tree with his axe. Phen took it upon himself to put one end of the spit on his shoulder while Oarly took up the other. It was an awkward looking rig, as the dwarf was easily a head shorter than the boy.
“You’ll want to pick a campsite well before dark, lad.” Oarly told Hyden. “We’ll need plenty of time to find wood and set up alarms.”
Alarms? Hyden asked himself as they started back under way. He found himself wondering, not for the first time, how Oarly had earned the title of master, and what he might be a master of. He was finding himself glad to have the dwarf along, though. He would never have thought of setting up alarms around the camp, and if he had, he wouldn’t have had the first idea of how to go about it.
Later, when Oarly suggested they stop, Hyden didn‘t argue. It wasn’t a clearing by any means, just a place where the trees were farther apart than elsewhere. The group was surprised when Oarly shrugged out of his packs and went to work.
“Stand back,” he said. He sipped from a flask, put it away, and wiggled his brows cheerily at Phen. With his axe held out he began spinning around and around in counterbalanced lurches of speed. Teetering and tottering as he went, he used his sharp blade to mow down the undergrowth to a manageable level. When he was done, he leaned on the haft of his weapon and stumbled in place for a moment. When his eyes rolled back out of his head he pulled a small shovel from his belt and threw it three feet wide of Hyden. “Dig us a fire pit. I’d let Brady do the honors, but he’s wore from swing’n that machete all day. You two come on,” he barked at a couple of the seamen, and off they went into the jungle. The two men took turns carrying back armfuls of dead fall that Oarly was chopping into manageable chunks. After a fire was going, and the meat was spitted over it, Oarly took out a pack that contained a sizable ball of twine and what might have been a dozen little bells.
“Come on, Phen,” Oarly ordered. “You’ll have to get up on my shoulders to help me get our web strung over some of these branches. I learned this trick from the Spiderton Tinks and it has to be done just so.”
“Who are the Spiderton Tinks?” Phen asked and Oarly obliged him with the tale as they went about stringing twine.
“Amazing,” Brady commented to Hyden as they watched the dwarf show Phen how to make a silent approach on them next to impossible. When his tale, and the rigging, was done, Oarly took a piece of sizzling meat from the thing roasting on the fire, sniffed at it, then wolfed it down.
“Mmmm, that’s tasty,” he said as he cut another piece. “Master Biggs, pass me that flask.” Then to Hyden, “You’ll want three two-man watches tonight. Me and the boy done did our part.” Oarly swigged deeply from the tin container a few times, and passed it back to the Deck Master, who passed it on to his men. No sooner had the dwarf lain back on his bedroll, than he started to snore.
“That right there,” Brady said. “That sound alone will keep the fiercest of creatures away from us.”
Hyden nodded his agreement with a distant smile, remembering Mikahl and Vaegon making almost the exact same comment about the sounds Loudin of the Reyhall used to make while he slept. He couldn’t help but remember the fine times they’d spent around a fire very much like this one. Neither could he forget that most of them never made it out of the Giant Mountains.
Chapter Twenty-Three
At the last possible moment Mikahl rolled into the direct path of the lead geka. The creature was moving too fast to snap at him with its needle-sharp teeth. Neither it, nor its riders expected anyone from the party on the roadside to intervene in their chase. The cold-blooded beast leapt over Mikahl intending to avoid the glowing blue blade he carried. As Mikahl hoped, it hadn’t leapt very high. With an upward heave of such force that it made Mikahl go to his knees he thrust his sword into the creature.
The geka shrieked in pain as its own momentum dragged its body across the razor sharp steel. It churned at the end of its leap, knocking Mikahl farther into the road, but the beast was dead before it found the earth again. The force of its limp impact with the rutted dirt threw the two zard-men riding its back over its head. They landed badly and before they were done tumbling Grommen was hacking into them with his heavy sword.
