Chapter 4:

The Iron Party

Beyond the Next Hill

Elias arrived at the Guild at five thirty-seven.

Tavian arrived at five fifty-eight with half a loaf of bread in his mouth.

Elias watched him cross the empty courtyard at a run, spear bouncing against his shoulder and coat only half buttoned. The sky above Bellhaven was still dark enough that lamps burned along the river, and most of the Guildhall’s windows remained black. Only the side entrance was open for adventurers leaving on early contracts.

Tavian slowed when he saw him.

“You said six.”

“It is almost six.”

“Then why do you look angry?”

“I’m not angry.”

“You’ve been standing here for twenty minutes, haven’t you?”

“Twenty-three.”

Tavian swallowed his bread. “That’s your own fault.”

Elias had no reasonable argument against that, so he turned toward the Guild.

Three people were waiting beneath the covered entrance.

Elias knew immediately which of them were adventurers.

The first was a broad-shouldered woman perhaps thirty years old, wearing a dark leather coat over a shirt of overlapping metal plates. A round shield rested against the wall beside her, and a short spear was strapped across her pack. She was drinking something hot from a tin cup while speaking quietly to a lean man with graying hair.

The man’s equipment was lighter. Bow, quiver, long knife, weather-stained cloak. Nothing he wore looked new, but every buckle and strap seemed exactly where it needed to be.

The third member was younger, perhaps twenty-two. He sat on the stone railing with a heavy two-handed sword across his knees and was carefully wrapping cloth around his right wrist.

All three wore iron badges.

The woman noticed Elias and Tavian approaching.

“You’re the Coppers?”

Elias nodded. “Elias Varren. That’s Tavian Rook.”

“Tavian Rook,” Tavian repeated. “He makes it sound like I’m luggage.”

The woman’s eyes moved between them. “You two found the ridgebacks?”

“Yes.”

“And heard the roar?”

“Yes.”

She finished her drink and held out the cup to the younger swordsman without looking. He took it naturally.

“Maelin Ors,” she said. “Party lead. The old one is Corren. The ugly one is Berric.”

The younger man looked up.

“You’re older than me.”

“I didn’t say old.”

“You called him old.”

“Because he is.”

Corren appeared entirely unconcerned. “I’m forty-three.”

“Ancient,” Tavian said.

Corren looked at him...or rather, glared at him...Tavian just cleared his throat.

“Respectfully.”

Maelin picked up her shield.

“Rules are simple. You stay behind us unless I tell you otherwise. If Corren says stop, stop. If I say run, run. If Berric says run, look around first because he might be joking.”

“I did that once,” Berric said.

“Once was enough.”

Elias nodded. “Understood.”

Maelin looked at Tavian.

“Understood.”

“Good. Let’s go see what’s eating the countryside.”

Maelin signed something at the side desk, and five minutes later they were crossing the western bridge while Bellhaven slowly woke behind them.

Elias stayed near Corren. Then the older man began doing things Elias didn’t understand.

Corren rarely looked directly at the road. His attention moved constantly between the tree line, mud, fences and distant fields. Twice he stopped without explanation. Once he crouched beside a patch of grass, touched it, and continued walking.

After the second time, Elias asked.

“What did you see?”

Corren glanced at him. “Rabbit.”

Elias waited.

“Is that relevant right now?”

“No.”

“Then why did you stop?”

“To see what it was.”

That answer irritated Elias more than it should have. “How did you know something had passed?”

“The grass was bent.”

“I saw that.”

“You didn’t stop.”

Elias considered this and Corren smiled slightly. “Books?”

“Yeah...lots.”

“Good. Books keep you from making old mistakes.”

He adjusted his bow. “They don’t help much with new ones.”

Tavian, walking behind them, made a silent remark. “I like him.”

“No one asked,” Elias said.

By the time they reached the abandoned mill road, daylight had spread across the fields and the ridgebacks were gone.

Elias led them to where the pack had emerged the previous morning. The spilled grain remained, though birds had eaten much of it. Tracks covered the mud.

Corren crouched, Maelin waited and nobody said a word.

Elias expected the older man to spend several minutes examining the prints. Instead, Corren stood after perhaps twenty seconds and stepped into the grass.

