Broken Stone 02 - Warlock's Sun Rising

by Damien Black

  His head… a low throbbing reminded him of his fight with the chief Wadwo. Shaking it free of water and feeling waves of pain shoot through his skull, he wiped his face and stared up at her.

  ‘Now is not a time to be resting,’ said the freesword dryly.

  A sudden panic rose in him. ‘The ladies you were guarding…’

  ‘Are not here,’ the outlander finished for him. ‘They have been taken, I think, though the gods only know why.’

  With some effort Balthor hauled himself up. His whole body ached, but that hardly bothered him. He was still alive – though Her Ladyship remained unaccounted for.

  The dead bodies of his comrades caught his eye. He felt suddenly ashamed that he had thought so ill of them – they had fought valiantly, as befitted true knights. Well, perhaps Rufus had been found wanting – but how many young fighters had been unlucky enough to face such fiends?

  Gazing at the loathsome corpses of the Wadwos, their pale ichor looking even more sickly in the morning light, he shuddered and made the sign.

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ he said.

  ‘After you fell I realised I could not win against three of yon beasts,’ answered the freesword. ‘So I escaped.’

  Balthor fixed her with a quizzical stare. ‘Why did you come back?’

  The strange woman shrugged her shoulders. ‘To see what I could find.’

  Such lack of valour and loyalty was all that could be expected from a pagan foreigner, and a woman at that, so Balthor let it go and pressed her for more information.

  ‘Her Ladyship… yon damsel you were protecting – did you see what happened to her?’

  ‘I think she tried to flee with the rest of the villagers,’ replied the mercenary. ‘Though clearly she did not get far – her horses are still here.’

  Balthor cursed loudly. ‘Then they are lost to us!’ he cried. ‘With the woodfolk gone we cannot hope to track them through this wretched forest.’

  The freesword stared at him inscrutably. Damned foreigners, impossible to know what they were thinking.

  ‘I have something to show you,’ she said. ‘Come with me.’

  Flinging aside the hide entrance to the hut, the freesword revealed her treasure with a triumphant flourish. He was bound and gagged and looked even more unkempt than usual, but it was unmistakably Ratko, their erstwhile guide.

  ‘I found him hiding under a pile of firewood,’ explained the mercenary. ‘He must have avoided the beast creatures, but a Harijan’s senses are not so easily fooled!’

  Balthor turned to look at her, momentarily forgetting Ratko, who had started yelling into his gag.

  ‘A what? Just who are you anyway?’

  ‘My name is Anupe, at your service. I come from a land where women learn to fight as men do, only better. My story is too complicated to explain here.’

  Balthor had no wish to hear it. ‘And why are you “at my service”?’ he barked. ‘What’s your interest in all of this?’

  ‘I have still not been paid,’ replied Anupe. ‘The lady you seek owes me money – and if I am not mistaken those Wo-Wos or whatever you call them took her riches with her.’

  The knight glared at her. ‘And what makes you think I will help you get your money?’

  She shrugged again. ‘You are a man of honour are you not? I have helped you so far, and will help you more – in this country I understand a man of honour pays what he owes.’

  Sir Balthor frowned. He had to admit she had a point, although doing business with a woman was extremely distasteful, especially this kind of business.

  ‘Very well,’ he frowned. ‘Let’s get this churl untied and get us gone – they have a half day on us already.’

  The Wadwo tracks were easy enough to follow. They took them in a south-westerly direction, further off the main road and deeper into the heart of the forest. That had meant leaving their horses behind. It pained the proud knight to leave the fine courser he’d requisitioned from one of Bergen’s richer merchants, but they didn’t have much choice: the woods were far too dense.

  Following closely behind Ratko he kept a close eye on him, his sword drawn and pointed at the small of his back. He had balked when they told him his next task, and tried to run off. But Anupe was swift as a deer, and she had brought him to the ground before he managed twenty paces. After that Balthor had loomed over him and put the fear of Reus into the churl. His head was still pounding and he was furious and upset – he’d had a good mind to carve the tracker up there and then, but of course they needed him.

