[game-notes version here]

XIII.

Duskmarch 17, Goldday, Year 731.

Maelen swore. “Damn this fog! I can’t tell if we’re headed west or back to Leandra’s Rest.” She spat into the grass. The lad winced.

“I haven’t seen signs we’re backtracking,” Alric said thoughtfully. He looked up in search of the sun, but Maelen knew that above was just the dull gray clouds of winter, no help in navigating. “I trust you’re taking us west.”

It was a fool’s comment, trusting in someone you hardly knew, but it warmed her all the same. Maelen grunted in acknowledgement, then asked, “Lad, you ever been this far into the wilds?”

He smiled, tightly lipped. “No. Thornmere Hold was the furthest from the city walls I’d been in my life. You?”

“Some years ago, I was part of a caravan guard. Just a young pup then, like you and Vess. We traveled all the way to Vireth’s Hold. Other than that, no.”

“You’ve been to the capital?” Alric’s eyebrows shot up his forehead.

Maelen grunted again. “Just the once. But it was on the Prince’s Road, nothing like this. No telling what’s out here, away from human patrols. I don’t like it.” As if her words had conjured something, she peered dubiously around at the grasslands and low hills, mists clinging to both.

The only thing that gave Maelen some solace was that they’d moved over marshland and grassy plains into foothills, a sure sign of going west. At some point they’d reach the Greenwood Rise, hopefully by nightfall. She didn’t much relish the idea of sleeping out in the open, without the defense of the forest around her. But had she led them in a northerly way, which only lengthened the trek to this Starless Rift? It was impossible to tell with the blasted gray sky and winter mists. At best, she could see a longbow shot’s distance at any one time, and often less than that.

A sharp whistle rang out from somewhere beyond the fog: Vessa’s call. Maelen stopped, put two fingers to her lips, and returned the whistle.

“What is it?” the scribe asked, looking around him.

“Our lass has found something,” she grunted.

They waited.

Like a ghost, Vessa appeared a stone’s throw away, padding towards them on soft feet. She held her bow in one hand, which wasn’t unusual for her scouting trips. The nocked arrow, however, made Maelen tense. She loosened the head of the mace at her hip, pulling it up and out of the leather belt loop. The weapon, her prize from the vault in Thornmere Hold, had replaced her longsword even though its reach was shorter than her blade’s. Maelen gripped the mace’s leather wraps, the black metal thrumming faintly in her palms. She couldn’t say why she now favored the mace with the heavy spiked ball on one end, except that it was hers, there by her bedside when she’d woken from her long sleep. Since then, Maelen hadn’t let it out of reach.

“Trouble?” she asked Vessa in a low voice.

The lass got close enough to touch them before speaking. “Hard to tell. There’s a farmstead up ahead,” she panted, out of breath from the run. “But it’s all dark and quiet.”

“Farm?” Maelen twisted her face. “Who in the nine gates would farm this far from the city?”

“There are several outlying villages,” Alric said, leaning on his staff as if to give his bad leg a rest. “The one west of Leandra’s Rest would be…” he frowned, searching his memory. “Vastren Hollow, I believe? Originally a ranger ward-post. Which means we’re almost to the hills! Vastren Hollow is small, but should offer another bed for the night, and means we’ve traveled southwest. Well done, Vessa!” He smiled. The lass looked startled by the praise and turned away.

“It’s dark, you said?” Maelen asked her. “Any animals?”

“Not that I saw, but I didn’t take a close look.”

“Well,” she said, grinning. She found the loop at her waist and returned the mace to her belt. For some reason, she felt a little guilty and disappointed at doing so, almost as if the metal itself was sighing. “Let’s go look.”

Vessa had scouted far enough that they crunched through grass and low brush for what felt like a full bell before the mists parted, revealing a simple wooden fence stretching before them. There was no gate she could see, but the barrier was meant to keep livestock inside, not people. The three hopped it easily enough and strode into the farm.

They found the first dead cow ten strides from the fence, lying on its side. Its brown-and-white flanks shredded by countless raking claws, the grass matted in a wide pool of dried blood. Vessa hissed—its head was almost gone, chewed to the bone. Even in winter a cloud of black flies swarmed what was left, their buzzing the only sound.

