Mary and Lari immediately retreated. Without a word, acting only on instinct developed over the years of joint adventures, they stood next to Blackbeard. In an instant, they freed him of the snow.
“I’m getting tired of this,” he grumbled, cleaning his beard. “I always end up trapped whenever we fight...”
“Well... If... You moved... faster...” Lari said, breathlessly.
“Stop bickering,” Mary hissed.
The Giant, as to prove to the two that Mary was right, swung with its mighty arms. Razor-sharp nails flashed in the sun and came crashing down on their heads. Blackbeard’s shield flashed like a gray arrow, and ice met steel. The ringing made Lari’s vision double. A bowstring sang and an adamantium arrow pierced the titan’s left eye.
The monster screamed and tried to pull out what looked like a splinter in comparison with its big head. Alas, with its fingers the thickness of a log, it was difficult to get a grip of a seventeen-inch long projectile. The harder it tried to pull it out, the deeper it drove it into the eye socket, causing itself even more pain. Adamantium burned like hot coals, and the runes engraved on the arrow’s shaft, meant to restrain movement, only made it clumsier.
Holding its eye with its left hand, it swung randomly with its right, trying to hit the Stumps. But the stronger it swung, the more time the adventurers had to dodge the blows that turned the walls of the gorge into debris. The snow fell incessantly, turning into a wall of white rain.
“It’ll start an avalanche if it continues like this!” Blackbeard shouted, looking up at the dark clouds gathering at the very top of the mountain.
Tul, not distracted by the trio, continued to fire at the Giant, preventing it from moving its left hand away from its face. One after the other, the arrows kept finding their way to the Giant’s eyes. Seven of them pierced their target, blinding the monster. Enraged, it leaned on its good leg and roared, turning the air itself into ice.
A huge hand, decorated with icy claws, left long and deep grooves in the stone, and whizzed inches away from Blackbeard’s shield. The defender had no doubt that he would’ve buckled under the blow had it hit him with full force. But like this, he managed to repel the powerful wind that followed the blow, and raise his ax. All he needed now was an order.
When the discussion was over, Mary took a step back for the first time in her life. In this battle, her light, lightning-fast rapier wouldn’t be of much use. This time, she’d have to stick to the rear and allow her teammates to finish the fight without her. And this singular step gave her more problems than the bloodiest of battles she had fought, because, for some people, retreating in the face of mortal danger was even more terrifying than facing it.
“Ash, Alice...” Tul drew the bowstring. Shadows danced around the tip of the arrow. “I want you to do what you can with this arrow. Wait for my signal.”
The mages nodded and began to whisper spells.
“Lari, you know what to do.”
Returning the swords into the scabbards, Lari crossed his arms in front of him, placing his right hand on the left hilt and his left hand on the right hilt. A scarlet bud bloomed under his feet, making Ash wince in spite of himself. It wasn’t often that he encountered something that could kill him instantly. Over the past few months, such deadly encounters had become unpleasantly frequent. Shaking his head, he focused on his spells. As we know, those had never been his strong suit, so he needed to not be distracted.
“Now!” Tul shouted, letting go of the bowstring.
The arrow, spinning like a drill, flew straight at the Giant’s throat. Alice was the first to release a spell, making the black veil that enveloped the arrow glitter with golden sparks. Crimson soon joined the gold, and the flame roared fiercely, causing the Stumps to squint at the light.
The projectile pierced deep into the icy throat. Ash had no doubt that the arrow tip had come out the other side. The Giant wheezed and shook, clutching at the wound with both hands.
“Singing Blow!” Lari shouted.
His hands blurred and two scarlet crescents shot forth from the blades. A strange, enchanting melody filled the gorge for a moment, but was soon replaced by a crackling. It fell short of being an “earth-splitting attack” but it was still worthy of its rightful place in history.
Lari was breathing heavily and a trickle of blood ran down the corner of his mouth. However, this time, he got out without broken bones, torn ligaments, or cut skin. His training hadn’t been in vain.
