by Curtis, Greg
“After that little Alyssi must have made a break for freedom, she’s a brave little girl. I’m guessing that she tried to use a little of her people’s skill for remaining unseen in the wilds, but that it didn’t work as she’d hoped and she had to flee, hunted by a pair of wolves. So she ran down the hill from the cave and into this valley because it was the easiest path, and because of her small size she could also squeeze through gaps in the undergrowth that her pursuers could not. Happily she found me before the wolves found her, and I killed them. Then, when she was safe, I went back after you as she wanted, killed the rest of the pack and brought you here.” Marjan had to admit that however foolhardy the child’s plan had been, she was a brave little girl and he respected that. Her courage had saved her friends.
“Little Alyssi left the cave? That was such a dangerous thing to do and she should have known better. She was foolish. Our people’s skills in remaining unseen are useless against beasts already with our scent in their nostrils and blood in their thoughts. She should have known that. What we really needed were weapons, but we had none. The Academy does not permit students or teachers to be armed.” Perhaps she had a right to be upset, and he could hear the frustration in her voice, but it was still a reasonable rule in Marjan’s opinion. Armed students could lead to accidents. Events had simply overtaken it. He was more interested in her name for the school, ‘the academy’. Though there were many institutions of learning in Gunder, only one of them he could think of had students from all the provinces and all the races. Only one of them taught only the most wealthy. And there was only one academy.
“The Goran Academy?” Of course it was, and he didn’t need to see his patient nod to know the truth. The most learned academy for the teaching of science, history, custom and languages in all of Gunderland, and also the most expensive. Those with wealth sent their children there to study from all over the province and far beyond, hoping that they would grow up to become great leaders and statesmen, or great traders and artisans. Just the knowledge that someone had studied there as a child was considered a mark of distinction, and of course by the time they left, the children could speak all the important languages fluently, knew the customs of every race and tribe in detail, and could wax lyrically about any science or art, or the effects of any law change. They could make their own way in the world.
It explained so much. From the children’s clothes, which were far too good for that of most city dwellers, to the way they all spoke trade so fluently and were so well mannered, and even to the way in which they got along so easily. It also gave another reason why the enemy would want to find them, would hunt them so hard. These were undoubtedly some of the children of the most powerful people in the lands, they would make invaluable hostages. So why try to kill them? Sadly he knew that Essaline could tell him nothing of that. She had told him all that she knew.
“You should rest now good maiden. We will be leaving in the morning which is only a few hours away, and you will need to be stronger by then.” Of course his words only worried her.
“Leave? But how can we leave? The beasts will surely be upon us as soon as we depart, and yet if we stay we will soon be surrounded. On foot we will be slow through the forest and vulnerable, we cannot take the roads as they will surely be overrun with beasts and yet neither can we stay.” She was right of course and for someone who had been badly injured, surprisingly cognisant of their situation. That was a good thing.
“We will not be taking the roads good maiden. I am a woodsman and this land is my home. I know many paths through the forest, paths that I would guess are a good deal safer than the roads for the moment. We will travel faster than they would expect. And as for the beasts, just be sure that they will not pose as great a threat as they expect to. Not to me, and not to you while you are with me.”
“But -.”
“You and the children are under my protection and you need not fear. Now rest.” He was firm with her as he took the empty mug from her hand once more, and then forced her to lie down on the couch once more and close her eyes, and despite the crudeness of his actions it seemed to work as he heard her breathing slow. Maybe she understood just a little of the truth of his words, or maybe she was just too tired to resist.
He stayed for a while beside her, watching her chest rise and fall evenly under the blankets, checking on her fever, which seemed to have broken, and generally making her comfortable. But in time he returned to his seat by the table and resumed his work with the medallions. He didn’t really want to, even in the moonlight Mistress Essaline was a beautiful looking woman, human or elf, and he could have simply stared at her for hours, but the key to survival lay in being prepared, and he intended to survive. He intended for the children and their teacher to survive.
Already half a dozen small back packs were sewn up and ready to carry what they needed, most of which would be food, jars of salted meats and preserves were ready to be packed away into them, and trail cakes without number were cooking in the oven while loaves of bread cooled on the bench beside it. Extra saddle bags for Willow were already stuffed with his own magical sundries not to mention blankets for the cool nights ahead, and he’d crafted some horse quivers for his spelled arrows as well. Thankfully over the years he’d crafted hundreds of them as his longbow had become his most useful weapon.
It had already been a long night and he had a lot of work to do before the sun finally rose. After all he had given her his word that she and the children would be safe, and even with his abilities that might not be an easy promise to keep. But he would keep it.
