Chapter 35

It took three more days of steady climbing. By then Mato was mostly recovered, though his jaw and ribs still hurt.

Sten was as good as his word, and not only did he stop teasing them, he made the others stop too. It was plain to see why the northmen all thought so highly of each other. They didn’t complain, they didn’t shirk, and when they gave their word, they kept it.

Hilda had more trouble being near him, and Mato couldn’t tell why. Asking her only made her angry and sad, so he settled back and began observing her. According to Ezhno, if you couldn’t understand someone from their words, you should watch their actions.

She worked harder than anyone else, and the other women had to stop her periodically and make her eat and drink. That told him she was very upset.

It was possible that she was angry with him for making a wager that might have led to breaking a promise to her. But he’d apologized for that, and she’d waved it away.

Maybe she was unhappy that he hadn’t mounted her when they slept together. Of the possibilities he considered, he really hoped that was the answer. It served his ego better than the others.

His best idea was simply that she liked him, but didn’t want to give up her dream of freedom. The inability to reconcile those could certainly be the problem. He knew it was driving him mad.

“Mato, what are those?” Mother asked.

He startled. When had she walked up on him? Then he looked where she was pointing. In between the stunted trees was a mound of earth three times the height of a man, and black shapes were pouring out of it.

“Go! Up the trail,” he ordered. “Go, now.”

“I’m not leaving you,” she said.

“Ezhno!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “Cutter ants! Move up the trail! Everyone move up the trail.”

“What are cutter ants?” Ulf said as he jogged up.

Mato pointed toward the mound. “They’ll eat a horse in minutes. Don’t let them sting you, and don’t let them bite you.”

Ulf ran to the nearest wagon and grabbed a greatsword from a sheath hung under the wagon bed. Then he sprinted back. By then the first ants were arriving.

They were all black, the size of a rat, and had a long stinger at the back, and scissor-like jaws in front. This was his first time meeting them, but Ezhno had warned him about them. They had two basic traits that made them a problem--they could see nearly as far as a human could, and they were extremely aggressive.

Ulf pointed his sword at them, and a shaft of pale yellow light swept across the ground. Mato felt the heat, painfully, from twenty feet away.

Erik arrived, looked at the ants, and bellowed for everyone to get moving. Now. Then he picked Mother up, ignoring her protests, and ran up the trail with her tucked under one arm.

The main body of the ant army arrived. They covered the ground in a carpet sometimes two or three ants deep. The air took on a strange, biting stench, and his nose burned. Ulf’s fire effect wreaked havoc, but there were thousands of them. Maybe tens of thousands. Wherever Ulf pointed the sword’s beam the earth heated to ant-cooking temperatures, but they ran onto the baking ground anyway, and then those behind used their corpses as bridges.

“Mato,” Ezhno called.

“Over here,” Mato replied.

“I know where you are. I’m just not showing the ants where I am. Use your shield. Keep their attention. You’re helping us get the caravan away. Once we have everyone clear, we’ll work out a rescue.”

“Okay. Make sure my mother is safe.”

“Yes.”

Mato patted Ulf’s shoulder. “Stop.”

Ulf’s fire attack went out, and Mato popped his shield into place. The ants were on it seconds. They couldn’t get a grip on it with their jaws, and their stingers would not penetrate either.

“Those are horrid little monsters, aren’t they?” Ulf asked.

“Yeah. Ezhno says in some ways they are among the worst things we can fight. The colony is constantly breeding new members, so they can fight for weeks. Basically they can fight until it starts freezing.”

“Nights are almost there sometimes.”

“Not cold enough to stop them yet. They should be slower at night, but it’s really easy to blunder onto one, and the stings are deadly.”

Ulf got down on his hands and knees and peered at them, doing their best to breach the shield. “Those jaws look like they can lop off a finger.”

“I’ve heard they can,” Mato said. “Push your sword blade through the shield, then you can use your fire effect again.”

“Fire effect,” Ulf chuckled. “He calls it fire. This is the gaze of Arnglow, Mato. Anything that displeased him burst into flames, and continued to burn until there was nothing left. They say it could even burn rocks and water.”

He put the point of his sword up against the shield, then glanced at Mato. “This isn’t going to break your barrier, is it?”

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“No. It will be just fine.”

He nodded and pushed. Slowly he forced the blade through, until only the hilt and crossguard remained inside.

“Try it now?” Ulf asked.

“Go ahead.”

The roar of Arnglow’s Gaze overpowered the sounds of thousands of ants, and within seconds there were burning heaps of ants outside the shield. The losses seemed to enrage them further. The rush toward the shield grew more frenzied, and soon they were piled so deep around the shield that Mato could only see out through the space immediately surrounding Ulf’s sword.

After a couple of minutes the gaze went out, and Ulf looked back at him. “Can I let go of this?”

“Yes. It can just hang there.”

He let go, examined the sword and the barrier around it, then nodded to himself. “That’s good. It gets hot. Need to let it cool off.”

Ulf sat down, looked at the blanket of ants covering the shield, then chuckled. “Nice of them to bring some shade.”

