Ravenwild: Book 01 - Ravenwild (99 page)

Dorin paid no heed to the laying down of arms, instead leading a squad of four that rushed with him to the wall of the fortress city, where he pounded at the entryway with the hilt of his sword. The stick of a man that opened it would have broken the heart of any decent soul. Once inside, they went first to the barracks, which were entirely empty. Next, they searched house to house in the officer’s sections where they found the survivors that had managed to stay together. All told, there were two hundred and eight of them, many so weak from starvation that they could not walk. Most of these looked to be at death’s door. Those who still could walk were tending the ones who were bedridden. Dorin ordered water brought in to at least begin to correct the obvious dehydration all around them, then walked back out through the entryway to see if there was any way they could get some food to these brave soldiers and their families who had hung on for so long. He took the trail to the north and received the dismal news that there was precious little, if any, food to be spared. Hunting parties had been sent out daily, but this was not good hunting country, and there had been no fresh game brought in for days. Saddened, he walked slowly back towards the entrance to The Gate, trying to muster the courage to break the bad news to those inside. He happened to glance down towards the river where he saw a dozen or so Wolves swimming across. He was about to call for help, and had actually turned to do so, when he spun back around, having noticed that they appeared to be swimming in pairs and that each pair seemed to be dragging something large in the lazy currents. He jogged down to the water’s edge and, sure enough, saw that each pair of Wolves was dragging a large deer. He looked towards the far shore and saw that more of the Wolves were dragging even more game down to the riverbank for the trip across. Not quite knowing what to do with this miracle before him, he ran back up to the fortress and summoned his squad. He was so excited they had to slow him down several times before they could understand what he was rambling on about.

Back down to the river they went, slowly and with great caution. Their intention was to help the animals drag the deer up over the riverbank and on to the fortress. But when the soldiers approached them, the Wolves would have none of it, barking and growling for them to get out of the way. One of them approached a soldier and bit him gently on his sword arm, easing him off to the side of the trail.

“I think they mean for us to remove our weapons,” he said.

“I agree,” said the commander. “Let’s be about it, then.” A few of his soldiers definitely balked at the idea, but whenever Dorin told them that they would be the last to eat, if they ate at all, they laid down their arms. This was clearly what the Wolves wanted, who then returned to the river, leaving the game for the Ravenwild troops. They dragged it, without delay, up to the fort. This process went on all afternoon with a total of seventy-eight animals donated to the cause.

As the sun was setting, with the two spring moons beginning to show on the distant horizon, Patriachus sat with Brutus and watched as the last deer was hauled up to the great fortress.

“Jacqueline would be pleased,” Brutus thought.

“She would indeed,” Patriachus thought back. “How sure are you that her sister is the one named in Prophecy?”

“I have no doubt.”

On her long ride back to Belcourt, Stephanie Doreen Strong picked up followers all the way. It had all started back in that town, what was the name of it? Where she had met that nincompoop of a mayor who had made her sick, the way he had fawned over her so. She couldn’t remember. But what she could remember was the townspeople all foolishly dropping to their knees everywhere she went, as soon as they spied her, where they would remain with their heads bowed until she ordered them up.

Several, perhaps twenty, had followed her when she left. She had tried to outpace them by urging her horse into a brisk canter, but upon slowing it back down to a walk, they had reappeared, and in greater numbers. These, in turn, were joined by more and more, until by the evening of her third day of travel, her followers numbered in the hundreds. She had to admit it was convenient to be able to ask for something to eat and have it appear almost immediately from the throng that now accompanied her, but at the same time it was not only annoying, it was unsettling to be hounded like this.

That night while she slept, more joined the multitude; so when she awoke,

close to a thousand had her completely surrounded.

Out of the blue, a mother rushed forward with a toddler cradled in her arms. “Please,” she begged, “my child is very sick. Help her. Please help her.”

She had no idea what to do. She wasn’t a doctor or a nurse. She was a freshman in high school, and it was more than a little scary to be placed in charge of something as important as a Gnome child’s very well being with absolutely no idea as to what to do.

It was time to act.

She remembered her father saying once, “Dire circumstances often require dire actions,” and these circumstances were certainly moving in the direction of dire.

She raised her arm in the universal sign of “Stop” to the woman who was pleading with her, raising her voice as well. “Please,” she said, “I’m not what you think I am. I’m a girl. That’s all, just a girl. I guess I do have some special talents, but these have nothing to do with healing. I repeat, I’m just a girl. I have
no
idea what to do to help you with your child. None. You have to believe me.

“Now, I’m headed for the city of Belcourt because that is where I’ve been told I might find my mother and father. I haven’t seen them for almost a year now. Go home. That’s what I want you all to do. I’m flattered that you think me worthy of all this attention, but I don’t deserve it. Please. Go home. Let me go on. I only want to find my parents and go home myself.”

