Feynard

by Marc Secchia

  Zephyr matched pace with the litter with some showy footwork that would not have been out of place in a circus. “How are you feeling?”

  “Passable. I’m in the way, aren’t I?”

  “Another lighttime or so,” said he, rolling his eyes at Kevin’s complaint, “and we should be able to remove that splint.”

  “I’ve never heard of broken bones mending so swiftly!”

  “Zinfandir did excellent work. You were very ill–near death from poison and exposure. But his magic and the Aïssändraught have combined to restore you to your present state. Your haleness is most pleasing. Soon you’ll be walking.”

  Kevin’s sigh was laden with the all burdens of his three decades. “Zephyr, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of occasions that I’ve been able to cover more than fifty steps in one attempt! I’m a weak and sickly individual.”

  “I pray that your scepticism will prove baseless,” Zephyr replied. “Now, that is not what I wish to speak to you about, good Kevin, and be thankful our sweet Dryad has not been invited to comment. You know how she feels about your allergies.”

  “Heavens, yes.” Kevin twisted on his seat to scowl at the Dryad, who marched ahead of the party with an ever-springy stride. “She’s just fortunate in her bursting good health and doesn’t understand for a minute what I’ve been through in my life. I swear, if my allergies don’t kill me, she certainly will, with that adder’s tongue of hers.”

  “Fell out of bed before dawn, good Kevin? You’re in a fine mood!”

  “I am riding to my doom!”

  But Zephyr laughed openly at him. “He who would not see, will not see. Now attend my words, noble Kevin. Strike has been scouting. He warns of several large packs of Black Wolves roaming to the south and east. This is a grave portent. When Ozark the Dark shadowed the Hills, the last Black Wolves were seen in this region of the Forest. They’re unusually large and fierce, distinguished from Grey Wolves by their size, their dark pelts, and a fondness for the flesh of intelligent or magical creatures–particularly Unicorns. Our enmity runs deep since olden times.”

  Kevin shivered. “Are we in danger?”

  “Not yet. The X’gäthi will shelter and protect us. But we’ll push further north, making directly for Mistral Bog, in order to avoid them.”

  “That sounds sensible.”

  “Indeed. But if you’ve any magic, good outlander, it would be best a strong wind sped your preparations.”

  “I have no magic.”

  Zephyr nodded. “So you say. I must make preparations of my own.”

  Kevin sat still for some minutes, bobbing along with the motion of the X’gäthi, who had perceptibly picked up the pace. What help could he offer the proud Unicorn? It was frustrating in one sense, but comforting in another. There would be no undue expectations of him, no dangerous reliance on one of such little worth. He would inevitably fail, anyhow, just as they had failed to bring that warrior to Feynard.

  He had just been acclimatising to Thaharria-brin-Tomal when that beastly Unicorn had forced him into this trip! Fancy taking his suggestion to investigate Elliadora’s Well at face value? Comfortable bedrooms, lectures, and running water he could handle. The great outdoors was an entirely different kettle of fish. Perhaps he should make an effort to read that alleged ‘tome of wizardry’–it was the least he could do in response to Zephyr’s request, and he was missing his daily reading. He looked across to Alliathiune, whose petite legs were fairly jogging along to match the X’gäthi strides. But her face was composed, not straining.

  The party made good progress all that afternoon, and by evening had broken out of the dense brush to find themselves upon a grassy lowland several miles shy of Mistral Bog. Here Zephyr deemed it safe to make camp. He chose a spot backing up against a stand of tall, straight trees, and the X’gäthi swiftly set about preparing a cold meal–no fire due to the danger–and setting up a defensive perimeter. Kevin, whose nose had been buried in his book all day, made a few vague sounds of annoyance as the light began to fade. Zephyr, smiling, ignited a tiny ball of light with the point of his horn, which hovered just over the yellowed pages to provide illumination. Even this small demonstration of magic made the outlander very uncomfortable, but before ten minutes had passed he was already speculating as to the globe’s probable source of power and prodding it with his forefinger.

