Through the Wildwood

by M. R. Mathias

  A glowing lavender dome rose out of the forest floor in an open space barely big enough to contain it. It was head high and appeared to be perfectly spherical, but only half of the globe rose above the earth. The thin-looking skin of the magical force was translucent. Lying still at the center of the protective field was a man.

  He looked frail and thin in his wizard’s robe, and the boots he wore seemed to be far too large for his feet. There was an explosive splay of grey hair and beard poking out of the robe’s collar and neck, and the robe was hiked up at the legs and sleeves, revealing spindly limbs swollen and covered with a rash. Lying alongside the humming magical globe was the body of an ogre. Only this ogre had been charred to little more than ash.

  Vanx decided right then not to touch the magical barrier that protected the wizard. Apparently the ogre had made that mistake and paid a heavy price for it. The beast had been charred to an ashy husk so quickly that not even a trace of grease or body fluids remained. When a body is burned so badly that it doesn’t even attract carrion or give off a scent, it could only have been burned by wizard’s fire or other magical means. Vanx found the tracks of another ogre, but these led away from the lavender dome in a widely-spaced pattern that Vanx envisioned as an ogre’s terrified run. It probably bolted away after seeing its companion’s life so violently taken away. Vanx didn’t sense any immediate threat in the area so he decided to attempt to communicate with the wizard.

  “Ho there,” he said in a loud whisper. “Are you alive?”

  Obviously the man was alive. His chest was rising and falling as if he were in a deep sleep, but still he didn’t stir.

  “Wake up, man,” Vanx said a bit louder. There was no response.

  Vanx stood there a little while pondering the situation, then he bent down and picked up a small stone. He tossed it at the wizard’s stomach area. When the object hit the glowing lavender field he ducked away and covered his face. Nothing happened to the stone as it passed through the shield and landed on the wizard’s belly, but still the man didn’t stir.

  Vanx didn’t want to leave him there, but saw no other choice. The others would be worried about him. He had been gone for quite a while. He doubted any harm would come to the wizard; the man seemed to be better protected than he and his companions were.

  As he made his way back down the stream bed he decided that the wizard was what the Kobalts wanted him to find, but why? Obviously the man would eventually die, or the power of his shield would exhaust itself, once again exposing him to the elements. Maybe they just wanted the glowing dome removed from their forest. Surely it bothered the strange little creatures. He doubted they understood the arcane nature of such a thing. If they did by chance have some magical ability, like being able to charm a wolf into being ridden, the trait was probably natural to them.

  Why his thoughts had drifted to the Kobalts and their wolves from the unconscious wizard, Vanx wasn’t sure, but when his mind snapped back into place he was sure he had been affected by magic.

  The magical dome’s shielding properties were more than they seemed, he guessed. It was a truly potent protection that not only shielded the physical body, but also misdirected the thoughts of those who came near so they would forget what they had seen altogether.

  “HALT!” Trevin’s voice split the night, causing Vanx to drop into a defensive crouch. “Who is it?” he asked the darkness. “Vanx, is it you?”

  If the situation were less dire, and the tension of knowing they were at the mercy of the Kobalts wasn’t weighing on him, Vanx might have had some sport with the young soldier. He could easily sneak around and creep up to tap him on the shoulder. As it was, Trevin was at the limits of his sanity with worry over Gallarael and the need to get her to Dyntalla.

  “Don’t put an arrow in me, Trev,” Vanx called ahead. “I have far too much to tell you.”

  “By the gods, Vanx,” Trevin sighed with relief. “You scared me. I expected you to return a while ago. We thought you were lost.”

  “I found the owner of that pack and what’s left of his companions.” Vanx eased into view.

  “What? Companions? Never mind that.” Trevin’s tone grew serious as his gaze finally found Vanx coming up the creek bed. “Gallarael’s fever has returned. I think it’s worse than before. We need more of your remedy. I—I—” His voice cracked and faltered, and Vanx could clearly see the tears pooling in his eyes. “I don’t know what to do, Vanx. What do we do?”

