The Beast of Maug Maurai, Part One: The Culling (13 page)

“Mind they don’t leave their
sheaths,” said Lokk. He tugged his horse back a step and returned Grae’s stare.

In the end, it didn’t matter that
they had no weapons. The Andraens scattered as Grae and Lokk rode up the ridge.
Grae called to them, but nothing he said would bring them closer. Each time the
soldiers tried to close with them, the Andraens scattered and galloped farther
away. Then they would stop and hoot, and taunt them by waving the bane box in
the air.

After a mile of this Grae decided
that it was better to face Hammer’s insecurities than to waste more time, so
they returned to the squad.

‘What ‘appened?” asked Hammer.

“Lokk chased him down and smashed the
box,” said Grae. “All the bones fell out.” Hammer turned to Lokk Lurius, raised
an eyebrow.

The Eridian looked at Grae Barragns
then cast his gaze up the nearest barrow. He spit to the side again and nodded.
“Bones everywhere.”

“They think I stole something,” said
Hammer as they rode northward. “But I didn’t.”

“What do they think you stole?” said
Grae. “And why do they think you stole it, Hammer?”

“It’s complicated Grae. Can we talk
about it when we’re in the forest?”

Grae studied his old friend. There
was sorrow in the man’s eyes.

Less than a quarter-bell later they
were flagged down yet again. This time by a man and woman, both peasants,
walking beside a wagon drawn by an ancient mule. The man waved them down,
hopping in place and shouting.

“We ain’t never gonna make Maug
Maurai,” said Hammer.

Grae nodded to the peasant.
“Trouble?” He dismounted and studied the wagon. It was packed with open sacks
of gold lentils. The wheels looked fine. The mule was old but seemed healthy.

“We comes from Debney,” said the man.
He had a lambskin hood over his head and shoulders, and the thick sing-song
accent of the western foothills. “We had us a good scare.”

“What sort of scare?” asked Grae,
remembering a violent battle he had won in the little town at the foot of the
Durrenian Mountains. He nodded to the woman. She wore a thick white robe tied
at the waist with an orange scarf.

“Thrulls,” said the man. “Dozens ‘a
em. Marchin’ southwes’ down the moors.”

“Dozens?” said Grae. “were they
armed?”

“No sirah,” said the man. “They
looked raw as bears. Don’ think they never seen people afore. They was a mile
off the trail. Might be they come outta Maurai.”

Sir Jastyn rode forward. “They’ve
been doing that for years now,” he said. “Everything that lives in Maurai
flees. Thrulls. Fox. Stag. Wulvens. They leave the forest as if it were on
fire.” He drew his sword, a slender arming blade with guards shaped like
charging boar. “If a tribe of thrulls is wandering in Tyftinshire, it is of
great concern to me and my family. Those thrulls will massacre anything in
their way. And when they gain metal weapons they will become that much more of
a menace.”

Grae turned to Hammer,
who shook his head softly and pointed his chin north, toward Maug Maurai. Grae
scowled and Hammer found interest in a cloud of larks that danced overhead.
There were no simple choices on this quest. Grae gazed skyward, toward Lojen’s
glaring eye. The cloud of larks jerked and shifted to one side, then the other,
then streamed off toward the south like a school of fish. It would do the squad
good to fight together before they met the Beast. Battling thrulls could bring
them together. And nothing improved the spirit of a troop as much as victory.

“Have the men follow,” he
said to Hammer and spurred his mare into a gallop toward the south with Jastyn
on his flank.

“You ‘eard ‘im!” called
Hammer. “We’re ‘avin a bit of practice.”

The men cheered and let
loose their horses toward the south.

--
from “The Arms,” Book II
of Lojenwyne’s Words

The travelers drifted deeper into
Maug Maurai. In the distance, Draek Ralee, the spearman taken by the Beast,
screamed. Shrieks and sobs at first. Then just the tortured howl of
please
,
again and again.

Ulrean clutched Murrogar’s arm and
looked back, his skin pricking with gooseflesh. The other nobles didn’t react.
Their faces were hollow, their eyes staring far downstream. It wasn’t a good
sign. Black Murrogar had seen it before. A touchstone toward madness.

Murrogar looked at the dead Eridian,
still strapped to the log. Sir Wyann hadn’t protested when Thantos slit the
man’s throat. But the knight wouldn’t let them cut the Eridian’s body loose.
“I’ll see him buried properly,” he had growled. So Murrogar had let it go. They
had greater concerns.

The Beast would follow them. There
was little hope of slipping away. The creature would take them one by one.
Murrogar was beginning to understand the Beast. Its motivations. It had
destroyed the land party swiftly so that it could mutilate the river party at
its leisure. He was certain of it. Murrogar had lived long enough to stop
believing in good and evil, but this Beast certainly possessed cruelty. Hatred.
It tortured its victims. Left them alive and poisoned and agonized.

I have to kill it
.

It was a grim thought, but an
inevitable one. They would never escape Maug Maurai while that Beast lived. He
should have realized it earlier. Perhaps he had. Perhaps he’d known it all
along. And as he thought on it, he realized there was something else he’d
known. Something he’d understood from the first time he’d seen that monster.

