Maverick

by Curtis, Greg

  In time, and though it seemed like hours it was surely only minutes, they could make out more of what lay ahead of them, and the nightmare just grew worse. The town, the whole town was destroyed, not one of the trees that had once supported it was intact, and neither were many of the others that had surrounded it. A huge section of the forest was no more, seemingly torn out of the ground by a colossus and strewn everywhere. The vast glade that was the centre of the town, was also no more.

  Beautiful level fields of emerald grass, orchards and wheat fields, farms and everything else that had once been part of it were gone, replaced with fallen trees and mountains of rubble nearly as tall as the magnificent trees they had once been. Yet the rubble wasn’t just the wind torn debris from the forest and the town either, there were stones among it, huge stones that looked like they had been ripped from the mountains themselves before being flung at the town. But what sort of creature could do such a thing?

  At least there were survivors.

  That knowledge gave Marjan hope, as he saw that many of the small fires were in fact camp fires, around which people were sitting, small broken looking figures, huddling. In the distance he could see banners flying, brightly coloured pennants waving from the tops of fallen trees which proudly proclaimed families and guilds, hopefully drawing others to them, but of course with the entire glade buried under so much debris, there was no way of knowing how many were gathered around each rallying point, and probably the difficulties in reaching many of them would be extreme.

  Some horses had survived the disaster too, for the most part wandering around freely grazing as there was nowhere for them to be tethered or housed, the stables were gone, but a few were in action, being ridden, having carts hitched to them as they ferried people and supplies around. Of course he knew that their usefulness would be limited, with the glade littered with fallen, broken trees, they were simply cut off from most of the people. That he decided, if the enemy was gone, would have to be his first task, opening up passageways through the mountains of debris to reach everyone. But first he wanted to kill whoever or whatever had done this. Kill him many times over.

  It was strange how that anger was suddenly so strong in him. He’d never been an angry man. And yet this tragedy was so similar to that of Snowy Falls, and he still remembered the rage he’d felt at seeing so many bodies lying in those streets, especially those of the children, children he knew. His anger, he told himself, was justified, even if he had to keep it under control. First he had to find out what had happened, and the answer to that lay with the people.

  Like an ill-disciplined horde they raced towards the nearest group of survivors they could see, a woman, a few men and children with her, tending to at least a few dozen injured people laying on the ground around her.

  “What happened here?” The captain cried out to her even as they approached at a gallop, and long before they had dismounted, a breach in etiquette, but this was no time for manners.

  The woman looked to be in no shape to answer them, there was blood all over her face which she had apparently given up on trying to rub away, more ran down the front of her robes making an unwelcome pattern, her eyes spoke of desperation and shock, and she was busy with her patients. She didn’t even bother to look up at them. The men looked not much better as they tried to set up a camp and make the others comfortable. But from one of them at least they got an answer. An older man, his clothes badly torn, trails of dried blood running down one arm, and exhaustion almost bringing him down to the ground himself, but at least he looked at them.

  “Giants. Stone giants.” His words made no sense, not to Marjan and the most he could do when so many turned to him, questions in their eyes, was raise his hands helplessly. He’d never heard of a giant so large that it could tear two and three hundred foot high trees out of the ground and snap them like kindling, and he’d never heard of any made of stone. Neither had he heard of any void creatures that matched such a description, nor even if they were from the void, should they have been able to get through the wards. There were so many questions to answer, and so little knowledge to do it with. He let the others continue with their questions, hoping only to find some of those answers.

  “Men, ugly men made of stone, fifty, a hundred feet high. They came in the night, risen from out of the ground itself, and when they walked the land shook. They threw rocks at us, massive boulders as large as a house, torn from the land. We couldn’t see them in the dark but when they hit, it was like a thunderclap. Trees shook and screamed, people screamed, wood flew, and then one by one they fell. Half a dozen hits and the strongest of trees became kindling. The trees toppled, the platforms, and the people with them. There was so much screaming.” Marjan believed the man, he had a look of such terrible horror on his face that it could not be a lie. But it still made no sense. Besides, everywhere he could see the evidence of the attack with his own eyes, the trees fallen and broken, boulders larger than a man on a horse, littering the land like giant pebbles, and worse still, mixed in among them he could see bodies. Not whole bodies, just pieces of them, and patches of red, but enough to tell him the truth of what had happened. The town had been destroyed, smashed into kindling with the people still in it, and too many had been unable to flee.

  “The guards, the rangers, they fought, but they could do nothing. Arrows bounced off them, even enchanted ones. The druids’ magic fizzled on their skins. Fire, lightning, all of it was useless. Nothing affected them, nothing stopped them.”

