It was clear that the stench of the last few miles emanated from here. Standing outside the walls of the city, the odor was strong enough to unsettle the stomach. The odor of decay. Of filth.
Grae Barragns stopped at a gap in the wall, one of four apparent gates to the village. He looked back to make sure his squad followed, then, in spite of himself, said a quick prayer to Blythwynn. He nodded back to the squad for no particular reason and stepped past the walls of CWNCR.
Hammer followed, sprinkling the white powder in every cardinal direction before stepping through. Lokk Lurius strode across next. Sage paused, rapped his knuckles on the loose stones that formed the wall, then stepped in. Lord Aeren hesitated as well. He drew a deep breath and strode into the city as if walking into a rainstorm. Meedryk relaxed himself with esereult before entering, while Aramaesia and Ulrean slowed for only an instant as they passed the walls.
Drissdie stopped at the entrance and would go no further.
Aramaesia looked back. They young soldier shook his head. Tears ran down his cheeks.
“Brig Barragns,” she cried. “We have left Drissdie behind.”
Grae stopped on the earthen track and walked back toward the walls.
“Drissdie,” he said. “You are a Laraytian Standard. Will you stop when there is no enemy in site?”
“I’m sorry, Brig sir,” he bawled. “I can’t go in. There’s things worse than dying.”
“Drissdie Hannish, get in here or I’ll bring you in myself. In pieces if need be.”
“Sir, please don’t be angry. Please, let’s go somewhere else. There are probably ridges and caves and things farther on, d’you suppose? Please, sir.”
Grae walked forward until he was face to face with the soldier, the brig inside the city, the trudge out.
“Drissdie,” Grae snarled, “Get in here. That’s an order.”
“I can’t!” Drissdie shrieked. “I can’t go in! I’ve done bad things! I’ve done bad things!”
“We’ve all done bad things,” said Grae.
“Drissdie,” said Aramaesia. “We can say a prayer. Your goddess will protect you.”
But Drissdie only shook his head. Ulrean took off the pendant Aramaesia had given him and offered it reluctantly to the crying soldier. But Grae reached across and pulled Drissdie Hannish into the village by his tabard. The shock of it made Drissdie trip and fall to the ground, clawing the air madly as he fell, his eyes rolling. Grae dragged him by one arm further into the village and Drissdie Hannish screeched.
Hammer grabbed Drissdie’s other arm and the two of them dragged him along the rough road. Drissdie’s feet kicked and scraped at the dirt, stones in the path scraping against his mail. He bucked and jerked his arms but the brig and hammer wouldn’t let go.
“Grae, please!” Aramaesia put a hand on the brig’s arm, but Grae Barragns was gone. It was The Headsman who dragged Drissdie Hannish into the cursed Margil village. He ignored Aramaesia and with Hammer’s help dragged Drissdie thirty yards down the path. They dropped him on the road and he scrambled to his feet. His mouth opened in a silent sob. He looked to the entrance of the village.
“Hannish!” snapped The Headsman. “If you leave this village you can stay out of it. I’ll have the C-mark ready for you if you make it out of the forest alive.” He spun and walked away. “Leave the coward to make his own decision.”
Hammer turned and followed Grae, calling back to Drissdie: “You’re already cursed now. Might as well stay in.”
The rest of the squad walked toward the village center. All save Aramaesia and Ulrean, who watched Drissdie flee.
†††
The village of CWNCR was a perfect circle. Gaps in the stone walls at each of the cardinal directions led to four primary thoroughfares, elevated and still vaguely discernable among the weeds and grasses. The paths met at the center of the circle, splitting the village into four wedges.
Most of the structures in the village had succumbed to time and elements long ago. Only four buildings had survived; massive, rectangular stone structures at the center of the inner circle. They faced inward, stretching lengthwise out from the center, each angled halfway between two of the central paths, so that the central circle of the village formed a star of sorts.
