Westhaven, Rowan Erlking [large ebook reader .txt] 📗

discontent. “And don’t you dare say bringing that woman was what brought it about.”

“I wasn’t,” the captain replied. He stabbed his potato with his fork, holding it in front of his mouth. “But this confirms my suspicions. The insurgents didn’t come this far. They’re back in that village in the valley.”

Nodding, Gailert frowned. “Yes. Though I do wonder why we weren’t attacked in the woods that night.”

“I don’t.” The captain chewed up the potato chunk. Speaking through the side of his mouth, he muttered, “There were too many of us on watch, and too many of us that are strong enough adversaries against the other demons.”

“Even spiders?” the general asked.

The captain gave him a hard look. “Oh yes. That spider, I believe, latched onto the lieutenant in desperation. I bet that lieutenant found it, but the demon got hold of him before he could stop it. They’re fast when they aren’t on a host.”

Gailert shook his head. “All the same, before we go, we should inspect our men for demon spiders. The captain here says that was the third one they’ve had to kill. That means there is a colony near by.”

“The colony is probably in the village,” the captain said.

“Then we have to leave soon.”

Rising from his seat, Gailert looked over the room. Most of his soldiers were tense. And who could blame them? Their best lieutenant had been inhabited by a demon parasite. Everyone was twitchy. Everyone wanted to return to the Southwestern Corner as soon as possible, including the general.

He marched out of the dining room into the hall leading to the stairs. Just before he went up the first step, he noticed some of the human servants groping their co-worker’s backs to double-check for demons. Then one whispered in a low voice. “We have to find a magician to get a demon ward put up.”

“That blue-eye captain won’t allow it,” the other hissed back. “You know how they are about demon wards.”

“But that’s the only way to stop those spiders from coming into the village,” the first one said.

Gailert cleared his throat.

All the servants in the room stiffened and turned.

“Oh, do you need anything, sir?” the head of the staff asked, marching forward.

With a stiff smile, the general said, “No. I don’t need anything. I just merely overheard your conversation.”

He took a step into the room.

The head of staff backed up.

“And I am disappointed to hear that you people are still seeking magic users to solve your problems.” He took another step. “Magicians are the cause of all the demons in this world, you know.”

“Yes, sir,” the head of the household said bowing. “We know that. But they also know how best to deal with them.”

Taking yet another step, Gailert raised his voice. “They do not! They wish to perpetuate the existence of demons so that you will continue to need their services. The best way to end that parasitic demon plague is to eradicate their nest and make sure they are no more magicians or witches to make any more demons.”

The inn staff glanced at one another as if they were holding back words they wanted to say. But wisely they all merely bowed to the general as they replied in unison, as per the only wise response to give, “We rely on your protection.”

Stiffly lifting his chin, Gailert turned and walked back through the door towards the stairs. Not until he walked up the second step did he hear them speak again.

“That demon is scarier than those spiders.”

He decided against going back to chasten them. Gailert was tired. Losing his best lieutenant, almost bested by a demon spider with very little brains and more instinct than any animal, and also losing the most enjoyable woman he had the privilege to collect for himself, he felt swallowed in a tremendous sense of loss.

Dragging his feet up the steps, he walked to his room and went inside, closing the door behind him. Heaving a sigh, he gazed across the room to the window. The curtains had already been pulled aside by the housing staff to let the light in. He could see the flat horizon, the grassy landscape stretching from end to the other. Thin clouds spread in the sky, the blue peeking out though it. He just gazed on it, sighing.

He was feeling old, too old to see his soldiers die over petty demon infestations. Gailert had thought he had cleared the central land of demons, but apparently they came back like the raiders that had gathered weapons from the Bekir Peninsula. His chest ached. His legs ached. His heart ached. And watching the sky as the clouds gathered and darkened, he felt as if the worst loomed on that horizon.

The sunlight suddenly ceased to shine into the room. A shadow from the swift moving clouds went over the village. A light rain started to hit the windowpane.

Gailert blinked.

Rising from the door, he walked slowly to the window. He peered out at the now almost black sky. It was hardly even noon, and yet the day had just in a few minutes turned to night. Lightening cracked in the distance. Then it cracked again, nearer. He looked out the window, up at the storm. The clouds rumbled with thunder as near as the room next door.

“Magicians.”

He jumped back from the window just as a flash of lightening struck the front of the inn. Darting to his door, he ran out of the room. Almost immediately, he heard another crack that split the windowpane, crashing glass to the ground.

“We’re under attack!” Gailert shouted to the captain and his officers who were still eating in the dining hall below.

“It’s just a storm,” the captain said rising, though he looked rattled.

