Hazelhearth Hires Heroes

by D. H. Willison

  “You two. This is no vacation. We stay alert, the crew concentrates on their work. That’s how it works.” Gnebnik pointed at a rocky outcropping the size of a small house jutting from the Earth like a lone tooth. “We’ll patrol at least a hundred an’ fifty paces out from the crew. Shin will be further out than that, but it’s a big perimeter, so we can’t count on him seeing everythin’. Yer mission is to keep predators from ambushing the crew.”

  “And you?” said Lee.

  “I have enough experience that I can watch the right flank alone. But know that this is an exception. Normally splittin’ up is a bad idea.”

  Sam and Lee nodded, taking position on the crew’s left flank, and beginning the first of many sweeping patrol rounds.

  Shin returned to report to the group about twice an hour, sighting only a spine swine and whip-tongued tree serpent in the rounds he made before lunch break.

  Yet unlike the work crew, or Sam and Lee at the workshop, the four escorts had no break. For them, lunch was but a few sips from a canteen and mouthfuls of dried fruit.

  The crew had felled and cleared a dozen and a half of the gnarled trees by midafternoon, when Sam, Lee, and Gnebnik regrouped to hear Shin’s scouting report. The only concern was the presence of two herds of caprids migrating the direction of the work crew.

  Sam glanced at Gnebnik. “Do you mind if we switch up. I’d like to go with Shin on the next round.”

  “Aye. Suppose it wouldn’t hurt. Lee, you’re with me.”

  Sam hopped on behind Shin, the two darting away into the woods.

  “Right,” said Lee. “So what are we—”

  A pair of screams cut him short. Gnebnik zeroed in on the commotion, drew his shortsword, and charged.

  A half-dozen workers, weapons drawn, glared at the base of a half-felled oilwood tree.

  “What is it?” said Gnebnik.

  “A hive of fire beetles under the roots,” said a woman clad in layers of linen with a leather vest, half-gloves and long boots, brandishing an axe. “Just surprised us is all. We’ve got it under control. Magnus is getting the helms and maces. You may go back to your patrol, master armorer.”

  “Fire beetles. I read about those in the bestiary tome,” said Lee. “May I have a look?”

  “Aye. Yer not wearin’ the right protection so stay at least four paces distant. An’ sheath yer sword.”

  “Sheath my sword? But aren’t they dangerous?”

  “Aye. But yer still borrowin’ my sword an’ I don’t want you ta melt it.”

  Lee tiptoed to the section of roots under the scraggly tree, shield up, his hand clenching and unclenching the hilt of his sword. His eyes zeroed in on movement in the loose soil.

  The creatures were indeed as depicted in the tome: segmented insectoid bodies oval in shape with spined ridges along the center and edges of the carapace, the spines all facing rearward. “Looks a bit like a trilobite from my world. Except bigger.” Lee cocked his head. Actually, how large were trilobites? He’d only seen an illustration in a book. These creatures, scuttling sluggishly around the upturned earth at the base of the tree, were a bit longer than his forearm.

  One of the workers handed out a pair of bulky leather hoods that looked a bit like bee-keeper garments, along with crude stone-headed maces.

  “Wouldn’t it be easier just to leave them alone?” said Lee.

  “What about the next person who stumbles upon them,” answered one of the workers. “Besides, if we don’t, they could infest the whole grove.”

  The worker donned a hood and took a swing at the first insect, the heavy stone mace head smashing through its carapace like a hammer against a snail shell.

  An Earth-type snail shell.

  The ones on Arvia looked like they could shrug off a volley of musket shot.

  Gnebnik grabbed Lee by the shoulder and yanked him back. “Yer not wearing protective gear, stay back.”

  “Protection from wha—”

  Ka-bamm

  Shell fragments from the exploding fire beetle whizzed past Lee’s face, one of which grazed his cheek, leaving an angry red streak.

  “Oww! What the—”

  Gnebnik pulled him further back.

  “Come on, we need ta get back on the sentry line.”

  Fooomp

  A puff of dense black smoke erupted from the ground beneath the roots.

