by A. Giannetti
Before Orgo could react to his presence, Elerian extended his right arm and cast a destruction spell. His third eye opened at once, revealing a cloak of crimson light that covered the massive Troll from crown to feet. When the golden orb Elerian had launched from his fingers reached Orgo’s huge chest, the destruction spell flared brightly and then vanished, deflected by the shield spell that protected the Troll.
“He does not appear to have mage sight but is still closely enough attuned to the magical energies to detect my spells whether I am visible or not,” was Elerian’s disappointed thought as he closed his third eye and drew out both of his knives.
“We can’t see you, Elf, but we can still find you easily enough,” Orgo rumbled softy to Elerian. “Grab him and crush the life from his body,” he ordered his grandsons who had turned around at the sound of their grandsire’s voice. “He'll not trick us and get away a second time.”
The young Trolls saw no one before them, but their noses told them exactly where Elerian stood. Along with their grandsire, they rushed forward, groping with great taloned fingers to seize Elerian, but they might as easily have tried to grasp the wind, for he evaded their massive hands with quick, fluid movements of his lithe body. Twisting, turning, and weaving about, he slashed left and right with his knives, inflicting shallow wounds that made only small demands on his power and slowed him not at all. As he gashed thighs, calves, and buttocks, black blood began to drip down the Trolls’ greenish, stony hides, but they refused to retreat, remaining grimly silent despite their injuries lest their cries attract other Trolls to the conflict.
High up on the ledge, Ascilius and the rest of the company watched the strange battle below them with anxious eyes. They could not see Elerian under the cloak of invisibility cast by his ring, but they were able to surmise his presence as the Troll’s pursued his invisible form. All of them were ready to fly down the rope which was still fastened to the pine growing out of the ledge the moment that Elerian called.
When a claw suddenly tugged lightly on his tied back hair, Elerian slipped away from the Trolls and retreated toward the forest on the far side of the clearing, afraid of pressing his luck further. Using their keen noses to track him, the Trolls subjected him to a barrage of stones as he retreated, obtaining their stony missiles from the plentiful supply of fist sized rocks scattered across the clearing. Despite not being able to see Elerian, they flung their stones so shrewdly that he would have gone down in an instant had he been visible. As it was, more than one stone whizzed uncomfortably close to his head and body before he finally slipped behind a massive oak tree.
“What stubborn creatures,” Elerian thought to himself as he advanced his right eye around the edge of the tree trunk protecting him from the Trolls’ missiles to survey his bleeding but undaunted adversaries. “If they will not retreat, then perhaps I can lead them away.” He began to taunt Orgo and his grandsons, hoping they would follow him into the forest so that Ascilius and the rest of his companions could escape from the ledge, but they made no move to pursue him.
“Stay here,” Orgo growled at his grandsons when they began to grow restive from Elerian’s insults, for no Troll likes to be called slow, fat, and dull. “He will either have to come to us to rescue his friends trapped on the ledge, or he can watch us pick them off when hunger and thirst force them down the cliff.”
“The old fellow is too crafty by far,” thought Elerian ruefully to himself as his keen ears caught Orgo’s words to his restive offspring. “He knows that he needs only to remain where he is to maintain his advantage over me. He has left me only one choice. I need to slay him and his grandsons, too, if they will not retreat after his death.”
Elerian considered hurling one of his knives at Orgo, but the distance combined with the quick reflexes of the Troll made a knife throw risky. He next thought of his new spell and how it might offer a way to bridge the gap between himself and the patriarch.
“I must be quick though,” he cautioned himself, “for Orgo knows about portals.”
Raising his right arm, Elerian drew on the power stored in his silver ring. His third eye opened as a small golden orb flew from his fingertips to take up a position in the air at the level of his eyes. There, it expanded into a gleaming circle the size of his head. A thin golden thread tethered the portal to Elerian’s right hand, feeding the charm the power it needed to maintain itself. Closing his magical eye, Elerian saw the ugly, cruel visage of Orgo on the other side of the portal, his green eyes widened by mingled surprise and consternation. The Troll could not see Elerian through the magical opening in front of his face, but as Elerian had feared, he had immediately recognized the odd, clear space before his eyes as a magical opening of some kind.
