So it was now, and Wulfgar managed to turn his gaze enough to see the ogrillon torturer, trailed by a pair of goblins, walking away from that pit. Considering the blood and guts on the floor before the lip of the pit, Wulfgar guessed that the brutal ogrillon had fed another tortured soul to its monstrous pet.
An orc dressed in shaman’s robes entered the room and rushed over to talk to the ogrillon. Wulfgar couldn’t hear what they were saying, and wouldn’t have understood the language anyway, but for some reason, he had a bad feeling about this—one that only grew worse when the orc pointed up at him and started his way, the other three in tow.
“Who are your friends?” the orc demanded, slapping him across the face. “The drow, the dwarves, the woman wizard? Who are they?”
“I have no friends,” Wulfgar replied, his voice barely audible, and his answer, clearly, unacceptable, for the orc unloaded a series of heavy punches, battering him about the ribs. And oh, but the wicked creature wore metal knuckles, and with little nubs that ground Wulfgar’s bones beneath their crush.
“Who are they?” the orc demanded. “How did they get out?”
Wulfgar could barely hear him, barely knew where he was or how he had gotten here, but that last line rang as sweet music in his ears.
His friends had escaped!
Despite the pain and the beating, a smile erupted on his bloody face.
“Take him!” the orc screamed to the ogrillon. “To the carnival. Take him. Tear him apart!”
The orc ended with a straight right cross into Wulfgar’s face, jerking the barbarian’s face back so that he slammed the back of his head on the stone wall behind him, and his thoughts and vision flew away.
He was vaguely aware of his chains coming down, then felt the explosions of pain as his weight pressed down on his battered legs. He crumpled to the floor and was dragged along. He managed to open one eye when he landed in the back of the cart, though he couldn’t see much, and even less when a goblin prisoner was pitched in atop him.
He saw the ogrillon behind the wagon, heard it yelling something he couldn’t understand at the goblins.
A goblin shouted back and the brute roared in anger.
Then came a sharp click—perhaps it was a bone breaking, perhaps his own, or one from the goblin lying atop him.
The ogrillon moved away, and looking under the prisoner goblin’s legs, Wulfgar could see it running back to the center of the room. Then it shouted, and seemed to slip and fall, pitching forward weirdly.
But it was too far away, and with his angle, and under the goblin, Wulfgar lost sight of it. He heard some screaming, ogrillon and goblin, he thought, then a crash.
And more screaming, horrified and shrieking, and the room shook and the monster in the pit thrashed.
Wulfgar didn’t know what to think. He tried to rise, but couldn’t, tried to turn more to get a better view back near the room’s center, but could not find the strength even for that.
It seemed a moot point a moment later, in any case, as the ogrillon torturer returned—and so did the orc shaman and some of its beastly friends, all screaming angrily from the hallway just beyond the jail. The ogrillon brute lifted the goblin’s leg and looked in on Wulfgar, grinning at him from behind the executioner’s hood it now wore.
Then it was gone, and darkness fell over Wulfgar once more as the wagon started its roll.
MY FRIEND, THE TORTURER
HE CUPPED HIS HANDS ABOUT HIS FACE TO BLOCK OUT THE REFLECTION of the high sun. Inside, all seemed normal about the curiosity shop, except of course that the door was locked and the place was empty.
The guard turned around and glanced past the many soldiers accompanying him, to the shop entrance across the street, where a second group of Helgabal soldiers had found a similarly locked door. Like Mickey’s Pouch of Holding, A Pocketful of Zzzzs seemed quite abandoned.
“Break it in,” ordered an old dwarf named Ivan, the commander of this force, who stood in the middle of Wall’s Around with hands on hips and a scowl on his lips. “Both o’ ye!”
A few shoulder blocks had both feeble doors opened. In swarmed the forces, into the curiosity shops, weapons drawn.
Priests and wizards followed closely, but not too closely, and with another line of warriors between them and the potential enemies they might find, these two women who had set up shop in Helgabal.
