Into the Thasryach
Afew short turns later, Allystaire was awake, dressed in his riding leathers, with his iron-banded gloves and thick bracers around his forearms, standing silently just a few yards outside the camp, a straight length of wood in his hand that didn’t quite reach his shoulder. Bark still clung to it, but it was straight, strong, and dry—everything he had hoped for.
He stood, waiting, his back to the camp, for longer than he’d hoped he would. Eventually, he heard quiet footfalls on the grass, a few of the first-fallen leaves crackling under Gideon’s careful steps.
“How’re you awake? The sky barely suggests dawn. Bhimanzir knew tricks that would allow him to do without sleep for days, yet always with a price to pay.”
“No tricks, just a long habit. I sleep when I can and wake when I must. Now.” Allystaire turned to face the boy, who was rubbing sleep from his eyes, and held the staff out for Gideon to take. “Did you come to talk of sleep or did you come to learn?”
“To learn,” Gideon said, then recoiled as Allystaire lightly tossed the not-quite-ready staff at him, but corrected himself in time to fling his hands out and catch it, one end dragging on the ground.
“Good. The first lesson, and our first exercise, just like the knife: hold on to that staff so that I cannot take it out of your hands.” With only a moment’s wait, Allystaire stepped forward and reached out, wrapping his left hand around the staff and giving it a rough tug, then another. Gideon held on briefly, but the second pull ripped it from his hands, the rough bark tearing at the skin of his palms.
“Again.” Allystaire held the staff out to the boy, who took a deep breath and accepted it.
This went on for roughly half a turn, with Gideon struggling more and more, till eventually he fell to the ground and curled his legs around the staff, locking his feet at the ankle. With both hands, Allystaire grasped the staff and lifted it from the ground, bringing the boy with it. He raised the staff till he was looking Gideon eye to eye, and then nodded approvingly.
The boy uncoiled himself from the staff and dropped his feet to the ground, roughly. His thin arms were trembling, and when Allystaire relinquished his grip, the staff nearly clattered to the ground.
“Is this what training a knight is like?” the boy asked, panting softly.
“No,” Allystaire replied. This is much easier, he thought, but did not say. “Besides, why would you want to know anything about training for such foolishness? Now. Carry that staff all day. At times I may ask you to do something with it, hold it above your head, say, or carry something with it. Will you do that?”
“I will try.”
“Good enough.”
“What would you be doing, if I might ask, if you were training me to be a knight?”
Goddess help me, I would be sending you away, to your mother, to the priests or the scriveners, where you belong, Allystaire thought, his mind instantly and unflinchingly sizing up the boy’s spare frame, thin arms, and narrow shoulders. What he said, though, was, “Putting a chain shirt on you and making you run the yard.”
“Seems it would be hard to run in a chain shirt.”
“That is rather the point, lad.”
They headed back to the small camp. Idgen Marte was slowly waking up and Torvul was sitting atop his wagon with his crossbow in his lap. He had fallen back asleep once Allystaire had woken up; his snores drifted on the morning air. Bethe, as was her habit, was huddled deeply into her blankets, unmoving.
After a moment of silence, Gideon said, “I don’t want to be a knight. I do want to learn utility. I don’t want you to regret bringing me with you.”
“Listen, lad, that you want to learn is a good thing. Even if you did not, it is not as though we would leave you behind. Besides, you already saved my life once. What would I be if I abandoned you after that?”
That seemed to mollify the boy, and he nodded. He lifted one hand from his staff and studied the raw red lines that a half turn of scratching against bark had raised. “Can you teach me to do anything about this?”
“I can tell you two things,” Allystaire said. “The first is that Idgen Marte probably has some sort of salve. The second is that you should talk to Torvul about cutting the bark away and smoothing the wood. He will have the tools.”
“Could you not heal it?”
“I could, but I will not,” Allystaire replied. “And I have reasons beyond mere cruelty,” he added. Allystaire pulled off one of his gloves and held his hand out towards the boy. “Look at my hand. Tell me what you see.”
The boy leaned forward, studying Allystaire’s hand, turning it over to look at the back, and then again at the palm, gnawing his lower lip. “I see that you have broken two fingers and two of the knuckles on the back of the hand, and that they probably hurt in damp weather, that your life line is odd—long, but odd—that your nails are cracked and dirty…” The boy glanced at Allystaire’s increasingly impatient face, and added, “And also that your hands are very calloused, which is what you wanted me to see.”
