"Before", Chapter 6: On the Edge of the Westerwood

[Scott of Hyperborea]

"Before" or "Romance of the Three Duchies"
Chapter Six: On the Edge of the Westerwood
Chapter Six Soundtrack: Over the Hills and Far Away

CHAPTER SIX

We begged, we pleaded, we cajoled, we bribed, we threatened. But Rain would tell us nothing of how he came to hold the Landssword. The more we tried, the more agitated he became. He wanted us to leave Lodermotsrik, and never come back. He also wanted to get the Landssword as far from his person as possible, to which purpose he offered it to Red.

Red, the master swordsman, took one look at it, with its wispy ethereal blade and clumsy gemstone-encrusted hilt and shook his head. It looked like the sort of weapon a very rich duke would wear if he was desperately trying to convince people that he was still in touch with his military side. "Not a fighting sword, boy," he told Rain. "You earned it. You keep it."

"It's not a fighting sword in any case," said Cloud. "The Prophecy of Brrapa is quite insistent that the Landssword shall never draw blood."

Rain looked so desperate to get rid of the thing that finally Pupil took pity on him and placed the sword in his belt, beside his own weapon. The sword, if it had any opinion on the transfer, stayed quiet.

I'm being flippant, but it was a magic sword. We all knew from the second we laid eyes on it what it was, though I can't say how. There was an overwhelming impression that the sword was Sxiro. The shimmer of its steel was the shimmer of the sun on the Eluin waters, the green of the emeralds in its hilt was the green of the Goldenmoon hills, the curve of its blade was the meander of the many streams of Riverrun. There had been some question, that day in Crestfallen, of how our buyer, Rennard E'lipov or whoever, would know we weren't pushing a fake. There was no longer any question. He would know.

We packed up pretty quickly. None of us were anxious to stay near Lodermotsrik any longer than we had to. By midday, we were well on our way south. Rain's warnings had spooked Red, and he set us on a course as far from the borders of Cerce as we could safely go, which meant were were literally brushing up against the branches of the Westerwood. That night, we camped underneath a stand of Westerwood pine. Quercia came to me again, and I did not refuse her.

The next morning dawned bright and sunny, with the friendly scent of fresh pine trees lending an unaccustomed cheer to our little band. I felt cheerful, but oddly drained, as if everything that had come before was a fading memory of a life I had never really led. For the first time, thoughts of Audentija, which I might never again see, no longer cut me so deeply. I felt like there was only the Westerwood, and my six friends, and nothing else before or after.

Red and Pupil left the group in the late morning to scout ahead, and they returned at midday with the news that an ambush awaited us at a chokepoint a league or so ahead. Pupil estimated about twenty men in uniform. Some sort of army regiment, maybe.

"Awesome," said Quercia. "Outnumbered three to one. That's the best odds I've had in months. Okay, let's go kill them."

"These people look dangerous," said Pupil. "We need a plan."

"I had a plan once," said Once.

"Surely I'm not the only one," interjected Cloud, "who realizes these might be the warriors of the lost kingdom of Westerwood? We may be on the verge of the first contact between the coastal and interior remnants of the So-Saran Empire in a hundred years, and all you can think about is how to kill them?"

"We should send our ranged attacks from the high ground," said Red, ignoring the tecnomaezj. "Those would be Quercia's magic and Cloud's tecnomaezj device. They'll provide the distraction. Then the rest of us will attack them head-on."

"I'll go with the ranged attackers," said Pupil, "to protect them in case we run into trouble."

"Right," said Red. "Cloud and Quercia, with Pupil. Rain, Loritis, Once, with me."

"You are ordering me to shoot the emissaries of Westerwood?" demanded Cloud.

"Hey," said Quercia, "look at it this way. If you don't, I'll kill you."

"I'll help," said Red.

"I am surrounded by troglodytes and morons," said Cloud, but he went off with Pupil and Quercia, with Pupil arguing with him the whole way and Quercia just smirking.

