Ravenwild: Book 01 - Ravenwild (31 page)

With his hand held fast to his sword handle, he fell into a light but restless sleep while sitting up against a giant hardwood about ten feet off the main trail, awaking repeatedly in a cold sweat with the weapon half-drawn. The next day was a repeat of the first, and the day after, and the day after that. Jessica’s captors were no longer making any attempt to cover their tracks, seemingly more focused on making good time. It was impossible to say in what direction they were headed, except it seemed to him that they were headed away from Mount Gothic, which now was to his back as near as he could judge, but he couldn’t be sure because the trees obscured any view of his surroundings. He considered climbing one of them to get his bearings, but rejected the notion as soon as it crossed his mind because of the time it would take. It didn’t matter. He had his job right in front of him, and his job was to follow their trail.

On day four he ran out of food.

On the morning of the fifth he got the sense that he was gaining on them. He confirmed his impression by examining a particular set of tracks carefully. Yes. They were definitely fresher.

He moved forward with a renewed strength of mind, increasing his speed as much as he could without sacrificing quiet. Overtaking them would mean nothing if they heard him coming. No, he needed to catch them under the cover of stealth. He needed his approach to be as silent as smoke.

On the morning of the sixth he downed a critter that looked something like a tiny moose. Completely out of the meat and other foodstuffs he had pilfered from the camp almost a week before, he needed it badly. With the many streams and springs along the trail, water had so far not been a problem, but he was sorely in need of nourishment.

He quickly gutted it and threw it across his shoulder. He didn’t want to slow one bit, knowing he was catching up.

The woods began to thin out in the afternoon, and it became apparent that they were on a trail that ran along the base of the mountains. His heart jumped when he caught a glimpse of the small Gnome war party leading Jessica along in front of him. Just as the tracks had told him, they numbered three. He suppressed a growl of fury.

Now that he knew he would catch them before the sun came up, he stopped and crouched down. Kneeling, he hacked off a hind leg of the small moose-like creature that he had dropped with his stolen bow and arrow earlier in the day. About the size of an average lamb, he had merely slung it over his shoulder and hefted it with him as he walked along. He tore off a chunk of the flesh with his teeth and chewed. He knew that he should be gagging, eating raw flesh. But this was something that he had done before, both in military training and out of necessity on maneuvers miles behind enemy lines. You need food; you kill it and eat it. If you can’t build a fire because it might give away your position, you eat it raw.

Survival.

Life reduced to its most simple terms: Kill or be killed.

And Blake had no intention of dying, no matter what planet he was on.

They on the other hand had taken his wife captive, and for that they were all going to die. Tonight. Every single one of them. He swallowed the flesh without tasting. He took another bite and eased forward while he chewed. There was no reason to rush any more. They might have her, but he had them. It was all over but the doing.

“Did you hear that?” whispered Orie.

Now deep within Slova, the three of them were awaiting the return of Forrester Ragamund who had gone on a quick scouting trip ahead of them to assure that the way was clear. Such was his antipathy of his Emperor and his evil regime; he had cast his lot in with these three Human children without hesitation.

He was not entirely believing of their story that they were not from this world but, then again, he had heard from his fellow sewer rats rumors of such things, rumors that had drifted down to them like the waste and detritus that drifted down from those in higher positions than they, which was pretty much everyone else in the kingdom. For they, the keepers of the huge septic system under the castle, were the lowest of the societal low. Forrester had always reasoned that this was why nobody had come after him the day he up and walked away, having had enough of his wretched life. Every job has its advantages.

Most of the keepers of the cesspits were intellectually challenged sorts, unable to do much of anything else. For many, however, the job had been ordered by the court as punishment for a crime against the social order. Forrester had received his sentence by throwing to the ground a captain who was whipping his elderly father for not getting his weapon forged on time, or something like that. Over the years that had since passed, he had forgotten many of the details. But he was never allowed to forget that he had been sentenced to a lifetime of tending the fortress sewers, with no possibility of appeal, for defending his frail father against a much stronger and abusive authority.

Before his heinous crime against society, Forrester had been a passionate student of magic. Not that this was easy for, other than he, there was no magic practiced by a single Troll in all of Slova. But at weeks end, if and when his work in his father’s smithing shop was done, and it was such that time permitted, he would travel about fifty miles to the border, stopping only to drink, rest, and avoid the patrols that were constantly on the lookout for those who were not where they were supposed to be. He would cross the Slova River into Ravenwild. Once there, he would seek out an elderly Gnome woman named Cirrhus Wishfor who was, for all of her eccentric ways, a highly skilled sorceress. Indeed, her ability in the magical arts was what kept her from being discovered despite the fact that her cabin was a mile off the main trail, and in the easternmost aspect of Ravenwild, no less. It was shrouded in spells so thick that anyone approaching who was not already invited would become hopelessly confused every time they ventured near her home, and their senses would only return when they were headed in any direction away from her.

