Westhaven by Rowan Erlking (ebook audio reader .txt) 📖

front, with sand underneath it. Pushing the door further open, he slid in through the crack then crawled across the room toward the hearth where coals burned low.  

Raising himself up to the hearth, he peered into the coals. Then end of an iron lay hot inside.

Finally with time to think, the boy looked to his arm. Pain seared where he had been shot. Prodding the hole where it bled, he clenched his teeth hard. He had no way to deal with that right now. So shaking his head, he thought about his leg irons instead. If this smith shop were anything like his father’s, it would have the tools to break off his chains. Looking up, he searched the walls. And where they ought to be, there were several hammers, tongs, and fire stokers. Next to them he saw the tools the smithy had forged. Among them were chisels, knives and even axes.

Climbing to his feet, he took down the heaviest axe, carrying it mostly with his left arm. Then looking around the room for the anvil, he dragged the axe with him then grabbed the work stool to set in front of it. The anvil was just a pace from the water barrel, next to the forge. Putting down the stool and resting his rear on it, he took a deep breath. He lifted his feet up, heaving the chain over the top of the anvil. He slid one leg to the side so that he could strike the chain close to that leg. He took another breath then hefted up the axe. 

Ignoring the shooting pain in his right harm, he brought the axe down onto the anvil and chain. The clang echoed as both his feet fell to the sides. Catching the axe to keep it from falling on his foot, he hoped with all his might that no one heard the noise. He peered at the dark corners just in case. Heaving another breath, he threw up the foot with the dangling chain still on it, dragging the chain across the anvil with his hand. Taking another grip of the axe handle, clenching his teeth, he heaved up the axe again.

The metal clanged. The clatter of the rest of the chain falling heralded the smithy who suddenly stomped into the shop.

“What are you doing?” the smithy shouted.

Jumping up, the weight of the leg irons no longer holding him still, the boy hopped away from the smithy, clenching the axe handle. “Just let me go!”

But the smithy approached, his large shadowy figure emerging into the light of the hearth fire. “Let you go? You are young and strong. You have a wiry body, good for survival.”

A familiar nasty smell drifted from the smithy.

The boy backed towards the fire, lifting up the axe. “Stay away!”

The smithy took another step into the light, his face now illuminated. The boy had no doubts that the pussy yellow of his face had nothing to do with the firelight. The man’s bloodshot eyes and his rancid breath were enough proof that the smithy was already dead—besides the telltale spider legs that extended up his bare arms as the demon parasite clung to his chest.

“I need a new nest,” it said.

Howling, the boy raised the axe. He brought it straight down into the spider’s back.

The inhabited man twitched, staring ahead.

The boy let go of the handle. Darting away to the wall as the man collapsed against the ground, the boy watched as spiders the size of small coins crawled out of the corpse’s ears. They immediately headed towards the boy like an army.

Jumping up to the hearth, the boy grabbed the hot iron. He dragging the flaming poker through the straw then jabbed the iron hard into the wall. Everything it touched caught fire. The wall itself, blazed from the poker.

But the spiders continued towards him, hungering for food.

Panicked, grabbing the first thing he could think of to crush them, the boy took the large hammer off the wall. He smashed the tool table, knocking it on top of the procession of spiders.

The young spiders crawled over it and their dead brothers.

The boy shoved the anvil over this time.

The surviving army climbed over that.

Pulling things off the wall and throwing them, tools, boxes, the smithing apron, he then grabbed one of the lanterns from the shelf and ripped off the metal lid. Throwing the oil over them as he retreated to the doors where outside the storm still raged with the battle, he fled.

Yet they continued towards him, unstopped.

With a leap, the boy hastily jumped into the doorway of the smithy’s home. He grabbed the nearest lantern and threw it at the oncoming demon spiders. But this lamp was lit.

The fire started in the middle then rippled over the fleet of spiders like water. Then like popping corn, twitching and shrieking in the flames, the demons curled up, rolling onto their backs.

But that was not the only thing that caught fire. The walls of the house, the oily paper window, and the hanging aprons quickly ignited. All of it burned up into bright colorful plumes—and he was still inside.

Surrounded, with no way out, the boy jumped back from the flames, looking for another window to escape through. But there wasn’t one.

Yet, as he stood there, he realized he still had the large hammer he had been dragging with him. He wrapped his fingers around the handle, and ran to the back wall of the house with it—swinging hard to break a hole.

Pain shot through the wound in his arm each time he heaved upward. It grew more intense with each swing. He dropped the hammer twice before he could make any break through the wood, but he kept going at it until he had made decent hold. By then he kicked the hole in the wall apart with his heel so that he had just enough room to squeeze out the gap.

Abandoning the hammer, the boy shoved his head through the gap then his body. He dropped to the soggy ground just outside the smith’s house. Scrambling his feet, he ran, going straight into the woods. He didn’t care where he went as long as it was far from spider demons and the general. And he didn’t quit running, even when he tripped and fell or hit a tree branch. Not until his lungs threatened to give out did he stop. By then he collapsed against a tree, because he could go no further.

