The Exodus Sagas: Book III - Of Ghosts And Mountains

by Jason R Jones

  “Weelllserrry filllimigga?” Dalliunn Cloudwatcher asked, Zen’s warhammer in hand, bounding ahead of his bearded scouting partner.

  “Aye, we will find em’ don’t worry, we will.” Tannek looked, one last time at the doors to Marlennak. The pillars were grand, the northern steps were massive, but his journey to nowhere seemed larger than life at this very moment.

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  Saberrak walked into the valley after a large turn in the pass. He stood by the latest totem of horned skull, bones, feathers, and blood. He looked back, Shinayne had not caught up yet, he looked up, nothing. Night was approaching, the sun in the east fell behind the peaks of the Misathi. It had been seven days since Marlennak now, and the noises in the night were closer. Last night he heard the chanting, but his friends would not let him go. He was tired of it all, his friends were getting no sleep, all of them watching the cliffs under the stars. The minotaur pulled his enchanted axe from the dragon’s cave and cut the totem down. He picked up the horned skull, twice the size of his own horned head. He unfastened his belt.

  Shinayne watched the peaks, rounding turn after turn in the pass. They had found spiral cactus several times, and the last three days had been mostly downhill. They all had made good time. Zen found a way to eat the plant by boiling its spikey leaves without the roots or red flowers. It tasted like grapefruit, almost. Regardless, they had some water and energy, the complaining dwindled to a dull roar instead of a constant turmoil. Her thoughts stopped their positive outlook, seeing what looked like Saberrak relieving himself on a ruined totem.

  “No! What are you doing?!” She ran toward him, but he had finished and was halfway up the slope when she arrived. She chased up the slope, not sure what he was doing, but certain it was not a good idea.

  “Here, skulking bastards! You want to follow me?! Follow this!” Saberrak roared and threw the horned Mogi skull, covered in his own urine, down the south side of the pass into the valley far below.

  “What are you doing, taunting them? You fool.” Shinayne was nearly out of breath, and not in time.

  “You need no sleep, nor I for the most part! But our three friends, they do! They toss at night with every noise, they wake up constantly, and it is wearing on them Shinayne.”

  “I think it is wearing on you more than anyone. You want a fight, you want to kill those that would dare hunt Saberrak Agrannar, don’t you?”

  “I want us safe, that is all.”

  “And that was safe?”

  “No, that was to let them know that we do not fear them.”

  “We, or you?”

  “Me, I do not fear them or their games!”

  “And pissing on a skull proved that how?”

  “So they can come and track me, find me, face me anytime they wish.”

  “I am sure they will appreciate the gesture, nothing says face me like pee on a skull to a cannibalistic giant tribe.” Shinayne chuckled, shook her head, and walked back down the slope to head west.

  “Well, now they know! Don’t you!?” Saberrak yelled from the bottom of his chest into the southern valley.

  The five companions traveled until the moons caressed the stars. Their sleepless night was haunted by screeches of women, sliding pebbles from high cliffs, and far off chanting in a strange tongue. Footsteps awoke them all on two occasions, but even with quick magicked light from Gwenne, there was nothing there.

  The next day the sun was covered in clouds, an eastbound storm, too high to give any rain, whipped debris constantly. The sun was shielded, but their faces and bodies still took a toll of fighting the winds and the dust that burned their skin red. By evening, the trek had resumed its normal ups and downs, and the winds had slowed to a reasonably tolerable breeze.

  They came to a worn wooden bridge, a winding ford below it, and the smell of fish washed over them. They raced to the river, but it was dry from the summer heat, the fish rotted in the dried mud. They tracked a mile in each direction to see if water had accumulated anywhere close, but it had not. Evening came, their water was empty. They had not seen a totem or a spiral cactus the whole day.

  Camp was similar, the stars were covered by light clouds, the moons cast a wicked glow through the mists of the sky, and no one could sleep. Hunger hurt, the thirst nagged, and weariness mixed with paranoia put everyone into a terrible silence.

  Saberrak snored, falsely, waiting for the elf to meditate or at least turn her back. When she did, he quietly got up and meandered ahead. He stopped, looked back, no one was watching. The minotaur walked some more, still his friends slept or rested without knowing he was gone.

