The Huntresses' Game

by Joe Jackson

  A scream brought her focus fully back to the matter at hand, and she saw the wraith put its clawed hand-like appendages into the human’s chest. He screamed again, but it was cut short, coming out as a groan, then a gasp before his body shriveled and turned pale grey in moments. The zombie fell to the ground unceremoniously with its master killed, and the wraith turned to the west. It began to glide in that direction.

  It must sense Aeligos! Kari realized, and she dashed forward to try to intercept it. It moved like the wind, though, and by the time Kari reached it, it was already upon the rogue. He tried to fend it off with his swords to no avail, and then he called upon his minor grasp of the arcane to try to stop it.

  “Make a light source!” Kari cried. Aeligos summoned a glowing ball of light, but it seemed to have little effect on the wraith as it grasped the rogue in its smoky hands. The rogue screamed, and Kari sprinted to close the distance, shouting, “No!”

  Her scimitars cut through the inky blackness of the wraith’s form, and it recoiled and let out an ethereal moan that reverberated through Kari’s chest. It released Aeligos, who collapsed to the ground, groaning. The undead creature whirled on Kari and reached out, but she met its attack with one of her own, severing the end of an incorporeal arm. It hissed in what Kari assumed must be pain, and then it glided back when Zalkar’s symbol began to glow on her chest.

  What was more than that, the black inlay on the blades of her silver scimitars began to glow in a golden hue. She had never seen them do this before, but she didn’t let it distract her. She pressed the undead apparition, slashing at it in brutal but controlled strikes, mindful not to use the same routines she would against an opponent that would counterstrike with material weapons. The wraith made no effort to fight back, howling in pain with each cut of the glowing scimitars, until finally it made it to the shadows at the forest’s edge and dissipated.

  Kari kept her blades up and backed over toward Aeligos. The cold was dispelled as the natural warmth returned to the air about them. Aeligos got up to a sitting position, but he looked disoriented. “You all right?” she asked.

  “Aside from feeling exhausted, I think so. What the hell was that thing? Did that idiot summon it?”

  “I’m pretty sure that was a wraith,” Kari said. “I don’t think that fool was strong enough to create one. But I don’t really know much about them. Can you walk?”

  “Barely, but yes.”

  “Let’s get out of here, then,” she said. She helped Aeligos to his feet, but before they went back into the forest, she decapitated the dead necromancer and the zombie, to hopefully keep them from rising under the wraith’s power. With that taken care of, she left the fixing of the cemetery to the city’s caretakers, and she and Aeligos went to the safety of the deep woods.

  “That thing…must have sensed my lifeforce,” Aeligos huffed as they walked. “What if Annabelle and Zaliskower can do the same?”

  “I’m sure they can, which is why we’ll be keeping our distance,” Kari said. “We should be able to get enough details about the fort without moving so close that they sense us.”

  He agreed, and they put a bit of distance between themselves and the cemetery before they stopped for the night. Aeligos was going to need rest, and Kari made sure he had a hearty meal before he turned in for the night. She silently wished they had a horse or other animal with them, something that would be sensitive to the presence of the undead and give warning. It was going to be a long night with no one to watch over them, but she trusted in Zalkar’s power and the blessing of the Earth Mother.

  *****

  The following day was slow going as Aeligos got his legs back under him. They were able to cover a decent amount of ground, and weren’t too far from Fort Sabbath if they could keep up a good pace for the next couple of days. The forest was turning more and more pine as they headed further north, and while the spring days were pleasant, the nights were still quite cool. Kari was a little nervous about being too close to Aeligos after his remarks in Solaris, but they cuddled up to stay comfortable at night.

  The paths started to become more pronounced as they neared the Fort, though they were still far from any established roads. Kari began tracking, trying to get a feel for the movement around the fort, and how many patrols they might encounter. The majority of the tracks here were animalistic humanoid, which suggested gnolls. With the rumors of gnoll troubles and the reports of attacks, Kari wasn’t sure how concerned they should be. It seemed unlikely that even gnoll marauders would operate in the vicinity of a vampire’s lair unless they were thralls.

