Ravenwild: Book 01 - Ravenwild (88 page)

The Wolf fell like a stone at his feet. He picked him off the ground and applied pressure to his throat.

“Don’t kill him!” cried Jacqueline.

“I won’t,” said Forrester, “But he does need to stay asleep long enough for them to drag him away from here. Let him go home and tend the she-Wolves in the Southland.”

He released his grip on the Wolf’s neck and stood. Jacqueline repeated what he had said to Patriachus.

“You know of this?” he asked. “You know of our she-Wolves in the Southland?”

Jacqueline relayed the question.

Forrester turned to him.

“You know,” he said, as Jacqueline translated, “we each know lots of things. Maybe we should share some of them.

“Meanwhile, if food is an issue, very soon it will not be. The mother of all battles is about to be fought at The Gate.

“You will not have a food problem for long.”

Maxilius Bravarus knew he was being followed. He also knew that they were slowly but surely closing in on him. A hawk had suggested it days before, and by the way it had flown, he had known they were still coming after him and approximately how far behind him they were. True to their tracking skills, they were on his trail at sunrise, unrelenting, and pushed on harder with the passage of every minute, determined to have him before the sun went down.

He, like all Trolls, was pathologically afraid of the water, being unable to swim a stroke, but he had a plan. He also knew that it was only a matter of hours before they caught him, and in less than a day he would be in a boiling pot.

He arrived at the edge of the Slova River midmorning on a flat-out sprint. He began to hack away at a giant tree that he thought he might be able to make water-bound with a good hard shove once he had felled it and trimmed it properly. So he cut and he chopped. Down and again his giant sword flashed in the morning light, large chunks of tree flying all about as he grunted and sweated with the effort. Finally, it toppled. He had been at it for well over an hour now, and he knew they were getting close. He practically dove into the water and began to take off the first of two big limbs at the top because they were hanging up in the shallows. Off came the first and he heard them. Screaming wildly, and beating on an attack-drum, they tore along the riverside trail in a frenzy.

General Vladimir Dumfe hung back and let the soldiers do the soldiering. Sliphen Wedor ’eum had arrived the night before, and they had stayed far to the rear, drinking spirits all night and congratulating each other on a mission well done, and planning how they were going to spend some of the wealth that the Emperor would be sure to lavish upon them as a reward for their brave and efficient capture of the renegade commander. With these thoughts playing in their minds, they pursued their quarry, howling in anticipation of the kill. Mayhem ensued as the troops charged towards him. He never glanced up as he continued to slash at the last barrier between himself and certain death. “Four more, three, two, one… ”

There. He was through. Using muscles powered by the fuel of pure fright, he gave the giant trunk a mighty heave and clambered aboard. The log began to lurch to and fro as the swift current tugged forcefully at it.

The first three to arrive heaved spears and even some large rocks at Maxilius who rolled off the log's far end to shield himself from the bombardment. Spurred on by the angry screams of their approaching squad leader, they took a running jump towards the floating timber in a last-ditch effort to capture the escapee. Somehow, they managed to reach and grab ahold of the felled tree, now pitching madly in the river’s waters. Each struggled to pull themselves aboard. The squad left behind at the shoreline was soon far out of sight, all of them waving their swords high and shouting encouragement to the three drifting away aboard this makeshift raft.

Maxilius worked his way carefully towards the opposite end and waited, his sword drawn in his right hand, and the large, spiked mace dangling from his left, with about eight feet of chain. As the log tilted and swayed in the river, he stared them down, his eyes on fire. “You know you will never get to me now,” he called out, “unless you are carrying a bow and some arrows that I have not seen.

“I say
this
to you then.
I renounce Leopold Malance Venomisis as my Emperor
and I will fight to the death anybody who would stand with him. Join me. Join me today and help get us out from under the rule of this pig of a Troll. He is scum. He is living garbage.

“Fight for something worth fighting for. Fight for honor. Fight for truth. Fight for loyalty, yes, but do not mistake loyalty for blindness. Would you be loyal to one who would torture your own child because it makes him smile? Would you surrender to him your father’s arm because it pleases him to cut it off? Would you fight for a Troll who, who butchers and destroys other free races solely because he can?

“I tell you lads, he has to die, and I am going to do my very best to kill him, or at least be part of the effort to see to it that he takes it in the neck. That’s the way of it. You know you can’t possibly kill me. In fact, if I chose to, I could kill you all. I,” he looked at the mace that hung on its tether, “have the mace.”

With a flick of his wrist, he buried the deadly spikes into the log about ten inches from the face of the Troll nearest him.

“What say you?”

In the predawn stillness of the day that was about to begin, Captain Pilrick and Blake knelt before the coals of the firepit. Blake idly poked at them, causing them to spark and spit as they reluctantly gave birth to a small flame that he fed with small bits of wood until there was a small cook-fire. He hooked a piece of venison onto the tip of a metal skewer and held it in the flames where it began to sizzle. Captain Pilrick did the same, and they knelt there, turning their meat.

