A Cruel Tale

by Alex Sapegin

  “EEEEEEeeeek!” the priest screamed.

  Ilnyrgu crossed her hands. An enormous pulsar crashed against the shield the orc put up. In the next instant, the helrat flew into the air, banged hard against the ceiling, then was turned around 180 degrees and bumped against the wall a few times.

  “Levitation spells have never worked for me the first time,” Andy complained to the Wolf. Having guessed beforehand that the enemy would lash out at some point, he put up a shield before the orc and struck back.

  “Really? Are you telling him that?” she smiled in response to the tirade. “One request: don’t use a levitation spell on me!”

  “Olaf!”

  “Yes, commander!” The northerner walked out of the room hugging Slaisa.

  “Take my sword and go around the floor in search of notrium shackles or a chain. Something about our friend turns me off. Should have zapaged[12] him right away. You can leave Slaisa with us. I give you my word: we won’t eat her.

  “I’m on it.” The Viking took the blade. “It’s an excellent sword, a master smith must have forged it!” Olaf admired the tiny grid on the metal for a few seconds, which called to mind little men holding one another by the hands, and then ran down the hall checking every room. Ten minutes later, the Norseman came back holding a whole bundle of chains made of the gray metal. They stood the priest up and smartly wrapped him in the notrium, binding his arms tightly to his sides in the process. “And now you won’t be waving them around without permission.”

  “Do you need him to repeat that?” Andy asked the helrat.

  The priest, who had come to, turned away, proudly cocking his head, and got a strong blow which sent him rolling across the floor.

  Olaf rubbed the knuckles of his right hand:

  “The slime! I almost broke my hand on him!”

  “Olaf? Did I ask you to?” Andy said angrily, poking the now unconscious body with his toe.

  “Sorry, commander, I couldn’t help it. I can’t keep hold of myself when I think of what THAT guy could have done to Slaisa.”

  “Il, Olaf, stay here. Get the girls out of their chains, then keep looking for our things. You,” he poked the Viking’s chest with his pointer finger, “carry that priest until he wakes up. If he hasn’t been made an idiot by your caresses,” the Norseman smiled, “I’ll ask him a couple of questions. By the Twins, don’t let him escape. First off, gather up some weapons—there are a lot of former zombie guards lying around here—and I’ll check the basement of this dungeon.

  Andy wiped the sweat from his brow and weaved some combat spells. In order to activate them, he just had to pump energy into the rune Keys. It would have been a dumb idea to go downstairs without a few “surprises” up his sleeves.

  Descending from one floor to the one beneath it, he set up “spider webs” and checked all the rooms and cells—neither a cursory or a thorough examination revealed any living soul. Fearing he would be too late and Tyigu would be dead already, he enacted the “battering ram” spell on the metal door that lead to the lowest level and, jumping two steps at a time, darted on downward. He’d gotten quite attached to the girl lately, who somehow reminded him of Olga. He didn’t even suspect a strange fatherly feeling would awaken in him. The fidgety little girl was like a daughter and a little sister to him at the same time. At first, he tried to figure out his feelings, what brought on that attitude towards someone else’s child, and then he stopped his soul-searching. The staircase led him deeper and deeper underground. Soon he stopped counting the intervals. Sparse magical lanterns and the reigning gloom gave the impression of an eternal descent.

  The descent stopped suddenly. The carved staircase led Andy to another door. He didn’t even have time to put his hand on the knob when the door swung open itself, and a trio of zombies with bared swords jumped out to meet the uninvited guest. The short sword fight ended in the dead men’s eternal repose by way of beheading, and one deep scratch on the deliverer’s left hip. The zombies turned out to be a little more agile than expected. That was bad. The presence of living dead in the basement meant that their master was somewhere nearby. And what was even worse, he was clearly aware of the visitor and not at all happy about it. Apparently, he could monitor who went where through some special spell or amulet.

  Andy stepped carefully over the defeated zombies, walked through the doorway and froze. This was bad, as bad as he could possibly imagine—the master of the zombies stood in the center of a large room right through the doorway and was squeezing Tyigu against himself, holding a thin blade to her neck.

