Shadow Witch: Horror of the Dark Forest

by J. Thorn

  With his heartbeat thundering in his own ears, Thom pulled his family toward the Mylan Road and into the waiting gloom.

  II

  Chapter 11

  Without aid of horse or carriage, with no protection from the frigid night except the clothes they wore when they fled, the Meekses followed the Mylan Road north out of Droman Meadows toward the protection of the kingdom. Even if he pushed them hard, by day and night, Thom knew it would take at least five days to reach the capital on foot.

  Thom remembered Marik’s warning to never diverge from the road, so he pulled his family through the dead fields that bordered the route on each side. The bramble grew less dense north of Droman Meadows and the leafless trees hovered over the road, keeping the family hidden from approaching enemies. The howls of the dread wolves interrupted the silent, starry night, reminding them all of the dangers they faced.

  They traveled for three hours over frozen knolls and through snagging, dead weeds protruding from the soil like undead hands from a grave. The monsters’ baying faded to the south and sometimes he thought he heard explosions and screams in the distance, as though a new battle began outside the village.

  Delia’s legs carried her body along in fits and stumbles. Their youngest daughter should have been in bed hours ago, and though she pushed through the difficult terrain without complaint, Thom saw the weariness in her eyes.

  Thom was the only one in boots. The soft shoes the women wore offered little protection from the rocks and ice. He felt the effects of the evening’s battle beginning to drag him down, as though he carried a heavy bag over his back. His shoulders slumped forward and his knees felt weak and unstable.

  “Over here,” Thom said, leading them into a clearing a hundred paces from the Mylan Road.

  A semicircle of pine and spruce shielded them from anyone on the road. The familiar scent reminded him of home—against the empty, dead feel of the surrounding countryside.

  Kira and the four daughters gathered dry branches as Thom shaped a circle of rocks into a tight fire pit. He looked toward the road and back at the cover of the trees, his eyes surveying the landscape and calculating the angles of visibility. A shiver racked his torso and convinced him to build the fire despite the proximity to the road. He rubbed flint and a rock together as he was taught as a child. His arms shook and spasmed, waiting for ignition. By the time the first spark jumped like a shooting star onto the dried needles and twigs, blisters burst on Thom’s hands. Smoke and a thin flame rose off of the kindling and Thom layered the fire with thicker twigs until the blaze grew.

  The women rubbed their hands at the fire’s edge, battling back numbness. For the first time since the madness began, Thom saw smiles on their faces.

  “Not too much,” Thom said as Sarra layered the fire with more branches. “We don’t want to invite attention or burn down our camp.”

  Kira cast a wary glance in the direction of the road. Though the trees blocked all sight between the clearing and the dirt path, she looked hard at the burgeoning flame.

  Thom nodded at Kira. “If we keep the fire low, we will not be seen.”

  He knew anyone passing along this point on the road would smell the fire, but nothing could be done about it. Building the fire was a calculated gamble, a risk they had to take.

  A full day’s travel from the smoke-choked village, the sky turned into an infinite canvas of black. It was dotted by stars glistening like a king’s ransom of diamonds. The dead, windless night made the gloom feel even colder, as though the black sky poured down. Looking upon the gathered kindling, Thom imagined it as a normal winter’s night. Yet calendar winter had long since passed and springtime had not arrived.

  He didn’t allow his family to rest. Two hours into their respite, he woke Kira to stand watch while he closed his eyes for a few minutes. Any longer and he feared their luck would run out and their position would be discovered. Any longer and he might dream again, and Thom wanted no part of dreams on this night.

  The family emerged from the temporary camp, slouched forward and in silence. They rubbed at bloodshot eyes, left the hidden clearing behind and pushed northward. Beyond the trees lining the road like gargantuan fence posts, Thom eyed the snaking path of the Mylan Road, which glowed in the moonlight. The path to the capital remained desolate and abandoned, and as he studied the road for signs of foot traffic and wheel markings, he listened to the deafening silence of the countryside.

