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Last week we announced that Kevin Hardman’s Warden (Book 1: Wendigo Fever) is our Kids Corner Book of the Week and the sponsor of our student reviews and of thousands of great bargains in the Kids Book category:
Now we’re back to offer a free Kids Corner excerpt, and if you aren’t among those who have downloaded this one already, you’re in for a treat!
Warden (Book 1: Wendigo Fever)
by Kevin Hardman
Now Errol must do the impossible and not only escape from the monster (something no one has ever done before), but also avoid the unearthly legacy it leaves on all its victims – a terrifying curse known as Wendigo Fever.
And here, for your reading pleasure, is our free excerpt:
Chapter 1
For the millionth time in his sixteen years of life, Errol Magnus decided that being a Warden had to be the absolute worst job on the planet. How could a single occupation simultaneously be the most boring, abominably stupid, and extraordinarily dangerous profession imaginable? And yet, here he was, staying absolutely still for what must have been hours (boring!), while hiding in a giant dung heap (stupid!) from a raging manticore (dangerous!). For a day that had started out so well, everything had gone horribly wrong in amazingly short order.
The day had begun with Errol’s older brother Tom, in atypical fashion, allowing him to sleep in an extra hour. Being the brother of the Warden essentially meant that Errol was – unofficially – a Deputy Warden (complete with uniform!), and most mornings Tom had him up with the sun. The day usually started with exercising – primarily running and calisthenics – followed by weapons training. Breakfast would come next, and then studying. Lastly, they would make their rounds for the day.
Needless to say, Errol hated the entire routine – aside from breakfast, that is. Although he came from a long line of Wardens (including his father, his father before him, and his father before him), Errol had no intention of entering the family business. Rather than spend the rest of his life patrolling some rural, backwater ward, he hoped to eventually make his way to one of the cities (which were allegedly free of the types of beasties he and Tom currently tackled on a far-too-regular basis).
On the particular morning in question, Tom’s odd behavior in giving Errol additional time to sleep should have served as an indicator that something untoward was happening. Instead, Errol had – foolishly, in retrospect – assumed his brother was starting to mellow and not take things so seriously. Other warning signs, such as Tom stating that exercise and weapons training would be skipped, were also ignored.
It wasn’t until Errol was eating breakfast that Tom sprang his trap.
“A raven came in late last night,” Tom had said nonchalantly. “A manticore was spotted out by the Devers’ farm. I want you to track it and set the ward.”
Errol, who was shoving a piece of bread into his mouth at the time, nearly choked. This was exactly the kind of thing that made him hate the whole idea of Wardens.
“Look,” Tom had gone on, before Errol could voice any objection, “I know you haven’t done it before with something like a manticore, but you should be beyond this stage now. I was setting wards for things like this with Dad back when I was twelve. You’re four years older than I was then. It’s time.”
The mention of Dad, as Tom well knew, would evoke compliance from Errol. Their father had died seven years earlier saving young Jennie Bevel from a swamp constrictus. It was sad, but not unanticipated; Wardens weren’t expected to live long lives. There was an old adage:
A Warden who dies of old age is said
To have allowed his charges to die in his stead.
In other words, if you live a long life as a Warden, you haven’t been doing your job very well as far as protecting those in your care – your wards. As if life wasn’t hard enough living this close to the Badlands.
They had left shortly after breakfast, each packing their own gear: weapons, food and water, camping items (heaven forbid, though, that they should have to spend the night outside) and more. Errol had only had time to briefly review the reference manuals on the topic of “manticores” before they left. He had wanted to take the appropriate book with him, but Tom had refused.
“You have to know this stuff,” Tom had said. “If you start taking books with you they’ll become a crutch, and you’ll never be able to do anything without them.”
Thus, the horseback ride out to the Dever farm was mostly a silent affair, with Errol trying to remember everything he could about manticores and the wards for restraining them, and Tom giving him time for reflection.
En route, they had encountered – separately – a direwolf and a gulon. In each instance, Tom had insisted that Errol ward the monsters off, which he was able to do successfully and with little effort. He had even received a rare compliment from Tom, which made Errol suspect that perhaps his brother had called the beasts in order to get Errol relaxed before having to deal with the manticore. Lots of Wardens were known for their ability to drive away monsters from the Badlands, but Tom was quite rare in having the talent to actually summon them. (Errol, however, saw little value in a skill that allowed you to beckon things that only wanted to eat you.)
