Blood Of The Wizard (Book 1) (5 page)

Chapter 7

Uncle Jickie, Frobhur, Gilli, and Kenzo were old.  They sat around me like visages of wisdom, saying nothing.  But no one in their right mind would start any trouble with a single one of them.  No one who has lived the wild, free life of the dwarven woodcutter would have any trouble understanding the cost of that freedom—not if they looked around me just then.  Lords and earls never waged more ruthless war on each other than the native Yrklandic elves and Dwarven Cutters during those first years of the Wild Wars.  The savagery and sorrow seen by the eyes around the table would not be eclipsed for centuries. 

But it did not damage the hearts of these old bucks. 

They were the sort of dwarves who were still pulled by the life of the wild cutter, felling as many elves as they did trees, all the while living off the land.  They still wanted to rise up and salute their destiny with a growl.  They were still ravenous for danger and barbarity.  They still felt the stirring of youth, the places where they had faced down and laughed at death, and roared at the inexpressible depths of defeat.  But since we had taken our seat at a table behind Gilli’s Hall, they sat silently across from Halvgar and me.  We were positioned in a mossy and rock-strewn clearing, the long hall casting us in the moon’s dim shadows. 

We sat for long minutes, perfectly still
.  All of us were staring in the lone candle before us.  Beside it was a goblet of goat’s blood, boiled and mixed with milk, to be drunk should any oaths be sworn this night.

Gill harrumphed quietly at the head of the table.  He fidgeted with his sharp green longshirt,
worn over his chainmail, thumbing at the silver waist-clasp.

“
There is in every dwarf some secret, a truth with which he does not dare depart,” he said, leading the meeting, as was his right, being that we were at his home. 

“
But tonight, lads… we must.”

Frobhur, the largest and stoutest
Dwarf I had ever seen, was shaking Gilli’s shoulder reassuringly.

“
Here, here.” Uncle Jickie said with unusual slightness.  “It is so, Master Gilli.  It would seem, dear lads, that we pursued the wrong fellow for some days now.  And we have allowed those days to turn into a pair of weeks.  But the answer to the riddle may not yet be beyond us.  These silent disappearances, we have seen them before.”

Gilli cocked an eye at Kenzo, a dour
, ancient dwarf whose might was still not to be doubted.  We called him Mighty Kenzo, as did people who had never met him.  He was smaller than Frobhur, but far more muscular.  His eyes were particularly fierce, and his hair had not yet been flecked with the slightest bit of gray.

“
So it falls to me,” Kenzo growled like a bear.  “As it should be, lads.  I am he whose runes on the Rock of the Heir’s Sea first woke the beast.”

“
The
beast
?” I asked.

“
Aye, lad.  The beast. We had gone further south than any dwarf had ever stepped, and as such, we made quite merry for the first time in months.  I struck the cliff face of the sea’s bank to mark as fully damned evident the date and time of the arrival of the Merry Cutters.  But no sooner had I finished than a creature rose to escape the crags.  I scampered back and saw it climb with a scuttling hiss.  Lad, the noise alone made the flesh want to run from your bones.  Then we saw it.  It was dragon, a true dragon—not one the wee bronze wyverns you get up here.  This thing was a thunderwyrm. 
The
Thunderwrym.  So incredible.  So evil.  Nothing written in the darkest, fevered corners of your soul could imagine it.  As black as the inside of a coffin, it slithered to the highest spot among the peaks.  Even from our lowly vantage, we could the outrageous girth of the wyrm.  It was as long as twenty horses if it was a foot.  As wide as ship!  Its roar was as thunder and its tongue was as some gruesome blue banner.  And when the chills had crawled fully across our backs, it launched itself and took flight!”

All of us, silent and rapt, turned to Halvgar.  He made a strange wincing expression and seemed to study
stars a moment.

“
That is when it began,” said Mighty Frobhur.  He had a voice like the Thunderwyrm he spoke of, a voice whose whispers were like snorts of a boar.  “Our merry band may speak of cutting.  Cutting down timber.  Cutting down the elves.  For in truth we did—but we took to hell only a fraction of what the beast carried back to those crags.”

“
Which was hell enough!” Gilli said.

Suddenly, Halvgar breathed sharply.  Then he let out a roar like the dog outside the quarantine’s tent
, and he punched to table hard enough to knock the candle high over our heads, landing nearby and leaving us in nearly perfect black.  “Damn it to the frozen depths, y’ old fools!  Tell me nothing more of this!”

