Blood Of The Wizard (Book 1) (7 page)

“
Don’t you know you’ve been talking in gushes for the past ten minutes?  No?” she said.

As she continued her inspection, I took a long pull from the flagon. 
“Well!” I said, the tasty beer propelling me.  “If you’ll give me a week’s warning, I’ll try to keep up my end of the conversation.”

“
Ah!  There!  I’ve pulled you enough to break through the ice at last!  It’s been such
hard
work!”

“
And you come up badly wet
.
”

“
Oh.  You’re doing well, handsome!”

“
Thanks to my instructor,” I said, and I swept her a courtly bow.

“
There!  There!” she cried, dropping her blouse as soon as I stood up.

“
Madam!   You’ve never given me my name—”

“
So long as you come when you’re called, I’ll just call you Handsome.”

“
That, my dear Dhal, is
not
going to be a problem.”

             
             
Chapter 11

“Handsome!” she whispered, interrupting my sleep at some point in the night.  “Let’s begin again.”

With a strange hope in my heart, I crawled cautiously down through the silent shadows of my dreams in the waking world.

But she had not uttered the words. 

I smiled anyway.

She was curled up next to me, naked in the cold grass, also smiling.  I pulled her a bit closer.

The wind moved through the empty solitudes of the forest, and it brought a warm, aching sigh of unutterable satisfaction.  I stared into the vast wastes of stars, completely content with my place in it all. 

I breathed, r
eflecting on my experiences in life, on Halvgar’s maddening heartache.  I’ll tell you and you alone, I was beginning to think of life as a senseless jumble with no purpose but to get through it.  Now, something in the calm of the forest around us, or the certainty of our unerring moment together, quieted my unrest.  The curves and gentle noises of breath that came from the woman beside me were too flawless for the limitation of speech.  Every faint breath brought me peace, a peace as vast and noiseless as the wheeling of planets through the star-speckled black, and any attempts to describe it seemed sacrilege.  Perhaps it was.  And that was purpose enough for my life.  For now. 

I
have no idea why such a moment came to pass with her, specifically.  There had been many others.  But let anyone who would hear a fool mutter absurdities, hear this—just like a mother quiets a fretful child, that rowdy, clever, gorgeous woman so free with her love, calmed and lulled my tumultuous thoughts.  And I loved her for that.  I did.  I
loved
her.  Say what you will, and trust that I know it’s difficult to understand.  Or perhaps it is challenging to even believe. 

But I did. 

I loved her.

Finally,
with the creeping morning light, she stirred. 

“
If you’ll wear this tartan, or maybe put away somewhere safe, perhaps you’ll remember the stray that came through your village on Mayday’ Eve.”

She yawned, then smiled sleepily . 

“If you’ll keep one end of the plaid for yourself, handsome, I’ll take the other.”

“
Brilliant,” I whispered, tightening my clasp around her fingers.  “You are… just brilliant.”

I kissed her neck. 
She laughed a low, mellow laugh that set my heart beating.  I felt a great intoxication, a “beer strength”, they call it.  Hell, but I could have conquered a good chunk of the known world if she had asked.

“
Fie!” someone shouted in the distance.

“
Ooooh, no.”

“
Fie?”
she asked.

“
Me—I mean, yes,” and I gulped down my embarrassment.

From the river came,
“Fie, where the devil are you, lad!”

“
Damn it.”

“
By thunder, that’s it, you scoundrel!  We’re leaving without you!”

Struggling to get dressed, I was shocked that she was in no rush to do the same.  She
was reclined there on the cold ground, naked as the day she came into the world, smiling.  I sat to put on my boots and kissed her stomach.  As I stood, I looked down with a questioning look, but I did not have to ask why she did not cover herself.  She was allowing me to digest what I was walking away from.  This is not to say she was full of conceit.  She was just comfortable. Comfortable and gorgeous and wise.

Stooping, I picked a bunch of green ferns, then felt foolish as I gave them to her.

