Sample, Out of Dark Waters: Chapter 3

Out of Dark Waters: Chapter 3

Southward Flight 

In the darkness, seabirds called. They sounded hungry. They sounded free, wheeling above. Coward. There was fire, and birds screamed like burning men. Burning men in the air. COWARD. Pieces of soldiers came raining around him, burning. Whose blood was he wet with? Vander looked toward the fire. He was too frightened. He ran.

     His scream, when he woke, was so loud it dulled his ears. Maggy had been shaking his shoulder. He propped himself up, trembling. They were on a stony beach, the skiff pulled up a few yards past the water. He began to scramble away. Maggy held him there.

     “Different beach,” she said. “You bled a lot.” He was dizzy, and he lay back on the ground. The sky was almost black. A thin line of red glowed on the horizon, and the crests of the purple waves took on a crimson hue. Two gray-tipped seagulls circled above him. Vander touched his face, and he felt uneven flesh there, below his eye.

     “I did my best to close it smoothly,” Maggy told him. “Torn skin is difficult.”

     Vander struggled to speak, but found his words, enunciating slowly, “I’m sure...it’s beautiful,” he said. With effort, and Maggy’s hand on his back, he sat up.

     They were around a campfire of heaped driftwood, popping and sending up sparks. Orin was standing by the flames, stirring a pot, and Vander smelled stew. Seeing Vander wake, the old gnome ladled him a steaming bowl and brought it over. It was seawater thickened with smoke-meat and crumbled biscuits, but it was warm.

     In fact, it might have been the best thing Vander remembered tasting. After he finished two bowls, he was unsure whether his stomach was roiling because he had eaten too much or too little. Silently, they sat around the fire, passing a bottle of hill whiskey. Orin and Maggy were mostly unscathed, though weary, with only a few scrapes and welts. Halada was covered in yellow and purple bruises. In several places there were bite marks, healed over into jagged lines. She had benefited from Maggy’s arts as well.

     Orin, who usually drank by the thimble, put the bottle of liquor to his mouth and downed a heavy gulp, passing it to Halada. Then he clapped his hands neatly together. “So, my friends, we cannot go back to Dulaman. That would be foolish,” he said.

     “We cannot,” Maggy agreed. Vander looked at her questioningly. She had a strange expression, as though focused a mile away. Looking none of them in the eye, she ignored the question of his gaze.

     “The knight sent us to die,” said Halada simply. “We owe him death.”

     “This is not the north,” Maggy replied. Her tone was calming, but she did not look Halada’s way. “We cannot...We cannot kill because it suits us. If we slaughter a nobleman of Periandor, we will be hunted and executed.”

     Vander added, “And there’s a wall, and a keep, and town guards, and houseguards between him and us. And every fucking knight in this country knows a bit of magic. We’re not taking the bastard.”

     “So we slink away?” Halada’s eyes narrowed.

     “Yeah,” said Vander, his voice rising, “We slink away. We get out of here, and we never come back. Not to this town, not to this province. We shouldn’t have come here to begin with. Should have stayed to the fat trade roads, with the caravans. This is what happens when you stick your nose in things that are bigger than you. And you!” He pointed at Orin, almost shouting. “You knew something. You said we had to get out. Didn’t feel like telling us until those moon-damned dead men were trying to eat us and...”

     Maggy put a hand on his arm. “Stop, Vander. If Orin hadn’t recognized the danger, we wouldn’t have gotten to Halada in time.”

     Vander looked at the ground. After a long silence, Orin spoke again.

     “It was a temple to Nerophet.” He said the name softly, as though the darkness around them might hear it.

     “The...sea god?” asked Vander. That was absurd. No one worshiped Nerophet, the eater of drowned sailors, the shadow in the storm. In no city, in his many travels, had he seen the lowliest shrine to Nerophet. He’d heard rumors, of course. Blood sacrifice on long voyages, to appease the deep waters. But no one built temples to Nerophet.

     “The god of my people’s enemies, the Thulgrähbar” Orin said, his lip curling. “It was in Nerophet’s name they flooded the Deepings and made war. ‘Great Sephis,’ they call him. Many times, I smuggled myself into their lands, but never would I set foot in their temples, not if it had won us the war, not with an army beside me. You have seen it. Evil dwells there.”

