The Eye of Tanglewood Forest (Haymaker Adventures Book 3)

by Sam Ferguson

  The battle was over in seconds.

  Ziegler was panting heavily and had blood splattered across his front and hands. He spat on the corpse of a nearby Kottri and then took back their belongings. None of the creatures survived.

  Jonathan didn’t say anything. He took his backpack and watched quietly as they all readied themselves for the rest of the journey. Ziegler dropped the Kottri knife in the dirt and pulled on his backpack’s straps, and then he set off without another word.

  Griff trotted on happily after the large warrior, seemingly pleased with the outcome.

  Jason stepped in close to Jonathan and whispered, “Never underestimate what Ziegler will do to rescue a friend.”

  Jonathan nodded. “I had a feeling he was laying a trap for them.”

  Jason sighed and then glanced back at the Kottri bodies. “Poor fools had no idea who they were up against.”

  Jonathan stood there looking at the leader’s body for a few moments after Jason began following Ziegler. “If I find your wife, I’ll get her back from the elves in the tower,” Jonathan promised. He turned and hurried to catch up with the others, unsure how he would break the news to the wife of someone he had just killed. He put the thought out of his mind. The Kottri had been lunging at him. He didn’t have any other choice, he reasoned with himself. The cat-man should have let them go without a fight. Or, better yet, he should have had the courage to join them in rescuing Raven and Teliah.

  “Don’t waste your breath,” Ziegler said. “Have you never heard of the Kottri?”

  Jonathan shook his head.

  “They would have slaughtered us if we had waited only a moment longer. They are one of the abominable races. Created by some elf wizard to be a kind of army. They are vile, savage creatures. They will slaughter anything that isn’t Kottri if given the chance. They’ve even been known to cannibalize rival clans and warriors among their own kind.”

  “But he spoke of his wife,” Jonathan said.

  “Lies. The Kottri do not have families like you and I do. They breed like animals, with the stronger males dominating the mating season. Trust me, even the gods do not look upon their souls with pity. They are vermin, and never to be trusted.”

  “How do you know this?” Jonathan pressed.

  Ziegler stared down at the dead Kottri nearest to him. “You remember I said my brother wanted to go to Lysander’s Peril?”

  Jonathan nodded.

  “He left with an expedition. I was twelve, he was just past his twentieth birthday. I tagged along, much the same way you tag along after your brother. We only made it into Tanglewood Forest maybe twenty miles. We were far south of Tyrwyn. We were set upon by a band of Kottri. They used similar lies to gain our trust. My brother ordered the other guards with us to turn over our weapons as a sign of good faith, to prove we would leave.” Ziegler’s face turned hard and he spat on the nearest Kottri corpse. “As soon as we gave them our weapons and started to leave, they pounced on us from behind. They slaughtered all of our guards and the other expedition members. My brother and I managed to flee, but not before my brother was shot.” Ziegler reached up to wipe the tears from his eyes. “The Kottri always use poison on their arrows. My brother died before we escaped the forest. I was the only survivor.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jonathan said. “I didn’t know.”

  Ziegler nodded. “I don’t talk about it.” He surveyed the scene and then turned to the north. “We’ll have to be fast if we want to get ahead of the others. They’ll soon notice that this group is dead, and they’ll come looking for us.”

  The group set out in nearly absolute silence, apart from the occasional grunt as Ziegler led them deep through the forest. They paused every so often, ensuring they weren’t being followed or tracked by other Kottri. Ziegler did his best to steer the party far to the west in an effort to avoid the Kottri village as well.

  They stopped traveling earlier than usual, as soon as Ziegler found a defensible hollow with a stout cliff they could put at their backs, complete with a granite overhang that would protect them from above. Jonathan and Jason quickly made themselves useful by gathering branches and setting pikes and poles into the ground around the camp. Griff impressed them all by digging a sizeable ditch around the outside of the pikes as well, while Ziegler fashioned traps with various materials from the forest.

