by AC Cobble
“Narjags,” guessed Raif.
Rew nodded. “They’re traveling the same direction we are. At least several dozen, I believe, though not all together in one group.”
“What do you suggest we do?” asked Cinda.
“There are two choices,” responded Rew. “We can turn around and go back to Eastwatch, and we can reconsider our options there. Or we can proceed, but with the knowledge we may stumble into a small army of Dark Kind.”
The girl winced.
“We can’t afford weeks of delay going back to Eastwatch,” declared Raif. “We have to reach our father.”
“He’s right,” said Cinda. “During the weeks it will take us to return and find another path to Falvar, Baron Worgon will have made his move.”
“You don’t think we should return, either,” said Zaine, studying the ranger.
Rew crossed his arms on his knees, still squatting by the tracks. “If I was alone or just with my rangers, I’d continue. It’s our role to find out what is going on in the wilderness, to see where these creatures are headed. I’d stop them if I could or gather reconnaissance if there were too many for me to face alone.”
“It seems clear, then,” said Cinda.
“Dozens of narjags,” reminded Rew. “If we’re forced into a fight with them, we might not win.”
The group was silent for a long moment, everyone considering that.
“For us,” murmured Cinda, “I don’t think there’s a choice.”
Rew stood and looked around the group. “Allow Jon and I to lead. If we see narjags or ayres, follow our instructions quickly and exactly. Have your weapons ready at all times. If we’re faced with more of them than we can handle, our only choice is to retreat to defensible terrain. If we can limit how many come at us at once, we may still have a chance. In the open, surrounded, I cannot protect you all. If we face a small group, a dozen or less, I’ll take the point. I’ll break their grouping, and you fall out on my sides. If they have ayres, focus on those first. They’re faster, and those jaws and necks will rip a chunk out of you that Anne cannot put back. Raif and Jon, it’s on you to cripple any of the ayres that I miss. Zaine and Cinda, do what you can from a distance, but keep your attacks well clear of the rest of us. Keep your eyes open, and yell if anything is coming at our backs. If you’ve a choice of not attacking or risking a strike close to us, don’t attack. Zaine, use your bow and don’t engage with those daggers unless it’s against something wounded, or you truly have no choice. Until you’ve trained extensively with the daggers, the lack of reach could be fatal in a fight against a large group.”
Anne asked, “Rew, could you conduct some training with the children? Even a little…”
He shook his head. “We don’t have time.”
“We’re not children,” complained Raif, “and I’ve been training for years. You saw what I was capable of last time, Ranger. Don’t discount what—“
Rew held up a hand. “It’s different when you’re not facing a single opponent. That blade of yours could devastate a narjag, of course, but they’re small and fast. If there are several of them, you’ll swing at one, and the rest will slip behind your guard.”
Raif grunted, and Rew could see the boy had no intention of staying back behind the two rangers. Rew wasn’t sure what to say to convince him. Like all young men, Raif believed he was invincible, and the words of a man who was mostly a stranger weren’t going to convince him otherwise.
“If there are enough of them, Rew, we’ll need all the help we can get,” mentioned Jon.
Rew sighed and turned to Raif. “I know you want to fight, but if we see them, will you at least hear my advice? We’ll be most effective if we work together, and I ask that you listen to my tactical instructions if I have time to give them.”
“Of course. We’ll be most effective working together,” said Raif, staring at the ranger, throwing his own words back at him.
Rew rubbed his head then turned to Cinda. “You wanted to engage the last time we faced a party of narjags. What spellcasting are you capable of?”
The noblewoman glanced around at the others and admitted, “Not much. I’ve some natural talent, but high magic takes study, and I’ve done little. If I may borrow that firestarter you showed us, the black powder, I believe I could send it on a cloud and ignite it. It will be more than just dust in their eyes. It could blind them. I don’t think it will kill anything, but if they cannot see…”
“That’s good. That’s good,” said Rew, taking off his pack and searching for the pouch of firestarter. He got it and tossed it to the young spellcaster. “I want you to walk with Anne from now on. She’ll find out what you know of casting and teach you what she can. It won’t be enough to make a big difference in such a short time, but even a little is worth trying.”