Fancy Dever, the patriarch of the Dever clan, had been waiting for them when they arrived. Errol didn’t know what his given name was, but everyone called him “Fancy” because – as a young man – he had always wanted to leave the farm and move to the city (to be a “fancy city boy” as everyone said). Eventually he did leave, but came home to Stanchion Ward several years later with a greatly changed mindset. He tackled farm work with aplomb afterwards and took over when his own father died.
Fancy was a fountain of knowledge about city life, but he advised Errol (and anyone else with ideas of moving there) against it. When Errol had once asked about cities being free of creatures like those in the Badlands, Fancy had merely said, “There are monsters everywhere, even in the cities. The only difference is that the ones there tend to walk around on two legs.”
On this specific morning, Fancy had taken Errol and Tom to a corner of one of his fields and shown them a few large bloody splotches on the ground.
“My eldest boy, Cedric, saw it right here yesterday,” Fancy had explained. “Said it swallowed one of our milk cows whole and then went trotting into the woods.”
Tom had nodded sagaciously while Errol had gotten down from his horse and began removing the requisite paraphernalia from his pack. This included, among other things, his warding wand and one-hand crossbow. His dagger and throwing knife were, as always, at his left and right hip, respectively.
Properly armed (or at least as well-armed as conveniently possible), Errol had looked around for the monster’s leonine tracks and began following them into the dense undergrowth nearby that marked the edge of the forest. The Badlands. Although he would never say it aloud, Errol had hoped that Tom would follow to oversee everything. To his chagrin, Tom stayed put, talking to Fancy about something mundane, like the size of this year’s crops.
The tracks were well-formed and deeply imprinted. At a guess, Errol figured the manticore would be full grown – at least ten feet in terms of body length, and more than twice that from nose to tail. He followed the tracks as stealthily as possible, relying more on the noise of wildlife – birds, insects, and the like – to give him warning should he start closing in on the creature.
As he walked, Errol mentally went through what he knew about manticores. They were fierce creatures, with the body of a lion, the tail of a scorpion, and large leathery wings like a bat. More often than not, the face of the monster would be almost human in appearance, which was quite unsettling. He was not surprised that it had eaten Fancy’s cow whole, as manticores – with the ability to unhinge their jaws like serpents – had a reputation for swallowing prey in that manner. Moreover, like so many of these weirdling beasts, manticores also had a predilection for human flesh. The sting from its tail would inject its prey with a paralyzing venom, and then the poor victim would be eaten whole – clothes and all – leaving nothing behind. (Aside from, perhaps, some blood from when the prey was stung.)
About two hundred yards into the forest, Errol came to a clearing, in the center of which sat a small hill. The tracks led to the base of the hill, where there appeared to be the entrance to a large tunnel. Mounds of freshly churned dirt were scattered around the front of the tunnel. Of course! The manticore had dug itself a burrow.
Errol stood still and listened for a few moments. Birds in the forest canopy were chirping loudly, and other small animals on the forest floor were also making noise. He took this to mean that either the manticore was not around, or it was in the burrow and had been there long enough for the normal sounds of the forest to resume.
Deciding that it was safe for the nonce, he had circled around and crept up to the tunnel entrance from a side angle, so that anything inside would not witness his approach. Moreover, the wind was now taking his scent away from the entrance. (Manticores allegedly had terrible eyesight, but an incredible sense of smell.)
When he got close enough, he again became as still as a tree, this time listening for any sounds of life coming from within the tunnel. After a few seconds, he caught the sound of deep, rhythmic breathing. It was asleep!
Quickly, quietly, Errol began using his wand to etch an immobilization ward on the ground in front of the tunnel. Unless the creature was a proven man-killer, Tom’s standard operating procedure was to immobilize beasts like this, and then put an impulsion ward on them to make them stay away from areas inhabited by people. If they found their way back a second time, despite the impulse put upon them, then Tom would eliminate them.
Without warning, the breathing pattern inside the tunnel changed, became a sort of snorting. Errol hastily put the final touches on the ward as a low growl rumbled forth from the dark recesses of the burrow. Satisfied, he muttered the activation incantation, causing the ward to flare light blue for a second, before quickly scrambling away. He stepped back into the brush of the forest, then circled around until he was once more in view of the tunnel mouth.
