Read The Hollow: At The Edge Online

Authors: Andrew Day

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

The Hollow: At The Edge (9 page)

BOOK: The Hollow: At The Edge
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Dogbreath pointed. “One
went down here. They dragged the body away... But the other five
ran that way.” He gestured eastwards.

“Come on,” Caellix took
off along the trail.

They ran quickly though
the forest. Serrel saw deep scratches in the tree trunks, and
another throwing knife knife embedded in another.

“Someone fell here,”
Caellix noted, pausing at one spot. “They got back up and
ran...”

“That way,” said
Dogbreath, pointing.

“But the other four
went... that way,” Caellix pointed in the opposite direction.

“And the elves?” asked
Serrel.

“They split up. One
followed the straggler, three more went after the larger group.
This way. Quickly.” She followed the trail of the larger group.

The group ran, stealth
forgotten. But they needn’t have bothered. They found the bodies
not long after. For a moment, they all just stood and stared.

“Shit!” Caellix
snarled.

“Looks like someone cut
around them,” said Dogbreath impassively. “Took them by surprise
here. The others ran them down.”

Serrel didn’t want to
see it, but he couldn’t seem to drag his eyes away. There were the
remains of four bodies, dumped in a rough heap on the forest floor.
They had been ripped apart, and barely even resembled anything
human anymore. What remained of their bloodstained clothing was
coloured Imperial green.

There were two large
crows standing on the bodies, picking at the flesh. They had
strange iridescent feathers that shimmered different colours. As
the group approached, the birds looked at them haughtily with eerie
green eyes that glowed in the dim forest.

Dogbreath kicked the
first bird savagely. It squawked angrily and took off, followed by
its partner. He and Caellix examined the bodies as the others
formed a rough perimeter and stood guard. Caellix found a bronze
coin still on a metal chain around the neck of one, and the remains
of some sergeants strips on another.

“Beaumont,” she
said.

“You can still smell
the oil in his hair,” noted Dogbreath. He didn’t laugh, or even
smile.

“They were killed, then
they were eaten,” Caellix added, matter of factly. “Looks like the
Ferine took their weapons and supplies.” She stood and wiped her
bloody hands on her pants. “Come on. Let’s find that other
soldier.”

They backtracked to
where the group of fleeing soldiers had been divided. They took the
second path, and followed the lone straggler. As they progressed,
the trees in this section of the forest grew closer together. The
canopy was dense and blocked out a lot of the light. Then Serrel
noticed odd patches of white among the tree branches. Like thick
white cloth and...

“Boy’s fast,” Dogbreath
said as he examined the footprints.

“He gave this Ferine a
merry chase,” agreed Caellix.

“Maybe he got away,”
said Holly.

He didn’t. They found
his body hanging between two trees, wrapped up in the strange white
cloth like that Serrel had seen in the tree tops. Except it wasn’t
cloth. It was a giant spider’s web, spun between the two trees. The
soldier had run straight into it in his frantic haste, and the
web’s owner had wasted no time wrapping him up tight for a future
meal. Serrel could just see the spider now, lurking high in the
tree branches, its mottled orange and black body just visible in
its vast web. It was almost as big as he was.

“Is... Is he alive?”
Holly asked, her face pale. “We stood cut him down.”

“No point,” said
Caellix. “The spider’s bite is poisonous. He’s slowly melting from
the inside out.”

“That’s... There has to
be something we can do.”

Caellix nodded.
“Brant.”

Brant sighed, and
lifted his bow. He fired a single arrow at the man’s chest, and
killed him. The impact sent tremors up the web. The spider stirred
up above, and unfurled long spindly legs. Holly lifted her own bow
to shoot it.

“Don’t,” said Caellix.
“That won’t solve anything. It’ll just make a mess.”

“It killed one of the
Legion!”

“It’s just doing what
it needs to to survive. Killing it will just draw attention to
ourselves.”

Holly held her bow
raised for a moment, her arms shaking slightly. She looked ready to
shoot, like she was desperate to shoot. Or scream, or hit something
repeatedly until she wouldn’t have to feel anything anymore.

Slowly she lowered the
bow, and released the tension on the string. She took a deep
breath.

“What now?” she asked.
“Are we going to take the others back to camp?”

