Posted by admin on October 20, 2008
The Cleansing of Darnuth Keep is a fantasy novel describing the adventures of Colter Halfspear as he becomes a man and an initiate of magical powers.
Later that evening, Harrim invited me into his private dining room, after I had already stuffed myself of course, where he and my mother dined privately. My mother dressed in the most beautiful scarlet, and she set her hair beneath a lace cap, very unlike anything I had seen her wear in the summers since my father died, but very much how I remembered her from before. Harrim served a table as grand as I have seen any innkeeper set, and far grander than many a nobleman, for the platters and cups were gold and silver, and even I knew the wine came of no common vintage.
“Come in and sit with us, my boy,” said Harrim cheerfully. “You’re of an age now when you should sit with the men, not the boys. Take some wine.” I refused the goblet for I sensed something amiss. I never ignored that sense. “Suit yourself then…”
“Colter,” interrupted my mother. “We have some wonderful news to share with you.”
“’Em, right,” and for the first and only time I believe that I saw Master Wilder slightly embarrassed. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like some wine? No? Ok, well, Colter, as you know I fancy your mother. I have for some time, but now that your pa’s been gone so long.”
“Harrim has asked me to marry him,” said my mother. Her face beamed like a girl again, and I could tell a great weight had lifted from her. “Isn’t it wonderful? It’s the most wonderful thing that could happen for us. No more digging and scratching and starving on that god-forsaken farm.”
There is something truly awful about being reminded how pointless your hard work is, especially when you already know it. I hated the work, and I hated starving. I despised having bloody feet and sores, but I loved the land. “I like the farm,” I muttered.
“Of course you don’t have to leave the farm,” said Harrim, once again cheerful. “Betta of course will come here and live with us, you are welcome, naturally, if you want. You’re a man now, old enough to choose what you want.”
“Of course, that’s right,” agreed mamma with a smile and a laugh. “We will be married within a market, and then it’s all yours anyway, to do with as you like. You can work it or rent it or sell it. I am sure Harrim will help you set up any trade you wish. Won’t you Harrim?”
“Of course, my dear. He’s a hard worker and bright. What do you have to say, Colter?”
The truth is I didn’t have anything to say really. Honestly nothing at all, but I think that is the first time I discovered how to lie, or at least how to conceal my emotions, which is better than lying. “This is truly wonderful.” I smiled and I laughed. “Now I wish I hadn’t eaten so much already since this calls for a celebration.” We all laughed and talked and once again mamma became the lady she had always been.
Harrim kept a great water clock in that private room, and after glancing at it a few times he invited me to take a walk with him. Mamma said, “Go on son, I’m afraid there will be more news and more decisions to make tonight.”
Harrim grabbed a lantern and led me to a path behind the Waystop that wandered into the hills south of town. Usually the land there is green and grassy, now the hills were brown and dry. The night had taken on a cooler tone, and I caught the scent of summer rain on the breeze. “There will be rain,” I commented. “That will help the farm through the summer.”
Harrim didn’t seem to notice my remarks, but he put a massive arm around my shoulders and guided me off the main path into a little grove of trees just outside of town. I was neither tall nor large, and Harrim was both. We must have looked an odd pair in the lantern light.
“You do understand the need for this marriage,” he said.
“Yes,” I confirmed. “I am happy for you both.”
“I am glad to hear it, although I know that your thoughts are undoubtedly more complex than that. In time I hope to be able to help you through some of those complexities, but in the meantime I want you to understand that I know I can never replace your father, and that life at the inn can never replace life at the farm. Your mother is practical.”
“She has sense,” we said at the same moment and we both laughed.
“Yes, she has sense,” continued Harrim. “Enough to go for all of us. The only thing she didn’t have sense about was your father.”
I jerked away instinctively and searched his eyes for the humor, but found only sincere sadness. I couldn’t find a way to respond or express the hurt I felt in his words.
“Colter, please, just a little further,” he pleaded. And we continued into the trees. “Your mother loved, still loves, your father more deeply than I have ever known a person to love another, but she loved him too much, more than she should have.”
