2

The Great Vanquishing

“There are many children here,” he cast a cursory glance over the crowd and the children nodded or said yes. “Who can tell me what you are told of the road north?”

“It was dangerous!” some shouted. “It was filled with monsters!” cried others. Shayar nodded, and then the oldest among them claimed all at once: “and a great hero long ago vanquished all the creatures that preyed upon the innocent!”

“Oh, yes!” Shayar began to pluck a melody. “The great vanquishing!” he grinned at the crowd, all of whom waited with great anticipation. Geoffrey alone grinned back. "Well, let me tell you, then, the story of that vanquishing – a story quite inseparable from the story of Jadugar the Dragon!”

He settled in and resumed his tune.

ⱡ

It had been a few hours since they’d left the gates of Valeford behind, and in those hours their ride north had taken them out of the vale. The Iron Road now ran clear of hills, its longest stretch out in the open, for the next dozen or so miles – the deepest reaches of the old forest were still another two days’ ride away. Tauth was tired, for the sun had disappeared behind the hills far away to their west, and he had not slept for two nights.

“We shall make camp here, near the river,” he said.

Serafina reigned in her horse. “If you think it best,” she gave the spot a quick look before turning to face Tauth. “But I had hoped to ride further north before stopping.”

Tauth considered it before speaking. “Perhaps we can ride a mile, but then we must stop. We are too near the forest now, near enough that the beasts within have scent of us. Besides that, the beasts maintain a vigil well outside the forest.”

“Then we will ride a mile. I do not fear the beasts,” she spurred her horse on, “for I have my magic, and you your sword.”

“Very well.”

They rode in silence until they felt a mile had passed. When they stopped, the first of the old forest’s great trees had begun to loom on either side of the road. Old oaks and yews, willows, and ashes, with trunks as thick as city walls and as tough as iron, stood there proudly, though they were hunched over like old men. They are old, Tauth thought, as he removed his pack from the horse’s back, and so they must be hunched over, he decided. The river was wider here, over a mile across almost, and deeper too. Trolls, common this near the old forest, were not best fond of water – or fire, for that matter – and a camp by it was safe. Still, a hungrier troll might see the camp and it might fancy an easy meal.

This did not much bother Tauth as he set up his tent, however, and he toyed with thoughts of troll fat soup. It tasted rancid, despite being perfectly fine to eat, and he hoped to avoid it this time. He turned around, aiming to help Lady Serafina with her tent but saw that she had set hers up without aid. She had dressed in a beige cotton frock and her hair was hidden under a bonnet, and she was now squatted in the midpoint between their tents piling wood for a fire.

He went to help, fishing a flint out of his pack, but before he could reach the fire, it had sparked and taken flame. From behind the flames, Serafina’s blue eyes glowed with mischief. "I am a 'witch’, remember?” she grinned.

“And never shall I forget,” Tauth smiled. “I shall get the rations.”

Tauth had ensured that they were well supplied with good food for their journey north. He knew of the wizard in his tower, lonely and hermit-like, and he knew also the journey was arduous. Men like Tauth, and perhaps women like Serafina, marched on their stomachs. So, face hidden by the coif supplied by Serafina, he had purchased enough steak, veal, chicken, salted meats, bread, fruits, and mead to sustain them twice over. His horse, a farm horse, was strong enough to carry it all much to Tauth’s satisfaction. With a great fuss, he set about cooking.

“You hum,” Serafina noted as he turned the steak. “As you cook, as you unpacked the food, as you set up the spit and pan. You’ve been humming a while.”

Tauth’s back was turned to her and so he could not see her soft smile, nor could she see his child-like grin. “Yes, I know. My squire, Banc rest him, used to call me Sir Humsalot.” He turned around, with two steaks in two plates. He handed Serafina one plate and sat beside her.

“I am sorry for what my father did. It was little short of murder,” she said so quietly that Tauth struggled to hear her over the crackling of the camp-fire.

“It is not for you to apologise.”

A moment of silence.

“What did he send you to fight?”

“A wyrmling. One of the river wyrms, near Woodsman’s Glades. He said it had been preying on the trade caravans from the Medean lands.”

