Erick's Journey - Part One

“This place has good ale.”

Erick looked up from his clay stein, half full of flat, dark ale, but the hulking man who sat beside him at the table offered no other comments.

The tavern was filled that night, and the patrons in the Grey Goose were talking so loudly that Erick almost didn’t hear the man.

Having arrived late after arranging for his lodging further up the lane with the local inn, Erick found all but one table packed. The table was closest to the front door, which Erick didn’t like at all. It was also solely occupied by the huge man, who hid his face and massive frame under a long hooded cloak.

No one else had arrived for the next half hour, which was why Erick didn’t notice how everyone else in the tavern but the barkeep had avoided talking to the hooded man. No one but Alrien paid him any attention, and the barkeep stayed long enough to set out a bowl of fresh bread, or to ask if either of the men wanted another ale. The hooded man answered only by nodding, and Erick hadn’t heard his voice.

Erick had come to the tavern to drink and eavesdrop, and he listened casually to the conversations of the other men, keeping his attention focused on his drink while he picked up news from the neighboring provinces. He was looking for work, but none of the patrons at the tavern were merchants, leaving Erick nothing else to do but spy on the best rumors and nurse his ale to preserve what little funds he had left.

He’d taken no time to look over at his drinking companion for the night, but the gravelly, near animal snarl in the man’s voice cut through the alcohol buzz working over Erick’s brain, and he peered more intently at the man.

The cloak flowed back over the bench, hiding most of the man’s body, and his arms were clad in odd leather sleeves. The sleeves were odd because the seams of his leather armor were stitched intricately in a Celtic dwarf style. But clearly, the man was no dwarf.

Though the tavern was warm, the man wore gloves while he drank. Erick tried to lean over to peer under the hood. As he did so, the man dipped his head as well, lowering the hood to cover his face while he sipped from his mug.

Erick sat up, frowning when the thought occurred to him that the man was hunched over the table. Turning his head, he confirmed how the man’s legs stuck out from the other side of the table. Dwarf boots and trousers, a full matching outfit. And once Erick thought about it, the heavy brown cloak was also typical of a monastic dwarf.

The man’s sheer size and growling voice had the same effect on Erick as it did on the other patrons. He swallowed nervously and glanced around the tavern for an empty seat while he said, “Yeah, it is good.”

No bench had room for him, and the lengthening silence of his drinking partner was troubling him enough to want to make small talk. “It’s a good place to find jobs, too.”

Nothing. The man gave no reply, but before Erick could think of something else to say, he heard the sounds of hoofs thumping outside. The thunderous stampede grew louder before it erratically faltered. The sounds of horses whinnying in protest was mixed with hoofs clattering just outside the tavern.

“You should move,” the man said in a low voice.

Erick almost didn’t hear him, but by the time he’d processed the suggestion, the door opened, and armored guards began filing into the tavern two at a time.

Erick wanted to swallow his heart back down into his chest where it belonged, but his throat was so dry. He thought to finish his ale in one gulp to relieve the dryness, and yet, with the sudden arrival of the royal guards filing into the tavern, he couldn’t find the strength to raise his stein.

The short blue cloaks of the guards bore the eagle crest of King Finrod, who was by most accounts a good and decent ruler. He only had trouble showing mercy to certain criminally inclined individuals, and unfortunately, Erick had a bounty on his head.

Erick was supposed to be far outside of the good king’s grasp by staying in the province of Ash Lake. Stout Hart forest was at least a two day ride away, and the king’s influence was weak in the community of civilized trow and rhyndarhim half-breeds.

The double line of guards split ranks as their captain entered the tavern, and Erick stifled a groan once he’d recognized Darryl.

The rhyndarhin captain’s hair was still a bright periwinkle color and had not yet shown any hints of lightening to white, though Darryl was approaching his second millennia. The narrow bands of color surrounding his wide pupils were silver, a subtle indication of his formidable telepathic powers.

Why him? Erick thought. Why couldn’t it be someone who didn’t know me?

His conscience answered, It doesn’t matter who showed up, because everyone in Stout Hart knows you.

Darryl wasn’t looking at Erick, and though he wanted to feel relief, he already understood that he was sitting next to the person who had the interest of the guards.

Darryl opened his mouth and raised his hand to point, but his gaze and his finger quickly swept to Erick, and his already wide silver eyes bulged wider with anger. “You!”

The hooded man chuckled and sipped his ale before he muttered, “Good luck, lad.”

The man’s growling voice seemed to cause Darryl to regain his composure, and he stepped up to the table while he drew a scroll from out of a pouch tied to his hip. “Luther, you were charged by King Finrod with a mission to—”

The hooded man shoved the heavy table toward the line of guards, his arms and legs vanishing under his cloak as he stood up.

