Blood Of The Wizard (Book 1) (21 page)

Chapter 45

I hung onto the sight of the troll family as long as I could.  In truth I was probably like a drowning man, clinging to a water-soaked log.  I could hear the snapping twigs and branches growing fainter and fainter.  I have no idea why, exactly, but I wanted to keep watching them.  Perhaps I wished to hold on to my sense of wonder.

In time,
reality began to slowly began to creep back to me—and it was a harsh reality at that….

T
he trolls were not the ones making the noise. 

Already, dwarven rangers were visible on a far hill.  I could hear the army behind them
, moving in large ranks.

I grunted. 

One of them turned.  I was certain he saw us.

Man is not a
deer, but under stress every creature is moved to fight or flee.  I should have froze and made certain whether he had seen us or not.  But my feet were already moving.

The
din of clamoring voices were added to by the shouts of approaching warriors.  Then we all heard the galloping of a multitude of horses and the whining yells of countless dogs.

It seemed next like
all of dwarfdom was on the outskirts of the forest.  We might yet have a chance, I thought, but the dwarven warriors were very near. Putting all my strength in gathering up Cullfor, I burst through the underbrush.  An errant step, though, and I went sliding down a small cliff.  Cullfor giggling, I was running breathlessly haste over fallen logs and across noisy creeks, through the wooded valley.  The branches, which reached out like the bands of pursuers, caught and ripped my clothing to shreds. I had on a good pair of boots, but I had broken a toe in my fall.  My left foot was bleeding through the leather. 

How long or how far I ran
, I do not know. I think it may have been an hour.  All I knew is that we were going deeper and deeper into the Trollwood.  Dhal was keeping good pace.  She never fell, and she was never more than two steps behind us.  It was not just my legs that burned, but my lungs and my mind.

Suddenly, another
gleam of water flashed through the foliage. A wide stream appeared, muddy and sluggish. My heart was beating painfully. There was a roaring in my ears, and at every step I took, the landscape swam in blackness before me.  The trees were racing into the background.

Already,
I had reached the limit of my strength. 

I sank down to rest
, but I could hear them coming now.  We were pursued.  There was no mistaking that fact.

With the most intense fear I have ever experienced in my life, I gather
ed Cullfor and broke into another terrified run.  The river was marshy and brown, but I gulped down a drink.

Was it the
pounding in my ears that suggested they were coming?

I stopped and listened. There was no sound but the lapping of water, or rush of wi
nd through the leaves. I went down into the stream, slower now, but distinctly heard a dwarven war whoop. 

There was a beaver dam in the middle, which had made the water s
luggish and treacherous-looking. But we had to try to cross.  With the blood flowing from my feet, dwarven rangers could track me for miles.

I look
ed across the river as we waded in.  I had a vague hope of running along the water to throw our pursuers off the trail, but I didn’t have the strength to go much further.  The shouts of our pursuers sounded nearer.  They knew how close they were, because in classic dwarven style, they were shouting that they had sighted their quarry.

I
grabbed Cullfor’s head and turned it to me. 

“Can you hold your breath?”

He nodded, a playful look still in his eyes.

“Okay
then…
now
.”

I
plunged in and floundered underwater toward the dam. The soft ooze felt good on my feet as I snared Dhal’s hand, swimming blindly.

Soon we emerged from the water
.

We
were inside the dam, and we were fairly well obscured from view.  But there were enough branches in it to entangle us with any movement whatsoever—and we were not completely hidden. Daylight broke through in several places, and I found that I was facing exactly where we had first waded in.  I stared through a rotted knot-hole, breathing heavily. 

Dhal, thank
s be to the heavens for her, pulled some mud up from the bottom and rubbed it on each of our faces. 

I rubbed on a bit more and looked ahead.

A dwarf in in a green ranger’s cape ran out from the tangled foliage of the river bank.  He saw the mud settling where we had been floundering and gave a shrill yell of triumph. Instantaneously, the woods were ringing, echoing and re-echoing with the hoarse, wild warcries of the dwarves.

