by Ted Neill
Haille shuddered. As he watched, the commotion of the pack increased. The figures split into two groups. There were the creatures holding down the girl, who had gone still, except for her heaving chest. Her hair was stuck to her face by blood, which dribbled down onto the ground, the smaller green creatures licking it up, coating their tongues in dirt. The larger gray menaces knocked them away the way hunters might kick at hounds interfering with their kill. Other gray members of the pack were occupied with attacking something else. Haille realized it was one of their own numbers, a smaller green imp. After a brief resistance they held this unfortunate creature up by his arms. Haille could see that even among the smaller creatures, this was one of the smallest. His yellow eyes were wide with terror. His legs kicked helplessly as they held him aloft, his claws shone with the fresh red blood drawn from the girl’s face. Unrecognizable speech passed among all the creatures, but Haille thought he could understand well enough.
Whomever they were taking her to wanted her unblemished.
The guttural sounds of debate stopped abruptly with a motion from the tallest of the gray creatures. His armor was more complete than the others. The swing of his sword had been too quick and subtle for Haille to notice, but he saw the result. The green creature who had cut the girl’s face swung free from one of his captors. The captor still holding him dropped him to the ground. The other appeared somewhat surprised to suddenly be holding a useless limb: a limp green claw. It threw the limb into the forest, sending it crashing through leaves and branches to land next to Haille.
The smell from the severed claw was powerful, like sweating pigs or the guano of a cave full of bats. There was also a coppery smell that Haille took for blood. The column started forward again. He closed his eyes and whispered a prayer to any god listening that the creatures would not notice him. The girl was already entwined in the burly arms of the gray things. They waited for the other creatures to go ahead then leapt off into the air themselves.
Haille was left listening to the sound of his own desperate breathing, but there was another sound, a gasping, hissing, whining. The small, maimed imp was still there, and Haille could see now, he was searching the road for the very claw, his claw, that the gray creature had cut off as his punishment. Haille was surprised to feel some sympathy for the beast, as he would feel, he guessed, for any wounded animal, as this one certainly was. The creature moved about cradling his severed stump, his snout sniffing the air for its scent.
He was moving closer. Haille reached down, overcame his own revulsion, and seized the severed claw. He pushed the thorns and bracken aside with Elk Heart then broke through onto the road. The creature looked up from its search and froze, its eyes wide, its mouth of needle-like teeth agape. He raised his good arm, its talons extended, but the wounded creature looked more pathetic than intimidating. Haille held up the severed hand. This elicited another hiss from the beast before his legs bowed and he leapt upon Haille.
The attack was too quick for Haille to think. He simply shuffled backwards, dodged a swipe of the creature’s remaining claw, and while it was off-balance, he struck the severed stump with the flat of his sword. The thing howled and bent over his wounded arm. Haille had size on his side and kicked the beast, sending it tumbling across the road. He lowered the point of Elk Heart at the imp’s neck and held it there. They remained rooted in place, their bodies shaking. Out of instinct Haille spat, “Stay back!”
It nodded and stepped backward, its eyes on the claw Haille still clutched. An amazing thought occurred to Haille.
“Can you understand me?”
It nodded again.
Haille could guess from the sounds he heard the creatures making before that they would not be able to make the sounds required for human speech, but if they had their own language, was it so unlikely that they could know his, at least enough to understand it?
“You can understand my language?”
The creature’s eyes widened with questioning, then he nodded again and hissed. He would have to keep his sentences simple, Haille decided.
“Can you speak it?”
He shook his head no.
“I didn’t think so,” Haille mumbled to himself. “Are they going to kill the girl?”
The creature nodded and hissed a noise that almost sounded like, “Yesssssss.”
Haille glanced to the side of the road and noticed a curtain of the same black vines that had come close to strangling him and his friends. He swept his sword past them and they fell limp, as before. Elk Heart still held some property that rendered them inert, at least for a short time. With a second swing he cut down a couple. He snatched one up as it began to curl into itself and applied it as a tourniquet to the severed claw then held it up, swinging in front of him.
