Greyfax Grimwald

by Niel Hancock

  “But when shall I be able to speak with General Greymouse, sir?” asked Otter, so close to his quest’s end, yet further than if he had still been snug in his faraway holt by the river.

  “We’ll see, trooper, we’ll see. Now we must be off. There’s much to do, and you shall need your strength.”

  The colonel moved away, motioning them after him, and the three made their way along the littered company streets, now pocked and covered with fallen tents and men, and through the busy work of clearing and carrying away the wounded and dead, they marched to the large tent that was the headquarters for General Greymouse. Otter saw one of the walls was torn and shredded from a blast.

  Inside, men moved and worked around tables of maps, and mock battle sites, speaking tersely, handing slips of paper bade and forth, and as the colonel came in, all stood quickly to attention.

  “Carry on, men,” snapped the colonel, going on through the bustling room. At the tent flap of his compartment, he halted.

  “Denwild, these men are to be used as runners. Give them something to eat, then put them on duty.”

  “Yes sir,” said Denwild.

  “And see if you can’t round up a decent uniform for this fellow,” he added, indicating Otter. “I won’t have him going about sloppy.” The colonel disappeared behind the flap.

  “It looks like you’ve been drafted,” laughed Flewingam.

  Otter did not think the matter funny at all, and whistled his disapproval of Flewingam’s jest in his own tongue. He wondered what the gruff colonel would say if he knew he now had one furry, gray, very unhappy otter in his service.

  “Would probably ask if I were a general,” he said aloud, getting into the drab fatigue uniform Denwild had brought him.

  “At least it will make an interesting entry in the lore book,” he consoled himself, “If I ever get the chance to write it.”

  At that moment Denwild approached and handed him a sealed brown parcel

  “Take this to the captain of the fifth squadron of field guns. They shouldn’t be hard to find. They wear the insignia of a cannon over their left shoulders.”

  “I’d better go with him to make sure,” offered Flewingam.

  “All right, but be quick. We’ve many orders to send out, and will need you back here.”

  Otter and Flewingam set off at a rapid walk in the direction of the gunnery captain’s battery.

  From beyond the rim of low hills that ran down ward into the valley below, out of sight, came the crashing flurry of many men joined in a heavy fight. The steady popping of rifles swelled to a deafening crescendo, broken occasionally by numerous bumping bursts of grenade or shell.

  “At least,” Otter offered up a logical answer to the question that troubled his mind, “I’m not there.”

  In reply, a burst of angry, fiery, buzzing sounds began crackling about his ears.

  “Run,” shouted Flewingam. “They’ve broken through somewhere.”

  Leaning forward, and moving faster than he thought man legs could carry him, he saw away off to his right a line of grotesque soldiers approaching, clad all in black uniforms, firing their weapons steadily at him. He reached the safety of a large rock and fell across Flewingam.

  “How do you like the life of a soldier?” he gasped, looking up at Otter’s panting form.

  Otter had no time for reply, for immediately behind them, they heard the sound of more firing, growing heavier, until at last it was a steady, pulsing roar in their ears.

  Raising his head cautiously, Otter watched as the reinforcements sent from their camp fell upon the intruding enemy and forced them slowly into retreat. The air all about them was alive with the crackling, popping sound, and it looked to Otter as if the world were filled with the flying lead darts. Flewingam sat calmly behind the protective arm of the boulder, waiting until they could move on again.

  “Enough excitement for you?” laughed Flewingam, gravely.

  “I would prefer less of it, friend. Man’s amusement appeals little to my sense of adventure. I’d prefer a good frisk of a swimming trip, or at most, a scamper or two in some quick flow of river rapid.”

  “You speak strangely, Otter. You’re as odd a man as ever I’ve chanced acquaintance with, meaning no harm. All the tales you’ve told me seem fairy-book stories for children. Flewingam finished, listening a moment, then raised himself. “But come, well speak more of that latter. Now we must make a break for it while we have the chance.”

  The two set off in a crouching run, away from the receding fight behind them.

