Sword and Sorcery Box Set 1

by Dylan Doose

  She looked back down at the muddy road, puddled from the previous night’s rain. She sagged in Zomat’s grip. She could not stand; she was paralyzed by fear. Her vision tore right as she heard the sound of iron screaming in unison with the cries of terrible death. A tall, narrow-shouldered attacker, cloaked and hooded all in black, stood over one of her father’s defeated knights like some black wisp of death. The pagan swung a long axe through the knight’s chest plate and ribs, sending blood bursting in an arc. The axe was pulled free and a second swing split through helm and skull.

  Zomat’s hold on her arm was the only thing keeping her upright. He snarled at her to stand, to move, but she could do neither. She could only tremble as, from the trees on the left side of the road, three long purple tendrils whipped out and took hold of the knight felled by the pagan’s axe. The tentacles dragged the corpse from the road, leaving streaks of blood in the wet mud.

  “Zomat! By the sun, what is happening? Why are they doing this?” Celia’s words were shattered with fear, and the question came out more in an animalistic sound than any audible language.

  Zomat grabbed her by the wrist and they began running toward his horse. Celia tried to be strong. She would need to be strong if she wanted to live, and she wanted to live. For her and her child, she needed the will to survive this.

  As her feet moved and her legs pumped, she felt strength rise within, felt she could survive. The smell of blood had reached Zomat’s steed, and despite its training, the beast looked soon to flee, the way it huffed and trotted in place.

  The attackers were all cloaked and hooded, and they fought with the weapons of peasants—sickles, hatchets, knives—but they fought with a speed and smoothness much like the shadows cast by a flame. A knight plunged his long sword through an attacker’s chest, and as he went to pry it free a second heathen slipped a knife quickly through his visor and thrust it in and out so that blood cascaded from the knight’s helm as he shrieked and fell to his knees, blinded and twitching. Another man brought a hammer down, smashing in the top of the helmet along with the knight’s skull.

  Zomat jerked her around as he caught the reins.

  “Mount.” He hauled up both her skirt and her foot and shoved the latter in the stirrup.

  I will survive this. I must survive this.

  Zomat gasped from behind her, and his hands fell away. She turned and fell against him, face to face, his eyes inches from her own as he died, a bolt sticking through his throat.

  Celia went down with him as he fell, her foot pulling free of the stirrup. A second bolt penetrated the horse’s eye and the beast’s head drooped and whirled as it staggered forward and collapsed, screaming. She turned and turned again, alone, afraid, desperate.

  All around her, her father’s men were dying at a pace far quicker than that of the hooded figures. They were not going to be able to save her. She accepted that, but she did not want to die, she refused, so she pulled up her skirts and, with a drive that only comes to those aware of death’s stalking hounds, she ran from the road into the woods. Her muscles burned and she could hear them behind her, chasing down a pregnant girl like a wild pig.

  One was close; she could feel his breath just for a moment, then she felt the shaft of his weapon beat her to the ground. It thudded into her back so hard she felt as if her chest would split. The air left her as fast as the pain came on.

  She slid through the sticks and mud, weeping now, the adrenaline of the chase disappearing in an instant. The horrible mixture of helpless terror and the feeling that somehow this was her choice, that she was in some way responsible for this end, quaked through her. Had she only listened to Mother, had she only stayed away from him, from all of them. But he would have had her; in the end he always had what he wanted, and she would still be on this road to right here, to this right now.

  A long-fingered hand gripped her by the hair. She tried shaking it away as she screamed and kicked in the mud. At seventeen Lady Celia had never seen true violence, had left her palace compound in Chech only twice, and she was vaguely aware that there was some horrific final lesson being taught, but she did not have the composure to figure out what it was. A hard boot found her ribs and she stopped screaming, instead whimpering and sobbing from pain and fear. The tall, hooded man dragged her to a tree and slammed her against it.

  “I am with child!” Lady Celia protested, a thing she knew to be pointless; her whole resistance had been pointless. She turned around, pressing her back and palms against the tree. The hands were no longer on her, and she gazed at the hooded figure as he pulled back his axe for the killing stroke. “I carry the child of the Patriarch. I carry a child of god!”

