by Joseph Lallo
“Get in there and help him, you idiots!” Duule ordered to his lackeys.
They rushed in, but by the time they reached the tangled pair, they were on the unstable ground where the fence had fallen away. The telltale patter of tumbling soil warned that the precipice was in no condition to support two men, let alone four. They stopped short and watched as Munn finally got control again and wrapped both hands around his foe's neck.
“Little monster! Little demon! I'll squeeze the eyes out of your mangy skull!” he growled.
“Munn, you idiot, get away from the edge!” Duule ordered.
The Red Shadow fought for breath, eyes wild and searching. Behind him was a long fall into raging water. He didn't know how deep it was, or how fast it was moving—and, regardless, he still didn't know how to swim properly. But his vision was already growing dim, and if he didn't make a decision now, he never would. He used his last ounce of strength to lash out with his knee, driving it into Munn's midsection. The mountain of a man pitched forward, breath rushing out in a ragged grunt, and took one final step forward. The crumbling earth at the edge of the courtyard finally reached its limit, breaking away beneath his boot and sending the two of them tumbling over the side.
Both man and beast clashed against the face of the bluff and plunged into the rushing water. Each was weighed down by too much clothing and too many weapons, and thus each was promptly swallowed by the roiling surface.
Duule and those in his employ crowded as close to the edge as they dared, watching the floundering forms sink from sight. The criminal was trembling with anger, and those henchmen who remained were wise enough to hold their tongues and thank their lucky stars that they were not the target of the anger. It wasn't until Maribelle exited her safe house and joined them that the furious silence was broken.
“So. Job done then?” she asked. “Do I get my gold?”
“No,” fumed Duule. “Once again I am confounded by the idiocy of my underlings.”
“What happened?”
“Somehow, even when the thing was half-crippled, it managed to drag the both of them into the river.”
“You're going to go after it, right? I don't want that thing coming after me,” Maribelle said, her voice heavy with the very reasonable concern of a woman who has learned that the skilled tracker and efficient killer she had just betrayed might not be dead.
“If a musclebound behemoth with his hands wrapped around the blasted thing's neck couldn't kill it, I'll be damned if I'm going to trust a river to do the job.” He turned to Dihsaad and the rest of his men. “Get back on its trail. Find it. If it is dead, bring it to me. If it is alive, kill it and bring it to me.”
The tracker and the thugs were quick to comply, leaving Maribelle behind.
“Wait! When do I get paid?” she cried. “I practically handed that beast to you with a bow on its head. It isn't my fault you let it get away.”
Duule turned and glared at her. “You. Gold,” he said to the strongman in charge of carting around the payments.
The meaty underling reached into the sack at his side and pulled out a tightly packed coin satchel. Duule took the payment and walked up to Maribelle, holding it out for a moment. He then turned and pitched it off the bluff and into the river.
“What was that for?” she griped.
“I asked you to give me the malthrope and it wound up in the river. Now I've got a lot of searching and frustration ahead of me to get it. Seems your payment should be the same. And as far as I'm concerned, at this point your real payment will be if we manage to kill the malthrope before it comes back and kills you. The rest is just generosity.”
Maribelle grimaced and looked to the water below as Duule and his men departed. “I'm beginning to think I sided with the wrong murderer.”
Chapter 23
The mighty river grew wider and calmer as it approached the crescent sea. At a place where it was widest, a section near enough to the coast for the air to have a salty tinge to it, the Red Shadow's motionless body drifted to the muddy northern bank. Minutes passed before he stirred, and when he did, it was with a violent coughing fit. He rolled aside, pulling himself farther ashore and hacking up river water until his lungs were clear. When his breathing was finally back to normal, he slithered through the mud to the shelter of some tall weeds and tried to pull his thoughts together.
He was chilled to the bone by the icy water. Where his body wasn't numb, it was throbbing. The arm afflicted by his attacker's dark magic hadn't recovered much. Three of his fingers were twisted and useless, and a stabbing pain still curled itself around his forearm like a thorny vine. His leg was similarly lifeless below the knee and wracked with pain. His weapons were gone, his equipment was gone, and the payment from his last job was gone, all claimed by the river. He was worse off now than he'd been upon escaping the plantation. Searching weakly, he discovered that the only thing that had not been claimed by the water was the old rag Sorrel had left behind, which had been folded safely into its own pocket in his shirt.
If he'd allowed himself to dwell upon what had happened, he likely would have been overcome, defeated, but he'd been a free malthrope in the world of man long enough for certain survival instincts to become little more than reflexes. He had to assume that people who had done this to him would still be after him. He would need to get to a place they could not reach him. Where would the people of Tressor never follow? Only one answer came to mind: the Nameless Empire. It was a place where they, like he, would be killed on sight.
He didn't have a firm enough grip on his wits to formulate a better plan, so north he would go.
