Read The Hollow: At The Edge Online

Authors: Andrew Day

Tags: #magic, #war, #elves, #army, #monsters, #soldiers, #mages, #mysterious creatures

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BOOK: The Hollow: At The Edge
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“So what really
happened to your mage?”

“Werewolves. Get
comfortable, Fresh Meat. The next two days are going to be mightily
unpleasant. Hope you don’t get sea sick.”

 

In hindsight, Serrel
figured he should have seen this coming. That a war would break out
the second he joined the Imperial Legion... Well, that was just how
his luck seemed to run lately.

The exact reasons for
the war were sketchy. The Land of Elsbareth, known mostly as the
Faelands, had long been at peace with the Empire. Mostly because
they had only barely managed to avoid being decimated by the Empire
during the last war, over a decade ago. When that war had ended the
ruler of Elsbareth, some elven king Serrel didn’t know the name of
and probably wouldn’t have been able it to pronounce even if he
did, had been deposed and replaced with someone more... amendable
to the needs of the Empire.

So the Faelands and the
Empire had co-existed peacefully as a reluctant puppet and a
domineering puppeteer respectively. Until the appearance of some
elven warlord named Vharaes, who claimed to be some blood relative
of the previous unremembered and vastly unmourned ruler of the
Faelands. He managed to rally together a band of like-minded
countrymen... or perhaps country-elves, and had started a
rebellion.

Somehow, Vharaes had
taken control of the elven trade city, Vollumir, and murdered the
Empire’s ambassador, which was apparently an act of war. The
fighting was still ongoing, and the Imperial Legion were now on
their way to aid the flagging forces of Elsbareth.

All this, Serrel knew
in passing. It was mostly just a load of strange names to him, and
a lot of big and important sounding words like “economics” that
seemed like poor reasons to have to fight someone.

All of his life the
Faelands had been only a legend, a place you told of in bedtime
stories to young children. He knew this was the land of the Elves,
an ancient and mysterious race of great power, and that many
strange, wondrous, and horrifying creatures still existed there,
and nowhere else on the planet. But he had never expected to have
to actually
go
there.

As the night
progressed, the ship left port and set off out to sea with little
or no fanfare. The rest of the Hounds took the opportunity to rest,
and soon the hold was filled with the sounds of nearly two dozen
men and woman snoring at varying volumes. But Serrel couldn’t rest.
His uncomfortable position and the rocking of the ship, an alien
and disconcerting sensation in itself to a previously landlocked
carpenter’s son, combined with the apprehension stirring in his
mind and kept Serrel awake. Eventually, he rose and quietly stepped
around his sleeping companions to make his way to the deck of the
ship.

The stars were growing
dim in the night sky when he emerged from below-decks. He found a
quiet spot out of the way at the stern of the ship and watched the
sun rise in the east, directly in front of them. When he looked
back, the land he had been born on, and not too long ago, had
expected to die on, was a mere dark smudge on the horizon. He
thought about the things he was leaving behind, and realised it was
a very, very short list.

But ahead of him...
Well, who knew what was out there? The idea that maybe, just maybe,
something good would come out of this frankly, rather terrifying
experience was almost enough to damp out the darkness of the Hollow
that was starting to stir inside.

So engrossed in his own
thoughts, he didn’t realise he had company until he glanced to the
right and realised his new commanding officer was standing next to
him. He quickly snapped to attention.

“At ease,” said the
newly promoted Captain Snow.

“Sir. Is there
something I can do for you, Sir?”

“No, Caster. I’m just
taking in the view. Marvellous, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Sir. I’ve never
been out at sea before, Sir.”

Snow took a deep breath
and grinned broadly. “Ah, smell that sea air! Marvellous!”

“Yes, Sir.”

“So...” Snow said in
what he thought was a casual, just-one-of-the-men type of tone, “We
left port a bit late last night. We seem to be lagging behind the
flotilla a tiny bit.”

“Yes, Sir,” said
Serrel. It seemed like a safe response.

“Can’t have that,” said
Snow. “Can’t have the Hounds
behind
everyone else. What sort
of scout unit would we be then, eh?”

“I’m... not sure,
Sir.”

