The Azure Wizard (22 page)

“We will be using my Wizardcraft to take us to Lumberwall, where we will warn Baron Ruauld of what we have told you. Then we will go to Taedroke and warn Baroness Jhinae.  Then I suppose I must do battle with this Troll.”

Baron Fernhollow furrowed his brow and replied to Ethan, “Why should you battle this shape-shifter? You said so yourself that your Wizardcraft isn’t offensive in any way. Wouldn’t it be better off in the hands of my knights?”

Ethan shook his head and answered, “It told me itself that I am the only one that can harm it. Any type of weapon can never kill it. It simply regenerates its wounds and continues to fight. Only the Wizardcraft of the Ancient Age that formed the beast can truly destroy it. I just have to think of a way to defeat it with my Wizardcraft.”

The Baron nodded and looked down, deep in thought. Finally he raised his head and stood proud and tall, a beacon of order and hope to his subjects that were present, “I will do as you suggested, storyteller. Be safe and soon return for I would wish to speak with you further about our land.”

Ethan managed a smile and a nod and he finally pulled the sleeves back down on his shirt so that his forearms were covered. He turned to May and asked quietly, “Are you ready?”

She nodded and in a flash of light and a brief moment later the two Foresters were vanished from the Great Hall of the Castle of Greenwell.

May blinked away the dizziness and the stars that swam across her vision when they appeared in a new environment after Ethan had Wizardcraft transported them from the Castle of Greenwell, which now laid about forty miles to the south. She looked immediately to Ethan and saw that the blue light in his eyes was quickly fading to his own original yellow hue. He then looked over into her eyes and smiled.

“I wonder where the tattoos are now?” he asked with a sigh.

May reached forward and grabbed the bottom of his wool shirt and she pulled it up to his chest revealing his muscular firm abdomen and lower back. The blue runes now had completely covered both his stomach and lower back in a collage of curving arcane symbols. She sighed and said with a huff as she rose, “These things aren’t going to stop until they cover every inch of your body, are they?”

Ethan shrugged as he replied, “It seems as much. There’s not anything I can do about it, though. At least not until our mission is finished and we’re safe back in Greenwell City.”

May nodded and the two finally observed their surroundings. They stood within the center of a wide plush green vale located in the saddle between two high forest-shrouded hills. Above, the sun shone brightly in the hot blue sky amidst small white clouds that crept slowly across the sapphire void. The vale was completely swathed in large green ferns and grasses and the bright blossoms of violet wildflowers were peppered throughout the green expanse. Ethan scanned the area slowly and intently before finally nodding.

“This is the place, alright,” he stated quietly.

This vale was the very same vale that O’Dell and Ethan had met the Woodfolk at those many days ago when they were en route to Greenwell City. Ethan could only hope that Férfa and her war party were still in the area. Just as May began to ask him where they were Ethan cried out in his loudest deepest voice, “Em fro Wulduk!”

May jumped at his loud shout that echoed throughout the vale and into the thick oak woods that surrounded it. “What in Illumis’s ghost was that all about?” she asked, shocked.

Ethan replied with a grin, “It’s a Woodfolk greeting.”

“I didn’t know that you could speak the Woodfolk tongue?” she asked in a confused tone.

Her storyteller companion shrugged and replied laughing, “I can’t. That’s the greeting that O’Dell used to lure them from their hiding places in the woods. Hopefully they’re still in the area.”

He then shouted, “Férfa,” and then, “Em fro Wulduk!”

After a few more times of yelling out the Woodfolk greeting May moved closer to Ethan and put her hand on her hand axe. “Ethan,” she said, “Maybe we should quit yelling. What about all the Wizardcraft beasts that now roam these wilds?”

Ethan was about to reply, but instead he thought about his companion’s statement, and then he swallowed the lump in his throat. “Yeah, you may be right, May,” he stammered.

They stood together in the center of the vale for a couple tense quiet moments. The only sound was the whisper of a warm summer breeze rustling the surrounding oak leaves and the foliage of the vale. Finally May whispered, “Ethan, let’s get out of this damn place. I have a bad feeling.”

The Vharian was about to agree, but then he noticed a naked man standing on the edge of the forest directly across the vale from them. He could barely make out his long blond hair and his short bow from the distance between them, about one-hundred yards, but it was obvious that the man was a Woodfolk. Ethan lifted his hand in greeting and once again shouted, “Em fro Wulduk!”

