Chapter 69
Chapter 69
Their journey was uninteresting. Robah prayed that the rest of the wetland ferals had more important things to do than track down a single old troll and his family, who would possibly be dead in the wild anyway. He knew Alpha George well enough to know that the fiend would not exhaust his energy and breathe down someone's neck in the midst of such minuscule problems. What was one less feeble troll to worry about? The nonexistent ferals sent after them were in a different circumstance. They would be forgotten someday. On a rover voyage up North, the two vampires were sleeping on the boat's deck after giving another set of bread and cheese to Diana, who appeared to always feel hungry.
Robah wished that when they failed to return to the wetland. Alpha George would believe them to be rogue fugitives who took their chance to run to the hills when freed from the confines of the South. It would be a sufficient justification for their disappearance. It had already happened with many trolls before.
In the afternoon, Robah’s party left their boats at the river’s end. They had all disregarded the spectacle of the changed river course within hours of steering upstream. After a few hours, they had begun to wonder if their memories had failed them and if the river had always flowed north. But as soon as they ran their boats aground, the current unexpectedly veered back south.
Robah fell to the ground, lamenting in gratitude for the powerful seer vampire.
His daughter noted that his father had been crying a lot lately, usually for the loss of her mother and brothers. He cried mostly at night when everyone else slept. He also prayed much more. Too much. It seemed to her that his father sought withdrawal by plummeting even further into his regrets to forgo confronting the grief of his heart. She felt that misery was more reliable and tangible than the desires and pledges of the wars. After so much deception by the Wetland, how could he switch his devotion to this new predator, Lord Andrew's, without a doubt? Lord Andrew's had saved them; it was true, but for whose sake? She felt more like a puppet in an imperceptible predator's competition for tussling powers. She did not feel as if she had much of a choice in the course. The terrible thing about the crisis was all the mysteries and enigmas. It made trust seem so unstable. She knew the vampires were there to help them, but for what in return? His father told her that the couple was looking after Tomas's family. The Whiteland Alpha and his two siblings. But what happened afterward? What would happen to them? They will no longer welcome the wetland, so what happens to their kin? They couldn't just live forever in the dark forest.
She trusted the knowledge of her senses. The power of a belly full of food, the connection of a handheld promise with the vampire's words, and the touch of her father's trust in them. These things she could understand with reverberating confidence. She found it more difficult to trust the welcoming and promising deals of the vampires and disappearing ferals. These vampires would have to prove themselves trustworthy with a bit more difficult confirmation to get her attention, especially the woman who seems more than a seer and a vampire.
Robah further believed in Diana’s integrity. When the river had returned to its natural southward current, he wondered how many other gifts they would take for granted with such a shortage of appreciation. The expenditure of nutrition to fill her bellies? More salvation from the adversary’s hatred? It seemed everything kept pointing back to Robah in his heart. He just needs to trust them, and he hopes that after the war they'll be alive to tell the tale. He watched Andrew lead the group with authority. He thought of him tenderly reassuring his fears, dreaming of his strength and humour. Robah simply wanted to make his family and kin happy and build a home together.
Robah kept thinking about doing only one thing with his kin, and it was to build a home for them.
• • • •
They travelled another mile through the ravine and the North Plain until they eventually stood upon their little camp. He knew if the vampire could travel so fast that they would arrive in the blink of an eye, yet Lord Andrew and Diana travelled with them without complaint. And this made Robah so grateful for the two heroes.
Andrew felt humbled by the beautiful white terrain. Everyone looked across the grey expanse in silence. The snow-covered dome of the North Mountain stood about ten thousand feet, the highest peak in the region between the North and the South. Behind them was the Devil's Forest. The mountain range included a dozen other cliff heads along the highlands. It looked like a fortress wall of rock with white-mounted lookout shafts. The vast lake scatters sparklingly to the west on the far horizon. Robah's soul moved deep within him, knowing that on the far side of Devil's Forest lay the valley of ferals that no one dared approach.