Cinda frowned at the empath. “What do you know of spellcasting?”
“I know some,” replied Anne with a smile.
“You’re not…”
“Of noble blood?” guessed the empath. “No, I am not. I have no high magic, but I’ve seen spellcasters at work before. I know some of their methods.”
“You’ve seen spellcasters in Eastwatch?” questioned Cinda, disbelieving.
“I wasn’t always in Eastwatch, and I wasn’t always an innkeeper,” replied Anne.
“What, ah… you aren’t from Eastwatch?” stammered Jon.
Anne laughed. “It’s a story for another day.”
Scratching at the back of his neck, the young ranger looked around. “Are we ready, then?”
“I’ll lead,” said Rew.
Chapter Ten
With the river to the left of them and the forest to the right, they began moving again, heading northeast toward the source of the river where they would turn and start into the foothills of the Spine.
Looking across the clear band of water to the thin fringe of forest there, above it to the foothills, and then craning her neck to stare high up at the peaks of the Spine, Cinda asked, “We’re really going to climb that?”
“We’ll have to climb about halfway up,” said Rew. “There’s a pass. On the other side is the mining encampment, and from there, the travel should be a good deal easier.”
“Well, that’s something, at least.”
He grinned at her.
“How did you become the King’s Ranger?” she asked.
He frowned.
Cinda waited for an answer.
“I joined the king’s service in Mordenhold and traveled a great deal to the cities and military encampments scattered around our kingdom. I was looking for a quieter assignment that had less interaction with people,” explained Rew, after walking several hundred paces beside the silent noblewoman. “It doesn’t get much quieter, or farther away from people, than patrolling the wilderness. After the first time I visited the eastern province, I knew this was where I belonged. I requested a transfer of assignment, and it was granted.”
She asked, “And what were you doing in the king’s service previously that required all of this travel?”
Tight-lipped, Rew shrugged. “A little bit of this, a little bit of that. A scout, most of the time. Good training for a ranger.”
Mercifully, she glanced back behind them toward Jon. “And him?”
Breathing a quick sigh of relief, Rew answered, “He was training in Mordenhold for a position in the king’s infantry. When we requested an additional ranger, he was assigned by our commandant, Vyar Grund. Grund keeps an eye on the recruits, picking out those suitable for ranger assignments and sending them to the frontiers when they’re needed.”
“How many rangers are there?” wondered Cinda.
“On the eastern front, myself and five under my command,” answered Rew. “Across the kingdom including in the capital, I’d guess fifty of us. We’re scattered broadly, though. Grund comes through once or twice a year, but other than that, it’s only every few years that we’ll see a ranger from outside of our territory.”
“I can imagine,” said Cinda. “Travel from one end of the kingdom to the other would take months if one could not portal. Is Vyar Grund a spellcaster? Travel by portal seems the only practical way to manage such an expansive area.”
“Commandant Grund can open a portal,” said Rew, “and you’re right. Without portaling, managing the rangers would be entirely impractical. Even with the portals, it is only one-way communication. It takes ages for our messages to reach the capital, and we can only hope Grund is around to receive them. Ideally, we’d have a network of rangers who could travel back and forth, but good spellcasters are hard to come by. As it is, Grund spends a good deal of his time portaling around to the far reaches of the realm, ferrying instructions, people, and supplies.”
Rew stopped walking, a frown growing on his face.
“What?” asked Cinda.
“A portal,” he muttered. “The first party of narjags I found were waiting in the wilderness for someone to come through a portal. We found no signs of the spellcaster, so they must have left after relaying instructions. That’s why the Dark Kind are traveling north, because the spellcaster told them to.”