  They found the gunnery captain after a brief search, delivered their message, took his answer, and returned cautiously to the headquarters tent, giving Denwild the brown folder from the captain.

  “The colonel wants a word with you,” he said, looking sternly at Otter.

  “What does he want of me?” he asked, feeling out of place in his strange new clothing.

  “He didn’t tell me,” snapped Denwild.

  “More questions, I suppose.” Otter resigned himself, and marched smartly into the colonel’s private quarters.

  The colonel sat at a paper-strewn desk, looking important, and shuffling about a bunch of official documents. “Come in, and stand at ease. I’ll be with you in a moment.” His voice took on an air of kind wisdom.

  Otter stood fidgeting before the desk, wondering if it would be proper or not to change forms while this man spoke. He wondered what Froghorn would advise him to do if he were here.

  “I should imagine he’s capering about off somewhere far beyond this mess,” he decided gloomily, speaking aloud.

  “Who might he be?” The colonel took up his unending, annoying habit of speaking only in questions.

  “Fairingay, sir,” answered Otter.

  “I was going to ask you about him and this other man you mentioned. Grimwald, wasn’t it?” The colonel rolled a pencil about on the desk top, and Otter, thinking it looked like an amusing game, reached a hand-paw to join, then checked himself quickly. Men were not easy to play with, and hated to share their fun. He forced himself to keep still.

  “Yes, Grimwald, sir.”

  “How is it that these two men knew our whereabouts? And how came you to find us so easily?”

  “I came upon my friend wounded, Flewingam, who’s outside there, not more than three days ago. He was kind enough to show me where the camp lay.”

  I “Was he alone?”

  “Yes sir, alone and wounded, and if I had not chanced upon him, I dare say he would have been done for. If not by his hurt, then by the Gorgolac raiders who discovered us.”

  The colonel listened intently, and was silent a moment.

  “There is enough truth to what you say to lead me to think you’re lying,” came his harsh, low accusation. “All these tall yarns about men who sent you and having to see General Greymouse doesn’t pull the rug over my eyes. I think you’ve come from the enemy, to scout us out. But you were caught dead to rights, before you could escape back and report.” The colonel chuckled triumphantly. “And to think I gave you the perfect means to make your break. What made you come back? You could have gotten away clean if you’d kept on.”

  “Escape to where, sir? I came to see General Greymouse, and I’ll go nowhere until I relate to him the message Froghorn sent him.”

  “You’re right there, spy-tongue, you’ll be going nowhere at all, except before the firing squad. After, of course, a fair hearing of the evidence against you.” The colonel paused, leering at him. “Denwild,” he bellowed, “take him away.”

  Denwild came in with two other armed men, who grasped Otter firmly, and before he could speak, they pulled him outside, where Flewingam was also captured, standing between two more guards.

  “Take them down to the quartermaster’s,” ordered Denwild. “They have a stout tent there that will hold them.”

  Flewingam and Otter were marched briskly away, rifle barrels prodding their faltering feet onward.

  At the quartermaster’s
supply tent, they were thrust inside the dark, crate-filled room, and a scowling soldier left at the door to watch them.

  Flewingam sighed.

  “I guess we’re in the soup now,” he said sadly. “It was a darker deed than we knew, when General Greymouse was wounded. Our colonel has long aspired to high command, but he never stood a chance as long as General Greymouse was well. Even I, who detest the fighting, hold Greymouse in high esteem. He is a very wise man, except for the fact that he’s a general.”

  “My friend spoke highly of him,” offered Otter, “and his judgment of men is far superior to mine.” Otter paced toward the door, to be met with the ugly barrel of a rifle poked at him. “As far as I’m concerned, being a superior judge of men is the last thing in the world I seek. All of them appear bent upon their own destruction, and let ‘em, I say, for all the good will they have for me.” He returned and sat down heavily.

  “They won’t shoot us,” said Flewingam. “At least not while General Greymouse lives. Even our friend the colonel wouldn’t run such a risk of displeasing him with that.” Flewingam sat down beside him.

