RuneWarriors

by James Jennewein

  Now having no choice, Dane moved down the tunnel on the left, stepping carefully to avoid any traps as he went, inching his way forward.

  And then a gust of air blew out his torch. Blackness. He called out to Jarl but in response heard only the echoing emptiness of his own voice. Why couldn’t Jarl hear him? Was he in trouble too?

  Dane instinctively fell on all fours and crawled forward down the ever-narrowing passageway. The ice grew slicker and colder. He heard a hammering in his ears. The rank odor again hit his nose, this time even fouler than before. He thought of his father’s last words and the disappointment he’d seen in his eyes. He thought of Astrid and wondered whether he’d ever see her again.

  He heard a sudden scraping noise, like the jangle of iron against ice. Perhaps Jarl had found something and was sending him a message! With his knife, Dane started stabbing the wall nearest to where he thought Jarl would be, moving down the narrow passage toward the sound. And just as suddenly the floor beneath him dropped away so steeply that Dane lost his footing and went sliding feet-first, shooting down a slick icy tube, with no time to react or stop himself.

  Faster and faster he slid through the darkness, taking wild stabs with his knife at the wall to try to slow his descent. Louder and louder he screamed as he rushed down the slope to what a tiny primal voice inside warned was certain death until—floosh!—he shot out onto a flat sheet of watery ice and went tumbling tail over teacups. Then wham! He hit something hard and came to a sudden, dizzying stop facedown in a pool of muck.

  A blinding pain shot through his head. There was a penetrating smell so overpowering, he thought it must be the stench of some horrific beast that lay panting nearby. Time to face his fate. He rolled over and opened his eyes, expecting to be eaten alive. The next thing he knew, he was staring into the face of what he could only describe as a blood-starved demon.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  DANE MATCHES WITS WITH THE WELLMASTER

  Actually, it was only a dwarf. Or troll. Dane had had too little experience with either to tell the two apart. Its stench was so fetid and foul, anybody might mistake it for a demon at first. But now Dane saw that the creature that stood before him was indeed of human form—a hairy, grime-encrusted thing about three feet tall, half clad in a tattered, sweat-darkened tunic, its face comprising two pink, bulging eyes, a large, misshapen nose, and a toothless hole of a mouth, above a tangled triangle of chin hair. And there was something odd about the eyes. They stared out, unblinking, seeming to look past him, not at him. Strange. And as the thing sniffed at the air, Dane noticed something even stranger: The thing’s nose had not two nostrils but three. And it had a pair of pointy ears. Telltale signs that it—or he—was a troll after all!

  As a child, Dane had been told by his mother that trolls were basically harmless loners who lived beneath bridges, more to be pitied than feared. But later, he had learned from Lut and his father the real truth about trolls: While some could be trusted, they said, most trollfolk were a coarse and warlike people who shunned humans and preferred to live deep in the forest among their own kind, delving into the dark arts, forging bewitched weaponry, and perfecting high-gloss ceramics. He was to avoid contact with them at all cost, they had told him. But now here he was, face-to-face with one.

  Dane sat up and peered at the homunculus, wondering if he was anything of a threat, when suddenly the troll issued an animal growl and lunged at Dane. Scrambling backward over the ice, Dane saw the troll jerk to a sudden stop and fall to the floor, cursing the rusted iron chain round his ankle, the other end of which, Dane now saw, was secured to the wall. And seeing the troll so tethered made Dane feel safe.

  Dane saw he was in an ice grotto inside a glacier, a great cavernous space at the base of a fissure that rose a hundred feet high. A glimmer of bluish turquoise light from above reflected off frosted ice formations, making the icicled ceiling and walls seem to glow from within, illuminating two glistening pools of water.

  The troll got to his feet. “Well, who were you expecting? The evil spawn of a Saxon queen, perchance?” he asked with a demented cackle. Then Dane heard a cry. Out from another chute hole shot Jarl, sprawling to a stop at Dane’s feet. Dane helped him up.

  The troll arched his eyebrows in amusement. “Well, thanks for dropping in, boys,” he said, his voice surprisingly deep and rasping. “If I’d known you were coming, I would have made sandwiches.”

