by Rex Hazelton
Jayk knew Kroyn was telling the truth. Why wouldn’t he, when the monster believed Jayk had no chance of beating him?
“I’m finished setting the table for my meal,” Kroyn admitted with a touch of insincere sadness in his voice. “We can fight now.”
With that said, Kroyn snarled and stepped toward Jayk who snarled back at him.
No matter that the white-skin’s explanation implied some of what made Kroyn who he once had been was still inside him, this was not his father-in-law. His body was so much stronger and quicker than it once was that it was hard for Jayk to believe he was fighting a middle-aged man.
Six rapid hacking blows by Kroyn drove Jayk backwards so fast his feet slid on the gravel covering the bottom of the streambed as he struggled to get his legs under him so he could go on the offense himself. Stepping forward, Kroyn wasn’t about to let Jayk center his weight. Three more hacking blows followed before Jayk relented and dropped to one knee before thrusting his blade into Kroyn’s abdomen left unprotected by the overhand blows he was dispensing.
As he had seen with other whiteskins, nothing significant happened to Kroyn. Still, he was startled enough by the move that Jayk was given time to pull his blade out of the bloodless cut and make a strategic retreat. This was followed up with an attack of his own.
Slash, slash, thrust, Jayk’s blade found Kroyn’s abdomen again. But before he had time to pull his blade out of the white-skin’s midsection and retreat once more, Kroyn used his sword’s blade to cut Jayk’s hand bad enough that the grip on his weapon was lost.
Stumbling back as blood flowed over his hand, Jayk withdrew his long-knife and got ready to defend himself against the swords Kroyn held in his hands- the whiteskins own weapon and the one he pulled out of his stomach.
Laughing, Kroyn said, “Let’s end this,” before he came at Jayk weaving his blades together so fast that Jayk’s long-knife was soon knocked out of his good hand. After both of his upper arms were slashed by the twirling blades before they stopped, Jayk fell on his knees, lowered his arms to his side, and waited for his executioner to act.
A growling shout was heard. But instead of his head being loped off and sent rolling across the gravel underfoot, a round mass of white skin and hair bounced off Jayk’s shoulder a moment before it struck the ground. Looking down at the strange object, Jayk saw that Kroyn was staring up at him minus his swords, the hands and arms that held the blades, and the body the arms were connected to.
“You fire-blasted monster,” a shout loud enough to elicit an echo from the dry streambed’s banks was heard. “That’s for my boy, you dung heap.”
Once the mournful cry that accompanied the pillar of smoke the white-skin’s headless corpse emitted faded away, and the body had lost the last vestiges of dark magic that had kept it alive , Jayk shouted, “Red, is that you!?”
“Well who else would it be now.” Red replied as he watched the corpse topple to the ground. “You got any other friends who’ve been tailing you besides me?”
“You used me as bait to go fishing for Kroyn, didn’t you?”
“We’re all bait brother. But aye. I had a hunch that needed to be followed,” Red explained as he sheathed the sword he used to cut through Kroyn’s neck. As he did the black pillar of smoke that had risen into the sky, returned with a wailing cry and dove into the ground. “The way Kroyn was making things so personal between you two, I thought he’d be ready for your escape. And I wasn’t surprised at all when he tried to stop you by himself, though if he had brought others along, I still would have cut his head off.”
“And leave me to handle the others by myself?”
“We all have our part to play. Anyway, I would have helped you once I killed the monster who kidnapped my boy.”
“Kroyn kidnapped Kyl?”
“He and Gyan maybe. The last time people saw Kyl before he was turned into a white-skin was when Kroyn was seen talking to him as they were walking towards the stable. Too bad Gyan and Trott didn’t come along with him. I’d be a lot happier if they did.”
“Do you think their following us?”
“We can only hope.”
“Red, you aren’t going to get me killed are you?”
“I haven’t so far.”
