The Beast of Maug Maurai, Part One: The Culling

by Roberto Calas

  There was a granite silence as the two men faced one other. Lokk Lurius’ jaw tightened and his hands slipped to the grips of his swords. He turned his head to the side, his eyes still on Grae, spat on the road. Then he quietly unbuckled the double sword belt. He allowed Sir Jastyn to take the weapons.

  “Mind they don’t leave their sheaths,” said Lokk. He tugged his horse back a step and returned Grae’s stare.

  In the end, it didn’t matter that they had no weapons. The Andraens scattered as Grae and Lokk rode up the ridge. Grae called to them, but nothing he said would bring them closer. Each time the soldiers tried to close with them, the Andraens scattered and galloped farther away. Then they would stop and hoot, and taunt them by waving the bane box in the air.

  After a mile of this Grae decided that it was better to face Hammer’s insecurities than to waste more time, so they returned to the squad.

  ‘What ‘appened?” asked Hammer.

  “Lokk chased him down and smashed the box,” said Grae. “All the bones fell out.” Hammer turned to Lokk Lurius, raised an eyebrow.

  The Eridian looked at Grae Barragns then cast his gaze up the nearest barrow. He spit to the side again and nodded. “Bones everywhere.”

  “They think I stole something,” said Hammer as they rode northward. “But I didn’t.”

  “What do they think you stole?” said Grae. “And why do they think you stole it, Hammer?”

  “It’s complicated Grae. Can we talk about it when we’re in the forest?”

  Grae studied his old friend. There was sorrow in the man’s eyes.

  Less than a quarter-bell later they were flagged down yet again. This time by a man and woman, both peasants, walking beside a wagon drawn by an ancient mule. The man waved them down, hopping in place and shouting.

  “We ain’t never gonna make Maug Maurai,” said Hammer.

  Grae nodded to the peasant. “Trouble?” He dismounted and studied the wagon. It was packed with open sacks of gold lentils. The wheels looked fine. The mule was old but seemed healthy.

  “We comes from Debney,” said the man. He had a lambskin hood over his head and shoulders, and the thick sing-song accent of the western foothills. “We had us a good scare.”

  “What sort of scare?” asked Grae, remembering a violent battle he had won in the little town at the foot of the Durrenian Mountains. He nodded to the woman. She wore a thick white robe tied at the waist with an orange scarf.

  “Thrulls,” said the man. “Dozens ‘a em. Marchin’ southwes’ down the moors.”

  “Dozens?” said Grae. “were they armed?”

  “No sirah,” said the man. “They looked raw as bears. Don’ think they never seen people afore. They was a mile off the trail. Might be they come outta Maurai.”

  Sir Jastyn rode forward. “They’ve been doing that for years now,” he said. “Everything that lives in Maurai flees. Thrulls. Fox. Stag. Wulvens. They leave the forest as if it were on fire.” He drew his sword, a slender arming blade with guards shaped like charging boar. “If a tribe of thrulls is wandering in Tyftinshire, it is of great concern to me and my family. Those thrulls will massacre anything in their way. And when they gain metal weapons they will become that much more of a menace.”

  Grae turned to Hammer, who shook his head softly and pointed his chin north, toward Maug Maurai. Grae scowled and Hammer found interest in a cloud of larks that danced overhead. There were no simple choices on this quest. Grae gazed skyward, toward Lojen’s glaring eye. The cloud of larks jerked and shifted to one side, then the other, then streamed off toward the south like a school of fish. It would do the squad good to fight together before they met the Beast. Battling thrulls could bring them together. And nothing improved the spirit of a troop as much as victory.

  “Have the men follow,” he said to Hammer and spurred his mare into a gallop toward the south with Jastyn on his flank.

  “You ‘eard ‘im!” called Hammer. “We’re ‘avin a bit of practice.”

  The men cheered and let loose their horses toward the south.

  Chapter 24

  Luck grows in fertile soil.

  -- from “The Arms,” Book II of Lojenwyne’s Words

  The travelers drifted deeper into Maug Maurai. In the distance, Draek Ralee, the spearman taken by the Beast, screamed. Shrieks and sobs at first. Then just the tortured howl of please, again and again.

