From his vantage point upon the steep, craggy flanks of the valley, the warrior continued to watch in silence. Whilst he waited, the rising winds whipped at the fur-lined cloak that hugged his shoulders. Finally, having satisfied himself as to the strangers' course and their ultimate destination, he turned and headed back along the winding path that led between the peaks and over the ridgeline.
* * * * *
Warner sat with Randall on the uppermost boulder, the two having spent the last hour climbing the steep incline together, unprotected from the chill wind that cut through to their bones. From their elevated position, they looked out over the wooded valley below, Randall still reeling in the last of their rope lines. It had been a difficult climb, and not something the rest of the armored column would be able to make. Warner hoped that the other scouts had had better luck in their exploration of the surrounding area, otherwise they would be forced to follow a far more time-consuming, roundabout route to get back to the river; and every day spent out in these lands reduced the odds that a person would be returning home. After taking a big swig of water, he handed their canteen back to the swordsman, and turned around to eye the terrain ahead of them.
The ground sloped upward, leading away from them before returning to the gentler inclines that they had been traversing prior to encountering the cliff face. More of those sickly, ailing pines lined the horizon, obscuring whatever lay beyond from view. The men had stayed fairly close to the steep, falling rapids during their ascent, and he could make out the river no more than a few minutes’ walk away; its path ultimately disappearing into the distant, silhouetted tree line.
The archer had started shouldering his pack when a shrill bird call broke the eerie silence of the mountainside. Both rangers’ hands immediately went to their weapons, Warner ducking down, palming an arrow from his waist-mounted quiver and immediately nocking it into the bow string without a moment’s thought. The two remained completely silent, each straining intensely to pick up any further sounds.
After a brief pause, they both made eye contact with one another, Randall using his free hand to sign the direction that he thought the noise had come from. Warner nodded back, concurring with his comrade’s judgment, and delicately lowered his bow to the ground. The ranger placed each hand to his mouth and whistled back an almost identical call, ever so slightly higher pitched, using both of his cupped palms to induce a characteristic tremolo effect.
Almost immediately, a similar, deeper warble was carried back to the men over the cold air, confirming their earlier suspicions as to the source's bearing. Toward the end of the bird song, the sound suddenly pitched back up, hitting the higher notes and creating an altogether unconvincing impression of the local wildlife.
“That's got to be Denner,” Warner chuckled, retrieving his weaponry from the ground. “He never could manage the proper calls.”
Randall grinned back at him. “What do you reckon, good news or bad this time?”
Warner smiled wryly at the pair's regular guessing game. “When was the last time it was ever good, Randall?”
* * * * *
Fellow ranger Denner and his partner, a swordsman by the name of Gareth, were waiting at the tree line for the two men as they jogged across.
“I swear, Denner, if you weren't such a good shot, you'd be booted from this outfit after unleashing a cacophony like that,” Randall greeted the slovenly archer good-naturedly. “How your wife puts up with it is truly beyond me.”
Denner smirked. “We can't all have your dulcet tones, Randall. If only our surroundings were more suitable to appreciate the full extent of your auditory brilliance.” The men laughed as they locked arms in a welcoming gesture.
“Yeah, yeah, don't encourage him,” Warner cut the conversation short. “So tell us, what have you found?”
This time it was Gareth who spoke up. “It's bad, boss. I don't know if it's what that knight was talking about, but it's a pretty big damn coincidence if not.” The fear in the man's eyes and the earnestness of his voice cut through the fraternal geniality from mere moments before.
Warner's features took on a serious cast. “Go on.”
“There's a church or something down there. I've never seen anything like it before, filled with these horrific statues and carvings that were just... just...” Gareth went quiet.
Denner was left to finish the man's thoughts. “The whole place had this aura about it too, just being near it felt nauseating.” He grimaced. “I'm telling you, Warner, it has to be linked to the Wicked Ones somehow, there's just no other explanation for the feel of that place. There's also... the…”
“The what?” Warner's tone had become increasingly anxious.
“The bodies,” Gareth's shock-laden voice cut the air like a knife, utterly emotionless and cold. “There are a lot of bodies.”
* * * * *
Night fell as the men of the Brotherhood made their way slowly up through several of the narrow breaks in the rocky cliff face. Weapons were holstered as members of the garrison bent and helped their comrades up and over the more difficult obstacles in their path. Warner and the other rangers, their packs lighter and armor more maneuverable, clambered easily across the rough terrain, leading the rest of the group toward the temple site. The way the skirmishers hugged the craggy outcrops, their eyes never leaving the dark horizon ahead of them, was not lost on the other soldiers.
Seeing such experienced fighters rattled had caused a deep, stifling silence to descend across the rest of the infantry. The only sounds to be heard along the rise were the muffled, angry curses emitted whenever an ill-advised step caused loose stones and scree to bounce noisily down across the slabs below, coupled with the soft clinking of the knights’ armor. Having been forced to leave their horses at the base of the rise, the unmounted knights struggled under the weight of their suits, but they continued on nonetheless.
