The Path of Poison: Chapter 21
Previously…
On the long road to Farhaven, after the caravan fought off a beastman attack and headed off into the wintry Voerlund highlands, the party find now themselves descending into a stretch of absolute wilderness…
Check out the Chapter Index for all previous installments
From the pale shafts of light that shot through the great black canopy, the winter wind came and snaked through the forest. To those who followed with their eyes those beams, the canopy seemed more like a strange firmament than a mere covering of treetops. The air was thick with the heady stench of rotting vegetation, upturned soil, and damp stone. There were bird calls, but they were sharp hoots and long lonely whistles which sounded with a curious torpor always in the distance. Elsewhere, unseen shapes skittered through the brush whenever the wagons passed them.
The place did not seem exactly alive, but in contrast to the almost utter stillness that welcomed their arrival, it was like the forest was turning over in its sleep.
Then there was a shout and a crash from up ahead. The uneasy lethargy which had been growing within the wagon where Sepp and his party sat brooding thoughts snapped, and they all shot looks to each other, and then to the Dunmarrow who accompanied them. The wagon stopped moving when a terse call from another northman came, and Karmov excused himself. There was a moment of tense listening while a dozen frightful thoughts rushed to the surface of every mind. The woods were probably infested with beastmen. They had to come from somewhere, after all. It only took a few uneasy glances for Skivor to unhook his axe along with Barosh, and for everyone to wordlessly agree that getting caught inside the wagon didn’t bear thinking about.
They slipped out one after the other into the forest gloom. They were met not with rushing shapes and Dunmarrow formations, but irate conversation from up ahead. One of the wagons was half tipped over, and two northmen had the dislodged wheel in their hands, while the Baletorians were gesturing dramatically to Captain Karel. The four of them relaxed, and nervous laughs of relief were let out. Skivor led the way to the group ahead, and Karmov saw them. He nudged his captain, who grunted as he saw to whom his man was going.
“A wheel has come off the Baletorian cart,” he said nodding back, “they are quite shaken, but they are okay. More like it is this place than the wheel which has them so.”
“Aught we can do to help?” asked Skivor.
“No no, that is our duty, it will be replaced soon. Perhaps you may want to stretch your legs, though?” His comrades called for him then, but as he started to leave, he added, with a lingering look back, “But do not venture far, hmm?”
They agreed with few words that a little walk would help instead of waiting in the still and the cold. But S’eth, Sepp thought to himself, they really were in the middle of nowhere. The only tell of a track was that their way forward wasn’t overrun with briars and brambles, nor hemmed in by twisting black trunks. A thin mist passed in waves further into the woods where the light beams bled in, making everything in the distance melt together in fog and shadow. It looked unreal, as if it was sight that brought things into being here, while all else wallowed in a half-formless murk. The chatter and clanking of the Dunmarrow, the theatrical displeasure of the Baletorians, and the crunch of feet on the soil, little stones, and dead twigs was a cacophony amidst the slumbering deep of the forest. No telling when the sun would leave, either. This place would be an unbroken bank of dark come the winter night. The kind that swallows up lantern light and snuffs out torches. Aye, Sepp had known that once or twice on excursions with his father. Shadow so thick you could feel it. Breathe it. Nothing healthy grew in it. Made for potent hexes, though.
They wandered back to their wagon slowly, winding around the others, stroking the aurox burden beasts which stood stoic as ever. What would Silverden, and indeed much of the known world, do without them? Meat, milk, furs, tilling—they were as much tools and resources as steadfast companions on the roads and in the fields. Though they were quite regularly eaten, it was Silverden and Voerlund who had long ago afforded them a unique reverence. Never was anything of them wasted out of sheer respect. Sepp liked them, they were generally well-natured creatures given to accepting a good couple of strokes, probably because they knew they were much larger than the people who herded them about and were capable of giving a lethal blow should the need arise. But sure, they were fed quite well. The minor indignities of the yoke and the driver’s reins were as naught when they were let loose in a verdant greenery such as this forest.
Sepp had stepped away to investigate a particularly large tree. All kinds of things to be found on and in the rough bark of large trees, like errant amber, small growths of moss, lichen, fungi, and this was of a size that dwarfed some homes he’d known. As he looked and turned about the trunk, his foot snagged on some unseen vine or root and he stumbled forward for fair ways. And in an instant, as he righted himself, all fell silent. So abrupt was the change that it felt like a physical blow, and he whipped around to find not the caravan just past the treeline, but no treeline at all. He stopped, paralyzed. There was no way he had walked in this far. The track had been a minute away, just off to his side. He took a few steps to where it ought to be, but as far as his eyes could see in the gloom, naught but that ashy dark, like a poorly recalled memory. With a choked voice he called out, grasping his pack and his short axe at his side. A few pregnant seconds later, stretched into eternities, a reply came from behind him. It was Skivor.
“Sepp? That you, lad?” said the woodsman in an uneasy, rough tone.
