The Beast of Maug Maurai, Part One: The Culling (9 page)

--
Brig Grae Barragns, Wolf
Company, Maulden

Lojen’s Eye glowered high and hot
above Grae’s squad as they set off toward Tyftin. The Brig and his hammer rode
in the lead. Sir Jastyn and Maid Maribrae followed behind, the flanks of their
horses brushing against one another. In the third rank was their new scout,
Sage. And Beldrun Shanks rode at the rear, still manacled, and spitting the
word ‘cock’ at Sage again and again.

“D’ya really think we should let the
big man ride in the back?’ Hammer asked.          

“You think he’ll run?” asked Grae.

“’sa fair concern, ain’t it?”

“You’ve seen that horse he’s riding,
haven’t you?”

Hammer chuckled and they rode on.

The rest of their soldiers waited for
them at Tyftin. Three more footmen, two archers, and a mage.

“It’s a wonder they let us have a
magician,” said Grae.

“Where do you think they dredged him
from?” asked Hammer. “I thought every spare mage was at The Front.”

 “I’m afraid to imagine what kind of
mage they would assign to this squad,” said Grae.

Hammer chewed at a strip of jerked
hare. “Don’t much like ‘aving mages around. Readin’ my thoughts and such.”

“You don’t really believe they can
read your thoughts, Hammer, do you?”

“Course they can,” said Hammer. “And
they can give you warts just by lookin’ at you.” Grae said nothing and Hammer
gazed past bushy brown eyebrows at him. “What? It’s true. You’ve seen ‘em yourself,
Grae. Remember that wizard at Debney? Burned up thirty Durrenians just by
pointing at them. ‘ad this way of looking at you. Like ‘e could see clear into
your spirit.”

     Grae shrugged. He didn’t know
what to believe about mages. All he knew was that the good ones could be damned
useful.

Tyftin was a large city. It sat beside
the Mythaenthys, with towering white walls and a population of nearly thirty
thousand within them. One of Sir Jastyn’s uncles was the Count of Tyftin.
Another was the Thane of Tyftinshire. Both lived at Daun Faulen, on the western
side of the city. So when the gate guards spotted Sir Jastyn, the group was
waved through without a second glance. Sir Jastyn and his songmaiden begged off
to pay a short visit to his uncle.

Meedryk Bodlyn, the magician assigned
to the squad, waited for them in a chair just inside the door of the Canalist’s
Guild hall. Grae knew that mages were sorted into their specialties. Canalist
were general purpose mages. He wasn’t sure that was the best type of mage for
the mission, but he wouldn’t complain. They had assigned him a mage and mages
served a valuable function. The good ones did, anyway. Meedryk Bodlyn rose and
saluted clumsily, sending his chair tumbling to the floor, and Grae wondered if
this mage would serve any function at all.

 “Meedryk Bodlyn?” asked Hammer.

“Yes, hammer,” the magician mumbled.

He was a boy, really. Not much older
than a boy. Slight of build with poor posture and hair the color of dirty
firewood. His gaze was everywhere except on the person speaking to him, and he
wore one of those coats that magicians always insist on calling cloaks. But
this coat had three small stars on the shoulder in place of rank insignia.

Grae looked to the magician’s arms.
“You don’t have your bracers on, soldier.”

“I … I haven’t earned them yet, brig
sir,” he stammered.

“What?” Grae asked.

Meedryk shook his head, his eyes
falling toward Grae’s boots.

“The brig asked you a question,” said
Hammer.

“I’m sorry… I’m not a mage yet,” said
Meedryk, understanding now that it had all been a mistake, his placement on the
squad. He wondered if they would send him back to Maul Kier. Back to the misery
of his old unit, Peregrine Company. “I’m a mantic.” He glanced up, saw their
confusion and sighed. “An apprentice.” Grae closed his eyes and rubbed at his
forehead. Beldrun Shanks gave a short bark of a laugh. Meedryk cleared his
throat: “I’ll be tested in another four months.”

Grae rubbed at the corner of his eye.
“You’re not even a mage. Can you cast?”

“Yes.” Meedryk smiled nervously. His
expression somewhere between nervous humor and a restrained indignation.