     Maggy said something then, staring into the fire. She was too quiet to hear. She said it again. “We must go to Paladric. The Geledrites must know.”

     “Isn’t that the home of your...” Vander paused, “of the Temple of Assandai?”

     She shook her head, eyes still on the flames, “The travelers have a chapter in Paladric, but no great temple. Its citadel houses the Paladic Order of Geledron.”

     “The sun blades?” said Vander. They were an order he had seen on the roads, and sometimes in cities, hunters of dark magic, slayers of dragons and demons. Their cloaks bore the symbol of a blade radiating light.

     “What we found was beyond us,” Maggy said. “If it corrupted Landon, if he is in league with it, we must tell the Geledrites. Few others have the skill. Fewer have the authority to deal with a nobleman. We need to go south to Paladric.”

     “No, no, no,” Vander stammered. “The road south isn’t safe. We almost died for whatever is going on here. We did our bit.” He looked at his companions’ faces. They didn’t seem convinced, which was madness. “The goblins down there are cannibals, damn it. What we need to do is go back north and forget about this. I’ll tell you what’ll happen if we go south without a caravan, without a company of guards. The little green bastards will eat us, after we’re dead, if we’re lucky. They’ll pick our bones for trying to fix things that are too damned big for us.”

     He realized Maggy was looking right at him now, for the first time since they’d gotten off the island. “We need to,” she said. There was something in her expression, desperation. “We can’t allow others to die so we live. We have to make something right. Just… We have to do something.”

     Vander really wanted to argue, but he didn’t. “OK,” he said, “If Halada and Orin are in, we’ll go.” Halada’s silence could reasonably stand for agreement.

     “People have tried to eat me before,” said Orin cheerfully. “I survived then.” Vander feared a story would follow, but it didn’t come.

     So, it was decided. Come dawn, they would travel south. At a comfortable pace, the journey might prove six days, but they didn’t plan on a comfortable pace. Vander collapsed on his bedroll while Maggy looked distantly into the embers of the campfire. He fell into his customary shallow sleep.

     Sometime in the dead of night, Maggy was whispering his name. She was lying beside him, face to face, her nose almost on his. What her expression signified he wasn’t sure. Terror, maybe? Fair enough. Their planned journey was terrifying.

     “Did you hear its voice?” She asked. “The thing in the temple?” He tried to clear sleep from his mind. “Did you hear it?” She asked again, louder.

     “Yeah, I heard it. It...”

     “Knew things,” she finished his thought.

     “It knew things,” he agreed.

     “Did it tell you?” asked Maggy “Did it tell you...Did it say to you what it said to me?”

     Vander wasn’t awake enough for this, not remotely. “I, uh, don’t think so.” He wasn’t sure if that was the right answer, but he thought he was being mostly honest. “Just said it wanted to eat me, I guess.”

     “It... didn’t?” Her face broke into an uncanny smile, and she laughed. Then, she gave one long, wracking sob, burying her face against him, and she was asleep. Unsure what had just happened, Vander drew his blanket over them both and nodded back off.

     Dawn came much sooner than he would have liked. The bite on his face had an unpleasant itch, but Maggy assured him the wound was not sour. Readying himself quickly, he shaved his head smooth, checking his reflection on the flat of his blade. The scar would detract from his looks. Maggy told him it was dashing, but he didn’t believe her.

     Fortunately, Halada and Orin had landed the boat well south of Dulaman. They wouldn’t have to skirt the village on their way to Paladric. Some thought was given to taking the skiff, which might hasten their travels. In principle, they could sail from village to village as far as Kedric. But they did not know the landings on this coast, and none of them wished to be caught in a gale and dashed on the headlands.

     As it was, the going over land proved better than it might have. The weather was warm and clear for late spring. After a day, they ceased watching over their shoulder for riders from Dulaman. There was no chase, nor any sign of the dark powers they had met on the isle. Halfway through the third day, they passed a sizable caravan. It looked by its markings to be carrying gold ore south, from Halfmoon Creek to Brimstock.

