Shroud of Four Silences - Chapter 5: The Redpitch Grove

Eleukas didn’t sleep much that night.

The events of the past few days had shaken his conception of the world. Otari was a peaceful town. Maybe a little small and sleepy, maybe the kind of place that big-city outsiders dismissed as a backwater, but he loved it all the more fiercely because of that. Community meant something here.

Didn’t it?

They had all assumed that the horrors they’d seen—the venomous rats, the faceless thing in the woods, those undead zombies and their false ghost of a master—had been the work of outsiders. But what if they weren’t? What if the culprit were someone in Otari, and Eleukas was ignoring obvious clues because he just didn’t want to believe that one of his own neighbors could do such things?

It’s impossible. He loved his little town too dearly to accept that any of its people could be capable of such evil. And yet…

None of it made any sense. Osgrath’s axe, just one small part of this puzzle, was befuddling in its own right. Visperath was an extraordinary weapon, obviously enchanted, and valuable for the sake of its craftsmanship and the brilliant green gem embedded in its blade alone.

Eleukas could understand why Osgrath didn’t want it: however magnificent the weapon, to the ex-adventurer it was nothing but a guilty reminder of how far he had fallen from his days of glory. But why hadn’t the “ghost” taken it?

If Wendlyn was right—and Wendlyn was usually right—then the “ghost” had only used Visperath to divert suspicion onto Osgrath. That meant whatever it was doing was worth the trouble of inventing and carrying out an elaborate ruse, and not taking a priceless magical weapon, just on the off chance that somebody bothered investigating a dead foreigner’s body and wasn’t deterred by the giant rats, or the zombies, or… anything else.

What could be worth that much?

Eleukas had never liked pondering the unknowable. His life was built around simple, certain things: steady friendships, honest work, and the solid assurance of a good axe in his hands. He’d found that, most of the time, sticking to those certainties was enough to navigate through life’s murkier waters.

He hoped that would still be true now.

###

He met the others outside the Dawnflower Library the next morning, early enough that his eyes were bleary despite the two cups of scalding coffee he’d downed on the way. Lisavet had drawn up a map showing the way to the Gullcracker goblins’ territory, or at least to the territory that Otari’s citizens had ceded to them. Whether the Gullcrackers had stayed there, none of them knew.

“What do you know about goblins?” Eleukas asked the others as they set off along the western coastline. The sea crashed violently against steep cliffs there, so they had little choice but to travel over land. There was simply no safe place to land a boat near the Gullcrackers’ territory. No doubt that was part of why Otari’s elders had given them that land.

“Not much. They don’t like horses or dogs, they’ve got some strange superstitions about writing, and they’re unhealthily enamored of fire,” Lisavet said. She’d tied her gold-streaked braids up into a high knot, and had exchanged her acolyte’s robes for sensible traveling clothes and a sturdy walking stick, with a steel-capped head suitable for clouting rats and zombies alike. “The Gullcrackers, specifically, have a variety of grisly entertainments involving sea birds, and also regard the birds as a culinary delicacy, as portents of the tribe’s future, and as the spirits of their ancestors. They don’t seem to perceive any contradiction between these roles. Goblin logic is… a little difficult for me to follow.”

“It’s hard for any sane person to follow,” Wendlyn said sourly. “I was up half the night reading some books Morlibint gave me about them. I might as well have taken four shots of rotgut, knocked my head against the wall as hard as I could, and passed out. Probably would’ve dreamed something that made more sense than goblin logic.
 
“But,” she added, a bit more brightly, “it did confirm that they like things that go boom. As it happens, thanks to my, ah, festive personality and creative preparations for various celebrations around town–”

“You mean the pranks,” Eleukas cut in.

“Yes, fine, ‘pranks.’ If you must.” Wendlyn sniffed theatrically, then grinned, patting her bulging satchel. “Anyway, seems clear the goblins are likely to appreciate my little toys far more than Captain Longsaddle ever did. So it’s a win-win. If we meet the goblins and they’re friendly, we have something to bargain with. If we meet them and they’re hostile, or zombies, then we’ll have a sack of bombs to throw.”

“And in the meantime, all we have to do is… carry around a sack of bombs,” Lisavet said dryly. Eleukas glanced at Wendlyn, half-expecting her to lob an acidic comment in return, but to his surprise, the half-elf just tossed her hair gaily.

“Quite so, quite so. Bombs are handy in all sorts of circumstances. For one, if we start getting lost in the woods, we can use them to blow up the occasional tree as a landmark. But probably that won’t happen, since we have Eleukas with us to navigate. Right, Eleukas?”

