Eggs popped and squished under the hob­nailed toe. Goo and bits of pink embryo ran onto sticks and yel­low nee­dles. Under the dark­en­ing pines, some­one cursed.

“Bug­ger it, Bertholdt, watch it. Those are deli­cious.”

The beard­ed Bertholdt lift­ed his foot, stared at a rem­nant of egg and nest stick­ing to his steel toe. “Well, Daetne, I’ve gone and stepped in deli­cious, then. Not my fault the idiot birds lay eggs on the ground.”

Daetne shook her cropped, scarred head, ducked behind a near­by log. “Keep doing that and there shan’t be enough grub for the lot of us.”

“But we do have more tree bacon,” said Strick­land. *

“Oi, no more of that shite. I’ve still got five eggs. And Daet­ne’s found plen­ty of shrooms,” said Bertholdt, frown­ing.

“Aye,” called Daetne, rais­ing a hunk of gilly mush­room. “We’ll boil ’em with the eggs and salt and have a broth.”

“That’s if Strick ever picks up enough fuel.”

“Lis­ten,” said Strick­land, clutch­ing a mea­gre bun­dle of kin­dling. “I don’t under­stand why there’s no sticks. Its a bloody for­est. They usu­al­ly have sticks.” He looked about the odd­ly-sparse hills of pine mulch. “I’ll head down the val­ley a bit, see if it’s bet­ter.”

“Bril­liant idea, mate. You do that. I’m hun­gry,” said Daetne.

Strick­land start­ed off, dis­ap­peared down the orange hill. Bertholdt watched him go. “You ever ven­ture with him before?”

Daetne shook her bald head, tugged a chunk of fun­gus from a soft log. “Nay. Thought you had.”

“If I had, would­n’t make it a repeat affair. Bit of a prick, real­ly,” said Bertholdt. “And none too bright.”

“Well, we’ve got to be a bit off in the head to do this job.”

“Sup­pose. Don’t look for­ward to this raid.”

“Me nei­ther,” said the woman, stand­ing. She brushed nee­dle-mulch off her knees. “Say, that sun’s dip­ping fast. Might as well make what fire we can. Strick­land can find his way back.”

“Aye, let’s.”

A half hour lat­er, the sun had well sunk below the treed hills. A bare scrape of moon did noth­ing to bright­en the deep-orange dark of the wood. Only a mean, wheez­ing fire of twigs and dry nee­dles lit the cut­ter’ faces. All about, the long shapes of trunks formed a sort of cage about the camp. 

“Where could he have gone?” mut­tered Bertholdt, peer­ing past the lines of trunks. Across the fire, Daetne shrugged. She leant into the smoke, busi­ly shoved more mea­gre fuel under their cookpot. “He’d bet­ter get back with some prop­er wood. This shan’t take less than a cen­tu­ry to boil, at this rate.” 

Bertholdt squint­ed into the night. Close by, an owl hoot­ed­from the canopy. Some­thing shuf­fled in the mulch.

“Oi!”

The cut­ters bright­ened up. “Bloody final­ly,” grum­bled Daetne. “Strick, you’d bet­ter have some shite to burn,” she called.

Strick­land was drag­ging some­thing. “Yes, I do,” he said. “Found a bunch of these down the hill, and they’re all quite dry.”

“Well, get it here then,” frowned Bertholdt. 

Strick­land dragged a brown, flakey mass next to the fire. He dropped it. It pro­duced a crunch and a small scat­ter­ing of dust.

“What in the good world is this?” said Daetne, scowl­ing at the thing. She nudged it with a toe.

“I’ve no idea, but it looks fair­ly burn­able.”

Bertholdt gave Strick­land a sour look. He knelt, picked at the mass. “Eesh, smells of rot.” He cracked at its mud­dy skin. “What is this, hair?”

Daetne knelt as well, pulled a dusty chunk away. “You’re sure this isn’t some­thing dead?”

There was a crunch, a puff of dust. Bertholdt tugged his hands away. “Shite, it is. Look, there’s bones.” Daetne stuck her tongue out. “What is this?” She brushed aside some flakey, red-brown dust. Abrupt­ly, she recoiled. “No, no,” she said, stand­ing, point­ing.

“That’s human teeth!”

Bertholdt’s beard­ed vis­age con­tort­ed. “Strick…” He looked up. Strick­land did­n’t react. He ignored the pair, stared into the dark between the trees. There was a soft hoo, hoo, very near.

“Strick­land,” barked Daetne, then silenced. Bertholdt did too. Between the lines of trees, low to the ground, two humon­gous yel­low eyes shone in the fire­light. A hooked beak glit­tered between, large as a plow, slight­ly agape.

Soft­ly, the thing hissed. The eyes began to rise, slow. Each cut­ter crept back, slow. Pine mulch crunched soft­ly. The eyes drift­ed clos­er, ever high­er. Its hefty, feath­ered bulk float­ed atop long, thick legs clad to the scaly knee in down. A foot, talons long as human arms, set down in the mulch. Three more fol­lowed. 

