by Dante King
Scrutor bowed her head. “All right then. Continue on your way, and may the luck of the gods, or whatever sadistic superintendents they have hired, go with you.”
Before we could say another word, she slipped back through the secret opening like an eel returning to its lair beneath a bank.
“And enjoy the Wilderlands!” the scout’s voice echoed eerily from out of the almost invisible gash in the rockface.
“Alright,” I said, gazing out at the seemingly endless expanse of hard, wild country in front of us, “let’s get moving. The sooner we’re through these Wilderlands, the better.”
We shouldered our packs and moved out, heading north into the sea of straw-colored tussock grass, uneven and windswept shelf-like cliffs, and sharp, protruding rock formations.
Scrutor was as good as her word. We found the mere, a blade of fresh, clear water thrusting into the side of a slope, directly north of where we had crossed the border. It took us a little longer than the single day that the scout had told us it would, though.
I worried about this at first, but then reasoned that Scrutor might have been traveling alone when she snuck into Vetrusca to conduct her spying assignments. Due to there being seven of us, and the day being brighter and less rainy than it had been the day before, I made a point of plotting our course and running from cover to cover.
The countryside was bleak and desolate, but beautiful in its way. It was the sort of empty, barren landscape that must breed hardy folk if they wanted to scrape a life from it. The scrubby grassland was filled with long, low ridges of rock that run through it like ribs just showing through the skin of a desiccated corpse.
“It’s not so devoid of life, you know, when you look closely, when you stop and breathe the air for a while,” Elenari said to me when we had found the mere and stopped to fill our waterskins with its water. “I’ve seen plenty of rabbits flitting about, though less as the day has progressed.”
Tamsin, who was washing the back of her neck and her hands in the mere, said, “I saw them too, Elenari. And did you notice the scat a few miles back? Some animals very much like large deer must graze out here.”
“Where there are herbivores there are most likely carnivores hunting them too, right?” I asked.
“Such is the way of the world,” Tanila said. She was leaning against a large, round bolder and scanning the land to the east of us. Her tiger ears twitched this way and that as she sought for any audible sign that we were being followed.
“Where prey roams, so will predators be,” Dasyr said. She crouched down by the pool’s edge and lapped at the water with a big pink tongue.
The day had almost come to a close, so I decided that we would stay the night at the side of the mere and set out at first light the next day. The others agreed, and we passed a slightly drier night by the side of the still pool. The wind sighed ceaselessly through the grass. At some point, the incessant sound lulled me into a pleasant sleep, wrapped in a blanket and wedged between Elenari and Saya, and I dreamed of the sea.
The following day we made good time, as our guide was the stream that flowed into the mere. With our dragonmancer speed and tireless tread, by midday we came to within sight of the abandoned village that Scrutor had mentioned.
“Anyone see anything?” I asked as we surveyed the derelict cottages and the overgrown market square from our vantage point.
Tamsin pushed aside a branch of the wild rosemary bush that we were lying prone in. “Nothing. Nothing moving that I can see.”
The chattering stream ran right through the former sheep farmer’s village and disappeared out of sight. The village itself was built on two sides of a narrow, shallow bowl, which acted as a natural windbreak. A main thoroughfare wound between the sod-roofed cottages, with a well in the middle of an empty market square. A few broken-down carts had been left behind by whatever villagers had moved on from this place. The shutterless windows of the cottages stared like the empty eye sockets of stone skulls.
We were going to have to either skirt the forsaken hamlet and pick up the stream on the other side or cut right through the center of it.
“Going through will save us time and keep us out of sight of the surrounding land,” Tanila said from where she lay on my left.
“Undoubtedly,” I said, “but it also leaves us standing with our dicks in our hands—sorry, I mean, leaves us open as sitting ducks if anyone wants to attack us.”
I ran my eyes over the surrounding hills. There was no sign of any enemies.
