Book I of III: The Swords of the Sultan (22 page)

With a sigh of resignation, Baltor decided to
let Valuspo go. He first set the backpack onto the ground, then the
water canteens, then the two saddlebags and then the saddle
itself.

He next opened his backpack, stuffing as much
as he could inside—food supplies, flint, map, ID, rations,
fifty-foot rope, and of course, the other empty large bags. On the
outside of his backpack, he tied two of his water canteens. As for
his saber, he secured that onto the ringed sheath on his belt.

After hiding the saddlebags, the saddle, and
the remaining water canisters in a small grouping of trees, he
marked the spot where he had stashed them in his brain. He next
slung the backpack on, before heading up the trail.

A few minutes later, he laughed in amusement
as he could still hear Valuspo following behind. He turned around
to face his friend, patted him gently on the face, and then said,
“Valuspo, you need to go, boy. Where I am heading, you would not
want to go…it’s probably going to get much colder than this. You
are free.” He turned back around and continued to head up the trail
while his camel continued to follow.

Nearly five minutes later, Baltor laughed
over his shoulder, “Well, I can’t force you to leave my side, my
friend, but I’m willing to bet that you will go soon enough.”

Valuspo grunted with irritation, yet
continued to follow.

By noon, snow had begun to fall again. Two
hours later, two additional inches of snow covered the ground and
trees. Meanwhile, Valuspo continued to follow behind, even though
he also continued to complain out his irritations, non-stop.

Night came, but unfortunately, Baltor could
find no dry sticks with which to build a campfire. Even though he
tried to start one with the wet ones, all attempts ended in
failure.

To make matters worse, the temperature had
been steadily dropping all day long. Now that he was no longer
moving, he soon began to shiver uncontrollably under his thin
blanket. From the shivering and from hearing his camel’s cries, it
took Baltor many, many long hours to get to sleep that night.

About three hours before dawn, Baltor
unexpectedly awoke from a light slumber. Now, the initial reason
that caused him to open his eyes was due to some snow that had
melted into cold water, which had seeped through his blanket and
was dripping onto his bare hand.

Only seconds later, what really woke them
both up was a howling sound that filled the night sky—sounding
suspiciously like a wolf.

Immediately, Baltor was up on his feet with
saber in hand, looking all around in a defensive posture.

Fortunately, due to the white snow that was
coupled by the full moon and the quarter-waxing red moon,
visibility was good; he estimated that he could see some sixty feet
or so. Not surprisingly, he heard Valuspo making very frightened
sounds from right behind him.

Suddenly, coming into Baltor’s visibility was
a pack of animals that were all circling in—dozens of them! Once
they had neared to a distance of about thirty feet, Baltor could
tell that they were wolves.

Strangely enough, they didn’t immediately
come in for the attack; instead, they continued to move closer and
closer around Baltor and Valuspo. Twenty-five feet. Twenty-three
feet. Twenty feet. Fifteen feet. Twelve feet. Eight feet.

Meanwhile, Baltor waited for the sign of
their attack with his saber ready.

At five feet, just as the growling commenced,
the two nearest wolves leapt in with fangs and claws exposed!

In the next split-second, he sliced off the
head of the first wolf with a sideswipe, before rolling directly
underneath the other flying wolf. While that wolf flew harmlessly
over, he angled his saber up and sliced that wolf’s guts open.

Without stopping, he leapt into another roll
between his camel’s legs, but just as he had gotten back to his
feet on the other side, two more wolves were already in
mid-leap.

Baltor swung his saber upwards into a wide
arc, instantly killing one, but only slicing through the leg of the
other. After twirling his sword once in his right hand, he plowed
his saber deep into the crippled wolf, just before he rolled to his
right to protect his camel’s front side.

Upon killing two more wolves, Baltor next
rolled back to the right side, killed one more, rolled back through
Valuspo’s legs, killed two more on the left side, and rolled again
back to his rear! An eternity seemed to pass as he continued to
take wolf after wolf after wolf out.

Finally, the last few remaining members of
the pack retreated into the night.