  Jonathan didn’t have to ask why they were preparing such defenses. They had done their best to evade the Kottri during the day, but inevitably they would find them. If they were half as cat-like as they appeared, then they would not only be able to track footprints, but scents as well. Jonathan didn’t even want to think about a cat’s enhanced vision during the nighttime darkness.

  Sooner or later, the Kottri would discover their missing guards, and they would be out for blood.

  After the pikes were set in place, Jonathan and Jason built a wall to shield them from arrows. They used loose stones to build the foundation, and then packed the spaces with clay and dirt as they erected walls made of branches. It wasn’t an impenetrable fortress by any means, but it would help add another layer of protection.

  Once they had all finished with their tasks, Ziegler tried to coax Griff to dig into the back of the cliff. The animal looked at him, but then sat down and curled its tail around itself.

  “Any ideas how to make him work a bit longer?” Ziegler asked.

  Jonathan shrugged and slapped his sides. “I don’t know more about him than you do.” Jonathan went to the cliff and raked his fingers across the stone. “Dig, Griff. Dig like you did before.”

  The animal cocked its head to the side and flicked its forked tongue out to taste the air.

  Jonathan repeated the motion a few more times.

  Griff stood and went to the stone. He clawed against it, but this time the cavedog’s claws did little more than mark the surface.

  “The stone is too hard, he can’t cut it,” Jonathan said.

  Ziegler nodded. “Then this will have to do.” The large man looked around the shelter and then sighed to himself and pointed out toward the forest. “Come on, let’s go.”

  “Go?” Jonathan asked.

  Jason laughed. “This is the obvious defense, but we never use the obvious defense,” Jason said. “It’s something we learned in the swamps.”

  “Get Griff to come with me. We’ll need his speed,” Ziegler said. The trio walked away from the shelter about fifty yards and Ziegler used a stick to mark out a large oval in the ground. “Have your pet dig a hole here, deep enough for us to lie down in and use branches to hold a bit of the dirt off of our faces.”

  “I’m sorry, what?” Jonathan asked.

  Jason slapped his younger brother on the back. “Don’t worry, we did this lots of times in the swamps. As long as the enemy doesn’t see you do it, it always works.”

  Ziegler stomped off through the woods and after a while Jonathan could hear loud cracking noises. The younger archer called Griff to him and mimed digging in the dirt. The large lizard happily obliged, making quick work of the task. Whenever it veered too far and dug beyond the oval outline, Jonathan or Jason quickly redirected it. Soon, the hole was four feet deep and ready to use.

  “Now grab some boughs. Try to use the large pine trees, their thick needles work best. And make sure not to use trees close to the hole,” Jason said.

  Jonathan sighed and moved along to find the materials he needed. He broke off several branches that were thick with offshoots and needles, and then he brought them back to the hole. By the time he returned, Ziegler was back and leaning several large poles at either end of the oval.

  “It’s Finnigan’s Oak,” Ziegler explained. “It’s like the bamboo that grows in patches in the swamps, mostly hollow except for pockets of water, which are easily enough drained. This will allow air down to us.”

  Jonathan nodded as if he understood, but a large part of him questioned whether the ploy would work or if they would end up simply killing themselves underground and making
the Kottri’s job much easier. Still, he didn’t complain or voice his concerns. He moved along with his task as directed and helped build a shelter of sorts in the hole with the branches. Then, after all was prepared, the three of them filled in almost all of the hole. Ziegler sent Jonathan and Jason into the hole and waited until they and Griff got into the shelter of branches. Then he filled in the rest of the hole.

  “How’s he going to get in?” Jonathan asked.

  Jason squeezed his brother’s shoulder. “He isn’t coming in,” he said. “He stays up top to make sure the hole is filled in all the way, and then he covers the top with forest debris to help hide the freshly dug up dirt.”

  Jonathan squirmed to sit up. “He’ll die up there alone!”

  Jason pressed his brother back down. “Don’t move. If you disturb the branches, the dirt will fall in around us. We need to keep it out so the air pipes work through the night.”

  “This is madness,” Jonathan said.

