Chapter 25 - Still Alive.
Stray drops falling from somewhere overhead gave back a long echo off the stone walls before they dissolved into the quiet.
Aren opened his eyes and stared up at a gray stone ceiling split by cracks with damp patches in them.
When he turned his head he found a sheer rock face where the drops broke loose one after another, and at his feet bright daylight forced its way into the cave and picked out a low opening at the far end.
Aren propped himself on his elbows and made out a stranger ten paces off, seated with his back to him, broad in the shoulder and plainly thickset, while the daylight caught his steel pauldrons and a helm with short curved horns.
Aren put a palm to his forehead and pulled it all back — the forest, the Cortexes, the scream, the dome, the green glow over the whole of his body and somebody's hands under his head.
He remembered the Cortex chewing at his forearm and looked sharply down at the arm, where a tight cloth bandage covered what the animal's teeth had left when they closed to the bone.
He ran his palm over it and was surprised that the arm obeyed him and that the forearm still held its shape.
He got up slowly with one hand against the wall and started toward the man.
Up close he could make out worn leather armor and a helm with goat's horns, from under the rim of which hung a long thick beard, with heavy brows and a small nose above it.
The man slept sitting, his head down and his hands folded in his lap.
Aren stopped a pace from him and looked over the motionless figure from behind.
"Hey?" he said quietly.
The man gave no reaction at all and went on breathing in a deep steady rhythm.
Aren waited several long seconds before he risked a second try.
"Hey..." he said, a little louder.
No answer followed, and the man's chest went on rising and falling evenly.
"Wake up!"
"AAAH!" the man shouted as he came off the ground, and his right hand swung back with the fist closed, caught Aren between the legs and left him unable to stand.
Aren went down on his knees, both hands at his crotch, and stared straight ahead of him without blinking.
The man came back to himself out of sleep, looked at him, and the awkwardness grew on his face.
At the side of the opening a young man's head appeared under a raised hood, a quiver of arrows at his shoulder and worry on his face.
"What's going on, Askir?" he asked, and leaned a bit further out past the edge.
His eyes went down to what was happening inside and stayed there a second.
"Did you... decide to finish him off?"
"N-No! He crept up behind me and I defended myself out of habit!" Askir protested.
"Attack as defense?... Fair enough..." the young man answered, with no attempt to hide the irony.
"I... didn't creep... up..." Aren got out hoarsely, still staring into the space in front of him.
The young man sighed, stepped into the cave, went down on one knee beside him and held out a hand, while Askir made a business of studying the rock ceiling with a pointedly indifferent face.
Aren moved his eyes from Askir to the offered hand, took it and stood up.
"Who are... you people?..." he got out with difficulty.
"... and where am I?"
"I'm Ray, and that's Askir."
"Right now we're in the western mountain ridge of the Great Forest."
Aren turned, and Askir settled meanwhile on the nearest rock in silence and sat staring at him.
"How long have we been here?"
"A few hours," Ray answered without leaving the opening.
"It's remarkable that you came around so fast."
"We've been here over a week, maybe two..." Askir said.
Aren turned to him and met serious eyes with no hint of a joke in them.
"Weeks?... Now hold on..." he said, still not believing his own ears.
Ray jabbed a thumb at his own chest with a smile.
"That's right, we're hunters who went out on the Sacred Hunt."
"They've probably got us down as dead by now?" Askir said.
Aren hesitated a second over his answer, then nodded uncertainly, at which Askir let out a heavy breath and dropped his eyes.
"Well, luckily for us we're still alive," Ray said into the silence that had gone on too long.
Aren sank into thought, and back came the green glow over his face, the strange hands under his head and someone leaning over him, and then his head came up sharply.
"Elen..." he said quietly, with his eyes fixed on Ray.
"Did he... did he survive too?..."
Ray and Askir exchanged a look for a moment before Ray spoke.
"He did, and he's the one who got to you in time. Do you two know each other?... He never said anything to us about knowing you."
Aren stared off in front of him as the first day of the hunt came back to him, Selma at the southern gate with her shoulders shaking and her eyes on the dust behind the departing company.
"No..." he answered, and took a moment before he went on.
