Refuge: Kurt's Quest (17 page)

His eyes followed the monster as it tumbled
into a fall, then looked up quickly to see Jackie standing on the path to his
front.

“Thank the Gods you jumped free,” he said to
the woman he loved, running up and wrapping his arms around her.

“But, James.”

“I’m afraid he fell to his death, my love.”

“What are we going to do without his power
behind us?” she asked, looking up into his eyes with tears in hers.

The best we can
, he thought, shaking
his head. 
It’s not like I haven’t had to continue a mission without a prime
asset before.  But he was our heavy hitter, and he’s gone.

There was nothing to do but forge on.  Those
who could be healed of the injured were treated by Garios, while the one man
who had lost half his face to frost was carried along, in the hope that
something might eventually be done for him.  And the dejected party continued
on, reaching the top of the ridgeline and the next campsite just before
nightfall.

Chapter Twelve

 “Dragons,” yelled out one of the Ellala
soldiers, pointing to the sky.

The Marshal thought they were well enough hidden
when he had ordered camp.  Now, he wasn’t sure.  He looked up through a break
in the trees to see the singular forms of dragons wheeling high above.  He
couldn’t tell from the distance what type they were.  From how far north they
were, and the evidence of villagers frozen to death they had found days before,
it didn’t take a genius to guess that they were white dragons.

One of the monsters swept lower, banking in the
sky, and Ellessa thought he could see the form of a rider on the back of the
dragon. 
And if they have riders, controllers, perhaps we can come to an
understanding. 
That was something they wouldn’t have achieved with the
beasts themselves.  They would have only cared about food, and would have seen
his party as several full bellies.

“Can you contact those riders?” asked the
Marshal of Millistara, who he knew had the strongest mindspeak of the party.

“I can try.  But why do you want to attract
their attention?”

“Because, my dear Jakisanda, they know this
area.  And are much more likely to know where these ruins, temple, fortress or
whatever it is happens to be located.  Especially since they must cover much
more area from the air than these land bound tribes.  So contact them, but
don’t let them know where we are until you feel comfortable that they can be
treated with.”

The Death Priest nodded his head and closed his
eyes, his brow furrowing in concentration.  In a couple of minutes he gave a
head nod of acceptance and opened his eyes. “They’re Elves,” he said with a
smile.  “And they seem willing to help us.”

“What kind of Elves?” asked Ellisandra, looking
back up from the shadows at the dragons that were wheeling overhead.  “Ellala
or Conyastaya.”  He couldn’t imagine them being Dark Elves, not out in the sky
in bright daylight. 
At least we’re not the center of their circle, so they
must not know our exact location.

“No kind of Elf we’ve ever heard of,” said the
Priest, sending an image that the dragon riders had shared with him during
their short conversation.

White skinned and white haired, with red eyes,
wearing an armor that was coated in frost, they were unlike anything he had
ever seen.

“They call themselves D’alla, and say they live
in the high mountains and the plains of the Arctic.  I guess we could call them
Snow Elves.”

Another creature of legend
, thought the Marshal.  They
were hinted of in the sacred texts of the Chaos Gods.  But no man living on the
K’elysium Continent had ever seen one.

“Tell them we will meet with them in that
clearing a kilometer back.  That will give them room to land a couple of their
beasts, while not giving away the position of our camp.”

The Death Priest closed his eyes again, then
opened them a moment later.  “They ask how many we are.”

“Tell them, but exaggerate upwards.  No harm in
letting them think we’re stronger than we are, in case they plan betrayal and
deception.”

“I don’t sense that about them.  They’re evil
bastards, but straightforward.”

I guess when you’re dragon riders in a land of
small tribes, there’s no need for anything but straightforwardness, since they
are the most powerful force around.
  He had counted eleven of the beasts circling
overhead, which might or might not be all of them.  His group could fight them
with the proper terrain, but they would be hard pressed to win, and would take heavy
casualties, victorious or not.

“They say they will meet us there in twenty
minutes, and will come bearing gifts.”