These two women rumored to be much more than simple humans.
All around the area, wizards, priests, and archers took up their positions. If dragons came forth from the shops, they would be met with a barrage of magic and missiles immediately and brutally. Ballistae had been set up on several roofs, ready to throw huge barbed spears laden with heavy chains.
From a rooftop even farther away, Dreylil Andrus leaned on a rail and shook his head. “This is madness,” he said to his companion, a tall and hawkish-looking fellow called Red Mazzie, arguably the most accomplished wizard in all of Damara.
“So we take the women away in chains, torture them until they admit they are dragons, and execute them to the cheers of the onlookers,” the wizard replied, and he seemed almost bored by it all.
“While you and your associates explain that you are magically preventing them from transforming into their natural forms, of course.”
“Of course,” answered Red Mazzie.
“That lie doesn’t seem obvious to you?”
“Of course, again,” the wizard answered with a laugh. “But then, I am a wizard, and schooled in such matters. I would know the truth, of course, that if we had before us Mystra reborn, we still would not likely stop a dragon in so simple a maneuver as reverting to its own beastly form. But the common folk will believe it—they will believe whatever we tell them. Is that not all that truly matters?”
Captain Andrus wanted to argue, but really could not. The mage spoke the truth.
“So we will capture these two shopkeepers and take them away in chains, and what a spectacle it will be!” Red Mazzie went on, rather dramatically, indeed overly so.
“And King Frostmantle will earn his title as Dragonsbane and at long last exorcise that ghost from his castle,” said Andrus. “And only at the price of the lives of two innocent women.”
“Bah, but they are merchants, shopkeepers, barely above the peasantry.”
Andrus sighed. “Do you think there might be a way to spare them?”
“A dangerous ruse?” Red Mazzie asked.
“It is all a ruse!” Andrus roared back, and the wizard laughed.
“Indeed. How long have you served King Yarin?”
“Indeed,” Andrus agreed, ignoring the rhetorical question.
“King Yarin will have his glorious victory over the dragons of Wall’s Around,” the mage said. “And yes, the lives of two innocent women will serve as the price of that victory.”
Andrus sighed again and leaned heavily on the railing, facing the distant shops. He saw the guards coming out now, from both doors, meeting with the dwarf in the center of the boulevard. They had collected many items from the respective stores, but the two women were not among those gathered items, apparently.
“Suppose they are dragons,” Andrus remarked. “What then?”
“Dragons? True dragons?”
Andrus turned to Red Mazzie, delighted that his supposition had put the wizard back on his heels. “Yes. True dragons. Perhaps the old crone spoke truly when she claimed that these same sisters were here on Wall’s Around back when she was a little girl, nearly a century ago. Surely Damara and Vaasa teemed with the wyrms in those days, during and immediately following the reign of the Witch King in Vaasa. Perhaps a pair made their way to Heliogabalus to mingle with the populace, in disguise.”
“Under the nose of the paladin King Dragonsbane?”
Andrus shrugged. “Why not?”
“And under the nose of Olwen Forest-friend, and Grandmaster Kane, and Emelyn the Gray, as powerful a wizard as Damara has ever known?”
“Perhaps, yes.”
/> “Dragons?” Mazzie’s incredulity did not abate.
“Are all dragons evil?”
The wizard laughed and shook his head at the preposterous suppositions.
The roof door banged open then, and the dwarf leader of the battle group came out onto the roof. “Not there. Not been there for a bit.”
“It is a fine day, late in the season,” Captain Andrus replied. “Why would a merchant close her shop on such a day, particularly with winter so close?”
“Ain’t just that the shops’re closed, Captain,” the dwarf answered. “We found a tunnel connecting the two, running right under Wall’s Around.”
That piqued the interest of both men.
“Do tell,” Red Mazzie bade Ivan.
“Aye, and that ain’t all,” the dwarf answered. “I been in those shops afore, me brother buys many the goods from Lady Zee and Mickey, and can tell ye that them two ladies were well-versed in appraising. Fine items, the best o’ quality, don’t ye doubt. Oh, they had many the cheap pieces scattered about—what merchant won’t be taking the coin of a fool who can’t be telling the difference, eh?”
