Out of choices, Maldoch selected. “We make a stand."
"In this spot,” J'tard said dubiously.
"Unless you're aware of a castle hereabouts, I can think of no better place,” rejoined the wizard, rapping the knob of his staff against the blockading log. Underland was undoubtedly a better proposition, but at four days walk away unrealistic.
Taking some practice swings with his prized mahtouk club, hooking the compressing foliage in the process, the Troll made the criticism, “There's hardly room to swing a cactus, let alone bash a nasty."
"I didn't say anything about fighting, J'tard."
'Didn't you bring me along as the hired muscle?"
"Only for scraps we stand a decent chance of winning.'
J'tard quaked. Whatever was making for them must be truly terrible.
"Gather me half a dozen straight sticks, each roughly a foot long,” Maldoch bizarrely instructed the Troll. “It's time to weave a spell."
J'tard started scouring the shrubbery for twigs. “Won't magic alert your no-good brother to our whereabouts?"
Surprisingly blasé about the risk, the wizard explicated, “Darkling Forest is superficially similar to Gwilhaire Wood in that it exudes a magical aura uniquely its own that suppresses the signature of other spells. Quite how it works without this forestland sprouting the equivalent of the Shadult Greenthe is beyond me. Perhaps the wood draws its magic from the basic evilness infusing the land. Whatever the cause, Omelchor will have a difficult time pinning us down in his own backyard."
"Is that so? From your nervousness I presume the goons coming to waylay us are of the extraordinary kind and not a haphazard piece of bad luck. That suggests the Ignoble One is sending word special delivery that he's aware of our exact location."
"Could be coincidence,” Maldoch lamely argued.
Letting his own sagacity shine, J'tard rumbled, “Since when, in your vast experience, do events happen at random."
The bested wizard snorted. “Just hurry up collecting those sticks, sandman."
J'tard quickly gathered the brushwood the spellcaster desired. Ushering the Troll behind him, Maldoch used the toe of his boot to scuff away the pine needle matting in front of the log obstruction, exposing the acidic loam beneath. Planting the sticks vertically ten feet apart within the semi-circle trough of earth, the wizard warned his puzzled travel buddy against crowding him.
Unable to contain his curiosity, J'tard demanded, “What are you up to, Magnificence?"
"Practicing my green thumb."
Concentrating his spellcasting talent, the incantation Maldoch invoked was older than the hills, predating some said the desolate Anarchic Years when a sect of druidic and Wicca purists rebelled against the technocracy of the times. Dedicated to ridding the abused land of industrial pollutants, the enclave of mystical greenies wove together strands of restorative magic to begin healing the mechanized countryside. Most were denied seeing the fruits of their labor; the indiscriminate Coughing Death cleansing the despoiled landmass of the human blight withered polluters and restorers alike. Those spellworkers who came through the ordeal completed the monumental task before setting about founding the pivotal fellowships of Terrathian magic.
A watered down derivative of that ambitious enchantment, Maldoch's scaled down spell was nonetheless potent in the right hands. Chanting sonorously, the working spellcaster tapped each of the upright sticks in turn with the Maker Staff, spreading his arms wide afterwards. His ancient canticle droned on for several more minutes, ending the moment he brought his hands together and thrust the butt of the stave onto the forest floor. There followed a muted rumble, as if a great beast stirred underground, fading into hollow silence.
Expecting a far more dramatic show, J'tard felt cheated. His disappointment evaporated when the sown sticks started to vibrate, generating a soporific clacking. The entranced Troll watched the twigs gradually thicken and shoot upwards, timed to the oscillations speeding up and the parallel clicks fusing into a droning hum of activity. Blurred by the fury of the magical force suffusing them, the rapidly expanding and heightening sticks sprouted horizontal branches that snaked rope-like to coil about the adjoining timber column on either side, forming interlocking bars of solidifying wood an arm's thickness in circumference. Before anyone could say “magic beanstalk” the fuzzy pillars of wood ebbed back into focus, twenty feet tall and nine wide, the diminishing buzz hanging in the air like an aftertaste.
"You've caged us!” decried the Troll.
"Merely placed us in protective custody,” rebuffed the wizard. “Would you rather be out there unguarded with that?"
