The Swordmage Trilogy Bundle, Volumes 1-3 (6 page)

The Captain lay there for a moment, his breathing finally slowing and some color returning to his cheeks. It seemed like a long time to Tiadaria before he opened his eyes again. Those eyes, normally full of fire, were dull and listless.

“Captain?” Tiadaria was embarrassed that her voice broke the way it did, but she had never seen a man reduced so quickly.

“I’ll be fine, little one,” he replied. His voice was low and tired. To Tia, it sounded as if he was reassuring himself as much as her. “I think we’re done training for today.”

She nodded, settling back on her heels. He struggled to sit up, resting his blade across his thighs as he gave her a measuring look.

“This is only going to get worse, little one. Are you up to it?”

She wasn’t sure if he meant his illness, or the care that came afterward. She decided that it really didn’t matter what he meant. She didn’t have anywhere else to go. Her training was the only thing that had ever made her feel as if she was good at something, as if she had a purpose. If caring for him after his episodes was a part of that training, then so be it.

“Of course, Sir,” she smiled. A tentative thing that danced on quivering lips. “Just tell me what you need of me?”

“Allow me to lean on you until we get back to the cottage...and let’s do so quickly. It wouldn’t do at all for the people of the village to see me in this state. Can you imagine the damage it would do my reputation?”

