by AC Cobble
“Something watching us?” she asked.
“No, not watching us,” he said, his stride quickening. “Hurry along. We don’t have a lot of time.”
No longer practicing stealth, they made it back to the others quickly.
Jon looked up at them in surprise. “Back already?”
Rew glanced over the party. Jon was squatting comfortably near Anne, who sat cross-legged on the forest floor. Raif was standing in his small clothes, shivering in the early autumn air, holding his hands out to the fire. Three bedrolls had been strung in a triangle between the branches of a couple of trees, and presumably, Cinda was huddling inside of them changing her clothing.
For a moment, Rew wanted to comment on the ridiculousness of trying to maintain privacy in the wilderness, but he shook it off and asked, “Do you hear that?”
Raif looked around uncertain, goosebumps pebbling his pale flesh. Anne shrugged. Jon surged to his feet.
“Barking… Yipping?” asked Zaine, frowning. “Are there, ah, dogs in the wilderness?”
“Ayres,” hissed Jon.
Rew nodded.
“How far?” questioned the junior ranger, drawing his longsword.
“Two leagues,” said Rew.
“They’ll come for us?” asked Anne.
“I hope so,” said Rew, gesturing at the fire. “They will have sensed us before I heard them. Smelling the fire is probably what’s got the ayres so excited. It would be very unusual if they ignored us once they detected our presence.”
Raif had moved to his wet clothing and armor and was tugging on his trousers.
“Leave the armor alone,” instructed Rew. “You don’t have time to put it on. Get your sword. Stand behind Jon and I. Be ready to swing at anything that gets past us.” He turned to Zaine. “Do you know how to use that bow?”
“It’s been a few years…”
“Do what you can,” he said. “Ayres are fast, so you’ll have to lead them quite a bit. Unless it’s a perfect shot, it won’t kill them, so aim for the narjags if they’re riding the ayres. Whatever you do, be sure not to hit any of us.”
Anne had moved to the bedrolls and was whispering to Cinda. The girl emerged, evidently having already changed into a dry dress.
Cinda flexed her fingers. “I may be able to—“
Rew shook his head. “Jon and I can handle a few ayres and narjags. Stay with Anne, and watch what we do. If you’re not skilled at it, spellcasting could do as much harm as good.”
Cinda glared at him, evidently put out at being told to stay with the empath, but he meant it. He didn’t want to be dodging poorly aimed magical attacks from behind while dealing with the ayres and their riders. A few of them should pose little risk to him and Jon, but they had the added complication of needing to protect the others.
Wordlessly, Rew gestured the group into position, having the women put their backs to the small fire and cluster close together. Raif stood in front of the women, and Rew and Jon stood in front of the lad.
“I don’t have time to teach you much, but if an ayre is coming straight at you, and there’s a narjag on its back holding a spear, always jump to the opposite side of the spear. Don’t let the ayre come directly at you, but don’t dodge out of its way too early either. Whatever you do, don’t let it get its teeth into you.”
They nodded, clutching their weapons, fear growing in their eyes.
Jon leaned close and whispered. “Senior Ranger, I’ve never faced an ayre before.”
Rew slapped him on the back. “Just hold my side. You’ll be fine.”
“I, ah, I’ve never seen a narjag, either,” muttered the younger man.
Rew gripped Jon’s shoulder. “I’ve sparred with you enough to know you’ll be fine.”
The senior ranger drew his wooden-hilted longsword and looked into the forest where, at any moment, the ayres would appear. Rew could hear their excited barks and yips and knew their party wasn’t going to be ignored.
Listening to the noises of the approaching animals, he told his companions, “Three of them, I think.”
Beside him, Jon set his feet and raised his sword to his shoulder. Raif took the other side.
“Back,” hissed Rew, but it was too late to adjust.
