The Spriggan: Adventures of an Amazon Hobbit: Part 7 By ZuiderZee zuiderzee98@hotmail.com www. geocities.com/Area51/Dungeon/4535 Crushfoot didn't sheath his knife, but kept it close to his leg as he picked his way down the rain-slicked rocks. He progressed with measured pace, letting the fog be his cover when the trees and boulders were too far apart to hide his hunched outline. There was a difference between a scout and a guide and Crushfoot knew it. He knew what lay ahead, but he was not one to go on ahead. Running was something he hated to do--going about it with a strange, rolling stride or when he couldn't manage that, a quickened walk/run with many steps that suggested the movements of a man far older or with abnormally tender testicles who didn't want them colliding with one another or against his pumping thighs. He wore normal cowhide boots, but the hollow space at the tip of the right boot was crammed with felt to make it more solid. But that padding was no substitute for toes. Only with toes could he sneak effectively, easing his weight forward from heel to toe or back again if need be. He could only manage it now with his left foot. It wasn't enough. Only now, in the static patter of the downpour were his tell-tale rustlings and uneven footfalls drowned out. In place of toes, he had grown wiles. Chains was a much bigger man; Crushfoot had never seen Chains in a fight, but that didn't matter much. With his balance, speed and kicking ability severely reduced, Crushfoot supposed even half-faced Fjorgun could have beaten him. Beaten him in a fair fight. Crushfoot didn't intend to go up against Chains with anything resembling fairness. Mists swirled, parted and sealed again. In a rare moment of visibility, Crushfoot saw the slowly advancing form of Chains not five paces ahead. Too close. But Chains still hadn't seen him. Feeling for a round stone he had spotted earlier, Crushfoot palmed it and a rock half its size, hesitating just long enough to feel their heft before he tossed the heavier of the two in a high arc over the other man then threw the smaller with more force in the same direction, but farther out. Thud. A silence. Thud. Kill Chains or lead him away. Fine if he could do the latter; there was some risk in that, particularly if the other renegades were simply sending Crushfoot on a fool's errand while they made their way to Gigurd's without him. He wouldn't put it past any of them. To his relief, Chains moved in the direction where the rocks landed. But something was still not right-Chains wasn't bellowing for the boy he hunted. Not even coaxing with a quieter voice. Another rock, then. Crushfoot dropped to his hands and knees and crawled forward to find one more. The long grass grew thicker and to his frustration, rocks were in short supply. When he finally found one, he thrust out his left hand to get it and froze. A tall, broad black shape he hadn't noticed before loomed over him. With his heart leaping up in his chest, Crushfoot swung his right hand, still closed around his knife-hilt and buried the pitch-blackened blade deep into the middle of the outline where the wicked point sank deep and held fast. Tholyff jumped in odd sympathy as he and RhohG looked on from above. The other renegades, led by Nubs, had moved away down the slope and were at a distance RhohG judged safe for movement and quiet speech. "That man just killed Chains!" Tholyff said in a voice slightly too loud for comfort, but RhohG didn't stir. "Then you're as mistaken as Crushfoot. Volmor's knowledgeable guide has just murdered an old tree stump. Chains is still safe.for the moment anyway. We can't rest here all night, come on." Confused, Tholyff cocked his head, wondering if he'd heard her right. "You mean I'm to join you? You don't want me to stay here?" "I know children! They never stay where you want them to. And you're no different from a lot of youngun's, boys in particular.you can't stand still for a minute. It's just best to have you close. Now, come on." Chains stiffened and crouched a heartbeat later as he recognized the sound of metal on wood-like a woodsman making the initial chop of an old tree. Minutes passed as little nervous impulses skittered over his skin like crazed ants. It wasn't Tholyff out there. Maybe not a man at all. Drawing his hand-ax from his belt, Chains wrapped both his huge, sweaty hands around the haft and side-stepped back in the direction he'd come from, ignoring the earlier thuds in the grass. A bull of a man, but not in the same class as Volmor, Chains made as much of a target no matter which way he turned, but approaching an enemy obliquely could at least offer him the chance of taking a hit in the shoulder rather than the throat. The fog thickened evilly as he went on. He slowed, positive he'd seen something squarish in the mist like the outline of a man. There he is! Uttering no cry, but taking a deep breath, Chains charged the shape and rammed the bit of the ax into its side where it drove in deep and lodged immovably. "By the Reckoner, that's got to be the most dangerous and formidable tree-stump in all of Cror." "My record of men to tree-stumps is a hundred to one. Show