024 – Warning

***

“Some say that the God of Swords hides himself from mankind. The god shuns burnt offerings and prefers instead blood shed in conflict as sacrifice. The battlefield is his holy ground. The ringing of steel on steel and the shouts of dying soldiers satisfy his need for prayer. Because of the unending turmoil in the sublunary world, the god feels no need to intervene, and so keeps himself concealed.” Putrizio the fightmaster spoke to us as we rowed up the Spitpoison River.

“Others say there is no God of Swords. The Lunar Deities never assigned one of their number to that office, so that mortal men would strive to gain the title for themselves. Were there a God of Swords, then mortals would humbly pray at his altar and avoid the hubris of comparing themselves to such a divine entity. Thus, to fill mankind with ambition and fire, they left the post open for us to strive for.

“To become the God of Swords is an impossible dream. All swordsmen know this. Any who attempt to claim the title are fate-bound to die cruelly disappointed. Yet it is the only goal worth having, and in our secret hearts, we all treasure that blasphemous ambition more than any other—to make ourselves a god with just the blades in our hands.”

The three disciples nodded their heads at the fightmaster’s sage words and quietly pondered his wisdom as they pulled against the oars.

It sounded like a bunch of crazy nonsense to me.

They could keep their bloody gods and swords; I wanted comfort and happiness—for myself and others. For a loftier goal, it would gratify me to expand the human race’s knowledge of the odd physical universe we’d found ourselves in. That’s the wisdom I valued. What more could a person ask for?

My oar thudded against Zambulon’s.

“Stop rowing out of time with the rest of us, Strythe. You’re making the boat go askew.”

“Sorry. I’ve forgotten how to paddle.”

“You have a very selective memory, junior disciple. You remember what’s useful to you and forget anything inconvenient. Why is that?”

“I don’t know. And if I knew before, it’s slipped away from me since.”

Putrizio said, “It’s a most unusual affliction. Before the accident Strythe was very… earnest. Now he is a great deal wittier. Ignorance is easy to overcome whereas dull wits need a miracle to cure. The stirring of his brain has left him better off than he was before, because for a swordsman, fox-like cunning is more essential than a right hand.”

‘Earnest.’ At least he didn’t compare me to an ox. People around here didn’t think much of poor Strythe. They had sent him on highly dangerous mission expecting him to die—which he did, really.

“I don’t think the old Strythe was so bad.” Hwilla said. She glanced back to me over her shoulder. The black skull concealed her face, but not her large doe-like eyes. “When I joined the cult as a spark, you gave me words of encouragement. They helped me endure the first months of basic training when everything seemed dark and frightening.”

That was one vote for the dead man’s worth. I suppose if you’re going to be an idiot, you should at least be a helpful, friendly idiot.

“Fightmaster, I have a question,” I said. “No doubt this is one of those commonplace facts I’ve forgotten. Why is it that swordsmen state aloud the names of their techniques?”

“I… Um… Well, it’s tradition. Everyone does it. And they always have.”

“What if one were to declare a technique and then use something else? A swordsman might shout, ‘Icy Cyclone Blast’ and then execute a ‘Fiery Storm Shot’ instead.”

“That’s just not done, Strythe. There is a difference between cunning and sheer deviltry,” the old fightmaster huffed. “Such tricks would do no good. The technique itself is plain to see no matter the words. Naming a technique merely declares one’s mastery of the art. It is a way to spread one’s renown. It’s similar, in that regard, to gaining a martial name.”

“And how do those work? Can I give myself whatever name I want?”

“Listen here, disciple. If there is one rule you must never break, it’s giving yourself a martial name. Sacred tradition demands that a name be bestowed upon you. It can come from your enemies cursing you or allies praising you or bystanders whispering as you pass by—but it must come from the outside. Nothing is sadder than a swordsman who invents his own name. Doing so would forever brand you as a laughingstock and third rate swordsman.”

“I had no idea a sobriquet was so important…”

I hoped no one stuck me with an over-the-top nickname such as the Vortex of Oblivion. That would be embarrassing. I would bet a minas of gold coins that Slezeanor ‘the Peerless Rake of Mount Rosejoy’ gave himself his own martial name. With that as an example, it made sense why self-naming was frowned upon. Otherwise nine out of ten people would be called ‘the Super Best Sword God.’

