by Stefon Mears
They’d never had a chance. Zatafa’s glory still rode high in the sky when the wolves had come, and Ehren dispatched them quickly.
But the sight of those eyes, glowing red with hatred for those who still drew breath. That sight would remain with Cavan for some time.
“Why are we stopping?” Amra asked, which almost made Cavan laugh.
Even though she could not have followed the growing sight of the necromancer’s center of power, as Cavan had, surely she had to have noticed that the tracking torch’s purple flame stood three hands high now, with flares as high as five hands.
Cavan nodded to the torch, then pointed past the grove of dead trees ahead of them.
These trees had once been evergreens of some stripe. Possibly the same type as those Cavan and his friends had camped among only two nights past. Difficult to say, as they looked now.
They had no needles. At all. Not on their branches, nor anywhere among the nearby ground.
Their bark had been stripped, or peeled off, or simply fallen away. Whatever had happened, the bark was gone too. The under-bark that remained was the red of old blood, veined through with streaks of black.
Every limb and twig of those trees remained, but none were lower than twice Cavan’s height.
“Through there,” Cavan said. “That’s where the lair is. We’ll need to hobble the horses over here.”
“Can you protect them?” Reesa asked, stroking Horizon’s nervous brow.
“There are no guarantees, but I can keep most threats away from them,” Cavan said, dismounting.
“And Zatafa can aid against threats Cavan cannot manage,” Ehren said, swinging down from Highsun’s saddle. “But he’s right. There are no guarantees.”
“Where’s the underbrush?” Qalas said, hopping down from Ondiq’s saddle, but his eyes all on the trees ahead of them. “Never seen evergreens that didn’t have underbrush, but not even skeletons of it remain.”
“One thing this necromancer is not,” Amra said, “is subtle. Why keep the underbrush, if the twigs will just catch in your robes?”
“Maybe,” Cavan said, then he and Ehren gathered the horses together. Cavan warded them, while Ehren blessed them. And then, it was the time Cavan had begun to dread over the last few hours.
“Feathers,” Cavan said. “Tuck them under the saddles, so they won’t dislodge accidentally.”
Cavan reached into his own shirt, withdrew the feather that held his temporarily bound air elemental, and tucked it safely under Dzint’s saddle, while all around him the others did the same.
Gasps and retches all around Cavan. He held his breath and withdrew his touch from the feather.
He tried a breath.
At first, Cavan thought his lungs were failing him. He gasped hard, but didn’t seem to draw in air.
By his second breath, he realized he was indeed taking in air. But that air had little life to it. Almost like giving seawater to a thirsty man.
Almost. But not quite. The winds of the world still blew, if weakly in this place, and fresh air came into the necromancer’s domain to do battle with his deathly influence.
And so while each breath meant far less than it should have, each breath would still contain life enough to sustain them for a time.
Those winds did little to abate the foul taste of each breath though. A decrepit, decayed odor that lingered on the tongue and in the nostrils.
Once Cavan and his friends were as accustomed to this foul air as they were likely to get, they drew their weapons and readied themselves to continue.
Silence. The whisper of the wind, but no buzzing or chirping of insects. No flapping of wings. Not a single sign of the usual activity Cavan would expect while out in the wilderness.
No, he hadn’t been expecting any. Steeped in death as this place was, the only sounds Cavan might have heard would have been dead things, coming to kill them.
Still, after hours on horseback and the dull sound of their thudding hooves across this twisted land, the sudden silence disturbed Cavan. As though the land itself held still, poised and waiting in ambush…
Those trees. Odds were that they were dead, but why risk that the trees weren’t undead? No. Better to…
Cavan shook his head. First things first.
“Tracking torch,” he said, holding out his hand. Amra handed it to him without a word.
Cavan thrust it into the dirt, head down, as he muttered, “Riwaka.”
The torch extinguished, it’s purple light flashing out, and leaving only the fading light of the distant sun.
“Ehren,” Cavan said, and Ehren proceeded with the blessing that would allow them to see as though it were bright daylight.
Torches or even the light of a gibbous moon were enough for many nighttime activities. But not here. Not now. Their little group would need every advantage it could get, if they all wanted to live to see the sunrise.
Ehren finished the blessing, and the foul, twisted countryside grew once more as visible as it had been at midday.
Cavan lifted his light, licha sword.
“This way,” he said, and started to the left around the grove of possibly threatening trees, hoping the blood coloring of their bark was not an omen.
At least no underbrush meant no twigs to step on or undead grasses to grab at Cavan’s ankles, as he led his friends around those needleless, blood-red evergreens.
The grove did not look very big. No more than a score and a half of trees, lightly scattered across the span of an arrow’s flight. And Cavan could tell that the entrance to the necromancer’s lair was on the other side of it. A ruin of some kind.
No reason to pass through those trees. No reason to come close enough, even, for their limbs to reach down and strike at them.
No, Cavan wasn’t sure that would happen. But he wasn’t going to find out the hard way, either. Not with all the dead things he’d seen moving that day.
But the problem with being surrounded by death magic all day, especially this close to its source, was that much of it began to look and feel the same. Oh, he could have spotted any incoming spells in an instant, but still.
