Lorik The Protector (Lorik Trilogy)

by Toby Neighbors

  They had to wait a long time. The Norsik raiders had been spooked by the glowing mist and chanting voices near their camp the night before. They made their way slowly forward once the sun came up. An hour later, they neared the camp of their former captives, and the Drery Dru moved forward. They were still high up in the trees, but their keen eyesight allowed them to see the raiders moving forward around the roots of the massive trees. When the elves saw the Norsik warriors draw their short, curved swords and begin spreading out to attack, the Drery Dru let their javelins fly.

  The projectiles were small in size to a human, but for the small-statured forest elves, they were the perfect size. They held their atlatls over their shoulders and and flung them forward, flicking their wrists and sending the little javelins hurtling down with great force. Half of the raiders died of wounds from the javelins. Another quarter of their number were wounded and unable to fight. Most of the others fell back, but a few pressed on. Vera watched again as Elissia and some of the others used their atlatls to hurl their javelins. The Drery Dru were deadly accurate with their projectiles, and the attacking raiders were killed before they closed the distance to the camp.

  Lorik lounged in the warm morning sunlight. He heard the crowds on the ground below, and knew they would be coming for him soon. But they took their time, slowly exploring each of the five levels of the watch tower. Lorik then took down the heads that hung on the tower’s walls. The flesh on the faces was split from putrefaction and exposure. Birds had pecked at the flesh until the faces were almost unrecognizable, but Lorik laid them gently on the roof of the tower, away from the area he was choosing to fight in. He stood with his back to the sun, not too close to the edge of the tower and waited. Finally, an hour after sunrise and about the same time that the raiders were creeping near Stone and Vera’s camp, Lorik saw the trapdoor begin to shift.

  Lorik took another drink from the water skin and then tossed it aside. The weight of the bodies on the door made it impossible for one man to open it. In the end it took three, all pushing at the same time and heaving the door up high enough that the bodies of the slain guards slid down. The door fell back with a thud and a head appeared, looking around the rooftop until it finally saw Lorik.

  He smiled and waved the raider forward.

  “It’s about bloody time,” he said. “Let’s get started.”

  The raider didn’t understand what he was saying, but he stared, frozen in terror for a moment, before dropping back down. Lorik heard the raider jabbering, and then two more heads appeared, glared at him, then disappeared. Finally a raider came up the staircase, his back to Lorik. The man moved slowly, as if he wasn’t afraid of being attacked from behind as he came up the stairs and onto the roof. Lorik made no move to attack; he stood waiting, his swords hooked together and held across his thighs.

  The brave Norsik warrior stood by the door staring at Lorik but speaking to the other raiders on the staircase. Slowly they came up onto the roof until there were nearly a dozen of them. Their side of the rooftop was crowded and Lorik smiled. Then he raised his sword and twirled it over his head.

  “Come and get me,” he said, still grinning.

  The big Norsik who was first up the stairs was also the first to die. He rushed forward and Lorik thrust the end of his sword into the man’s throat. The raider’s momentum slammed him into the sword so hard his head was almost severed from his body; only the man’s backbone remained intact. Lorik jerked his sword so that the raider fell sideways and the other raiders would have to go over or around the body to get to Lorik.

  “Come on!” he shouted. “You’re a bunch of cowards!”

  The group on the rooftop flinched backward, then they found their courage and moved forward together. Lorik slashed at one man, who fell back into the raider behind him, getting a nasty cut in his back, near his spine, for his trouble. Another raider edged around the wall and Lorik swung his word in a horizontal strike that the raider easily caught on his own sword, but the powerful blow sent him reeling backwards, where he tripped on the wall’s crenellated edge and fell headfirst to the ground.

  There were shouts and cries for blood from below, but on the rooftop the raiders were slow to attack. Lorik gutted one man and stabbed another in the shoulder. One raider jumped forward with his sword in front of him. Lorik sidestepped the clumsy attack and severed the raider’s arm. The screams and cries for help whipped the crowd below into a frenzy. More and more raiders from the huge encampment were gathering around the tower and crowding their way in. Lorik moved forward and sent the next raider falling backwards, his chest sliced open from an overhead slash. The raider fell through the trapdoor and landed on the warriors below who were struggling to get up the stairs.

