by Peter Plasse
Taber gave a wry smile. “Short cut.”
“Wizard, are we secure?” asked Rolan.
“We are.”
“Are you certain?”
“I am.”
“Good. How long?”
“As long as you wish, My Lord. There is no magic on Inam'Ra that could possibly unravel the spells that shroud this hall. But having said that, the longer we stay, the greater the danger of being trapped here. My guess would have to be that there are wizards lurking about outside that are doing everything they can to ensnare us. We must use the tunnels. And we must use them now.”
“Thargen, your thoughts.”
“My Lord, I agree with the good wizard Taber, at least for the Queen and the Prince. They must use the tunnels, and they must use them without delay. They will be safe under his charge. We, however, must fight our way out of this the same way we came in. They are Gnomes. Gnomes.”
He spat the word out as though the very presence of it on his tongue was distasteful.
“No amount of Gnomes can prevail upon us in our own castle. I say we take the fight straight at them. When all of their blood is spilt, we will regroup and make safe our home once again.”
“And what of their wizards? Is it possible they even have wizards? I was unaware that either Gnomes or Trolls even had wizards. Surely doing battle with sword and mace, the Gnomes stand no chance against us, but in the face of magic, which it looks to me that they must have, how great is the risk?”
“My Lord,” said Taber, “There is nothing here that leads me to the inescapable conclusion that they have discovered the use of magic, although it certainly begs the question. For now I think we must assume that they have, but, again, it is not a conclusion I am willing to draw. It would certainly be the first we have ever heard of it. But if they have, their wizards will want to leave as quickly as possible to try and thwart an escape attempt. This was surely planned for a long time, and they have undoubtedly anticipated that we will attempt an escape by the tunnels, with me as the escort. Assuming they have magic, they would have to know that they would need it all against a wizard-of-the-first-school were they to have any chance of success, and even that chance would be pitifully small. Their attempt in the nursery was doomed the moment I arrived.
“I am also sure that they have underestimated our fighting abilities, and when they see they have no chance, man on Gnome, any with a command of magic are going to want to go at once.”
“Anyone else?” asked Rolan. It was his way to petition all present. It was his belief that a good leader always solicits and considers carefully the opinions of trusted subordinates in critical situations as long as there is time. No one spoke.
He decided. “Good Wizard, I entrust you with the safe conduct of the Queen and my son. You will take them via the tunnels to Duck Lake. You know where the boats are hidden. From there you will go to Mount Gothic. There should be a sizable force of our men there who can provide protection for you once you have arrived. We will either meet you there or send for you as soon as we can. Right now, we have Gnomes to kill.”
“Indeed,” said Luke with a nasty smile. He had been sharpening his broadsword during this entire exchange. He wiped it softly over the back of his arm and was rewarded with a showing of hair on the flat of the blade. It was now fit for battle, razor sharp and polished. “Let the games begin.”
As the King was saying a hasty goodbye to Isabella and their as-yet unnamed Prince, he was approached by Borok who was covered in blood from a large gash over his left ear. Cradling her baby protectively in her arms, the Queen then left hurriedly with the wizard Taber through the back entrance of the Great Hall.
“My Lord, we must speak.”
Rolan tore his gaze from his fleeing wife and looked squarely at his commander.
“Speak then. But first, you’re bleeding, man. Dorin, wrap his wound while we speak!” He turned back to Borok. “You’re going to need your strength. I can’t have your sword arm weak while we rid the castle of this vermin.”
Dorin ripped apart some cloth from one of the tables and proceeded to wrap the wound.
“My King, as you know, we captured a Troll spy last night, and although we have been unable to get any information out of him despite Barber’s persuasive methods, among his effects we found something unusual. I can’t think of what to call it, or even how to describe it, but I feel you must see it as soon as possible. There was also a very strange map of lands that do not appear to be of our world.”
“Where are these things, then?”
“In the dungeons, My Lord. Barber summoned third-school wizard Reginald to look at them on my order, and I was going to inform you of them at this morning’s debriefing when this mess broke loose.”