“Raise your shoulder!” Blackbeard shouted, voice more high-pitched than normal.
Still shouting, Blackbeard charged. Dragon’s Wing turned into a transparent, shimmering face of a bear.
Running through the snow at a speed unusual for someone of his build and seemingly impossible to achieve in full armor, he leaped at his opponent. Ash had no doubt that the defender had used some sort of skill to boost his speed even though he had never heard of anyone doing something like this.
With a final battle cry, Blackbeard collided with the Giant, whose wounded leg had been cut off by Lari a moment ago. There was a dull, slurping sound, and then the Giant swayed and lost its balance. Showering them with snow, rocks, and ice it fell with a roar into the gorge. Its cry echoed through the air for a long time.
Ash stood with his mouth wide open.
The Stumps certainly deserved the reputation that they had been given and which was often used as an example of what real adventurers should be like. When Lari had ridden that arrow in the Forest, Ash thought that it was nothing more than a farce. But seeing Blackbeard defeat a Giant with nothing more than his shield... He was just glad that his companions were much stronger than he had thought.
“Now that’s what I’m talking about!” Blackbeard spat and grinned.
The Stumps smiled victoriously and congratulated each other. No one seemed to care that their victory was a Pyrrhic one. Sure, the Giant was dead, but with it were gone its icy tears that could be sold ten gold per ounce.
“Luck is on our side!” Tul slapped Lari on the back, and moved the quiver away from Mary so that she wouldn’t be able to count just how many expensive arrows had been lost in the fight against the Giant. In pursuit of profit, she’d go against the king himself and even demand that he paid her back with interest.
“A strange kind of luck,” Ash drawled, scratching his nonexistent beard.
“What do you mean?” Blackbeard poked him in the side and began to brush snow off the bags.
“I think that you’re wasting your time.”
“What?”
Before Ash could answer, another rumble reached their ears. This time, however, it wasn’t the Giant. An avalanche descended from the mountains, carrying with it not only ice and snow, but also rocks.
Mary shouted something, but it was drowned out by the growing roar, which was more terrible than thunder in the most turbulent storm. Blackbeard was the first to react. Grabbing his friends, he threw them into the snow, and raised the shield above his head. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to stop the avalanche, but the least he could do was cover the Stumps with a dome.
With their heads lowered and chins pressed tightly to their chests, they folded their arms to their sides, pulled their knees to their stomach, and braced themselves for the snow and cold. Time passed as if in slow-motion. Their hearts beat faster and faster, waiting for the terrible blow.
But it didn’t come.
Chapter 51
A lice was the first to raise her head, and what she saw would forever be etched in her memory. Ash stood in front of the flood of snow, his figure shimmering with either magic or the play of light and shadow. He thrust his staff forward and sent torrents of fire crashing down on the avalanche. Like breakwater, they cut through the white sea, preventing it from touching the travelers. Crimson collided with the blinding white, but the hiss of the flames wasn’t heard. Perhaps it was the pounding of blood in her temples and the grinding of both Ash and Blackbeard’s teeth that drowned them out.
“How...?” Mary whispered, perplexed, shaking the snow off herself and looking longingly at the buried path.
Ash, taught by bitter experience, had already prepared an excuse. With a feigned, but quite authentic sorrow, held out his hand, showing his companions a handful of ash.
“Another one, gone!” he sobbed, wiping his hand on his pant leg. “Flaming Rickets gave it to me himself! Don’t ask me why, I ain’t gonna tell you. I’m in a bad mood today.”
With that, he sniffled, blinked away an actor’s tear, and turned away, leaning on his staff.
“Actually, I was going to ask how you’re doing.” Mary sighed.
“No better than a corpse.”
There was silence.
“What?” Tul asked after a moment.
Ash shrugged.
“I don’t know. That’s what my friend says. She constantly compares how she feels to a corpse.”
