Pathfinder Tales: Skinwalkers

by Wendy N. Wagner

  "It's too quiet," Jendara murmured.

  "Jendara," Vorrin whispered. He pointed.

  Beside a cart, a man stood awkwardly, head hung low, arms behind him, legs too straight. It took her a minute to make sense of the strangeness of his pose, to see the stake running through him, lifting his feet inches off the ground. To see the black puddle beneath, clotted with flies.

  A crow settled on his shoulder and nipped at his cheek.

  "No!"

  Even as she ran, she knew it was stupid, knew it couldn't change anything. But she couldn't just watch the bird eat his face. Her sword jumped into her hand.

  "Jendara!"

  The bird fluttered aloft, but the sword was already swinging, already biting into its neck. For a second, the crow hung in the air, eyes fixed on her face. Then its head soared out over the brink of the quarry. Its body fell to her feet.

  "Damn it, Jenny!" Vorrin spun her around by the elbow.

  "Don't call me Jenny." She shook him off and began pacing, too upset to hold still. "I've seen this before."

  "We need to scout out the camp," Vorrin said, keeping his voice low. "We need to know if there are any survivors."

  "Or worse, any attackers." She took a deep breath, regaining a little control. "You're right, we need to go through the whole place."

  "Do a quick perimeter check. I'll head west, you go east. And don't take any chances." He reached out for her, brushed his fingers against her cheek. "I don't like this."

  "Me neither," she whispered, but she was already turning away from him. She still couldn't hear any sounds save for her own footsteps crunching the gravel underfoot. That was bad.

  She sank into her hunter's crouch and approached the nearest building, the largest around. The presence of a tin stovepipe suggested it might be the kitchen and mess hall for the quarry workers. Jendara pressed her ear to the wall and listened hard. Still quiet, save for a faint drip-drip-dripping. She wished she could look through the window, but the shutters were closed.

  Jendara's fingers trembled as she reached for the doorknob.

  She snapped open the door and almost staggered backward at the overpowering stench of blood and offal. The kitchen looked like a scene from a nightmare. Bloody handprints covered the counters. Flies buzzed over raw-looking heaps that she didn't want to name, and blood slicked the floor. Jendara swallowed hard and took a step inside.

  "Is there anyone here?"

  She didn't know why she called out, except in the faint hope that someone hiding might hear her and come out to explain that this was all a joke, this was all animal blood, those weren't human intestines curled around that sack of onions, there was nothing horrible in the big pot sitting on the stove. She kept her grip on her sword, but her knees wobbled a little as she picked her way across the room. She had to look. Had to know. She peered over the lip of the pot.

  It was empty.

  Jendara sagged. She had expected...she shook her head. Silly perhaps. Whatever happened here, it must have happened fast, and whoever did it hadn't stopped to cook. They weren't that civilized. She knew they weren't that civilized.

  After all, she'd seen this before.

  She shook her head and pushed forward.

  A door opened up into the dining hall, and she stepped out into the space. The dripping was louder here. With only a few windows, the big room was almost too dark to see into, but she saw enough. Something squelched under her boot as she crossed to the nearest table and righted a bottle of milk. The puddle on the table kept dripping, a soft slow pattering onto the tin mug lying on its side on the floor.

  The door burst open. Sunlight poured in, lighting up a long sweep of blood leading outside. Vorrin stopped in the doorframe. He took in the empty room. "I see you forgot we were just circling the perimeter. Any survivors in here?"

  Any survivors. Such a flat way to say the worst. She shook her head. "It's empty. Just blood and parts."

  The dripping stopped.

  "This must have just happened," she realized. "A lot of this blood is still wet. And the milk bottle couldn't have been knocked over more than a few minutes ago."

  "We must have scared someone away. A looter, maybe. From what I saw, I think most of this was done longer ago. Maybe this morning."

  "Most of what?" Her voice sounded faint even to her own ears. An attack at dawn. That was what happened on Crow's Nest, her father's island. Her sister's island. She thought of the man tied to the stake and felt sure it was no coincidence. She stiffened her shoulders. "Show me."