  Ratko pulled up short as they reached an overgrown dell. The trees parted a little here. Balthor was grateful for the flash of azure skies. It was stiflingly hot; the sun had risen to its zenith above the treetops and they were all drenched in sweat after their forced march.

  ‘What is it?’ snarled the knight, with more viciousness than was necessary.

  ‘It looks like they were joined by others here,’ breathed the tracker.

  The knight exchanged glances with Anupe and cursed. ‘Well, how many?’ he asked.

  ‘Looks like another three or four,’ replied the woodlander after studying the tracks a little longer.

  Balthor felt his heart sink. The odds had turned against them yet again.

  ‘Well, we’d best press on then,’ he sighed. ‘We need to catch up with them before any more of the fiends join them!’

  ‘Wait,’ said Anupe suddenly. ‘I have something here that might help put things in our favour again.’

  Reaching into the folds of her cloak she produced a jar of green ointment.

  ‘Dammit woman, we’ve no time for your pagan ways now,’ spluttered Balthor.

  ‘This is no work of mine,’ replied the freesword coolly, ‘but made by the very lady we seek. It is a treatment made from a plant you call Wose’s Bane… it helped me kill several of the beast people.’

  Of course… Her Ladyship and her blasted obsession with herbalism. Well, he’d seen her cure and treat enough knights at Graukolos, she could be trusted on that score at least.

  ‘All right,’ he said, somewhat bashfully. ‘How does it work?’

  ‘You apply it to your blades, it should last for at least one battle,’ explained the freesword.

  Balthor grudgingly snatched the pot and sat down to daub his sword and dagger.

  Redeemer’s wounds – now he was going into battle with poisoned weapons! Errantry definitely wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

  They spent the rest of that day and the next travelling hard, barely stopping to eat and sleep. Balthor should have been exhausted by now, but a fire burned in him that stubbornly refused to go out – he was damned if he’d be outdone by a woman and a churl in matters of endurance. He had a reputation to maintain: he was still the greatest knight in Dulsinor, and if he had to die to keep that epithet alive so they could put it on his tombstone, then so be it.

  He was thinking that for the umpteenth time towards evening when they began to hear a sound, dull and rhythmic and repetitive.

  Boom-boom, boom-boom-BOOM…

  ‘That’ll be the Woses,’ said Ratko, his voice shaking. ‘They play ‘em drums at night.’

  ‘Redeemer be praised, we’ve caught up with them!’ said Balthor. ‘They won’t be expecting us – if we strike fast enough and this blasted herb poison works, the day may well be ours!’

  ‘We should get closer to them first, unawares,’ said Anupe. ‘See for sure how many they are.’

  ‘All right,’ said Balthor. ‘You, churl – is there another dell up here? If they’ve taken to low ground for the night we can get the advantage of height against them.’

  Ratko shook his head. ‘Aye, there’s a dell a’right, but they wilna be stoppin’ now, sirrah – Woses prefers to travel at night. Most like, they’ll be eatin’ now.’

  ‘What do they eat?’ asked Anupe curiously. Balthor repressed a shudder – he was half expecting to hear that they feasted on mortal flesh, but the answer surprised him.


  ‘Far as we ken, naught but trees an’ roots an’ such,’ said the woodlander. ‘Right strange fowk, yon beastmen.’

  ‘They are not folk,’ said Sir Balthor severely. ‘They are ogrish fiends, and we’ll soon send them to Gehenna where they belong!’ He gripped his sword feverishly. ‘Lay on, dammit!’

  Flattening themselves against the sedge they peered down into the dell. It was wider than the previous one; stars peeped from the clear night skies in the aftermath of dusk, a sickle moon slowly waxing towards gibbousness.

  We’ll reap a fine harvest underneath that sickle, thought Balthor, though in truth he knew he was just trying to console himself. For a glance told him his fears had been justified. About the clearing lurched half a dozen beastmen, tearing branches off trees and crunching them between broken teeth. They had kindled a small fire in the middle of the dell. Next to it lay a large hide drum.

  He had to pray the Wose’s Bane and element of surprise would be enough to turn the tide; the tracker was clearly petrified out of his wits and would be of little use in a fight.

