Paul Kemp: Shadowbred

The shadowman ignored her. He had eyes only for Aril.

"What did you call me?"

His sword was as long as Aril was tall. Darkness poured from it like steam off the lake on winter mornings.

"He meant no offense," Mother said.

Aril said, "The shadowman. You don't like that name? That's what Nem said the peddler called you. Hunters have seen you, too. In the forest. Some said they spoke to you but I thought it was all a tale. Nem said he heard you rode here on a shooting star. He said you came here to protect us because…"

Aril trailed off, suddenly nervous about continuing. He did not like the frown on the shadowman's face. The dark eyes-they weren't yellow anymore-bored into him.

"Because?" the shadowman prompted.

"He meant no offense, goodsir," Mother said, her voice quavering. "Please… leave us alone, now."

Aril summoned his courage and said, "Nem said he heard you protect us because you had a friend who was a halfling and you… could not protect him."

The shadowman's face was frozen. Aril could not tell if he was angry or sad.

The shadowman appeared next to him-had he moved?-reaching to touch Aril's head, maybe to tousle his hair, but he stopped short. He studied Aril's face and said, "Your friend has the right of it. My name is Erevis. Erevis Cale." He paused then said, "But I like 'shadowman,' too."

Mother audibly exhaled.

The roars and shouts from the village drew the man's attention back to the slaughter. Without another word he was gone.

Aril twisted in his mother's grasp and looked about. He did not want to be left alone in the forest.

He spotted the shadowman not far from them, crouching in the undergrowth, looking toward the village, and said the first thing that came to his mind.

"Tomorrow is my Nameday."

"Let the man go," Mother said to Aril, in the tone she usually reserved for telling him to do chores. "He's going to help the others."

The shadowman turned so that Aril saw his face in profile. Darkness gathered around him.

"I do not want him to go," Aril blurted. "I'm afraid."

Aril did not see the shadowman move. The man looked back on Aril, the darkness blurred, and he was suddenly kneeling at Aril's side. Mother and Aril gasped.

"Everyone is afraid," the shadowman said, his tone soft. Ribbons of shadow leaped from his flesh and touched Aril with cold fingers. "Even me. There's no shame in it. Do you really want me to stay here while the trolls attack your village?"

Aril understood the question. It was the same as when Mother had offered to let him sleep in the next day. He was supposed to say no. He struggled to find words.

"I was just… I was praying for Papa to come, and you came. I thought…" He trailed off. He did not know what he had thought.

The shadowman stared at him for a moment. Finally, he asked, "What number Nameday is it? Eighth?"

Aril felt indignant that the shadowman had taken him for a wee. "My tenth," he corrected, and his tone made the shadowman smile.

"You are small for your age," the shadowman said. "But only in your body, not in your heart. What is your name?"

"His name is Aril," Mother answered. Aril frowned that she had stepped on his answer.

The shadowman nodded. "Aril is a good name. My friend's name was Jak. And he was a halfling like you. Not from this village, but from another like it."

The screams from the village continued.

"Can you count, Aril?" the shadowman asked.

Aril nodded.

"To one hundred?"

Aril nodded again.

The shadowman stood and looked down on them. "When you reach one hundred, this will all be over. Those trolls will never bother you or your village again."

Aril nodded, wide-eyed.

The shadowman looked at Mother. "This is nothing you'll want to see. Same for the boy. Trust me, and stay where you are. I'll save who I can."

Mother just stared.

The darkness around them began to deepen. Before it was too dark to see, Aril took a skipping stone from his pocket and tossed it to the shadowman.

"You might need it," he said.

The shadowman caught it, smiled, and slipped it in a pocket.

"I might at that. Your papa would be proud of you, Aril."

The shadowman vanished as the darkness grew impenetrable. Aril held his hand before his face and saw nothing. His mother's arms were around him though, so he felt safe enough.

The shadowman's voice cut through the darkness. "Start counting, Aril. Aloud."

Aril did. "One, two, three, four…"

By ten, he heard roars of surprise from the trolls. By fifteen, he heard the first of them die. Others followed quickly-at twenty, twenty-three, thirty-one. Roars of pain came one moment from Aril's left, then from his right, one moment nearby, the next farther away. He imagined the shadowman stepping out of the shadows, killing, and disappearing, only to materialize across the village and slay again. By sixty, Aril stopped counting. The surviving trolls were trying to flee. He could tell by the way their terror-filled shrieks grew more and more distant.

Mother held him throughout, rocking him, humming a lullaby. He thought perhaps she was more frightened than he was.

"It's all right, Mother," he said, and patted her hand. "He is here to save us."

He felt his mother shake her head. "No, sweetdew. Not us. He's here to save himself."

After a time, quiet settled over the woods. Then Aril heard a whooshing sound. The smell of smoke and burning flesh grew powerful.

He and Mother remained still, as the shadowman had told them. He heard no trolls, no combat, merely the moans of wounded villagers, the soft crying of mourners, the barking of a few dogs.

"Shadowman?" Aril called.

The darkness lifted. He blinked in the flickering orange light of a great bonfire that burned in the communal fire pit between the forest's edge and the village. Aril and his mother walked cautiously to the forest's edge. A pile of a dozen or more troll bodies, all of them dismembered and squirming, lay within the flames. Thick, stinking black smoke spiraled up from the corpses. The smell was foul and sickening.

The shadowman was gone.

The survivors from the village wandered slowly, dazed, confused. A few tended the wounded or knelt over fallen friends. Aril avoided looking too long at the dead. He would have cried but he felt too numb to do anything more than stare.

Some of the survivors walked cautiously toward the fire. Many held weapons-mostly pitchforks-but a few carried swords. Others leaned on their fellows, whether from wounds or fatigue Aril could not tell. They murmured amongst themselves as they neared the pyre. Aril could see them pointing, explaining, trying to make sense of what had happened. Some prodded the burning troll corpses with their weapons. Sparks mushroomed into the air.

Thunder rumbled in the distance. A storm was threatening. Aril doubted it would rain, though. It rarely did.

"None escaped," Aril heard someone say.

"Did you see him?" said another. "Who was it? What was it?"

Aril and his mother limped out of the woods toward the fire. Mother took Aril's hand firmly in her grasp.

"It was the shadowman," Aril called, and all eyes turned to him. "The shadowman saved us, all of us. His name is Erevis Cale. We saw him. He talked to me."

Aril spotted Nem in the village beyond, standing near his father, who held a woodsman's axe resting on one shoulder. Aril waved, relieved to see his friend. Nem returned the gesture and both forced smiles. The numbness left Aril abruptly and he began to cry. So did Nem.

"The shadowman is a hero," said another, and everyone nodded.

"Where did he go, Aril?" asked Matron Steet.

Aril glanced around through his tears and could only shrug.

"Back into the shadows," Mother said.

Aril gazed into the woods, into the dark.