by Robert Beers
Neely opened his mouth to shout a reply but shut it as an arrow buried itself into a trunk next to his head. He hunkered down and rode on.
Flynn's draft horse, being nearly twice the size as the others had a harder time of it passing through the trees and both his flanks and Flynn's ankles bore scrapes from the effort. Several arrows had come close to finding their mark in the big man or his passenger but at the last moment something seemed to slap them away into a tree or the ground.
One of the riders pulled up and took aim at Neely's back. The tracker's passage up the next rise had slowed him, making for a ripe target. As the rider pulled back on the bowstring an arrow passed through his hand and buried itself into the hollow of his throat. Seconds later two other riders fell from their saddles with shafts sticking from their chests.
“Get up here!” Charity yelled out as she loosed another arrow, knocking another Trading States rider from his horse.
Their closest pursuers were now several horse lengths behind Flynn as Neely's gray topped the rise, kicking away large clods of rich-smelling moist soil. The big man urged his mount up the last few yards and guided the well-lathered draft horseto a spot behind a clump of sturdy looking hardwoods. Circumstance slid off and ran over to a large Alder, peering around its trunk at the bowmen.
The rider with the black cape still sat astride his horse on the hilltop. A breeze rustled the leaves of the hardwoods about him and shifted the cape's folds. Soft glints shone from its fabric as it moved. About half of his men lay scattered across the forest floor, their horses either patiently waiting vainly for their riders to remount or cropping at the new growth sprouting through the leaf cover.
He raised his head and shouted out a command. The language was guttural and harsh and the rest of the riders stopped as if a leash had suddenly been yanked taut.
“You able to tell what he said?” Neely spoke to Flynn who hovered over his friend's left shoulder. They shared the cover of a fallen fruitwood.
“No, never heard anybody talk like that before,” Flynn murmured. He started slightly, “'Member that time you got stuffed into that fish barrel? Did it sound like that jaberin’ them folk made?”
“Naw,” Neely answered, “Not enough sneezy sounds in it.”
Charity eased her way over towards Flynn and Neely after sending her mare down slope to be with the other horses. “Why are they just standing there?”
“Don't know.”
“Beats me, Miss Charity.”
Circumstance crawled the last few yards from his chosen hiding place to the fallen tree. “That one with the black cloak. It's the one I felt.”
Charity peered over the top of the trunk. “Don't you mean ‘he'?”
Circumstance shook his head. “It's not a he or a she. I don't know what it is, just that it's bad.”
“Prey!” The shouted word came from across the shallow valley. It was still guttural but this time they understood it.
“Prey!!” This shout was louder, almost deafening.
“What's that thing callin’ us?” Flynn's face showed his perplexion.
Neely's just showed disgust. “The prevert wants us to get religion.”
“No,” Circumstance sat down with his back against the trunk, “that's its name for us. It's the hunter, we're the prey.”
“Buggerit!” Neely glanced at the rider. Other than shouting it hadn't moved. “I ain't game for no ghoul with a fancy cloak.” He rose up enough to get a clear look at the valley and the hill beyond. “Don't look much further than that Madrone, Charity. Think you kin make th’ shot?”
“Prey!!!” This time leaves fell from the trees. “I weary of the chase. Surrender now and I promise your passings will be ... easy.” The last word was spoken at the bottom of the scale in a sepulchral bass.
Charity nocked an arrow. “I don't have much choice, do I? But if this takes that thing out we still have a dozen or so left. Do you think they'll continue the fight with their leader gone?”
“Can't say Miss Charity,” Flynn shifted to a more comfortable position. “But them sittin’ there like statues makes a man ponder.”
“They're its puppets. I can feel the lines of control, they're very strong.” Circumstance's eyes were tightly shut.
She drew the arrow to her ear. “Right, well, here it goes then.” Charity released the arrow and it sped across the valley sending its hiss into the still air of the wood. As she and her companions watched the shaft struck the mounted figure. It rocked slightly with the blow.
“It ain't fallin',” Neely remarked. “Why ain't it fallin'?”
