CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: BEYOND THE WALL

  “Beyond we go,” Marcus whispered, only loud enough for Cassius to hear as they pushed through the gate in marching formation. Cassius felt the strength of the world shift as he breathed in rich air that filled him with energy. All across the formation men and women stiffened and gasped as they experienced the strength of the wilds.

  “Silent,” Vira hissed behind from the front of the formation where she was walking. She had volunteered herself as the lead scout, tracking the path of the summoner and his imps. Cassius thought it was fairly easy seeing the large amount of the creatures had left a trail that a blind man could find.

  The noblewoman’s hissed warning was enough to silence the small muttering of the legionnaires as they pushed through the gate and into the wilds fully. The forest here seemed older, more primordial, Cassius thought. Every tree was thicker, the leaves greener, the ground thick with years of built up sediment.

  Vira led them without pause, walking with a long stride, her head lowered to the ground while the block of legionnaires marched as quietly as they could. It wasn’t silent by any means, but the general sounds of this forest were loud. Where their side of the wall had seemed mostly barren, the cries of animals and monsters were nearly constant here.

  A thundering roar that could have been mistaken for thunder came from the west, closer to the coast line. Cassius turned his head to look that way, noticing how the trail was slowly curving in that direction. They continued their march, slowly arcing to a north-west direction. After nearly an hour of marching the roar came again, closer this time.

  “Halt,” Marcus said, throwing a hand up and causing the legion to come to a crisp stop. Cassius looked back on the men and saw the nervousness there as they looked to where the crash and roars of something large and powerful continued to echo through the tall trees.

  “Cassius, I need scouts moving forward. I will not walk the century into that,” Marcus whispered to him. Cassius swallowed as he understood what was being asked of him, even if Marcus wasn’t going to say the words.

  “I shall move ahead of the lines and see if I can scout what it is,” Cassius volunteered and Marcus nodded in appreciation, even as his face was cast in grim lines. Cassius stripped his pack off, setting it down and looked at his heavy shield, debating with himself. He set it down after a long moment of debating the merits of it in the heavy brush. Armed only with spear and gladius, he broke from the group as the rest of the century ate and drank as sentinels were posted.

  “Dangerous to go by yourself,” Vira said as she fell in step with him as they hurried along towards the growing sounds of battle.

  “Quickly and quietly. Let us hope they have found their match and we can return back home,” Cassius whispered to her as they jogged forward.

  With how wide and great the trees were, there were fewer than had been on their side. It allowed for them easy passage, even if the ground was rife with dry leaves and sticks. A steady crackle preceded them, but the sounds of fighting were only growing louder, masking them in their approach.

  “At least two of the beasts. They have different cries,” Vira said, brow furrowed as her hand gripped her sword tightly. Cassius nodded as sweat trickled down his face and back as his heart rate accelerated until it was as if he was in a full sprint.

  After ten minutes there was a mighty crack, louder than any thunder he’d heard before, and the ground shuddered a moment later beneath their feet. Cassius came to a stop as he looked around, but a scream of rage came, closer than anything they’d heard so far.

  “Keep moving, we’re almost there,” Vira whispered, dropping low in a crouch and scuttling forward as Cassius tried to follow her lead. It didn’t take long to find the site of the battle as they followed the screeching. An acrid scent permeated the air, one that Cassius had begun to grow increasingly familiar with.

  “Imps close by,” Cassius told Vira. She nodded as she darted next to a tree and poked her head around it slowly. She jerked back, face pale and coated in sweat as she motioned him forward as she slowly slid down until she was planted on her rear amid the roots of the great giant.

  Cassius hurried over to her and looked around to see what it was that had shaken the normally fearless noblewoman. Slowly he worked his way around the tree until he could see through the foliage and into a battle-wrought clearing. Trees had been deposited to their sides, shattered and broken through from the course of fighting. Imp corpses lay in broken heaps as their corrosive blood leaked out across the land.

  Each of them were the size of a bear, larger than anything that Cassius had seen of their number before. And they had been split apart like they were chaff. He swallowed hard as he slowly pushed his head further around the corner.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Cassius struggled to understand what he was seeing at first. Blue-grey feathers coated it, wings that were twisted and uneven as a foot long chitinous beak opened and screeched another warcry. Talons slashed out as fast as thought and another bear-sized imp went flailing across the ground to land in pieces.

  His mouth was dry as he looked at the massive beast, the size of a large building, as it killed the few surviving imps around it. Talons and beak flashed back and forth as it tossed the summoned monsters about, bouncing them off of the thick trees with bone crunching force.