“More than he deserved, you mean,” I replied. I was angry, resentful, a boy.
“No, not more than he deserved. More than he could handle. More than he could return. Let me show you. Let me explain.”
We reached a small clearing in the trees where the starlight sprinkled down to the ground in soft wisps over the buzzing insects. A large stone dominated the clearing. It was circular in shape and rounded on top, perhaps a meter and a half high at the center and two meters in diameter. The moonlight danced over the stone and it seemed to begin to glow with a soft inner light as we approached.
“Kyven brought a number of treasures back with him when he returned from his adventures. This is one he brought back the first time, before he ever married, before you were born. Take a look.”
The stone now definitely glowed with a soft green light and wisps of green vapor began to slip off the surface of the stone into the air and over the ground. Wherever the vapors touched the grass, it turned one shade further from brown to green until within a few short moments the entire grove appeared vibrant and green again, as if just after a spring rain.
“The stone is tied to the will of the gods, Colter. It brings life and prosperity when we follow their will and death and plague when we do not.”
“So, what does this have to do with me?” A naive question, one I suspected I knew the answer to, but I needed to hear it.
“When I said ‘we’ I really meant ‘you.’ You need to follow the will of the gods. In order for your father to retrieve the spear of Udelf and defeat the demon lord of the hordes of Kaarum, he made a pact with Tylos to forever obey and serve. That is why he left again after completing his first adventure. But it nearly broke your mother’s heart. She waited in agony those winters while he was gone. You were born and grew in prosperity and the plantation prospered in those days. Then he returned. Something about that final journey changed him. He never confided all of the details to me, but I knew that he was hurt beyond casual notice.”
“He was wounded in battle. That’s what he told me,” I said.
The innkeeper looked at me. A deep sadness covered his face. “Yes, he was wounded, but not so much from battle as from heartbreak. He came home to your mother, his one true love and forsook his adventuring ways, and he began to wither. You see, he was compelled to hunt evil.”
“But he gave it up for mamma,” I finished his thought. I began to understand at that moment. It was only a beginning, but an unfortunate sad beginning, like swallowing tyrnwood prepared without sweetening for the first time. I stared at that stone and the wonder I felt at seeing the green vapors turned to loathing and fear of the unknown.
“It started working again today,” said Harrim. I had guessed as much but I didn’t need to say it. “The council is going to meet today to decide how long you will be permitted to stay in the village. Then you will have to take up where your father left off.”
I admit I cried. “I’ll send your mother for you.” He left me there to cry out the last vestiges of my boyhood alone in the thin lantern light. So I did, and as my teardrops fell on that warm, inviting stone my fears turned to curiosity and my loathing into longing for the wide world. Some part of me enjoyed the thought of finding glory and riches, of standing on my own against a Kaarum rather than hiding frightened in a corner. And some part of me wanted to simply wake up in the morning and go back to my parched fields to try to grow a crop for the autumn harvest.
Copyright 2008 Kelly David Tolman
On to The Cleansing of Darnuth Keep Fantasy Novel Chapter Five
Back to The Cleansing of Darnuth Keep Fantasy Novel Chapter Three
Posted by admin on October 13, 2008
The Cleansing of Darnuth Keep is a fantasy novel describing the adventures of Colter Halfspear as he becomes a man and an initiate of magical powers.
I expected to walk to town, but Harrim had driven not just a wagon, but the coach he saved for special days. He invited me to ride on top and help drive, and I did so gladly. As we passed the turnoff to Trakkin’s farm I looked down the road in hopes of seeing a friendly face, but saw no one.
When my father lived, we visited Harrim’s Waystop at least once a five market. The friendship between Harrim Wilder and my father stretched back into their childhood. The large two-story brick inn towers above the other buildings in the village. Local legend recounts that generations ago the Wilders trafficked in exotic herbs with the darkunders, and after growing wealthy Harrim’s grandfather had settled in Dunston with his ill-gotten wealth in a place the empire would not come looking. True or not, most in the village didn’t worry since the inn grew in popularity until it attracted buyers for crops after good summers and for crafts after bad.
