by Paul Yoder
“So all that commotion at the gate was because of Nomad?” Arie questioned as she trotted her horse alongside Fin and Cavok.
“Oh yeah. Had a small platoon chasing him down, and one at the gate ready for him. I doubt they were able to stop him from breaking past the gate patrol. He moved like a bat out of hell,” Fin explained between breaths, both Fin and Cavok having to sprint to keep up with Arie’s horse.
Making their way through the thick of the forest was slowing them down, Arie having to trot her horse around felled trees and thickets multiple times as they caught each other up on the situation. What starlight that did shine down through the woods canopy was being diffused further by the fog that covered most of the woods.
“Then he must have broken through. On my way over here, I saw troops on the road. It did take a while to find you two in the woods off trail. I’d guess they’ve made good time on their way to hunt down Nomad. They had horses. I don’t suspect Nomad was on one.”
“Speaking of horses,” Fin cut in, “I know Cavok wouldn’t mind it, but I can’t keep this pace forever. Maybe you should go ahead and we’ll catch up as quick as we can. Nomad might be run down sooner than we’ll be able to make it to his aid at this rate.”
Arie trotted past two hitched horses calmly waiting for Reza, who, unbeknownst to the horses, was not returning for them.
“Well…that certainly is convenient,” Fin said as he came into the clearing.
“It’s not convenience, it’s planning,” Arie said. “Though, Reza should have been here. I bet she’s on the chase ahead of us.”
Unhitching them from the tree they were left at, Fin and Cavok mounted up and followed Arie, who was now headed to the road, kicking her horse into a full-on gallop as soon as she made it to the wide dirt path.
A slight breeze picked up, pushing the fog into swirls along the dark road by the lakeside. Starlight was not enough to illuminate much of the scene below on the road under the oak canopy where a red-eyed shadowy figure turned to hiss at an approaching woman atop a white horse, pulling up to a halt just before the defensive man.
“Hiro! Please, I know you’re in there, please, fight it!” Reza called, jumping down off of her horse, coming up to him with a hand held out to him.
He snarled, hackles raised, and ripped off the trail and into the woods, leaving Reza quickly behind.
“You there! Stay where you are!” a voice called from a ways down the road, breaking Reza’s gaze away from Nomad. Six or seven guards on horseback rode towards her through the fog.
Grabbing a satchel from her mount’s rigging, she slung it over her back and—though every fiber of her warned her away from rushing into a lightless forest with a feral predator—dashed off into the woods after Nomad, getting a glimpse of his red eyes as the rest of him was black and grey, blending in well with the dark woods.
The woods were thick and following Nomad’s trail was no easy task. If her garb wasn’t so sturdy, all the snagging on branches and bushes would have quickly derobed her, but she was following Nomad’s wake, and he had trailblazed somewhat of an opening for her to stumble through.
She could hear the rustle of troops behind her, roadside. Steel on flint sounded as torches were lit aflame, their light dancing through the thick woods as she pushed onwards towards the direction Nomad had gone.
She could see Nomad caught on something up ahead, and getting closer, she noticed that he was all wrapped up in vines. He was ripping through them, uprooting bush and roots, but it was costing him distance as Reza leapt over a trodden brush, catching up to him quickly now.
“Hiro, please, wait! I’m here to help you!” Reza cried, rushing up to him, grabbing one of his arms, trying to turn him around.
Letting out a lion’s roar, Nomad did turn around, but it was to bat Reza to the side, slamming her so hard that she was launched a few yards over bush and vine, chest slamming into a tree trunk, memories of the arisen king slamming her as he had that one night months ago flashing through her head, blackness befalling her as she went unconscious.
11
Back Woods Scuffle
“Reza, hey!” a voice called, causing her to open her eyes, everything dark and blurry at first, with Arie’s face slowly coming into view.
“Hiro!” she called out, trying to get to her feet, but instead dipped into Arie’s arms as she began to wobble backwards.