After having inspected both himself and
Valuspo, Baltor next gently patted his frightened camel on the neck
to calm him down, remarking, “How lucky we were not to have even
gotten injured, much less dead. Hey—maybe I could now fashion some
warm fur coats for us!”

In response, Valuspo made another frightened
squeal.

“Relax, Valuspo,” Baltor whispered
soothingly. “We’re okay.”

Valuspo relaxed.

Though untrained in the art of fur making,
which was a course Baltor now greatly wished the Guild had offered,
he immediately began to skin the wolves with his saber as best he
could.

After he had skinned nine dead wolves to the
best of his ability, he wrapped the meat-covered furs on top of
Valuspo in order to get his camel warm first. Once done, he then
cut slits for his arms and head into the largest fur, and then
draped it over his body.

Overall, Baltor had tried to make sixteen
furs—fortunately; he had only mutilated six of them to the point of
being unusable. Neither made complaints about the blood that
completely drenched their bodies, especially for the fact that they
were now both warm.

Just as he finished with this exhausting and
frustrating task, dawn began to fill the skies with ever-lightening
colors. Meanwhile, snow started to fall once again from the sky,
which had already covered most of the wolf tracks.

Exhausted, he turned to face his camel, and
yawned, “Well, Valuspo, I guess you’ll be coming with me after all,
huh, boy?”

Valuspo slobbered Baltor’s face in
response.

After he had wiped off all the drool, which
took a few seconds, he hopped onto his camel’s back, grabbed a
morsel of hair on the back of his camel’s neck, kicked his boots
lightly into his camel’s sides, and they continued. He steered by
lightly tugging the hair whatever direction he wanted to go.

That afternoon, the valley abruptly ended
with an ice-covered cliff face, certainly not climbable by a camel.
There also appeared to be a fork in the road that split in two
different directions—north and south.

Once they had arrived at the fork, Baltor
stopped the camel, and looked in both directions carefully.

He saw that the path to his right that led
south consisted of rocky terrain, which continued to escalate
higher into the mountains. As he turned his head to look the other
direction, he saw that the left path going north had a declining
slope and that the terrain looked much smoother.

Without pause, he prompted his camel to the
north. That night, he set up camp, and the very cold night passed
by without incident.

It was shortly after dawn that they
continued. Several hours later, the path switched from veering
downward back to veering upward, while increasingly becoming
rockier and colder.

By that afternoon, the temperatures had
dropped to about twenty degrees Fahrenheit, and snow steadily fell.
Despite the fact it snowed all night long, Baltor remained warm in
the furs as he slept—Valuspo made no complaints either.

The following morning, despite the fact that
there was more than a foot of snow on the outside layer of the
furs, he discovered with happiness that the inside layer had
remained dry and warm—that, coupled with the fact that he had slept
so well, he felt wonderfully refreshed.

After eating a small breakfast of dried
rations, they continued their journey north. The rocky path that
they were on not only elevated higher and higher, yet the air got
colder and colder still.

Late that afternoon, the blizzard winds had
become so tumultuously strong that they began to lift the furs off
their bodies—making them both quite cold! Valuspo had already begun
to make irritated grunting noises, to confirm his displeasure.

An hour later with no sign of the blizzard
stopping, which Baltor took that as an ominous sign, he breathed a
sigh of exasperation, hopped off his camel in order to warm up his
own legs by walking, turned the camel around by the reins, and then
headed back south. They pushed on through the entire night without
stopping.

The snow stopped by three in the next
morning; and by six, the sun had even poked itself between two
mountain peaks, creating a beautiful morning within this frigid
environment.

However, Baltor’s eyes, mind and body were so
completely exhausted and numb that he didn’t assess a thing—around
seven in the morning, he tiredly hopped back onto his just-as-tired
camel, and they continued onward.

A little over ten minutes later, and without
any warning whatsoever, an unseen force slammed very hard into
Baltor, which not only caused him to get completely knocked off his
camel—a split-second later, he slammed even harder onto the
ground!

While lying on his back, the only thing he
initially knew in his dazed and starry state was that this creature
was something very large, very heavy and as white as the snow
around him.

