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Chapter Eight
Ephram crept forward on his belly, pulling the bulk of his weight through the thick brush. The fresh snow activated his ability to turn invisible. However, it didn't make him silent. In front of him, and at the tree line, were his two stealthiest soldiers: Hunter and Fiver. The harefoot ranger drew powers from Rhya, goddess of the wood. The anthropomorphized rabbit walked forward with little regard to being spotted by anyone and with good reason: his magical "cloak of the woods" blended him seamlessly with his surroundings as it bent the sunlight around him.
Perfect camouflage, Ephram thought.
On the other hand, Hunter relied upon an insane level of skill. Ephram only saw him because Hunter inevitably made tracks in the snow. Right now, Ephram spotted him at eleven o'clock, but only because he knew where to look. Fiver was motionless at one o'clock. Hunter hid in the small shadow of a quaking aspen, limbs mostly devoid of leaves, and peering around the trunk to the towering Bone Wall that lay across a gap about a quarter of a mile wide. Hunters black armor so perfectly positioned itself in the shadow that he looked a natural extension of the tree's massive roots. Directly in front of the assassin was all open country with a few small boulders and dead grass poking up here and there. Ephram did hear the babble of a brook, but couldn't see where it was coming from.
No place to hide. No cover at all. We'll be sitting ducks while we cross.
A few hundred feet behind Ephram, a twig snapped. He glanced over his shoulder at Akagi, and briefly turned off the Skin of Thomas power that made him invisible in snow. Ephram held up a fist to signal "hold back," and the black-haired warrior backpedaled, taking his weight off a branch hidden in the terrain. To Akagi's left about twenty paces, the powerful minotaur barbarian, Tomoluk waited with his battle axe in hand.
All my men are on edge; they all knew that the Bone Wall has its defenders. Good. We'll be lucky if someone doesn't die here.
High above the canopy, two huge black birds with oddly elongated bodies circled. From here, Ephram could make out greasy feathers and surmised that each had a wing span exceeding eighteen feet. These hell crows possessed red glowing eyes and beaks filled with sharp teeth. He knew they could pierce most armor but was fairly sure they'd have difficulty with his corobidian cuirass or Hunter's killsuit.
"Caw! Caw!" the hell crows cried out. One of them broke from its flight formation and perched itself on the top of the enormous Bone Wall. Ephram spotted other hell birds joining this one, flying up from some place beyond the hedge itself. Soon, the top of the construction overflowed with them in one gigantic murder of crows.
"Fuck," Ephram uttered under his breath. Reactivating the Skin of Thomas again, his pale flesh drained of its pinkness. Once he became albino, Ephram faded from view. First he become translucent and then he transitioned to completely invisible with the effect extending to all that he wore.
Ephram stilled his breathing and stared forward at the Bone Wall itself.
Do my scouts see anything that I don't? he thought.
The massive structure jutted from the prairie ahead like a mountain range. It was comprised of so many kinds of bones that it resembled a macabre spine belonging to a mythic creature that met its end in this place. Over a thousand feet high in places, and virtually vertical in its design, tremendous necromantic magic obviously held it together. Ephram spotted rib bones, skulls, femurs, wings, antlers, and other crazy things all twisted and coiled and fused together for league upon league north and south as far as the eye could see. Some bones were gargantuan, and he struggled to try to envision the creature to which they once belonged. The thing bent and wrapped itself over the terrain much like the wrinkles on a tablecloth, over hill and dale, until swallowed by the horizon.
Hunter flickered and reappeared at Ephram's side. "We cross here, sir," the assassin told him in that mechanized tinny voice he'd gotten used to. "The suns won't shine brighter today. If lady Henna is right about the necro-terror linnorms being afraid to come out during the day, all we'll have to deal with are the birds."
"There's dozens of them," Ephram said. "Let's get back with the others and talk things over. We need a plan."
Hunter nodded, and then flickered to Fiver to deliver Captain Ephram's orders. Soon all of them gathered under a thick copse of giant spruce trees about a dozen yards from the forest edge. They spoke in low voices.
"The good news is that we've got about twelve hours of daylight left, and there's no soldiers or sentries in sight, either patrolling the base of the Bone Wall or atop it," Ephram said.