Before Orgo could react to the threat that had appeared so suddenly before him, Elerian thrust the knife in his left hand through portal, sinking Rasor into Orgo’s right eye, the twisting threads of argentum inlaid in its bright sides gleaming brightly as they drew power from his hand. As Rasor’s cross guard fetched up hard against Orgo’s bony eye socket, Elerian felt as if a hammer had struck him between the eyes. Involuntarily releasing Rasor’s hilt, he fell backwards, his portal vanishing as it slipped from his control. As from a great distance Elerian heard a thunderous roar, but a black curtain before his eyes obscured his vision. Too weak to move and unable to see, he remained where he had fallen.
“I hope that Ascilius and the rest of the company are able to drive off for the smaller Trolls,” thought Elerian hazily to himself. “If not, I will be easy prey for them if they come seeking revenge for the death of their grandsire.” On the edge of unconsciousness, he waited stoically to see what would happen next.
When Orgo unexpectedly fell backward, full-length on the ground, his grandsons stood in a stunned group around their prone grandsire, trying to comprehend how a knife had suddenly appeared in his right eye. Given a moment to recover, they might have sought Elerian out to revenge Orgo’s death, but when Ascilius saw the great Troll fall, he immediately decided that he had waited long enough on the ledge. Determined to get his fair share of the fighting, he cast the rope end off the ledge and immediately leaped after it, his left hand holding firmly to a bit of leather that he had already wrapped around the rope. As he flew down the cord, his speed and friction caused the pad in his left hand to hiss and heat up in his calloused palm, but he did not slow his descent. Above him, Dacien prepared to follow him but was delayed when Cordus and Cyricus unexpectedly began jostling each other to be next down the rope and ended up scuffling with each other. Both of them would have rolled off the ledge had Dacien and Triarus not got ahold of them and pulled them back. By then, Ascilius had thumped down on the ground behind the Troll brothers. Uttering a battle cry, red sparks flaring in the back of his dark eyes, he raised Fulmen in his right hand, determined to slay all three of the Trolls before him.
Upon hearing his war cry, the three young Trolls started badly before turning to confront this new threat. Faced with a fierce, bloodthirsty Dwarf in front, more enemies descending down from above, for Dacien was now flying down the rope after sorting out Cordus and Cyricus, and an invisible, dangerous opponent lurking nearby in the forest, the brothers took an entirely unexpected course of action. Wheeling about as one, they bolted across the clearing toward the forest.
“Stop you cowards,” roared Ascilius indignantly before setting out in furious pursuit, for he was determined to make someone pay for the many injuries he had suffered at the hands of Orgo. Trolls, however, are much faster than Dwarves are, especially young, terrified Trolls who fear for their lives. Flying across the clearing in great leaps, the three brothers left the Dwarf far behind and vanished into the forest, one of them passing within a few feet of Elerian, who had recovered enough to sit up against a nearby tree. Still unable to stand, he felt a twinge of guilt as he listened to the frightened voices of the brothers fading into the forest, even though he had fully intended to slay all them if he could.
“They are orphans now, like my
self, on their own in the world,” he thought to himself, feeling a reluctant sympathy for their plight, for with enemies like Horca about, he doubted that they would survive for long. Ascilius now attracted his eye, for he had stopped at the edge of the forest, cursing and swinging his hammer angrily through the air.
“Let them go, Ascilius,” advised Elerian, fearful that the furious Dwarf might actually follow the Trolls into the wood. His disembodied voice rising up from a point only a few feet to Ascilius’s right, caused the Dwarf to start nervously.
“I am neither angry enough nor foolish enough to follow three Trolls into the forest at night,” Ascilius grumbled in an irritated voice. “Now show yourself, confound you. I feel as if I am talking to a ghost.” A moment later, after he sent away his silver ring, Elerian appeared, still sitting on the ground.
“This is a poor time to be lying about,” said Ascilius with a frown. “You ought to have stopped those Trolls before they escaped into the forest. If they blab about us, every Troll in the mountains around us will be on our track in a few hours.”
“I am recovering from slaying Orgo, not resting,” replied Elerian somewhat testily as he rose to his feet.
