The Hammer's Fall

by Summers, Derick

  When he thought about it, Logan, himself, was amazed by his body’s ability to heal. The arrow wounds had already stopped weeping by the time he’d woken that morning and they’d begun to close over while he’d walked. Logan tried not to think about it, but a part of his mind knew that things weren’t right. He’d spent enough time helping his mother and sister when they tended to the villages’ injured. He knew the kinds of wounds he suffered should have killed him. At the very least, he should have been down and out for weeks while the wounds healed and his body recuperated. He definitely shouldn’t be hiking into town.

  Hades, he thought. I shouldn’t even be able to get up.

  Logan tried not to dwell on what he should and shouldn’t be able to do. It was just too much for his weary mind to deal with. He couldn’t be expected to solve the mysteries of his life. He could barely even cope with the fact that his family was gone. All he could do was focus on the task before him and keep going until it was finished.

  “Just keep moving,” he told himself over and over again.

  “Just keep moving.”

  It became a mantra to him.

  Logan stumbled into Solan Bay before he knew he was there. As he looked around, he realized that the attack must have started here. The invaders must have come up from the beach. As he thought about it, he understood that there was really no alternative. The great forest stretched around Solan Bay with only a very few merchant routes cutting through it.

  No, he thought. If you wanted to get to Solan Bay quickly and with the benefit of surprise on your side, then you had to come by sea.

  He wandered through the market square, past the charred remains of the village hall and down to the beach. He studied the ground before him looking for clues, for any confirmation that this was where the carnage had started.

  Yes, there, he thought. In the sand he could make out human tracks and gullies left by a beached boat. It was a big boat, by the looks of things, and it hadn’t come alone. From what he could see, Logan figured at least three large, narrow boats had beached here.

  The more he thought about it, the more sense it made. The force was obviously fairly large if it expected to raid an entire village. He had seen at least a dozen men at his own homestead. To carry that size of a raiding party and all their supplies, the boats would have had to be fairly large. Possibly there had been a larger ocean-going ship anchored in the bay, sending long boats of soldiers to the mainland. Now all he had to figure out was, why Solan Bay? Where had they come from? And most importantly, where had they gone? He shook his head in frustration at so many unanswered questions.

  He continued to wander through the devastation that had once been Solan Bay, identifying the bodies he could and gathering together any supplies that he might be able to use. Unfortunately, the soldiers had been almost as thorough here as they had been back at the house.

  He was rooting through the remains of the general store when he heard a low moan. It was so soft that at first he thought it was just wind off the ocean. When the moan sounded again he realized that somewhere around him someone else was alive.

  His sensitive ears tracked the sound out of the dilapidated store and back into the street. Soon he was searching in earnest. His ears eventually led him to the tattered remains of an old house that had once stood near the hall. Logan knew the place. It was Liam’s house, or at least it used to be. Not much remained of the building now.

  The moan came again, this time softer and more pained. It came from under the wreckage of the house. Logan moved quickly and began heaving wood and stone up and away from the source of the sound. Much of the wood still burned as he hurled it away and burned blisters into his hands. He ignored these small pains, they were nothing compared to the agony he’d experienced in the last few days.

  The moan grew louder as he cleared the rubble away. Finally, he uncovered the boy who lay beneath the wood and stones. Through the dirt and blood, Logan recognized his friend, Liam. Liam’s limbs projected from his body at unnatural angles and Logan could see he was broken in many places. A short, rusty sword lay near his friend’s body. Logan guessed that he had tried to defend his family. Liam regarded Logan with pained eyes. The young man’s breathing was short and rasping.

  As gently as he could, Logan pulled his friend from the wreckage of his home. Liam was incredibly light in Logan’s arms and as he lifted him, the young man screamed in agony. To Logan’s horror, Liam’s torso came away in his hands. He realized that his friend’s legs had been nearly severed by the blow of an axe or a large sword and Logan’s final tug had pulled them the rest of the way free. Blood gushed from the wounds as Logan moved his bleeding friend to a clearing.

  Using the remains of his tattered tunic, Logan tried to stem the blood pumping from Liam’s severed legs. It was like trying to hold back the sea itself. Liam was pale and his breath rasped as he watched Logan work. Logan applied pressure to the bleeding stumps and tried to remember the medicine that his mother had taught him. Logically, he knew that there was little he could do, but he couldn’t just let him die. There’d been too much death already.

  “Logan ..,” the young man croaked, his voice barely louder than a whisper. Logan continued to work on his legs.

  “Logan!”

  Logan stopped what he was doing but continued to hold the tunic against the bleeding stumps. He looked up at his friend. Liam’s eyes were already starting to turn glassy. They both knew that there wasn’t much time left. Logan moved up to his friend’s head and cradled it on his lap. Liam wheezed and blood trickled from his mouth as he tried to speak.

  “Logan ... it’s up to you ... they took ... they ... took ... the others ... the young.”

  Logan was stunned by Liam’s revelation, but as he thought about it he realized it was true. He hadn’t seen many of the bodies of Solan Bay’s young people among the dead in the village. But why?

