——— 4 ———

⁠—⁠—⁠— IV ⁠—⁠—⁠—

Meanwhile, back on the raft, several twists had passed without any unwelcome visits from bigmouths or giant leeches or any of the other horrors of which Istavan warned. Once again Rinda was beginning to find their trip down the ever-widening river quite pleasant, much to her surprise. The golden chariot of Ruah had raced swiftly across the arch of the sky and was now slowly dipping down toward the mountains. It was easy to forget that this was the Marches and that the river that bore them onward was the black Kes.

The deep green of the Marches forest extended without a break on their starboard side, the unchanging scenery interrupted only once by smoke rising from the cooking fire of a borderland homesteader.

Occasionally, though, there were creatures to be seen. A long-tailed bird with feathers of ruby red and coal black took flight from the treetops, its piercing screech trailing behind it.

A tan water snake flexed and sped across the surface of the water, wriggling out of the path of the swiftly moving raft.

To the port side stretched the ash grays and light browns of the Nospherus wildlands, a barren vista of rock and sand.

There were some signs of life in the wastes; here and there faint green lichen clung to the rocks. Yet the bleak expanse was a far cry from the lush green of the opposite bank and only served to confirm what the settlers said: that Nospherus was a no-man’s land, where only barbarians and evil creatures dwelt.

Far beyond the sands, the gray, jagged silhouette of a mountain range rose like a distant mirage. “The Ashgarn Mountains, ceiling of the world. They stand between the Marches and the Northlands,” Istavan pointed toward the far-off range. “Queensland, ruled by a queen who lives forever in the ice, is beyond those peaks. Somewhere up north too is Taluuan, home of the giants. Then there’s Vanheim, land of the gods, ruled by the hero Bardor; and beyond that, Norn, the northernmost land in the world, or so they say.”

The others did not speak. Undeterred by the lack of response, the Crimson Mercenary continued his impromptu lecture.

“The thing that used to get us mercenaries wondering the most is why in the world, with all the perfectly good land to be had, Gohra or the Mongauli archduke was interested in this forsaken waste of a place? Aye, we spent many a night after river-crossing practice in hot debate over just that question. The Gohran Marches may not be my idea of paradise, but you can make a living there, and it’s green, by the gods! But cross this hell-river and you’re in no-man’s land. Jarn was in a peculiar mood indeed when he put these two side by side.

“Or maybe he knew what he was doing, laying the river here to keep the men on their side and the fiends on the other. Though he had some help from the bards in that. The stories they told of poisonous vapors, death to breathe, kept most folk out of Nospherus for the longest time.

“And those weren’t the worst of the tales! They say the two races who do live in Nospherus, the giant Lagon and the tiny Sem⁠—neither of which you’d call human⁠—were once just like us, but as they lingered under the spell of the wildlands their forms gradually changed and their minds became barbaric! My grandfather’s a kitara player of some fame back in Valachia, and as he tells it, there’s a foul mist, a humor in the air, that changes the creatures that live in the no-man’s land. It makes them unnatural, monstrous. That’s why you get things like the bigmouth here in this river, and on land, the sand leech, the flying velolith, and mouth-of-the-desert⁠—not to mention the fiendish creations of Doal that don’t even have names!”

Istavan suddenly turned to Guin. “Say, leopard-head, maybe you came from around these parts?”

“Guin’s no fiend!” shouted Remus.

Rinda shot a cold glare at the brazenfaced mercenary. Guin merely shook his tawny spotted head as if to say he did not know.

“You should have remembered something by now, even a little. I have to wonder: are you as brainless as a Kes river snake, or do you just want us to think you are, eh?”

“Istavan! You shameless… idiot!” shouted Rinda furiously.

The Crimson Mercenary laughed a gravelly laugh. “When you lose your temper, the violet of your eyes deepens to purple, like two evening stars in the twilight! Why don’t you turn those stars to the water and watch for that bigmouth, eh? We’d best be ready next time it comes.”

“Scum!” hissed Rinda loudly, but in spite of herself she turned furtively to check the water around them. Twilight had come upon them. They were near Alvon now; before long they would be coming to Tauride, castle at the eastern corner of Mongaul.

They ate a simple meal of dried meat, dried fruit, and a few vasya that they had collected when they were provisioning the raft. A few twists in the afternoon sun atop the raft had dried out their clothes, so drenched just a while ago from the fight with the bigmouth, so that it seemed they had never been wet at all.

