by Peter Plasse
“In order to be a part of the Agden Wolf family, you have to honor the code they have. Everything is for the well being of the pack. Everybody makes sure that everybody else is taken care of. It’s a Wolf thing.”
Patriachus and Brutus met with the council of elders. Brutus told them of how they had come upon Jacqueline and her cat, how Roly had noticed that she was wearing the blood-red stone on her neck on the finest of golden chain, and how they had all wondered about whether or not she might be the one named in Prophecy. He went on to explain that she and her cat had bargained in good faith with their only food for nothing more than the right to be heard, and how they had all questioned them to decide if they were worthy of adoption into the Agden Wolf family, saying that all had voted yes with the exception of Stefen, who had died attacking the Troll. He then went on to explain that the only food they had been able to catch in the last several days was another bird brought down by the cat, who, according to the Wolf way, had turned it over without so much as taking a bite, so all might share in the nourishment. These were honorable souls, argued Brutus, and the decision to admit them to the Agden Wolf family was the right one.
Those in the council of elders knew that there was nothing private about their conversations, and that many of the Wolves in the pack were following every word with a hungry belly, as well as the fact that most had a mate in need of food in the faraway Southland.
In the end, it was decided that the two Humans and the cat would be spared.
“But what of the Troll?” asked Brutus.
Now it really heated up. He had, after all, killed one of them, and despite Brutus’s arguing that it had been in self-defense, the council voted that he would die and his body dedicated to first feeding Stefen’s mate, and therefore his pups yet unborn, and thereafter as many of the females in the south as possible.
“No!” screamed Jacqueline. “This Troll did not kill anybody. Stefen killed himself. He called to me from between life and death and said that I was right and he was wrong. He said he was sorry.”
“Is this true?” Patriachus asked Brutus.
“I cannot say,” he answered honestly. “But I know the girl would not lie.”
“Well, what says the council?” asked Patriachus. “The daylight is wasting.”
The council argued the matter for several minutes. The votes were four for Forrester to live and five for him to die.
Now in a panic, Jacqueline screamed to Orie. “The vote was five to four. They’re going to kill him, Orie! They’re going to kill him!”
“Wait a minute!” shouted Orie, all eyes turning to the point from which his voice sounded. Jacqueline translated. “There was a vote. I challenge any one of you who voted to kill him to a fight to the death. If I win, the vote is tied, and Forrester lives. Yeah, that’s his name: Forrester Wiley Ragamund. I thought you should know that he has a name. You know. Before you kill him and eat him and all. Anyway, if I lose, do what you will.”
“Orie, I cannot let you do that,” said Forrester.
“I don’t see that either of us has much of a choice here, Forrester. These are not exactly charted waters we’re in, are they.”
Patriachus interrupted them, saying, “That would be a fight that would be completely unfair. We cannot see you. How could we possible defeat you in a fight?”
Orie looked at Jacqueline, who translated.
He walked fearlessly towards the Agden Wolf leader, his footsteps kicking up leaves and small sticks on the forest floor as he walked. “Unfair?” he asked as Jacqueline continued to translate. “Unfair? I’ll tell you what’s unfair. Unfair is hundreds of you against one of us. That’s unfair. Unfair is us being on your world in the first place and having to play by your rules. That’s unfair. I’ll tell you what. You don’t want to fight me, fight him alone, one on one. No weapons. Oh, wait. He would win, wouldn’t he? Too big. Too strong.
“My sister tells me that what you are all about is honor, that each and every one of you would sacrifice himself rather than bring harm upon the pack. We,” he drew arrows in the dirt to Jacqueline, Forrester, and a little one for Cinnamon, “are no different. We, too, hold honor supreme among all principles. Respect for all life forms.” Jacqueline had to tell her brother to slow down so she could continue to translate everything he was saying. “A sense of doing what is right. These are the things that matter most where I come from. Now where do you get off thinking that murdering my friend is doing what is right? He has done nothing except defend himself against attack.
