“There was a fire there,” Perian said, pointing. “A large fire.”
Off to one side of the large open area surrounding the main building lay a blackened ring of char and wood-ash. It was twice the size of a good cook-fire, and its placement seemed out of the ordinary. The square was a tidy space of packed earth where only a few weeds were beginning to sprout; it had been kept clear and even swept. The fire was an anomaly.
Pelekarr circled the site carefully, scanning the ground. Then he dropped to one knee and stirred the ash with a gloved finger. After a moment he grunted in satisfaction, fished something out of the ashes, and rose to his feet.
The others gave it a glance. “What is it?” Perian asked. Keltos and Makos already knew.
“It’s part of the wooden edge of a wax writing tablet,” Pelekarr said. “I’ll warrant we’d find more if we looked. This is where the records went. Burnt up.” He tossed the charred bit of wood back onto the ash pile. “Yes, and look there—a scrap of rolled parchment, just the inner part that didn’t burn.” He leaned down and tried to pick up the bit of charred material, but it crumbled to dust and blew away.
A trooper trotted up. “Looks like they left by way of the river gate, Captain. It’s tied shut from the outside with a bit of rope. Easy to do from a boat before pushing off.”
“Good work, trooper. Report to your sergeant.”
Keltos turned the mystery over in his mind. Barbarians would have left sign; even had attackers carried off every corpse, there would be dried blood, marks of axe and sword on wooden doors, probably an arrow stuck in the palisades. To say nothing of the probability that they would have fired the entire place or at least burned the thatched roofs. And in the absence of any corpses or fresh graves, plague was unlikely.
It was possible that some unknown threat had necessitated the mass abandonment of the settlement. But no mass exodus had reached Bax Town and the outlying settlers had seen nothing. And why leave no message or clue behind? An evacuation in the face of danger would not have required the burning of all records. That act alone made this situation entirely different.
A fresh breeze brought the smell of the river as one word now began to repeat itself in Keltos’ mind.
Mutiny.
CHAPTER 12: PERIL IN THE TREES
Giant old-growth trees rose up so close together that it was difficult for Damicos to pick a route between them that would accommodate the entire column. The river’s roar grew as they ventured forward, until everyone’s gaze became fixed on the trees in front of them, each man eager to be the first to spot the next landmark in their journey into the interior.
Once, Damicos thought he heard something large moving in the branches high overhead and looked up, but all he saw were tangled limbs and hanging vines, so he rode on with eyes to the front.
Only a minute later he whirled in the saddle when one of the infantrymen let out a strangled shout and those around him took up a furious cry. The man, one of Urcan’s troop, was caught in the grip of something long and hairy that had reached down from the branches overhead.
Damicos could hardly understand what he was seeing for a moment; it was as if the tree itself was attempting to pull the man off his feet into the air. There was no body of any creature visible, just this impossibly long, thick arm. And now Damicos saw curving claws as big as a man’s arm which were crushing the breath from Urcan’s man. If not for his breastplate, he would have already had all his ribs broken.
The man struggled mightily, and his comrades drew swords and began to hack at the thing tugging him, though they could barely reach it overhead. Finally one man leaped up and got in a good hit. The arm recoiled as the bronze blade bit into it, letting go and disappearing into the canopy as quickly as it had come.
But a second later another of the huge hairy arms plunged downward and took hold of another man in the next troop back. This soldier was not so lucky. Without waiting to get a good hold around the man, the arm yanked him into the air and rapidly retracted upward. The infantryman’s legs kicked wildly in the air, and he screamed as the claws found a chink in his armor and pierced his side.
Then he was gone, before anyone could aim a spear or put arrow to string. They all heard the sickening crunch that came from the cluster of tree branches overhead, and the man’s dying moan. Leaves rustled, and a moment later an empty helmet dropped to the ground.
“Swords out! Look to the trees!” Damicos yelled, and his sergeants took up the cry.