  “Beyond it, on the far side of the clearing,” Vira whispered, hardly daring to breathe hard as she clutched to her sword, eyes focused back toward the legion. Cassius spared her a glance, but turned away from the one sided fight to see what it was that she had seen.

  It was difficult to see past all of the torn apart foliage, a fallen tree obscured a long portion of the far side, but Cassius saw the still form of another of the feathered monsters laying surrounded by a score of imps. If anything it was the larger of the two monsters, but if it had been felled, Cassius slowly let the thought fade away.

  “Where is the imp that slayed it?” he asked out loud. He had seen how fast the monsters grew after eating their own weak members, but if one had managed to kill that creature, then he could only imagine the size and power it would wield.

  “I did not see it, but if they eat that corpse, they will be beyond us,” Vira said. Cassius could only nod as he saw the wounded feathered monster slow down. Cassius could see how the wings had been broken many times over, its powerful legs covered in numerous deep cuts that wept freely. Even its claws and beak were warped, the caustic blood of the imps insidious even in defeat.

  “You are faster than me. Rush back to the others and bring them forth. We will have to somehow kill them before they consume the bodies,” Cassius said, mind already spinning. Five of the giant imps remained, slowly backing up out of their prey’s range as they let the collective wounds slowly drain the life of the beast.

  “They have killed two griffons. I do not believe we can slay them,” Vira said.

  “We don’t have to kill them. Just scare away the summoner. You bring the century, and I’ll see if I can find the summoner. He’s a coward and won’t risk his life, even for the reward of those bodies,” Cassius reasoned.

  “You make reckless leaps in logic,” Vira hissed, but she rose and darted away back toward the camp. Cassius nodded to himself as he settled down to watch the clearing, seeing if he could see where the summoner would position themselves.

  “Where would I watch?” Cassius muttered to himself. After a moment he stopped looking at the ground around the edge of the fight, but turned his eyes upward. The branches of these giant trees were thick enough to support a man with ease.

  It took a few long moments as the tension increased, Cassius’ eyes sweeping around slowly until he found what he feared. Thirty feet off the ground, perched like an oversized cat, the summoner rested on his heels, eyes locked on the griffon. Something stirred in the shadows above the summoner and Cassius thought at first it was another monster, but another of the guards dropped down to land next to the summoner, the branch hardly moving under their weight.

  “More than two guards makes sense. How many are there?” Cassius asked himself. He kept looking for more of the assassins in the trees, but the depth of the forest let little light through, creating thick shadows perfect for their cloaks.

  Cassius backed out of the roots of the tree they had taken cover in and slowly started to work around the far perimeter of the battlefield. All the while he made sure he kept where the summoner and assassin were firmly planted in his mind. The remaining imps were all awaiting the moment the second griffon fell due to its wounds and the two interlopers were kindly waiting for him, their own attention settled on the fight.

  There was relatively little he could do, his spear unsuited for throwing, and his armor and cloak too bright for proper skullduggery. Legionnaires were not trained for quiet moments, but to stand proudly at the forefront and crush their foes with discipline and strength. Cassius had struggled with that mentality, too many years living by staying hidden.

  It took nearly fifteen minutes to slowly get behind their tree, their backs turned to him as he got into position. His mind was still whirling with ideas, thoughts of how he could turn this in his favor. He was stronger now than when he had fought the last assassin, but he doubted he could fairly cross blades with it and succeed, to say nothing of the summoner.

  A wounded imp drifted closer to him, slowly circling with its wide back toward him. The griffon looked worse for wear, feathers falling off of its body as it shrieked weakly as it tried to charge toward one of the imps, only to have all five of them back up and continue to circle.

  The imp closest to him was heavily injured, long raking wounds across its ribs, its arm held limply, uselessly, at its side. Cassius looked up toward the summoner and assassin and back to the imp, swallowed hard and knew what he was going to have to do.

  Waiting for the rest of the century to arrive was a test in patience, sweat rolled down his body and his heart beat hard enough he feared they could hear him. But through it all, nobody took their eyes off the griffon, not the imps, assassin, or summoner. The monster was too strong to take even a moment’s attention away from, even weakened as it was.

  It was nearly a half-hour after Vira had left him that the first signs of the century arrived. As was their course the legionnaires did not skulk upon the battlefield. They came from the side, not far from where Cassius was, keeping the imps between themselves and the griffon as a brassy horn bugled a charge.

  The ten nobles of Vira’s complement had fully armored themselves and they stood to the side, waiting as spears were lowered and shields clacked together, drawing everyone’s attention. It was the distraction that the griffon and Cassius had both been waiting for.