Quest Call

by Kirk Dougal

  “Thanks. This will be more valuable than what's in that bag you’re carrying.”

  Pagul shook his head, a frown falling over his face.

  “You'd better have Spoon boil out the shirt tonight when we make camp. I had to pull it off of what was left of the poor bastard the Eaters were munching on.” He lengthened his stride and left me gaping at his back.

  *****

  The sun still held a sliver of gold above the tree line when DeBrest finally called a halt for the night. Activity swirled through the area as everyone fell into their duties putting together camp. All except for Saleene and Bree who slipped into camp only long enough to talk quietly with the duke for a few minutes before disappearing back into the trees.

  “Where are they going?” I asked, not expecting an answer from the bustling characters around me.

  “They'll scout around us a good distance, maybe go back a little and make sure we weren't followed.” Spoon already had a fire going and two of his helpers were breaking down a half-grown deer the women had brought back to camp a couple of hours before the group stopped. I had watched him bleed the carcass off the back of the wagon before the smell hit me, and I rode forward. “But don't you worry, they'll be back in time to eat. Now, if you want me to boil the shirt that Pagul got for ya, then fetch me a couple of buckets of water and let me be.”

  By the time I had brought Spoon some water, and then more firewood, I decided I better move along or he would just continue to find me things to do to keep busy. My horse had already been rubbed down and was grazing inside the rope fence that had been erected on the edge of camp. One of the stable boys nodded at me as I checked the bay's feet. I turned to go, but then stopped so suddenly I felt one foot hanging in the air for a second before momentum carried me forward.

  Trellac stared at me from across the camp, within the light of Spoon's fire, but close enough to the trees to disappear in a blink. He stood his ground, however, his gaze never straying from my face even though most other men would have been embarrassed at having been caught and would have looked away.

  “He is a watching son-of-a-bitch, isn't he?” Pagul's voice pulled me out of the staring match. I glanced at him before turning back to Trellac. The spot where he had been standing was now empty.

  “And quiet,” I answered. “I swear I never heard him inside that room today until he burned that last man to ash.”

  Pagul chuckled. “Yeah, that was a helluva trick. Pretty handy to have that talent in a fight.”

  I fell into step beside the larger man as we walked back toward the center of camp.

  “Who is he?” I asked.

  “I suppose just what he said,” Pagul said with a shrug. “Trellac's from north and west of the mountains in the Sand Sea. You can tell from his red skin. All kinds of stories about what those people can do. Eat fire. Go days without water. Glide across the sands like they were riding in a boat on a smooth lake. Probably just a bunch of children's tales. But—”

  “But we saw what he did today.” I shuddered at the memories of the room where we found the half-eaten bodies. “And we saw what those cannibals were capable of, too. Didn't it bother you?”

  Pagul moved the next few steps in silence. “I've seen it before, and I'm sure we'll see it again. Most likely a lot worse.” He turned to the side and kept walking to the wagon where Duke DeBrest was sitting on a wooden camp chair and eating.

  A line was already snaking its way around the fire, and Spoon was waving his namesake, keeping everyone moving and rapping the backs of a couple of the younger boys' hands as they reached back for more than a single share of venison. I pulled a small knife from its holder on the outside of my sword scabbard and stepped into line.

  “Get out of his way, boys,” Spoon said, waving a path open for me. “The guardsmen always eat first. Stop acting like it's your first night in the woods.”

  I felt the heat rise in my cheeks when I stepped past the other men, mumbled apologies following my back.

  “Here you go, Wolf,” Spoon said. He slopped two ladles full of potatoes and vegetables from his pot, and then stabbed a good portion of venison and put it on top. “Tomas, get him some bread.” One of his helpers ripped off a healthy handful and dunked it into the other side of the bowl.

  “My name's not Wolf,” I said. My stomach roiled at the thought that I had been recognized or someone had seen the snarling werewolf head tattooed across my back. A leftover from my days when I ruled the game I helped create, The Kindred, and reflected my gamer nickname of The Beast, the tattoo had always followed me inside the games from the real world.