"And the bad news?" Brunhilda asked. The strong ursuul female leaned on her axe and tweaked one of her tusks with the fingers of her left hand. "Don't fuck with us, Eph. This is Zanda. There's going to be bad news."
Ephram nodded. "The bad news is that there are a lot of hell birds atop the wall. They'll attack us once they spot us. Someone's got to lead them off so the rest of us can get at the wall here without being picked off."
"Whoever that is won't be coming back," Annie said, clutching hold of Ephram's elbow in fright. He looked at his girlfriend, dressed warmly in furs yet still showing a lot of cleavage despite the wintry conditions. "It can't be Eph," she said. She stared up at him with those doe-like eyes. "He's the most valuable person on this team." Annie licked her lips suggestively, and Ephram couldn't help but notice how Hunter hung his head and shook it from side to side.
Is he judging me? Fuck him; he's just jealous I get to plow this every night.
"Let's have a map of what you two saw," Akagi suggested, handing Hunter and Fiver a stick. Aside from the Bone Wall, did you see anything?"
Hunter busied himself by drawing lines in the snow and mud. Fiver dropped small stones to represent their party. Another to indicate their destination.
"And I have to go with Eph," Annie said. "I'll positively fall to pieces if I don't have his strong arms to hold me." Her red hair cascaded from off her shoulder like liquid blood. "Tell them you can't go. Tell them how important you are, honey." A few tears appeared at the corner of Annie's eyes.
Don't cry, beautiful, Ephram thought. I'm the only one that knows the true mission beyond "You are hereby ordered to rescue White Wolf Beryl Loftcrag from his incarceration in the dungeons of the Librarium Apocalypto." That's how Lady Carlina had put it to him so many months ago. There are only ten White Wolves in the church of Thomas, and they serve the disciple as a council of sorts. Powerful priests all, Beryl Loftcrag is significant in the White Wolves because he knows where the Orb of Winter is stored. That...and he's my Duke. I must rescue him before he gives up its location to Kahket. And that brings us to that other thing: I alone have the password to open the chamber containing the Orb of Winter. It was entrusted to me by Thomas himself, and I have secret orders from Carlina to retrieve the orb (once we've recovered it) and bring it to Citadel Raven for safekeeping.
"Annie's right, I can't be the one," Ephram said, holding her hand.
"Of course," Jareck the dwarf stated. "This is a rescue mission, and it shames us all to allow the one that's supposed to be doing the rescuing to perish to a bunch of animals. We should draw straws. Whoever gets the short straw sacrifices themselves for the glory of Djoser."
Salina spoke up. "There was nothing of `sacrifice' mentioned at the time of our recruitment. If this is the case, you can pay us half of what you owe us and we'll leave."
"Yeah," Shae said. The two ladies wore the scratched and dented battle armor of the Valkyrie legion belonging to the King of the Firetrees elves. "Our deaths must be meaningful or we do not sit at the fire with our ancestors."
"Djoser, god of the earth, will see to it that the gift of your lives is well rewarded," Jareck said, swinging the Howl of Night around. "He is the mightiest of gods and extends his calloused hand to all that recognize his might."
Salina and Shae frowned but said nothing.
"With all due respect to you, Djoser can go fuck himself in the arse," Hunter said. "No one's sacrificing their lives here."
The dwarf scowled and tightened his grip visibly around the haft of his weapon.
"Try it, and I'll kill you," Hunter said coolly.
The dwarf spat in the snow. "I'll have you know, I organized a party to clear out an entire mine of evil dwellers. I called my party, `The Shield of Darkness,' and we—"
Hunter cut him off by sweeping the dwarf's leg with a swift kick to the ankle. It sent the dwarf tumbling. Jareck responded by swinging his axe at Hunter's ankles, which the assassin lithely jumped as if it were no effort at all. The dwarf tried one more time, and Hunter kicked the flat of the blade so hard with his cleats it sent the Howl of Night tumbling into a tree trunk a yard from where the dwarf lay.
"How dare you?!" the dwarf yelled, getting to his feet.
