by Peter Plasse
Brutus and Patriachus merely waited patiently for the killing to stop for the day. Knowing there was nothing they could do about it, what they saw in the carnage in front of them was food for their mates and as yet unborn pups, nothing more, nothing less.
“Orie?” asked Forrester in a soft voice.
“Yes, Forrester?”
“We need to return to Cirrhus’s farm. Right now.”
“And why is that?”
“Well, it’s hard to explain, but I’m certain that the magic is failing. The magic required to use the portal, the magic to render you visible again. We suspected it before. Now, I’m sure.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, up until yesterday, although I’ve been unable to see you in person, you know, in the real world, I have been able to make out your image with the tell-all. A faint image, yes, but now you don’t even appear there. This is bad, Orie. I’m positive.”
Forrester handed him the stone. Orie studied it briefly. It was impossible for him to come to any definitive conclusion. He noted the obvious: that his image was clearly absent, and yes it did look dead, but in the end it didn’t matter. What mattered was they had to leave. Now.
He looked at Jacqueline, bent over the map, and nodded in the affirmative. Nobody saw, of course, but this didn’t matter either. They had gotten what they came for. It was time to move on.
“Look here,” he said, pointing to the map, forgetting for the moment that Forrester could not see what he was pointing to. This invisible thing was taking some getting used to. Fortunately, Forrester was bright. “Ryan and Gracie are right here about a third of the way back to Cirrhus’s. We need to see if we can get to them first. Then we can all go to Cirrhus’s, or straight to Mom and Dad. Why do we need to get back to Cirrhus’s anyway?”
“I believe it is safest,” he said. “It only makes sense that whatever power is left will be strongest at the source. If we try to go anywhere else, there’s no way of telling what might happen.”
“You may be right,” said Orie, “but there is no way we’re not going to try to get to Ryan and Gracie first. Absolutely no way.
“But let’s back up a minute. This magic, these spells that you say were laid down by the great wizards thousands of years ago, have lasted all this time. Why would they suddenly fail now? It doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“Nor to me,” said Forrester, “but now, we need to go.”
“Orie,” said Jacqueline, “You said these are Ryan and Gracie’s dots, and these are Mom and Dad’s. That means this one must be Nanie’s, right?”
Orie snatched the map away from her.
She couldn’t see it, of course, but he was grinning from ear to ear.
“Good job,” he said.
“Doing what?” she asked. “I didn’t do anything.”
She and Cinnamon spoke their silent goodbyes to Brutus and Patriachus, Jacqueline finding it extremely difficult to disengage from the hug she gave Brutus as giant tears rolled down both cheeks. “I hope we see you soon,” she said in her mind to both of them.
“You just might,” returned Brutus. “Keep us in your thoughts.”
“Always,” she said. Cinnamon, listening in, agreed.
The next thing she knew, they were all back in Ravenwild, in the woods near a town called The Forks, so named because it was where two great rivers, the Kennebec and the Dead, met. Forrester stood guard while Orie spread the maps out on the forest floor. He and Jacqueline studied them intently. “Here they are,” said Orie. “And here we are, less than five miles from them. Good shootin’ Forrester.”
Forrester nodded. He was studying the trail. There had definitely been movement along it within the last twelve hours. Trolls, about a dozen of them, maybe half-again that. Headed the same way they were headed.
“We’ll definitely need to keep our wits about us now,” he said softly to them. He showed them the footprints.
“Forrester, check the tell-all and see if you can see me.”
“Yes,” he said. “I can. Definitely not as strong as before, but I can see you.”
“Good. Watch the tell-all. I’ll walk twenty yards ahead. I’ll wave like this if I see anything suspicious.” He moved his arm up and down in front of him. “Don’t forget, we’re more concerned with silence than we are with speed.”
“You know, Orie,” he said, “you’re turning into a pretty fine soldier.”
Orie grunted and said, “Move out,” with a chuckle.
Jacqueline only rolled her eyes.
