Chapter 1
Rew moved through the forest as quiet as a falling feather. He instinctively avoided the slender sticks and the first dry leaves of autumn that scattered across his path. His tall, leather boots padded across the soil without making a mark. He passed between the branches and boughs of the trees as effortlessly as the wind. In the coming months, brittle leaves would blanket the forest floor, and such silent stalking would be impossible even for him, but he did it now without thought.
He paused. Ten yards in front of him, a small brown and gray furred body leapt off a tree and scurried across the forest floor. A squirrel collecting acorns. Rew watched it, noting its unworried movement, and waited for it to gather its nut and vanish back up the trunk of a towering oak. When the squirrel climbed out of view, he moved again, passing unnoticed through the forest, his boots leaving no disturbance, no sign that the ranger had been there.
For another two hours, he trotted beneath the autumn canopy, the dapple light that reached the forest floor reflecting the brilliant reds, oranges, and yellows that burst amongst the green leaves like fireworks at the new year. Periodic stands of stoic pines held firm, their boughs the same green they were in the spring, the same green that they would be in the heart of winter. They were unchanging, like him, while the forest changed around them.
He stopped and knelt. A nearly invisible track passed through the forest, a deer trail going from the stream that cut along the base of the ridge into the deeper reaches of the woods. Gently, he moved aside leaves and sticks, placing them carefully out of the way as he studied the soft dirt. In a half-crouch, he moved along, following the tracks.
Impressions from hooves dotted the forest floor. Some were old. Some were recent. They showed the regular passage of large animals. There were other tracks intermixed from smaller animals, taking advantage of the work the deer did keeping the pathway through the forest clear.
And there, Rew found what he was looking for. An impression of four curled toes. He crab walked along, confirming his hunch that the four-toed creature, with its curious, loping gait, followed the path of the deer. The ranger touched the ground, feeling the moisture and the depth of the tracks. They were recent, left two or three hours prior, no more.
Rew moved off the trail the forest creatures had left and, a dozen yards away, found another set of tracks. More impressions from toes and the balls of the feet, no heels. His quarry was moving quickly, jogging along the front halves of their feet. They weren’t just following the deer’s trail. They had a scent. He moved another dozen yards off the forest trail and found a third set of the four-toed impressions. A pack on the hunt.
He glanced up at the brightly colored canopy above him, checking the progression of the sun. It was mid-afternoon with another three hours of sunlight left. His quarry would pause to feast if they caught their prey, but otherwise, there was not enough time for him to catch up before nightfall. He had the tracks, though. The ranger was on the hunt.
Rew reached over his shoulder and checked the plain, wooden hilt of his longsword, rattling it to make sure he could draw it cleanly. He shifted the pack on his back, moving the cloak he’d bundled and tied to the bottom so it was clear of the bone handled hunting knife hanging from his belt. He bent and felt the two daggers that stuck up from the sides of his calf-high leather boots.
Weapons in place, secure but ready to draw, he moved back to the deer trail and started along it, walking briskly, but not so fast that he couldn’t maintain stealth. He covered ground quickly, untiring. He was at home in the forest and spent nearly every day moving through the citadel of oak and pine. He could maintain the ground-eating pace from dawn to dusk if he needed to, but after an hour, he stopped.
He’d found the corpse of a buck, or what was left of it. Its skin, torn and discarded, lay in stomach churning piles. Bones, stripped of meat and then cracked and sucked clean of marrow, were tossed on top. The skull had been shattered like the shell of a nut and the brains had been scooped out. One antler was still attached, the other was missing. Rew saw dark blood on the tip of the antler, and despite the grim scene, his lips curled upward. The animal had died messily but not without a fight.
Walking in expanding circles, he spent several minutes searching the rest of the site then moved on, forcing down the uncomfortable feeling that in the chaotic swirl of tracks, there were impressions for more feet than he would have guessed. It was difficult to count, not knowing how long the creatures had been at the kill site, but he’d seen such scenes before. Something felt off about this one.
Narjags, bestial creatures that they were, had feasted upon the raw flesh and then moved on. It was unusual behavior for them. They’d eat anything that had a beating heart—deer, squirrel, or man—and preferred their supper while that heart still beat. They were naturally lazy, though, and it was surprising they hadn’t paused to rest, bellies filled with fresh meat and perhaps some of the foul liquor they were known to distill.