“You want it back?”
The creature nodded.
“Then take me to her.”
The creature made a choking noise and rubbed at his eyes with his good wrist. He swung his head to and fro as if locked in a debate with himself, looking up to eye his severed limb where it now hung swinging from Haille’s belt. Finally he waddled over to some of the severed vines, snatched one up, and wrapped his own bleeding stump in one and shook his head in the direction where the horde had passed.
Haille was about to follow when a shape broke through the foliage on the side of the road. The imp arched his back and the hair on his shoulders rose up on end. Haille readied his sword as a blade cut through the latticework of branches.
Val stepped through the gap and into the road.
“Haille!”
“Val!”
“By the stars what is that thing?” came Cody’s voice from behind. Not a moment after, the elk leapt passed and charged the monster, his rack of antlers lowered. The creature snapped his wings and took refuge in the branches of a tree. Katlyn emerged onto the road next, shrieked upon seeing its hunched shape and beady eyes, but just as quickly she moved to Haille’s side and embraced him, the jays accompanying her, landing on his shoulders and head.
“We thought you were lost,” she said.
“I was,” Haille said and turned to Val. “Val, I’m sorry I ran. I . . . I was hearing voices, I somehow lost my mind.”
“And now?” Val said, taking his eyes off the beast to study Haille.
“I feel like they are gone. But I don’t know why.”
“What is this thing and why do you have its hand?” Katlyn asked.
“I don’t know. I saw more of them, dozens. They have a girl, a human girl, they are going to kill her.” Then without knowing why, he added, “We have to save her.”
“Hold on,” Val said, his hand up. “First you run off, claim you lost your mind, heard voices, now you want us to try to rescue some girl? How did she even end up this deep in the wood?”
“I don’t know, but he told me they would kill her,” he said, pointing to the treed imp.
“Like they will do to us if we interfere,” Cody said.
“This thing can talk?” Val asked, incredulous.
“Sort of, it can understand us.”
The creature made another long hiss that sounded like a mangled, “Yesssss.” The elk curled its lip and gouged at the dirt with his hoof. Val appeared, for the first time since entering the woods, overcome. He knelt down and rested his head on one hand, the other holding his sword pointed up at the creature. Haille was afraid perhaps he was struck with the battle sickness again, but after a moment he realized it was just weariness.
Katlyn spoke up from beside Haille, “If there is a girl in danger, we have to help her.”
Haille said nothing, instead studying Val who rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I don’t know anything, anymore. I thought we had lost you, Prince, now we find you and you suggest driving into a den of these things to save a girl I can’t even be sure you saw.”
“I did see her!”
“And you heard voices, too. I’d never believe you if I had not heard them as well.”
“You, too?” Haille asked.
“While we’re confessing here, I could have sworn I’ve seen things moving in the bushes, things like shadows,” Cody said.
All looked to Katlyn, who shrugged. “I’ve seen, heard nothing.”
“But you’ve had blessed more sleep than the rest of us,” Cody said.
She also wears a magical band, Haille remembered.
“These woods can turn a man mad. Given enough time I don’t doubt they would do the same to woman folk,” Val said with a nod to Katlyn. “I’m tired, tired of pushing forward against the current of this place, tired of it beating on my brain like a hammer. Maybe it is time we fought back. Katlyn is right, this girl needs our help. But I swore an oath to protect life, you all did not.”
“If it counts for much, I’d be fine leaving her to fend for herself,” Cody said. “We need to get our own hides safely through this place. But Captain, you know I’ll follow.”
“Aye, and I don’t take that lightly. Haille, does this thing have a name?”
The creature adjusted its grip on the tree branch and made a guttural noise that sounded like, “Storn.”
“All right Storn,” Val said, getting up. “Lead the way.”
