“Unless,” O’Dell began, “Ethan could use his Wizardcraft again to get us back to Greenwell City now.”
“No way!” May exclaimed. “It practically put him into a coma when he used it the first time!”
“Relax, May. I feel different now. I don’t know how to explain it, but for some reason I know with absolute certainty that I can use my Wizardcraft somewhat safely now. What happened before must have been because it was kind of like popping a cork off a bottle. The Wizardcraft within me is open now and I can use it freely. But I still don’t think I can take you all at once, and I don’t want to run the risk of leaving someone behind. I think it’s best if we do what Kraegovich suggested.”
O’Dell and May both nodded in agreement.
The four of them spent the rest of that terribly hot summer day sitting by the roadside refreshing themselves with inactivity, rations, and water. If it wasn't for the rising level of dread and anxiety among the party at the imminent arrival of the Troll they may have even relaxed. Conversation between the Foresters ran through a gamut of topics but they were particularly focused on the return of Wizardcraft to the land and what that would mean for the people of the Three Baronies.
It was said that the rise to power of Illumis the Wizard Emperor in the Ancient Age of the Three Baronies’ history was due in large part to his Wizard allies who were corrupted in their long years of power-hungry scheming and dangerous Wizardcraft powers. It may have been possible that the people of the Three Baronies were better off without Wizardcraft in the world, without powers that make men more than their peers. But they were not sure if Wizardcraft powers had returned to others in the land, or if it was the sole capability of Ethan.
But as darkness and shadows crept back into the Forests of Greenwell as the sun descended into the west the Foresters appeared to become more wary and suspicious of the noises in the wild. Ethan volunteered for the middle watch, the most difficult of the night, with Kraegovich taking the first watch and, despite persistent disagreements from May, O’Dell was taking the final watch. Hence it was sometime in the deepest darkest part of the night, when even the intense heat of the summer had given way to shadow, when a drowsy Kraegovich awoke Ethan with a slight shake of his shoulder.
“You’re up, Ethan,” groaned Kraegovich as he eased himself onto his side in the thick spongy grass they had bedded down in.
May and O’Dell breathed easily where they slept nearby as Ethan sat up and rubbed his eyes. He still was clothed in only his dark trousers and no shirt, and before he rose Kraegovich handed him his silver hand axe. “Take this, young storyteller. Be ready for anything.”
Ethan nodded and stood up, stretching at the end of his ascension. He then slipped on his hide gauntlets and boots for what little protection they could offer against the Troll or any of those Deep Wolves that Kraegovich and May had battled. Afterwards, Ethan strode from their little camp and stepped out onto the Three Baronies Road a couple dozen feet away. The hard packed dirt that was the roadway felt foreign and stable beneath his booted feet after his time spent in the woods. He began to amble about, preparing himself mentally for whatever dangers intruded on his watch.
Chapter Fifteen
Words with the Troll
Minutes turned into hours as Ethan paced the immediate area, his amber gaze never leaving the oak and birch woods that lined the road and his sleeping friends. He never relinquished the grip on Kraegovich’s hand axe in his right hand. Sometime near the end of his shift though he found himself in the middle of the Three Baronies Road a few hundred feet south of where his friends slept. He stood there in the bright moonlight and marveled at his arms, at the snaking blue sigils that had appeared there the night before. He was a Wizard, the first in a thousand years, and it scared the life out of him. Ethan didn’t know what he was going to do when he returned to Greenwell City, but he knew that the rest of the people of the Three Baronies must be warned about the Wizardcraft that he had apparently returned to the land.
As these thoughts crossed his mind he heard the scrap of a footstep on the dirt of the road behind him. He whirled around with a snarl and raised the hand axe for a devastating chop into the face of whatever had stalked up behind him, be it a Deep Wolf or the Troll. He was relieved and felt foolish when it was only O’Dell standing there in the road with his arms crossed and a smirk on his face. Ethan’s face blushed in the woodland darkness and he hurriedly lowered the weapon.
“O’Dell, you scared the Soul Wastes out of me. What are you doing up? My shift isn’t over yet?”