  He removed his leather and hide boots, his belt and bags, everything but his two greataxes, one in each hand. Naked, he stalked out into the Misathi Mountains. Up slopes of warm rock under his toes, past another vale, over two cliffs, he even traversed a rock ledge in the dark unlit night. He set down his axes, took the collected red dust from a cavern corner, and dusted his entire body. Then he spit on his axes, wiped the red sand all over making a paste to hide the sheen from the steel. He wiped the same on his horns. He imagined he looked much like the red minotaur with the dragon now, but he did not care.

  Further south he stalked, toward the chanting and the footsteps that had plagued them, day and night for so long. He saw a fire, green fire. Then two, then ten he saw as he kept heading south in between peaks. They were spread out far and wide, miles to the east and west, many well ahead of where they were now. The chanting grew louder, he was close to one, maybe a few hundred feet. Saberrak crouched over a bluff and looked down to the green fire in the night.

  He saw the Mogi, not the old feeble woman that Zen and Dalliunn had killed. No, these were men and younger women, even children. The men had horns galore on their heads, nearly sixten feet tall they were. Gray skin, thin muscled physiques, braids of black hair braided down their backs, and they all had tusks like a boar or an ogre. The women were smaller, by a foot or so, and the children ranged from seven to twelve feet tall. The smallest Mogi he saw was as big as him, the rest, twice that or more. The women had long nails of white and no hair, while the men had black nails and braids. Besides breasts, one would hardly know the difference.

  The minotaur watched, these naked gray giants with solid black eyes danced around a green fire. Six men, eight women, and six looked to be with child, and four children. Their pupils were miniscule slivers of silver, just enough to tell where they were looking, but nothing else. The men jumped up and down, the women chanted, the children just watched.

  “Raaghaha, rahaga, mogaha, ramogahi!”

  Over and over it went, the same words, for an hour. Then they all stopped. They all looked to the sky, at things that Saberrak could not see. He looked around, then it came out from behind them, to the south, and they fell to their knees and waved their arms.

  A taller male, scars of strange designs upon his chest, walked forward. He had chains and feathers adorning his horns, a spear made of vertebrae all tied and to a point, and he jingled when he stepped. He threw a bag, made of patchworked skins, toward the fire. Dozens of spiral cactus fell out, roots and all. The Mogi tossed them into the summoned fire, strange and green, yet it ignited them the same. Now Saberrak knew why it had been days without seeing any.

  This decorated one, pointed to a female, and she approached. He took her by the arm, she did not struggle. It was her time. He plunged the spear into her chest, pushed again and it came out the other side. He removed it, yet she still stood. The leader reached his hand inside, pulled out a black heart dripping with pasty black ichor, and ate it. She fell into the fire, without scream or objection. All six men, seven women, and four children ate the female that crackled on the fire. They ate every bit. Legs were passed, arms as well, the bone knives came out and so did the organs shortly after. Saberrak turned away, more from the sense of normality they had in eating their own than the actual sight of it. When he looked back down, nothing but a horned head and bones remained. The leader w
as offered the head, and he sucked out the eyes and the insides with horrible slurps. When he was finished, the skull was polished and eaten clean.

  The shaman, as Saberrak had guessed him to be, stood in the fire now, seemingly unaffected. He lifted another skull above his head as the other Mogi waved their arms again. Shadows flitted in and out of the fire, danced from the sky and into it, almost as if he controlled them. Then he saw it, he saw himself.

  The green fire crackled, the skull he had thrown them was in the fire, in the hands of this giant shaman, and Saberrak saw an image of himself rise from it in the flames. The image however, was red and naked, as he was this very moment. The Mogi all screeched, chanted again, and the minotaur felt the hair on his body stand up. He went to stand, the image stood. He raised his right hand with his axe in it, the image in the flickering green flame did the same.

  “Rahagama, udhara, mogamhahada!” The Mogi Shaman pointed up to the cliff with his spear, the six males grabbed their spears and pointed. They pointed right at Saberrak.

