The Hickory Staff e-1

by Rob Scott

  ‘And if Mark dies between here and Welstar Palace, what then?’ The Ronan bowman took a few steps forward. ‘Stay with us, Steven. Defeat Nerak and Hannah has nothing to fear.’

  Steven felt confused and cornered and lashed out at Garec. ‘Stay back,’ he called, raising the staff as if to strike. In an instant Garec had his bow drawn and an arrow trained at Steven’s chest.

  ‘Don’t make a mistake, Steven,’ he warned in steady, even tones, ‘I am impressed with your newly acquired magic, but I will drop you in your tracks before you can think to summon it against us.’

  White fire burst from the spaces between Steven’s fingers and, crying out in pain, he dropped the staff.

  Thinking Steven had cast a spell, Garec grimaced and released his arrow. It never left the bow. Instead, the shaft remained nocked, frozen in place with the bowstring drawn full. Garec stared in disbelief at his weapon and then turned to see Gilmour, his eyes closed and his palms extended before him.

  The old Larion Senator spoke. ‘We will not fight among ourselves.’ Slowly, Garec’s bow relaxed in his grip and the arrow fell to the ground.

  Gilmour said. ‘Steven, we cannot defeat Nerak without you. When we find shelter, I will endeavour to contact Kantu in Praga. It will take me a day, and I must channel all my energy to that task; I cannot risk it here in the forest. I will tell him that Hannah is looking for him and he should bring her to Welstar Palace.’ His tone was firm but understanding, a worried parent struggling to communicate with an angry teenager. ‘He will see her safely north to join you and Mark before your return home.’

  Steven knew Gilmour was right. Despite his near inhuman need to find Hannah, he knew the best course of action would be to recapture Lessek’s Key and give the sorcerer the tools he needed to ensure victory. Still his emotions ran through him like a flood tide and the thought of camping overnight in the valley made him furious. Torn between his desire to find Hannah and his reborn determination to help his friends, Steven felt his head begin to spin. The sweat on his face and neck grew suddenly cold; his vision tunnelled and he fought to remain lucid.

  He lifted the hickory staff from the snow and delivered a mighty blow to the trunk of the nearest lodge pine. Swinging with all his strength, he bellowed into the forest, crying even as the staff tore through the trunk and the enormous pine came crashing down in a blurred cloud of snow and green boughs. Once again surprised the staff had not shattered in his hands, Steven turned and ran towards the mountain slope in the distance.

  Diving involuntarily away from the massive tumbling pine, Mark could have sworn he saw colour, bright neon colour, and text. COLD BEER illuminated for a fraction of a second in the wake of Steven’s swipe at the tree. Dispelling the idea as a momentary hallucination, or perhaps a trail of thin fire clinging to the shaft, Mark propped himself up on one elbow, brushed the snow from his face and cried after his friend, ‘Steven, wait!’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Garec said calmly, ‘he’ll come to his senses. He can’t keep up that pace very long.’

  Angry, Mark turned on the bowman. ‘Where’s your head? You were going to shoot him.’

  ‘I was not going to shoot him,’ Garec assured them. ‘I thought he was going to turn on us with that unholy stick.’

  Sallax stared blankly at the others. Brynne, getting increasingly worried about her brother’s wellbeing, pleaded, ‘Let’s rest here. Maybe Steven will come back when he tires. We have to give Sallax a chance to recover.’

  Steven struggled to catch his breath as he raced blindly down the slope. The forest around him was a jumble of greens and browns cast randomly on a backdrop of ghostly white. His thoughts overwhelmed him, an involuntary mosaic of ideas and images, and he fell hard twice, rolling through hillside drifts. Coming to his feet, he fought for control and pushed on again, running with knees high, forcing himself to lift his feet clear of the snow with each step. Finally, his adrenalin waning, Steven felt himself calming and the athlete in him took over. Find a rhythm, he started repeating as a mantra. Run with your legs, not your lungs.

  Stopping for a moment, he wiped his face clean with a handful of snow and dried his eyes on a corner of his cloak. Drawing several deep breaths, he felt his heart rate drop and his thoughts clear. Deliberately, Steven removed the cloak, folded it neatly and fastened it to his pack with a thin length of rawhide. Hefting the pack under one arm like a bulbous football, he carried the staff in his opposite hand.