The squad, without Drissdie, walked instinctively toward the central structures. The halls—fifteen feet tall and twice that in length—were formed by massive slabs of greying white stone. Three of the stones formed the walls, a fourth made a flat roof. One additional slab of dark gray stone had been placed at the front of each structure, sealing the halls from the world. One of those grey slabs lay broken in half, lying upon the dry grass before the southwest structure. And that great stone hall lay open.
No one spoke. The dry grasses whispered against their legs as they walked.
Sage scanned the grasses on the path. “Ancient abandoned villages are not so abandoned as one would think.”
“I noticed as well,” said Grae. “The Beast?”
“The Beast has been here, for certain,” Sage replied. “But it’s not the only one. Humans. Or humanlike, at any rate. Lots of them.”
One more circle lay at the very center of the village. A pit that had been dug into the soil and lined with stones. The buildings seemed to point to this hole, which lay twenty yards from the mouths of each of the four structures. The circle of the pit was ten yards in diameter, but the depth was impossible to determine because of a dense mélange of fungus growing within it. Uncountable numbers of mushrooms. They bubbled up from the pit like an alchemical reaction. Like a mage’s project fizzing out of control.
The explosion of fungus spread away from the pit, dissipating with distance, but not before encircling all four of the stone structures with a sparse scattering of unidentifiable lime-colored mushrooms with spots of darker green. Lokk and Sage used shovels to scrape an area clear of them, but no one wanted to sit where the fungus had grown. They settled on the broken slab of stone instead, which had only lichen upon it.
The smell was almost unbearable here. Most of the squad mates held tabards or other fabrics over their noses. Grae studied the halls, noted the long, carved lines of ancient writings along the tops of the walls. A ring of faded and ancient runes. He glanced at the fallen stone they sat upon. “It would take a lot to bring one of these slabs down.” He wondered how such stones could have been brought to this forest. He wondered why he was whispering. “Could the earth have shifted?”
“No, brig, sir,” said Sage. He pointed to the open edges of the structure, where the fallen slab had once rested. “See those marks up there? Someone pulled this down.”
Grae noted the faint gouges on the time-worn, water-stained stones. “Our friends who trampled the grass?”
“No,” said Sage. “That slab was taken down years ago. The tramplers were here more recently. A day or two at the most.”
“Could Shanks have been the trampler?”
“Shanks comes from a long line of tramps,” said Sage. “But he’s no trampler. That grass was mashed by many feet.”
Grae looked at the gaping mouth of the stone hall. Humans here in CWNCR? Many of them? Recently?
The brig stood and walked to the open mouth of the stone hall. He looked into the darkness. There were faint dots of glowing green inside; Mushrooms. Not bright enough to illuminate. Just bright enough to make themselves known. He took a breath and began to cough. This was where the foul odor emanated.
“What were these things?” he asked, pointing to the building. “Homes? Meeting halls? Temples?”
Lord Aeren stood and peered into the darkness, seeing nothing. It smelled like death and sewage and rancid meat wrapped in rotting human flesh. The odor was so powerful that both Grae and Aeren had to turn their heads away and cover their noses.
“It is probable that they served a religious purpose.” Lord Aeren’s voice was tinny as he pinched his nostrils. “I am not familiar with the Margils or their religion, but I understand their practices
tended toward the barbaric.”
“Meedryk,” said Sage. “Did your father say anything about what went on here? In CWNCR?”
“Lots of things went on here,” said Meedryk. “The atrocities we’ve all heard about. Human sacrifices, torture, people mutilating themselves and walking around looking like demons. It think it was scary place.”
“What about those… scyllhing things you talked about?” asked Lord Aeren. “What were those?”
“My father said there were four scyllhing. Servants of the Margil gods. Two greater ones for summer and winter. And two minor ones for the spring and autumn.”
“Were they priests?” asked Hammer
“I don’t think so,” said Meedryk. “I think people were sacrificed to them. My father wrote that the scyllhing took the souls of those sacrificed.”
