James West - Reaper Of Sorrows

“Have your knotholes and sheep, you toothless, uncouth wretch,” Loro growled, absently hiking a leg to scratch his backside. “You’d not recognize a fine woman if she fell in your lap.”

Rathe burst out laughing, only to be stilled by the call to halt. He heeled his mount past bedraggled soldiers, thinking it early to make camp. Still put out by Breyon’s estimation of what they would find in Valdar, Loro trailed after, casting rude aspersions on their cohorts. Sullen glares met his ridicule, which only served to encourage him.

At the head of the company, Rathe found Captain Treon conferring with two riders. Behind them, the stream curved, its breadth spanned by a rutted stone bridge just wide enough to accommodate the wagons. On the far side, the road cut through a soggy glade with a broad muddy knob dotted with rock fire rings. Firs and pines leaned over the clearing, their boughs hung with moss and dripping icicles.

Treon turned at the sound of approaching hooves, his cheeks rosy for the cold, his stare emotionless. An unexpected grin turned his lips, alerting Rathe to trouble.

“Lieutenant,” he said, managing to twist the title into an insult, “Aeden and Eled found something upsetting.” His gaze shifted to Loro. “They will lead you and that slovenly dung heap at your side to their find.”

Loro hawked and spat, then passed wind, not once looking away from Treon’s snaky glare.

Rathe glanced at Aeden and Eled, paying particular attention to the latter, a wan fellow with stringy black hair and an unfortunate potato nose. Fingers of steam rose from their cloaked shoulders, and both peered between Rathe and Treon with affrighted stares.

“What did you find, Eled?” Rathe asked.

“There’s … it … it’s,” he mumbled, before doubling over and spewing his last meal.

“By all the gods,” Loro growled in disgust. “Did a witch harvest your stones for potions, or are you that much the craven?”

Rathe looked to Aeden. “Can you tell me?” he invited.

The soldier blanched. “Best see for yourself, lieutenant. It’s not far.”

“Have a care,” Treon said lightly. “Wolves, lions, and bears make their homes in the Gyntors. Also, there are creatures beyond the ken of man, the progeny of demons and sorcery, evil given life and flesh. And brigands are as common in these parts as rocks and trees.”

Rathe bristled. “Then I would request a larger party.”

“No,” Treon said. “Four are enough.”

Rathe’s sword flashed from its scabbard. Treon flinched back, belatedly groping for his own blade. By then, Aeden had spun his mount and clattered across the bridge, followed by Rathe and a chuckling Loro. Eled hung well to the rear, his tight features tinged an unpleasant shade of green.

The foursome rode through the glade, crested a rise, then left the road and plunged into the forest, following an overgrown game trail. After a few hundred paces scrambling their mounts over downed trees, crossing muddy brooks and bogs, the way opened on a grassy meadow. A stag bounded away when they came into the clearing, its antlers crashing through the brush. After a moment, silence fell.

“Over there,” Aeden said, pointing at a distinct silhouette hovering amongst a stand of white-skinned birch.

Rathe gradually detected the contours of a wagon hidden within the murky greenery.

“What’s that stench?” Loro asked, raising an arm to his nose.

Rathe had smelled the same many times over, on countless fields of battle. “Death,” he muttered, a finger of unease coiling through his insides.

Loro cast a baleful look at Aeden. “Has a dead huntsman’s camp so unmanned you?”

Aeden dismounted. “See for yourself.”

Rathe climbed down, tied the reins to a bush, and followed Aeden, their boots sinking ankle-deep in the miry ground. Cursing the damp under his breath, Loro came along as well. Eled stayed put, glancing nervously from shadow to shadow.

The wagon stood empty and missing one wheel. A pillar of rock stacked under the bed kept it upright. The spare wheel leaned against the bole of a nearby tree. Rathe squatted, studying the wagon’s route that led to its final resting place. The driver had wended his way between the trees, following a path that might have been a road long before, but was now choked with low bracken and grass. For the most part, the grass had sprung back, but faint ruts remained. “Hasn’t been here long.”

“A fortnight, no more,” Aeden said.

A bitter gust fell off the misted spires of the Gyntors, pushing before it the cloying reek of corruption. Raising his face into the wind, Rathe spied a ragged tent hunkered a little deeper into the forest. He looked a question at Aeden, and the man’s jaw tightened in answer.

The closer they came to the tent, the stronger the stench of rot grew. Skin prickling with unease, Rathe halted several paces away, tried to get an image of what had happened. Animals had scattered stores of dried goods around the tent, and its sides had been shredded to flapping tatters. By the pile of wood shavings and kindling next to the blackened fire ring, it looked as if the huntsman had been about to start a cookfire. On a nearby stone, flint and rusted steel waited for hands that would never pick them up. From a picket line, four ropes fell to a cluster of carcasses-oxen, by their size.

“Is this all?” Rathe asked.

Aeden pointed to a place of dense undergrowth, the murk made deeper, more substantial, by the coming dusk. Fresh footprints in the slushy skim of snow showed where Aeden and Eled had already walked.

Wanting to get back to the company before full dark fell, Rathe moved to the spot, searching, and halted mid-step. The legs of a pair of corpses clad in woolen trousers poked from under the brush, as if they had died trying to find cover. As scavengers had been at the camp’s stores, so too had they been at the dead, savaging rotten meat and strewing entrails. Beetles and grave worms, sluggish with cold, churned through the soupy corruption.

“Fever must have taken them,” Loro said.

“No fever did this,” Rathe said, nodding toward two rounded lumps covered in strands of dark hair. Heads . While a wolf or bear might have torn the skulls from the dead men, neither animal would have placed them upright and side-by-side, as if to grant the gaping eye sockets leave to watch the slow decay of their bodies. Such as that took the calculating mind of a higher order of creature.

“Something watches,” Loro warned, looking back the way they had come. The trio moved together, brandishing swords. The forest gazed back with bland menace. Shadows lay thicker than before.

“By all the gods,” Aeden whimpered, the wavering tip of his sword pointing at a group of pale shapes flitting between tree trunks. A moment later, the creatures vanished into forest.

The three men stood mute, still as iced statues.

“What-”

“We must get back to camp,” Aeden said. “Come!”

They ran to their horses, all looking in different directions for another glimpse of the elusive creatures. The forest revealed nothing. Eled sat his mount where they had left him.

“Did you see?” Aeden asked.

Eled, who had regained some of his color, paled again. “See what?”

Aeden swallowed. “The Shadenmok and her demon hounds!”

Eled let out an agonized moan and sawed the reins, dragging his horse around. Without a word, he kicked the mount into a hard gallop.

Rathe leaped into the saddle, waited just long enough for Loro and Aeden to do the same, then went after Eled. Rathe fought against whipping branches and his horse’s plunging stride until breeching the forest’s grasp. Having caught up with Eled, the foursome raced back along the road to the first glade.