by J H G Foss
Without any warning at all she began to scream as loudly as she could and started running along the beach. Meggelaine went after her, with Ghene not far behind.
Roztov and Salveri, neither being inclined to join the chase, returned to the camp.
‘She’ll not take the death of her father well my lord. She is highly strung.’
‘Does anyone take the death of a parent well?’ said Roztov.
‘Well, it was a blessing when my father died, he was a drunken old fool who spent every penny my mother ever earned.’
‘Oh, I see. Sorry. I never understood why she was onboard anyway.’
‘She wanted to come and the captain could never deny her anything. He spoiled her.’
‘How old is she?’
‘I think twelve.’
They reached the tree line and turned to see how things were going on the beach. From what they could see through the mist, Meggelaine seemed to have calmed the girl sufficiently enough to get her under cover, but they could still hear her talking loudly in a shrill strangulated voice.
Roztov scanned the sky and said, ‘I don’t see any dragons anyway.’
‘Her screams would have been heard for miles around.’
‘I tell you what, you go back to camp and get them ready for Ophess’s arrival. I’m going to do a bit of scouting. This fog, it’s so thick, I’m interested to see how far up it goes.’
Salveri was about to ask how Roztov planned to do that, but then remembered he was talking to a shape-shifter. Just as that thought crossed his mind, Roztov clapped him on the shoulder, nodded, then in the blink of an eye he was gone and there was a seagull in his place. Then it too was gone, flying off into the mist. Salveri stood in amazement for a moment or two, it had been a herring gull, just like the ones you saw all along the west coast. He closed his mouth, licked his dried lips, then turned and ducked into the forest, heading back to camp.
That evening, it was agreed to move the camp further inland in the morning, staying near the wreck of the ship any longer seemed folly and they had recovered enough food, clothing and other supplies to last them for a few weeks at least. Long enough, it was agreed, to set up a base, send out scouts and see if they could find a way off the island. The next morning they packed everything up, buried everything that they didn’t need right now or couldn’t carry and prepared to set off.
Away from the others the druids had a whispered conversation in Peret, the secret language of druids (and not elfish as Salveri thought). Roztov and Ghene knelt so they could talk to Meggelaine at her level.
‘I’ll go at the back of the line and watch our rear,’ said Roztov. ‘Keep going north for about five miles I would say. The fog seems to clear after that. From what I saw when I was flying about yesterday the island is ringed by it. It must be magical in nature.’
‘Very well,’ nodded Ghene.
‘We will reach some hills eventually. I didn’t see what was beyond them. Listen though, there are no birds or very few anyway. Have you seen any nests or any other signs?’
The other two shook their heads, Meggelaine was tense and nervous.
‘I think the dragons must kill anything else they see flying about. I felt really conspicuous when I was up there all alone.’
‘Did you see any dragons?’ said Meggelaine with a gulp.
Roztov paused and rubbed his beard.
‘I won’t lie to you Meg. I saw many dragons. All in the distance though. They seemed to be hunting the forest.’
‘For us?’ whispered Meggelaine hoarsely.
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. I mean, the wreck can’t be that hard to find for a dragon, even in the mist.’
‘Either way we are safer inland,’ said Ghene, trying to comfort her.
‘Perhaps if Ghene goes in front? And Meg, you can watch Ophess and the middle of the line. I’ll go last and cover our tracks.’
There were rarely leaders and followers amongst druids, but Ghene and Meggelaine were happy for Roztov to be gently taking control. He was, after all, the most travelled out of all of them.
Ghene, then, was first to leave the camp, followed by Broddor and Floran, who were old friends and used to travelling together. Next came the sailors - Salveri, Arrin and Tankle. Then Meggelaine, keeping a watchful eye over Ophess, who was still skittish, and finally Dreggen keeping his own company.
