Maverick

by Curtis, Greg

  Battles, people fighting, living and dying, those were things he didn’t need in his life, and as a wizard expelled or not, things that weren’t allowed either. Happily living where he did and with no trails leading the way to his home, he thought he could stay out of it. The wards around his home and glade should also help as anyone of evil intent as well as most predators would find themselves wandering around in circles never finding him, and if by chance they did find him, he figured he was more than a match for most.

  So that morning as every other, after finishing his tea, he bathed and dressed as he normally did, ate his breakfast, and then set about his daily tasks. Life in the woods didn’t come without chores, and he always made sure to do his work first thing. There was water to pump from the rain tanks to the tank on his roof if he wanted to have a bath in the evening not to mention a cup or two of elderflower tea. There were eggs to collect, Holly the goat to milk, wood to chop, thatching which seemed to have become a permanent occupation of late, maybe it was finally time to think about building a slate tile roof, gardens to hoe and vegetables and fruit to gather.

  It was a fairly heavy set of chores for the day, but in the end it turned out to be a pleasant mornings work, mainly because while he was sitting on the roof, in theory thatching, in practice he spent most of his time lost in thought and enjoying the promise of the coming spring. He was prone to doing that, especially when the sun was shining, and that could also have had something to do with why the roof needed continual thatching.

  By lunchtime however, just when he was beginning to feel tired and due for a break, Marjan had at least completed the chores for the day, and was looking forwards to a good solid meal, or at least a hunk of bread and a slab of cheese with some goats milk to wash it down. Once it would have been ale, but with the troubles growing all around him by the day, he hadn’t wanted to risk the journey in to Snowy Falls to purchase supplies of late, thinking instead to avoid whatever was going on in the outside world, which should be easy enough.

  After all he lived in the middle of a great wood, surrounded only by trees and animals, and without anything that even looked like a trail leading from his house to the road and with the wards he’d put in place to keep the unwelcome away, it should be easy enough. Staying and hiding was the sensible option and the lawful one for a wizard even in exile. Whatever was happening out in the world, no one would know to come looking for him, nor if they did would they know where to find him, and sooner or later the chaos out there would end and life would return to normal as it always did. And it wasn’t as if there was much he could do anyway. Wizards, even exiled wizards had their limits and one of the main ones was strict obedience to their guild law, and above all the first law, that they weren’t allowed to go to war.

  Some felt the laws of the guilds were too restrictive, but in truth he knew they were wise. After all if a wizard could fight for you he could fight against you, and the death toll from such battles would be terrible. They had been terrible.

  Once, nigh on eight hundred years earlier, wizards had become involved in wars, and the cost had been all but unimaginable. Those battles, the so called wizard wars and unseen wars had killed not just hundreds but hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, while scores of cities had been raised to the ground, and whole realms had been levelled. Forests and fields alike had burned, leaving the survivors hungry while great and terrible beasts had been released upon the land and seas, inflicting their misery for many years to come. Plagues had walked the lands, death on a scale never before known, following in their wake, while the world itself had seemed to teeter on the edge of a great precipice, with destruction and death waiting for it below.

  Those wars were the reason that large sections of human history had simply been lost to time as libraries, repositories, reliquaries, cities and whole civilizations had been completely destroyed, while what remained from them were mainly legends, folk songs and tall tales told around the fires at night, ballads sung in inns across the lands. Despite that, all knew that the wars had happened, and all knew that they must never happen again.

  After the dark fury of the wizard wars, or the unseen wars as they had later become known by the bards, had ended, when the sanity of the new morning had finally made itself known after the nightmares that had been, when the costs of those terrible battles had been counted and found far too high, when one and all had had their fill of blood and pain, of loss and suffering, the Guilds had come together into one great coven and with one voice had said never again. Never again would wizards go to war. Never again would wizards serve rulers and prices and emperors. Their obedience was always first to the great guild, and their service to the people.

  Later they had gone on to decide such matters as a wizards role in day to day life, the magics they could cast and those which they couldn’t, who should be trained, when and how, and even the way in which wizards from one guild in one land should behave around others from other guilds and other lands in times of war and peace, but that first law was always at their heart. War was for other people.

  The most a wizard was allowed to do was defend himself and those with him, heal the injured and sick, and help to rebuild after the hostilities were over, and he would do just that when this war ended. But that was something for later. For the moment the battle if that’s what it was, still raged somewhere out there, Marjan couldn’t get involved, and he had study to do.

