Through the Wildwood

by M. R. Mathias

  “Uh, my lord, you may want to hear what I have to say in private,” Orphas said. “It is of a delicate nature.”

  Duke Martin looked down at the priest and considered him. Remembering that he was a personal spiritual advisor to his wife, he chose to agree. He didn’t want to suffer any more embarrassment than he already had. His whore of a wife had all but ruined him. He couldn’t wait to come up with a way to rid himself of her without drawing suspicion or breaking his daughter’s heart.

  Turning to Coll, who stood behind his chair, dressed in a black robe trimmed in scarlet, Duke Martin spoke a quiet command. Coll nodded and began urging the hunters out of the room with the promise of a hot meal and cool ale to keep them occupied. High Commander Aldine looked at the duke askance, awaiting a command.

  Duke Martin saw this and let loose a sigh of contempt. Obviously the commander hadn’t gotten the hint for his need of privacy. “Commander, I want supplies ready for the— ah—.” He glanced at Orphas. “Ah— for the undertaking we were just speaking of. Round up animals, gear, and provender.” He paused to let the man nod his understanding, and then continued. “See to it personally. I will come down and inspect your work with the mountain man after I dine. Oh, and if you don’t mind, Commander, would you have one of your men place the head of that bandit who wandered in yesterday up on the gate.”

  “As you command,” Commander Aldine said, letting a bit of contempt reflect in his own voice. The tone was lost on the duke, but Orphas heard it plainly.

  As soon as the door closed behind the commander the duke let out a long, hissing breath of air. “What has my troll of a wife done now?”

  “Your perception is to be admired, my lord,” Orphas said, somewhat mockingly. “She confessed to me just hours ago before seeking the safety of the temple’s inner sanctum.” Orphas scratched his chin and looked at the vaulted ceiling. He did this to make himself seem hesitant and unsure. “It seems she—uh—she—”

  “Out with it, man. Speak,” the duke snapped. His face was reddening as Orphas went on.

  “My lord, a woman’s confession is sacred to the discretion of her priests, but since you’ve ordered me to tell you, I cannot disobey.”

  Orphas met the red-faced duke’s eyes and held them. “In secret, your wife sent your daughter away with the caravan that left this week past. Gallarael was to make sure a certain slave was purchased and freed once they arrived at the market.”

  “You’re telling me Gallarael was on that caravan?”

  “That’s what your wife told me.”

  The duke let out a howl so loud and full of hatred that it chilled Orphas to the bone.

  Old Master Wiggins

  danced a fancy jig.

  He tossed his hat out to the crowd

  but found he’d lost his wig.

  – a Parydon street ditty

  After seeing the strange wolf rider, the traveling grew tense. Vanx, Trevin, and Darbon kept arrows to their bow strings, leaving Matty to keep Gallarael in the haulkatten’s saddle. Vanx rode the horse at the lead. Trevin and Darbon shared the younger of the haulkattens at the rear. Trevin rode backward. It was awkward but served to keep him from having to crane his neck around trying to see what was behind them.

  They went as quickly as they could travel through the forested terrain without wearing down the animals. Not quite relentless, the pace was constant, and the few breaks they took were quick and purposeful. They rested longer in the afternoon so that Matty could tend Gallarael’s personal needs. While they waited, Vanx scaled a tall red fur and scouted the way ahead and behind them.

  There wasn’t much to see either way, save for the otherworldly scape of the treetops. A rolling sea of green peaked occasionally by a towering pine spread out endlessly around them, except for the dark, jagged peaks that still loomed up behind them to the northwest. There were a dozen birds wheeling and circling over a dark cut in the trees that might be a river basin up ahead. A thin grey cloud of fire smoke clung to the treetops a dozen miles behind, letting him know that they were most likely still being watched.

  Vanx wondered why no move had been made to attack them. They were outnumbered. The watchers had been in close enough to examine their party during the day. Vanx not only saw them a few times, but he smelled the musk of the wolves the strange Kobalts rode.

  None of it made any sense, he decided, as he made his way down from the treetop. He found no reason to turn back. Gallarael’s life might be dependent on them getting to Dyntalla swiftly. All they could do was be alert and ready to defend.

