He could eliminate those areas as possible fronts. He found the smallest two gaps and decided that those would be his escape routes. And he familiarized himself with the rest. Ranthos counted paces until he was dead center in the island and then got to work clearing shrubbery so that he’d have an unobstructed view to each threatening front.
Next were the snares. He set a club tipped with four arrowheads to a tripwire with what rope he had left in his bag. That was eight arrows less than what he had. Leaving only fifteen. But Ranthos thought that if he needed sixteen arrows to bring it down, it wouldn’t go down with thirty.
Next, he needed bait. He hadn’t a clue how to draw the buck here. Perhaps a fire, or perhaps… Ranthos sighed.
Blood. Predators could smell it for miles.
Ranthos sat cross-legged in the center of his island. He closed his eyes and sniffed the air for any animal scents.
Nothing.
He waited another minute.
Nothing.
Ranthos grit his teeth and realized what he’d have to do. He tore a strip of fabric off his shirt and readied to bandage himself before drawing out an arrow. With a deep breath, he pressed the steel tip into his flesh on the back of his arm. He really had little idea where to do it. He just assumed that he ought to stay away from any tendons or his throat.
“Scut,” he cursed as he bled out onto a pile of weeds.
He picked up the bundle and climbed the small trees that dotted the island, and coated those leaves which moved the most in the wind, refilling his weedy brush as needed. Once the wind was sufficiently saturated with hodge blood, he bandaged himself up.
What was another cut, right? He had enough.
If he had his bearings correct, the wind would carry his scent straight into the Tatzelwood.
Hopefully, the watchmen didn’t have any dogs. Even if they did, the buck would reach him first. So in the disaster scenario, he’d fight the buck, and then the watchmen. Perhaps with a brief intermission.
That’d be swell.
Ranthos sat with his bow in his lap in the center of his island and tried to control his breathing and his nerves as he waited for something to take his bait. He could still only smell fear—a scent which hadn’t truly left him since he fled Tatzelton. Now though, in the dead space of waiting, he could smell it and very little else.
Once he caught whiff of the buck though, every other scent would drop away completely, like it did when he met it first, and like it did inside the Shortcut. It certainly wouldn’t be able to surprise him.
Ranthos tried praying, but gave up soon after, not really having any clue of how that was done, and settled on finding a rock for his collection. It was nice, an oblong gray stone banded with red, a little bigger than a coin.
Ranthos heard hooves trot across sandstone and leap from one island to another. His heart picked up its pace and he scrambled to his feet and strung an arrow.
Could this be it?
He sniffed the air but couldn’t catch any scent.
A shriek echoed through the caverns beneath him, amplifying it like some macabre natural organ.
He heard the beast leap again.
Ranthos’ breath became short and slowly, every smell in the world died out until he could only smell himself, scared scutless.
12
The Scut
One step right and two steps left the buck approached; one breath in and two breaths out, Ranthos managed in his fear.
Ranthos still couldn’t see the buck, but heard it shrieking again, and heard its hooves clop forward.
Darker than the night sky, the shadow of a crown of twelve jagged points emerged into the flickering moonlight; shaggy filth-stained fur blew in the wind; and a shrieking face lifted itself to peer into Ranthos' soul with its all-too-human eyes.
The shriek made Ranthos' spine wrench and contort as he writhed in pain. It was louder than it was when they first met, more hungry, and seemed to have a new depth.
The buck’s chest was not only pierced by Ranthos' arrow, but many others, including broken spears and blade wounds. They jostled against each other with each jagged step. When the beast inhaled, they knocked together in a rhythm and harmony that whipped Ranthos' heart to its fastest speed.
Ranthos tried to take control of his breathing and aligned himself against the nearest snare to the buck to draw him through it.
It shrieked and Ranthos spasmed with another wave of unnatural pain down his back. Thundering rolls of pain filtering through his bones and the buck’s braggart confidence ringing in his ears; Ranthos knew it was over.
