The Beast of Maug Maurai, Part One: The Culling by Roberto Calas Page A

mantic.” He glanced up, saw their
confusion and sighed. “An apprentice.” Grae closed his eyes and rubbed at his
forehead. Beldrun Shanks gave a short bark of a laugh. Meedryk cleared his
throat: “I’ll be tested in another four months.”
    Grae rubbed at the corner of his eye.
“You’re not even a mage. Can you cast?”
    “Yes.” Meedryk smiled nervously. His
expression somewhere between nervous humor and a restrained indignation.
    “Yes, what?” asked Hammer.
    “Yes … yes I can cast,” replied the
mage.
    This wasn’t what Hammer had been
after and he leaned in, but Grae intervened. “I’m a brig. You’ll address me as
such,” he said. “We’ll discuss your merits later. Lace up your jacket, you look
a shamble. And hurry it up. We have one more stop to make in Tyftin.” Grae
turned and caught sight of the old man again, looked at Meedryk. “Do we need to
talk to him?”
    “He’s sleeping.” Meedryk almost
shouted it, his voice shrill. “That’s why I didn’t check on him, brig sir.
Because he’s asleep.”
    “Easy boy,” said Hammer. “Do we need
to sign you out or something?”
    “No, hammer,” said Meedryk. “He’s not
my master. I actually haven’t spoken to him, sir. He … he hasn’t moved much.”
    Grae ‘s eyes fell on the old man
again. “Hammer.”
    “Aye sir?”
    “Does he look a little pale to you?”
    Hammer squinted, then clopped over to
the desk. “Hey, you there. Old man.” He tapped him on the shoulder. Finally he
grasped a handful of the man’s hair and lifted his head off the desk. He
glanced at the face and let out a humph.
    “How’s that for supper?” said Hammer,
still holding the man’s hair. “He’s dead.” He let the head drop heavily onto
the book and walked back to the squad.
    “Poor man,” said Grae. “Let’s get
moving. We’ve still got a long day ahead of us.”
    Sage and Beldrun Shanks moved toward
the door of the guild. Meedryk stood in shocked silence, the guilt rising like
tears. When only Grae, Hammer and Meedryk were left, the apprentice spoke.
“What … what about him?” he asked. “We shouldn’t just leave him here like that,
should we, hammer?”
    “Why not?” said Hammer, ushering the
mantic out. “Someone’ll find ‘im.” 
    Meedryk cast one last look at the old
man and wondered exactly what sort of squad he had joined.
     
    Their last five soldiers waited at a
tavern called Swift Waters . When they reached the tavern the stableman
took Hammer’s horse, then reached for Grae’s mare. She stamped nervously and
leaned away from the man.
    “There’s a girl,” said Grae. He
clicked his tongue and rubbed at her neck. The stableman stroked her nose as he
took her. He swept his gaze across her with the canniness of an accomplished
horseman.
    “What a fine ‘orse she must ‘ave
been,” he said.
    “Still is,” Grae replied. He massaged
her flank, seeing her now as the guardsman had. Noting the old scars, the
dullness of the eyes. She’d gained most of her weight again, but her coat had
never come back properly. It was flat and spare.
    “Was she wounded?” asked the
guardsman.
    “She’s from Gracidmar,” he said. “One
of their officers got caught on the wrong side of a skirmish line. Someone
thought it’d be funny to draw him with his own horse.”
    They had secured her to the tension
chains, had forced her to pull her master to pieces as they interrogated him.
After that, they simply left her there, a replacement for the worn out cob that
had done the job for years.
    “They don’t know about horses like
this in Tenyth,” said Grae. “They didn’t treat her right.”
    The mare had spent two years doing
nothing but pulling people apart. They rarely turned her out. Fed her only
enough to keep her from dying. Whipped her until she didn’t care about whips
anymore.
    When Grae saw her for the first time,
he could count every one of her ribs, could distinguish every swell and lump in
those bones. He