  “What is this place?” said Jarl, getting his bearings.

  “It’s the world-famous Well of Knowledge, pox brain!” growled the troll. “Didn’t you read the sign out front?”

  “Hey, a dwarf!” said Jarl in wonder.

  “Actually, I think he’s a troll,” said Dane.

  “What kind of idiots are you?” said the exasperated troll. “No, don’t answer, I already know. You’re prize scut-wits in desperate trouble. Some ridiculous life-or-death situation, a marital squabble, a murder charge, a love triangle—I hate love triangles!—and you’ve traveled far and risked all to come here and find the answers you seek.”

  Jarl looked at Dane, dumbfounded. “How’d he know that?”

  “I’m the Wellmaster, nimrod! Fifty winters I’ve been here listening to people’s problems. Fifty long years! And if you think it’s fun listening to people whine and worry and snivel and snerk about the many foul forms of human misery, then you don’t know pisspots from periwinkles. You name it, I’ve heard it. Bees in the bonnet! Boils on the buttocks! Idiot sons! Wart-ugly daughters! Lost fortunes! Frostbite! Famine! Pestilence! Sick pets! I’ve heard it all! But the worst, the absolute worst of all, is love! And you know why? Because the wounds of love never heal! Love can crush a man’s soul—knock him out for good—and I for one am all too weary of seeing good men cut down in their prime because they fell in love with some prissy little missy who couldn’t see it in her heart to love them back!”

  He now paused to catch a breath.

  “Sounds like you’ve had it hard,” said Dane. “Sorry for your plight.”

  “My plight? What plight is that?”

  “Well, being stuck here alone, no one to talk to.”

  Again the troll exploded. “Who said I’ve no one to talk to? I have myself, don’t I? I listen to every word I say. No matter what mood I’m in. Which is a mite more than my wife ever did, I can tell you that.”

  “You had a wife?”

  The troll fell silent, surprised he’d let this slip. “Yeah. Long story.” An awkward silence hung in the air, Dane sensing this might be something of a sore subject to the little man. They heard the steady drip, drip, drip of melting ice dropping from the ceiling. Then the troll erupted.

  “You had to bring it up, didn’t you? Just had to go poking around inside me, trying to hit my sensitive spot. Well, you found it, all right!”

  “I didn’t mean to—”

  “You want the whole sad story? Yes, I had a wife. Yes, she was beautiful. Yes, I loved her with all my heart. And you want to know what she did? She ran off with the VILLAGE IDIOT, that’s what she did! Okay? You happy now?”

  Dane said he was sorry.

  “Sorry?” sighed the troll. “No one knows the pain of another man’s heart.”

  Dane listened as the wee one continued to pour out his heart, but Jarl cared little.

  “Uh, I hate to interrupt the pity party here, guys,” interrupted Jarl impatiently, “but can we get to the well water? Time’s a-wasting.”

  “What?” snapped the troll. “My pain is a waste of your precious time?”

  “We are rather in a hurry,” said Dane apologetically. “You see, someone we know is in trouble and we’re trying to save her, so we’d really appreciate it if—”

  “Oh, so there is a girl in the picture,” said the troll triumphantly. “Which one of you is in love with her? No, don’t tell me! You’re both in love with her. Hah! I knew it. It is a love triangle! Ah, ha-ha-ha. Oh, you poor raggers, will men never learn?”

  “Can we just get to it?” Jarl said
angrily.

  “Okay, okay, okay,” said the troll testily. “Here’s the deal.” His voice took on a bored, almost mocking tone as he launched into his memorized declamation. “You see before you two wells,” he said, gesturing vaguely toward the twin wells behind him. “The water from one well will give you great wisdom and insight, but only for a very short time. The water from the other will make you lose whatever wits you have and turn you into a drooling idiot forever.”

  “Uh…could you repeat that last part again?” said Jarl.

  “I said one gives you wisdom, and one makes you an idiot.”

  “But you’re not going to tell us which one is which, are you?” asked Dane.

  The troll gave a toothless grin. “That’s right, I’m not. And do you want to know why I’m not?”

  “Because we brought up the wife thing?” said Jarl.

  “No,” said the troll. “Because, in case you haven’t noticed—I’m blind!”

