by Robert Bevan
“Dave and Cooper?” Katherine suggested.
Ravenus brightened up. “Yes, that’s them!”
“Why aren’t they all together?”
“I don’t know,” said Ravenus. “I came in after Tim was gone. I don’t know the whole story, but I think they went to rescue Tim from prison, but he had already escaped, and then they got caught in prison. So I’m supposed to find Tim, and get him to rescue them.”
“They couldn’t have been here more than a few hours, and they’re all in prison already. I’ll bet anything this is Cooper’s fault. What a fucking moron.”
“Is he the giant one with the tusks?”
“What?” asked Katherine. “I don’t think so.” Then she thought about her own pointed ears. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Farts a lot and shits himself sometimes?”
“Probably.”
“Yeah, he strikes me as kind of dumb.”
“It’s starting to get kind of late in the afternoon,” said Chaz. “If we’re going to find Tim at this campsite, we should probably make our way there.”
The trip didn’t take long before Ravenus said “Well, this is the place.”
Katherine was surprised to find that she didn’t need to be told that. She spotted details that she didn’t even realize she knew to look for. Flattened patches of grass. A couple of broken twigs. A mutilated leopard corpse. “What the fuck is that?”
Ravenus flew down to inspect the leopard more closely. He pecked at a bit of exposed flesh. “It’s still fresh,” he said. “I’d say it hasn’t been dead more than a day.”
“What happened to its leg?” asked Chaz.
“Dunno,” said Ravenus. “I think Dave was wearing it.”
“Wearing what?”
“The leg. He had a leopard skin armband on his forearm when I first met him.”
“They’ve gone feral,” said Katherine. “They haven’t been here more than a couple of hours and they’ve gone all Lord of the Flies.”
“Do you think leopard meat is okay to eat?” asked Chaz.
“What?” said Katherine.
“I mean, we need to eat something. The bird said the meat was fresh. I’ve mentioned I’m hungry, and he said he’s ravenous.”
“Ravenus,” Ravenus corrected.
“That’s what I said.”
“No, you said ravenous.”
“What did you say?”
“Ravenus.”
“As in ‘very hungry’, right?”
“No. As in my name. It’s a play on words. I’m a raven, you see. It’s supposed to be a sort of latin sounding, but also fierce kind of thing.”
“Oh, right,” said Chaz. “I get it. Clever.”
“Thank you,” Ravenus said smugly.
“So does that mean you’re not hungry?”
“I could eat.”
“I’m not eating fucking leopard,” shouted Katherine. “We need to look for my brother.”
“Calm down,” Chaz said. “We’ll find him. The bird -I’m sorry- Ravenus said your brother is due to be coming back this way eventually. The best thing we can do is to wait here, build a fire, and wait for him. Then when he gets here we can have some leopard meat already cooked up for him. If he just broke out of prison, he’ll be hungry.”
“You’re going to listen to a fucking bird?”
“I beg your pardon, Miss Katherine,” said Ravenus. “I’m no ordinary bird.”
“What makes you so special?”
“I talk.”
“Hmm... that’s true.”
“Listen to him,” said Chaz. “He speaks British English. That means he’s smart, right? Like a librarian or some shit.”
Katherine looked at Chaz through narrowed eyes, unable to respond. She opened her mouth to respond anyway, but Ravenus cut her off.
“Listen, Miss Katherine,” he said. “I understand you’re worried. But wandering around in the woods is only going to make matters worse. If it helps alleviate your anxiety, I’ll fly around and scout the area while you two get a fire going.”
“All right,” said Katherine grudgingly. “Go ahead. I’ll get the fire going.”
Ravenus flew off, disappearing into the trees.
“I’ll go get some firewood,” said Katherine. “You stay here and see if you can find anything useful in our bags.”
“Don’t go off too far,” said Chaz. “It could be dangerous out there.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Katherine said, bending down on one knee to pet her wolf on the head. “I’ve got more to protect me than a banjo.” She stood up and walked out of the clearing, with her wolf following loyally at her side. “We’re going to have to think of a name for you.”