     They gave it a good berth as they walked past, tromping off into the grass. Nobody liked armed strangers mingling with them on the road. But the caravan master, a stout dwarven woman, waved them to her as she pulled up her coach. The whole caravan came to a stop. Its dozen or so guards wandered near Vander but did not interfere as he went to speak with their master.

     “What’s your destination?” the short, muscular woman asked from atop her towering draft horse. Vander looked back and forth at his friends, unsure whether to answer. In the end, though, he decided that nobody pulling this much gold ore would be looking for trouble.

     “We’re going to Paladric,” he told her. “Maybe two days off at a good clip, if our map is true.”

     “You’re not wrong,” said the caravaneer. “But I don’t suggest you go past Stoneport. You don’t see a lot of groups your size traveling that part of the road, and there’s reason for it. The forest is only getting worse. We’ve had to double our guard the past year.”

     Vander didn’t disagree, but he steeled himself and answered otherwise, “Maybe so, but our business is urgent. South or bust. It is what it is.”

     The caravan master examined him. Her eyes darted over his weapons and armor, then to the deportment of his friends. “You know your way around that gear?” She asked.

     “As well as the next bladehand,” said Vander. “And they do magic, healing,” he gestured back toward Orin and Maggy.

     “My name’s Mabel Greymark,” the caravan master told him. “You should travel with us. Our pace won’t be as fast as yours, but we’ll pass Paladric within three days, four at the outside. We’ll be safer with you. You’ll be safer with us.”

     Vander glanced backward, and so saw no objections from his party. Reaching up to shake Mabel’s hand, he introduced himself, “Evander Creek.” And pointing back at others, “Magdalena, Orin, and Halada. We’ll do right by you.”

     Mabel smiled, “No doubt you will.” She clapped Vander on the back before raising a hand for the caravan to get underway. Horses nickered and dust drifted up through sunbeams as the carriages began to roll.

     From there, they made good time and camped at the crossroads near Stoneport. The next day’s travel brought them to the hills just north of Heron Bay. Mabel would have liked to reach the town and rest there, for this was the most treacherous leg of the journey. The road would be pinched between the sea’s edge and looming Dimweald. The great forest lay to the east like a slumbering beast, waiting for nightfall to stir.

     Even so, the risk of hastening to Heron Bay was too great, for the convoy had already lamed one horse that day. The way was muddy and slow, with runoff draining into the road from the surrounding hills. It would not be prudent to rush through this terrain in the dark.

     As hemming and hawing began about where to set up for the night, Vander climbed to the top of a muddy hillock. From there he could see the twilit forest more clearly, and the road running north and south. Just a ways farther, there was a broad pond. Descending the hill, he suggested to Mabel that they camp by its waters, guaranteeing protection on one side. She agreed, and with his companions he began to help the caravan unload their gear there for the night.

     After a decent supper of ash bannock and saltfish, fires began to dim, and before long even the embers had lost their glow. Maggy and Vander offered to take watch to the north and stationed themselves atop a stony mound. It gave them a clear view over the camp and the land beyond it. The moon was bright, only a few strands of cloud passing it now and then. The grass, damp from a shower in the evening, took on a silvery sheen, broken in places by the shadows of thickets.

     Vander had a draught from his waterskin and offered it to Maggy. “Looks like we’ll be getting to Paladric safe enough,” he said. “One more day’s travel, and we’ll clear the forest.”

     She agreed, “By then we’ll be into Brimstock’s lands. The road will be better patrolled. The trade guilds see to that, and the Geledrites keep their own watch near Paladric.” She turned a handbell over in her fingers. It had been lent to them for the night.

     “And with the moon this full, we’re not likely to be ambushed,” said Vander. An easy night ahead of him, he was tempted to open his flask but thought better. “A sortie out of Afairn tried to take my company on a night like this. No luck for them. We...” He stopped talking. Maggy followed his gaze. Across the pond, near the south end of camp, a string of small figures was stooping through the grass. They came single file from the darkness of a tangled copse. “Shit,” he said definitively.

     Maggy rang the handbell as Vander tumbled down the rise and ran through the camp, shouting. Guards were pulling on their helms and grabbing weapons. As he came to the southern edge of the encampment, he found Halada already perched on an open wagon, drawing back her bow. Orin was nowhere to be seen. Not thirty yards from where Vander stood, squat figures were moving through the night toward them.

