Ogre Revenge
Willow tied up the horseman and gagged him with a wad of cloth. She then took his sword and dagger and let his horse free, sending it down the southern trail with a slap on the backside.
“You just sit tight,” she said to the man, glancing around at the dark forest. “Someone, or something is bound to find you.”
He tried to protest through the gag, but Willow slapped the reins and urged her team north.
Now that the excitement was over, her finger began to throb. It was bound in cloth that was stained with blood, but she had no time to tend to it now. She wondered for a lucid moment where the other half of her finger had ended up, and found herself bent over with laughter. Her amusement soon turned to anger as the severity of what had happened hit her. She thought of the others, who had been scheduled to be so marked the following morning.
Willow’s anger grew by the minute, and she decided that the only way to help her friends get sober was to eat all the treats and somehow destroy the fairy dust supply. She had to free the pixies as well.
Dayday had been gone longer than Willow thought she should, and she was beginning to think that she would never see the fairy again.
Willow was alone, she determined, and she was just going to have to do it herself.
She thought about burning the tower down and destroying the fairy dust that way, but of course she would still have to get the pixies out.
One thing at a time, she told herself, and focused on getting to the city. She still didn’t know how far away she was.
An hour went by, and then two, and just when she was beginning to think that she wouldn’t beat the sun, a tower rose above the tree line in the distance, one she recognized. She stopped the horses and tied them off to a tree before sneaking along the roadside. There had never seemed to be much security in the city of dippies, but she didn’t want to take any chances.
She arrived at the southern edge of the city, where the wall had been destroyed long ago. Now only a grown-over bump in the earth remained, the stones having been gathered by the dippies to make sculptures and the like.
Willow knew that the kitchens weren’t far from her location, just a few minutes’ walk north. To the west, she would find the store houses, some of the few buildings that were guarded. She wasn’t interested in the flour or sugar or other ingredients, just the large supply of pipe weed that was sprinkled with fairy dust. She figured that when the time came, it would be easy enough to simply burn those buildings down.
She decided to start with the kitchens. She was hungry, after all, and there were more than enough treats there to sate her appetite.
With as much grace as she could muster, she made her way through the dark ruins. She saw no one else about, and no torches indicating a faraway patrol. The only light came from the moon and the soft glow of the city square, where the tent village was located.
When she reached the kitchens, she stopped and checked behind her, listening for many minutes. No sound came from the city, but the kitchens were alive with bakers and cooks at work on the next day’s treats. These people, she had come to realize, were much more like Captain Ripps than the dippies, and she deduced that they, like Danbrig, must be a part of his original crew. These were no simple-minded, flighty drug heads, but Willow didn’t think they would give her too much trouble. She just had to make sure none of them ran for help like the horseman.
She took a moment to prepare herself and put on a dopey demeanor, pushing through the kitchen doors, giggling and staggering like a drunkard.
“Got any treats?” she asked merrily.
The dozen or so humans, elves, and dwarves mostly ignored her, caught up in their work as they were. One elf male strode over to her and smiled kindly.
“Come now, ogre, you are not supposed to be here. It will ruin the surprise.”
“Just want some treats,” she said, moving farther into the kitchen and looking for a place that she might lock them all up.
“Come on,” he said, grabbing her wrist.
“Oh, you want to dance!” she said, laughing. She grabbed him and twirled him around. She towered over the elf and everyone else there, and easily manhandled him.
The others had taken notice of her as she went deeper into the kitchen, past the rows of baking ovens and the long prepping counter where most of them were working. She twirled him once, twice, three times, and then heaved him with all her might. He slid down the fifteen-foot counter and crashed into a stack of pans at the end.
The bakers and cooks all jumped and looked to her with shock.
A big man with a funny white hat stomped over to her, looking quite cross, but before he could get a word out, she clonked him on the head with a marble rolling pin.
“Listen up you slavers or whatever you are. I’m taking over this kitchen. If you scream, try to get away, or in any other way try to alert your captain, I will bake you in an oven and eat you.”
They looked to each other and back to Willow.
“You can’t do this,” said one.
“When the captain finds out, he is going to—”
“Start eating!” she yelled over him.
When they only stared at her, she smashed a stack of dishes with the heavy rolling pin and grabbed an elf woman’s face and slammed it into a cake that she had been working on.
“I said start eating!”
They all hurriedly dug into the treats before them, stuffing their mouths as she walked around the room stuffing big handfuls of cakes, biscuits, bread, custard toppings, and pastries in her mouth. Soon the workers began to become droopy-eyed and slow. Once one of them started giggling, it was over, and Willow was looking at a kitchen full of bakers and cooks rolling on the floor in a fit.
Willow searched the storerooms and found bags of sugar, grain, flour, and tubs of freshly churned butter, as well as bags and bags of fairy dust. The rooms held finished treats as well, and Willow went to work eating as much as she could.