Shaking his head, Gailert ran to the front of the inn, pointing out at the now drenching rain that dumped over everything. “That is not a natural storm! That is a conjured magic storm brought by insurgents to attack us! The automobiles are probably damaged.”

The captain hopped up, running right out into the storm.

“Don’t!” Gailert shouted after him. But he was too late to prevent what he knew would happen. A lightening bolt crackled down and struck the captain. The captain flew off his feet, his body smoking

The corporals ran to get the captain out of the rain, but the general shouted after them. “Don’t go out in there! You’ll get killed too!”

That moment, arrows rained down on the front of the inn, impaling soldiers left and right—followed by the war cries of men. The general ducked for cover, drawing his pistol. His soldiers dived to the floor, pulling out their sidearms as the wounded crawled back inside for shelter.

“Take cover and fire on any human that enters this inn.”

*

The boy heard the general’s cry, immediately ducking low as the arrows stuck in the wall. They would shoot any human, and that included him.

Flattening himself to the wood planking, the general’s boy crawled under the low window, trying hard to keep out of the crossfire. Five arrows struck near where he had scrambled. The rain poured around him with a deafening rumble, muting the screams of everyone that was running this way and that through the downpour: humans, Sky Children, animals, carts. He lifted his eyes to the general’s automobile. It sat in the mud, punctured with about a hundred arrows. All the tires were flattened. Next to them, the armored cars also lost tires, each one popping with a bang. But the main target of this raiding party was inside the inn, firing back at them with a crack, crack, crack of his pistol.

Lightening flashed. A deafening boom of thunder came with it. The light striking every standing thing or person that was not human. Though the boy had seen storms like this before, it had always been from far off. This was not the handling of a magician or a witch, but a wizard. Only a wizard could aim lightening at specific people that quickly, and that wizard had to be nearby watching the village.

The boy dropped off the edge of the walkway, landing chest first in the mud. Glancing once at the space under the walkway, the boy shook his head. He crawled on his belly around the building instead of going under it. If the rumors he had heard from those who had gone in and out of the inn were true, then there probably was a den of demon spiders hiding under the houses. He didn’t want to be food for them while trying to avoid a different kind of death.

No one seemed to notice him as he crawled through the mud behind the inn and across the way to the houses on the edge of the forest—not for a few yards at least. One soldier finally spotted him on the road and shouted out for him to stop.

Then the soldier fired.

The shots struck just three feet away from him. Then a foot away from him. Before the solider could reload his pistol, and arrow struck him in his chest. Then a sword went through his gut.

A bearded warrior stood behind him. He shoved the blue-eyed demon off as he withdrew his sword from the soldier’s innards, shoving the blue-eye away so the soldier could not use its demon power to drain him to heal himself. Somehow the warrior looked familiar, though the boy could not place where he had seen him. Tall, dripping wet and carrying a weapon that in all likelihood the boy’s own father had made, the man didn’t even see him. Instead, the warrior charged ahead after all the blue-eyeds he could find, slaughtering them. It was easy. The eyes of the Sky Children stood out in the murky gray of the rain. All others blended right in, most especially those of the attackers.

And that wasn’t the last time the boy was shot at.

One soldier spotted him crawling through the mud between the houses and shot just above the boy’s head. The soldier gave chase, slogging through the ankle deep sludge to drag the boy back to his master. But as he did, three insurgents suddenly met the blue-eye with swords, attacking him. Springing back, the soldier shot and killed them all. Then he whipped his eyes back to the road to search for the boy in the murk—but the solider was unable to find him again. The boy lay flat in the mud, unmoving. The rain had turned the ground into a four-inch layer of muck and grit. Praying to high heaven to live, the boy waited, mostly submerged. Unable to see him, the soldier jumped back into the fray. And as soon as he was sure, the boy continued on towards the forest.

Another soldier spotted him crawling near the woods as the Sky Child was battling some of the local villagers. He took only one shot.

The boy dropped face first in the mud, clenching his arm. The pain was almost as bad as getting branded.

The soldier sauntered from the battle to him. “The general is not going to be happy with you running off like—”

But the blue-eye stiffened when he got two yards from him. He stared up at the sky, then collapsed. That tall warrior stood over the soldier, his sword dripping with blood.

“Run, kid,” the warrior said then turned. He jumped back behind a house, waiting for his next prey.

The boy scrambled over the muddy ground to the house on the far end.

But his leg irons were slowing him down.

He knew the soldiers would most likely win this battle, despite the help of a wizard and that warrior. Then the soldiers would hunt him down and drag him back to the general. He had to get rid of the chains.

Lifting his eyes to a trail of smoke he had recognized from the very day they had arrived in the village by its smell, the boy turned and crawled to the doors of the smithy. They were open partway. Straw lay on the ground in