by GJ Kelly
“Alas, they did. And all our lands are paying the price. Perhaps later on our journey we can discuss the folly of trusting wizards, but for now we need these vakin logs to burn. Have we used all the brandy?”
“Except for the last of it at the torches.”
“Dwarfspit. Let’s hope the torches burn brighter than this pile of worthless twigs.”
Flames suddenly began licking in the heart of the stack, and the crackling and hissing intensified.
“Call it another name,” Berek mumbled, “Make it a rude one and it might become a blazing inferno.”
oOo
54. A Big Bit of Bough
It was hot, the heat from the blazing bonfire behind them dispelling the chill of the northerly breezes, logs crackling and flames roaring in all three of the conflagrations so urgently coaxed into life. Now, two hours after calling the recalcitrant piles of worthless twigs rude names, they were huddled close together, Reesen sitting on his folded cloak, swollen eyes closed and weeping. From time to time, Ognorm wetted a cloth with a weak silvertree solution and squeezed the drops into his friend’s eyes, which seemed to help a little. Lamps glowed, shutters wide, and though the torches weren’t lit, firestones and steel remained ready to ignite their front line of defence against the shadow-creature.
Prester had said he’d seen it half an hour earlier, in the gloom beyond the starlit glade Allazar’s blast had created, but no-one else had caught sight of it. Allazar had shone the Light of Aemon where Prester had pointed, but of course it revealed nothing.
Mist clung to the forest floor out in the glade and beyond, knee-high in places, but the air was clear, and the stars in that clear sky a welcome sight. Sparks from the fires floated up on currents of hot air billowing from the pyres, the heat burning away the mist from around the casket tree.
“This time tomorrow,” Gawain announced over the muted roar of the fires, “And all being well, we’ll be on the plains.”
“D’you reckon the shadow-thing will follow us out there, melord?”
“Not if we roast its threken arse tonight it won’t,” Prester asserted, with great passion, and spat towards the glade before taking another bite from a meal bar.
“I don’t intend to allow it to feed this night. And if it comes within sight and range of the White Staff, Allazar, I want you to loose light upon it. If that doesn’t persuade it to keep its distance, then by all means, roast its arse. Just make sure that if you bring down a tree, it falls away from us, not on our heads. My shoulder still aches from the last one to land on it.”
“Heh,” Ognorm chuckled, “It were just a bit of a bough, melord, not a whole tree!”
Allazar cleared his throat.
“Arr, well, it were a big bit of a big bough, though. Melord.”
“Trust me, Ognorm,” Gawain sighed, “By the time the story’s told in the main room of the Traveller’s Rest, it’ll be a whole tree.”
The world exploded in an immense series of concussions which saw fiery brands and embers blasted out into the clearing along with great splinters of wood and earth. The force of the blasts knocked men off their feet, hands and arms instinctively covering heads as burning debris rained down upon them. Another pair of concussions, so close together the sounds were barely distinguishable from one another, and more wood and earth blasted towards the glade. Then there came a load cracking, wood under great stress splitting and groaning, and Gawain risked a glance up and to his left. The casket tree was leaning slowly towards the south, toppling away from them, the glade ablaze with the scattered remains of the southerly bonfire.
“Darkweasel!” Prester screamed, as the casket tree fell, and snatched up his bow to loose a hasty shot harmlessly into the darkness.
Allazar thrust himself to his knees and loosed a torrent of white fire through the bonfire behind them and into the space beyond, hosing an area towards the southeast, hopefully.
But then they were running, Ognorm dragging Reesen, towards the north, the ground beneath them bulging upward and bursting as roots were torn from their centuries-old resting-place.
The fall of the tree was deafening, limbs and boughs overhead splintering and shattering through its neighbours, the immense trunk splitting and tearing as it smashed into the darkwood that had stood proudly beside it for hundreds of years.
Gawain glimpsed Agomak demGoth in the gloom, a Rod of Asteran held casually in his hand, watching the catastrophe unfold, firelight flickering from his iron mask, expression inscrutable behind the dull metal. Without hesitation, Gawain hurled his arrow, and watched it zip across the thirty yards between them to thud harmlessly into the trunk of the tree beside the dark wizard’s head.