Looking through the mesh of timber bars linking the sturdy posts, J'tard gulped nervously when a monstrous figure slipped soundlessly out of the shadowed underbrush to cram the game trail with its gigantism. 600 lbs of corded muscle stuffed into a twelve-foot tall, three-foot wide humanlike frame hulked into view under a stray shaft of revealing sunlight filtering bravely through the evergreen gloom.
Squinting, J'tard's natural intrigue in the world beyond his desert home, even a land fraught with peril, calmed his instinctive fear. Few creatures in Terrath exceeded Trolls in stature, supposedly none of them bipeds. No Sulander in the recorded annals taking up space in the Library of Histories ever clapped eyes on one of the mythical Norg'kthar, so the smidgens of speculative descriptions of the dread beasts proved woefully inaccurate. Maldoch himself often no more than caught fleeting glimpses of Carnach's premier monster, and only then when running hard to evade them. In spite of his ignorance, the Troll unihorn dealer guessed at the importance of the colossus boldly taking six-foot strides toward the cage. He dutifully drank in the repulsive sight with his enquiring eyes, knowing that scribes would demand a detailed account of this encounter to record for posterior in their age-defying stone tablets ... providing J'tard lived to give it.
The intruder loomed as gross as it was big. Its face looked superficially mannish with high cheekbones angling downward to be stopped by a wide jaw set in a permanent grimace, the protruding bottom lip supporting a pair of small upward thrusting tusks while a larger fang dropped from each corner of the unsmiling mouth. The ears were both lobed and upswept, contrasting features unseen on any of the Fellow Races. Gray, spiral horns ringed with bands of white bone and exhibiting a slight downward curvature extended half a foot out from the temples above intimidating brow ridges, beneath which shadowed eyes scarily devoid of pupils glowed yellow with evil intensity. The skin seemed the end product of an indecisive color consultant: an underlying hue of insipid gray speckled with patches of brown and pink. Black-rooted red hair fanned backwards from the monster's high forehead in an unmanageable wave, echoed by its pronouncedly hairy chest, forearms, and legs. Unclothed but for a fur loincloth, the only weapon the Norg'kthar carried was an immense club of mystery bone gripped in normal looking hands.
J'tard's fascination continued, seemingly drawing the beast in. By far the most bizarre feature of the Norg'kthar's physical makeup was its bare feet: two and a half foot long clodhoppers with broad, inward curving sickle-like claws where the toes and heel should be. Rather than bestow a clumsy, shuffling gait, the weirdly shaped feet permitted the walker to almost glide over the dense mat of pine needles like an ice skater, enabling virtually noiseless travel through the coniferous forest. Peculiar crescent tracks marked the creature's whispered passage.
"An Ogre,” Maldoch sighed exasperatedly, using the Nglais label to name the approaching menace. “Of all the worse luck."
The disheartened wizard's voice halted the Ogre, warily commanding the trail four yards from the improvised cage. Sniffing the air, its gargoyle head rocked from side to side.
"Just how sturdy is this cell?” J'tard hastily asked, concern winning out over curiousness again.
"It's Ogre-proof,” maintained Maldoch.
As if testing that declaration the Ogre rushed at the timber erection, mightily swinging its ivory club. The wooden bars reverberated from the tre
mendous overhand blow but held, neither cracking nor chipping. Baffled, the thwarted Ogre bashed at the shielding wood again, bellowing in frustration afterwards at its inability to break through the wizard's ingenious defense. J'tard took an involuntary step backwards as the stubborn Ogre, picking brawn over brains, pounded mindlessly at the magically strengthened cage, timber thwarting bone every time.
"Omelchor's pets aren't the brightest stars in the night sky."
The Troll looked over at the commenting wizard sitting himself down. “How long is it likely to hammer away?"
"It is a he, J'tard. All Ogres encountered down though the ages have been male. So far as I'm aware, nobody has ever come across a female Norg'kthar. Probably just as well. Going by the menfolk, they'll be ugly as sin.” Maldoch gave an unhelpful shrug in answer to the query. “Might as well get comfortable, sandman. He could be at it for a minute or a month."
J'tard uneasily took a seat beside the blasé spellcaster on the thick pile of dampish, pine needle carpet. In between the regularly thumping of bone hammering wood they conversed. Since joining up with Maldoch's quest the Troll had gradually opened up.
"The Library of Histories doesn't contain much more than vague references to Ogres, Magnificence. I've researched the annals right back to their starting date in the fourteenth century of the First Epoch. There's no mention of the Norg'kthar anywhere in the records before Year Seven Hundred of the Second Epoch and that itself was a partial, unverified account from a Dwarf prospector on the wrong side of Fearsome Grey who, and I quote, ‘bumped into a devil beastie with eyes afire and ram's horns'."
