Dockalfar Page 4

  The birds called down at them from the branches indignantly.

  They had given up riding some time ago, when the path became too snarled for the passage of mounted riders. The ogre forged the path ahead, slicing vines and foliage out of the way with his mammoth ax. Alex and Victoria walked behind the spriggan, the goblins bringing up the rear with the horses. She clutched his hand, her fingers tightening occasionally, either to receive comfort or to give it. She stared at the glory around them in awe, often nudging him to silently point out some spectacular bird or clustering of butterflies. When they spoke, they cast their voices low, out of the ogre’s hearing.

  The sporadic discussion they were having was a repeat of what made up most of the morning’s conversation.

  “How can there be such a thing? A portal between worlds…it’s fantasy.” She was scrutinizing the spriggan’s misshapen back as she whispered this. They seemed to be taking turns arguing the reality of the situation.

  “I’ve seen some odd things, Vicky, I really have. Seen men do crazy things. Just because a man won’t normally do a thing, doesn’t mean he won’t do it under stress. Same thing here, I guess. Because we aren’t familiar with the concept, does not mean it cannot exist.”

  “Why us?” She hit the concern that had been gnawing at him for some time.

  “Why would this portal open into my apartment?”

  He had no answer and their captors would not venture to give them one. The sense of helplessness was overpowering.

  Not knowing. He could cry with the frustration save that Victoria needed his strength to lean on, little as it was in comparison with what they journeyed with. He put an arm around her, for her comfort, but it was his own that was somehow eased.

  Something screamed out in the forest.

  A punitive, scratchy cry that momentarily silenced the bird chatter. The party hesitated, alert. The goblins drew wicked knives and stared out into the foliage. The horses threw up their heads in nervousness. The cry repeated, ahead of them. The ogre forged onward. They followed and came upon a great tawny body sprawled across the game trail. It was feline in some respects, huge, its body almost ten feet stretched as it was.

  Thick gray fur, liberally dotted with black and fading to white on its tummy. It had a great plumed tail and ears that sported tufts of soft white fur. It was quite dead, and newly so by the luster that still clung to the fur and the state of the body.

  “Gulun,” the spriggan said behind them, a wary tone to his voice. “Damn lucky we are to come upon this one dead.”

  Alex turned to stare at the little man, even as Victoria moved a step forward towards the animal corpse.

  “Very dangerous?” he asked, as if anything in this place was not.

  Bashru snorted. “A troll would think twice before crossing one’s path.”

  Alex paled and stared back at the cat.

  And found that there was movement in that fur after all. White and black shifted and moved at its belly. Large black eyes and flattened ears peered up over the rise of fur. The cry that had alerted them voiced again, this time hardly more than a hiss.

  The spriggan let out a wail and scrambled for his knife. The ogre lifted his war ax and rumbled forward.

  “Kill it! Kill it!” the goblins shrieked from the rear. And none of them descended on the gulun cub as quickly or as absolutely as one slim and silk clad form that swept it up in terror and held a mewing spitting kitten to her chest gazing at them all with wide furious eyes.

  Alex made a rush for her, terrified.

  “Put it down, Vicky!” he shouted. “It’s dangerous!”

  She backed away, clutching the squirming furry body that was bigger than an oversized house cat and considerably more vocal.

  “It’s a kitten,” she cried back at him, at all of them. “It’s scared.”

  “Put it down woman,” Zakknr rumbled, waving the ax. Her eyes widened as the ogre advanced. Alex made a grab for the great arm, and the ogre shook him off.

  Victoria backed another step, tears streaking down her cheeks. “I won’t let you kill it.”

  “Put it down!” the ogre bellowed, shocking her white. The kitten flattened its ears and buried its face in her hair. Its claws drew blood on her shoulders. Alex was in turmoil. He wanted to talk her into putting the thing down, he wanted to keep the ogre from laying hands on her or worse, and he felt hopelessly inept to achieve either goal. Her look was pure stubborn righteousness and the ogre’s strength was unconquerable. She took another step back as Zakknr and the goblins descended upon her. She collided with something that had not been there a moment before. She gasped and whirled and faced the assassin, all green and brown with hints of shimmering gold. He was slim and faceless and apparently immovable, and Alex thought more deadly than the lot of the others combined.