  “Cheer up, friend, at least we have safe cover, and no need to go about out there, where we might be hurt. And now we have time to pass, and you can spin me more of your odd ales.” He smiled warmly at Otter.

  Otter agreed that they were, for the moment, out of harm’s way, and being heartened at that, he began his tale again, and talked long into the afternoon.

  Flewingam did not interrupt him, but at times the noise of the battle drowned his speech, although these harsh sounds seemed to be dying away as Otter drew near the part of his story where he’d met Flewingam in the ruined farmhouse, and as night approached, and the battle ranged farther away, he finished. Flewingam opened his mouth to comment, or question Otter about some point or other, when the tread of marching feet drew up before the door of the tent

  “Prisoners arise and come with us,” ordered a gruff voice, and they were escorted away to eat, then to the headquarters tent, where the colonel wished to question them further. There they learned General Greymouse had recovered enough to talk, and after the colonel had told him of the strange capture of the two spies, the general had sternly rebuked him, and ordered him to bring the two men to his bedside. Otter, at last at journey’s end for the moment, was led in to see the great man.

  The Darkness

  Begins

  to Gather

  “Loc Alla Dula

  Indomine”

  By forced march, Dwarf drew near the first man settlement Otter and Bear had passed through by early evening. Darkness was lingering above the pale last glow of light when he stepped resolutely up to the barred gate and called out loudly.

  “Hail, friends, Broco, Lore Master, Lord UnderEarth, seeks to pass into your city.”

  An alarm went up with a great jangling beat behind the walls, and a rapid volley of shots exploded from the firing posts, sending Broco scuttling to the safety of the ditch that bordered the road.

  “That’s how you’ll pass our gates, scumlick,” laughed a cruel, lisping voice.

  Dwarf fumed in the snow-filled bottom of his shelter. “Drat and dwarf curse on the bunch of them,” he huffed, his hat tumbled down over his eyes. “I’ll teach them better manners for it,” he mumbled, removing his hat, spinning it on his hand. An old dwarfish rune he remembered from Tubal’s lore book came to his mind, and he repeated the words, made the proper motion with his hat, and sat back to wait.

  The harsh rasp of a voice called out again. “We’re ready now to welcome you, filthbreath. Come, my comrades and I haven’t eaten all day. You’ll at least fill half our cooking pot,” it sneered. A grinding noise followed, as the great bolt was shot back to open the gate.

  Dwarf grew uneasy, trying to remember if he had spoken the entire spell. If he had left something undone, he would be in for it now, for two black-clad, misshapen men, or at least half-men forms, came forward out of the gate toward his hiding place, their firearms ready in their hands.

  Before Dwarf could repeat the ritual, they had dragged him roughly from the ditch.

  “He don’t look more than a mouthful,” complained Lakmog, picking Broco up by his ear. Dwarf twisted in pain, but the man-beast’s iron-handed fist held him fast.

  “We’ll use him for dessert,” put in Mishgnash, roughly feeling Dwarf’s arm. “He seems to be meaty enough.”

  The two grotesque forms, Gorgolacs, carried Dwarf back through the gates, laughing and poking his ribs, and took him to the lockhouse, behind which other men dressed in black stood watching from the low door of a guard shack.

  “Bake him, broil him, clean his bones,” they chanted in unison, pounding their firearms against the hard snow-packed ground.

  Dwarf, between painful pokes or pinches, tried to recall what exactly it was he had left out of his spell, and as he ran through it all for the third time, he was heaved brusquely into a steel-doored cell and left to himself for the moment. Broco regained his wind, looking about his prison. His captors had taken his sword and pack, and the hunger grew as he raged to himself at his mistake of a spell that had allowed him to be taken again.

  “This begins to bore me,” he huffed. “If it’s not some jawing by an overgrown cur of a wolf, it’s these troll apes pinching and dwarfhandling me. Now where is it I went wrong with that infernal business?” Dwarf paced angrily a few steps, and stopped. There in the darkness before him trembled Corporal Cranfallow and Ned Thinvoice, drawn close into small bundles of terror.

  “Hullo,” said Dwarf, surprised at the quaking men.