“It’s eyes,” Alric muttered grimly. “They’re gone. It’s Orthuun again.”

“Don’t get jumpy,” Maelen scolded. She’d freed the mace again and held it in both hands, the weight reassuring her. “Its whole face is gone, not just the eyes, and ravens could have gotten those. Looks like a pack of something got in here, but they’re long gone.” The lad didn’t answer her, his mouth an unhappy line.

The barn loomed ahead in the mists, its wide doors hanging open. Inside they found more of the same—livestock carcasses strewn in their stalls, faces gnawed away, claw marks littering their bodies. Maelen tried to imagine what had swarmed over this place, but it wasn’t wolves or dogs. The tracks were five-toed and rat-like, but too large for typical vermin. Vessa pointed to long, oily trails glistening in the straw, either the drag of large tails or something serpentine sliding beside them. Maelen noted that the flies avoided the oily trails, though they were otherwise thick masses around the bodies.

“If the people survived,” Vessa said. “They would have holed up in their house.”

“Yeah,” Maelen grunted. “Let’s find it.”

Between the barn and longhouse they found a chicken yard strewn with feathers, blood and a few stray legs and heads, but no bodies. Those oily trails and clawed footprints were everywhere. Crows called out from the fog, feasting on some corpses no doubt, but besides the crows and flies, no sound. It was unnerving, the silence on a farm that should have been brimming with life.

Maelen’s hope that the farmers had survived the raid dimmed when they approached the house. The door was a mess of claw marks and, it seemed, the creatures had torn off any window shutters and scrabbled inside. On the uneven wooden steps were bloody, clawed footprints and more of those oily, snake-like tracks.

“Do we go inside?” Alric whispered.

Maelen and Vessa both quieted as they listened. Nothing from inside. She cleared her throat and yelled through an open window. “Hello? Anyone there?”

Silence.

She exhaled. “No profit in raiding a farmhouse.”

“Profit?” Alric blanched. “Shouldn’t we… help?”

“They’re dead, lad.” She said, her voice harsher than intended. “You want to see children with their faces gnawed off?” Alric looked away, like he might throw up. “Let’s get to the village. Night isn’t far off, and I don’t want to be outside with whatever these things are.”

As they turned from the farmhouse, the flies rose in a dark cloud behind them, and for a heartbeat, Maelen thought she heard faint skittering beneath the floorboards. It was probably her imagination, though. She gritted her teeth, jaw tight.

A muddy footpath led to a sagging gate, hanging open. Beyond it, the path wound west through wet grass toward the foothills, cedars and alders ghosting in the fog. Crows cawed, and somewhere a jay screeched. Vessa, bow still at the ready, nodded towards the mess of footprints all along the path–long, five-toed ones, snaky trails, and plenty of human boots, all in no clear pattern. Whatever these creatures were, there had been a lot of them.

It did not take them long to reach the edge of a shallow basin and there, set against the foothills, the path led to a squat, functional rampart wall made of thick palings of dark pine, braced with mossy stonework at the corners. Its wooden gate was reinforced with iron bands, with the symbol of what looked like a hollow tree burned into its wood. Beyond the walls were the faint sounds of people yelling, some screaming, high-pitched and desperate. A dog barked frantically, far off behind the ramparts. Smoke coiled through the gray sky, glimpsed only when the fog tore open for a heartbeat.

A ragged pack of villagers clustered outside the gate. To Maelen’s eye, their gear had been scavenged and improvised—one woman held a woodcutter’s axe, another man held a spear whose shaft had been broken, a boy no more than twelve held a garden spade. Their clothes were damp with dark stains, their faces smeared with grime, and one had her arm in a sling. Only one man, barking orders at the rest, looked to be a proper soldier. Stocky, thick-shouldered, skin the color of earth, his beard tightly braided with copper. A chain shirt hung from him, boots sunk in the mud, a short glaive gripped in one meaty hand.

One of the villagers let out a cry and pointed in their direction. Maelen and Vessa froze, and Alric took one additional, shuffling step before realizing they’d stopped. The villagers froze, mud-streaked, hollow-eyed. The Stonekin fellow growled something at his companions, and then stepped forward, planting the end of his glaive in the mud.

“’Ware, travelers! It’s not safe here!” he called out in a gruff voice ragged with overuse. “Turn back!”

