The Return of Cathos (Tales of the Silver Sword Inn, Complete Collection One)

by Wilson Harp

  Five orcs lay crumpled around Baldric as four others surrounded him trying to hit the fast, cagey dwarf. Ermine shot past the group and headed toward the orc leader and his guards. Martel saw two other orcs pull weapons and start to chase after her. He was sure that Baldric had the four, now three, orcs that faced him well in hand. Martel shouted as he ran after the two orcs chasing Ermine. One slowed and looked back. Martel stabbed him in the throat and kept running. Ahead of him he saw Ermine sprinting forward as the orc leader braced his spear to face her charge. Behind him, the orc wizard was standing and muttering the beginnings of a spell.

  A burst of flame shot up from the back of the platform, and the orc wizard was engulfed in fire. His shrieking and the sudden heat caused both of the ogres to turn toward where the orc wizard burned. It also caused the orc Martel was chasing to slow down, and Martel stabbed him in the back. The orc leader merely flinched when the fire burst behind him, but that was all Ermine needed. In that moment of hesitation she leaped into the air and landed on the shaft of the orc leader’s spear with both feet. As the spear was ripped out of his hands, he looked in shock at the woman in front of him. A second later his eyes stared lifelessly from his head as it rolled on the floor.

  Martel yelled “Right!” as he wrenched his sword out of the back of the orc lying in front of him. Ermine heard his call and jumped out of the way as the ogre on her right swung his heavy club at her. Martel jumped to the ogre on the left and started swinging at its knees. It backed up from the assault and tried a sweeping swing to catch Martel. Martel jumped back, and when the ogre pulled his arm up for another swing he jumped toward the ogre and jabbed up with his blade. It bit deep into the ogre’s exposed armpit, and blood started flowing from the wound. The ogre reached over to grab at Martel but stopped his hand and started flailing above his head. He dropped his club, almost hitting the warrior at his feet, and started spinning while waving its hands about its face. Martel timed the spin and used the ogre’s own momentum to drive his sword deep into its chest. It gasped and shuddered. Martel pulled his sword free and jumped back. The ogre hit the ground with a thud.

  “Good job, Namos!” said Baldric.

  Martel looked at the dwarf, not quite understanding what he was talking about.

  “He cast some sort of confusion spell on the ogres,” said Ermine as she came over to Martel. She was wiping her sword blade clean. Martel realized that all of the orcs, goblins and ogres lay dead on the floor.

  “He did? I was talking about the passages,” said Baldric.

  Both passageways leading out of the main chamber were completely blocked by thick, sticky webs. There were several orcs caught in each of the webs trying frantically to get free.

  “That is very clever, Namos. How long will it take for them to break free?” asked Martel.

  “Several minutes at least.”

  “And if we want to go down those hallways?”

  “Oh, I didn’t realize you needed to go down them. I have the key. Which one would you like to go down?” asked the wizard.

  “Let’s go down that one.” Martel pointed towards one of the passages.

  “An excellent choice. If you will all stand back.” The wizard walked over to the passage and pulled some powder from a pouch. He said some words and threw the powder at the web. A blast of flame shot out of his hand, filling the entire passageway. The web and all of the orcs were gone when the flash faded.

  “The doorway is open,” said Namos while making a deep bow.

  “Nice key,” laughed Baldric as he went first down the passageway.

  Martel followed the happy dwarf down the tunnel. He heard Baldric shout another battle cry and saw the short warrior dart forward. Martel had started to run after him when he heard the sounds of a whip’s snap and Baldric’s grunt. The sound of something heavy and metal dragging along the floor spurred Martel to run even faster. When he could see into the room that opened at the bottom of the passage, he saw a large orc holding an axe above his head. At his feet was Baldric. His legs had been entangled in a whip that the orc was holding in his other hand. Martel knew he couldn’t close the distance in time, so he dropped his sword and grabbed for the knife strapped to his left arm. He threw desperately as the blade slid free of the sheath. The orc had paused to spit an insult at the dwarf before killing him, and that was his mistake. As the axe started downward, the point of the knife found his forehead. The orc’s head snapped back as the blade slid into his brain.

  Baldric dropped his warhammer and started trying to untangle himself. By the time Martel got to him, he had sat up and was unwrapping the whip from around his legs.

  “Are you all right, Baldric?” asked Martel.

  “Yeah, just got the wind knocked out of me. He was fast with that whip, and strong. Pulled me right off my feet. I landed dead on my back and he dragged me over to him. Good thing you have that knife of yours. Good throw by the way. Thanks.”

  Ermine and Namos came into the room, looking a little embarrassed.

  “Sorry, we didn’t see you head down. Namos spotted some items that were magical, and we were checking them out,” said Ermine. “We heard the commotion down the hallway, but by the time we could see Martel, it was over.”

  “Magic items?” said Baldric, scrambling to his feet. “What magic items?”

  “This spear,” said Ermine indicating the one she held in her hand. “And a ring the goblin wizard was wearing.”

  “Is that the young man we are after?” asked Namos pointing to a man strapped to a table in the far corner of the room.

