“I have a cup right here in my sack. Don’t mind if I do share a few drops with you.”
“What’s your story, Wellington? What brings you to this part of Neverwind?” She looked over at Gnath still sound asleep on the ground. She took my cup and filled with the steamy, dark ambrosia. “And what’s up with the ogre?”
“Half-ogre, and I wouldn’t call him an ogre to his face. He is sensitive about it.”
“Understood,” she said, handing me my cup. “I wouldn’t want to anger him. But seriously… what’s your story?”
“Nothing to tell, really. Gnath and I are from the same part of the country, he from the coastal city of Farrador, and I from a small, unnamed hovel a few hours north by foot. Gnath was a slave aboard the Vermillion, a large twin-mast fishing vessel, forced day and night to shovel tons of smelly sea creatures into the holds of the ship.”
I stopped to take a sip of the Java, and though the brew was far stronger than I was used to, I welcomed the warmth into my body in a ritualistic, almost religious offering.
“One day,” I continued, “I was in a game of Onesy-Twosy with the captain of the fishing vessel Vermillion in a small inn in Farrador when the hand turned very hot in my favor. It was a dream hand, four two’s and an ace. I couldn’t lose. The only hand better is four aces, and I held one in my hand.”
“So, what then?” Nyssa asked. “He thought he had a better hand than you, so he put Gnath in as part of the pot?”
“Something like that. Gnath was sitting at the edge of the inn, waiting for the Captain to have him loaded up like a pack mule. But to the point, yes, he put Gnath into the pot, and I put up the last of my savings; money I planned on using to buy passage to somewhere east, maybe Mandervale Island.”
“I heard that’s a nice place.”
“Me too. I really didn’t need a giant tagging along with me, but he looked sad sitting there, waiting on his captain.”
“So, you played your hand and won, right?”
“Not exactly. When it came time to show our hands, I showed my four two’s and the ace. At the same time, he lays down a perfect Onesy-Twosy.”
“Wait, that’s not possible—”
“Right. The son-of-an-orc cheated. As he’s reaching for the pot, I put my hand on top of the pile of money and proceeded to explain the impossibility that between the two of us there were five aces and five twos.”
“You called him a cheater. I bet he didn’t like that!”
“Right. Suddenly I realized that swords were being drawn, and they were being pointed at me.”
“Well, you don’t look dead, and the Ogre, er… Gnath is here with you, so…?”
“Yes, yes. It was then that a pair of twos’ fell from his sleeve. With the obvious evidence against him in front of his crew, he withdrew his grab for the loot, stood up, spit on Gnath and left the establishment. I was collecting my winnings when I was suddenly caught up in a warm, smelly, half-ogre fish-shoveler embrace from behind. The rest is history. He’s been my companion ever since. That was twenty years ago.”
“So, did you make it to Mandervale Island?”
“Nah, we don’t really fit in anywhere. And though I had more than enough money to make the trip, Gnath would not set foot on a boat again, afraid he would once more to have to shovel fish. So, we have been wandering the land. When money gets low, I get into a game somewhere and hope to make enough money for a few meals, or we work cutting wood or other odd jobs to get a meal or two before we move on again.”
“Sounds like a good life.”
“Is that java?” a soft voice stopped the conversation. I turned and it was Rika, rubbing her eyes and looking trapped under the weight of Gnath’s huge tree-like arm.
“Yes, it is,” Nyssa replied, lifting the pot off the fire and sloshing it a bit. “Do you have a cup?”
“No, I do not,” she said with a frown, trying to get out from under Gnath’s arm.
“You may use mine,” I offered, drinking down the last swallow, and pouring the remaining droplets onto the ground.
“That’s very kind, dear Wellington. But I may never get free of the gentle giant.”
“Gnath! Let the poor lady up!” I said, waking Gnath, and the wizard in the process. Gnath stirred, opened his eyes, and realized he had pulled poor Rika close to him. He wasted no time removing his arm, letting the young lady get to her feet. The embarrassment was obvious on the half-ogre’s face. Rika saw his uneasiness, and she knelt next to him and placed her hand on his large, wrinkled face.
