Of Gods and Men Page 3

  Eventually they stopped to eat, but even then Waide made sure two people kept watch. Accidental deaths might happen from time to time, but this far away from the cities and towns, murder was rare and unusual. The three people who had died hadn’t been old or sick. Something had killed them. They were friends and relatives, and even in a growing village like Morgan’s Creek, their absence was felt by everyone. He could see it in the hunch of their shoulders and the way Waide kept clenching his jaw.

  When they’d all finished eating, the group doggedly pressed on. After a while, the trees started to thin out and the ground became uneven, dotted with lumps of slate. A short time later, they heard the trickle of water and soon they were following one of the many tributaries that ran underground through the forest.

  A high-pitched scream to their left made everyone drop into defensive crouches with weapons held at the ready. Vargus could hear his heart beating loudly in his ears and he smelled the fear sweat coming from the woman on his right. Cocking his head to one side, Vargus closed his eyes and listened to the silence until it began to ring in his ears. Nothing stirred in the trees. Then the shouting began and they all knew that something was wrong.

  “Move,” hissed Waide and they sprinted towards the sound of raised voices. The trees whipped past in a blur. Bushes snagged at Vargus’s clothing but he ignored them and pressed on, moving towards the danger instead of away from it.

  They came into a clearing and found themselves on the edge of a rocky shelf overlooking a deep ravine which was eight or ten paces across. Above them, the hillside broke up into a series of narrow stone gullies and rocky outcrops. Several worried faces were peering down from a ledge further up the hillside.

  “What happened?” called Waide.

  “We saw something,” a woman shouted down. “It was huge and fast. Cerille chased it and she fell,” said the woman, pointing into the ravine below. Vargus crept to the edge and peered down into the gloom. If he ran and jumped, he wouldn’t be able to reach the other side, but below him it narrowed until it was barely wide enough for one person. He didn’t know how deep it went and couldn’t see the bottom.

  “I’ll climb down,” said Vargus, setting down his sword and starting to shrug out of his leather armour. It wouldn’t do him any good down there and it looked as if it would be a tight squeeze without it.

  Much to his surprise Lanny passed his sword to Waide and started to take off his armour as well. “You can’t carry her up by yourself. I’m stronger than you.”

  It made sense. No one had thought to bring any rope with them. They’d come to hunt for a huge bear-like creature, not climb into ravines.

  Vargus lay down on his stomach and let his feet dangle over the edge into thin air. Once his hands were secure, he found toeholds that would bear his weight, and then he slid over the edge. It was still early in the afternoon, but as he slowly worked his way down the rocky channel, the light began to dim. Vargus knew he was rushing but didn’t know how badly Cerille was hurt and they had to get to her soon. When one of his footholds gave way, Vargus grabbed an outcrop before he fell and thankfully it held his weight. He paused for a moment to settle himself and wait for the shaking in his arms to subside before carrying on.

  Soon he could touch both sides of the stone channel and was able to spider-walk his way down with no fear of falling. At the bottom, a black opening barely wide enough for him to squeeze through led to a shallow cave. Cerille was lying face down just inside the hollow. Her right arm was bent at a strange angle behind her back and her left leg was twisted out of shape. Moving her as gently as possible, Vargus rolled Cerille onto her back.

  Lanny squeezed into the cave, scraping his chest and back against the stone on either side of the opening.

  “How is she?” he asked, shuffling closer. There wasn’t enough room in the cave for Vargus to stand up and Lanny had to crawl on hands and knees across the broken stone.

  Cerille’s skin was ashen and, putting his ear to her mouth, Vargus could barely hear her breathing. There was blood trickling from one ear and a huge damp patch on the left side of her torso. He didn’t investigate any further, afraid of what he might find.

  “She’s got one broken arm and her left leg is a mess. She might be bleeding from her head as well. If we try to move her, we might kill her by accident.”

  “Give her to me.” In the dim light, Vargus couldn’t see his friend’s eyes but his tone of voice brooked no argument.

  “Why?”

  “Hurry, Vargus, while there’s still time.”

  Lanny cleared a space on the ground before hunching over and sitting down. Moving as gently as he could, Vargus shuffled across the ground, carrying Cerille to where Lanny sat.

  With both hands, Lanny lifted her as if she were weightless and set her down across his folded legs. Placing one hand on her forehead, he bent forward and turned his head until his ear was almost touching her mouth.

  “If it’s really you, and not the boy, then should you be doing this?” asked Vargus.

  “You tell me. You’re the Weaver. Was her life supposed to end here?”

  Vargus had not tapped into his old power for a long time. He wasn’t even sure that it belonged to him any more. It made him hesitate, but only for a moment. Staring at Cerille, he raised his right hand and light blossomed on his palm, filling the shallow cave with a pale white glow. As if she were sat at the heart of a spider web, threads ran out from Cerille’s body in all directions. The past was there, sharp images from her childhood which were so clear to Vargus it was like looking in a mirror.