“Good point.” Jayk stood and took off the breastplate he had was wearing. He kept the boiled-leather greaves and vambraces on. Though he wanted to travel light, it would be foolish to throw all the armor away.
“Are your arms alright?”
“Cut off some strips from the bottom of my cloak, will you,” Jayk said as he studied his wounds. “Once I bind them up, we’ll be ready to go.”
Red spit on Kroyn’s head as it lay on the ground and the two men set off for the Thrall Mountains a scant moment before the sun peaked over the horizon to take a look at what had been done.
****
Despite the size of the two large men travelling in the group, Peyt, Cloy, and Petyr were the first to reach the triangular-shaped mound that rose above the surrounding foothills. Tree-covered as it was, the three couldn’t see the top where a rock outcropping, looking like a fist with its index finger pointing to the sky, was found, an outcropping they had seen earlier from a vantage point that was farther off. Though they had reached their goal, the men didn’t cast caution aside. Since the others were headed for the same place, the men needed to be on the lookout for signs that would tell them whether their friends had been followed or not. Unaware that they were the first to arrive, the three kept their eyes open for any traps that were set for them by those who might have intercepted the others.
Moving through the shadows cast by the trees growing on the hill they were climbing, the men took their time working their way up to the stone outcropping that sat on the hill’s top. All went well, until the outcropping finally appeared beyond the last of the trees to separate them from their goal. That’s when Cloy’s muted voice was heard saying, “I heard something moving up in the rocks.”
“Look how steep they are,” Petyr replied in an equally quiet voice. “There can’t be any soldiers up there. And I doubt the whiteskins would hide themselves.”
“What about cretchym?”
“Aye, that could be, but it’s more likely a squirrel or racoon’s up there. Crows and eagles like to nest in rocks too.”
After rubbing his bald head with one of his meaty hands, Peyt finally spoke. “I think Petyr’s right. Our Ar Warl neighbors aren’t hiding up there. If they were, they would’ve showed up by now.”
Still, the three men stood motionless listening for other sounds, both those that came from the rock outcropping and from behind them.
“Could there be elves up there?” Cloy’s imagination had been busy trying to come up with an answer for the scrabbling sounds they heard, though no other noises followed.
“If there are, with the outcroppings height they’d have to be archers to take up such a position.” As tense as the situation was, Petyr couldn’t resist saying what he did. “But, I’ll be safe since I plan on using you as a shield.”
“Get serious Petyr.” Cloy was in no mood for banter.
And Petyr did get serious when the scrabbling sounds returned. The size of the animals that were seen moving about ruled out racoons, and for that matter, badgers and foxes too.
“What are those things?” Cloy hissed out his words as he reached for both his sword and long-knife.
“They look like hunchmen to me, though I’ve never seen any up close,” Peyt replied. With Jayk in charge of protecting Bridgewater it had been a long time since the beast-men tried to raid Bridgewater. And being a tavern owner, Peyt didn’t have an opportunity to meet them on the roads the merchants used to transport their goods.
Little did the men know the creatures that were leaping down the rock-outcropping were actually hunchman-human cretchym. Neither Peyt, Cloy, or Petyr were aware that the creatures’ arms were shorter than a hunchman’s usually were, though they were long by human standards, or that their l
egs were longer, their snout-like mouths shorter, and the manes that covered their heads less dense.
Since there were only four of them, the men decided to fight rather than run. The speed that the creatures displayed as the descended from the rock outcropping made them guess they couldn’t outrun the beasts even if they tried.
“Here we go boys,” Petyr shouted as he pulled out his own sword and long-knife and stepped forward to meet the hunchman-humans that jumped to the ground at the foot of the rocky-outcropping.
Without a threat being made or time for posturing taken, a fierce fight broke out that was filled with the type of shouting, snarling, and growling sounds that were commensurate with the energy being expended in the deadly struggle.
Cloy and Peyt’s natural strength enabled them to knock aside the jagged-edged blades that were swung at them and shove the creatures back when they tried to grab them with their free hand. The discrepancy in quickness made them vulnerable to glancing blows they were slow to intercept.