“That way.”

Elias frowned.

“How do you know?”

Corren pointed at something but Elias saw nothing. Then he noticed a small patch of gray fur caught against a thorn. He looked toward the trail.

“Yesterday they ran east.”

“They came from west first.”

“So we’re following where they came from.”

Corren nodded.

Elias felt an uncomfortable combination of admiration and annoyance.

For the first hour, nothing happened.

Elias had imagined tracking a dangerous animal would involve more danger and less walking uphill.

Instead, they climbed through damp woodland while Corren occasionally stopped to inspect things Elias could barely see. Maelin asked him questions about yesterday’s encounter, mostly concerning the ridgebacks’ condition and behavior. Berric walked near the rear with Tavian and spent an unreasonable amount of time convincing him that Iron adventurers were required to wrestle a boar during promotion.

Elias believed this for almost three minutes, then he remembered Berric had been introduced as unreliable and not so...trusting.

A bit later in the morning Corren found the dead ridgeback. It was laying beneath a cluster of ferns. Elias smelled it before he saw it.

The animal’s body was mostly intact, but its chest had collapsed inward and there were no obvious bite marks.

Maelin crouched beside it. “Same as the farmer’s report.”

Corren nodded. Berric used the end of his sword sheath to move a branch.

“Something stepped on it?”

“Maybe.”

Elias moved closer.

Maelin looked at him. “Thoughts, Copper?”

He wasn’t sure whether she was testing him.

“Broken ribs. No feeding marks. If it was killed for food, whatever killed it changed its mind.”

“Or?”

“It wasn’t killed for food.”

Maelin nodded. Elias crouched, careful not to touch the carcass. The ridgeback’s front legs were scraped badly, and mud had dried along its belly.

“It was running.”

Corren looked at him.

Elias pointed. “The front claws. They’re worn more than the rear ones. And there are scratches under the jaw.”

Corren examined them. “Could be.”

Berric leaned against a tree. “So something chased it down and crushed it?”

“No,” Elias said.

Everyone looked at him while he studied the body again.

“If something caught it from behind, I’d expect damage around the back or hind legs. Its chest is crushed from the front.”

Maelin’s expression sharpened. “Meaning?”

Elias looked toward the forest ahead. “It was running away and hit something.”

For a moment, nobody said a word, then Berric pointed out: “That would need to be a very solid something.”

A sound moved through the trees. It wasn't a roar or a scream but heavy branches. Corren was standing before Elias even realized he’d moved.

“Quiet.”

The atmpsphere changed immediately. Everyone was on guard now. Maelin brought her shield forward. Berric drew his sword. Corren nocked an arrow without pulling the string. Tavian’s spear lowered. Elias drew his sword.

His heart began hammering.

The sound came again and it was getting closer. Something large moved beyond the trees.

Elias searched for it between the trunks, trying to turn glimpses into a complete shape. Dark hide. Movement low to the ground, a branch bent aside, then the animal stepped into view.

Elias had never seen anything like it.

It stood taller at the shoulder than a large horse, but its body was broader and lower, supported by four thick legs ending in wide, blunt feet. Layers of dark hide folded over its shoulders like natural armor. Its head was enormous, with a flattened snout and two short horns curving forward from above its eyes. One horn was broken.

The animal stopped and everyone else stopped with it.

Berric whispered, “Stoneback.”

Elias knew the name. He had only seen drawings, that, now he realized, had been inadequate.

Stonebacks lived in the western highlands and were generally herbivorous. They were also territorial, nearly impossible to injure from the front, and capable of overturning a wagon.

This one had blood along its flank, not its own though.

Maelin slowly raised one hand...nobody moved.

The stoneback sniffed, its small eyes passed over them. Then Tavian’s boot conveniently slid half an inch through wet soil.

The stoneback’s head snapped toward him.

Elias stopped breathing, Tavian didn’t move.

The animal took one step... then another.

Maelin spoke without turning. “Back away.”

They moved slowly and the stoneback followed.

Elias remembered the Guild manual.

Do not run from a threatened stoneback and do not approach calves. Avoid standing between an adult and an escape route....nothing about what to do when the animal simply kept following you.

