The Barons' War
Copyright© 2025 by Lumpy
Chapter 11
The Silent Isles
They had walked for hours, all of them tense, trying to see past the torchlight for the thing that had taken his men.
The blood trail was hard to follow. There would be a clump of it around what looked to William like well-tilled earth, then nothing for a ways, then another clump. He couldn’t figure out what could have done this, or why the bodies only seemed to bleed in starts and stops.
At least the path was more or less a straight line, making it easier to continue in the right direction until they found the next blood trail section.
They pressed on through the night, with only brief stops to confirm their direction. The strange dirt mounds appeared with unsettling regularity, like markers left deliberately for them to follow.
Hours passed. The mounds led them deeper into the forest, up a gradual slope that William realized must be one of the hills they had spotted from the beach. As the sky started to shift from black to a deep blue, marking the coming of dawn, they emerged into a small clearing. At the far end, a dark opening gaped in the hillside. A cave mouth, black and forbidding.
William raised his hand, halting the party. Around the cave entrance lay scattered remnants telling them they were in the right place. A piece of some kind of animal, a leather boot with a foot still inside of it, and blood smeared on the rocks around the mouth of the cave.
“Whatever brought their bodies here dragged them in there,” Eskild said.
“Do we have to go in after it?” One of the soldiers, a man named Terrin, asked.
A fair question. They were good men, experienced soldiers all with several battles under their belts, but no one in their right mind, no matter how brave, would want to go down into that cave.
“No. We don’t know what’s in there or how the tunnels run. We’d be blind and vulnerable.” He pointed to positions around the clearing. “We set up here. When it comes out for more prey, we’ll be ready.”
The men seemed relieved as they spread out taking the positions he’d pointed out. They instinctively tried to put trees or other obstacles between themselves and the cave, although William wasn’t sure how much good that would do. They didn’t know anything about the creature, or creatures, that had taken their men other than it seemed to be able to get to them without giving enough warning for them to put up a fight.
So hiding may not be an option.
Time passed and William knew there was a chance that this thing might not come out to feed for days. There had been an extended periods between the times when his men had been taken, so it could be days before it reemerged.
William was just thinking this was a mistake, that they needed to go in looking for it after all, when the ground began to shake. It felt localized. The shaking wasn’t the whole island. It felt like it was coming from the cave, although, it wasn’t exactly coming from the cave either.
“What is that?” one of the soldiers asked.
Before anyone could answer, the earth near the edge of the clearing bulged upward, as if something massive pushed against it from below. The bulge moved, soil cracking and shifting.
With a spray of dirt and rock, something burst from the ground at the forest’s edge. William caught a glimpse of armored plates, a massive, segmented body, and a circular mouth ringed with teeth. The creature reared up, towering twice the height of a man, with more of it clearly still under the ground.
A soldier named Davitt, closest to where the monster emerged, froze in place, either in shock or from sheer surprise at seeing something so grotesque. He didn’t start to raise his weapon until the creature lunged forward. Its mouth clamped around the man’s torso and wrenched him toward the hole it had created.
“Davitt!” Terrin screamed.
William sprinted forward, but he was too far away. The soldier disappeared beneath the soil, his scream cut short as the dirt closed over him. The creature seemed to push dirt back up, filling in the hole until it almost looked like tilled soil, without a clue that there had been something there moments before. For a moment the ground rippled as the creature moved away underground, and then there was no sign that anything had happened.
“Spread out!” William shouted. “Get away from each other! It’s moving under the surface!”
The men scrambled to obey. William watched the ground, but there seemed no way to track the creature’s movements.
“There!” Eskild said, pointing to a ripple of earth moving swiftly toward another soldier.
The soldier started to backpedal, trying to get out of its way, but the creature seemed to move so fast. The dirt exploded upward several paces from where the man stood. The soldier turned to run, but the creature disappeared just under the surface, changing direction with unnatural speed, the ground bulging on a new course to intercept him. The earth erupted directly beneath the man’s feet, throwing him into the air. The worm-like monster reared up, catching him in its mouth like a wolfhound playing with a soup bone.
William charged across the clearing. “Hold on!”
The soldier screamed, stabbing downward with his short sword, but his blade merely scraped against the monster’s armored hide. With a powerful jerk, the creature pulled him down into the churned earth.
