by JF Smith
The rain began to slack off and the thunder receded, but within another quarter hour of walking, a new sound reached his ears.
He turned back from the direction he had come to see two huge wolves speeding towards him, their feet pounding hard the forest floor as they ran, and their fur and muzzles matted with the black of thick and congealed blood.
Before he had any time to react, the foremost wolf leapt into the air directly at him and Gully threw his arm up to deflect the blow. The image of the wolf stuttered for a second, and then it was the form of Gallun landing on top of him, knocking him over and then pulling at him before he had any time to ward it off.
Gully started to panic and fought to push his frenzied friend off, and recoiled at the sight of the blood and hair stuck to the naked man grabbing for him.
Gallun and Gellen both managed to pull him up and almost began to drag him bodily back towards the Mercher camp, but Gully pushed his feet firmly into the ground and shouted at them, “What is this?! Why are you all bloody and half-mad?”
Gellen grabbed at Gully, physically throwing him over his shoulder to carry him back towards the camp with no attempt at explanation. Gully used his fists to push in on the backs of Gellen’s knees, causing him to fall so that he could scramble away.
Dirty and wet, confused and frightened by his friends’ behavior, Gully assumed a defensive stance and he shouted, “What in the starless sky is wrong with the two of you?! Are you hurt? Whose blood is that?”
Gallun and Gellen stood panting, their chests heaving frantically, their eyes wide and wild. Even in human form they were still covered in blood. Gully wiped the rain off of his brow as he eyed them warily. Despite being covered in blood, they did not seem to be hurt. Gully wondered whose blood was dripping off of them.
Gellen looked like he was about to attempt again to physically drag Gully back towards the camp, but Gallun’s face turned desperate.
“Hehwp!” came the single, malformed word from Gallun’s exhausted and pleading face.
Gully looked at them and then repeated unsurely, “Help?”
They both pointed back towards the camp as their chests heaved.
Gully’s blood froze. He grabbed his pack off the ground and began running back towards the camp as fast as he could go, darting around trees and jumping bushes as he ran.
By the time he got back to the camp, the pain in his side from running felt like a burning knife had been stuck deep into him. His hands were scratched and red from warding off branches and bushes that he had run through rather than dodge. He had no idea what to expect — soldiers, fires, an ambush... his mind was a stirred-up wasp’s nest of horrible possibilities.
The one thing he didn’t expect to see was what greeted him, though. Nothing seemed amiss.
The panther transmute named Aalehvan and Wyael were at the edge of the camp, waiting for them to arrive, and hurriedly led Gully on to the patriarch’s shack.
As they ran, Gully barely able to jog he was so exhausted, he asked his two escorts, “Has the camp been attacked? Is the patriarch safe?”
“No attacks, sir, but you must see. Gallun and Gellen brought something that you absolutely must know of,” said Aalehvan anxiously.
He found the patriarch pacing nervously, both human and ocelot halves walking distractedly back and forth in concert. The ocelot’s tail was swishing to and fro anxiously. Many of the clan were gathered around, but Exoutur, Encender, and Raybb all seemed to be arguing about something heatedly. The patriarch did not seem to be paying attention to the argument around him.
“Gallun... and Gellen... almost dragged me back bodily...” panted Gully, interrupting the men and trying to ignore the painful stitch in his side. “What has... what has happened?”
The patriarch said, very gravely, “As best we can tell from what Gallun and Gellen had made us understand, earlier this morning they tracked down one of the soldiers that kidnapped them. He was on his way from the Maqaran Pass and traveling back towards Lohrdanwuld by horseback. They took their revenge on him and made very sure he would never abduct anyone else ever again.”
“Oh!” said Gully, feeling relieved. “But, that is good news!” He smiled at Gallun and Gellen and said, “I only regret it was not both of the starless bastards that got to feel your jaws around their necks!”
Neither Gallun nor Gellen looked very pleased or happy.