  They stayed silent as Vorrin led her around the side of the nearest building, passing by a clothesline with a few limp garments hanging in the still air. An open door showed a basket of dirty shirts and a washtub. Ordinary items in an ordinary washhouse.

  They rounded the corner. A heap of bodies lay ahead, a raw mound of broken and bloody dead.

  "Gods," she breathed. "That has to be eighteen or twenty men."

  Vorrin circled around the pile. "Some of these bodies don't look...whole."

  "What?"

  He waved her over. Jendara knelt to look at a body on the bottom of the stack. She was glad she couldn't see his face; only his feet and legs stuck out—or more aptly, his mutilated legs and foot. Jendara's stomach twisted. "Is it just me, or do his legs look like the meat's been cut off in strips?"

  "I don't want to think about it." He pointed to the remains of a small campfire. "Someone definitely built a fire here, like they stayed a few hours."

  Jendara stooped to hold her hand above the ashes. She nudged a flat rock in the center. "Still warm, and if I had to guess, I'd say those were grease stains on this stone."

  Vorrin blanched. "I don't want to think about it," he repeated. He pressed his fist to his mouth, skin pale.

  Jendara felt her own gorge rise, but swallowed hard. "We should check out the rest of the camp."

  She moved to the next building, a woodshed. Jendara freed her sword to circle it. Behind her, Vorrin moved quietly, only the occasional crunch of gravel giving away his movement. There was no blood in the woodshed.

  Jendara steeled herself to walk past the mound of dead again, but Vorrin caught her eye. He tapped his ear and nodded toward the gaping pit of the quarry.

  She listened. She heard nothing at first, but then caught a small sound: a scrape of leather against stone. "Do you think it's our milk spiller?" she whispered.

  He nodded. They crept toward the cart road. As they passed behind the washhouse, Jendara felt a momentary gratitude that its bulk hid the grisly mound, a feeling which passed all too quickly was the tiny sound of a foot crushing gravel caught her ear. There really was someone down there. She wondered how deep the quarry went and tightened her grip on her sword.

  The cart road led to the rim of the quarry—a deep stony bowl cut out of the hillside. It stretched a good quarter of a mile across. Jendara peered over the edge. The narrow track continued down into the rocks, following the curve of the walls. For the first hundred yards or so, mounds of yellow sandstone lay piled up on the shoulders of the road. Trees and brush obscured the turn beyond. Jendara leaned out farther. The bottom of the quarry looked empty, the flat expanse of sea-green stone like a placid lake.

  Jendara turned back to Vorrin. "Whoever went down there, they haven't reached the bottom yet."

  He glanced over the edge. "I don't like that descent. It's too easy to rig an ambush on a road like this."

  Jendara laid her hand on his arm. "If the person we're chasing is dangerous. This could be a survivor, scared out of their mind after what they saw back there. Or it could be a witness, some woodsman who just walked into a nightmare. No matter who they are, I want to talk to them."

  "Let me go down."

  "No. I'm a local, they're more likely to trust me." Jendara pointed to the far side of the quarry. "I think you'd better follow the top of this cliff around to the far side. The ground's rough, but I think that looks like a footpath leading out of the quarry, don't you?"

&nb
sp; Vorrin squinted a moment. "I see it. Good plan." He gave her a sharp look. "You'll be careful, right? You're not running down there with your sword half-out just because of what you saw back there?"

  Jendara began walking down the steep path without sparing him a backward look. "I know I'm doing, Vorrin. Just watch the trail."

  As she went, she studied the path ahead for clues. There was no way to make out tracks on gravel this heavily traveled, but blood would stand out. No way to kill that many people without getting bloody. And it was hard not to leave tiny signs of passage that a good set of eyes might pick up: with every step, a person shed spoor like hairs and threads and fragments of the foods they ate.

  She paused to listen for other footsteps. The quarry was silent. Jendara took a few steps forward, focusing on the sound of the gravel beneath her boots. She knew how to step lightly, but the tiny stones made a certain amount of noise no matter what. She paused again. There. That might have been the rustle of a foot passing over pea gravel.

