The Last Garrison (Dungeons & Dragons Novel)

by Beard, Matthew

  “Not here,” said Luzhon, and Nergei jumped again as the tree rocked with the force of Kohel pushing the girl against the trunk. Even on the move again, Nergei could not stop himself from seeing what he could not possibly see: the thick meat of Kohel’s hands upon the lovely Luzhon, upon her face, rubbing her painted lips with his thumb. The fingers of his other hand spreading across her belly, then up to the string that tied her top at the neck.

  More that he did not want to see, that might be happening despite his aversion: Luzhon’s top opening, then falling, Kohel’s thumb traversing her body from lip to chin to neck to sternum to nipple. Desiring that it was not happening did not make it so. Nothing, Nergei thought, could hold back the inevitable, and nothing could darken the images of it in his mind.

  Nergei saw not because he was sure of what was happening—he would have to circumnavigate the tree for that—but because he himself had appeared in the same scene and in the same role, night after night. How many times had he fantasized about Luzhon finding him out in the woods, in a bramble or clearing far away from Haven, in the places where they both went to gather berries and herbs?

  How many nights had he lain awake thinking about such improbable moments, wishing even less likely scenarios atop them, scenes in which he might be able to talk to Luzhon as he longed to, where he could tell her the way he felt about her, the way he had felt about her since he was a child, since they were both children together?

  Even then she had been the most beautiful of the villagers their age, with her tight-braided black hair, her perfect pale skin that shone in the night air. A decade later, she was not just the most gorgeous of their peers, but also of the whole village, and Nergei knew there was no chance for him, a landless, fatherless orphan, raised in the village but also apart from it, up in the Old Stargazer’s observatory built above the crags of the mountain.

  He had tried all his life not to be ungrateful, but was ungrateful still, and like so much else, it ate at him, turned in his guts, another inadequacy he could not defeat.

  Luzhon was not just beautiful. She was the child of successful, but certainly not powerful or affluent, farmers, and had many talents of her own. She was bright and capable, good with her hands, able to work the soil as well as her father. She had proven herself to be good at bartering with the other villagers, always coming out slightly ahead, but with no feelings hurt. She was even, it seemed, a fair shot with a sling and a good hand with a small blade. But because of her great beauty, so many other possibilities, so many other ways to be a true leader of Haven—something she might have preferred, thought Nergei—was lost to her and, though she struggled against it, she was something else entirely. To the powerful in the village, the fathers of sons who stood to inherit the most fertile terraces for farming, the tanning house, the smithy, Luzhon represented status.

  She was, simply, a prize, and Kohel was determined to win her.

  Nergei shook his head to clear it of his thoughts—always these thoughts, always too many thoughts pressing in—and then he had reached the thinner top branches of the fallen tree. So came the choice between concealment and exposure, and for once, Nergei acting brashly, chose the latter. Bunching his robes in his hands, he stepped over and through, crashing into the bramble of dried leaves and cracking branches on the other side. The noise was significant, and hardly worth the cost, as the blocking breadth of the tree was replaced with the thicket of dead leaves and dry branches, also keeping Luzhon from Nergei’s sight.

  Still unable to see but suddenly trapped, Nergei listened as Kohel’s pressing patter stopped, interrupted. Nergei froze, as the quiet, careful Padlur spoke in warning. “Kohel. Someone else is here. Watching.”

  Where Kohel was stocky and thick with muscle, Padlur was taller, more athletic, had a fast, lithe build like an elf, but the resilient bones of his human heritage. There were rumors in his youth that his father was not his father at all, that his elf build was the sign of some other heritage, but since Padlur was old enough to walk he had been big enough to knock down anyone who suggested such. And so the villagers stopped suggesting. Anyway, who had ever seen an elf in Haven? The village’s strength was its isolation, and not even the elves or eladrin came so high. Nergei did not hunt with the other boys, but in the market he had seen the elk and deer slain by Padlur’s arrows, had heard the tales of the dark-skinned boy’s prowess at dropping such prey from across gullies, the fast and wide streams of the mountains. Most recently, he had seen Padlur stand in soaked breeches and tell of wading through an ice-clutched mountain river for an hour to return with the gutted weight of a great bear he had, at close range, felled with a spear. He had seemed to brush away the cold like nothing more than an annoyance, a tiny buzzing insect that did not warrant his attention beyond a quickly flicked wrist, and that too had shamed Nergei, who could not imagine himself possessing such bravery or skill.

