Christofer lifted his head slightly. His vision swam, but he could make out shapes now. The guides were conferring quietly. The Captain dismounted, scanning the treeline. Halvar stayed close to Christofer.

  "We clear?"

  Christofer didn’t answer, just folded to the side and vomited. The forest had gone quiet. Too quiet. Then the ground shifted. Not an earthquake. The shudder of a vibration. Just a subtle wrongness beneath the snow. Christofer felt it through Gristle's hooves. A hollow sound. Like walking over a frozen pond.

  "Stop!" the older guide shouted. "Everyone stop!"

  Too late. The lead horses were already past the threshold when the ridge shook with impact. Something huge had leaped down. They heard the crack of breaking stone, saw a cloud of snow spray. A screech of rage or pain. Then it was gone, crashing through the undergrowth below with the sound of something too large moving too fast. The ground beneath them buckled. Not collapsing. Just sagging. Snow slid sideways, revealing a slick layer of ice beneath. One horse slipped. Its rider yanked the reins, overcorrecting. The horse reared and then the ledge gave way. Not a full collapse. Just enough. A section of the path. Maybe ten feet wide, rumbled inward, spilling rock and snow into the chasm below. The lead horses scrambled back.

  The column split. Christofer's group, rear guard, Halvar, three others, ended up on the back side of the gap. The Captain, the guides, and the bulk of the column were ahead, separated by a jagged six-foot gap in the path. The Captain cursed. He dismounted, approached the edge. Looked across.

  "Can you jump it?" Ike called from the other side.

  Halvar assessed the gap. The crumbling edges. The spooked horses.

  "I could, but not safely. However, the norseman definitely can’t."

  "There's a way around," the younger guide said, pointing left. "Lower path. Circles back. Meets up half a mile ahead."

  The Captain looked across at Halvar. Then at Christofer, still slumped over Gristle's neck.

  "Can he ride?"

  Halvar glanced back. "He's staying on. That's enough."

  Christofer gave a shaky thumbs up as he lay folded over Gristle.

  The Captain nodded grimly.

  “We'll meet you at the fork. Stay together. Watch your backs."

  Halvar raised a hand in acknowledgment. The Captain turned away, already shouting orders and just like that, they were separated. The lower path was narrower. Older. Less used. Halvar led, his horse picking carefully over roots and stones. Christofer followed on Gristle, who moved with cautious deliberation. The three soldiers behind them kept their hands on their weapons. The trees here were older. Thicker. Their trunks scarred with deep gouges. claw marks, maybe. Or something worse. They rounded a bend. Halvar stopped.

  "Fuck," one of the soldiers whispered.

  Bodies.

  Three of them. Half-buried in snow. Stripped of armor, weapons, anything useful. Their skin was pale, waxy. Ritual marks carved into their forearms. Symbols Christofer didn't recognize. A deep gouge slashed across one of the dead men’s midsection. Most likely caused by huge claws. Halvar dismounted slowly. Approached the nearest one. Crouched.

  "How long?" one of the soldiers asked.

  "Days. Maybe a week." Halvar touched the man's shoulder. Frozen solid. He stood, scanning the area. "These are from the fortress. I recognize the boots."

  The missing people. Christofer felt his stomach turn. Not from the bodies. From the marks. The savagery. The size of those claw marks. Instinct flashed back to the large shadow they noticed earlier.

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  "That beast," he said quietly. "Probably couldn’t have stripped these guys of armor"

  Halvar looked up at him.

  "Looters most likely," one of the soldiers filled in. "Whatever did this guy in, it absolutely disemboweled him, emptied his contents straight into those boots. Only reason they left them on him."

  Halvar's jaw tightened as he looked at the blood stained boots lined with innards.

  "We keep moving."

  They left the bodies where they lay. The lower path eventually climbed back up, joining a wider road. Halvar spotted the Captain's tracks in the snow and followed them.