Mikahl didn’t get the chance to regain his feet before one of the zard-men riding the second geka leapt from its back down onto him. The geka’s driver reined the creature headlong into the camp and let its gnashing jaws go to work. Two of the Highwander soldiers were caught off guard by the attack. One of them was bitten almost in two. The other, who had been attempting to shove his companion out of the way, had his arm chomped off at the elbow.
The horses picketed at the forest’s edge brayed and bucked wildly. Maxrell Tyne charged toward the road to help Mikahl, drawing his blade, and cursing their sudden involvement in a battle with the skeeks as he went. It was only then that he realized one of the men who was being chased was the one they were seeking. One of the fleeing riders, brandishing nothing more than a carved walking stick for a weapon, was now charging his horse back toward the road. With a violent swing, he clouted the zard-man that had tackled Mikahl in the side of its green-scaled head.
In the middle of the camp, the other two zard-men were dismounting their geka; one with a short sword raised high, the other with a long barbed pike in its clawed hands. The geka driver stayed on his mount and fired a crossbow at Grommen. The bolt struck the big fighter, leaving the wicked missile protruding from his shoulder.
Tyne saw that Mikahl had found his feet and started toward the unprotected flank of the thrashing geka. The remaining Highwander soldier put a serious gash across the big lizard’s snout and was now ducked behind a tree near the horses, waiting for help. The geka lunged and snapped at him with futile effort. Finally, it screeched and hissed, and latched onto the nearest horse. It shook its head violently back and forth. As big as the geka was, it couldn’t sling the horse around, but it did lift the screaming steed off of its hooves, snap its tether, and tear a huge chunk of flesh away. The horse half bucked, half fell sideways into the trees with a loud crash, thrashing and whinnying pitifully. The geka, after several jerking chomps on the horsemeat, raised its head high and chugged the substantial morsel down its gullet.
Unable to keep the big lizard from exposing itself, the geka rider hissed a curse and leapt from its back. The Highwander soldier charged from the trees aiming his sword at the geka’s chest just as Maxrell Tyne ran a sword into the creature’s gut. Both blades struck deeply. The geka reared in pain and twisted its tail around, knocking Tyne to the ground. The Highwander man barely got his sword free and dove out of the way. The zard who had been riding the creature had no intention of continuing the battle and broke into a tail-slinging run back up the road the way they’d come.
“Stop him!” Grommen yelled to whoever was listening. He wasn’t close to his horse, and he was in terrible pain, or he’d have chased the zard down himself. Tyne heard him, and stumbled from the trees to get mounted, but when he started to climb on a horse, a fierce grinding in his knee dropped him.
The zard-man before Mikahl looked at him with its blank black orbs and hissed menacingly. Then it glanced at Ironspike’s glowing blade. It started toward Mikahl, feigned a claw one way then rolled around twisting to rake its claws from the other. Ironspike whistled as it cut through the air. Mikahl dropped to knee level and the zard-man tried to leap back, but it was no use. A deep furrow across its scaly upper thighs opened up. Mikahl stepped out of range of its thrashing claws and tail and glanced up the road at Lord Gregory. Beyond his friend he could see the fleeing zard. The other pair of Highwander soldiers were engaged with the remaining zard-men in the camp. Tyne was trying to get there to help them, but limping badly.
Mikahl pulled Lord Gregory’s sword from his hip and hurled it at him with a grin. “Lose something?” he yelled. He didn’t even look to see where the thing ended up. Instead, he started off toward the Highwander men who were fighting desperately to defend themselves.
Mikahl held out Ironspike’s tip, and in the symphony it sent coursing through him, he found the single melody he was after. Sharp red darts of magical force shot from the weapon into the zard wielding the pike. The thumping impacts sent the lizard-man sprawling across the roadside.
“Clear out!” Mikahl yelled. The Highwander men wasted no time falling to the ground and rolling away. A streaking blast of lightning consumed the remaining zard. Before it could register what happened it was charred to a husk.
Seeing his own sword twisting through the air toward him filled Lord Gregory with a surge of uplifting energy. He spurred his mount to meet the blade, and with effortless grace snatched it out of the air by its hilt. As if it knew