The rest of us crept very slowly forward, following Red's lead. We were walking alongside the bank of a small stream, with some cliffs - only three or four meters high - on either side. It was these that Pupil and his group had climbed, and it was these that narrowed to a chokepoint just ahead, where there was only a few dozen meters from the stream to the cliff bank. The whole area was full of trees and undergrowth, but I could not see any potential attackers.

Quercia came into view on the cliffs above. She was, to my dismay, topless. "YOOHOO!" she shouted at the top of her lungs, toward the undergrowth. "COME AND GET IT!"

"When that girl provides a distraction," Red muttered to himself, "she provides one hell of a distraction."

And yet, I saw a flicker of movement in the undergrowth in front of us. A turning head, an opening eye, something. It was enough.

From above us, Quercia opened her mouth wide, and out flew a swarm of fiery bees. They rushed towards where our attackers were hiding, burning and stinging everything in sight. Immediately the soldiers, so assiduously hidden until now, screamed and jumped out of their covering, flailing their arms wildly. Pupil had underestimated, I saw. There were at least twenty five of them, maybe as many as thirty.

BOOM! From the heights above, behind Quercia, Cloud had used his tecnomaezji device. The closest soldier to us fell, an iron ball sticking out of his head.

"Sxiro!" shouted Red, heedless of the numerical disadvantage. He rushed forward and cut a swath through their ranks. "Sxiro!" I shouted, and did likewise. It really was true. Red was the only person in Sxiro who could come close to matching my swordsmanship. These poor guys didn't have a chance, especially not as they ran confused from Cloud's fire and Quercia's bees.

Then I felt a sudden shock of pain in my arm, and looked down to see a burning bee burrowing into my skin. I screamed, shook my hand, and slapped it. It flattened and turned to ash.

"QUERCIA, YOU IDIOT!" I yelled up to the heights above. "CONTROL THESE THINGS!"

"CONTROL?" Quercia shouted down. "DO YOU REALIZE HOW MUCH WORK THAT WOULD BE?"

I wasn't going to risk staying in that battle a second longer. I ran for the river. Several of the soldiers had apparently had the same idea. We plunged into its protective stream together, all thoughts of fighting forgotten. I heard a recognizable yell of pain. Red, distracted by a hornet buzzing around his head, had gotten stabbed in the leg by a soldier. As I watched, he finished the soldier off with a single well-placed cut, then limped away.

And then there was Once.

Having stayed at the fringes of the battle before, he suddenly came running in, waving his axe wildly. He did not seem to mind the bees, didn't even seem to notice them. He just started hacking at people, bees be damned. The battle, which had been as good as lost a minute before, suddenly reignited. Above us, Cloud, who either saw the way things were going or just found his moment, punched Quercia in the jaw. Her concentration disrupted, the bees disappeared. I ran out of the river and began my massacre anew.

Meanwhile, Red had propped himself up against a tree, and even immobile he had collected a reasonably sized pile of bodies in front of him. The soldiers got the idea pretty quickly and gave him wide berth. From above, Pupil made a daring leap off the cliff and rushed to Red's side to defend his friend. And Cloud was still reloading and firing his tecnomaezjik missiles. But really, it was Once. Wherever he swung his axe, people fled or put down their arms, sometimes literally.

Finally, the battle was over. Pupil, probably the least scratched out of all of us, searched the enemy wounded until he found one who satisfied him.

"You're not Westerwood men at all," he said.

"Mmmmmf," said the captive.

"Let's make this easy for you," said Pupil. "In a few minutes, Storm is going to wake up. She's the one with the bees, by the way. I reckon she's going to be pretty pissed. Looking for someone to take it out on. Don't make this more painful than it has to be."

The captive gulped.

"We're from Goldenmoon," he said.

"As I thought," said Pupil. "Are you Mercaja men?"

"Na'ami sent us," said the captive. "He heard...from a spy...that you were going to give Rennard E'lipov the Landssword. So he sent...us here to get it...from you. We were...going to leave you alive...if you just...gave us...the blade."

"You want the Landssword?" asked Pupil. "You want the Landssword?! Here's your Landssword!"

And he drew the Landssword from his belt and sent it right at the captive's neck.

