by Chris Turner
The plan earned enthusiasm and coarse jests flew while Risgan struggled futilely with his bonds. A deep roar and a rustle of pounding feet stirred the men out of their jocularities. Risgan felt an abrupt and wild rush even before it came. Roving predators had picked up the troupe’s scent. They had taken the party unawares, attacking by stealth and claws.
The packbeast carrying Risgan’s bulk bolted. At the first smell of blood, it gave a whicker of panic. One gibbeth came lumbering in fang-snapping anticipation straight at the half-frenzied mount, threatening to tear out its entrails. The creature stopped short. An unexpected scream came from its mate, alerting it. It went bounding back snuffling to the attack scene, where Risgan heard a hysterical neighing and rearing of where-backs. Men cursed and pikes gutted hairy beasts while swords hewed. There were savage cries, screeches of terror, pain-filled bellows, animal and human. A silence ensued as the prisoner lay still in his sack and dared not breathe. The sounds of ill deeds grew fainter. Risgan hoped they would continue to languish as the where-back fled on terrified hooves...
* * *
The packbeast slowed and roamed the flowering fields feeding on heather and sweetgrass. Luck had prevailed, for the gibbeths did not return to finish off Risgan. The afternoon passed in lazy monotony. For the relic hunter in discomfort. Try as he might, he could not squirm free of his infernal sack. The leather which bound his wrists chaffed at the skin and he grew thick with sweat, dirt and blood.
For a day and a night he bumped along the lonely lands while slumped on the back of the packbeast. The creature was canny enough to stay out of the jaws of gibbeths, but Risgan was very sore by this time, and hungry and too apprehensive to call out for help and possibly alert other potential marauders. Risgan felt utterly foolish trussed up on the back of his brute beast.
* * *
Later that day, a farmboy discovered the where-back wandering in his pasture along the skirts of a fence. The beast had paused to drink, normally at a trough reserved for the boy’s own herd. He scratched his head with something of puzzlement. He cut the relic hunter loose and looked Risgan over for a few curious seconds, before dismissing him as a loon. The retriever wobbled on his feet.
Famished and brimming with rage, Risgan squinted into the bright sunshine. “Have you food for me?”
The boy handed him a tired bag of apples and some sweet-bread which he had left over from his lunch.
Risgan gratefully wrung his sore wrists and looked about him for the first time. He had landed in territory unfamiliar to him. The wild meadow teemed with white willowcups and long green grasses. Long-winged butterflies flew from flower to flower. Risgan’s gibbeth club was roped in the packbeast’s panniers, much to his fortune and he retrieved it with a clench of teeth. Obviously the burnished weapon was not considered an item of worth to Bousaka’s men.
“You can keep the mule,” Risgan muttered to the farmhand. “It’s dull-witted and not very lucky, though it did guide me to safety. Don’t tell anyone you saw a bedraggled wayfarer and his mule. Then this recompense’s all yours.” Fishing in his boot, Risgan tossed the boy a fivepiece.
“Thank you.” Overjoyed, the boy gave a glad cry from a sun-browned face. “Your generosity is noted, sir. Not everyday am I accustomed to gifts from a stranger.”
“Nor are most,” grunted Risgan.
“Here—I am curious, what brings you on the back of this flea-bitten nag anyways?”
“’Tis a sad story.” Risgan shook his head with an air of resignation. “Suffice it to say that my trials are a sorrowful example of how a man can be led astray by the wiles of a woman.”
The boy nodded, as if understanding.
“Now—to earn the rest of your wage—tell me of the lands to the north. I have wandered far and the territory seems unknown to me. Or perhaps ’tis only my aching head.”
The boy nodded in eagerness. “The forest is haunted by gibbeths. Balcimax too, and black land wights. Better that you stick to the Badan River. There’re only thrukules there and malamanders.”
“I have some knowledge of thrukules.”
The boy grinned. “As far as beyond the forest, none knows. There’s a great city, I hear—Bazoor? Bamook, maybe?—men ride by air there on birds and great balloons.”
Risgan gave a throaty guffaw. “Only wives’ tales.”