The small collection of farms surrounding a small collection of huts surrounding the Waystop still bears the name of Dunston in honor of the first settler’s horse. The blacksmith owned a nice house, and the miller built a home of brick near the river, but nobody else was able to use more than mud walls to keep them warm. During the midsummer festivals we all danced and sang. Sometimes we joined with Kerby for the harvest celebration. Sometimes they joined with us. Weddings, funerals, births and the rites of Tylos each became an affair for the entire village, and more often for both Dunston and Kerby.
The first dog barked a warning as we came within fifty meters of the first house, and several others took up the cry as we trundled into the village. Jans and Lora, children of Master Tintelbar, who kept the general store darted into the street and back again, playing. I could not make out the faces of the boys at the far end of town who kicked a pig’s stomach around. They were still too young to work the fields and had managed to escape early from their daily chores.
Betta waved at Lora, and she waved back. “Can I play with them?” she asked.
“Not now,” replied mamma. “You will get your dress dirty. Besides, I think I will need your help with dinner.”
I looked around but didn’t see Anaria or anyone else close to my age. Ton and Wess would still be in the fields for a few more hours while their sisters worked at home. A slow breeze cooled the streets as we pulled around to the back of the inn. Harrim pulled the coach to a stop and jumped down. He handed me the reins before helping my mother and sister.
“Put the coach away and take care of the horses, Colter. See they get a good rub down,” he said.
I didn’t see Achard, the servant that usually did the work around the Waystop, though I hardly expected him. Every time we visited the Waystop Harrim gave his servant the day off. The work kept me busy and out of trouble, and I enjoyed the change. I found another team of horses already stabled as well as a large black stallion with imperial livery. I tended these as well, knowing that Achard would have done the same in my place. As the sun began to set I heard the workers returning from the field. I piled on the last of the hay and went to see if I could find a friendly face.
Lyekal, a tall young man with broad shoulders that had yet to acquire the strength of his father, the smith, also watched the workers returning from the fields. He noticed me and crossed the street with a smile. His hands and face were black from the forge. I sat down on the front steps of the inn, and he joined me. “I thought I heard Harrim’s carriage,” he said. “Pa didn’t let me come and look. Jans says he saw an imperial soldier ride in earlier.”
“His horse is in the stable. I haven’t been inside yet,” I said.
“Pa says there’s war coming in the north. The Eastern Watch is recruiting again. I want to join if I can. Dunston’s got nothing for me,” he said.
“Your dad won’t like that,” I replied.
“All he does is work. Even ma says he works too much,” said Lyekal.
Wess, a boy about my height, but a few winters older came along the road carrying a bundle of firewood across his shoulder. Most of the villagers had straw colored hair they cropped short in summer, like Lyekal’s, but Wess wore his black hair to his shoulders. His family came from the west about the time my father left on his second adventure. He dropped the bundle next to us and sat on it. “It was a hot one today,” he said. “How’s your crop looking Colter? I’ve not had a chance to get out your way.”
“Mostly burned to dust,” I replied. “We’ve a few patches of barley that will see us through the winter if we get some rain.”
“The whole valley used to be green through the entire summer,” said Wess. “I remember when we came we could fish in that stream that disappeared after the earth moved.”
“Pa says time will change soon enough,” said Lyekal. “I don’t think so. I’m not staying anyway. Your of age now, Wess. Why don’t you join up with me?”
“You’ve been talking the soldier for two winters now. You know your pa won’t let you,” replied Wess.
“I’ll be of age in a five-market,” replied Lyekal with a snort. “Kyven Halfspear isn’t the only hero around here. I’ve plans for myself.”
Betta found me loafing there. “Mamma says its time to help with supper.” I glared at her and she stuck her tongue out at me. I smiled back and we laughed. I waved to my friends and headed inside.
“Serve the captain,” ordered mamma. “Bring him what he asks for, but mix the wine with water if he wants more than a second cup. There’s no point making him drunk, and we’ve business to tend to tonight. There is also a pair of cloth merchants who will likely ask for more than Betta can manage herself, so you keep an eye on them as well.”
