Dan the Adventurer, page 14
part #2 of Gold Girls and Glory Series
“Like Fire Ridge,” Dan said, and took a drink.
Holly nodded. “They’ll burn everyone.”
“That’s not our fault,” Dan said.
“No? We didn’t kill the slavers and set these elves free?”
“That’s not the point. If Roderick’s Raiders come here, that’s on them, not us. That’s the truth.”
“No,” Holly said, taking another sip. “The truth is that all of these people will die if we don’t help them.”
“Help them?” Dan said. “We don’t have time to help them. What about Zeke? What about the thing in the crevasse?”
“We don’t know where Zeke is or what he needs.”
“Yeah. That’s why we have to go to the Pool of Dreams.”
“The Pool of Dreams can wait,” Holly said. “These people can’t. Eventually, Roderick’s Rangers will march on Fire Ridge. They’ll send a larger detachment than we faced. Twenty or thirty warriors, probably.”
Dan didn’t want to hear it. “That’s ridiculous. These elves didn’t kill those slavers. We did.”
“That doesn’t matter and you know it,” Holly said. “Roderick’s Raiders will burn this place to the ground just to send a message to other communities. Unless we help, of course.”
“We can’t help,” he said. “We’ve already lost too much time. We can’t wait here to fight their battles for them.”
“I’m not saying we should fight,” Holly said. “In a month’s time, we could help them rebuild their defenses and prepare for battle. If we mended the fortress, prepared defenses, and trained the elves, they could repel the raiders.”
“No,” Dan said. Holly had ruined what had been a great dinner. Now he felt disturbed and angry. But he was adamant, too. This wasn’t his problem. These weren’t his people.
He told her as much.
She tried to say more, but he refused to listen. “Tomorrow morning, I’m heading for the crevasse.”
Blushing servers delivered dessert in the form of warm apple crisp with a side of sweet yogurt.
Dan smiled and thanked them but couldn’t help picturing the pretty serving girls as charred corpses nailed to trees.
Holly had ruined everything. Now the dessert tasted like ashes in his mouth.
The matriarch raised her glass, silencing the hall. “Dan, Holly, Nadia, Ula, and Lily,” Ahneena said, going down the row and looking at each person as she said his or her name. “Again, we thank you for bringing home our beautiful girls.” She went on for a while, calling them heroes and thanking them repeatedly.
“And now, if you will forgive me, I will retire,” the matriarch said with a smile. “I am nearly two thousand years old and can’t party like I did back in my 1800s.“
Laughter filled the great room.
As the plates were being cleared, Holly suggested that Dan escort the matriarch back to her chambers. The gesture would be appreciated.
Dan nodded. When he rose, Ula stood, too. Dan motioned for the ever-vigilant warrior woman to return to her seat.
Ahneena smiled at his offer and took his arm. “I hope you’re not trying to seduce me, young man,” she joked. “You’re too young to handle all of this experience.”
Dan laughed.
They left the celebration and headed toward her home, but the matriarch asked him to accompany her on a short diversion. “I would like to show you the Hall of Memories.”
Dan agreed, and she led him to a long, narrow, single-story building at the back of the compound.
They went inside, and Dan squinted. The Hall of Memories was brightly lit by what he first thought were wall-mounted torches and then recognized as tubes spouting flame.
His eyes adjusted, and he whistled. Unlike the other buildings he’d seen, The Hall of Memories was not slipping into ruin. A long, elegantly crafted table stood at the center of the room. The tile floor shone brightly, and there wasn’t so much as a spare leaf littering the space.
A floor-to-ceiling tapestry mural covered the walls.
“Our history,” the matriarch said, and pointed to where embroidered figures stepped from flames into a needlework forest. “Three hundred thousand years. From our origin all the way to our present situation.”
They walked slowly, eyes skimming the tapestry, every inch of which depicted red elves living, loving, and fighting.
So much fighting!
Red elves fighting orcs, hobgoblins, other elves, dwarves, humans, and all manner of monsters.
