Sam Sykes - Tome of the Undergates

He glanced up at the sound of sand crunching beneath massive feet in time to spy Gariath’s wings twitching as the dragonman turned his back to the companions. Without so much as a word, he began to stalk off down the beach, snout occasionally thrust into the air with quivering nostrils.

‘There, see?’ Lenk smiled smugly. ‘That’s what you call community-minded. He’s already got the scent of some food.’

‘You can all starve,’ Gariath replied calmly without looking back. ‘I’m following something else.’

‘What?’

‘Die.’

‘Ah.’ Lenk frowned. ‘He’s in a mood.’ He cast a sidelong glance at Dreadaeleon, gesturing towards the dragonman with his chin. ‘You’d better go with him.’

‘What?’ The boy looked incredulous. ‘Why me? I can barely walk.’

‘“Barely” still translates to “capable”,’ Lenk responded sharply. ‘It’ll be better if we’ve got two hounds on the Abysmyth’s trail.’

‘I’m not sure I follow.’

‘You can sense magic, can’t you?’

‘All wizards can.’

‘And there you have it,’ Lenk replied. ‘While I don’t know if the demon is actually magical in nature, it probably leaves some kind of reek behind that either you or Gariath can follow.’

‘That logic doesn’t entirely hold up.’ Dreadaeleon rose to his feet shakily. ‘Wouldn’t one of us have sensed it before it attacked the Riptide ?’

‘Maybe things work differently when it’s out of water.’ Lenk placed a hand on Dreadaeleon’s shoulder. ‘The other reason I’m sending you is to keep an eye on him. If you do find the demon, try your best to keep him away from it until we can all assemble. We don’t want anyone to fight this thing alone.’

The wizard had no sarcasm in reply. Instead, placing an expression of resolution upon his face, he nodded stiffly to the young man, his tiny chest swelling as Lenk offered him an encouraging smile.

‘Beyond that,’ Lenk clapped him on the shoulder, ‘he looks like he’s going to kill someone, and since you crashed the ship, it might as well be you.’

‘That does make sense.’ Denaos nodded.

‘What?’ Dreadaeleon’s eyes flared. ‘You can’t be-’

‘I am.’ With another clap on the shoulder, Lenk sent the boy staggering across the sands in pursuit of the dragonman. ‘Off you go now.’ He had barely a moment to make certain Dreadaeleon was still on his feet ten paces later before he spied Kataria moving away in the opposite direction. ‘Where are you off to?’

‘Hunting,’ she replied, holding up her bow and patting the quiver of arrows upon her back. ‘Gariath is going that way, I’ll go this way.’

‘Fine.’ He nodded. ‘I’ll come with you.’

‘You don’t have to,’ she muttered in such a way as to indicate that it was not at all a simple suggestion.

‘But I should,’ he said, less firmly than he might have, ‘if only for protection.’ He raised a brow. ‘Is that disagreeable to you?’

‘Slightly,’ she hissed. ‘But if you can keep up, I can’t tell you where to walk.’

And with that, she was gone, vanished into the palm trees like a shadow. A dramatic sigh brought Lenk’s attention to the rogue leaning on the remains of the vessel, staring wistfully into the jungle.

‘Tell me,’ he muttered, ‘why is it that you always get to go with Kataria while I’m left behind?’ A puzzled expression flashed across his face. ‘And what am I supposed to do here, anyway? Not that I’m complaining, but I seem to have been left out of this plot of yours.’

‘The boat needs mending.’ Lenk gestured to the wreckage. ‘You and Asper can tend to it and see if the Abysmyth comes your way.’

‘Oh, good,’ Denaos said, sighing once again. ‘We get to sit here and do busywork while we wait for the demon to come and eat us.’

‘More like appetisers than busyworkers, I’d say.’

Lenk didn’t linger to hear whatever the tall man might have offered in retort. Pausing only for a moment to pluck his sword from the ruined vessel, he slung it over his shoulder and tore off in pursuit of the shict.

With a resigned grunt, Denaos pulled himself up to perch upon the hunk of wood, frowning at the gaping hole between his legs. Definitely some work to be done here, no doubt, and it was work he hardly felt like doing. There’d be wood to find, wood to shape and wood to attach to the ship’s wound.

‘So, you know how to take care of this, right?’ Asper asked, tilting her head at him.

‘It’s not too hard,’ he replied. ‘I did a bit of work under a carpenter back in Redgate.’ He scratched his chin. ‘His name was Rudder, more body hair than flesh. Nice fellow, but a bit handsy when he tossed back a few. So long as you can-’

A sudden movement caught his attention and he glanced over to see Asper busily at work, altering her garments. After a little bit of tearing, she tied a flap of her skirt to each of her legs, securing the fabric with leather strips to form a pair of makeshift leggings. His interest was piqued and he leaned forwards as she rolled up the sleeves of her tunic to her shoulders, exposing firm arms. The faintest hint of a grin appeared on his face as she grabbed the hem of her tunic and rolled it up, tying it off below her chest and baring a slender midsection.

Suddenly aware of his gaze, she looked up with a suspicious glance.

‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘But that’s quite a bit of skin to show if you’re just mending sails.’