Mato gave him a wide-eyed stare. “This is funny to you?”

“Sure, lad. Listen, because this is good advice. You do your thinking when nothing else is going on. If there’s fighting to do, then fight. If there’s women to woo, get in and get your hands dirty.

“Right now, there’s nothing to do. If I sit here and worry, I’ll just unman myself. So a joke is the right thing for the moment.”

“I don’t know any jokes,” Mato said.

“That can’t be right. What kind of man doesn’t know any jokes?”

Mato frowned at him, and Ulf motioned for him to say something.

“I don’t know.”

“A peasant!” Ulf laughed and slapped his leg.

It didn’t make any sense to Mato. Was the joke mocking peasants for having no sense of humor?

Ulf sighed. “You’re hopeless, boy. It's funny because it implies that kings are jokes, and peasants don’t know kings.”

“Have you told Erik that joke?”

Ulf chuckled. “Erik told me.”

“No wonder you think it’s funny,” Mato said. “He told you to laugh.”

Ulf snorted. “It’s a weak effort, but since we’re stuck in here for a while, I’ll allow it.”

* * *

“Mato,” Ezhno called.

Mato pried his eyes open. Some of the ants were gone, but all that meant was a little part of the shield, on the top, allowed them to look up at the sky. It looked like dusk was less than an hour away.

“We’re here,” Mato replied.

“We’re going to build a fire on top of the anthill after dark. They don’t see well at night, but a couple of us do. Once the fire is going, we’ll put a bridge of logs on top of the ants, and you can run across.”

“Why won’t the ants just climb on top of the logs?” Ulf called out.

“They will. We have to do this fast.”

“I hate this plan,” Ulf said.

“Me too,” Mato said. “Way too many things can go wrong.”

“Got any better ideas?”

“Maybe. I was just dreaming about making a bridge out of shields to cross a canyon.”

“I’m not following.”

Mato cast a simple shield, round and about a hand across, between them. “I can make more than one at a time, and make a hole in the big one. If I can make a long shield with a bit of a slope, I think we could climb out and slide right over the ants.”

“Slide?”

“Shields are slippery. Really slippery.”

Ulf poked the little round one with his fingertip. “I see what you mean. How do we keep from sliding off the side and falling into the ants?”

“The edges aren’t sharp. Just hang on with your hands.”

“Sounds simple. Doesn’t involve too much risk. It’s a better plan than Ezhno’s.”

Ulf was quiet for a few seconds, then shouted, “Ezhno? Are you still out there?”

“Yes.”

“Mato, can they build the fire right around the shield?”

Mato nodded, then realized Ulf probably couldn’t see him in the failing light. “Yes. We could wait until the ants are clear on one side, then just jump over the fire.”

Ulf shouted the idea to Ezhno.

“The light and heat will draw more ants from the hive.” Ezhno called.

“We don’t like your idea of building a fire on the hive,” Ulf called. “You’re going to get surrounded and stung to death.”

“Does anyone have a cold effect?” Mato asked.

“Erik does, but he’s with the wagons. What of your people?”

“I don’t know what everyone has. I have a really weak chill effect. I use it to keep cool on hot days sometimes.”

“Hmm. How strong would it need to be? It’s cold at night. Didn’t you say these things usually hide in their burrows when it gets cold?”

“Yes.”

“So try cooling them. It’s already cold out, if you can add to the weather just a little, perhaps that will be enough to stop them.”

“Okay. I’ll try it.” Mato drew his sword and pushed the blade through the shield, down low on the side facing away from the hill. Then he pushed through the chill rune. There was no sound, no light, no vibration. In the darkness he had no idea if the ants were reacting or not.

“This may take a while,” Mato said. “The effect really is weak.”

Ulf groped around in the dark, then patted Matto on the back. “One of the things you’ll learn as you get older is that it’s better to do something that helps a little than it is to sit by and do nothing at all.”

“What are you doing?” Ezhno called. “Saw a disturbance in the ants, and now they’re moving away from that spot.”

“Mato, can you put up a shield over that spot when it’s empty?” Ulf asked.

“Sure.”

“Then we don’t need to clear the whole area. We do it a bit at a time. We only need to move about twenty feet, and we’ll be clear of the swarm.”

Ulf relayed their new plan to Ezhno. Then it took about half an hour to clear a small area of ants. Mato put up a new shield over that space--Ezhno verified that it was free of ants--and Mato opened a hole just large enough for them to crawl through into the new shield.

It took four moves before Ezhno told them it was safe to leave. Mato grabbed his pack, sheathed his blade, and waited for Ulf to declare himself ready. Then he dropped the shield and they ran blindly toward Ezhno’s voice.

For half a clip or so they picked their way along, Mato holding the back of Ezhno’s shirt, and Ulf holding onto Mato. When they were finally comfortable having some light, Ezhno lit his small lantern.

It took them most of the night to catch up with the wagons. Mother was waiting up by the fire, and ran to give him a fierce hug when the sentry called them into camp. To his surprise, Hilda came and hugged him, refusing to let go for a couple of minutes.