He would get them home. After that though, that was the unknown. A wizard wasn’t supposed to go to war, but this war had come to him. He had the right to defend himself, and within reason the right to defend others, as long as the enemy wasn’t the army of a warring neighbour and he wasn’t taking the battle to them. But dire beasts and werewolves, even if they were an enemy’s shock troops, they were dark magic and something never permitted in the land. He had the right to defend them against such evils as well, and the responsibility to destroy them wherever he found them. How much further than that he could go he wasn’t sure, and he was sure he didn’t want to find out.
He would get the children to safety. That at least he could do. Then he would have to decide what to do. Whether to stand and fight, or leave. Already he knew it wouldn’t be an easy decision, but it would have to come after that first duty. First he had to get them to safety and that meant returning to his preparations. Yet there was still one more thing he had to do before he could return to his work.
It was late, the children were asleep as was their teacher, and he had a lot of work to do before dawn, but still took a moment to bow his head in silent prayer to the Lord of Magic, a prayer for his family and friends, for his former Guild and for the thousands or tens of thousands of people now panicking as they fled in fear through the forests pursued by strange beasts. It wasn’t much, and in his heart he doubted it would help, but it was all he could do for them.
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Chapter Two.
Late morning brought the enemy to Marjan once again, and he wasn’t happy about having been caught so soon, let alone on his own land, nor by something as powerful as this thing was, whatever it was. He could feel it, feel its strength and hunger, even if he couldn’t yet see at first. But then, even though the part of the forest they were in was relatively open, the trees being well spaced and most of them impossibly tall and straight silver birches with few branches which allowed a lot of light through, it was still enough to hide an enemy if he wanted to remain hidden.
“Stay down children, and be quiet.” He spoke as forcefully as he could without shouting at them, trying to make sure that they understood there was danger nearby, even as he drew his longbow carefully and notched an arrow while he hunted out the threat. It was one thing to sense it with his magical abilities, but another to lay mortal eyes on their enemy. Unfortunately it didn’t take as long as he woul
d have thought to spot the enemy once he realised he was looking in the wrong direction and not far enough away and turned his attention to the distant skies instead, the creature was that large, but it did take a little while longer to believe it.
“Qua’thor’s balls!” The old curse rolled off his tongue as he admitted the truth to himself. It was a drake! An accursed drake! Over his forest! And hunting the children too! The dark wizard’s balls were certainly rolling this day!
Drakes were nasty, venomous flying lizards, smaller cousins to the dragons, though that still made them nearly a hundred feet long, and deadly. They were without the dragons’ intelligence or ability to cast fire thankfully, but they would still pose a serious threat to nearly anyone. They were fast flyers, vicious hunters, and fully capable of taking a man and a horse from above in a single, terrible bite, and worse with their long sinuous necks even a forest full of tall trees was no guarantee of protection against them.
Like the dire wolves though, they weren’t native to Gunderland, so this beast had flown a long way to start hunting prey, and that it had found them so soon into their journey, that was not good. But what really surprised him was that with his wizard sight he could make out a man riding the beast on some strange saddle arrangement strapped to its back. That he’d never heard of. In truth he’d never heard of anyone with the ability to train let alone ride drakes. They weren’t bright, didn’t take instruction and he couldn’t imagine that they wouldn’t eat their handlers if they got the chance. They’d eat their own young if they could. In fact the reason there were so few drakes in the world were the drakes themselves.
What troubled him more as he finally laid his own magical vision on the man was the feeling he got from him. Wizard sight was perhaps the most useful of a wizard’s gifts as it let him see not just the physical, but also the living, the spiritual and the magical. But what his sight revealed to him about this particular soldier was not something he wanted to see. It was more than just hatred or blood lust, or fear or even orders that ruled him, it was something other, something foreign and dark, perhaps even insane, and the werewolf had been the same way too. What he was Marjan didn’t know, he’d never encountered anything like him, but he knew what he wasn’t, human. There was nothing in him any longer that spoke of humanity, and if there once had been, that man was long since dead. Still that was a riddle for another day.
Carefully, not wanting to draw any attention to himself though the drake was still half a league away, barely a black smudge weaving its way across the sky almost randomly, searching for them or others like them, he put the fire arrow back in its quiver on his back and went to the quivers on Willow’s back, drawing a couple of lightning arrows. They would have the effect on the beast that fire would not.
Essaline and the children all stared at him as he did so, wondering why he was changing arrows, wondering how a mere hunter with a bow could even think to take down such a beast, let alone at such a distance, and he could see the fear growing once more in their eyes. They surely wondered if he was mad. At least though they were quiet as they hid among the trees. Their fear wouldn’t remain with them for long he promised them silently.
