by Colin McComb
We had been rotating strike zones, changing raiding party size, and had broken up our group into three parties. They never knew what to do against us, and the few times they tried to sneak spies in on us, well… I’ll say that what we did to those spies made any other would-be spies think again.
We had the rich men on the run. No one from town would hire on with them anymore, so they had to hire from outside. We felt a lot better when we weren’t shooting at our neighbors. So it was that Lohan’s caravan wasn’t as well protected as it could be that day, and so it was that we had to kill his guards.
It was in that mood that we opened the day’s take. I was over by the cave with Kal, tending to the horses, and I heard him say, “What in the hells is that?” It was a sound like… like… I can’t explain what it was like. It was like a whine, a whine made by a dog the size of a horse, with a throat made of metal. It started low and deep, and got louder and higher for about five seconds. We all stopped to see what was happening, and the folks by the chest backed off some. Inside the chest, something was shedding blue light, blue-white like lightning, and then a ball the size of my fist lifted out of the chest on its own power. It hummed and spat off sparks and out of the corner of my eye I saw two of our brethren from Lower Pippen take for the hills.
We all saw why quick enough. The ball hovered for a second, turning this way and that, and then it struck. Everywhere I looked was blood. The thing moved faster than any bat or bird I’ve ever seen, and everywhere it went, it killed. Five died before we could move, and then we scattered. We’d hear the thing’s hum rocket up for a moment, then a dull splash, and we knew another one of our friends was dead. It was hunting us, hunting through the woods we called home—but once we got about fifty yards from our camp, it stopped. It wouldn’t go any farther. We crept back toward it, and it swung toward us, but always on a straight line, like it was tied to a line in that chest.
All right. I had an idea. I gathered the survivors outside of the thing’s range and gave it to them. They wanted proof that my idea would work, so I did one of the hardest things I’ve ever done: I walked right up to the edge of that fifty yards and swung a stick at the orb. It danced back out of reach faster than I could swing, and it shot back with a grace and speed that was nearly blinding, but it didn’t come any closer to me. If it had been alive, I would have sworn it was straining after me, but it couldn’t break that leash.
That convinced the others, but they told me that I’d have to be the one to go through with it. All right, I said, but you had better move when I tell you to move.
We spread out in a circle around the open chest, all outside of the thing’s range. We’d lost ten people, and their bodies were steaming in the evening air in front of us as a reminder of what could go wrong. That left fifteen of us to deal with this. I whistled, and they started running inside that fifty-yard range and running back out, switching from near-opposite sides of the circle. It was a close game, because that thing was fast, but we played it well. If someone’d been watching from above, they’d have seen this ball moving in something like a triangle around the chest, leaving a clear space around it. We switched up the patterns, seeing how quick the thing reacted and how close it had to be to someone to go after them.
That was the easy part.
Once it was opposite to me, I ran in, and two of the others ran in with me. It shot toward us, and I dove to the ground. The other two ran back across the line, and bandits down the line started leading it in a circle around the perimeter, letting me wiggle and crawl my way closer to the chest, an axe in one hand making the job harder than it should have been. When I got to the chest, I stood up. Inside, there were wires and tubes and other things I didn’t have time to register because I was too scared to see straight. I just swung.
To their credit, none of my circle stopped to watch me—they kept that ball moving with the promise of their lives, and they didn’t stop until I’d struck those magical workings five hard blows and the ball dropped lifeless at their feet. They converged on it with clubs, axes, and stones, and they smashed it to bits.
After we cleaned up and disposed of our dead, we went looking for our other two groups. They had to be warned that the magus was on us now, and we could only hope that our friends hadn’t taken any spoils today. We headed for Jensen’s camp first, cutting straight through the woods. Speed was more important than stealth. It turned out that we didn’t have to bother hurrying—one of those cursed metal orbs hovered at its outer limit, facing us as we approached, and between it and the chest lay twenty dead. We didn’t have time for the elaborate ruse that had helped us before, but I’d figured a new way to get at the innards on the way over.
