Tuesday, September 30, 2014

11. Westward

From the camp they turned East to face the edge of a ridge line of hills that ran east-to-west.  The road angled to follow the southern side of the hills and to Stamfield, but the party left the road to follow the North side of the hills instead.  The reason the sisters gave was that if Stamfield was in trouble then by definition the area was unsafe.  They could get closer to the city without being seen by approaching over the hills.

The next two days proceeded a little slower as they crossed overland through rising land and up gullies wedged between the hills, trusting Lady Calanth’s maps.  The hills were only a few hundred feet in height, but they were a steep and effective barrier between the vast grasslands and Stamfield.  Grass gave way to forest suddenly where the hills began, mainly widely-spaced specimens of oak.  Several areas were choked instead with birch.  Basil explained that there must have been a fire, probably by lightning strike, and after grass the birch trees were the first species to take root.

For two days the camps were cold and well-hidden, and watches were tense.  On the third day they rose early and, near dawn, crossed an unmarked pass that put them within sight of Stamfield.  Basil and Tad were the first over the pass, several minutes ahead of the others, and the first to glimpse the city in the valley below, peering between the trees.

The hill dropped steeply to a valley marked by long centuries of habitation.  Near its center was a squarish building with a peaked dome Tad recognized as a temple of ancient design, although its current purpose was anyone’s guess.  The temple made up one edge of a five-sided plaza ringed around with buildings only a little smaller.  From this center roads sprouted in five directions branching and retrenching and intersecting like an irregular spiderweb, the whole forming a village smaller than Walter’s Bailey.  The buildings were all gray stone and thatch.  Only about a third of the town’s chimneys were letting smoke into the sky where it lingered in a brown layer a hundred feet above the ground. From the edges of the town the spiderweb kept spreading as the country lanes and low stone walls subdivided the valley into ever-larger parcels.

Beyond the town rose another line of hills dominated by the mountain of Stamhed.  It was as tall again as the hills all around and its peak was well-lit even as the valley below lay at the edge of dawn.  From their position Tad and Nolan could see part of a road switchbacking its way up the gentler southwest face before it disappeared behind a spur of the mountain.  Somewhere on the mountain, Tad knew, would be a spring-fed lake whose waters lapped up nearly to the walls of a small castle.  

The town was ringed with a wall with at least three gates Tad could see: two for the main road running east and west, and a smaller gate facing them.  At each of these a fire burned for the watchmen gathered there.  He couldn’t make out an exact count without getting closer, but it could be ten men in each position armored and equipped with a spear.  Towns frequently guarded their guarded their gates at night, but something about them felt unfriendly to Tad.  Maybe that had something to do with the total lack of other people or animals in view.

Tad was on his belly peeing over the ridge, counting people, when something large and heavy struck his thigh.  Nolan rolled onto his back and fired a crossbow bolt into the air, dragged Tad to wedge him between a rock and a tree, reloaded, fired again from their new position.  While Nolan was thus engaged Tad managed to form a single thought,   “What’s that on my leg?”

The two of them were packed into a space the size of a camp cot.  Nolan had found them shelter were an ancient oak grew among large rocks.  The canopy and thick limbs gave them some protection from above, and they were surrounded on three sides by rock and wood.  Whatever attacked them would have to approach by ground and face their crossbows at close range.  Tad could hear the flapping of great wings, a heavy thump of a large body touching the ground, the roar of two (or three?) beasts.  Tad got his crossbow pointed at their unprotected side.  For several long moments they huddled waiting for the monsters to either attack or lose interest.

The attackers split up: one taking up a position at the front while the other circled around looking for another way in.  Tad realized anything larger than a goat could jump to the top of their meager rock wall and he swiveled his crossbow to point above the rocks behind them.  Whatever it was sounded like it had paws, not hooves.  It also had wings and could attack at range.  Tad thought to examine the wound in his leg for clues but decided he wasn’t curious enough to risk looking.  He would learn what the creature was when it tried to eat him.

Tad’s world was wholly occupied by a simple imperative: track the stalker by sound and put a bolt into whatever showed itself.  Though he was breathing heavily he felt calm about it.  The thing would attack him and he would fight back.  Either he would live or he would die.  His leg was beginning to experience the first throbbing pains, but if the attack came soon then it wouldn’t matter: it would all be over before the pain could debilitate him.

