Shara and the Haunted Village: Illustrated Edition (Bryanae Series Book 1)

by Jeffrey Getzin

  “How long do you think they'd last us? A month?”

  “Naw, probably not that long. But probably a few weeks if we ration them.”

  Shara did not like the direction their conversation was going.

  “D'Arbignal,” she said again. “Please wake up.”

  “I think the other one's already dead.”

  “He still looks pretty fresh. He'll be all right if we cook him right away.”

  “D'Arbignal!” Tears ran down her face. D'Arbignal showed no signs of having heard her. In desperation, she pinched his nose shut with one hand and covered his mouth with the other. For a moment, nothing happened, and then D'Arbignal's hands clutched at hers, yanking them away from his face. He coughed and sputtered, his eyes dazed but were at least open now.

  “Look,” one of the mob said, “he's not dead! And he's got some muscle on him, too. That should make the Rat happy.”

  “Shara?” D'Arbignal said, dazed. “What happened?”

  “Not right now, D'Arbignal,” she replied. “We're in trouble.”

  He followed her glances, and his eyes widened. He leapt to his feet, but his balance seemed to be off as well, and he staggered sideways a few steps before falling to his knees. Bitter laughter surrounded them.

  “He's got a little fight left in him,” one of the members of the mob observed.

  Shara rushed to D'Arbignal's side, helped him to his feet.

  “Thanks, milady,” he said. “I've got it now.”

  But the moment she withdrew her support he started to collapse again. She caught him under his armpit and steadied him.

  “Hmmm, this could prove challenging.” D'Arbignal's voice was hoarse and he mumbled a little. He addressed the mob: “What do you want?”

  Laughter was their only reply. The mob had by now ringed them in and was slowly tightening the noose around them.

  D'Arbignal reached for his rapier but the sheath was empty. One of the mob, a man with a long drooping mustache, laughed at him.

  “You drop something?” he said, dangling D'Arbignal's rapier between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Oh no,” Shara said.

  “Ah,” D'Arbignal said, a half-smile on his face. “That does change things a bit. I'd say that your odds have improved to a little better than one-in-twelve now. Well done!”

  “What's he on about?”

  D'Arbignal's hand went to his side again, but this time his hand closed on his rapier's empty sheath, which he withdrew from his sword belt. The sheath was made of stiff leather and was a few inches shorter than his rapier itself. D'Arbignal steadied himself against Shara's shoulder and raised his sheath as though it were itself a sword.

  “You're shittin' me,” one of the men said. He had a faded jagged scar by one of his eyes that made him look fierce.

  “No, my scatological friend, that is not my name. I am known as D'Arbignal, the Greatest Swor—ur—Scabbardsman in the World, and I offer you this one last chance to lay down your weapons and leave us in peace.”

  “Not likely,” the man with the scar said, and led the charge.

  Chapter 17

  The man with the scar raised a nasty-looking hatchet over his head and rushed at them, but with a flick of the wrist, D'Arbignal produced his knife as though by magic and flung it. While the knife was in flight, D'Arbignal hurled his scabbard at the man who held his rapier. The scabbard whirled end-over-end towards its target.

  “Catch,” D'Arbignal said, and then somersaulted toward him.

  The knife landed in Scar's shoulder. He howled in a mixture of rage and agony.

  The man holding D'Arbignal's rapier flinched at the incoming scabbard and raised his free hand to block his face. The scabbard bounced off his forearm. He yelped.

  D'Arbignal came out of his roll, and as he did, he yanked his rapier from the hand of the man holding it.

  “Thank you,” D'Arbignal said. He took two quick steps towards the rest of the mob, but his balance gave out, and he fell to his knees again. “This is rapidly becoming a nuisance.”

  Scar yanked D'Arbignal's knife from his shoulder, took aim at D'Arbignal, and threw it. D'Arbignal glanced quickly at the man who had stolen his rapier, then used that very same rapier to slice the back of the man's legs. The man collapsed, falling directly into the path of D'Arbignal's knife, shielding D'Arbignal by catching the knife in his throat.