Through the trees, they could see the bounding shapes of blue-skinned ayres. Narjags clung to their backs, hands gripping the rope harnesses they used to stay on the mounts, their other hands holding short spears. The ayres were fast, running in bounding gaits like wolves but snapping their squared jaws aggressively and whipping their heads from side to side like they’d gone mad from sickness. Their eyes were larger than a wolf’s and were watery-yellow. Their skin was hairless, cobalt blue. It bunched thickly at their joints and was as tough as leather armor to cut through. They looked underfed, loose skin draped over bone, but Rew knew that they held their weight and their muscle in their hips and their necks—hips to propel them in leaps to pounce on prey, their necks to rip and tear once they’d sunk their teeth into flesh.
Jon and Raif edged closer to him, nervous.
Rew cursed. “Spread out, you fools.”
If they heard him, they didn’t respond and only shuffled unconsciously closer still, eyes fixed on the approaching Dark Kind. With the two younger men crowding his sides, Rew’s maneuverability was lessened. He would have no chance to dodge to the side, and he couldn’t fall back and leave them exposed, either. That left forward.
When the ayres and their riders were a dozen paces away, he charged, running straight into the lead creature’s path. It saw him coming and leapt to attack, its rider shrieking a high-pitched battle cry, but Rew had timed his movement so that he met the ayre as it was mid-leap, unable to turn on him.
He breezed past it, his longsword carving a wicked gash across the ayre’s throat and down its side. He dragged the point of his longsword through its tough, dark blue skin then brought the blade around in front of him in time to meet a second of the ayres. He thrust forward, stabbing this one directly in the neck, just above its breastbone.
His longsword sank deep, snagging in the body of the charging ayre. Rew let go of the hilt and stepped sideways, letting the momentum of the dying beast carry it by. He raised a forearm and caught the side of the narjag’s spear with his leather bracer, shoving it away. With his other hand, he grabbed the throat of the narjag as it streaked past, tearing it from the back of the dead ayre.
The narjag wailed as Rew spun it. He smashed the narjag’s compact, muscular body to the ground and pinned it with a knee. Whipping his hunting knife from his belt, Rew punched it into the chest of the narjag and then lurched to his feet, stepping around the dead ayre and tugging his longsword from its motionless body.
The surviving ayre had charged Jon, and the ranger had acquitted himself well, chopping the forelegs of the thing, crippling it. The narjag rider had catapulted over the shoulders of its mount and crashed to the ground, stunned.
The narjag rider from the first ayre that Rew had struck had ridden its ayre to the dirt then jumped off, attacking Raif. The big youth was wheeling his hand-and-a-half sword around and lashing out with a sweeping blow. The narjag raised its own crude blade to parry the attack, but the giant hand-and-a-half sword smashed through the narjag’s weapon and took the Dark Kind in the torso, thunking into it hard, cleaving halfway through the narjag’s body.
Rew advanced on the lone narjag that survived, the one that had attacked Jon, but Zaine released an arrow, striking it in the shoulder and spinning it. Then, Jon was there, thrusting his longsword into the narjag’s chest for the killing blow. Foul, black blood dripping from his weapons, Rew stepped to the ayre that Jon had crippled, and he silenced it with a powerful overhand strike to the neck.
The party was uninjured, and their foes were dead. The younglings began speaking at once, all babbling in amazement at the speed and brutality of the fight.
Rew ignored them, staring at the dead Dark Kind. Three ayres with narjag riders. Why were they there?
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Jon walked to stand beside him, and Rew met the younger ranger’s gaze. Jon raised an eyebrow in question, shooting his eyes to the dead ayres, but Rew could only shrug.
In years past, ayres and their narjag riders functioned as a scouting and swift attack force for the Dark Kind. They could cover far greater distances than the narjags alone, and the more intelligent narjags kept their mounts on task. The pairs of them were hell to chase down. Fifty years ago, during the last full-scale war with the Dark Kind, Rew knew they’d wreaked havoc behind the lines as the quick-moving groups ravaged small settlements, but that had been the last time Rew was aware the units had operated effectively. In recent years, even during the last migration two years prior, the ayres and narjags seemed to function independently, and only occasionally was a narjag seen atop a mount. Whatever bond they’d held seemed to have been broken.