Three boats full of novices rowed in front of us, and we rowed in front of the boat carrying the three witches. The more expendable people went first. We had prepared for the appearance of the giant turtle monster by bringing harpoons and lines. I would have thought a monster of that size would make river travel unappealing, but the cult looked forward to hunting it down and butchering it. Larger monsters had valuable organs with magical or medicinal properties.

Everyone worried more about the devil-birds. Those beasts could capsize the boats with their ferocious winds. They would often grab an animal, lift it to the sky, and drop it over a field of rocks. Not even a witch could survive a fall like that. The cult had plans to capture and domesticate those wild monsters for their own ends.

We rowed upstream to the cataract that divided the north and south parts of the Spitpoison River. Our tender boats were better at navigating the river than the corkwood goblin raft from my previous trip, but the group still stopped before the rapids and brought them ashore. The faceless minions had to carry the boats and supplies across the portage.

“Follow me, juniors. We are going to scout that old camp to see if any monsters have laid an ambush,” Zambulon announced. He pointed to the troll’s walled camp.

Gritha and Veylien already killed the resident monsters, and the disorganized tribe at the citadel probably had not reclaimed it. But we went to examine it anyway, just in case.

We entered the walled off camp. The saw-toothed birds had picked the corpses clean, and some other beasts had entered to gnaw on the bones. Little evidence of the slaughter remained. The burnt out husk of a building had also been picked clean. Someone had salvaged everything useful: nails, bits of metal, ropes, buckets, shovels.

Yurk bent down to examine the ground. Small footprints tracked through the ash.

“Goblins,” he announced.

“That or barefoot children with long toenails,” I said.

“Disgusting little creatures. We should eliminate them before they become a nuisance for us later on.” Zambulon drew a line through the tracks with the point of his sword.

“They’re harmless,” I said.

“They are not harmless. They’re little thieves. They steal chickens and goats and sometimes make off with human babies when the mothers aren’t looking.”

The cult didn’t have a lot of human babies laying around, so that was not a concern, but it was true the goblins liked sneaking into places they shouldn’t be and sneaking out with things they shouldn’t have. The little monsters had a bad reputation for thievery.

“Shouldn’t we try to recruit them? The witches plan to defeat the trolls and add them to the dark lord’s armies. Why not goblins too?”

“Goblins are cowardly creatures that flee at the first sign of danger. And they’re too scatterbrained to follow orders and fight in formations. At best, they can act as night scouts or trap builders. They aren’t worth the trouble to train,” Zambulon said. “No. It’s better to wipe them out in a surprise attack before they can pilfer from our supply lines on the river. While the others make camp for the night, the four of us will go out to track down their nest and destroy them.”

Zambulon was the most senior of the disciples. He had trained under Fightmaster Putrizio for several years and now eagerly anticipated the day he could take off his mask. To get a promotion to some higher office in the cult, he wanted to prove himself a skilled swordsman and competent commander. Wiping out a monster village would make him look good to his superiors. Everyone wanted to impress their bosses.

The faceless minions had spent the whole day rowing and needed to recover their strength. The group set up a camp on the north side of the cataracts under a canopy of trees which concealed them from passing devil-birds. The fightmaster and witches rested in private tents while the others slept bivouacked under the sky. It was the bright season, and the star heart rose in the east opposite the setting sun and sparkled throughout the night.

While everyone else readied to bed down for the night, the four of us met on the river bank for our nocturnal excursion.

“May I make a suggestion, senior disciple?” I said. “The Spitpoison river cuts the valley in half. So to search this area, we should split up into two groups. I volunteer to take the western side of the river.”

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“That’s a good idea. I’ll go with you Strythe,” Hwilla said.

“A sound strategy, junior disciple. I applaud your ingenuity but do not trust your faulty memory. You might mix up your directions or fail to spot the goblins’ tracks. Both Yurk and I are capable trackers. Therefor Yurk will accompany you on the western side, and Hwilla will come with me to the east,” Zambulon said.

“That sounds good to me, senior disciple,” I said.

“Now then. We will search until midnight and then meet back here at the gloam. Whichever one of us has found the nest will report on its location, size, and defenses. If the nest is large, we may need to bring additional minions with us. We will then raid the camp and return by morning. Now, Hwilla, let us cross the river in our boat and leave these two to go on foot.”

