Dunmoor Harbour
All was quiet as the ship entered the harbour. It seemed almost deserted. A mist had settled over the planks, which were beginning to rot, and the old watchtower creaked in the mournful wind. They had chosen the minor port because it was unlikely to attract much attention. It was the port used for banishment ceremonies, so it rarely had normal traffic – it wasn't a good fishing spot, there were security restrictions on who could visit it and it was too small to be a useful place for trade – but it had more guards than the larger ports. Lars had expected to at least see the stagecoach service to the nearest town, maybe a small crowd of locals gathered to see if Terian was going to banish anybody today. Even during the war, there had been something happening; Ishmeria was too small a place for any region to be completely deserted. As he alighted from the ship, he couldn't help but glance around him nervously. There was a sense of wrongness in the air. His danger senses were terrible at warning him in time, so he didn't want to rely on them, but it would be foolish to ignore the feeling altogether.
"Do you think they know we're here?" whispered Garth. Lars put a finger to his lips and they walked silently down the dusty road, away from the forgotten harbour and the still, silent promenade. Gweyn and Erin's crew were busy mooring the boat, so Lars had volunteered to lead a scouting party, mostly to give Ander something to do that was somewhere else.
Half a mile down the road, where the jagged cliffs began to give way to Lyle Country's harsh moorland, Lars discovered the tiny wooden depot where the stagecoach made its terminus. It was boarded up and, from the state of disrepair it was in, hadn't been open for a very long time. He shook his head.
Then he heard cries of alarm from back in the direction of the boat, followed by Erik's furiously bellowed battle-cry and the ring of steel as his twin axes found their first victim. Unsheathing his own sword, Lars ran back down the path. He jumped onto a boulder and used the vantage point to watch the battle; Erik was furiously laying into a figure in plate mail and a blue tabard. While he was nowhere near Erik's ursine build, the other man had an air of tireless confidence about him as he parried every blow swung at him with almost mechanical efficiency. He wasn't even backing down; in fact, as he riposted with broad strokes of his own longsword, he seemed to be driving Erik back.
"That's Griff!" whispered Ander. Lars recognised him as well, now; the blue tabard with the black emblem of the Lankshire crown above a spiked, closed gate and crossed keys. He had heard tales of the man's prowess in battle but, watching him stand up to a berserk Erik without breaking a sweat, he realised that none of the stories were exaggerated. He was almost glad he had never gotten the opportunity to fight the man before Terian got between them and halted Lars' advance permanently. Except that they were going to have to fight him now. Before he was promoted to Eselred's elite, he had been one of Ishmeria's most merciless border guards. Robyn knew they were coming after all.
Suddenly, Erik's left arm slipped for a moment, an error caused by exhaustion or lack of concentration, and Griff sprang at him, his sword cleaving in a wide arc that would have taken off the man's head if a crossbow bolt from Leander hadn't struck him through the chest at that moment, hurling him back. He rolled through the dust and landed back on his feet, already posed to meet Gweyn and Erin as they rushed him. They all moved to surround him; they were through being chivalrous. Honour was impossible to maintain when you were breaking the curfew on your exile.
"Is he even human?" whispered Garth, "That's clearly gone through his armour! He must be badly wounded! He doesn't even look shaken!"
As if in answer to his question, Gweyn screamed and jumped back again, stamping her feet and hacking at something on the ground. Lars saw it as well; twisted, spindly shapes poking their way through the grimy sand. Bones. The skeletal remains of the dead were clawing their way out of their graves! So that's what happened to all the guards. Lars felt slightly sick, and not just because of the sudden stench of decay.
He ran back down the path to aid the others but they were already retreating towards him. More skeletons rose with each second until they outnumbered the small band of exiles. Griff was more dangerous than all of them combined and he wasn't alive either; Erik and Leander, keeping him occupied while Erin and Gweyn held off the skeletons so they could retreat, had dealt him at least five mortal wounds, none of which slowed his advance.
"This way!" Lars waved his arms at them as he ran across the moors, away from the cursed beach. He kept on running until he could no longer hear the clatter of bones or the thud of Griff's armoured footsteps, until the panic all around him died down. Blood pounded in his head and his every muscle ached but he thanked whatever deities remained in Ishmeria that he was unharmed. He fell to the ground, gasping for breath. His vision was a blur; he could only just make out that the sand had been replaced with green, that he was out of danger. For now.
"Is everyone okay?" he asked.
"I'm fine but Erik took a few wounds," said Gweyn.
"I'll live," Erik growled, uncomfortable with anyone exposing his weaknesses to his rival, "Where are we?"
"Looks like Petaria," said Erin, "We've gone a bit off track. We're not far, though."
"What the bloody hell has gone wrong with Ishmeria? The walking dead? And look at the sky!" yelled Leander, pointing upwards, "Look at it! Full of bloody Gargoyles! No wonder nobody's outside!"
Lars stared up at the sky. It would have been clear and blue, if it hadn't been for the black shapes that dotted the view like ink blots on what should have been an idyllic portrait of the Ishmerian countryside. None of them were bird-shaped. Birds didn't get that large, even birds of prey, although these shapes also prowled the sky as if lying in wait for the kill. He had seen Gargoyles before, of course. Small, manageable units that could be ordered to fly over enemy walls and drop soldiers screaming from the battlements. This was no organised regiment; neither were they few in number.
One of the shadows, high on the mountain peak, was far too large to even be a Gargoyle.
"Head to the forest! We'll be out of their reach!" cried Loryn.
"God only knows what's in the forests!" exclaimed Leander.
"At least there'll still be elves! Elves know how to deal with this sort of thing!" Loryn assured him.
"If you say so…" Leander muttered, clearly unconvinced.
"We mustn't lose sight of our original goal!" said Lars.
"Lars, that's not the way to the Forest!"
"Sorry… lost my way… it doesn't look right…" he muttered to himself, scratching his head. He ran after Loryn but scanned the horizon for familiar landmarks, just so he could try and make sense of what he was seeing. Ishmeria was still the same country; yet he felt as though he had crossed into some fairy kingdom, or a layer of Hell. It was as though Ishmeria itself had snapped under the strain of the insanity all around it, so that reality was warped to fit the madness. He looked over at Eadric, wondering if the young man still thought Adryl's words were a fairy tale. His companion seemed more troubled by something else entirely.
"Where's Garth?" demanded Eadric suddenly.
"He's gone?" Lars darted around. The old man had been running alongside him, until… until when? He didn't remember the last time he had seen Garth. Time was as muddled as space.
"I thought he was with you!" called Eadric.
"He was!"
"GARTH, YOU MORON! COME HERE!" roared Gweyn. The only answer was the screech of a gargoyle, like stone walls creaking under extremes of weather. They became quiet then, realising that making a loud noise might be a bad idea.
"We can't let him get separated," whispered Eadric, "We all die if we're split up."
"We stop and search, then. He can't have gone far," said Lars, "But if the Undead come, or if we don't find him in an hour or so, we keep on running. If Norwood is truly safe, we must reach its borders by nightfall. Evil grows stronger by night, and if he has been alone for that long, we will not find him again."