  “I wish I knew,” Vanx mumbled under his breath. What he said out loud was, “Come, let’s have a look at her.”

  Trevin was right, Gallarael’s fever was back. Vanx could tell before he even gained her side. She was brightly flushed and looked worse than she had after the initial bite, if that were possible.

  Matty had Gallarael’s head cradled in her lap and a worried expression on her face. Darbon took a piece of cloth and a cup to the stream. The fire had burned down, so Trevin went about adding some deadfall while Vanx examined Gal. It didn’t look good. She was so feverish that heat radiated from her as if she were literally burning.

  “We need to put her in the stream, and quickly,” Vanx proclaimed. He wasn’t sure that it would help, but he knew if her body didn’t cool down she would lose her mind or die from it.

  As he and Trevin carried Gallarael to the water, Vanx decided that Gallarael’s best chance didn’t lie in Dyntalla anymore. It lay in the woods a half-mile away under a glowing shield. The wizard, if he was revivable, was obviously somewhat powerful. The kind of components in his pack and the complexity of the shield he had constructed around himself attested to his capabilities. Most wizards knew herb lore and throughout the history of the kingdoms they’d often served their lords as healers during battle. At least that’s what Vanx had been taught in the history books he’d read.

  Gallarael was laid by the stream, instead of carried out into it. “We can’t just dunk her,” Vanx explained. “The shock of hot to cold could do more harm than good. Use the rags and the extra blankets to cool her off slowly.” He stood and looked up at the sky. The moon was behind the clouds, but he could tell that it was already sinking below the mountains. Dawn would be upon them soon.

  Darbon watched helplessly, still clutching the cupful of water he’d come to fetch. Vanx saw him and was suddenly struck with an idea.

  “Come on, Darby,” he said with a trace of hope in his voice. “And bring the cup with you.”

  “Where are we going? How will we see?” the young apprentice asked as Vanx stalked upstream into the night. “It’s dark as pitch out here.”

  “We’re going to fetch a wizard. Just follow me closely,” Vanx ordered. Then back over his shoulder he added, “And don’t spill the water from that cup.”

  They hunt gray bears and ogres

  and they kill them with bare hands.

  You’d be better to slap the kings own face

  than to cross a Highlake man.

  A Highlake Mountain Man.

  – Mountain Man

  “They went into the Wildwood,” Kavin Karcher, a mountain of a man who was also known as Bear Fang, said with no emotion showing on his overly hairy face. He was a head taller than most men and smelled wild, like a boar or an ox. His hair and beard were unkempt and his dark eyes were as hard as iron. He wore clothes made of elk hide and shin-high lace-up boots. Beside the long dagger at his hip hung a one-handed crossbow, and his thick walking stick looked like it could easily be used as a club.

  “No need to follow them in there,” Commander Aldean said with a sigh of regret. “No one has ever survived the Wildwood and lived to tell of it.”

  “We’re talking about my daughter,” Duke Martin barked. “I don’t care if they walked into a dragon’s mouth. We will follow them until we find her.”

  Since Duke Martin learned that Gallarael was among the caravan members he’d insisted on personally conducting the search for her.

  “Duke Martin, I understand and respect your persistence, but it’
s more likely that Gallarael is in the group the others are tracking.” Aldean let out a sigh to cover his unease. “Why would she travel away from civilization?” He looked to Coll, the duke’s dark-haired, black-clad advisor for support. The strange man seemed to be somewhere else in his mind and was no help.

  “If your blood is too yellow to come with us, Commander, then you can return to the ambush site and wait on the others.” The duke glared at his one-time most trusted friend with contempt in his eyes. “Master Coll, Commander Karcher and I can continue just fine without you.”

  The placing of his title before the treacherous trapper’s name wasn’t lost on Aldean, and what Coll was the master of, he had no idea.

  Aldean was no coward, but to traipse off into the Wildwood following a trail that was probably made by escaped slaves or wounded haulers was suicidal.

