Malden craned his neck to peer around him, looking for the source of the buzzing noise, and It came again, even louder, very close now. He nearly jumped off the horse’s back so he could go running and screaming through the woods. But no. Surely he was safer on horseback. He reached down to touch the hilt of his bodkin. Then cursed himself as he remembered he had Acidtongue tied up behind the saddle. Surely the magic sword was the match for anything short of a fire-breathing dragon.
To his left, something crashed through the foliage. Malden wheeled around to that side and the jennet did likewise, snorting in panic.
The thing that came out of the woods was as big as a cow, and it gleamed with iridescent colors when the sunlight struck its back. Two stunted, cloudy eyes stood on either side of a curved black beak, below which spiky mandibles clicked together. The beast’s massive oblong body stood supported on six slender legs that bent in all the wrong directions. Coarse black fur covered those legs, though the rest of the animal was smooth and covered in plates of armor.
The thing reared up and snapped at the jennet with its compound jaw.
Malden reached back to grab the hilt of Acidtongue and slapped the jennet’s rump instead, because he could not see what he was doing. He couldn’t take his eyes off the monster that bore down on him.
The horse, perhaps thinking her master had finally come to his senses, did a very horselike thing and bolted. Unfortunately Malden was leaning backward at that precise moment to reach the sword. He had to slip his feet out of the stirrups to get it.
The horse went forward. The thief went backward, head over ankles. He crashed to the leaf-strewn forest floor with a thump that took his wind.
The jennet disappeared between two thickets of trees. The monster ran forward, barreling right for Malden’s prostrate form. Malden grabbed for the bodkin at his belt and brought it around in a wild arc, slashing at the thing’s face.
The creature took a nimble step back, avoiding Malden’s swing. Its jaws clacked together and Malden pulled his hand back. Carefully, he got to his feet. The monster tried to circle around behind him, so he turned with it. It lunged forward-he jabbed, and struck, but the point of his bodkin only scored the leathery hide on its beak.
Malden recovered and started another swing, intending to cut at its eyes. Surely they must be a weak point in its armor, he thought. He must strike true to catch such tiny targets. Yet as he leaned forward into the stab, the monster’s carapace split open, two pieces of its shell peeling back as long glassy wings burst free and buzzed savagely.
Malden danced backward as it jumped up into the air and smashed into him. He was knocked back, his heel caught on a rotten log and he fell, his bodkin flashing wildly before him as the monster bore down on him from above. He threw up his free arm to fend it off, and the mandibles grabbed at the sleeve of his jerkin.
“No!” he shouted, certain it would snap the bones of his arm like so many twigs. The weight of the creature fell on him and he was enveloped in its strange reek, an acrid stench like nothing he’d ever smelled before. The mandibles closed on his arm and he yelped in anticipation.
Yet the pain did not come. The thing gummed at his sleeve, and Malden realized it did not have any teeth. It could grasp him, and drool on him, but it lacked the equipment to actually bite him.
It buzzed angrily and its skinny legs batted at his face, the hairs there feathery soft. It tried to crush him under its massive bulk, but it proved surprisingly light for something so large.
If it wanted to kill him, it was going to have to sit on him until he starved to death. Malden almost laughed as he understood. This was no monster bent on devouring travelers who strayed into its forest. It was some leaf- eating insect, grown overlarge, yes, but as harmless as a pill bug. It must have attacked him only in desperation. Had he stumbled across its nest? Was it protecting its young?
Then he heard shouts and the crashing clamor of horses running through the forest. Suddenly his companions were all around him, and he called to them that he was all right, that it was nothing.
Apparently Croy didn’t hear him. Ghostcutter came up high and flashed down, slicing the insect’s head from where it seamlessly joined its thorax.
Stinking yellow blood poured down over Malden’s face in great gouts. He choked and spluttered as some of the foul stuff got in his mouth. That was the worst injury he’d taken from the animal.
“You didn’t need to do that,” he said as Croy helped him up to his feet.
“I just saved your life,” the knight insisted. He looked perplexed.
“No, no, it was harmless-look-it doesn’t even have any teeth.”
Croy picked up the severed head of the beast and poked inside its mouth with a finger. “I thought you were in peril,” he said. “You were down on the ground and that thing was on top of you.”
Malden wiped at his face and chest. The yellow slime had positively ruined his clothing. It stank of the animal’s alien odor and clung to his fingers like thick mucus. “Gah,” he said. “I need to find a stream so I can wash this off.”
“There’s one just up ahead,” Cythera told him. “We were trying to ford it when we realized you were missing. Then when your horse rejoined us, missing her rider, we knew to come look for you.” She frowned and looked away. “Morget-what are you doing?”
The barbarian had his axe out and was cheerily butchering the giant insect. “Slag says we can roast this for dinner. It’ll be good to have fresh meat.”
“I think I might be sick,” Malden said.
The dwarf, still sitting his pony, just shrugged. “More for the rest of us, then. Though I’ll tell you, you’re missing out on a fucking delicacy. I haven’t had a good giant cave beetle steak since I left my country. You can get it in Ness, dried and salted like jerky, but it’s just not the same.”
Croy looked incredulous. “You’ve seen such a beast before?”
“Oh, aye,” Slag told him. “There’s some mines in the dwarven kingdom just crawling with the things. Normally they live underground. What this one’s doing up here in this blasted daylight, I can’t say. Must have climbed up out of a crack in the rocks and got lost. They’re sodding stupid like that.”
Malden studied the eyes of the dead beast. “Out of its element,” he said, thinking perhaps that explained its aggression. A humble creature, a harmless feeder on fungus and subterranean plant matter, suddenly lost in a world of painfully bright light full of strangely soft but dangerous monsters. He could not help but feel sorry for it.
“Wait,” Croy said. “If it’s a denizen of caves, by nature-does that mean what I think it must?”
“Aye,” Slag told him. “It could only have come from one place. This means the Vincularium must be right around the next fucking bend.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Croy and Morget studied a map for a while, then they all mounted their horses and headed to the northeast. The way led up a slope, at first gradual but ever steepening. At times they crested a ridge of land and could see out beyond the trees and across great vistas of green valleys to hills in the distance. Then the trees began to grow thinner on the ground, and shorter of stature, and soon the sunlight that burst through the gaps between their branches was strong enough that Slag could not bear it. He put on a wide-brimmed hat and rubbed burnt cork under his eyes to cut the glare, but eventually he was forced to throw a cloak over himself and allowed Croy to lead his pony on a line. To keep the horse from panicking, the dwarf rigged up an ingenious device-a set of square iron plates mounted on the colt’s bridle, which kept it from looking to either side or behind. It could only see Croy’s horse ahead of it, and instinctively stayed in line.
Malden kept an eye on his own horse, not wishing to be separated from the others again. The jennet seemed badly spooked after her encounter with the giant beetle. It didn’t seem to help that Malden still stank of the thing’s thick blood. He had to whisper soothing words to her constantly lest she panic and run off. He was barely aware, then, when they crossed some invisible border and suddenly were out of the forest. It was not until Croy called for them all to look up that he raised his eyes from the ground.
He saw at once they had climbed a great hill that stood at the foot of a great towering mass of rock-the Whitewall, the chain of mountains that separated the land into eastern steppes and western plains.