  D'Arbignal whirled his rapier experimentally. He grinned at the remaining members of the mob. They outnumbered him six to one, but they didn't act like it. Fear shone in their eyes.

  “Get him!” Scar shouted, sprinting for D'Arbignal.

  “Hah!” D'Arbignal faked a kneeling lunge at one of the other members of the mob, then rolled backwards. He pivoted, and embedded his rapier into Scar's chest. Scar's eyes widened, more in surprise, it seemed, than fear or pain. When D'Arbignal withdrew his blade, Scar fell to his knees, then dropped to the ground and did not move. A pool of blood spread from his body.

  Again, D'Arbignal tried getting to his feet, but once more, he failed. He growled in annoyance.

  “Get him,” one of the mob said to another.

  “No, you,” the other replied.

  “Will you please make up your mind who's going to try to kill me next?” D'Arbignal said. “Before I die of boredom?”

  D'Arbignal's taunts seemed to galvanize them, as they rushed him simultaneously. D'Arbignal continued to roll, now to the left, then back and to the right, staying in constant motion. The mob slashed and hacked at him, but D'Arbignal never seemed to be anywhere where a blow landed. Meanwhile, his rapier seemed to be a thousand places at once. Moments later, the last enemy fell, mortally wounded.

  Shara stood gaping. She had a hard time comprehending that the skirmish had ended so quickly. Then she ran to D'Arbignal and helped him to his feet.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “It seems that there are some problems you can solve with a rapier,” she said, awed.

  Chapter 18

  “We're back outside the village?” D'Arbignal said, still trying without success to remain standing without assistance. He kept trying to take his weight off Shara's shoulders, but each time he'd start to sway, and there he'd be, clinging to her again.

  Shara shook her head. “I don't think so.”

  D'Arbignal surveyed the landscape with narrowed eyes. He tightened his mouth into a thin line.

  “There's something not quite right about this,” he said.

  “I know. Things seem just a little bit off. Also, where did the leaves go? Weren't the trees full of them last night?”

  D'Arbignal shook his head. “To be honest, I don't recall.”

  “And our voices sound odd,” she said. “Don't they? Kind of muffled?”

  “Swords sold sour seers,” D'Arbignal said. The look of disquiet on his face grew. Then he noticed that one of the mob, Scar, was still alive and chuckling.

  “Are we telling jokes?” D'Arbignal asked. “Did you hear the one about the acrobat and the unicorn?”

  A coughing fit overcame Scar, and after, when he smiled, his teeth were stained with blood.

  “You think you've won,” he said. “But you haven't, really. We're all dying in here anyway.”

  “In here?” Shara said.

  “Wait … until the boss finds you,” Scar said, his strength visibly failing now. “You'll … you'll wish …”

  “I know, I know,” D'Arbignal said, waving his hands impatiently. “The Rat will make us suffer. I've heard it all before. The Rat is evil. The Rat is terrible. Blah blah blah. Tell me something I—”

  Scar laughed and coughed, and blood dripped from his mouth. “You … you think I … was … talking about the Rat …” He coughed some more; it seemed like something ripped inside him.

  “That … is … is … funny,” Scar said and then died.

  Chapter 19

  Shara couldn't take her eyes off the slain men. Sure, they had been going to murder her, but there was something sad in the way
their bodies lay sprawled in the dirt, their open wounds gaping.

  “We should do something about the bodies,” she suggested.

  The two of them were sitting cross-legged on the ground, facing each other. D'Arbignal offered her a waterskin, which she accepted. She took a drink, and her stomach growled—an all-too-familiar feeling for her of late.

  “Like have a parade?” D'Arbignal said with an impish smile.

  She frowned. She enjoyed D'Arbignal's sense of humor, but it didn't seem to stop within the boundaries of good taste.

  “Throw a party?” he said. “Compose an epic poem?”

  She sighed and handed the waterskin back to him. “I meant maybe we should bury them.”

  “By all means, milady,” D'Arbignal said. “Do you have a shovel on you? No? Mayhap a pickaxe? A mattock, perchance?”

  At last, he picked up on the sadness in her eyes, and his tone softened.

