The tent flaps opened letting in unwelcomed frigid air. General Mikel turned to the soldier who opened them. "Sir, our scouts have returned." said the soldier. One man followed the soldier into the tent.
"Close those flaps will you?" commanded Mikel. "Now, your report Marshal Erik." The soldier exited the tent, closing the flaps behind him and leaving the scout behind.
"Sir, we've spotted the beast a couple miles or so north and a bit east of here."
Erik approached the map laid out on the large table in the centre of the tent and began looking over it, searching for known landmarks.
"We are here, Erik." said Mikel as he pointed to a landmark on the map, simply labelled 'camp'."Our guest has outdone herself, what do you think?"
Erik looked closer, rubbing his scruffy beard, his expression turned to one of astonishment.
"Ah, yes!" exclaimed Erik, pointing to another landmark slightly north of camp. "I recognise these cliffs… though I thought they were further north than here." Erik looked up at Mikel, expecting a response. Mikel, in turn, looked at Evelyn. There was a slight pause before Evelyn realised they wanted an explanation.
"Ah, sorry general, Marshal Erik was it?" she replied, voice shaking from the cold. "A few days ago, when General Mikel's men kindly escorted me to those cliffs, I realised that we were walking up a slight incline, one you cannot measure without the right equipment." Erik looked at her, surprised. She continued, "I apologise again for travelling there on foot but it's easier to get a rough idea of how far it is when I'm walking on my own two feet rather than horseback."
"You can measure distances by counting steps? Wow lass, that's amazing. Gee, I would lose count after a hundred."
The winter's air masked her embarrassment at the compliment, almost everyone was sporting rosy cheeks.
"Oh, it's nothing so precise. Once I'm walking in a rhythm, it's easy to keep a rough count of how many hundreds of steps I've taken. I counted approximately fifty eight hundred steps to those cliffs, just shy of three miles on flat ground but on that incline, it's closer to two and a half."
"Quite something, isn't it?" said Mikel, gesturing to the map. "Now Erik, whereabouts do you think that blasted monster is?" Erik again stroked his scruffy beard looking at the map.
"If those cliffs are here then I believe it was spotted around here." Erik pointed at an empty spot one mile east of the cliffs.
"Great, let's have a look around." said Mikel, looking up at Evelyn and Erik with a big smile on his face, emphasising the wrinkles on his aged face. She was caught off guard by his sudden change in expression. Is he enjoying this? Evelyn had heard stories of the famed general, a leader who still revelled in the thrill of battle despite his advanced age. She suspected she was going to witness this more manic side to him in the coming days. Up until now, she had been discussing business with the official representative of the Rafathod on charting the Galken Wood but now, an entirely different man had surfaced. A uniter, general, warrior… hunter.
Mikel exited the tent, not waiting for anyone else, and began barking orders at his men. Evelyn folowed to observe. The snow, broken up by hundreds of footsteps in the camp, scattered the ground. The air was cold and still but the general's men were anything but that. Weapons were being sharpened, soldiers were in drill formations and horses were being tended to. A few dozen or so men had lined up in formation in front of Mikel. Every soldier she had come across had sported a scruffy beard much like Mikel's and Erik's and these men were no exception. She pushed up her scarf hoping to mimic them but she found it wasn't quite enough to keep her lips from cracking.
"Remember your positions and expect there to be an extra hour of waiting after you hear the signal." shouted Mikel, "For the hunt!" All his men grunted in unison and began marching in different directions, some to the horses and some to the armoury. Mikel turned back and approached Evelyn.
"Come take a look at what my soldiers have made, lass." He gestured to the west end of the camp. The sound of woodwork dominated the air. Dozens of men were moving the trunks of the colossal trees in this forest, rolling them on smaller logs. It still astonished Evelyn that the tree trunks were often over an armspan in width let alone the fact that these men were chopping them down and cutting them. An entire country could be built on this timber alone.
They approached a handful of men mounting a makeshift wooden bridge to a few horse carts, the length of which was at least fifteen metres long from end to end. She could hear the wood creak with every adjustment.
"What do you think?" he asked.
Evelyn looked at him then back to the bridge and pondered momentarily. "It looks like all the other bridges we've used to cross some of the chasms, only…" she paused, "it's nowhere near as fortified as the others. Can a man on horseback even cross this without falling?"