The boy shrugged. “Beyond that?” He raised his palms in defeat. “Only wasteland, steppe, marauding tribes, so I’ve heard. I’ve met no travellers who have come from those parts, only rumours—in back kitchens and ale rooms. Drunken bandits, peddlers maundering on about strange gods, legendary creatures, beasts, wizards and adventurers...”
Risgan blinked with dismay and thanked the boy. He strode away, with a noticeable limp. Much was on his mind and the boy’s testimony weighed on his heart. It was not for the first time that he contemplated a complex revenge on Vosta and his arrogant magician.
He put his mind to other matters. Of what happened to Bousaka’s men, Risgan did not care to speculate on. Easily he could assume the worst... The half bear, vole creature with the soft turquoise fur that had surprised him recently near the temple grave gave him cause to shiver. Under no circumstance must he fall into one’s jaws.
He tightened his belt. After fingering his talismans, he ensured that all were still in order and made firm note to increase his vigilance. Through sheer carelessness he had fallen into the hands of enemies. Such would not occur again. Taking a long last look at the butterflies floating from willowcup to willowcup, he made swift progress northward.
Darkening clouds began to presage rain. Woolly bush, tussock and bramble became a source of much annoyance, with the odd cairn or stray boulder looming in his path, yet he hoped to locate the river again before nightfall.
He thought wrong. He had entered a dense tangle—where crumbling outcrops and flinty ruins peeked through a screen of sylax trees. Stony rubble crunched underfoot, rank with bottleweed and dwarf cedar. Risgan’s spine tingled, aching to explore those eerie places for their treasures. But a stronger urge took hold—to avoid pursuit and night marauders. He pushed on in an effort to discourage the enthusiasm of bounty hunters. As long as he could keep his senses alert and his feet moving, he would be safe from prowling gibbeths and volfi.
He spent the night in a crooked tree, strapping himself into a crook of the sylax branches lest he fall in an exhausted sleep to the lusts of marauders. Now he resumed his bleak trek at first light. The sky was clear, garlanded with puffy clouds riding a warm stiff wind. The forest was still, silent and sombre; there seemed no sign of dangerous beasts, none that he could detect at least, but that could change at any moment. Carefully he reached for his tin of purple powder, the gibbeth-deterrent, which had saved him on many prior occasions, the stuff which he hoped was dry and full of potency even after its soaking in the river.
The powder was clumped and serviceable, and Risgan breathed a sigh of relief.
By midday he approached the placid shores of a long lake whose aqua-blue stillness lay sparkling gently in a breeze. Sheer cliffs rose on either side. No passage presented itself across the lake and Risgan tugged at his chin in moody reflection. The water was much too wide to swim. A few furlongs down he noticed that the lake narrowed to a wide shallow river, rich with serpentine weeds and swamprot.
Risgan stepped back with a rumble in his throat. Three mangy didors, hybrids of bull moose and camel, stood tied in a crude wood-piked stall. Their eyes were dull, but shrewd in essence and belied a sense of ill will.
Risgan marched with confidence up to the river master who stood beside the beasts and his long ribbed punt.
“Here, sir,” Risgan said. “How much for passage across this lake?”
The old man gazed at him in absent manner. “I have been known to take certain persons for free.”
Risgan gave an astonished exclamation. “Would I be one of these persons?”
“All depends.” His grey eyes narrowed and he gave Risgan another crafty gl
ance. “Are you a Morphor or Bilbite?”
“Neither—though I favour the Morphor.”
“Then, you can pass.”
“A kind gesture,” Risgan said. With a wry grunt, he asked further, “I insist on absolute probity though. You must declare that you absolve me of all payment, gifts, bonds, ties, liens in relation to this ‘safe’ passage across the river.”
The boatman nodded in careless fashion. “Absolutely. In every regard.”
Risgan clapped his hands. “Then we have a deal. Let us proceed.”
“I couldn’t think of anything better.”
The two hunkered down in his small rib-backed boat to unhitch the rope from its wooden tethers. The didors gave soft grunts and insistent whines. The boatman inclined his head. “These animals are sentimental beasts. They do not wish to see me cast off.”
“That’s very curious. You must be an indulgent master.”
The rivermaster offered a polite nod.
The river was brownish and hosted residence to several offensive weeds which Risgan noted with care. They sported tall towering stems and whitish yellow stigmas protruding from throats of white bell flowers. Risgan gave a frowning inspection upon the unsettling aspect of their parts and not for the first time muttered doubt at the strange foliage.
