The Beast of Maug Maurai, Part Two: Feeding the Gods

by Roberto Calas

  “You’re cynicism shocks me,” she said.

  “It is only cynicism if it isn’t true,” he called down. He was fifteen feet off the ground. Aramaesia was starting to look smaller.

  “Why are you climbing that tree?” she called.

  “I’m not climbing it. I’m trying to tame it.”

  “Do trees need taming?” She asked.

  “Only the wild ones. And this oak is certainly that. See that glimmer in its knotholes? The frisky turn of its trunk? This plant’s a fury.”

  Aramaesia laughed. “And why do you need to tame it?”

  “Did people ask Trumboar why he slew the dragon? Did anyone question Gyrryn Faul when he brought down the giant? Why must I, Sage Tharke, put up with these sorts of questions?”

  “Sage is a funny name.”

  He shuffled across the branch and gauged the distance to a larger limb, a few feet higher along the trunk. “You can call me Mollingsley. That’s my real name.”

  “Mollingsley,” she said, rolling it over. “Moll-ings-ly. That is nice.”

  Sage took a breath, crouched, then jumped straight up. He caught the branch, lost his grip and plummeted. Aramaesia gave a cry and reached with her arms. Sage’s knees struck the bough he had jumped from, then slid off. He flailed with his arms and caught hold, pulled his chest tight against the limb. His legs dangled in the space below, twenty feet above the ground.

  “Mollingsley!” she called to him. “Mollingsley, come down! You are going to hurt yourself. What are you doing?”

  Sage swung one leg over the tree limb and pulled himself back up. “Have no concern,” he shouted down. “I was raised by a family of chipmunks. I was climbing before I could walk.” He jumped for the higher branch again, caught it and pulled himself up. “Took an eternity . . . to stop stuffing things in my cheeks.”

  “Stop talking and concentrate, Mollingsley,” she called. “Come down.”

  The massive scale of the bark on the oak made it easy to find handholds. He climbed higher, stepped into a protuberant knothole half again as large as he was and posed with hands on hips and chin high. Aramaesia scolded him again so he blew her a kiss and climbed higher still. He reached a height of sixty or seventy feet before he spotted soaring shapes through the gaps in the canopy. There were dozens of the creatures. Large and scaled. They flew in lazy circles, dipping and rising, anchored above a distant spot in the forest. He smiled at the flying creatures. “Thank you, my winged friends.”

  “Did you tame it?” Aramaesia held her hands out to Sage as he backed down the last branch.

  “We have reached an uneasy truce,” he replied. “But it showed me things of great interest.”

  “What sort of things?”

  He shrugged. “Things have worked themselves out.”

  “You found the trail again?” Aramaesia helped him into his mail shirt.

  “I found the Cobblethries,” he replied. “What is left of them, anyway.” He pulled the tabard over his head and picked up his sword belt and shield, set off down the ridge toward the flying wyverns.

  “Mollingsley, wait,” Aramaesia called. “Should we not tell the others?”

  “We are scouts, Aramaesia.” He smiled and blew another note on the horn. “Let’s scout.”

  Chapter 28

  It is said that a demon or evil spirit can be captured by discovering and uttering its name. The truth is that such apparitions are not the ones trapped by names. It is humans who suffer that weakness. When a commander knows the names of his soldiers he becomes trapped by their humanity. Immobilized by responsibility.

  -- Overlord Turth Hallion

  The nobles slept that night, but Murrogar did not. He lied to Wyann, told the knight that he would wake him for a second watch. But Murrogar had no intention of doing so. When the Beast came for them, it would be Murrogar that greeted it.

  He stayed on his feet so that sleep would not overcome him and waited. He flinched at every sound in the forest. Saw green phosphors in lightning bugs and smelled death when smoke from the fire shifted his way. But when Lojen’s Gaze burned through the dark coils of the forest there were still six sleeping nobles around the firepit. The Beast had not come. And his hopes brightened with the daylight.

  He woke the lords and ladies and, without a word, led them southward as quickly as he could.

  “You didn’t wake me,” said Wyann. “Don’t you get tired?”