Rew ranged back and forth across the trail as he left the kill site. He tallied the number of narjags that had departed and found there were too many. Too many to be traveling in a pack together. He hurried his pace, overcoming his trepidation with determination to catch up, to find his quarry.
The group he tracked was in a rush, but to where and why? He couldn’t imagine the narjags had somewhere to be. That meant they were running from something, but it wasn’t him. He hadn’t yet encountered this party, and he’d seen no other tracks on their trail. The wind was from the west, so there was no chance the awful creatures would have caught his scent, or that of any other pursuer. Narjags were full of bluster as long as they thought they had the advantage, so why run unless they knew what was behind them?
His face twisting in a grimace, Rew glanced back the way he’d come, but he sensed nothing. The forest was calm, filled with the sounds of small life and an autumn breeze that was just enough to cut the heat from the bright, sunny day. He shook his head and kept going. What answers he would find, he would find ahead.
* * *
Rew stripped the bark off a long, straight stick. With his hunting knife, he’d already whittled the end into a sharp point. He knelt by the brace of skinned rabbits he’d set on the dirt beside his campfire. They were plump ones, fat from eating the summer’s bounty. It was more meat than he could eat, and he hated to take more from the forest than he needed, but if he still had meat in the morning, he could break his fast with it.
If he had meat left in the morning.
He glanced around the forest. It was two hours past sunset now and dark. Dark and quiet. Most of the animals that lived beneath the trees had retired for the day, and their nocturnal brethren had not yet emerged. Somewhere out there was a party of narjags, but it seemed they were not disturbing the life around him. Incredulously, even after they’d been delayed feasting on the buck and after he continued hunting after the sun set, he had not caught them.
Narjags could be fast in short bursts, their muscular but squat legs propelling them in lopping leaps, but they tended to have low stamina and couldn’t cover long distances quickly. The behavior of this party was unsettling. They hadn’t paused after their kill, and they’d kept moving even after dark. Rew had no idea what could be motivating them.
Grunting, the ranger picked up his newly fashioned skewer and worked it through the two skinned rabbits, sticking them head-to-tail on the slender wood and then setting the skewer over his fire, suspending it in the joints of thicker branches that he’d knocked down into the dirt.
The rabbits would cook there, their flesh warming, getting crispy on the outside, tender in the middle. Their fat would heat and drip, igniting in the fire. The scent would make his stomach rumble, and he hoped, spread on the air like a banner to the narjags he pursued.
The creatures were slow-witted and lazy, but they had excellent noses. From leagues away, if the wind blew toward them, they could detect the scent of cooking meat. They were apt to eat flesh raw when left to their own devices, but they wouldn’t turn down a cooked meal. And by cooking it, he could spread the scent across several leagues of forest. The narjags would come to him if they smelled it. They would come, for the rabbit and for him, unless they were frightened or too far away.
He stood and drew his longsword from where he’d sat it beside his pack. He stuck the blade into the dirt a pace away and, with his hunting knife, began to slice off bites from a fist-sized apple. He ate the apple and waited, occasionally turning his skewer so the rabbits cooked evenly, watching as their juices dripped into the fire, popping, burning, and rising on the smoke.
Rew waited until he began to worry that his rabbits were going to burn, and he began wondering if he should pull them off the fire before they were overcooked. Maybe, even though the narjags had been headed northeast for hours, the creatures had turned. He’d estimated they would be downwind from his campsite, but he could have been wrong.
Then, moments before he gave up, he heard a muffled snort and the crunch of bare feet stepping on fallen leaves. Rew sliced another hunk from his apple and popped it into his mouth, chewing loudly.
His eyes were on his fire, but his focus was on what was happening outside the circle of light it provided. In a normal party of narjags, there would only be four or five of them. That was as many as could travel together without their cantankerous natures getting the best of them and the group fracturing into violence. In years past, when the Dark Kind were more common in the forest, it wasn’t unusual to find bodies of narjags killed by their companions and left to rot.
