Chapter 67. The Cliff I Stared At All Night Was Exactly Where He Was Looking Back

Chapter 67: 67. The Cliff I Stared At All Night Was Exactly Where He Was Looking Back

A chill crawled over the back of my neck...

I looked instinctively at the cliffs on the far side of the river... a long, jagged wall of black rock about two hundred yards away, rising straight from the water.

They’d seemed so remote when we’d arrived... so far across the river that no sane archer could hit us from there.

"Thank you..." I said.

"There’s one more thing." He hesitated. "It isn’t a condition."

"I’m not bargaining... But I’d like to see Harrowmere again before they hang me... or whatever they intend."

"Just this once... I’d like to stand there and say a few words." He gave a crooked, weary smile. "It’s a small request from a bad man..."

"You’re not a bad man, Garrick."

"Qualified if I did bad things."

"That’s different."

"Is it?"

"I’d like to think so." I stood up, took his empty bowl, and balanced it on top of mine. "I can’t promise anything... But I’ll remember it."

"That’s all I ask."

I climbed down from the wagon and carried the dishes back toward the fire, and the whole way there, I could feel a thin, cold thread of dread pulling at the back of my head.

I opened the panel as I walked because I needed to see something solid.

[STATUS]

[Lust: 92%]

[Aether Reserve: 88%]

[Physical Condition: Recovering, 85%]

[Note: Rib integrity is improving but remains compromised under deep breathing or heavy strain.]

It could have been worse. I was close to full, and my body, though complaining, was almost healed.

Still, I thought, I took a deep breath as an experiment and felt it.

A sharp little ache, just under my left arm, like a splinter that hadn’t quite come out.

’Close,’ I thought. ’Just not quite there.’

...

By full dark, the camp had been turned into a miniature fortress.

Alicia had spent two hours at it, with Holt at her elbow and a stick of charcoal in her hand. She’d divided the shelf into zones, and every inch of ground had a purpose.

The wagon sat dead center... with heavy tower shields propped around three sides, and its roof and walls had been wrapped in layers of wet leather and thick canvas, soaked from the river and pegged tight.

It was her idea.

Crystal-tipped arrows were bad enough, she’d said... but a damp hide slowed anything that tried to push through it.

"And Garrick sleeps on the floor," she told Holt. "Right at the bottom... between the wheels. Not on the bench."

"Is that a good idea? He probably won’t like it," said Holt.

"He’ll like it better than a crossbow bolt."

She’d posted four sentries at the corners of the shelf, spaced so that each one could see the next, and she’d set the rotation for two hours on and four off.

Laura had walked the perimeter after dark, murmuring under her breath, tracing faint glowing lines on the stones.

The glyphs were subtle, mere threads of silver light that vanished as soon as she lifted her hand, but I could feel them humming at the edge of my awareness, a quiet web of warning strung across every approach.

Sharon had laid her sword across her knees and settled onto a boulder at the edge of the shelf, with her back to the fire and her face toward the dark.

She’d announced that she was going to "sit very still and be unpleasant," and I believed her.

Beside her, cross-legged on a flat rock, sat Eveline.

She had her eyes closed and her hands resting on her knees, and her ears stood perfectly upright. Her chest rose and fell in a slow, even rhythm.

I counted, out of curiosity... Four in, two hold, six out.

She did it over and over, with no trembling and no hesitation, and for the first time since I’d met her... she looked entirely at peace.

I watched her for a while, and I felt something loosen in my chest.

’Good,’ I thought. ’That’s good...’

I couldn’t sleep, though... I’d tried.

I’d lain on my bedroll with my head on my saddlebag and my sword at my side, and I’d stared at the stars, and I’d tried to count them.

But still... It hadn’t worked.

Every few minutes, a faint pulse of Combat Instinct would flutter at the back of my head, like a moth beating against a window, and I’d feel my whole body tense in response.

Nothing happened.

There was no noise, no movement, and no sign of danger.

The night was still and cold and full of stars.

I got up quietly and walked to the edge of the shelf, where the breastwork of boulders overlooked the river.