  Murrogar didn’t respond.

  Home. That was his only thought. Home is near. And for the first time in days, he thought he might actually see it again.

  “Why didn’t the Beast attack last night?” Wyann continued. “It has attacked every night, except for the night we spent near the . . . ” He cleared his throat. Murrogar knew the knight didn’t want to bring up the cave again. “Why didn’t it attack last night?”

  Murrogar set one foot in front of the other. His boots crushed fallen branches and carpet moss, set leaves shuffing and snapped saplings. Home. One step, then the other. Home is near.

  They pushed into a stretch of ferns that were taller than Murrogar. He lifted Ulrean onto his shoulders and carried on, the fronds slashing at his face and neck.

  “It hasn’t tried to stop us,” Ulrean said. The boy held Murrogar’s forehead with his hands.

  “You noticed, eh?” Murrogar replied wryly. “They told me you were bright.”

  “Will it try? Will it try to stop us?”

  Murrogar’s shrug made Ulrean wobble and hold on tighter. “Something changed yesterday. The rules are different. I don’t know what it’ll do now.”

  They pushed past the last fern and Murrogar knelt, set the boy down.

  “Will we make it out?” Ulrean asked.

  Murrogar thought of a several replies but nothing seemed right; too much optimism was as bad as too little. Ulrean stared into his eyes.

  “I hope so.” Murrogar grinned. “Or some fruit tart vendor on Westgate Street is gonna lose the biggest sale of his life.”

  Ulrean smiled, and behind him the Beast killed the blond nobleman.

  The monster lunged from the darkness of a buckthorn patch and drove black claws through the man’s chest. Warm blood spattered Murrogar’s face and hands, and splashed across Ulrean’s tunic. The nobleman convulsed, hands quivering at his sides, head jerking upward. A sound tore from the Beast, a tempest of rage that made the ferns sway. The monster ripped the shining black claws outward, shredding the man, releasing another spray of blood and a half-formed sound that might have been the embryo of a scream.

  It happened so quickly and with such lack of warning that for an instant Murrogar could only stare at the ravaged body of the blond nobleman.

  Cleryn.

  He sprang to life, hefted Thantos’s sword, expecting the Beast to vanish into the ferns again. But it didn’t. The rules had changed. The monster tensed for another strike and Murrogar realized that it had come for all of them. The game ended here.

  The countess of Laudingham was closest to the monster. Murrogar made a calculated guess and leaped toward the countess, aiming his strike at the space directly in front of her. He guessed right. But the Beast was faster than guesses. Faster than luck. It pounded Murrogar with its foreclaw before he could drive the sword into the lowered head.

  He tumbled ten paces and struck an oak with a grunt. One of his legs went numb from the impact but he forced himself to rise and stagger toward the Beast.

  The countess of Laudingham ran for the ferns. The creature ran her down, gashing open her back and knocking her to the carpet moss. It dug through her flesh with talons as she screamed, sending up shreds of skin and muscle, fern clippings and blood.

  Dylaria.

  Murrogar stumbled toward the creature. Something in his leg wasn’t working properly. The machinery was grinding. The creature found the duke, who stood staring at it with casual interest. The duchess pulled him by the hand and sobbed.

  Something flashed from the ferns. Sir Wyann shoved through the
giant plants and found himself less than an arm’s length from the creature. He swung his sword with two hands. The Beast grunted and lurched away from the blow. But not even Wyann could miss from that distance, with surprise on his side. The blade opened the monster’s flank, releasing a shower of green muck. The Beast cried out, kicked the knight with a rear leg. Sir Wyann hurtled backward, making the ferns chatter and shake. The Beast howled once and lunged into the forest.

  And Black Murrogar put an end to the cries of Dylaria, countess of Laudingham.

  Chapter 29

  Lightning struck when Valéra Montuine was born. The fiery bolt set her Gracidmarian cottage alight and the newborn babe was bustled out by the midwife as burning thatch fell upon them. Years later, when the soldiers pulled Valéra from her horse and tied her to the stake, it is said that lightning struck again. And though the bolt killed one of the soldiers, it also set alight Valéra’s pyre. She burned as Valéra Montuine, but was born once again.

