Belial - Episode 1 of the Elder Bornshire Chronicles

by Ben Stivers

  Another crackle of laughter filled the room, leaving Arthur oblivious to the inner workings of the Downs.

  Chapter 13

  The kill did not seem unproblematic. The doe they watched was guarding a stag that grazed up the hill. Further around the circle the male invisibly etched, four more doe also grazed quietly, their tails twitching, all ready to alert. At the first sign of danger, they would be off and away, and Adam and Shanay would be left to resume their tracking until who knew when.

  Adam had taken the lead eight or nine paces ahead of Shanay and each of them had already drawn straight arrows from their quivers. Shanay had complimented him on the quality of his handiwork, and Adam had accepted the praise with a smidgeon of gratitude.

  A new morning still yawned from a sleepy night. The rain that had passed over the last couple of days dragged a chilly blanket behind it. The evening had been silent except for their small fire, the woodland creatures still except for an occasional eerie howl far in the distance. Shanay had fallen asleep thinking about Arthur, wondering if he were already home.

  In front of her, Adam peeked around his tree at the doe, which had turned her head away. As she had with Joanie, Shanay had taken to her son quickly, as if she had loved him since the day he was born. Arthur had first mentioned the accommodation to her after their ride into Ploor. She had not been surprised. Their way of life did not leave them an opportunity to birth a child. That was fine to Arthur’s way of thinking. God had enough orphans. They could take one and raise him as their own, show him the world, love him as only those who lived with death could love the living.

  Adam had grown considerably in the intervening months. His arms had filled out. He stood taller. His eyes carried none of the fear they had when they had first met him, nor any of the hatred they had held the night he killed the man in the Lusty Wench. Even so, she felt certain that like she and Arthur, Adam held within him the seed of violence for good.

  He rolled back around the tree, put an arrow to the string, and glanced her way. Their eyes met. He winked. She smiled and he stood, drew back the arrow and eased around. She stood and drew, aiming slightly higher up the hill, anticipating the deer might bolt.

  The stag tensed, sensing danger, and Adam’s arrow sliced through the air between them with Shanay’s not far behind. They had both hoped to strike the stag broadside in the chest cavity, puncturing both lungs and the heart. Had he bolted as they anticipated he would, Adam’s shot would have been perfect, but the stag crouched first and then bolted at the snap of Adam’s string. Adam’s arrow struck low against the rib cage with a slight thud and the deer bounded away. Shanay’s arrow went a finger width high and lodged in the base of a tree.

  “Damn,” Adam said aloud and drew another arrow, hoping to get a second shot away at the moving target. Even with his quickness, the quarry had already taken itself out of range and raced up the ridge, taking the group of doe with him.

  “If hunting provided perfect conditions for just the hunter, there would be no challenge,” Shanay remarked, walking toward her son. “You definitely hit it. Let’s go track it.”

  Together they started down, crossed the creek and headed up the slope where the deer had been. After a brief search, they found blood on the leaves of the forest floor.

  “At least we know where he went,” Adam said.

  “Come on,” she said. “You arrow was still in it, but it sounded like it struck a rib.”

  “Yeah,” Adam said, the disappointment at his shot clinging to his voice. He had told her as they had sat by the fire the night before of his hunting experience. The fact that he had not brought down the first mark they had come to did not sway her assessment of his talent. Yet, most certainly, Adam thought that it might.

  The day passed and the trail continued, weaving through the forest, over one ridge after another.

  “I don’t think I hurt it much,” Adam said, a little out of breath. Several times, they quickened their pace when signs said that the stag rested. Those pauses drew closer together, an evident sign that the deer tired.

  As the day wore on, Adam finally said, “I think we should go back. Artex needs feeding. He will wonder where we are off to.”

  Shanay shook her head. “No, we shot that doe. We do not wound animals and leave them. We must find it.”

