Table of Contents – (spoilers)
Choke kept Pekot’s Bushrats in a lose formation as they moved cautiously out of Bristlenook the same way they had come in, keeping to the road. A number of magpies followed them, flying from tree to tree, yacking as they went.
Choke called a halt when they had almost reached the point where the road and Bristle Creek both went into the forest where the little bowl valley narrowed.
“Corporal Dom! Set a perimeter. Squads set in a square around my position, ten meters out, evenly spaced. There, there, there, and there. You understand?” Choke pointed out the position for each of the four squads.
“Yes, sir! You heard him. Get on it. Move!” Dom said, keeping his voice low, but still managing the intensity of a shout.
“Sergeants Theodas and Nikolas: join us in the middle,” Choke said.
Once Knuckle, Pinch, Peep, and Gabe were together with him in the defensive position of their men, Choke spoke to them in a low voice:
“Keep you voices down. I don’t want the men overhearing this. What do you make of all that?”
“All what?” Knuckle asked. “The blessed valley and the forest eating people horseshit? That’s just bullshit to scare peasants with, man. Fuckin hick mumbo jumbo.”
“First off, these aren’t peasants out here. They’re beholden to no one. And something is keeping this place safe from bandits,” Pinch said.
“Yeah. A bigger, badder-ass bandit. Maybe ye heard of him. Sneed? And if not him, then some other cat. They’re paying someone protection. Who gives a shit? So long as they steer clear of Bristlehump, not our fuckin problem, right?” Knuckle said.
“Your point is well taken, Knuckle,” Choke said. “But I don’t think Sneed would be the one muscling this place. He hasn’t been here that long, remember? The way the buildings are laid out here, this hamlet was obviously set up from the beginning without any fear of attack. What do you know about it, Gabe?” Choke turned to their guide.
“Well, I don’t know why the bandits leave them alone, sir. We don’t mix with the folks out here, right? We’re Stronian, and they aint. But, I do know the folks out here are tough and good in the bush. Archers and that. So they aint gonna be pushovers. And a lot of them are kin to those that go off elsewhere to raid,” Gabe said.
“That’s right,” Peep said. “Remember what Rodolf said? That bitch Neva that was lipping off was salty because we killed her brother, or some shit, along with the rest of Burkhard’s bandits.”
“Exactly, Miss Otilla!” Gabe exclaimed, obviously pleased to have her agree with him for a change.
“That could be it. Or, they could be protected by someone or something we haven’t run into yet,” Choke said. “Gabe, what do you know about this magpie business? Them warning them. And what do you know about Diya?”
“Well, I never heard about these magpies like that. And alls I know about Diya is that she’s a herbalist healer type who grows really good weed and shrooms. Just basically what Lucky was saying. But like I said: they’re not our sort of people out here, right? We stay away from them, and they stay away from us.”
“Okay. So we don’t know shit,” Peep said. “But we’ve shown them we’re here and are doing things right. So right now we leave them be and hope they do likewise with us. Question is, how do we wanna get back to town? Heading back on the same road that we came out on is kinda dim. But, if we head back on the hump on them trails, the bush gets pretty tight. The lumber skid trails aint all that direct and there’s gonna be stretches of us going single file. This bunch is a bit green for that, I’d say. If we can avoid it.”
“I agree,” Choke said. “That means the road. With all caution, as before. No training stops, though. Agreed?”
Peep, Pinch, Knuckle, and then Gabe, all nodded their assent to the plan. Knuckle and Pinch rejoined their squads and the platoon reformed into their marching formation as they left Bristlenook. The few magpies that had been following looped and wheeled overtop of them with a few pointed squawks to send them on their way, before flying off.
“Good fuckin riddance,” Peep said. “Creepy fuckin snoops.”
On the south side of Bristlenook, the last habitation was a fine little cottage with a vegetable garden behind a low stone wall. Between the cottage and the edge of the forest was a small field whose crop was just sprouting. Running about parallel with the Bristle Creek, the road went around the front of the cottage and into the woods.
Peep was on point as they left Bristlenook. She was only a few meters in front of the column of marching men. When she was about twenty meters from the woods, she stopped her horse and raised her hand to halt the men behind her. Then she sat in the saddle, bow in hand, and stared up at a big, leafy tree immediately ahead, just off the road.
After a few seconds of waiting for Peep to do something, Choke gently urged Nike forward alongside her. Behind them, the men, who were already a little spooked, started shifting nervously and muttering.
“Quiet! Hold yar position!” barked Knuckle, way too loudly.