This would be the nearest anyone could ever come to the legendary feral valley where almost all of the deadliest monsters of ogres and fearsome beasts reside. A tribe of human hunters guarded its border to keep the ferals away.
They stood before an enormous white landscape of igneous rock. There was not a soul in sight. A lifeless, frigid wasteland. Robah wondered where the tribe of human hunters was—those forgotten native people and their patriarch that they were supposed to find?
Slowing his thoughts, Andrew answered his many doubts and questions. "We will camp here, our allies will be all coming here, and we shall wait. I have a human messenger who went into the far end of Whiteland to gather more werewolf armies, and Alpha Henry of Waterland was dealing with his pack land. However, we need to simply rescue Elizabeth first, Tomas's sister. She was abducted by the feral and rumoured to be held captive in the feral valley, and by then we need Tomas to regain his consciousness, which by the way is unbelievably outrageous."
Diana rolled her eyes at him.
"Yes, milord," Robah replied. "I believe Tomas was cursed in the devil's forest and..."
Diana heard this and intruded on their conversation. "What curse?"
"Milady, I believe Tomas here was asleep."
"That I know."
"No, milady, he was in a cursed sleep, and only the golden fruit can heal him."
Diana frowned. “Robah, where can we get this golden fruit?"
"In the dark cave, Milady, on the west side of Devil's Forest."
"Ah hell, what is with this devil's forest anyway?” she growled before adding, “We have to get this fruit, Andrew."
Robah went further after hearing the two vampires scheming their plan to get the golden fruit. Moments later, he still surveyed the expanse of the cold terrain. Thinking about it, Robah thought. Did they have his directions correct? He hoped. Yet, there was not a sign of life for miles around. Human tribes of any size always left traces of their presence, and they could see no trace of any human presence in the range but their own.
They would have set up camp and begun their survey of the area first thing in the morning. Robah hoped that he had not wasted his and everyone’s time after all. He then commanded the trolls to build more camps and gather some wood to burn for their little bonfire.
In the evening, they pitched camp a mile away on the barren landscape to avoid being surprised by any approaching adversaries. There was nowhere to sneak up on them in any area, as their back was a massive stone pillar. Anyone who tried to crawl their way towards the camp would shred their clothes and flesh right off their bodies from the sharp, permeable bedrock and rubble-strewn about.
Robah limited the Nightwatch to two details of four troll guards. Lord Andrew made sure to keep himself and Diana on the far edge of the camp for his watch detail. It would keep them ready to run anytime if the camp was attacked.
The midnight hour came, and Andrew could not sleep. His thoughts charred Diana, penetrating his brain with a hammer-like pounding. At least it kept him awake for his watch duty. Unfortunately, it also distracted his attention from the woman's feet. Her blond curls flew around the frigid wind; he thought he could detect a little of the arousal scent, and it made her seem even more beautiful in his eyes. Her sweet, delicate, but quiet voice seemed to make him smile as she followed him around the little smooth rock and sat beside him.
He did not catch the first soft sound of scraping in the rocks near him. But the second time the sound flew by, he heard it. He looked up. A full moon lit the landscape. There was nothing out there. Still, he was uneasy. He reached down and picked up his sword, intending to practice some moves with it while Diana watched him in one eyebrow raise.
When he brought it up, he stopped in silent shock. Just seconds before, the horizon had shown no life for miles around. Now the shadows of a hundred dark figures surrounded the camp. The shapes stood upright like men but had horns like wild animals. They forged a living fence of shadow-like spectres around a roundabout. Where had they come from? It was as if they emerged out of the rocks themselves. Were they from the underworld?
Before Andrew and Diana could shout a warning, all the figures held up branches with pots on them and smashed the pots with their weapons. The reverberating echo woke everyone up in a panic. Women cried out, and men grabbed their weapons. A startling ring of fire encircled them, and they became disoriented. The shadows had hauled lamps hidden in pots. The camp was taken completely by terror, and now Robah’s company was entirely powerless, like a man asleep with a sword at his throat.