The Beast of Maug Maurai, Part One: The Culling (10 page)

--
From, “A Modest History of West Nuldryn,” by Yurik Bodlyn

Murrogar heard a nightmare playing
out behind him, back where he had left the second party. The Beast had stopped
trifling. It was killing on a large scale now, a tempest of violence. Howls like
thunder. Cries raining out from the travelers. It seemed to Murrogar as if all
of them were screaming, the ones being chased, the ones torn into, and the ones
left mangled and pleading for death. All soaked the forest with their cries.

Black Murrogar broke off a branch
from the maple that they floated upon and hung the last lantern upon the stub.
The wick was little more than glowing threads now. Here on the river, it wasn’t
a problem. Blythwynn’s Gaze made it through the canopy in patches and lit everything
in silver. But when they left the river they would be blind.

The travelers clustered close to one
another on the fallen maple, half the party on each side. Ten adult nobles.
Ulrean, perched on Murrogar’s shoulders, made eleven. Sir Bederant’s squire,
straddling the log, made twelve. A spearman that Murrogar had allowed into the
party drifted at the far end of the log was thirteen. Thantos and Hul clung to
the tree opposite Murrogar, and Sir Wyann clutched the log with both arms at
the far end. Sixteen. Sixteen people to look after.

Ten’s what I needed. Sixteen’s too
many
.

And then Murrogar caught site of
something next to Sir Wyann, half hidden in the leaves of a branch. It was the
Eridian spearman.
Gods curse you, Wyann
. The spearman lay barely breathing
and Murrogar’s instinct was to wade over and cut him loose. To let the river
take him home. But he remembered the Eridian’s bravery. The man had leaped out
of the forest to stab at the Beast earlier that night. His actions had saved
Sir Wyann, but Murrogar respected the spearman anyway. The old hero glanced at
the nobles on the log, then looked back at the Eridian.

Seventeen people to look after.

He studied the Eridian’s withered
skin. The swelling of his face. The man had been poisoned. His fingers twitched
occasionally but he didn’t move otherwise.

 Sixteen-and-a-half.

The river carried them on. No one
spoke. There was only the storm of death behind them, the rushing of the
Typtaenai, and the muffled sobs of Lady Genaeve Baelyn, daughter to the Count
of Laundingham. She was one of the travelers that Murrogar had decided would
live. He gripped the tree more tightly and thought of Bederant accepting his
duty without protest, leading the others through the forest with a killing
fiend at his back.

Bederant’s squire was hunched on the
log. He caught Murrogar looking and stared back with tears in his eyes.
Murrogar thought the boy was mourning Sir Bederant, but the boy proved him
wrong.

“I don’ wanna die,” said the squire.
“Are we gonna die, Murrogar?” His voice broke at the end. He wiped at his nose
with the back of his hand.

Murrogar stared downriver. There was
only darkness down there. A nothingness toward which the maple log hurtled.
“Yeah,” he said. “I think we prolly will. That monster back there ain’t playing
no more. Maybe it’ll forget ‘bout us. Don’t think so, though. And I don’t
imagine it’s going to give us the time to get to Kithrey.”

Sir Wyann spoke: “What is wrong with
you? He’s a boy. You’re scaring the life out of him.”

“The boy needs to be scared,” said
Murrogar. “Fear is your mind’s way of telling you to wake up. Of preparing you
to do what you thought couldn’t be done. And most important, fear’s the thing
that tells you to do what Black Murrogar says to do.” He gave the squire a wink
then checked the lantern. It would be dead soon.

He caught the eyes of the Duchess,
who stared at him with naked hatred.

Still angry about her servant
.

Murrogar knew she would never forgive
him, no matter his reasoning. The cries of the dying drifted down the river,
faint and haunting. Screams like that could carry clear down to Maeris on a
still night like this. He watched the shivering travelers in the water,
struggling to keep their arms over the log. All of them craned their necks to
the side, back toward the riverbank. Back to where the monster made memories of
their friends and servants. The screams wouldn’t end and the nobles could do
nothing but listen.

Murrogar watched them flinch at the
cries for a time then cleared his throat. He gazed downriver, toward the great
void of Maug Maurai, and he sang. His voice was deep and powerful and far more
polished than any of travelers would have imagined.

What
does it take to win a cup of clay?

An
iron shield?

A
sword of steel?

It's
the mettle lads,

It's
the mettle lads

What
must you bring to find a cup of clay?

A
cloak and hood?

A
spear of wood?

Just
the mettle lads

Just
the mettle lads

It was an old song about the Raging
Eight. A tragic band of heroes that ventured into Durrenia to reclaim a holy
relic of Laraytia. It wasn’t his first choice. Murrogar had wanted to sing “
Lost
My Heart on the River Blue
” but he had changed his mind at the last
instant. Losing your heart had a different implication in Maug Maurai.

