by Stefon Mears
“No sign he was ever here,” Cavan said. “Definitely a forest elf then.”
“Missed one,” Amra said, pointing to something down the hill. Even with Ehren’s blessing lighting the way, Cavan couldn’t tell what he’d missed from where he stood.
Amra trotted down the hill, eyes scanning the horizon. Cavan followed next this time, with Reesa bringing up the rear.
“Look at the tracks,” Amra said, pointing. “Are they what I think they are?”
The tracks were made by the hooves of a four-legged creature. Split like they were left by an elk, but immense. As for an elk whose shoulders stood higher than Cavan’s head.
But they didn’t dent the dirt as deeply as they should have…
“Great elk tracks,” Cavan said. “Lighter than they should be, but there aren’t any other good options. Nothing else in this region leaves a hoofprint nearly that big.”
“Don’t forest elves use great elks as mounts?” Reesa asked, her tone only a little wistful.
“They do,” Amra confirmed.
“Tracks lead in, but not away,” Cavan said.
“So where did the elk go?” Amra asked, finishing the thought. “Ideas?”
“None at the moment,” Cavan said, looking up. “Unless you think it took wing.”
The question was meant in jest, but Amra took it seriously.
“I’d’ve seen it, and so would Reesa.”
“Forest elf magic?” Reesa asked.
Amra looked at Cavan.
“Never heard of forest elves being able to hide their elk tracks, but I suppose they could have…” Cavan shook his head. “No. If I could hide Dzint’s hoofprints, I’d do it on approach to my target, as well as on escape.”
“Otherwise you’d risk your enemy learning of the capability for no useful gain,” Amra said, eyes still scanning. “I agree.”
“So what happened to the elk then?” Reesa asked.
“No idea,” Cavan said, “and that troubles me.”
Brisk, cool night air for a long run under a waning gibbous moon.
Vastig should have recalled Lasitasanathila by now. Should be riding across these hills, instead of running. He knew that. His master would expect him to return with all speed, given what he had gleaned from his investigation. And he had covered more than enough ground to ensure that mere humans could not follow him.
But excitement burned through Vastig’s veins. Pounded his heart.
Who could ride, after seeing what he’d seen?
The arrow shot had been perfect. Timed for the moment that woman, that human, looked away in response to something said by her companion. The one who held a bow as though she believed she could use it.
Perfect timing. Perfect angle. Perfect arc. Perfect speed.
Perfect.
It should have slain the dark-haired woman. The fair-haired woman should have turned, puzzled by her companion’s collapse, raised her excuse for a bow … and fallen silent to an arrow in the throat.
The other three humans had been sleeping, or near enough to it. They would never have mounted a defense before three more arrows added them to Vastig’s larder.
Slaughtering the five of them should have been a simple matter. Vastig should have been feasting even now.
But that was not how events unfolded.
It should have been. Vastig had made no mistakes. Given away no signs. He was sure of it. Not when he took up his position. Not when he called up that concealing stone from within the hill. He had even held back from loosing his intended second shot, knowing to wait for the result of his first arrow.
That dark-haired woman could have seen nothing. She could have heard nothing. She could not possibly have known even that Vastig was nearby, let alone that he had fired an arrow toward her back, aiming for the heart.
And yet…
And yet…
Her parry was exquisite. That strange, dark sword of hers, interposed exactly in time to catch Vastig’s arrow. Precisely enough strength to the movement that the blade did not so much as twitch when the arrow struck.
Not just struck. Shattered.
No human warrior had instincts that good. No human female could have had the strength that parry showed. Vastig could draw only one conclusion.
That was no ordinary sword.
Only a highly enchanted blade could have warned her. Could have ensured that it interposed itself between harm and its wielder.
The woman with the sword. She might be nothing on her own. Just another arrogant human, believing her scant collection of skirmishes made her an expert in the field of war. Arrogant enough not to respect the true warriors, who had survived their battles for centuries.
But that sword.
Marvelous. Wondrous. The work of a master.
Vastig would claim it from her corpse. She parried one arrow, yes, but even the mightiest of swords would need a true warrior’s hand to handle as many arrows as Vastig could loose in the span of a breath.
Or, for that matter, to handle him in melee, where he would whirl with his blades until he’d sliced her to ribbons.
Even the swords of the ancient, lost Dunaians could be in only one place at a time. Could not defend the throat, while guarding the stomach.
Oh, yes. Vastig would slay this woman and claim her blade. Two-handed, which was less than ideal, but it would still likely prove superior to even the best zil swords he had ever seen.
In Vastig’s hands, that sword would mean revenge.
But he needed a plan. No sword that powerful would surrender its wielder’s life easily. It had already proven as much. So long as that woman had her friends about her and that sword in her hands, she was all too dangerous.
But the necromancer, he could make the difference here. He wouldn’t care about the sword, but he would have his own interests in this little group.
One of the humans had enough aura that he probably fancied himself a mighty wizard. Had to have been the one to have stumbled into the necromancer’s trap, and eluded it through sheer luck.