She had spied Forrester one day in her looking-stone, a fantastic spelled talisman that allowed her to see deep into Slova, in pretty much any corner, and had decided she would like to have him for a student. She watched him for years as he went about his business, and he seemed to her to be bright enough and to have a good heart as well, unlike that pig of an Emperor and his court of cronies. She was getting on in years and wanted to have someone to whom she could pass on what she had spent an entire lifetime learning. So she had conjured a very powerful spell when he was a young Troll that caused him to journey her way without really knowing why, and it came to pass that he ended up being her student until the day the courts convicted him.

She had asked nothing for his apprenticeship, but still he did chores for her, always wanting to repay her in some way for all that he was learning. These tasks were nothing she couldn’t have done herself with any more effort than saying a few incantations, but she let him do them because it helped in the balance of their relationship. So time passed, and his magic grew stronger.

Cirrhus had watched the entire trial on her looking-stone, knowing always that she could spirit him away undiscovered for all time with a few simple spells, but two things tempered her from acting to prevent the execution of his sentence. First, it was time for Forrester to practice and practice and practice again the command of magic that he had developed under her tutelage. She knew that, as a cesspit worker, he would have all the time he needed, for theirs were days mostly spent at idle, unlike toiling in his father’s shop where making things of iron under the constant demands of the customers would serve as a huge impediment to his furthering his skills in sorcery. Moreover, she wanted him inside the castle walls where he would learn to know, and therefore learn to loathe, the evil ways of Leopold Malance Venomisis. Innuendo always eventually found its way to the lower reaches of the fortress, where the days were mostly spent talking.

She knew he would hear again and again of the terrible deeds of his vile Troll Emperor and, when he had heard enough, she knew the time would come when he would return to her, having mastered all that she had taught him and eager to learn more.

She always knew she could be his rescuer, but she believed it best that he rescue himself.

Both Gracie and Ryan nodded. It was a troubling noise to be sure, the sound of a branch cracking, and what was most disturbing about it was that it had not come from the direction from which Forrester Ragamund should be returning.

Three hearts raced as one as they waited for whatever it was that was out there to declare itself. Orie instinctively checked his broadsword to make sure it was free in its scabbard. Gracie and Ryan did the same. They heard it again. This time it was much closer, about fifteen feet out. Gracie silently calmed the horses, who were getting more than a little nervous. Ryan nocked an arrow and peered into the night. Orie silently drew his blade.

All breathed a sigh of relief when Forrester appeared suddenly out of the darkness.

“That’s very strange,” thought Orie. “He didn’t just walk out of the gloom. I was staring at that exact spot and suddenly he was suddenly there. Hmmm.”

He was going to ask him about it when Forrester broke into a huge grin. “Good news,” he said, keeping his voice deliberately low. Nonetheless, it was such a powerful baritone it was almost as though your clothes rumbled no matter how quietly he spoke. “In fact,
great
news.” He raised his giant, bushy eyebrows skyward, a gesture not lost on the children in the dual-moon light of the Slovan late-summer nighttime sky.

The threesome gathered in close to hear what he had to say. He did not make them wait. “Your sister and her friend, Erik Fairman, Prince of Ravenwild and heir apparent, have this day escaped from the fortress of Malance Venomisis, out from under his very nose. And it was a brilliant getaway, as I heard it told, engineered in no small part by your sister herself, who led the party straight back towards the castle highlands, seemingly into the very hands of that slimy wartpig that had them locked in the dungeons not five days ago, when they took to the air on the backs of their horses and disappeared over the distant horizon on a set of, what should I call them … enchanted wings. Oh would that I could have been there to have seen such a brave escape.”

The young friends were overcome by joy and clapped each other on the back in celebration.

“That means they are safe, right?” asked Orie.

“Certainly for the moment,” returned Forrester. “Unless they happen to come down right on top of a Troll war party, they are small enough in number, four that is, that it will take considerable time, perhaps forever, to find them on the vast Slovan Plains. I was told there were huge headwinds that might yet carry them better than halfway across. Quite fortuitous. The headwinds I mean.”