by GJ Kelly
Gawain confirmed Reesen’s assessment of the tracks in a forest floor which had lain otherwise undisturbed for centuries. Not that he needed to; this was, in effect, Reesen’s home ground. The elf moved away, to the very edge of the fog-bound circle, studying the leaf litter. When he returned, he shrugged slightly, and whispered a short stream of elvish which Allazar duly translated.
“He can see no obvious reason for our quarry’s change of course, Longsword. But change it they have.”
“Understood. Mitak, Reesen,” Gawain whispered, and signalled they should continue the hunt.
It was frustrating. On their way to the city from their camp on the plains of Juria, they’d been able to proceed at a loping trot once clear of the narrow region they’d feared had been seeded with traps. Now, on similar ground, they were reduced to little more than a fast walk at best, and a slow one at worst where patches of fog thickened and closed in for no apparent reason.
Two hours of that, and they came to a stream, where Gawain called a halt and they took the opportunity to refill water skins and to drink.
“Still a couple of hours until noon,” he complained, eyeing the mist with contempt. “And no sign of it fading.”
“Mithal,” Reesen whispered, and when Gawain turned to the elf, held up two fingers and pointed to his own dark brown eyes. “Reesen hunt, near,” and then made a circular motion with his index finger.
“Stay close,” Gawain ordered, and the elf nodded before loping silently away into the mist.
“Anything happens melord, how’re we to find ‘im in this?”
“Nothing will happen, Ognorm. Reesen wouldn’t be swinging a loop around us if his Sight had shown any kind of threat within range of us, dark or light.”
“Arr. Sorry melord. Just a bit worried about me mate, I spose.”
“We all are,” Gawain admitted, “Without him, we wouldn’t have made half the distance we have this morning.”
“Arr, that’s true.”
“We seem to be heading almost due north now, Longsword, unless the fog has addled my senses?”
“No, Allazar, your eggs are as firmly poached as ever. Our quarry has swung in an arc. The light from the sun is brightest behind us, and the moss on the tree yonder confirms our general heading. Curious. Once clear of the city, they had a free run to the west. Instead, they swing north.”
“The canal you spoke of is in that direction, my lord?”
“It is, Jerryn. Though I doubt it’s their goal. These aren’t elves we’re tracking, bound for Ostinath. Besides, according to the wizard Arramin, it’s likely the immense rock fall at the farak gorin has crippled the canal’s mechanisms and rendered it useless.”
“Why then go north?”
Gawain shrugged, and pondered the question. “To evade their pursuers. That’s likely why Reesen is casting his loop around us, to see if he cuts a second trail left by the force which ambushed the Orb-carriers back in the city.”
“It is strange,” Allazar mused aloud, “They count a dark wizard in their number, likely one of significant power. Yet they abandon their course, and flee. The old forest of Pellarn is broad indeed to the west, much further so than the four days on foot it took us to gain the city from the east. Broader still in the direction they have taken, and with unfriendly geography twixt the forest and the Empire.”
“The great river gorge. I saw it from the Wheel of Thal-Marrahan, the scouts described it too. But that’s a good ways north of there.”
“But why should they flee at all?” Allazar persisted.
“Perhaps because the force they are fleeing from is superior.”
“The bodies within the heart of Calhaneth seemed to suggest otherwise.”
“We don’t know the time-line of events there, Allazar. The Gorian guardsmen may have been guarding the tower awaiting friendly forces to claim the Orb, and were surprised and killed by the dark wizard before that force arrived. Or, they may have been scouts sent ahead, who fell foul of the dark wizard within.”
“I still hold myself responsible for delaying our arrival, and thus losing the Orb.”
“Then you’re still a bastard,” Gawain smiled, though his eyes remained hard, and scanned the shifting mists around them.
“You seem changed, somehow,” Allazar whispered, stepping a little closer to his king. “Since we left Harks Hearth you are become much more the longsword warrior of old, or so it seems to me.”
