by Arthur Stone
I was a fighter by nature. And I intended to fight until the end. But before I could fight, I needed to observe and to analyze. And then to conceive a battle plan.
Then I might just have a fighting chance.
A few pressing questions remained: why had I been picked up, where was I being taken, and for what purpose? I kept trying to come up with some plausible explanations, but so far none of them had clicked.
Though these two had referred to themselves as good people, if their treatment of pedestrians was any indication, goodness was not one of their primary attributes. Besides, good people wouldn’t have appropriated my money the way they had.
So, in all likelihood, I’d gotten myself in some kind of trouble.
On the other hand, I wasn’t going to get far on my own two feet, so I might as well hitch a ride to wherever they were taking me.
Then, I supposed, they would do whatever they wanted...
* * *
I had heard of Redriver before, but had never actually seen it. No one in their right mind would have taken me there—and I would’ve had to be out of my mind to go on my own. But even if I had tried, my body would have failed me after ten steps.
Not that there was a reason to go. Redriver served as a natural border between the relatively settled north and other, either untamed or utterly wild parts of it. The further out you went, the gloomier it got. And once you passed the Foothills—assuming you could even make it to a place where even warriors of the twenty-first circle couldn’t always reach—that was when the truly terrible places began. The local version of the gates of hell, where the Order itself was an infrequent guest, for this was Chaos’ domain.
Lying past these lands was not hell, but rifts through which chaosites came into Rock. That was my name for forces that adhered to their own systems of order, congruent with their host worlds in some ways, discordant in others.
Magic hadn’t existed in Rock until the arrival of Chaos. Or rather, it had, but there hadn’t been any instruments for working with it.
It had been the chaosites that brought those.
Along with a multitude of other, far less pleasant novelties. Ever since then, the lands that ended up being in close proximity to the rifts’ locations remained abandoned and extremely inhospitable.
Thankfully, we didn’t have to travel that far—there would be no sense in starting up a trading post in a place where it couldn’t survive even a year. From what I’d gleaned talking with Rycer and Krol, we had about two days of travel left. Assuming that the caravan would continue heading strictly north at a similar leisurely pace, that meant a distance of less than fifty miles. Possibly a lot less, though I couldn’t be too sure given such imprecise data.
When I laid eyes on Redriver for the first time, I felt a great disappointment. The sinister frontier looked like an ordinary lowland river. A couple of hundred yards across, with a sluggish current and muddy waters. The banks were lined with reeds, and the walls were perforated with dead channels overgrown with duckweed. The shallows abounded with seaweed-decorated snags washed downstream, lily-white herons promenading between them as they scoured for food.
On the opposite bank stretched the very Wild Wood with which the locals so loved to scare their kids. As well as other grownups. Only I wasn’t seeing anything scary. The relatively flat and sandy slope was covered in underbrush and short leafy saplings. Beyond those, sparse pine trees soared like skyscrapers. That meant the wood had plenty of natural light. Nor should it be as damp as the forest on this side of the river, the terrain being more elevated than these marshlands.
Yet, the caravanners’ behavior made it clear how seriously they were approaching the crossing. Even the peasants, which had ostensibly been sent to the trading station to work off debt or some such minor infractions, were being armed with gnarled clubs, stored in the last wagon until now for this very purpose. Once armed, the newly minted “militia” were warned to hold on to their weapons from here on.
Women, children and the elderly made for dubious soldiers, especially armed with such crude weapons. But it was better than nothing.
No club was issued to me. No sense arming a teenager who was barely able to stay on his feet even without a weapon. And indeed, I was capable of taking no more than ten or twenty uncertain steps before being overtaken by dizziness and needing something to hold on to until it passed. And if I continued moving, the fits became more frequent.
This was concerning. Were I to find myself in danger, I wouldn’t even be able to get away. The infusion of energy I had felt from the wave of chi was long gone. My body was wracked with pain as it adjusted to the amulet’s changed attributes. No, I wouldn’t be getting far in such a sorry state, and I had no idea how long it would persist.
The speed of my recovery was all over the place. And bloody confusing.
Naturally, there was no bridge, these lands being not nearly so civilized as to support major engineering projects. The dirt road came out to a sandy ford, at which point the wheels of the heavily loaded wagons started to get stuck. I had to leave the comfort of my carriage and proceed on foot to make it easier for the others to push.
A question arose that I couldn’t resist asking.
“Won’t the caravan get stuck? The river bottom seems to be lined with the same sand.”
“You dolt,” Krol replied lazily. “The wheels get stuck in dry sand. Wet sand is a breeze for foot and wheel alike.”
A dolt, indeed. It had been a while since I saw sand, so I had forgotten about this aspect of it.