  He curled his fingers into knots of tension, then utter dismay as she grasped a handful of layered cloak and pulled herself and her small victim behind the assassin. She continued to hold onto the cloak. The assassin did not flinch. A mere inclination of the hooded head, what might have been a glance at her fingers clutching his cloak.

  “It’s just a baby,” she murmured.

  “They want to kill it. Please help me.”

  She was pressed against the back of a creature that had killed trolls with ease.

  She could not imagine the danger, could not imagine how badly Alex wanted to yank her away from him, to the safety of his own arms, how suddenly and purely Alex developed a loathing for a faceless silken voice, when the assassin lifted a hand and stopped the ogre in its tracks.

  “Leave her be. The cub is not danger.”

  Zakknr swelled in outrage, wanting dearly no doubt to smite the assassin where he stood.

  “Mind your own business, Dusk!” he roared. “The humans are mine.”

  “They are not,” the assassin whispered, low like the caress of a feather over silver. “They are the Dark Lord’s.”

  “Mine to keep ‘till then,” Zakknr cried, his authority usurped and he afraid to punish the usurper.

  “So be it.” Dusk inclined his head.

  “They are yours.”

  The ogre nodded slightly mollified until the assassin added, “The cub then is under my protection. Touch it at your own risk.”

  He moved, almost faded into the forest and found himself restrained by a small white hand in his cloak. Victoria had her face buried in the cub’s fur, hardly noticing to whom she held. With her hands on him his colors almost seemed to ebb, to turn cream and alabaster. He turned to Alex. A silent command.

  Trembling, Alex went forward, caught Victoria in his arms and pried her fingers from the cloak. It was like silk and light. He chanced a glance up under the hood, wondering morbidly at the face it hid and caught his breath as he got a glimpse. It was not human, but it might have been angel. It might have been some visionary artist’s fevered dream of unearthly perfection. Only it was not perfect. It was too unattainably beautiful to be perfect. Almost, but not quite feminine in its beauty. There were undertones of Victoria in the skin tone, undertones of the muted forest around them. It changed even as Alex drew Victoria away, softly shifting back to gold and powdery green-brown. The assassin stepped back into the shadow of the foliage and melted away. Alex was left with a woman and a catling in his arms and the feeling that in all the horrors he had yet experienced in this world, the one that he had just seen could very well be the one that might haunt him forever.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Part Three

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Victoria seemed to have no other care than her rescued gulun cub. Almost as if a daze, she walked cradling it in her arms talking to it as if it understood her. It, in turn attached itself to her as if she were its own mother and purred contentedly at her breast. It had a very loud purr. The spriggan and the goblins kept their distance, casting it and the humans occasional wary glances. Zakknr forged ahead, disgusted and muttering to himself.

  Alex had the gro
wing fear that vengeance would be taken upon them at the next camp, since Dusk had forbidden harm to the cub. Which brought his mind back to the assassin, whom they had not seen a trace of since his appearance that morning.

  Alex had the feeling he was close by, drifting along beside them in the wood like some shadow hunter, a chameleon who could match his colors to the environment and fade like a whisper on the wind when he chose. And almost human.

  “Did you see him?” he asked of Victoria as they walked. The gulun cub laid its ears back at him and showed him its teeth. She rebuked it gently, scratching under a furry chin.

  “Who?” she murmured.

  “Dusk. The assassin.”

  “A little.”

  “He was almost human.”

  “Almost,” she agreed, paying him little attention. He sighed at her distraction. He had berated her for her foolhardiness, to little benefit. This conversation, like the others he had attempted, seemed a lost cause. Did she find some fault with him for not backing her up when she had decided to rashly champion the cub? There was no way to defend himself without making things worse. He could not tell her, of all people, how helpless he felt. This situation was worse than his nightmares and the reality they were based upon.

