The Last Garrison (Dungeons & Dragons Novel)

by Beard, Matthew

  The creature spun Temley and stepped back from him. He chittered loud and gruff and pointed at Temley’s chest. And then he struck his own with his fist. The kenku around the fire stood and flocked around the two. Temley stood perfectly still, wondering if the creature would squawk for a while and then lose interest. Claw was back in his tent, but he did not think he would need it.

  The large kenku feinted left and bobbed his head forward as if to strike, but did not. Temley flinched, and the crowd erupted in noise. And so did the large kenku. He seemed to laugh. He feinted and bobbed two more times, but knowing what to expect, Temley did not flinch again. He followed the creature with his eyes, not his head. And he took a moment to survey his surroundings. He spotted exactly what he would need just as the large kenku feinted a fourth time, but that time struck out with his right arm. The blow landed square in Temley’s chest with no little force. Temley reacted as the blow struck. His skin went black, and his body seemed to fall to pieces. Each piece fell toward the ground, but quickly spread and changed. Each piece had a body and wings. Each piece was a black bird. A raven. The pieces became a flock, spun away from where Temley had been standing, and moved swiftly to the edge of the crowd, where they struck one another and reformed from bird, to swirling black shape, to Temley again. The man reached out and pulled a short blade from the belt of one of the gathered kenku. He spun toward his opponent, who was still trying to comprehend what had happened, pointed the sword at him, and quietly said, “You belong to my mistress now. You will be delivered.”

  He rushed forward, blade aloft and struck out, but the kenku dodged the blow. “You will be delivered,” Temley said. The kenku struck back with an open palm that Temley ducked away from. The kenku stumbled forward and Temley attempted to hit him in his side. The kenku’s heavy tunic was sliced, and feathers, sprinkled with blood from a shallow cut, dropped away. Temley used the momentum of the slash to continue shifting to his right and spinning, and soon was in the position the kenku had been moments earlier. The kenku, left side bleeding and painful, tried to lash back at Temley, but he was not where the creature had anticipated he would be.

  “You will be delivered!” shouted Temley, and he raised the blade over his head. Around him it appeared that the world went darker. He appeared to grow. And, again, his nose and chin seemed to sharpen. It looked to some that in his shadow on the ground, wings appeared from his back. The large kenku was facing Temley when the human rushed forward again and brought the sword down into his shoulder at his neck. With his free arm, Temley struck the creature in the chest and pushed him toward the crowd; which didn’t part quickly enough, and the kenku rammed into them, sending them to the ground. The blow was deep, hacked through flesh, and broke the creature’s bones. It may have lived, but that day it would not rise again. Temley did not spare him. He raised the sword, blade down, over the kenku’s chest and plunged it in. He did not pull the blade back out, leaving that instead for the sword’s owner. He returned to the campfire to procure another helping of soup, which was given to him without delay.

  The kenku chieftain clucked when he saw what had happened, but did not speak to his brethren. He approached Temley, tapped him on his shoulder, and when the man turned, nodded his head once. The attack would begin in the morning. Haven would be taken, and Temley would be given a chance to hunt his prey. The frost was on the ground in Haven and the queen’s chill was all around them. Temley was ready. The blades were sharp and the portents good. It was time.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The mountain was colder, despite the calendar’s insistence on spring. It was better that way: The villagers did not have time for the plowing and the planting that should be consuming their days. Instead they toiled and trained. Some worked atop Haven’s ancient stone walls, first erected in the age of the empire and barely added to since. Men and women alike worked to augment the thick stone with wooden spikes as long as their height, then nettings once meant for catching mountain salmon, put to more martial uses.

  The first day of construction, the villagers had complained, doubted.

  “Your walls do not have to be tall, only tall enough,” Sten had said, showing them where the first of the makeshift defenses would go. “Kenku were not meant for wings, and whoever gave these beasts theirs didn’t change their fundamental nature. They can fly, but more like the turkey than the eagle. The walls are twenty feet now, and thirty will force them through the gates, or else upon our spears and our nets.”

