Frank’s Sporadic Blog, With Fries

Mules, unlike horses, can see all four of their feet at the same time. That makes them ideal for any trail that involves negotiating steep hills or winding around narrow high passes, and we did both, one right after another, the whole trip.

The forest was ancient. I ducked under boughs and reflected that the trees around me were older than anything I’d seen outside the East. Hell, Elves might once have sneaked about on various murderous errands beneath these very behemoths.

Marlo led the way. Scatter and Lank were right behind him. Then there was a husky carpenter named Burris who was said to be an expert bowman and then Lady Werewilk, Gertriss and finally myself atop my majestic steed Lumpy.

The forest floor was wet loam. None of us spoke. Aside from the faint stretching of leather or the occasional soft snuffling of a mule, we made our way like a bevy of spooks.

Marlo stopped and dismounted, as did Scatter, Lank and Burris. They’d crouched down in a circle around a featureless patch of loam to exchange whispers and nods. I was about to dismount myself when Scatter came tip-toeing back to explain that they’d found sign of a man on foot, a day or two old.

The spot they indicated looked like every other bit of ground in sight to me, but I didn’t argue the point.

It took us a little over an hour to get near the camp. Finally, Marlo raised his hand, listened for a long minute, and signaled for us to dismount.

We tied the mules, and crept up the last ridge on foot.

Marlo was the first to pop his head over. He looked, and we listened.

Squirrels chattered and leaped. Birds sang. Crickets and cicadas chirped and sounded.

“Let’s go,” said Marlo, rising. “Camp’s empty. They’re gone.”

And they were. Even my city-bred eyes could see where the camp had been, could tell there had been tents and a corral and half a dozen campfires. I wanted to try and get a rough count of the camp’s population, but there was time enough for that after we found Weexil.

Scatter and Lank pointed out Weexil’s resting place, but refused to return to it. The spot they indicated was right behind a thick copse of chokeweed, at the base of a lightning-struck blood oak. It wasn’t in the camp proper, but it was right where I’d put a latrine, if I was the one arranging secret camps.

Not exactly a dignified way to die.

There was blood on the ground, right behind the chokeweed bush. The blood was pooled in a flat, smooth depression in the loam. And there were still fat blue-green flies haunting the air.

But there wasn’t any Weexil.

I dropped to my knees and tried to see drag marks or footprints.

If they were there, I couldn’t see them.

Marlo and Burris joined me. Marlo sniffed the air and made a face.

“Stinks like a dead one.”

It did, though I’d not noticed the stench immediately. I’d learned to not smell that during the War.

I pointed at the blood. Blue-green flies took flight at the movement.

“There was a body here. Someone moved it, which means someone has been here since Scatter and Lank found Weexil this morning.”

Marlo squinted at the ground. “Don’t see no drag marks.”

“One got his arms, one got his legs.”

“Don’t see no fresh footprints neither. Look.” Marlo poked a finger into the ground. “The loam takes a while to spring back up. Aint’ nobody been here.”

I shook my head. Weexil had died at the latrine all right. There was a clear, oft-used trail, and a freshly filled trench. They’d even left a shovel behind, stuck upright in the dirt. The amount of blood drying on leaves left no doubt. He’d died there, but he sure as Hell hadn’t strolled away alone afterwards.

I stood. “Let’s get back to the women. I don’t like the idea that someone came back to tidy up.”

Burris wordlessly nocked a long, lethal arrow. He favored an old-fashioned longbow made of wood so old it was black. His steel-tipped hunting arrows looked meaner than any crossbow bolt.

“I reckon I ought to shoot any body what didn’t come here with us.”

“I reckon you ought,” I replied. “I just hope you don’t have to.”

We moved quietly back to the mules and the rest of our party. Lady Werewilk was holding a fancy black-lacquered crossbow that must have been concealed in a saddlebag. Gertriss was trying to feed her sleepy-eyed mule a carrot.

“Was it Weexil?” asked Lady Werewilk.

“I believe it was,” I replied, keeping my voice low. “But the body has been removed.”
Scatter and Lank went ashen. Gertriss dropped her carrot in favor of her short plain sword. Scatter and Lank found their voices and began to protest that they hadn’t been lying.

They forgot to keep their voices down. “Hush,” I said. When that didn’t work Gertriss grabbed Scatter, who had the misfortune to be the nearest to her, and twisted his arm around to the small of his back.

“The man said be quiet. Remember where we are.”

Amazingly, that worked. Gertriss even got a nod from Lady Werewilk.

“What now?”

“We have a quick look around. Everyone in pairs or better. No one gets out of sight of everyone else. No shouting unless you see a stranger. If you find something you want me to see just stay there and wave. Got it?”

A chorus of yeses was my reply. We struck out. Scatter and Lank stuck close by Burris and his famous deer-slaying longbow. Marlo and Lady Werewilk took off in a different direction. Gertriss joined me, her borrowed sword at ready.