“How could a knife throw, even across such a great distance, be so tiring?” inquired Dacien who had now arrived next to Ascilius. Like the rest of his companions, he thought that Elerian had hurled Rasor from the edge of the forest. Elerian did not reply at once, for across the clearing he saw that Cordus and Cyricus were just now touching their feet to the ground while Triarus was preparing to descend the rope.
“Stay there, Triarus!” he shouted. “Send down our gear before you come down.” Turning to Dacien, Elerian said wryly, “I did not throw my knife, Dacien. I stabbed Orgo through a portal, but I badly underestimated the amount of power that it would take to slay him. The blow rendered me helpless so that I was not able to slay the others as I had planned.”
“We should have attacked them together,” grumbled Ascilius, who was still upset at being balked of his revenge on the Trolls. “Then none of them would have escaped.”
“The younger ones escaped because you could not hold your tongue,” replied Elerian dryly. “If you had kept quiet, you could have brained the three of them before they ever turned around when you descended the rope.”
“A war cry is entirely proper before a battle,” replied Ascilius loftily. “At three to one odds, I expected them to fight me, not run off like frightened rabbits.”
“There is no point in quarrelling about what happened,” said Dacien reasonably before Elerian could continue the argument. “We ought to be on our way as soon as possible.” As if to emphasize the danger they were in, drums began to boom deep in the valleys to the east. Falling silent, but still casting contentious looks at each other, Elerian and Ascilius joined the others in taking up their packs, which Triarus had already sent down from the ledge. When the little man climbed down after lowering the last of their gear, Elerian raised his right arm, the line cascading down around his feet as he sheered to rope with a parting spell at the point where it hung over the lip of the ledge.
After Elerian retrieved the cord, Ascilius led the company west toward the pass, running along the ridge tops before him with no thought of concealment now, for the air was filled with the boom of Troll drums. The sun was rising over the peaks of the mountains behind them when the company reached the pass into the Broken Lands. Walking now so that Dacien, Triarus, and Elerian, who was still not fully recovered from Orgo’s deathblow, could regain their wind, Ascilius led the way through a stony defile where no trees grew. When he and his companions reached the far side of the pass, they were able to see far into the lands before them. The mountain they stood on fell away into rugged foothills that soon gave way to the green sea of trees that was the Broken Lands. Far to the west, a line of dark clouds was drifting east, obscuring the blue sky overhead and casting a shadow over the lands beneath them. Still opting for speed over the cover of an illusion spell, Ascilius led the company at a fast trot into the dark forest that covered the side of the mountain.
“We must get as far into the Broken Lands as possible before dark,” thought Ascilius to himself just as a tall Uruc suddenly sprang out from behind a huge, rough barked chestnut squarely into his path. To his right and left, Ascilius saw the pale faces of more Goblins appear in the shadows under the trees. Silently berating himself for not anticipating that the pass might be guarded, he rushed at the Uruc, sweeping him aside and off his feet with his shield. His companions followed behind his broad back as Ascilius broke through the thin line of Mordi who had appeared behind the fallen Goblin captain, mowing down their slender forms with his shield and powerful shoulders. Before the remaining Goblins could rush up and surround them, Ascilius and his companions broke out into the open forest behind the cordon of Mordi.
“It goes against the grain to flee instead of fighting,” thought Ascilius to himself as he began to run flat out down the side of the mountain, “but speed is our only hope now.” Behind him, his companions matched his pace, but Elerian, who ran last, wondered how long Triarus and Dacien, too, could keep up. The miles they had covered since leaving Iulius had hardened them, but could they outlast the Mordi pursuing them?
“I may tire myself,” he thought grimly to himself, for he still felt the effects of the blow he had struck against Orgo. Glancing quickly over his left shoulder, Elerian saw that the forest behind him was now full of Mordi, their eyes gleaming redly in their pale faces as they ran through the shadows under the trees. Running among them were black four-footed shapes, canigrae and perhaps lupins too, all of them baying eagerly as they followed the scent of the company.
By exerting themselves to the utmost, Ascilius and his companions managed to maintain a slight lead over the Goblins pursuing them, but when they reached the border of the Broken Lands at the foot of the mountain, Triarus began to tire, his face slicked with sweat as he drew in great gasps of air. Glancing back again, Elerian saw that the swiftest Mordi were almost at his heels now, their slender forms flitting silently between the trees.