It did the trick, though, as the men settled right down.
“What’s the matter?” Choke asked Peep quietly.
“That fuckin tree. It’s shivering,” Peep answered.
Choke opened his mouth to ask if Peep was high, but snapped it shut as he simultaneously recalled that she was not, and noticed that the big tree was, indeed, vibrating. Within its foliage a low, thrumming sound was rising and falling, again and again. It had a cadence not unlike breathing.
“What is that?” Choke asked even quieter than before.
“How the fuck should…” Peep’s whispered reply drifted off as she leaned forward to peer even more intently up into the tree.
Then, from the front tree, the vibration began to spread to others in the forest behind it. Within less than a minute, the trees before them seemed to shudder in unison as the thrum rose and fell.
Choke sat upon his warhorse Nike, his shield and lance in hand, and did his best to contain the wild impulse to sound a full retreat from these breathing trees.
The sound was changing now. The intensity increased and the branches of the trees seemed ablur with motion around them as they shivered. Then, rising from within the rustling and rushing and the thrumming came a cacophony of chirping.
“Fucking birds! It’s more fucking birds!” Peep yelled above what was now a din.
Choke realized that, of course, Peep was absolutely right. As he did, the murmuration of starlings exploded into the air from inside the trees’ folliage. The gray sky above them became black as thousands of starlings flew overhead. Like a thick cloud itself, the murmuration stretched out over Bristlenook. It wheeled and bulged like a turgid clump of melted wax pooling at the base of a candle, before almost splitting in two as the collective worked out a disagreement as to its next heading. And, then, what had seemed some sort of demonic visitation, was nothing more than a large group of birds doing what they so often do in the evening.
“Starlings! It’s just a bunch of starlings!” Corporal Dom called.
“It’s a witch warning, is what it fuckin is!” one of the men shouted back.
“Shut up!” bellowed Knuckle. “It’s a bunch of fuckin birds! Yar all gonna shit yarselves over a bunch of fuckin birds? Get it together!”
“Knuckle is right! We’re leaving! Come on!” Peep shouted. She then spurred Gorgeous Boy and cantered straight into the woods.
Choke raised up his lance and dropped its point at the road ahead to signal the men to follow her. He sorely hoped that he was conveying calm and confidence with his posture, because he certainly was not feeling it. He alone had seen Peep’s face before she had ridden into the woods, and there was no mistaking it: she was rattled. Until that moment, Choke had never thought it possible.
It was late afternoon and the sky was overcast, so the woods were dark. Of course there was still enough light to see where they were going, but the shadows of the bush had deepened and were encroaching more by the minute.
They had not gone more than a few hundred meters down the road before Peep stopped ahead of them. According to the protocol of her and Pinch switching off on point, this was just as she should do. But just as Choke and Gabe at the head of the marching column were about to reach her, she held up her hand to signal another halt. She then signaled for them to hold.
Peep sat in her saddle and stared into the gloomy woods ahead of them, tilting her head this way and that as she listened. The woods were still, and the sounds of Bristle Creek running out of sight about fifty meters to their left was about all they could hear.
Then, out of the shadows about fifty meters ahead, a huge, pure white stag stepped out onto the road. In the dim light, the gorgeous animal seemed to glow. It stopped in the middle of the road and faced Peep, presenting her its enormous rack.
Peep was in her saddle with her warbow in hand and the deer was well within range, but she sat still as the white stag stared into her eyes. Finally, the animal wheeled in the road and loped off through the forest, moving with eerie ease and quiet through the trees and thick underbrush.
Then it was gone.
Peep continued to sit in silence for a while more, staring at the spot the stag had occupied. Then she gave her head a terse shake.
“Let’s move out,” she said quietly, her voice a dry rasp.
Peep moved on down the road and Choke waited just a moment before giving the signal for the men to follow. They did not get far.
They had not moved on more than twenty meters when at the rear of the column, Pinch gave a loud shout of alarm. The men at the rear of the column immediately began to shout and cry out in fear. They spread out as they sought to flee up the road around the sides of the column of their marching fellows ahead of them.
Choke and Peep both wheeled their horses back, but could not see what had caused the alarm.
“Hold! Hold!” Choke shouted. “Rear face! Rear face! Shield wall! Facing rear!”
Riding at the side of the column, about at its middle, Knuckle was able to put a stop to the rout. He wheeled his large, black stallion and ran its chest straight into one of the fleeing men at his flank. The man fell hard and his fellows ceased their flight.
“Rear face shield wall! Do it! Do it! Do it!” Knuckle screamed as he dismounted and began kicking the men in front of him into line.
