"Watch out!" the cadet cried, although the huge shape of the creature was much more of a warning to his friends than his voice. He was tackled to the ground under its massive body.
Adam shot to his feet immediately, but he couldn't tell what was happening. The creature, huge like a bear but covered in feathers, bore down on his friend, but just a second ago they'd been laughing at him. His head was still trying to adjust to reality, and for a second, all he could do was watch Matt struggle under the beast. He felt his shoulders rising into his ears as the adrenaline hit him, and he leveled his hands to cast a spell against the monster.
At the last second, something caught his eye in his periphery, and he pivoted to the left. A sickly ray of dark smoke and goo shot from his hands and slammed another creature in the face, one stalking out of the woods and no less than five feet beside George. His nurse scrambled away from the shot, but he stopped short of going behind Brady. The sorcerer still sat on the ground between them.
Matt felt claws dig into his chest and he panted through the searing pain, his arms raised to keep the massive beaked face away from his. It snapped and snarled at him, its big, disc-like eyes trained on him like two lenses of a telescope. The beast was leaning closer to his face, his arms bending against his will and trembling from the weight, until it pulled back in a roar of pain. It turned its head to Nathan on its left, and he threw his other knife into its hide. The massive taloned claws of the beast stepped off of Matt's chest as it advanced on the thief, and he felt arms around his shoulders. Gee helped him to his feet, fumbling for a short sword from his pack. Heaving breaths, blood running down his chest for the second time in as many days, Matt drew his sword from his scabbard.
The second creature recovered from the inky shot to its face and screeched at them, but George raised his hands quickly. Adam could see that he was shaking, but golden light from the fire shot towards it under his command, wrapping around the creature like a rope and stopping its advance. Adam shot another jet of black magic at it, watching an arc carve through its feathered hide.
"George! Get out of the way!" Brady cried from the ground, leaning around the cleric who stood in front of him and blocked his view of the creature. George was too busy focusing to hear him, and he stumbled as Brady shoved at his legs. The golden lasso shattered around the creature.
It took a step forward, as if to begin charging, when Brady clapped his hands together and blue lightning zapped forward from his spot on the ground, electrifying the beast. Adam could see the feathers of its coat floating in the static electricity, and it stumbled around in a daze. Before it could recover, Adam hooked his hands under his sorcerer's arms and dragged him away from the fight.
It was clear to Matt that Gee didn't have much practice with a sword. Nathan jumped back from the huge monster before it could get to him, but he'd lost both of his knives in its side already and he was unarmed. Before it had time to charge at him, Matt was slashing through its side and drawing its attention back. He stepped further into the forest, sword leveled to block a huge slash from its claws. The darkness of the night made him nervous, but he didn't dare let his attention shift away from the beast in front of him. Commander Kain's voice was loud in his ear as he screamed, An unsteady mind will be your undoing!
The creature bore on him when Gee slashed its other side, perhaps not as lethally but equally as distracting, making it turn away from the cadet. Nathan seemed to emerge from thin air and planted a foot against its side as he heaved one of his knives from its feathers, the beast roaring in alarm. It swiped through the air, raking his arm but Nathan stumbled away, gripping his knife tightly in one fist like that would be enough to stop its attacks. Matt came to his side quickly, flashing his sword up as a massive claw fell through the air, talons screeching over his blade. Nathan darted to its other side as Gee slashed it again.
They almost had the beast turning in circles, more frenzied and confused after each hit to its flank, and Matt almost had enough time to be proud of the other boys.
As the second creature watched the mages retreat, it pawed the ground angrily. This far back, Adam could see both this beast and the one that had fallen out of the trees more clearly, and this one was smaller. They lumbered like bears, even if they looked more like owls, and he could wager a guess that it was a mother and cub tearing through their camp right now. He didn't see wings on their backs, but they clearly had some ability to jump or climb, and he was about to warn his friends as he watched its hind legs tense in a pounce.
It launched at George, who crumpled under its weight and fell hard on his back in the dirt. He choked on air, the wind knocked out of him as talons dug into his arms, pinned under the creature. Fear exploded in Adam's mind, but it corrupted to anger as he spied the blood running from George's wounds. No one, man or beast, is allowed to draw his blood, he thought in a rage, and he raised his hands without thinking. He jerked them back harshly, clenching his fists, and the beast suddenly looked up from the prey under its paws. Its large disc eyes seemed to grow wider and crazed, its head whipping around like it was trying to adjust its ears to hear a whisper. It's blind, Adam realized, and he started to smile.