  The shadowed figure pulled back the hood.

  A woman. The fine feminine features gave Celia the smallest kindling of hope that she could still talk her way from this end. The very angel of death was she. Her dark, sharp eyes were glaring like an unkind boy’s, straight white teeth bared beneath the thick, full lips of a seductress. She was tall and wiry like a primitive hunter. Her dark hair fell from a single braid at the back of her skull.

  “You kill for him?” Celia asked, her voice little more than a whisper. “For the Dog Eater?”

  “I am the Dog Eater.” The woman swung her axe.

  * * *

  “So you’re a mercenary, then?” asked the Jarl, a grin on his blood-soaked face and beard, the latter a hue already close to crimson.

  He was drunk, wandering too far from his hall, alone, unarmed when the giant attacked. Lucky for him, the young hunter was traveling through, pursuing his destiny.

  “No, I am a hunter,” the hunter said in answer to the Jarl.

  “And I am the axe god, and last night I fucked Skjilla and all her Valkyries…” The Jarl laughed. “I don’t believe you. You are a southerner. We are speaking in common, and I hear in your accent you are a Brynthian far from home. Your weapon is a claymore that looks to be from my home—”

  “I am no common hunter. I am Theron Ward; my quarry is all things evil, and all things wicked. Every beast, demon, and rogue mage. I am here from Brynth on my hunter’s trial, and I have sworn to aid the innocent of this foreign land against monstrosities like this one that came upon you in the night.” The hunter indicated the giant’s corpse with his blood-soaked blade.

  The Jarl stared at the young hunter, wide-shouldered and corded with muscle, but he was near-starving lean, the circles beneath his eyes so dark they looked like bruises.

  “Aid the innocent? Kill every beast? This is the north, my new friend. Here, no one is innocent and there are only beasts.” The Jarl’s smile grew. “Return with me to my home. You look in need of respite, and clean clothes not so stained with blood and guts.”

  He extended his arm and Theron Ward grasped it.

  * * *

  Chapter Three

  Blood and Guts

  The blood was not fresh .

  “Several hours since the killing. Three.” That was Theron’s professional guess.

  “And you think this is the convoy we passed this morning?” Aldous asked. “What is that terrible smell?”

  “The knights that we passed on the way into Chech this morning,” Ken said.

  “Indeed, Kendrick, I’d say that’s an astute observation,” Theron said. “The very smell that has attracted the beast.”

  “What beast?” Aldous asked, covering his mouth and nose with his palm. “I see no beast. And what makes you say beast? It could very well be beasts.”

  “Just being hopeful, lad,” Ken said.

  “You ought to be hopeful, like Kendrick, Aldous. I have come to see you as the negative one of your trio,” said Yegarov.

  All three turned and stared at him in silence.

  “Careful what you say, Yegarov,” Theron said, his tone sharper than intended as a spike of pain shot through his head, a gift from the morning’s repeated smashing of his skull against hard objects. “Aldous has a fiery temper, and there is no telling what he will take a
s insult.”

  “I don’t understand what I do to deserve any of this.” Aldous sighed.

  Theron moved ahead, staring out at the empty length of road that ran straight for miles, only to wind and give view to a vast distance of trees. It was a cool, sunny day, and yet all was ominous, as if the beauty of the scenery were an illusion painted over a reality far more sinister. Terrible things were hiding in plain sight, and Theron wished to know what they were before he stepped into something. Something foul, if the smell was any indication.

  “Easy,” came Ken’s voice, his horse nickering.

  “They’re down the road,” Theron said, pointing southwest. “They must just be over that hill a half-mile down the way.”

  “They?” Yegarov asked.

  Theron took another deep breath through his nose. “Corpses, and whatever is eating them…I can smell it.” Theron’s experience as a hunter gave him a hunch as to what was over the hill feasting on the corpses.

  “Nonsense. I don’t smell anything,” Yegarov said, and sniffed a few times, then retched. “We should go this way.” He gestured in the opposite direction.

  Ken used his horse to nudge Yegarov’s mount to follow Theron’s.

  “There is another road. We can avoid them,” Yegarov said.

