by James Fahy
Have you found Henry? Is everything okay? We’ve had a lot of trouble. Centaurs.
I think we’re in trouble again now.
The words disappeared as he wrote them, sinking into the paper. He waited a moment in the pale golden fog of the dawn, impatient for a reply. When none came immediately, he shouldered his pack and set off after Woad towards the gates at a jog, the card gripped in his fist.
The reply came as he weaved his way through the streets and buildings, Briar Hill oddly muffled and silenced around him. He would be very glad to see the back of the place. Frustratingly, Karya’s response was not answering his questions, but demanding answers of her own.
Where are you, right now? Exactly?
Robin, paused in the street, flipped the card and leaning against a wall, scrawled on the reverse.
Briar Hill, at the main gates to the town. Are you nearby?
The reply did not come until Robin, having weaved his way through the odd ghost town, reached the gates, and was approaching the figures of Hawthorn and Woad, who he saw were standing between the gateposts, looking out and down the hill into the mists at something.
Don’t move a muscle. Sending help.
Robin shook his head, unsure what to make of this. It would have to wait. He stuffed the card back into his jeans as he came up alongside Hawthorn and Woad.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “What is it?”
“They are back, Robin,” Hawthorn replied, still staring down the hill. “And they are not alone.”
Robin peered down at the landscape. The autumnal grasslands, with their rising swathes of heather, their dips and hollows and rolling vistas, were lost in a low ground mist, hilltops emerging below them here and there in islands in the fog. It looked like an old Japanese silk painting. The sky above was hidden by the thin mist, cocooning the three travellers and the town they stood before in a vapour through which the sun's rising light streamed like scattered gold-dust.
Robin saw at once what Hawthorn referred to.
Centaurs. They had returned. In far greater numbers. They circled and strode about in the mist below them, shadowy shapes half glimpsed. Through the morning fog it was impossible to tell how many were down there, but it was a lot. Maybe a hundred, maybe more. The ground was a low muffled rumble of thunder with their ceaseless hooves.
“We’re surrounded,” Woad said. “I’ve been all along the outer wall. Like a desert island and sharks. Only sharks with spears. That’s not a good thing.”
“What did you mean they’re not alone?” Robin asked, his eyes roaming over the half-hidden army below them. Their silhouettes faded in and out of view in the rolling mists. Shadow puppets on a muslin screen, backlit by the lamp of the sun.
Before Hawthorn could answer, a chill, deeper than any morning mist could account for, rolled up the hill toward the town gates where Robin and the others stood. It hit them in a silent wave, making all three shudder. The centaurs closest to the front had parted, their vast, armoured heads bent low in deference, forming an empty corridor in the ranks leading up to the base of the hill. A figure on horseback was emerged from between them.
“The mask,” Hawthorn whispered. “Keep it safe. He must not take it from us. At any cost.”
“He?” Robin asked, and then a lurch in his stomach cut off any further questioning. The figure on horseback came forward, resolving out of the mists into clarity like a conjuring trick, the darkest of shadows.
The man on the horse was clad in black, spiky armour, oiled and insect-like. A long feathered cloak, darker than a crow's-wing fluttered from his shoulders, drifting behind him in the mist. The hard iron-masked face of a grinning wolf looked up at them all inscrutably. Strigoi.
The man brought his horse to a standstill, the steed stamping restlessly in the mist. The centaurs were silent at his back, and for several seconds, he did nothing but stare up at them, the blank eye-slits of his iron mask unreadable, frozen in eternal scowl.
When he finally spoke, his voice was a low whisper, but despite the distance and the fog, it carried clearly to their ears.
“Well,” he said softly, a cold rasp. “What treasures there are to be found, in the wild places of the world.”
With a rustle of his cloak, he swung down expertly from the horse, landing heavily, his great armoured boots thudding solidly into the soft loamy earth.
“I scour this land, seeking a Shard,” he said, his tone thoughtful and cold. “A Shard awakened and living in a beast. But instead, one of my hunting parties …" With a lazy wave of his metal-gauntleted hand he indicated the horde of centaur at his back. “They tell me instead that they have run errant quarry to ground. Flushed from the underbrush. Outlaws.” His masked face peered up at the companions standing by the town gates above, curiously. Its grinning maw making every word he spoke seem mocking. “Not a Shard, but still … a prize nonetheless.”
