Tiger Writes Medieval (and possibly other) stuff
Jun 5, 2016 14:46:04 GMT -5
Gelquie and Shinko like this
Post by Tiger on Jun 5, 2016 14:46:04 GMT -5
Part Nine
Warning for some animal violence; nothing graphic
When Markus had first met Captain Alden, he had assumed it would be very difficult to tell when the man was truly angry. He had been quite wrong - when Alden was furious, it was clear as the fact rain was wet. Not that he acted it out, of course; rather, being near him was like standing beside a storm cloud, all tense, staticky anticipation of a lightning strike. The knights were quiet as they followed the captain through the still-dark streets to the guardhouse.
“Clay, with me,” he said when they reached the building, his eyes flicking to Desmond. “We’re getting any answers these bandits have to give.”
Desmond nodded and followed the captain inside; the remainder of the company stood quietly near the door, but after a minute or so passed with no sign that this would be a quick interrogation, Markus said, “So - looks like it might’ve been a dragon.”
“I don’t understand,” Jamison said, frowning. “I mean - it explains how it got over the walls, and I guess why the dogs didn’t smell it - it would only have been near the ground for a couple seconds. But nobody saw a blighted dragon? And the dragon always avoided people and light?”
“It could be young,” Brandt said, “But like I told you before - prowlers are ground-hunters. They don’t have the size or the feet for it.”
Markus ventured, “Maybe it’s another kind of dragon, and we just didn’t realize that species has night-vision?”
“Well, that’d be lovely news to bring back to command,” Brandt said with a sigh. Then he frowned. “Are gryphons nocturnal?”
“Nope,” Markus said “If they were...gryphowls, or gryph-hoots or something, then I’d say maybe that’s an idea. But they’ve got eagle- eyes, and eagles can’t see in the dark. Trust me on that one.”
“Maybe they’re cat-eyes, cats can see in the dark.”
“Cats can’t fly,” Markus countered. “Trust me, they have eagle-eyes and they’re not nocturnal.”
Jamison interrupted, “Well, even they were, this is pretty far north for one to roam - especially without getting caught by the phoenixes.” He frowned. “I don’t suppose...”
“Phoenixes aren’t nocturnal, either,” Markus confirmed.
“And they’re the ‘Woo’s birds,” Tanner added. “This seems...hostile, for them.”
The knights lapsed into silence. A few minutes more passed before Alden and Desmond finally came back out of the guardhouse. “They say they know nothing.” Alden’s voice was whip-sharp.
“It must be hiding out in the woods somewhere,” Markus said. “Or the ravine; we never finished checking it.”
“Maybe it’s hiding in the bat’s cave?” Tanner suggested.
“Whatever it is, could be.”
“We’ll scout the ravine,” Alden agreed. “But we’ll do it from above - this seems to be a flying animal, and if it’s in the ravine, we don’t want to be in its swooping path.”
They entered the forest, and considering it might be living in the batcave, the knights decided to traverse the opposite side of the ravine. Among their gear - most of it their usual weaponry and darkly-colored armor, thank goodness - was the rope from their adventure two days ago, in case of any need to climb down. The hope was that they wouldn’t have to use it.
They were prepared as they could be, but Markus’ stomach knotted and churned anyway. Going into battle against an unknown adversary was the worst way to go into battle - it meant Markus couldn’t focus on just one possibility and all its myriad scenarios - no, he had to try and concentrate on every theory and try to plan for every one of those encounters. He knew they would do what reconnaissance they could before attacking, but there was no guarantee they would have much, if any, time - after all, what if it spotted them first?
The forest itself wasn’t any help to his tension. The chirping crickets and buzzing cicadas created a racket that distorted sounds and doubtlessly hid others, and the snaps of twigs Markus could hear over them weren’t helpful to his nerves. Shadows moved in the trees - most were probably just the wind, or small animals, but if any of them were not… There was only a little moonlight, and most of that was spattered in patches between the trees like spilled milk, or pouring into the ravine.
Markus’ head was hammering by the time the gaping mouth of the cavern appeared around a bend in the stone walls. No sign of any animals - no dragons, gryphons, giant owls, flying bears… even the bats were probably gone for the night.
Probably off harassing the fruits again - you’d think they’d learn -
And everything suddenly came together in Markus’ head. His stomach dropped like he had pitched it down the ravine.
“Wait!” Markus hissed, sidestepping out of line to dart up to Alden. “Captain, wait!”
“What?” Alden came to a halt as Markus stopped at the ravine edge just in front of the captain, blocking the column’s path. Markus scouted the ground, his thumb just inches from the magelight on his belt. “Accipiter - what?”
“This is a bat cave, Captain - we’re looking for a flying nocturnal animal big enough to pick up a cow - what if it’s a camazot?”
Alden’s eyes widened - Markus quickly turned back to looking down the ledge, but heard nobody in the squad raising an argument. That might mean Markus was right, and in that case...
“Brandt,” Alden said. “I want light on the ground outside the cave. Now.”
“Aye, sir.” Brandt drew an arrow from his quiver and a bit of ropy material from a pouch on his belt and tied the rags just behind the arrowhead. Desmond tossed the rope he’d been carrying off his shoulder and drew out a tinderbox. He lit the bedraggled fabric while Brandt held the arrow notched, and before the flames could spread too far, Brandt fired the arrow at the sprawling plants outside the cave.
A few of the dry, husky leaves caught fire, and as the light spread out and the leaves burned away, it became very clear they had found the right place. The firelight flickered yellow-gold over freshly-revealed bones littering the ground - enough to account for a week’s worth of nightly livestock thefts. Piles of gray-black, pellet-like objects had also been hidden by the foliage - Markus was not a trained bat-studier, or whatever you called such a thing, but he would have bet his broadsword on that being bat guano.
Tanner suddenly cursed, and pointed to something. “There - where the fire’s about to spread, is that - “
Markus winced. “Well...I don’t think a goat was wearing that ring. Can’t tell if the gem’s ruby or rose quartz, but...yeah, that explains our missing body.”
“And why there wasn’t an attack after we took down the bandits,” Desmond growled. “It scavenged.”
“But what’s riling it up every night?” Brandt asked, nocking another arrow.
Tanner started to say something, but then shadows began rapidly flicking about the cave mouth. Every one of the knights tensed and held up their weapons. A bat about the size of a crow darted out of the cave, then swooped back in almost as quickly. Another bat fluttered out, just briefly, and then another, and another - for a moment, it looked almost like a swarm of giant, furry flies buzzing around the cave mouth. Markus could just barely hear a high-pitched cascade of chittering.
Brandt started to raise his bow, his expression uncertain. Alden snapped, “No - hold your arrows!”
Desmond asked, “Does it matter? The smoke from the fire’s probably already - “
The bats all swooped back into the cave in one sudden rush, like the cave was slurping them back in.
“Yeah, they’re riled,” Markus said. “Captain, what’s - “
A snarl rumbled from the cavern; Markus stepped back as a massive, wolfish face emerged from the shadows. Huge ears pricked and swiveled, its deep black eyes were probably fixated on the knights, and its nostrils quivered under a strange horn on its nose, pointed forward for what Markus assumed made easier stabbing.
Brandt cursed. “It’s big as a bloody horse!”
The massive bat’s ears twisted toward Brandt’s voice and it bared its teeth. The fangs were not at all horse-like. One thumbclaw hooked around the entrance to the cave, revealing some of its wing - Markus realized “horse-sized” was an understatement, with the size its wings must be. Not that that was much of a surprise when they already knew it had been carrying off small cows...
Brandt raised his bow again, but Alden raised a hand. “Wait - aim for the walls instead. They’re usually wary of humans, maybe we can scare it back in and deal with it when it’s weaker.”
“Yes, sir.” Brandt shifted his aim, and fired. The camazot jerked sharply at the sound of flint on stone, and it snapped its teeth in the knights’ direction. Drool flew from its jaws, and continued to dribble down its chin as it growled, low and long and slow. It was hard to see quite where its dark eyes were aimed, but its nose twitched and shifted between the knights, suggesting it was probably sizing them up. It opened its mouth a few more times in a motion like it was blowing air at them. That was a thing bats did, if Markus was remembering his monster-fighting lessons correctly. Nobody was really sure what the action was for, but with camazot, it sometimes meant an attack was coming - Markus tensed, raising his sword fully into defensive position along with the rest of his squad.
“Brandt - another arrow,” Alden ordered.
The bat’s ears pricked as Brandt pulled another arrow from his quiver. The knight froze, and the camazot, though tensed, remained almost totally still. Its other foreclaw shifted, and Markus said, “Watch out for - “
The camazot burst out of the cavern with a swooping screech of a scream and lunged toward Markus. Definitely bigger than a horse! was all Markus had time to think before bracing for a striking impact. Before it hit the blade, however, the camazot split apart - its face peeled into the faces and wings and claws of smaller bats, and so did the monster’s torso and wings and legs. Dozens of pairs of wings battered at Markus’ face and tiny teeth snapped at his ears, but he held his arms up to block the worst of the attacks.
But it wasn’t over yet, not by a longshot. Markus turned on his heel to see the colony coming together again, moving in one huge hovering shape like a school of fish, before all the tiny bats suddenly weren’t separate, tiny bats, but coalesced into one huge, snarling animal.
“Away from the edge!” Alden snapped, and the knights darted away from the ravine and its potentially-deadly drop. The camazot beat its wings and shrieked, swooping for Desmond; he ducked and rolled, and the bat’s claws just barely skimmed his shoulder blades.
“Exhaust it!” Alden snapped as the bat came around again. “Tire it and force it to come apart!”
Right - like that was going to be easy to do to an animal that had carried cows and pigs from Bexley to this cavern every night. Markus readied his sword - no shield this time, so no obstructions to two-handed combat.
Brandt, backing toward better cover, fired an arrow at the camazot. The arrow struck, but the bat didn’t so much as flinch in pain - which was explained when the spot the arrow had hit suddenly wavered and twisted like disturbed water, and the arrow dropped back down, ushered away by numerous small wings.
The camazot swooped down again, this time aiming for Alden. The captain raised his shield to block the bat’s talons, but the force of the impact was still enough to drive Alden to the ground. He managed to keep his shield up between himself and the bat’s scrabbling talons and made a sweeping cut at one of its wings. Two bats split off from the wing - Markus was too busy darting in for an attack to make note of what happened to them.
He swung for one of the leathery membranes as the bat realized it was being attacked from multiple sides and reared up slightly on its hind legs. The wing split into a temporary hodgepodge of bat limbs and bat faces out of an otherwise solid mass as Markus’ sword passed completely through it, doing not a shred of damage. The camazot started to turn toward Markus, but was quickly distracted by Tanner as he darted in close to get at its momentarily-exposed chest. A bat tumbled out of the camazot’s chest, flailing its wings and darting off into the darkness, and the huge creature it left behind shrieked in anger, snapping at Tanner and catching the knight’s shoulder in its teeth.
Markus swore and hefted his sword to stab its thumb joint - before he could hit it, the camazot shrieked again, jerking its head back and wings out. Something thick and heavy slammed into Markus’ ankles, and the next thing he knew, he was on the ground, looking up at the fresh slash across the camazot’s nose and the large slice in its ear. Trails of some thick, dark liquid dripped from its teeth. Tanner was backing away, holding his left arm close to his body, Jamison close beside him with his sword darting back into a defensive position.
Markus quickly realized, however, that the camazot’s twisted expression of outrage was fresh and directed at him - the knight who had just landed, hard, on the camazot’s wing. Markus tried to scramble off at the same moment the bat tried to jerk its wings free, and somewhere in the tangle of motion, as the wing was yanked out from under Markus and he was sent thumbled, the bat’s long, sharp thumb claw sliced across Markus’ forehead, just over his left eye.
Forcing himself to ignore the pain, Markus managed to hold onto his sword and scramble to his feet, expecting the bat to be on him at any second. It wasn’t, however - the only reason being that Alden had just tried to stab it through the stomach. The camazot had just pulled apart into a small horde of bats around the blade, but it staggered a step back, apparently off-balance with a chunk of its center mass not entirely solid.
Perhaps it finally noticed just how many knights it was facing; the camazot flared its wings and beat them several times, trying to get lift, or maybe just to kick up dust and twigs and force the knights back. The later it was doing quite effectively, on purpose or not; dust caked onto the blood flowing from the slash over Markus’ eye and flew into the wound just to add a little extra sting, and Alden staggered as one of the wing tips hit him in the arm while he tried to back away.
“Well - at this rate, we’re tiring it!” Markus shouted, wiping blood out of his eye.
