A Warrior's Legacy (9 page)

The terrain was undulating and I headed for
where I thought water might be congregated in the folds of the
land. We slipped in and around massive tree trunks and around large
boulders.

Areas of the forest still lay in fog, which
only aided the imaginative fear of what kinds of menacing monsters
lay just out of our sight. Rounding a tree I saw a pool of water
just where I had thought that there would be.

We didn’t approach it immediately, but
instead we studied it and the surrounding forest closely. I
detected nothing in the stillness. Slowly we made our way down to
the pool of water.

It appeared clear and of a sufficient
quantity as we had need of. I kept looking around at our
surroundings as Gavin kneeled down before the water and cupped some
of it with his hands to bring it up to his mouth to drink.

I heard the water fall abruptly from his
hands to smack into the pool of water and looking back I watched as
he fell away from the water and backed away even further scooting
on his rear.

A hand on my sword I asked in a loud
whisper, “What is it? What do you see?”

Gavin looked like he was about to be sick,
but he managed to hold it in.

He pointed at the water and said, “See for
yourself!”

I stepped closer to the water and cautiously
peered down into the water. The water was crystal clear and the
piled jumble of human skeletons was clearly visible. I swallowed
and looked away from the water. This forest really must be
cursed.

I loved forests generally, but this one had
such an oppressive menacing feel to it that I wouldn’t have thought
a thing of it if the whole forest was hacked down and turned into a
desert. I couldn’t wait to be free of the place.

I caught a glimpse of something moving in
the forest and I wasted no time in grabbing Gavin and directing him
along a narrow ledge around the pool water to its backside. I had
noticed a cleft in the rock there earlier and into this I half
shoved Gavin and then stuffed myself into as well.

Our heads were positioned so that we could
still see a filtered view of the pond of water through the fronds
of a fern.

“Did you see someone?” Whispered Gavin

“Shhhh!”

The creatures I had seen moving in the
distance came closer and closer. There were two of them and they
were hard to look at mainly because at one time the two disfigured
creatures before us lapping water away at the pool like dogs had
been human.

While still human in form they had a brutish
quality to their mannerisms and a feral look to their eyes that
signaled to the fact that they had more in common with an animal
than they did a man.

They were naked and every inch of them was
scarred, as if torn by nature and each other in constant strife.
Open wounds festered and oozed puss. They were pitiful to
behold.

These must be the people of the Eastern
Kingdom who had not died of the disease, but instead had gone mad.
One of the creatures suddenly seized a bone out of the water and
gnawed on it viciously.

Giving a disgusted grunt the creature
through the bone back into the water. That answered that question.
Not only were these freakish looking creatures stark raving mad,
but they were also cannibalistic. Certainly not who I wanted to
shake hands with in this darkened forest.

One of them abruptly lifted its head as if
it had heard or smelled something of interest and I feared that it
might be us. The other creature lifted its head and then they both
seemed to gurgle excitedly in their throats as if in some fit of
grotesque glee probably over their next meal.

They ran off towards their point of interest
in an odd combination of all fours and staggering half standing. My
hand relaxed off of my sword and fell to my side.

I turned slightly back to Gavin, “I want you
to go back and warn the men and have them come in that direction.”
I whispered pointing where the two man beasts had run off
towards.

I started to leave in that direction, but
Gavin seized my arm, “You’re not going on after them alone are
you?”

I nodded.

He whispered, “You’re crazy!”

He let go of me reluctantly. I moved off
leaving him, admitting to myself that I was undoubtedly loony for
going off alone, but it was an urge that I couldn’t deny. Something
told me to follow the creatures and see what mischief they were up
to.

I left my sword sheathed and instead pulled
the composite bow from my back and notched an arrow into it. My
skills of stealth in the forest had always been good, but my time
spent fighting alongside of the Attorgrons had honed my skills even
further.

The creatures had moved fast and so did I. I
quickly slipped through the forest ready to nail anything that
moved, with an arrow. The creatures had a sickly rotten smell to
them and it was this that I paid the closest attention for as I was
sure that as the feral animals these people had become they were
probably extremely adept at blending in with their
surroundings.

I’d gone quite a ways when I caught a whiff
of the smell and I slowed down and took my time creeping through
the forest. The smell grew stronger too strong for just the two
that I had been tracking.

There were more of the creatures gathered
somewhere close by. I heard a slight sound that didn’t fit in to
the still setting of the forest right. It had sounded like metal
hitting off of a rock.

I had seen no metal implements on the
creatures. Instead of following the trail where it led down into a
small cul-de-sac I instead climbed up some projecting boulder
formations in order to get a better view and avoid being ambushed
by the creatures or something else in the tight confines of the
cul-de-sac.

Gaining the high ground of the massive
boulder promontory I peered over the edge to view the scene below.
I was surprised to see people, that is sane people, gathered below
my perch not thirty feet away. There were twelve of them and they
did not appear to be Westerners as their dress was too humble in
comparison.

These then must be the survivors of the
plague and residents of the last city remaining of the Eastern
Kingdom that Ziya had mentioned. A formidable looking warrior stood
off to one side of the group sword in hand.

He couldn’t have been much older than me,
but he was obviously the one in command. He was flanked by two
women who must also be warriors; they held bow and arrows at the
ready, as all three surveyed the surrounding slopes of the
cul-de-sac.

A third warrioress stood up higher on a
rocky projection on the opposite side of the cul-de-sac from me.
She must be there look out. She too carried a bow and arrow at the
ready.

These warriors were ready for a fight, but
what were they doing here in the first place? The remaining eight
men, who also appeared to be warriors, were on their knees digging
in the dirt with their hands and with small shovels. I saw one pull
a plant from the ground that had long thick yellow roots. He tore
the top of the plant off and threw the roots into a sack by his
side.