  “What ... what do you mean?”

  Liam coughed blood as a spasm racked through his body, more blood seeped through the tunic wrapped around his legs.

  “They ... they were slavers ... Slavers, Logan … Da said … Da said they came from the north.”

  As another spasm racked his body, more blood frothed from his mouth. Logan could hear the death rattle in his friend’s throat. Liam’s hand reached for him.

  “You have to ...” Liam died in Logan’s arms. Gently, Logan lifted his friend’s limp body and carried him to what remained of the village hall where he’d gathered the remains of the others he’d found.

  Over the next few days, he managed to find enough wood and materials to build a large pyre. He also scoured the village looking for the bodies of the dead. More often than not, the vermin and the scavengers led him to the remains. As he performed his grim task, he couldn’t help but notice that Liam had been correct. Almost all the dead seemed to be the old and infirm. The young he had found had all died with weapons in their hands. It was clear they had fought to protect themselves and their families.

  He thought of his sister and the other youths of the village. If Liam’s father was right, and he had no reason to doubt that he was, then what was happening to them? What was happening to his poor sister? The thought made him sick to his stomach, and even more determined to find and save her.

  As the moon rose on the third night since the attack, Logan found himself once again standing before a funeral pyre. He set it ablaze and watched as it enveloped the remains of the dead. As he watched, he prayed. He prayed for the souls of the dead, for his friend, Liam, and for the slaver’s captives. He made a vow to avenge the dead and to free those who’d been taken, or die trying.

  By morning, the pyre had burned down and Logan gathered the few supplies he had managed to find. There wasn’t much. The slavers and the fires had been as thorough here as they’d been at his home. He had found a serviceable knife, a beat up horse blanket, and a small amount of dried fruit and some grains. He added these to the hammer, salve, and arrowheads he already carried and f
igured he was as ready as he’d ever be.

  He looked around the remains of Solan Bay with a heavy heart. He’d lived in or near the town for his entire life. Much of that time had been good and some had been bad, but that didn’t change the fact that it was still home.

  Or, at least it used to be, he thought bitterly.

  He sighed deeply and steeled himself to his task. Liam had said that the slavers came from the north. Logan turned to face his destination. If they had come from the north, then the north was where he was going!

  Chapter Twelve: Go North

  Logan remembered little of the first few days of his trek north. He’d followed roads, then hunting trails as far as he could, but eventually he had to make the transition into the unknown part of the forest. As he went, the foliage became thicker and his progress slowed. His body still ached continually from the wounds he’d sustained and a dull throbbing seemed to run right down into his bones.

  Eventually, his mind seemed to shut down from the pain and exhaustion and he struggled to keep going. He focused all his will on just putting one foot in front of the other as he pushed through the dense brush of the forest floor. He would press forward until his body could go no further then collapse where he stood, waking hours later and beginning the process again.

  When he grew hungry he ate from the roots and plants he passed along the way. Sometimes a thought would dredge up from somewhere deep within his brain, telling him what was and wasn’t safe to eat. It was at these moments he gave silent thanks for his mother’s lessons. She had taught him what he could eat in the forest and with that knowledge his strength finally began to return to him. He came to realize the importance of those early lessons.

  Within a few days, he had traveled well beyond any area of the forest he knew or recognized. The trees grew bigger and denser here and their leaves seemed to form a canopy a hundred feet above him. It blocked out much of the sunlight, making the forest that much eerier. Solan Bay, the village that had been his home, was long gone and it seemed that all that lay before him was an endless forest.

  Those times he did sleep, the flashbacks and memories tormented him. He saw his father fall before a never-ending onslaught of swords. His mother’s head rolled grotesquely across the ground before coming to rest in a slight hollow, its cold empty eyes staring at him in death. Mixed with these nightmarish images came memories from the feverish dream he’d had while lying unconscious and bleeding in the dirt. He saw the great blacksmith, Hephaestus, hammering at his forge, explaining Logan’s reason for being. They were such strange and bizarre images. He nearly lost himself in his growing depression, desperately hoping none of it had been real.

  It couldn’t possibly be real, could it?

  But, what if it wasn’t all a dream? What if it was real and he actually was a creation of the great smith? It would go a long way to explaining his physical appearance. He’d always known that he didn’t belong with the humans. Certain individuals had made sure of that. But, even if they hadn’t, it was obvious just by looking at him. At five foot three inches tall he was even shorter than most of the women in town, never mind the men. His ears and teeth ended in very noticeable points and his eyes were black pools against his pale white skin. Yet, he was as strong, if not stronger, than his father was.

  When he was alive, Logan sighed. It was so hard to think about his family in the past tense.

  The villagers had said that he must be a dwarf, but from what his father had always told him about the race, he didn’t match with them either. According to his father, as short as he was, he was still too tall to be a full-blooded dwarf.

  Logan’s head began to hurt as he tried to puzzle things out. Unfortunately, there were far too many unanswered questions. The only thing he really knew for certain was that he was not human. At least, not completely.