"You're awfully informed for a Unihorn dealer."
"I'm an amateur historian. It gets me out of the house on weekends."
"Out of K'hanti's hair."
J'tard shared Maldoch's cheeky smirk. “The peace of the library is a welcome break from my wife's distinctive voice,” he conceded.
"What became of the prospector?"
Losing the grin, the Troll related, “The passage is fragmentary and doesn't say. Obviously the Dwarf got away and lived to tell his tale. My point is, every one of the Fellow Races is made mention of in the Histories by Year One of the Second Epoch—except for the Ogres. Where were they before then? Have Ogres always dwelt in Darkling Forest, or did they migrate from further afar? For that matter, what is their specific ancestry?"
"The last is one question you really don't want the answer to,” returned Maldoch. “Why all the interest anyhow? You weren't aware the Mdwumps existed until our encounter in Shadfenn. Are you next going to tell me that you intend to research the lineage of those giant slugs?"
"There's no need for that,” huffed J'tard. “The first two lines in the last verse of the Dissension Scroll take care of that nicely."
Maldoch flashed the Troll a remonstrating glower. “Copies of the prophecies are stored at Kha-Rell with the understanding that only wizards may study them."
J'tard was unabashed. “V'drall has a passion for eating dates. His weakness allows me to bribe my way into perusing the tablets stacked in the Restricted Vault from time to time."
"I'll have a stern word to the librarian when next I see him,” Maldoch muttered promisingly, “if only to curb his exotic gluttony. Just what have you deduced about the Mdwumps from the Scroll?"
"That they're Elves."
Impressed by J'tard's bang on decryption, the wizard blocked out the Ogre's door knocking to concentrate on the Troll's reasoning.
"'Nor'greeners wade undone marsh’ was a toughie, but once I figured out that it referred to the ancestral Elves after doing a bit of digging in the obscurer records, then ‘Fleshed spirit twists from darken arts made perfect sense’ ... the dark magic infusing Shadfenn contorted the Elves into Mdwumps. What doesn't add up is why the Berhanthite Treesingers vacated the northland all those centuries ago to wind up lost in a southern swamp."
Privy to that answer, Maldoch kept mum. “What's the relevance to the Norg'kthar?"
"They too are mentioned in the Dissension Scroll."
"Line four, verse three"’ cited the wizard. “'Molding beasts of horn'."
"The previous line of ‘Errant maker-words cast askew’ is more intriguing,” said J'tard. “I reckon I've sussed out Omelchor's connection to the Ogres. Your bad boy brother magicked the Norg'kthar into being."
Astounded by the Troll's cleverness, Maldoch nodded pensively and confirmed, “You're partly right. The evidence points strongly to Omel creating the Ogres. But magic wasn't at all involved."
J'tard slowly cottoned on. “He bred them into existence?"
"My evil alter ego has many talents. Racial husbandry is likely one of them."
"You don't know this for certain?"
"Not entirely,” admitted the wizard. “Omelchor is even more secretive than I am and Carnach not the easiest place to go snooping about in. As my brother does not have a set stronghold anywhere in this accursed land, he makes full use of Darkling Forest as his entire base of operations, constantly shifting his impermanent camp and making it impossible for me to spy on his activities. I can therefore only surmise about the stuff he does here. However circumstantial the proof may be, I'm adamant the Norg'kthar are a hand-built race and that Omelchor holds the patent on them."
J'tard rumbled ruminatively. This was one revelation for the tablets. The historians back home would have to radically revise their thinking that, anthropologically speaking, the Fellow Races were all natural products of their environments. Ogres were plainly not. Interest stirred by his background as a unihorn dealer, where bloodlines were constantly mixed to improve the genetic stock, J'tard was naturally keen to explore the mechanics behind Norg'kthar breeding.
Conversely, Maldoch seemed intent on further discussing the Troll's interpretations of the prophecies, figuring he might gain valuable insight from a fresh perspective on the ambiguous auguries. They both spoke at once, halting after their opening words collided head on. An awkward silence rose between them.
