Voyage of the Fox Rider

by Dennis L McKiernan

  “Ready!” hissed Aravan. “The Trolls are past. The Yrm come after. We cannot let them get by to take command.”

  Jinnarin peered out into the corridor. In the distance oncoming torchlight shone ‘round the bend. “Let’s go!” she hissed, and into the passageway scurried dark clusters to run alongside each wall, Aravan following, his crossbow cocked and loaded.

  As they came to the side passage leading to the Trolls’ den and Aravan stepped within, ‘round the main passage came the torchbearing Rûpt, the Spawn armed and armored and heading for the quay. And into the innocent shadows they stepped, but of a sudden they clutched at necks and cheeks, as if stung by bees. And as those in the fore were felled, those bringing up the rear shrieked in alarm and turned to flee even as the Pysks set arrows to string.

  Aravan sighted his crossbow, but from behind there came a grunt, and he whirled about just as a monstrous grasp caught him up and slammed him against the stone wall, stunning him, his crossbow clattering away in the dark.

  Into the hallway lunged the Troll, roaring in monstrous glee, dazed Aravan trapped in his crushing grip.

  Shouting for help, Jinnarin loosed her tiny arrow at the brute, but it merely bounced off the scaled hide.

  In the water below the galley, Tink and Tivir clambered into a dingy and then up the line to the deck of the galley, where they found Dwarves and Men desperately hewing at a Troll, gallantly trying to bring it down. But their axes and cutlasses and Jatu’s warbar merely clanged against scales like stone, while the Troll smashed the warriors and sailors aside as if they were nought but pests, and bones were broken with each of his blows. And Trolls ashore jeered as the defenders were whelmed away.

  Tink grabbed Tivir by the arm. “C’mon! Let’s kill’m!”

  Together they ran to one of the ballistas and set it up on its footing. As Tivir wound the crank, Tink opened one of the boxes of javelins, taking care not to touch the dark smut smeared along the length of the steel point.

  Tink placed the shaft in the ballista groove.

  Then, while Tivir braced the pedestal, Tink stepped to the stock and aimed. “Dona hit no Dwarf nor Man!” barked Tivir.

  “‘Don, guide me,” Tink prayed, and then loosed.

  Thnn! the shaft hurtled through the air, the recoil knocking Tink and Tivir flat to the deck, the ballista landing atop them.

  Thok! the spear slammed into the Troll, striking him in the full of his back, running him through, the dark-smeared point emerging from his chest. His eyes wide, the Troll looked down at this thing piercing his body and opened his mouth to roar, but staggered hindwards instead, toppling over the rail and into the water with a great splash, to plummet from sight.

  From the deck where he’d been knocked, a ballista in his lap, Tink looked at Tivir and said, “I’ll be damned, Tiv, we got him!”

  Laughing insanely, and ignoring the shadows, the Troll raised up Aravan, preparing to dash his skull against glittering stone, while all about him Pysks loosed their tiny arrows, to no avail, for they merely bounced from the monster’s scaled hide.

  But before he slammed the Elf into the wall, a look of cunning swept over the Troll’s face, and instead he clutched Aravan’s chest in both hands, the thick fingers wrapping completely ‘round, the creature preparing to crush the life from the Elf, to slowly squeeze the air from him, to shatter ribs, to hear him bubble on his own blood, the brute now leering at this most clever plan. And deliberately he tightened his grip.

  The pain brought Aravan awake, and with his ribs creaking under the strain, gasping, he heard Jinnarin shouting, “Do him in the eye, Aravan! Do him in the eye!”

  Desperately, Aravan scrabbled at the long-knife strapped to his thigh, while the monstrous Troll laughed in cruel glee and slowly squeezed. In an agonized groan, air hissed out from Aravan’s lungs, and there came the crack of breaking ribs. The Troll’s eyes flew wide in delight at this sound of damage and torment from his helpless victim, and he held the Elf up to his ear to hear better, and squeezed again. But as another rib snapped, Aravan jerked his long-knife free and before the Troll could react, he slammed the dark blade straight into the monster’s ear, the grume-smeared tip punching through, delivering Fox Rider poison directly to the creature’s brain.

  In agony, the Troll sucked in a great breath of air as if to shout, but instead collapsed sideways, slamming Aravan to stone, while shadowy clusters scattered away to escape the falling monster.

  And the passage filled with a sickening stench as death loosed the Troll’s bowels and bladder.

