Gathering of the Titans: The Tol Chronicles Book 2

by Robert G. Ferrell

  The solution to Tol’s takedown location dilemma leapt out and danced a little hornpipe.

  “I imagine time would be in short supply for a business executive such as yourself. I’ve done a bit of sailing, but not nearly as much as I’d like. Sadly, I live rather far from the sea, so I own no sailing vessels of my own.”

  So close...

  Jexx cleared his throat. “While I have quite a busy schedule, I believe that for a fellow Knight I could squeeze in a short cruise at sea, if you’re game.”

  Target acquired.

  “I could scarcely pass up such a generous and noble invitation. I would be honored.”

  “I will have one of my staff prepare the ship. Today we shall be sailing aboard the trabaccalo Dez Klag, which I helped to rebuild after it suffered considerable damage in an unfortunate collision. She is a fine two-master with a large rudder and excellent draw.”

  “I look forward to sailing upon her.”

  They walked down to the docks. Tol paid very close attention to the number, position, and gait of Jexx’s bodyguards. He saw four, including the one in the shack at the foot of the pier. Of the three accompanying Jexx, two he discounted offhand as overconfident bullies. The third, a goblin, might be dangerous. He had a very fluid walk and his eyes never stopped moving. The only one with any real training, Tol guessed. He also looked vaguely familiar, but that wasn’t too surprising, even here on the other side of the world from Tragacanth: Tol had seen many thousands of mug shots in his day from just about every nation on N’plork. His mug could well be among them.

  Once at sea, Tol had to admit that Jexx knew how to handle a boat. He was obviously showing off, but it had the desired effect; Tol was impressed. Somewhere into the voyage Jexx seemed to have made his mind up about something and they abruptly changed course. After a few minutes Tol could tell that they were making for a tiny island in the bay; nothing more than the tip of an ancient volcano ringed with lush vegetation.

  “This is my private island up ahead,” Jexx explained, “On the nautical charts it’s called Volcano Island, but that’s woefully prosaic for such a beautiful locale, so I’ve renamed it Vershulpa, which is ogrish for ‘Green Cone:’ a more appropriate moniker, I believe you’ll agree.” Tol stared at the verdant little bump on the ocean ahead. It was a green cone, all right.

  “Works for me.”

  They docked on the south side of the small blot of land, at a pier that miraculously rose out of the water as the Dez Klag approached. “I had this pneumatic lift installed because I don’t want to encourage boaters to tie off here.”

  “I would think the huge ‘Private Property: Keep Off If You Want to Live!’ signs would probably take care of that,” Tol replied.

  “They do help, but one can’t be too careful where the riffraff are concerned,” said Jexx.

  “You have a lot of riffraff who own boats around here, then?”

  “You’d be surprised. Even though we’re ten kilometers from Yiks and almost into the shipping lanes, the number of people who pile into their little knockabouts and end up way out here is considerable. I’ve even had to chase off a couple of jloks in a jon boat.”

  “How did a jon boat get all the way out here? Was there a storm involved?”

  “I believe they were carried here on a wave of cheap razzle,” Jexx replied with a touch of sarcasm.

  “Ah. You don’t approve of razzle, I take it?”

  “On the contrary. I have a sizeable cellar full of it, in various vintages and recipes, as you saw. I simply don’t approve of its use by people who should be concentrating on piloting their vehicle, no matter what it is.”

  “I can certainly get behind that philosophy.”

  “Let me lead you on a tour now,” said Jexx, “Of this most picturesque little island.”

  “No offense, but you’ve seen one tangled tropical jungle, you’ve pretty much seen them all,” Tol sniffed.

  “Perhaps, but I think you’ll find this one to have certain... attributes not common to other similar locations.”

  Tol shrugged. “Lead on, then.”

  They followed a well-maintained path to the base of the volcanic cone and then wound their way up a gentle spiral ramp cut into the basalt, pausing every so often to take in the ever- changing panorama of the dense jungle canopy framing the deep greens, blues, and whites of the ocean beyond. At the top there was, unexpectedly to Tol, no actual indentation but instead a knob of rock and vegetation.

