by Eric Ugland
“Food—?” Arno began to ask.
Skeld moved to take up more of the front, while Ragnar dropped his shield and started pulling spears out of the bag.
I hauled off and threw the first spear hard enough to take the rider off its mount, tangling up the next few wolves for a moment.
The next spear impaled the oncoming wolf.
Spear after spear flew into the horde, dealing death. After what seemed like an eternity, the wolf-riders slowed and stopped, finally taking a minute to try something else, instead of just eat spears.
“I can keep this up all day!” I shouted.
“Actually,” Ragnar whispered, holding up an empty hand.
“Play along,” I hissed back.
“Plenty of spears here, your lordship,” Ragnar piped up.
“Oh, that was believable,” Skeld said.
“Sorry I haven’t had time to brush up on my play-acting,” Ragnar hissed back. “Maybe if I wasn’t picking up all your slack so you could moon over—”
“Not the time,” I snapped. “Weapon.”
Ragnar struggled to pull a very large axe out of the bag, hoisting it up to me with no small amount of strain.
Our lane between the two felled trees was only about fifteen feet wide. Not exactly a lot of room when you’ve got an eight-foot axe to swing around. I took a few big steps in front of Skeld and struck a menacing pose, hoping I could just scare the rest of the goblins into going away.
The wolf-riders eyed me warily, while the wolves eyed their fallen pack-mates. The wolves did not look particularly eager to continue.
“Any chance you’ve got a speak with animals spell?” I called over my shoulder.
“None,” Tarryn said.
“Sadly not in the Legion spell book,” Arno replied.
“Mind if I look at that spell book?” Tarryn asked quietly.
“Yes,” Arno replied in a perfect shut-down.
I stared at the wolf-riders, and then I sneered at them.
“You want to sit here all night or are you ready to dance?” I yelled, giving my axe a twirl.
They whispered amongst themselves.
I threw the axe.
They thought they were safely out of range.
They weren’t.
I loved seeing big weapons flying; it was so absurd. And effective.
The axe hit home, cutting a goblin right down the middle and deeply into his mount.
For a hot second, the goblins just stared at the fountain of blood where their commander had just been.
Then they ran.
I was unclear on whether it was the wolves or their riders who decided to flee. But the result was the same.
“Interesting tactics, your grace,” Arno said. “Do we have to pick up all your spears now?”
29
I had prinkies for that. Arno hadn’t seen my mass prinky summon before, and he was more than a little surprised when a hundred of the little furry guys popped into existence and began running around the forest, picking up anything and everything they found. They brought all the stuff back and dropped it in my waiting knapsack, even as we walked back to the holding.
“Fascinating bit of kit there,” Arno said, watching as another spear disappeared into the knapsack.
“He’d be useless without it,” Ragnar said.
“Useless?” I asked.
“Hard-pressed,” Skeld replied.
I rolled my eyes.
Ahead, Amber waved us down frantically.
“Now what?” I asked.
She shot me a dark look and had her finger up to her mouth.
When we all shut up and got down, she gestured for me to come forward.
I came at a crawl, trying my best to ignore all the teeth stuck inside my flesh, grinding against my insides as I moved my outsides. It was also odd to not be healing, and I had to wonder why my body wasn’t responding the way it should. Something to talk to—
You have been offered a quest:
Why Can’t I Heal
Discover what prevented your regenerative abilities from healing yourself
Reward for success: Knowledge
Penalty for failure (or refusal): Ignorance
Yes/No
Come on. Really?
Apparently yes.
I crawled up next to Amber.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“The clearing up ahead.”
Slowly, I got to my knees and peered around the trunk of the tree hiding us so I could look into the clearing.
It wasn’t a large clearing. It looked to be about as big as one of the tighter Trader Joe’s parking lots. And like those parking lots, it was full.
“Well, fuck,” I mumbled. “Don’t suppose you can guide us around this?”
“I can try,” Amber said. “But I think they’re waiting for us. If we go around, they’ll move to intercept.”
“You think?”
“I mean,” she said, “they watching us right now, so...”
“Fuck.”
30
My hatred for the night goblins had hit an all-time high.
The clearing was crawling with creatures that looked a lot like the florgs we’d already come up against. If, you know, those florgs had eaten a steady diet of steroids, growth hormone, and PCP.
Like their smaller cousins, they were round creatures with two stumpy legs and a tail. But these guys were much bigger, probably six feet tall with tails that went out three feet. Their mouths practically bisected their ball bodies. They were closed for the moment, but I could see tendrils of drool dangling down from more than one. Thick leathery skin replete with bumps and random tufts of thick fur covered their bodies. They had lots of wrinkles along the legs, as if they had extra skin down there. Each one had a distinct pattern of horns and spikes across their bodies, including some with full-on stegosaurus-like thagomizers at the end of their tails. Four small yellow eyes were in a line above their mouth. And they were looking directly at Amber and me.
