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

by John Klobucher

  Morio made to wriggle or roll but could not move at all. “Kudos, good warlord! Your mastery of the rod is real, or really unreal… I am awed… Owww!” He reached to rub his arm. “Your hand will come in handy.”

  John Cap peered through the darksome drops at the flailing of his friend. He twitched as if about to act but the tall young woman shook her head.

  Morio gave a hard lurch left and heard his ruckscoat rip. “But pleasantries aside,” he said, “I wonder whether you’ve had the chance to chat with your cohorts or associates on a matter that I mentioned earlier tonight. Sound familiar? The notion of negotiating a temporary truce or treaty to attend to some ever-more-pressing private business? Ring a bell?”

  Syar-ull drew from his planted pikeshaft a long well-honed impaling lance, one hewn smooth and sharp by an old cold hand to mock the mark of an oddcat’s fang. “Prey die!” he sang, inspecting it. Then he stabbed at the stranger to finish him off. But Morio popped up just in time and flew afoot with his coat torn in two and a nick on his neck from the tip of the point.

  “Sorry!” he sang back, “Business first!” And he flew, straight as a stingle wing and fleet as his wee feet could flee, drawn to the darkness and the black mass of the Liar’s Tree.

  The great Guard growled and leveled his lance as all eyes followed the fugitive’s flight.

  “He must be mad.”

  “Is this a full moon?”

  “Farewell, you fool!”

  “Toodles!”

  “Good night loon.”

  Holding the grip of the lance in both hands, a riled Syar-ull snapped off the butt to reveal a length of wrapture rope knotted at one end. He yanked the knot hard and it popped like a cork, spilling a spool of fine vine down Sovereign’s meaty, sinewed side. Then he heaved the new-made harpoon up upon his padded shoulder and gave it a mighty hurl.

  Morio turned in time to see the weapon sail right overhead. And then the vine unfurled behind. It speared the soil mere feet away and blocked the route he had been on — straight to the foot of the armored arbor. The tail of it lashed his back and latched on tight to rope his every limb, wrapping his trunk in a knotty embrace.

  “Mark! Mark!” he cried out loud, signaling back to his small stand of friends.

  Boxbo kicked Ixit. “Who’s Mark?” he asked. Ixit kicked him right back. “Mark of the dead, I guess!” He laughed.

  Now everyone anticipated the endgame of the Guard.

  “We’re taking wagers, gentlemen! Don’t be late. No bet, no win!”

  “A basket of sand beans says he’ll start by splitting the man in half.”

  “I’m in!”

  “Who’ll bet on a skinning?”

  “Alive?”

  “Five sticks.”

  “Six if it takes two peels.”

  “Hmmm…”

  “That is a porkling one…”

  “Indeed, but the Guard is very good…”

  “Tell you what — because we’re kin — I’ll throw in a head of pepper salts too.”

  “You’re making an offer I can’t refuse.”

  “Are we on?”

  “Sure.”

  “Easy treasure!”

  But away from the bloodsport, there in the secret space behind the young woman and man, another game began. The og hide that hid Jixy safe inside suddenly fell slack and slipped from her back to the sweetgrass about her kneeling knees. It rolled up tight to a twisted tube then turned and turned again… right before her amber eyes remade as a leg-long boney blade. At that it lay flat on the given ground, still until it went all white, a deathly pure from pommel to point.

  The young woman called softly to the child but with urgency in her voice. “Go girl, run. Seek safe haven. Your time is to come. We will need you then.”

  Jixy nodded her tangled mane. Though sleepy-eyed she understood and her muscles mindlessly knew what to do, what had kept her alive this long. She plunged her hands into the rich, black mud that bubbled between the leaves of grass and smeared it thick like warpaint over every inch of innocent skin — face, arms, legs — all concealed. Then, as if guided by an ancient instinct never learned, she fled for the darkest corner of the Guard-filled field. Eastward she went and away from the walls of the Keep.

  No one saw as the soily creature scurried toward the near ring of riders, slipping quick and low through the tallest tufts. In a stroke of luck she caught them off guard while the war men, by order of a bull-mad Syar-ull, lit from their mounts to converge afoot upon the alien three. The little mud maid pounced at her chance. She snuck to flank the first chevox she found, the brown cow Clarion, and ducked under the beast’s wide belly to hide amidst her hooves from the marching Guard. There the girl held, huddled and hushed as they passed. Then suddenly the cow sensed something below and let out a bellow low and long. But Jixy was already gone.

