Chapter 8

It was midmorning the following day when Roderick and company reached an area where the road became noticeably wider and better-maintained, and the trees on either side of the road became noticeably older and more gnarled. Barbara paused to look at a tree leaf that was shot through with veins of bright blue. A light breeze had picked up, and rustled through the tree leaves and sent a few branches knocking against each other.

Suddenly Roderick slapped at his arm. Barbara shot him a questioning glance, but he shook his head and started looking intently through the trees to either side. Barbara looked too, but didn't see anything particularly interesting, so after a while she shrugged and went back to composing lyrics in her head.

The wind rustled through the trees again, and Roderick slapped his shoulder. He pulled his horse to a stop and stared off to the left, toward a particularly old and gnarled oak tree. The others looked at him in concern. Roderick's horse, picking up on his tension, started to prance nervously sideways.

A twig snapped, and Roderick snapped his head to the right. He gently spurred his horse onwards, and then suddenly kicked it to a gallop. The others were caught off guard, but managed to keep up.

"Roderick, what's wrong with you? What are you doing?" Barbara called ahead to him.

He glanced briefly over his shoulder at her. "This is a faerie forest," he called back. "We need to get through here as fast as possible."

The others just looked at each other.

Then Stan's horse stumbled.

Roderick heard, and had his horse turned around in a flash. "It's a founder spell!" he called. "Hold on!" He came in close, pulled some salt out of his pack, and tossed it over Stan's horse's foot. "You should be okay now. Let's go!" He wheeled his horse and took off at the front of the group again.

Spurring his horse on again, Stan muttered to Barbara, "Frankly, I think I could've gotten my horse going again without his salt."

"Don't get too close to the trees," Roderick called back to them. "There could be more founder spells, or all kinds of glamours."

"Glamours?" Johnson asked.

"Illusions," Barbara supplied. "Things that look and feel like they're there, but aren't really. They have no substance of their own. The faeries make them by weaving sunlight or moonlight together with wind."

Stan stared at her. "Don't tell me you believe in this stuff, too."

Barbara shrugged. "I had to learn all kinds of lore, including faerie lore, to be able to pass the bard exam. And a lot of it is in the old songs, so I know some from there too. The fact that I know it doesn't mean anything about whether I believe it or not."

"Do you?" Johnson asked.

Barbara grinned. "Not really," she admitted. "I'll probably end up leaving large portions of this trip out of the story when I'm done, and this faerie nonsense will probably get cut long before the final version. Heroic deeds have to actually sound heroic, you know. They taught us that in Storytelling 401: How to Lie with Iambic Pentameter."

The sound of wind in the leaves kept getting louder, though, and after another ten minutes even Stan started to fidget in his seat. The horses were snorting and whinnying with anxiety.

Then they rounded a bend, and found that some of that sound hadn't actually been wind in the leaves. Directly in front of them was a broad, rushing river, a stone bridge, and three guards.

"Halt!" called the lead guard. "Dismount and line up over here."

Roderick glanced back at the others, then obeyed. The others followed, equally hesitantly. "What's this all about?" Roderick asked, doing his best to feign both innocence and curiosity.

"We're searching everyone who tries to come this way," said the lead guard, a slightly overweight man with bright red hair and a bushy beard. "Under orders from Herman the Grave, chairman of the Evil Overlords' Union. Apparently someone is going to try to get to Mount Paladin."

"Uh-huh," said Stan. "And this concerns you guys how, exactly?"

The red-bearded guard shrugged. "Large cash bonus to whoever brings the hero in, plus smaller cash bonuses to everyone who was guarding any of the bridges." He grinned. "That concerns me quite a bit. I've got a girlfriend to support."

"Well," Johnson said, "no problem, then -- we're not heroes at all. Just three henchmen and a bard."

The guard shook his head. "We're to search everyone. No exceptions." He grinned nastily at Barbara. "We've been authorized to do strip searches if necessary."

"What?" Barbara shrieked.

"Hey, now just a minute," Roderick broke in. "All three of you are men. You can't strip-search a woman!"

"And why not?" said the taller of the other two guards, with a nasty smirk.

"Why not?" Roderick repeated incredulously.

Johnson stepped forward. "Why not?" he echoed quietly, his bulk looming over even the tall guard. He cracked his knuckles and frowned ominously. "Why... not?"

The guards all backed up a step and looked at each other nervously.

Barbara, who had by now recovered her composure, said, "That's enough, Johnson. If they insist on being crude, we'll just turn around and be on our way."

"Not so fast. Janek! Gunter!" called Red-Beard. Two other guards melted out of the trees, with swords already drawn, and placed themselves between Roderick's group and their horses almost before they knew they were there. Red grinned, and said, "We have our orders."

