by AC Cobble
Rew rubbed his lips. A longsword. When Jon had first been assigned to them, the young man had spent his childhood on a farm and a year training to join the king’s infantry. Jon had learned the spear and the short sword in the infantry, though he’d learned neither weapon very well. Now, the young ranger rotated through a variety of weapons. He moved from Rew’s and Tate’s preferred longswords, to the hatchets that Blythe used, to Vurcell’s falchion, and for a brief moment, Jon had attempted to master the swordstaff used by Ang. He traded the blades depending on who he was on expedition with and which one he’d most recently been embarrassed by in sparring.
Rew decided not to comment on how the day before, the young ranger had been hanging up a pair of hatchets like Blythe’s, and now he was hoisting a longsword. Today, they had business to attend to. Scolding Jon about not picking a weapon and learning it could wait.
Rew was about to turn toward the forest, but he paused. The wire-wrapped hilt of the longsword that stuck above Jon’s shoulder was familiar. The steel pommel, carved into the likeness of a bear, was not standard issue. The young ranger wore Tate’s weapon.
Nervously, Jon felt Rew’s stare and shifted. He stammered, “Ah, Blythe told me to carry it. She said it was my blade now, and I’d honor Tate by carrying it always. She said… she said she thought the longsword would be good for me. I hope that’s all right. Blythe told me it’s what Tate would have wanted.”
Rew grunted but did not respond.
Blythe was right about what Tate would have wanted, and she was right that the longsword was a good match for Jon.
Rew started off toward the forest, following the narrow track that the rangers had worn through the grass from decades of departing on expedition into the wilderness. Behind him, he heard Jon scrambling to follow, still adjusting his pack, still adjusting to carrying the old ranger’s longsword.
Rew had found the trail left by the narjags easily and then allowed Jon to follow it back toward its source. It was easy tracking, and while they were in something of a hurry, there was a limited amount of ground to cover.
Farmer Bartrim had first reported the suspicious activity, and that had been three days ago. The narjags had traveled only a few leagues from Bartrim’s farm to where Rew had found their trail the day before. For two days, they’d only moved a few leagues if at all. But when Rew had been following them, they’d seemed in a hurry. What had they been doing before, and where?
Rew walked a dozen paces behind Jon, letting the new ranger follow the trail. They had a mission to be about, and he had to restrain himself, wanting to hurry ahead, but it was the ranger’s way to train by doing. If Jon was to be of any use to the king and Eastwatch, he had to learn, and there was no better test than learning on a real expedition. They could take him out for years, following the signs of deer and the feral hogs that populated the shallow forest near Eastwatch, but they’d never know if the young ranger could survive the deep forest or face the Dark Kind until he did.
“Senior Ranger,” said Jon, pausing. “Come look at this. I think this might be an… an ayre.”
Frowning, Rew hurried to where the young ranger was looking down at the damp soil. A light rain had fallen the night before. It hadn’t been hard enough to obscure all of the signs, but it’d softened them. There, in the dirt, was the impression of a paw print. Rew breathed a sigh of relief.
“No, a wolf, not an ayre,” he assured the new ranger. He squatted, drew his hunting knife, and pointed with the tip of it. “See here, these marks left by the nails? An ayre’s would be twice as long and a little bit thicker. You’re right, though. The size of a wolf’s and an ayre’s paws is nearly identical. The depth of the impression can be the same, too, though if there’s a narjag rider on the ayre, you’d expect to see a deeper mark.”
Jon frowned. “So it’s the nails then, that’s the biggest difference?”
“On hard soil, sometimes the only discernible difference,” responded Rew. “The back of the footpads are narrower on an ayre, and there’s never any mark left by fur. You can’t always see that if the ayre is moving quickly or if the earth is dry. The nails are the clearest distinction. With a bit of practice, it’s not difficult to tell the two prints apart.”
“A wolf…” said Jon, pinching his chin between his fingers. “A wolf tracking narjags?”