“Yes. If I heal your scrapes, you will never grow them, and your hands will always be scraped. Proves my point, lad. Some hurts are good for a man, aye?” The boy nodded, let go his hand, and Allystaire quickly asked, “What was that bit about a life line?”
Gideon shrugged. “Parlor tricks sorcerers sometimes perform to impress their patrons. Reading the future in the hand. Mostly nonsense.”
Allystaire shrugged it off and motioned the boy to Idgen Marte, who was groggily strapping on her sword belt. Gideon went to her, gingerly wrapping his hand around the staff and swinging it in front of him like a walking stick.
Allystaire rapped on the side of Torvul’s wagon. The light sounds of snoring stopped, and were replaced with rumbling Dwarfish oaths.
“We leave in half a turn. I mean to make some distance today. No time for loafing.”
“Loafing! Boy, in a quarter turn of sleep my mind does more work than yours has in a score of years,” Torvul answered, through a yawn. “Never call it loafing.”
“As you say, Torvul,” Allystaire replied. “Nevertheless, it is biscuit and cold meat and breakfast in the saddle today.”
As the dwarf rattled more stone-chewing words he clambered—rather nimbly, Allystaire noted—from the top of his wagon, to the board, and finally back inside, slamming the door behind him.
* * *
Two turns later, the sun was up and bright, but brought very little warmth as they climbed. Their winding track through the foothills had begun to cut back and forth across the mountain it ascended, and their going was slow, till it finally halted when Idgen Marte, walking a few paces ahead, called back for Allystaire.
Sweat streaming down his face despite the chill in the air, he swung from his horse, landing on his heels with a heavy, clanking thump, and trudged up to meet her. She was crouched to the inside of the track, near a pile of fallen rock and broken branches. She looked up, saw him coming, stood, and pointed with one finger—at a corpse.
Allystaire frowned and moved closer. The body was fairly fresh, not rotted yet, wearing the remnants of a mail vest and the scraps of a tabard. Allystaire knelt, reaching out with one gloved hand to rip free a strip of the cloth.
“Faded, but this was red once, I think. Innadan red,” he said, as he held it to the light.
“Aye. When’s the last time any Innadan man got this far into Delondeur?”
“The last time they were allied, I suspect,” Allystaire replied. “Still, they made a good go of it, two years ago. Probably a deserter.”
“Look at his neck,” Idgen Marte said. She pulled her sheathed sword free from her belt and used the tip of the scabbard to push away some of the detritus obscuring him. His throat had been torn out, and dark brown stains covered his light beard and the neck of his mail and clothing.
“Torn out by a beast? Bear, wolf?”
“Body’s still here. Bear or wolf wouldn’t have wasted it.”
Allystaire stood, wincing at the click of a knee, and said, “Unless they were scared off. This man was probably not surviving up here alone.”
“Deserter’s Brotherhood,” Idgen Marte said, though without force or conviction.
“Could be,” Allystaire replied, and was about to go on before he stopped himself short, frowned. “If so, they would have taken the body. Buried it. And the vest, his clothing…Cold, even his sword is still sheathed.”
Idgen Marte looked at him, an odd light in her eyes. “Man dies with his throat slashed, his sword still in its sheath, and the beast or man that did for him does nothin’ with the body?” Allystaire started to shake his head, but she spat once, and muttered, almost growled one word as she shifted her eyes back to the body.
“Chimera.”
Allystaire spat, reflexively, over his left shoulder, moved by superstitious need. He collected himself, shook his head. “Plenty of reasons before we go reaching into legend to frighten ourselves. And,” he added, lowering his voice, “the boy, and Bethe.”
“Only one reason the stories put here in the Thasryach. Legends stay with us for reasons, Allystaire,” she said, her words clipped short by thinly pressed lips.
“Then remember what you are, and act like it, not like a frightened child,” Allystaire said, his eyes widening as his voice rose. “We have chosen our road, and that is over the pass. We will fear nothing we might meet upon it. Will you take the lead, or shall I?”
“I’ll do it. Goddess only knows what you’d blunder us into.” Her anger at his words was evident in the set of her jaw and clenched teeth. But, Allystaire noted, she stood straighter again, looked him in the eye.