The patriarch said, “They found this on him, though, and brought it back to the camp.”
He handed to Gully a damp piece of parchment, spattered with blood. The elaborate wax seal on the folded paper had been broken already. The patriarch’s face was creased with a grave worry, almost a dread, that Gully had never seen there.
Gully looked at the letter and slowly had to form the words with his mouth as he read it:
Krayell,
As we planned out, I will have three of my best battalions assembled and prepared to march to Lohrdanwuld to seize the city on the 24th day of the month of your Waxing Summer.
You had best have as much of your forces scattered and diverted in the search for your prince and away from our path, or your payment will suffer greatly for the failure. My generals demand that you leave as much armor and as many weapons behind in Lohrdanwuld as you have for our use when we take the city.
If you have not thought of it, ensure there is a minimal guard on the pass that day so that we can overcome them and control both sides. See to it.
I anxiously await delivery of that spineless little wretch you call a prince as my new slave, to be followed by many, many more once Iisen is under the Maqaran yoke. Perhaps I will loan him to you on occasion after you are admitted to status among the Maqaran aristocracy.
~~Azi
When Gully got to the end, his mouth hung open and he looked up at the Mercher clan gathered around him in silence. He glanced back down at his hands holding the letter and saw that they were trembling with fear. The 24th of Waxing Summer was less than a week away.
Gully murmured to himself in abject horror, “Damn that man to drown at the black bottom of the sea for all time, he has betrayed the whole of the Iisendom into slavery!”
Chapter 21 — One Step At A Time
“We are wasting time!” shouted Encender impatiently. “All this waiting and wasting time! And for what? For someone who wants little to do with us in the end!”
“Encender...” said the patriarch, half to sooth his son and half in warning him.
Encender continued to bellow, though. “We could be half-gathered now and soon to leave for further north! Every moment we loll about brings the Maqarans that much closer to our heels! Instead, we squander time, waiting on... that one!” he snapped, pointing at Gully.
The ocelot half of the patriarch hissed at Encender and the human half shouted, “Enough, Encender! Enough!”
“You speak of listening for fate, father!” said Encender, bristling still. He grabbed the letter from Gully’s hands and shook it at his father. “Well, fate has just handed us a week’s forewarning of doom, and you are content to ignore it. To sit around wasting that which your precious fate has given us, all so you can dote on this one!”
The entire clan, crowded around the scene, waited to see what would happen. The patriarch frowned at his son. He started to say something, but glanced at Gully and stopped. He thought a moment more, and then said more evenly, “We can spare this little bit of time, my son.”
He turned to Gully and said, “And in the meantime, Gully must know of what has transpired and what we have learned. And we will wait to hear what he decides to do, and then we will decide for ourselves based on that.”
“What I decide?” asked Gully, confused.
“We will not learn of this and disappear while your back is turned,” said the patriarch. “We will not leave one of our own behind, unless he wishes for it to be so,” he added with something of a glare at his eldest son.
“So, I must decide what I am to do next...” said Gully to himself.
>
He began to wonder exactly that. Things were looking very bad, and so much was going wrong that he saw no way to avoid the utter collapse of the kingdom as it fell, betrayed and enslaved, to a foreign king.
Gully looked at the faces, waiting for him to announce his intended plan.
The temptation was as great as his fear at what was coming through the pass in less than a week. He could leave the prince, abandon him to his fate, and flee with the Mercher clan somewhere to the north. He could make a home with them, and be welcomed into it.
