He took a few steps around a massive tree-limb, to where he could tramp around that fallen waerwood tree and along the scar in Darlok's wake. Stifling a curse, the fearful Lord Leaf followed, still panting from all the clambering up through the trees, and shaking a numbed hand he'd slammed into a very solid bough in the insufficiently torchlit darkness.
After a dozen more breaths of lurching along climbing on his knees over hard yet splintered wood and bruising himself against branches too strong to give way before him in the blinding tangle of leafy boughs, the priest came out into the westwards end of the open area. And stopped, aghast at what he saw.
A great scaled bulk stretched from near his boots for a long, long way to where the scar ended, in a clump of trees leaning perilously over the open area as if anxious to topple into it. It was the largest beast Cauldreth Jaklar had ever seen, and it lay in a sickeningly deformed heap. Broken-off treetrunks, dark with glistening gore, thrust up out of its rolling, twisted flesh like spears here, there, and over yonder.
It was dead, all right.
The lord of Hammerhold came tramping back along the huge corpse-Jaklar's stomach heaved as he realized what he'd thought was an upthrust, splayed tree in the distance was actually the talons of one large, dark dead claw, frozen in a last, futile clawing of the air-to growl, 'Well, Jaklar? Know what you're looking at?'
'A greatfangs,' the Lord Leaf managed to say, though he was certain his voice quavered. 'Or what's left of one.'
Hammerhand nodded. 'It had a rider.'
'Oh. You found the body?'
'No. Which means we may have a Doom lurking near us right now. I hope you've magic enough, Lord Leaf.'
'Narmarkoun,' the priest murmured, too afraid to bristle at Hammerhand's words.
The lord of Hammerhold nodded. The Doom called Narmarkoun was known to breed and ride greatfangs, and this great bulk beside them, all scales and tail and a dark, spreading lake of blood that was starting to stink, was the shattered corpse of a greatfangs.
The Lord Leaf swallowed. He knew of no priest of the Forestmother-not even Loroth the Highest-who could hurl magic enough to fight off a Doom. Fight off, not destroy.
'Lurking near us, right now,' he whispered to himself.
Hammerhand looked at him sharply, then turned to a knight who was hastening up with a torch, and pointed in silent command.
The knight nodded, stepped forward, and bent to let torchlight fall where his lord was pointing.
Something small, pale, and bloody glistened in the flickering radiance. It took Jaklar a moment to recognize what he was seeing: bloody fragments of bitten-through human bodies. His stomach lurched.
Lord Hammerhand bent down and picked up the largest lump as calmly as if he'd been a butcher gutting boar in his own kitchens. It flopped in his hand, heavy but shapeless, rows of shattered ribs protruding from dripping flesh. One shapely breast thrust forward from the gory piece of ribcage.
'Female,' Burrim Hammerhand said grimly, holding it up for a better look.
Jaklar vomited violently, staggering aside almost blindly as his stomach emptied itself in a hard, unstoppable, heaving rush.
When he could see again, the lord of Hammerhold had dropped that obscene lump and was holding up another, severed scraps of leather war-harness dropping from it. It was part of the shoulder of a sleekly-muscled woman's back, with the base of a bitten-off limb that shouldn't have been there protruding from it.
'Aumrarr,' he added tersely.
The priest swallowed. Hammerhand thought he was trying to ask a question, and explained, 'A wing.'
Jaklar's stomach heaved again, trying to rid itself of meals that were no longer there. He drooled bile helplessly, swallowed, then gaspingly turned back in time to see Hammerhand hold up the most grisly thing of all: a head, minus jaw and everything below.
The Lord Leaf caught sight of a face, all smeared hair and blood across dark, forever-staring eyes, as Burrim Hammerhand held it up and calmly looked into that dead gaze.
Then the lord of Hammerhold shook his head and let it fall back into the darkness with a wet thud. 'No one I know.'
Cauldreth Jaklar found himself fighting to be sick again, though there was nothing still down him left to come out.
'Lord Hammerhand!' It was more of a breathless gasp than a shout, out of the forest below. Back toward Hammerhold, whence they'd come.
'Here,' Burrim Hammerhand replied, turning, his sword coming up.
'Lord!' It was a Hammerhold knight, gasping hard after a hasty climb through the dark forest. 'News!'
'What is it?' Hammerhand sounded as calm-and grim-as ever.
'Horgul and his army have taken Darswords!'
Hammerhand nodded as if he'd expected this, and said only, 'There's more. Worse.' It was not a question.
The knight nodded, gasping for breath, then blurted, 'Nelthraun, Lord of Stelgond, has marched through Yuskellar, the valley of the Gold Duke-and right through all the Gold Duke's guards, too, when they disputed his passage, though he did
'Six message-birds, lord, all from merchants we pay for news. All bore the same tidings,' the knight replied grimly.
Darlok had joined them out of the night, and now snapped, 'Stelgond up in arms to come here-where no Lord of Stelgond has ever been, nor wanted to be-and Horgul in Darswords, three holds away from us if he marches on in the direction he's been going. They're coming here because of the Lord Archwizard, lord!'
'Harlhoh, then through the wild Raurklor to Darkriver, then east along the Long Trail to Burnt Bones… and on, to us,' Hammerhand mused aloud. 'Stelgond alone is more than enough for us to handle, what with the two vipers here in the Vale biting at me day and night to see who'll be lord and who'll be dead. If we must cross swords with this Horgul, too, we'll need all the Forestmother's luck-and anything else the Aumrarr or lorn or anyone else can spare to aid us-to have any hope of holding onto Ironthorn and our lives.'
'Where's Stel-' the Lord Leaf started to ask.
'In Tauren,' Hammerhand snapped. 'A small hold, but wealthy.'
'Ah. I have heard,' the priest murmured, 'that a Doom rides behind this Horgul. The same wizard who aids Lyrose, Malraun the Matchless. If that's true, we are all… doomed.'
'Heard where, and from whom?' Hammerhand growled, watching the knight who'd brought the news go pale and flinch back at Jaklar's words.
'In altar-visions, of far-away priests of the Forestmother talking to each other,' the Lord Leaf replied.
Hammerhand shot him a hard look, but the priest seemed both sincere-and scared.
He was.
'I have prayed to the Forestmother for guidance,' Jaklar whispered, 'in case we must flee into the arms of the Raurklor around us. All of Hammerhold, that is. But She has sent me no sign.'
Lord Hammerhand rounded on him. 'Of course She hasn't. She knows we'll fight to hold Ironthorn, and die doing it. No Ironthar will flee anywhere. If we lose what's dear to us, what is 'living on' worth? Nothing. We stay here, our swords sharp in our hands, and defend our Vale against anyone who comes to try to take it from us.'
He stared out into the night, past the torchlight. 'Even if every last Stormar or Galathan took up arms and came here, in hosts beyond counting, I would take a stand and try to kill them all. It's glorking near all I know how to do.'
Warriors were climbing the hill from all sides, torches flickering wildly in their hands. With the moon now so bright, the flames they carried served more to make them superb targets than to aid their way over the heaped and strewn bodies, but Malraun didn't even bother to shrug at that passing thought. He had more important matters to concern him.
Blasting down these last few wizards before any of them managed to spin a magic to flee this place, for