  Those he could deal with. This. This was nothing so simple or predictable.

  Moss and twigs were trod underfoot.

  The dappled light changed its pattern. The sounds of the forest subtly changed from the chorus of day creatures to a quieter symphony of night ones. The cub began a punitive whining that would not let up.

  The spriggan more than once offered to put it out of their misery. The goblins were all glares. And the ogre, fed up with the constant drone of miserable gulun cub, crashed back towards them and waved a massive fist threateningly over Victoria’s head.

  “Shut it up or leave it. Don’t need everything in the forest comin’ to see what the racket’s about!”

  She shrank against Alex, her courage of the morning seemingly dried up.

  “It’s hungry,” she whispered, clutching it while Alex clutched her.

  Zakknr blew out a snort of disgust and stalked off. The humans started again at the goblins urging. The spriggan fell into pace beside Alex, glancing up at them with a certain glint of maliciousness on his weathered face.

  “Know a good recipe for hempcat soup. Gulun would be a good substitute. Never had gulun afore.”

  Victoria made a small gasping sound and glared at the little man. The cub hissed, as if it knew it was being discussed in culinary terms.

  They made camp at the first hint of darkness, the goblins going to some efforts to build a blazing fire. Alex and Victoria sat on one side of it, the goblins and the ogre on the other. The spriggan, it seemed, preferred his own company and sat away from them all, muttering quietly to himself.

  Victoria tried to feed the mewing cub a strip of the jerky they had been given but the dried meat was not to its liking and the little creature turned up its pink nose, more verbose than ever. She turned helpless eyes to Alex.

  “What do I feed it?”

  He looked over her head to the spriggan who was eyeing them both as it sharpened its ragged dagger.

  “Probably wouldn’t mind a little spriggan. Do guluns eat spriggan, Bashru?” He asked and the spriggan drew its considerable brows together and glared. Bashru was the only one of the little company that Alex had any inclination to exchange words with.

  Despite crude comments and none too veiled threats, the little man seemed by far the least dangerous .

  The most dangerous, which had been conspicuously absent all day, suddenly killed conversation within the circle of firelight by his materialization out of the night. Dusk stepped into the firelight in a swirl of filmy cloak.

  “There’s a gorge a days travel to the north. A gnome bridge spans it. Old. There might be gnomes on the northern side.”

  “With our luck,” the spriggan muttered. “Nothing is ever easy.”

  The assassin, having delivered this news began to fade back into the shadows of the night.

  “Wait.” A trembling female plea, and slowly solidity returned. The dark assassin stepped back into the circle of light. Faceless, voiceless. Waiting with an infinite, dread patience.

  Alex drew a breath, wishing Victoria silent. But holding a protesting cub between her knees, she was heedless of his silent request.

  “What do I feed the kitten? It’s hungry.”

  The spriggan sputtered on laughter, greatly amused that she should ask such a thing of a dark assassin. The assassin in question continued to stare silently.

  “Well, it’s yours.” Victoria finally declared in frustration, gaining a tilt of the hooded head. “You took it under your protection. You can’t just watch it starve.”

  Alex thought that the assassin probably could. Dusk proved him correct by refusing to engage in dialog. He simply faded out and left them all staring at the area he had occupied.

  “I can’t believe you asked him that,” he whispered into her hair. She twisted to look up at him.

  “Why not? It’s true. Didn’t he save her?”

  “He’s not human, Vicky. Don’t expect human reactions.”

  She sniffed and scratched behind the cub’s ears as it curled between her legs.

  “It’s a girl,” she noted, using Alex for a convenient back post.

  “Really.”

  “I have to name her.”

  He looked over her shoulder to the cub. It was mostly white fur, not having yet gained the spots of its massive mother.

  The only breaks in the snowy fur were dark tips about the ears and nose and three rings at the plumed end of its tail. That tail was snapping irritably with the young carnivore’s yearning for food.