Saviar Murlis, as well as most of the crew of the Mexyl Wynn, lay on her decks unable to rise or move to any significant degree, owing to the overpowering grip of nausea that had seized them like an Agden Wolf seizes a plains buck in its fangs. No matter what he tried, he couldn’t shake it, and every time he did try to struggle his way upright, he only retched all the more.
At first, as the ship had drifted away from the shore on its own thanks to the onshore breeze, the sentiment aboard had been nothing short of ecstasy at their triumph. They had set the mast, with everyone cheering loudly as the mainsail unfurled, but in the face of the motion sickness that now held him and the crew in its clutches, it was a short-lived victory. Fortunately, Titan Mobst seemed to be immune and stood unwavering at the tiller, guiding the ship further and further from the shore until, to the Trolls, it became nothing more than a tiny dot.
The brigade leader, a monster of a Troll, half of whose face had been hacked away in one of the many battles he had fought on behalf of his Emperor, ordered the patrol back to the city itself. He figured if they tortured enough of the citizens there, somebody would squawk like a chicken, and he would have something to tell his Excellency other than how they had let the Gnomes get away with this outrageous act. He needed something to save his own head now. The problem was, when they got back to the town, it was completely empty. High and low, from building to building they searched and found not a single occupant. All had gone somewhere. The question was, where?
Jared came up from below, carrying a bucket of fresh water that he used to wash off the faces of the utterly miserable crewmembers. He forced them all to drink some.
He and Diana had parted company, she traveling with her father to provide yet another trained sword arm in his service as they pressed forward in the western campaign, and he to the coast. Having begged a little fishing skiff from one of the locals, he had rowed his way out to the great ship.
After tending to the forty or so sick ones, he served the dozen who, like he and Titan Mobst, were unaffected by the ravages of motion sickness.
“I feel like I’m dying,” said Saviar, as Jared got him to take some more water.
Titan laughed a belly-laugh and said, “And I’ll bet you wish you could up and get it over with, don’t you lad?”
He offered a faint smile, mumbling, “Aye, that I do.”
“Not to worry, my good Gnome,” he continued. “It will pass. It will take longer in some than others, but it will pass. It happens to many of the Gnomes who use the little boats to catch the fish in the harbors. It used to happen to my brother when my father took us out as boys. Never seemed to bother me, though. But it will pass.”
“How soon?” asked Saviar, after a particularly nasty spell of dry heaving.
“Not more than a week or two.”
Saviar’s head snapped up. “A week or two?”
Titan laughed again. “No. Bad joke, that. You’ll be better in a day or two.
The thing is, once you’re comfortable on the Mexyl Wyn, every time you go ashore the land itself will do the same thing to you.”
Saviar groaned. “Great. Just great,” and retched again, almost as if to emphasize the point of how truly miserable he felt.
Jared carried the bucket the last few feet aft and offered a mug full to Titan who drank it with delight after he offered a toast. “To the Old One,” he said. “Today is a historic day. May the seas be calm and the winds fair. We make for the castle
at Ghasten, where we will lay siege to the very lair of the Emperor himself. May the Old One grant us safe passage.”
He lifted his mug towards the sky. Jared filled one and did the same.
Smacking his lips, he bellowed, “Get well lads. Get well. We have a mission. We have a purpose. The Trolls will wish for all time that they had never invaded our homeland.
“We go now to kill the Emperor himself.”
It was a rousing speech, but all he got in return was a lot of grunts and groans. It didn’t bother him in the slightest. In fact, it only broadened his smile. This was indeed a historic day. The ship was floating upright and true, thanks to her thoughtful design, solid construction, and the pig-iron that they had labored so hard to get aboard to use for ballast. And with Jared’s miracle powder they would now, for the first time in the history of their nation, be able to stand up to the Trolls. All they needed was some way to harness the power of the explosive powder in order to direct it, and he had a plan for that too. Yes, this was a great day.
