by GJ Kelly
“They too may have been deceived.”
“Aye.”
“There is an area of darkness which seems to have more substance than the mist before us,” Valin announced. “It occupies the space formed by the lowest part of the tree. Perhaps the first six or eight feet above what appears to be the ground.”
“Yes,” Elayeen agreed. “I had marked that too. Do you see anything else?”
“No, the rest is all obscure, and evenly shrouded.”
“I do not wish to waste arrows and bolts shooting into what might be empty space. Yet it would seem to be no coincidence that the centre of this illusion is the darkest part of it.”
“Do you think the creature might be hiding at the foot of the tree, Ranger Leeny?”
“I do not know, Pahdreg. Nor do I wish any of us to walk over there to find out. Perhaps if there is a rock or a fallen bough to hand which might be hurled at it, we might learn whether the tree is all illusion, or if something more substantial lies at its centre.”
“What you got in yer pack, Rickerd?” Trigo whispered, eyes still swivelling this way and that.
“Rope. Food. Water. Lumps.”
“Lumps?”
“Aye. Two-pounders.”
“He means lump hammers, Ranger Leeny,” Pahdreg explained, “Two-pound lump hammers.”
“Wotcha got them fer, Rickerd?”
The big man shrugged. “In case.”
“Think you can chuck one and ‘it that tree yonder?”
Rickerd eyed the tree, some twenty-five yards away, and shrugged. Then he glanced down at Meeya, who was watching the rear. She flicked her gaze up at him, held it for a while, and then continued scanning for the unseen enemy. The big man stuffed his sledgehammer into his belt, and shucked off his pack. Immense hands gently released the single wooden toggle securing the pack’s flap, and he reached in to withdraw a well-used lump hammer that looked almost like a toy in his fist.
He hefted it, grunted, and eyed the tree again.
“Careful, Rickerd,” Trigo cautioned the big man in great earnest. “This ain’t no toss the ‘ammer for a turkey at the mid-summer fête.”
The big man nodded his understanding.
“Try not to hit the trunk any higher than eight feet from the ground, Serre Rickerd,” Elayeen announced. “The heart of its darkness seems lower.”
Rickerd eased himself between Elayeen and Valin, and fixed his eyes on the trunk of the evergreen. He rolled his considerable shoulders, flexed his neck, raised one knee and then the other, hefted the lump hammer again, and to their sudden surprise and alarm, took three immense strides of a run-up forward and hurled the hammer.
The two pounds of forge-hardened steel on its stubby handle whirled and arced across the glade with jaw-dropping speed, and slammed into the trunk slightly left of centre about four feet above the level of the ground. But the sound it made was not the dull thump of heavy steel striking wood. It was the ring of heavy steel striking masonry.
The world before them seemed to shudder, lurch, and fade, leaving them all slightly off-balance, and momentarily distrusting even of the ground beneath their feet.
“By the buckin’ Teeth!” Trigo gasped, and brought his crossbow up to his shoulder, “Get back ‘ere, Rickerd! Get back ‘ere!”
The huge man needed no encouragement, and was already heaving his sledgehammer from his belt and scurrying back behind the line.
Elayeen’s expression darkened. Ahead of them, in the centre of the glade, stood a stone pillar some ten feet tall, perfectly cylindrical for the first eight feet of its height, and then tapering to a point. Its surface was engraved with panels, each containing runes and glyphs of a language unknown to all of those staring with shock upon a spectacle perhaps unseen by kindred eyes since its creation. Four jet black stones were inlaid near the top of the column, one each for the cardinal points in whose direction they faced, and they glowed, darkly and malevolently.
The ground at first seemed strewn with sun-bleached boughs turned grey with age and covered in mouldering leaves and mosses, until they realised that the slender sticks and twigs were nothing of the kind, but were the bones of people and animals long dead and long ago consumed. Save for a fresh scattering near the eastern side of the glade, bones picked clean of meat yet still with colourful rags upon them.
“Gillane,” Rickerd said, his voice breaking, clutching his sledgehammer with fierce resolve.