Tink fired a crossbow quarrel into the open lid, knocking the chest over onto its back, and we walked the perimeter of the thing’s range. On the other side, we fired arrows and bolts into the exposed chest, and sparks hissed into the air, and the ball fell to the forest floor. We cracked it open on a boulder and ran to the third camp, fearing the worst, and I cursed myself along the way for not setting up a signal system.
We need not have feared, luckily. They’d found a caravan—right about the same time ours rolled through, in fact—but they hadn’t opened the box by the time we got there because Laz (who was leading them) wanted to rejoin our camp and didn’t want to be distracted with loot until they’d found us again. We convinced Laz to open the chest with us, and we stood over it, ready to strike as soon as the lid opened. He flipped the lid, we heard the hum, and we smashed the chest before that death could emerge.
We took what we had and fled into the forest. John Harelip, one of the Pippen dwellers, told us why he’d taken to his heels: he recognized those spinning orbs as the tools of the magus. That was enough for him, he said. He’d come back to see if anyone had survived, and he was too ashamed of having run and too frightened to face the magus. He’d stay with us, he said, but he wouldn’t fight the magus—he’d run again and again. That was fine with us—we’d grown to like him, and we weren’t happy about the idea of killing him to keep our secrets.
Well, we put up a guard at each of the three sites—a scout, hidden in the trees—to see if anyone turned up there. We left John Harelip at the first, and that might not have been the wisest choice. When we came back for him, he’d soiled his pants in terror. Magus Underhill himself had come out to collect his toys! The man had four of those metal things circling him, Harelip said, and he was mighty displeased to find what had happened to his flying demons. The magus left quickly, and we knew from our other scouts that he’d visited the other two sites, too, growing angrier with each, though he took some pleasure in the bloodstains on the forest floor. It was a good thing for us that he hadn’t brought along scouts to read the trails we’d left, because we hadn’t taken the time to move clean. He left something for us to read, though. Laz read the note aloud for those of us who didn’t have their letters:
To the Bandits of the West Forest Way and Surrounding Environs:
You have been warned.
(signed and sealed)
Underhill
Magus of Lower Pippen, advisor to the Baron Mulvrain, by appointment of his Majesty King Athedon I.
Weeksend, Month of the Water Falcon, CY 596
So now we had a magus on our trail. Worse, this magus was young and vigorous, and more to the point, bloodthirsty. The old magus was an abstraction to us, a distant terror who rarely stirred from his seat of power. The new one was eager to prove himself in war as he had proved himself a defender, and it seemed that we were the way he was going to do it.
That night we held a council. They put me in charge. We had only thirty-nine left, and Kal spoke to commend me. He said, “If Doreen hadn’t seen the pattern, if she hadn’t seen the limits of the demon ball’s power, we’d all be gone. If she hadn’t sent us on a sprint to Laz, they’d all be dead. It was her that saved us, and it’ll be her that continues to save us if I have any say.”
Tink said yes, and so did Laz,
and that pretty much settled it for the rest of them. I didn’t know what to say, so I stood up and cleared my throat and thanked them all, then I said that it was clear we were at war with an enemy who wouldn’t be as easily outsmarted as a pack of fat merchants and landholders. I said we’d be merging the two groups back together again, with a strike squad and a support squad. We’d stop recruiting for now. More importantly, we’d hit our targets harder, we’d burn their warehouses, and we’d be on our guard with every single chest we opened.
And so it was for several weeks. So it was.
A month later, the magus struck again. We’d opened every box we took with five people standing next to it, ready to strike at the first telltale hum. Two weeks in, we got one. A week later, we got a box that was empty except for a reflecting mirror and some wires behind it. We took extra caution thereafter, adding another watcher for each box. And that’s how Underhill took us again.