  At least the damsels were still alive: they were slumped in the centre of the clearing, lashed together back to back beside a small group of terrified woodswomen who were also bound. One of the beastmen lumbered over to them, pulling a gourd from its belt. Grasping Hettie it unstopped the gourd and poured a white liquid down her throat, spilling half of it on her bosom.

  ‘Milk!’ he hissed as the Wadwo served Adhelina with the same. ‘So they’re feeding them at least – keeping them alive, but for what?’

  ‘If all goes well, we will not need to find out,’ said Anupe, slowly reaching for her dirk and preparing to throw it. ‘I can take down one of the creatures now – then we rush them. Hopefully we can kill two more before they react, then it is just three against two.’

  Balthor bit his lip. They couldn’t be sure of that – the dell was wide, its ground uneven. The leader with the scythe was there: it had already proven to be a shrewder opponent than its cumbersome form implied.

  Then he noticed something. The leader was clutching its scythe in both hands, with no sign of the injury he had inflicted on it.

  ‘They heals very quick if ye dunna kill ‘em outright,’ said the tracker, when Balthor asked him. His sweaty face was pale and gaunt.

  ‘Reus’ teeth, why didn’t you tell us that in the first place?’ hissed Balthor. ‘I’ve a good mind to – ’

  ‘Wait!’ whispered Anupe. ‘Listen…’

  The Woses had heard it too; they were now looking up from their strange meal. Their ears looked like cauliflowers but their hearing was evidently quick enough.

  Then he heard it too.

  Boom-boom, boom-boom-BOOM…

  More drums. A Wadwo seized the drum and started beating the same rhythm, timing its responses to the growing sound.

  Boom-boom, boom-BOOM…

  Boom-boom, boom-boom-BOOM…

  ‘More of them!’ said Anupe. ‘Coming from the other side of the dell I think!’

  ‘Then now is the time!’ said Balthor, starting to rise.

  Anupe grabbed him and yanked him back down. She was surprisingly strong for such a slight woman.

  ‘No!’ she hissed. ‘They are too close – we’ll be overrun before we can kill these ones and rescue the ladies.’

  She was right. A minute later another four beastmen burst into the dell, loping down from the forest fringe to join their comrades. They were dressed in the same greasy boiled leather, and carried the hotchpotch weapons typical of their kind: one of them had fashioned a giant club from a sapling, bound with iron loops sprouting long crude nails.

  This one appeared to be the leader of its band. It approached the Wadwo with the scythe, and the two giant creatures cracked their heads against one another.

  ‘A painful way of saying hello,’ quipped the Harijan.

  ‘Is this a time for joking?’ Balthor rounded on her. ‘There’s ten of them now – this is a fight we can’t win!’

  ‘It would appear not,’ she replied, looking as serene as ever. He hated that – women were supposed to swoon at first sign of danger, not react calmly to it all the time. He felt like strangling the outlander.

  ‘So what do you suggest?’ he demanded, struggling to keep his voice down so they wouldn’t be heard above the Wadwos’ guttural grunts as they greeted one another.

  ‘That we wait,’ said Anupe, pushing her dirk back into its scabbard. ‘We cannot kill them now so let’s keep following them until we get a better chance… If what yon woodsman says is true they will soon leave after eating, if you can call that eating.’

  The knight glanced at the tracker. The dirty woodlander clearly looked relieved that the fighting had been postponed.

  Presently the Wadwos took up their spoils and the women and set off again, one of them putting out the fire with a stomp before leaving. They moved in single file beneath the trees now, the one holding the damsels and woodfolk in the middle while the two drummers kept up their monotonous twinned rhythms, one at either end of the misshapen column.

  Stepping lightly down into the dell after them, the three of them followed the beastmen at a distance. Balthor mouthed a silent prayer as they did, wondering why the Wadwos were keeping the women alive.

  They pushed on hard through the night. At least it was cooler now; the drop in temperature brought renewed vigour to Balthor’s limbs. He hadn’t pushed himself this much since the last war; much as he hated to admit it, years of carousing had softened him up. Perhaps the archangel Stygnos had set him on this path to teach him a lesson, he reflected grimly: being the greatest knight in Dulsinor should be no easy life. Dawn was starting to gift the trees with shape and colour when he noticed them beginning to thin. The twin drums could still be heard, relentlessly beating a path ahead of them.

