The Lore Anthology: Lore of the Underlings: Episodes 1 - 5

by John Klobucher

  He shifted his gaze to the tall young woman and their eyes briefly met. “The Semperors taught us to turn from the foreign face, even the most beautiful. But where did we learn to turn from the moment in fear? Or to turn blind to revelations that may save our Keep? These are not lessons known to my brothers and me.”

  Bylo looked sideways at Pyr. “So what would young master Hurx have us do now?” He gestured toward the strangers with a slow sweep of his hand.

  The elderwoman answered for him, elbowing her way out from behind the meater and his apprentice, each of whom carried their long carcass knives. “Isn’t it obvious, Finder? Ah, this boy is every bit his father’s son. Ayryx would be proud indeed.”

  “Um, perhaps so,” said Bylo, “but what…”

  “If I might make a suggestion,” offered a voice politely. Morio waved his hand to catch their eye. “Yes, over here. Do you think it possible to take a brief break from these proceedings? I find myself in need of… forgive me… a personal moment of relief.”

  “Really?” whispered John Cap. “Right now? Really?”

  The elderwoman seemed not to hear or not to understand. Bylo grinned and curled his lips to respond, when suddenly…

  Episode 2 ~ Return of the Guard

  From the night sky came a blood-cold cry, like the woeful plea of a haunted child. “Wurree! Wurree!” Overhead circled the og from the Liar’s Tree, once more taken wing. It shone luminous black neath the watchful moon.

  To the heavens turned the eyes of all, all but for the strangers three. They instead turned to each other and exchanged a silent signal, a palm upon the heart. As eyes again fell to find them, they now stood in a new formation — a tight triangle with each facing away a different direction. They stood at the ready, waiting.

  Hidden amidst them, Jixy Mox found a comfortable patch of sweetgrass and sat. She played with the broken stone in her quickling hands, tossing it up and down in the air.

  John Cap looked back at the tall young woman. “Do you hear it?” he asked. “That rumble?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “It grows nearer.”

  Morio made a pained face, straining to hear it too.

  Without glancing up from her game, Jixy mumbled to herself in a soft sing-song. “Here they come.”

  The land began to quake underfoot as a pounding sound storm rolled in like lightningless thunder from the angry plains. It shook the boney limbs of the Liar’s Tree. Into the dark that cloaked its trunk fell things that whooshed and rang.

  “Boxbo!”

  “There you are, Ixit!”

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “That it has suddenly turned quite late and we should quickly be off to our homes for bed?”

  “And that…”

  “We were never here at all and know nothing about it?”

  “And not to mention…”

  “That we trust in the Guard to protect us from such threats and believe with all our hearts in their methods and goals?”

  “Right, treasure that. Now hurry, loglegs, before we’re the last left.”

  Abruptly the og fell deathly silent. Jixy looked up and let her stone go tumbling to the ground uncaught. “Mr. Oggie?” She saw the creature slowly stretch to the width and weight of a bareskin blanket then float gently down from the far above. It draped about her head and neck. It covered her completely. With a squeal she vanished from view.

  Out at the edge of torches’ reach, a line of riders tore through the curtain of darkness that bounded the fleeting field. They charged hard on massive mounts, kicking up clods of sod and soil the size of heads that burst all about like a volley of hurlage bombs. Quickly they closed on the fleeing folk and cut off their path at the neck of the road. The slow they knocked from their feet and nearly trampled under hoof. The rest they rounded up like lapsheep, herded back toward the heart of the field.

  And the riders began to sing. Deep and strong they sang, a bloodsong of the war-born:

  Pray drink, pray dine

  Prey mine tonight

  Pray drink, pray dine

  Prey die

  Pray meat, pray wine

  Prey spine of white

  Pray meat, pray wine

  Prey die

  Prey bone and bleed

  Pray prey to feed

  Prey feed to death

  Pray die

  Pray feast, pray fast

  Pray hell’s repast

  Prey ever cast

  Prey die

  By the fall of the final note, a count of three and thirty chevox strode the field under the firm rein of their masters. Their long column had slowed to a trot and turned a perfect arc toward the Liar’s Tree before branching into two separate companies. One of twenty-two formed an outer ring, encircling all. The other of eleven surrounded the trio of strangers and the few folk who had held to hold them — Bylo Hamyx, elderwoman Pum, and the Hurx boys.