Guin continued to wield the pole, tirelessly keeping them on course.

“It’s too quiet,” Istavan spoke between bites of vasya fruit.

“I rather like the quiet,” Rinda responded, glaring at him. There was something about the mercenary that made her irritable and anxious at the same time. Why did he always seem to be up to no good, and why was he always grinning like that?

“I said it’s too quiet. I find it hard to believe that the Kes, hell’s river itself, is just going to let us float on down like lovers on a summer sail… No, something’s going to come, and we’ll be lucky if it’s only twice the size of that bigmouth.”

“Is that what you sense, Istavan ‘Spellsword’?” the princess teased. She had heard enough of this scoundrel’s empty boasting to last her a while.

“You might say that⁠—hey, leopard-head, you aren’t planning on us spending the night out on the river now, are you?”

“Of course not,” came Guin’s reply from the stern. “The black river is no place to be after nightfall, unless you’re fiend or demon. Staying out here would be suicide. We’ll pull up to shore just before dark, make a campfire small enough to avoid detection, and take turns on watch. We can resume our river journey in the morning.”

“Good idea!” Remus sounded rather more relieved than he had intended. Rinda only just managed to keep from shouting an exclamation of relief herself. She was glad they had Guin, a real warrior, protecting them. To think how it might have been if they had been stranded out here with only the so-called Crimson Mercenary… they would have been appetizers for some fiend three times over by now! Istavan himself seemed to accept Guin’s leadership of their little party, though Rinda did not like one bit the way his eyes always seemed to be laughing at them, plotting something at which she could only guess. The girl shivered.

“My thoughts exactly,” said Istavan, seeming not to notice the twins glaring at him. “Things will get easier once we’re out of Mongaul. After Tauride down to the city of Ros, the river runs along free settlers’ land.”

“Yes,” Guin agreed, “but tonight we will have to risk sleeping on the Mongauli shore. Spending the night in Nospherus would hardly be better than spending it here on this raft.”

Istavan grunted his approval, quietly staring at Guin. In the course of their short journey so far, Guin had often noticed the Crimson Mercenary’s eyes on him, perhaps more freuently than could be attributed to mere curiosity about his leopard head⁠—though Guin could not think of any other reason for Istavan’s interest.

Guin raised his face, his wild, yellow stare meeting the unwavering gaze of those black, laughing eyes.

It was Istavan that turned away first, on the pretext of looking up at the cliffs on the Mongauli bank. He squinted, and suddenly grew serious.

“Guin!”

The mercenary did not yell, but hissed in a low, tense voice. The leopard-man had just begun steering the raft in toward the bank. The water was now painted red by the setting sun.

“Someone’s there!”

‘What are you talking⁠—” began Remus, but Rinda grabbed his arm, cutting him off. Istavan squinted at the woods upon which the dusk of twilight was slowly falling, searching for movement. Then he waved back at Guin.

“Wait, wait, keep us in the deep⁠—I’m sure I sensed… there! On the bank, where the woods come down to the river. There are more than a few of them!”

“Gohran soldiers!” gasped Rinda.

Istavan glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “Maybe⁠— or maybe Jarn is in a generous mood and it’s only some local homesteaders⁠—but wait! By the white steed of Irana!”

“There’s a full squad’s worth, maybe more,” Guin calmly noted.

“What’s this? Those are no regular troops, they wear white!” Istavan’s distinctive features twisted into a grimace as he leaned out over the railing to get a better look at the riders. He could now clearly see a squad of white knights spilling out of the deepening shade of the forest on the far bank.

Though it struck fear into her heart, Rinda found that the scene had an odd, dreamlike beauty. The riders came drifting out from under the trees like white ghosts, then spread sure-footedly along the riverbank. All were attired in pure white, as though they had been cut from the ice that capped the Ashgarn peaks. White cloaks fluttered behind them, and simple white plumes fell back gracefully from their helms. Their horses, too, were all white, each one fitted with the same white barding.

“They wear Gohran armor,” Guin observed.

“But⁠—white knights? That’s impossible!” Istavan groaned.

“Why not?” Rinda said. “Everyone in the Middle Country knows about the five knightly orders of Mongaul, the black, the white, the blue, the red, and the yel⁠—”

“Save your lecture,” said Istavan, brusquely interrupting her. “Little girls shouldn’t speak of things they know nothing about. Stafolos was guarded by the Count Vanon’s Third Black Knights; Alvon is defended by the Fifth Red under the banner of Count Ricard. The black and the red guard the Marches, you see?”