  John Cap stood ready to meet the dismounted. He was not long alone. Something grasped his wrist and he glanced down to find an almost ghostly gray hand and slender fingers wrapped around it. The tall young woman had joined him to stand at his side.

  “Let them come John,” she said calmly. “Do not resist.” The ever green of her beautiful eyes gazed deep into the handsome blue of his. His lips let slip the hint of a smile.

  It was strange about this tall damsel, this maiden, this youthful lady of the pale… how she somehow seemed to be untouched by the dark night’s teary fall. The few drops that caught her sun-dipped hair glistened like stars in a twilight all aglow with yesterday’s goodnight kiss.

  The peace of the storm’s eye passed. The vanguard of the footmen, the blue-clad coast keeper named Faal-syr, greeted John Cap with a short heavy harmlet to the throat and threw the tall traveler aside with surprising ease. Then he dropped the leaden club with a thud and strode ahead, for he sought not the man but the space he took. It was his in no time. “Child’s play,” he said to himself.

  Yet, despite the bright of a fresh torch following just behind, all the blue Guard found was the white weapon at his feet. He picked it up, heavy handed in his gutting glove, and studied it suspiciously. He turned it over and over again, seeking some sign of the hidden hand that made its fine wide blade and doubled edge, that fashioned the toothy sharp tip of it, or that cast it so strong down to a hilt the thick of an arm.

  The black Guard barked. “Faal-syr! Report!”

  “Sir!” answered Faal-syr smartly, crossing his arms in salute. “My sir!” The blue made a beeline for the black except for a stumble on a little something hard lurking in the grass. It was Jixy’s jagged pummel stone. He quickly collected the fist-shaped shard and delivered it double-time with his other find to the moody master Guard.

  “Our search did yield but these, sir my sir.”

  “A pale blade and a broken stone?”

  “Yes, sir my sir. But this sword… ‘tis a strange thing… unlike any I have known.”

  Syar-ull scoffed and took up the arm, weighing it in his hand. “Odd, the hold of it. And so light…” He waved the tusk-like weapon in air. “It seems to mind its motion…”

  A voice from afar caught their ears. “Yoo hoo! Will some friend kindly set me free from this mortal coil? It surely packs a pinch.”

  Faal-syr the Blue bowed his helmeted head. “The snared stranger, sir. Shall I send him hellbound?” He placed his free hand on the handle of the spikey halfpike hung at his side.

  Syar-ull answered in a mutter black and bitter, as if to no one but himself. “He has chosen the liar’s path. Let him suffer the liar’s fate.” Then he tore from the fingers of Faal-syr’s left fist the lost half pummeler of young Pyr Hurx and launched it into the sinister arms of the looming ironwood.

  As it flew he sang an old childling’s song:

  Come the fall

  When iron flies

  Quick Boy darts

  But Slow Boy dies

  The dark, deformed limbs of the great tree shook, unleashing a hail of ironfire upon the poor soul below. Morio struggled against hi
s bonds to duck and dodge the rain of terror as hell’s cruel elements fell all around with the ring and clang of a devil’s dance. A squall of razor leaves sliced the skin of his ragged ruckscoat, in places slashing his underclothes too — and nearly more. Indeed, where one sleeve was shredded and torn right to his snowy white folking-wear, a weak streak of red bled through but then blurred in the waterlogged fibers of limberwood.

  The doomed man’s mouth moved yet the din was too loud. It looked as though he said, “Oh my!”

  The vell Arrowborne tried to rise. The boys struggled but held him down.

  Then another fall began… one of fine needles… thousands of them… shed like a shower of silver tears… teardrops from the pining Liar’s Tree for the leaves it lost a season too soon…

  Lacking any shelter or shield, Morio bent as best he could to let his rucks’ padded back take the bulk. It worked… in a way… except that he now stood pinned and poked from shoulder to shoe in a topcoat of quills.

  “Looks like a prickupine,” someone smirked, “Plump and ripe for plucking.”

