by J Battle
After a moment, he called out for Lasting.
A figure emerged from the small group behind him; a man so thin you would wonder if he had the room within his sparse body for all of the necessary organs.
‘Yes, my Lord Ashlorn?’ He bowed low as he spoke.
‘Go with Tarrd. See that he doesn’t get all tongue-twisted and forget what he is supposed to be doing.’
‘Yes, my Lord.’ With another quick bow, and a gesture that could have been first cousin to a salute, he was off.
‘What you want?’ gasped Tarrd, as he caught up with him.
‘I’m here to stop you being stupid, but I reckon that’s beyond anyone.’
‘Did he say I’d do something stupid?’
‘The Trytor? Near enough as would make no difference if you were counting eggs.’
‘He thinks I’m stupid, that’s why he sent you.’
‘Don’t you worry about that. He thinks everyone is stupid, even his own brothers. Here now, look at the size of him!’
They came to a halt just a few feet from the Giant.
‘Ho there, Mr Giant,’ said Tarrd, with as much jollity as he could manage.
‘Good day to you, little man,’ said Belloom. ‘You got any food with you? Or ale? Ale would do just as well.’
‘Sorry, Mr Giant, we ain’t got nothing, have we Lasting?’
‘No, sir, but, if you went along this road to the east a little,‘ said Lasting, pointing away from the direction his master would come, ‘then I’m sure there’s a little village that has a reputation for fine cheeses.’
‘Fine cheese? I likes a fine cheese, I do. And a big chunk of bread to go with it. Will they have bread there?’
‘Oh ay, I reckon, for what good is cheese if you ain’t got something to put it on?’ He glanced over his shoulder to see if the Trytor was near.
‘What’s the weather like, up there, like?’ asked Tarrd, feeling that he should be more involved in the distraction.
‘What do you mean?’ asked a puzzled Giant. ‘I’m sitting down here on the road next to you, so I reckon there ain’t much difference in my weather and yours.’
‘Ah…but if you stood up, it would be.’
‘I ain’t stood up, and I ain’t standing up, until that there Trytor comes along.’
‘Then it is time that you got to your feet, you fat fool, for I am here, and I am not in the best of moods.’
Belloom turned and looked up into the glaring red eyes of the Trytor.
With a grunt, he began the awkward process of getting to his feet with only one hand to aid him.
‘There you are. I reckon I was getting fed up of wait…you’re not the same one. You look different. You look bigger. How are you taller than a Giant?’
‘I am different. It was my brother you insulted and I have come to teach you the meaning of respect.’
Belloom scratched his great shaggy head. ‘I know the meaning of respect. It means…well, when you…oh, I had it then, but it’s slipped away like a fishy fish.’
‘Enough of this, you fool Giant. Prepare to defend yourself.’
The Trytor took a couple of steps backwards to give himself some room.
Belloom raised one massive fist.
With a laugh, Ashlorn withdrew his foil and, flexing his wrist, flicked its sharp point here and there before the Giant.
Belloom looked puzzled. ’You going to scratch me with that? At least your brother had a proper sword.’
Ashlorn smiled at his words, and then he lunged forward, driving the point of his foil into Belloom’s left eye. With a twist, he withdrew, leaving half of an eyeball resting on Belloom’s cheek.
‘Argh!’ roared the Giant, and then he charged.
Ashlorn easily avoided him, stepping to his own right and landing a heavy blow on the temple above the ruined eye.
Ignoring the blow, Belloom swung to his left, missing the Trytor by a country mile.
As he turned to get his good eye on his evasive adversary, Ashlorn lunged with the foil again. He was within an inch of destroying the Giant’s remaining eye, but his weapon struck his heavy brow instead and snapped like a brittle twig.
Off balance from his lunge, he was unable to avoid the massive fist that was coming his way, but he let himself fall and only the edge of the fist caught him across the shoulder as he fell.
He hit the ground and rolled to his feet, dancing away from his dangerous foe.
He took a moment to gather himself, and he swung his left arm to see what damage had been done. He was relieved to find that it wasn’t broken, although it would surely be bruised in the morning.
He laughed when he looked back up at the Giant. Blood was pouring into his good eye from the cut his foil had made and he was effectively blind.
When the Giant heard his laugh, he swung towards him with his enormous fist. The miss had him stumbling to his left.
Ashlorn stepped forward and struck him twice on the throat before leaping backwards.
The blows seemed to have no effect on Belloom, who continued to move forwards, throwing blind punches as he walked.
Ashlorn gave him a wide berth and watched him swing away.
When the time was right, he unslung his axe from his back.
With his legs braced, he waited for the Giant to get close enough, and then he swung, using the whole of his powerful body and struck the Giant across the neck.
The force of the blow stopped him in his tracks, snorting and turning his head this way and that, seeking out his enemy.
There was blood but Ashlorn could see that it was little more than a scratch.
‘Come on here and fight me proper like. Not like a shadow of something scared.’ As he spoke, Belloom clawed at his bloodied eye with his hand.
Ashlorn watched him for a moment, and then he lowered his axe. He took a deep breath and took two steps forward, and he grabbed the Giant’s thick arm with both hands.
