The Last Garrison (Dungeons & Dragons Novel)

by Beard, Matthew

  Orick whispered in Londih’s ear, “He’s right. I have gone out to the forest to the south and have seen the creeping frost. It is not a trick of the seasons. This is something else.”

  Londih held his hand up, and Orick dutifully stepped back. “We are aware of the threat to our crops, my friends. And aware of the threat to our mountain and our village.” The council meeting stirred and whispered. The men wore long sleeves and heavy trousers; fall garb. They brought baskets of browned and damaged fruit, fallen too early and meager.

  “How will we feed the animals? We will not have a harvest. And we do not have enough in storage to lose a full season.”

  “We have lived through a hard winter,” said another farmer, this one a younger man name Jodpa, “But we cannot do so after a long summer and an empty harvest.”

  The old farmer spoke up again: “If this is magic, where is the old man who steals apples from my tree? Why is he not doing something?” Agreement echoed through the crowd.

  “Perhaps,” replied Jodpa before Londih could answer, “he is in league with the bandits. Perhaps he is the cause of all of this in the first place,” he said, and another murmur of assent filled the room. Jodpa smiled. It appeared he could not help himself.

  Londih saw it then. Jodpa had designs. “Perhaps, Jodpa, you would like to go to the old man and ask him yourself?” he said. “Perhaps you would like to go up to the observatory and confront him with your accusations?”

  But Jodpa was not intimidated or cowed by the Crook’s words. “Clearly the only one in Haven with a relationship with the old man is you, Londih. If you do not believe there is a connection here, we will leave it to your great wisdom. But, and I hesitate to speak for the rest of the village, perhaps instead of sending out for champions to protect us, we should approach the bandits in another way. Beyond this unnatural freeze, which they are clearly creating in order to intimidate and blackmail us into giving them whatever it is they want, they have done nothing else.”

  Londih put a hand to his mouth and wiped a little at his brow. Jodpa, and the rest of the villagers, were unaware what else had happened since the youths had been attacked outside the village. Londih, with the help of Orick in the absence of his reeve Pyla, had kept quiet a few small, but serious incidents. Cattle had disappeared and their bones discovered later. Hunters had discovered talismans—figures made of hair, sticks, and teeth—set at the outskirts of their hunting grounds. The places where the townsfolk went to the river to fish were icy and, in a few places, poisoned. Dead fish bobbed in the water or had thrashed onto the banks, covered in red boils and open sores. They were inedible, and too damaged to even serve as fertilizer for the fields. It had been difficult to keep the rumors of the incidents quiet. Londih had promised sections of his own fields for silence. Orick had promised extra protection from the bandits. They had, on occasion, even lied and said they would ask the Old Stargazer to cast charms on the future ventures of those who had encountered the kenku mischief. It was never truly successful, though. Rumors spread through the small village. And Orick was unskilled at subterfuge or charm. Londih missed his reeve’s abilities and wished for his return.

  It seemed clear to Londih that Jodpa was well aware of the rumors, but either did not believe them or wanted them out in the open to weaken the Crook of Haven’s legitimacy. So he was testing Londih. He poked at him to see if he could find a little crack in the facade. He poked to see if he could break through and make Londih angry or flustered. But Londih had dealt with men like Jodpa before. Perhaps not in a circumstance as dangerous, no. But Jodpa’s verbal attacks were familiar and easily parried.

  “You propose we meet the bandits, Jodpa? You propose we parlay with them? The creatures who tried to kill my son?” Londih filled the room with his voice. He knew the value of volume in a situation where his power was being questioned. He knew the value of forcing his emotions to the surface to pull at the emotions of others. And he knew how to put a man in a corner. “Perhaps this makes sense to you, Jodpa. Perhaps because your own children were not attacked by these creatures, you have a more detached view of this situation. I, on the other hand, find it hard to think beyond the safety of my family. And by extension, my village.”