  Lorik looked like a warrior from another time, his giant form gilded by the sunlight behind him, his muscles rolling beneath his skin as he hacked and slashed his opponents. One by one they died on the rooftop until there was no place to climb up onto the roof without stepping on bodies. Lorik used every lull in the action to clear his side of the roof. He tossed bodies over the edge, whether the raider was alive or dead. The crowd below learned to stand back several feet from the edge of the tower wall, where bodies were starting to pile up.

  More raiders climbed up, but without a way to get their balance on top of the bodies of their fallen companions, they tripped and fell, often within striking distance of Lorik’s flashing swords. At one point he unhooked his swords and sheathed the long-handled sword. He chopped and slashed with his sword, filling the rooftop with blood until the flagstones were slippery and wet. Still he fought. Sweat poured from his brow, even in the cold autumn wind. An hour passed with a hundred men dead on the rooftop. Then another hour, and the raiders were having trouble getting on the roof at all. The trapdoor was surrounded by bodies and there were more bodies piling up on the stairwell.

  Finally, someone found ropes and tried climbing up the wall, but Lorik cut the ropes and tossed bodies on top of the climbers. The flow of raiders coming up to face him slowed, and then it stopped altogether. Lorik had lost count of the death toll. There were bodies everywhere and he was covered in blood.

  He took another long drink from the water skin and waited to see what would happen next. To his surprise there was a crash that shook the tower. Lorik hurried to the side and looked down to find that the Norsik raiders had recovered one of the long logs that had been part of the fort’s palisade and were using it like a battering ram. Lorik realized he hadn’t thought about what he would do if they knocked the tower down. It seemed like an unassailable spot from which he could fight the Norsik raiders all day, but it wasn’t quiet noon and they were already trying to knock the tower down.

  Lorik picked up a body and hurled it down on top of the men trying to ram the tower. The ploy worked: the body hit two of the foremost raiders and knocked them down. The log slammed into the ground and the raiders were forced to back up and try again. But there were plenty of men to carry the log ram and Lorik had to time his throws carefully to stop the rammers. The other Norsik raiders were clearing the bodies from the base of the tower and Lorik took a moment to close the trapdoor and pile three bodies on top of it. After an hour of throwing bodies, even Lorik’s arms were aching with the exertion, and he was almost out of bodies to drop on the raiders below.

  The sun was high overhead and birds were beginning to circle in the sky. Lorik saw the shadow of a great flock of carrion birds every once in a while, but the Norsik, with hundreds of men waiting to take their turn on the battering ram, were relentless in their attack.

  When Lorik tossed the last of the bodies, except for the three on the trap door, he knew he had to make a decision. The next blow from the ram shook the building and Lorik saw dust from between the massive stone blocks waft up in front of him. Only one option remained: he had to go down and fight the raiders on the ground before they knocked the tower down around him.

  He slid the bodies off the trapdoor and flung it open, only to find more
bodies stacked from the stairs to the ceiling blocking his path. He grabbed one and pulled it up, then another. He was determined to break through the barrier of the Norsik fallen warriors when another blow from the battering ram shook the tower. This time a hole appeared in the wall where the ram had broken through.

  Lorik kept pulling bodies out of his way and found another layer of bodies beyond the first. His mind raced as another blow rocked the tower. He wasn’t going to get out this way. He grabbed one of the bodies and tossed it down onto the battering ram. That bought him about a minute. He checked the ropes that were still attached to the crenellations, but they were all severed or broken. He could try climbing down to one of the windows, he thought, but he didn’t think he could hold on well enough the way the tower was shaking from the battering ram. And there might be warriors just inside those windows waiting to hack him to pieces. He had been transformed by the magic of Drery Dru, but he wasn’t invincible. He tried desperately to think of a way out of the situation he was in, but there was no escape. Perhaps once the building fell, he could leap free and clear of the rubble. He wasn’t sure if his body could withstand a fall that far, but he would have to try, and he would have to time his jump perfectly to land clear of the rubble.