The Woodfolk began shuffling about on his person like he was rummaging through something, and then he lifted his bow and held it vertically. May noticed the danger before Ethan and she screamed, “Get down!”

She dove into the thick ferns on the ground beneath them and Ethan launched himself to the left. As he sailed through the air towards the ground a thin arrow with a white stone arrowhead whisked by exactly where his throat was an instant earlier. With a grunt he smashed into the ground and rolled into some higher grasses. “What a bastard!” Ethan screamed with wide eyes as he kept his head low to the ground.

“Ethan, I don’t think he wants to talk to us! Let’s get out of here!” exclaimed May as she unfastened her hand axe and unsheathed it from her belt.

Ethan nodded but couldn’t resist the urge to lift his head just barely above the height of the grass and risk a glance at the Woodfolk. His amber eyes grew wide in alarm when he saw at least two score of Woodfolk where just the one previously had stood. Somehow they noticed him and shouts cried out from amongst them in their own sylvan tongue. Before Ethan could even drop back down for cover, another arrow streaked forward across the distance that separated them, and it slashed through Ethan’s right cheek as it continued on behind him. Instantly, warm blood raced down the side of his face and chin. As he growled in pain and anger he collapsed back to the green earth.

“Ethan, are you alright?” May cried as she began crawling over to him through the ferns.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Ethan replied in between snarling expletives.

The Woodfolk could now be heard hooting like excitable birds as they raced across the clearing towards their prey. Just as May was about to reach Ethan more Woodfolk charged passed or leapt over the prone Foresters from the opposite direction. Confused, Ethan once again eased his wounded head over the tops of grasses and ferns and beheld a slightly smaller number of Woodfolk rushing forward towards the ones that had attacked him and May. He was about to duck back down, grab his lover, and transport them hundreds of miles to the north, to the safety of Lumberwall, but then he noticed that Férfa, long red hair dancing as she charged forward, led the charge of the new Woodfolk, all of them with dark red paint on their faces.

“Wait!” Ethan shouted to May when she reached his kneeling form, “That’s Férfa and her war party!”

“So what?” cried May as she knelt next to Ethan and started to pull him down.

“Well, we have to help them so we can speak with her!”

May closed her eyes in a grimace and shook her head as she growled to herself, “Stubborn Vharians,” and then to Ethan she yelled, “Come on, get out your axe, storyteller! I hope you’re ready for blood!”

Before Ethan could respond in shock, May leapt from the hiding spot and rushed forward with the speed and agility of a Forester of the Three Baronies. Her silver hand axe reflected the glare of sun and she leveled it behind her as she sprinted, readying it for a powerful charging attack. Ethan rose quickly, unsheathing his own axe as he did so, and darted forward on his own slender mountain-bred legs.

The battle was just beginning between the two Woodfolk war parties as Ethan and May approached. To Ethan it seemed that time slowed and sounds grew sluggish as they neared the violent battle. He noticed Férfa forcing her stone knife through the thick throat of a muscular male, initiating a deluge of gurgling screams and hot blood, before immediately ducking a spear thrust from behind. Then the naked warrior-woman extended her leg out behind her, and she kicked up the spear into a high angle. She then spun on her other foot and used the traction of thick ferns to launch herself very powerfully forward.

She bounded forward at her foe, a woman with numerous dark short braids, and slammed into her chest with both of her feet and the blade of her knife directly below the clavicle. As the woman began to stagger backwards Férfa helped her along as she used the dying woman as a springboard to launch herself into a long, slow back flip. She landed on her feet, low to the ground and facing her foe, as the other Woodfolk smashed lifeless onto her back on the ground. Just then speed and sound returned to this exotic battle of nude warriors in a rush, and Ethan and May smashed into the carnage.

May easily split the skull of a Woodfolk male from behind as she rushed passed and hot blood raced up her weapon arm. As she left his crumbling form and moved on she snatched his own stone hatchet as it tumbled from his lifeless fingers and spun both of her axes in her gauntleted hands. She now entered the thick of the melee where Woodfolk eviscerated Woodfolk, and she easily spotted her new foe, a tall lanky man with a bloodied horrid weapon, a two-handed club of oak that was pierced through its head by jagged spikes of bone. He laughed evilly as he continually hacked into an unfortunate Woodfolk female that lay on her side in the grass. She still screeched and twitched painfully as the cruel weapon pounded holes into her flesh and bone, again and again.