The lump hammer lay on the ground some three feet from the pillar where it had rebounded from the glancing blow it had struck, and there, perhaps four feet above the foul and stomach-wrenching ground, they could see the glaring white of fresh stone where the steel had smashed a chunk from the column. In so doing, the hammer had struck off one of the graven runes or glyphs, and that, they surmised, had shattered whatever foul magic the pillar possessed to deceive their senses.
Elayeen summoned the Sight, and at once the column’s darkness was visible in all its detail, the four jet black gems glowing darkest of all. Low down, though, near the base of the pillar, beneath the thick and grotesque roof covering it, something grey lay curled as if asleep. The creature they had been hunting, perhaps believing itself safe in its centuries-old lair, had retreated below ground, trusting that the threat to its existence would pass.
“Rickerd,” Elayeen asked.
“Aye.”
“Do you have another lump you can throw at that pillar of stone?”
“Aye.”
“Please do so. The creature we seek lies beneath it. I would rouse it, and rid the world of its evil.”
“Aye!”
There was a rustling, and then Rickerd was charging forward again, another two-pound hammer sailing across the glade to smash into the stone. This time, with a clear view of his target, Rickerd’s steel struck clean in the centre of the pillar, giving of a shower of sparks bright enough to be seen even this close to noon, and sending chips of stone flying.
The damage caused by the lump hammer went further than just the immediate marring of the stone. Great streamers of black lightning began crackling and running the length of the column, winding around it, arcing from the four gems and dancing upon the ground and the steel of the hammers. The ground smouldered where the black fire touched, and for a fleeting moment, Elayeen recalled the distant horror of Calhaneth, that dead city towards which her beloved Gawain was even now riding.
The sparking slowed, the discharges weakening, and a loud hissing filled the air. The elves did not need eldeneyes to know what the sound meant, and nor did the men of Mornland. They braced, all eyes fixed upon the base of the monolith. They did not need to wait long. The beast practically flew from the entrance to the lair behind the pillar, hissing and spitting, black fur, white-striped, the badger’s head turning its black and enraged eyes upon them.
Trigo loosed without hesitation, the bolt slamming into the creature’s right shoulder after raking the side of its face, but either it felt no pain or ignored it, advancing towards them, pulsing as it did so.
“It is changing! Remember to shoot low in the loins!” Elayeen called, dropping to one knee while swinging her bow cross-wise, searching for the angle she needed to strike the black and pulsing heart of beast.
“The wolf!” Trigo called, his boot jammed into the cocking-stirrup, fumbling with the hooks dangling from his belt.
He was right. The badger had advanced barely a yard after emerging from its subterranean den at the foot of the column, and already its muzzle had grown longer, head and body expanding, legs lengthening. Rickerd shifted the great sledgehammer to his left hand, reached down into his pack with his right, and pulled out another lump hammer.
“Last one’s for Gillane!” he cried, stepped one pace, and hurled the steel at the half-badger half-wolf.
The sound the hammer made this time would have been sickening were the creature one of nature’s making. Now, it was a satisfying mixture of crunch and wet splat. The wolf’s head burst open, but instead of blood an
d brains staining the charnel ground, nothing emerged from the devastating wound but hundreds of tiny tendrils, quivering, writhing, as though reaching to pull the pieces back together again to form a new shape, a new beast…
Dog, and before fully formed Pahdreg shot it through the eye. Sheep, and Trigo loosed a raking shot which took the ovine form low on the breastbone, the bolt disappearing from view into the creature’s body. Still it advanced, and again began to change its form. It was obvious to all that it was seeking a creature in its repertoire suitable to overcome the six of them, and while it remained on all fours, the likelihood of their weapons striking its single weakness remained small.
A hissing wildcat was its next metamorphosis, and this time it was Valin who loosed a yard-long shaft into its shoulder, the arrow penetrating fully half its length but the point failing to find the fist-sized peach-pit organ which gave the beast existence, and the power to change itself. Again it began to change, still moving towards them, closing the gap to some fifteen yards.
Elayeen caught sight of a pair of horns beginning to emerge from the wildcat’s head, its legs becoming longer and slender, cloven hooves replacing paws. She loosed an arrow, taking it in the throat, encouraging it to try another shape, hoping the next one would stand upright.