  “I wonder what killed the mother?” Victoria mused.

  “Nothing I’d care to run into,” Bashru declared from his solitude. “Nothing hunts gulun. Even the high hunts hesitate with gulun as prey.”

  “Disease?” Alex asked. The spriggan looked at him blankly, as though that word had no meaning to him. Alex sighed and elaborated. “Maybe she got sick. Ate something she shouldn’t have.”

  The little man scratched at a body insect. “Could be. In a couple of moons that kit will outweigh you. It’s probably entertaining thoughts of eating you now as is.”

  “She’s not,” Victoria assured Alex, ignoring the spriggan. “She’s just scared and lonely. I think I’ll call her Phoebe. Very cat like, don’t you think?”

  The firelight flickered and the assassin was back in their midst. They had hardly time to gasp before he tossed something at Victoria’s feet. A small still body with a rodent-like tail and short, banded fur. Victoria gaped and Phoebe pounced with a delighted squall. Alex stared in stupefied surprise as the cub tore into the still warm and pliant rodent. She was neat enough to carry it a few feet away from them to feast.

  Of course the assassin was gone when he looked back up to find him.

  Bashru was muttering in disgust and some amazement. Most of his disgruntlement seemed to be that a worthless gulun cub was worthy of such a delicious tidbit when a loyal spriggan rated nothing but dried strips of meat. He glowered into the woods for some time muttering about the lack of charity in assassins.

  The next morning brought them to a game trail wide enough to allow riding.

  The spriggan absolutely refused to ride with the gulun and put up such an irate argument that even Zakknr gave up bellows and treats in favor of an easier solution. He made the goblins ride together and gave the humans and the gulun a mount of their own. Not that he trusted them that far. The reins were secured to his own saddle in case they might take it in mind to bolt. That was perfectly all right. Alex was delighted to ride with Victoria over Zakknr, even with the gulun as excess baggage.

  They rode for hours through landscape awash with color and sound. It was always changing, always wonderfully bright and new. Hours into the day they paused to relieve themselves and stretch cramped m
uscles.

  Dusk appeared out of nowhere with a small furry sacrifice for Phoebe. Victoria beamed and mouthed thanks. Alex found himself glaring. He could think of no good cause for the animosity, other than the fact that Dusk had a face that had made him stop and stare, much less what it might do to a woman. And the assassin was going out of his way to accommodate a cubling that the rest of his party would happily carve up for stew. Alex could not help thinking that maybe it was the woman and not the animal that the courtesy was being extended to. Victoria certainly responded.

  She even went so far as to comment to Alex when they were back in the saddle and making their way down the trail again that Dusk, (she had little liking for forming assassin on her lips) was the most humane of their captors. Alex kept his tongue, looked straight over her head and secretly dreaded making camp that night. For most certainly the assassin would repeat the cub’s feeding and gain even more of Victoria’s gratitude.

  They reached the gorge a hour before sunset. It was a narrow ravine cut deeply into the sprawling forest. A rocky river snaked some two hundred feet below. The forest stopped twenty feet from the gorge, leaving the land naked and scattered with sandstone and dead branches and restarted almost immediately on the other side of the span, nearly a hundred feet away.

  There was a bridge that crossed it. It was constructed of twisted vines, as thick as a man’s arm and lashed together with time weathered planks of rough hewn wood. It seemed solid and well built. Wide enough for the horses.

  The company paused for some while, scanning the far side. The goblins muttered amongst themselves, whispering of gnomes and gnomish traps, and how one would very badly not like to be turning on a gnomish spit.

  Bashru commented that gnomes were fonder of goblin meat that any other.

  Swarn rebutted that no self-respecting creature of any sort would lower itself to taste of spriggan. Zakknr ceased the debate with a rap across the back of the goblin’s knobby head and the order to take the horses across first. The goblins scurried to do his bidding, taking reins in hand and leading the nervous animals across the bridge.