by AC Cobble
As they crossed the stream, Ben was finally glad of his quarterstaff. Even at the shallow crossing, the water came above his knees. The slippery footing risked dumping him in the creek. He had his boots slung over his shoulder to keep them dry and leaned on his quarterstaff to help keep his balance. He couldn’t help smiling to himself as he heard a splash behind him and a series of loud curses. At least one man was going to have a long, cold walk home.
Ben was in the first group of men to cross and sat down with both of the Pinewoods while William Longaxe and the miller’s son Arthur stood guard. Will seemed completely at ease despite the mission they were about, but Arthur nervously shifted his grip back and forth on the long boar spear he had found somewhere.
Several more men made it across the creek while Ben finished pulling his soft calf high boots back on. Alistair was already up and directing some men to put their shoes on. Others were tasked with holding positions and guarding the crossing as if they were a small invading force landing on foreign soil. As soon as Ben was up, he was sent to stand between Brandon Pinewood and Arthur, halfway to the tree line.
About a quarter of the men had made it across the stream with another quarter crossing. The remaining men mulled around on the far side waiting. Ben glanced back at Serrot who was on the other side after completing a final scouting trip on that bank. Serrot was bent down checking the string on his bow, clearly worried about the damage the moisture was doing.
Ben was still staring across the stream when he heard a sharp crack behind him. His blood ran cold. He spun around, raising his quarterstaff, but couldn’t see in the fog past the first few pine trees. His mind raced, trying to find a natural explanation for the sound. He knew that all morning these woods had been dead quiet.
Arthur stammered, “Isn’t it supposed to bellow a…”
At that moment, they heard a bestial shriek that rattled their bones. A heavy black shape shot out of the gloom, heading directly for them. Brandon barely had time to raise his axe when the creature swept by him, raking its talons across his leg. He screamed in agony.
Ben had no time to worry about Brandon though—the thing was almost on top of him!
Out of pure instinct, he swung his quarterstaff in front of him and made solid contact with the demon’s shoulder. It felt like he had just swung at the side of a building. His quarterstaff shot out of his hands with the impact. It was just enough to turn the demon from its path, though, and it went crashing straight into Arthur.
Ben watched in horror as Arthur sprawled onto his back with the demon on top of him. Ben dove for his fallen quarterstaff. When he rolled to his feet, he could see he was too late. The demon had ripped out Arthur’s throat and was greedily slurping the gushing fountain of blood.
Will Longaxe burst out of the shroud of fog with his axe raised above his head and took a mighty swing at the creature. Ben blinked in disbelief as the demon darted to the side and the axe whistled by, catching nothing but cold air. Will stumbled off balance. The demon, which came barely waist high, surged forward and slashed across Will’s stomach. A shower of gore slapped onto the wet ground.
Suddenly, an arrow sprouted on the thing’s back, right between its two tiny wings. It bellowed in rage and turned toward the new assailant. Ben saw Serrot standing on the far bank nock another arrow and take aim.
Ben knew he had little time before the demon finished with Arthur and turned back on him. His quarterstaff was useless against the monster. He tossed the staff, ran to Brandon’s side, and started dragging him back toward the stream and the rest of the men.
He could see Alistair Pinewood and the others standing wide eyed and stunned by the creek bank.
“Get back. Get back! It won’t cross the water!” Ben shouted
Ben had a tight grip on Brandon’s jerkin and dragged him across the wet, bumpy ground in a stumbling half-run. He couldn’t spare a glance behind him, but knew the demon was coming because Serrot and the other archers were frantically launching arrows behind him and screaming for him to hurry.
Ahead of him, the rest of the terrified men drug a frozen-in-shock Alistair through the water. None of them stayed behind to help protect Ben’s retreat.
Ben knew he could not hope to pull Brandon through the rushing torrent and maintain his balance. If he tried the shallow crossing with Brandon, he’d likely get them both killed if the demon pursued. In his panicked rush, he saw the deep pool of water below the shallows and prayed that everything he heard in the stories was true.
