by AC Cobble
Jon had easily dispatched one of the narjags, parried a strike from another, but then saw Raif was in trouble, so he tried to turn, lunging toward the youth. The ranger thrust with his longsword, taking the narjag clinging to Raif’s shoulder in the side. Jon had left himself open, though, and three narjags smashed into him, surprised he was undefended, swinging at him wildly with their small blades.
Jon cried in pain, and Raif roared, tossing the dead narjag aside but then taking another strike from the spear of the first in the torso before he could bring his sword back around to kill it. The narjag fell away, and two more darted in, attacking inside the guard of Raif’s longer weapon.
The boy dropped the hand-and-a-half sword and grabbed for the narjags. He was strong, but the little creatures were surprisingly wiry. One of them slashed at him with a short blade. The other sunk teeth into Raif’s arm.
Then Rew was amongst them.
He wielded his longsword in a tight pattern, sweeping it across the backs of the narjags but not allowing himself to be thrown off-balance by the force of the blows like Raif had. In heartbeats, he’d carved through four of the foul creatures, and then he swung the blade low, hacking into the narjags on Jon like he was scything the grass behind the ranger station, sweeping them away in a tangle of flesh, blood, and shattered bone.
The young ranger was lying on his back, bleeding, but Rew could see the panic in his open eyes. Jon was alive, for now.
Rew spun, thrusting his blade into the back of the creature stabbing at Raif, and then Zaine was beside him, carving up the one biting the fighter like she was filleting a fish, one of her long daggers plunging into its side, the other raking across its abdomen, spilling its guts in a disgusting pile at its feet.
Raif tried to rise, but he stumbled and collapsed onto his side.
Rew turned and saw the last injured narjag approaching, its blade raised. Casually, the ranger stepped forward and chopped its head off. The twelve narjags were dead.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” babbled Cinda, falling to her brother’s side.
Rew moved to help her, seeing Anne was already with Jon, the empath’s confident fingers poking at the bloody gashes in the young ranger’s side.
Gently, Rew moved Cinda’s hands so she was holding her brother’s head and so he could see the boy’s injuries. Raif’s leather cuirass had taken a solid strike, but the armor had held, and there were several nasty-looking impressions from teeth on his bracer. Rew’s hand came away bloody when he put it underneath the cuirass. He winced. One of the narjags’ spears had found a gap in the protection.
Rew began to unbuckle the breastplate. With Cinda’s help, he tried to move it aside, but the heavy youth was laying half on it.
Zaine stood above them, glancing between the two injured men then at the forest as if she was afraid more narjags would come pouring out of it. Rew thanked her for keeping watch and told her to keep doing so. In times of trauma, it helped for everyone to have something to do.
Zaine nodded tersely and retrieved her bow from where she’d dropped it.
“Hold him while I undo these buckles,” Rew instructed Cinda, turning her brother so he could reach the other side of the armor. “We need to get this cuirass off of him and then cut away his shirt to see the extent of the damage.”
“How is he?” questioned Anne from where she was working on Jon.
“A puncture from a spear, I think,” said Rew, talking over a continuous litany of curses from Raif as the boy writhed in pain. Rew leaned on the big youth and held him down long enough to free the buckle on the cuirass. “It’s pretty deep. Close to going all the way through him, but I don’t think it hit any organs.”
“Let’s switch,” suggested the healer. “Jon’s got a dozen lacerations, but they’re all shallow cuts. Make a poultice to patch him up and to slow any infection. I’ll tend to Raif and come back to Jon when I’ve recovered.”
Rew pressed the fighter’s hands against the wound in his side and told him to keep pressure. Then, he stood and collected his pack from where the party had dropped it just before the fight began. He opened it, looking in at dozens of pockets stuffed with a variety of herbs.
Teeth gritted, Jon watched as the senior ranger began to pull out packets and jars.
