Chương 2: The Huntsman's Home

It was dark, but a hazy yellow moon stared unblinking down at him, providing just enough light to make his path clear. Martimeos was standing in a field of long grass, dotted here and there with soft white meadowflowers, almost seeming to glow as they caught the moonlight. Fairy's tears, they were called, drooping sadly towards the ground, their petals looking oddly like little women in dresses, faces in their hands, weeping.

They bobbed up and down, gently, as a breeze passed through the field, the grass rippling in waves. The wind brought with it a wave of heat and the smell of burning wood, and something else. In the distance, the dull orange glow of fires stained the night sky. Ash drifted down to settle gently in his hair. Martimeos opened his mouth to speak, tearing open lips that felt as if they had melted together. Nothing but bright blood bubbled out.

His hands were pale, too pale, too cold, and he could only dimly feel an agony, an agony that he knew was dulled beneath numbness, deep inside him, like the sounds of screams in the far distance. He walked, stumbled, shuffled through the tall grass, not feeling it as it brushed against him, not willing himself forward at all, drawn, drawn to those fires in the distance. He had to know what burned. But long before he reached the flames, he spotted a small figure laying face down on the ground.

All at once, he knew he could not go near it. He tried to scream as his feet dragged him closer. Closer to the small, ruined, broken figure, mercifully hidden mostly in shadow, lying in the dirt. He tried to tear his eyes away, but whatever force it was that made him walk against his will made him look, too. He had to look. He couldn't look. An eye in a ruined face moved slightly, to look back at him. Not dead. Oh, if only, if only it had been dead.

The thing on the ground opened a mouth full of broken teeth to speak. ===***=== Martimeos awoke with a hoarse yell, his eyes staring wildly, heart hammering in his chest. It took him a few moments to realize where he was, and when he did he grimaced. His throat burned as if he had done more yelling in his sleep, and he hastily wiped tears from his face. It had been years since he had had that nightmare. Or, at the least, years since he had remembered it upon waking.

"Dark thoughts," he muttered to himself. Dark thoughts put into his head, by his meeting with the demon yesterday. That was all. He quickly put it out of his mind, not wanting to think of it at all. Let the Land of Dreams claim back its visions, the way it normally did. He stood up with a groan, stretching sore limbs, shaking leaves from his hair. It had not been a very satisfying sleep at all, and the light had only barely broken, but he did not intend to stay here one moment longer than he had to.

He had been in these woods too long already, and he had further to go before he was out of them. The demon had said less than a tenday's journey, but how much less? Martimeos was a fast walker. Perhaps he could be at Silverfish with just a few day's journey, and hopefully find a bed to sleep in. In a tree a stone's throw away, a bird burst into exultant song, saluting the sun. Other birds joined in quickly, but Martimeos smiled. He recognized who that first birdsong belonged to.

"Ho, Flit!" he cried out, following with a birdlike whistle of his own. A brilliantly scarlet cardinal darted out from the leaves, camouflaged quite nicely among the reds and yellows of autumn, and winged its way towards him, landing on his outstretched glove, cocking its head to stare at him with one beady, black eye.

"Did you have a fine time winging yesterday?" Martimeos asked him. He nodded sagely as his familiar told him of a fine talking-to he had given a group of finches who thought they could keep him from a bush of bloodberries that he had found, despite the fact that there was enough for all. The way he talked, he made it sound as if he had battled every finch at once with the utmost honor and defeated them all handily. Perhaps he had.

Flit, like most familiars who chose to serve one who practiced the Art, was unusual for his species. Something about the Art seemed to invigorate them, make them more than they otherwise might be. Flit was larger, smarter, and had plumage more brilliant than your typical cardinal, something he was inordinately proud of. Some even learned to speak a human tongue, though Flit had never had the ability for that.

Though Martimeos at times suspected that he might have, but simply found it too insulting to speak in anything but song. Familiars were supposed to serve, but Flit seemed to find the relationship much more of one between equals. Martimeos paused for a moment, considering. He could speak in the bird-tongue too - or, at least, one of the bird tongues, one that Flit could understand.