What had changed? What were three pairs of them doing in an isolated place in the wilderness, and where had they been going? There was nothing to raid, nothing to scout nearby. Rew rubbed at the stubble on his head. Two separate parties of narjags passing through the wilderness seemingly headed in the same direction. Something was going on, but he couldn’t fathom what.
He sighed and moved to assist Raif, who still in just his trousers, was trying to free his hand-and-a-half sword from where it’d snagged in the spine of the dead narjag. The boy had raised a bare foot as if he meant to put it on the narjag to help free the blade but cringed at the sheen of ichorous blood that covered the creature.
“Pull,” said Rew, stepping on the narjag with his boot. Over his shoulder, Rew called to the others, “Separate the wet clothing and let’s wait to dry it until we camp for the night. The stench of narjags isn’t pleasant when they’re alive, but trust me, it doesn’t take long for a dead one to become unbearable.”
Chapter Nine
Six days into the journey, they walked along a ridge, looking down into a deep, narrow valley. A band of river cut through dense forest, the water reflecting like crystal in the morning sun. The trees were thick, mostly pine, but the green of the pine was speckled with the colors of autumn as oak and elm broke through the canopy. It was serene and beautiful, but it hid a terrible danger.
“You’re certain we’re high enough up?” asked Cinda, staring down into the valley.
Rew grinned. “We should be. We’ve done what we can to stay safe. We’re at the top of the ridge. We can’t go any higher, and avoiding this valley entirely would add four days to our journey.” He pointed down the other side, away from the river valley, where the crest of the ridge they were walking along fell away into an expansive breadth of shorter, scrub-like trees and outcroppings that burst randomly through the foliage. “It’s difficult to see from here, but the land down there is broken, shattered. The soil is thin, so there are no tall trees blocking the undergrowth. It’s covered in brambles, and we’d have to chop our way through. There’d be as much climbing as there would be walking through that stretch. It’s all short, jagged outcroppings and boulders, but here on the ridge, the travel is as easy as it is anywhere in the wilderness. We’ve just got to be careful not to venture down the wrong side of the slope.”
“Easy, unless one of these… what did you call it, a simian?” she asked. “Unless one of these simians comes up here after us.”
“There’s a reason this is wilderness, lass,” he said. “Look around you. This land is beautiful and verdant. If it was safe to live here, Eastwatch wouldn’t be the fringe of the kingdom. But it’s not safe. East of Eastwatch, it’d be difficult if not impossible to form a settlement in this forest without encroaching on something a lot bigger and nastier than we are. The narjags are just the start of it. Dark Kind are dangerous in large groups, but as long as they don’t gather, they’re little problem. It’s the natural creatures that pose the greatest risk day to day. Simians, bears, wolves, primal sloths that have shoulders as high as the roof of the ranger station, silver-breasted harpies when we near the Spine, giant marrow spiders, rock trolls, and even forest drakes. Believe me, the last thing you want to do is go anywhere near the hunting grounds of a forest drake. If people tried to build a village out here, it wouldn’t be long until something came along that viewed them as food.”
Cinda shuddered.
“Your home has its dangers as well,” he advised. “Everywhere does. Outside of Falvar in the barrowlands, you’ve wraiths to worry about. They don’t frighten you because your people have charted which barrows are active, and it’s easy to avoid those. If you were to stumble into the wrong crypt, though… There’s little danger when you have knowledge of your surroundings, whether you’re in the wilderness or Falvar. It’s when you’re on unfamiliar terrain that the risk is serious, and that’s true anywhere that you are. Even the civilized places like the capital have courtiers, and truth be told, I’d rather deal with a simian than one of those.”
Cinda laughed, and Rew grinned, happy to have taken her mind off the dangers of the world. The girl was bright, and he imagined she was normally inquisitive and thoughtful, but the stress of fleeing Yarrow, the kidnapping in Eastwatch, and the attack by the narjags and ayres two days prior had sent her into a terrible depression. She’d shuffled along, one foot in front of the other, and it’d pained him to watch. It pained him even more to know that worse was ahead. Not even the girl’s brother had been able to cheer her.