  “Ha, ha! It is now. Pagul said you attacked those damn Eaters today like a lone wolf.” He lowered his voice. “Go eat, lad. It's just a name. And I've heard a lot worse.”

  I settled in on the outskirts of the fire, close enough to feel like a part of the group but far enough away to see if one of the NPC characters turned to attack. Until I completed my mission to discover if the terrorists were meeting inside Quest Call, I needed to be careful about everyone. As I ate, my thoughts turned to why the terrorists would choose this game and how they were benefiting from the meetings.

  “Looks like you're thinking about something hard enough to hurt yourself.” The words were followed by sing-song laughter.

  I glanced up at Saleene. I wanted to be mad at her, but the laugh had washed over me and left only my own amusement.

  “Sometimes the gears get stuck and you need to pound them loose to keep moving,” I said as I slapped the heel of my hand onto my temple.

  “Let me know and I'll be glad to kick them free.” Saleene gestured toward my arm. “Bree, check his arm while I get us some food.”

  I watched as Saleene turned, her silver hair tied in a ponytail that waved across her back like a cat's tail when it was playing with a mouse. I had to remind myself she was more like a lion than a cat.

  “That's as close as you'll get to the apology you wanted,” Bree said as she knelt beside me and reached for my right arm. She jerked off the bandage she had put on earlier, pulling out more than a few hairs and making me wince. “Did that hurt?” she asked, her eyes opening wide in innocence and her voice losing its edge.

  I shoved some of the bread in my mouth and chewed, assuming the only way to keep from starting a fight was to keep my thoughts to myself. Saleene may have gotten over my taking her weapons but Bree still carried a grudge for her friend.

  “No swelling. Red but no white streaks,” Bree mumbled after she wiped off the remains of the green poultice she had smeared on in the village. “I need to move this bracer to make sure…what is that?” She glanced up, the anger in her voice replaced by curiosity.

  I pulled off the band. Firelight played off the hunt scene in the metal, in places scratched so deeply it was hard to make out the figures. On it, a warrior was taking down a giant boar with a lance while a woman in flowing robes looked on from above, an eagle perched on her shoulder.

  “It's the Divine Hunt,” I said. “The chosen is being watched by Dziewona, the Goddess of the Hunt, as he kills the boar as a sacrifice to her.” The words sounded like a bedtime story as they tumbled out of my mouth, half-fairy tale and half-nonsense. But it was the back story that Card had created for my character when we were preparing for my mission inside the game.

  “You worship Dziewona?” Bree asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You're a Searcher, aren't you?” Saleene was standing behind Bree again, two bowls in her hands.

  I nodded, remembering Card's instructions that Searchers were expected to ask a lot of questions because they were looking for answers for their deity. He thought it would give me a good cover if someone was suspicious.

  “And Judge, too?” Saleene's voice remained calm, leaving behind the edge it had held for most of the time I had known her. I did notice her right hand had dropped closer to the hilt of her dagger.

  “When I need to be.”

  “Then what are you searching for now?”
The bite had returned to Bree's voice, unable to control her emotions as well as Saleene.

  “Dziewona demands an answer to the evil lurking in Farwolaeth. I was sent to find that answer.”

  The two women glanced at each other and stared for a three count. When Bree turned back to my arm, the moment had passed and the smell of venison roasting and sounds of laughter and conversation washed over us. I wondered what was unsaid in that look between them but decided not to press the issue. Saleene sat beside me and dug into her bowl, slurping in the broth. Once Bree had finished bandaging my arm again with a fresh cloth, she joined her.

  “Pagul tells me you've run into Eaters before.” I said after a few minutes of silence. “Is that why he appeared so unbothered by what they had done?”

  “No.”

  My head whipped to the side when it was not Saleene or Bree who answered. Trellac stood only a few steps away, but I had not heard his approach. He smiled at my surprise.