“Reza, slow down. Tell us what happened,” Fin said, helping to hold Reza’s off-balanced weight.
Steadying herself a moment, looking around, she noticed where she had engaged Nomad at in the thicket of vines, then noticed the trampled path passing through that area as though a whole group of people had recently tromped that way.
“The soldiers—looks like they got ahead of us,” Reza said through gasps of breath, feeling her chest bruised where she had slammed the tree.
“Yeah, no kidding. At least their trail won’t be hard to follow, and if they’re close on Nomad’s heels, then we should still be able to track him down. Lucky we saw you though, you are a ways off the trail over here. You alright?”
Reza held her ribs and began walking back towards the fresh trail in the thickets, resisting the urge to grunt through the pain. Arie could tell Reza was shrugging off what was likely a nasty bruise or fracture, but Reza toughing through her injury did make things easier for them, since she knew they didn’t have time to stop and take care of her.
“Fin and Arie, make sure we don’t lose him. Reza and I will catch up with you as soon as we can,” Cavok ordered tersely.
Without a word, Fin and Arie nodded and sprinted off through the woods after the destructive wake of the soldiers. Reza was about to protest Cavok’s command but let it go, seeing that the two were already out of sight.
Cavok didn’t speak another word as he marched behind Reza, letting her head the trail at her pace, the two following the now very well-trodden path.
It had taken Arie and Fin less than an hour to catch up to the Sephentho search party, and though they considered circumventing the group to track down Nomad first, they decided against that as it was very thick woods, and there was a possibility of losing the trail or being detected by the search party if they did.
The night wore long, and the morning sun soon showed through the treeline as the search party began to slow down, orders being barked as the group scuttled frantically in an outcropping up ahead.
“He’s coming around on you, sir! Watch out!” one of the guards shouted as Arie caught a glimpse of what she assumed was Nomad flailing out at the same captain that had released her from jail the day before.
Swords and stud-covered cudgels were brandished, swinging to keep Nomad at bay as the seven guards encircled him by a tree.
Arie looked to Fin, waving him to come closer. The two were not but a dozen or so lunges to the scuffle, but the thick overgrowth covered them well enough that she doubted they would be seen by the engaged guards.
“What’s the plan?” Fin asked, huddling next to Arie, both well hidden behind a full holly bush.
She watched the guards a moment longer as they smacked Nomad with their clubs, a few slashing his arms as he lashed out. It seemed the guards would have the upper hand in this fight, Nomad’s usual tremendous strength flagging the longer the scene went on.
“Nomad’s going to need some help. I’d like to not kill those guards if possible, but that’s going to take some extra care. You comfortable distracting them while I pick them off at range?”
“Hmm, seven against one? You better be good on your word about helping with that bow. And you better not hit me either in the heat of it.”
Without answering, Arie was off through the woods, bow out, searching for a perch where she’d be able to pick her targets with ease.
Shaking his head at the recklessness of stepping up to seven armed guards on his own, he unclipped four of his bronze throwing daggers and, after taking a stabilizing breath, stepped out fr
om the bushes and walked towards the harrying guards who continued to mutilate a flagging Nomad.
“Sir! Someone in the woods!”
Turning around, the captain considered the new approaching threat.
“Damn,” the captain grunted, having looked up at the approaching stranger just as Nomad came in and knocked the man down, being pushed back by a flashing short sword just before descending upon the prone man.
“Bron, take care of him,” the captain barked at the man who called out Fin’s arrival.
Fin held his hands up nonthreateningly but continued to approach the group who were having difficulty even with an extremely exhausted Nomad.
“Leave, now,” the man the captain had named Bron said in a deep, threatening voice. The man was large, not quite as big as Cavok, but close, and Fin knew he didn’t want to get in a brawl with the brute, so he came to a halt ten feet from him.
“I said leave!” Bron yelled, brandishing a nasty studded club, approaching close enough to Fin that he had to backstep or risk being within the man’s threat range.
