Drowning at Dusk Ch. 04

Not a single fly buzzed above the corpses, either, a sure sign they'd fallen to cryptwolves.

I dismounted to touch my fingers to the blood.

"Still warm. A fresh kill." I scowled up at the sun, which was only just starting its descent towards the horizon. "Unusual for them to be active during the day."

"The curse must be strong, then," said Dazyar.

"Or the necromancer controlling them is," Xelari said, her wary green eyes inspecting both sides of the road. "Odd. No tracks or disturbances in the underbrush. Which means they came up the road, and went back down it. Not the way we came."

"Well I'd much rather fight cryptwolves in the open then in the wilderness," said Dazyar. Eyes affixed on the southbound road, he withdrew his fiddle from its satchel.

We pressed on; I readied my crossbow while Xelari gripped her runes. Three more dead sheep lined the sides of the road, and a minute later we came upon the shepherd: a young man lying face down alongside four more of his sheep, his neck as bloody and gory as that of his livestock. His staff was broken and smeared with gray bits of flesh.

"Died fighting, at least," I said with a sigh.

There were still no signs that the cryptwolves had wandered off the road: there was a patch of crushed grass, but a close inspection revealed sheep tracks, not those of a wolf. The surviving livestock had run off to the southern side of the road, but the undead horrors had not followed.

An hour passed, and we came across no more sheep, shepherds, or wolves.

The lack of any further signs of the creatures was proving more disturbing than the bodies we'd come across. Where were the damned things? Had they snuck off the road and we'd missed the tracks? Or were they still lurking further to the south?

We received our answer when we came to a narrow stone bridge that crossed a large stream. Standing in the middle of the bridge were six cryptwolves. Long-limbed, ragged, rotted things, with yellowed jaws and bright silver eyes that leaked dark blood.

The beasts did not so much as twitch. They offered no growls, no unearthly howls, no snarls of warning.

Motionless. And still no less deadly.

No other cryptwolf I'd encountered had behaved in such a way. This could not have been a random curse or a pack of the wretched beasts simply straying close to Arkostead. Their behavior bore all the marks of deliberate commands by a necromancer pulling their strings.

If we found the den, we might find some clue as to who was behind this.

"Well?" Dazyar asked.

I dismounted from my horse, knelt, and took aim.

"Be ready."

The bolt erupted from the crossbow, striking the foremost cryptwolf just beneath its jaw. Undead flesh parted before the impact, and the creature rocked back, gurgled, and swept its lifeless eyes towards me.

Its claws raked against the road, and it snarled.

That was more like it.

Each cryptwolf let out an eerie howl and bounded towards us. Dazyar played three rapid, off-key notes from his fiddle. Each strike of the bow against the strings sent waves of blue energy cascading out along the cobblestones. Several of the stones shattered, spraying shards into the faces of the onrushing wolves. I had time for one more bolt, which I used to put down the one I'd already wounded, then tossed down my crossbow and reached for my elven blade.

It practically leapt out of the finely-forged scabbard Terakh had given me. Squaring my feet, I met the charge with several wide swings that carved open one wolf's skull and sliced at the outstretched paws of another. Dazyar slashed and jabbed at his fiddle, creating another discordant tune that turned more cobblestones into weapons, sending them flying up from the road and battering into the wolves.

Xelari, unable to deploy the eruption-rune lest the magical flame drive the wolves into a greater killing frenzy, deployed a swarm of those ghostly snakes that she'd used to paralyze me. Even magical poison proved useless against undead flesh, but the tide of serpents was more than enough to distract and delay the wolves.

My blade carved a wolf in half as it snarled and snapped at the ethereal serpents, but I hissed with pain as another creature's jaws closed around my shin. I lashed down with the blade, hacking deep into the top of its head. It reeled back, then yelped as a cobblestone detonated beneath its belly, tearing it apart from below.

The last wolf reared up and darted for Xelari. With only one foe left, the dusk elf opted for eruption-rune and sent a pillar of fire directly into the creature's gaping mouth. Its howl of pain and fury went silent. Piles of ash and embers fluttered to the ground, and I growled down at the wound to my thigh.

"Allow me," Dazyar said, dismounting. He wiped his fingers in the blood, then ran the blood along the strings of his fiddle. After a few jarring notes, violet energy wafted from the instrument and into my wound. I hissed with pain and discomfort at a sharp burning sensation, and gagged at the stench of burning flesh.

