Knight Watch

by Tim Akers

  The creature disappeared a second later, hidden behind more branches and the rapidly thickening trees. And now that I wasn’t screaming, I realized that the forest was filled with animal sounds. Long growls, high-pitched wailing, the chirruping scream of...something. I used to camp a lot as a kid, and I remember lying awake at night in my tent, wondering which of the hundred noises echoing outside the thin canvas walls were worth worrying about. The foolish fears of a child, unfamiliar with the world.

  Except now I knew those fears were justified. Monsters were real, or maybe unreal enough to be dangerous, at least to me. It didn’t comfort me much to think that if a troll found me in the woods and tore me limb from limb, the park ranger who found me would assume it was a bear. Horrific death was horrific death, after all.

  Doesn’t matter, I reminded my worrying brain. The ground can’t be all that far away, and then none of this will matter in the—

  The ground wasn’t far away at all. I saw it for the briefest of seconds before I hit. It was just enough time for every muscle in my body to clench in terror, and then I slammed into a mat of moss and broken twigs. The earth bent around me, flexing like a bow as I impacted. My descent slowed rapidly, stopped, reversed. I shot back into the air, my limbs flailing as I tried to get my bearings, my body slowly twisting as I rose into the lowest branches of the forest. I slowed, hung in the air, then fell again. This time I braced my arms and legs, holding myself ramrod straight as I went in. The ground below me didn’t look particularly soft, but once again it flexed beneath me, gradually snapping back to flat and sending me into the air. This cycle repeated a couple times, each launch slightly lower, until I finally came to a stop.

  I stood there, trying to catch my breath. I gave the ground an experimental stomp. Hard as packed earth. I looked up. The distant branches of the forest canopy waved in the wind, moonlight flickering among the branches. I remembered the gentle arrival in Clarence’s domain, the soft light of the forest and the fresh smell of pine branches, the distant birdsong. I shook myself. I jingled.

  My clothes were gone, replaced by the fine chainmail and leather I had worn in Clarence’s domain. The only difference was a tabard across my chest, quartered in red and black, and emblazoned with a dragon rampant. I chuckled.

  “Kracek wouldn’t like that,” I said.

  Chesa appeared a second later. Screaming, as you might expect, though not exactly what you’d expect.

  “John Rast I’m going to fucking kill you!” she howled as she bashed her way through the tree limbs, trailing a comet of broken branches and fluttering leaves. She hit the ground ten feet to my right, distended the ground, and bounced back into the air. She was windmilling her arms, but as soon as she caught sight of me standing casually to the side, her motions became more...violent.

  “I’m going to tear your eyes from your head! Your hair from your skull! Your teeth—” Whump, she hit the ground again, and this time she stuck. Ripples flew out from her feet, upsetting pebbles and tickling my toes. When the ground grew still, she jumped at me, hand extended for my neck. “If I have to fall to my death one more time, I swear, it’s going to be the death of you!”

  “Okay, okay, I get it. This isn’t going like you hoped,” I said, backpedaling as I batted her hands away. She stopped just short of strangling me, mouth still open, purple eyes blazing. But she wasn’t looking at me. Her gaze was fixed over my shoulder.

  “John?” she whispered. “Did he come with us?”

  I turned slowly around. There was a tree, maybe fifteen feet away, swaying with the movement of our entrance. Except this tree had a mouth, and two long arms, and it was eating a deer. Loudly. Bones cracked under its woody teeth, and blood splattered its bark. As we watched, it pushed the last bit of deer into its maw, swallowed loudly, then turned to us and grinned.

  “Welcome to forest, new food,” it said in a clumsy rendition of English. “We friends now.”

  “No, I don’t think we are,” I said.

  “Okay, friends!” the tree answered. It wiped a bloody antler from its chin, then reached for us.

  Reached for me, actually. Chesa was already running. I followed.