Gully bit at his lip. But that meant leaving everything behind. It meant always being on the run from the Maqarans as they pushed further and further into the land of Iisen. Strangely, despite how he felt about the Iisen noble class, he was reluctant to leave Prince Thaybrill to his fate, which would probably be a death in the bogs when he finally tried to find his way out after being betrayed a second time. He still couldn’t understand why he felt this way, except that he had found that the prince had a heart where he had not expected one to be. It also meant abandoning Roald to whatever fate befell him — probably dying fighting off the Maqarans, as brave and as true as he had been every other day of his life. Then the beautiful face of Mariealle appeared in his mind. He wondered how he would live with himself if he left her to be taken into a slave’s life in some foreign land. He shuddered and bristled at the horrible thought of some cruel Maqaran soldier pulling on her tongue so that he could cut it out before sending her off to some filthy slave market.
It meant abandoning his home, his cabin. It meant abandoning the search for his father.
If he had had more time, time to talk to Roald first, to work together on a plan, maybe they could do something. But he no longer had time to go get Roald and bring him back to his cabin the way he had intended.
Gully looked up into the gray and weeping sky of morning. For the first time in his life, he wished he believed. He wished that his father was a star in the sky. He wished he could open his mind and reach out to him now, even in broad daylight, and beg for some kind of guidance, for some kind of wisdom. He wished he could look to someone else for instruction on what he should do.
Gully shook his head back and forth. He said aloud, “No.” He would decide for himself what he would do. He shuffled his feet in his father’s boots nervously for a moment.
He looked at the patriarch and said, “I cannot stand by if I can do something to stop this. I cannot leave the prince to die in the woods and bogs he is incapable of leaving on his own. I cannot leave my foster brother to be taken by surprise by an invading army. I will go to Lohrdanwuld, with this letter as proof of the Domo Regent’s treason, and do whatever I can. I do not know what yet, but I go there. Patriarch, take the clan and head north, I assume to the forests east of Coldstone or Sowfield. If I can do no good in Lohrdanwuld and can make my way, I will come and find you there.”
The patriarch nodded gravely and said, “It is decided, then. We will stay here as well.”
“Father! You damn us to slavery alongside—” shouted Encender again, only to be interrupted by the patriarch.
“No! We have time! We will wait here until the day mentioned in the letter. Gully, if we have heard nothing from you on the morning of the 24th, we will quit these woods and head north. The Maqarans will be focused on taking Lohrdanwuld and not combing the Ghellerweald for the likes of us.”
“You play with our fate as if—” began Encender, pacing back and forth.
“I have decided, Encender!” insisted the patriarch.
Gully closed his eyes and wished deeply that his decisions did not carry the responsibility of so many lives.
~~~~~
Through the damp forest air, Gully caught a slight whiff of a familiar smell once again. He had scented it a couple of times on his walk towards the South Pass Road, but he had not acknowledged it. This time it was mixed with the scent of fresh water from a stream ahead. He picked up his pace and decided to take the opportunity to wash himself in the stream and rest for a few minutes before continuing on.
As he got to the stream, he decided to end the game and called out behind him, “There is little point in skulking around behind me! I know you are there! You aren’t the only ones with skilled noses, you know!”
He turned as he set his bag down, glad he had had the foresight to ask Wyael for a few extra things when he had asked for a spare tunic and chaperon of a dark fabric.
In the distance, Gully saw two gray and black wolves step out from behind an oversized bush of beetle’s sage, both looking remarkably embarrassed.
“First of all, I expected you to follow, despite your assurances that you would not. Second, I grew up in the forest and my father taught me to use my nose well. You may as well join me since you will not honor your promise to stay with the clan and guard them,” said Gully. “And please come wash off in the stream, for Vasahle’s sake! You’re both still covered in the tainted blood of that traitor swordsman!”
Gallun and Gellen assumed human form and joined him. Gully was about to remove his own tunic to wash in the flowing water when he noticed the two fighters watching him warily, staring more at his feet than his face.
He stopped and said, “Oh, stars in the sky, what is the matter with you two now? Are you feeling defeated because I have an educated nose?”
Gallun stepped forward hesitantly and pointed at the leather cord around Gully’s neck. He looked at Gully in a sort of humble curiosity.