Roztov counted them off as they went, including himself there were ten survivors of the wreck of the Red Maiden. He took up his place in the rear of the column and used his druid magic and forest craft to conceal their passage in the choked and oppressive dark woods. The trees were tall and thick branched, limbs that hung so low that everyone except Meggelaine had to stoop. The forest floor was so thick with fallen pine needles that it was almost like walking across a feather bed. The branches were full of dew drenched cobwebs that no one could avoid walking into.
After five miles of slow travel they did indeed find that the fog lifted. They walked on another mile until the druids found a very good campsite next to a stream, hidden in the shade of an overgrown cliff. The canopy of the forest was so thick that virtually no sky was visible from the ground, but even so the druids took no chances and used their magic to burrow a cave into the side of the rock that went back about six yards and was wide enough to accommodate them all and light a fire. The sailors watched on in awe as the druids worked their magic and the rocks moved aside, flowing like water, to then form up in solid formation again. They felt compelled to run their hands across the smooth stone surface and as they did so they whispered between themselves.
‘They are mighty in magic,’ said Arrin quietly.
‘Yes, but not mighty enough to save anyone more from the wreck than us three, Dreggen and Ophess. Notice that they all survived,’ grumbled Salveri.
‘What are you saying?’ asked Tankle.
‘Just that...’
Salveri stopped talking as Roztov went past them, further into the recently formed cave and started carving out a narrow passage at its rear. The sailors watched in amazement once more as the rock flowed away from the druids hands like water pushed back by the wind. He created the passage with a dog leg in it and then finally a small chamber at the end of it.
‘A dragon proof room,’ he explained to them. ‘Where I hope their fire cannot penetrate.’
As it grew dark they divided up the tasks and settled in for the night. There were rotroks in the stream and one was killed for dinner. It was made into turtle soup, enough to feed everyone, boiled up in a small pot on a fire in the cave. It was cold outside, but warm around the camp, druids had a way of making a place feel comfortable. Boughs had been cut to serve as couches and Meg had found myrtle and other plants that helped sweeten the air inside which would have otherwise smelled of their unwashed bodies. There were plenty of other things to eat in the forest besides rotroks if you knew where to look and the druids had gathered in mushrooms, early blooming edible plants of various kinds, such as sweet amaranth, snow asparagus, and crocus. The druids talked of other things that would appear later in the year, such as pine nuts, lettuce, naraberries and all manner of other things that they were sure would grow in the forest on this island, but this was early spring and summer was still a long way off.
Still, the camp was warm and there was enough food for everyone, so it was easy to forget the tribulations of the last two days and most were eager for sleep.
Roztov took the first watch, and set himself up on a fallen log just outside the cave entrance. There was not much to see from where he was sat, or indeed anywhere around the cave. It was densely packed with undergrowth and besides, apart from a few slivers of moonlight from above, it was pitch black. Roztov mainly used his ears, listening to the nocturnal patterns of the forest, knowing instinctively that all was well from what he heard. An owl, a fox, a vegetain snoring somewhere in the trees, a badger or something similar, rooting about for food. Everything indicated a distinct lack of dragons.
Roztov smiled
and pulled his pipe from his pocket. It and most of his tobacco had been recovered from the wreck, thank goodness, and he had had the foresight to pack it in a seal skin pouch. As he lit the pipe he glanced back into the cave.
Ghene was asleep, Tuppence was curled up by the fire with his eyes open, and Meggelaine was nodding off where she sat. The others were all arranged around the fire, he assumed asleep.
He could just make out Dreggen, as far back in the cave as he could get, wrapped up in his robes. On the other side of the fire he could see Ophess, still awake, breaking up twigs into small bits and tossing them into the flames one by one.
He turned back to the darkness and puffed away on his pipe. Strawberry flavoured clouds of smoke drifted from where he sat into the cave, drawn in by the fire.
His thoughts wandered for a while, then drifted back to the start of the journey, way back in Tullis. Roztov always framed his thoughts in the form of fireside tales. He imagined himself telling this story to his wife, his children, the locals back in Ulrim and all his friends that came through to visit him in his house in Angor Forest.
