Friday Flash: Some Heroics Required

Chuck Wendig gave us a sub-genre mashup this week, and the dice gave me "creature feature" and "sword & sorcery." That's almost too easy a fit, but I was pressed for time, so that was a good thing. In 998 words, I give you:

Some Heroics Required

“You have to, Eeyla. You’re our last hope.”

The knight shifted uncomfortably. She was the last hope? To go after a monster that had destroyed how many knights?

“It’s defeated every other knight in the realm?”

“Well, no.” Lord Altain looked uncomfortable in his turn. “But you have what none of them do. You have magic.”

Eeyla sighed. She might have known. “So some fool of a wizard created a golem that’s run out of control. Why me? Let him fix his own mess.”

The Lord Chancellor grimaced. “The monster ate him for breakfast, minutes after it was created. It had most of the village for elevenses.”

It was the knight’s turn to grimace. It didn’t look like there was any way out. With a small groan for the joints that had been sprained too often, she rose and began gathering her weapons. “Where will I find this...creature?”

Lord Altain gave her an incredulous look, but refrained from comment. “Just follow the trail of death and devastation.”

She didn’t like the sound of that. She hoped the reports of destruction were exaggerated.

#
Two hours later, Eeyla was forced to admit that the reports were, if anything, an understatement. She rode her light mount, keeping to a canter as she approached the village where the creature was last reported. Her heavy warhorse followed on a lead rein. He’d be needed soon enough, and needed as fresh as could be, too. She drew up at the edge of the village.

She could only tell it had been a village by the bodies strewn about. Every structure had been reduced to rubble—kindling and gravel, she thought, looking at the ruins of the wattle-and-daub buildings. The dead had been flung about, many missing limbs.

“Playing with its food,” Eeyla muttered. The creature, sated, continued to kill. Lord Altain was right. She had to do this, and she needed to move fast. How many more villages had it devastated in the hours since leaving this one?

It didn’t take long to get an answer to that question. The trail of destruction required no wood-craft to follow. Eeyla rode through the remains of three villages, and found half a dozen crofts or small farms that had suffered likewise.

She had drawn up to listen more closely to the distant sounds of battle when the first man ran past her, fleeing back up the trail of destruction. Terror contorted his face, and he didn’t seem to notice the knight and two horses in his path.

He wasn’t the only villager to flee, only the fastest. Others soon followed in a thickening stream, most too focused on their flight to respond to Eeyla’s presence. A few called to her to turn back, to fly while she could.

Eeyla didn’t turn back. She set her spear, loosened her sword in its sheath, and ran through all the spells she could think of that might be of use. She didn’t think the thing would listen to a command to, “Begone, fiend!” Instead, she concentrated on spells that would give her weapons greater force and accuracy. Which knights had been killed? Yes, at least one was stronger and faster than she was. She would need her magic.

Maybe she could combine the double-force spell with some lightning.

When screams and crashing told her she was very close, Eeyla switched mounts. She could do it while in motion, not in full armor, but in the leather and chainmail she wore for this battle. Armor would be more protection, but she thought the speed and agility of the lighter garb would be more needed. She turned loose the lighter horse.

Eeyla rounded a final bend in the road and took in the scene at a glance. This village might recover, if she stopped the creature soon enough. There were a lot of dead, but more had somehow escaped alive.

A moment later she saw how. A dozen men had attacked the creature—a giant, almost featureless golem—with pikes and ropes, and their efforts slowed the thing enough to allow the people to flee.

She was planning her attack when she saw the children cowering behind a chicken coop almost at the monster’s feet. If she drove it back, it might well crush them. She had to draw it forward, away from them.

The creature knew what a knight was. It lunged toward her, tearing the ropes from the grips of the villages.

“Fly!” Eeyla commanded.

They fled. One man chanced a dash behind the monster, swept up the children, and escaped by crashing right through the fence that had trapped the children. Eeyla was left alone to face the monster.

She didn’t waste her breath with taunts, threats, or entreaties for the creature to just stop. She lowered her spear, shouted the words of the empowerment spell, and charged.

The spear shattered. The creature seemed to have a hide of steel. It stumbled toward her, clumsy but deadly, and Eeyla pulled her sword from the sheath. Her mount, terrified though it was, held its ground, and the added height put Eeyla on a level with the creature’s chest. What on earth had the wizard been thinking, to make something so huge? She had time for just the one thought before her sword met leathery flesh.