It took time and effort, but he managed to wrestle enough control over his damaged leg to climb to his feet. Once standing, he moved in a daze, eyes barely focused and breath ragged. Every few minutes he paused to cough up another splash of the river, but he kept going. He hadn't the presence of mind nor the physical strength to avoid soldiers from either army, but through a rare stroke of good fortune, the soldiers defending this stretch of the border must have been called to battle elsewhere, because three full days passed before his mind cleared, and by then he was well north of the front. During that time, his meals were composed of whatever plants he could stomach and whatever else he could scavenge.
Now it was night. The journey so far had taken him north along the east coast of the northern land until the grassy fields turned to the rocky beginnings of a mountain range. All around him were pines, and far to the north he saw snow-capped peaks. He'd just managed to snatch up his first fresh meat since the attack, in the form of a squirrel that had not been wary enough. What little the meal did for his hunger was sufficient to set his mind to the long overdue task of processing what had happened.
He had been a fool, that much he knew. He had been careless, weak. It had cost him everything. Had he been stronger, perhaps he would have been able to fight off the ambush . . . but they had been using magic. There had simply been no way for him to have been prepared.
His eyes turned to the twisted fingers of his hand, still not quite recovered even now. With his other hand he touched a sore spot on his forehead, only to discover a crusted-over gash he'd not noticed before.
A wave of anger swept over him. It didn't make any sense! He had fought off the griffin, he'd savaged Marret's farm . . . why couldn't he fend off a single man with a sword, magic or no? What good was it having a monster lurking inside if when he needed it most it wasn't there?
His face twisted in pain as he tried to flex the fingers of the arm that had felt the touch of whatever dark spell had been at work. Swords and whips, straps and arrows, none of them had been enough to stop him, so they'd turned to magic. It seemed hopeless. Perhaps if he was any other being, or if this had been any other time, he would have considered abandoning his cause. Not now. He'd sacrificed too much. He'd let his only chance for happiness walk away from him. He'd committed irredeemable deeds. He'd felt his soul wither, shut his heart and his emotions deep away. The purpose w
as all there was. So the answers must be found.
The solution had to be out there. Until now, he'd learned all that he needed by listening and observing. Ben, Sorrel, even the criminals of Tressor had taught him lessons that he'd used to come this far. But now he needed to know how to fight, how to kill. He needed to know how to combat mystic spells and how to escape dedicated trackers. No one would teach a malthrope such things. He could find his way back to the front and watch the soldiers do battle, but surely the tactics one used as part of an army were of little use to one working alone. Perhaps he could seek out battle on his own, find warriors and challenge them . . . no. If he was not flawless from the beginning, he would be hurt and have to recover, or be killed outright before he could learn anything. There had to be a way. There had to . . .
His eyes swept over the scene before him. The clouds were thick and heavy here, blotting out the stars and leaving the moon little more than a dull glow. He'd climbed a fair way up the slope of the foothills, and from that vantage, the dim light revealed much of the land. This place was not like Tressor. There, a view such as this would have included flickering fires and rattling carriages even at this time of night. There would be signs of life and bounty. Not so in this place. He could see only one town: a small, tightly-packed hamlet that hid behind tall, crude walls. He looked farther north, where the forest grew denser, and something about the way the trees met the mountains stirred a memory from long ago. It was something Ben had told him when he was young, a story about a cave that was home to a mighty beast. Ben had said that the greatest warriors in the world would seek it out to battle, and they would fall.
He let the story unfold itself in his mind. Decades of warriors entered the cave to face this thing, and none returned. It had done what he hoped to do. It had battled the best and emerged victorious. It must have learned much in those years. Become savvy in the ways of battle, either through instinct or wisdom. Slowly, he came to a decision. He would find this cave, and he would find the beast within. If it was an intelligent creature like himself, he would implore it to teach him its ways. If it had struck down so many warriors, then it was no friend of man. Perhaps then it would be a friend to him. If it was mindless and wild, then he would fight it. If anything could pull to the surface the rage and fury that had carried him through the battles with the griffin and the slave-drivers, it would be this beast. And if the monster killed him? Well, whatever the outcome, his troubles would be over.
By the time the sun was beginning to add color to the clouds, his mind was made up. He would sleep, and when he woke, he would seek the cave.
#
For a time, the Shadow traveled steadily northward. The temperature dropped sharply as he went. Before long, the ground was covered with dense snow. The need to remain unrecognized as a malthrope had long required him to dress heavily enough for the stifling heat of Tressor to be nearly unbearable. Even stripped of his cloak by the river, the handmade hide shirt and trousers were more than enough to make him uncomfortably warm when he was south of the front. The cool air of the north was at first a blessing, though the farther he traveled, the deeper the wind sunk its teeth. By the time he'd reached what he presumed to be the heart of the forest, he was grateful for the layers he still had. Sorrel hadn't been exaggerating when she suggested that the cold of the Tresson mountains was nothing compared to what the north had to offer.