  Jodpa demurred, but only for a moment. Called to make a decision, he took a long moment before responding. “I have had, Pelor be praised, a successful season with my livestock. I will offer a few head of cattle to the creatures to see if they can be convinced to leave us be. The creatures are likely only in need of food to get them through whatever pilgrimage they are on. No raven men have been seen on the mountain before, yes? This is not their home. They likely want to take what they can get and move on. If we offer them a small portion of what we have, they will not need to fight or die.”

  Orick approached Londih again and crouched to his ear. Before he could say anything, though, Londih raised his hand again, turned to his advisor, and whispered, “Yes. We are indeed lucky. We will sacrifice to Avandra tonight.” And then he spoke to the gathered crowd. “You are very generous, Jodpa. Allow me to donate three casques of my best wine to this negotiation. When will you approach the creatures? This evening? In the morning?”

  Jodpa’s eyes grew wide. Londih stood tall and stepped forward. “This is a great thing you are offering to do, Jodpa. Haven commends you.” A few glasses were raised. Jodpa’s back was slapped. The color, though, had left him.

  Later, Orick fretted. He and Londih ate together and discussed the turn of events. “He will return without the cattle and without the wine,” said Londih. “That is all.”

  “Are we sure, Crook of Haven?”

  “He will go to them under a flag of truce. The kenku may not be of the more civilized races, but they are at least intelligent enough to understand the forms and rules of a simple parlay.”

  “I wonder, Londih. They attacked the youths without provocation. It did not appear they were interested in extending our children any mercy. Why would they do the same for Jodpa and his foolish mission of diplomacy?”

  “They have been out there for a while now, Orick. They strike at us with little force—killing fish and scaring hunters. Perhaps we have overestimated them. Perhaps they are few. Perhaps they are marshaling a siege. Perhaps they are hoping to frighten us. This will help us find out.”

  Orick looked at Londih, whose attention was focused on his stew. “Do you truly believe what you say, Honored One?”

  Londih knew to tread lightly around Orick. “I do,” he said. And perhaps a little bit of me does, he thought. Mostly, though, I don’t really care.

  Jodpa took his oldest son and his three strongest farm hands with him the next morning. He rode his horse in front, a large white banner above him. His son came next, minimally armed, but wearing a thick leather tunic and wide-brimmed cap. The cattle were next, driven by two of the hands behind them. Last, a cart driven by the final man carried the wine. The procession was awkward and slow. It was noisy, too. It would have some trouble on the roads heading west in the direction of the forest where the villagers thought the kenku were encamped. They were barely blazed trails, really, only having been used by individuals on foot or a single horseman. The cart shook and bucked. The cattle ambled and complained. The progress was both too slow for the increasingly nervous Jodpa, and way too quick. But when he began to lose heart, he talked to his son.

  “This will be a great day for us, my boy. Haven will see how valuable we are to the village. They will finally honor us for the great family that we are.”

  “Yes, Father,” said the son.

  “When you reach the age of your majority, my boy, you will be given a place of importance on the council. When I am in my dotage, they will still whisper about me when I walk by. ‘He’s the one who sent the raven men away,’ they will say. ‘He’s the one who was brave enough to look them in the eye.’ ”

  “Indeed, Father,” said the son.

  Jodpa talked when he got nervous. His talk steeled his heart. He went quiet, t
hen, for long minutes, until the nerves crept in again. And then he talked again. He told his son about the coming harvest, how once the kenku had been persuaded to leave them in peace, and the cursed frost had been lifted from the mountain, they would likely be blessed with their best season yet. “Favor breeds favor,” he said to the boy. “A good deed like this will be noticed by Pelor, and then he will shine his light on our fields. What do you say to that, eh? To our best harvest yet?”

  “Yes, Father,” said the young man. “I’m sure you are right.”

  As Jodpa and his men got deeper into the woods, the place went quiet. No birds. No animals rustling in the underbrush. It got colder, and they pulled their cloaks to them. The blue sky went increasingly white and gray. The trees went from green and lush to dark and empty. The ground crunched beneath the horse’s hooves and the wheels of the wooden cart. Jodpa’s nerves returned, but he found himself unable to find a single thing to talk about with his son. The boy would not have responded anyway. He was past the age of automatic deference to his father, and fancied himself a serious man. Had insisted on coming. He had pulled an animal skin cloak up over his mouth, and was breathing deeply through his nose. Jodpa looked at him and saw his eyes dart from side to side. In the dead silence, he reacted not to noises, but to the occasional flicker at the horizon.

