Maverick

by Curtis, Greg

  Nor though, had the guilds ever guessed that they might have need of those texts one day, and in his mind theirs was the more foolish mistake, choosing not to keep a copy or two securely locked up, leaving the only copies among the various magic emporia, most of which were now all burnt to the ground, and with the collectors of such works, most of whom they didn’t know and who were probably dead or like him, fled without their libraries. So in the end, everyone had made the same mistake and because of that mistake he was forced to recover the only tomes he knew existed by riding through the very heart of the enemy territory.

  The strain of the ride through dangerous lands drove him a little crazy at times, for so many reasons. He hadn’t wanted to leave his library behind, or his cottage for that matter, but he hadn’t had a choice. Even had he known or guessed the identity of their enemy, he couldn’t have carried so many tomes of ancient fables on poor old Willow anyway along with everything else. But more than that, he knew that even when he reached his home, when he obtained the volumes, he was still going to have to leave it all behind once again in all likelihood. He had a second option, translocation, but it was a magic he had never used before on such a scale and he had no faith at all that he could do it this time. So the chances were that he would once again be making this very same ride back to Evensong in a few more hours, once more abandoning his home to the enemy. That just wasn’t fair.

  It was with thoughts like that running through his head that he carried on, a silent, blur galloping down the main road almost like a bird in flight though far faster, and hopefully scaring any of the enemy that they encountered completely senseless. But that wasn’t likely. They didn’t know enough to be scared. For the most part, they weren’t particularly clever, and what intelligence they did have, wasn’t very relevant to life outside of the void.

  Millennia lost in the darkness of the void had robbed the wrymlings of any intelligence that they might have once had, and replaced it with eternal screaming madness. Now that they were apparently free, he doubted that they had regained much of their wit had they had any to begin with. Certainly the werewolf and the soldiers he had encountered had shown no great intelligence as they all but sleepwalked their way through the world, and that was good. They could hunt and attack without remorse, they could possess the bodies of many creatures and even a few unfortunate people, but they couldn’t plan. If and when they did learn or relearn that skill, then they would all be in terrible trouble.

  Still he knew, there must be at least one among them with some wit left to him. Enough to help him and the rest escape the void, enough to direct them all, and enough to set them the task of searching out the world for whatever it was that they were seeking, and despite everything else that he knew of the wyrmlings, he was certain they were seeking something. Who or what that was he still had no idea, none of them did, and that troubled them. Nor did they know who led them and that troubled them more. Was he a wyrmling grown stronger and brighter than his pack? Was he something else lost in the void who had somehow found a way to control them and then escape? Or had some idiot on this side opened a portal and pulled them through? Or worse was he some wizard who had brought them through intentionally and now somehow directed them in their evil? There was of course no answer, not yet. But at least now there was a place to start looking.

  In time there might also be a road cleared of the enemy if he was doing everything correctly. Using his previous trick of enchanting pieces of tile he was busy leaving a trail of enchanted fragments all the way along the road as he raced along it, all designed to do only one thing, keep the wyrmlings away, and a road as he recalled from captain Saul’s endless lectures was a strategic asset. It was best that the enemy didn’t have it, assuming they used roads. If they didn’t he’d also been busy scattering the same pieces of broken pottery around the forests surrounding Evensong over the previous tenday. They might not stop his armies, that was unclear since they’d been in the world far longer than a day or two, and some of that worldliness should have rubbed off on them, but if they could stop the newest wyrmlings, those that still hadn’t found flesh to possess, then that had to be a positive, especially as they had to be nearby to take possession of someone’s flesh.

  It was as he was thinking such hopeful if somewhat speculative thoughts that he heard a snuffling coming from just to his side, and shocked he spun around in his saddle, one hand already reaching for his axe, to see a bear cub giving chase. But even as he saw it, wondered briefly if he was going mad and seeing things, then wondered it was an enemy, and then realised it wasn’t, the impossibility of the situation impressed itself upon him. He was on Willow, galloping far faster than any horse could, and yet a baby bear cub was somehow keeping pace with him. How? Why?

  Even as he wondered a part of the mystery revealed itself as he realised that just like Willow each of the cub’s strides was covering far more ground than it should have, while her feet also didn’t quite touch the ground, and he knew that part of his spell was affecting her, though how that could be was unclear. She hadn’t been around when he’d cast the magic and in any case if she had been, she still shouldn’t have been affected by it since he hadn’t cast it on her. Then she gave off a plaintiff cry and he stopped wondering as he realised one thing more, this was no enemy, this was a cub, alone and frightened he might leave her, and she needed his help.