“Too many bodies,” said
Caellix. “Besides, the Legion won’t be there by the time we get
back. We need to move forwards.” She joined Dogbreath where he was
searching the tree line. “Well?”

“Pointy eared git’s not
bad,” replied Dogbreath. “He’s like oil. Straight into the trees
with barely a mark. Nearly as good as you.”

“But he isn’t me,” said
Caellix with feeling.

Dogbreath looked over
at her, and grinned. “No, he isn’t. Heheh.” He stayed low to the
ground, looking for a sign of the elf’s passage. He came to the
base of a tree, and sniffed it. Then licked the bark of the thick
roots. “Hmm. He took a piss. Then he went... That way.”

Caellix stared into the
forest thoughtfully. “That’s the direction they were dragging the
first body.”

“Maybe they got
themselves a camp. With a big pot to cook their leftovers in. Shall
we invite ourselves to dinner?”

“Um...” said Brant.
“Shouldn’t we continue on our way? They haven’t noticed us-”

“Yet,” said Holly.

“We could sneak by
them. I mean, don’t we need to tell the others about this?”

“Tell them what?” said
Caellix. “We don’t know how many Ferine there are? It’s our job to
find out, then report back.”

“But... that’s rather
the point,” Serrel reluctantly spoke up. “We don’t know how many of
them there are. There are only five of us.”

Caellix’s dogs started
growling.

“Five and three
quarters,” Brant corrected.

“I didn’t take you for
a coward, Fresh Meat,” said Caellix.

Serrel frowned. “I’m
not a coward,” he snapped. “But true, that was before I found out
elves really do
eat
people
.”

“All elves eat people,”
said Dogbreath helpfully.

“Ferine just have lower
standards,” Caellix finished. “All right, Fresh Meat. You can
decide. They killed at least five of our people. The sixth was
dragged away, and maybe they’re dead, or maybe they’re just badly
wounded and need our help. What do
you
want to do?”

Serrel could feel six
sets of eyes, two of them canine, boring into him. Judging him. His
first thought was about how badly he did not want to be in this
gods damned forest, with creepy insects, giant spiders and
man-eating elves. He wanted to be anywhere else. He would’ve
thought,
I want to go home
, except even with the terror that
was slowly gnawing at his mind, he knew he didn’t have a home to go
back to. This, in a perverse way, stuck in a twisted forest of evil
with people who mildly detested him, was his home now. He took the
bronze. He was in the Legion.

His second thought was,
what if it had been someone he knew that had been killed out here?
What if it had been one of Pond Scum? What if one of them had been
dragged away to be eaten alive by insane elves? Would he have left
them to their fate, then?

Hell, what if it had
been him captured by the Ferine? Wouldn’t he have expected someone
to come to his rescue? Wouldn’t he have liked, in the very least,
to think that someone would have considered avenging him, sad,
self-centered git that he was?

There was a voice in
his head, small and malevolent, perhaps echoing up through the
Hollow, that said,
You are not a soldier. You’re just a
carpenter’s son who likes to pretend he’s a mage
.
You are so
far in over your head, and you don’t even realise you’re drowning.
You’re going to die here, and worse, you’re going to get someone
killed
.

Serrel sighed.

“Well, Fresh Meat?”
Caellix asked expectantly.

“You’re right,
Sergeant. I don’t want to be here. But like I told you before, I
don’t run away, not if there is someone else out there who needs
help. I’m with you.”

Caellix smiled. It was
rather predatory, with a lot of teeth. “I thought you would
be.”

Brant slapped him hard
on the back. “That’s the spirit. I mean what’s the worse that can
happen to you?”

“We all end up as an
elf’s bowel movement,” said Holly.

“I mean besides
that?”

“You want the entire
list?” said Serrel. “That could take a while. Well, come on then,”
he said with forced enthusiasm. “Let’s get going. Honour and glory
and all that.”

With Dogbreath in the
lead, they set off in the direction they believed the Ferine had
travelled, disappearing silently into the forest. Behind them, the
giant spider slowly descended from its nest, and began to feed on
its freshly caught meal.

