by Sam Ferguson
The three walked along the outskirts of the town, circling back up through the northern area that mingled with the trees. Unlike most cities, which would have some sort of wall marking its border, Tyrwyn simply yielded to the forest. The buildings became scarcer and the trees and bushes more dense. Only when the clearly defined walkway turned into a pine-needle covered path did they realize they had completely left Tyrwyn behind. After a while, the cavedog flicked its tongue in the air and then took off into the woods at an incredibly fast speed.
“Hey, come back!” Jonathan shouted.
“Just as well,” Ziegler said. “One less mouth to feed at this point. If it comes back, great, if not, we are no worse off than before.”
Jonathan nodded. Ziegler was right as usual.
The group walked through the forest for another ten minutes until they came upon a massive hill. As they followed the path around the large mound of lush ferns, they were stopped by a foursome of elves. Three held spears, while the fourth stood in the middle with his arms folded and a wicked sneer on his face.
“We don’t see many humans in these parts,” the elf said.
As he watched the tall elf look to his companions, Jonathan felt the same chilling tingle on the back of his neck as he had when they had seen the robin outside the window shop. “We are here to inspect your papers.”
“Papers?” Ziegler asked.
“There have been strange and terrible things happening of late,” the tall elf said. “Murderers have been lurking our streets, and battles have been fought on our lands. The one thing they all have in common is the sighting of several humans.” The elf held out his hand. “Papers, now.”
The three elves fanned out and stamped their spears on the ground.
Jonathan felt the tension rising. His muscles tensed slightly, ready to spring into action. He glanced at his comrades and saw Jason’s hand hovering over the hilt of his sword. Ziegler was beginning to grin and was standing very still.
Then, before any of the humans or elves moved a muscle, a long, brown animal came darting out of the ferns. With one whack of its tail it snapped the first elf’s spear and buckled the warrior’s knee. A moment later, the animal’s jaws snatched the elf in the middle, gripping and tearing the flesh at the hip joint. The elf’s face contorted in pain as his body was jerked forward and then thrown backward to the ground.
The warriors broke into action, but Jonathan had already taken his bow in hand and let an arrow loose. An elf took the arrow to the throat and collapsed. Jason rushed forward and parried a spear thrust by the second warrior before countering and severing the elf’s left arm below the elbow. The cavedog finished that warrior by leaping up and raking the elf across the face and neck with its front claws and then crushing the elf’s throat in its jaws.
Ziegler let out a shout and sprinted forward for the third warrior. He dodged the elf’s first strike and then came in fast and hard, leaping into the air over the extended spear and driving a punch down into the elf’s face, letting his body weight force the much thinner elf to the ground. Ziegler then seized the broken spear and ripped it from the elf, driving it into the elf’s stomach a moment later. The battle won and the warriors slain, the three of them surrounded the severely wounded leader as Jonathan’s cavedog stalked up toward the elf, snarling and hissing as it moved.
“It will sense if you try to cast magic,” Ziegler warned. “If you want to live, then you should act with extreme caution.”
“Fie the women that bore you lot into the world!” the elf growled.
Jason was there in the blink of an eye with his sword tip resting on the elf’s throat. “I don’t let dogs speak of my mother,” he said in a low voice.
“Who sent you?” Ziegler asked. “You didn’t come to check our papers.”
The elf laughed, wincing momentarily at the pain it caused him to move. “You are without help,” he said. “The master has many spies.” The elf pointed up to the trees above him.
Jonathan saw the same, red-breasted robin sitting atop a branch and watching them. No sooner had he found it, than the bird took to wing once more.
“Jonathan!” Ziegler shouted.
The young archer was already reaching for an arrow. He took aim and let fly. The arrow pierced the bird through and through, carrying the body and nailing it to a tree.
The elf hissed. “No! You wretch!” The elf moved as if to cast a spell, but the cavedog lunged in, making a mess of finishing this last foe as it ripped the elf’s throat out and slashed at the body with his claws.