  “And where are they now?”

  “Gone. Back. Back in the ground. Once the attack was done, once the town was broken, once the people were dead, they sank back into the ground itself, silently slipping away, almost like it was water.” Despite the foolishness of it, Marjan started staring at the ground under his feet, wondering what might dwell beneath it. A kraken of the land? Was there such a thing? He wasn’t the only one. But then he’d never heard of a creature like the man described, and the thought of one of them rising from the ground underneath them was frightening to say the least, especially when they were resistant to magic.

  “When was this?” The captain was right to ask the question, something Marjan should have thought of asking instead of standing around like an idiot.

  “Last night, when the moon was high. But for the mercy of her light we would never have seen them at all. It was a small blessing at best.” He was right too, falling in the darkness would have been terrifying as you waited to hit something, and the chance to hold on to something as the trees fell, would have been even less, but given what they had endured, maybe not that much worse.

  “At least they are gone.” One of the rangers tried to give the man comfort with his words, looking to the good as his people did, but his words fell on deaf ears.

  “Of course they are gone, Evensong is destroyed. There is nothing left for them to do.” The man returned to his duties, laying blankets on the patients, and they knew they would get no more from him. He was at the end of his strength and maybe his hope too.

  “This gets us nowhere. Rangers, to the town and let us try to save those we can. Druids, cut into the fallen trees and rescue those who are trapped. Argene, take ten rangers start finding ways around the fallen giants to carry the injured to the healers. Take whatever mounts and wagons you need. Lyos take another twenty and start hunting out supplies, food, fresh water, clothing, blankets and shelter. Stockpile what you find. Mayven …..” The captain started barking out orders as if they were naughty children gossiping in the yard, and he was right to Marjan realised. Without something to do who knew how long they would have stood around staring aimlessly, shocked, panicking and feeling sorry for themselves.

  It took no more than that for him to start hurrying towards the nearest tree, a giant of the forest fallen on its side that even laying down stood forty feet high. It had once been a magnificent tree, it had once been a home to many. He knew that when he saw the smashed timbers and torn ropes that had once been platforms, homes a
nd buildings, scattered everywhere, hanging from its broken branches. Now all they were was firewood. That was a tragedy in its own right. But worse, in its death it had trapped and killed others.

  Too many of its shattered branches were covered with red, and every so often along its impossible length he could see people, trying to break through the tangle of branches that had become a prison, to reach others. He ran to the closest of them and quickly sent his magic soaring into the fray, shaping the force like a blade, slicing through branches as a sword through flesh, breaking down the wooden prison bars.

  Even with his magic it was a slow job, too slow. He could cut through the branches with his magic of force, cut through quite easily in fact, even when the branches were five and six feet thick, but others had to pull them away, dragging them by hand as the horses were nowhere in sight, and they were heavy. Half a dozen men with ropes had to drag each one away, and that before he could cut the next one apart.

  Still Marjan persevered, as did the others, there was no choice, and eventually they managed to cut their way into the heart of the branch prison, where several elves were trapped. Some were alive he noticed, arms and legs moving feebly, while others lay far too still for his liking, bleeding, the remains of what had probably once been a house all around them. While the elves began helping them, digging them free and carrying them out into the sunlight where others waited for them, he left the group to run to the next one, barely twenty paces further along the tree trunk, trying to break their way through into a prison that had once been the platform immediately beneath the one he had just helped destroy.

  Four maybe five platforms per tree, hundreds and hundreds of fallen trees, half an hour maybe an hour to cut all the way through, he did the maths as he started cutting into the new tree, and knew it was going to be a long time before he reached the end. A lot of people would die before he could reach them. A lot of people were already dead.

  And somewhere in this disaster he knew lay Essaline and her family and the children, and he had no idea where, no way of finding her, especially if she was trapped. Alive or dead was the question that tore at his heart, and he couldn’t bear to think of the latter possibility. All he could do was cut, and with tears flowing down his cheeks like those of a small child, he did just that.

  ****************

  Chapter Seventeen.

  Marjan could finally sense the enemy ahead, and with a sense of relief and trepidation he knew his journey at least was over. So many living forms, at least some of them wyrmling possessed and powerful, and many more smaller creatures apparently serving them in some capacity, and none of them seeming to be moving, that could only mean he’d found their home, the place from which they’d launched their attack upon Evensong, and for that at least he was grateful.

  Next of course came the hard part, killing them, and freeing the captives. After that would come the most terrifying part, praying that Essaline was among the prisoners along with her mother and sister, and still alive, as he hunted them in the enemy’s lair.