  “Perhaps we can talk?” Andy was the first to break the silence, examining the local version of a kidnapper. He wasn’t a mage. At least, there was something good going on. He had been controlling the zombies through a communicator amulet. A ton of magical junk was hung around the guy’s neck. Most of the amulets had multi-directional and mutually exclusive functions. If you were to activate them all at once, there was a hundred percent chance you could multiply yourself by zero. The guy was apparently a novice when it came to magic. And his face was somehow familiar… it was the guard at the monastery wicker gate! Now it was clear why he was holding Tyigu. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together regarding the connection between the guest and the purpose of his visit.

  “There’ll be no talking. Now throw down your sword—or she’ll die!”

  “Okay! Just don’t hurt her.” Andy threw his blade on the ground and kicked it away. The nervous guy pressed his sword harder against Tyigu’s delicate neck; a few drops of blood appeared.

  “Lie down on the floor!” the man cried.

  Okay, I’ll make it look like I’m obeying; I’ll get down. The kidnapper is a coward. You can see how his hands are trembling, and his eyes are shining. Compared to him, that priest we left with Olaf and Il looks like a hero. But this coward has to prove he’s the master of the house….

  “Elven spawn!” the guy howled. His nerves could no longer take it. He activated a powerful defense amulet, kicked the girl away from him and, jumping towards the elf, who was lying on the ground, brought his sword down on him. Andy quickly jumped to the side, extracted his old sword from his “pocket,” which he had taken the time and effort to retrieve on the battlefield in Ortag and pull out of the shield cast off by the rebel who had used it. A short bolt of lightning shot from his left hand. The guy gasped, his eyes bulging. Andy’s good old sword finished the ordeal.

  The baby girl stood up from the ground and threw herself in the arms of her rescuer. The rescuer sighed in relief and hugged the girl. His stress slowly left him. He just couldn’t imagine what would have happened if the fake guard hadn’t fallen for his trick.

  “I knew you would come to save me!” Tyigu began to chatter. “But why did you drop your sword? I would have bitten that villain’s hand. He was a bad guy. The bad man threw me in a cage with Rary and Rury and told them to eat me, and Rury said he doesn’t eat people. Then the villain grabbed a fiery whip and started beating the babies, and when the guy in the next cell over said he’s a creep, he started whipping the guy, and I got out between the bars and shot a fireball at him! Then he really screamed! I wanted to run away, but the guys without eyes caught me, and all the other villains went upstairs.” Andy was sitting on the floor playing with the girl’s pitch black hair, stroking her head. Tyigu’s monologue went right by Andy’s consciousness; her words went in one ear and out the other without touching the cochlear nerve, then hit the wall and dissolved. Almighty Twins, what are you punishing her like that for? In such a short time, she’s seen what some adults never see in their whole lives, and yet remains a wonderful kid. What did she ever do to deserve this? “...smelly zombies. And then I was locked in a small cage where I couldn’t slip between the bars, and then, boy, did I cry. I told Rary it’s you and that you were coming to save us, but she didn’t believe me, but I wasn’t worried for a minute. Rury said humans don’t save dragons, only kill them, but I said, you were a dragon too….”

 
; Catching something about dragons, Andy, who’d been zoning out for a minute, gently shut the girl’s mouth with his finger.

  “Tyigu, what dragons are you talking about?”

  “Well, I just said, Rary and Rury, they’re little, the villain beat them.”

  “Stop—wait! Rary and Rury are dragons?!” Andy sniffed. It certainly did smell musky in there.

  “Of course! Let’s go—I’ll show you!” the girl jumped to her feet and set off, pulling Andy behind her by the hand.

  Andy didn’t feel like going anywhere. The “recoil” and his fatigue were beginning to take their toll. He had to go through the whole “I can’t” routine and swearing in Russian. Even though he had almost forgotten his native language by now, he remembered these words well.