As he watched, he garnered the impression of movement inside the blackened interior of the burrow. He brought up his crossbow, with the bolt pointed directly at the entrance of the tunnel. He was so high-strung that he almost pulled the trigger the second he saw something coming from the darkness into the small patch of light at the front of the hole. He sighed in relief, relaxing and letting out a breath that he didn’t know he had been holding. It was a man coming out of the tunnel. He didn’t recognize the person, but the man had wide-set eyes, a broad nose, and sideburns that ran down into a thick beard.
Errol chuckled silently to himself, thinking how morosely comical it would have been if he had plugged this guy with an arrow. He was about to step into the clearing and say so when the face – and the rest of the body attached to it – moved farther into the light. Errol froze. It was the manticore!
Somehow, he had mistaken the monster’s face for human. (However, aside from what he could now see were razor-sharp teeth and cat-like ears, it was a forgivable error.)
Errol watched in horror and fascination as the monster stepped from its lair. Because of where he had drawn the ward, the creature wouldn’t be able to avoid stepping on it – even if it knew what it was. As Errol watched, the manticore’s right forepaw came down on the symbol he’d drawn. Almost immediately, blue light blazed up from the ground.
In a perfect world, the manticore would have become frozen, immobilized by the ward’s magic. As it was, the creature uttered an unearthly howl of pain and anger as it hopped immediately to the side. Its roar had a riptide effect, causing the surrounding forest to become instantaneously silent. As if animated by the monster’s anguish, its scorpion tail whipped viciously back and forth, seeking the source of the injury, before slamming into the ground a few times with concussive force in the exact spot where the ward was drawn.
Errol knew with dread and certainty what had happened. In his haste to finish the ward, he had somehow etched the symbol incorrectly. Thus, it hadn’t immobilized the beast, only wounded it in some way. Worse, instead of having a paralyzed manticore in front of him, he had one that was wounded and angry – and therefore much more dangerous.
Slowly and inconspicuously, Errol began backing farther into the dense bush of the forest. He kept his eyes on the manticore as he did so, noticing that it favored the limb that had touched the ward. The monster gingerly tested the paw, placing it on the ground and carefully putting weight on it.
Still thankful that the monster had not yet noticed him, Errol’s good fortune came to an end when, through his slow, backwards retreat, he stepped on a dry twig. To Errol, the sound it made as it snapped was as loud as a thunderclap in the muted forest. Suddenly, the monster’s ears perked up. It roared again, looking around as it did so – an obvious attempt to make any nearby prey flee.
It looked in Errol’s direction – directly at him – and roared again, a sound full of ferocity and bloodthirst. It was all Errol could do not to run, but he remembered the creature’s poor vision and knew that it couldn’t see him. He merely had to be patient and wait it out. Then his luck took a final turn for the worse.
The wind subtly changed directions, and Errol now found himself upwind of the manticore. The creature had opened its mouth, presumably preparing to roar again, when it suddenly sniffed the air. It sniffed again, then looked towards Errol once more. This time, he had no doubt that it knew where he was.
The beast’s brow furrowed and it bared its teeth as a low rumbling growl came from its throat. Errol saw the muscles and tendons in its legs tense as it squatted slightly before taking a powerful leap into the air. Spreading its wings, the monster was able to cover a tremendous amount of distance and was coming straight at Errol.
On his part, Errol almost soiled his pants as he suddenly had a vision of himself getting stung by that scorpion tail, and then gobbled up whole for supper. Raising his crossbow, he fired – almost out of instinct. After years of training, he was proficient enough that he should have been able to put a bolt through the manticore’s eye. As it was, the shot went wide right. The creature was about halfway to him when his legs seemed to develop a mind of their own, and a few seconds later he was running helter-skelter through the forest as fast as he could go. Behind him, crashing through the underbrush with predatory snarls, came the manticore.
Errol knew the monster was close behind him, and he fought every instinct to avoid glancing back. To do so would probably cost him precious seconds, and he would need every advantage if he was to survive this encounter.