  Steven was disappointed none of the others had followed. Turning to the unbroken snow ahead, he began jogging towards the distant mountain pass. With his first few steps, he felt a pang of guilt at leaving his friends, but soon he forced it from his mind. They would be fine. Gilmour would ensure their safety and he would rejoin them after he had found Hannah. He had no idea how he would get to Orindale – even where Orindale really was – and was even less certain how he would cross the Ravenian Sea, so he ran, until his breathing, heart rate and pace all met in a steady aerobic plateau. He could do this for hours, skimming through the snow, his feet leaving postholes behind him like tiny air shafts to subterranean chambers. Soon he had crossed the valley floor and began making his way up the mountain slope towards the tree line. He would find her.

  Years of running had taught Steven that as long as he did not overwork his lungs, he could maintain a steady, loping gait for great distances. He adjusted his stride to be certain plenty of oxygenated blood coursed to his leg muscles. He sustained his pace; if he broke his stride, he wouldn’t be able to continue – he’d taken part in dozens of road races where he felt as strong as a lion through ten or even twenty miles, then nearly collapsed when crossing the finish line. Sucking on handfuls of snow as he ran to hydrate himself, he allowed the rhythm of his stride to lull him into a state of subdued awareness. Only the steady pounding of his feet and the quick but gentle repetition of his breathing made any sound.

  He was pleased to discover the snow at lower elevations had not accumulated much above his ankles. Feeling stronger as endorphins rushed through his bloodstream in a natural narcotic fix, he leaped over a small stream babbling east, flushed a covey of what looked like Eldarn’s version of quail from beneath a juniper bush and spooked a large deer from a thicket. The forest was beautiful, undisturbed by the myriad nefarious horrors that haunted the rest of Eldarn. Steven could smell fresh pine, a sweet aroma that lingered on the furthest edge of the morning air. He inhaled as deeply as possible to wallow in the delicate scent; despite a painful chill in his nose, the rewards justified the effort. Lodge pines similar to the one he had so viciously truncated that morning grew to impossible heights all around him, determined contestants in an interminably slow competition to reach the heavens. He found it comforting they could never move; anything more than the gentle sway in the mountain breeze might mitigate their flawlessness. Steven was certain he would never encounter anything as simple and beautiful as a tree. If he were to remain trapped in Eldarn, he would come back to this secluded valley and live in isolation, protected by the forest from the dark magic of Malakasia and Welstar Palace.

  Dicot, a five-letter word for pre-paper. That clue was clever, but not one Steven could remember solving. Instead, he kept trying to fit the word trees into the allotted spaces even though he knew ‘d’ was correct, because he had solved Daniel, a six-letter word for lion tamer, and then ‘n’, in nectar, a six-letter word for Dionysus’s lunch. There was a woman who could solve the New York Times crossword puzzle, every day, in ink, some sequestered and genetically anomalous freak of nature from Parsippany, New Jersey. Steven periodically measured himself against that same benchmark. Every morning, his routine was the same. Turn left from Tenth Street onto Miner, walk two blocks to the cafe, buy a cappuccino and choose a newspaper for the day. Some mornings he did choose the Times: Idaho Springs had an abundant selection of out-of-state newspapers. But most days he would look at its small fonts and its crowded front page, shake his head and dejectedly purchase the Clear Creek County Gazette,
a local rag with gripping headlines, regional news and a much easier crossword.

  The Gazette’s puzzle was nothing like the Times ’. Rather than frustrating prompts, the Gazette contained large, obvious clues that broke the puzzle’s back early so working the crossword quickly became nothing more than filling in the blanks. Enormous, mid-line clues such as a 14-letter word for bilateral Christmas treat, gingerbreadman, or a 17-letter word for Georgia raptors, theatlantafalcons, made the victory inherent in inking the last box both shallow and fleeting. Steven could only guess at what would cause a person to choose the Gazette over the Times. Perhaps it was the comprehensive local sports scores and statistics from high school basketball games. Maybe it was the full column account of the roast beef supper at the United Methodist Church the previous Sunday. Or possibly it was the fact that any barely literate child could struggle through the Clear Creek County Gazette’s crossword puzzle, oftentimes in ink, while it took a more resilient and soundly tempered individual to navigate the Times’ cryptic spaces.