Several hours later, the main body of the patrol finally finished traversing the ground that the scouts had taken such a comparatively short time to cover, and they were able to move out across the plateau toward the location of the unidentified temple. As the remaining distance to the isolated site decreased, the atmosphere within the group became increasingly tense and fractious. The men had heard the rangers' dire reports of the massacred worshipers and seen the fear in their eyes as they recounted the scene to Quaid and the other knights. In spite of the usual military rivalry that existed between the two groups, the men of the watch still held a grudging respect for the experience of the hardened irregulars, and the concern amongst the skirmishers' ranks had become contagious.
The remaining distance to the shrine was passed in silence, the mixture of the unforgiving surroundings and utter darkness conjuring a myriad of horrific nightmares to run through the soldiers' minds. But none of their scouts' reports could fully prepare the men for the devastation they were to discover as they began their descent into the clearing that ringed the ruined structure.
* * * * *
The soldiers picked their way through a scene of utter slaughter and destruction. Smoke rose in thin plumes from the cooling, burnt out remains of the building's wooden supports. The once large beams were now nothing more than twisted and brittle, crack-ridden lumps of charred timber. Altars had been pulled down and numerous dark stone statues smashed, the men unable to make out whatever bizarre scenes the crudely ornate sculptures had once depicted.
Quaid wandered through the broken remains of the smashed and desecrated religious site. It seemed that around every corner lay yet more of its dead inhabitants, their bodies mutilated and burned, piled up in small groups for some purpose that he could not fathom. The church had sat in the middle of a small clearing, its low, single story hiding the grounds from prying eyes. There was a stream flowing through the center of the compound, running directly underneath the main building. Had it not been for Aldous's vision, Quaid doubted that they would have ever come across the peculiar site.
When they approached the outer e
dges of the perimeter, Warner and some of the other rangers had come across several of the more intact corpses, and from what he could tell, they did not belong to any group known to the Brotherhood. Entirely male, they had worn unusual robes of midnight purple, free from any form of lavish decoration or ostentation, in stark contrast to the level of effort put into the imagery adorning the structure around them. Each man had marked their face with some kind of charcoal paste, many of the designs mirroring the symbols that had been inked across much of their exposed flesh, the letters and numerals utterly unknown to any of the soldiery.
As far as Quaid could make out, it appeared that none had survived whatever attack had reaped such devastation, so complete and total was the destruction to their surroundings. The fact that such an established culture had managed to secure some kind of foothold in this region without anyone in the Brotherhood being aware of its existence caused him a great deal of concern, and it would no doubt trigger much debate when presented to the Captain's Council upon their return. He allowed one hand to linger on the bas-relief inscribed into the stone pillar in front of him, a chill running through his bones at the touch.
There was indisputably a sick malaise hanging over the whole area, and he managed to gain some measure of understanding as to what Aldous had felt by the river earlier that day. Whether it was linked to what had existed within the fallen walls before recent events had turned the space into a charnel house, or instead was simply the result of such a brutal massacre, he could not say. Was the presence that his brother-knight had felt merely an echo, or had something truly terrible once resided here?
Before him, the carved stonework depicted a large, almost featureless face. Its forehead disappeared into a swirling mess of tendrils, and where the left eye would be was nothing but a blank void. The mouth twisted and turned, one side smirking in an exaggerated depiction of mania, the other frowning, almost a mirror image of the other facet. The image was dominated by a curving mask, swooping up and over the manic cheekbone before curling back on itself above the creature's nose. It was lined with concentric stretches of the same kind of text he had seen tattooed onto the worshipers, and within its eye-hole lay a single overly diluted pupil that seemed to stare into his very soul as he watched it.
Turning away from the ghoulish visage, Quaid took in what remained of the rest of the room. Circular in shape, it resembled one of the larger antechambers from the Crucible's monastery, easily able to hold a couple dozen practitioners; although portions of the wall had subsequently fallen in from the heat of the blaze, leaving the ceiling open to the cold night sky. Set within the inner portion of the room, two more pillars stood, each one laid out to form the points of a perfect triangle. Letting his gaze take in the scene in its entirety, Quaid soon noticed that all of the stone uprights featured a different design wrought into their surfaces. Each depicted a face, but they varied significantly in both design and demeanor.
One of the other columns showed a man's head tilted back, screaming toward the heavens. Where the first had featured a comparatively plain expression, this guise was covered in crisscrossing scars, the ligaments taught and stretched in a grotesque exaggeration of complete and utter rage. The look of hatred in the sculpture's eyes seemed so real to Quaid, that the lack of any sound being emitted from its mouth almost felt more unreal to the knight than if it had been shouting.
