by Peter Plasse
She did, after a quick check of Spirit’s underbelly to make sure the girth was tight enough. A loose girth would be disastrous. She noticed Erik mounted slowly, deliberately, and that up to this point he had not spoken a single word, his face a blank. “What’s wrong?” she thought. “Something is definitely wrong.”
The reason for Erik's unease became apparent as soon as they exited the cavern at the base of the mountain upon which the great castle sat. Directly in front of them, not a hundred yards away, was an entire battalion of Troll soldiers, fully armed and ready to destroy them all if they proved foolish enough to try and fight their way through them. She looked at Maxilius Bravarus. He looked back at her. The expression on his face said it all. They were doomed. She looked at Erik. His blank look was unchanged. He had known all along what the end game would be about. She looked at the faces of each of the Troll solders in their small group who had risked so much. The horses pawed nervously and sidestepped. She looked at the terrifying horde of Trolls before them. The only clear pathway was straight ahead of them in the direction the castle’s main gate. She noticed that the wind whipped mightily in their faces. She spied a trail directly to their left that led not to the castle, but disappeared towards the far side of it somewhere up high in the distance. She whipped Spirit soundly on the rump and cried, “Follow me!”
Spirit charged up the trail. Erik spurred Cloud and raced after her. The doctor and their small band of Trolls ran after them and a roar erupted from the Troll battalion who dashed madly ahead to close the gap between them and give chase to this crazy band of marauders.
Ever upward they galloped, never looking back. By sheer luck the trail narrowed for them in several places, and the Maxilius loyalists took every advantage of this by slowing the charge of their pursuers who, despite their overwhelming numbers, were forced to advance in single file where they were held at bay by Doreen’s protectors, all of whom were superior fighters. Even higher Doreen and Erik raced, followed by the doctor, Daria, and Maxilius. With the horses nearly spent and fully lathered, they found themselves at the top of a great cliff. In front of them the Great Slovan Plains stretched as far as the eye could see. Behind them they could hear the clashing of the troops, punctuated by the screams of Trolls on both sides, some wounded, some dying. There was nowhere left to go. The wind blew even more violently now, causing them all to squint. Dust blew crazily all about. The horses whinnied, threatening to lose control, and Spirit reared, causing Doreen to nearly lose her seat.
“Erik,” she cried, “Those underwings. They’re working, right?”
“I think so,” he said. “They’re there, but I didn’t pack them. I hope so.”
“And can we each carry an extra?”
“I don’t know,” said Erik. “I don’t think it’s ever been tried. It’s a lot of weight.”
“Well, we’re going to try it now,” said Doreen. “Come, we need some sort of rope.”
They dismounted and quickly fashioned makeshift rope harnesses that they slung over the saddles, passing one to the doctor and one to Daria. Doreen looked at Maxilius Bravarus. Tears slid down her face.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “ I’m only too glad to die with my lads. It’s a soldier’s fate. And now that evil one who would call himself our Emperor will know that there are those of us who have had it with his monstrous ways, and that is worth dying for.”
He hugged his sister tightly as they whispered their private goodbyes.
And with that, they launched.
Doreen led the way, taking flight after a short gallop. Daria clung to her rope desperately with one hand, and to Spirit’s tail with the other. For a moment it appeared that they were going to be dashed to bits on the rocks below them, but Spirit gained control and, in the face of the brutal headwinds, they began to gain some altitude. Next came Erik and Cloud with the doctor hanging on for dear life. The same scenario played itself out, the doctor making a mighty leap right after Cloud took flight. Immediately, however, there was a problem, and Erik found himself plummeting downward at a fantastic speed. One of the underwings had fouled on their makeshift harness as it deployed, and right away they were in a death spiral. Doreen saw it and skillfully maneuvered Spirit over towards them, now in a wild dive herself with Daria holding on, her face a mask of terror. “Daria!” Doreen screamed. “Grab the end of the wing! Pull it out straight! It’s their only chance!”
Cloud came around in a twisting, winding curl, and Daria grabbed for the wing. She missed. Again they tried. Again they missed. Daria glanced at the rocks below that were screaming their way up at them, and knew they would only have one more chance. Here came Cloud, approaching wildly out of control, and this time she caught the wing in her hand. Doreen banked Spirit hard to the right, at just the right angle, and they moved away from the cliff face, allowing the wing to be successfully deployed. Cloud struggled greatly to gain control and finally did, now in hot pursuit of Doreen and Daria who were again cruising upwards, Doreen riding the winds like she had done it her whole life.
Off they soared, proceeding not only away from the castle and their would-be captors, but higher and higher in the sky until they were two tiny specks, barely visible.
“Well, all right,” murmured Maxilius Bravarus, as he walked slowly back down the trail with the intention of killing as many of Malance’s supporters as possible before he too had his meeting with the Old One.