“And the white⁠—?”

“Are led by Lady Amnelis, daughter of Archduke Vlad himself, and General of the Right. They are the archduke’s guard, stationed in Torus, which is why not one, certainly not a whole squad, should be out here in the boondocks.”

“But there they are,” said Guin.

Istavan’s only response was to irritably rap his hands on the railing and turn back to watching the knights. Then he frowned. Their luck, it seemed, was turning for the worse.

What little hope Guin and the others might have had that the riders had not noticed them was shattered when the largest of the white knights moved his mount to the edge of the river and cupped his hands around his mouth.

“You there, on the raft!”

Guin and Istavan quickly exchanged glances. The mercenary slowly reached for the sword at his waist, but Guin shook his head firmly. They were only two, and the knights were a full squad; furthermore, it was not clear that they meant Guin and the others any harm.

“Well?” said Istavan in a low voice that sounded like the purring of a cat. “We’ve not much time until nightfall!”

“Let them make the first move,” was Guin’s reply.

On the bank, the white knight called out again, louder this time, as if in doubt that they had heard him. “You on the raft! We are the Marches patrol, from Alvon Keep. What are your names, and where do you go? Stop your raft on the bank and speak with us!”

He waved one arm toward a low part of the bank that could serve as a landing.

Istavan clicked his tongue. “Me and the twins might be able to talk our way through this, but leopard-head and the monkey girl… hey, Guin, I think a quick escape’s our best bet.”

“No,” said Guin slowly. “Look.”

The others on the raft looked at the knights and groaned in unison. It was clear that the Gohran warriors, whatever their purpose, had no intent of letting the raft pass them by. Even as the captain called out to the companions in a reassuring voice, the other knights, following quiet orders, had spread out in a fan formation behind him. Now a full thirty crossbows were pointed at the raft, ready to fire a hail of stone shot should the adventurers not comply.

“What business is it of yours what we do? We are travelers! Why do you trouble us?” yelled Istavan angrily.

The white-garbed captain swung his horsewhip in a commanding gesture. “I’ll ask the questions. I’ve strict orders to bring all on that raft to Alvon Keep. Now come ashore, or be shot: the choice is yours.”

“Great,” grumbled Istavan. “Guin, let’s skedaddle. Children, lie flat on the deck. They won’t be able to hit us with those Crossbows once the sun goes down.”

“Hold on tight,” said Guin in an even voice, and pushed off with the oar-pole on the river bottom, giving the raft an abrupt burst of speed. The knight on the bank shouted for them to stop. Guin’s pole found a sturdy rock and he pushed off again hard, sending them through the water so vigorously that a wave came spilling over the side. Then suddenly the air was rent by a terrified scream.

“Yipes!” Istavan whirled to see the source of the cry. It was Suni, clinging miserably to the railing, staring with wide eyes at…

“A bigmouth!” yelled Istavan, though by now all on the raft and the bank could see the great white swelling of water racing towards the raft at an incredible speed.

The rushing sound of water nearly drowned out the shouts of warning from the knights and the screams of the children.

Istavan cursed the accuracy of his prediction⁠—the nightmarish monstrosity bearing down on them was at least three times as big as the last one.

“It’ll break the raft!“ he shouted, raising his sword to cut the great maw in half, and dropping to his knees to get better balance on the deck as it swayed and tilted violently in the spray of water from the fast-approaching monster.

A fearsome arc of enormous teeth, the creature lunged and slammed into the raft again and again, trying to knock Guin and the others off into the water. Each time it hit, the five clinging to the railings were tossed about like insects on a leaf in a rainstorm. Fighting back was out of the question; it was all they could do to just hang on for dear life.

Back on the shore, the knights, who had been ordered to capture the people on the raft alive, were frantically firing their crossbows at the creature in the river. But the few shots that hit did little to stop the thrashing monstrosity, and they were forced to shoot wide to avoid hitting the companions.

Even the agile Guin and Istavan Spellsword had their hands full staying on the raft as wave after wave rocked the raft. The bigmouth then slipped under the raft and smashed upwards with tremendous force. It was sure to capsize them soon, and then all would be easy prey for its blind, ravenous hunger.