Berek loosed a bolt from his crossbow, but they couldn’t see if it struck the mark, momentarily robbed of sight by another torrent of white fire which arced and flickered and stained their vision purple.
“The Orb!” Allazar screamed, “Secure the Orb! I shall take the demGoth!”
And with that, the First of Raheen charged forward, staff held like a pitchfork, screaming “Vex!” and loosing streamers of white fire which spread in all directions.
Gawain glanced to his right. The glade was lit by starlight and the flaming debris from what had been the southern bonfire. The eastern conflagration was still burning, though partially collapsed and fiery wreckage lay about its base. The northern fire which had warmed their backs still stood, a blazing beacon of light and heat in the night.
“The torches!” Gawain shouted, sounds of white and black fire receding towards the southeast, “Get the torches alight!”
Back they went, back to the area of ground where they’d waited, ground now torn open and smelling of damp and mould and rich dark decay. Reesen peered through narrowed and streaming eyes, searching for Allazar and the demGoth, Ognorm beside him, lamp held aloft in his left hand and an arrow strung in his right.
Berek was cocking his crossbow, Prester and Loryan scrabbling to gather the torches and to find the bottle of brandy to douse the canvas heads for ignition. Gawain stared at the fallen tree, a shattered stump some four feet high, tilted at a crazy angle, the remains of the mighty trunk running towards the southwest. Then he ran forward through the remains of the southern bonfire, searching for the casket which had been chained to one of the tree’s lower limbs. He could see a faint light, glowing from beneath a mass of split and shattered wood, one of the lamps which had been attached to the chains which bound the lid of the casket closed.
Away to his left, bright flashes of Allazar’s white fire in the trees where the wizards, themselves unseen, did battle. Gawain drew the longsword, and began hacking and prying at the tangled mass of wood that lay between him and the Orb.
“Gawain! Gawain! Get out of there!” Berek screamed, and something bright and silver flashed passed his face.
Gawain heard the crossbow-bolt strike something hard and unyielding, and glanced to his left. The shadow-creature recoiled a little at the impact of the bolt, no more than thirty feet away from him, pulsing, oozing forward hesitantly in the swirling mist. Gawain lifted the sword, and braced, two hands gripping the hilt firmly, eyes fixed on the shadow creature. He heard his name called again and again, saw the dim flashes of white fire from the corner of his left eye, and noted the creature flinching a little each time they came.
Then, in a blur, the creature shot forward, completely ignoring Gawain, passing within inches of him, and in the dim silver-grey of starlight, flung itself into the mist swirling over the wreckage of the tree-fall. It shuddered, and debris began first to judder, and then to convulse violently. The creature, Gawain knew instinctively, was utterly unopposed by wood. It had simply passed through all obstructions, grasped the Orb casket and was thrashing and jerking wildly to free it from beneath the fallen tree, suffering the pain of the lamplight for the sake of its need to feed. And as the piles of debris convulsed and shuddered, he also knew instinctively it would succeed.
The longsword crackled, the aquamire from phi
al, Eye, Aknid and demGoth seeming to swim anxiously, almost frenetically, deep within the steel. Wood groaned and splintered, drowning out the faint crackling of the blade.
“It is not for you!” Gawain shouted, and brought the blade slashing down…
Whether the ancient sword of Raheen struck the shadow-creature or simply the trunk of the fallen darkwood tree, Gawain could not say. He felt the impact shudder the length of his arms and it was so violent it would have made his teeth rattle had they not been so tightly clenched at the time.
But almost at the same moment, a flaming torched sailed into the pile, landing about eighteen inches from where his sword was embedded, and suddenly the violent shuddering of the woodpile subsided, and something very black and very fast sped away to the southwest.
“Get out of there, Raheen!” Berek gasped, trying to pull Gawain away.
“No! Bring fire! Bring fire! We have to free the Orb or the creature will take it!”
“Threk! Fire! Bring fire and lamps!”
Gawain began working with the blade again, but Berek eased him aside.
