Dragongate I

It was time to take stock, now the column was back in order and on the road. Thank the Powers they were moving again, thought Elle. With her were gathered Elyssa, Amora and Trystan, and she motioned captain Trum to join them. Conan was off doing what he did well, cheerfully chivvying the weary townsfolk along, his calm good humour lightening their steps even as he exhorted them to greater efforts. Some fifteen men of the town had proved to have been the problem. Leopards, no doubt, or their creatures. They had been sent, Elle was sure, to spy out the Vale and to cause trouble behind the lines, the Powers curse them. Fortunately, Conan, the Rangers and the loyal townsfolk had overcome them quickly and without loss of life. She had them bound, and, on pain of death if she saw them again, expelled from the column and sent across the river with the advice to get out of the dale before darkness and the terrors that dwelt there overtook them. She had questioned them first, and, for her pains, she had received little but insults, wheedling excuses or defiant complaints. These bitter men had not seemed grateful, let alone repentant, at being spared. It had seemed, thought Elle, as if mercy, though gladly accepted, was at the same time an insult to them. Surly to the last they had been, the sort of men who resent everything, even a kindness. She wondered what had happened to them; what their story had been to make them thus. She knew, of course, that there were hard times, and that many lacked much, not least in the Fallen Kingdoms of the Northlands. Yet, she had not expected to find such discontent. These men, she deemed, who felt they had never yet received their due, had reflected not upon what little they might have done to deserve better. It seemed to her that these were men who, above all, feared that others received more, or even as much, as they, and hated them for it. Such, then, it appeared, were the malleable malcontents that cleaved to the Leopard’s cause. Beyond that, she did not pretend to understand them.

Looking east, Elle saw that the rebellious townsfolk were now in the far distance, picked out in sharp relief by the lowering western sun, like tiny carven figures. She saw that they were herded now by some Leopard riders, and that they walked in the right direction for the southern pass in the moors down which the Leopards had come. Where the rest of the horsemen were, she could not tell, but she did not think they would be bothered again, unless in conjunction with any force that might have infiltrated the dale ahead of them.

“Good riddance to bad rubbish”, remarked Trum, who seldom allowed himself to express an opinion, nodding towards the departing malcontents.

Elyssa tugged at Elle’s sleeve, and silently pointed to where the far distant knees of the southern moors had almost climbed to their peak. There, against the gorse and heather, barely to be seen, a mounted figure bearing a spear was picking its way westward, tracking them, it seemed. One of the hill men, he looked to be, who farmed the dales beyond, grazed the moors with their sheep, and drove their kine to Dimlicdale. It saddened Elle beyond measure to think him a spy for the Leopards. She nodded in acknowledgement.

“What of Sigird and Sacrissa?” asked Amora.

“We will not meet them again in this dale,” said Elle grimly, “I fear for them.”

“Why, my Lady?” asked Trum, “Surely there is some point at which they my cross the river to join us? There has been little rain of late, the river is nowhere near its full spate. Surely they may swim it on horseback?”

“The river is not their obstacle,” replied Elle, “though it soon comes to step banks on its north side, like a gorge. I fear because across their path lies the Frencenlic Wood. Steep and tangled and dark, it is avoided by all who enter the dale, for it is deemed perilous even in daylight, for the sun barely reaches its dark depths.”

“Aiee!” cried Elyssa, “that is a place of evil omen amongst our people, though I knew not where it lay. There is a power trapped there that it would not be wise to disturb.”

“It is a nightmare place,” added Elle.

“But what is the danger they face?” this from Amora, who now sounded concerned.

“I know not,” replied Elle, “Frencenlic Wood is seldom spoken of in the Fallen Kingdoms, and it is many years since anyone ventured there. When it is named, old men and loremasters blanch pale and fall silent.”

“It’s a pity they could not have been more specific,” commented Trystan, but he too looked worried.

Trum looked troubled also, “then, even if they can keep their course and pass through the wood, it will be at the cost of time they cannot spare.”

“Yes,” replied Elle, “they, as we, will be racing the sunset. We have a chance, but they …. If they pass through the perilous wood, they will then face the Dunwald.”

“The Dunwald, what is that?” asked Trystan.

“A place of great mystery is all I know, and that it is said to lie to the west of Frencenlic Wood,” answered Elle, “My father made me study all that is known of the Lore of the North, but the lore falters here. Whether the Dunwald is a greater or a lesser danger to our friends than Frencenlic, I cannot say, but my heart is troubled at the thought of them there. If they even make it so far.”

“We call it the Baran Wood. It is a place where the two worlds touch,” said Elyssa, “Between them is but a thin sliver, as if a pane of ice. At night it is yet thinner, as if then a sheet of falling water.”

The company looked thoughtful at that, save Trystan, who looked as if he had questions.

“I have questions,” he said.