Gully sighed. “Ah... that. I suppose someone in the clan got around to telling you the other grand ideas the patriarch has arrived at regarding my father on this most recent visit of mine.”
Both Gallun and Gellen turned a little red in the face, but nodded.
“I do not know what to believe. Although what the patriarch describes of a conjure does fit with all that I remember of my father. All I know is that if he had the ability to come and go as smoke, he never did so in my presence. At least, not directly.”
He pulled off his tunic and threw it off to the side onto his bag, exposing his bare chest with the imperial sigil hanging around it. Both Gallun’s and Gellen’s eyes got as wide as porridge bowls when they saw it hanging there.
“And yes, then there is this thing. It has always been special to me only because it was special— Stop! Now see, this is why I dislike it! Stand up!”
Gallun and Gellen had each dropped to one knee and looked down at the ground. At Gully’s insistence, they slowly stood back up. Gully was taking his breeches off in the meantime, and then his barecloths, so that he ended up as naked as they were. The only thing left on him was the pendant.
Gully said, “I know that this means something very special to you, that you have grown up revering this symbol. But I have yet to find any meaning in it for me other than the fact that it was my father’s most treasured belonging, for whatever reason that might have been.”
He stepped forward to them and said, “Here and now, know that I am no more or no less than the same person I was a few days ago.”
He grabbed Gallun by the left hand. He pressed his left palm to Gallun’s and then repeated the motion with Gellen. “I am first... this person with you,” he said as he pressed his palm to theirs.
When he was done, he stepped back and said, “And whatever I might be beyond that does not matter between us.”
Gallun and Gellen finally seemed to relax at Gully’s assurances, and the three of them took some time to clean themselves in the stream and rest for a few minutes. Gully spent the time telling the twin brothers how his father never wore the pendant, but made his son promise every week to take it and keep it always if something happened to him. The story fascinated Gallun and Gellen.
After washing, they sat on the ground for a while to rest a little more before continuing their trip. Gallun wandered off to find something for them to eat, only to return running as fast as he could a little later. It alarmed Gully and Gellen for a moment, but then they started laughing uproariously tog
ether when they saw how the skilled fighter was being chased by no more than a tiny fuss-finch. The little bird cheeped and squeaked at him furiously as it flew around his head, angry at having its territory intruded upon. At least Gallun had managed to hold onto the wild figs he had found and picked and the two rabbits he had killed, though.
They made a late lunch of the wild figs and held onto the rabbits for when they arrived at the cabin. Gully guessed that the prince would be hungry for something a little more substantial than what he had left behind for him to eat.
They ate the figs, and Gully watched his companions as they struggled with a task so simple as chewing. He said nothing more about it, but his heart broke for them at what they had been put through, the scars they would carry for the rest of their lives as a result.
As the three of them finished the last of their figs together, Gully said, “If I tell you to turn back to the camp, will you do so?”
Gallun only shrugged noncommittally while Gellen shook his head resolutely “no.”
“Even with my assurances that I am in no need of your escort and can take care of myself?”
Gallun shrugged again the same as before and Gellen shook his head “no” with a frown.
“Yes, well, I find little surprise there,” said Gully with mock irritation. He playfully pushed on Gallun’s shoulder and chided them, “The Ghellerweald has never seen such obstinate wolves as the two of you!”
It made Gully happier to see smiles spread across the brothers’ faces.
“To be honest, with what lies ahead of me, I will be glad of the company and the support, so I won’t press you to leave,” he conceded. “However, I cannot arrive at my cabin with two wolves at my side. The prince would likely die of fright. But I do not wish to create a complicated lie to maintain in front of the prince, either.”
Gallun and Gellen looked at each other uncertainly.
“For Thaybrill, I will be honest that you are part of what he would refer to as the gypsy tribe — the Mercher clan — but we will leave the balmor aspect out of it. It means only that you’ll need to stay in human form. You’ve done it before on other trips to Lohrdanwuld.”