by Ari Marmell
“The Finders’ Guild? Oh, figs.” Last she knew, Shins wasn't in any trouble with Davillon's thieves, but she couldn't readily come up with any good reasons they'd want to keep an eye on her.
“Where did you get this?” she demanded.
“Uh, been circulating for a couple months, now. In Davillon and all the surrounding towns. Actually were some going around earlier'n that, even, but those said deliver any information to a particular address in the Ragway District, rather than the Guild in general.”
She was only half listening, now, her attentions fixed on a point hundreds of miles distant and a season gone by. The bustling city of Lourveaux; the strangers loitering about the tomb of Archbishop William de Laurent, as though waiting for someone; the spy she had believed, only learning otherwise much later, to be watching her on behalf of House Carnot.
Again she pitched her voice for divine ears only. “What do you think?”
Worry, suspicion, but tentative agreement. Someone watching for her on both sides of Galice? It seemed far too much to be sheer coincidence.
Snapping back to the present, Shins clunked a couple of coins onto the food-stained table. “It's not as much as they're offering,” she said, tapping a finger on the parchment, “but you don't have to face a road supposedly full of monsters—or me—to collect.”
Grimy hands twitched toward the silver, but the stranger stopped himself. “And, uh, what am I doing for this reward?”
“Finding any more of these that might be floating around this little trading post and burning them.” It wouldn't accomplish much, she knew, but it might render this particular spot a tad safer if she had any need to come back this way.
Not that she planned to.
“Oh. All right.”
“Incidentally,” Shins added, interrupting him in mid-scoop, “it's probably crossed your mind to just take the coins and then not bother looking for any more of these posters. I mean, how would I know, right?”
“Um…”
“I suggest you consider the lengths that someone's gone just to keep track of me. And then wonder why.
“And then…ask if you're really sure I wouldn't know.”
With that, she swept from the chair and the table. It was all nicely melodramatic and threatening, and she almost ruined the whole effect by bursting into laughter when Olgun suddenly filled her head with ominous operatic music. Fortunately, she managed to hold off until she was back outside.
“Was a little overwrought, wasn't it?” Still chuckling, she checked the overcast skies. Deciding she could still get a few hours’ travel in before bunking down for the night, she turned her heels on the trading post and swiftly left it behind.
In the nipping winds and the shadows of the trees, however, her mirth scattered along with the stillborn leaves of early spring. Something was clearly wrong in Davillon.
“I mean,” she told Olgun, “when isn't something wrong in Davillon? If nothing was wrong, we'd know for sure that something was wrong! But who the hens is so hot to find me? We didn't leave that many people still pissed at us! And even I can't irritate people from all the way across the nation.”
A sigh, and then Shins stuck her tongue out at apparently nothing at all. “I set you up for that one, didn't I? Yes, I'm sure.”
Olgun would have to have been a god of cats to be any more smugly pleased with himself.
“Yeah, yeah. Well, keep your eyes open. Or my eyes open, or your not-eyes open, or whatever it is you actually use to see. If you see. Did you know that, even after all this time, you can be very confusing?”
When no response beyond more amusement was forthcoming, she continued, “Whatever. Be alert. There's something wrong at home, and there's supposedly something nasty on the road to home.
“I seriously doubt it's really any sort of ‘monster,’ though. I mean, most people go their entire lives without meeting one, yes? It's a pretty safe bet that you and I aren't going to encounter three.”
“If you happen to think of it,” Widdershins dully suggested to her unseen companion, “could you remind me, in the future, never to gamble? Or maybe talk?”
Olgun solemnly assured her he would take steps to ensure the former, but that the latter was beyond even divine intervention.
Shins nodded absently, having fully expected the retort; having invited it, even. The banter kept the both of them centered while taking in the tableau they'd stumbled over.
What had once been a large covered wagon lay beside the road, reduced primarily to planks and kindling. Here and there, though, protruded recognizable bits; a largely undamaged wheel, half of the driver's bench. The canvas tarp that had protected the vehicle's contents hung limp from a spur of wood, the heavy material rustling modestly in the wind.
