by Sam Ferguson
“Is it a border?” Jonathan asked.
“Can’t be a border,” Jason said. “We’re still inside of Tanglewood Forest, and nowhere close to the northern edge. We’re not even as far north as Telward.”
“I’ve seen something like this before,” Ziegler said. “A group of battle mages cleared a swath of trees in the Murkle Quags. They hoped it would provide a better view of the trolls when they came into the clearing.”
“So who cut this clearing?” Jonathan asked.
“If I had to guess, I would say Brykith is marking the edge of his territory. We must be on the right track,” Ziegler said. “The question is whether anyone is still watching and standing guard.”
“We could try to go around it,” Jonathan suggested.
Ziegler spat and looked up and down the length of the clearing. “I can’t see the end of it. Not even sure we’d find one without going days out of our way.”
“I could crawl across in the grass,” Jason offered.
“I’ve lost enough friends,” Ziegler said. “I’ll do it, but we’ll wait for dusk.”
The captain led the others back into their side of the forest and the three of them broke out their food stores and ate an early supper. Griff sat at the base of an old tree and went to sleep. Jonathan shirked the top half of his Kottri skin off and let it fall to the ground behind him.
“We can probably take these off after we make the other side,” Ziegler said as he pulled on a bit of fur from the skin he was wearing. “Doesn’t seem the Kottri are coming after us anymore.”
“Could we do it now?” Jonathan asked.
Ziegler shrugged. “A few more hours won’t hurt you.”
Jonathan gave up the argument and turned his attention back to his food. He had learned how to ignore the discomfort the disguise gave him physically, but mentally he still couldn’t disconnect the skin he was wearing from the person that it had been. Even with Ziegler’s tale of his brother, it was hard to categorize the Kottri as worthless animals. They were certainly savage, but so were the trolls, and Jonathan couldn’t see himself wearing a troll skin either. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand Ziegler’s motivation, but he wasn’t sure the end justified the means. War had changed Ziegler in many ways, it seemed, and there were probably even more surprises lurking in the large man’s character.
Perhaps it wasn’t just the horrors Jason had seen that had him itching to get back to Holstead. Maybe it was the fear of what he might become. Jason had never mentioned wearing troll skins before, but seemed to almost expect Ziegler’s suggestion to wear Kottri skins.
The life of a warrior was certainly not the same as Jonathan had read about in the glorified tales of famous heroes of old. It was dirtier, bloodier, and in most cases, a shorter life. He thought of Moose, the mountain of a man who by all rights was as strong as a giant and as fierce with a blade as any other soldier Jonathan had met. When he had first seen the man, Jonathan had thought he would be nearly invincible. Yet, somehow the young archer had outlived the large warrior. Then there was Bull, a headstrong, proud warrior without fear. He was dead as well.
Jonathan’s own father had died in the Troll Wars.
What chance did he actually have of getting through this alive? Even Ruben, who could call down lightning and hold collapsing caves with his magic had died. What good was a boy with a bow?
A sudden sting struck Jonathan’s right shoulder, snapping him from his thoughts. He looked up to see Ziegler wagging a finger at him.
“Best not to dwell on those kinds of thoughts.”
Jonathan was about to ask how Ziegler would know what he was thinking, but he thought better of it and simply nodded. “I just need something to focus on, I suppose,” Jonathan said.
Ziegler pointed to a tall pine behind them. “Shimmy on up there and take a lookout position. It will be dusk within the hour. I’ll be going across then and you can cover me from above.”
Jonathan nodded. He grabbed his bow and climbed up into the tree. The branches were thick and sturdy, with rough bark that provided excellent traction as he gripped and pulled himself upward. He got to a nice perch about two thirds of the way up the tall tree that provided him with a great view of the swath of cleared land. He scanned the grasses, but didn’t see any sign of enemies, so he moved his eyes to the trees and searched for any sign of movement.