It had been a fair-sized camp. I’m thinking twenty men. There’d been six three-man tents, four of the much larger tents we’d called officer’s halls in the army, and then a single massive tent that had been filled with rows of long tables.

There had been numerous cook-fires. They’d set up a temporary corral for the horses. They’d had six wagons.

And they’d been very careful to leave absolutely nothing behind. What they hadn’t carried out they’d burned.

I found a stick and poked through the ashes. They’d burned papers. Lots of papers. And tools—I found hammer handles, I found shovel handles, I even found a handful of half-burned pencils, the fancy kind, with gum erasers stuck to the blunt ends.

“Who the Hell burns perfectly good pencils?”

“What?”

Gertriss had crouched down beside me. I hadn’t noticed. I chided myself for letting my attention lapse while pilfering the enemy camp.

“Look what I found.” I waved the pencil stubs. “They left in a hurry and burned what they didn’t feel like packing.”

Gertriss frowned. “You know those fancy figuring machines, the ones with the wires and the beads?”

“An abacus?”

“I found one of those in yonder fire. Aren’t they expensive?”

“They are. Odd.” I used my stick to move aside ashes, put my hand down on the ground beneath them. It was dry, and still faintly warm.

Gertriss put her hand down beside mine.

“They left late yesterday, didn’t they?”

“Pretty close, I’d say. Right after they killed Weexil.”

Gertriss shivered. “And he’s gone now?”

“Afraid so. Maybe somebody up the chain of command didn’t approve of them leaving corpses behind.”

“Marlo is waving, Mr. Markhat.”

I looked up. He was. Lady Werewilk was on her knees beside him, poking at something on the ground with a long thin dagger.

Crossbows and daggers. “I’m surprised she doesn’t clank when she walks,” I muttered.
Gertriss giggled. “I was just thinking the same thing,” she said. “But she has some of the most interesting items, Mr. Markhat. Look what she gave me.”

From the top of her boot Gertriss revealed a good five inches of slim steel. The blade had been blackened to prevent it from flashing even in firelight, but the razor-sharp edge glinted and shone.

I raised an eyebrow. “Is that what the ladies are wearing to Court this year?”

Gertriss pushed her black dagger back down. “We’d better go.”

Marlo was dancing an angry little jig by the time we arrived.

“Nice of ye to drop by. Thought you might need to see this.”

We knelt by Lady Werewilk, watched her stir the ashes with her blade.

“There,” she said. Her knife coaxed something solid out of the ashes.

It was a finger. A skeletal finger, attached to a skeletal hand, a hand which had been stuck upright in the ground, buried, and then burned.

The burned bones jerked. The dead fingers flexed. It made a fist, and then relaxed, and then it start turning on its wrist, fingers grasping at ash and empty air.

I threw Gertriss back with one arm, shoved Lady Werewilk down on her side with the other. Marlo bellowed, eyes full of murder, his axe turning and preparing to swing my way.

I leaped to my feet and whacked him hard and straight in the gut with Toadsticker’s hilt. He didn’t go down, but he did back up.

“Get back.” I kicked at the skeletal hand and missed.

It extended a bony forefinger, pointing it right at me.

And then the banshee sang.

She howled. She keened. Buttercup rent the air with that penetrating howl of hers, and she was somehow at my side and she gave me a pitiful little yank, as if trying to pull me away.

Marlo bellowed and brought up his axe, slashing at Buttercup.

Buttercup screamed, and was gone.

I brought Toadsticker down on the hand with all the strength I could muster. Ashes flew. The bony finger pointed.

And that’s when I felt the fingers close around my neck.

Close, and begin to squeeze.

Marlo caught on. He swung his axe down, brought sparks when he struck Toadsticker, but failed to damage the bones.

I tried to tell him not to bother, that the spell had been sprung, but I couldn’t speak.

Gertriss spun me around, and I felt her hands on my throat, but she couldn’t feel the hex choking me, much less grapple with it.

I let go of Toadsticker and stepped away. The spells our sorcerer corps had cast in the Army always had limited ranges. I took a useless pair of steps back, but could feel no lessening of the grip around my throat.

The traps left by our sorcerers were always designed so that by the time the victim realized what was happening, flight was simply too late.

I couldn’t speak. My lungs were burning. My vision was beginning to blur.

Gertriss was screaming at me, as was Marlo. Their voices were growing fainter.

Run into the forest and hope I got beyond the choking spell’s range before I died. Or…

I rummaged in my pocket. Darla’s charm was there.

My world was getting dark. I tried to draw in air, couldn’t. I resisted the urge to flail at the invisible hands closing around my neck.

Instead, I took out the charm, threw it at the skeletal hand.

The charm lay next to the bones, unbroken.

I remember dropping to my knees.

I remember Gertriss holding me up.

And I remember a bright flash. But that’s all. Just a flash, and the echoes of Buttercup’s final cry echoing in my mind.