Branded (Master of All Book 1)

by Simon Archer

  While that was all fascinating, there was something that worried me, and that was the distinct lack of animal sounds. There was no buzz of insects, no warbling of songbirds, and no occasional snapping twigs or crackling leaves from animals creeping through the underbrush. All I could hear was the noises we made as we crept ever onward in the twisting trail.

  Just to be sure, I checked my pocket compass once. That was as helpful as a poke in the eye, as the needle simply spun crazily on its axis. Still, I had a good sense of direction, and I was acclimating to our new environment quickly. I was almost dead certain we weren’t going in circles or spirals, that we were headed somewhere. In a strange way, it almost felt like I was coming home.

  In a way, I supposed I was.

  It was only maybe ten minutes later that we hit our first real problem: a crossroads. It wasn’t even a clearing, that would be too generous of a word. Instead, it was a crossing point of four different paths which meant there were a grand total of seven new paths we could go down. They weren’t quite identical, of course, but with no real frame of reference and no clear sounds or signals, we might as well have rolled a die to see which path to take.

  “Well, this is a sticky wicket,” Reggie noted as he scratched at his whiskers. He knelt low as I stepped into the center of the crossroads to inspect the detritus on the forest floor. “Hmm, well, if there is any good news, Master William, it is that there certainly seems to be some disturbances in the trail.” After taking a handful of silvery leaves in his hand, he gave them a good sniff. “Hard to say how long since something came through here, but if we were still on Earth, I’d say a day at most.”

  I nodded slowly and kept silent. Instead, I focused on trying to catch any sound at all from the other trails. For a long moment, I couldn’t hear a thing. Despite all the clear signs of life around us, it was like every sound was smothered in a blanket. With Sir Thorpe sure there someone or something had come through here, it made me wonder if there was another element of magic involved.

  But then, I heard something. A clear, distinct something… a voice. A woman’s voice, whispering in my ear like silk-wrapped steel.

  “You returned,” the words said. The very sound of them made my heart beat harder. “He promised that one day, you would come for me.”

  My reaction to that voice must have been obvious because Reggie came up behind me.

  “What is it?” he whispered. “I know I’m getting on in the years, but I don’t hear anything and yet--”

  I raised a hand for silence, and he thankfully obliged just in time as the voice came back. “I am weak, but still, if you can follow my voice, you can free me. You can free us all.”

  There was a tremor in her voice as if it was taking real effort for her to make her voice carry to me, but I was now almost certain it was coming from the rightmost trail. There was another thing I was certain of, even though I had nothing to go on save for the near-electric feeling that voice made me feel.

  This voice belonged to Her, the woman that Dad wanted me to find, the key to all this.

  “I can hear Her,” I whispered to Reggie as I turned back to him. “And I think She’s in trouble.”

  The aging explorer gave me a long look, his expression bordering on disbelief for a moment. It was clear he couldn’t hear Her, and he probably thought I was going a bit soft in the head, but then he cracked a smile.

  “Well then, Master William,” he said as he drew his revolver, “we had best go to the lady’s aid! Lead the way.”

  I didn’t say another word, I didn’t want to miss the voice that had now softened into an incoherent but entrancing humming, but I matched his smile and gave him a thumbs-up. It meant a lot to know that, even when things went crazy, Sir Thorpe trusted me.

  With that, I turned on my heel, focused on that humming, and plunged deeper into the trail.

  3

  With renewed purpose, Reggie and I plunged through the Forest of Welcome, as Dad called it. The rainbow leaves blurred by, and as we progressed, it became clear to me that the only welcome this forest had was to the twisting maze of trails we discovered. Past that initial winding path, the woods looked to be a chaotic mass of crossroads, switchbacks, and dead-end trails. If I didn’t have Her constant humming in my ears to guide us, we would have been lost for days at the least.