Rew’s heart began to beat faster as he heard their movement around him. As he’d estimated from their tracks, there were more than four or five. Too many to identify with certainty just from their sounds. As they spread around him, he cursed his sloppiness. He’d hoped he was wrong, that he’d somehow over-counted the footprints he’d seen, but he’d known that wasn’t the case. Known, yes, but that wasn’t the same as hearing the creatures work to slowly surround him. A sliver of worry crept down his spine, and he chastised himself for not returning to town to gather another ranger. He’d been more concerned with the narjags escaping, but that may have been a mistake. He carved another slice from the apple and tossed the core into the fire. Blessed Mother, why were so many of them traveling together?
Shuffling quietly, they surrounded him. His night vision was weakened from his fire, so he couldn’t risk rushing into the forest to seek them out or trying to break through the circle they’d formed. He had to let them come to him, to come into the light. Steeling himself, he waited.
When they finally did come, they came in a wave, a muffled growl his only warning.
Rew reached out with his open hand, grasped the wooden hilt of his longsword, and pulled it free of the dirt, spinning as he did and meeting a rushing narjag with his steel.
Squat, muscular, and only as tall as the middle of his chest, the narjag was clothed in a filthy loincloth and a tattered cape it must have looted from some long-dead traveler. It carried a short spear that wasn’t more than a sharpened stake.
Rew thrust with his longsword, taking the narjag directly in the throat. Then, he pivoted, using his hunting knife to catch and deflect a blow from a second one of the creatures. He turned its rusty shortsword aside and ripped his longsword free of the first. He bashed the second narjag with the hilt of his blade, the heavy, steel pommel crunching bone as it crashed against the small monster’s forehead. Wailing in pain, the narjag backpedaled, and Rew stepped forward to pursue.
He was knocked to his knees when a heavy body slammed into his back, clutching fingers grasping at him, foul breath blowing against the side of his face as he turned his head. Rotten teeth clacked shut beside his ear, barely missing his neck. Stabbing back with his hunting knife, Rew blindly caught flesh and bone. Dark, ichorous blood spilled onto his shoulder from the wounded narjag.
He let go of the bone hilt of his knife and grabbed at the narjag, snatching it by the arm. He threw it forward, grunting in exertion as he flung the heavy body into the path of two others that were charging at him.
One tried to leap its Dark Kind brethren but tripped as the thrown narjag flailed its arms and legs wildly. The second creature veered around, and Rew surged off his knees, lashing at it with his longsword and buying himself space to glance behind where three more narjags were circling his fire.
Rew attacked furiously, forcing the narjags away, and then bent to rip his hunting knife free of the injured one that had jumped onto his back. In the same motion, he slashed the blade across the neck of the narjag that had tripped coming at him, then turning and swinging wildly, he clipped the second one in front of him, cracking its skull and felling it. He skipped to the side, shifting to adjust to the three that had now circled the fire. His breath was coming fast, but he was uninjured, and he’d made some progress.
Four narjags dead, one injured, three hale. He heard a rush of feet in the forest still outside of the light of his fire. Not three uninjured. There were more of them.
He charged.
One narjag flung a rock-bladed hatchet at him, but Rew knocked it aside with his longsword. He smashed the heel of his boot into the face of the hatchet-thrower. He caught a spear on the edge of his hunting knife. Then, with an overhand chop, he brought his longsword down on the skull of the spear-wielder. He reversed his grip on his hunting knife and stabbed it into the neck of another narjag that was attempting to sneak up on him. It squealed in surprise and pain, and he yanked the blade free in a shower of dark blood. Whipping his longsword free from the narjag’s skull, he swung backhanded and hacked into the creature he’d kicked.
Three more down. He turned, seeing the wounded narjag now flanked by two more.
Rew paused. Behind the three warriors, stood another narjag. It was taller by a head than its companions, and instead of crude weapons, it hefted an amber-tipped staff.
Rew blinked. A shaman? He’d never seen one before, but he’d heard stories about narjags being taught rudimentary magic by the spellcasters who conjured them. Notes scrawled in unofficial histories said it was common two hundred years ago, when the Dark Kind had flooded into the land, but it had been two hundred years since any spellcaster had allied with the Dark Kind. Could a feral species like the narjags truly wield magic? Could they teach themselves?