“Maybe it's wearing some sort of armour,” Charity mused.
Flynn scowled and flexed his hands. “Try puttin’ one in its eye. I bet they ain't covered with no armour.”
The rider was examining the arrow in its chest when Charity loosed her second. Again the shaft sped across the valley unerringly toward its target, but this one was casually pulled out of the air.
“Bardoc preserve us.”
“I don't flickin’ believe it. You see that?”
“We're in trouble.” Charity lowered her bow. “We're in real trouble.”
A deep chuckling welled up, seeming to come from all corners of the wood. It grew in volume until the ground vibrated in time with the laughter's rhythm. The voice that followed felt as cold as the kiss of the grave, “Foolish humans, naive prey, I am beyond your touch. Enjoy the pain as you die like the others and feed my hunger. Kill them.”
At that command the riders snapped out of their trance-like state and rushed, screaming, towards the companions’ position. The horses beneath them responded instantly to shifts in position, passing between the trees with ease.
Flynn scrambled down the slope to the horses and grabbed his axe. On the way back up he pulled Neely's short sword from its sheath and tossed it to the tracker. “Looks like we's gonna need these.”
“Can either of you shoot a bow?” Charity released an arrow and quickly fitted another to the string as she talked.
“Not like you but I can sure scare ‘em with it.” Neely hefted his sword as a rider charged up the hill towards him.
“Then see if you can pick up one of theirs and use it against them.” Charity took out another rider.
Circumstance vaulted the fruitwood and ran down the hill straight into the path of the closest bowman. Just before the horse reached him he dropped prone and the horse swerved, running its rider full force into the sturdy branch jutting out at head height. Flynn reached out and snagged the saddle-mounted quiver from the passing horse. Circumstance picked up the horn bow and tossed it to the big man. “Here.”
“Thanks lad.” Flynn caught the bow and shouldered the quiver. “Lucky that horse shied the way it did. You coulda been killed, boy, why'd ya do it?”
“Later,” Circumstance called over his shoulder, “when there's time.” He ran across the slope of the hill heading to where Neely was involved battling two bowmen. A third lay on the leaf strewn forest floor minus half an arm and all of a head. Several arrows streaked toward the boy. All of them missed because they swerved aside at the last second.
Charity knocked an arrow out of the air with one of her own before it could skewer Flynn. “Keep your eyes open!” She shouted, “I'm running out of arrows.”
“Sorry Miss Charity.” The big man bobbed his head in contrition and then yelled out in pain as a barbed head buried itself into his calf. “Aauuggh!”
“Flynn!”
“S'ok Miss Charity, just me leg. I'll be fine.” Flynn snapped off the shaft leaving a thumb-length stub before hobbling to relative safety behind a nearby tree.
Charity nodded and turned back to see how Neely fared.
The lanky tracker had his hands full. Another Trading States bowman had joined the two harrying him through the trees and numerous arrows jutted out from the trunks like thin branches.
She had three arrows left. Three bowmen, three arrows, but she didn't feel the confidence that had been t
here earlier. For some reason her sense of knowing the target was off, the last few shots had hit, but not true, not true at all and the last was placed further off center than the first. Something was distracting her the same way a gnat or a fly would by buzzing at her ear. Shaking her head in an attempt to clear it she drew the nock to point and released.
The arrow streaked past the trees between her and those attacking Neely, grazed a branch, and wobbled into the foliage at right angles to her target. “Damn!”
She fitted another arrow and tried again. This one didn't even come close. Giving it up as a lost cause Charity lowered her bow and ran to Neely's defense, slipping and sliding on the slick leaf cover. She had to reach out with her free hand a couple of times to keep from losing her footing entirely. Neely dodged behind a gnarled Beech, ducked one more arrow, and darted around the other side, slashing upwards at the bowman as he passed. The tip of his sword gouged a deep cut in the man's side. With uncanny quiet the bowman tilted to the left and fell onto the forest floor. Charity reached Neely as the fallen bowman was climbing to his feet. A kick to the side of his head stunned him. Neely's sword kept him down.