The wizard stared beyond the cage bars. Halting his futile hammering, the Ogre shuffled back, his muscled torso glossy with sweat and heaving from the sustained effort. Maldoch blinked and shook his head, afraid he might be seeing double. He unfortunately was not. There now stood two Ogres blocking the trail with their frightening, joint immenseness.
"I think Fate just shoved Destiny aside,” Maldoch muttered bleakly.
Eyeing up the newcomer, J'tard could see the second Ogre bulked half the size of the first and was squatter in form, his thick legs curving outward in a slightly bowlegged stance. The club he gripped was a crudely fashioned mace, a sturdy stick topped by a rough chunk of stone lashed to its forked tip by cords of rawhide. Whereas his larger buddy had the feral look of a wild animal, this Norg'kthar actually seemed to be sizing up the cage. When those unnerving yellow eyes fell upon him, evilly narrowing as their animalistic owner contemplated the caged prey, J'tard actually shuddered.
His nostrils flaring, the flustered Troll hissed, “Do you smell smoke?"
Whirling, his mane of snowy hair spilling about his shoulders like a breaking comber, Maldoch's eagle eyes narrowed as his beak of a nose drew in a whiff of tainted air. “Looks like there is a bright spark in these woods,” growled the unhappy wizard, pointing with his staff to a ribbon of gray wood smoke wafting upwards from beneath the upended trunk walling the rear of their enclosure. Herded by a fitful breeze, the rapidly billowing fume swirled about the cage, filling the space with choking acridness.
"Aren't Ogres just big, dumb brutes?’ coughed J'tard, his eyes beginning to sting and water.
"Of all people, a Troll should not jump to the assumption of racial stereotyping,” spluttered the mage. “For the most part Ogres are dumber than dirt, but every so often one pops up which, while not a mental giant by normal reckoning, is a genius by Ogre standards. Norg'kthar intelligence is reflected in stature ... the smaller the package, the brainier the beast.” The wizard looked back over his shoulder through the thick
ening smoke at the watchful Ogre. ‘For all his littleness, the shrimp out there is calling the shots. He's a clever one. Burning green wood is a surefire way to smoke us out."
Too true. By now the smoke had grown dense enough to suffocate what scant woodland air remained in the cage. Maldoch tried incanting a spell to disperse the fumes, only to hack horribly as smoke filled his lungs, interrupting the enchantment. With no time left to restart the incantation, the wizard grabbed the coughing Troll's brawny arm. “I'm going to have to drop the cage, before we both pass out from smoke inhalation,” he rasped. “I can manage that quicker than magicking this smoke away. We'll have to resort to old-fashioned brawling to get out of this spot of trouble. You take the big Ogre."
"I was afraid of that,” hacked the Desertlander.
Maldoch proceeded to withdraw the enchantment, the billowing smoke that obscured the timber bars, now shrinking in size back to unimportant sticks, delaying the Ogres storming the breakout. Roaring in gleeful surprise as wizard and Troll hustled from the gray fumes into clear air, the Norg'kthar leapt to the challenge.
Barely having time to rub his teary eyes, J'tard checked an overhand swing from the bigger Ogre with his own club, staggering from the inhuman strength behind the blow that numbed his arm to the elbow. Sidestepping his larger foe, he swung hard with his own bat after changing hands and caught the Ogre a beauty in the small of his back. Shrugging off the hit as if it was nothing but a slap with a flyswatter, the monster biped rained blows onto the dismayed Troll in reply. Clubbing lacked the finesse of other fighting disciplines, coming down to the simplistic level of bludgeoning your opponent into submission: an end result that normally entailed the severest of headaches afterwards.
J'tard blocked determinedly, managing even to deliver a couple of ineffectual counterblows, before the bone cudgel his enemy wielded smashed through the woody mahtouk root like a hammer through glass. Left holding the broken end of his prized club, the distraught Troll flew into a rage and tackled the Ogre about the waist, winding the surprised brute as the pair crashed to the ground. Coming up on his knees on the Ogre's chest, the jagged remnants of his Desertland certificate of manhood clenched tightly in his fist, J'tard staked the Norg'kthar in what he hoped was the beast's heart. The Ogre reacted by bawling and knocking the audacious Troll off him, pawing at the shard of petrified root embedded in his pectoral muscle. J'tard came back with a rock in his hand, hammering the stake home. A geyser of blood exploded around the peg and the Ogre convulsed, his back arching. Smashing the stake again, J'tard fell back from the giant's violent death throes, pooped and covered in sticky blood.
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