by Kevin Hearne
Båggi stowed his own gear inside one of the benches, then helped to clean and lubricate the joints of the legs. Agape ignored the transport at first and tested some of the cleaning solution and lubricant on Piini Automaatti, who agreed that both substances were salubrious for his mechanical well-being. Gerd found a corner in which to sit and groom her wings, softly trilling as she did so.
As they were finishing up, a crane whirred into action above them and a hook laden with several packs traveled in their direction. It purred to a stop above the half centipod, and three automatons with long arms clomped over and unhooked the packs.
“Right, ready to go, then?” Eino’s voice called. He was burdened with two red glowing bulbs the size of grapefruits, which he held clutched against his chest. “Hop in. There should be room for everybody but the gryphon.”
There certainly was. Båggi chose a bench opposite Agape and Piini Automaatti as Eino performed his gnomeric magic and brought the machine to life. A loud thrumming noise purred underneath the vehicle, and the legs lifted in clacking sequence and came down again, confirming that they were functional.
“Excellent,” Eino declared, his eyes alight with excitement, and it seemed to Båggi that years had dropped away from his face with the prospect of the journey ahead. “I don’t have enough fuel to get us all the way to Okesvaa, unless anyone is into either screaming or torturing anyone else into screaming. No? Fair enough, but this should shave a day or two off the journey and save our legs.” With a loud clunk and a lurch, the half centipod moved forward as Eino settled into the captain’s chair and steered the vehicle up the ramp.
Once outside, they headed north across farmland. The ride wasn’t terribly smooth, but it wasn’t jarring either: Båggi enjoyed it tremendously, although the bones of his spine seemed looser than usual, and smiles were easy to find.
Unfortunately, their transport was also easy to hear and spot from some distance. They were pursued on two occasions by pairs of patrolling halflings mounted on alpacas—albeit the sort wearing armor instead of cozy sweaters—but Gerd swooped at them in both cases and the pursuers abruptly lost interest.
The speed wasn’t miraculous—more like a brisk jog than anything else—but they could take their ease and didn’t have to carry their burdens or suffer their blisters in the meantime. It was quite restful, Båggi thought, and he privately told Onni that going to see Eino had been a smashing good idea.
They crossed the river that eventually emptied into the Dämköld Sea at Soperki and made camp on the eastern bank. Their fire was hailed shortly after dark, and it turned out to be a family of gnomes who’d been hiding only a short distance away. A frazzled matriarch approached, and once she determined they were safe, she called her husband and little boy to join them. They looked tired and their cardigans were torn and frayed. They had very little food with them and almost nothing in terms of belongings. They clearly had left Pavaasik in a hurry, and they regarded Faucon with much suspicion.
But they knew Eino, and he knew them.
“The Savelas!” he cried. “I’m so glad you’re alive!”
Onni and Kirsi had heard their name around town but had never met them before. They were light-skinned, rosy-cheeked folks with a wee gnomelet named Toivo, who was only six. He had a little stuffy replica of a Beauner whale clutched in one arm, and Båggi thought he might be the cutest thing ever. He rummaged around in his pack while introductions were being made, and when it was his turn he beamed at the Savelas.
“Hello! I’m Båggi Biins, dwarvelish herbalist. You look like you could use a draught of Black Jack Proudsack’s Lilac Slurp Snack! It’s an exhilarative restorative and safe for gnomes.”
They accepted the tiny shots he’d poured into wee travel glasses and downed them, thanking him afterward and claiming to feel better already. Shortly thereafter they were invited to dinner and to travel along in the half centipod the next day, for there was plenty of room when one was of gnomish size. They swapped tales and sang songs around the campfire, and Båggi recited an episode from one of the dwarvelish epics about the hero Smeggi Spheers.