  She resisted the urge to run toward the sound. It would be all too easy to think of those bodies piled up by the wash house and let hot rage whip her into a run, but she pushed the anger aside. If she ran toward a survivor, it would only further terrify the poor man or woman. And if it was a killer, well, it would still be just as easy to die by falling to the bottom of this pit as it would be to get jumped by a slavering cannibal.

  Cannibalism. Just the thought of it sickened her. The only cannibals she'd ever heard of were the Kalvamen, those reclusive island dwellers far to the north. Few risked the trip to Kalva to see the massive barbarians with their milk-white eyes and sickening eating habits, and no Kalvamen had raided the islands in generations. Morul and Yul weren't the only ones who thought the Kalvamen were nothing to fear. If asked, most islanders would agree that the people of Kalva were too deranged and inbred to manage a sea crossing.

  Maybe they should be more afraid, Jendara thought. After she'd returned home that day to find her father dead and her sister missing, she had taken to her ship and scouted the island of Kalva from the sea. It was true she had seen no sign of ships large enough to travel the ferocious seas between Kalva and the Ironbound Archipelago, but it was also true that plenty of islanders had sailed remarkable distances in small raiding vessels. She had never discounted the Kalvamen just for lack of seafaring ability.

  She tripped on a stone jutting out of the worn path, and at the last second caught herself on a massive boulder. She clung to it a moment, trying to catch her breath. She needed to pay better attention if she didn't want to kill herself.

  A few feet beyond her, someone had cleared away the piles of fallen rock and brush, and she could clearly see the bottom of the quarry. The current work zone stood out from the rest of the rock floor, with racks of gear and tools stacked around a square perimeter. Piles of rock sat waiting to be loaded onto carts. Jendara knew little about stones or masonry, but thought the green stuff might be soapstone. It was always in high demand, being easy to work.

  The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. All those piles provided easy cover for an ambush.

  She picked her way forward and kept low to the ground as she came out into the flat stone-working area. A massive chunk of green rock sat beside the edge of the path. There was no way to see behind it.

  Jendara brought out her handaxe. She pressed her back to the stone and reminded herself that whoever was down here might not be a white-eyed cannibal killer.

  "I don't want to hurt you," she called out. "I just want to talk."

  No reply.

  She threw herself around the side of the stone with her axe ready. She saw no one.

  The jolt of unused adrenaline made her legs go to jelly. She ignored it, kept her axe at the ready, and began to walk the perimeter of the quarry. She'd expected the worst. It felt strange not to face a monster when she was ready for one.

  She stopped. She'd reached the side of the quarry bottom almost directly below its entrance, and a dark blot lay on the ground. The crow's head she'd lopped off at the top of the quarry. An ant crawled over the still-glossy bead of its yellow eye.

  She had to avert her gaze. Beheading the crow had been a bad idea. She'd been raised to uphold the old clan traditions, and the crow had been her clan's totem. Life at sea had been one way to escape the bird's constant presence on dry land—the only time she had to look at them was when the ship docked, or when she saw someone wearing one of those crow-shaped traveler's pendants. She tried not to look at those necklaces for too long. She'd bought one once for Kalira, her sister. The younger girl had adored it.

  Jendara had circled most of the way around now, and still hadn't seen anyone. Where was the person who'd gone down into the quarry?

  Above her, something scraped. Jendara looked up and swore. She'd missed the entrance to the little footpath, and now her prey was escaping up it.

  "Vorrin!" She had to warn him.

  But a roar answered her shout: the rumble of something huge rolling down the hill. Vorrin might not be in danger, but she was.

  She somersaulted over the soapstone block, pressing her face against its rough surface. Dust filled the air. She couldn't see. Or breathe. The soapstone shuddered as something massive hit it and stone shards rained down on her. Jendara hissed as one pierced her sleeve and drove into her forearm.

  Coughing, she managed to get to her feet. Chunks of rock lay all around the soapstone block. If she hadn't moved behind it, she would have been crushed.

  She scanned the trail above. Dust obscured all details. She was going to have to climb it blind.