Band after band burst from the leafy cover and dashed in full pursuit after the
scout, who had now crossed the stream.  Some of the hunters still wore the longshirt of the cutters, and some really were cutters.  But the swiftest were the other rangers, who tore forward into the stream as if completely unimpeded. The last dwarven form to appear among the trees of the river bank was the king himself.  King Bhiers.  There was such an ominous calm about him.  He wore a simple, crowned helm.  Black and white streaks of hair spilled from it like an ashen landslide. 

The dwarf king
sat silently on his mount, and I sensed that he knew his rangers had been foiled.

Would they return to the last marks of
our trail?
That thought sent the blood from my head with a rush that left me dizzy, weak and shivering. I looked to the river. The floating branches turned lazily over, lapping in the sluggish current.  There was a bit of green slime oozing from a cluster of beaver lodges of the far side.  As a ranger came pattering back through the brush from the opposite bank, two of the irritated animals left with a great splash of their tales.

In the distance, a score of brazen throats screeched out their baffled rage.

Two more came back.  They went about looking into every hollow log, under fallen trees.  A fourth began searching through clumps of shrub growth, where a man might hide, and into the swampy river bed.

Should
we wait to be smoked out of our hole like badgers?

It didn’t matter.  It was only a matter of time. 
Again I looked hopelessly to the river.

The rest of the dwarves had returned to the far bank
and were eagerly searching, looking down against the steep little bank or else scanning the limbs of trees above.

Suddenly, the king a gave a slight cough, and it
seemed the entire world froze, silencing itself.  When he had every dwarf’s attention, he rolled his eyes and pointed bemusedly at us. 

Everything in me went numb.

They began stepping into the water, moving to surround us.  I hugged Cullfor, and I kissed Dhal.  I had all but counted the course of my life as run dry, when a tremendous, thundering splash resounded nearby. 

I turned to see a large, uprooted tree
.  It was settling into the water.  Then another splashed resounded.  In the next moment they came from everywhere, along with massive stones.
I gathered Dhal closer, holding her tight.  Her face was a snarl of fright.  She was shaking.  She rocked back and forth, and there was a noise like a hint of laughter squeaking out.

There was a score of dwarves coming, holding taut bows.  I could them searching the woods, the sky, everywhere for the source of the enormous missil
es, and yet they came in for us.

Just as suddenly, the trees and rocks that came next halted in the air.  The Dwarf-King made a gripping gesture, then turned his palm down, and the earthy weapons dropped harmlessly into the water.

The dwarves gave a bellow of triumph.

But the cries of victory were cut short. 
The king was grabbed by each arm.  A large troll pulled at him, flinging from the horse him onto its back.  There were ten more beyond them, fully naked save for being covered in long blackish-red hair that swung from their arms.  Thirty more were flanking them. 

Encircling
the king now, his personal guard looked, and they knew fully well that the notion of a fight was ludicrous.

But that did not stop
them.

The dwarf closest to the king,
who was still prostrate over the troll’s shoulder, swung his axe at the troll, grazing it.  The troll punched the chest of the first dwarf he saw, who was happened to be next to the one that swung.  The little fellow fell back, grunting airlessly like a wounded pig into the river as the second man chopped at the troll’s ankles with a broadaxe.  The troll leapt, his monstrous feet as high the dwarf’s head, and landed atop him, crushing him nearly flat.  Dwarves exploded from everywhere, rushing to the king’s aid.  The noise of it all was like a nightmare.  Everything blurred.  I could only vaguely sense the surreal gravity of the moment as a troll crunched a dwarf’s face into the gravels, then kicked another—his neck broken so badly he was nearly decapitated. 

Another came. 
His eyes swollen with fear, a dwarven ranger stabbed at the troll holding his king.  The troll growled, wrenching the tremendous sword from his own hide, swirling it even as the dwarf held on. The dwarf
turned, still whirling, and I could see that his sword was attached to his wrist by a thick leather strap, but only for an instant.  The dwarf’s arm ripped off as he went flying toward us, the three of us still crouching in the beaver dam.

Hairy a
rms, dwarven fists, and bloody steel were whirling in every direction.  The swords and arrows flashed in impossible sweeps; it was impossible to distinguish the growl of one from the roar of another.  On troll in particular bore his teeth, biting and punching, and he felled a score of dwarves as surely as if he swung a sword.  The fearsome thwacks and pings were chorusing death-grunts now.  Animalistic wailing rose.  All around the dwarves they came. 