The group had fanned out slightly with their arrival, seven villagers in all, and now Maelen could see two bodies at their feet. Both thin forms were covered in black fur and the size of the boy with the spade, with clawed hands and feet and long tails as black as night. They reminded her of skratts, humanoid vermin that sometimes plagued the Oakton sewers, but these were decidedly larger. Besides, she’d never heard of skratts attacking humans, or of slime-covered tails.

“What’s going on here?” Maelen asked, gripping her mace. The soldier muttered something she couldn’t hear, and the wide-eyed villagers began fanning out more deliberately, forming a semicircle between them and the open front gate. They looked exhausted, terrified, and wholly incapable of wielding those weapons effectively. If it came to it, she would cut them down more easily than the Lanternless in the forest. It shouldn’t come to that, though.

Maelen spat into the mud and cracked her neck. She swung the heavy-headed mace to rest on her shoulder in a display of casual violence. Her face became a thundercloud as she scanned the ragged line of villagers.

“You’ve got troubles enough without testing me. But if you’re eager to taste my mace,” she jerked her chin at Vessa. “Or her arrows, keep coming. Well? Fighting or talking?”

Several of the villagers stepped back, looking over at the soldier. The man scowled and shook his head. “We’re talking,” he said grimly.

“Right then,” Maelen grunted. She nodded to Vessa and Alric, and they fell into step beside her, approaching the Stonekin man. As they closed the distance, the lack of training and skill amongst the commoners became clearer. Their hands shook with fear, this lot. Half of them didn’t wear shoes, like they’d rolled out of bed when the skratts attacked. The soldier, meanwhile, seemed to recognize their competence just as clearly. He appraised Maelen and her crew with a calculating eye, his lips set in a grim line. Vessa, always a good lass, stayed back several paces with her bow.

“So, what are these then?” Maelen asked, nudging a furred body with her muddy boot. Alric dropped into a crouch, examining them without touching. This close, she could see the rat-like heads clearly, their long-fingered hands tipped in short claws. Skratts, yes, but wrong. Too big, slick-furred, and one stared sightless up at her, its eyes milk-white as Wink’s. The jet fur was greasy, their ropy tails covered in a dark slime.

“Some sort of feral skratt,” the soldier replied in his deep, raspy voice. “They fell on us pre-dawn, hundreds of them. I’ve never seen or heard of the like.”

Alric stood up. The lad was shaken, his lips pursed. When he caught her eye he mouthed a word silently, but she understood it well enough. Orthuun. The blind eyes. The black fur and slime. It all harkened to the zombies in Thornmere Hold, and the spider-thing Vessa had described. Dammit all. There was no escaping the eyeless bastard west of the city, it seemed.

“You’ve been fighting ‘em all day?” she asked, shaking her head and trying to peer back towards the gate. The yells and screams became louder and more muffled depending on the mists, but they were still going. And that blasted dog was still barking, like a drum beat of doom.

“As best we can,” the soldier sighed tiredly. “We’ve killed scores of them, but their numbers were overwhelming.”

“What did they want?” Alric asked with some urgency. “Did they focus their attacks?”

Both Maelen and the soldier seemed surprised by the question, or even that the lad had inserted himself.

“At first we couldn’t tell,” he answered. “Then it became clear: They were focused on our shrine to The Watcher, in the village square.”

“The Watcher!” Alric said triumphantly. “Yes, of course. Is there a flame there?”

“There was,” he said. “But we,” he nodded to the ragged group around them. “Had to flee. I doubt it’s still burning now.” At these words, two of the villagers began to openly weep.

Maelen had heard enough. Whatever was happening across the Greenwood Rise, they couldn’t stop it here. They needed to get to this Starless Rift, which was still three days away if Wink could be believed. She needed to get Alric and his book there, exchange it for whatever treasure Hadren offered, and then get back to the city. After that, well… she had to admit that Vessa was right, that it was safer to work within the city walls than not. What could she do against rampaging demons and blighted wilds?

And then the lad messed it all up with his next words.

“Where is it?” he asked, voice steadier than it should have been. “We’ll protect it.”

Somewhere beyond the wall, the dog’s barking broke off suddenly with a yelp.

Next: Battle of the Watchflame [with game notes]