Stillbright

by Daniel M Ford

  He immediately threw his weight forward, trapping the thing’s legs under his body and seizing hold of it with both hands, curling them into fists. Feathers tore free from his grip as the thing flapped its wing; its other arm could not break his grip, though he felt it loosening.

  He didn’t have to hold it for long, thankfully. Idgen Marte wasted no time; she sidestepped, brought her blade up, and then swept down into its neck, the blow sending a burbling spray of blood into the air. Allystaire ducked his head to avoid the spray, smelling the warm animal stink of the beast, not unlike a horse, or a dog, or a falcon, or some mix of all three. There was another blow, and another, till the chimera’s head finally rolled free, and still the body beneath Allystaire twitched and quivered for a few more seconds till, finally, it lay still.

  He pulled himself to his feet and went immediately to Idgen Marte’s side, pulling off his left glove. She tried waving him away but he planted himself implacably in front of her. “You have wounds, and Goddess only knows what disease that thing might carry. Show.”

  “Not yet,” she grated, through clenched teeth, pointing at Bethe, who trembled on the grass with her hands clutched over her head. Allystaire turned towards her, but Torvul waved him away. He shifted his crossbow to one hand, and with the other seized a potion from pouch and flicked the cork out of it with a thumb. He knelt next to the woman, speaking in hushed tones and holding the bottle out. With just a few seconds of coaxing, she took the potion and drank, and suddenly stood. The dwarf took her by the hand and led her up into his wagon, where Gideon shut the door behind them.

  As Torvul handled one problem, Idgen Marte bent and began trying to clean her sword on the grass, but Allystaire grasped her, gently, by the shoulder. The slashes on her shoulder were not deep, but they had broken through heavy leather and into the muscle. His fingers moved over blood-slick skin, and he poured forth a measure of the Goddess’s healing warmth into her body; he felt the scratches on her shoulder knit seamlessly and he lifted his hand.

  “Your other wound,” he said, looking down. Her hand was pressed over her stomach, occasional droplets of red trickling through her clenched fingers. He pried her hand away, pressed his against her wound again, and repeated the process. This wound was deeper, required more concentration. He stood stock still and barely heard her gasp when his fingertips pressed into her torn skin. She tried not to lean forward against him as the pain of the healing—and it did hurt, he knew—moved through her.

  When he finished the healing his eyes drifted closed, and they opened with a start, staring straight into Idgen Marte’s wide, dark eyes. She stepped away from him, slowly and deliberately, then she slammed her sword home in its sheath and turned to pick up her bow.

  Allystaire returned to the chimera’s corpse on the ground, toeing it over onto its back with his boot. The monster was a hideous amalgam of parts that did not fit. One leg was furred and bent like a cat’s, with a paw to match, while the other was taloned like a bird. There was the wing, and the rodent-like claw, and the wolf’s muzzle set into a man’s face, atop a man’s torso, covered with faded scraps of clothing.

  Torvul stumped over to meet Allystaire and the two studied the monster in silence while Idgen Marte, bow in hand, joined them, and Allystaire bent to retrieve his hammer.

  “Well,” Torvul said, before pausing to chew his bottom lip briefly. “Chimera.” He lifted his eyes to the other two. “Good tidings, though. They take a bit of killin’, but they do die.”

  “We should not have come this way,” Idgen Marte sneered, and Allystaire forced himself to meet her gaze, and was opening his mouth to retort, when the air was suddenly cut by a great wolf-like howl that sounded somehow too pained to be natural.

  And then the piercing screech of a hunting bird.

  And then a roaring bark.

  “And that would be the bad tidings,” Torvul managed to say, before the three exploded into motion. Torvul ran for his wagon and hopped into his seat, while Allystaire and Idgen Marte leapt into their saddles.

  “You ride with the wagon. I ride ahead with the lance,” Allystaire shouted. The horse’s eyes were wide and the great grey beast tugged at the reins, but seemed to calm once a familiar weight was on his back. Allystaire quickly lifted his helmet from the pommel of his saddle and sat it on his head with one hand. The other lifted his shield free of the saddle cleat it hung on, letting it fall on his arm till the straps hit the bend of his elbow.

