Things Unseen: (An epic fantasy adventure series) (The Caris Chronicles Book 1) (11 page)

“Well all things considered, not too bad. Your battle-frenzy was very well timed. I don’t know if we would all still be alive, if you hadn’t suddenly discovered your new gift.”

“What battle-frenzy?”

“Look around Janen, who do you think killed all those grey people?”

“I don’t know.”

“You did. I have seen someone in a battle-frenzy before, but they didn’t achieve as much as you did here.”

“I did that? I don’t remember,” Janen said in confusion.

“It is normal to not remember much after a battle-frenzy, usually you don’t stop until the battle is won and you can sleep, or until you are dead, and then I guess you get to stop anyway,” she said. Her voice became firm as she continued, “But you cannot stop. The lost ones are regrouping; they will attack again soon. Give me some more of your shirt, then get up and walk around, loosen your limbs, find some strength. You must fight again soon.”

He tore off a long strip of his shirt and handed it to Tilda. Then he dragged himself to his feet and forced his leaden legs to walk, while Tilda struggled to bandage Bek. Slowly his limbs began to loosen, as he gazed into the trees he could see the cowering lost ones watching him; more were gathering and though some were urging caution, others seemed to be questioning the delay and arguing for action.

“Bend down and pick up a handful of dirt.”

He obeyed Tilda while watching her, once more wondering about her state of mind.

“Focus on what it feels like, the grains in your hand, let it run through your fingers. Concentrate on how it feels.”

Janen looked at Tilda questioningly.

“You need to ground yourself.”

Janen stared at the dirt with a creased brow.

“I don’t mean like that. I mean you need to fully come back to the moment. You’re walking around in a daze. If you’re going to find the strength to fight again, you need to push through your lethargy. Try harder Janen! I need you here now!”

Janen followed her commands. He focused on the coarse dirt in his fingers, rubbed the silky bits between his thumb and fingers. Then he started to look at the trees around him, noticing the colour of their leaves and reminding himself of the names of as many as he knew.

“What’s the most important thing to you, Janen?”

He looked at her in consternation; they had never spoken about anything like that.

“Oh, never mind,” she said almost irritably, “It’s too late.” Tilda stood, gathering her sword. “Just keep that foremost in your mind and force your body to fight for it.

It was not hard for Janen to fill his thoughts with Caris as lost ones began to leave the trees and head toward them. He moved so his back was to Tilda, Bek on the ground between them. Somehow, he found the energy to lift his sword arm and start fighting again.

It felt like they had been fighting for an age, when the sound of horses reached them through the trees.

By the time The King’s Horse burst into the clearing, Janen had fallen into an exhausted rhythm with his sword. In the back of his mind, he knew that he was fighting lazily and that any experienced swordsman would have made short work of him, but he was too tired to care. Only the thought of Caris kept him going. He had convinced himself he needed to continue fighting to keep her safe. He didn’t know how he had arrived at that conclusion but it was all he had.

The clearing had gradually filled with more lost ones, until they were coming at Janen and Tilda three at a time. The King’s Horse burst through, hacking into the grey ones, bringing relief to Janen and Tilda just in time.

Janen sobbed aloud when he saw them ride away into the bushes on the other side. He almost threw down his sword in defeat, but then Garner and Holmen were ploughing back into the midst of the lost ones on foot, wielding their heavy swords with two hands and vanquishing any grey ones who didn’t move away quick enough. For the first time, Janen was genuinely glad to see Garner. The rest of The King’s Horse followed behind them, and to Janen’s relief, the grey ones turned their attack to the others.

Janen was too tired to wonder at the cheer of triumph that went up from the lost ones as they hurled themselves at The King’s Horse with a fury they had not shown before. He stood for a moments reprieve searching in vain for Caris, before lifting his sword again to fight off the attackers that ventured his way.

The clearing below them was swarming with people attacking her friends, but there was something terribly wrong with them. Their skin was an unnatural grey; they were dirty and dishevelled, as if they had travelled a long distance without stopping to care for themselves. Some of them had long sharp teeth and all of them had wide eyes full of torment and sorrow. The sheer number of them overwhelmed Caris; they filled the clearing below her and were all through the surrounding trees. She almost despaired of any of them ever surviving the encounter, but as she watched the chaos, she realised that her friends were actually making good headway.

Garner and Holman ploughed through the enemy with their large heavy swords. Lillit and Veeta almost seemed to be dancing as they sliced through the masses, fleet of foot and lightening quick. Kalen and Crispin stood in the middle back-to-back, fighting with the confidence of swords-people who had been doing this together for years. Caris realised that though the enemy far outnumbered her friends, they didn’t have the same skill. They fought with short swords and daggers, trying to stab their opponents but not having the reach against swords. They were ferocious, some even trying to use their teeth, but they were not fast.

