Dragonsbane

by Shae Ford

  A low, rumbling growl came from Silas’s hairy throat and the glow of his eyes dimmed as he slunk half a pace back into the shadows.

  “You want me to follow you?” Kael guessed.

  Silas blinked.

  “Why? Is something wr —?”

  “Kael? Oh, Kaaael?”

  He turned — and was alarmed to see Baird stumbling from the shelter, nearly bent double under the weight of their packs.

  “Kael?”

  “Over here, Baird!” He grabbed the bard by his knobby wrist and latched him onto the hem of his tunic.

  Silas growled again. His full furry head stuck out from the brambles, now. And Kael knew by the way his whiskers bunched up around his nose that he was getting impatient. “All right, we’re coming.”

  “Coming where?” Baird said from behind him.

  “Going, I mean,” Kael said quickly. “We’re moving on.”

  “Why?”

  Kael wasn’t sure. “Just march, will you?”

  Silas moved effortlessly through the trees, and Kael had to walk quickly in order to keep the flicking end of his tail in sight — a task made more difficult by the fact that he had Baird dragging down on his tunic.

  They’d gone several yards when Silas came to a halt. He turned back, facing the direction they’d come, and crouched.

  Kael mirrored him. Orange light from their fire glowed faintly through the hairline cracks in the rotted shelter. Now that evening had darkened it, he thought the monstrous tree looked a bit like a log glowing in a hearth.

  Just when he was about to ask Silas what they were waiting for, a large shadow passed above the shelter. It floated across the toppled tree, its blackened skin eclipsing the fiery cracks.

  For a long moment it did nothing but circle. Kael lost track of how many times the shadow went around. Then without warning, it disappeared … and something far more troublesome took its place.

  He heard their heavy footsteps before he saw them: three monstrous, hunched creatures — three devils of the night. They lumbered up to the shelter, dragging themselves forward on their front claws while their backs followed at a hop. One by one, they slipped inside. Kael could see their shadows moving around as they searched.

  Baird must’ve been able to sense that something was wrong. He spoke at hardly a whisper. “What is it?”

  Kael’s tongue stuck to the back of his throat. “Monsters,” he choked.

  “What sort? Trolls? Goblins?”

  “Worse.” Kael watched in horror as one of the monsters trotted out with Baird’s sopping cloak gripped in its jaws. It swung the garment about violently. He could hear the faint ripping of thread at it broke across the seams.

  Somehow, Kael forced himself to turn. “We should …”

  But the space beside him was empty. Silas was gone.

  The other two monsters loped from the shelter and joined their companion. They growled to one another as they tore at the cloak. He could hear their sharp breaths as they dragged their noses across the wool. Then all at once, they stopped.

  The monsters’ heads swiveled behind them and they took off at a gallop, panting loudly as they vanished into the shadows cast by the trees.

  It was only after they’d gone that Kael realized just how tightly he’d been clenching his fists. He knew they had to get moving. They needed to find Kyleigh. Where in Kingdom’s name had she run off to?

  When he turned, he saw Baird’s mouth parted slightly beneath his beard, as if he’d been about to say something. “What is it?”

  “I … that is …” He licked his lips. “Do you ever get the feeling someone is … watching you?”

  Baird spoke as if there was a hand clamped around his throat. His face went pale beneath his beard. His limbs stiffened with a dead man’s chill. Kael’s heart thudded in his throat as he leaned to peer over Baird’s shoulder.

  Two glittering eyes peered back.

  A monster crept out of the darkness. It looked exactly like the wolf monsters in Bartholomew’s Pass — except this creature was a mix between a man and a hound. The monster’s fingers were swollen around a set of short, dark claws. A saddle of black fur sprouted in uneven patches down its twisted back. The tattered remains of a tunic and chainmail hung across its chest. The links of the armor had melded into its skin, clinging like scales to its torso and shoulders.

  Kael stood, frozen, as the hound raised its head in their direction. Waves of loose skin fell over its eyes. The flesh bulged and swelled as if its face had been badly burned. A man’s nose, stretched so widely that it had split down the middle, flared as the hound sucked in the night air.