“Thanks lass.”
Charity collected as many arrows as she could in the seconds given her. “Thank me after we've survived this. Look out!”
One of the remaining five Trading States bowmen erupted from behind a small thicket of Alder waving a long curved saber. Neely fell backward just in time to miss having his head removed. His hat did not have the same luck. The blade caught the tweed just below the feather and tore a gash right through it.
Charity sent an arrow the rider's way but missed by a good yard. “Damn and blast! What is happening to me?”
“It's that one.”
Circumstance's voice came from behind her and to the left. She turned to see him scrambling up the slope toward her, “Which one? Oh, him,” Charity focused on the rider in black.
“Not him, it,” Circumstance corrected her. “I think I know what it's doing, try another shot.”
“Try it Charity, now!” Neely dodged another arrow sent his way and spun on the leaves as his feet went out from under him, sending the tracker into an uncontrolled slide down the slope. “Nowwwwww...”
Charity targeted the bowman who'd shot at Neely, aiming for a path crisscrossed by innumerable branches and twigs. Her knowing was back and she released the arrow with full certainty the attacker was already dead.
The rider in black held its hands to the side of its head and screamed, knocking loose more leaves. Two of its last three bowmen fell to Charity's next two arrows. The third charged at Neely with an arrow at full draw, leaning far to the right in his saddle. There was a meaty thunk and the bowman toppled to the ground with Flynn's axe sticking from between his shoulder blades.
“I think that's the one what stuck this here arrow in me.” Flynn pointed at the fallen bowman as he limped out from behind the tree he'd used as shelter. “What're we gonna do about that feller what led them?”
Neely finished brushing the last of the leaf and twig litter off his trousers and scowled up at the subject of Flynn's question. “I say we stick ‘im full of his puppets arrows an’ leave ‘im for th’ wolves. I've had me fill of this place an’ Grisham's looking downright hospitable in comparison.”
Charity, with Circumstance trailing closely behind her, made her way down the slope and immediately bent to examine Flynn's wound. “Let me see that, oh Flynn, you're bleeding! We've got to get that thing out of you before it festers.”
Another scream from the rider drowned out Flynn's answer. Neely clapped his hands over his ears and winced, “I'm gonna kill that thing just fer th’ quiet it'll bring.”
“It will take all of us I think,” Circumstance stood quietly, looking at their pursuer with a thoughtful expression, “If we even can.”
Flynn bit back a cry as Charity inspected the stub of the arrow in his calf. “Maybe we should hold on fixin’ this ‘till we kin see about doin’ it proper, ok?”
“Ok, Flynn,” Charity began, “but I wan...”
“Prey!!”
“What do you want?” Charity sounded like she was remonstrating a petulant child.
“You, prey, I want you.” The rider's voice held a tightly suppressed fury, the glow of distant fires rose up inside its eyes. It grasped the shaft of Charity's arrow and pulled. No blood followed the removal of the head, just a small puff of dirty steam. “Not since the time of Labad have I hungered so for the taste of a soul. Your passings will be long and savored, prey. You will endure the torment of ages as I feed upon your tender minds. None of you are able to stand against me, none of you. Await my wrath and tremble.”
“Talkative cuss, ain't he?” Flynn muttered as he hefted his ax.
“Wonder how many arrows it'd take to let out alla his steam?” Neely had sheathed his short sword and retrieved one of the horn bows favored by the Trading States riders. A quiver filled with arrows rested on his hip
Charity fingered one of the Trading States shafts now filling her quiver. They didn't quite match the quality of those she acquired back at Howell's Wayfarer House, but they shot straight enough. “Yes ... I wonder that too.”
The rider threw its black cloak over one shoulder and nudged its mount into a walk. A breeze sprang up and flowed before it sending an odor of dead things into the shallow valley where the companions waited.
Circumstance crouched, small crackles of blue lightning arced across his fingers. “Watch the bodies.”