  The word hung there, echoing up through the cavernous fissure.

  “You mean you can’t see?” asked Jarl incredulously.

  The troll turned his head in Dane’s direction. “Is he really as dumb as he sounds?” Dane was about to nod yes but realized the imp couldn’t see.

  “I can’t tell you,” continued the troll, not waiting for an answer, “because I really don’t know. As you can see, my chain has prevented me from ever getting close enough to take a drink from either well myself. And all the others who’ve come to drink have failed to furnish me a clue. I can only conclude that those who drink the wisdom water are too smart to utter a word and those who drink from the other well can no longer speak at all. So I’m sorry to say you’re on your own. You want wisdom? There it is. Go get it.”

  Back on the longship, Lut the Bent was worried. Two hours and so far no sign. Moving away from the others on board, most of whom were in some state of boisterous disagreement, he knelt down and drew out the runebones. Closing his eyes to focus his mind, he threw them on deck and then braved a look. Hmmm. A tiny trouble could turn nasty. Not so promising a sign, Lut mused, especially given Jarl’s lack of good judgment and the excessive attention he gave to his hair. But did it foretell disaster? Lut returned the runebones to their pouch and secreted them away in his coat. Fortitude. One must have fortitude. He heard a bird cry overhead. His eyes drawn upward, he spied the raven circling in the sky and the dark mouth of the cave high on the cliffs above. The mouth that had eaten his companions. But would it spit them back out? For now, all he could do was ruminate and wait.

  Jarl and Dane drew out the goatskin drinking sacks they’d carried with them and approached the wells.

  “So what do we do?” said Jarl. “How do we know which water is which?”

  Dane said he didn’t know, and the two stood there a moment, pondering what to do. Then Jarl’s eyes lit up, and he picked up a pebble he found on the cavern floor. “I know. I will turn my back and throw this pebble in the air, and the pool it lands nearest to is the one the gods want us to choose.”

  “But,” said Dane, “what if it’s the wrong pool? What if it lands near the well with the water that will make us morons?”

  “Then our fate has been written by the gods and our quest will fail.”

  Dane wasn’t sure he agreed. “But what if there’s no such thing as preordained destiny? I mean, what if the gods don’t really decide for us at all? What if we’re supposed to live or die by our own decisions? Our own judgments?”

  “You can’t be serious,” said Jarl, shocked by these blaspheming words. “That’s crazy talk.”

  “But the gods wouldn’t have given us reason if they didn’t want us to use it, right?” Dane pointed over to the far left, where a dozen skeletons of men long dead lay strewn about. Didn’t it seem possible, he asked Jarl, that those who drank the idiot water—since its effects were permanent—probably didn’t have the brains to even find their way out of the cave? “Many skeletons lie near the well on the left, but no bones by the well on the right. So I think it correct to conclude that the well on the left is the idiot water and we shouldn’t drink it.”

  “But all you’re going on is what your own mind tells you. That’s nonsense,” said Jarl in exasperation. “You do what you want. I’d rather trust in the gods.” He tossed the pebble over his shoulder. He turned to see it bounce twice and come to rest beside the pool of water on the left. “Aha, you see? It is the left. The gods have guided us well.”

  Jarl went over and filled his goatskin bag with the water from that well.

  Dane, following his reason, filled his goatskin with water from the other well, the one on the right. The water felt cool to the touch and smelled faintly of roses, and this made Dane instantly wary. Was it a trick? Making the idiot water smell nice so he would mistake it for the good stuff? It was certainly possible, but with no way to tell for sure, he went on filling his skin, worried he might have chosen wrong.

  Dane thanked the troll for his hospitality and asked how they could find a way out. The wee one walked them over to one of the ice tunnels and took hold of a long, ropelike vine that disappeared up inside it.

  “Our pulley system,” said the troll. “Just hold on and it’ll pull you all the way up.” Dane felt bad, leaving the troll behind; he was beginning to like the little guy. They said their good-byes, and when the wee one put out his hand, Dane didn’t hesitate to shake it warmly, though it was a tad diminutive and hairy.

