The Ring of Winter Page 12

  Drunkenly the dinosaurs stumbled about, shaking their heads or working their jaws in stunned silence. At least it seemed to Artus they were silent, though his ears were ringing too badly to tell for certain. The remaining bearers took advantage of the confusion to escape, too. They ran off in a different direction from Artus and Judar. Before the explorer could signal the surviving Tabaxi to follow, they had vanished.

  The dinosaurs recovered soon after. They milled about the remains of the packs and the two corpses in confusion, then charged after the survivors. Artus could hear them breaking through the undergrowth close behind, splashing through the fetid water, churning up the thick mud. Only one of the beasts caught up with Artus and Judar; in fact, it somehow got in front of them. It was a small specimen, nine feet long with a stunted sail upon its back.

  Judar was intent on getting the dinosaur out of their way, and quickly. In one fluid movement, the guide reached into his white robes, withdrew a pinch of sand, and tossed it at the dinosaur. As it traveled forward, the sand expanded into the shape of a lion twice as large as a man. The conjured creature struck the altispinax head on. Artus lost sight of the dinosaur, but when the cloud lost its form and the sand settled to the ground, not even a single bone remained.

  "Why didn't you tell me you were a mage?" Artus asked as they took off again at a run.

  The guide said nothing, only stepped up their grueling pace. Soon the roars of the dinosaurs faded, masked by the cries of birds and other creatures high in the canopy. A short time later, they were out of the swamp. While that meant no more slogging through mud, the undergrowth grew more dense here. Without the bearers' machetes, they were forced to rely on Artus's dagger to hack their way through the thick vines and fronds blocking their path. The going was tough and very slow.

  "I want an explanation," Artus said. He dropped the vine he was cutting through and wiped his brow. The day was growing intolerably hot, even with the protection of Theron's tunic.

  Judar slumped to the ground. "I really do not wish to discuss it."

  "If you'd been honest and told me you had spells at your control, we might have avoided that fight with the altispinax altogether," Artus snapped. "Those bearers would still be alive!"

  The guide shook his head slowly. "In most Tabaxi tribes, only village elders and those the elders choose as apprentices may use magic. The bearers would not have traveled with a renegade like me." He turned his large eyes to the explorer. "We would still be at the port."

  Artus paused, considering the explanation. He had heard something about Tabaxi mages being protective of their craft, but that still didn't explain everything. "At the start of the fight, you reached for the medallion I wear. Why?"

  "I was born with a rare gift. I can see the aura all magical things radiate," the guide offered honestly. "I saw a slight glow from the medallion and thought it might help us," He shifted on his heels, tearing up saw-edged grass one blade at a time. "I am sorry I led you to disaster. My family's shame seems to no know bounds. First Kwame, now this…"

  Artus sank to the ground beside Judar. "Well, magic or no, we'd better try to make it back to Kitcher's Folly by sunset. We should be safe there, at least from the dinosaurs." He looked up at the curtain of greenery surrounding them. "From there we can go to the port, We'll have to gather what supplies we can along the trail. At least I can still do a little hunting."

  Artus bad managed to salvage a few items from the disastrous morning: his dagger, his bow and arrows, the clothes on his back, and Theron's map. Judar had nothing but his white robes and the spell components in his pockets. As they struggled on, presumably northeast toward Kitcher's Folly, the guide explained that another explorer had taught him the rudiments of magic. With a few years of experimentation, he had done much to develop those kernels of knowledge. Judar only knew enchantments useful for battle. While that would help protect them from any other menacing dinosaurs, it would do little to speed the trek back to Port Castigliar.

  Luckily, the dinosaurs they stumbled upon that afternoon were gentle giants, content to tear up whole bushes and clumps of bamboo with their gaping mouths. The first resembled a monstrous armadillo, though its head was large and broad. Rock-hard circles of bone, like plate armor, covered its body, and blunted spikes patterned its skull. From the brief look Artus got before the beast trundled away into the jungle, he figured the dinosaur to be at least twice as big as the largest elephant, perhaps even thirty-five feet long. Its most amazing feature was not its size, but the bulging knob of bone at the end of its tail. The club splintered trees as the dinosaur walked, demonstrating how formidable a weapon it would be in battle.