Despite her warnings, the captain ate quickly and quietly, and though he finished the second cup of wine he did not ask for more. He hardly spoke a word, and buckled on his sword immediately after eating. “I’d hoped to see more of the men. Is there a tavern in this village?” he asked.
“Sometimes they gather at the smithy after supper,” I replied.
He nodded and I watched him walk through the front door. The merchants complained about the weather as they ate, and I could not help but miss the livelier days when my father brought us here to celebrate. Mamma disappeared with Harrim into his private dining room while Betta and I ate in the kitchens. Afterwards we sat together on the front porch of the inn, laughing and listening to the sounds of the village. Lyekal walked towards us from his father’s smithy just down the street. He had replaced his smile with a scowl.
“Pa’s being unfair,” he complained. “Captain Torbridge is looking for recruits. He’ll take anyone willing, and they pay too. Not one of the men wants to join and I can’t. I tell you I’m leaving as soon as the council declares me of age.”
“I like it here,” said Betta. She laughed. “I think you would look silly with a spear. You’re too skinny.”
“What do you know?” he sneered. “You’re just a little girl.”
Betta stuck out her tongue. “None of us knows anything about the world,” I said. “I’ve been to most all the farms around Dunston and Kerby. I even went to Havensod a couple of times before pa died, but I don’t remember it much. I’ve hunted as far north as the Wynndle, or at least the west fork, and south past Trakkin’s.”
“I’ve never even been that far,” said Lyekal. “I hate this place.”
Down the street we saw the men starting to leave the smithy. “I don’t think your captain is making any friends,” I said. I stood up and took Betta by the hand. “Time for bed. Maybe your pa will change his mind.”
Copyright 2008 Kelly David Tolman
On to The Cleansing of Darnuth Keep Fantasy Novel Chapter Four
Back to The Cleansing of Darnuth Keep Fantasy Novel Chapter Two
Posted by admin on October 6, 2008
The Cleansing of Darnuth Keep is a fantasy novel describing the adventures of Colter Halfspear as he becomes a man and an initiate of magical powers.
I woke up with a poultice on my arms and a bandage on my chest. The sun had risen long hours before. “Get up sleepy head,” Betta said. She had a ribbon in her hair and bounced as merrily as if nothing had happened the night before and as if she had never been ill.
“I see the tyrnwood worked,” I said, and mamma smiled.
“You found an excellent plant. Now, get up and fetch some more water.”
I hurt to move, but boyish pride kept me going. I dragged back a bucket and mamma proffered me some tea in one of our many chipped cups. “You’ll need your strength Colter, drink it.”
“When is Master Wilder coming?” I asked.
“Around mid-day. Are you hurt anywhere else?” Her eyes and voice were full of unusual concern and tenderness. I knew then that she worried about more than just my cuts.
“Just my arms,” I replied.
“Drink your tea. The tyrnwood will help you.” She checked the poultice as I drank the tea. We had no honey or beet sugar, so the drink tasted bitter and thick in my throat, but the warm sensation that covered me from head to toe rested both body and mind.
“I had such an awful dream,” commented Betta in her childish, ever cheerful voice. “There was screaming and darkness, and I was afraid for you Colter. I kept calling and calling, but you had gone and couldn’t hear me. Then I felt warmer and then I woke up and mamma was here.”
“It was just a dream dear,” said mamma.
“Oh, I know that, mamma,” replied Betta. “I’m not scared anymore. I just thought it was a strange dream.”
“Not too strange.” I showed Betta my arms and torn shirt. “You probably woke up partly during your fever. Mamma and I killed a Kaarum last night”
“Did you really?” Her eyes grew as big as saucers, her curiosity insatiable. “Can I see it?”
I laughed because she seemed so happy, and she laughed and giggled as we went to the back of the house. The carcass was cold now and a few flies had gathered around it. I pulled out my arrow and cleaned the sticky black blood from the point. I could still use the unbroken arrow. Somehow it didn’t feel much different from a deer or any other animal I had hunted. The creature wore some kind of hardened armor over its rough black hide. The head was shaped like a dog’s head, but with horns like an ox and eyes more like a great cat. Hard sandals with tight leather thongs padded the broad black feet but didn’t hide the twisted yellow toenails.