For all of the faults of this northern land, there were benefits as well. The farther north he traveled, the fewer humans and the like could be seen outside of the cities. Once within the forest, there was seldom so much as a whiff of a human on the breeze, and little sign that a human had ever been to a given stretch of woods. Hunting was good in the forest, too. True, he was lucky if he smelled half as many creatures in a day as he did on the Tresson plains, and a fraction of what he smelled in the Great Forest, but there was more than enough to make meals quick and easy to secure. It was a dense forest, plenty of shelter and places to hide. He could make a fine home here . . . but a home was not what he was after. He was seeking the cave of the beast.
For a time, he worried that he would never find the place. It wasn't that he couldn't find a cave. Quite the opposite—the mountainside was littered with them. The problem was that he didn't know which cave was the one he sought. He had no map, and even if he'd had one, he wouldn't have known how to read it. Some of the caves were marked with signs, but he couldn't read them either. Even if they had been in his native language, he wouldn't have known what they said, but these were in Crich, or Varden. Despite his troubles, he pressed on.
To this point, everything in his life had been a struggle. He hadn't expected this to be any different. He reasoned that the cave of the beast would surely be marked, if only to warn the unwary of the dangers ahead, and it would need to be large if a creature was to live inside without ever being seen. Caves that met the requirements were rare, and those that seemed to be likely candidates didn't stand to scrutiny for very long. Either the place stunk of humans coming and going—certainly not something one would expect of a monster's lair—or a quick search turned up nothing.
After weeks of searching, he finally found something. The cave itself was rather unassuming. It was somewhat taller than he at its mouth, and a narrow stream flowed from it. Surrounding it, though, was a veritable thicket of signs. They seemed to be written in all manner of languages, as the shapes and symbols were vastly different from one to the next. Others had no words at all, only showing human skulls and other strong and forbidding shapes. More threatening than them all, though, was the smell. It was far too faint for a human to detect, but unmistakable to him: death, rot, fear. Lives had been lost in this place.
He breathed deep and looked into the yawning mouth of the place. He expected to feel anxious, fearful. Instead, he felt only resolve. Somewhere within this cavern was a being that knew more about how to kill and how to survive than any other. If he ever left this place, it would be with some semblance of that same knowledge. Whether he earned it through necessity or through experience, he would learn it well or he would lose his life. It was the way forward or the way out, and regardless of which, it would be well-deserved. There was nothing to fear for him now but leaving this place no better than he entered.
He hesitated only for a moment when he realized that he was without a weapon, but pressed on regardless. He'd had no weapon when he faced the griffin. It was just as well that he had none now.
Beside entrance to the cave, hanging beneath a large and detailed sign inscribed with every conceivable word or image that might dissuade someone from entering, was a cluster of torches and a few bits of flint and steel. The mere fact that neither had been stolen spoke volumes of how feared this cave must truly be. He took two torches, sparking one to life and pocketing a flint. Without another moment of hesitation, he marched into the maw.
He wasn't a dozen steps into the cavern when it became clear that this place was unlike any he had been before. During his time in the Tresson mountains, he'd been in and out of many caves, and in his search for this one, he had explored many more. This was entirely different. The stream running along the ground had made the floor and walls slick with ice and frost. Then there was the sound. For the most part, he was following the running water to its source, and its trickle and flow filled the air constantly. It echoed up and down the tunnel, and into and out of more side tunnels than he could count. The sound multiplied and fractured, becoming a cacophonous din. For a creature such as he, a creature with ears sensitive enough to paint nearly as clear a picture as his eyes, it was confounding and disorienting, like looking into a pair of parallel mirrors and seeing an infinite hallway. Worse, it meant that the beast could approach him from any side and there would be no simple way to detect it.
He moved more slowly, forced his breath to be as steady as possible, and sifted his every sense for anything hidden within the shadows and echoes.
Time passed, though without the sun or stars to go by, it was diffic
ult to know just how much time had passed. Gradually, the torch began to dim, but he pressed on, following the trickling water. The farther he traveled, the more the cave changed. It grew warmer. Where once had been a crust of ice was now a glaze of inky water coating every surface. The air became heavy and muggy, with a stale and lifeless quality to it. The passage that contained the stream was quite large, but the tunnels branching from it varied greatly in size. When they seemed large enough to be a potential home for the beast, he would explore them. Some seemed to fan out forever, but most led downward until the way was blocked by water. Indeed, anything that reached downward into the depths of the mountain seemed inevitably to reach a point where only water could be found.
Just as the torch was burning its last, the stream that he had followed reached its source. The tunnel had opened into a vast alcove, large enough that the weak light revealed only the rocky and uneven floor, while the walls and ceiling were lost in the darkness. When he finally reached something else, it was a natural wall, smooth where the water flowed but riddled with jagged fractures and splits elsewhere. The flow that made up the stream was formed by a dozen rivulets leaking through faults in the wall. The trickling sound of water, constantly with him through his journey so far, was louder here. It almost sounded as though it was coming from within the very stone beneath his feet.