  “I appreciate the sentiment,” he said, his expression becoming thoughtful, “but really, there's no practical way to dig graves.”

  She felt moisture in her eyes and was surprised to find herself crying, but for the life of her, she didn't know why.

  “Couldn't we cover them with rocks or something?”

  He leaned forward and wiped away one of her tears with a gentle touch. He shook his head solemnly. “It would take hours of back-breaking labor to accumulate enough rocks to cover just one of them. It'd be days before we'd covered them all.”

  “But…” She fumbled for something to say, for some way to make it work out. “But we can't just leave them there for the birds and the flies.”

  “What birds?” D'Arbignal said, his eyebrows arched. “What flies?”

  “What?”

  “Do you see any birds or flies?” he said, making a sweeping gesture with his arm to encompass the entire village, the forest, the clearing, and the sky above.

  She searched the skies, unnerved. Nothing. And he was right about the flies, too: there were none swarming around the slain bandits. Back in Cerendahl, it wasn't uncommon for the body of a starved commoner to be left stinking by the side of the road for days until someone finally got around to disposing of it. When it got hot enough, entire carpets of flies would cover the body. And then the birds … best not to think about the birds.

  She looked back at D'Arbignal, feeling a dread that gnawed at her from within.

  “Do you see any living thing other than ourselves?” D'Arbignal added.

  She cast her gaze about with increasing desperation. No birds, no insects, no grass … why, even the trees were dead and leafless. Neither was there any sound: no chirping nor rustling. There wasn't even a breeze. It was if the world had died while she had lain unconscious.

  “There's nothing,” D'Arbignal said, and at last, she picked up a nervous undercurrent to his voice. “Everything's dead.”

  She knew he was right. Then she saw something that should have eased her mind, yet only increased her apprehension.

  “If everything's dead,” she said, pointing down the road into town, “then why is there smoke coming from that chimney?”

  Chapter 20

  It was, of course, the house they had entered earlier, the one with the treacherous bag. The mage Artisimize's house. It lay where it had last night, at the end of the road bisecting the village, its door and shutters closed, appearing as desolate as every other house in the village … except for a fire in the fireplace.

  “This village is starting to annoy me,” D'Arbignal said.

  He climbed to his feet. Shara moved to help, but he waved her away with a grateful smile. He managed to stand upright. He took a few experimental steps; while he listed like a ship at sea, he did not fall.

  Shara caught a whiff of a tantalizing scent—of fresh-baked bread, and perhaps some kind of meat stew. Her stomach growled again and D'Arbignal grinned.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled, blushing.

  “Not at all,” he said with a tip of his battered hat. “In fact, I just asked my belly how it was doing.”

  “And…?”

  “And I'll let you know as soon as the echoes die down from the question.” He gifted her with a wry smile. “Smells like something's cooking at the house. Perhaps we should invite ourselves over for lunch.”

  The aroma was seductive. It smelled like so many wonderful things: her mother's cooking, the meat pies they used to sell at the Festivals, even a little bit like Gil. It highlighted an emptiness that extended deeper than just her stomach. And she was so hungry … it seemed like she had been empty for so much of her life.

  D'Arbignal shambled off down the street towards the house. Shara started to follow, but stopped.

  “No,” she said, suddenly overcome with a premonition of doom.

  D'Arbignal seemed not to have heard. He continued his disjointed stroll into the mouth of the village, whistling a jaunty tune.

  A series of half-remembered fables drifted through Shara's mind, stories of children lured to their deaths by candy, of greedy adventurers who found themselves baked alive inside a giant pie, of evil sorceresses with needle-like teeth.

  “No,” she said again. “D'Arbignal, come back!”

  She sat on the road and withdrew the wrapped mutton from her travel bag. She began to unwrap it.

  “D'Arbignal,” she called with greater urgency, “come back!”

  D'Arbignal had heard her this time. He looked at her quizzically. It seemed to her that he was fighting the lure of the house just to meet her gaze.

  She ripped off a piece of mutton with her bare hands and proffered it to him.

  “Have some of this,” she said.