  We know her now as Ja’Drei.

  -- from “The Gods of Gracidmar,” by Neren of Maulk

  Sage and Aramaesia pushed their way through the foliage, climbing the long, steady rise he had spotted from the untamed oak. They passed scattered animal corpses, similar to the desiccated deer they had seen that first day in the forest. White and dried. Grotesquely withered, lips drawn back from teeth. Aramaesia touched two fingers to her throat and whispered softly as they passed each one.

  “I caught sight of a wyvern just above us.” Sage pointed to a break in the canopy overhead. They had walked nearly a mile through the forest and he could see the shapes more clearly here. They were longer than wagons, but slender, and lithe in the air. “We are close. Have a care with the wyverns. They are not agile among trees, but best to keep your eyes open.”

  Aramaesia strung her bow and nocked an arrow. The two of them pushed through a thick copse of ragged hawthorn and fallen logs. A flock of jurren birds scurried awkwardly past them, moving with unusual alacrity. Sage watched them go with a thoughtful expression until a voice rang out somewhere up ahead of them. Thick and mournful. It took a moment before they recognized it as sobbing. They exchanged glances and quickened their pace, cleared a small rise and ducked behind a boulder jutting from the soil.

  A brigade of dead cedars rose up in front of them, spaced into ranks, their jagged branches dried and free of greenery. Hundreds of broken, rotting tree limbs the color of rust littered the forest floor. The sky was visible here. A dozen wyverns circled and swooped and called shrilly, their slender bodies twisting in the sun.

  One of the creatures swooped low among the trees, sweeping its leathery wings. Aramaesia tracked it with her bow as it slowed and fluttered clumsily among the cedars, then lurched back into the sky with a cry.

  A woman knelt among the dead branches, her back to them. She wore what once might have been a beautiful blue traveling gown, with dagged sleeves and slim skirts and gold piping. Days in the forest had torn the dress and faded the colors, had taken the nobility away. A body lay in front of the woman. Sage could only see the head and shoulders of the corpse, and a once-fine pair of riding boots.

  The lady sobbed, a staccato sound that reminded Sage of the harbor seals he had seen among the rocky shores of Hrethri once. The noblewoman lay her head on the dead man’s stomach and stroked his chest, sobbed again.

  “We’ve found two of them,” Sage whispered, “Hopefully there are more nearby. Stay here. No sense both of us risking the wyverns. Wait until I have calmed her, then call the others. Four quick bursts. And cover me in case those toothy things fly my way.”

  He handed Aramaesia the horn and stood, walked toward the noblewoman. He cleared his throat, not wanting to startle her. “My lady,” he said. “You are safe n . . . ”

  The words died in his throat when she turned toward him.

  It might once have been a human in that dress, but there was no humanity now. The skin was rough, greenish-grey, swelling and shingling in horrible bags and ridges. Her nose was swollen to cover half of her face and her lips were so bloated they seemed almost a part of her chin.

  Somehow the lips parted revealing the shattered black crags her teeth had become. Blood lay thickly on her chin, spilled down onto her chest. The creature sobbed. Only it wasn’t a sob. It was a bark, a freakish, croaking bark they had mistaken for a sob.

  She was eating him.

  Sage reached for his sword as the creature launched itself at him. He drew the weapon out only halfway before the savage impact sent both of them to the ground. More creatures barked in the distance.

  “Run Ara!” he shouted. The creature had a brutal strength. He struggled to keep its claws from his throat. “Get . . . others!”

  The jagged nails, grown black and stony, ripped at his mail. Tore at the links. Aramaesia raised her bow and fired three times. The creature howled and clawed at the arrows as they struck. Sage kicked the creature backward and stood. He drew his sword as four more of the monsters appeared over a slope and closed with him. Two of them wore cloaks bearing the Hammer and Sun of the Cobblethries. The other two were dressed in rusted chain mail.

  “Run Maesia, go!” shouted Sage.