It never connected. There was a loud booming noise, and the captive fell to the ground. Pupil stared at the Landssword in shock, as if seeing it for the first time. He need not have.

"Numbskull!" shouted Cloud. He was holding his artillery device, aimed at the man who had just fallen. "Be glad that I am skilled at aiming this contraption. The prophecy clearly says the Landssword must never draw blood!"

"Sorry," said Pupil sheepishly. "I guess I just...well...how often do you get a chance to make a clever retort like that and kill an enemy at the same time?"

"Your idiotic retort could have destroyed everything for which we have worked so hard! You could have..." and then Cloud stopped speaking, because Quercia had woken up and pushed him off the cliff. He landed with a thud on the ground a few meters below, bruised but alive.

"I'll stop now," he said.

"I made a clever retort once," mentioned Once, who showed no signs of noticing the many serious wounds covering his body.

"Shit," said Rain, suddenly. He had run to Cloud, to try to help him up, but now he was staring at the ground just beneath the small rock wall down which the tecnomaezj had fallen. Everyone turned to look.

"Tracks," he explained. He was pointing to the ground. A pair of Goldenmoon army boots and presumably their wearer had climbed up the cliff and fled.

"Let him go," said Cloud, regaining his wind. "Just one man."

"Wrong," said Quercia, who jumped down, using magic to check her fall, and landed beside Cloud, standing over his still supine body. "One man running east back to Goldenmoon. One man who's probably going get captured by the accursed Deamon Fish of Balgurd on the way there. One man who could tell them our location.

Cloud stood up and brushed himself off. "That's true," he admitted. "We've got to pursue."

"I can't," said Red. He was still clutching his injured leg. "Rain, Cloud, Sun, Storm - you pursue. Pupil, Once, you stay here with me. We'll clean this place up so the demons don't find it and camp here tonight. By tomorrow, I should be able to walk. We'll do half-days' march 'til Ifniday, and then hopefully I'll be back on my feet again."

"Are you certain splitting up is a good idea?" asked Cloud.

"Better than sitting here and letting Goldy get wherever he's going," said Red.

So we climbed up the riverbanks and followed hot on the trail of the missing Goldenmoon soldier. Rain was a decent tracker, and our man had only had an hour's head start. Still, it was almost evening by the time we caught up with him, by a little pond that broke the monotony of the Caverden plains.

"Please," he pleaded to us, "lemme live. I've got a family back home. I've got two kids! I don't know what you're doing here, I just take orders! Please!" And we just kind of waited there. Despite the whole mercenary bandit vibe we had going, none of us were really evil. None of us were really the sort to kill a guy who had just surrendered to us. And with me, there was something else going. I'd been in his position barely a few months ago. Red's band had taken me in, made me one of their own. I thought to myself and came to a decision.

"If you want to join..."

Quercia waved her middle finger, and the man burst into green flame, dying within seconds.

"Do I have to do EVERYTHING myself around here?" she asked. Then: "What? No one ever showed Narjone any mercy. No one ever showed that poor boy who was defending her any. And when the tecnomaezji catch up with me, none of them are going to show me any. And, as they say, do unto others." And before we could reply, she turned and headed back to camp.

I noted with interest that I wasn't angry. I also realized I hadn't felt the same sort of rage or fear during battle today, not even during the madness that followed Quercia's bees attacking. It was not quite inner peace, but it was a pleasantly anaesthetic simulation. I credited the Westerwood, and its healing sights and scents. But deep inside me, even then I was a little worried, or should have been.

We trod back to camp through the dark, doubling back on our own trail, relying on the stars and Quercia's magic for light. It was two hours short of midnight when we returned, and we were all ready for sleep.

There was no one there.

Our campsite was deserted. The debris of battle was still in place, and there were even three tents up, seemingly pitched by Red, Once, and Pupil as they prepared for sleep. But of our friends there was no sign.

"Storm, give me some light," asked Rain. The user complied, and the whole riverbank was bathed in sickly green as Rain looked for some sign of where our leaders had gotten to. There was nothing.

"They're probably just out hunting for food," I said, unconvincingly. "We should stay here and wait."