  Struggling, Aravan managed to free himself from the creature’s grip. He painfully stood and tried to take a deep breath but could not, for five of his ribs were cracked.

  “Quickly,” commanded Bokar, “set the ballistas in place. Burak, Fager, Jatu, you others, tend the wounded. Tink, Tivir, jeer at the Trolls. We must keep them here until Captain Aravan deals with the Black Mage.”

  “Ar,” shouted Tivir, grasping the foremast rigging and leaping to the rail and waving at the Trolls, “y’ stupid gobs of snot! We kilt y’r mate, we did. Me ’n’ Tink done it, roight enough.”

  “Right you are, Tivir me lad!” shrieked Tink, climbing up to stand beside Tivir. “And if any of you ugly toad suckers want a taste of th’ same, come and get it. We’re waiting, or are you too frightened to face us mighty Troll killers, eh?”

  “‘N’ besides bein’ toad suckers,” added Tivir, “y’r so oogly y’d spoil milk. O’ course, that’s th’ way y’ loike it, Oi shouldn’t wonder, good ’n’ blinky!

  “’N’ lemme tell y’ about y’r oogly mothers…”

  It is uncertain whether any of the Trolls understood a single word shouted at them by the two lads, but that they were being jeered at, the creatures had no doubt at all. And while some Dwarves hammered spikes to mount the ballistas to the deck of the drifting ship, and others uncrated the javelins—javelins whose blades were coated with Fox Rider poison brewed in secret by the Pysks in Tarquin’s woods—and while Fager and Burak and Jatu and sailors tended the wounded, the Trolls roared out Slûkish curses and raved back and forth along the dock, and two or three, frothing at the mouth in anger, disappeared into the passageway behind.

  Groaning and holding his rib cage, Aravan stepped to the dead Troll and retrieved his long-knife. Then in the shadows of the side passage he found his flung-away crossbow, the weapon spent, the quarrel gone, the bow having fired when it had hurtled against the wall, though the bow itself was unbroken. Sissing in pain, he managed to cock it and lay another poison quarrel into the groove. And through clenched teeth he said, “Let us go on.”

  Down the passage they scurried, did the shadows, ‘round limping Aravan, while behind from the direction of the quay there sounded the roaring of Trolls. Moments later the Pysks and Elf came to the side passage leading to the Ruch and Lok quarters, and they could hear scrabbling down that way. Squatting, wincing, Aravan whispered, “Anthera.” When a shadow approached, he jerked his head toward the passage and said, “I would have no Rûpt at our backs; take half and deal with them while the rest of us go on. Follow as soon as ye are done. —Jinnarin, Farrix, stay with me.”

  Six clusters of darkness broke away and headed down the rough-hewn side corridor, while Aravan and the others pressed forward along the main way.

  ’Round a long curve limped Aravan, shadows running fore and aft, and at last they came to the split where to their right lay the gathering hall and the three chambers on past, and to their left lay the crystal chamber, Durlok’s quarters beyond. Again Aravan squatted, his breathing shallow, labored. “Who is left?” he whispered.

  Jinnarin dropped her shadow as did the others. Aravan scanned them all. “Fia, Dwnic, Lurali, Temen, again I want no Rûpt at our back; if any hide in the gathering hall, galley, privy, or prison, deal with them. If there are prisoners, I would know that as well.” Aravan gestured at the passage leading toward the crystal chamber. “Seek us yon when ye are done.”

  Once aga
in all the Pysks gathered shadow unto themselves, and four slipped down the right-hand way, while Aravan and two went left.

  Shouting oaths, Trolls brandished their clubs and warbars at the japers, some even hurling their ungainly weapons at these invaders aboard their ship. The lads dodged this way and that as the inept missiles came whistling past. The three Trolls who had gone down the passage returned, each bearing a large stone or two. And they threw the rocks at those aboard the black galley, hurling them with such force that they hummed as they flew through the air, and one badly aimed stone broke through the hull of the craft just above the water line. “Oh, lor!” exclaimed Tivir. “Oi j’st hope they dona get th’ idea t’ sink th’ ship.”

  But those words were said in vain, for the Troll whose rock had smashed through the ship’s side shouted and threw again, this time deliberately taking aim to send the galley down.

  Yet at that moment, Bokar shouted, “Ready! Loose at will!”