Cinda brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “Dark Kind working for a spellcaster… Has that happened before?”
“It was two hundred years ago when they were first conjured, and the Dark Kind were used by spellcasters then,” said Rew. “Fifty years ago… As I said, no one knows who was commanding those foul armies during the last war.” He smacked a fist into his hand. “We were wondering why a spellcaster of talent would be coming into the wilderness and not stopping by Eastwatch. It’s because they weren’t looking for a place or a person but for the Dark Kind. The spellcaster was organizing the narjags.”
“Why would someone do that?” questioned Cinda.
“The only way to find out is to find out where they are going,” declared Rew.
As they moved along the river, Rew and Jon saw more signs of narjag activity. It became apparent they were not going to be able to continue unnoticed. They and the Dark Kind were traveling the exact same path, bound by the river on one side and the wilderness on the other. It did not surprise Rew when at midday, he began to get a creeping sense that there was danger ahead.
The river bubbled by, clear and unconcerned, and the wind stirred the branches of the trees, crackling the dry leaves and sending flurries of them down to carpet the forest floor and the bank of the river, but the sounds of animal life had stilled. The birds and other small fauna that normally filled the day with their songs and rustling had gone silent. It wasn’t the presence of man that had driven them into hiding. It was the uneasy sense of wrongness that they would sense near the Dark Kind.
Rew warned the party to be alert and had everyone check their weapons. He considered moving into the forest, guessing that whatever was ahead was near the bank of the river, but that might only be putting off the confrontation. If there were narjags ahead, they were going to run into them sooner or later. Best do it during the day when they were prepared.
After another league of travel, he called for a rest. When the party paused, he told them, “I’ll go scout ahead. Stay here and keep an eye out.”
Moving alone, Rew began to jog along the riverbank, his feet falling softly, his attention focused ahead. He made it a quarter league before he slowed and moved into the forest, creeping along, but still faster than he could travel with the others. It was difficult, now that the autumn leaves had begun to fall in earnest, but he’d spent decades of his life practicing moving quietly, and he was able to ghost between the trees until he found what he was looking for.
There, on the bank of the river, a dozen narjags were clustered around a kill. Rew circled them, staying well back, peering between the pine boughs and bushes that provided him cover. He raised a hand, feeling the wind. It blew down from the north, off the mountains and following the course of the river, but wind was a temperamental force. Within the forest, he was confident of his ability to stay hidden, but the narjags had exceptional noses, and they would smell him before they could see him.
He raised a hand to his lips, pressing the five points of his fingers there. He whispered a simple cantrip and then waited a moment, feeling the lethargy that seeped through his bones at the casting and then the tingle over his skin as his spell began to work. His scent was contained for a time. He began to move again, placing each step with care. The narjags wouldn’t be able to smell him now, but if he was clumsy-footed, they could still see and hear.
Rew peered between the leaves and the boughs, studying the scene in front of him. Twelve narjags, no shaman, no ayres. There was a bloody kill in the middle of them, and he wondered briefly if they’d been chasing something or someone, but as he circled the site, he saw it was a bear they’d felled, a small one that had no chance against a dozen narjags. They were gorging themselves on the animal’s flesh, and he knew they wouldn’t pause long once they were finished.
Rew had seen what he needed to and skulked back the other direction, staying within the cover of the trees for a thousand paces before he came back out into the clear on the riverbank and released his cantrip. He sighed in relief as the pressure faded from his skin and the weariness leaked from his bones. Jogging south, he made it back to the party in a few minutes and described what he’d seen.
His plan was quite simple. He didn’t trust their party to be able to move through the forest with stealth, so a quick ambush wasn’t going to work. Instead, Rew had Jon and Raif take the lead, and they walked with the others along the river, heading straight for the narjags. The two swordsmen would try to slow the attack of the creatures, while Cinda let loose a handful of the firestarter powder into their eyes. Zaine would strike as many as she could with her arrows, and then Rew would come at them from behind as the party held the attention of the narjags.