  On a normal spring night, the chatter of katydids and the hoot of owls would fill the air. But this was anything but a normal spring. Walking along the rock strewn field absent anything except for widely scattered patches of pricker bush, he felt as though they were walking through a graveyard.

  “Oh dear, the princess may need to be carried,” Jasmine said. She turned and grimaced at Sarra five paces behind.

  “It’s your fault if they catch us,” Krea said, grabbing Sarra by the arm and dragging her forward. “You may be the oldest, Sarra, but you’re always holding us back.”

  Kira turned on the twins.

  “That’s enough from both of you. Don’t you realize the danger we are in? Arguing amongst yourselves when who-knows-what could be following us in the night? We’re all tired but there is nothing to be done with it. Keep moving.”

  The twins aimed fierce glares at Kira.

  “You heard what she said. Mind your mother,” Thom said.

  A film of tears covered Sarra’s eyes and she winced with each step on a rock or the sharp point of a broken branch. Krea and Jasmine shared looks and watched their older sister out of the corners of their eyes. Delia rushed ahead of her older sisters to walk by Thom’s side as though she could sense the growing tension.

  He looked over his shoulder. Thom wondered if the dread wolves could hunt by scent and how long it would take the beasts to catch up.

  “Keep moving,” he said. “We cannot afford to rest anymore this night.”

  Chapter 12

  Thom rolled and tossed, trapped in the space between consciousness and unconsciousness. Every time the memory returned, Thom wanted nothing more than to wake up, to end it before it began. And yet he knew that wouldn’t happen. The dream would end with Thom screaming himself awake.

  Thom hid those late teenage years from the villagers of Droman Meadows, from Rowan and Kira. He even hid his past from Gavin, who guarded the capital in those days, unaware of the minor battles taking place on the kingdom’s edges. The king called for mercenaries to support the Mylan Guard in a border dispute at the southern boundary. Several village boys enlisted when the call came, but only Thom returned home. The heavy casualties in those battles made it easy for the surviving soldiers to bury their past with their dead friends. But as Thom would come to realize, the past never dies.

  “Here.”

  Thom turned to face his commander, the broadsword dripping blood from the tip of the blade.

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “I need you here, at this gate. The Everforge mercenaries will make a push on it at sunrise. You must defend it with your life. If this outpost falls, the kingdom of Mylan could be in jeopardy.”

  Thom nodded and took his place next to three other teenagers recruited by the king. He did not know them or their village but he knew their fate. Thom would walk away from this fight with his life. But the others, they would most likely die on the blade. He knew the king would send his most expendable forces to defend the kingdom’s outposts.

  The commander left. The three boys laughed, one rolling tobacco leaves and pulling a glowing ember from his leather pouch.

  “Stop that,” Thom said. He swatted at the brittle paper the boy held over the glowing coal. “They’ll see the flash and know our position along the wall.”

  “We’ll all be dead on the morrow,” one boy said.

  “I don’t plan on making my death easy for them.”

  The boys looked at Thom and back to the tobacco, the lure of the smoke battling with their sense of self-preservation. B
efore the conversation could continue, a yell came from the guard tower to the east.

  “They advance.”

  The message made its way down the line and the boys scampered for their weapons. Thom pulled his chainmail tight and secured the leather strap beneath his chin. His head didn’t fill the helmet and he knew he would toss it to the side once the fighting began, leaving his view unobstructed but his head unprotected.

  A ball of fire exploded to Thom’s right and the wooden barricade ignited in a blaze of orange. The enemy’s first wave included sacks of burning oil. He watched as it splashed on the men, the fire jumping on their backs like demons. The two boys to Thom’s left ran into the darkness as the enemy flanked the outpost and pushed forward.

  “She needs you alive. You must save yourself.”

  Thom heard the voice in his dream as he did on the battlefield that night. It cut through the chaos and hung inside his head.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “Use the symbols, the spells you were taught. You must sacrifice others in order to stay alive.”