“Fie, you young fool” came a call from the distance, but it might as well have been her words.  “We’ll see you upon our return!”

Then she blew me a kiss, and it made a dull thud echo through my stomach—it was the most erotic and heart-melting thing I’d ever known.
  What other absurd things I might have said, I cannot tell.  But we were at the end of our time together, and I had to go. 

“
Go, you handsome young scoundrel!  Go!  You’ve already rescued your maiden… now go slay your dragon.”

The purple hills were a frosty mirror to the morning’s new sunlight.  Between their deep shadows and the forested banks I found the lads in a tight circle.  Their backs to each other, their weapons jutted like thorns.  I could hear the shouts now, shouts of defiance and shouts to give a fellow courage.  Then unseen archers on the city walls loosed their bows.  I saw the glitter of the feathers as the arrows slashed down toward my fellows.  A moment later, throwing spears came, arching over the high wall to fall on the upheld shields.

Amazingly, at least to me, it seemed that none of our
dwarves was struck, though I could see their shields were stuck with arrows thick as hedgehog spines.

S
till the lads advanced toward the ship.  And I noticed that it was not archers that were attacking.  It was
maids
that were attacking.  All of them,
maids
.  Three small parties of war-maids advanced. 

N
ow my lads were wielding their bows, shooting at them, seemingly careful to land their shots in the maid’s shields.  A handful of younger maids broke from the ranks to hurl their spears at the small shield wall.

“
By thunder lads, we can’t wait!  We must hurry along now!” my uncle cried nervously.

I saw the closely touching shields vanish along the docks.  Then I saw the shield wedge emerge from a far ditch, and, like a monstrous beast,
to crawl out closer to the vessel.  Now I could see nothing except the flash of blades rising and falling, and as the maids charged, I could hear that sound, the real music of battle, the chop of iron on wood, iron on steel.  The wedge was still moving.  Like a boar’s razor-sharp tusks, the blades began to swing and lunge.  The wedge had pierced the maids’ formidable ranks along the docks, knocking several of them into the water.  Soon after, the Feisty-Goat heaved upstream by dint of a Big Frobhur, rowing with two oars, and though the maids plunged into the water and tried to wrap around the vessel, my merry lads pressed forward.

M
ore of them rowing now, they went swiftly across a small sandbar and into the deep green waters beyond it. 

The lads suddenly cheered and surged beyond sight.

I muttered under my breath, realizing the surreal situation they had left me in—one moment I was asleep, and very much naked with a rare beauty, and now they had vanished into the curves of the river.

“What the devil have they done?...”

With a mixed sense of panic and relief, I charge into town, careful to remain unseen.  Almost immediately, I spotted a lone nun, walking her horse.  She was leading it by the bridle. I snuck behind her.  Then I lifted her robes over her head, and twisted them.  While she struggled, panicked, I tied the large knot of robes to a tree, curling twice around a sturdy branch.

She was soon free
, though, and in the next instant she was running after me.

“
Thief!  Devil!”

“
I am sorry, good sister!”

And
so I was on her large black horse, scrambling through the city’s ramparts.  Then I was down the bank’s farther side into the streets.  The way led through a side entrance in the city walls, then the alleyways and outskirts beyond.  In the next instant, I was cutting through a dense thicket of pines with ferns the height of a dwarf. 

Here, o
nly dim light penetrated the maze of foliage, and the trail led the horse and I at least a mile away from the river. 
Little Fellow
, as I called the enormous steed, was trotting hard, but with controlled glee.  We both glided through the brake without disturbing a fern branch, while I—after the manner of humans everywhere—seemed to catch every twig in the forest with my face.

The horse seemed to know what I wanted
though, as only the finest steeds can do.  Twice I felt Little Fellow pull up abruptly.  He would look warily through the cedars on one side.  Once, he stooped down and peered among the fern stems.  Then he silently whinnied back toward the river, galloping through the undergrowth again without explanation. 

I looked back. 
At first I could see nothing, and regretted being led so far into the woods.  I was about to reign him back onto the trail when Little Fellow pricked his ears again and halted. 