Within a minute the wounds were cauterized shut, leaving behind thin white scars upon my skin.

"Full of tricks, aren't you?"

"Oh, that's but the start." He gave me a playful wink, then scowled down at the creatures. "Shall we burn them?"

Xelari nodded and scorched the corpses with her eruption-runes, and I frowned at the bridge.

"They were on guard. Bound to this bridge. And that must be recent, because while other travelers mentioned cryptwolves, nobody mentioned them guarding the bridge like that."

"So their den or their master must be close," Xelari said.

Weapons still at the ready, we crossed the bridge. On the far side we found an overturned cart, and the bodies of two farmers, their blood leaking from the road down to the stream. About twenty feet from their bodies, I noticed that several of the cobblestones were missing. At first I wondered if Dazyar's spell had misfired and had detonated stones on the far side of the bridge, but there were no shards or fragments.

I knelt down by the missing stones, pressing my fingers to the dirt.

Ice cold.

My scowl deepened and I retraced my steps to the other side of the bridge, and noted three more missing cobblestones about a hundred feet in the other direction.

The dirt there was ice cold as well.

"Yes," I said. "Someone definitely bound the creatures here. Used pieces of the road as an anchoring sigil. That's why they haven't strayed off the path. Someone wants them on the road and the bridge, harrying travelers."

"Another merchant trying to gain a competitive advantage?" Dazyar asked. "Killing off the competition with undead creatures?"

"Wouldn't be the first time someone used necromancy for profit in such a fashion," said Xelari. "I encountered a blacksmith who hired a necromancer to raise skeletons from a cemetery near a mine, to drive out the mine's owners so the smith could buy it on the cheap to supply his own foundry."

I shared a long glance with Xelari; given our suspicions about Heroth, I was certain this wasn't as simple as a greedy merchant willing to kill in the name of coin.

"As for the den..." I said, frowning and wandering up and down the sides of the road. "Looks like it rained recently. Washed away any tracks. So I can't tell from where they might have come." One of those skilled dusk elf rangers Xelari had mentioned probably could have done it, though.

"I have another trick to offer," said the bard. "You said there were anchoring sigils?"

"Yes. I can still feel the magic in the dirt."

Humming to himself, he knelt and examined the patches of dirt, and dug for a few moments. He pulled out a yellow wolf's tooth.

"Magic sings, and longs to harmonize," he murmured. "I think I may be able to trace the general direction of this magic. At least for a short while."

He ran the tooth along the bow of his fiddle; light pulsed from one of the runes. Dazyar turned, struck the fiddle with the tooth again, then pointed to the north.

"That way."

"What else can you do with that rune-etched fiddle of yours?" Xelari asked.

"I can force foes to dance until their legs break, to sing until they run out of air. Less useful against undead, of course, but if we run into any bandits or human minions of this necromancer..." He continued to jab and strum with the tooth as I gathered up the horses. "I can shatter certain objects with the right notes, as I did with the cobblestones. The right tune can strengthen the bodies of my allies, too, make them faster or stronger for a short while. But it's taxing on this little old relic. That's half the reason I play, you know. Not for the coin, the drinks, or for the way my songs can spread the legs of pretty young women...it's the power in the music. It enhances and replenishes the magic of this fiddle."

I'd known a few bards with similar tricks, including a skilled flutist who hired herself out as an assassin, using her magic as a weapon against her targets.

Even if Dazyar didn't end up being useful in terms of getting us close to Heroth, those other tricks would be damned handy indeed.

We followed the bard off the road, through the tall, swaying golden grasses of the countryside. He struck the fiddle every few minutes, occasionally adjusting his course. After a half hour he cursed under his breath, and cast the tooth aside.

"The connection has frayed. The song has run its course."

"Better off than we were before." I pointed to a grove of trees to the north. Their white bark gleamed against the fields of golden grass. "Good vantage point there. I can use my sight-rune, see anything else of note."

We made it to the grove, and while Xelari and Dazyar tended to the horses, I climbed up the stark-white trunk of the largest tree, scampered from branch to branch, spooking a few sparrows in the process. Once at the top I settled comfortably within the embrace of the largest branches.