He drew his bow and took aim. The buck shrieked and his bones shook and the arrow went wide. Ranthos yelped and winced in pain. He wasted no time in loosing another, which flew between the buck’s antlers.
The thing gurgled what sounded like a chuckle, its deerish lips curling into a mockery of a grin.
It leapt to another island. There was only one gap now between it and the snare.
Ranthos wanted to run, but he knew he had to stay right where he was if the snare were to catch it. Ranthos fired another arrow, but his aim was thrown off again by a laughing shriek. Ranthos snarled in frustration and hammered an arrow into the thing’s neck. Its head twitched and shook, before stretching to full length, spurting blood from its jugular and righting itself again.
It shrieked louder now, with more anger, and Ranthos almost lost his footing, but didn’t. Then its offbeat hooves began forward, as it lowered its crown and began a stiff charge for Ranthos, pulled forward by invisible strings.
Ranthos fired another shot but missed; another, and the arrow clattered off the thing’s antlers; another and it shrieked; another and it scraped the thing’s shoulder.
Ranthos was so nervous he could hardly aim.
The buck leapt over to Ranthos’ island without losing a step, vaulting the gap effortlessly. Ranthos held his shot now, while it shrieked. He waited. It felt like an eon had passed as he listened to every single step of the buck barreling toward him, drooling for blood.
He couldn’t take his eyes from the snare.
The buck caught the wire, and the arrowheads tore through its knee, sweeping it out from under it, driving the thing’s antlers into the ground. It scraped and scored lines into the soft sandstone, grinding out from it a wretched wail. Ranthos winced and trembled at the noise.
Ranthos still held his shot until after the buck shrieked again. Once he regained control of his limbs, he fired two successive shots through the buck’s head.
It hardly seemed to affect it, as it just shrieked again.
There was nothing he could do. He had to dismember it somehow.
The buck thrashed and tried to yank its flesh from the snare.
He couldn’t dismember it without a cleaver.
The buck snapped the sapling.
He’d have to use something else.
The buck got itself to its feet.
Ranthos had an idea, a terribly stupid idea, likely the worst idea in the world; no one that existed would even have thought that this idea was anything more than a joke. There was little chance it could work, and even a smaller chance that Ranthos could even maneuver the buck into the right position.
The buck charged again, lowering its head again like a grisly battering ram. It was so close now, and Ranthos’ eyes went wide as it filled more and more of his sight.
To avoid complete body-rending, Ranthos tried to dive behind a larger tree, without grace, ease, or much success. His gut hit against a low stray branch, which he did not have enough time to duck past. He was trapped in the buck’s charge line before he could get behind cover.
Seven points ripped through Ranthos' back, knocking him prone onto the hard ground and slamming his back into a jagged rock.
Its over.
“Scut,” Ranthos muttered, as his nose filled with indescribable fear. He reached behind him and touched his wounds, he saw blood on his fingertips.
Ranthos tried to stand, but
every part of his body ached, his older wounds suddenly deciding to pain him again, disturbed by the rocks. But Ranthos got up, though he knew it was over. The mountaintops were too far.
Meanwhile, the buck was thrashing madly to wrench its antlers out of the tangle of branches in the tree, for they had embedded themselves so deep into the trunk that the beast’s massive rotting muscles couldn’t get free. Unable to escape, it shrieked, and the tree began to wither and rot like the trees in the Labyrinth, blackness crawling forth from the antlers onto the wood like a poison, and finally crumbling as its massive crown erupted forth and each dagger-sharp point turned to Ranthos.
“Wonderful,” Ranthos said, “I’m glad you can do that.”
The buck shambled forward, swinging its antlers into Ranthos, throwing him to the ground again, tearing his skin and muscle as easily as a hand through water. Then it shrieked and charged forward, stomping Ranthos' writhing leg with its hoof as it trampled over him, and it stumbled another twenty feet down the empty island before it could steady itself on its snared leg. It seemed unsteady.
How Ranthos was still alive was a miracle, much less still conscious. He felt like his leg was shattered.
Growling in the deep of his nose, Ranthos rose again, first to his knees, then to his feet, clutching his side.