Petyr was at a loss on both accounts and it wasn’t long before it showed. After wounding one of the savage creatures, the willowy human was picked up by the hunchman-human he had skewered and thrown to the ground where the dying beast drove his jagged-edged blade through the boiled-leather breastplate that was to thin to repulse the desperate blow.
Seeing his friend fall, Cloy bellowed like an enraged bull and dove into the snarling enemy in front of him. Knocking the hunchman-human to the ground, Cloy stuck his long-knife into the beast’s abdomen time and again. Bent over as he was, another beast-man cretchym the big man didn’t see rammed his jagged-edge blade deep into Cloy’s exposed side.
Four of the original combatants were now dead, this left three to carry on the fight. With Peyt swinging his sword as savagely as he was, three quickly became two.
Driven by feral extincts that wanted the kill to be up close and personal, the last hunchman-human dropped his sword and grabbed Peyt in its clawed finger’s vice-like grip. With his knife hand being pinned to his side as it was, and with the creature pressing him backwards toward the rock-outcropping, Peyt’s sword was rendered useless. So, he dropped his weapons and latched onto the cretchym. Once Peyt’s back struck the rock, he pivoted his feet and pulled the creature sideways toward the stone he had hit. Kneeing the beast in the groan, Peyt continued to pull the creature around until he had the beast-man’s back against the stone that rose above them.
As savage as the creature was and as much as the thing bit and clawed his enemy, inflicting wounds that were far from insignificant, the hunchman-human was unaware that the fight was over. In close quarters as they were, Peyt was in his element. With balled up fists as big as soup bowls, the tavern owner began to hammer away at the beast who had never been taught to brawl like humans do. Again and again, Peyt’s fists pounded against the creature’s head like they had pounded against the heads of those who came into his tavern to make trouble back in Bridgewater, fists that had killed more men than he had slain with the sword he used to defend the village against the raiders that threatened it. But today, there was a difference between Peyt’s brawling in the tavern he owned and the fight he now fought. This time when he knocked his foe unconscious, he didn’t quit striking his adversary’s head until its face looked like the grapes that were trodden underfoot to make the wine Bridgewwater was famous for.
****
Everything was quiet now, except for the cries a single crow made as it was being drawn to the scent of spilled blood. Having pulled Petyr and Cloy’s bodies over to the rock he leaned against, Peyt sat with his arms wrapped around his friend’s shoulders and wept.
Seeing Peyt crying like he was, not certain why, even though their lifeless bodies lay against him, Petyr and Cloy’s spirits turned from the scene and began walking down the hill and away from the place where the battle was fought. Continuing on, not realizing why they were, the two headed off into the woods that lay east of the hilltop where Peyt mourned their deaths.
Strange as it might seem, the close friends were heard arguing over the source of the sounds they had heard coming from the rock-outcropping. With the memories of the fight being as vague as they were, the two spirits had returned to a moment they recalled with a measure of clarity.
Later that day, as the two walked along with strides where their feet didn’t touch the forest floor, Cloy and Petyr struggled to make sense of what had happened to them.
“Do you think were dead,” Cloy asked when he saw his feet never actually touched the ground.
“Aye, I think we are, though I don’t see any elf arrows sticking out of your back.”
“Where do you think we’re going?”
“To help our families, of course. That’s why were heading east… don’t you think?”
“I know Bridgewater’s in this direction and so are our families, but I’m not certain where were headed.”
“Aye, to tell you the truth, neither am I.”
Who could have guessed that spirits could be so talkative? But, as it turned out, the man they met later that night was grateful they were.
****
Surprised they weren’t gowing weary, though their sense of passing time was no longer what it once was, the spirits of the two men continued onward.
