The Beast of Maug Maurai, Part One: The Culling (14 page)

Black Murrogar cast one final glance
into the blackness of the forest, searching for any signs of the fleeing beast,
then let the river carry him downstream. He had buried his sword three quarters
to the hilt before the monster had escaped. He smiled at that word.
Escaped
.
It had fled. Scampered off into the forest.

Nothing can survive that type of
wound. Not through the gullet. Not from below. Not so deep
.

He let the Typtaenai wash the blood
from his blade then rested the sword on his chest as he drifted downriver on
his back. The maple log had grounded itself on the curving riverbank again
about three hundred yards downstream. Thantos and Hul sat on the trunk,
shouting to the shivering nobles who were in a frenzy around the tree, shoving
and tugging at it. Murrogar chuckled and made his way out of the river.

“What’s yer hurry?” he called. His
men offered broad grins. They stepped off the tree and splashed thigh-deep into
the river. Thantos gave a concerned nod upriver. Murrogar smiled, made a phantom
thrust with his sword.

Sir Wyann stood on the riverbank
removing the spaulders and cuisses of his armor. He approached Murrogar. Ulrean
came too, Murrogar’s black bear brooch gleaming on the boy’s chest. The Duke
and the Duchess followed close behind.

“The Beast?” asked Wyann.

“I’m the only Beast in this forest,”
said Murrogar. “That other thing went lookin’ for its mum’s teat.”

Ulrean smiled, his eyes bright and
wide. The gem in his forehead glittered in the faint light of the moon. “You
killed it?”

Murrogar winked and Ulrean hugged
him. The old warrior put his arms around the child and squeezed. The rest of
the nobles stopped working on the maple and trudged toward Murrogar. Their eyes
wide, their expressions guarded.

“It’s gone,” shouted Murrogar. “It’s
gone. You’re safe, now.”

The Duchess reacted first, sobbing
and embracing Ulrean. The Count of Daendrys dropped to his knees and covered
his face with his hands. His countess sank at his side and cried softly against
his shoulder. Most everyone was crying or hugging. The Duke gave Murrogar a
solemn nod and the hero returned it.

Murrogar sloshed into the river and
settled against the tree, this time facing downriver. “Let’s get to Kithrey
tonight, if it pleases all of you,” he shouted, and slowly the nobles took
their places and helped shove the log back into the cold river.

They ran aground twice more on the
shallowing river before the bridge came into view far downstream. Murrogar
remembered passing the bridge on his way down, in the wagons. It wasn’t much
more than a clapper bridge;  two stone moorings with a flat deck of boards, and
wooden rails on either side. A decade of neglect had reduced it to little more
than a ruin. It leaned to one side where part of one mooring had sunk. Planks
were missing and rotted in spots. Moss and ivy covered much of it. But looking
upon it now Murrogar couldn’t remember any bridge looking more beautiful.

The silhouette of a large, squat tree
waved in a breeze from the rail of the bridge, leaves glimmering green in the
moonlight, so peaceful and soothing until Murrogar recalled that the tree
hadn’t been there when they crossed the bridge in the wagons. Until he recalled
that trees don’t grow from bridges.

“No.” He whispered it. The green
glimmers weren’t leaves, but green phosphors that grew brighter as he watched.
“That’s not possible.”

Thantos followed Murrogar’s gaze. He
hissed a breath and plucked his sallet helm from a branch. Hul did the same.

Ulrean cried. His quiet sobs woke
fear in the travelers again. They huddled and slipped lower in the water and
Lady Genaeve resumed her weeping.

Sir Wyann shouted at Murrogar. “You
said you killed it! You said it was dead!”

“It ain’t the first time someone’s
been wrong about that, is it Wyann?” Murrogar stared at the shape on the
bridge. The phosphors flared like molten emeralds.

God’s vomit, it wants to be seen. It
wants us to know it’s still alive.

The Beast leaned toward the river and
it looked like one of the stone demons that adorn the towering Blythhaven
cathedrals. All spikes and teeth and curves. They could hear the bridge
creaking under the creature’s weight.