yourself!" "This should do." RhogG took a single step forward, but remained partially screened by long grass. "I knew that voice-Rhoh-Gollilla-Lu!" "You know me." Again her tone carried an unspoken phrase: and if I am, what then? "Why are you here? Are you alone?" Chains continued trying to work his weapon from the side of the stump with little headway. "Oh, hush!" Over the noise of the rain, RhohG heard the familiar taff of a bow releasing an arrow. "You say hush to me-" "Arrow! Throw yourself down, you mooncalf!" "Mooncalf is it!?" Releasing the ax, Chains turned. RhohG rushed out of concealment, hauling on the man's arm until he was sprawled on the grass with RhohG beside him. A single war arrow flashed into view as its flight was halted by the stump. "Knife, ax and arrow. Will none of you see this stump for what it is without daylight? But it was well the arrow hit where it did." RhohG let out a mighty yell of agony, surprisingly low-toned and manlike. "Why did you make such a sound?" "Because you didn't." RhohG saw the mists swirl again. She got up and yanked the arrow free and then did the same for the ax. In a further curious note, she found Crushfoot's knife still lodged where he'd plunged it. This too she freed. "Whose blade is that?" Chains was still in shock, seeing how lucky he'd been. "One of Volmor's men. I've a mind he ought to see it again." Tearing loose a slab of bark, RhohG shoved it down his shirtfront and then stabbed the arrow through the fabric, replanting it harmlessly despite a grunt of surprise from Chains. "My yell will have them thinking that was you. They're out for gain, not war. If they come searching for you, they'll be content you're lying still and won't give you a deathblow to finish you off. Let's have a groan from yourself-the kind a real man might give. Out with it Chains.before they shoot again!" Chains took his ax in his left hand, rolled over onto it lest anyone come within striking distance and let out a pathetic death-throes moan followed by a few coughs. "Like a dying ox. Well done. Be sure they're long gone before you try to get up. And who fired old Gigurd's hall.was it you?" "Piss-eyes!" Chains said in a hushed tone, emulating hers now. "Eldeyed?" "Who else? And it wasn't the hall. A few outlying buildings only." "Why?" "Men can only guess at such things. Trickery is not our way, but the crutch of the woman-the Reckoner decreed it so. Any man who sinks to deceit shall know the Reckoner's judgment." Chains declared with sincerity. "And the man who shot that arrow.was he honest enough to show you his face? I don't suppose the wielder of this knife would have given a fair warning. But you said deceit. Was she hoping to fool Volmor? A night with fairer weather would have shown the hall was not on fire. Who was she hoping to fool by getting them to think the hall and its treasures were up in flames?" "There were rumors." "Name them!" RhohG said in a harsh whisper, wary of the renegades. "Berserks. The fit was not on them when they drew near one day, but they lingered beyond the reach of our arrows and Gigurd knew them for what they were and that they might return if they thought they could breech our walls and plunder Gigurd's trove. Now and again we saw their tracks and my dogs whined and barked when their stink blew our way. Be warned!" "I've known women who were adept at fakery. And men whose confidence was swelled because of it. Eldeyed has a certain method to her madness. If any berserk comes without the fit on him, he may be content with far less than if he was battle-mad." Cutting short the exchange, RhohG slipped away without letting on about Tholyff and glad Chains didn't keep on about the boy's whereabouts. She didn't like lying either. "Nubs-you fool! Shooting into mist like that. I was down there as well! Or had you somehow forgotten?" The bowman with the worn-down teeth drew an arrow from his quiver, nocked it and pointed it at Crushfoot. "Like I told you, Crushfoot. If anyone doubts my accuracy, let him dodge or run!" "Enough of this!" Toadhands cut in, truly believing Nubs would release. "Crushfoot did his part. Alive or dead, Chains is behind us now and he is only one man." Nubs kept his arrow nocked, but lowered the bow. "And you. How adept are you at evading arrows?" "I guess myself at being average. But only if they be thrown by hand." Nubs laughed at this and the tension was eased, but he didn't put away the arrow yet. "Toadhands is a fine one for sense. And where is your knife, Crushfoot?" The guide responded with a preserved account: "Buried in the kennel-master's side. He had some fight left in him though. We grappled long and he nearly had me, but I locked my hands around his throat until he released me. His bulk saved his vitals. A slow kill certainly." "And that explains why you have no blood on you." "Exactly." Nubs shook his head, muttering something foul under his breath. "Have you lost your faith in Crushfoot?" "I never had it to lose! As yet, I haven't gained a mite." Nubs said. "You spit like the dwarf-witch herself." Crushfoot answered. "If she'd been the first to tell me rocks don't float, I'd've taken her word at that. If you'd said it, I