  In the afternoon he planned on spending some more time working on his casting. He’d recently come across another tome of fire casting in the magic emporia in Gunder, and he was slowly working his way through it, learning the new shapes and practicing them. Though he might no longer be a Guild wizard, he still held to the same values he had been taught, and training every day was an important part of his life. Besides if the troubles out in the world did eventually find him, a good fireball or two would make an effective defence, and some might try to attack him. Not many would know him for a wizard, and not all would care.

  It was as he was thinking such hopeful thoughts and sitting down on the stoop in front of his cabin with his lunch, that all his plans came undone.

  The first he knew of it was when he heard the noises of someone crashing their way through the forest, breaking through bracken since they apparently couldn’t find the trail, while behind him came the sounds of something growling. Something very much like a wolf. But even as he identified the howl, Marjan knew it wasn’t really a wolf. He could feel the creature long before he laid eyes on it. It was like one, but larger, more powerful, much more powerful, and much more savage, and something else as well, something he’d never known before, something strange, dark, violent and insane. It also wasn’t alone. It was coming closer, despite his wards, bloodlust and the scent and maybe even the sight of its prey overcoming them.

  Quickly he stood up and reached for his longbow and quiver, his first protection against wild animals and most other dangers which was why he always kept it close, and waited for either the hunter or the hunted to break through into the clearing in which his cabin sat. He didn’t have to wait long until the brush under the nearer trees started shaking violently as someone pushed their way through it.

  “By the gods!” As startled as he was when he saw the tiny figure finally break her way through the last of the undergrowth, catch sight of him and start running across the grass for his cabin as fast as she could, he still only whispered the words. He’d been too long a woodsman to make a noise when he didn’t have to. Still, he was surprised.

  She was a child. He was sure of that as he saw the tiny figure running for him, dressed in a torn city cotton vest and leggings and a wool jacket that was much too large for her, and yet even as he knew that, he also knew there was something strange about the child. Something not quite normal, even if he couldn’t quite explain what. Besides what was a child doing wandering through the woods alone? A few heartbeats later he forgot about all that as the wolf broke cover and sprinted after the child.

&n
bsp; It wasn’t a wolf. He finally knew that for certain the instant he set eyes upon it. It looked like a wolf, growled and slavered like a wolf, even hunted like one, but since when were wolves the size of ponies? And since when did they have a mane of spiky fur running around their necks and then down in a ridge all the way to their tails? Or fangs that extended beyond their mouths like tusks? Or padded feet the size of small hams with massive claws extending from them? It was a dire wolf, more or less, and that shocked him, not least because he’d never seen one before. But then dire wolves didn’t live in the Great Allyssian Forest, or anywhere else for hundreds of leagues in any direction as far as he knew. But that didn’t stop him from sighting the beast and then releasing an arrow straight into its heart even as it continued chasing the child thinking its dinner was almost ready.

  The effect was as always gratifying. The enchantment on the bow gave the arrow far more power than could be achieved by a normal archer, while the arrows had their own enchantments for accuracy and damage. From the moment his arrow found its heart, the wolf was dead, and his arrows always found their mark. But even if the arrow hadn’t found the beast’s heart, the sudden burst of fire ripping its way right through its flesh would have killed it instantly, cooking its heart and other vital organs inside its own chest. He crafted his arrows well.

  The beast gave a single howl of shock and pain before keeling over onto the long grass and tumbling a few body lengths. It was dead long before it hit the ground, smoke already wafting from its snout as it fell. But it wasn’t alone. Even as it died a second burst through the tree line, also giving chase to the child, and he had to quickly draw and loose another arrow at it, felling it before it had made even half a dozen paces towards the desperate child.

  A third arrow was notched and ready well before its smoking body even started tumbling, and he quickly scanned the surrounding forest nervously while he waited for the child to reach him. These creatures weren’t supposed to be able to get through his wards, but in their frenzy as they chased the girl they had, and if two of them had made it then maybe more would. But quite quickly he realised there were no more nearby, and he let himself know a brief moment of relief as his young guest kept running towards him.

  Two of the beasts down! Marjan congratulated himself on that although he knew it was still too early to be sanguine about such things. There were more of the beasts out there somewhere in the distance, an entire pack. He could hear them howling, their disturbing cries echoing through the hills, feel their unbridled savagery and insanity, and he knew that the only reason they weren’t already in the clearing, chasing hard after the child, was because they’d found more prey. Maybe more children, the thought filled him with alarm. Children lost in his forest, being hunted by these unnatural creatures. That was not good and he couldn’t allow it.

  He didn’t have time to wonder about anything other than his immediate problem though as the child finally reached him and he could see for himself all that he’d wondered about. She wasn’t human.

