Dungeons of the Crooked Mountains
Page 34
The bleaking, coming back to its senses, started moving dully but it was in death throes at that point... A puddle of its sticky blood was quickly forming beneath it.
The harn didn’t jump again. His head plunged instantly into the now large wound. A strong burst... A nasty crunch... And I see the reptile’s heart in Gorgie’s satisfied mouth.
I turned.
Jay was leaning on the wall and not breathing, frozen. Her dark emerald eyes contain disbelief and shock.
“Listen,” I turned to her with the most calming voice I could muster. “If you want any loot, you’ll have to hurry. The bleaking is gonna die soon...”
“Are you a mage?” Jay asked timidly.
After finishing off the monster, we sat at the water’s edge and waited for the harn to eat his fill of the fresh meat. All caked in lizard blood, he’d make the perfect bait for all the local predators, so I was going to get him in the water before we left. Thankfully there would be nothing else living in the water where the bleaking was. It’s best not to drink, but it’s just fine for washing up.
Still, Jay refused to swim outright. To be frank, this place would soon be packed with scavengers, so I had to agree. Time to move our butts...
“Probably,” I shrugged. “Although to be honest, I’m still very far from the official rank... But I do have a magic supply. And a few spells too.”
“So you are a mage,” Jay said affirmatively and asked a question I also wanted answered:
“But if you’re a mage, why aren’t your eyes blue?”
“That I do not know.”
But I do have a guess... I think the reason is that I have only ever used iridescent tablets. But I decided not to tell her that.
“Gorgie is also a magical creature, but his eyes are green,” I said.
“Maybe it works differently for animals?” Jay suggested and suddenly said joyously:
“You know, that’s actually cool!”
“What exactly?” I didn’t get it.
“Well, your eyes...” she said, then facepalmed:
“I’m such a silly girl! After all, that’s why you asked me to take an oath of silence!”
“Exactly,” I chuckled. “I don’t want the attention.”
“Honestly, a powerful mage could tell in two shakes...”
“Believe me, I have no intention of encountering powerful mages any time soon,” I objected with a smile.
“Good,” said Jay. “Alright then, now I understand about you. But what are you planning to do with your Gorgie?”
I glanced at the harn, now bathing in the water.
“Oh! That’s actually no problem at all. You’ll see when the time comes.”
“Hrn...” Gorgie told me, his ears perked up.
“Okay,” I said, getting up off the ground. “We’ve gotta go. The scavengers will be here soon.”
* * *
I was standing on the top of a cliff and taking in the sunset! At that moment, I sincerely believed I was seeing the most beautiful, captivating spectacle of my life!
The sun, gigantic and fire red, was slowly drifting into its heavenly palace, bidding a fond farewell to the world below. It seemed to have been waiting to give me a little bit of its warmth and light before going away for the night.
Jay was perched on a small boulder next to me. There were tears of joy and relief rolling down her pale cheeks...
We made it out! The caverns took pity on us in the end and let us go!
After the battle with the bleaking, the harn led us another two days. Sure there were several megabats, fangblooms and two vipers, but I have to admit they were the calmest days of all the time I spent underground.
Jay was jumping for joy. She had never gotten so many esses and tablets before. We did the math and just the reward for the bleaking covered most of her debt. Too bad the lizard wasn’t magical... Then she’d really be in luck... But even still she had to be counting her blessings. The last few days had brought her more money than she could even imagine. If she pays back the debt, she’ll still have a decent amount left over. Now it’s just the small matter of selling all the loot at a good price.
We admired the sunset then decided to continue and spend the night somewhere down below.
Cave cats are frequent visitors to the surface, so Gorgie didn’t feel any discomfort. He quickly found a fairly comfortable path and was confidently leading us along, giving occasional warnings when we reached somewhere dangerous.
“You recognize any of these places?” I asked Jay in the early evening when we were standing on a wide cliff overlooking a valley below.
“Yes,” she nodded. “See that river, it’s called the Swiftwater. The forest to the right we call White Glade. We used to collect birch sap there.”
“And what’s over there?” I asked, pointing to a pillar of black smoke in the distance.
“That’s Fisham, the village where my aunt Vasilina lives. I was actually going to suggest we go see her. She lives alone. We could get there in a few days. We can take a breather... And you know, she cooks so well! Mmm! You’ll be licking your fingers!”
“I’m not opposed. We could use a rest. And I really miss normal food. But I’m worried by that smoke...”
“It’s just normal smoke,” she waved it off. “Somebody’s hut must have burned down. It’s been a dry autumn this year. They probably weren’t being careful...”
I looked around. So the mining village was behind us and we had emerged on the other side of the Crooked Mountains. All we can hope is that we won’t meet any old friends over here.
When we reached the foothills, it was already night. We mutually agreed to keep walking and not stop. With a guide like Gorgie, going through the woods at night would be a walk in the park.