“What’s her name?” Lari asked, but immediately faded under Alice’s displeased squint.
Ash turned and looked at the snowmen shaking themselves off, gradually turning into the people he knew. If he told them that the phrase belonged to Kessa the Unarmed, they’d either laugh or tell him that he’s a liar.
“That’s for me to know and for you to never find out!” he exclaimed proudly.
“Are you going to keep talking, or are we going to get back to business?” Mary asked, exasperated, making them all fall silent immediately. No one wanted to anger the already annoyed Mary, famous for her hot temper and quick hand. “Tul?”
Ash whistled, amazed by the hunter’s quick wits. While everyone was talking, driving away the tension, he managed to run through the snow around the turn and have a look around. On his way back, he had some news to share.
“How to say it politely...? It ain’t good, chief,” he grunted, having lost his breath on the seemingly impassable ledge. However, where a reasonable person wouldn’t dare to go, a hunter would explore it to their very last breath. “There’s no road, and I doubt there’ll be one until spring. It’d be nice if it were only snow, but I wager that there’s a lot of rocks there, too. The avalanche could’ve dragged some with it.”
“Could we dig through it?” Mary asked with hope in her voice.
Tul pondered for about a minute, which caused the rest of the group to crowd around him as if around a Christmas tree, waiting to be given their present. But instead of a shiny new toy, they were given coal.
“It’d take us about a week,” he said, but then added: “If not more.”
The Stumps sighed. Just yesterday, their mission seemed like a walk in the park, and now it turned into a test of strength and patience. A new race against time, in which the advantage clearly wasn’t on their side.
“So, that’s a no-go,” Alice said.
Not wishing to see his companions sad, Ash tried to cheer them up but was immediately shushed and dismissed like an annoying puppy. In response, he pouted and joined them in moping around. If it weren’t for the need to hide his true identity, for which someone would be given a nice sum of forty thousand gold, he would’ve made a passage in an instant. But in moments like these, he was always surprised by the selflessness and recklessness of some people. Lari, for example.
The swordsman moved away from them and took a rope and a kind of hammer with an elongated, pointed end out of his bag. After tying a tricky knot around the hilt, he tied the other end around his body, stuck some pieces of iron on his feet, and, without a word, went toward the mountain. Having estimated the distance that separated him from it, he plunged the odd hammer into the wall, fixed it there, pulled himself up, and began to crawl upward.
Ash nodded and tugged at the edge of Mary’s cloak.
“What do you want?” she barked but then noticed Lari climbing the wall like an insect.
One by one, the stumps fell silent and stared at their friend.
Soon, each of them armed themselves with the same equipment and began to climb.
A few hours later
“Finally!” With a sharp exhale, Blackbeard, Tul, and Lari yanked the rope back, pulling as onto the small platform.
“Thank you.” He smiled a little shyly but they still looked at him as if he had killed their cat or something.
The mage didn’t get a set of climbing equipment and had to be towed all the way up. This not only complicated and slowed down the ascent, but also exhausted both the strength and the nerves of everyone around. Especially those who had to pull him up.
Maybe, just maybe, the situation would’ve been different had Ash not been cheering his companions on the entire time. Most of his cheers were reduced to jokes on at expense of nobles and riders, as well as all sorts of barbs and witticisms. All in all, it wasn’t surprising that Ash was now forced to retreat from the Stumps who seemed to have every intention of teaching him a lesson on keeping his mouth shut.
“Wait, wait, we’re partners!” he exclaimed, but it didn’t do him much good. “Alice, tell him how good I am and how wrong they are!”
Unfortunately for him, even she swung her wand as if it were not a healer’s instrument but the mace of a soldier. Even the good-natured Blackbeard, who usually answered to profanity with even more profanity, had drawn his ax, adding to its steely gleam the shine of his porcelain-white teeth. No need to even mention Tul and Mary who hadn’t liked the mage to begin with. Even Tul, the voice of reason, seemed to be torn between which arrow to choose to shoot Ash with.