  “The two of them’s got boots on that were issued from your armory. Soldiers’ boots.” Bear Fang gave a chuckling grin toward Commander Aldean. “Three groups, like I said before. They’re all following each other at a distance. One set of boots in the first lot, the other with the horse. That’s probably the one that killed that fat dice cheat Gregon back yonder. The last group is the one I can’t figure. I can’t think of no reason for anyone to follow a lone soldier out into the Wildwood, but they done it.”

  Duke Martin looked to Coll, who only shrugged. “How many do you think are in the first group?”

  “That slave you’re after, I figure. He tried to bust his shackles on them rocks I showed you. Them other slaves you described, they couldn’t have made it this far. It’s hard to say, but either he took them boots off of a dead soldier, or there’s a soldier with him. Either way, there are three sets of footprints, and three places where bedrolls was laid out back at that campsite in the cut. One of them sets of prints be dainty. Them’s your girl’s, maybe.” Bear Fang hacked up and spat a thick wad of phlegm into the dirt. Then he took out a plug of tobacco and with jagged yellow-brown teeth bit off a chunk of it.

  “See, Commander,” Duke Martin sneered at Aldean, “that adulterous bastard and maybe one of those bandits took Gallarael as hostage. I’d wager your month’s worth of coin that it’s Moyle on that horse following them. If he found out that Gallarael was traveling with the caravan then he is trying to keep her alive. He knows that is his first priority.”

  The duke reached for Bear Fang’s tobacco plug and unceremoniously bit off his own cheekful of the stuff. “Maybe I’ll make Moyle my next commander,” he said around the brown wad of chew.

  Commander Aldean had heard about the duke’s early days as a frontiersman and kingdom explorer, but he’d never seen the man actually in the field. They’d hunted elk and troll in the crags around Highlake Valley together, but the gumption Humbrick Martin was showing now was a stark contrast to his lazy lording lifestyle. The duke was being called out, Aldean knew. The man had no choice but to rise to the challenge. Though he detested Duke Martin’s ways, Aldean coveted his position as Commander of Highlake. He wouldn’t let that go to the likes of Bear Fang Karcher, or even Captain Moyle. Besides that, he had watched Gallarael grow from a curious girl into a beautiful young woman. As slim as the chances of her surviving this ordeal, his sense of chivalry was nagging at him to at least make the attempt to find her.

  Trying to mask his uncertainty, he spurred his horse ahead of the other three men. “What are you waiting for then?” he called back. “If they’ve got Gallarael, then we have no time to waste gabbing.”

  Bear Fang laughed aloud, and Duke Martin spoke around his mouthful of tobacco. “Yat’s da spirit.” After he spat the juice from his mouth he added, “You craven bastard.”

  This got a laugh out of Coll, but his mirth vanished when Bear Fang spoke up.

  “Only a fool isn’t afraid of the Wildwood.”

  Duke Martin wasn’t worried. He had been in the Wildwood before and survived. In his youth, he and a small group of hunters, including Prince Paliver Oakarm, King Oakarm’s deceased brother, had been tracking wyvern in the foothills. Of course there was a hundred-man mounted escort following only a half-mile behind the party, but they didn’t arrive in time to save the prince from his fate. It was a shame, too, Duke Martin reflected. He and Paliver had a plan to kill Prince Ravier so that when King Maliver Oakarm died, Paliver would take the throne instead. Humbrick Martin was to be the High Lord of Parydon Isle and King Paliver Oakarm was to rule from the mainland city of Andwyn. Duke Martin would have lived better than the king himself had the wyvern not gotten hold of Prince Paliver. The day hadn’t been a total loss, though. By saving the prince’s body and slaying the beast that had killed him in a fantastic manner, Humbrick Martin guaranteed himself an eventual place among the nobility. A few years later, when Maliver Oakarm died, King Ravier took the throne and granted him the title Duke of Highlake.

