Tales of Mantica

by Rospond, Brandon; Waugh, Duncan; Werner, CL

  *****

  There was a short lull as the demonic army regrouped. “We can’t go on like this,” Dillen said, panting to catch his breath. “We’ve been at this for an hour. Someone needs to do something.”

  “What do you propose?” Stevven asked. He was tending to Arkbald, who sat upon the sodden ground. The Sparthan had been struck by a javelin in his right thigh and a crimson stain ran down his leg to the top of his riding boot. Once Stevven had finished binding the youngster’s wound, he turned to Dillen and leaned on his shield, which had been scored by a dozen blows. Stevven seemed dispirited, something Dillen had never seen in him before.

  “There’s nowhere to run,” Stevven said. He gestured further up and then back down the line of march. “We’re too deep in the woods to make an escape back the way we have come. We must presume that we are being assailed everywhere up and down our column. “It is only a matter of time.” Stevven stamped his foot, spraying rainwater and mud. “This will be where we stand our last.”

  “We must not give up!” Dillen objected. “We can’t allow such a fine army to be destroyed by the spawn of the Abyss.”

  “What do you propose?”

  “One of us must ride to get help from the Green Lady. She can’t be too far off, maybe a day or so for a swift rider.”

  A weary Stevven shook his head. “That is suicide. No one will break through the lines of this foe. Look at their multitude on the other side,” he said, pointing with his sword at a milling mass of foul men and even fouler demonic creatures.

  “I will chance it, nonetheless,” Dillen said. “My horse is fast, and I will not die today.”

  Stevven wore a grim smile and cocked his head to the side. “I am not sure if you are the bravest man in this army or the craziest.”

  Dillen sheathed his sword. “Maybe both. We don’t have much time to discuss this. The dictator and Brothers Tebald and Bartolomo are up ahead. They are either dead or so beset by the enemy that they can’t get word to us. We have to act on our initiative.”

  Stevven nodded. “Go then. I must stay with Arkbald.” He pointed to the assemblage on the far side of the ravine. The Abyssals’ numbers had swelled to the point where it seemed that they were ready to launch another assault on the Basileans. “Be ready to make your break when I give you the signal.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Stevven chuckled. “I will cause a distraction that men of this corrupted sort will be unable to resist.”

  “What kind of distraction? There isn’t much that these soul-damned knaves haven’t seen already. Not much will impress them.”

  “Of that, I am well aware.” Stevven grew suddenly serious. “Ready now! They come again!”

  Dillen mounted his stallion and spurred the animal forward, carefully picking his way down the ravine. The beast was surefooted and descended the slope without incident. He hid himself and his mount in the dense undergrowth at the bottom and looked back to Stevven, who stood at the front of a knot of spearmen, his face an unreadable mask. Then he smiled, and in a friendly voice, called out to the Abyssal warriors who were advancing once more, gaining their attention. When they had closed, Stevven held up his pouch, a bag of brown leather tied with a yellow cord. He undid the closure and removed a handful of silver and gold coins from within. He showed them to the soul-damned men, who looked upon the money with a startling mixture of avarice and lust. Stevven delivered a mocking salute to them and hurled the coins to the bottom of the ravine. “This is what you really want,” he shouted, his voice carrying easily to them amidst the clamor of battle. “Come and get it!”

  The mob of the Abyssals wavered, as their overseers struggled to maintain their hold over their charges. Whips cracked and flails struck the backs of the miserable once-men. Then the power of their greed overcame their fear of the lash, and they lunged forward to grab the coins that Stevven had cast before them. They rushed down the slope, falling over one another to be the first to claim their prizes. Stevven tossed another handful of coins to their side, and this riveted their attention away from where Dillen and his horse hid. A clever ruse, Dillen admired, but there was no time to lose while the enemy was momentarily distracted. He spurred his horse up the slope, and the animal drew him upward, its hooves slipping now and again in the mud, until it reached the crest.

