Pathfinder Tales: Skinwalkers
Page 6
Everyone laughed except Jendara. A memory of her father leaped into her head, his funny brown mustache and white beard pressed against her cheek, his hand on her shoulder as she sighted on an elk. She'd been so eager her hands had shaken. But when he told her to let the arrow fly, it had flown true.
She came back to the present with a lump in her throat.
"Anyway, we spent three days wandering that island, sniffing at bear scat and rooting in the mud for tracks. We were just about to give up when the bear charged out of the woods and attacked us in our own camp! It lifted up a full-grown man and tossed him into the trees like it was throwing out an apple core."
Jendara looked around the clearing. Rak's mouth had fallen open. Everyone's eyes were on the old man.
"I wasn't sure whether to piss myself or run away, but your dad just jumped to his feet and roared. Roared like he was a big ol' bear himself! And the bear stopped in its tracks! Stopped cold. Gave us the chance to grab our gear and fight back. My sister wound up taking it down with an arrow through the eye, but we would have all died if it weren't for Erik White Beard and his roar."
Everyone laughed. Vorrin looked up at Jendara. "Did you know that story?"
"I'm not sure. Dad had lots of stories." She stuffed the last of her sandwich in her mouth to stop further questions.
Vorrin frowned. "I don't think you've told me any."
She shrugged.
"That's a crying shame," Nol said. "Erik was a good man. Everyone on the islands knew him. He could have been a king if he wanted to. But he was busy helping people and doing what he liked. Couldn't have done that in Halgrim, I s'pose."
Jendara smiled at the old man. "You think the tide's changed yet?"
He looked at the sky. "Reckon it might be low enough. Let's go see."
No one seemed to mind the change of topic, but Jendara didn't meet Vorrin's eyes as she got to her feet and gathered up her gear. She had never told him much about her family, and she wasn't going to start today.
paizo.com #3236236, Corry Douglas
Chapter Five
Skinscour Causeway
The air hung dead and heavy over the narrow spit of land connecting the main island of Flintyreach to the forested mound ahead. Jendara missed the wind. She scowled up at the gray sky and wished for sun, a breeze, even drizzle: anything besides that thick humidity and gloom. She looked back at the causeway.
"The tide's still going out," she said.
"Ayuh," Nol agreed. "Them rocks be slippery right about now."
A wave flopped over the neck of the causeway, leaving behind a layer of white foam that fizzed in the open air. Slick stuff, Jendara knew. They were going to have to wait a little longer.
"How long do you think it will take before it's safe?" Vorrin asked, with his usual talent for reading her mind—or her face, as he insisted.
Boruc suddenly pointed. "Is that smoke?"
Jendara squinted into the distance. A fine trickle of white rose up from the little forest across the causeway. She might have missed it against the background clouds, but it stood out now like a bright ribbon. "Do you think there are any sea urchin collectors camped out there?"
Rak snorted. "You saw the entire village last night. Ain't none of us on that spit."
"Do trolls build campfires?" Vorrin asked.
"They fear fire," Boruc said. "It'd be a pretty rare troll to want a bonfire."
"All right." Jendara checked her gear. Wilfric's bow had a heavy draw; it was clearly meant for a larger archer than even a tall woman like herself. But she could make it work. She'd always been a good shot. "Everyone ready? Rak, you've got the pitch in case we find a troll?"
He rolled his eyes at her. "Course."
"All right. Let's move out slowly. Whoever's down there isn't going anyplace. The waves have the causeway pretty well cut off. We'll get in place, and when the rocks look safe enough, we'll cross."
They picked their way down the urchin gatherers' trail. The elements had scoured away the soil, leaving only the bare rocky bones of the island in steep descent to the causeway. Jendara picked her steps carefully. A slip here could send her tumbling into the ever-hungry ocean.
They reached the causeway. The waves leaped up the sides of the narrow finger of land, but they no longer lapped over the top. Nol waved Jendara behind him and took the first step.
"It's not too bad," he called back over his shoulder. "Just take it real slow."
