A War of Stones: Book One of the Traveler Knight

by Howard Norfolk

  There had been some screams in the darkness, as the Whisper had visited a part of their camp. They had all stood to arms in the fire light, as the goblins and trolls fought one of the powerful dolls and finally set it alight. Then they did for their comrades who were changing before their eyes into ghouls. They called it going white: an unnatural death by the Dimm’s poisonous magic, followed by a transformation to being one of the undead. Even with the clean water from the springs they had found at the base of the hills, and the delivery of twenty food carts to them, his army was in a bad mood as they chewed down their gator meat and bread.

  They hadn’t come into the trees to fight a battle of attrition with wolf cavalry and a sinister monster otherwise almost alone in its sinister wood. This was supposed to be just a side-step to secure materials before the march across Big Stone and the siege of the Stone Pile. Yet here they were in this the situation and it was intolerable.

  The body was in good shape for having been gutted and burned down into a black husk. It was still pinioned upright, transfixed by a half dozen pile lances that had blistered and baked, but mostly refused to burn because they were too green. The face was unmistakable: it was that of a middle aged human with the lower half mutilated and stitched over into a mask.

  “Any idea of what direction it came from?” Kulith asked the goblins who were standing around.

  “It slipped out of a clay bank, a few hours after we had camped down here,” one told him.

  Kulith stalked around the edges of the still smoking pyre, looking at the thing, wishing it were still animate enough to destroy it again. This was a patient monster he thought, able to wait hidden for months until the time for it to strike seemed right. If there was one thing his army did not have, it was patience. If the creature was mostly a spirit moving from body to body, they might end up fighting it for years.

  “We need to find it today,” he declared out to the rest. Something this nasty would make an area for itself where all the living things in the forest, including goblins and trolls did not go. He would have to find this area, unless they were already inside of it, and have a look around. If the Whisper had been arranged just to oppose them, then it seemed like it would be running out of bodies pretty soon. All the captives they had taken had revealed that it had abided here continually, shunning others. That usually meant a lair.

  It would be good strategy on Red Tower’s part to close up the fortress and have the lurking monster pick off the enemies outside their walls. He didn’t think that the Red Tower was the source of this thing, or at least the point of its creation. Grave yards and crypts didn’t really exist in the Dimm, as bodies were usually cremated on turned directly into thrings. There were a few tombs here and there, where one great thring had defeated and sealed away another, like the Growler’s tomb, but that was all. What he was looking for was a sanctum where the work was done to collect and prepare the special bodies his buggers were fighting.

  “We are looking for somewhere close to the water, where there are trails or a road but where no living thing goes. It will be off the path, but not too far off.” He knew that by invading the forest, they had disrupted what passed for normalcy here. Perhaps they had disturbed it by their movement through the woods. If they just pressed on to the Red Tower and took it, it might stop and leave them alone. Would it then attack the wood felling parties that now worked on the edge of the forest, or anyone else passing through later?

  He squatted down over a piece of cleared ground and began to make a map of what he knew of the woods they were in, using a stick to draw out the features. A line became the line of the woods to the west, and another the cliffs to the east where they had found the springs. It was not that big of an area, and the entire horde could march across it in a single day. He concentrated on where they had been so far and on where they had not yet gone.

  Maps were still like magic to most of the Dimm goblins and trolls, and they got quiet and watched him, or argued in whispers between themselves about where the Red Tower stood. When Kulith placed the castle onto the map, no one tried to correct him. He did not know where the river that fed the wide moat around the Red Tower came from, or where it ran to, and this was placed in by help from a troll chief. They then laid out any structures or oddities they had discovered during their advance.

  There were a couple of mounds down along one of the streams that fed the river, close to where the main channel formed. Kulith didn’t think that the goblins of the Red Tower would abide a thring right upstream on their water supply, more so one that had the power to spread death and reanimation like a plague. There were other streams that fed into the river past the mounds, and he supposed the taint was diluted. The creature had played it smart though he realized, allowing them to pass close by its point of origin unmolested before attacking them later on down the road in the deeper woods.

  Going and seeing what was there was better than standing around all day, waiting for the Whisper to attack them again. He readied two of the supply carts and filled them up with flammable oil, coal, and some brimstone they had brought to fling at the roofs of the Red Tower. He brewed up two pots of black tea from roots and told the chiefs of the bands to have their braves each drink a cup. Many didn’t want to or would not, as if made tump or other alcohol impossible. The White Knife warriors Kulith had brought with him drank without hesitation. They had seen too much already to balk at his judgment, as to the necessity of it.

  They set off down the trail though the woods, armed with fresh cut piles, the two carts being pulled along behind by trolls. The goblins ranged ahead in larger groups, going up off the trail at times to look at things under the trees that caught their interest. There was some kind of old ruin in one place, but nothing remained now but a few red bricks poking up from the grass. They reached the series of branching creek beds and washed-out stones. They left the carts behind, and went down and across the uneven ground and soft, muddy bottoms. They ranged out over the set of low hills, perhaps the ones that the goblin chief had remarked about earlier, now looking for signs of thring use.