The disciples split up. I traveled with Yurk, a man of few words. The words he did speak were mostly monosyllabic. He was taciturn to a fault. We walked together in total silence for a distance. When we lost sight of the river, I spoke to him.

“Senior Disciple Yurk. I don’t think we can do much in half a night. Even split in two, the Spitpoison Valley is much too big to search even a fraction of it before midnight. We should split up again to cover more ground.”

“Unsafe,” he muttered.

“True. However, the devil-birds have depopulated this region of most large animals. So it is safer than most places on the continent. The deadliest hazards come from the toxic plants. I think two magi can avoid little problems like that.”

“Which way?”

“Why don’t you go southwest. That will take you back toward the fallen troll camp. I’ll go northwest. By midnight, whatever we’ve found or not found, we can return to this spot and report to Zambulon.”

“It’s trouble.”

“If something goes wrong, I’ll take the blame. We aren’t technically breaking the rules. No one said we had to stick together.”

“Hmph.”

The other disciple didn’t seem fully convinced, but he turned to go to the southwest anyway. I wandered northward on my own.

My last voyage down the river had already shown me the general area where the goblins lived. Searching in the dark for tiny footprints was unnecessary. I started running straight north along the edge of the river. With no cultists to observe me, I could warn the goblins of the coming danger.

***

The gloam came and went. I still had many kilometers to cross before reaching the little fishing pier. Making the rendezvous would not happen. The other disciples would have to deal with my disappearance. They might assume that some monster had eaten me in the woods.

I had exaggerated the safety of this valley to Yurk. When I traveled on the Spitpoison, weird beasts drank from the river’s edge. Wolf monsters and multi-headed reptiles hunted in the valley, as well as giant xlobats flapping through the night. And numerous species of carnivorous plants would trap the unwary. I scanned the ground, not for goblin tracks, but for any animated thorn bushes or explosive tubers.

I removed my mask and ran until dawn.

Strythe had started off in better shape than me, and the past few weeks of magical training had improved my new body even more. The burning mana refreshed my tired muscles. Running all night did not exhaust me. I imagined that those magi who specialized in augmentation techniques could perform even greater feats of endurance. A marathon like this wouldn’t even cause them to break a sweat.

I could put off sleeping for a time, but not even the greatest mage could go without it forever. Soon I’d have to take a short nap. I preferred to do that in the daytime, when fewer predators hunted through the forests.

I stopped briefly to rest and drink. Small hemispherical mounds, about two meters high, dotted a flat clearing in the woods. No clouds floated through the clear skies. I jumped to the top of one of the mounds and scanned the skies for any devil-birds riding the winds high above. There were no signs of the monsters.

Suddenly, the mound shifted under me. I tumbled to the ground. The entire mound, complete with moss and grass and gravel, rotated in place. It lifted two huge pincers into the air. The tiny hillock turned out to be a gigantic crab. The monster had camouflaged itself with a layer of pebbles and plant life. I scrambled away from the beast and drew my sword.

The giant crab scuttled sideways and snipped its claws. It let out a noise that sounded more like the whistle on a steam kettle than an animal’s cry. This warning signal alerted the other mounds, which began to stir. An entire colony of giant crabs brought out their claws and extended their eye stalks upwards. I had traipsed right into the middle of their home.

Darting to the left and right, I zigzagged between the angry crab monsters. The plants on the top of their round shells swayed back and forth as they moved. The converging monsters blocked off my escape path, so I ran up the side of one and jumped from mound to mound.

Compared to other monsters, these crabs were not hyper aggressive. They defended their territory from intruders but did not pursue me once I leaped to the perimeter of the clearing. Only a single crab stood between me and the forest. On a whim, I slashed out with my sword.

The blade of my sword thrust through the layer of dirt and the crab’s hard carapace. It let out another steam whistle of must have been a cry of pain. The crab scuttled away from me, taking my sword with it.

“Hey! I need that.”

I jumped on the creature’s back and grabbed the hilt. The sword had gone in fine, but it refused to come out. Every time I yanked on it, the crab squealed.

“Let go of it and I’ll stop twisting.”

The crab walked toward the others, taking me back into the giant crab party. The sword would not come out. Abandoning it would leave me without a weapon in the middle of a monster filled forest. I grunted and braced my legs against the wandering mound of debris.