Both Flynn and Neely jumped back with an oath as the slain bowmen lying near their feet started to move. Their arms and legs jerked in fits and starts giving a grotesque parody of the smoothness they'd had when living. The one closest to Flynn struck out with a backhand blow delivered so clumsily that the big man dodged it easily. He answered the attack with one of his own, loping off the corpse's arm with his ax.
“What's to be afeared of them, Circ? Don't move worth nuthin', they's easy to deal with iffn you ask me.” Flynn sidestepped a jerky rush, letting Neely whack off the thing's head.
The tracker dealt with the second one in the same fashion. “Flynn's got it right boy. Just keep your eyes open and we'll be fine.”
Two more staggered through the trees heading their way. Charity had already put half a dozen shafts into them before realizing she was just wasting arrows. As they drew nearer she noticed a change in their gait. “They're getting faster ... aiieekk!” She stumbled back from a sudden lunge by one of the attacking corpses but not before its nails tore into her tunic, scoring a long scratch across her belly. The wound burned like she'd been stung. Her kick at the thing missed as she slipped on some wet leaves and went skidding onto her back. Three of the things rushed toward her.
“Charity!”
“Miss Charity!”
Flynn and Neely tore into the corpses between them and Charity, hacking off heads and arms to clear a path, but before they could get to her, twin eruptions of blue energy twisting like snakes shot past them. The energy enveloped the things, turning each into a pyre of blue flame that flared briefly into an eye-searing blue-white radiance and then died out, leaving small piles of grayish ash. Other flashes flared and died around them flickering through the wood like sunbeams.
“Deity!”
“Hell's breasts! What was that?”
Charity climbed to her feet and looked at the piles of what used to be the animated dead. Her stomach felt queasy. She hadn't been that close to death since ... no not even that time when she and Adam were captured by the giant couple was like this. Her voice trembling, she turned to see Circumstance, small arcs of magik still played about his fingers. “Circumstance, what was that? What did you do?”
The half-elven boy smiled shyly. “They were Draugs and they needed to go away. I made them go before they could hurt you.”
“Draugs?”
Circumstance looked over his shoulder at the slowly approaching rider. “I'll tell you later.”
The
companions turned with Circumstance and spread out as the black-cloaked rider finished its descent into the valley. A sneer appeared at the corner of its mouth and it leaned forward in the saddle, one forearm draped languidly across a knee. “Hmph, I see you have a fledgling Wizard with you.” It straightened. “No matter, the Draugs were merely a test. Once I remove it from my path the rest of you will be kindling for my fire.”
A dark red bolt of light shot from its eyes and slammed into Circumstance sending him backwards against the upper slope a good fifteen yards away.
“Noooo!” Charity ran a few steps after the boy and then turned, her face a blaze of fury. “Damn you, you stinking thing! I'll see you destroyed if I have to do it with my bare hands.” Tears streaming down her cheeks she sent three swift arrows at the thing. Two it batted away, one got through, penetrating its upper body and emerging near the left shoulder blade. Puffs of evil smelling smoke wafted from both wounds.
Just as Charity released her first arrow, Flynn and Neely ran forward attacking the rider from both sides. Flynn struck out with a huge roundhouse slash intended to remove the thing's right leg from its body. The rider's mount shifted slightly and lashed out with a hoof, deflecting the big man's axe into the trunk of a Chestnut.
Neely saw the horse shift and pulled his stroke, waiting. Charity's third arrow struck and so did he, aiming for the left hand.
“Aarrghh!!” Billows of stinking black smoke boiled out of the gaping hole where the rider's hand used to be. It screamed again as it attempted to staunch the flow with its other hand. While it was distracted three more of Charity's arrows smacked into it with a hollow sound, like rocks thrown against an old dead tree. More smoke rose from the rider. Its mount began to shy and fidget, dancing back and forth in the leaf cover.
Neely sidled in, looking for another opening while Flynn struggled to get his ax unwedged from the Chestnut. Charity sent arrow after arrow into the rider, all the while screaming imprecations at it. The horse tossed its head and danced to the left giving Neely the opening he was looking for. He lunged forward, slashing his sword at the rider's midsection.