“I think it’s you gentlemen that need to leave, though I doubt you’ll heed my words, I’ll at least give you the courtesy of a warning. We have you surrounded, and you’re harassing our man,” Fin said in a voice that held a lethal edge, now lowering his hands to hover over his unbuckled daggers that glinted a bright, warm red-gold in the morning light.
Bron, Fin could see, was no novice to warfare. A fool would scoff at potential bluffs like Fin just issued, but Bron made no confident chuckle, instead eyeing the surrounding woods quickly to check if there was any merit to the seemingly lone wanderer’s claim.
Raising his cudgel, Bron rushed the distance between him and Fin in a flash, but after the second stride, just as he raised his club, a whistling arrow shrieked through the woods, punching through the large man’s arm, tip coming out the other end of his bulging bicep.
Fin grabbed the faltering man’s wrist, twisting around to deftly place his feet within Bron’s wide stance, and threw the off-balanced man head over heels into a thorny holly bush, scratching him up as he wriggled around to try and right himself.
The encounter had not been overlooked, two of the other guards rushing over to engage Fin, making no small talk as a swordsman and another cudgel wielder came right in at him.
Fin turned, flicking both wrists, once, twice, and out came his polished bronze daggers, flipping point over handle towards the two guards. The first two, though hitting their target, stubbornly bounced off their uniform lamellar chest piece. The following two daggers, however, found home in exposed flesh, sinking a few inches deep into the swordsman’s thigh and one directly into the hand of the club wielder, tacking the stick to the man’s hand.
The volley of daggers caused a moment of hesitation in the two attackers’ step, but the charge continued after realizing the wounds weren’t fatal, the guard with the club making it first to Fin, swinging the now bloodied club at his head, attempting to slam Fin unconscious.
Fin, hearing a rustle in the bush behind him, dropped low and sidestepped to the left, juking around the attacker, tripping him as he stumbled past, falling into Bron who was poised to lunge at Fin from behind, now being forced to help steady his comrade.
A short sword came point first at Fin, spurring him to twirl to the side of it, gripping the man’s sword arm, rolling with it extended over his shoulder, snapping the man’s arm beyond the ability to bend, dislocating it and letting go, moving past the screaming man towards the next two guards that now faced him.
Two more arrows came screaming into the fray, one thudding into the cudgel fellow’s leg as the other narrowly missed Bron, who ducked out of the way just in time.
The whistler arrows had, by this point, garnered the rest of the guards’ attention, and the sight of three bloodied guards over by Fin, and a few of them wearing claw marks and bruises from Nomad’s demonic grip did little to reassure the captain’s confidence in the quickly waning odds of him getting his troops safely home to their families that night.
“Alright! Hold your fire! Let me tend to my men and we’ll be gone.”
Things were still for a moment, even Nomad recognizing an agreement was being struck just then. Fin brushed fingers over his swept hilt dagger, eyeing the group, keeping track of those on the ground to his right, and those standing to his left.
“Alright,” Fin said in an unusually calm voice, “take your men and leave us be. Don’t attempt to regroup and hunt us or there will be no parley next time.”
With gritted teeth, the captain let his quarry be, waving for his men to gather Bron and the others, leaving Nomad completely exhausted, breathing heavily slumped against a tree base.
“If you ever return to Castle Sephentho, orders will be to kill on sight,” the captain hissed out as he led his men back through the forest the direction they had come.
“Well ol’ boy,” Fin mused, taking a look at a hacked up, heaving Nomad, “you’ve sure seen better days, haven’t you?”
Usually the one to bring light to a dim situation, even Fin this time seemed saddened by what rotten circumstances fate had decided to unleash on his good friend.
12
The Ancient Grove
“They saw us, but didn’t pursue,” Reza said, a bit confused at the situation.
“We just whipped their asses. They’ll not be interested in any run-ins till they get back to their castle and get reinforcements,” Fin answered, turning back to take note of the two stragglers, both Reza and Cavok finally catching up to Fin and Arie.