  Now as armored as he was going to get, he lifted free his lance. Then he glanced upwards at the afternoon sun, forming in his mind and his heart a quick prayer. Mother, please, your guidance. If there must be death here, let it be mine. Do not let them suffer for my stupidity.

  “No one’s dying here, least of all you,” Torvul shouted, and Allystaire was suddenly aware that both the dwarf and Idgen Marte had overheard his prayer. He had little time for considering the matter, as another chimera came loping down the track at them, its body some hideous mix of canine and man. Though it ran with all four limbs upon the ground, its back legs were those of a man, weather-burned and strong, even as it loped forward in its twisted, bent-backed run.

  With no time left for thought, Allystaire’s body—and more to the point, his mount—knew precisely what to do. His knees squeezed the horse’s flanks, and the destrier gathered himself and flung his great bulk forward, hooves churning up dust. Allystaire lowered his lance and leaned forward in the saddle.

  The chimera leapt, but the lance was too long, the paladin’s arm too sure. Sharp steel took it in the collar and plunged straight out its back. The beast died with a pitiful yelp, its body writhing at the end of the lance, the force and the shock of its weight nearly tearing the weapon from Allystaire’s hand.

  He managed to hold on, his arm and shoulder straining, barely managing to keep the weapon aloft, as another chimera lumbered out of the forest at them. A bear’s head, and massive shoulders, moving unsteadily atop a man’s trunk and twisted, grey-furred, bent legs. It staggered towards him, whuffling at the air in seeming confusion, and then letting out a half-roar, half-moan, charged towards them, raising dangerously-clawed paws as it came.

  Behind him, Allystaire could hear the singing twang of Idgen Marte’s bowstring as she loosed arrows towards the top of the trees. He spared a glance from the bear-shouldered monster while struggling to lift his lance with a dead chimera on the end of it.

  The sky was alive with feathered things. Allystaire saw one man-sized, winged creature fall when a second arrow pierced it near the neck. Another he briefly saw crouched in a tree. Like the first chimera, it had only one wing, a fact that became evident when it leapt free and spiraled, screeching piteously, to its death as a crumpled heap several yards away.

  This is wrong, some part of his mind, the detached observant part that was not focused on keeping his lance aloft despite the weight and the pain it was rooting into his shoulder. These creatures are as pathetic as they are monstrous.

  And yet this thought did not stop the chimera charging him from being a threat. With a roar of pain, Allystaire was able to keep his lance aloft just enough to plunge the tip into the creature’s twisted, bent-kneed leg.

  There was no hope of saving the lance now. It tore free of Allystaire’s hand at the muted shock of impact, and it was like letting go of the weight of the world. His arm and shoulder were a flaming agony, but pain was an old acquaintance. The oldest friend he still had, and he let it wash over and through him, even as his hand closed around the haft of his hammer and drew it free. The twisted chimera was not dead, but it was down, buried beneath the weight of the first he’d speared and with several span of lance pinning it to the ground. There were no more apparent threats ahead, so he spared another look back.

  Between Idgen Marte’s bow and Torvul sparing his reins to take the occasional shot with his crossbow, the air was mostly clear. He saw one flying beast that had drifted away
, circling off above the trees.

  Reaching inwardly towards the dwarf and the warrior, rather than shout, he thought, Time to put speed on. This cannot be all of them. We can find a defendable place before nightfall and make it down the pass tomorrow if we do not linger.

  We should turn back, came Idgen Marte’s thought.

  No, Allystaire thought back, and he would have shouted if he knew how. We lose too much time if—

  We must go forward, came a voice that all three of them recognized as Gideon’s, who had once again overheard them. Please. I can feel something ahead. A kind of power. We should go to it.

  Why? The single word echoed in all of their minds as Allystaire, Torvul, and Idgen Marte responded together.

  It is something that animates these monsters. I can stop it. There was a pause. I think.