Belloom roared his pleasure that it was turning into proper fight, and he pushed at the Trytor’s grip.
For a second, Ashlorn held him, his feet braced against the hard surface of the road, and he smiled. He’d taken a blow from a Giant, and now he was holding a Giant; he was surely the first to do either and survive.
But the Giant’s strength was unrelenting, and Ashlorn’s grip began to weaken.
With a satisfied laugh, he threw himself back, out of reach of the grasping giant.
With a smooth movement, he picked up the axe and set himself once more.
When Belloom was close, he swung again. This time his target wasn’t the neck of the almost indestructible beast before him. This time it was the stump of his half-chewed arm, and his aim was true.
The sharp cutting edge sank three inches into the Giant’s barely healed flesh, and it came away with red chunks and gushing blood.
‘Argh!’ roared Belloom, staggering backwards.
Ashlorn grunted and leapt forward and struck the arm again and again. Each blow was as accurate as the first, and the stump was soon no more than a bloody mass of lacerated flesh.
Belloom tried to move away from the attack and the terrible pain, but the pain was with him, and his attacker was remorseless.
With the axe imbedded deep into his arm, Ashlorn paused for a moment, because even his strength was beginning to wane.
Belloom, for a second able to think clearly through the pain, grabbed Ashlorn’s arm in a grip that could crush rock and threw him across the road, tumbling across the rock-strewn ground beside the road.
With even his good eye useless, and working on nothing but instinct, Belloom roared a challenge and charged. At the last minute, he threw himself, with both feet off the ground, hoping to land on top of his enemy and crush him to pulp beneath his great weight.
His aim was good, but he couldn’t have hoped to see the great axe, wedged between the Trytor’s legs and braced against the ground.
His attack drove the weapon deep into his guts, and he screamed as his weight
continued to press the axe deeper and deeper into his body.
Ashlorn twisted out from under him, just as the handle of the axe snapped and he fell face down to the ground.
With his enemy bleeding and groaning in agony Ashlorn took a moment to look around.
In a second he found what he was looking for.
Humming happily to himself, and hardly feeling the pain in his shoulder, he strolled over and picked up the rock he’d selected.
He whistled as he returned and straddled the Giant’s back. When he was set, he brought the rock down as hard as he could on Belloom’s great skull.
The rock seemed to bounce off with little effect. But he wasn’t dismayed by that, not at all. He had all the time in the world, and sooner rather than later, the Giant’s head would break open like an egg.
He lifted the rock and struck again.
‘That’s two,‘ he gasped. ‘I don’t believe it will take ten.’
He was right. The ninth blow did the trick, and he found himself sitting astride a dead Giant.
Book II
Who will pay the cost of Magic?
Chapter 15 Alice
The ship was broad and squat and ugly. It sat heavily in the water, and every wave worth the name tossed spray over its sides. Only a true sailor would feel at all comfortable on the craft as it wallowed along, pulled through the heavy sea by its ragged pair of sails.
Neither Lord Richard nor Alice would call themselves such, so they remained down below in their somewhat less than luxurious cabin, each with a bucket close by.
‘What will happen now, Father?’ asked Alice, nursing her sore arm.
Richard looked down at his daughter, and he found a smile for her. It was a weak effort, and wouldn’t last long, but it was returned, with a little bit extra.
‘Ah now, my dear. Let’s just concentrate on getting you home, to safety. I wish we’d all stayed at home, I do. If not for this foolish celebration of the King’s, they’d still…’
He stopped talking then, for what use were these words?
‘We weren’t to know, Father. We weren’t to know what would happen.’ She placed a hand on his arm.
He patted her hand, and he looked away.
‘We’ll get you home, and then…well, when the king sends along his soldiers, I’ll have to leave you for a while.’
‘But, Father, you are not a soldier. You should let them take on this task.’
‘Ah now, my dear. You are right enough, that I’m not a soldier. Not now, but I will learn to be. For this is not something I can leave to others.’
‘Father,‘ she turned to him, and straightened her back. ’I would not have you do this and risk losing you as well. This is folly.’
He turned away from the sudden fierceness in her eyes.
‘I understand my dear, I do. But the land must be rid of these creatures, and I will not rest until it is done.’
‘So, you will leave me all alone in the world? Is that what you plan, Father? To cast yourself on the funeral pyre with Mother and Clara, and leave me behind?’
‘That is not what I’m doing, child. You don’t…’
‘Don’t say I don’t understand, for I would take up a sword myself, if there was any good to be got from it. But, can’t you see? Didn’t you see that creature? You can’t stand against it, not even with 20 soldiers behind you.’
‘What would you have me do, child? Hide away in Misthaven and pick daisies? Pretend that this terrible deed was not done? Do you think so little of your father that you think he might do so little?’
‘Father, I don’t mean to insult you; not at all. But I would not want to lose you as well. And, if there is a cost to your pride, then it would be worth it to save you.’
‘Pride? Do you really think this is about pride?’
He stood up and bent towards the tiny window that showed little enough of the outside world.
‘I’m…sorry, Father. I did not mean to say that. It’s just…I can’t lose you as well.’ The strength seemed to go from her voice as she said the last few words.