Rolan acknowledged him with a curt nod, saying, “We’ll have a look at them as soon as the castle is secure.”
“Very good, My King. But now, should something happen to me, you know about them. You must see them. I know they are important, although on my life I cannot figure out the why of it.”
Rolan motioned to his men. Battle positions were assumed. Luke and Dorin threw open the massive doors to the Great Hall and they charged out. It was a pitched battle to be sure. The Gnomes had managed to breach the main entrance, having eliminated the four guards in charge of the operating mechanism, all of whom lay dead with multiple arrows protruding from each. The intruders were all about the courtyard and looked to outnumber the castle regiment by about three to one. Nevertheless, the Gnomes, being of much smaller stature and with inferior weapons, stood no chance against the Ravenwild troops.
The air was filled with the clashing of weapons and the screams of the Gnomes as they were skillfully worn down and eliminated by the Ravenwild soldiers. Soon, the few who were left standing threw down their weapons and begged for mercy. They were rounded up and put in irons. One of the castle soldiers took the chain that bound them together and began leading them towards the dungeon entrance.
Thargen and Rolan, along with Luke, Dorin, and Borok, met in a group as they were being led away.
“It appears the good Taber was correct,” mused Luke.
“So it does,” returned Thargen.
“How many did we lose?” asked Rolan. All glanced about the courtyard. Now that the battle was over, it was easy to see that most of the Ravenwild troops who had met their fate had done so while asleep. None of these were in battle positions. It was apparent to all that they had been somehow spelled into some sort of slumber and then hacked to death by the invading Gnomes.
“There is bad magic about. Very bad, very powerful magic,” said Luke.
Thargen grimaced and stepped side-to-side nervously. He was a soldier. No more, no less. Magic, even the discussion of same, made him uncomfortable. He knew it existed and yet had absolutely no comprehension as to its nature. Although keenly aware of its power in the right or wrong hands, the mere mention of it made him anxious. Soldiers fought. The stronger ones, those with superior weapons, the ones better trained, won the encounter. Magic wiped that all out. Give him a good sharp sword, a well-balanced bow with a straight arrow, a properly tooled dagger, and an enemy he could face man-to-man, and he was fine. But show him magic, and he became an unsettled warrior, a warrior who might hesitate when he should be charging ahead.
“I will have the night captain prepare a battle damage report,” he said, “but from the looks of it I would say three to four hundred.”
“What could they hope to accomplish with such an attack?” asked Luke, “Except to lose their entire battalion …”
Rolan caught sight of one of the Gnomes being led away towards the dungeons, towards certain suffering and, surely, some form of torture at the hands of Barber, although the methods used by the dungeon master of Ravenwild were tame compared with those used in Slova. He always attempted to get the information he needed with the most humane methods possible. With the Slovans, torture was the method employed first. It was well known in all three lands that they enjoyed it, as th
ough obtaining intelligence information was almost secondary to the pleasure they got from hearing the screams. But Barber had come to realize very early on in his career that information obtained with brutal methods was, by and large, useless. You could, after all, get a prisoner to say pretty much anything if you tortured him enough.
He noticed a furtive smile on the face of one of the Gnomes. He glanced at another, and another. Whereas he should have seen looks of fear, all seemed quite matter of fact. Something was not as it should be. He leaned close to Thargen. “Take note of the faces of the Gnomes.”
Immediately, Thargen thought what his King had already deduced. The open attack on the castle by way of the main gate, and in all likelihood the failed attempt at kidnapping the King and his son in the nursery, were probably diversionary tactics that had something to do with the dungeons.
He knew what to do. He ordered his three captains to take three squads down to the levels below the dungeons. On his command, they would feign an attack from the front and bring the strongest assault from behind. So sixty Men, Elves, and Dwarves left on a dead run via three separate routes.
It was as Rolan had thought. With the advantage of surprise, and being outflanked on three sides, the enemy troops were vanquished in a matter of minutes. The bad news was that Barber and his covey of deputy wardens were all dead, and the Troll’s belongings were nowhere to be found.