In the absence of any better idea, we did. Midnight came, but Red and his party did not. I volunteered to keep watch, and the other three fell into fitful sleep.

An hour before dawn, I heard noises coming from the direction of the Westerwood. I was up and alert instantly, my hand on my sword, and I quietly tapped Quercia on the shoulder on the grounds that she would be the one most useful in a fight. She awoke and instantly understood the situation. We sat wordlessly and watched the dark forest to see what would emerge.

Suddenly, a huge dark shape burst from the branches. I ran towards it, waving my sword. "DIE PAINFULLY!" shouted Quercia, and hit it with a stream of violet fire.

The shape staggered, and then muttered like a wounded thing: "I died painfully once."

It was Once, somehow still on his feet after the attack Quercia had inflicted on him, and Pupil followed close behind. Of Red, there was no sign.

"What happened?" I asked the Goldenmoonman. "Where's Red?"

"Gone," said Pupil. Quercia's shout had woken the other two, and they were listening attentively, all thoughts of sleep gone from their heads. "We were attacked by demon fish. It was too many for us. Red told both of us to run away, and we did. He couldn't run. We fled into the Westerwood. The demons must have taken him. We heard noises and were afraid they were still here. Then we came out to investigate and we found you.'

"PRH," I said. "The demons have Red? How long ago?"

"Sunset," said Pupil. "They've got a hell of a head start. There were at least sixty of them. Even the lot of us couldn't take them all on, not even if we had Red at full power. Which we don't."

We all digested that information. "Well, we can't just abandon Red," said Rain. "He's our leader. And our friend. We've got to go after him."

"No one's suggesting abandoning Red," said Pupil. "We've just got to..."

"Hello!" said Quercia. "Might want to ask around before using that whole 'no one's suggesting' thing. I say, if it's a question between going home with the Landssword and becoming obscenely rich and powerful, or getting killed by a bunch of stupid demons, let's go home and get rich."

"You ungrateful wretch!" said Cloud. "Red saved your life!"

"The gods will grant him his reward in the Celestial Temple," said Quercia. "Isn't that what you tecnomaezji like to teach us? Or are the myths just for the little people?"

"I was in the Celestial Temple once," said Once.

"I don't care what anyone else does," said Rain, having come to a decision. "I'm going after Red. If you want to follow, it's your own business." And he walked out of the camp, heading east to Cerce.

"Oh FUCK," said Cloud. Then a little louder "I'm under an oath to protect you! You can't just go! When you waltz into a demon realm, that threatens me too! Let's make this decision together! RAIIIN!" And when there was no reply, the tecnomaezji ran after.

"Red is my oldest friend," said Pupil, "and he's saved my life more times than I can count. I'm going with Rain." And he went. Once followed.

It was just me and Quercia sitting there. The feeling of listlessness, the lack of emotion that had been haunting me all day, came back, only stronger. I realized I genuinely didn't care much if I lived or died. "I'm going after Red," I told Quercia. "You should come with me."

Quercia looked east, towards Cerce. She looked to the Westerwood. She looked south, to Riverrun. She thought for a long time. Then, finally, "Only till Pupil gets himself killed. Then I'm taking the Landssword and going home."

"Fair enough," I told her, and we caught up with the others.

"We still don't have anything even remotely resembling a plan!" Cloud was protesting, when we came to him and Rain. "By the time we catch up with the demons, they'll be back in Cerce. No man's ever seen it and lived."

"I do invisibility," said Quercia. "I can't do everyone, and I can't do it permanently, but I can enchant a few of you so you can make it into the city without being detected."

"And this stone," said Cloud, warming to the idea and pointing to the grey-green stone on his necklace, "confers magic resistance. It can protect someone from the demons' magical defenses long enough to get them inside."

"And I notice neither of you are volunteering," said Pupil. "No worries. I'll do it."

"How about we get to Cerce first?" I said. "It's still seventy leagues, most of which is infested by demons and their slaves.

Everyone considered that. The sun was starting to rise now, and the eastern horizon was alight with fire. But the line of light was broken at one point, where a cloud of blackness hovered over the ground and fought back the rays of dawn. The demon city of Cerce.