by Logan Jacobs
Then I saw them, and my heart sank into my gut. A company of six dwarves who I hadn’t seen before surrounded Maruk and Aerin as they led them forward toward the bier. The orc and elf’s weapons were nowhere to be seen, and their hands were tied behind their backs.
At my side, Lavinia cursed.
My illusion broke, and the other dwarves returned to their senses as my companions were brought through the camp. As they once again gathered up their weapons and other items, the russet-bearded dwarf from before stepped forward again.
“These interlopers sought to disturb our sacred rituals,” he announced, which prompted a chorus of angry shouts from the other dwarves, “but now they shall join us, brothers, as additional sacrifices to the Dovar-cu!”
Chapter 10
“Shit!” Lavinia hissed. Then she stood and let fly the three arrows that took down three of the dwarves who guarded Aerin and Maruk.
I almost couldn’t believe how fast she had shot. It had to have been less than a second for her to release the three arrows, and the dwarves probably died before they even hit the ground.
Shouts of anger and surprise sounded from the crowd as Lavinia pulled another arrow from her quiver. “Stupid. Fucking. Evil. Cult!” she yelled, and before I could even think to argue or stop her, she vaulted over the bushes and began to run toward the camp.
“Lavinia, wait!” I called after her, but she either didn’t hear me or intentionally ignored me, so I had no choice but to follow her.
Lavinia yanked back her bowstring casually, and then her arrow streaked across the clearing and took a dwarf in the throat. Then she swung her bow to the side as she pulled another arrow from her quiver. This one was almost instantly sent away, and it passed through the eye socket of one of our enemies before it lodged into the skull of another. A third shot happened half a second afterward, and a dwarf that had opened his mouth to scream had his words cut off as her arrow drove straight through his mouth.
Holy shit, she was really damn good.
Lavinia continued to shoot as she ran, and her arrows cut a path through the startled dwarves and toward our friends and the captured woman. Perhaps the dwarves were simply too shocked to react to our sudden arrival properly, or perhaps we were just outstandingly lucky, but in our mad dash Lavinia and I managed to reach the others, and I drew my knife to cut the ropes around Aerin’s wrists as Lavinia freed Maruk.
Not to be forgotten, the woman on the platform struggled against her own bonds and tried in vain to shout something to us through her gag. I removed the gag, and she gasped, but as I started to cut through the ropes that tied her to the bier, I realized that they’d been strengthened with some sort of waxy coating that made them almost impossible to sever.
“It’s alright,” I said, as much to myself as to the woman while I worked at the ropes. “We’re here to rescue you.”
A few flowers were still stuck in the waves of her dark hair, and her cheeks were flushed as she shifted and craned her neck up as much as her bonds would allow. She stared at me, her manicured brows bent in an incredulous expression as she panted, “Oh, right, and a fine job you’re all doing! You know, it usually works out so much better when you slay the captors before you rescue the maiden.”
“Great, she’s one of those,” Aerin muttered.
“Everyone’s a fucking critic,” Lavinia agreed.
I ignored the woman’s sarcasm and was able to cut through a few of the ropes, but clearly, whatever extraordinary luck Lavinia and I had experienced to get here was short-lived. As I glanced back at the camp, I saw that the remaining dwarves had formed a line to cut off our exit and trap us between the river and the rest of the camp. They wore murderous scowls behind the tiny blossoms braided into their beards, and each brandished a heavy wooden club, axe, or spear wrapped in colorful ribbon.
“Get ready,” Lavinia warned as she drew an arrow and fitted it to her bowstring.
Rows of logs were set to lean against the platform where the woman was tied up, and Aerin had armed herself with one and was trying in vain to convince Maruk to take one up as well.
“You know I don’t like using weapons!” the orc protested.
“Now really isn’t the time for your principles, Maruk!” Aerin hissed.
“On the contrary - our character is defined by our behavior in times of stress,” Maruk argued. “This is precisely the time for my principles!”
“They’re going to feed us to a river monster if you don’t help us!” Aerin pulled another log from the platform and shoved it at Maruk. “Just take it!”