‘You can knit,’ she said, scowling at him as she moved over to the boat and pulled herself inside. After rummaging around in a few crates, she produced a shiny, well-worn hatchet. Leaping from the vessel, she hiked it over her shoulder and glanced at him. ‘There’s wood to be cut. If you’re scared of demons and want to sit here and cry, though …’

He bit his lower lip contemplatively as he watched her go. Truthfully, he had to admit it was a difficult decision: linger here, out in the open where he couldn’t be surprised by anything on two or more legs, or follow a hatchet-wielding, half-clad woman into the forest where he might very well accidentally strangle himself with a vine if insects — or demons — didn’t eat him alive first.

The decision seemed easy, he thought, until he caught one last glimpse of her before she vanished. It was funny, he thought, but he had never noticed the particular delicacy with which her hips swayed.

Forests, Lenk decided, were places where man was not meant to tread.

It seemed a logical enough theory; humanity built their cities out on the open, where they could see threats coming. In the canopy-choked gloom, everything seemed to be a threat.

What had begun as a tiny copse of trees had blossomed into a lush jungle, deep and green as the sea. And, like the sea, the forest, too, was alive. Hidden amidst eclipsing boughs and grasping leaves, sounds emerged in disjointed harmony. Birds sang shrilly, determined to drown out the thrum of insect wings with their agonising choruses. For all the noises, he couldn’t see a single living thing. Not so much as a flicker of movement in the shadows.

Sunlight filtered through the green, twisting net of the forest’s canopy, shadowing every tree that crowded Lenk in an attempt to keep him out of their domain. He glanced about warily; in the darkness, the verdant trunks, slim and black, resembled nothing so much as his quarry.

The Abysmyth comes from the sea, right? He asked and answered himself. Right. It’ll stay near water, then. He paused. But what if it needed to go into the forest for some reason? What if it had to eat. . demons eat, right? He considered that for a moment. Right. They eat heads, probably. They seem like the kind of thing that would eat a person’s head.

If it had retreated into the forest, it could stand right in front of him and not be seen. Even worse, it could easily ambush anything that wandered by it; after all, how could anyone tell the difference between it and a tree in the gloom?

Simple , he thought, a tree won’t eat your head.

That thought brought him no comfort. Instead the same thought occurred to him each time he forced his eyes closed in a blink: he didn’t belong here. That thought, in turn, opened his eyes in a scowl at the pale figure shifting effortlessly through the foliage in front of him.

How does she make it look so easy?

‘You’re moving rather quickly,’ he said, if only to break the ambience.

‘I’m sorry,’ she replied acidly, ‘would you like to stop and paint a picture of the scenery?’

Lenk let that particular barb sink into his flesh, not bothering to pull it out or launch one of his own. He sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth; perhaps, he thought, he should wait before attempting to mend things with the shict. She didn’t seem to be in the mood for reconciliation at the moment.

No, no , he scolded himself, if you don’t do it now, she’ll just get angrier and do worse than bloody your nose. His eyes drifted down to the hunting knife strapped to her leg. A grimace creased his face.

‘What I mean,’ he replied, ‘is you usually take longer to find a trail.’

‘In most cases,’ she nodded, ‘but this particular quarry has a few exceptional qualities.’

‘Such as?’

‘For one, there’s still a great deal of noise in the forest. Prey, like birds and bugs, always go silent when a predator is about.’

‘You said a few qualities.’

‘Well, there is something more.’

‘What?’

‘It’s a ten-foot-tall fish that walks on two legs and reeks of death, you moron,’ she snapped. ‘If it’s anywhere on this island, it’ll be disgustingly hard to miss.’

He chose to leave that one in his flesh, as well. It would be easy, he knew, to sling something equally venomous at her. In fact, as he noted a particularly thick branch just next to her head, he realised it would be even easier to repay her for her earlier violence.

All you have to do is reach out, and. .

He shook his head to dispel that thought. While he knew there to be very few problems smashing someone’s head into a tree couldn’t solve, this was not one of them. Tact, however little use an adventurer usually found for it, was called for in such a situation.

‘That’s all there is to it, then?’ he asked, hoping she didn’t note the civil strain in his voice.

‘In this particular case, yes.’ She ducked under a low-hanging branch. ‘Let me ask you something.’

His entire body tensed; questions from the shict, lately, had served chiefly as preludes to violence.

‘Have you thought at all about how you’re going to fight this thing if you find it?’

‘Would it distress you to hear that I don’t know?’

‘No more than usual.’

‘Well, I’ve been giving it some thought,’ Lenk replied. ‘The Abysmyth can’t be hurt by mortal weapons, and that’s about all we’ve got. But it can be hurt by fire. Dread can do something about that and, if we’ve got time, we can get torches.’

‘It’ll be hard to make a fire when it’s eating our heads.’

‘You think it eats heads?’

‘Sure.’ She shrugged. ‘It seems like the kind of thing that eats heads.’

He smiled.

‘Dreadaeleon has his headache, however.’ She grunted as she pressed her lithe body between a heavy stone and a tree trunk. ‘I’ve never seen him use magic in such a state, but I wager it won’t be pretty.’