by Glen L. Hall
‘I’m not going to listen to another word.’
Folding her arms decisively across her chest, she turned on her heel and set off in the direction of the house.
Sam ran after her. ‘Emily! Listen!’
‘No! You’re over-tired and irrational.’
She kept walking and he knew there was no stopping her, but he stood there for long minutes watching her disappear into the gathering gloom.
The Trow-Hulda
Under the trees there was very little air. Sweat was dripping off Brennus’s nose and his nostrils were burning from the intense humidity. He was now being carried along by Drust, who seemed not to feel the heat. Neither did the creature. It had set a relentless pace. Brennus couldn’t be sure, but it seemed they were following some sort of overgrown path up the wooded hillside. It was steep and zig-zagged round trees and bushes. Now and then Brennus would spot a stone that had been placed in the middle of the path, for what reason he could only guess. But the stones were becoming more prominent and before long he realised they were beginning to form jagged steps entwined in a strange dance with the trees, which were now much closer together.
Looking up through the dense foliage, unable to see the afternoon sun, Brennus felt helpless. Here he was, clinging to his brother like a frightened child, while behind him the Faeries had been unable to prevent the Shadow Ruins from crossing the Dead Water and other servants of the Ruin might be crossing this very moment. How had it come to this?
Then he caught sight of something in the trees: a figure clinging to a trunk. As he looked more closely, something moved at the very edge of his peripheral vision, this time on the opposite side of the stone steps, but when he turned, it was gone.
‘Drust,’ he managed to say through parched lips.
‘I have seen them.’
At the thought of danger now encircling them, the last of Brennus’s strength seemed to leave him. Exhausted, he buried his face in Drust’s dark curls. There was a haze settling across his vision, a sickness in his stomach and a heaviness in his body. He was struggling to stay conscious.
Then a single horn blast split the silence and he felt Drust come to a sudden stop. There were further blasts, perhaps answering calls. Forms were dropping from the trees all around them. They were short and squat, no more than five feet tall, and they had long beards almost to their waists. Each of them carried an axe with an ugly blade which they held before them threateningly. Brennus couldn’t tell by their dark faces whether they were friend or foe.
‘Ezru!’ A voice deeper than any man’s called a name he had never heard before. ‘Why have you not come alone?’ The voice sounded angry.
‘Breth,’ came the creature’s voice in reply, ‘you need to close the path. You cannot delay – the Ruin’s servants are coming.’
Brennus was struggling to focus on the men, if that’s what they were, now forming a tight circle around them. They had thick necks and grizzly faces, painted with brown and green flecks and masked by long beards and eyebrows. They were wearing thick animal hides and looked as though they could have come straight out of the Stone Age. Their arms were muscular and had also been painted with spots of brown and green.
‘Why have you brought men here?’ The voice boomed through the clearing, followed by what Brennus thought was the rumble of thunder.
The small men seemed disturbed by the sound, looking around and raising their weapons as if an attack was imminent.
‘What darkness do you bring with you?’ called the voice.
As more rumbles were heard, Brennus realised they were drums filling the wood with an ominous music.
‘A horror from the Otherland,’ the Grim-were said. ‘Close the path.’
The drums rumbled through the wood with renewed vigour, and then axes were being deftly placed behind backs and, with surprising speed, bearded men were clambering up the trunks of trees like apes.
Brennus was hauled roughly from his brother’s grasp by arms with skin as rough as bark and carried into the trees almost without effort. With the last of his strength seeping away, he seemed to enter a bizarre dream of rope bridges and tall trees. At one point he was lifted above the canopy of the wood and the afternoon sun dazzled his eyes whilst all around him the trees were alive with the rumble of drums and the sound of horns, then he was back beneath the trees, being carried along lines of rope that were fastened by the most curious knots. He imagined a giant web of interconnected ropes running through the whole forest. Then the man he was clinging to suddenly leaped across a gap, making his stomach flip. He barely had time to worry that he might fall to his death before they were off running again. There were several thuds as the men grabbed the trees behind him, and on and on they went, until Brennus heard the drums beginning to quieten and the horn blasts becoming less frequent. Then his stomach flipped a second time as they slid down a long rope from the very tops of the trees down to the forest floor.