The Savelas shared that the Dastardly Rogues had driven them from their home, along with their entire neighborhood, and they had heard that roads in and out of most gnomeric cities were now patrolled by halflings on alpacas. They had only escaped one such patrol by sending their trained dachshunds to harry the alpacas, but the dachshunds had never returned from their valiant effort. Poor wee Toivo began crying as soon as he heard the word doggy, and although she’d been quiet and held herself stiffly around the newcomers, Agape hastened to carve a tiny wiener dog from a chunk of wood to make him smile again.
Knowing of the many dangers lurking along the roads made the trip far less relaxing. But they took to the fields, where there were deer and antelope for Gerd to hunt. At least they had plenty of supplies for the rest of them, thanks to Eino.
The miles crawled past—or, rather, they crawled past the miles—and it was all very merry, outside of the existential dread and continuing lack of dachshunds. Outside of Okesvaa, however, the half centipod wheezed and coughed and ground to a stop.
“Out of fuel, I’m afraid, but we’re almost there,” Eino said. They were on the northern wooded foothills of the Honeymelons, and the old gnome pointed at the eastern horizon. “See that line of trees in the distance, heading north from the hills? That’s the river that flows all the way to Cheapmeat feeding those trees. Okesvaa is located near the headwaters of that river. We can make it there in an hour or so on foot, I bet.”
“So you’re just going to leave the transport here?” Kirsi asked. Eino shrugged.
“Sure. It wasn’t doing anything in my workshop except collecting dust. Got more use out of it than I ever thought I would again! Can’t get more fuel anyway. Those were my last two bulbs, and the Screaming Grotto is pretty much tapped out.”
“Is that grotto somewhere in the Skyr?” Båggi ventured.
“No, no. It’s in the Siren Sn’archipelago.”
Båggi decided he didn’t ever need to go there. He joined the others in groaning and cracking their backs as they unpacked the benches and shouldered their burdens. The Savelas didn’t have much to carry and wee Toivo was anxious for a walk, so they disembarked first to let him run around.
Gerd had been walking next to them but took to the air to scout the road from above, since they were leaving the vehicle and its relative safety behind. Båggi strapped his picnic basket to his back, hoisted his mead cask onto his left shoulder, and held his Telling Cudgel in his right hand. In truth, he welcomed the familiar weights. He flashed a grin at Agape and she shook her head at him.
“Always haaappy, aren’t you?”
“I was rueful once. Once! Ha ha!”
“Ha ha!” A strange voice called from the trees at the base of the hills, the tone mocking. “Time to be rueful twice. You’d rue the day, in fact, if you were going to live through it.”
Agape’s head whipped around. “Whaaat?”
Beware! Gerd’s voice shouted, though Båggi saw that she had climbed quite high above them and was banking around in their direction. A motley crü of halflings approaches!
The halflings that emerged from the trees were indeed motley, but they all wore the medallions of the Dastardly Rogues Under Bigly-Wicke. Their predatory grins did not bode well, but Båggi thought they would vanish once they saw Gerd.
“Road to Okesvaa is closed,” one of them said. “No one in or out. Everybody dies. That’s the deal and you have to take it.”
Wee Toivo began crying, and the Savelas started to scurry back to the half centipod.
“No, no, stay still now,” the halfling said. “McDeathbreath, you’re up.”
A tall, thick, pear-shaped troll charged out of the trees and swept an enormous club at the Savelas. Their cries abruptly ended with a crunch before their bodies flew throu
gh the air to fall bonelessly some distance away.
The halflings laughed and applauded as if death were some entertaining sport, even as Agape, Faucon, Eino, Kirsi, and Onni gasped in horror.
Båggi’s muscles tensed as his blood rushed to his brain and back to his extremities again, his skin radiating a furious heat. He carefully put down his mead cask and picnic basket, but his fingers tightened on the Telling Cudgel and he could feel it changing. It was the most natural thing in the world for it to transform now, for he had something he wished to tell that troll. Never mind that it must be five times his size and probably responded to criticism by administering blunt-force trauma.