The twelve years spent in the homestead had left me completely unaccustomed to life’s basic realities. I would have to work on restoring the lost skills and knowledge posthaste. My objective was challenging and my time limited—and a clumsy simpleton wouldn’t have a chance in hell at completing it.
As promised, the wagons had an easier time moving through the shallows than over a grassless beach. I held back any expressions of joy on account of being barely able to move, weak hands holding on to the wagon’s side for dear life, terrified of losing my grip and collapsing in the water. If that happened, I could only hope that someone would bother rescuing me instead of leaving the waif of a boy to the mercy of fate.
I had no knowledge of these people’s plans, only that they were my only support and only hope. Alone, I was utterly powerless. So I would have to push to my last breath to ensure I wouldn’t be left alone.
Being focused solely on keeping my balance, I began to neglect my surroundings. So it took me longer to notice when the caravan’s affairs began to sour. Someone behind me screamed as though they were being cut open—it was all I could do to keep my grip on the wagon and not fall.
“Move it!” Rycer bellowed, seemingly right into my ear.
Of course, the soldier wasn’t screaming at me, but at Krol. The impact was the same, however. His pitch and panicked expression made it clear that something bad was happening behind us. Screams of pain and rage quickly followed, interspersed with choice expletives from coachmen as they whipped their horses.
The water began to recede. It had been up to my neck in places, but here it was barely waist-deep. Ten more paces and it would be down to my ankles.
Something whistled overhead, the sound reminiscent of Camai practicing with a bow. Rycer bellowed an altogether different sound, something between a growl and a cry of pain. Hands outstretched, he stepped behind the wagon and dropped clumsily to his feet.
My blood chilled when I saw his face. A thin shaft stuck out of the mercenary’s eye. Sporting gray feathering, the arrow had hit him just above the wrist, slicing through his raised forearm and getting wedged in his eye, leaving the man half-blind, his hand pinned to his head. The sight was at once absurd and horrifying.
My scant knowledge of medicine suggested he could survive such an injury. Assuming he’d be treated back on Earth, with modern drugs and skilled surgeons. Alas, my knowledge of the local medicine was even poorer. Who cares? We’re under attack! The
realization was sobering.
I was at serious risk of being shot myself by the unseen enemy.
The death would be entirely too bland for someone with such an incredible biography. Besides, I wanted to live. Crouching quickly next to a groaning Rycer, I squeezed underneath the halted wagon, pushing the back of my head against the wheel axle. From here, I had a good view of what was happening at the tail of the caravan.
The situation appeared to be in flux. The direction of the arrows still wasn’t clear, but the mercs serving as security had other problems besides. The water around them seethed, the surface breaking here and there. The flickering tails appeared to belong to fish at first glance, but I had never seen such fish before: sporting an armored back with a pair of slick black fins. Whatever these creatures were, they were besetting the caravanners stuck at the deepest section of the ford.
A mother holding her baby stumbled and fell, submerging under water in full before popping back up with a heartrending shriek. Her hands were empty, the child having remained underwater.
An old man leaped up to her and began whacking at that spot in the water with his club. Likely not to finish off the poor child, but to fight off whatever had snatched him. A second later, something dark and sleek—presumably the baby-snatcher—leaped out of the water.
Another shriek, this one coming from the old man. His arm was now a bloodied stump, the club gone from its grip.
I glanced down warily. Though the water level at this spot was inches deep, somehow sitting here didn’t feel too safe.
More yelling, this time from up ahead. The battle had apparently reached the head of the caravan, and judging by the clangor of metal against metal, I highly doubted that the fish were to blame. Brandishing axes was as out of character for river dwellers as archery, so no, the mercs were up against a different opponent.
I twisted forward to try and snatch a glimpse. The view from underneath the wagon was poor. All I could see was the lower half of a mounted man, and then the tip of his bloodied spear as it flickered near the water’s edge.
A round object rolled on the sandy beach. My eyes, unaccustomed to such spectacles, didn’t immediately recognize it for what it was: a severed human head. The head didn’t belong to our sole mounted soldier—that one wasn’t red-haired, and he never took off his helm besides.
“To the shore! Get all the wagons ashore!” I heard voices yelling from all directions.
No more arrows were whistling, and the fighting seemed to have been isolated to the tail of the caravan. The enemies there clearly weren’t human, but some kind of giant armored pike close to six or seven feet in length.
My wagon began to move, the wheel axle nearly pushing me down nose first. Twisting out of the way just in time, I hurried after the wagon—my only cover against enemy fire. I couldn’t help but feel surprised as to how well I was moving for someone who had been barely walking just a few minutes ago.
The survival instinct was the best kind of motivator.
I glanced at the corpse at the water’s edge. It was the coachman from the wagon just ahead of ours. He, too, had caught an arrow in the eye, but unlike Rycer, the angle of this arrow was perfect, piercing the brain. There was no coming back for this one.