  “We’ll be all right,” Jason replied.

  “I should at least send Griff up to help,” Jonathan offered.

  “Ziegler knows what he is doing. Just be still.”

  The light vanished from the underground shelter as dirt filled in all the spaces above them. Jonathan waited, listening to the soft thumps of the dirt being piled atop them. After a while the thumping stopped, and everything was eerily quiet.

  The shelter was surprisingly warm. Jason had laid a bed of large, soft leaves along the bottom to keep them insulated from the cold dirt. Above them, the covering served not only to hide their presence, but also to keep the heat in. The smell of earth and pine mixed together as the humid air became uncomfortably warm. It reminded Jonathan of the times he had put his head under the covers at home on his bed, only there was no way to quickly flip the blanket down for fresh air this time. He would have to make do with the light draft of semi-cool air coming in from the ends of the oval. To make matters worse, any time he or his brother moved at all, a stream of dirt would sift through the branches above, often hitting him in the face.

  Jason soon fell asleep, but Jonathan didn’t. He stayed awake, listening intently for any sounds of battle above. He could only imagine what Ziegler was preparing for the cat-people if he was caught. He was not a terribly religious person, but he soon found himself praying to Icadion for protection as he hid there in the darkness.

  A long time later, he heard a strange call coming from above. It was something like a growl and scream mixed together. It was joined by numerous other screeches. Something thumped across the top of the pit, dropping more dirt through the branch shelter and onto Jonathan. Griff growled softly, but Jonathan reached out quickly to quiet the animal. More screeching above, and then there were screams.

  Jonathan had heard those screams before. They were the screams of the dying. The pained shrieks and shouts of agony that came with war. Metal clashed on metal and still more shrieks echoed down the wooden pipes that provided Jonathan and Jason with fresh air. Then, Jonathan heard Ziegler yell and there was a massive crash on the ground above that shook the entire pit Jonathan was in. Kottri screeched and shouted. Feet trampled the roof above the hidden brothers, and swords clashed against each other for a long while. As the sounds continued, Jason reached out to steady Jonathan.

  “Easy now,” Jason whispered. The captain can handle it.”

  Jonathan could hardly hear his brother, for his senses were focused on the goings on above them. It was hard to know who was winning, or even what kind of numbers Ziegler was faced with. All Jonathan could do was whisper his prayers to Icadion, and hope that someone in Volganor was listening to him.

  A great whoosh rushed through the pipes after a while, and the shrieks went up louder than ever before. Ziegler yelled once more, cursing the Kottri and cursing their mothers for giving them life, and then everything was quiet.

  Jonathan, Jason, and Griff remained below ground in the silence, sheltered by the dirt and the branches, with absolutely no indication what had brought an end to the fight. Only when Jason saw the light of day poking down to them through the pipes on one side of the underground shelter did either of them speak. Jason told Jonathan how to move to the appropriate side so they could dig themselves out without collapsing the whole thing in on them. Griff helped, of course, and soon they were free.

  As Jonathan brought his dirt-streaked face up through to the surface, he was met with smoking dirt and gray ash floating through the air. The trees around them were black and charred. The shelter under the overhang was collapsed and littered with dead Kottri. Several pikes had skewered many of the creatures, but other poles and pikes had been ripped from their places. Arrows littered the area, and the stench of cooked blood and burned flesh filled the air. The brothers tried to plug their noses as they pushed up through the warm dirt, but it wasn’t enough to keep Jonathan’s stomach from twisting.

  A pair of corpses lay to his right, their backs burned and charred. Both of them appeared to be Kottri. Jonathan looked around and counted nearly thirty of the creatures, but he could not find Ziegler. The brothers fanned out around their hiding place, but they never saw his body.

  “Oi! Up here!” a familiar voice called out.

  Jonathan looked up to the top of the cliff and saw a Kottri standing and watching them. He reached for his bow, but Jason quickly rushed in and stopped him from getting it.

  “Look closer,” Jason said.