“It’s okay, my hero. I never felt safer than I did last night. Thank you.”
A thin smile washed over the big guy's face; one like I had never seen before. Rika stood and accepted my cup and held it for the lady warrior to fill with the dark brew.
“Since we’re all awake,” Arick, now sitting upright said, “I suggest we avoid wasting too much time so that we can be on our way.”
I never liked wizards.
In a modestly sized chamber of stone, a man of significant age, and two warriors muddled about. Two arrow slits on the wall let in the morning sunlight, making long rectangular beams through the dust in the air down before being intercepted by the table and a chair in the center of the room.
“I never liked wizards,” the old man said, stroking his almost white beard as he pulled a small, glass jar from the shelf. He huffed as he shuffled over to the small caldron on the table. Something putrid was boiling in the old iron vessel over a small oil-burning heating unit. The ancient sorcerer removed the wooden stopper on the jar and dumped the contents - dried bugs of an exotic sort - into the pot. Bluish steam billowed from the brew and rolled into a cloud before the eyes of the two men and the sorcerer.
“Arick has always been a thorn in your side, has he not, Master?” the orc said. His underbite displaying his extra-large lower canine teeth and the greenish tint to his skin was a dead give-away to his orc ancestry. He wore a brown tunic and had a large battle-ax slung over his shoulder with a sling.
The other person in the room, a human barbarian, was dressed in full armor, though the sheen from his plate mail had long since dulled. His large, two-handed sword rested near the door with his extra-large shield. He stood there, arms crossed, watching the blue cloud grow bigger before his eyes and begin stinging his sinuses.
“Aye, Arick is a thorn, indeed,” the sorcerer agreed. Zaleus was old school magic. He used potions and objects to create and control his magic. One of the last of the wand-bearers, he worked the big magic. It was the simple wizards like Arick that annoyed him. He felt they were always stepping in and using their little spells and incantations to disrupt the real magic, the magic of old. Zaleus was the last of the old sorcerers.
“And now that I have unleashed a magnificent dragon once again, he is coming back to put a stop to him. We need to remove him as a threat once and for all.”
Glos the orc and Dhell the barbarian grunted in agreement.
Zaleus slowly began working his wand through the blue smoky mist, much like a conductor controlling the tempo of a symphony. Then, as if a window to another part of the world had opened in the air before them, they could see a party of travelers making their way through the woods. The sorcerer waved his hands apart and the image grew larger. There they could see Arick the wizard, accompanied by an ogre, elf, a fighter, and a woman.
“He’s not alone. He has help with him this time.”
“We can take them all out, Master Zaleus,” Glos, the orc said. “We will wait for them inside the Forest of the Damned with an army of orcs and ambush them.”
“Yes, you do that. But I do not want the Wizard harmed. Take a metal collar with you and put it around his neck. He will not be able to conjure with iron around his neck.”
“And the others? What shall we do with them?”
“Kill them, of course. I have no use for them. Do not fail me.”
It was then that the sorcerer noticed that the party had stopped moving; all looking confused
, save one. The Wizard, Arick, was looking straight into the portal.
Chapter 6
“What is it, wizard? What are you looking at?”
I could see nothing in the sky, the path before us, or branches overhead that should attract the mage’s attention so intently, but certainly, he was seeing something the rest of us were not.
“We are being watched. We are in danger, I feel. I must go on alone from here.”
“Hey, we’re going your way anyway,” I said, not thinking too seriously about the consequences.
“You are facing a most-certain death.”
“I must get to Edenkeep,” Rika said. “And since you are going that way, I would rather be in your company than not.”
The wizard let her words sink in a moment. “Okay, but at the first signs of trouble, you get as far away from me as you can. Understood?”
“Understood.”