“Because he is something to eat? Because he is food? Maybe he could help you with your food problem, and provide you with a hundred times the food that is contained in his body. What good are you doing the pack then? Huh?
“Any way you slice it, it’s murder, and murder is always wrong.”
“Trolls have been murdering Agden Wolves since before we were born!” came an angry shout from the pack. Several voices joined in. Orie, of course, heard only growls so Jacqueline translated.
“And you would hold him responsible for the actions of others? That is nonsense, and you know it. There is not a shred of sense to the notion of holding him responsible for the past actions of others. But this Troll,” he said, retracing the arrow in the dirt that pointed to Forrester, “has done not a thing against you. I say again, he defended himself against attack.”
“He killed Stefen,” one of the Wolves barked loudly from the back of the pack. “Stefen was my friend. I will fight him.”
The pack parted once again as one more Wolf made his way to the center of the rough circle. “I will fight him, no weapons, to the death. We will end this. He dies, we eat him. I die. Same. Enough talk.”
He started circling Forrester with a vicious growl. The pack closest to them all moved back, forming two rows for the fight that was about to happen directly in front of them. Jacqueline and Cinnamon heard several hushed whispers and muted conversations among the Wolves around them as the Wolf, whose name they hadn’t yet learned, walked slowly back and forth in front of him, edging closer and closer to where he could lunge at him. Wolves were known to be able to take down and kill an adult Troll. Foam began to appear on the muzzle of the huge Wolf as he crouched low and snarled.
He sprang.
He went straight for Forrester’s slightly outstretched arm. Too fast for the Human eye to follow, it was merely a blur, and Forrester barely had time to lift it out of the way. Even so, the Wolf seized a good-sized bite of skin, muscle, and sinew with his teeth, causing a large show of blood. Forrester gasped and managed to deliver a weak, ineffectual blow to the back of the animal as it lurched away uninjured. Turning back towards his now wounded enemy, the Wolf took his time swallowing the piece of Forrester’s arm. He almost seemed to be wearing a wicked smile as he chewed on it.
Forrester never reached for his blade, which he calmly removed, slipping the baldric over his shoulders and hanging it on a nearby thorny shrub. The fact that he chose to honor the terms by surrendering his weapon was not lost on the rest of the Wolves, as evidenced by the murmuring going on in the heads of Jacqueline and Cinnamon.
After hanging it up, he faced the Wolf. “Is this the only way?”
In answer the Wolf started circling again. He wore the same snarl, but this time there was not a sound except that of his feet scuffing the forest floor as he began the dance with death.
Orie hollered, “This is not how it has to be. Jacqueline! Get them to stop. Come on. You said you are one of them. Make them stop!”
Jacqueline screamed her thoughts out, furiously probing to get into the mind of the Wolf who had bitten Forrester. When she couldn’t, she ran forward and put herself between the Wolf and the Troll, holding up her hand. “Stop this foolishness right now!” she screamed.
“Get out of the way or die, little girl,” snarled the Wolf as he bared his fangs at her, saliva dripping off them like water from a leaky spigot. Forrester took a step forward and swatted her out of the way, knocking her roughly
to the ground where she rolled to a stop.
“Now,” he said, “I am, regrettably, going to have to kill you.”
He crouched low. It’s almost impossible to think of how low he managed to crouch his large frame. Bending forward at the knees and hips, he assumed an almost sprinter’s stance. This time when the Wolf sprang at him, Forrester sprang too, not forward, but up, so that for an instant he hovered in space over the animal, whereupon he delivered a crushing blow with the side of his huge hand to the base of the Wolf’s neck.
The Wolf fell like a stone at his feet. He picked him off the ground and applied pressure to his throat.
“Don’t kill him!” cried Jacqueline.
“I won’t,” said Forrester, “But he does need to stay asleep long enough for them to drag him away from here. Let him go home and tend the she-Wolves in the Southland.”