Rew waited, wondering, but if the creature had spells to cast, it did not. Instead, it aimed its staff at him and shouted in the guttural language of the Dark Kind. The three surviving warriors attacked.
Rew stepped forward and wheeled his longsword above his head, lashing it in front of him like he was scything wheat. Two of the narjags couldn’t avoid the powerful blow, and the hard edge of the steel longsword burst through the body of the first and into the second, taking it in the head and crushing bone and cutting flesh. The third narjag, the one that was already injured, lurched out of the way, falling onto the ground and clutching at the black blood that poured from its wounds.
Rew left it and charged the shaman. The big narjag raised its staff above its head, howling, eyes bright with madness. He kicked his boot into its chest, knocking the narjag onto its back.
Screeching, the creature kept its gaze on him, screaming what he thought were most likely obscenities, because they certainly weren’t a spell. Nothing happened. The creature’s staff did not blaze with infernal power. No boiling liquid fire came shooting at him. No creatures were summoned. Nothing at all.
Rew waited for half a dozen heartbeats to make sure no slow-building spell was forming, and when still nothing happened, he stepped forward and plunged his longsword into the narjag’s chest, silencing it. Turning, he was prepared to meet the last one, the one that had dodged his blow, but it was gone.
Looking around the clearing he’d chosen as his campsite, Rew felt a surge of uneasy confusion. Narjags didn’t travel in large groups, and they didn’t run. They didn’t have shamans. At least, they hadn’t in his lifetime.
Blessed Mother, what was going on?
Chapter 2
“Senior Ranger,” greeted a man, glancing up from where he was repairing a tear in a patchwork woolen cloak. “You think the commandant will free up some extra funds this year? I’ve been wearing the same cloak since I began this posting.”
“Aye, and it’s kept you warm. Must be a nice cloak, too, if it’s almost as old as I am,” said Rew with a wink. “We do have some spares in the storage room, but I’m not sure they match your mature sense of style.”
The ranger at the table snorted. “They don’t make them like they used to, you mean?”
Rew shrugged. “You’re the best judge of that, though, I’ve heard that past a certain age the memory gets a little foggy. When I look at that thing, I see more patch than I do cloak. Could it be that in all of those years you’ve forgotten your old cloak isn’t any better crafted than my new one? Yours certainly seems to need repair often enough.”
The other man grinned, placed one hand on his cloak and raised his needle and thread in the other. “Some things have aged well since this was first sewn, improved even. Maybe you’d like me to give you a little stitch, and see what I can do for you?”
Rew rolled his eyes and walked to the other side of the table from the man. He laid out the amber capped staff he’d taken from the narjag shaman, a crudely constructed pack he’d found dropped in the woods outside his campsite, and a necklace made of shriveled bits of flesh he’d taken from the shaman’s neck. “What do you make of these, Tate?”
Tate pushed his cloak and needle aside and leaned over the items. “Unusual. These are from the narjag party, the one Farmer Bartrim reported?”
“They are,” confirmed Rew.
Tate stood, rubbing at the white stubble on his chin. “Quite strange to see narjags with something other than rudimentary weapons and clothing, unless they’ve been looted from their victims. Is that human or narjag flesh on the necklace?”
“Narjag ears, I think,” answered Rew, “though, in their condition, they could be anything.”
“I’ve never seen the like, and the only time I’ve heard of a narjag with artifacts like this it was a shaman,” said Tate, looking up to meet Rew’s gaze. “You chased down a narjag shaman? It’s been years since anyone has seen one. Before my time, even.”
Rew shrugged. “I don’t know. It had the look of a shaman, but it didn’t cast a spell against me. I gave it the opportunity. It yelled at me a bit in the Dark Kind tongue, and then I killed it. I don’t know the nature of Dark Kind spellcasting, but a human would have had time to get a spell off.”
Tate blinked at him, shaking his head.
“I would have struck before it actually cast its spell,” assured Rew. “I had to wait to see if it had the capability.”
The other ranger grunted. “But it did nothing except curse at you?”
“Nothing,” agreed Rew.
