The Hickory Staff e-1

by Rob Scott

  ‘It looks like they want you to cook,’ Versen said, relieved. ‘I think you’ll be all right.’

  Brexan forced a lopsided smile, her cheek bulging. One eye had swelled nearly shut. ‘Well, when they discover I can’t even brew tecan without a recipe, they’ll put me on wood collection next time.’

  Dinner consisted of pale mush, a mixture of crushed oats, wheat, nuts and some herbs, Brexan guessed. Her job had been to find and boil water, stir in a small bag of the grain concoction and stand by as it began to congeal. She watched as their Seron escort ate heartily; beside her, Versen did the same. He paused to look at her quizzically when he noticed her staring.

  ‘What?’ he asked between mouthfuls.

  ‘How can you eat that stuff?’

  ‘This?’ Versen gestured into his trencher. ‘This delicate souffle of finest quails’ eggs, over which you laboured for avens?’

  ‘Ox-’

  ‘I am famished,’ he told her, ‘and you must be. It may be bland, but it’s perfectly edible. At least it’s not some rotting animal. You should eat. You know better than to go hungry when you don’t have to.’

  Brexan scooped up a finger full of the gloop, ate it and scowled. ‘It tastes like yesterday’s laundry.’

  ‘Eat it anyway.’

  Pouting like a schoolgirl, Brexan finished her portion, but nearly retched when Versen reached into the pot and ladled another helping into her trencher. She soon recognised that he was as much interested in seeing the Seron’s response to him acting without permission as he was in feeding her up.

  Surprisingly, Karn grunted his approval and motioned for Brexan to eat as much as she desired.

  Opposite the prisoners, Rala and Karn began arguing. Versen couldn’t make out the topic of their disagreement, other than Rala was disagreeing with her leader about something. Though Karn was in charge, he didn’t appear to be as dangerous or violent as Lahp. At least Karn was willing to listen to Rala -Versen imagined Lahp would have run Rala through simply for daring to question his orders. Versen hoped their less rigid approach might provide him and Brexan an opportunity to escape… but Haden was always lurking on the periphery. He said nothing.

  After an animated exchange, Rala cursed angrily and wandered off to unpack her bedroll. Karn looked upset as well. He moved the horses to another area of the clearing, where sedge and grass grew in abundance. Neither Seron spoke, and neither seemed concerned with their prisoners. Without looking at Brexan, Versen whispered, ‘If they continue like this, I’m sure we’ll be able to get away.’

  ‘They aren’t paying much attention to us at all,’ Brexan agreed.

  ‘No and I’m not sure why.’

  ‘Maybe they don’t care if we escape. We obviously don’t have that key you were talking about.’ She pulled her knees in tightly against her chest and rested her chin on them.

  ‘That’s why they have to keep us with them, though,’ Versen said. ‘If they capture Gilmour, they’ll find out that none of us have it.’

  ‘What will happen then?’

  ‘They will most likely kill Gilmour and torture the others.’

  ‘And us?’

  Versen didn’t mince words. ‘This one with the scar… he will kill us.’

  As night fell, Haden placed the last of their firewood on the dimly glowing coals and rolled into his blankets to sleep. Rala dozed against a nearby tree trunk; Brexan watched as her head slumped forward onto her chest. Karn remained awake for another aven, whittling at an oak branch with his dagger and humming an out-of-tune melody to himself. Finally he nodded towards his captives and shuffled off to his own bedroll.

  Despite her fatigue, Brexan was completely awake, but she feigned sleep, breathing in a slow, measured rhythm, until she was confident all the Seron were asleep.

  ‘What are they doing?’ she asked quietly. ‘They must know we’ll run.’ The thought was so loud and vivid in her mind that she was sure the Seron could hear it.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Versen was sceptical as well. ‘But we have to risk it. You get Renna. I’ll get Karn’s saddlebags.’

  ‘No,’ Brexan said, too loudly. She lowered her voice and continued, ‘You’ll wake them. Let’s just go. We’ll find food tomorrow.’

  Versen furrowed his brow, then agreed. They crept to where Renna was tethered and Brexan gingerly disentangled the mare’s leather reins from the oak tree while Versen saddled her, trying to avoid the stirrups clanging together.