“Let me tell you about right and wrong,” Båggi seethed, pointing at the troll as he stalked forward. Agape told him to wait, but he ignored her as the troll pivoted to focus on him. “Let me tell you about justice. About what happens when you step across the line of decency and tread on evil ground.”
“That’s right, McDeathbreath, shut ’im up,” one of the drubs said, a leering grin plastered on his face. He clapped a couple of times in encouragement. “Dwarves are high in vitamin D!”
With a gurgling roar, the troll raised its club and lurched in Båggi’s direction. Feeling his energy surge, Båggi raised his own cudgel, sprinted forward, and rolled underneath the strike as it pummeled the earth where he’d been a split second earlier. He bloomed from the ground like a fried squash blossom and gripped the Telling Cudgel in both hands, noting that it was no longer a friendly walking stick or even the threatening weapon that had briefly showed itself to the cabbage pastor. Now it was a horror of spiked hardwood glowing with coruscating red and orange lights, which he did not expect but which he hoped would mean a bonus payload of pain for the troll. He swung his cudgel with everything he had at the troll’s armored knee, the very first act of premeditated violence in his life, and hoped that one of his spikes might find a gap in the armor and bring the troll down, even if it was on top of him.
What happened instead startled everyone, including Båggi.
The troll’s knee exploded.
The sound of the cudgel hitting the knee was not a smack or thud but more of a detonation, and not only did the troll’s leg come off at the knee, the rest of his body fairly launched backward in a low trajectory that wound up instantly crushing a couple of the drubs in his party. His entire body smoked and sizzled inside the armor. He twitched and screamed, and then expired. Båggi blinked, recalling that Brother Bo Boffing had predicted he would slay two halflings and a troll. But the Cabbage Pastor had neglected to mention that they would be murderers who dearly deserved to be slain.
Båggi regarded his Telling Cudgel with wonder and perhaps a twinge of worry. The red lights were gone and some of the spikes looked less sharp now that the troll was dead, but it was still a fearsome weapon.
“Gadzooks,” a voice said, and Båggi turned and saw that it was Faucon, his eyes large and his mouth half open in surprise. The rest of his party was likewise gobsmacked, blinking at the smoking corpse of the troll and then at him.
But Båggi wasn’t satisfied. He turned and saw that the bodies of the Savelas were still sprawled in the dirt, and the drubs who’d ordered the troll to slay them were standing there as if they deserved to live after ordering the deaths of innocents. A growling noise rose in Båggi’s throat, and the halflings realized they were in mortal peril. They tried to deliver some to Båggi first, tossing throwing stars and knives at him. But he squared up behind his cudgel, the spikes lengthening like the feathers of a most deadly fan and slapping the stars and knives out of the air. That danger past, he closed the distance, holding his weapon in front of him until it was time to bring it down upon their heads. The spikes shortened, thickened, and dealt unto them the death that they had dealt to the Savelas, and probably to many more besides. The last one ran, and when Båggi gave chase, the drub looked back over his shoulder and cried out in despair, “Mercy!”
The plea only served to enrage Båggi anew.
“Where was the mercy for the family you killed? Where was your voice, standing up for the innocent? That little gnome boy your troll batted through the air—where was the mercy for him?” The halfling sniveled and let loose a final cry of despair before the Telling Cudgel ended him in a hairy meatsplosion.
In the silence that followed, Båggi took deep gulping breaths and said, “It’s done. It’s done.” His muscles quivered, but he did not let go of the cudgel, for he wanted to see it return to its peaceful shape, to see it signal with a bee-shaped pattern in the grain at the top that he was at peace and could return to his mountains. “It’s over now,” he added, a cautious smile of hope tugging at the corners of his mouth. “The violence, you know? Ha ha! It happened, so it’s gone, it’s all out of me.”
The Telling Cudgel finally scraped and shifted and smoothed out from its fearsome configuration to something a bit less threatening, but it stopped far short of a peaceful walking stick. The exterior retained wee knobs of hardwood where there used to be spikes, and there was no friendly bee figure carved into the grain. Instead, there was a gryphon.