  Thom looked to his right where the first battalion of Everforge mercenaries appeared, cutting down the boys from Mylan like wheat from the fall harvest. The teenagers fought with second-hand weapons and mismatched armor, neither of which could stop the flow of Mylan blood.

  “I cannot sacrifice my brothers in battle.”

  The voice did not respond but he felt the disapproval inside, like the fiery seizure of a back spasm.

  More Everforge mercenaries reached the gate. He heard metal on metal, dying horses and men calling out for their mothers. Thom swung his sword to the left and then back to the right. He had a few more years’ experience than the other boys and used it to survive several battles. Thom wiped the blood of dead men from his hands more than he wanted to remember.

  The boys hoping to enjoy the tobacco lay dead at Thom’s feet. In the waning moonlight, Thom saw their eyes open in a death stare. One of them stood his ground, sword on the ground and in hand-to-hand mortal combat with an Everforge mercenary.

  Even without hearing the voice, Thom knew this was what he had to do. He would use the symbols to conjure the spells, sacrificing the boy in order to save himself.

  Thom closed his eyes, imagining the message traveling to the boy’s mother. He could see her tears and feel her pain, the grief squeezing her heart.

  “I can’t,” he said, knowing he would. “I can’t do this. It goes against the warrior’s code.”

  He felt the voice laugh, a wet chuckle lodged in his brain.

  “But you will because she commands it. You must kill your own for the greater good.”

  The symbols appeared in Thom’s eyes and he smiled at their return, knowing they would conjure spells more powerful than any weapon on the field. He basked in their glow and protection. They would save him from death. At least on this night.

  “That one, should he live, would be a threat to her. You must kill him to save her. And yourself.”

  The symbols swirled around Thom’s head and he felt the surge of power that came with them. He inhaled, as if breathing the intoxicating aroma of their energy.

  He opened his eyes and saw the boy strangle the last bit of life from the mercenary on the ground. The boys held off the night’s attack despite the fires raging all along the perimeter. Everforge commanders sounded the retreat and the boy heard it as the man beneath him died.

  “Now, Thom. You must do it now.”

  Thom lifted his sword and took two steps toward the boy. He saw the whites of his eyes and the gleaming, bloody smile on his face.

  “We did it,” said the boy. “We turned them back.”

  “Aye,” Thom said. “That we did.”

  He lowered his sword and pushed the tip into the boy’s abdomen, below his chain mail and above his leather belt. Thom felt the blade slide through soft flesh as the boy fell into Thom’s embrace. Thom turned the blade and the boy winced. He looked at Thom in a final moment of confusion and agony, his lip twitching as the blood pooled at his feet.

  Thom dropped the boy to the ground and fell to his knees. The symbols vanished and he felt the voice fade into the ether. Thom tossed his sword into the darkness and collapsed on top of the dead boy, his screams bellowing over the burning inferno.

  And as they had on many nights since, his cries awoke him, the boy’s dying eyes the last thing he saw before waking up.

  Chapter 13

  Dawn broke to an opaque sky. The sun shone through as though perched behind hanging linens. Thom wrapped his cloak tight about his body, fighting hard to keep his body heat from bleeding away into the wintry morning. The women shivered, Sarra’s teeth chattering as she pressed her body against Kira’s. Already the morning breeze began, crying in a faraway dirge through the unshielded meadows southward.

  The howls of the dread wolves fell silent for several hours, and though Thom took comfort in the growing certainty that they had lost the beasts, he kept a watch on the trail of the Mylan Road through the cover of the trees. He detected tracks in the roadway, snow swirled over them by the diurnal wind but not enough to obscure the clawed feet headed south. The imprints of horse hooves and boot marks left in the snow proved men passed along this road in the last day, and Thom knew there weren’t enough tracks to be a garrison of the king’s soldiers.