  After ten minutes of our fast-paced chase, I caught the first sounds I had heard other than ourselves and Her voice. It came in a rush as my ears popped, almost as if I were on a plane rising after take-off. Maybe it was some field or invisible barrier we crossed, but when I glanced back at Sir Thorpe, I could tell that I wasn’t the only one to have experienced it.

  He slowed his pace and pointed at his ears, and I nodded in understanding as I slowed my pace down to a walk. We both cocked our ears towards the trail ahead, Her humming playing a steady undercurrent to the new noises we heard, namely the echo of heavy footfalls on earth mixed with the clatter of metal. Armored men were my best guess, and primitive armor by Earth standards at that. Under the fuss and bother, I could just make out what sounded like a hurried and heated discussion.

  I slowed to a crawl now as I leaned low to lessen my profile. While the voices were hard to make sense of, caught between the clangs and the melodic humming, I swore that I could comprehend out some of the words. Rationally, that was impossible. This was an alien world, and I doubted I would even find human beings once we slipped around the bend ahead to look and yet…

  I glanced back at Sir Thorpe, and his face was screwed up in concentration. “I swear that I can almost understand them,” he whispered harshly as he rubbed his whiskers.

  With a nod, I thumbed to the turn in the trail and put a finger to my lips. Reggie nodded and followed my lead, dropping into a hunter’s crouch as we prowled a little further ahead. Every step forward brought the sounds into more clarity, and to my shock, I could understand the words. Whoever was talking had a deep, guttural voice, and the words were mixed with an almost porcine snorting. It was English… but it also wasn’t. It was a hard sensation to describe, almost a buzzing in my ear and my head that seemed to act as a filter, to turn the alien words into something I could understand.

  Even if I couldn’t, the tone was undeniable. The guy, and I was certain it was a man of some sort, was extremely pissed-off.

  “By the Black Runes, I don’t care how many moons we’ve been sitting here,” the voice snorted. “We do our duty, and I will not brook any disobedience.”

  Another piggy voice called back, whiny and wheedling despite the depth of it. “But, mighty Uruk, you said yourself that no one has come through here for decades, and you have your slave to protect it, anyway. Why can’t we take it easy?”

  The word ‘slave’ made my blood boil. What can I say? I was as American as anyone could be. On top of that, while I had no idea what they were guarding, maybe the slave in question was Her. Or maybe She was what they were guarding. I could feel Reggie tense behind me and heard the unmistakable sound of his revolver being drawn as the voices continued their back-and-forth. Not the worst idea. I silently slipped my knife free as I took a careful peek around the trunk of a tree with bark like dragon scales.

  What lay beyond the bend was a short bit of the same shaped trail that opened into a large clearing, and in that clearing was my first sight of the Land Below’s native people, at least two types of them. Both kinds could have stepped out of a fantasy movie, and they were very distinctly different from another as well as certainly not human.

  The majority of them were the people stomping around the clearing, making most of the ruckus as well as all the conversation. There were five of the creatures, four dressed in a motley collection of metal plates over boiled leather armor while the last wore a rather well-kept robe of purple silk trimmed in gold. The snorts and snuffles that mingled with their words now made a lot more sense, as their faces were dominated by large snouts, very much like a pig or, more properly, a boar. The boar aspect was only enhanced by the
large, sharp tusks that protruded from their lower jaws and their gleaming, beady eyes set deep in their skulls.

  Outside of the face, the creatures were more human. Their skin ran a range from ruddy red to pale pink, and while they all seemed to be carrying a bit of paunch on them, they all seemed strong and sturdy, even the robed one. Though their hands only had three fingers, they otherwise seemed quite normal, but their legs ended in feet that I could best liken to an elephant’s.

  Most of the armored ones were gathering up in a half-hearted formation, almost like Earth soldiers gathering for inspection with a variety of medieval weapons, while one of them, the largest, was obviously the whiner, as he seemed to be sniveling before the robed one.

  It was that robed one that caught my eye the most. He was cleaner than the others, for one, and he carried himself with authority. Instead of a real weapon, he had what looked to be a strangely tipped metal rod in one hand, and in the other, a chain that connected to the collar around the other type of being in the clearing.