  And ballistas were cranked and javelins hurled, piercing Trolls on the quay, the poison tips deadly. Trolls fell where they were pierced, some toppling from the landing, dead before striking the water. Others were shoved from the dock as their comrades panicked and sought to flee, and bellowing in terror, they drowned, plummeting from sight as if made of stone. Some Trolls stumbled and fell over their dead brethren, and they scrambled up only to be slain by another deadly round of ballista bolts. Still others escaped, running back into the passageway behind.

  “Kruk!” spat Bokar, as the dock emptied.

  “Damn!” gritted Jatu. “Just what we didn’t want!”

  And at the fore of the ship, “Cor,” breathed Tivir. “Oi do ‘ope th’ cap’n ’n’ Pysks ’r’ safe.”

  “Let’s hope,” agreed Tink. “If not in the skinny passage to the lookout post—”

  “Then safe past th’ narrow doorway into th’ Black Maige’s alchem’stry plaice,” interjected Tivir, “where th’ Trolls can’t squeeze in t’ get’m.”

  “How many Trolls are left, I wonder?”

  “Har, there’s th’ one what we killed, ’n’ Oi count nine more alayin’ on th’ dock, ’n’ one fell in chasin’ you, ’n’ three more was accidental’ shoved off by their mates ’n’ drowned. That makes”—Tivir counted on his fingers—“ten and four deaders, and that still leaves, um”—again Tivir counted on his fingers.

  “Fourteen,” supplied Tink.

  “Yar. Fourteen more. But those ’r’ runnin’ toward where th’ cap’n ’n’ th’ others are.”

  “The Trolls aren’t what worries me most, Tiv,” replied Tink, “but the Black Mage instead. The cap’n, now, he said himself that the Fox Rider poison on the ballista javelins would take out the Trolls, just as Master Farrix figured. But the Black Mage, well, the cap’n still didn’t know what’d do him in, though Armsmaster Bokar says that if the cap’n or the Pysks get a clean shot, Durlok is dead. Let’s just hope he’s right.”

  Tivir nodded slowly, but added, “Yar. But let’s also ‘ope th’ Trolls can’t get at th’ cap’n neither.”

  While Tivir and Tink were toting up the dead foe, at the other end of the galley, Jatu and Bokar and Kelek stood at the rail and did the same. Jatu turned to the Dwarf and said, “There’s fourteen of them slain, Armsmaster, and six of our own are dead—two of my sailors and four of your warriors. Too, we’ve another eight with broken bones—three Men and five Dwarves. More will die when we go after the remaining Trolls, perhaps none will survive. But if we don’t go after them, then likely they’ll kill the captain.”

  Bokar glanced at the black Man and nodded, then turned to Kelek. “Ready the new-forged crossbows—”

  In that moment from the corridor leading inward there came a great clanging of picks against stone.

  Limping and hissing quietly in pain, Aravan made his way down the passage toward the crystal chamber. Before him trotted Farrix, Jinnarin coming after, both Pysks cloaked in darkness and nearly invisible in the shadowy corridor. In the distance behind them they could hear the far-off bellowing of Trolls, punctuated now and again by the closer shrill cry…the shriek of a Ruch or Lok or somesuch.

  As they came to the first cavity on their left, they heard hoarse breathing back among the wares, and while Aravan waited, Jinnarin and Farrix slipped into the dark area. Moments later there sounded a sodden thud, and the shadowy Pysks emerged, and Jinnarin whispered to Aravan, “It was one of the Rucha.”

  Onward they went, and ahead they could see the glimmering of magelight seeping down the corridor, but ere they reached its source, the second storage area gaped to their left. Once again Jinnarin and Farrix slipped in among crates and bales and kegs and the like, but this time they found no one hiding among the goods.

  Onward they pressed toward the crystal chamber, the light growing brighter as they neared. And Jinnarin could not seem to get enough to breathe, and her heart leapt about in her breast as would a caged wild bird.

  And then they came to the entrance, the crystal chamber glittering in the phosphorescent blue light.

  With shadows clustered about her, Jinnarin peered into the temple. It was empty. —No wait! Down on the crystal altar lay a mutilated corpse, blood runnelling adrip.

  “Take care,” hissed Farrix, “he has slain a fresh victim.”

  “One at a time we will enter,” whispered Aravan. “Remain spread out; give him less target. I deem we must search the quarters beyond.”

