Lanterns swayed to and fro as the carriage trundled along the earthen road. Evergreens loomed large on either side. Jaegers stared warily into the uncertain dark of the woods, their weapons at the ready. Horses whinnied and snorted, anxious of the way ahead. With a tug of the reins, The merchant wrestled it back to attention.

Blacwin yawned as he marched alongside the carriage, the night growing heavier with each step. Not that he minded. Uneventful was good. It meant that he got paid for escorting this merchant without unsheathing one of his twin swords. And yet the quiet was as equally a blessing as it was worrisome. Some nocturnal animal, some bird upon the perch of a branch, should at least stir the night, for when the woods were quiet was when the beasts came out. And as such, anything could lurch within the shadowy evergreens. Perhaps an abomination with a hideously large mouth. A beast with too many heads and too many teeth, leaving his swords blunter than a rock. There was no way to know. The only certainty was the firmness of the ground, the chill in the air, and the nervous aching in his jaw.

With the snap of a felled tree, the carriage unexpectedly bucked up and came to a halt, nearly throwing the merchant off his seat. Instinctively Blacwin drew his twin swords. Scanned between the evergreens for the gleam of an evil eye, the glint of a claw.

“It’s the wheel,” said a Jaeger. “Must have struck a rock or the like.”

“Fuck!” the merchant hopped down from his seat. “Somebody come help me change the wheel, lest we wait any longer.”

Tension tautened his muscles. Jaw clenched shut as a bear trap. Blacwin breathed slowly to dampen the thump of his heart, to listen intently to the rhythms of the surrounding woods. And yet nothing disturbed this uneasy peace. Not a snap of a branch. Or the hoot of an owl. Something was certainly in the dark. He felt it deep in the marrow of his bones. As irrefutable as sunrise and sunset. The question was where.

Groan did the carriage as a couple of Jaegers lifted the bulky wooden frame, and working quickly, the merchant switched the broken wheel for a new one. Sweat greased Blacwin’s hands but he was holdfast with his grip. A man caught without a weapon was a man guaranteed to a swift end. He wished the merchant moved faster as the hammering of a mallet pounded the new wheel into place.

“Ya done yet? This bitch is fucking heavy,” groaned a Jaeger.

“It is now,” the merchant said.

With a collective grunt, the couple of Jaegers gently lowered the carriage back to the ground. Blacwin felt his shoulders sag with relief. Another moment stalled on the road would have been torture. The Jaegers took up their positions alongside the carriage once again. Blacwin was about to sheath his swords when a strange sensation stopped his hands. Had he moved it would not have been noticed, this growing quake underneath his boots. Or perhaps it was the night playing tricks on his sleep-deprived psyche.

As the merchant returned to the purchase of his carriage, dirt sprayed up as something shot from the earth. It coiled around him like a surge of serpents, drawing blood as he struggled against the barbs, like claws, sinking into flesh. Eyes bulged as a thorny root tightened around his skull as he screamed for help and grasped for the dagger in his belt.

“Help! Help! He—!” His skull burst like a ripe rotten melon. With the body slackened, struggling no more, the thorny roots dragged the dead man into the earth.

“Watch the ground!” A Jaeger grunted as his axe hacked at the thorny roots shooting up.

Each man tangled with the unnatural undulations, their steel flashed in the moonlit night. With scrambling hands, Blacwin diced the thorny roots that grasped onto his boots with his twin swords, clambered back as another shot at him like a biting snake. He glanced around. The other Jaegers were faring worse. Most were limp bodies getting pulled to early graves. Even the horses were spared no quarter as the malevolent arborous sinews snapped their necks. Only a few remained alive. Their backs were to each other, protecting a man in the centre who was hurriedly striking a flint to light a torch.

“The oil! Grab it from the carriage” The Jaeger with the axe called out to him, then pointed to something past Blacwin’s shoulders.