“Keep backing up, get away from the cliffside!” Alden ordered. The camazot shrieked in his direction, its middle steadying into solid, furry flesh once more. The moonlight hit its muzzle, revealing the liquid dangling from its mouth to be a mix of blood and drool.
Forming into a monstrous camazot was an effective defense strategy for a colony of tiny cama bats - but it required a lot of energy, which meant a lot of food; and for whatever reason, a camazot abandoned the individual cama bat’s preference for insects in favor of meat.
Wait - cama bats, they eat Insects - not fruit! Markus shoved the errant thought out of his head for now. This was not the time to figure out mysteries, except the very great mystery of how he was going to get out of this battle with all his limbs and preferably his face intact.
The camazot threw itself forward with a snarl; Alden called out, “Jamison! Markus!” and the two knights, each at a far end of the party line, charged forward to flank the giant bat. The camazot faltered, snarling at Jamison and then at Markus, crouching with one foreclaw slightly raised, sometimes making the blowing-air motion again or snapping at the air like a dog silently barking. It was only a matter of time before it was going to pounce at someone -
There was a flicker of light from the corner of Markus’ not-being-bled-into eye, and then a fire-tipped arrow shot toward the camazot. Though once again, the arrow didn’t seem to do any damage, the camazot shrieked and lurched backward. The arrow dropped from its body, and the fire quickly burned out in the dust, but the camazot was already backing toward the ravine again.
“Hah! Don’t like fire, do you?” Brandt jeered.
Markus, hoping to get some advantage while the bat recoiled from the flames, picked up the pace of his advance. The bat spotted him coming, and to Markus’ surprise, leaped into flight - how did it get airborne so fast?! and streaked toward him. He barely had time to brace for impact before the jolt of collision. One set of talons clumsily locked around his arm, squeezing hard; the other pair scrabbled for purchase on Markus’ sword as the knight struggled to hold it between himself and its claws. The bat’s wings were beating heavily, filling Markus’ ears with a repeating thwumph that he did not like the sound of - if it was trying to take flight, well, Markus wasn’t as heavy as a cow and only as airborne as one, he did not want to fight in the air -
He threw all his weight into a roll and jammed his elbow into the camazot’s “arm” as hard as he could, pinning the camazot’s left wing under his right shoulder. The camazot screeched, but dissolved its wing into a horde of tiny bats under Markus’ arm so he couldn’t pin it in place. This left at least six or seven bats to flap at Markus’ face and try to bite through his sleeves and gloves - Markus managed to swat two of them away, his skin crawling, and the remaining bats swooped away.
Markus tried to wrench his arm free of the bat’s talons, hefting his broadsword to attempt a stab at its toes. On the sword’s way up, however, the bat lunged at him with its teeth, and Markus had to quickly angle the blade to intercept its open mouth. The camazot raised a foreclaw to try and paw the sword away from its teeth, but then its ears twisted to the side, its head followed, and it had to phase apart most of its wing to avoid being sliced by Alden.
While it was distracted, Markus slammed his sword into the back of the camazot’s mouth. It was quick to split apart - for a moment, its head was in two halves, each moving separately of the other - but Markus’ blade came back bloody from the soft flesh where the upper and lower jaw connected. Again, though, it turned away from Markus, no doubt drawn by the sound of other knights closing in. Markus struggled to wrench his arms out of the creature’s talons again, and suddenly, it split apart into the colony again. Markus saw a flicker of silver as a sword swung in a broad through the air where the camazot’s body had been.
Markus scrabbled to his feet, raising his sword and backing up to rejoin the rest of his squad. “Plan ‘tire it out’ is too vague, can we get something more specific?” he panted, watching the bats cavorting into the sky and back into the shape of the camazot.
“It doesn’t like fire!” Brandt called, nocking another arrow. “But the thing just - “
The bat reformed and with a stroke of its wings that seemed to grasp and yank the night air toward itself for pushoff, the camazot stooped and swooped down toward the knights. Desmond and Jamison ducked as it swept just over them - Desmond raised his sword over his head and when the camazot tried to strike him with a talon, it screeched and drew its claw close to its body again. Two bats fell away from the foot, one of them flying with an obvious limp in its wing.
“Maybe it’s guarding its territory!” Jamison called as he got back to his feet. “If we back off, maybe it’ll dissolve - “
Markus wiped more blood out of his eye and shouted, “I don’t think it’s backing off - all it got last night was scavenging; it’s probably starving and we look like a string of sausage links!”
“It’ll just go back to Bexley for another cow, anyway!” Brandt agreed, firing an arrow at the camazot’s retreating back. He missed, the bat turning more nimbly than he’d probably anticipated. “Camazots need to eat after fighting!”
“So it’s just been taking stuff after fighting every night? The ‘Pit is - “
Tanner interrupted, “It’s been eating the bugs! Cama bats eat bugs, not fruit! But they’re poisoning the bugs in the peach fields...” The younger knight’s voice was little shaky despite its volume.
But Markus’ concern was joined by a stark stab of realization; he swore, and because he didn’t hear any other curses, clarified, “It’s being poisoned every night!”
“So what - “ Jamison scampered sideways as the bat came for him again; he tried to swing his sword at the creature, but it’s back simply puffed up into a small pouf of fluttering bats. The camazot whirled on him, trying to strike with its nose-horn - when Jamison blocked it with his sword, the camazot lashed out with its thumbclaw. Markus couldn’t hear or quite see whether or not it struck; there was too much noise and he had already charged too close to the bat to see around it.
He swung at the camazot’s leg, hoping to cut a tendon. His sword hit some resistance, but Markus didn’t get a chance to see the results - the bat’s foot jerked - then he wasn’t sure what hit him, a wing or a kick, but suddenly his gambeson was torn and his side was on fire. Markus instinctively rolled to try and shrug off as much damage as he could - and his stomach lurched as he tried to stabilize himself and found his foot on nothing but air. Markus dared a glance over his shoulder - he had almost rolled right off the ravine ledge like a complete moron, and right into poisonous plants, too -
Or, no, not poisonous…
Markus looked back at the camazot - it had rounded on Tanner again, a knife dropping out of its side. The animal seemed hesitant to strike, maybe because of the remaining knife brandished in Tanner’s hand. A flash of fire sparked to life in the darkness, and Brandt fired another arrow that landed at the camazot’s feet. It snarled and scrabbled back, turning its head rapidly to see all of its opponents.
Its eyes lit on Markus and Markus had the feeling it was not because it was intrigued by his handsome features.
Well. “Get the rope ready, please!” Markus called before he glanced down at the ravine floor, edged back, and let himself slide down the wall. The camazot howled, and the last thing Markus saw over the lip of the ravine was its face contorted into a snarl and it barreling toward him with a flap of its wings.
Then it was looking down at Markus as he slid down the wall, and then trying to chase him down, leaping and gliding between the walls like a very massive jumping spider. Markus got to ground and managed to turn his stumble into a bumpy roll. His side got whacked again and for a second it hurt too badly to flex his chest to breath - but it was probably better than remaining where he had been, as he saw and felt and smelled the camazot pass just over him as he rolled away. If he’d been standing, the bat would’ve tackled him right at the chest and that probably would have been the end of Sir Markus Accipiter.
He staggered to his feet, forcing in a breath and raising his sword. The camazot was struggling to turn in the tight corridor of the ravine, and its pounce had carried it too far to be an immediate danger to Markus. The knight stooped - a motion that hurt - and hastily yanked up some of the leaves of the plants that sprawled over the ravine floor, dropping them on his boot in a loose pile, glancing up every other second to make sure the camazot hadn’t twisted free -
From up above, one of the knights’ magelights flared on. The camazot looked up, snarling - and suddenly split apart into a dozen bats at the neck. A loud thock! Was the only sign of the arrow Markus could perceive, but looking up, he saw Brandt drawing another arrow from his quiver. Jamison darted up beside him and chucked something, probably a rock. The camazot screeched with fury, practically writhing as it scrabbled along the wall to try and twist itself around.
“Markus!” Following the shout, Markus saw Tanner beside Desmond, who was dropping the rope into the ravine behind him.
“Thank you, you’re the best!” Markus called. He rose to his feet, gathering the plants he had torn from the ground into a huge, squishy ball. After forcing in a deep breath his side was not pleased to take, and planting his feet, Markus shouted to the camazot, “Hey, you! Flappy!” He held the ball up and shook it a little. Goop from the plant oozed down Markus’ arm and the fiery pain in his side seared up higher, like it was attached to a string tied around his wrist. “Hey! Look what I got!”
Brandt fired another arrow and demanded, “What are you - “
“It’ll throw up the poison!” Tanner called back. Markus had just enough spare mental space to think that of course Tanner would remember Kent telling them the plants were nauseating.
“So we’re making it hungrier?!”
“We’re making it less poisoned!” Markus insisted, but he hadn’t quite thought of that himself. Entirely emptying its stomach might not be the best idea, either...
He didn’t have much time to prepare for that, however, as the bat suddenly seemed to realize it might have to go back to go forward - or forward to go backward, considering the direction it was facing - and scrabbled up the wall, then turned and leaped back to the ground that way. Markus held his positon, wishing he had a long pitchfork or the like to wave the clump of greens in the camazot’s face until it ate them out of sheer frustration. As it was...well, hopefully the idea he came up with in the four seconds he had as the camazot barreled toward him would be enough.
He thumbed the light on his belt, and the orb lit up in a burst to full intensity. The camazot shrieked, and Markus, who had squinted preemptively, lobbed the ball of plants at its open mouth. Though he was a terrible shot with arrows, Markus had better luck with the bat barely a couple feet in front of him, and there was a very satisfying choking noise followed by a heavy gulp - then the much less pleasant being knocked off his feet again as the bat tried and failed to skid to a halt, slamming a deceptively scrawny-looking arm into Markus.
Markus rolled onto his elbows, gritting his teeth to hold back what would likely be a very loud, attention-drawing curse at the pain erupting in his side from the blow. He forced himself to his feet, and after wiping blood out of his eye again, put a hand to his torso - didn’t feel bloody or torn enough to explain it, so he’d at least pulled something - or, perhaps more likely, he had done something to a rib or two. It hurt like a particularly fiery level of the ‘Pit, but at least Markus probably wouldn’t bleed to death.
Not yet, anyway - the camazot was coming at him again, its eyes slits and its teeth bared. Occasionally it paused to shudder and gag, but nothing was coming up just yet. Brandt shot a flaming arrow between Markus and the camazot; the bat reeled back from the flames, and Markus quickly backed away, heading for the rope. The bat silently opened its mouth again, and its eyes locked on Markus. Snarling, the bat paced sideways, and then leaped. Rather than trying to clear the flames in one leap, it split back into the colony. Markus braced, again, sword raised, teeth gritted, hoping they wouldn’t go right for his side…
The bats lurched in their school-like formation. A few tumbled out of the group and landed, heavily - others drifted to the wall, or dove straight down and staggering to a landing. Only a few made it to Markus; one tried to land on his arm but Markus reflexively shook it off, his head filling for a split-second with the mental image of the entire camazot reforming on and subsequently crushing that single limb. In the light from the disc at his waist, Markus could see some of the grounded bats retching, and realized what the strained, high-pitched, yelp-like noises rapidly flooding the ravine must be.
“It - it worked!” he called.
Alden said, “Whatever’s in their system must split up between them when it deforms. Smaller bodies, faster effects.”
“So now Markus can take them out - “ Jamison started to say, but was interrupted by Tanner.
“No!’” Tanner insisted. He’d sheathed his sword, and though his sleeve was worryingly dark, someone had hastily wrapped some torn cloth around Tanner’s shoulder to stem the flow at least a little. “Wait - Bexley needs the bats. They were eating the bugs, not the fruit - but now they probably fly off or turn into a camazot before they eat enough. That’s why there’s such a bug problem!”
“That makes sense,” Markus admitted. He winced as he took another deep breath to call up, “But what do we do? It’s not going to just leave us alone after this!”
“Can we catch and separate them?” Brandt suggested.
Alden shook his head. “Not without containment. Other suggestions?”
“It’s hungry,” Desmond said in his scratchy voice. “It needs food - where do we get food?”
Jamison started. “Think it’ll eat fish?”
“Maybe?” Tanner sounded uncertain.
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Markus called. Some of the bats were rising from tiny puddles of sick, snorting and wrinkling their noses. “Where’re we getting fish?”
“Remember the lake?” Jamison asked. "Swords and knives and arrows aren’t exactly standard spear-fishing weapons but - “ One of the bats started chittering - Markus raised his sword, but that only seemed to draw more bats to start making noise. Most of the colony was still hacking, but that would only last for so long.
“The lake’s on the other side of the ravine!” Desmond snapped. “How are we - “
“Someone come down here and help me,” Markus shouted, “and someone else throw down the rope! We’ll get up the wall and tie it for the rest of you, then you cross that way!”