In fact, that’s basically what it was... We walked a fairly wide path while talking in muted tones. Well, Jay did most of the talking. Heh... I wasn’t expecting her to be so chatty. She was trying to keep quiet in the caverns...
She told me about her family, sisters, mother, good-for nothing father who was still a kind man deep down... About her former fiancé who stopped talking to her once he found out she was being given up into peonage. About her girlfriends, who also turned against her.
“Oh gods!” she exclaimed. “I was such a fool then! I sobbed indignantly!”
“And you’re not a fool now?” I chuckled.
With a laugh, she gave me a light pat on the shoulder.
“No, now I’m not a fool anymore. You know, I’ve been one step from death for the last few days, and that gave me a chance to rethink a lot of things. I feel like my life is starting over. All my troubles from before the caverns seem so minor and insignificant...”
Suddenly the harn, who was walking in front, stopped sharply... And we quickly saw and did the same...
“What is it?” Jay whispered, on edge.
“Gorgie smells death,” I answered gloomily. “There are a few corpses in the next glade.”
“What are we gonna do?”
“There are lots of tracks, but he doesn’t smell any living people,” I answered and suggested:
“We should take a look...”
We smelled the nauseating stench of rotting corpses as we approached the glade. And a few minutes later we found the source...
It was a wide-branching old oak with people hanging on ropes, swaying. Five. Men. Undressed. The oldest, I think fifty or so. The youngest still just a boy.
“Robbers?” I asked, turning to Jay.
But she didn’t answer... She was standing with both hands covering her mouth, a river of tears gushing from her eyes...
“Do you know them?”
“That’s... Michal...” she pointed at the boy, sobbing. “I’ve known him since childhood... And that old man is his father... They aren’t robbers... They’re from Fisham... Simple folk... Who would want to kill them?”
Not knowing what to do, I took a step forward and gave the silently weeping girl a timid hug. T
here was no reason to say anything. Silent, I started stroking her hair reassuringly.
She sniveled and pressed her whole body up against mine. I feel my shirt get wet on my right shoulder from her tears.
“Listen, Jay,” I said quietly. “I’m really sorry about your friends... The gods saw what happened to them. I’m telling you the whole truth... But it’s too late to help them now. They’re dead. We need to get out of here. It’s risky to stay here too long.”
She raised her head and backed away.
“We’re not gonna take them down and bury them?”
“No,” I answered. “We shouldn’t draw any attention now. What if the authorities did this? You know it’s illegal to cut down hanging men without permission. But I promise you — as soon as we reach the nearest village, we’ll tell the local elders.”
“You promise?” she asked, wiping her tears away.
“I promise,” I nodded. “Now let’s go...”
It was around morning when we reached Fisham... Or rather what was left of it... We saw another couple impromptu gallows along the way, too. And every time Jay recognized an acquaintance or childhood friend. There were no women among them, either. Whoever did this was clearly only killing the men.
We walked through the village, burned to the foundations, and tried to figure out what happened. Gradually we made our way to the center where Jay’s aunt’s home once stood.
“Did your aunt live in the center of the village?” I asked in surprise. I just couldn’t forget the ramshackle hut old man Burdoc picked her up from. And her lonely aunt lives in a mansion in the middle of a village...
“Yes,” she nodded, looking at the black smoldering pieces of wood with tears in her eyes. All that was left of Vasilina’s home. “She was a miller’s widow.”
Hm... It suddenly occurred to me that a well-heeled aunt could have helped get her niece out of peonage. But I kept tactfully silent...
“And what’s that?” I asked, pointing at a long post towering in the middle of the small square.
“That’s where the elder used to proclaim orders from the Baron.”
“See that? Is there something hanging there?”
Our interest piqued, we walked across the square and stopped five steps from the pillar. The unknown item was a wooden shield cloven in two. The shield boss, which survived intact, was engraved with a grinning bear, the emblem of our Baron. But that wasn’t so interesting... In black ink, there was a raven drawn on the shield itself with its wings spread wide.
I took a heavy sigh and lowered my head.
“What does that mean, Eric?” Jay asked, agitated.
“You can’t guess?” I answered with a question of my own. “It looks like the young Raven brought that mercenary army he promised. And based on what we’ve seen today, we must be just behind the cutthroat army’s back lines.”
End of Book One
To be continued...
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About the Author
Alexey Osadchuk was born in 1979 in the Ukraine. In the late 1990s his family moved to the south of Spain where they still live today.
Alexey was an avid reader from an early age, devouring adventure novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jack London and Arthur Conan Doyle.
In 2010 he wrote his first fantasy novel which was immediately accepted by one of Russia’s leading publishing houses Alpha Book.
He also used to be a passionate online gamer which prompted him to write the story of a man who joins an MMORPG game hoping to raise money for his daughter’s heart surgery. In 2013, the first book of Mirror World was published by EKSMO, Russia’s largest publishing house. The English translation of the series is now available worldwide in its entirety, prompting a reviewer to call Alexey “one of the best LitRPG authors to date”.