The Outcast (Summoner #4)(63)

“That simple, huh?” Arcturus muttered semisarcastically, trying to keep her instructions in his head.

“Of course, then you can control the direction of your spell with your mind, in the same way that you can control a wyrdlight. That’s how you shape a shield, or decide if you want to send out a stream of fire or simply a ball of it.”

“Right,” Arcturus said. “I’ll just try it, shall I? You can tell me if I do something wrong.”

“Maybe tomorrow,” Alice whispered, patting him on the shoulder. “Whatever spell you use, it will make light and noise—better not to signal our presence to any orcs out there.”

“Of course,” Arcturus said, feeling a hint of disappointment.

Still, now that he knew the basics of spellcraft, he could teach himself. He just hoped that he wouldn’t need to use it before the morning.





CHAPTER

35

THEY SMELLED IT BEFORE they saw it. Or at least, Arcturus did. It was metallic, so strong he could almost taste it on his tongue as they pushed through the trees, blinking in the dawn light as the vegetation thinned.

Sacharissa noticed it first. Arcturus almost fell as her consciousness was suffused with a sudden horror. Then he saw it too. The bodies. Scattered like rag dolls on a nursery floor, their dead eyes staring through him and into oblivion beyond.

Rebels. At least a hundred of them, their corpses adorned with gaping wounds, or their bones caved in by enormous force. The team stood frozen, and Arcturus heard Elaine retching as she emptied their meager breakfast of wild berries onto the blood-soaked ground.

That was what the smell was—blood. Only now it was tinged by the barest hint of putrefaction, and the air hummed with the buzz of a thousand flies, and the croak of carrion birds as they hopped among the feast lain out before them.

Arcturus’s gorge rose, but he forced it down, eyes watering as he staggered against a tree.

“Orc handiwork,” Rotter growled, and Arcturus heard the rasp of the soldier’s sword being drawn. “There.”

He jabbed his blade, and Arcturus followed its point to see the body of an orc among the humans, its gray skin stark against the damp soil, a ragged wound to its throat showing the reason for its demise. Now that Arcturus looked, there were half a dozen others, though their corpses were surrounded by the scores of humans they had taken down with them.

“How many could have done this?” Edmund said, his voice uneven in his distress.

“Twenty, maybe less,” Rotter replied, edging forward. “However many, they won.”

The field of battle was in a clearing of sorts, scattered with the occasional sapling and tree stump. Beyond, Arcturus could just make out what looked like green fields of long grass—where the jungles ended and Hominum’s territory began. He tried to resist the urge to run for it. The area was still, with nary a breeze to stir the leaves.

“They don’t leave their dead if they can help it,” Rotter said, turning his head and body slowly as he walked farther into the battlefield. “They’ll be back for them soon enough. Must’ve looted the weapons first. We’d best be on our way, quickly now.”

Arcturus didn’t need telling twice. He took a moment to grab Elaine’s hand, and then he was pulling her along, wending a path through where the bodies were thinnest on the ground.

“It tells a story, this,” Rotter said, walking backward now as he watched the forest behind them. “They came from the back, took the rebels by surprise. Some others…”

He turned and stared into fields beyond. The bodies were thickest along its edge.

“They came from that way too,” he said. “Must’ve been tracking them. Set up an ambush, hid in the long grass. Hit ’em from both sides.”

“It’s a good thing, right?” Elaine said, her voice still weak from throwing up. “They’re not hunting us anymore.”

“There’s nothing good about this,” Arcturus whispered. He tried not to look at the eyes. Somehow there was accusation in their gaze.

“Do you think this was the group who were following us, or were they following Prince Harold and the others?” Alice asked.

Her question went unanswered. Because Rotter had frozen, his eyes bulging from his head as he looked into the trees beyond him.

“Don’t look behind you,” Rotter growled, walking backward once again. “Just keep doing what you’re doing. But when I say run, you run like the dickens, understand?”

Elaine whimpered, and Arcturus gripped her hand, if not for her comfort then for his own. Sacharissa growled beside him, and it took all his control to keep the demon from turning around to look behind them. Instead, she looked into his eyes … and suddenly he could smell them. Orcs, yes, but something new too. Something animal, with breath that stank of rotting meat.

“What … is it?” he managed to say, the words catching in his throat, breaths coming in short bursts.

“Orc scouts,” Rotter replied. “There’s three of ’em. But they’ve got hyenas with ’em. Big buggers, chests like cart horses. Easy now, they’re just watching us at the moment. ’Tis a good thing you and Alice have your demons out—they’ll know you’re summoners. Might spook ’em.”

Arcturus could almost feel the orcs’ eyes on the back of his neck, and he pulled Elaine closer to him as they staggered over the bodies on the edge of the grasslands.