“There is nothing here for you, black worm,” Hawthorn called down the hill defiantly. “Your mules will not set their tender hooves on haunted soil, and we have the higher ground.”
Strigoi's wolf-face tilted thoughtfully to one side. “An old man, a tender Fae-thing, and a blue runt. What odd companions you make. I was told there were four. Another Fae.” His eyes roamed the hillside slowly, as if searching for another member of their party. “Imagine,” he whispered up to them. “Three Fae abroad in the world like wild animals, loosed from their cages. Not knowing their place is not in the wild, but in irons.”
“Your horse-brained beasts cannot count, clearly,” Hawthorn said. His voice was filled with hatred. Deep resentment. Robin knew that it had been Strigoi and his ravens who had captured and imprisoned him previously. No wonder he hated the servant of Eris.
“Be that as it may,” Strigoi said. “I caged you once before, fallen lord. Not long ago. Sent you to the Hive to dwell on your crimes.” Strigoi stepped forward, away from his horse toward the steep slope of the hill. “You are a slippery one. You pathetic rebels always are. Slippery as eels. I think this time you will not escape the Hive. Fool me once, shame on you … etcetera.” He pointed a long finger up the hill at Robin.
“And you!” he said, a note of sudden triumph in his cold hiss. “Troublemaking Fae-spawn. You are the worst of them all. Snuffling through the Netherworlde like a blind piglet. A creature unchained. There is a price on your weak and feeble head that even I cannot ignore.”
He glanced back at his army, still lost in the mists. “What sport my centaurs might make of you, if only our Empress did not wish for you unspoiled. It seems a shame to deprive them of it. It would be fun to watch them fillet you.”
Robin refused to be cowed by the menacing servant of Eris. They may be surrounded, and he would be stupid not to be scared, but he would certainly not give Strigoi the satisfaction of seeing it.
“As I remember,” Robin called down, his voice sounding defiant. “Last time we met, you were sprawled in the mud and snow. More like a pig than I ever was.”
He heard Woad gasp quietly next to him. The herds of centaur shuffled uneasily, and the temperature of the chill seemed to drop even further.
“And you fled,” Strigoi noted darkly, outwardly unruffled. “A running, whimpering coward.” He laughed harshly, low and quiet. “Delusional child … playing at heroes. Saviour of nothing.”
The wolf mask leered at him, black iron and frozen malice. “We will see who is the beast on their knees in the mud, Robin Fellows. You will come before the Empress of the Netherworlde on your belly, like a worm, and before I am done with you, you will beg like a dog to be allowed kiss the hem of her robe.”
“Why don’t you come up here and say that?” Woad yelled angrily, half-stepping in front of Robin protectively. “Maybe you’re as scared of ghosts as your evil donkeys, eh? Or is it that you’re worried we might have a can-opener, you … big metal moron?”
Strigoi ignored Woad’s anger completely.
“I do not parley with animals,” he said simply, directing th
e statement to Hawthorn. “I wonder though, how shallow are the beasts? This noble and united front they present. Foolish yes, but how easily they might sacrifice one another, to be spared my judgement.”
He pointed up at Hawthorn. “Old one. You have tasted the nectar of the Hive already. You know its bitterness, its despair. You know the world that awaits you back there. Tell me…if I were to spare you. To set you free to roam the barrens like the aimless, sad beast you are, would you give up your spoils, I wonder? Would you surrender your charge to me?”
Robin glanced at Hawthorn, but the older Fae did not look back. He was staring down the hill intently at Strigoi, his face hard. He may be dressed in rags, his face lined and cheeks hollow, but Hawthorn's bearing was still as regal as it had appeared to Robin in his vision of the past.
“Te futue et caballium tuum. You will not take this boy from me,” he said firmly. “You will not lay one black claw on either of them. I will not trade my life for theirs. Your offer is insulting. Not all of us are so easily bought and sold, dark one.” His bow was clutched tightly in his right hand. With his left, he raised his arm, fingers splayed toward the lurking menace below.