 

They moved as quietly
as they could through the increasingly dark forest, heading in the
rough direction Caellix figured the Ferine had gone. They found few
signs of its passage, but according to Dogbreath, and Caellix’s
dogs, the elf ahead of them had stopped to urinate on several trees
as it went, as if it were marking its territory like an animal.
Vost and Ripper made sure to reclaim the land as they went
past.

By the time they found
the first marker, the sun was beginning to set, and the forest had
grown very shadowy. Caellix considered this a good thing, as it
would help hide their approach. Serrel didn’t bother to point out
that it made other creatures sneaking up on them just as hard to
spot. He just plunged after the sergeant and tried to make as
little noise as possible. In this, he was beginning to feel like a
complete liability.

Then Dogbreath led them
to a strange white monolith, standing next to what appeared to be
an overgrown trail. There was a strange elven design carved into
its marble-like surface, but something had come along and
vandalised it, carving four great gashes into its surface, like
claw marks. Then they had pissed on it, just to get their point
across.

Vost sniffed the bottom
of the monolith, then relived himself on the giant stone to reclaim
it as his.

“Home sweet home,”
commented Dogbreath.

Serrel opened his mouth
to ask the relevance of the monolith, but Caellix quickly gestured
for him to remain silent. She pointed up the overgrown trail, and
made a throat cutting gesture. He decided to shut up for the
foreseeable future.

Caellix led them off
the trail and back into the undergrowth. It didn’t take long for
them to see the first signs of a camp. Up ahead there was the
orange glow of a campfire, and faint voices. They crept
forwards.

Suddenly Caellix
stopped dead, and dropped to the forest floor, the others quickly
copied her. Serrel lay almost flat, and didn’t even dare draw a
breath. Up ahead, he could just make out a tall, dark figure as it
detached itself from the shadows and started moving across the
forest. Caellix gestured for them to stay put, then slowly began to
creep forwards, stalking the new arrival. Her knife pulled its
sheath with barely a whisper as she approached her prey.

Then a loud voice
carried through the trees, and she dropped out of sight. The figure
turned back to the campfire and called back. Serrel didn’t
understand what they were saying. He thought that they might have
been speaking elvish. The figure and the unseen shouter traded
words for a moment, and from the way the figure’s voice grew louder
and more terse, they were clearly having an argument. The
conversation ended with the figure making a sound like a snarl,
before he stomped back to the camp, no longer even bothering to try
being stealthy.

Caellix’s head
reappeared. She waved at them to stay put one more time, then crept
after the fuming elf. She soon disappeared from sight.

The group waited
anxiously amongst the trees for what felt to Serrel to be an age.
In the dark, he could just make out the faces of his companions.
Holly and Brant looked as nervous as he was, but Dogbreath was
grinning broadly, battleaxe in hand. Ripper and Vost stared after
their departed master, and yawned in boredom.

Suddenly Caellix
reappeared in front of them, causing Serrel’s heart to start
hammering even harder in his chest.

“I saw eight,” Caellix
whispered to them, so quiet they could only just hear her. “One in
the trees on the eastern edge, the others in some old ruins. I saw
two prisoners, one in a Legion uniform. We take them by surprise.
Dogbreath and Holly, come in from the south. I’ll circle around and
come in from the west. Brant circle to the east with Fresh Meat.
Count to one hundred, then take out the sentry in the trees. He
isn’t very high up. When the others are distracted by the noise we
attack. Clear?”

They nodded, and
quickly unslung their packs and placed them at the foot of a tree
to pick up later.

“You ready for this,
Fresh Meat?”

Serrel nodded, even
though he thought he was going to throw up.

“Move out. Quietly,”
Caellix added. “
Frae naleth
.”

At that last command,
her two dogs dropped low and followed her away. Dogbreath gave the
others one last grin, then slunk off with Holly in tow. Brant
tapped Serrel gently on the shoulder, and the two made their own
way through the trees.

Brant moved slowly, but
kept his eyes up, looking out for the sentry in the trees. Serrel
tried to keep the man in sight as he scanned the dark for any other
sentries on the ground. Meanwhile the light from the campfire grew
nearer and nearer. There were raised voices yelling at one another
nearby, followed by a lot of snarling and growling. At least the
elves were occupied, and with the fire going their night vision
would be ruined.

BOOK: The Hollow: At The Edge
8.03Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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