“What was that?” someone said. And there were footfalls.

Panting, the boy looked up at the tree branches, clutching his wounded arm. He tried to hold his breath in case he got overheard by soldiers, but he wasn’t able to. Clawing up the side of the tree to get back on his feet, he ducked low, hearing footfalls coming closer.

“I thought I saw something,” that voice said. 

“It was probably your imagination,” someone else replied. “And we’re late. Those people will be done with them before we can get there.”

“It wasn’t his imagination.”

A pair of meaty hands seized the boy. They lifted him off the ground by his neck, turning him around and shoving his back against a tree.

Howling, the boy struggled, kicking at what had grabbed him. Then his eyes met the face of his captor.

He screamed even louder.

Staring back at him were blue eyes looking out of a pale face. And worse, almost automatically, the boy could feel his strength suck out of him, pulling straight to the hands of the ghost white demon that held him.

“Ha!” His captor shouted in triumph. And he let go.

The boy fell as if he were a sack of coal. Light headed and entirely lacking energy, he collapsed.

The demon left him there without further ado, walking back to his companions. “We are on the right trail. This kid just came from battle over there. He’s the property of one of their brown-eyed’s.”

The boy used all his strength to scoot away from this demon. Like the stories he had overheard, it had blue eyes alright, but it wasn’t a Sky Child. Its stature was different—more western in build and more chiseled in his features. Also, it was as pale as death itself, including its hair, which bordered on the yellow color of wheat.

“Alright then, let’s go,” one of the other pale blue-eyeds said.

They tromped past the boy, one winking at him as it walked by.

“Don’t worry, kid. We’re not interested in humans,” the pale demon said.

“Let’s go kill Camus.” The demon that had grabbed him beckoned the others to go.

The threesome marched away through the trees.

Sitting there, the boy found it impossible that he had been left alive.

Blinking for a moment, he then wiped water off his forehead as it ran from his hair into his eyes. He then looked up. The rainstorm was not there in the forest where he was. In fact, it was perfectly dry all around him. The ground was firm.

Resting to regain his strength, his eyes turned to the north to where he could see the flat horizon. Something stirred inside him. And though he felt weak, he rose to his feet and trudged in that direction.

*

“What is the damage?” the general asked the village captain, glancing up at the clear evening sky.

His soldiers slogged through the mud, most of which was ankle deep all over the village.

The captain spat on the walkway. Speaking through clenched teeth, he growled, “We lost about fifteen men between you and myself. You are now short a captain, and we can’t find your boy.”

Gailert nodded, lowering his head. Losing his boy was inevitable. It made the old saying whenever it rains, it pours suddenly have significant meaning.

“Most of the village homes have burned down, including our military post.” The village captain then looked over at the automobiles that were sunk in the mud. “And your transportation is pretty much shot.”

“That is not good.” Gailert gzed up at the remaining buildings where the fire had not reached. The rainstorm had in fact done a decent job of dousing the flames, preventing more loss. “And what about the ghosts?”

The captain spat again. “The three unexplainable creatures have escaped—though we wounded one of them.”

Gailert punched the wall. “A captive would have been better.”

“I know,” the captain said. “I would have like to have cleared up this mysterious blue-eyed demon question myself. Are there really descendants of Cordril on this world?”

“If Camus crashed and survived,” Gailert replied with bite, “Then it is just as likely that Cordril did.[1]”

Huffing, the captain stomped to the road. “And they’re out to get us, huh?”

Nodding, Gailert leaned on the wall. “Yes. It seems so. And we need to inform the Sky Lord that the rumors are real.”

The captain nodded. “Certainly. Now that we know they were not lies.”

“General.” A corporal from the general’s caravan jogged up, holding up a heavy chain. “I found this in the smith shop where the fire started. It wasn’t lightening that started it. It was the boy.”

“The boy?” The captain rushed back, grabbing the chain to look at it.

Gailert took the chain from him. Clenching the iron, he turned to the corporal. “How far do you think he’s gone?”

Shrugging, the corporal said, “I don’t know. He’s on foot. We found the smithy with an axe in his chest and a whole heap of burned up demon spiders.”

“Could the boy be inhabited with a spider?” the captain asked.

The general shook his head. “I doubt it. He identified the one on the lieutenant. And I heard a rumor he had spotted the first one. He’s got sharp eyes. I believe that boy is running free.”

“Where do you think he will go?” the corporal asked.

His mouth pressing thin into a line, Gailert nodded to himself. “North. He’ll go back to Lake Bekir.”

“Then we go after him, right?” the corporal said.

The captain shook his head and walked away.

“In what automobile, corporal?” Gailert replied. He waved to his punctured vehicle. “We don’t have the capacity