I don’t think I can kill it.

But he was Black Murrogar. So he
unsheathed his sword and stared upriver, at the water itself, knowing now that
the Typtaenai was no obstacle for the Beast. He listened, hearing nothing but
the rumble of the river and the fading cries of Draek Ralee. His eyes burned
the night until he spotted the cluster of green phosphors in the distance. The
monster was just visible in the river, its shape defined by a darkness even
blacker than the night.

It paddled down the
River of Blood
,
its colossal teeth held upward and out of the water. The long tail curling and
angling behind. The creature was enormous and hideous and something about its
quiet paddling sent a shiver through Murrogar.

He raised his sword, its blackened
blade almost invisible in the night, and looked to Thantos and Hul. They
reached for their weapons too and he shook his head, gestured toward the nobles
with his chin. They glanced at one another, but they nodded back.

Murrogar slipped quietly underwater.
The crimson glow of the river bottom reddened his sword blade. The river
currents raced past him.
Everything runs from the Beast of Maug Maurai.

But Black Murrogar had stopped
running. He struggled against the current, his right arm clumsy with the sword,
his legs kicking fiercely. He dipped lower until his feet found purchase
against a half-buried stone. He hunched down, braced himself against the
sweeping water and stared upward, searching for the green fire of the Beast.

He almost missed it. The phosphors
were dimmed almost to darkness, as if the creature had tried to extinguish
them. Thousands of tiny bubbles from its six paddling legs made the pale
phosphors twinkle when it was almost over him.

He brought the sword into both hands,
his muscles tensed for what he knew would be his only chance. There was a
change in the creature’s movements. A tension. A slowing of the paddling. As if
it realized that it was in danger. Its legs stopped moving. Then all of them
swept backward at once, thrusting the monster upstream.

It was a good attempt. But Black
Murrogar couldn’t miss at this range. Not even underwater. Not even in the red
darkness of the Typtaenai. He drove the black blade upward, felt it strike,
felt it plunge deep into the Beast of Maug Maurai. He never heard the monster’s
raging cry but he felt its shudders, felt the front claws swipe at the sword
and saw the brume of dark blood billow into the river.

River of Blood
.

The creature rolled off the blade. It
dove, its body undulating toward the shore. Murrogar rose to the surface and
took air into his smoldering lungs. The monster tumbled out from the water.
This time Murrogar did hear its cry. A strangled call as it dragged itself up
the river bank.

Black Murrogar took another deep
breath then howled back at the Beast. As loud as he could. He screamed once
more and then laughed as the monster tottered into Maug Maurai. The Beast
paused to look back at him before pulling itself into the safety of the forest.

--
From The Endeavours, Book I
of Lojenwyne’s Words

The thrulls were easy to
spot on the rolling moors. The dusky grey of their skin, the dirty hides they
wore, and the crude weapons of wood and stone stuck out like gravestones among
the foliage of the flowering moors. The creatures were five miles southwest of
Kithrey and had run up against the Serinhult River. There was no crossing
there. They would have no escape from their pursuers. And Grae knew they would
seek none. There was no parlaying with thrulls. There was only violence in
them. Hatred for anything that wasn’t thrull. They fought until they died. They
never surrendered and they never fled.

The creatures snarled up
at the grouping of horses upon the hill and bared their fangs; tightly packed
rows of thin teeth. From their position on the swell the men could hear the
howls and hisses. A few of the monsters wore crude helmets of wood or leather,
their tall pointed ears jutting from holes gouged into them. The beasts shook
their spears and clubs in ceremonial fury.

Grae addressed their
longbowman, Daen Hyell. “Long range, but reachable, no?”

Daen rubbed at his eyes,
squinted at the Thrulls. “Yes, brig sir,” he said, dismounting. He was young.
Maybe eighteen. But his shoulders were strong, his chest thick. He slipped his
longbow from a woolen case on his back and took a waxed bowstring from a quiver
at his saddle. He leaned on the bow, using his strength to curve the yew and
kempwood, and slipped the bowstring loops into place. Daen looked to the
thrulls again as he drew an arrow from the quiver at his side and nocked it.
The muscles of his arm rippled as he drew the bowstring back, the kempwood and
yew groaning. Not even Beldrun Shanks could have drawn that bowstring back as
far as Daen Hyell did. Only a lifetime of drawing longbows gave a man the
specialized strength necessary for the task.

Daen held the bowstring
as he sighted down the hill. The trembling in his arm almost imperceptible. The
twitching eye that Grae noticed when they first met him was unwavering now.

What a machine
, thought Grae.
If
only we had a few more like him.

Daen Hyell fired. The
string
thwacked
and the arrow flew, arching downward toward the thrulls.
It missed the nearest thrull by forty paces. Grae cleared his throat.

Daen squinted and
scratched his cheek. “Did I get one?”

“What do you mean?” asked
Grae. “You put the arrow in Thourne Duchy. Course you didn’t get one.”

Daen leaned forward and
squinted more. “You saw it land, sir?”