  Chapter SEVENTEEN

  WILD, WILD

  WORLD OF KILLING

  It’s hard to get a reasonable impression of a forest when you’re running through it, especially if you’re running away from a slightly friendly carnivorous tree for the express purpose of not getting eaten. Pretty much the only thing I could tell you about this forest was this: it was not made for running through. The trees were densely packed and trackless, the ground was choked with underbrush, and every branch and bough had been custom designed to slap into my face and hands. What good is armor if everything seems to hit the bits of you not protected? It was miserable, but still markedly better than getting eaten.

  Also, running in armor is terrible. I was huffing and puffing after the first dozen steps, and my feet sank into the soft loam, nearly tripping me with each stride.

  Despite the thick roof of interwoven branches, moonlight managed to trickle through the trees, so while I couldn’t see very far, my immediate surroundings were almost as clear as day. I was reminded of night shots in older movies, magically bright enough to let you see the faces of the heroes, but utterly dark a dozen feet away. Constant night sounds filled the darkness, an endless cacophony of whistles, hoots, growls, and screams.

  Chesa was right in front of me, but she was slowly pulling away. Some of that elf magic, I suppose. She jumped over fallen trees, skidded down hills, leapt creeks in a single bound, and danced over gullies like she had been born in the forest. I did not. I stumbled, fell, ran into trunks, tripped over uneven ground, and finally fell headlong into a bramble patch that Chesa had somehow skirted over like a ballerina. The chain protected me from most of it but falling down still hurts.

  The slow, ponderous thud of the approaching tree-monster shuddered through my bones. Chesa’s glowing form disappeared into the forest.

  “So much for doing this together,” I whispered. I untangled myself from the brambles as quietly as possible. The trees around me started to shake.

  “Meat friend? Where am meat friend?” The tree-monster hove into view like an unwelcome party guest. He wrapped his gnarled hands around a tree and uprooted it, peering under the dangling trunk. “How can I eat you if you hide, meat friend? Meat friends are for eating.”

  Someone doesn’t understand friendship, I mused. I mean, I’m not exactly an extrovert, but at least I’ve never tried to eat my casual acquaintances.

  It quickly became apparent that I wasn’t going to be able to outrun this guy, especially now that I was lying face down in a bramble patch. I vaguely remembered Esther saying that a domain’s owner couldn’t die inside their domain, but I also wasn’t sure I was in my domain yet. And even if I was, I didn’t really want to test the theory. I also remembered the feeling of Clarence’s sword scraping past my ribs on its way to my still-beating heart. I didn’t want to repeat the experience with wooden teeth and the slow digestion of a hungry oak tree.

  Tree-monster discarded the uprooted trunk and looked around desolately. Maybe if I waited long enough, it would get bored and just go away. I burrowed deeper into the brambles. Hardly the most comfortable hiding place, but certainly better than the pit of a wooden stomach.

  “Meat friends are the worst friends,” it grumbled. “But tasty. So tasty. Oh, well.” The monster gave out a tremendous sigh, then settled onto the bramble bed. It tore out a handful of thorny vines and started to eat them, reeling the tangle into its mouth like cold spaghetti. “Gotta get my fiber, anyway. Stupid fiber.”

  This isn’t going to work out. A coil of thorn wrapped tight around my ankle. I was just barely able to wiggle free of the vine before it ripped out of the ground and was drawn into the tree’s mouth. Time for plan B. And plan B is...I looked around desperately. Plan B is not coming to me.

  A trio of arrows hammered into the monster’s woody jaw. The c
reature paused in its ponderous chewing, then raised a finger to brush the fletching. Another arrow thudded into its knuckle, and a look of shock washed over its face. It flinched back, eyes going wide. It stood up, vines still trailing from its mouth.

  “Tag!” it shouted. “Tag! I’m it!”

  “Hey root head! Over here!” Chesa yelled. She was balanced precariously on the limb of a distant tree, bow drawn and purple eyes blazing. Another arrow whistled through the forest, landing heavily right in the monster’s pupil. It stumbled back, nearly crushing me as it pulled the shaft free. “You want a friend? I’m the friendly type!”

