----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
Glen
Arguen Garth
Hardir O’ Fardor
Lord of Morn Taras
Monarch of Sinya Goras
Beyond Nether’s Veils
Part III
-The Seer of Snakeville-
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
[https://i.postimg.cc/pTN5BnQY/Snakeville.jpg]
The white-back grey Vulture raised its ugly head, curving black beak covered in gore and set its beady eyes on the approaching ranger. Wylinor extended his arm back, signaling for Shalia to stop and then brought it behind his ear.
Wueh! The large bird croaked.
Glen lowered the spyglass and stared at Kalac. The Horselord’s mood hadn’t improved after their success against the Hydra. The fact that only six Horselords were left from his initial force probably playing a role to it.
“What are they doing?” Glen asked, looking through the spyglass again.
“That’s a corpse milord,” Kirk replied.
Glen could see the bloated half-eaten corpse by the side of the cobblestone path that had replaced Lord Onas’ much wider road they had been following. Not even ten meters from the first simple houses of the village.
“Shalia is coming back. Keep yer eyes on Wylinor,” Glen murmured and with a last glance at the gloomy Kalac turned around and walked towards the stationary force. They had stopped four hundred meters from the village, not wanting to get ambushed in its narrow streets. It turned out there was only the one main street running through the center of the settlement and no cultist was waiting for them.
But for the corpse left to rot that is.
Which had given Glen pause. He ordered the army to rest by the side of the road, under the heavy shade of black-bark trees, Darunia called Nere, or Locust Bean trees, due to their colorful red suspended spherical fruit. The hairy fruit looking anything but eatable to Glen and he just tuned out the healer’s diatribe after a moment.
“No sign of them?” Sam asked him and Glen nodded, rubbing his unshaven cheek.
“They thought the Hydra got us all and went for the supplies,” Lyceron said. “The Wyvern burning all that soaked wood really helped.”
With fifteen killed and two badly injured Glen wished he’d insisted on going with Uvrycres immediately, but the problem with leading a lot of people, is you have to bother with stuff you wouldn’t when you were riding solo.
“Alright, I want an assault group ready posthaste,” he decided not wanting to just wait for someone to spot them. They were really difficult to miss and sooner or later people would start wandering off, or fall asleep by the road. The sun was high on the sky, their third day in a row of good weather.
“How many?” Lyceron asked.
“Let’s try not to make a ruckus, pick smart guys,” Glen thought about it for a moment. “Twenty. Have the rest ready to charge in.”
“I’m coming in,” the bandaged Marlo grunted. “Jingo too.”
Glen glanced at Sam and the adventurer nodded. “I don’t want us to start killing folk that have no intention of fighting,” Glen warned them.
“Marlo will behave,” Sam assured him.
“I make no bloody promises Mathews,” Marlo hissed.
Glen sighed and turned to the approaching Shalia. The ranger had sprinted the distance, but appeared rather unfazed.
“No wounds that we could see,” she reported.
“Fuck does that mean?” Glen was well past his tolerance for vagueness.
“The vultures had feasted on the exposed parts,” Shalia blurted with a blush at the rebuke. “We couldn’t tell Garth.”
“How long was he dead?”
“She. A couple of days at the most.”
“No one bothered to pick her up?” He murmured not liking mysteries. “Are they gone?”
“We could ask the prisoners,” Kirk suggested. “Milord.”
Glen nodded and stared at the sky for the Wyvern, but Uvrycres had gone sightseeing again.
“We approach carefully,” he said to those near him. “Nobody relaxes until we figure out what is going on.”
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
Glen followed Shalia on foot until they reached the first houses. He’d hurt his ankle mimicking the crazy Gish –his exertions born out of desperation and not an attempt at showing off- during the fight with the ashen Hydra and pulled something in his back, so walking wasn’t exactly pleasurable to him. Nevertheless the houses were made out of nearby quarried stone and cut timber. They were very simple constructions really, with small triangular windows facing east. The fetching ranger stopped them from continuing with a gesture.
Glen loved the rangers dark green leather uniform since he first seen it on Lith. In three months it would be four years to the day. He’d just turned one and twenty.