“They find nourishment from the dirty waters,” explained the boatman. “They are only Astrix, queer plants which root deep in the bottom and take sustenance from the iron and rich metals that dwell there. Pay them no heed. They look more menacing than they are.”
Risgan grunted and motioned to the quivering stems. “The blooms smack of certain noxious epiphytes I have witnessed in Mazgul forest.”
“They are as innocuous as snails.”
The two were silent for a time. The old man paddled them across the strait with ease, avoiding the tallest and ugliest of the weeds. Circumnavigating a complex, weaving path, the boatman stood up at last at the bow, mid-way across the river, then gesticulated fearfully at a particularly menacing Astrix. “Take heed, wayfarer! The plants are rising. Quick! Pass me your silver. All of it! The plants are beguiled by shiny objects.”
Risgan, without protest, handed the distraught boatkeeper five of his remaining mezks, fearing for his life and the sting of the Astrix.
The boatman tilted the coins to reflect the rays of the sun and the beam struck out at the plants which seemed to resent the directed heat, rearing back, hissing like snakes, barely missing the gunnels of the creaking craft as it passed, raking it with their hatchmarked leaves. Further assaults threatened to topple the craft if only their stems or leaves could latch on to it.
The boatmen veered away with a grinning leer. “A perfect move! If not for our quick action we would have been dragged under, then suffered the wrath of the roots. Perhaps mauled by their feelers or other appendages that lurk below.”
Risgan inhaled a sharp breath. “That would have been an ignoble death.”
“At the least,” the boatman agreed solemnly.
Risgan paused to assess the plants which seemed to have hardly moved a few inches from their place of assault and now looked utterly docile. His lips twisted in a frown. “The Astrix seem benign. Perhaps it was your imagination, boatman? Or are you sure they were a danger?”
“Utterly! Now I urge you to sit tight and set this matter aside. I normally ask a compensation at this point for services rendered.”
Risgan’s face grew sour. “I have already tendered you five coins. Your own coins jingle in your pocket and easily could have been used to thwart the menace.”
The boatman waved a hand, objecting. “I remind you that your silver is buffed more shiningly than mine. Also, it is broader and flatter and becomes an essential deterrent in circumventing the Astrix. Here, let me demonstrate—” He shafted another threatening ray at the plants which seemed quite lackadaisical now and ostensibly harmless. “See them, timid as milk snakes.”
Risgan pitched his voice low in an effort to control his temper. “Being familiar with the area, you should have prepared for such an assault.”
The boatkeeper admitted that such was true. “You ask too much of an old man. I cannot forecast every menace on a river journey.” He pulled out two of his own flat silver coins to prove Risgan wrong, but Risgan could not see any difference between these and his own, and began to detect an air of chicanery.
The boatman allowed no time for Risgan’s scepticism and pulled on the oars. “Be so good as to hold this wind flag and stay quiet in the stern whilst I steer us to safety.” He poled sharply from the last of the Astrix and remarked with wise portent, “’Tis good to know whether the breeze swings us on a tangent toward the Astrix or pulls us closer to the rock wights which dwell surely in the reedy shallows below. In such case, I, as boatkeeper, must charge you an extra ten mezks for labour and inconvenience.”
Risgan gave an outraged cry but the old man would hear nothing of it. “The wights are an unruly breed, even more fractious than the Astrix.” He gave a knowing smirk and paddled with speed. “Meanwhile, I shall keep these coins of yours, as an expression of charitable good will.”
Risgan was in truth, the dullest sort of fool if he were to be so easily hoodwinked. “You would demand an outrageous price for passage and then cheat me again with your soapy lies? You deal with Risgan the Relic Hunter! Do not forget, you made me a solemn pledge, which is nothing less than a binding covenant.”
The old man gave Risgan a rascally grunt and a cheerful stare. “There are no such covenants in this world, friend.”
The boatkeeper motioned. “If you care to argue, I refer you to my didors, which already strain their tethers. Look, and you will see. They will come on my instant signal to my rescue.” He snapped his fingers. “Liking my pouch of sweet-meal, they are not inconvenienced by any Astrix. Withal, I mentally chanted the sacred homage to Douran, the river goddess, which makes me immune to any of your maledictions.”