The travelers turned to look at
Murrogar. Their expressions told him what they thought about his sanity, but
they weren’t looking back at the shore anymore. Murrogar’s voice masked most of
the screams, but the distant cries could be heard in the spaces between his
notes. And when those cries finally faded with distance, a new one began. The
Eridian woke and began screaming.

He screamed as if burning ingots had
been nailed into his belly. He cried out so loudly that one of his ears fell
off, which didn’t seem possible to Murrogar, but there it was. The man’s ear
fell onto the log and lay there like an eavesdropping leaf. Murrogar noticed a
look of disgust on Sir Wyann’s face. Then the log struck a fallen cedar that
jutted into the river.

The impact spun the maple and Sir
Bederant’s squire lost his balance. The boy cried out and his hands clawed
frantically at the tree trunk. He toppled into the icy water and the river
swept him downriver. The great maple log creaked and stopped among the branches
of the fallen cedar.

Ulrean had to shout to be heard over
the Eridian’s cries: “He can’t swim!”

Murrogar looked downstream. They were
on one of the river’s few truly deep stretches. Ten or fifteen feet to the
bottom. He turned to Thantos and Hul, then roared at the nobles. “We’re in
mail. One of you go!” But no one moved. They stared upriver, or at the maple
trunk, or into the forest, but none met Murrogar’s gaze. “None ‘a ya?” he
bellowed. “Not a one?”

Ulrean clambered down from Murrogar’s
shoulders and onto the log. The old hero thought the boy wanted to be with his
mother and father, but the child dove into the river instead. His parents cried
out. Ulrean didn’t leap far enough and was swept into a submerged bough of the
cedar tree, pinned by the currents against the capillary branches of the
jutting limb. His hands pushed against the cedar trunk but the Typtaenai was
too strong. Ulrean’s head dipped underwater.

Murrogar took a deep breath then
lunged away from the maple log. The river pulled at him. His blackened
chainmail sought the river bottom, but the old hero struggled and flailed
wildly and found the boy’s foot. The Typtaenai pulled Murrogar down, and he
took Ulrean with him until they were clear of the branches. Then he lifted the
boy high and gave him a shove toward the riverbank before the thirty pounds of
chainmail took the old hero down. Murrogar sank to the bottom, only ten feet or
so. The stones at the bottom glowed crimson. A luminous algae of some sort.

River of Blood
.

His feet found purchase against the
slippery rocks. He fell to all fours and scrambled across the bottom, fighting
the gale of currents that dragged him farther downstream. Fighting the burning
crush in his lungs.

The maple had crashed into the cedar
twenty feet from shore. If it had been twenty one feet Murrogar’s lifeless body
would have joined the gleaming red algae on the river bottom. But Black
Murrogar hauled himself out from the river and fell upon the shrubs coughing
and sucking for air. He glanced toward the maple log. Ulrean had made it and
was back with is parents. The Duchess was holding the boy tightly with one arm
and crying, the Duke seemed to be lecturing the child, a warning finger in
front of the boy’s face. A pulsing blue light lit their faces. The stone in the
boy’s head was glowing.

Thantos and Hul helped Murrogar to
his feet. The two had crossed the half submerged cedar tree in full mail to get
to shore. The old hero glanced at the slippery cedar trunk then nodded once to
his men and grunted. They smiled at the praise.

Thantos and Hul stripped off their
mail and helped Murrogar out of his. All three carried their armor back into
the river, tied the mail to the maple then shoved the great log free of the
cedar. Murrogar took position next to Ulrean, who looked up at him, shivering
in the cold night. The jewel tucked into the boy’s forehead had dimmed once
again.

 Black Murrogar nodded at Ulrean once
and grunted, then unfastened a steel broach from his shoulder. He placed the
broach into the boy’s hand. Ulrean didn’t need to study it. He had stared at
the metal disk for hours on their wagon journey. Murrogar’s Black Bear sigil
was carved into the metal. It was identical to the broaches worn by Thantos and
Hul, and by Grim, who had been cut in half during the initial attack.

Ulrean tried to smile but he burst
into tears instead. He sobbed and wriggled past his mother and threw his arms
around the old hero’s neck. The child lay his head on the padded gambeson and
wept. Murrogar patted him stiffly with his free hand then, after a moment,
hugged the child tightly and let him cry.