“They will overtake us soon,” he thought worriedly to himself. Resolving to delay their pursuers a bit, he drew his bow from its wrappings. When a glance over his left shoulder revealed that Elerian had his bow in hand, Ascilius immediately divined his intention and began to fall back, at the same time encouraging the rest of his companions to continue west at the fastest pace that they could manage.
“Lead the others away,” urged Elerian as Ascilius drew close.
“Lead them yourself,” suggested the Dwarf with a frown. “If you are going to stop and fight, then I mean to crush a few Goblin skulls.” Suddenly whirling about, he confronted the closest Mordi who was closing on him with a black bladed knife in each hand. His weapons did him little good, for in an instant Ascilius crushed his helm and skull with a blow from Fulmen. Behind him Elerian stopped and strung his bow in one fluid, unhurried motion. A second Goblin now appeared on Ascilius’s left, but even as the Dwarf raised his hammer to strike him down, the Mordi fell backward with an arrow in his right eye. Twice more, in quick succession, the same thing happened.
“Stop that,” shouted Ascilius angrily as he spun about to face Elerian. “Let me have at least every other one!”
“We had best be on our way again or you will have more Goblins around you than even Fulmen can deal with,” replied Elerian grimly. Looking back, Ascilius saw that a great pack of Mordi was now approaching through the trees with their hounds by their sides. Reluctantly, Ascilius retreated before them, Elerian running at his left shoulder. Although their companions were out of sight now, Elerian knew that they could not be far ahead. Every now and then as he ran, hoping to slow their pursuers, he paused for an instant to turn and loose an arrow at some Mordi who foolishly drew too close. Each time he released his bowstring, a Goblin fell dead with an arrow through one of his eyes, but it did little good, for another Mordi soon moved up to take his place, each one determ
ined to be the first to draw blood from some member of the company.
“Take to the trees and save yourself, Elerian,” urged Ascilius grimly when Triarus and the others appeared ahead of him and Elerian, all of them running noticeably slower. “The Mordi will flank us soon, for our companions are tiring. If they come at us from all sides, they cannot help but overwhelm us, for we are too few to resist them.”
“Smell the air!” replied Elerian, his voice suddenly hopeful.
Preoccupied with their desperate situation, Ascilius had taken little notice of anything else, but now he became aware, for the first time, that the air smelled damp, and the wind was commencing to blow from the west, whipping about the branches and leaves over his head. The canopy blocked out the sky, but Ascilius was certain that it was growing darker under the trees. Evidently the storm clouds they had seen from the pass were drawing close.
“Not quickly enough, though,” the Dwarf thought to himself, for only a few feet ahead of him, Triarus was flagging badly. “We will have to make a stand soon,” he decided, for he refused to entertain any thoughts of abandoning the little man from the west. Ascilius had barely formed this grim thought in his mind before he and his companions suddenly broke out into one of the clearings that dotted the Broken Lands. The blue sky that had greeted them that morning was now covered with black clouds, and a strong wind flattened the turf covering the clearing. Great bolts of jagged lightning suddenly split the dark sky overhead, followed moments later by the rolling boom of thunder. As if someone had suddenly opened a floodgate, heavy rain began sluicing down from the sky, blinding the eyes of all the company and drenching them to the skin. Following his innate sense of direction, Elerian took the lead now, walking instead of running, for the driving rain limited his vision to a few feet. Behind him followed his companions, each of them holding onto the belt of the one in front of him.
The rain effectively ended the Goblin pursuit. Unable to see, the Mordi milled about the clearing while their hounds sniffed uselessly at the ground, for the rain had instantly washed away the scent trail of the company. When Elerian reached the forest on the far side of the clearing, he turned north, reasoning to himself that when the Goblins resumed their pursuit, they would not expect him and his companions to travel north toward the Trofim. The rain slowed only a little under the trees, falling in cold sprays and streams from the branches overhead each time they were whipped back and forth by the raw wind. The company donned their cloaks as they followed Elerian, the heavy wool warming them even when it was soaked through. Able to see each other now, they followed Elerian in single file for what seemed like hours. Ascilius was the first to notice that the ground had begun to slope upward.