“Right.” He glanced up instinctively, but they’d gone far enough from town that the looming silhouette of Giant’s Wheel was lost behind the trees.

This part of the forest hadn’t been cut for years, maybe decades, and had only been touched lightly then. The trees grew tall and majestic, their broad leaves casting the companions into cool green shade. To the untrained eye, it might have looked like primal wilderness, wholly untouched by human hands.

Eleukas, however, could see the subtle signs that Otari’s loggers had left behind. It was a common misconception among outsiders that loggers didn’t care for the forest they worked. That wasn’t always wrong. Some, like the Kortos Consortium, only cared about how much profit they could pull from the trees, and how quickly. They were outsiders with no connection to the land, and they didn’t care what might happen to future generations if they razed the forest today.

Otari’s loggers felt differently. They regarded the woodland as a treasure to be passed down to ensure their children and grandchildren’s prosperity, just as it had supported theirs. Harvests were meticulously planned and divided between the three companies, none taking more than their fair share, and each group was bound to plant new saplings to make compensation for what they took. The companies could and did compete viciously with each other, but all were bound, by tradition and culture, to treat the forest with respect.

This sigil etched into a great elm marked it as a venerable elder, not to be felled; that patch of young chestnuts had been planted to replace harvested trees. Simplified druidic signs pointed out the cardinal directions and marked the way back to Otari, so loggers in future years wouldn’t get lost.

And there was a new sign, one Eleukas hadn’t seen before, which began to appear on the trunks with increasing frequency as they continued westward. It was a two-part sign: the first part was the standard logger’s mark for “danger,” but the second marking he didn’t recognize. It was a circle with two long slashes forking out from its sides, almost like a child’s rendering of –

“Oh,” Eleukas said aloud, feeling foolish. “It’s a goblin’s face.”

“What is?” Wendlyn asked, turning to look at the mark. “Oh.”

“This one’s ‘goblin,’ and this one’s ‘danger.’ And the last one, over here, indicates the danger is in the direction we’re headed. West.” Eleukas traced the carvings in the tree trunk, bark and moss alternately rough and soft under his fingers. He wondered what danger those old loggers had feared. The goblins, or something else?

Noon came and went. The shadows stretched long around them, and the afternoon sky began reddening toward sunset. The loggers’ etchings continued, but became older and sparser, often overgrown by the wild wood.

Still there was no sign of the Gullcrackers. Just rotting old game snares, neglected for months, and a few burn scars that might have been left by goblin pyromania, or might just have been from lightning-struck wildfires. Any tracks had long since been lost to time.

They came to the stand of redpitch pines that had been planted by Otari’s elders as part of their agreement with the Gullcrackers, yet here, too, Eleukas could find no trace of recent activity. There were crusted taps and scabbed-over slashes on many of the pines, indicating that someone had harvested their famously incendiary sap, but nothing had been touched since spring.

“We should stop here for the night,” he said, looking up at the redpitches. The pines’ pungent, almost minty fragrance filled the air. Beneath their boughs, it was full dark. They’d been walking by lantern light for nearly an hour. “We must be close if we’ve reached the redpitches, and I don’t want to stumble on the Gullcrackers in the middle of the night. They might get the wrong idea about why we’ve come.”

“All right.” Wendlyn set down her lantern, and by its yellow glow they laid out their bedrolls. Eleukas gathered enough fallen branches to make a small campfire, and Lisavet put together a light dinner of toasted bread, smoked mackerel, and pickled vegetables.

Midway through the meal, Wendlyn lowered her sandwich, sniffing the air with a frown. “Do you smell that?”

“It’s supposed to smell like that,” said Eleukas, who had never been fond of smoked mackerel.

“Not the fish.” Wendlyn put her sandwich down and stood, reaching for the sword belt she’d left propped against the log she’d been sitting on. “Something else. It smells like something–”

“—dead,” Lisavet finished for her, squinting into the darkness. Slowly the cleric put her own sandwich aside, picking up her walking stick from the needled earth. “I smell it too.”

Now Eleukas did as well. A putrid carrion stench rose beneath the clean scent of the redpitch pines. It reeked of open graves and plague pits, of battlefields so glutted with death that the vultures grew too heavy to fly.

Small figures, big-headed and big-eared, approached the edge of their firelight. These zombies were as dead as the ones they’d encountered in Otari, but in far worse shape. Their little bodies were badly decayed, with patches of skull gleaming bald through their scalps and empty, sagging sockets instead of eyes. Some were missing limbs. Slack-jawed and stumble-footed, they staggered forward, claws outstretched for the blood of the living.