It had, when intact, required a two-horse team to pull. One of those horses lay, still partly harnessed, as broken as the rest of the wagon. The abnormally cool spring meant that relatively few insects were out and about, but those that had found the equine buffet buzzed in offensive contentment.
Of the other horse, or any riders and drivers of a more bipedal nature, there was no sign.
Well, no sign other than the wide swathe of disturbed dirt and crushed underbrush where something had been dragged from the road.
Between that, and the almost comically large puncture wounds in the dead horse—it looked like it had been shot with multiple ballista bolts—Shins had pretty well given up on her earlier skepticism.
“Right. So. Monster it is, then.”
Grudging agreement from her partner.
“But, hey, the timing couldn't be better. This had to have happened pretty recently, yes? So whatever it is, it's off somewhere. Busy. Probably not hungry.”
Less grudging agreement.
“Perfect time for us to just continue on by, be on our way home in safety.”
Emphatic agreement, now.
“No reason whatsoever for us to get involved.”
Olgun continued to agree. Shins continued to stand at the edge of the road, gazing at the trail, and very obviously not going about her merry way.
“Yep. Going any minute now.”
Air wafted over them. Insects buzzed. Feet failed to step.
Oh, figs. “We're both really, really stupid.”
And back to grudging agreement again.
She hesitated a moment more, long enough to dig through her gear and recover the heavy pistol she'd confiscated from the first of the robbers who'd interrupted her travels. A quick juggle of powder and ball to load the weapon, and she was off, creeping low through darkening woodland.
Not her preferred environment, no, but avoiding protruding roots or loose leaves wasn't too different from creaky floorboards or crunching gravel. Between her own aptitudes and Olgun's assistance—warning her of an obstacle here, muffling the sound of a cracked twig there—her advance was quiet enough.
Her first hint that she was drawing near was the scent of smoke; rich, woody, redolent with roasting meat. It actually smelled pretty good, though Shins didn't have much of an appetite under the circumstances.
“Guess we know what happened to the other horse,” she muttered.
Flickering lights, glimpsed through the foliage, guided her closer. Widdershins ducked beneath a pair of crossed branches, dropped even lower so her crouch was more of a duck-waddle, and peered around a pudgy thumb of a stump.
A large campfire crackled angrily away, feeding on moist, snapping tinder that belched thick plumes of smoke in its death throes. Over the fire hung a primitive spit, little more than a branch on two rough Xs of wood. Shins couldn't clearly see the hunk of horse flesh dripping grease to sizzle in the flame, as it was already heavily blackened and veiled in smoke.
From across the encampment, a frightened whinny drew her gaze. The missing horse—a speckled roan, bits of its torn harness still wrapped around its chest—tugged frantically at the rope that bound it to a neighboring tree.
But if the horse was over there, then wh
at…?
Widdershins's gaze flickered back to the roasting meat, and she felt her stomach turn inside out.
“Olgun…” Barely a croak.
She felt the god's power tingling in her gut, settling it enough that the nausea wasn't overwhelming so that she could bite it back and not give away her presence with a loud retching. Even so, it was a near thing.
Then the thing whose camp this was tromped into view on the far side, actually shaking the nearby branches with each step, and Shins forgot about everything else.
It was no demon she'd heard described in sermons; no fae she'd run across in any fairy tale. More or less humanoid in silhouette it might have been—if overly, even obscenely, muscled—but it was anything but human. A single eye peered from furrowed brow; above, a lone horn curved upward, tearing leaves and twigs from the branches. Although difficult to tell in the firelight, it seemed the thing's skin was a deep russet; on a person, it would have suggested an exceedingly painful but slowly fading sunburn.
It smelled, even from this distance, of soured sweat and rotten breath. It wore only leather breeches, carried a primitive but brutal-looking spear, and none of these were the detail that first stole a reluctant gasp from her throat or set her gut to quivering all over again.