“You don’t find it ironic that we are in the absolute middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing except mountains, forest, and sky, and messengers now tell us that you and I are allies? That the Gnomes, Humans, Elves, and Dwarves now fight as one? This doesn’t strike you as particularly ironic? Imagine that. Almost makes me glad that we didn’t deliver you to the Troll cooking pots after all.” He smiled broadly.

“Don’t remind me,” said Blake. “And more importantly, don’t remind Jessica. Anyway, I’ll stick to healing the ones you military guys hack and gouge.

“But what I can’t figure out for the life of me is how it all got to this state. What caused the fall of the Great Wall? How did it come apart? What happened? Does anybody know?”

“What I have heard, and the details are not clear, is that one day the top part of it started to disintegrate.

“It is said that the uppermost face was originally formed with the magic of wizards and the power of the Elves. This was added to the base, the stonework of which was done by the Dwarves. The wizards, they say, actually melted the mother rock of the mountain herself, using metamorphosis spells of transmutation and the like. The Elves supposedly supplied the power for this, which they were somehow able to harness from the earth, sun, wind, and water, the magic of which dates back to ancient times. It is called the Bindu-warding art of magic and spell, or something like that. Anyway, whatever the cause was, it … it just crumbled.”

“I remember the first day we saw it. Jessica and I rode up from the front with some idiot named Hemlock Simpleton, the one who engineered this whole thing. A nitwit, if you ask me. We were being chased by Gnomes, I think. It might have been Trolls. Anyway, the upper aspect looked like it was made of sheer glass. It must have been a hundred feet high. You could tell to look at it that it could never be breached … ”

There was a pause in the conversation.

“But when you think about it, what does all this matter? The Wall is down. You can’t unscramble a scrambled egg. The focus needs to be on fixing it. Plain and simple. It lasted for hundreds of years, thousands, maybe. Now it’s broken and needs repair. That’s it.

“By the way, where are we anyway?”

“Yesterday we crossed over the border into Vultura. We are coming up on the city of Stihl. The same runners that brought us the message that we are now allies have told us that we are going to be folded into the Stihl Clan to take the fight to the Trolls. We will be traveling south. The Ravenwild forces have attacked the Trolls down by King’s Port, and the Trolls will be mounting a counterattack from the north in an attempt to flank them as they retreat. We will attempt to disrupt that counterattack. You and Jessica are now free to go, whenever and wherever you choose, but I would think you would want to remain with us until we can try and get some news as to the whereabouts of your daughter.”

“As the kids would say,” said Blake, “Ya think?”

Atop the Great Wall of Belcourt, overlooking the giant breach, were the five Ravenwild wizards-of-the-first-school, each of them masters in conjuring and spell. All were presently wondering if the magic had waned to the point that it would be helpful to any significant degree in repairing the damage. It was unbelievable that this could be, but such a thing as a simple levitation spell, for the obvious purpose of lifting of heavy objects, was no longer easily accomplished. It was mostly exhausting and mostly not doable. Raising as light a load as a large bag of oats now took the combined efforts of all five of them, and they were hardly able to sustain it.

As they stood, studying on the problem and pondering their dilemma, a messenger sent by Titan Mobst approached them. He arrived panting and out of breath.

He could have told them a dozen tales of narrow escapes from under the very noses of the Trolls on his journey up from King’s Port, but what he needed to do was deliver the message. So without so much as an introduction, he saluted Titan Mobst, in absentia, and broke his personal seal, reading,
“Per Order of Saviar Murlis, personal advisor to his Emperor, Singular Barb’rus Night. Titan Mobst, loyal citizen and metallurgist, says to Ravenwild’s wizards all, “Come to King’s Port straight away with full military escort. Do not delay for any reason.”

All read it twice. Most, three times. “Not a lot of ambiguity there,” said first-wizard Taber.

“Indeed,” agreed first-wizard Paulimas.

“Here comes our escort,” said newly graduated first-wizard Provostus, who nodded down the length of the Great Wall behind them.

The marching of a hundred boots sounded from the top of the Wall. The soldiers approached briskly to where the five of them stood, still studying the ugly gap below and in front of them. It was a hideous defect, no less than a several hundred feet in width and extending all the way to ground level. All could imagine the devastation the day it had crumbled, and what an easy victory had been handed the Troll army in that fateful moment, as they had surely poured in through the opening like so many grains of sugar from a bag, slaughtering all in front of them.

The commander of the soldier group approached them. “Fall in with us,” he said. “We will be climbing down. We will be moving with all haste. Please watch your footing. We cannot afford to lose any of you.”

Along the top of the wall they walked. It was so large that it took the better part of half an hour to circle back around to the central gate that faced in the direction of the Knife Edge.

By the time they had made it down to the bottom and were preparing to ride away, there appeared some of the first returning Ravenwild citizens, approaching on foot from the far side of the flat. It was heartwarming to see that some had never stopped believing. Or perhaps they were so sure the end was near that they had merely decided to return so they might at least die within the limits of their beloved city.