Ergund spared one hand from calming his horse, made a hasty ward. “We are about Kelgris’s business, demon. Begone. You may not hinder us.”
“It’s not that simple,” whispered the thing. “You see.”
With the hand that had snapped the arrow apart, it brushed through the grass as if stirring the surface of water. Waves raced out from its touch, seemingly random, certainly in defiance of the prevailing breeze from the north. The grass bowed, it shivered and whipped about, it made mounds like the racing backs of sea creatures just below the surface.
“
In the space around the figure, the mounds grew suddenly still, rose silently and took on stricter form. Half a dozen separate shapes, maybe more. Egar felt the breath stop in his throat as he realized what he was looking at. The creature in the leather cloak had surrounded itself abruptly with men—but men woven out of the grass itself, and moving restlessly around on its surface like bathers immersed to the waist in a river.
“No corner of the steppe,” murmured the figure. It sounded oddly distracted, almost sleepy. “But that the blood of men has fallen there and fertilized it. Occasionally, the steppe can be made to recall these things. Kill them.”
And the grass men flung themselves forward.
They had no weapons, nothing beyond their ill-formed stringy tendril hands, but they surged up at the terrified horses like ill-intending waves, and where they gripped, Egar saw blood spring out on the animals’ hide. He saw them pull Ergund’s mount right over in a flounder of limbs and rolling eyes, saw Ergund stagger briefly upright and make frantic warding signs, shrilling the name of Kelgris until they dragged him down into the grass as well, and his screams turned choked and gurgling. He saw Alrag hacking about him with his lance, yelling and cursing, Ershal wheeling his beleaguered horse about in the chaos, face a mask of horror . . .
There was little enough time for more—a pair of the grass things came at Egar as well, and he was busy grabbing his lance back up off the ground where he’d dropped it. Grass came with it, blades of the stuff folding over and wrapping and clinging stubbornly to the shaft, trying to pull it back down. For one insane moment, it was like a tug-of-war for the weapon with some surprisingly tenacious toddler around the camp, and then Egar had the lance free and was swinging it up to defend himself against a long thin slashing arm and the empty eye sockets of the grass-formed head behind it. He scythed off the arm at what might have approximated an elbow joint, saw it simply re-form as more grass stalks slithered up into place. A ragged gap opened in the thing’s head where a mouth would have been on a man. The rustling, keening noise that came out of it turned his blood to ice.
The leather-cloaked figure spoke without turning, hissed, furious words, made a rapid whiplash gesture back across its shoulder that would have dislocated the limb on a normal man. The two forms slopped like waves collapsing up a beach, and were abruptly gone. Melting motions in the grass and an errant gust of wind, and then nothing at all. Egar drew harsh breath and gaped around him in time to see Alrag hauled, lance still flailing, down to a bellowing death in the grass, and Ershal spurring his horse away at the gallop, lashing wildly behind him with his knife, chopping at the empty air alongside his mount’s rump like a man deranged. The summoned forms surged about for a moment or two, perhaps looking for more victims, then they, too, sank back into the grass that had spawned them and Egar stood panting, alone with the thing in the leather cloak.
It turned slowly to face him. That the features below the brim of the hat were no more than nondescript human seemed like the final impossible thing. The voice that drummed around the inside of his skull hit him like the pulse of a bad hangover.
“You were supposed to run, Dragonbane. That’s the purpose of a warning.”
“Who—” Egar struggled to master his breathing. “—the
The eyes beneath the hat glinted, another warning in them for him. “That’s complicated.”
“Well, hey, everybody’s fucking dead. We’ve got some time.”
“Not as much as you think. You heard your brother Ergund call upon Kelgris? She is awake and abroad. Poltar the shaman has her favor. All I have done here is hold back the tide a little.”
Egar found his rage still had the better of his fear. He clenched fists on the staff of his lance, drew clamped breath. Grimaced.
“Listen. Don’t think I’m not grateful to you, because I am. You saved my life. By sorcery or not, I still owe you a blood debt for that, and you won’t find me stingy on the payback. But I will have a name for my debt, or it can’t be called honorable.”