  He ran. Not from fear, but from common sense. Saberrak ran like the wind in a hurricane. He jumped rocks, they still pursued. He dove over ledges, they kept coming. He turned, twisted, veered this way and that, he could still hear the thunderous chase behind him. He turned into a cavern that faced north, it was a dead end. Saberrak backed up into the cave, it was nearly fifteen feet high. He looked left and right, almost twenty feet across and twice that deep. His axes were at his sides, he crouched, horns lowered.

  The first of the giant gray cannibals leapt over the cave entrance from the south, it kept running. Two more dropped down in front of him, they stopped, looking to the east and west, then they ran ahead. Another Mogi landed, slid in the rock, and it kept searching out in the valleys.

  That’s four, the shaman sent six hunters. Just wait for the other two to pass, then run for camp. Just wait Saberrak.

  He talked to himself for minutes, then he stood. Two bone speartips shone in the faint light the clouds outside allowed. The spears came in, followed by their stalking wielders. The Mogi hunters ducked under the cavern ceiling, sniffing the air. Saberrak waited, trapped in the back of the cave. Their eyes glimmered toward him.

  He ran again, surprising them in the silent indenture of the mountain. Right into the middle of them, spears slamming into stone as he reached their legs, the minotaur jumped into the air and swung both greataxes out as he passed in between the gray giants. He landed, rolled, and turned up on his feet just in time to dive out of the way of the spears again. Both Mogi were split across their ribs, bleeding black down their sides.

  They charged him, thrusting spears to keep him at bay, yet he did not stay down. Saberrak crossed his axes to block one spear, then turned his shoulder and snapped it. The next one came for his chest, he spun, axes out, and cleaved it in two as the bone tip pierced the red rock floor. Their black clawed hands used their spears as clubs, rearing back to strike him, but their heads and broken bone shafts hit the ceiling. The minotaur lunged savagely, cleaving an axe, then the other, into the stomach of the Mogi to his left. He watched the other one rear back to hit him as his back was exposed and defenseless. He dropped his grip, leaving the axes buried deep in his opponent, and hit the floor.

  The bone club smashed his axes even deeper into the Mogi on his right and it fell to the its knees. Saberrak did not hesitate, grabbed his axes, pulled them free, and cleaved wildly into the shins and thighs of the Mogi that still stood. Black blood splattered the entire cavern. The gray gladiator chopped down on the necks as giant arms reached for him. He cut off the arms that grabbed, then continued to butcher the two Mogi giants until their heads fell free. His breathing was heavy, his arms tired, but two lay dead at his feet. He took the braids, heads attached, and the broken spears.

  Saberrak walked to the top of the cliff before his camp, covered in black sticky blood that smelled of rot. He did not care. He took the spears, thrust them into the rock over and over until they held firm. He stepped onto a pile of windswept red stone, smooth and warm in the dark, and planted the heads, one on each spear. He took his axes from the ground, and roared like a beast into the Misathi Mountains.

  Shinayne jumped up, hearing the savage yell of her friend to the south. She turned, Zen, James, and Gwenneth were up as well. She strapped on her blades, waited for her friends, then she heard it. Footsteps. They all drew weapons.

  “Gwenneth, I need light, bright as you can when I give the signal.” Shinayne whispered. Gwenne nodded and readied her staff.

  The steps were closer, closer now than they had dared come before. Shinayne waited, crouched, then swished her shortblade.

  Gwenneth spoke quietly, “Hiviarthes!”, and golden light as the sun in the morning illuminated the vale of Deadman’s Pass.

  They expected a Mogi giant, maybe several. They were not prepared for what strolled down the slope. Saberrak, naked, red dust covering his gray hide walked toward them, axes in hand. His blades, horns, and body were streaked with black streams of blood. Behind him, two decapitated heads were speared on top of the ridge for all to see. The braids waved in the breeze.

  “Saberrak, what have you done?” Shinayne gasped.

  “I paid a visit to our stalkers. I don’t think they care for me much. The feeling is very mutual.” He walked past them to get his clothing.

  “How many are there?” Zen looked around, listened, waiting for them to come any moment.

  “Ten or so camps, roughly fifteen in each camp. They are all around us, even ahead to the west. Half are male hunters.” Saberrak put his belt and cloth back on, then his boots.