Occasionally, Ahneena paused to identify specific scenes. The carving of the throne at Flame Valley. The rise of Mooret. The slaying of the blue dragon. The building of Fire Ridge.
As they neared the end of the hall, the mural ended. The remaining twenty feet of tapestry was merely backdrop without illustration.
The matriarch pointed to one of the final illustrations, wherein humans and humanoids knelt before a muscular red elf with a beard of flame tattoos. He wore black plate mail and held a flaming sword overhead.
“The Subjugation,” Ahneena said with a sad smile. “Every race finally bent the knee to our might. Six thousand, four hundred and twelve years ago.”
After that came a thin band of scenes depicting mostly drinking, dancing, feasting, and lovemaking.
Beyond that, nothing.
“Not a single scene added in thousands of years,” Ahneena said.
“Why did your people stop adding scenes?”
“We didn’t stop adding scenes,” Ahneena said. “We stopped adding history.”
Her fingers brushed over the empty space beyond the final scene. “I am not the woman that my mother was. Nor was she the woman that my grandmother was. In the time of my great-grandmother, who was born two thousand years after the Subjugation, Fire Ridge was a grand fortress. Our power was still unparalleled. No one could withstand our fire mages, and we remained a fierce and warlike people.”
Dan glanced again at the Subjugation scene. With his black plate, flaming sword, and fiery eyes, the red elf warrior certainly looked fierce.
Ahneena laughed softly. Bitterly, Dan thought. “These,” she said touching the fading flames tattooed on her cheeks, “are the last, faint echo of that strength.”
“What happened?” Dan asked.
“We were conquered by two opponents,” Ahneena said, a twinkle in her red eyes. “Arrogance and sloth.
“We were so strong after conquering the forest. We couldn't even fathom losing a war. And in a sense, we were correct. We never did lose in war. We lost in peace.”
Ahneena shook her head. “Dominance made us soft. And I speak not only of Fire Ridge but of red elves everywhere. Rather than training in the arts of war, we dedicated ourselves to the arts of pleasure. Rather than studying fire magic, we spent our days singing and dancing, drinking and screwing. Our ancestors fought hard. We no longer needed to fight. We were simply enjoying the fruits of their struggles. And why not? We hadn't been challenged in a generation.
“Our decadence and hubris displeased the gods. They took back the gift of fire magic and transformed us into a silly, oversexed race with neither fire nor courage. They even reshaped our bodies.”
She pointed to reddish figures on the tapestry beside her. “The spare, muscular physiques of our ancestors vanished. With each generation, we grow shorter and weaker. Softer, more effeminate. Since we rejected the ways of fire and war, the gods have transformed us into obscene caricatures, exaggerated reflections of our hedonistic pursuits.”
Gesturing toward the tapestry, she said, “These men were as hard as hobgoblin knuckles, and the women were sharp as obsidian blades.”
Flattening a hand against the blank space beyond historical record, she said, “Now? Androgyny, apathy, and ruin.”
The matriarch shook her head, and Dan was surprised to see a tear glistening at the corner of her eye. “I do thank you for rescuing my granddaughter and the other girls,” she said, “but I fear that your act of mercy all but guarantees that Fire Ridge will never finish its tapestry.”
Dan opened his mouth to speak, but Ahneena spoke first.
“I fear that the gods will add one last scene, and that it will show me, the last matriarch, the silly old woman who failed to save her people.”
Dan looked at the blank tapestry and then met the matriarch’s red gaze.
“Oh to Hades with it,” he blurted. “We’ll help you rebuild.”
22
Foondek
“This is their war, not ours,” Dan said, looking around the living room of the villa he shared with his friends. “The moment that they’re ready to defend themselves, we’re out of here, okay?”
Holly and Lily nodded.
Ula looked amused.
Nadia scowled. “We can’t stay here,” she said, her emerald eyes flashing with anger. “What about Zeke?”
Dan shifted back and forth. “Look, I’m not happy with the delay either, but these people need us. Besides, I haven’t even been dreaming about Zeke.”
“He probably thinks we abandoned him,” Nadia said. “Which is true.”