  Lee shot a glance over his shoulder as he followed Gnebnik. A second and third worker joined the fray. Now a jet of flame puffed from the ground. “Don’t they need help?”

  “Nah. Those are just little ones. But they’re makin’ a ruckus, so we better keep our eyes an’ ears open.”

  Fooomp

  The pair reached the sentry line, and were halfway through the first circuit when Lee finally asked, “Why are we even here?”

  “Because, apparen’ly you made a bad deal with the dimension brokers.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” said Lee. “I mean the escort. The work crew doesn’t seem to need any help. They’re all armed.”

  “Anyone who sets foot outside the city walls is armed. Else they’re a fool.” Gnebnik stopped and glared back at the work crew, who were stomping out a fire in a clump of dead grass that the fire beetles had set ablaze. The grass was sparse, and most had been stomped flat, yet no sooner had they extinguished the first fire, another clump ignited. Gnebnik sniffed the wind. “They’re makin’ too much a ruckus. We’re gonna get the attention of somethin’ the way they’re going.”

  “Should we go back and help?”

  “Nay. They need ta do what they gotta do. An’ we’re gettin’ paid ta protect them. But this is not what you should be doing adventuring in the wilds.”

  A pair of juvenile caprids leapt from behind a hut-sized rhododendron with scraggly white flowers, charged a dozen paces toward the work group, and froze in their tracks.

  Gnebnik glanced at the pair of goat-like creatures. A third, much larger creature, bearing a full set of antlers, emerged from the undergrowth, stopped and stared at them. “An’ yes, the work crew can fight. But they’re here ta work.”

  “That one looks like an elk, is it dangerous?” said Lee.

  “It’s an adult male. Give ’em space. You don’ wanna get skewered by those antlers. But somethin’s got ’em all riled up.”

  “The scent of smoke?”

  “Maybe.”

  Gnebnik took a step back, clanged his sword against his shield, took another step back. “I’ve got this one in my sights, you stay alert for other beasties.”

  The pair took a dozen more paces, Lee scanning the terrain around them.

  “We expecting more of those wood panthers?”

  “Dunno.”

  Ka-bamm

  The detonation of a fire beetle startled the two smaller, goat-sized creatures, who bounded into a small clearing, moving at remarkable speed in a hopping, zigzag gait.

  Gnebnik froze, gaze fixed upward.

  Lee’s eyes followed Gnebnik’s skyward where the charcoal outline of a bird approached.

  Gnebnik shook his head, muttering, “Just keeps gettin’ worse.”

  The large, elk-like creature finally turned and followed the other two, though at a methodical pace.

  Catching sight of a second bird, Gnebnik turned to the group of workers, shouting, “Bone bill. Keep the little ones close!”

  The birds were certainly large, but against the sky, Lee had no sense of scale. Yet with Gnebnik more troubled than he’d been all day, they were clearly a threat.

  “Back. We need to get back.”

  Gnebnik ran toward the work crew. “Stop with the fire beetles. Group up and get back to the wagons.”

  A man with a stained leather apron and axe turned to him. “We’re not done yet. Still have a wagon to fill.”

  “And the bone bills have stomachs to fill. I count two, more could be coming.”

  The man glared at Gnebnik, back at the twisted section of roots.

  Fooomp

  “Alri
ght, fine. We’ve exterminated most of the fire beetles.” He turned to one of the others. “Form three groups instead of five. Get Jan and Lars to reform the groups and pull the empty wagon to that tree.”

  Lee shook his head. “What’s so dangerous about those things? Do they do magic or something?”

  “Nay.”

  “They’re big.” Lee stared at the bird. It was larger than any bird he’d ever seen, yet in the sky, at this distance, it was hard to tell exactly how large. “I think I could beat one.”

  “Aye, that you could. If you had your sword an’ shield ready when it attacked. But that’s not how these critters fight.”

  “How do they—”

  Gnebnik pointed to one of the wagons where two girls who looked about twelve and a boy of about eight were chopping at the roots of a stump. “Cover ’em. One of the birds gets too close, have ’em hide under the wagon.”

