by Peter Plasse
He could have told them a dozen tales of narrow escapes from under the very noses of the Trolls on his journey up from King’s Port, but what he needed to do was deliver the message. So without so much as an introduction, he saluted Titan Mobst, in absentia, and broke his personal seal, reading, “Per Order of Saviar Murlis, personal advisor to his Emperor, Singular Barb’rus Night. Titan Mobst, loyal citizen and metallurgist, says to Ravenwild’s wizards all, “Come to King’s Port straight away with full military escort. Do not delay for any reason.”
All read it twice. Most, three times. “Not a lot of ambiguity there,” said first-wizard Taber.
“Indeed,” agreed first-wizard Paulimas.
“Here comes our escort,” said newly graduated first-wizard Provostus, who nodded down the length of the Great Wall behind them.
The marching of a hundred boots sounded from the top of the Wall. The soldiers approached briskly to where the five of them stood, still studying the ugly gap below and in front of them. It was a hideous defect, no less than a several hundred feet in width and extending all the way to ground level. All could imagine the devastation the day it had crumbled, and what an easy victory had been handed the Troll army in that fateful moment, as they had surely poured in through the opening like so many grains of sugar from a bag, slaughtering all in front of them.
The commander of the soldier group approached them. “Fall in with us,” he said. “We will be climbing down. We will be moving with all haste. Please watch your footing. We cannot afford to lose any of you.”
Along the top of the wall they walked. It was so large that it took the better part of half an hour to circle back around to the central gate that faced in the direction of the Knife Edge.
By the time they had made it down to the bottom and were preparing to ride away, there appeared some of the first returning Ravenwild citizens, approaching on foot from the far side of the flat. It was heartwarming to see that some had never stopped believing. Or perhaps they were so sure the end was near that they had merely decided to return so they might at least die within the limits of their beloved city.
They would not know. Not this day. From the looks of their faces as they raced by them, it appeared as though they might have some fight left in them, but they did not stop to make conversation. No. They ran by them at full gallop, en route to some sort of important gathering of talent in a farmhouse to the southeast of King’s Port.
There were problems to solve, and they were being summoned to solve them.
“You need to sleep,” said Saviar Murlis. “If you don’t get some sleep, there’s no telling what might happen to you. Have you gotten any?”
“I’ll sleep when the war is over and we have won,” growled Titan Mobst. “Right now it’s time to get back to the Mexyl Wyn.”
Saviar Murlis had just come from the ship, where she lay hidden at the halfway point to the site of today’s launch.
“What are you working on, anyway?” He noticed that in addition to being completely covered with soot and ashes, his burly friend also reeked of smoke, but it had a different smell than Saviar had ever smelled before.
“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”
“Try me.”
“Well, there arrives a Human fellow from their capital city of Belcourt. At least he was born there. He has lived most of his life in the woods, but that is another story. At any rate, shortly after we bedded the Mexyl Wyn down last night I got word of him, and while you were snoring the night away, I learned of a discovery of his that will turn the war for us, or my name isn’t Titan Mobst.”
Saviar couldn’t help but see the gleam in his friend’s eye, and knew he was on to something.
“Well?”
“Well, it’s a substance. A gray/black sandy substance, that, when touched by flame, burns with such intensity that if you try and contain it, it explodes. I mean it bursts, and will destroy anything and everything that is close to it when it does. It’s an amazing compound, and I’ve been up all night experimenting with it. What we need now is a vessel in which to pack it so as to harness this power and use it to launch anything we want. I, well, it’s a simple thing, but I was thinking of large round balls of iron. Take down gates. Take down walls. But you could load it with lots of small round balls too. Take down a lot of Trolls that way, you could. We succeeded in making one, but the powder blew it up. Too thin.
“But right now, we have a ship to launch.”
Arriving at the site where the Mexyl Wyn lay concealed in the last stretch of trees before the beach area, Saviar Murlis and Titan Mobst got report from the scouts, who told them that the Trolls had taken the bait and were now chasing the Ravenwild troops along the Emperor’s Highway, hours to the north.
All struggled tremendously to roll the great ship along. Everything went smoothly enough for a time, but the operation ground to a halt when they hit the beach sand, which caused the logs upon which they were rolling her to dig in and bind. Here they were, sitting out in the open, completely exposed, three hundred feet from the launch point, and they could go neither forward nor backward. Muscles strained to the breaking point as the Gnomes pulled, giving it everything they had. Surely they would be discovered. Panic began to set in and the work party started to grumble amongst themselves that it was over, that they were doomed, that all was lost.
Titan and Saviar stood quietly and studied the situation before them. Unlike the raw feelings expressed in front of them as the workers dealt with their fears, the faces of the two leaders showed no emotion.
“We need a ramp,” said Titan quietly.
“I was thinking the same thing.”
“Very good. Send the entire crew back to the woods and have them cut us six hundred feet of tree: The straighter the better. If we can manage to lay these out in front of her we can use the same rollers to get her in the water.”
“Agreed.”