The mage, who was frantically looking around, froze for a moment and stared in disbelief behind the Stumps. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in legends — after all, it was hard to not believe in them when you were one yourself — but what he saw left even him speechless.
“Look!” he exclaimed, pointing in the opposite direction of the Stumps.
“You think we’re gonna fall for that trick?” Mary grinned, eyes and saber flashing with bloodthirst.
Chances were that Ash wouldn’t suffer anything more than a couple of snowballs shoved into his pants, but he would’ve preferred being sliced and diced over being cold. So, when Blackbeard moved to grab him, he magically appeared behind them all.
“Oh, you quick-witted bastard!” Tul shouted, sounding like an upset hunter whose prey had just escaped. “Catch him before he leaves!”
With each word that followed, the archer’s voice grew fainter and fainter, until the last syllable was almost as loud as a whisper shared between two secret lovers.
“By the demons and my beard!” Blackbeard whispered, grabbing the said beard.
On the mountainside, near the peak, bloomed a tree of unprecedented beauty. Too short to deserve to be really called a tree, but so beautiful that it took one’s breath away. It was chest-high, and miraculous in its appearance. How could something so lovely and lively be living in this icy wasteland?
Still, contrary to all the laws of the universe, a cherry tree had somehow managed to break through the ice and snow to bask in the light of Irmaril, whose rays penetrated the dense veil of clouds. Small, but strong and persistent, it had become a part of many legends and stories, and thousands of minstrels tirelessly sang about the beauty of this tree, left here to aid the travelers.
Its white buds might’ve been mistaken for snowballs if an adventurer wasn’t trusting of their own vision. The wind whipped the white petals, whirling them along with the sparkling snowflakes. Sometimes, with a strong gust, the branches creaked, shaking off icicles. The roots, thick as the branches of the Tree of Peace, hung over the chasm, breaking through the granite and defying the fury of the winter. Black as snakes, they wrapped themselves around the peak, clinging to it.
“I’ll be damned...” Lari gasped in a bewilderment. “It’s Ar’valon.”
Alice, coming closer, ran her fingers along the icy trunk. A
s if responding to her touch, the tree shivered. However, Ash seemed to be the only one to hear the soft whisper of the white petals.
The young girl closed her eyes and repeated the rhyme she had heard many times before.
On the slope of mountains steep
In the slumbering Graven’dor deep
In the dreams of Anna’Bre
Twice dead, she must be
Eternal Ar’Valon you shall see
Ash watched with a smile as the faces of his companions lit up with greed for treasure and glory. It was unlikely that among the adventurers born near the eastern border of the Thirteen Kingdoms, there was anyone who hadn’t heard about the ancient castle.
“A magic tree, yes...” Tul nodded, having come back to his senses. “But why are we staring at it?”
Surprised by the question, Ash remembered that Tul, being from the northern lands, had never heard about this.
“It’s Ar’Valon!” Mary exclaimed, her hands trembling with anticipation or because of her nerves.
“Ar... What?”
“Ar’Valon!” Blackbeard repeated, slowly recovering from the shock. “An ancient magic tree, left behind by the druids from the Age of the Dancing Dragons. According to legend, when Anna’Bre captured Graven’Dor and banished the Order of the Magi out of it, they left a clue for the future adventures on how to find her. A guiding star, if you will. In fact, in the old dialect, ‘ar’valon’ means ‘that which points the way.’ If I recall correctly, that is.”
“I didn’t know you liked old languages,” Ash said, surprised, for he could only speak Common, to say nothing of its many dialects.
Blackbeard just shrugged, as if to say: “I’m so mysterious and knowledgeable.”
“But if it points the way,” Lari said, coming up to the slope and raising his hand to his eyes so that he could peer out at the icy wasteland, “where the hell is it pointing? There’s nothing here but snow and rocks! It’s bullshit”
Ash. The Legends of the Nameless World. Progression Gamelit Story Page 33