Tiadaria had to laugh. That sounded more like the Captain she knew. He seemed to rally the nearer they got to the cottage. By the end of the evening, Tiadaria had forgotten about the incident. That was just as well, it would be repeated more often than she would have li
ked during their time together.

~~~~

It was barely dawn when a rapping on the door of the guardhouse roused Lieutenant Torus from a fitful sleep. His back and shoulders were sore and he groaned as he straightened up, the chair creaking underneath him. He had fallen asleep at the table again, poring over troop movements and casualty reports from Aldstock. The elves were riled up about something again. Xenophobic by nature, they kept a fanatical surveillance of their borders, but they’d never been outwardly hostile before. He’d lost two good men to arrow wounds in the last week and a half. Something was definitely changing. The rapping returned, increasing in both speed and intensity.

“Alright! Alright!” He muttered several colorful oaths under his breath as he hefted his massive frame, pushing off on the table to steady legs gone numb from sleeping in armor. His feet felt as if they had become extensions of his heavy plate boots. It was as if his joints had rusted during his impromptu nap.

Torus yanked open the guardhouse door and peered down at the little man who stood on the threshold. He might as well have been a city rat, Torus thought. The black eyes set a little too close together, a nose a little too long and pointed to be attractive, even for a man. He wore simple dyed linen, much patched and still fraying in many locations.

“Yes?” the lieutenant demanded peremptorily.

The little man’s hands worried at the wide brim of the floppy hat he clutched between dirt-stained fingers. He looked back over his shoulder, and then back at the lieutenant, clearing his throat incessantly.

“Um, sir, the villagers, they, uh...”

Torus ground his teeth. Getting angry wasn’t going to help matters. He knew that as soon as he raised his voice to this quivering creature in front of him, that it would be completely useless trying to get any worthwhile information out of him. He stood aside and swept his arm in a wide gesture.

“Please, come inside.”

He was unaccustomed to any type of civility, Torus realized as the man stepped sideways past him into the guardhouse common room. The lieutenant pulled out a chair and gestured, a bit firmly, for the man to take a seat. He poured a cup of spiced wine from the skin warming by the hearth and passed the tin cup to his guest. The man’s thin fingers grasped it as if he had been handed a holy golden chalice. He took a sip of the wine and sighed. Some of the rigidity left his frame as the hospitality and the drink began to have the desired effect.

“How can I help you?” Torus asked, deciding to try a soft touch.

“Well, sir, the villagers asked me to come to you. They...we...know that you have men down by the tree line. We, uh, we think something may have happened to them.”

“Why do you think that?”

The man swallowed, his throat bobbing up and down in a nervous tick that threatened to drive Torus past the edge of his patience.

“Sir, we was doing a bit of trading with your boys. You know, sweets and ale and the like, and we goes down there to play at dice sometimes. We ain’t looking to get them into trouble...”

“Whatever trouble they get in, isn’t your concern, now tell me why you think something’s happened.”

“Yes, Sir. We was going to take some bacon down to your boys this morning, but there’s no fires and the tents is all pulled down and grass is all torn up around the camp. We didn’t get close, on account of them wood-dwellers still being around. They shoot arrows at us if we is gettin too close to the trees.”

Torus swore under his breath and the man reddened. The violence with which the man’s hands started shaking threatened to splash the wine over the rim of the cup. The lieutenant reached across and plucked it from his grasp, setting it firmly on the table.

“You’ll take me there, immediately.”

Torus grabbed his helm from the shelf above the table and picked up his long sword from the rack beside the door. It was a well weathered weapon, with many dings and scratches. It had been his since he had been sworn into the guard as a youngster and had served him through his entire service. The feel of it sliding into the scabbard slung over his shoulder was comforting and brought a sense of peace to him that few things did.

He reached up and pulled the rope that led to the bell in the barracks. The loud pealing echoed through the room and the mousy man clasped his hands over his ears.

“Get up, you lazy bastards!” Torus roared down the hallway. “There’s trouble and we need to see what kind.”

To their credit, his soldiers appeared through the doorway momentarily, pulling on plates of thick leather armor and buckling on scabbards and quivers. They presented themselves to the officer with a crisp salute, which he returned before he looked them over. Not bad for an emergency muster, he thought. He pulled a strap here, untwisted a buckle there, but the three kids in his charge were as ready as they were going to be.

It was fortunate that the path down to the tree line wasn’t too far from the guardhouse. The nearer they got to the
forward camp, the more nervous the villager became. Before long, they reached the split rail fence that separated the village proper from the wide swathe of land that marked the border between the Imperium and Aldstock, the ancestral home of the elves. The villager refused to go any further, showing a surprising amount of backbone that Torus wouldn’t have believed he possessed had he not seen it.

Torus wondered for a moment if the man or the villagers hadn’t had something to do with the attack, but that didn’t add up. Why would the man have come to tell them that something was amiss? Certainly they’d have tried to avoid the confrontation altogether. Besides, the man was genuinely afraid of going any further toward the camp. They had been there before, playing dice, so there was no reason that he should not want to return unless he really felt there was something wrong.

From the gentle slope above the camp, it was obvious that there was something amiss. The tents, normally pulled taut against their supporting poles, sagged limply toward the dew-covered ground. The fire rings had been scattered and no whisper of smoke scented the morning breeze. Clothing and cookery items were scattered about. Most disturbing, however, were the weapons that lay, abandoned, around the camp.

Whatever had happened here had happened quickly and with the element of surprise. Torus drew his sword, prompting the others to ready their weapons. Two archers and two swordsmen suddenly seemed like long odds. It didn’t help, Torus thought, that these boys were as green as spring grass. None of them had been in combat and spilled blood. Shooting an arrow at a training target was one thing. Shooting one at something that shot back was something else entirely.

