Free A Warrior's Legacy by Guy Stanton III Page B

backed away even further scooting
on his rear.
    A hand on my sword I asked in a loud
whisper, “What is it? What do you see?”
    Gavin looked like he was about to be sick,
but he managed to hold it in.
    He pointed at the water and said, “See for
yourself!”
    I stepped closer to the water and cautiously
peered down into the water. The water was crystal clear and the
piled jumble of human skeletons was clearly visible. I swallowed
and looked away from the water. This forest really must be
cursed.
    I loved forests generally, but this one had
such an oppressive menacing feel to it that I wouldn’t have thought
a thing of it if the whole forest was hacked down and turned into a
desert. I couldn’t wait to be free of the place.
    I caught a glimpse of something moving in
the forest and I wasted no time in grabbing Gavin and directing him
along a narrow ledge around the pool water to its backside. I had
noticed a cleft in the rock there earlier and into this I half
shoved Gavin and then stuffed myself into as well.
    Our heads were positioned so that we could
still see a filtered view of the pond of water through the fronds
of a fern.
    “Did you see someone?” Whispered Gavin
    “Shhhh!”
    The creatures I had seen moving in the
distance came closer and closer. There were two of them and they
were hard to look at mainly because at one time the two disfigured
creatures before us lapping water away at the pool like dogs had
been human.
    While still human in form they had a brutish
quality to their mannerisms and a feral look to their eyes that
signaled to the fact that they had more in common with an animal
than they did a man.
    They were naked and every inch of them was
scarred, as if torn by nature and each other in constant strife.
Open wounds festered and oozed puss. They were pitiful to
behold.
    These must be the people of the Eastern
Kingdom who had not died of the disease, but instead had gone mad.
One of the creatures suddenly seized a bone out of the water and
gnawed on it viciously.
    Giving a disgusted grunt the creature
through the bone back into the water. That answered that question.
Not only were these freakish looking creatures stark raving mad,
but they were also cannibalistic. Certainly not who I wanted to
shake hands with in this darkened forest.
    One of them abruptly lifted its head as if
it had heard or smelled something of interest and I feared that it
might be us. The other creature lifted its head and then they both
seemed to gurgle excitedly in their throats as if in some fit of
grotesque glee probably over their next meal.
    They ran off towards their point of interest
in an odd combination of all fours and staggering half standing. My
hand relaxed off of my sword and fell to my side.
    I turned slightly back to Gavin, “I want you
to go back and warn the men and have them come in that direction.”
I whispered pointing where the two man beasts had run off
towards.
    I started to leave in that direction, but
Gavin seized my arm, “You’re not going on after them alone are
you?”
    I nodded.
    He whispered, “You’re crazy!”
    He let go of me reluctantly. I moved off
leaving him, admitting to myself that I was undoubtedly loony for
going off alone, but it was an urge that I couldn’t deny. Something
told me to follow the creatures and see what mischief they were up
to.
    I left my sword sheathed and instead pulled
the composite bow from my back and notched an arrow into it. My
skills of stealth in the forest had always been good, but my time
spent fighting alongside of the Attorgrons had honed my skills even
further.
    The creatures had moved fast and so did I. I
quickly slipped through the forest ready to nail anything that
moved, with an arrow. The creatures had a sickly rotten smell to
them and it was this that I paid the closest attention for as I was
sure that as the feral animals these people had become they were
probably extremely adept at blending in with their
surroundings.
    I’d gone quite a