After fetching the sight-rune from my satchel, I brushed my fingers over it and took in a sharp breath. Ice rippled through my eyes, and blue light pulsed at the edges of my field of view. The golden grasslands snapped into sharper focus; I spotted several elk running in the distance, rabbits bobbing and fleeing from a circling hawk. I ignored the critters and looked for anything that might have hidden a den: a ruin, an abandoned farm, or even a pile of boulders.

As I took in the sights, Dazyar hummed a tune down below, playing a few soft notes on the fiddle.

After a minute my eyes settled on a mill, perhaps a half mile to the north. It was clearly inert and abandoned, with vines covering most of its exterior, and with the great wheel having half-crumbled. I stared at it for several minutes, taking in every detail. I noticed the pressed-down sections of grass near the mill, hinting that men or beasts had been moving frequently to and from the structure. Near the mill was a half-collapsed cabin, and I caught a flicker of movement through the door. The sight-rune was not quite keen enough for me to pick out exactly what it was, but that mill was as good of a target as any.

When I descended, I found Xelari and Dazyar engaged in a deep debate about the meaning of the song he'd been singing.

"No, no, no," Xelari said with a fierce wag of her finger. "That wasn't about the queen's daughter, it was about her wife."

"That doesn't make any sense, though. Why would she want to kill her wife for fear of taking the throne? Thrones don't go to wives."

"They do in the old dusk elf kingdoms, which is where the song originated. It's a lovely tune no matter the lyric, but I was just pointing out the factual inaccuracy."

"It's a bloody song. Doesn't need to be accurate. Just needs to get a rise out of the crowd." He grinned over at me. "Care to take sides?"

"Not particularly. Especially since we may have more cryptwolves to kill."

I relayed what I'd seen of the old mill, and they immediately set to preparing their weapons and gear.

"I say we sneak up through the grass, and have Keltara just lay waste to the place with that eruption-rune. I daresay it'd make short work of a rotted old mill."

"As expedient as that would be, we still don't know for sure what's inside that mill," I said. "The movement I saw could just be some other animal, or a squatter. No guarantee there are cryptwolves or death mages inside."

"Not to mention that such an inferno could set this entire plain ablaze," said Xelari. "I am eager to end those abominations, but not so eager that I'd burn a dozen other farms and mills in the process. Furthermore, we'll need evidence, to confirm how widespread this crisis is, to know for sure if this necromancer is acting alone or not."

"Fair, fair. I also suppose just burning it down from a distance wouldn't make for the best song, either?"

We opted to leave our horses in that little grove to better approach in a stealthy fashion, and crept northwards through the tall grasses. We moved at a slow, careful crouch, taking nearly an hour to reach a little hill that overlooked the old mill.

The stench of death assailed us first. Dazyar retched, while Xelari merely wrinkled her nose in faint disdain.

"More cryptwolves," I murmured. "Possibly other foul things, too, if there is a death mage there coordinating them."

If there was indeed a necromancer within that mill, we'd need to take him alive to confirm if Heroth was somehow involved in all this. Assuming we even managed to take the mage captive, we'd have to interrogate him discreetly, without Dazyar overhearing about our interest in the Lord-Protector.

We lingered on the hill for a few minutes. Though the power of my sight-rune had faded, I could still assess the threat: nine cryptwolves were scattered around the mill, all perfectly still. I focused on that little hut where I'd seen movement before, and caught sight of two skeletal figures, swaying back and forth just inside the door. Barrow-walkers of a sort, I'd wager.

"The first floor of the mill is mostly intact," I muttered. "So if there is a necromancer here, they're probably in there. An ideal little nest for a wretched mage."

"Any devious plans that don't involve just burning the whole damned thing down?" Dazyar asked.

"Your music can draw out the cryptwolves, yes?" Xelari asked. "Some sort of illusion, perhaps. The sound of bleating sheep or helpless children."

"Aye."

"Good. You deploy the ruse, I will stay with you, and use my magic to cull the cryptwolves. Esharyn here will loop around, and strike at the death mage while his minions are busy chasing us. Divide and conquer." She gave me a pointed stare. "We'll need him alive."

I frowned.

"Dividing and conquering cuts both ways in this instance. The two of you could be overrun."

"You lack faith in our abilities?" Xelari asked, raising an eyebrow. "Or if you are worried about a cryptwolf fang scarring my pretty face, have no fear, my runes will see to any scars."