  “What happened to the crater? I thought volcanoes always had craters.”

  “There is a crater,” Jexx replied, “But I hid it under this roof covered with stone and jungle. It forms a little workshop, hidden from curious eyes.”

  “Whose eyes? Sea avians?”

  “I believe what I’m about to show you will answer that question, as well as provide motivation for the camouflage.” He pulled a lever concealed by a hollow tree and the entire cap folded and slid to one side, revealing a crater about forty meters in diameter. In the center stood a strange concretion of wood, wires, and fabric that looked like some great avian with its wings held out parallel to the ground. It was perched on a pair of iron rails that began at one wall of the crater and terminated abruptly at the other side.

  Jexx walked over to a pedestal set near the wall and pressed a button on it. The wall at which the rails ended dropped into the floor revealing a sheer cliff below it. “This,” Jexx announced with a little flourish, “Is my newest and most intriguing project: a flying machine.”

  Tol decided to play dumb. “What do you mean, a ‘flying machine?’A machine that actually flies?”

  “Precisely. Not only does the machine itself fly, it does so with me in it. It glides for quite a long distance and can ride on columns of air that rise up from the surface of the land or water.”

  “That,” Tol said in feigned disbelief, “Is amazing.”

  “Isn’t it? While I did not develop this astounding apparatus myself, I did provide considerable funding for it. I am the only person in the world, other than the creator—sadly now deceased— who owns a flying machine.”

  “Really?” Tol said, suppressing a laugh, “Simply incredible.”

  He decided it was time to take the conversation another, more productive direction.

  “I’m interested in your knighthood, Sir Jexx. To what Order do you belong?”

  This question caught the half-ogre totally off guard. “Oh, um,” he stammered, “It is the, um, Order of the Grand Maritime.”

  Tol raised his eyebrow ridges. “As in, Grand Maritime Duchy? I thought they were a role-playing group or something.”

  He could see Jexx beginning to bristle and his bodyguards ratchet up the alert level. He also thought he detected a slightly incongruous response from the goblin: less hostility than simple increased attention.

  “Are you questioning the legitimacy of my claim to knighthood?” Jexx asked, adopting a belligerent stance.

  “Sounds like you are,” Tol replied calmly. “Legitimate knights don’t usually respond that way.”

  “You, sir, should be more aware of the precarious position you are in. No one knows where you are. I could simply claim, with witnesses,” he waved at the guards, “That you tragically fell overboard and we were unable to recover your body.”

  “Yeah,” Tol replied, “I noticed that several of your associates suffered similar tragic fates. You must be attracted to accident- prone people.”

  “In confirmation thereof, you will sadly suffer one shortly,” said Jexx grimly, motioning to the guards.

  Tol grinned and waited. When two of the guards approached him, one on each flank, he suddenly ducked under their grasp, coming back up with a large, knobby elbow in the crotch area of each. When they ducked in pain, he brought his huge fists down on the junction between neck and skull and both of them dropped like sacks of gravel.

  The remaining guard, the goblin, drew a weapon but instead of pointing it at Tol, leveled it at Jexx. The half-ogre stare
d at him in surprise and anger.

  “Hands up, Jexx,” said the goblin, “You’re under arrest for murder, attempted murder, racketeering, and tax evasion, among other charges.”

  It was Tol’s turn to be surprised, although he’d felt there was something out of place about the gob all along. He looked at him inquisitively. The former bodyguard pulled out a badge. “Detective Gilmat: Frespiola Investigations Division,” he said.

  Tol nodded. “I thought there was something familiar about you.” Recollection flooded in: he’d met Gilmat at an international EE conference a couple of years earlier. Gilmat was obviously the ‘inside operative’ Tol had been told about.

  Jexx suddenly leapt for the pedestal and pressed another button. A loud pop emanated from the far wall, and the crater filled with thick smoke. Tol and Gilmat instinctively dropped down to where the air was more breathable. As they did there was a grinding noise followed by a click, then the smoke swirled violently as something large moved through it. Both cops leapt for the glider, but they caught only empty air as the flying machine was catapulted out over the dropoff with Jexx in the cockpit.