Then I saw a sight I could scarcely believe. 
A dwarven berserker was tearing his way through the tumult, chopping, and his axe was swinging now as fast as arrowfire, popping any skull too close.  More power seemed to gush into him with every troll that fell, keeping him upright despite his many his growing wounds, a dozen cuts growing now across his chest and arms.  It was little matter.  He had perforated the edge of battle-madness, burning with the perverse high of it, when he noticed two arrows protruding from his right thigh and third just under his left arm.  He turned, laughing, baring red teeth. 
Lunging
back toward the fury and bedlam, his ferocity was such that he caused several of the trolls to
fall back.  Defensive and low, they went crouching back to their prowls.  Some crawled on all fours like a beast to escape, looking back into his seething eyes.  For a moment, there was stillness.  Only his raspy breath.  Distant movement out in the forest.  Then, with the abruptness of a startled animal, one troll leapt down from a tree atop the berserker, biting his head.  Falling to the ground, the dwarf turned with a stark slash of red dripping from the top of his nose.  The rest of his head was gone, cracked awkwardly. 

As the fourth or fifth large arrow flashed
by us, a thwack resounded, too close.  He crouched lower, just in time to see the trolls were even attacking the horses.  One took a large log and popped it into the skull of a horse he had not seen.  It reared and rolled backward, galloping ten feet into the water with that terribly large stick in its brain. 

More arrows dropped as the foremost
troll faded off into the woods with its dwarven cargo yet slung over its back. 

The
dwarven warriors were still arriving, and went scampering after the impossibly fast trolls to rescue him. 

I started to get dizzy, trying to sort it all out.  Just when it seemed the dwarves had finally gained some manner of advantage, I noticed
that the trolls were emerging from the ground itself—the very ground I had only just crossed!  And soon it was all just so much distant commotion, lost to the consuming forest beyond our sight. 

I
was numb, shaking.

Little Cullie, however, thought it was the grandest he sight he’
d ever seen.  The stout little fellow!  By thunder, he even begged me to run after the mayhem to see who would win. 

I must confess, it made my own heart soar.

Dhal looked at me, though, quite sternly, shaking her head no.

Chapter 46

I felt a flick of terrible pain prancing up my injured foot as I slogged up out of the marshy stream.  When we looked around, we saw nothing.  Then, still dripping, Cullie pointed to a parting in the shrubs across the creek.  It was the troll family we had seen earlier.

They stepped toward us, holding their child as they entered the water.

We turned and began running.  But now I was exhausting fast.  My legs felt heavy.  I tripped and began rolling down a hillside, further upstream.  As I looked back, I was horrified to discover the creatures were padding along in effortless pursuit.  They came trotting along our wake of woody debris, stepping over the tangles.

“Go, you two!” I yelled.

Dhal, panicked, reached down to gather up Cullfor, but she merely crouched beside me.  Cullfor laughed and shook his head. 

I ran as best I could with them once more.  The terrain was increasingly steep
.  In mere moments we were tracing along a cliff top.  The land slopped a few feet, and beyond was that deep gouge, the river crashing along the bottom.  It went as far as I could see.  I was almost too terrified to look back, but I could not help himself.

They were still coming
. 

I wondered if they were just as fast in the water.  I
caught my breath a moment.  I leaned on the tree that had just saved me from tumbling over.  The trolls approached, just fifty feet behind us now.  Massive animal-men, their teeth were sticky with muck and blood.  The father was gripping a disembodied deer hoof.  Scars rippled under the bodily hair, and it had an obscenely human face.  The salty hairs around the mouth gave it the look of a shadowy grin.

It was thirty feet away now.

I glanced down the cliff.  It was too steep.  I suspected Cullie would not survive jumping in, and I knew his skills with wizardry were not strong enough to protect us from the fall.  Huge but nimble, each of them were snapping slobbery jaws as if attempting speech.  The tongues were spotted and long, lapping wildly.