Caris noticed they seemed to be concentrating their attack on Crispin; the rest of the band formed a circle around him. Many of the grey people died as they rushed heedlessly past swords in their single-minded resolve to reach Crispin. She looked to Syngar for an explanation and noticed he had already moved to a higher branch that gave him a clearer space for throwing his knives.

Without looking at her, he sensed her question. “Crispin carries something of great value, they are trying to steal it,” was his brief explanation. He punctuated his statement with another knife thrown with deadly accuracy.

Caris climbed onto another branch and pulled her bow off her back. She cursed herself for her slowness. Once again, she had been overwhelmed when she was needed most. Though she had taken in the scene in mere moments, she abused herself for not using that time to shoot her arrows instead.

Caris concentrated on picking off those who were closest to Crispin. She had to choose her targets carefully as her friends were jumping around in his defence as well. Syngar was picking people off from a slightly different angle and, not long after, arrows started flying from the bushes on the other side of the clearing. She realised that Bridee and Frystal must be over there. It didn’t take long before Caris’ arrows began to run low. She began to look for a way to enter the fray and recover some of them.

The enemy had been thinned out drastically and though they still outnumbered the band two-to-one she was surprised they didn’t turn and run. They fought on with mindless determination, seemingly careless of their own lives. Off to the side of the clearing she noticed Janen fighting. Tilda was at his back but there was something on the floor between them. With a gasp, Caris realised it was Bek.

She began to use her last few arrows to pick off some of the grey people around them. Even from a distance, she could see that blood covered Bek and that Janen and Tilda were exhausted
. Who knows how long they were fighting like that before we arrived,
she thought in alarm. She realised they had survived because the attack was centred on Crispin, only a few stray grey people were stopping to lunge at Janen and Tilda. Even so, it was obvious they couldn’t last much longer.

Her supply of arrows exhausted, Caris scrambled down her tree determined to gather some more and mount an all out defence of Janen. Shouting to get Syngar’s attention, she pointed to Janen. She had hoped he would pick a few of the enemy off with his knives, but he was out too and he scrambled down behind her to gather some back. As they hit the ground, he grabbed her elbow to stop her and handed her his second last knife, a long one that was almost like a short sword.

“We stay together!” he yelled at her over the noise of the battle. She nodded and peered through the leaves of a bush to discern the safest way to get to an arrow.

They collected a few of their weapons and worked their way around to a spot in the bushes only a short distance from Janen and Tilda. Between them, they picked off the remaining grey people who were attacking the exhausted scouts. Janen leant on his sword momentarily and took a deep exhausted breath. Caris smiled to herself in relief. Their reprieve was short lived however.

Another group of grey people came bursting through the bushes right where Caris and Syngar were hiding. Their only routes of escape lay in opposite directions. Caris was surprised she got away so easily but on looking around realised that the attacking group was only interested in reaching Crispin.

They bypassed Janen and Tilda completely, though only an arm’s length from them. Janen and Tilda cut a few of them down as they passed by, then stood wearily over Bek as the mass converged on the small group of fighters standing guard over Crispin.

Caris was just about to signal Syngar, who had climbed a nearby tree, that they should go down to gather some more weapons, when she noticed another group of the ugly grey people creeping from the bushes on the other side of the clearing. She realised with alarm that the band had their whole attention focused on the battle on this side. Crispin was fighting to the rear with his back to the newcomers. Kalen was at his side but her focus too, was on the attackers in front of them.

The battle raged loud. The grey people screeched and screamed as they attacked and died. There was no way for Caris to alert the band. She looked over to Syngar and saw that he too was aware of what was happening. They both leapt down from their trees. Caris was momentarily blinded by the underbrush. This time she didn’t pause to make sure it was safe before rushing into the clearing.

As she broke cover, she saw that the grey people already had Crispin. Kalen was lying on the ground and the rest of the band were fighting furiously, unaware of what was transpiring behind them. Caris realised that even if she could get their attention, none of them would be able to get away. She started running across the clearing, leaving a wide berth around the fighting.

She looked over to where she expected to see Syngar doing the same, but the grey people had intercepted him and he was fighting them off with his long knife. With relief, she saw him manage to back up to Janen and Tilda. He would not get away soon but the three of them should be able to defeat those opposing them.

Caris noticed a group heading for her; it seemed now that they had their prize, they were willing to fight anyone. Either that or they wanted to make sure no one was free to go after Crispin. Caris was a fast runner but she realised she wasn’t going to get far on foot. Eluding her enemies, she cut across the clearing, pulling a few arrows from corpses as fast as she could.

She ploughed into the bushes, close to her first post, and headed for where she had left Indira.

To her relief, she found her not far from where she had left her. Indira was skittish but pleased to see Caris and she welcomed her familiar weight on her back with a whinny. Caris pressed her knees in firmly and steered Indira in the direction she had last seen the grey people taking Crispin.

She had hoped to head directly for the spot she had last seen him and follow them from there. But, almost immediately, a grey person jumped out of a bush in front of her. He lunged at Indira with his long dirty nails.
They are almost like claws,
Caris noticed with disgust. She pulled Indira side on and slashed him across the face with the long knife Syngar had given her.