Ten meters further inside the settlement Wylinor was climbing nimbly on a slanted roof to better scout the large open space at the center of the village that was its square. Shroudcoast was twice as big the former thief mused and stooped to listen to Shalia’s whispering words.
“Four more bodies,” the ranger said and Glen glanced at the vultures flying away from the street disturbed and crying in protest. They kept circling high above the houses, which is as plaguin’ ominous as it could be, Glen thought.
Wylinor pointed at his eyes with index and mid finger then at the square underneath him, before showing them the number thirteen.
“Eh,” Shalia said and turned nervously to translate the ranger’s signals, as much purple in her eyes as light blue. Skin flushed and smelling of leather and the forest.
Hmm.
“Speak,” Glen grunted, seeing her hesitation.
“More bodies in the square,” Shalia blurted and Glen realized her hand was touching his sword wielding arm. With a hiss he removed it and turned to the nervous Sam Mathews.
“They fought each other?” Glen asked and the adventurer twisted his mouth this way and that unsure. “A sickness?” Glen chanced with a nervous glance at the street.
“We fought them up close Garth,” Sam reminded him and Shalia gasped at the thought.
Fuck.
Glen got up and stared at the rest of their group. “Lyceron send for Darunia. We might have an arse-clenching situation here.”
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
The small round opening, a gathering place for the villagers -with an artificial pond smack in the middle- had twelve stone pillars set up in a semi-circle. Every single one of those pillars occupied. At the lip of the three meters in diameter fresh water granite basin an emaciated Zilan sat, still eyes staring in the Nether. Looking as dead as the tied up bodies on the pillars, but not as thoroughly picked by the carrion birds.
Or as bloated.
“Good grief,” Sam murmured at the disturbing sight, the shrieking vultures flying above them not helping.
“Ayup, this is Gish Lament all over again,” Marlo agreed and Glen whipped his head to glare at the adventurer.
“Explain!”
“No Ticu,” Shalia told them and walked near the first tied up corpse. “They are bind in silk.”
Glen frowned not understanding what she was saying. Lyceron had directed a couple of his Hoplites to search the houses and Soren helped unlocking the first door, giving it a good shove that cracked it in half. So he gave it a kick next to send the broken up pieces, hinges and all, into the one story house.
“Don’t know about that,” Marlo commented. “But we didn’t see any as well,” he paused to clear his throat afore adding ominously. “In the beginning.”
Glen eyed the eerie silent main square, if one ignored the vulture symphony and Soren’s crude burgling style, then the trees behind the first couple of rows of buildings to the west. He stared at the sloping path leading to the barren mountain top next and the stone quarry. The village was built at the edge of the fertile swampy land, in fact Pelleas had picked the driest and rockiest spot.
Perhaps it is the view, he mused. Or the closeness to the quarry more like. The again, who would want to sleep next to a Hydra?
“SNAKE!” Wylinor barked from the top of the roof behind them and Glen recoiled in panic. He twisted around dagger in hand, but the ranger had nailed the pale predator's coffin-shaped head with an arrow. Wylinor’s marksmanship impressive given the distance.
“Shit,” Marlo said and cut its head off with a casual hack. “Jingo it almost got your foot. Eyes on the ground lads!”
“You were lucky human,” Shalia told the stoic Issir and stooped to retrieve the arrowhead from the severed snake’s head, pouting when she realized it was ruined. “The black mouthed asp is lethal out of the cradle,” she pressed the pale grey snake mouth open to show them its blackened viscous innards.
Ugh.
Glen had approached one of the pillars in the meantime and examined the corpse of the Zilan female on it. Her skull cleaned of flesh, gouged out eyes empty holes, but for the fat white worms eating her rotting brain occasionally peeking out of the sockets. The cadaverous smell so strong, he had to step back not to throw up. His face pale and the taste of acid in his throat.
Glen glanced at the bindings, the silvery thin ropes looking less than ‘ropes’ and more like spider webs. He turned his head to ask Shalia about it, everyone else either looking about them for more snakes, or joining Lyceron in checking out the rest of the houses and realized the dead-looking man sitting on the fountain-like basin had stood up. His robes loose over his gaunt figure.
The face familiar up close.