  As the hazy eastern sky brightened, Delia clutched her stomach and moaned. Because of their flight under the cloak of darkness and the battle to fend off the cold, Thom hadn’t thought about food. The family passed a full day without eating and Thom knew if they didn’t find a source of nourishment soon, their bodies would not be able to withstand the difficult travel.

  “Hold on a little longer,” Thom said to Delia. “Your father knows a few tricks for finding food in parts such as these.”

  Krea shared a doubtful look with Jasmine and asked, “Was Daddy a tracker or a soldier once?”

  “Don’t be silly,” Jasmine said. “He’s just a shepherd.”

  “Stop talking about Father,” Sarra said. She held her hand up to the twins. “He knows what he is doing.”

  Kira dropped back so she could eavesdrop on the conversation and think about her husband. She remembered the terrible beast that attacked them outside of Droman Meadows. Thom killed the dread wolf with a swordsmanship she had never seen before. She walked behind her husband and watched his cloak fluttering in the wind. She watched and she wondered.

  They came across a shallow stream winding through a grove of coniferous trees. The surface layer froze paper thin but the spring sun blazed too strong to allow the stream to completely freeze. He punctured the ice with a stick and it broke apart like glass fragments, the water sweeping it downstream. They drank with cupped hands, eager to relieve their parched throats despite the freezing water stinging their fingers.

  Along the stream bank, where the proximity to the water kept the ground from turning to ice, Thom dug into the soil until he located a string of groundnuts. The twins protested at first and Sarra consumed her share with a pained expression, but they ate them all. When Kira spotted a bush of cranberries further along the stream bed, the daughters raced each other to them.

  The girls picked the last of the berries, chewing them in a slow, deliberate motion. They moved the branches aside and searched for any fruit they may have overlooked. Color returned to their cheeks and each of the girls managed a smile for Thom.

  “How far is it to the kingdom?” Krea asked as the sun tracked to its noontime position.

  “Days. Several,” Thom said.

  Sarra groaned and Krea had the look of a puppy tossed into the cold to fend for itself.

  “The king’s guards will protect us, right Daddy?” Delia asked.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Jasmine said. “Of course the king’s guards will protect us.”

  “Jasmine.”

  Kira grasped Jasmine by the arm and pulled her to the side.

  “Haven’t we enough to worry about without you
constantly fighting with your sisters?”

  “The Mylan Guard is made up of the best swordsmen in the kingdom,” Sarra said. “Whatever those monsters were, the Guard will know what to do.”

  Krea giggled.

  “Even better than your hero, Bran Allador?” she asked.

  “Stop it,” Kira said, casting a warning glance at Krea.

  Bran Allador.

  Thom’s heart sank, thinking of the blacksmith’s apprentice murdered in the battle.

  “Bran asked me to attend the mid-summer dance with him this year,” Sarra said. “I hope he doesn’t think I abandoned him.”

  Krea and Jasmine burst into laughter, whispering to each other as they trailed the others. Thom drifted deeper into his own thoughts, trying to forget the image of Bran Allador’s shattered body amid the carnage of Droman Meadows. He tuned out the teasing and focused on the road, letting Kira handle the bickering sisters.

  The terrain climbed northward and an hour later the Mylan Road descended into a steep path between cliff walls—Drake’s Pass. The massive rock closed against the road like clamps, blocking out the sun and enshrouding the path in dangerous shadows.

  Thom brought them to a halt before entering the pass. There was no way around it that would avoid the wild without adding hours to their travel. Nor could they avoid the road. The cliff walls would force them out of hiding, and once they entered the pass they would be caught within the chasm for several hundred paces until the terrain reopened. He knelt on the ground, studying the road which disappeared into darkness. He hadn’t seen a single traveler, but the faint outline of tracks remained in the snow as ghostly reminders they were not alone in the wilderness.

  “What is it?” Kira asked, crouching at Thom’s side.

  “Drake’s Pass. There is no way to avoid the road. We must come out of hiding.”