Gawain flicked at glance at the wizard, and smiled a thin-lipped and cruel smile. “Life is become simple again, Allazar. Find the enemy, kill the enemy. There are no wheels within wheels here, no hand of Morloch pulling hidden strings. No distractions, no infernal box of worms. And all of us here well able to cope with whatever we encounter along the way.”
The wizard frowned, and studied the young man beside him, noting the sharpness in the steel-grey eyes scanning the wall of fog across the stream before them. Gawain seemed to be completely alert, all senses heightened. Sharp was a good word, the wizard decided, and, worryingly, it had described Gawain perfectly in the days of the Ramoth…
Reesen loomed out of the mist to the north, and strode silently towards them to leap nimbly over the stream.
“Much feets, miThal,” the elf announced softly, nodding to the west. “Much feets hunt vizarrn am Morloch.”
A quick stream of elvish, and Allazar confirmed that the Ranger had cut trail to the west, a large party of men, perhaps as many as twenty, moving parallel to the track left by the Orb-carriers.
Gawain nodded his thanks, and they moved off, continuing their necessarily slow pursuit until, an hour later, Reesen slowed, and squatted, bringing them to a halt again.
“Camp,” he signalled, and they advanced cautiously.
Something, they knew, was wrong. The ground was churned here, but flattened there, as though bedrolls had been laid and then, perhaps in the middle of the night, the camp hastily abandoned. The remains of charred bundles of sticks were found, makeshift torches, still smelling of burnt wood.
They moved cautiously, peering at the ground, and then Gawain squatted on his haunches at the periphery of the enemy campsite, drew his boot knife, and flipped a clod of humus, revealing something pale and white, the size of a plate, stark against the blackness of the overturned soil.
“What is it, my lord?” Jerryn whispered, as they gathered.
“That, my friend, is all that remains of an Aknid of Gothen.”
“If that is the carapace,” Allazar gasped, “Where then are the rest of its remains?”
Gawain dug a little deeper, turning up nothing but green and black mould.
“There are the remains of its remains, Allazar. Mould and rot.”
“Like them blokes back there,” Ognorm muttered.
“Yes. Just like them.”
“What happened here, my lord?”
“I don’t know. We’ll take a little time and look further. Reesen, cast a loop please,” and Gawain made the necessary hand-signal.
They found five more of the bleached Aknid carapaces ringing the campsite, but of the creatures themselves nothing else remained but mould. Four makeshift torches were found in all, bits of rag binding bundles of twigs together and rags soaked in what smelled like strong spirits serving to provide light. Reesen returned, and through Allazar’s translation, announced that the force tracking the Orb-carriers had maintained their parallel course, but that the enemy were swinging further east.
“It’s as though they mean to circle the city, according to Reesen.”
“Thank you, Allazar. Mitak, Reesen.”
“Melord, I don’t mean to sound as thick as I am broad, but what’s going on? What’s done fer them spider-crabs?”
“I don’t know, Ognorm. According to Allazar, fire is the best-known way of destroying them. But these weren’t burned.”
“According to me, Longsword, fire is the only reliable way of destroying them, though your sword recently required me to amend my notes.”
“Yes,” Gawain mused. “The carapace of the Aknid is infused with aquamire, which gives its armour great strength, like the skin-plates of the Kraal-beast. It may be why only the carapace now remains, while all else is reduced to corruption. And I am beginning to think I spoke far too soon earlier, when I said all of us here are well able to cope with whatever we encounter along the way.”
“Oh that doesn’t sound very encouraging,” Jerryn sighed.
“No, it don’t,” Ognorm agreed. “You got some notion of what done this, then, melord?”
“Not what. But there’s a common thread which seems to bind all these mould-corpses together.”
“An insight, Longsword?” Allazar asked, frowning again.