“We ain’t stopping at the bridge,”
Murrogar called. “We’re going to pass right under it and keep going. I want all
‘a you to duck under water and get beneath the tree when we get close. You got
that? Stay under the tree for as long as you can hold your breath. Don’t come
up until you’re about to die. You understand? DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”

The nobles broke from their terror
long enough to murmur their understanding. Murrogar could feel the river bottom
with the toe of his boot. He hoped there would be enough water for the
travelers to submerge themselves.

The Beast leaned closer to the river
as the log approached, its teeth less than a child’s height from the water. The
wooden rails groaned. Planks tore, sounding like breaking ribs, but the bridge
held. The creature opened its great jaws and howled. And it was like nothing
they had heard that night. So resonant that it seemed to echo from everywhere
at once. So powerful that it rippled the waters of the Typtaenai. Murrogar
heard hatred in that cry and imagined it was meant for him.

The nobles screamed with renewed
vigor. Murrogar drew his sword once more. Slowly this time. He was tired of
drawing that black blade. Thantos and Hul drew their swords as well.

 Sir Wyann, still wearing breastplate
and mail, shook his head. “You’re not going to attack it from down here.”

“Keep your mouth shut.”

Sir Wyann tried to draw his sword but
Murrogar stopped him with a look. “Stay low. Find a good branch and hold it.
But stay low. If you try to fight with that armor on, you’ll end up on your
back underwater.”

Murrogar signaled to his men. The two
of them swam until they flanked Murrogar at the center of the log. They had to
draw their knees up to keep from dragging their feet along the river bottom.
The Typtaenai was little more than twenty five feet wide here. Above, the
branches came together like clasped fingers and Murrogar had the sensation of
drifting along a sewer pipe. He eyed the Beast, leaning toward them less than
fifty yards away.
And we’re about to hit the mother of all shit-clogs.

 When they were less than ten yards
from the bridge the travelers took deep breaths and, one-by-one, plunged below
the surface. Except for Murrogar, Thantos and Hul. The three warriors raised
their swords. But their blades seemed paltry things against the Beast’s curling
mass of ebony teeth.

A creek straying from the Typtaenai
cut across the road on the outskirts of Maeris and a small arched bridge
spanned it. It was white and delicate and far too pretty a thing for Standards
to ride over, but Grae’s squad stormed it anyway, their horses’ hooves
thundering along the planks.

Maeris was a town recovering from
waves of calamity. It lay ten miles northwest of Kithrey, nestled against Maug
Maurai. Many of its men had taken part in the Scrubber Revolt ten years
earlier. It had been a bloody and hopeless struggle from the start. Duke
Mulbrey’s janissaries had dealt with the revolt as one might deal with
mold-ridden bread; he simply discarded the entire loaf. Grae had been in
Nuldryn back then, stationed at Lalei. He remembered hearing of the savagery.
Mulbrey’s Falcons hadn’t bothered to distinguish rebel from loyalist.

A year after the rebellion, as the
town found its growth again, as the men who fled returned and as new males
arrived and took widows to wife, the Beast appeared. A new wave of sorrow
crashed onto the village. A new monster killed in Maeris.

Grae and his squad reached the
fairgrounds and they found laborers dismantling the festival; pavilions being
taken down, workers wandering the fields collecting rubbish. Grae felt his
hopes for a new archer fade. He asked a worker about the archery contests and
was told that the contests were over, although a few exhibitions were taking
place. A swordsmanship display in the south pasture and an archery
demonstration in the north.

There was a trough near one of the
standing pavilions, so Grae ordered the squad to dismount and left Trudge
Drissdie Hannish to water the horses. Drissdie watched the others go with a
vapid look on his face, his mouth open, looking not unlike the horses. Grae
glanced back as they walked. “I’m not certain that leaving Drissdie with the
horses was a good idea.”

“He’ll take good care of them,” said
Hammer. “He grew up around horses. His father was a saddler.”

Their scout, Sage, chuckled. “Fitting
then that he was saddled with that lump of a son.”

Maribrae, walking behind him,
giggled. “Oh, how Sage doth stirrup trouble.”

They rounded a stand of trees and
were unimpressed by the small crowd gathered at the butts. There were
half-a-dozen targets pinned onto bales of hay, lined up with ten feet between
each. Twenty or thirty people sat or stood on the grass in an arc opposite the
targets, watching a single contestant taking aim with an oddly curved bow.

“What’s the song?” asked Hammer.
“Where’s all the people? Where’s the archers?”