His move did not send the table crashing into any of the guards, but it did cause Darryl to back up quickly, giving the massive man room to plan his fight.

The metallic keen of swords being drawn from scabbards sang out dozens of times as the guards armed themselves, but the hooded man produced no weapons. A disturbingly amused chuckle erupted from him as he strode away from the bench.

Erick had a strong urge to draw his sword, but it was taken from him by Tam, the tavern tough who collected all arms at the door. And with Tam being telepathic, Erick didn’t have a way to sneak weapons in.

He stepped back over the bench, intending to use it in the coming fight. But for the time being, every guard’s gaze was focused on the hooded man as he walked to stand in their midst.

Luther’s growling voice drew Erick’s attention like iron filings to a lodestone. “I did not agree to take on your king’s mission. In fact, I believe my last words to Finrod before I walked out were, ‘No, thank you, your highness.’”

“Funny, I remember it coming out as, ‘high ass,’” Darryl said.

“Was it?” Luther asked. “I’m terribly sorry about that. Now please, get out of my way, runt.”

“Luther, we will take you by force if we have to,” Darryl said, though there was a distinct lack of confidence in his tone of voice.

Erick’s curiosity almost got the better of him, but his common sense kicked in, and instead of taking time to find out what race Luther was, he started to edge his way around the table, and out the front door.

Darryl turned around, shaking his head while he frowned at Erick. “You’re coming with us too, Erick. You still have yet to answer for your crimes against the forest.”

Some of the guards moved to surround Erick, and without weapons, he had no choice but to nod and raise his hands in defeat.

But as he was lifting them, Luther sank down and leapt, barreling into two of the guards so quickly that they didn’t have time to react. Even before Erick could register what he’d done, Luther had stripped the guards of their swords. He brought both weapons in front of himself to deflect the attacks of two guards, and he forced himself between them, lashing out his foot to stomp at the calf of the guard behind him. The stunned elf twisted and sank with the impact of the blow.

It was obvious that Luther was restraining himself. If he had stomped with his full weight, the guard’s leg would have shattered. But Luther’s light attack twisted the guard’s ankle until the tendon was on the verge of ripping, and it threw the elf off balance for several seconds while he tried to favor only one leg.

Luther flung his cloak hem into the face of another guard. He drove his leg out to sink his knee into the gut of the guard, doubling the short rhyndarhin over. The stunned guard with the sprained ankle was still trying to get to his feet when Luther snapped a heel into the elf’s chin. The guard’s bright lavender eyes rolled up before his wide eyelids fluttered shut.

Then, stunningly, Luther dropped the swords and advanced on the next group of guards barehanded. He never slowed down, and he was attacking a sixth guard when Erick realized that he had a good chance of escaping with the brute.

Erick turned toward a guard and thought hard about wanting to take the man’s sword. He focused on the idea, building up his plan. He would wait for the guard to swing and step inside the attack. He imagined breaking the guard’s elbow, and then turning the hilt to twist the sword away.

Erick even allowed himself to visualize impaling the guard with his own sword, and when the guard swallowed nervously, Erick knew that he was dealing with a low-level telepath.

The whole plan had been a diversionary thought, which is why Erick kicked the guard in the groin instead. Stripping the sword from the loose grip of the guard, Erick shoved his shoulder into the chest of another guard and sent them sprawling across the floor.

Like Luther, Erick was using his size to his advantage. The guards were all rhyndarhim from “proper homes,” meaning they didn’t have any mixed blood. So none of the guards stood over one hundred and twenty centimeters in height. At one hundred and fifty-five, Erick practically towered over them.

He had to estimate that Luther was almost two meters tall, and he was far too bulky to be an elf, or even a trow. But in spite of his bulk, he moved with the instinctual grace of a trained fighter.

Erick was occupied by his own fights, but every glimpse over at Luther unnerved him. Such speed! The man’s armored limbs blurred with every strike, yet he did not move to make killing blows.

In fact, Erick had to concede that he wouldn’t be holding his own against the royal guards if their attention wasn’t so distracted by Luther’s towering presence. Even with Erick thinking diversionary thoughts to hide his attacks, many of the royal guards were strong telepaths who should have been able to see past such simple tricks. Or they would have been if they were able to focus through their fears.

Erick wasn’t telepathic, but he knew the scent of fear well. The guards reeked of it, and glancing back at the wake of slumped guards behind Luther, Erick knew who they were really afraid of.