They walked on, and after a moment, she asked him, “You’ve been to the capital, or were you jesting?”
“I’ve been to Mordenhold,” he admitted.
“Can you tell me of it?” she asked. Flushing, she added, “I’ve never been outside of Duke Eeron’s duchy. Spinesend is the greatest city I’ve seen, and from what my tutors have told me, it’s a speck compared to Carff or Mordenhold.”
“Not a speck, I wouldn’t say,” said Rew, grinning at her, “but yes, it’s much smaller than those two cities. Carff is a beautiful place, as you might expect for the capital of the eastern province, though it’s rather crowded for my taste. It’s filled with arches and domes, formed of the red sandstone that surrounds the city, but instead of blending into the terrain, it seems to burst from it. The sandstone is painted in a myriad of bright colors. Tiles decorate most of the doorways and windowsills. Colorfully stained glass is set in the windows of those who can afford it, and who cannot hang sheer curtains. Shimmering domes of copper and tin adorn the buildings, and the people wear light linen robes dyed in vibrant hues. Poets spend volumes describing Carff, but to me, it looks as though a drunken artist stumbled and spilled his entire palette over the city.”
“It’s a hub of commerce, isn’t it?” asked Cinda.
“It is,” confirmed Rew. “It’s the largest sea port in the kingdom, and one of the few places that interacts with the lands beyond the realm. Carff’s streets are filled with strange languages and scents. It’s both wonderful and overwhelming.” He waved a hand around them. “You may have guessed, I prefer solitude.”
She grinned at him. “And Mordenhold?”
Rew’s smile wavered. “It’s less crowded than Carff and less colorful. Mordenhold sits deep in the mountains, only accessible by a few roads that are guarded by stout walls and watchtowers. Where Carff is a city that grew up because of its access to the sea trade and the wider world, Mordenhold grew because it’s inaccessible. The original king, Vaisius Morden, prized defense above all. His capital reflects that attitude.”
Cinda nodded, her eyes sparkling.
“It sits athwart a major east-to-west highway, and merchants have a much quicker time passing through than going all the way around the mountains, so there is commerce,” continued Rew, “but the purpose of the city is rule and war. Mordenhold is a grim place of dark stone and soaring battlements. The streets are filled the clank of steel instead of the babble of strange tongues. The military and the courtiers all wear the black livery of the Mordens, and even the burghers favor darker shades. Where Carff smells of the sea and exotic spices, Mor
denhold smells of snow and oil on metal. The smithies are fired constantly, crafting weapons and armor for the king’s soldiers.”
“There’s an academy there, is there not, for spellcasters?”
Rew grunted. “Yes. It’s… Yes.”
Cinda frowned at him.
He kept walking and finally decided that he may as well explain. “There’s an academy but not one I recommend you ever visit. It’s not a place of study and thought as you might imagine. High magic passes through the blood, as you know, and there’s no blood purer than that of the king’s line, so while the masters spend some time developing their students, they spend just as much trying to strengthen the bloodlines. It’s a cold, callous environment, filled with people who think only of themselves and their own standing.”
“They try to strengthen the bloodlines?” questioned Cinda.
“Many of the matches between the highest-ranking nobles are concocted within the halls of the academy. Unions are directed by scholars and genealogists in the king’s employ,” explained Rew. Before she could speak, he kept on, “And there are the bastards, children of high-ranking nobles with the talent that comes with their blood but without the income and opportunities. The bastards are collected in the academy and trained there for service to the king. They’re bred as well, with little choice in their mates, and no one to look out for them. The progeny from such relations have even less freedom. The only life they know is in the academy, and the indoctrination they receive there. Powerful practitioners of high magic are too dangerous to be allowed freedom, so they’re held captive, by psychological and magical means. It is not pleasant, being forged into a tool for the realm.”
Cinda brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “I… I’ve never heard it described in this way.”
“I did not find Mordenhold a joyful place,” said Rew. “If you have the opportunity to visit one of the kingdom’s great cities, then I recommend Carff, or Jabaan in the west.”