  *****

  Dillen rode forward, winding his way as fast as his horse could gallop within the confines of the trees. Soon he was far enough from the battle that the sounds of screaming men were muffled. He turned to the southeast, thinking that he would take a parallel course to the one that the army had traveled and make his way to the folk of the wood. Then his horse bucked and collapsed, a javelin protruding from the beast’s neck. Dillen sprawled across the damp forest floor, rolling upright as he fell.

  He stood and caught a blur passing in through his field of vision, a black shadow streaking from left to right. A scarlet blade slashed at his face, and he dove, the weapon passing above his head so close that it sheared the horsehair crest from his helm. His attacker cursed, and he saw now that it was a woman, tall and lithe, but unlike any he’d ever seen before. Spreading behind her were two leathery wings. Her legs ended in delicately cloven hooves. Two small horns emerged from her forehead, which was high and broad. Intelligent eyes, large, blue, and unutterably cruel, stared at him angrily. They never blinked. Most disconcerting of all was the sheer beauty of the creature before him. She possessed a loveliness that would have melted his heart had she not been so intent on killing him. Her face was a soft oval, framed by coal-black hair; her skin was the purest ivory. She was scarcely clad, too, and a proper Basilean woman would have been ashamed to be seen in public wearing nothing but two skimpy pieces of fabric about her breast and hips. He could not help letting his eyes linger on her a bit too long.

  “Well, boy, haven’t you ever seen a woman before?” she mocked.

  “None such as yourself. I count myself blessed.”

  She broke into a run, holding her saber high, and slashed in a descending arc at his head. He blocked the blow with his sword and kicked outward, slamming his boot into her calf. She cried out, and stumbled off, hobbled by the intense pain.

  Regaining his footing, Dillen circled, still unsure of what manner of the Abyss’s residents was before him. He looked at her closely. He had never given the rumors of what roamed the Underworld much credence, thinking them tales stitched together either to frighten children or to fill idle and too-welcoming minds with the salacious. Yet here she was, a woman of frightful aspect and yet still grandly beautiful, more akin to one of the Elohi than to the fiends that he associated with the Abyss.

  Her lips twisted in an evil smile. She charged at him once more, feinting from the right before pulling back and then thrusting forward with the wickedly sharp point of her blade. He dodged the saber well enough so that the edge of it caught him only slightly, grazing the mail covering his left shoulder. He winced and then responded with a flurry of blows that pushed her onto the defensive.

  She was a competent swordswoman, Dillen saw, but there was no brilliance in her bladework. His instructors had taught him well, enabling him to quickly analyze the fighting technique of any opponent upon seeing him, or in this case, her, in action. She was used to winning quickly, Dillen surmised, and had thus never had to develop a full suite of attacks, parries, and ripostes to do battle against an accomplished foe.

  Her face, lovely but suffused with frustration, betrayed her emotions. Dillen rammed into her with his shield, knocking her backward. She unfolded her wings instinctively to prevent herself from falling over, and Dillen slashed, cutting a bloody tear in the skin of her left wing. She cried out and then tumbled over, rolling down a low slope. She ended in an angry heap, her right wing broken and hanging limply by her side. Her unblinking eyes blazed up at him with impotent fury.

  “What are you?” Dillen asked. She was nothing he had ever seen before, or hoped to see again.

  “Nothin
g that you need to know,” the woman sneered. “Ha! Go on! Run away! You’ll be dead soon enough!”

  “Perhaps, but I have a job to do before that happens.”

  “I know what your mission is, mortal, where you are headed, and you will never succeed. There are things in this wood that owe no fealty to the Green Lady, though she may extravagantly claim all of it as her realm. You will be dead before sunrise.”

  “That may be so,” Dillen answered. “I will at least be rid of you in my final hours. Enjoy your walk back to your own people. It will be a rather long one, I think.” Dillen ran off as fast he could through the trees. The afternoon sun was setting, and there was an army that needed rescuing. In the distance, he heard the peal of a horn, dim and faltering.