Shaking his head, he headed back to where Ardent waited for him. The destrier’s ears were moving, his eyes slightly wide, nostrils flaring. He didn’t shy or protest when Allystaire took the reins and swung back into the saddle. He felt the stallion’s restiveness in the bunching of huge muscles, and patted the long grey neck softly. “We have many turns of light left. Let us not waste them,” he called.
The little column moved on in mostly uncomfortable silence for the time being. Behind him, Allystaire could hear Torvul speaking quietly with Gideon on the seat of his wagon, prying and needling information out of the boy about the sorcerers and their history. Most of the conversation was too quiet and too circumspect for him to follow, but he sensed the dwarf was learning quite a bit.
As morning gave way to afternoon, despite the brightness of the sun, the day seemed to grow colder. They were gaining height as they moved up the switchbacks, but Allystaire didn’t think the elevation was enough to explain the cold.
Then something, a thought, a notion, a warning, perhaps just irrational, animal fear, tickled the back of his neck. He raised a hand to call a halt. Even though he did not speak, and she was dozens of paces ahead of him, Idgen Marte drew an arrow from the quiver at her hip and fitted it to her bowstring. He lowered his hand and began easing his hammer out of its loop, then looked behind him, towards the dwarf’s wagon.
“Torvul,” he said quietly, “is there room for Gideon and Bethe in your wagon?”
The dwarf puffed out his chest as if to complain, but when his eyes met Allystaire’s, his demeanor changed. “Aye.” He reached back and twisted the doorknob, swinging the door open. “Get in there, boy. And you too, lady,” he said, waving to Bethe, who had slid off of Idgen Marte’s horse, slowly, and begun taking tentative steps towards the wagon.
She paused, though, hesitating, looking around at the mostly barren trees, squinting.
Gently, trying to sound urgent, but not angry, Allystaire spoke. “Please get in the wagon.”
She stopped, cold, turning suddenly widened eyes on him. “It…I don’t…is it dark in there?”
Allystaire shot a glance at Torvul, who was stepping down off the step and extending a hand. “I’ll set up a lamp for ya. Now please, go on in.”
Gideon stuck his head out of the door, holding one of the dwarf’s small metal lamps, fiddling with its pump and dials. “There is a stove,” he pointed out, “and chairs. Dwarf-sized, but big enough for us. It is quite warm inside.”
The woman hesitated, then nodded slightly and began to walk forward.
Allystaire started to release a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding, when suddenly, something hard and strong and vaguely man shaped swooped down onto him, knocking him clean out of the saddle. He landed on the ground with a clatter, his hammer knocked clear from his grasp. Bethe froze in place.
He didn’t bother searching for his weapon. Instead, Allystaire pushed himself to his feet, his leather-and-iron clad hands curling into familiar fists. The thing that had attacked him was giving him no chance to recover, though, and was already pouncing. It was man-shaped, but with, he could see, one feathered arm. No, he thought, even as it leapt upon him, a wing. And a man’s face, twisted into a muzzle, bristling with teeth that had no place in a man’s jaw.
Chimera. The one thought, certain and overpowering, sounded in his brain like a bell even as the thing began beating its wing upon him. Its other arm was clawed, like a rodent’s, and it sought his face. Allystaire caught the claw descending upon him with his left and began punching with his right, seeking out any vulnerable spot, but in the beast’s wild thrashing his blows seemed to glance away.
The strength of the arm he had caught was wild and daunting, and it ripped free of his grasp, then descended again, clawing three hot lines of pain across his cheek. Then the thing hopped, skittered, fluttered away, crying out in some half mad sound that was neither the cry of bird, nor the anguish of man, nor the growl of a beast, and leapt towards the stock-still Bethe.
No. Allystaire thought, though the creature was faster, faster than him, and its clawed arm was reaching for her even as he dove towards it.
As his extended hand caught the feathers of its useless, flapping wing and tore a hank of them free, Idgen Marte had suddenly rippled into sight at his side, her curved sword swinging in a quick upward arc towards the chimera’s face—even as a crossbow bolt from Torvul, who stood propped on the step of his wagon, bow in hand, pierced its side.
Still, it shrieked and turned in a rage upon the swordswoman.
That it got a claw briefly sunk into Idgen Marte’s shoulder was a testament to its speed, a fact Allystaire had undue time to reflect on as he tried to grab the beast and missed, feeling like he was running through water to try and reach it. His senses sharpened in the way they always seemed to do when blood was first spilled. He could hear Torvul cursing as he drew back the string of his bow, could hear Bethe’s rapid, frightened breathing, saw Idgen Marte twist out of the chimera’s grasp and draw back her blade for a two handed swing.