“I’m glad it came back,” Ziegler commented, speaking of the cavedog. The others nodded emphatically in agreement. “We should hurry,” Ziegler said as the three of them watched the cavedog finish his task. “Whoever was watching us will not be pleased with what we have done.”
Off into the forest they ran. The cavedog easily outpaced them, but it would only rush ahead of them for a short while before circling back to them, scanning the forest all the while for new threats.
CHAPTER 8
The forest was so thick that it took the group two more days to forge ahead thirty miles. There were no paths or roads deeper in the forest, so they hacked and pushed through as best they could. Though the going was extremely slow, even Ziegler commented several times how fortunate they were that no one had followed them after the incident near Tyrwyn.
In the meantime, Jonathan was busy working with the cavedog. He had learned a couple of good signals and commands such as “come” and “stay”, each accompanied by their own hand signals, but he was unable to make the cavedog fetch. Still, all of them were impressed by the cavedog’s hunting instincts. Each night when they stopped to make camp, the animal would run off in search of food, and it never came back empty handed.
When the forest finally broke near the top of a hill overlooking a meadow, they all stopped and rested a few moments while they took in the sight in front of them. Tall grasses of green and yellow bent to the will of the wind as the meadow leveled out and butted up against a wide stream. Beyond the water were tall, white towers obscured by ivy and overgrowth.
“What is this?” Jason asked. “Where is the map? Let’s pull it out and see what this city is called.”
Jonathan removed his pack and they fished the map out that they had purchased from Eustinian in the city of Telward and unrolled it. He scanned the map several times, drawing a line with his eyes starting at Tyrwyn and then going north. He repeated the exercise several times, but never found anything marked on the map between Tyrwyn and Heartspring to the north. He knew they weren’t as far up north as Heartspring, but he couldn’t find any settlement or name upon the map where he thought they were.
“Let me see it,” Ziegler said. The large captain took the map in hand and studied it for a couple of seconds. He grunted and handed it back to Jonathan. “It’s not here. Whatever it is, it’s either a lot older than the map, or perhaps it was constructed in secret.”
“How could a city of this size be a secret?” Jason asked.
Ziegler shrugged.
“Perhaps this is where Jaeger, the gnome, went after he took the crystal from Lysander.” Jonathan replaced the map in its protective case and then stuffed it back into the backpack. “Well, no use standing around out here. It’ll be dark soon.”
The cavedog started walking toward the meadow first, the others followed it as Jonathan slipped his backpack onto his shoulders. It was nice to be out of the thick forests and feel the naked sunlight on his face once more. The grass brushed against Jonathan’s trousers, leaving bits or fuzzy seed briars along his knees. The ground was a lot harder than Jonathan had expected, almost as if it was a packed road beneath the grass. He moved a patch of green blades aside with his foot and looked down to see compact dirt that was entirely black. It wasn’t the dark black of fertile earth that every farmer envied, this was a blackness brought on by fire and scorching. He had seen similar marks once when a slash and burn fire had gotten out of hand on the ea
stern side of Holstead, but this was far more severe. He bent down to the ground and tried to pick at the dirt with his finger, but found it too hard for his fingernail to break. He pulled a knife from his sheath and dug a small hole into the ground. The black earth went down several inches.
Whatever had burned this area had been enormous, and extremely powerful.
“Jonathan, what are you doing?” Jason called out from ahead.
Jonathan looked up to see that his brother and the others were standing on the bank of the stream waiting for him. He picked up a clump of dirt in his hands and caught up with them quickly.
“Playing in the dirt?” Jason asked.
Jonathan ignored the playful jab and held his hand out to Captain Ziegler. “Take a look at this,” he said. “Something bad happened here.”
Ziegler took the scorched earth in his hand and crumbled it with his fingers. “This was more than a forest fire,” he said. “How big was the patch?”
Jonathan shrugged. “I think it’s the whole meadow.”