Some of the bats were flapping their wings, taking to the air and starting sharp, circling flight. Alden must have seen this, as he ordered, “Desmond, help him - Jamison, undo the rope when he gets down - Brandt, we need to get its attention up here! Tanner - your arm?”
“It wasn’t my sword-arm - I can still fight,” Markus heard Tanner say, as Desmond started down the rope.
“Keep some distance, just - “
Markus assumed Desmond said something like ‘just to be safe’, but the bats’ chittering and flapping had been steadily increasing in volume as more bats joined the circle. The knight tensed, ready for them to reform; he could just barely hear a momentary skidding sound behind him, and then a thump and a scratchy grunt as Desmond landed behind him. Markus called to Jamison, “Untie the rope!” He hoped Jamison could hear him over the bats.
Desmond stepped up beside Markus, drawing his sword. “Who’s climbing without the rope, you or me?”
“You, sorry - think I cracked a rib or at least pulled something and it’s not happy with me breathing - so hauling myself up a cliff face’s probably not the best plan.”
“But you can fight?”
“I’m heavier to lift than my sword,” Markus assured him.
Desmond nodded. “I’ll help - “
Before he could finish, the bats all swooped up a foot or so - then dove back down, melding into the huge camazot once again. Markus didn’t wait for it to come to him this time - he had an idea, and darted forward to meet the bat. When he swung his sword at its wing, it was a relatively light sweep, but the wing still split into numerous smaller bats. As Markus had hoped, the suddenly non-whole wing made the bat lurch sideways. He narrowly avoided being hit by pressing his back to the ravine wall. Desmond did one better, and made a swing of his own that actually struck the bat’s wing. Snarling, the camazot turned on him, but an arrow grazed its ear, and a rock from Markus struck it between the shoulder blades.
“Climb, Des!” Markus shouted, partially to make sure the other knight was moving and partially to get the camazot’s attention. Hopefully it didn’t speak Kythian.
The bat lunged at him, and was again interrupted by an arrow, this one striking it in the leg. Though the bat ‘caught’ and dropped it again, the animal was clearly furious, and it beat its wings to get into the air and attack the knights on the ravine’s edge. Markus gritted his teeth, but hurried back to Desmond to help him secure the rope to his belt and wind some of it up so Desmond could get started. He made sure the trailing rope stayed free of any obstacle or catches as Desmond climbed and simultaneously watched the fight as much as he could hear - most of it was taking place out of his sight, and he only had one chance to throw a rock - and missed, doing no more than momentarily distracting the camazot before someone caught its attention again.
He looked back up at Desmond - the scarred knight was almost there...almost…
A stone crumbled away under the knight’s foot, and with a doubtlessly panic-spurred burst of speed, Desmond lunged the rest of the way up the ledge and onto the top of the ravine. He staggered toward a tree, and though he was out of sight for a moment, Markus felt a firm tug on the rope and Desmond’s magelight flickered brightly, then dimmed, then brightened, then dimmed; a signal to the other side of the ravine. Markus sheathed his blade, set his jaw, and started up the rope.
It hurt - it hurt a lot, even with the considerable help he was getting from his legs, to pull himself up the rope, and the fact that every breath felt like it was shoving some of his ribs into a lining of heated, broken glass wasn’t making it easier. Still, he made it to the top, where Desmond reached down and gave him a hand up. That hurt, too, but Markus suspected it was less painful than the alternative.
“Thanks,” Markus gasped as he got his feet firmly on solid ground. How’s Tanner gonna get up that? he wondered briefly - but that was something Tanner and the knights with him would need to figure out. “I’ll get you more rocks and sticks to throw,” he told Desmond, and darted a little into the darkness to pick up anything with a bit of weight to it that he could find - rocks, nuts, chunks of bark, twigs…
“Are you going to be able to run?” Desmond asked as Markus returned.
Markus nodded, adding, “With enough cursing.” He looked down the ravine; Jamison was on his way down, followed closely by Tanner, while Brandt and Alden kept the camazot engaged and Desmond continued to throw its attention off with well-aimed blows. Markus alternated between trying to replenish Desmond’s stock, making noise to draw the bat’s attention, and keeping an eye on Jamison and Tanner’s progress; Tanner was climbing first, mostly one handed, with Jamison close behind.
When the younger knight made it close enough to the top, Markus reached down and managed to help haul Tanner up from under his shoulders. The wrapping around the bite was barely hanging on. “Your bandage needs tying - how’s it feeling?“
“Not great,” Tanner said, holding still as Markus retied the ends of the cloth into a sturdier knot. “But I can still hold a sword.“ He drew his blade with his right, uninjured arm to demonstrate.
“Stick close - we’ll watch your flank,” Markus promised anyway.
“Alden and Brandt need cover first,” Jamison grunted as he pulled himself over the ledge. “Markus - you and Tanner should go on ahead - get some fish ready and we’ll lead this blighter to you!”
Markus didn’t like the idea leaving the others to fend for themselves, but the alternative would take longer. With their injuries, Markus and Tanner wouldn’t be the best fighters, anyway. “Okay - we’ll be ready.” The two knights hurried off into the forest.
“Clay, with me,” he said when they reached the building, his eyes flicking to Desmond. “We’re getting any answers these bandits have to give.”
Desmond nodded and followed the captain inside; the remainder of the company stood quietly near the door, but after a minute or so passed with no sign that this would be a quick interrogation, Markus said, “So - looks like it might’ve been a dragon.”
“I don’t understand,” Jamison said, frowning. “I mean - it explains how it got over the walls, and I guess why the dogs didn’t smell it - it would only have been near the ground for a couple seconds. But nobody saw a blighted dragon? And the dragon always avoided people and light?”
“It could be young,” Brandt said, “But like I told you before - prowlers are ground-hunters. They don’t have the size or the feet for it.”
Markus ventured, “Maybe it’s another kind of dragon, and we just didn’t realize that species has night-vision?”
“Well, that’d be lovely news to bring back to command,” Brandt said with a sigh. Then he frowned. “Are gryphons nocturnal?”
“Nope,” Markus said “If they were...gryphowls, or gryph-hoots or something, then I’d say maybe that’s an idea. But they’ve got eagle- eyes, and eagles can’t see in the dark. Trust me on that one.”
“Maybe they’re cat-eyes, cats can see in the dark.”
“Cats can’t fly,” Markus countered. “Trust me, they have eagle-eyes and they’re not nocturnal.”
Jamison interrupted, “Well, even they were, this is pretty far north for one to roam - especially without getting caught by the phoenixes.” He frowned. “I don’t suppose...”
“Phoenixes aren’t nocturnal, either,” Markus confirmed.
“And they’re the ‘Woo’s birds,” Tanner added. “This seems...hostile, for them.”
The knights lapsed into silence. A few minutes more passed before Alden and Desmond finally came back out of the guardhouse. “They say they know nothing.” Alden’s voice was whip-sharp.
“It must be hiding out in the woods somewhere,” Markus said. “Or the ravine; we never finished checking it.”
“Maybe it’s hiding in the bat’s cave?” Tanner suggested.
“Whatever it is, could be.”
“We’ll scout the ravine,” Alden agreed. “But we’ll do it from above - this seems to be a flying animal, and if it’s in the ravine, we don’t want to be in its swooping path.”
*******
They entered the forest, and considering it might be living in the batcave, the knights decided to traverse the opposite side of the ravine. Among their gear - most of it their usual weaponry and darkly-colored armor, thank goodness - was the rope from their adventure two days ago, in case of any need to climb down. The hope was that they wouldn’t have to use it.
They were prepared as they could be, but Markus’ stomach knotted and churned anyway. Going into battle against an unknown adversary was the worst way to go into battle - it meant Markus couldn’t focus on just one possibility and all its myriad scenarios - no, he had to try and concentrate on every theory and try to plan for every one of those encounters. He knew they would do what reconnaissance they could before attacking, but there was no guarantee they would have much, if any, time - after all, what if it spotted them first?
The forest itself wasn’t any help to his tension. The chirping crickets and buzzing cicadas created a racket that distorted sounds and doubtlessly hid others, and the snaps of twigs Markus could hear over them weren’t helpful to his nerves. Shadows moved in the trees - most were probably just the wind, or small animals, but if any of them were not… There was only a little moonlight, and most of that was spattered in patches between the trees like spilled milk, or pouring into the ravine.
Markus’ head was hammering by the time the gaping mouth of the cavern appeared around a bend in the stone walls. No sign of any animals - no dragons, gryphons, giant owls, flying bears… even the bats were probably gone for the night.
Probably off harassing the fruits again - you’d think they’d learn -
And everything suddenly came together in Markus’ head. His stomach dropped like he had pitched it down the ravine.
“Wait!” Markus hissed, sidestepping out of line to dart up to Alden. “Captain, wait!”
“What?” Alden came to a halt as Markus stopped at the ravine edge just in front of the captain, blocking the column’s path. Markus scouted the ground, his thumb just inches from the magelight on his belt. “Accipiter - what?”
“This is a bat cave, Captain - we’re looking for a flying nocturnal animal big enough to pick up a cow - what if it’s a camazot?”
Alden’s eyes widened - Markus quickly turned back to looking down the ledge, but heard nobody in the squad raising an argument. That might mean Markus was right, and in that case...
“Brandt,” Alden said. “I want light on the ground outside the cave. Now.”
“Aye, sir.” Brandt drew an arrow from his quiver and a bit of ropy material from a pouch on his belt and tied the rags just behind the arrowhead. Desmond tossed the rope he’d been carrying off his shoulder and drew out a tinderbox. He lit the bedraggled fabric while Brandt held the arrow notched, and before the flames could spread too far, Brandt fired the arrow at the sprawling plants outside the cave.
A few of the dry, husky leaves caught fire, and as the light spread out and the leaves burned away, it became very clear they had found the right place. The firelight flickered yellow-gold over freshly-revealed bones littering the ground - enough to account for a week’s worth of nightly livestock thefts. Piles of gray-black, pellet-like objects had also been hidden by the foliage - Markus was not a trained bat-studier, or whatever you called such a thing, but he would have bet his broadsword on that being bat guano.
Tanner suddenly cursed, and pointed to something. “There - where the fire’s about to spread, is that - “
Markus winced. “Well...I don’t think a goat was wearing that ring. Can’t tell if the gem’s ruby or rose quartz, but...yeah, that explains our missing body.”
“And why there wasn’t an attack after we took down the bandits,” Desmond growled. “It scavenged.”
“But what’s riling it up every night?” Brandt asked, nocking another arrow.
Tanner started to say something, but then shadows began rapidly flicking about the cave mouth. Every one of the knights tensed and held up their weapons. A bat about the size of a crow darted out of the cave, then swooped back in almost as quickly. Another bat fluttered out, just briefly, and then another, and another - for a moment, it looked almost like a swarm of giant, furry flies buzzing around the cave mouth. Markus could just barely hear a high-pitched cascade of chittering.
Brandt started to raise his bow, his expression uncertain. Alden snapped, “No - hold your arrows!”
Desmond asked, “Does it matter? The smoke from the fire’s probably already - “
The bats all swooped back into the cave in one sudden rush, like the cave was slurping them back in.
“Yeah, they’re riled,” Markus said. “Captain, what’s - “
A snarl rumbled from the cavern; Markus stepped back as a massive, wolfish face emerged from the shadows. Huge ears pricked and swiveled, its deep black eyes were probably fixated on the knights, and its nostrils quivered under a strange horn on its nose, pointed forward for what Markus assumed made easier stabbing.
Brandt cursed. “It’s big as a bloody horse!”
The massive bat’s ears twisted toward Brandt’s voice and it bared its teeth. The fangs were not at all horse-like. One thumbclaw hooked around the entrance to the cave, revealing some of its wing - Markus realized “horse-sized” was an understatement, with the size its wings must be. Not that that was much of a surprise when they already knew it had been carrying off small cows...
Brandt raised his bow again, but Alden raised a hand. “Wait - aim for the walls instead. They’re usually wary of humans, maybe we can scare it back in and deal with it when it’s weaker.”
“Yes, sir.” Brandt shifted his aim, and fired. The camazot jerked sharply at the sound of flint on stone, and it snapped its teeth in the knights’ direction. Drool flew from its jaws, and continued to dribble down its chin as it growled, low and long and slow. It was hard to see quite where its dark eyes were aimed, but its nose twitched and shifted between the knights, suggesting it was probably sizing them up. It opened its mouth a few more times in a motion like it was blowing air at them. That was a thing bats did, if Markus was remembering his monster-fighting lessons correctly. Nobody was really sure what the action was for, but with camazot, it sometimes meant an attack was coming - Markus tensed, raising his sword fully into defensive position along with the rest of his squad.
