Chadwick Yates and the Forest Labyrinth: The Adventures of Chadwick Yates, #2

By Bradley Verdell

“I would ask that you, whose crafts of warfare are renowned, enter the forest labyrinth, find this minotaur, and destroy it.”

A Majikal Maze.

A harrowing journey by river raft brings Yates and Sharp into a Faerie country, but they find it in crisis. A Faerie master enchanter reveals the existence of a hidden maze in the jungle that leads to the source of all majik. A Servant of Maraa now walks the forest labyrinth. The enchanter promises Yates a charmed weapon of incalculable value if the pair will destroy the brutal Servant — and learn how it came to be there. At the same time, Sharp finds a way to reveal Yates’ true plans, and for once, the ambassador cannot lie his way out of trouble.

About the Series

“Yates shouldered his shotgun and poured cartridge after cartridge of triple-aught shot into the minotaur. The monster howled and turned to face him, ruby eyes alight like coals.”

Monsters and elephant guns face off as Ambassador Chadwick Yates and Navy Commander Thurston Sharp explore the Forbidden Continent of Tanzia. The pair must adapt to the curious cultures of Gremlins, Faeries, Anurans, and others to make allies, and fight off the evil creatures that serve an ancient sorcerer.

The Adventures of Chadwick Yates is for readers who love action in exotic locales. The series blends the Lost World literary genre of Indiana Jones and King Solomon's Mines with the magic and monsters of epic fantasy.

Featuring real 19th century gadgets and a gorgeously-realized world, the series was inspired by such works as Allan Quatermain, Sherlock Holmes, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Heart of Darkness, The Most Dangerous Game, and The Lost World.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bradley Verdell
• Release date: Oct 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781533744494

Book preview

Artwork and Lore

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For a collection of illustrations, including the world map, races, firearms, potions, and majik sigils, please visit www.chadwickyates.com. The website serves as a field guide to the world of Chadwick Yates, featuring: Weapons, Equipment, Majik, Monsters, Locations, Races, Characters, Cavendian History, and more.

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Your ship awaits. Enjoy your expedition.

Foreword:  In Response to Communications from the Public

By Mr. Thurston Sharp, former commander in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy

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Out of the hundred-odd letters and telegrams I have received in the span since my first story appeared, a number in the sixties included the question of how Mr. Chadwick Yates acquired his star-steel blade and what enchantment is upon it. Readers will be delighted, therefore, that this remarkable episode in my life with Yates on the Black Continent of Tanzia comes next sequentially.  Though it occurred in the far past that forms the earliest days of my association with Yates, the connected events were so dramatic that the tale remains as vivid for me today as it was at the time.

To the writer H.J. Davenport who corresponds with the single line, Tell us of monsters! I assure you that your wants will also be satisfied.

A few newspapers have commented that my account establishes the bravery of Mr. Chadwick Yates upon the field of battle.  I will press the point by saying that I regard the destruction of the cannibal shrine as among the least of his martial achievements.  As the good reader will come to learn in this history, I was only beginning to understand the prowess as a warrior Mr. Chadwick Yates possessed.

I began this series to explain to a confused public the truth behind all the rumors shrouding my good friend, not add to the heinous gossip and uninformed conjecture dominating the wider public press.  That is to say nothing of the conversations that swirl in the streets and the parlors of our fair city since the recent crisis.  No one even knew the name of the former ambassador until those most dire of events in which he played so central a role, and now evil rumors gather round him.

It troubles me, therefore, when I forecast the effect of this story, for I have no doubt that it will lead to more slander, through the misunderstanding, scandal-seeking nature of humankind.

Let me then be plain with my gentlemen readers, who would know the truth and not pollute it with fancy:  I received some hints at the time of this current adventure that Mr. Yates might be involved in very black business indeed.  I only found out the complete truth much later, and I mean only to convey my suspicions at the time.  But so that readers do not misinterpret what I am bound to describe, I will say it now clearly:  Mr. Yates’ pact with a demon was not an exchange like I or any of the Faeries imagined, wild though our unspoken guesses might have been.

Chapter One:  The Building of a Raft

Following our stay with the Gremlins, which had the effect of guaranteeing our place among their kind, Yates decreed that we repair to the Faerie settlements in the central eastern part of the continent, for he was not a man who could be content for long.  Our success with the bat-like race had been profound, but it only made him restless to push forward to greater challenges of diplomacy and adaptation.

It was a mighty long stretch from those cold mountains to the tropics which form the heart of the Faerie provinces, but Yates, as always, had a daring and brilliant strategy to win through.

It was through his grasp of Gremlish, his tireless efforts to wade through a morass of questions and clarifications in a second language, that he secured knowledge of the facts which I will now share.

The Gremlins have a settlement on and under the Dawn Mountains on the eastern coast of Tanzia.  Gremlins traveling from there to our current location, the royal seat of the Gremlin Kingdom in the Hylus, had a weary journey indeed, by an indirect route heading north and then west in avoidance of dangerous cannibal territory.  This circuitous northbound route was comparatively safer but still haunted by roaming Servants of Maraa.

However, the journey from the Hylus in the north, where we were, down to the Dawn Mountains was not such a perilous undertaking as it was the other way round.  There existed an exceptionally faster outward route.

To explain why, I must divulge certain facts about the rivers of Tanzia. The most important to the free races is the Goln, which is the longest south-flowing river on Tanzia, so far as is known. This mighty flow has two main tributaries on the high end.  There is the White Goln, which starts on the southern slopes of the Hylu Mountains – precisely where Yates and I were at the time – and the Blue Goln.  The Blue Goln’s head lies at the majestic waterfall lagoons near the Gate of Stars, a place I cannot describe yet.