  “Welcome back, Guard! Welcome home,” the elderwoman loudly announced in a voice surprisingly deep. “We pray that your mission met with success, whatever it was, wherever you went…” She squinted a bit and chewed her teeth. “And not that an old woman needs to know the details of every excursion…” Her eyes had a sudden steeliness. “But ‘tis good to know you have returned.”

  She gestured toward the strangers behind her. “For we have had our own adventure — some unwelcome guests this day.” Her words met stony silence from the helmeted faces mounted high about her.

  Then the great matron noticed something amiss. “Is he not here? Did he not make it back with you? Where is the brother Treasuror?”

  One of the Guard raised a shiny black battle pike and pointed off into the night.

  “Ah,” she replied uncertainly.

  From the side of his mouth John Cap mumbled something, just so Morio could hear. “Is this what you expected?”

  “More or less,” Morio mumbled back.

  “What’s with the fancy suits of armor?”

  “Armor of spring vine, it is said. In the colors of each different region or clan.”

  “Look!” someone shouted.

  “There.”

  A lone rider took form in the murk from which the others had come. But this one was different. Something was wrong.

  This man and mount moved slowly, haltingly — not with the pace or power of the first. As they came closer all could see that the animal had suffered wounds. It limped painfully on but three of its four long legs, listing perilously to the left while holding its head high and proud.

  Another of the eleven inner Guard produced a thin pipe from the handle of his battle pike and raised it to his lips. He blew a short, shrill melody then repeated it once then once again.

  “What happened?” wondered Ixit aloud.

  “It’s the brother Treasuror’s vell, Arrowborne,” answered Boxbo. “It’s hurt.”

  “I can see that, you knothole.”

  Still the vell was a creature of beauty. Taller by two than its rider it was but slender of shape, a wisp of the width of the chevox, its kin. Its coat shone sleek, colored lightly of tan, but with head and mane that seemed of smoothest soulstone, carved in perfect measure by a master’s hand, cast pure white despite the summer moon’s yellowed palette. Its eyes were set like treasured gems that had been polished well and inlaid with a gentle touch, wide apart upon each side. They were lidless and black, like liquid pooled, a black the deep of dreams.

  As the wounded one approached, each chevox bowed its great horned head, some quietly scraping the ground with their heavy hooves while it passed. The vell seemed to nod slightly in return, revealing the hint of horns that crowned it.

  The rider called out, “Ayr, Pyr, Ayron! Come here!” He dismounted the vell with care and lowered himself to the ground as the three boys came quickly forward. The vell staggered then let out a muffled grunt. “Lead Arrowborne to the stables. See that he is fed and watered — and made comfortable.”

  “Yes Uncle,” answered Pyr.

/>   “We will sir,” said Ayron.

  Ayr silently took the vell’s gold-hued reins in hand and turned away to hide his damp eyes.

  “It reminds me of something from the Everall,” said the young woman softly in the direction of John Cap.

  “I have seen such a creature before,” added Morio through a hand cupped to mute the sound. “Once in a book of Semperors past… a noble animal… quite rare it seems…”

  The vell craned its neck and stared at the strangers as if listening to them.

  Ayr gave a little tug at the reins but Arrowborne ignored him. He tugged a little harder. Nothing still. “Come on boy… please,” he whispered. “You’re not right. We’ve got to look after you.”

  Arrowborne shook his head and kept an eye fixed on the three unknowns.

  The two other brothers took hold too to give the vell a pull. It answered them by turning tail and letting its hindquarters do the talking. The message was clear from the look on their faces. No buts about it. Then it sat down.

  Try as they might to plead with the ground-bound vell, it was all to no avail. “We have our orders,” Pyr explained. “We must not fail them and let Uncle down. Duty calls, old boy. You know that.” Arrowborne crossed his lengthy front legs, low and close to the hooves.

