Steele Alchemist

by Deck Davis

  It was the bear mutoction. It was picking up on warm blood somewhere in the forest. Not just the faint heartbeats of the hares and mice, because it was easy to tune them out, but something bigger. And lots of them.

  “Someone’s here,” he said.

  Faei stood up. “I’ll go check it out.”

  “Be careful.”

  “Thanks. If you hadn’t have said that, I was just going to go stomping through the forest clapping my hands and singing.”

  “Break a leg,” said Jake.

  Faei slunk off into the forest, avoiding any snapable branches and twigs with her keen hunter’s eyes.

  She was gone ten minutes, before she returned. Jake was still outside the house; he’d been so restless that he hadn’t been able to do anything but wait for her.

  The look on Faei’s face wasn’t reassuring. “What is it?” he asked.

  “Thotl. A bunch of his spider friends, more of those goddamn trees, a couple of wild dogs, and some men.”

  “An army then. That’s what it sounds like.”

  “They know we’re here,” said Faei. “That’s the only explanation.”

  They went inside and found Solly, who was in a cramped room on the upper floor. Each wall had a bookcase next to it, and each shelf was rammed with old tomes of various subjects. Jake glanced at the titles and saw necromancy, cannibalism, burial rituals. The old alchemist had quite a particular reading taste, it seemed.

  Solly stood with a book open and resting in his palm. When he saw them, he snapped it shut, and then coughed at the resulting plume of dust.

  “Bolt-shooter and pot-stirrer. Everything alright with you two?”

  “No, it bloody isn’t,” said Faei. “Thotl is here.”

  They walked into the living room. It looked better than the last time they’d been in the house. After Faei had checked it for spiders and other insects, at Solly’s insistence, the mage had cleaned away all the dust, mud and critter dung. They got rid of the broken furniture and kept anything that was still intact. Now, there was a table with four chairs around it, but none of them sat down.

  Jake paced the room. “How could he find us? That was the whole point in moving, he wasn’t supposed to know.”

  For a second, Faei glared at Solly. Then she turned away.

  Solly answered. “He could have used a follow spell.”

  “Or a follow potion,” answered Jake. “Maybe. Come to think of it, he kept slapping my back a lot when we met him in the shack. I just thought he was a touchy-feeling guy. You know, a back slapper. Maybe he got a hair from me, or something.”

  “If that’s true, we’re more screwed than a witch in warlock country. Wherever we go, he’ll find us.”

  “Unless I leave you guys,” said Jake. “If he brewed the potion or whatever with one of my hairs, then it won’t track you two. No point us all suffering.”

  “No way,” said Faei.

  “Sounds like a plan,” said Solly.

  The had both said it in unison. Faei gave Solly a stare so mean that it almost bruised him.

  “Err, I meant no way,” said Solly.

  “Then what are our options? Fight or run, is that the size of it?” asked Faei. “I’d like to tear this guy’s throat out, so let’s go with option one.”

  Jake shook his head. “Fighting is out. You said that he’s got a dozen people or animals with him, at least. He’ll have our balls as trophies before we know it.”

  “I’m safe then,” said Faei. “Sorry about your balls, though.”

  “We make a hasty retreat, good,” said Solly. “And where do we retreat to?”

  “They’re coming from the south,” said Jake. “And the rock wall covers most of the north. Far enough that it’s not worth trying to go around it, anyway. That leaves us going east or west.”

  “When I was hunting, I found a massive patch of quick-mud to the east,” said Faei.

  “Okay. We grab our shit and head west,” said Jake. “Put some distance between us and Thotl, and then we can think about what to do.”

  Faei clapped her hands together. “Let’s get packing.”

  Luckily, they’d been preparing for their journey to Widow Leaf for the last day, so the gear they had was already semi-packed. It didn’t take long to fill what leather sacks and pouches they had and pile them by the front door of the house. When they were done, they each took as much baggage as they could handle, and they stepped outside.

  The forest seemed even heavier than before now. It wasn’t just the dampness of it, but more like it carried something. As if the air was thicker than before, so much so that Jake could feel it when he breathed in.

  He took a vial out of his pocket, checked it, then uncorked it. He drank back a quarter of the liquid. Soon, the bear mutoction began to fire inside him again, and the heartbeats across the forest thudded back in full force. It was much louder than before, and not just because the potion was fresh inside him. Thotl and his army of freaks were closer.

  Faei and Solly joined him outside. Solly, despite having the classic mage physique of gangly limbs with little meat on them, had taken one more bag than Faei and Jake. Maybe it was to prove a point. At any rate, Jake could tell he was struggling.

  “Let’s go west,” said Jake.

  They left the alchemist’s house and headed west through the forest, keeping a quick pace but being careful not to snag their feet on any of the knots of weeds or tangled vines that filled the forest. A sprained ankle would be the end of them at this point.