He also saw that as fast as she was, even with the Goddess’s Gifts aiding her, her swing left her too exposed. What’s more, a sudden shift in the beast’s stance told him it saw that too. With a control and agility unnatural as the muzzle growing out of its otherwise human face, it flung itself forward, jaws opening, claws extended, at Idgen Marte’s midsection.
Allystaire dove at it, managing to seize one of its feet, a five-toed, padded cat’s paw in mottled brown and grey fur, in one of his hands, and bore it towards the ground, just enough for its claws to slash Idgen Marte across the stomach, even as its jaws snapped shut on air.
He immediately threw his weight forward, trapping the thing’s legs under his body and seizing hold of it with both hands, curling them into fists. Feathers tore free from his grip as the thing flapped its wing; its other arm could not break his grip, though he felt it loosening.
He didn’t have to hold it for long, thankfully. Idgen Marte wasted no time; she sidestepped, brought her blade up, and then swept down into its neck, the blow sending a burbling spray of blood into the air. Allystaire ducked his head to avoid the spray, smelling the warm animal stink of the beast, not unlike a horse, or a dog, or a falcon, or some mix of all three. There was another blow, and another, till the chimera’s head finally rolled free, and still the body beneath Allystaire twitched and quivered for a few more seconds till, finally, it lay still.
He pulled himself to his feet and went immediately to Idgen Marte’s side, pulling off his left glove. She tried waving him away but he planted himself implacably in front of her. “You have wounds, and Goddess only knows what disease that thing might carry. Show.”
“Not yet,” she grated, through clenched teeth, pointing at Bethe, who trembled on the grass with her hands clutched over her head. Allystaire turned towards her, but Torvul waved him away. He shifted his crossbow to one hand, and with the other seized a potion from pouch and flicked the cork out of it with a thumb. He knelt next to the woman, speaking in hushed tones and holding the bottle out. With just a few seconds of coaxing, she took the potion and drank, and suddenly stood. The dwarf took her by the hand and led her up into his wagon, where Gideon shut the door behind them.
As Torvul handled one problem, Idgen Marte bent and began trying to clean her sword on the grass, but Allystaire grasped her, gently, by the shoulder. The slashes on her shoulder were not deep, but they had broken through heavy leather and into the muscle. His fingers moved over blood-slick skin, and he poured forth a measure of the Goddess’s healing warmth into her body; he felt the scratches on her shoulder knit seamlessly and he lifted his hand.
“Your other wound,” he said, looking down. Her hand was pressed over her stomach, occasional droplets of red trickling through her clenched fingers. He pried her hand away, pressed his against her wound again, and repeated the process. This wound was deeper, required more concentration. He stood stock still and barely heard her gasp when his fingertips pressed into her torn skin. She tried not to lean forward against him as the pain of the healing—and it did hurt, he knew—moved through her.
When he finished the healing his eyes drifted closed, and they opened with a start, staring straight into Idgen Marte’s wide, dark eyes. She stepped away from him, slowly and deliberately, then she slammed her sword home in its sheath and turned to pick up her bow.
Allystaire returned to the chimera’s corpse on the ground, toeing it over onto its back with his boot. The monster was a hideous amalgam of parts that did not fit. One leg was furred and bent like a cat’s, with a paw to match, while the other was taloned like a bird. There was the wing, and the rodent-like claw, and the wolf’s muzzle set into a man’s face, atop a man’s torso, covered with faded scraps of clothing.
Torvul stumped over to meet Allystaire and the two studied the monster in silence while Idgen Marte, bow in hand, joined them, and Allystaire bent to retrieve his hammer.
“Well,” Torvul said, before pausing to chew his bottom lip briefly. “Chimera.” He lifted his eyes to the other two. “Good tidings, though. They take a bit of killin’, but they do die.”
“We should not have come this way,” Idgen Marte sneered, and Allystaire forced himself to meet her gaze, and was opening his mouth to retort, when the air was suddenly cut by a great wolf-like howl that sounded somehow too pained to be natural.
And then the piercing screech of a hunting bird.
And then a roaring bark.