  Into the crystal chamber they slipped, one after another, the trio spaced wide—Farrix first, Aravan next, Jinnarin coming last, her heart trapped in her throat. Along the curving wall they crept, bows and crossbow ready, Farrix in the lead heading for the distant doorway. His shadowy cluster had nearly reached the opening when—

  “Fools!” sneered a voice, echoing in the chamber.

  Jinnarin whirled, seeking the source, and down at the altar as if appearing out of thin air, stood a tall hairless person in dark robes, a long black staff in his left hand.

  Durlok the Black Mage had come.

  “Stand by the ballistas!” cried Bokar. “I think they mine rock to sink the ship.”

  The chnk! of pick on stone was followed by the dnnk! of sledge on drillbar, and Bokar paced back and forth along the line of ballistas. “When the Trolls come, Relk, you and your crew shoot first. Varak, your ballista is next. Alak, you are third. Bral, next.…”

  Jatu called the remaining unscathed sailors to him, eight in all—Tink and Tivir included—and said, “Man the dinghies. We need to square the ship to the quay. And should the Trolls succeed in holing the galley, we will need to evacuate. If they fail, still we will need to draw the ship deeper into the lagoon a bit beyond their range, but not beyond ours.”

  As Men and lads scrambled over the side and into the boats, shadowy movement was seen at the entrance to the corridor, and a Troll stepped forth, a great jagged rock in his hand. But even as he drew back to hurl it, Thnn! Relk’s javelin hurtled forth and slammed into the monster’s gut, running him through. The Troll staggered sideways and fell, the rock thudding to the quay, but another of the creatures leapt forth and scooped up the stone as a javelin splintered against the wall beside him. Another javelin missed as the monster straightened and turned, but even as he hurled the stone, the next javelin pierced his groin, and down he crashed, howling as black blood gushed from him and where it fell smoke curled up from the quay, even as the monster’s yowls chopped into silence.

  The great rock smashed down onto the stern of the galley, shattering planks as it holed the afterdeck and fell through to crash into the quarters below. Slowly the ship turned in the water, the impact of the stone swinging it ‘round. But Jatu called down to the sailors in the dinghies; and some rowed away and hauled on lines while others rowed to push against the galley with the bows of their boats. They stopped the swing and began to square the ship to the quay even as the Dwarves cranked the ballistas, recocking and reloading them.

  Within moments, two more Trolls were felled, thei
r hurled rocks thundering harmlessly into the waters between.

  And all sound of pick on stone and hammer on drillbar ceased.

  “They have given up trying to sink us, I think,” said Jatu.

  “Aye,” Bokar grunted in agreement. “But heed me: if we would save Captain Aravan”—Bokar motioned to Kelek—“it is time for us to enter the tunnels.”

  Swiftly, Bokar and Jatu rattled off orders, Men and Dwarves springing to respond. Down into the boats they clambered, leaving the dead and wounded aboard, Chirurgeon Fager in attendance. Led by Bokar, all remaining warriors ferried in the dinghies to the landing. Along with the armsmaster and five other Dwarves, Jatu stepped from the lead boat and onto the quay, and behind him Tivir whispered, “Fortune be wi’ you, Mister Jatu.” Then the lad began rowing back to the galley, where he and the rest of the Men were to tow the ship beyond range of the Trolls’ rocks.

  Armed with massive crossbows, each requiring two Dwarves to cock and load it, up the steps and toward the silent, dark entrance went the warband, threading among slain Trolls.

  “Remember,” hissed Bokar, “aim for the throat.”

  Ignoring pain, Aravan whipped the crossbow to his shoulder and loosed the poison quarrel, the bolt streaking down at the Mage. But Durlok threw up a hand, and spat, “Peritrapoû!” and the quarrel flew straight back at Aravan, the Elf jerking aside as the bolt hurtled past to shatter against the crystal wall.

  “Once more I name you fools,” sissed Durlok.

  Widely separated, two shadowy clusters darted down toward the Black Mage, but again he threw up a hand, pointing first at Farrix and then at Jinnarin, hissing at each, “Anoémon genoû!” and both Pysks fell stunned, their gathering of darkness gone.

  Aravan gritted his teeth and casually moved toward the doorway leading to Durlok’s quarters.

  Durlok laughed wickedly. “Do you seek to draw my attention away from your allies?” He pointed a finger at the door leading to the quay—“Emphragma!”—and the portal filled with darkness. “Again I name you fool, for just as you, they are no threat to me.”