Those trees might have been dead, and they might have been undead. So close to the necromancer’s lair, it was difficult to tell without spending precious time on a spell to discern the truth. Easier just to go around them.
Unfortunately, that all-pervasive aura of death magic meant that Cavan had no warning at all when hands reached out of the ground for him.
In that instant, many things happened at once.
Reesa screamed.
Amra’s shouted “Ware!” cut through that scream, and her sword cut through something else.
Ehren cried out in Penthix, but the only word Cavan recognized was “Zatafa!”
One set of grayed, but human-looking hands grabbed each of Cavan’s ankles and yanked in different directions, as the owners of those hands came up through the ground as though surfacing in a pool.
Falling, Cavan’s enchanted blade sliced through one of the forearms, but the hands all still gripped him as his back slammed into the ground.
The fall, Cavan’s training kept him ready for. He barked out a breath with his torso tensed for the shock and his head tucked forward so it wouldn’t hit. His licha armor stole any sting from the short fall.
Both zombies had once been male. But now, even their death shrouds were decayed and falling apart. Though their own grayed skin held together all too well.
A second hack while the zombies found their footing, and Cavan’s right leg was free. More or less. Hands still clutched it, but the arms had been severed so his movement of the leg was unimpeded.
From the corner of his eye, in that moment, Cavan could tell how the rest of the fight was going. Each of his friends faced two of these fell zombies.
Amra had evaded being grabbed, and likely cut all four hands free from their owners’ arms before her zombies even made it out of the ground. She’d already severed the head and legs from one b
y then and was swinging at the other.
Ehren’s zombies were down on the ground and burning, which explained the even worse odor assailing Cavan’s poor nose.
Qalas had evaded one set of hands, and not bothered to sever the other. His first time fighting zombies, perhaps. He’d cut the head from one of his attackers, but all four hands ripped him to the ground.
Reesa was in the worst position. She’d had her bow in hand, and arrows were useless against this kind of zombie. Some could be taken down with arrows through the skull, but the kind with grayish, intact skin had to be hacked apart and burnt.
Her zombies had already dragged her down and one twisted at her legs while the other moved up her body with murderous intent.
Ehren was already moving to help her, so Cavan focused on the two coming after him.
The severed hands crawled their slow way up Cavan’s leggings. Their owner moved in swinging its handless arms like clubs. The other, intact zombie continued pulling at Cavan’s leg, dragging him on the ground away from his fellows.
Cavan tried kicking the dragging zombie, but that was just reflex. No point in kicking a grayed zombie, unless he could kick hard enough to dislodge a limb. Even Amra couldn’t do that.
The handless zombie managed a blow to Cavan’s skull then, hard enough that Cavan thought for a moment of the tolling of the Tradeton bell on market day, when he’d been a child living with his foster family.
Cavan sliced right through the knees of the handless zombie. But its momentum led it to fall forward at Cavan. Blows to Cavan’s chest then, but his licha hauberk stole their strength.
The zombie latched onto the licha links with its teeth. Fortunately those teeth would give long before the dune elf steel.
Battle shouts behind Cavan now. Amra and Qalas coordinating, from the sound of it. Plus more of Ehren’s prayers.
Unable to reach the dragging zombie with his sword now, and frustrated, Cavan cut through the torso of the handless zombie, but that only made the dragging zombie’s load lighter.
The loose hands were still working their way up Cavan’s body, likely going for his throat. The handless zombie kept battering at Cavan’s chest with its forearms, but Cavan’s armor kept him safe from that for now.
He needed to do something about that dragging zombie.
The dragging zombie braced.
Cavan flicked one of the loose hands into the dragging zombie’s face.
A moment of distraction, while the dragging zombie cleared away the clutching hand.
All Cavan needed.
With the lighter weight on his chest now, Cavan was able to sit up and slash through the forearms of the dragging zombie.
Not exactly free, but certainly in a better position than he had been, Cavan immediately rolled and kicked and struggled to dislodge the remaining hands, as well as the zombie gripping Cavan’s armor with its teeth.
Finally, Cavan was free and on his feet. Just in time to see Amra slash through the neck and then waist of Cavan’s remaining standing zombie in a graceful, arching swing with her dark sword. Qalas, beside her, bashed open the skull of the biter with the steel-wrapped grip of his halberd’s handle.
Ehren strode through then, poking bits of zombie with his staff, while muttering prayers that set those bits to burn so fast and hot they were ash within moments.
“Reesa?” Cavan asked, turning to face her, where she sat, pale and shaking.
She gave Cavan a determined nod, though, and stood.
“My fault,” Cavan said, stepping closer while the others disposed of the remaining zombie bits. “We’re so used to trusting each other’s weapons choice that I didn’t think to advise you to switch to your swords, now that we’re close.”
“Ehren … already said that,” Reesa said, not looking at Cavan while she picked up her bow and slung it over her shoulder. “Verbatim.”
“But—”
“Look,” Reesa said, turning quickly, her gray eyes blazing. “It was a scare, I admit it. And I’ll have some bruises. But I’m all right. And we have work to do.”
