Dennis McCiernan - Into the Forge

"We'll hamper each other, bucco," said Beau. "And you're right, another horse would do. Too bad the one I was riding took one of those black arrows."

"Oh, is that what happened?"

"Yar. The arrow went in right behind the shoulder."

"Heart shot, he was?"

Beau nodded. "Looks that way. Must have been struck just as we broke through the line. I think he ran another twenty strides or so before he collapsed, though to tell the truth, I was too busy loading and slinging to know."

"You, too? Oh, Beau, so was I-loading and loosing, that is. And I don't know how many I hit-Phais says that it's common not to know-but I seem to recall one or two."

Beau expelled a breath. "I remember the Hlok I slew at the last. Loric says altogether we killed perhaps a dozen, and from what he said, I think it was mostly your arrows and my bullets that did the job."

"Adon," breathed Tip. "Quite a bloody pair, we two, eh?"

"Oh, Tip, don't say that."

With these words chill rain began falling from the grey skies above.

That eve they camped among thickset trees well off the road.

"Another day should see us out of this slot," said Loric as he shared out jerky and mian.

"Is there a town somewhere near after that?" asked Beau. "I'd like to sleep in a bed, if you please, and have a warm bath."

"Aye. Stede lies a league or so beyond. 'Tis but a hamlet now, yet once was a town of import when trade flowed into and out of Rell."

"Yes, but will they have an inn?"

Loric smiled. "Mayhap, wee one. Mayhap."

"If not," added Phais, "then surely one of the villagers will put us up."

"Well, I'd like an ale, myself," said Tip. "After a bath and before a bed."

"I am hoping we can replace the horse," said Loric. "And take on some additional supplies. We lost much when the steed was slain."

"Yes, yes, a horse, but after the bath and the ale and the bed, if you don't mind," said Beau.

Once again the skies opened up and rain came tumbling down.

All the next day it continued to mizzle, fine mist blowing through the slot.

"Lor'," said Beau, "even if we don't get a bed and a bath and an ale, just to get out of this drizzle will be enough."

"Aye," agreed Tip, "I'll be glad to simply get before a fire."

"With hot tea," added Beau.

"And soup," appended Tip.

"Or stew," amended Beau.

"Anything warm," said Tip as the chill wet wind swirled 'round.

"Lor'," breathed Beau. "What happened?"

Afoot, they stood looking at charred ruins in the glum light of the dismal late day, the hamlet entirely destroyed, the blackened wood sodden with three days of rain, ashes washed to slag. Only here and there did stone chimneys stand, though some stood broken, as if deliberately shattered, and still others lay scattered across the ground.

The horses snorted as if something foul filled their nostrils, and Loric and Phais spoke words to soothe them.

Loric squatted on the wet ground and took up a burnt split of wood and smelled it and plucked a bit of char and rubbed blackness 'tween thumb and forefinger. He looked at Phais and shrugged, saying, "I cannot say when this misfortune befell, for the rain has washed away the day of the burning."

Leading the skittish horses through the damp air, on into the ruins they fared afoot.

"Hoy, what's this?" called Tip, and he stepped to one of the fallen chimneys and picked up a broken arrow shaft. Black it was and fletched with ebon feathers, wet and mud caked. "Maggot-folk," he declared, stepping back and handing it over to Beau, that buccan to look at it briefly before passing it on to Phais.

"Aye," said the Dara, " 'tis one from the Rupt."

Even though they could see no foe across the leveled town, still they readied their weapons, and then on they went, Phais going wide to the right, Loric wide to the left, and Tip and Beau in between.

Soon they came to the end of the wrack, and Loric joined the buccen.

Beau looked up at the Elf and said, "Well, one thing for certain, even if the maggot-folk did this, the villagers must have got away."

Tip cocked an eyebrow. "How so?"

"No corpses, Tip."

"Perhaps any who were killed are buried, Beau. By those who escaped. That or they burnt up in the fires."

Loric shook his head. " 'Tis said that horseflesh is not the only provender favored by the Rupt."

Beau's eyes flew wide. "Surely you don't mean-"

"Over here," called Phais from the lip of a small ravine, her horse shying back.

And there in the shadows they found the dead-hacked, smashed, pierced with black arrows-men, women, children, babies, thirty-seven in all, bloated in death, some with great chunks of flesh torn away, as if eaten by animals. A faint miasma of rot drifted on the rain-washed air.

Beau turned away trembling, but Tip stood looking down, his face twisted in rage. "They're not even armed," he gritted.

"It matters not to the Rupt," said Phais.

"It looks as if they were herded here and then slain."

Loric nodded. "Aye, as lambs to slaughter."

"How long?" asked Tip.

Phais stepped before Beau and knelt. "How long, wee one?"

Beau swallowed, then turned and faced the carnage and after a while said, "From their condition, two weeks or thereabouts, or so I would gauge."

Phais canted her head in concurrence. "I agree."

"Does that mean there's a Horde somewhere in Gunar?" asked Tip.

Loric turned up his hands. "Mayhap. Mayhap not. This could have been committed by a small band of ravers rather than a full Horde. Yet whoever did so may no longer be in Gunar at all."

Beau shuddered. "All this slaughter by a small band of ravers?"

"Look and see," said Phais. "A third are old men and women. A third are but children or babes. The remainder are all who could have put up a fight-how effectively, I cannot say-yet they number no more than ten or twelve in all."

Beau nodded numbly.

Loric glanced at the waning sun. "We must make camp."

"Not here," said Beau. "Please."

"Nay, we will press on some way from this place of death."

"What about the dead?" asked Tip. "Shouldn't we bury them or place them on a pyre?"

Phais shook her head. "War yields little time for such, Sir Tipperton. We have no dry wood to give them proper burning, and burial would take many days."

Tip nodded sharply once, then turned away, saying, "Let's go."

"But I didn't want to look."

Tip nodded. "I know, Beau. Neither did I. But even though it's terrible, I think she's just trying to get us to look at war straight on-to look at sights such as that one back there without flinching-so we don't fall apart at the wrong moment."

"Nevertheless, it was hideous, Tip. The babies… the babies…"

Tears spilled down Beau's cheeks as the horses pressed oil through the gloaming, but Tip's own eyes were filled with rage.

Over the next days, down through Gunar they passed, following along the Gap Road, camping far from it at night, for mayhap Foul Folk went that way as well, though they saw none.

Gunar itself was a land embraced on the east and south by two long, arcing spurs of the Grimwall, reaching out like enfolding arms ringing the land 'round to hug it tight against the main range all along the northwesterly bound. This encircling reach was named the Gunarring, and in the southeasterly quadrant where these two spurs met stood the Gunarring Gap, a passage through the mountains and into the land of Valon. It was through this wide defile that the four hoped to escape through the Grimwall barrier and turn northeasterly to head toward the city of Dendor in Aven afar.

And so along the Gap Road they fared, a full two hundred miles down through the land of Gunar on a southerly course, passing across plains and among occasional stands of trees as the deepening spring days grew longer.