The cool autumn night air felt good as he ran. At first it had been quite chilly, but not anymore. Now it cooled his damp face and he gulped it in with sharp breaths. Breaths that now came in time with his running: breathe in, stride-stride, breathe out, stride-stride, breathe in, stride-stride, breathe out, stride-stride. The pounding in his ears from his heart did not match the tempo of his strides, he noticed distractedly. The running, broken every now and then with a gasping break for a quick rest, went on for some time before he was finally at his destination.
He stood hunched over, hands resting on the waist-high wooden gate, catching his breath. It had been a dark run. Hemet wasn’t due to rise for several hours and Duvin not until even later. But the night air was cool, sharp, and clear, and even without the two moons, the brilliant stars had provided enough light so that he could keep to the dirt road. And eventually, his eyes had adjusted to the starlight, and he had been able to see just enough of the road not to turn an ankle, though there had been a few close calls. After a few minutes rest, he no longer breathed raggedly, and his heart beat closer to normal.
He saw no light coming from within the small but neat house, and he grew worried. Though it was late, it wasn’t late enough for Master Retter to be asleep, which meant the smith was probably still at work. He made his way around the side of the house to the building behind, which housed the forge.
He felt terrible about being late and knew he deserved it if he got an earful from Master Retter. But the date had gone so perfectly! He was well and truly smitten with the delightful girl. After dinner, they’d sat on the porch swing talking and laughing for hours. Her father had finally come to the door and said it was time for her to get to sleep. That’s when he had realized the late hour and rushed back.
As a provisional apprentice, he could ill afford to upset his mentor. Honestly, though, it wasn’t even that. Master Retter was a bit of a hero to him, and he didn’t want to disappoint the burly craftsman. The man could work wonders with metal! It was almost as if the smith used magic while crafting.
He could see light through the large windows that opened on the forge room proper, thrown wide to let the cool evening air in. And smoke, though faint, rose from the chimney. When he walked in, however, he was alone in the large room, so he made his way to the drinking bucket to quench his thirst. “I’m sorry I’m late, sir!” he shouted. He drank deep of the water, faintly metallic from the ladle but very refreshing, and poured the last over his head, dropping the dipper back into the bucket after. That was when he noticed the silence. And the smell.
He tentatively sniffed the air. The normal sharp and smoky scent of the forge fire was layered with the new smell. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant exactly, just . . . odd.
He looked around the large room. There were no items in the softly glowing fire pot of the forge. And there was nothing on the workbench next to the forge.
“Sir?” he asked.
Maybe there had been need of fuel? Charcoal or coke, perhaps, but he’d refilled the coal bin himself this morning, so it couldn’t be that. He made his way around to the supply room, a small space down a short hallway in the back of the large forge room.
A small wheelbarrow was in front of the storage room door. It sat turned on its side, under displays of various items the smith made. Occupying the entire left wall of the hallway, the small shelves and wall mounts were filled with examples of craft items: helmets, breastplates, and other bits of armor; maces, daggers, and other weapons; tools such as hammers and axes; even small things like various rings used in crafting, along with other oddments.
He righted the wheelbarrow. It was used to haul fuel and normally sat next to the bins near the forge. He smiled. He had been right.
“Sir, I can get the fuel,” he began as he stepped past the wheelbarrow and opened the door to the supply room. It was dark within, the sconce on the wall just inside the door still shuttered.
He furrowed his brows, closed the door, and turned back to face the hallway. “Master Retter?”
On his left, he noticed that the door that opened to the yard in back of the building was cracked open. He grabbed the handle of the door, pushed it open, and stepped out onto the small stoop. “Sir?”
The yard was dark, the faint crystalline light from the stars the only illumination. The air felt cold.
“Master Retter?” As he moved down to the second step, he nearly lost his footing. The top step was slippery for some reason, but he was able to keep himself from falling by holding onto the door handle and twisting his body.
“Barbs and blades!” he muttered through clenched teeth. He had pulled something in his back while straining to keep from falling. What in all of Yrdra’s deepest hells had he stepped in?
After a moment, and mindful of the twinge in his back, he gingerly bent over and examined the top step. His boot had smeared some kind of liquid, dark and shiny in the starlight. Polishing oil? He couldn’t tell what it was in the low light.
As he stood up, he glanced around the back area of the building. To his right, he noticed a darker shadow against the building, on the ground. He furrowed his brows. “Sir, is that you?” he asked as he cautiously made his way over to the shadow.
It was!
“Great Ulthis’ maze! Master Retter! Are you alright?”
The master smith was propped against the back wall of the building and gave no response. It was impossible to see details with just the starlight, so he ran inside, being watchful of that step. His back was still twinging, which made him run with an odd gait. He grabbed a lantern and a water skin and rushed back to Master Retter.
“Sir, I brought you some . . .” He saw his master in the light of the lantern. The smith had large slashes across his muscular arms and chest and across his throat. The smith’s clothing was covered in blood.
“No!” he whispered desperately. The water skin and lantern dropped to the ground as he fell to his knees.