He could only have escaped through luck, because he lacked the power to burst his way out. And since power and skill were one, luck was the only explanation.
Another of the humans looked to be a priest of their sun goddess. The master would enjoy that one even more than he’d likely enjoy the would-be wizard.
Sun gods tended to hate the undead, so their priests were prizes.
That left three. The sword-wielder, the would-be archer, and … another warrior. Possibly decent. Difficult to judge while he slept. He did use a halberd, so he couldn’t be all that good, even among humans.
Everyone knew that the weapon of a true warrior was the sword.
Yes, Vastig would return to his master. Report what he had seen, and the direction they rode. Explain that they yet lived because Vastig carried only enough preservative for one heart and one skull, which meant either the wizard or the priest would be lost.
The necromancer would accept this reason as sound judgment. He would consult with Vastig about the best ways to deal with them.
They would plan.
They would strike.
Vastig would claim for his own what could only be a mighty relic. And then, revenge would be his.
Soon.
7
While everyone agreed that the forest elf archer was gone, Amra insisted that another attack might be coming. Cavan wasn’t sure about that, but he agreed that the safest play was to assume it would, and not be there when it came.
Thus, Cavan and his friends broke camp and rode for an hour due east under a starry sky. Ehren’s prayers lit the way for both riders and horses, without shedding so much as a visible candlelight for any observing enemies to see.
Cavan kept the heatless violet tracking torch burning, concealed within his cloak, so that even that light would not be visible.
If anyone, indeed, was watching.
They settled once more on another hilltop. Took some time to choose the right
one, for they were finding more copses of those unusual evergreens, and they all agreed that camping near trees would be giving any forest elves in the area an unfair advantage.
They finally lay out their camp sometime before midnight, on a low hill that managed to be taller than any near it, among greener grasses, and weeds that Cavan knew produced a crunchy kind of berry the local orcs liked to cook with.
This time, Amra and Qalas checked the surrounding hilltops to ensure that no good hiding spots for an archer had gone overlooked.
Thus satisfied, the group bedded down for the remainder of the night, with Qalas standing the next watch, before waking Cavan for the watch that would see them to dawn.
Ehren had actually started to argue that, until Cavan reminded the smiling priest of his tendency toward predawn sleepiness.
Oh, Ehren wasn’t useless at night, but he was never at his best either.
At least the attack had accomplished one good thing for Cavan. It had distracted his thoughts from … unproductive lines. He’d been able to return to sleep easily enough, after the ride, and now that he stood watch, his focus was right where it should have been.
Awareness.
He noted every change in the cool, late night breeze. More importantly, that it carried the scent of goldenrod and fresh dirt, as well as the pungent scent of those weed berries, but not any signs of other horses, or worse, great elk.
Though Ehren’s sunlight vision prayer had faded when the smiling priest went back to sleep, the light of the gibbous moon was more than enough to keep Cavan aware of any nearby movement larger than a field mouse or vole.
He considered extending his vision into wizard sight, but Ehren was right. The less he attempted, the sooner he would recover from the spell fire.
Besides. If an attack came from the necromancer, Cavan would still sense it. Necromancy was hardly the subtlest form of magic.
Still, all was quiet, here among the hills. The distant swoop of an owl. The flutter of a bat. The bark of a hunting fox. These were Cavan’s only companions on watch that night.
They were good company, and helped keep his focus right where it needed to be throughout a watch that was the kind of quiet Cavan needed.
Focused quiet. It had healing qualities of its own, and it would give the back of his mind time to worry at … other matters while his attention stayed where it belonged.
His watch passed without incident, and Cavan found himself in the rare position of being the one to wake others for the morning.
Well, the one to wake Reesa. The other three woke easily enough on their own, as the dawn neared.
Reesa, though, was not used to this life. Even in her sleep, her brow looked troubled, and Cavan had to shake her twice before her eyes snapped open and she gasped.
“Arrows?” she said. “Archers?”
“You’re safe,” Cavan said, empty hands raised in a calming gesture. “It’s morning.”
To her credit, she laughed away her chagrin.
Soon they’d broken their fast of more of Reesa’s trail rations of dried beef, hard bread, and cheese, along with fresh spring water from Ehren’s backpack. No workouts this morning. Chances were, there’d be no need. They’d face real combat again soon enough.
The dawn broke and Ehren greeted it with songs and prayers, with Reesa joining in.
Finally, once more, they rode north. Well, north by northwest was Cavan’s estimate. But Amra was in the lead, and she held the tracking torch for the time being.
The hills began to flatten, and the green of the grasses faded to gold as they rode. Trees became fewer. And as midday approached, when the wind shifted to come down from the north, it lacked the sort of healthy, growing smells they’d grown used to.
The smell wasn’t dead. It was just … wrong. Sick. Not merely decay, but a foulness underneath that decay.
Amra whistled the three-note trill that halted all the horses except Horizon, who had not undergone the training the others had been put to.
Amra’s raised hand was enough signal for Reesa to rein in.
“What do you think?” Amra asked Ehren. “A plaguemaster’s work?”