  The villagers were inexperienced enough not to see the flaw in Sten’s reasoning, and he had been happy for it. The new walls would diminish the kenku’s advantage in the air, but only until they got within the village walls. Once inside, they’d again be able to move vertically as well as laterally, and the entire fight would grow more complicated.

  Walking the streets of Haven with Spundwand, he repeated that worry for the tenth or twentieth time since arriving in the village. Spundwand turned his own hammer in his hands, shrugged. “You’re not wrong, of course. But maybe there’ll be more to complicate the matter. These devilish winds that are crushing our spirits won’t help the kenku either, especially if they’re as clumsy with their wings as you think they are, and they’ll keep blowing inside the walls as well as out. And maybe the wizard—one of the wizards—can help with the same.”

  “And Magla too, with the archers she’s culled from the hunters.”

  In the village square, Magla was even then drilling her archers, the men who’d come forth at the meeting hall claiming some proficiency with the bow. The first day of Magla’s instruction had ended with one grown man in tears and another with his bow broken across her knee, but they did seem to be improving. The difficulty was less in their ability to shoot—these were men who could drop an elk at several hundred paces—and more in their willingness to follow orders, to work as a group. Each thought that they would be best served by firing level at targets of their own choosing, and Magla complained that nothing short of failure in battle would convince them otherwise. She tried explaining the concept of defensive archery, of firing on a group of advancing enemies not with a straightforward volley of individual arrows—which would only hit those in the front row, wasting too many arrows on the already dead and dying—but rather with an arcing hail of arrows aimed for distance rather than the heart or the lungs. The tactic—one the simplest of military minds understood—somehow seemed lost on the individualistic spirit of Haven’s bowmen, even as Magla tried to draw diagrams in the dirt, showing how an arc of arrows would hit every row of a cluster of enemies, rather than just one. The individual shots would come only later, once the kenku were already through the gates, and headed in more than one direction.

  Spundwand shook his beard, stroked its long braids with one hand. “You know what that elf told me, when I asked her if they were learning? They’re already ghosts. What kind of thing is that to say about people? It’s almost as if she doesn’t expect to win.”

  Sten stopped, looked up and away from the dwarf, toward the observatory above the village, the cloud-soaked mountains above that. “We’ve been in a lot of bad fights, friend. And this one is worse than most. A company of six, a couple dozen villagers, and a reclusive wizard against who knows how many kenku, and whatever else is behind that? Only days to prepare this assortment of farmers and hunters for the task. I don’t know that I expect to win, either.”

  “Now you wait and listen to me, boy. When your father and I fought beside each other, he never said anything half as pessimistic as that, and he died with his sword in his hand—the sword you’re wearing on your hip, I might remind you—at the beginning of the end for the empire he breathed every breath in defense of. He saw his friends butchered, and their dreams come to an end, and still he expected to win every fight, believed himself strong enough to do it, right up until the time he was proven wrong. And for me to stand here and listen to you become defeated in your old age—”

  “Enough, Spundwand. Enough.” Sten ran a gloved
hand through the scratchy growth of beard he’d let overtake his face, some small protection from the cold. “It is just this weather, this place. There’s something about it that is getting under my skin and into my bones, and it’s making me sound worse than I am.”

  “Aye, I know, and I forgive you already. But remember: We’re still breathing, and our bellies aren’t completely empty, and that counts for something. So save the worry for another day, and let’s figure out how to not lose this fight.”

  Sten nodded. Spundwand had been a good friend, and his optimism—misplaced as it seemed in the situation—eased Sten’s worry a little. But looking around the village, Sten found it difficult to keep his spirits up.