  They pushed onward, avoiding the larger trails that might see traffic. It required effort to not go crashing through the undergrowth, but Kari was certain they still had the luxury of time, so they took things slowly. The undergrowth was more scarce in the northern pine-dominated woodlands, but there was a lot that could give away their position, even with the blessing of the Earth Mother. They moved steadily but quietly, doing as fine a job walking the woodlands as any journeyman ranger, but as it turned out, it wasn’t enough.

  It was their scents that gave them away.

  The gnolls made no effort to hide their presence. Kari saw them before they were able to pinpoint her location. Their hyena-like noses kept rising, sniffing the air, correcting their course as they followed Kari and Aeligos’ scents. They were bestial in appearance, somewhat like the mallasti but with bent, canine-like legs. Their coats were brown and dirty, highlighted with black spots and tufts of lighter tan on the back of the neck and on the upper chest. Unlike the hyena-folk of Mehr’Durillia, the gnolls wore armor over clothing, and were heavily armed.

  This was no hunting party, but more like a small, roving war band. What was worse, Kari and Aeligos were going to be forced to fight them. They couldn’t hide their scents, not without some preparation, and they couldn’t very well go crashing through the woodlands when they were this close to Fort Sabbath. Kari just wondered why they were this far north in the first place; the gnolls preferred the warmer regions as often as not, and were known to populate the badlands of the southeast. Again, it sparked her interest in whether there was something larger going on behind the scenes, whether it was the work of Annabelle or simply involved her.

  Kari could smell them now, dirty and unwashed – and far more so than she was. They carried the scents of mangy fur, dung, and unwashed mouths. She had to wonder how they could smell anything other than themselves. Kari had no love for gnolls, but part of her wondered if they were related to the mallasti, and whether that should temper her hand at all. Tormaar was only half-mallasti, as she’d learned, being also half-gnoll. Was there anything to be redeemed among these people? Or, more specifically, among this group?

  They growled back and forth in their guttural language, and Aeligos obviously reached the same conclusion as Kari. Four blades were drawn from sheaths just as the beasts’ fine senses of smell brought them upon the hiding rir. Kari disarmed one and punched it hard across the snout before it truly recognized she was standing in front of it. The creature shook its hyena-like head and snarled. Those teeth and, to a lesser extent, its claws still made it a force to keep an eye on, even without weapons in its hands.

  Aeligos singled out a gnoll that was wielding a battleaxe and began to duel it. Its swings were powerful, but he was able to deflect rather than bluntly parry its attacks, and worked to give it a serious of stinging, smaller wounds to weaken and exhaust it. Kari was satisfied the rogue could hold his own, as long as they didn’t gang up on him, so she worked to make sure that didn’t happen.

  She and Aeligos didn’t fight back to back, but they stayed close enough that it would be difficult for anything to get between them. Kari used brilliant swordplay to disarm or discourage her foes, and mixed in kicks and hilt-punches in an effort to show them she wasn’t looking to kill them. They were strong, fierce, and hardy, but Kari’s skill was too much for them, and she had the majority of them disarmed in minutes. Four fell back while the fin
al two tried their luck, and Kari kept swiping weapons into a pile between her and Aeligos to keep the beasts disarmed.

  “Don’t suppose you speak gnoll?” Aeligos joked from behind her.

  Kari riposted and caught hers too cleanly, her scimitar biting deep into its side. The beast yelped in pain and fell to the ground, clutching at a wound that would no doubt kill it if it didn’t receive some aid. Kari readied her weapons again, but a quick glance over her shoulder revealed that the one fighting Aeligos had stopped attacking. The others, disarmed, were looking at each other in confusion, and yapping back and forth to each other in tones of fear.

  “Can you understand me?” Kari asked.

  There was recognition on those hyena-like faces. “A little,” one of them returned in a guttural snarl that was more natural than effort.