A hot shiver prickled his whole body. Blacwin strangled the grip around his twin swords, wringing courage from the pommels. The monstrous roots had combined into an abomination beyond imagination. The thorny roots bound their dead into a many limbed, riving beast with some of its roots flailing around like barbed whips. In the snatch of silence Blacwin could hear the quiet rattles. It reverberated from the mouths of the dead.

A terror tactic born from unnatural animations?

Do the dead possess some vestige of life?

Were they aware of its ghastly predicament?

Blacwin shook his head. He drew a long draft of air into his lungs. The carriage, the oil, was in the way of this beast. After a quick succession of breaths, he broke into a sprint. In reaction the amalgamated beast followed suit. The earth shook with each of its steps. The carriage was shaking in its wake. Even the chainmail shirt over his black gambeson sharply jingled with each jolt. Blacwin shunted the fear into the darkest corner of his mind. He focused on the metallic tang on his tongue, the taste of strength and experience he would reap from this kill. Hot breath pumped from his mouth like a blacksmith chimney on full blast. Past the cliffs of fear was righteous glory. He sheathed his twin swords and dove into the carriage.

The light was low inside, gauzy and diffused, enough to discern the outlines of shapes. The wooden boards of the carriage vibrated as the steps shook with greater magnitude. There, as though appearing in the dark: a medium-sized barrel. Blacwin snatched it into his hands, about to climb out of the carriage, when suddenly his whole world started spinning. The carriage was sent tumbling from a mighty swing. It was dizzying, painful, as his body banged against every hard and sharp surface. To protect the barrel of oil he curled his body over it. There was screaming outside. The carriage kept tumbling and tumbling until it smashed against something rustling.

Vomit lurched up into his throat, however, Blacwin swallowed the nausea down. Miscellaneous items in the dark clinked and clattered as he clawed his way out of the carriage. Outside, the moon was fully gorged. The sky was clear, cloudless. He panted for a moment on the grass, then he looked up. The carriage had rolled down the slope from the path and was stopped by a tree. Screaming persisted, shrill and loud. Holding the barrel under his arm, Blacwin scrambled up the slope.

The Jaeger with the axe was the last man standing. He swung his steel wildly, roaring as he did so in the flicker of the torch that laid near his feet. Using a dagger, Blacwin scored the oil barrel like a poppy pod. It weakened the integrity of the wood, enough so that it would smash upon impact like an egg.

“Back, beast! Back!” The man roared.

A flail of thorny roots whipped down on the Axe Jaeger, who sliced them all like decapitating the heads of many blind snakes. However, the man neglected to watch his ground, allowing barbed roots to sneakily tangle up his lower half. Trapped now in its clutches, he screamed as the amalgamated beast tore him into two. Nothing could be done.

With the amalgamated beast distracted, Blacwin seized the opportunity to run up and hurl the scored barrel at it. The wooden shell cracked, splattering oil all over the beast. The amalgamation recoiled, rasping so horribly that it composed Blacwin like a child wary of every shadow. He drew the twins. As though sensing the fight, the amalgamation livened and lurched forward, a beast eager to kill. Thorny limbs surged forward. Swift with the blade the roots were slashed as he charged at the thing, then, using the momentum he gained, slid under and past the bridge of the beast, and hastened back to a run. The left twin returned to the sheath, and the torch was picked up.

Some vestige of consciousness must still exist, for the amalgamation rattled with fear as Blacwin threw the torch. Upon making contact with it, the assemblage of bodies and roots went alit. Flesh and wood cracked and popped as the amalgamation burned. Long and gruesome. Not an inch of the beast was spared until only ash and char remained. By then, a hint of dawn slashed across the horizon.

Blacwin, battered and tired, sighed as he put away his swords. The job could have been worse, for his life could have joined the ghastly fates of his fellow Jaegers. Another yawn sounded from his lips.

Perhaps the carriage had some gold squirrelled away, and a half decent inn down the road.