Maruk held up his hands, “Oh, no, no, that one’s all covered in sap, and these are new trousers--”
“Fine, is this one clean enough for you, Your Highness?” Aerin snapped as she grabbed a different log.
“I suppose it will have to do--”
“Are you kidding me?!” the dark-haired woman demanded as I continued to hack at the rope.
“Can we focus on the evil dwarves who are trying to kill us?” Lavinia shot back as she gestured at the line of dwarves with the tip of her arrow.
The whole camp was gathered around now, and their leader, the dwarf with the roses in his hair, held up his hand. “Not to worry, we’ll wait,” he said. “Actually, I think the orc has a point about adhering to one’s values in difficult situations.”
Several of the other dwarves nodded, and one stepped forward shyly. “If-if it’s alright,” he said, “I’d simply like to say that I object to being called ‘evil.’ Um, I feel like that’s a reductive label and--”
“Oh, come on,” Lavinia snarled. “Can we just get on with this?”
There were some grumbles among the dwarves, and the leader gave Lavinia a disapproving frown as he waved his hand. “Fine, we’ll do it your way, then.” He nodded to the dwarf on his right, a burly, red-bearded warrior with a wicked-looking scar that ran from his hairline down through his twisted lip and a chain of peonies strung about his thick neck. “Gilmar, if you don’t mind.”
Gilmar nodded back and then let out a tremendous roar as he charged forward with his club raised above his head.
Lavinia side-stepped and the dwarf’s momentum carried him past the ladona and directly into Aerin’s range. There was a sharp crack as the dwarf brought his club down and it struck Aerin’s log, but Lavinia wasted no time in sending an arrow through the back of his neck.
The dwarf slumped over with a gurgle and Lavinia kicked his body down the bank where it rolled into the river with a heavy splash.
“Oh, that is disgusting,” the woman on the bier complained.
The other dwarves exchanged nervous glances with one another, and none of them broke their ranks as we turned to face them again.
The dwarf leader frowned at them and spread his arms to wave them forward. “Well, go on then, all of you! There’s no ‘I’ in ‘clan warfare.’ Off you go, kill them!”
I had only managed to cut two of the ropes around the woman, and I was forced to stop as all at once, the rest of the twenty-odd dwarves rushed forward with clubs, axes, spears, and other improvised weapons to attack.
The log was somewhat unwieldy as a weapon, but pride swelled in me as I managed to block the axe of a dwarf with a crown of posies braided into his dark hair. He swung again quickly to strike at my arm, but I moved the log and the blade of his weapon bit into the wood instead.
It took him a second to pry it free, and that second was all I needed to switch to the offensive. I shifted my grip on the log and drove it forward for a direct hit to the dwarf’s chest, and he stumbled back with a wheezing gasp. He adjusted his grip on the axe he carried, but I was faster, and I swung the log like a bat against the side of his head. There was a loud crack and a spurt of bright blood, and the dwarf stared at me for a second with a dazed expression before he fell over. That was one more down, but the dead dwarf’s brothers were quick on his heels and undaunted by our defense.
We were forced almost into the river as we fended them off, Lavinia
with her bow and arrows, and Maruk, Aerin, and I with the logs we had retrieved from the platform.
The dark-haired woman shouted criticisms and instructions as the dwarves swarmed around us, but even without her input, I knew we weren’t going to last long like this. Lavinia needed more range to be effective, and I was so absorbed with holding the line that I couldn’t even think about magic. Maruk and Aerin needed their real weapons back.
I scanned the crowd of dwarves that separated us from the camp, but it didn’t look as though any of them had thought to try to use our own weapons against us. That must mean they’d hidden them somewhere, or they had left them in the forest.
Just then, a blond dwarf with lilacs in his hair came at me with a stew ladle, and I whacked him aside with my log and sent him sprawling into the water before I returned my attention to the camp. Then I saw them. Maruk’s shields were propped up like offerings against a tree by the statue of the Dovar-cu, and Aerin’s mace lay beneath them.