Chapter 13
The few small patches of light that showed through the forest canopy were beginning to change from blue to purple, and Chaz began to feel uneasy about being left alone. One small comfort he found was that it felt really good to take the pack off of his back. He hadn’t realized how heavy it was until he set it down.
The first thing he noticed was the hilt of a sword sticking out of the top. What kind of adventurer keeps his weapon in his bag? He looked down at his clothes. Oh yeah. A bard. He pulled the weapon out to find that it was long and very thin. A fencing sword. A rapist? Raper? Rapper? Rapier? That was it. Rapier. Not exactly badass, but it gave him a better sense of security than his lute did at present. Strapped to the side of the pack he found what at first appeared to be just an oddly bent piece of wood. A stick or something. Closer examination revealed it to be an unstrung shortbow. Inside the pack he found the string, a couple of daggers, and a bunch of arrows bundled together.
“I’m armed to the fucking teeth,” he said to himself. With a moderate level of surprise at the fact that he had any idea what he was doing, he strung the bow and nocked an arrow. He set his eyes on a particular notch of a particular tree, and let the arrow fly. If found its target with ease.
Digging deeper into his pack, he found what he was looking for. He pulled a hexagonal steel box out of the bag. A flame was embossed on the lid. He opened it to find a collection of dried strands of plant fiber and twigs. It looked like a bird’s nest. Also inside were a bar made out of some kind of rock, and one made out of steel with a rough edge to it.
Scraping the two bars together, Chaz produced an impressive spray of sparks. He tried again, aiming at the box, and some of the sparks were caught by the thinner fibers, producing a small flame. The flame grew, and Chaz knew it was going to burn itself out in a couple of seconds. He found a torch in his pack and held the business end of it over the flame. It caught instantly, and the fire in the tinderbox burned out.
“Now what?” said Chaz. He had to admit, though, it felt good to have a burning torch in his hand.
With his free hand he dug around some more in his pack, until he found a metal tube with a screw cap on one end. He shoved the bottom end of his torch into the ground, and unscrewed the cap of the tube.
“I’ll be damned,” he said, looking at his character sheet. “I kinda suck.”
He rolled the paper up and inserted it back into the tube. He was suddenly overcome with curiosity at what Katherine’s character sheet might reveal.
Instinctively, he looked around first. He was still alone. He scrambled over to Katherine’s bag and fished around until he found what he was looking for. “Druid,” he said. “I was right.” He noticed, however, that he was wrong about her being an elf. She was only a half-elf.
“Well done,” came a voice from behind him. Chaz nearly jumped out of his skin, and turned around. It was Katherine. She was carrying a bundle of sticks and fallen branches under each arm. Her wolf was standing by her side, panting happily. “I see you’ve got a fire started.”
“It’s just a torch,” said Chaz. Best to put all the cards on the table. “I hope you don’t mind, I had a look through your bag.”
“Why would I mind?” asked Katherine. “Unless it’s full of sexy underwear and dil
dos. I mean, it’s not even really my bag, is it? Just like this isn’t my body, and whatever the hell I’m standing on isn’t my world. Find anything useful?”
“I found you.”
“What are you talking about?”
Chaz held up the paper he was holding. “This is your character sheet. It shows your stats, your skills, the spells you can cast-”
“Let me see that,” said Katherine. She set the wood she had gathered on top of the remains of the previous fire, and snatched the paper out of his hand.
“I was wrong about you being an elf,” said Chaz. “You’re only half elf.”
“What’s the other half?”
“Human.” He set the torch to the pile of wood.
“So what does that mean?”
“It means that one of your parents was an elf, and the other was a human. You’ve probably got some emotional issues.”
“About what?”
“About whether you identify more with your elven or human side, about how neither side completely accepts you as one of their own,” Chaz paused, and then added solemnly “And there’s the possibility that you are the product of rape.”
