their bodies bouncing here and there from the rough ride of the carriage.
Nix glanced ahead. The carriage was bearing down on the Vwynn before them. Nix looked back into the carriage. Rusilla's head was tilted to the side, her body bouncing, but her eyes were fixed on him. A shooting pain rooted in his skull, behind his eye. He winced, looked away, but too late. He tasted pepper, and Rusilla's mental voice penetrated his head, displaced his thoughts with two words uttered with such rage and hate that they nearly caused him to lose his grip on the wagon.
Kill Rakon! she said.
The words bounced around in his brain, drowned out the sound of everything else around him. His hand tightened on the grip of his falchion. He brought it up toward the window. He could jam it through, stab Rakon in the chest.
The violent thoughts against Rakon triggered the spellworm. Nix's stomach cramped. His muscles seized and he held on to the bouncing carriage only because his spasming hand closed over the rail he was holding on to.
Kill him!
A sharp pain started in Nix's chest and radiated toward his left arm. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't hold on.
I am Nix Fall of Dur Follin. Nix Fall…
It was no good. He felt as if he'd been stabbed in the chest. His legs went weak under him and still his hand slowly, incrementally raised his falchion for a killing strike that would surely result in his death. He forced his teeth apart and shouted, spitting as he spoke.
'Stop it! You're killing me!'
Rakon looked at him sharply, at Rusilla. He cursed and fumbled for his bag. He withdrew a metal vial and popped the wax seal with his thumb.
Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!
Rakon leaned across the carriage's interior, roughly took his sister's face in his hand, and dumped the contents of the vial into her mouth, spilling some in the process.
Almost immediately the drumbeat of violence in Nix's head ceased.
Rakon shoved his sister back into her place, glared at Nix, and slid the wood window panel back into place. Nix could hardly breathe.
'You all right?' Egil asked him.
'All right,' Nix said.
'Good. Because here we go.'
Ahead, a dozen Vwynn loped down the road toward the wagon.
'Hold on!' Baras said, and whipped the reins with one hand while holding his blade in the other. Nix put the episode with Rusilla from his mind and gripped his sword.
The wagon closed on the Vwynn. Ten strides. Five.
Baras pulled the reins slightly to steer the terrified horses into the Vwynn as the groups met. The huge draft animals trampled two of the creatures, who died in a spray of blood and screams. Another leaped high, over the horses, and landed on the roof of the carriage, claws scrabbling for purchase. Egil's hammer and the swords of two other guards bloodied it and sent it careening off the back. The other Vwynn parted around the carriage and leaped at the passengers from the side as they passed.
A Vwynn bounded at Nix, claws outstretched. Nix slashed wildly and his blade opened the creature's shoulder in a spray of blood. It snarled, clawed at him as it fell away to the road. Egil's hammer caught another Vwynn in mid-leap, slammed into its head, and sent it spinning away with a shriek of pain.
The guards on the other side of the wagon chopped and slashed and screamed. A Vwynn tore one of them off the rail and onto the road. He was swarmed, screaming with pain and fear as claws and teeth ripped flesh.
The guard beside Egil, Derg, lashed out with his blade at a Vwynn that loped beside the wagon, an awkward swing made still more awkward by the fact that his foot slipped as he swung. He lost his balance and the Vwynn coiled and pounced on him. One of the creature's claws sank into the wood of the carriage's top, with which it pulled itself up onto the rail, and the other tore bloody furrows in the man's face. Before Derg could ply his blade, the creature sank its teeth into his shoulder and tried to use its weight to pull him off the carriage.
Egil snatched at Derg's shirt, held him precariously on the hurtling wagon. The Vwynn clambered over Derg and clawed Egil's arm, tried to bite it. The priest endured the attack and held on to Derg, whose one leg was dangling free, hanging in space.
'Nix!'
Nix stabbed at the face of the creature, once, twice, and it lurched back, lost its balance, swayed. Derg shoved at it, but almost dislodged himself in the process. A blow from Egil's hammer to its face finally ended it, sending bits of fangs flying and knocking the creature back onto the road.
'We're clear in front!' Baras said.
Behind them, Vwynn thronged the road. Egil assisted Derg back onto his perch.
'My thanks,' Derg said to the priest.
Egil thumped him on the shoulder, eliciting a wince of pain from Derg.
'Two wounded on this side,' Nix said.
'We're all right over here,' the guard called from the other side.
'My lord?' Baras called over his shoulder into the carriage.
'We're all fine, Baras. Don't stop until we reach the ruins.'
'Yes, my lord.'
Nix sagged against the carriage, blew out a sigh. 'You all right?' he asked Egil.
Egil winced with pain but nodded. 'I'm all right.'
Derg, however, was not. He did the best he could to stanch the blood flowing from the bite in his shoulder, but he was already pale. Yet the carriage could not risk a stop for fear of another Vwynn attack.
In time they could no longer see the mass of Vwynn behind them. Minnear rose as they rode onward, casting the landscape in sickly, pale green. The ruins thickened, towering, monumental blocks looming out of the darkness, the stone ghosts of a lost world.
It looked as though an entire city had been torn from the ground, jumbled in the air, and cast back to earth in a heap. Tumbles of stone suggested pillars, statuary, monolithic building blocks that dwarfed everything in Dur Follin save the Archbridge and Ool's clock.
'They say Ool had the building secrets of the ancients,' Nix said, as they rolled past a bygone age.
'Seeing this,' Egil said, grimacing at the pain of one wound or other, 'I believe it. What do you say, Derg?'
Derg glanced at him, glassy-eyed, pale, and started to fall back. Jyme and Egil grabbed him simultaneously. Derg's eyes rolled. His head flopped back.
'Stop the carriage, Baras,' Nix called. 'Now.'
'Don't stop,' Rakon said.
'Derg needs attention. Stop the damned carriage!'
Baras looked over his shoulder, saw Derg, and pulled the reins. The horses pulled up, sweating, steaming. Egil and Jyme quickly lowered Derg to the road. Baras hopped off the driver's bench and came to his man's side.
'Derg!' Baras said. Everyone gathered around as Baras rolled him over. Rakon looked on from the carriage.
'What is it, man?' Baras asked, tapping Derg's cheeks. 'Derg? Derg?'
Derg's eyes rolled and his mouth fell open, moved, but no sound emerged. Flecks of foam rimed his mouth. Nix kneeled beside him, touched Derg's face.
'Is it blood loss?' Baras asked.
'No,' Nix said. 'He's burning up.'
'We cannot stay here,' Rakon said from the carriage. 'The Vwynn will be coming.'
All eyes looked back down the moonlit road. Nix saw no Vwynn.
'Watch the ruins and the road,' Baras said to his men. 'Stay sharp.'
'Check his wounds,' Egil said, nodding at Derg. 'The bite especial.'
Baras hurriedly cut off Derg's tunic and pulled the man's makeshift bandage away from his shoulder wound.