  Another blow from the battering ram caved in a whole section of the tower, and the structure began to lean. Lorik thought about what Hennick had told him. His decision to fight from the top of the watchtower had effectively sealed his fate. He knew he wouldn’t live, but what bothered him was that he wasn’t sacrificing himself to save anyone. There were still hundreds, perhaps thousands of raiders who would eagerly attack the settlements of Lorik’s countrymen again and again. And now Lorik wouldn’t be there to stop them.

  Another blow from the ram rocked the tower and it swayed a little more, the slippery, bloody rooftop tilting toward the harbor. Lorik sheathed his swords and ran to the lowest edge of the roof, climbing out onto the crenellation and trying to brace himself the best he could.

  Another blow did the deed. The tower rocked, then it creaked and groaned. The stones that were held in place by the thick timber beams began to grate on one another. The raiders were cheering and Lorik was glad to see they were moving back from the tower. If he survived the fall, he might have just enough time to get on his feet and draw his weapons before the raiders fell on him.

  The timbers cracked and the stones inside the tower shattered. The sound was like lighting strikes. Then the tower shifted again. Lorik readjusted his feet on the wall, and then the tower toppled. It seemed to happen in slow motion. The tower teetered, then fell. Lorik’s plan might have worked if the tower had fallen like a tree in one long swoop, but instead the tower cracked in half and the top portion flipped so that Lorik was falling down and the tower was falling toward him. He jumped anyway, more out of instinct than hope. He knew, even as he jumped, that the rubble would crush him. The last thought that slipped through his mind was of Vera and Stone, lying together, arms around each other. He was happy they had each other.

  Then something hit Lorik’s shoulders. His head snapped back and he saw a flash of green before everything went black.

  Chapter 41

  Lorik was only unconscious for a minute. When he came to he was flying over the Norsik camp toward the massive redwood trees of the Wilderlands. He thought for a moment that he was dead, and then he saw the huge, green talons gripping his shoulders, and fear made him go stiff as he looked up. All he could see were huge legs covered in green scales. There was a whoosh whoosh whoosh, and then they were slowly descending.

  The talons released Lorik when he was only a few feet from the ground. He dropped and rolled, coming up on his feet and drawing his sword, which he nearly dropped when he saw the great green dragon up close for the first time. The beast was huge, with wicked-looking horns on its head and a long, spiked tail. Then the great leathery wings folded back, and to Lorik’s surprise he saw a man on the dragon’s back.

  The rider was barely more than a boy, and he reminded Lorik of the volunteers who had ridden with him and died under his command. The young man slid off the dragon’s back and limped toward Lorik.

  “Hell of a fight,” the man said. “I hope we saved the right person.”

  “Who are you?” Lorik asked.

  “I’m Zollin, Wizard of Yelsia. And this is Ferno,” he said, waving to the dragon, who roared so loudly that Lorik instinctively covered his ears.

  “And you are?” Zollin asked.

  “I’m Lorik.”

  “You from Ortis, Lorik?”

  “I’m from Hassell Point in the south. On the coast, past the Marshlands. I just volunteered to help guard the border when the king’s troops went south.”

  “So those are Norsik you were fighting?” Zollin asked.

  The raiders were staring at the dragon in awe, to afraid too continue the attack and too mesmerized to flee.

  “Yes, they’ve invaded and taken a lot of captives. My friends and I rescued a group of nearly a hundred women and children.”

  “They’ve got five times that many in chains on the far side of their camp,” Zollin said.

  “I’ve got to save them,” Lorik said.

  “By yourself?”

  “If I have to.”

  “Well...” Zollin said, smiling, “don’t make me ask twice.”

  “Would you help us?” Lorik said, still not quite believing what he was seeing.

  “I think we could,” Zollin said. “Go ahead, show ’em what you’re made of, Ferno.”