  “I saw what might be a stream bed a few miles ahead of us,” Vanx told Trevin and Darbon before he leapt the last few feet to the ground. “We could fill our skins and wash off the dust then find a place to stop for the night.”

  “Stop?” Darbon asked with confusion and fear showing plainly in his expression.

  “If they wanted to take us, Darby, they could do so anytime they like.” Trevin gave a dry chuckle. “Why they haven’t yet is a mystery to me. We are at their mercy.”

  Vanx nodded his agreement. “We need rest. The animals need rest. Maybe they are going to let us pass. Like Trevin said, they could take us if they wanted to. There’s no sense stumbling around in darkness.”

  “Maybe we’re not a threat to them?” Trevin showed his agreement with Vanx. He gave Darbon a pat on the shoulder and went to help Matty get Gallarael back in the saddle.

  The cut in the trees Vanx had seen was indeed a waterway. A stretch of sun-bleached grey rock with a fairly shallow, yet briskly flowing stream ran through the forest like a giant snake. They filled their skins and ate some dry meat. With Matty’s help, Trevin gave Gallarael’s body a good cleansing, and then they dressed her in some of the hauler’s loose-fitting garments. Matty washed the filth out of Gallarael’s other clothes, thus making the decision for all of them that a fire would be lit when they stopped for the night.

  When they were finally mounted and moving again, the sun was beginning to sink behind the mountains. It was then that the strangest thing happened.

  As they started through the stream, a trio of wolf-riding Kobalts appeared directly across from them. One of them was a bit larger than the other two. This one wore a bandolier-like sash of some reddish-brown-colored animal pelt across his upper body. He eased his wolf out of the tree line into the open and paused there. The Kobalt’s small, furred ears twitched and he sniffed cautiously at the companions. The low growl of the haulkatten rumbled behind Vanx and he silently hoped that the big cats would stay in line. He was sure that any wrong move could provoke an attack that would end all of their lives. His horse sensed his unease, and he felt it stomp and shudder beneath him.

  The Kobalt wearing the sash pointed downstream and gave a harsh, barking grunt.

  “There are more of them behind us, Vanx,” Trevin called from the rear. “A lot more of them.”

  “I think they want us to go downstream,” Vanx called back. “What do you want us to do?”

  “It’s your decision,” Trevin half laughed. “But what choice do we have?”

  “Aye,” Vanx agreed and turned his horse in the direction the Kobalt was pointing. “Nice and slow, follow me. Keep those cats calm. Talk to them. Relax your bows, but keep them at hand,” Vanx instructed.

  As they made their way down the streambed they saw that they were surrounded. Vanx felt like a sheep being herded to sheer.

  After just a short bit of travel they came to what might have been a campsite not long ago. The Kobalts had seemingly dispersed. Vanx wondered if the Kobalts wanted them to camp there.

  There was an open pack that had been rummaged through lying under a tree, and the blackened remains of a day’s-old fire in a ring of rocks that had been taken from the stream bed. The area had been trampled, as if a handful of men with horses had tromped around the site for a night, if not longer.

  Vanx’s keen Zythian nose picked up a sickening scent. Its source was at least a mile away, as best as he could te
ll. Remembering the birds he saw circling earlier, he decided they might have been carrion marking the source of the stench. Curiously, he wondered why the smell of death wasn’t alarming him.

  None of the wolf-riding Kobalts were to be seen now. Apparently this is where the ugly little creatures wanted them to be. The group that had camped in this clearing before them had obviously gone in the way the smell was coming from, but they hadn’t been in a hurry. The spacing of the tracks showed that they had ridden and walked away at a casual gait. There were five, maybe six horses and three sets of prints left by standard boot-clad feet.

  Had they been herded this way too? Vanx doubted it, but the possibility lingered in his mind. Kobalts couldn’t know that he was half Zythian and had senses as keen, or even keener, than their own. They couldn’t know that he knew how many dozens of them were out there surrounding them, nor that he could smell the death that lingered not so far away.

  “It’s full of pouches of herbs and powders,” Matty said. “Some rocks and some scrolls too.”

