New World: a Frontier Fantasy Novel

by Steven W. White

  Chapter 35

  Tyrus Jurgen raced to the doorway of the tower. "Cadogan!"

  No answer. If Cadogan was up there with Uilleam alone--

  Yolaf had just dragged the treasure chest from the hole. Zane stooped by the hole's edge, taking the chest from Yolaf. The chest was old, wet, coated with sand and slippery from years underground. Zane had barely secured the chest at a point where it wouldn't slide back in the hole. He was wet and sandy himself, but his eyes danced with the thought of treasure.

  A sound roared to Tyrus's ears, a furious trumpeting cry. He stepped away from the doorway and saw a monstrous creature thundering down the slope from the forest, covered with red hair, its great round feet driving up sand. Its white tusks swung like scythes, and its writhing trunk looked ready to strangle.

  Tyrus had heard stories of creatures like this, but he had treated them like all the stories of strange creatures in Mira. He had laughed. And now, he knew that the four-legged hill was real.

  And behind the ears of the creature, spurring it on...

  Was a little boy.

  He wore a white shirt and an osnaburg coat, with a raccoon-skin cap on his head, like a Miran mountain man. His face was young and childlike, but fixed in an expression of pure rage.

  "To arms!" Tyrus cried.

  Yolaf jumped halfway out of the hole and scrabbled the rest of the way, throwing sand behind him. He reached his war hammer and took it up in his right hand, while keeping the shovel in his left.

  Zane found himself on the wrong side of the hole, trapped between a rampaging monster and a pit. His bow was by the tower--

  Tyrus snatched up bow and quiver and hurled them to Zane. Zane plucked them both from the air and gripped an arrow, letting the quiver fall, and knocked it with cool professionalism into his bow.

  But the animal was on him before he could draw. He ducked a swinging tusk and stumbled back into the pit, disappearing from Tyrus's view.

  Yolaf strode into the fray, a giant swinging a hammer and shovel, and if anyone looked like he could slay a monster, Yolaf did. It swung tusks at him, and he parried them both. Its trunk wrapped around his shovel and pulled. Yolaf pulled back, and when the hill trumpeted, Yolaf roared his battle cry.

  The hill won the battle over the shovel. It lifted the shovel high over its head and pitched it at Tyrus. Tyrus threw himself to the sand, and the shovel clanged against the stone wall behind him.

  Yolaf gripped his war hammer in both hands and struck a blow to the side of the monster's head. The beast's bulk simply absorbed the blow and the hammer bounced off. The creature swung its tusks and knocked Yolaf flat. Its trunk reached into the hole just as Zane, crouching there, aimed his only shot.

  His arrow flashed through the beast's ear and raced into the sky. The creature bellowed.

  Zane draws first blood, Tyrus thought. Well done. Too bad his arrow didn't do more than that.

  The beast's trunk wrapped around Zane's head and drew him out, blind and screaming. The creature tossed Zane over its hairy shoulder. His body flew helplessly through the air, thumped on the sand behind it and didn't move.

  Yolaf rolled to his feet and squared off against the creature again.

  Tyrus drew his sword and circled the hole, approaching the creature from behind.

  #

  Bogg was dumbfounded, near paralyzed from the sight of the fracas down there. Not only had the pup jumped into the mess, but he had beaten Bogg to it. And Bogg had used a dragon! To get here so quick, the pup must have rode that four-legged hill as hard as he could put.

  Bogg could believe it. Hills were speedy when they wanted to be. Why the critter didn't pull the pup into bits was a question outside of Bogg's scrutiny at the moment... but by jings, now was the time to fish or cut bait. Bogg was going to settle a score, and a giant hairy monster didn't make any difference to him -- especially if it might be fighting on his side.

  Bogg jumped out of the cover of the woods and raced down the hill.

  #

  Chapter 36

  As Tyrus crept closer to the creature from behind, Yolaf swung his hammer and rang a blow against a tusk. The beast took a step back, and the boy urged it on. Its trunk wrapped around the hammer and pulled. Yolaf couldn't dodge the tusks and hold on to the hammer at the same time, and when the beast swung its head, the tusks knocked him down.

  The creature swung the hammer around and brought it down on Yolaf again and again, beating him with his own weapon. Finally, it reared on its hind legs, and as the boy held on, stomped its front feet on the dazed Yolaf, crushing him.