  ‘Ah, bullshit… Give me the Gazette any day,’ he said in a soul-cleansing confession. ‘If I can’t tell the truth out here, I’ll never be able to.’

  Slipping on an icy branch, Steven woke from his reverie. He tapered his pace to a slow jog and peered up through the trees in search of the peaks he had been using to triangulate his position. Slowing to a walk, he felt dizzy for a moment and quickly swallowed two handfuls of snow. Dropping his pack, he held the hickory staff aloft and sighted along its edge towards a naked granite mountaintop in the northeast. He was out of position. Looking northwest, he repeated the motion and failed to find the second peak. ‘Well, damn it all to hell and back,’ he spat, and sat down dejectedly in a nearby drift to catch his breath. His daydreaming had put him far off course to the east. Now he would have to backtrack, realign his position between the mountains and make up for lost time. Drawing a cold piece of boar from his tunic, he took several hearty bites before it occurred to him that he would need to ration what little meat he had until he found another food source. With snow on the ground, he had plenty of water, although he would need to start melting it over a fire before long; he couldn’t continue to eat snow by the handful without risking a change in his body temperature. That would be a deadly mistake out here.

  He would also need food soon, and without a bow, or even a rudimentary spear, Steven realised he was looking at going hungry for the next day or two. He wrapped the slab of meat and replaced it securely in his pocket.

  ‘Okay, time to move. I’ll get nowhere sitting here.’ Steven cursed as he pulled himself to his feet. His thighs and chest ached. He was finished running for the day.

  Moving west along the lower slopes of the mountain, he craned his neck in an effort to catch a glimpse of the peak he had been using as a fixed navigational point. Realising he could not look around the mountain, no matter how far he stretched, Steven suddenly felt awkward. He peered about the forest just to make sure no one was watching him. The stillness of the valley struck him as unnatural and he listened for a moment before shrugging and continuing through the snow.

  He estimated he had come about half a mile too far along the valley floor. If he climbed at an angle, splitting the difference between a direct assault on the peak and a full trip around its base, he should eventually cross his original path to the top of the mountain. But climbing at such a curious angle soon made the soles of Garec’s boots roll beneath his feet, and with each uncomfortable step he pined for his own hiking boots. He cursed himself for not retrieving them when he had the chance. The day that Garec had borrowed his boots to descend the rocky slopes of Seer’s Peak seemed a lifetime ago.

  Remembering that brought the memory of Garec aiming an arrow at his chest. Steven forced the image from his mind, reassuring himself that his friend would never really have fired to hit him. Secretly, he was glad Gilmour had intervened. Steven swallowed hard as he imagined the shaft piercing his rib cage. It would have come fast, too fast to avoid, but not so fast that it would be invisible. He would have seen the arrow coming… he cringed, and tried hard to think of something else.

  When the blow did come, it was different. A blur of mercurial darkness from above and slightly behind him, its force took Steven in the ribs. It wasn’t the precision targeting of a Ronan arrow; instead of piercing his flesh, the impact sent him reeling backwards down the hillside. The blow was rough and clumsy: he felt like he’d been struck by a truck. The air exploded from his lungs as he landed hard on his back, then rolled over several times before he finally came to rest against the trunk of a thick pine. Several clumps of snow fell from its branches, landing on his face and shoulders, and he rubbed his eyes clear as he struggled to fight off the disorientation and see what had hit him.

  Still dizzy from the fall, it took a moment for his eyes to focus, but as his vision sharpened he flinched in terror as the hulking form of a huge grettan took shape before him. It was missing a forelimb and Steven could see a mass of congealed blood matting its fur. It was obviously the same animal that had attacked their camp the night before, but now it was just a grettan, a gigantic, wounded and most likely ravenous grettan. Its eyes shone black in the dim winter light; Steven’s first thought was relief that at least Malagon was not controlling the beast today.