Down below, Griff had moved to the base of the pine tree and was scratching at the bark. Jason was trying to pull the cavedog away from the tree, but the large lizard held its own and remained in place. Jonathan smiled at his loyal companion. When he had thought of his chances of survival before, he had forgotten about Griff. He may only be a boy, but he had the bow of a god and a cavedog for a companion. Who else could say they had the same?
Jonathan smiled as Griff settled down at the base of the tree and then continued to watch the clearing. Other than a lone, brown hare that bounced out from a hole and then back down below the ground, he didn’t see anything at all until Ziegler decided it was time to venture out across. The large man was surprisingly hard to follow. He nearly disappeared in the long grasses as he crawled slowly toward the other side. Had Jonathan not been able to see him start from the forest, the young archer doubted he would have been able to find Ziegler at all. Jonathan was learning that there was more to the title Ghosts of the Quags, than just a short life span during the Troll Wars.
The large man made it more than half way across the clearing and then crawled in close to a gray boulder. He didn’t lean against the rock or sit up, but instead he hugged the ground even closer, trying to fit under the boulder it seemed as he came around the other side to continue his trek across the clearing.
The boulder rolled away from Ziegler.
Jonathan pulled back on an arrow, suspecting perhaps a troop of guards to emerge from some hole under the rock, but it was much worse than that.
The boulder rolled several feet and then there was a loud click-clack! Other smaller boulders came together and joined the first. A creature made of stones stood up in the clearing, with two legs and two arms as any man would have, but much larger.
Ziegler saw the danger and leapt to his feet.
Jonathan fired an arrow, but the missile harmlessly bounced off of the stone creature.
“Stone golems!” Ziegler shouted.
The golem swung its massive arm like a club. It was surprisingly fast for its size, barely missing Ziegler by a hair’s breadth. Jonathan fired another arrow, but again the arrow bounced off harmlessly. Ziegler was on his own.
“More forming around you!” Jonathan shouted as other rocks joined to larger boulders and several new golems rose from the ground.
Ziegler charged the golem in front of him, leapt up, and kicked it square in the body. The golem didn’t even move an inch. Captain Ziegler fell to the ground, quickly rolling away as the golem brought its thick arm down in an overhead chop to crush Ziegler.
“Run!” Jason called out from below.
Ziegler sprinted back toward their side of the clearing as fast as his legs would carry him. Two golems chased after him. They were gaining on him, only about fifty yards away and closing in. The first golem detached one of the stones on his arm and threw it at Ziegler. The rock slammed into Ziegler’s left shoulder and knocked the man to the ground, but the experienced warrior used his momentum to roll forward and put his feet back under him as he shot upright once more, hardly losing more than a fraction of a second’s worth of time.
Unfortunately, that mistake put the pursuing golems closer still, and they were coming in hard, their stone feet pounding the ground like great claps of thunder during a storm. By the looks of it, Ziegler had only a few moments before the creatures would catch up with him.
A flash of brown tore through the grass, streaking out from the forest and heading straight out toward one of the golems chasing Ziegler. It took Jonathan a moment to realize that it was Griff.
“Griff, no!” Jonathan shouted, knowing that t
he stone creatures would be too much for the lizard to claw through.
Griff barreled toward one of the creatures and leapt up from the tall grass. There was a strange, terrible sound like nails against a black board, and then the golem’s left leg came undone. Smaller rocks fell to the ground and the golem toppled over, splitting apart as it struck another boulder that had remained still on the ground.
Ziegler was running faster now, and Griff wasted no time in turning his attention to the second pursuer. This time he hooked out and around to come at the golem from behind. Griff jumped up and climbed the magical stone golem’s back and then pulled its arm off. The golem tried to turn and swing its other arm, but lost its balance in doing so, and fell to the ground. Like the first, this one also split apart, rocks tumbling in all directions, but unlike the first, it regrouped rather quickly.
