Blood Of The Wizard (Book 1) (24 page)

Chapter 53

“The ears do their labors for free.  Use them.”

—
Halfling wisdom

Fulko Fallwater, the king said to Dhal and me, is not only the wisest and hardiest of our rangers, he is also the captain of the Troll Guard.  He woke, horrified at how wonderful he felt, for Captain Fulko was one for the adage:  wake in wonder, bed down in gloom.  Wonderful old charge, that Fulko! Perhaps there is a seed of wisdom in old superstition, ya?  At any rate, the captain sensed that no good would come of that day.  It was only a matter of when.

That was a week ago.  The weather
was gorgeous.  A blue silk sky shone on the springs first white flowers.  There was a herd of hind deer and roe deer out in this very meadow, neither of numbers less than a hundred.  Everything was like a mural, painted with a merry and patient hand.

Out past the village, beyond meadows and farmsteads,
Fulko went on patrol with his Troll Guard and an entourage of rangers into a rare quiet.  Out in the wooded reaches, the silence reverberated.  Here he tells that the quiet possessed the land, choked it.  Even the thunder of a noon storm was subdued as it dropped into the silent woods, and the forest seemed to sigh without noise in response. 

For three more hours, there was only
their breath, the breath of a hushed and stealthy company, the muffled strike of their booted feet on the moss-carpeted stones.

Then came of flush of chikadees, a bird that does not flock together and yet arrived in a rare multitude of five hundred, at least.  Fulko
could not see beyond the thick green caps of towering firs.  There was only the roll of clouds.  As they arrived at the thick brake of oak, the world became suddenly alive with sound.  He heard intermittent caws and chirps.  But these were not the sounds of birds.  Fulko knew well what they were, for these were the communications of Trolls. 

The sound grew more plaintiff.  Closer.  They turned and walked up a steep, sudden hill,
and together they formed a sword wall and crouched, moving on a trail that wound through a dank cathedral of trees.  They stepped a cautious path, timber reaching over their heads, soaring to the belly of clouds. 

Yet they saw nothing.

Then they got off the trail, onto the needle-covered ground.  Our rangers walked back downhill, through a ridge torn agape with released of a great burden of towering trees, and they knew the trolls were talking to them through their actions. 

Confused and
growing weary, they paused at the edge of a great wood.  The great, consuming presence of the trolls were all around, and yet they saw nothing off them.  Rain had begun to seep in though smoky holes in the canopy and there was smell in the air, a mixture something dead and something musky.  It was unusual, and unnerving, for all this was the mark of a frightened troll, and yet they had ventured into our lands as if in the making of war.  It seemed the trolls were up to some manner of new trick

They stepped out into the open field before them
.  The field was vast, ringed at its far edge by a river.  And that is from whence they emerged, a family of trolls, carrying two humans and a dwarf.  As the beasts crossed the long field, each of them revealed their unpleasant faces and received our rangers warmly.  Too warmly.  The trolls lay you three down, and then they themselves went to the ground, presenting their bellies as if in submission. 

Fulko thought to end them
.  And I might add, the old hammer thought at first that you three were food that the trolls had brought along as snacks!  But he saw more trolls out in the unusually dark stretch of forest, scores of them.  They stood in wolfish circles, on all fours, making themselves known without making a great show of themselves. 

He looked
back, at his own winded warriors.  They had marched for a full day without pause across the watershed.  Each was adorned with thick but simple straps of studded armor.  Most had no shields, and while there were arrows enough for a hunt, there were not nearly so much as might be taken for war.  The tallest of his warrior stood in the middle, a line of eight stout halfling to either side of him.  The man was holding his bow, waiting.  And while he was not yet the wiser that you were not food, he thought twice about a fight.

So
Fulko shook his head no.  There were trolls aplenty, enough to end our party should they have chosen. 

So
Fulko stayed his hand, and as this family was subdued and civil in her greeting, he approached in a show of difference to them and called upon the Trollspeaker, Gigg Goodsmoke.

Here, he wore a thin smile,
trying to remain calm even as the other trolls watched them.

Fulko told Gigg to ask them what they want.

The trolls tilted their heads as Gigg went to them on all fours, signing in their language.  When they had returned the gestures with signs of their own, he turned, and he told Fulko that the trolls wanted peace.