She ran a finger over her cheek where I'd sliced her the night we'd met; her magic had eradicated any hint of that wound. The gesture served as a reminder that I still bore the thin scar she'd inflicted upon me in retaliation when I'd been her captive. Had she left that scar on me as another sort of chain-rune, a reminder of her mercy?

That didn't matter in the moment, though.

"We can handle it," Dazyar said. "If we wipe out that pack first, we'll rush to your aid. And if you get the death mage, then you push out to our position, hit the cryptwolves from their flanks."

Gritting my teeth, I pondered how many ways that could go wrong, and lamented the fact that we didn't have Terakh or even the undisciplined bandits there. I'd feel a lot better about letting Xelari be a distraction if she had more support.

"Fine," I said. "I'll make my way around to the northern side of the mill."

"My distraction will be unmistakable," he said. "A few moments after you hear it, it will be safe to begin your advance."

Xelari reached out, pressed her fingers to my elbow as she'd done so many times before as prelude to a command to follow her.

"Go," she bade me.

I vanished through the swaying golden grasses, scampering low as I worked my way around to the north of the mill. Moving to my hands and knees, I crawled for several minutes until I neared the edge of the grassy field. The mill rested only fifty feet from my position; the stench of undeath assailed my nostrils.

The nine cryptwolves remained perfectly still, their lifeless eyes staring out across the golden plain. Something creaked from within the little cabin, and a skeletal barrow-walker wandered out, dragging a rusted halberd behind it. It shuffled and swayed, and moved slowly over towards the central mill before disappearing inside.

Curious. Summoned by the death mage, perhaps?

Thunder boomed from the south. Its echoes carried with it a sweet melody, something akin to a lullaby. Growling as one, the cryptwolves turned to face the sound. With a collective yip, all nine of them darted off into the grass.

I grimaced, hoping my companions could hold. The barrow-walker with the halberd shuffled out of the mill, and two more limped from the rickety cabin.

Three skeletons? Was that all the necromancer had to guard him?

Given the state of the sun, a shadow-rune would have been useless crossing that open ground, so I activated my fury-rune instead, sending fiery strength into my limbs. I'd need it to make the mad sprint to the mill, and to face whatever lurked inside.

The melody from the south grew louder.

As my limbs roared with newfound arcane energy, I broke into a fierce sprint, clearing half of the distance to the mill before a barrow-walker croaked in alarm. The others joined in, creating a chorus of raspy growls that surely alerted whoever was inside.

A cough, a curse, and the shuffle of footsteps echoed through the mill's rotted door. I leapt, kicking through the door. It flew off the hinges, spraying rotted wood and splinters over the mill's central chamber. A man in a fancy doublet, velvet leggings, and a frilly cloak went sprawling before the impact. A rune-etched bird skull rolled out of his grasp.

His eyes widened as he sprung to his feet. I rushed him, blade swinging. Yelping, he dodged to the side, and my blade cleaved through his cloak. He rolled, snatched up the skull, then howled with pain as I hacked the blade into his shoulder. Enough to ruin his day, but not quite enough to cut him down entirely.

The mage's fingers nonetheless managed to scrape over the runes. Something shattered outside of the mill. As the mage collapsed, bleeding and moaning, I looked out to see the little cabin in ruins, and my jaw dropped at the sight of the creature that had destroyed it from within.

It was perhaps nine feet tall, having likely taken up most of the interior of the cabin before it had burst out. At least six writhing skeletons made up its torso, with long, horrific arms each consisting of rotting flesh and bones that had no doubt been harvested from multiple other corpses. It had no face to speak of, only a mass of broken skulls held together with shadowy tendrils of necromantic magic.

"Dismiss it!" I shouted, whirling back to face the mage.

He'd already gotten up and sprinted to the far side of the mill. Before I could dart after him, the three barrow-walkers burst in through the door, jabbing and slashing at me with their polearms. A rusted halberd slapped the side of my head, sending me spinning to the ground. I rolled, the pain dulled by the fury-rune, and leapt back at the creature and its comrades.

Three swift, savage slashes of the elven sword made quick work of the trio, but by then the monstrosity from the cabin had begun to move.

The ground thudded beneath the impact of its heavy, bony feet. It crashed into the side of the mill, caving in one wall and causing the upper structure to groan in protest. A fist made of ribcages and spinal columns lashed through the rubble, coming within inches of me. I darted backwards.