by Logan Jacobs
“I don’t suppose there’s a way to go around?” I asked with a glance back at the archer.
“Right you are,” Lavinia answered. “The road is bottlenecked by a ravine, so the only way is through. I don’t think it’s anything to worry about, merchants use this road all the time. Probably just some goblins or trolls or something, nothing we can’t handle, anyway.”
“You think goblins are making this smell?” Urim asked.
“It’s not as though they bathe,” Maruk pointed out. “Well, whatever it is, if we can’t go around, let’s just try to get through quickly.”
It wasn’t long before the bog came into view. The land hadn’t risen above sea level at any point along the road since we’d left Kepa, and now it sank even lower until it disappeared beneath the stretch of mud and murky water before us. Oak and aspen gave way to tall cypress trees that loomed up and tangled their branches into a dense canopy overhead, their image reflected on the still, dark surface of the water.
Insects chattered and droned amongst the trees, and I felt Merlin twist around and poke his head out of my pack, no doubt interested in the prospect of a meal. He clambered up onto my shoulder, took one sniff of the muggy swamp air, and recoiled with his nose wrinkled up in an exaggerated expression of disgust before he retreated into my pack again. I wasn’t sure how much of a difference that would make, but I couldn’t blame the puca for trying to avoid the stench. Combined with the thick, humid air, it almost seemed to have a physical presence, and I had to resist the impulse to try to wipe the odor off my skin.
Where the dirt road finally succumbed to the swamp, someone had constructed a wooden bridge on stilts above the water, but either the contractor hadn’t built the bridge high enough, or recent rains had swelled the swamp, but even from here, I could see places were the water lapped sluggishly over the old planks. Rezo pulled the carriage to a halt just before the planks began, and I noticed that the wheels had already begun to sink into the swamp. The underside of Yvaine’s beautiful carriage was splattered with greenish-gray mud, and the horses kicked up more of the stuff as they snorted and stomped, obviously unhappy to be stalled in a place like this.
Rezo picked his way down from the driver’s seat carefully, but before he’d even reached the ground, the carriage door flew open and Emeline jumped out, followed by Lena and Aerin.
“Ugh!” the panthera woman cried as thick mud splattered up the hem of her robes. The carriage must have provided the women some protection from the smell because Emeline looked startled as it hit her for the first time and reached up to cover her nose. “What is that?”
“The leading theory is goblins,” I said as I nodded to the swamp behind her.
Lena and Aerin were a bit more careful as they stepped down from the carriage and looked around.
“Why did we stop?” Aerin asked with a frown.
“I don’t trust that bridge,” Rezo answered, and he threw a nervous glance back at the planks that spanned the water. “The horses are already nervous, I’ll have to lead them across. It’d probably be best if all of you go on foot until we’re out of this place.”
“And there are goblins?” Aerin asked as she turned back to me.
“We don’t know,” I told her, “but I’d be surprised if we didn’t run into something nasty out here. Let’s all be on our guards.” I looked at Rezo. “We’ll go first, that way we can deal with anything that crawls out of there before it gets to the horses.”
The man nodded, and I walked past him toward the bridge. The mud sucked at my boots and water pooled in the impressions my feet had left in the soggy ground, but when I stepped up onto the first of the planks, I realized the bridge was only slightly better, and I understood Rezo’s reservations. The wood groaned and sagged beneath my weight, and just a few yards down, the low railings had fallen away from the platform and hung halfway into the water. Slimy moss trailed from the tree branches overhead, and the weather worn planks of the bridge were coated in the stuff.
At least from here, there was no sign of goblins or any other danger besides slipping and falling into the stinking water, but I kept a sharp eye out as I moved forward and gestured to the others to follow. Mosquitos buzzed through the air around us and water striders darted across the dark surface of the swamp as our group moved carefully forward, but the rest of the swamp was still. It wasn’t comforting. Instead, the stillness seemed to indicate that something was lying in wait. I kept my hand on the hilt of my dagger as I led our party forward.
