Other Works by Roberto Calas:
THE SCOURGE:
Published by 47North
The Scourge (Book One)
The Scourge: Nostrum (Book Two)
The Scourge: Emaculum (Book Three)
Wages of Sin (A Scourge short story published by StoryFront)
THE BEAST OF MAUG MAURAI:
The Culling (Book One)
Feeding the Gods (Book Two)
KINDLE WORLDS
Kingdom of Glass (A Kindle Worlds Novella)
Learn more about Roberto Calas on robertocalas.com!
Foreword
Maps
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Glossary of Terms
About the Author
THE BEAST OF MAUG MAURAI
STARS AND GRAVES
(Part Three of Three)
ROBERTO CALAS
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2015 Roberto Calas
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express written permission of the author.
Published by Westmarch Publishing
ASIN: B00T2TSDE0
In memory of Alistair Rhind.
Foreword
I’d like to thank you for purchasing this final book of The Beast of Maug Maurai, and I offer an apology for the amount of time it took to finally complete it. What you are about to read is the culmination of ten years of my life. A long, long, ten years.
I wrote the entirety of this series as a single book, ages ago, and decided that it was too big as a single volume. So, I split the work into three parts. After releasing the first volume, I was offered a publishing contract for a serial novel called The Scourge. I wrote that novel, and then returned to Laraytia.
It took a few months to re-edit and publish volume two of Maug Maurai. And shortly after that, I was whisked off to 14th century England again. I completed two more books in The Scourge series and, finally—five years after publishing the first volume of The Beast of Maug Maurai—I re-edited and published the final episode.
I was tempted to rewrite great swathes of this volume. To bend it into something more like The Scourge—faster, tighter, neater. But Maug Maurai was never meant to be that sort of book. I have remained faithful to the writer and storyteller I was when I first wrote this sprawling epic, and have changed little of the plot and conclusion.
I hope those of you who have followed Grae Barragns and his squad through the first two books find this a satisfying and enjoyable conclusion to his tale.
Thank you again for accompanying me through the dark forest of Maug Maurai.
Maps
Chapter 1
There are those who say that not even Lojenwyne can kill Black Murrogar.
I disagree. I believe Black Murrogar is Lojenwyne.
— Commander Narek Allender, Laraytian Standards
It should have been a legendary struggle. Two old beasts locked in a final battle.
There should have been witnesses. A songmaster to memorize each strike, to sing of Murrogar’s dying prowess. But this wasn’t a clash of veteran knights on the battlefield—trading blows until a weakness in mind or lung brought disadvantage. Such fights could rumble for hours, like summer storms, the thunder of each strike scarring the afternoon.
Two hundred years ago, Maegen Grimbrand had fought Thyros Malstaern for an entire day, armies cheering on either side. And when that day was not enough, they rested for a night, before continuing. It was long past noon the next day before Sir Maegen could finish his foe.
Murrogar’s battle with the Beast should have been such an effort. A legendary struggle. A timeless tempest of violence that songmasters could sing of for eternity.
But there were no songmasters. There were no cheering armies. And when the Beast’s rancid stink was upon him, Murrogar managed only one blow. A rising cut with a blade meant for crushing. It was the wrong weapon for that monster. Slow and clumsy. But Murrogar’s will made it dagger-swift. The blade moaned through the thick forest air. Steel bit flesh. Thantos’s sword took something from the Beast of Maug Maurai. Something sinewy and ancient.
The Beast’s counterattack was quick as lightning, except lightning is slow enough to be seen. Murrogar never saw the strike that gutted him. He felt the cold sting of splitting flesh at his abdomen. Stumbled back.
A single crusted talon, long as a man’s hand, lay on the blood-spattered soil.
He’d traded his life for a finger.
His last thought, before the Beast’s second blow took away all thoughts, was gratitude that no songmaster had witnessed the ordinary death of the hero Black Murrogar.
Chapter 2
There are three certainties in Celusia: That Lojen’s Eye will rise every morning, that Blythwynn will rest once each month, and that the Cobblethrie curse will sputter on.
— Duke Mulbrey Arlineous, Nuldryn
Grae Barragns and his squad plodded through the thick underbrush of Maug Maurai. The scents of the forest—damp, rotting wood and fertile earth—colored everything. Tainted the food, mingled with oiled metal plates and musky leather armor.
Brambles rose like castle walls, swamps like moats. The squad’s pace was slow, but it wasn’t thorn or bog that slowed them the most. It was their scout, Sage, who had taken a bite from a forest ghoul—a new breed of monster that their scholar, Lord Aeren, had dubbed maurg. The venom in the creature’s mouth had paralyzed the scout’s leg, and the squad’s progress.