The patrons of the tavern reacted in a predictable way by Lissand standards. Most of the men picked up their drinks, holding them protectively in case their tables were disturbed. Beyond taking that one precaution, they watched the uneven fight with interest. It was more entertaining than sharing gossip, and none of them were wanted by the king, after all.

Erick spotted a clear line to the door and took off running. But the double ranks of guards still mounted on their steeds just outside stopped Erick short.

Luther thumped into Erick, grunted, then cast his head around at the guards watching him with arrows notched and bowstrings drawn back tightly. The hooded man nodded and held up his hands, and so did Erick.

They had no choice, as everyone knew the maxim about rhyndarhim archers: If it’s in their range, then they can hit it.

Erick didn’t realize he’d muttered it until Luther said, “Aye, and we are inside their range, to be sure.”

Erick was going to ask what Luther meant by “we,” but his question froze on his lips when the man drew back his hood to reveal the grey, bulging face of an orc.

***

Erick was seated on his horse with his hands bound behind his back. Ropes lashed his forearms together, and more loops were wound around his chest and upper arms, locking him in place at least until he could twist his way free.

He spent many hours of the first day studying Luther before concluding that he was not an orc. First, he was not nearly tall enough or thick enough to be an orc; and secondly, he spoke elven languages too fluently. His mouth was not bulging with tusks or fangs, and though his canines bulged his lips out prominently, they did not jut out of his mouth. Being able to put his lips together, he could pronounce every word in the elven dialect without mauling them badly, as an orc would typically do. And that was assuming the orc knew any elven words.

Erick wanted to think of Luther as a trow, a half breeding of orc and elf. With the orcs sometimes assailing wayward females of every race in Lissand, any number of crossbred results was possible. But the man’s body was uncommonly thick, even for the most bestial of trow. And in the case of a trow with dominant orc genes, they were often incapable of speaking so clearly because of their snaggleteeth.

Once he’d been bound and lifted onto his own massive black stallion, Luther kept to himself. He introduced himself politely enough, but he offered no explanation for why King Finrod would hire him, or why he had refused the job.

Erick figured he might have a chance of finding out before he was dragged before the king, but first, his sense of curiosity over the man’s lineage had to be satisfied.

“So...I guess your father was an Orc?”

Luther dipped his head, looking down on Erick from the much higher vantage point of his black stallion. Erick’s palomino looked like a pony standing beside the huge horse.

“My father was drunk,” Luther said.

Erick shook his head, almost about to object that he didn’t understand when suddenly, horribly, he did. His dark face crunched into a look of disgust. “Nobody could get drunk enough to find an orc female attractive. Tarn knows orc males have to get drunk to mate with them.”

Luther sighed. “You’ve heard of pixie’s tears?”

Erick nodded. “Yes, I’ve...oh, I see.” He nodded again, then tried to chuckle uneasily. “Let me guess. He didn’t dilute it?”

“No. My father believed in death—”

“Before diluting,” Erick finished the saying and nodded, involuntarily shuddering when he got a mental image of a dwarf mating with an orc. The saying was common in many dwarf languages, and at times it was both an explanation for dwarf behavior as much as it was a half hearted defense when their drunken misadventures backfired.

Pixie’s tears were the elven name given to a type of liquor made from honeysuckle nectar. The pixies probably had their own names for the syrupy sweet clear liquor, but since every word in the pixie vocabulary sounded like insect buzzing to Erick, the proper name eluded him.

However, he was familiar with the liquor’s reputation as a potent sexual stimulant. Most races used the drink as an aphrodisiac, but most consumed the drink in a highly diluted form. Erick had never tried the potent drink himself, but then he considered himself still too young to take on a mate. He was only seventy-five, and there was plenty of time to find “the one” later.

Erick asked, “How much did he drink?”

“If this will lead to jokes about my father, you will regret asking,” Luther warned.

“I’ve seen you fight, sir.” Erick grinned and shook his head. “No force on Lissand short of Tarn himself could make me insult you directly.”

Luther’s bulging lips stretched and twisted into a smirk. “I may allow subtle teasing, but if I think you are enjoying yourself too much—”

“My bloody death shall surely follow,” Erick said and nodded quickly. “Was it more than a full thimble?”

Luther sighed, and his shoulders slouched despite the tightness of his bonds. “One and a half.”

Erick whistled. One and a half thimbles was a dosage high enough to cause week long hallucinations, if he remembered his lessons correctly. Erick asked, “What did he think he was mating with?”

“He claimed that she was a goddess when he dragged her back to the caravan.” Luther’s face crinkled in an odd look of embarrassment. “Then after the drink wore off a week later, it was said that his screams could be heard in the frozen fields. By then, he was legally bound to her.”