Jendara nodded, although he had already turned back to watching the path, and took her first step onto the causeway. Her boot slid, just a little. Her heart leaped into her throat. It was one thing to be on a boat in the open sea—if she'd fallen overboard off the Milady, she could tread water until someone threw her a line. But out here, there were no lines. No swimming. The waves would smash her against the shore before she could even call for help.
She took a deep breath and kept her eyes on her feet. It wasn't a long walk. She'd be fine as long as she took it slowly. Nice and slowly.
It only felt like a few steps before she was at Nol's side and waiting for the others. Vorrin skidded a little and Jendara had to look away. She shrugged her shoulders up and down a few times, trying to work the nervous stiffness out of the muscles.
Vorrin cleared his throat. "You okay?"
She gave him an impetuous hug. "I've seen people who fell in places like this."
"Hurt pretty bad?"
She rubbed the back of her now-sore neck. "They didn't come out alive."
He looked back at the rocks he'd just crossed. "Glad I didn't think too much about that while I was out there."
"You made it look easy," Boruc complained. "I thought I'd fall in half a dozen times."
Vorrin laughed. "What can I say? I grew up on a boat. I just imagined it was a gangplank standing between me and dry ground—and a tavern," he added with a wink.
Vorrin's stab at humor worked. Everyone smiled, and even Jendara felt herself relax.
Nol looked at the sky. "The tide should be at its lowest in about two hours. I'd like to be finished with this island before then."
Everyone agreed, loudly, and the group set out. Jendara stooped to study a branch of a nearby tree, recognizing the blue-gray needles of a spruce.
"Jendara."
She looked up to see Nol squatting beside a clump of tiny herbs. She recognized the fronds of yarrow among the greens, but drew a blank on the others. The indentation at the edge of the plant group, however, was more than familiar.
"That looks about the same size as the footprints we saw back on the trail," she said.
He nodded. "Pretty sure whatever came down that trail is here now."
Jendara scanned the skies, but now that they had entered the forest, the faint line of smoke had disappeared. "Too many trees to see anything."
"Can't be far ahead. I'd say if we cut left, we'll run into it."
Jendara unslung her bow. "Ready weapons."
The forest thickened around the hunting party, the dense spruce boughs forcing them to stoop. The sun's light, already filtered by the thick gray clouds, waned as the trees knotted more closely together. The air clung to Jendara's skin, clammy and heavy with the scent of the sea. No birds sang. No creatures rustled in the ferns.
"I don't like this," Vorrin breathed.
"Me, neither."
Nol hesitated. "Do you smell that?"
Jendara sniffed. "Smoke."
"And wet ashes. Our quarry's moving." Nol rushed forward, knocking back branches with the tip of his spear. The group hurried to catch up with the old man.
He burst out into a scooped hollow of earth, just catching himself on a knotted bunch of roots. The immense tangle massed around the snapped body of a very tall spruce tree. Its limbs stuck out everywhere. "A windfall," he gasped. He grabbed his knees for a minute to steady himself and catch his breath.
Jendara examined the root ball of the fallen tree. The roots had spread themselves over an ar
ea wider than she was tall, and now they towered above her, pried up out of the ground and revealed for all to see. The tree must have fallen in the spring storm season, for nothing yet grew in the soil clinging to its massive root system. The earth still looked raw in the dug-out hollow the roots had torn out of the ground.
Nearest the tree, the earth looked smoother, compacted in one neat oval that stood out to Jendara's trained eye. She nodded at Nol. "Think it slept here?"
He touched the soil, crumbling a bit between his fingers. "I'd stake money on it."
"Here's our campfire," Vorrin said, his voice grim. He nudged something with the tip of his spear. "Dara, you'd better take a look at this."
She slipped between Rak and Boruc to the little campfire. Situated between two massive limbs of the spruce, the fire had been larger than she'd expected, the ground scraped clean to keep the fire in line. The kind of fire a seasoned outdoorsman might make.
"No troll built this," she murmured. She picked up an abandoned stick of firewood and noticed a few strands of coarse dark hair caught in the splintered end. "But this looks like the hair they saw back at the quarry."