Roderick glanced at Stan, who had drawn his own sword and was standing in a ready crouch; at Johnson, who had his large iron mace at the ready; and at Barbara, who shrugged and said, "Sorry. I don't fight."

"Oh, that's really helpful," Stan said sarcastically.

Roderick stood thoughtfully. Three of them would be fighting. Three guards between them and the bridge; only two guards between them and their horses. Slightly better odds, then, in going for the horses, but that would get them back where they had started, whereas going for the bridge -- and come to think of it, if he strained his eyes, he could just make out horses moving around on the far bank of the river.

He shouted "Go!", snatched his sword from his sheath, and plunged forward, with Stan and Johnson close behind. Red-Beard brought up his own weapon, as did his two companions, and the clang of metal on metal rang out.

Then Red-Beard called out, "Backup!"

And two huge trolls lumbered out from under the bridge.

Johnson paused. The trolls were each an arm's length taller than he was.

During that pause, the nearer of the two horse guards came up behind him. He only barely heard the other man's approach, and ducked aside just in time.

Roderick looked around in despair. The guards by the bridge were quickly circling around to surround them, trusting the trolls to guard the bridge -- and hell, if anyone could guard a bridge, it was going to be a troll, hands down.

The only options seemed to be to surrender, or to flee into the woods. The faerie woods. He tried frantically to figure out which option would be worse.

Then he saw the answer to the whole problem sitting next to the campfire. He let out a fierce battle cry, and dove between two of the guards to get to it.


"So you're all in agreement, then?" asked Sir Hugo the Mad, while standing next to the castle of Erik the Goth.

The six surveyors all nodded.

Sir Hugo grinned broadly, showing a set of very sharp teeth. "Wonderful news," he said. "All right, you may all report to my bursar, in that wagon there. I've instructed him to give you the usual pay, plus a thirty percent bonus for a job well done."

He started to turn away, then paused. "Oh," he added, "and you can all stop back by the castle and ask for some fresh chocolate-chip cookies from the kitchen."

Then he turned to the group of workers by the plow and hollered, "All right, men, harness them up!" The workers went to the supply cart and produced a large set of heavy chains, which they used to hook the huge plow blade to the set of eighteen oxen that were to pull it.

Amidst the clatter, a tall, lanky man -- evidently Erik the Goth himself, as evidenced by the stringy black hair, black turtleneck in the middle of summer, and black leather pants -- came running out of the castle's front door. "Hey," he shouted in a kind of hoarse whisper, "it's the middle of the day! Keep the racket down out here!" He took in the scene of oxen and plow with horror. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"I'm getting ready to plow these weeds off of my land."

Erik's face went a shade paler than it already was. "Weeds? This is my prize rose garden! And what do you mean, your land? This is my castle! I should have you arrested for trespassing!"

"Actually," said Sir Hugo, enjoying his role immensely, "according to these documents" -- he held out a stack of papers an inch thick -- "this plot of land is actually part of my property. It seems the first surveyor made a slight error in calculations."

He turned to his workers and called, "Okay, men. Plow at will."

Interests: Cats, rose gardens, reading existential poetry in coffeehouses, and throwing lightning bolts at anyone who annoys him. -- Personality Profile: Erik the Goth, by Amanda Sphinx; "Overlords Monthly", Volume 114, Issue 2

Erik's expression of horror quickly darkened into a mask of rage. "Why, you little --" he said, raising his right hand over his head. The air began to snap and sizzle around him.

"Ah, I wouldn't do that," Sir Hugo said, pointing at the largest rosebush in the garden. Another set of workers was just finishing hooking up a large lightning rod, wired directly to the bush's central trunk. Hugo grinned. "The surveyor who came to see me last night was very thorough in his research."

Erik's jaw sagged.

He stood and watched, without another word, rooted to the spot, as the guards whipped the oxen forward.


On hearing Roderick's battle cry, and seeing him dive for something by the guards' fire, Johnson let loose with a mighty swing that set both of his attackers staggering back, and moved in Roderick's direction. "Roderick, what is it? What'd you find?" he shouted.

"Come on, guys!" Roderick called after them. "I've got it! This is our ticket out of here! Now move! Let's go!"

"Move where?" Stan cried. "They're blocking the road!"

"Into the forest! Come on!"

Johnson broke away, but Stan was surrounded. Roderick waded into the fray, sword in his right hand, something large -- a jug of something? -- in his left. One of the guards turned his attention to Roderick, and that gave Stan the opening he needed to duck out and head for the trees. Roderick followed.

The trolls lumbered after them.