Tate brushed back a lock of silver-white hair then hesitantly opened the pack. He peered inside, shuffled through the contents, and brought out a half-empty gourd. He sniffed it and scowled, shoving the gourd back into the pack.
He said, “Nothing remarkable in here. A container for that awful liquor they drink. Some tools they crafted themselves, a couple of rocks. No food, which isn’t surprising. Narjags feast or famine. A needle but no thread. Stolen, I imagine. Looks a bit rusty. Maybe it’s been some time since they took it. A whetstone, probably stolen too, along with this little hand mirror. Doesn’t look like they found that too long ago, but we’ve had no recent reports of attacks, have we? I suppose this is what a pack of narjags think is their valuables. It was in the woods, you said?”
“They dropped it before attacking me,” said Rew.
“Well, the pack doesn’t seem unusual, though it’s odd one of the party was able to hold onto this stuff without the rest of them fighting over it,” said Tate, fiddling with the items. “The necklace and the staff do sound like what the shamans were purported to carry, but if it was a true shaman, I agree it ought to have tried something on you. Maybe it’s a sign of leadership rather than magical might?”
“There’s something I’m missing here,” replied Rew. “It was a large party. Nearly a dozen of them, counting the shaman, or whatever it was. That’s twice the size we were seeing two years ago when the Dark Kind last passed through the forest, and these narjags were going somewhere as if they were in a hurry. That’s the thing, Tate. They were in a hurry, but I still managed to catch up to them after getting Bartrim’s report two days ago. Why were they moving so quickly now, and where have they been the last two days?”
“Narjags in a hurry?” asked Tate skeptically. “There have been rumors that the conjurers trained some of the Dark Kind as shamans years ago, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of narjags going somewhere in a hurry. Not unless there’s a bloody piece of meat at the end of the journey.”
“I’ll walk you through from the beginning, from when I first found the tracks,” said Rew. “I want to hear what you think in case I missed something. You’ve been out in this wilderness three times as long as the rest of us. In over three decades of service, have you ever seen anything like it?”
“Narjags traveling in larger groups than usual, sure, I’ve seen that,” replied Tate, sitting back down at the table, his eyes still on the artifacts. “Narjags acting unusual or carrying odd items, of course. They pick up things, as you know, items from people they’ve encountered and killed, rubbish they’ve stumbled across. I’ve seen them adorned with plenty of strange trinkets. A shaman, though, nah, I’ve never seen one. Never heard of anyone else seeing one, either. Not even the old rangers when I first started had seen that. They spoke about it, though, like there had been shamans on the field during the last war against the Dark Kind. That’s, ah, fifty years back, Rew. The wilderness has been clean of such since then. I will say it appears that whatever these talismans are meant to be, the narjags made them themselves. The staff is crude like the weapons they use, and I can’t imagine any person going and collecting narjag ears.”
Rew rubbed his chin while both men looked at the artifacts on the table. “Could it be, ah, narjag fashion? Some chieftain of theirs trying to set himself apart?”
Tate shrugged. “Could be.”
Sighing, Rew said, “Pack them up and put them in the post to Yarrow, will you? I’d like to see what the baron’s arcanist has to say about these. Maybe they’re junk, but…”
“You never know,” finished Tate, nodding. “I agree, Senior Ranger, it’s best to get another opinion. If the Dark Kind have regained the ability to cast spells… I don’t suppose you followed their tracks back and saw what they’ve been up to between Bartrim’s farm and where you caught them?”
“Not yet,” replied Rew. “With a larger party than normal, I figured I would bring someone with me in case we stumble across more of them. If it’s the beginning of another migration, we’ll need to start going out in pairs, me included. You fancy a quick jaunt into the wilderness tomorrow morning?”
Tate shook his head. He put a hand on his half-repaired cloak. “I’ve got a bit of work to finish here.”
Rew raised a hand, thinking of reaching across to the older man, but he dropped it. “Of course. You finish what you need to. Who else is in at the moment?”
“Just you and me,” replied Tate. “Ang and Vurcell haven’t returned from Yarrow, but they should be back within a day or two unless Vurcell got lost in the taverns again. Blythe took the new kid out to the southern range, trying to teach him a few things, I suppose.”
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