  “Boy!” Tyrus called.

  The hill roared and shuffled around, still holding the bloody hammer.

  “That's a dangerous pet. Make sure it doesn't turn on you.”

  The creature coiled up its trunk and pitched the hammer at Tyrus. He sidestepped. The hammer sailed over the bluff, blasted into the sand, and slid halfway to Dragon's Head.

  Tyrus tightened his grip on Blodleter and remembered how the creature had fought Zane and Yolaf. When it was almost upon him, Tyrus dodged and stepped in quick from the side, and with a flick of his sword, lopped off a tusk. He leaped clear of the tusk as it fell, but it nearly caught him as it rolled on the sand.

  #

  Bogg ran on. He watched as the oversized one, Yolaf, got squished by something even bigger than he was. That suited Bogg just fine.

  “That's one,” Bogg muttered.

  As that tusk fell, and Bogg knew he still had a fight on his hands, the dark-haired one, Zane, got up and brushed himself off. He seemed all right.

  Zane spotted Bogg coming down the hill. Not far away was an arrow stuck in the sand - the same arrow that had cut though the hill's ear. Zane pulled it from the sand and held it like a short sword. “Greetings, filthy creature. I presume you are in league with the boy and that thing.”

  Bogg skidded to a stop, puffing like a bellows from all this running. He stepped up to Zane and drew his sabertooth dagger from his belt. “You reckoned right.” Bogg swung his dagger and snipped off the end of Zane's arrow. Then he drove the dagger through Zane's breastplate and into his heart.

  Bogg pulled it free, and Zane fell.

  “That's two.” Bogg was about to wipe his blade on his own clothes, but he was too sooty and bloody. He wiped Zane's blood on his own blue-and-whites, instead.

  #

  The one-tusked creature bellowed at Tyrus, its black eyes burning. The boy atop it had lost all focus, gazing only at the fallen tusk.

  “Now,” said Tyrus. “You see the end, boy.” Blodleter swayed gracefully, teasingly in his hand. “I'll kill your hairy steed. Then I'll kill you.”

  The hill charged at him.

  Tyrus could not have asked for more. He slipped to the side, keeping the treasure pit between himself and the monster. The beast's great round feet came close to the edge, slipped in the sand... for a moment the creature teetered, a huge living mass thrown out of balance.

  The animal's right front leg slipped into the hole, and its whole body dropped down and forward, its weight straining against the trapped leg, and Tyrus heard the glorious thundercrack of snapping bone.

  The animal cried again, slumped down against the hole, but this was a cry of anguish, sonorous and high and sad. Tyrus grinned. Its remaining tusk was pressed against the sand, forcing its head up at an awkward, lopsided angle.

  And the boy was suddenly in convenient reach of his sword. Tyrus leveled it at him. “Not so many get this close to me, boy. Who are you?"

  "You killed my father!" the boy whined.

  Tyrus paused. "Recently?" He did not recall killing the boy's father. How could he?

  Instead, he thought of the fine job the boy had done. Riding in on a monster like that, defeating Zane and even Yolaf. Maybe, rather than kill the boy, Tyrus should offer him a job.

  Tyrus looked the boy over. The point of his sword drifted over his fea
tures. The child had startlingly bold gray eyes, but the face of a child. He was so small... simply too young, even when storming on his four-legged hill.

  No. Death for him.

  Tyrus's intent was shattered by a howl; long, pained, hungry, mournful, that came from the top of the tower.

  Cadogan stood triumphantly on a crenel at the tower's edge, forty feet up. At least, the thing up there looked like Cadogan. He brandished his axe over his head. It and the entire front of his chain mail were soaked in blood. Tyrus knew it had to be Uilleam's blood.

  He stared. His blade sagged, forgotten.

  So. Only Tyrus and Cadogan. Cadogan would have to be dealt with, and Tyrus would have to do the dealing.

  Good.

  The thing that was Cadogan howled again, and even Tyrus's iron heart was chilled by it. Cadogan looked seven feet tall and skeletal, his red eyes gleaming.

  #

  Bogg had thought the hill busting itself up in the pit was bad enough, when the fracas he was heading into suddenly became a pup rescue. But now...

  Bogg knew that sound. That feller up there. He'd gone and switched into a wendigo. So whose team was he on?