The buck was turning around. It was time to execute the plan.
Ranthos looked round for the other snare, and once he caught sight of it, ran towards it as fast as his trampled leg could carry him, dove over the wire, and stood behind it, knees bent and ready to act. He left his bow behind, but he didn’t need it, and the rest of his arrows fell out of his quiver. It was of little consequence, though.
As Ranthos turned himself around to face the buck, however, he realized that it was already upon him, a trail of dust in its wake as the jagged crown of the fell king flew forward through the dark.
Right before the crown pierced Ranthos' flesh, he ducked low, and the antlers caught the trunk of a tree, and its hoof the wire of the second snare.
The arrowheads swept the other leg out from underneath the beast.
The buck had its head caught low to the ground, and Ranthos was almost lying down, so they looked each other in the eyes and Ranthos felt the hot breath of the monster waft over him, and the buck stamped its free hoof at Ranthos, but with little success, the crown was too mighty, and his neck to large and muscled, it couldn’t reach him; Ranthos was just skinny and gangly enough to be out of reach. That is, until the buck shrieked and rotted the tree away.
It hardly moved its snared leg as it focused on poisoning the tree. Heavy boughs fell behind Ranthos, and atop the buck, rolling off its mighty back harmlessly.
Ranthos saw an opportunity: the beast’s head was mostly still as the deafening shrieks shook Ranthos’ body. Ranthos clenched his fists and forced himself to move as the sound of the buck’s scream echoed and reverberated in his hodge ears. His chest shook and convulsed, but he clumsily swung his hands at the buck’s face, taking hold of the arrows he left inside of it. He only had to hold onto them tight enough so that his shaking bones would snap them free. He gripped them as hard as he could as his limbs contorted with the screaming buck’s wail.
His muscles felt as if they would rip apart. Sweat poured down his face and finally with a snap, his arms were free and there was no more tension. Ranthos now held the broken ends of two arrows. One of which cut his hand. Though that was of so little consequence compared to everything else.
As the buck’s head got free, Ranthos took a strike at the buck’s mannish eyes, swinging the broken arrows limply but with as much power as he could muster. One arrowhead pierced the thing’s cheek, while the other hit its mark and popped an eyeball, hooking around the skull’s eye socket.
Cold blood running down Ranthos' arm from the buck’s face, it shrieked, rotting the tree away completely, it broke through it. But now the tree trunk seemed unsteady and ready to collapse.
Antlers and falling debris bearing down upon him, Ranthos watched the buck’s knees buckle and quiver as the weight of the trunk slammed down upon its arched back. Still hooked into the buck’s skull, Ranthos pulled himself to one knee and yanked the buck’s head around to throw it off balance.
The buck’s head turned, but it didn’t budge. Ranthos pulled harder and it budged, but at a cost; the buck’s antler scraped down his upper lip to his chin.
Ranthos tried to pull the arrow from its eye socket but his hand throbbed with numb pain. The buck stirred and its antlers clattered against the ground, propping its head up oddly and contorting its neck. With his free hand, Ranthos reached over and gripped the arrow stuck inside its eye, and moved it back and forth, cutting and scraping the inside of the buck’s head as much as he could.
The skin of the buck’s face tore and peeled, Ranthos took hold of it and pulled the soft rotten flesh off from its snout, revealing a grisly skull.
The shriek changed pitch as the beast’s nose and lips were lost and left dangling. The buck slammed its free hoof into Ranthos’ chest. Ranthos screamed in fear and fell prone in pain, rolling over his battered ribs and cut side, into the ground, now bloody mud, with a damp slap.
Ranthos felt like he saw the face of death itself. He saw Hell screaming at him. He was but a child lost in the dark.
Ranthos pulled his body across the mud with his elbows; tears streaming down his face, he let out a cry that could be heard throughout the whole Shortcut until he reached the edge of the island.
This was the worst idea that had ever been thought, but it was time to try it.