He released his grip on the Wolf’s neck and stood. Jacqueline repeated what he had said to Patriachus.
“You know of this?” he asked. “You know of our she-Wolves in the Southland?”
Jacqueline relayed the question.
Forrester turned to him.
“You know,” he said, as Jacqueline translated, “we each know lots of things. Maybe we should share some of them.
“Meanwhile, if food is an issue, very soon it will not be. The mother of all battles is about to be fought at The Gate.
“You will not have a food problem for long.”
Maxilius Bravarus knew he was being followed. He also knew that they were slowly but surely closing in on him. A hawk had suggested it days before, and by the way it had flown, he had known they were still coming after him and approximately how far behind him they were. True to their tracking skills, they were on his trail at sunrise, unrelenting, and pushed on harder with the passage of every minute, determined to have him before the sun went down.
He, like all Trolls, was pathologically afraid of the water, being unable to swim a stroke, but he had a plan. He also knew that it was only a matter of hours before they caught him, and in less than a day he would be in a boiling pot.
He arrived at the edge of the Slova River midmorning on a flat-out sprint. He began to hack away at a giant tree that he thought he might be able to make water-bound with a good hard shove once he had felled it and trimmed it properly. So he cut and he chopped. Down and again his giant sword flashed in the morning light, large chunks of tree flying all about as he grunted and sweated with the effort. Finally, it toppled. He had been at it for well over an hour now, and he knew they were getting close. He practically dove into the water and began to take off the first of two big limbs at the top because they were hanging up in the shallows. Off came the first and he heard them. Screaming wildly, and beating on an attack-drum, they tore along the riverside trail in a frenzy.
General Vladimir Dumfe hung back and let the soldiers do the soldiering. Sliphen Wedor ’eum had arrived the night before, and they had stayed far to the rear, drinking spirits all night and congratulating each other on a mission well done, and planning how they were going to spend some of the wealth that the Emperor would be sure to lavish upon them as a reward for their brave and efficient capture of the renegade commander. With these thoughts playing in their minds, they pursued their quarry, howling in anticipation of the kill. Mayhem ensued as the troops charged towards him. He never glanced up as he continued to slash at the last barrier between himself and certain death. “Four more, three, two, one… ”
There. He was through. Using muscles powered by the fuel of pure fright, he gave the giant trunk a mighty heave and clambered aboard. The log began to lurch to and fro as the swift current tugged forcefully at it.
The first three to arrive heaved spears and even some large rocks at Maxilius who rolled off the log's far end to shield himself from the bombardment. Spurred on by the angry screams of their approaching squad leader, they took a running jump towards the floating timber in a last-ditch effort to capture the escapee. Somehow, they managed to reach and grab ahold of the felled tree, now pitching madly in the river’s waters. Each struggled to pull themselves aboard. The squad left behind at the shoreline was soon far out of sight, all of them waving their swords high and shouting encouragement to the three drifting away aboard this makeshift raft.
Maxilius worked his way carefully towards the opposite end and waited, his sword drawn in his right hand, and the large, spiked mace dangling from his left, with about eight feet of chain. As the log tilted and swayed in the river, he stared them down, his eyes on fire. “You know you will never get to me now,” he called out, “unless you are carrying a bow and some arrows that I have not seen.
“I say this to you then. I renounce Leopold Malance Venomisis as my Emperor and I will fight to the death anybody who would stand with him. Join me. Join me today and help get us out from under the rule of this pig of a Troll. He is scum. He is living garbage.
“Fight for something worth fighting for. Fight for honor. Fight for truth. Fight for loyalty, yes, but do not mistake loyalty for blindness. Would you be loyal to one who would torture your own child because it makes him smile? Would you surrender to him your father’s arm because it pleases him to cut it off? Would you fight for a Troll who, who butchers and destroys other free races solely because he can?
