by Thomas Head
He had no idea what to do. He could just shake his head no, hoping. Then he heard something behind him, and the lady stared past him.
It was Aural. The handmaiden walked in, crying. She sputtered a moment, then stepped between him and Lady Dhal.
“My lady, I understand. Trust that much. Life will be a hard, dirty affair with only this simple cur to provide for us.”
Cullfor, eyes wide, nodded in something nearing agreement.
“But, my lady, you owe me. Decency demands you kill me first.”
Lady Dhal’ eyes widened too. There was a moment of perfect stillness, then came heavy breathing. And perfect anger. Then the dead silence began falling on the cottage like snow. They all just stood there. There was a moment that felt like the cottage took a breath on its own, a moment of change in her eyes that made him dare to hope. Then Cullfor’s leg was starting to cramp, to lock up rigid as a river stone, but he could do nothing.
While the ladies were staring at each other, his aunt lost her balance. She braced herself against the wall, still slipping. In a sudden lunge, the handmaiden grabbed her, the sword crashing to the floor as they embraced.
Then an unmistakable noise barked from the river—the sound of wood on pebbles.
A chill went through Cullfor’s forehead. Shit. He heard splashing, then the strange bur of foreign, dwarven voices. That’s why they left. To see which cottage I entered...
“Blistering hell,” he whispered. “You two, get yourselves to the cellar. Sneak out. Run. Run for your damn life.”
Lady Dhal was shaking, hardly able to stand.
“Now!”
The halfling handmaiden reached up and stroked her head. She kissed her forehead and her mouth, pulling her toward the cellar door, where they paused and looked at him.
He grunted, palming his thigh. Then he nodded.
“Go,” he whispered.
Aural led the lady down, and he heard the oak thud into place. He hobbled to the front door’s large oaken bolster. But it wasn’t there. Cullfor spun, shivering. He searched for the jam, pain shrieking up his leg. He leg was starting vibrate strangely.
Suddenly the lady’s grief-stricken wail rose to fill the cottage. They were screaming.
Suddenly, the front door creaked open. He spun to see one of the dwarves stepping inside. The first of them smiled, just standing with his arms open. He motioned for Cullfor to come with him.
Cullfor squinted in confusion, then lurched for his uncle’s great sword. The big dwarf, every bit as large as himself, chuckled, then hurled a small axe underhanded.
Cullfor thrust his hand out to shield the air before him, but the weapon did not even slow. The fabric of the unseen verve of the world seemed reversed, the air almost seemed to speed the weapon toward him, and Cullfor’s nose burst. The world blinked. Vines of pain crackled across his face as he groped at the worn oak table like a drowning man.
There was the coppery taste of blood again. Time began passing in waves. More dwarves entered. The women were being drug around front. He felt himself crawling toward them. But he was not moving. From his sideways view on the floor, some shocked part of his mind was making boasts about killing them all. He could see Aural outside, crying. Still not moving. Two dwarves were carrying her. She was grunting, pulling at the lady’s gowns as they flung them both onto the wood pile. Not moving. One slapped Aural, binding one of her wrists over and sort of behind her head.
Then someone kicked him in the eye, and it felt like he was crashing through the floor into the earth.
He woke, briefly.
They had left the front door open. He saw them loading the women on the ship like just so much cargo. And he saw something else, something he dismissed as a product of his bruised head. From under the ships canvas, a great, bluish head emerged. It was enormous. The black face of it like a spiked fish, battered with old, red and white scarring all about it, turned, with two horns jutting backwards as the beast’s eyes narrowed. It looked directly at him. Licked the air with two tongues like flattened sea serpent tails. The skin around the lips was dry and salt-crusted, or else just begging to molt. Licked the air again. Aural rose, briefly, one of her breasts bared while a skinny dwarf knotted her hair into a length steel chains. The same fellow reached forward with a pole and covered the beast’s head with the canvas.
Then it let out a low, rumbling roar that he could feel in his bones.