  The monster started laughing, a deeply disturbing hacking that sounded like stones tearing apart. It crashed into the forest toward Chesa. She paused long enough to make sure she had the creature’s attention, then somehow looked directly at me and nodded. I waved back, but she had already disappeared from view.

  I stood up. Brambles had stitched their way into my hair, my clothes...even my underwear. I started the delicate surgery of freeing myself from their attention without taking off the chainmail. No chance I was going to spend even a minute in this place without my armor. In the distance I could see trees waving and hear the occasional booming laugh or whistling arrow. Chesa seemed fine. I just hoped I would be able to find her later.

  “I know we’re not supposed to complain,” I complained. “But this doesn’t seem fair. She has the eyes, and the elfy grace thing, and a bow, and I guess she can climb trees like a squirrel now? I don’t know.” I winced as a thorn dug into something that was never supposed to see a thorn in the natural order of things. I carefully reversed the situation, then let out a long, weary sigh. “All I seem to have is a tendency for things to fall apart around me. Oh, and I fall down well. Lots of practice. Champion of falling down.”

  Once free, I gave the surrounding forest a long and distrustful look. I didn’t really want to go anywhere. Every inch of this place seemed incredibly dangerous, almost like it was conjured to push every fear response I had available. There were some directions I could eliminate: Where Chesa and the monster had gone, because eventually she was going to slip free and then you’d have an angry and hungry tree-monster to deal with, and the direction I had come from, because maybe that’s where the tree-monster lived. Oh, and I couldn’t stay here, in case the tree-monster decided to come back.

  Picking one of the other directions at random, I started walking. Without Chesa to choose a path with her elfy vision, and with no monster on my heels to motivate me, my going was slow. I eventually found a creek and followed it downhill until I reached a shallow pond. The stream bubbled playfully over a waterfall of smooth, mossy stones, casting the surface of the water in ripples of silver moonlight. Despite my recent terror, it was a very peaceful scene. I pulled off my boots, finding a new collection of thorns to extricate, then dipped my toes in the water. The water was cool and refreshing, but not so cold that it was uncomfortable. I sat down on the shore and found that it was surprisingly soft. I lay back on the spongy moss, comfortable for the first time since Chesa and I had fallen out of the sky. The insect song from the surrounding forest took on a comforting rhythm. I was reminded of summer nights in my youth, sleeping with the windows open as a warm breeze whispered through the curtains. Warm air and the overwhelming smell of fish tickled its way through my...through my...

  Overwhelming smell of fish?

  My eyes snapped open. A glowing lantern hung a few feet above my head, bobbing gently in the darkness. I tried to focus on the hand that was holding it, but all I could see was a slimy stalk of dull skin. A gust of wind washed over me, and the ocean stink returned, turning my throat into bile. I looked down at my feet. My toes poked out of the water, floating on the gentle current of the pond. A row of jagged teeth emerged just beyond them, each one as big as my foot, pale and curved and inching ever so slowly closer.

  “Holy shit!” I yelped, sitting bolt upright and scuttling my way backwards out of the pond. My head bumped into the lantern, sending it bobbing high into the air. Light flashed across the clearing, illuminating the pond, the shore, the tiny stream and the waterfall of mossy stones.

  And also lighting up the fish head, twenty feet across and consisting of nothing more than two bulbous eyes and a gaping mouth, lined with row after row of curved teeth. A long stalk sprouted from its forehead, from which dangled a glowing, luminous orb that looked a lot like a lantern. The whole monstrosity barely fit into the pond.

  We stared at one another for half a heartbeat, fishy eyes unblinking, mouth hanging open. I screamed. It pounced.

  Crab-walking backwards across a stony shore is apparently my fastest mode of transport. I flew over that beach like lightning. The fish-thing snapped down on the empty air where I had been, then surged forward, teeth cracking shut twice, three times, each report as loud as thunder in my ears. For a fish the size of a bus, it was really fast, and really hungry. Its flaccid body slapped against the pebbled ground, sending a plume of water and torn moss into the air. It chased me all the way to the treeline. Trees bent and shivered as the fish slammed into a pair of trunks, sending a shower of leaves onto the ground. The fish lay on the shore, gills flaring as it stared at me, just out of reach. I got to my feet.