“We haven’t abandoned Zeke,” Dan said. Suddenly he’d gone from explaining his plan to feeling defensive. “We just have to—”
“What about the acolytes?” Nadia interrupted. “What about the thing in the crevasse?”
“Again,” Dan said, trying to keep his voice calm, “we will take care of that, but first—”
“Or don’t you believe me?” Nadia stood. “Do you think that I made it all up?”
“What are you talking about?” Dan said, his face twisting with confusion. “You know I believe you. But we have to prioritize. These people will die without our help.”
“Prioritize?” Nadia shouted. “These red elves aren’t our people. Zeke is our people!” She stormed out of the room and slammed the door.
Dan started to go after her, but Holly raised a hand. “Give her space,” Holly said. “We have work to do.”
Dan stared at the door for a second. He wanted to chase Nadia down and patch things up, but Holly was right. They had work to do.
Roderick’s Raiders were currently busy with orders from the Duke of Harrisburg, but after that, probably six to eight weeks from now, according to Holly and Lily, the slavers would march from York, bent on burning Fire Ridge to the ground.
“All right then,” he said to the women gathered around the table. “How do we do this?”
“You tell us,” Holly said with an encouraging smile. “You’re the leader.”
“Well, as the leader, I need your help. We have to brainstorm the situation and figure out what needs done and who does what.”
“First and foremost?” Holly said. “We need to mend the wall.”
Lily was translating everything to Ula, and when Ula finally spoke, Lily served as her interpreter.
“Ula says that we must give the elves teeth.”
“Huh?”
“She means that we have to teach them to fight.”
“Oh,” Dan said, and gave the hobgoblin warrior woman an approving nod. “Right. That’s a primary goal.”
“I checked the armory,” Lily said. “There are a lot of weapons down there. Most of them are in pretty bad shape, but they’ll get the job done.”
“What sorts of weapons?”
“Swords and daggers, bows and arrows. The bows will need to be restrung, and most of the arrows need new fletchings, but the wooden components seem fine.”
“That’s good news,” Dan said. “Lily, organize a crew of red elves and haul up the weapons this afternoon. Ula and I can teach sword fighting. I’ll ask Nadia to teach them to use daggers. Holly, will you organize a group of elves to start repairing the bows and arrows?”
“Of course, husband.”
“But the most interesting weapon isn’t in the armory,” Lily said, a grin coming onto her dirty face. “It’s in the guard tower beside the gate.”
“And you know this how?” Dan said with a smile.
Lily shrugged. “I like to explore. Anyway, it’s some kind of big projectile weapon. It has this weird funnel on top, and there’s a crank and six or seven tubes that shoot spears or something. I think it’s broken, but it looks like it might be powerful if we fix it.”
“Good work, Lily. We’ll check it out and see what the matriarch knows.”
Ula spoke up.
Lily interpreted. “The weapons will need cleaned and sharpened.”
Dan managed to suppress his amusement. The hobgoblin was fanatical about cleaning and sharpening her equipment. She honed and polished her axe nightly and had taken to giving Dan’s sword the same treatment whenever he would allow it. Wulfgar would certainly have cracked some jokes about that.
“Good thinking, Ula,” Dan said. “We’ll assign each elf a sword and dagger and set up mandatory maintenance every night after dinner. How are we set for armor?”
Lily frowned. “The armor is rusty but serviceable,” she said. “The real problem is that the armor won’t fit. The helmets and shields will work, but these elves are much shorter and smaller than their ancestors. The males are too skinny, and the women are too busty.”
Dan nodded grimly. There had to be a way to use the armor, to adapt it. Something. But they didn’t have time now. One more thing to add to the list.
“We need to focus on the fortress itself,” Holly said. “If they don’t have walls, armor won’t help them.”
Lily must have translated, because Ula laughed.
“Good point,” Dan said. “There’s so much to do. We can’t get sidetracked. We’ll focus on the fortress. If there’s time after that, we can see about the armor.”
“We should start with the inner wall,” Holly said. “We won’t have time to fix both walls.”