“Brandt - another arrow,” Alden ordered.
The bat’s ears pricked as Brandt pulled another arrow from his quiver. The knight froze, and the camazot, though tensed, remained almost totally still. Its other foreclaw shifted, and Markus said, “Watch out for - “
The camazot burst out of the cavern with a swooping screech of a scream and lunged toward Markus. Definitely bigger than a horse! was all Markus had time to think before bracing for a striking impact. Before it hit the blade, however, the camazot split apart - its face peeled into the faces and wings and claws of smaller bats, and so did the monster’s torso and wings and legs. Dozens of pairs of wings battered at Markus’ face and tiny teeth snapped at his ears, but he held his arms up to block the worst of the attacks.
But it wasn’t over yet, not by a longshot. Markus turned on his heel to see the colony coming together again, moving in one huge hovering shape like a school of fish, before all the tiny bats suddenly weren’t separate, tiny bats, but coalesced into one huge, snarling animal.
“Away from the edge!” Alden snapped, and the knights darted away from the ravine and its potentially-deadly drop. The camazot beat its wings and shrieked, swooping for Desmond; he ducked and rolled, and the bat’s claws just barely skimmed his shoulder blades.
“Exhaust it!” Alden snapped as the bat came around again. “Tire it and force it to come apart!”
Right - like that was going to be easy to do to an animal that had carried cows and pigs from Bexley to this cavern every night. Markus readied his sword - no shield this time, so no obstructions to two-handed combat.
Brandt, backing toward better cover, fired an arrow at the camazot. The arrow struck, but the bat didn’t so much as flinch in pain - which was explained when the spot the arrow had hit suddenly wavered and twisted like disturbed water, and the arrow dropped back down, ushered away by numerous small wings.
The camazot swooped down again, this time aiming for Alden. The captain raised his shield to block the bat’s talons, but the force of the impact was still enough to drive Alden to the ground. He managed to keep his shield up between himself and the bat’s scrabbling talons and made a sweeping cut at one of its wings. Two bats split off from the wing - Markus was too busy darting in for an attack to make note of what happened to them.
He swung for one of the leathery membranes as the bat realized it was being attacked from multiple sides and reared up slightly on its hind legs. The wing split into a temporary hodgepodge of bat limbs and bat faces out of an otherwise solid mass as Markus’ sword passed completely through it, doing not a shred of damage. The camazot started to turn toward Markus, but was quickly distracted by Tanner as he darted in close to get at its momentarily-exposed chest. A bat tumbled out of the camazot’s chest, flailing its wings and darting off into the darkness, and the huge creature it left behind shrieked in anger, snapping at Tanner and catching the knight’s shoulder in its teeth.
Markus swore and hefted his sword to stab its thumb joint - before he could hit it, the camazot shrieked again, jerking its head back and wings out. Something thick and heavy slammed into Markus’ ankles, and the next thing he knew, he was on the ground, looking up at the fresh slash across the camazot’s nose and the large slice in its ear. Trails of some thick, dark liquid dripped from its teeth. Tanner was backing away, holding his left arm close to his body, Jamison close beside him with his sword darting back into a defensive position.
Markus quickly realized, however, that the camazot’s twisted expression of outrage was fresh and directed at him - the knight who had just landed, hard, on the camazot’s wing. Markus tried to scramble off at the same moment the bat tried to jerk its wings free, and somewhere in the tangle of motion, as the wing was yanked out from under Markus and he was sent thumbled, the bat’s long, sharp thumb claw sliced across Markus’ forehead, just over his left eye.
Forcing himself to ignore the pain, Markus managed to hold onto his sword and scramble to his feet, expecting the bat to be on him at any second. It wasn’t, however - the only reason being that Alden had just tried to stab it through the stomach. The camazot had just pulled apart into a small horde of bats around the blade, but it staggered a step back, apparently off-balance with a chunk of its center mass not entirely solid.
Perhaps it finally noticed just how many knights it was facing; the camazot flared its wings and beat them several times, trying to get lift, or maybe just to kick up dust and twigs and force the knights back. The later it was doing quite effectively, on purpose or not; dust caked onto the blood flowing from the slash over Markus’ eye and flew into the wound just to add a little extra sting, and Alden staggered as one of the wing tips hit him in the arm while he tried to back away.
“Well - at this rate, we’re tiring it!” Markus shouted, wiping blood out of his eye.
“Keep backing up, get away from the cliffside!” Alden ordered. The camazot shrieked in his direction, its middle steadying into solid, furry flesh once more. The moonlight hit its muzzle, revealing the liquid dangling from its mouth to be a mix of blood and drool.
Forming into a monstrous camazot was an effective defense strategy for a colony of tiny cama bats - but it required a lot of energy, which meant a lot of food; and for whatever reason, a camazot abandoned the individual cama bat’s preference for insects in favor of meat.
Wait - cama bats, they eat Insects - not fruit! Markus shoved the errant thought out of his head for now. This was not the time to figure out mysteries, except the very great mystery of how he was going to get out of this battle with all his limbs and preferably his face intact.
The camazot threw itself forward with a snarl; Alden called out, “Jamison! Markus!” and the two knights, each at a far end of the party line, charged forward to flank the giant bat. The camazot faltered, snarling at Jamison and then at Markus, crouching with one foreclaw slightly raised, sometimes making the blowing-air motion again or snapping at the air like a dog silently barking. It was only a matter of time before it was going to pounce at someone -
There was a flicker of light from the corner of Markus’ not-being-bled-into eye, and then a fire-tipped arrow shot toward the camazot. Though once again, the arrow didn’t seem to do any damage, the camazot shrieked and lurched backward. The arrow dropped from its body, and the fire quickly burned out in the dust, but the camazot was already backing toward the ravine again.
“Hah! Don’t like fire, do you?” Brandt jeered.
Markus, hoping to get some advantage while the bat recoiled from the flames, picked up the pace of his advance. The bat spotted him coming, and to Markus’ surprise, leaped into flight - how did it get airborne so fast?! and streaked toward him. He barely had time to brace for impact before the jolt of collision. One set of talons clumsily locked around his arm, squeezing hard; the other pair scrabbled for purchase on Markus’ sword as the knight struggled to hold it between himself and its claws. The bat’s wings were beating heavily, filling Markus’ ears with a repeating thwumph that he did not like the sound of - if it was trying to take flight, well, Markus wasn’t as heavy as a cow and only as airborne as one, he did not want to fight in the air -
He threw all his weight into a roll and jammed his elbow into the camazot’s “arm” as hard as he could, pinning the camazot’s left wing under his right shoulder. The camazot screeched, but dissolved its wing into a horde of tiny bats under Markus’ arm so he couldn’t pin it in place. This left at least six or seven bats to flap at Markus’ face and try to bite through his sleeves and gloves - Markus managed to swat two of them away, his skin crawling, and the remaining bats swooped away.
Markus tried to wrench his arm free of the bat’s talons, hefting his broadsword to attempt a stab at its toes. On the sword’s way up, however, the bat lunged at him with its teeth, and Markus had to quickly angle the blade to intercept its open mouth. The camazot raised a foreclaw to try and paw the sword away from its teeth, but then its ears twisted to the side, its head followed, and it had to phase apart most of its wing to avoid being sliced by Alden.
While it was distracted, Markus slammed his sword into the back of the camazot’s mouth. It was quick to split apart - for a moment, its head was in two halves, each moving separately of the other - but Markus’ blade came back bloody from the soft flesh where the upper and lower jaw connected. Again, though, it turned away from Markus, no doubt drawn by the sound of other knights closing in. Markus struggled to wrench his arms out of the creature’s talons again, and suddenly, it split apart into the colony again. Markus saw a flicker of silver as a sword swung in a broad through the air where the camazot’s body had been.
Markus scrabbled to his feet, raising his sword and backing up to rejoin the rest of his squad. “Plan ‘tire it out’ is too vague, can we get something more specific?” he panted, watching the bats cavorting into the sky and back into the shape of the camazot.
“It doesn’t like fire!” Brandt called, nocking another arrow. “But the thing just - “
The bat reformed and with a stroke of its wings that seemed to grasp and yank the night air toward itself for pushoff, the camazot stooped and swooped down toward the knights. Desmond and Jamison ducked as it swept just over them - Desmond raised his sword over his head and when the camazot tried to strike him with a talon, it screeched and drew its claw close to its body again. Two bats fell away from the foot, one of them flying with an obvious limp in its wing.
“Maybe it’s guarding its territory!” Jamison called as he got back to his feet. “If we back off, maybe it’ll dissolve - “
Markus wiped more blood out of his eye and shouted, “I don’t think it’s backing off - all it got last night was scavenging; it’s probably starving and we look like a string of sausage links!”
“It’ll just go back to Bexley for another cow, anyway!” Brandt agreed, firing an arrow at the camazot’s retreating back. He missed, the bat turning more nimbly than he’d probably anticipated. “Camazots need to eat after fighting!”
“So it’s just been taking stuff after fighting every night? The ‘Pit is - “
Tanner interrupted, “It’s been eating the bugs! Cama bats eat bugs, not fruit! But they’re poisoning the bugs in the peach fields...” The younger knight’s voice was little shaky despite its volume.
But Markus’ concern was joined by a stark stab of realization; he swore, and because he didn’t hear any other curses, clarified, “It’s being poisoned every night!”
“So what - “ Jamison scampered sideways as the bat came for him again; he tried to swing his sword at the creature, but it’s back simply puffed up into a small pouf of fluttering bats. The camazot whirled on him, trying to strike with its nose-horn - when Jamison blocked it with his sword, the camazot lashed out with its thumbclaw. Markus couldn’t hear or quite see whether or not it struck; there was too much noise and he had already charged too close to the bat to see around it.
He swung at the camazot’s leg, hoping to cut a tendon. His sword hit some resistance, but Markus didn’t get a chance to see the results - the bat’s foot jerked - then he wasn’t sure what hit him, a wing or a kick, but suddenly his gambeson was torn and his side was on fire. Markus instinctively rolled to try and shrug off as much damage as he could - and his stomach lurched as he tried to stabilize himself and found his foot on nothing but air. Markus dared a glance over his shoulder - he had almost rolled right off the ravine ledge like a complete moron, and right into poisonous plants, too -
Or, no, not poisonous…
Markus looked back at the camazot - it had rounded on Tanner again, a knife dropping out of its side. The animal seemed hesitant to strike, maybe because of the remaining knife brandished in Tanner’s hand. A flash of fire sparked to life in the darkness, and Brandt fired another arrow that landed at the camazot’s feet. It snarled and scrabbled back, turning its head rapidly to see all of its opponents.
Its eyes lit on Markus and Markus had the feeling it was not because it was intrigued by his handsome features.
Well. “Get the rope ready, please!” Markus called before he glanced down at the ravine floor, edged back, and let himself slide down the wall. The camazot howled, and the last thing Markus saw over the lip of the ravine was its face contorted into a snarl and it barreling toward him with a flap of its wings.
Then it was looking down at Markus as he slid down the wall, and then trying to chase him down, leaping and gliding between the walls like a very massive jumping spider. Markus got to ground and managed to turn his stumble into a bumpy roll. His side got whacked again and for a second it hurt too badly to flex his chest to breath - but it was probably better than remaining where he had been, as he saw and felt and smelled the camazot pass just over him as he rolled away. If he’d been standing, the bat would’ve tackled him right at the chest and that probably would have been the end of Sir Markus Accipiter.
He staggered to his feet, forcing in a breath and raising his sword. The camazot was struggling to turn in the tight corridor of the ravine, and its pounce had carried it too far to be an immediate danger to Markus. The knight stooped - a motion that hurt - and hastily yanked up some of the leaves of the plants that sprawled over the ravine floor, dropping them on his boot in a loose pile, glancing up every other second to make sure the camazot hadn’t twisted free -
From up above, one of the knights’ magelights flared on. The camazot looked up, snarling - and suddenly split apart into a dozen bats at the neck. A loud thock! Was the only sign of the arrow Markus could perceive, but looking up, he saw Brandt drawing another arrow from his quiver. Jamison darted up beside him and chucked something, probably a rock. The camazot screeched with fury, practically writhing as it scrabbled along the wall to try and twist itself around.
“Markus!” Following the shout, Markus saw Tanner beside Desmond, who was dropping the rope into the ravine behind him.
“Thank you, you’re the best!” Markus called. He rose to his feet, gathering the plants he had torn from the ground into a huge, squishy ball. After forcing in a deep breath his side was not pleased to take, and planting his feet, Markus shouted to the camazot, “Hey, you! Flappy!” He held the ball up and shook it a little. Goop from the plant oozed down Markus’ arm and the fiery pain in his side seared up higher, like it was attached to a string tied around his wrist. “Hey! Look what I got!”
