“Hammeredshield spoke of snakes a mile long dwelling within,” Flatfoot said. “And vines which strangle passers-by.”
“No one really knows,” Willock said. “The marshes remain unexplored. See on the far end there? Those are the White Moors. It is there the warm southern winds meet the cold blasts from the mountain peaks Thus the frequent fog. Their edge is not even a day’s march from Glammonfore Keep, yet they remain unexplored.”
“That close, you say?” Flatfoot said. “I would think your people would’ve thoroughly scouted them out by now.”
“They are frequented by dark forces,” Willock said. “Sometimes, solitary wizards are seen passing through the Glammonfore Gap headed toward them. Other times, wizards emerge from their foggy depths. It is said the moors are a meeting place for evil wizards, and foul rituals take place at night atop the hilltops. And the scouts of Llangellan have also reported what Hammeredshield spoke of - strange flashes of fire amidst the fog, and lightning appearing from out of a clear sky.
“Oh, my!” Flatfoot said. He turned around to face Ronias, who was riding all the way in the back of the column by himself. “Ronias, what can such a thing as that mean?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Ronias said, his voice thick with sarcasm. “After all, I’m not an evil wizard.”
“We won’t be going into either of those damned devil places, laddies,” Ironhelm said, scanning the bottom of the valley uneasily. “Aye, we’ll skirt their edges and then cut across along the far edge of the moors towards the Teeth.”
Flatfoot nodded, glancing back down at the marshes. There was something about them which filled him with a vague feeling of dread.
_____
By afternoon, the column of horses and ponies had traveled several more miles along the ancient road. The Nor Marshes grew ever closer until they overlooked them. A fetid mist hung over the place, but high above on the old Guardian road it was cool and the air was clear. The path wound along in wide curves as it hugged the sides of the steep mountainside, a twisting ribbon extending for mile after mile in front of them.
“Do you see that?” Flatfoot said suddenly.
“See wha’?” Ironhelm said, grabbing the handle of his axe.
“Up ahead,” Flatfoot said, pointing forward down the road. It curved gently to the left and then disappeared from view behind the great bulk of the mountainside. No more than a half mile further, however, the road swept back towards the right and back into view. In between them and the other end of the curve was a thickly-timbered valley floor several hundred feet deep
“Look!” the gnome said, pointing again. “There is something moving along the road across the valley, and I do believe it is headed this way.”
The others all glanced at one another and shook their heads, unable to see anything amiss on the road ahead. Willock dismounted and hastily assembled his spyscope. Leaning his elbows on a rock along the side of the road to steady the lens, he scanned the path ahead. After a few seconds he started in surprise. He lowered the spyscope and looked back at the others.
“Never doubt the sharp eyes of a gnome!” he said. “There’s a party of trolls pulling a cart and headed this way.”
“Grang’s teeth!” Jorn said. “How many?”
“I counted four,” Willock said. “They don’t seem to have seen us, but we’d better get out of the way before they do.”
They backed off, moving their horses towards the edge of the road, hugging the mountainside. It blocked the distant bend in the road from view.
“What now?” Ailric said. “Do we await their approach, then attack?”
“There is no need to attract any attention,” Willock said. “I say we head directly up the ridge a safe distance and wait for them to pass by.”
“We could take them readily enough,” Ailric said. “Four trolls are as nothing.”
“Aye, true enough,” Ironhelm said. “But Hugh is right, laddie. There’s no need to attract attention.”
“Hiding from trolls,” Ailric said, shaking his head. “I notice you weren’t so cautious when we happened upon dwarves being attacked. You were only too eager to risk us all in a fight which had nothing to do with the quest at hand.”
“Have you gone mad, laddie?” Ironhelm growled. “Or do you enjoy cutting down everyone else for the fun of it? There’s a difference between helping allies in distress right before our eyes and needlessly seeking danger, laddie!”
“Hiding from trolls,” Ailric repeated, shaking his head.
