The Berserker and the Pedant (2 page)

"Hmmmph." One can hardly blame poor Arthur for continuing to fail to unleash dreaded wizarding power, what with the butt of an axe shoving the wind out of him by being rudely thrust into his gut.

"Roooaaarggghhh!" This was not a sound uttered by the wizard, but let us not think poorly of him for this. He found himself unable to speak, as he was somewhat hindered by the axe etching a deep red gash from his right shoulder through his left hip.  No, this was the sound Gurken made as he plunged into his full berserker fury.

If you've never borne witness to a dwarve... dwarfen templerager in the midst of a berserk fury… well, of course you haven't, you're reading this.  They strike with complete abandon, making no attempt to defend while they hack and hew through friend and foe alike.  They don't feel any pain, nor suffer from anything like judgment, morality, or sense of propriety until they calm down.

When people tell of the carnage found the next day, they don't speak of a small dwarf and his young prisoner, but of a savage demon.  No mortal could have left behind such a slaughter; so many hacked off limbs, disemboweled corpses, and decapitated bodies.  The lone known survivor was a wizard of the tenth rank. He could hardly utter a coherent thought except "blood... pain... blood...  so much...  death.  It's dwarfen, dear gods... mercy... it's dwarfen."

And he died.

Hours later, but before anyone had come to move the bodies, the little girl walked up to the gruesome scene.  Alone.  After a brief survey of the carnage, she walked over to Arthur's body.

"Well, Arthur," said the little girl, looking wistfully into her coin pouch. "Having you mended is going to be costly."

Episode One

The Berserker and the Sweet Cake

 "Most likely, I'll find you dead in the morning," Gurken Stonebiter grinned at the thought. He spoke with the deep grumbling of a dwarf lost in pleasant thought. "Bones picked clean by the rats and small bitey insects."

"Like ants?" asked Pellonia, smiling with the easy charm of a young girl.

"Yes," Gurken replied, glowering at her. "Now be quiet. If you in somehow manage to cheat death, we'll set off for the Mines of Moog at first light. If you insist upon trying to escape, I shall become wroth. Remember, I've got an axe." He held his axe in one hand and pointed at it with the other, scowling.

Pellonia couldn't help but smile. Gurken stowed the axe on his back, clamped shut the irons on her leg and stomped out of the dungeon in a huff. 

"I think I like him," Pellonia said. She was tall for a girl of twelve, though one wouldn't know it because she was sitting on the floor.

"He's hardly the sympathetic sort," Arthur sniffed.

"You don't like him?"

"I tend not to like people that kill me. Mind you, I didn't know that until today, seeing as today was my first experience with dying and returning to life. I believe the priests called it resurrection. I didn't enjoy the experience and hope I never need to repeat it. No, I don't like him."

"You do hold a grudge."

Arthur's mouth hung open.

"Well, Arthur," she said, changing the subject. "It's a fine bit of trouble you've gotten us into." She yanked on the chain to see if she could pull it from the wall.

"Me? I was dead! You're the one that chose to go back to the temple of Durstin." Arthur reconsidered his logic. "Thank you for that, by the way. I'm very much obliged."

"It's Dwarven, not Dwarfen," Pellonia sing songed in her best Arthur Gimble, wizard of the tenth rank impression. It wasn't very good but what it lacked in accuracy it made up for in bass and mockery. "D. W. A. R. Hgurk!" She struck at her head with one hand, as if swinging an axe, then put both of her hands around her neck, pretending to choke herself, and fell over, legs jutting up in the air. She twitched a few times for effect.

"Yes. Well. Fine, quite right then," Arthur somehow managed to look dignified, even though he was suspended upside down against the wall, manacles hanging him up by his ankles.

"A geas," Pellonia said, changing the subject yet again. She climbed to her feet and fiddled with the manacles. "I can't believe they placed us under a geas.

"Under a what?" Arthur asked, looking up but seeing no sign of water fowl.

"A geese," Pellonia continued. "It just doesn't seem right. Why 'mystically compel' us to complete their dumb quest? I returned their stupid holy artifact." Pellonia grumbled, "It's not fair, they just assumed we stole it."

"Ah, it's pronounced geas. And you did steal it," said Arthur, waving a hand towards her. "Hence, geas. Why did you return it, anyway?"

She muttered under her breath.

"Pardon?" said Arthur, "but I couldn't hear you."

"I saaaiiid, 'They said they needed it to mend you. They said couldn't mend anyone without it.'"

"I'm really quite flabbergasted; that's rather companionable of you."

"Stuff it, Arthur."

Gurken arrived the next morning, humming a light-hearted dwarfen tune. He walked up to the dungeon; it was a small building hewn from large rocks, and had a rather rough finish. Inside was but the one room, which at various times held gardening tools, mundane temple supplies such as paper and spare vestments, or, as it does presently, prisoners. It was the contents, then, not the configuration of the structure that determined its classification. And so, the building was, in turn, a gardening shed, a storage room, and, just now, a dungeon. 

Gurken left his chainmail armor behind, in favor of a somewhat less cumbersome, though to be sure, more uncomfortable and prone to chaff, oiled leather armor he favored for travel. He still wore his dented metal cap and his beard was still caked with an earthy red clay. He carried a traveling pack, within which were heavily salted fish, a shovel, and three sleep sacks. The shopkeeper from which he had purchased the sleep sacks had assured him that they would provide his questing party some layer of protection from rain, uncomfortable rocks, and insects which had a propensity to bite in places that one ought not be bit.