On the other flank, Corporals Dom and Lenny managed to halt the fleeing men just a few seconds after Knuckle.
With Choke and Peep now pushing what had been the front of the column back towards the middle, the men formed up into something aproximating a rear-facing shieldwall. It was unevenly oriented across the road in a diagonal zig-zag, and many of the men had not managed to deploy both their shields and spears correctly. Even so, the rout had been halted, and Knuckle, Dom, and Lenny were already working on getting the shieldwall tightened up.
Out in front of the men now, Pinch shot an arrow into the bushes as he rode around the edge of the shieldwall to dismount at their left flank with three of the slingers.
Choke stayed in his saddle behind the men and wheeled around, watching their flanks and rear. Nike excitedly lashed the air around him with his front hooves as he pranced this way and that. Out in front of the shieldwall, in the gloom of the forest to either side of the road, Choke could now make out white, ghostly figures standing amongst the trees.
Crouched low in her saddle with her warbow in a sideways grip, Peep rode behind the men towards Pinch. They were making a terrible racket, with Knuckle, Dom, and Lenny attempting to shout above several of the men who were still screaming and yelling about whatever it was they had seen out there.
“Quiet! Everyone shut the fuck up!” Peep shouted as she reached Pinch.
The men did no such thing, but Knuckle and Dom heard her and began shutting them up, moving up and down the line to punch some of the noisiest in the back.
“The fuck is out there? What the fuck are those things?” Peep asked Pinch in a low voice as things quieted.
“Skeletons,” Pinch answered.
“The fuck?” Peep muttered, peering hard into the woods at some of the closer figures. She then raised her voice to address the men: “Stay quiet! Shut the fuck up, I said! I’ll cut the next man that makes any noise!”
The men finally shut up. They held their position in silence, listening to the woods around them. There was not a sound. It had been almost two full minutes since Pinch had sounded the alarm. The gostly figures in the bush were still standing in place.
“Was anyone attacked?” Peep asked in a voice loud enough to carry.
There was a general murmur from the men as they all responded in the negative.
“Nope!” Knuckle proclaimed after he had looked up and down the line.
Peep rode back to the road where Choke was still in his position. Near him, the man Knuckle had knocked down with his horse had been dragged behind the shieldwall. He was coming around and groaning quietly. Standing over top of him, Gabe was holding his and Knuckle’s horses.
Peep kept watching the ghostly figures in the trees as she moved to Choke. They were all standing just as they had been, keeping their position like sentinels. Even so, they were not stock still, and seemed to be swaying back and forth just a little.
“We need to check this out, man. I need a better look at them fuckers,” Peep said to Choke.
“I agree. Something seems off here. Why aren’t they attacking?”
“I dunno. Let’s go have a boo together and find out, huh? I aint heading out there alone. And ye can show the men how brave ye are, backing me up,” Peep grinned, her earlier unease covered by her usual swagger.
Choke nodded. “Alright, men! Ottila and I will go ahead and check this! Archers and slingers: cover us!”
Choke and Peep rode around the right flank of the shield wall and back to the road. They slowly moved side-by-side down the road towards the figures. As they did, it became clear that Pinch had been right: these were human skeletons standing in the woods. They were spread out in the forest to either side of the road, flanking it in a random pattern. There were many more of them than they had seen from further back: easily at least a dozen on each side of the road. Of course, Choke and Peep did not ride into the section of road the skeletons were flanking. They stopped about twenty meters from the closest of them to observe them from a distance.
Most of the skeletons were wearing the rusted and rotted remnants of armor and gear. The skeletons themselves were in no better condition; it did not seem that any of them were near a complete set of bones. As well, in watching them, it became obvious that none of the skeletons were moving in an animated way. Peep soon spotted what was happening.
“Oh, shit! Yeah, look at that! They’re just strung up by vines from the trees, man!” Peep exclaimed, pointing to one of the nearest ones.
With the trees being fairly dense and the underbrush thick, it was difficult to make the vines out against the backdrop of the forest, but once they were noticed it was impossible to mistake what was going on.
Peep laughed, her tension bleeding away.
“Fuck, man! That had me going! What a fuckin trick!”
A breeze rose up just then through the trees, and the suspended skeletons swayed. The sound of their bones knocking together filled the woods around them like macabre wind chimes.
Peep’s levity melted away at this.
“But how are they being held together though?” Choke asked, squinting as he peered at the skeletons.