Brandt fired another arrow and demanded, “What are you - “
“It’ll throw up the poison!” Tanner called back. Markus had just enough spare mental space to think that of course Tanner would remember Kent telling them the plants were nauseating.
“So we’re making it hungrier?!”
“We’re making it less poisoned!” Markus insisted, but he hadn’t quite thought of that himself. Entirely emptying its stomach might not be the best idea, either...
He didn’t have much time to prepare for that, however, as the bat suddenly seemed to realize it might have to go back to go forward - or forward to go backward, considering the direction it was facing - and scrabbled up the wall, then turned and leaped back to the ground that way. Markus held his positon, wishing he had a long pitchfork or the like to wave the clump of greens in the camazot’s face until it ate them out of sheer frustration. As it was...well, hopefully the idea he came up with in the four seconds he had as the camazot barreled toward him would be enough.
He thumbed the light on his belt, and the orb lit up in a burst to full intensity. The camazot shrieked, and Markus, who had squinted preemptively, lobbed the ball of plants at its open mouth. Though he was a terrible shot with arrows, Markus had better luck with the bat barely a couple feet in front of him, and there was a very satisfying choking noise followed by a heavy gulp - then the much less pleasant being knocked off his feet again as the bat tried and failed to skid to a halt, slamming a deceptively scrawny-looking arm into Markus.
Markus rolled onto his elbows, gritting his teeth to hold back what would likely be a very loud, attention-drawing curse at the pain erupting in his side from the blow. He forced himself to his feet, and after wiping blood out of his eye again, put a hand to his torso - didn’t feel bloody or torn enough to explain it, so he’d at least pulled something - or, perhaps more likely, he had done something to a rib or two. It hurt like a particularly fiery level of the ‘Pit, but at least Markus probably wouldn’t bleed to death.
Not yet, anyway - the camazot was coming at him again, its eyes slits and its teeth bared. Occasionally it paused to shudder and gag, but nothing was coming up just yet. Brandt shot a flaming arrow between Markus and the camazot; the bat reeled back from the flames, and Markus quickly backed away, heading for the rope. The bat silently opened its mouth again, and its eyes locked on Markus. Snarling, the bat paced sideways, and then leaped. Rather than trying to clear the flames in one leap, it split back into the colony. Markus braced, again, sword raised, teeth gritted, hoping they wouldn’t go right for his side…
The bats lurched in their school-like formation. A few tumbled out of the group and landed, heavily - others drifted to the wall, or dove straight down and staggering to a landing. Only a few made it to Markus; one tried to land on his arm but Markus reflexively shook it off, his head filling for a split-second with the mental image of the entire camazot reforming on and subsequently crushing that single limb. In the light from the disc at his waist, Markus could see some of the grounded bats retching, and realized what the strained, high-pitched, yelp-like noises rapidly flooding the ravine must be.
“It - it worked!” he called.
Alden said, “Whatever’s in their system must split up between them when it deforms. Smaller bodies, faster effects.”
“So now Markus can take them out - “ Jamison started to say, but was interrupted by Tanner.
“No!’” Tanner insisted. He’d sheathed his sword, and though his sleeve was worryingly dark, someone had hastily wrapped some torn cloth around Tanner’s shoulder to stem the flow at least a little. “Wait - Bexley needs the bats. They were eating the bugs, not the fruit - but now they probably fly off or turn into a camazot before they eat enough. That’s why there’s such a bug problem!”
“That makes sense,” Markus admitted. He winced as he took another deep breath to call up, “But what do we do? It’s not going to just leave us alone after this!”
“Can we catch and separate them?” Brandt suggested.
Alden shook his head. “Not without containment. Other suggestions?”
“It’s hungry,” Desmond said in his scratchy voice. “It needs food - where do we get food?”
Jamison started. “Think it’ll eat fish?”
“Maybe?” Tanner sounded uncertain.
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Markus called. Some of the bats were rising from tiny puddles of sick, snorting and wrinkling their noses. “Where’re we getting fish?”
“Remember the lake?” Jamison asked. "Swords and knives and arrows aren’t exactly standard spear-fishing weapons but - “ One of the bats started chittering - Markus raised his sword, but that only seemed to draw more bats to start making noise. Most of the colony was still hacking, but that would only last for so long.
“The lake’s on the other side of the ravine!” Desmond snapped. “How are we - “
“Someone come down here and help me,” Markus shouted, “and someone else throw down the rope! We’ll get up the wall and tie it for the rest of you, then you cross that way!”
Some of the bats were flapping their wings, taking to the air and starting sharp, circling flight. Alden must have seen this, as he ordered, “Desmond, help him - Jamison, undo the rope when he gets down - Brandt, we need to get its attention up here! Tanner - your arm?”
“It wasn’t my sword-arm - I can still fight,” Markus heard Tanner say, as Desmond started down the rope.
“Keep some distance, just - “
Markus assumed Desmond said something like ‘just to be safe’, but the bats’ chittering and flapping had been steadily increasing in volume as more bats joined the circle. The knight tensed, ready for them to reform; he could just barely hear a momentary skidding sound behind him, and then a thump and a scratchy grunt as Desmond landed behind him. Markus called to Jamison, “Untie the rope!” He hoped Jamison could hear him over the bats.
Desmond stepped up beside Markus, drawing his sword. “Who’s climbing without the rope, you or me?”
“You, sorry - think I cracked a rib or at least pulled something and it’s not happy with me breathing - so hauling myself up a cliff face’s probably not the best plan.”
“But you can fight?”
“I’m heavier to lift than my sword,” Markus assured him.
Desmond nodded. “I’ll help - “
Before he could finish, the bats all swooped up a foot or so - then dove back down, melding into the huge camazot once again. Markus didn’t wait for it to come to him this time - he had an idea, and darted forward to meet the bat. When he swung his sword at its wing, it was a relatively light sweep, but the wing still split into numerous smaller bats. As Markus had hoped, the suddenly non-whole wing made the bat lurch sideways. He narrowly avoided being hit by pressing his back to the ravine wall. Desmond did one better, and made a swing of his own that actually struck the bat’s wing. Snarling, the camazot turned on him, but an arrow grazed its ear, and a rock from Markus struck it between the shoulder blades.
“Climb, Des!” Markus shouted, partially to make sure the other knight was moving and partially to get the camazot’s attention. Hopefully it didn’t speak Kythian.
The bat lunged at him, and was again interrupted by an arrow, this one striking it in the leg. Though the bat ‘caught’ and dropped it again, the animal was clearly furious, and it beat its wings to get into the air and attack the knights on the ravine’s edge. Markus gritted his teeth, but hurried back to Desmond to help him secure the rope to his belt and wind some of it up so Desmond could get started. He made sure the trailing rope stayed free of any obstacle or catches as Desmond climbed and simultaneously watched the fight as much as he could hear - most of it was taking place out of his sight, and he only had one chance to throw a rock - and missed, doing no more than momentarily distracting the camazot before someone caught its attention again.
He looked back up at Desmond - the scarred knight was almost there...almost…
A stone crumbled away under the knight’s foot, and with a doubtlessly panic-spurred burst of speed, Desmond lunged the rest of the way up the ledge and onto the top of the ravine. He staggered toward a tree, and though he was out of sight for a moment, Markus felt a firm tug on the rope and Desmond’s magelight flickered brightly, then dimmed, then brightened, then dimmed; a signal to the other side of the ravine. Markus sheathed his blade, set his jaw, and started up the rope.
It hurt - it hurt a lot, even with the considerable help he was getting from his legs, to pull himself up the rope, and the fact that every breath felt like it was shoving some of his ribs into a lining of heated, broken glass wasn’t making it easier. Still, he made it to the top, where Desmond reached down and gave him a hand up. That hurt, too, but Markus suspected it was less painful than the alternative.
“Thanks,” Markus gasped as he got his feet firmly on solid ground. How’s Tanner gonna get up that? he wondered briefly - but that was something Tanner and the knights with him would need to figure out. “I’ll get you more rocks and sticks to throw,” he told Desmond, and darted a little into the darkness to pick up anything with a bit of weight to it that he could find - rocks, nuts, chunks of bark, twigs…
“Are you going to be able to run?” Desmond asked as Markus returned.
Markus nodded, adding, “With enough cursing.” He looked down the ravine; Jamison was on his way down, followed closely by Tanner, while Brandt and Alden kept the camazot engaged and Desmond continued to throw its attention off with well-aimed blows. Markus alternated between trying to replenish Desmond’s stock, making noise to draw the bat’s attention, and keeping an eye on Jamison and Tanner’s progress; Tanner was climbing first, mostly one handed, with Jamison close behind.
When the younger knight made it close enough to the top, Markus reached down and managed to help haul Tanner up from under his shoulders. The wrapping around the bite was barely hanging on. “Your bandage needs tying - how’s it feeling?“
“Not great,” Tanner said, holding still as Markus retied the ends of the cloth into a sturdier knot. “But I can still hold a sword.“ He drew his blade with his right, uninjured arm to demonstrate.
“Stick close - we’ll watch your flank,” Markus promised anyway.
“Alden and Brandt need cover first,” Jamison grunted as he pulled himself over the ledge. “Markus - you and Tanner should go on ahead - get some fish ready and we’ll lead this blighter to you!”
Markus didn’t like the idea leaving the others to fend for themselves, but the alternative would take longer. With their injuries, Markus and Tanner wouldn’t be the best fighters, anyway. “Okay - we’ll be ready.” The two knights hurried off into the forest.
Part Ten
Warning for animal violence, again, nothing graphic
The sounds of the fighting faded relatively quickly behind them, but that only made Markus more worried as he and Tanner made their way through the forest at a pace just shy of a jog. At least when he could hear the fighting, he knew the squad was still alive. This, however...his spine was wound tight with tension as he waited for a scream or a shriek from the camazot to rip through the quiet lull of crickets and cicadas.
He and Tanner had turned their magelights up so they didn’t have to worry about tripping on an unseen obstacle and breaking their necks on top of everything else, but the forest as a whole was still dark and if they missed the lake, they were in a lot of trouble. Markus left marks on the trees with his knife again as he followed Tanner. The younger knight was breathing heavily, but he was firm in his directions; soon Markus could hear frogs, and then he and Tanner pushed through a bush and into the clearing with the calm, placid lake. Frogs darted out of their path as they raced toward the water’s edge, disappearing with splashes and angry croaks.
“Okay - knives probably’ll work better than swords - here.” Markus rummaged in one of the pockets on his belt and pulled out some mangled dried meat. “We can use this as bait.”
“We can dig up worms, too,” Tanner said, but he took a chunk of the meat from Markus’ hand and tossed it onto the water’s surface. Markus set his maglight down on the shore; through the glimmery waves of reflected light, he saw a fish dart toward the surface, swallow a piece of meat, and then disappear again.
“They’re fast,” Markus said with a frown. He leaned forward, dagger at the ready. “Hope we can be faster.”
They weren’t, at first, and considering the splashes that resulted from each failed attempt, by the time Markus hauled back from his third failed attempt, he was worried they might scare the fish off entirely. But finally, Tanner managed to get his knife into one and haul it back to shore. It took Markus two more tries to get a fish...which he failed to hold onto.
Another failed attempt later, however, Markus finally, hauled a fish onto the bank. Tanner had caught a second fish in the meantime, but three was not nearly enough to satisfy a bat the size of Millicent. They kept going.
Seven fish were gathered on the shore when Markus saw a strange shape farther out on the water. He held up his light a little, and realized it was a fish, floating on its side. “Oh - guess I got that first one in a vital spot after all.” He looked around and spotted a long stick not too far off. “Let me try and nudge it to shore; it’ll probably be faster than waiting on me to spear a fresh one.”
Markus got up, retrieved the stick, and found a slight rise to reach out from. He eyed the water, but it was still calm and his position felt solid enough. His real concern ought to have been his side - it protested violently when he tried to reach out with the stick. Gritting his teeth, Markus forced himself to ignore it and stretching his arm until he could feel the strain in his fingertips. His stick bopped against the fish’s side, and Markus started to ease it toward the shore.
Between a lap of the water and the start of a wind rustling the leaves, Markus thought he heard something big and billowing - like a heavy cloth whipped by a strong breeze. He looked up. Nothing he could see, and he couldn’t hear the sound again over the leaves brushing together in the warm gust. “Tanner? Did you he-”
It was purest luck that Markus saw it - the wind blew the tees just the right way at just the right second, and let a beam of moonlight fall onto a terrifyingly familiar face.