Chapter 13
Blake awoke and right away knew something was wrong. There was no way Jessica would not have awakened him in four hours for his watch. There was no way she would have let him sleep until sunup, yet that is exactly what had happened, and she was not inside asleep as she should have been. He was frantic as he pulled on his cloak and readied his weapons. Still, he was cautious enough to slowly break cover of the great pine, and he peered about for a long time before he emerged. He quickly compartmentalized his attention into equal halves. One was completely devoted to following her trail away from their overnight camp. The other, to expanding his awareness of what, if anything, was happening around him.
He followed her tracks out to the windblown on which she had sat for several hours the night before. There were several sets of smaller ones that converged to where she had been seated and undoubtedly fallen asleep. He was all at once sick with anguish that he had let her take the first watch, yet at the same time he knew that there never was a choice in the matter when she set her mind to something. He found where somebody had tried to hastily cover the three sets of footprints in addition to hers that led away from their campsite. It was a crude attempt, and he hoped that somehow spoke to their overall woods skills. He would follow them of course and weak, not strong, foes were always preferable in wartime.
Cursing under his breath, he returned to their campsite in the huge pine. He wanted to see if Jessica had taken the small signet belt, as well as to be sure he was not leaving behind any of his newly acquired survival supplies and gear. Satisfied that she had indeed taken it, and that he had left nothing behind, he exited and returned to the trail they had left. Jessica’s were by far the largest of the tracks, so he had to presume that Gnomes had made the others. He could see how she was deliberately digging her foot in every once in a while to make it easier for him to follow. “Good girl,” he thought. “Hang on. I’m coming.”
He followed the tracks all day until the sun went down. He stopped earlier rather than later, fearing that if he kept on he would lose the trail completely and would have to rediscover it in the morning, wasting precious time. Besides, he needed to drink and eat some. For a brief moment he had felt terribly guilty about emptying their little campsite of all of the food stores in it. He knew he was violating a sacred woodsman’s code by basically stealing another’s supplies and therefore depriving their rightful owner of possible lifesaving nourishment. He grunted at the thought.
“Tough,” he thought. “I’ll replace them when we get our daughter back. Oh, and yes, after I first get my wife back.�
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He chewed the meat slowly, trying to think of anything that might help him in his quest to rescue her. He couldn’t think of anything other than to wake up and continue to follow the trail in an attempt to catch up with them and then make a plan based upon the situation with which he was confronted. When you’re up to your butt in alligators is not the time to think about draining the swamp.
With his hand held fast to his sword handle, he fell into a light but restless sleep while sitting up against a giant hardwood about ten feet off the main trail, awaking repeatedly in a cold sweat with the weapon half-drawn. The next day was a repeat of the first, and the day after, and the day after that. Jessica’s captors were no longer making any attempt to cover their tracks, seemingly more focused on making good time. It was impossible to say in what direction they were headed, except it seemed to him that they were headed away from Mount Gothic, which now was to his back as near as he could judge, but he couldn’t be sure because the trees obscured any view of his surroundings. He considered climbing one of them to get his bearings, but rejected the notion as soon as it crossed his mind because of the time it would take. It didn’t matter. He had his job right in front of him, and his job was to follow their trail.
On day four he ran out of food.
On the morning of the fifth he got the sense that he was gaining on them. He confirmed his impression by examining a particular set of tracks carefully. Yes. They were definitely fresher.
He moved forward with a renewed strength of mind, increasing his speed as much as he could without sacrificing quiet. Overtaking them would mean nothing if they heard him coming. No, he needed to catch them under the cover of stealth. He needed his approach to be as silent as smoke.
On the morning of the sixth he downed a critter that looked something like a tiny moose. Completely out of the meat and other foodstuffs he had pilfered from the camp almost a week before, he needed it badly. With the many streams and springs along the trail, water had so far not been a problem, but he was sorely in need of nourishment.
He quickly gutted it and threw it across his shoulder. He didn’t want to slow one bit, knowing he was catching up.
The woods began to thin out in the afternoon, and it became apparent that they were on a trail that ran along the base of the mountains. His heart jumped when he caught a glimpse of the small Gnome war party leading Jessica along in front of him. Just as the tracks had told him, they numbered three. He suppressed a growl of fury.
Now that he knew he would catch them before the sun came up, he stopped and crouched down. Kneeling, he hacked off a hind leg of the small moose-like creature that he had dropped with his stolen bow and arrow earlier in the day. About the size of an average lamb, he had merely slung it over his shoulder and hefted it with him as he walked along. He tore off a chunk of the flesh with his teeth and chewed. He knew that he should be gagging, eating raw flesh. But this was something that he had done before, both in military training and out of necessity on maneuvers miles behind enemy lines. You need food; you kill it and eat it. If you can’t build a fire because it might give away your position, you eat it raw.
Survival.
Life reduced to its most simple terms: Kill or be killed.
And Blake had no intention of dying, no matter what planet he was on.
They on the other hand had taken his wife captive, and for that they were all going to die. Tonight. Every single one of them. He swallowed the flesh without tasting. He took another bite and eased forward while he chewed. There was no reason to rush any more. They might have her, but he had them. It was all over but the doing.
“Did you hear that?” whispered Orie.