  There was a movement over in the trees off to the left, and then one of the Whisper’s dolls attacked a group of goblins, and then it fled back as they rushed forward to impale it. Scratched up, cut, the goblins pursued the thring through the trees and stabbed at it with their piles, finally pinning it through the body so many times that it could no longer move. Kulith came over to them and looked at it, as one of the injured goblins who hadn’t drank root tea sweated, wondering if it would suddenly go white.

  Kulith had one of the trolls bring up a pot of oil and some brimstone. He threw it onto the squirming white body, this one once belonging to a pig faced goblin. One of the White Knife warriors had a torch ready and touched it to the creature, and they stood back and watched it wither and burn, the air hissing out through the woven flesh mask as it blackened over and hardened.

  “Is that a whisper I hear?” one of the goblins said as a joke, about the whining noise of the escaping hot air. Some of the others grunted and chuckled approvingly. Kulith grimaced and looked around them. There was some jaggedness to the mounds just beyond, like stonework, perhaps indicating a barrow place used by the thrings. They began moving through the forest again, with some of the trolls now acting as porters, carrying pots of oil and bags of brimstone forward. The goblin that had been wounded by the Whisper began to get sick. His pot mates pushed him away from themselves and as he spit up his food and blood, and they drove their piles through him and pinned him to the ground.

  Kulith could feel it now: like the whole floor of the forest was trying to flip itself over and reveal something vile and unnatural. It was then that three more dolls appeared, to attack them from out of the woods. One was seen ahead, running with the great speed and power from trunk to tree trunk. Kulith pulled out the Tuvier Blade and it answered him, blazing up like a torch of golden light in his hand. He rushed through the pack of goblins in front of him to meet and fight the thring doll
, blocking its weapon’s slash with the champions’ sword, and a moment later cutting off its head with the Tuvier Blade. Instead of just falling, the white corpse stumbled and began to burn along the edge of the sword cut, turning black as it fell and then in a hot shimmer of flames, rendering quickly down to just white ash and bones.

  Kulith paused only for a moment, as his warriors adjusted themselves to form a defensive line in a wide circle. Another one jumped down from the trees and the trolls caught it on their lances and pinned it down to the ground, then began cutting it apart with their other weapons. The third jumped off something up the slope, and used the trees as cover to move around their back, then came at the edge of the formation with a large, rusty black sword that sheared through the piles that the warriors carried and thrust at it. It licked the black sword across twice to take off a goblin’s arm, then another’s head. The piles and spears clattered together as the warriors tried to move and follow it.

  Kulith ran back through the trees in front of his own line, following the movement of the monster, chasing it with the golden sword. It seemed to ring like a bell in his hand as it focused on his prey. He jumped to cover the last open space between them and landed between the trees to strike at its back, but the creature shifted and caught his edge with the black sword it carried, and then it followed with a thrust, almost too fast to see, that he just caught and drove away.

  The doll jumped back from them and tried to figure out what was happening. Kulith rushed forward and then used the trunk of a tree to redirect himself, pushing off of it, launching, making a long jump in the air, swinging around at the side of the thring. He drove the magic blade down across his body and tried to cut the creature in half. It took a stance and used the black sword again to deflect the blow, and then his other sword was knocked away also, with a sharp rasping series of snaps.

  It jumped back farther away from him, but the buggers were closing in from another side and drove at it with their lances and spears. It leapt up into the air, to more than three heights of a troll, into one of the trees where they could not get at it. Some of the goblins shot at it with bows, while the rest followed its rustling path overhead with the tips of their iron and wood weapons.

  Bows were snapping with a twang all along the line, the arrow shafts following the white shape as it moved overhead. Trees dropped small branches and leaves, and he used those to mark the path it was taking to escape. Kulith moved through the buggers and tried to follow it out over the maze of small hills and eroded banks, through the green and red of the pines, oaks, alders and maples. The doll dropped down in front of him onto one of the mounds with a dozen arrows in it. He detected the rising of the spirit from the body, and a current of air passed by. The wind moved back toward them, but not so close that Kulith could leap out and take a swipe at it with the magic sword.

  It spiraled for a moment, blowing the leaves around, and then it seemed to disperse. The goblins and trolls jumped back as the thrings they had captured on the piles began to move, attempting to break the piles and escape. One pulled free with a cracking of bone, as another dragging itself forward along the shafts. From the mounds now rose several more of the creatures, from under fallen leaves, up through their barrow dirt, and one from a stagnant pool down in a creek bottom. There was desperation to it, but not only for the monsters. The buggers had been regardless of their advance and had ventured out too far. Though there were several hundred of them, they were now strung in a long line straddling the mounds and creek beds, and one side could hardly see the other.

  The goblins hastily moved back and tried to reestablish their lines, with arrows striking the new dolls as they closed in to attack. Some goblins were now stabbing back at the ones that had arisen in their midst. A troll threw a pile through the chest of a thring, and then another shattered a jar of oil on it. They touched a torch to it, and it burst into flame, and ran off through the trees. They fought the rest, with Kulith managing to skewer another one on the point of his sword, and turn it to ash.