  And then the trail stopped.

  Or not stop, precisely. It just faded slowly away, melted into the frosty ground and dying vegetation. On either side of the last feet of the visible trail, two effigies stood. Man-shaped: two arms, two legs, and a head. They were eleven feet tall, twice the size of a real human. They were built of fallen branch limbs, gathered brush torsos, and a dark green head of gathered moss. Each was speared through the center with a sharpened stick. The cattle shifted nervously, as did the horses. They felt the presence of something before the men had even taken in the full measure of the effigies. Jodpa felt his horse buck a little, but he struck it in the sides with his heels to keep it still. “Heya,” he said to the creature.

  “Father?” said the young man.

  “Heya,” he replied. Or, no. Someone replied.

  Something replied.

  Before anyone could react, an arrow ran the boy through. It entered his chest through his leather like it wasn’t even there. It nearly made it out the back. The fletching peaked out, but the shaft of the arrow had made it all the way in. Jodpa watched the boy’s hand relax and let the cloak he held tightly to him fall. He watched as the boy looked back at him, his eyes quiet, the light going out of them. Within a moment, he had fallen from his horse to the ground. He rolled onto his back, snapping the arrow.

  The sound of the snap was followed by the sound of more arrows in flight. They caught two of the farm hands, and dispatched them as quickly and as easily as they had killed Jodpa’s son. More arrows—where were they coming from?—sailed into the procession and struck the cattle, causing them to groan and break from the group into the woods. Soon, they, too, fell, lowing pitifully. Jodpa snapped out of his shock, and tried to turn his horse. His son was dead. All but one of his farm hands had fallen. All in mere moments, and to an unseen enemy. He thought only about saving his own life. Escape. Home. He would take the full measure of the tragedy in later.

  But when he turned, he saw them. The kenku were waiting behind. They had emerged from the dead brush in cloaks made of the vegetation, dusted with the frost. And then they gathered by his sides. They had him surrounded. The chittered quietly, communicating with each other in a language he could not even begin to understand. Before he knew it, he was pulled from his horse.

  His last farm hand was run through with a short blade to his back. Jodpa raised the white flag, but it was knocked out of his hand. “I am not here to fight,” he sputtered. “I came to offer you livestock. I came to offer—”

  A larger kenku raked a claw over Jodpa’s mouth to silence him, opening a gash from cheek to cheek, ripping through his upper lip, revealing the teeth beneath. But Jodpa kept trying to talk, his words garbled by the injury to his mouth. “I came to offer you goods,” he tried to say. “I came to try to make a peace with you.” All he could manage were vowels and cries. The pain of the injury was deep, and it eventually dissuaded him from trying to communicate. Instead, he blubbered. His son was dead. He would likely follow.

  The largest kenku chopped the scalp from one of the farm hands and hung it on an effigy. He did the same with the other. The third scalp was tossed at the feet of Jodpa. As was a fourth—the scalp of his son. He was on his knees, crying and shaking, but the largest kenku squawked to one of his comrades, and Jodpa was raised to his feet. The creature pushed him toward his horse until he mounted it. The largest kenku wiped blood from his beak—blood that had spattered during the scalpings—and pointed back toward Haven. “Heya!” he said to Jodpa. “Heya!”

  Jodpa prompted his horse and rode away as quickly as he could make the beast gallop. He heard the casques break open, and even though he did not want to turn to look, he did. There were dozens of them emerging from the woods. Dozens heavily armed. And coming soon. He could feel it. There was an arrogance and an urgency to the way they spoke. Jodpa had showed them just how unprepared Haven was for them, he was sure of it. He had doomed the village, and he had lost his son for it.

  Jodpa returned. He was met in the village square. The pain of his wound had become a powerful throb. Through his tears and his pain, and through the injury to his mouth, he tried to say, “My son! My son!” but it was merely noise.