“Then let us continue onward. We don’t know when he will strike, but when he does, it will be fast, and harsh.”
“Who,” I asked. Who will strike? What do you know that I don’t know?”
“Zaleus, the ancient sorcerer. He has been on this world for over four-hundred years. He gained mastery over the dragons of old. He was not too pleased that I defeated his precious Dragonroth. He vowed to come back one day, again with dragons, and this time he would come after me personally. After two hundred years I figured he was dead and gone, but when I heard a dragon was sighted, I knew he was responsible. I knew I had to once again defeat him, and permanently this time.”
“Four hundred years old?” Nyssa asked. “You Mages have a thing for longevity, don’t you?”
“The magic takes care of us.”
“What can you tell us about the Forest of the Damned? I’ve heard the rumors of gobbling and orc armies, barbarians and thieves. Is any of that true?”
“Maybe your friend Rika would like to answer that? She must have passed through there on her way south to Megan’s Rock.”
I looked at Rika, who continued looking straight ahead as she walked.
“I saw some things. Some goblins, yes. A few cutthroats. I hid whenever I heard them come near. They never knew I was there.”
“That’s a handy skill to have,” Lady Nyssa said.
“I’ve done it all my life. It’s second nature to me.”
“I bet it is.”
“Well,” I continued, “the rest of us can’t just go poof into thin air – at least those of us without the magic.”
“I can’t go poof either, Master Wellington,” the wizard confirmed.
“I thought that was first-year wizard school stuff. Making things go poof?”
“Things, yes. Myself, no. Would you like to go poof?”
“Um, no… sir.”
“You’re getting on my nerves. I suggest you don’t do that anymore.”
“Right. Don’t make the mage mad. Gottit. So… I heard that the sorcerer found a dragon’s talon, and that is what he used to bring back the beasts. Is there any truth to that?”
“You know as much as I do. Usually, there is a thread of truth to such things, so it could very well be true.”
“So, let’s say for a minute that’s true. What if we could gain possession of the claw? Would we control the dragons?”
“I don’t know if we would be able to control them, but it would eliminate his ability to control them. That would be a good start.”
“Do you have any kind of a plan at all, oh great wizard?”
Arick shot me a look that told me I had no more chances. I quickly looked straight ahead towards the direction we were walking.
“I have no plan. I just have to be better than him, and hope his dragons aren’t ripping you apart limb from limb before I can put a stop to them.”
“I can see the merit in that plan.”
We passed a sign on the path that said the next town, Forest Edge, was a day and a half away. At the bottom of the sign someone added in ink, Turn back now!
Forest Edge was a small but busy town that dealt in stolen goods, brothels, and crooked gambling. It was the perfect gateway to the Forest of the Damned. From all that I had heard, whoever wrote that message on the sign knew what they were talking about.
The remaining journey to Forest Edge was hardly eventful. We camped once more, and Nyssa managed to take a few rabbits from the surrounding brush, enough to feed us fresh meat for the night. It was good to not have to eat hardtack and dried meat again, even though we’d only been on the trail for two days.
The woods began to thin on the final day prior to Forest Edge, and as the evening was coming on, the small hamlet came into view. Lanterns in windows and street torches took a bit of the darkness away but did nothing to mask the eeriness that the town seemed to be painted in. Most of the buildings were in disrepair; shutters hanging askew from one hinge, porch railings falling down, and others with steps broken in the middle halfway up the flight.
Many of the dwellings were dark, and possibly uninhabited – at least by mortal beings - while others showed shadowy figures milling about inside. Sometimes I could catch a quick glance of curious eyes looking at us before they ducked behind the safety of their unkept window frames. Spooky would be a good descriptor for this town. Something very unsettling clung like a foul stench within its borders.
Kings Folly Inn, a crusty old inn near the center of the small town, was barely louder than the sounds of the night and the footsteps of our approaching party. I caught Gnath looking at me as if to question whether we really wanted to consider entering such a place. I turned to look it up and down, and then the answer seemed obvious to me.
