“We’ll make camp another two hours’ ride closer, Belial. Any closer and we’ll all suffer nightmares. In the morning…in the morning we’ll ride in.”
Belial understood his commander’s hesitation. The Woods were a frightening sight, and he dreaded to think what they would look like at a lesser distance. Let alone what they would look like while they were riding through them.
“All of us, BattleAxe?”
Axis laughed sympathetically at his lieutenant’s question. “No, Belial. Only a few of us. Myself, Gilbert, and one or two others. Timozel, perhaps, and Arne,” he said naming one of the cohort commanders. “You had better stay and assume command of the Axe-Wielders until I return, Belial.”
Belial tried, unsuccessfully, to hide his relief. “As you wish, BattleAxe.”
The Silent Woman Woods were even more unnerving from the vantage point of the campsite. The trees, dark, thick and gnarled, grew tight and close together. Their tops reared upwards for what seemed a hundred paces and stretched outwards so far that their boughs intermingled one with the other ensuring that little sunlight ever reached the forest floor. Eyes seemed to gaze out at those who watched. A constant undertone of strange whispers and crackles issued forth for anyone who cared to listen. The men were silent as they made camp, and most kept their backs to the Woods as much as possible. More men than usual made a prominent display of weapon practice with their axes as the cooks hurried to prepare the evening meal.
Faraday, her cloak held tightly about her, strolled up to Axis and Gilbert as they stood surveying the Woods. “It’s frightening,” she said quietly as she reached them, her eyes wide and apprehensive. “It’s so wild, so untamed, so uncivilised. What could live in there but demons?”
Gilbert tried to reassure her. “The Seneschal have the Silent Woman Woods well under control, Lady Faraday. Do not fear, Artor is with us.”
“Now and forever,” whispered Faraday in automatic response. She turned towards Axis. “And you have to ride in there tomorrow?”
Axis did not move his eyes from the dark Woods. “There is no other choice. Although how the brothers could live in there, Artor only knows.”
Faraday turned back to Gilbert. “Why are they called the Silent Woman Woods?”
“Because they do not ask as many questions as most women!” Axis snapped at her before Gilbert could reply.
“I’m sorry if I disturbed you, BattleAxe,” she said quietly, and turned and walked back to camp. The white cat wound about her heels. Axis glared at it.
It was a bad night for many in the camp that evening. Those that did drift off to sleep often woke sweating a few minutes later, frightened by unidentifiable fears. After tossing and turning for what seemed like hours, the nightmare claimed Axis.
He was in the dark place, naked and bound by invisible bonds to the floor. He strained every muscle, every ligament, trying to break free, knowing as he did so that he should be saving his energy for the fight that lay ahead. Sweat broke out from every pore on his body. His breathing grew heavy and laboured as his fear deepened.
Suddenly he could feel the presence, surrounding him, so powerful it might crush him.
“No,” he whispered, “you are not my father!”
The presence grew strange. It did not speak. There was not the hatred that he could usually feel. It felt…puzzled.
“Who are you?” Axis whispered. “Who are you?”
“Who are you?” an echo whispered back at him, strangely hoarse and distorted by the darkness. “Who are you?”
It felt strange—just as frightening and threatening, but different. The bonds holding his arms and legs disappeared and Axis leapt to his feet, trying desperately to discern shape or movement in the darkness that surrounded him. The ground felt cool and damp beneath his feet.
“We do not know who he is,” a voice whispered behind him, and Axis whirled in the dark, almost losing his balance. “Where has he come from? What is he doing here? How did his feet find the paths? Who guided his feet to the paths?”
“Who are you?” Axis whispered fiercely, looking around for his sword or his axe.
There was a moment’s silence. Axis could still feel the puzzlement surrounding him. “We are who we are and we have always been here. Who are you?”
“I am Axis Rivkahson,” he said. “BattleAxe of the Axe-Wielders.”
Instantly he could feel the change about him. Puzzlement vanished in an instant as fury and hate surrounded him in palpable waves. Whoever, whatever, was out there began to hiss and moan in equal amounts. Axis could feel himself being buffeted by the malevolence surrounding him. He clenched his fists and crouched, as ready as he could be for attack.