  Martel and Namos hurried over to the table and found a big man barely conscious. His leg was broken in several places and was twisted at a horrible angle. It looked like he had been beaten and burned by the instruments scattered around the room.

  “Hold his mouth open. I have a potion that should help him,” Namos told Martel.

  Martel gently opened the man’s mouth, and Namos poured a mouthful of the liquid into him.

  “He’s burning up, and it looks like he has several infected wounds,” said Namos as they started unstrapping him.

  Ermine came over and handed Martel his sword back.

  “Thanks,” he said as he put his weapon away and slung his shield on his back, “Baldric and I will carry him. You and Namos lead the way out.”

  “Wait, Martel,” said Baldric. “That is a dwarven rune on the wall.”

  Namos looked to where Baldric was pointing. “By the Divine, you are right Baldric. It’s faint, but it’s clearly a dwarven rune.”

  Namos stepped over to the wall and cast a spell that would reveal the fading carvings. “Can you read it, Baldric?”

  “Yes!” shouted the dwarf. “It says ‘The city of Krigadul’. This room holds a passage to a dwarven city.”

  “We don’t have time today,” said Ermine. “That web won’t hold the other orcs for long. And Karl here can’t afford to have us take any extra time.”

  Baldric muttered some dwarven curses under his breath. “I know, but we will come back. Kirgadul was one of the major dwarven cities that are missing.”

  “We will return, Baldric. Now let’s get Karl out of here,” said Martel as he lifted the young man’s feet off of the table.

  Ermine and Namos led the way out of the mine, with Martel and Baldric carrying the badly injured Karl. They reached the entrance to the mine without running into another orc. The wall blocking the tunnel to the goblins was still holding, although they could hear the goblins chipping away at it.

  Once they had made it outside, they secured their packs onto their backs and gave Karl another drink of Namos’ healing potion. Karl’s fever had broken and his face looked fuller when they examined him. His leg was badly broken, though, and once she got a good look at it Ermine thought it would not heal right. They carefully took the injured man down the narrow crevasse and made the camp at Long Branch before midnight. They decided to stay there for the night and keep a sharp watch for any orcs that might have
followed them.

  The next morning Karl was awake. He was weak but was able to drink some light broth and some more of the healing potion. He told his rescuers of how he had been captured and tortured. He was concerned for the others in his party and was quite relieved to hear that they were safe.

  “I couldn’t understand their speech, but their leader spoke some human language, and he told me that before they finished torturing me to death he would force me to watch my friends fight each other to the death. He told me he would kill us all quickly if I would just tell him what he wanted to know,” said Karl.

  “What did he want to know?” asked Ermine.

  “He wanted to know how many troops the nearby town had and where the chamber of Kerin Kor was in the ruins of Balcchor. I told him Black Oak had more than enough troops and I had never heard of the chamber of Kerin Kor.”

  Martel and Ermine looked at each other. “Balcchor,” they said at the same time.

  “Let’s get him to town. We need to let Black Oak know that their lizardman problem is about to get a lot worse,” said Martel.

  To Catch an Elf

  Croft looked at the two men sitting by dim candle light and shook his head. He walked over to them and leaned on the table with both hands. “Do you still intend to go through with this idiotic idea?”

  Calaran looked up at the innkeeper and smiled. “It’s not idiotic; it’s foolhardy and bound for failure. But yes, this is the best chance we have of finding the elf.”

  “We have told the hunters in the area to stay clear because of the orcs. We know that they released that giant spider in the woods, and everyone saw Karl when he was brought back. From what I can tell, I have been the only human in the woods for almost two weeks now,” said Donal.

  “How is the young man, Croft?” asked Calaran.

  It surprised the innkeeper how concerned the elven bard was, but then he had never really understood Calaran.

  “He is recovering. With luck he will walk without a cane, but he will never be the same. He will always have a bad limp at the very best.”

  Calaran shook his head. “I’m sorry to hear that. I’ll go by and see him. I understand he has a flair for treating wounds and creating herbal concoctions. I may know someone in Loramund he could apprentice with.”

  “I’m sure he would appreciate your help in that regard and your concern for him. What makes you think that the elf that rescued the others is your mystery in the woods?” asked Croft as he sat down at their table. The inn was shut down for the night, and only a candle on their table and the low embers from the fireplace threw any light on the common room.

  Donal pulled nine arrows from a burlap bag and laid them on the table. He picked one up and showed it to Croft. “Do you recognize this arrow?”

  “Yes, that is the arrow you retrieved from the swamp. The one that killed the lizardman shaman.”

  “No,” said Donal. “This is one that killed a man in the Shadowmist Wood about fifteen years ago–a man who had just been part of a massacre of sick people.”

  Donal held up another arrow and showed it to Croft. “This is the arrow I pulled from the lizardman a couple of months ago.”

  Croft held both arrows up and looked carefully at the fletchings and how the arrowhead was attached. “These were made by the same person.”

  “Precisely,” said Donal. “These arrows are almost identical, made from aged black oak. The arrowheads are hand crafted in the same manner, and the technique and materials for binding are the same. Even the raven tail feather fletchings match. The person who killed the eight men from Black Oak when they killed the plague victims of Long Branch is the same person who made that impossible shot in the swamp.”

