The first attack came in the middle of the day.
The column was marching through the green-tinted and shadowy foliage when suddenly one of the guards at the front cried out. Leopold was in the back with Bryan and they saw the man fall, but not what had caused the cry. Other guards caught the injured man and one cried “medic!”
Dean Weatherby sprinted back from the head of the column, lugging his seven-foot staff with him, and dropped to his knees in the center of the guards around the injured man. Rolf shouted “form up” and everyone who wasn’t Leopold, Bryan, Dean Weatherby, and the injured man took their places in a circle facing outward.
Leopold had been pushed close enough by that time to see what it was that had felled the guard. A solid five inches of wood sprouted from the man’s collarbone like a small tree-limb, no thicker around than Leopold’s thumb, but he could see from where blood was beginning to well around the injury that there was even more embedded in the man’s chest. It had nicked the man’s boiled leather armor chestpiece, but Leopold didn’t even consider that the shaft had come as an attack from afar.
“Leopold,” Dean Weatherby shouted, and Leopold broke his stare at the shaft of wood. The dean motioned him down and Leopold fell to his knees.
“Put your weight here, on his chest,” the dean said, motioning to the chestpiece. “Hold him down. I’m going to remove the shaft.”
“Uh huh,” Leopold said, still not completely sure what he was looking at. He pressed down on the man’s chest, which elicited a groan and caused the man’s eyes to roll back in his head, and the dean gripped the shaft firmly and yanked it out in one swift motion. Leopold was quite unprepared for the amount of blood which gushed from the wound.
“Stay sharp, Leopold,” the dean said at his momentary waver, and began building a complicated layered spell which Leopold barely caught the concepts for. Something about blockage, something about reconstruction. Something about returning.
The dean slid the spell over his hand like a glove and pressed down on the puncture wound, which Leopold was realizing had been from an arrow. The half-bloody bolt on the ground didn’t have any fletching, but it had an unmistakable pointed tip. As the dean pressed down on the puncture, the blood which had run under the man’s chestplate pulled back into his body. The man screamed through clenched teeth as his lifeblood drew back into him, and by the time the dean pulled his hand away the puncture wound was gone.
Dean Weatherby let out a sigh and sat back on his heels. “Gods I haven’t performed first aid in decades.”
“I’ve never seen a spell like that,” Leopold said.
“You will, if you go into the mobile mage corps,” the dean said. Leopold had heard of the corps before—groups of mages who were sent to natural disasters outside the city walls. He supposed a spell like that would be terribly useful in such situations.
“You’ve healed him, then,” Leopold said, but the dean shook his head.
“Now the real battle begins. Sometimes the patient pulls through without flinching, but most times the body must fight to regain its humoral balance. We’ll have to scourge the body of a buildup of phlegm every few hours. Even then, the black bile may overcome him.”
Luckily, the guard had passed out while he was being healed, so he wouldn’t have to hear this terrible prognosis. Rolf circled around the wounded man then bent down to whisper into Dean Weatherby’s ear.
“I suspected as much,” the dean said. “We must keep moving. We can’t lose the track.”
🜛
The second attack came not from the treetops, but from the ground.
Two guards were now assigned to carry the third on a stretcher constructed from branches and rolled canvas while Dean Weatherby administered treatment every few hours. The man sweated terribly and called out in his delirium, but for at least a few minutes after the treatment he seemed more peaceful.
Near the front of the column something rustled the leaves and one of the guards was suddenly jerked into the air while his leg gave a wet snap. The guard began to scream. It took only a moment’s work for the dean to slice the rope overhead while three others waited below to catch the unlucky guard. The dean similarly healed the guard, but at least with a broken bone the guard was back on his feet in a matter of minutes. The arrowed guard still hadn’t come completely conscious again after the attack.
When they set up camp for the night Rolf ordered an increased shift to take watch around the tents. Leopold sat in the open flap of his tent thinking over the events of the day and fingering the solid sphere of essence in his cloak pocket. Willow had given it to him two months before and it still hadn’t decayed. He was lucky, he supposed—it contained a supremely powerful store of fire-concepted essence. He was wondering as he slid his fingers over the surface if he’d need to use it in self defense, when he saw the dean slip silently out from the circle of guards and into the darkness of the forest.
“What in the seven hells,” Leopold said and looked around, but none of the guards sent up the alarm at the dean’s disappearance. Leopold gained his feet and left the circle as well in the same direction—none of the guards stopped him either.
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It wasn’t hard to track the dean through the forest, not with the man’s seven foot inscribed staff which shone with a yellow light. Leopold had no such staff, and though every step pained him he crouched as low as he could and followed in the man’s wake. What could the dean be doing out here in the night?
Dean Weatherby stopped and turned his head around. “I suppose you might as well come out, Leopold,” he said. “No use in creeping around, especially where we’re going.”
“Damn,” Leopold whispered, then stood up and entered the circle of light.
“I didn’t want to involve you,” the dean said. “But we’ve got no choice now. You’re going to see things tonight that are considered vital state secrets, and you are not to repeat them to anybody without my explicit permission, upon threat of imprisonment. Do you understand?”
Leopold swallowed and nodded. What had he gotten himself into?