  “This is the fastest road to Brasov. This is the road we will take,” Theron said in a tone that made it clear he could not be swayed, but he knew Yegarov would likely still try. The bard knew little about the hunter’s resolve.

  “I say this for your own sake, good Theron,” Yegarov said. “You are tired. Depleted. You fought many men today and it is not yet noon. It is unwise, and unhealthy, to fight a pack of beasts right now, no?”

  “No.” Theron tapped his horse to increase the pace. “Just one beast, and it has to die.”

  “Now, wait,” Yegarov said, as Ken again urged his horse forward. The others followed.

  “If my hunch is correct,” Theron began, “it will be a Sertesek Demon over the rise.”

  “A what demon?” Kendrick asked.

  “I believe it is a Swine Demon in the common tongue, if I recall what I read back at Wardbrook,” Aldous said.

  “You recall well,” Theron said. “But do you remember how the fiends come about? What is it that creates one, Aldous?”

  “They are beasts born of a curse placed on once great warriors turned tyrants and gluttons?” Aldous asked more than told from behind Theron.

  “There is a bit more to it than that…but yes, that is the summary of it,” Theron said, satisfied with his answer.

  “I hate to interrupt your conversation on the vast bestiary of the demonic realm, but until sundown you three are still under contract to me, don’t forget. And I would like to contract you to go in the opposite direction.” Yegarov’s tone gave away his unease.

  Theron turned his head over his black-cloaked shoulder, his single eye on Yegarov.

  “What’s the matter with you? Aren’t you a lover of bard’s songs?” Theron snarled. “Don’t you love a tale about adventures and heroics? That is what you told me when first we met.”

  Yegarov said nothing; he just halted his horse. Theron smiled to himself and trotted on. “Just as I thought. I see you, Yegarov.” He could sense the beast more strongly now. The footfalls of their horses were enough to scare some beasts, or warn them of a coming threat. But not this one, not while it was feeding. It was just ahead. Theron knew it, though he could not see it yet.

  “We swore an oath, Yegarov”—it was Ken who spoke, his tone even and honest—“that if we see, hear, smell, taste, so much as a hint of a nearby beast, we will pursue it. So if you want to take the other road, go ahead. But you take it alone, and we meet in Brasov.”

  “But you’re a wealthy lord with two horses and a chest of gold, who is shit in a fight,” Aldous chimed in. “Who knows when…if…you will arrive in Brasov.”

  “All right,” Yegarov said, and he quickened to catch up with them and the carthorse. “I get it, you bastards. You swore an oath to me, too, you know, but I guess an oath to be a man’s bodyguards is less important than the one you made about killing beasts. Who exactly did you three make that oath to, Kendrick?”

  “Aldous and I gave our oath to Theron, and Theron gave his oath to the most important person any man can give his oath to… himself,” Ken said. “And yes, it…supersedes—”

  “Supersedes,” Theron interjected, repeating the word, impressed. “Fine form, Ken, fine form.”

  Ken glared at him and finished, “It supersedes our oath to you.”

  Theron laughed and turned back around on his horse. His comrades at his back, the beast ahead…he felt better, righter, than he had since their group of four hunters had become a misguided group of three, riven by loss.

  “Don’t worry, Yegarov, we haven’t let anything kill you so far. You will make it out the other side of this,” Aldous said with a hopeful laugh.

  “There, you see, Yegarov? The most optimistic of us all,” Theron said, the excitement for the hunt rising in him, and from the way the conversation was going, he was willing to wager his companions were sharing at least mildly in his excitement.

  Yegarov sighed. “So what are we going to do, just ride over the hill down the road and charge at the beasts?”

  “Almost. And there is just one beast,” Theron said.

  “How can you know?” Yegarov asked.

  “I have encountered such creatures in the past. They dine alone.” Theron paused. “And I can smell it.”

  “That is complete rahat!”

  “Don’t ever doubt me, Yegarov.” Theron dismounted. He pulled his sheathed claymore off his back and began harnessing it to his horse’s saddle. “Those who doubt me end up wrong.”