Rew nodded, acknowledging that was strange. Natural creatures tended to avoid the Dark Kind. They could sense there was something wrong with them, that their flesh would be rotten, tainted by their ancestry in another world. The scent of a narjag or an ayre was certainly foul enough, but it went beyond that. Those creatures did not belong in the world. They were not native to it, and that was repulsive.
The Dark Kind had been conjured, hundreds of years prior, to build armies. It had been a time of constant war, before the kingdom was united by the original king, Vaisius Morden. The Dark Kind the rangers hunted in the wilderness were the remnants and children of those shattered forces from long ago. The histories claimed that the Dark Kind had grown into massive hordes through feverish breeding, and they’d broken the magical chains their conjurers had used to control them. Vaisius Morden had unified the territories in an attempt to fight back, to save mankind.
And it had worked. Vaisius Morden crushed the hordes of the Dark Kind and forced them back into the remote places of the world. He’d kept his hold on the people through it all, and on the back of his victories, they’d supported his ascension to king. The lands had remained unified since then, always under the sway of Vaisius Morden’s line.
But while the Dark Kind had been defeated, and the conjurers who’d summoned them had been hunted and killed, the Dark Kind hadn’t been completely wiped from the world. They’d fled, hid, and continued to breed in the far-off places. From time to time, they emerged again, coming from hiding and threatening the settlements of people.
That was the prime reason why the rangers were stationed in Eastwatch, and that was why they left on expeditions into the trackless wilderness. They were the kingdom’s eyes and ears, always vigilant, always looking for signs of valaans, narjags, ayres, and a dozen other lesser Dark Kind that weren’t intelligent enough to organize but would still kill a man the moment they saw one. The Dark Kind were all foreign to the world and dangerous. Conjurers and spellcasters occasionally tried to command them, but the truth was, there was nothing to do but kill them.
Someday, the story was, the king would gather forces and march through each far-off corner of his kingdom and eliminate the threat once and for all, but that had been the story for two hundred years and through eight generations of Mordens. The Dark Kind were still out there, and rather than an army, Rew had only five rangers in his command.
He winced. Four rangers. He had four rangers, now that Tate was dead. Four wasn’t enough. It had never been enough to cover the hundreds of leagues of forest that he and his rangers regularly patrolled, not to mention the expanses beyond that they knew little of. It wasn’t enough, but they did what they could.
Jon, noticing his expression, asked, “What are you thinking?”
Rew huffed and turned his attention back to the print the wolf had left. He looked up and down the path, noting that the creature did seem to be following the trail of the narjags, but it hadn’t been when they’d originally picked up the signs. The wolf had followed and then left off pursuit. That was one bit of behavior that wasn’t unusual. The wolf had followed far enough to know it wanted nothing to do with the awful monsters.
“I’m thinking there’s little we’ll learn from one single print,” answered Rew. “Let’s keep going, see how long the wolf was on their scent, and see if we can figure out what those creatures were doing in the days between Bartrim’s sighting and when I found them.”
Nodding, Jon started walking again, his eyes scanning the ground and occasionally the foliage around them, moving carefully to avoid stepping onto the impressions that he tracked.
Rew ghosted behind him, watching the track
s and studying the area around as well. It was calm, normal. It meant that whatever the Dark Kind had been doing nearby, they were gone now. A pack of narjags was a disruption, an invisible taint that lower animals could sense. They would have fled if they still felt the narjags nearby, but the song of birds filled the citadel beneath the trees, and small creatures flitted around in front of them, preparing their stores for winter. It was normal, but was it too normal?
Shaking himself, Rew brought his attention back to Jon and his hesitant efforts to follow a trail. Too normal? What was he even thinking?
“Blessed Mother,” said Jon.
Pacing around the circle, Rew nodded in agreement.
“A conjurer did this, you think?” wondered the junior ranger, his hand reaching up to touch the wire hilt of Tate’s old longsword. “Were they summoned somehow?”