There were hundreds, if not thousands of them, some of them just slight variations on what he knew, some of them so foreign that he could not tell one trill from the next. He was a bit clumsy while speaking it, but.. maybe, just maybe, someone was listening to him. Pursing his lips, he whistled smartly.

"Have you noticed anyone following us?" Flit puffed up imperiously, insulted, his crest bobbing up and down in irritation. Of course he hadn't, if he had, he would have told, now wouldn't he? Martimeos did his best to soothe him, offering him an old, stale crumb of bread that he dug out of one of his pockets.

"It's alright. The demon, yesterday, told me someone was following me. It might have lied. But perhaps it is best if you stay nearby for a bit." Flit gave a long, desultory, put-upon whistle. Usually, he spent most of his time winging up high, far ahead of Martimeos, scouting the land and reporting back anything unusual. The little cardinal liked to think of himself as leading the charge; being the rear guard did not nearly satisfy his curious bird's sense of honor.

But still, he agreed, taking off from Martimeos' hand to alight upon a nearby branch, warbling unenthusiastically as his wizard made ready. Not that there was much for Martimeos to do. He grabbed his satchel from a nearby tree and slung it over his shoulder, as well as his crossbow, fumbling for a bit to make sure they did not tangle in his cloak. He loosened the red scarf that hung about his neck. It was a crisp fall day, but walking would warm him up.

For a brief moment he considered hiding the evidence of his campfire, but if someone really was following him, they certainly already knew he had been there. Maybe it would make sense, in the future, to be more discreet with his campsites. He sighed. He almost hoped that Flit did spot someone, so he could confront them, and not have to put up with the extra effort of hiding. A brief memory of his nightmare swept through him as he looked at where he had slept, and he shivered.

Defiantly, he began whistling a merry tune, forcing any lingering memories from his mind, and was off and on his way. ===***=== His camp had not been made far from the road, just off of it enough to be out of sight if someone had glanced his way, and it was not long before he was striding down it with a purpose, Flit darting from tree to tree around him, the whistle eventually fading from his lips as he became lost in his own thoughts.

Unlike the ancient, forgotten statues by the demon's cave, this road was only centuries old, or at least so it seemed. Its builders had laid good foundations, in any case, and while the top layer of flat, gray paving stones may be worn, the forest had not reclaimed it yet. The wells and cisterns he had seen built roadside for travelers, however, were choked with brush and useless more often than not.

Someone had once, at great expense, carved a path through these woods, trying to tame them, but whoever that had been was now long gone. Most folks he had spoken to called it the One-Road Wood, appropriately enough, with warnings never to stray from the path. Martimeos knew they had another name as well: the Forest of Glys, though only because he had seen that name on an old map.

He had heard stories when he was young mentioning that name, though, with never a description of where it was, only tales of brave young men killed by shadows in the dark, or foolish princesses lured into the deep woods by the fae, never to return. He wondered if the stories had any truth to them. Nowadays, there were such tales about every forest. But then again, nowadays, nearly every forest did swallow up folk in all truth.

There were no Kings to carve them up with roads and tame them; none with the strength or inclination, anyway. The demon, at least, is truth enough for any story, he thought grimly. The demon was known as a Dolmec, and the stories - none of the sort that you told in polite company, the sort of stories that wizards and witches might whisper to each other when normal folk weren't listening - they said that such creatures could be bargained with.

The demons were always after the jet-black material which most folk called Nightstone - if they knew of it at all - but which those who practiced the Art called Dolmec iron. If they knew of it at all. It was a rare thing, and in truth may not have been stone or metal at all. It was something out of an age long gone; nobody alive knew how to work it, it was for all intents and purposes indestructible.

He had gotten his Dolmec iron from the same person who had told him about the Dolmec in the first place: A witch that called herself Mother Pris, who lived on the outskirts of the village of Congar. The men of Congar traded in timbering and woodcraft, but though Mother Pris would tend their wounds, they seemed not very fond of her, and the women even less so. Martimeos had thought, at first, that it was simply fear of the Art.

After meeting Mother Pris, though, he didn't think he could blame the villagers for their lack of gratitude. He thought it very likely that the witch was not entirely human.