Ephram tackled him and placed his hand over the dwarf's mouth. "Shut up, god dammit," he warned. "You'll give us away."
That's when Hunter pointed toward the wall in the distance. "Those birds are just filthy hell spawn. If they're all dead, there won't be any to go telling where we crossed the wall. So I propose this: I'll lead the crows to the south. There's a small but deep river that collects the runoff from several brooks in this area." He tapped with a stick at their makeshift map. "It runs away from the Bone Wall and into the forest at this point, which means I'll have to cross the water. Luckily, there's also an ancient stone bridge here. If I can get to the forest, that will keep the birds off of me, and then I'll catch up with you later. Or, if all else fails, I can hide at the bottom of the river for several hours. The birds can't get at me there."
"You can breathe underwater?" Fiver asked.
Hunter gestured at his helmet. "My suit can pull oxygen from the air through this mask. I should be able to stay under for some time."
Tomoluk spoke up. "What does the bridge look like? My people are descended from the great earth spirit who took the form of a shaggy bull when the beasts of the world were carved by Venerick from the Kurillyic Stone. If it is made of natural rock, I could pull power from it to protect me from the birds."
"I think it's granite," Hunter said.
Henna cleared her throat. "Zanda was not always settled by humans. In the Second Age, these lands belonged to the Dragon Men, ancestors of the Nykorans. It's said they erected great monuments to Sheila, goddess of dragons, and they used granite because of its ability to absorb and store magical power. If the bridge is granite, it might be one of those monuments mentioned in legend. Something that predates the Bone Wall."
"What other monuments do the legends speak of?" Dallin Christopher asked. "Forgive a bard's curiosity."
"Five obelisks spread about the land," Henna said. "They have symbols on them that can be read by anyone with draconic blood in their veins. Each was supposed to bear a powerful secret known to the old gods. However, all of them are destroyed. I saw the ruins of the last one a few years ago. Quite a shame really, as I imagine it stood for eons. When it fell, all of its magic dissipated leaving behind nothing but ruined stone."
"Tomoluk," Dallin Christopher said, "You mentioned you could draw power from the bridge provided it's made of natural rock. May I ask what kind of power? This sounds like something I could write about in a ballad. People love my heroic songs."
"Strength, mostly," Tomoluk said. "I'm the strongest one here by far. But on natural stone, nothing can defeat me. The birds can attack me if they wish, but it'll be like me swatting at insects even if they come in great numbers. My entire being shall become as hard as rock...so hard, in fact, that I can't be cut, even by a magical cibrian blade."
"The bridge is too far away," Fiver remarked. "You'd never make it by yourself. They'd swarm you by the time you were a quarter of the way there."
"I'll take him," Hunter said. "He can ride at my back on Cyrayalayeth. We'll drop him off at the bridge to draw the crows, and I'll race with my mount into the forest here."
"You mean flee like the coward you are?" Tomoluk asked.
"I'm not a coward," Hunter said, visibly bristling in his armor. "Need I remind you who carried your arse back to camp when you got hamstrung?"
The minotaur snorted and said, "It's awfully convenient that you attacked the giant skeletons and the Timeron knights first. It's almost like you knew they were coming."
Hunter balled his fist.
"Save it for the birds," Ephram said. "Hunter and Tomoluk, this sounds like a good plan. Let's make it so, okay?"
Hunter nodded and flickered away.
Tomoluk grabbed Ephram by the shoulder and walked him a few paces to the south. "Captain, this is going to shit and you know it. We can't trust him."
Ephram swallowed and said, "We've got no choice, Tomoluk." He clapped the minotaur on the shoulder. "You don't have the speed to outrun the birds, and you can't use your power unless you're standing on natural rock. We need Hunter to get you to that bridge, and someone should go with you if things go crazy. He's coming back with his mount. Try and make this work, okay? We'll see you on the wall."
"Aye," the minotaur said, gnashing his teeth. "You will at that. This I can promise."
As usual, there's more on my website at http://slckismet.blogspot.com/p/discussion-board-for.html under the label "Chapter Seven" if you care to read ahead. Please tell me about your favorite character on the forum; I might be persuaded to post another chapter mid-week.