Twin bright blue wisps of energy slammed into the creature's paws, and it stumbled backwards as Brady lowered his hands, then shot a third towards the big one caught in a dangerous circle of his friends. George crawled back, and as the beast thrashed in confusion above him, he slammed his hands on the ground and then towards the beast. A spear of stone followed his hands and stabbed through its chest. The monster howled until it went limp on the spike.
Drawn in first by the blue hit, then by its cub's dying cry, the bigger creature shrieked in rage. Gee didn't know how to raise his sword to block a claw like Matt did, and he took a bad hit to his chest as the beast ignored his friends slashing at its back. It lunged over him and towards the cleric still on the ground, dizzy and heaving for breath.
Matt started running. As it bared down on George, rising onto its hind legs to smash him into the ground, the cadet flung himself into its side and they tumbled to the ground together, becoming a tangled ball of limbs. Its beak nipped his neck as its huge arms pushed him off and into a tree trunk, his sword clattering out of his grasp. Matt looked up, grimacing through the pain in his chest, as the beast rose again.
As it began falling, no one was between him and its claws. Then, in the blink of an eye, a dark shape was blocking his view, holding a perfectly angled knife that flashed in the firelight. The beast fell on them hard, but it was dead by the time it reached the ground.
The other four stared at the slumped over body in shock before Adam and Gee rushed forward, hurriedly shoving it off of their friends. Adam saw the indentation of an invisible hand in its settling feathers, and he spied Brady's outstretched hands from the corner of his eye. After heaving against it, the corpse of the beast rolled to the side and Matt and Nathan looked up at their friends in a daze.
For a second, no one did anything. Then Nathan was tackled in a hug and Matt was being helped to his feet, an arm around his ribs but he promised he was okay. They were led back to the safety of the firelight, where George and Brady waited for them, still sitting on the ground.
"Are you okay?" Gee asked the thief, but Nathan was the one leading Gee to sit. Blood soaked through the dancer's shirt from huge scratches down his front, and despite the slightly dazed look on Nathan's face, he seemed determined to treat Gee's wounds first. Could be a concussion, Adam thought, but he didn't have anywhere near the same medical knowledge as George did. That's when he heard his name tremble through the air.
"Adam?" He was by George's side in an instant as George held up his arms, blood dying the leather red. His anger from earlier, when the bear had stood over George triumphantly, was replaced by worry as he gingerly took one of George's arms in hand. A smokey cloud gathered at his palm and he massaged it over the punctures in George's arm. Through his torn shirt, he could see goosebumps ripple over his flesh, but George began to relax as he healed the wound, taking a moment to close his eyes before turning to the rest of the crew.
"Is anyone badly hurt?" George asked as Adam moved to his other arm, and a few cries rose from around the circle.
"Gee is."
"So is Nathan."
"Matt's bleeding from his neck!" Adam started to protest as George muscled out of his grasp, but George shot him a determined glare that shut him up. He shuffled the short distance to Gee's side, where Nathan was trying to stem his bleeding with any spare cloth he could find. His tunic was easily opened, and George bowed his head in prayer. His hand rose to his chest and Gee winced. When he realized it didn't hurt, he blinked away surprise and George turned his attention to Nathan.
"You really are a great healer," he mused under his breath, and Adam thought he saw George smile.
Seeing George's long list of patients, Adam itched to help him heal the party. He had the second most training between the six of them, perhaps the only other person who could lessen George's load, but as he approached the cadet holding a hand to the wound at his neck, George snapped at him to stop.
"You're not supposed to touch him anymore! You gave him enough of a demonstration back in town. I'm almost there." George's hand roved over Nathan's arm and then he was standing on wobbly legs, coming to Matt's aid. Adam turned to the cadet for any sort of support, but he shrugged sheepishly as George forced him to sit. He was too tall for George to heal upright, and his hands quickly rose to his neck, then the claw marks on his chest.
Adam wanted to argue as he watched George grow sluggish, but his adrenaline was beginning to fade now that everyone was healed. He didn't feel so good. The image of the cub, eyes wide and unseeing, replayed in his head like a bad play, twisting his gut into knots. He'd never done something like that before.
There was a tug at his hand, and he turned to see Brady at his side, nodding his head to tell him to sit down. Something cold passed through his body and Adam began shivering as Brady tended the fire beside him, sitting close with the eerie darkness of the forest at their backs.
"I guess we know what was out there now," Nathan said drowsily, and Adam looked up to find him staring at the dead bears on the edge of the fire light. In the hurry to heal everyone, they'd just left them there.