  D'Arbignal looked at her as though she were mad.

  “No offense, Milady,” he said, “but do you not smell that wonderful meal that awaits us?”

  Since he hadn't returned to her yet, she stuffed the slice of mutton into her mouth and chewed. Her head cleared almost immediately. She ripped off another piece and held it up for D'Arbignal.

  “It's another trap!” she said. She fumbled for the right words. “It's using you … making you hungry … It's a trap, D'Arbignal!”

  D'Arbignal looked longingly at the house for a few moments, but then his eyes hardened.

  “You're right,” he said, anger in his voice. “It's a ploy, and a transparent one at that.”

  He returned to her side, accepted the piece of mutton, and wolfed it down.

  “Yes,” he said, shaking his head. His eyes seemed better able to focus now. “That was a dastardly scheme, to be sure. I thank my stars that you saw through it.”

  She finished chewing and swallowed, then broke off another piece and started on it. A cold fury filled her. Whoever had set the trap had gone too far.

  It was one thing to try to trap or kill them, but to use hunger … that was just wrong. She knew hunger all too well, and there was nothing worse than an empty belly feeding on itself. She knew the desperation and despair that came from starvation. To use that to bait a trap ….

  D'Arbignal seemed to pick up on her emotions. He nodded, his eyes at first merely serious, then angry.

  “You've spotted the web,” he said. His hand clutched the hilt of his rapier. “After we've finished eating, I'd like to have a few words with the spider.”

  Chapter 21

  D'Arbignal marched ahead, walking with a slight limp. Whenever he glanced back, his eyes were fiercely narrow, and his mouth was a determined line.

  The sky was the same muddy grayish-brown, and sunlight did not so much shine as seep through. Shara could not locate the sun, which worried her; she had no idea what time it was, or how long she had been awake on this interminable day.

  The village felt otherworldly, as though it had been transplanted to one of the many Hells, and she and D'Arbignal transplanted with it. Everything looked solid enough, true, but just the slightest bit wrong in some indefinable way. She passed by the same buildings she had passed the previous night, and while they no longer glowed, they
seemed no less alien, no less damned. Doors and shutters remained closed, but she no longer felt watched; instead, she felt utterly alone.

  D'Arbignal had cast aside his nonchalance in favor of indignant outrage. He was too polite to say so, but Shara could tell he was impatient with how slowly she was walking. She felt like a walking mass of bruises and sprains, and it was all she could do to keep up with him as it was.

  D'Arbignal glanced to his left, did a double take, and came to an abrupt halt. He looked back at her, his eyes wide.

  “Shara,” he said, an alarming calmness in his voice, “you need to be prepared for this.”

  That calmness disturbed her more than anything else did. There was nothing calm about this man, so the voice was so much at odds with who he was that it was as though he had shrieked.

  “What …?” She could barely find the breath to speak. “What is it?”

  Now he was looking to his right, transfixed. His jaw hung slack, no longer jutting with determination.

  “What is it?” She slowed her approach, trepidation sapping what was left of her energy. “What is it?”

  “I think we've found the villagers,” he said, his face blank with shock.

  As she approached, she saw the first of the alleyways. With each step, more were revealed.

  The villagers were dead, but she had already known that in her heart. That they were dead was not what shocked her. It was how they were posed.

  The corpses looked as fresh as if they had died only last night. They were nailed to wooden poles and makeshift scaffolding as if to pose them in a variety of festive positions.

  “They're … they're …” She had trouble saying it aloud. “They're dancing.”

  D'Arbignal said nothing. His face was blank, but his eyes held something she could not read; they stared at her without comprehension. He didn't seem frightened, and he didn't even look horrified.

  He looked offended … offended? Yes, that was it. Offended.

  Offended because these villagers were not just dead; they were trophies, or amusements, or some other mechanisms of sick pleasure. Arranged in concentric circles, as though burned onto her retina by the brilliance of the lightning that had struck them all dead in a single dread moment. It was a macabre after-image of an idyllic village festival. Dead hands were fastened to dead hands, and dead heads lolled back with dead eyes staring at the dead sky.