He was counting on the women to slow the Dark Kind with their ranged attacks and the men to hold them for a brief moment. Unseen, Rew could cause devastation as he came at their opponents from behind. If the party could hold out for just a moment, it would work.
From the cover of the forest where he’d gone ahead to hide, Rew watched as the party first appeared walking along the riverbank. He gripped the wooden hilt of his longsword and shifted nervously. If something went wrong, they were visible and alone out there.
In front of him, the narjags had not yet noticed the party’s approach. Rew waited, forcing himself to breathe slow and steady, holding his longsword in his hand, ready to chase after the creatures as soon as they attacked.
It was a good plan. It should work, but plans had a way of falling apart the moment blades were drawn. The younglings were untested, and even Jon had only faced his first narjag days ago. They’d all handled themselves well during that fight, but they were facing more of the enemy now, and Rew wasn’t standing with them. He hated letting them approach on their own, but it would give him the opportunity to strike quickly and ruthlessly. Striking by surprise, without the others to foul his movements, he could fell most of the narjag party in the space of half a dozen heartbeats. It would work. He hoped it would work.
The narjags, shoving and snapping at each other as they finished gorging on the last of the bear carcass, took longer than he expected to notice the approaching people. When they did, they suddenly sprang to their feet and turned south, grasping crude weapons, snarling in their bestial tongue to each other.
Rew waited.
Jon shouted as if surprised to see the narjags there, and he and Raif drew their swords, the ranger holding his longsword comfortably, Raif gripping his hand-and-a-half sword like it was a child’s comfort blanket. Behind them, Zaine nocked an arrow and let fly.
The narjags were startled, and one of them screeched as the feathered shaft of the arrow flashed past it, gouging a bloody trench on its arm. Rew grimaced. The wound was inconsequential and wouldn’t even slow the creature.
The narjags took the attack as impetus to charge, and they did so in a diso
rganized, howling pack. Rew waited three breaths. Then, he darted out of the forest, letting the narjags outpace him before speeding up, running after them.
Zaine fired another arrow, and this one flew true, catching a running narjag in the chest. The creature tumbled, rolling across the rocky ground, kicking and squealing, clutching the shaft of wood that had bloomed in its torso.
Cinda threw her hand up, tossing a cloud of the firestarter and whispering a quick incantation. The powder drifted by her to fall gently on the ground, and even from the other side of the narjag pack, Rew could see her frustration as she stared down at it. Whatever casting she’d attempted had failed, and there was no time to attempt it again. When the narjags reached the party, the Dark Kind wouldn’t be blinded as they’d planned.
Rew sped up, racing after the narjags at a full sprint, giving up his attempts to reach them unnoticed. Nearly the whole pack was going to reach the party unmolested.
Raif glanced over his shoulder at his sister, white-faced. Jon crouched, like he was the lone spearman facing a full company of charging knights, and Anne drew her belt knife, though she stayed back and didn’t look eager to use it.
Zaine, with the narjags a dozen paces from the men, got off another arrow. It was a panicked shot, but with eleven targets right in front of her, she managed to strike one, and that narjag went down, though Rew couldn’t tell if it was a killing shot or not. The hastily aimed arrow had slowed one of them, at least.
Jon shouted something, and both he and Raif charged, evidently trying to shock the narjags into pulling up on their attack.
Raif swung a mighty blow with his hand-and-a-half sword, sweeping it across the narjags, making a clean strike against one across the throat, nearly chopping through the head of a second, and battering a third, knocking it astray. But the blow pulled him off balance, and his sword was terribly out of position. Two narjags were on him, one punching at his torso with a rusty-tipped spear, the other jumping at him, yellowed teeth snapping at the boy’s face. Already teetering from his sword swing, Raif stumbled to his knees on the rocky riverbank from the force of the attack.