A sound began building in Rickerd’s throat, a nascent battle-cry which rose in pitch and in volume and became a full-blown scream, and before anyone could shout a warning, he charged forward towards the half-bull half-cat, sledgehammer held aloft. The ground beneath his feet seemed to give a little under his weight, and below his primeval shouting came the noise of splintering and a crackling, bones giving way and breaking under his considerable weight.
He swung the hammer in a two-handed uppercut which caught the creature in what had started to become the bony and powerful chest of the bull. Again the wound was horrific, but the beast barely flinched, tendrils lashing to reform the damaged area. Again Rickerd screamed, raining blow after blow on the misshapen thing before him. More wounds, more quivering tendrils, and Elayeen realised what the huge man was doing.
“Swords!” she screamed. “Swords! Advance!”
And she cast aside her bow, and drew her shortsword, and ran forward, Valin swearing loudly as he raced to keep up with her. Too late she realised why. Only she, and Valin and Meeya, possessed swords at all, and Meeya was unable to wield hers…
But it was too late. Even Rickerd could tire, and already the time between his blows upon the beast’s head and back was lengthening. Sword gripped two-handed, Elayeen began first hacking at the flanks, and then stabbing, trying to thrust the sword-point into the pulsing black stone that was the evil heart of the thing.
Then Valin was there opposite her, bringing his blade down in two-handed hacks that any battle-field butcher of men would be proud of. Rickerd suddenly gave a cry of disgust, and began using his hammer like a tamper, the haft held vertically and the head powering downwards to crush the tendrils which had slithered out from the creature’s carcass and were trying to encircle his legs. They were succeeding, too, and already had a firm hold of his boots, heaving, dragging more of the creature’s body towards Rickerd’s feet.
Then Trigo was there, huntsman’s broad knife in hand, slashing at the tendrils, and then Pahdreg, armed with Meeya’s shortsword, likewise hacking.
“It’s trying to snare us!” Trigo shouted, “It’s trying to plant itself in us!”
“We cannot prevail, it’s not of flesh and blood!” Valin shouted, sawing at a mass of tendrils that had shot out of a wound and wrapped around his wrist.
Elayeen slashed at a rope of tendrils worming their way up her calfskin boot towards her thigh, and then summoned the Sight once more. There, pulsing rapidly, furiously, the black and stony peach-pit of its aquamire-infused heart, the creature desperately trying to repair the damage to itself and to attack and absorb the life from its attackers at the same time. She swung the sword around in her hands, holding it point downwards, raising the hilt high and summoning all her strength.
“Vex!” she screamed, and slammed the point down through the writhing mass of tendrils, driving it into the black stone.
The effect was immediate. A blast of something shot through the steel of the sword and flung her six feet from the writhing mass of tendrils, blackening the blade instantly. The tendrils jerked and stiffened, quivering like taught bowstrings, and a loud crackling began.
“Run!” Valin screamed, dropping his sword and rushing towards Elayeen.
But he need not have feared for her. Rickerd simply dropped his hammer, took three immense strides, and picked her up as though she were a rag doll, and began lumbering for the trees at the periphery of the glade. All Elayeen knew of it was that the ground below her, a horrifying nest of intertwined bones, was a blur moving rapidly beneath two very large leather work-boots, and then there came the familiar rushing sound of purple fire as the creature behind them was consumed.
oOo
15. Happy Birthday
Her hands tingled, there was a pain in her right hip, her mind wheeled and it was difficult to focus. Rickerd had carried her to the western side of the foul glade, and gently put her down, propping her back against a tree. The concern in his eyes and expression was plain for all to see, including Meeya, who knelt cautiously, wincing, by her side.
“We must watch well still, there may be more danger here,” Valin announced, and the huge and fuzzy shape of Rickerd moved out of Elayeen’s view.
“Leeny?” Meeya whispered.
“My head is swimming,” she managed, “I feel a little sick.”
“Just close your eyes and breathe, Leeny, and take your time. All is well, the creature is destroyed.”
“My bow…!”
“Is safe, I have it here, hush.”