“Sure is ugly,” commented Betta. Then she went back into the house.
I took advantage of the hours before Master Wilder came to scout the farm for signs of Kaarum. I followed the trail for a few kilometers north and east before circling back to the south. I found the spot where the tyrnwood grew, and pocketed a few additional leaves. A game trail ran south across the road. The road lead to Havensod. The trail continued over to a stream and onto the only other free hold in the valley, Master Trakkin’s farm. The rest of the farmers rented from the wealthier men in the region.
I nearly reached the stream when I heard movement along the trail. Any meat I could catch now would help, though I doubted I would find anything very fat so early in the summer. I quietly stepped into cover behind a stunted pine tree and waited. After a few moments I saw a tangle of deep auburn curls emerge from the creek bottom.
“Hello, Anaria,” I called as I stepped from behind the tree. “I hoped you were a deer.”
“Denan has a fever, so ma sent me to find some tyrnwood, but I don’t think there will be any this early. I haven’t seen any deer either.” Anaria often roamed the wild in trousers like any of the farm boys, though her father generally disapproved. Her homemade moccasins showed signs of wear, but I knew they were far more comfortable than my bare feet. She always kept a fresh flower over her left ear, just like her mother. That day she had a yellow and purple pansy. As the only neighbor anywhere near my age, we had explored much of the valley together despite her father’s dislike of my father’s adventures and reputation.
I dug the leaves I had gathered earlier out of my pocket. “I found these further up, on our place. You can have them if you want. We’re going to town later, so they would probably just spoil anyway.”
She took the leaves and smiled. “Thanks, Colter. Pa’s going to town later too. I’ll see if I can go along.”
“You haven’t seen any strange tracks, have you?” I asked.
“No, not that I would notice anyway. You read sign better than I do,” she said.
“A Kaarum came to our house last night,” I said. Anaria looked more frightened than I intended. “Don’t worry, we killed it. I just wanted to know if you had seen anything out here.”
“I think I better be getting home,” she replied. “I don’t think ma would want me out if she knew about the Kaarum.”
“If you get a chance, come to the Waystop. I think that’s where we’ll be.” We waved goodbye, and I turned home. I hurried, knowing I didn’t have much time before mamma expected me back.
I heard Harrim Wilder’s voice before I saw him. Deep, booming, friendly, ever ready to engage a visitor, that voice marked the man. He was as grand a figure as his voice, tall, two meters at least, and bulky. The man could consume half a lamb in a sitting if the mood struck and I had watched him drink more wine than the rest of the village combined during festivals. Generally considered handsome by the women, his hair, though graying, curled black and thick and his well-tended beard made for an imposing presence. His inn, the Waystop, served the finest food and drink found in the region. I knew him as a generous and forgiving man, willing to take a loss himself rather than see another hurt.
I entered quietly, and left the rabbits on the table in the back room that served as kitchen, dining hall, and porch.
“Ho, Colter,” bellowed the innkeeper. “Come in and tell me of your adventures in the night. What’s this talk of Kaarum so far south in the empire?”
“One attacked us last night. Mamma and I killed it. There isn’t much to tell.” There really wasn’t much to say about it. I had done no more than stay alive, and that by more luck than skill.
“Are there any more? Did you see any signs?” His voice was earnest, but steady.
“Nothing. I retraced all the way back to where I first heard it, and followed its trail another kilometer out. I didn’t see anything. It trailed down from somewhere north of the valley across the wild. I couldn’t say where.”
“Good, that is very good. I don’t think the village is prepared to handle an attack.”
“You don’t really believe there is any danger of that?” asked my mother.
“I don’t know Lelda,” said Harrim. “Times have changed again, for the worse it seems, or maybe not.” He raised a brow and gave me an odd sort of look that told me he knew something I did not. Whatever he knew, my mother was better at keeping it away from me. Only later, many winters later when time made such things moot, did I realize the pain my mother endured in those winters to keep me from my destiny. But destiny is not to be cheated, nor bargained with, nor spurned. It can only be accepted and fulfilled.