“The others would be
laughing behind our backs... Except in front of us... Which is
where they are. In front. Far in front.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“A pity. Wouldn’t you
say so, Sergeant?”

“Yes, Captain,” said
Caellix, making Serrel jump. Somehow she had appeared next to Snow
without making a sound.

“A real pity,” Snow
went on. “You know, some of these ships have their own mages on
board. Someone to blow the sails as it were. Shame we don’t have
one of those.”

Serrel kicked himself
for being so slow. “You want me to... make the ship go faster,
Sir?”

“You think you can?”
said Snow, still grinning.

Serrel had his doubts.
He had a vague idea of how boats worked. Wind blew into the sails
and the ship moved forwards. Though he recalled something called
ballast, and thought that maybe that came into play somewhere,
whatever that was. Also keelhauling. That might have been
important, too.

Though what he said
aloud was, “I’ll give it a try, Sir.”

“Oh yes, Fresh Meat,”
said Caellix scornfully. “Do
try.

Serrel took his staff
and approached the main mast cautiously. A few sailors looked over
in interest. One pointedly spat overboard. Serrel ignored them. He
regarded the sail, and the way it moved, the rigging that held it
in place. He felt the wind on his face, and the way it fluttered
his long coat.

He imagined the sail
filling up with air, with wind and force, pushing forwards, making
the boat cut through the sea. Not too much force, though.
Uncontrolled, the sail would rip, the boat might be damaged. There
would be shouting, most of it directed at him... No, you needed
enough force, just enough...

Serrel felt the ether
flow through him, through his staff, and weaved it into a form he
could use. In his mind, he thought,
Soa
...

A wave of force struck
the sail, and the ship suddenly heaved forwards with an unexpected
burst of speed. Serrel focused on the force, on exerting the right
amount of pressure on the sail, endeavouring to keep the amount of
energy he used as low as possible. He ignored the sailors that now
hurried around him, making adjustments to the rigging.

“What are ye doing?” a
large burly man with an eye patch snapped at Captain Snow.

“Your job,” Snow
replied, still smiling. “We are so far behind the others, I half
expect the war to be over by the time we reach landfall, Captain.
At least bring us level with the nearest ship, if only to appease
my wounded ego.”

The ship’s captain
grumbled something about the bloody Legion and their bloody
wizards, and went off to shout at his crew.

“Well done, Caster
Hawthorne,” Snow called to Serrel. “Well done. If the Captain
requires any... further assistance, please lend it to him.”

“Yes, Sir,” said
Serrel.

“Marvellous,” Snow said
again, before going back below-decks.

Sergeant Caellix just
sniffed, and followed him.

Serrel smiled to
himself. The motion of the ship, and the feeling of energy pulsing
through him, just
weaving
in general, made him feel better
about himself. Whatever else life threw at him, he had this.

And when it occurred to
him that he was, by himself, single-handedly moving
an entire
ship
, his smug self confidence all but clouded out the Hollow
inside.

 

Not that that feeling
lasted.

The rest of the Hounds
treated him with equal amounts of indifference and outright
disdain. In the close confines of the ship’s hold he was regularly,
and roughly, bumped back and forth by his fellow soldiers, and
caught by a few unexpected elbows to the side when he least
expected it. The best apology he got was, “Sorry, didn’t see you
there”.

It was all rather
childish, but Serrel bore it as best he could. Of all the Hounds,
Brant O’Kellin seemed the most friendly. He was also the biggest
mouth of the unit, and never seemed to shut up. He had a tall tale
for every occasion, and the weird thing was that a rather large
amount of them ended up being true. For instance, there had been a
mage named Barnaby in the unit, and he had indeed been devoured by
werewolves, though Serrel could never get a clear picture of how
this had happened.

“Poor ol’ Barnaby,” was
all Brant would say. “It’s how he would have wanted to go.”

“I bet he tasted
stringy. Heheh,” was Dogbreath’s contribution.

“Oh, dear,” was what
Captain Snow said, before he had to go for a lie down to “calm his
nerves”, as he put it.

“I don’t know,” said
Holly Wells, the girl who had spoken to him the night before.
“Maybe he was too busy asking stupid questions and wasn’t paying
enough attention to his surroundings. Like all mages,” she added
pointedly.

