R. Salvatore - The Ancient

Almost.

It clipped him on the forehead and rebounded away. He staggered for just a moment before shaking it off. “Jameston, cover our backs!” he shouted, and started forward, going right by Vaughna. He ripped off a series of slashes and stabs that overwhelmed the nearest troll and kept on moving, determined to drive back the mob, to protect his two fallen companions.

Another lightning bolt reached past him, slamming the lead trolls, but another rock soared in for Bransen’s head. He ducked fast to the side and came right back up.

His bandanna and gemstone fell free.

He took a couple more strides, more on inertia than conscious thought, and by the end of the second, he stepped awkwardly, badly twisting his ankle and knee. “What?” he tried to cry in surprise, but he only got out, “Whaaaa…”

He knew. The Stork knew.

Bransen staggered and stumbled. The trolls closed in on him, and he tried to lift his sword to strike. He thought of the Book of Jhest, tried to recall his lessons, tried to fight through the sudden disconnect between his body and his mind. It was too sudden, too unexpected.

Bransen stumbled and fumbled. He dropped his sword and didn’t even know it, swinging his arm across as if he still held the blade. A rock smacked him in the face. The nearest trolls, both carrying clubs, ran to flank him, either side, and whacked him hard, driving him to the ground. One flew away, though, a hand axe stuck deep into its forehead.

Vaughna and Brother Jond came forward in a rush, protecting Bransen. Hardly slowing as she neared, Vaughna bent and scooped up his sword and waded into the trolls, axe and sword. She scored a kill, and wounded two others.

“Net!” Brother Jond yelled, but before the word even truly registered to Vaughna she saw the trap, a huge net thrown by a trio of trolls. Instinctively she slashed at it. Bransen’s fine sword sliced through one of its thick strands. But more nets were already airborne. The trolls pressed in from in front and from behind.

If it had been twenty, they might have won.

If it had been thirty, they might have won.

Fed to the Fishes

The arm crackled in protest as Cormack bent it over the torso of another dead troll. He tried to find some levity in this gruesome task. In truth, the monk couldn’t believe what he was doing here: tying together the bodies of several trolls he had slain into a makeshift raft. So he laughed because he wanted to scream, because the whole world had suddenly become surreal and ridiculous.

“What have you reduced me to, Brother Giavno?” he asked aloud. He paused, surprised by the name he had put to his lament. Giavno hadn’t passed judgment upon him, after all. That had fallen to Father De Guilbe, so why had he just used Giavno’s name?

Because Brother Giavno represented to him all the promise and all the failure of the Abellican Church. So much potential and such shortsightedness all wrapped into one complex package. Just thinking of the man made Cormack’s back ache, and yet, strangely, he found that he bore the man no ill will. He couldn’t agree with the premise of his missionary brothers, and certainly not with their coercive and borderline evil methods, but he understood their perspective. He understood it all.

So he would stand against it. Out here, on a barren lump of rock in the middle of a steamy lake, tying trolls together into a macabre raft. Cormack laughed for real this time. It was that or cry, and he preferred to laugh.

Using strands of dead plants washed up against the rocks and contorting the stiffening troll bodies to complement each other, he soon enough had his bobbing craft constructed. He waded out with it to where the water was waist-deep, then pressed down on it to test its ballast. Dead trolls proved surprisingly buoyant-much more than a human, he thought, though of course he had no idea of how long his craft might last. Wouldn’t it be fitting for him to float out into the middle of Mithranidoon only to discover that troll buoyancy lasted only a short while? He chuckled again.

To stay here was to die. That much he knew. Either trolls would come out of the water to attack him, or he’d waste away with little to nothing to eat, or he’d parch under the sun. Or a great storm would come up and wash him into the water-winter was closing in on Alpinador, after all, and even the warm waters of Mithranidoon were not immune to terrible storms.

So he had his raft. He had no other chances to take. Cormack gathered up the plank of his destroyed boat to use as a paddle and pushed off, drifting into the mist on a squishy pillow of flesh. He had no true idea of where he was on the lake, no idea of which way lay Chapel Isle, or Yossunfier, so he played his hunch and paddled out generally in the direction he considered south.

The plank wasn’t much of an oar. Mithranidoon’s strong crossing currents, brought on by the many hot springs that fed the lake and the constant battles between the colder surface water sinking into the heated depths, had Cormack swirling all over the place. The mist proved especially heavy this day, and the man couldn’t see more than a few feet in any direction. Eventually, he just surrendered to the whims of the lake and reclined on the troll raft.

Sometime later, a slight twitch beneath him surprised him. He moved up to his elbows. The raft twitched again, then again more insistently. Cormack moved to the edge and peered into the dark waters, expecting to see a troll tugging at the raft. He fell back, swallowed hard, and knew he was horribly doomed, for a great fish had glided by just beneath him, a fish longer than he was tall.

Breathing hard, the man knelt on the center of the macabre raft and took up his paddle. He had to get out of here, had to get anywhere that was not open water. The raft jerked one way then shuddered as something large bumped it from below. Suddenly it began moving sidelong against all of Cormack’s efforts, caught not by a current but by the gigantic fish!

He scrambled to the edge; his face blanched as he saw the beast just below him, its large mouth clamped about a dangling troll leg. Cormack took up the plank in both hands and stabbed hard at the fish. The whole raft bobbed under the water suddenly then popped back up, its integrity beginning to fail. Cormack saw the fish swim off with the troll leg in its mouth.

He rubbed his face. The raft continued to spasm as more and more of the huge fish nibbled, bit, and bumped it. He grabbed the plank and repeatedly smashed it down hard upon the water, trying to frighten the beasts away. For a few moments things did calm. Cormack held his breath, hoping he had escaped. But the raft was falling apart around him, and when he moved to hold it together he saw them, the great fish, circling and waiting.

“Oh, Giavno, what have you reduced me to?” the distraught monk asked into the stifling Mithranidoon fog.

Yach, pull “er left, ye fool!” Kriminig chastised the four dwarves rowing the boat. Cranky old Kriminig, all gray beard and wrinkled face, stood at the prow, clutching his bloodstained beret, which was the shiniest among the powries of Mithranidoon. For none had seen more battles and none had scored more kills than Kriminig.

He closed his eyes as the boat began its turn and let his thoughts flow through his beret. All powrie caps shared the magic of bestowing toughness; wounds healed faster for the wearer, and the brighter a beret, the more cushion it would offer to its wearer. A few of those berets gained added benefits, as the layers of blood on the fabric and wisdom of experience for the wearer brought added insight.

For dwarves like Kriminig, the berets could serve almost as beacons, though weak lights in a thick fog, where he could sense the magic of another powrie cap. An injured dwarf would spark the magic, and that magic resonated.