Fulko told him to ask why is it that they wanted peace now.

Peace is good, was the first response.  The second answer was that they could return to their old lands now because their new king had killed the devil that took it.  They no longer needed to come here to steal apples and pigs.  Finally, they added that they wanted peace because their new king is hurt, and they don’t know how to fix him.

Who is their king, he made Gigg ask.

The king is the provider was the response.

Fulko tsked
.  Who is the provider?

The dwarves tried to eat the provider
’s baby.

Fulko
cocked an eye in surprise at this.  He breathed deeply.  He thought for a moment, then told Gigg to ask them what does the king provide.

The old lands.

Oh!  For heaven’s sake, he said to Gigg, tell them we can’t bloody well fix their king if we don’t know who he is!

Gigg made a thoughtful face, then brightened.
  He said something to them that may or may not have been what Fulko asked, for every halfling is entitled a few secrets—even if they are from his captain!

And
when the prostrate trolls had mouthed their irrational noises, shook and growled, and made all their uncanny gestures, the rangers had their answer.  The broken Troll-King was human! 

You, Fie, were King of the Trolls. 

You had killed the devil that took their old lands and for heaven’s sake, you had even escaped the dwarves that tried to eat your baby! 

Chapter
54

As the tale drew to a close, so too did the feast, and the night’s fog drew in around us.  Preparations for departure rose from the fog.  I closed my eyes a moment.  The was something in my head that I almost did not want to come out.  For the briefest moments, I entertained not telling him.  I distracted my own my own mind with trivia, little bits of information, really, like how it now made sense that the river that ran south to the Fell-Riding was called the Trollwater.  But the daunting truth that I had to tell would not be tamed with such small morsels.  What I had to tell the king rattled around in my mind with the muffle clank of a ghost, howling incessantly for my attention.

“My liege, there is something I must tell you.”

“King Fie, dear fellow, I know what it is you have to tell me.  Allow me to say this first:  Your thoughts, indeed the thoughts of any honest man, can be counted without hearing them.  We know of the child.  That is to say, we know what we suspect.  What we don’t know is any other man that would have done that for him.”

“Thank you, king.  Then you know what he can do?”

“I know of no other man but a mage-guard that would travel so far with a dwarven lad.  And to travel with him on the shoulders of trolls, straight from the Troll Wood itself… well, it says volumes, sire!  Volumes!”

The king patted my shoulder, and I patted his. 
History spurns the dwarf to battle, I mused.  History and gold.  There would be plenty of both made for a warrior that traveled with their king.  I breathed, thinking of the great Dwarven Horde, gathering somewhere beyond the beautiful rivers and meadows of this green land. 

“Then you know
…” 

He opened his eyes
, widening them in such merry surprise that it made me grin.

“You would ask if we know that the dwarves are coming to kill him?
”

I looked off in the distance.  Night
had obscured the pathetic defense of hedges and hedge-mazes.  But I had seen them with the light of that day, and I knew they had been thinned from neglect.  Huge tracks had been worn flat by wagons or erosion, or else trampled down by raiding trolls.  The hills that faded into the little farm were utterly open, it’s only defense the merry hearts of these halflings.

“Yes, sire, I must ask it.  Even if you know my question before I speak it, I must still ask it, liege.”

King Alberik took another large breath, then laughed with such boisterous knee-slapping that I thought at first it was some kind of seizure.

“Know it?  King Fie, good man, we are counting on it!”

At that, a roar like horn blast escaped the king’s throat and filled the dark meadow.  His men rushed, plunging in from the fog, roaring.  As they halted, there was a brief moment of silence. 

There was a
perfect stillness.

Then
hellish bellowing swelled.  Bone-splintering thuds rang.  Horrendous growls followed the great, clanging song of metal on shields, underpinned with the high and icy sounds of screams and shrieks. 

Then they were silent again. 

And the perfect stillness returned. 

Alberik
gathered his guards closer, and traced the bare blade of his closest captain, slowly.  He paused at the razor-sharp tip. 

“King Fie, indulge me.  Have you ever wondered at why halflings so rarely go to war?”

“In truth, sire, I have.”

He gave an exultant shiver, as if relishing some delicious memory. 

