The Dread Lords Rising by J. David Phillips

  *

  Bug ran hard through the thick carpet of snow. The thing chasing her was not far behind. Its feet thudded, keeping pace but never drawing close enough to be seen. Her pursuer was teasing her. In her heart she was terrified that it was playing a game of cat and mouse, toying with her and using her up until she was spent.

  Then it would pounce.

  Bug wanted to scream, but she knew fear encouraged some animals—so she clamped her lips shut and just ran. Whatever followed had the distinct footfall of something that moved on two feet. Which meant it could be a trall or a person. But tralls also went on four feet, didn’t they? Or maybe they didn’t. And they stank. That’s what Niam told her. But the fact that she didn’t smell anything didn’t mean it wasn’t a trall.

  Behind her the steady gait continued. A branch snapped loudly, and she forced her legs to move faster. Ahead, the forest opened up. Home was just a short run past the barns and beehives. Why hadn’t she listened to Niam?

  Bug emerged from the woods into the open where guards were stationed just up the rise in a one-room building by the barn. That’s when she screamed shrilly. The footfalls slowed and stopped, and Bug screamed again. One of the guards looked out of his shack, recognized her, waved cheerily . . . and went back into the small room where it was warm!

  Stupid guards!

  Bug kept running and didn’t stop until she got home. Then she dared to look back. Amid the trees by the forest’s edge a dark shape stood. If she hadn’t known to look for it, she might not have seen it.

  A man. Wrapped in a dark cloak with his hood pulled up concealing his face. Sweat poured down her face and rained down her back, and as the cold air leeched through the fabric of her coat, she began to shiver.

  With a massive effort of will, Bug forced herself to go inside, where her father stood cooking salted pork in a pan.

  “There she is, my Madeline,” he said cheerfully.

  Bug felt her knees weaken, and she fought back tears. If she told him that she had been followed, he might go into the woods to look for her pursuer. And if something happened to her dad, she might never be able to get over it.

  It was a man, she told herself, trying to find some kind of relief in that knowledge. It was only a man. But it didn’t help. Card wasn’t a trall, and look what he tried to do to her. Salb wasn’t a trall, either. And look what he did to Corey. Then she chided herself for trying to feel relieved because her follower might not have been a trall at all. Everyone around now knew about the things Joachim’s soldiers fought at that terrible merchant’s estate.

  Moving bodies! Eew!

  Luckily those monsters had been so slow that the only way they managed to kill someone was by taking them by surprise, but she heard that the Wizard’s Hammer warned people that some undead were able to move very quickly.

  Bug fought hard to suppress a shiver. But now, she was home. Inside. Safe. A warm, inviting voice spoke up jovially from the small stove.

  “Twelve for three days now . . . how does it feel to be a year older?” her father asked, oblivious of the fact that her insides were as wobbly as worms.

  “I’m not a year older,” she managed to make herself say. “I’m only three days older.”

  “Oh! You’ll have to excuse me. I can only count so high considering I have only four fingers on my counting hand.”

  “Oh dad,” she said. An old joke. He had been telling her that one since he had lost a finger when a blacksmith’s anvil fell on it. “I, um, need to go put my dolls away,” she said, and darted into her room. With the door firmly closed, she sank into her blankets and began to cry.

  Niam had warned her not to go through the woods whenever she ran errands between Joachim’s estate and Mr. Sartor’s. Ever since she knew she was about to turn twelve she had wanted to be braver—like Niam, like his friends.

  She was twelve!

  So after a month of scaring herself half to death, Bug decided to do what the boys would have done. She wanted to show herself that she could face her fear.

  Bug knew that you had to face your fears, or insult them and run like mad—not let them get to you until you were like a frightened puppy that peed on the floor at every scary sound.

  Besides, she reasoned that the trall seemed to be getting father and farther away. Now most of its attacks had been against farm animals, though people still went missing on the outskirts of the Lake Valleys. Joachim’s patrols seemed to have done some good.

  Or so her dad had said.

  When Count Joachim’s physician summoned her to deliver some of his honeyed berry cakes to Mr. Sartor and Mr. Kine earlier that day, Bug chose to use the opportunity to take the long way through the woods instead of down open roads to deliver the food.

  These trails were seldom traveled in the winter, and Bug felt better as she moved down the path because no other passing had disturbed its snowy surface. She had hoped that maybe she had been tricking herself into believing something was following her after all. Too bad the paths hadn’t been snow-covered the last time she thought she had been followed.

  To her alarm she did finally find footprints in the snow. They came from a trail never used except during the summer, because that path led to Siler’s Gorge and was extremely treacherous during the winter.

  Now, however, the snow along the path was packed down from constant wear, and at several points along the path, the footprints left the trail and branched off into the forest towards the Joachim and Sartor estates. And toward the roads and paths she walked between the two places. That’s when a cold, icy spear of fear sank itself into her. Now, with a man following her, she had her proof, and she wanted more than anything in the world to tell Niam.