  Now the creature lay in the snow only a few paces away, obviously exhausted from the effort of attacking Steven. Slowly it lifted its enormous head and turned on him, its jowls dripping with the effort. Its initial leap had drained it; now it needed to muster the strength to come at him again. Steven fought to regain his feet. He cried out as a sharp pain lanced beneath his arm. At least one of his ribs was broken. As he fell back against the tree he looked around frantically for the hickory staff: it was lying some ten paces away and there was no way he was going to get to it before the grettan pounced. The animal growled and Steven, bracing himself for the inevitable, closed his eyes tightly against the pain in his side and sprang to his feet.

  Two, three, then four steps. Behind him, the grettan was on its feet now.

  Five, six steps. An unholy cry: the beast howled in pain. Steven’s heart soared; he might just make it.

  Seven steps. Foes, both injured, fighting with the last measure of their strength.

  Eight steps. Steven was unable to bring his right foot forward. He looked down to see his boot, Garec’s boot, disappear into the grettan’s jaws. Eight steps. He hadn’t made it. We might not make it. Throwing his body forward, a sprinter finishing a dead heat, he reached for the staff, but as he fell face first into the snow, he knew it was beyond his grasp.

  The grettan clamped its jaws down on Steven’s calf and he felt the razor-sharp teeth pierce his flesh to the bone. He screamed, forgetting the staff, forgetting everything. His thoughts focused on nothing. Nothing. Not Hannah, nor his mother. Not the mountains of Colorado or the vast, surf-tipped surface of the ocean. Not his myriad embarrassments or failures. Nothing. No bright light, no symbolic tunnel, no benevolent deity and no cinematic review of his life.

  At the moment of his death, nothing passed through Steven’s mind except: We might not make it.

  We might not make it.

  These were the last in a string of moments he had na??vely believed would go on for ever.

  Steven felt the bones of his lower leg snap just before he heard it, like twigs breaking under his boots, Garec’s boots. Uncertain whether his leg had been torn from his body, Steven Taylor fell away into darkness.

  THE SANCTUARY

  Garec was snapping branches into kindling when he saw Gilmour stand suddenly and stare out into the forest. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, tossing two ends of a damp twig onto their struggling fire.

  ‘Steven is in trouble.’

  At that moment, they heard the distant cry of a grettan emanating up from the valley. It reminded him of the scream he had heard when he and Renna swam to safety across Danae’s Eddy. Unconsciously he ran one hand over the knee that Gilmour had healed
.

  ‘Let’s go.’ Mark was already on his feet, pulling on his cloak.

  ‘You and I can move quickly down the hill,’ Gilmour said. ‘Garec, stay with Brynne and Sallax. Follow our trail when you can. We’ll wait for you wherever we find Steven.’

  ‘Right.’ Garec felt helpless, but the plan was sound: although Sallax appeared to be improving, he was still in no condition to run anywhere, let alone through knee-deep snow in the freezing cold.

  As Mark and Gilmour moved to depart, Brynne caught Mark by the arm. ‘Wait,’ she cried, pulling Mark to her. She brought his face close, looked deep into his eyes and whispered, ‘Be careful.’

  ‘We will,’ he promised, and kissed her quickly on the lips. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll be fine. I’ll see you later tonight.’ He hugged her hard against him, feeling a sudden rush of emotion, and kissed her again, more deeply this time, before reluctantly letting her go.

  ‘We’ll see you soon. Take your time, and don’t rush Sallax. We’ll be there. I will be there, waiting.’

  Steven’s trail was easy to follow. As Gilmour set a rapid pace through the snow they heard another wail from the valley floor, a thin and insubstantial shriek. Mark could not tell whether it was a cry of anguish or rage, but the ensuing silence implied that one of the distant combatants had emerged victorious.

  Every now and then Gilmour stopped without warning and closed his eyes in concentration. Mark assumed he was casting about the valley floor for some sign that Steven was still alive. When Mark suggested he search for the staff instead of trying to trace Steven, the magician reminded him the magic in the hickory stick left no detectable ripple in its wake, even when it was being used.

  ‘It has enough power to kill a grettan, though,’ Mark said, grasping for reassurance. ‘Look what it did to that one last night.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Gilmour answered, ‘but grettans travel in packs, and are quite intelligent enough to plan surprise attacks when hunting, even when they’re not housing evil sorcerers.’ He smiled grimly.