Enter the Lamb's Head (The Adventures of Ranthos Book 1)

by Jasper B. Hammer

  “We are not alone here,” said Remy.

  “Obviously.”

  “I want you to stay calm, dear cub.”

  “I will,” said Ranthos.

  “But there are more people here,” said Remy, “Behind us.”

  Ranthos’ heart sank, and he turned round to see four figures in white cloaks wading through the herd after him. Once he turned, one of them pointed to him and the others nodded and picked up their pace.

  “Scut.”

  34

  A Markedly Bad Dream

  Ranthos’ heart fired off a hundred beats in the blink of an eye. “Flockers?!”

  “They are wearing white, aren’t they?”

  A horse whinnied and bolted past him, agitated. One more did, and then like a chain, the herd began to pick up speed. The nearest oxen turned their heads to Ranthos. He tried to reign in his fear, but could do very little.

  “Well, cub?” asked Remy, “You oughta do something.”

  “Right,” said Ranthos, “What if they’re kind?”

  They all drew swords.

  “Does that answer your question?” asked Remy.

  “Enough snark, catten,” said Ranthos, adjusting his stance, and taking aim with his bow at the nearest flocker.

  “Shall I dance a jig?” asked Remy.

  “Please,” said Ranthos, loosing an arrow through the misty wood and into the throat of the flocker, who gurgled, spun round wildly, clattered his sword on a tree, and collapsed on a horse beside him, spraying hot blood all over it.

  Suffice it to say, the herd did not feel comfortable anymore, and the soles of Ranthos’ feet began to rumble as they charged forward, the mist of their breath, and the heavy-hanging scent of their nerves filling the air. The flockers continued after him, gaining more speed as they gave chase, shouting loudly at any horses in their path, who would scramble to avoid them.

  “Meow!” screamed Remy. Ranthos turned to duck beneath the swinging horns of a charging ox. It hit the trunk of a tree, and with a furious grunt continued forward like a meteor through the herd, mist hanging off its warm hide in the cold air.

  More horses rushed past Ranthos—who felt so afraid that he could barely move—and crashed into the surrounding trees in their frenzy. By the time Ranthos could force his legs to move and flee from the flockers, charging further into the stampede, snow was being shaken loose from the boughs of the pines and cascading down, landing in huge clumps and breaking apart in misty explosions upon the backs of the frantic beasts.

  Ranthos growled at an inattentive horse. Its face snapped up to meet his, and it suddenly became very afraid, tripping over its own hooves. It hammered its thick belly into a tree and found itself half buried in snow, scrambling madly to escape.

  Ranthos picked his legs up high to move as fast as he could through the deep, thick snow. They felt numb, the snow melting through his trousers.

  He growled again at an oncoming horse and got a facefull of snow as it leapt out of his way. He heard the flockers behind him shouting after him. Remy clung tightly to his shoulders. Ranthos could feel his claws, but didn’t reprimand him, as he needed Remy to remain unharmed if he was to have any hope of surviving the dream.

  Ranthos looked behind him frantically and saw the flockers, clad in white sheepskins, caked in dirt and ice, brandishing long curved swords. They looked to easily be about three heads taller than Ranthos was. It was terrifying.

  Ranthos launched an arrow behind him, but it found only a tree trunk, and the freezing cold rush of air of the bowstring stung his exposed eyes.

  Ranthos felt a sharp pain in his side as he was flung headlong into the snow by an ox’s horns.

  The center of Ranthos’ back hit a tree trunk, and his shin was hit by a rushing horse. He barely pulled his face out from the snow, before more fell down on top of him from the trees and the hooves of the stampede kicked more into the air. The flockers blended perfectly with the white haze.

  “Remy?!” Ranthos called.

  His face emerged in a puff of white a few paces down from Ranthos. They both crawled out of the snow, wet and shivering. An iron sword flew through the air and into the snow by Ranthos’ half-buried body. It missed. The flocker above growled and took his sword in both hands again to lop off Ranthos’ head—

  An ox tossed him aside with his horns, away from Ranthos.