  The future was murky and constantly shifting as there were many possibilities and paths she might walk depending upon her choices. In one he saw her court someone from the mill, marry, have children and die an old woman in Morgan’s Creek surrounded by her loving family. In another she followed her passion and travelled to the capital city where she became an artist with limited success. In another she married, but her husband died in a terrible accident. Heartbroken, she fled to the coast where she became a sailor and eventually a captain of her own ship. In yet another she chose a quiet life of reflection and service, becoming a priestess for the Lady of Light. She travelled to the most desperate places, bringing comfort to those in dire need.

  There were more. So many more, where the slightest choice dramatically changed the course of her future.

  But in each possible version, she died many years from now. This was not her time.

  The light faded from Vargus’s outstretched hand and he stared at Cerille with concern.

  “She was never meant to die here.”

  “She’s still alive,” whispered Lanny, his face was hidden in shadow but one eye seemed to be gleaming with an inner light.

  In the silence of the cave, Vargus heard a long, slow breath being drawn into his friend’s lungs through his nose and mouth. Lanny’s chest swelled more and more until finally he bent forward so that his lips were almost touching Cerille’s.

  Slowly he exhaled into her mouth and Vargus could see the air moving between the two of them. The breath seemed to go on and on, filling the cave with a raw primal energy that made Vargus’s skin tingle and the hairs stand up on the back of his arms. Still it came, whistling out of the bottom of Lanny’s chest as if his lungs were deeper than the crevasse in which they sat.

  Finally he closed his mouth, and Vargus risked a glance at Cerille. The colour had come back into her cheeks and her left leg was whole and straight. The dark bloodstain that had soaked into her clothes was gone. If not for her broken arm and the trickle of blood coming from her ear, Vargus would have thought she was merely sleeping.

  “It would look suspicious if she had no injuries at all,” said his old friend with a brief grin.

  One of the group threw down a spear which Vargus broke into pieces to use as a splint for her arm, tying it in place with strips of cloth. Cerille remained unconscious even when they slid her across the bottom of the cave. Fashioning a sling from Lanny�
��s shirt, they tied her onto his broad back.

  Moving slow and steady, Lanny climbed out of the hole and then up the rock face until others could lift Cerille off his back to safety.

  When they were all back on solid ground, Vargus allowed himself a moment to let his hands shake. A few saw but said nothing, thinking he was trembling from the climb or the adrenaline wearing off. They didn’t know. They hadn’t seen. As others praised and patted Lanny on the back, Vargus looked into the boy’s eyes. Nothing of his old friend stared back. He was gone again.

  Chapter 6

  By the time they made it back to the village, it was late in the afternoon and darkness was falling. Cerille was taken away to be tended by the local sawbones, but Vargus knew exactly what they’d find. A woman who had been remarkably lucky. To have fallen so far and only broken her arm was nothing short of a miracle.

  The day had been long and tiring for everyone, much of it spent stalking through the forest in tense silence with their senses stretched to the limit. Remaining vigilant for so long frayed the nerves. Vargus wanted nothing more than to have something to eat and then curl up in his bunk and sleep off the rawness. Instead, what followed was an equally long night where he and Lanny were thanked countless times and asked to tell the story over and over until everyone must have known it off by heart. With every retelling, they were given free drinks until, despite a full stomach from a generous free meal, his head was swimming.

  Lanny seemed unaffected by the ale and his good cheer remained intact throughout the night. Vargus kept a close eye on the boy, but that was all he was for the duration of the celebration: a wide-eyed innocent who had carried the Elder to safety on his back. Only this morning they had been strangers but now were being treated like family. It was only going to make it more difficult to leave when the time came.

  On the one hand, he was pleased that his old friend had intervened, as Cerille was meant to live for many years. Whatever the creature was, it had upset the natural flow of events and at least this small misstep had been corrected. At the same time, a small part of him regretted it, because now their arrival in Morgan’s Creek was closely tied with Cerille’s miraculous good luck. It would take much longer for locals to stop telling the story and for the description of big Lanny and his uncle to fade into myth and then be forgotten.

  Vargus knew he would have to avoid coming this far south for years to come in order to reduce the risk of being recognised. It tended to unnerve people if you showed up twenty years after your first visit and hadn’t aged a day in the interim.

  Eventually, at some point after midnight, the majority of the crowd went in search of their beds. Vargus felt himself being lifted to his feet from his comfy seat in the corner. Lanny supported him on one side and together they shuffled back to the bunkhouse.

  The long room was cool, dark and quiet, a welcome relief after the noise and heat in the Fighting Cock. It didn’t stop the room from spinning, but as Vargus pulled the cold sheets against his skin he felt more at peace and slightly less fragile.

  Sleep should have swallowed him quickly but instead he lay there, listening to Lanny’s snoring echo around the bare room.

  It wasn’t his old friend that was keeping him awake, or even the creature and its effect on the skein of events. It was using his old power. He had not done it for a long, long time. There were too many memories tied to it and who he’d been in the beginning, when their kind had been so few in number.

  Vargus had thought it would be difficult to reach back and summon the Weaver’s power, but it had been easy. It was almost as if it had been just under the surface, waiting patiently, for a day such as this. It made him worry about how far he’d come since those early days and if he’d really changed in all that time.