After Serrel, Holly was
the youngest member of the Hounds, and had only just managed to
escape the stigma of being Fresh Meat herself, and wasn’t eager to
be relabelled by dint of association. Though she did grudgingly
point him in the right direction when he needed it, for which he
was grateful.

Serrel decided not to
ask Sergeant Caellix about Barnaby. In fact he had decided to avoid
her wherever possible, until the unlikely event that she warmed to
him. Serrel figured this would happen somewhere between his term of
service ending, and hell freezing over. Caellix made his old
training sergeant, Reage Holland, look all warm and cuddly by
comparison, and that man had once broken a trainee’s arm, just so
they could practice healing spells. Serrel had a mental image of
Caellix painted blue, with an axe in each hand, screaming as she
charged down a hillside to pillage a defenceless mountain village.
He found out later he wasn’t that far off. Not even about the
paint.

After Caellix,
Dogbreath was the longest serving member of the Hounds. Serrel had
no clue just how old the man was, it could have been anywhere
between forty and a hundred. He couldn’t decide if Dogbreath was
crazy, or had simply been hit on the head one too many times. His
black toothed smile was bad. The way he barked and howled like a
dog was weird. His laugh, usually following some comment about how
tasty or unappetising he thought you might be when served in a stew
was downright disconcerting. But what got to Serrel was the way he
would turn around to find Dogbreath standing a few inches away,
grinning maniacally. Then you got the bad breath in the face, the
smell of wet dog, and a far too detailed view of an unwashed beard
that Serrel swore had things moving in it.

Captain Tobias Snow was
the complete opposite of Dogbreath. In fact, he looked almost as
out of place in the Hounds as Serrel, with his fussy little beard
always neatly trimmed, and his uniform clean and pressed. He smiled
a lot, and everything he said was in a jovial and convivial tone.
Orders often seemed phrased like polite suggestions that it would
have been rude to ignore. He had the bearing and the air of
superiority that Serrel often associated with stuck up lords, and
yet the scruffy and all too common Hounds had nothing but respect
for him. Apart from Caellix, whom Serrel heard muttering several
times, “That bloody beard.”

Then there was Morton.
Like Snow, he seemed out of place in the Hounds, and the rest of
the group tended to leave him to his own devices most of the time.
According to Brant, he had been a mage himself at some point, but
supposedly he had become addicted to the Elixir of Vorkeph, the
magical concoction made with the distilled essence of the ether
itself, and was no longer capable of weaving. The Elixir, also
called Magi’s Bane or more colourfully, Liquid Damnation, could
replenish the energy within a mage, but if you weren’t careful, and
used that energy too quickly, it would also drop you straight down
the Hollow quicker than you could blink. Serrel knew that from
experience, and thought he might have understood the reason for
Morton’s creepy, glassy eyed expression.

The Hounds kept Morton
because he still knew a great deal about plants and herbs. Out in
the wild, it paid to know what species of mushroom was safe to eat
and which would give you a long agonising death. He was also
supposed to be especially knowledgeable on the flora and fauna of
the Faelands, which was why Caellix endured him. Morton at least
had a use, something Serrel at the moment failed to possess in her
opinion.

It was going to be a
long boring trip. There was little space in the hold, and the deck
was was often filled with soldiers milling about and getting in the
way of the ship’s crew. Caellix tried to keep everyone busy by
making them help out, tying rope and scrubbing the decks, but for
men and women who lived for open land and dark forests, for long
journeys and the hunt and the chase, it was only a matter of time
before they began to grow restless. And Serrel suspected the game
of choice was soon going to be “pick on the Fresh Meat”.

Sometimes being right
was no fun at all.

It was midday on their
first day at sea. There was no land in sight, just the endless
waves of the Dividing Sea and the huge blue expanse of sky that was
broken only by a few wispy clouds. Serrel was trying to be helpful
by coiling a long rope for some of the sailors. The crew of the
ship, particularly the Captain, were rather old fashioned and still
considered having a mage onboard to be bad luck, and Serrel was
hoping to look as unthreatening as possible.

BOOK: The Hollow: At The Edge
6.29Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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