  Thick folds of skin hung off its cheeks and sagged on either side of its mouth. Monstrous teeth smacked together, their sharp white tips dripping as the swollen nostrils breathed in. Then it arched its neck and let out a blood-chilling howl.

  Kael knew what was coming next. There wasn’t time for anything else: he kicked Baird aside and sent an arrow straight into hound’s drooping mouth.

  Its gangly limbs convulsed as the arrow’s head erupted out the back of its skull and drops of blood sprayed in and arc behind it. A breath later the monster landed — dead — at Kael’s boots.

  “What in Kingdom’s …?”

  His ears cringed against a familiar sound: a howl drifted through woods, rising and falling over the trees. More howls joined the first. They filled the damp air with a song of wails.

  Baird moaned and clutched his beard. “It’s the Huntsman. His hounds bay for blood!”

  Kael didn’t have time to argue. He grabbed Baird around the arm and hauled him into the trees.

  Howls filled the woods at their backs — a song of wails that rose and fell in a constant stream. Soon they became like the breath of a steady wind, the growl of a storm growing closer. They shrilled until the forest fell silent. The cry of owls, the fluttering of the leaves, even the crickets’ song went hushed. It was as if every tree held its breath, as if they knew they were about to witness a slaughtering.

  Meanwhile, the hounds pierced the air in a chorus of desperate yelps. No more! They seemed to wail. Please — no more!

  Every bump that rose across Kael’s skin trembled against the baying. They bunched together so closely that it made his hide go taut over his bones. He stumbled forward as the joints of his knees struggled to bend, fighting against the strangling grip of his skin.

  His heart thudded in his ears; the tips of his fingers went cold as he ripped through the thorns. His breath slid out between a dagger’s edge of space. Then quite suddenly, the howling stopped.

  “What is it? What’s happened?” Baird hissed.

  “I’m not sure.”

  Kael glanced back over his shoulder, but couldn’t see a blasted thing. The moon cast a weak light around them — hardly illuminating anything beyond a few feet. With the baying stopped, their steps sounded impossibly loud. He grit his teeth and charged on. If they wanted to live, they had to keep moving.

  Kael wasn’t sure how long they ran. He dragged Baird by his elbow and fought madly through the tangled mane of the forest. A thick wall of brush rose in front of him, stretching far to either side. He dropped his shoulder and charged through with all of his strength.

  Vines grasped at him. Wiry branches whipped him across the face. He grimaced as he felt himself lose one of his curls. When he finally burst from the wall’s grasp, he was off balance. He stumbled into a dark clearing and heard Baird crash behind him with a yelp.

  “Baird?” Kael hissed.

  The leaves were woven so tightly above them that not even the moonlight could filter through. He couldn’t see his fingers well enough to count them. He stepped around and swung his hands before him, hoping he’d stumble upon the beggar-bard. He thought he’d found him, once — but it was only his rucksack.

  He called again, but Baird didn’t answer. So Kael had no choice. He dug through his pack until his hands found a lantern and flint. He struck the flint against his dagger and wa
s relieved when the sparks finally caught onto the oil-soaked wick.

  Gnarled roots stretched out in every direction. Their tangled shadows fled from the lantern’s pale flame and seemed to wriggle like snakes. He found Baird lying behind him, his body crumpled beneath his filthy rucksack.

  The beggar-bard groaned and his scraggly head lolled as Kael shook him. “Are you hurt?”

  Baird clutched piteously at his face. “Oh, I’m wounded! Oh, it aches!”

  There was an impressive amount of foliage lodged in his mane and a few hairline bramble scratches cut from his beard. There might’ve been one, perhaps two drops of blood weeping from the largest scrape, but that was it. “I think you’ll live,” Kael muttered. “Come on, we’d better get moving.”

  But Baird wasn’t listening. He grimaced as his knobby fingers edged down to his wound. “What’s this? It’s sticky, and it smells like …” He brought a stained hand to his nose and the skin beneath his layer of filth went white. “Blood! Blood!”