  Hours passed with Vargus drifting in and out of consciousness, waking several times at the slightest sound. At some point during the night, he fell into a dreamless sleep only to be woken what felt like moments later.

  “What isss it?” he slurred, rubbing the grit from his eyes.

  Judging by the light filtering in through the windows, it was barely dawn. Lanny was leaning over him, gently shaking his shoulder.

  “We need to go.”

  “What’s happened?” said Vargus, struggling to claw his way to full consciousness. “What have you done?” he asked, fearing the boy had snuck out while he’d been asleep.

  “Nothing, but we need to fix this before anyone else gets hurt.”

  It was difficult to tell in the gloom, but Vargus thought it was his old friend speaking and not the boy. Either way, it was good advice. The villagers would probably rest today and go back out tomorrow, once they were certain about Cerille’s health. She couldn’t continue with the hunt, but it wouldn’t stop everyone else from trying. Vargus didn’t know how many more villagers would die, but he didn’t think the creature would just give up. If they were able to track and corner it, then the toll in blood would be high.

  “Give me a minute,” said Vargus, tugging on his boots and peeling off his shirt. He scrubbed the sweat from his torso and pulled on a fresh shirt from the footlocker. Leather armour wouldn’t do much against sharp claws, but he put it on over his shirt out of habit.

  Apart from a wisp of smoke coming from the baker’s chimney, the rest of the village was still asleep. While Vargus dunked his head in a bucket of water from the well, he sent Lanny to buy some fresh bread to keep them going. The spinning from the previous night was fading but hadn’t completely stopped. Vargus gulped down handfuls of water and only stopped when his belly felt swollen. When Lanny returned with a freshly baked loaf that was still warm, they set off into the hills, Vargus sloshing as they went.

  The forest was quiet and the hike far less tense than the previous day. No one had seen the creature until they’d reached the rocky area and that was at least two hours’ walk. It seemed unlikely it would venture further south but they still kept a casual eye on the surrounding trees. The whole area was so quiet they would have heard any large creature approaching long before it was close enough to cause them injury.

  By the time they reached the ravine, Vargus’s head had cleared and he was feeling more human. The irony of that thought was not lost on him.

  Lanny had been strangely quiet during the walk and now he lifted his head, sniffing the air like a dog.

  “Do you smell it?” he asked, pointing up the hill. Vargus inhaled a deep lungful of air and took a moment to sort through the different smells. Soggy leaves from where it had rained overnight. Wild garlic growing in clumps in the shade. Something chalky and damp rising up from inside the small cave below.

  “Try again,” said Lanny, guiding Vargus a little to the right. Almost immediately, it hit him like a physical blow. A musky scent so overpowering it was worse than an animal in heat. This wasn’t merely a scent-marker. It was something else. Something primal and old. It triggered a memory at the back of Vargus’s mind but when he tried to focus on it the idea slipped away. The hairs began to stand up on the back of his neck, making him draw his sword.

  “That’s not a bear,” said Vargus, scanning the area.

  “It came back after we left,” said Lanny, bending down to touch the earth. Vargus saw a few deep impressions on the broken ground from the passage of a big creature. It looked the right size for a bear, but there was something wrong with the shape of the print. He also spotted several notches in the stone coming down the hillside. As if a creature with big claws had clung to the uneven rock to find purchase during its descent.

  The calm Vargus had felt all morning evaporated. Gripping his sword tightly, he felt the first trickle of sweat as it ran down his back. Moving in silence, they pressed on up the hill, pausing from time to time in search of more tracks. There were a few, but the rocky ground made it difficult to work out where the creature had come from.

  Something big was living in the area but oddly there were few signs of its presence. There were no scattered animal bones or skins of long-dea
d animals. No scratches on trees to denote it was marking its territory. He thought it was possible they would come across the bodies of the villagers from the failed hunt, but they saw nothing.

  All around them, the forest quietly hummed with life. Birds chirped in the trees and chattering squirrels flew through the high branches above their heads. It was almost as if the other animals weren’t alarmed by its presence. An old memory was still tickling the back of his mind, but it wouldn’t solidify.

  The sound of running water started quietly in the distance but quickly became deafening after only a few minutes’ walk. Vargus’s thighs were starting to burn from the incline and he was glad when the path finally levelled out. The narrow muddy track looked well used and rainwater had collected in shallow puddles all along it. With a steep drop on one side and a sheer rock face on the other, they had little choice but to squelch through the mud.

  Around the corner, Vargus saw a flurry of movement through the trees and a few minutes later the track ended at a steep waterfall. A secluded spot out of the wind offered them a safe view of the waterfall and they found signs that other people had been here recently.

  A blanket had been laid on the ground, perhaps for a picnic, but now it was trampled and tangled up. It was covered with muddy footprints, fallen leaves and a few scraps of something blue and mouldy. A broken glass bottle sat off to one side, and half buried in the mud Vargus found a cloth bag.

  “What is it?” asked Lanny.

  “The missing teenagers, I think,” said Vargus. They’d probably come up here for some privacy away from their parents, but something else had found them.

  “There!” shouted Lanny, pointing at something on the far side of the waterfall.

  It was visible for only a few seconds before it disappeared into the trees, but Vargus saw it clearly.