Captain's Fury (Page 74)

Marcus fell silent and glanced away from the young man. They had reached the healers’ tents. Several wounded men lay on stretchers on the ground, bandaged while they waited their turns in the healing tubs. Several other men lay senseless on bedrolls nearby, fresh pink skin showing where their wounds had been watercrafted closed, exhausting them in the process.

Lady Aquitaine, in her washerwoman guise, was there, serving as an attendant to the wounded, carrying them water and monitoring their injuries. She glanced up at Marcus, smiled very slightly, and returned to her tasks.

"Fidelar Marcus just doesn’t roll off the tongue as well though, does it?" Crassus continued. "All the same, I thought you should know that I am aware of all the extra work you do. Thank you."

Marcus tried not to spit out the bitter taste in his mouth. "You’re welcome, sir."

Chapter 28

The rain, Amara decided, was a mixed blessing. While the moderate, steady downpour helped to hide their trail and cut down on visibility, reducing their chances of being seen, after three days it had begun to gall. Here at the southernmost reaches of the Realm, rainfall such as this was not unusual this time of year, but Amara had never had to contend with such a relentless downpour.

The nights were uncomfortable, especially because there was no dry wood to be had for a fire. Bernard told Amara that he could have used his crafting to shape the trees into a more effective shelter, or to open a dry hole in a rock shelf, but that he didn’t dare risk it, for fear enemy woodsmen might recognize it.

Despite that, Amara’s husband was as resourceful as ever about practical matters. He always managed to find some means by which to keep at least some of the water away from them, but none of them were resting very well. If the rain didn’t let up soon and allow them something other than a cold meal of traveling biscuits, they were going to run out of them and be forced to eat only whatever Bernard could forage or hunt as they traveled. Amara was not looking forward to raw rabbit.

She glowered up at the sky and wished that she had more practice with crafting the weather instead of flying.

"I know precisely how you feel," Gaius murmured, limping steadily along. "I can’t stop thinking about how nice a warm fire and a hot cup of tea would be."

Amara smiled. "Is it that obvious?"

"We’re all thinking the same thing," Gaius replied. He squinted up at the clouds. "This is mostly my fault, you know."

Amara glanced aside at him. "Why do you say that?"

"Because it was my mistake. The wind that brought us here was from the far north, cold and dry. I bade it fly south with us, and it met the warm, humid skies over the sea. Rain is the result."

Amara shook her head. "Not a terrible mistake. The rain has probably helped us a great deal."

Gaius smiled, teeth gleaming. "Just between the two of us? I’ve had all the help I can stand."

Amara laughed, and her eye alighted upon the nearest tree trunk. Perhaps seven feet up, the bark had been roughly gouged and scored to the inner skin with thick, crude furrows.

"Bernard?" Amara called quietly.

"I saw them," he said.

"What are they?"

"Territorial markings," Bernard replied.

"Territorial markings…? Of what?"

"A predator," Bernard said. "Maybe some kind of hunting cat. Maybe one of those big lizards." He stopped and held up a hand, his head tilted slightly to one side.

"They’re called garim," Gaius supplied quietly. "They make marvelous cloaks when-"

The underbrush ten feet to the First Lord’s left erupted in sudden motion, and something massive and leathery and low shot across the forest floor, its head turning sideways, its jaws gaping to snap at Gaius’s legs.

It was an enormous lizard-a garim.

The First Lord saw it coming, and he reacted with admirable speed. He managed to turn and thrust his heavy walking staff into the beast’s jaws. The garim snapped them shut, neatly clipping off the end of the staff. Then it spat the wood aside and pressed in on Gaius.

Gaius’s maneuver, though, had given Amara precious seconds to act. The Cursor called upon Cirrus, borrowing of the wind fury’s swiftness, and the world slowed down to a lazy, syrup-thick dance.

Amara’s hand dipped to her belt, and her fingers found the hilt of the knife there. She drew, even as she turned toward the menacing garim, shifting her weight with maddening slowness, and flung the knife at what, to her own perceptions, was almost normal speed.

The knife tumbled precisely one and a half times, struck the creature’s scaled hide, and sank several inches into the garim’s flank, just behind its forward leg.

The garim reacted more slowly than any animal she had ever seen would have, and Amara had taken most of a step before it suddenly wrenched itself to one side, falling into a slow tumble as it snapped its jaws at the knife, tearing it free.

Amara drew her sword and flung herself at the beast, gripping the short weapon in both hands. The extra speed lent her by her fury would allow her to deal out a powerful blow-and she would need it to cut through its hide if the lack of penetration from her knife throw was any indication.

The steps between her and the garim drifted by slowly, and she had time to appreciate another mixed blessing: Though the gift of speed granted by her fury made her swift enough to intervene on the First Lord’s behalf, it also left her with entirely too much time to realize the danger in her course of action.

The beast was much larger than she had thought at first. Though it stood very low to the ground, no more than two feet at the highest point of its back, the garim was built broad and flat, with powerful legs that spread out widely from an overly broad body made from gristle and sinew. It probably weighed at least twice what Amara did, and quite possibly more. Its feet were tipped with heavy claws, its head was solid and blocky, distended with the size of the muscles that powered its vicious jaws. It had eyes like beads of black glass, small and vicious and stupid, and its tail, stretching out in length nearly equal to its body, thrashed about with entirely too much power and speed. Its hide was dark grey-green, and rippled with stripes of darker coloration, giving it ideal camouflage in the rain-drenched forest, and the scales looked tough and thick.

If the garim seized her, it would remove her limbs every bit as easily as it had snapped through Gaius’s walking staff. She could evade it easily, of course, if she had been on her own-but she wasn’t. The creature had deliberately rushed Gaius, and if she did not force it to deal with her, it would only return to its attack on the First Lord. She had to fight, which meant that she had to deal out a decisive, crippling stroke on the first blow or risk being overwhelmed by the beast’s power and speed.