     Halada loosed an arrow as long as a javelin. It arced like a splinter of shadow through the moonlight, down into the front-most enemy. They fell amid the long grass. Vander crouched as more arrows whistled past him from behind, raining down around the advancing column. The thunk and twang of crossbows filled his ears. But, coming forward in a line, their enemies presented a narrow target.

     He could see them now, around as short as dwarves, greenish skin pale in the moonlight. They were covered in scraps of steel, wielding an array of stolen oddments as makeshift weapons. The goblins broke from their line into a scattered formation, ducking low. Moments later, slingstones began to fall near Vander. One of the Guards, raising his bow, grunted suddenly and fell to the ground, his eye stove in. Up went Vander’s shield, just in time, as three rocks struck it. Another ricocheted off his armored shin.

     Several yards away, Maggy and Halada were hunkered behind a carriage, neither having the benefit of a shield. But Maggy grabbed a fallen slingstone and leaped out. Wrapping the stone in her own sling, she spun around and hurled it back at the goblins, before diving to safety.

      Lowering his shield for an instant, Vander noticed that the volley of stones had ebbed, now only enough to keep the defenders’ heads down. The bulk of the goblins were circling the encampment.

     They were heading toward the horses.

     Maggy and Halada were keeping the slingers busy, ducking up and down and sending missiles back their way. Vander ran parallel with the other goblins, hoping he wasn’t the only one trying to intercept them before they reached the animals.

     To his relief, others began dashing the same way. He doubled his sprint and plunged into the goblin’s midst. Kicking one down, he stabbed another and lifted it on his spear, then tossed it away.

     There were a lot more goblins than he’d realized.

     At least a score, if he were being miserly with his count. The other guards were well behind him still, as the small green figures began to encircle Vander. They had sharp little elfin faces and huge eyes. Their open mouths were full of jagged teeth. Long arms looked to give them a reach belied by their stature.

     One among them, ever so larger than the rest, moved toward Vander. In its claws, it wielded a pine branch with a chipped cleaver strapped to the end. It lunged and Vander parried with his spear, keeping distance as best he could, pushing the filthy blade into the dirt. As he did, a second goblin lurched toward him from the side, swinging a cudgel studded with snapped daggers. Vander caught it on his shield, bashing it away. The little creature landed hard on its back. The others began to close in.      

     Hastily, Vander lobbed his spear into their midst, not knowing whether it had found a mark, and drew his falchion for the scrum.

     Then, there came a most welcome sound, one he hadn’t heard in years. He stared hard into the darkness beyond the semi-circle of goblins and saw nothing, but the unmistakable call of horns and the thunder of hooves reached his ears. A cavalry charge! He let out a “whoop!” as all but two of the goblins turned to face this new enemy.

     But none came. The sound petered out. The pair of goblins facing him looked nervously over their shoulders, inching closer. Then a flash of mist, glowing blue and white, wailed out of the night and struck a goblin in the face. It fell thrashing, its eyes wracked with frostburn. Another and another. Orin was striding toward them, casting streaks of ice into the foes surrounding Vander.

     With the goblins’ attention turned toward Orin, they did not see the caravan guards bearing down on their flank. A volley of thrown spears landed among them. Then the guards, outnumbered but better equipped, waded in with sword and shield. The goblins died and broke, their survivors bolting toward the distant shadow of the forest.

     Vander sat heavily in the swaying grass, deciding that it was a good night for his flask, after all, and drained it halfway. Orin came to kneel by a dead goblin a few feet from Vander, looking at it closely. “By Tumno!” He exclaimed, in a mixture of shock and intrigue, “She filed her teeth! Evander, lad, what is wrong with the goblins here?”

     Throwing his arms out in a forceful shrug, Vander answered, “They’ve always been like this!”

     Orin looked at him skeptically. Maggy spared them further argument though. She was jogging across the field, wrapping a bandage around her leg. Vander rushed to examine the wound, though he found it light, a scrape from a jagged slingstone. Even his worried affection for her could not trick him into thinking it a mortal injury.