“Pelleas?” Glen asked unsure, the man standing not two meters from him.
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
“Oh shit!” someone gasped spotting the still living leader of the Cult.
“Motherfucker,” that was Marlo.
Pelleas took a forward step not bothering to answer and Wylinor’s arrow skewered the side of his head, just below the right ear, down through the neck and out above the left shoulder. The Priest paused, then turned his milky eyes on them, skin tearing around the wound like paper, but no blood pouring out and then made another step forward.
Shite.
“Motherfuck’r,” Marlo repeated very impressed and moved to cut him off, afore Glen’s warning could stop him. The adventurer hacked once at the Priest’s chest, opening the decaying flesh revealing rotting organs and breaking bones. He raised his arm to cut Pelleas’ head off but another snake unfurled itself from the Priest’s waist and snapped at Marlo’s chest.
Luthos cock caught in a vise.
Glen dashed to his aid, the bandaged adventurer jerking away, the mail saving him but the snake followed its initial attack with a flurry of angry bites, moving so fast the arriving Glen missed most of them. He hacked at the thrashing snake’s body severing its spine, the coffin-shaped head’s black mouth cracking shut on the metal covered tip of his boot, as it had immediately turned to attack him. The snake, now missing a fang, tried to coil to strike at him again, but it was missing a couple of feet of tail and was sluggish doing it.
Glen’s reinforced boot moving with the speed of a dropping hammer squashed its creepy head on the stone tiles of the village’s square. The thud reverberating on the empty building’s walls and the mountain slopes behind him.
“Gah,” Marlo gasped, his sword clattering on the ground. “Gallopin’ fucking Goblins.”
“Where did it get him?” Shalia asked rushing to his aid. Marlo had removed his right hand glove and showed her his middle finger. The ranger showed him her sharp hunting knife in return. The silent gestures bordering the absurd considering the gravity of the moment.
“Just do it!” a sweating Marlo growled sounding panicked. Shalia grabbed his finger with her left hand and severed it abruptly with her knife, the blood splashing her comely face.
“Ugh,” Glen flinched in shock seeing the gory finger hitting the tiles.
“ARRGH!” Malro cried out blinded by pain. “FUCKIN’ HELLS!”
“This thing is still moving,” that was Sam keeping his eye on the present.
Glen swung around, the corpse almost on him and chopped a portion of his face off with the dagger. Another snake dropping between Pelleas legs.
Fuck is this disturbing shite? Are ye plaguing kidding me? He wondered diving away in a roll, the snake jaws snapping shut a foot from his right ear. Glen jumped upright with a shudder, just as everyone was scattering away from the butchered but still standing corpse of Pelleas and unsheathed his sword.
The Jackal’s cackle mocking.
The snake came at him moving with uncanny speed, but Glen hacked it right between the nostrils, slicing its snout in two flapping pieces and a couple of meters to his right a hurled spear smacked a stumbling Pelleas’ in the throat decapitating him in the process.
The Priest collapsed on his knees and all Glen could hear now in the eerie square was Marlo’s curses and his thundering heart. Perhaps also the hint of something tapping at a hard surface somewhere near.
Dammit.
“STUPID CUNT!” Marlo groaned, grasping at his bleeding wound. “Didn’t mean… arggh! Fuckin’ bullshit!”
“Put a tourniquet on it,” Sam advised cloth in hand, already trying to stop the bleeding.
“Tourniquet yer arse!” Marlo retorted his teeth clattering. “Where’s that plauguin’ healer?”
Darunia had just arrived in the village’s square with Ehlark.
“Mister Marlo,” she said with a frown, then paused to examine the macabre decorations and the killed snakes with interest.
“Doc I love ye truly, but I’m both poisoned and bleedin’ like a cracked faucet here,” Marlo grunted grimacing manically. “Half the blooming turd is out, but there’s no more give, if ye get me meanin’!”
Darunia blinked, probably not getting it, or too bemused to answer, but placed a glowing hand on the snarling adventurer just the same.
“Garth?” Shalia asked seeing him looking about them energetically, avoiding the dead Pelleas.
“There’s a Wraith Arachnus here,” he grunted and Sam perked up at that remembering the mountain’s tunnels.