My guild seemed to share my discomfort, but behind me, I could hear Maruk’s cousins still laughing and joking around as before. It seemed like even the smell didn’t bother them much. I supposed they had gotten used to that and worse spending most of their time crowded onto a pirate ship.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the hazy bulbous bodies of wisps between the trees. They hung low to the water and danced about in swirling patterns, seemingly oblivious to the turtle that watched them closely from the roots of a cypress. Every so often, I’d catch the burst of a bubble or a splash as fish came near the surface to hunt the water striders and other bugs, but it was difficult to see the fish themselves in the murky water, and absolutely impossible to gauge how deep it was.
“Hey, Lavinia,” I called back. “Do you have an idea of how big this place is?” The bridge and the rest of the swamp stretched on as far as I could see until they were lost between the looming trunks of the cypress beyond. Of course, we didn’t have any choice except to follow the bridge, but I wanted to get a better idea of what we were in for.
“It’s not very large,” the ranger replied. “Looks like it’s about a mile-and-a-half across the bridge here.”
I had just opened my mouth to respond when something flickered beneath the surface of the water, noticeably larger than any of the fish I’d seen so far. I frowned and leaned forward to try to get a better look at the creature, but whatever it was, it had already slid back into the depths, and the water was so thick with mud and silt that I couldn’t even try to track it by the light of its mana. I sighed and shook my head. It was probably just a fish.
Then the bridge shuddered as something jostled it, and I threw a warning glance back at the others as I reached for my dagger. I caught sight of the shadow again, this time on the left side of the bridge, and as I watched, a monstrous worm-like creature with a dark, slick body raised itself up out of the water and turned its triple rows of fangs toward us.
Chapter 9
For a heartbeat, the only sound was the trickle of water as it streamed off the beast’s black hide. Its body appeared to be nothing more than a tube of muscle as big around as a bus, studded with fishhooks and was scored across with innumerable scars, and its face ended in a gaping hole of a mouth with row after row of curved fangs that led down to its throat. As I stared into the darkness behind those teeth, my mind finally supplied a name for the creature. It was a leech, a giant leech.
Then that moment of frozen shock ended, and behind me, Sulla and Urim cheered. Before I could say or do anything, the orc pirates rushed forward along the narrow bridge and threw themselves at the monster. Urim swung both of his axes out as he leapt for the leech, but Sulla left his sword strapped to his back as he swung himself onto the leech’s back and grabbed it in a chokehold without a care that leeches don’t have necks.
The leech, which most likely had intended to prey upon a few hapless travelers through its swamp, seemed as shocked by this development as the rest of us. It was like the world’s weirdest rodeo as the leech twisted and writhed in an attempt to fling Sulla off its back, and by some astounding feat of skill and brute force, the orc managed to hang on.
For his part, Urim sloshed through waist-high swamp water as he attacked the leech with his axes and shouted taunts to Sulla.
“Will you pull its teeth from its mouth now, Sulla?” the orc called up with a wild grin. “Or do you need to wait until it is dead like you did with that sea dragon?”
“Tha
t one was still moving when I broke its jaw!” Sulla argued. He grunted as the leech thrashed and nearly bucked him off, but he had his massive arms wrapped tightly around the beast just past its terrible mouth and kept his hold.
“We should--” I started but before I could finish saying “help them,” there was another splash from behind us. The bright blue light of my mana blade gleamed against the green and brown tones of the swamp as I whirled around to face two more leeches as they reared up out of the stinking water.
“So, not goblins,” Aerin observed as she drew her axe. The elvish writing along the handle subtly glowed as the redheaded elf hefted the blade in her hands.
“Not goblins,” I confirmed. With one hand, I reached behind my back and pulled Merlin out of my pack by the scruff of his neck. The puca chattered in annoyance at being disturbed before he caught sight of the leeches, but when he did, his hackles rose as he hissed.