  His parents had told him very early in his life about how he had been found on the field after a great battle, amongst the bodies of the dead. That Hagar “the Hammer” had heard his cries amongst the moans of the dying and had searched him out. As he thought about it, he realized that fit with what Hephaestus had told him in his dream.

  He’d been told how Hagar found him and how his father realized at that moment that his time as a soldier had come to an end. Hagar had petitioned to be relieved of duty. His commander had tried to talk him out of it, but finally granted the request. Logan had been told of Hagar’s journey south with a little unnamed infant in his saddlebags. He knew he’d fed him on goat’s milk and used his undershirts as diapers, until they had made the long journey back to Tess.

  Tess, Logan bowed his head. She wasn’t just Hagar’s wife. She was the woman I’ll always think of as my mother.

  Yes, Logan knew he wasn’t human, but he also knew that those first humans in his life would always be his family.

  He was feeling more and more like himself as he came to a small river that ran across his path north. Glorying in the sudden sunshine from the break in the forest canopy at the river’s edge, he paused before crossing, attempting to judge the water’s depth. His eye caught his reflection looking back at him and he nearly scared himself silly. He looked like some hideous creature from the depths of the forest. The blood from his wounds had mixed with mud from the trail and had dried to his skin. The few remnants of clothes that he still wore were stiff and also caked with blood and dirt. His face was gaunt and hollow from surviving on a diet of roots and berries. Meat had been too hard to catch in his weakened state. Fortunately, the look of death was slowly leaving his face.

  Well, he thought. A bath would at least take care of part of the problem.

  He stripped the remains of his clothes from his body and took the time to inspect his wounds. The arrow wounds had healed over in the last days. Fresh, pink skin had covered the holes and he was relieved to see that there appeared to be no sign of infection. He couldn’t help but wonder how much of that healing was his own natural ability and how much was due to his mother and sister’s salve. He shrugged off the thought. He had no way to be sure.

  The only thing he could tell for certain was that the wounds were healing and that they would scar. That much was very clear. If his ability to heal did indeed come from the god, Hephaestus, then it was apparent that the blacksmith cared little for how his creations looked, as long as they continued to function. Logan smiled briefly as he pictured the god in his mind. He guessed he could understand that.

  He laid his clothes on the bank of the river and placed his few belongings next to them. Slowly, he eased himself into the clear water. It wasn’t cold exactly, but it was still a shock to his system. When the water finally touched his privates, he felt almost instantly awake and alert.

  He picked up a handful of sand from the bank and used it to scour the dirt and grime from his body. He could feel his skin beginning to tingle under the rough scrubbing. He washed his face and leaned back to run the water through his hair. Slowly, almost magically, he began to feel more relaxed and alive. The fresh water rejuvenated him and he seemed to draw new life from it.

  As good as the river felt, he didn’t allow himself to luxuriate long. His thoughts kept coming back to his sister. She was all the family he had left and he had to find her, had to save her if he could.

  He rose from the water and felt the heat of the sun beating down on him. Its warmth felt good as it dried his skin. Grabbing his clothes from the bank he quickly washed and rinsed as much of the blood, dirt and mud from them as he could.

  He rang his clothes out then wrapped them around himself before pausing to take his bearings. For the last several days at least he’d been traveling north and now he was well into the heart of the Great Forest. Unfortunately, he had never been this far from home before and his many studies had never really included much geography, or at least he hadn’t paid a great deal of attention to Hagar’s lectures on the matter. He’d always been more interested in blacksmithing and the forge than learning the locations of places he’d probably never get t
o visit.

  Foolish boy, he thought as he shook his head at his own short sightedness.

  What he did know, was that to the west lay the human community of Ta’alad. He just wasn’t sure if he was ready to deal with more humans. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he realized that humans really were the last ones he wanted to deal with right now.

  With that in mind, he gathered his meagre belongings together and continued north along the route he had been traveling. If he remembered Hagar’s teaching, he should eventually come upon the Dragon’s Spine, the large mountain range that bisected Tir’an from east to west. Once on the other side of the spine, he should be able to find his way to the human enclaves of the Western Isles. The Western Isles held the largest number of humans in Tir’an, so that was definitely the place to start his search for his sister.

  How exactly he would do that when he got there, he had no idea. But as he trudged northward back under the great canopy of trees, he realized that he had lots of time to figure it out.

  Chapter Thirteen: The Hunger and the Hardship

  Logan had left the river about two hours behind him, when his stomach informed him that he was hungry. As he continued walking he realized that if he wanted to save his sister, he had some other day-to-day priorities that needed to be taken care of first.

  At the top of the list was the need to find food, preferably meat of some sort. And that meant hunting, and hunting meant a weapon to hunt with. He thought of the various things he carried with him and chuckled as he pictured himself trying to bring down a deer with a forge hammer.

  No, he thought. I’m going to need some form of distance weapon.

  He needed a spear or a bow and arrows. A sling would work as well, but he really had no skill with such a weapon and this wasn’t the time to learn. Worse, though he had used a bow before, he had never made one. That left the spear as the only practical option.