Eleukas didn’t waste any breath on a battle cry. He swung Visperath like a woodcutter setting to work on saplings, clearing the zombies out of his way with wide horizontal strokes that they made no attempt to evade. The axe cleaved through their bodies, leaving hissing trails of acid vapor and dissolving flesh behind, but the zombies only grabbed hold of its haft and blade, heedless of how many fingers they sliced off in their efforts.

Visperath was far deadlier than his old guard axe. Nearly everything it hit, fell. Eleukas cut through at least half a dozen, but more kept coming—an entire tribe of the dead. Those in the rear ranks were even more rotted, little more than maggot-infested skeletons. They came without finesse, without cunning, with only a blind determination to pull him down and overwhelm him by sheer numbers.

One goblin clasped its scabrous hands around Wendlyn’s short sword, which she’d buried in its ribcage. It wrenched the weapon away from her as it fell. Disarmed, Wendlyn danced backwards, then snatched a fallen redpitch branch and swept it through the fire. The dry needles ignited in spitting bursts, and she used the flaming brand to hold the zombies back.

The branch was slower and heavier than a sword, though, and redpitch wood burned fast. Already the flames were licking up toward Wendlyn’s hands, spurred higher by her swings. Eleukas didn’t know how much longer she’d be able to wield it.

Lisavet was faring even worse. Zombies surrounded her, clawing and battering the cleric from all sides. She whirled her walking stick, trying to fend them off, but wasn’t doing enough damage to put them down for good. Half-crippled zombies dragged themselves along the forest floor toward her, spitting pine needles and snarling through teeth full of wet dirt. They dragged Lisavet, kicking and flailing, to the ground.

Eleukas waded in to save her. He couldn’t swing Visperath into that mob without endangering the cleric, so instead he grabbed the undead and hurled them bodily away from her. Putrid flesh squelched between his fingers as he flung the little zombies aside. Maggots flew from their scrawny bodies like wriggling drops of sweat.

Breathing through his mouth to minimize the stench, Eleukas focused on getting Lisavet free. But the goblins were crawling onto him too. One seized his leg and bit his thigh. Another jumped onto his back, hugging his neck like a nightmarish child. Two more tried to push Eleukas over as the piggybacking zombie slid off his side, throwing him off balance. Rotten gore slimed his fingers, making it impossible to hold onto anything in the fray.

He lost his grip on Visperath, and then he lost his grip on Lisavet. The axe vanished beneath the swarming zombies. Lisavet had nearly vanished as well; he could only make out an arm, a kicking leg, and occasional glimpses of her braided topknot.

Is this how it ends?

No. Surely not. But Eleukas couldn’t fight them all. They’d already gotten his friends, and they were pulling him down too. There were too many, just too many.

Fire burst across his vision. An explosion rolled across Eleukas, Lisavet, and the zombies attacking them. The blast knocked Eleukas to the ground and drove the wind from his lungs. He heard Lisavet scream, but he couldn’t see her—he couldn’t see anything but a blurred shock of orange and black. When he tried to rub the afterimages from his vision, his eyelashes crisped and crumbled under his hand.

Wendlyn? She’d brought bombs, but these explosions were fiercer than anything he’d ever seen from her. These were no mere pranks.

And he didn’t think Wendlyn would have thrown her bombs quite so close. This was—was this meant to hit them?

A second blast roared to Eleukas’s left. He rolled away blindly, feeling the wash of renewed heat over his raw skin. Before he could catch his breath, or get any sense of where the explosion had come from, a third fireburst boomed to his right. Lisavet screamed again, this time in pain rather than terror.

The afterimages were fading. Eleukas scrubbed his hand harder against his eyes, fumbling desperately with his other hand until he found Visperath’s handle in the scorched leaf litter. He shook the axe free, unsure of if it would do him any good.

The blasts had come from above. He looked up to the redpitches. There was a goblin squatting in the pine branches. Alive, not a zombie. It wore thick round-lensed goggles and a suit of eccentric leather armor covered in fluttering, partially blackened bits of paper. In its hand was a smoking, bulbous bomb.

“Who are you?” Eleukas yelled to the goblin. “Are you in league with these zombies?”

“I am Gristleburst.” The goblin showed its teeth in a goggled grin. It didn’t answer his other question. Its fangs gleamed in the light of the burning redpitches, and it hurled the last bomb down.