  Alliathiune disappeared somewhere just after dinner. She seemed withdrawn and troubled. Hardly a word had she spoken, though the Unicorn tried on several occasions to bring her some cheer. Kevin was now convinced he understood women not one whit, and Dryads even less–she had been alternately friendly and terrifying before, but now that had all changed. Not a week before, could he have imagined travelling in a new world, beneath a stand of alibutha trees, with their stinking crop of large, papaya-like fruit that only the X’gäthi enjoyed, wrapped up in a blanket reading a volume on wizardry? With a Unicorn, a Dryad, and a dozen trained killers for company? He chuckled softly, making Zephyr’s ears prick at the sound. How strange life was–if this was life.

  “Aren’t you going to sleep, good Kevin?” Zephyr asked.

  “I’ll just finish this page.”

  Sometime towards morning, when the light of false dawn was brightening the clear sky, Kevin awoke with his nose pressed awkwardly against the spine of his book. There was a small puddle of drool under the corner of his mouth. He had dreamed of Father. He dreamed of the heavy leather belt slashing across his shoulders and back–but when his eyes cracked open to see Zephyr standing over him, the sickness in his stomach subsided.

  “Softly,” whispered the Unicorn. “Gather your belongings, as quietly as you can.”

  Kevin scrambled to his knees, flipped the volume closed, and gathered up his blanket. A pair of dark hands materialised next to him to hastily pop them into a backpack. His heart thrashed about madly. Blast this splinted leg. Double-blast his ineffectual efforts due to panic. Two X’gäthi warriors raised him bodily to his feet. Somewhere in the darkness, there was a low growl, and an answering hiss of steel shearing the chill air. Then the night exploded.

  Padded feet rushed out of the bushes and amongst the short grassy hillocks. There was a snapping and crackling of stakes and spears, ropes and arrows, as dozens of traps set by the X’gäthi were sprung, followed by the yelping and howling of wounded animals. Yellow eyes gleamed out there, dozens of slit yellow eyes. Kevin began to make out lean shapes slinking low to the ground, blending with the shadows, and X’gäthi weaving graceful dances of death amongst them. Then his helpers jammed their shoulders into his armpits, locked their arms around his torso, and dragged him off backward at a dead run. Lead the retreat, Jenkins!

  He saw wolves falling upon the X’gäthi, the chorus of their snarling rising like a baying tribute to the unknown gods of the sky, and the silvery dust of Zephyr’s magic settled across the battlefield like the blazing of faraway stars, cold and beautiful and untouchable, for it flared as fire wherever it touched the Black Wolves. The warriors whirled and leaped, their flashing swords wreaking terrible devastation amongst the wolves; Kevin saw atop a small mound Alliathiune had taken her stance, facing this fracas with a stony frown of concentration masking her features.

  Leaping lizards, so much blood and gore!

  The wolves were everywhere, nipping and tearing, teeth snapping like steel traps in the air where the peerless X’gäthi had been just an instant before, in sheer numbers and mindless ferocity beginning to press the warriors back. Kevin saw one of the protectors fall, swamped by six or seven great, hairy bodies, ripped apart before he hit the ground. Then Alliathiune gave a piercing whistle, audible even above the din of the battlefield, and as the X’gäthi broke and fled, she plunged her hands down into the soil to the elbows. There came a deafening clap as though of thunder groaning within the earth, anxious to be released, and the ground shook. The wolves howled and spun about in confusion. Kevin stumbled, but his bearers simply swung him up and kept running. When nex
t he risked a glance, it was to see thick vines bursting out of the crumbling dirt, writhing and waving in a carnivorous madness, like a sea of animated ropes tripping and snaring and binding the Black Wolves beneath their sapid coils. Alliathiune picked up her feet and fled as though pursued by the blackest fiends of Hell itself, her long hair whipping out like a sail behind her, in fleetness comparable even to the X’gäthi. His jaw hung open in awe.

  They fled parallel to Mistral Bog until the Black Wolves were but a fading nightmare, and the warm sunlight burned away the early mists. Only then did they pause for a hasty repast, eyes flickering nervously all the while, to the trail behind them and any signs of the expected pursuit. They had lost three X’gäthi. Alliathiune’s features were haggard, tired beyond ordinary fatigue, and her pallor so concerned Zephyr that he harangued her into taking a sparing swig of Aïssändraught from his silver flask, whereupon a pinch of colour returned to her cheeks.

  She smiled wanly at Kevin. “Learned any wizardry yet?”