This was far from his first escapade of this nature. Back when he, Broddor, Ghene, Floran and Meggelaine had been young, once the goblin situation had calmed down in his homeland and not wanting to give up the life of adventure just yet, they had set off north to Vegas and beyond. There were tribes of dwarves up there, in the Lead Hills, who were constantly at war with all manner of creatures. Roztov had met his first necromancers in these lands, and had known real terror for the first time. After that, they travelled south again when the Moon Marshes were disputed lands and the king of Joppa was calling on everyone with a sword or magic to help turn back the tide of undead. After the Moon Marshes it was the Powder Plains, the Savage Lands and Lunaria.
Eventually though, their band which had numbered up to two hundred at its height, was down to twenty. Some were dead, most had taken their share of the treasure and retired. The Battle at Bograt was the end, everyone went home after that. There was no fun to be had in seeing your friends die, Ghene and Meg went to the Great Forest, Floran returned to Hyadna and even Broddor went back to the Vale of Adders to marry and do his duty to the king of Kardane.
Only Roztov kept going, to a certain extent, and occasionally dragged Broddor out of retirement. The wanderlust in him was too strong and even with a house, a wife and a family he was always fighting the pull of the unknown.
So this was not his first tight spot, or even his first encounter with dragons. In his head he was telling his tale to his wife, at his fireside. Constructing it to suit her ear, not too much danger, (he’d add that back in when he told it to his friends) a story tailored to the audience. The only thing that really made him in any way tense about their situation was the presence of Ophess. If anything happened to her, he and the others would feel terrible. The sailors too, yes, but in a way he felt less responsibility for their welfare. He’d seen plenty of death in his life, it was the way of the world, but he’d never had a child die in his care. He was not sure how he would take it. There was a pain buried so deep in him, regarding the death of a little girl that he kept hidden, even from himself. If something triggered those memories, he’d be of no use to anyone, a potentially deadly circumstance.
He put those worries to one side and tried his best to form the retelling in his head of the story so far. Like most tales of this sort, it starts in a tavern. A tavern, named The Thirsty Dolphin, which faced out onto the docks of the port of Tullis in the country of Bellavia. It was early in the year, the snow drops were blooming in the common and the city park. It had been a mild winter and the flowers were early.
He had been in the tavern a couple of days and had a room on the top floor, a decent one as he was a rich man, his fortune made back in his days with the Kardane Company.
He liked to pay over the odds when he was travelling, not to show off, or so he told himself, but to distribute the wealth. Perhaps he felt guilty in some way, in the blood that had been shed to gain the fortune he had, but mostly he liked the fact that you got better service and food if you paid extra. He enjoyed watching the landlord eyeing him up, wondering how much he should try and fleece the scruffy looking druid with the deep pockets. Whatever it was, Roztov always paid, he had much more coin than he knew what to do with.
Though not of the Council, he was still a druid and all druids of Nillamandor respected and honoured the elders of the Great Forest. When word had come to his house in Angor, he took his wife and two young daughters to his father’s estate in the Vale of Adders to be looked after, and then travelled to Tullis to see what all the fuss was about.
On the second day, as Roztov played dominoes with one of the locals, a small figure he recognised entered the tavern and shook the rain off her cloak.
‘Meg!’ he declared and knelt down by the table to receive her hug.
Meggelaine was a fressle and no more than three feet tall. She too was a powerful druid and well regarded in the Great Forest.
‘Just you?’ he asked.
‘Ghene is not here yet?’ she replied in her child-like voice.
‘Ah, he is coming too?’
‘He’s supposed to be. He had things to arrange with Lilly, he said. I thought I would be the last one to arrive. What do you know about all this?’
Roztov rubbing his beard, said, ‘only what you said in your letter. A trip across the Diamond Sea, commissioned by the GFC.’
Meggelaine thanked the landlord as he brought her a bowl of broth, a hunk of bread and a tankard of brown ale. ‘Ale. My word. I’ve not had that in a while.’