Katherine looked at him incredulously. “Where are you getting this bullshit?”
“Back when I used to play these games, I read some of the novels that were written by-” He was interrupted by Katherine’s laughter. “What’s so funny?”
“The thought of you reading a book.”
“I read a lot of-”
“That fire isn’t going to last very long,” Katherine said. “We’re going to need some more wood. The wood around here is a little damp, but it might catch if we’re lucky. See if you can get some of that going, and I’ll go forage for some more dry wood.”
“Okay, but-”
“We don’t have much time. It’s going to be dark soon.” She stepped back out of the clearing, toward the direction she had come from.
“I read lots!” Chaz shouted after her.
He started to gather some smaller twigs. They were indeed damp, but he thought they might be small enough to burn anyway. He tested a few of them and found he was right. They burned pretty well, in fact, but crackled and popped loudly, and produced an enormous amount of white smoke. Still, a fire was a fire. That leopard wasn’t going to cook itself. After he was confident that the fire could handle it, he upgraded from sticks to thicker branches, and then even to some rotted sections of tree trunk.
When the fire got large enough so that he was satisfied that it would continue to burn through most of the night, he stood back and admired his work. Then he walked over to the leopard corpse. This wasn’t going to be an easy task. There was some exposed muscle on the leg where the skin had been removed. That would be as good a place as any to start. With some effort, he cut a chunk of flesh off with his dagger, and carefully poked the end of his rapier through it. He sat on a stone upwind from the billowing smoke. He put the end of his sword into the fire and watched the meat start to cook.
This was the first time Chaz was able to really let his mind relax and think about shit that didn’t involve immediate survival. He thought about his motorcycle. The rain had let up when he parked it in front of the Chicken Hut, but the weather was fickle that night. He wondered how much time had passed, and if his bike had gotten rained on. A sudden breeze blew through the camp and temporarily flattened the plume of smoke, revealing a face staring back at him. It wasn’t Katherine’s. It wasn’t even human, not even close.
Chaz didn’t remember much from his gaming days, but he knew a troll when he saw one. The green skin, the hair like a crop of moss growing on the top of its head, the yellow eyes, all were vaguely familiar. But what really gave it away was the nose, hanging like a dick in the middle of its face past its toothy grin, and even down below its chin.
Chaz immediately stood up and raised his sword at the creature. Both of their gazes fixed on the smoking hunk of meat on the end of it.
The troll rose to its feet with considerably less urgency than Chaz had shown, looking as though it wasn’t sure it was worth the bother. Grabbing its spear with both gnarled hands, it hoisted itself up to a hunched standing position.
Chaz had assumed the creature had been sitting on a rock or a stump just like he had been, as they were at even eye level to one another while sitting. It had, however, been sitting flat on the ground, and now that they were both standing, the troll stood a full disgusting head taller than him. If they got far closer than Chaz hoped they’d get, he could imagine the tip of the dick-nose brushing the top of his hair.
Chaz flicked his sword to the side, and the chunk of cooked leopard meat flew off and landed nearby on the ground. He made a mental note as to where it landed so that he could go back for it. The troll licked its lips. It was probably thinking the same thing. One of them would be going back to claim it once the fight was over.
“Hello,” said Chaz. His voice was shaky. “Can you... um... talk?”
“Technically, I shouldn’t be able to talk to you,” said the troll. “I only speak Giant.”
Chaz relaxed. For a giant monster with a dick for a nose, it seemed friendly enough. “So why is it you can speak to me?” he asked.
“I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry it had to come to this,” said the troll. There was something familiar in its voice, but Chaz couldn’t place it. “I have nothing against you, you see,” the troll continued. “You didn’t offend me like your girlfriend, or her brother and his friends. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Who are you?” asked Chaz. The answer was hiding at the front of his mind.
“The thing is,” said the troll. “Now that you’re here, I can’t let you go.”