A wind blew through the village, hissing through the dry grass. Grae peered into the hall. “Blood of Anris that stinks.” He held the collar of his half-cloak to his nose and stared into the darkness. “Meedryk, if you would.”
The magician took the great lantern from his pack. It looked dented and worn now, the glass cracked on two panes. So different from the incongruous, unfired thing it had been at the start of the adventure.
“Suhira suenath”
The lantern roared with flame. Meedryk followed Grae a few steps in, holding his collar across his face. Something glimmered ahead of them. Grae stooped and worked at something with his hands. “Lojen’s heart,” he whispered. “Will you look at that.”
Chapter 45
Never trust a man with no scars.
—Laraytian proverb
“That belonged to Taryn Fulgrae,” Lord Aeren took the rusted chain from Grae’s hand. “That is his chain of office.”
Grae stared at the chain feeling a pang of shame. It was the livery collar worn by the Champion of Nuldryn; the very office that the Chamberlain had offered Grae.
There was more. They fished out a corroded rank insignia for an Underlord, no doubt Harren Felch, who led one of the first expeditions against the Beast, eight years earlier. They found his officer’s sword as well, the blade rusted and fused to the leather scabbard. There were thirty eight janissary brooches in all, most bearing the arms of Tyftin, Shaen or Kithrey. They found several garrison brooches as well, each emblazoned with the crest of a noble family of Nuldryn;
Among the other military regalia were also more mundane items: Coins, drinking horns, shears, belt buckles, hoes, pitchforks, horseshoe nails, awls, bracelets, skinning knives. Common things from common men.
“Take one brooch from every garrison and janissary unit,” said Grae. “And bring Felch’s rank and sword. I want all of these returned to their commanders. Throw the remaining items aside.”
The men, holding tabards over their noses, began sorting the brooches and insignia by unit.
“I don’t suppose all these men died here?” asked Hammer.
Lord Aeren shook his head. “These were brought here. There are no bones. No remains that I can see.”
“Brought here, eh?” Hammer said.
Everyone quieted as they worked through the possibilities. It did not take long to arrive at the only real conclusion.
“So the Beast likes shiny things? Is this its home?” asked Aramaesia.
“This puzzles me,” said Aeren. “Creatures that collect objects typically have very good vision. Crows, magpies, wyverns. But the Beast… it doesn’t make sense.”
“Could it see better than we thought?” Grae gritted his teeth. He had counted on the Beast’s poor vision. It could see motion well, but Grae suspected that motionless objects confused it. His plan—and their lives—counted on this theory.
“It is a possibility,” said Aeren. “But not a very good one. Creatures with thick bone ridges around the eyes rarely have good vision. And we saw ourselves how it wouldn’t move past the breastplates and helmets without smashing them.”
Grae gazed out to the walls of loose stone in the distance, and up to the treetops—he could see the sky from the village. The edge of Lojen’s eye was approaching the canopy. Another two or three hours of sunlight at most.
“All right. This is where we’ll make our–” he stopped himself. Began again. “This is where we’ll finish the Beast.” It sounded like a lie, even to his own ears. He pointed to the open hall. “We need to make that structure defensible.”
“And tolerable,” said Sage, pinching his nose.
“Sage and Lokk, bring stones from the outer wall.” He turned to the others. “Hammer, I need you to start digging at the rear of that hall. I have no delusions about that monster’s abilities. If it gets past our fortifications, I want a way out. Lord Aeren, if you could help dig it would improve our odds substantially.”
“Of course, brig, sir.”
“Meedryk,”
“Aye, brig, sir.”
“Do you know any palisade chants?”
“In theory sir, yes.”
“Then theoretically set the biggest one you know just outside of the doorway.”
“Aye, brig sir.”
“And find a way to get on top of the structure. I want another palisade set there, in case the Beast gets clever.”
Meedryk glanced at the slab on top of the stone hall, fifteen feet up.