“It needs lifting, Raheen, not cutting!”
“Oy!” Ognorm shouted, leading Reesen, the elf with his hand on the dwarf’s shoulder while the dwarf held two flaming torches aloft and hurriedly picked his way through the burning debris towards them.
More flashes of white fire from further south, and then the brilliant cold white of an Aaron’s Candle burst some distance away. Gawain found a torch thrust into his hand, and sheathed his blade, trying to ignore the tingling in his hands and forearms from the impact of his immense blow earlier. He was gently eased aside, and found himself standing with Reesen, while Ognorm, Berek, and Prester brought their strength to bear on the debris, Loryan holding two torches aloft to illuminate their work.
“MiThal hurt?”
“No, mifrith. You?”
“Eyes hurt,” the elf shrugged, “Babycry hurt, Ognorm say.”
Gawain glanced at the elf’s face. His eyes were red raw, tears still streaming, but he was holding them open, a little, tiny slivers of pink where white should be, and brown pupils swimming in watery tears.
“Reesen see vizarrn am Morloch, miThal, come near soon. Reesen see…”
“Reesen sheene.” Gawain finished the sentence for the Ranger.
“Isst, miThal,” Reesen smiled through his pain.
Another quick survey of the scene, and Gawain eased back a little further from the men working in the wood-pile, logs and boughs being heaved and tossed this way and that. He took a position to Reesen’s right, and watched as the elf nocked an arrow by feel, and tested the string, face turned slightly east of south.
Another candle burst in the sky, but this time it was dull, and it moved. Gawain had seen such a thing before, in the hills east of Harks Hearth.
“Allazar come. Vizarrn am Morloch follow.”
“Yes,” Gawain agreed, following the dark wizard’s candle as it tracked Allazar’s progress back towards them.
To his right, he heard men groaning with effort and then take a deep breath before groaning with effort once more. Before him, above the trees, the candle began to flicker and fade. Behind, the two remaining bonfires crackled and roared, and somewhere out there in the darkness the shadow lurked.
“I can feel the chain!” Ognorm shouted, “We need to lift ‘er up a bit so’s I can undo it!”
More groaning.
“Narr not enough! Needs a lever under it!”
“We haven’t got one, Ognorm!” Prester called.
“Needs to make one then! Got a bit of wood ‘andy?”
“Threk… can you get the other side?”
“Narr, thrukken trunk’s in the way!”
Gawain sighed, filled with anxious frustration, flexing the muscles in his arms. They were beginning to ache, holding the flaming brands aloft, and the light from them was flickering, fading a little. His shoulder ached, his hands and forearms were numb, and he tightened and loosened his grip on the torches to try to get some blood flowing and some feeling back into them.
“Allazar come. Reesen see,” the elf sniffed, and took his right hand from the bowstring to wipe his eyes with the back of his hand.
More concussions from within the darkness of the forest then, a pair of black fireballs exploding, though they seemed much weaker than the first strike which had burst apart the bonfire and helped bring about the fall of the casket tree.
“Lift again! Go! Go! Go! I got it! Ease back!”
Gawain turned his attention to the flickering torchlight and lamps to his right. Men on and in the pile of wood.
“Chain’s off!” Ognorm announced triumphantly, “But the thrukken weight of the trunk is on the thrukken box!”
“Can we dig under it?” Berek demanded.
“Dunno, Serre, give me yer sword an’ I’ll ‘ave a go!”
Dwarfspit, Gawain thought, Hurry up! The torches are burning out!
And they were, no-one had brought wood-tar or ellamas oil or any other fuel with them. Once the brandy-soaked rags had burned away, all that remained was the wood itself.
Another candle burst high in the air, brilliant white, bathing them all with its welcome light, illuminating the entire tableau. The four in the wreckage of the fallen tree took immediate advantage of it, Ognorm up to his waist in the debris digging furiously with Berek’s shortsword while the Imperator and Prester clambered over the tangle of wood to heave a long and heavy bough from under lesser branches, hoping to use it as a lever to raise the fallen trunk and free the Orb casket.