“Fie, when a man goes to war, and he sees the dim line of the enemy approaching.  He will by then have seen many a warrior readying themselves for battle.  And they will have pre
pared themselves in many ways—in as many ways, in fact, as there are those who would fight.  To the learned eye, however, there are but three means.  Primary among them is bluster and drink.  Be it the drink of the word, the vine, or the hop, discount these men as worthless.  They are as gusts against stone.  Real warriors needn’t suppress the will to preserve life.  Nor again do they need to build upon that primal part of themselves that seeks to end it.  Those who seek blindness for what they are about to do will be the first to die.  There is another, rarer sort.  These are the warriors whose lips are muted with rage.  But these men are not yet the deadliest, for these men only seek the memories that haunt them.  They busy their minds with a list of wrongs done unto them, and they seek a vengeance they cannot win.  So many of these warriors will be ghosts all the same, and their muted roars will crash against the stones.  And now we come to those who are rarer yet.  These are the warriors who smile, those who seek serenity.  There are certain warriors who go about the fields with a small knife and a bit of leather.  They pursue the wild flowers of the valley, to cut and bind some artful way.  Others of their deadly ilk seek parchment, to craftily fold in the likeness of some beast of the wood.  Or they seek ink and quill, to put letters to their thoughts.  This, my liege, is the way of the halfling.  Of
all
halflings.  We go to war so rarely, sire, for one reason and one reason alone—because are so terribly, terribly good at it.”

Chapter 55

I
nodded, and King Alberik nodded, and he began telling me one more secret thing.  This was a secret in my heart.  It was a thing I had not even dream to hope was true, and I had held it deeply, and in secret from even myself. 

He told me:  “No, we will not be using the boy to aide us.  He and Dhal will be hidden away, quite safe, I assure you.”

A fat tear welled up, and I could not stop it from dropping as I bent down and hugged the mighty little king before me.

Chapter 56

Night. 

The moon shining over the army below. 

In the darkness, Fulko Fallwater gathered his sealskin cape around him and joined me atop the highest parapet of Brickelby Castle.  We nodded to each other, then watched as a fresh swarm of the Dwarven army approached.

They were coming
now, slowly, making a great show of their noise.  As they wound up the sheep-cropped orchard, the lines of dwarves halted, crimping here and there like a great wyrm of old, swollen with vengeance.  It had torches for breath.  Armor flashed like scales.  And the beast had choked off every retreat. 

Fulko Fallwater
spit beer in what sounded like a laugh. 

“Well,” he said.  “I supposes we could shit ourselves in worry of over it.”

I grinned in understanding.  “Perhaps they would kill us more kindly.”

He
laughed.  “Such mercy!  Ya!  But I suppose dead is dead, King Fie.  And whether it is swift or slow, tomorrow or one of the tomorrows after, our tombs will patiently await our arrival all the same.

I grunted and
looked around at two thousand armed halflings.  It was a strangely nightmarish scene, but only in that it was all so strangely pleasant.  All around, their little forms were lined atop the walls with carts that were laden with sheaves of arrows no longer than darts.  Some held pikes at their side, weapons that could do little more than stoke a fire.  Some held a sword the size of a long dirk, and the rounded shields could have anyone of the platters we’d feasted on just a week before. 

Fulko Fallwater
pointed.  I turned and saw a low, sideways roll of ships that listed and plunged in the distant ocean.

Dwarven reinforcements. 
It was like another great serpent, writhing in the sea.

And suddenly, random shouts began to rise
from the dwarves below us.  A long, low barking of orders rose, course as a beast’s grunts.  The sounds rolled atop the great tumult of a march that had begun far across the mountains and managed its way through the Troll Wood, only to end in a castle that boiled beeswax into scented candles.

All of it, the great machined madness of it, was forming ranks on the shores below.

As the last of the army poured from the longboat barges, I cocked an eye to the rear gateway of the castle.  A gateway is any hold’s weakest point, and therefore if a man has wits enough, it is its strongpoint. 

But the
Dwarf-King’s troops were too veteran and swarthy for that.  They were coming now with ladders.

Breathy moments stretched as
I looked beyond them.  Just out of bow-shot, a figure emerged from a sheltron of knights.  It was King Bhiers in full armor and a black thistle crown.  Beside him, on either side, were dwarves so wide with muscle the seemed to be carved from granite.  They wore horns at their waist, barking orders. 