  Despite the danger of stopping in enemy held territory, he reined Willow to a halt, something she didn’t particularly want to do, and then watched in awe as the little cub came straight up to him and started sniffing at his foot, all she could reach while he was in the saddle. Willow didn’t seem particularly impressed by the cub’s behaviour though she wasn’t frightened either, something that she should have been. Bears and horses generally didn’t like each other, not even bear cubs. Maybe that was a good sign.

  She was a tree bear cub he slowly realised, her surprisingly long legs and neck could make her nothing else, and her colouring, a strange mixture of browns both light and dark and a few haphazard streaks of white and red for some colour were also a strong clue, while her retractable claws were the final proof. No other bear had claws that they could sheath, but tree bears had to be able to run fast as well as climb trees, and claws that couldn’t be sheathed would have slowed them down.

  Despite himself he had to admit that she was cute, and there was a look of longing, make that pleading in her dark eyes that completely disarmed him. Of course when she grew up she would be far less cute and far more deadly, which left him with another important question.

  “Where’s your mummy little one?” Of course she couldn’t answer him, just kept sniffing at his ankle and when that wasn’t enough she started licking him as well, and he got the distinct impression she thought he was her mother. That did not strike him as good. It was always possible he realised, that the enemy had killed her mother, or worse that her mother was now one of them. The wyrmlings were every bit as deadly to the creatures of the forests as they were to people, and he wasn’t at all sure he wanted to see what they would do to a tree bear’s flesh given the chance. Tree bears might be relative lightweights among their kin, but they were the fastest of all the bears and skilled predators.

  Using all his senses he scanned the area around him, hoping to find a mother tree bear, and despite all the practice he’d been doing of late in the natural magics he found nothing. That at the least told him that this cub was alone and that was wrong. She was too young to be alone, the enemy would kill her when they found her and even if they didn’t, she wasn’t old enough to survive on her own in the woods, and yet what could he do about it.

  “You should go home.” Of course she didn’t understand him, and even if she had she seemed in no hurry to do so as she started chewing at his leggings and making some plaintiff mewling sounds, so strangely similar to those of a kitten calling for their mother’s milk. He guessed quite quickly from her chewing that she was hungry, and he had to wonder how long it had been since
she had eaten. How long since she’d lost her mother.

  “I’m not your mummy and I don’t have any food for you.” Naturally she didn’t respond except to keep licking at him and mewling, and as she did so he suddenly remembered that he did have some food with him. Cautiously, wondering if he was thinking clearly, he reached into the saddle bag and pulled out a half loaf of bread and wedge of cheese for the cub, deciding that he could go hungry for a day if he had to, and in truth he would have felt guilty eating it anyway with her pleading eyes in his thoughts.

  It didn’t take her long to discover the food and even less time to gulp it down, and a few heartbeats later she was back, asking for more, licking at him and making some small plaintiff cries. He didn’t have any more, and yet as he looked into her pleading eyes he knew he couldn’t say no. How could any man refuse such an innocent? How could he turn her away? Not when he was somehow sure she was an orphan.

  “Alright little one, I’ve got no more food now, but I promise I’ll get you some more on the way.” It was a mistake, he knew it was a mistake, and yet he couldn’t refuse her, and the cub knew it. She saw the weakness in his eyes and knew she’d found a new source of food, and promptly started gambolling around in circles, happy at last while he groaned. The elves probably weren’t going to like this at all, and they hadn’t exactly been completely happy with him to begin with. And as to where she would stay, he had no idea. Still that too was a problem for later. For the moment they were in enemy territory and he had a mission to complete.

  “I am truly crazy.” He whispered the truth to himself even as he held out his hands for the cub and she instantly leapt into them, trusting him when she’d never even met him before. But then for some reason he felt the same, almost as if the little cub was somehow kin.

  Willow of course wasn’t so happy about having the extra weight to carry, especially when it wriggled, but fairly quickly he managed to persuade the cub to wrap herself up into a ball around his waist, and they were off again.

  ****************

  Arriving at the edge of the forest just beside the clearing where his cottage had once been, Marjan felt a sense of cheer and of homecoming the like of which he had never before known. He had been away for far too long, and seeing his old home standing there in the middle of the clearing, even if it was a truly humble structure, nearly brought a tear to his eye. Until just then, even having scried it from his new home, he hadn’t truly been able to believe that it still stood. Now he knew it, and it was as if a part of him had returned to life just because of that knowledge.

  He would have flicked the reins and gone to it instantly if it wasn’t for the smell of wood smoke in the air, and the slight puff of it coming from his old home’s chimney. That made him stop in a hurry well before he entered the glade, and remain concealed behind the bushes.