  Aramaesia shook her head. She took aim as another three crested the ridge. Her eyes were wide. Her breath came in short spurts. “No!” she cried. “They’ll kill you!” She fired two arrows at the nearest one.

  Sage spread his legs wide and crouched as another of the monstrosities reached him. He dropped to one knee and cut the creature’s leg off at the thigh. It fell, screeching and clutching at the wound. The scout rose and shuffled backward. He unslung his shield and moved until he felt a tree against his back.

  “Get the others,” he shouted. “Blow the seamarken horn!” And then two of the monsters were on him. More of them crested the hill. And more howls echoed in the distance. One of the creatures Aramaesia had brought down rose to its feet again, a pair of arrows thrusting from its body.

  Sage slashed madly, his sword hissing through the air. He cut one across the belly. Another across the face. The monsters howled with pain, but they scarcely hesitated. He pounded them with his shield.

  “Come with me Mollingsley!” Aramaesia backed away as two of the creatures lumbered toward her. “We can run!”

  But it was too late. There were five bearing down on Sage now. Something that once was a knight with an antlered helm ripped the shield out of Sage’s hands. The scout watched in despair as the creature hurled the shield into hedges.

  Sage ducked behind the tree. When the knight showed its face, he stabbed at its open basinet. Another creature grabbed the scout’s arm. He turned to run but the monster yanked him to the ground.

  “Mollingsley!” Aramaesia’s voice cracked. Tears brimmed in her eyes. She fired again and again but the ones that had fallen were rising again. There were too many. Sage, on his back now, dropped his sword and drew his dagger. He stabbed a monstrous nobleman in the crown of the head as one of the ghouls bit his leg. The jagged teeth latched onto him below the mail and through the leather breeches. Sage screamed.

  Aramaesia fired three more times. Two of the creatures fell away from the scout. He kicked his leg free and stood again. And then Aramaesia had to run. There were too many approaching her. Too close to her, moving too quickly.

  She turned and fled, slinging the bow and drawing the horn to her lips. She blew several desperate blasts. The creatures were closing quickly. Once again Aramaesia found herself sprinting through Maug Maurai. But it wasn’t Laraytian Standards chasing her this time. Tears raced down her cheeks and were torn away by the wind of her flight. She noticed one of the creatures coming at her from an angle and recalled Lokk Lurius chasing her down in a similar way. She lowered her head and ran, thinking of Sage.

  A creature wearing a battered and bloody silk shirt lunged at the scout. He slashed it across one eye and kicked its body toward the others. Then he ran.

  His first step was agony, his second worse. Streaks of pain sh
ot through his leg where the monster had bitten him. He lurched through the forest, knowing he wouldn’t be fast enough. Knowing they would catch him.

  He lunged into a field of briars, covering his eyes with one arm. The oversized thorns – some as long as knife blades – ripped at his mail and leggings. They cut his face and clutched at him like a hundred skeletal hands, pulled him backward. He forced himself further, lifting one leg, then the other, leaning into the thorny tendrils, feeling them give behind him.

  The tactic worked at first. The creatures followed him, but those closest and fastest had no armor; the thorns ripped at their skin, clawed at their eyes and slowed them. The few with armor lurched past the others. It was a sluggish chase, both prey and predator reduced to a careful, creeping plod that made it somehow more horrifying for Sage. He could hear them crackling and sliding through the brambles, crying out in pain when thorns bit deep. He could empathize. The thorns were finding every exposed gap, leaving long bloody rents in his skin.

  He shoved his way forward, ignoring the pain. When he glanced back at his pursuers he shuddered at the thick, drooling mouths, the wild eyes and hanging flesh. What had happened to them? Why were the Cobblethries monsters?

  When he emerged from the thicket he trailed several long, spiny vines behind him. Several of the creatures had tracked his progress through the brambles and were circling to meet him at the other end. He had gained maybe ten heartbeats on the horde. He tried to run and felt a numbness in his leg, could hardly move it. So he shuffled again, dragging the foot through the dirt and leaves. He slid his feet halfway down an embankment, then forced himself to stop so quickly that he nearly tumbled the rest of the way. A whimper escaped him as he scanned the valley below.