M. Mathias - Through the Wildwood

Vanx’s keen Zythian nose picked up a sickening scent. Its source was at least a mile away, as best as he could tell. Remembering the birds he saw circling earlier, he decided they might have been carrion marking the source of the stench. Curiously, he wondered why the smell of death wasn’t alarming him.

None of the wolf-riding Kobalts were to be seen now. Apparently this is where the ugly little creatures wanted them to be. The group that had camped in this clearing before them had obviously gone in the way the smell was coming from, but they hadn’t been in a hurry. The spacing of the tracks showed that they had ridden and walked away at a casual gait. There were five, maybe six horses and three sets of prints left by standard boot-clad feet.

Had they been herded this way too? Vanx doubted it, but the possibility lingered in his mind. Kobalts couldn’t know that he was half Zythian and had senses as keen, or even keener, than their own. They couldn’t know that he knew how many dozens of them were out there surrounding them, nor that he could smell the death that lingered not so far away.

“It’s full of pouches of herbs and powders,” Matty said. “Some rocks and some scrolls too.”

“What good would it do you, woman, if it was full of gold?” Trevin asked.

Matty turned with a snarl on her bruised face. “Maybe you could just live off your woman’s coin if she-if we survive all this.” Her angry tone lost some of its steam as she continued. “If I walk out of the Wildwood alive, all I got, is all I got.” She sighed, seeing that Trevin was no longer paying attention to her. Instead, he was getting Gallarael out of the saddle.

“There’s not much work for a girl with one hand,” she finished in a whisper.

Vanx bit his tongue for Darbon’s sake. The boy was obviously blind to Matty’s current occupation.

“Help me lay out her bedroll, Matty,” Trevin said through his struggle to get Gallarael down by himself. “Please,” he added when she hesitated. She let out another huff and went to help him.

By then Darbon had a kindling fire burning inside the ring of rocks and was adding pieces of deadfall to the blaze as he found them. Once the fire was raging and some extra wood was stacked, the boy began building something. Vanx was impressed when he realized it was a sort of rack they could use to dry Gallarael’s clothes.

Darbon almost spoke up for Matty, but the words she had chosen to defend herself hurt him so badly that he couldn’t speak. She’d said that if they got out of this mess, all she had was what she had. Where did that leave him? He knew that he could find work with a smith in any village or town; he was already well trained. Old Uncle Elbar had taught him all sorts of tricks of the trade. He could work lumber too, like his father had before he died. Remembering the loss of his uncle at the hands of the trolls made him sad. Matty’s comments only served to add to the lonely feelings that were suddenly assailing him. But still, when she saw the drying rack he had set up and smiled at him, he couldn’t help but smile back.

“After it gets dark we can sneak off to wash our clothes by the stream,” she whispered to him seductively.

“What about those things out there and their wolves?” Darbon asked, the true nature of her suggestion lost to him.

“You can bring your bow, if you’re afraid,” she said with a smirk that left him confused, but no longer dwelling on the loss of his loved ones.

While the others settled in and the sunlight faded from the sky, Vanx took one of the bows and disappeared into the forest. He had no problem shafting a fat rabbit and pinning a lazy pheasant to her nest. The latter was the better of the two kills because the bird was sitting on a trio of eggs, and Vanx loved eggs more than most any other food in the wild. He had intended to go on and scout what the source of the rotten scent was, but the promise of freshly scrambled eggs brought him back to the fire.

They ate like starving dogs. Even unconscious Gallarael reflexively gulped down the chunky broth Matty made from the rabbit meat.

While Darbon and Matty went to wash their clothes, Trevin and Vanx sat by the fire. They discussed the quality of the first warm meal they’d had in days and fought to keep from laughing at the sounds of Darbon and Matty’s passion. The two were only a score of paces beyond the firelight and every grunt and heavy breath carried through the night.

“He’s a naive fool,” Trevin commented quietly.

“It’s a matter of viewpoints,” Vanx replied.

“What do you mean?”

“We are here looking at the fire, and he is getting his wick wetted,” Vanx shrugged, letting his own high-browed grin punctuate the statement. “How could he be a fool?”

Trevin chuckled at the truth of it, but glanced at Gallarael. Vanx watched the mirth drain from his face. The girl’s arm was still swollen and the fang marks on her wrist looked like puckering sores. Otherwise, she looked like she was sleeping soundly.

“Either we will get her out of here and get her well, or we won’t,” Vanx said. He meant to be encouraging but the words didn’t come close to conveying his sentiment. Trevin must have caught the gist of the comment because he nodded silently.

Vanx retrieved the pack Matty had examined earlier and explored its contents in the firelight. Some of the pouches of herbs and powders contained substances that Vanx recognized. These were components used in the casting of spells. Some of them were the kind of ingredients needed to cast spells of the most potent nature. The scrolls confirmed that the bag belonged to a human wizard. The writings were incantations, directions, and recipes all written in Kingscript.

Kingscript was the written language of choice for the Parydon nobility because the wording and flow were too elaborate for the average citizen to grasp. Had it been a Zythian wizard’s pack, there would have been no scrolls. Vanx knew a few spells, of the most basic sort, but nothing substantial enough to even consider himself a dabbler.

His curiosity was now piqued to the point of restlessness, so he made a decision.

“When Matty and Darbon return, I am going to scout our surroundings.”

Trevin, seemingly lost in his brooding, only nodded and moved over to Gallarael’s side.

It was full dark, with very little of the moon’s light filtering through the trees, but Vanx saw just fine. The odd, grisly scene he found was startling but not unexpected. There were three dead horses and five dead kingdom men, all of them starting into the process of being reclaimed by the earth. Most of the bodies had been looted of belt and pack. Only a broken bow and an almost empty quiver of arrows lay about. Not even a dagger remained, and some of the clothing and boots were missing as well.

The bodies were too far gone to tell what had killed them, but Vanx found a few sets of huge, deeply pressed footprints and had to assume an ogre had been around, either during the skirmish, or just after. The only thing that was discernible was that one of the horses fled the scene, possibly with a rider, and someone on foot had started away from the massacre and then vanished in his tracks. His first thought was that the disappearing tracks belonged to the wizardly owner of the pack they’d found earlier. Then another idea occurred to him. An ogre could have plucked a running man right off his feet and hurled him, or if the ogre were hungry enough, worse.

As Vanx surveyed the forest around the area he found only two stray arrows. He managed to startle off some hissing thing that had come to feed on the rot. He hadn’t even noticed the creature and had to spend a moment letting his thudding heart settle back in his chest before he continued. The beast’s presence completely surprised Vanx and he took that as a sign of warning. Other carrion feeders, both large and small, would come around before the night was over. Some were possibly lurking in the darkness this very moment. Wood trolls were sometimes drawn to a decaying carcass. A whole pack of trolls might come to this feast. Why hadn’t they already come? As Vanx asked himself the question, his nose picked up the musky scent of a wolf. He cursed himself for not bringing one of the bows with him this time. A scan of the trees around him revealed the shadowy form of the wolf and its Kobalt rider. When he caught a tiny glint of amber-yellow eyes, he froze.