William reached the spot seconds too late. He thrust his sword into the disturbed ground, but hit nothing but dirt. The soldier was gone.
The men were starting to panic. William understood it and was having to fight off his own. They could face down hordes of riders and a wall of spearmen, but how did you fight something that seemed to appear and disappear at will?
The only one who seemed unmoved by the beast was Eskild, who was taking wide steps in a circle around the clearing, looking at the dirt around him.
“There,” Eskild said, pointing with his blade.
A line of disturbed earth moved in a circle around the clearing’s edge. One of the soldiers had backed against a large tree, perhaps thinking it would protect his rear.
It didn’t. The dirt began to mound up right behind the tree. William yelled a warning, but it was too late. Just as the man turned, the creature erupted from the ground, grasping his leg in its tooth-ringed maw.
The soldier screamed, driving his spear down into the creature. The spearhead connected with the monster’s plated skin but slid off without penetrating. He was still trying to stab it as the creature yanked downward, pulling him into the churned earth.
None of their weapons were having an effect, which meant the men were helpless against its attack.
“Everyone to me. Gather up,” William said.
If their weapons wouldn’t touch it, perhaps his would. He had found nothing Marrow’s Bane couldn’t pierce, but he needed to be able to get to grips with it first.
Eskild and the two remaining soldiers sprinted to him, the four of them forming a tight circle, facing outward with their weapons, as useless as they were, extended.
“Don’t look for it, feel for it,” Eskild said. “You can feel the ground shake as it moves by, even when it’s deep, where we can’t see the dirt move.”
William nodded and tried to focus on the ground beneath his boots, unsure of how he would know when it was near. And then he felt it. A tremor running through his soles and up his legs. It took a second, but he could even sort of feel the direction the tremor was going in, as if it was a rock tossed into water, leaving ripples.
“It’s coming,” William warned.
The creature burst from the ground, showering them with dirt and stones. It rose higher than before, revealing more of its segmented body. Its circular mouth opened and closed, rows of teeth clicking together.
The creature lunged toward them, its body weaving from side to side. Eskild slashed with his scimitar, but it didn’t pierce the armor. The creature moved through him, its hard body sending the Thay sergeant flying through the air.
William was close enough this time and struck, his sword slicing a deep line across the side of its body. Dark fluid spurted from the wound, and the creature let out a high, keening sound before disappearing back into the ground.
It didn’t go deep this time, staying close to the surface where they could see the ground moving as it passed. It moved erratically now, the soil bulging and shifting in random patterns.
“It’s angry,” Eskild said, picking himself off the ground.
The men scattered as it scythed through the dirt toward them, erupting between the two soldiers, arching high before its massive body slammed hard into the ground on the surface. The force of its impact was enough to knock the two men off their feet. William barely stayed on his own, even though he was now several paces away. From the ground, one of the men thrust his spear into the monster’s open mouth, seeming to finally cause some kind of injury, but not enough to stop it.
It twisted violently, wrenching the weapon from the man’s hand and snapping it in half.
William charged forward as it plowed into one of the men on the ground, pressing him into the earth and disappearing in after his body. He managed to catch only a piece of it, lopping off just the very end of its tail as the rest of it disappeared, leaving another pool of dark liquid in the churned soil.
Now, only three of them remained. This thing was picking them off one by one until none would be left.
It felt as if the ground was moving in all directions. It was circling them as a shark circled a boat, tightening its path with each revolution.
With a spray of soil, the creature burst from the ground in front of them, sending William and Eskild flying backward from the force of its expulsion.
William hit the ground hard enough that the wind was knocked out of him for a moment, keeping him from getting to his feet quickly.
The remaining soldier thrust his sword into the open wound William had left. A good plan, getting past its armor and maybe hoping to hit something vital enough to stop it.
It didn’t work.
The worm-like creature was still moving, ripping the weapon out of the man’s hand, leaving it protruding from its side. The creature disappeared into the earth again, the ground rippling around the now unarmed man, who tried to back away, but seemed to run into a ripple of earth, leaving him nowhere to go.
The man looked up at William, panicked.
Before William could do or say anything, the ground exploded beneath him, and the creature seized him by the waist. William ran forward and hacked down at the creature, but it was wider than his blade and it seemed to hit nothing vital as it went all the way through.