  They spotted the other dinosaur, or more precisely the other group of dinosaurs, in a clearing at the edge of a small pond. Artus recognized them as a family of stegosaurus. The largest of them, perhaps twenty feet from the tip of its pointed snout to the four sharp spikes at the end of its tail, would have been dwarfed by the armored monster he and Judar had disturbed earlier. An alternating double row of bony, diamond-shaped plates ran the length of its arched back, starting small near its neck, growing larger in the middle, and tapering down again along its tail. Six of the beasts grazed upon the tender grasses at the water's edge. They turned to idly study the two men who pushed out of the jungle, but apart from herding the two smallest behind their mothers, the dinosaurs went about their business as if no one else shared the pond.

  The afternoon wore on, and the twilight world beneath the thick jungle canopy began to slide into a more profound darkness. To make matter worse, after hours of walking Artus and Judar were still thoroughly lost. The guide insisted they were moving toward the well-worn trail to the port, but the way remained close to impassable. Artus checked the dagger again and again, It always agreed with Judar's assessment of their direction.

  "We will surely break into the more traveled areas tomorrow," Judar assured the explorer, though Artus found little comfort in the guide's words. His predicament had made him rightfully cautious, and Judar's secrecy about his skill with magic had fanned the embers of his suspicions into an open flame again.

  They ate a meager meal in silence. After, they rested in the darkness, listening to the calls of the night-stalking creatures. Artus sat with his bow across his lap, two arrows planted point-first in the ground nearby. If anything entered their small camp or passed too close through the branches overhead, he intended to make the beast think twice about attacking. He didn't want to think about what would happen after the arrows were gone. Anyway, it was better to go down fighting.

  Artus was soon asleep, the stress and strain of the day dragging him down to oblivion.

  A sharp jab in the back woke the explorer, how much later he could not tell. He rolled to the side, grabbing for his bow and an arrow. Holding the bow sideways, he glanced around the camp. Moonlight filtering through the canopy revealed a terrifying scene.

  Judar lay face-down a few feet away. Over the motionless guide stood two squat goblins. Artus loosed the arrow, hitting one of the intruders square in the chest. It went down with a grunt, its wide mouth moving wordlessly. Two more goblins crashed from the bushes, nasty-looking spears held menacingly forward. The rustle in the vegetation to his back told Artus that others had circled around to surround him.

  Kneeling as he was, the explorer could look the manlike creatures straight in the eyes. Their faces were round and flattened. Broad foreheads sloped down to dull eyes the yellow of rotten eggs. Noses that seemed uniformly squashed wandered out to their high cheekbones, toward their pointed ears. Their skin was strangely mottled with reds and oranges. Artus had seen goblins before, but never any as wild as these. They wore only torn breechcloths and a few scattered scraps of leather armor.

  The rest of the arrows lay far away from the explorer, certainly too far to reach before a goblin spear took him in the back. Artus slid his grip toward one end of the longbow. It had served as a club against the dinosaurs readily enough. The goblins' skulls would prove easie
r to break, too…

  He had tensed his legs, ready to lunge, when another goblin entered the clearing. This one was fully a foot taller than the others, with a well-tended breastplate of dinosaur hide covering his torso. He snorted when he saw the dead goblin warrior, then pointed at Artus.

  The shuffle of bare feet alerted Artus to the attack. He spun around. Two goblins rushed toward him, ready to grapple him barehanded. It took but one swing of the bow to send them sprawling. A clear path to the jungle suddenly lay before him.

  Maybe I'll get out of this alive, he thought hopefully.

  That hope died quickly. A solid blow to the back of the head knocked Artus to the ground. Darkness rolled over his mind, shutting out the night in waves.

  "He no challenge for Batiri," the armored goblin said scornfully. He kicked Artus in the side.

  The explorer spoke fluent enough Goblin to understand this coarse dialect. "Batiri!" he gasped. Artus's thoughts spun like a raft caught in a maelstrom. Oh gods, his mind screamed, the cannibals who captured Theron!