  An hour later, they emerged from the forest. A village. Small. Maybe twenty buildings. Stone foundations, timber walls, thatched roofs heavy with snow. Smoke curled from a few chimneys. Faint light glowed in shuttered windows.

  The Captain's column was already there, horses tied outside what looked like a communal hall. The guides stood near the entrance, talking quietly with an older man in thick furs. Halvar rode forward. Christofer followed, swaying slightly but still mounted. The Captain turned as they approached. His expression eased, just slightly, when he saw them intact.

  "Trouble?" he asked.

  "Bodies," Halvar said flatly. "Three. Marks of a beast, a monster. Men from the fortress."

  The Captain's jaw tightened. He nodded once.

  "We'll discuss inside. Get the Norseman off that horse before he falls off."

  Halvar dismounted, moved to Gristle's side. He reached up.

  "Come on. Down."

  Christofer blinked. Tried to swing his leg over. Couldn't quite manage it. Halvar grabbed his arm, steadied him as he half-slid, half-fell from the saddle. His boots hit the ground. His knees buckled. Halvar caught him.

  "Easy. I've got you."

  “I’m either terrible bait, or too good of a bait. This was terrible.” he mumbled.

  Christofer leaned heavily against him. Blood still crusted on his face. His vision swam.

  "The trolls?" the Captain asked.

  Christofer looked up. Met his eyes.

  "Still out there, I feel their eyes on me, but from afar. They seems to stay clear here for some reason. Although I am more worried about the huge monster with the tail and… the…" his words trailed off as his mind was busy processing the events.

  Something in his mind made him think about a pterodactyl, but he couldn’t place why this thought bubbled into his mind. Christofer grimaced. His mind was trying to tell him something, but he couldn’t place why. A flash of the shadow they saw earlier flashed into his mind. Like something within nudging him. He lifted his head.

  “...This was the place where people disappeared from, right?” he asked.

  The Captain nodded grimly.

  "Right. Then we don't stay long."

  Christofer was helped into the hall, a longhouse, its interior timber walls stained black by smoke. The heat from the central fire was a physical shock. Villagers, hard-faced men and hollow-eyed women watched from the shadows. Christofer who slumped down on a bench with Halvar’s support, registered only exhaustion and the iron taste of blood. The elder, knuckles like gnarled roots, listened to the Captain’s report of the three frozen scouts.

  “Aye,” the elder said, voice gravel. “We found them. Began the rites. Something came through the trees. Swift, quiet. We left the symbols, fled. The forest takes what it is owed.”

  His eyes flicked to Christofer’s bloody face. Recognizing the after effects of magic use.

  “Your man sees too much. The Old Ones are already restless. Angry.”

  He placed a heavy leather pouch on the table with a soft clink.

  “For the trouble your men have seen. For the discretion of the fortress and calm silence for our transgressions” A pause. “We have fodder for your horses. We can clean wounds, stitch. Food we cannot spare. Our children are gone north; our stores are for those who remain to fend for our ancestral home.”

  The Captain’s hand rested on the table. He picked up the pouch, hefted it. The deal: silence, fodder, basic medicine. No meals. He looked at his shivering men, at Christofer’s shallow breathing.

  “Done,” the Captain said, tucking the pouch away. He turned to Ike, his voice low. “Get the men on prepared rations. Half portions. They eat what we carry.”

  He looked back to the elder.

  “The beast. What do you know?”

  “Where it kills. Where it has failed.” The elder sketched vague lines in the wood ash. “The lower path. The old outpost. It prefers ambush from stone, but the ice betrays it. It is… loud in its fury. A wounded thing. Some have spoken of a clink of metal by the rocks, a chain perhaps? If there is truth to this rumor, we don’t know. Those that saw it are no longer with us. We know nothing else.”

  Outside, the wind screamed. Beneath it, that same jagged, furious cry split the early morning. A screeching bestial howl. Halvar and Ike exchanged a glance. The mapping would be up to them.

  An old village woman approached Christofer with a bowl of melted snow and ragged linen.