Going into shock, shaking, he laughed.
“Sure. Go ahead, make it worse. Now they’ve got a wyrm.”
Chapter 60
__________
In Cullfor’s lightless dream, he and the beast are writhing in combat on a rocky beach. Soon after, he is awake.
And confused.
Cullfor rubbed his face, but the edges of his dream were still sharp. In his mind, pearls of the beast’s blood were still swimming down the heft and curve of its blackish, battered silhouette, and he could still smell the crisp, fetid-meat scent of its breath. As he swiveled onto an elbow, he blinked at the pressed dirt section of floor.
He was in his uncle’s cottage….
What was he doing in his uncle’s cottage?
He rolled, very slowly, and once he got on his back, he stared up. For a long time. There were only pain and thirst. Then roof beams. Then, at the far the long room, the hearth seemed to come into being; it was making the side of his face sweaty. Trying to orient himself, the first conscious thoughts were of Aural, about her showing him her pale arse, then each smooth cheek of it being eaten like a white apple by a fairytale creature. He blinked again, and then rolled onto his side. In the copper band of a beer barrel, a purple-eyed version of himself was staring back. He looked beyond terrible, like a creature parents warned their children about. Despite the copper’s distortion, he could see that his nose was jaunty and dark. The eye sockets were grisly starbursts. All the blood-encrusted teeth seemed to be there. But one wiggled when he rubbed it with his incomplete tongue. His hair was sweaty, like wet black snakes on his forehead and neck.
He shivered, then tapped the keg. The beer was cold, more delicious against his face than in it. Then, careful of his nose, he washed his beard in it. He spent painful eons peeling away the dark tendrils of blood.
When he was able to right himself with the top of the keg, he stood. He clung to the wall. But it was all he could do to remain upright. More than once, the spinning forced him into strange dullness.
Memories began splashing, thoughts of smoke and screams. Throughout every thought was a bizarre howl, or roar, like the sound of dragons in the distance. His bottom lip quivered into a sneer, briefly. He was not positive he could remain standing. After some slow breaths, he sat. His lips curled again as he reached down and picked up the axe that had knocked him out.
Of course, he thought, flipping the incredibly light weapon in his hand… adaranth. The small blade was forged from the rarest of metals, found only in the firestones within a dragon’s craw. It was worth a small fiefdom…
which meant they had left it on purpose.
Then he saw why. He looked at the inscription on the steel handle. In dwarven runes, it read: Live well, young wizard. Many have died for you. Remember your uncle, who now feeds the crows. And remember your aunt fondly, as I will, for soon I will dine on her flesh.
He made a fist, which hurt his leg. Everything was weak and stiff as tears began to well in his eyes.
Then, dragging the swollen limb, he coasted out into pavingstone courtyard.
__________
It was the stillness that slapped him. The air itself seemed dead.
Where are the other survivors?
There were none. Twice as many dead bodies festooned the ground as before.
He cocked both swollen eyes, staring dumbly at the crows, which had become brazen by the feast before them. They were filthy and wet, perched half-inside the carcasses. One of them was pecking on his uncle’s face. The arrows that had killed him were gone, adding to his suspicion that t
hey had been tipped with adaranth—there had been no need to leave them too; the point was made.
Cullfor shooed the bird, compelled now to drag the big fellow into the church. But his face was aching as he bent over his uncle like his eyes might burst. And tendons seemed like they were snapping in his arms as he used the fabric of magic to pull him to the front of the church.
He settled on rolling some canvas out of the pub and covering him. High, thin clouds spun overhead. When he sat, he was spent. He sat on the chapel’s steps and looked down at Fie Wyrmkiller’s bloated form.
“They have taken her, Uncle Fie.”
There was something cruelly soothing in the disgusting truth of it. A morbid, dizzy sense of release washed through him, like his hands were on fire, then chopped off.
“And I know what you would have me do. But would you, old man? Could you? What manner of life would it be to look back on this moment and know that I did naught to avenge you, uncle… nothing to try to get her back?”