"We've never met... but I know his mother."
Ray watched him for a few seconds and smiled a little.
"Well, if you want to see him you'll have to wait a while. He's out scouting, and he's meant to bring us something to eat while he's at it."
The Great Forest meanwhile kept its silence, and a few hours' walk east of the foothills the trunks closed in so tightly that there was no horizon left to speak of.
The crowns shut the sky out completely, and only a scattered greenish light came through the leaves.
A hare had settled by a mossy root and worked its jaws over and over, while the quiet in the undergrowth held with no wind and no movement at all.
Behind the trunk of the nearest giant a breath steadied, a bowstring came back to the corner of a jaw and slipped free.
The arrow flew with a faint whistle and went home in the hare's belly.
Elen came out from behind the tree with his bow lowered, crossed the short distance to his kill and crouched beside it.
The arrow had gone in deep, so he took the shaft in both hands, braced a knee against the ground and pulled it out by main force, then tied the kill to the two hares already hanging at his belt.
A branch cracked to his right and brought Elen sharply around to face it.
Out of the trees came a tall, strongly built man of middle years in leather armor with steel inlays, who took in the wood around him in no hurry.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Short black stubble covered the lower half of his face, his dark chestnut hair was cut short, and a thin scar from a cut ran across his upper lip.
He walked up to Elen with his eyes still moving over the trees around them.
"Things are a good deal better today," he said as he stopped beside him.
He saw the three hares at Elen's belt and a smirk touched his mouth.
"Would you look at that, I see you've got the hang of a bow these last few days."
"Though I had to keep the range short, because I missed more often than not," Elen answered with an awkward smile.
The man put a heavy palm on Elen's shoulder and squeezed it a little.
"That's nothing. To be good at a thing you have to be bad at it first. Luckily you aren't bad any more, so you'll get to good soon enough."
"Right. Thank you, Arswald," Elen answered.
Arswald smirked briefly, and then a third man stepped out of the trees, a fighter by the name of Armund.
He was tall and wiry, about thirty-five by the look of him, and he cleared a root that rose from the ground in one wide stride and stopped beside the others.
"Well? What's out there?" Arswald asked.
"No fresh Cortex tracks," Armund answered.
"But I don't much like it."
"Nor do I," Arswald said.
"It went quiet here too fast. Especially after this morning."
The words went into the thick silence of the forest and dissolved in it.
"Never mind, then," Arswald said shortly.
"The main thing is to keep our guard up, and for now, let's head back."
The others nodded and set off after him without a word.
Ray was standing on a ledge of rock directly above the cave mouth when a branch cracked among the trees to his right, and in that same moment he pulled an arrow from the quiver, drew the string to the corner of his jaw with part of his magical energy shifted onto the head, and put the point into the gap between the trunks.
He froze completely still and weighed privately whether this was an enemy or a friend.
Arswald came out of the trees first, Elen behind him, and Armund last of the three.
Ray raised his head a little, eased the string off slowly, and the magical shell dispersed from the arrow's tip as he did it, and only then brought the bow all the way down.
He put the arrow back in the quiver, dropped off the ledge lightly and met his companions at the mouth.
"Well? How is it out there?" he asked Arswald as the man went past him.
"Quiet so far, but we still need to keep our wits about us," Arswald said as he walked on.
Ray followed him with his eyes and then looked at Elen and Armund coming up behind.
Aren was standing at the cave mouth when Arswald, who walked with his head down, raised his eyes, stopped short and stared at him in surprise.
Elen's voice came from behind Arswald's back, aimed at Ray.
"How's that lad doing? Any better?"
"Ask him yourself," Arswald answered without taking his eyes off Aren.
Elen drew his brows together and stepped around Arswald's side, saw Aren as well and stopped where he was.
"Oh... you're awake already..."
"Elen... so it really is you," Aren answered, unable to trust his own eyes.
Elen exchanged a look with Arswald and then brought his eyes back to Aren.
"Do we know each other?" he asked.
Aren let out a breath with a smile and took a step forward.
"Not in person, but I know your mother, Selma... We're staying at your tavern for the Summer Festival."