He was dumped unceremoniously on the ground whilst his captor repositioned his axe. Somewhere off to his left, hidden by branches, he could hear the Grim-were’s voice warning them not to stop.
The gruff voice he had heard earlier cut across him. ‘It is forbidden for men to go beyond this point. Our elders will not permit it.’
‘The men are Keepers of the Druidae. You must allow them through. The Bodika wishes to speak to them.’
There was a sharp intake of breath from all those who had heard. Even lying half-conscious on the ground, Brennus could tell that several of the men had turned to look at him.
‘What mischief is this?’ called a voice.
‘No mischief, only the truth. You must close the path and take us to your elders.’
‘There has been a darkness moving on the edge of our lands this past week, we have seen the crow horde flying east and the Ruad Roshessa has been following his rivers through the Blindburn. The Forest Reivers have called a council at the King’s Seat and now you say the Bodika has woken!’
A solitary horn blast silenced the man.
Then another voice said accusingly, ‘Whatever darkness you have brought with you, it has reached the stone steps.’
‘It took two of my brothers, two Vargr,’ explained the Grim-were. ‘It may be them.’
‘Then let us go!’
There were several grunts and before Brennus could locate Drust amongst the throng, he was thrown over someone’s shoulder and they set off again. Whoever these men were, they had supernatural stamina and a strength he had never felt before. He bumped against a cold axe that seemed disproportionate in size to the man carrying it, and wondered how these men could climb trees and run so quickly with such weight strapped to their backs.
The trees ended suddenly and Brennus saw that they were on the very edge of a steep hill that turned into a sheer cliff. Before them was a stunning vista, a dizzying array of colours and contours stretching off in every direction. The afternoon sky was deep blue and marked only by thin white clouds. A gentle breeze was playing over Brennus’s tired face, but when it eased, he could still feel the autumn sunlight warming his skin.
He could now see the men more clearly and they were stranger than he had first thought. In all his years of travelling with the Forest Reivers, he had never come across them. Had they been there all along, though? He had realised that the brown and green marks on their faces and arms helped them blend in with their surroundings, serving as camouflage in the gloomy forest as well as perhaps some form of tribal markings. Who were these people? Where did they come from?
He stood slowly, his legs shaking and his vision jumping. He heard guttural grunts around him, and then the man who had been carrying him gently led him past a dozen of the men, their faces looking up at him curiously, to where the Grim-were, now looking more feathered than ever, was standing with a man whose long red beard trailed beneath his waist. He wore a simple cloth shirt which hung
loosely around his stout and muscular frame, and when he looked at Brennus, his eyes shone blue. There was still no sign of Drust amongst the company.
‘Where is my brother?’ Brennus said feebly, almost unable to stand unaided.
‘Ezru says you are a Keeper of the Druidae. Is that so?’
Brennus was reeling, dizzy, blinking back waves of sickness. ‘Tell me where my brother is.’
Behind him he heard angry grunts and then he felt a strong hand on his arm, steadying him.
‘Ezru says the Fall is dying. Is this true?’
‘Yes,’ he managed to reply.
The bearded man shook his head and took a step forwards. ‘Then you understand there will be war.’
Brennus nodded.
‘Why did you seek Fer Benn at the end of the Druids’ Way?’
Brennus took a deep breath. ‘The Druids’ Way?’ he repeated.
‘Ezru says you spoke to the Dagda at the Dead Water. What did you hope to find?’
‘Hope,’ whispered Brennus, his body shaking with the effort to remain standing.