Behind Aerin, I could see that the others all had their weapons, magic, tools, whatever they fought with, ready, and they glanced from the leeches to me as they waited for my signal. If the water was waist-high on Urim, I knew that even Maruk would have trouble trying to wade through it, and the rest of us wouldn’t even be able to get our heads above the surface. That meant we’d have to keep to the bridge.
“Spread out along the bridge!” I called back to the rest of the guild. “We’ll have to draw them close and hit them from here.”
As it turned out, drawing the leeches in was no problem. I suppose our weapons had given them pause, or else they’d hesitated to attack once they got a look at what Maruk’s cousins were doing to their friend, but before I’d even finished my sentence, the first of the leeches dove for the bridge at Merlin.
The puca yowled and jumped for the leech at the same time, and he shifted in midair into a gigantic eagle with dusky black feathers and goat-like green eyes. He caught the top of the leech’s lip in his talons and yanked it back just as Emeline cast a jet of flame at the beast’s exposed underbelly.
The fire caught as if the leech had been doused in gasoline and burned furiously through its flesh. I glimpsed sections of red exposed muscle where the flames ate through the leech’s body, but within seconds, the monster appeared to be nothing more than a writhing column of flame.
The leech screeched in pain and twisted violently to free itself from Merlin’s hold and dive below the waves. It managed to do so, but as it fell back into the water, I noticed that Merlin had torn loose a sizable chunk of its rubbery flesh with his talons.
Water splashed over us as the leech retreated beneath the swamp and sloshed up over the planks of the low bridge, and I felt my stomach lurch as another wave of that terrible smell hit full-force. I remembered what Maruk had said about the bog smelling like it was full of corpses and wondered if he hadn’t been that far off the mark.
The second leech ducked as Merlin swooped back toward it, but it didn’t flee. Instead, it lashed out at the puca. Its jaws extended from its mouth like a grasping hand as rows and rows of teeth tried to clamp down on Merlin’s wing, but the puca swerved just in time to avoid them.
I could still hear Urim and Sulla as they grappled with the third on the other side of the bridge, but I didn’t dare look away to see how they were faring as the leech gave up on Merlin and turned back to those of us on the bridge.
“Get it to look over here!” Lena called. The alchemist had a round bottle clasped tightly in her hand, the inside of which was filled with a shockingly bright purple fluid.
“Hey!” Maruk shouted to the leech as he banged his shields together. “This way, you big ugly worm!“
“Over here!” Emeline joined in, and she summoned several tiny fireballs to her hands to entice the monster’s attention.
The leech’s jaws moved slowly as it turned toward them, and Lena threw the vial in her hand. The leech reacted more quickly than I would have thought was possible and lunged to snap the vial out of the air. Its throat convulsed as it swallowed the bottle whole, and I could see the lump as it traveled down the leech’s esophagus.
“Agh, no!” Lena wailed. “It wasn’t supposed to swallow it!“
“What did you think it was going to do?” Lavinia asked.
“I thought it would chew it or something!” Lena replied. “It was supposed to break the glass!“
Merlin dove for the leech again, and it was just about to snap at him, too, when it suddenly stopped. I would have sworn I could see a look of surprise in its blank, black eyes.
A heartbeat later, purple light exploded inside it and shone through its muscles and blood vessels as the beast twisted and heaved. Its entire body convulsed again, and I just had time to grab Aerin by the wrist and pull her after me out of the way as the leech vomited.
Bits of glass and bright purple potion spewed out of the leech’s gaping mouth. The vomit fizzed and burned the wood of the bridge where it splashed, and even the water smoked where poison dripped from the leech’s mouth. The leech screeched and writhed as its flesh bubbled and was eaten away by Lena’s potion, and Lavinia took advantage of its moment of pain to shoot a volley of arrows into its body.
I summoned an illusion, another eagle like Merlin, to help keep the leech busy and draw it near enough to the bridge for Aerin to swipe at it with her axe and Maruk to hit it with his shields. I took care that the illusion would be visible only to the leech since I hadn’t yet told Emeline about my powers. If the panthera mage had noticed anything strange at Edward’s estate, she hadn’t brought it up, and I’d concluded that the chaos of the battle had given me some cover. With all of us lined up on the bridge here, though, I couldn’t rely on that again.