“Chew this, but instead of swallowing the juice spit it out,” said Rew, handing Jon a pinch of dried flower buds. “It will help a little with the pain, a lot with any infection.”
Anne had already sliced the ranger’s shirt and peeled it wide open, so Rew had no problem identifying nearly a dozen slashes on Jon’s ribs and stomach where the narjags had hacked at him with their dull blades. Blood streaked Jon’s side, but Anne had been right. They were all superficial cuts, though rather painful looking.
“Blythe’s going to kill me when she sees this,” jested Rew, trying to take the young ranger’s mind away from his injuries. “You keep it up at this rate, and you’ll have half as many scars as the rest of us in no time, though there’ll come a day when you decide it’s best to not let the Dark Kind chop you up. Everyone’s gotta learn the hard way, it seems.”
Rew bound a hasty bandage around Jon’s side to staunch the bleeding then went to rinse his bloody hands off in the river. He returned with some water in a bowl and began dropping herbs into it. He ground them with a pestle, making a slick paste. It would be better if he could boil the poultice, but it would provide some benefit as is. He just had to keep the younger ranger alive until Anne could tend to him. Rew kept joking with Jon, keeping the other man’s attention on his words and not on what he was doing.
Behind them, Raif’s breathing was still coming fast, but Anne’s voice was low and calm. Rew took that as a good sign, that the empath thought she’d have little problem closing the wound. When she was stressed, her words took on a brusque, demanding tone. As long as she spoke softly, Rew wasn’t overly concerned.
Looking down into the bowl, he decided the poultice was good enough. Rew pulled back the loose bandage and began to slather the mixture on Jon’s side.
The younger ranger gasped. “It’s cold!”
Rew grinned. “It’s the water from the river and the oils from some of the herbs. Don’t worry. It will help numb the pain. There are other herbs in this mix to fight potential infection, to stop the bleeding, and to speed healing, though hopefully Anne can get back to you before those have a chance to work. Just stay still and try to breathe evenly.”
Rew pulled his bedroll off his pack and slid it under Jon’s head. Gratefully, the younger ranger laid back and relaxed. Glancing at Anne, Rew saw she’d sat back on her haunches and was rubbing at her temples. She looked tired but unworried.
Cinda, tears in her eyes, was still babbling apologies to her brother over her failed attempt at casting.
“How is he?” the senior ranger asked the healer.
“He’ll be fine,” Anne said with a groan. “I know we’ll need to move from here, but I recommend we stop for the rest of the day as soon as we can. I need a few hours before I can address Jon. By morning, everyone should be capable of travel, though we cannot push it. Rew, you might need to scout ahead.”
Rew met her gaze, and he could see in her eyes that she meant it. The party would be well enough to hike a few hours the next day, but they wouldn’t be near anything like fighting shape.
Rew stood, torn between staying with the party and moving off into the forest to find them a safe place to recover. If the narjags were all doing as the tracks indicated, heading directly for the river and then following its bank, then their current location was an awful place to make camp. They were right in the path of whatever Dark Kind may come shuffling along next, but with Jon and Raif both injured, they couldn’t waste hours exploring their surroundings. Zaine was the only one proven effective in combat who was still standing. Rew couldn’t leave the party unguarded for long.
He glanced at Zaine. “Nice shooting, by the way.”
She offered him a wan smile.<
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“I mean it,” he said. “Firing into the face of a charging enemy is never as easy as hitting a stationary target.”
“I failed us,” hissed Cinda from where she was still sitting on the ground, cradling her brother’s head in her lap. “He could have been killed.”
“You didn’t stab him,” remarked Rew.
“I didn’t manage to blow the powder into the faces of those narjags, either,” lamented Cinda. “I tried to light it when it fell to the ground, hoping to distract them, and I couldn’t even do that. All I could do was watch.”
“You’ve had no chance to practice,” consoled Rew.