The buck grunted from the ground, a bleeding skull with a venomous crown. Head and shoulders pinned under the tree trunk, its little erect and fluffy tail wagged skyward, as if flaunting its immortality. Sending a chill through Ranthos' body, the monster found footing for its shaking legs and began to heave the trunk off its back. It wasn’t dead yet, and thought it had won. Snorts and grunts of what it thought was its coming victory abounded, ingraining Ranthos' coming demise into the very fiber of the scentless world around him.
“Stand up,” Ranthos whispered to himself. He felt paralyzed. He told himself, “Stand up,” because he wanted nothing more than to stay down.
Because if he stayed down, then the buck could kill him and it would be over, the fear, the pain would disappear. From his mind came these thoughts, telling him to give in, to cower, but from his bones came a call to stand. For Bell; stand up to see her again. For Nosgrim; stand up and prove his insults wrong.
Ranthos stood up once again, body rent, eyes bloodshot and teary. He smelled nothing but fear.
The buck got up too, the trunk finally rolling off its broken back, and was standing wearily, and it shrieked again, but with less power than before without a proper mouth. The pounding pain tumbled through Ranthos' bones once again, but he endured, nose wrinkled and snarling as he barely kept his footing.
In dire straights, Ranthos sometimes blacked out and regained his senses after some feat of strength or agility, like at Chickenrock or when he was being chased by the watchmen, and he felt himself drifting into that space now, his instincts beckoning him to let them take charge of his body. But Ranthos needed control, he couldn’t lose himself in the black. He had a plan, and as unlikely as it was that Ranthos himself would even survive, he had to do it for the chance that if the buck was dead, Bell and Nosgrim could see the mountaintops.
Ranthos, from the day he first saw this arrogant scut, believed the buck to be mortal, and it was time to prove it. Ranthos' shaking right hand was cut and bleeding. In his left, he held half of an arrow.
It was just another deer, just with a worse attitude.
He was going to feed its heart to Remy.
The Stranger was going to take them away from here.
The two of them, an immortal buck and a mostly killed hodge, faced each other down, locking their eyes, Ranthos’ green and the buck’s deep dark. Shrieking, the buck shook its shaggy hair and sent ripples thr
ough the thick blood-mud, and roaring like a wild creature, Ranthos clenched his fists in primal fury and continued the roar, leaning into it, ears flat and teeth barred.
The buck prepared a final attack for Ranthos, who bounded forward, meeting the buck halfway. With a growling pounce through the air, Ranthos leapt into the buck’s antlers to clumsily and left-handedly jam the blood-slick arrow into the top of the buck’s skull. It entered with a watery crush.
Ranthos’ limbs were caught in the beast’s crown and as it shrieked, a rotting poison seeped into his body. The rot in Ranthos’ body felt like ice in his blood.
It tried to shake him loose, but failed, Ranthos locked his legs around the beast’s head and arms around its antlers and neck. He took fistfuls of fur and held tight as it bucked up and down. Ranthos could hear with every leap that the buck’s snared legs became weaker and more wobbly.
And he saw the ledge beside them. Ranthos snarled and attempted to steer the buck nearer the edge. It almost worked; for every one step it took back, it took two forward. The moment Ranthos could see down the side of the ledge, he loosened his grip and let the buck fling him off.
But getting up this time was easy, his bones were hardened and his soul burning with fervor. The buck chuckled, unharmed by the arrows in its head and fluffy tail wagging happily. It wasn’t afraid, but it should have been.
Ranthos charged forward, ducking beneath the antlers and slamming his shoulder into one of the buck’s knees. And kicking out the other one. Both made crunching sounds.
The buck whimpered.
Ranthos then took hold of the buck’s chest as it was distracted by the pain, and lifted it up as high as he could, and dropped it down so that with the fall, both knees snapped underneath its weight.
Ranthos took a few steps back as the buck tried to stand but couldn’t without functional legs. Its hind legs scrambled to keep its haunches upright.
It’s head still thrashed angrily, its shrieks no longer effective.
Enter the Lamb's Head (The Adventures of Ranthos Book 1) Page 14