__________
A half of an afternoon later, Cullfor stared down the river trail, watching as some hundred or so members of a neighboring village’s warband came. He did not see their captain, a halfling lord named Bedew. But the little old dog didn’t have to be here. As they spilled into town, his well-armed campaigners were marking his claims on Gintypool with their carriage alone. Halfling are a merry folk. Let any doubt of that dissolve here and now. But truth is a strange and slippery eel, for the truth is this: Halflings go to war so rarely because they are so awfully, awfully good at it.
Loud and forward, they arrived on foot, already here from Nobody’s Sleigh. The armored halflings nodded grimly to each other, out of respect, but they were already poking around for anything of value. A few nodded to him in recognition. These were folk who once fought at Brickelby Castle against the Dwarf-King with his uncle. Which is why, perhaps, they politely acted oblivious of him. That, or they did not recognize his swollen face. Either way, he was glad of their courtesy.
Others acted uncertain why their new, much wealthier captain would even want the muddy little bend in Gardenwater River. Like most villages in the Watershed, it had no walls. No tower.
Our swords are our walls. Our faith is our tower.
They had too damned little of each.
__________
Beyond the soldiers, a monk was filing into the courtyard, Friar Basil. The freckled old halfling was from the other direction, west. He was from Muttondon, Cullie believed. It was beyond the dark stretch forest where he had felt the strange presence this morning. He had gone there get Auntie Dhal’s birthday present.
The brown-garbed old halfling dropped to his clean knees in front of the primitive chapel. For a brief moment, he prayed, almost sobbing. Then he kneeled nearby and began crossing Uncle Fie’s body repeatedly.
His uncle had spoken of the halfling more than once, usually in angry whispers. Still, Cullfor understood little of him, only that he was a traveling monk and that he conducted church business at several parishes. Uncle Fie had called him a “migratory rodent”.
Cullfor sneered, looking away. A couple of soldiers were standing in front of Pluck Bird Pub. They carted armloads of spoils, talking low. They wore helms but no chain mail. Both of them nodded yes across the courtyard, to a thick young halfling. The boy was not just soft, he had the bobbed hair of a poet.
When they had nodded again, they pointed to Cullfor, and the boy began walking toward him.
Cullfor stood, breathing deliberately slowly. Already, he didn’t like the lad’s face, which was also that of a poet, an awkward cocktail of fear and arrogance.
“Your uncle?” the young man asked, too plainly, before kissing Cullfor on the forehead.
Cullfor kissed him back. “Dead.”
“Yes, we’ve feared this day. Tricky business, that of Mage-Guard.”
The boy had a poet’s lack of decency, too.
Cullfor shot him a look. “Dwarves. Attacked this morning,” he said. “Dragon-cutters, I think. They came in a longboat, like the man-warriors of Delmark. They took my aunt and her handmaiden.”
The young halfling seemed to be thinking of some properly insulting way to express the lack of surprise in his head. In the end, he just nodded, too softly. He looked off for a moment, seeming to write something in his mind.
Then he walked away.
Something boiled up from Cullfor’s stomach, and the words that wanted to come out felt like sticky, hot acid. So he breathed, and he did not speak them. He growled inwardly. He watched him, contemplating something very stupid when heard someone call the boy Ghelli.
He decided to let the matter go. Of enemies, he already had plenty, including the Dwarf-King of Yrkland. There would be no sense in adding to that list. Cullie looked around again in the terrible recognition of the fact that he was utterly alone.
Ghelli stopped.
Cullfor looked him over. He imagined the lad had given him some time, a moment to think and change his story. Perhaps, when he did not, curiosity had won out. Whatever the reason, Ghelli returned.
“Wizard, what will you do?”
Cullfor shifted his weight. The question was a surprise; it caught him off guard to think anyone might think so little of him as to ask. He looked down at his new axe, the one the dwarves had left, the one the Dwarf-King’s smith had inscribed with the taunt… the one he planned to bury between the Dwarf-King’s eyes.