“What in Rukhal’s darkest pit—” Tarsha began, staring back at the gruesome attack with only slightly less horror than his daughter. But then the fat man’s words turned to a terrified gurgle as another of the hairy arms came down just behind him and plucked him from the saddle.
Jivenna screamed in abject terror. Jamson swore and grasped at his friend’s leg with one hand while reaching for a dagger at his belt with the other. Tarsha was quickly rising into the air with black claws closed around his prodigious midsection like a vice. Damicos turned his mount and tried to reach the man with sword in hand, but he saw he wouldn’t make it. Leon had his spear at the ready, and shoved it upward at the thick hairy mass that had taken Tarsha.
The lieutenant’s spear-tip just managed to draw blood from the thing, but it didn’t stop it. A shrieking groan came from the canopy, however, and Damicos saw a large hairy shape detach momentarily from the top of the giant trunk where the branches spread. It looked like a great monkey or bear, clinging to the tree with its other fifteen-foot arm. It wavered for a moment, swinging Tarsha back and forth, and then got better purchase and hauled its prey up toward its waiting jaws.
“Archers!” Damicos screamed, pointing at the target. Two of the skirmishers armed with bows broke away from their troop and ran toward him. The tall female recruit, Kaecha, and Ica Mistshaper each had an arrow on the string. As soon as they were in range and could manage a clear view, they loosed.
The two missiles sped upwards toward the tree trunk, and for a moment Damicos was afraid they would both sink into the body of the man he was trying to save. Of course, Tarsha would be dead in seconds if they waited. But the archers were good, and their shafts went past the man struggling in mid-air and clattered among the branches.
Damicos thought both had missed. One fell back to earth having hit the trunk, but the second seemed to have done some good. There was another shriek from above and Tarsha’s body sank a few cubits closer to the ground.
Damicos risked a glance back along the marching line. There were now three more arms reaching among the men that he could see, and the infantry were hacking at them desperately to fend off further casualties. Even as he watched, however, one man was pulled up into the trees.
A fourth arm came down and scooped one of the other skirmishers off his feet. The man’s fellow warriors launched a hasty fusillade at the thing, and it dropped its victim—from twenty cubits up. He crashed to the earth among his comrades and lay still.
Ica and Kaecha loosed more arrows to protect the vanguard, and Lopontes Ukan and his brother stepped forward to sink hard slingstones into the flesh of whatever horror was up there. Finally Tarsha fell back to the ground, bouncing off a log and lying senseless near Jamson’s horse. The explorer leaped from his saddle to minister to his friend, and had the presence of mind to also pull Jivenna from her mount to huddle near the ground.
Damicos, sword in hand, checked the trees ahead. He couldn’t see any of the hairy creatures there. It seemed they had let the front of the column pass by their position before beginning their assault. But how many of them were there? If he led the column onward, or moved off into the trees to either side, would they encounter a hundred more of the hideous tree-dwellers?
“Bring one down with your spears!” he called to the sergeants.
“We can’t reach them,” Hundos protested. “Their bodies are too high up, we can only fight them off as they reach down to us.”
Indeed, another glance rearward showed the captain that his was the
way the vicious encounter had turned. Some of the skirmishers seemed to be having success keeping the monsters at bay with well-placed shot from sling or bow, but even the long spears of the infantry couldn’t get at the creatures if they stayed among the tree tops. Their grasping arms kept coming down toward the men, searching for easy targets.
Another of the beasts reached down farther back, in the mid-point of Damicos’ column. The two men nearest, forewarned by what was going on amid the vanguard, swung their swords at the arm, and then a pack of skirmishers led by The Sickle launched three short javelins into the trees above. There came another of the shrieking groans, halfway between the call of a boar and the dying moan of a frightened horse. Something huge fell from the tree, crushing a man underneath the bulk of its hairy body. Its long arms lashed out, but the men all around lunged forward and chopped the limbs away from the torso of the huge creature.
“Tarsha is badly hurt,” Jamson yelled, bringing Damicos’ gaze back to the ground where the stocky man had fallen. “We’ve got to get clear of these trees!”