I had seen Slezeanor and Hrolzek use projection techniques. They sent their inner fire out of their arms and into their blades. Malisent had projected into her sword to keep it from getting sliced to pieces. That maneuver might not have qualified as a named technique. Strengthening a blade could be a basic thing all swordsmen could do. I decided to give it a try. Projecting might free my sword from this crab.

My mana swirled within me and my inner fire flared up. I closed my eyes to concentrate. The steel of this common sword did not work as well as Slezeanor’s custom blade. It took a great deal of effort to push the fire through the hilt and down the blade. My legs applied the physical force, but muscle alone wouldn’t be enough. I had to alter the sword to make it sharper, stronger, faster. After a minute of experimenting, the sword came loose in a spray of crab ichor.

Wasting no more time with these monsters, I raced for the edge of the clearing.

That little detour had cost me a great deal of mana, more than the whole night of running. If my reserves of energy got too low, I wouldn’t be able to maintain pace for the rest of the day. Screwing around with wild monsters, even fairly harmless ones, was a bad idea. From now on I would avoid everything and not start pointless fights. It served me right for poking a crab when I didn’t need to.

For the rest of the day, I jogged northward. Further up the river, I found another clearing with mounds, but these had no crabs inside. The monsters had molted these shells, leaving empty husks that small woodland creatures used as houses.

After molting their older shells, the giant crabs exuded a glue on the top of their bodies. They then rolled around on the bottoms of the river picking up round pebbles. Once they had a stony coat of armor, they would come onto land and acquire another layer of mud. Moss and grass sprouted a short time later and gave them a perfect camouflage to blend into the valley. It worked close up and from a distance, protecting them from the devil birds.

A thin residue of crab glue stuck to the blade of my sword.

Running proved faster than floating on a raft, and I made it to the goblin fishing huts before nightfall. The fishergobs were surprised by a human appearing out of nowhere. They shouted out in a panic and took of running for the woods. I ran one down and grabbed it.

“Listen goblin. I’m here to deliver a warning to your tribe. Let me speak with the redcap, Nimblesto.”

The goblin wriggled to get free. It screeched in a language I didn’t understand. Not all of them could speak a human language the way Nimblesto could.

“Nimblesto. I want to talk to Nimblesto.”

They might not understand my words, but they would recognize the name of their tribe’s number one thief and fashion plate. I let the monster go. It ran off into the woods to join its friends.

After that I rested on the dock for a few hours. I ate the small amount of rations I brought with me. Then, without anyone forcing me to, I did a meditation exercise to cycle my mana. Bumbling into those crabs had cost me a lot of energy. I needed to refresh my supplies.

At sunset, I ventured into the woods. The goblins had left clear foot trails going back and forth to the docks. They lived somewhere in this area. I lit up my lumestone to announce my presence.

“Goblins! Come out here. I want to talk.”

I could hear the little scamps moving through the edge of the trees. They were watching me from the underbrush, too cowardly to show themselves.

“Nimblesto! Get out here already.”

“What human want?” The little monster popped out of a nearby bush.

“Gah! What the… There you are. You really kept me waiting.”

“Human stink, loud, bright.”

“Look. I came to warn you that your tribe is in danger. An army of humans is coming this way. You need to run and hide while you still can.”

“Where humans?”

“On the river. They’re going upstream to the Ancient citadel.”

“Humans steal castle?”

“Yes. They’re taking it from the trolls. These humans are stronger and have greater numbers. They’re going to move inside and set up a base.”

“Goblin no trust human,” Nimblesto said warily.

“That’s good. You shouldn’t trust humans. They’re dangerous. Especially the ones in skull masks.” I held the minion mask up to my face.

“Why human trick humans? Why human help goblins?”

“Uh. I’m not sure exactly. I suppose I still owe you a favor. Since you never got your golden baby head.”

“Human no give gold. Human take raft. Human cheat.”

“Well, now I’m paying you back by saving your tribe. You need to relocate far away from the shore. Move over to the edge of the valley near the hills or something. The humans won’t chase you too far from the river.”

I looked around the area we were in and noticed strange bumps in the surrounding forest, a feature that would have escaped me before.

“You goblins are using crab shells as tents, huh?”

“Wah! Goblin no tent crab,” Nimblesto said. He looked back and forth shiftily. The little goblin was terrible at keeping a straight face.

“Sure. That’s fine,” I said. “I’ll let you inform your people. The humans will be here by tomorrow.”

I had to prepare to see the humans as well. They wouldn’t be happy with me.