They found a passable route up the slope a few hundred feet back and made their way up it. It was slow-going as the horses managed the rough terrain until they were well out of sight of anyone passing below.
They found a small level area surrounded by thick trees and dismounted. Willock found a cottage-sized boulder about a hundred feet away and climbed up one side of it. Laying flat on its surface, he pointed the spyscope towards the road a few hundred yards away and waited.
It reminded Willock of younger days. He had spent the better part of his youth as a scout in the service of the Royal Guard of Llangellan. It was tougher and more dangerous work than most men understood. Even within the army, he would often receive looks of disdain and whispered comments as he passed through the camp with his daily reports to whoever was in command. To the soldiers, Willock and his kind got paid to wander around the forest, hiding to avoid the enemy.
The hostile stares remained even as Willock entered the tent of some great battle lord, sometimes even admitted into the very presence of the king himself. There, his reports were listened to carefully.
Willock was no more than twenty years old on one occasion, reporting on gruk troop movements as the aged King Eurion listened intently. The army of Llangellan was camped near the village of Winnavaal on the southern frontier, a hilly region of tangled woods and rocky hills. Great lords of the realm, including a dwarven chief from the one of the freeholds with a long white beard that fell down to his fat belly, crowded the tent and watched as Willock pointed out on a large map precisely where the gruks were and in what direction they were moving. Braemorgan sat besides the king, smoking his pipe and listening to the young scout intently. Willock was remarkably precise and thorough, even at that young age.
“Twelve hours ago they were at this bend in the river, fifteen hundred of them,” Willock explained, his finger marking the exact spot on the map. “Based upon how fast I observed them advancing and the nature of the terrain ahead of them, by now they would be right here.”
He slid his finger several inches over, pointing out the enemy’s current position.
“Then they are much closer than we thought,” the king observed, frowning. “Much closer indeed. We must make ready to march, and quickly.”
“Your majesty, gruk troops never move this quickly,” one of the lords in the tents protested. “They cannot be this close. Surely you wouldn’t move on the word of this mere boy.”
The king stared intently at Willock, looking into the young man’s eyes.
“Indeed I would,” Eurion declared. “He has a serious manner about him. If that is where he says the enemy is, then we still have time to steal a march and occupy the high ground in front of their path. This is a chance which is not to be missed!”
The king stood, his great height reaching nearly to the ceiling of the tent. Even in his later years, he was a formidable figure of a man.
“We march at once,” he roared. “Make all haste!”
The army crossed the River Quintael that night and was just in time to block the gruk advance. Any hesitation on the part of the king and the gruks would have been too far east to stop from swinging north towards inhabitated farmland. The raiding and pillaging could’ve gone on for weeks. As it was, Eurion took the gruks by surprise the next morning and crushed them. Willock was rewarded with a promotion to the rank of Scout Captain and the esteem of the aged king.
Willock recalled it all with some pride more than twenty years later, and with good
reason. Whether or not the royal scribes and chroniclers noted his name in the Annals of Llangellan for that year, Willock couldn’t say. It hardly mattered to him. He’d done what he knew how to do best, and it saved lives. The foot soldiers might’ve snickered at the young scout after he left the king’s tent, but they were not there the day before, deep in the wilderness, as Willock was dodging gruks patrols close on his heels. Neither were they with Willock as he was hiding high atop a tree all night after he found himself trapped inside the enemy picket with no choice but to wait them out.
What a life he’d chosen! There was little glory in being a scout, and much peril. To get close enough to see anything of any use you had to put yourself at risk of death or capture. Scouts all too often died miserable, painful deaths as dinner for gruks and trolls. In spite of the perils – or, now that he thought about it, perhaps in large measure because of them - Willock was a scout for fourteen years. He was never once captured, of course, but he came closer than he cared to recall on at least a dozen occasions. He’d been wounded three times, hunted more times than he could count, nearly drowned at least twice, and came within a hair of freezing to death.