  Croft sat speechless as he thought about what Donal was saying.

  “This person, or should I say elf, is also the one who killed the cultists that Horas and Lendin found in the woods. He also rescued the young people from the orcs in the mine,” said Calaran.

  “Are you serious?” asked Croft. “An elf is living in the Shadowmist Wood?”

  “He probably has a much larger range than that, but I would say that he has made his home there,” answered the elven bard.

  Croft chuckled. “His range? You make him sound like an animal.”

  Donal and Calaran looked at each other in a way that made Croft extremely uncomfortable. Finally Calaran looked back at Croft.

  “He’s a wild elf,” said the bard.

  “A wild elf? There are no wild elves left. Those are stories even old for elves. I’ve read the legends. I even saw a play once that told the story of Ternesian, and he was one of the last wild elves.” Croft wiped his forehead as he suddenly felt a headache coming.

  “He is a wild elf, Croft—an elf with no contact with the other races. I would venture that he has had no contact with any other elf, either. Not for a long time anyway. There is something still not right about the situation, but I can think of no explanation that comes close to making sense other than the fact that he is a wild elf.”

  “But if he hasn’t been around even other elves, how does he survive? He wields a bow, he makes his own arrows…” Croft trailed off. It was ridiculous to be speaking of legends, and yet Calaran and Donal seemed convinced.

  “You know how a bird can fly, or a wolf will howl, even when raised by humans? Elves are in many ways the same. Making a bow, making arrows, hiding from humans, hating goblins and orcs. These are all natural instincts for an elf.”

  “What about making arrowheads out of steel, and leather clothing?”

  “I don’t know how old he is, but he may have watched the fletcher in Long Branch put metal arrowheads on his arrows. He probably picked up the idea and construction of clothes by watching the hunters in the woods over the decades.”

  “How has he avoided detection all of these years?” asked the innkeeper.

  Donal leaned back in his chair and stretched. “We have no idea. Even an elf would have been spotted at some point. The hunters in this part of the world are quite skilled at tracking and at woodcraft. They would have seen something. But the facts are simple when you start stacking them together. We have a wild elf in the woods.”

  “Is the town in danger?”

  Calaran shook his head. “No, if he views this area as his home, then Black Oak is just a part of it. As long as people don’t start hunting him, he will leave them alone.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  The bard stood up. “We are going to hunt him.”

  Croft nodded as he looked at the two experienced adventurers. “Won’t that, I don’t know, make you both dead?”

  “Maybe, but I doubt it. He will know who Donal is, and he might allow another elf to start a conversation with him. The fact that he rescued the young men from Black Oak is unusual. Maybe he wants to establish a dialogue.”

  Croft shook his head. “The legends of Ternesian say that he and nine other wild elves destroyed the temple in Helposso. It was guarded by eight hundred soldiers. They are killers, through and through.”

  “The tempering effect of the elven kingdoms may dull the killing edge, but all elves have that in our nature. The reason the wild elves were hunted down by the kings wasn’t because they were too dangerous. It was because they believed we were too dangerous. In a way, they proved their point by being killed. They waged war against civilized people everywhere, wanting to drive elves back to the woods, humans out into the plains, and the dwarves back into the mountains. There weren’t many of them, and we hunted them down whenever we found them.”

  “You use the word ‘we’ when talking about them, Calaran.”

  The bard looked back at the two men sitting at the table. “Which of you will do it?”

  Donal looked at Croft and then at the fireplace. Croft looked down at the table.

  “I’m sorry—,” the innkeeper started.

  “How old are you,” interrupted Donal.

  “That is the most impolite thing a human can ask an elf,�
�� said Calaran. His voice was filled with subtle rage.

  “No, the most impolite thing is to ask if you are part of a noble house,” replied the woodsman.

  Calaran smiled and laughed. “You are correct, Donal. That is more insulting. I won’t tell you how old I am, but I will say that I was around when Ternesian and his nine wreaked havoc on the world. And since I know the next question, that was eight hundred years ago.”

  Croft looked at the bard with a true understanding of the word amazement. He thought he had known Calaran a long time, all of eighteen years. But to Calaran it must seem as if he had met Croft just last week, or maybe even yesterday.

  “That is a long time ago,” said the innkeeper.

  “Yes,” answered Calaran. “Even for an elf.”

  Donal stood from the table and smiled down at Croft. “You get some sleep. If everything goes as planned, we will be here waiting for breakfast when you wake up.”

  “Yes,” said Calaran. “It’s almost midnight now; we need to get to the woods. I believe we will be at an advantage tonight.”

  “You are both insane. A wild elf will kill you before you know he is on you,” said the innkeeper shaking his head. “You be careful out there, Donal, and I mean it. I don’t want Lendin deciding he has to avenge you or some such nonsense.”

  “I’ll return, Croft, and we will be careful. Let’s go, Calaran.”

  The woodsman and bard left the inn and slipped out into the night. Croft sat staring at the candle flame. A wild elf. A creature of legend and terror. And they said he had been living a short distance away for years. Croft finally blew out the candle, locked the front door, and went to bed.