The Burning Goddess by Ian Hammell

Author:Ian Hammell [Hammell, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Novela, Otros
Publisher: ePubLibre
Published: 1994-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

After the dragging, painful progress of former days, events now started to move as if they’d mounted a flying carpet.

Within an hour the army was gone without trace. With no supplies and little save their blankets and swords, the men just turned and shuffled away, grumbling. It was almost twenty leagues to the sea, which would take them three days in this terrain, three days on empty bellies. Zed was glad he didn’t have to escort them. Tiger Eye’s warriors came from the trees with small red deer, gutted, over their shoulders. Cutthroat and his bodyguard were so hungry they kindled fires on the spot, roasted the meat on sticks, and gorged it half-raw. Having full bellies went a long way to smoothing the friction between Fulcrumian and Nureti.

The highlanders wrapped the leftovers in the deer hides and slung them as bundles over their backs. Except for Cutthroat’s satchels and jeweled weapons and cape, no man had much besides a spear, blanket, and short sword. They could be ready to march in a minute.

Tiger Eye explained how the remaining adventurers would travel. “We won’t cut trail, but will rather slip through the forest like the other animals. We’ll take to the trees where need be. They’ll be no talking. If you must talk, whisper and only against one’s ear. Stay away from open spots where the grass is yellow at its base, for that means a boiling spring. Do not lean against trees covered with moss, for the drilling spider lives in there. Don’t touch any cobwebs you see, but go around them. Avoid razor grass, which has blue lines in it…” She went on and on, cataloguing the dangers of the ground. Zed shuddered at some of them, especially the idea of pink larvae that bored into a man’s foot and crippled him. Yet, for all the information given, he sensed Tiger Eye was telling them only the basics of survival, and leaving much unsaid.

They were almost ready to go, Cutthroat actually champing at the bit, when a shout sounded from the south. Two tree folk, spears in hand, accompanied Darroc, the ancient crabbed sailor, man or dwarf or elf or whatever he was. He trotted in his rolling sailor’s gait. In his hand was a gnarled staff taller than he was. The short man danced like a boy.

“I’ve gotten it!” he shouted when he arrived. “Look! The Staff of Old Malosho! I’ve gotten it! The real thing, taken from the King’s hand himself!”

Curiously, wary of the powerful artifact, men gathered to see. Darroc was filthy with cobwebs and sweat and dirt, scratched and mosquito-bitten in a hundred places, yet his face and eyes were smiling. He cradled the staff, which was nine feet long and thick almost as a hitching post, in his powerful craggy hands. The staff was crooked as a dog’s hind leg and lumpy, almost warty, as if grown entirely from hardwood burls. Darroc was so excited he set the staff back down and danced a sailor’s jig around it like a maypole.

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