Plaguemasters. Priests of Kulath the Pestilence. One of the foulest gods Cavan could name — or rather, was willing to. Certainly, the smell seemed to Cavan as though it might be…
“No,” Ehren said with a firm shake of his head. “I’ve had the misfortune to smell the handiwork of the Pestilence’s priests, and we would already be gagging from the stench.”
“All the same,” Amra said, “we should back off a bit and take one more break for the horses, before we continue. I don’t relish the idea of our horses grazing anywhere that can smell like that.”
No arguments, of course, but urgency had them back in the saddle and moving as soon as they reasonably could. Though it helped the horses that they were riding even slower than their usual long-distance pace.
The hobbies would have been only too happy to hold a quicker pace throughout a long day’s ride, but Qalas’ rouncey lacked their stamina, as likely did Reesa’s courser. Though they would not be certain that was true of Horizon unless they tested it. But it seemed to Cavan a likely guess.
Even at that slower pace, they had not been riding long before the reason for the growing stench became clear.
Cavan and his friends halted atop a low hill without the need for whistles or signals. Not with the sight they beheld from where they stopped.
The land … changed ahead of them. Exactly halfway down a hill.
Cavan and his friends sat ahorse atop a low hill, under a warm, midday sun. What clouds littered the sky above were white, though some toward the horizon were the darker grays of rain clouds.
The sky should not be so beautiful. Not here. It was wrong that they should see such a sight as the land that lay before them, smell such a rank odor as assailed their nostrils, under a high, beautiful sun and sky.
Such sights and smells as these should have been restricted to late nights. Moonless nights. Cursed nights.
Because the land ahead of them could only have been cursed.
The others might not see that yet, but Cavan did.
The top of this hill, this last hill, was fine. A mixture of green and golden grasses, a sight that continued down the hill just about exactly halfway.
There, everything changed.
The grasses ahead were gnarled, and a sickly shade of yellowish brown. Where the grasses at the top of the hill grew beyond ankle height, those sickened grasses ahead would barely crest a handspan. Had Cavan been confident enough of the ground to test their height.
He was not that confident in the ground. Had no desire to touch it.
Here atop the hill, the ground was not the rich dark loam of good farming — the summer had been too dry through here for that — but it still had a good, reddish brown hue, even in the places it cracked from the heat of days past.
But down the hill, the ground was black like squid ink, with dark red undertones. As though blood had soaked into it to the point Cavan half-wondered if Dzint’s hooves would squish when he rode ahead.
And the ground lacked the … granularity of proper dirt. It was smooth, like rubbed clay.
Lone trees dotted that sick land ahead of them. Twisted things, lacking leaves even this early in the year. What bark they had was the yellow of old bones, and cracked and peeled all across the trunks of those trees.
“Ehren was right,” Cavan said, his voice hushed as though he spoke near the dying. “This isn’t the work of a plaguemaster.”
“What makes you so sure?” Qalas asked. “That land looks plague-ridden to me.”
Cavan pointed down the hill, to the transition point. The place the good, healthy land met the sick, twisted abomination ahead of them.
“See the way it arcs?” Cavan continued pointing off into the distance. “Razor sharp point of change, following the curve of a tremendous circle.”
“A spell?” Amra asked in shocked disbelief. “
A single spell did all this?”
“The opposite,” Cavan said, shaking his head. “An accumulation of perverse magics, spreading their influence from a central point.”
“The necromancer,” Ehren said.
Cavan nodded. “Powerful and long-entrenched, from the look of this. At least the height of the tracking torch’s flame” — three fingers tall now — “says we should reach him by nightfall.”
“I don’t relish that idea,” Qalas said. “I’d rather have Zatafa overhead when we face the necromancer.”
“So would we all,” Amra said, which got her a raised eye from Ehren. She shot him a lopsided grin. “Don’t worry. I’m not becoming a zealot. But I’m not stupid, either.”
Ehren, wisely, hid his thoughts behind his smile.
“Any chance this is an elaborate trap?” Amra asked Cavan.
Cavan sighed — which had the misfortune of giving him a lungful of the wretched odors — and enhanced his wizard sight.
“Neela asa.”
Cavan caught himself wincing in expectation of the pain of spell fire, but to his relief he had indeed fully recovered. He once again had all his resources available to him.
Now he could see the cause behind the foulness easily enough. Necromancy. The power of death battling the power of life, and slowly ebbing it away from all the natural things between Cavan and the necromancer.
Everything that lived within this domain was battling, just to stay alive. And now Cavan could easily spot the swaths were the fell magics had won the day. Large sections of the grasses and trees were already dead. Though some of them still pretended otherwise.
No single spell to it. But no safe direct path either.
“Necromancy,” Cavan said.
“We’ll need to bring in a priest of Halstaffur the Green Lord,” Ehren said. “Set the land to right.”
“We need to kill the necromancer first,” Amra said. “Little detail, but important.”
“Then it’s time to go,” Cavan said, urging Dzint forward. Amra rode beside him, and Ehren, Qalas and Reesa rode together in a second rank.
Down the hill they went. Cavan savored the last few strides of his horse across the healthy land they’d been riding…