‘The only hope is with the Druidae. It is in their sacrifice that you will find hope. Is that not the story that your kind has been preaching for a thousand years and more?’ The man laughed, and the sound wasn’t pleasant. ‘But our elders say the Druids perished.’
‘No!’ Brennus closed his eyes. ‘There is still hope in the world.’
A horn blast came from the woods.
‘Breth!’ called Ezru.
The man nodded and turned to the edge of the hill. Taking a curved horn from beneath his shirt and placing it against his beard, he took a lungful of air then blew a single piercing note out into the wilderness.
Then he turned to Brennus. ‘We will take you with us.’
‘Where are we going?’ Brennus asked.
‘We will go across the rope bridges to Kyloe Shin,’ Breth replied. ‘From its top there is a secret path to our villages.’
‘Can you tell me where my brother is?’
The man kept his gaze steady. ‘The pale one?’ he asked. ‘Ezru says there is a magic in him that cannot be trusted. My people are taking him to the Hedgehope. When you have met the elders, you will join him there.’
Brennus felt his heart sink. He too had noticed how pale Drust’s skin had become, how the dark rings beneath his eyes had given him a ghostly look. How he had not felt the cold in the forest or the heat as they had climbed the last hill. What was happening to him? What magic was in him? He was beginning to think the unthinkable – that it could be too dangerous to take his own brother back to Sam.
He looked across at Ezru and saw his grey feathered face seemed to be changing as well, appearing to be more bird now than man.
‘I will scout back,’ the creature said, ‘and see where the enemy is.’ With that, he leaped over the edge of the cliff.
Breth seemed as surprised as Brennus. He shot out a hand to grab Ezru, but he had already gone. A few seconds later, a magnificent grey bird of prey rose up and swept over the peak. With a few strokes of its giant wings, it disappeared over the trees.
Brennus was stunned. The Forest Reivers had told him about shapeshifters, but to see a creature changing before his very eyes was something else.
Breth disappeared over the edge next. Brennus blinked, until he realised there was a small drop to a ledge before a larger one plunging into the gorge below. He watched several of the bearded men join Breth on the ledge and pull a thick rope from a concealed iron ring.
Brennus could see a single knotted rope stretching across the gorge to a hilltop half a mile east. Through the shimmering heat he could see figures moving around there, but he didn’t understand what was about to happen until Breth, who was fastening a second metal ring round his body, called him over, said bluntly, ‘Don’t look down,’ then looped the ring around him and, without giving him chance to answer, swung them both out into nothing.
For a second they both hung upside down whilst the clifftop and the ravine merged into a blur of sickening colour. Brennus felt the bite of the steel ring and, as the blood rushed to his head, thought it might break his back. The breeze, which had been gentle at the top of the hill, whistled through his ears as Breth, his feet wrapped around the rope, pulled them both out further from solid earth. Then the rope began to vibrate as the rest of the bearded men began to follow one by one.
Breth was pulling both his own and Brennus’s bodyweight hand over hand and soon Brennus could tell he was beginning to struggle. Every few minutes he would stop, breathing deeply through his mouth as his sweat dropped into the gorge below and Brennus hung there, several hundred feet in the air, upside down in a sickly daze.
The rope was now jumping to the rhythm of the men following behind and oddly this seemed to bring Brennus back to his senses. Breth got them moving again and they reached the barren peak and were met by several more bearded men, some carrying their axes before them. Breth unfastened Brennus and greeted a man with the same red hair and an equally long beard. For a second, Brennus thought hanging upside down had given him double vision.
‘This is Kiltrevern,’ said Breth as the other man greeted Brennus with a nod. ‘He is my brother.’
‘Twins,’ thought Brennus, as he turned to watch the last man fall exhausted from the rope.
Then a distant horn blast, followed by a second and quickly a third, had the men looking back towards the wooded hill.