Sage slowed, allowing Maribrae to
move next to him. “That’s quite funny, maiden,” he said. “Stirrup. I suppose it
would
behoove
me to pay close attention to your words.”

She smiled. “All your wits you’ll
need if you wish to show this
gal-up
.”

“Grace of Blythwynn, you’re not
human!” said Sage laughing. “I think I’ve met my match.” He moved closer, his
shoulder touching hers. “Shall we see if we have other parts that match?”

Maribrae stiffened and glanced
sidelong at Sir Jastyn. The knight said nothing, didn’t even look, but Sage
felt the chill.

“Friends,” said Sage. “Let’s not go
ruining a perfect friendship with wild lust and hideous pleasure.”

“Silence,” called Grae. He looked for
other archers, but it was only the one. A woman. She wore a corset over a white
shirt that was bunched off her shoulders. At her waist dangled a wuriun skirt,
the kind worn in Eridia or southern Gracidmar and made of long strips of thick
leather hung vertically from a wide belt at her hips. She wore a short grey skirt
of cloth beneath the leather strips.

The target in front of her, one
hundred yards away, was pierced through the red by two arrows. As he watched,
she drew smoothly. It wasn’t a warbow that she drew. It was a short weapon.
Scarcely four feet. But the bow didn’t have a single long curve like most bows;
the last six inches on each end of the weapon curved in the opposite direction.
Grae had heard of similar bows in Annecia and Gracidmar.  

The archer let the arrow fly. The
iron head sparked and
tinked
as it struck one of the sunken tips and
plunged into the red. It hit so close to the others that the three shafts
looked to be touching one another. She drew back a fourth arrow, paused, then
let it fly. It too drew sparks and bit into the red. There was wild applause
from those gathered. A small wooden collection bucket made its way through the
crowd. Some of the spectators tossed coins into it.

The archer turned to the crowd and
smiled, and Grae lost his train of thought. She was like a longbow herself.
Tall and willowy. Hair of the deepest red framed her face, splashing playfully
along her shoulders. She hadn’t bothered to tie it back, so it flicked around
her face.

As Grae watched, she took a deep
breath then drew a fifth arrow from the quiver at her side. This one was longer
than the others, black, fletched with crow feathers, and tipped with a long,
sharp bodkin. He marveled at her perfect posture;
common among the nobility
and noble among commoners
, his father used to say.

She brought the arrow back farther
this time, to her ear, and her arms quivered with the exertion. She held it for
an instant, her eyes closed, her lips moving silently. When she opened her eyes
the trembling in her arms ceased. She loosed the arrow. The sun flashed
brightly off the shaft as it left the bow.

The speed of the arrow made it
impossible to follow. Grae would have thought it missed its mark, but the
target wobbled, as if it had been struck. He couldn’t find the shaft anywhere
on the target, and neither could anyone else. Then someone shouted and the
spectators rose to their feet, shading their eyes from the sun and pointing.
Grae looked past the target. Thirty yards farther was an ancient willow. There,
buried halfway to the vanes in its bark, was the arrow. It had passed completely
through the target before piercing the tree.

There was applause and whistling and
the coins filled the small collection bucket. Another bucket was brought out
and it started the rounds.

Grae and Hammer exchanged glances and
moved toward the archer. The squad followed, stopping less than ten feet from
her. Sage, his face long with astonishment, nudged Jjarnee Kruu, who shrugged
and pretended to shoot his crossbow at the target. “She good shot. But I
better.” Daft Dathnien said something about women and omens and was shushed by
Maribrae.

The archer curtsied to the crowd as
one of the assistants brought a large platter forward, its face polished to a
mirror shine. She brought an arrow to the bow, but did not draw it. Her
assistant held the platter up as she turned her face away from the target. The
boy fidgeted with the mirror trying to get the angle right, and for a moment,
Grae’s face was reflected in it. The archer looked into the platter and caught
sight of him. Her face was reflected to Grae as well. Sun-dark and freckled. He
found himself smiling. Grinning like an idiot.

The mirror shifted and reflected, for
an instant, Grae’s uniform. And suddenly there was a panic in the archer’s
posture. She bolted, keeping a hold on the oddly curved bow.

It took two confused heartbeats for
Grae to react. He scanned his soldiers, found the two fastest men on the squad
and called out: “Sage, and … you, Lokk Lurius, Go! Flank and retrieve!”

