by RW Krpoun
“A pity she couldn’t save the elbow,” Pieter sighed.
“Just saving his life will be a major accomplishment,” Hunter shook his head.
“What happened to him?” I asked.
“The vines closed around his group,” Hunter shook his head. “His group and a bunch of those creatures.”
“Vine-men,” I suggested, and was pleased when the ‘slinger nodded.
“As good a name as any.”
“They had been running for the edge,” Hatcher tapped the cover of her writing kit. “From what I could make out from his ramblings, there were at least six others in his group.”
“They almost made it,” Hunter noted.
“So the plant trapped them?” I frowned. “That sounds like the Arts.”
“It isn’t,” Hunter shook his head. “Although I’m sure that the Arts had something to do with creating the plant or its forebearers, given the fact is that it can sense its environment, and respond. I expect it can communicate on some level with the vine-men; I think the vine-men chased the Nisker’s group into the trap, which would have already been partially completed.”
“Is there any idea on who they were?” Pieter asked, leaning forward on his stool to check on the sleeping Rose.
“Not from their gear,” Hatcher scratched her cheek. “They were equipped in Imperial lands, but the Nisker was just babbling in fever delirium, and that only in the mother tongue. From his accent and manner of speech I would guess that he is a scholar, but that doesn’t narrow the possibilities. Could be a scholar who took advantage of the war to reach lands that would normally be inaccessible, or he could be part of an investigative group such as ours. Until he wakes up and gets his wits back, there’s no telling.”
“One thing is certain, we’re not going back into the vines,” Hunter took a swig from his flask. “We were lucky.”
“My question is this: how does the Dusman group manage to avoid getting killed?” Hatcher wondered.
“It’s not the Arts,” Hunter shook his head. “Given the size of the plant, well, I could sense an arcane solution from here.”
“The key might be one of senses,” Pieter suggested. “As in, by which sense does the plant mhm detect intruders? Are these ‘vine-men’ its detection method? If not, or not the primary aspect, mhm I would venture to suggest heat or smell.”
“Heat I can see,” Hunter leaned forward. “Plants follow the sun, but smell?”
“Pheromones,” the engineer gently rocked Rose’s cradle with the toe of his boot. “Trees both release and sense them.”
The ‘slinger stared into the distance. “Sweat contains enough of the bodily humors for Tulg shamans to use it to track individuals, and given the remote location, even the absence of hot weather wouldn’t be protection, because armor and boots will inevitably have their own distinctive odor. It could work.”
“The quantity and ‘flavors’ if you will, of such odors mhm would give an accurate picture of a group,” Pieter nodded. “There would be some blurring from Hatcher riding Grog, mhm which could produce a strange of blend of half-breed and Nisker, or myself, who would smell of mhm man, mule, and pigeon, but I don’t believe that would be much mhm of a problem. Certainly it wouldn’t confuse a tracking dog, and I would venture to say mhm that this plant would be easily as sensitive, and likely more clever, than a dog.”
“Someone would have to make something like the vines,” Hatcher noted.
“That is likely the case, and I would guess that it was the Elder Ones,” Hunter nodded. “I seriously doubt it is a coincidence that the, well, movement incident was so close. They wanted a way to get here, and leave from here, efficiently. There might be more than one pair of these movement artifacts.”
“Which means there must be a way to safely traverse the vines,” Pieter agreed. “No one builds a lock mhm without making a key.”
“Interesting,” Hunter nodded.
“You’re both missing the main point,” Hatcher pointed out. “If it works like you say, the vine is both locks and traps, and what do you need locks and traps for? To guard something that you don’t want to be stolen.”
“The First Folk weren’t a material culture,” Hunter objected. “They espoused a primitive life, as far as we can tell, anyway.”
“By choice, right?” Rose stirred, and Hatcher went over and picked her up. “Ooohhh, what a pretty girl!”