"And who's 'we'?" Elen asked, tilting his head slightly.
"Me, Elara, Leo and Bern—"
Elen shook his head and cut him off mid-word the moment the names landed.
"Hold on, hold on... Greenfields?... Elara and Leo Greenfield?... and Bernard the smith?... Are you from Golden Flow?"
Aren nodded without a word, and a wide smile came slowly over Elen's face as he stepped closer and looked him over.
"Well now... what do you know... And what's your name? I don't remember anyone like you ever coming to us from Golden Flow. Black hair, runes all over you... are you even from Waldruhm?"
"I'm Aren, and to tell the truth I still don't know myself how I ended up here."
Elen looked back, threw a glance at Arswald, and brought his eyes to Aren again.
By the time the daylight had died out of the sky, all six of them were sitting at the fire with the hares browning slowly over the flames, and Aren had told the whole of it, from waking on the bank at Golden Flow, through the survivor from the Trade League and Selma's tears in the tavern, to the duel with Lieutenant Schtance and being taken in the forest.
When it came to Selma, and how hard she was holding herself together in the tavern, Elen stared into the fire with guilt in his eyes.
"So William could be somewhere in the forest right now?" Arswald asked.
"I don't know... he was with me when they surrounded us," Aren answered.
Askir let out a short laugh, made a face and shook his head.
"If that idiot is dead then good riddance. Talked our ears off about his honor, and here he is... look at him... taking people."
"That's right... So it was you he survived out here with?" Aren asked.
"It was. And to be truthful... we all thought he was dead well before they saved him," Arswald answered.
Aren looked thoughtfully into the fire as the words settled in his head.
"William never did tell me what happened," Aren added.
Arswald, Askir, Ray and Armund exchanged looks before Ray spoke.
"On the fourth day of the hunt... when we couldn't find a single magical creature, we decided to join up and work out what was going on, because we'd found nothing even in the proven ground..."
Arswald took over from Ray without leaving the fire.
"The four of us went along the inner bound, without crossing it, though we were still running the risk of trouble... and we kept hoping we'd find something all the same."
Armund spoke half under his breath and took it on.
"And then all of a sudden we saw Elen running with terror and panic in his eyes. Covered in blood and dirt, with a piece of somebody's flesh in his hood."
Askir leaned forward a little at that.
"Arswald caught hold of him and asked what had happened, and he couldn't get a word out... choking and stumbling over it... I'll swear to you, at the time I thought he'd suffocate, breathing like that."
"Then we heard a terrible roar a few hundred meters off, the kind that goes through your bones, and Elen only got one word out. 'Run.' We understood what that meant and got our legs moving at once, inward into the Great Forest. But before we'd made ten paces we heard a shout for help. I turned around while I was holding Elen up and saw a knight of the Green Order running toward us with no helm, his face covered in blood and that same terror in his eyes," Arswald went on.
"Once we'd all got clear, we sheltered in this cave, which by William and Elen's account the thing that had gone for them could not reach," Ray said.
Askir pulled a sour face at Ray's last words and shook his head.
"Why do you say 'the thing' when you know perfectly well who it was?"
Silence hung over the fire until Aren made himself ask.
"Who?..."
Ray said nothing, kept his eyes down, and his fingers shook faintly.
Arswald answered in his place, looking Aren straight in the eye through the tips of the flames.
"Ursus."
Aren looked at Arswald and tried to fit the word he had heard into his head.
"Ursus? And who is that?"
Arswald took a deep breath and began.
"In Waldruhm they take him for a child's tale or a myth, something to keep the ordinary sort away from the Great Forest."
The others kept their eyes on the ground while Arswald looked into the fire and went on.
"Ursus is the warden of these woods, and he lives at the heart of the Great Forest. By the stories he keeps the peace and the balance here, and guards and protects the Great Tree."
"Against whom?" Aren asked.
"Against outsiders and unclean powers," Askir answered without raising his eyes.
Aren turned back to Arswald, who took it up again at his own pace.
"The way the myths have him, he's an enormous dire bear with six legs and saber fangs."
The pause drew out before Aren could put the next question.
"Have you... have you seen him?..."