“Why is there—” Båggi began, but he was interrupted.
You did a good thing, Gerd’s voice said in his mind as she landed next to him. I would have done the same had I not been so far away. I am glad you acted quickly.
“But…it’s done now, isn’t it? Why hasn’t my cudgel transformed to peace?”
This smöl part of your task is done. But not all of it.
“All of what?”
The gnomes. The halflings. Their brouhähä. There is much wronge here. It is in the air, the very wind. As a dwarf who has sung to the winds in the mountains, you should be able to sense this. The rain will not wash it clean. We must help.
“We must? Why do we have to do it?”
Because we cannot sleep while evil wakes.
“Evil is always awake.”
Then we must always fight.
“Always fight?” Båggi said, his voice tiny. Perhaps this is what happened to other dwarves who never came home. They realized they must always fight and could not in good conscience remove themselves from the fray, even if they wanted nothing more than to return to their snug mountain aerie and content themselves with a wee bit of wisdom and a great deal of mead.
But looking around at the dead halflings and the troll, and realizing that he had done all that violence, Båggi felt ill. He didn’t think he had the temperament to always fight. And why would his limbs not stop shaking? It wasn’t cold outside.
The others came over and they said things to him, but it was all noise; he couldn’t process any of it.
“Forgive me, friends,” he said. “I think I need to be alone for a little while.”
He wobbled on shaky legs to the side of the road and fell to his knees, leaning on his cudgel with both hands, head down in front of it. He tried to get control of his breathing and find some smöl spot of peace in the tempest of emotions he felt. He didn’t like being angry or violent. It had done nothing to save the Savela family. He wasn’t sure avenging them made a difference either or whether it was truly justice to execute the troll and the Dastardly Rogues. The only good that could possibly come from this experience was preventing the same fate befalling others, but imprisoning them would have accomplished the same goal. Not that there were any prisons nearby capable of housing trolls.
What worried Båggi most, and what lit a burning coal of doubt in his chest, was the source of that red eldritch energy that had blown up the troll. He had never heard of a Telling Cudgel behaving that way, although most dwarves were quite shy about recounting their Meadschpringå tales. Was that how hot his anger burned? If so, how would he ever be able to quench that and live in his mountain home again?
The wind moaned and wailed and he opened his senses, taking it all in. It stank of death and lonely onions.
&nbs
p; Gerd was right: There was much wrong in the Skyr and much work to be done.
And Båggi, it seemed, was destined to do some of it.
“Ha ha,” he thought sadly.
“The first creation in the famed Affirmation line of the Gearhand Handiworks was the Pompuss, a megalomaniacal metal cat that everyone uniformly hated. The Cocky Cock was likewise an immediate flop, outside of a few sales to collegiate fraternities. The line only devolved from there until someone had the bright idea that maybe it wasn’t the construct that should be so confident but rather the owners—for who couldn’t use an extra shot of self-esteem? The Affirmation Gecko was thus invented and to this day is the bestselling PickaPet in history.”
—TED ANTIKK, in Nice Purchase, Pal! Way to Select the Perfect Book About Affirmation Geckos and Other Gnomeric Constructs!
It was a most troublesome feeling, Gerd thought, to be surrounded by people yet know yourself to be alöne; it was quite different from being by oneself. She had felt that in the past and she often felt it still, but right now the young dwarf, Båggi Biins, was feeling it sööper badde. She could not help except to tell him he had done well, for he had. But he must struggle and win the fight within his own mind, and she could already tell it was a tougher fight for him than defeating the troll.
He rose from his knees after a while and helped bury the Savela family. They left the troll and halflings where they lay, and Gerd scouted for more such ambush parties ahead of them as they walked the rest of the way to Okesvaa. She found two patrols of halflings mounted on alpacas and dealt with them by flying overhead and screeching at the alpacas, which terrified them, and then speaking to the halflings.
These are my hunting grounds. You can ride far to the north right now and never come back here, she said, or I will eat you. Choose now.