To one side a bright light bloomed and Axis twisted in that direction, squinting as the light hurt his eyes. There seemed to be a vague shape behind it.
“Go away Axis Rivkahson, BattleAxe of the Axe-Wielders!” a thousand voices suddenly boomed, surrounding him from every direction. Axis whimpered as the full force of their fury hit him. “Get you gone from this place! You are not welcome!”
The shape that held the light stepped forward and became more distinct. The light itself spread and grew stronger and Axis started to distinguish his surroundings. He was in a large grove in the middle of a forest, black trees pressed close about the edges of the circle of light. There were shapes, however, many shapes, moving restlessly among the trees. Axis was glad the light was not strong enough for him to see them properly. The creature holding the light was standing slightly to one side of the centre of the grove, and as Axis focused on it he almost cried out in horror. Although it had the trunk and limbs of a muscular man, clad only in a brief loincloth, the creature had the head of a full-grown stag. Massive antlers branched out from its forehead and its eyes were red with hate. It wove its head threateningly from side to side as it strode towards him, baring its broad yellow-stained teeth. “Leave!” it screamed, and Axis screamed with it.
He sat bolt upright in his bedroll, still terrified. At first he thought that he had screamed aloud, but the other men about the campfire paid him no heed, trapped as they were in their own ill dreams. Axis leaned forward and put his face in his hands. Would it never end? He felt a warm shape bump into his side. His heart leapt in fear, before he realised it was only the cat. Axis pulled it up to his chest as he lay down and tried to get a few more hours’ sleep before dawn. He slept soundly and dreamlessly until Belial awakened him just as the sun was staining the eastern horizon.
13
THE CAULDRON LAKE
An hour after dawn the small group breakfasted and took their horses not fifty paces from the Silent Woman Woods. A biting wind blew over the land and they all shivered inside their cloaks. The horses shifted uneasily, the nervousness of their riders transmitting itself to them. Belial stared at the path leading into the Woods.
“It won’t be wide enough for two of you to ride abreast, sir.”
Axis sat still and silent, then said, “How far in is the Keep, Gilbert?”
Gilbert looked discomforted. “I’m not completely sure, BattleAxe.”
“I thought you knew most things, Gilbert,” Axis said dryly. “You do know exactly where the Keep is, don’t you?”
Gilbert’s face splotched a patchy red in embarrassment. “At the end of the path, BattleAxe.”
Belial swore under his breath. “Is that all you’ve got to say, you useless lump of…”
“Belial,” Axis said mildly, “it is not a good thing to curse the Brotherhood of the Seneschal. If Gilbert says the Keep is at the end of the path, then the Keep is at the end of the path. Of course, it might help if Gilbert knew how long this Artor-forsaken path is, wouldn’t it, Gilbert?”
Gilbert swallowed. He wished he were back in the Tower of the Seneschal. “We have not had any communication with the Keep for some time, BattleAxe.”
Axis frowned. “Jayme said he was going to send a rider in to tell them we were coming.”
“The Brother-Lea
der sent a rider, it is true…it’s just that he hasn’t come back out again.”
All the men shifted nervously now. Timozel and Arne, the youngest men present, traded frightened looks and fingered their axes.
Axis remembered how unsure Jayme had seemed about the records the Keep contained. “And just how long is it since the Brother-Leader has heard anything from the Keep, Gilbert?”
Gilbert rolled his eyes skyward, as if he found something terribly interesting among the clouds. His skin was pasty-white in the dawn light. “Thirty-nine years.”
“Thirty-nine years?” said Axis incredulous. “Gilbert, how does anyone know there is a Keep in there? Jayme told me that Brother Ogden was chief Brother in the Keep. How does he know that if there’s been no communication for thirty-nine years?”
Arne, a dour-faced and dark-haired man, chuckled suddenly in grim humour. “Because that’s who the Seneschal sent to take charge thirty-nine years ago, BattleAxe!”
Axis stared at Gilbert. “Is that right?”
Gilbert nodded unhappily. “The Brothers are an uncommunicative lot,” he muttered.