Chapter 11
The Feast
“The woods are changing,” Katlyn whispered as they slipped between the massive trunks of trees. She was right, Haille thought. After following the horde for what felt like an hour, the underbrush had thinned and the spaces between the trees had widened.
“It’s this,” Val said, kicking at a pile of spoor on the ground. It released a smell akin to cat urine and pig feces. “Droppings of these monsters,” he said with a nod to Storn, who led the way, hiding behind one tree then the next. “This shite must kill everything that tries to grow from the forest floor.”
Storn hissed for quiet, putting his stump to his mouth and pointing upwards with an extended claw. Katlyn stifled a gasp. Just above their heads, hanging like bats from the tree branches, were more of the creatures. So close were they that Haille could see the mess of interlocking and twisted teeth, the folded conical ears, the enormous nostrils. Their eyes were closed, as if in sleep. Cody guided his sword out of his sheath; Val, Haille, and Katlyn followed suit.
The trees began to have an ordered appearance. Each was equidistant from the next and they seemed arranged in long straight colonnades, which in turn, formed corridors and, in places, small rooms or large chambers. The place was part forest and part fortress. Looking left and right, Haille saw the larger gray creatures, awake and moving in dim torch light. Haille could hear their ghoulish voices as they communicated with grunts, hisses, and guttural groans. Occasionally a howl would echo throughout the forest, reverberating between the trunks and freezing the four of them in place. Storn continued on, unperturbed, followed by the elk. There was no trust between them. The elk followed Storn closest, his rack of antlers lowered so the points hovered just behind the imp’s neck. Between the howls and the grunts of the beasts, the forest was otherwise silent. Gone were the noises of other forest creatures. Everything here that was not a monster had fled, or was dead.
Ahead, a light appeared between trunks. Haille moved to get a better look and noticed Storn was slowing down, the hair on his back standing on end. It was firelight they saw. It grew and spread, silhouetting the trees like light from behind prison bars. Haille stepped on something that rolled under his foot. Picking it up, he realized it was too light to be stone and too heavy to be wood. It was curved like a fragment of a bowl, but not cold like porcelain. Realizing what it was, he dropped it with a shudder where it fell among a mess of other skulls, some human, some not. Cody let out a disgusted curse while the elk made a loud huff, like an angry horse. Val waved at them all to be quieter. Katlyn was unable to comply, running back behind a tree and retching. Haille stood stupidly, unsure as to move forward or go back and help Katlyn. What were they doing? Why had it felt so important to follow and save this girl?
Something was pawing at him. It was Storn, poking at the severed claw and holding out his good one, empty.
“You want it?” Haille asked. “Not yet. You have to get us out of here too, only then when we’re safe do you get it.”
Storn snarled then turned away. Haile and Val followed now with the others bringing up the rear.
In the chamber ahead of them, the monsters, giant grays and impish greens were gathered round a fallen tree turned into a table of sorts. Storn pointed around a trunk. By the way he cowered, Haille sensed this place was the center of things, the deepest recess of the creatures’ lair and the worst of Storn’s betrayal. Haille kept a hand to the severed claw, loathe to let go of their only leverage over the imp. Before he could step forward for a better look, Val took him by the arm.
“Prince, we might not all get out of this one alive,” he said.
“Are you saying we should turn back?” he said, looking into the captain’s eyes. They were focused, hard as steel.
“No. You’ve chosen righteously, but sometimes the righteous can do the right thing and still lose. It is one of the hardest lessons to learn.”
Haille swallowed. For a moment he felt he understood Val, his life of great idealism and great disappointment, better than ever. The captain, despite his scars and his burden of loss, was the most honorable man Haille knew. Haille felt a terrible fear swell within him, not of the creatures or what fate might await them in the clearing ahead, but a fear of disappointing yet another mentor as he had disappointed his father. He was not sure if it was admiration or love he felt for Val in that moment. Maybe it was just a misplaced desire to please his own father, but Haille knew his choice was already made.