“I don’t think so,” said Rew. “The Dark Kind were brought through a portal centuries ago from a world that I’m told we can no longer reach. The plane passed too far in the astral nether or something of the sort. The ones we see are the children of those who were conjured. These days, it’s demons, imps, and elementals that conjurers are able to call upon.”
“What… what is this, then?” questioned Jon.
Rew shook his head. In a circle, twenty paces across, the ground and the foliage were singed, as if from a brilliantly hot, but quick, flame. A thin line bisected it, slicing through a tree as cleanly as a razor-sharp blade, cutting through the earth a finger-width wide trench. It was the mark of a portal that had been opened carelessly, but narjags didn’t have the art to cast such high magic, and why would any spellcaster who did have the skill open a portal for Dark Kind? If a spellcaster had opened the portal for themselves, then where were they?
Jon stood, staring blankly at the scene.
“Someone opened a portal,” Rew told him. He crouched near the center of the mark and saw whatever fire had blasted the clearing had scoured the soil clear for half-a-finger deep. If a spellcaster had emerged from the portal, they’d blown away any trace of their footsteps. Rew stood, circled the rim of the mark, but saw no impressions left by the boots of a human, just the four-toed marks left by narjags.
“A spellcaster? Why?” wondered Jon.
Rew shrugged. It was a good question.
Both rangers walked out from the site where the portal was opened. There was evidence of a violent spell in the immediate area, but they saw no signs of blood, narjag or human. Whatever the spellcaster had unleashed had not been meant as an offensive or defensive measure, thought Rew. Would they have cast such a spell simply to obscure their footprints? He kept his slow circuit, noting more footprints of the narjags but not seeing anything else.
“Here,” said Jon from fifty paces away.
Rew walked to the younger ranger, who was standing at the base of a large rock outcropping. Stone struck from the floor of the forest like a giant’s finger, rising a dozen paces into the air, leaning over the ground, and offering a shaded space that was clear of underbrush.
Jon was pointing to the remains of a foul camp.
“Narjags,” hissed Rew.
The younger man nodded. “They camped here.”
Rew grimaced. There was a fire pit, the torn and shattered remains of several animals, and gourds which smelled of the awful brew the narjags distilled. Their waste was scattered around the area, and the rangers could see plenty of activity where the narjags had stalked around the site.
“They were waiting on something,” surmised Jon. “They could have been camped here for days.”
Nodding, Rew looked around. “Waiting on the spellcaster, I imagine. Long enough that there are no signs of how they arrived. Narjags holding still for an appointment, a spell was released, and then nothing except the tracks where they left the area.”
“I don’t understand,” said Jon.
“Neither do I,” admitted Rew. He kicked one of the broken gourds across the camp where it bounced off the rock outcropping. “We need to speak to an arcanist.”
Jon nodded agreement. “There’s a good one in Yarrow…”
Rew shook his head. “Falvar. We’ll go to see Arcanist Ralcrist in Falvar.”
“Blythe told me about the younglings,” said Jon, ignoring that he was only a few winters older than the boy, Raif. “You mean to take them over the Spine? That’s a hard journey, Senior Ranger.”
“I know, Jon,” said Rew. “I’ve done it. I won’t go, though. I think Blythe is better suited for this. Blythe and maybe you to accompany her.”
Jon fell silent, his gaze darting between the remains of the narjag campsite and to where the portal had opened. Jon scratched his head.
Rew felt a twinge of sympathy for the younger ranger. The only thing nearby was Bartrim’s farm, a quarter league west. The narjags had been spotted there in the middle of the night, taking some of the livestock. Feasting, it seemed, and then they’d begun to travel. There’d been enough of them that they could have overwhelmed the farmer and his wife with little difficulty had they wanted to. Bartrim had a small farm, but there were still dozens of animals left alive there, along with the farmer himself. It was enough food to last the narjags several weeks. Why had they not killed everything? It wasn’t like the Dark Kind to leave fresh meat still breathing.