A dried berry hit me on the cheek, and I turned to face a dwarf with a bowl full of dark red berries under one arm as he pelted another one at my eye. Before I could do anything to retaliate, however, I heard Maruk gasp.
“Don’t waste those!” he cried as he drove his log forward like a battering ram into the dwarf’s chest. “Those are a delicacy, and they have a short season!”
I didn’t stick around to find out the fate of the dwarf or the berries, however, because at that moment I saw my opening through the crowd. I darted forward, around the fire and past the tents toward the statue of the Dovar-cu and our weapons. I shook off the loose blossoms that the dwarves had scattered over the pile as I gathered up Maruk’s shields and Aerin’s mace, but when I turned around again, the dwarf leader stood in my path.
His eyes were crinkled up in a smile, but he had an axe of his own in his hand, and his voice was cold when he said, “Now, where do you think you’re going with those, lad?”
I was about to drop the shields and try my luck going hand-to-hand with the dwarf and Aerin’s mace when something dark and furry dropped out of the tree above us and landed squarely on the dwarf’s face.
The short man’s cry of outrage mingled with the angry chattering of the puca as he stumbled back and tried in vain to pry the creature off himself. I didn’t waste the opportunity the puca had given me and ran back toward the river with the weapons.
Lavinia, Aerin, and Maruk were in the water now up to their ankles as the dwarves’ assault continued to press them back. Still, there were almost as many dead dwarves surrounding them now as there were those still capable of mounting an attack, and now that I’d gotten the rest of our weapons back, the fight could begin for real.
About a half-dozen dwarves stood between my friends and me, and I knew I shouldn’t risk trying to fight through them alone, so I stopped on the bank and shouted over the dwarves’ heads, “Hey! Heads up!”
I hurled Aerin her mace first, and she caught it just in time to deliver a devastating blow to a dwarf that was coming at her with a teakettle. The dwarf’s skull split open with a burst of blood, brains, and scattered flowers from the crown he’d worn, and I was suddenly reminded of the colorfully dyed eggshells filled with confetti that my cousins and I used to crack open on Easter.
When Maruk saw me, he lowered his shoulder and charged through the dwarves between us like a battering ram. Those who weren’t quick enough to jump back where either shoved aside by the orc’s massive shoulders or nearly trampled underfoot. He grinned broadly as he strapped his shields to his arms again and gave me a quick nod of gratitude before he reentered the fray.
His entrance caused the group of attackers to focus on him, so I sprinted around the edge of the melee to the dark-haired woman so I could finish cutting through the ropes.
“There you are!” she said when she saw me, though her tone was more judgmental than relieved. “Hurry up and get me out of here!”
“Working on it,” I replied through gritted teeth.
As I sawed at the bindings, I cast a quick look around to see how my companions fared. Aerin grappled with a dwarf in the shallows while Maruk held off another two. Three more stood on the bank and seemed to have been plotting some sort of coordinated charge before they realized that Lavinia had her bow again, but a spark of magic went off inside her, and the three arrows she shot at once brought them down before they could rethink their plan.
I cut through another rope as Lavinia turned her bow to the dwarves that were hounding Maruk and took them out with two arrows at once. A moment later, Aerin struck out the final blow against her opponent. As the final dwarf reeled back, fell, and disappeared beneath the murky water, I realized there was still someone missing.
The leader.
“Anyone see the boss?” Lavinia asked as she pulled her arrows out of the skulls of the dead dwarves and returned them to her quiver.
“The puca attacked him,” I said as I nodded back toward where I had grabbed their gear.
“What?” Lavinia groaned as she turned to me.
“Yep,” I snickered. “I think he likes me, but--”
“No!” The dwarf leader stumbled out of one of the tents. His face was covered in scratches, and there was a manic look in his eyes as he took in the scene before him, his camp in ruins, his comrades all dead.
“No!” he roared again. “You will suffer for what you have done here! Sunset is upon us. The Dovar-cu will take you all!”