She kept her face hidden entirely, buried deep within a filthy hooded shawl, and wrapped around with a scarf; she had worn long gloves, covering every inch of flesh, yet all that precaution could not hide the fact that she stood a good two heads taller than Martimeos did, nor could it hide her eyes, too-large, rheumy, and moving in different directions from each other.

There were tales of wild witches consorting with demons and other outsiders, and Martimeos would have bet all the coin he had that Pris' mother had been one such, if he could have, or call himself Fortune's fool if he did not. For all her strangeness, though, Pris had welcomed him warmly once she had learned he was a wizard. She felt a responsibility, she had said, to welcome young practitioners of the Art.

She told him of the Dolmec which might have some of the answers he sought, and Martimeos had been surprised when she had offered him the figurine and the little charm of Dolmec iron. He had wondered if there weren't men who would pay quite a lot for such things, the little relics from another time being so rare. But she had seemed glad to be rid of them, eager even. He wondered, not for the first time, where exactly Pris had gotten them to begin with. Or how she knew of the Dolmec, so deep in the woods.

Who, exactly, her mother might have consorted with. Shivering, he put it out of his mind. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work! She had told him, too, of a huntsman, by the name of Coxton Praet, who made his life alone in the deep of the woods, but who would help travelers. If she had told him true, he would reach Coxton's outpost before sunlight failed today. Martimeos looked forward to it.

He had traveled on his own for some time now, but never so utterly alone as he was in these woods, not seeing a soul, other than the demon, for days on end. He had Flit to keep him company, but another human face would be good to see. Coxton was certainly an odd sort of man, to eke out a life alone this deep in the woods, but some men were simply like that. Martimeos could sympathize, to a point. There was something to be said for the quiet of a wood. Perhaps he might even get a well-cooked meal, for once.

Hunting was not sparse in the One-Road Wood, but one tired of rabbit seared over a campfire. That is, if he could be trusted. If Pris could be trusted, for that matter. What if it was Pris who was following him? A witch so much older than he, so much more worked with the Art, might have the means to hide even from Flit's eyes. What if that was the plan? To have him walk right to Coxton, her ally, thinking that between the two of them a young, inexperienced wizard would be easy pickings. But why?

Perhaps not to kill him. After all, there were things that could be done, rites that required the living blood of those who practiced the Art… Martimeos shook his head grimly. He was not going to let the demon's words worm their way into his brain. If Pris were following him, and wanted to kill or capture him, she had had many opportunities. And visiting the Dolmec, for all that it had unnerved him, had worked out to his advantage as she had promised as well.

If she had wanted him, she never even had to let him out of her sight - she could have bound him up as he sat in her hut. He was still not convinced that anyone was following him at all. Certainly the demon would have taken perverse pleasure in lying to him, for exactly the sort of reaction he was having at this very moment. He told himself that. Still, he walked on less enthusiastically than before, his worn boots no longer eating up so much ground.

He kept his eye on Flit, and glanced behind himself, down the long empty road, more than he should have. ===***=== The sun was just beginning to set when he reached the home of Coxton Praet. Or so Martimeos assumed it was. When this road had been laid down, in addition to the wells and cisterns for the benefit of travelers, the builders had also constructed occasional waystations.

He had already passed by a few of these, or rather, the stone skeletons of what remained of them - their roofs and whatever else was wooden about them long since rotted away. This one, however, had a thatched roof in good repair, though the adjoining stables had been left to ruin. It would have served as a modest inn, with rooms for a few travelers to rest in overnight; it probably was too large for a man living alone, though perhaps being stone-carved made the effort worth it in the winter.

Firewood lay stacked against one of the outer walls, and the well which lay in the center of a small, stone-paved courtyard out front was not choked with brush or fallen in on itself, as so many others had been.

"Coxton Praet!" Martimeos called out as he approached. He glanced behind himself, catching a glimpse of Flit darting from tree to tree over the road, then cupped his hands to his mouth to shout once more.