The Ravenwild forces, having fared far better than any had hoped in their attack on the Troll forces in King’s Port, now ran hard along the Emperor’s Highway, heading north. The air was electric with the sound of the thousands of booted feet striking the cobblestone thoroughfare, along with the nonstop rattle and clack of the weapons. Straight through Pyrrt they ran, a tiny town consisting of nothing more than a few houses to either side of the roadway, along with a central meetinghouse, schoolhouse, and town jail. As the racing army passed through town, the resident Gnomes, curious, eyed them through windows and from open doorways. Gnome youngsters waved, some of them hollering out greetings.
From there they sprinted all the way to Soledad, several hours up the road. Coming to the town limits, Thargen raised his arms, motioning for the troops to halt. Unlike Pyrrt, with its paucity of structures, Soledad was a fairly good-sized town with several fine, multi-level houses on both sides of the road, and, more importantly, branching off from the main roadway were several side streets on which dozens of simpler structures stood. Litter after litter of the injured was transported down every one of these to the healers that were expecting them in the shelter of the receiving homes. Sweepers meticulously removed any trace that anyone had ever so much as walked on by.
When the wounded had all been situated, Thargen ordered the remainder of the strike force onward to the east.
Continuing on their way, they left the Emperor’s Highway, following a well-worn trail to the village of Utt and arriving as the dual spring moons were beginning to show in the eastern sky. They were less careful than they might have been about concealing their point of departure from the Emperor’s Highway, but not so careless as to make it obvious. With the village directly in front of them, Thargen once again raised his arms, and the company halted.
What they looked upon was a grouping of around a dozen houses. Nothing like the elaborate homes of Soledad, these were simple, single-story homes and outbuildings that had once held the families, the animals, and the equipment necessary to tend the vast fields of crops that spread out like the wings of a giant butterfly to either side of them all the way to the moonlit horizon. In the pale moonlight they could see that the spring planting had begun, with dozens and dozens of neat rows of new shoots peeking out of the soil to both sides.
Directly behind the town rose a sizable hill several hundred feet in height.
All that could be heard was the heavy breathing of the thousands of Human, Elf, Dwarf, and Gnome soldiers. Many of them held their sides as they sucked in the sweet night air.
“Where is he?” asked one of the lieutenants, his question directed at Thargen. The squeak in his voice betrayed the unease he was feeling, knowing that as they stood there, a vastly superior Troll force was bearing down on them with lethal intent.
He had no sooner asked the question, when Rolan materialized in the doorway of a nearby house and strode briskly towards them. At his side walked Andar Gall. Much shorter, as all Gnomes were, he nevertheless carried himself in such a way that his shorter stature somehow didn’t seem so.
They crossed the short span of field in between the house and the troops. The soldiers all straightened at the sight of their King, who introduced his second in command to Andar Gall, then inquired at once about the casualties and how the soldiers were holding up. Thargen debriefed him quickly and concisely, at which point Rolan moved to a spot directly in front of his assault forces. Whereas a minute before the air had been filled with the sounds of their labored breathing, once he positioned himself, there was not a sound to be heard. The breeze itself seemed to still as he began to speak.
“My good and brave men,” he called out, “I am, as always, awed by your performance in battle today.
“This Gnome is named Andar Gall. He hails from Kohansk. Many of our Gnome allies present today know of him, and some may even know him. He is a good and honorable Gnome. I will need all of the officers and squad leaders to meet with him right now where he will instruct you on what your duties will be.
“Not a year ago his wife was brutally murdered by the Troll scum for the crime of having asked a simple question, and he has labored since that time for this day. We have a surprise for those that follow us.
“Obey him as you would me.”
Jessica awoke, Blake beside her. From the sound of his breathing she figured he was still asleep. Her first thought, after she shook the cobwebs from her mind, was that she would probably never again awaken for the rest of her life without a feeling of agonizing dread, worrying whether or not her children were safe. She could take the physical agony of the endless marching. She could suffer through the cold, the hunger, the thirst, the seemingly endless tedium of food that gave no pleasure whatsoever in its eating. But what did threaten to consume her every morning was not knowing if her child on this backwards planet was even alive. It was her worst nightmare come true with every sunrise, taking every bit of her iron will to come to grips with it, to stare it down, to fight through it, and to pledge to the very core of her being to never, ever, ever give up until they had found her and they were all together again in that place, worlds apart from where she now lay, called home.