Erick smiled wider, unable to hide his genuine surprise. “Wait, so you’re from somewhere around...Port Sirius?”

“We called it home when we weren’t at sea,” Luther said.

Erick laughed then, quickly shaking his head in an objection to Luther’s look of wounded pride. “Your home isn’t that far from the province where I came from. In this dreadful language, they’d call it Milk Springs.”

Luther nodded, lowering his voice. “You don’t care for speaking Rhyndarhim?”

Erick laughed again, and again it was in surprise, this time at Luther’s intellect. He spoke Daoine with only the slightest hint of an accent, and the accent gave away Celtic Dwarf as his native tongue for how much emphasis he placed on each vowel sound.

“I just find it limiting. I guess you can’t expect too much of tree dwellers, though.” Erick sniffed mockingly and glanced around at the guard riding parallel to him on his left. “I don’t see why they have so much influence across the Sapphire Ocean when every kingdom is little more than huts built in the trees.”

Luther chuckled. “If you miss the buildings of civilization so much, why did you come all the way out here to Ash Lake?”

“This was a recent move. I was formerly haunting the huts in Stout Hart.”

“Yes, I gathered that, but I’m also developing a subtle feeling that you left under unfavorable terms?”

“No, not at all,” Erick said. “I bore no one any ill will as I ran away.”

“And what did you do?” Luther asked.

Several rows ahead in the column, Darryl spoke up then, his Daoine horribly accented though he could still be understood. “He incited a riot among a war party of orcs, who subsequently burned down forty kilometers of forest before they were subdued and relocated.”

Erick shook his head quickly, wishing he could hold up his hands to aid his act of protest. But try as he might, he still could not twist his fingers around to find the knot binding his forearms together.

“It isn’t so straight forward as he claims. I was escorting a shipment of bloodwine from Knob Mountain, and our caravan literally stumbled into a war party less than two days ride from Stout Hart. The orcs were already psyched to burn something, and they started talking about roasting us. The way I saw it, we had two choices. Either we could try to fight with the orcs, or we could leave the bloodwine with them and see if they would let us go. And they did. They even let us keep the horses and the carts.”

Darryl moved back in the column, guiding his horse in toward Erick’s white and brown palomino to replace the guard on his left. He uttered a heavy sigh and shook his head before he began speaking in Rhyndarhim. “He didn’t give the wine away. He traded it.”

Luther tipped back his head and laughed. “You traded with orcs?”

“Indeed he did,” Darryl said. “He traded them bloodwine for orc war jewelry. He also told them to have fun burning the forest down. He suggested this in their tongue, and he started a chant.”

“Oh I see,” Luther said before his lips split in a wide grin that revealed his stained brown teeth.

They were pointed, but much smaller than normal orc fangs, and the gaps in between were yellowed with heavy plaque deposits. Erick would have thought the half-orc had a smile only a mother could love, but he corrected himself: Luther’s full-blooded orc mother would probably consider his smile too feminine.

“I didn’t tell them to burn the whole thing, and I didn’t start a chant,” Erick said crossly. “They added that part to the chant after they started drinking.”

“So what did you really say?” Luther asked.

“I...I said ‘Burn one down for me.’” Erick shook his head. “I picked it up from a troll who said it’s an orc compliment.”

Luther laughed loudly. “Didn’t anyone tell you that one and forest sound exceedingly similar in orc?”

“Precisely,” Darryl agreed. “So in effect, you told a war party, “Burn forest for me.’ You did this after handing them a very large quantity of alcohol, and yet you still feign innocence.” He looked away in disgust. “If it were up to me, you’d be tossed inside a tree for a few hundred years to sort you out.”

The smile vanished from Luther’s face, and he coughed meaningfully to catch Darryl’s attention. “I hope you were joking.”

Darryl hesitated before allowing the half-orc to call his bluff. “Well, of course we wouldn’t...he is only a child, after all. Still, the work that had to be done to rebuild that much forest...” He trailed off, turning his head to glare at Erick. “The fire also killed several members of a werekin pack.”

“But of course, what do a few burned trees and animals mean to the rhyndarhim?” Luther asked. “You’re blessed with green magic, so anything burned can be replaced easily enough.”

Darryl turned his angry scowl on the half-orc. “I don’t see why you’re defending him when you’re also facing your own punishment.”

“I doubt that,” Luther said.

And from then on, it was all he said until the column stopped to make camp for the night.

It was clear that Luther didn’t like Darryl. It was one more reason for Erick to develop a fondness for Luther, though he too left the brooding half-orc to muse on his next conversation with King Finrod.