“I think I need some ale,” I said to everyone, but no one in particular. “Who’s with me?”
Glos watched from behind a wagon parked in the street as the smell of ox dung permeated the air. The orc didn’t care. In fact, the smell came as rather pleasant to him. Dhell, on the other hand, stood back behind a display of hand-carved cooking utensils in s desperate attempt to allow the gentle night breeze to take the pungent odor with it as he kept an eye on the new arrivals to town.
Glos was thief by trade but master spy at heart. It was his passion to be an orc spy to take infiltrate the goblin armies, but he learned early in his life that he could not blend into the goblin ranks, resigning himself to be an ordinary orc foot soldier. Fortunate, he was, to have been picked by the sorcerer to be his personal henchman, though he feared that should he ever fail the great magic one, it would be his undoing.
“Come, Dhell,” Glos said as he watched the big ogre, his small companion, and a girl make their way into the Kings Folly Inn. He heard the others say something about securing some lodging for the night as they went off down the street. “Let’s go see if we can sucker some d’nars off the stupid little elf fellow.”
“I don’t believe Master Zaleus would approve of you straying from your task.”
“Master Zaleus won’t find out about the things I do when I’m away. The task will be completed, and that is all that will matter.”
“If we fail, it is on you.”
“If we fail, it will be because of your incompetence.”
“One of these days I will lop your head off and walk away happy.”
“Shut up and cover my back.”
Glos waited for the strangers to be out of sight before stepping out from behind his cover. He quickly made his way across the street to the Kings Folly Inn, and once at the door, righted himself, brushed the dust off his garments, and stepped in the door closely followed by Dhell.
I looked around the inn hoping to find a gaming table somewhere, but it seemed none were operating at the moment. In fact, all the tables were occupied with drinkers and diners, so Gnath and I found our way to the long ornate wooden bar which luckily had enough room for three people. Rika caught most of the attention as she stood there waiting for the barkeep to acknowledge her. Her somewhat formal dress stood out like a lillybud in a field of orc dung. I didn’t notice
two more strangers entering the bar behind us.
When the overweight and under washed barkeep found his way before us, we ordered the house ale, and Gnath managed to grunt out the only words I’d heard him speak all day: “Meat on a stick?”
I had to laugh. The big guy seemed to care about only one thing; food. When would we get our next meal? What would be our next meal? How much would he have for himself? But it made him happy, and the big, half-ogre was not a pleasant companion when he wasn’t happy.
Strangers found their way up to the bar behind us. I looked over my shoulder to see them stop directly behind Gnath. The tallest of the two, a barbarian looking fellow, though many hands taller than I, was dwarfed by my large friend. The look on his face told me that he appeared a bit intimidated by dear Gnath.
“Hello, gentlemen,” I said, looking at the barbarian first, and then the orcish fellow he appeared to be with. “Are you from these parts?”
“We are simply passing through, friends. You don’t appear to be from here yourselves. What part of Neverwind do you call home?”
“I spent much of my life on the east coast, near Farrador. You?”
“The barbarian and I come from Edenkeep.”
“Edenkeep? Why, that is where we are headed. Is it true what they say? About the dragon?”
“Ah, you heard the tales of the dragon? All folklore. There hasn’t been a dragon in Neverwind for—"
“I know, two hundred years.”
“Is that what is attracting you to Edenkeep? The dragon lore?”
“Actually, we are in service of the fine lady here, Rika. She has asked us to escort her back to her family in the great castle city.”
“Do be careful making your way through the Forest of the Damned. There are things in there that would make your ogre look like a little pupdog.”
“We will take that into advisement. Thank you for your concern. And, he’s not my ogre.”
“Half ogre,” Gnath grunted with a hint of warning.
I sensed that the two strangers had motives beyond a friendly chit-chat, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. And looking at the orc and barbarian, I wouldn’t put it past them to try something underhanded.
The Dragons of Neverwind Page 4