  “Why did you attack us?”

  “Not know. No remember how got here. Forest…unfamiliar.”

  Aeligos came around beside Kari. “You think they were being controlled by Annabelle?”

  “Not sure,” Kari said. “But I could see them break free of something when I wounded that one. Protect me for a minute.”

  Aeligos nodded, and Kari moved to channel some of Zalkar’s power to heal the gnoll she’d wounded. She was able to stanch the bleeding; thankfully – she supposed, anyway – she hadn’t hurt it too badly. With the help of her healing energy and some bandages, she was able to make sure the creature wasn’t going to die from that wound, as long as it made some effort to keep it clean. The gnolls began yapping back and forth in their guttural language again, obviously surprised by Kari’s help.

  “Where are you from?” she asked them, rising back to her feet.

  “North of human city on morning sun’s shore,” the one replied. “No know how got here. No remember leaving home.”

  “That’s definitely weird,” Kari said to Aeligos. “I doubt Annabelle and Zaliskower are going that close to Dira Ch’Tori to press gnolls into their ranks.”

  “Something else to look into that we have no time for,” he agreed.

  “You can keep your knives, but we’re not giving back your weapons,” Kari said, making motions to indicate each as she explained. She pointed east. “Go home, and don’t let me hear about any gnolls attacking travelers, or I will come find you.”

  She wasn’t sure they understood all of her words, but they understood her tone and her gestures well enough. They ducked their heads submissively as they backed away from Kari and Aeligos, and then they turned and made their way east through the woods. They had no apparent concern for stealth, crashing through the forest heedless of danger. Kari smirked, considering it was probably because they were danger. She hoped she had done a mercy and not something foolish; if they harmed other travelers, it would be partially her fault. But something had been controlling them, and they seemed repentant to some extent when they realized what they’d done.

  “What are we going to do with these?” Aeligos asked, indicating the axes and short blades they’d taken from the gnolls.

  “Just bury them a bit. They can probably come back and find them by scent, but we don’t have time to guard them or haul them around.”

  They moved on after a half-hearted burial of the captured weapons. The rest of the day and night passed without any sign of the gnolls returning. By Kari’s best estimate, they were within a day’s walk of Fort Sabbath now. She and Aeligos got the best night’s sleep they could, and kept up a good pace the following day as they approached the fort. They wanted the cover of darkness to do their scouting, so they made sure to temper their enthusiasm and close the final distance once night had fallen.

  Kari had only seen the fort twice before. It was partially collapsed, the remnant of some of the first attempts at establishing kingdoms in the north on Terrassia. Few even knew the truth of who originally built it, but only the keep itself and some of the outer walls remained. The keep was low, only two or three levels, with a dungeon below ground. The walls encompassed a sizeable courtyard, but one had fallen into disrepair, and another was long destroyed before Kari had ever seen the fort for the first time.

  There were no lights in the keep or the outer parts of the fort, but that meant nothing. Kari could see numerous forms atop the walls here and there, and there was movement through the courtyard. She and Aeligos circled the fort quietly, getting a feel for its layout, and both reached the same conclusions. The keep had only one way in, with no windows allowing winged attackers entry to the upper levels. There were arrow slits, but they were too narrow for anyone to fit through, as was intended. It was possible there was an entrance at the top of the keep, but if not, it could be a disaster to fly up there and risk revealing themselves.

  The southeast and southwest towers still stood, and these were manned by larger groups than the walls themselves. The lack of light, fire, or other sources of warmth gave Kari the impression that these men were all undead, thralls or full-fledged vampires in their own right. It was what she expected, but she quickly deduced that even with the sizeable force the Red Mask had promised her, this would be no easy task. She figured she might be better served to go to Dira Ch’Tori and request help from the regional army. If she had time, she’d ask several of the kingdoms and larger cities for aid from their militias and attack the fort from all sides.

