by B. V. Larson
Then he watched as Arlon shouldered his crossbow as if to shoot. Twrog tensed. The pigs had not yet scented the hunter. Was he perhaps not as foolish as he seemed? But then he did not shoot, and Twrog knew the truth. He had forgotten to load his cumbersome weapon. Twrog sniffed quietly. Men always built things that were overly complex and took time to make ready. Twrog’s club never needed to be loaded.
The pigs became restless. Twrog’s grin returned. He considered a booming shout that would send them all running. That would be quite a surprise for the invader! But he held back. The man had his crossbow loaded now, and Twrog had no desire to feel its sting. Let the man fire at the pigs. Let the river man do the shooting—Twrog would do the eating, later.
Twrog rose from his squatting position into a ready crouch. He carefully shouldered his stout oak club, the thickness and weight of which was greater than the fattest man in the Haven. It was a good club, and had always brought him luck. Privately he thought it was magical. Flittering Faerie might scoff and twitter at the idea, but Twrog was convinced. Today, he suspected he would prove once again his club was special. Today, he would crush a man down with it until his blood and bones were driven into the black earth of the Deepwood.
The man fired his crossbow too late. The pigs were already running. But, to Twrog’s surprise, he saw one of the pigs stumble and go down. The young boar had been struck in the shoulder. The man whooped and raced forward to follow the wounded animal.
Twrog’s flapping lips flared wide. His gnarled, stinking teeth were yellow and riddled with decay. He could not believe this insult. This human was not to be tolerated, killing Twrog’s game in his part of the forest. If this intrusion went unchecked, there might be a dozen of them next year with a dozen yapping dogs leading the way.
Twrog burst out of cover and rushed after the man and the wounded boar. His club rode his shoulder, his fingers wrapped tightly around it. So intent was the human on chasing down his wounded boar that he didn’t seem to notice the giant that trailed him. Twrog controlled his pace. Rather than crashing through the brush, he moved as quietly as he was able, keeping up with the man’s rush without having to break into a thundering trot. He moved with care, ducking under branches rather than smashing them aside and paying attention to where his broad, hairy feet came down. It would not do to alert the human now. The joke would be all the sweeter if the river man’s fate arrived as an utter surprise.
* * *
When Arlon caught up with the small, young boar a feeling of triumph surged through him. He had done it! He had brought down a wild boar in the forests—in the Deepwood no less—and he would take the carcass back to Hamlet. He would present it to Molly with a ribbon as red as the blood that flowed from its shoulder. A ribbon which he would wrap all the way around the beast. She would be pleased and surprised. He had no doubt she would cook it for him. He imagined himself pridefully cutting into the prize in front of her three daughters. Before the first bite was served and swallowed, he would propose. How could a good widow do anything but accept his offer? For the first time since Dera had passed on, he felt truly whole inside.
Arlon’s pleasant moment was short-lived, however. He stooped over the fallen boar, examining it as it twitched in a pile of dead leaves, when something caused the back of his neck to tingle. He had a sensation of foreboding. He turned and felt the hot wash of a vast creature’s breath full upon his face. The giant must have been standing there, holding its breath, waiting for him to notice it.
It was huge. Standing as tall as a farmhouse chimney, it must have weighed as much as any three horses in the Haven put together. On its shoulder rode a surprisingly thick club, a branch that was as big around as a tree trunk. The bark of the tree the club had been torn from still clung to it—rough oak bark it was, black and gnarled.
Arlon did not scream, nor did he stammer and plead. He simply turned and ran for the thickest copse of trees in sight. With a great, warbling cry, the giant gave chase. The ground shook now with crashing footsteps. Arlon could not imagine how this creature could have snuck up on him. It must have followed while he was hot on the trail of the boar, laughing all the while.
Arlon was no soldier and he did not carry a sword. He did have a long knife, however, with which he’d planned to use to dress the boar. He pulled the blade from its sheath on his belt as he ran.