Hunter scowled, twisting his flask’s cap on and off. “I’m no expert, but if you are right, this is a major advance in our knowledge of the First Folk. So far as I know, other than the Place of Mounds, no one has ever found anything resembling large-scale organization among the Elder Ones. And the Mounds could just be the result of tradition over time.”
“Interesting days,” Pieter mused.
I went up the hill to relieve Burk. “See anything?”
“The vines have been twitching like snakes. They find out anything about the Nisker?”
“Provine Sael amputated his left arm, and he’s delirious.”
“Huh.” Burk rubbed his chin. “What about the vines?” Any answers?”
“They think maybe it’s smarter than a dog, and tracks by smell. Hatcher thinks it’s guarding something.”
Burk scowled. “That makes some sense. You grow something that big, you must have a reason. How’d the Dusmen get in?”
“That’s a good question.”
He got up from the rock he was sitting on. “I’ll head back and keep an eye on things.”
“See you in a bit.”
Burk had found a good vantage spot with a rock to sit on and bushes to break up his outline (Torl had taught us that shapes catch the eye), so I sat there and kept my eyes and ears open while I pondered mountains, and then vines that could smell.
The vines idea quickly played out, so I thought about children for a bit. Babies were pretty helpless, and would take a good deal of effort and expense, and I doubted children would be able to perform steady labor for some years, longer still if the parents were less diligent than Master Horne. All things considered, having children seemed to involve a major investment of money and time with an uncertain return. I worked at that for a while, and then decided that I must be missing some facts of the matter.
I put some time into considering hobbies; Burk’s idea was a good one, and I conceded that he was obviously adapting faster to freedom than I was. That was a little upsetting because I had always been ahead of Burk in learning things, despite my being stupid. But freedom was a tricky thing, really hard to pin down. I had been free for weeks now, and except for having money it was no different than from the day Provine Sael had purchased me and Burk.
Freedom was complicated; it was obvious that a lot of people mis-managed it. The Concourse had demonstrated that a lot of people couldn’t behave properly if left unsupervised, and I was determined not to let that happen to me. I would keep my feet set to a proper path.
I returned to the camp as the sun was setting, arriving just before Torl appeared out of the trees. Pieter had caught a lot of silver-scaled fish in the wicker things he had been working on, and he made a sort of stew with them. Provine Sael got up and had supper with us, only she had greens and a piece of baked fish.
Hatcher and Hunter spent a lot of the meal telling Provine Sael their thoughts on the vines, but it was basically what they said before, so I just ate two bowls of stew and looked at the looming mountains. I was wondering what made mountains, but not in a serious way.
“Anyway, that’s what we’ve come up with,” Hatcher concluded. “The Nisker is still out; before the drink kicked in all he did was rave. I wrote down what I could make out; I expect he was a scholar of sorts.”
“He is desperately weak,” the Dellian frowned at her fork. “If the infection in his leg doesn’t respond to my efforts by dawn, I’ll have to amputate, and I fear he may not survive another such surgery.”
“I don’t understand why the age of a wound affects your Arts,” Hatcher shook her
head.
“It is a complex issue,” Provine Sael shrugged. “Compounded by the fact that I am not a healer of great distinction; he needs a chirugeon. The irony of it, is that from the contents of his pack, I would say he is himself a skilled man of medicine.”
“He beat extremely long odds just getting help at all.”
“Torl, what of your efforts?” Provine Sael changed the subject.
“There is a camp just outside the north-northeast edge of the vines,” the scout noted quietly. “I expect it is there to support the group who is investigating within the vines. If you want to unravel what is going on here, we will need to take it. There are two Dusmen and four Ukar warriors, four Human vassals, and eight Human slaves.”
“Any users of the Arts?” Hunter asked.
“Not obviously, but the four vassals are clearly learned people.”
“Violence,” Provine Sael sighed. “And long odds at that.”
“We aren’t going to be able to go into the vines again,” Hatcher noted. “We were lucky once. But if the Dusman group have a method to getting through safely, we could probably suss it out from what’s in the outside camp. We probably could figure out what they’re doing in the vines, too, which would be good to know.”