“Yes, what?” asked Hammer.

“Yes … yes I can cast,” replied the
mage.

This wasn’t what Hammer had been
after and he leaned in, but Grae intervened. “I’m a brig. You’ll address me as
such,” he said. “We’ll discuss your merits later. Lace up your jacket, you look
a shamble. And hurry it up. We have one more stop to make in Tyftin.” Grae
turned and caught sight of the old man again, looked at Meedryk. “Do we need to
talk to him?”

“He’s sleeping.” Meedryk almost
shouted it, his voice shrill. “That’s why I didn’t check on him, brig sir.
Because he’s asleep.”

“Easy boy,” said Hammer. “Do we need
to sign you out or something?”

“No, hammer,” said Meedryk. “He’s not
my master. I actually haven’t spoken to him, sir. He … he hasn’t moved much.”

Grae ‘s eyes fell on the old man
again. “Hammer.”

“Aye sir?”

“Does he look a little pale to you?”

Hammer squinted, then clopped over to
the desk. “Hey, you there. Old man.” He tapped him on the shoulder. Finally he
grasped a handful of the man’s hair and lifted his head off the desk. He
glanced at the face and let out a
humph.

“How’s that for supper?” said Hammer,
still holding the man’s hair. “He’s dead.” He let the head drop heavily onto
the book and walked back to the squad.

“Poor man,” said Grae. “Let’s get
moving. We’ve still got a long day ahead of us.”

Sage and Beldrun Shanks moved toward
the door of the guild. Meedryk stood in shocked silence, the guilt rising like
tears. When only Grae, Hammer and Meedryk were left, the apprentice spoke.
“What … what about him?” he asked. “We shouldn’t just leave him here like that,
should we, hammer?”

“Why not?” said Hammer, ushering the
mantic out. “Someone’ll find ‘im.” 

Meedryk cast one last look at the old
man and wondered exactly what sort of squad he had joined.

Their last five soldiers waited at a
tavern called
Swift Waters
. When they reached the tavern the stableman
took Hammer’s horse, then reached for Grae’s mare. She stamped nervously and
leaned away from the man.

“There’s a girl,” said Grae. He
clicked his tongue and rubbed at her neck. The stableman stroked her nose as he
took her. He swept his gaze across her with the canniness of an accomplished
horseman.

“What a fine ‘orse she must ‘ave
been,” he said.

“Still is,” Grae replied. He massaged
her flank, seeing her now as the guardsman had. Noting the old scars, the
dullness of the eyes. She’d gained most of her weight again, but her coat had
never come back properly. It was flat and spare.

“Was she wounded?” asked the
guardsman.

“She’s from Gracidmar,” he said. “One
of their officers got caught on the wrong side of a skirmish line. Someone
thought it’d be funny to draw him with his own horse.”

They had secured her to the tension
chains, had forced her to pull her master to pieces as they interrogated him.
After that, they simply left her there, a replacement for the worn out cob that
had done the job for years.

“They don’t know about horses like
this in Tenyth,” said Grae. “They didn’t treat her right.”

The mare had spent two years doing
nothing but pulling people apart. They rarely turned her out. Fed her only
enough to keep her from dying. Whipped her until she didn’t care about whips
anymore.

When Grae saw her for the first time,
he could count every one of her ribs, could distinguish every swell and lump in
those bones. He bought the beast for twice what she was worth and nursed her to
health. He promised himself that someday he would take her to the foot of the
Durrenian Mountains and set her free.

The tavern was crowded, but it was
breezy compared to the
Happy Pig
in Kithrey. Grae was expecting three
infantrymen and two longbowmen in the tavern. But he was learning that nothing
was as he expected in this squad hand-picked by the Duke of Nuldryn. The
disaster of the Chamberlain’s choices grew worse as he met each soldier. Grae
first met a stout named Jjarnee Kruu, from Basilisk Company up in Maul Lawray.

Stout Kruu was originally from
Hrethri, a kingdom far to the north known for bitter winters, bitter spirits,
and bitter civil wars. Kruu was tall, only a few inches shorter than Beldrun
Shanks. He wore a bulging, archaic breastplate with oversized spaulders at the
shoulders and steel greaves on his shins. The man had wavy blonde hair, a thick
soldier’s face and eyes creased by laugh lines. A ragged half-moon scar on one
of his cheeks was evidence of a day when things hadn’t been so humorous.