Silently, we all stared in the blackness where the candle had been.

Then, with surprising quickness, Halvgar placed the candle back in its spot.  “Damn it, then!  See here, Kenzo.  Hear an unspoken apology; know an unknowable thing:  A beast such as you describe cannot be woken with naught but the scratching of runes.  This thing… it may fly, and it may prey upon innocents.  But that it hunts at all means it eats.  If a thing eats, it lives…”

Then he did something I had not ever seen.
  He nodded to me a with a bow like one might reserve for a Dwarven captain, or even a king.

“And by damn if it lives, it can be killed!” I called.

“
Here, Here!” Uncle Jickie thundered.  “Then once more, lads!  Once more to the filthy joys of war!”

“
Here, here!” we all cried.

And each of us, in turn, drank from the goblet of goat’s blood.
 

   Chapter 8

In making my oath, they had decreed me a Merry Cutter, and I took up the role with an enthusiasm that prompted more than a few eager nods from our band of adventures.  A young man on his first escape into the night with a horny young woman couldn’t have been half as exhilarated as I was to have so venturesome a quest before me.  I wore black plate mail on my upper body, a bishop’s helmet, which was open at the top, and decided on a kilt instead of oversized dwarven trousers for my legs.

My great Dellish longsword
, called an orphanmaker, was longer than the tallest of my fellows.  Its hilt was as black as my armor.  I also carried a long spear, and what the dwarves call a lesser axe, meaning it’s blade was one-sided.

As for the crew,
I provisioned us with every worthless trinket and flashy trifle that could tempt the elf into aiding us with supplies or the secrets of the forest.  And if these things should fail, I added a dozen fine as new dwarven dirks, which everyone knew could corrupt the soul of even the hardiest elf, and I also equipped us with a box of wicked-looking hunting knives.  I placed these things in square cases that were slow to open, which would surely add to their aweing power.  As to
our
needs, I secured a twenty-seven foot longboat with a flat bottom, specially designed for the river.  It was lovely thing with a hull of oak, with carved goat’s horns at the prow and a pair of carved, bucking goat legs at the stern.  It had a triangular wind vane made of bronze on which a leaping goat was painted in black. The wind vane was mounted at her masthead, though the mast was lowered now, supported by two timber crutches so that it ran like a rafter down the center of the long ship.

And for all our posturing, preparation, and searching the week prior, it seemed like no time at all before the unlucky number of six of us were loading the vessel with every manner of supply:  Tents, blankets, bows, arrows, flints, pipes, starweed, flour, smoked herring,
milk, and beer.

The Feisty-Goat was a
Dellish military ship, so despite the handsome cost in silver, I had to suppose that Addly, loyal to jolly ol’ Delmark through and through, harbored no grudge against my good friend—for we bought it from his commander, and I believe, without doubt, that he could have made the purchase more difficult if he chose.

From a distance. the Feisty-Goat looked lean, and knifelike, but when you were aboard you could see how the midships flared outward so that she sat on the water like a shallow bowl rather than cut through it like a blade.  Even with her belly laden with
a man, several stout dwarves, our weapons, shields, food, and supplies, she needed very little depth.

Testing it, we cutters went out rowing with
our full crew and a full load of supplies, our painted shields lining the ship’s sides. They chanted a song I did not know as we rowed, pounding out the tale of how Mighty Kenzo had fished for a trout and caught Gilli by the britches.  It was a good tale and its rhythms took us down the Trollwater. 

We were going north, with the current.  The ride was placid, and the sun was warm, despite the river’s margins being thick with ice
.  Once in a while her long keel would scrape on gravel, but by keeping to the outside of the river’s sweeping bends we were able to stay in sufficient water.  The mast had been replaced with a river pole, so that on the outside of the river’s curves, we could slide under the overhanging trees without becoming entangled.

A few of the guards rode horses, keeping pace with us on the eastern bank.  Behind us was a fleet of beast-prowed ships.  This was the
human army of Goback at its fullest, making damn certain we made no run for it before we paid in full. 

We had gone so far north as
to approach Dragonfell before the river was fully choked with ice.  Crews from Delmark were working now to clear a path in it to get north to Dragonfell’s bays.

We all saw Batt on the ice, helping the men chop the ice
.  Here in the mountainous, rich part of the country where we lived, elf tribes had taken to living on farms, guiding for dwarves or Dellishmen, or fishing for a living along the Trollwater’s banks and marshes.  But the country’s heart, wealthier still by the steady stream of timber that poured from it, was filled with tribes that were no man or dwarf’s friend—and it occurred to me that while I had brought every manner of thing to trade with them, I had no way of speaking with them.