  The dragon roared again and jumped high in the air. Then the great green beast’s mighty wings flapped hard and propelled the dragon into the air. Lorik watched in awe as the dragon dove and bellowed flame. It took only one pass to scatter the Norsik. Most fled toward the Wilderlands and those that came too close to Zollin and Lorik were batted aside by invisible waves of magic.

  “Are you doing that?” Lorik asked.

  “Yes,” Zollin said, focusing on the fleeing raiders.

  It took less than five minutes to clear the plain of raiders. They abandoned everything, all they had pillaged and all the slaves they had captured. Lorik looked at Zollin.

  “I can’t thank you enough,” he said.

  “I have news, and most of it isn’t good,” Zollin said. “Why don’t you rest here while I go see about freeing those captives.”

  “All right,” Lorik said.

  He had tears in his eyes as he watched Zollin rise suddenly up into the air and fly across the field toward the captives, whom Lorik could barely make out in the distance. He fell to his knees watching the green dragon follow the wizard. He didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. And then he heard Stone behind him.

  “What the hell happened?” Stone said.

  “You won’t believe me,” Lorik said.

  “You did it,” Vera said in shocked disbelief. “You defeated a whole army by yourself.”

  “No,” Lorik said. “Not by myself. You see that blob in the distance?”

  “Not really,” Stone said.

  “Well, you’re going to see it real soon. And when you do, just try and stay calm. It’s on our side.”

  “Lorik, what are you talking about?” Vera asked.

  “I don’t think I can explain it,” Lorik said. “You’ll just have to wait and see.”

  They didn’t have to wait long. Less than five minutes later Zollin and Ferno returned. As the dragon approached Stone grabbed Lorik’s arm.

  “Is that... is that a—”

  “A dragon, yes,” Lorik said.

  “I can’ believe it,” Vera said in awe. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Is that what we heard roaring?” Stone asked.

  “Probably,” Lorik said. “It was so loud it shook the ground.”

  “Did it knock down the watchtower, too?” Stone asked.

  “No, the Norsik did that. I was on top of it, and they would have killed me if the wizard and the dragon hadn’t saved me.”

  �
�Did you say ‘wizard’?” Vera asked.

  “Yes, here he comes.”

  They watched as Ferno landed. He growled and then curled himself up. The women and children behind Lorik were fearful at first, but slowly they came out of the trees to get a better look.

  Zollin walked slowly, favoring one leg as he moved over to where Lorik waited with Vera and Stone.

  “Zollin, meet Vera and Stone, my very best friends,” Lorik said.

  “It’s nice to meet you both. I wish I were here under more pleasant circumstances.”

  “You’re a wizard, huh?” Stone said, his voice cynical.

  “Liam!” Vera said.

  Zollin just smiled and raised his hand. Stone rose slowly into the air and began thrashing and shouting.

  “Hey!” he roared. “Let me down! Put me down!”

  The children watching from the trees laughed as Zollin lowered Stone gently to the ground. Stone hobbled to keep his balance on his injured leg. Then Zollin’s face grimaced and he stared at Stone’s leg. Stone felt a warm feeling in his leg, as if someone were pouring hot water over his knee. He grabbed onto Lorik’s shoulder, expecting the pain to intensify, but instead it dulled and after a moment it disappeared all together. After another moment, Zollin took a deep breath, as if he were coming up out the water.

  “Believe me now?” Zollin said with a smile.

  “I never doubted you,” Stone said, trying to smooth his clothes, but his heart was racing. “What did you do to my knee?”

  “Try it out?” Zollin said.

  Stone put his weight on the leg, but instead of pain it felt strong. He bent the knee, then lowered his body down into a squat and straightened back up.

  “It’s fine,” he said. “I can’t believe it. You did something to my knee.”

  Zollin just smiled.

  “We are very pleased to meet you,” Vera said. “And it is a great honor to see your dragon, no matter what the circumstances.”

  “Oh, that’s Ferno, but he isn’t mine. I’m more of his pet project. It’s a long story, but one for another time. Right now, I need to tell you what has happened in Osla.”