“You are right, of course, Dragonmancer Noctis,” Tanila said softly, “but Queen Frami herself has sent for us. She would not allow us to be harmed on her land. It would be detrimental to her own cause.”
“Yes, but she doesn't know we’re on her land yet, does she?” Saya said. “And it’s going to be a bit hard for us to explain that we’re here on a mission of diplomacy if arrows start dropping through the tops of our heads.”
I held up a hand.
“Are we all in agreement that it looks clear?” I asked.
There was a murmur of general agreement.
“Lorekeepers,” I said, rolling onto my side to look at Dasyr and Tanila, “what do you want to do? Seeing as you’re the key components to the first part of this expedition, I think it only fair that you make the call.”
“We will go through the village,” Dasyr said. “It’s best that we make as much speed as possible and get to Hrímdale soon. The risk, minimal as we deem it, is worth it.”
“Okay,” I said, “through the village it is. Everyone keep your weapons to hand, ears pricked, and eyes sharp.”
Chapter 8
Walking through the edge of the village and into the main street was like walking onto the set of a medieval movie somehow. It was all so perfectly familiar. The genuine article, but empty. It was hard to describe. I was half waiting for someone to yell action and the scene to start - bustling village women carrying baskets under their arms, chickens pecking in the dirt, children running around and getting in the way, and men gossiping on the periphery over a tankard of ale.
But there was none of that. All was calm. All was tranquil.
“None of the buildings look like they have been touched since whoever lived here left,” Saya observed.
“I suppose there are few out here to touch it. To loot,” Renji said. The djinn’s hand was resting on an axe that she had tucked into her sword belt. “The Vetruscan Kingdom is a hard and wide land, if you listen to the reports of the few Mystoceans who have visited it. The folk who call it home often live far apart from one another in isolated communities.”
“Just seems weird that no one would scavenge this good stone, or the doors, or anything like that,” Tamsin said.
“I don’t suppose there would be anywhere near for them to lug it,” Renji replied.
I looked at Will, who was floating along just behind me. He had turned down his brightness, I thought, or else made himself look smaller in some way. If a will-o’-the-wisp was capable of showing nerves, then he was doing it.
We walked up through the middle of town slowly, heading toward the well at the center of what must have once been a busy marketplace, judging it by its generous size. There were a couple of pens and a race constructed of a hardwood that had aged to be about as giving as iron, which I assumed had been for when sheep had been shepherded out of the hills to be bought and sold here.
Senses were on high alert.
I approached the well. It was a simple construction, the exact type of well you might imagine if someone asked you to draw one: built of stone with a basic windlass pulley system and a little roof over the top.
I leaned forward to peer down the black hole.
And that’s when the first arrow smacked into the rustic wooden tiles of the well’s roof, precisely where my head had been about half a second before.
I rolled sideways and heard a sharp click as another arrow punched into the stone side of the well.
I caught a flash of pale
light out of the corner of my eye and saw Will whisk away out of sight. I wasn’t worried in the least about him. Any entity that you could pass a hand through was unlikely to be bothered with taking a random arrow.
“The hills, the hills!” I heard Dasyr cry out, in a voice that was at once fierce and controlled. “From both sides! Here they come!”
I ducked behind the cover of the well wall. If the enemy were coming down both sides of the shallow bowl that flanked the village, then that meant that I should have cover from both sides.
I should have cover...
I chanced a quick glance out from my hiding place, ignoring another arrow that thudded into the ground about seven inches from my right foot.
There were men and women all along the ridgeline. Some were knelt in the attitude of bowmen, while others streamed hurriedly down the hillsides. The exposed metal of weapons and armor glinted dully in the light of the sullen sky.
It was no surprise that we hadn’t sensed their presence. They might have been equipped with armor, but they looked like a pretty wild group nonetheless. They were spattered with mud, so filthy that the skin colors of the individual raiders could not be guessed. Their hair and beards were overgrown, straggly and matted, as though they had been out in the rain for months, let alone a couple of days like us. They looked like they were coated in half the countryside.