May came forward in a flash and swung her silver hand axe downward into the tall Woodfolk’s leg. It severed some flesh from his calf muscle, and he roared in agony. He looked at his civilized foe with wide, wild eyes as his cheeks quivered in fury, and without looking he buried his heel powerfully into the skull of his last still-groaning victim. She thankfully laid still.

May came forward and extended her left arm to swing her hatchet into the brute’s chest, but he easily parried it with his thick club. Her hatchet, though, buried itself into the wood, and when he jerked his weapon back it yanked the axe from her fist. She stumbled forward and the Woodfolk met her with a fierce elbow across the face. All she could see were bursts of white light as she staggered backward and collapsed to a rubbery knee before her foe. He chuckled and marched forward as she struggled to stand. Just then a spearhead sliced through some meat on his shoulder and he turned around in fury to end whatever new threat had attacked him.

May took this opportunity to dart forward, and she growled as she buried the silver blade of her weapon into the small of the Woodfolk’s back. She could hear the splintering of vertebrae despite the loud fury of the skirmish around her and the Woodfolk slumped over and thudded to his knees in the blood-soaked foliage of the vale. May wasn’t yet done with him. She hacked into the side of his neck from behind, caring not of the blood that flowed freely from her broken nose or the swelling of the left side of her face, and she repeated the attack again and again as the Woodfolk crumpled to the earth.

Finally, after one last heavy chop at the neck of the prone man that speckled her face and cuirass with dark blood, she jerked his severed head from the ragged sinew of his neck. Gripping it by its greasy shaggy red hair, the Forester scanned the battle for her next foe. She spotted a young woman with a single black braid secured at the bottom by a rat skull. The Woodfolk finished skewering one of Férfa’s Woodfolk through the gut with her short spear and rubbed the man’s spraying blood over her bare breasts, her nipples erect in ecstasy. May threw the severed head of her foe at the grotesque Woodfolk woman, and the sickening projectile bounced off of her head, knocking the stunned Woodfolk onto her butt in the grass. May extended her hand axe towards her opponent, as the Woodfolk’s confusion was replaced by anger, and the Forester charged forward.

Ethan, meanwhile, had trials of his own in the battle. When he entered the fray he meant to plunge deep into the carnage, where Férfa fought, as quickly as possible. He could think only of her and O’Dell’s six children and their need of their mother now that O’Dell was killed. It provoked Ethan into a state of fury and finesse he had never known. He rushed forward through the first batch of the combat, his only attack a quick slice into an enemy Woodfolk’s bicep that he hoped would give his opponent time enough to kill him.

He could see Férfa through the carnage of dueling woodland warriors as he dashed towards her. But just before he reached her a Woodfolk man armed with twin stone curved daggers brought down his latest foe and charged directly towards Ethan. He was the storyteller’s only opposition before reaching Férfa, but the lines of blood that dripped from the Woodfolk’s weapons and his angry blood-thirsty glare proved to Ethan that he was facing an experienced foe. But Ethan had an edge.

Just before the two met in a violent melee duel Ethan’s eyes flooded blue light and a pillar of the same hue streaked instantly into the sky, as bright as the sun that shone above the battle. The Woodfolk skidded confusedly to a walk when he saw that his Forester opponent was vanished. As he tried to convince himself mentally of what he had just seen Ethan, standing behind him, buried his Forester’s axe into the back of the Woodfolk’s neck, completely through the spinal column, and the nude warrior crumpled lifelessly into a heap.

Ethan then turned on his heel and crossed the short bloody expanse littered with corpses and flesh that lay between him and Férfa, and upon reaching her he cried out, “Férfa!”

She brought down her latest foe with a quick kick to the stomach and a slash across his open eyes with her dagger. As he howled in pain she plunged the blade into his throat and withdrew it just as fast, releasing a quick torrent of blood. Then she turned to Ethan, acknowledging that she had heard him, and she nodded before turning back around and continuing the fight against a new foe. Panting, he turned around in a hurry and scanned the fight, warriors on both sides greatly reduced in numbers. He sought his lover in the bloodshed.