He never made it to the safety of the thick grove of trees. He heard a thrumming sound behind him as if something huge moved through the air. The club swept him up from behind, like a matron’s broom catching up with a fleeing cat. Unlike a broom, however, the club crushed his legs, breaking them both in several places. Arlon was uplifted and thrown, tumbling head over heels into the trunk of an ash tree. He sagged down at on the thick roots and leaves at the bottom of the trunk, a broken tangle of limbs. He lay stunned as the giant approached.
The giant wore a broad, imbecilic grin on its face. He made a great honking sound, a heavy laugh that would haunt Arlon’s dying thoughts.
“Is not right!” said Twrog, shaking his club at Arlon.
Arlon stared back in shock and incomprehension. He felt the giant’s thick fingers, probing into his rucksack. The monster removed the ham hock Molly had given him and gnawed at the meat with obvious relish.
What was not right? Arlon thought. He pondered the giant’s words vaguely as he lost consciousness.
* * *
Arlon awakened once more before he died. A strange figure stood upon a horse and bent low over him. The creature was dressed in rancid black cloth and none of its features could be seen. In the night, the outline of the figure glowed slightly. Arlon knew the being must be one of the Fae, or some other creature of darkness.
“Help me,” Arlon said in a voice that was barely above a whisper.
The figure made a soft sound of dismissal. It ignored Arlon and continued dipping something down toward him. Arlon tried to move, but was unable to operate his broken body.
“Will you not aid a fallen man?” Arlon asked.
The unseen figure chuckled. It was an evil sound, and upon hearing it Arlon abandoned all hope of rescue.
“It is thee, who shall be helping me, this eve!” said the figure. It leaned down from its saddle and commenced working again.
Arlon, his mind fuzzy with the nearness of death, tried to puzzle out what the creature was doing. As far as he could tell, it used a goblet to gather the blood that ran from his wounded body. The goblet was small, silver and ornately decorated. The silver shone in the moonlight, although moonlight shouldn’t have been able to penetrate the thick canopy of the forest above.
Thinking of Molly, Arlon smiled weakly. She would have been so pleased to have tasted the boar. The creature, never leaving its horse’s back, bent far down to scoop with the goblet. The edge of the goblet thumped against each of Arlon’s stacked ribs as it was dragged over them. The being whistled a soft piper’s tune as it worked. Arlon thought it was a wonderful sound. The creature was musical and mysterious.
But why does it fill a silver goblet with my blood? Arlon died while wondering about the Dark Bard’s true purpose.
Chapter Two
The Berrywine River
The final reddening rays of sunlight streamed down from the heavens to touch mountains, sea, leafy treetops and thatched roofs. Near the western border of the River Haven, at the foot of the Black Mountains, the dying light illuminated a rain cloud. Silvery-gray droplets fell from the cloud’s belly and shimmered into arcs of crimson, orange, amber, green, blue and violet. Together, the arcs formed a brilliant rainbow. Everyone in the Haven who saw it knew that somewhere, at the impossible foot of the rainbow, danced a ring of the elusive Faerie.
To the east of the rainbow lay the Berrywine River. There the sunlight fell upon the backs of Brand Rabing and his older brother Jak. The warmth of the sun was slight, but it felt good on Brand’s bare head and helped keep him from shivering beneath his cloak of gray, homespun wool. Brand glanced to the west and shivered a
t the sight of the rainbow. Its presence chilled him anew. For the River Folk rainbows were bad omens indeed, not due to superstition, but rather due to the beings that gathered promptly when rainbows appeared. He hunched over his pole and worked harder.
Brand and Jak were speaking little now, saving their energies for punting the loaded skiff quickly to safety before the light failed completely. They had gotten a late start, and the trip had taken most of the afternoon. The short mast at the center of the skiff was unadorned by a sail as the wind was blowing upriver and into their faces. They had only the current and the power of their limbs to move them downstream.
Jak was three years older, but Brand was taller. They didn’t bear much family resemblance, Jak being blond and brown-eyed, while Brand was dark-haired with eyes like clear blue water. Both, however, had well-muscled shoulders from long years of battling the river’s currents and eddies. They wore tunics of buckskin, the wet sleeves and leggings of which were stained nearly black by the splashing water.