  Tol and Gilmat ran out of the smoky crater onto the narrow surrounding lip in time to see Jexx inscribe a wide arc above them, laughing. “Better luck next time, gentles!” he yelled and turned toward the distant shoreline. Gilmat took a couple of shots at the glider, but if he hit his target there was no observable effect. Tol rolled his eyes. “What I wouldn’t give for...” he stopped in mid- sentence as he heard a familiar drone. “That!” he finished, pointing to Dagyo approaching them in the Sir Tol. Gilmat, who had been on the comm calling for backup from a fast patrol boat stationed just out of sight on the ocean-facing side of the island, stared in amazement at the flying sausage.

  Tol motioned for Dagyo to winch down the prisoner cage. He pointed to the rapidly shrinking glider and yelled up, “I need to catch that thing!” Dagyo nodded and released the winch cable. Tol climbed aboard the cage and turned to Gilmat.

  “You go after him on the water, I’ll take the air.”

  Gilmat just nodded with wide eyes as the cage with Tol in it lifted off. Dagyo pulled up until he was sure they were free of obstacles and then pushed both throttles full open. The Zifjagga accelerated as though eager for the chase, trailing its suspended goblin cargo behind at an acute angle. Tol tried not to think about how easy it would be to fall out of the unlocked cage and plunge to a watery demise and instead concentrated on the target ahead.

  The glider was swift, but it was entirely dependent on air currents for both speed and altitude. Jexx found a thermal above a small coral archipelago and rode it as high as it would take him before popping out of the spiral with renewed height and velocity. Meanwhile Dagyo and Tol had been steadily gaining on him from below. Jexx decided to go on the offense while he still had the advantage of altitude.

  Whirling suddenly, Jexx aimed his glider directly at the zifjagga and pulled out a disruptor. He aimed at Tol and then at Dagyo in the command car, but Dagyo took evasive action and both shots went wide of the mark. Switching tactics, he removed a projectile weapon from its bracket in the cockpit and started punching holes in the envelope surrounding the gas bag. The zifjagga lost altitude almost immediately and seemed to be doomed to crash into the water as the gas leaked away. Jexx laughed evilly and resumed his course toward Yiks Island.

  Dagyo dumped most of his emergency ballast and the plunge toward the sea was arrested. Tol looked up at one of the exit holes from Jexx’s projectiles and saw the ragged edges that had been flapping as gas escaped through the opening cease to flap. Self- sealing, Tol thought, Good idea. Dagyo ignited a small heating element that ran along the keel of the ship. This gave the remaining gas more lift; they were soon at cruising altitude again. Tol couldn’t guess how long the battery powering that heater would work, but he figured it would be enough to get them back to land looming about three kilometers ahead.

  They gained on Jexx again. Tol motioned to Dagyo to get as much altitude as possible. They came in on top of the fugitive while matching his speed. Tol pointed at the cage, and then down. Dagyo nodded in comprehension and lowered the metal enclosure until it was right on top of Jexx, who had not heard them coming because of the rush of wind in his ears in the open cockpit of the glider.

  Something suddenly tipped him off and he made a hard right turn in evasion just as Tol dropped down onto the fabric-covered fuselage behind Jexx. Tol scrambled wildly trying to hold on, and finally grabbed a spar from which control cables ran to the surfaces on each wing that controlled the turns of the glider. Straining mightily, he reached up and grabbed the left-hand wire, pulling it back as far as he could. The corresponding wing surface folded up, levelling the plane out contrary to Jexx’s control inputs.

  Tol realized he now had effective mastery over the roll axis of the craft. He could counteract any attempt to upset the glider and knock him off it. Jexx scowled in anger and pulled back on the wheel, which brought the nose up until the wings no longer had any effective lift, at which point the glider stalled and dropped out of the air.

  Tol hung on for dear life. When Jexx realized Tol was still there, he pushed the nose forward until the craft was once again flying. After a moment he began to twiggle the vertical control surface on the tail back and forth. This slewed the tail of the glider from side to side, making it difficult for Tol to hold on. He realized that Jexx would eventually succeed in dislodging him if he stayed put, so he started pulling himself centimeter by centimeter along the top of the glider’s fuselage, inexorably creeping toward the cockpit and Jexx himself.