  Lee nodded to the children, planted his feet, squared his shoulders, and fixed his gaze on the closest bird as it circled above. It swooped in and out of view, gliding between treetops. Its plumage was nondescript—mottled shades of gray. It had a large, wide bill with a bulbous knob at the front and long legs trailing behind it in flight.

  “I guess there’s no school for you kids, huh.”

  “We’re not stupid!” snapped the boy. “We learn in the winter, and I can read the bestiary tome all by myself.”

  “You just look at the pictures,” said one of the girls.

  Like the rest of the work crew, she was dressed in a hodge-podge of layers: protection against both chill and aggressive wildlife. She wore cotton trousers under a linen tunic with a leather vest and leather protection for her wrists, elbows, knees, and even neck. A slender dagger strapped to her thigh, and a sheath at her waist for her hatchet gave her the guise of a hardened adventurer. Yet unlike the adults, she and the other children had accented their clothing in a less-than utilitarian fashion: a mint-green bandanna around her neck matched a hair band of similar color, and her vest bore a whimsical engraving of a six-legged reptilian monster with a basket of flowers in its beak-like maw.

  Lee snapped his head as another puff of smoke caught his eye. A pair of workers split from the main group to stomp out another fire.

  The group seemed determined to do everything you were not supposed to do in the wilderness.

  “Hey mister, can you help me get this branch in the wagon?”

  “You should have chopped it smaller,” said the girl with the green hair band.

  Lee stepped to the back of the wagon, lifting the other end of the branch, glancing at the circling bird every few moments.

  “No!” barked Gnebnik. “Yer watching ’em, not helping ’em.”

  “Sorry, kid.” He gave the branch a final shove and turned around.

  A crashing drew Lee’s attention. Two dozen caprids sprang out of the undergrowth at the far edge of the small clearing.

  Lee spun, drew his sword, squared his stance.

  A wood panther darted from behind the dense green foliage of a rhododendron and charged at the group. The black-and-green-striped feline charged straight through the middle of the herd, splitting it in two.

  Wumm

  “Musket fire, great,” growled Gnebnik. “If every predator within a mile didn’t already know we were here, they do now.”

  Lee couldn’t see the exact position of the panthers through the trees, but the larger group of caprids changed direction again: now heading straight for the work crew.

  “Take cover!” yelled Gnebnik.

  Lee turned back to the children. “Get under the wagon.”

  A second wood panther leapt from the undergrowth, the direction the caprids had originally come from, and pounced on one of the larger ones, its massive maw clamping almost clear around the creature’s neck.

  The herd, now completely panicked, charged straight into the grove of trees. The work crew pressed themselves against the very trees they had been hacking at just moments before.

  A third and fourth bone bill swooped in, their charcoal wingtip feathers passing so close to the crown of a seventy-foot-tall deciduous tree that the wind blast scattered amber and crimson leaves.

  “There’s too many of them,” shouted Lee. “Which one do I focus on?”

  “Just hold position,” said Gnebnik. “An’ keep your back against the wagon.”

  One of the birds dove at the herd, managing to strike a smaller caprid with the knobby tip of its beak. The creature slammed sideways as if hit by a train, tumbling, rolling three times before being trampled by a much larger caprid: one of the elk-like males. The male—as large as a pony—stumbled, finally tripping and falling in a cloud of dust. The bird, sensing a bigger meal, switched targets, landing atop the male and pinning it to the ground with a single talon.

  Lee grimaced. With a known creature for scale, the bird looked a lot more imposing: its wingspan was at least twenty feet.

  The smaller caprid, flat on its side, convulsed like a beached fish, unable to stand. Was it stunned? Crippled? Or perhaps already fatally wounded. A second bone bill landed, clamped its massive beak around the creature’s neck, jerked it skyward, snapped its head forward, and gobbled it down in a matter of seconds.

  Lee shot a glance right and left, his sword hand grasping the hilt so hard his knuckles turned white.

  “Don’ panic,” said Gnebnik. “You said it yourself. You’re armed and armored. You can beat one of ’em in a fight. Jus’ don’t get blindsided.”

  The larger, remaining, downed caprid squirmed against the bone bill’s talon, shoving the bird’s leg noticeably as it struggled to stand up.