Mikel grinned. "Perhaps but you know what definitely can't?" He laughed as the realisation set in. He gestured back toward her tent. Evelyn looked back on this month-long expedition, much of the terrain was bafflingly uneven despite being relatively dry. There were little to no rivers or streams yet they came upon the occasional crack in the ground. Often there were ways around but some of these chasms seemed impossibly long and were up to ten metres deep. The snow devilishly masked their depth and many men and horses were injured falling into deeper depths than they had expected. Evelyn had insisted on marking every chasm they had come across. Though they were scarcely twenty miles deep into the Galken Wood, they had marked at least that many chasms on the way and they only became more common the further in they ventured.
"I recall there being a particularly wide crack southeast of here," said Mikel, pointing to a general area on the map down and to the right of camp.
"Yes, I remember, it was approximately one hundred and ten degrees southeast of here. I don't recall exactly how far but probably no more than two miles," Evelyn pointed to a specific point on the map near where Mikel had indicated. "It's quite a distance, do you intend to lure it that far?"
Mikel frowned. "We have no choice, this monster is not something we can face directly."
After about twelve miles into the forest, everything they had encountered had been freakishly large, the most troubling being wolves almost as large as horses. The soldiers employed strategies similar to the ones used to defend against cavalry charges, wooden stakes as fortifications and very long spears to keep them at bay while archers rained hell upon them. Most men that found themselves within arms reach were killed, crippled or amputated. Though Evelyn had never seen these wolves alive, she saw their corpses being carted back along with ten times as many corpses of men each encounter and just as many injured.
"No matter how many men we throw at it, we simply do not have the raw strength to push it back. Which is why we must trap it, even just to restrict its movement for a moment. Can you make a copy of this map to take with us? We should be ready to set off in a couple hours."
"Of course. I'll have a rough one done by then." She nodded.
Mikel again showed that slightly manic grin and left her to her devices, shouting more orders as he left the tent. She peeled the map off revealing a second large sheet of paper, identical in size and placed the map next to this sheet. The second sheet had many of the indents from the map and some of the ink had soaked through the paper leaving incomplete outlines of all the nearby features. Why draw an entire map twice when you can draw two at once? Her father's words rang in her mind. She had insisted that no one touch her maps without permission and thankfully, Mikel is blessed with extremely loyal men who respected her wishes.
Evelyn exited the tent, donning a fur cap, to find Mikel and his men waiting, many of them mounted on horseback. Mikel himself stood by two unmounted horses and offered one to her as she approached. She held up a cylindrical container containing the copy of the map.
Mikel smiled and said, "Perfect, you'll lead us there."
They both pulled themselves up onto their horses and only then, at this higher elevation, did Evelyn notice how many men were participating in this hunt. It must have been at least two-thirds of the garrison, over two hundred and fifty men. Mikel had led a force of five hundred men into the Galken Wood and a month later, under four hundred remained. At first, Evelyn thought this force was excessive but after seeing the numerous casualties over the last month, she understands the caution the Rafathod council exercised when allowing Mikel to organise this expedition. He knows what's best and has earned their trust. Whatever this monster was, Mikel intended to end the threat, permanently.
Mikel rode to the front of the group, Evelyn followed closely behind. Approximately one-fifth of the force was also mounted on horseback while the remaining bulk was on foot. At the rear, there were a few horsecarts filled with snow shovels, stakes, food and ammunition as well as the two wooden bridges, one of which was the purposefully structurally unsound one while the other looked like a normal one they had used to cross some of the creeks and chasms. Half the foot soldiers carried heavy-duty long bows while the other half were armed with crude pike-like stakes, made from the same lumber used to make the bridges and stakes. Though not as thick as the stakes she had seen them use for fortifications, they intended to pierce something just as thick with its sheer weight. The woodworkers must have sawn the stakes into quarters because the sharp points were not centred at the ends of the pikes.
"Attention!" shouted Mikel. The murmurs quickly stopped. "We will march half-step!" He paused briefly, "Onward!"
The sound of footsteps dominated the air, followed by the creaking of the wooden carriages as the horses heaved them into motion. Each cart required four horses to pull. Mikel led the march at a very slow canter. Evelyn had to reign her horse in as she almost overtook him trotting at speeds she was used to.
"Sorry lass, it will take us a lot longer to move everything over to the chasm. Enjoy the afternoon sunlight while you can."
She turned about on top of her horse to face southwest where she thought the sun would be but she could not see it through the forest's canopy. Snow still fell this time of year, not nearly as heavily as when they had started the expedition but even so, the giant trees still carried snow on their leaves blocking most of the sunlight if any could peek through the clouds.