  #

  Chapter 37

  Cadogan leapt from the leaning stone tower. He landed on his feet near Tyrus, and Tyrus brought Blodleter on guard.

  Cadogan's feet had driven six inches into the sand after that drop, but he seemed unhurt. He had grown a foot, and become emaciated. His arms were no stouter than the handle of his war axe, but they hefted it easily. Claws like knives tipped each finger, and wolflike teeth showed past his shrunken lips.

  Werewolf? Vampire? Tyrus had never seen anything like it.

  Cadogan raised his bloody axe to strike. "My lord!"

  The axe was a slow weapon and Tyrus parried the blow easily. "What happened to you, Cadogan?"

  Cadogan's armor hung on him loosely and rattled as he brought the axe to bear. His red eyes flashed gleefully.

  The fool. The next time he swung that axe, Tyrus would sidestep and cut him in two.

  Something dark moved beyond the crippled and writhing four-legged hill. At first, Tyrus thought it was another creature like Cadogan -- blood and black filth covered every inch of it. But it was a man, coated with grime and with half his beard missing. Another enemy?

  Cadogan struck while Tyrus was distracted, and the axe came down fast for Tyrus's head. Tyrus parried, hooked the axe's blade with Blodleter and wrenched it down and away from Cadogan. Cadogan released his axe and slashed his finger knives across Tyrus's face.

  Tyrus saw his own flying blood as his face opened up. Cadogan threw his head back and cackled.

  #

  Simon winced at the red splash from the swordsman's ruined right eye. The swordsman stumbled back and screamed.

  Simon pulled at the hill's fur, but the animal simply couldn't get up. In the two days since Simon had learned to ride this young female four-legged hill, he had come to know her. He had nicknamed her Hummock. And now -- the sound had been like a pine tree snapping -- her leg was broken and she would starve to death. And her tusk! And he had brought her to this!

  She wailed, a sad and deafening sound, and her trunk writhed helplessly.

  And what could Simon do now -- run for his life?

  The sling. The golden slingstone... one shot.

  But at the swordsman or the... monster?

  Simon knew what it was. He remembered Bogg's story of the wendigo, and even knew the vivet word for it.

  Chenoo.

  And as terrifying as the chenoo was, Simon knew that the swordsman's destiny would be far more destructive for all of Mira. He slipped the sling's loop on his finger and reached for the bag at his hip.

  The swordsman shook his head hard, flinging his long brown hair and throwing blood from his face. He gripped his sword and whipped it up to swing at the chenoo -- then feinted back and drove it into the chenoo's mouth. Two feet of the blade pushed out the back of the monster's head.

  Now was the moment. Simon's fingers slipped inside the bag, and he felt the hard weight of the gold stone.

  The chenoo didn't bleed. It grinned and its wolf teeth gnawed and squeaked on the blade. It lifted its hands, claws spread wide, and reached for the swordsman's throat.

  The swordsman's remaining eye was wide with horror. He stepped back, put a boot on the chenoo's chest, and heaved the monster off his sword. The blade made a terrible scraping noise as it came free of the monster's skull.

  The chenoo staggered back. A moment passed between the two of them as they sized each other up. The swordsman wielded his blade to strike again, but the chenoo darted out of range.

  And straight for Simon. Its red eyes fell on him and flashed ravenously. It leapt onto Hummock and balanced its gaunt frame on the furry crown of her head. Simon recoiled, drew up his legs to roll off the hill and run for his life, but the chenoo was too fast. It snatched Simon up, squeezed him in its claws, and leapt off Hummock.

  It thumped on the sand, long legs springing into a run across the dunes.

  Simon's body went numb with terror as the chenoo's claws pressed against his skin. The chenoo was fleeing the swordsman's blade, Simon knew, and stealing Simon as a meal for later. It would find some dark, safe place far from any chance of rescue, and peel the flesh from Simon's bones.

  Simon found the strength to move -- he kicked and pounded with his fists, but the chenoo's long, scrawny body felt like it was made of wood. Simon stretched and reached for anything to grasp. His sling trailed limply from his finger, and his head lolled back, upside down.

  Sky, sand, chenoo tracks, all blurring with tears. Simon choked on the monster's death stench and twisted to escape the claws cutting his skin. He blinked, struggling for a last glimpse of Hummock - an innocent creature that Simon had spurred into this disaster.