  Haven was a good place. There were families. There were children playing in the square, seemingly ignorant of the dangers in the trees not far away. He had spent the first evening with Luzhon and Nergei walking around looking at Haven. Spundwand had uncharacteristically decided to turn in early after a few pints of ale. The homes were modest and clustered at the western side. The square sat in the center near the great hall. A blacksmith. A very small tavern with a pair of small rooms, barely able to accommodate the gathered warriors. (Luckily, Ekho had, true to her word, set up a tent near the southern walls outside of Haven. Sten, observing the rooms in the inn, noted that it was unlikely her great size would find any comfort in the small beds available to them.) No store for provisions though—the villagers gathered what they needed for journeys from one another. Luzhon said that when she and her companions had set out for the city, the people of Haven had each simply donated something. Cured meats from a farmer with livestock. Water in skins from another who knew how to tan and prepare a hide. Thick, dry bread from the miller’s wife. No one expected payment for the things they offered. Londih, the village chief, didn’t even have to ask.

  Londih. The Crook of Haven, they called him. When the party first arrived in town, the Haven youths and the warriors, a crowd had gathered quickly in the square to greet them. Padlur’s father, Orick, arrived. But notably absent for a long while were the arrogant boy Kohel’s family and the old man Nergei served.

  When Londih did arrive, it was quite a sight. Pyla pushed members of the gathered crowd aside, insisting that, “Our Honored One desires to see his son!” Londih followed, appearing to fake tears. His clothes were immaculate. Not the clothes of a man who toiled in the dirt, or even led a village full of those who did. Sten guessed he may have had the tunic and the fine, purple cloak made for that occasion only.

  Londih walked, slowly and deliberately. He held his head up high, looking dramatically from warrior to warrior, and from youth to youth until he finally found Kohel among them. The boy had, Sten noticed, already managed to attract a coterie of young village maidens, and he had been discussing his own great heroism on the journey to the city with them.

  “My child!” cried Londih. “You have returned to me. I have prayed for this. Pelor be praised. Avandra be praised. I have my son at my side again.”

  Kohel smiled and tried to embrace his father, but the older man waved him away and turned to Sten. “You have the demeanor of a captain of men,” he said, holding his crook out to Sten. “You must be the one my son found to protect us from the kenku.”

  “Aldo Sten,” said Sten. “My dwarf friend here is Spundwand, a priest of Moradin. Magla will teach your hunters how to shoot their bows. Mikal, her brother, is an arcanist.” Spundwand was by his side. The siblings had found a quiet place on the outside of the crowd, but gestured to identify themselves. “This is Ekho,” said Sten, pointing to the goliath. “She is a guardian of this mountain, and has agreed to help us. And last is Imony.” Sten looked around, but his friend had melted into the crowd somewhere. “She seems to have made herself scarce, but I will introduce her to you when she returns. She can be … mercurial.”

  Sten noticed that Londih was trying hard to disguise his lack of enthusiasm for the warriors. And they were perhaps not the most formidable-looking group. “We are happy to have whatever assistance you can give,” said Londih. “Our home is in peril. Recently, the kenku bandits killed the son and servants of a man we sent out to broker a simple peace with them. Murdered them under a flag of parlay, in fact. These creatures do not even honor the most basic codes.”

  “The young ones have told us a bit about them, as has Ekho, who has surveilled them from their arrival. I will need to know more, though.”

  “After our man was attacked, we had Orick initiate a scout of our own. They can tell you all we know,” said Londih, and he gestured to the two of them. “We have some resources, but not many. We have some walls, but they are old and in some disrepair. We have not needed to protect ourselves in the way the other towns and cities have for a very long time. Ever, in fact, in my lifetime and the lifetime of my father and his father before him. We have always had,” and there Londih hesitated, “the Old Stargazer for that.”

  “Nergei said a little of his master, but not much. He is there?” Sten asked, pointing to the observatory to the north up the mountainside and across a narrow stone bridge.

  “Yes. That is where he lives,” said Pyla. “And has lived for as long as Haven has existed for all we know.”