  Ulrean clutched Murrogar’s arm and looked back, his skin pricking with gooseflesh. The other nobles didn’t react. Their faces were hollow, their eyes staring far downstream. It wasn’t a good sign. Black Murrogar had seen it before. A touchstone toward madness.

  Murrogar looked at the dead Eridian, still strapped to the log. Sir Wyann hadn’t protested when Thantos slit the man’s throat. But the knight wouldn’t let them cut the Eridian’s body loose. “I’ll see him buried properly,” he had growled. So Murrogar had let it go. They had greater concerns.

  The Beast would follow them. There was little hope of slipping away. The creature would take them one by one. Murrogar was beginning to understand the Beast. Its motivations. It had destroyed the land party swiftly so that it could mutilate the river party at its leisure. He was certain of it. Murrogar had lived long enough to stop believing in good and evil, but this Beast certainly possessed cruelty. Hatred. It tortured its victims. Left them alive and poisoned and agonized.

  I have to kill it.

  It was a grim thought, but an inevitable one. They would never escape Maug Maurai while that Beast lived. He should have realized it earlier. Perhaps he had. Perhaps he’d known it all along. And as he thought on it, he realized there was something else he’d known. Something he’d understood from the first time he’d seen that monster.

  I don’t think I can kill it.

  But he was Black Murrogar. So he unsheathed his sword and stared upriver, at the water itself, knowing now that the Typtaenai was no obstacle for the Beast. He listened, hearing nothing but the rumble of the river and the fading cries of Draek Ralee. His eyes burned the night until he spotted the cluster of green phosphors in the distance. The monster was just visible in the river, its shape defined by a darkness even blacker than the night.

  It paddled down the River of Blood, its colossal teeth held upward and out of the water. The long tail curling and angling behind. The creature was enormous and hideous and something about its quiet paddling sent a shiver through Murrogar.

  He raised his sword, its blackened blade almost invisible in the night, and looked to Thantos and Hul. They reached for their weapons too and he shook his head, gestured toward the nobles with his chin. They glanced at one another, but they nodded back.

  Murrogar slipped quietly underwater. The crimson glow of the river bottom reddened his sword blade. The river currents raced past him. Everything runs from the Beast of Maug Maurai.

  But Black Murrogar had stopped running. He struggled against the current, his right arm clumsy with the sword, his legs kicking fiercely. He dipped lower until his feet found purchase against a half-buried stone. He hunched down, braced himself against the sweeping water and stared upward, searching for the green fire of the Beast.

  He almost missed it. The phosphors were dimmed almost to darkness, as if the creature had tried to extinguish them. Thousands of tiny bubbles from its six paddling legs made the pale phosphors twinkle when it was almost over him.

  He brought the sword into both hands, his muscles tensed for what he knew would be his only chance. There was a change in the creature’s movements. A tension. A slowing of the paddling. As if it realized that it was in danger. Its legs stopped moving. Then all of them swept backward at once, thrusting the monster upstream.

  It was a good attempt. But Black Murrogar couldn’t miss at this range. Not even underwater. Not even in the red darkness of the Typtaenai. He drove the black blade upward, felt it strike, felt it plunge deep into the Beast of Maug Maurai. He never heard the monster’s raging cry but he felt its shudders, felt the front claws swi
pe at the sword and saw the brume of dark blood billow into the river.

  River of Blood.

  The creature rolled off the blade. It dove, its body undulating toward the shore. Murrogar rose to the surface and took air into his smoldering lungs. The monster tumbled out from the water. This time Murrogar did hear its cry. A strangled call as it dragged itself up the river bank.

  Black Murrogar took another deep breath then howled back at the Beast. As loud as he could. He screamed once more and then laughed as the monster tottered into Maug Maurai. The Beast paused to look back at him before pulling itself into the safety of the forest.

  Chapter 25

  “And our enemies lay in wait for us, brazen, dauntless and certain of victory. And we rode out to humble them, to drive fear into their souls, and to teach them the falsehoods in their minds.”