Axis swore under his breath. Why hadn’t Jayme told him this? “Belial. If we’re not out in three days, send in a party after us. If that party doesn’t come out within three days, then send no-one else in. Break camp and go back to Carlon. You can tell Jayme that if anyone else has to go back into the Woods then it will have to be him. And if he doesn’t want to go into the Woods, then he can go and stop the Forbidden at Gorkenfort.”
Belial nodded and backed his horse off a little. “May Artor keep and hold you in His hand, BattleAxe.”
“Now and forever,” the others muttered.
Axis turned to the other three. “Arne, Timozel, are you ready?” They nodded. Axis turned to Gilbert. “Brother Gilbert, you may take the lead. Your prayers might help to keep the demons at bay. Timozel, you follow me; Arne, bring up the rear. Are you ready, Axe-Wielders?”
“We follow your voice and we are ready, BattleAxe!” Timozel and Arne shouted.
“Then let us ride,” Axis cried and spurred Belaguez into a gallop.
Belial stood and watched them until they disappeared into the gloom of the Woods, then he slowly turned his horse. He would set guards by the trail night and day until his BattleAxe came back. Halfway back to camp he came across Faraday standing alone in the waving grass, watching the spot where the riders had disappeared.
The men slowed their horses to a walk once they entered the Woods. Within thirty paces of the tree line they were completely lost in gloom. Every man sat straight and tall in the saddle, eyes shifting constantly from side to side, expecting attack at any moment. They could hardly conceive of a world where there were no wide-open spaces, where the sky was not instantly visible. The three Axemen had pulled their swords from their weapon belts and held them at the ready. Gilbert occasionally whimpered in fear and would have stopped had not Axis kept Belaguez pressed against his horse’s rump.
The gloom and the silence enveloped them. Not even birds called from the trees. About one hundred paces in, Timozel abruptly cried out from behind. “BattleAxe!”
Axis pulled Belaguez to a halt and whipped around in the saddle. “What is it?”
Timozel was bent double, half out of the saddle as he leaned further and further down his horse’s off side. “It’s my axe!” he gasped, “it’s…”
Now Axis could feel it too, a massive weight hanging down by his right hip as if a gigantic hand had seized his axe by the haft and was pulling it towards the ground. He grunted and tried to pull the other way, but whatever had hold of his axe was too strong. The next moment he was pulled out of his saddle, and though he desperately grabbed the pommel he felt himself being dragged inexorably to the ground. Axis heard Gilbert cry out in horror, but he had no time to see what was wrong with him. The pressure on his axe increased—whatever invisible hand had hold of the haft was unbelievably strong—and, an instant after he heard Timozel hit the ground, Axis was pulled completely out of the saddle himself and hit the ground so hard that his breath was knocked out of his body.
Axis unbuckled his weapon belt to free himself of his axe almost as soon as he hit the ground, and the instant it was free he felt the immense pressure disappear. He jumped to his feet. Timozel and Arne lay struggling on the ground nearby, their horses a little further down the track, milling in confusion. Axis almost lost his footing as the ground swayed underneath his feet.
“Tim…Arne…unbuckle your weapon belts!” Axis shouted, stumbling in his efforts to reach his men still writhing helplessly on the ground. Timozel had been pulled halfway into the ground and Axis bent over him, the ground heaving beneath his feet, desperately trying to help Timozel free himself from his axe. Finally the weapon belt dropped free and Timozel grunted in relief. Axis hauled him to his feet then bent to help Arne, who had also unbuckled his weapon belt. All three turned to look for their axes, but the ground was heaving and buckling even more violently and their axes had completely disappeared underneath the loose covering of leaves and pine needles that littered the surface.
They all stepped back several paces to where the ground was firm, legs shaking. “Artor save us!” Arne gasped, “they would have taken us with them!” For a few heartbeats longer they stood, swords in hand, chests heaving as they fought to recover their breath, watching the ground where their axes had disappeared, hardly able to comprehend what had happened. After a moment the ground settled down until even the leaf litter had ceased to shift. They exchanged frightened glances. What sort of place was this where the forest could eat axes? How could they fight the very earth itself?
