Hollow Road

by Dan Fitzgerald

  “I’ll need to be within about thirty yards, to be sure,” Sinnie said to Finn. “I’ll move as slowly as possible and hope I’m half as quiet as you. Carl, Nicolas, if you stay within sight of me, you’ll see when I fire and you can start moving then.”

  Finn again brought his focus to his core, then down into his legs, where it seemed to settle a little more easily this time. He winked at Sinnie and began moving down the path, so quietly it surprised even him.

  The scene had not changed, and when he got within thirty yards, Finn ducked behind a cart-sized boulder and motioned Sinnie forward. She moved slowly along the game trail, then picked her way among the ferns and trees until she had caught up with him. They could just see Carl and Nicolas crouched another fifty or so yards behind them. Sinnie locked eyes with Finn, and there was something hard in her expression he had not seen before. He hoped it was just a shell she had formed to protect herself, like he did with his magic. The last time, when she killed four of the Maer, there had been no time to think, and no question of right or wrong. But doing this might change her in ways that would take longer to undo.

  “Are you sure?” he whispered.

  Sinnie shook her head, pulled back her bow halfway, and slowly raised herself high enough to see over the boulder. She pulled the bow all the way back, her eye trained on her target, and when the Maer’s head popped up for a moment, she let the arrow fly.

  The Maer fell without a sound. Finn released his legs, stretching them as best he could to get normal feeling back. Sinnie had another arrow nocked, and stood watching, but there was no sound or movement, either from the fallen Maer’s spot or from the cave mouth. Carl and Nicolas moved in a crouched run, hiding behind their shields as they approached, hewing close to the rock formation. As they reached the sentry, Carl gave a thumb’s up, and moments later Nicolas began climbing the rocks with impressive nimbleness and speed, despite his heavy armor and shield. Carl followed a little way behind him, and as Nicolas approached the entrance, Finn moved around the edge of the boulder and crossed the game trail.

  Carl had not quite caught up when Finn saw Nicolas draw his sword and disappear into the hole. A single scream pierced the valley, followed by a cacophony of others, some of them the high-pitched shrieks of children. Horrible hacking sounds filtered out of the cave, followed by more screams, and Carl scrambled up and charged into the hole. Not knowing what else to do, Finn brought his energy to his center and held it, waiting to see what might be needed of him. There was no sense going into the crowded cave with no armor and a weapon ill-suited for close-quarter combat. He glanced back at Sinnie, who had moved atop the rock for a better shooting angle and held an arrow nocked, her bow pointing toward the cave mouth. A ferocious scream pierced the air, followed by a deep yell, and two bodies came flying out of the cave, tumbling together for some distance before landing hard on a rock. Nicolas cried out as he landed, and shoved a Maer off him, a female with blood dripping from her mouth and stomach. She scrambled to a crouch, howling in pain, as Nicolas rolled to one side, then collapsed.

  Finn dug deep within himself, took a couple of quick steps, crouched and sprang up, up, up, his body hurtling through the air at incredible speed before smashing into the Maer, who had drawn a knife and was preparing to leap on Nicolas’ prone body. The force of his flight pushed the Maer into the rocks, her body cushioning some of the blow for Finn, but his right elbow banged off a rock, sending shooting pains up his arm and into his shoulder, and his face bounced against a tree as he fell sprawling down into a crevice below, dizzy and gasping for breath.

  “Finn!” cried Sinnie, and through his pain and mental fog, he heard her scrambling up the rocks. He tried to move, but his right arm was useless, and the trees above him started to spin and blur as blood trickled into his eyes.

  He heard Nicolas groaning, and Carl screaming from inside the cave: “Stay back! Stay back and don’t move one fucking inch!” Finn felt an unexpected giggle welling up inside him, knowing the Maer would have no clue what he was saying, but the meaning in Carl’s tone would surely be clear.

  “Oh gods, Finn, are you okay?” Sinnie grasped his face in both hands, her breath hard and hot as she wiped the blood away from his eyes.