“Aye, sir,” he said uncertainly.
“And can you do something about the smell in the hall?”
“I can make it smell acrid instead of fecal,” he said.
“I would take vomitous over the current smell,” he said. “Acrid or sulfurous would be fragrant compared to this. And do something about that fungus in the pit. It’s making me ill.”
Meedryk nodded.
A small voice sounded next to Grae. “Brig, sir.”
Grae looked over. Ulrean stood beside him, chest swelled, chin high. “What about me?”
Yes, thought Grae. What about you?
“Get plenty of rest,” he replied. “It will all be over soon.”
†††
Grae, Sage and Lokk dragged stones from the walls to the village center. Drissdie watched them from the base of an eighty-foot fueryk. The frightened soldier broke down again when Sage asked for his help. He cried and rambled about the curse again, so the three worked without him, stacking the stones on haypads and dragging them two hundred yards to the great halls.
Aramaesia watched from the village center as the men worked. She listened to Drissdie’s faint cries and shouts and sighed. The young soldier was terrified. She and Ulrean had spent a half-bell trying to coax him into the village, and it had been a maddening conversation. Drissdie’s beliefs were a muddle of Andraen and Blythlojean, with local legend and soldierly ghost stories mixed in liberally. How could you argue with someone whose ideology was so jumbled?
The archer helped the men lay stones across the entrance to the hall. The soldiers packed the stones tightly with dirt from the hole that Hammer and Aeren were digging, and angled four logs into the mounds, burying their ends deep into the soil. More earth was packed around the logs and another layer of stone was laid behind them. Grae was reminded of the pen he and his men had built to catch orchard pigs a week ago. But it was reversed now. The pen would keep Grae’s men in. He liked it better the other way.
They finished the wall as the light began to fade; six feet high and three feet thick. It sealed off the entire breadth of the hall, and nearly half the height. The Beast might be able to squeeze through the space at the top, but the warriors could hack it apart while it tried. Grae had ordered the men to leave a small gap at the center, wide enough for a soldier in breastplate to squeeze through. Four vertical slits pierced the new wall on either side of this central gap, two on each side. They were just wide enough for spears to poke through.
Lokk and Sage pounded the wall with their shoulders to test its strength. It did not move even when they jumped at it. They nodded and tapped each other’s chest with their fists.
Hammer and Aeren still had
not finished the escape tunnel in the back of the hall. Grae waved them over. “We’ll all dig after we eat.”
If there’s time.
They sat on the toppled stone slab outside the hall and ate a cold meal of salted jurren and berries. Grae regretted working the men so hard before the real work of the night; the inevitable battle with the Beast.
If all goes well, that wall won’t be necessary.
He looked into the hall, at a sack that lay just inside the entryway. All of their lives depended on the contents of that sack.
†††
Grae called Meedryk over as the first hints of darkness gnawed at the village. He ordered the mantic to make torches. A lot of torches. Grae wanted them around the hall, along the entire length of the four paths, and at each of the village gates.
“That will take time, brig, sir,” Meedryk replied.
“Have Aramaesia and Ulrean help you. And when you start planting them on the roads and gates, take Lokk Lurius with you. In case our friend pays us a visit.” Grae pointed to the mushroom-filled pit beside him. “And can you please take care of this? I don’t think it’s healthy.”
Meedryk grinned. “We’re in Maug Maurai, brig, sir. And you’re worried about mushrooms?”
Grae gave him a half-smile. “Did Meedryk Bodlyn just make a joke?”
Meedryk’s smile grew wider. He avoided Grae’s stare and walked to the pit.
“I’ll wither the mushrooms. Should be very effective on them. Anything wet or moist is especially suscep—”
“Wither away, Bodlyn. I don’t need the details.” Grae took out one of the two enchanted crossbow bolts from his belt and called Lokk Lurius over. “If things go wrong on the first attempt…” He trailed off.
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