Reesen sniffed, and took the tension on his bowstring again. There was another exchange of fire within the trees to the southeast, flashes of white lightning bright but brief, and then the crackling riposte of dark fire. The candle began to fade, and Reesen’s right elbow lifted high, back muscles flexing to draw the longbow until the string rested lightly against his chin.
“Get it under! Get it under!” Loryan called as the candle flicked and died, plunging them back into relative darkness once more.
Reesen loosed his shot.
Gawain held his breath.
“Heave! Heave on the threken thing! The torches are burning out!”
Reesen sighed and drew another shaft, and nocked it.
“Oggy, get your weight on the lever! Give the end of the chain to Loryan!”
More light in the woods, Aemon’s Light, cold, bright, but harmless. Then it winked out, to be followed by a flash of white fire streamers.
Reesen’s bow creaked a little as he drew its full weight. The torch in Gawain’s left hand guttered, giving off nothing but the red glow of useless embers. In its light, his left hand looked red, too, as though sunburned.
“Heave now! Heave now! Loryan!”
Reesen loosed his shot.
The torch in Gawain’s right hand guttered and died, leaving the King of Raheen holding two useless, glowing sticks. He tossed them behind him, unhooked the miner’s lamp from his belt and held it aloft instead.
“It’s moving!” Loryan practically screamed, “It’s threken moving! Just a little more boys! Just a little more!”
Reesen nocked a third shaft and drew it in smooth, flowing, single motion, and released the shot. Then he rested the bow on his boot.
“Out! Out! It’s out!” Loryan screamed.
Wood cracked and groaned, a chain rattled, and in the gloomy glow of lamps Gawain saw Ognorm, up to his waist in pieces of shattered wood, holding aloft the Orb casket, intact, and unharmed.
Another light burst overhead, and Gawain saw Allazar some forty yards away striding rapidly towards a heap of something lying on the ground. The wizard paused, and glanced to his right, straight at Gawain and Reesen, and then he thrust his staff forward and down, and blasted Agomak demGoth to pieces.
oOo
55. Cold Hands, Warm Heart
“I had to be sure he wasn’t faking it,” Allazar sniffed, grubby white robes covered in gore. “Just because he had Reese
n’s arrows sticking out of his arm and chest doesn’t mean he was dead.”
They were standing between the two bonfires, the Orb on the ground and chained to an immense exposed root at the shattered stump of the fallen tree, in clear view before the easternmost conflagration, while they stood with their backs to the northernmost. Allazar, leaning on his staff as ever, looked tired, but elated.
“He threken is now,” Prester muttered, and there were smiles all around.
Even Reesen looked happier, his eyes still red and inflamed but open a little wider now. Gawain stood quietly, shrouded in his cloak, eyeing the gloom around them, hands and arms still numb. He turned his back to them all, pretending to gaze away to the east, and thrust his hands out from under his cloak. The skin was red, angry-looking. He tucked them back under his cloak and turned to face them again.
“If we can keep the shadow at bay until sunrise, it’s a straight run east to the plains and the men of Callodon waiting there. The Orb will need to be taken as far as possible before a night-camp on the plains; there’s no kindling out there to burn, so a goodly distance of starlight far from the tree line will be the Orb’s best defence. Assuming the shadow can leave the forest, that is.”
All eyes turned to him.
“Your tone is strange, Raheen.”
“Indeed it is, Longsword.”
“Simply explaining what must be done. Remember, it is the Orb that matters. Nothing else.”
“Now yer giving me trouser-bricks, melord, an’ ain’t nothing in this place done that yet.”
“What aren’t you telling us, Raheen?”
Gawain took a deep breath, and let it out slowly before answering, staring Berek straight in the eye as he did so.
“How long was it after Farayan struck the shadow-creature with his sword before the mould began to take him?”
“Ah threk no, no, no!” Loryan gasped, “By the threken Spire, no!”
Gawain pushed his cloak open, and held out his hands, the flesh bright red in the firelight. Allazar’s staff glowed, a sterile Light of Aemon bathing the scene. When Gawain drew back his sleeves and exposed his forearms, it looked as though he’d dipped both his hands in scalding water up to his elbows.