  “I must be thick or something,” he muttered, crossing his arms defensively. “I’m really not getting very far. It all sounds so natural and straightforward!”

  “But it is, good outlander!”

  “Says you, a creature of magic.”

  Alliathiune considered this with her head askance, then leaned forward and said amiably, “And it scares you silly, good outlander.”

  The words hung between them, an orison of truth. Kevin was appalled at how transparent his thoughts and feelings must be to her. He had no reply, no defence, nothing that could shield him against such perception, and what tiny measure of confidence had begun to bud within him, shrivelled. Alliathiune was like the Forest–mysterious, unexplored, and potent–ostensibly vulnerable on the one hand and yet proficient and skilful on the other, and capable of depths of passion and anger he had never plumbed.

  His gaze turned from the grey, indistinct depths of Mistral Bog, to the heavily-wooded hills around them. Evergreen tree tops vied with huge sprays of a purple-flowering vine, that in places had entirely overtaken its host hardwood trees and turned it into a towering purple heap. Myriad birds flitted and swooped through the dense undergrowth, and there was a profusion of mammal species he had no names for–mice and weasels and badgers, he surmised, and wildcats and voles and more.

  The Forest was alive. And how! He had never been in such a place.

  But Kevin’s neck jerked painfully as a faraway, excited yipping and howling came to his ears. Strike hurtled down from above, conveying further intelligence, and after a brief consultation, the Unicorn turned to Kevin and Alliathiune.

  “Ill tidings!” he whinnied. “The wolves lie behind us and before, in great numbers. We must strike north for Mistral Bog, or return south and try to lose them in the woodlands.”

  “Not south,” grunted one of the X’gäthi, his accent guttural and hard to follow. “We would be cornered there, helpless to the slaughter.”

  “The Bog is a death trap.”

  “They may lose our scent there; the Black Wolves will not soon follow. We shall not penetrate the depths of the Bog. That would be too dangerous.”

  “Is a Dark Wizard abroad, good Zephyr?”

  Kevin might as well have slapped both the Unicorn and the Dryad with his question. “Say it not!” they chorused.

  The reduced party moved off again, bearing east of north, for the Unicorn still hoped to skirt the fringes of Mistral Bog. But the afternoon grew swiftly clearer and brighter, save for the vapours drifting above the swamp itself, which lay yet several miles ahead and to the side. The gently rolling terrain was carpeted in short, bright green grass, the low hillocks tufted in contrast with spiky brown marsh grass, and in the runnels of streams they began to see taller reeds or the occasional, defiant hardwood tree. Kevin, his litter abandoned in the confusion surrounding that early morning attack, was again hauled along like a sack of grain between two X’gäthi, leaving the remaining seven to surround the party.

  He saw now, angling in with frightening rapidity, two–no, five, seven, more–Black Wolves, tall as the Irish wolfhounds Father affected in his lordly living, all whipcord muscle and shaggy black coats as dark as patches of night against the viridian grass. Lithe and sure were their paws upon the trail, their movement having a sinuous quality that ghosted them across the ground with great speed. Zephyr and three of the X’gäthi broke off at once, heading off the Black Wolves, and the grim warriors sprang forward with swords held high. In battle their movements had the graceful fluidity of dancers, beauty and fatality juxtaposed. The Unicorn reared and lashed out with his sharp hooves, cleaving wolves left and right, and his head dipped to spear a wriggling, yelping form upon the point of his horn. And then as suddenly as it had appeared, the attack dissolved and one lone wolf streaked for cover. Zephyr and the X’gäthi came trotting back, warily scanning their surrounds. Kevin tried to ignore the gore matting the Unicorn’s forelegs, as those hooves had undoubtedly splattered wolf brains all over Driadorn.

  “That was well done!” Alliathiune said stoutly.

  Zephyr tossed his mane proudly. “Praise indeed, good Dryad. Have you seen Strike?”

  “Above, there.”

  His eyes followed the hawk’s arcing flight for several heartbeats. “Swiftly now, we have little time.”

  “Why?”

  “The Black Wolves are on our trail.”

  Kevin scowled. “And that was–”

  “A paltry few scouting ahead of the main body.”

  The X’gäthi helping Kevin broke into a loping run. With his good leg hopping every so often to take the burden off his carriers and the bad one dragging, their progress resembled a crazy three-legged race. “Surely wolves don’t behave like this!” he called to Zephyr.