  Theron took off his gauntlets; he pulled his cloak off his shoulders, and removed his chain mail shirt, tying the items to his steed. When he was done he wore only a thin white linen tunic, tucked into his leather trousers, and his leather boots.

  “Ken and Aldous, ride over the hill. Stick to the road. Take Yegarov with you,” he said. “I’ll head into the woods, climb the hill, and remain hidden. The beast will be blood drunk, and with any luck it is still feeding. We attack from both sides. I will engage it first, and you will flank it from the other side of the hill.”

  “I don’t know anything about any flanking,” Yegarov complained.

  Ken grunted.

  “You’ll learn as you go,” Aldous said.

  “You’ll learn nothing,” Theron said. “And it matters not if you do.”

  “I learned,” Aldous said.

  Theron and Ken turned to each other, grinning.

  “It’s true. The way of the sword and shield did not come easy to the boy, but here he is,” Theron said, and it wasn’t all poking fun, either. Aldous truly had come a long way. But Theron had no such optimism for Yegarov.

  “Nor did riding…or even running, for that matter,” added Ken. “Flanking came a bit more naturally, though.” As usual, Kendrick’s expression was iron solid, but Theron understood the joke and laughed. And if it wasn’t a joke, he laughed all the same. It felt good, this laughter.

  And then he thought of Chayse, his sister, dead these many months, killed at Dentin. His laughter died.

  “You are young, malleable, and a wizard,” Yegarov said. “I am old, tired, and a patron of the arts. It is far too late for me to learn flanking. I will stay with the cart.”

  From his horse’s saddlebags Theron retrieved a small, one-handed crossbow that, when armed, could fire four bolts in rapid succession before it needed to be reloaded and rearmed. He loaded it and handed the weapon to Yegarov.

  “If the beast comes barreling out of the woods drenched in blood and screaming for more, shoot it right in the eye,” Theron said, pointing to his scarred eye socket.

  Yegarov gulped.

  “Loosen your cravat, Yegarov. It’s choking you,” Kendrick said. The red faced, sweaty-browed lord took Ken’s advice, but it didn�
��t seem to help.

  Theron pulled a one-handed short sword free of a scabbard on the saddle. It had belonged to his sister. She had had two of them. Aldous carried the other now.

  He turned and went into the green, foggy woods. He did not look back. He took deep breaths and moved at a quick pace, his footfalls nearly silent.

  With each step his head throbbed from the morning’s contest in the breaking square. He ignored the pain.

  The trees reminded him of home, and as his heart raced and his light footfalls glided across the forest floor he thought of his sister, thought of good times, when they were children running through the forests of Wardbrook, playing at being hunters, the most legendary of hunters. They had run in the ravines and the bogs of the estate, Theron swinging a big stick like a sword, Chayse pretending a smaller, thinner one was her bow. And it was not but a few years before he swung a real sword and she let fly arrows from a real bow.

  “No beast will break us, brother, because we will never fear them. The predator never fears its prey,” she had said as a girl time and time again, and she had said it as a young woman. She had been true to her words when she died, fearlessly fighting the rat horde of the Emerald Witch, drenched in the blood of her enemies, surrounded by their corpses.

  The stench of the feeding swine intensified. He was close. Just over the hill now. Theron went low, holding the short sword in a reverse grip as he crept on all fours up to the top of the hill, using roots that burst out from the dirt as stairs and grips for his free hand. Dense trees around him, pine and ash as tall as towers and some of them as thick. He examined the bottom of the hill, peering past the trees, trying to find a sign of the corpses or the beast. He could not see anything; his line of sight was obscured by the density of trees.

  There was a gust of wind, and on it Theron could taste his prey.

  The hunter stayed low, remaining on all fours as he descended the steep opposite side of the hill. Once again he gripped at exposed roots and small protruding rocks as he attempted to move from behind tree to tree to keep out of sight and stay quiet. Halfway down to the gulch at the bottom of the hill, he heard the crunch of bone and the squelching of flesh, and the snorting, struggling breaths of the thing smothering its snout in human meat. The sound came from Theron’s right, so he stayed halfway up the hill and moved laterally, hiding behind trees and peering out every ten meters or so, to make sure he was still the hunter and not the prey.