“Get down!” Markus shouted, dropping the stick and drawing his sword. The camazot swooped into the clearing, its wings making that strike-on-canvas noise as as it stooped toward Tanner. The young knight spared a glanced over his shoulder as he crouched - cursing, he threw himself down and turned onto his back so he could use his knife. The bat passed over him, talons lashing out - Markus didn’t think they had connected, but he couldn’t be sure from this distance, and the light from their magelights was being obscured and revealed and darted all about by the chaotic motion of Tanner and the camazot and the water.
All he could really tell was that the camazot was already turning its attention to the next obvious target.
Markus tried to brace himself for the attack, but the bat was, again, fast - its talons squalled against his sword, its teeth just barely missed Markus’ face and the knight’s nose filled with the hot, reeking scent of putrid carnivore breath. Trying to hold back the animal’s weight made pain lightning up Markus’ side and what had been difficult breathing became momentarily impossible. Markus’ arm gave way, he staggered, and the camazot’s furious weight and momentum pushed them off the small rise and into the lake.
The sudden lack of oxygen was a jolt like a knife. Water flooded into Markus’ nose and he couldn’t breath - the camazot was thrashing around, wings and claws churning up the water, it’s movements slowed by the water, but still brutally strong . Blows like punches knocked Markus farther into the lake, keeping him from getting to the surface - he couldn’t breath, he hadn’t even gotten a chance to take in some air first, his chest already felt weighted and constricted. Despite the pain that shot through his side every time he tried, Markus struggled to fight his way past the camazot, he needed to get to air! Something landed on his chest and he tried to swipe it away, but his arms already felt heavy...
The bat suddenly dissolved again. Markus, in a motion more of a thrash than a coordinated swim, managed to push through the horde of tiny bats and reach the surface, sputtering and choking and sucking in breaths that set fire all through his ribcage. His feet found the lakebottom and he managed to stand; something slid down his chest as he did so. Markus snatched it, expecting a bat - but no, it was a fish. Dead, stabbed, but not the one Markus had gone in after - that one was still floating just out of his reach -
An angry yell and a snarl made Markus twist around, his injured rib like a claw hooked into his side. Tanner! The camazot had reformed on the lake shore, already lunging toward Tanner; the knight was hastily backing away from the fish pile, his knife raised, other arm held up defensively to protect his face. It did little good when the bat lashed out at Tanner with a wing, striking his already-wounded shoulder. The knight fell back, the bat started forward -
“HEY!” Markus shouted, waving his arms high and adding several loud curses at the twist of wrenching pain from his rib. The camazot paused, glancing toward him, but its attention darted back to Tanner.
“Oh no you don’t!” Markus shouted, taking a sloshing step forward. “You listen when I’m talking to you, you overgrown, ugly - throw rug!” Markus chucked the fish in his hand at the bat. He could have exploded from sheer frustration when it missed - but then the camazot turned, its ears pricked and teeth bared at the fish it must have heard hitting the shore.
“That’s right! You are in big trouble!” Markus shouted. He jabbed a finger toward the cut over his eye. “Look at this! Look what you did! What if I can never sultrily raise this eyebrow again?”
The camazot shrieked in his direction, the fur on its neck spiking.
“That did not sound like an apology!” Markus bellowed back. Over its lowered head, Markus saw foliage moving. Please be the others! he thought desperately, and forced himself to suck in a deep breath so he could keep shouting and hold the camazot’s attention.
“I can’t believe you went for the eyes!” Markus reached for the fish he had been trying to nudge out of the water earlier. “That is low, Flappy, real low! I’d expect that from a bandit, but not a proper monster!”
The camazot snarled, taking a step toward him, but it hesitated at the water’s edge.
“Yeah, that’s right, you stay right there!” Markus ordered. “You try to drown me again and I swear by every feather on the ‘Woo’s body I will take you down with me, I’ll just give you a huge bear hug and we’ll go see what the bottom of the lake loo - “
Around the camazot’s huge bulk, Markus saw someone approaching Tanner. The camazot’s ear twisted - Markus hurled the fish at it. “Look at me, you jerk! ‘Pit, you’re the worst date I’ve ever had! You tried to mortally wound my eyebrow, drown me, and now you won’t even look at me while we’re doing dinner?!”
The fish landed near the camazot’s foot and it sprang back a little, like a startled cat. The knight going to Tanner’s aid - Desmond, Markus thought - froze. The camazot’s ears swiveled toward Markus...it slowly lowered its muzzle to the dead fish. It sniffed at it...and sniffed...and sniffed…
“For the love of ‘Woo, just eat it!” Markus demanded through clenched teeth, his hand just as tight against his sword.
Another second passed...two...three…
The camazot raised a foreclaw, pinned the fish in place, and finally took a huge bite out of something that wasn’t a person or ball of nauseating plants.
Markus almost didn’t believe it. He waited, tense, his side burning with every short, quick breath; any second, would it realize it had been distracted and whirl on Desmond and Tanner? The fish wasn’t tiny, but it wasn’t big enough to satiate an entire horse-sized bat, either.
The camazot tossed its head back and gulped down the remainder of the fish without chewing, the way a reptile would have. Markus bent his knees. The camazot growled at him, even as it lowered its head toward the mud. Its nostrils flared, and cautiously, it edged nearer to the water.
It made a noise between a shriek and a squeal. Markus twitched in anticipation of an attack - and the camazot sprang forward just a short distance and plunged its muzzle into the pile of fish Markus and Tanner had caught earlier. Though its ears rotated as it ate, its whole posture changed to focus as intensly on devouring the fish as it had previously been on attacking and killing the knights.
Good time to get out of here, Markus thought, especially as he saw Desmond and Tanner starting to move. Markus started toward shore, moving as slowly as he could to avoid loudly sloshing the water. The camazot glanced up and snarled.
“Don’t worry, I don’t want your stupid fish,” Markus told it. “You’re welcome, by the way.” The bat did not thank him, though it also chose to go back to devouring the fish rather than attempting to disembowel or drown him, so Markus supposed he couldn’t complain. Too much.
The squad gathered in the trees; Jamison and Brandt were watching the camazot, Jamison with his sword drawn and Brandt with a nocked arrow. Desmond and Tanner were just arriving as well, and Alden looked up from assessing the younger knight’s shoulder as Markus stepped into their sight.
“Well done,” the captain said with a nod. “Jamison says you were injured earlier?”
“The ‘Woo finally took vengeance for my jokes and showed me how it feels to have my side split for once. Just a bruised rib, I think, though. And the stupid flying rodent tried to drown me. How’s Tanner?”
“Fine,” Tanner said, his voice noticeably strained. “I mean - not wonderful but - relatively, fine.”
Desmond said, “Wortham should look at it. Some of those bites went deep.”
“Clean them first,” Markus advised. “Animal bites get real nasty if you don’t. ...But we should try to get back to town first.”
“Agreed,” Desmond said.
Jamison asked, “Think the bat’ll stay here?”
“If we stay here, we’re just likely to make it feel threatened again,” Alden said. ”Hopefully the fish are enough, but we can at least warn the town what might be coming. I’m pulling us out of combat while we’re still in shape to do so.”
The men at the gate seemed quite surprised when the knights showed up bloodied, exhausted, and in Markus’ case, soaking wet. Markus wasn’t sure why they looked so startled; the knights hadn’t exactly been on their way to have tea with the livestock thief. Alden gave orders for someone to fetch the reeve and Wortham, and in the meantime, they were brought to the guardhouse to rest, somehow all cramming into the little space. The reeve showed up first, his hair spiky as a porcupine. Wortham arrived next, looking annoyed, until he was close enough to see the blood on the knights’ coats.
“‘Woo’s feathers, more bandits?”
“No,” Alden said. “A camazot. There’s a colony of cama bats in the ravine; they eat insects, your farmers have been poisoning the ones in the fields, and we think the bats were poisoned by eating them. Poison is apparently a threat to a colony of cama bats. It seems they’ve been transforming into a camazot every night, which needs meat. Hence the thefts.”
The reaction to this concise, almost flat explanation was meet with wide eyes, open-mouthed stares, and one sharp hiss of ”Pit!” from one of the guards.
“We’ve settled it with fish, which hopefully will keep it grounded for the night,” Alden continued calmly. “However, we had to fight it first. Sir Attwater was bitten; Sir Markus may have a cracked rib. If Master Wortham knows healing spells, we would be very grateful for his assistance.”
The reeve ruffled his hair anxiously and glanced at Wortham, who sighed and said, “I know some simple healing spells. Cleaning blood, magic for small slices, that sort of thing.”
“Please do what you can, Master Wortham,” the reeve said. “Captain - if it does come back tonight - “
“I can give you some instruction in how to handle that.”
While Alden spoke to the reeve, Wortham began work on Tanner’s shoulder, and the other knights attended to their smaller wounds. Markus finally got a chance to look at his side and found a nasty bruise covering his ribs; it looked like someone had thrown a quillpot at his side and it had burst on contact.
Wortham, whose healing spellwork did indeed seem limited to Espiskey, finally finished with Tanner several minutes later. The wounds were by no means completely healed, but the worst of the punctures were significantly shallower. While Brandt helped rewrap the wound, Wortham came over to Markus to scrutinize his side.
“Rib’s bruised or cracked, I think,” Markus said when he realized the man was not going to cast any sort of internal-injury-divining spell.
“I’ll take your word for it. I don’t have spells for healing the bruises on the inside, though - just the outside.”
“Well, don’t worry about healing those. I don’t think it’d help much.”
“Best I can do is pain potion.” Jerking his thumb in Tanner’s direction, Wortham added, “He should have one, too.”
Alden said, “We can pay you for the potions; I’ll have one of my knights escort you home and pick them up, if you have them on hand.”
“Yeah, I do. And you should get some for the road as well; I’ll brew up something a little stronger for that.”
“Thanks,” Markus said.
“Yes, thank you,” Tanner agreed. He added sheepishly, “And - sorry for accusing you of doing all this.”
Wortham grunted and nodded. “Bet you wish I was that powerful a mage now.”
The rest of the group’s injuries were minor, and so they headed back to the inn, sans Desmond, who would be accompanying Wortham to his home and bringing back the pain-relieving potions. The adrenaline of the fight had worn off some time ago, and Markus found his thoughts wandering and his vision not quite focusing as they walked to the inn. He just barely stayed up long enough to retrieve and take the potion Desmond brought back for him.
Finally, the knights were dismissed to their rooms, and Markus gratefully peeled off the still-damp clothes from his lake adventure, used a spare tunic to dry himself off, and curled up under his blanket - swiftly straightening again when that made his side feel like a ladder being climbed by sharp-taloned ‘Pit-demons.Can’t wait to see Linnea and tell her all about this - she’s gonna be so proud of me for beating up a monster and only almost breaking a rib and drowning!
They remained in Bexley for three more days, giving Tanner and Markus’ wounds time to heal, and a buffer to be sure that they had actually stopped the culprit this time - that the camazot wasn’t just another red herring. There had been no attack the night they’d pacified it with the fish. The day immediately following, the reeve sent word about what had happened and why, and told the farmers not to smoke the trees with the new repellent. There was a town meeting scheduled for midday - which was good, because the simple passage of news via messenger did not seem to have been taken well; the church where the meeting was held was packed full.
Alden explained the situation with the camazot to the villagers. Though clearly startled and perturbed, they at least didn't accuse Alden of lying. There was one snag, however:
“So you’re saying we can’t use our repel poison anymore?” a man demanded as he stood up from his seat. “But we need it!”
Another man stood up as well. “Why don’t we just kill the bat and be done with it?”
“You should’ve finished it off when ya had the chance!” an elderly woman croaked from her seat.
Alden started to speak, but before he could, someone near the middle of the church stood up and said loudly, “Wait, hold on now - the poison wasn’t really working in the first place, was it?” If Markus hadn’t recognized Kent by appearance alone, he would definitely have noticed Tanner stiffen slightly in the seat next to him.
“It makes sense, doesn’t it?” Kent continued. “We’ve been havin’ trouble with bugs this year, and that’s never happened so bad before. And we started using the stuff at the start of the season - the bats never had a chance to get rid of the bugs ‘fore they were poisoned.”
“Then what was eating the fruit?” one of the men demanded.
Alden spoke, delivering the conclusion he, his knights, and the reeve had reached earlier. “Bird, most likely. Possibly a second colony of actual fruit-eating bats, though that’s unlikely.”
“So what do we do about that?” a woman demanded. “You don’t have anything else to keep them off, do you?”
“We do not,” Alden admitted.