Grae looked back at Sage, hobbling near the back of the file. The scout had one arm draped over the shoulder of Lokk Lurius, an Eridian freeblade who joined the group at the start of the journey. It seemed a century ago that they’d met the mercenary on the Old Byway. The squad had been in the forest only two days, but time seemed to pass more quickly here. Two days in Maug Maurai was a lifetime.
“You two gonna kiss?” Beldrun Shanks laughed and made kissing sounds toward Sage and Lokk Lurius, but his laughter dried up when he looked into the Eridian’s eyes. The big infantryman veered away from them, toward the far wing o
f the formation, high-stepping over coiling vines and fallen trees.
Just before he was wounded, Sage and the squad’s archer, Aramaesia, had been scouting ahead. They had stumbled upon bodies belonging to the Cobblethrie expedition. But the forest fiends attacked before Sage could inspect the corpses. The squad arrived in time, cutting down three dozen of the ghouls, and discovering that many of the creatures had once been members of the Cobblethrie expedition.
That moment of realization had been a bittersweet one. The Duke of Nuldryn tasked Grae with two missions in Maug Maurai. One was to slay the Beast. The other, to make certain that no one from the Cobblethrie expedition made it out of the forest. So, as his squad cut down the hissing remnants of that royal caravan, he gave a silent thanks to Blythwynn. The men and women he slaughtered did not possess the wit to understand that their saviors had become their murderers.
“There.” Aramaesia pointed a slender finger toward a boulder that jutted among ragged hawthorn and fallen logs. “There was the place of the first corpse.” Aramaesia was from Gracidmar, a land at war with Laraytia. Her Galadane was accented, but excellent.
Grae forced his eyes away from her freckled face and pushed through the shrubs. A squirrel chittered somewhere up above. The half-eaten corpse Sage and Aramaesia had found was easy to spot, lying upon a bed of rotting pine needles. A breeze, rare in the forest, stirred the dead noble’s dark hair. The squad made a half-circle around the body. Dead evergreens stretched into the heavens like bristles of a godly brush.
Dead evergreens. Grae noted the irony absently.
“The others are over there,” Sage said, pointing to the east. “And I saw some to the north, as well.”
Grae looked up toward the sky. Lojen’s eye was visible here, among the dead pines. Another hour of Lojen’s light, not much more. “I want all the bodies found before dark.”
An explosion ripped through the distant forest. A sound so loud that most of the squad dropped into a squat and cast wild glances into the forest.
“That one was close, Grae,” Hammer said.
Grae searched the distance but found nothing to explain the blast. They’d heard these mysterious explosions before. Always far in the forest.
“Everyone, keep your eyes open.” He licked his lips and spun slowly in a circle, staring upwards, fists clenched. “I want to know what those are. That one was close enough to worry about.” The squad mates squinted up toward the canopy, or off into the hazy-green-forever of Maug Maurai. “Not a lot of light left. We’re going to split into two groups. I’ll take Lurius, Aramaesia and Hammer toward the east. Sage you lead the others westward. I want the last Cobblethrie bodies recovered before dark.”
Grae trudged out of the dead pine forest, back into the lush oaks and fueryks. They crossed a tiny stream and searched for less than a hundred paces more before finding another body. There was no mistaking the identity of this one: Duke Orien Cobblethrie.
Hammer whistled.
“This is the Duke?” asked Aramaesia.
“Was,” Lokk replied.
“Will be a storm of kak in Lae Duerna,” Hammer muttered.
The duke sat with his back against a tree, as if dozing. A summer nap in the forest. He seemed utterly at peace, except for the jagged rent in his belly and the sag of entrails on his lap. Aramaesia closed her eyes and chanted quietly.
“Those maugers must not ‘ave found his body yet,” said Hammer.
“Maurg.” Grae knelt and offered a prayer of penitence to Blythwynn. It was shameful to feel joy at the sight of a dead man. He drew out the list that Mulbrey’s Chamberlain had given him, read it over and took several items from the Duke; The ducal signet, the ring of Lae Duerna, the Collar of Haelyn. He gave all of it to Hammer, who stuffed them into his pack. “The others can’t be far.”
“Grae... ” Hammer rubbed the knuckles of his hand. “What about... what do you think happened...? ”
Grae stared at the duke and didn’t respond for a long time. “If the duke is dead then I imagine Murrogar is too. The old bear never failed at anything. He would have died before letting harm come to the duke.”
Hammer rubbed a hand over his mouth, shook his head slowly.
A scream rang out in the distance.
Maribrae.
The songmaiden screamed again, louder, panic rattling her voice.
Grae spun and sprinted back in the direction they had come, the others crashing along behind him.