  Brexan stroked the horse’s neck and whispered, ‘We need you to be quiet, Rennie, very quiet. We’re going to find Garec.’

  Versen reached down and helped the Malakasian up behind him. His hand lingered in hers a moment. ‘That’s what Garec calls her, too.’

  ‘Rennie?’

  Kicking the horse softly in the ribs, the woodsman added, ‘It appears you’ve made another friend this trip, Brexan.’

  The young woman responded by wrapping her arms more tightly around Versen’s waist.

  As silently as they could, they rode towards the trail. Renna appeared to have understood their need for haste and stealth; she stepped lightly despite carrying two riders.

  As they turned east along the forest path, Versen thought for a moment they had made it. His heart leaped as he peered back at camp. None of the Seron had moved. The remaining horses would be no match for Renna in a race. Still, running a full sprint carrying two riders was dangerous and would tire the mare more quickly, so Versen determined to put as much distance as they could between themselves and the Seron. With every step their chances improved.

  But some fifty paces outside the firelight, Versen realised something was wrong. He heard a faint rustle coming from a twisted scrub oak along the trail. He reined Renna to a stop.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Brexan whispered. ‘We have to keep moving.’

  ‘Quiet just a moment,’ Versen whispered, then asked, ‘Do you hear that?’

  ‘It’s just the wind.’

  ‘There is no wind.’

  He could feel the young woman tense behind him. ‘Again, the soldier,’ he whispered to himself. ‘She’s freed her arms, ready to fight.’ He grinned, despite the tension. ‘And she thinks she’s a coward.’

  Versen squinted into the darkness, struggling to see what was making the tiny oak shrub quake before them.

  ‘Maybe it’s just a bird,’ Brexan suggested, but as she spoke the faint moonlight broke through the confounding tangle of pine branches overhead and lit the tree, which appeared to shrink. It grew smaller, then withered.

  ‘Rutters,’ Versen spat. ‘They have an almor. No wonder they didn’t care if we wandered about.’

  ‘I thought it went after the others.’ Brexan trembled; watching the scrub oak wither to a husk, she thought better of their plans to escape.

  ‘Maybe there’s more than one,’ Versen speculated. ‘Who knows what demons Malagon can summon?’

  ‘Should we run for it, run the other way?’

  ‘We’d never make it. They’re too fast. It would have Renna in an instant and then we’d be left on foot.’

  As if reading their minds, the almor extended one fluid appendage above the ground. Glowing palely white, starkly contrasted against the darkness of the forest, it was a ghostly warning: ‘Turn back.’

  Bringing Renna about, they covered the short distance back into camp, tethered the mare to the same oak branch and returned to their bedrolls. Karn and Rala still slept soundly, Rala snoring loudly through her nose while Karn lay on his back, his arms thrown above his head in a gesture of mock surrender.

  Brexan adjusted her cloak, folding it into an uneven pillow. She was about to close her eyes against the night, against their captivity and against her fear when she saw Haden peering at her through the firelight. He grinned, hideously.

  Brexan did not sleep until exhaustion overtook her an aven before dawn.

  THE SOUTHERN SLOPES

  Morning in the Blackstones brought rain, a cold drizzle that soaked through cloa
ks and tunics, leaving everyone chilled to the bone. Garec’s knee was seizing up in the damp; although the injury was healing despite his refusal to rest, much of this sort of weather might damage it permanently. He remembered twisting his knee falling from a cliff above Danae’s Eddy into the Estrad River, escaping from the largest grettan he could ever have imagined. It felt so long ago.

  Garec blinked: he had just realised that day had been the beginning of this whole ordeal. He’d got home to find soldiers interrogating everyone. They had beaten Jerond that morning. Now the young partisan was missing; Garec feared he was dead. Namont and Mika were dead and Versen was gone; they had found no sign of him.

  Garec wanted to believe that Versen had escaped on Renna and maybe ridden west to find another route through the Blackstones, but he thought it was a bit of a vain hope.

  Now searching for a passable route through the southernmost peaks, the small group fought their way up the muddy slope. Despite its gradual incline, the narrow draw was a natural runoff and the travellers found themselves ankle-deep in freezing water and covered with heavy, wet filth.