“We can’t clear the trees,” Kairm hissed. Damicos noticed that the trapper had sunk to the earth, making himself scarce as possible among the bushes and fallen branches. He had a long curved knife in his hand and his eyes glittered with fear. “The forest goes on for leagues! Kill the sloths or they will eat their fill. They can move through the trees far faster than we can.”
“Sloths are supposed to be slow!” Damicos snarled.
“Maybe in Kerath, Captain! Not here! Not in the trees.”
“Madness! Can we get away from them at the river?”
“We can try,” Kairm replied. “They’ll stay in the trees; I’ve never known one to touch the ground.”
“We have to try!” Jamson shouted. “We’ll all be plucked and eaten if we stay here.”
Damicos saw that his men weren’t going to be able to bring down many more of the creatures quickly enough. They didn’t have enough archers to effectively fell them.
“Forward, at the double!” he yelled, pointing ahead with his sword. “Move out! Bring the wounded along, quickly!”
Risking the reaching arms, he sprang into the saddle and spurred forward, searching out a path. Kairm ran alongside, ducking and dodging at every shadow that he thought might be an attacker. Behind, Jamson and a few of Hundos’ soldiers frantically worked to put Tarsha’s broken, unconscious body over his saddle, defended by Hundos and the two skirmishers as they heaved at the man’s ponderous bulk.
Finally they followed, once the girl Jivenna had also remounted, crying in horror at her father’s condition. The rest of the column lurched unevenly into motion behind them.
Slashing at the arms descending around them, the men came on, dashing ahead in spurts, now stopping to stab at one of the sloths, now rushing onward to get away. Although the attacks seemed to increase as the men began moving, causing Damicos to wonder just how many sloths could be hiding in the foliage, they finally slackened off when the weight of the column passed the initial attack point. Either the tree-dwelling fiends had all taken sufficient wounds to deter further slaughter, or they had gotten enough of the men that they were busy feasting overhead. He didn’t want to think of how many men he’d just lost.
And to sloths! Rukhal’s guts.
Damicos pressed ahead until he saw the trees beginning to thin off to his left. He veered in that direction, horse stumbling beneath him over the crooked roots and stones. Kairm was at his stirrup.
“Stay on the edge of the trees,” the tracker advised, eyes still wide and worried. “Trefonts and awl-catchers watch for prey out in the open of clearings like that.”
Damicos didn’t pause to ask the man what creatures he was talking about. He rode onward until he knew the rear guard had to have cleared the main attack area of the sloths. Then he sent Leon back to get a report. The column formed a phalanx, facing the way they’d come.
“Three men dead or missing,” the lieutenant said when he returned to the front of the column a few minutes later. “And three more wounded. We killed at least two of the things, thanks to that Duran hunter’s arrows and the rest of our skirmishers. They’re as big as your horse, but with arms twice that long again. Ugly things. But they bleed easily enough.”
“They’ve stopped attacking,” Damicos observed, “and have not attempted to follow. We are almost to the river. Hear it now?”
The lieutenant nodded. The roar of the rapids was beginning to drown out the moans of the wounded behind. Not the sobs of Jivenna over her father’s broken body, however. She kept a hand on him as she rode alongside.
Finally, after another ten minutes, the ground began to slope slightly as they approached the river. The water-course came into view ahead, a welcome sight. The White was wide here, at least sixty paces across, and deep. It churned downhill over boulders as large as a wagon, splashing and throwing up a mist that permeated the first several paces of forest around. Moss covered the rocks and ferns grew along the edge.
“Keep moving along the bank,” Kairm said. “There’s an open part up ahead, if memory serves, where the trees recede. We can regroup there.”
Damicos nodded his thanks, and led the way forward with the river rushing past on his right. Every man kept eyes on the trees to the left, wondering what further dangers lurked by the river.
Soon they reached a level river meadow, just as Kairm had said, which provided some space for the column to bunch up. The wounded were laid down and tended to. Some of the men sat near the river and rubbed at eyes tired of staring through the gloom, straining to see threats before they met a fate as swift and merciless as their departed comrades.