I spotted a handful of dour-faced dwarves coming slowly down the slopes on their short legs. There were a couple of big figures who looked more than half trollish to me, as well as some nimble-footed female warriors that might have been elves.
Another arrow thunked into the ground on my other side. I studied it, noting that the fletching was made of soft gray feathers, the shaft of a light, almost white wood; a pretty killing tool.
“Conventional weapons only!” I roared.
Another couple of arrows flashed over, twittering like partridges breaking from the cover of a bush in their speed. Musical death. They were followed by a few more.
“Magical weapons are okay too!” I amended. “Keep it subtle! Nothing too overt!”
I hadn’t seen where the others had scattered to, but I assumed they had taken up cover in the cottages lining the square.
There was little to be gained from hunkering down on my ass by that well, so I sprang to my feet and made a dash for the building closest to me. Dragonmancers can move like a cheetah with a lump of ginger up its butt when they need to, and I made use of that skill then. Arrows thudded into the road at my heels, kicking up mud and stones.
The patter of running feet and the jangling of chainmail came from around the corner of the hovel that I was running toward. I readied myself. Reminded myself that I was a dragonmancer—a walking personification of a bad day for anyone who crossed me. I rounded the corner with my teeth bared.
There were four of them. In the lead was a light-footed dark elf, hair streaming behind her like a war pennant. She sprinted up the street, which was empty except for a cart with a broken axle, with a mace in her hand and a snarl twisting her lips. Behind her came a trio of dwarves, jogging along and moving in an easy unison that spoke of three warriors who had fought much together.
The dark elf saw me as soon as I cleared the corner and let out a piercing war cry that sent a shiver through me. She put on a burst of speed, leapt up onto the cart, and then launched herself at me.
Without stopping, functioning on adrenaline-fueled instinct, I conjured my repeating hand crossbow with a thought.
I pulled the trigger three times. The first bolt caught the dark elf in the shoulder, spinning her in midair. The second and third crunched through the breastplate she wore and punched through the back in twin gouts of bright blood.
I ducked as the limp form of the dark elf fell past me and, before the body had come to land with a very conclusive thud in the road behind me, I had lashed out with a foot and kicked the front of the busted wagon parked forlorn in the roadway.
The strength of my kick propelled the cart backward. Its back wheels on their broken axle came off the ground and its seized front wheels left twin ruts in the soft dirt of the road. It smashed into two of the dwarves and lifted them off their feet, before pulverizing them against the wall of another cottage down the street. Stone crumbled and part of the earth roof collapsed onto the wrecked cart and the two dead enemies.
The third dwarf managed to avoid the cart-turned-missile by a beard hair. He spun as the wagon careened past him, flattening his brethren, and drew a throwing axe from his leather jerkin. With a lovely bit of wrist work, he sent it blurring toward my face as I began sprinting toward him.
I caught it in mid-air as easily as if it had been a paper airplane thrown by a child.
The dwarf’s eyes widened under the rim of his heavy helm. To his credit, he didn’t panic. Instead, he drew a pair of shortswords from scabbards at his sides and stepped out to engage me.
I slapped the first sword out of his hand as it whistled toward my torso and sent it cartwheeling away. The second sword I caught in the crook of my elbow. I flexed my arm, the blade caught between my bicep and forearm, and the sword bent out of shape.
The dwarf grunted something in a foreign language and reached for a knife at his belt. I hit him so hard with the back of my hand that his helmet swiveled one-hundred and eighty degrees on his head, and he was flung across the street. In an explosion of wet wood and the sound of cracking bone, he went through the shuttered window of a hovel and disappeared.
I turned and sprinted left down another side street. I had caught the flash of movement, the sound of running and fighting. Now that we were in a scrap, I found myself searching for Dasyr and Tanila. I was sure that the two dragonmancers would be able to hold their own, but I still wanted to be there should anything untoward happen.