The fact that the enemy’s archers were this accurate caused me to crouch even more, giving them absolutely nothing. They shouldn’t even see me behind the wagon.
Just as long as I kept up... The wave of stress-induced energy had come suddenly, and might evaporate just as quickly, leaving me defenseless.
And with my degree of enlightenment totaling a big fat zero, the tiniest scrape could be fraught with serious consequences. So I would do well to become “one with the wagon” until things settled down.
I glanced back to gauge the situation behind us. All of the wagons except for one—lopsided and mired in the water for some reason—were hurriedly moving ashore. Those caravanners who weren’t pushing the wagons, were fighting instead, swinging and stabbing with their clubs, axes and spears, though with dubious results. The dark armored shapes weren’t breaking the surface near the convoy any longer, but only in two distinct circular spots downstream, where the water boiled as if in a cauldron. Something over there must have captured the strange creatures’ attention far better than the distancing caravan.
I looked harder as the water in those spots grew muddier. And changed color.
Now I knew why they called it Redriver.
Chapter 9
Wonders of Medicine
Degrees of Enlightenment: Unknown
Attributes: none
Skills: none
States: none
The caravan got off easy. I had been certain that our fates were hanging by a thread, that we were all about to get an arrow in the eye and become fish food. Yet, the danger had passed surprisingly quickly.
The attackers had somehow lured to the ford a group of full-grown kote—the big fish from before. I had only heard of the creatures until today. They were known to be as delicious in their cooked form as they were dangerous while living. Even the smallest specimen required careful handling once caught, lest it snap its jaw and snatch the flesh off the fingerbone. A larger kote could bite off the whole finger, while a fully mature monster could get the whole hand. But one would need to have the worst kind of luck for that to happen.
Indeed, Redriver was hardly rich with monsters that grew to a size of six or more feet. I had heard this from people whose word could be trusted. And the beasts rarely ventured outside of the river’s deepest sections. How, then, did a group of them end up in the shallows? That was an anomaly. And the fact that it was a group was an anomaly twice over. Kotes were known to be solitary creatures—even a few of them working together was a rare phenomenon, let alone a dozen.
Someone had somehow gathered over a dozen of these armored sharks in one place, then set them on the convoy at just the right time. The folks in the front section were already safe, but they had naturally turned toward the commotion, and that was when the main assault was launched. Several bandits leaped out from the bushes and engaged the coachman and the merc from the front wagon, while another one stayed out of view, taking a position on the hillside to rain down arrows with remarkable accuracy. The archer ended up killing two, striking both squarely in the eye, and wounding Rycer in much the same manner, while his accomplices were finishing off their opponents.
And the battle might have ended very differently if it hadn’t been for Atami, our mounted warrior. The eagle-eyed archer had failed to strike him down, despite many attempts, while the rider himself killed two enemy combatants and drove the rest back into the bushes. The attackers didn’t reappear but retreated, along with the archer.
Having pulled the eleven surviving wagons ashore, the caravanners set to counting their losses and licking their wounds.
Two had been killed by the archer, and two more had fallen from axes, clubs and spears. The kote had torn up two small children and one infant after snatching them away, and injured several grownups. One woman that had suffered particularly grave wounds bled to death shortly after making it to the bank. An elderly man who hadn’t been bitten once outlived her by only a few minutes. Once on land, he grabbed his chest and sat down, then collapsed on his side—it appeared that his heart couldn’t handle the stress.
The wounds inflicted by kote teeth looked gruesome. These creatures were indeed similar to sharks, as whole chunks of flesh had been torn out. A tremendous amount of rags was utilized to stanch bleeding wounds, much of it ill-fitted for the purpose. Bandages were either unknown technology or used entirely too rarely in this world.
Feeble thing that I was, I didn’t participate in the fuss, still sitting behind the wagon, content to stay out of sight. Though sentries had been placed up on a hill, I still didn’t trust those woods. My ears were still ringing with the thumping, squelching sounds of arrows smashing into eyeballs before Atami rode in to the rescue.
Turning to a groan nearby, I saw Ry
cer sitting down clumsily, holding on to the wagon’s side while slowly bending his legs. Each movement was a struggle for the wounded man, forced to keep his skewered hand suspended in the air. The smallest shift of weight in relation to the body reverberated with pain in his forearm and eyelid.
Krol waited for the warrior to sit, then said with uncertainty in his voice.
“If I pull on the arrow, it should exit the head. Then I’ll cut the shaft and pull it out of your arm. Can you... handle that?”
The warrior moaned. “Give me something for the pain, at least, before you torture me!”
“You drank it all...” Krol bleated. “I ain’t got no more swill left, that was the last of it.”