"Are we sure there aren't more?" Gee asked, and his eyes searched the trees above them. Adam couldn't help but follow suit, remembering the sickening crunch he'd heard when Matt had been tackled under its immense weight. The cadet recaptured his attention.
"They're owlbears, they don't hunt in packs of more than two or three. We should be safe, for a little while." Matt groaned as he stood up, rolling his shoulders against some invisible pain in his back. He forced George to sit back down as the cleric rose to try to heal him again. "I'm alright, save your strength. I need you to be able to save us if I'm wrong." He smiled easily at the noble and George sat down in exhaustion at Nathan's other side. Adam watched the thief pat his back as George hung his head, half asleep already.
"I didn't know there were owlbears this far south," Brady said, but his voice was shaky. Adam squeezed his hand.
"They're in the forests across the river, I know that. Maybe they swam across, or they came over the mountains. Watchmen have been getting mauled on the road north for the past twenty years, or at least that's what my commander told me."
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
"Is this the same commander that stabbed you two days ago?" Matt gave Brady a tight, joyless smile. Then he turned to Adam.
"Can you help me move the carcasses further away? We're not going to want to sleep with them rotting right there." Adam nodded faintly and got to his feet, but he found it was easier to cope with the memory of the cub if he had a task to do, and he followed the cadet's lead. They lifted the dead owlbear and walked it a hundred feet into the dark forest. Adam took point since he could see just a little bit better than Matt, like the moon was shining right on his path. Gee helped them drag the mother about half that distance before they gave up. As Adam dropped one of its legs in exhaustion, deep in the woods, he noticed Matt staring at its big, open eyes.
"I saw those eyes right before it fell on me. They look so different now." He sounded heart-broken, and Adam decided not to share that he'd taken the sight away from this thing's cub. They walked back to the camp in silence.
The night passed slowly, and each shift was taken with extreme anxiety as each pair of boys scanned the dark forest and sky for signs of another attack. None came, but each rustle of leaves and crack of branches far off in the distance made them jump. When the sun finally began to warm the sky, most of them had slept fitfully and groans echoed around camp as they stretched out in their bedrolls.
Matt had found sleep and watch a little bit easier than everyone else, he knew, so he took point on making a morning fire to warm their aching bodies. They were going to be upon the river early on their walk today, so he emptied a few waterskins into their coffee pot and handed it to Brady when the sorcerer was awake enough to process his request. He curled up in his bedroll at the edge of the fire, looking like a giant worm, as the tin glowed in his hands.
In the middle of considering if he should take a bow and try to shoot some fresh game for breakfast, Matt looked back and stifled an exclamation as he saw Adam's face. He looked gray and devastated, black hair disheveled and laying over his forehead in sweaty clumps.
"Do I look that bad?" he joked weakly, and George's head perked up at the sound of his voice. He crawled over to Adam's side in an instant. "I don't feel so good."
"Do you think it's a bad day?"
"I'm simply going to decide that it isn't," the noble declared, trying to turn over in his blankets but not finding the strength. The instant look of distress on George's face made Matt nervous, and he wracked his mind to find something helpful to do. He knew his contract had been a forgery, but he still felt like George deserved the help. He was single-handedly keeping his body intact over the last few days, peace of mind was the least he could provide.
He crouched down beside the nobles and noticed Brady watching them closely by the fire.
"Let's stay here as long as we need to feel stronger," Matt soothed, talking to Adam but his eyes were trained on George. "We're half a day's journey away from Lochton, we can wait until lunch before deciding to move or not."
"W-W-We might need some privacy sometime today."
"No–" Adam started, but George cut him off with a look.
"We could run laundry down to the river while you look after him, how's that?" George nodded, and Matt watched some of his composure crawl back as he looked around at the curious faces all around him. Nathan and Gee watched cautiously on the other side of the fire, warming their hands, but Brady was staring at Adam's face in contemplation.
"I'll stay with you two, if that happens," he said suddenly, and it looked like George was about to argue before he nodded softly.
"The help would be nice."
"Anyway, I'm not sure Brady has ever touched water in his life," Gee snickered, and Brady turned to her in mock hurt.
"That's not true! I cleaned up in the river once!"
"Are we supposed to be proud of that?"
"I'm sure that's more times than Nathan has."
"Wh– I wasn't even the one making fun of you!" Nathan cried defensively, and Brady cackled.
"You're just so easy to annoy, dear," Gee mused, bumping him with her hip, and the thief turned to her in betrayal.