Now deep within Slova, the three of them were awaiting the return of Forrester Ragamund who had gone on a quick scouting trip ahead of them to assure that the way was clear. Such was his antipathy of his Emperor and his evil regime; he had cast his lot in with these three Human children without hesitation.
He was not entirely believing of their story that they were not from this world but, then again, he had heard from his fellow sewer rats rumors of such things, rumors that had drifted down to them like the waste and detritus that drifted down from those in higher positions than they, which was pretty much everyone else in the kingdom. For they, the keepers of the huge septic system under the castle, were the lowest of the societal low. Forrester had always reasoned that this was why nobody had come after him the day he up and walked away, having had enough of his wretched life. Every job has its advantages.
Most of the keepers of the cesspits were intellectually challenged sorts, unable to do much of anything else. For many, however, the job had been ordered by the court as punishment for a crime against the social order. Forrester had received his sentence by throwing to the ground a captain who was whipping his elderly father for not getting his weapon forged on time, or something like that. Over the years that had since passed, he had forgotten many of the details. But he was never allowed to forget that he had been sentenced to a lifetime of tending the fortress sewers, with no possibility of appeal, for defending his frail father against a much stronger and abusive authority.
Before his heinous crime against society, Forrester had been a passionate student of magic. Not that this was easy for, other than he, there was no magic practiced by a single Troll in all of Slova. But at weeks end, if and when his work in his father’s smithing shop was done, and it was such that time permitted, he would travel about fifty miles to the border, stopping only to drink, rest, and avoid the patrols that were constantly on the lookout for those who were not where they were supposed to be. He would cross the Slova River into Ravenwild. Once there, he would seek out an elderly Gnome woman named Cirrhus Wishfor who was, for all of her eccentric ways, a highly skilled sorceress. Indeed, her ability in the magical arts was what kept her from being discovered despite the fact that her cabin was a mile off the main trail, and in the easternmost aspect of Ravenwild, no less. It was shrouded in spells so thick that anyone approaching who was not already invited would become hopelessly confused every time they ventured near her home, and their senses would only return when they were headed in any direction away from her.
She had spied Forrester one day in her looking-stone, a fantastic spelled talisman that allowed her to see deep into Slova, in pretty much any corner, and had decided she would like to have him for a student. She watched him for years as he went about his business, and he seemed to her to be bright enough and to have a good heart as well, unlike that pig of an Emperor and his court of cronies. She was getting on in years and wanted to have someone to whom she could pass on what she had spent an entire lifetime learning. So she had conjured a very powerful spell when he was a young Troll that caused him to journey her way without really knowing why, and it came to pass that he ended up being her student until the day the courts convicted him.
She had asked nothing for his apprenticeship, but still he did chores for her, always wanting to repay her in some way for all that he was learning. These tasks were nothing she couldn’t have done herself with any more effort than saying a few incantations, but she let him do them because it helped in the balance of their relationship. So time passed, and his magic grew stronger.
Cirrhus had watched the entire trial on her looking-stone, knowing always that she could spirit him away undiscovered for all time with a few simple spells, but two things tempered her from acting to prevent the execution of his sentence. First, it was time for Forrester to practice and practice and practice again the command of magic that he had developed under her tutelage. She knew that, as a cesspit worker, he would have all the time he needed, for theirs were days mostly spent at idle, unlike toiling in his father’s shop where making things of iron under the constant demands of the customers would serve as a huge impediment to his furthering his skills in sorcery. Moreover, she wanted him inside the castle walls where he would learn to know, and therefore learn to loathe, the evil ways of Leopold Malance Venomisis. Innuendo always
eventually found its way to the lower reaches of the fortress, where the days were mostly spent talking.
She knew he would hear again and again of the terrible deeds of his vile Troll Emperor and, when he had heard enough, she knew the time would come when he would return to her, having mastered all that she had taught him and eager to learn more.
She always knew she could be his rescuer, but she believed it best that he rescue himself.
Both Gracie and Ryan nodded. It was a troubling noise to be sure, the sound of a branch cracking, and what was most disturbing about it was that it had not come from the direction from which Forrester Ragamund should be returning.
Three hearts raced as one as they waited for whatever it was that was out there to declare itself. Orie instinctively checked his broadsword to make sure it was free in its scabbard. Gracie and Ryan did the same. They heard it again. This time it was much closer, about fifteen feet out. Gracie silently calmed the horses, who were getting more than a little nervous. Ryan nocked an arrow and peered into the night. Orie silently drew his blade.
All breathed a sigh of relief when Forrester appeared suddenly out of the darkness.
“That’s very strange,” thought Orie. “He didn’t just walk out of the gloom. I was staring at that exact spot and suddenly he was suddenly there. Hmmm.”
He was going to ask him about it when Forrester broke into a huge grin. “Good news,” he said, keeping his voice deliberately low. Nonetheless, it was such a powerful baritone it was almost as though your clothes rumbled no matter how quietly he spoke. “In fact, great news.” He raised his giant, bushy eyebrows skyward, a gesture not lost on the children in the dual-moon light of the Slovan late-summer nighttime sky.