  “That’s strange.” In truth the smoke coming from his cottage’s chimney struck Marjan as more than strange, it was worrying considering he’d left it abandoned so many months before, and as everyone knew smoke meant people. Yet the wards surrounding his cottage and the glade were all intact, and now that he knew what the enemy was, he also knew that they were despite all he’d feared, effective against the wyrmlings. They wouldn’t stop them, but wyrmlings could be as easily fooled and misdirected as other more natural beasts and people, and in fact in their insanity they’d be even less likely to realise they had been misdirected. Also he wasn’t aware that they lit fires for warmth or dwelt in cottages. Besides all his scrying from the silvery pool in Evensong and the very few roaming packs they had encountered in the woods as they trotted the last couple of leagues from the road, suggested there were few about.

  He’d fried at most half a dozen hell boars and two dire wolves in the last few hours, not the hundreds or thousands he would have expected had his home been found, though he had to admit all of them had been far larger and more changed than he recalled from the last time. It seemed unlikely therefore that a wyrmling had made it inside, or even to the glade, and if they had they wouldn’t have lit a fire. They would have burned the house to the ground.

  On the other hand they had been through the forest, and the toll they had taken on its normal residents was terrible. In a forest once teeming with life, what remained was almost a desert. The birds still flew, it seemed the enemy had few aerial forms so far and so they were more or less safe, but everything on the ground that couldn’t climb a tree, fly, swim or burrow had been killed, and too many of them as well. Normally these woods were filled with deer and wild goats, possums and birds filled the trees, while badgers, rabbits and stoats had their burrows everywhere. The streams and lake should have been filled with fish, while in the hills just beyond several families of tree bears and a pack of wolves should have been out and about hunting, preparing for the tough winter ahead. None of that was happening.

  It seemed the wyrmlings had come through as a pack, killed and eaten everything they could find, and then moved on south, hunting the people fleeing the cities, and what they had left behind was a graveyard. Everywhere he went he came across signs of death, animals torn apart and now little more than piles of bones, scavenger birds fat and happy, burrows ripped open and trees with their bark scratched off as great clawed creatures in their dozens had scaled them to get at those that had made them their home.

  It was sad but more than that it was an outrage and the anger he felt for them was only tempered by the knowledge that they were out of his reach, for the moment. This was his home and someone, maybe tens of thousands of someones, or somethings in truth, had come and defiled it, killing at random, wrecking everything that stood, and then left as quickly as they had come, moving on to their next crime, their next meal, leaving behind only death. In a very real way he felt as though they had attacked his family, even though as a wizard he didn’t even have one. But at least they had moved on, and by the looks of things, long ago. Their trail was cold, and that surely meant the forest was safe again, for a while, and it surely meant that whoever was now making his cottage their own, it was not the enemy.

  Still that didn’t make them friends. It seemed he had guests, and not all guests were welcome.

  Marjan flicked Willow’s reins lightly against her neck and they trotted slowly across the last few hundred paces through the trees and out to the glade itself while he kept his magic close, just in case.

  “By the Goddess!” He uttered the exclamation as he finally came out into the open air of his glade and he could see the entirety of his old cottage itself still standing happily, idly realising that he’d been living among the elves for far too long, as he found its lines strange. Then saw the children playing in the long grass, chasing a ball of all things. As he laid eyes upon his cottage and its new dwellers, he was shocked not just by the fact that there were more children there, but because he knew them.

  “Gilas, Verona!” He called the children’s names even as he fully left the tree line and emerged out in to the sunshine. He wasn’t surprised when they looked up, startled and obviously frightened, but he was relieved however. The enemy knew nothing of fear. A few heartbeats later the children recognised him and fear was replaced with smiles.

  “Marjan!” It was Verona who first screamed his name, even as she began jumping up and down, but her brother soon joined her, and then the front door of his cottage opened and he watched their father come rushing out, long sword at the ready in one hand, shield in the other, panic in his eyes. But he never raised it as he in turn laid eyes on Marjan and his mouth dropped.

  “Marjan?” He seemed uncertain as he called his name. Of course Marjan realised, he’d changed a lot over the previous months and the elven chain mail was only the beginning. His hair was even longer than before, unusually clean and he let it hang in loose knots in the manner of the elves to help fit in among them, his ever present stubble was gone for the same reason, and he fancied he’d slimmed down some from all the running he’d been doing of late. Then there was the bear cub still curl
ed up around his waist. It had also been a long time since the blacksmith had seen him.

  “Sumas, what are you doing here?” It wasn’t that he wasn’t glad to see the blacksmith, he was, especially considering the number of bodies he’d seen in Snowy Falls, it was just that it seemed impossible for him to be here in his home. He checked the wards around the glade and the house once more just to be sure, and they were intact. Nothing of evil intent could have come through them, not without the defensive magic inherent in the cottage and the land around it having either sent it screaming or destroyed it, and even before that, anything evil should have been turned away, subtly misdirected without ever knowing how, when or why or even that it had happened. But then Sumas was never an evil man, as he had to remind himself, the wards hadn’t been designed with him in mind.