“An Arachne yes,” Shalia repeated correcting him and Glen realized she knew already.
“Where?” He grunted glaring at her.
“I don’t know,” the ranger gasped. “I thought I was wrong. That it was something random.”
Glen realized she hadn’t seen one afore and hissed in frustration. “Warn Lyceron to watch out in the houses. Light up torches and burn the corpses. From a plaguing distance!”
A bloody Arachne in a Snake-infested-ville, he thought eyeing the corpse of Pelleas sourly. You were a weird fucker my dude.
Right disturbed in the brain.
“Milord?” Kirk asked rushing close to him with most of Lyceron’s Hoplites.
“It’s a fucking trap!” Glen spat hoarsely and the decaying, half-eaten corpses started shaking on the pillars unloading the snakes coiled on them down.
A lot of snakes.
----------------------------------------
Glen sliced at the leaping predator, its angry hiss stopped abruptly and punched another with the guard sending it sprawling between his legs. He jerked his knee aside, the leather soaking in poison, but the hollow fangs missing the skin and stabbed the dagger on the scaly head afore it could try again.
“Wahh,” he breathed deeply jumping away, his mouth dry at the close miss. Glen twisted about saw Soren getting bit and then ripping the snake out of his thigh sort of, huge fist clenched around the base of its neck so hard, he de-fleshed it in the process leaving the vertebrae bone exposed. Lyceron lowering his Hoplite helm to deflect a flying serpent and then nailing it below the neck with his Kopis. Eight Hoplites had already collapsed and Marlo didn’t look that well, whether it was from poison in his blood, or blood loss.
Ugh.
Wylinor escaped another snake that had climbed the roof he was standing on, leaping astoundingly on the next one and firing an arrow on its mouth twisting around midair, which Glen thought was a bit dangerous. The ranger crashing on his back and going through the wooden roof the next moment vindicating him.
“Darunia!” he barked at the healer trying to treat the many wounded. “How serious?”
“We need to mush the Locust bark into salve,” she told him working feverishly.
“You have some on you?”
“I gathered some earlier. It’s a very rare tree,” Darunia said and reached for her satchel. Glen stooped and killed a snake sneaking up on her, then barked at a nearby Hoplite and Kirk. “Help her finish it fast!”
Ah, ye son of bitch, Glen thought looking about the empty roofs, at the occupied pillars and the distant tree tops, afore glancing back towards the gleaming rocky slopes. Where in Hells are you?
“This isn’t natural,” Shalia informed him, stumbling on her legs before going down.
“Darunia!” Glen growled and pointed at the pale-faced ranger. “She’s been bit.”
They had killed the snakes. Almost thirty of them, now in many hacked pieces, scattered about them.
“STOP PLAYING GAMES!” Glen bellowed and a cloaked figure materialized on the roof Wylinor had jumped away from, not ten meters from him. Glen expected a giant Arachne, but this thing looks like a Zilan. The sun coming from behind going through parts of the body, mainly the exposed head and left arm, skull and long bones gleaming underneath. The skin a strange dark orange, a pliable translucent amber. The long hair reaching her knees and blowing in the light breeze, all white but for a couple of faint purple strands.
A long elaborate staff covered in bloodstones, half-charred and crooking a bit to the left in her right hand.
Great.
A hag on a roof. What's next?
“What if more come Hardir? The swamp is not far,” she asked in a raspy tomb-birthed voice.
Snakes was her meaning.
Hopefully.
“I lose one man,” Glen retorted stepping forward, seriously pissed with this fresh freak that had come out of the woodwork. “I’m gonna fuck you up.”
The strange woman chuckled and a poisoned Hoplite died with a gasp, his helmed head cracking on the tiles. A jolt running through Glen, locking his muscles up momentarily.
No.
The dagger had said in its hissing voice.
“Huh?” the freak huffed and two more Hoplites gave up the ghost, her staff’s butt striking the wooden roof. A pillar detaching and flying towards Glen with a thunderous crackle, but barely clipping him, though it caved a wall across the square. Bringing the whole house down in a deafening collapse.
Glen’s left arm had gone numb.
Move, Uvrycres warned.