  *****

  Wiping the mud from her wings and knees, Damathana watched as the young paladin ran off. She consoled herself with the certainty that, by this time tomorrow, the knight would be a moldering corpse, and the trapped host of Basilea would have been exterminated.

  *****

  Dillen ran on, sucking breaths as he wound his way through the close-packed forest. He leapt over protruding roots of trees of such girth that he guessed that they were as old as the world itself. It was well past midnight, and yet the darkened wood was curiously alive, filled with the hoots of owls and other animals he could not identify. Now and again he caught glimpses of creatures looking back at him, the light of his small lantern illuminating their eyes in unearthly hues of amber.

  Within Galahir, Dillen felt as if he had stepped back in time to the dawning age of the world; when the sun was young and all beneath it was covered, so the wise said, in a primeval forest that stretched from sea to sea. It had been a forest untouched by the rude hands of Men, filled with trees that had not known the bite of an axe, with roots buried in soil that had never known the cut of a plow.

  He began to despair as he realized that he had lost his way. He turned about, trying to seek out the sun, but it had not yet risen, and the moon was not visible from within the deep darkness of the wood. He had been hoping to follow as straight a course as he might from where he had fled the demon assassin, but the denseness of the vegetation and the roughness of the ground had left his sense of direction hopelessly muddled.

  In an incipient panic, he began to hurry up whatever high ground was in reach, hoping to find the moon and gain some idea of his correct course. He trotted up a slope and found himself enmeshed in a thick bundle of sticky fibers invisible in the darkness. He pulled, but the glue that covered the cable-thick strands refused to release him. Soon, both his arms were stuck fast. He dropped his lantern, which fell to the soft wet earth, flickering. Dillen looked up, and in the dim lamplight he saw that he stood at the base of a vast web, all but impossible to see except within an arm’s length of the thing. He yanked again, but the strands, though pliant, yielded only a little, and he could not free himself. Above his head he saw that a large bird, perhaps an owl, was suspended, upside down. Another victim of the great spider that had woven this iron-like web between the trees. At his feet were also stuck a rat and what looked to have once been a rabbit.

  There came a slight tremor, transmitted fitfully along the fibers of the web. Dillen looked above him and saw a tight grouping of multiple eyes examining him. Eight of these there were, some smaller, some larger. None betrayed any human feeling such as pity or forgiveness. Coming downward along the web, which did not hinder its movement in any way, Dillen saw that the spider’s body was an elongated tube, with long legs thrust out before it and behind. It opened its jaws, displaying dagger-sized fangs. A bird, a man, a rat, a rabbit. Such things would all be part of the meal for this creature. Was he the main course, Dillen wondered, or a mere appetizer for this horrid beast?

  He pulled once more with all his might, straining to free himself from the strands that held him fast. They were unyielding; strong, sticky, and as massive as the ropes used to haul river barges. Dillen’s swelling panic threatened to overcome him altogether. His heart raced. He struggled to order his thoughts. He tried again, in vain, to free himself, twisting uselessly in the web. Still the spider closed on him, unhurried, its alien and emotionless eyes staring blankly at him. Its mouthparts clicked several times. Dillen imagined them snapping through his bones and flesh.

  He struggled to remember his training. So much of it had been pressed into his head, but he could recall little of it now that death approached him on eight spindly legs. He attempted to clear his mind, uttering a wordless prayer to the Shining Ones for the grant of courage. His quivering muscles tensed as he pulled again. His teeth chattered, loud and fast. Perspiration poured from his face, stinging his eyes. It was almost upon him. A calmness came over him. Perhaps it was a blessing of the gods. He felt a clarity that had been missing only moments before. He would meet his death with his eyes open. He was young, and even though he had not been a man for long, he would die as one this day.

  The vast thing stopped a few feet from his head, busying itself with consuming the owl. A patient predator, Dillen thought with detached admiration. The creature was utterly confident that nothing caught in its web would escape.