Surely these warriors weren’t risking their
lives by coming to this dreadful forest to gather medicinal herbs
and roots! But apparently they were doing just that.

They must be sorely needed by their people
to risk coming here. The warrior below held up his hand and all
work stopped. He surveyed his surroundings with a sharp eye. He,
like I did, sensed that our common enemy was near.

Very near!

But where?

I saw the slightest of movements near the
scout’s location out of the corner of my eyes and my bow swiveled
to that point. What was it I had seen?

I watched closely. A clump of moss moved
ever so slightly nearer the warrioress’s feet. A gnarled hand
reached slowly out of the clump of moss towards the woman’s
legs.

I let loose my arrow and pinned the
outstretched hand to the ground. The beast roared up in pain
throwing the moss covering to the side. The warrioress drilled an
arrow at point-blank range into the beast’s skull and it fell over
backward dead to the ground.

The ground all around her erupted with
movement and she screamed a warning out to those below. With the
grace of a mountain panther she leaped off her rocky perch and down
towards the group of her people below, even as one of my arrows
whizzed past her and drilled into a beast that had been about to
grab her.

There were strange hideous looking beasts
appearing out of everywhere all of a sudden. They had to number at
least sixty. The group below was hopelessly outnumbered.

The lead warrior had backed his warriors up
against the rock face I was on top of as if sensing I was a friend
and not a foe.

Spellbound I watched even as I fired off
arrows at the raging horde of beasts suddenly ringing the top of
the cul-de-sac, as the woman jumped perilously from boulder to
boulder in her headlong rush down the hill towards her friends. A
group of fifteen of the brutes had taken on after her and I tried
my best to pick them off, as they lunged after her on all fours
over the rocks.

She was near the bottom of the dip, when her
foot slipped on a wet rock and she fell. I saw her pretty face
tighten up with pain, even as her mouth opened on a scream that I
couldn’t hear, because of the din and noise of the brutes around
us.

Her leg was broken I could tell that even
from my high perch. Incredibly I watched her with great effort flip
herself over and reach back and pull her leg out from between the
two rocks it had slipped between. Flipping back over onto her belly
she started crawling for a cleft in the rocks up ahead of her
grabbing her bow up in the process.

She had given up on reaching her friends for
the hope of finding a defensible position. Reaching a rock she
turned and pushing herself up slightly she cranked off an arrow
that went through the throat of a brute that had slipped past my
arrows.

The brute fell at her feet choking on its
own blood. She was one tough girl that one was! I was running out
of arrows and soon I wouldn’t be able to keep the majority of the
brutes at bay and she was too far away for me to reach in time. She
was out of arrows and so was I within moments.

I jumped to my feet and ran along the top of
the rocks toward her even though I would probably be too late. A
big brute was already almost on top of her. I was going to be too
late!

I stopped abruptly when I saw Holon come out
of nowhere on a dead run and lop the beast’s head clean off with
his long war sword. He then put one foot to the headless brute’s
chest and pushed the body over and away from the girl. Holon
stepped overtop the girl and dispatched another onrushing
brute.

She was in good hands now and so I turned my
attention back to the other confrontation taking place. The main
mob of the brutes had descended upon the other warriors. The lead
warrior had broken free of the close quarters combat and fought
alone in amongst the brutes with superb skill and precision of
movement.

To some it may look like he was showing off
and perhaps partly he was, but he was also attracting the attention
of a lot of the brutes, which evened the fighting odds of the other
warriors, who with great skill as well were easily eliminating the
brutes before them, while they protected the sacks full of the
yellow roots behind them with their lives.

I started my own perilous journey down into
the dip hoping that I didn’t break a leg in the process too. It
would have been easy to do.

The lone warrior got clubbed hard from
behind and fell to one knee. The brute was raising his club to
finish him off, when after I had jumped from yet fifteen feet
higher above, my boots landed on his shoulders. The impact drove
the beast into the ground and broke my fall. Thrusting both of my
sabers through his back for good measure, I hopped off his
back.

The warrior was back on his feet a crimson
streak of blood running down from his hairline. Our eyes met and a
bond was formed. Turning back to back we fought the mob of brutes
off together.

The fighting was soon over, when Gavin and
the others ran sword swinging into the scene. The last brute fell
while trying to escape from one of the archer warrioress well aimed
arrows.

I looked around none of the Easterners, as
that was who I was sure they were, had fallen. The girl with the
broken leg was the worst casualty. I saw that the other two
warrioress’s had gone over to her and Holon.

They held the girl down as Holon realigned
her leg bones with a sharp click. The girl’s strangled cry of pain
would have made anyone with a heart cringe in sympathy for her.

Holon was already strapping a splint to her
leg aided by the other two women. My attention came back to rest on
the young warrior whom I had fought side by side with, as Gavin
came up to stand beside me.

The warrior looked from one to the other of
us incredulously. “You are the two brothers the high priestess
prophesied of! You have come!”

He and the others abruptly kneeled to the
ground before us. Even the girl with the broken leg and splint
tried to kneel, but couldn’t when Holon pushed her back down.

Gavin and I shared a brief look and I
couldn’t resist whispering, “Think that high priestess is your
dream girl Gavin?”

He looked like he wanted to cut me in half
with his giant sword. I turned back to the kneeling warrior and
pulled him to his feet.

“We are no one that you should bow to. All
of you stand up.”

They stood watching and looking at us in
open amazement of our appearance out of seemingly nowhere to their
rescue.

“If it had not been for your help and your
well aimed arrows, many or perhaps all of us would have fallen. We
are in your debt.” The lead warrior said.