  Garec, the last in line, struggled to make his injured leg move. To take his mind off the pain he replayed images from his dream, trying to work out what Lessek might be communicating to him. Gilmour kept saying Lessek’s message would become clear in time, but Garec was afraid he was letting his companions down by his lack of insight.

  Climbing, slipping, cursing, sliding, pointlessly scraping mud from his clothes, pushing on… the Ronan bowman missed his family’s farm. He missed nights sitting around the fire after stuffing himself with roasted meat, mounds of potatoes and succulent fresh vegetables. His father baked bread above the hearth, its aroma permeating the house, maybe even the entire countryside. It was the near-perfect scent of ‘everyone is welcome here’.

  He and his sisters would drink red wine and cool ale from casks stored in the family cellar and chat and laugh together for avens on end. Was there any better place in Eldarn? Were there ever better times than those? Garec was clinging to the side of the mountain, yet another mountain, pushing ever forward to battle an unbeatable foe and every part of him wanted nothing more than to turn back, to go home and to fall into the comfort of predictable, familiar, safe routines of life on the farm.

  Then they were upon him again, the visions of a beautiful young woman, naked, her body exposed: he was embarrassed to look at her; did she know he was there watching, peering at her longingly in his mind? Her insane partner was there as well, screaming and cajoling unseen demons that scudded across the ceiling, visible to no one but him.

  Had they succeeded in creating Eldarn’s king or queen?

  If the Estrad River ran dry, if the land cracked and burned, he would never again enjoy a day at the farm. If Rona itself died, there would be no family feasts, no all-day preparation capped by long nights eating, drinking and dancing together.

  That was why he continued north. That was why he was cold and wet and miserable. He was looking for answers. Would he be forced to kill Malagon to save Rona? Would he have to die himself?

  Garec did not discuss his feelings as easily as the two foreigners did, but like Steven, he was uncomfortable killing. He was skilled; his arrows almost always found their mark. But too often he imagined the pain his enemies experienced, the intense and terrible fire burning from inside out. Garec reflected upon and regretted every arrow, while at the same time knowing he had to sublimate his regrets if he were to survive himself.

  ‘Just until this is over,’ he promised, ‘just until Eldarn is free.’ With the battle won, he vowed he would find some way to reconcile his actions. Garec imagined how disappointed his sisters would be if they knew their baby brother had become such a finely honed instrument of death. Steven had found great courage and killed with efficiency, but the foreigner killed with a discovered magic, a powerful talisman. Garec had no mystical excuse. He faced his enemies on equal footing and still emerged without a scratch. He was perhaps the most dangerous weapon the Ronans had, because he represented what anyone could become when oppressed or tortured long enough. He was just such a man; he hated killing, yet he killed more often than anyone he knew.

  Perhaps, Garec thought, that was why he found himself haunted by visions of ghostly wraiths. Perhaps the souls of those he killed would stay with him for ever, taking up residence in his woods, crowding him out of his most beloved hunting grounds. He saw them again, drifting through his mind’s eye, flitting from tree to tree, their faces hidden from him.

  He hoped time would bring him answers; now he struggled to force the images from his mind as he clawed his way uphill.

  One particularly resilient ghost remained. Garec closed his eyes and shook his head from side to side before peering into the trees just off the pathway. It was still there, a disembodied spirit, hovering inside a stand of young evergreens. Garec stopped.

  From up ahead, Brynne noticed and called over the din of the rainfall, ‘What is it?’ The others, curious, stopped to watch him.

  Garec pointed towards the wraith and whispered, ‘It’s one of the spirit creatures I saw in my dream.’

  ‘Great rutting Pragans! So it is,’ Gilmour exclaimed and started towards the trees. ‘You there,’ he ordered the spirit onlooker. ‘Stay where you are.’

  Steven and Mark exchanged a surprised glance and Steven moved quickly to accompany the older man.

  ‘What is it, Gilmour?’ Steven asked, nervously turning the hickory staff in his hands.

  ‘I don’t know. But it is watching everything we do.’

  ‘Can you talk with it?’