  Kohel was bolstered by his father’s status as chief. Padlur needed no such support.

  Nergei knew that as much trouble as Kohel could cause him, it was Padlur who presented the real danger, at least in that moment. He stilled himself again, tried to hold his breath and keep his body silent against the footsteps he was sure even his untrained ears would be able to hear. Would it be Kohel? Padlur? Who would catch him?

  And then nothing. No sound until, at last, Luzhon’s voice saying, “What is it? Who’s there? Is someone watching us?”

  “Kohel,” she hissed, her demeanor changing. “They will see us, see what isn’t there.”

  “Quiet, girl,” said Padlur, farther away than Nergei expected. And then farther still: “Pay attention. We’re not alone anymore.”

  Nergei’s heart raced, but his curiosity overtook him again, pushed him forward through the brush. He tried to make as little noise as possible, but the branches slapped his face, shed their leaves into the folds of his robe, and all the while he heard Kohel yelling, “Spy!”

  Yelling, “Sneak!”

  Yelling, “Come out here and face us!”

  Then Padlur, even farther away, implored Kohel to be quiet, to stay with Luzhon.

  Nergei continued working his way through the fallen treetop, until finally he could see Kohel and Luzhon a dozen yards ahead. Luzhon still stood against the trunk, her arms wrapped around her chest, her eyes less scared than furious. Kohel stood in front of her, his hand atop the dagger at his belt, looking around the bramble for whatever had taken Padlur off into the trees.

  The chief’s son called out again, yelling “sneak” and “spy,” yelling threats at whomever he thought he had heard. With each accusation, Nergei flinched, but eventually he realized that Kohel was yelling away from him, toward the deeper woods, away from the village. They had not heard him at all.

  Who’s there, then? he thought. If they’re not looking for me, who are they looking for?

  It was then that Nergei heard the first fluttering. Wings? He looked to the sky and the treetops, expecting to see birds frightened by Kohel’s yelling, but saw nothing. When he looked back to Kohel, he saw the boy crouched, as if waiting to fight or be attacked, and then something else, something he had never seen on the face of the chief’s son, his bravado-filled tormentor.

  Kohel was afraid, something he never was inside Haven; where his father reigned over everything important; where, by his father’s hand, Kohel ruled over everything else.

  Nergei allowed himself a smile at his bully’s shame, but his happiness was short-lived, the smile fled his face, the feeling turned to skin-crawling fear when from behind him he heard Kohel’s voice.

  And from in front of him he heard the voice.

  And from the east, and farther off to the west.

  And from above, in the treetops, where he could not see. Kohel’s voice surrounded them, hemmed them into the clearing in a way that a dozen real Kohels never could have.

  Luzhon cried out, begged Kohel to explain what was happening. The chief’s son shushed her, drew his short blade. Nergei pushed forward himself,
tried to free his robe from the many branches that clung to its folds. From the north, he heard Kohel say, “Sneak!”

  And from the south, “Spy!”

  And from the west and the east, cries of “Meddler!”

  From above him, still unseen in the trees, he heard the voice of Kohel say, “No one will see.”

  Across the clearing, Padlur reemerged, sprinting toward Kohler and Luzhon. He shouted warnings, told them to run, to head for the path back to Haven, but that way was blocked already, and behind him came a cacophony of the same voices, more Padlurs, more voices making Kohel’s voice, throwing it up into the air, air filled abruptly with the flapping of wings, of many wings all at once. Heavy wings, though. And heavy footfalls accompanying them.

  Before Padlur had made it a quarter of the way across the clearing, Nergei could see his face was bloody, his breeches torn, his weapon drawn.

  Before the hunter crossed even halfway to Kohel and Luzhon, a half-dozen shapes had followed him out of the woods, and the same number had begun flying down from the trees around the clearing. One flew over Nergei’s hiding spot, and Nergei recoiled at the speed of the passing, at the smell of spoor and unwashed feathers that accompanied it.