The chest was like any other. Stumps and Harelip were the openers, and four others stood ready at the four corners. The openers tossed the lid, we heard a click, and then a gout of flame hurled us to the ground. My ears rang, my head swirled, and I walked straight into a tree before I could get my feet under me. As my hearing came back, I heard whimpers and screams of pain. I almost stepped on a severed forearm. I got my senses slowly, but faster than most, and I started shoving the company—my company—away from the crater and into a nearby glen. I wanted them away from the carnage until they could get themselves together. The ones who didn’t seem shocked helped, and they carried our supplies away, too.
We had to move our camp quickly, I figured, because even if the magus and his allies weren’t waiting for the explosion as a signal to swoop in, someone would come to investigate, and we couldn’t take the chance of being discovered. We had to leave the bodies, and we had to kill those who were too wounded to flee. We couldn’t let them fall into the hands of the magus because he could wrench our names from their tongues. We took as many as we could, honest we did, and tears ran down our burnt faces as we cut the throats of the rest. We staunched the wounds of our friends and covered our trail as best we could, falling back to a long-disused camp on the banks of the river.
We had lost another eighteen to that attack.
That night at the council, I said, “I quit.” No one objected. I said, “How about Laz?” They stayed silent.
Laz cleared his throat and said, “No.”
“Kal, then,” I said.
“I won’t,” said Kal.
“Tink?”
“Beg your pardon, Doreen,” he muttered, “but I ain’t near as clever as you. I don’t want to lead.”
“For the love of…will anyone take charge?”
All of them looked at their feet. They were whipped men and women, beaten by the horrors of what they’d seen that day. They were strong and proud, but today they saw strength they just couldn’t fight.
“Fine,” I said. “Then this is what we’ll do: those of you who want to quit, this is your chance. Pack your gear and head south, down to Dunlop or farther, where they won’t care what you did up here. That’s out of reach of Mulvrain and his men, and the magus won’t look for you there. Hells, you might even be able to get a job as a caravan guard down there!”
They laughed a little. Good.
“But those of you who want to get a taste of revenge on that magus—gods know I do—stick around. I’ve got some ideas. We’ll talk them over after everyone’s had a chance to decide what they want to do. We ought to get some sleep tonight, see about patching up our friends here, and we’ll outfit the folks who want to leave tomorrow.”
Mishi shrugged her shoulders and said, “Not waiting ‘til the morning. I’ll light out now. Give me a handful of coins and you can keep the rest of my share. Anyone who wants to come with me now is welcome, but if you fall behind that’s your own fault.”
She looked around, and a couple of them stood. “All right,” she said. “Pack light.” They rolled their blankets and heaved their packs. Mishi sketched us a curtsy, and the three of them set off to the north. Only Mishi looked back, and that look was filled with sadness. That left us eighteen.
The rest of us bedded down for the night, and I thought that we might have a chance to do some damage to the magus come morning. Just my luck that we didn’t make it to morning, then.
It seems that Underhill had some huntsmen on his side after all. Seems further that he’d given them visored hats that let them see just fine in the dark, and they could move through the woods on our trail without alerting us with flaming torches. The magus didn’t come with them at first, and that’s probably what led to some of us surviving.
I woke to the sound of a muffled gasp and the rustle of leaves, and some voice in me screamed danger. I slipped my wrist knife carefully into my palm and whispered, “Kal?”
I heard a curse, and someone was running toward me. The moonlight trickled down onto a blackly gleaming blade, and I threw my blankets into his face. I rolled to the side, kicked Kal with my foot, and screamed out loud. All around, people started struggling awake, and right about then my unseen enemy closed on me. I couldn’t see his eyes, couldn’t see what he was going to do, so I threw my left hand out in a wild block and thrust hard with the knife in my right. To my great surprise and my enemy’s, the blade sunk home. He fell down, and I smelled a horrible stench of open gut that told me he’d be lucky to see the sun rise.