  Tyigu led him through a suite of rooms. He stopped near a pair of them—holy mackerel—there were two real, fully equipped alchemy labs set up in the basement! What’s more, someone had been working with ingredients extracted from dragons in one of them. There were vials of blood, ground and whole scales, some sort of extract, and flasks closed with corks. Now I know why the monastery didn’t need money, and why the merchants readily bought the hunters’ goods, and what kind of hunters they were, whose worldly experience came in handy. Andy clenched his fists in rage. I’ll let the priest go—let him go over the edge of a mile-long cliff! I remember that slimy piece of scum was nervous about going downstairs—he knew he’d be killed on the spot as soon as I saw this. In the second laboratory, he discovered golden lily bulbs and distillation devices. Drugs…. These brutes didn’t shy away from making money that way either…. That might be why this nest of helrats hasn’t yet been discovered. The “monastery” probably had its agents in Ortag and Troid and was bribing the right officials with their plentiful gold, and maybe, with dragon’s blood. The “monks” have been making a fantastic profit from this. Ten or twenty thousand pounds on a few “administrative” costs was no skin off their nose. Someone’s going to pay dearly for this. I’ll make them!

  “We’re here,” Tyigu said and tugged the massive metal ring on the door. Andy guessed they were right in the vicinity somewhere. The smell was leading him to them no worse than it would a hound dog. He moved the girl away and opened the door.

  Before the tired were-dragon’s eyes was a natural cave about forty by seventy yards in size, turned into a prison and a corral. The prison was lit by three dingy magical lanterns hanging from stalagmites. A small stream flowed along the length of the cave. The air down there was cold and damp.

  Andy filled the lanterns with energy. The room got brighter right away. Tyigu let go of his hand and ran along the front of the cages.

  “Rary! Rury! I told you Uncle Kerr would save us, and you didn’t believe me! He’s here with me now, and he’ll help you and your mom!”

  Andy stepped forward and broke the locks off the cage doors, setting a few prisoners free. A few of them no longer had any need for freedom. Merciful Hel had accepted them into her arms. Andy came to two enormous cages. One of them held two small dragonlings with reddish scales; they were no bigger than oxen. The other held an adult dragon whose coloring was no longer discernible. They were all half dead! Reduced to skin and bones, among other issues. The mother dragon was missing whole patches of scales. Her face and paws were bound in thick chains fastened to anchors. There wasn’t a healthy spot anywhere on her back and wings. The little dragons were not fettered, because before a certain age, they cannot spit fire. The dragonlings hurried to the farthest possible corner from Andy. Rury opened his wings and hid his sister behind them, stuck out his neck and breathed in through his nostrils trying to determine through scents who it was standing before him. His whole back was covered in stripes from the fiery whip; the scales that had been hit were darker. There were a few tears in the membranes of his wings. Those brutal helrats—they’re just children! Those helrats aren’t human, they’re sub-human, they’re….

  “Uncle Kerr, are you crying?” Tyigu dashed over to Andy and extended a handkerchief to him, by some miracle still intact.

  “Yes, hon. Stand back. I’m going to break the cages.”

  Andy changed hypostasis. The mother dragon stared at him. Her tail began to thrash against the ground. Rury stopped hissing and curled up into a ball even more, not taking his wing from in front of his sister. The appearance of a grown dragon instead of a human was totally unexpected for the prisoners.

  “Oh man, have they scared you so bad?” Andy said shaking his head and broke the cages. Then he broke the chains and opened the metal fetters around the dragon’s legs. She then took the chain off her snout herself.

  “Thank you,” she wheezed.

  “Uncle Kerr, there’s another cage here, you missed it. It’s the guy who stood up for Rury and Rary,” Tyigu cried.

  Apart from the other cages, Andy saw another, made of gray metal. Notrium again. They must’ve found a mage they were planning to sacrifice.

  Andy tossed the cages in his way to the side and walked over the mage’s confinement.

  “Hello, Kerr,” the mage said, holding the bar with his right hand. His left arm was dangling limp at his side, swollen and blue on the forearm. His face was covered with many scabs; his eyes were puffed and bruised. His shoulders and back were striped from the fiery whip.