"I was told by Mother Pris that I might find rest under your roof!" Silence answered him. Most likely the man was out hunting. He would likely be back soon, before it got dark. Martimeos shrugged off his hide satchel and his crossbow, and drew up clear, cool water from the well to refill his waterskins. Too bad there was little hope that Coxton had an extra bed. It would be nice when he could sleep in one of those again. Having drunk his fill, he walked around the inn, admiring it.

It may have been modest in size, but in nature it seemed dignified; a stately columned portico hung over the front entrance, seeming to invite weary travelers to at the very least rest in its shade, and the doorway itself was large, grand, and back when it was first built probably graced with a pair of heavy great doors, though nowadays it looked as if Coxton had boarded most of the portal up and built a more modest doorway into it.

Martimeos walked around the side of the building, still admiring the architecture, his mind far away and dreaming of a hot well-cooked meal, when he turned the corner and froze. At the back of the building was another entrance, this one smaller - probably used by the cooks, when this was still an inn, to throw out the refuse from the kitchen. However it was used now, though, it was torn off its hinges, and lay askew half-in and half-out of its own doorway.

For the briefest of moments Martimeos held onto the hope that Coxton had merely left it in the middle of repairs, before he spotted that the long, dry, dying grass leading away from it was trampled and broken and unmistakably bloodied. Part of him still wanted to live in denial. Coxton was a huntsman, maybe it was simply the signs of his butchery. But a foreboding told Martimeos that this was not the case, that something was wrong here. And he knew well enough to listen to that instinct.

Something about working with the Art sharpened it. In wizards and witches, it was rarely wrong. He held his breath, his hand going to the hilt of his sword, and listened. Except for the chirping of crickets, he could hear nothing. He drew his blade, slowly, so slowly, with just the whisper of a hiss as it left its scabbard, and crept forward. As he inched closer to the broken door, and got a better look, his heart sank.

There was a lot of blood smeared on the grass, as if something large and bleeding profusely had been dragged away. It had been dried black, though. This hadn't happened recently. It could have happened days ago, for all he could tell - there had been no rains recently to wash the bloodstains away. He relaxed, just a little bit, though he still kept a firm grip on his sword. If it had happened days ago, there was less of a chance that whoever had done this was still here.

Unless they heard you crying out for Coxton and now lie in ambush for you. He listened once again, but shook his head - he wasn't going to hear someone standing still behind stone walls. Pressing himself flat against the outer walls, he gathered his courage, and quickly peeked around the edge of the doorway - and then swore. The interior of the inn was a shambles. Bloodstains were spattered everywhere - the walls, the floor, the ceiling - in some parts, it almost seemed as if the floor had been painted with it.

This was no butchery - there had been a battle here, and someone, or multiple someones, had bled out on the floor and probably died. The smell of blood was thick in the air, as Martimeos stepped inside. He still held his sword, but he didn't think that anyone who had done this was still here. He liked to think that even bandits would have made an attempt to clean up the gore if they were going to stay. Not that he was certain this was the work of bandits, because the blood was the least of it.

Every scrap of furniture, everything made of wood, everything that would burn, had been hacked to timbers and piled up in the center of the inn floor. There were the remains of a table, several chairs, books with their pages torn out. He even saw a few perfectly good furs thrown in the pile, wolf pelts. And the acrid smell of smoke hung in the air. Part of the pile was blackened with char.

He reached out with the Art, and could feel the dead trace of flame thwarted before it could catch hold; it had burned hot enough to burn through torn papers but not enough to catch the hard, heavy wood of the furniture. Someone had gone through all this trouble to try to burn down the inn, but had not bothered to stick around to make sure it took. And they had not been back to try again since.

Martimeos quickly checked all of the adjoining rooms, which was easy enough, since Coxton had either not bothered to put doors in them, or what doors they had had been torn down and added to the fire-pile. All empty except for dust. Walking back to the inn's common room, he sheathed his blade with a sigh, and then shook his head, disgusted. He made his way out of the inn, filling his lungs with fresh air. The scent of dry blood in that enclosed space was making him feel sick.

But seeing the forest that surrounded the inn, its shadows growing darker every moment as daylight died, hardly made him feel any better. He whistled out to Flit, telling his familiar to stay close. He thought those who had done this were long gone, but he didn't want to take any chances at the moment. Wondering what might have done this, he decided to follow the blood trail out the back of the inn to see if it led to any answers. He did not follow it far before the sour stink of death filled his nostrils.