  Adam nodded, but considerations of his horse remained scribed on his face. Still, he knew the rules of hunting. Finally downing the deer, one of them would have to travel the long distance back to their horses while one of them gutted the deer. They would haul the carcass back and the new butcher would make quick work of preparing the meat for meals.

  As they reached the top of the next rise, a broad valley came into view. Shanay felt abrupt tension grip her. She placed her hand on Adam’s shoulder. He stopped and started to speak, but did not as her expression quieted him.

  The distant valley was broad and flat. The gap that led into the valley was narrow. The center looked gray rather than a summer green. Tremendous black cubed stones randomly littered the valley as if casually thrown there by giant gods. The north end of the valley clutched a shattered tower, a ruin, and one that Shanay had never hoped again to see.

  Adam touched her arm with his fingers, pointing with his other to the stag a hundred paces down the hill. He stood face-forward to them, looking as though he had a notion to spring past them. Even from so far away, Shanay could see the animal trembled from the shock of the arrow that still dangled from its side.

  Adam, mistaking her hesitation as a warning not to spook the animal, unshouldered his bow and reached for an arrow. Shanay put her hand on top of his and a finger to her lips, telling him to hush.

  She pulled Adam back over the edge of the ridge and behind a tree. “We have journeyed too far. We need to go back.”

  “But it’s right there.” His eyebrows furrowed and his usually curious eyes said that he did not understand. “You said not to leave it.”

  “That tower is Wizard’s Tower,” she explained. “That is where we fought Mrandor and Lucifer.”

  Adam’s eyes threw away their confusion and his lips scribed an “O”.

  Even with Lucifer unseated from his evil throne, no one came to this valley on purpose. Nothing grew here. Even Thanatos had once confided that ghosts he could not retrieve wandered there. Still, Adam had a point. They could not abandon the wounded animal to die a long and painful death on that remote slope.

  She measured next steps, decided to leave Adam out of the plan, and then set aside her instinct to shelter him and said, “Let’s ease back over the ridge. You take down the stag. One shot each. No more. Then, we get out of here. We can drag the carcass a few ridges back, then recess to retrieve the horses.”

  Adam started to protest, but her face must have put his argument to sleep. He nodded that he understood. “We should spread out in case it tries to run past us. I believe that stag feels the depravity of the valley below. That is why he stopped. He would rather face us than whatever is down there. You shoot as it comes up. If it does not go down, I will take the shot when it goes over the ridge. Wouldn’t seem motherly to accidently shoot you on our first hunting trip together.”

  Adam grinned broadly and headed off to his right. Shanay went left, feeling a mounting calamity could spring from the tower at any moment and strike them both from the earth. Wolf had lost his wife here. They had all lost something on that day.

  “May this not be another,” she prayed, but that prayer felt unanswered.

  Adam cautiously crossed the ridge through a stand of shadowy sycamores trimmed in bright birch. There he crouched and duck-walked half a dozen steps down the slope, being careful not to step on a twig that might surrender his presence. His mother would not approve of his breaching the slope, but once he reached the ridge, he could see his best shot was but a few feet away. Without looking back at her, for he knew she would be frowning fiercely, he knelt and put his arrow to the string.

  He had heard of Wizard’s Tower, t
hough his parents did not speak of it. If he asked questions about it, they answered his questions, but with negligible answers that turned out less than palatable. His friends at the livery and the blacksmith, however, told him many things. Wolf, Arthur and Shanay—their names sprouted legends. Tales were told and the telling grew each time he heard them.

  Though he did not necessarily believe all that his friends told him, as he did not believe in trolls, or undead creatures or sorcerers or hellhounds, his parents and their close friends had garnered enough adventure into their lives that such tales were told.

  He counted himself lucky that they had folded him into their lives. That one night with the mercenaries had shown him that his parents were capable of protecting him. His fight with the sailors in the streets of Ploor confirmed to himself that his hard work and their insistent drilling with swords and knives and hand-to-hand combat would keep him safe should such things ever occur again.