Brand blinked at his brother for a moment, reminded of first his father and then his mother, both dead these last seven years. In years past, they had all traveled to Riverton for the offering as a family. Now only the two brothers were left to farm the family Isle and transport their bounty to the Faerie.
Their hardwood poles glinted wetly. A dragonfly landed on the tip of Brand’s pole, making him smile and pause briefly before it flittered away with a shimmering movement of its translucent wings.
They rounded the last of the Thorn Rocks and entered the deep, slow-moving eddies on the far side. Brand thrust his pole down to where his hands touched the inky river in order to reach the bottom. Soon, they were able to do little more than drift between the spots where they knew the bottom was in range of their long poles.
So busy were the two young men with their task that at first Brand missed the movement of a shadow in the white-barked birch trees on the west side of the river. The second time, however, the water seemed disturbed, and he looked up. What he saw amongst the trees left him gaping.
The shadowy figure of a man on horseback stood there—at least it was man-shaped—but obscured somewhat by the long afternoon shadows of the trees. His surprise was not in the sight so much, although it was strange to see a man in the River Haven clad all in black and staring silently, but rather in the feeling that overcame him. Later, he could only describe it as dread—the feeling of a cornered rabbit that turns to face the fox’s teeth. Instinctively, he hunkered down, losing his grip momentarily on his pole as fear numbed his fingers.
He saw a silvery glint of something in the shadow’s hands. Something long and bright.
“You’re losing your pole!” shouted Jak, turning back to see what the matter was.
Sure enough, it had slipped completely from his hands and was drifting away. Brand made a grab for it, caught it, and nearly fell in as the skiff wallowed with the sudden movement. After a precarious moment, he regained his feet, saved by years of boating experience. He turned back to the shore, ignoring Jak’s perplexed frown.
“What’s gotten into...” began Jak, but he halted, following Brand’s wide-eyed stare.
They looked together at the trees along the western shore. There was nothing there.
“What was it?” hissed Jak, stowing his pole and unlashing the crossbow. “Was it a merling?”
Brand shook his head. “It’s gone.”
“That’s the edge of the Deepwood and the Deepwood is full of merling dens. It probably slipped into the water. You get the boathook. If I see its froggy eyes pop up, I’ll chance a shot at it,” said Jak, hurriedly putting his foot into the stirrup of his crossbow and cocking it.
“No, no merling...” said Brand. “It was a man—maybe.” He quickly described what he had seen, leaving out only his feeling of cold dread.
Jak stared at him for a long moment, and Brand feared that even his brother was not going to believe him. It did seem very odd, even to him. But finally, Jak nodded, placing a bolt into the slot of the crossbow.
“It’s been a strange autumn,” was all that he said.
They watched the water and the trees for a time, but nothing else happened.
“We must get our offering to Riverton before dark,” said Jak when it seemed clear that the shadowy figure would not return. “The Harvest Moon is almost full tonight.”
Brand quietly agreed.
They spent the rest of the trip tensely watching the western shore. The river moved below them, carrying the skiff rapidly downstream in the narrow portions, barely creeping or swirling backward in the wide slow parts. They knew every mile of the river, every deep, backwashing eddy and pole-catching snag. More importantly, since the river changed somewhat with the seasons and the years, they knew how to tell a new snag just by the way the current wavered as the water passed over it. Like all the folk that lived in the River Haven, they felt most at home when near running water, or preferably on running water.
Feeling the chill breath of the night that lay ahead, Brand half wished he had worn his newest thigh-high boots, dreading the intrusion of river water and squishy delta mud when they had to wrestle the cargo up to the docks. These older boots were no longer thigh-high as he had grown so greatly this past year. He had not yet been able to bring himself to wear his new boots on the river, wanting both to keep them clean and new, and at the same time wanting to savor the comfortable softness of the old ones.