Chapter 3
Don’t bury me with a sword. When I die, find a redhead in a grave nearby and throw her in with me. Not a sword. Not a bloody sword.
— Black Murrogar
Black Murrogar’s death wasn’t as ordinary as he feared.
When the end approached, he closed his eyes. Relaxed his body. Offered his soul to the Black Spinster.
But she didn’t take him.
He shifted and forced himself not to grunt at the pain. Thought instead of Lojen’s Hall, in Eleyria. About the wars he would fight—battles against the spirit soldiers of Mundaaith. He thought of the mortal clashes, as well. Conflicts he would look down upon from Eleyria—Laraytians battling their enemies on the war fields of Celusia. Murrogar would pick out the finest of his kinsmen and lend them his strength, from above. Help them drive their opponents back. He was certain that fallen heroes of the past had guided his own hand many times. And when he entered Lojen’s Hall, he would carry on the tradition.
But first he had to die.
“Mighty Lojenwyne, Father of Justice, Lord of War,” he prayed, “stop being a cock.”
But Lojenwyne continued being a cock, and Murrogar continued breathing.
He had unfinished work, here on Celusia, so the doors of Lojen’s Hall remained barred.
The God of Justice wouldn’t allow him to rest. Not even now, with belly torn open, entrails glistening in the green forest light, blood pulsing from the wound. Not even now.
“Fuck you, Lojen.”
He lifted a fallen branch from the ground, studied it, then let it drop. Too soft.
The Cobblethries would be dead. All of them. He was certain of it.
Sir Wyann had betrayed them all. The Duke of Nuldryn had bought the knight.
Murrogar had put the pieces together while waiting to die. Wyann had convinced Orien Cobblethrie to take the forest road. The only thing Murrogar couldn’t understand was why the knight would sacrifice himself. Go through the forest road with them.
What’d you lose, Wyann?
My dignity, Murrogar. My fucking honor.
And what did I lose? Murrogar wondered.
I lost the Cobblethries. Watched them die, one by one.
But not all of them. He hadn’t seen the duke and duchess die. And the boy, Ulrean. If there was even the smallest chance that any of them lived, it would be Murrogar’s shame to surrender now. He planted his hands on the ground and pushed himself upright. Pain crackled the length of his hand and a groan slipped past his guard. The smallest finger of his left hand was shattered.
He ignored the broken digit and dragged himself backward, a thousand burning swords stabbing at his belly. Blood washed from the wound. He bent his knees, darkness swirling at the edges of his vision. Dug his heels into the ground. Sweat made his hands slick on the carpet moss. He shoved backward, crying out, dragging himself along the ground until his back came to rest against the trunk of a massive white oak.
He took deep, quivering breaths. Closed his eyes to clear the shadows away. When the pounding of his heart had slowed again, he opened his eyes and found a cluster of pine needles. Shook his head. Much too soft.
A marsh of blood shone brightly against the green moss around him. A seamarkin’ red ocean.
He wouldn’t last long. Not even Lojen could keep Murrogar out of the Hall for long. Not in this condition. Murrogar’s wound was a siege, and the gates of Eleyria would fall before night claimed Maug Maurai.
But he was Black Murrogar. And he’d lifted far greater sieges than this one.
He studied the wound again. The entrails weren’t damaged. The Beast hadn’t gone any deeper than skin and muscle. The claws had only cut him open. Maybe it had wanted to sting him. Keep him alive. A stupid mistake by that monster. But the blood pulsing out across his lap spoke otherwise. It was a shock that he had lived this long.
The Cobblethries might still be alive.
He spotted a thick, twisted branch jutting from a patch of dead leaves. Maybe he could carve it down with Thantos’s sword. Whittle it down to needle-size. But he knew that wasn’t feasible. Carving would take time and strength, and he had been stripped of both.
But he couldn’t stitch the wound without a needle.
He glanced at his hand. The shattered little finger bubbled with black blood, skin erupting in odd directions, the white of splintered bone flashing. He sighed, a long rasping sigh.
“Fuck you, Lojen.”
Murrogar brought the broken finger to his mouth, searched with his tongue. The sharp, metallic taste of blood. The gritty scrape of dirt. The jagged smoothness of shivered bone. When he found a shard the right size, he bit down, took three great breaths through his nose, and yanked his head back quickly.
His clenched-jaw scream echoed through the forest, and very likely, to the doors of Lojen’s Hall.
Chapter 4
Sometimes the Black Spinster steals.
And sometimes she borrows.
—Andraen Proverb
Grae burst through a wall of blackthorns, sword drawn, shield high. Lokk Lurius slammed through the hedges beside him, the ornate short swords still sheathed.
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