“I had enough time,” said Cinda, looking up to meet his eyes. “Anne helped me with some of the technical aspect. This is a spell I know, Ranger. I’ve done similar before, but when it mattered, I couldn’t cast even the smallest of sparks.”
Rew glanced at Anne, but she was not looking at him. Instead, the empath sat forward and put a hand on Cinda’s thigh. “High magic is not easy, lass. It takes years of study. Be calmed. You will learn it but not in a week and not while spending most of the day hiking. You need rest. You need focus. You need time, and we have none.”
“She’s right,” said Rew. “You will learn but not today. Today, you can help us carry the packs so we can get Jon and your brother to a place they can rest.” He looked between the injured men. “Can you move now, just a few hundred paces?”
They gave assurances, and with Rew’s help, they struggled to their feet, clutching their sides and cursing fervently.
Grinning, Rew gripped each of them on the shoulder. “It could have been worse.”
“It would have been, if you weren’t there,” said Jon.
“That’s why I’m here,” said Rew, feeling Anne’s eyes on him. He looked away and pretended not to notice her smug look.
Chapter Eleven
For two days, they traveled half the day, walking slowly so their injured could recover. Anne doled out healing, taking their pain but not so much that she affected her own ability to travel. At the end of the second day, they made it near the source of the river. It was a slender finger of water compared to the arm that flowed farther south, but they’d passed hundreds of feeders where water poured down from the pale gray mountain on the other side.
Beside the river, there was a pair of shoulder-high piles of rock. The stones were worn, weathered by wind and rain, but they’d been placed and fitted together carefully to signal a shallow place in the river. It would take more than a storm to topple the two markers. Between the stones were the bodies of five narjags.
“We’re not the only ones out here killing narjags,” remarked Jon, “or do you think it was some sort of tribal disagreement?”
Rew walked up to observe the bodies, wrinkling his nose at their awful odor. “These five have been sitting out for some time. I’d guess four days, and they weren’t killed by other narjags.”
Everyone, reluctant to get too close to the stench of the bodies, was intrigued enough to pinch their noses and try. The five narjags had huge, brutal slashes on them that cut them open as cleanly as if on a butcher’s table.
“Sonic lashes,” murmured Rew, walking a slow circle around the bodies. “A spellcaster did this. Afterward, it appears someone looted the bodies. I’m guessing these were killed, then another party of Dark Kind took their belongings.”
“They don’t bury each other?” quipped Zaine.
Rew offered her a tight smile.
“A spellcaster, out here?” asked Jon. He gestured around them. There was nothing but wilderness, and no other people within several days’ walk of them. He scratched his head. “I suppose it could have been the same one who opened that portal we found near Eastwatch, but why would they portal there and then to here? I can’t imagine there are two spellcasters out in the wilderness, but I also can’t imagine anyone with the skill to open a portal would do so and then hike so far. And if they didn’t hike through the wilderness like we did, it seems rather odd they’d choose these two locations to portal to.”
Rew nodded. “Spellcasters in the wilderness, spellcasters choosing to hike, spellcasters appearing somewhere like this crossing? I agree. None of it seems likely, but all the same…”
The younger ranger didn’t reply. All the same, they’d found evidence of a portal opening, and now, they were standing above the bodies of five narjags killed by a spell. Whether or not the options seemed likely, there was evidence that something of the sort had occurred.
“But why?” wondered Cinda. “Spellcasters use portals to save time moving between the places they’d want to be. Eastwatch maybe, but here? What reason could they have to be here?”
Rew merely grunted in response.
Continuing, Cinda added, “Perhaps they didn’t know exactly where they were going. Without an established target destination, travel by portal can be erratic, I’ve read. Maybe they didn’t realize how far off they were, and maybe they are appearing in random locations to try and figure it out.”