  Jamming her axe back into her belt, she scrambled forward. The ground was steep, the yellow sandstone of the main cliff walls unstable. She kept sliding backward in the stuff. Jendara grabbed for a handhold and dug her fingers into a gnarled root. The dust was clearing.

  Something dark moved up ahead.

  Jendara reached for the next handhold. Until she got her feet under her, she didn't dare try to attack the thing. She had a good arm, but on a nearly vertical path, the odds of her hitting him with her handaxe were small. She pulled herself up over a knoll of solid stone and caught her breath.

  There he was. A man—a tall man in a long, shaggy cloak—hurried up the trail. He pulled himself up the steep hillside, snatching at the branches of the overhanging trees like rungs on a ladder.

  "Hey!" she shouted, and reached for her belt axe. She'd never really believed she was chasing was an innocent bystander, but the man's grace and mass made his guilt a near certainty in her mind. No islander would have just stood by to watch his friends be ripped apart and eaten, not unless he was sick or crippled.

  He leaped forward and disappeared between a pair of bushes. A rock as big as Jendara's head rolled out of the brush, bouncing and tumbling straight toward her.

  "Damn it!" She threw herself aside and skidded on the path. She caught herself on a tree and raced up the hill.

  Up above, Vorrin gave a sudden shout of surprise. Jendara hurried, but by the time she reached the top, Vorrin was just picking himself up, pinching a bloody nose and swearing.

  "It got away," he growled. "I turned away for a second—I thought I heard something behind me—and it jumped me. Looked like a bear."

  Jendara shook her head. "A bear? I was following a man. A big man, but a man."

  Vorrin shrugged. "It happened fast, and there was a lot of dust in the air. Could have been a man, I guess. But it looked furry. And it had claws." He held out his hand. A gash ran down the back of it.

  Jendara looked out into the forest. Some kind of trail continued into the forest, but here the trees were thick and the bracken dense. If anything wanted to disappear out here, it would. And back at Alstone Village, the crew of the Milady were waiting.

  "Let's get out of here," she said. "Someone should know about this."

  paizo.com #3236236, Corry Douglas , Aug 10, 2014

  Chapter Three

  Funerals


  Jendara rubbed her forearm. She'd barely noticed the cut she'd gotten back at the quarry, but it had started stinging as they hurried back to the fishing village. Probably just her sweat working down into the wound, but she'd still like someone to take a look at it. Maybe she hadn't dug out all of the stone before she'd tied it up with her handkerchief.

  "So just what do you think attacked those workers?" Vorrin looked pale, a smear of blood drying across his cheek from his bloody nose.

  "Something terrible. We've got to get a hunting party out to the quarry so we can track down the killers."

  "You think there are more of those things?" Vorrin looked almost hopeful. He didn't appreciate being attacked from behind.

  "I do. That man, or bear, or whatever it was—it was strong, and it was fast. But it wasn't strong and fast enough to slaughter an entire encampment of quarry workers."

  Vorrin walked in silence a moment. The first of the village's cottages appeared. A little boy waved at them. A dog barked. The normalcy was comforting.

  "What are we going to tell Yoric and Morul?" he asked.

  "I don't know." She couldn't imagine telling either man that his brother had been murdered and possibly eaten.

  A seagull fluttered down, squawking to itself. Jendara remembered the crow at the quarry and shuddered. "We can't just leave all those bodies out there," she said. Vorrin just nodded. Perhaps he was thinking the same thing.

  Jendara led them to the closest building guaranteed to have people in it at this hour: the tavern. The barkeep frowned at them. "You're with the Milady, aren't you? You look like hell."

  "Something terrible has happened," Vorrin said, and began to tell the man what they had found.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Two wagons stood at the edge of the forest, their drivers waiting patiently for the five big men to finish checking their weapons. Jendara approved of the assortment of arms: spears, bows, swords, handaxes. She just hoped that it would prove unnecessary.

  "It was probably a troll," the leader, a man named Wilfric, said. He'd said it before, back at the pub. "You probably frightened it away. But at least we'll be prepared."