  “No,” he said again. “Eating the dead does not bother Pagul because his people often eat from their fallen enemies. They believe it helps them to take in their spirit. You might want to keep that in mind.” He laughed and walked toward Spoon.

  My mouth was still open in amazement when Saleene spoke around bites of meat.

  “So, how do you like your new name, Wolf?” She smiled.

  I let my chin drop to my chest.

  Chapter 12

  Three more days passed with little changing about our trip through Qunader. DeBrest kept to himself most of the time, talking only with Pagul during the day as we traveled. At night, he passed among the men, saying a few words here, laughing at a joke there. For their part, Saleene and Bree left at sunup and returned after camp was struck for the night, on good days with wild game slung over a horse's back. But when they took the time to eat, they sat close to me, Saleene with a few hushed words that were usually on the border of insulting and Bree with knives stabbing from each glare. It was almost as if we had made some silent pact after they discovered I was a Searcher, passing some unstated test that made me acceptable as a road companion.

  Pagul, on the other hand, hardly ever shut up. He was constantly waving me to the front of the column where he would tell tales of his exploits, generally involving women and gold. He made the miles pass quickly under my horse's hooves, keeping the mood light even as the road grew darker. It was from him that I found out that we were only cutting across the corner of Qunader and would soon be in DeBrest's homeland of Bretonia.

  That left only Trellac to keep an eye on, and that was a job in itself. I often would find him on the edge of the group, staring at me or one of the other characters. If I turned my head for only a second, blinked just a little too long, he was gone when I looked back. Just as quickly, he would reappear, often closer than I liked, wearing a lopsided smile that held no humor beneath his black eyes.

  On the third day, we happened upon another village. This one had also been deserted but it had not been destroyed. It was even more eerie than the first town we had seen since the homes and shops were still standing in good condition, waiting on the edge of the road for their people to return.

  Pagul and I were almost all the way to the final street when the highwaymen jumped us. Ten of them streamed from around buildings and out doorways with screams of murder. My new armor barely turned away a spear thrust at my back before the attacker fell with an arrow through his neck from Bree. Most of us took some sort of wounds in the fighting before it was all over. Pagul took a fairly deep gash to his side, Saleene was nicked by a crossbow bolt on the side of her neck, and I earned a few more cuts on my arms to go along with the spreading bruise across my back. Bree was most worried about Saleene's wound, but she spent almost all of her time with Pagul and her green goop even while she was yelling at her friend about taking too many chances.

  Trellac, of course, appeared suddenly in the middle of the battle, killing two men immediately with a blast of fire, before just as quickly disappearing. When the last opponent fell, our red-skinned companion appeared to be uninjured, but I noticed him limping at one point as we finished scouting the town. In the end, he helped Pagul back to our group down the road while I checked the town for spoils with Saleene and Bree. We found enough gold and silver in one building to warrant loading the bags onto our horses for the return trip.

  Despite the money, Bree was more excited about the overgrown garden she found near a boarded up house as we were leaving. She grabbed handfuls of different growths, some that smelled as sweet as honey, and others that made me gag from several steps away, and shoved them into a bag that she pulled from her pack. When the cloth appeared on the edge of bursting, she and Saleene kicked in the door and went inside the home. I waited outside, but I heard shouts and laughter before the noise abruptly stopped drifting through the opening. Leery of the silence, I had pulled my sword and was preparing myself to head inside when they reappeared. Bree was quiet, but her eyes shone brightly beneath her silver hair, and she clutched one closed fist close to her chest. Later that night at camp, after she had worked on all of us and even offered aid to Trellac, I thought I saw her staring at a flat-sided ring in the palm of her hand, a black stone sucking up the night.

  We broke camp a little later than normal the next morning, and when we did, Pagul rode close to the wagon, wincing with every step from his horse. That left me to ride in the front of the group with DeBrest. It also gave me the chance to ask him a question that had been bugging me since the first night I had spoken with Spoon.

  “Duke,” I said, “I understand how Spoon escaped from Breton the night Farwolaeth attacked, but what happened to you? How did you live?”