“And that would be the bad tidings,” Torvul managed to say, before the three exploded into motion. Torvul ran for his wagon and hopped into his seat, while Allystaire and Idgen Marte leapt into their saddles.
“You ride with the wagon. I ride ahead with the lance,” Allystaire shouted. The horse’s eyes were wide and the great grey beast tugged at the reins, but seemed to calm once a familiar weight was on his back. Allystaire quickly lifted his helmet from the pommel of his saddle and sat it on his head with one hand. The other lifted his shield free of the saddle cleat it hung on, letting it fall on his arm till the straps hit the bend of his elbow.
Now as armored as he was going to get, he lifted free his lance. Then he glanced upwards at the afternoon sun, forming in his mind and his heart a quick prayer. Mother, please, your guidance. If there must be death here, let it be mine. Do not let them suffer for my stupidity.
“No one’s dying here, least of all you,” Torvul shouted, and Allystaire was suddenly aware that both the dwarf and Idgen Marte had overheard his prayer. He had little time for considering the matter, as another chimera came loping down the track at them, its body some hideous mix of canine and man. Though it ran with all four limbs upon the ground, its back legs were those of a man, weather-burned and strong, even as it loped forward in its twisted, bent-backed run.
With no time left for thought, Allystaire’s body—and more to the point, his mount—knew precisely what to do. His knees squeezed the horse’s flanks, and the destrier gathered himself and flung his great bulk forward, hooves churning up dust. Allystaire lowered his lance and leaned forward in the saddle.
The chimera leapt, but the lance was too long, the paladin’s arm too sure. Sharp steel took it in the collar and plunged straight out its back. The beast died with a pitiful yelp, its body writhing at the end of the lance, the force and the shock of its weight nearly tearing the weapon from Allystaire’s hand.
He managed to hold on, his arm and shoulder straining, barely managing to keep the weapon aloft, as another chimera lumbered out of the forest at them. A bear’s head, and massive shoulders, moving unsteadily atop a man’s trunk and twisted, grey-furred, bent legs. It staggered towards him, whuffling at the air in seeming confusion, and then letting out a half-roar, half-moan, charged towards them, raising dangerously-clawed paws as it came.
Behind him, Allystaire could hear the singing twang of Idgen Marte’s bowstring as she loosed arrows towards the top of the trees. He spared a glance from the bear-shouldered monster while struggling to lift his lance with a dead chimera on the end of it.
The sky was alive with feathered things. Allystaire saw one man-sized, winged creature fall when a second arrow pierced it near the neck. Another he briefly saw crouched in a tree. Like the first chimera, it had only one wing, a fact that became evident when it leapt free and spiraled, screeching piteously, to its death as a crumpled heap several yards away.
This is wrong, some part of his mind, the detached observant part that was not focused on keeping his lance aloft despite the weight and the pain it was rooting into his shoulder. These creatures are as pathetic as they are monstrous.
And yet this thought did not stop the chimera charging him from being a threat. With a roar of pain, Allystaire was able to keep his lance aloft just enough to plunge the tip into the creature’s twisted, bent-kneed leg.
There was no hope of saving the lance now. It tore free of Allystaire’s hand at the muted shock of impact, and it was like letting go of the weight of the world. His arm and shoulder were a flaming agony, but pain was an old acquaintance. The oldest friend he still had, and he let it wash over and through him, even as his hand closed around the haft of his hammer and drew it free. The twisted chimera was not dead, but it was down, buried beneath the weight of the first he’d speared and with several span of lance pinning it to the ground. There were no more apparent threats ahead, so he spared another look back.
Between Idgen Marte’s bow and Torvul sparing his reins to take the occasional shot with his crossbow, the air was mostly clear. He saw one flying beast that had drifted away, circling off above the trees.
Reaching inwardly towards the dwarf and the warrior, rather than shout, he thought, Time to put speed on. This cannot be all of them. We can find a defendable place before nightfall and make it down the pass tomorrow if we do not linger.
We should turn back, came Idgen Marte’s thought.
No, Allystaire thought back, and he would have shouted if he knew how. We lose too much time if—
We must go forward, came a voice that all three of them recognized as Gideon’s, who had once again overheard them. Please. I can feel something ahead. A kind of power. We should go to it.
Why? The single word echoed in all of their minds as Allystaire, Torvul, and Idgen Marte responded together.
It is something that animates these monsters. I can stop it. There was a pause. I think.