“Wait a second,” said Chaz. “Are you that fat fuck from the Chicken Hut?”
“You’ve just made this a lot easier for me,” said the troll. It put the stone tip of his spear into its mouth, grinning and toying with it suggestively with its long tongue as it made small thrusts in and out.
“Um...” was the best way that Chaz was able to express his discomfort. As little as he wanted to see this demonstration, he didn’t take his eyes off the troll as he inched his way backwards to where his torch was still sticking out of the ground and burning.
The troll moved with him, inching forward as Chaz inched back. The spearhead was covered with a thick coating of saliva. As if not content with how disturbing it was, it then proceeded to lick and suck on each of its clawed fingers.
Chaz felt the heat of the burning torch on his backside, and swerved around it, hoping that he hadn’t just inadvertently made some kind of hip thrust that might be mistaken for a sexually suggestive gesture. Backing behind the torch, he pulled it out of the ground with his free hand.
The spearhead, as well as all of the troll’s fingers,were positively dripping with saliva now. Its eyes didn’t look the same as they had when it was talking to him. They were savage and hungry. With a speed Chaz hadn’t thought it capable of, it hurled its spear at Chaz, piercing him just below his ribcage.
Chaz didn’t scream. He couldn’t. The physical pain, the terror, and the determination he had to hold on to his wits and his torch kept him from it. Instead he took a long and steady lungful of air, and let it back out with a prolonged “Aaaaaaahhhhh” that didn’t rise above normal indoor conversational volume. Sweat abandoned every pore of his body like rats from a burning ship. He dropped to his knees, let go of his sword, and pulled the spear out. The pain of doing so was negligible against the pain of having it in him.
Chaz hadn’t ever been stabbed before, but he had a strong suspicion that the pain he was feeling was more than a simple stabbing would have accounted for. This pain was life draining. It probably had less to do with the spear tip and more to do with the thick coating of troll saliva. It hadn’t been sexual innuendo after all... well maybe some of it had been. It’s not possible to lick the head of a spear without putting images of blow jobs into someone’s head, but t
his troll had really seemed to be going beyond the call of duty. There was obviously some kind of head game at work.
The troll sauntered toward Chaz, rubbing the clawed ends of his fingers together. The sound was like half a dozen pairs of scissors cutting simultaneously. The scissoring sound was fast and frantic, but the troll walked at an unhurried pace, clockwise around the fire.
Fire! That was the troll’s weakness. He tossed away his sword in favor of the torch. With more than a little effort, he stayed up on his knees, with one hand bunching his tunic over his wound, trying to keep in as much blood as he could, and the other hand brandishing his torch. He wanted to throw it, do damage from a distance, but doing so would only leave him defenseless. He held it in front of him, hoping that maybe the fire would deter any further advancement.
It didn’t. The troll continued to move forward like the second hand of a clock. It actually smiled at the feeble attempt Chaz was making with his torch. “You know,” it said, “That isn’t going to affect me like you think it is. I’m not a standard troll.”
“Don’t bullshit me, man,” said Chaz. “I know a troll when I see one. That limp dick hanging off of your face is a dead giveaway.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t a troll,” said the troll. “I said I wasn’t a standard troll.”
“Yeah yeah, I know,” said Chaz. “So you can talk. Whoopty shit. You ain’t talking your way out of this, buddy.”
“I’m a forest troll.”
“What is that?”
“It’s in the third Monster Manual.”
“Do you have every book they ever released?”
“Just about.”
“Well what the fuck difference does it make? You’re a troll, and you’re about to burn. I don’t give a fuck what your habitat is.”
The troll had paused in both his walking, and the scraping of his claws, when mention had been made of Mordred’s book collection. Now he resumed both. “Forest trolls are weaker than their mountain cousins.”
“Good,” said Chaz with a cough. Blood began to well up in his mouth. He spit out a mouthful. “Then you’ll burn even faster.” He waved the torch threateningly.