  The rider had seen enough by now. “Very well then. Leave him be.”

  As the boys let fall the reins, the vell seemed to sink a little and sigh. They moved to its side and used their hands to smooth its coat and comfort it. But the man spun sharply in place and cast a cold eye over the figures of the field, now dimly lit by the dying glow of ashen logs and burnt oil. The jawbone under his thin, red beard looked to lock up tight.

  In the meantime, the Guard about him posed poised for force, as if waiting to seize a word or a sign. Each held his battle pike high, at the ready. Overhead, a thick bank of clouds, gray ghosts from the east, had rolled in unnoticed. They blinded the heavens and stole the gold of the moon gone mournful and dull.

  John Cap watched as the bearded man pulled a tired firestalk from the ground and headed in his direction. He approached with a certain swagger wearing a long, brown journey coat and minder’s cap well-worn of heavy boven hide, yet the closer he came, the smaller of stature he seemed. He rose perhaps to the shoulder of the strong young stranger, perhaps less. His eyes though, dark and sharp, bore a stare the match of any man. They locked on John Cap.

  John Cap did not look away. He returned the gaze unblinking and began to raise an arm, his right, as he had raised it before in battle with the ogs. This time though, he stopped and held it halfway, holding for things to unfold. His hand hung awkwardly in the air.

  “We are infected, Fyryx!” The words burst from Bylo’s crooked mouth in a shower of bitter spittle. “So good you could find your way back for it.”

  The man, Fyryx the Red, the brother Treasuror, paused for an instant but kept his back to the Finder behind him. He now stood just a torch’s length from John Cap, near enough to raise the failing flames he held to the young man’s face. He squinted hard at the stranger, studying him.

  John Cap squeezed his hand into a fist but held still, steady as stone.

  From nearby came a voice. “No.” The voice was female, firm but calm. “I am the first.”

  Fyryx turned his torch to the sound and found another tall stranger, this one the narrow young woman with hair of wheaten gold and eyes the green of pom wine. He raised a red brow, the one on his right, then sidestepped left for a better look.

  From toe to top he measured her make, lingering longest on the timeless beauty of her face. Her clothes, like those of her two companions, were nothing uncommon. In keeping with the ways of old, they wore garments of limberwood peeled from young trunks in soft supple sheets, dyed in browns and greens, and sewn. She herself was dressed plainly in a maid’s cheesing frock, which appeared not to fit quite right, and a pair of weathered leg leathers that wrapped her feet as footings. But something in her look, her skin…

  Fyryx watched a lone drop of rain fall upon her high, smooth cheek, which glowed pale gray in the low light of the ironfire. The drop rolled down toward her perfect purple lips then vanished before it reached them.

  She opened her mouth, parting those lips to speak. But Bylo had a different plan.

  “Beware her trickling tongue!” he howled. “I warn you — dear, dear brother Treasuror — already did this one try to sow a seedy, weedy row.” In disgust, he stopped to cough up a thick ball of phlegm from his raspy throat, but it hung bloody black on his lip. So Bylo scooped the phlegm in the crook of his fetid finger and flung it flush at the young maid’s head, though it somehow misappeared behind her in the empty space the trio made. “Look how pretty they pose there. Foreign fakes. Even now they hide another, a toadstool that fouls the soil they shield…”

  “It is true,” avowed the elderwoman, crowing loud as a warnbird to be heard across the grassy gap. “Even my aged eyes see it. Lie upon lie upon lie. There is some filthy game afoot — a dark trick that they play on us in league with a devil of their doing, a beast of flesh that flies. And one of the unwanted too. The dirty waif of a leaver, you no doubt know the girl. She acts spellbound by this evil skin. One masks, the other mocks. These are the strangers we’ve long learned to fear. They honor neither the bile of the Finder nor the blood of your own family, embodied by your brother’s sons who alone stood bravely today. These are the strangers from without whom the Semperors said would come.”

  Fyryx had tired of the talk and raised his hand to silence them both. “And so, treasured ones…” he said in a voice cold with disappointment that seemed to be timed to a downfall of rain, “Why do they still live?”