“A feeling,” Gawain lied, again. “The Aknid of Gothen here, and the bodies behind us. All were alive when they were overcome by whatever did this.”
“Arr, well there goes a trouser-brick an’ no mistake,” Ognorm groaned.
“The body propped by the wall in the tower, probably beyond aid and left as comfortable as could be by his guardsmen comrades. The one on the chequered flagstones an enemy, a mercenary, and simply abandoned by friend and foe alike. The other, propped against the statue, and the one propped against the tree a few hours back. Whatever took them, found them alive, and left them as we saw them.”
“Dwarfspit,” Ognorm sighed, “And no sign of any fighting neither?”
“None,” Gawain asserted, eyeing the ground within the limits of the fog around them. “Whatever it was, they abandoned their camp in haste. No bolts or arrows in the ground or the trees, they weren’t ambushed by the force pursuing them. The torches bother me, too. Lights would only serve to mark their location for an enemy.”
“I do not think I like this new turn of events, Longsword,” Allazar shuddered. “It speaks of evil beyond my ken, and there is evil enough in dark wizards and those who serve them.”
Gawain gazed upward, but the fog obscured the treetops, and the lowest boughs of the darkwood trees being high up, even they were vague and indistinct, and yielded no further clues.
“Well, it would seem that the Aknids were the only creatures to suffer here. On with the hunt, let’s see if we can add to the misery of those who have the Orb.”
oOo
35. Light…
It was perhaps three hours past noon when the world brightened around them and expanded a little, visibility extending to perhaps forty yards, though that of course meant little in a forest where immense trees grew at least every twenty. It did, however, mean that the hunters could increase their pace, and increase it they did, and gladly. The faster they moved, the warmer their blood after the damp and the chill of the morning.
Their track swung ever eastward, until Reesen drew them up again from his position twenty yards in the van. The reason for the abrupt halt became instantly clear when they joined him. There was a body, intact and quite dead, lying face down some forty feet from them, the dull grey of a steel crossbow bolt sticking out of its back.
Cautiously, and with weapons at the ready, they advanced, spreading out in case someone or something which Reesen’s Sight could not see lay in wait nearby. Just beyond the body of the dead mercenary, the ground was churned, humus and leaf litter scattered. Plenty of bolts and arrows were in evidence, jutting from the ground where they’d been spent and from tree trunks struck when they’d missed their intended targets.
More bodies were found, all intact, or rather all unaffected by the filthy blight which had made mould of their former comrades. Six in all were found, in a line trending towards due east, four downed by bolts and arrows, two almost cut in half by sword or axe. Blood on the ground around them was still tacky.
“Could this have happened last night, Longsword? Could it be what we heard? It makes no sense.”
Gawain was as astonished as the others. “By rights, these men should be two days from here, at least.”
“Unless…” Ognorm began, but then suddenly fell silent.
“Unless what?”
“Narr melord, ignore me, I’m an idiot who don’t know his place.”
“Your place is here with the rest of us, speak Ognorm.”
“I was going to say, unless they bin where they went, and come back again.”
Allazar’s eyebrows arched, and Gawain nodded thoughtfully.
“These are kin to the mercenaries once hired to guard Ramoth encampments and towers. Not the bravest of souls. Ognorm could be right, they might have fled their dark master, or been sent to fetch reinforcements. Their flight could have been noticed by the force pursuing them, and they were hunted down before they could escape.”
“But where could they have bin… been,” Allazar corrected himself, “For a day or two, only to return this way?”
“We’re headed straight for the canal, and the docking pool must be a fair distance south of us now. Perhaps they’d hoped to take a barge north after all, and finding the canal of no more use than a clear path through the trees, these few abandoned their quest and their comrades, and fled back this way, hoping to continue westward to Empire land.”
“Again, it makes no sense, though as I have often conceded, Longsword, I am no military man. What prevented them from continuing west? Why did they turn, and circle the city? Surely the men pursuing them were to their rear, not pressing them from their flank?”