  -- From The Endeavours, Book I of Lojenwyne’s Words

  The thrulls were easy to spot on the rolling moors. The dusky grey of their skin, the dirty hides they wore, and the crude weapons of wood and stone stuck out like gravestones among the foliage of the flowering moors. The creatures were five miles southwest of Kithrey and had run up against the Serinhult River. There was no crossing there. They would have no escape from their pursuers. And Grae knew they would seek none. There was no parlaying with thrulls. There was only violence in them. Hatred for anything that wasn’t thrull. They fought until they died. They never surrendered and they never fled.

  The creatures snarled up at the grouping of horses upon the hill and bared their fangs; tightly packed rows of thin teeth. From their position on the swell the men could hear the howls and hisses. A few of the monsters wore crude helmets of wood or leather, their tall pointed ears jutting from holes gouged into them. The beasts shook their spears and clubs in ceremonial fury.

  Grae addressed their longbowman, Daen Hyell. “Long range, but reachable, no?”

  Daen rubbed at his eyes, squinted at the Thrulls. “Yes, brig sir,” he said, dismounting. He was young. Maybe eighteen. But his shoulders were strong, his chest thick. He slipped his longbow from a woolen case on his back and took a waxed bowstring from a quiver at his saddle. He leaned on the bow, using his strength to curve the yew and kempwood, and slipped the bowstring loops into place. Daen looked to the thrulls again as he drew an arrow from the quiver at his side and nocked it. The muscles of his arm rippled as he drew the bowstring back, the kempwood and yew groaning. Not even Beldrun Shanks could have drawn that bowstring back as far as Daen Hyell did. Only a lifetime of drawing longbows gave a man the specialized strength necessary for the task.

  Daen held the bowstring as he sighted down the hill. The trembling in his arm almost imperceptible. The twitching eye that Grae noticed when they first met him was unwavering now.

  What a machine, thought Grae. If only we had a few more like him.

  Daen Hyell fired. The string thwacked and the arrow flew, arching downward toward the thrulls. It missed the nearest thrull by forty paces. Grae cleared his throat.

  Daen squinted and scratched his cheek. “Did I get one?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Grae. “You put the arrow in Thourne Duchy. Course you didn’t get one.”

  Daen leaned forward and squinted more. “You saw it land, sir?”

  “Everybody saw it land, Trudge.” Grae pointed to where the arrow had fallen. “There. You can just see the orange fletching. There.”

  Daen squinted.

  Grae closed his eyes, brought a hand to his forehead and sighed. “Everyone, on me.” He drew his father’s arming sword, raised it high into the air and charged down the hill. Nine horses followed, thundering downward, spears and swords gleaming in Lojen’s light.

  Sir Jastyn reached the thrulls first. His charger’s powerful strides pulled him far ahead of the rest of the squad. Grae watched the knight drive a spear into the throat of the first thrull, shattering the wooden shaft. The knight dropped the broken lance and drew his arming sword, slashed from above as he raced through the throng.

  And then Grae was among the snarling, howling mass of them. He had no spear. Only his father’s sword. He leaned far and low in the saddle to empty the stomach of a thrull wearing the skin of a dear. His mare trampled another that had leaped at her and Grae had to straighten quickly and lean into her to stay mounted.

  He shred the throat of another thrull then had to slow when he reached the central mass of the creatures. They ran at him, sometimes on four legs, sometimes hunched on two. One bit his mare with its needle-like teeth and Grae howled. He hacked at the creature again and again, leaning low over the mare’s flanks to carve at it even when it stopped moving. The creature’s blood spattered Grae’s mare.

  Beldrun Shanks was not far from Grae. The big man crushed thrulls with his war axe, swinging to one side of his horse’s head then the other, laughing as he chopped. He slashed through the neck of one and the creature’s head bounced into his lap and then down to the ground and Shanks laughed even harder at this.

  The squad formed up in their Northern V even though they were mounted, and they forced the Thrulls toward the river, pushing them back with sword and spear. Lokk Lurius arrived late. He rode with both fists on the sides of his horse’s neck and didn’t look completely comfortable galloping on horseback.