With the castle now secure, Rolan and his officers were in the Great Hall. The damage report was far worse than Thargen had estimated. Well over a thousand troops, including fifty-four of the Castle Guard, had fallen, twenty-eight of them officers. This left a bare bones defense team to hold the castle in the event of an all-out assault. This was dire.
Messengers were promptly dispatched to alert commanders in the field to send reinforcements without delay. Bad enough that the field campaigns were not going well, but to lose the castle would be a blow with the worst possible consequences imaginable to Ravenwild. Still, the Great Wall stood, so losing the castle was almost surely not going to happen, but Rolan and his remaining officers had to figure out how this assault team had managed to breach the Great Wall in the first place. “My Lord, they have overextended themselves on this assault,” said Thargen. “I believe it was a suicide mission from the beginning. I’m sure of it. There is no way they could have an attack force of any substantial numbers even remotely close to us. We would know of it. Messengers from last night have told us of the Troll’s advance to Lexington, but we still have the Wall in between us and any enemy troops that might be out there, not to mention the Silver River and the Belcourt Plains, and our scouts report nothing in the way of any significant enemy forces anywhere near us. You can’t hide an army out in the open. Any army. No, they were here to reclaim the effects that we found on that one captured Troll. Of that there is no question. And they were willing to sacrifice a lot of Gnomes, not surprising, in order to do it.”
Rolan listened without interruption with his chin in his hand.
“I’m sure you’re right,” he said. “And Borok said there were two things on the captured Troll that were out of the ordinary: A map that did not appear to be of our world, very strange, and something else. What did he call it? ‘Unusual.’ Do we know anything more about it? Where is Borok?”
“He left with a squad to commandeer reinforcements, Sire. To answer your first question, unfortunately no, My King. The entire contingent of Barber’s men was wiped out in the encounter, as was the captured Troll. Interestingly, it looks like he was killed by Gnome blades, meaning he was killed by his own allies. That would seem to say that protecting the knowledge of what it is, is of the utmost importance to them.”
“And whatever it is, it appears to have vanished?”
“Correct, My Lord. We have searched high and low for both the map and this other article and have found neither.”
“Well, whatever they are, I’m sure they are things of powerful magic,” said the King.
Thargen’s blood ran cold.
Chapter 2
He slowed down to a polite 65 as he sped past the speed trap on Highway 2 and waved to the officer manning the radar gun. In a few seconds he had his friend on his cell phone.
“Corey,” he said.
“Hey Doc,” Corey answered. “Finally headed home?”
“I am,” he answered. “I wanted you to know she’s doing fine. I just left her bedside, and everything looks okay. Dr. Sher was there with me, and he expects we’ll be taking the tube out this afternoon. That’s very good news. I didn’t think he’d be taking it out this soon, but he’s quite sure she’ll be able to fly on her own.”
There was a pause in the conversation as each man thought back to the terror of the night before. Corey’s remembrance was his young wife suddenly gasping for air and croaking, “I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” Then there had been the blood, erupting out of her mouth like some malevolent volcano and splattering against the wall some three feet away from the bed.
Not wanting to awaken the children sleeping in the next room, he had tried to keep his voice down as he spoke to the 911 operator. He must have been louder than he wanted because when he hung up the phone, Anna, their 5 year old, was standing in the doorway. Still half asleep, and holding her favorite Teddy, she asked, “What’s wrong with Mommy, Daddy? Is she dying?”
He had yanked a pillowcase off the pillow and started wiping the large clots out of her mouth, preparing to give her mouth-to-mouth, and tried to sound calm as he said, “No honey. She’s going to be all right. The ambulance is coming. Go wake up your brother and get dressed. Wait there until I come get you. Quickly now. Quickly!”
Dr. Strong thought back to A.J.’s report over the med-net.