O’Dell kept his relaxed stance in place and replied, “I couldn’t sleep too soundly. Probably due to the approaching doom, you know.”
Ethan let out a slight nervous smile and responded, “Yeah. I don’t know if it will be our certain doom though. When you saved me back in Deephollow you put the Troll out of commission for awhile so we could escape. Can’t you just do it again? I mean you’re obviously a better fighter than it.”
“Either that or I’m just lucky.”
Ethan laughed and they stood there in the dark warm night in silence.
“Ethan,” O’Dell began after a moment, “I think that I’ve found the secret to defeating the Troll.”
The storyteller’s face was sculpted into a visage of graveness that threatened to be chiseled with an explosion of relief and joy. “Great! Maybe you’ll finally destroy that bastard once and for all. What’s the secret?”
O’Dell stared at him for a long moment before answering, his smiling face transforming into a featureless slate. “You, Ethan Skalderholt, are the key to destroying the Troll. If you really have Wizardcraft powers, if you really are a Wizard, then you are the only one in the Three Baronies who can defeat it.”
Ethan stood there in shocked disbelief and then he replied quietly, “How can I defeat it?”
“The Troll was forged in the Wizardcraft in the Ancient Age and I believe that only that same Wizardcraft can unmake it.”
“That makes sense I suppose. I hope you’re right, O’Dell, but that only scares me all the more.”
O’Dell didn’t take his blue eyes from the Vharian and he responded, “I am positive that you can destroy the Troll, Ethan. That’s the real reason why I am awake now.”
Ethan started to nod in answer but then he noticed that his Forester companion was not speaking in his own passionate voice, but an empty shell of his voice, one without emotion. His grip tightened on the handle of the hand axe and he said quietly, “What do you mean, O’Dell?”
“Quit calling me O’Dell, Vharian, for I am not him.”
Ethan’s heart dropped and his stomach lurched in panic, but he responded in a controlled firm voice, a voice that could do nothing but accept the inevitability of death, “When did you kill O’Dell?”
“Not that it’s any of your concern, human, but I captured him just after he left you in the Headquarters of the Foresters of the Three Baronies in Greenwell City. I followed you two closely from Deephollow. The Woodfolk almost caught me, in fact. Once you humans reached your destination it was not hard at all to devour a drunkard in the east side of your wretched city. Sure enough your friend departed the compound alone the following day and went to drink his frustrations away with spirits and meads. It wasn’t difficult for me to stalk him in his drunken state through the filthy avenues of the city and end him. Finally after all these years I ended him, that thorn in my side, and now I am so very close to completing my objective, bestowed to me over a thousand years ago by my master. And then you showed up.”
It continued, “When I first met you, when I was in the guise of that southerner woman, I sensed something special in you, but no more special than the red-eyed woman before you. But now as I understand, you have become a Wizard. You have returned Wizardcraft to our land of the Three Baronies, and with it the key to destroying me and what I have worked for all these centuries. I will not allow that to happen.”
Ethan’s eyes welled with tears, and he gave into hope
lessness. There may have been a way for him to destroy the Troll with Wizardcraft, but he didn’t have any idea how to do it. This beast was going to murder him and his friends and then systematically kill all the Foresters of the Three Baronies. After that it would probably be freed from its duty and go about the Three Baronies causing havoc and mischief.
Then something changed within the storyteller. Far too much depended on him. His friends needed him, if what the monster said was true. He was the only one who could defeat the beast. He couldn’t accept demise and defeat at the hands of a single monster, one composed of Wizardcraft just as he seemed to be. He clenched his jaw and twin tears raced from the corner of each eye.
“Well then,” Ethan said, “enough talk. You killed my friend and he’ll never see his family or friends again until they too go to the Ancestor Lands. I already grow tired of running from you so let’s just finish this here and now.”
“Are you so eager to die, human?”
“Don’t count your chickens before they hatch, Troll. You obviously aren’t at the top of your game if it’s taken you so long to only get this far. And besides your master, that demented, castrated tyrant, got killed a millennium ago. Maybe you should have been his master for you still remain, sick and decadent though you may be.”