“One,” the freakish Zilan taunted. “I’ve already killed. Another and your line is severed.”
Glen shivered, knowing she wasn’t talking about the men she had slain already.
“Come down, let’s talk about it,” he grunted hoarsely, fear for his family strangling his words, keeping an eye on the sky, the other on a grimacing Wylinor stepping out of the house he’d crashed into a moment afore, loaded longbow drawn.
“Is it greed what’s driving you?” she asked curious with that gravelly voice. “What you used shall kill thee. What else you’ve hidden inept Warlock?”
“A Wyvern,” a scowling Glen deadpanned and the sinister figure flickered out of existence, the fireball hitting the spot she was standing on in a huge explosion that demolished the small house and the two adjoined to it and set several nearby buildings on fire.
EEEEERRRRR
Glen had dived for the ground instinctively hoping Uvrycres wouldn’t hesitate, but the Wyvern did, fearing he’d hit him and the woman had escaped the blast unscathed.
That is, but for Wylinor’s arrow stuck in her chest to the fletching’s.
----------------------------------------
Darunia’s cry snapping him back to reality moments later.
Shalia had stopped breathing. The Healer’s frantic efforts to revive her doomed to failure.
“What the hells was that?” Sam Mathews asked, his face grim.
Another witch.
Also trying to have me killed, but not as pretty.
“She killed her to escape,” Glen murmured, his mouth bitter and stepped away from the approaching distraught Wylinor. “On purpose,” he whispered.
“Why?” the adventurer croaked.
“I’ve no idea, other than out of malice,” Glen replied shaken. “To hurt me.”
And because she heard us talking.
Gods.
He shook his head that uneasy feeling returning, remembering her threatening words. “How’s Soren?”
“Big bastard just walked it off. Never seen the like,” Kirk reported in bewilderment coming to stand next to them. “Lyceron is scouring the buildings to find her. What do you want to do about the fire? We need to bring everyone here to put it out.”
“She’s gone,” Glen said gruffly and realized he couldn’t close his left fist at all. Pushing the glove away revealed hardened coal-black skin underneath, the knuckles as stiff as Kalac’s bronze hand. “Let it burn. Level the bloody thing,” he added and covered the hand back up again, Kirk who’d seen it nodding and opting not to comment.
> Arguen Garth Aniculo, having secured the newly christened Snakeville the outlaw Pelleas had destroyed ‘in his fury’ and neutralizing the threat presented by the ‘Veils of Nether’ bloodthirsty cult, returned from the Snake Mount after a month via the same marshes road. He left the Horselord Kalac, son of Duham near Eroshin River’s banks to ‘make camp and built a ranch of sorts’ and allowed him to send a call out to the distant Eplas Steppes for more of his kind to arrive to the expansive ‘Horselord Fields’. The latter tasked Tarn, son of Badal with guiding them to Quiceran’s Road and through the Pale Mountains. Tarn accepted the mission and left for the two year long journey. Tarn would succeed in his task, but opt to remain in the plains himself and spread the word of free lands away from Khan’s yoke.
>
> ‘The Steppe’s folk not always grasped the true meaning of words.’
>
> Justifiably worried about the situation in Goras Arguen Garth considered returning to his family, but Anfalon, First of the Hallowed, informed them while they were still recuperating in the docks near Serpent Canal’s bridge that he’d entered Abarat. Lord Rothomir was nowhere to be found and Lady Olonelis had surrendered the castle city to his Phalanx.
>
> So Arguen Garth boarded the returning transport ships leaving a strong force behind and dutifully crossed the Canal.
>
>
>
>
>
> The King’s words chronicled on the third/fourth month of 192 NC
>
> by
>
> Vulreon, of Kataer ‘the Trusted’
>
> First Royal Scribe, King’s biographer,
>
> Respected member of the King’s Permanent Council
>
> In
>
> The Monarch’s Campaigns
>
> (Official record)
>
> Chapter II
>
> Beyond Nether’s Veils
>
> -Securing Chimera’s Leg & Abarat-
>
>
>
> -
>
> Entered into the Royal Library,
>
> In 201 NC,
>
> Circa 3407 IC –consolidated- (3rd Era)
>
>