Serrot winged another arrow a hand past Ben’s shoulder. Ben knew he had no time left. With all of his strength, he slung Brandon around in front of him and launched both of them head first off the creek bank into the water. The icy chill blasted the air out of his lungs as he plunged beneath the surface. He lost his grip on Brandon’s flailing body and pushed off the rocky creek bottom with both feet. He came up coughing and glanced at the far bank. Serrot and the other archers were still rapidly firing off arrows, but the look of intense terror was gone from their faces. He was too afraid to look over his shoulder and see where the demon was.
Ben felt Brandon thrashing around under the water by his feet and pulled him to the surface. They started awkwardly swimming toward the safety of the far bank, Ben half-pulling Brandon and both of them half-drowning.
They’d been washed several hundred paces downstream by the time they made it to the other side. Most of the men ran to meet them. Several strong hands reached down and dragged them from the water.
Ben lay on his stomach, hacking up what felt like half the Callach River while the men gathered around Brandon. Through their legs, Ben could see Edward Crust, Farview’s resident baker and doctor, kneeling beside Brandon and wrapping a makeshift tourniquet around his ruined leg.
Crust glanced up at Alistair. “I think he’ll make it, boss. It will be awhile before he walks again, if he ever does, but he’ll make it.”
Ben’s head sank down on the carpet of damp pine needles that covered the floor of the forest. He breathed a sigh of relief. His heart was still hammering inside his ribcage, but he would live, and he’d saved Brandon’s life.
Two weeks after the attack, the entire village was still on edge. In a community the size of Farview, the loss of two people was felt by everyone, and despite Ben’s heroic efforts, they were worried that there would be a third casualty. Brandon Pinewood survived the brutal gashes the demon left on his leg, but a few days after the attack, he came down with a fever that Edward Crust did not have the skill to cure.
If it wasn’t for the demon still roaming the forest, Brandon’s injury and Alistair Pinewood’s black grief would have been the talk of the town.
When the battered group returned, there was an emergency Town Council meeting. Alistair demanded a new hunting party form to avenge his son’s injury. Cooler heads prevailed, though, and Alistair instead offered to personally finance a contract with a hunter. Since that meeting, he had barricaded himself in his estate and refused to speak with anyone other than his daughter Meghan and Edward Crust. The rumor was that he spent each day by Brandon’s bedside in an alcohol-fueled haze, slowly working his way through his prodigious cellar.
Despite the drama with the Pinewoods though, news and speculation about the demon was all that anyone was talking about.
After the initial attack, Serrot and the other archers peppered the creature with a quiver full of arrows. It disappeared back into the fog, dragging the bodies of Arthur and William Longaxe with it. They knew the demon still lived because farmers continued to wake up to dead livestock. The farmers on the outskirts of town began keeping their animals in at night or moving them to farms south of town where attacks had been less frequent. Just two nights past, the creature smashed in Nathan Rockfield’s barn door and slaughtered every one of his cows. Since then, everyone slept behind barricaded doors. No one was venturing out after twilight. Even during the day, people were moving about in groups and keeping their weapons nearby.
Th
e storytellers had gone silent at the Buckhorn Tavern. They all knew what came next. As the demon continued to kill, it would grow in power. Eventually the size of the town would no longer be a deterrent. At that time, it would kill or be killed. Ben was not sure how the town would survive. Even two weeks ago, the demon had been faster and stronger than any of them expected. It survived an attack on sixty men and left only injury and death in its wake.
After the emergency Town Council meeting, Serrot and another man were sent at first light to Murdoch’s Waystation to find a hunter. They returned four days later with news that there was no one at the Waystation willing or able to take the contract. They left a plea with Murdoch himself to look for a suitable person and offered ten gold coins to anyone who could slay the demon.