Anyhow, the White Goln becomes a decent size creek in the lower Hylus, going down through the forests in the range’s foothills past the border of the Inub Plains.  There it enters the jungles, joining with the Blue Goln before the main river enters the impenetrable, perpetually dark rain forests of the Interior. From there it meanders all the way to the sea just north of Anvil Peak in the extreme southeast – Nadhili country.  There the Goln is held in reverence equal to the sea and the sun.

The Gremlins had found that they could, in the spring, raft down the White Goln and exit before it went into the Interior. Here they could get out on the western bank and make a shortcut overland to the Gremlins of the Dawn Mountains.  This helped them not a bit with the complicated matter of getting back, for paddling up a mountain creek is inconceivable, but it did make the outbound journey convenient indeed.

As I have said, another restriction was that this southward journey from the Hylus could only be made in the thawing spring.  Only then did the melting snow swell the creeks, covering the boulders which barred the shallows the rest of the year.

As spring was coming upon us fast, Yates and I meant to take advantage of this  fortunate quirk of nature.  The Gremlin trail that left the river, we reasoned, ought to be well marked and stamped out by the many Gremlins who’d trekked it.  It should be as wide as a wagon road, making it impossible to pass by; surely we should not mistake it and raft too far downstream.

When we communicated our intentions to try this means of transport, the Gremlins further assured us that the headwaters of narrow creeks would soon be perfectly navigable, for they who tapped the mountain snows for their drinking and washing knew all there was to know about the spring snowmelt.  So Yates and I commenced to spend our last weeks with the Gremlins outside one of their lower exits constructing a suitable raft.

We had no currency with which to hire help, but tools and strong building materials were loaned to us on account of the gifts we had given and our recent services regarding the cannibal shrine.

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Building a raft is not a process to be rushed, and it is, I have much cause to say, the most finicky, maddening, and unreliable arts in all Bushcraft.  Half the time survival rafts simply fall apart after a few hundred yards on fast-flowing water. The other half of the time they slowly get waterlogged and sink.  As the lashings get slowly strained, and as soaking loosens everything terribly, the damn things stretch until all that’s left is a haphazard pile of sinking logs in the watercourse. Then the builder is made a poor castaway swimming for the banks, wet and cold enough to ring Death’s dinner bell.  I would scarcely waste time on an improvised raft for travel in ordinary circumstances.  However, we had the advantage of time and fine materials.  We had, therefore, no excuse to fail. We also had far to go and therefore much to gain.

If we get halfway down the river and it wrecks, Yates said more than once, we have only our own stupidity to blame.  We must get this perfectly right.

We went about the crafting of our vessel with extreme care, and twice we started over from scratch.  Yates swore more often than usual during this process, and a few times he became so frustrated at himself as to almost sulk.  The ambassador is many things, but a shipwright he is not. He never learned that in the Sutherbury Outback.

I was quite amused by how the task took the conceit out of him, and eventually in his frustration he turned to me saying, All right, Mr. Royal Navy, you design the damn thing this time.  Just tell me what to do, and I shall obey.  Design us a man-o’-war, if you like, so long as it will hold together. 

Thus, the unenviable task fell to my management, but it proved worth the mental tension and the pains I took.

We managed a craft whose underside was made of small-diameter, buoyant logs, tightly lashed with presoaked rope and later caulked with pitch.  The topside was made of flat timber boards.  Gremlins use board lumber very little, yet it was easy enough for Yates to convey our sawing intentions. They certainly had the implements required, in the form of waterwheel-spun bandsaws.

Once the body was constructed and secured with copious quantities of pitch, nails, and more lashing, we anchored it to the shore and shoved it onto the creek.  It floated as neatly as a cork ingot, and no water rose over the planks of the deck.

This had been the subject of an escalating wager between us, and Yates lost three pounds eight shillings to me, payable if we should ever return to civilization.  For all that, I’m bound to say he was not the least sour about losing, for we were both overjoyed by success.

Next, we used our tarpaulin to make a little square shelter near the back of the raft, leaving room to get through it to steer.  The Gremlins gave us a fire tray of hammered metal to set in the center of the front portion, and we fashioned two long poles and two long oars for steering.  We affixed fully closed rowlocks to the bow and stern for quickly maneuvering around fast-flowing turns. Not much steering could be achieved given the size of the raft, but we could ward off the banks and rocks at any rate.  If the Gremlins were right, the stream should take care of us and carry us down like a locomotive, albeit with more bumps in the track.

I was pleased to see after ten days floating on the creek, our raft looked none the worse.  Before our departure, we affixed a few supple branches to the sides from which we could hang lines and catch fish.  It was my idea to make a rope ring affixed with iron to the deck and to take a grappling hook, so that we could anchor ourselves to creekside trees and camp aboard the raft, instead of trying to pilot it up on the banks when weariness overpowered us.

I reasoned that the raft would be more likely to break apart running up on shore and being shoved back off than it would if it stayed in levitation atop the waters.

When it seemed nothing more could be done to toughen this craft, Yates and I conducted a thorough inspection and maintenance of our guns and other equipment twice over.

In the Hylus we had access to the full array of Gremlin tools and engineering know-how.  There were bona fide forges and gunsmithies, as well as basic supplies like oils, files, and pliers.  The workers could