Saviar relayed the order to the crew foremen, who relayed it to the crew, who raced as one back through the scrub towards the woods. Every one of the Gnomes felt better now that they had something to do. For the next several hours they cut and hacked and stripped branches, moving the small straight trunks down to the Mexyl Wyn in groups of five, where they hastily constructed the ramp to the water’s edge under the guidance of Titan and Saviar. As soon as each log was positioned, the crew of five raced back to the woods to get another. None asked for a moment of rest, or food, or even water, the last of which Titan and Saviar forced them to take, knowing that getting behind on their fluids would only impede their progress. So they stood over them like mother hens, offering words of encouragement with every flask, and as the sun was preparing to set over the Western Sea, the waves were starting to caress the bow. Now, less than two hundred feet away from their goal, the cry went up. They had been spotted! Unmistakable battle cries could be heard from the squad of twenty Trolls that were suddenly racing across the beach towards them, screaming with blood lust and waving their swords and maces high over their heads. Behind them, a larger force could be heard mustering beyond the woods where they had harvested the trees.
Once again the Gnomes began to panic, but Saviar settled them without delay by ordering the archers aboard the vessel. Up the ropes they scrambled, the ones who made it first helping the ones who followed up and over the railing. Knowing they might face such a situation, Saviar Murlis had seen to it that all of their weapons were placed in readily accessible positions in the huge cockpit. Within seconds, dozens of arrows flew over the sands while the rest of the Gnomes put their shoulders to the stern and shoved mightily. In the face of all of this Titan Mobst remained perfectly calm, calling, “Push! Push!” so that they would get the most out of their efforts. Inch by inch they slid her forward, and at the halfway point along the hull she suddenly lifted up as though she had a life of her own, and with the next couple of shoves, she had launched and was floating free. Meanwhile, a hundred more Trolls now ran from the beach scrub and watched as the Mexyl Wyn slid s
ilently away from the shore. All of the remaining shore-bound Gnomes were hauled aboard by ropes thrown down to them from above.
They had done it, and a great cheer went up from all as the Trolls all looked at one another and tried to fathom the significance of this astounding event.
Chapter 30
Doreen sat in the corner of her ten by ten cell and watched the sun come up.
She had wondered a lot of things as her last night passed slowly by, like how they were going to execute her. She hoped it wouldn’t be painful, but couldn’t imagine that it would not be. Being young, she had never given any thought as to how she would eventually die, but now that she had been told she was going to, she couldn’t help but wonder how they were going to do it. Would it be by hanging? Beheading? It had been awful to have to sit there in the dark, entirely alone, and think such thoughts, but what else could she do? There was no chance that she could escape, and even if she could manage to break out of the cell in which she was being held, there were the two Trolls standing guard outside of the door.
She also wondered why she was being executed in the first place. Because she was food? The thought that she was no more than food was a notion out of which she could make no sense at all. It was horrible. She felt like there were certainly reasons to take another’s life. Like with those Towners. She had been completely ready to do whatever was necessary to rescue that young woman’s children, but she hadn’t done anything to anyone. Yet here she was, locked up and facing a death sentence so they could eat her.
But mostly she wondered about who she was. Where she had come from. This being her last night alive, with nothing to do but sit alone in the dark, she had found herself over and again trying to force herself to remember, sometimes grunting and straining with the effort. Bad enough that soon she was going to be dead; she did not want to die without knowing the answers to those questions. Had she ever had a family? She must have at some point. Everybody starts out with some kind of family. Were any of them alive? If they were, where were they? Who were they? “Think!” she had screamed at herself in her mind. “Think!”
Sitting there, doing this wrestling match in her own psyche with these disheartening thoughts, was horrible. She thought back to the first thing she could remember: Standing with Erik and meeting the horses back in Ravenwild. What were their names again? Spirit and Cloud. That’s right. It had been a beautiful day, and he had looked so handsome. She remembered the garden, and how she had been impressed at how well-cared-for it had looked. Then they were going to ride over to the castle and meet the King and Queen. She had never met them before. Then how had she met the Prince? How had they been introduced? Hmmm.
A vision crept into her mind of a room that was solid white. In it was a large painting of some sort, but the painting seemed to be alive, that is, the images in it moved freely about, and she could hear the people in the painting speaking. Now that, that was strange.
She shifted her position and looked away from the sunrise, wishing she could have the use of her hands, but the guards had not had the decency to remove the heavy iron manacles in which her hands were bound behind her back. Suddenly infuriated, she jerked hard on them. To her amazement, the chain that bound the two
cuffs around her wrists snapped easily!
“Wow,” she thought. “I wish I had thought to try that last night.”
Holding her freed hands in front of her, she looked at the chain that had moments before linked the two handcuffs behind her back, thinking how lucky she was that there had been a defect in it but, no, the metal was twisted like taffy and slightly smoking. “Oh, that is too weird,” she thought. On an impulse, she gripped the handcuff around her left wrist between her thumb and the base of her right index finger and twisted it firmly. It twisted right off. She did the same with the one on the right and it too fell away. She spit on the twisted metal. It sizzled as her spit came to an instant boil.
“Well, I’ll be,” she thought.