Guin growled. The time to act was now! Letting go the pole, he slid across the deck, moving along the railing as the raft bucked wildly with every impact. With one hand still on the rail he drew out the shortsword at his waist⁠—in the water, it would prove far more effective a weapon than his great longsword. Quickly clenching the weapon in his teeth, he stripped off his baldric and threw it down on the deck to rid himself of its bulk.

Only then did Rinda, gripping the railing near the bow of the raft with numbed hands, notice what Guin was doing and see the fierce determination of a wild beast burning in his yellow eyes. The color drained from Rinda’s face. “No, Guin! What are you doing?” She immediately began crawling down the swaying deck toward him. “You can’t go! It will kill you!”

Guin took the sword from his mouth for an instant.

“Hands on the rail, girl!” he roared, and clamped the blade in his teeth once more.

Just as he crouched, ready to spring into the water that now roiled from the bigmouth’s violent motions like the pools of hell, Rinda screamed again.

“Wait, Guin⁠—look! Something’s happening to the bigmouth!”

All on the raft looked, and gasped.

The bigmouth was moving off to the side of the raft, and it looked as if the water around it had turned to a translucent jelly. No, it was something else: some creature had swum⁠—if you could call its oozing motions “swimming”⁠—right over the bigmouth, and was wrapping itself around the Doalspawn’s bony mass.

“A swalloworm!” shouted Istavan, hope rising in his voice.

The massive, translucent creature’s gelatinous body was covered with thousands of tentacle-like cilia. It looked like a gigantic lugworm, thought Rinda, at least three times as long as Guin was tall. Searching for food to wrap itself around, it moved through the water by rippling its cilia.

Once it had established its death-grip, no amount of struggling would shake the swalloworm off. The thousands of cilia would then drag the prey into the monster’s body, where it would be slowly and slimily digested.

So the bigmouth isn’t king of the river, thought Rinda.

The bigmouth was panicking; it thrashed against its foe so violently that it made the attacks on the raft seem mere sport by comparison. The rays of the setting sun made the water red, and it looked as if the raft floated on a river of blood except where the surface was churned to spray by the struggling big-mouth.

No matter how much it tried, however, the great-jawed creature could not break free from the squiggling gelatinous grasp of the swalloworm. The hunter was now the hunted. Seized by a primal drive for survival, the bigmouth turned on its assailant and bit into the gelatinous body wherever it could. But the swalloworm did not bleed, nor did it seem to feel any pain, and its grip only tightened.

“Now’s our chance to escape!” yelled Istavan.

“No good⁠—I lost the pole!” shouted Guin.

Then he howled and Rinda screamed. The bigmouth and the swalloworm had twisted in a sudden fierce convulsion, creating a giant wave that flipped the raft clear over. The companions’ hands finally slipped from the rail as they all fell screaming into the water.

“Everyone make it?”

Istavan was the first to pop his head back up out of the river, spluttering and coughing. His youth spent in the sea in Valachia had made him an excellent swimmer. Spouting a geyser of river water from his mouth, the mercenary started to make for the far Mongauli bank, but the sight of the knights pointing and shouting on the shore made him turn around. He didn’t particularly want to stay out in the middle with the two monstrous beasts having at it, so with powerful strokes, he struck out towards the Nospherus side of the river.

Rinda had been fortunate. When the raft capsized, she had been thrown through the air to land in the shallows not forty feet from the Nospherus bank. And Istavan found her floating there. Grabbing her around the neck, he tugged her with him, stroking the water with one arm. It did not take them long to reach the bank. The Crimson Mercenary crawled up onto the rocks like a drenched torqrat and heaved the unconscious princess of Parros up behind him.

When Guin’s leopard head broke the surface, he made the same decision as Istavan and began making for the Nospherus bank. Before climbing out onto the rocks himself, he threw little Suni up out of the river, then went to help the waterlogged Prince Remus pull himself out of the water. Istavan reached out a hand to the leopard-man, who scrambled onto the shore none too soon as the mass of living gelatin had made quick work of the bigmouth and was now streaking through the water towards Guin, its cilia rippling.

Up on the safety of the rocks, no one spoke for a long while. Their breathing was ragged, and they were once again soaked to the bone. Exhausted, they lay sprawled, glad to be feeling solid ground under them.

The sun had dipped below the horizon. The white knights on the far shore seemed a world away. The far shore, thought Rinda, who had come to and was coughing up the last of the water that she had swallowed.

For they were in Nospherus.