Willock was sixteen when he first signed on as a scout, far too-young to know any better. He nevertheless quickly developed a reputation for accuracy and reliability which came from the foolhardiness of getting close enough to the enemy to get a real grasp of his strength, position, and speed.
By that morning four years later when he stood in the tent before Eurion and convinced him of the gruk army’s position, Willock was already a seasoned and reliable scout. Six years after that day by the banks of the Quintael, Willock was once more on a routine scouting mission along the southern fringes of Llangellan when he happened upon a small group of bandits camped at the bottom of a wooded valley. Willock knew at once who they were. They were ruthless men, heartless killers led by a madman named Glofus the One-Eared. The frontier troops had been hunting Glofus for months, and Willock had by sheer chance happened upon the camp of the villainous brigand.
Willock hid nearby, waiting until nightfall to creep out for a closer look. It began to pour heavily, such conditions a boon for scouting enemies up-close. The pickets couldn’t see or hear a thing amidst the driving rain, Willock learning their exact number. He was sneaking away at dawn, in a bit of an elated state. He knew how many men Glofus had and where the bandit chief’s guards were set up. He had also learned the various approaches to the camp, and would be able to diagram the whole thing out. The royal troops were but ten miles away and would now have all the knowledge they needed to crush Glofus’ band once and for all. But only if they moved quickly.
As he left to return to the royal camp, a pair of bandits spotted him. Perhaps they were an early morning patrol, or out hunting for a little breakfast. They fired a pair of arrows at Willock’s back which sailed harmlessly past into an oak tree to Willock’s left. The damage had been done, however, their shouts shattering the early morning quiet. For much of that day two dozen men on horseback pursued Willock through the dense wilderness. He finally lost them in a bog and limped back exhausted to his own garrison late that night. By the time he led troops back to the bandits all they found was an abandoned encampment. Willock stood in the middle of it, cursing his awful luck at having been spotted just as he was leaving the area.
The army finally trapped Glofus two months later. He was captured and beheaded, Willock present on both occasions. He was glad that the fiend had finally gotten what was coming to him, but he was all done with scouting. Something about that last close call disquieted him. He’d had enough.
Willock stayed in the king’s service, but no longer a scout. He found contentment in the southwest of the kingdom, in the vast forests of Greenerwood as an archer and the deputy commander of a small garrison of men. The last few years he was captain of the garrison and one of the most experienced woodsmen in the entire army of Llangellan.
To be sure, he still trained young scouts and led patrols along the frontier. He’d also seen his fair share of battle in the past two decades, but he was nearing the point in his life where a good book and a warm fireplace were more welcome distractions than creeping through the wilderness spying on a vicious enemy. Even now, atop the boulder, his mind wandered towards thoughts of home. How he’d much rather be in front of his hearth with Milla and the children!
When the letter came from Braemorgan last month, Willock agonized over it for days. Every few years Braemorgan would wander through just when a wizard’s assistance was most needed, such as when strange beasts had been terrorizing the countryside. Sometimes, Braemorgan would implore his help in various endeavors. This last summons, however, was worded more strongly than normal and Willock felt he owed the wizard his presence at the requested time and place. And so he kissed Milla and the girls goodbye, setting off to meet with the wizard. He held his newborn son close to him in silence before setting out in the pre-dawn twilight, giving the boy his finger to squeeze with his tiny hand.
“You’ll be grasping a bow before very long,” he whispered.
_____
Willock had an excellent view of the trolls lumbering along the ancient road below. He could almost count the rows of sharp teeth in their oversized mouths or the bristle-like hairs on their massive heads and large pointed ears. Two of the brutes pulled the cart along the rocky track as another pair guarded them, grasping massive wooden clubs six feet long. Another pair of clubs lay atop the cart. They barked at each other in what passed for language among trolls, growling and grunting as they went about their task. Willock shifted his focus to the cart. Whatever was loaded upon the cart was covered by a coarse cloth and tied down tightly with rope. Willock could not guess from the shape of the cover what could be underneath.