Two hours later, she sat against the wall of the storeroom, rubbing her bulbous belly and groaning painfully. She had eaten until she threw up, and then eaten some more, until all the treats were gone. After slowly pulling herself up from the floor, she brought the bags of fairy dust and two sacks of sugar out into the kitchen and rounded up the giggling workers. She locked them up in the storeroom and pushed the long table up against it. For added measure, she piled up dishes and silverware and pots and pans on the table and left the kitchen, feeling as though she might have to vomit one more time. She had eaten enough treats to last the dippies a few days, and her stomach wasn’t at all happy.
From a nearby broken wall she chose three huge slabs of stone and squatted down, wrapping her arms around one of them, and lifting with all her might. With slow, lumbering steps, she carried the stone over to the kitchen door and dropped it against the threshold, completely blocking it. She laid the other two stones—slabs that would take ten men to carry—on top of the first. Slapping the dust from her hands, she nodded approvingly at her work and went about dumping the fairy dust out in the wind. She watched it blow away into the dark city, illuminating the stone columns and forgotten battlements before dispersing into the night. With that done, she shouldered the sugar sacks and headed for the fairy dungeon.
From a distance, Willow watched the tower door. She waited for a few minutes, wanting to make sure that no patrols came her way, before hurrying to the tower with her big belly jiggling. She stifled a burp and rubbed her gut, not liking the grumbling sounds that it was making.
A fart escaped her, long and forlorn and foul, and Willow was forced to clap her hand over her mouth lest she laugh out loud.
She found the door unlocked and barreled through, closing it behind her and putting her back to it. She took a knee, feeling as though she was surely going to get sick, when a voice cried out right behind her, “What do you think you’re doing?”
Willow turned her head as her stomach suddenly turned. Pounds of chewed-up and half-digested treats flew
out of her mouth and covered whoever had spoken.
“Ugh…” said Willow when she saw the man standing there wide-eyed and speechless, covered in ogre puke. “Sorry,” she said, before punching him in the face and laying him out.
She continued down the hall she had ventured earlier and peered into the doorway leading to the dungeon. There was only one guard that she could see, an elf with a short beard and a net laid over his shoulder. He was walking away from Willow, going around to the right side of the circular catwalk. The dungeon glowed with the light of pixies trapped in their cells.
Willow rushed into the room and charged the elf. He turned around when he heard her coming, and his eyes went wide with fright. She slammed him with her shoulder, sending him careening into the bars of a fairy cell.
She rushed over to finish him off, frowning when she realized that he was out cold. She glanced at the stairwell leading down into the sorting room and, hearing heavy boots coming up, began a charge of her own.
Two dwarves crested the stairway and cried out when they saw her coming. One of them swung a mace at her, catching her in the head and dazing her for a moment. The other dwarf jumped on her back and tried to choke her out, but his thick arm didn’t even stretch around her wide neck. She grabbed him over her shoulder and threw him into his friend, sending them both tumbling down the stairs.
Willow went back and grabbed the elf and brought him down to the sorting room, where the dwarves were lying on the floor groaning.
“Captain Ripps is gonna be havin’ yer head,” said one, spitting out blood.
She walked over and grabbed the dwarf by the throat. “How do I destroy the fust?”
“What, why would ye want to do that? Do ye know how much it be worth?”
“Tell me how to destroy it.”
“Ye be mad.”
“You’re right,” she said, and head-butted him in the nose. He hung limply from her strong hand, and she tossed him aside.
The other dwarf was backing away from her on his elbows and rump as she stalked over and grabbed him by the throat, lifting him high into the air with ease.
“Tell me how to destroy the fairy dust, or you’re next!”
“It...it can’t be destroyed.”
“Willow!” came a high-pitched voice that she recognized.
“Dayday?” She spun around, looking for her.
“Up here!”
Willow looked up past the mesh screen of the cell holding the green pixies.
“Dayday! What happened?” she asked, rushing over to the bay of green fairy dust.
“I got caught when I came back to look for sugar yum-yum,” said Dayday, embarrassed.
“Awe, Dayday,” said Willow, disappointed.
The dwarf began to slap her arm because she was unconsciously squeezing. She gave him a quick head-butt and tossed him aside.
“I’m getting you all out of here,” she told Dayday, holding up the keys.
Other pixies had begun to gather at the bottom of their cells, which were the tops of the bays on Willow’s level.
“Three cheers for the ogre!” one cheered, and the others took up similar exclamations.
“Shhh!” Willow warned them all. “You have to be very, very quiet. Listen. I have a whole bunch of sugar.”
“Sugar?” They mimicked. “Sugar-sugar?”
“Yes, delicious, golden sugar. But you have to be quiet.”
That was a tall order for the thousands of pixies, but their thrumming wings created a constant buzz in the dungeon, and Willow doubted any other noises rose higher to those outside.
Willow hurried upstairs and began unlocking the fairies’ cells. By the time she was done, she had a thousand fairies flying circles around her.
“Come on, I’ve got the sugar outside!” she told them all.
Willow ran to the hall and out of the tower as the glowing pixies followed her. She knew that their glow would be incredible in the dark city, but she had no other choice. She grabbed the sugar sacks and ran as fast as she could as the hungry pixies followed close behind.