     “You two alright?” asked Maggy. Vander nodded.

     “Perfectly unscathed, I’m pleased to say,” Orin told her. “The cavalry horns, my work by the way!” He clapped his hands together, again producing the sound of horns and hooves. Vander slapped Orin on the back, almost knocking him over.

     “I should see to others then,” Maggy said. “Some of the goblins’ weapons were dipped in poison.” Before she turned to go, Vander offered her what remained of his flask, and she pitched it back. As he was tucking the flask away again, all three of them froze.

     An unearthly shriek carried across the night. Not pain, not surprise. The cry of terror, when your voice comes wordless and unbidden, howling out past your palpitating tongue. Instinctively Vander looked to the sky, but he found only the stars and moon. The scream issued again, coming from near the water.

     Orin and Maggy dashed toward the terrible sound, as it rose in pitch and did not ebb. Vander took a step back, cold sweat on his neck and shoulders. The scream twisted out of the darkness and smothered him.

     Screaming all around. Fire and flesh coming down like rain. Every cry a death.

     He brought his shield’s rim down on his knee, crashing back to the world. He could not let Maggy go without him, so he ran after her. They veered back through the tents and toward the water’s edge. Then he felt a presence in his thoughts, at first like a niggling splinter, growing and digging.

Coward, the splinter said. You left them to die. Coward. The words hung in his mind like the ringing after a loud noise.

     Panting, they approached the edge of the pond, about ten yards distant. There were three shapes amid the puff-tailed reeds in the shallows. A body floated in the water, face down. Another man, in the armor of a caravan guard, was held by a hunched creature. It was the held man who was screaming, though his voice grew weak. Orin caught up with them, coughing and out of breath.

     The creature in the shallows looked up, opening the eye that encompassed its face. Not an eye. A gaping mouth of cruel teeth, like the needle fangs of a deep-sea fish, unfolding from beneath the eyelid. Its skin, smooth and gray, shone wet in the moonlight and began to ripple. Pulsating orifices opened across its back and sides. Tentacles whipped out, longer than the abomination’s body, with finger-like tendrils at the ends. The pond’s water, Vander realized, was black as the abyss. Not a hint of moonlight glinted from it.

     The thing tossed away the guard it had held. Food is tired. Vander heard in his mind. The creature seemed to size them up as it sluiced the rest of the way from the water. It stood tall, like a great cat of the plains, if not higher. Food is a murderer. Food is a coward. The voice grew in his mind like a blade screeching on stone. Food is an oathbreaker. Food is a fool. Come, playthings.

     With unnatural suddenness, the dead man in the water lurched up and tore across the ground. It still held a blade and a shield, though it showed no thought of using them. Halada bent her bow and released, but her arrow passed clean through the dead man. Her next shot, a blink after the first, went wide. Orin unleashed flashes of ice toward its legs, but he missed, except for one that struck its side, bursting into glowing frostburn. But the dead man knew no pain.

     Vander jumped forward, putting his weight behind his shield, angling his blade into the charging corpse, but its armor rebuffed the attack. Their shields were locked, and it slammed the pommel of its longsword into his helmet. Vander’s head spun as he stumbled, kneeling behind his shield, thrusting blindly with his falchion. Something whooshed over his head, followed by a thump and the cracking of bone.

     Maggy stood behind him, and she swung past him again, her pole-mace connecting downward with the dead man’s shoulder. It crumpled to the sodden earth. Vander wasted no time in standing, and he hewed at its arms and legs, taking them off. The body and limbs writhed on the ground, dry dead husks. A hand crawled toward him, and Maggy crushed it before he could put it beneath his boot.

     Then in a blur of speed, the abomination was upon them. Tentacles grabbed Orin by the ankle, hoisting him upward, upside down. Frost flashed all around into the darkness as it twirled Orin through the air. Maggy swung with her club, but the gray tendrils seized it from her hands, wrapping around the haft like vines. She leaped aside, as the monster slammed her own weapon into the mud where she had stood.

     Another tentacle grasping for him, Vander severed it with his blade, then ran in close, cutting at the creature’s body. It seemed to bleed black water. The wounds were closing.