The Troll, in the disguise of O’Dell, its latest victim, let its mask turn into a scowl of such contempt and utter hatred that Ethan found it hard to believe that it could come from his good-spirited friend’s features. Ethan did his best in an attempt to return the look as his brain struggled to grasp the oncoming horror of violence. He hadn’t ever attacked another living creature in his entire life and he was about to fight to the death with one of the most devious and dangerous foes the Three Baronies had ever known. So be it, he thought.
The thin Vharian Forester, shirtless in the summer air, shot forward with the speed akin to a striking viper and brought the silver axe in a quick explosive horizontal chop from right to left across the Troll’s chest. It jerked itself backward just in time, but was caught slightly unawares when Ethan repeated that exact same attack at its head. It saved its new face from injury by whipping its head to the side but the silver blade grazed its left cheekbone sending a thin line of oily black blood into the night.
In their silent combat the beast replied to Ethan’s two attacks by unsheathing O’Dell’s own hand axe in the blink of an eye. At the appearance of the weapon Ethan’s newfound courage began to waver and anxiety began to melt his insides and fill the void. Thus it was only sheer luck that allowed him to survive the attack of the Troll. With efficient precision it twirled the axe like silver lightning in its gauntleted hand and let out an inhuman snarl as it swung a tremendous downward chop that could have easily split the storyteller’s head in half. Somehow, though, Ethan brought his silver axe up horizontally and parried the strike in a clang of metal and a brief flash of sparks.
In a reflexive action Ethan immediately went on the offensive in his duel with the Troll, abruptly after his successful parry. As the Troll’s arm recoiled from the shock of the parry Ethan buried the blade of his axe deep into the forearm of the creature that wore the guise of his friend. It roared in a feral bestial roar that Ethan had heard when he and O’Dell had fled the Troll in Deephollow, and the Vharian quickly jerked his weapon out of the thing’s arm, already awash with black blood.
Before the monster could again go on the offensive Ethan let out a growl of his own as he swung his hand axe horizontally into the left side of the Troll’s face. He chopped deep and hard, bones splintering and flesh breaking, and its eyes, the blue eyes of O’Dell, rolled back into its head as Ethan was showered in a hot spray of greasy black blood.
Ethan didn’t stop to watch as the Troll crumpled to the hard dirt of the road because he knew it would soon be fully healed and very angry. Instead the Forester ran into the falling form with his bare shoulder and knocked it backwards to land hard on its back and head with a crack. Ethan stumbled but continued on, trampling over the prone form of the monster, and he dashed down the road to where his friends were sleeping.
As he dashed in a rush of adrenaline towards his friends’ campsite he was relieved to see Kraegovich and May jogging confusedly up the road towards him.
“Run! The Troll killed O’Dell! Run!” screamed Ethan.
Behind the Forester the monster began to stir and struggle to its knees, and in a swift moment Ethan practically collided with his two companions. He grabbed May’s hand and began pulling her down the road to the north, but both quickly noticed Kraegovich remained where he was, staring unwaveringly at O’Dell’s silhouette struggling to its feet a score of yards down the road. “Kraegovich, what in the Soul Wastes are you doing? Come on!” cried May as she and Ethan stood hand in hand a little behind him prepared to sprint away down the Three Baronies Road.
“Go on,” he started in a tense even tone, “I’ll buy you two some time.”
“No, Kraegovich, you don’t need to sacrifice yourself! You can’t beat that thing!” responded Ethan.
“I know, but if you really are the key to killing that son of a bitch then you need all of the time that you can get,” replied Kraegovich.
Ethan shook his head in frustration but knew that there would be no talking the old Vharian out of his course of action. The decision had been made. The two younger Foresters ran back to Kraegovich as the Troll began straightening itself to a fully-erect stance. Ethan grabbed the larger man by his gauntleted hand and slammed the shaft of his silver hand axe into his palm. “Take this, you stubborn old bastard. Show that asshole just how rough it can be going toe to toe with a Vharian,” Ethan said passionately through gritted teeth as tears welled into his eyes.