“Aye, it’s me,” he replied, rushing forward, nothing but coiling roots and weeds at his feet. Skivor grasped Sepp’s forearm in greeting with a firm nod that immediately retreated back into an all too clear fear.
“Cursed merchants dragging us through woodland like this…” Skivor looked up and around as he spoke.
“We must have stepped off the path for only a second, what happened?”
“This old forest is what. Gone without the tread of people for only god knows how long.” Skivor took a few steps forward as he tried studying the murky surroundings, and Sepp stayed close.
“How did you get dragged in here? Where were you?”
“Giving Barosh a wide berth. Lad swings his arms like a windmill when he’s at full stride. Tripped over something, looked up, found myself in here.”
Sepp wanted to chuckle at the remark, but it wouldn’t come.
“Dragging a caravan through it, S’eth,” the woodsman muttered to himself. “There were a few spots like this out past Yamesh. Right on the borderlands. You ever run into them?” Sepp had never heard the man so talkative.
“A few times maybe. Some wilds are just easy to get lost in.”
“That they are. This feels different to me, though. You feel it it?” Sepp took one look around, and felt very small then.
“Feels like I’m not wanted here.” Skivor grunted in agreement.
“You know aught about Voerlund wilds, lad?”
“Only that they’re...I don’t know, my dad always said Voerlund was harder, but Silverden was wilder. Doesn’t really help.”
“Harder? Bit of force then might get us out. Beat the trees back. But here, what of the, ah, the land spirits is it?”
“Landwights...I don’t know how to talk to them. Or if they’re here, or just at those altars. You know, the others probably know we’re missing, they could be looking.”
“I doubt they’d be allowed find us, if they’re not vanished themselves.” Skivor shivered as he spoke, unable to repress it.
As they trudged through the twilight expanse, heading towards hazy beams of light they thought might be the way out, the drone of insects and lonely calls of birds came without rhythm and always in the distance. Not as if letting them pass, but rather, Sepp thought, as if they were holding back, and observing. There was no doubt in either of their minds that this was anything less than the forest’s doing, though no venerate’s teaching they knew of ever spoke on such things. Could it be the landwights up here were just that different, that much stranger to his own custodian dead? Or the World Serpent for that matter? As a great being itself and not a presence in the world? He couldn’t get the woodsman to say much, for the man seemed to shut up entirely after a point, and Sepp was lucky if he could two words out of him to break the tense stillness of their fruitless search. He loathed the idea some great hand had plucked him so swiftly and silently from the track, from his friends, his people. He couldn’t help but feel some spite in it.
Neither of them were strangers to the wilderness, but this only reinforced every suspicion they had, and made their eyes dart to every single little sound of the forest. Every crack, rustle, and knock, every wafting of musty detritus or chill wind ensured them that at any moment goatish heads, or worse, might peer from the dark. Skivor, however, had become more forceful in his traversal than before, removing the brush underfoot with the odd kick or stamp. Sepp supposed whatever made him keep going was fine, but he hoped it was the right thing to do, if there was right a thing to do at all. Would he need to use a hex on this place, he wondered? Force it to let them out? He thought about it, but frankly wasn’t sure where exactly he’d start if he wanted set a hex on an entire forest, or if even his strongest poison could ward it, or its...power or influence or whatever it may be, away from them. Was this one great force, or something more nebulous? Was it many things? Was a forest all of its trees, or more? These thoughts and possibilities occupied his mind in silent stalemate until, all of a sudden, Skivor stopped, reached back to Sepp, and spoke with a trembling voice.
“Sepp...look...you see them, aye?”
He did. The apothecary took several hesitant steps forward, trying to ascertain just what it was he saw. There were lights some ways off, but they were not the pale beams from the winter sun above, nor were they from torches or lanterns, no, these were small, dancing lights of a warm, whitish hue. They wavered back and forth, almost as if they were beckoning. Sepp would have been inclined to think of them as some new trick or test of the forest, but the earnestness and enthusiasm with which Skivor motioned told him to trust whatever was happening. Woodsmen knew things, that much was truth. So he didn’t even ask. As they got closer, the lights retreated slowly from them, but never darted away. Like they were saying “follow us”. They would sway as they changed direction, keeping the duo’s attention. They stood out, too, quite clear from the opaque air about them, though in the darkness, no particular form around them could be seen—if they had such. After a few minutes of this beckoning and leading, the lights began to move faster, the two running to catch up to their movements, and not long after, they were actively chasing them, leaping over brambles, tumbling over arching roots, pushing past bent and twisted black trunks, ducking under low snaking boughs, the lights always within sight.
And then, they stumbled through the fog betwixt two great trunks like gateway pillars, and onto the trampled grass of the road.
But Sepp had been behind Skivor, and in the moment just before they fell out of the treeline, he had looked up, and had seen something the woodsman hadn’t.
It was only a flash of an outline, but that flash was clear as day.