“I would die to protect either one of these children from you … and your Empress.”
“How predictably noble,” Strigoi replied, sounding rather bored. “Cling to the shreds of your ideals, fallen race, if you must. But know this. You will die only when I allow it.” His voice was low and full of spite. “The Hive is a place you may come to know well, a longer stay is in order, I feel. And these spawn you value? Resist if you will, you know you cannot best me. I will pry them from your broken fingers.”
“Try,” Hawthorn said. “The higher ground is ours.” His hand flicked suddenly and the line of red gems along his bow flashed as he cast his mana. Between them, the Fae atop the hill and the servant of Eris at its foot, the earth cracked and shook, tearing open in a great fissure. From out of this maw, rocks and boulders flew, spewing out of the earth. Stones the size of cannonballs, deadly missiles aimed at Strigoi and his army.
As quickly as Hawthorn had cast, Robin saw their enemy raise his hand in response. A similar flash in the pommel of Strigoi's sword and the air shimmered around him, an invisible dome of pure mana wavering like a shield. Several of the boulders and rocks smashed and crashed into this barrier of will, exploding into harmless dust against thin air. Others flew over the dark man’s head, landing with crashes amongst the centaurs in the mist, who were not so protected. The great beasts reared up in alarm in the deadly hailstorm, crashing into one another to avoid the heavy rain of rocks. Strigoi ignored their commotion behind him. He hadn’t flinched at all.
“Yes, you do have the high ground,” he hissed over the cacophony of stone. He hadn’t taken his steady gaze from the three on the hilltop for even a moment. “Allow me to remedy that.”
Strigoi clenched the fist of his outstretched hand, the metal gauntlet shrieking as his fingers ground together, and he pulled his arm back sharply.
Hawthorn, at Robin's side, was lifted clean off his feet, plucked upwards like a helpless puppet. He flew through the air and down the hill in an ungainly tumble, landing with a crash in the mud at Strigoi’s feet, dragged by concentrated, invisible mana.
“Hawthorn!” Woad cried in alarm. Robin could hear the old man wheeze, winded as he struggled to clamber to his feet. Strigoi, looking down at him, splayed his fingers wide and lowered his hand a little in the air, as though about to deliver a blessing on the old Fae’s head. Hawthorn collapsed back to the ground with a grunt, crushed by some terrible unseen weight, his face ground into the earth under the sheer force of Strigoi’s mana.
“Stop it!” Robin yelled. “Leave him alone!”
The wolf head looked back up the hill to the two boys, as the man effortlessly kept the Fae pinned to the ground like a butterfly.
Every carved corner of the grinning wolf-mask seemed to be grinning hungrily at Robin, filled with mockery and cruelty.
“It is simple to teach a beast to crawl,” Strigoi whispered. “Beasts want to, deep down. They only need be reminded of their position. As do you, so called Scion. Will you walk down the hill; I wonder? Submit to me as the submissive slave you know you ought to be? Or must I drag you by the neck also? Strip you of your defiance and your ill-placed dignity? Shall the choice be yours?”
Woad grabbed his wrist. “Pinky, he will kill us.”
“Oh no, faun,” Strigoi called up. His hearing clearly as keen as his skills with the Arcania.
“Your precious, delicate master is to be delivered to the Empress. Alive and … relatively … unspoiled. You, on the other hand, you I may very well kill.”
Robin stared down the hill, at Hawthorn, captured and held. They were in the middle of nowhere, he thought. There was nowhere to run, even if they wanted to. Strigoi was only toying with them for his own sport. He could drag them down the hill at any moment he wished. But he wanted Robin to choose. He wanted to break him. It was what he did.
But if I do go willingly, what then? he thought. Woad would be killed. Hawthorn sent back to the Hive prison. Strigoi would find the mask. What would happen if that fell into Eris’ hands?
As though the dark man was reading his mind, the Wolf of Eris held out his other hand, his black-feathered cloak billowing behind him. He beckoned Robin.
“You know you have no choices here,” he said. “You will come with me, if I must kill everyone here, and break every bone in your body to make it so.”