  Ranthos scrambled to his feet, and tried to find his bow in the snow. He hadn’t any arrows, he couldn't’ see where they had flown off to. “Remy get me my bow and arrows!” Ranthos shouted.

  Remy blinked, and suddenly they reappeared in Ranthos’ hands, but at the same time, he watched in horror as the two other flockers who approached him began to twitch and blink out of Ranthos’ vision. What was happening?

  Remy crawled up Ranthos’ back, and explained with a fearful voice, “Retrieving your weapons—”

  Ranthos pressed his back against a tree as an angry ox barreled forward.

  “Retrieving your weapons cost us some control.”

  The twitching flockers soon split themselves into two flockers each, exact replicas of the original.

  “Is that five of them now, then?” asked Ranthos.

  “Correct,” said Remy, “If the one flung aside by the ox is still alive, and if he didn’t split as well, which he probably did.”

  Ranthos began fleeing the charging flockers, looking back every moment to try and master his surroundings both ahead and behind him. Everything was too loud, he couldn’t focus on the herd or the flockers with any accuracy without looking at them. “Just say ‘no, six,’ if five was wrong,” said Ranthos, before snarling at a horse, whose white spray disoriented him further.

  The flockers were even closer now.

  “Brevity is our ally,” said Remy, “I shall be more direct—” he barely hung onto Ranthos’ coat, his hind legs swinging wide as Ranthos spun around and lodged an arrow in the gut of one of his pursuers.

  “Five,” said Remy.

  “Exactly what I need, thank you catten.”

  “I live to serve, dear cub. Ox.”

  Ranthose dove to the side, and allowed the ox to pass between himself and the pursuing flockers. He landed against the soft belly of a horse, and was almost kicked in the gut, but Remy spun him around to dodge the blow.

  The flockers doubled again.

  “Remy!” shouted Ranthos angrily.

  “Shh! I saved your life,” said Remy batting his head angrily, “Ten.”

  “Scut.”

  Ranthos trudged further through the snow and could see no end to the herd, it only stretched further and further down through the trees.

  “Perhaps the herd is infinite. Who knows? Dreams are strange!” said Remy.

  “Please don’t dance,” Ranthos missed a shot. “Don’t replenish my quiver if I run out of arrows,” said Ranthos.

  “I will replenish it,” said Remy, “Or we’re both very dead.”

  Ranthos groaned, “You’re probably right.” He caught the shoulder of the nearest flocker, who staggered and was then caught underhoof of an ox.

  “Nine,” said Remy, “If he doesn’t stand up again.”

  “You’re talking way more than I think I need,” said Ranthos, who, distracted, was hit by a charging horse head. He growled too late, and the wind was knocked out of him, so it was more like a pathetic whimper.

  “Then stop replying with so many words,” said Remy.

  “I just think—”

  Remy hit his head.

  Ranthos shut it, and steadied his stance, heaving in a tired breath before dropping another flocker with an arrow straight through the chest.

  “Eight.”

  Ranthos missed his next shot, catching the hind leg of some poor horse. Ranthos turned back around and rushed away from the eight flockers on his tail. “How many arrows do I have left?”

  “Twelve,” said Remy.

  “How many did you make?!” Ranthos tried to do the math—it was difficult, but he knew it didn
’t add up to the correct number.

  “Focus, dear cub.”

  Ranthos fired again, but only found the arm of a flocker, who wailed, but continued on, rushing beside his allies.

  Ranthos’ pace began to slow as his breath started to catch in his throat. He pulled the scarf away from his face—he felt like he was overheating—strange as it was to say.

  “Try some magic,” said Remy.

  “Like—” Ranthos panted, “What?”

  “How would I know?!” said Remy.

  Ranthos pulled up the sleeve of his right arm with the atvyyrk and extended it towards the flockers.

  “Horse!” called Remy.

  Ranthos roared at it, and cleared a path for his next few paces. He took a deep breath and focused the magic in his arm, his hair sticking on end as the ink began to glow yellow, then green, then rose. The golden specks blew off his skin in the wind, and swirled through the fog like lanterns in a blizzard. They found their way to the trunks of the pine trees behind him.