“Oh, sir. No.” Tears welled up in his eyes. “Who would do this to you?” He reached over and tried to straighten the smith’s clothing, tears running down his face, hands shaking.
He noticed an item on the ground, next to the smith. It caught the light of the lantern, a flash along its length. A sword?
And what was that? A few feet away, flat on the ground, was the body of some animal. He grabbed the lantern, wiped the tears from his eyes to see more clearly and, on his knees, moved closer to the shadowy corpse.
This was where the strange smell was coming from, he realized, from this beast. The scent was very powerful. He examined it closer.
The creature was vaguely human in its shape, but the proportions of its legs and arms to its body were off. It had very thin, lean muscles, and what he could see of its skin was dark gray and mottled, nearly black in the light of the lantern. On most of its body it had thick though very fine fur, also dark gray or maybe black. It was matted here and there with blood from various slashing cuts on its body. It had long sharp claws on both of its ‘hands’ and shorter claws on both its feet. Its head was almost human, but there was something subtly wrong with its shape. And then there was its mouth. It was from some kind of dark nightmare. An enormous maw filled with large, wide, razor-sharp teeth. The mouth gaped open, lips stretched taut against the teeth, a long thin tongue hanging out.
It came to him what it was. Nahual!
He glanced quickly about. They were supposedly lone hunters, but you never knew. He’d heard of them before of course, everyone had. There were rumors and reports of occasional attacks from time to time. He had always thought that nahual were old wives’ tales, that something else had actually been responsible for the attacks. Yet here was living proof. Well, not living anymore.
He glanced back at Master Retter’s body. You killed it, sir, he thought. You killed the miserable piece of garbage that killed you.
He grabbed the sword from the ground to provide him with some measure of comfort, and maybe some protection, and glanced about the y
ard again. A chill breeze blew a smattering of leaves along the ground. In the distance, he heard the slow deliberate calls of an owl. There was nothing around.
He looked back at the body of Master Retter and then at the sword in his hand. If the master smith had not been able to live through an attack, he realized, he didn’t stand much of a chance no matter the weapon. He didn’t have the late smith’s strength.
The tears threatened to return, but he forced them back. No! He gripped the hilt of the sword tightly. He had to be strong, he realized. He had to make it back to Cotter’s Grove to warn them.
“Yrdra be cursed,” he muttered and then spat. Nahual were real, and they had reached their village.
Malina was exhausted. She had been traveling all night. In the last hour the second moon had risen. A thin, meager crescent, it added its wan glow to that of the other higher up in the eastern sky.
Her instinct was to find a safe place away from others. Even so, this journey had taken her exceedingly far. She could not remember any that had ever traveled this distance for any purpose, but she felt she had no choice—it was almost time, and she was very uneasy.
True, she had no experience with this at all, and she was always anxious. She had a brief moment of clarity and realized that they all were, all the time. She shook her head. That was not it! She felt that something was not right, and she did not want to be anywhere near others and suffer more humiliation should she be correct. As it was, she could not afford to lose any face at all. A faint whimper escaped her.
She liked to pretend that all the machinations of House standing did not matter to her. But very few of those who stood higher than her failed to remind her of her standing every day. And those closest to her standing were the worst. Humiliation upon humiliation was inflicted on her. The last oily comment was almost more than she could bear.
The only reason he was allowed to be with you is that he is so young. It was only to break him in. It meant nothing. You are nothing.
She let the humiliations slide over her, however, like mist passing in a breeze. Their pettiness would be washed away if her plan worked. Even with all her careful preparation, however, she was worried. She felt dread. It had been growing slowly and spreading throughout her like some kind of disease for days now. She continued south.
As she came over a rise, she saw light ahead and panicked. There was light and fire and many, many buildings enclosed in a barrier wall of stone. It was some kind of settlement! She quickly shifted her way to the southwest around it. She did not dare be seen. She moved as quietly as she could, putting distance between her and them.
One of the two guards looked westward. “Hey Dan, did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Dan asked, adjusting his armor slightly. In truth, he had been half dozing, leaning against his pike as he stood in the watch tower. It was one of two towers above North Gate, the northern entrance to Caer Baronel, where he and Emmon had the watch this night. He looked over at Emmon briefly, on the tower on the the western side of the gate, before turning and scanning the eastern horizon for signs of dawn’s approach. It was chilly, and the half-height walls at the top of the tower offered no protection from the night breeze. Sunrise should come soon, however, and with it, warmth.
“I dunno,” Emmon said. “It sounded like . . . movement. But different.” He continued to stare westward. “And did you notice how all the sounds of the woods suddenly stopped?”
“Sounds of the woods? What, the woods that are over two hundred yards away? You can hear a damn sight better than I can, then.” Dan glanced at the ragged line of trees.
Some materials were needed in great quantities for the construction of Caer Baronel, including wood from trees that were cleared as needed all around the site of the Caer, and a huge amount of stone, quarried from the hills to the northwest.
Dan looked over at Emmon. “You been drinking when you got guard duty?” He stomped his boots a little, trying to get some blood to his cold feet. The warming brazier he stood next to did little warming at all. “Lord Baronel will have your toes.” He again scanned what he could see of the nearest patch of trees to the west.