Thankfully, the density of the trees and shrubs in the woods meant that the monster couldn’t use its wings. However, it was still fairly fleet on the ground, and could clear a lot of shrubbery with its leaping ability. Moreover, it had his scent, so there was little chance of shaking it off.
All of this flashed through Errol’s brain as he ran, literally, for his life. Because of his training, he had great stamina – he could run for miles at a stretch – but he didn’t kid himself; there was no way that he could outrun this monster. Soon, he would start to tire, slow down. Latching on to the thought unintentionally, he suddenly felt as though the manticore was right on his heels, hot breath blowing on his neck as that tail poised to strike…
Ahead of him, he saw two large boulders in close proximity to each other – maybe two feet apart. He ran for the gap between them. As he got nearer, he realized that the space between them was smaller than he thought. Nevertheless, he leaped between them, turning his body to the side as he went through and clearing the gap with barely an inch to spare on either side.
Errol hit the ground and rolled as a thunderous impact sounded behind him. He came up and glanced back. The manticore had indeed been right behind him, but had been too large to fit between the gap in the boulders. In fact, it had practically wedged itself between them. It clawed the ground ferociously, growling in frustration. For good measure, the creature’s tail stabbed one of the boulders – which all of a sudden let out a blaring screech of its own and began to move. In blatant alarm, Errol suddenly realized these weren’t boulders that he had squeezed through; they were trundlers!
Trundlers were creatures that seemed to be a cross between a giant pig and a mutated elephant. They grew to be the size of a small house, and – while mainly herbivorous – they were known to eat just about anything (including dirt and rocks) and would consume and void their own body weight in food several times per day.
Errol had been running so hard and so fast that he hadn’t even noticed the smell. Neither had the manticore, which suddenly began squinting almost spasmodically and scratching its nose with a paw, as if there were some irritant inside that it couldn’t get out.
Although still in mortal danger, Errol grinned and began looking around. There! A fragrant (to put it nicely) mound of manure half again as tall as he was and six times as big around. He spared a glance back at the manticore – it still appeared disconcerted by both the trundlers and the smell of their bodily wastes – then raced for the dung pile.
Errol didn’t hesitate; he dove in, turned back around, and then crouched. The disturbed mound of manure, still soft and fresh, shifted and dung cascaded down around Errol, effectively covering him.
***********************************
It was this position that Errol now found himself in as he reflected, once more, on how insane a person must be to want to be a Warden. His concentration, however, was constantly broken by the smell surrounding him, which was intense. Little wonder, then, that the manticore had seemingly lost his scent. Small slivers of light came through tiny gaps in the mound, and the darkening of these – by a body blocking the light, as well as the occasional growl – let him know when the manticore was right outside.
Thus, it seemed to Errol that hours had passed. He didn’t know how patient manticores were, but he wasn’t going to suffer through the indignity of becoming a human turd just to end up in some monster’s gullet. He would stay there as long as he had to.
However, if he didn’t end up a meal, it seemed just as likely that he would suffocate. The trundler stench was almost unbearable. Errol had tried breathing through his mouth, but that had made it feel as though he were eating the dung (a thought which nearly made him gag) rather than just hiding in it.
Just when he thought he couldn’t take it anymore, the chuckling voice of his brother said, “It’s okay, Errol; you can come out now. I’ve taken care of the manticore.”
Errol was just about to move when it suddenly occurred to him that it may not be Tom. The manticore had a human face; could it mimic human voices? Certain monsters in the Badlands could. He decided to stay still.
“Come on,” the voice said. “I don’t plan to be out here all day. Let’s go.”
When Errol still didn’t move, the voice continued. “Look, I followed your tracks right to this mound and they disappear. If I were the manticore – which can’t copy human voices, by the way – and I knew you were in there, I’d just dig you out. Now come on. The quicker you step out, the quicker you can get cleaned up.”
Still wary, Errol stayed put.
“Alright,” said the voice, “you’re making me pull out the big gun. When you were seven years old, Dad and I left you alone to take a bath for a few minutes. You thought we’d be gone for a while, and when we came back you were-”
“Okay!” Errol screamed, bursting from the dung heap like some hellish babe being born. “That’s enough!”
Tom took one look at his younger brother and broke out into a fit of laughter. As did Fancy Dever, who was with him. Errol ignored them both and, looking around and at the sun to get his bearings, began walking in the direction of the Dever farm.
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