He motioned silently to the archers, who nodded and spread out on the ridge. Another gesture and the boy with the sword fell into step beside him. Their approach to the camp was agonizingly slow, eye and ear alert for the slightest warning or indication of danger. As they neared the closest tent, Torus knew they would find no survivors here. The wind brought the smell of sewer sludge, tinged with the thick coppery smell of spilled blood. It was the smell of death. Torus had smelled it on enough battlefields to know that whatever had happened here had been a massacre. He didn’t look forward to what they would find.

Torus nodded to the boy, urging him into position across from him, outside the flap of the nearest tent. The lieutenant flipped the flap open with the tip of his sword. The boy beside him dropped his blade and promptly vomited into the grass by his feet. As a soldier, Torus judged him harshly, but as a human being, he couldn’t fault the boy. Inside the tent, a scattered mass of flesh, tissue, and bone that had once been one of their brothers-in-arms. Whatever had torn him apart had done so some hours ago. The offal was already beginning to blacken with decay. The stench was nearly overwhelming.

A shout went up from the ridge, and Torus whirled, his blade at the ready. A man stood at the edge of the tree line. He was naked from the waist up, his muscular arms held high above his head. In one he grasped an ornate bow. In the other, a bunch of arrows. He wore breeches of forest green and brown boots that seemed to blend into the ground where he stood.

He walked forward in measured steps, never dropping his eyes from Torus’ face. Torus sheathed his sword. He knew an armistice when he saw one. Besides, the look on the elf’s face was raw enough that Torus could recognize it even at this distance. He was terrified.

“You may call me Dendrel,” the elf said as they came within speaking distance. “My people are not responsible for this, certainly you see that?”

“Torus,” the lieutenant replied, gesturing over his shoulder. “I’m not certain of anything, but I’ve never heard of that kind of brutality from your kind.”

The elf shook his head, sadness reflected in his oval, deep blue eyes.

“Our people aren’t so different,” he said slowly. “This, I think, is a common enemy, if an old one.”

“Then you saw who did this?” Torus was growing impatient. If the elf or his kin had seen who the attackers were, they could pursue them immediately and call up reinforcements from elsewhere along the line. Even to Dragonfell and Blackbeach if need be.

“Yes. Your men were slaughtered by the
Xarundi.”

It took a moment for that thought to register. For a moment, Torus was certain the elf was mocking him and his hand went to the hilt of his sword. The elf dropped his bow and arrows in the grass at Torus’ feet, looking up at him with those sad eyes.

“You’re mad.” Torus’s voice had dropped to a hoarse whisper.

“If only I were.”

The elf moved to the side, slowly lifting the flap to the tent that was sagging there. Deep score marks marred the tent post. A footprint in the soft dirt was reminiscent of a dire-wolf, but far larger.

“A wild animal,” Torus said, half-heartedly. The answering look the elf gave him was no longer sad, but disdainful.

“What animal do you know of that walks on two legs, like man, and has such deadly claws?”

Torus didn’t answer. He had nothing to say.

* * *

A mass of black shapes moved along the road toward the village. The pack was silent and only stood out from the night's blackness when the moonlight fell on sleek fur or reflected in luminescent blue eyes. They loped along easily, covering the distance between Aldstock and the sleeping town as fast as a man on horseback.

The leader stood eight feet high, a full foot or so taller than the tallest of his closest kin. He loped along on powerful hind legs, thickly roped with muscle and designed for springing with terrible speed on unsuspecting prey. His arms were equally powerful, with huge hands and fingers tipped by razor sharp claws that slipped in and out of their sheaths with unconscious agitation.

Glowing blue eyes were set above a narrow muzzle and strong jaw. The
Xarundi's ears were erect and swiveled two and fro, alert for any sound that might indicate danger or detection. He smelled the stench of man and his nose twitched in hunger and anticipation.

“Where?” growled one of the pack in the guttural tongue of the
Xarundi. The language was harsh and sounded very similar to the dialect of their simpler lupine cousins. A series of growls, yips, and snarls served to convey the basics of language.

“Close. Can't you
smell the reek of them?” Zarfensis wrinkled his nose in distaste. The settlements of man were growing entirely too close to the ancient forest. They would need to be shown their proper place and made to respect their rightful masters. Snarling quietly, the High Priest called the clerics up from the rear ranks. Their magic would be needed. First to confuse and cause panic among the prey, second to heal any of the Chosen who might be injured in the struggle against the pink-skinned, hairless, vermin. The infestation spreading across the land like wildfire.

They were near enough
to
the settlement now to make out the sentries as they patrolled on the high wooden wall that surrounded the little village. Zarfensis called the darters forward and snarled an order. Four Xarundi raised long, hollow tubes and, as one, fitted darts into the near end. Each feathered dart was tipped in a poison so potent that a mere drop would cause a sleep that lasted for days and might never end. The amount of poison on each dart was enough to kill a fully grown Xarundi. A human would have little protection against its effects.

“Fire,” Zarfensis growled.

There were muted thumps as each darter fired his weapon. Up on the wall, the human guards slumped over at their posts. One fell over the outer wall, hitting the ground below like a sack of vegetables collapsing in on itself.

“Now,” the High Priest growled, dropping his jaw in a grin. “We eat well tonight.”

The Xarundi closed the distance to the heavy wooden gates with a speed and ferocity that would have terrorized the people of the village, had they had any warning. Without the guards at the top of the wall, the only alert the village would have would be the splintering wood of the Xarundi pulling the gate apart. A feat which they performed with little resistance, as their sharp claws tore easily through wood and pitch.

The gate fell, and the
Xarundi poured into the village, pulling down lanterns and torches as they went, plunging the village into darkness. They crashed into doors, knocking them off their hinges and filling the night with the screams of the panicking villagers. As others began to awaken and run, the powerful wolf-men ran down their quarry, tearing out their throats and gorging themselves on the blood and flesh of their prey.