Damicos dismounted and stood in the group clustered around Tarsha, who lay on the ground with eyes closed.
“I fear his back is broken,” Jamson said. His face was pale. Jivenna erupted into a new round of racking sobs, covering her eyes with her hands.
“We need to get him and the girl out of here,” Damicos said. “We should have insisted they stay behind.”
Jamson nodded. “The question becomes, then, how to get them out. We dare not repeat the journey under the trees…”
The captain turned to Kairm, who was staring upriver. “Is there another way back to the coast? We have wounded to send back to the towns.”
Kairm shrugged. “There are many ways. None of them is particularly safe, especially if one is burdened with wounded.”
“Perhaps a small party could follow the river,” Jamson suggested. “Keep in the clear along its banks.”
Damicos shook his head. “The Southwhite goes northwest for six leagues or more before leaving the forest. It’s not three back the way we came, from Garrim.”
“But those are three leagues of death!” Jamson shouted. “The wounded would never make it.”
The girl spoke up, wiping at her tears. “I demand that we be guarded back to civilization at once, with all the troops at your command to protect us,” she told Damicos. In spite of himself, the captain was impressed at the plump girl’s firm audacity—the casual expectation of obedience that was common to all nobility, he supposed.
Damicos met Jamson’s eyes and jerked his head, summoning the man a few steps away to confer in private. “Tarsha knew the risks he was taking when he came with us,” he told the expedition leader once they were out of earshot of the girl. “What’s happened is tragic, but we knew there would be casualties.”
Jamson nodded bitterly. “It was foolish, bringing them along,” he admitted. “Poor Tarsha may not last the night. But my resolve in this endeavor remains firm. We shall go on, and perhaps the gods will vindicate me.”
“Well said!” Damicos clapped his employer on the shoulder. “This is but the first setback. I expect others.”
Jamson sighed. “That is why I hired you. We should send the wounded and Jivenna back through the trees as speedily as possible, circling wide around these horrors. With enough men that they will make it through.”
�
��Easier said than done,” Damicos muttered. “Every man we send back now is a man we won’t have later, when we face the real dangers, the ones we came here to overcome. And the ones chosen to go won’t like missing out on the spoil.”
“But they’re your men! You can order them to go.”
“Yes. I can, and I will. But only a single troop of men. The girl will have to carry her father on her horse, and his will be used to carry two of our wounded.”
Jamson sighed. “They’re your men. Send them, and let’s be on our way.”
Damicos selected Urcan’s troop, the hardest hit, to take their wounded and the others out. Sergeant Urcan physically bristled at the news of his assignment, but said only “Yessir.”
There were other mutters. Fieron Tarmull, the young infantryman Cormoran Telos had befriended, grumbled the loudest at being selected to retreat with the wounded. He punched his veteran friend in the shoulder. “I want a gemstone as big as my head. See that you find me one, Corm.”
The captain instructed Urcan to conduct the girl and her father to Garrim or another sizable town, and then to set up their wounded fellows in Dura and give a full report to the sergeant in charge there. He anticipated that word would reach Pelekarr sooner or later about the infantry’s decision to continue deeper into the interior.
Ica Mistshaper approached the captain as he was still speaking to the sergeant.
“Sir, I can help escort these back to Dura. They’ll need a hunter, I think, since the trapper guide will be staying with you.”
Damicos eyed the hunter. “You feel your strength flagging so soon, Ica?”
“I could go on. But for how long, I cannot say. If we are to send the wounded back, let me go so that one of your armored spearmen can remain with the expedition.”
Damicos’ eyes flickered to the tall female archer, Kaecha, who was gathered with the other wounded. It seemed she had come away from the sloth encounter with a broken arm. The captain had seen Ica speaking with her at length during the journey thus far, and he wondered if something else lay behind the hunter’s desire to accompany the wounded. He smiled thinly. It made good sense, though, as much as the archer would be missed in the days ahead.
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