At length, the horns were raised, and their
war-shrieking echoed over the ocean.

In the next instant, the shuffle and clank of war roared from below and
the dwarves charged.  Soon, the ladders began to rise. 

The line of
halflings to each side of me began yelping unusual war cries, which sounded like horns blowing.  The horde below answered and blistered the air with a noise to cower a banshee.

Fulko Fallwater
was bellowing, shaking his penis at them. 

I
whirled a war bow overhead that was twice as long as Fulko, and the line of halfings nocked diminutive arrows onto their weapons.

“Hooold,” Fulko bellowed.

I
breathed, peering down the ash shaft.  In all the commotion and thunder, I focused, and the loud quaking of it all seemed to hush.  I became conscious of the strain of the halflings holding their fire, aware of the ladders plunking against the walls.

“Hold.”

The horde was yelping like dogs, and there was growling and roaring to either side of me.

“Hooold.”

Thundering, crazed bits of dwarven death-hymns surged upward like an insane buzzing—until a ladder split.  Dwarves were screaming as they spilled down on top of each other.

Fulko Fallwater
must have taken it as a sign.

“Loose!”
he growled.

The
small arrows hissed, wrecking dwarven armor and flesh with astonishing power.  As they pounded below, everywhere, the dwarves shrieked and stumbled down the ladders.  But the dead were unable to meet the ground for the upward lunge.  Hundreds began pitching forward onto the ladders.  I screamed wildly, launching missiles into closer and closer bearded faces.  The ground itself seemed to rise to bring them closer.  Halflings to either side fired without cease.  They were quicker than I was, more steady, and far less winded.

But then a strange green light arced across the stones of the castle
.  It was the wizardry of the Dwarf-King at play, shielding his warriors.

Dwarves
still dropped and thudded below us, but with so many of our arrows frozen in the air, twice as many filled the rungs.  Now they carried oaken battle-boards overhead.  I grimaced, and I continued to shoot, and shoot again.  I was already running low on arrows.  But I could do nothing about it, except keep at it, firing arrow after precious arrow.  I struck the dwarves climbing below me haphazardly.  My arrows pinged off their backs or slammed into their glaring faces.  One continued to climb with an arrow jutting from his helmet.  A captain of some sort.  I fired another into his shoulder.  Then a third.  As the dwarf wheeled back to snap off the arrow in his back, he continued to yell orders.  I loosed yet another into his chest.  When the dwarf fell, he cleared the ladder, shifting sideways, clinging at his warriors as he dropped.  Then something in the massive stir beyond them caught his eye.  At the very back was a wide scattering of archers.  They rose atop wooden platforms, eighty yards away.

Fulko noticed them too.

“Archers!”
he barked.

As the shielded
dwarves climbed, they were covered now by the bowmen with their longer, quicker bolts.  Wooden sheets of the missiles began thudding into the halflings atop the wall.

The
y began to fall.

“Watch those damned archers!”

The arrows slammed into guts on either side of me.  I ducked to discover Fulko Fallwater lying on the parapet, an arrow’s goose feathers jutting from his chest.  He was rolling in pain.  Blood was flowing freely from the tear in his chest plate, and he was gasping for breath.  He rose to remove the armor. 

Forgetting
myself, I rushed to help.

“Dammit backs to y
our spot, human!  Lead, troll-king! 
Lead!
”

Everywhere along the parapets,
halflings dropped on the stones.  Shafts sprouted like branches from their eyes or necks.  Our numbers halved. 

Now arrows zipped from the walls behind
us, pounding them in the backs of their legs and heads.  I spun to discover ladders swinging upward from a dozen more places.  The entire army below the seemed to go aloft, rushing up the walls in great swarms.

“Poles!  Poles!”
I roared.

Too few left were alive.  Perhaps four hundred.

“Your poles, fools!”

I and
Fulko Fallwater, his wounds less grave than they had first seemed, each grabbed a pole and a nearby halfling . 

Fulko
shook his head and roared, “Grab your poles, ye ball-biting, ignorant cod!” 

I
and several more now were racing across the parapet, carrying shields aside our faces.  We worked the poles like a game, and for insane moments, it was just so much macabre sport, sending the ladders down with clusters of dwarves.

“Heaves,
heave!
” Fulko shouted, laughing like the jubilant warrior he was.