     Gripping tentacles wrenched down his shield, as others entwined his shoulders, forcing him down toward its open mouth. Three tongues flashed out, licking his face. The voice was in his mind again, Taste fear, the coward is bitter, best eaten fast. Know peace.

     The teeth closed on his shoulder. His hauberk did nothing to blunt the bite. Rings of mail popped, landing in the dirt in front of him as he stared down. Cold spread through Vander. The creature pulled him farther, bending him double.

     Held in its jaws, blood pouring from his shoulder along his chin, Vander grew tired. So peaceful. He knew that to live he must break free. Perhaps he could, but was not sure he wished to. Unstirring black waters opened before him, hushed and tranquil. There would be no flame in that abyss. No weariness, no reproach. He slumped in the vice-like embrace of the abomination’s maw.

     In the distance there was screaming, a voice torn at the edges, as loud as it could go. Sparks of light and blood. He spun in the darkness, a gentle whirlpool guiding him down.

     Then in a flash of agony, he was free, rolling over the earth. Blinding white pain arched from his shoulder across his body. He pushed himself up, blood and dirt in his mouth. Maggy was standing in front of the monster, a heavy stone in her hands, bringing it down on the thing’s head.

     Orin lay several feet away, tangled in severed, writhing tentacles. Halada threw a hatchet, which lodged in its neck, spurting black water. “I am no oathbreaker!” she screamed. As Maggy raised the stone above her head again, the creature sprang on her, claws raking. She met the ground beneath it, the distending jaws widening around her face.

     Vander wrenched himself from the mud, groping fruitlessly for his sword. He pulled a dagger from his boot, and he hurled himself onto the beast, stabbing its back. Bitter, black water spurted into his mouth, spewing from the wounds. Tentacles grabbed him and tossed him aside, but he sprang up again, dodging a blow from Maggy’s pole-mace, still in its grip.

     With his dagger, he cut the tentacles twisted around her weapon, then took it up himself. Swinging it down across the monster’s spine, he heard a crack. He hefted the mace again and smashed its shoulder. It scuttled back from Maggy, who lay moaning on the ground.

     The abomination stumbled, its wounds closing, its spine realigning beneath the skin. But its flesh was knitting more slowly than before. A heavy arrow skewered the thing’s head, snapping its neck to the side. Vander slammed the pole-mace down where the arrow was, crushing its skull, driving the arrow deeper, while Halada tore into it with her hatchet.

     To the side, Orin was wrestling off squirming tendrils of flesh, which had wrapped him like serpents. Maggy rose, staggering, and scooped a stone into her sling, bringing it down like a flail on the monster.

     It lashed at them with no thought. A claw caught Vander’s leg behind his greave, slicing through his flesh like a curved knife. He fell with it latched to his ankle and saw his falchion within arm’s reach. Stretching as the blade-like claw sank deeper into his leg, he grabbed the sword and twisted around, cutting away the grasping claw. As its limb fell away, the thing released him, and he hobbled to face it again, half crawling.

     Their weapons rose and fell in the moonlight. Orin unleashed a stream of frost across it, and Maggy grabbed her club. She smashed the beast where frost lay glowing on it. The flesh shattered and it was split in half, still trying to strike them as it melted into black water. It was gone then, a dark pool quickly turning to mist. Stars glimmered on the lake.

     But dark blood poured from Maggy’s arm. She staggered and sat heavily. Even on the ground, she seemed weakened and unsteady. Vander limped to her, leaning on his sword. He tried to examine her wound, but seeing his injuries she murmured a prayer to Assandai, placing her hands on his leg and shoulder. There was a golden glow from beneath her fingers. A moment later his wounds were healed, and she slumped against him, unconscious. He shook her and whispered her name. No reply. She was heavy in his arms.

     Tearing off what remained of her sleeve, Vander found a terrible cut. Her arm was open to the bone, from the shoulder past the elbow. Less and less blood flowed out as she grew paler. Her limp body was soaked with red.

     Yelling her name drew no reaction. Panicked, he cut away a length of his coat, wrapping it around her arm. Someone was shouting at him and grabbing him, but he paid them no mind. There was not enough fabric. He cut another strip from his coat. But then he was hauled upward. Halada carried him and dropped him on the dirt, holding him there as Orin bent over Maggy.