Ziegler looked to the skies and Jonathan knew exactly what the captain was thinking. A wizard would not have been able to cause such large devastation. To burn an entire field so thoroughly, it would take a dragon, or perhaps a demon the size of the one they had encountered in Lysander’s Peril.
“We should get to the city,” Ziegler said as he cast his eyes to the sky. “Come on, let’s quicken our pace.”
The group plodded through the shallow stream and jogged toward the ruins. The looming alabaster towers might at least provide some sort of shelter if there was a dragon nearby. The closest towers stood jagged and broken, their once beautiful spires cracked and now nothing more than spikes of stone stabbing into the air. The shorter buildings were mostly intact, though some had collapsed roofs and walls. They were all covered in ivy and vines, which would have made for a beautiful scene if Jonathan didn’t have the fear of running into a dragon burning in the back of his mind.
Ziegler went up to the nearest tower, a building that was nearly completely intact at the base, but broke off suddenly thirty feet up, exposing an interior staircase that was sagging with age under its own weight. The captain pulled aside some vines and then whistled through his teeth.
Jonathan saw black scorch marks marring the white stone of the tower’s exterior. Whatever had obliterated the field had come to this city as well. The cavedog stayed close to Jonathan, testing the dirt with its claws and keeping pace with the boy without running ahead.
“Let’s find shelter in the city,” Ziegler said. “We’ll spend the night here and then move on.”
The light from the sun was still stretched into the sky, but the bright orb had already disappeared below the western horizon, threatening to take the daylight with it shortly. The group moved quickly beyond the outer towers, following what had once been a cobblestone street as it led them deeper into the city. Great buildings rose up on either side. Those that were nearly intact still proudly displayed the intricate carving and stonework along the mouldings and around the windows. The beauty may have been exquisite at one time, but now it seemed little more than a sad reminder of whatever tragedy had overtaken this city. The windows were dark, void of glass, and blackened with shadows, lending an eerie quality to the entire town.
Jonathan stared at one building, catching just a glimpse of something lying in the open doorway. It took him several minutes to realize that he was looking at the skeletal hand of a person killed long ago. He nearly stopped in his tracks, but Jason nudged him and told him to keep up. Ziegler had turned around the corner to the left.
As Jonathan and Jason turned the corner, they saw Ziegler standing in the middle of the street. His sword was out, but he was quiet and still as a statue. Jonathan looked past Ziegler to see a strange scene of bones and ruins. On the left side of the street was a pile of scorched bones scattered against the rubble of what had once been a house, or perhaps some other smaller building. On the right, a solemn skeleton was lying upon the ground. The chainmail had rusted long ago, but it still covered most of the skeleton’s ribcage. The tarnished helmet was lying just a few inches above the skull. A spear was gripped tightly in the skeleton’s gauntleted hand, stabbing up through the ribs of a massive skeleton that Jonathan didn’t recognize.
He moved closer to it, discovering wing bones, arm bones, and a long tail. The monster’s skeleton had weakened over time, with some bits of ivy and moss clung to the bones now and had separated some of the joints. It didn’t look large enough to be a dragon, but then, Jonathan had never seen one before.
The only thing he knew for sure was that both of these combatants had died together. The monster had been run through with the spear, and it had either mortally wounded the warrior below, or pinned him down and smothered him. Either way, both of them were dead.
“That’s not the only one,” Jason said as he jabbed an elbow into Jonathan’s spine.
Jonathan turned around and looked further down the street. There were skeletons, armor, and weapons strewn all about the inner city. Most of the fallen appeared to be humanoids, probably elves given the fact that they were deep in Tanglewood Forest, but there were other monster skeletons as well. Some had wings, others didn’t. A few of them had two legs, but the majority appeared to have either four or even six legs in addition to their arms.
“Whatever happened here, it looks worse than the trolls,” Jason said in a voice little louder than a whisper.
The cavedog growled low suddenly, tensing its body and tasting the air with its tongue.
“Something is here,” Ziegler said as they all watched the cavedog.