“I tell you lads, he has to die, and I am going to do my very best to kill him, or at least be part of the effort to see to it that he takes it in the neck. That’s the way of it. You know you can’t possibly kill me. In fact, if I chose to, I could kill you all. I,” he looked at the mace that hung on its tether, “have the mace.”
With a flick of his wrist, he buried the deadly spikes into the log about ten inches from the face of the Troll nearest him.
“What say you?”
In the predawn stillness of the day that was about to begin, Captain Pilrick and Blake knelt before the coals of the firepit. Blake idly poked at them, causing them to spark and spit as they reluctantly gave birth to a small flame that he fed with small bits of wood until there was a small cook-fire. He hooked a piece of venison onto the tip of a metal skewer and held it in the flames where it began to sizzle. Captain Pilrick did the same, and they knelt there, turning their meat.
“You don’t find it ironic that we are in the absolute middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing except mountains, forest, and sky, and messengers now tell us that you and I are allies? That the Gnomes, Humans, Elves, and Dwarves now fight as one? This doesn’t strike you as particularly ironic? Imagine that. Almost makes me glad that we didn’t deliver you to the Troll cooking pots after all.” He smiled broadly.
“Don’t remind me,” said Blake. “And more importantly, don’t remind Jessica. Anyway, I’ll stick to healing the ones you military guys hack and gouge.
“But what I can’t figure out for the life of me is how it all got to this state. What caused the fall of the Great Wall? How did it come apart? What happened? Does anybody know?”
“What I have heard, and the details are not clear, is that one day the top part of it started to disintegrate.
“It is said that the uppermost face was originally formed with the magic of wizards and the power of the Elves. This was added to the base, the stonework of which was done by the Dwarves. The wizards, they say, actually melted the mother rock of the mountain herself, using metamorphosis spells of transmutation and the like. The Elves supposedly supplied the power for this, which they were somehow able to harness from the earth, sun, wind, and water, the magic of which dates back to ancient times. It is called the Bindu-warding art of magic and spell, or something like that. Anyway, whatever the cause was, it … it just crumbled.”
“I remember the first day we saw it. Jessica and I rode up from the front with some idiot named Hemlock Simpleton, the one who engineered this whole thing. A nitwit, if you ask me. We were being chased by Gnomes, I think. It might have been Trolls. Anyway, the upper aspect looked like it was made of sheer glass. It must have been a hundred feet high. You co
uld tell to look at it that it could never be breached … ”
There was a pause in the conversation.
“But when you think about it, what does all this matter? The Wall is down. You can’t unscramble a scrambled egg. The focus needs to be on fixing it. Plain and simple. It lasted for hundreds of years, thousands, maybe. Now it’s broken and needs repair. That’s it.
“By the way, where are we anyway?”
“Yesterday we crossed over the border into Vultura. We are coming up on the city of Stihl. The same runners that brought us the message that we are now allies have told us that we are going to be folded into the Stihl Clan to take the fight to the Trolls. We will be traveling south. The Ravenwild forces have attacked the Trolls down by King’s Port, and the Trolls will be mounting a counterattack from the north in an attempt to flank them as they retreat. We will attempt to disrupt that counterattack. You and Jessica are now free to go, whenever and wherever you choose, but I would think you would want to remain with us until we can try and get some news as to the whereabouts of your daughter.”
“As the kids would say,” said Blake, “Ya think?”
Atop the Great Wall of Belcourt, overlooking the giant breach, were the five Ravenwild wizards-of-the-first-school, each of them masters in conjuring and spell. All were presently wondering if the magic had waned to the point that it would be helpful to any significant degree in repairing the damage. It was unbelievable that this could be, but such a thing as a simple levitation spell, for the obvious purpose of lifting of heavy objects, was no longer easily accomplished. It was mostly exhausting and mostly not doable. Raising as light a load as a large bag of oats now took the combined efforts of all five of them, and they were hardly able to sustain it.
As they stood, studying on the problem and pondering their dilemma, a messenger sent by Titan Mobst approached them. He arrived panting and out of breath.