In that moment of silence between my mother and the innkeeper I read some of that pain.
“Put on your boots,” my mother ordered. “Get out the clean shirt and trousers.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” joined Harrim, returning to his usual jovial tone. “See, your sister is all dressed up. Look how pretty you are Betta. What a lovely dress. Oh, and bows and ribbons in your hair. Doesn’t the yellow look lovely?”
Betta really did look her best. Of course with just six winters, she was excited to be noticed by anyone. I preferred to chat and play with her rather than to dwell on the events of the night.
“Bring your spear, Colter, and your bow,” he advised. “You never know when you will need them.” The road to Dunston remains to this day one of the safest, least interesting roads in the empire, but I obeyed.
Copyright 2008 Kelly David Tolman
On to The Cleansing of Darnuth Keep Fantasy Novel Chapter Three
Back to The Cleansing of Darnuth Keep Fantasy Novel Chapter One
Posted by admin on September 29, 2008
The Cleansing of Darnuth Keep is a fantasy novel describing the adventures of Colter Halfspear as he becomes a man and an initiate of magical powers.
I pulled up a bucket of water from our well out on the old farm. My father built it a few kilometers east of Dunston near a low rocky hill where he could defend it easily if needed. In the spring when the buds and shoots gave new life I often roamed the hills in search of adventure. Summer came early, and the sun pounded hotter than even mamma could remember. Drought had turned the farm into a worn down shell of nothing. Our few cattle died during the cold but too dry winter. Crops refused to grow. Nothing had a will to stay alive out there, not then. Despite our losses, I always found the farm a nice place.
We needed the bucket of water for Corbetta, my little sister, who slept. I knew she was sick, probably dying. Mamma sent me to get the water as much to help Betta as to get me out of the way.
I brought the water back and sloshed the bucket onto the table in the back room of our house. Once it had been a rather fine mansion. Now it was two rooms, one where we slept and received guests and one where we ate. The fire two winters before had burned everything. Without money we could only repair so much.
“Do you want me to get some tyrnwood,” I asked her.
“No, I don’t want you going out anywhere.” I never saw her frightened, or at least I never noticed it before, but lately mamma seemed frightened a lot. Then her voice softened. She tried to coax me out of going. Her weathered face was gentle most of the time. “It’s getting dark, son. It may not be safe.” Her jet-black hair, just gray at the temples, hung to her waist, and her green eyes looked at me full of love and tender concern.
“I’ll be careful,” I protested. “I’ll take the bow. Besides, I won’t go far.”
She relented with a sigh. “Leave the bow, Colter. You won’t be able to use it in the dark.” I think that’s the one thing I remember best about mamma. She always had common sense. Others tell me about how their mother could cook one thing or another, but my mother had sense. So I left, out into the fading sunlight to find a handful of tyrnwood and hope it would help.
Tyrnwood flourishes in the late summer. Midsummer had not yet reached us and the plant was still hard to find. But I knew where to look. More importantly I knew where to look without hurting my feet. I owned no shoes to wear day-to-day then. I used a pair of my father’s shoes for special times, but not for scouting tyrnwood.
Across the valley I saw the faint light of the nearest farm as they settled in for the evening. Their farm suffered like ours, though they hadn’t yet lost their livestock. Although one large ranch ran cattle near Kerby a few kilometers further west, the farms near Dunston clustered closer to the village. Our farm ranged farthest out, where my father cleared land for himself and built a buffer between the wild and the rest of the valley.
A patch of tyrnwood by a dry creak bed liked to come up early each summer, and I could follow the path easily in the moonlight. Tylos blessed my efforts. It may have been the rising full moon, or just some lucky guess, but I spotted a plant and pulled it out gently. Then I heard the distinct but still distant snap of a twig.
Under the light of a full moon on a farm with no animals, that twig meant something unfriendly must be out there. Though only a boy of fourteen summers, I had sense not to drop the tyrnwood and skill not to make more noise than necessary. No ranger of the south could have made a faster, more effortless trip back to the house. I knew every rock and shrub near our farm and I loved every meter of it.