Hammer assumed he was a footman
because of his armor. Infantrymen were allowed to wear plated armor if they
could afford it. But Jjarnee Kruu was no infantryman. He was an archer.

 “Gonna have an unholy time of it in
forest with that lead suit you got on,” said Hammer. “How can you fire a bow
with that armor?” Jjarnee Kruu flipped his wood-framed pack and revealed a long
crossbow strapped to the side.

“A crossbow?” asked Hammer. “We were
told you were a longbowman. How in Blackblyth are you supposed to kill a beast
when you only got one shot?”

Jjarnee reached down by his left
thigh and swung a smaller crossbow around. It was slung on his belt, hidden
behind a dangling war hammer. “I have second shot,” he said, smiling.

“So what?” asked Hammer. “Two bolts
won’t bring down that creature. What are you gonna do after your second shot? 
Throw your breastplate at it?”

Jjarnee Kruu chuckled and reached for
something hooked to the back of his belt. He held it up; an ancient, tiny
hand-crossbow made of iron. “Jjarnee always have more.” The lines bunched
deeply around his eyes as he laughed.

A young man sat next to Jjarnee, also
from Basilisk Company. Thin and pale, with long blonde hair tied back and an
asymmetric face made for mockery. He wore the Standards’ black chain mail and a
leather coif with hanging straps. The black Basilisk badge was sewn crookedly
onto his grey tabard. Hammer studied the man’s eyes and found a lack of focus
in them, a lingering confusion that Hammer suspected was permanent.

Next to Trudge Drissdie Hannish sat
Trudge Dathnien Faldry, a tall man with short, unevenly cropped black hair. He
was another infantryman. Silent and fidgety. He wore no badge indicating what
company he belonged with. Hammer had heard something about Trudge Faldry. The
soldier had been confined to a purificery for almost a year. It was common to
send soldiers to purificeries when they stopped thinking rationally. Surgeons
and alhumerian mages treated their afflictions there with meager results.
Hammer had never heard of a soldier coming back from a purificery. But whatever
ghoulish cleansing techniques the surgeons had employed on the man seemed to
have worked. Trudge Dathnien Faldry was quiet, polite and respectful, if a
little jumpy.

The last infantryman was Trudge
Rundle Graen. A dour, thick-chested soldier with black hair to his shoulders
and a nose that had been broken many times. He wore a heavy beard that almost
covered a long scar running from the corner of his mouth to the top of his
cheekbone. He was from Griffin Company, far to the southwest, a company tasked
with patrolling the Durrenian Range. Rundle Graen wore his mail tight, and
blackened the metal of his sword in an homage to the hero Black Murrogar.
Trudge Graen had painted Lojen’s orange sun device across his entire sallet in
a gesture of devoutness. Grae knew soldiers like this. Inferno-men. Men who
worshipped Lojen with a binding singularity. They made vows to never rout and
to never back down from any quarrel. Hammer said that Rundle had been
disciplined for fighting in the ranks, so it was a mixed blessing, this
devoutness to the god of justice and war.

And finally there was Trudge Daen
Hyell, an archer from Wyvern Company. Hyell was broad shouldered and tall like
most archers, but his hands trembled when he held his cup and his shooting eye
twitched when he spoke.

Grae shook each soldier’s hand. He
looked them in the eye and welcomed them to the squad warmly despite the
disappointment that settled over him. These weren’t soldiers. They were
castoffs. Beldrun Shanks, a murderer and rapist. Meedryk Bodlyn a clumsy
apprentice mage. Jjarnee Kruu, an armored crossbowman who could scarcely speak
Galadane. Drissdie Hannish, an imbecile. Dathnien Faldry, a recovering lunatic.
Rundle Graen, a surly brawler. And Daen Hyell, a twitchy-eyed, trembling
longbowman.

Grae studied each of them as they
drank and when he couldn’t suffer the dejection anymore he ordered Hammer to
call the men out. Grae watched them file out. How long would men such as these
last against the Beast of Maug Maurai?