  Jonathan focused his vision against the bright morning sun and realized he was not looking at a Kottri. He was looking at Ziegler, who was wearing a Kottri’s hide. “That’s…” Jonathan couldn’t find the right words to finish the thought.

  Ziegler disappeared from view only to come around the side of the base of the cliff a few minutes later, carrying something under his right arm. It took Jonathan a moment to realize that Ziegler was holding more Kottri hides.

  “He doesn’t want me to wear one does he?” Jonathan asked.

  Jason slapped his brother and laughed. “Just be thankful it isn’t a troll skin. Those things stink much worse, and it takes weeks to get the stench off of your body.”

  Jonathan looked to Jason, and then back to the hides Ziegler held.

  The large warrior smiled and nodded knowingly. “It’s always a bit repulsive, and you never quite get used to it,” he said as he handed a black hide to Jason. “But, I don’t know of a better method for throwing an enemy off of our scent. We may even get lucky, and sneak right up to the tower without our identities being discovered.”

  “The element of surprise,” Jason said as he wriggled into the hide Ziegler had given him. Jonathan watched in disgust as his brother slipped his hands through what had been a Kottri’s arm. The black hide filled out and took shape as Jason stretched it and pulled it into place. Bits of sinew and connective tissue still hung from several places where the hide had been roughly yanked from its former place.

  “I can’t do that,” Jonathan said.

  Ziegler stepped toward him and handed him an orange and tan hide. “It helps if you don’t think of them as being like us,” the captain said. “Don’t think of the Kottri as people. Remember what I told you about my brother. They are animals. We wear leather, right? Well this is the same, just a bit fresher. Even the gods wouldn’t weep over dead Kottri. They have no souls; they are just the magical creation of a mad wizard.”

  Jonathan nodded.

  Ziegler nodded. “This is one of those things that you do now to save your life. We do what is necessary to survive. Put this on, and it will mask your scent. Last night was a hard battle, and I don’t want to have to fight another one like it each night as we make our way north.”

  Jonathan then saw a gash along Ziegler’s abdomen. The large man had sutured it closed, but the dried blood was still visible through the slit shirt. Another wound had streaked blood along the front of Ziegler leg, and he had several abrasions along his cheek and forehead. Ziegler held out the hide, and Jonathan took it reluctantly.

/>   He tried not to think about the wetness as he slipped the hide onto himself. He kept telling himself about a tale he had once heard of a hunter using a slain deer’s carcass to survive a cold winter night. “It’s just like Mazer, just like Mazer and the deer,” he told himself. When the fingers on his left hand got stuck in the hollowed out paw, he nearly retched, but Ziegler helped tug the hide on and put it in place.

  “Of course, you’ll only look like a Kottri from the back, or perhaps from afar off, what with the front being cut away to allow you to get into it,” Ziegler said. “Still, it is better than what we had before.”

  “Did you really do this with trolls?” Jonathan asked.

  Jason laughed again and started walking away.

  “I would take a Kottri hide over that of a troll any day,” Ziegler said. “Come on, let’s keep moving.”

  Ziegler turned and walked away as if the ordeal was entirely normal, but Jonathan stood there trying not to think about the wet, cold flesh against his skin. Griff came over to him then and tasted the air. The animal started to growl, that is until Jonathan spoke.

  “Easy, Griff, it’s me.”

  The large lizard looked up at Jonathan’s face and tasted the air a couple more times before huffing and turning away. It was then that Jonathan knew Ziegler was right. The scent of the fresh hide was enough to even fool Griff, and he was an intelligent animal. Surely it would keep the Kottri off their trail as well.

  CHAPTER 11

  After two days of traveling through the forest wearing the Kottri skins, the group came upon a clearing. It was as if a great axe had been swept through the trees in a long line, for the clearing extended for miles to either side and was roughly half a mile across. Great boulders littered the area, lurking in the grass like sleeping giants. A pair of ravens squawked from the trees to their left and flew out over the clearing, one of the birds cutting off to the east while the other flew directly toward the trees on the other side.