  Finally, with the glider yawing wildly and the fabric beginning to bulge and rip as a result, Tol laid one beefy hand over the edge of the partial nacelle surrounding the cockpit proper. He pulled himself into the opening while Jexx rained blows on him with his right fist. Tol shrugged them off and punched Jexx hard in the right ear. Stunned, he slumped forward on the wheel and the glider went into a steep dive. Tol tried to pull the unconscious half-ogre away from the control wheel, but the only other space in the tiny cockpit was currently occupied by Tol himself; there was no place to put Jexx.

  Tol rolled his eyes. “Smek me: why isn’t anything ever easy?” He clambered back out along the spine of the craft toward the control surface cable spars. With his feet anchored under the lip of the cockpit, he reached back and grabbed both of the wires leading aft to the horizontal surfaces on the tail, pulling back as hard as he could. The glider abruptly stopped losing altitude and leveled out.

  Tol realized that with the half-ogre’s body mass still resting on the control wheel, as soon as he released the cables the glider would resume its dive. Seeing as how they were only a hundred meters or so above the water now, that didn’t seem like a good idea. Trouble was, he was already growing fatigued from the intensely strenuous effort. Tol let out his breath and rested his head against the fabric. As he did he heard a whistling noise just above him and looked up to see that Dagyo had brought the cage to within reach. He took a deep breath, tensed, then in one motion released the cables while pushing off from the cockpit frame and grabbing the front edge of the suspended cage.

  The glider pushed forward and resumed its dive, crashing into the water below at high speed and fracturing into a thousand fragments. Tol pulled himself up into the cage with his final remaining strength and slumped, breathing heavily as Dagyo winched him up to decrease drag. They puttered along for a few minutes until at last the gnome hovered over solid ground and lowered the cage to a meter above the beach. Tol dropped into the warm sand and briefly considered hugging it. He looked up at the crowd gathering and quite suddenly found himself in Selpla’s arms. They had come ashore at the Sellestra Placidum beach, not ten meters from where Selpla was sunning herself in a nice wooden chaise with down cushions.

  “Tol! What on N’plork were you doing?”

  “Landing,” Tol replied, closing his eyes and smiling blissfully.

  Pieces of glider and half-
ogre washed up on Yiks Island beaches for the next couple of weeks. Once most of Jexx’s head was discovered wrapped in seaweed, the case was officially closed. Tol and Selpla spent a few days actually resting and recreating—with emphasis on the recreating—before heading back to Tragacanth. Tol bought Dagyo a very nice dinner at the resort in appreciation for his services and promised once again to extol the virtues of the zifjagga to those responsible for EE acquisitions back in Goblinopolis.

  Chapter the Twenty-Seventh

  in which a number of loose ends are secured, more or less

  When Tol returned to Justice Hall, there was a diplomatic communiqué waiting for him from the office of Odinial Tartag in Hellehoell. It was requesting information on the whereabouts of a titan named Korq. The Hellehoell authorities had reason to believe that Sir Tol-u-ol was in possession of knowledge regarding his current location and respectfully asked for a meeting concerning said personage.

  Tol laid down the parchment and leaned back in his padded executive swivel chair. He stared at a detailed map of Tragacanth on the far wall without seeing it and thought about how best to reply. He weighed the current excellent relations with the fledgling titan nation against the specter of slavery and racial elitism. Something about Korq’s story didn’t sit just right with him—never had. The titans had not betrayed any trace of that repugnant behavior in front of him, even under stress. Either they were first-rate actors as a race, or there was more to this than what Korq had given him.

  Tol knew he couldn’t just ignore something that arrived in a diplomatic pouch. Not like the old days, anyway, when things just ‘fell behind his desk.’ Heads of State had a nasty habit of knocking on the door until someone answered. He sighed and poured a cup of stankabru. He knew what the right thing to do was, of course: confront the titans about the practice of enslaving half-breeds. For most of his life he would have plunged into that crusade without a second’s hesitation. He was strangely reluctant this time, and that reticence itself puzzled him.