A quick count, as long as they were mostly standing still, told me we were probably in no small amount of trouble.
“Ten,” I said.
“I count twelve,” Amber whispered back.
“This is going to be a nasty fight,” I said, running through any scenarios in my head that didn’t wind up with me charging in and being eaten. I didn’t see many. “I’m going to go in there, keep their attention. You go around with the rest, get to Coggeshall.”
“What are you—”
“This looks like one of those fights where it’s best if others aren’t around.”
“Frenzy?” she asked.
I nodded.
She nodded, then crawled back to the others.
I stood up. The florgs in the clearing shuffled around, one of them darting a thick black tongue out and licking the drool off its neighbor.
I frowned. That was disgusting.
Walking forward, I pulled my sword out of the sheath and held my blade out to the side. Ready, but not threatening. Something was holding the florgs back, if these were, in fact, florgs, and I wanted to buy more time for Amber and crew to get moving.
“Gentlemen,” I said, looking at the twelve beasts ambling to encircle me. “Any chance you’re here to chat? Maybe switch sides?”
No response from the creatures.
I reached for my bag, feeling like a shield was going to be clutch in this sort of situation.
But I felt nothing on my belt.
I glanced down.
No bag.
Ragnar had it.
I rolled my eyes at my stupid self.
“Don’t suppose you’d excuse me for a minute?” I asked.
The gathered florgs did not seem inclined to do so.
But they also hadn’t moved.
Why? What was their play here?
“Fuck it,” I said, not wanting to spend any more time thinking about goblin strategies.
I lunged forward, flicking my sword up and driving i
t right through the stupid yellow eyes of the über-florg. I got my foot up and shoved the dying beast off my blade, then spun around to see the next big fucker coming my way, its huge mouth agape.
Quickly, I sidestepped and contorted myself out of the way of the mouth. And what a mouth. It was huge, with teeth that were a foot long, with a very thin point and a thick root the size of Coke can.
My dodge put me in perfect chomping range of the next florg, but he wasn’t ready. He opened his mouth, and I tried to get my blade up to attack.
There was no room. The teeth were coming closer.
I grabbed the horn of the florg coming in behind and pulled myself up and out of the way of the oncoming teeth.
These guys were so big, and not at all used to working in teams, that they were all rushing together, trying to fight me at the same time.
I managed to walk across the tops of their bodies for a moment before a sudden florg-shift caused me to fall to the ground.
Where I dropped the sword.
I rolled out of the way of a florg stomp, then scrambled to my feet just in time to get squished between two florgs, both trying to turn to get their mouths around me. Their horns and spikes and other keratinous protrusions dug into my armor, hard enough that the metal screeched. Then one horn punched through the steel and I felt a horrific pain right through my lung. Breathing immediately got difficult.
But it also made me mad. I didn’t like these big fuckers in my forest. For one, they were ugly. For two, see one.
I punched the one in front of me.
Hard.
The florg made a noise, but otherwise, no effect.
I reached up and grabbed a horn on the one to my left, and the one to my right. Then I pulled.
And pulled.
One of the florgs started trying to get away. I gripped down harder, but the damn horn slipped out! I screamed in frustration and pain, as the departing florg tore his own horn from my lungs.
Dropping to my knees, I ripped my gauntlets off, and then rolled out of the way of another stomp. This time, when I got up and grabbed some horns, I got my grip on tight, my hands that joyful clammy-sticky mess from sweating inside gloves all day.
With a moment’s effort, and just as I felt teeth coming down on the back plate of my cuirass, there was a grand ripping noise as I opened up the side of a florg.
It was a mess of green flesh inside, with a dark, thick blood that poured out in great quantity, steaming in the cold, snowy air.
The florg behind me had his teeth firmly in the steel of my armor, and slightly in my back itself. He wrenched me to the left.
I held onto the horns in my hand. There was more tearing until I had a new set of weapons: Florg horns.
Hunter Florg Horns
Item Type: Improvised
Item Class: One-handed Melee, Two-handed Melee
Material: Florg Horn
Damage: 90-120 (Piercing)
Durability: 200/200
Weight: 4.8 lbs
Requirements: n/a
Description: The horns of a hunter florg removed and used for stabbing.
The torn hunter florg went into a rage, attacking anything it could, which, in this case, mostly meant its fellows.
I stabbed backward with the florg horns, feeling them punch through the heavy leather of the florg.
This did not make the florg happy.
He tried to get his teeth out of me.
But they weren’t going so easily.
So he shook me harder.
And I stabbed over and over again.
I could feel fresh blood pouring over my body, so I clamped my mouth shut and closed my eyes. I did not need a taste of florg to know it was going to be disgusting.
Stabbing and stabbing and stabbing, and soon I wasn’t even punching through the hide. I was just going into flesh. The flails of the dying florg sped up and then stopped suddenly, the florg becoming literal dead weight.
The rest of the florgs were devolving into their own fracas, fighting each other and ignoring me.