“But for a company of knights, a wyrmling should have been little trouble?”

“Indeed, it wasn’t. We dispatched it easy enough, and it had been chomping on traders’ bones when we found its layer. But that was not what ambushed us,” Tauth’s voice turned tight. “When we left, there were men. Eight of us, eight of them. They were in plate and mail, same as us, but they bore no standard. They simply said ‘your fealty is done’, and attacked.”

The fire crackled in the silence as they swallowed a few more morsels.

“I was the only one of us that survived. None of theirs made it back.” Tauth said finally.

“I am sorry.”

“Sleep now. I will take first watch.”

*

The leaves rustled in the trees above as a warm wind ran through camp and Serafina yawned. Tauth slept now, sword within arm’s reach, and she stood watch. Well, she sat watch. The embers of their fire were now a dull orange, cool enough that she could poke them with her fingers, but they were warm enough still to be useful.

She gave another yawn, and leaned her head back against the oak’s trunk, fighting back sleep. Her powers, considerable though they were, did not extend to keeping herself awake. That was an exercise of her ordinary, mortal, will.

Still, she stayed awake another hour, until the dawn light appeared on the hills to their east. She rose then to wake Tauth, but that was when the noise reached her ears. It was a howl, low and sharp, and it did not belong to any wolf.

“Sir Tauth,” she whispered, but it was unnecessary for Tauth had already begun to stir. “Blackmaws call, Sir Ta-” that was when it leapt. A black mass, like a solid shadow, launched from a bush on the bank and it brought its gnashing teeth to bear on Sir Tauth’s neck. Only his experience saved him, for he rolled out of the way in the last moment with a cry of surprise.

Before he could get to his feet, however, there was a flash of orange and red, as flames roared out of the embers of the fire and engulfed the blackmaw wolf. Serafina stood there, arm outstretched and muscles tensed, and eyes a blazing azure as the column of fire danced to her will. Sir Tauth, unfazed by it all, had risen and now readied his sword as the rest of the pack attacked.

There were eight of the blackmaws, of which one lay dead, and each was as dark as night, as big as a wagon, and strong as an ox. Aside from that and the black insides of their mouth, they looked no different to the wolves around these parts.

Two came from the other side of the oak on which Serafina had rested, and they busied themselves with Tauth. Four came from the side of the road, and the last came from the river bank. Serafina immediately sent her fire-pillar on the lone wolf, before turning to those at her back. Behind her, another wolf yelped as Tauth killed it.

The four wolves snarled at her and the smallest among them leapt. The poor, dumb creature was not as fast it should have been for Serafina’s fire-pillar fell upon it first and it cried out in agony as it died. Behind her another came another yelping death and Tauth appeared by her side, sweating hard as he clutched his sword.

From afar, came another howl and the remaining three wolves slinked away, though they remained growling the whole time.

“What was that last howl?” Serafina asked as they sat back down. It was the first time either of them had spoken since the wolves had disappeared.

“It was their… King. Or Queen, I’m not sure,” Tauth sat down too. “It is a large pack, if the monarch didn’t attack. We have only scratched it, I think. They shall continue to hound us.”

“What do we do?”

“We must kill them first.”

ⱡ

Shayar paused again, but he did not open his eyes to speak. He breathed in and out a few times, enough to replenish his reserves of air and stamina, and as he did so, the crowd whispered.

“What a terror, those blackmaws!” cried an older child. “Blessed by Banc are we that Sir Tauth kills them all!”

“Hush!” her mother shushed her. “We don’t know that that’s how it ends! Now just listen!”

“A witch…” an older man was whispering to his wife. “Like you-know-who,” he grinned and his wife rolled her eyes but not humourlessly. She poked him in the shoulder for the crass joke, however.

“That’s not nice! She’s just ugly, she can’t help the mole on her nose!” they spoke about Mrs. Braithwait of Braithwait Manor, and to label her witch was an old joke of theirs. “Besides,” the wife turned her attention back to Shayar for he had now begun another tune, “she doesn’t have the cats or the brooms to be a good witch, anywho!”