  Dillen gave a thought to his comrades, fighting for their lives in the outer reaches of the wood. He had failed them, miserably. Soon he would be a feast for a beast of the forest, his remains never to be found, his story never to be told. The Blades of Onzyan, or what few of them would be left after the debacle in Galahir, would strike his name from their rolls, and perhaps inscribe his name on a temple wall to honor the fallen. Better that his end be never known, Dillen mused unhappily, and that story of how he failed his fellow soldiers never be told among Men.

  A pair of small hummingbirds came and hovered about his face as he stood trapped in the web. Brightly colored, they seemed to eye him, examining him in some way, as if trying to see into his soul. Dillen laughed without mirth. “Come to get a little taste of my tears before the big fellow has his fill?” In a conspiratorial whisper, he added, “Just don’t tell your fellows how I died, will you?” The little birds hovered, and cocked their heads, as if they somehow understood what he was saying to them. “You would not consider drawing my dagger from its sheath and finish me off yourselves, would you?”

  Ignoring his plea, each bird flitted to his arms and wrists, which were bound tightly in the webs. With their beaks they snipped and cut away at the strands until his arms were free. The mysterious birds then descended and did the same for his legs. He stumbled backward, grateful to be loosed from his bonds. He looked about for his tiny saviors. They hung in the air, still studying him, and then disappeared into the gloom of the night.

  The great spider had noticed that its prey had been freed and stared at Dillen, perhaps wondering how any creature had escaped from its web. It came at him in a rush, faster than Dillen would have thought possible for a beast so large. It charged down the web and leapt. He jumped aside and the thing missed, but only just. It snapped its jaws, seeking to cut off an arm or envenom him. Either would prove fatal. Dillen raised his sword above his head and chopped down on one of the spider’s long and exposed legs. He severed it, and the animal flinched and scurried off, the agony causing it to retreat from its tormentor. It soon found safety in the darkness, and Dillen watched it run away until he could see it no more.

  *****

  Dillen continued his journey, climbing over fallen tree trunks and wading through brooks swollen with rainwater. He sank to his knees several times, exhausted. Dawn was now not long in coming, but it was still dark, and he was hopelessly lost. He scooped water from a small stream with his helmet and drank greedily. It tasted better than any he ever before imbibed, but the pleasure of it faded to nothingness as he contemplated his mission. By the time he found the Green Lady’s folk, his own people would have been slaughtered by the Abyssal horde. He must go on and try to save them, or die doing so. He despaired knowing that he would fail.

  “The Lady shows you her favor, young one,” came a
soft voice out of the darkness.

  Dillen scrambled to his feet and drew his sword. He could see nothing. “Show yourself! Who are you? Where are you?”

  “Such a typical human you are,” said the voice. A winged woman appeared in the inky blackness, seemingly lit by her own internal light. “Your kind is always waving iron swords about, this way and that, making yourselves appear dangerous and mighty.” She giggled softly. “Like little boys, playing with sticks, fancying themselves knights.”

  She was a wispy thing, sweetly pretty, and full of mirth. It must have been a sylph, one of the creatures of the air that owed allegiance to the Lady of the Wood. Dillen had seen a portrait of one such as her in his bestiary. “She does not show me enough favor, or she would have lit the way for me to her by now.”

  “Things are not all going your way?” The sylph asked with not a trace of sympathy. “And you blame someone else? Perhaps you would prefer that the Lady herself come here to hold your hand?”

  “I am not complaining,” Dillen protested. “I am cold, wet, and tired. I apologize if my manners are deficient. I have an army to save and time grows short. Please help me.”

  “The Lady already has helped you,” the sylph corrected. “The birds that rescued you answered her summons, as have I now. She is otherwise occupied fighting the same enemies you are, and her attention is elsewhere, but she has seen you. I am called Shaarlyot. Come, follow me. I will lead you to her.”

  Dillen stood and his spirit lifted. “Is it far? Can she not send us help right now?”

  “I have told you that she has already sent me, as well as the birds that freed you.”

  “If she has known of me all this while, why not send more. . .”

  Shaarlyot ignored him and flitted off, staying just within his sight. “Hush now! Enough of your questions! We must hurry!”