“Well look at em. They’re fuckin full of weeds and brambles and moss and shit. Someone’s just drug em up outta the turf and strung them up in the trees to shit us up. Nice trick.”
“I suppose so. But that stag was real. And when we saw it, we were right there,” Choke pointed with his lance tip at the road right in the center of the flanking lines of skeletons.
“Yeah, well, I aint saying it aint creepy.”
“Those skeletons were not there when we came through. They popped up after we moved on,” Choke continued.
“Yeah, like I said: nice trick. Some kinda trip snares could do that, though.”
“Or a witch controlling the plants themselves.”
“Yeah. Sure. Maybe. But, whatever it is, and whoever is pulling the strings, they aint had the balls to come at us straight. They’re just trying to shit us up so we leave this place be like everyone else been doing. So, fuck them, I say,” Peep said. She then turned in the saddle and whistled loud at their men behind them.
“Men! To us! It aint shit! Come on!” Peep bellowed at them.
“What are you doing, Peep?” Choke asked intensely.
“We’re gonna cut them fuckers down, is what we’re gonna do. Fuck this mumbo-jumbo!”
“No you are not! No one is going into the bush here! Least of all with a bunch of skeletons. What was I just saying about witches controling plants? They could string us up in those trees!” Choke hissed.
“Huh. For real?”
“Yes!”
“Well, shit. Don’t want that,” Peep said. She turned back at the men who had only just left the shieldwall and were being herded down the road towards them by Knuckle, Lenny, and Dom:
“Hurry up! Get yar asses over here!” she bellowed.
“What? What are you doing?” Choke yelled at Peep.
“Well, if we can’t go in the bush, we’ll have the slingers crack at them a bit.”
“No!”
“Why the fuck not?” Peep snapped back.
“Because we have no idea what that might instigate!”
“What are ye talking about, man? They aint undead. They’re just a bunch of bones that’ve been strung up to scare us. It’s bullshit!”
“Are you not concerned about escalating things here?” Choke asked Peep.
“Yeah. I am! That’s what I want. Whoever rigged this up did it because they’re too fuckin scared to come at us straight up. So fuck them. We don’t scare like that. Bring it. Bring it!” Peep shouted into the bush. “We’ll kill ye like we did every other fucker that came for us! Come on!”
There was no response to this challenge. Only the gentle breeze and the clacking of the swaying skeletons.
“Ye see, Choke? It’s a fuckin bluff. And let me tell ye: If ye don’t let the men see this shit for what it is, the fear is gonna put its roots down into them. Let em bust these fuckers up with some rocks and they’ll stop thinking about all that weird animal shit that came before.”
Choke thought this over. By this time, the men were getting close.
“Alright then. I hope you know what you’re doing,” Choke said quietly.
“Yeah, me too,” Peep grinned at him. Then she turned to the men: “Check these fuckers out! Someone strung up a bunch of bones to try to scare us. Almost worked, huh?”
Peep let the men take their time talking about the spectacle. While they almost all accepted that the skeletons had been staged somehow, the question of the how was almost immediately raised.
“Yeah, but, we didn’t see them when we was all standing right there! How’d they pop up like that?” once of them asked, raising his voice above the babble of the others.
“It’s just some fuckin snares, man. Easy to do, when ye know how. So fuck these things! Right?”
Peep squared up and drew back the arrow she had notched on her warbow. She hit a dangling skeleton about thirty meters away dead center in the skull. There was a sharp snapping sound as the arrow struck. The skeleton danced with the impact of it, but stayed intack within its vine harness.
“Slingers! Pop some of these fuckers! And extra pint of ale for any of ye that bring one down. Come on!” Peep shouted.
Peep’s squad was back in town under the command of the lead slinger, Hardmod, with one more slinger that Peep had hand picked for her squad. This meant there were only five slingers there with the platoon. They did not need much encouragement to start slinging stones at the skeletons in the woods. The biggest of these stones were about half the size of a man’s fist, and they struck with terrible force. Within minutes, the four nearest skeletons had been completely obliterated to the cheers of the men watching the slingers work. As Peep had predicted, there was no response from whoever or whatever had been responsible for the spectacle.
“Alright! Alright! That’s enough. Save some ammo, just in case. We made our point! And that’s an extra pint tonight for all five of ye!” Peep proclaimed. This time it was the slingers who raised a cheer.
“Okay! Let’s tighten up! Same as before! Stay frosty! Let’s move!” Peep shouted, waving her hand above her in the signal to move out.
The men got into formation quickly and with good focus. Morale remained high as they marched back to Bristlehump.
Muse Vassal 