Richard would have said something to comfort her then, if there had been any words he could find that were up to the task.
Instead, he remained silent, lost in the torment that threatened his very mind.
**********
‘So, good man, you serve another.’
Jumba glanced over, trying to work out if it was a statement or a question.
‘I do, and there ain’t nothing wrong with that.’
‘Did I suggest that there was?’
‘He’s a good man, and a fellow, he’s got to earn a living, he has.’
Lancer smiled, and took his arm as they walked.
‘So, serving a good man, does that mean you yourself do not need to be good?’
‘I don’t know what you’re getting at, with your slippery words, but I reckon I’m as good as I can be, when the situation allows.’
Lancer laughed, and Jumba found it a satisfying thing to hear.
‘That leaves a lot of room to manoeuvre, does it not? You can blame the situation and your nature for all the wrong you do, and claim back some credit for the good your master does. I bow to you wisdom, Jumba, for you seem capable of any number of dark deeds before you accept culpability.’
Jumba snorted and pulled his hand away. ‘Your meaning is as hard to get hold of as an oiled fish, it is, and I don’t reckon it will do me any good to keep on listening.’
‘Ah now, I’ve offended you with too much truth. It has always been my way. Let us talk of other things; things with a handle for you to grasp, if you like.’
‘Hmf.’
‘So, good Jumba, are you expecting a welcome from the king and his court?’
‘Don’t rightly know what I’m expecting. Don’t see the point of… expectating. You can’t see the future, so how can you know what’s coming along?’
‘The future is not so hard to see, not when you can see the past.’
‘Now you’re about your oily words again. What does knowing the past tell you about the future? Nothing, that’s what it tells you.’
‘Forgive me, Jumba, if I disagree. Look back down the road we have just walked along. That is our past, is it not?’
‘Ay, I can get that.’
‘And what does it tell us about our future?’
Jumba pursed his lips, and fought the temptation to turn back and look the way they were going. ‘Well… I reckon it tells us that…there’ll be more road ahead.’
‘And?’
‘Er… there’ll be bushes and grass and such by the side of the road?’
‘See, it’s easy. Now, it could be that there is a cliff three steps ahead of us, or a waterfall, but both of those are unlikely, based on the empirical knowledge we have of the road we’ve already walked.’
‘But…It kind of sounds right, what you’re saying, and yet, it ain’t right, is it? Anything could be around the next bend; something we haven’t seen yet.’
‘Of course, you are right. The past is a guide to the future only, and if you rely on it enough, you will eventually be wrong.’
‘So…why we are we talking about all this nonsense?’
Lancer laughed, and he tapped him lightly on the shoulder.
‘Oh, we’re just chatting away here, Jumba. Talking nonsense as travellers do, to pass the time.’
Jumba glowered at him for a moment.
‘Talking to you gives a man a headache.’
‘You’re not the first to say that, and you won’t be the last. Now, as the juices are flowing, so to speak, what do you say to a wager?’
‘A wager?’
‘Yes, just to pass the time.’
‘I don’t know. I ain’t got much money.’
‘Not for money. Let’s make it for a forfeit. Whoever loses has to answer a question. How about that?’
‘I think you’re about to make a fool out of me, but, alright, I‘ll go along with it, for now.’
‘Good man, Jumba. Now, let me see. I know, that bend yonder, when we walk past it we’ll find a tree with no leaves. There, that’ll be fine. What do you say?’
‘Alright, I say no, we won’t see that tree.’
‘Should we shake on it, do you think?’
‘No, I’ll trust you.’
They walked on and around the bend, and sure enough, there was a broken, dead old tree without a single leaf.
Jumba stopped and shook his head.
‘You’ve been this way before, haven’t you?’
‘Ah now, you are right enough there, and that’s another way to know the future, when you’ve already been there.’
Jumba groaned. ‘Them slippery words again.’
Chapter 16 Jimmywood
He was sitting on a rock just beside the yellow field of harroweed, and he was smoking his pipe. He tried to enjoy it as best he could, though it was only pipeweed he smoked and not the pungent, powerful weed growing before him.
He was dressed all in brown, with his long grey hair in a horse’s tail and his beard plaited and greased. Jimmywood was his name, and he was of an age where birth seemed a distant miracle and death an approaching shadow.
He drew on his pipe and he stretched his back a little. They’d come today, he was sure, for it had been a full moon last night and they would have made good use of the light.
Of course, they could travel in the full light of day, for the sun would not harm them, but they chose the dark before the light, as if that would hide the signs of their diminishment.
He felt a twisting in his stomach at the thought of their imminent arrival. There was fear, of course there was fear, for the Elvenfolk could be wild and vicious, and inconsiderate of mortal man’s weakness. But, there was also excitement, for his lord, Crawlord Elstar of Sun and Moon, he’d surely have harroweed about his person, and he might be inclined to share with his most loyal servant.
It had been near a full year since he’d been sent on to this valley, along with a band of others, to clear the ground, plant the seed and build a Fellhall for their masters. He’d brought a supply of harroweed with him, and he’d measured it out, pinch by pinch, until he’d smoked the very last a few weeks past.