  The elderwoman’s shoulders sank. Her face deflated to a jowlful of folds. She knew — how well she knew. Bylo too. Eyes down, he found the ground as engrossing as ever. And folk further back looked nervously about, pointing fingers at their neighbors.

  “Shame on you!”

  “You make me ill.”

  “Yellow-fellow!”

  “Spineless swill.”

  “You could have axed them, Ixit.”

  “Bloody Boxbo. Who’d you kill?”

  As his question hung on the air unanswered, Fyryx turned to walk away. With a flick of the wrist he summoned the nearest and most menacing of the Guard — a warrior clad in all of an armor well-waxed, black, and thick, and one who’d been watching like a bloodhawk from astride a great, brutish bull chevox.

  “Syar-ull! See to it.”

  They seemed as one these two, this team of animal and man, with eyes that flashed unworldly through the dark night’s rainy veil. The bull let out a thunderous snort and pounded the puddling ground hard using its wide front hoof. The Guard mashed his battle pike three times into the gauntlet he wore on his right. Then he dexterously turned it in air to rest across his heavy breastplate, a vestment adorned by an artisan’s skill in a pattern of yellow leaves and shoots that sprung from a long thorned vine. The same markings covered the intricately carved shaft and handhold of the pike.

  He called out from behind the visor of his full face mask and helmet, which allowed no window to the wearer but a wide, thin eye slot. The sound was nearly song, strong but highish pitched:

  Till the grave

  Plow this row

  Reap their souls

  Sovereign, ho!

  The bull began to lumber forward. But then, all of a sudden…

  “Hi-ho sirs! Hello!”

  Stranger three, the fattier folkish one, stood out betwixt the taller two. His arms were open wide and he gave a cheery smile.

  “May I call you ‘sirs’?”

  Fyryx looked back over his shoulder. Bull’s-eyed Sovereign set his sights.

  “Permit me please, very quickly, to introduce myself. Morio Yoop at your service.” Morio made the briefest bow while keeping one eye bullward. The other he shifted to send John Cap a cheeky secret wink.

  John Cap squinted at him with a question on his fa
ce. “What?”

  But his eager colleague did not wait to answer or elucidate. Instead the fuller fellow was off on a venture of his own invention. In other words, that is to say, Morio set some scheme in motion…

  To begin he took a slight step back and said something odd like, “Psst! Tuck and run,” in a whisper to the tall young woman. She tipped her head, puzzled, and frowned at the words. Meanwhile his foot found the fleshy mass of friends lying low amongst the tufts and he kicked it hard with his soft shoe heel. “Tusk and run Ogdog,” he half hushed. “On my mark!”

  Beneath the shielding skin something seemed to stir and wake… with a weak cry and a muffled voice.

  And the brawny bull was upon them. Morio bounded to meet the beast with a leap like a hoppalope then thrust his hands up high in the air. The chevox was nimble and stopped on the spot, so near that its nostrils flared in the stranger’s face and sprayed him in a mist, a warm shower of sour mucus.

  Morio turned his head to breathe. “You can see, noble sirs, that I bear only arms.”

  The rider leaned over the neck of his mount.

  “But for even further fellowship, I hope you will accept my full and unconditional submission to your will and every whim!”

  The black Guard raised his battle pike to strike the stranger down.

  A score of strides away, the vell shoved Pyr Hurx in the back with its long and boney nose. Somehow that gave him the pluck to speak. “Hold there, honored Guard! Forgive me, Uncle…”

  Syar-ull swung. Morio ducked, but the weighty stick still struck his shoulder with a glancing blow, barely so, but enough to fell him aground. “Mmmph.”

  Fyryx fired a livid look. “Mind your place, boy!”

  “But Uncle…”

  “The Guard do not take orders from children. Nor do I.”

  “But Uncle…”

  “Silence! Go. Tend to your animal.”

  Morio gazed up from the sodden grass having fallen flat upon his back. The dark pikesman loured over him, unmoved by the man’s cherubic look or that friendling kind of face. He gripped his weapon spearwise and then spiked the fat foe through his ruckscoat’s right side, just by a wide but solid belly, to pin him to the spongy sod.