When his senses came to, a few moments later,
he saw an enormous cat with two large fangs sitting firmly on top
of his own legs, simultaneously tearing through the wolf furs with
its razor-sharp claws and teeth, in order to get to the meat
underneath—Baltor’s meat!

He launched a hard punch into the cat’s nose,
in order to try to get it off him, but because he did not have the
power of his whole body to back that punch up, the cat roared out
in anger while throwing a powerful swipe of its massive paw into
Baltor’s head.

Instantly he was knocked “out cold,” no
longer able to fight against the ferocious and hungry cat!

An unknown amount of time passed before
Baltor finally returned to the state of consciousness; already was
he feeling a slight headache.

After opening his eyes and slowly glancing
around with his very blurry vision, he discovered with surprise
that he was lying under a very warm fur blanket in a giant-sized
bed that even had a wood headboard. Chiseled into this wood was the
detailed image of a luscious forest with a wide assortment of trees
and spacious partly-cloudy skies—spread here and there on this
“absolutely beautiful art piece,” in Baltor’s opinion, were either
small groups of birds or squirrels.

As his vision slowly-but-surely cleared, he
saw another bed of the same size and model to the right. To the
left, in the very center of the room, there stood a massive
rectangular wood table had six wooden chairs surrounding it. While
two of those chairs were normal in size, the other four looked like
they were made for giants!

A few moments later, just beyond the table,
his eyes spotted a gigantic living room, evident by the fur
carpeting that covered most of the floors. Taking most of this area
up was a giant-sized/fur-covered couch that would have formed the
shape of an equilateral triangle, except for the fact that
one-third of it was missing. This couch’s opening, which also
happened to be the same area that the carpeting stopped, was safely
distanced about fifteen feet away from a roaring fireplace and
chimney. In addition, hanging upon a stoker within the fireplace
was a black cauldron—steam continuously pouring out of the corners
of the lid.

Within this giant/one-room cabin—whose
floors, walls and ceiling were made of cedar—there were six
frost-covered windows revealing the winter darkness outside, and
thirty-eight silver plaques mounted on the walls. Each plaque
containing a different type of stuffed predator animal head. Last
but not least, there was one ten-foot tall cedar door, currently
closed.

As he tried to sit up in bed, so too did he
begin to feel the temples in his head pound rather painfully, so he
lay back down while shutting his eyelids.

Several minutes later, just as the pain in
his head was almost completely gone, his keen ears detected the
approaching sounds of crunching footsteps in the snow.

About twenty seconds after that, those
crunching sounds were replaced by the creaking sounds as that same
someone now loudly stomped on a wood porch outside, fast nearing
the door.

He shut his eyes into teeny slits, while ever
so slightly turning his head toward the door—it was his intention
to appear unconscious until he had fully assessed the situation,
which could possibly turn dangerous at any given moment, as he had
learned the hard way over the years.

Just after someone had turned the doorknob
and the door pushed open, he saw the silhouette of a giant standing
there—the top of this giant’s head was a fractional bit shorter
than the door-frame itself, making him or her nearly ten feet tall!
Moreover, Baltor observed that he or she was nearly as wide as the
door.

While the giant stood in place, he or she
began to stomp his or her snow-covered boots heavily on the porch,
and only a moment later, the whole place began to steadily vibrate
from the powerful impacts by this potentially six-hundred-pound
giant—so Baltor estimated.

As soon as the giant had completed getting
all the loose snow off, nearly thirty seconds later, he or she then
stomped into the room that still caused vibrations though on a much
lesser scale, coupled with the occasional squeaks in the cedar
floor.

Upon the giant’s entry into the cabin, Baltor
could tell through his slightly less squinting eyes that he wore a
fur coat, pants and boots. The very next thing to catch his
attention was the giant’s white-skinned hands that were twice the
size of his own hands. Then it was his clean-shaven, masculine and
pale face, which was surrounded by golden blond hair that was very
thick, wavy and shoulder-length. Though Baltor wasn’t interested in
men that way, he still believed that this giant was actually
handsome.