Maverick

by Curtis, Greg

  Neither of them he knew, had great forests in which he could once more build himself a home, another sadness, but Lands End also had ships that could take him to other places, other lands. Perhaps on one of them he could find a new home. Or he could travel on further south again to other more distant lands that were little more than names to him. If he was feeling brave, he could perhaps travel west into southern Tonfordia itself, in the hope that the enemy hadn’t yet crossed the chasm, and maybe use his magic to help those who needed it if and when they did. They would he hoped, welcome his help and if they got driven further back it would be to the mountains and the home of the sylph, a most powerful people.

  “That is not much of a plan.”

  “No it isn’t. But it is what I have. Now you should go to sleep good maiden. Tomorrow and all the days after it will be long and difficult and you will need your strength.” For some reason she seemed to obey him, nodding slightly and then lying back in her blanket roll and even closing her eyes, but he wasn’t convinced. He knew that even as she lay there, pretending to sleep, she was really watching him, letting her hurt and disappointment rule her thoughts. But in time he hoped, sleep would rule, and in the morning a fresh new day would arise and this awkwardness would be behind them. It was the sensible thing.

  Still he remembered his father telling him a long time ago after a row with his mother that women weren’t always sensible and they could hold grudges far longer than would anyone more reasonable. Best not to upset them.

  This could be a long journey.

  ****************

  Chapter Three.

  Seven days later and maybe the best part of a hundred leagues from where they had begun, the party came in sight of the great chasm and the Lochore Bridge spanning it, and Marjan’s heart soared for a brief moment as he knew they had reached a major league-stone on their journey, the chasm crossing.

  The chasm itself was a massive rift valley, a tear in the land itself that extended the best part of five hundred leagues, from the western coastline that was the furthest edge of Tonfordia, across Gunderland neatly bisecting the province, then further east again into the Dead Men’s Wastes, separating the northern swamp from the rest which slowly became Ellington as you headed south. Some said it was the fracture between where the gods themselves had fought over the lands, tearing the northern half of the continent from the southern, others that it was simply a massive trench carved out by vast rivers over millions of years, but none truly knew. What they knew was that it was massive, spanning the entire width of the continent, and for the most part nearly a league wide and just as deep and only in a very few places did the two sides approach each other closely enough to be spanned by something. This was simply one such place.

  If everything went according to plan, then it was here that they would finally gain some distance on their pursuers, hopefully, meet up with others to share the journey and learn more of what lay behind them, and maybe ahead. But then, when he remembered anew the trouble in front of them, the battle to come, his thoughts returned to their more normal constant worry.

  They had made good time, very good, mostly because on their third day he had built a sturdy raft when they had reached the gently flowing Huntsman’s River. It helped to be able to fell and mill trees with his magic, not to mention fuse them together into a solid raft without the need for rope or nails, and while crude and large, the raft had carried them surely fifty or sixty leagues in only two days before the river began meandering off to the east and eventually back towards the main south road which they knew they couldn’t take.

  It had actually been a pleasant journey on the river. Marjan had enjoyed the gentle bobbing movement of the raft, the children as well had been excited by it, and the idea that they didn’t have to walk for a bit, while the gentle murmur of the waters meant that conversations were kept to a minimum. Most of them anyway had been the children complaining about how they were all roped together around their waists, a sensible precaution in his view and one their teacher insisted on, but one that didn’t meet with their approval.

  It was worse for Willow of course as he had made the poor horse lie down on the raft for hour after hour, something she wasn’t happy about even when he gave her a thick padded grass mattress and plenty of fresh grass to eat, but the alternative had been to leave her behind to be killed by the beasts. After all these years together she was almost family, and he couldn’t do that. Holly hadn’t been that pleased about it either, though still encased in her saddle bag with only her head free, there was little she could do about it, and when he picked some thistles for her to chew on, she stopped complaining, for a while.

  Attacks on them had been thankfully few, but still he had had to destroy a small pack of hell boars led by a soldier with a face to match theirs and a soul that wasn’t even close to human, sent a couple more drakes and their riders to their doom and even killed a sabre bear, a five thousand pound savage killing machine that should never have been anywhere near them, or awake for that matter. The last of the long winter was still in the air and it should have been sleeping in its den somewhere in the northern mountains. Worse though, the sabre bear had grown sharp spines over its entire body and somehow learned how to breath fire. Whatever had happened to it, the beast was far more deadly than it should have been, and far more savage.

  Happily the double axe when hurled at the beast had turned the charging nightmare into a blinding orb of lightning and ice crystals thanks to the enchantments he’d placed upon it, and by the time the whirling blade of death had returned to his hands thanks to another enchantment, all that had remained of the unnatural beast was a pile of scattered, cooked and frozen body parts, most of them unrecognisable. But they had made for good eating for the next several nights.

