Forest Kingdom Trilogy 1 - Blue Moon Rising

lanterns wouldn't last the journey. He tried to figure out how much oil there was left for the lamps, and then bit his lip when he remembered he'd used most of it to burn the creature from the Coppertown pit. He swore softly, and checked the candle in his own lantern. Less than an inch of stub remained; half an hour, at most. Rupert frowned.
    Perhaps that was the demons' plan — wait until the company loses its light, and then attack under cover of the darkness. Rupert called for the men to stop and rest, and moved over to join the Champion.
    'I really don't think it's wise to stop, Sire,' said the Champion quietly.
    'We're using too much light,' said Rupert shortly. 'Either we cut back now, or we'll finish our journey in darkness.'
    The Champion nodded thoughtfully. 'I'll order the lamps doused. The lanterns can give us what light we need. When they're exhausted we'll switch back to the lamps.' He looked at Rupert warningly. 'The men won't like it, Sire.'
    'They'll like the dark less,' said Rupert. 'Anything's better than the dark.'
    The Champion looked into Rupert's haunted eyes, and looked away. 'I'll give the order, Sire.'
    He turned away and moved quietly among the guards, and one by one the lamps went out, and the darkness pressed close around the shrinking pool of light. Several of the men stirred restlessly, and a few glanced angrily at Rupert, but nobody said anything. Rupert was too tired and too worried to give a damn. After a while, the Champion came back to stand beside him.
    'We have a problem, Sire. We've lost seven men since we entered the Darkwood.'
    For a moment Rupert just looked at him, not understanding, and then his blood went cold, rushing through him like a chill wind. 'Seven? Are you sure?'
    The Champion nodded grimly. 'There's no trace of the men, their horses or their equipment, no sign to show they were ever with us. They were taken quietly, one at a time, and nobody heard or saw a thing.'
    Rupert swore harshly, and kicked at the dusty ground. If the demons had found them already . . . 'From now on the men work in pairs, one cuts trail while the other guards his back. There can't be more than a handful of demons out there, or they'd have attacked us openly by now. It'll take them time to summon more. If we can move fast enough, we might get out of here alive yet.'
    'With no sky or stars to guide us, we can't be sure we're cutting a straight path,' said the Champion slowly. 'Press ahead too quickly, and we could end up travelling in circles.'
    Rupert looked back the way they'd come. The sparse light showed only a few feet of the trail they'd cut.
    He shrugged angrily. 'Sir Champion, the way we're spread out we'd soon notice a bad curve in the trail, and we're not going to be in the Darkwood long enough for a subtle curve to make much difference.'
    And so the company moved on into the long night. The dark pressed close around them, muffling all sound and dimming the light they moved in. One by one the candle stubs in the lanterns guttered and went out, and were replaced by oil lamps, and still the company cut their way through the decaying trees, with
    never a sign to show they were any nearer to the Darkwood's far boundary. They lost no more men to the dark, but still Rupert could feel the pressure of watching eyes on his back. The scars on his face throbbed with remembered pain, and only his pride kept him from peering constantly into the darkness.
    His lantern guttered, and he scrabbled in his backpack for an oil lamp. And then everything hit them at once.
    The earth boiled and writhed beneath the company's feet as dozens of corpse-white arms thrust up out of the ground and snatched at the guardsmen's legs, pulling them down to what lay waiting in the burrows under the earth. Long sticky strands of blood-red gossamer uncoiled from high in the rotting trees and lashed down to wrap themselves around the bewildered guards, dragging them with a horrid ease back up into the far branches of the trees, where the lamplight couldn't reach. Blood ran down the tree trunks, and the guards' screams carried clearly on the still air until they were sharply cut off. Small scurrying creatures poured out of the darkness in their hundreds and swarmed all over the screaming horses, eating them alive.
    Rupert and the Champion stood back to back, killing anything that came within reach of their weapons.
    Out of the corner of his eyes, Rupert could see the unicorn rearing up again and again, shaking off the