The attack came simultaneously from both directions.  The slightest rustle of dirt, a sudden shadow on the rocks, then a huge furry face like a monstrous cat appeared above him its mouth open wide and huge yellow fangs bared.  Tad pulled the crossbow’s release and was rewarded with a spray of hot blood across his face.  The beast yowled horribly and its face disappeared, to be replaced by a huge paw.  Tad dropped his crossbow and drew his sword to hack at the searching paw but there wasn’t enough room to get a good swing in.  He could score the beast’s hide but he couldn’t pierce it.  He reversed the weapon to point up and braced it against his body.  When the paw came down again it found a sharp point and impaled itself.  The creature drew back again and yanked his sword away from him.  Tad drew his dagger and set his mind to killing the thing, whatever it was called.  A mere nine inches of steel didn’t seem like enough but he wasn’t about to give up.

Tad spared a glance in Nolan’s direction and saw his master fit a bolt to his reloaded crossbow.  A mound of tawny fur blocked the opening behind Nolan.  Nolan motioned with his eyes to the rocks above Tad, meaning “pay attention there”.  Something large was by turns chuffing and yowling.  Maybe it was worrying the sword from its paw.  With any luck it was dying.  Tad’s leg was starting to hurt in earnest.  He wished the creature would hurry up and attack or else hurry up and run away.

Tad didn’t get to see the end of the fight.  There was a rush of hoofbeats, a shout, a dying roar, then silence.  The sisters had arrived to put an end to it.

“It” was a manticore, a monster like a giant cat with a flattened face, massive wings, and a tail full of spikes it could throw with deadly force.  Even dead they were scary to look at.  It was one of the tail spikes that had pierced Tad’s thigh and it might have killed him if it had been a few inches nearer the femoral artery.  Getting the spike out of his thighbone was the worst part of the whole ordeal.  Ambrose and Aidan held him down while Nadia twisted the thing and yanked it out in motion that hurt so badly Tad couldn’t scream.  He couldn’t even breathe.  He flailed like a man drowning and passed out.

Tad awoke later in a cold camp in a steep gully, all pain gone.  People around him were unloading and grooming the horses, and when they saw he was awake they hauled him to his feet.  They patted his back and whispered congratulations.   They gave him spirits to drink.  Nadia presented him with the spine that had almost killed him.  Tad took in his hand the slim spiral length of bone a foot long.  She had thoughtfully washed off all the blood.  Nolan beamed.  For someone who so recently was nearly dead Tad felt quite good, like he could do it all over again.

“So what are we doing next?” whispered Tad, because everyone else was keeping their voices so low.  They must be camped very close to the town.  They had come a ways down the hills which now loomed over their camp.

“We’re still discussing it,” said Nolan in a low voice, “Stamfield is occupied by some outside force, but that’s all we know.  Probably bandits.  Aidan and Nadia want to ride down there and hit something, they don’t care much whom.  Father Ambrose thinks there will be a priest here and wants to make contact with him.  The rest of us want to know more about what’s going on before doing anything.”

“I could find out.  It’ll be easiest for me.”   The entire group looked at Tad, over half of them with the look you get from a patient relative before they tell you that no, you can’t play with fire inside the house.  “It’s a human town, right?  Any non-human will be noticed.  You can’t send them,” he said indicating the sisters, “or the Father because they don’t know how to act normal.  They can’t walk down the street without being in charge of it.  They’ll get noticed.”

“And you don’t think a child alone will draw any attention?” Ambrose asked.

“The occupiers won’t see him as a threat,” Nolan offered. “But the natives will notice a stranger.  They’ll ask questions.”

“My name is Fernie, son of Willis.  I live with my family over the hill.  Or, I did,” Tad improvised, making a sad face and forcing his eyes to fill with water, “until a monster came ... it was so awful.”  He turned his face away and swiped at his face with the heel of one hand, as any boy would do rather than shame himself by openly showing tears.  “I didn’t know what else to do, so I came here.  Pops used to tell me about the town over the hills, so I thought I could find it.”

“Oh, you poor thing!” said Earkey, caught up in the act.

“I walked for days!”

“Ah,” said Ambrose acidly, “and pray tell, what kind of beast ravaged your poor family?”

“Manticore,” said Tad in a piteous voice.  He produced the manticore spine from his pocket as proof, “see?”


Maybe it would be that easy.  Or maybe he was high on the rush of surviving a surprise manticore attack.  Either way, he was walking into Stamfield as a Fernie Willison.

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