  Then another wave of darkness crashed down upon his thoughts, dragging Artus down to unconsciousness.

  * * * * *

  Artus awoke in a circular hole in the ground, rain dripping on his face through the bamboo-and-frond roof covering the dank prison. His head throbbed, and his face was wet from the rain and sticky with blood. When he tried to sit up, pain arced through his head like lightning in a stormy sky.

  With a groan, he collapsed back onto the dirty straw pallet. Gingerly he touched the top of his head. Three sizeable lumps formed an uneven circle on his scalp. That would account for the blood and the pain, he decided. I got one lump when they attacked, but where did the other two come from?

  Vaguely Artus recalled being moved from the site of the ambush to wherever he was now. The Batiri had tied his hands and feet, then strung a pole through the ropes. They carried him this way, just as Artus had seen big game hunters transport their trophies. Each time he awoke, a goblin clubbed him back to unconsciousness. He grimaced. That would account for the other two goose eggs.

  "Well?" came a familiar voice from across the squalid room. "You don't plan to just lie there, do you? Be a good soldier and get moving."

  Artus stared in amazement, his jaw slack. There, on a broad stump that served as the jail's only chair, sat Pontifax-or at least his ghost. The old mage was pale, and Artus could see right through him to the earthen wall. His bushy eyebrows were raised in slight amusement over eyes that still shone like phantom sapphires. His mouth was turned up in a smile.

  "I-I don't believe this," Artus muttered. He put his hand to his forehead. "They must have hit me harder than I thought."

  "Good!" the spirit exclaimed. "It's about time you started being a little more skeptical. Look where you've got yourself by trusting people without making them prove their mettle." Pontifax glanced around and shook his head. "Well, better take the gorgon by the horns and get yourself out of this, my boy. The sun is setting, and the goblins are getting restless."

  Artus closed his eyes tightly. "This isn't happening," he said, then repeated it two or three times, mantralike. Sure enough, when he looked again, the specter was nowhere to be seen. He chalked the hallucination up to the welts on his head, a lack of food, and the dire straits in which he now found himself.

  Slowly he got to his feet, then waited for the dizziness to subside. Weak light crept into the room through the thatched roof, along with the rain. The circular prison was ten or twelve paces across in the center, with walls about fifteen feet high. No door. No ladder up to the ground.

  He wondered for a moment where Judar was. Theron Silvermace had made it clear two fates were possible at the hands of the cannibalistic Batiri-becoming a sacrifice to the thing they worshiped or landing a spot on their menu. Since he was still alive, Artus assumed the goblins intended to sacrifice him. That Judar was nowhere to be seen meant another fate had likely befallen him. Artus forced that thought from his mind and scanned the room again.

  The prison seemed more than roomy enough for its meager contents-a straw pallet, the up-ended log, and a few discarded wooden plates. His dagger and his bow had been taken. Since the goblins had burrowed it into the ground, the prison proved cool, if somewhat damp. Water ran down the walls in rivulets, turning the floor into a mire. Artus was a bit surprised the walls hadn't collapsed, considering how much it rained in Chult. A closer examination revealed the source of the prison's stability-a fine net of tree roots held together by bamboo poles.

  Exhilaration damped the throbbing in Artus's skull and calmed the hunger raging in his stomach. A plan had presented itself, prompted by the goblins' ingenuity.

  The discarded wooden plates were easy to break, cracked as they were from dampness and misuse. One of the fist-sized pieces was sharp enough for Artus's needs. With it, he set about cutting a foothold into the wall, shearing away the roots. It proved more difficult to sever the bamboo supports, but the earth had made them softer than the canes Judar had cut near the altispinax swamp. With a minimum of noise, masked in part by the falling rain, Artus cut two more footholds higher up.

  Mud began to seep from the gaps almost immediately, making the climb treacherous. Twice, Artus's feet slipped from the footholds. He landed on his back in the mire, frozen with dread, waiting for a goblin guard to push back the roof to see what had caused the commotion. But the Batiri proved oblivious to Artus's activities. He was soon at the top of the wall, peering cautiously through a hole in the roof.