The cut­ters froze, watched the beast rise to the extent of its eleven-foot legs. From high, the beak pro­duced a tiny hoo.

“Freeze,” mur­mured Bertholdt.

For a silent half minute, they stood. Were it not for the fire, the stryge’s legs would have been mere hid­den trunks amidst many pines. 

Strick­land pro­duced a small sob. The stryge snapped to face him. Its pupils con­tract­ed. The beak gaped wide, screamed, high and aton­al. Strick­land’s eyes bulged. He dug in his heels and bolt­ed. 

Instant­ly, the stryge stepped the length of the camp. It loped off in pur­suit, shriek­ing. Its call fad­ed into the benight­ed pines.

Daetne and Bertholdt kept still. There was anoth­er scream in the pines, human. Bertholdt winced. “How about,” said bertholdt, trem­bling. “We run in the oppo­site direc­tion?”

Daetne pro­duced some sort of laugh­ing sob. “Away from the giant death-bird? That sounds like a bloody bril­liant idea.”

They ran.

The Four-legged Owl

In the Dark Ages, folk feared owls. ** These feath­ered mon­sters were said to be drinkers of blood; snatch­ers in the night who swept up good folk from for­est paths and vil­lage roads, left them days lat­er as dry and man­gled wrecks.

All knew the strange ter­ror of the owl. In day­light, such birds perched asleep, small and innocu­ous. Only in night did they grow to mon­strous size, turn their boge­ley yel­low orbs on Litoran lands. From high above, they’d take peo­ple up in long talons, spir­it them away to be devoured. Only by chance would the tak­en be dis­cov­ered, like­ly in some gul­ley. They’d be unrec­og­niz­able, half-sized lumps of cloth, bone, and hair. 

Thus, the call of the owl became a most dead­ly omen. A soli­tary hoot or a shriek at sun­set was suf­fi­cient to keep cot­tages shut all the night long and far into the morn­ing. † 

Some four hun­dred years past, folks’ reck­on­ing of the owl changed. One day, a knight-hunter of the House Oldaren emerged from the Rol­vian Wood with a strange car­cass in tow. It was a ter­ri­ble sight: A burly, feath­ered hulk, larg­er than a buf­fa­lo, with the head of an immense owl. Four legs like tree trunks con­nect­ed the thing to saber talons. 

It was, for a while, thought to be an owl killed in the night. The knight, how­ev­er, insist­ed it was­n’t: He and his men had found and killed the mon­ster dur­ing the day, as it slept in a great nest. He said it must be a sep­a­rate species.

A magi­cian was called to set­tle the mat­ter. She arranged an exper­i­ment: She and the knight would ven­ture into the Wood to find an owl. They’d trap it and keep it for obser­va­tion. If it did not trans­form into a mon­ster like the one caught, it would be declared a dis­tinct species.

A long trek and a lot of wing-flap­ping lat­er, an owl was pro­duced. They locked it up, and, after one trep­i­da­tious night under guard, it failed to trans­form into any­thing. The King of Oldaren declared owls to be good­ly birds and had the fowl freed.

Mean­while, the owly mon­ster was dubbed “stryge.” †† Its head was mount­ed in the knight’s hall. Said knight went on to mar­ry the King of Oldaren’s daugh­ter, thus becom­ing Crown Prince. Over the ensu­ing years, he lead count­less hunts into the Rol­vian Wood, killed many a mon­strous stryge. Some thir­teen gen­er­a­tions lat­er, the crest of Oldaren still dis­plays a four-legged owl.

Stryge

A stryge is an inva­sive preda­tor from the Oth­er­world, a tow­er­ing bird of prey which makes its nests in the pine hills of the Coast. Such ter­ri­ble fowl stalk the night­time trunks on inter­minable legs. They snatch up prey in long claws, fer­ry them off to fortress nests.

These nests are tru­ly enor­mous. By some mad­ness, stryges are dri­ven to col­lect and uti­lize all detri­tus in their ter­ri­to­ry. The domain of a stryge is near­ly devoid of twigs or under­brush. From this bulk of mate­r­i­al, the birds craft cave-like, domed nests. There­in, they sleep away the day, safe in a fortress of twigs.

While the stryge may dine inside its nest, and even keep impris­oned food there, it will nev­er excrete where it sleeps. Stryge drop­pings take the form of large pel­lets, quite like the scat of an owl. These are dry, com­pact things filled with any­thing the mon­ster’s hasty diges­tion finds dif­fi­cult. Stryge pel­lets are lumps of hair, sinew, and bone. If they con­tain human remains, as they so often do, they will also con­tain undi­gest­ed man-made items. ‡

While the owl was long ago declared a blame­less bird, it still shares some con­nec­tion to the awful stryge. The call of that Oth­er­world­ly avian resem­bles in all ways the hoots and screams of its Coastal cousins. For this rea­son, the cries of owls yet sum­mon the same fear they begat so many hun­dreds of years ago.

⁂