“Gods! The frog-hopping thing's got to be twice my height!” And that wasn't even counting the creature's horn. “What in the name of Khuriel's codpiece is it?!”
It was, in some ways, a useless question. Communicating through sensation and imagery as he did, Olgun couldn't really offer her an actual word for what they were seeing even if he knew it.
What he could convey was a sense of time. Of age.
Great time and age.
Before Galice and Rannanti and the other modern nations, a lengthy age of barbarism had engulfed the continent, perhaps the world. For centuries, violent tribes warred for territory, for supremacy of culture. It had been from these tribes that the 147 gods, those who would eventually make up the Hallowed Pact and bring about the rebirth of civilization, had come.
And earlier even than that, a millennium and more before Shins's own time, an age of myth. Legend spoke of great empires and warring kingdoms, magics far more potent and more common than today, and monsters the likes of which had never since been seen.
Shins didn't believe much of it. Nobody really did. But one tiny bit was true, apparently, since Olgun seemed pretty emphatic that this sort of creature was indeed that ancient.
“You don't believe this one's actually lived that long, though?!” she demanded.
No. No, he most assuredly did not.
“Then where the happy hens did it come from?” And then, “How do you even shrug without shoulders?”
To which, of course, Olgun only offered a second shrug.
“Whatever, then.” She watched as the creature squatted beside the fire, winced as it poked at the cooking flesh, perhaps to see if it was done. Even crouched, it was markedly taller than she.
“I really don't want to fight that,” she confessed. “So let's make this count, yes?”
The tingle in the air flared up as Shins raised the flintlock. Carefully sighting along the barrel, between grasping branches and the shadows cast by the dancing fire, she took a single, deep breath….
Allowed Olgun's influence to tweak her aim, shifting the weapon a hair this way, then that….
Thunder cracked; fire spat; smoke plumed. Through the dark and the sudden haze, Shins saw the creature's head rocked back by the impact. It screamed, hands flying upward to clutch at its temple.
And then, roaring like a tornado made of lions—and, though bleeding profusely, sporting a skull sadly lacking the hoped-for gaping hole—the thing bolted upright and charged.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh!” Shins observed.
Rough bark chewed at her fingers as she scrambled madly up the nearest tree, empty pistol tumbling with a flat thump to the soil. She felt Olgun's strength supporting her own, tightening her grip, boosting her jump as she pushed off the trunk in a lunge for the next branch over. Slender boughs scraped at her face and arms, enough to sting, not remotely enough to stop her. From behind, the rending and tearing and splintering and howling rather efficiently announced her pursuer's approach where the darkness might otherwise have concealed it.
And about that darkness…“Olgun?”
Another tingle of the god's power and the world brightened, though it lost some of its sharpness and color. One more leap, so she could haul herself up onto a higher branch, and then Shins took the time to turn and look.
Although slowed by the need to circumnavigate or squeeze between the largest boles, the creature wasn't far behind. Most of the intervening branches, and even a few small trees, simply snapped and fell away as it thundered through them. The protruding horn occasionally snagged in the canopy, forcing the thing to twist and crouch, impeding it further still, but most of the time it, like the rest of the beast, just tore through whatever blocked its path.
Every few steps it thrust that massive spear up and out, stabbing into the darkness. It was a veritable battering ram, thicker than the scattered saplings; with Olgun's enhancement to her vision, Shins could still see dried blood—she chose to assume it was the horse's—clinging to the sword-sized tip.
A bough thicker than the one on which she crouched splintered and fell with the spear's impact, hanging loosely by a few thin fibers. With a sound something akin to “Eep!”—only less articulate—Shins leapt. Over the monstrous head and horn, though not as high above as she might prefer, she soared across the gap to the next tree over. There she swung clear around the trunk and began again to climb, seeking a perch too high for even this enemy to reach.