“I don’t know,” Gawain admitted. “What I do know is that we have perhaps two and a half hours of daylight left, and these corpses do not possess the Orb. Reesen, cast a loop.”
“Isst, miThal.”
They watched the elf lope away to the west to begin circling their position, waiting quietly for his return. When he did, he reported excitedly that the two trails leading eastward had merged. The men in the second force pursuing the Orb-carriers were no longer content to shadow their quarry, but like Gawain, were hard on their heels.
“Then these dead mercenaries must have blundered through the forest in the fog, last night, and were cut down by the force which had been tracking them. The Gorians that killed these men must have then returned to their comrades, and that means we’re only half a day behind that force.”
“And Reesen has seen nothing light, nor dark, Longsword. They must be a goodly distance away.”
“True. If they reached the canal, the tow-path would give them a clear run south. Come, let’s take advantage of what light we have left, and hurry as best we can.”
The best they could saw them arrive near sunset at the foot of a gentle slope that led up to the slight crest along which ran the Canal of Thal-Marrahan, arrow-straight to the north and to the south. From their position in the trees they could see the enemy’s tracks running south, back towards Calhaneth, and towards the docks beyond the lock gates at the terminus of the great water road.
Shadows were long and diffuse, night was falling, and the fog seemed to be closing in again. Gawain ordered them to remain concealed within the trees, while he himself crawled on his belly up the slope, across the expanse of scrubby, weed-blown ground, to the familiar blue-stone tow-path.
Cautiously, he slithered forward, and peeped over the edge. The water level in the canal had fallen several feet, the water itself brackish and still. The chains he knew were there at the bottom of the canal were as motionless as they day he himself had silenced them in the hut at the lock gates many miles to the north. A glance to the south revealed nothing of interest, simply the darkness of the canal stretching away into the wall of mist.
Back at the trees, he quietly informed them of his discovery.
“Then Master Arramin was correct,” Allazar sighed, “And the creation of the unnamed canyon at the farak gorin has made a ruin of the canal.”
“I don’t know, Allazar. The water level has fallen considerably and the chains are still. What it does mean beyond doubt is that those who stole the Orb either know nothing of the canal’s operation, or the mechanism is as Arramin said, unable to operate. Either way, we know the enemy ha
sn’t taken a barge from the dock and travelled north upon it.”
“We have the lamps, melord.”
“I know, but the fog is rolling along the canal in what little breeze there is, and we are still well outnumbered. Those six back there were destroyed by their enemies in such conditions as these, which means we should certainly err on the side of caution, even with Reesen’s eyes on our side.”
“You don’t think they got folk who can see in the dark like Reesen can, melord?”
“I doubt it, master Ognorm,” Allazar smiled reassuringly. “The Sight of the Eldenelves is a uniquely elven trait.”
“Arr. Good. Only it would be unfair if they did. Stealing our advantage an’ all.”
“You make a good point,” Gawain conceded. “I suppose we could move a little further south, with Reesen at point. No lamps though.”
On, then, they moved, and swiftly too, along the blue-stone of the tow-path, Reesen leading the way. Great banks of fog rolled over them on the stiffening breezes from the north, chill and cheerless, stars in the clear night sky seen only occasionally through holes in the mist. For an hour they jogged, quietly, on the balls of their feet, each with their eyes fixed on the fellow in front, all save for Reesen, whose Sight pierced the fog one moment and then, his eyes normal, scanning the path ahead for obstructions.
Suddenly, and without warning, the world grew immensely brighter, the silvery-grey of starlight flooding their surrounds as the last of the fog from the north blew past them towards the ruined city. Gawain uttered a quick hiss, and at once they stopped their southerly run and scurried into the trees, breathing well enough for their efforts at speed and stealth.
“Wind’s rising a little, my lord,” Jerryn said softly. “Though how much of it will stir the fog in the trees I can’t say.”