Autumn had come early this year, very early. It seemed that winter was already on its way, hard on autumn’s heels. The Black Mountains to the east and the higher peaks of Snowdonia to the north were already dusted with caps of snow. Hail had damaged much of the crops, ending hopes of a good harvest. Worse still, there had been many signs that things were not right in the River Haven. Rainbows occurred almost daily, earning frowns and concerned looks cast over hunched shoulders. Reports of wolves, merlings and worse things had become commonplace. All over the Haven, from the High Marshes to the Glasswater Lake delta, came word of things appearing from the forests and mountains, and even out of the Berrywine River itself. Fisherman and hunters made sure they were home by dark, and the shepherds hurried their flocks into their pens early each evening. Up on the Isle of Harling, as far up the river as Haven folk ever ventured, a hill giant was said to have wrecked a farm with his two great fists. Many scoffed, though all were given to glancing back at the trail behind.
Brand looked down at the crossbow and the boathook that lay atop the skiff’s netted cargo of broadleaf melons and berrywine casks. He wondered if a single steel-tipped bolt could stop a hill giant. When he looked up, his brother Jak was eyeing him sidelong.
Jak huffed at him then and he was reminded that he wasn’t punting, nor was he watching for trouble as was his assigned task. Worse, they were close to the Talon Rapids, where the going became the toughest. Blushing, he put his back into it and turned to watch the shores again. Jak returned to his work in the prow, shaking his head.
Both heaved a sigh of relief when they rounded the final bend into the wide slow section of the river that surrounded Stone Island. In the blue-white twilight, Stone Island was an impressive sight. On three sides the island rose up on cliffs of hard granite, twenty to fifty feet high in most places. Atop this gray wall perched a hilly land of forests and glens. The fourth side, the eastern side, dipped down to the water and cradled a lagoon and the village of Riverton. Chosen long ago as a good site for a community as it was well-protected from storms and floods, Riverton had been the prosperous center of the Haven for as long as anyone could remember.
* * *
Darkness fell swiftly as they drifted toward the island. The first anchored buoy clanged its bell in greeting and they exchanged smiles. Their faces were now illuminated only by the light of the lantern that swung from the mast. They let the current take them now, lifting their poles from the water and saving their energies for the final push to the village docks at Riverton. Both were tired, a bit shivery, and glad the
journey was almost at an end. It seemed to Brand that their home island was further away from Riverton this autumn than ever before.
Tonight, Stone Island was a towering shadow of blackness. Only the twinkling lights from the outlying houses that were sprinkled along the cliffs and the warm diffuse glow that came from Riverton relieved the darkness. It wasn’t long before the skiff slipped into the lagoon and nudged up against the docks. Brand and Jak were lucky; there was plenty of space at the high public docks. There was no need to jump down into the cold squelching mud of the river to pull the skiff up to shore. A lone cart waited for them at the docks. A chestnut carthorse stood, tail flipping. The cart’s driver climbed down from the board and held aloft a heavy brass lantern in greeting.
“Hey there, Corbin!” shouted Brand to the driver. “Give us a hand, man!”
With deliberate steps that suggested bulk, the man approached. Brand noted that the man had the hood of his cloak pulled up and that the lantern failed to penetrate the gloom within. He frowned. Was this truly his cousin, Corbin Rabing? Or was it someone good at imitating his slow, stumping gait? Thoughts of the shadowy horseman back on the river sprang to mind.
“What’s wrong with you, Brand?” asked Jak. He was a bit short-tempered after the three hour journey. “Take this cask, will you?”
Brand clambered up onto the dock and took the proffered cask. He set it down on the creaking boards while still eyeing the approaching figure. Then he shook his head, chiding himself. Of course it was Corbin. No shadow man could walk like that.
Corbin stepped closer and threw back the hood of his cloak. “It’s a cold one tonight, isn’t it? It took you gentlemen quite some time to get here. Couldn’t use the sails?” he asked. His wide face split with a smile that showed his strong white teeth. “Good to see you, in any case.” He was the same age as Brand, both of them being about twenty, but looked older with his heavy reddish beard and big-boned shoulders. Corbin was as wide as Brand was tall. As was often the case with young hard-working men, there was no fat on either of them.