  Safety felt comfortable. Being loved, for Shanay and Arthur let it be known how much they did love him, also felt good. Though his heart still ached for his lost parents, he could not remember when he had felt more contented.

  He nocked his arrow, set his drawing hand, all the while keeping his eye on the trembling foe. The stag looked up the hill, as if gauging whether or not Adam was still there. In one fluid motion, he stood, raised his bow to the target, his left foot forward, drew the bowstring tight and inhaled. The arrow rested in the anchor position for but an instant. Even though he had shot arrows a thousand times before, each time he felt the thrill of the moment. Relaxing his bow fingers, allowing the string to flow from them, the follow-thru, a maintaining of his position, his elbow level, and the string seemed to pass through his fingers and the arrow launched in slow-motion acceleration. His senses clinched the sensation to him as the arrow flew through the trees, spinning over and over again, the feathers guiding it, caressing the air—and missed.

  Shanay saw Adam cross the ridgeline and descend into the trees on the other side after a short hesitation. As bullheaded as his father, that boy. She did the same, moving only far enough down the slope that she could regain sight of him. That required only two steps and a third that drew her behind an elm. The tree could have hidden two of her, the thick trunk and deep ridges of the bark that where finger deep. This tree had witnessed Arthur’s battles in the valley down below. It had seen the carnage, the bloodshed, the slaying of thousands. It had seen monsters. Perhaps, it had seen God.

  She drew her arrow and nocked it to the string, scootched just far enough to see both Adam and the deer. Already he rose smoothly from his knee. The bowstring drew taut.

  From behind Adam, but many steps below, a large black shape crunched swiftly through the woods, shoving down saplings as if they were but chaff. Shanay faltered in her decision of action as she scrutinized the beast. The thing stood nearly tall as a plow horse, but its four strong legs propelled it through the woods as no plow horse ever could. The body of the animal had tight, short brown-grey fur that tended more toward shale than coal. Its tail could not be what she believed in those few seconds, for it looked to be a serpent, hissing, striking at the trees as they passed by. The paws were large as a lion’s and much the same claws. If none of that had alarmed her, the beast had two heads, large, square with swept-back ears.

  She continued her assessment as her bow came level and her aim forgot the deer and centered on the broad chest of the beast. Her fingers still grasped the string as the brute collided with the astonished stag. The left head grabbed the deer by the neck and the right head chewed into his flank. With one assertive heave, it ripped the stag in two. The bleat the deer made forced Shanay to hesitate, hold her arrow while her instinct said to let it fly. Adam’s arrow traced a track overhead and disappeared into the trees, and with that, Shanay felt time’s dilation withdraw and resume its pace. She slid back against the tree and then peeked in Adam’s direction.

  Where he had stood, only a vacancy remained.

  Adam felt a moment of bewilderment as the deer vanished from his focus and his arrow passed where the stag had been. That confusion turned to panic as he saw a black creature tear into the deer and rip it apart, snarling with a savage growl that frightened Adam down to his still ripening bones.

  He glanced Shanay’s way, but her attention was on the hecatomb below. Her bow arm remained straight. Her bowstring displayed tautness and her face carried a courage Adam could not feel.

  Blindly, he ran toward the ridge and down the other side, hoping beyond all hope that he could outrun the fiend that had come out of the valley and the cowardice that gripped him.

  Shanay remained behind the tree, not knowing where Adam might be, but if she could not see him, the best she could hope for was that the thing below would be satiated with the slaughter of its kill. The growling continued, as well as the crunching of bone and the slap of meat.

  Dear God, please let my boy be safe, she prayed, afraid to even whisper lest the creature turn its attention to her.

  She could have fired, but an arrow would not bring down a creature so strong. If it pierced the skin and skewered the muscle, who knew what lay below that hide?

  When the noise subsided, she lent an eye to scout carefully from the side of the tree. In the place below where the deer had stood, blood slicked the leaves, splotches of fur lay scattered about and smaller pieces lay up in the branches of some of the saplings. Other than that, nothing of the deer remained, no muscle, no bones, and no sinew.