The stones rolled back together and the golem stood over Griff. It tried to stomp the lizard, but Griff darted out of the way. The golem followed Griff, giving Ziegler the time he needed to reach the trees once more.
“All right, Griff, come on back!” Jonathan shouted once Ziegler was safe and resting behind a large oak tree.
If Griff could hear him, the animal wasn’t showing it. The cavedog continued to draw the golem’s attention, coming in close to make the creature stomp or swing at him and then darting out of the way. The problem was, there were three more golems closing in from all sides, and soon Griff would be surrounded. The first golem that had thrown part of itself at Ziegler now took another rock from its arm and aimed for Griff. The golem hurled the stone through the air, but Griff seemed to sense the danger, darting out of the way just as the golem closest to it stomped down.
The thrown stone crashed into the other golem’s lower leg and split a couple of rocks apart.
The golem emitted a mix of howling and grinding stone as it fell to the ground and tried to balance itself on its stump of a leg. The rocks did not rejoin with him as they had before.
“That’s it,” Jonathan said. “Stone on stone!” He glanced back to the first golem Griff had attacked and realized that when it had fallen on the boulder that it hadn’t fallen apart. The stones had actually split. Griff had made it fall in such a way that it died. Now, the clever animal was using the golems to wound each other.
The animal hissed and snarled as the golems closed in. Soon they were so close that they were swinging for Griff, but hitting each other. Rocks split and bits of stone broke and shot out over the clearing, sometimes with a flare of orange sparks and hisses of smoke. Within a matter of seconds, all of the golems were wounded. One had lost its head and fallen to the ground, another had lost half an arm and all of its right leg, and the third had lost every limb. The two that were not wounded collided with each other so violently that they split themselves apart, cracking and shattering their stone bodies and falling into crumbled piles of broken stone.
That was it.
The battle was over.
A force of seemingly unstoppable power was confounded by a cavedog.
Jonathan smiled and hollered out happily while pumping a fist in the air.
“Have I mentioned that I really like your pet?” Ziegler asked from below.
Jonathan clambered down from the tree and the group was able to walk across the clearing without further incident.
After the clearing with the golems, they traveled another two miles before pitching camp as the last of the sunlight faded. As Ziegler had said, each of them were able to shed their Kottri skins the following day. They found a stream in which to bathe and remove the bits of filth that had stained their bodies and then they continued on their way.
The forest was far less dense in this part, allowing them to cross more than thirty miles in a single day, whereas before it would have required two full days to go the same distance before. The ground was mostly level, with a few hillocks here and there, and there were berry bushes aplenty to forage from without halting the journey very much.
As night began to fall at the end of the day, they set camp in a small clearing nestled between a mix of aspens and a few pine trees. Ziegler made a fire and began boiling some mushrooms he had found in a pot of water while Griff went out to hunt.
“I could go for some of Memaw’s rolls and apple butter right about now,” Jason said as he placed an armload of wood near the fire.
“What’s wrong with mushroom soup?” Ziegler asked as he stirred the pot a bit.
Jason leaned over and sniffed the rising steam. “Smells all right, but it’s lacking that little touch of home,” he replied playfully.
“Well,” Ziegler began with a shrug, “I suppose you could always cook your own supper if you like.”
“No, no, mushroom soup will do, just make sure to put some meat into the pot after Griff comes back with whatever kill he can score.”
“Blueberry lemonade,” Jonathan said as he threw a pebble at Jason’s shoe. “That’s what I want. Apple butter is great, but right now I am thirsty, and we have been walking for a long time. I want some of Pa’s blueberry lemonade.”
“Blueberry lemonade?” Ziegler asked.
“No one makes it better than Pa,” Jonathan replied with a nod. “A basket full of lemons, freshly squeezed, a bowl full of blueberries, and a handful of sugar. Nothing better to refresh the body after a long walk.”