Sage and Lokk sprinted after her,
taking alternate angles. Murmurs rippled through the crowd. Beldrun Shanks,
swung his axe to hand and started after the two soldiers. “I’ll get ‘er sir.”

“No you won’t,” said Grae. “My
definition of ‘get’ doesn’t involve an axe. The rest of you, on me.”

She was fast, the archer. Her long
legs carried her northward into the outskirts of Maug Maurai. She could hear
shouts behind her and risked a glance over her shoulder. A man with two short
swords pursued her, forty paces behind and twenty paces to her right. She ran
faster, leaping over rocks, dodging trees and thickets. Her boots betrayed her
at times, threatening to come loose in mud or turning her ankle on a loose
stone. But the man behind her was wearing armor and swords, and couldn’t match
her pace. She was gaining ground on him.

A branch snagged her bow and pulled
it out of her grasp. She stopped and untangled it, making a desperate groan as
she tugged it free. Another glance back showed just how much time she had lost
and fear numbed her limbs. She ran.

She was gaining her lead back when she
noticed movement to her left. Another soldier, this one thin and fair, had
taken a longer angle and was almost upon her. She whined and tried to run
faster, but there was nothing left. Each breath was like knife blades dragging
through her lungs. She was running on nothing but fear.

She veered toward a ridge of stones
in the distance, losing distance on the first man, but forming a plan. When she
reached the rocks, she leaped, catching a foothold halfway up. She jumped
again, grabbing a root and pulling with every dram of energy left in her,
willing herself up the face of the boulder. She was halfway up when the root
snapped, sending her down to the ground in a heap.

Her hip smashed against a rock,
blinding her with pain. But she rose and nocked an arrow just as the thinner
soldier arrived. He stopped and stooped, struggling for breath. He placed one
hand on his thigh for support. Raised another toward her, palm outward.

“You… You won’t need that … my little
gazelle,” said Sage.

Lokk Lurius arrived a moment later,
breathing hard but standing straight. “Put that twig down before you get hurt,”
His Eridian-Galadane sounded savage. She frowned, whisked the bow back and
forth between the two of them. Lokk took a step forward looking irritated. “Put
it down now and I’ll only hurt you a little.”

The archer loosed the arrow. It
struck Lokk Lurius in the thigh. He dropped to one knee with a grunt. Sage
dashed in but stopped short when he found another arrow already nocked and
aimed at him. Lokk snapped the arrowhead off and pulled the shaft from his leg
soundlessly. He winced as he stood then took a step toward her. “Now I’m going
to hurt you a lot.”

But Grae and the rest of the squad
arrived. They made a half-circle around the archer and Jjarnee raised his
heaviest crossbow. She looked at the weapon and Grae tried not to smile at her
rolling eyes. The rest of the men drew their swords. And then Beldrun Shanks
was with them too, his dreadful battle axe in hand. Hammer glared at him.

“Wait.’ Grae called to the men. “Put
down your weapons.” He lay his sword down slowly onto the soil of Maug Maurai
and held his hands up. The other men did the same, except for Lokk Lurius, and
Beldrun Shanks who leaned on his axe and leered at the archer.

“All’s fine, lass,” Grae said, “We’re
not here to hurt you.”

“
Ure hala
!” She exclaimed in
Graci. “That is not the thing that this one says,” she motioned to Lokk Lurius
with her bow. The words in the tongue of the enemy – the accent of Gracidmar –
spurred glances from man to man.

“She’s a Grack,” called Shanks.

“Cram yer hole, trudge,” said Hammer.
“I thought we told you to stay at the butts.”

Grae kept his hands in the air and
took a step toward her. “We won’t hurt you. I promise.”

Lokk Lurius snapped the arrow shaft
in half and threw it at her feet. “I might.”          

“Lurius,” shouted Hammer, “I’ll put
another arrow in you myself if you don’t clamp it.”

The archer expanded the arc of her
swinging bow to include all of them. “I have heard enough Laraytian promises,”
she said. “Rape. Torture. Mutilation. I have seen what Laraytian soldiers do to
the women of Gracidmar.”

“Aw, don’t take it to heart, luv,”
said Shanks smiling. “We do that to all women.”

“SHANKS!” shouted Hammer.