  The creatures were shorter than Padlur, probably shorter than Nergei too, although he couldn’t be sure at this distance. They wore brown robes, but robes made for stealth and deception rather than the shapeless scholar’s robes Nergei himself wore.

  On every creature’s back, he saw a quiver and a bow.

  On every belt, a short blade, hung unsheathed from a leather strap.

  Their wings were not really wings, and not really arms, either. Rather something like both, covered in black feathers but ending in a four-fingered hand, as rough and pebbled as the talons of a raven.

  As they flew in, their hoods fell back, and Nergei saw the creatures’ great beaked faces, the black raven’s eyes blazing above them. They cawed and cackled and cried out in Padlur’s voice, in Kohel’s, in Luzhon’s, and as the three villagers yelled back, the bird men only doubled their cries as they loosed their swords, and drew back their bows. Padlur dropped his blade at his feet, then took an archer’s stance, drew his own bow, fired one arrow, then another and another, the first three missing their targets, not because Padlur’s aim was off, but because of the creatures’ quick movements. The fourth arrow drew blood, catching one of the beasts in the throat, lifting it off its taloned feet and sending it spiraling to the grass. As Nergei watched, Kohel pumped his fist, cheered his friend’s attack, only to have his cry echoed back at him by the near-dozen creatures still standing.

  The creatures drew their own bows and blades, answered Padlur’s attack with their own volley of arrows. One grazed Padlur across the thigh, sending him down to a knee, while the others thudded around the screaming Luzhon, the equally panicked Kohel.

  Nergei saw Kohel’s fear—the fear that had gripped him even before the bird creatures had emerged from the woods—wasn’t going away. His hand was slack around his dagger’s hilt, and he made no move to attack, or even to protect Luzhon. With Padlur down, there was no one between her and the bird creatures, and Nergei knew that if he did nothing, then all of them might die or be captured or worse.

  With a confidence he’d rarely felt before, Nergei shoved through the last of the branches, tearing his clothes but not caring. He started running, stumbling over his robe’s edge as he tried desperately to close the distance between himself and the others. Unaccustomed to even light athletics—he was round in the middle, but had thin arms and legs—his chest beat hard, his legs pounded awkwardly on the uneven ground. Still he kept going. As he ran, he tried not to look at the attacking creatures, at the arrows being loosed by their bows, even when one slipped through the fabric of his robe and shot out the other side.

  Just a snag, no harm done, he thought, and though ordinarily he might have marveled at such an uncharacteristically brave thought, there was no time. Later he would realize that was what had saved him, for if he had been able to think more, as always he was thinking, that tiny sliver of bravery would surely have come undone.

  Nergei slid to a stop in front of Kohel, planting himself in front of the cowering boy, and in front of Luzhon, the girl he had dreamed of saving, just so, many times.

  “You,” spat Kohel. “What are you doing here?”

  “You!” the bird men repeated. “You! You! You!” They stopped their attack, cocked their heads and stared as carrion birds stared, their gazes sidelong and cold. Nergei flicked his eyes from their alien faces to Padlur’s grimacing attempts to stand, to Kohel’s red-shamed glare, to Luzhon’s confused blankness.

  “I’ve come to help,” said Nergei. He looked at Kohel, but spoke to Luzhon, knew he did, felt his own face redden with embarrassment. “I’ve come to help you.”

  Kohel laughed, shoved him away. “Help with what? You don’t even have a weapon!” He laughed again, stronger with Nergei there to bully again. The bird men laughed along, shook their feathers as they repeated Kohel’s sounds. Nergei looked at them, tried to guess what they were, to place them within the leather-bound bestiaries in his master’s library. They were unlike anything he’d seen before, unlike anything he’d heard of upon the slopes and steppes around Haven. Whatever they were, they were not native to the mountain, and even Nergei knew that was very bad indeed.

  “I can fight,” said Nergei, but less confidently than before. Kohel was right. He was weaponless, lacking even a small blade like that of his rival. What could he do against enemies such as those?