The golem used its own arm as a shield, deflecting the blow, and reached for the knight with the other arm. Eeyla was saved only by her horse dancing back out of reach. The creature screamed rage.

Enough. As she swung the heavy sword again, Eeyla spoke the words of the lightning spell. Power poured through her, and from her. A bolt from the clear sky met lightning from the sword in the middle of the golem.

Bits of the creature flew everywhere. Eeyla was knocked from the saddle by either a piece of monster or her own magical power, she didn’t know which.

It didn’t matter. Her battle was won.

###

 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2016
As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated!

If you like your fantasy adventure with a touch more humor, check out Halitor the Hero,  on sale this month for just 99 cents.

Or purchase in the format of your choice from Smashwords.

Friday Flash: Gorg and the Mages

As a special treat this week, we return to the continuing adventures of Gorg the Troll!

Gorg and the Mages

Gorg Trollheim stood at the window at the top of the tower and studied the Valley of Baleful Stones. He tried not to notice the scattering of stone trolls. He would bring them back to life if he could. He just had to find Duke Bale, kill him yet again, and force his sorcerer to undo the petrifying spell.

Bale wasn’t in his tower. Gorg had found only three empty grey robes, like the one that had failed to stop him from entering. These didn’t speak to him, but they did stand in their corners unsupported, which gave him a creepy feeling. Were they watching him?

Probably they were. He couldn’t help that. What he had to do, and do fast, was figure out where Bale and the actual sorcerer had gone. A strange idea was starting to tickle his stone mind, and Gorg didn’t like ideas, especially strange ones. To distract himself he broke a bit of stone off the windowsill and put it in his mouth.

He spat out the stone after the first crunch. This was no fine sandstone or foamy granite! The tower was built of the stinking, sulfurous stone for which the valley was named. Gorg tried to tell himself that was only right, but he knew better. The tower he had pulled down a few months ago, crushing Bale under a pile of stone, had been built of a fine granite. Something about this tower was completely wrong.

 With a sigh of resignation, Gorg took a sip of his magic potion. The ghastly stuff had been meant to render a man incapable of intelligent speech, and it did. But it made a troll think faster and speak more wisely. Gorg needed to think just now.

When the potion took effect, Gorg stopped staring out the window, and descended the tower stairs faster than he’d gone up. The smell of burning sulfur penetrated his consciousness and now made sense, giving him the motivation to accelerate his usual deliberate troll’s pace.

He made it out the door as the tower burst into flames behind him, and vanished.

It had been an illusion. Only the mocking echo of the sorcerer’s laugh was real. Gorg turned his attention to the valley. If he could not find Bale, could he reanimate his petrified friends and relations?

Gorg approached the first statue, salt tears etching lines down his face as he recognized his friend Pulgrum Stonelump. He laid a hand on the stone head, and said, his voice the rough sound of stone rasping over stone, “I will save you, my friend.” Then, thinking hard, he uncapped his flask of Confusion Cocktail, the magic potion that had unintentionally given him such quick wits, and let a single drop fall on Pulgrum’s head.

The drop left a wet line as it ran down the stone, but, to Gorg’s disappointment, the stone remained stone. He corked the bottle and sat down, for the moment too discouraged to go one.

“I think you need our help,” said a voice behind him.

Gorg stood and whirled, faster than one would have thought a creature of stone could, and prepared to do battle with the three mages who stood a dozen feet off. He didn’t know when or from where they had materialized, but he knew that none of his dealings with mages had been positive. Well, except when the Earl of Beetroot had given him the Confusion Cocktail, but that hadn’t been meant as a favor.

“Easy, there, Trollheim,” the lead mage said. “We’ve come to help.”

“Why?” Gorg didn’t even try to sound polite.

“Because Duke Bale the Artichoke Hearted threatens this entire kingdom with his greedy, hateful ways. We have sworn to stop him.”

“I no longer care what he does to humans,” Gorg said, his eyes still fixed on the field of statues.

“I understand,” said the second mage, a female. Gorg thought he recognized that voice, and looked closer. He had last seen her at Bale’s tower.