Elayeen closed her eyes, and it did feel a little better. The nausea began to subside almost at once. “Are my hands burned? They feel strange.”
“No, they look entirely unharmed. Though they could perhaps do with a wash.”
“Bah.”
She felt her friend’s hand on her brow, cool and gentle, fingers caressing gently, giving Elayeen something to focus on other than the tingling in her own hands or the lurching of her stomach.
“Don’t make me giggle, Leeny, you promised.”
“I am sorry. I have always liked the way G’wain says ‘bah’, perhaps because it is so childish. It always seems to remove any tension from a situation. He is very clever like that.”
“He is. Here, wait a moment, a drink of water might help.”
Meeya uncorked a canteen and held it to Elayeen’s lips.
It did help, the relative coolness of the water after the heat of violent exertion settling her stomach. She opened her eyes, and the world had stopped spinning. A glance at her hands revealed no visible signs of injury, and the tingling was fading. And that meant the bruises from being flung across the glade now jostled for her attention, and there were a number of those, not the least of which was one on which she now sat.
“Leeny?”
“Bruises. Suddenly I am aware of parts of me that hurt, though doubtless none as badly as your ribs. I’m sorry Meemee, Valin was right, I should not have risked all our lives as I did. We might all have been consumed by that thing.”
“Now it is my turn to say ‘bah’. Once we had been declared for what we are, we had no choice but to honour our oaths to the Rangers. Can you stand? The men are worried, especially the big one.”
“He has a large and gentle heart, Meeya, and is likely accustomed to the role of protector in Fourfields.”
Wincing, grimacing and gasping at their various pains, the two ladies stood, and smoothed down their clothing. Meeya had regained her sword, but Elayeen’s still lay on the charnel ground near the fire-blackened stain to the south of the stone column. She regarded it with distaste, but after Meeya handed her her bow and it was slung in place over her shoulder, Elayeen took a deep breath and strode out across the sepu
lchral ground.
The blade was blackened, but unlike Gawain’s, there was no aquamire swimming within the steel. The steel had simply changed hue, from a dull grey to a dusty coal-black. When she stooped to pick it up, Elayeen hesitated but a moment, and then gripped the hilt firmly, as if expecting a shock of something to assail her. It didn’t. She remembered Gawain’s description of the jolts that had flashed unseen through his hands and arms when he’d struck the Black Riders with his mighty Raheen longsword, and he’d had no word for the something either.
The blade examined and apparently serviceable in spite of its striking the black heart of the creature, Elayeen sheathed it, and turned to regard her comrades-in-arms. The men of Mornland stood close to each other, eyes narrowed against noon sunshine now lancing through the scudding clouds, late January’s sun burning the overcast away but bringing little warmth to those on the summit of Croptop. They regarded her with a mixture of concern, and awe, all their own fears forgotten. Meeya and Valin stood side by side, though facing in different directions now and scanning the woodland for darkness.
Elayeen looked down at her boots, and then forced herself to look at the centuries-old pile of bones upon which she stood. How long the three beasts of Croptop had dwelled upon the hill she could not say, nor how many kindred lives or those of other animals had been lost here. Behind her, she could almost feel the malevolent presence of the intricately carved pillar, and turned to look at it.
Its point towered above her, though the four black stones would be within her reach if she stood on tip-toe. Not that she had any desire so to do. But she walked carefully towards it, and some three feet from the panels facing her, stooped to pick up one of Rickerd’s fallen lump hammers. As she did so, something shiny caught the light and glinted in gloom of a small hollow. Grimacing, Elayeen reached into the hollow, keenly aware of what it was brushing the skin of her hand and wrist.
She felt something cold, and metallic, and pulled. There was a slight crack which made her skin crawl and her eyes screw tight shut for a moment, and then the object was in her hand, in the light of day. It was a bracelet, of white metal, untarnished though smeared with dirt. Elayeen brushed it away, and admired the craftsmanship of the artisan who’d made it. The designs wrought in the links and engraved upon the solid curved bar that was the main body of the bracelet were pretty. It would have been prized and worn proudly on the wrist of any girl or young woman.