He covered his mouth and nose with the corner of his cloak. And then he came across the body. He almost stepped on it, it was so hidden in the long grass. He took it at first for the corpse of a man in strange garb, and thought that his answer was that bandits had done this. But past a first glance, the corpse did not look human at all. It was not wearing strange garb - it was covered in filthy, dull gray feathers, where its flesh was not covered in primitively stitched, untreated skins.

And its face, its face was not human at all. Covered in whorls of tough, knotted gray skin, surrounding a long, hooked, curving beak - a vulture's beak. The eyes, though, even in death the eyes were human, far too human for comfort. Its throat had been opened, and a sheet of dried, blackened blood fell down its neck and chest. It had been here long enough for the flies to find - they crawled all over it, into and out of that sharp beak, over the sightless, unblinking eyes.

But what struck Martimeos the most was the strange sense of familiarity that washed over him, looking at it. Why should he feel this thing was familiar? He had no idea what it even was, he had never heard of such a creature before… Vultures. Remember where you saw vultures? There were so many of them, wheeling through the sky. A storm of them. Martimeos shook his head, banishing the thought, but he could not stop staring at the corpse. A sense of disgust, of contempt welled up within him.

What a wretched thing this creature was, how hateful. So intent was he that, at first, he missed Flit's cry. But his head snapped up when his familiar called out with another shrill song. Someone was near. A stranger. Close. He scanned the dark treeline ahead of him, wrapped in a soft gloam as the last few rays of daylight danced across the sky. At first, even while listening to Flit's frustrated directions, he saw nothing.

But as he swept his eyes across the shadows, there seemed to be one part of the forest they lingered on, even without him knowing why - And then he saw them. What once his mind had dismissed as a split in the trunk of an old gnarled oak moved in a way that no tree trunk should, and all at once he could see it was not a part of the tree at all. It was a dark figure, unmistakably so, though too hidden in the dim light of evenfall to make out any features, and less than a shout's distance away.

Before Martimeos could even think to remain quiet, he had cried out in alarm, and the figure immediately disappeared behind the tree. He only paused for a moment before immediately sprinting after them, as hard as he could. Whoever it was, they could have been luring him into a trap. Perhaps he was being foolish. But maybe whoever it was was running off to tell others that he was here. Maybe it was another one of the vulture-men. He had already committed to the choice.

And Martimeos was a fast runner, with long legs, and nimble through the brush. He leapt over a patch of itchleaf to come down with a crash right where the figure had stood mere moments before, and there it was moving deeper into the woods before him. He had already halved the distance between them. He could make out, now, that whoever it was, they wore a long, dark jacket, and a wide-brimmed, pointed hat. He got a glimpse of a pale face as the figure looked back at him in alarm, and then began running hard.

Not a vulture-man, then, Martimeos thought as he tore after it. Whoever it was could not run as fast as he could, and he was easily gaining on them. Branches tore at his hair as he flew through them, but he was too intent on the figure before him. But then, between one step and the next, it seemed to simply disappear. Martimeos slowed, making his steps more careful, but he did not stop. Soon enough he came across the explanation.

Right where the figure had disappeared, a shallow gully cut across the forest floor, carved by a stream that had since gone dry. Deep enough for someone to disappear, if they threw themselves in it, but shallow enough that it wouldn't hurt them, and deep with dead leaves as cushion besides. He stopped, breath ragged in his throat, and listened for a moment. He could hear no sounds of movement.

Growling with frustration, he leapt into the gully, kicking aside the mounds of leaves, sending them fluttering through the air. But nothing lay beneath them except hard dirt and waterworn stone. Martimeos swore beneath his breath, then glared at the empty, silent forest.

"Show yourself!" he cried out, his voice harsh with anger.

"If you follow me, show yourself, unless you're a hollow coward!" Nothing but his own echo answered him. He gave the leaves one last desultory kick. There was nothing for it. He couldn't waste time searching. Darkness was coming on, and he had to move. He couldn't stay here.