  Lying in the middle, the two-headed monstrosity rested, its eyes closed, its tail curled up beside its right rear leg, dozing. She stood downwind and with the beast bedding in a blood pool, she hoped it would not catch her scent as she eased away from the tree and back up to the ridge and over.

  She arched around, hoping to see Adam, but she did not spy him until she reached the bottom of the next ravine. He lay against the tree, his bow in his hand with an arrow resting on the ground. He wept quietly, but shuddering had taken him. His hands visibly shook. His eyes pleaded with her for forgiveness.

  “I am sorry,” he said, his voice cracking.

  Shanay knelt beside him, casting a frequent look back up the hill to ensure the thing did not pursue.

  “I am a coward. I know that now. You can leave me here.”

  Shanay frowned deeply and she pulled him close. “Stop it. You are not a coward.”

  “I ran. I ran away and I left you there.”

  She held his face firmly against her to stifle his cry and his words from echoing into the woodlands. “I ran too,” she said. “As soon as I knew what it was, I ran too.”

  That pulled Adam back from his shock and his hands slowed their shaking.

  “You didn’t shoot?”

  “No, Adam, that would have been foolish.”

  “Why? It was terrible.”

  She nodded, ensuring their eyes met and held tightly before she replied. “If you had stayed there, you would have died. Same for me. Two arrows, maybe even four arrows would not have stopped that thing. At best, we might have wounded it, making it even more dangerous. You think you ran away because of fear. I don’t feel that way. You did the smart thing Adam. You did the right thing. Don’t confuse cowardice and intelligence. I hope our teachings ingrained that reaction into you.”

  He searched her face and she hoped he could see the honesty of her explanation.

  “Let’s get to the horses and get back to Ploor. We need to let your father know that we were wrong about the war. It is not over. Evil only rested, or perhaps it never rested, and only hid. I do not believe those people that killed your father and mother were seeking Arthur and me for their own reasons. Someone sent them. Someone evil.”

  Adam put his self-control back into place and picked up his bow. “Those were men. Just men. That was something else.”

  “You’re right,” Shanay replied, “but I will bet you a quiver of arrows that what happened at Ploor and what lies over that ridge, and perhaps down in tha
t valley, are connected.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because, Adam, that thing up there—it’s a hellhound, but worse. Something depraved. Pick up your bow. We must get word to your father.”

  Anthony gathered his men the night after Wolf’s encounter with Morm and Detur at the Dead Whore tavern, along with a dozen other regulars who frequented the place. Scralz kept everyone else out, including members of the Downs. That, of course, would arouse suspicion and rumors would sprout up and down the street. Only God might hear them all.

  Wolf had everyone take a seat. All told, twenty Templars were in residence. That should be enough for what Wolf intended.

  “First of all, we are not going down into the labyrinth at night. Let me make that clear. If that place has a hand full of them down there, the last thing we need to do is flush them out onto the street or the middle of town and have them feast on someone’s child, or disrupt vendors, or start a damned slaughter while we are trying to find our way back out. We will go down first thing in the morning when the sun comes up. We will meet outside of the Haunted Virgin; tear up only enough flooring to get under the building and into the entrance. The owner, whomever that might be, has granted permission, as long as we pay reparation. The Templar funds will be more than sufficient. Anthony?”

  Anthony stood up and addressed his men, “We will pair off two-by-two. Both men carry your weapons out. One of you carry a torch. No one goes alone. No one. Wolf is the only one that I know of that has been in that place. He tells me that you can get lost in two breaths if your light goes out or you take a wrong turn. We don’t want an encounter with these things until we know more about them.”

  A man who had come from the northern tribes near the end of the last war raised his hand. His name was Goldslay. His hair was amber, which matched his bright eyes. He was always glad to take the role as the enforcer when Templars policed areas. He loved a good fight—fair or not, it did not matter to him. “Why are we going down there, if we ain’t going to kill’em?”