“I wonder whether the rider that Jayme sent was wearing an axe,” Timozel said quietly, his youthful face ashen. “And if he was, I wonder if he got his weapon belt off in time.”
“And how many others are buried under the earth in this spot,” Arne whispered.
That thought didn’t bear thinking about, and Axis battled to regain his equilibrium. “Get back on your horses. I for one am going to feel a lot better with Belaguez underneath me again.”
Gilbert rode back as the others remounted. “What happened?” he asked.
Axis swung into Belaguez’s saddle. “We have been deprived of our axes, Brother Gilbert,” he said, a lot more calmly than he felt. “We must hope that the forest does not eat us as well. Ride on.”
Nothing else troubled them for the rest of the long ride, although the forest loomed still and dark around them and they were all tense and jumpy, snarling at each other whenever a twig snapped under hoof or a low-slung bough scraped at a head or a shoulder. Hands lay slippery with sweat on the hilts of swords, but the three Axemen were unwilling to wipe their hands along their cloaks in case the demons, or whatever other dark fiends inhabited these Woods, chose that moment to attack.
After they had been in the saddle almost eight hours, the ground started to drop away underneath them, and they had to rein their horses back on the increasingly steep path in case they slipped and fell. An hour later Gilbert pulled his horse up and turned back to Axis, his face now so weary that deep lines of fatigue scored his pimply cheeks and forehead.
“BattleAxe,” he waved ahead sketchily. “Water.”
Axis peered through the gloom. Although it was difficult to see very far ahead, he could see a glint of water. “Keep going,” he said. “The sooner we find somewhere to rest and eat the better.”
“If we find somewhere to rest and eat,” he heard Timozel mutter. Axis hefted his sword in his right hand, almost dropping it as his fingers cramped, and leaned further back in the saddle as Belaguez slipped a few paces down the slope. Artor, he thought, if we don’t get some rest soon we’ll have to lie down here in the very path.
And if we do that, will the ground swallow us as easily as it swallowed our axes?
Almost as soon as that thought crossed his mind, Gilbert’s horse jumped a small obstacle and landed on level ground, Gilbert only managing to keep to his
saddle by the most strenuous effort. Forewarned, Axis gripped the saddle with his knees just as Belaguez leaped across a small stream; he called a warning back to Timozel and Arne. The path broadened and flattened ahead and all four men allowed themselves a deep breath of relief at the increased space, Gilbert taking the first opportunity he’d had to rein his horse back from the lead position. Axis kneed Belaguez forward.
“The trees thin ahead,” he said. “There’s a lake.”
A few moments later they had reined in at the shore of one of the most incredible sights they had ever seen. The entire forest sloped down into a deep circular basin, the mass of grey–green trees ending abruptly at the edge of an almost perfectly round lake. But it was the water itself that caught the party’s attention. It shone a soft, gentle gold in the late afternoon light.
Axis turned to Gilbert. “Did you know this was here?”
Gilbert shook his head slowly from side to side, not taking his eyes from the water.
“It must be enchanted,” Axis said flatly. “Water isn’t gold.”
“Perhaps it isn’t water,” said Timozel softly, making the sign of the Plough to ward off evil.
“Look,” said Arne, pointing with his sword. “It’s the cursed Keep.”
The Keep sat virtually at the lake’s edge, about a quarter of the way around, built of pale yellow stone that reflected the glow from the water. Its smooth cylindrical stone walls rose some thirty paces into the air, the walls only occasionally broken by narrow dark windows. It looked to be completely deserted.
“Well,” Axis spurred Belaguez forward, “let us go find this lost tribe of brothers, shall we?”
The horses slipped and slid their way around the lake’s edge, finally reaching the Keep just as the last rays of sun disappeared behind the tops of the forest trees. The Keep looked even more deserted closer up, and the men began to feel uneasy. No-one wanted to spend the night outside in this damned forest.
Axis kicked his stallion up to the barred door and brought the hilt of his sword crashing down on it three times. “Open up in the name of Artor!” he shouted. “We have need of food and rest.”