There must be four hundred of them, he said.
The floor of the trench is covered with them. Wonderful.
Nissa looked over the edge.
The giants were right, Anowon said.
The giants are down there, Sorin said. Their bodies are being dismembered right now. He was quiet for a moment. Rather interesting entrails.
Nissa turned. They will find our sign and ascend to us by day s end.
Oh, undoubtedly, Sorin said.
But we will not be here, Nissa said. She began walking toward the mountains, along the trail on Khalled s map. The trail would take them past the tipped castle. We should run.
And they did. They ran, holding what gear they had against themselves to keep it from bouncing. The goblins managed to carry Smara. One held each limb, and a fifth ran in the middle, while others scampered behind.
Nissa felt the mana from the grass course around her ankles as she ran. With this mana she spun a camouflage spell around the whole party, hoping to make them appear as a patch of grass on the expanse to any prying eyes that might be watching. Nissa dropped back a bit and squinted at her companions. But it was hard to tell if her spell had worked. She was too close to gauge its effectiveness. Nissa sped up.
The party ran through the shadows of the floating islands of land, which dropped clods of dirt from bare roots as they passed. Nissa saw a small rodent poke its head out of a hole and almost plummet the distance into the massive crater where the other side of its hole continued.
The wind picked up and began to blow in their faces as they ran. Soon they were sweating with exertion. Nissa couldn t help but think about how the wind in their faces would help spread their scent for the brood tracking them. She ran faster, and the others picked up their speed as well.
The sun was half-past zenith when they fell to the ground panting. Nissa laid her face down and breathed the rich smell of dirt and grass. Her tongue was swollen, and her cracked lips hurt. She needed water.
There might be water at that palace, she said.
The palace was closer, but it still lay tipped with its many tethers strewn around it. Nissa had watched for movement as they approached, but she had not seen any. It must have been inhabited by humans. They had begun to pass fields of grain, but what huts there were had been abandoned long ago. She was no judge of crops, but the stunted plants in the ground did not look like the most prosperous bounty she had ever seen.
After a bit of rest and hard tack, Nissa stood and began running again. Sorin was on his feet in an instant and following her at an alarming pace. He had passed her easily as they ran earlier, and she had the distinct feeling that he was slowing his pace so the rest of them could keep up. Nissa sped up to keep ahead of Sorin. It is the poor food I am eating that is allowing the human to run faster, she thought as she pumped her legs. But what is he eating? she wondered again. How is his body functioning without food?
Anowon, on the other hand, was not having as easy a time. Vampires were capable of alarming feats of physical prowess. They were naturally stronger than most elves Nissa had met. In the jungles of Bala Ged, Nissa had seen a vampire literally run up the trunk of a tree. They could jump better than most elves, but Nissa had never seen a vampire freefall off a tree, spin in midair, and catch itself on a branch. Still, a vampire should be able to run at least as fast as an elf.
Anowon was not running as fast. In fact, the vampire was midway between Nissa and the goblins that were, after all, carrying a mad kor. She had little doubt that it had been Anowon who had disposed of one of Smara s goblins. If that were the case, then Anowon should be quite fit and able to run. Nissa found it strange.
They ran past more huts hunched next to the fallow fields, then topped a low rise. The palace loomed ahead. In its course it had floated away and then back again to its original crater, only to fall hugely canted to the right. There were three lines of smoke rising sideways from the ground around the palace.
Then Nissa saw the first hole. Soon she saw more dotting the landscape ahead. She stopped running. Each was about a man s length across and just as deep. Many of the holes were stuffed with what looked like crops. Others were empty. Brood holes, she muttered.
When Nissa saw a hole with a pair of bare legs jutting straight out, she jumped behind a nearby hut and crouched. When Sorin and Anowon joined her, she leaned over.
Brood, Sorin said before she could even open her mouth.
Anowon nodded.
Ahead the ground was flat and grassy with small undulating ridges. The huts were more common along the foot-trod path they had been following. Each hut was made of thatch and turf bricks, and as Nissa crouched behind one, she could smell cooking grease from within. A gust of wind blew her hair in her eyes, and with the hooked finger of her right hand she pushed it behind her long ear.
There were people cooking in this one earlier today, she said.
The brood holes that dotted the landscape were fresh, and as she looked, Nissa saw plenty more legs sticking out of them.
Why do they stuff the corpses in the holes? Nissa said.
Sorin and Anowon said nothing, but Nissa had the distinct impression that one or both of them knew why.
What s that? Anowon whispered. He pointed.
A large column of dust far to the right in the grassland. The point from which it emanated was hidden behind one of the rises.
That, friends, is the dust thrown up by a great host, Sorin said. He stood and began walking forward to a high point occupied by another hut.
When he reached the hut, he stopped and stared down. Nissa stared too. It was a group of something walking along the ridge between the grassland and the mountains.
Sizable, Sorin said.
The tentacled scourge, Nissa said. She could not make out the individual forms, but she could see that some were taller than others, and that some of them moved in strange ways.
I suppose we should count ourselves lucky to be seeing their backs, Sorin said as he turned and began walking toward the palace.
Nissa had never seen anything like it. The populations of Zendikar did not have the discipline to form ranks. Plus, there was never enough of anyone, other than the wild creatures and trees, to form any kind of organized fighting force. And even though the brood were not formed in anything like ranks, they were traveling in a group. Where had they learned to walk together in lines? she wondered. She did not know enough about the brood to answer the question. But she would find out, she promised herself.
Behind the brood, the grasslands swept up in a smooth transition to the Piston Mountains. As she watched, the top of one mountain came hammering down on the base, and the ground shook.
If we are very lucky, Sorin yelled over his shoulder as he walked, The brood that did this he kicked at a leg poking out of one of the holes will meet and join forces with the brood advancing on us even now from behind.
Nissa looked back the way they had come. There, far away, was a smaller dust cloud.
Should not be long now, Sorin said.
Robert B. Wintermute
Zendikar: In the Teeth of Akoum
The holes became more common as they neared the palace, which, itself, had bodies hanging from their riggings heavy humans, dead in their armor with strange fighting devices strapped to their arms. Plumes of smoke spiraled from within somewhere. The huge tethers Nissa had seen from across the plain lay strewn on the grass, as thick as a man s torso.
Soon they were past the last hut and near the roots of the mountains. Ahead, a huge rock stood on its end, balanced precariously next to the trail. Nissa stopped and took out her map. The trail wound into the foothills and then skirted to the right. They would be moving parallel to the brood lineage that were beating their way around the base of the mountains. Will they cut into the mountains when they find our path? she asked herself as she rolled up the maps.
The stone balancing next to the trail appeared to wobble in the gusting wind. Nissa had seen other teetering stones, as they were called. She had never known one to fall. On the other hand, she had never known creatures to kill whole villages and stuff the corpses in holes.
They passed around the teetering stone and kept running along the path.
Nissa stopped suddenly and crouched, putting her finger into a small depression. She always ran looking at the ground, watching for signs.
An odd track, she said. I have never seen it before.
Sorin and Anowon stopped for a look. Nissa traced the deep divots and deep knuckle grooves; it was as if something had dragged itself across the ground, but uphill. Nissa looked up at the treeless mountains ahead. There were small boulders and low clumps of grass, but nothing that appeared large enough for even a goblin to hide behind. And whatever had made the sign was larger than a goblin, by plenty. Each finger groove was longer than her shin.