  “Not today, little buddy. Not today,” I said.

  The glowing bulb of its lantern slipped between the trees. It bobbed over my head for a long minute before slowly drawing back toward the creature’s mouth. I smiled.

  “I’m not falling for that,” I said. “It’s a very nice light, but it’s not worth getting eaten for. Good try.”

  The fish let out a tremendous sigh, then slowly retreated into the water. It disappeared beneath the surface of the pond, first gills, then bloated eyes, and finally gaping jaws. Finally, the glowing lantern dipped into the water. It turned the pond into a shimmering bowl of golden light, descending, descending, growing dimmer and dimmer until it was completely gone. The insect song resumed.

  “So I guess that pond is deeper than I thought,” I said.

  “You just going to lie on your back all night?” Chesa asked. She dropped as light as a leaf out of the shadows at my side.

  “Chesa! You’re okay!”

  “Of course, I’m okay,” she said. “That guy was about as slow and as dumb as a rock. He doesn’t even make a good tree. What happened to your shoes?”

  “Oh, uh...” I glanced toward the pond. They were still sitting next to the pond. “Lost them.”

  “Isn’t that them over there?” she asked. She started toward the pond. I grabbed her shoulder.

  “No, no...I mean, yes. But they weren’t very good shoes. I, uh...I don’t think they’re part of my mythic self. You know? I’m more of a barefoot hero.”

  She stared at me for a long moment. I could feel the disappointment in her gaze.

  “Did something scare you, John?”

  “Very badly. But I think it was a rational reaction.”

  “For you, maybe. But you’re not you anymore.”

  “I’m not?” I asked.

  “No. You’re here to be a hero. And heroes don’t go around barefoot because they’re scared of the water, or a tree, or whatever it was that put some bump in your night.”

  “This is not a great pep talk, Ches. There’s a monster in that pond.”

  She looked over at the pond and sniffed.

  “Anything that can fit in that pond isn’t worth being scared of. Now go get your boots.”

  “Honestly, I’m perfectly fine—”

  “Damn it all, Rast,” she snapped. “Boots! Now!”

  I stared miserably at the boots and the pond for a few moments. I really wish I had a sword, or at least a knife. Chesa had the full kit, double scimitars, a bow, elven armor, the grace of a goddess. I had soggy chainmail and muddy feet.

  “This is some bullshit, I tell you what,” I said, then tromped damply toward the pool.

  The surface of the pool was absolutely still. If I stared directly into i
t, I thought I could see a dim light in the depths, but that might just be the reflection of the moon, or a trick of the deeper shadows all around. About ten feet from my boots I slowed to a crawl. Chesa sighed in exasperation.

  “I’m doing this at my own pace, Ches,” I said. “You want me to go faster, you can—”

  She marched past me and grabbed the boots. She held them away from her body, grimacing at the deluge of dirty water that poured out.

  “What the hell did you do to get so wet?” she asked.

  Just then, the surface of the pond swelled, like a boil about to burst. Warm light shimmered through the rising water. A single bulbous eye pressed against the water.

  “Chesa!” I yelled. She knit her brow together, then turned to look at the pond.

  There was no time. The creature’s teeth sliced out of the pond, yawning wide to swallow Chesa whole. I leapt at her, hoping to at least knock her aside before the monster’s jaws closed on her. But of course, she was already moving, elf-fast and silent. I glanced off her hip as she vaulted clear of the pond, sending me reeling to my knees. Those terrible jaws sliced shut inches away from my face, sending a flood of cold water crashing over me. It surged forward, gnashing its teeth, that glassy eye staring at me, both of us quite surprised to be here again.

  I got to my feet, standing in about a foot of water, the muddy bank slippery under my bare heels. The fish reared back, swinging its jaws in my direction. I caught a glimpse of Chesa behind it, face slack with shock, still holding the soggy cuff of my boots. I didn’t really want to die with her watching. Especially with that look on her face.