Thinking I may as well get a better view of things, I leapt ten feet up onto the thatched roof of a building next to me and ran nimbly over the top of it. Arrows whistled around me, and I was obligated to swat one from the air a couple of inches from my face.
Looking to my left as I ran, I saw that there was an archer on an adjacent roof armed with a nasty crankhandle crossbow. He had just placed the weapon to his shoulder, resting it on a low stone chimney, and was drawing a bead on someone down in the street.
My own repeating crossbow popped into my hand, and I let loose with a small barrage of quarrels. The stone chimney was pockmarked with bolts, fragments of masonry sent flying. It was enough to put the bowman off his aim, and he recoiled under the onslaught.
I reached the edge of the roof I was running across and sprang into the air. The gap between me and the archer was big—too big, I realized at the last minute.
Hoping that no one was paying too much attention to me, I conjured the Chaos Spear and hurled it at the bowman at the same time as he was leveling his crossbow again.
It was a fortunate accident that an enemy faerie, four feet tall and armed with a vicious serrated sword, chose to buzz up into the air with his whirring iridescent wings to intercept me. The Chaos Spear took him through his armored chest and sent him flying backward in a spray of black blood, the spear sticking clean though his back. Both spear and faerie exploded through the stone chimney that I had been initially aiming at and skewered the bowman behind it. Stone and bodies clattered down into the street below.
I landed heavily in a crouch, spraying mud and water in all directions. Ahead of me, Tamsin was fighting about eight enemies at once. She had picked up a spear from some fallen foe and was wielding it with devastating effect, whipping it about her so fast that it looked like the wooden shaft of the weapon was bending as it hissed through the air.
“Who the fuck are these assholes?” I muttered to myself as Tamsin eviscerated an enemy warrior and sent his guts spilling out into the mud like shining purple and pink ropes.
My initial guess was that they were desperadoes, but the more I saw of their fighting technique, the less sure I was about that guess.
Then,
as I was deciding who to kill next, one of the two trolls that I had seen ducked out of a barn and made for Tamsin. It had a splintered beam clutched in one three-fingered hand.
“Tamsin—” I started to say.
The head of the troll, who had been about to impale the distracted hobgoblin through her back, burst like a green goo-filled watermelon as Renji descended out of nowhere with a double-handed warhammer held in her fists. Shards of bloody bone flew in all directions. The twelve-foot creature teetered like a redwood that had just been sliced into by a lumberjack and then crashed over, obliterating a market stall and turning it into little more than firewood.
Leaving Tamsin and Renji to their work, I ran back toward the main square, cutting through a few buildings and smashing through a mud brick wall at one point to expedite the process.
The ambush had dissolved into full-on medieval urban warfare now. My companions were all under attack but more than holding their own.
Dasyr and Elenari fought back-to-back against a dozen or so of the enemy. Elenari’s daggers were a blur as she cut and stabbed at her attackers, while Dasyr used her claws efficiently to blind and hamstring any opponent who came in too close.
I caught sight of Tanila dodging inside a cottage, followed by three women armed with swords. A moment later, and much to my satisfaction, one of Tanila’s adversaries burst through one of the walls in a shower of dust, missing an arm. A moment later and another’s head punched up through the turf roof of the hovel—and rolled down it into the street.
I didn’t see what happened to the third unfortunately, because a muscle-bound minotaur decked out in full plate armor of blued steel and holding a double-headed battle-axe stepped out of a street and gave me the hairy eyeball.
The very hairy eyeball.
There’s no point pausing to swap pithy insults, not in real life.
I tackled the minotaur around the middle, and the two of us tumbled over and through a low stone wall. The minotaur landed as lithely as a five-hundred-pound cat on the other side. He came at me with a hook kick that would have left a mortal man’s femur resembling powdered sugar. I blocked the kick by raising my shin and countered with a knee strike to the minotaur’s chest. My opponent kept his feet, but breath and snot sprayed out of his nostrils. He stumbled back on his hooves and crunched into the wall behind.