In response the Elf shook her head as she searched for words to convey her meaning, “Have you never felt a presence you could not account for, or thought you saw something, a movement, or, even, a figure, in the corner of your eye, but when you turned, there was no one there?”

Amora nodded. Trystan looked sceptical. The others looked pensive.

“The Elves, and only the Elves, may walk in both worlds. You should be grateful that

some other folk may walk only in the Other World.”

“Hmm, again, though,” said Trystan, “any specific idea of what the Dunwald may hold?”

“Perhaps it is the origin of the terror that stalks Dimlicdale by night,” replied the Elf, “I know not. It is a place of stories, told to Elflings at their mothers’ knees to frighten them!”

“It is also told of in tales of Men throughout the Northlands,” added Elle, “of strange creatures and disappearances. With what truth I cannot tell.”.

“I pray that some power is there that will protect them,” said Elyssa, “Even should they pass through that place, I fear that it will not leave them unchanged.” Her voice trailed off into silence.

Trystan looked set to ask Elyssa for further and better particulars, but the Elf now looked closed-off and distant, and Amora motioned him quiet.

Elle broke the silence, “At this rate, we will be lucky if we get the townsfolk clear of the dale before dusk. There will not be time to go back for our lost companions.”

With this solemn conclusion they fell silent, and drifted apart, each to find some task to do for the good of the column.

***

Sacrissa’s fine black destrier reached the crest of the slope, and she reigned in. Sigird’s piebald mount thudded up beside her.

“Damn!” cursed Sacrissa. Before them the ground sloped away gently, but a quarter of a mile or so away, the land was closed to their front by a thick, darkling wood. She glanced back to see a dozen Leopards, as expected, still slogging up the slope after them. “Come on!” she cried to Sigird and spurred her steed down the hill.

As their horses pounded down the slope it steepened and narrowed. Approaching the treeline, they dropped to a canter. They sensed a nervousness in their mounts, and the beasts slowed greatly in spite of their riders. Frantically they urged on the now reluctant steeds. Glancing once more behind her, Sacrissa saw the first Leopards breasting the ridge. “Come on!” she grunted with gritted teeth, and she dug her legs into to her horse’s flanks. They were now at the margins of the wood. The trees looked old, straggly and untidy. Past the first few gnarled and rangy trunks, they could see little. All was dark beneath the boughs, and they sensed, rather than saw, that the ground beneath the trees began to drop sharply away. Their horses tossed their heads and turned first to one side and then the other. Through sheer will power, it seemed, they forced the beasts forward under the ragged tree canopy and passed between the twisted trunks.

Gloom immediately overcame them in the wood. Well, thought Sigird, a dark and difficult place was a place in which they might lose the encroaching Leopards, yet she did not like this place. They were descending steeply. The leaf mould muffled the horses’ feet, or was it the air about them? Indeed, all sounds seemed dulled in this place. The atmosphere was thick and heavy, the air seemed opaque in the half-light. Her horse trudged reluctantly on. Trees loomed up as she passed them; grey trunks flecked with lichen, the bark deeply grooved in crazily twisting patterns. Bent branches hung down, brushing Sigrid with frail mossy twigs, gnarled like witches’ fingers. Brambles hid the dips and pits, roots and stumps of the forest floor, tugging at the horses’ legs, snagging and pricking them, causing them to stumble. She feared their horses might stumble and snap their legs.

They found themselves in a ravine now, with steep banks of brambles and nettles, here and there broken by tumbled rock sides. The trees clung and leaned thickly on the bank, with exposed mossy roots in weird loops, home to boles of ancient ferns. No bird was heard, nor sudden scurry of any forest creature. Somewhere, unseen, a beck or rill wound a course along the bottom of the ravine; Sigird could hear its faint trickle. Overhanging bows now laced across their way. Soon these proved as great an obstacle as the treacherous weeded ground.

“We must lead the horses, I think,” said Sacrissa softly, “before they throw us or break a leg.”

Sigird nodded. Somehow, she felt disinclined to challenge the quiet of the wood with speech. They swiftly dismounted. They picked their way painfully along the ravine leading their reluctant horses. There was no trace of a path of any kind, and the ground remained rough, pitted, and riven with roots and the holes of secretive, burrowing animals. It was festooned with undergrowth; the nettles were waist high in places and stung through their clothing. It was now their legs the bramble pricked and snagged. Almost wilfully, it seemed, the brambles would wrap around their feet and trip them. Still, reflected Sigird, they were going no slower than when mounted. She strained her ears for sounds of pursuit, but all remained still and silent in the wood.