  With every attack he thwarted, Marjan had started to feel a little more confident in his abilities, and that was good up to a point. Overconfidence was of course something to be avoided. But as each new nightmare approached he also became more and more aware that what they were fighting wasn’t natural.

  That soldier, a man with tusks coming out of his mouth like that of the hell boars he seemed to be leading, had reminded him most of an orc, but he hadn’t been an orc. Physically he was mostly human, and Marjan suspected he had been fully human, once. But something had happened to him. Something that had transformed his flesh and done far worse to his soul. What remained in the end was not human, of that he was sure, and he felt comfortable in destroying him to protect the children, but not so good in the knowledge that some terrible dark magic had first transformed a man into a monster, and that whoever or whatever had done it was surely somewhere behind them, giving chase.

  The hell bores themselves like the dire wolves before them when he thought on them, were wrong too. He wasn’t completely sure how having only ever seen the beasts in images drawn by others in his many tomes of knowledge, but somehow he was sure that whatever had transformed the man that led them, had also changed them, making them more terrible still. In truth it was almost as if they too had been possessed by whatever the darkness was that owned the souls of the soldiers, but that somehow in them it slept, only working its strange evil as if in dreams. Then again, maybe that which was in the men themselves, only slept as well. It was hard to be sure.

  What he was certain of was that they were being chased. Not them specifically, but all the people that had fled through the forest. Each night he sent his thoughts flying with the owls, and as he practiced the magic and as his need grew his range was becoming longer. Now he could see things many leagues away, maybe even as many as ten, and while thus far he’d seen almost no people fleeing, he kept seeing the enemy’s pack soldiers making their way south through the forest, spreading out thin and wide in what was probably their version of a skirmish line. Most of the refugees were ahead of them still, but only just.

  Each evening he had told Yaris of his encounters and his thoughts after the children had been put to bed and heard nothing but a wo
rrying silence in return from the adept. Did he know something about the enemy and was keeping it from them? Marjan couldn’t be certain, just as he couldn’t be sure that that was any better than the alternative, that the adept and by implication the Guild, knew nothing.

  What the lad had been able to tell him and which was better news, was that others had been directed to Lochore Bridge and would be waiting for them. When he thought about what lay ahead of them that had to be a bonus, especially if as he hoped, some of them were wizards, and who else would be able to make contact with the Guild. On the other hand, the destination was a concern.

  The children were in mixed spirits, having apparently come to believe that they were safe with him as much as he tried to tell them they still had to be wary. But that same confidence in their own safety left them free to remember all the evil that they had already seen and there wasn’t a night that went by that Essaline didn’t have to spend time comforting the children as they burst into tears every so often, or waking them from their nightmares to hold them and tell them once more that they were safe. Even Petras suffered from bad dreams though typically he told them nothing of what he saw. It wasn’t the dwarven way to admit weakness of any sort.

  Still it was nice that the children trusted him, though embarrassing as well as they started playing childish games with him, and begging for stories of great heroic quests and epic battles they were sure he must have faced. He settled instead each night for telling them the tales of some of the more famous wizards of the Guilds, stories or really histories that had been drummed into him as an apprentice and which he knew by heart. Those ancient wizards hadn’t been heroic warriors slinging swords with reckless abandon as they cut their way through enemy armies. Wizards simply weren’t like that. They had beaten their foes with cunning, planning and magic, and yet for some reason the children seemed to like that just as much. Then again they liked anything that took them to better times and places, anything with a happy ending.

  Essaline was also polite and friendly if a little distant, and he knew she still hadn’t completely forgiven him for his insensitive words of their first night on the trail. He still wished he knew what he’d said that was so wrong. But she kept her upset to herself, never argued with him, supported him in front of the children, and wouldn’t utter a poisoned word against him. If he had hurt her, she wouldn’t allow it to show, and that was a noble trait, but then he was beginning to believe that Essaline Veral of Evensong like her students was of refined birth as well. Since that first night, when surely emotions had been high after so many shocks, she had told him little of herself, and sadly he knew little of the elves and their realms, but still it showed through in many little ways.

  Like the children her command of trade and he suspected, most of the other languages, was exceptional. She spoke both trade and human without any trace of an accent, and that spoke of a quality education and a dedicated student, which had surely made for a good teacher. Essaline was also surprisingly strict with the children in their manners, not allowing them to get away with things like name calling or subtle put downs, though when she told them off it was always with great care and patience. She insisted on them giving thanks before each evening meal, something he wasn’t used to but also a custom he was starting to appreciate. While he knew little of the Goddess as the elves called her, it set a good tone for the evening ahead, and if indeed the Lady was listening then they could use all the help she could grant them.