  Andy froze.

  “Timur, is that you?!” he gasped, barely recognizing the familiar face.

  ***

  Timur stirred the coals, which immediately flickered with a lazy red flame. He breathed in the appetizing smell of barbeque and looked at the chef with a questioning look. This was the first time he’d seen a dish like this. He couldn’t wait to try it. Ilnyrgu was the cook today, because one member of their collective refused to accept the job of cooking due to reasonable winged circumstances. She had to take the time to cook herself. The orc, grinning, glanced at Andy, who felt like a babysitter/mother hen. Rary and Tyigu settled comfortably under his left wing, and Rury under his right. Boys on the right, girls on the left. Tyigu flatly refused to sleep in the tent. Of the travelers’ things that were found still intact, she brought over a blanket and a big sheet used to wrap the items in for carrying. She made Rury, who was feeling very sleepy from the meaty meal, move over, and gladly snuggled up against the dragon’s warm side. The girl was desperately jealous of the dragonlings’ relationship with Andy. The “mother hen” laid his head down on the warm stones and rolled his eyes. Timur and the Wolf snickered from the sight of it. The dragon heaved a sigh.

  “In three minutes take ‘em off the flame,” Andy told the orc. He, the dragonlings and Lanirra, their mom, gorged themselves on venison from an icebox that they found under the house. The local adherents to the forbidden religion did not suffer from asceticism. They had a lot of money, so the “monks” did not skimp on food. The stores and the icebox were stuffed with tied packages of groceries and food stuffs.

  Whole bodies of bulls and deer, enormous fish that looked like the sturgeons found on Earth, baskets of frozen trout, wine and vegetables. In a separate container, they kept jerky and dried fish, dried fruits, pickles, and jams. The full warehouse said that the helrats had settled here seriously and for a long time, but one angry dragon spoiled all their fun, cut them to the quick and turned out to be a fly in the ointment.

  While Ilnyrgu was conjuring over the improvised grill, Andy was listening to Timur’s story, starting from fleeing the School and ending with the battle of Ronmir. He didn’t hold it against his friend that he’d set him up like that. He lamented at first that a certain tailed individual might have been somewhat franker with his friends, but he did not develop the topic. He had no news of Frida. According to Timur (and Andy readily believed him), after the battle on the shooting range, there was so much chaos at the School that even the number one songbird of their class opened his beak wide, dumbfounded at the abundance of rumors, gossip, and untrue stories and could hardly discern a crumb of truth as to who started the battle. When arrests began
in their group, they decided that army grub was better than prison slop and quickly flew the coop. For the last month, they’d been chowing down not only army grub. The soldiers, loyal to the crown, had managed to “bite off” other “delicacies” they got to taste while putting down the rebels and the bombardment of Ronmir. And, apparently, they would be “enjoying” this cuisine for a long time to come. The Empire had declared war on Tantre; it seemed the Woodies would soon join in, and there was no end in sight….

  “How did you get here?” Andy asked Timur.

  “If you hadn’t blown up the arsenal, I wouldn’t have wound up here. The explosion creamed the portal settings and coordinate binding. When we were flung into the frame, I noticed a ripple, and in the next second, we flew right to the priests. The helrats, not being idiots, flew at me with swords straight away. I had to fight a little, and it sucks that it was just a little: a whole crowd of zombies ran up and really scared the pants off me. While I was ‘relaxing’ behind bars, I had time to chat up my neighbors. It turns out the priests would build a ‘needle-like’ portal once every two weeks that allowed them to pierce the screen. A human can’t go through a portal like that, but a small portion of cargo certainly could. They had a transfer point set up around Ronmir. On the day of the storming of the military camp, the priests were planning to transfer the next portion of their product. Probably what happened was a short-term overlapping of vectors, and a counter channel is what they got. At the moment of the blast, the channels overlapped and sent me and a wounded elf I’d picked up—who actually turned out to be a girl—straight to the priests. And there you have it. So, you got to me just in time. If you’d gotten to the priests a week later, I wouldn’t be any different than the rest of the prisoners.”