Arswald said nothing and went on looking into the fire.
"I have," Elen said.
Everyone turned to him, and the skin at the back of Aren's neck crawled.
"I saw him throw knights of the Order about like nothing. Tear them into pieces. Crush them like nuts."
"After a few days of surviving out here we tried to find a way out, but for some reason every one of the beasts we'd been looking for in the first place turned out to be here. Cortexes, white-stone boars... even Kestrels. They closed a ring around us and kept us inside the forest," Ray said.
He turned his eyes into the depths of the cave, where those days returned to him, and went on.
"We started to quarrel. William had no great liking for us to begin with, since he's a knight with honor, and we're supposedly rabble who don't respect tradition and act out of self-interest."
Askir laughed at the words with a shake of the head.
"And one of those days the idiot lost his temper and simply walked out, and found time to fight Elen first."
Aren moved his eyes to Elen, who watched the fire without a word.
Ray went on with his eyes still down on the flames.
"For all that he only irritated us, we couldn't leave him out there, and three of us went after him. A few thousand paces to the northeast we found the remains of his torn-up armor, blood and... tracks... enormous ones... a bear's..."
Something clicked into place in Aren's head, drawing everything he had heard together, and he straightened up with his eyes somewhere ahead of him.
"William said that something dragged him to the Great Tree..."
The others exchanged looks, and a short silence settled between them.
"Are you saying Ursus caught him, dragged him to the Great Tree, left him there and then let him get away?" Arswald asked.
Aren looked at nothing in front of him and turned the thought over.
"Remember I said William took me because the voices told him to bring me to the Great Tree?... What if Ursus had an order like that as well?... What if..."
Askir cut him off at that, shaking his head.
"Hold on, hold on, do you honestly believe that lunatic idiot took you so he could carry out somebody's order in his head and deliver you to the Great Tree?"
Aren said nothing, and Elen answered for him.
"Have you got a better idea?"
Askir broke off, because there was nothing he could say to that.
Elen stayed quiet another second and turned to Aren.
"Anyway, what are you going to do now?"
Aren thought about it and moved his eyes to the bandaged forearm as he remembered how close one Cortex had come to killing him.
The silence drew out, and only then did he raise his head.
"For the first time I've started to feel some kind of thread... a hope that the answer is close... and... even with all the danger... what I want more than anything in the world is the truth. And that is why I mean to reach the Great Tree and have it at last."
"You do understand that you nearly died this morning?" Arswald said.
"I understand," Aren answered, with his eyes still on him.
"And I've felt for myself the difference between fighting a man and fighting an animal... and that's why I want to ask you for something."
Some of them leaned forward a little and listened for what came next.
"Please, could you show me how to fight with a sword?"
A quick exchange of looks ran between all of them, and Arswald spoke.
"What matters far more to us now is working out how to break through the ring of beasts and get home. I don't think we have the time to teach you the sword."
"I learn very fast," Aren answered, and his face was serious.
Arswald raised an eyebrow slightly at the tone and breathed out.
"Sorry, lad, but either way, this part of the forest has gone quieter than it has been in a long while, and it's probably our one chance to get home as soon as tomorrow."
Aren dropped his eyes, but then Elen's voice came.
"And what if it's the quiet before the storm?... We don't know what is really going on in this forest. First every animal moved off the outer bound and inward. Then Ursus, the voices in William's head, beasts that hold us here instead of simply attacking or hunting us. Do none of you see something strange in that?"
Elen ran his eyes over everyone present and stopped on Aren.
"I don't entirely believe it myself... but... for some reason I feel that if we help him, we may well find our own way out of this bad business too."
A long silence settled on them all while each turned over what the two had said.
Arswald breathed out noisily through his nose and rubbed the back of his head.
"Damn it, Elen, there are times you irritate me... All right. Aren. In that case you'll need to give everything you have. I'll show you twice, no more. If this really does have something to do with you, then I hope our help in getting you to the Great Tree gets us back to our families."
The fire crackled and threw red light over the stone walls around them, while the smell of roasting meat had long since merged with resin and wet rock, and outside stood the still forest quiet in which no sound was born.