“What’s happening,” Cloy questioned his friend as a strong desire to change directions swept over him
“Something’s pulling on us like we’ve fallen into the Teal River. Should we resist or go with the flow? After all, drifting aimlessly along has been an aspiration of mine.”
“You know you’re not as funny as you once were,” Cloy said with a shrug.
“Aye, I’m losing my touch, aren’t I?” Looking at his vaporous fingers for a moment, he copied Cloy’s shrug before adding, “No jest intended.”
The spirits continued to wind their way up into the Thrall Mountains proper, until they came upon a campsite where an old man sat before a fire tending a rabbit he was roasting on a spit.
“I know that man,” Petyr remarked. “It’s Findyl the Wizard. He’s a witty one himself for being as old as he is.”
“Aye, that’s the old geezer alright,” Cloy’s laughter, as breathy as it was, echoed through the darkened greenwood.
With his back against the bole of a large tree, Findyl looked up as Cloy laughed.
“Can he hear us?” the big man asked in surprise.
“He just might be able to.” Petyr smiled as he moved toward the old wizard.
Of course, Findyl couldn’t hear them. They were dead after all. But he could feel their presence, since he was a wizard who was sensitive to his surroundings, those both natural and supernatural. With his experience in practicing necromancy being relegated to youthful experimenting in the Dark Arts he had long ago forsaken, because the blood of unwilling victims was needed to progress further in the practice, Findyl’s sensitivity to the presence of the departed was limited.
“Hey, Findyl,” Petyr said as he sauntered up to the old man, “it’s Petyr and Cloy. Can’t you see us? Can’t you hear us?”
Findyl put the spit with the roasted rabbit on it back on the forked branches he had arranged over the lively fire and studied the darkness filling the spaces between the trunks of the nearby trees. Then he lifted a hand covered with weathered skin and rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully. When Cloy went over and, to his own surprise, was able to knock one of the wooden forks holding the spitted rabbit in place askew, while Petyr tried kicking the wizard’s foot, Findyl reached into the large satchel he always carried with him and brought out a smooth blue stone he held up in his hand as he said, “Whoever’s here, please touch the stone if you want me to know your thoughts.”
Looking to Cloy for input, seeing him shrug, Petyr reached out and touched the stone and said, “Findyl it’s Petyr.”
“My Boy,” Findyl looked straight ahead like a blind man surrounded by others who were engaged in their own conversations, “I’m sorry to learn that you’ve died.”
“You’re sorry… how do you think me and Cloy feel?”
“Is Cloy here? Pleae ask him to touch the stone.”
After complying with the wizard’s request, Cloy said, “Aye, I died too and I’m no more happy about it than Petyr is.”
Aware that they were off fighting a war, Findyl imagined they could have been killed any number of ways, so he didn’t ask for the gruesome details regarding their deaths, rather, he cut straight to the chase and asked why they were there.
“I can’t rightly say,” Cloy replied. “It was like the smell of Momma’s cooking hooked our nostrils and drug us here.”
“I think the pull of a river’s current is more accurate,” Petyr said. “Though I must admit, Cloy’s description is pretty darn good.”
Laughing at the banter he heard in his mind, Findyl had to say, “Death hasn’t altered you much. You know, it’s usually a huge game changer.”
“Well, if one can’t laugh about their death, what can they laugh about?”
“Maybe that’s it Petyr?” Findyl rubbed one his wrinkled hands through his unkempt hair that looked like gray grass were growing out of his head as he gave a little more thought to an idea he had. “Maybe it’s your sense of humor that keeps your humanity from slipping away. Isn’ that why we love jesting so much. Even though it is oftentimes cruel and almost always debasing, I think if we weren’t able to laugh about our misfortune, we’d all go mad.”
“But my wit is disappearing,” Petyr said with a suddenly emotionless voice.
“You can say that again,” Cloy remarked. “He’s becoming as dull as a butter knife used to weed a garden.”
“You’re dull,” was the only quip Petyr could come up with, one that was so insipid it ended up proving Cloy’s point.