  “Or a porkling peppered with prickly cloves and skewered for the spit.”

  “But no. See how the needles crown him? He’s more Lord of the Lard than pig in a poke.”

  “Yes, swillbag,” hissed Finder Hamyx, suddenly sprung to life again and recovering from his long silence of shame. “All hail the Semperor of Swine!”

  “The Liar King!” roared elderwoman Pum, who too had awoken as if from a spell.

  Boxbo and Ixit joined in together with a girlish giggle:

  Truth lies in a royal pain

  So don’t mind if we pick your brain

  “That sounds offal, Boxbo.”

  “Exactly, Ixit.”

  At last Morio’s knee buckled under the heartless barrage and he seemed almost certain to succumb, bough-beaten and buried by the unforgiving fall. A moment more and it would all be over. The battle lost. The man gone.

  But just then the rains abruptly stopped and the winds turned a new direction, gusting strong and warm from the south. Morio filled his lungs with a new breath, a puff of life, and a wonder befell him — a small wonder well aimed, as if by an unseen hand. From high atop the Liar’s Tree a heavy seedcone tumbled down, down at a dead drop like a hard truth cast from heaven. The cone had the shape of a wildeboar’s heart, with four full pods and every edge tipped in an irony fang, so it met no match in the snaky vine that tethered him to his hell-bound berth. It cut the cord and the man ran for his life, given again.

  The folk were confounded.

  “He lives!”

  “Huh?!”

  “It can’t be. How?”

  “Who cares how? You owe me. Now — pay up, pay up, the lot of you!”

  “Not so fast, Lunxy. Look where he goes.”

  “Back to the Black and Blue?!”

  “No…”

  Out from under the ironwood’s reach, Morio stopped for a moment and shed his mortally wounded ruckskin. “Pity,” he blurted, out of breath. “You were a fine old friend.” He made to tuck his tattered shirt but suddenly stiffened, looking legward, with a boyish blush. “Whoopsie! There we go. Hooo…” After a solid minute or so, he shook one leg and then the other, his face flush but serene. “Some business just won’t wait!” he proclaimed, pouring forth with a frothy laugh.

  Three of the onfoot outer Guard moved in and quickly surrounded him. They pressed their pikes to his back and sides. “Go now!” ordered one.

  “I’d love to sir,” said Morio. “That’s oh so kind of you, but… ‘Mission accomplished’ and ‘Anchors aweigh’ already, I am relieved to say!”

  The Guard put a boot to Morio’s buttocks and kicked him into gear. That launched a long march toward the thicket of troops with a poke or prod for every step forward.

  “Who knew that a pant could be so absorbent?” marveled the prisoner as they went. “And then treat the nose to such a scent… of heaven-sent mersy petals to boot?!”

  The Guard, less enamored of Morio’s pants, gave him another whack in the back.

  A column of pikesmen, more armor than flesh, lined the last of their course. As Morio passed they thrust weapons aloft and chanted low the verses of a wordless dirge ominous and old. Ahead at the heart of the hold they marked, a glow of soft gold awaited… cast by a bale of light, sweet crude… spun oil just now laid down and lit.

  Here Morio’s keeper sent him sprawling, headlong into the haloed ground with one final blow from behind. “Down, clown prince.” The hammering nailed him — bound to be whiplashed and cross-eyed as well — while from his hair fell a pound and a peck of the ironwood’s precious nettles. Oddly, those had done no harm, for the deep heap of curls he wore atop had made a cushion to catch them in style and spare his skull a certain riddling. But he was on his knees now blinking back a haze… a man adaze and confused.

  In more or less the bat of a lash Syar-ull stood over his kneeling prey, this sack of skin awallow in the stinking mud and soiled black blades all once sweet and green. The master Guard looked to call for his mount but the bull chevox needed no command. Sovereign charged hard from the rear, eyes ablaze and snorting foul fire. With the right of his two great goring horns, he hooked the marked man by the brace of his britches to hang him high and helpless.

  “Well whoa is me,” noted Morio, fighting back a wince. He looked glassy-eyed and a little woozy. “Regards, everyone! Hello down there. Glad to see you and you again… albeit in duplicate and spinning… I didn’t know that you all had twins… Anyway, where were we my friends? Where did we leave off earlier?”