I took a few steps, feeling the pain in my legs, my lung, and dragging a whole fucking florg behind me.
I shook the blood off my face and my florg horns and sighed. I took a deep breath, bared down on my pain, and forced a maniacal smile on my face as I kicked in my least favorite ability - battle frenzy.
My health was dropping, and I needed to kill these fuckers just so I could get the one percent health bump with each death. Didn’t do me any good if they killed each other. My vision tinged toward red, and I could feel my heart hammering against my chest as adrenaline, and probably other things, powered through my system.
Unable to help myself, I leaned my head back and let loose a primal scream. Then I launched into the fracas, pulling the dead florg on my back, and caring little for my own ruined self.
It was slaughter time.
31
As always, the frenzy was a blur.
I returned to myself while I was standing — well, sort of standing, using the dead florg still attached to my armor for help. My armor had a few more holes in it, and several florg teeth were now part of me. Some went all the way through from front to back in my legs.
My health bar was prodigiously low, and looking at the various indicators, I was only going to continue to lose health until I got these damn teeth out of me. I finally had a chance to really look at the teeth. They were unbelievably smooth. Even with my gloves off, I couldn’t get a grip on them, certainly not enough to pull them free.
I sighed, sagging back against my florg-backpack. I summoned a horde of prinkies and had them carry all the florg corpses and all the rest of the spare gore from around me. I figured, once again, that this stuff would be useful to study.
Now I just needed to make it back in time. It was a race against my health bar.
I closed my eyes, gave myself a pep talk, and stood up and started walking. One foot in front of the other, really wishing I had a different backpack.
32
In my two lifetimes, I’ve done quite a bit of hiking. Of all the hikes in my lifetimes, I’d rank that particular hike, from the florg clearing to Coggeshall, in the bottom five.
The storm got worse, wind whipping the snow sideways through the trees. I had a host of prinkies that would get stuck or lost or start fighting amongst themselves. My boots had holes in them, and were full of blood, which was slowly freezing around my feet. It made me wonder how my body would deal with frostbite. Would my toes regrow after falling off or would they regrow while my black and dead appendages were still attached? That was one answer I didn’t want to know.
Thanks to scouting, I had a decent sense of direction in a forest, but even then, the sun had risen by the time I finally emerged from the tree line.
The gates opened up and soldiers charged out, seeing what must have looked like a monster approaching the walls. But the guard came to a stop when the prinkies surged out around me, rushing for Coggeshall as they all competed to be the first ones to complete their assigned jobs.
I kept putting one foot in front of the other, well aware that I had a precariously slim bit of health bar remaining.
The guards, perhaps confused, stood aside as I trudged through the last few yards of snow before walking under the gatehouse and into the village of Coggeshall. I didn’t stumble, didn’t drop to my knees, but I did take a minute to sigh and breathe with relief. Most likely, I’d be able to survive this nonsense. I moved enough along the road between our two gatehouses to make sure I wouldn’t get in the way of the wagons coming in from the Empire side.
Then, I pulled at my pauldron, realizing why knights in stories always had squires and pages to help them armor up. Getting armor on and off was a pain in the ass.
“I need a squire,” I breathed.
“I am sure there is a long list of potential candidates,” Nikolai said.
I looked up and saw my chancellor walking out of the gatehouse.
He looked me over and po
ked at the florg on my back with a walking stick.
“You have the most interesting taste in fashion,” he said.
“I think I’m pulling it off,” I replied, giving up on getting the pauldron off and leaning against the corpse. Which was no longer soft, having hardened between rigor mortis and freezing.
“I do wish you would pull it off.”
“It’s a bit stuck.”
“Oh?” he asked, walking around and peering at my armor and my florg. “Ah. I see.”
“You thought I was wearing it for fun?”
“It may have crossed my mind.”
“Really?”
“I have stopped trying to guess, your grace.”
“Can you get someone to help me?”
“Of course,” Nikolai said with a smile. Then his smiled vanished as he likely realized just how injured I was. “Healers!”
He was as close to running as I’d seen post-prison Nikolai, which was about as fast as I think he could go these days.
The prinkies were piling up their goods about ten feet from me, and I smiled a wan smile ,watching them struggle to get all the bits and bobs to stay together.
My breathing was getting ragged.
A woman raced toward me with a wooden box under one arm. She almost slipped trying to stop next to me, and my arm shot out on its own to keep her upright.
“Thank you, your grace,” she said, setting her box on the ground, “but I am supposed to be helping you.”
She flipped the lid of the box up, revealing two rows of glass bottles holding various potions in a rainbow of vivid colors. She peered over me, pulled on some of the teeth, gritted her own teeth, poked me a few times, and finally decided she’d seen enough. She picked out a yellow potion.
“Open,” she said.
I did, and she poured some potion into my mouth.
It burned, like really pure alcohol, but I started to heal. At least, my health bar was going up. But none of the holes in my body closed.
“You are quite injured, your grace,” the healer said.