“What? Don’t be stupid. Of course I ain’t been drinking. But I heard something.” Emmon turned toward Dan and shrugged. “Trick of the night, maybe.”
“Ha, trick of the night. You still edgy up here in the wilderness? It’s been, what, a year and some since all of us followed Lord Baronel way up here to join his new holding? I’d have thought you’d be over all that by now.”
Emmon furrowed his brows, annoyed. “Now see here, there’s all kinds of creatures and what-not out in these northern parts, many of them deadly, everyone knows that. And there’ve been more and more reports of nahual too. So I don’t feel any shame for bein’ a bit nervous when we first came up here.”
Dan smiled at having riled up his friend once again.
Emmon saw his grin and continued anyway. “But I’m not nervous now. I heard something.” He turned back to the woods. “I’ll be glad when our watch is up. It’s damn cold out.” He shook his arms hoping for some warmth in the action, the sound of his chain armor loud in the near silence just before dawn.
“That it is,” Dan said. “Winter’ll be here soon enough. And then it’ll really be cold. Snow is great to hear stories about, and truth be told, I do enjoy the white stuff. Though as the months go on, it does tend to wear out its welcome.”
Emmon remembered the months of cold and shivered. “Well at least Lord Baronel was right. This will be a prosperous holding for sure. Those caverns have turned out to be perfect for his trade. We’ll be doing just fine here, and that’s the truth.”
“Aye. Those caverns will serve perfectly for light moss. They go on long and deep too. It’ll likely take a long time to map the full width and breadth of ‘em, if they even have an end.”
Behind them, sounds of the Caer rising began to be heard. Cows lowing and livestock milling about, wagons and carts clattering on the cobblestone roads, and muted conversations and arguments, all the sounds of people and animals beginning to move about the place. It meant that sunrise, and the end of their watch, was close.
After several minutes had passed, Malina was able to regain some control of her panic. Stupid! she thought to herself. She had almost wandered right into that settlement. She needed to concentrate on where she was going. She had been so focused on reviewing her recent decisions again and again that she had been traveling without actually seeing anything around her.
She could just make out what looked like another range of hills far ahead in the distance. Maybe she could get to them before sunrise and head farther west along the other side of them, putting more distance between her and the settlement. However, she could sense that sunrise was going to come before she made it that far if she did not hurry. And she was so tired. She had been traveling for hours this night, but she increased her pace.
She was nervous. She would admit that. When was she not? But what she felt was not nerves. She felt near-overwhelming dread. She felt it in her bones. It had been growing as the weeks had passed. And now, it was so strong that it almost incapacitated her at times. She shook her head violently, trying to cast off the corrosive thoughts. She would not surrender to this . . . this darkness. She would not!
Sharp pain shot through her body and she let out a cry that she stifled quickly. Could it be? But so soon! Somehow it was already time. Desperately, she looked about for somewhere, anywhere that might be safe. With the light from the two moons, she could just make out details of the area around her. Wait. There! What was that? A patch of darkness in the ground in the trees ahead. She approached quickly.
It was a sinkhole. She peered down into its depths as she circled it. The sinkhole had openings branching off to the north, west and south. It was perfect.
Panting and desperate, she quickly took the leaf-strewn rubble ramp that lead down into the sinkhole, and then she hurriedly entered the southern opening. It was a passage, ju
st large enough for her to get through without too much effort.
After a dozen feet, the passage was much darker and started to angle downward. She could still see, barely, but she had to be very careful in the sloping dark tunnel, slowing her progress. When patches of light moss began to appear on the walls and ceiling, however, they provided enough light for her to easily make out her way, and she was able to quicken her pace again. The passage opened soon enough into a cavern, but it was too small and a bit too close to the sinkhole for her liking. She continued southwest down the passage.
Another contraction. And with it, pain. She clenched her jaws and stopped to let it pass. When it was over, she took a few breaths before continuing down the passage. It was awkward going for her, and though she wanted to, she did not dare go any faster. The tunnel maintained its downward trend opening up briefly here and there.
The passage ultimately ended on a ledge overlooking an enormous cavern, the other side of which she could not make out in the dimly lit gloom. She had no idea how far below the surface she was. Above, she could see a faint glow. Light moss on the ceiling, perhaps?
The stillness was profound. Only the faint sound of water dripping intruded. And her heavy breathing. She moved to the left and looked over the ledge and down into the cavern.
Part of the ground gave way under her. She panicked but was able to regain her footing. After a while, once her heart had slowed a bit, she examined the ground closer. The entire ledge was not solid rock. She moved to the center of the ledge, which seemed to be firmer, and carefully took another look.
Very far below, she could see the floor of the cavern, made visible here and there by soft light given off by various plants and fungi that grew in patches along it. But she could see no path down to it from where she was. With visibility so terrible and with so little time, she dare not try to find other ways of getting down there. However, there was another ledge perhaps thirty feet below the one on which she stood. It was much larger than this ledge, and she decided it was her best choice.
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