“Maybe I’ll split your jaw, boy?...”
Ghelli looked up, gripping his own weapon.
“Then perhaps I’ll go up into the heart of Yrkland, to Arkenstowe, kill them all, and bring back my aunt and her handmaiden.”
“Oh. Yes?”
“Good Joyous God, boy. What choice does honor leave me? Of course, yes.”
Ghelli put his hand on Cullfor’s shoulder. “All the more then, wizard, I would remind you that your honor, your power, and not to mention your courage, is well known here.”
Cullfor looked at the hand.
“And, forgive a simple dolt, but we both know full well that all of your boats are burnt. No one is going to sail you out of Sleigh. And I would wager that no one is going to sail you out of The Seven Patricks, Brickelby, or even treacherous old Fetter.”
He ignored him and it to himself again: He would get them back. By damn, he would go northwest to Arkenstowe Castle and get them back.
“Then I will go by land, boy.”
“A dwelf, across Delmark? Are you mad?
“I’m no fool, halfling. I’ll go north into the borderlands then skirt around Dragonfell.”
“Wizard, you do not see my offer here?
“What of it?”
“This of it: My father knows your virtue, your quality. He knows your worth and prowess on the field of battle. It is said you have yet to be bested in single combat. And you know him to be wealthy and merry enough. I imagine you have some home here?”
Cullfor nodded. So this was Bed Bloodwine’s boy. The bastard was growing like weeds in horse dung. He drank in the sight of the young lord another moment and thought for a moment about what the young lord said—he had more than some home here; he had more than a man could ever need here. He had good fires on cold nights. He had his pipe after a good breakfast. He had long afternoons of beer and making merry, crazy afternoons and clever conversation with his friendly neighbors, and long nights of chasing plump halfling women around his little cottage.
“Yes, well. I did.”
The young lord harrumphed. “Well then. Perhaps another could be arranged in Nobody’s Sleigh. We have cottages there to, you know! By damn but we’re really coming along! And women. Hell, wizard, we’ve got women so plump that when they stomp grapes, it rains wine for two days after. They’re so randy, so pale, you gotta sow their clothes on good so the neighbors don’t be counting every blue vein in those cabbage-heavy teats.” The boy seemed wistful for an instant, then shook his head. “Besides the ladies, wizard, to go by land… where’re you
to find a pony after the hoof blight? Damned if the horse is more than a fairytale creature these days. Let Nobody’s Sleigh… may, let us be your home. Let my father be Mage-Guard, wizard!”
Damn it, but Cullfor smiled at that. All around him was the utter destruction of all that he loved, all he had ever loved…
And he smiled.
“Well then, young master, much love, lunch, lust, and luck to you and your father. And sweet lord but the women are fine your way. But I cannot chase them. Not until I return… I’ll be needing my strength for the walk west.”
Chapter 61
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As the dwarves worked to steer the longboat down Gardenwater River, Dhal gripped the worn wood of the gunwale. She was in absolute shock, torn from her home, tied up, then tied again next to something… impossible.
Something straight out of a childhood nightmare.
Right next to her was a dragon—a very long dragon. The beast was so long its tail dragged in the water behind them, and its head was so massive it seemed that it could decapitate a man with one bite. The breath alone was unnerving. It filled the air around the vessel with a stench to bring sea scavengers to the surface to investigate.
She breathed while she stared, the oceanic horizon moving behind it, rising and falling. The afternoon sky was gray—a frozen, undulating portrait of the water under it. Gulls screeched loudly behind the vessel while some circled overhead. Yet others began diving to the foamy gray surface, picking at the great curling wake of the dragon’s tail.
The dwarves had retied its tail down and rechecked the head, but as they made their way out of the river into the bay, it began to lunge and rumble. The motion made the boat’s path feel unnatural, like the ship was animate, fighting the crew’s efforts to find for itself the best way from shore.