Turning to take in the last of the three figures, he gazed into a countenance that appeared utterly indifferent in its attitude toward the viewer. While the others had disconcerted him with their intense depictions of raw emotion, this face felt all the more perturbing for its detachedness. Unfocused eyes stared back at him out of features that looked hardened and weathered from a life spent in the outdoors. The paths of various celestial objects were tracked across a background depicting the night sky, with the man's eyes seeming to reflect their light back towards the viewer. Quaid had never felt so small in his entire life, and it took significant effort for him to break eye contact with the carving, having to remind himself that it was nothing more than a piece of inert rock.
The knight had no idea what the meaning of his surroundings were, but he could sense that nothing good would come from lingering in such a place. Taking a step back, his foot caught against a raised section of the floor, and looking down, he realized that a winding series of shallow channels had been carved into its surface, linking all three of the bizarre pillars. The weaving paths appeared to be stained with splashes and rivulets of deep ocher, alluding to the kind of primitive sacrifices his kind had forsaken millennia ago. Alone, he felt a strange chill run down his spine, and, sure that whatever the worship site was it had to be linked to the Abyssal forces in the region, he made his way back to find Warner and begin the ordered dispersal of their men.
* * * * *
Brotherhood soldiers hurried around the site, pulling the fallen rubble into doorways and corridors to create choke-points and defensible fallback positions should they be needed. Any spare weaponry was collected and stashed behind the makeshift emplacements, while torches were lit and scattered around the grounds. Warren was not sure that advertising their presence would prove to be the wisest of moves, but the unsettling knight from the Retribution Order had overruled him, apparently confident that they could expect company before whatever he was working on was complete.
The archer headed over to the other rangers who were gathered in a small group just inside the main courtyard. “Come on, lads. We've got a job.”
Denner looked up, sour-faced. “Picket duty?”
“Picket duty,” Warner nodded back to the sound of much sighing from the assembled men.
Slowly, the tired soldiers got their gear together and started to head out in their pairings. Randall looked over at him, wrinkling his nose and smiling cheekily. “Ah well, you know I love a good walk in the fresh, country air.”
Warner smiled and slapped his friend on the back as they paced out through the arched entranceway, making their way toward the tree line.
* * * * *
When Quaid found him, Aldous was standing in what appeared to be the main altar room of the shrine complex. He was bent over, studying what appeared to be some kind of plinth placed into the floor at the midpoint of the space. Inlaid in its center lay a tablet, made from some kind of ancient metal. Cracked, and with some parts missing, it clearly predated the rest of the structure that was built up around it. Its surface was adorned with more of the raised symbols that none of their group had been able to discern the meaning of.
With the other man's footsteps snapping him to attention, Aldous addressed his fellow knight. “This is it, Quaid. This thing here is linked somehow to what I sensed before by the river.”
Quaid came to a stop next to his one-time brother and looked down at the strangely hammered motifs. “How do you know?”
Aldous hesitated. “This gift I have… It lets me feel other magics. Only in the crudest sense, you understand. But every instance of malign energies that I have encountered has left its own distinct aftertaste. And this... Well, it is unique. After a fashion.”
“So, what is it?” Quaid failed to keep some of the bitterness of the past from creeping into his voice.
Aldous turned his helm to regard the other knight. “That is a good question. There is undoubtedly a presence tied to this place, and this artifact does rest at the very heart of whatever it is I felt. But whether there is an entity that is being bound to this location by the magic here, or is merely being connected to the shrine through it, I have absolutely no idea.”
For the first time in years, Quaid heard real emotion underpinning the man's words, and it filled his stomach with dread.
* * * * *
Gareth and Denner stood, leaning against the trees at their allotted picket point. The rangers had made sure to position themselves between cover, with the torchlight illuminating the shrine behind them, so as not to provide any telltale silhouettes that would give away their location. Gareth could
hear Denner idly stroking the fletchings of his already nocked arrow, a nervous habit that the man had sported for the whole time he had known him. As much as the dark shadows of a forest could reach in and tug on the primal fears of a man, he was grateful to be away from that eerie shrine and its dead bodies.
The swordsman preferred enemies that he could fight with his blades, and the unwholesome witchcraft that had infused that cursed place chilled him more than any natural phenomena could have. Shivering in the cold night air, he pulled up the collar of his leather jerkin and breathed deeply into his hands in an effort to warm the freezing digits. The woodland appeared completely still and devoid of life, not even a breeze stirred the branches or their thin, waxy needles. Nevertheless, he still strained to see into the dingy pools of light being cast by the intermittent moments of moonlight breaking through the cloud-covered sky overhead.
From the corner of his eye, Gareth saw Denner's stance harden, his body going rigid as the man rose to a fully upright position. With his weapon still pointing down at the ground, the archer slowly pulled back the string of his bow to the midpoint, the tensioned limbs groaning softly under the additional strain they were bearing. Gareth immediately stood and silently slipped forward, positioning himself against a fallen bough that lay angled between Denner and the potential threat that lay ahead.
Tales of Mantica Page 3