  “Horse!”

  Ranthos snarled, without looking forward and kept running.

  “Tree!” said Remy, “Run left!”

  Ranthos did so, trying to focus his energy on the trees, under whose shadows the flockers passed.

  “Other left!” said Remy, before Ranthos slammed headlong into hard bark.

  He reoriented himself and waved his hand at the trees, watching their boughs sway against the wind with his movements. The snow that they held all cascaded down upon the flockers, confusing some, and tipping others into the path of a rushing horse.

  Ranthos instinctually balled his fist to grasp the trunks of the trees, and he slowly began to twist his arm in a circle, as the boughs shifted with his will, enclosing the flockers in a coral of pine branches. The thick trunks of the trees even began to tilt down towards them ever so slightly as the wood creaked and groaned with an ancient strength.

  “Well done, dear cub,” said Remy. “Though if you wouldn’t mind could we—Oh you’re knocking an arrow. Alright.”

  Ranthos fired shot after shot into the trap he set, his back against the tree, leaving him safe from the stampede.

  “You’re hitting something,” said Remy, “I can hear it.”

  Ranthos was down to six arrows when the flockers finally pushed through the thick branches, or else navigated the herd to circle round the back.

  “Count them for me,” said Ranthos.

  Remy nodded, and began to do so under his breath as Ranthos checked his path forward round the other side of the tree.

  Clear.

  Ranthos rushed forward through the snow with a snarl, just in case he missed something.

  “Six,” said Remy. “If you miss one shot, I’m refilling the arrows.”

  Ranthos understood. He couldn’t miss a single shot moving forward, he couldn’t fail. He roared into the herd for safety and then turned around to loose an arrow directly into the head of a random horse.

  “Scut.”

  “Twelve,” said Remy, counting the flockers.

  “At least I’ve got more arrows,” offered Ranthos, trying his hardest to be optimistic—a trait completely against his nature.

  “Twenty-four to be exact!” said Remy, forcing a smile.

  “That’s more like it,” said Ranthos, before being tackled to the ground by a heavy flocker. His face hit the snow hard and he felt Remy roll back over his head, and could hear more flockers cheering on the one above him, who held him down and surely aimed a sword at his back.

  After a tense breath, Ranthos was suddenly on two feet again, thirty paces from the now-doubling flockers.

  “Damn you!” said Ranthos.

  “I had no choice,” said Remy frustratedly from his shoulder.

  35

  "Twenty-Four"

  “Suppose not,” said Remy, “I could make you some more if you’d like.”

  “I’ll pass.”

  Ranthos turned to shoot one.

  “A little higher.”

  “Shut it,” said Ranthos, dropping his bow and turning round to run again.

  “I am simply just so nervous, dear cub!”

  “As am I, catten. Just let me do the aiming myself.”

  “Understood!”

  Ranthos spun around and loosed an arrow at a flocker who was merely three paces behind him. The arrow flew clean through his chest and dropped him into the snow to be trampled by the others.

  “Aha!” exclaimed Remy, “Twenty-three!”

  Ranthos could see an end to the tree cover ahead of him now, a bright white patch of snow in the open sun. the landscape only specked by a handful of orange lichen-covered boulders.

  The herd was not even there, finally an end to the madness.

  Well.

  Perhaps half of the madness.

  Ranthos turned again, and dropped a flocker with an arrow to the leg.

  “Twenty-two!” called Remy as the flocker was trampled by horses.

  Ranthos was caught between a row of thickly-branched trees and face-to-face with a charging ox, about ten paces ahead of him, head down and horns gleaming in the sparse sunlight.

  Ranthos roared at it with all his might, but it didn’t move. Ranthos didn’t have much choice now—he had to either be trampled and gored or double the flockers again.

  “Dear cub!” shouted Remy.

  Ranthos grabbed Remy’s face to prevent him from acting just yet. Ranthos closed his eyes, diving into his fury, finding it simpler to access within his dreaming state.