But the Gnome mother would not be denied. Frantic, she not only persisted in her efforts, she argued louder, much louder, her only thought being that Stephanie do something to help her little-one. Angry shouts could be heard from the throng, all demanding that she do something to help this sick Gnome youngster, causing the hairs on her neck to stand on end, not for fear of what they might do to her, because she now knew that she could not be harmed, but for fear of what they might do to each other if they got any more out of control.

Years from that day it would be said that the force of her scream caused several rows of the nearest Gnomes to tumble backwards and some of the nearest trees to be stripped clean of their leaves. That would be overstated, but there
was
enough wind behind her agitated yell to move the crowd back some. Whether or not it was the actual wind effect or the ear-splitting volume is anybody’s guess. But move back they did, giving her room to visit in private with the mother. She did manage to convince her that she had nothing to offer her regarding her child’s sickness, and that she surely would if she could. Whether the crowd knew this, or thought she had delivered medical care to the young Gnome, became irrelevant as she once more mounted her horse to finish her trip.

By the time she arrived at the southern reach of the Knife Edge, those that followed her had doubled in number yet again, the Gnome contingent having been joined by hundreds of Humans, Dwarves, and Elves from Ravenwild, all of whom had somehow gotten wind of the imminent arrival of the miracle girl.

Not knowing the horse well, she dismounted and tried to lead him up the trail. Halfway to the Great Wall, she wished she had left him back at the beginning of the narrow ascent. Stepping nervously this way and that and tossing his head wildly about, he was obviously struggling greatly with the narrow pathway which, at some points, measured less than eight feet wide and dropped straight off for thousands of feet on either side of them. She tried to calm him by talking to him softly, but it was not to be. He could not be calmed, and soon his bucking and rearing made him impossible to manage. He was threatening to throw them both over the edge, so she punched him hard in the forehead, and he dropped like a stone. Her followers gave a collective gasp as she burrowed underneath him, rolled him onto her shoulders, and carried him the rest of the way to the Great Wall.

Carefully setting him down directly in front of the monstrous gap, she looked up to see dozens of workers scurrying about on hundreds of feet of scaffolding, all working at breakneck speed to try and get it rebuilt before the Trolls returned. Recognizing something in the way he moved, she coned down her vision on one of them and found she could see his face as clearly as if he were right in front of her.

“Erik!
” she yelled, watching his eyes light up and the smile overtake his face as he looked down at her. From where he was, she looked no bigger than a child, but there could be no doubt. It was she. Down the scaffolding he scrambled, back and forth, as he made his way down to her.

Coming into his arms was like standing at the gates of heaven itself, and she felt like she might melt.

Pushing her gently away, he said, “Look at you. The miracle girl has arrived.”

She blushed a deep crimson and stammered, “I am
no
miracle girl. I have seen some miracles on this crazy journey, that’s for sure, but I am no miracle girl.”

He gestured towards the flat in front of them in which the thousands of her followers all knelt with their heads bowed. They were chanting in her name. “Apparently, they do not agree with you,” he said softly.

“I know it,” she said, shaking her head. “They’ve been with me for days now, more and more every day. It’s crazy. What are we going to do with them?”

“I’ll tell you what we’re going to do with them,” he said, breaking out in a smile, “We’re going to put them to work to repair this Wall.”

His manner turned serious. “The word is that the Trolls are all headed for Ghasten, where they’re expected to muster and form ranks for the final assault on our city. They plan to occupy it this time as their own. You, my friend of friends, may have brought the solution home with you.” He waved to the throng.

“Speak to them. Tell them it is your wish that they join us in our labors. We could surely use their help. I have a feeling they will listen.”

As one, they continued to chant in her name.

Leopold Malance Venomisis, for the first time in his reign as Emperor of the nation of Slova, was having serious doubts that his army would prevail in this war against the Humans, Elves, and Dwarves of Ravenwild. Every day, for weeks now, the reports he had been getting contained nothing but bad news from the four corners of Inam'Ra. First there had been the debacle of that fool of a general and his informant in their failed attempt to capture his former nurse’s brother. Then there had been the disaster of epic proportions with essentially his entire occupying force in Vultura. And the latest news was that some sort of huge watercraft, armed with strange weapons with enormous destructive power, had decimated the force he had in place at The Gate and was presently bearing down on his very castle. Without the occupying soldiers at The Gate that he had so carefully built up, he knew it was merely a question of time before the remaining Ravenwild army, that had proven so vastly underrated in the Vultura campaign, staged a land invasion of the homeland. And now the Gnomes had joined them. This was bad. This was very, very bad.

He had killed and dined on so many bearers of calamitous news he had lost count.

“At least,” he thought, “I was smart enough to order the withdrawal of all my remaining troops as soon as the Vultura situation fell apart. At least we can launch our final attack on Belcourt while the wall is still down.”