The faint sound of shouts came to my ears, and those were followed by the pounding of heavy padded feet on the ground. A creature broke through a bush close at hand and lunged at us, its hideous jaws open and dripping with frothing drool. My heart nearly came to a standstill at that familiar open maw. It was one of those hideous creatures, the nethril.
And it was charging straight at me.
Chapter 7
Titus swung his dagger, and the blade cut across the beast’s throat. The creature dropped to the ground and writhed before it withered away just as its friend had done a few hours before. I scrambled backward, but tripped over my own clumsy and panicked feet.
The rest of the camp erupted into chaos as dozens of the fiends leaped out of the shadows. The horses screamed and pulled at their reins. They danced around the snapping jaws of the monsters, and their panic broke the ropes. They galloped into the darkness with the nethral close at their heels.
The men didn’t fare much better. They cut away at the forces, but didn’t come out unscathed. Men were knocked down and mangled, and the bitter scent of blood filled the air.
Cries of pain filled the air, and the worst of the wounded was the gallant but inexperienced Valerian. He faced off against a particularly large nethral, and the monster latched onto his leg. He was mangled before one of his compatriots intervened, slicing the thing’s head off.
I was less than useless. A half dozen of the nethral focused on me, intent on snatching my clothes. One of them succeeded in grabbing the back of my shirt, and the fiend dragged me several yards before Secundus sliced the creature’s head off.
I rolled out of the way and scrambled toward the only safe place I could see, the tent. Two of the monsters leaped into my path and grabbed the front of my pants. I was yanked toward the woods, but my salvation leaped out of the shadows of the trees.
The king’s cape flew behind him as he swung his sword downward with both hands clasping the hilt. He drove the blade through the top of one of the creature’s skulls and out the bottom jaw. The force of his thrust shoved the thing into the dirt, where it was pinned by his weapon. He brushed his hand over his exposed arm and drew out some of those strange plates, one of which he jammed into the bleeding wound. The nethral let out a terrible screech and thrashed about for a few moments before dissolving.
My heart pounded in my chest as I watched the king take on the other creature. They faced off, monster to man, bright blue eyes to hideous yellow. Two combatants amidst the chaos of battle.
Little did I know my attention should have been elsewhere. That’s why I didn’t see the fiend come up behind me until it snapped its jaws on the back of my pants. I whipped my head around and found myself staring into the blazing yellow eyes of a particularly large nethral. The monster was so large that it lifted me off the ground. I thrashed in its hold, not caring whether I kept my dignity or not, but its jaws were like vises.
Another dozen of its brethren surrounded us, creating an impressive guard. I screamed and alerted the king to my predicament. He turned, but his foe took advantage of his distraction to lunge at him. The king jerked his body to the side and only barely missed having his arm ripped off by those razor-sharp teeth.
Other men in the convoy tried to reach me, but they, too, were pushed back by the bodyguards, many of whom sacrificed themselves to block their attack. My captor dashed toward the woods, carrying my flailing person over the uneven ground. I tried to reach the dirt to dig my heels in, but the creature shook its head like I was its favorite, rattling my brain and the rest of my body.
We shot into the woods and darted through the brush. I didn’t get away unscathed as every bramble and branch tried to latch onto me. I flung up my arms to protect my face, and my sleeves were torn to shreds.
The noise from the camp died away, and with it, my hope of being rescued. Our hideous entourage fell back, no doubt to stop any attempts at further heroics, until it was only the large nethral and me. I don’t know how long or how far we traveled, but the woods eventually parted to reveal a tiny meadow. The earth was barren except for a few scraggly weeds. Even the branches that stretched over the clearing were either dead or had shriveled leaves.
And in the very middle of that desolation was a small, black hole. The pit was completely dark, save for the very top edges of the jagged circle. My heart told me I wanted to be anywhere else other than there.
The creature had other plans. It dashed forward and leaped into the abyss, and my scream echoed off the walls as the earth swallowed us. I expected a steep drop and a hard landing. What the beast did was quite a bit more disgusting. The creature struck the walls with all four paws, and what I had taken for solid dirt was, in actuality, some sort of disgusting black ooze. The ooze created squirted underneath its paws, gushing out like a squished fruit. My captor pushed off from the wall and aimed lower down, darting to and fro deeper and deeper into the shadows.
We eventually reached the bottom, and a quick look up told me salvation was too impossible to reach. The tunnel in which I had been taken was illuminated by glowing rocks stuck into the ooze. They flickered and danced, casting their haunting light over the high and long tunnel well out of my sight. Dozens of smaller paths led off into the earth, and all of them exuded a chill, dank air that made my stomach churn.
I was spat out like a hairball and landed hard on the unforgiving floor. A faint cloud of dust rose around me, causing me to cough. I heard the creature back away, and a faint rustle of fabric came from in front of me. The bottom hem of a robe came into view, and I followed the elegant cloth up to the head.
A man of some seventy years stared down at me. He sported long, wispy white hair that cascaded over his shoulders, and an equally unimpressive, seaweed-like mustache hung limp down past his chin and merged with his beard. The man was as pale as death, and his long, bony fingers grasped the edges of the front of his robe. He stared at me with unblinking dark eyes, and a golden chain around his neck glistened in the faint light. A small, bulbous orb was attached to the necklace, and the contents were so black that the lights around us couldn’t penetrate its interior.
He spoke in a raspy voice that reminded me of the rattle of stiff paper. “So you are the one who has disturbed the woods.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat and then did it again before I was able to speak. “I-I don’t know w-what you’re talking about.”
The evil hound at my back let out a terrible growl.
He hunched over closer to me, and I felt like a fly caught in a spider’s web. “The nethral know you are imbued with magic, and that you traveled so far into my woods means you must have a very powerful gift to hide yourself.”
I ran my tongue across my lips. “B-but I really don’t have any magic. I can’t even pull a hanky out of my sleeve.”
He straightened and sneered down at me. The flickering lights cast his wrinkles in deep shadow, creating a death mask effect over his face. “Your lies are worthless against me, woman. No one has the foresight of I, Zareth Vhulkar, and I am quite able to tell when someone is not being truthful with me.”
Then you’d better get your eyesight checked, I thought to myself even as I bit my tongue to keep the words from coming out. The hellhound at my back was a convincing argument not to talk back to the owner. Instead, I eased myself onto my feet and set my palm against one wall to help my shaking legs. “I don’t have what you’re looking for. Really.”
He lifted his nose and scoffed. “Since you refuse to cooperate, I am forced to take more drastic measures. You will follow me.” He turned and shuffled down the tunnel in the direction he had come.
“I think I’d rather be leaving,” I insisted.