With a single impulse he then pulled back the string and released the first arrow and the magic bound within it, unsurprised when it bolted away from him far faster than it should in a blaze of whiteness, only to hit the beast directly in the head like a lightning bolt less than an eye-blink later.
The effect was immediate as the beast screamed in shock and fury one last time, a sound that split the air like thunder. Its head lit up in a mighty explosion of whiteness that rivalled the sun for brightness, before it starting to plummet to the ground in a crazy spiral of death, wings and limbs flailing everywhere, its rider being pulled down with it. Marjan didn’t even have to draw the second arrow.
“Ephesus be praised!” He whispered the blessing under his breath as he tried to make sense of what he’d done and failed. It was a victory and he should have been happy or relieved, but he wasn’t. Instead he was troubled and confused. The confusion was partly because he had not seen a drake in these parts before, and never heard of a man riding one. But that was only a minor matter. What disturbed him was that even at the end he felt nothing of fear in either rider or beast. The beast was dead or dying as it plummeted to the ground, probably beyond such things, but its rider, even being dragged down thousands of feet to certain death knew no fear, only hatred for the fact that his prey was getting away, such terrible hatred. He so desperately wanted to kill and tear them apart, and he didn’t even know that there was anyone nearby. He just wanted to kill and rend everyone.
He wasn’t normally a vengeful man, but right then Marjan felt true rage towards their enemy. Evil should know fear and whatever else that rider was, to have been part of such atrocities, to think of people only as prey, to know nothing but the desire to destroy them, to destroy even children, he had to be evil.
The impact when the beast hit the rocky ground was immense, and even as far away as they were they could feel the tremor as it smashed birches and pine trees over like twigs and then hit the ground in a thunderous explosion that rippled through the earth under their feet. But that didn’t matter. What did matter was that neither the beast nor its rider was moving. Through his wizard sight he could see them just laying there in a bloody heap as big as a small mansion, and Marjan knew he’d made a kill. He also knew he’d killed a man, evil and threatening as he was, and that was not so good. It should have bothered him, and perhaps it did a little, or maybe that was just fear talking. Still the only other choice had been death, and the death of innocent children, and that was far worse.
Yet more than that he felt little for the man because in his very essence he didn’t believe that he was a man. There had been something wrong with him, something strange and inhuman. He looked like a man, probably walked and talked like one, but in his heart Marjan knew he wasn’t. He was something far more evil. In a way in fact, even though he had been shaped like a man, there was something in him that reminded him strongly of the werewolf. A creature created from dark magic and innocent victims. A creature not of this world.
The children though had other ideas and from out of nowhere they started cheering even as he tried to persuade them to be silent. They had little understanding that there might be other enemies out there, though thankfully none as far as he could tell were close and neither were any even nearly as powerful as the drake. But one of their enemies had fallen, and they liked that, and it seemed heartless of him to stop them. It was a reason for them not to be afraid, and they didn’t want to be afraid any more.
“How did you do that?” Essaline asked once the children had quietened, clearly surprised and suspicious as perhaps she had every right to be. He had told her little of himself that morning as they’d travelled, and now she was suddenly discovering that he was more than the simple woodsman he claimed to be. Perhaps she should have guessed that when he’d given her and the children their own forest amulets and made them wear them at all times. They were simple enchantments, designed purely to stop them leaving tracks and odours, and to divert the attention of predators, much the same as many woodsmen carried though his were far more powerful, but still he had far more than one woodsman should have had.
“Lightning arrow. Draconic forms are all very susceptible to them.”
“And where would you get such things?” She stared at him intently, and then at the full horse quivers of differently fletched arrows on Willow’s back, and the children did likewise. They trusted him, mostly, but they trusted their teacher more and they heard the concern in her voice.
“I crafted them, as I crafted your amulets, the packs and cloaks, the packets of salve and other lotions, and all of these other arrows. Two horse quivers of fire arrows, a quiver of lightning arrows, a quiver of ice arrows and just in case, a quiver of medusa venom arrows as well. Why do you think I have Willow carrying so many different quivers? I like to be prepared.” Sh
e stared at him and then the quivers beside her for a while, probably wondering why she hadn’t thought to ask why he had brought so many arrows, or why they were all fletched slightly differently. Then again she should perhaps have wondered about the small library of spell books he had in the saddlebags as well, if she’d looked. But of course she hadn’t thought to look.
She’d had too little strength in the morning, and after breakfast and a bath, she’d had to spend most of it getting the children ready for the journey ahead. Marjan had no doubt that under her determination and quick command of the children she was exhausted, and that exhaustion had robbed her of some of her curiosity. She had simply accepted him as being what he appeared to be, and it was only now that she was starting to understand that he was not so simple.