  With no time to think, Nergei turned away from Kohel, set his feet in an approximation of the brawling stances he had seen the other boys take when they wrestled in the village dirt. The bird men laughed to see the young man, so clearly trying to act the part of a warrior—and Nergei even thought he saw a flash of mockery in the panicked Kohel’s eyes—and they laughed until Padlur, standing once again, loosed another arrow. It cut down another of their number. At that, the creatures wasted no time. In a flurry of fluttering, they charged, their feet barely touching the ground as they ran toward the four villagers, their wings making each seem larger than he truly was. Kohel stumbled back, and Luzhon screamed, but somehow Nergei held his ground. He raised his hands, felt the heat of his embarrassment and fear and the desire to be free of both fill his veins. He felt his blood fill his brain until all he could see was his own heartbeat, the too-quick thrum of his center stuttering red across his eyesight.

  He started to think, and then he thought nothing.

  He thought nothing, and then he felt the heat in his hands, and then the heat everywhere else, surrounding him, licking his arms and legs and neck and hair, then lashing out from his body. Tongues of flame shot from the vortex spiraling around him, striking down the bird men one by one as they charged. Their blades burned red, fell from their talonlike hands, and their robes burst into flame, turned to cinder and ash. One of the bird men fell at his feet—feet surrounded by blackened earth and burnt bramble, a smolder encircling his stance—but the others turned, wheeled in their near-flight, retreated, chittering wildly to each other. Nergei noticed that it wasn’t precisely flight, their movements. They bounded far, and floated, but did not sustain flight for long.

  As they fled, they at last gave up their mimicry of Nergei and the others’ voices, and found their own cowardly caws and clucks of retreat.

  When the last creature had fled the clearing, Nergei sunk to his knees, felt the fire drain from him. Nearby, Padlur sat upon the ground, his hands pressed to the gash in his thigh, trying to pressure the wound into clotting. Nergei struggled to turn, his body exhausted, soaked in sweat and adrenaline. Behind him, Luzhon stood crying, looking ashamed of her tears. Nergei pushed himself to his feet, determined to go to her, to put aside his own questions at what he had just done—he was no wizard, not even a wizard’s apprentice, despite his years at the feet of the master—to comfort the girl he had wanted his whole life. He wondered if she might
at last see him as someone worth having, but then there it was. The thoughts returned, the dreams making a mockery of the real world Nergei knew. She could never want him.

  Nergei had almost managed to smile by the time he got himself to his feet, only to have the impulse flee his face as he found Kohel’s own face inches away, breathing hard.

  “What was that?” asked Kohel. “Was that all your doing, or your master’s?”

  Nergei’s smile dropped, then lost the expression altogether when he realized Kohel meant the creatures too, not just the fire. Before Nergei could respond—he had never been quick to speak, and was not quick then—Kohel pushed him backward, his hand a wedge against Nergei’s chest, so that the smaller boy tripped over his robes and tumbled backward to the dirt.

  “Stay there,” said Kohel. “Don’t you dare get up.”

  “No,” said Nergei. “You don’t tell me what to do anymore. I saw you. I saw what a coward you are, and I’m not afraid of you.” Whatever slim courage had pushed him out into the clearing, it welled up again, helped him to his feet. He set his face, stared Kohel in the eyes. “I also saw what you tried to do to Luzhon, and I won’t let you do it again.”

  Just as he had when the bird men approached, Nergei opened his hands, hoping for the heat again, knowing that he shouldn’t. He knew that whatever had happened before wasn’t meant to be used in such a way, but how could he resist. Already once that day he had seen Kohel shamed with fear, and also himself—himself and Padlur, of course—made into heroes instead.

  He open and closed his fist, but no heat came.

  All that burned was the grass in the clearing, the downed bird man, and Kohel’s eyes. The arrogant boy’s face was filled with rage.

  This is what it looks like when a man becomes capable of murder, Nergei thought, but the look hardened, became static in Kohel’s eyes, and the chief’s son still managed to curl a smile from his lips. “Is that so, orphan?”

  Nergei shook off the insult, pulled himself as straight as he could, reached his body up toward the greater height of Kohel. “Yes,” he said. “I saw, and Padlur saw, and Luzhon saw. We all saw.”