What the hell does that mean
, thought the Marshal
as he, the Death Priest, and four Mages, along with a strong escort of
infantry, made their way to the meeting place.  It was a ten minute wait after
they got there, but right on time the first dragon flew over and dropped a
large object in the clearing.  The next came over and dropped yet another elk. 
The third dropped a brown bear, almost a thousand pounds of fat and meat.  When
they had finished there was enough to feed his party for many days.

“Go back and get more men,” he told off a pair
of his soldiers.  “We need to prepare and cook this food.”

As soon as the men ran off, the largest of the
dragons came flying over the clearing.  A moment later a slightly smaller
version flapped in and landed.  Its rider sat its back and scanned the trees
around the clearing, almost ignoring the Ellala that stood at the edge of the woods. 
The Snow Elf closed his eyes for a moment, and the monster that had to belong
to the leader flapped in, his wings lifting great hunks of earth and leaves
into the air.   The Elf on the dragon also took some time looking around, then,
obviously satisfied, he undid the buckles of his safety harness, dropped a
small rope ladder from the saddle, and climbed down.

The Elf turned and bowed as soon as his feet
hit the ground.  Ellisandra returned the bow, then walked out from under the
trees, aware of the stares of the two dragons on him the entire time. 
I
hope this doesn’t turn into something I wouldn’t like
, he thought, keeping
his attention on the Elf and not the dragons.  If either of the dragons decided
to strike, he was dead.  His men might avenge him, but he would not care.

“What is your purpose in our land?” asked the
strangely colored Elf, his ice blue eyes staring into the green ones of the
Marshal.  “Have you come to take lands?”

“We have no interest in your lands,” said the
Marshal truthfully.  “We do not come here for conquest, but to find a temple
that houses some items we could find useful in our war against humans.”

“You cannot defeat humans without aid?  What
kind of weaklings are you?”

Ellisandra felt his temper rising as the other
Elf asked his questions.  “These humans are not weaklings like those you prey
upon here, but a mighty warrior people with fearsome machines.  When they first
arrived, they had flying machines that could kill multiple dragons.  They were
faster than our best red, and could kill at ten times the distance of a breath
weapon.”

“I’m not sure I believe that,” said the Snow
Elf, hands on his hips.

[Then look into my mind and see for yourself,]
he sent to the other Elf, opening his thoughts for the leader of the Elves to
peruse.  There was no way to be deceptive in this kind of speech, and he let
the thoughts and images of the Germans and Americans come to the fore.

[By the Chaos Gods,] replied the Snow Elf as he
looked into the mind of the Ellala in front of him.  [How did you survive?]

“Fortunately, they only had the weapons they
brought with them, and they had limited, uhh, they called, ammunition and fuel,
for them.  When those substances ran out, the machines stopped working.”

“And then you destroyed them?” asked the Snow
Elf.  “No, of course not, or you wouldn’t need magical artifacts to defeat
them.”

“Unfortunately, they had other means of
fighting back, and had developed some mighty magic of their own.”

“And you need the magical artifacts to defeat
them,” said the Snow Elf, his eyes narrowing as he tilted his head.   “But what
is in it for my people?”

“If you can help us find this thing, this
temple, ruin or whatever it is, we will share the rewards with you.”

“If we can find it?”

“I figure you have a better chance than we do,
with your control of the sky.”

“We know where the things are you seek,” said
the other Elf with a smile.  “We have never felt the need to put our lives and
souls at risk by trying to breech that place.”

“Are you sure it’s the place we are looking
for?”

“I know of nothing else on this peninsula with
such an aura of evil about it.  It is what you seek.”

“And you can lead us to it?”

“We can lead you to it.  But do not expect us
to join you in entering that place.  We will wait outside, and let you bring
our share of the loot to us.”

“You have a deal,” said Ellisandra, crossing
his wrists and bowing in the manner of his people.  The Snow Elf smiled and
repeated the gesture. 
And it’s a good thing you weren’t looking into my
mind right now, my friend
, thought the Marshal, already working on how he
was going to betray the dragon riding Snow Elves.