  And there was Bogg, bloodstained and dirty, creeping up on the swordsman. His splintercat cloak was gone, and black soot puffed off him with each step.

  But he was so far away! Simon's great-uncle receded, shrank, as the chenoo's broad strides carried it up the dunes toward the forest.

  Simon focused every last shred of strength and hope he had and screamed.

  #

  Chapter 38

  Bogg stopped where he was. Things were changing mighty fast.

  The pup had gotten himself snatched by a wendigo, and how it was making tracks! The swordsman stood there, dumb as a stump, watching it go. He held his shiny pigsticker in one hand and his bloody face in the other.

  Then the swordsman saw Bogg. Bogg held up his sabertooth knife, stuck out his jaw, and grinned at him.

  The swordsman didn't seem happy to see Bogg at all. He kept the sword in his right, grabbed the chest of truck in his left, and dragged it over the lip of the terrace leading down to Rastaban. He had had enough.

  Bogg's grin fell away. He sprinted to the spot where the swordsman and the wendigo had just been standing, next to the bellyaching four-legged hill.

  The wendigo ran.

  The swordsman ran.

  Everybody was getting away.

  Bogg's mind got up and danced. He figured the pup for a goner. The poor luckless lad could never get an even break. Wendigos were fast and tough, Bogg had never beaten one before, and this one was already up near the treeline. If Bogg chased down the wendigo, he couldn't be sure he could catch it, let alone thump it, let alone thump it before it killed the pup.

  And if he even tried, the swordsman would get away, safe to Rastaban, and lose himself in the crowd down there. Bogg would never find him, and if Bogg did, he'd have to wrestle thirty of the swordsman's friends, and Rastaban was a tough town.

  The chest dragged a smooth stripe through the sand as the swordsman hauled it one-handed. Blood ran down his face. He was laden, half-blind, vulnerable as all getout, and that sword he was swinging around for balance was Bogg's ticket to the Hestern Sea. No way Bogg would
let it go.

  Bogg's chin jutted forward, his eyes narrowed, his face grim. Poor luckless lad.

  The sorry, one-tusked hill let loose another ear-cracking holler.

  And somewhere in his hearing way above that, the pup's screaming came through to him. Bogg's head whipped around from the swordsman to the wendigo. It was a hundred yards away, near enough, and nigh into the trees.

  Bogg tucked away his fang dagger and picked up the bloody axe at his feet. He gripped it by the end of the handle and swung it around, spinning his body, faster and faster.

  He let fly. The axe sailed like a thunderbird rib after the wendigo and the pup. It whacked off the wendigo's left leg just above the knee. Down they went.

  Bogg barked out a laugh and sprinted after them, all the while thinking what a lucky bastard that swordsman was. By the time he got up the hill, the wendigo was snarling and scrabbling like a lizard after the pup, and the pup was scampering away, kicking sand with all he had.

  Bogg came up behind the skinny beast and pushed its head in the sand with his boot. "Hey there, pup. You all right?"

  The pup stopped scampering and collapsed flat. "Bogg! I knew you'd come for me. Watch out!"

  The wendigo's claws were sure fearsome up this close, but they only flailed and dug in the sand. The critter's face was buried, and it seemed to be turned all around and blinded. It couldn't find Bogg to slash at him.

  "Oh, him. I reckon we should deal with him."

  "Can you kill it?"

  "That's a trick. We'll try. There's not much else to worry about, now." Bogg pushed the cussed swordsman from his mind, and took a moment to recall the wendigo stories he'd heard. "We'll hog-tie him and take him to that tower."

  Simon picked himself up and, after teetering for a moment, threw his arms around Bogg. With his boot on such an important task, Bogg was in no place to get away from the kid... so he hugged the kid back.

  It was a peculiar moment.

  Bogg realized that the kid was still wearing Bogg's raccoon skin hat. Bogg had lost his own on the dragon, and felt suddenly that the kid had outdone him in the arena of hat-keeping responsibility. It made Bogg like the kid, a lot, in some hard-to-place way.

  Simon looked good in that hat. Sharp. Like he belonged in the woods.

  His nephew.

  The wendigo got to slashing too close, and Simon jumped back. Bogg stomped a little harder. "Yep. Let's tie him with something. His heart's colder than a well digger's wallet, memory serves. We'll have to melt it."