What would have been an hour's ride in uneven terrain and thick snow turned into a whole ordeal. Between the horsecarts, the longbows and the stake pikes, the bulk of the forces were already marching at a snail's pace and to top it off, they paused at least twice an hour to give the men some rest. Evelyn used this time to lead a scouting team, often on foot, to get a feel for the terrain and to find wide enough pathways for the carriages to fit. Some of the scouting team had brought snow shovels to clear the thicker snow. Only after clearing the way could they resume the march. What a cruel joke, commander. Evelyn thought. She scarcely had the time to bask in what little sunlight had found its way through the canopy and before long, night had come turning the cold from something she tolerated to something she dreaded. She tried not to sit still, thinking she would freeze to death if she did. She estimated it was only around 4 pm. At this time of year, the nights were long and a majority of the travel was done in the fewer hours of daylight they had. To top it off, the nights in the Galken Wood were eerily dark and almost impossible to navigate in. The canopy covered what few stars peeked through the clouds. Even then, that didn't explain the darkness. This slowed their progress even further, torchlight could only see so much of the terrain and reading and annotating her map became more and more tedious.
It had been six gruelling hours since the darkness set in and only now had she felt a wave of relief as she recognised some of the nearby trees' positions. They were close.
"Halt!" she shouted. The men begrudgingly gathered around her. She could tell they were on edge. They had been walking back and forth at slower and slower paces, shovelling snow and taking orders from a stranger. Before this night, Evelyn had only advised Mikel and some of his lieutenants on which directions to go. They had never scouted in darkness before and for a force so large.
"What is it now?" asked Ruben, one of Mikel's lieutenants that she had worked with before.
She looked down, "Sorry, I don't mean to be a bother." She stared at her map. This was a critical moment.
After a short pause, Ruben sighed, loudly. "It's ok, lass," he assured, "We do not like this as much as you, so let's get this over with. What are your orders?"
Evelyn met his eyes, "We are close." The men turned to each other and cheered, some with relieved faces. "Travel in pairs, one in front of the other, single file. If one of you steps into the chasm, it's up to the other to catch you. You're with me, Ruben. I'll lead. Let's spread out!" She tried to sound commanding toward the end but it sounded like she was pleading with them. They spread out in a cone, Evelyn and the other men in the front of their pairs carried the torches while Ruben and the men at the back followed closely behind, with one hand on the person in front's shoulder.
The forest was dead silent, Evelyn could only hear the crunching of the snow beneath her and Ruben. She could no longer see the other pairs of men, only the torches which looked like fireflies, tiny specs of light in the darkness. Her heart was pounding and her body shaking in the cold. Where is this bloody chasm? She thought, wishing this would just end. Each footstep was slow and deliberate. One hundred and eighty-seven, one hundred and eighty-eight, one hundred and eighty-nine. Each number counted, taking longer than the last—one hundred and ninety, one hundred and ninety-one, one hundred and ni-.
Evelyn shrieked. Her foot sank into the snow, failing to find solid ground beneath. Losing her balance, she fell forward and dropped the torch in front of her. She felt a strong tug on her left arm, halting her fall.
"I got you, lass," Ruben had overcorrected and pulled her backwards, landing on the ground behind him. "W-woah, sorry lass, you are lighter than I thought," apologised Ruben as he helped her back to her feet. The torch petered out in the wet snow and they were left in the darkness.
"Thank you, Ruben," her voice shaking. She composed herself for a moment. The silence was broken by another scream to their right.
"Everybody stop!" bellowed Ruben, "We've found the chasm."
One of the floating lights moved closer toward them and Evelyn could make out the two men carrying the torch.
"One of you two, stay near the edge, we will go back and grab some stakes to plant and attach the torches to. We must mark the boundaries of the chasm," said Evelyn. She led Ruben back toward the rest of the scouting team ordering them to carry stakes and hammers over to each torchbearing pair. "We will report back to Mikel and–"
Evelyn's voice was cut off by a howl in the distance that came from the northeast on the other side of the chasm. Shortly after, they heard another howl this time on their side of the chasm but to the southeast.
"Quick, the signal!" Ruben yelled.
One of the scouts unwrapped a longbow from around himself and another pulled out an arrow wrapped in oil-soaked cloth.
"Faster, those wolves will be on us in a few minutes!" Ruben urging the man.
He lit the arrow using the torch and the scout groaned as he struggled to draw the bowstring. He aimed back toward the way they came and released a light into the darkness.
"Another!" Ruben drew the short blade at his belt. They released an arrow into the darkness and another shortly after. While this was happening, the pairs of men abandoned their positions near the chasm's edge and began to form a ring around Evelyn and Ruben. They had all drawn their blades, frantically looking around into the darkness.