“And?” prompted an annoyed Captain Andrus, who figured he had wasted too much of his time on this distasteful business already.
“But they knowed a good piece when they saw one,” the dwarf answered. “And had many o’ them scattered about on their shelfs.”
“And?” Andrus prompted again.
“Weren’t none o’ them good pieces in there now, neither place,” said Ivan. “Just junk, all junk. Worthless, save to a blind fool.”
“So they sold their better wares,” Andrus started to reply, but Red Mazzie cut him short.
“You think they took all of the fine pieces with them,” the wizard reasoned. “They abandoned their shops and absconded with the valuable items?”
“That’d be me own guess, aye.”
“They simply rode out of Helgabal in the middle of the night with a wagon full of plunder?”
“No,” the dwarf and Andrus said together.
“We asked that o’ the gate guards afore we came here,” Ivan explained. “Both o’ them ladies were in the city yesterday, or the day before that, or sometime recent. But they ain’t gone out, neither, that anyone’s seen.”
Red Mazzie turned to Andrus and shook his head. “Then they’re still about in the city,” the wizard said.
“Or perhaps they flew out in the dark of night,” Andrus replied, and he was only half-joking.
“Carryin’ half a store o’ goods with ’em?” asked the dwarf.
Neither man offered an answer.
“Search the town, all of the town,” Captain Andrus ordered, and the dwarf heaved a long sigh.
“Big town,” he said.
“And post guards about both shops, and with other guards in sight to relay their cries of alarm should Mickey or Lady Zee return,” Andrus commanded.
The captain and Red Mazzie left the roof then, leaving Ivan to wonder how far they would carry this absurd hunt to satisfy the idiocy of King Yarin Frostmantle. “Dragons,” the dwarf muttered, shaking his head.
He had ridden a dragon once, a great red in a faraway land in a long-ago time.
And he had fought another one, a dead one, a dracolich, and that ride had been wilder still.
Ivan Bouldershoulder smiled widely as he thought of those foregone days. Often did he tell those tales in the taverns of Helgabal. And so many others—who would believe that he had caught a fleeing vampire in a bellows?
Ah, but that story got him a round of drinks every time!
It was a good life.
The ogrillon paraded about the stage, an eager smile behind its executioner’s hood as it lifted one implement of torture after another for the huge gathering to see. Each wicked item elicited a tremendous cheer, and shouts in several languages, all calling for a painful and cruel death to the human.
It wasn’t often that they got a human to their carnival so fresh from the battle now, and this large barbarian had inflicted quite a bit of damage to orc-kind in the last few tendays.
The ogrillon scanned the room—there were hundreds in here, he estimated.
Many more than the last time. In between the sections of benches in the semicircular amphitheater, a huge bonfire lifted its flames high into the cavern, and about it danced goblins and orcs, all eager to see the pain inflicted on the prisoners.
The ogrillon moved to a small fire on the stage and lifted a hot poker from its glowing embers. With a wicked smile, the skilled torturer turned for the goblin and took a step that way.
The crowd cheered, but not as crazily as before, for they had seen many puny goblins murdered, and this one seemed hardly alive—would it even squirm when the poker went against its pallid flesh?
Hearing that muted response, the ogrillon threw down the poker and waved at the goblin dismissively, turning around and pinching his own nose in clear disgust.
The crowd laughed heartily.
Yes, this executioner was a fine showman.
Over at the center altar on the stage, the ogrillon lifted an acid-filled waterskin up high, and while the audience’s eyes were drawn up, the torturer subtly shifted a second waterskin into place on the gruesome sacrificial table.
The brute went to the goblin quickly, his back to the crowd, the acid-filled waterskin up high, and his free hand going to his belt, producing a fine dagger. He crashed right up against the hanging goblin, then backed away a step, paused for a few heartbeats, then roughly poured the acid down the creature’s throat.