  Three days! That knowledge, the guilt and shame tugged at him, as he knew it had already been far too long. But for three long days and nights he had done nothing more than rescue people trapped in the remains of their homes, and pray that Essaline and her family were there somewhere, alive. And then, when he had finally found her father, and been told the horrible truth, he had still been unable to go after her. Not until enough wizards and mages had arrived to continue the work. Enough so that he could be spared.

  He hated himself for that. Waiting wasn’t the act of a loving man, it was the act of a coward, an uncaring swine, and just because it had been the right thing to do, that didn’t make it any better. But now, finally, too late and yet still he hoped, in time, he knew where they were. He had his chance. And somehow he managed to stamp down hard on his warring emotions, as he dropped to the ground and began the painfully slow but vital part of the plan, of creeping up on the enemy. He had to see them with his own eyes, he had to learn who and what they were, and prepare to face them, and they could not know he was anywhere near.

  Step by step he led his horse through the forest heading towards the enemy, but determined to not break through the tree line at any point. It was agony. Every fibre and sinew in his body wanted to go rushing in, magic at the ready, and simply lay waste to whatever he found, and surely that was what Master Argus would have told him to do, but his few months with the rangers had taught him at least a tiny modicum of caution and stealth, and he knew they were right.

  So as the nervous sweat dripped off him, and his heart raged at him to go and destroy everyone and everything that stood between him and his love, he still crept carefully through the forest, stalking his enemy like a cat, and muttering prayers to every god he knew. Eventually though the torture ended as it had to, and he finally found a thick copse of trees and bracken with sunlight beyond, and he knew even as he dropped to his hands and knees and started crawling through the underbrush, that he’d found his vantage point. Not long after that he finally saw his enemy.

  “Stone trolls!” Seeing them there in front of him Marjan finally understood what had attacked Evensong, and he couldn’t help but whisper the name out loud. At least something made some sense, and finally he knew what could rise up out of the earth itself to strike at a town and then disappear back into it. All trolls to some extent had that ability, and stone trolls, the toughest of them, were said to be able to swim through the earth as if it were water.

  He’d always thought it was a myth, never given it any credence, and assumed that the creatures simply hid well, camouflaged against the rocky terrain by their impossibly tough stone like skin, and then merely seemed to rise out of the ground when they stood up. But of course, he hadn’t thought about it that much, given that stone trolls could be found in only one place, the island of Pithica, a thousand leagues north of even the northern most tip of the Varden Regency, where it was said they lived in a land of ice and mountains and ate rocks.

  They’d travelled a long way and somehow he doubted that anyone with a boat would have ferried them, even if they had been smaller at the time. They were savage creatures at best, and who in their right mind would want one on board a ship. Of course trolls, even stone trolls didn’t grow seventy feet tall, and these ones had grown stronger and thicker still in proportion to even their distant tiny cousins. No ship could have supported them. Yet he couldn’t imagine that they’d swum either, they were simply too dense to float. So how they’d got to Evensong he didn’t know.

  Their impossible size was the wyrmlings’ doing, and looking at them he knew that they too were infected by the otherworldly monsters. The strange blackness of their souls was unmistakeable, as was the hunger that burned within their chests, and the evil they had done. The evil they were still doing, as they held hundreds maybe thousands of elves prisoner.

  Why?

  That he still didn’t understand. Stone trolls even wyrmling possessed stone trolls had no need of prisoners. They ate and they killed, that was their essence, and they had no intelligence to speak of. Except that some of them now did apparently, at least a little. The possessed soldiers had had enough wit to use weapons, enough to search for something after a battle, and he would dearly have loved to know what it was that they sought. Maybe after a year in those human bodies, they had found a little more. Enough to form a plan that involved taking prisoners.

  “What to do?” Of course that was the real question, and Marjan knew as he asked it of himself, that there were many answers. The captain would have recommended stealth, studying the enemy, finding his weaknesses, and then calling for back up when he had a plan. But the rangers weren’t here, they were still helping at the town, ferrying supplies, assisting the elders and the healers as best they could, trying to rebuild a broken town. It would be a long time before they could join him. He had come alone for that reason. They were needed in the town, and too lose so many able bodies at such a time would have been unthinkable.
One mage though, battle hardened and suitably cunning, he could be spared when hundreds more lives were on the line, and it had been three long days before even he could be sent.

  Master Argus would have said for him to get mad and unleash his magic, all of it, something that wasn’t hard for him to do given all that they had done, but equally something that could be dangerous given the fact that they had prisoners. That maybe they even had Essaline and some of her family among them, somewhere inside the mountain they seemed to be guarding. Yet they could be killing them even now, or worse, wyrmlings could be possessing them, all while he sat there, planning like a coward.