  Whatever else this being was, she was imminently female. While the pig men were tall and barrel-shaped, this woman was short, barely five feet tall with a figure that could have been the example picture for hourglass in the dictionary. In fact, at first glance, you could mistake her for being human, but once you realized her skin was actually an earth-brown instead of being deeply tanned, the rest of the differences came on all at once. Her long, wavy hair wasn’t made of human hair, but a cascade of fine leaves in all the colors of the forest I had seen so far. Though her face was downcast, I swore I could see a hint of almond-shaped eyes and full lips set in a forlorn frown. Wispy vines seemed to writhe slowly around her delicate hands while roots and grasses danced around her bare feet, all of which added to the air of unearthly exoticness that pervaded her.

  Speaking of those bare feet, that wasn’t the only thing about her that was bare. In fact, the beauty was mostly naked, showing every inch of perfectly smooth skin from foot to thigh, the curve of her flat stomach, her rounded shoulders, and elegant arms. The only things she wore was what I could only describe as a bikini made of leaves, vines, and moss. It was just enough to keep her from being fined for indecent exposure, probably not something to worry about in this alien world. I would be lying to say if I wasn’t pleased by the sight, from the curve of her perfect ass to the canyon of cleavage her large breasts created.

  And then I was driven to anger because right on her breastbone, a livid scar marred her flesh. No, not a scar… it was a brand, like what a rancher would sear into a cow’s rump to claim it as his. As if the collar and chain weren’t enough to let me know that she was the robed pig man’s slave. No doubt the metal rod in the monster’s hand was the iron that branded the woman.

  But the one thing I knew through my growing rage was that the plant woman was not Her… because She spoke again, pulling me out of my fury.

  “Take me up, son of Tyler,” She whispered from the clearing, “and we can break the dryad’s chain and heal her soul.”

  My eyes snapped away from the pig men, away from the slave dryad, and to the source of the whisper. I had been so distracted by the unusual people and the dryad’s beauty to notice what looked to be a twisted mass of thorny vines that grew up from the center of the grassy field near where the robed pig and his slave stood. It was like they had grown up around a lattice, like a very dangerously sharp tomato plant, but instead, I could just barely see a rusty metal shaft of some kind that looked to be thrust into an old stump. At the peak of it, maybe three feet off the ground, a handle of polished wood thrust up out of the tangle of vines, the only piece of the bound thing clear of thorns.

  I put the last piece together when She whispered again, urgently this time, and the metal under the rust shone with faint golden light in time with her words. “Come! Act swiftly before the orcs see you.”

  Whatever that thing was trapped by the vines was Her, and the realization made my palms itch in a desire to take hold of that handle and wield Her… whatever she was. I might have sprung into action right then, but Sir Thorpe’s hand on my shoulder brought me out of my near trance. He pulled back just a little, a warning to approach this cautiously, and as I calmed down, I caught more of the robed pig’s argument with his subordinates.

  “Quit your sniveling, you blunt-tusked slime,” he snorted at the whiner before tugging on the dryad’s chain. “Petra sensed intruders in the woods, so get your weapons and be wary! They might die in the forest, but they might also bumble their way here.” The enslaved girl almost seemed to fold in on herself at his words, but the pig-man ignored her distress. Instead, as if he expected more arguments, he raised his branding iron, and the twisted tip glowed red hot. “If you want to argue about it, I’ll make your soul mine as well.”

  It was plain now, with the light the tip shed, that the iron’s design matched the horrible burn in the dryad Petra’s chest. Yep, that pig man… an orc, I guessed from Her whispers… had risen to the top of my shit list.

  With that last threat made, the whining orc did exactly as he was told, hefting a spiked mace over his shoulder as he joined his already cowed comrades. It looked like they were about to spread out around the clearing, to the four shaped trails that exited it, and I glanced back at Reggie with an arched eyebrow.