  “What good would it do you, woman, if it was full of gold?” Trevin asked.

  Matty turned with a snarl on her bruised face. “Maybe you could just live off your woman’s coin if she—if we survive all this.” Her angry tone lost some of its steam as she continued. “If I walk out of the Wildwood alive, all I got, is all I got.” She sighed, seeing that Trevin was no longer paying attention to her. Instead, he was getting Gallarael out of the saddle.

  “There’s not much work for a girl with one hand,” she finished in a whisper.

  Vanx bit his tongue for Darbon’s sake. The boy was obviously blind to Matty’s current occupation.

  “Help me lay out her bedroll, Matty,” Trevin said through his struggle to get Gallarael down by himself. “Please,” he added when she hesitated. She let out another huff and went to help him.

  By then Darbon had a kindling fire burning inside the ring of rocks and was adding pieces of deadfall to the blaze as he found them. Once the fire was raging and some extra wood was stacked, the boy began building something. Vanx was impressed when he realized it was a sort of rack they could use to dry Gallarael’s clothes.

  Darbon almost spoke up for Matty, but the words she had chosen to defend herself hurt him so badly that he couldn’t speak. She’d said that if they got out of this mess, all she had was what she had. Where did that leave him? He knew that he could find work with a smith in any village or town; he was already well trained. Old Uncle Elbar had taught him all sorts of tricks of the trade. He could work lumber too, like his father had before he died. Remembering the loss of his uncle at the hands of the trolls made him sad. Matty’s comments only served to add to the lonely feelings that were suddenly assailing him. But still, when she saw the drying rack he had set up and smiled at him, he couldn’t help but smile back.

  “After it gets dark we can sneak off to wash our clothes by the stream,” she whispered to him seductively.

  “What about those things out there and their wolves?” Darbon asked, the true nature of her suggestion lost to him.

  “You can bring your bow, if you’re afraid,” she said with a smirk that left him confused, but no longer dwelling on the loss of his loved ones.

  While the others settled in and the sunlight faded from the sky, Vanx took one of the bows and disappeared into the forest. He had no problem shafting a fat rabbit and pinning a lazy pheasant to her nest. The latter was the better of the two kills because the bird was sitting on a trio of eggs, and Vanx loved eggs more than most any other food in the wild. He had intended to go on and scout what the source of the rotten scent was, but the promise of freshly scrambled eggs brought him back to the fire.

  They ate like starving dogs. Even unconscious Gallarael reflexively gulped down the chunky broth Matty made from the rabbit meat.

  While Darbon and Matty went to wash their clothes, Trevin and Vanx sat by the fire. They discussed the quality of the first warm meal they’d had in days and fought to keep from laughing at the sounds of Darbon and Matty’s passion. The two were only a score of paces beyond the firelight and every grunt and heavy breath carried through the night.

  “He’s a naive fool,” Trevin commented quietly.

  “It’s a matter of viewpoints,” Vanx replied.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We are here looking at the fire, and he is getting his wick wetted,” Vanx shrugged, letting his own high-browed grin punctuate the statement. “How could he be a fool?”

  Trevin chuckled at the truth of it, but glanced at Gallarael. Vanx watched the mirth drain from his face. The girl’s arm was still swollen and the fang marks on her wrist looked like puckering sores. Otherwise, she looked like she was sleeping soundly.

  “Either we will get her out of here and get her well, or we won’t,” Vanx said. He meant to be encouraging but the words didn’t come close to conveying his sentiment. Trevin must have caught the gist of the comment because he nodded silently.

  Vanx retrieved the pack Matty had examined earlier and explored its contents in the firelight. Some of the pouches of herbs and powders contained substances that Vanx recognized. These were components used in the casting of spells. Some of them were the kind of ingredients needed to cast spells of the most potent nature. The scrolls confirmed that the bag belonged to a human wizard. The writings were incantations, directions, and recipes all written in Kingscript.

  Kingscript was the written language of choice for the Parydon nobility because the wording and flow were too elaborate for the average citizen to grasp. Had it been a Zythian wizard’s pack, there would have been no scrolls. Vanx knew a few spells, of the most basic sort, but nothing substantial enough to even consider himself a dabbler.