“Have you changed your allegiance, Katerina of the Vale of Kale? You were Bale’s pet when last I saw you.”

“I have changed much, including my allegiance, Gorg Trollheim. You persuaded me to leave. I went to the City of Celestial Celery, and there I learned the extent of Bale’s plans. That included not only eliminating Trolls from the kingdom, but eliminating sorcerers, once we had done his bidding.” She made a face. “I didn’t care for his attitude.”

“He wishes to make all living beings his slaves.” The deep, calm voice came from the third mage. “We can stop him, but only if all his enemies work together. We will awaken your kindred, and you will lead us in the hunt.”

Gorg nodded. He might never fully trust a mage, but he could see their argument.  “Where has Bale gone? And what sorcerer left his empty robes to defend the tower?”

They all turned to look at the smoldering remains of the tower. Katerina scowled. “I don’t know,” she said. “Do you, boys?” She looked at Gorg. “I should introduce my friends. This,” she gestured at the first speaker, “is Brendren, of Mosternestine City. And our leader,” she indicated the deep-voice mage, “is Hort, master of all sorcery in the Vegetative Kingdoms.”

Gorg bowed. “I have heard of your power,” he lied. It was always good to make sorcerers feel important. The truth was that Gorg paid too little attention to human affairs to know the names of their leaders. He made a decision. “You can find Bale?”

“We can. But we are too few to stop him. There are some humans who will follow us, but most without magic are too afraid.”

“So you need the trolls, who are too stupid to fear?” If Gorg sounded bitter, he felt he had reason.

“We need the trolls, who have already lost too much to fear more.”

Gorg thought, took a sip of his potion, and thought some more while the mages waited.

“Awaken them. We will stop Bale.”

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2016

The Valley of Baleful Stones, with an army of petrified trolls.

Okay, actually this is Goblin Valley State Park, Utah :)

Friday Fiction: Swords of the Desert, Part II

Four kids from another world have landed themselves in the Mojave desert, just in time to be caught up in Jake Stone's troubles. Read the beginning of the story here; this really is just a single story divided in two.

I got really carried away with this one, and will be working more with the characters and the story. But I pruned it to about 2200 words total, to keep it to two posts. The longer version will show up somewhere, sometime...probably in that anthology I keep saying I'll assemble!

#

Jake thought maybe he should lay off the whiskey. He had to be hallucinating. Nothing about the kids looked right, not for white kids, not for Indians. Especially not the one with the tail. Jake refused to think about that.

Hallucination or not, they couldn’t stay where they were. Jake knew he’d been followed into the desert, and the men behind him would kill a kid without a moment’s thought. Jake slid down off the horse, and stood still until the children stopped cringing.

“Well, I guess you can’t understand me, and I can’t understand you, but come on, let’s get you somewhere safe.” Jake held out his water flask to the girl who seemed to be in charge, mentally figuring how long it would last and how far it was to the spring at Cima. They’d make it, though they might be thirsty.

Then he looked back. The outlaws’ dust was closer. “We’d better skedaddle.” They didn’t understand his words, but the tallest girl looked where he looked, and seemed to understand the situation.

#

I couldn’t understand his speech, but the stranger’s meaning was clear enough. Someone was coming after him, and not in a nice way. We knew about that sort of thing, and since he seemed willing to help us find our way out of this bizarre desert, we got up and went along. He noticed right off that Lessa was hurt, and wanted her to sit up on the giant animal.

Lessa was scared of the beast, but she was weak. The wound wasn’t bad, but she’d lost some blood, and she couldn’t keep up. She let him lift her to its back.

Wherever the Sphinx had landed us this time, at least they drank water. There was that one time…

#

The kids were quick, Jake saw, and they were tough. Even the one with the bloody bandage was game. He could see old Buck scared her silly—and what kind of kids had never seen a horse, anyway?—but when the boss girl told her to, she rode him.

Trouble was, they might make it to the wells at Cima, but what then? If he’d been alone, he’d have run for it. But with five of them and only one horse, they couldn’t even think about it.

Jake looked back again at the line of youngsters trotting along behind the horse. They looked tough, and one of them had a bow and quiver. That puzzled him, too. Not that bows were unusual in the area, but the bow wasn’t like any he’d ever seen. These kids were different. Jake shrugged. They were his responsibility now, whatever they were.