"Don't you start. I have enough on my plate dealing with that." Matt tuned them out as they continued bickering, sparing a glance at the nobles to his side. George's look of distress was totally erased and he sat very still, his eyes softly flicking between the insults being thrown between the others. It was eerie to see his emotions kicked under the rug like that, but Matt wasn't going to mention it. Adam stayed in bed, holding his hand over his eyes to shield them from the light, and grimaced through unseen pain.
Matt didn't know what was going to happen, exactly, but he didn't trust the noble's resolve to avoid 'a bad day', whatever that meant. Gee began making the coffee as Matt encouraged everyone to eat a cold breakfast. George tended to the sickly noble quietly, but Matt noticed he greedily drank from his cup after Matt handed it to him, and even Adam sipped his. It was easier to convince them to eat after that.
Everyone moved quietly, but it was hard to ignore that Adam was not getting better the longer they waited. Matt had noticed something unsettling about his face at night, but he tried not to stare then. Now, Adam looked nothing less than a corpse, sweating and grimacing worse as the morning went on. Matt's mind strayed to their meeting in the library. Adam had said there was something else in his body, was it making an appearance today?
George found a better balance between his nonchalant act and panic a few minutes after they finished eating, and they'd been listening to his mumbled prayers as he sat by Adam's side. He kept his pendant to his lips and a hand roved over Adam in his bed roll as George pumped magic through his hands. Matt could see the bags under his eyes, which hadn't been assuaged by restless sleep, deepening, so he finally made the call.
"Nathan, Gee, I think it's laundry time." Gee made eye contact with him and nodded her head curtly, standing up with a flourish.
"I was just thinking the same thing! The cleaning spirit is in the air." She came to George's side and held out her hand for something. The exhausted noble looked up at her in confusion.
"Shirt please."
"I don't–"
"You're covered in blood. Come on, darling, take it off." George's cheeks colored, but he glowered at the dancer standing over him. He muscled out of his tunic and placed it in her hand, shivering against the cold morning air. Gee ruffled the top of his head as she walked back to her pack and threw him an oversized, white, billowing shirt to wear in the meantime.
He put it on so fast that it seemed to Matt like he'd always been wearing it, and despite his small size, he didn't seem totally out of place in one of her shirts. George's caramel skin contrasted with the white as beautifully as Gee's did, and Matt noticed a stifled smile spreading over the dancer's face as George hastened to tie up the front so it covered more of his chest.
Gee turned to Adam.
"Don't kill him, alright? I need to see him in a few more of my shirts before this is all over." Adam laughed weakly, more of a coughing sound really, but he promised. George seemed to not find the humor in it.
The river was calm and refreshing after two long days of walking, and the three of them stood in the shallows before getting to work washing. Gee took George's shirt to the shore and began mending it with needle and thread as the other two scrubbed away blood in the rushing water. Matt washed his own shirt, taking care not to rip bigger holes in it as he worked it between his hands. His ribs ached from tussling with the owlbear last night, but his life as a cadet had been just about as painful. He couldn't help but laugh to himself as he realized that with or without his commander giving him a beating, he was still getting one.
Between making himself laugh, Matt was keeping an ear out for the two doing chores with him. Gee hummed softly on the shore, occasionally cursing as she nicked herself, but he had to glance up to know where Nathan was. Water broke around his ankles and arms as he furiously washed his own shirt, but he was still so quiet.
Matt let his eyes linger over Nathan's back as he crouched in the water, pale skin pot marked by crisscrossing scars. There was a dark tattoo on his shoulder, and although Matt didn't recognize it, he knew it was a tag. In addition to spending lots of time in the low town, since that was where the camp was built, there had been a cadet in his year with a mark like that, and he seemed to be an endless well of stories. Matt remembered sitting around campfires listening to his animated voice admit to all these crimes and feeling a pit of unease in his stomach. This same kid who had done terrible things (and who seemed to be pretty easy-going about it) was in training to uphold justice and oppose people doing the same things as he'd done. Back then, Matt had forced down his confliction to enjoy the stories, but now it rose again.
Nathan had saved his life last night, putting himself between the cadet and the massive, crushing weight of the owlbear. Matt hadn't even offered him a “Thanks,” caught up in surviving the night, and now he was fighting the instinct to take a step away from him.
Nathan's eye caught Matt's and he hurriedly looked back to his hands. I'm not even in the program anymore, Matt reprimanded himself. Be grateful he's not treating you like this, or else you might be dead.