The water below was black, slow, and almost silent... with the stars reflected in it like scattered coins. And on the far shore, the dark wall of cliff rose into the sky, a deeper black against the black.

Something was wrong, but I couldn’t say what.

I stared at the cliffs for a long time, and I couldn’t see anything on them—no light, no movement, and not even a shape. But a voice at the back of my mind kept whispering that I was being watched.

It wasn’t the vague unease I’d felt before, when the scouts followed us, but this... it was sharper, colder, and much closer.

It had the patient, attentive quality of a predator that has settled into the grass.

’He shot from wherever you weren’t looking.’

I looked at the cliff, then at the road, then at the sky, and then at the cliff again. I laid my hand on the pommel of my sword, and I felt the faint hum of the kingsteel against my palm.

It was the only sound in the world that I could hear right now.

I stayed there until the moon came up, pale and thin, and I didn’t see a goddamn thing.

But... It started with a hum.

I was standing at the edge of the shelf, about to go back to my bedroll, and that’s... when I heard it. It was a very faint, very low vibration, so low that I felt it in my teeth before I heard it.

It rose steadily, an eerie, wavering drone, like a swarm of bees trapped in a bottle.

I turned my head, and every muscle in my body went tight.

"SHIELDS!!!" I screamed. "Get down...! AND READY YOUR SHIELDS!!!"

The first volley hit about two seconds later.

It came out of the dark in a long, glittering sheet, hundreds of tiny blue points of light streaking across the river like falling stars.

They weren’t ordinary arrows. Every one of them had a chip of crystal bolted to its tip, glowing a faint, sickly blue, and as they flew, they gave off that same low, buzzing hum.

They struck the wagon and the shields and the stones with a sound like heavy hail, and where they hit... they stuck.

I dove behind the nearest boulder as a dozen arrows bit into the rock where my head had been. Splinters of stone flew past my ear.

All around me, the camp exploded into shouts.

"Contact!" Holt bellowed. "East side! Shield wall!"

"Down, down, down!" cried Alicia.

I heard the clang of armor, the thud of boots, and the crack of splitting wood. I rolled onto my knees and peered around the boulder.

Laura was standing at the edge of the shelf, with both hands raised and a translucent silver barrier shimmering in front of her.

It was a wide, curved shield of Aether, and the arrows were slamming into it one after another.

Then I saw the barrier begin to flicker.

The crystal tips were drinking it. Every arrow that hit the shield drew a faint trail of silver into itself, like a child sucking on a straw, and the barrier dimmed a little more with each impact.

Laura gritted her teeth. A thin crack ran through the shield, and then a second, and then a spiderweb of fractures.

"It’s... eating my Aether!" she shouted.

"Pull back! Let it go!" Alicia ran toward her, with a tower shield in both hands. "Use the real shields! Wood and iron!"

Laura released the barrier with a gasp, and it shattered into drifting silver sparks.

At the same moment, Holt and Wynn and Pike slammed a line of heavy shields into place in front of her, and the arrows thudded harmlessly into oak and steel.

The hum went on, rising and falling, but the barrage slowed.

That was when the monsters came.

I heard them before I saw them, a deep, throaty chorus of howls, snarls, and crashing underbrush, rolling out of the dark at the foot of the hill. It sounded like a stampede.

RAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!

A moment later, they burst out of the trees and began to climb the goat track in a surging black tide.

They were wolves... mostly, huge shaggy brutes the size of ponies. But each of them wore a collar of linked crystals around its neck, and the stones glowed a lurid blue, lighting their eyes and teeth from below like lanterns.

Behind them lumbered a massive boar, with tusks as long as my forearm and a hide scarred with old fights.

And behind the boar, rising up on its hind legs with a roar that shook the stones, came something big and shaggy and brown, with a hump of muscle across its shoulders and claws like garden rakes.

"A bear..." said Ferris, in a strangled voice.

"A big one," said Dessa.

"Wonderful," said Holt. "Everyone! Hold the line!"