“The odds are bad,” Hunter noted. “Dusmen do not die easily, and four Ukar are nothing to sneeze at, either. That’s six with cold steel against Burk, Grog, and Hatcher, while Torl, Provine Sael, and I take out the four Humans fast in case any are adepts, and then switch to help against the warriors.” He stroked his goatee. “With surprise and speed it might be done, but even if everything goes well it would be desperate work.”
“You may count on my meager skills,” Pieter noted.
“Does it need to be done at all?” Hatcher asked.
“I believe it does,” Provine Sael said sadly. “Torl, would you say that the Dusmen have been here long?”
“No more than a month.”
She nodded. “I think the Dusmen’s efforts to activate the scattered artifacts of the Elder Ones has caused them to stumble upon this place. We have completed our investigation into the Place of Mounds, and I will send a bird tomorrow with the final details, while not mentioning our…travels. At the moment we cannot help the Legions any further, but we can hinder the Dusmen’s activities here. Whatever the Dusmen are undertaking here, we can rest assured that it is not being done to further the greater good.”
We sat in silence for a bit, Hatcher rocking Rose in her arms while Provine Sael mixed the infant’s supper, the only sound the crackling of the embers in the firepit and the Nisker humming.
“We know what the Dusmen are attempting,” Torl said, his voice cutting through the silence.
“And that would be?” Provine Sael took Rose.
“The lullaby.”
“Huh?” Hatcher untied her scarf, re-folded it, and tied it in place. “That’s just a tavern song. I can’t sing hardly at all, but Rose likes a tune.”
“Do you know the words?’
“Sure, well, not exactly; you hear different versions in different places, but it’s about a dragon.”
“It describes a dragon sleeping on a mound of treasure,” the scout noted.
“Sure,” Hatcher nodded.
“How does it describe the dragon?”
“Long of body, fast, strong, with teeth like swords and claws like war axes. Oh, and…lets see… scales of great strength the color of gold, jade, and pure bronze.”
“Curled like a cat on the treasure.” The scout shifted on his stool. “The vines are curled, they are green, with yellow and brown leaves. They were asleep when we entered today, asleep around little buildings. Think of the place as seen from the hill, with the buildings being chests.”
Pieter clapped his hands. “Brilliant.”
“What?” Hatcher looked from Torl to Pieter. “It’s not a dragon.”
“Think like a poet,” Pieter advised gently.
Hunter nodded. “Yes. It could be.” He took a swig from his flask and then offered it to Torl. “So what is the treasure?’
“Not gold,” the scout accepted the flask and took a swig. “The Dusmen wouldn’t need a month to load their carts to capacity. The party in the camp isn’t the sort sent to secure bulk material wealth; no, they’re looking for something smaller and less certain: knowledge.”
“The vines-thing is the dragon,” Hatcher mused. “Well, I did say it was guarding something.”
“We need to find out what it guards, and if at all possible, to prevent the Dusmen from getting it,” Provine Sael said a bit indistinctively because Rose was trying to stick her fingers into the Dellian’s mouth.
“Dusmen!” Burk exclaimed, keeping his voice low, as I relieved him on sentry duty. “One for each of us!”
“It will be like a match,” I nodded, trying not to grin. “One on one, if the others can do their part.”
Burk was so excited he clapped my shoulder. “This will be the best day ever!”
After he had retired to his cot I sat on the cart’s tongue in the darkness and noted the sights, sounds, and smells. When I had my sentry duty fixed in place my thoughts turned naturally to the coming fight: a Dusman! I had seen a captured one fight in the pit, and the clerks had read us many details of their fighting styles; whenever High Rates had gathered the talk inevitably turned to Dusmen. They were rare in the world, and rarer still captured and brought to the pits. Their warriors claimed to be the very best combatants on two legs.