  His curiosity was now piqued to the point of restlessness, so he made a decision.

  “When Matty and Darbon return, I am going to scout our surroundings.”

  Trevin, seemingly lost in his brooding, only nodded and moved over to Gallarael’s side.

  A battle they did fight

  across the land and in the sky.

  Against dragons and dark demons

  By the thousands they did die.

  – The Ballad of Ornspike

  It was full dark, with very little of the moon’s light filtering through the trees, but Vanx saw just fine. The odd, grisly scene he found was startling but not unexpected. There were three dead horses and five dead kingdom men, all of them starting into the process of being reclaimed by the earth. Most of the bodies had been looted of belt and pack. Only a broken bow and an almost empty quiver of arrows lay about. Not even a dagger remained, and some of the clothing and boots were missing as well.

  The bodies were too far gone to tell what had killed them, but Vanx found a few sets of huge, deeply pressed footprints and had to assume an ogre had been around, either during the skirmish, or just after. The only thing that was discernible was that one of the horses fled the scene, possibly with a rider, and someone on foot had started away from the massacre and then vanished in his tracks. His first thought was that the disappearing tracks belonged to the wizardly owner of the pack they’d found earlier. Then another idea occurred to him. An ogre could have plucked a running man right off his feet and hurled him, or if the ogre were hungry enough, worse.

  As Vanx surveyed the forest around the area he found only two stray arrows. He managed to startle off some hissing thing that had come to feed on the rot. He hadn’t even noticed the creature and had to spend a moment letting his thudding heart settle back in his chest before he continued. The beast’s presence completely surprised Vanx and he took that as a sign of warning. Other carrion feeders, both large and small, would come around before the night was over. Some were possibly lurking in the darkness this very moment. Wood trolls were sometimes drawn to a decaying carcass. A whole pack of trolls might come to this feast. Why hadn’t they already come? As Vanx asked himself the question, his nose picked up the musky scent of a wolf. He cursed himself for not
bringing one of the bows with him this time. A scan of the trees around him revealed the shadowy form of the wolf and its Kobalt rider. When he caught a tiny glint of amber-yellow eyes, he froze.

  There was only one of them. For a few heartbeats both were still, taking the other in. The Kobalt finally barked out a grunt and pointed in the direction the disappearing foot tracks led.

  Vanx saw that this creature wasn’t the one with the bandolier sash. This Kobalt did have a dagger in its clawed hand, though. Before Vanx could take in any more details, the wolf bounded away, carrying its rider into the darkness.

  Not sure what else to do, Vanx cautiously explored the forest in the direction the Kobalt had indicated. The tracks didn’t pick back up immediately, but after a short way he found an area of shrub and thicket that had been broken and trampled, as if a body had fallen from the trees and landed there. His assessment of an angry ogre hurling the fleeing man came back to him and he wondered if Zytha herself wasn’t guiding his perceptions this night.

  From the trampled undergrowth a set of foot tracks led haphazardly through the forest. This person was either bewildered from injury or no experienced forester, for the trail Vanx followed led right through a thick patch of itch-ivy. Vanx circumvented the growth and found where the trail continued. Broken branches, kicked leaves, rubbed bark, and a well-munched apple core marked the way. Oddly, the trail eventually led right back to the stream bed. Vanx estimated that he was about a mile upstream from the campsite where his companions were resting.

  He decided that the pack they’d found had been on this man’s back when he ventured into the camp. He also figured that if he looked close enough he would be able to see where the man left the camp the second time.

  He was walking along the stream’s edge on the whitewashed rocks when he noticed a faint lavender glow emanating out of the trees. More curious than alarmed, he eased closer to the inexplicable phenomenon. As he drew nearer he picked up the faint smell of charred meat, and a clean ozone scent prickled at the hairs on the back of his neck. It was magic. He knew the sensation well. Master Bylizar, a scholar of the archaic arts back on the Isle of Zyth, had constantly reeked of the smell. It was potent here. Vanx was more careful as he crept in, but it turned out that the caution wasn’t necessary.