  Londih came to him and held him by the shoulders. “Your men?” he asked. “The cattle? The wine?” Jodpa shook, overcome with grief. “Your child?”

  Jodpa kneeled before the Crook of Haven and wept, apologizing for his arrogance through his incoherent speech. The gathered crowd could make out little of what he said, but the way he said it made the message clear enough. They were near, they were powerful, and they would not be dissuaded from their pillage of Haven.

  Somewhere deep down, Londih recognized that the result of Jodpa’s fool’s errand to speak to the kenku was a kind of victory for him—in less desperate times, he would have admired his ability to maneuver the man into his own defeat in the eyes of the villagers—but he saw it as hollow. The danger was much worse than he had expected. Later, he and Orick discussed what had happened to Jodpa.

  “I don’t think I understand, Honored One,” said Orick. “Jodpa says they killed the cattle without regard for what could be saved. The frost seems to be getting stronger. They did not even give Jodpa an ultimatum. If they are bandits in need of goods, why would they act like this? What do they truly want?”

  “I don’t know, Orick,” said Londih. “No more parties sent out to ask, though. Find a man or two to scout out there and give us some warning about when they will arrive. And pray with me that my son is successful and returns to us soon.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Beyond the bridge, a road led north. Dusk was falling over the city, and Sten and Spundwand led the Haven youths up the road. A mile hence, Sten walked the party into the woods. In thirty yards, they came upon a clearing. At the center of the clearing, a figure sat hunched over. Sten approached and called out. “Imony!” he shouted. The figure remained hunched. “Imony, my friend.” And still nothing. “When she gets involved in her meditations, it is sometimes difficult to pull her free of her work,” he told the others. “Come on.”

  The group walked into the clearing, Sten at the lead. The figure they approached, the woman, was slight and simply clothed in a long gray robe. Her hair was very short, cropped as close as Sten’s, but it was a reddish blond and thick where Sten’s was steel gray and thinning. When they were close enough to see her face, Nergei noted that she was plain and serene looking, a little wrinkled, somewhat heavyset, and radiating grace. She stared down at a parchment in the grass in front of her, and held a brush in her hand. She was tracing a symbol on the parchment, over and over, but the brush was dry, and there was no inkpot near her. S
he repeated the same five lines, though, slowly, deliberately.

  “Imony?” said Sten. “Are you in there, my dear?”

  Imony continued to trace the symbol on the page. Kohel snorted. “What is this? Who is this person, Sten? You think this woman can help us?”

  Nergei was wondering the same thing. Imony had no weapons, no armor—just her robe. She did not appear to have a staff or orb, either, the trappings of a practitioner of the arcane. And she appeared to be so focused on her tracing that she did not even react to the approach of the group. A trained combatant would at least react to a sudden interruption, even by friends. One could never tell. The kenku who had attacked the youths in the woods were able to mimic the voices of others. If the same had happened here, if the one who had called to her was someone pretending to be Sten, she would’ve been killed without even having a chance to react, to parry a blow, to dodge an arrow. Perhaps Sten was not the judge Nergei had thought he was. Perhaps Kohel would be proved right, and be given yet another opportunity to gloat. “Are you sure?” asked Nergei quietly.

  “Imony is deep in concentration,” said Sten. “I must admit I find it fascinating that she is able to do this.”

  “I’ve always found it quite—unsettling,” said Spundwand.

  “That’s simply because it would require more strong ale than exists in the bars of the city for you to reach a similar state of focus, dwarf,” said Sten. “Watch her, young ones. Learn something about discipline from my friend Imony.”

  Kohel was agitated. He stared at Imony for a moment, raised his eyebrows and hopped in front of her. “Hello?” he said. Imony traced and traced. “This is futile,” he said, and he reached for Imony’s hand. “Stop writing,” he said, grabbing at the brush. In a fluid motion, Imony was up and behind Kohel, one of her arms locking his behind his back and her brush up his nostril.

  “Stay still,” she said in a high, sweet voice. “This is merely uncomfortable right now. It will take very little for me to really make it hurt.” She added a little pressure to the end of the brush and Kohel felt it, sharp and insistent. He let out a tiny cry and she relaxed the pressure.