  “What’s it… doing?” said Lee. “That male caprid is far too large to…”

  The bone bill slammed a knobby beak into the base of the caprids head, stunning it, before picking it up in its beak. It jerked its head several times, each jerk adjusting the position of the caprid, until only its head and massive set of antlers hung from the side of its beak. The bird bit down, the brutal inner edge of its beak slicing through the caprid’s neck with a wet scrunch. The head and massive set of antlers thudded to the ground.

  “Eeesh,” said Lee.

  The bone bill jerked its head back and swallowed the caprid’s now limp body.

  “That’s how they got ther’ name,” said Gnebnik. “Slice the limbs off anything too large ta gobble down whole.”

  “I can’t hit anything from here,” yelled Lee. “The bow and musket are in the cart.”

  “An’ you don’t have to hit anything. The birds are opportunists. We group up an’ make ourselves an unattractive target. As long as they don’t go into a feeding frenzy, we’re fine.”

  Three more of the massive birds swooped in. Lee counted at least eight in total.

  A pair of bone bills dove at the edge of the undergrowth, driving the caprids back into the clearing. Random chaotic motion in the sky shifted into a formation. They were hunting as a pack, driving their prey to run in circles, driving them to exhaustion.

  “Grab a spear from the wagon,” said Gnebnik.

  “It’s fifty paces away,” said Lee.

  “Not the cart, the wagon. Every wagon has a few.”

  Lee turned toward the wagon. Mounted to the side of the wagon above a spade, there was indeed a spear. He sheathed his sword and unstrapped the seven-foot spear from its mounting.

  “Everything under control?”

  Lee turned to find Shin and Sam had returned unnoticed thanks to Sally’s eerily silent gait.

  “Yeah. Fine. Just not doing much good here.”

  “You’re doing fine,” said Shin. “I’m going to drop Sam off at the cart to snipe, then I have to go back to the tree line to see what happened to the wood panthers.”

  “Right.”

  Two birds dove into the herd in quick succession, the first snapping up a juvenile and devouring it mid-flight, the second missing its strike. The herd shifted, moving as a swirling mass of muscle, long legs, po
unding hooves—and quite a few sets of razor-sharp antlers. A mass now headed straight for Lee’s wagon.

  Lee squared his stance. He could brace the spear against the ground, even the wagon if he needed to. The lead elk may have weighed triple what he did, but a polearm was perfect against a charging enemy.

  Twenty paces and closing.

  Wait. Why am I defending a wagon? Thought Lee. These creatures aren’t charging me, I’m just in the way.

  He dove under the wagon. Several dozen pounding hooves thundered by, the herd parting, flowing around the wagon like a school of fish.

  “Hey mister.” It was a boy of eight wearing a maroon bandanna.

  “Yeah?”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be one of the warriors protecting us?”

  “I am protecting you. Smart-mouth kids get eaten by carnivorous earthworms you know.”

  “Riiiight.”

  Lee rolled out from under the wagon, picked up the spear, and scanned the sky. He counted six birds, all now directly over them.

  “Help protect the draft horses,” yelled the leader of the work crew. “We can’t complete the job without them.”

  “You kids stay put,” he barked, sprinting for the tree, under which the five draft horses were tethered. Blood trailed down the flanks of one of them, a half dozen puncture wounds from the antlers of a caprid. One of the workers, a tall woman with silver hair, lay slumped against the tree.

  “Gnebnik, what’s going on?”

  “Should be fine. The caprid herd scattered. Birds’ll pick ‘em off one at a time.”

  A scream caught Lee’s attention. One of the bone bills poked under the wagon, hunting the children like a woodpecker would probe for grubs.

  Time slowed to a crawl.

  The bird dragged a squirming body from under the wagon. A maroon bandanna flashed into view. The boy grasped the spokes of the wagon wheel.

  Lee hurled his spear at the bird, launching into a sprint before the spear reached its target.

  The spear chunked into the dirt, missing the bird by an arm’s length. The bird ignored the near miss. It released its grip on the boy’s ankle, grabbed him by the calf and yanked, breaking his grip on the wagon wheel.