"Stakes! A few meters in front!" ordered Ruben. The scouts who had prepared the hammers and stakes ran in front of the torchbearers and plunged the stakes into the ground at a 45-degree angle facing away from the ring. Like clockwork, each scout hammered a stake into the ground in less than a minute and pulled back behind the ring, drawing their blades as well. They made a half circle of wood facing the direction of the second howl and again, silence.
Evelyn's heart was racing, her thoughts as well. Her eyes darted back and forth to catch anything in the darkness. She could not believe the sounds she heard, those howls were from no ordinary wolves. They were deeper, guttural. She could make out an underlining roar beneath the high-pitched howl. She recalled the numerous dead and injured from encounters with these wolves, only adding to an impending sense of dread. The sound of snow crunching in the distance broke the silence, Evelyn covered her mouth and held back a scream. She put her hand on her knife at her belt and drew it, hands shaking. Standing in front of her, Ruben turned to her, putting his hands on hers, steadying the shaking.
"Try to stay calm, they'll have to get through us before they get to you," whispered Ruben. Evelyn closed her eyes. Stay calm, they fired the signal, help is on the way. These men are trained. Ruben knows what he is doing. In stressful situations, Evelyn finds solace in the facts, the positives and so she continued to recite them. Help is on the way, we can't be more than a few hundred meters away. They know this way is safe so far, I'm sure they are rushing here on horseback.
A growl permeated through the darkness, they could not tell exactly which direction it came from. More growls, each one layering onto the next.
"Fire!" a sharper whisper.
Evelyn heard a loud woosh over her head as a light flew into the darkness ahead. She didn't even notice the same scout was still loading arrows. The light disappeared as the arrow buried itself in one of the nearby trees. What is that going to do? She wanted to voice the question but she knows speaking now is not a good idea.
"Again."
The scout fired another arrow, slightly more to the left of the first. This light rapidly disappeared into the darkness. After a short pause, the growling continued, sounding closer this time. Evelyn's shaking stopped and she opened her eyes again, searching the darkness. The least I can do is spot them– she thought.
This time, Evelyn heard a rumbling from behind them. She turned to see a line of floating lights in the distance rapidly approaching. Startled, she heard loud barks in front of them, gargling, chaffing to the ears but thankfully, they seemed to retreat further and further into the darkness. The scouts still held their blades forward, fixated on the darkness but as the rumbling got louder, they finally relaxed.
Mikel and two dozen other men on horseback approached.
"Is everyone alright? Is our navigator safe?" As he got within line of sight, he sighed in relief. "Spread out and clear the area, make sure none are hiding!" ordering his men. Evelyn fell to her knees, breathing heavily. Ruben leaned over and patted her on the back.
"Wait!" pointing forward, she called out, "Don't go in that direction. The chasm is there, it's dangerous." Mikel nodded and redirected his men.
"How do you… how do you do it?" Evelyn asked, still panting. Ruben kneeled next to her and breathed a sigh of relief.
"I've been in your position, a fresh recruit with no combat experience. You'd probably want to hear something like 'you get used to it' but well…" he trailed off. Evelyn looked up at Ruben. The ring of scouts was still holding in formation, as frozen as the snow they stood upon.
"For God's sake!" speaking out and standing up. All the scouts jumped in unison, finally audibly breathing. He offered her his hand and pulled her to her feet.
"This cursed wood, what is Mikel thinking?" he grumbled. Ruben looked upward into the darkness and sighed again, this time in frustration. "Sorry lass, it's not what you want to hear but this ain't nothin' like the battles we used to fight. We've never fought monsters, in the dark." Evelyn stared in disbelief but felt a sense of relief and her breathing settled down.
"You finally get to hear Running Ruben," Mikel approached the scouts again on his horse. "I thought it odd he shut his trap in front of you!" Mikel continued to jest.
"Shut it! You old fool!"
Mikel and the scouts began laughing. "Trying to look classy in front of our navigator are you?" said one of the men.
Another replied, "Ruben wouldn't know class if it struck 'im over the head!" By this point, all tension had dried up and even Ruben started laughing with them.
"Look, you got the miss smiling!" said another one of the men. Evelyn only just noticed she was as well and almost forgot where they were, in the dark blistering cold.
"Don't worry lass, he's just intimidated by your speech." Mikel jested again, patting Evelyn on the back, harder than Ruben had.
"Are you calling me an idiot?!" The men continued to laugh and Evelyn found herself joining in.