  To call it a gift was inaccurate. More like a curse. A punishment full of perks was what it turned out to be. A puny castle way up in the wild Highlake Valley, with barely a route for supplies to come and go, was what he was granted. He’d fortified the stronghold, built an easily defendable wall around most of the valley, which allowed protected access to the lake. He rid the passage up from Waterdon of legitimate bandits and replaced them with men who were more or less under his thumb. All in all, he’d put himself and his family in a position to rise even higher in the ranks of Parydon nobility. The problem now, though, was that Gallarael was the key to that ascension.

  At this very moment Prince Russet Oakarm, King Ravier’s eldest son, was visiting Dyntalla. His ship would sail to Dabbldwyn in a few days, where he would cross the Waterdon River and then travel from outpost to outpost. After that he was to trek up to Highlake Stronghold. No doubt the Prince thought he was there to snoop for his father, but Humbrick Martin had been scheming for months to get the boy to come meet Gallarael. Now, Gallarain had made him into a laughing stock and sent their daughter into a hornets’ nest of his own making. He wasn’t one to worry about “what ifs” and he didn’t dwell on useless regret. He was a man of action; at least he had been most of his life. More recently, the mild opulence his title and holdings provided, along with the mundane duty that came with them, had softened him. Even though his daughter’s life was at stake, for the first time in years he felt alive and invigorated. It was the hunt itself that made his blood tingle. More than that, it was possibly the stakes themselves, and the location of the chase, that had him feeling so hungry. Either way, every passing moment the tree line of the notorious Wildwood loomed nearer to them, he grew more determined to catch his prey. His heart bled for Gallarael, and part of him was stricken by what was happening to her, but that only served to fuel his determination. He decided that he would follow her trail right into the dragon’s maw if that’s where it led. If he managed to save Gallarael in the process, then all the better. But he was no fool. He knew that there was little chance of her surviving this place or her captors. He knew there was a good chance all they would find were corpses.

  A glance ahead of him at Commander Aldean’s back brought back his contempt a hundredfold. There was another whose chances of surviving the Wildwood were less than slim. He found that he didn’t care. He was certain that as long as he killed the man who had tarnished his honor, the man who now held his only loved one as a hostage, the man who had repeatedly bedded his wife, that he could die feeling avenged.

  Early the next day the duke’s group came upon Captain Moyle’s body in a trampled area. The captain’s corpse had been ravaged by scavengers. It was a grisly scene. Duke Martin was thankful that the morning fog lingered among the tangle trees and the clinging undergrowth. For a long while, as Bear-fang inspected the scene, he felt fearful and empty. He was afraid that at any moment the tracker or Commander Aldean would call out that they had found Gallarael’s body.

  Bear-fang Karcher told him that the three parties had converged here, and that one of the people now traveling as a group had been bitten by the fang-flower they�
��d found severed. It did little to settle his nerves. He had no way of knowing which member of the group had been bitten, but one look at the fleshy, pink-colored thing the commander retrieved from the scrub made him know in his heart that it was his daughter. He couldn’t imagine any other member of the caravan even noticing, much less trying to get close to the exotic-looking bloom.

  Who was to say that Gallarael hadn’t been ravished by the bandits or eaten by the trolls too? The petite footprints they were following could be that whore’s just as easily as they could be his daughter’s.

  He drew in a deep breath and the smell of Moyle’s decaying corpse filled his lungs. He started to dry heave, but caught a glimpse of Commander Aldean. That craven bastard was watching him. Swallowing back his bile, he let his contempt toward the commander steady his guts.

  “We better get out the bows,” the duke said in a tone that brooked no argument. “Unless we want to end up like the captain.”

  Bear-fang laughed and unhooked his crossbow from his belt. The man actually looked excited at the prospect of tracking the other group deeper into the Wildwood.

  Coll spoke a few quick words and an arm-length rod of intricate wood flickered to existence in his hand. He held it as one might hold a sword.

  Commander Aldean strung his bow and hung a quiver of arrows from his saddle horn. He had a grim look on his face, as if he were no longer afraid. Duke Martin clipped a quiver to his hip and strung his great hunting bow. His sword he strapped across his back so that the hilt jutted up over his left shoulder.