Risgan stared in speechless irony. “I will not be domineered! We shall see what Douran says. Douran, oh Douran! Come hither, I hereby call on you, oh illustrious river goddess. Come and pounce on this snake-tongued rogue!”
The boatman peered around. The river remained as placid as ever. The ferryman raised his brows and gave a sigh. “Well, it seems Douran has no quarrel with me. Thereupon!—” he gave a supercilious laugh “—let us journey to yonder bank, which is only a bowshot away and thus our transaction is over.”
With bold strokes the boatman propelled Risgan shoreward. Just as the gloating swindler was about to take credit for his successful crossing, there came an unwholesome ripple on the surface and the boat canted at an uncomfortable angle. The boatkeeper swayed, called out a malign epithet. He fell sideways into the water.
Too late—Risgan tried to throw out a hand to help him but the old swindler was already thrashing about in the murky water. A malformed head reared up from behind.
Risgan shouted but the boatman flailed in the water, gaping into the demon’s face with its drooping snout and pair of writhing tentacles. The figure struggled, twin tentacles reached. Risgan offered a quivering hand but Douran’s minion faced the pathetic swimmer with a sinister zeal. The brief struggle ensuing was not pleasant, and the minion was gone—as was the boatman.
Risgan picked up an oar and with ever philosophical reflection, poled madly to shore, clutching for any threads of sanity. He thrust his feet onto the baked mud of the shore and scurried to safety. Who knew what jurisdiction Douran commanded?
* * *
On this side of the lake, steam rose from the ground. Hot springs, Risgan surmised, also certain noxious holes dug into the bluffs bordering the river. What were these? Caves? Sink holes? Risgan shook his head in perplexity. A wide valley swung southwards with hints of green. A vague road followed the river and disappeared into the haze, infinitely more inviting than the holes, but heading the wrong way.
Risgan brought his attention back to the caves. Puckering his lips in distaste, he sighed.
Doubtless the haunt of some evil thing. Yet it wouldn’t hurt to have a look. One never knew what gainful treasures lay in such burrows.... What was more, he lacked funds, owing to the boatman’s cupidity.
Risgan stepped over with reluctance to investigate the black caves of crumbling rock that could lead to mysterious inner worlds—horrors or boons, such were much the same. A stench immediately greeted his nostrils and Risgan thought to abandon his project. He caught sight of a mesh of chain mail, dangling from a stalactite, its rings long rusted but yet shimmering. Silver? Magestone? The glint only suggested it was once a costly coat of mail, perhaps of some ancient warrior. But the prospect of a trap caused him to pause.
A mournful call drifted from the hole, accompanied by an exhalation of dank air that had Risgan shuddering and retreating with alacrity. Even he had his limits.
All day long the disgruntled wayfarer plodded, ever on the lookout for gibbeths and bounty hunters. He moved with skirting hops and leaps. The reason was neither impractical nor abstract. There could another horror or ghoulish surprise lying in wait around the next yew or goblin oak.
The cliffs receded and Risgan strayed from the river. Acres of primeval forest stretched before him, rich with sprawling sylax and goblin oak with fans of green flowers, pink blossoms, and poison thorns. To his right stitched in a bed of rank furze, rose a queer plant with feathered pods, shaped like miniature dragon heads which opened mouths as a butterfly came to land, then closed up again to trap the unfortunate insect and suck its juice. Risgan shivered. The heat was oppressive. A sticky dampness clung in the air between the massive trunks. Often Risgan swatted at pesky flies hovering about his neck and matted hair. By twilight, at last he made shelter in a ruined shrine, equipped with a dome and a sagging turret, possibly some ancient zealot’s sanctuary. Following his relic-hunting instinct, he foraged around the sanctuary, checking in cubbyholes, niches, drain holes, anything for stray relics. He realized that there lay only emptiness: crawling vines, cracked stone, broken tablets—whether votive offerings or the remnants of ghostly memories he could not say. Shadows, spider webs and old memories stared back at him. Even in the greying twilight, Risgan found no comfort. Bone-thirsty and hungry, he could not generate enough energy to promote a more exhaustive search and there he lay in a sprawled heap alongside a sagging altar that exuded a waft of dusty antiquity.