Then
our strength thinned, or forked poles began to brace from below.  Then the green light arced across the stones once more, and we could no more shove at the ladders; it was as useless as trying to shove a wall down! 

As more and more
dwarven soldiers scampered atop the southern wall, we worked again with the bows.  Now they were firing sideways as much as downward, downing dwarves as they raced toward them.

All around
us now, hundreds were pushing onto the causeway that ran the ramparts.

“Swords!”

I waved my blade, but the halflings were still at their struggles against the braced ladders, or else fleeing flames that somehow leapt up the walls in watery streams.

“Swords!”
Fulko roared. 
“Grab your swords, my boys!”

Soldiers near him screamed for swords.  Others were almost singing as they filed over into ranks on the ramparts. 
It was merely dozens at first.  Then at last the call resounded, the last of them came rushing towards me and Fulko in a great living shield of halflings.  In their running, some were fighting.  Some were shot in the back or hacked down.  Slips of gore streamed, and the ramparts began to slicken with the blood of the watershed folk. 

Finally
Fulko Fallwater managed to form them up into something resembling ranks.  We bent and stepped together—two groups, both directions. 

In the center
, I discovered Fulko Fallwater hunched over an immense, iron ring set into a wooden block. 

“Here, boy
s!” he roared at us. 
“Get yourselves down here!”

I
looked, and he was utterly taken at the sight of Dhal as the heavy block rose.

Both chevrons of
halflings began stepping away from us along the wall.  I breathed, confused, then helped Fulko Fallwater pull.  Soon, we dropped into a door beneath us, alongside Dhal. 

In a hand-hewn tunnel,
I grabbed Dhal’s hand.  We ran a careful path down through winding pits and traps. We were under the high ceiling of the castle’s subterranean belly.  Morning’s new light and a granite-like dust streamed from cisterns, open the courtyard above.  Dwarves ran amuck, plundering or chasing down the retreating halflings. 

Then, b
efore us rose a shrine to a halfling queen of old, a great, curvy halfling with breasts the size of beer kegs.  Some of the Dwarf-King’s men had already managed to follow, and in the hellish hall behind us, they were screaming now, victims to the hidden pits or impaled on traps.

“Here,”
Fulko said, handing me another bow.  I gripped the weapon, my fists quaking.  It was a silly-looking little thing, not even the length of my arm. 

“Thundering hell!” I quipped.  “I’ve seen longer things dangling from between a troll’s legs!”

But when I nocked it with a dart, it was tremendously difficult to pull back—this thing had all the power of my long bow.

“Ya!  See?” Fulko roared with amusement.  “
Now we’ll we have ourselves some sport!”

Dhal behind us, we felled a score of dwarves, but now they came faster than we could fire. 

Dim torchlight flickered as air breezed in from the castle above.  I grabbed Dhal’s hand again.  With Fulko beside us, we ran together across a rock bridge, the pits to either side of us seemingly bottomless.  With a great breath, I froze, nearly firing into a livery of halflings that were coming down from yet another entrance from above. 

Dhal crouched behind a great stone column.  I nodded at Fulko, then turned
.  He and I then fired into the crowd of dwarves rushing our way, and a volley rose from behind, sending a wide sheet of darts into them.  They fell or froze, or else went sliding and skidding into the pits to either side of the causeway. 

For a moment, the torrent of incoming dwarves ceased.

Fulko Fallwater stepped ahead of me and nocked his bow, his back to us.  “Get behind the stone tooth with your woman, Troll-King!” he roared, laughing with joy.  “There’ll be plenty for all of us.”

I
scampered with Dhal behind a stone column, carved with a slit so that a man or a halfling could fire an arrow from behind.  All around us, higher in the caverns, five dozen halfling bowmen were perched, bows taut, and nearly invisible.  And suddenly I realized just how good these watershed folk really were at war.  The castle walls, and indeed the castle itself, had all been a ruse. 

The whole point was to get the dwarves down here!

Just ahead of us, Fulko Fallwater brought the arrow back, the feathers bent and oddly luminous in the cool light.  He was staring off toward the sound of more approaching dwarves.  His lips were pressed as he said, “Ya ya!  Pigs to the poke, boys!”

And so it began, a slaughter
.  It was a victory like I would have never thought possible.  For two more hours, we sent volley after volley into chests and heads.