It took another step and Its head lowered.

Maelin’s shield came up. “Berric.”

“Ready.”

“Corren?”

“No shot.”

Elias looked at the animal’s legs.

Mud.

Its right front foot wasn’t landing properly...It was injured.

“Wait.”

Maelin glanced toward him, Elias pointed with his sword.

“Right leg.”

The stoneback took another step, as it did its body shifted heavily to compensate.

Maelin saw it. “Back.”

They gave it more room.

The stoneback stopped and for several seconds, it stood there breathing heavily...then it turned.

As its flank came into view, Elias understood where the blood came from.

Three long cuts ran across its hide, they were not deep enough to kill it bt they were deep enough to make it angry.

Corren stared at the wounds. “Those aren’t from ridgebacks.”

The stoneback disappeared into the trees and nobody lowered their weapons for a minute, they just stood there collecting themselves and letting their nerves calm down slowly..

Eventually Tavian exhaled. “I think I stopped having a heartbeat.”

Berric grinned. “You get used to that.”

“Do you?”

“No...”

Maelin approached the place where the stoneback had stood and Elias followed her.

The tracks were enormous, among them were smaller prints.

Ridgebacks.

...and something else. Elias crouched.

The print was almost as long as his forearm...Four toes and deep claw marks.

Corren came beside him. “You recognize it?”

Elias shook his head. Corren didn’t either, which worried him considerably more.

They followed the tracks uphill.

The forest thinned near the top of the ridge, opening onto a rocky slope overlooking a narrow valley. Elias could see Bellhaven’s distant walls behind them now, small enough that the Guildhall disappeared among the rooftops.

Beyond the ridge lay country he’d never seen with more hills and more forest...and, much farther away, blue mountains beneath the clouds. For a moment, Elias forgot about the tracks.

He had lived seventeen years within sight of those mountains but from here, they looked completely different.

Tavian came up beside him. “Worth waking up for?”

“I didn’t sleep much.”

“Of course you didn’t.”

Corren called from farther down the slope and they joined him beside a patch of disturbed earth. The unknown tracks continued into the valley, so did the stoneback’s.

Maelin noticed something in the mud, it was a piece of leather, or so she thought, but when she picked up she realized it wasn't leather but a torn shoulder strap. Human-made.

There was dried blood along one edge which wiped Berrics smile from his face.

Corren kept searching the ground. “More here.”

A footprint, made with a human boot, another one and another one... They led in the same direction as the unknown animal.

Maelin unfolded the regional map from her coat.

“What’s down there?” Corren pointed toward the valley.

“Old quarry. Closed maybe fifteen years ago.”

“Settlements?”

“None.”

Elias looked at the bloody strap.

The contract had started with grain wagons, then ridgebacks, then a roar and now someone had been out here ahead of them leaving bloody straps behind...

Maelin folded the map. “We’re no longer hunting an animal.”

Tavian frowned. “What are we hunting?”

“We aren’t.”

She looked toward the valley. “We’re finding whoever owns that strap.”

They went down the hill. The old quarry appeared shortly before noon.

It had been cut into the side of the hill, leaving a broad scar of pale stone among the trees. Abandoned wooden structures leaned beside the entrance, their roofs partially collapsed.

Corren found blood near the first building, it was fresh enough to still be red beneath the shade.

He followed it behind the structure.

“Alive.”

Everyone moved...a man was laying beneath a broken part of roof. He was wearing traveling clothes and an Iron Guild badge. His left leg was trapped beneath a timber.

Another adventurer lay nearby, unmoving. The injured man’s eyes opened slowly when Maelin approached him.

“Don’t,” he rasped.

She stopped.

His face was pale.

“Don’t what?”

He looked toward the quarry entrance.

Elias heard it. The clicking sound...not ridgebacks. Something scraped against stone inside the darkness.

The injured adventurer’s hand closed weakly around Maelin’s sleeve. “There are three.”

Maelin’s expression changed.

“Three what?”

The man gulped and as he did the roar came from inside the quarry.

This time Elias felt it in his chest, dust drifted from the wooden roof. Tavian moved closer to him.