would have dived down to look!" Toadhands wrung his warty fingers, finally letting out the laugh he'd been saving. His face contorted, the rain hiding his single tear. Waspface, the least vocal of the renegades chewed his leftover gristle behind smiling lips. His large black eyes and notably oval-shaped head earned him his name. Like most of the other Crorgathalers, he had a spear for his chief weapon, but he was capable with slender darts which he hurled with the aid of a notched stick-none of the other men in the clan could quite master the technique. "Now if we're finished." Nubs went on in mostly obscene terms that they should continue to Gigurd's. "Did you tell Chains about me?" RhohG pulled Tholyff down as they reached the open fields that marked the beginning of Gigurd's territory. "There was no need. He didn't ask and he had other things to worry about. And where did all this water come from? It hasn't been raining that long." The cleared ground, pastures and roads that ringed the steading were underwater. The orchards and fences were visible like crude toys set on a filthy mirror. "It's still rising I think." RhohG rubbed her chin. "The floodgates were deliberately opened at the south end and closed at the north. Not Volmor's renegades. I don't think they're here yet. Eldeyed did it, maybe. We're nearer the north. I'll open that one first then go back and close the other one." "All by yourself?" RhohG snorted. "I just said I would didn't I?" "But the gates are so heavy." "Well, I'm so strong." RhohG felt her arm. "You want me to come along?" Tholyff said in an awed voice. "Anything to get some running water on you!" Tholyff looked at her with sad, puppy eyes. He knew that look well. "I smell don't I?" "No. You don't smell. You stink! Clean things work better." "The Reckoner never spoke such a law." "The Reckoner never met you. It wasn't the Reckoner's job the speak every wisdom. The sense of most things is plain enough." RhohG tousled Tholyff's dirty hair which ran with filth and streaked his face. "You're still young and can learn such a lesson without wounding your pride. I've know so many who couldn't learn. So, so many." With Tholyff in tow, RhohG ran, slogged, waded and then swam to the shut floodgate, brushing away floating branches, drowned rodents, wooden implements and masses of odd flotsam the current had swept up. She boosted Tholyff onto the top of the flat wall near the gate and climbed up with him. "The chain has been broken.Sod me, I might have known. And likely the same at the other end. There's just a few links attached, barely enough to get a hand around.." Went and crapped all over the place, didn't you Eldeyed. Crapped good and thick on everything you could manage so no one else would want it. Just like a harpy. Crapping on anything valuable. Now I have to come in and clean up your mess.and get what's mine. With grief and wrath and mirth all boiling in her like a cauldron left too long over a fire, the spriggan planted a foot on either side of the chain and hunkered down, wrapping her hands around the stub for a grip as laughable as trying to yank a bear from its cave by the tail. "You don't think you can lift that?" Tholyff nearly fell as he gave RhohG room. "That's much of the point. I don't think I can. Thinking gets in the way. It isn't a matter of how much I can lift, but whether the chain will hold when I haul on it. That's always the danger of using force that comes on suddenly.if it comes at all." RhohG tightened her grip and pulled upward, not looking at the gate anymore. The bronze-bound gate was as a mighty thickness of oak, twice as thick as the ponderous dining table in Gigurd's hall. It could be as heavy as a pony. And if it were snagged below the water, there was no guessing how difficult it would be to move. Movement. It was a promising start. The rough formed chain links were more square than round, cutting into her palms as she drew upward. Muscles bunched up in her limbs and body like huge trout in a weir, shifting, bending, wriggling this way and that, sliding over each other, seeking new avenues to move as more and more and more of the same jumble multiplied in dangerous confinement, fighting madly for some way to turn back or break through and all the while the conditions became ever strained. She had raised the floodgate. Contained water flushed under the edge of the elevated gate in a vile black swirl, taking everything with it. "You've done it, you've done it." Tholyff spasmed as only the utterly incredulous can do; limbs thrashing and head about to topple from his neck. With the top of the hefted gate held as high as her chest, RhohG has little choice but to hold it or let it drop again. The windlass around which the chain was wound under normal conditions was behind her. Rope might hold it, even a leather thong of the right length could be used as a spare link. Nonsense! You're thinking again. What do you really want to do? RhohG was numb, but she knew she had changed outwardly. Changing her grip in a heartbeat, RhohG let go of the chain, seized the gate by the edges where her fingers found unexpected purchase, and gave another terrible tug, pulling the