#

We trotted along for an hour or so, following the man and the big creature. Lessa was pale and squirming with discomfort when the man suddenly ducked aside into a clump of trees, and there was a little pool of water in the middle of them. He made a bunch more of his strange noises and lifted Lessa down from the beast.

He set to piling rocks and things to make some defenses, and we set to helping him. I had a thought.

“Joc, you climb up that tree thing and keep a lookout.”

A while later Joc slid down from the tree and said, “Someone’s coming.”

I tugged the man’s arm, and Joc pointed. The man couldn’t understand us, but he got the message. Now we could all see the dust cloud, and mounted men in it. I drew my sword, and Joc strung his bow. I wished we all had them. The man didn’t seem to be armed, though he had a long metal and wood stick that he laid carefully over the rocks. He handled it like a weapon, but it just looked like a club, which wouldn’t do much good, especially if whoever was after us had bows.

#

Jake glanced at the children. They looked calm. Did they understand what was about to happen? The one with the bow had strung it, and while it didn’t look like any bow Jake had seen before, it looked serviceable. The swords would be no use against guns.

Jake smiled grimly. He’d expected to die violently. He just never would have guessed he’d be defending the strangest bunch of kids he’d ever seen, against the meanest outlaws he’d ever met.

#

The attackers came on fast. I could hear the pounding of the great riding-beasts’ hooves, and then some kind of explosion. I guessed we hadn’t hidden too well, or they knew the spring, because they came right at us. Something hit a rock and showered us with stone chips.

We huddled lower. There were weapons here that we didn’t understand, and I felt really afraid for the first time. This was starting to look too much like the battle we’d escaped when the Sphinx brought us here: a lost cause.

I heard the man grunt, a kind of muffled sound as though it had been forced out of him. Something had torn a hole right through his shoulder, and blood soaked his shirt. He was still upright and his long stick was making explosions, but he was pale as water and I knew that shock and blood loss could kill him fast. Behind me I could hear the Sphinx whimpering.

I crawled over to the man and cut a strip from my shirt. When I touched the wound, the man flinched, but he went on firing his strange weapon.

I heard the Sphinx cry out again, and I knew what was coming. Well, just like last time, I thought. The Sphinx’s random transfers were better than staying where we were.

#

Jake knew he was hit hard. This was it, then. When he’d lost enough blood, he’d pass out, and Barlow would charge in.

When the girl began to bandage his wound, Jake was startled, but kept firing. That was the important thing. He doubted he’d make it, but he’d do his best for the kids. The older boy, the one with the bow, shot too. Jake saw an arrow go through one of the outlaws, who tumbled from the saddle and lay still. Jake whistled softly. That was some bow, and some shooting.

There were too many of them. There wasn’t time to reload the rifle, even if he could have with one arm useless. Jake dropped the long weapon and pulled out his six-gun. His vision was blurring. He would pass out, and then they’d all die. “Sorry, kids,” he whispered, and the world spun to black.

###

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2015

The sort of country the children walk through.

And, just for fun--the post office/store at Cima, probably built not long after they were there :)  I'm not actually certain there's a spring there--but there pretty much had to be, anywhere people set down and tried to live. The cottonwood tree certainly suggests it.

 Looking at this...I think the next photo essay will have to be about the Eastern Mojave and the Cima Dome, where this story takes place!

Friday Flash: Genre Mash-up, Part I

NopeI'm still doing my own thing for my flash fiction prompts, and this week I pulled up a sub-genre mash-up that really caught my fancy. The lists gave me "sword & sorcery" and "wild west," and the story just started to come. And come. And come. I'm afraid you only get the first 1000 words today. The next 1000 words will be along next Friday, and I'm beginning to suspect it might take another thousand after that to finish the job. My apologies--this isn't even sort of an ending!

Swords of the Desert

We did pretty well against the first round of attackers. We met them with our swords bristling out in all directions, and they backed off after we cut down a couple of them. The Sarnassans weren’t very good fighters, but there were so many of them, I knew we stood no chance. The next round, they led with their spears, which was harder to defend against. Lessa screamed, and I had just enough time to guess she'd been hit when everything went black.