  She was a girl but she wasn’t human, dryad in all likelihood, it was hard to tell under all that dirt and the torn wool cloak, and with her long dark hair falling everywhere, but he was sure that with her slender frame, deeply tanned skin and pointed tips on her ears she could only be either a dryad or an elf, and truthfully there wasn’t that much difference between them in his opinion. But what was a dryad child doing in a human realm, let alone in his forest? Or running away from such monsters. Still that wasn’t his first concern. She needed his help.

  He went to her, helped her up the wooden steps to his front balcony, then picked her up when her legs gave way under her and wrapped his arms around her, feeling the worrying thinness of her tiny frame underneath her jacket, listening to the way her breath came in desperate gasps, and mostly seeing the terror in her eyes. That fear was enough to tell him his work wasn’t yet done. The wolves were dead and she was still frightened.

  “You’re safe now child.” He held her tight hoping she would know at least a little security in his arms.

  “Please … help. Friends trapped … in cave.” Her plea came in short, strangled gasps and he knew she’d been running too long and too hard, terrified as no child should ever be, chased by creatures that shouldn’t be in any forest let alone his, and which absolutely should never be allowed anywhere near children or civilization. Still he needed to know where her friends were if he was to help them, and he had to help them.

  He would have asked her, but she didn’t give him the chance, collapsing in his arms like a rag doll the moment she had got her message out, and he knew she was at her end. Desperation and fear had carried her as far as they could, she could go no further. He also knew he didn’t have a lot of time to tend to her. Not if there were more children in his woods, being chased by dire wolves. That he couldn’t allow. And the unexpected thing was as he slowly realised, that she’d said friends, not family. Surely she shouldn’t be out in the woods without her family? Where were they? Who were her friends? More dryads?

  It made no sense but exhausted and unconscious in his arms he knew that she wasn’t going to be able to tell him anything more for a while. Still she’d told him enough.

  He held her gently, checking for injuries, before carrying her over to the front door of his house and setting her down in the rocking chair beside it where he usually sat in at the end of the day to watch the sun set. It was a comfortable enough chair, and with the blanket he pulled over her prone form, she would be warm enough for a time, and she would be safe with the wards he’d put on the land around his home. Violence and evil would not approach his cottage no matter how they tried as instead such people and creatures found themselves turned around. Of course even the best wards had problems as he’d already discovered. The dire wolves had made it through as they tracked their prey through his wards, blood lust and their unnatural heritage giving them an edge while she was still in their sight, her smell strong in their noses, while she in turn had made it through because she was neither evil nor violent. Maybe it was time to rethink those wards, later. Still she would be safe. Meanwhile he had work to do.

  He had a dire wolf pack to destroy and children to rescue.

  Heading back inside momentarily, he grabbed his double headed war axe and a second quiver of arrows, threw on his leathers and tightened them and tied back his hair so it wouldn’t get in his eyes, before stepping back on to the porch. He was only lightly armed to most people’s eyes, just as a typical woodsman would be, and a single dire wolf would have been a match for him if it wasn’t for his magic. But with that magic he knew he would be victorious.

  Leaving his guest still sleeping Marjan headed off into the forest, back tracking the dryad child’s tracks, figuring that sooner or later they would lead them to her friends. In truth he probably didn’t need them. There were only a few caves in the area, and he knew them all. He had a fair idea where they’d be and in any case he could probably just follow the growling of the wolves, but it was best to be certain, and the ground was still soft from the previous night’s rain and the child’s tracks were easy enough to follow.

  Unfortunately the forest around the hills where she’d come from was quite rugged, with lots of bush and undergrowth filling the spaces between the great cedars and redwoods that formed the bulk of the trees, and she hadn’t travelled in a straight line. But then being merely waist high, what looked like a passable track to him probably wasn’t for her, and what he could see over she couldn’t. In desperation she’d obviously had to crawl through some of the dense undergrowth, and gone around more of it. Still that had probably saved her life as the dire wolves had had to do the same, and thanks to their surprising size they weren’t so good at squeezing through such tight places.

  Marjan found himself constantly having to weave his way around some of the patches of undergrowth she’d crawled through, and then rejoin her trail at the point before she’d left it. It made the travel slower than he would have liked, especially
with lives in the balance, and even more so when he was basically travelling uphill towards the hills to the north of his home, while the ground was still damp and slippery underfoot due to the morning dew, but he still fancied he made good time. Within twenty minutes though he was near enough to make out the cry of each wolf, and thanks to the thinning trees he had enough visibility to stick an arrow in its hide the moment one approached. His prey was within reach.