The cart bumped and rolled on, eventually passing out of sight along with the trolls. Silence returned to the mountains as Willock slid down the back of the boulder and rejoined the others. He told them what he’d seen.
“I wonder what the bloody things might be hauling,” Flatfoot said. “I’d also like to know where they’re taking whatever it is.”
“Most likely supplies for the army on the valley floor,” Willock said. “They must use the old road to avoid the Nor Marshes.”
“Ach. We should stay off the road, we should,” Ironhelm said
“We could ride parallel to it, but the going would be slow,” Willock said. “Or we can still take the road, but I can scout ahead a few hundred paces on foot. I would spot anyone traveling towards us.”
“We’ll need to do something. I don’t want to run right into another bunch of trolls.” Ironhelm shook his head. “Let’s try it your way, laddie.”
Willock led them back down to the road. They headed south once more, but did not get very far. Almost as soon as they stepped back onto the road they heard a guttural shout ahead of them that sounded halfway between a dog’s bark and an angry curse. A second group of trolls stood not fifty feet in front of them, pulling another cart around the bend in the road. Stunned by the party’s presence in the road in front of them, the trolls stopped in their tracks and seemed unsure of how to react for a few moments. They stared dumbly at the group of oddities in front of them before finally before springing into action. The largest of the trolls growled furiously at the others, shaking them out of their stupor. A cacophony of barking shouts filling the air.
Ironhelm counted four trolls in all, like the last group.
Their massive clubs in hand, the monsters charged. Willock fired an arrow at the closest, a hulking giant with a hideous scar running along its jaw. The arrow hit the troll in the shoulder but did little to slow it down. It grimaced as the shaft penetrated deep into muscle, yet still charged forward with growing rage. Meanwhile, Jorn, Ironhelm, and Ailric met the charge of the trolls, weapons in hand. Flatfoot slid off his horse into the trees by the side of the trail, carrying his crossbow. If he moved quickly, he hoped, one so small as he might get around behind the trolls with
out being noticed. For someone not quite four feet tall, it was the only strategy which made any sense.
Willock drew another arrow as Ronias lifted his arms behind him and began whispering words of magic. Chanting steadily, the elf felt a certain tingling in his chest which defied easy description. The sensation grew quickly, suddenly exploding outward in a wave of magical energy flowing down his arms and into the air in front of him. It took a good deal of effort to control this powerful force pulsing through his body, to bend it to his will. It took the form of a glowing ball of bluish light which Ronias cast towards the largest troll. It struck the troll square in the chest, focused right on the very center of its life force, hitting with a terrible impact and knocking it backwards onto the ground. Ronias steadied himself on his horse’s neck as his vision grew suddenly blurry. It was a powerful spell, and the energy which passed through him worked havoc on both body and mind. He took several deep breaths, his vision clearing as he surveyed the scene before him.
The lead troll lay on its back, smoke rising from the gaping hole in its chest carved out by Ronias’ blast of magic. A second troll, a pair of arrows already protruding from its shoulders, swung its mighty club in a wide arc at a charging Sir Ailric on the left. The club hit the knight in the shield, a loud clang ringing out as the knight was knocked right out of the saddle. It raised its club again, hoping to crush him. Jorn came at the troll from the right before it could react, his sword cutting deeply into the troll’s exposed flank as Ironhelm hurled one of his hand axes at it. The axe head buried itself deep into the troll’s chest and the mighty creature fell onto its back with a great thud.
Two trolls remained. The first came at the unhorsed Ailric, who sprung to his feet in time to duck the swing of the troll’s club. The knight swung back, cutting deep into the troll’s knee. It howled in pain, falling forward and grasping its wounded leg. Ailric finished the creature off with a well-placed blow to the neck.
Child Of Storms (Volume 1) Page 40