  The prison was situated at the edge of the Batiri camp. Three huge trees towered over the hole, the source of the roots used in the walls. Nearby, a dark line of plants and vines encroached upon the area cleared for the village. That was his path to freedom.

  In the other direction lay the village itself, a collection of haphazardly placed huts. Totems of dark wood jutted up before each building. The man-sized poles were intended to keep away evil spirits, Artus decided. He'd seen similar totems in orcish settlements in Thar and kobold warrens in Ashanath. The sun still struggled to break through the pallid storm clouds overhead, and patches of wan light dotted the clearing. The goblins were waiting for the sun to give up the fight and retreat for the evening. Goblins hated sunlight. It made them weak and nauseous.

  Artus could see only two Batiri, and they were quite close.

  "Leave be, Balt," one of the warriors snorted. He sat at the base of a massive tree, not ten feet from the prison. A spear leaned against the trunk, well out of the goblin's reach. "Prisoner no get away. I club on head again if he try to run."

  The Batiri with the dinosaur-hide breastplate loomed over the guard, fury dancing across his features. His grimace revealed a small pair of fangs. "I club you," he snarled. "You march or you go to Grumog."

  The guard was slow to his feet, but he heeded Balt's warning. Taking up the spear, he marched toward the prison. This was the chance Artus needed. He ducked beneath the cover of the roof and tensed, waiting for the goblin to get close. The shuffling of flat feet got nearer… nearer.

  Artus burst through the fronds and grabbed the guard by the ankle. Raising his spear, the goblin shouted in surprise, but he couldn't strike before Artus yanked his foot from beneath him. With a shriek, the guard toppled onto the roof. The bamboo supports cracked, then broke under his weight. The warrior crashed to the floor of the prison amidst a rain of bamboo splinters and torn fronds.

  Balt rushed forward, drawing a wickedly curved scimitar. He lashed out just as Artus pulled himself up from the hole, but the explorer somehow managed to roll out of the way. The blade bit into the ground next to Artus's head, and a dollop of mud slapped into the explorer's face. Blinded in one eye by the muck, he tried to kick Balt. The goblin used the flat of his blade to easily divert the awkward attack.

  "Escape!" a deep voice bellowed. Then another joined in. "Capture Grumog's bounty!"

  These weren't goblin voices shattering the silence, but the gravelly cries of the totems before each
hut. The leering, twisted faces on each wooden pole shouted warnings to their masters, calling the Batiri to arms. Balt smiled at the cacophony, certain the village would rouse itself in time to recapture the human… if he didn't subdue the man first himself.

  Artus saw that confidence in the goblin's yellow eyes. He'll expect me to run now, the explorer realized. Better not disappoint him.

  With speed born of exhilaration and more than a touch of fear, Artus rolled away from Balt and jumped to his feet. He took one step toward the jungle, just as the goblin expected, then wheeled around. Balt's guard was down, and he was nowhere near quick enough to block the vicious right hook Artus threw. The punch landed squarely on the warrior's lantern jaw, sending him reeling to the very brink of the pit. Balt dropped his scimitar and windmilled his arms in an attempt to save himself, but it was futile. Artus snatched up the sword and struck the goblin in the chest with one fluid stroke. The dinosaur-hide armor protected Balt from the blade, but not the push backward. He tumbled into the pit, cursing and shouting.

  Batiri warriors began to stream out of their dark little huts, spears and small bows in their hands. Arrows buzzed around Artus like angry bees as he pushed into the jungle. He could hear the goblins swarming around their village, shouting orders that could be heard even over the wailing of their totems.

  It's pointless to try to outrun them, Artus decided, especially with night coming on fast. Maybe I can hide out until dawn, then make a break for it. That plan in mind, the explorer stealthily scrambled up the neatest tall tree. Shielded by the thick foliage, he observed the goblins without being seen.

  To Artus's surprise, only a few scattered groups of Batiri combed the bush looking for him. These hunting parties, made up of ten or more warriors each, beat the bushes and checked behind each boulder in the jungle immediately surrounding the village. A few even scanned the trees, though they acted as if they didn't think it likely the human would hide there.