We hung a tattered blanket at the back of the house in place of a door. We built the new room after the fire consumed most of the old house. One room from the older part of the house, the brick house as we called it, remained in tact but ugly from the fire. Once my mother welcomed wealthy guests in the great hall, and served wonderful parties. Now, with burned out doorways boarded up, it served as a place to sleep and talk while my mother tried to explain away our misery.
Mamma watched me come in and read my face instantly. “There is something out there,” I said. “It moves on two legs. I’m sure.”
“Give me the tyrnwood, and get the bow and your father’s spear.”
We kept my father’s spear in a creaky old chest in the great hall. My sister slept on the bed in one corner, sick and hot with fever. I dug out the weapons and waited. I heard my mother bolt the sturdy original door to the front of the house. She waited silently. We had no door between the two rooms, and I could see by the light of the embers of the dying fire out to the shadow of the blanket at the back of the house. A trail behind the house led into the low hills of the eastern empire. Beyond the partial walls my father had started to build, stretched a wild expanse only lightly patrolled by imperial soldiers. Since my father’s death, the paths leading to our door had grown more dangerous each winter.
As I crouched in the darkness, waiting for the unknown, I concentrated on trying to breathe silently for the first time in my life. I had played hide and seek with other village boys, but this time the danger was real and I held a bow in my hands. I noticed a slight movement in the shadows, some flicker of starlight out of place. Although I didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary, I drew and fired an arrow in one smooth motion. From a very young age my father taught me to hunt and shoot, but I was too small to pull the bow to its full length. The arrow did less damage than I expected.
The creature screamed out in pain and anger and lashed about with horns and claws. It paused long enough to glance around the room. Then it caught my scent because it charged into our home with one arm dangling uselessly at its side. I tried to get the half-spear into my hands but fumbled in the dark and it rolled away. In the next instant the beast lunged and pinned me to the ground. I could smell the foul breath, like rotten meat and vomit, closing in all around me.
Somewhere in the darkness mamma screamed and for the briefest moment the beast turned its attention away from me. I kicked and pushed and managed to grab the spear, but in the darkness and fright I couldn’t tell the sharp end from the blunt and had no idea how to attack with it anyway. I thrust what I hoped to be the point, but it quickly snatched the spear from my hands and I heard it clatter to the floor. In desperation I threw up my arms, and it began lashing at me with its horrible claws, rending my arms, shirt and chest. I heard another scream, or maybe two, in the dark. Then I felt the great weight of the beast suddenly collapse over me. It stopped scratching and biting, but I felt I would be smothered. In the darkness I heard my mother crying and calling my name.
“I’m all right mamma,” I said, though I’m sure I sounded awful. “I’m a bit scratched up, but I’m all right.”
“I had our knife hidden,” she said. “Oh, Colter, I thought you were dead. It was lashing and growling.”
“I’m okay. I’m alive.” To my own astonishment and I’m sure to my mother’s, I was indeed alive and only badly scratched instead of bleeding to death. We dragged it outside, into the cool dark night and prayed to Tylos to save us from any more harm.
“Was that a Kaarum?” I asked. I had heard stories, everyone has heard stories, but I had never seen one.
“Yes, but they haven’t been heard of in this part of the empire in many winters, not since your father went to war. You were just a little boy then, and Betta wasn’t born yet.”
“Will there be more of them then?”
“Not tonight. Kaarum hunt in packs, or alone, didn’t your father teach you that?” I remembered he had, but I knew better than to say anything. “Now get some rest. Tomorrow Master Wilder is coming, and I think we should go into Dunston with him. The village council will want to hear about this.”
Terror gripped me through the night. Even after the crickets started again and the warm summer night washed over me I felt alone and exposed. I held back the tears that night by clutching my father’s spear and fell asleep in my mother’s arms. It is right for a boy to be frightened. It is good. Nobody should live in a world where there is so much evil that children aren’t afraid of it anymore.
Copyright 2008 Kelly David Tolman
On to The Cleansing of Darnuth Keep Fantasy Novel Chapter Two