I bent down to look at him, and for a second I thought he had the face of a nighttime stream—the moonlight reflected my face back at me. Then I realized it was a screen, a mirrored mask he was wearing, and I pulled it from his face. Turning it around, I could see the clearing we slept in like there was a red sun pouring down light. And I could see five other hunters wearing masks like these, and they were slaughtering my friends, who couldn’t see nearly as well. I slipped the mask over my own face and went hunting myself.
I got close to one of them, probably because he saw the mask and thought I was an ally. He didn’t think so after I slit his throat. I gave that one’s mask to Laz, and he and I went after the other four. We got two more before they realized what was happening in the general confusion, and then the four of us had the two remaining hunters surrounded. We took them down pretty quickly—they weren’t fighters, they were trackers, men and women who I’d seen working with Crenshaw through the years. They must have thought they’d get in and out with minimal fuss. They’d done a job on us, though—we had eight left. Eight. Including me.
But now we had magic masks. We just needed time to learn to use them and to regroup, and then we’d show the magus that he couldn’t stay one step ahead of us forever. But then...then I had an idea.
Across the fire, a small man with feathers in his hair smiles broadly. Doreen does not see this, but she shudders nonetheless.
“West,” I said. “We’re going into the Sickened Lands. But we’re going to pay a visit to Crenshaw first. He’s got something that’ll make him regret what he’s done here.” We scavenged our gear as best as we could, and we ran.
Half an hour later, our masks brightened intolerably, and we turned to see the clearing where we’d slept engulfed in a tower of flame, another explosion from, I guess, another of the magus’s devices. We turned away from the ashes of our friends and kept running for the rest of the night.
We hid out at my old farm. The building was falling apart. The bank had taken my land, and it was clear that someone’d been working the field, but the farmhouse was empty except for the evidence of occasional trysts and lazy fieldhands. We bunked there for two weeks while we watched the town and made our plans. When we were sure of ourselves, we struck fast and hard.
We made our stop in town and snatched Crenshaw’s little girl from her bed. Then we went west. We reached the Sickened Lands in two days.
I couldn’t bring myself to kill the girl. I’m not as hard as that. Hell, I’d never have kidnapped her in my old life, but I was hurting more’n I’d thought p
ossible, and pain makes people do things they wouldn’t. By the gods, Crenshaw’s going to pay part of his debt with fear. We could have just killed him in his sleep, killed his family, but we’re not monsters.
I never thought we’d be caught by you reavers so fast. I never meant for us to die here.
I guess I’m past Johnny’s reach now.
The firelight was dying down, and the tribesmen surrounding the brigands began to hoot and shout. The Crenshaw girl, having awoken during this tale, began to sob again. Doreen’s face was set and pale, resigned. She knew what was likely to happen next.
The Shaman’s Tale
Midnight on the plains of the Sickened Lands, where the night winds circle the cloud-haunted moon and the plains warriors circle their fire. The easterners, the captives with the red masks and the girl they have stolen, have told their stories. The chieftain will decide their fate shortly in this Court of the Stars. But for now all eyes are on the newcomer, the wiry man with magpie feathers woven into his hair. The chieftain has ordered him to tell his story, to explain why he should not join the soft easterners in the dinner pots.
The man stops, considers, looking within himself. His eyes reflect the firelight, magnify it, and the warriors shift their grips on their spears and bows. The wiry man kneels by the fire, the feathers in his hair catching the air of his movement, and he thrusts his fist into the coals. He sucks air over his teeth, his eyes closed, and his lips begin to move. A cold wind springs from nowhere and arrows across the fire, splitting it in two for a brief moment, like waves parting. The wiry man stands then, and he thrusts his hand into the sky.
He holds flame in his fist, and the plains dwellers cower back, for inside that fiery aura, his flesh does not burn. He begins to speak with a voice that is hoarse, quiet, and filled with the broad accents of the sea.