  Chapter 11

  The Cave

  There was no more discussion. They plunged upwards along the ascending trail. The wagon rattled alarmingly, and despite Torvul’s sputtered assurances of the sturdiness of dwarfish construction, they could read the worry on his deeply lined features. They ran the animals for a long time, too long, and finally with no sign of further chimera attacks, horses and ponies slowed to a walk. It grew colder, and the sun sank lower. Ardent’s breath roared in his chest and Allystaire slipped out of the saddle, but he kept hammer and shield ready.

  Idgen Marte hitched her brown courser to the back of the wagon along with their pack horse, and trotted forward to meet Allystaire as they took a brief pause. Torvul’s ponies drooped in their harness, and the alchemist clambered out of his seat. He fetched a bucket from a rope on the side of the wagon and emptied a waterskin into it, then tugged a potion out of a pouch and upended it into the water, then went to offer it to his team, letting each pony drink in turn.

  “Boy best know his business,” Idgen Marte murmured, as they watched the dwarf. Soon enough Torvul came towards Allystaire, and held out the bucket.

  “Give that great beast of yours a sip or two of this. Not too much, now.” Allystaire took the bucket, setting down his shield. He brought it to the horse’s muzzle, and Ardent dipped his nose in and began slurping. Allystaire took it away quickly, though the horse stretched his neck out for more, giving his head a vigorous shake and stamping his front hooves. Ardent’s eyes went a bit wider, and despite the lather on his shoulders and flanks, the destrier looked ready to run.

  “What did you put into this?” Allystaire handed the bucket off to Idgen Marte.

  Torvul frowned, the expression creasing his broad, hairless face from forehead to chin. “Somethin’ to keep their heads up. It won’t do the animals any good over too long a time. Enough of it and they’ll run till they keel over dead. Still, for tonight, and mayhap a bit in the morning, so long’s we give them a rest after, ought to be fine.”

  “Do you have more of it if we need it?”

  “We won’t. I don’t think…” Torvul looked back at his wagon, where Gideon’s head had emerged from inside. “Boy’s a bit uncanny, but I think he means what he says.”

  Their rest came to a quick end after all the animals were treated with Torvul’s potion, and they set off again, Gideon now riding next to Torvul, leaning forward, his eyes closed and his hands resting on his knees, concentrating intensely.

  And so they rode, the horses and ponies showing renewed vigor, eating up ground till they were off the switchback trails and onto a straighter, albeit rockier track. The wind bit at them a bit more, and the pass narrowed in places, though never so far as to threaten the safe passage of the wagon. Rock walls and mountains loomed up on either side of them, and Allystaire gripped his hammer tightly, straining to hear any sign of further monsters. Soon enough, Idgen Marte rode up to replace him at the point, but he stayed up front rather than fall back, riding side by side with her. Neither spoke, for their state of watchfulness did not allow it.

  Once, Allystaire heard an echo of the half-human, half-raptor shriek of a winged chimera, and he and Idgen Marte both started towards the noise, hands filling with weapons. The cry receded, but not their vigilance, till the moment when Gideon suddenly stood up on the wagon’s board and pointed to the left. “There!”

  Torvul hauled back on the reins to stop his ponies, and followed the boy’s extended finger. Several yards away, over rough rock and scrub, a pile of stones didn’t quite obscure the opening of a cave. It was positioned on a slight slope above the main pass, with no real tree cover to shield it.

  “The opening is large enough for man and horse,” Allystaire said, “if we can move some of the rock. Go.” He slid off Ardent’s saddle and began leading the horse up the slope, loose rocks sliding around the destrier’s hooves and onto the track. Allystaire stopped just short of the cave, planted his feet, and began digging at the rock pile with his gloved hands.

  No sooner had he begun than Torvul’s wagon halted along the track and the dwarf leveled his crossbow with one hand while swinging the door open with the other. He chanced a glance back into his little cabin, and cursed.

  “Ah dammit, the woman’s asleep. I didn’t…” The dwarf looked to Allystaire, shaking his head. “Didn’t count on this when I gave her that little tincture.”

  Idgen Marte rode up behind the wagon, her bow at her side. “Allystaire! There’s more coming. Half a score, mayhap a dozen. Slow, scared I think—but they’re coming.”