Kraegovich looked down into Ethan’s glistening amber eyes, his own brown ones shining in the moonlight. He said in a whisper, “I know your name, Ethan Skalderholt. Many decades ago a woman named Ethyl Roantor joined the Foresters. I was her tutor for her Errand and we fell deeply in love, a love as deep as two large proud Vharian hearts can manage. At the time I was known by the nickname Bear, on account of my size, and Ethyl earned the title of the Axe Maiden for her skill with the Forester’s axe. Such adventures we had, boy. But she met another while on patrol in Vhar. Despite my best efforts I could not get her to stay in Greenwell with me, and she left the Foresters and married the man. His name was Hildar Skalderholt. Years later she and her new husband came to Greenwell on an errand and I spoke to her again. She was pregnant at the time. What I’m trying to say, Ethan, is that I knew your grandmother.”
Tears streamed down Ethan’s cheeks as he looked into the eyes of his elder and he whispered, “I know the story of Bear and the Axe Maiden. My grandmother told it to me when I was a boy but I never knew it was about her.”
A tear dripped from one of Kraegovich’s old tired eyes as he nodded. He embraced Ethan quickly, clapping his back and rubbing the back of Ethan’s head as a parent would with a child. He let go of the storyteller and turned to May who wept openly. He instantly embraced her with a long deep hug, despite the presence of the Troll who now stood fully erect. It cocked its head as it turned and looked at them, and in the moonlight Ethan could see O’Dell’s angular face break into a sinister predatory grin.
“I don’t want to leave you,” May sobbed as she shuddered in the older Forester’s embrace. He closed his eyes and bit his bottom lip as his cleft chin quivered.
“I know, my little Snow Rose, but you have to go right away. You and Ethan have to get back to your mother and save our order. You two must warn all the Three Baronies about the return of Wizardcraft to the land.”
May still sobbed but Kraegovich extended her to arm’s length. With one huge hand he lifted her chin and looked mournfully into her reddened eyes. “I love you like the daughter I never got the chance to have, May. Live happy,” he whispered to her.
The Troll in O’Dell’s form began to stride toward them in an easy ambling pace that bespoke confidence. The beast even began to
casually whistle a little tune. Ethan swallowed the lump in his throat and grabbed May from Kraegovich. Kraegovich looked at them both and said, “Hurry home, children.”
Ethan nodded and turned to run away with May, but quickly Kraegovich raised his voice as he barked, “I wish I could have heard one of your stories, noble storyteller!”
Ethan turned partially around as they ran and he replied, “You can be assured that all will hear your story! Good bye, my friend, and may the Ancestors take you into the Ancestor Lands with open arms!”
At that the two young Foresters sprinted off into the darkness. Kraegovich smiled warmly, but it immediately faded when he gazed upon the approaching monster. “This will not be easy,” Kraegovich stated to it as he held the silver hand axe out pointed unwaveringly at his foe.
“I’d have it no other way, old human,” replied the Troll as it too pointed at its opponent with its own hand axe.
“In honor and duty,” the old Forester recited under his breath and he charged forward to his doom.
Chapter Sixteen
An Inspiring Yarn before Bed
They heard the harsh violence of the duel between the Troll and Kraegovich down the Three Baronies Road to their backs as it echoed throughout the surrounding quiet forest woodlands in the hours just prior to dawn. May and Ethan sprinted down the road, their booted feet pounding on the hard dirt of the road in a swift rhythmic pace that mimicked their hearts. Tears dried on their faces. Both wore masks of grimness like a replacement of the Foresters uniforms that they had lost during this adventure. Their gauntleted hands, though, still clung together as they ran northward.
After they had been sprinting for about thirty minutes they were forced to stop for a breather. Their breaths came out in wheezes and both were drenched in sweat. The air was beginning to grow humid and the dark sky was cloaked in thick clouds in the grey hours that heralded the approaching dawn. Finally Ethan said, “May, we have something like one-hundred miles to travel to reach Greenwell City, but as we speak the Troll is already after us. Kraegovich is gone by now.”
The Azure Wizard Page 14