As she urged Indira forward in a wider circle around the clearing, she remembered guiltily Syngar’s repeated instructions to stay with him. She wondered if she should go back for him.
If I do though, it will give Crispin’s captors too big a head start.
She had seen their ferocity and had no hope that after they had stolen the desired object from him they would let him live
. I have to get to them before they get a chance to stop and search him
.

With frustration, she steered Indira in an increasingly widening circle to evade a group of grey people ahead of her.

Twice more, she used Syngar’s knife to fight off people who leapt out at her from the bushes. “Thank you Syngar,” she sighed after stabbing a grey woman in the shoulder who almost had her wicked teeth into Caris’ thigh.

Finally, she reached the southern side of the clearing where she had last seen Crispin disappearing into the scrub. He was long gone and Caris realised with dismay that finding his trail was going to be a lot harder than she had anticipated. Scores of the foul people had trampled through the area, ploughing through bushes with no regard for their own exposed skin.

She began to head south, away from the clearing, following the most trampled route. She thought that as she got farther away, she would be able to see more clearly if anyone had left in that direction. Caris rode for only a short while before she realised there had been too many feet along this route for her to tell if anyone had left that way. Pulling Indira to a stop, she punched herself in the thigh. “Where do I go?”

The battle was still too close and too loud. She couldn’t track under these conditions. She kneed Indira into a gallop along the freshly made track, trying to put some distance between herself and the fighting going on behind her. As the screams of grey people and the clash of steal grew quieter behind her, Caris again pulled Indira to a stop. She climbed down from her back and began a thorough search of the ground and surrounding bushes. It was as she had expected. There was too much damage for her to discover anything of use.

She decided that she would have to use a systematic approach. She hoped she would find their track earlier rather than later. Caris refused to think what might happen to Crispin if she was too slow. She needed all her concentration to be on her search and couldn’t afford to panic.

Caris mounted Indira and began a wide circle to the west around the clearing. She reasoned that with all the trouble coming out of the west, that might be their destination. If she was wrong and they had gone east she would probably be too late for Crispin by the time she found their trail.

As she cut through the bush, it was easy to see where their attackers had come from. Though most of them had entered the clearing through the track she had followed initially, there were many other newly made tracks all coming from the southwest and converging on the small clearing where the fight had taken place. She marvelled at how they seemed to have travelled separately or in small groups but still all arrived at exactly the same location.

The smaller trails, they had forced through the underbrush, were much easier for her sharp eye to read. Though Caris had grown up doing her tracking in a rocky, largely barren land, the skills she had acquired over the years enabled her to pick up on small things in the wild forest around her that had been created by animal or human. In many ways, she found it easier to find signs amongst the trees, where leaves and small branches were so easily broken, where grass was trampled down and where deep prints were left in the soft ground.

Caris stopped to examine four different paths that had been beaten down on the grey people’s mad rampage to the clearing. All of them showed leaves and twigs broken in the one direction and grass pushed down the same way. The fifth path she came to was wider and took longer for her to examine. She moved to the side to examine the bushes and her heart skipped a beat.

A branch had been snapped in the opposite direction.

She followed the path for a few steps studying the ground and found the confirmation she was looking for. There in the soft earth was the print of a boot belonging to someone in The King’s Horse. Caris had often envied the good solid leather boots of her companions; the grey people went bare foot. She was sure she was looking at a print left by Crispin.

Mounting Indira, she set off at a gallop down the trampled path after the grey people and Crispin. They had a good start on her but she didn’t think they had horses,
indeed no horse could stand to carry a creature with that stench on its back
. She hoped to ride them down before too long.

Caris rode Indira as hard as she dared well into the afternoon. She had never pushed her so hard before and was surprised by her speed and stamina. Mid afternoon, she began to feel an urge to slow down and be more cautious. Pulling Indira into a walk, she listened with all her senses to the trail in front of her. The track had narrowed considerably after the group she was following had branched off from the incoming trail into a more westerly direction. As she neared a bend, she heard noises coming from around the corner.

Caris pulled Indira off the track and wound her way through the trees toward the sounds coming from ahead. Indira seemed to sense what she wanted; placing her feet on the soft earth and avoiding breaking twigs or rustling leaves. As she neared the group, she dismounted and left Indira secreted behind a large bush.

Caris crept towards them and as she got closer was amazed to discover they were speaking in the common tongue. Their words were slow, slurred, and spoken with a harsh guttural quality, but they were intelligible. Caris realised she had expected them to growl like animals or not be able to communicate at all, they were so beastlike despite their human appearance.

She reached a position where she could watch them safely, and was relieved to find that they appeared to have only just stopped. Crispin was lying tied up on the ground. He looked exhausted but was still conscious. There were a score and five in his group of captors, they too looked worn out from their hard run. They sat around on the ground eating chunks of dried bread or lapped water like dogs from the small pool they had stopped by.