“Where… um, are we going?”
“Not far,” Dean Weatherby said, and turned to continue on. “I suspect they’ll find us before we find them.”
Who the ‘them’ Dean Weatherby was referring to was revealed shortly after, when they’d traveled not five hundred feet from the encampment. Not far by most standards, but far enough for the sounds of cooking and sight of the fire to disappear entirely. As Dean Weatherby stepped forward, his circle of light illuminated a face in the darkness ahead.
Leopold startled at the sudden and completely silent arrival and looked around on pure reflex. The circle of light illuminated several other faces just like the first, all green so as to blend into the trees. They surrounded them, somehow even behind them.
“I have come to treat with the elves of this forest,” Dean Weatherby said. “Do you represent them?”
“We represent only ourselves, human,” the first face hissed, and the ‘elf’ stepped out of the shadows. If the term had given Leopold any romantic notions of the impossible, mythic creatures, those were quickly dispelled by the form which made itself visible. Six legged like some kind of insect, the creature was covered completely by green chitin. Even its face was just a mask of chitin, proved by the semi-transparency of the creature’s sharp cheekbones. Its chin looked wicked enough to cut wood, and the hollows of its cheeks were multisegmented. Its arms though were strangely human.
“You have attacked our caravan and injured two of our party,” the dean said, nonplussed by this non-answer. “Why?”
“You intrude in our domain,” the elf said.
“I left several offerings—”
“And you hunt one of our own.”
At this the dean stopped, his eyebrows quirking up in a look of confusion. They weren’t looking for an elf, were they? They were looking for Willow.
“We track two human women who came through here not a handful of days ago,” Dean Weatherby said. “Are they still alive.”
“The human is still alive. The other was in great pain.”
“The other,” Leopold said. “Did she have long, dark hair? Was she thin, like you?”
The eyes in that insectile face swiveled to fix Leopold and for a moment he regretted that he’d spoken at all. But if they were talking about Willow, he had to know. He stepped forward.
“Did she have a limp?”
“She was dragged on a bed of branches,” the elf hissed. “She is changing.”
“Changing? How?”
“She becomes one of us. Even now we can feel her breath through the trees. She is the greatest of us, our queen.”
“We mean her no harm,” the dean interrupted. “We are only trying to find her, to bring her the aid she requires.”
“With iron and sinew? I think not,” the elf said, and a slight creaking caused Leopold to turn toward an elf at their side. It had silently produced a bow which it was drawing that very moment, the arrow sighed on Leopold’s chest.
“D-Dean,” Leopold said, and the dean grabbed his arm and pulled him close. The staff began to glow even brighter, exposing the arachnid shapes of the elves surrounding them. All sighted arrows at the pair. Leopold doubted if the light alone would deflect the missiles.
Leopold reached into his pocket and gripped the sphere. The elf’s head immediately snapped down to fix on his hand, as if it could see through the cloak entirely. Leopold debated with himself if he should pull the sphere free or activate it while it was still within his cloak.
The elf gave a short hiss and the rest of the creatures lowered their bows. A layer of sweat broke out instantaneously over Leopold’s skin and he felt cold and clammy. At that moment he wanted nothing more than to be back in his tent, the guards doing this kind of dangerous stuff. Why had he even gone with the dean?
“You are her paramour,” the elf whispered. Leopold gripped the sphere, frozen to the spot, but he nodded slightly.
“We did not know. Please, forgive your humble servant,” the elf said, and bowed low at the waist. Creaking sounds from all around them revealed the others bowing as well. Dean Weatherby looked incredibly confused as to what was happening. Leopold wasn’t quite sure what it was either, but he wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
“You will pass unharmed through this forest,” the elf hissed. “We will make clear the queen’s path to you.”
“Gratitude,” Dean Weatherby said, and jerked Leopold’s arm back the way they’d come. Leopold backed away from the elf, who wouldn’t take its eyes from him even through the bow, and they passed through the circle of insectoid creatures and back into the seemingly uninhabited woods. They looked over their shoulders until they could hear the first sounds of food preparation from the encampment.
“Do you have any idea what just happened there,” Dean Weatherby asked. Leopold looked at the man and saw his eyes piercing into his own. Leopold’s thoughts went to the sphere of Willow’s essence, but he decided to play dumb.
“Willow and I were involved,” Leopold said. “I know you know, but I don’t know how they could tell.”
“That’s just what I’m wondering myself,” Dean Weatherby said, and looked Leopold up and down, then apparently decided that there was nothing left to puzzle out. He turned toward the camp.
“Wait, Dean Weatherby,” Leopold said. “What… I mean, those things—”
The dean sighed. “Elves. Magical creatures of intelligence.”
“Such a thing should be impossible, shouldn’t it,” Leopold asked.
“They’re half breeds. The forest people had looser morals than we can even conceive of, and the elves are the result. Deadly in the forest, their existence is kept a tightly controlled secret in the walled cities.”
“But why? What’s the harm in knowing?”
“You can’t imagine even one reason why a foolhardy hunter or mage would want to capture an elf or other half-breed and draw the species’ ire?”
“Oh,” Leopold said, and felt disgusted at the idea.