  “These are far from your ordinary wolves!”

  Kevin made the mistake of looking back. His hopes had been raised by their progress so far and the relatively easy work their X’gäthi protectors had made of the latest attack–but now his courage scarpered for the hills. “Oh … good Lord no … Zeeeeeeephyyrrrrr!”

  Pouring down the gentle slopes and over the mounds and grassy hillocks, streaming out of the woodlands, from south and east and west, came a torrent of wolves so thick and black it resembled a tidal wave of oily night washing across the earth. Shoulder to shoulder they leaped in their hundreds and thousands, mouths agape in fanged smiles of anticipation, and the sound of their feet was like the low tremor of an incipient earthquake. Sighting the travellers, they raised a dreadful yipping and snarling chorus. Their animal hunger was overwhelming. Kevin’s bowels turned to liquid. It was too much! He groaned in shame as his bladder voided itself and a familiar, repugnant warmth spread in his trousers.

  For an illusory instant, the sinister wave paused like a breaker upon the brow of the grassland, and then it streamed ahead, gathering momentum. The wolves gave tongue now, scenting their prey on the breeze. The swamp was too far, and the Black Wolves too quick. The outlander’s red mop jerked about frantically, trying to discover some hidden salvation–but there was none, save Mistral Bog. And would it stop the wolves? He feared not.

  The Unicorn too glanced back, with grim mien. “Be not dismayed, good outlander!”

  “What will you do?”

  “We shall see how little wolves love fire!” And he whirled about.

  “No!”

  The X’gäthi dragged Kevin away as the Unicorn trotted up to stand on a small mound, shining like a pure white star against the gathering night, breathtaking in his grace. The thought of that goodness being ripped apart and consumed by the Black Wolves was unbearable. How could it be? Kevin’s eyes misted over. But suddenly there were two Unicorns on the meadow, one yet standing and the other, insubstantial as a pond’s still reflection, galloping away with his snowy mane streaming back like a flowing mantle from the wind of his passage. The Black Wolves slowed, confused by this apparition that waited there so unafraid, and then fell upon it in a rage scarce credible to
the beholder. Lightning crackled crazily across the field. A great clamouring and yammering arose from the massed lupine ranks. Many dashed about like dancing candles, burning bright and hot as the noonday sun, igniting their fellows in their demented throes.

  The charge scattered and collapsed as the Black Wolves gave way to their primal fear of fire. Kevin cheered weakly as Zephyr, in full and supple stride, came streaking after them with such speed that the only way he could tell the Unicorn was not floating above the ground, was the spray of turf kicked up by his flashing hooves, and the gap between them and the pursuing hordes widened appreciably meantime.

  But before Zephyr overhauled them, the foremost Black Wolves again scented their quarry. A kind of madness came upon them. Snarls of untrammelled bloodlust burst forth. As the great paws flexed for purchase upon the loamy sod, the inexhaustible founts of stamina were stoked for the chase, and the pack sprang forward as one in pursuit of the fleeing travellers. Wild and tawny were their eyes, glinting from sable faces, and powerful their loping strides that devoured the intervening ground with relentless efficiency. Thus was Zephyr’s brief abeyance ended.

  Mistral Bog was not far now. There was between solid and infirm ground a clear demarcation, from grass to foul water, as if that separation had been etched in mute warning to the incautious traveller. A desperate hope blossomed in Kevin’s breast. If they could hold out for a few minutes longer, there might be a reprieve. But the hairsbreadth that now separated the foremost wolves from the X’gäthi was insufficient–something had to give. A charcoal-coloured powder billowed suddenly from the Unicorn’s back, of which he caught a peppery tang, and drifted innocently into the faces of the straining Black Wolves. Pandemonium ensued. Kevin’s fleeting look showed him blinded wolves whirling aimlessly in their panic, being bowled over and mauled by their fellows as the leading edge of their mad, headlong rush crumbled into a gigantic pile of snapping, fighting animals. Again, even though their fellows on the wings of the charge continued unimpeded, a vital few seconds were won for the fleeing travellers. But they were even now snapping at the Unicorn’s heels, for he had slowed to release the pepper, and Alliathiune was barely a nose-length in front of him. She was tiring visibly. Her face was contorted in pain.