gate up and up as dented bronze screamed and wood groaned until it was free. RhohG tilted it back and held it over her head like a schoolgirl balancing a book to learn poise. With a roar, RhohG threw it away into the flood where it hit with a splash that betrayed every ounce of its seven hundred pound weight it hit the mud at the bottom, sticking up a sharp triangle as though a metallic shark were cruising the current. Crushfoot's remark about her being out of place struck her just then. A shark in the mountains was more plausible than a giant reborn as a halfling. It hadn't been enough that she lift the gate. She had to destroy it. Show Tholyff and remind herself the limits of her being. But the job was only half done. The gate at the south end was in worse shape than the one at the north, before or after RhohG had gotten her hands on it. Different from its counterpart, the south floodgate featured stout doors which had been swung wide and not simply wedged open, but staked triply on either side. RhohG felt the stakes underwater and guessed they were driven very deeply. Coated liberally with grease the water hadn't managed to wash away, the stakes slid through her fingers again and again. Eldeyed again, most likely. Cleansing the grease from her own hands before she started, RhohG cut notches in the stakes with Crushfoot's knife and then used her own bronze sword to hook them free. Tholyff could do little but marvel and take her crooked blade when she'd finished with it. Disposing of the wedges, she started with the door on the left and swung it slowly shut, fighting the current from start to finish. "A couple of stakes!" RhohG called as her shoulder held the door. She pounded them in with a rock, wishing for a maul instead. The door gave a little and the stakes leaned. Satisfied she could close the other side before it gave, she dashed to the right and hauled on the door, her feet sinking in oozy mud, only to slip when she pulled them out. The ground had an odd consistency and this was her fear when she tried to drive down the first stake. The hole was too big and the stake leaned drunkenly askew. Trying a new spot, the stake once again sank into a space too generous to hold it firm and fell loose. She grabbed it just in time before it floated away and stabbed it angrily into a new spot that was just as weak. The more she walked in the mud, the looser it got. Now the left began to show signs of failing. Water surged against the door, inch by inch moving it open. With a growl of frustration, RhohG put a hand on either door and shoved them brutally shut, making water spray from the narrow crack into her face until she was sullied and blinded by the muck. Then she let go and spun, forcing her back against the closure as the water argued and complained against the bronze-bound doors. She looked at her body, noting with lessened surprise at the swollen dimensions of her arms and legs. Sinews rippled and slid new tissue over old, letting muscles bud flowerlike in widening circles. Tholyff gave a cry of alarm as across the yard the first of the renegades clambered over the wall. "It's too late now, but calling attention doesn't always bring help!" RhohG groaned, knowing the situation was going to go very badly. "It's the Kriirling!" Crushfoot did his best to dance on his uneven feet. Waspface, Toadhands and Nubs were nowhere as excited, but turned to look anyway. "If you come any closer, you'd better bring something to help hold these gates!" "What a bluff!" Crushfoot felt for his knife, forgetting he'd lost it. He searched around for a suitable weapon, finding one of the stakes. It was slimy, but solid and had a sharp point. "You should know already I don't have to bluff! Ask Volmor if he still lives." RhohG felt her feet slip and readjusted with a gasp. "We haven't time to go chasing back to him because you bid, dwarf- witch! Fakery and lies is the realm of womankind." Crushfoot snarled. "I'm not holding these doors with anything less than raw might. That's simple enough for you to understand." "You have to kill him, Rhoh-Gollilla-Lu!" Tholyff said in a panicked voice. RhohG threw her widening back against the wall as the force pushing against her mounted. Water sprayed and back of her neck and dribbled down her spine. Another heave of her legs and the doors shut again, trapping the loose folds of her shirt. Her thighs bulged anew, sending out humps of flesh. "The Reckoner never spoke such a law!" She told him. "And a fine thing!" Crushfoot came nearer, brandishing the stake. Behind him, Nubs drew an arrow and Waspface twirled a dart around his fingers. Toadhands stood a ways back, changing the grip on his spear. "Watch yourself Crushfoot, the dwarf-witch has grown some since we last met. Not so surprising after devouring an elk." Toadhands yelled. "He's right!" Tholyff said. "You're twice as big." "Fakery and lies! I'm not any bigger. I'm just retaining water." When the next narrow fan of water burst through over her head and she was sure Tholyff was high and safe on the wall, RhohG began to count from five to one, waiting for the awful moment she would surrender her fight against the flood. To be continued.