  ‘Where are we?’ he asked the tracker. ‘It feels like we’re leaving the Argael.’

  ‘We are,’ replied Ratko. ‘If they carry on this way, they’ll lead us t’mountains.’

  The Hyrkrainians. Balthor wondered wryly how the beastmen would manage, deprived of their precious tree-food. It struck him as strange – the Wadwos were native to the Argael, and there were few sightings of them beyond its confines. Just where was this mad chase leading them?

  He didn’t like to dwell on that. The creatures had shown no signs of splitting up. That still meant ten armed beastmen to fight at the end of an exhausting journey. He thought of the castle troubadour back at Graukolos. Whatever lay Baalfric Swiftfingers composed to mark his heroic death, it had better be good.

  The ground started to rise steadily as the trees thinned out some more. Ignoring his aching limbs Balthor pressed on, trying to use the beastmen’s rhythm as a marching tune. It gradually got lighter, then the drumming stopped abruptly.

  ‘Can you still follow them?’ Anupe asked the tracker.

  ‘Aye,’ replied Ratko. ‘Light’s good enough to follow their tracks now.’

  The sun was rising on the rugged green foothills of the mountains when they broke cover of the Argael an hour later. Picking their way through rock-strewn slopes they stopped as they saw it: further up the hills, set against the backdrop of the dizzying slopes was a crude fort fashioned from logs. The warband of beastmen they had been following could now be seen, loping up towards it.

  ‘Well I’ll be buggered,’ breathed Ratko as they ducked behind a large boulder out of sight. ‘Yon beastfowk’ve built themselves a bloody castle.’

  ‘I take it this is not normal for such creatures?’ asked Anupe.

  The woodlander shook his head emphatically. ‘Ye can say that again – normally they live in caves, jus’ two or three o’ ‘em. Why, now they’re almost behavin’ like men.’

  ‘I am glad you do not think they are behaving like women,’ replied the Harijan dryly.

  ‘And I’m glad you still find time for jokes,’ snarled Balthor. ‘We should have attacked them in the dell – now what in Seven Princes do you suggest we do
?’

  The question was rhetorical – he had no interest in a woman’s opinion on warfare. Although he had to admit the foreigner’s stamina was impressive. He felt as though his whole body was on fire. At least he was only wearing a light mail shirt: a full-sized hauberk would have made the ordeal even harder to bear.

  The freesword appeared to be taking his question literally though. ‘We need to try to get around, to yon hills higher up,’ she said, pointing. ‘That way we can spy on them.’

  Sir Balthor followed her finger. She was right: beyond the fort the hills continued to rise steadily upwards to meet the mountains proper. There was a ridge overlooking it that snaked a crescent from its far side towards where they crouched.

  ‘Yes, we can reach the end closest to us if we strike out due west from here,’ he said. ‘We can probably get up there by noon, if we push ourselves. Though Reus knows what we’ll do once we’re up there!’

  He turned to look at the fort again. The warband had reached its gate; a single beat of a drum sounded, reverberating off the peaks and slopes. The gate slowly creaked open, and the Wadwo raiding party disappeared inside, taking the damsels and woodswomen with them.

  And then suddenly he knew. His gut lurched as fireside tales from his childhood came back to him.

  ‘Redeemer’s mercy, they’re going to dishonour them!’ he exclaimed.

  The other two looked at him quizzically.

  ‘I remember my governess used to tell of Wadwos preying on wayfarers in the Argael,’ he said. ‘The men they would butcher, but sometimes they would take the women alive… so they could beget more of their monstrous kind on them!’

  Suppressing his revulsion he made the sign.

  ‘This makes sense,’ said Anupe, nodding slowly. ‘In my land we do the same, with men, so that our people can survive.’

  Balthor shot her a disgusted look.

  ‘Aye, we know them tales,’ said Ratko. ‘They’ve done it t’our wummenfowk long enough. Were only the odd vanishin’ until recently – but lately there’s been more an’ more gone missin’.’