Closer, the
father appeared scarred and maimed.  There was a hole in its cheek.  It seemed it was more... 
human
now.  As it reached us, I marveled at the bizarre, gentle eyes.  It panted as it stared down at us

Then it
tossed the deer leg onto my chest, a gesture I took as positive.  But When I stood to thank it, I scared the child.  It began to climb the tree just behind its parents.  Its haunch-muscles were rippling from its own weight as it ambled up.  The action was sickeningly easy for it, even more hideous to behold as it wrapped the hands around a branch, reached down, and slapped me in the face.

“What the
—hey, watch that!”

The father looked up at him, mouthing odd noises as it ascended to get it down.

Then they all just stared at us again.

“What the icy devil is
happening?...” Dhal whispered

I
was shaking.  Utterly panicked, I had no idea what to tell her.

Suddenly, behind them
, there arose such a ferocious, quick fight that my mind struggled to piece it together.  There was a line of trolls, carrying the Dwarf-King across the river.  Suddenly, and abrupt plucking sound washed over the forested hills behind them.  The trolls halted, and a sheet of arrowfire came like rain, whirring into them.

Arrows pinged off the rocky grounds
all around us on our side of the river.  A couple of the trolls grunted and ran, clutching at arrows. 

C
ullie’s face was flushed.  His heart thudded, I could practically see it as he stretched out his arm, and raised his palm.  It looked then as though he was pointing to the trolls with his thumb, or clutching some invisible thing in the air in front of him.

Another round of arrowfire fell,
splintering this time, or else they were bent, perfectly still in the middle of the air.  Some were frozen higher in the hills now.  There were tiny lines of light squiggling across the water.  They were like transparent serpents.  And their movement sent a current through water that was like wind, but steadier and harder.  Then a sizzling noise erupted, and the current ceased.  The arrows dropped. 

The arrow-fire came next in a downpour. 
Cullfor was still holding his palm up to the mayhem across the stream, sweating.  There came a fearsome clamor of groaning noises on the wind, like metal ripping

When the hail
of arrows came, they once again stopped.  They were bent frozen, mashed , and splintered.  All around the trolls the arrows, were hovering like magical stalks of some white flower, sprouting constantly.  The light whirled up around the trolls, not unlike a swarm of lightening flies.  And the arrows vibrated on the warm current of light in the air before dropping harmless around the their feet. 

Suddenly,
loud whisks cracked by our heads, studding the trees with great hollow cracks, or else shaking the ground as they thudded around us.  We could see nothing now, ducking. 

W
e went to our bellies and began slithering like lizards, just before an arrow bit the skin between my thumb and forefinger.

Then there was a gruesome thwack in
my skull.

I froze.

Stunned, motionless, I felt my head. 

By some miracle
I was alive.  I had only been thumped again by the juvenile troll. 

“Thunder and hell, the playful little bastard will be my death!”  I roared, then
I crouched, very low and still, hoping it would not hit me again. 

Then came the noise,
one I had only heard in the distance, the rumble coming from everywhere now, and I understood the noise was growling.  I could feel it.  It was the father.  An arrow protruding the side of its leg, its lips curled, it stared at me and bared teeth like yellowed blades of bone.  The hair on the back of its head was raised.

It
edged in toward me sideways.

I
felt the goose bumps erupting over my skin.  Shrinking and shifting, I only watched.  I had no idea what to do. 

“Oh, hell.”

I have said before that man is something more than an animal, that if somewhere in his being he can call upon kindness and gentility when it would seem imprudent, then he might even be something
beyond
a man—but if I had claws right then, I would have burrowed.  No…
I would have dug like a damn mole rat. 

Instead,
I thrashed like a seal toward the river. 

Suddenly, a
large flash of blackish red leapt over my head, pouncing in front of me.  It was the female.  She growled as she clasped her strong hand down on the back of my neck.  I squalled.  I felt each rough, warm finger.  She pushed my face down into the rocks, and it felt like my cheeks would snap.  Then two more hands latched onto my ankles.  I was scooting and wiggling against being dragged.  I undulated toward the river.

It was not working.

They were in complete control.  As they pulled me up into the air, slinging me atop the female, I gnashed my teeth, screaming.  But my head hit a branch, and as they carried me, I felt blood running out of my ear.

M
y conscious mind fading, I saw Cullfor laughing delightedly as they picked him up.  And when they picked up Dhal, protesting the whole affair, naturally, he positively squealed with joy.