“Hash browns,” Ziegler said. “It may not be as fancy as blueberry lemonade, or as sweet as apple butter, but I could go for some steak strips, two eggs, and a whole mess of hash browns.” The large man smiled and glanced at the pot. “Fresh out of potatoes at the moment though, so soup it is.”
Jonathan smiled. It was good that they could each talk about something normal.
They passed the time listing off more foods they would want, but obviously couldn’t acquire in their current location, and then the conversation turned to home. Jonathan talked about raising sheep and how they took care of the animals. Jason talked about his wedding plans. Ziegler mostly listened, commenting here or there with small pleasantries while allowing the brothers to do most of the chatting. As the darkness fell around them and the fire did its best to illuminate their small camp, the gravity of their situation left them for a while, and they were able to find a bit of comfort and relaxation.
Griff soon returned with a small boar, already missing one of the legs, and Ziegler quickly cut meat into the soup. The three men feasted until their bellies were full and then Griff dragged the remainder of the carcass away to finish it off for himself.
“Get some sleep,” Ziegler said after they had put away their dishes and nearly all of the soup was gone.
With full stomachs and tired bodies, the three warriors fell asleep easily, and soon the camp was filled with the sound of contented snores.
The cool night air was ushered in as the few clouds in the sky above were blown away, allowing the silvery stars to twinkle through the sparse openings in the tree canopy overhead. The breeze wound its way through the trees, causing the leaves to whisper, and the scent of the soup to waft through the forest. While the slumbering men snored, a great bear caught the scent of soup, and began lumbering toward the camp. Even Griff was so deeply resting that the massive beast was able to approach in the dark of night undetected. It padded softly toward the pot of soup and stuffed its maw into the container, licking at the food still inside. As its head came up, the pot stuck to it momentarily and then slipped off to clang onto a half-burned log.
Griff woke with a snarling start and lunged at the bear, but the bear was faster. It came down with its heavy, dinner-plate-sized paw and pinned the lizard to the ground.
Jonathan and Jason scrambled to their feet, but it was Ziegler who went on the offensive. He charged in and slashed out with his sword, cutting a gash in the bear’s right flank. The bear picked up Griff with its paw and threw him out of the camp. A heavy thabump and a light whimper announced that Griff was no longer a part of this fight. The bear stood on its hind legs, easily twice as tall as
Ziegler, and roared ferociously. It came in with a heavy swing of one paw and lunged forward immediately afterward with its mouth, snapping its teeth together and forcing Ziegler back.
Jonathan fired an arrow, but the head barely penetrated the thick hide, and the bear seemed not even to notice that it had been shot. Jason rushed in then, but the bear doubled back and caught Jason with an outward sweep of its left front paw. The force of the blow lifted Jason up and knocked him backward into a tree. The young warrior was stunned, and slumped to the ground as he lost his grip on his sword.
“NO MORE!” Ziegler shouted. “I am not losing any more of my men!” Ziegler darted in and stabbed the bear in the right shoulder. The massive beast charged Ziegler, lifting the man up as he held tight to his sword and the two crashed through a pair of aspen saplings and into the darkness.
Jonathan went to the fire and grabbed a burning limb and then sprinted for the bear. This one was bigger than any he had seen before, but he and his brother had scared off bears with fire before. He jumped over a fallen log and set the burning limb to the bear’s backside. The hair melted and the skin hissed and sizzled. The bear wheeled around fast as a snake and lunged at Jonathan. The young archer leapt to the side and barely found cover behind a large pine tree as the bear’s claws ripped through the bark and wood of the tree. It then snapped at him with its mouth, but Ziegler must have hit the bear again for it snarled and turned away from Jonathan just as quickly as it had charged him.
Jonathan scrambled to his feet just in time to see a heavy paw come at Ziegler. The man went flying through the air back toward the camp, his sword twirling end over end off in another direction. The hulking bear ran out of the darkness and back into the camp to finish Ziegler.