  He rode on in silence long enough for me to think he was not going to answer before he finally opened his mouth.

  “Just the gods' luck, if you believe in that.” He glanced down at my bracers before continuing. “One of my mother's ladies got me out. I don't even know how. Somehow she got me out of the castle and down the river, probably floating on pieces of debris.”

  “Why don't you ask her?”

  He shrugged. “She's dead. She never told me anything about the escape before she died except that the river had been our path to freedom and my real parents had been royalty.” His voice raised at the end, words tumbling together. I recognized his tale as a story construct, something the programmers put in so he would have a quest to choose. It was not the most original idea in the world, and I was sure there were probably hundreds of other players with similar back stories and adventures playing out in Quest Call, but DeBrest was really selling his with emotion. It made me wonder if he had experienced the loss of his parents on the outside or if he was just that good an actor.

  “Lani pretended to be my mother and raised me as her own in a small fishing village downstream. She told everyone my father had been killed when his boat sunk, something they all understood and accepted. After she died, I left the village and began looking for clues to my parents' death and found Spoon near the border in a city. He saw me and told me how much I looked like the Bear Killer. When he saw this,” DeBrest pulled out a signet ring on a leather tie around his neck, “he knew I was the duke's lost son.” The ring was cut in relief and showed a double-sided ax hanging over a bear's head. “This is the official seal of my father's house and was given to Lani by my real mother for protection. I won't wear it until I am back in the royal chair of my father's court.”

  A shout made both of us glance up. Bree pointed while galloping straight for us. I followed her gesture and noticed a bird circling in a downward spiral, each turn bringing it closer to us.

  “That's a big bird,” Pagul said between clenched teeth as his mount halted behind us.

  “Is it… I think it's white,” said DeBrest.

  I shook my head, almost laughing out loud at the absurdity of the situation. Inside The City, I had sent and received messages to my FBI handlers through the telegraph office. Card had chuckled when he told me I would know imm
ediately when he was sending me a message inside Quest Call.

  “I'll take care of this,” I said, dismounting and handing my reins to Pagul.

  A tree had fallen in a storm in previous years, its hand-sized trunk snapped over and held aloft by the jagged edges still clinging together. I adjusted my bracers as I walked past Bree, her horse's coat wet from its gallop. She nodded but, for once, did not look like she wanted to loose an arrow in my direction.

  The eagle swooped down on the broken tree, its claws gripping the wood strong enough to crunch the dead bark. The bird kept its wings outstretched for a moment after landing, white feathers rippling in its own breeze. When the eagle folded the wings tight to its body, it lowered its head, giving me a chance to see its golden eyes up close. But it was the eagle's blood red beak that caught my attention and held it, especially after it opened wide.

  “Rick, there's been another attack.” Although the eagle's maw never moved, it was Card's voice I heard. “More than two hundred were killed in an explosion at a minor league baseball game in Iowa. We're still gathering information but it looks like the same M.O. as the previous attacks. Well-planned and funded. We know you haven't been inside the game for very long, but Agent Tower wanted me to urge you to move as fast as you can to see if there is any connection to Farwolaeth.” The bird shook its head, raising the feathers on its neck before holding still again. “I'm not supposed to know, but I think the other agent has returned inside Quest Call so you might have somebody to rely on inside. I will send an eagle again if we have any information to pass along that might help you. If you need to contact us, go to the oracle at Winchon or any temple where they worship the Huntress. She is one of our people playing as a Priestess of Dziewona. Good luck.”

  The eagle's beak snapped together, the echoing crack shaking me out of the moment and making me realize I had been holding my breath while Card's message was delivered. The bird cocked itself to one side, now that its mission was completed, looking me over like it was sizing up its next meal. I stepped back and the wings unfolded, beating the air with enough force I felt the pressure against my chest. The eagle leaped upward and disappeared above the tree line before reappearing in a steep climb. A few seconds later the bird was out of sight, blending into the clouds dotting the sky.