It was
as if he feared to move.

For the fourth time
, we came to a dead stand.  Now, I also heard a rustle.  I saw an elusive, sinuous movement, distinctly running abreast of us among the ferns.  When we stopped, it ceased for a moment.  Then it wiggled forward like a beast or serpent in the underbrush. It did not move far.  But I could never discern what it was. 

Little Fellow eased back
.  We stood noiseless, until by the ripple of the green, it seemed to scurry away.  I suspected an amber wyvern, though I had no idea they could remain so nondescript amid the green, and the thought was terrifying.

I shuddered atop Little Fellow, before urging him along. 
Then at last, I saw them. 

My merry band of old lads.

                           
Chapter 12

Just before the river narrowed to series of rapids, I called out with a series of three bird whistles. 

My
dear little Jickie, whose cunning eyes seemed to gleam with the malice of a snake, silently twisted in the vessel.  He turned to the bank.  Then he shook his head and motioned for the others to row ashore. 

The swish of waters rushing past, I gave the horse a drink and set him on a course back the way we came. 

Wrapping my half of the plaid tartan around me, I propped my arse on the gunwale and slid into my place among my fellows.  When we were midstream again, I felt the heat of their silence.  Half dazed by the wonder of my night and half shocked still by the unexpected, unexplained flight my lads had taken from the war-maids, I just breathed the clear air, and began rowing.

All I had seen and heard during the day still floated in my mind like a sigh of wind through the forest, and I was only half-conscious that cedars, pines and cliffs were engaged in a mad race past the sides of the canoe.  During all this,
I tried not to notice their lack of attention.  Dwarves, I can assure you, are rarely so silent.  I dared not pierce their quiet anger with any questions.

I just yawned and kept rowing.

Which was more less when my uncle cuffed me across ear, to an uproar of laughs from the lads.

“
Sacred thunder!” he screamed.

“
Oh, now!  What’s all this?”

“
Oh now what’s all this indeed!” Halvgar roared, silencing all onboard.  “How dare you, sir!”

I turned to look at him.

“Little brother, you make off with a ripe human maid, and you
dare
not tell an old dwarf all the details?”

At which
, Frobhur, Kenzo, Gilli, Delthal, and Jickie laughed with such an uproar that my cramped limbs ached to catch myself, lest I get tossed from the rocking vessel.

A dozen times I could have dozed off, but every time my eyelids became heavy, my uncle turned his grimace
on me with a warning in his eyes:  fun may indeed be had along the way, sir, but it will certainly
not
slow the war party.

Now wide awake, I turned wearily toward Delthal. 

“What the thundering hell did you do back there to get those maids so fighting mad?”

Not a muscle of
his face changed, nor did any of the attitudes alter in the least.  They all seemed in a sort of stoic oblivion of my existence.  Gilli’s head was thrown back and the steely, unflinching eyes were fixed on the morning’s growing storm clouds. He looked guilty as all hell and half of Yrkland, as they say.

“
Suffice to say, Mister Fie, that even a merry adventurer must adhere to certain boundaries.”

“
Who was she, Gilli?” I asked.

“
Angry
whores
, as it happens.”

“
What?  Why would… Gilli!  You…
didn’t pay them?
”

“
I didn’t see paying no maid, not when I did all the work!” he thundered.  “Besides all that, I bought their madam a damn horse when I found out what they were!”

“Oh, hell
…  A large black horse?”

At which the others lost their stoic cool, rollicking again like lads.

I asked no more of it.  Still, Gilli spent the better part of the morning pouring out such a jumbled mouthful of quick-spoken explanations about drink, darkness, and so forth, that I was not a bit the wiser.  Laughing, I told him sharply he was to be more careful with that thing.

He gave an evil leer and muttered,
“Pah!  Likewise, Mister Fie!”

“
Oh, Master Gilli, please.  You would assume to give council to such an expert?”

It was not a particularly clever joke, but a good humor had settled on us, and
the vessel was sent rocking once more.