  “Farewell,” said the troll. “And thanks for listening.” As Dane turned to leave, the troll added, “My name’s Skogul. Skogul the Gloomy.”

  “I’m Dane the Defiant,” Dane said, nodding to Jarl, “and his name is—”

  “Jarl the Impatient,” Jarl said hastily, “and if we ever run into your former wife, we’ll be sure to say hello for you.” Then to Dane he said, “Can we go now?” And as Jarl and Dane took hold of the viney rope, it suddenly jerked forward. The two had to hold on tightly as it dragged them upward into the tunnel. The last thing Dane saw before disappearing up into darkness was Skogul’s grinning face as he waved good-bye and called out a final warning: “Whatever you do, don’t let go!” Then the troll exploded in laughter, his echoing cackles reverberating up the tunnel, making Dane wonder if they were really out of danger yet.

  Jarl prattled on about how they’d gotten the better of the imp and how the gods were on their side and how he couldn’t wait to find Thidrek so he could cleave him in twain and watch his blood run and see his face turn pale and his eyes go white and how Astrid would be so thankful she’d hug and kiss him and agree to marry him at once. Jarl always talked a lot and never really cared if the person he was talking to talked back because mostly it was just the sound of his own voice he liked to hear.

  Dane let him drone on, happy to be with his own thoughts as he held tight to the frayed vine pulling him up the steep incline in the freezing darkness. His mother’s face suddenly came to him, her sweet smile and the grit in her voice as she’d growl curses coarser than his father’s whenever the hearth fire went out or someone forgot to put smudgie wipes in the outhut. His mind was so busy with memories of home and of Astrid that when he looked up and saw the round circle of daylight ahead, it took several moments for him to realize that there was also a big round shadow blocking out a good portion of that light. And once they reached the top and let go of the rope and could stand up in the tunnel itself—he finally saw what it was that was blocking the passage ahead. His blood ran cold.

  Because now, he realized, what he’d thought was a vine he’d been holding on to wasn’t a vine at all—but rather the hairy tail of a giant ice rat! Or ísrotte, as it was called.

  Some pulley! And now the monstrous thing, having reached the top, had moved round to face them. The ice rat looked to be at least four feet high and twice as long, with thick bristles of shiny white fur covering its body. Its long pearl-gray whiskers quivered as its pointed dirty-pink snout sniffed at the air. Its breath smelled of rotting flesh and its eye
s glowed a dull green. When its jaws broke open, Dane could see jagged rows of fanglike teeth and—to his horror—a wriggling mass of maggots crawling among those teeth and over its glistening gray tongue. The maggots were apparently feeding on the remains of something else the ice rat had eaten some time ago.

  Jarl and Dane stood trembling.

  “The troll tricked us,” said Dane, trying to stay calm and keep his wits about him. Jarl asked Dane under his breath if those were maggots he’d seen in the ice rat’s mouth, and Dane said, yes, he thought they were.

  “So that means,” Jarl half whispered, “we get eaten twice, then, eh?”

  “Yeah. First by the ice rat, then by the maggots.”

  “Well, first it’ll have to get past this,” said Jarl, unsheathing his sword, brandishing it at the monstrous thing. The ice rat flared its nostrils. Its eyes glistened at the sight of the weapon. It gave a dismissive snort and drew nearer, its eyes narrowing to two gleaming pinpoints. Soon they’d be devoured. Swords would be useless, Dane saw. In desperation, he searched his mind for an idea. What could they do? And then he had it. A story he’d once heard about rats aboard a sinking ship.

  “Slash its whiskers!” cried Dane. Jarl shot him an are-you-kidding? look, and Dane said, “Just do it!” Dane’s sword flashed, slicing through the rat’s protruding whiskers on the left of its snout. Enraged, the rat lunged at Dane, who leaped back, barely escaping the snap of its daggerlike teeth. Jarl then slashed the whiskers off the other side of its snout. Suddenly shorn, the ice rat gave a sharp, ear-piercing squeal and pawed its snout in alarm.

  “Run!” shouted Dane. And run they did, dashing toward the circle of light at the end of the tunnel. Throwing a look over his shoulder, Dane saw to his horror the two green eyes advancing with inhuman speed. He felt the hot, fetid breath on his neck.