Breth turned to another man. ‘Kerr, this darkness cannot be allowed to reach our villages. Go back and take our families to the fort at Simonside. Then bring the elders to the stone circle at Bloodybush Edge. Go by the rivers and the woods. Do not travel across the hills, for they are vulnerable to attack. I will go directly to Bloodybush with Kiltrevern, Ezru and this man, for he has been in the presence of Fer Benn and this cannot be ignored.’
Brennus felt his heart sink. He had nothing to tell these people’s elders. He had gone to the Dead Water to seek answers and if possible alliances and to draw the Shadow from Sam. That was all. But he was beginning to like the bearded men. Whoever they were, he could sense some good in them.
He looked round for the Grim-were, but couldn’t see him. He was strange and cold, but Brennus had to admit he and Drust might not have got through the bizarre wood with its inanimate army without him and his wolves.
Thinking back to them, Brennus felt helpless once more. They had been so big and strong – how had they perished so easily? What kind of enemy were they dealing with here? One that could apparently not be stopped by Faerie or Grim-wolf. What kind of power did the Druids have to repel such monsters? He had sensed Sam’s power in his tutorial room only a week ago, but already it seemed a lifetime away. How could a mere boy stop such relentless hate?
There was also something else troubling him. It was clear Breth knew the Grim-were and had heard about the old man and the Fall. The Forest Reivers must have mixed with these people or at least known about them, and yet they had chosen not to mention them.
Then a call from the sky cut through his thoughts. Ezru was back and he looked more twisted than ever as he started changing back into his feathered Grim-were form. Towering over the bearded men, he looked briefly across at Brennus, and Brennus thought he saw fear, or something close to it, in his misshapen eyes.
‘What is happening?’ Breth asked.
‘The Shadow Ruins have taken your men.’
There was shocked silence.
‘All of them?’ Breth gasped.
‘Including my brother?’ cried Brennus.
‘I am not certain.’
The creature turned to Breth and Kiltrevern, whose eyes were now red with anger and tears.
‘But there is not an army that could stand against them. Your only hope is to protect the Druidae. Only their magic can stop this madness.’
The bearded
men were shaking their heads.
‘We have lived peacefully in these woods and valleys for many years,’ Kiltrevern protested. ‘We do not venture from these lands, or cause pain to others. You know that, Ezru! And that there have been no children for several generations and therefore our time will come to an end. We want that end to be peaceful, not to be in battle for a cause that has long left our blood.’
The Grim-were replied bluntly, ‘You will be drawn into this war whether you like it or not. When the Fall dies, nowhere will be safe for those who locked the Ruin beyond time. The only option left to us is to defend the Druids with our last breath. The time for hiding has come to an end. The time to stand together has only just begun.’
Brennus stared at him, feeling a sudden warmth for the awkward creature.
Breth wasn’t so impressed. ‘I hear your sentiment, Ezru,’ he said, ‘but don’t forget what my people and my family have already given. Didn’t we stand blindly with you on the shores of the Dead Water? And weren’t we betrayed by a Druid?’
Brennus’s eyes widened in surprise. Betrayed by whom? He sat down, suddenly exhausted, overwhelmed by his own ignorance. It seemed he barely knew half the story. Breth, Kiltrevern and Ezru were now arguing more fiercely, and almost in a daze, Brennus turned his head away from them and stared back at the tree-lined hilltop they’d come from. Several figures were emerging from the cover of the wood. From this distance he couldn’t tell who they were, but they seemed to be moving, and with rising alarm, he realised they had found the rope.
‘Look! We have company!’ he managed to croak, as the first figures started shimming across the steep gorge.
‘Cut the rope!’ commanded Breth.
Kiltrevern drew his axe and with one devastating blow cleaved the rope and its metal ring in two.
Brennus watched the rope zig-zag like a headless snake across the chasm. The figures were beginning to fall, but there were no noises, no screams. The black dots fell silently into the shimmering depths below.
‘To the rope bridge!’ yelled Kiltrevern.