The leech, delirious with pain but still very much alive, twisted over itself as though it was trying to tie its own body into a knot. Lavinia continued to shoot at it, and it was a miracle that any of her shots connected given how erratically the monster flopped around and slammed into trees. Still, despite the acid and the arrows, it showed no signs of slowing, and as it thrashed, I realized with a spike of dread that it would only take one hit, even an accidental one, for the leech to destroy the bridge we were all standing on.
“Emeline!” I shouted as I turned back toward the mage. “You have to burn it!” That had worked against the other one, at least. Maybe they had a weakness to fire.
The panthera mage nodded and adjusted her stance as she prepared to cast another spell. Her mana was like liquid sunlight as it flowed out from the center of her chest and down her arms, collected in the palms of her hands, then burst forth as a flame. Twin fireballs, each the size of a basketball, arched toward the leech with a sharp whistling sound. The fire spread rapidly once it hit the monster’s body, and the leech screamed as it twisted in agony, a ribbon of flame. Then its flesh sizzled as it sank back beneath the water and disappeared.
“Ha! Got it!” Sulla shouted from behind, and I turned to see the orc still wrapped around the third leech’s worm-like body, his arm soaked to the elbow in dark blood as he pulled one of the monster’s teeth out of its mouth. One of the leech’s eyes had been torn out in the struggle and hung limply from an oozing socket by a few strands of muscle, and blood streamed from gouges in its body where Sulla had evidently torn it open with his bare hands.
Urim was still in the water, and he had hacked a good quarter of the way through the leech’s body with his axes. Blood splattered over his face as he hit a major vessel, and he whooped as the leech cried out and fell with a heavy splash.
Sulla leapt from its back even as it fell and landed in the water next to Urim, and the pair exchanged wild, triumphant grins and slapped one another on the back before they hauled themselves back onto the bridge with the rest of us.
“Ah, that was fun.” Sulla sighed as he wiped the blood away from his new leech fang to admire it. “I wonder what other sorts of creatures are around here.”
“I think your arm is bleeding,” Aerin told him with a worried frown. “Are you sure you don’t want me to heal t
hat? Or at least wash it? There’s no telling what kind of parasites live in there.” She threw a glance toward the silty water, once again as still as it had ever been.
Sulla lifted his arm and examined the pair of long gashes across it as though he hadn’t even noticed them before.
“Hmph,” he grunted proudly. “These will become nice scars.”
“I’m pretty sure what they’ll become is infected,” Aerin argued, but when she saw the stubborn set to Sulla’s jaw, her shoulders fell. “If I promise not to close the wounds, will you at least let me rinse and bandage them?”
“Fine,” he replied, and he held out his arm while Aerin took the stopper out of her canteen and poured clean water over Sulla’s arm. The orc didn’t so much as blink though I was sure a wound like that must be painful. With the mud and blood rinsed away, it was apparent now just how deep the leech’s fangs had gone, and I glimpsed a pale section of bone beneath the bright red muscle.
“Oh, goodness,” Maruk groaned. “That is quite severe.”
“Urim, look!” Sulla called out proudly. “Down to the bone.”
“I want to see,” Lavinia urged as she shouldered past Maruk to marvel at Sulla’s battle wounds.
“That’s going to need stitches,” Aerin said, and even the healer’s face was a bit pale. “You’re not against stitches, are you?”
“Stitches are fine,” Urim answered as he leaned over Sulla’s shoulder and prodded at the edge of the wound with one finger. “These will look good. Too bad it is just the one arm, eh, Sulla?”
“Don’t encourage him,” Maruk pleaded. “In case you two forgot, we do have an actual mission to complete here. You can tempt fate later.”
Sulla laughed and punched Maruk on the shoulder good-naturedly, and as Maruk took a step to regain his balance, the bridge shuddered.
“Watch it, this thing probably isn’t built to have us all stomping around on it,” Lavinia warned.