  “That would be around seventy Mogi hunters then. Alden have mercy.” James grabbed his gear and began putting his chainmail on.

  “Two less now.” Saberrak huffed. “They have been scouting ahead of us, taking the cactus. I saw it.”

  “Now what do we do?” Gwenneth waited a second before she had her answer.

  “Rahaga mogahara ragahamahas!”

  The war chant grew louder, male voices this time, echoing from camp to camp, tribe to tribe across the mountains. The hair stood up on all their necks, all save Saberrak.

  “We run, that is what. Let’s go.” Shinayne grabbed her gear.

  “They can see us in their fires, they watch us with those shadows. Destroy every totem you see, quickly. If we do not stop, they can’t tracks us as fast. Keep to any caves, they don’t fight well when they have no room to stand.” Saberrak ran with Shinayne, grinning from horn to horn.

  “I suppose you are happy, now that we are going to be mobbed and eaten by giant cannibals? They are cannibals, right?”

  “For certain, I watched them have dinner.”

  “Wonderful. I do not want to die here, Saberrak.”

  “You won’t.”

  “Not very reassuring at the moment.” She kept running.

  “They will follow me, not you. Remember that, they track by the blood of their own, and I won’t be washing it off any time soon. I will be the bait and the decoy this time, you just keep heading west Shinayne.” Saberrak smiled.

  “You enjoy this, don’t you?”

  “No, enjoyment would be a good fight. Slaughtering evil giants, protecting you from cannibal tribes, through the mountains of certain death, I cannot think of the word to describe it.”

  “Pleasure?” Shinayne looked at him as they ran ahead.

  “Close enough.” Saberrak smiled, running in the night, the hunt was on.

  Kendari III:III

  Ruins of Stillwood, Eastern Kivanis

  Early morning dew put a shine to his boots, dampened his black cloak, and made the lifeless forest glimmer with the intermittent rays of the western rising sun. The birds watched him pass, rabbits sat still, and not a sound emerged from what a normal forest would evoke at dawn. His footsteps, quiet as they were, made the loudest noise within earshot. Kendari knew he was here, he was home, in Stillwood.

  He passed the outer wall, in moss covered de
privation it was, and continued inward. Three towers, once grand brown marble of ten stories each, had but thirty feet of foundation that was wrapped with green and gray vines.

  “The three towers of the Maglesh, my you have not aged well at all.” Kendari smiled, though his stomach ached in shooting pain. He knew that his deal with the demon Nareene would protect him from most holy and sacred places that his curse prevented him from entering, but this area was likely beyond her hellish powers.

  His mind wandered, envisioning what the entrance to Stillwood used to look like. Tall white and gray trees covered in green ivy and vines it was. It was often full of visiting highborne elves of gold from Kilikala. Scattered families from the tan savages in Gualidura lived here too. Even the occasional monarch of dark hair from Shalokahn would venture to Stillwood to implore the mighty court of the Whitemoon. But his people, the Loestal River elves that founded Aloeste and New Aloeste, the elves that lived on the Agarian continent long before the northerners knew of it, they ruled and called Stillwood their home.

  Kendari walked past, his nausea was mild yet he continued in. The grove of trees, once flourishing with bridges for children and swings as well, now sat dead and white with bare branches. He saw a score of homes, what was left of them. The crumbled temple to the Hedim Anah, the steps to the auditorium where plays and song used to decorate the air with sound, and the cursed swordsman walked through the merchant district that was but overgrown and empty.

  You used to play there…

  You once bought honey and apples for your mother here…

  You sang in the Ehlirien Choir there as a boy…

  Do you still remember…

  “Silence!” Kendari drew his blades, the voices came from all around him. He saw nothing, but heard the words, four different voices in the elven tongue.

  His abdomen throbbed, he knew he was near now. He passed the castle of the rulers of Stillwood, a grand but slim manor once, now toppled and buried in leaves and weeds. Kendari walked further in, further east, toward the center of his home of birth. The statue of Siril, majestic still and standing in elven grace over fifty feet high. His hand reached for a statue across, a statue that lay broken. The arch that once marked the entrance to the open court of the Whitemoon was shattered. He looked to his left, he saw the face of Seirena, cracked stone eyes staring back at him.