  The black Guard pressed the point of the strangers’ sword of pearly white to Morio’s throat. This time he spoke his sentence songless in words both clear and hoarse. “Now shall you die like dogswine to slaughter. Prepare your eyes for darkness and your pitiful soul for the fires below.”

  Arm and blade drew back to strike when a sound of horror stood all still. A poisonous noise. It was the vell.

  Arrowborne howled a baleful howl with a soul-filling cold to chill even the bloodless. As if his grave wound had been healed, he bounded from the bittersweet seedbed that the brothers made for him and at the death about to be. It mattered not that Syar-ull was the finest soldier of Syland. No man alive had the power to change a vell’s mind once in motion. Arrowborne met him high ahoof and kicked the broad boneblade from his grasp.

  The weapon went spinning skyward, high then higher than a bird, then floated to land in phantom flight right to the hand of the man of red, the brother Treasuror, Fyryx Hurx. In that same instant the vell fell hard, aslump on the ground in a motionless heap.

  Fyryx raised the sword for silence. Eerie quiet gripped the Keep.

  “This is the devil’s night… as if grim Prince Vysitor himself reaches from hell to play us for puppets. He offers us a devil’s deal, to let his demons win the light or lose ourselves to this dance in the dark. No good can come of either.”

  A weariness weighed on his voice.

  “Bring the taller two. Let me look on all three at once.”

  “Treasuror, sir!” answered Faal-syr eagerly.

  As he waited, Fyryx dropped the arm to his side without the slightest glance at the foreign hilt his fingers held. For a moment his eyes seemed absent, lost.

  The young woman was first to come, let to walk alone untouched. She strode in steady and sure. Behind her followed two pair of the pikesmen herding the larger John Cap like a bull. He seemed to like making them labor some, though that caper came at a heady cost — his hat was lost along the way.

  Syar-ull marshaled them all arow, aside the dangling Morio. He barked and growled and gnashed his teeth, both hungry and angry to bite.

  Carefully, John Cap cocked his head and whispered up to their high-borne friend. “Hanging in there, ‘O?”

  “In high spirits,” answered Morio.

  “Keep it up.”

  “Oh, yes I can, all for Miss Vaam’s plan!”

  “Shhh!”
>
  Fyryx paced the strangers’ row yet this time eyed them not. It was downcast that he kept.

  “Odd invaders are these three… but how did we go so weak?…

  “And why did a part of our heart turn their way as ally to turn on us? A vell of the ull, from the Semperor’s stable… Arrowborne, what have you done? Are you fevered from your wound? Is that the reason you protect them… at the price of your very life? Perhaps you’ll wake and shun their souls…

  “But the beast rules tonight. It cannot be denied. The die is cast till dawn.”

  Fyryx raised his gaze from the ground and found the black mask of the master Guard. “Syar-ull!” he ordered with speech again strong. “Take these to the Letting Pen. Hold them there alive for now but surely locked away, deep down, bound in devil’s moss if you must… feet to the flames as you see fit.”

  “With pleasure, sir my sir.”

  “Then pitch my battle tent, out beyond the wall by the wood and make camp.”

  “Sir. As Treasuror says, Guard does.”

  “Boys! Ayron, Ayr, Pyr! Go gather the Guard of the southern shores. Fetch pike poles and good, thick limberwood sheets from their packs and fashion a litter to bear poor Arrowborne away. When you reach camp, lay a bed of soft straw in the fore chamber of my tent, near the door. Then set him there to rest. He must not pass this night alone.”

  “Yes Uncle.” And off they ran.

  Fyryx suddenly noticed the folk.

  “Now what are you waiting for?! Someone, clear this forsaken field and shepherd what’s left of our herd back to town. It’s time to send the Treasured home.”

  Episode 3 ~ Fyryx

  Fyryx slowly shed his wet coat and hat then laid them carefully at the foot of the thick mat of bristlebush on the floor before him. Though soft sleep seemed to beckon, he showed no sign of napping abed this night. Instead the restless man straightened and turned about, brushing aside a flap stitched of old sector flags to emerge from the battle tent’s aft chamber and into its dim, high-domed meeting hall.