Willow ran all the way to the southern wall of the city and to the wagon and team of horses waiting for her. She ripped open the sugar sacks and spread their contents in the wagon as the pixies happily converged on the coveted crystal treats, diving head first into the piles. She went around to the front and untied the horses before slapping two of them on the backside.
They bolted down the road leading south, bringing the pixies with them.
“Aren’t you coming with us?” said Dayday, who had remained behind.
“I can’t. I’ve got to get my friends out of here. Listen, you need to bring the pixies to Faeland. You will be safe there.”
“But the sugar yum-yum is always here.”
“No more sugar yum-yum here. You understand? I’m putting a stop to all of this tonight.”
Dayday pursed her lips but nodded. “Okay, Dayday bring pixies to Faeland.”
“Thank you, Dayday.”
“Thank-thank you-you. Willow saved the day!” Dayday sang.
“Shhh!” said Willow, giggling. “Go on, get out of here, you crazy-ass pixie.”
“Bye-bye,” said Dayday, flying upside down and pretending to do a backstroke.
“Goodbye,” said Willow, watching her fly away. Soon the glow of the pixies disappeared into the southern woods. With any luck, the horses would run them far away, maybe even all the way to the coast.
Willow looked to the sky. The sun would be rising in about an hour. She pulled up her ragged trousers determinedly. It was nearly time to set the pipe weed sheds on fire, but first, there was all that fairy dust to deal with. She could eat all the treats she wanted, and burn all the pipe weed, but she had to get rid of the fairy dust somehow.
Chapter 10
The Revolution
Willow stared at the piles of dust, biting her thumbnail and pacing the sorting room. There were more than a dozen bays full of different-colored dust, and there was no way she could move it all. She had considered burning down the building above it, but it was built mostly of stone and would never catch on fire. Besides, she had no oil or piles of dried wood.
“Maybe I can bring it down,” she said to the tied-up elf and dwarves.
They looked at her wide-eyed, desperately trying to say something despite the gags in their mouths.
“Don’t worry, I wouldn’t leave you down here. What do you think I am, a monster?”
She tapped her right tusk, thinking. The tower was well constructed, and seemed to have survived the worst of the turmoil that had occurred here so long ago, before the fall of the ancient city. And stones were stones, as the dwarves liked to say. They did not comply with the rules of Father Time like other things did. Theirs seemed to be an eternal aging.
There was no way Willow could bring down this tower from within. Its beams were solid, its walls thick.
She kicked a crate and then suddenly remembered the leaning tower next to this one. She rushed outside and looked east. There, with the moon shining brightly from behind, stood the tall leaning tower that looked to be perpetually falling.
Willow climbed over the crumbled wall separating the two towers and rushed over to the leaner. She inspected its foundation and noted that roughly half of the stones were missing on the west side. It seemed that the tower had begun to fall at one time, but had been stopped by the ten-foot wall of stone separating the buildings. That wall was partially destroyed, but the part that the base of the leaning tower rested upon was intact and strong. The stone blocks that made up the wall were four square feet, and testing one that had been cast aside, she realized that they were not too heavy to lift, though it taxed her greatly to do so. She studied the pile, guessing which ones she might loosen to send the tower over.
When she was content with the plan, she grabbed a torch, collected the four guards she had found in the dungeon, and dragged them to another abandoned building. She hurriedly set about tying the guards to the center
beam.
“You all sit tight,” she said with a grin, and she ran off toward the pipe weed sheds.
The sun was nearly up, and Willow felt out of breath and very full and sick from all the treats she had consumed, but she toiled on, knowing that the fate of the champions, indeed the fate of Fallacetine, lay upon her shoulders.
She ripped open the pipe weed shed, glanced at the rising sun and grinned, and ran inside, dragging the torch across the many shelves of drying weed, even that which was piled in sacks beneath the shelves. Soon the shed was a roaring pyre.
No one had called out in alarm yet, and Willow couldn’t help but giggle to think of all the dippies waking up with no pipe and no treats, and no fairy dust to snort up their greedy noses.
She tossed the torch and rushed across the city to the leaning tower—the last obstacle in her plan.
***
Murland awoke with a wide grin and smacked his dry lips, reaching for the wine bottle he had fallen asleep with. He took a long swig and sat up, wondering where the elf maiden and rainbow bear was with the morning pipe.
His body felt all itchy, and his mouth tasted like kale. He looked around at the other sleeping champions and staggered over to the door.
Dippies were running around in every direction, sometimes bumping into each other or wrestling one another to the ground.
Confused, he turned back to his friends. “You guys got any fust, or treats?”
Sir Eldrick gave a yawn and reached for his pipe. He peered into the bowl and threw it aside with disgust. “Where is the morning weed?” he asked groggily.
“You guys should see this,” said Murland.
Brannon untangled himself from the two young elf lads he had been sleeping between and walked to the door. Gibrig came as well, eyes swelled nearly shut and bloodshot.
Outside, the dippies were tearing the city apart.
“Hey there!” Sir Eldrick yelled at one of them as they ran by, looking frantic and wide-eyed. “What is going on? Where are the treats?”
Beyond the Wide Wall: Humorous Fantasy (Epic Fallacy Book 2) Page 7