Olgun's doubt was a sheen of sweat, clinging not to her body but her soul. Shins couldn't honestly blame him; with a foe nearly twelve feet in stature, wielding a spear even longer than that, “too high to reach” was—so to speak—a tall order.
Every stretch, every heave brought an extra foot of height and a bit of swearing—well, “swearing”—to match. “Figs…figs…hens…figs…”
Beneath her, something growled. Shins froze, leaned left, and glanced downward.
It stood at the base of the tree, its one narrowed eye meeting hers. She could see it studying the length of trunk between them, deciding she was out of reach, if only just. It hefted the spear a time or two, perhaps debating whether to throw.
Then, grinning until the flesh around its horn rumpled like an unmade bed, it reared back, lifted a foot, and kicked.
The entire tree shuddered and jumped. Branches waved like drowning sailors, and Shins could only cling for dear life as bark bit into skin and her teeth clacked hard enough to grind cornmeal. She might have considered drawing her rapier and letting herself drop, hoping both to kill the thing and break her own fall by landing atop it, but the wicked horn made that a rather unenticing proposition.
A second inhuman kick. Shins slipped a few feet down the trunk with a brief squawk. A trickle of blood wormed its way out from beneath her left palm.
“O-o-o-lgun-n?” she asked as the shuddering faded.
She caught the first stirrings of whatever idea he meant to convey, a brief flash of imagery that had something to do with the branches around her, but whatever else he intended was lost in a silent shriek of panic. The tree shook yet again, but this time was different. The impact seemed somehow less solid, yet the vibration was just as violent. Once more, Shins could only clutch tight to the trunk and twist about to look down.
“Oh, figs.”
The thing had turned the edge of its spear against the trunk. The massive tip was more than heavy enough to function as an axe, and while the surrounding trees provided limited room, the creature's strength was such that it didn't need much of a swing to build momentum. With that first strike, it had already gouged a larger gap into the tree than any human lumberjack could have managed in a half dozen blows.
Again it swung, and again, driving metal into woo
d. Shins tried to climb, but each impact cost her most of the progress she'd just made. She sought wildly for a safe spot on the neighboring boles, but the constant shaking kept her from planting her feet solidly enough to jump.
A fearsome crack sounded; the world began to tilt, just that much more with each subsequent strike; and in the end all Shins could do was scramble around the trunk so at least she wouldn't be crushed beneath the tree as it finally, ponderously, inexorably toppled.
Looking back on it some few moments later, the experience wasn't nearly so bad as she'd expected. The woods here were tightly packed enough that her tree lacked much room in which to fall. It plunged through a layer of canopy, ripping branches from its path, but lodged in the arms of its neighbors before its crown had traveled even halfway earthward.
On the other hand, it was still a sizeable tree, taking a sizeable fall. Already bleeding from a score of tiny lacerations and abrasions, Widdershins tumbled madly—head not only over heels, but also under, beside, and even cattycorner to them—thrown from the trunk by the impact. Only a desperate surge of power from Olgun allowed her to snag the nearby branches as she flew by, barely keeping herself from crashing through the canopy and breaking on the forest floor.
For roughly a decade or so, she just hung there, arms and legs wrapped tight around the thickest limbs, shuddering and aching over every inch. Wood and leaves crunched nearby as the creature prodded at the canopy with its spear, but the mess made by the falling tree, and the fact that Widdershins had managed to catch herself at a greater height than any normal human could have done, meant the brutal weapon thrust nowhere near her.
Her lungs burned, but she forced herself to take only soft, shallow, quiet breaths. Olgun's soothing touch washed over the worst of her cuts and bruises, but she knew she'd be feeling this for a couple of days to come. And still she waited, as the bestial grunts and the scraping spear grew faster and ever more frustrated.
Until, just as she despaired of it ever doing so, the creature offered a final sullen snarl and began climbing the fallen tree like a ramp, determined to find the hidden thief. It leaned sharply forward as it came, spear wrapped tight in one fist.