She drew her short swords.
Cavan gave Reesa and smile and a nod. The smile she returned made her look like Amra’s long-lost cousin.
Vastig watched the trap spring from his hidden place within the undead, dried-blood neelach trees, just outside the master’s lair.
Not a comfortable place — even undead neelach trees grumbled objections to his presence — but perfect cover. Even for a banished forest elf. He could dance among these trees and no human would ever see him, so long as he kept his arrows and blades to himself.
And Vastig’s goal right now was merely the gathering of information. Yes, he wanted that relic. He craved the feel of it in his hand. But any true hunter knew the importance of learning much about prey before striking.
So Vastig stood where he stood to study this prey.
They possessed enough command of elementals that the air within the necromancer’s demesne was only just beginning to trouble them. Worth noting, but not all that impressive.
Further, these humans had been smart enough not to test the trees. That might have been impressive, had they not ridden all day past a great deal of undead vegetation to get to this point.
The one in front. The human whose armor and sword were both dune-elf forged, which only proved the low standards of Vastig’s foul cousins from the deserts.
Given what passed for that one’s wards around their horses, it seemed likely that this human was the one who considered himself a mighty wizard. And yet he was not even skilled enough to spot the waiting zombies, ready to come for them. Nor did he dispatch any foes with his “arcane might.”
Not that this human was any more impressive when it came to playing with his dune elf toys. Knew to dismember grayed zombies, but he still got dragged to the ground, and was on the verge of getting his unprotected head stove in before he finally managed to halt the immediate threat.
As for the others…
The woman with the relic. Oh, how the black, wyrding blade called to Vastig, now that he stood no more than two score steps away. He could feel the song of its dark magics in his bones, his blood…
Vastig shook himself and returned to his observations.
She acquitted herself well enough, Vastig supposed. Likely attributable to the blade’s gifts and warnings. She’d leapt free of the grasping hands, and severed her foes with neat, precise strokes.
With that sword in hand, she might even put up a fight, when her time came.
The southerner. With the halberd. Decent reactions, though ignorant of the dangers of grayed zombies. Still, he adjusted to his situation readily enough, and coordinated with the relic-wielder well.
Competent, but he would pose no threat to Vastig.
That priest, though. Up close now, Vastig could see the pristine white of the priest’s garments, even after their skirmish. Not to mention the might of his goddess’ blessings, through him. Experienced, and firmly in the favor of his goddess.
That priest might pose problems. He was likely the reason those humans had yet to light a torch, though dusk had to be troubling their inferior eyes.
The master would deal with the priest. Vastig would have to be sure the master understood the depth of threat that one might pose.
That left the last one. The woman who fancied herself an archer. She was nothing. Lucky to have been saved by the priest, or she would be dead already.
Oh, now that their brief struggle was over, she drew her swords and brayed sounds of battle, but all humans behaved thus. Or at least, all humans stupid enough to continue on a venture such as this one.
She lacked even the seasoning of her fellows. She had not the intelligence to recognize that she was outmatched and flee. She would fall quickly, when the time came.
But then, at least her flesh was the most likely to be tender. Soft, from an easy life. Marbled, perhaps.
Yes, Vastig would relish most the flesh of the relic-wielder, fo
r it would mean he now held her sword. But of the five of them, the would-be archer, the woman with the hair like honey, she would likely be the tastiest.
Vastig already imagined how each of them would taste. What parts he would eat raw, and how he would prepare the rest.
He got so lost in his mental preparations, that he almost missed the most important sight of the whole scene.
The skirmish was over. The few bruises suffered had been treated with competent herb lore. The humans gathered, they planned, and they moved on.
But the relic-wielder. She kept glancing into the grove of neelach trees. Not as though she feared the trees. More as though…
More as though she suspected Vastig’s presence.
Oh, what a wondrous idea. Was it too much to hope that Vastig was right?
Some enchanted swords, Vastig knew, could warn of enemies nearby. But only those with currently hostile intent. Often to the point of weapons drawn and readied, such as a waiting ambush.
And yet, here Vastig stood, intending only to watch, and no weapons even in his hands.
Were the relic-wielder of one of the longer-lived races — an elf, or even one of the dwarves or skolach — Vastig might have believed that she had battle-honed instincts warning her of Vastig’s possible presence.
But the relic-wielder was a human. And though Vastig was no expert when it came to humans, he believed her to be young in her adulthood. Certainly she lacked the wrinkles and hair colors that indicated what humans considered old age.
She could not have the instincts or experience necessary to suspect Vastig’s presence. To look over once to check for a possible observer, that was not beyond the bounds of reason, even for one such as her. But to continue looking? Even though her senses gave no confirmation of a reason to keep checking?
No. No youthful human woman could have such finely honed battle instincts.
That meant the sword had to be warning her. Perhaps the sword even knew of Vastig’s precise location, but the relic-wielder was too arrogant to listen or too dull to hear.
Either way, first the relic saved her life from an arrow she could never have seen coming. Then it warned her of the zombies from below. Now it even seemed to be warning her about Vastig.