Kent said, “But other places might - we’re hardly the only farmin’ village in Corvus, and other places have to have pest problems and cama bats, too. We’ve got that horse now - if somebody takes it, we could find someplace that has a better way. Or get ingredients for Master Wortham to make a better way.” Kent half-smirked. “Me and my family, we’ve spent this whole spring fighting bugs ourselves. I think I liked the bats helpin’ better - we could just focus on the peaches.”
An argument started up, and Alden stepped back to join the reeve. “I think this is a decision best left to the people here,” he told the man quietly. “But if Master Wortham does have a potion in mind - we’ll be stopping in other towns on our way back to Araydian, and we can send some supplies back to get you started.”
“That would be very useful, thank you,” the reeve said. He sighed heavily as he looked out at the townsfolk. “I suppose we’ll see what comes of this. But in any case - thank you for your help.”
The morning the knights were scheduled to leave, Markus woke with his rib hurting and his stomach growling. He wasn’t supposed to have another dose of pain potion yet, and would rather have slept a little longer - but between the steady throbbing pain and the increasingly more dramatic theatrics of his hungry stomach, Markus couldn’t get back to sleep. Eventually he gave up and headed downstairs to see if breakfast might be available so he could shut up at least one whiny part of his body.
He heard quiet voices drifting from the stairs, and as he paused to adjust his boot - it was as if shoving his boots on without looking wasn’t the proper way to don footwear! - Markus recognized them. One was obvious - Tanner. The other was less immediately familiar, but of course, he realized who it must in about two seconds.
At the bottom of the stairs, Markus saw Tanner sitting at the bar and talking quietly with, sure enough, Kent.In similarly shocking news, the sky is blue, Raylier has vineyards, and smashed up ribs hurt like the ‘Pit.
Kent was getting to his feet as Markus quietly left the staircase. The two men shook hands, and Kent headed for the door. The farmer paused when he spotted Markus, but Markus gave him a light wave and that seemed to be taken as permission to go.
When the door to the inn had closed, Markus approached the bar. “So what was that about?” he asked.
Tanner looked up from his mug. “Morning, Markus. Don’t worry, we just talked a little. He happened to be delivering peaches, and I was down here getting a drink.” He withdrew a small bottle of partially-used pain potion from his pocket; Wortham had said it would work just as well mixed into peach juice, and apparently Tanner couldn’t taste the lingering combination of poppy and peach flavor that made Markus want to gag.
“I’m not accusing you of anything,” Markus assured him, swinging into the seat next to Tanner - and promptly regretting it. “Okay, ow, that was a terrible idea. But speaking of pain - the captain says you’re clear for riding?“
Tanner nodded. “He cleared me for it last night. And everything’s healing okay. How about you? If you can’t even swing into a seat...”
Markus waved his hand. “Well, it has to be better than walking. I’ll be fine once I get to take my dose of potion. Besides - the sooner we’re in Araydian, the sooner we can get some magical healing.”
“Would you go in for magical healing, though?” Tanner asked with a wicked grin. “You could try playing it up to make Linnea fawn over you.”
“You’d think, but no - Linnea would crack a rib on my other side if she found out I was pulling a stunt like that. Besides, that implies she doesn’t fawn over me unless I’m injured. I’m very fawnable, Tanner.”
Tanner rolled his eyes. “Oh, of course. Silly me.”
“Now, speaking of fawning - what’d your peach-farmer have to say?”
Tanner flicked a strand of hair back behind his ear. “Nothing gossip-worthy. Just that he’s going to volunteer to be the one going out to look for better bug-repelling tools. He’s excited about it - I guess he had to talk his family into it and that took a while, but they finally agreed.”
“Did I tell you he’s single?”
“Only about twenty times every day since you found out.”
“Okay, so, a reasonable amount.”
Shaking his head, Tanner said, “I did tell him I hope we cross paths again. And to send a pigeon our way if he winds up in Araydian.”
Markus raised his eyebrows. “Oooh, good thinking - don’t worry, the rest of us will make sure to all be busy, and oh no, the two of you will just happen to be all alone at the bar together…”
“Pff. As if you’d miss the chance to relive the time you got to fight a giant bat.”
Within a few hours, the knights were packed, the pack ponies loaded, and their chargers bridled and tacked. Some of the town had come to see them off, though most were busy in the fields. The reeve was among the farewell party, as were the leader of the militia and the innkeeper. Even Wortham showed up, though it might have been less to bid them farewell and more to give Markus and Tanner each a last bottle of pain-relieving potion, and Alden a list of ingredients to try and send back.
It was, Markus thought as he nudged MIllicent toward the gate, a good send-off. Hopefully things would improve for the little village, if Kent got his way, the cama bats remained content snapping up the bugs, and the ranchers had time to rebuild their herds. Leaving places with the danger eliminated was good - leaving them in a position to prosper was always better.
“So,” Jamison said as they made their way back along the dirt road. “Our first camazot fight.”
“Hopefully our last,” Desmond grumbled.
Ignoring him, Jamison continued, “Think that’s the weirdest we’ll get?”
To everyone’s surprise, it was Alden who responded first, and his tone was almostwry. “Gentlemen; this is Corvus. You haven’t seen anything yet.”
He and Tanner had turned their magelights up so they didn’t have to worry about tripping on an unseen obstacle and breaking their necks on top of everything else, but the forest as a whole was still dark and if they missed the lake, they were in a lot of trouble. Markus left marks on the trees with his knife again as he followed Tanner. The younger knight was breathing heavily, but he was firm in his directions; soon Markus could hear frogs, and then he and Tanner pushed through a bush and into the clearing with the calm, placid lake. Frogs darted out of their path as they raced toward the water’s edge, disappearing with splashes and angry croaks.
“Okay - knives probably’ll work better than swords - here.” Markus rummaged in one of the pockets on his belt and pulled out some mangled dried meat. “We can use this as bait.”
“We can dig up worms, too,” Tanner said, but he took a chunk of the meat from Markus’ hand and tossed it onto the water’s surface. Markus set his maglight down on the shore; through the glimmery waves of reflected light, he saw a fish dart toward the surface, swallow a piece of meat, and then disappear again.
“They’re fast,” Markus said with a frown. He leaned forward, dagger at the ready. “Hope we can be faster.”
They weren’t, at first, and considering the splashes that resulted from each failed attempt, by the time Markus hauled back from his third failed attempt, he was worried they might scare the fish off entirely. But finally, Tanner managed to get his knife into one and haul it back to shore. It took Markus two more tries to get a fish...which he failed to hold onto.
Another failed attempt later, however, Markus finally, hauled a fish onto the bank. Tanner had caught a second fish in the meantime, but three was not nearly enough to satisfy a bat the size of Millicent. They kept going.
Seven fish were gathered on the shore when Markus saw a strange shape farther out on the water. He held up his light a little, and realized it was a fish, floating on its side. “Oh - guess I got that first one in a vital spot after all.” He looked around and spotted a long stick not too far off. “Let me try and nudge it to shore; it’ll probably be faster than waiting on me to spear a fresh one.”
Markus got up, retrieved the stick, and found a slight rise to reach out from. He eyed the water, but it was still calm and his position felt solid enough. His real concern ought to have been his side - it protested violently when he tried to reach out with the stick. Gritting his teeth, Markus forced himself to ignore it and stretching his arm until he could feel the strain in his fingertips. His stick bopped against the fish’s side, and Markus started to ease it toward the shore.
Between a lap of the water and the start of a wind rustling the leaves, Markus thought he heard something big and billowing - like a heavy cloth whipped by a strong breeze. He looked up. Nothing he could see, and he couldn’t hear the sound again over the leaves brushing together in the warm gust. “Tanner? Did you he-”
It was purest luck that Markus saw it - the wind blew the tees just the right way at just the right second, and let a beam of moonlight fall onto a terrifyingly familiar face.
“Get down!” Markus shouted, dropping the stick and drawing his sword. The camazot swooped into the clearing, its wings making that strike-on-canvas noise as as it stooped toward Tanner. The young knight spared a glanced over his shoulder as he crouched - cursing, he threw himself down and turned onto his back so he could use his knife. The bat passed over him, talons lashing out - Markus didn’t think they had connected, but he couldn’t be sure from this distance, and the light from their magelights was being obscured and revealed and darted all about by the chaotic motion of Tanner and the camazot and the water.
All he could really tell was that the camazot was already turning its attention to the next obvious target.
Markus tried to brace himself for the attack, but the bat was, again, fast - its talons squalled against his sword, its teeth just barely missed Markus’ face and the knight’s nose filled with the hot, reeking scent of putrid carnivore breath. Trying to hold back the animal’s weight made pain lightning up Markus’ side and what had been difficult breathing became momentarily impossible. Markus’ arm gave way, he staggered, and the camazot’s furious weight and momentum pushed them off the small rise and into the lake.
The sudden lack of oxygen was a jolt like a knife. Water flooded into Markus’ nose and he couldn’t breath - the camazot was thrashing around, wings and claws churning up the water, it’s movements slowed by the water, but still brutally strong . Blows like punches knocked Markus farther into the lake, keeping him from getting to the surface - he couldn’t breath, he hadn’t even gotten a chance to take in some air first, his chest already felt weighted and constricted. Despite the pain that shot through his side every time he tried, Markus struggled to fight his way past the camazot, he needed to get to air! Something landed on his chest and he tried to swipe it away, but his arms already felt heavy...
The bat suddenly dissolved again. Markus, in a motion more of a thrash than a coordinated swim, managed to push through the horde of tiny bats and reach the surface, sputtering and choking and sucking in breaths that set fire all through his ribcage. His feet found the lakebottom and he managed to stand; something slid down his chest as he did so. Markus snatched it, expecting a bat - but no, it was a fish. Dead, stabbed, but not the one Markus had gone in after - that one was still floating just out of his reach -
An angry yell and a snarl made Markus twist around, his injured rib like a claw hooked into his side. Tanner! The camazot had reformed on the lake shore, already lunging toward Tanner; the knight was hastily backing away from the fish pile, his knife raised, other arm held up defensively to protect his face. It did little good when the bat lashed out at Tanner with a wing, striking his already-wounded shoulder. The knight fell back, the bat started forward -
“HEY!” Markus shouted, waving his arms high and adding several loud curses at the twist of wrenching pain from his rib. The camazot paused, glancing toward him, but its attention darted back to Tanner.
“Oh no you don’t!” Markus shouted, taking a sloshing step forward. “You listen when I’m talking to you, you overgrown, ugly - throw rug!” Markus chucked the fish in his hand at the bat. He could have exploded from sheer frustration when it missed - but then the camazot turned, its ears pricked and teeth bared at the fish it must have heard hitting the shore.
“That’s right! You are in big trouble!” Markus shouted. He jabbed a finger toward the cut over his eye. “Look at this! Look what you did! What if I can never sultrily raise this eyebrow again?”
The camazot shrieked in his direction, the fur on its neck spiking.
“That did not sound like an apology!” Markus bellowed back. Over its lowered head, Markus saw foliage moving. Please be the others! he thought desperately, and forced himself to suck in a deep breath so he could keep shouting and hold the camazot’s attention.
“I can’t believe you went for the eyes!” Markus reached for the fish he had been trying to nudge out of the water earlier. “That is low, Flappy, real low! I’d expect that from a bandit, but not a proper monster!”
The camazot snarled, taking a step toward him, but it hesitated at the water’s edge.
“Yeah, that’s right, you stay right there!” Markus ordered. “You try to drown me again and I swear by every feather on the ‘Woo’s body I will take you down with me, I’ll just give you a huge bear hug and we’ll go see what the bottom of the lake loo - “
Around the camazot’s huge bulk, Markus saw someone approaching Tanner. The camazot’s ear twisted - Markus hurled the fish at it. “Look at me, you jerk! ‘Pit, you’re the worst date I’ve ever had! You tried to mortally wound my eyebrow, drown me, and now you won’t even look at me while we’re doing dinner?!”
The fish landed near the camazot’s foot and it sprang back a little, like a startled cat. The knight going to Tanner’s aid - Desmond, Markus thought - froze. The camazot’s ears swiveled toward Markus...it slowly lowered its muzzle to the dead fish. It sniffed at it...and sniffed...and sniffed…
“For the love of ‘Woo, just eat it!” Markus demanded through clenched teeth, his hand just as tight against his sword.
Another second passed...two...three…
The camazot raised a foreclaw, pinned the fish in place, and finally took a huge bite out of something that wasn’t a person or ball of nauseating plants.
Markus almost didn’t believe it. He waited, tense, his side burning with every short, quick breath; any second, would it realize it had been distracted and whirl on Desmond and Tanner? The fish wasn’t tiny, but it wasn’t big enough to satiate an entire horse-sized bat, either.