“Yeah, we have a 32 year old female. Sudden respiratory distress. Coughing up a lot of blood. Say again, a lot of blood. Color was pretty blue when we arrived, and not maintaining her airway, so we tubed her, and she has pinked up nicely. Mental status is good now. She is responsive. Able to squeeze fingers on command. Blood pressure: 150/80. Pulse 150 … E.T.A. is 25 minutes. Over.”
Corey was the first to break the silence, saying, “I can’t thank you enough, Doc. You saved her life.” He sounded as if he was welling up as his voice broke.
“Slight correction,” replied Dr. Strong. “You and A.J. saved her life. Between you getting the blood out of her mouth and clearing her airway, and A.J.’s quick intubation, I didn’t have a lot to do. He also gift-wrapped and handed me the diagnosis on the radio, so all I had to do was give her some medicine while she weathered the storm. You guys did good, Corey. Real good. I’m proud of both of you. Anyway, like I said, I’m sure she’s going to pull through. It was actually a pretty small clot, despite the large show of blood, and there’s no brain damage at all. None. So, if she continues to remain stable, they’ll be taking the tube out later today, and she’ll be much happier. Then we’ll need to try and figure out where the clot came from, in other words, where it was growing before it broke loose, so she’ll have to be in the hospital for a few days. But, one way or another, she’s going to come through this without any harm. Going to have to stop the birth control pills, and smoking of course, but we can all sit down later and talk about all that.”
There was another pause as each man again thought his private thoughts, and Corey said, “Well, thanks again, Doc. That was scary.”
“I’m sure it was, my friend, but as I always say, my kingdom for a happy ending.”
“So are you going fishing?” Corey asked him.
The phone crackled. “Hello … Hello?”
“Nope,” Blake replied. “I’m going to take a nap. Then Orie and Stephanie both have games. Jessica’s going to Stephanie’s and I’m going to Orie’s. Both teams are undefeated, so it should be an absolute hoot.”
“That’s great, Doc. Have fun and tell the kids I said good luck. And thanks again.”
“You’re welcome again. But the real ‘thank-yous’ should be going to A.J. an
d Jeanette. They deserve them far more than I do.”
“I hear you, Doc. I’ll call them later. I promise.”
“That’d be great. Okay, guy, I’ll catch up with you. I’ll look in on Suzie first thing in the morning. Bye now.”
“Bye Doc. Thanks again.”
He clicked “End” on the cell and thought, “Isn’t it the way. The Doctor gets all of the credit …” When really, he had done very little. A.J. was the man of the moment, not him. Cripes, he had not only gotten the tube in to breathe for her, he had handed him the diagnosis on a platter. So he hadn’t even had to think about it. And Jeanette had once again proven that under the absolute toughest of circumstances in the critical care arena, those being life-saving interventions on a friend, that she was simply the best IV starter in the history of modern medicine. You couldn’t do better than that. He hoped Corey called them. That would mean a lot to A.J. and Jeanette. Prehospital people and nurses hardly ever got the credit they deserved. Wasn’t fair. Oh well.
He slowed down for the exit and turned right onto Route 11. His thoughts turned to the games this afternoon, both against Westerly. These were the big matchups and he could hardly wait. He wished he could go to both games, but since the kids’ games were always on the same day, Jessica and he each alternated so that one parent was at each game. He knew both kids would be pumped. Nothing like the big game to get the old adrenaline going.
He took the exit onto Route 11 at 70 mph or so. He felt the suspension on the Acura tighten as he started into the sharp portion of the curve. “This is a good car,” he thought, “I’m glad we bought this car.”
He bumped it up to 85 as he came out of the curve. Soon he was cruising at a comfortable 90. Nothing but straight, empty highway between him and home now, one of the distinct advantages of practicing in rural Connecticut. No traffic, at least on this particular stretch of road. He zipped under the old railroad bridge on cruise and flipped the radio on. He thought he might catch some news on the recent elections. The preliminary results showed overwhelming defeats by the Republicans, and the Democrats were screaming foul play, of course. After a few moments of boring advertisements, the announcer came on, and he started to pay attention in earnest. It was then that he saw it.