The wretched creature gurgled, but did not squirm.
A splotch of blood appeared on the goblin’s throat. Another was already flowing from its heart, from a quiet stab wound that had ended the goblin’s life before the acid ever got near its lips
More bloody splotches appeared, the acid eating the creature from the inside, through its lungs and upper belly.
But no screams came forth, and no wild thrashing as one would expect.
The goblin was already dead, the crowd realized, and a chorus of boos and jeers came at the torturer from every part of the audience chamber.
Wulfgar managed to open his working eye at that time, and he glanced over just as the goblin’s torso fully collapsed from the corrosive fluid, spilling its contents over the floor. Now the crowd did cheer and dance and scream with wicked glee.
Wulfgar watched the torturer rush back to the table and grab up another waterskin. The brute held it up and half the crowd cheered—but the other half, thinking such a tactic would create too quick a kill, screamed for the ogrillon to stop. The acid was supposed to be the finale, after all.
The ogrillon did not stop or even slow, however, but spun around and charged at Wulfgar.
Wulfgar’s eye widened with horror. He had to fight it!
Up came his legs—one, at least, for the other was too swollen and pained for him to lift. He twisted and thrashed about in his shackles, but he could not pull his arms free.
The ogrillon slapped aside his leg and came up right against him, one bloody hand to his throat, the other lifting the waterskin to his lips.
Desperately, the barbarian turned his head—as much as he was ready to die, as much as he preferred death to this horrible imprisonment, in that moment of truth, his instincts made him fight, and fight for all his life.
The waterskin chased him about; he snapped his head back the other way, but some liquid got into his mouth. He tried to spit it out, but the waterskin was back to his lips, blocking his attempted spit and pouring more liquid!
Some slipped down his throat, and he felt … warmth.
“Scream, you fool,” the ogrillon whispered in his ear, and in a voice that was strangely familiar.
The brute stepped back. It took Wulfgar a moment to register what might be happening here. There was blood on his lip and on his throat, but it was not his. The ogrillon torturer had put it there with his bloody hands!
His bloody hands and
his familiar voice.
So Wulfgar screamed, and he thrashed. He gave the audience the show it so dearly craved.
The waterskin came back to his lips, and he pretended to try to get away from it, but no, he was quickly caught, and he drank deeply.
The torturer’s free hand, holding a small implement, went up to the shackle as the ogrillon pushed in closer, as if to hug Wulfgar and stop him from turning away.
“Don’t pull your hand free,” came the instruction, and Wulfgar felt one shackle loosen as skilled fingers deftly picked the crude lock. “Grab the chain, keep your hand up high.”
The ogrillon pulled away and swung about. “And keep screaming,” he said above the roar of the crowd.
And so Wulfgar did, screamed and thrashed as if in horrid, burning agony.
In truth, he felt his bones knitting, his wounds closing, his eyes clearing. He had consumed half the waterskin, several powerful potions of healing. He almost felt as if his legs could hold him upright once more.
A moment later, he knew they would!
The ogrillon torturer paraded about the room, holding the waterskin, rousing the orcs and goblins. The barbarian cried in feigned agony. The gathered orcs and goblins, ogres and ogrillon, cheered wildly and spat curses, and threw small stones at the hanging barbarian warrior.
“Go slack,” the ogrillon in the executioner’s hood quietly demanded as he passed the prisoner on one of his parades, and Wulfgar fell to the length of his chains, now seeming overwhelmed, spent.
The crowd booed.
The ogrillon leaped against the man and moved as if to bite his ear, telling him to scream again, and so he did.
“You’ll know when,” the torturer promised, moving back and lifting the waterskin once again to Wulfgar’s lips, draining its healing contents down his throat, while his free hand went up to pick the second shackle.
Wulfgar screamed wildly, and the crowd followed with cheers of equal intensity. The barbarian noted a slight nod from the torturer, and so he fell slack again, holding himself by the chains above the shackles, his legs apparently useless beneath him.