  He managed a weak smile, his left hand coming to rest on her leg. “I’ll live,” he said. “Check on Nicolas.” Nicolas groaned as if on cue, and Finn heard the chink of his armor as he rolled away from the body of the female Maer. Sinnie looked over toward Nicolas, then down at Finn, her eyes flooded with tears, and nodded.

  “A little help here!” Carl shouted from the cave mouth. “It’s mostly females and children, and they’re pretty freaked out. I don’t think they pose much of a threat, but I could use another body. There are...three adults and...four children. None of them are armed.”

  “I’m coming,” Nicolas called, his voice strained. “How’s Finn?”

  Sinnie helped Finn to a sitting position, pulling him up by his left shoulder, and he made a small wave in Nicolas’ direction. Nicolas stood awkwardly, his back in obvious pain, looking around for his sword, which had fallen down about ten feet. He made his way gingerly down to it, favoring his right leg, retrieved the sword and slowly climbed back up, sword and shield in hand.

  “Sit tight.” Sinnie picked up her bow and nocked an arrow. She sprang up toward the cave mouth, arriving before Nicolas, and aimed her bow in for a moment before lowering it, covering her mouth with her hand, and turning toward Nicolas, her eyes red, her face contorted with horror.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Carl leaned against the edge of the cave mouth, looking down at Sinnie, who seemed to pivot between shepherdess and sheepdog, keeping the Maer adults and children under wraps while occasionally glaring a fierce warning at Nicolas to keep his distance from her flock. Carl didn’t blame her; Nicolas had killed two Maer women and one of the children in the cave, and had slit the throat of the one who had tackled him down the rock after Finn had knocked her out. Carl called Nicolas up to the cave and told him to carry the dead to a large rock out of sight of the remaining Maer so they could burn them in what was apparently the Maer tradition.

  “We should just leave them here to rot!” Nicolas yelled, his face red with exertion and slick with sweat and blood, especially on his cheek, where the female had given him a nasty bite.

  “Maybe we should leave you here to rot,” Carl grumbled, searching the Maer’s paltry belongings, which were arranged neatly against the back wall of the cave. There were several extra spears, a bow and arrows, and two bone knives, all hand-made with impressive craftsmanship. On the body of one of the Maer females he found an ancient bronze knife, similar to the sword he had found on the Maer they had killed at Holden’s Glen. Two of the children, including a girl Nicolas had killed, were wearing clothes that must have belonged to Samuel and August, though they were much too big for the Maer children. Carl imagined they must have seemed like great treasures to them, then chided himself for trying to empathize with the creatures who had murdered at least three people, and tried to kill him and his companions to boot. As he was helping the bitter Nicolas shoulder the weight of the last of the Maer bodies, the woman who had tackled Nicolas down the rock face, Carl noticed a rolled piece of leather tucked in her vest, and pulled it out. Nicolas tried to get a look at it, struggling under his burden, but Carl shooed him away with a grunt, and Nicolas adjusted the body over his shoulder and huffed his way down the hill.

  It looked to be some kind of map, the contours of which were marked by tiny indentations as if they were made by a thousand pricks of a needle. The indentations had been painted over, and there were humps and peaks that looked like mountains, as well as a blue line that might have been a river. He made his way down the rocks to where Finn was resting, his eyes closed, his mouth moving silently. Carl stood watching him for a moment, wondering exactly what he was doing. Finn had said he could heal faster than most, and Carl knew he could focus his body’s energy to do a number of things, including
the impressive leap that had carried him up onto the rock. Carl had calculated that Finn had leaped or flown more than sixty feet up, and with enough accuracy to land on the Maer female, although his landing had taken its toll. His elbow was surely broken and his shoulder dislocated, but he did not appear to be in excessive pain at the moment.

  “Something I can help you with?” Finn murmured, opening his eyes to slits.

  “We’ve got some heavy rocks that need lifting,” Carl deadpanned. Finn chuckled, grimaced, then opened his eyes the rest of the way. His pained expression gave way to wide-eyed fascination when Carl showed him the map.