"Hey!" came a shout from the other end of the clearing. "What about me?"

Roderick skidded to a stop. "Barbara!" he shouted. "Come on!" He turned and charged back through the cluster of guards. The clash of swords rang out.

"Is he mental?" Stan said, but nobody was listening. Johnson was already charging after Roderick.

Stan sighed, moved in more cautiously, and downed one of the guards with a well-placed blow with the flat of his sword. Roderick and Johnson had already taken down another of the guards, but Roderick's right arm was bleeding, and the remaining three guards, including Red-Beard, were circling around in an effort to slow them down.

"Johnson! Look out!" Stan cried.

Johnson dove aside, crashing into one of the other guards. A huge wooden club whistled through the air where his head had been a moment before.

Stan leapt at the guard Johnson had knocked down and got him in a headlock. Johnson got up, now bleeding from a gash on his shoulder. Roderick struggled to fight the two remaining guards and still dance out of reach of the trolls' club swings, but the guards fought to push him closer to the trolls. Johnson took a swing at the nearest guard, but got knocked aside by a sweeping blow from a club.

Gritting his teeth, Stan took a tighter grip on the guard's neck and fought him to the ground. The guard twisted, and Stan was dragged around so he was facing almost entirely away from the trolls. He tried to keep watching the trolls through the corner of his eye, but the guard was still struggling, and the effort of holding on made Stan's peripheral vision begin to fade.

And then, with that odd clarity that strikes when it's most needed, he heard the whistle of something large moving through the air right behind him.

Almost without thinking, he flipped backwards and thrust the guard's body upward with his knee. The troll's club went an inch above Stan's nose, connected with the guard's ribcage with a wrenching crunch, and tossed the guard through the air to land in a ragged heap and with a crying moan, a good six feet away.

Stan continued his roll, pivoting on his shoulder and landing in a crouch. The troll grunted, breathing heavily, and stepped closer, preparing its club to swing again.

"Got her!" came a cry from the other side of the clearing.

"Great," muttered Stan. "Now what about me?"

He waited for the troll's club to reach the top of its upswing, and then started to dart under the upraised arm. But he was stopped halfway by the point of a sword, held by the guard he'd thought he'd knocked out just moments earlier.

The troll roared in displeasure and brought its club down. Stan leapt aside as best he could, but the club caught his leg and sent him sprawling, pain throbbing through his ankle.

Then Johnson was there, with a screaming Barbara slung over his shoulder. He ducked in close enough to take a wild swing at the guard. The guard leapt to the side to avoid the swing, and Roderick ducked through the opening, pulled Stan to his feet, and pulled him toward the trees. Stan gasped in pain as he put weight on his ankle, but he was able to hobble along after Roderick.

"Put me down!" Barbara was screaming. "You're getting blood all over my dress!" She and Johnson were already past the first clump of underbrush at the edge of the trees as he lowered her to the ground. Stan and Roderick struggled to catch up with them, as three guards ran after them, followed by two trolls. And, as Stan saw when he glanced back over his shoulder, a half dozen more guards were running across the bridge, and would be there any moment.

"Go!" Johnson shouted to Barbara, putting his hand on her back and giving her a shove. She shrieked. Johnson darted out, grabbed Stan, slung him over his shoulder just as he had with Barbara, staggered half a step, and then started back for the trees at a run, Roderick right beside him, guards close behind.

"Come on!" Roderick called. "We just need to get out of sight of the clearing."

"They're right behind us!" Barbara cried. "This would be a really good time for an epic-quality turnaround!"

"Just keep moving," Roderick called, awkwardly trying to sheathe his sword while he was running. He finally succeeded. Johnson was beginning to fall behind, not accustomed to the effort of carrying a man while running.

Roderick pulled the stopper off the glass jug he was carrying. "Attention, all faeries who live in this forest," he called out. "We come to you begging a favor, in return for a favor." He paused to catch his breath. "We offer you this jug of milk as a token of our esteem. All we ask is that you divert those who follow us -- those who would have withheld this milk from you, out of ignorance or spite."

Behind them, they could hear the guards crashing through the underbrush, still coming closer. Not much farther away came the sound of whistling followed by snapping and cracking, as a troll swung its club to sweep away the tree branches. Roderick glanced over his shoulder and saw that the nearest guard was no more than a dozen feet behind.

As he turned back forward, he noticed the cut on his arm for the first time. "Oh, no," he said softly. Barbara glanced at him, and he met her gaze, shaking his head slightly. "I hope the blood doesn't attract the wrong kind of faeries."

Then the crashing sounds behind him stopped, and Roderick felt the ground shift and rise under his feet.


< Chapter 7 Chapter 9 >