And what, for King’s Sake, had the filthy beasts been waiting on? Rew shifted his weight, wondering uncomfortably if the reason the narjags had taken so little from Bartrim was because they were attempting stealth. He wasn’t sure if the creatures possessed the intelligence to hide and wait, but he was certain he’d never heard of them having the patience to do it for days.
“We don’t know where they came from, and we don’t know where they were going,” muttered Jon, beginning to pace. “It’s possible they met someone—or something—here. You said it appeared they were going somewhere or running from something when you were on their trail?”
“Narjags having somewhere to be,” groused Rew, hitching his thumbs in his belt. “Can’t imagine that’s very often the case, but I think it must be. There were no tracks of any pursuit, and I never sensed anything behind me. These creatures were going somewhere, and by the direction of their travel, I’d say it was almost due north.”
“Wilderness, the Spine…”
“The barrowlands beyond,” added Rew.
“That’s a long walk,” responded Jon.
“Aye, but there’s nothing else around here except Eastwatch, and we haven’t seen either narjags or a spellcaster in the village. If there’s a caster with talent to travel by portal, why would they appear here, so far from anywhere?” wondered Rew. He forced his arms down and turned to the junior ranger. “Let’s swing by Bartrim’s place and let him know the threat is over but to remain vigilant. The narjags that were harassing him are dead, but I’m not convinced there won’t be more of them. There’s something going on here I don’t understand, and I don’t think we will on our own. We need to get to an arcanist. We need to show them the artifacts I took and describe this site and what we’ve found. Maybe they’ll be able to decipher what’s going on.”
Jon nodded, and Rew waved for the junior ranger to lead. If the boy could find Bartrim’s farm without having to ask for guidance, he was making improvements. Small, incremental improvements. Rew was getting a terrible feeling that soon, those skills were going to be needed.
The next evening, five rangers stood over the grave of a sixth. Around them, knee-high oak stakes rose from dozens of other graves. Some of those spears of wood were recent, signs of a new burial. Other pieces were ancient, decaying as weather and time turned the marker back to the dirt from which it came. Once it did, it was said the memory of the deceased was no longer with its family, that it was in the care of the Blessed Mother.
Tate’s grave was unmarked, just freshly turned dirt, partially hidden by plugs of turf that they’d sat down atop it. The rangers had their own rites, and their hope was that the body’s return to the earth was sp
eedy, that the memory of the ranger lived on not in the minds of friends and family, but in the sighs of the wind through the living trees of the forest, the laughing of a brook as it bubbled over rocks, and the call of the animals as they roamed where few men dared to go. The rangers gave part of themselves to the forest during their lives, and in death, they gave all. There were no words to say, no incantations to perform, just a final goodbye to a man who had served longer than some of them had been alive.
“I found this amongst Tate’s things,” said Ranger Ang. He fished a leather-bound flask from beneath his cloak. “It’s that brandy from down near the coast the old man bought when he was last in Carff. He said it tasted of dates and sea salt.”
Without further word, the ranger uncorked the flask and passed it to his left. Vurcell, Ang’s twin, accepted the flask and tilted it up. He sighed and offered a wan smile. “Dates and sea salt.”
He passed the flask around the circle, and Blythe, Jon, and Rew all drank their share. Finally, Ang received it back and he tilted it up. He licked his lips and shook the flask, listening to the slosh of the remaining liquid. “Not bad. Not bad at all. Didn’t think the old goat had a taste for fine spirits. I can’t recall the last time I saw him drink something stronger than a cider.”
“He didn’t have a taste for it,” responded Blythe, a smile on her lips. “He meant it as a gift.”
“To whom?” wondered Vurcell.
Blythe winked at him.
“Who?” asked Vurcell again, glancing at Rew.
“He meant it as a gift for Jon,” answered the senior ranger. “He was waiting for… I don’t know what he was waiting for. Meant it as a gift after an expedition or some other milestone that only Tate would recognize. He wanted to welcome you into our fold, Jon.”
“For me?” asked the youngest of the rangers. “I didn’t know. He always seemed so… harsh.”