Chapter 16: Vengeance

Jewel opened her eyes, brushing a soggy leaf from her cheek with fingers that trembled. He head ached! Where was Neal? And Amy? Why was she so cold?

Something scurried away as she stirred. A shower of water droplets cascaded down on her from the branches of a low bush. It was still dark, but the cloudy sky was beginning to lighten in the east. Slowly, painfully, the events of the night came back to her. Memories of fear, of waves of panic that had sprung from nowhere.

She trembled at the painful memory, but already her mind was at work, trying to come up with a reasonable explanation. The terror had struck at the very moment that the priest had died on her knife, pouncing in time with his final words. The fire had leaped on high, and escaping steam had thrust a padded beam against the great brazen shield.

"Of course!" Her worried expression cleared as the answer struck her. "Subsonics. No wonder I panicked. How'd they ever stumble onto that?"

She climbed stiffly to her feet. A few yard away, her dagger lay where she had dropped it. A quick scrub with a handful of moss cleaned most of the blood and dirt from its bronze blade, and she stuck it back into its scabbard. Her stomach was already telling her that it was time for breakfast, and beyond. If only she had the faintest idea of which way Arragin's camp lay from here...

The trees and brush were too thick for her to see very far. Keeping the rising sun to her left, she started walking. The Inland Sea lay to the south, that she knew. Once she reached its shore, she should be able to find her way back to the camp.

By noon, she wasn't so sure that she had guessed right. The going had been slow, but even so she was sure that she had come much too far. There seemed to be a ridge off to her left, maybe she could see something from its crest that would give her a clue as to where she was. Several times in the past few hours, she'd fought off twinges of fear. Now, climbing higher, her breath caught in her throat. She stilled her trembling by an effort of will, and as soon as she topped the ridge and started down the other side to where the trees opened out her fears left her.

"At last!" Drawing a deep breath, she repeated the words aloud. Through the trees she could see a vast expanse of water, clear and blue under scattered puffy clouds. She was scampering back up the slope for a clearer view when a new pulse of fear washed through her.

"Now just one damned minute! This is getting ridiculous. There's nothing to be afraid of around here." She took a deep breath and advanced boldly to the top of the ridge. Here, where the trees were small and scattered, she could see that she had been following a finger of land that extended far out into the water. Once again she stilled a tremor of fear.

"Dalliktan!" The name was a curse. "I'm still feeling his damned subsonics. But, hey! That means that Arragin's camp has to be back that way. It must be some trick of the shape of the hills, focussing the sound waves so that they carry this far."

Keeping to the west slope of the ridge, she made her way back. Several times along the way, she had to cross back to the east side of the ridge to avoid impassable tumbles of boulders. Each time, the pulses of fear as she crossed the top of the ridge were weaker, confirming her guess that she was moving out of their focus.

The eastern shore was curving away, the peninsula growing broader, when she heard voices ahead. Instantly, she flattened herself in the shelter of a mossy boulder. She could tell that there were several of them, voices kept low but definitely arguing about something. Taking advantage of every scrap of cover, she worked her way closer.

"I say, we head into the woods!" The voice was hoarse with fear, that of a soldier unnerved by dangers he'd never been trained to face. "It's none of our affair whether that damned Arragin or the priests come out on top."

"Not on your life!" This voice was familiar, and as she drew closer she recognized Jal of Borresk. "We've all got a real stake in this fight. You ain't one of my squad, so maybe you ain't been told what's up. This here's a chance for the MotherGoddess to get back some of Her own."

"Who cares? It's nothing to me, one way or the other. I'm for the Old God, anyhow, and... Ahh!"

Jal had moved like the uncoiling of a tightlywound spring. A flash of light, and the blade of his dagger was quenched in the soldier's throat.

"The rest of you've been vouched for. Just don't get no funny ideas about leaving, 'cause you'll never make it."

"So, what'll we do now?" The question came from a toughlooking veteran. "We can't just head back into camp and say, 'Sorry we ran out on you.' They'd hang us from the nearest tree."

"No, we can't I'd give a lot to know what kind of demons Dalliktan loosed against us back there. I can still feel them breathing down my neck, every once in a while."

"No demons." They whirled as one person to see Jewel calmly walking toward them. Her hands were empty at her sides, but the symbol of the MotherGoddess hung in plain view about her neck. "A sending of terror, but nothing that can do you harm of itself."

"Jewel!" Amy ran to meet her from the rear of the group. "You're all right? We didn't know what had happened to you."

"I'm fine, but how did you get here? Where's Nurm?"

"We don't know," Jal answered for her. "We can only hope that he's still back in Prince Arragin's camp. He was still with the Prince when all Hell broke loose. Never saw such a jumbledup mess in all my life. Everybody fighting everybody else, or just running in circles. I grabbed up Amy, and headed for my own squad. Found them, somehow, and we cleared out. I wasn't taking no chances of getting her wiped out in that kind of a riot. We picked up these other guys wandering around in the woods afterwards."

"What do you plan to do now?"

"We didn't want to just head back to camp, since we didn't know what we might find there. I kinda thought that we might be more useful out here, on our own. Now that we've met up with you, I'm sure of it. Say, what did you find out, anyway? What do you mean, no demons?"