"Hmmn." Vorrin pointed at the clump he'd nudged out of the ashes. "What do you think about that?"
Jendara leaned closer. She smelled something now: a whiff of scorched meat. Boruc squatted beside her, watching closely as she reached for a stick and scraped off some of the ashes.
"Shit!" Boruc threw himself backward. "Is that a foot?"
Jendara shoved it away. The grisly thing flopped over. The breeze stirred, blowing away a wisp of ash.
"It wasn't burned," Vorrin mused. "But it was mostly buried in the ashes."
Nol squatted beside Jendara to better look at the thing. "Like someone was trying to hide it?"
"I got to piss," Rak blurted, stumbling into the woods. He didn't make it far before the sounds of retching began.
Jendara used her stick to turn the foot around to study the thing's stump. "It was removed with a blade," she said. "The bone looks sheared through."
"The fat pad at the base of the heel's been removed," Nol noted. "Bitten clean off."
Jendara got to her feet. "Whatever we're following, it's been eating human flesh." She dug a hollow in the fire pit and pushed the foot into it. "We can pile rocks over it. At least keep the animals from digging it up."
They began building a cairn, stacking the rocks quickly. No one spoke.
"You guys!" Rak crashed back into the clearing, nearly falling over a tree limb. "You guys! I saw something." He paused to catch his breath.
"What is it?" Vorrin got to his feet.
"Something big. And furry. I couldn't really see it. It took off too fast." Rak shook his head. "I don't think it was a troll."
"Let's move out," Jendara said. "Good thing you saw it, Rak."
The boy grabbed up the pot of pitch and hurried to catch up with her. "It started moving, and pretty fast. Headed for the end of the island."
They moved quickly, unhampered by the need to look for footprints or clues. They had a real sighting of the creature. The thing that had killed the quarry workers was just ahead.
But was it really the thing that had killed them, or just some kind of scavenger? Maybe it was a troll, a pathetic troll reduced to scavenging. That could happen to an orphaned young creature. Hell, even a bear could have wandered into the quarry, drawn to the smell of the dead.
Jendara thought about the boulder, tumbling down the hill toward her. That hadn't been the work of a bear. Neither had that fire pit back there. Something humanoid had been out here in the woods.
The crash of waves on rocks was clearly audible here, and in a second, the group broke through the edge of the spruce forest. Jendara's eyes smarted at the sudden burst of sunlight. Then her heart sped. On the rocks ahead, someone raced toward the end of the peninsula, his long legs pumping and fur cloak trailing behind him. Definitely human.
"That's him!" Rak shrieked.
Jendara reached for her quiver. She didn't want to kill the man, just slow him down. They needed to know what he'd seen back at that quarry.
"Hey, you!" Vorrin bellowed. "Stop!"
The man dropped to his knees and then leaped up, suddenly looking thicker, hairier. Jendara blinked. Had her eyes been dazzled by the light? The man-thing hit the end of the island and skidded for a second on the damp rocks. Its shape stood out, as bulky as a six-foot-tall black bear.
Jendara slid to a stop on the lichen covered rocks, nocked her arrow, softened her breathing, and let fly.
The arrow flew true, slicing through the air and striking just between the bear-man's shoulder blades. The beast gave a pained growl, and then its body toppled forward, hitting the edge of the rocks and tumbling down the edge of the island.
"Catch it!" Jendara shouted, breaking into a run, but it was already too late. Vorrin and Boruc stopped at the edge of the cliff, peering down into the sea. When Jendara stopped herself beside them, she could see the surf pounding down below. The ocean had swallowed up the beast.
"That was the bear that jumped me back at the quarry," Vorrin said. "It was the right size, for sure."
"Bear?" Nol shook his head. "Look." He pointed to the ground, where a worn leather moccasin had caught between two rocks.
"No bear made that campfire," Boruc reminded them. "That had to have been a man. And he didn't want us to catch him."