  The ox bellowed out a ear splitting call, and Ranthos felt his hand touch the smooth, cold surface of the ox’s horn. Ranthos lifted himself up over them; he felt the gnarled fur on its shoulder scrape against his face, and finally the smack of hard pine needles against his freezing legs.

  He shook his head and steadied his balance, before extending his hands to catch Remy in his arms.

  “What a feat of acrobatics!” hollered Remy, crawling back onto his shoulder as Ranthos continued forward.

  “What happened?”

  “You threw me over the ox, and then vaulted over it yourself—”

  The flockers behind Ranthos and Remy screamed and yelped as the ox barged through their ranks.

  Ranthos emerged into the empty plain, where only a few straggling horses rushed into the wood.

  “Twenty…” Remy counted, “Nineteen.”

  “Nineteen?”

  “That ox crushed a good number of them,” said Remy.

  “That means I can miss…” Ranthos counted on his fingers as he ran.

  “Thrice!”

  “Very good,” said Ranthos, immediately wasting one of his misses.

  “Less good.”

  Ranthos shushed him, and began clambering up one of the large boulders. By the time he reached the top, his lungs felt ready to burst completely. His breath felt cold in the deep of his throat.

  The flockers began to emerge out from the wood in droves. Ranthos felt his heart sink into his gut.

  He felled three with three arrows.

  “Sixteen,” said Remy.

  They attempted to climb the rock, but left themselves very vulnerable. His first shot bounced off the rock and into the snow—he only had one more miss—but his next two nailed two flockers in the skull.

  “Fourteen.”

  Ranthos kicked a flocker who had climbed up the rock in the gut, but found his leg caught in his grasp. He twisted his grip and knocked Ranthos face first into the rough rock. He felt blood run down his face and his ears began to ring.

  Remy scrambled after Ranthos’ fallen arrows, losing two down the side of the rock, “So sorry,” said Remy, preparing to double the flockers again.

  “Stop!” said Ranthos, pulling his knee to his chest and bringing the flocker closer to him. Ranthos kicked out his other leg and wrestled the man to the ground beside him, fury overtaking Ranthos’ limbs.

  With a snarl, Ranthos forced the man’s own sword into his gut, and let him roll off th
e rock into the snow.

  “Thirteen,” said Remy, sliding Ranthos his bow.

  Three more flockers had climbed the rock. Ranthos drew and fired three arrows into their torsos, lying on his back, the final one collapsed on top of him, and by the time he was free, two more had made the climb.

  Ranthos panted for breath.

  “Ten.”

  “Nine.”

  Ranthos missed the next. It was just him and that flocker at the top of the rock for now. Ranthos caught a blow to the jaw, and returned a kick to the groin. As the flocker doubled over in pain, Ranthos fired a shot through his skull. The arrow clanged dully off the stone as he slid down the side, leaving a trail of blood behind him.

  Ranthos doubled over, panting like a dog for breath.

  “Eight.” Remy wrenched an arrow from the corpse of a nearby flocker with his mouth and offered it to Ranthos, who fired it into the next flocker. “Seven.”

  A sudden, terrible pain pushed through Ranthos’ body as a blade emerged from his chest. Ranthos ogled down at it, sticking out his chest, slick with his blood, steaming in the freezing air.

  Ranthos had been run through the back by a sword. He could feel his punctured lungs faltering, and feel blood welling up in his mouth.

  The flocker kicked Ranthos to the floor, wrenching his sword out from him. Ranthos’ blossom hand began to glow, and the flecks of light transformed the lichen below him to healing moss, it began to sprout its curling tendrils and glowing bulbs as it sought the blood which pooled in the crevices of the rocks.

  Ranthos flipped himself around and fired an arrow into the dark silhouette of the flocker who’d ran him through, “Six,” and then the one who came up behind him, “Five.”

  Moss was already creeping over his bloodied face, and under his coat on his belly. He snatched up another handful and stuck it to his back. It quickly warmed him, stitching him back together. He could feel the moss creeping through the hole in his body. He felt its warmth on the inside. It didn’t feel fully healed, but it felt good enough.

  Ranthos, in a fit of fury, pulled himself to his feet, and “Four.”