  A few of the thrulls were forced into the river. Jjarnee Kruu fired bolt after bolt from his three crossbows at them. He rarely missed. Thrulls fell thrashing into the water and the Serinhult carried them to another world.

  When the last stragglers were hacked or beaten to death the squad cheered. They shouted like children, as if they had won a neighborhood game of phocksies or lord-of-the-bailey. They held their weapons high and screamed at one another and laughed and smashed shields. Grae couldn’t resist a smile. What were omens in the face of this? It was a taste of victory. A good start.

  There were few injuries. Trudge Dathnien Faldry had been bitten on the hip. The thin teeth of a thrull had slipped through the holes in his mail. Dathnien dipped his finger in the wound and traced abstract patterns onto his hand as Hammer inspected the bite.

  “That bloke’s a right damaged loon, ‘e is,” said Beldrun Shanks. “Daft Dathnien.” Rundle Graen and Drissdie Hannish laughed and Dathnien Faldry became ‘Daft Dathnien’ from that moment on.

  Grae tended to his horse. The wound it had taken was superficial. Two other horses had been hurt, including the new gelding that Jastyn had bought, but none seriously. No one noticed the missing horse until they had checked all of the thrull bodies. It was Grae who made the discovery as he took count of his men. Daen Hyell, their longbowman, was missing.

  Lord Aeren and Maid Maribrae were off their horses halfway up the hill where they had waited. Lord Aeren was leaning over Daen Hyell. He called to Grae with his hands cupped around his mouth.

  “Over here!” he cried “Someone’s hurt!”

  But Daen Hyell wasn’t hurt, he was dead.

  A spear had struck Hyell in the cheek as he charged down the hill. The blow had knocked the archer awkwardly off his horse and he’d broken his neck. He lay on the hill with his head rolled upward at an impossible angle. Blood ran up the left side of his face from the horrible gash beside his nose. The soldiers looked glumly down on his body. Except for Beldrun Shanks, who laughed. “He prob’ly never saw it coming.”

  Grae ordered the men to make a litter for Daen’s body out of thrull spears; It was a dark irony they would have to live with. He doubted that the Chamberlain would assign the squad another archer. Not a good one anyway. It would be an old man who could barely draw a bow, or a boy who was too scared to shoot. Maybe a man with one leg. Blythwynn above only knew.

  So Grae asked the soldiers if any of them knew a good longbowman in the area. A soldier or hunter maybe. No one did, but their magician, the apprentice, mumbled that there was an archery contest held in Maeris every year before the Garellane Festival.

  Grae gave the apprentice a half smile. It was brilliant. Maeris was on the
way to Maug Maurai. Even better, it was a town that had suffered from the Beast’s violence. There were probably a few archers from Maeris willing to answer blood with blood.

  They made their way back to the Trail and flagged down a caravan of yarn merchants. Grae ordered them to take Daen’s body to Kithrey to be sent home to his kin, and gave the merchants three drakes for their trouble. Then the squad sped north again on the grass of the moors.

  Grae spared a moment to think about the poor, half-blind Daen Hyell. Just a boy, really. The soldiers hadn’t stepped into forest yet and already their small squad was dwindling.

  Chapter 26

  Mercy forsakes justice. Justice forsakes mercy.

  -- Blythlojean Proverb

  Black Murrogar cast one final glance into the blackness of the forest, searching for any signs of the fleeing beast, then let the river carry him downstream. He had buried his sword three quarters to the hilt before the monster had escaped. He smiled at that word. Escaped. It had fled. Scampered off into the forest.

  Nothing can survive that type of wound. Not through the gullet. Not from below. Not so deep.

  He let the Typtaenai wash the blood from his blade then rested the sword on his chest as he drifted downriver on his back. The maple log had grounded itself on the curving riverbank again about three hundred yards downstream. Thantos and Hul sat on the trunk, shouting to the shivering nobles who were in a frenzy around the tree, shoving and tugging at it. Murrogar chuckled and made his way out of the river.

  “What’s yer hurry?” he called. His men offered broad grins. They stepped off the tree and splashed thigh-deep into the river. Thantos gave a concerned nod upriver. Murrogar smiled, made a phantom thrust with his sword.