The armoured fingers glinted in the sun streaming through the fog.
“You are alone in the world, Robin Fellows,” Strigoi said. “Alone in the wilderness. And no one can help you. Submit.”
Robin glared at the man with boiling hatred, his fists balled at his side. He opened his mouth to prepare to tell Woad to run. He didn’t know how hopeless that would be. But Robin could fight. He would fight Strigoi and the centaurs alone. He knew his mana was no match. He knew he couldn’t win. Hawthorn's easy dispatchment had proved that. But maybe he could buy Woad enough time, even if only seconds, if he could cause enough confusion with cantrips and chaos, to at least give the faun a fighting chance to get away.
But before he could say a word, his hands half-raised to begin casting, there was a great rumble beneath his feet and the entire ruined town of Briar Hill shook, making timbers creak and groan. Small landslides cascaded down sloping roofs. Ancient chimneys behind them toppled and fell, crashing into empty buildings.
The centaurs below whinnied and reared. Strigoi’s own horse cantered about in panic, and Woad grabbed Robin by the wrist, just as the earth opened up beneath him in a sudden large sinkhole, dropping them both down and into its dark mouth.
Shocked, Robin had time to glance down, at the ground opening up beneath him. A great pit had opened suddenly, right at the top of the hill where they stood. Portions of the rocky wall either side of the gates collapsing noisily as the earth disappeared from under it. Down there in the soil of the deep sink-hole was a tangle of green and vibrant vines, monstrously large, writhing over one another like a great nest of snakes. Robin and Woad, their footing stolen from beneath, tumbled into them, feeling the strong whips of vegetation and root wrap around them, dragging them down further. He heard Hawthorn and Strigoi both yell over the roar of the landslide. Above them, the earth which had gaped wide to welcome them, suddenly closed up again, shutting out all light and noise, plunging them into suffocating darkness as the two boys were swallowed whole by the ground.
LOVELY, DARK AND DEEP
Robin awoke to a low rumbling continuous thunder, being juddered to the bone from side to side. A very sharp pain in his head made him wince as he reached out with both hands to find himself sitting on a curved and lumpy surface. It felt as though he was in a pile of ropes. It was pitch black.
“Woad?” he called in panic.
“I’m here,” came the reply, very close to his ear. “Wherever here is.”
Robin reached
out, feeling lumpy surfaces close on all sides. What on earth had happened? They had fallen into the ground. Swallowed.
“Can you make some light?” Robin asked, talking loudly to be heard above the close, continuous thunder. It sounded like they were inside a storm cloud.
A tiny flash of Woad’s opal mana stone blinded him, and then a soft glowing wisp of light appeared in the faun’s hand, illuminating their surroundings with a bluish, flickering glow.
“Where are we? What happened?” Robin stared around. He didn’t try to stand up. There wasn’t room. “Hawthorn?”
They were in a small space, perfectly spherical, as though packed inside a giant ball. The curved walls all around them were comprised entirely of thick, tightly knotted vines. They shook and rumbled, and there was a sense all around them of great motion. Occasionally, Robin's stomach lurched. He looked at Woad, wide-eyed. The faun looked more than a little disoriented.
“Did you …” Robin asked woozily. “Did you pass out too? My head is blurry.”
Woad looked terribly affronted. “Fauns do not ‘pass out’!” he exclaimed. He looked around their curious alien environs. “I may have taken an impromptu and very short power-nap, but that was just to regain my strength.”
Robin decided there were more important things at hand than arguing with this.
“What is that noise?”
“We appear to have been eaten by the ground, Pinky,” Woad supplied helpfully, looking suspicious. “And we’re moving under it, at very high speed. My guess is that churning rumble we can hear is soil passing over this…thing. We’re burrowing.”
“We’re moving?” Robin asked, steadying himself against the sway of their organic prison. “How can you tell?”
“I can feel it in my stomach, can’t you?” asked Woad, giving him a look as though he were an idiot. “Honestly, you really are a brainless pteranodon sometimes. Whatever this thing is, it’s going fast. Through the ground like prunes through grandma, a rolling rootball.”