‘What do you drink back at the Council?’
‘Elven wine. I’m sick of the stuff.’
Meggelaine took a long draught of the ale and then smacked her lips and rubbed her tummy.
‘That’s the ticket!’
‘The beer here is good. Local. Not as good as Stykian stuff, but good.’
‘The best beer in the world in brewed in Styke,’ agreed Meggelaine as she put her mug down. Almost unconsciously she then passed her hand over the mug, a gesture that honoured Queen Jally, a monarch long dead.
‘Do that in a tavern in Ulrim and you’ll get arrested,’ commented Roztov.
‘Just as well we’re not in Ulrim then isn’t it?’ replied Meggelaine tartly. ‘Allow me my superstitions Roz, a girl can dream.’
‘Dangerous dreams of sedition Meg,’ he observed. ‘Not that it matters now I suppose.’
Meggelaine, wishing to change the subject put her hand on Roztov’s. ‘It’s so good to see you, sweetie.’
‘You too,’ he laid his other hand on hers. ‘It’s been too long.’
‘I’ve not even met your daughters yet.’
Roztov laughed. ‘You always have an open invitation!’
‘I know, I know, but you know - the Council.’
Meggelaine took her cloak and hung it by the fireplace on the back of a chair. It was midday and the common room was not busy.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Meggelaine wittered on. ‘Here we are again. When Lilly started putting all this stuff together she thought of me. And when she thinks of me, she thinks of you. And here we are. Off on some madcap adventure again. I can’t believe it!’
‘How is Lil?’ put in Roztov.
‘Still old and grumpy. She doesn’t see why you have not joined the Council. She feels a little insulted I think.’
‘Well, not insulted enough to not want my help.’
‘Oh, I’m sure she’s much appreciative. I’m sure she, I mean, I’m sure she’ll appreciate if you do help. You know how it is. She’s so old, she seems harsh to a lot of people, but she’s not really. If we knew a tenth of the things she knew. About you-know-who, and all that sort of stuff. Well, no wonder her hair is white. I don’t dare ask, I’ve enough on my plate without worrying about the undead in the east. They sent out that maniac Festos a while ago. Oh well, that’s another story, he sends his regards by the way...’
And so it went on, they gossiped and compared notes well into the night, Meggelaine doing most of the talking, drinking ale and getting cosy by the hearth. In the end Meggelaine fell asleep and Roztov carried her upstairs and put her on the bed in her room before retiring to his own.
The next day Ghene arrived, by ship down the Dioti River. He was as sick as a dog and in no mood for beer or food, but did manage to sit by the fire, wrapped in a blanket, long enough to exchange greetings with his friends. He was a slight fellow, not much taller than five feet with little in the way of meat on his bones. His ears were pointed and his features delicate. He wore his black hair in a ponytail and was clean shaven.
‘I got a fever the second day on the boat. That combined with the sea sickness made the entire journey miserable. Every time I venture into the lands of men I catch something. You lot are a bunch of animals.’
Roztov smiled and handed his friend a cup of fresh water. Ghene sniffed it.
‘I used magic to break the fever. If I wasn’t a druid I’d probably be dead by now.’
‘But you made it. You are here,’ stated Meggelaine.
‘I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like when I get out into the actual sea. What a nightmare this is going to be. Listen, we shall talk more on the subject of our journey but first I must rest, I’ll be no use explaining things otherwise.’
Ghene went upstairs to get some sleep and came down again for the evening meal. Roztov and Meggelaine had not left the tavern all day.
Ghene joined them, sitting down as close to the fire as he could get.
As they ate, they talked.
‘So you two are high up in the council now?’ asked Roztov.
‘Not really,’ shrugged Meggelaine.
‘High-ish,’ said Ghene looking up from his plate.
Roztov laughed.‘Why the drive west then? What’s out there that interests the GFC?’
‘Well, it’s an old story, but Hanna.’
‘That old saw. Surely the wise ones are not chasing old sailor stories?’