The forest shook with howling and screeching, and for a moment, a whole chorus of the beasts’ collective voices. A great commotion roiled in the clearing. Creatures shifted and parted and Haille saw the bloody remains of something—someone—on the table. He was afraid they were too late, then he was afraid the commotion meant they had been discovered, but none of the creatures looked in their direction. Instead they were all turned towards the end of the chamber to Haille’s left. He and Val pressed closer to the tree between them. The din of the horde was such that it drowned out any sounds they could make. Haille and Val made their way over ground littered with cracked and splintered bones. One of the jays made a somber whistle from the elk’s antlers. Cody cursed.
The room was larger than Haille would have guessed, longer than it was wide. Soot from the torches had turned the branches above them black, but the trunks below were stained white and brown: bone dust and blood. Two grays carried in the girl he had seen before. She was stripped of her armor and clad only in her fabric garments—a simple tunic and britches. Her limbs were tied to two ragged logs. The two grays dropped her on the table. The logs overlapped just behind the small of her back, bending her entire body painfully upwards, her tunic parted from her belt, the soft skin of her midrift exposed. Behind the two grays followed a tall one, his scales a dark blue-black, his head crowned with a headpiece of braided gold.
This blue-black thing bent down over the girl, the horde silencing as he neared her. His teeth moved. He was speaking. She was turned away. One of the grays handed a curved sword to the blue-black creature. It was made of a brownish metal, with a green patina growing on it. The blue-black thing drew his hands over the girl’s face, lifting up her hair. Haille had been mistaken, she was not looking away, but directly into the eyes of the monster before her: defiant. He could see the white of her skin stained red by the rivulets of blood that trickled from her wound and her burning blue eyes that stared unflinching into the nightmare above her.
The beast’s neck bent in a fluid motion, the braided golden crown shifting slightly. He moved backwards, the nails of his feet rasping on the table. His fingers tightened around the sword and his eyes narrowed to slits. It was so strange to watch the language of his body. In some ways he was readable like any human—it was almost as if a human was dressed i
n a costume of the creature—yet in other ways he was pure animal, an overgrown lizard, tongue flicking among his teeth, yellow eyes darting.
The other creatures were already pulling at the girl’s limbs. Fingers wrapped around her throat. Haille realized he could not stand to see her flesh rent again. She gave a cry. The blue-black thing lifted his sword.
The jays cried out in surprise as the elk leapt forward into the clearing with a deep bellow. He caught two green imps immediately on the ends of his antlers, impaled them, then flung them, their own blood spiraling outward, into the trees.
“I guess we’re not waiting,” Val said, and rushed into the clearing after the elk. Haille followed, aware of Cody and even Katlyn scrambling over bones and skulls after him.
Haille’s fear turned to rage as he looked upon the scene before him, the helpless girl, the hideous things with their ravenous mouths. He wished for all their deaths, for their complete extinction. Two more green creatures leapt at him, but his sword was up and cleaved them into halves. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Katlyn stab one with a yell and Cody kick another in the face before running another through. They were mad, all five of them, warriors, butchers, and hopefully saviors. The creatures panicked, in complete pandemonium, while Haille and his companions cut them down, stabbed them in their scaly necks, and slashed at their leathery bellies.
The monsters began to form ranks around the table. Haille ran forward before his path to the girl was cut off, but gasped as he was thrust aside and went tumbling. A green creature was standing on him. It scratched and bit at him wildly, ripping at his clothes. The terror of it broke him out of any controlled, practiced defense he knew and he kicked and swung at any bit of the monster that he could. It was Katlyn who drove into its side with her short sword, knocking it off. Cody ran it through with his sword that was already dark with oily, black blood. Katlyn reached down to help Haille up, but she was tackled from behind by another one of the creatures. This one pinned her to the ground with its legs and moved to rake her neck open with his claws. Haille scrambled across the ground but it was another creature that fell upon the first and twisted him off.