  “I can go and speak with him?” asked Sten.

  “You can try,” said Londih. “But the old man has not been available to anyone for months.”

  At that, Mikal came forward and joined the conversation. “He has protected you with magic?” he asked.

  “We know little of such things,” said Londih. “We farm and hunt. We do not dabble in the arcane.”

  Mikal nodded and stepped back to his sister, but not before giving Sten a look that said, We need to speak. Sten bowed and begged Londih to give him leave. He would speak to Orick and Pyla later. He asked after accommodations for his companions, and was pointed in the right direction. He and the warriors said a brief good-bye to the crowd, and asked Luzhon and Nergei to come see them later. (Kohel bristled at the slight, but distracted himself with the village girls. Padlur stood silent beside his father.) They walked to the inn, and Mikal approached Sten.

  “I can feel the old magic here,” said Mikal to Sten. “It is everywhere. Old spells hang on the branches of the trees surrounding us. The fabric of those spells, though, is fraying at the ends. It’s powerful, more powerful than any magic I have seen or felt before. But it is disintegrating.”

  “The old man is dying?” Sten asked.

  “This is something far more serious than the man’s death,” said Mikal. “Far more serious. Death does not necessarily unravel a spell at its very core. A powerful spell—and these are all powerful spells—can outlive a wizard. It can outlive generations of the wizard’s family, in fact. But this. Some of these spells—illusions cast to make Haven invisible, for example—were cast in such a way that they should be able to sustain for millennia. They are that well crafted and have that much power behind them. Only the caster himself should be able to dispel them.”

  “I don’t understand, Mikal. Are you saying the old man is destroying his own work?”

  “Just some of it. Or, perhaps, just part of him. The power is in flux. It is like part of him wants to tear the facades he has created down while another part of him wants them to remain.”

  Sten and the warriors arrived at the door of the local tavern. Spundwand and Magla entered. Ekho took her leave and left the village gates to search the trees nearby with Orick and Padlur. (Their mutual interest in silence seemed to make the three of them perfect not just for scouting, but for companionship with one another.) Imony had reappeared with a jam bun she had acquired from somewhere, but she would not say where. She followed Spundwand and Magla. Sten stopped with Mikal, having considered all he had said. “What does any of this mean, Mikal?

  What should I do?”

  “I’m not sure,” said the wizard. “Go see the old man? Don’t see him? It would perhaps be valuable to try, just to see if there is anything we can learn from him.”

>   “Do you think he will be able to assist us?”

  “I do not, Sten,” said Mikal. “I don’t know if he can stop himself from whatever it is he is doing to his spellcraft. I’ve known old wizards, Sten. I’ve known them to be forgetful. I’ve known them to be eccentric as they enter their final years, and seen the mischief this can cause. This feels like something very different, though. This feels dangerous to me. I think we are on our own.”

  The two men stood for another long moment. “When the boy returns, Sten, I will go with him to see about the old man.”

  Sten nodded. “Thank you, Mikal.”

  Nergei was at a loss for what he should be doing, and had been since returning to Haven to find the Old Stargazer locked in the highest rooms of the tower, unwilling to come out and unwilling to allow Nergei entrance. At first he had wandered the structure’s other rooms, unsure where he fit into the plan the mercenaries were putting into place. He was no good with a blade or a bow, and not as strong as many of the others for manual labor. He would gladly do his share, had in fact tried to before his usual shunning by the other boys his age took effect. He’d tried to go to Luzhon, but she was with Magla, had stayed at the elf’s side since meeting her in the city, and there was no room for Nergei there, despite their bettered relationship, earned through their travels to the city. And who else would take him? Not Padlur, who was outside the city with his father, scouting the woods alongside Ekho, and certainly not Kohel, who supervised the building efforts with his father and the other council members.

  Not that Nergei would go to Kohel in any case. Not then and not ever.