  “Wh—who are yo—you?” Cranfallow’s voice shivered loudly.

  “Broco, heir and Dwarflord UnderEarth, Lore Master, Seeker of the light,” Dwarf huffed, puffed into believing these two men terrified of his terrible countenance.

  “Do they hold you hostage, too?” asked Thin voice, more sure of himself, as he looked carefully at Dwarf, finding him only half again as large as he had thought him.

  “They think they hold me, but I’ve a surprise or two under my hat for the likes of those trolls. Even the Dark Queen herself can’t long keep Broco, Dwarf-lord, prisoner.”

  Cranfallow was seized with wonder at this small fellow who spoke so boldly, and talked of Dwarflords and Dark Queens. But this was probably another of the long series of misfortunes that had befallen them since the appearance of those other two witches that had caused their ruin and fall. Cranfallow shuddered as he recalled the swift doom that had overtaken them not three days after the bear witch had gone. An enemy force had overrun them, and these half-men, half-beast soldiers had eaten everyone in the village, one by one, until he and Thinvoice, and this new sorcerer, were the only ones left unharmed.

  Dwarf paced furiously back and forth, hat far down over his forehead, thinking. He ignored the gaping stares of the two men.

  “Now, In’mun dula dil,

  Mot in don a’brill

  Loc Alla Dula Indomine,

  Rocco ronco il da fine,”

  he chanted slowly, going over it again, then repeating it in reverse.

  “That must be it, it amply must. Surely I haven’t let it slip my mind so soon.”

  Dwarf fell into silence, and there came a golden arc of pale light that lighted the room, and down the bridge of the glowing ray came two small, almost invisible figures. Broco, with his back turned, didn’t see the light bridge or the figures at once, but Cranfallow and Thinvoice broke in together with their chorus of rattling teeth.

  “Eh, what’s that?” asked Dwarf, turning. “Upon my beard,” he cried, delighted and relieved. “It’s about time.” He crossed and sat before the pale golden figures, and fell into a tongue the two men could not understand. After what seemed hours, Dwarf got up, the light bridge glowed brightly once, then disappeared, and all was once more left in darkness.

  “Well, that settles that. It seems they took so long because I neglected to mention exactly what plane I was on,” explained Dwarf to the dum
bfounded men.

  “Ahhhh,” moaned Cranfallow, “have mercy on our souls, another witch. A curse on the day I ever laid eyes on the bunch of them,” he sobbed into his kinds, teeth beating madly, body twitching. Thinvoice was frozen where he sat.

  “Here, here, old fellow. Obviously you can’t have anything to do with these brutes out there, so you have nothing to fear. Come, friend, tell me your names, and be of good cheer. We’ll be out of this before morning,” Dwarf tried to reassure them.

  “If we’re not had up for supper,” groaned Thinvoice. “They seem to have no end to their hunger.”

  “My little surprise for them may spoil their appetites a bit,” laughed Dwarf. “They’ll be thinking of other things than food before this night is out.” Broco went to the iron-barred window. “Come, one of you, and hoist me up that I might see out.”

  Neither of the men moved.

  “Come,” said Dwarf, in a sterner voice. “If you want to keep out of the dinner pot, come and hoist me up.”

  Cranfallow slowly rose and went to the small figure of Dwarf. Hesitantly he touched him, then convinced he wouldn’t be burned or otherwise harmed, he put Dwarf upon his shoulders and stood close up to the window.

  “Do you know this place, friend, or are you strangers here too?”

  “Corporal Cranfallow, sir, and my friend Ned and I were of the garrison that defended this town, so I know it well enough.” Cranfallow, his fear lessening as he spoke, went on, relating to Dwarf how they had been surprised in the darkness by the superior enemy force, and the town devoured, save he and Thinvoice.

  “Most likely, all because of the likes of them other two, the bloody bear witch and the one what hexed us all to sleep,” he added. “No harm to yourself, sir, and I knows you means none to me, nor my friend. | Just seems that anytime you gets into anything unnatural, something dreadful always gets you.”