“True,” Lily said. “But maybe we could do a rough patch job on the outer wall, just to slow them down? That way, the elves could rain arrows down on them when they were trapped between the walls.”
Dan nodded. “I like it. We also need to get rid of the vines on the stone wall. They’re thick as ladder rungs. If we can’t chop them, we’ll burn them.”
“What about the big hole where a gate should be?” Holly asked.
Dan chewed his lip for a second before answering. “We don’t have time to build a proper gate, but we have to block it off.”
“That’s a big opening,” Lily said. “It has to be twenty feet across.”
“We’ll scrap furniture if we need to,” Holly said. “We have to build a gate, even if it’s a crude one.”
Ula grunted, and Lily translated. “We need to clear the meadow. Remove all cover for the enemy and create a kill zone. We should focus our military training on archery and spear work from the walls. If it comes to swords, the elves will be… foondek. There’s no real word in common for what she said.” She turned to her sister.
Holly said, “If it comes to swords, the elves will be pieces of meat used for both fucking and eating.”
Ula showed her tusks.
Dan laughed.
The warrior woman was slowly growing on him. Her sense of humor was dark as Hades, but her laughter was musical nonetheless, and he kind of liked her smile. Even the sharp little tusks were sort of cute.
“Lovely,” Dan said. “And good point on bows and spears. We’ll show them the basics with swords and daggers and leave it at that. You know,” he said, a smile coming onto his face as he pictured the elves jamming spears into the faces of slavers trying to scale rough-hewn ladders, “I’m actually starting to think these elves might be able to hold this fortress.”
The others, with the exception of Ula, nodded.
The hobgoblin snorted laughter. “Groat un asha taleel foondek.”
Lily interpreted, but Dan didn’t really need her to. He only needed to have the word for “pieces of meat used for both fucking and eating” interpreted once. He could guess at the rest.
23
The Fist of Fury
Later, as he, Holly, and Ula were heading for the tower, Dan found Nadia filling her water skin in the courtyard.
“You coming to the tower?” he asked. “Ahneena is going to show us the big weapon.”
Nadia stood, capping her water, and shook her head. “I’m leaving with Lily.”
Lily had already set the weapon-gathering crew in motion. Now she was heading out to scout the roads and warn the gnomes and the green elves about Roderick’s Raiders coming for payback. She would be gone for days, maybe weeks.
Nadia tagging along, however, hadn’t been in the plans.
Dan and Holly tried to talk her out of it, but Nadia wouldn’t listen. Her emerald-green eyes burned with anger. “I have to get out of this place for a while.”
And then she marched off without so much as a goodbye kiss.
Badly confused, Dan watched until Nadia rounded the corner. Then he and Holly started toward the guard tower.
“You should have stopped her,” Holly said as the three of them climbed the tower stairs.
“Stopped her?” Dan said. “Earlier you told me to give her space!”
“Yes,” Holly said patiently, like she was talking to a child, “but in this situation you should have stopped her. That’s what she wanted.”
Dan made a face. “What she wanted? She said that she wanted to get out of this place.” He shook his head.
“You have a lot to learn about women,” Holly said.
Topping the stairs, they entered the guard tower and exchanged bows with Ahneena, who was smoking another of her dark, smelly cigars. The matriarch gestured toward the huge weapon dominating the tower.
Ula gave an impressed grunt.
“What exactly is it?” Holly asked.
Looks like a Gatling gun, Dan thought, remembering the bad-ass crank-style revolver rifles from Westerns he’d watched as a kid. Man, we could really use one of those now.
“This is the Fist of Fury,” Ahneena said with obvious pride. “My great-great-great-grandfather invented it. Go ahead, take a look.”
Swivel-mounted on a rusty tripod, the Fist of Fury had an oblong frame and seven barrels encircling a central shaft. A large hopper rose from one side of the frame. From the base of the frame snaked a flexible hose of shiny black material that appeared to have actual scales. This reptilian tube joined with a metal pipe that disappeared through the floor. Just below the union of hose and pipe was a valve handle.