  She and Aeligos faded back into the shadows. He suggested they wait an hour or two to see if the complement of guards changed at intervals. Kari was agreeable to that, so they made a cold camp a good distance from the fort’s walls and shared a supper of dry rations. Kari wished she had a brys or even half-brys with her. Their incredible night vision would give them a much clearer impression of what they were dealing with. Still, Kari was able to get a cursory head count and a feel for how the fort was manned thus far.

  It seemed unlikely there would be many in the keep itself with Annabelle and the dragon. They were the masters, and it seemed that the fort’s defenders were arrayed so that every single one of them would be dead before anyone reached Annabelle or Zaliskower. That was what the vampire’s words suggested when they had parted ways in Solaris. To kill Annabelle on her home ground was going to require either a lot of subtlety or a larger portion of brute force. Kari was more partial to the former, but with vampires or undead guards, she wondered how effective a covert attack could really be. If the gnolls could sniff them out, and the wraith could sense their lifeforces, how easily would vampires or their thralls find the intruders?

  “Any idea why it’s called Fort Sabbath?” Aeligos asked quietly, wary of his voice carrying in the forest.

  “Just bits and pieces I overheard in my prior life,” Kari answered, munching on some rations. “Not sure who built it, but it became famous as the base for a bandit lord, Sabbathis. I think it was originally called Sabbathis’ Fort, and people thought it was Sabbath’s Fort. So it got what, bastardized? And they ended up calling it Fort Sabbath.”

  “A bandit lord? So the place has been a den of trouble for centuries and no one ever just came in and destroyed it?”

  “I think Sabbathis ended up going straight,” Kari explained. “Came to realize he stood to make a lot more money acting as scouts and outriders for the kingdoms than robbing people here and there. But then something changed, and the dragon came, though nobody seems to know from where. Annabelle ended up caught in that, and Zaliskower turned her into a vampire.”

  “A vampire dragon…I’ll tell you, every time I think I’ve seen it all, I get taught the hard way that I haven’t seen squat.”

  “I’d never even heard of such a thing before I ran into him the first time,” Kari agreed.

  They made their way back to the fort after a couple of hours, and marked any changes in the patrols and stationing of the guards. Nothing seemed different, and Kari mused that being undead would mean the guards needed no rest or even meals. And if the entire complement of Annabelle’s thralls and servants were set to guard duty as she expected, then what they saw was never going
to change.

  “I wonder if the thralls are affected by sunlight like a vampire supposedly is,” Kari said to Aeligos in a bare whisper.

  “We’ll need to scout during the day, too,” he answered. He gestured back toward where their cold camp was, and Kari nodded and fell into the shadows with him once again.

  “So we know about how many we’ll be dealing with,” Kari said. “I won’t assume that Zaliskower won’t set his own thralls on fire with his breath, but we can hope that’s the case. If we can get the men here and invade, the numbers Eugene promised us should be enough to take that fort. Then we can kill off Annabelle and see what sort of luck we have with a small army against a vampire dragon, if he stays to fight.”

  “When we scout during the day, we’ll get a feel for the paths and their eyes,” Aeligos said. “We need to know which direction will be best to attack from, where the trails lead to, and what sort of–”

  He stopped abruptly. Kari heard it, too: the snap of a branch too obvious to have been a mistake. There was someone listening to them. Kari got to her feet and drew her scimitars. Aeligos got up and armed himself as well. They watched the shadows to the south of their camp – whoever it was had followed or circled around them – and waited for the spy to expose himself.

  The creature that emerged from the darkness of the forest looked more like Kari pictured a half-dragon, such as the one who had worn her armor before she received it. Its head was like that of a dragon with nearly a dozen horns of varying lengths. Its body was humanoid but with clawed hands and feet. It was covered in black scales, but its eyes began to glow a sinister red as it came into the circle of trees where Kari and Aeligos had sat. Most peculiarly, it was armored in heavy plate, though it carried no weapons.

  “Who the hell are you?” Aeligos demanded.