It was now getting light in the cell, and she could hear the guards muttering outside. She listened hard at what they were saying and found she could hear them through the thick oak door as if they were standing right in front of her. She knew from their talk that two others had come to replace the two that had stood watch over her.
“Have they lit the fire under the cook-pots?” asked one.
“No, you’re going to, before you turn in,” answered another.
“Why us?”
“Don’t ask us. Captain’s orders … ”
“What is going on?” she wondered, when she heard the unmistakable sound of the key being inserted into the lock. She positioned herself right in front of the door. When the first Troll entered, his eyes went immediately to her free hands, and from there to the malformed shards of metal on the floor that had been her shackles. “What the … ” he started to say, but never had the chance to finish as Doreen seized him by the front of his uniform and tossed him against the wall of her cell with no more effort than it would have taken her to toss a feather pillow. He was out cold. The second guard rushed in and the process was repeated. The third, hearing the unbelievable sounds, made sure he drew a nasty looking dagger from his belt before he stepped inside. She took a step back.
“Let me go and I promise I will let you live,” she said, gesturing at the two Trolls sprawled on the floor in front of them.
The huge Troll cocked his head, utterly bewildered by the strangeness of the scene, then twisted his face into a sneer and bent low, advancing on her slowly. This gave an opportunity for the fourth to enter, who undid a fearsome looking battle-axe from his belt that he swung in front of him, back and forth, as they backed her up to the far wall.
“I say again,” she snarled, “let me walk out of here and I promise I will let you live.”
One Troll looked at the other. This puny little Human girl was serious!
“Time to end this,” said the one holding the dagger. He lunged for her, but she moved to her right as quick as a cat, causing the Troll to bury the wicked knife into the wall of the cell. The one with the axe, however, had anticipated her move perfectly, and because the low ceiling prevented an overhead strike, he swept the huge blade in from the side. It struck her directly in the abdomen below the breastbone and… broke into pieces. Stunned, he dropped the handle, and would have drawn his own belt knife but for the fact that she seized him by the wrist and twisted it violently, causing it to snap like a brittle stick. Screaming, he was helpless as she spun him around and slammed him hard enough into the wall to crash right through. His face, crushed, misshapen, and bloody, said in no uncertain terms that he was instantly dead. The last remaining Troll watched this amazing turn of events out of the corner of his eye as he tried frantically to remove the dagger from where he had embedded it deep into the wall, but after his partner flew through it with a thunderous crash, he turned and tried to sprint back out the door. Instantly, however, Doreen positioned herself in between him and his escape route, where she calmly delivered a mule-kick to his chest as he rushed her, causing him to rocket backwards as he exhaled a massive grunt. He too crashed all the way through the wall of the cell, through which the early morning sunlight streamed in the swirling dust.
Dozens of Trolls, hearing the loud crashes and bangs, now sprinted to the jailhouse from the area where they had been performing their morning maneuvers. Most were heavily armed. One, the first to arrive, attempted to strike her down with a large, spiked battle-mace that he expertly swung, aiming for her head. She caught the ball in mid-swipe and gave a snap of her wrist, causing him to stumble towards her, where she seized him by the front of his uniform with both hands and launched him easily a hundred feet in the air. All stood in awe as he plummeted back to the ground, screaming madly all the way. He landed with a ghastly crunch. Instantly she was beside another, whom she also seized in the same way.
“Would you like to give it a try?” she asked.
“N … n … no,” he stammered.
�
�I thought not,” she said, shoving him violently backwards. He tripped over his own feet and rolled to a stop.
She stood in a defiant posture with her hands on her hips, glaring at the jailers in front of her.
“Would anyone else like to give it a try?”
Nobody moved.
“Smart choice,” she said. “Now get me the captain.”
“H … he doesn’t arise until after nine,” said one.
Once again her movement was nothing more than a blur as she moved to his side and grabbed him by one of his large thumbs, snapping it like a carrot and causing him to shriek in pain.
“Don’t make me ask again,” she growled.
The Troll ran off to awaken the captain, blubbering all the way.
She didn’t wait long.
Orie, Jacqueline, and Cinnamon sat with Forrester, Brutus, and Patriachus in the shadows of a small stand of pine trees that bordered the valley to the south of
The Gate, on the Agden Forest side of the Agden River.
In front of them the battle raged, as the Ravenwild forces attempted to organize enough to retreat from the direct assault on the Troll army that they had launched earlier that morning. They had streamed out of the foothills to the northwest of The Gate at daybreak, confident in their numbers, but whenever the Trolls had counterattacked with their secreted reinforcements, they realized they had been baited and could not possibly hope to prevail in the campaign. So Dorin had ordered the retreat. Forrester studied the battle intently with a critical eye, ever trying to fathom a way that that he and the Wolves might help to turn the tide against the Trolls. Orie and Jacqueline studied the map that was spread out in front of them, Orie whispering constantly to her about the details, forcing her to concentrate on the parchment and not the horrific scene before them. Every once in a while, she would glance up, and he would gently grasp her by the head and lower it to take her eyes off of the fighting. As concerned as he was about her knowing where they were, and the locations of the rest of them in the event that they got separated, or something happened to him, he was equally concerned that she not watch the bloodshed.