“
We need a seventh member,” I said to my uncle. 

The old dwarf knew at once knew what I was hinting at.  He looked up at Batt, who was hovering over a hole in the ice like a white sea bear, and
“pished” loudly.

“
Pish
doesn’t feed the wolfhound, uncle.  Someone has to mind the wind vain on the river pole.  And we need someone who knows the tongues of the southerly elves.”

“
He’d make a damn fine guide,” Gilli agreed behind him.  “Knows how to keep that mouth shut!”

At that, Big Kenzo grunted. 
“Remember the bloody elves that guided us the first time—straight to the “lucky” mountain, the home of damned thunderwyrm!”

Suddenly, someone yelled from the banks,
“Fine vessel, my lads!  I hear that the Feisty-Goat could float on a puddle!”

I looked up from a trout, rising to a crumb I had tossed in. 

“Oh?  Who is this!”

Swallows, just out of their winter sleep, swooped across a familiar form.
It was Delthal.  He stepped beneath the naked branches of a brake of willows.  Then he came wading out to greet us, crunching through the thinner ice until he waist deep in the frigid water.

“
Now what’s all this!” Uncle Jickie declared.

“
I’ll tell you fine fellows what all this is!” Delthal roared back at him.  “This is a deathtrap!  Sometimes you’ll pass a riverside settlement of thatch and timber, and you’ll think it’s an elf village. But the folks inside are fully dwarven, at least by blood.  I tell you, they’ve become like them, and in many parts they are more like elves than dwarves at all!”

“
Says the dwarf in the skins of the elf!” thundered Jickie.

“
Nay!  Says the dwarf in the
mind
of an elf!  Trust at least this much, Master Jickie, I know them as well as any dwarf does!  If you will not make me rich as your guide, then make me satisfied knowing you will not travel by day.  Hide the vessel, lads.  Hide it by day and glide it by night.”

“
Thieves and vagabond, all of them!  We are
warriors
!”

“
Ha!  They have warriors, too,” Delthal said.  “Never mind the wild dwarves.  I’ll admit they are not so lethal as years ago,” he added, “Back then, if you did not want to be a warrior you stayed home in the fatherland. You till the soil, herd sheep, fish the sea, but you do not take to the ships and become a Cutter.  So in the first years here in Yyrkland, most
every
dwarf was forced to the fight.  But the— ”

“
But?  What but?  You just proved our point, by thunder!” Kenzo growled.  “These days, only one in twelve dwarves has a belly for the blood of his enemy.  The rest are farmers who fell to wanderlust in their youth, or who were unlucky enough to be born to mountain dwarves—the vagabond southerly dwarves will think they’re approaching dogs, but they’ll find themselves facing bears!”

“True enough.  But
it’s the southerly elves you’ll have to worry about.  They’ll come at you by the score, Master Kenzo, each one more naked, hungry and fierce than the last!”

Big Kenzo laughed.
“Lad, you’re amusing, I will grant you that.  But elves?  I think only one in twelve is a real warrior, and sometimes—nay most times—not even that many.  But in our company, Young Delthal, every blade is wielded by a warrior!”

One or two of the oars dipped and the Feisty-Goat glided backwards.

“Aye, you’ll be as bears, my lads.  Bears, growling and yelping, crying like a damned cub when you face the thunderwyrm!”

The vessel slowed.

“I saw the elves try to take it once.  They brought a force a hundred times this size.  They had blocked the mouth of its lair with felled trees.  There were about a hundred naked elvish warriors.  They had a score of bowmen and spear-throwers waiting by the blockage, ready to skewer the beast.”

For once
, my kinsman fell silent.

“
That was something else I learned about the elves, the joy with which they faced it.  And the utter failure they were at it;  I saw them whooping with joy as they leaned down to stab it, only to have teeth the size of those oars chomp them in twain.  But that was not all I learned.  At least it’s not all I think I learned: there might be a way to kill it with but a handful of stout dwarves…”

I watched in amazement as Jickie and Kenzo hefted Delthal over the Feisty-Goat’s prow.
  They began stripping him naked, then offering him more Dwarven attire.

“
You’ll at least stop cutting your beard off like a damned maid, I hope,” Gilli offered, at which the others had a good laugh.

We had our seventh member.