The cavedog’s eyes were fixed on a square building some fifty yards away. Jonathan studied the building, but he didn’t see anything at all. No movement, no forms hiding in the shadows, nothing.
The cavedog clawed at the ground and shook itself, snapping its jaws as it remained fixed on the building.
“We need to run,” Ziegler said. His tone was flat, but nobody missed the gravity of his warning.
Ziegler pointed to a nearby house of stone and the group sprinted for it. Jonathan had only gone two steps when he heard a tremendous roar that shook the ground. He glanced over his shoulder to see a strange, orange glow from within the building the cavedog had been staring at only a few moments before. He didn’t wait to see what it was, he redoubled his pace and made it to the house just after the others.
“Come on boy, come!” Jonathan shouted for the cavedog.
The massive lizard wasn’t responding. He snarled back at the building, standing his ground and thumping his tail.
“Come here!” Jonathan shouted again.
“Jonathan, just come inside!” Ziegler yelled.
Jonathan took a small piece of gravel and threw it at the cavedog. It bounced off the animal’s back and it turned to regard him. “Come here!” Jonathan shouted as he patted his leg.
Finally, the lizard reluctantly obeyed, running to catch up with Jonathan.
The two entered the house and Ziegler swung the heavy door closed and slid the small metal bolt into place to lock the door.
“Look for something to barricade the door,” Ziegler said.
Another roar rent the air, followed by the sound of cracking stone. Heavy footsteps rushed toward the building they were in, shaking the ground as each foot fell upon the ground. Jason found a chair and slid it up under the door knob. The cavedog was backing away toward the far wall, never taking its eyes off of the door.
“Jonathan, move your legs!” Ziegler shouted. Only then did the young man realize he had been standing in the way while watching the others. He jumped aside as Ziegler brought up a hunk of stone and placed it at the base of the door. Jonathan looked around and saw a doorway leading to a hall. He went through it, trying to find something useful to help the others. In the hall there were a few toppled pedestals and bits of shattered pottery. His feet crunched along shards of pottery as he walked through the hall toward a door on the l
eft. He opened the door and found what was left of a bedroom. The outer wall had caved in, along with the roof. The top half of a skeleton protruded out from the rubble, a hand stretched outward. Jonathan let his eyes trace from the hand toward the other wall and there he felt a lump catch in his throat. There were two skeletons huddled against the wall. One was that of an adult. It was cradling a much smaller skeleton. This room is where an entire family had perished. One parent fell victim to the stone, while the other died defending their child. What had killed the last two was anyone’s guess. There were no scorch marks or obvious signs of struggle.
Jonathan jumped when a hand grabbed his right arm from behind.
“Come back inside, you dolt!” Jason chided. “We have to barricade this door too.” The three men quickly piled rubble in front of the door.
“Where’s the cavedog?” Jonathan asked.
“Still staring at the front door,” Ziegler replied.
The footsteps stopped and something crashed into the front of the house. High-pitched screeching assaulted their ears and the house shook and trembled. Jonathan pushed past the others to find the cavedog. He turned the corner and went through the doorway in the hall to find him still standing where he had been. The animal looked to Jonathan, and then another crash rocked the house.
The front door split and collapsed inward, taking the chair and stone along with it. Jonathan ran toward the cavedog and motioned for it to follow him into another room.
“Come on, this way!” Jonathan shouted. The cavedog obeyed the command, and Ziegler and Jason were not far behind. Soon they located a hatch leading to a root cellar. They clambered down and hunkered against the far wall as the house above continued to shake.
The monster’s roars grew louder and angrier with each passing second. Stones skittered across the floor.
“Easy now,” Ziegler said in the darkness.
Jonathan kept his eyes glued to the thin crack of light from a tiny gap on one side of the hatch above Dust and dirt fell as the roar turned to angry screams and screeches and the monster above stomped around upstairs. Scraping sounds accompanied each footstep, giving Jonathan the impression that whatever was up there most definitely had claws. A shadow obscured the thin line of light and the footsteps crossed beyond the hatch above.