  ‘I plan to try.’ Searching between the young evergreens, Gilmour added irritably, ‘If we can get it to stand still for half a moment.’

  ‘Do you suppose it was sent here by Malagon? Like the Seron or the grettans?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Gilmour moved rapidly into the trees in an effort to flush the spirit out into the open. ‘It doesn’t seem to mean us any harm… yet.’

  The trees, just tall enough to block his view, would have made perfect Christmas trees for the average Colorado home, but as a grove, Steven thought, they were a confusing maze of identical clones, all conspiring to keep him at least one half step behind Gilmour as the old man hustled about. Steven rounded a corner and suddenly came upon the wraith; Gilmour was nowhere in sight.

  ‘Christ,’ Steven yelled and raised the staff to ward off any ghostly attack.

  None came. The spirit simply hovered above the ground, its head, shoulders, upper arms and torso now clearly visible. Its extremities seemed to have been forgotten, as if hands and feet were useless in the afterlife; Steven marvelled at how its fringes appeared to dissipate like a cloud of pipe smoke on an undetected breeze. Gilmour came up behind him and Steven jumped. ‘How did you get back there?’

  ‘Never mind,’ the old man said as he studied the wraith with a practised eye. Steven was convinced this was not the first spirit Gilmour had ever chased through the woods.

  Drawing confidence from the magician’s presence, Steven turned to study the creature more closely. One strange feature moved in and out of focus; Steven suddenly realised what he was looking at.

  ‘It’s a belt buckle, B-I-S! ’ Steven said excitedly, ‘I recognise it! It came from my bank, many years ago. And I know who he is – his photograph hangs in our lobby. He was one of the first tellers at the Bank of Idaho Springs.’

  Barely had Steven finished speaking when the wraith vanished, breaking apart with a sense of solemnity and floating off through the rain.

  They made camp in the lee of a rock formation: mean shelter, but the best they could find. All were exhausted, but with wet blankets wrapped around wet clothing, no one anticipated sleeping well. Garec was unable to get a fire started so the companions dined on cold rations.

  Gilmour’s pipe still burned, though and Mark speculated on the magician’s other means of keeping his tobacco fresh and dry. Steven forced a smile as his roommate mot
ioned towards Gilmour’s pipe; he shrugged as Mark indicated the dripping stack of tinder and sticks Garec had tried unsuccessfully to ignite.

  Gilmour caught Mark’s pantomime and smiled wryly. ‘Even if I lit the tinder, the rain’s too heavy to allow any fire to keep going,’ he explained.

  Emotionally and physically exhausted, no one felt like talking. In spite of the cold and wet, after nearly two avens, Garec, the last of the company still awake, finally drifted into uneasy sleep.

  Steven woke with a start shortly before dawn. The rain had stopped at last and the mountain was deathly quiet. Blanketed with a heavy, humid coverlet, the dank hillside felt like the foetid interior of a freshly breached tomb. Nothing moved; Steven lay there silently staring up at unfamiliar constellations before rising slowly to a sitting position. There at the edge of their small encampment, hovered the pale, ghostly remains of Lawrence Chapman’s first employee.

  Steven couldn’t remember the man’s name, but he had often gazed at the photograph in the lobby case, admiring his outlandish attire, particularly the enormous belt buckle embossed with the letters BIS. And here they were once again, this time staring at him from across the hillside.

  Steven stealthily reached for the hickory staff, bracing himself for yet another battle with a monster from a netherworld that should never even have existed – but the wraith did not charge. Instead, the creature’s diffuse facial features came sharply into focus. Steven watched it; he thought it might be trying to communicate. The wraith’s lips moved silently; Steven struggled to understand.

  ‘Mark, wake up,’ Steven urged quietly, but Mark did not stir. ‘Garec,’ he said, poking the Ronan with the staff, but Garec slept soundly as well. ‘What’s happening?’ Steven asked, then understood. ‘You’ve done this to them.’

  The wraith nodded.

  Steven grew angry. ‘Leave them alone.’ He stood and drew the hickory staff up with him. ‘Leave them alone, or you’ll have to deal with me.’ Secretly, he hoped his threat would work. He had no idea whether the staff’s magic would respond to his summons again.