I didn't swoon. The world went black because the Sphinx panicked and transported us. He could do that, but the thing was, when he did, you never knew where you'd end up. Once, he landed us--but that's a different story.

When I could think again, I had no idea where we were. The air was hot and dry, and we stood in the bottom of a sandy wash. A few scrubby plants grew along the edges of the wash, and I could tell they were the type that would have thorns. I'd been born in country sort of like that, but this didn't look like Kamini, either. The plants were the right type, but they were no shrub I'd ever seen before. Warily, we looked around, but nothing attacked us. Only the sun shone down with a heat that felt like a blow, and I immediately began to sweat in my battle leathers.

"Ugh!" Joc grunted. "Where in the Shades did you land us this time, Sphinx?" We all lowered our swords and looked around. After a moment I sheathed my sword, and scrambled up the side of the wash. "No one around here. Come one. We'd better find some shade and some water, or we are cooked." I didn't bother asking Sphinx if he could take us home. He never can tell where he’s going. It wouldn’t have been safe to try, since we'd likely end up somewhere worse--under water, or back in the middle of that fight with a dozen Sarnassan lances through each of us. Usually someone with control over his magic figures out we're gone and pulls us back. That could take a while, though, and in the mean time we needed to take care of ourselves.

The others all sheathed their swords and scrambled up to join me. We looked across the empty land.

"There are trees over there," Lessa said. I remembered her scream and looked at her. Blood trickled down her arm, but she didn't seem to be badly hurt. "Sphinx, tie up that hole in Lessa's arm," I commanded. "Then we can walk over to those trees. If there are trees, there will be shade, and there should be water."

It was a good thought, but as we neared the trees I realized that we were walking up a shallow hill. That was weird. So were the trees. Their spikey branches weren’t casting the kind of shade I was thinking about, but it was something. We flopped down under the “tree” once I’d made sure there was nothing dangerous on the ground. I remembered that much from growing up in desert country. There’s always something sharp or poisonous or uncomfortable. Then, because it was hot and we had been fighting a battle and were tired, we went to sleep.
#
Jake Stone slumped in the saddle and let his horse pick a way through the Joshua tree forest. He’d been riding all day, and the prospector who’d told him there was a herd of wild cattle up here had surely been lying. There was nothing up here but those blasted Joshua trees, and the things gave Jake the willies. They didn’t look right.

Jake Stone’s plan was to find some wild cattle, round them up, throw a brand on them, and make a sale for enough money to get a stake and go back to prospecting. But things had gone wrong from the beginning, and now he had no cattle and maybe trouble riding his trail.

Jake pulled up, looking hard off to his left. There was something under that tree over there. If you could even call those things trees. Jake thought they were probably something from another world, or maybe God’s idea of a joke. But there was definitely something under the tree, and out here there weren’t many options. Probably cows, or calves. They were small for cows, but big for anything that lived out there of it’s own choice.

Jake rode closer, and stared. “I been riding too long,” he concluded. “I’m seeing things.” He rode closer. They were children, or at least small people. Jake couldn’t be sure, because he’d never seen children that looked like these, or wore such strange clothing. Whoever or whatever they were, they couldn’t stay where they were.

“Hey, you kids! What’re you doing out here?” Jake looked around, thinking they might be Indians, or might have escaped from Indians, but there was no one else in sight. Just four sleeping kids, one of them just waking up.

#
I heard a voice and opened my eyes, and wished I hadn’t. For one thing, it was hot, I was dreadfully thirsty, and my mouth and eyes were gummy. To make it worse, there was a really terrifying sort of man looking down at us from atop a very large hooved animal. And he was making noises at us, but it wasn’t any language I’d ever heard, and I may be only a youngster, but I’ve been around and I’ve heard a lot of languages.

I kicked the Sphinx. He’s the one who is really good with languages. He doesn’t have to have heard them before, he just sort of figures them out. He sat up and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, and I saw the stranger’s eyes go wide when the Sphinx lashed his tail around. He does that when he’s scared.

“Stop it,” I said. The man opened his mouth and a stream of gibberish came out. I looked at the Sphinx. “Can you tell what he’s saying?”

"No." I looked from the crestfallen Sphinx to the nervous stranger, and tried on a smile. We'd have to go with what we had.

###

Just wanted you all to know that I actually love Joshua Trees!

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2015