"You can ask," he heard over the rushing water. Matt snapped his head up to Nathan, but he kept his eyes down on his shirt rubbed between his two hands.
"What?"
"You were staring at my tattoo. You can ask." Matt hung his head, fighting off the curiosity that begged to know who he had vowed loyalty to, to have some semblance of an idea what Nathan had done for money before being thrust on this suicide quest with the rest of them. Instead, he rose and took his shirt to Gee.
"You look as cut up as I do," he said instead, and he watched Nathan peak over his bony shoulder at him. "It's nice to have a healer for once."
"I tried my best to keep him running," Gee told him, taking his shirt and trading it for George's which was still covered in blood and dirt. "There's not anyone on the streets who can heal even an inch like George can."
"I always went to the camp infirmary, and they had bad healers, the ones that failed to get into the hospital." Nathan scoffed in the river, nearly losing his shirt as he threw it down in the water.
"Don't even get me started on that hellhole." His anger was so palpable that Matt almost wanted to, but then he considered that a member of the family who owned the hospital was currently withering a few hundred feet off in the forest. He thought better than to agitate the old wound. Instead, he turned to Gee.
"You did a good job patching him up."
"Thank you!" Gee smiled wide and wiggled her needle at him. "I battled death with this very needle."
"Speaking of battle–" Matt blurted, crouching in the water to wash George's tunic. "How many times have you used a sword before?"
"Well, if we're being generous . . . never. I thought I did pretty good last night, for it being my first time and all." Matt shook his head. "You don't think so?"
"No, no, I agree, you were pretty good. But 'pretty good' will get you killed out here, and I'd rather not see that happen." He ignored the devious smile spreading over Gee's face. "I'd like to give you a lesson before we head back."
"You think they're going to need that long?" Nathan asked, and he rose out of the water.
"I have no idea how long they need, but based on George's demeanor, I don't think there's such a thing as 'too long.'" They finished washing and mending respectively, and Nathan strung up a drying line as Matt had Gee take up her short sword.
"Just promise not to bruise me up like you were that day we left Erilea, okay?" she said, treading into the shallow water after him. "I don't think poor George could handle it after doting on his noble."
Matt forced a smile over his face, but it didn't quite reach his eyes.
"I'm not going to hit you. Let's just focus on the basics, for now." He began to show her the best way to hold the short sword, and he stood next to her as they flowed through rudimentary motions together. The water pulled at their ankles, but he had chosen to stand in the river on purpose, Kain's voice leaking into his head like smoke through cracks in a door. Being controlled by your surroundings will be your undoing, you must learn to fight despite it! He'd said that before forcing Matt to fight nearly naked on a frozen winter day, and the memory pulled at his focus. No, standing in the water was a big enough lesson, he thought.
Gee flowed through the air with the blade in a beautiful fashion, Matt noticed. She had more than enough confidence to wield it, she just needed a stronger base, so he focused his instruction on her posture and stance. She picked that up quickly too, so Matt turned her on a tree to practice hitting something. Watching her flick its weight around easily, he realized with a start that her practice as a dancer was giving her an advantage. She already knew how to use her momentum, she was just learning how to shift her balance with the weight of a blade.
Matt was about to give her a similar compliment when he noticed Nathan pop onto his feet in alarm. The thief turned to look deep into the forest and Matt opened his ears to the quiet world around them, tightening the grip on his sword. Dread was starting to blossom in his heart, like watching dark storm clouds roll in over the horizon.
Gee stopped her practice, and they listened in silence until the sound of scurrying feet echoed through the trees at them. Squirrels and rabbits broke through the underbrush around their feet, bounding north towards the river and unfrighten by their presence. Matt spotted deer prancing in the same direction far off in the woods, but he looked up at the sound of flapping wings. Flocks of birds beat the air above their heads and broke through the canopy in panicked flight.
The forest quieted suddenly, and Matt swore his ears were ringing from the silence. The three of them stared deeper into the woods, back towards whatever the forest life was fleeing from, where they'd left two mages and a possessed noble.
"I can't believe we left them alone with him," Nathan mumbled to himself, and Matt bit back his own worry.
"He's one of us, don't forget that. Let's gather our laundry and head back, we've been here long enough."
"Yes, that decision is definitely unrelated to all the animals that just fled from their direction," Nathan hissed quietly, but he closed his mouth when he noticed Matt's stern look. The cadet made a show of sheathing his sword, the metal melodiously sliding past the leather as he turned his back to the thief.