  “Cold,” Allystaire spat, even as he shoveled away another rock. The way was clear enough for most of them—but not for him. More importantly, not the horses.

  Gideon, meanwhile, leapt down out of Torvul’s wagon, holding in both hands a long piece of the bar stock the dwarf had purchased back in Londray. “I cannot carry her,” he said, as he ran to join Allystaire at the cave mouth. “But I can do this. The right tool makes almost anyone as strong as a knight.” With that, he plunged one end of the bar amid the rocks, rooted it around, and then began tugging on it, throwing all his weight into it. The pile broke free and rushed down around Allystaire’s ankles, almost tripping him as he began running for the wagon. Torvul set down his bow, hopped up the steps, and ducked inside. The dwarf came out carrying the woman and handed her over to Allystaire.

  Meanwhile, Idgen Marte had hopped atop the wagon and drawn her bow, tilting the arrowhead high up to give it distance, then loosed. The shaft was quickly out of sight, but Allystaire thought the wind carried to his ears a distant, canid yelp of pain.

  Bethe was barely conscious in his arms; whatever Torvul had given her had dulled her senses considerably. When Allystaire ducked into the mouth of the cave, and the late afternoon sun was suddenly dimmed, she sat upright in his arms and tried to scramble away, her face frozen in a rictus of fear.

  Wincing, Allystaire gripped her tighter and laid her down against the rough rock wall just a few feet in. She tried to break his grip and could not. Her mouth closed in a thin, tight line and she began breathing hard and sharp, her eyes wide open and her clawed hands scrabbling at his arms.

  “Bethe,” Allystaire said sharply, his voice echoing loudly in the cavern. “Bethe, listen to me. I know it is dark. I know why that frightens you, but there is no sorcerer coming with a hooked knife for you here. It is dark, but you will see light again, I promise. Have Faith in the Mother. Have Faith in my right arm, and Torvul’s magic, and Idgen Marte’s blade, and you will see such brightness that you never need fear the dark again.” The woman’s hands relaxed and she ceased buffeting him, and that would have to do. He stood, ducking beneath the cave’s roof instinctively, though it was several feet above his head. Torvul appeared with his lantern in one hand, crossbow in the other, and Gideon in tow.

  Torvul quickly sparked his lamp to life—how Allystaire never quite saw—and unshuttered it, throwing bright white light through the cave. It was enormous and full of points reaching gracefully up from the ground or somehow threateningly down from the ceiling like liquid stone
, poised forever on the point of a drop. The light fell across a dark red smudge that drew his eye. He had little time to study it, but he knew instinctively that it had been shaped. Whether by hand or by instrument he could not guess, but it was some kind of painting on the stone wall, of a form walking upright, like a man, but with an unmistakably bear-like head and huge claws at the end of its outstretched arms.

  “Allystaire!” He heard Idgen Marte’s call and pulled himself away from the painting and towards the cave mouth, stooping to pick up hammer and shield as he emerged into the light. Idgen Marte had gathered up all the animals, cutting Torvul’s ponies and Allystaire’s packhorse free from their lines and harness, and was leading them towards the opening. Distantly, down the track, Allystaire saw monstrous forms loping towards them, hooting, roaring, calling, and barking.

  The animals shied from the opening of the cave, protesting loudly, and Idgen Marte hauled hard on the tangle of reins and straps to no avail. Whirling on one foot, Allystaire barked out, “Ardent!”

  The grey turned his head, yanking his reins from Idgen Marte’s grasp, and ran to his master. “Go inside,” Allystaire said. “Watch the entrance. Kill anything that comes in that is not one of us. Now.”

  The huge destrier whinnied and reared slightly, stamping his front hooves on the ground. And then disappeared inside the opening of the cave, taking the other animals with him.

  “That’s not canny,” Idgen Marte said, as she came back out.

  “Agreed, though I stopped questioning it some time ago,” Allystaire replied. He and Idgen Marte moved a few paces away from the mouth of the cave, stretching their arms.

  “How many shafts do you have left,” he asked, rolling his shoulders beneath his armor, lifting his shield and hammer in turn to test his arms, the right still tingling.

  “Half a dozen. No chance to retrieve any.”