Then, by a tall riven stump of a shattered and fallen tree, that stood, pointing like a sharp finger in their way, the horses planted their hooves and refused to go a step further. The two women cursed and shoved and dragged at the reins to no avail. Sacrissa then muttered words of calm and comfort to her horse, secret words Sigird could not hear. The destrier stepped slowly forward. Sigrid’s thick-limbed brown and white dales mare whinnied. After a pause, she began to follow. Yet, but a few paces past the jagged stump, the horses spooked. They put their ears forward and their nostrils flared, snorting. Then they cried out, as if in great horror or pain and shook their reins free of the women’s’ hands. Eyes staring, mouths foaming, they reared, and the women flung themselves aside. When their hooves crashed back to earth, the horses turned and scrabbled up the sloping ravine, back the way they had come. By the time Sacrissa and Sigird had freed themselves from the clawing brambles, there was no hope of catching their mounts.

They brushed themselves down and exchanged looks. There was nothing to say. The atmosphere in the wood was close and it depressed their spirits beyond the loss of their mounts. After all, without horses, they could move reasonably freely, but they began to feel trapped by the place and to fear that, somehow, it would prove reluctant to release them. They must fear dusk, and had no clear sense of how much of this eerie dale they must cross before its haunted night closed in. All was dim in the wood, and they could glimpse no sky through the dense canopy or see through the dense trees beyond its margins. For all the light in the wood told them, it could be dusk already, but they told themselves that outside the wood, it must still be a bright autumn afternoon. The ravine had narrowed so that there was not much distance between them, as they struggled and stumbled abreast of each other, and the ravine’s increasingly rocky walls. It was deeper and darker here, too. They had not walked for long before they realised that a sense of oppression had steadily grown and settled upon their spirits. They glanced occasionally at each other, but neither felt she wanted to speak. The silence was intimidating to begin with, but now they felt that it would take great strength and determined will to break it, and then they saw that they lacked such will. Sigird realised that she had long since ceased to listen for sounds of pursuit. She sensed that the Leopards were not close, but that something was. This stultifying, close dark wood had sought to rob her of her senses, perhaps even of her sense of herself. Yes, she thought, the wood is doing this. Suddenly she found that she could brush away the fog that had settled on her mind. Yes, this wood, or something in it, has an … influence. It has a will and a purpose. She glanced at Sacrissa and saw that she was looking around with a thoughtful expression. Suddenly she felt the hairs on her arm and the back of her neck bristle and tingle, and a sick plunging fear in the throat and chest. “Sacrissa,” she said, “I feel we are being watched.”

“Yes,”, said Sacrissa deliberately. Then, in a clear, quiet voice tinged with resolution, “I know we are.”

Sigird realised that her companion might have merely nodded, but had chosen to speak as an act of defiance, a reassertion of will, in the face of whatever oppressed them in this unnatural wood.

Sacrissa seemed to have seen something, up on the side of the ravine, at the top, some feet above them. She glanced back at Sigird, then turned to assault the steep rocky slope, clambering up to whatever had caught her eye, Sigird stumbled after her.

At the top of the slope, looking over Sacrissa’s shoulders, Sigird saw something seemingly hanging in the trees, a sickly white face she thought at first, surrounded by a crimson halo. Behind the ghastly visage rose an impenetrable looking thicket, a natural or seeming natural abattis. Then she saw that the face was a skull, mounted on a stake, and set about with blood-hued cloth and feathers. The skull was unlike anything she had seen, larger than a man’s and with a slightly protruding face, like a dog or a wolf, but much shorter and quite unlike any animal skull she had seen. From both jaws protruded long, fang-like teeth. A man-like forehead rose above it, on which was carefully marked some charm in Elf-runes. The skull’s black sockets stared past them, down into the ravine.

Sacrissa turned suddenly, and Sigird saw a grim look was set upon her. Without a word, her lips tight together, Sacrissa strode back down the slope, leaping over obstacles to reach the foot of the ravine. She then moved rapidly up and down scanning the opposite bank until, again, an object seemed to catch her eye. This she also climbed up to and inspected. Sigird, following, got close enough to see it was another such sightless dead face staring down at them, just as Sacrissa turned to her.

“Another one,” said Sacrissa, “we are seeing them now the ravine is so narrow, but I bet they’ve been along its length. I wager, if we went back, we’d find one this side of that ragged stump where we lost the horses.”

“What do they mean?” asked Sigird, now sounding very worried.

“I don’t know exactly,” replied Sacrissa, “but they are a ward, a token of the sort, set to stop something from passing them. I don’t know what, but the thing of it is, the thing is”, the pitch of Sacrissa’s voice was rising, “they’re all facing inwards, into this ravine!”

Then they heard a twig snap loudly. It sounded close. Fear like she had never known seized Sigird, and she saw it at once reflected in the other’s eyes.

“I have a really bad feeling about this,” said Sacrissa.

Sigird seemed now to hear, or sense, an unpleasant grunting and sniffling. She stuttered “I … I think we should …”

“Run!” cried Sacrissa.