Then he raised his hand, and I saw that he held a small stone totem that glowed with the unmistakable light of magic. He was practically frothing at the mouth as he began to speak some sort of incantation, and the totem started to glow brighter. A sound like rushing water swelled up in the back of my mind, and I raised my hand just as Lavinia raised her bow.
Stop, I willed, and the noise cut off like a record scratch, and the light from the totem went out like someone had flipped off a light switch. For half a moment, a bit of his power filled my chest like a sip of tequila would burn, but then it was gone.
The dwarf only had enough time to look surprised before Lavinia sent an arrow through his eye and he fell back with the totem still clutched in his hand.
Without thinking, I walked over to where the dwarf lay in the grass, and Aerin, Maruk, and Lavinia followed.
Aerin pulled the totem out of the dwarf’s grasp and turned it in her hand. It was made of greenstone, polished to a shine and carved so that it resembled the statue of the Dovar-cu at the edge of the camp, though on a smaller scale.
“What is that?” I asked. “It had magic.” The light in the totem had gone out when I’d blocked the dwarf’s spell, and not even a spark remained now.
“It must have been enchanted,” Aerin replied. “No idea what it did, though, and it looks like it was one use only.” The elf frowned as she examined the totem. “Still, something like this wouldn’t be easy to come by. I wonder where he got it.” One of her eyebrows quirked up. “I wonder how much we can sell it for.”
Lavinia stepped forward to pull her arrow out of the dwarf’s skull and raised her eyebrows. “ Did the puca do this to him?”
“Looks like it,” I said as I inspected the damage to his head.
The puca had left its mark. It looked as though clumps of the dwarf’s hair and beard had been pulled out, and his face was covered in deep scratches.
“I’m sure this part is fun for all of you,” the captured woman called, “but in case you forgot, I am still tied up over here, and there is still a monster coming to eat me, so maybe we can wrap up the whole rescuing thing sometime soon?”
“Isn’t she charming?” Maruk muttered.
Lavinia had a knife with a serrated edge better suited to cutting through the ropes than my dagger, and between us, we were able to get the woman free in a few minutes.
She wormed her way out once we’d cut down the ropes at her knees and climbed off the platform.
“About time,” she snipped. She was beautiful, tall, and slender, with a
long, aristocratic nose and large gray eyes, and despite her predicament she proudly carried herself as she shook the rest of the flowers out of her hair.
“Watch it, princess,” Lavinia retorted. “We did save your life.”
The woman raised her eyebrows. “Barely. And I’m a marchioness, actually.” She held out her hand to me with a prim smile. “Marchioness Yvaine.”
“Uh, nice to meet you,” I said in a final attempt at diplomacy. I took her hand and shook it, which seemed to surprise her, but she quickly gathered herself again.
“Well, I’ll be going then,” Yvaine said after a beat. “I think I can leave the monster-slaying to you all.”
Lavinia scoffed, but I asked, “Wait, you’re leaving? It’s almost night, where are you going to go?”
“Anywhere that there isn’t an enormous man-eating fish-monster roaming around will be an improvement,” Yvaine replied.
“You’re just going to wander off into the forest?” I asked.
“There is a gift among the nobility to be born with an innate sense of direction,” Yvaine scoffed. “I will have no trouble finding a road, and then surely a passer-by will notice my plight and take me in.”
“That doesn’t seem like a very good idea,” I started, but Lavinia cut me off.
“If the princess wants to go get herself kidnapped by bandits, who are we to stop her?” she asked. “We have a job to do.”
“I told you, I’m a marchioness,” Yvaine said.
“I don’t know what that is,” Aerin said.
“Marchioness is the feminine title for a marquess which is the rank of nobility just below a duke and above an earl,” Maruk told her.
“Whatever!” Lavinia groaned. “Can we focus on what we came here to do?”
I held up my hands. “Look,” I said, “Yvaine, I’m sure your… sense of direction is great, but this forest is dangerous. We have to kill the Dovar-cu, but then we’re going back to Ovrista--”