  He saw dozens of disfigured white corpses now come out of the trees on the upslope, made from all sorts of different creatures, including the big dogs that troll bands sometimes kept as guards. The goblins had formed up into ranks, with trolls mixed in along their line. The bowmen got up onto several of the small hills and began shooting down and across at the dead white bodies as they came forward.

  Kulith held the Tuvier Blade and watched to see if one of the toys would begin to move faster and leap about, showing that it was the main vessel for the spirit. That would be the one that he would have to move to and fight. Some of the trolls had gotten oil ready and they threw it out before them at the creatures. They lit the monsters on fire right as they closed with them and began fighting them, and they all whirled around, dancing in flames. Kulith had to shake his head as he watched them.

  He seemed to sense the possessed doll the moment before it again appeared and attacked him. It dropped down on him from above, and he had no explanation for how it had achieved this. Sparks skittered across the edges of their swords, as he managed to knock back the black blade. The corpse fell and sprung away with a great gash in its side. It flailed in the air, then landed a little below him and struck at the goblins and trolls now around it. One of them speared it with a pile through the leg, and then another rammed a spear through its torso. It chopped for a moment at the piles that transfixed it, and then Kulith felt the wind gust out from it and fly across through his goblins and into one of the other dolls.

  The old doll went slack, and a goblin lopped off its head with an axe. The new Whisper jumped back from the line and looked around for a weapon it could use. It pulled a spear from the body of one of the other thrings and went forward, dancing into the buggers, stabbing and slashing at them. Kulith waited for his moment, wondering if he would have to destroy every thring in his view to get rid of the demon. He watched them fight it, and fight the other weaker thrings.

  He had several hundred goblins and about three dozen trolls with him, and they were mostly veterans of other actions against the thrings during the campaign. Each fought knowing what they should do and not do, of what worked and what did not work. Their numbers were telling, and they systematically filled the corpses full of arrows and speared them on their piles. They distanced themselves from those they made immobile, having learned that lesson, and used oil to light them on fire. They broke up the pack of undead, prodding them to the right and left, shoving them into the fires that were already lit. In a few minutes they had surrounded all the white corpses, and it became juat a matter of getting them cut up and burned.

  One of them made a break down for the running creeks, jumping and pushing past a couple of goblins, but in passing they caught it on fire. The piles in its body then pinned it between the trunks of two trees, as it moved between them, and there it burned. A goblin was caught on fire and he jumped down for the water and instead rolled in the mud on the bank, putting out the flames to roars of approval from his comrades. It was always worth watching to see if someone could cheat their own immolation.

  The thring armed with the spear had tried to jump away, perhaps realizing that the battle was lost. One of the trolls threw a pile through it as it jumped, and they chased it down through the woods. Kulith had been following it behind their defense line, and had waited for his chance now to go forward and cut it down. He ran with the others now, down into the lee of a ravine where it had just disappeared.

  He approached it and cut the spear tip off as it slashed up at him. He walked forward and used a quick turn to swing the Tuvier Blade around and cut a great gaping wound down one arm and across the base of the monster’s neck. It sizzled, popped, burst into fire and began to turn to ash at the edges, the black moving backward and crikling like a piece of paper being consumed. He sensed the movement before he heard the wind rustle, and he struck out with the Tuvier Blade into the white gust that arose and fled away. It felt like he had hit something solid: a momentary jerk pulling
the edge of the blade and his arm back.

  A moaning sound came back to them through the air. It made the goblins shiver and the trolls pause and look cautiously around. Then the noise and the wind were gone through the trees, out of the ravine, and they were left there with just a white corpse, now burning and rendering itself to bones and ash. Kulith would have bet that the Whisper now wished it had saved at least one doll’s mouth to say something to them, to capitulate as it could.

  They put all the remains into piles and burned them, then waited to see if anyone else went white. Then they moved back out, fanning across the low places and lines, following and exploring all the trails between the trees. There was a great thick stand of willow, backed by a grassy heath that crept up to make a gentle hill covered over in oaks and grass. One of the trails the goblins had followed down when entering the forest ran across there, uncared for now. There was an increase of broken gray and black brick near the willows, and it appeared to have been a building at one time. Perhaps there had been a water mill or some other type of structure that had made use of the streams gushing by.

  Several saw a rectangular passage, framed with brick, going back into one of the banks, and they called him over. There were tracks in and out of it, and it seemed to be a thring hole. Some of the leaders talked and discussed what to do, and then they decided to send warriors down into the dark hollow of the dungeon.

  Kulith and several other trolls led the way in their leather and iron coats, wearing their flaring, pointed helms. They found a great room and a number of side passages, a quite common arrangement for a thring burrow. The great chamber had several large stone crypts that had their lid effigies broken and ground off to be used as tables. On two of them were unfinished white bodies, and against one wall sat a hideously deformed corpse that had two extra arms sewn onto its shoulders, to be used Kulith guessed, to do the preparation work on the others. They were all still, waiting for the command of a greater thring to move.