  Perhaps most telling though was her knowledge. Just a chance remark about the nobles from Gunderland or for that matter any other realm, and she seemed to know every detail about their backgrounds, rule, family, practices, treaties and laws. She even knew the protocols for addressing them. Who would know such things except another noble?

  Yet if she was of such high station, she wasn’t haughty with it as many were. She helped each night with the chores, helping to gather firewood, collecting berries and any other foods they found along the way, washing and dressing the children, even mending their robes and tending to the animals. Oddly enough she liked the goat, and Holly now had a daily wash and rub down which she loved. She might not like spending her days in a saddlebag, something for which she blamed him entirely, but she loved her new mistress, and when the time came to part ways, he was thinking of leaving her with the elves. At least she would be welcome among them and safe.

  Moreover, when her arm had healed sufficiently, he had tended to her wound and dressed it morning and night and was pleased with the way it was responding to his care, Essaline had started adding to the defences by carrying a longbow of her own which she crafted from the stem of a yew tree sapling and the sinew of a hell boar. It was a surprisingly well-made bow for something made in a single night with just a belt knife, the embers of a fire and some boiling water, and it had a good draw on it. But then she was an elf. She was a good shot too, something that fitted well with her elven lineage, and he had enchanted most of her well-fletched arrows with spells of accuracy and sloth for added effect. Whatever she hit, even if it survived, would not be coming after them for at least a day or two. It was just a shame that she didn’t have the magic to release some of his more heavily enchanted arrows. Then she would have been truly deadly. But as an elf her magic was of nature not the elements.

  He missed the laughter she still shared with the children, and her smile, and maybe most of all the promise of things to come even if they could never have been except in his deluded musings, but he could not fault her as a companion. That was good. He would need that companion for what lay ahead. They all would.

  Breaking through the last of the Allyssian forest and walking into the clearing in front of the Lochore Bridge, Marjan finally got his first look with his own eyes at the ancient structure and was impressed.

  Though it was called a bridge it wasn’t really a bridge, more an immense outcropping of rock that somehow straddled the chasm and had done so since before human history had begun. Some called it a land bridge, others a fortunate outcropping. Some said that when the chasm itself had formed, the earth somehow tearing itself apart, the land bridge had simply been created as it refused to pull apart, and instead it had stretched, like the strands of dough that remained when the baker tried to pull the dough into two halves. Others held that when the chasm had first formed a mountain once on top of it had conveniently fallen into the immense cavity underneath and that the bridge was all that remained of it. Whatever the truth of it, it was immensely strong and he had no worries that the structure might fail, causing them all to fall perhaps many leagues to their doom. Unfortunately the land bridge itself was the least of their worries. The main one was the castle that sat on top it.

  Itself also older than recorded history, probably many thousands of years old, the broken black monolith of burnt stone exuded danger and evil even from half a league away, the echoes of too many dead victims still remaining in it, not to mention the unimaginable evil of whatever race or creature had first built the ancient monolith. But what now dwelt inside it, what called it home was still more dreadful, and very much alive.

  Bathsha, hideous queen of the spiders, a creature said to be as large as a dragon and ten times as deadly, though no one alive had ever seen her, had made the ancient ruin her home long ago, some said that she’d actually been raised in it, a pet of the ancient sorcerer Qua’thor himself until he’d abandoned her to become the terror that she was. Whatever the truth, from the black castle where she had her nest, she raised her legions of death spiders and sent them out into the world to hunt and bring back food for the lair. Spiders the size of a man and with stingers that could disembowel a knight in armour, poison sacks bursting with venom that they could spray a dozen feet or more, and speed far greater than any insect should have. Worst of all the damn things could hunt and set ambushes, showing entirely too much intelligence as they lay in wait for the unwary.

  Her soldiers were the bane of the region and the reason that there wasn’t a town or village or e
ven cottage within a dozen leagues. They were probably also the reason there were so few large animals about whether predator or prey. The spiders weren’t fussy about what they hunted and their queen was always hungry.

  The gods alone knew how many of her soldiers lay within the ancient ruin, hundreds, thousands, more? But what Marjan and the children did know was that they had to cross it and the queen wouldn’t be happy about that. She didn’t let a meal go free.

  Worse still, while her soldiers could be overcome, and he was reasonably sure he could set up enough traps with time to level her entire army, he was equally certain the queen was far beyond his power to kill. Killing her was probably far beyond the ability of any mortal wizard, and maybe even beyond those of her one time sometimes imagined master Qua’thor. So even once the army was gone, they’d still have to find a way to cross the land bridge without her attacking them. That was going to be difficult, though he had a plan.