While there was no one currently at Murdoch’s to take the contract, the Town Council had hope that someone would take it soon. Murdoch’s Waystation was not really a town so to speak, and had few permanent residents. It sat at the intersection of the Callach River, the Fabrizo Road, and the Kingdom Highway. Anyone travelling in that part of the continent of Alcott was likely to stop at Murdoch’s.
As long as anyone could remember, there had been a Waystation there. Murdoch was just the most recent proprietor. Over the centuries, it had turned from a small roadside inn into a bustling mercantile hub for traders who did not want to travel all the way to the coast at Fabrizo, or up into the small mountain towns like Farview.
It was common for merchant trains to spend a few nights at the Waystation until they could work out a deal with another merchant who came from the other direction. That way, both parties saved a great deal of travel, which directly padded their bottom line. It was also common for all manner of individuals and adventurers to stop by for supplies, news, or work. In that part of the world, Murdoch’s was the central meeting point and Farview’s best hope for finding a skilled hunter.
Ten days passed since Serrot returned from Murdoch’s with the bad news, but even with the impending threat of a demon attack, life moved on in Farview. Food had to be put on the tables, children had to be praised or scolded, and shops had to be tended.
Ben was back to work following a few days of exhilarating fear and celebration. After word spread of his part in fending off the demon and saving Brandon Pinewood’s life, he spent several happy nights at the Buckhorn Tavern. He got slapped on the back and accepted countless pints of lager in exchange for just one more description of what the demon looked like up close, how fast it moved, or how he knew to dive into the water.
Of course, once he found out about Brandon’s fever, the joy leeched out of his celebration. Even though they were never tight like real brothers, Brandon was the closest thing Ben had to one and it felt wrong to celebrate while his life was hanging by a thread. Privately though, Ben was still intoxicated by the thrilling mix of fear and excitement that had coursed through his body during the attack. To his friends, he adamantly proclaimed that he was done with adventures. However, in his heart, he felt like he had discovered something new about himself.
Ben shook his head to clear it of thoughts about the demon. He pulled another bag of hops out of the storage cellar and tossed it next to a large kettle. He knew he should focus on his work and helping out however he could in town, but he couldn’t stop remembering how he felt during the attack.
The liquid in the kettle, called wort, was coming to a roiling, healthy boil. Ben expertly gauged the timing before dumping the bag of hops into the mix. Soon, he would take the kettle off the fire and cool it in the cellar. By evening, the cooled liquid would be poured into one of his copper fermenting tanks along with several other kettles of wort. It would sit for about a week. After the week was up, the tanks would be full of strong, dark ale.
In normal times, Ben brewed about four barrels a week for the Buckhorn Tavern and the few residents of Farview who preferred to drink their ale at home. This week, Ben was filling up every one of the copper tanks and wishing he had more. Sales at the Buckhorn had doubled since the demon attack, and people who had never asked for a barrel of beer before wanted one now. He supposed that it was only natural. People had always turned to a pint of ale to spread some cheer or get through a difficult time.
A year before, shortly after his eighteenth birthday, Ben had taken over the brewery. The previous brewer passed away without an heir, and like many of the businesses in Farview, he owed money to Alistair Pinewood.
After giving Ben a little seed money for supplies, Alistair let him run the brewery in exchange for half of the profit. Ben loved the work and because of his frugal lifestyle, he was able to save a little money every week. He had competing visions of paying off Alistair and either owning the brewery or purchasing back his father’s old timberland. He was torn, though. He didn’t want to give up on his heritage, but when he was honest with himself, the prospect of spending the rest of his life chopping down trees had no allure.
Still, working in the brewery was bittersweet. It was located in the yard behind Farview’s timber mill. The same mill Ben’s father had taken a loan to build. The one that along with their timberland, Alistair took as collateral on the unpaid loans when Ben’s father passed.