  “By the gods, it’s a cylinder scroll!” Finn’s tone was reverent, awestruck. “But it’s...” He traced his finger over the map’s lines as Carl held the leather up close. “I’ve only ever seen one, at study, when a visiting master gave a lesson on incantations. They are mostly a mind trick, by the way; saying the words is just a way to focus, and it won’t get you anything unless you have the technique and the...” He smiled awkwardly, and Carl blinked to tell him it was okay. “Anyway, as far as I’ve heard, they were mostly used to write down ancient poems that were believed to have some sort of power. The idea is if you read them, and truly understand what they are saying on some kind of deep, otherworldly level, you can unlock powers hidden within yourself you never knew existed. But a cylinder map? I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

  “And cylinder, as in...” Carl made a vague gesture with his fingers, and Finn nodded.

  “Right, well, they made these cylinders with little spikes all over them, and when you roll them out across soft leather, they leave an imprint that you can read. If you know what you’re looking for. And if you’re literate in...whatever ancient language they’re written in. Which almost no one is. But this...” Finn cocked his head sideways, then back again, his finger tracing the blue line, stopping on a spot where a deeper, rougher hole had been made, much more recently than the others, it seemed. His finger moved up the blue line, where it came to a circle with several squares inside it, next to what looked like a mountain, with many more around it.

  “Well I’ll be,” Finn said. Carl raised his eyebrows, and Finn nodded quickly. “That’s Brocland,” he said, “and that’s Hawthorne mountain.” His index finger tapped the peak, then ran back down to the blue line, back to where the fresh hole was made. “And this—”

  “Is where we are right now,” Carl whispered.

  Finn nodded, grinning like a kid, his pain seemingly forgotten. “Pretty cool, right?”

  Carl sat down next to Finn and took a drink from his waterskin. He wasn’t sure how cool it was that a group of Maer had what looked like an ancient map of his home village. In fact, he was pretty sure it wasn’t cool at all.

  “So these cylinders,” Carl said, “they’re made to be reused, right? To make more than one copy?”

  Finn nodded, turning slowly toward Carl. “Yeeesss...” he said.

  “So whoever made this cylinder, it was made as part of some larger collection, a library, if you will.”

  “Exactly,” Finn agreed. “They would make one cylinder, then make as many copies of the document as they needed, and keep the cylinder in case they ever needed to make more.”

  “And as far as you know, these cylinders are all ancient, correct?”

  Finn nodded. “That’s right. No one really knows just how old they are, but really, really old, hundreds of years at least, if not thousands.”

  Carl studied the map again, noted some figures on each edge. “These figures in the middle of each side, could they be references to other connected maps?”

  “Sure, I don’t see why not.”

  “So let’s break this down. Someone, a long time ago, we don’t know who or why, made maps, maybe a whole lot of them, and somehow these Maer got ahold of one of these cylinders, or got a map from someone who had one, and it led them right to Brocland.”

  “Well when you put it like that, it doesn’t sound so good,” Finn admitted. “Now if only we could talk to the Maer, maybe we could figure out what it all means.”

  “Well let me go see how Sinnie’s making out,” Carl said. “She seems to have taken a shine to them.”

  “I expect Nicolas’s actions helped push her in that direction.” Finn’s face sank for a moment.

  “Yes, well, I have a plan to get rid of him.” Carl held a straight face as Finn’s eyes widened, but he couldn’t hold it for long. “I’m going to ask him to run back to Brocland while we stay in the overhang with the Maer. We’re expected by this evening, so that should kill two birds with one stone.”

  “Wait, you want to bring the Maer back to Brocland? Um, I’m not sure I like your plan.”

  “We can’t leave them out here to be killed,” Carl said, “much as we might like to.”

  “I wouldn’t like to,” Finn admitted. “And what happens tomorrow?”

  Carl spat, since there were no women around. “I have some ideas, but I want to feel out Sinnie first.”

  Finn nodded and closed his eyes. “I’m just going to rest here a bit longer and work on my elbow.”

  Carl reached over to take a look. “Mind if I...”

  “Go ahead,” Finn whispered. Carl pushed Finn’s sleeve aside and saw to his amazement that the swelling was almost gone, and Finn’s elbow had returned to near its normal shape and size.