Shayar’s song began again and the crowd fell silent.

ⱡ

“How do you know to spot their tracks?” this question by Serafina came much later than Tauth had anticipated. At that moment, he was on one knee intently studying the leafy and sodden forest floor. They were deeper in the forest now, though still a long way from its heart where the wizard lived, and the trees had begun to close in around them. Up above, the sun was high in the sky but through the thick canopy, the light only shone in leopard spots.

“The wolves, especially the blackmaw wolves, are inelegant movers. They disrupt the forest where they tread,” he stood up and indicated a circle around him. “See the snapped twigs, the tufts of fur caught on the tree trunks, paw prints the size of my face in the mud. These are fresh, I think.”

“You think? That does not fill me with much confidence,” Serafina was still in her saddle.

“I know enough of tracking to steer us through the forest, but to hunt game and beasts was never my job. My squire, the son of a ranger from near Caldwell, knew how to do that,” Tauth got back into his saddle, grateful that the horse could bear his fully armoured weight, and pushed aside the thoughts of the now-dead Squire Regus. “But I know the forest well, and I know where the pack will go. There is a glade, a few hours’ north, where a stream runs crystal clear. They drink there, and there too, they live and rest.”

“You mean to strike them in their home?”

“Yes. They will go to lick their wounds, to take their King or Queen’s counsel, and then set out again to hunt us.”

“Counsel? You speak as if they are men, not wolves.”

“What has the wizard taught you of these lands?” Tauth wondered as he spurred his horse and Serafina followed. “You do not know the way of things in the forest, and yet you ventured here to learn?”

“Speak plainly, Sir Tauth,” he could almost hear Serafina’s scowl.

“The blackmaws are intelligent and they speak as we do, but in their own tongue. There are eight packs in this forest, but only one of these is near enough to concern and hunt us. They are not smart enough, though, to outwit men or elves or the mountainfolk. So, I ask, what did the wizard Havenock teach you that he did not teach you the beast-lore?”

Serafina did not respond for a while and Sir Tauth had almost let the issue drop by the time that she did. “I came to him late, and of my own accord. I was born with my ability and I trained myself in it for I was afraid to tell my parents.”

“Why? Would you have fallen out of their favour?”

“No. Quite the opposite,” Serafina laughed as if the thought of being expelled was ridiculous. Before Tauth could ask another question, she continued. “The wizard came to dinner, once. That is how first I met him. He is an eccentric one – a hermit, truly, and mad to boot. He took a dislike to my father, and he did something at dinner.” Serafina smiled to herself, though Tauth could not see it, as she remembered.

“What did he do?”

“Now is not the time for that, nor is it my story to tell,” she spoke sternly. “But it showed me that I could trust him. So, I sought him out on my own.” They travelled another few dozen yards before she next spoke. “He wasn’t in his forest tower then.”

“We are here,” Tauth reeled his horse abruptly. “Dismount. We will approach on foot.”

ⱡ

Shayar opened his eyes, and saw that the crowd had more than doubled. Ash Square Market was now at a standstill, for everyone there – the shoppers, the shopkeeps, the street performers, the buskers – had all gathered in the audience. There were some loud murmurs at the back, as the newcomers asked to be filled in on what they’d missed, and Shayar chuckled.

The spring heat was warm enough now that Shayar was reminded not quite of home, where the spring of Dunwenn might be cooler than home’s winters, but of where first he learned the art of storytelling. Memories of the sunlit city of Casat and the white beaches on either side if its sandstone walls, of the mountainside it was built into, of its many types of coffee drank in colourful streets flooded him.

The city had changed now, and he had not been back for some time. He would head there after Valeford, he decided.

“Allow me a moment’s respite, if you will, for my throat is parched,” he besought the crowd, “let me wet it with your sweet-milk and we shall continue!”. At once, a jug of the stuff was produced by someone in the crowd and Shayar finished the lot.

“Now, as our heroes come upon their prey, we must shift our attentions,” Shayar grinned as some faces fell, for they were expectant. “Back to Valeford, to the cruel lord of the Castle at the tippy-tippy top of The Fallow!”