     The old gnome moved swiftly, with the focus of a harper playing long-practiced music. He rolled his sleeve, then raised a dagger glinting in the night, and he stabbed it through his forearm. A look of shock took Orin’s face as his arm went limp, the dagger still impaling it. But his other hand, like a possessed marionette, wove arcane symbols. Blood flowed in strands through the air from Orin to Maggy. As it streamed into her, the wound closed. When the spell was finished, a white line of uneven skin remained on her arm.

     Orin collapsed backward onto the grass. Lying there, he looked at Vander, a gleeful smile spreading through his wrinkled features. “I didn’t think I knew how to do that, lad! It’s very complicated you see...” Those last words he mumbled sleepily. His eyes closed, and he went slack.

     Maggy was breathing more steadily now. Vander remembered she had salves and dressing in her pack, which he grabbed, and he scrambled to where Orin lay. The stab was deep, having passed clean through Orin’s arm, but it missed the bone and arteries. Vander’s hands trembled as he drew moss from a pouch and packed the wound on both sides, then added honey and wrapped it with clean bandages.

     Halada carried Orin and Maggy to lie in a covered wagon, at the edge of the campsite’s general chaos. Caravanners were running everywhere, tending to the other wounded or corralling panicked horses. Mabel’s guards recovered the man whom the abomination had been savaging. He had survived, though barely, and Vander shuddered at the man’s face.

     He looked to have aged a hundred years, his hair whiter than the moon, skin clinging to the bone. His eyes were dull and watery. Alive though he was, Vander could not imagine that the stricken guard was long for the world, and surely he would never do a young man’s work again.

     Shutting his eyes and sitting beside Maggy, Vander took one of her limp hands in his. Halada, who had fared best in the fight, went back into the night to help carry a horse that had injured itself fleeing. It wasn’t long before his head nodded forward, once then twice.

     Finally, he was startled awake by the caravan master Mabel, Halada beside her. She inquired about Orin and Maggy, who lay sleeping. And she thanked Vander for his band’s service. They had thrown themselves toward danger when the goblins slunk out of the dark, and again when the thing came from the water.

     Afterward, Vander lay wondering whether he should have told her that the abomination had come hunting them, that it was a creature they had fought just days before. But he did not know where to begin. What its reappearance meant he had no idea, and after all, they had killed it, and it could threaten them no longer. So went his mind for much of the night.

     With dawn, they made what haste they could. When the caravan paused for the evening, near Kedric, they were far from the shadow of the forest. So, the companions took their leave, traveling the rest of the way toward Paladric themselves.

     Mabel told them she would put in a word with another caravan master, an elf named Ilathyr Tinmarion, whom she expected to be in the market for guards. She had heard he would be leaving Brimstock with a convoy bearing spices and ivory within three days. Thanking her, they departed southward.

     Maggy was recovered enough to walk, though she grew tired quickly. Halada bore Orin in a basket lashed to her back. He had woken only fleetingly since the fight. Vander was unsure how much of Maggy’s weariness came from her wounds, and how much from guilt that Orin had risked himself to save her.

      He told her that Orin would be right as rain after a few days’ rest. In truth, he was less certain. Though Assandai’s power could exhaust Maggy, Orin’s overuse of magic usually only addled him. His mind might grow so numb he could no longer speak, but Orin had never been so physically sapped. Vander wondered if Orin had relinquished into Maggy more of himself than he had meant to. Still, Vander tried not to waste his attention worrying on it, when he knew so little of magic, and he bent his focus to the road ahead.

     After another five miles, judging by vine-wreathed markers, they passed the crossroads east of Kedric. The moon had not risen much farther when they crested a hill to look on a mighty citadel. A wide town lay around it, and its walls were plastered white with a starlit sheen. The central keep rose above them as they moved closer, looming like a vast wave. Vander had rarely seen such monumental stonework outside of dwarven lands. Raising his steel-clad fist, Vander hammered on the shuttered gate with all the strength that remained to him, and soon they were let into the sanctuary of the Geledrite citadel.