She shook her leg again. The creatures had climbed up as far as her hips and now employed their stingers. Her legs began to go numb. Yet she vowed she wouldn’t die without a fight. She shook and writhed her body, ignoring the stings, and brushed some of the creatures off with her free hand. Each hatchling that fell off was a victory. She ground them into the earth with the heel of her boot.
A screech echoed over the whimpers of her fellow victims, and some great winged thing crashed through the canopy of the trees. Karigan cringed under its shadow. What horror had come to join the feasting of the little creatures? Then she saw the outline of an eagle—a huge gray eagle.
“The web!” she screamed at him. “Watch the web!”
She felt the beat of each powerful backstroke of his wings. The span of his wings had to be as long as she was tall—wonderful for the great heights of the Wingsong Mountains, but not practical in the woods.
I will help you. He settled on a stout branch above her head.
“What?”
In the oldest folklore, the kind children adored and skeptical adolescents scoffed at, there were stories of creatures with an intelligence equal to a human’s, who could speak into the minds of others. Karigan herself had pleaded with her mother to tell such tales, but now, a skeptical adolescent, she wasn’t sure that she had actually heard the eagle. Master Ione had never said anything about animals or birds using mind speech, so surely, she had heard nothing at all. The eagle was nothing more than an illusion gazing at her. Her pounding, addled mind, and the poisonous stings were making her see and hear things.
I will help you. The voice was deep and guttural, and very real.
Awed, Karigan could only stare at him, her mouth gaping. If the old stories were true and the eagle really spoke to her, did she direct thoughts of what she wanted to say to him, or did she speak aloud? Could he hear her thoughts?
Direct me. The eagle perched as implacable as a statue, though his “voice” was tinged with irritation.
Karigan opened and closed her mouth, fishlike, unable to utter a word. Even if he could read her thoughts, they’d be an unintelligible jumble.
She did not know what to tell him. If he tried to fight the creatures, he could easily get tangled in the web, or the creatures could sting him, or . . . She looked hopelessly about for an answer, shaking a couple of hatchlings from her leg almost as an afterthought. She looked at The Horse’s still body. He had fallen on the saddle sheath. If the eagle could reach her saber . . .
“My sword,” she said. “It’s beneath the horse. If you could pry it out and—”
The eagle, guessing her intent, launched from his branch to The Horse. He stood on the ground, his head cocked as if deciding how best to proceed. Karigan couldn’t watch. Tiny silver disk shapes swarmed all over The Horse.
Her right leg was completely numb. At least she couldn’t feel the pain in her ankle.
“Ow!” A hatchling bit her beneath her left knee. She shook her leg so violently that the hatchling smashed against the nearest tree trunk. She breathed hard with the exertion, and hung limp in the web like a marionette.
Here is the sword. The eagle hovered just above her, the hilt of the saber grasped in a huge talon.
She extended her free hand as far as possible. The eagle lowered the saber carefully, trying to avoid becoming enmeshed in the web. She couldn’t quite reach the hilt, and had to grab the blade instead.
“Ow!” It bit into her fingers and palm, and she almost dropped it. But her fear of the creatures was greater than the pain, and she kept her grip on it. She shifted it with her other hand, so she could grip it by the hilt.
Your horse still lives, the eagle said. I will do what I can for him.
The Horse was alive! Joy surged through Karigan and she slashed through the sticky web and released herself. However, her numb right leg failed to support her and she fell face to feelers with a dozen hatchlings. She scrambled to her left foot and hopped back a step. She brushed or cut off any hatchling that still clung to her.
You must kill them all, the eagle said. Using his sharp beak, he plucked a hatchling from The Horse and smashed it against a rock, much the way she had seen gulls crack crabs open along the seashore. You must do it now while their shells are still soft. They harden as we speak. Kill them all.
There must have been hundreds of the creatures scattered all over the forest floor. First she attacked those hatchlings affixed to the hapless animals caught in the web. The doe and the raccoon were dead, their flesh efficiently stripped down to the bone. Then she released the birds and bats that were too high up for the creatures to reach.
The wolf still fought, but the weight of the hatchlings attached to his blood-soaked fur weighed him down. He yelped with every movement, his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth, and yet Karigan paused. Too many people had told her, when she was little, that wolves killed the sheep people depended on, that wolves would eat a man if driven to hunger. Wolves, they said, were evil—products of Mornhavon the Black.
The wolf gazed at her with defiant amber eyes, as if challenging her. As if challenging her to release him. Just as suddenly, his eyes rolled back in a spasm of pain, and his hind legs sagged beneath him.
Without another thought, Karigan brushed the creatures from his fur with her saber. His sides heaved as he panted. Where the creatures clung to him with their mouths or claws, she speared them through the shells. When she had them off the wolf, she hacked them into pieces, their phlegmy yellow blood soaking into the ground. The wolf collapsed, his eyes half closed in exhaustion. Karigan slashed down the web to prevent any other animals from becoming ensnared.