Master Horne would be very pleased to learn of two of his High Rates killing Dusmen; the Ebon Blades only had one Dusman on its tally sheets, and that had been achieved years before I had reached the pits.
Of course, there was the chance that the Dusmen would prevail over one or both of us, but that was true of every fight we faced, and thus not something to be concerned about. Better to die fighting a Dusman than from catching a lucky hit from some half-trained idiot.
Both Burk and I dressed with extra care in the morning, because you wanted to look your best for this sort of fight; opportunities like this did not come every day. There wasn’t much talk as breakfast was prepared and consumed; even Hatcher was silent, which I would have found unnerving had I not been too excited to ponder it.
After breakfast Torl sketched the enemy camp in the dirt: they were on the west side of a stream, with three tall-wheeled carts parked on the east side, and three pairs of oxen picketed downstream on the same side as the carts.
A canvas-covered stack of barrels and crates sitting on pallets dominated the camp; the slaves bedded south of it, the Ukar to the east of it, and the Dusmen and thralls in tents to the north. The warriors were always armed and in battle harness when awake, and from the path worn around the perimeter they mounted at least one guard during the hours of darkness. The camp was in the open, without a tree or bush for a hundred paces in any direction, making surprise very difficult.
“Why not attack at night?” Hatcher asked. “At least only one would be in full armor.”
“That is what they would expect,” Torl noted. “You’ve seen Burk and Grog prepare; by the time we covered the remaining open ground after the alarm has been raised we will be facing armored warriors. But in the daytime the oxen are on long lines, and they are not inquisitive creatures when awake. Our main group can approach from the southeast, keeping the oxen between us and the camp, and get within fifty paces. Meanwhile, Grog and Burk approach from the west, and stop halfway to the camp, challenging the Dusmen to single combat.”
“What if they do not take the challenge?” Pieter asked. He was to remain in our camp with Rose.
“They will,” Hunter took a swig from his flask. “They’ll be bored and ripe for a fight. If they refuse, Grog and Burk can simply withdraw. But the reason their camp is so spread out is because this is their land, and they feel comfortable, and comfortable warriors get bored.”
“We have always been told that the Dusmen are arrogant about their prowess, so they
should be inclined towards single combat,” I observed.
“Once the duel is joined, the main body attacks.” Torl tapped his stick on the dirt. “The rest of us should be able to achieve surprise.”
“Four bull Ukar against a provine, a Nisker, a ‘slinger, and an archer,” Provine Sael shook her head. “That is not a safe contest.”
“There is no sign that the warriors patrol beyond sentry duty,” Torl shook his head. “The only ones to leave the camp are slaves tending the oxen. They keep their warriors close, so there is no simple method to shave the odds.”
“If we can drop at least two Ukar with ranged attacks, it would be doable,” Hatcher stroked the haft of a throwing axe. “Risky, but doable. Torl may have to resort to cold steel.”
“I can use a sword,” Torl advised her. “I prefer a bow, but I am not unskilled, nor inexperienced.”
“I sincerely hope you’re brilliant.”
Where we split from the main body Torl gave us the stub of a candle. “Light this when you are almost within sight of the camp; when it gutters out advance and make your challenge.” He paused, a hard-faced man searching for words, and it occurred to me that he lived by the same sort of code that Burk and I did: when you engaged the services of Chabney Torl, you got quality work. Realizing this made me feel new respect for him. “Good luck.”
“You, too. See you afterwards.”
He flashed a bleak grin at that.
“Not long now,” Burk whispered, his eyes fixed on the half inch of blackened wick standing in the hollowed-out ruin of the candle’s base.
“True. Keep your head in the game; this is what Master Horne was preparing us for our entire lives; odds are good that we won’t get another match like this one. It’s not just the honor of our barracks today: we’re fighting for the Red Guard as well.”
That got his attention. “True,” he snapped into his stance.
The wick slowly fell onto its side and the flame drowned in the melted wax.
I slapped Burk on the shoulder. “It is time.”