  “Incredible,” Carl said. Finn had said he could heal quickly, but his elbow had been broken, and though it might still be, it didn’t look like any broken bone he had ever seen, except for one that had been healing for weeks. “You keep at it, and I’ll go deal.” Finn nodded, his eyes still closed, and Carl walked over to where Sinnie was sitting on a rock, watching the Maer. They were huddled together around one of the females, who was talking in serious, hushed tones.

  “Any idea what they’re talking about?” Carl asked.

  Sinnie shook her head. “No, and it doesn’t sound like any language I’ve ever heard, but they do go on and on. The one who’s holding forth, I think is the leader, or is now that the one who tackled Nicolas is dead.”

  Carl nodded, watching the female, whose face was covered in hair, with a thin, delicate nose and full purplish lips. The thick hair on her head was pulled up into a tight bun, and she wore a necklace with some sort of bone pendant hanging down. She spoke quietly but emphatically, punctuating her speech with gentle jabs of her finger in the air, at the other Maer, and back at Sinnie and Carl, whom she eyed from time to time. A child of about three or four clung to her leg, sucking its thumb, with wide, fearful eyes set in a face covered in hair.

  “They are clearly terrified, and not just of us,” Sinnie said. “The female there, she tried to talk to me before, and she kept saying this word, Ka-lar, and making all kinds of horrible faces.”

  “She trusts you, I guess,” Carl noted. “That will make things easier.”

  “Well, I don’t know if I trust her, but I don’t think they pose much of a threat regardless. But what the hell are we going to do with them? We can’t just leave them out here, and we are due back by tonight. There’s no way we can get back in time, not with them in tow.”

  “Indeed,” Carl agreed.

  “I’m guessing you have a plan, right? You always seem to have a plan.”

  Carl nodded grimly. “I do. But I’ll need your help to make it happen.” He told her of his plan, and she listened, nodding and looking from the Maer to Nicolas and back to Carl. As they spoke, the Maer female extricated herself from the child around her leg, whom she pushed gently toward the lone male adult, who pulled the child in close, watching Sinnie with somber eyes. The female slowly approached, her hands in the air. Carl instinctively touched the hilt of his sword with his fingers, and Sinnie put her hand on his to stop him, then stepped forward.

  The Maer female began speaking, in slow, dramatic phrases, emphasizing each utterance with a gesture. Her language was smooth and fluid, almost gooey-sounding, with occasional sharp sounds mix
ed in. Though Carl couldn’t understand anything she was saying, there was something about the sound of it that was vaguely familiar, though he couldn’t have said why. After a few moments of prologue, she stepped back, raised her hands like claws and bared her teeth in a terrifying face and said “Ka-lar!” then began clawing at the air and chomping with her teeth. As she continued talking, her speech became faster and more emphatic, and she slunk low to the ground, making more clawing and chomping motions, then pretended to pick something up and sink her teeth into it, shaking her head from side to side. The Maer children, who were watching, spellbound, ducked behind the other adults, their crying and whining as painful to the ear as that of any human child.

  Sinnie held out her arms, and the Maer female stopped, turned toward them, and said something with the word Ka-lar in the middle of it, shaking her finger at them.

  “Okay, so the...Ka-lar attacked you?” Sinnie ventured, making her hands into claws and feigning attack. The Maer female nodded, her face solemn.

  “Ask her where it is,” Carl said. The Maer female glanced at Carl, her face twisting into a snarl, then relaxing as she turned back to Sinnie.

  “Where...” she pointed in various directions, shrugging her shoulders. “Where is the Ka-lar?”

  The Maer woman’s eyes narrowed, her face grew taut, and her nose quivered as if she were trying to sniff out their intentions. Sinnie pointed back in the direction they had come from, and the woman nodded, pointing in the same direction and taking a step back.

  “Okay. We’re going to kill the Ka-lar.” She enunciated every word as if it would somehow help the Maer understand. She pointed to Carl’s sword, made a stabbing motion, and repeated her words. The woman shook her head vigorously, wagging her finger at the sword, then pointing at the dagger on Carl’s belt, which had taken off one of the dead Maer females. She said a string of words, the third or fourth of which was Ka-lar, and ended by pointing at the dagger again, then shaking her head. Though her exact meaning was unclear, the dread in her eyes was unmistakable.