*     *     *

The camp was quiet that night, a feeling of
doom having descended after the loss of their Mage, the only arcane magic user
in the party, with the exception of Fenris.  And the Ellala was the first to
admit that he was nowhere near the power level of the young human.  He could
pull some tricks, but Drake was able to turn the tide of battle.

Everyone had eaten despite the mood.  At this
altitude and temperature, and with the effort of walking through the day,
calories were needed.  Everyone had an appetite, and they polished off the last
of the food they had brought up to the high road.  Now everyone lay huddled
together in their furs, trying unsuccessfully to stay warm.  And they didn’t
have their fire mage there to heat them up, another great loss.

Fenris had dreams that night.  Disturbing
images going through his mind.  He saw the young man, tied to a stake with
Grogatha dancing around him.  Drake was grimacing in pain, multiple cuts upon
his bare chest.  A shaman was standing in front of him, barking out some words
in a barbaric dialect of Grogatha, his tusks flashing in the firelight.

The shaman pointed his staff at the faggots
stacked below the stake and they flashed on fire. The flames rose up high,
obscuring his view of the young mage.  He came awake at that moment, confused,
wondering if what he had seen was real, or just his wishful thinking that the
young man was still alive. 
Some wishful thinking
, was his next thought. 
Wishful thinking would be seeing the young man alive, well and free.  Instead
of seeing him tied to a stake and facing a horrible death. 
Or is he?
thought the Ellala warrior, recalling Drake’s affinity to fire.  Or again, just
wishful thinking.

*     *     *

James Drake thought it was all over when he was
blasted over the cliff.  He still wasn’t very good at the levitation spell, and
his energy reserves were almost gone fighting the ice worm.  When the blast
that resulted from the combination of elemental fire and ice hit him, enough of
the cold came through to burn his face, the pain interfering with his
concentration.  And then he was in the air and taking the long plunge to the
valley below.

But first there was some rock to hit on the
way.  As he came out of the clouds, James saw the first outcrop coming and
waved his hands at it, pushing himself further out, just enough to clear.  A
couple of hundred meters further was another, and he was able to miss it as
well, by a bare meter.  After that it was a clear fall over two thousand meters
to the valley floor.

I’m dead
, thought James with unreal calm.  There was no
way he could survive that impact.  He looked at the ground through vision that
was distorted by the rushing air, and tried to imagine what it would be like to
no longer be.

The hell with that
, was his next thought,
and he pulled the energy from deep inside and reactivated the levitation
spell.  Immediately he started to slow, and started to think he might actually
touch down softly.  The ground still came up too fast, and he hit hard enough
to lose his breath as he rolled onto the ground.  He looked up, wondering if he
had survived, when a sense of extreme lethargy hit, and he rolled back with his
eyes closed to pass out.

He woke to the sound of guttural voices,
knowing that that wasn’t a good thing.  He pulled at his hands  and found them
bound, the same as his feet.  He was afraid to open his eyes, sure that there
wasn’t anything he wanted to see beyond his eyelids.  Something poked him in the
side, and when he didn’t move, poked him harder.  Drake moaned slightly, and a
hard foot kicked him.

“OK,” he said, opening his eyes and looking up
at the savage faces of a group of barbaric Grogatha.  All were grinning as they
looked down on him, and he was sure it wasn’t a sign of greeting.

An Orc that looked like a shaman came into
view, shouting something that sounded like Orcish into his face.  When he
didn’t answer the language changed, and Drake was sure the Shaman was speaking
in Nord, another language he could not speak.  When he didn’t answer, the
Shaman slapped him hard across the face, then said some words that caused two
of the Grogatha to jerk him to his feet.  They carried him across a clearing
crowded with the creatures, to an upright stake set in the center of what
appeared to be their village.

After his restraints were untied rough hands
pulled his arms behind the stake, then the ropes were roughly retied.  James
was still trying to figure out what they were going to do with him, his mind
tending toward such things as throwing hard objects at him to sticking his body
with pointed things, when the Grogatha started laying faggots around the
stack. 
Welcome to the briar patch, brer fox,
thought the Mage, forcing
himself to keep the smile from his face, lest he give away the game.