Rew shook his head. “I disagree. If it’s the same spellcaster, they’ve been traveling by foot or by portal with an awfully lot of precision for someone who’s lost.” He pointed to the stacked rocks marking the crossing. “They came to the exact point I was guiding you to after two weeks in the open woods. The odds of that are unfathomable. At the other site, they appeared within one hundred paces of a waiting pack of narjags. No, if it’s the same caster, they arrived in these locations because they meant to.”
“Could they be tracking us?” wondered Jon.
“This happened about four days ago,” remarked Rew. “If they were tracking us, why would they appear here four days before us and at the other site before we’d even gone looking for the narjags?”
Cinda frowned, crossing her arms over her chest. “You said you’ve seen tracks by the narjags, right? What about tracks that could have been from a spellcaster?”
Rew shook his head. “I’ve seen nothing. That means they could have traveled by portal, or they could have cast a glamour to obscure the signs of the passage. A spellcaster who could cast a glamour to fool me in these woods… I think it unlikely, but perhaps it could be done.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” responded Cinda.
“Could this spellcaster be traveling to your father’s domain the same as we are?” asked Rew. “Maybe it’s someone in your father’s employ, and for some reason, they’re unable to portal directly to Falvar.”
Cinda shook her head. “My father has no spellcasters of his own. It’s part of the reason he sent me to Yarrow to foster. I was to be trained there. I… I don’t think he has any spellcasters of his own.”
“There’s much we do not know,” mused Rew. He glanced down at the bodies of the narjags again. “Come on. Let’s drag these to the edge of the forest where they can rot out of the path, and then let’s cross. You’ll want to get rinsed off after touching those, I suspect.”
He winked at the younglings, but none of them laughed at his jest.
The trail up the side of the mountain wasn’t much of a trail, but it was up the side of a mountain. The first league felt similar to traversing the wilderness but at a sheer incline. After that, the ground became rugged, not just scattered bits of rock but boulders jutting out of the earth and patches of raw stone that they had to scamper across, leaning against the slope so they didn’t slide hundreds of paces back down.
That first league into the foothills was littered with the corpses of narjags and ayres. Three dozen of them, Rew counted, before the trail of bodies ended. At the end of the grisly line, it appeared a concussive blast had been unleashed, pulping the bodies of ten narjags, knocking over several trees, and blasting huge chunks of stone a score of paces away.
“Maybe the spellcaster was tired of being followed,” speculated Jon.
Rew didn’t respond. Whoever had killed three dozen narjags while on the run, leaving not a trace of their own passing, was a frightfully talented
spellcaster. Blessed Mother, what were they doing out there?
“Sonic lash spells, for the most part,” advised Cinda, looking the way they’d come then back toward the site of the explosion. She admitted, “I don’t know what that was.”
Shaking his head, Rew kept going, and for the rest of the day, they did not see any more corpses of narjags. He wasn’t sure if they’d moved off the path that the spellcaster and his pursuers had taken or if all of the narjags had finally been killed.
“She,” said Cinda from the other side of the fire when he’d commented on it that evening. “The spellcaster could be a she.”
He blinked at her and shrugged. “Of course.”
Raif, tossing his empty bowl on the ground, groaned, “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m ready to eat something other than beans and rice.”
“I think the narjags have been running off all of the wildlife the last few days,” said Rew. “Maybe tomorrow we’ll have better luck with fresh game. You’re right. It’d be good to mix in something new. There are mountain goats on these slopes. If we see one close, we may be able to chase it down. Of course, any that survive up here are quick and careful. They’ve got to avoid the rock trolls, after all.”
Raif cringed, and Rew grinned at him.
“I’m just glad it’s not me cooking any longer,” remarked Zaine.
“As are the rest of us,” mumbled Anne.
They all laughed, and the mood lifted.
Anne usually cooked their evening meal, but after the healing of Raif and Jon, she’d been exhausted. To everyone’s dismay, Zaine had taken over the responsibility, and they’d spent two days scraping burnt bits off the bottom of their pots and tossing inedible hunks of overcooked slop into the fire.