Murrogar looked downstream and saw
only darkness. They would never see Bederant’s squire again. He was certain of
that. He had made a promise to Sir Bederant, an unspoken promise. But the boy
had drowned minutes into Murrogar’s care. He gazed at the travelers, huddled
against the maple log, shivering. At Ulrean weeping against his chest. The
Eridian was silent again, likely dead. He thought of the Beast, enormous,
faster than arrows, stronger than steel. And for the first time that night,
Black Murrogar understood with certainty that none of them would make it out of
Maug Maurai.

    
Kithrey was still two hours away, but
Grae held them at the ruined tower of Ulgrei Tauk. It was an old,
lightning-toppled fortification that once guarded the border of Nuldryn against
Maulden, back when the two territories had their own kings. His squad was
complete now and he wanted to start drilling the soldiers with his strategy to
bring down the Beast. It would take hundreds of repetitions before they were
comfortable enough with the tactics to be effective, which meant drilling at
every spare instant.

But they had to contend with Beldrun
Shanks first.

“Our squad is assembled.” Grae stood
straight and proud before the men. He had thought long about the words he would
say to them. “But a group of soldiers is nothing without –”

“What in Blyth’s cunt do you mean?”
Shanks’ lip was curled upward. “This is it? These bunch of pink-fisted
brown-fingers?”

“Shut your gapin’ portcullis,
Shanks.”  Spittle flew from hammer’s mouth as he shouted.

“I hope all of you left your best
weapons with a mate,” Shanks continued. “Cause they’ll be lost forever where
we’re going. Pay off yer debts. Won’t need money no more. It’s an old fashioned
execution. Show ‘em yer throats. Let’s get it done and over quickly. I’ll take
mine in the …”

“STITCH IT, SHANKS!” Hammer grabbed
the man by the strap of his baldric and shook. The top of Hammer’s head scarcely
reached Beldrun’s neck. “You keep talkin’ like that and by the Blood of Anris I
swear it
will
be your execution. Do you understand me? Do you understand
what I am saying?” 

Shanks’ eyes burned into Hammer’s,
but he nodded.

Hammer tried to shake him again, but
the big man only swayed. “I want to hear it, you seemarken pizzle! Do you
understand?”

Shanks nostrils flared, but he nodded
again and spoke quietly. “Aye, hammer.”

Hammer gave the big man one final
shove. “You an’ me, we’re gettin’ close to that ledge, Shanks.” Hammer waved a
finger. “You’ll take a nasty fall if you don’t watch it. Take it to ‘eart. Take
it to ‘eart.”

Grae abandoned his speech and set the
men to drilling in formation. He didn’t have a wealth of experience fighting
animals. He’d been faced with a few on the Front – massive bultanyons and
steam-breathing drasiks mostly. But they were simply more enemies to contend
with there. He fought them with whatever he had, however he could. How did one
hunt a Beast in a forest? Not a boar or a scaly, horned runk, but a monstrous
predator like the Beast of Maug Maurai.

In the end, Grae settled for a
variation of an old Standards formation. The Northern V was used when
confronted with a small number of fierce opponents. Two lines of men arranged
in a V, capable of surrounding and enveloping the enemy. It was the best
strategy he could think of for a creature that he knew almost nothing about.

Grae studied the scruffy group of
misfits and shook his head. He might have had a chance if they had let him
choose his own men. He ordered Hammer to split the men into two groups for the
drill. Each group formed one wall of a V, facing inward with spears and swords,
like a mouth ready to devour. Sage and the slow-witted Drissdie Hannish stood
at the top of the right wall holding spears. Next to them, toward the crook of
the V, was Rundle Graen, the bearded warrior with the sun-painted helmet. Next
to Rundle was the knight, Sir Jastyn Whitewind. Rundle Graen and Sir Jastyn
would use their swords to attack, Drissdie and Sage their spears.

The left wall was set up similarly;
Dathnien Faldry, the recovering madman, and Hammer were the spearmen. Grae and
Beldrun Shanks would be the swordsmen, although Shanks would use the great
double-bladed axe of his and not a sword.

At the base of the V stood their
armored crossbowman, Jjarnee Kruu, and their twitchy-eyed archer, Daen Hyell.
Meedryk Bodlyn, the magician’s apprentice, took position behind the archers.

 “We will alternate attacks,” said
Grae. “When the spearmen on the right strike, the swordsmen from the left will
attack. If the Beast turns to attack the swordsmen on the left, then the
spearmen on the left will strike to protect them and hold the creature back.
The swordsmen on the right will attack while the creature is engaged with the
Spearmen on the left. With luck, the alternating attacks will protect us while
enraging the Beast.

“Archers, you will fire at will. I
want you to punish the creature. Taunt it into attacking you. Because if the
beast lunges into the mouth of the V to get at you, every soldier on each side
will get a good look at its flanks. Let’s pray that the Beast goes after the
archers. Let’s pray that it goes after them right away.”