Pointing to Nomad as he finished collecting his two thrown daggers from the bushes, he caught Reza and Cavok up on the situation.
“Nomad’s exhausted and in pain. Not sure if he’s aware of who we are just yet, but we’ll need to figure out what we’re going to do with him soon. He’s catching his breath now, but who knows how long that’ll be for.”
Arie jumped down out of a tree beside the two newcomers, walking into the clearing, saying, “You made it just in time. Those guards just left naught but a minute ago. We were waiting to see if they were going to return before dealing with Nomad.”
“By the looks of it, I’d say he’s already been dealt with. We should see about staunching the bleeding,” Cavok said, moving in to inspect Nomad’s wounds.
Wait, don’t get too close—” Arie started, but Cavok was already kneeling next to a delirious Nomad, who, for a moment, snapped out of his internal struggling to take note of the large man reaching out for him.
Nomad backhanded Cavok’s arm so hard that it off-balanced him, falling over as Nomad scrambled to his feet. Hanging onto the tree for balance for a moment, Nomad eyed the group of watchers for a split second, then sprinted away through the tall field of grass.
“No—” Arie started, holding a hand out towards Nomad, rushing off out of the clearing and into the field after him, the rest of the group running to catch up with Reza limping in the back trying to not fall too far behind.
Fin caught up to Arie quickly enough, and the two trailed Nomad closely. Though he was sprinting recklessly headlong into the obscuring grass fields, he was badly injured, causing him to stumble often. Reza was having a harder time catching up, and Cavok held back to make sure they didn’t leave her behind.
Bursting through the wall of grass that ended at another forest treeline, Nomad tumbled down a knoll, streaking the moss-covered forest floor in red-black blood.
Splashing into a small stream beneath a springhead, Nomad went to stand, slipping and thrashing in the spring a few times before he was able to get to his feet again.
Looking back, there were no signs of his pursuers. He started forward again, stumbling along the mossy carpet of the heavily shaded forest grove he had stumbled into, going deeper and deeper into it.
Arie and Fin stalked silently to the side, keeping up with him, waiting for Cavok and Reza who were taking an awfully long time to catch up.
They needed Cavok’s muscle, they knew. If it came to a wrestling match, neither of them wanted any part of Nomad’s ferocity. They felt Cavok might be their only chance at subduing him if it came to that.
Nomad halted, dead in his tracks, and Fin and Arie stopped as well, though why Nomad had come to a halt, they weren’t sure.
“A darkness, you bring to my grove,” a calm voice whispered, which would have been passed off as the breeze or the soft rolling of the creek if Fin and Arie hadn’t been so still and silent.
Nomad stood deathly still, looking off to the side, and as Fin and Arie concentrated on what Nomad was looking at, their eyes widened, as a human-shaped sapling slowly moved towards Nomad now.
Nomad growled, crouching, ready to spring at the tree-like figure, but Arie stood up, shouting, “Nomad, don’t!” distracting him as the figure raised its arm.
Vines sprung up and latched around his legs, holding him in place long enough for thicker roots to sprout and blur to life. The roots pulled him down to the ground, lashing him to the soil along a knotty grandfather tree, its gnarled trunk moving slightly to pin Nomad fast in place.
As Nomad thrashed and squirmed, the roots bore down harder, sinking him further into the rich soil, partially burying him until, at once, he stopped, dropping his head back while heaving, trying to catch his breath, only being able to lull his head from side to side, struggling to stay conscious.
Turning its head, the tree-like figure looked towards Fin and Arie, then to Cavok and Reza who came rushing into the grove, taking cautious note of the stranger as well as Fin and Arie coming down from the knoll across the way.
A light breeze playfully ruffled the treetops above, dropping a few acorns along the moss carpet before Arie stepped towards the treekin and asked, “Are you…a dryad?”
The feminine figure’s skin slowly morphed and shifted, bark, leaf, and vine making up what seemed to be living clothes or armor. Her face seemed like a detailed wood carving by the hand of some long-forgotten master.