  Sir Thorpe’s grey eyes were narrowed, and it was clear that he had the same basic idea in mind as me. Take out the orcs, free the dryad. He nodded to me, then pointed at the clump of warriors as they began to break apart. I nodded back, then raised a finger before pointing at the end of our trail. The idea I was hoping Reggie got was to wait until they had fully separated so that we could take them down systematically, and I knew I had when a rather cold grin came across his lips.

  I flashed him a thumbs-up then turned to keep closer to the entrance of the clearing, keeping to the shadows thrown by the thick canopy overhead to conceal my advance. Though the slave master’s threats spurred the guards into action, it was obvious they were still half-assing it. The one that was walking toward our path scratched at the patchy stubble around his pig snout as he yawned, his axe cutting a furrow in the grass as he dragged it behind him.

  I tensed and readied myself as he came closer, completely oblivious to my presence. This guy was almost as big as the whiner, probably three inches taller than my six-foot-even frame, and as well-muscled even if he carried a paunch on him. Of course, there was no way to tell where this guy’s vital organs were, if they were close to a human’s or not, but the irregular plates hanging off his leathers left me a tempting target right in his side.

  Now, I was no stone-cold killer, but in the crazy travels I had taken as part of Dad’s weird training trips over the years, I’d have to fight, even kill, in self-defense, and this? This was something more important than that.

  As the orc came within a few steps of the trail entrance, I made my move. With only the faintest crunching of leaves, I lunged forward, staying low as I hooked my knife up and around towards the orc’s exposed side, my free arm up and ready to try to block his axe arm. Those beady eyes went wide at the sight of me, but as powerful as the orc looked, his reactions were dirt slow. He barely even flinched as I slammed my blade right into the gap in his plates, and the tip slipped right into and through a seam in the leathers underneath.

  The orc let out a loud, screeching squeal, sounding, like, well, a stuck pig as the razor-sharp knife split through fat and muscle, chipping off bone before driving up to the hilt. As dark red blood began to spill around the hilt, the warrior tried to swing his axe around, but I caught his forearm with my own to interrupt the strike.

  With a catch of the wrist, I then twisted his arm into a vicious wrist lock, the familiar popping of torn ligaments music to my ears as I wrenched the orc’s arm hard. The orc’s axe slipped loose from his grip as Sir Thorpe slipped past my little brawl to take aim at the rest of the alarmed guards.

  Though they had been lazy and sluggish before, the sound of agony from their brother-
in-arms seemed to incense the orcs to action. Their collective war cry made the branches shake, leaves fall, and the dryad shook in fear… but then the booming report of Reggie’s pistol cut them off as the whining guard’s skull caved in from the impact of a .455 slug. That shut them up for a moment, just long enough for me to rip my knife free of the first one, yank him forward by the wrist, and drive my now-free elbow right into his snout. Cartilage and bone broke under the force of the blow, and though I didn’t think he was dead yet, that orc dropped hard to the grass along with his dead fellow.

  “Kill the Uplanders! Start with the old wizard!” the robed orc yelled unnecessarily, as the last two guards looked ready to do just that and raised his branding iron again. The tip glowed an emerald green, and the brand on Petra’s chest responded in kind. “Protect Libritas, my pet, and protect me as well!”

  The old wizard must have been Sir Thorpe, and I couldn’t blame the slave master’s mistake. Guns made for some awfully good magic tricks, but that also meant that the two guards, one with a nasty, rusty hooked sword and the other with an iron-bound club, made a beeline for the old explorer, their mass letting them build up a good head of steam, and coincidentally cutting me off from where She was trapped.

  Reggie backpedaled as he took aim, but I swept past him as I snatched the orc’s discarded axe off the ground.

  “I’ve got these guys, Reg,” I yelled as I blocked off the orcs’ charge. “Wheel around, try to get a good shot!” The weapon in my hand was poorly maintained, but the balance felt on point as I brought it around in a wide, two-handed swing. My plan wasn’t to kill anyone with that stroke but to force them to check their movement and drive them back.