“Everybody saw it land,
Trudge.” Grae pointed to where the arrow had fallen. “There. You can just see
the orange fletching. There.”

Daen squinted.

Grae closed his eyes,
brought a hand to his forehead and sighed. “Everyone, on me.” He drew his
father’s arming sword, raised it high into the air and charged down the hill.
Nine horses followed, thundering downward, spears and swords gleaming in
Lojen’s light.

Sir Jastyn reached the thrulls first.
His charger’s powerful strides pulled him far ahead of the rest of the squad.
Grae watched the knight drive a spear into the throat of the first thrull, shattering
the wooden shaft. The knight dropped the broken lance and drew his arming
sword, slashed from above as he raced through the throng.

And then Grae was among the snarling,
howling mass of them. He had no spear. Only his father’s sword. He leaned far
and low in the saddle to empty the stomach of a thrull wearing the skin of a
dear. His mare trampled another that had leaped at her and Grae had to
straighten quickly and lean into her to stay mounted.

He shred the throat of  another
thrull then had to slow when he reached the central mass of the creatures. They
ran at him, sometimes on four legs, sometimes hunched on two. One bit his mare
with its needle-like teeth and Grae howled. He hacked at the creature again and
again, leaning low over the mare’s flanks to carve at it even when it stopped
moving. The creature’s blood spattered Grae’s mare.

Beldrun Shanks was not far from Grae.
The big man crushed thrulls with his war axe, swinging to one side of his
horse’s head then the other, laughing as he chopped. He slashed through the
neck of one and the creature’s head bounced into his lap and then down to the
ground and Shanks laughed even harder at this.

The squad formed up in their Northern
V even though they were mounted, and they forced the Thrulls toward the river,
pushing them back with sword and spear. Lokk Lurius arrived late. He rode with
both fists on the sides of his horse’s neck and didn’t look completely
comfortable galloping on horseback.

A few of the thrulls were forced into
the river. Jjarnee Kruu fired bolt after bolt from his three crossbows at them.
He rarely missed. Thrulls fell thrashing into the water and the
Serinhult
carried them to another world.

When the last stragglers were hacked
or beaten to death the squad cheered. They shouted like children, as if they
had won a neighborhood game of phocksies or lord-of-the-bailey. They held their
weapons high and screamed at one another and laughed and smashed shields. Grae
couldn’t resist a smile. What were omens in the face of this? It was a taste of
victory. A good start.

There were few injuries. Trudge
Dathnien Faldry had been bitten on the hip. The thin teeth of a thrull had
slipped through the holes in his mail. Dathnien dipped his finger in the wound
and traced abstract patterns onto his hand as Hammer inspected the bite.

“That bloke’s a right damaged loon,
‘e is,” said Beldrun Shanks. “Daft Dathnien.” Rundle Graen and Drissdie Hannish
laughed and Dathnien Faldry became ‘Daft Dathnien’ from that moment on.

Grae tended to his horse. The wound
it had taken was superficial. Two other horses had been hurt, including the new
gelding that Jastyn had bought, but none seriously. No one noticed the missing
horse until they had checked all of the thrull bodies. It was Grae who made the
discovery as he took count of his men. Daen Hyell, their longbowman, was
missing.

Lord Aeren and Maid Maribrae were off
their horses halfway up the hill where they had waited. Lord Aeren was leaning
over Daen Hyell. He called to Grae with his hands cupped around his mouth.

“Over here!” he cried “Someone’s
hurt!”

But Daen Hyell wasn’t hurt, he was
dead.

A spear had struck Hyell in the cheek
as he charged down the hill. The blow had knocked the archer awkwardly off his
horse and he’d broken his neck. He lay on the hill with his head rolled upward
at an impossible angle. Blood ran up the left side of his face from the
horrible gash beside his nose. The soldiers looked glumly down on his body.
Except for Beldrun Shanks, who laughed. “He prob’ly never saw it coming.”

Grae ordered the men to make a litter
for Daen’s body out of thrull spears; It was a dark irony they would have to
live with. He doubted that the Chamberlain would assign the squad another
archer. Not a good one anyway. It would be an old man who could barely draw a
bow, or a boy who was too scared to shoot. Maybe a man with one leg. Blythwynn
above only knew.

So Grae asked the soldiers if any of
them knew a good longbowman in the area. A soldier or hunter maybe. No one did,
but their magician, the apprentice, mumbled that there was an archery contest
held in Maeris every year before the Garellane Festival.

Grae gave the apprentice a half
smile. It was brilliant. Maeris was on the way to Maug Maurai. Even better, it
was a town that had suffered from the Beast’s violence. There were probably a
few archers from Maeris willing to answer blood with blood.

They made their way back to the Trail
and flagged down a caravan of yarn merchants. Grae ordered them to take Daen’s
body to Kithrey to be sent home to his kin, and gave the merchants three drakes
for their trouble. Then the squad sped north again on the grass of the moors.

Grae spared a moment to think about
the poor, half-blind Daen Hyell. Just a boy, really. The soldiers hadn’t
stepped into forest yet and already their small squad was dwindling.