"So it was a man wearing a bearskin cloak," Jendara said. "Or..." She broke off, thinking. "He was so strong and built so strangely. I mean, I really thought he was a bear or some kind of monster. Could it be some new kind of troll we've never seen?"
No one had an answer. The sea roiled below. Nothing, man or beast, bobbed in the rough water.
"If it was a man, what was he thinking?" Vorrin mused. "He ran over here like he thought he had a way out."
"He waited out there in the woods a long time," Nol reminded them. "Almost as if he was waiting for something in particular."
"Why would he do that?" Boruc asked.
"The tide change, maybe," Jendara mused.
Nol stroked his beard. No one said anything, but they all followed his gaze out to the deep water between the islands.
"He could have been waiting for a boat," he said, very softly. "A boat on a schedule."
Jendara stared at the horizon. She didn't see any boats, but that didn't mean they weren't out there. A fog bank was already moving in across the sea.
"Let's get back to the village," she said.
paizo.com #3236236, Corry Douglas
Chapter Six
Sea Snakes
The group made its way through the spruce forest in silence. It was impossible to make sense of the man she'd shot back on those rocks. Was it a man? It had run like a man. It had made a campfire. Yet it had certainly sounded like a bear when it fell, and it looked like a bear at the moment she sighted it. Jendara tried to remember what its ears had looked like. Did it have the small rounded ears of a bear? Her memory refused to show her anything except its black silhouette.
They followed the path down to the narrow bottleneck of the causeway. The waves pattered around the base of the rocky finger of land, lower than they had been. The tide neared its lowest ebb.
"Maybe it was some kind of gorilla," Vorrin suggested.
"Gorilla?" Rak scoffed. "What's that?"
"A creature from Garund," Vorrin said. "I saw one once in a market down in Katapesh. They're kind of like men. More like men than a bear or a troll."
"Do they use fire, though?" Nol asked.
"I don't know," Vorrin said. "I only saw the one, and it was in a cage."
"What about a skinwalker?" Jendara asked, thinking of Yul's stories.
This time Rak laughed outright. "Now you're just messing with me. I'll buy that maybe there's something called a gorilla down in Garund, but nobody out of diapers still believes in skinwalkers."
"Watch yourself, boy," Vorrin growled.
The spear rolled sideways. Boruc lunged for it, but the tip plunged into a crack between the rocks. Boruc swore.
Nol laughed. "Maybe you should go out hunting more often. Grab your spear, Boruc. Let's hurry home so we can drink."
Boruc tugged on the end of the spear. "Thing's stuck."
Rak sighed. "Can we just get moving?"
Boruc pulled harder. "Must be wedged in the rocks." He got onto his belly, peering down into the depths. "This gap goes an awful long way down."
"Give it a twist," Jendara suggested. "Probably just that flange on the iron point, catching on something. Turn it, it'll come out."
He grunted. "Can't twist it." He gasped. "Something's yanking on it!"
Jendara stepped closer. "What?"
There was a splintering sound, and the end of Boruc's spear flew up out of the crack.
"Run!" Jendara shouted, but she was too late.
The green head of a massive snake popped up out of the ground, its mouth closing on Boruc's arm. Jendara grabbed the back of his tunic and yanked, but he lurched forward, his arm disappearing down the crevice in the rocks.
"Help!" Jendara bellowed. Her feet slid on the still-damp rocks.
Vorrin grabbed her wrist. Boruc screamed and pushed himself up off the ground, the muscles in his neck bulging hugely. Vorrin managed to get his other arm around Jendara's waist, pulling back on her as she pulled on Boruc's tunic.
The snake exploded out of the hole in the ground, its scales shimmering blue and green—sea colors. It reared back to strike at Boruc's face.
Jendara felt his tunic slip out of her grip.
The man ducked under the snake's attack but kept falling forward, no longer anchored by Jendara and Vorrin. He hit the edge of the causeway and tumbled down the cliff side.
"Boruc!" Vorrin launched himself across the rocks, thrusting his spear down into the rocks at the last second. It held. Vorrin swung out over the edge of the rocks.