The camazot tossed its head back and gulped down the remainder of the fish without chewing, the way a reptile would have. Markus bent his knees. The camazot growled at him, even as it lowered its head toward the mud. Its nostrils flared, and cautiously, it edged nearer to the water.
It made a noise between a shriek and a squeal. Markus twitched in anticipation of an attack - and the camazot sprang forward just a short distance and plunged its muzzle into the pile of fish Markus and Tanner had caught earlier. Though its ears rotated as it ate, its whole posture changed to focus as intensly on devouring the fish as it had previously been on attacking and killing the knights.
Good time to get out of here, Markus thought, especially as he saw Desmond and Tanner starting to move. Markus started toward shore, moving as slowly as he could to avoid loudly sloshing the water. The camazot glanced up and snarled.
“Don’t worry, I don’t want your stupid fish,” Markus told it. “You’re welcome, by the way.” The bat did not thank him, though it also chose to go back to devouring the fish rather than attempting to disembowel or drown him, so Markus supposed he couldn’t complain. Too much.
The squad gathered in the trees; Jamison and Brandt were watching the camazot, Jamison with his sword drawn and Brandt with a nocked arrow. Desmond and Tanner were just arriving as well, and Alden looked up from assessing the younger knight’s shoulder as Markus stepped into their sight.
“Well done,” the captain said with a nod. “Jamison says you were injured earlier?”
“The ‘Woo finally took vengeance for my jokes and showed me how it feels to have my side split for once. Just a bruised rib, I think, though. And the stupid flying rodent tried to drown me. How’s Tanner?”
“Fine,” Tanner said, his voice noticeably strained. “I mean - not wonderful but - relatively, fine.”
Desmond said, “Wortham should look at it. Some of those bites went deep.”
“Clean them first,” Markus advised. “Animal bites get real nasty if you don’t. ...But we should try to get back to town first.”
“Agreed,” Desmond said.
Jamison asked, “Think the bat’ll stay here?”
“If we stay here, we’re just likely to make it feel threatened again,” Alden said. ”Hopefully the fish are enough, but we can at least warn the town what might be coming. I’m pulling us out of combat while we’re still in shape to do so.”
*******
The men at the gate seemed quite surprised when the knights showed up bloodied, exhausted, and in Markus’ case, soaking wet. Markus wasn’t sure why they looked so startled; the knights hadn’t exactly been on their way to have tea with the livestock thief. Alden gave orders for someone to fetch the reeve and Wortham, and in the meantime, they were brought to the guardhouse to rest, somehow all cramming into the little space. The reeve showed up first, his hair spiky as a porcupine. Wortham arrived next, looking annoyed, until he was close enough to see the blood on the knights’ coats.
“‘Woo’s feathers, more bandits?”
“No,” Alden said. “A camazot. There’s a colony of cama bats in the ravine; they eat insects, your farmers have been poisoning the ones in the fields, and we think the bats were poisoned by eating them. Poison is apparently a threat to a colony of cama bats. It seems they’ve been transforming into a camazot every night, which needs meat. Hence the thefts.”
The reaction to this concise, almost flat explanation was meet with wide eyes, open-mouthed stares, and one sharp hiss of ”Pit!” from one of the guards.
“We’ve settled it with fish, which hopefully will keep it grounded for the night,” Alden continued calmly. “However, we had to fight it first. Sir Attwater was bitten; Sir Markus may have a cracked rib. If Master Wortham knows healing spells, we would be very grateful for his assistance.”
The reeve ruffled his hair anxiously and glanced at Wortham, who sighed and said, “I know some simple healing spells. Cleaning blood, magic for small slices, that sort of thing.”
“Please do what you can, Master Wortham,” the reeve said. “Captain - if it does come back tonight - “
“I can give you some instruction in how to handle that.”
While Alden spoke to the reeve, Wortham began work on Tanner’s shoulder, and the other knights attended to their smaller wounds. Markus finally got a chance to look at his side and found a nasty bruise covering his ribs; it looked like someone had thrown a quillpot at his side and it had burst on contact.
Wortham, whose healing spellwork did indeed seem limited to Espiskey, finally finished with Tanner several minutes later. The wounds were by no means completely healed, but the worst of the punctures were significantly shallower. While Brandt helped rewrap the wound, Wortham came over to Markus to scrutinize his side.
“Rib’s bruised or cracked, I think,” Markus said when he realized the man was not going to cast any sort of internal-injury-divining spell.
“I’ll take your word for it. I don’t have spells for healing the bruises on the inside, though - just the outside.”
“Well, don’t worry about healing those. I don’t think it’d help much.”
“Best I can do is pain potion.” Jerking his thumb in Tanner’s direction, Wortham added, “He should have one, too.”
Alden said, “We can pay you for the potions; I’ll have one of my knights escort you home and pick them up, if you have them on hand.”
“Yeah, I do. And you should get some for the road as well; I’ll brew up something a little stronger for that.”
“Thanks,” Markus said.
“Yes, thank you,” Tanner agreed. He added sheepishly, “And - sorry for accusing you of doing all this.”
Wortham grunted and nodded. “Bet you wish I was that powerful a mage now.”
The rest of the group’s injuries were minor, and so they headed back to the inn, sans Desmond, who would be accompanying Wortham to his home and bringing back the pain-relieving potions. The adrenaline of the fight had worn off some time ago, and Markus found his thoughts wandering and his vision not quite focusing as they walked to the inn. He just barely stayed up long enough to retrieve and take the potion Desmond brought back for him.
Finally, the knights were dismissed to their rooms, and Markus gratefully peeled off the still-damp clothes from his lake adventure, used a spare tunic to dry himself off, and curled up under his blanket - swiftly straightening again when that made his side feel like a ladder being climbed by sharp-taloned ‘Pit-demons.Can’t wait to see Linnea and tell her all about this - she’s gonna be so proud of me for beating up a monster and only almost breaking a rib and drowning!
*******
They remained in Bexley for three more days, giving Tanner and Markus’ wounds time to heal, and a buffer to be sure that they had actually stopped the culprit this time - that the camazot wasn’t just another red herring. There had been no attack the night they’d pacified it with the fish. The day immediately following, the reeve sent word about what had happened and why, and told the farmers not to smoke the trees with the new repellent. There was a town meeting scheduled for midday - which was good, because the simple passage of news via messenger did not seem to have been taken well; the church where the meeting was held was packed full.
Alden explained the situation with the camazot to the villagers. Though clearly startled and perturbed, they at least didn't accuse Alden of lying. There was one snag, however:
“So you’re saying we can’t use our repel poison anymore?” a man demanded as he stood up from his seat. “But we need it!”
Another man stood up as well. “Why don’t we just kill the bat and be done with it?”
“You should’ve finished it off when ya had the chance!” an elderly woman croaked from her seat.
Alden started to speak, but before he could, someone near the middle of the church stood up and said loudly, “Wait, hold on now - the poison wasn’t really working in the first place, was it?” If Markus hadn’t recognized Kent by appearance alone, he would definitely have noticed Tanner stiffen slightly in the seat next to him.
“It makes sense, doesn’t it?” Kent continued. “We’ve been havin’ trouble with bugs this year, and that’s never happened so bad before. And we started using the stuff at the start of the season - the bats never had a chance to get rid of the bugs ‘fore they were poisoned.”
“Then what was eating the fruit?” one of the men demanded.
Alden spoke, delivering the conclusion he, his knights, and the reeve had reached earlier. “Bird, most likely. Possibly a second colony of actual fruit-eating bats, though that’s unlikely.”
“So what do we do about that?” a woman demanded. “You don’t have anything else to keep them off, do you?”
“We do not,” Alden admitted.
Kent said, “But other places might - we’re hardly the only farmin’ village in Corvus, and other places have to have pest problems and cama bats, too. We’ve got that horse now - if somebody takes it, we could find someplace that has a better way. Or get ingredients for Master Wortham to make a better way.” Kent half-smirked. “Me and my family, we’ve spent this whole spring fighting bugs ourselves. I think I liked the bats helpin’ better - we could just focus on the peaches.”
An argument started up, and Alden stepped back to join the reeve. “I think this is a decision best left to the people here,” he told the man quietly. “But if Master Wortham does have a potion in mind - we’ll be stopping in other towns on our way back to Araydian, and we can send some supplies back to get you started.”
“That would be very useful, thank you,” the reeve said. He sighed heavily as he looked out at the townsfolk. “I suppose we’ll see what comes of this. But in any case - thank you for your help.”
*******
The morning the knights were scheduled to leave, Markus woke with his rib hurting and his stomach growling. He wasn’t supposed to have another dose of pain potion yet, and would rather have slept a little longer - but between the steady throbbing pain and the increasingly more dramatic theatrics of his hungry stomach, Markus couldn’t get back to sleep. Eventually he gave up and headed downstairs to see if breakfast might be available so he could shut up at least one whiny part of his body.
He heard quiet voices drifting from the stairs, and as he paused to adjust his boot - it was as if shoving his boots on without looking wasn’t the proper way to don footwear! - Markus recognized them. One was obvious - Tanner. The other was less immediately familiar, but of course, he realized who it must in about two seconds.
At the bottom of the stairs, Markus saw Tanner sitting at the bar and talking quietly with, sure enough, Kent.In similarly shocking news, the sky is blue, Raylier has vineyards, and smashed up ribs hurt like the ‘Pit.
Kent was getting to his feet as Markus quietly left the staircase. The two men shook hands, and Kent headed for the door. The farmer paused when he spotted Markus, but Markus gave him a light wave and that seemed to be taken as permission to go.
When the door to the inn had closed, Markus approached the bar. “So what was that about?” he asked.
Tanner looked up from his mug. “Morning, Markus. Don’t worry, we just talked a little. He happened to be delivering peaches, and I was down here getting a drink.” He withdrew a small bottle of partially-used pain potion from his pocket; Wortham had said it would work just as well mixed into peach juice, and apparently Tanner couldn’t taste the lingering combination of poppy and peach flavor that made Markus want to gag.
“I’m not accusing you of anything,” Markus assured him, swinging into the seat next to Tanner - and promptly regretting it. “Okay, ow, that was a terrible idea. But speaking of pain - the captain says you’re clear for riding?“
Tanner nodded. “He cleared me for it last night. And everything’s healing okay. How about you? If you can’t even swing into a seat...”
Markus waved his hand. “Well, it has to be better than walking. I’ll be fine once I get to take my dose of potion. Besides - the sooner we’re in Araydian, the sooner we can get some magical healing.”
“Would you go in for magical healing, though?” Tanner asked with a wicked grin. “You could try playing it up to make Linnea fawn over you.”
“You’d think, but no - Linnea would crack a rib on my other side if she found out I was pulling a stunt like that. Besides, that implies she doesn’t fawn over me unless I’m injured. I’m very fawnable, Tanner.”
Tanner rolled his eyes. “Oh, of course. Silly me.”
“Now, speaking of fawning - what’d your peach-farmer have to say?”
Tanner flicked a strand of hair back behind his ear. “Nothing gossip-worthy. Just that he’s going to volunteer to be the one going out to look for better bug-repelling tools. He’s excited about it - I guess he had to talk his family into it and that took a while, but they finally agreed.”
“Did I tell you he’s single?”
“Only about twenty times every day since you found out.”
“Okay, so, a reasonable amount.”
Shaking his head, Tanner said, “I did tell him I hope we cross paths again. And to send a pigeon our way if he winds up in Araydian.”
Markus raised his eyebrows. “Oooh, good thinking - don’t worry, the rest of us will make sure to all be busy, and oh no, the two of you will just happen to be all alone at the bar together…”
“Pff. As if you’d miss the chance to relive the time you got to fight a giant bat.”
*******
Within a few hours, the knights were packed, the pack ponies loaded, and their chargers bridled and tacked. Some of the town had come to see them off, though most were busy in the fields. The reeve was among the farewell party, as were the leader of the militia and the innkeeper. Even Wortham showed up, though it might have been less to bid them farewell and more to give Markus and Tanner each a last bottle of pain-relieving potion, and Alden a list of ingredients to try and send back.
It was, Markus thought as he nudged MIllicent toward the gate, a good send-off. Hopefully things would improve for the little village, if Kent got his way, the cama bats remained content snapping up the bugs, and the ranchers had time to rebuild their herds. Leaving places with the danger eliminated was good - leaving them in a position to prosper was always better.
“So,” Jamison said as they made their way back along the dirt road. “Our first camazot fight.”
“Hopefully our last,” Desmond grumbled.
Ignoring him, Jamison continued, “Think that’s the weirdest we’ll get?”
To everyone’s surprise, it was Alden who responded first, and his tone was almostwry. “Gentlemen; this is Corvus. You haven’t seen anything yet.”