She threw off her blanket and half-walked, half-crawled, to the fire. She picked at the coals for a minute until she had coaxed forth some flame that she fed with bits of kindling. Lost in dark thoughts, she was not aware when Blake came to squat beside her. “I’d say good morning … ” he murmured.
“No such thing,” she said. “Not until … ”
“I know.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes when they were approached by Captain Pilrick, who laid a piece of venison on a flat rock that Blake had deliberately placed at the fire’s edge to serve as a cooking/warming surface. He said, “I know this must be extremely hard on both of you. I, for one, am encouraged that at least we are now fighting on the same side. We will make the village of Perpst today, certainly by nightfall, probably by late afternoon. I want you both to know I will do everything in my power to find any news of your child. I cannot emphasize enough the significance of the new alliance between our countries … ”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” interrupted Jessica in an annoyed tone of voice, “Our country is not even on this planet, remember? We’re not from here. This is your war not ours, and frankly I couldn’t care less … ”
Now it was Blake’s turn to interrupt. “Jess, Jess. Easy.” They made eye contact and he tilted his head slightly, arching his eyebrows. His look said, “I know you’re upset, but we need this guy, remember?”
“I’m sorry, Captain Pilrick, you were saying?”
“Yes, well, as I said, now that there is an alliance between the two lands, networking as to the whereabouts of a Human child will be a lot easier, now won’t it? Not that it will be easy, but at least not impossible.”
Blake nodded a somber, “Yes.”
Jessica stared into the fire, obviously seething with frustration. The captain stabb
ed the piece of venison, still ice cold, with his belt knife and moved away.
Knowing he would get nowhere by confronting her about the way she had spoken to the one Gnome who might be able to help them track down their daughter, he asked, “Did you make any progress with the little guy?” He nodded towards Jebwickett, who was having some sort of spirited discussion with Oddwaddle well away from the fire.
She shook her head, “No,” then said, “to be honest, I don’t care one way or the other how he’s doing. I just want to find Stephanie.”
“I know you do,” he said. “And I also know that you care about the little guy. I know because I know you. It’s a big part of who you are, and it goes all the way to your soul. It’s much of why I love you.”
They embraced briefly and got about the business of breaking camp.
They trudged steadily westward for the entire morning and much of the afternoon, stopping only to snack briefly and drink from the several mountain streams they passed on their way to Perpst. The weather was clear and warm. Each was surprised at how it had gone so quickly from the icy winter cold to early summer warmth, but they reasoned that this was probably normal and attributable entirely to seasons much shorter than they were used to.
The going was rough, up and down mountainous trails with loose rocks and scree threatening to break an ankle every step of the way, but mostly monotonous. Nobody spoke, all maintaining a state of battle readiness in case they ran into a squad of Trolls, but they arrived at the outskirts of Perpst without incident. They began to glimpse the rooftops of the houses in the distance when a Gnome scout appeared on the trail directly in front of them, holding up his arm and motioning for them to stop. He then made some gestures. It looked like some sort of sign language that neither Blake nor Jessica understood, but Captain Pilrick obviously did, and soon they had fallen into a single-file line and were hiking at a brisk pace higher and higher into the mountains surrounding the city. In about an hour, to either side of them on the steep trail, the rock walls jutted straight up for hundreds of feet. A short while after that, as the sun was diving hard for the horizon, their escort motioned for them to stop. He walked straight to the rock face on their right and grabbed one of the vines that grew along it. They heard the muffled sound of a bell ringing, seeming to come from inside of the rock itself. A minute later a large segment of it slid to the side, revealing the entrance to a spacious cavern.