  As if Kael’s heart hadn’t been pounding hard enough already, the wails that tore from Baird’s throat nearly made it stop. “Shhh! Shut it!”

  Baird clamped both hands over his mouth and moaned between his fingers. “What will we do? What can be done …? You must leave me, young man!” he said suddenly. “Go, flee into the woods and may Fate protect you. Take this with you.” He thrust out his filthy rucksack. “Guard it well!”

  “I’m not leaving you,” Kael said. He’d dealt with Crevan’s monsters before, and he doubted very seriously that they were interested in the blood of a beggar-bard. “We haven’t heard anything in a long while. They’ve probably given u —”

  A roar, and Baird was gone — flung several feet away by the monstrous, fleshy mass that slammed into him. A cry tore from Kael’s throat as he sent an arrow into the hound’s back.

  The monster yelped and arched away from Baird. It twisted around and the pits beneath its drooping brow locked onto Kael. Then it charged.

  No sooner did he get an arrow nocked than he heard thundering steps behind him. He threw himself to the ground just as a second hound burst from the woods.

  Twin yelps pierced his ears as the hounds collided. Bright red blood leaked across the first hound’s back. He could see it glistening at the base of the arrow buried in its shoulder. The second hound wrapped its jaws around the wounded hound’s throat and tore — showering the root floor with a spray of blood.

  There was no time to be horrified, no time to panic. Kael tried to block the sounds from his ears and charged for Baird.

  He clung tightly to the filthy rucksack as Kael dragged him to his feet. His bandaged head turned back as they ran; his mouth hung open beneath his shaggy beard. “I hear the crackling of sinew and the shriek of muscle torn from bone. Are they … eating each other? What madness could drive a dog to eat his brother?”

  “They aren’t dogs,” Kael gasped. “Keep m —”

  The breath left his lungs and his feet left the ground. He managed to catch a tree on the shoulder — the only thing that saved him from splitting his head. The tree whipped him around and drove him belly-first into the knotted floor. The world was still spinning when he forced himself to stand.

  A third hound had flown from the woods. Now it stood over Baird, towering on its hind legs. The knots in its throat bobbed up and down as it screamed. The second hound joined its song and rushed to meet it — a fleshy chunk of its brother still gripped in its jaws. The hound that stood over Baird snapped its head down for the feed.

  And Kael’s arrow struck its throat.

  The howl broke into a gasp. The second hound screamed and fell upon its dying brother. It ripped and tore, lapping at the gushing veins while its brother wriggled helplessly beneath it. Their massive bodies were between Kael and Baird. He couldn’t reach him with the hounds in the way.

  So he fired again.

  The last hound arched back as Kael’s arrow struck its side. It screamed in pain and spun, nostrils flared above its gaping mouth. Kael grabbed another arrow. He nocked it tightly. The hound leapt, its fleshy jaws bared around its teeth and claws curled for his throat —

  A burst of white light erupted in the clearing. The hound flew backwards as if it’d been struck. Kael shut his eyes tightly, grimacing as the ferocity of the light stabbed his lids. He could feel it in his ears, pressing against his skin. Just when he thought he could bear it no longer, the light vanished.

  When Kael opened his eyes, he saw an astonishing sight: a forest man stood over the mangled body of the hound. Though he was past his middle age, thin cords of muscle stretched across his limbs. An animal’s hide knotted about his waist was his only clothing.

  Around his neck he wore a wooden medallion. He held the medallion from his chest and the blinding light faded into its center, leaving nothing but silence in its wake.

  “Sleep, Abomination,” the forest man rumbled. “I rid your body of its cursed soul.”

  The hound flailed its limbs; its monstrous mouth froze in a silent howl. White light seeped from its eyes, its drooping ears. The light turned liquid as it slid across the hound’s skin and dulled, sinking into the ground. Then at last, its twisted body went still.

  A familiar moldy smell struck Kael’s nose as the last of the light went out. It wasn’t as strong as the stench he was used to, but there was no denying what it was: magic.

  Kael kept his bow drawn taught and the arrow aimed at the forest man’s back as he got to his feet. “Who are you?”