Now, Ben lived in a small apartment on the second floor of the mill and crossed the yard every morning to the little shed that housed the brewery. It wasn’t a bad life though, and he couldn’t complain.
Many people in the town blamed Alistair for their troubles, and because of that, Alistair led a secluded life. After getting to know him, Ben didn’t blame Alistair. It was unfortunate when it happened, but many of the people who lost businesses would not have had money to start them if it wasn’t for Alistair’s loans.
Ben sighed and got back to work. He was brewing as quickly as he could, but he had to be patient and wait for the brew to mature. Only then could he transfer it to the empty barrels he stacked up outside the brewery and deliver the final product to his customers.
Ben splashed his face with water from a trough outside of the timber mill and headed toward his second-floor room. Climbing the steps to his door, he saw Serrot jogging toward him across the timber yard.
Before he came to a stop, Serrot breathlessly blurted, “Ben, have you heard? I thought I’d see you down at the Buckhorn. Where have you been all afternoon?”
“Heard what?” asked Ben. “I’ve been working all day. I’ve got more orders than I can possibly fill right now. What’s going on?”
“The hunters finally made it,” explained Serrot. “They just set off to find the demon.”
Ben could only gape in disbelief. Aside from the demon itself, this was the most exciting thing that had happened in Farview in years and he was missing it! Then it dawned on him. “Wait. He’s heading into the forest now?”
It was early evening, and already the shadows were growing longer in the timber yard. Out in the forest, under the trees, it would be nearly dark already. Hunting a demon in the dark was pure madness.
“Is he crazy? It’s suicide going out there this late!” exclaimed Ben. “This fool is going to get himself killed and we’re going to have to find another hunter.”
Serrot grinned and said, “It’s not just one. There were two of them that went. One of them is a woman, and the other is a blademaster! They seemed pretty confident when they left. Barely took the time to drop the girls off at the tavern.”
“Girls? What girls? And a blademaster!” Ben’s head was spinning. Blademasters were stuff of legend. He was only half sure it was even a real thing.
He was trying to process all of it but Serrot was already going on again, skipping from when the group arrived to what the girls were eating at the tavern to the woman hunter.
“Wait, wait,” pleaded Ben. “Tell me from the beginning. And don’t leave anything out!”
“Okay, I don’t know everything, but this is what I pieced together from what I saw and the talk at the tavern. A few bells ago, five strangers walked right into the middle of town. There were
two men, a woman, and two girls. They walked up to the Buckhorn Tavern and asked Blevin Beerman if there was still a demon problem.” Serrot continued breathlessly, “Of course, that sent everyone scrambling. It wasn’t but a few moments before Alistair turned up and plunked ten gold coins on the table in front of them. The blademaster and the woman said that they accepted the contract. They asked if the girls could stay in the tavern, then they had Alistair walk them to the edge of the forest and point them toward where the last attack happened. The two girls and the other man are at the tavern now. The man doesn’t say much, but the two girls are dressed like highborn ladies.”
“Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go see them!”
At the Buckhorn Tavern, they found they were not the only residents of Farview interested in the strangers. It seemed like the entire town was packed into the tavern or milling around outside. Ben and Serrot pushed their way into the low building and weaved through the crowd, trying to get closer to see the strangers. They were still enjoying a little respect and celebrity for their role in the fight with the demon, so the crowd grudgingly parted until they were almost on top of the table where the strangers sat with Alistair and Blevin.
Ben had to agree with Serrot. The two girls were indeed dressed like fine ladies. Their clothing was simple, but the quality far surpassed anything that Ben had ever seen. They wore dark trousers and dark vests over white blouses. Their hair was swept back in loose ponytails, and it took a second for Ben to realize that while they were dressed nearly identical, they looked very different. One was fair-haired and had a scattering of freckles, while the other’s hair was a dark brown, nearly black, with a pale complexion and rose-colored cheeks and lips. Both girls were stunningly beautiful.