  They had only gone a few minutes in that direction when Jake saw figures ahead of them. Here, the trees were so tightly packed together that it was hard to make much out.

  “It’s not Thotl,” said Faei, reaching for her bow. “I know that much.”

  Jake pulled another vial from his pocket. This was the wolf mutoction. He drank a little of it. Mere seconds later, his vision changed. The forest began to brighten a little, and the darkness faded. As soon as he saw clearly what was in front of them, he wished he hadn’t taken the mutoction.

  It was the barbarian and his three goblins. Joining them were the innocent family he’d slaughtered. They were all in a state of decay, with the family at a more advanced stage. Their flesh was rotted, covered in mud and crawling with maggots, though that didn’t seem to bother them. When they caught sight of Jake and the others, they let out the most pitiful groans, and then began walking in their direction.

  “What the hell?” said Faei.

  Jake remembered the books in the alchemist study. Ones on necromancy and raising the dead. Just what dark arts had the old alchemist been trying to learn? Whatever he had gotten up to, it had turned the dead barbarian, his goblins, and the family into the undead. Maybe the whole forest was infected, or something. Now, the west passage through the forest was blocked.

  “Seven versus three,” said Jake. “As good odds as we’ve ever had.”

  “Seven versus two,” corrected Faei.

  The mage huffed. “I can swing a sword, you know.”

  “Do you have a sword?” asked Jake.

  “…no.”

  Faei shook her head. “I’ve seen undead before. One bite, one scratch, and you’ll catch their blight. It’s just not worth trying to fight our way through.”

  “Our hands have been played out, my dear, our dice have been shaken. I’m afraid we don’t have many gambits to choose from,” said Solly. “Thotl and his friends are south, the quick mud is to the east, and our friends block our passage to the west.”

  “That leaves going north,” said Jake.

  “There’s a mile of thirty-foot high rock,” said Faei. “You know, the kind the house is carved into? We can’t get through it, and Thotl will catch us in the time it takes to skirt around it.”

  She was right. There’s was no arguing with her logic on that score, but something had occurred to him.

  “The old alchemist’s lab was in the basement, right? And he was into some pretty advanced stuff. Who knows what
kind of gasses and toxic vapors his alchemy would have produced? So, he must have had a chimney of some sort. Something leading from the house, up out to the top of the rock face to ventilate fumes.”

  The pounding of pulses in his ears got louder, and the coppery smell of blood grew stronger. Thotl and his gang were moving in.

  “We need to get a move on,” he said.

  “Fine,” answered Faei. “I don’t know what else we can do.”

  When they got back to the shack, they headed straight into the basement. Jake led them into the alchemist’s study, where he was sure there would be a chimney of some sort. Sure enough, in the corner of the room, he found that a square patch of the wall was covered by a sheet of tarpaulin. He pulled it down to reveal a large hole.

  “Anyone got a candle or something?” he asked.

  Faei pulled one of her bolts from her quiver and stroked her hand along it. The tip of the bolt burned with fire.

  Jake held it into the hole. Then, he slowly peered inside, and looked up. Around thirty feet above, he could see a square patch of daylight. He moved away from the chimney.

  “It leads to the outside, but it’s quite a climb.”

  “Is it…a tight fit?” asked Solly.

  “Yeah, a little, but that’s why we need to use it. The rockface outside is too steep, and too damp. We’d never climb up it. But the chimney is so narrow we just need to wedge ourselves up a foot at a time.”

  Solly shivered. “Is there no other way?”

  “Unless you’ve got a helicopter, no.”

  “A heli-what? I don’t like this, friends.”

  “Is there nothing you aren’t scared of?” asked Faei.

  “Insects and tight spaces are it,” answered Solly. “Unfortunately, one always seems to accompany the other.”

  Pulses pounded in Jake’s ears. They were like drums now. A dozen of them banging one after the other.

  Suddenly, they heard a crashing sound coming from upstairs. Something had gotten into the house.

  “Why didn’t you warn us?” asked Faei. “I thought your bear juice gave you super ears or something.”

  “They do, and I can still hear Thotl. He’s not here yet.”

  “What is it then?”

  “I can’t hear anything! Something without a heartbeat.”

  “The undead,” said Solly.

  There was more crashing from upstairs. Jake listened, but he couldn’t hear a pulse nearby, nor could he smell warm blood. Solly was right.

  “Maybe we could have fought them in the forest,” he said. “But in a cramped space like this? No way. Looks like our choice is made for us. Come on – up the chimney. You first, Faei, then Solly.”

  “And leave you last? No chance.”

  The undead had reached the staircase that led to the basement now.

  “Stop arguing and get your arse up that chimney,” said Jake.

  Faei climbed in first. It looked like a tight squeeze, but she was dexterous enough that it wasn’t long before she disappeared, and Jake heard her clambering up the chimney.