Gurken walked towards the dungeon's entrance and, rather pleased at the prospect of adventure, began to narrate the start of the quest. He had practiced many times since the priests of Durstin told him take the treacherous temple thieves and fetch the Orb of Seeza… The Orb of Sizank… Such and such, doesn't matter. The point was it had fallen into the hands of evildoers and that the three of them were to reclaim the orb.

"Well then, fellow travelers. As you can see, or at least you will once we've stepped beyond the confines of this dungeon. The sun has begun to peek over the distant horizon, the birds shall soon be chirping, and there is a fine, crisp chill in the air. It's time to be off." Gurken was rather proud, this being more words than he often bothered to string together. So he was rather dismayed to find he lacked a proper audience; the dungeon was empty (if one can call an empty room a dungeon).

On the floor were the chains with which he had bound the little thief. The manacles were open, lacking the former prisoner. And there on the wall were the fetters he used to bind Arthur, though one would be forgiven for confusing the fetters with the type of wall ornamentation used to organize various shovels, rakes, and other tools of considerable length that one used in the course of gardening. Seeing that there were not prisoners in this dungeon, Gurken left the way he had come.

Standing in front of the dungeon (or, perhaps, the gardening shed), Gurken began to think. His mind set off in the direction of arriving at the opinion that Arthur and Pellonia had escaped. This laborious task was cut short in the nick of time. 

"I say there," Arthur interjected, "Gurken, good fellow! It's good to see you, let us be off, for the birds have begun to sing, and if you look yonder, you'll see the sun beginning to peek over the distant horizon."

Arthur and Pellonia walked up to the gardening shed, crumbs from sweet cake about their attire, holding mugs of freshly brewed coffee, and stopped in front of Gurken.

"I see that you are no longer bound," Gurken said, frowning, an expression to which he was most accustomed, "I begin to suspect that you've attempted an escape."

"Escape? Come now, that's an interesting word," said Arthur, nervously gulping down the last mouthful of his sweet cake, beads of sweat forming on his brow. He tugged on the collar of his robe, as if to relieve heat and pressure building up from within.

"Far from interesting," Gurken said, "I think it a most mundane word. A word so mundane, in fact, as to be deserving of an axe!" Gurken swung the axe off his back with his right hand and thrust it into the air in one expert motion. Ansuz, the dwarfen rune of insight and communication glowed bright orange and upside down on the head of the axe, the low hum of a flawless tuning fork vibrating Arthur's teeth and soul. Gurken's face went flush, "or even, perhaps, a shovel!" He pulled the shovel off his pack with his left hand, thrusting it towards Arthur. A few flecks of mud flicked off, splutting on Arthur's face. 

Arthur said something to the effect of "Oh no, not again." His words sounded far off to Gurken, as if spoken from the other end of a large chamber and echoing several times in order to arrive at his ears. Everything seemed to stretch and pull away and dim.

"Gurken," said Pellonia, hardly seeming to notice, "if we were trying to escape, would we have brought you coffee and sweet cake?"

Gurken was surprised at this statement. So surprised that his vision came rushing back in a great WHOOSH, and he was once again standing next to his friends, Pellonia and Arthur. He lowered the axe and the shovel. "Coffee and sweet cake? You brought coffee and sweet cake for me?"

Pellonia looked at Arthur, then back at Gurken. "Well, to tell you the truth, we started here with a sweet cake for you. But, you see, the walk back was longer than I thought it would be, and I finished mine. Since I didn't have any more sweet cake, and I was still hungry, well, I ate it." Arthur flinched and began to invoke an ancient spell of protective power, though one would be forgiven for misunderstanding his incantations and elaborate gestures as cowering and covering his face with his hands.

"Well, that's perfectly understandable," said Gurken.

"It is?" asked Pellonia and Arthur together, and at once, with a look of relief on Arthurs face and amusement on Pellonia's.

"Certainly," said Gurken, "I have often consumed more than I thought I would, but it is, as the elfs say, the thinking that is what counts."

Out of reflex, Arthur began "I don't think that's precisely wha… whoof." Pellonia punched him in the gut, gave a disapproving look, and grinned at Gurken.

"But then, where is this famous coffee I have been promised?" Gurken asked, smiling, an expression to which he was decidedly not accustomed, but which he found quite agreeable. "I see you have it in your hand, come pass it to me and let us be off. I brought sacks for us all to sleep in, which will protect us from the rain, too rough of terrain, and insects with a tendency to bite."

"Well then," Arthur said, "I agree, let us be off."

So it was that Gurken, Pellonia, and Arthur set off on their great adventure. 

The Mines of Moog were a week's travel, when one traveled by horse. Given that it would take some time to explore the mines, recover the orb, and return from the quest, the priests of Durstin were rather surprised when Gurken returned later, if one was being generous in their description, later that evening. The priests gave the most disagreeable of looks as Gurken dumped out of the sack, and onto the temple floor, pieces and parts of Arthur and Pellonia. 

"I have faith that," said Gurken to the priests, "when setting out on one's inaugural quest, one ought to be granted, as the elfs say, a mulligan."

"My Gods," the priests said, making the holy sign of the star on their chests, "what happened?"

"Well, you see," said Gurken, " we ran into these giant ants…"

Episode Two

The Berserker and the Sleep Sack