  “Graymange, the wolf shaman,” he said without turning.

  Shaman? Kael let the bow go slack. “You mean you’re one of the shapechangers?”

  “Yes.”

  It made sense. Baird mentioned that the shamans had given up the power of the mages. The spell he used must’ve been some sort of … earth magic, he supposed. At least it didn’t smell as foul as normal magic.

  Graymange knelt before the body of the hound. His hand shot out quickly — prodding and snapping back, as if its skin was hot. “Abomination,” he hissed.

  Perhaps Graymange had never seen one of Crevan’s monsters before. Kael took a cautious step forward. “The King does this to them. It’s some sort of spell —”

  “No, this is different. These creatures aren’t shapechangers … they lust for human blood.” Graymange scowled at the twisted body of the hound. “Our land is ruled by order: things that were meant to be, traveling the paths they were meant to follow. But these creatures should’ve never been born. They have no paths to follow. They live only to interrupt our order. Their very existence is Abomination — they must be stopped.”

  Those sounded an awful lot like the things the Tinnarkians used to say about Kael. He stepped away from Graymange quickly and went to check on Baird.

  The beggar-bard must’ve cracked his head on a root: he was unconscious and snoring heavily through his beard, but otherwise unscathed. Things certainly could’ve been worse.

  He heard a low grunt and turned in time to see Graymange tugging at the collar that was clamped around the hound’s throat. “Help me, Marked One.”

  Kael took two steps before his legs froze. “Wait a moment — how did you know I was a whisperer?”

  He grunted something that sounded like Emberfang, but that couldn’t have been it. “Why don’t you just spell it open?” Kael said as he leaned over the collar.

  “Our magic isn’t like the magic of the mages. I command order, not power.”

  Kael wasn’t sure what that meant, but he was focused too intently on the collar to ask. He’d expected it to look like all the others had. But instead of iron, this collar was made of solid gold.

  He grasped it and wasn’t surprised to feel the familiar itch of magic. What did surprise him was that he didn’t see the milky white film of a spell wrapped around it. Instead, hairline ripples folded all along the metal — like the marks that wind left in the sand.

  The ripples were a dull red and glowing. He supposed it must’v
e been some sort of spell. He scratched at them, but they didn’t break. Even when he tore the collar into two, the ripples glowed on. It was as if the magic had somehow melted into the gold …

  “Quickly, Marked One — we will gather the other collars. Then we must be gone,” Graymange barked. He scooped Baird’ knobby body effortlessly onto his shoulders and set off into the woods. Kael stuffed the collar into one of the rucksacks and followed at a trot.

  *******

  Something was chasing them.

  Graymange never said it aloud, but Kael knew by the way he wove them around that he was trying to muddle their trail. He dragged them through thickets and past enormous trees, toting Baird easily across his shoulders. They circled the decaying body of a deer — and the smell was so potent that Kael could taste it in the back of his throat.

  At one point, they stopped at a shallow cave. A great tree sat on the hill above it. The roots that stretched from its base hung over the cave’s mouth like a curtain. Graymange sat Baird on the ground and went inside the cave. He rubbed his bare shoulders against the roots and his back against the rocky wall. Then he scooped Baird up and set off again without a word.

  A wide river flowed just beyond the cave. Kael’s toes curled as he watched Graymange slip into the water, but he forced himself to follow. The current was fairly gentle; the murky waters were surprisingly warm. At its middle, the waves came up to Kael’s waist. He stepped carefully, keeping both packs raised over his head and out of the river’s reach.

  Baird’s boots dragged a half-moon in the water as Graymange turned.

  His face betrayed nothing, but Kael thought he could see the question in his eyes. “I’m all right. Keep going.”

  The bottom of the river was covered in a thick layer of sand and grit. He concentrated hard on staying balanced while fighting against the current, and he was doing rather well. Then he stepped on a fish.

  It must’ve been sleeping in the sand. The fish’s slippery body twisted violently beneath his boot and in his surprise, Kael leapt back. The moment his feet left the ground, the river tried to sweep him away. Luckily, he managed to hook his foot around a root before he got carried too far.