  “There’s plenty of grip,” she called down, her voice sounded strange coming from the tight space.

  “Okay, you go now,” he told Solly.

  The mage scratched the back of his hand. He looked at the hole to the chimney, then back at Jake.

  The footsteps boomed beyond the room now. Every step brought the undead closer to them. He could smell them now, the weeks old stench of purification.

  “Come on, Solly!”

  Solly hesitated. Jake felt himself getting frustrated. He wanted to sock him in the face. Instead, he pushed him toward the hole.

  “Get up there, or I’m taking your place and I’ll leave you to get acquainted with our new friends.”

  They heard moaning. A guttural sound, like a howling wind but deeper. A bestial sound full of longing, but longing for what? Flesh? Blood?

  This changed Solly’s mind, and the wizard clambered into the hole. Given he didn’t have Faei’s flexibility, it took him a while to straighten up so he could climb, and even longer to get into a rhythm. Jake clenched his fists as he listened to the mage’s slow progress.

  The footsteps sounded in the hallway beyond the room. The heavy boots of the barbarian, the tip-taps of the goblins, the shuffling sound of the family, whose bodies were so rotted that their putrid flesh scraped along the floor.

  Solly grunted. Jake stuck his head in the hole, only to find himself looking up at the mage’s bottom.

  “Hurry up, will you?”

  “It’s quite a….” he took a deep, fear-filled breath, “…squeeze.”

  “Just get a few feet more. Enough that I could get in.”

  The footsteps were closer now. Each time they made a sound, the hairs on his arms stood up straighter. He pulled out his trusty dagger.

  Just as the rotted barbarian appeared in the door arch, Solly called out to him, his voice muffled.

  “That should be enough room,” he shouted.

  Damn it, this was hardly ideal. They were having to escape through a cramped chimney and were going to have to leave all their stuff behind. Jake patted his chest and made sure his camera was around his neck.

  He squeezed himself into the hole in the wall. Man, Solly wasn’t lying. Jake wasn’t a big guy, but this was cramped. With some moves that would have earned the respect of a contortionist, he straightened up and got ready to climb.

  And then a hand seized hold of his leg. It gripped his calf and squeezed. Even through his trousers he could feel how cold it was. He could smell the ripe, sour odour of death.

  He kicked out, just enough to dislodge the hand, and then climbed. The chimney walls were slick with some kind of liquid that was dropping down from above. It looked like a tough climb, but the space was so cramped that he could press his legs against the sides and then, inch by inch, haul himself up.

  By the time he reached daylight he was desperate for it. Thirty feet up on the surface of the rock face, the humidity of the forest was thinner, and there was a breeze. It lashed around, smoothing over his face and bristling the beard on his cheeks. It was only then, amidst the trouble, wedged between the undead and Thotl, that he thought of something; how long had it been since he’d had a shave? His moustache would have gone to shit!

  Faei grabbed his arm. She pointed to the forest below them, where dark figures prowled in the shadows cast by the trees. He watched the timberkin take sturdy strides. Spider-people scuttled along the undergrowth, while Thotl and a band of men walked in the centre, some with swords, others brandishing axes, bows and spears.

  “We better go,” said Jake.

  “Can we just get our breaths?” asked Solly. “We are quite safe up here.”

  “I suppose you forgot that spiders can climb?” asked Faei. “We’re not safe. Not in the slightest.”

  As much as the climb up the cramped chimney had tired him, Jake knew she was right. They had to push on while they still had the advantage of enough of a head start. As Thotl and his men approached the alchemist’s house, Jake, Solly and Faei looked for a way off the rock face.

  After finding a way down, they didn’t stop. Not even when the adrenaline drained from their system and their legs tired and their eyes begged to close. When night greeted them with wide arms they walked into its embrace rather than sleeping through it. No matter how much they needed to stop, they kept on going.

  Their journey took them well away from the forest and north. Maybe there were other places to go east or west, and perhaps there were refuges to be had somewhere, but north was the surest direction. Their pursuers were south of them, so north they would go.

  Every so often, Jake took a sip of his bear mutoction to boost his blood sense. Always, he heard the pounding of blood in his ears and smelled it in the air. He found that he could tune out the pulses of birds and other wildlife and keep their pursuers solely in mind, so in that way, he learned how close they were.

  Eventually, the sound seemed to
lessen. They had put more distance between them, and that could be for only one reason; Thotl and the rest of them had stopped. Neither he, Faei nor Solly needed even to speak about what they did next. When Jake sat on the ground, the rest followed.

  Their race had taken them way north now. Two days north, in fact, and they had kept going only by sharing stamina potion Jake had brought with him. The air was different in this part of Reaching Crest. It was thicker, blacker. It gave Jake a peculiar feeling. Like he was being watched, but not by people. It was as if the land itself was peering at him.