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Back to Empire on the HPe3000
... and ...
"Nosnra will skin us!" the giant shouted back.
The door to the outer barracks, a three room building unattached
to the main hall in the north-east corner of the yard, burst open. Breme
an aging giant warrior came out. He gave a wide yawn, lifting his arms
over his head and stretching his back. It took him a moment to react to
the shouts and then he gave a start.
"What...what is going on!" he yelled.
"The chiefs hall," a giant guard yelled back, "those heads have
set to screaming!"
Breme ran over, passed the fire and toward the northern door which
lead into the main building and down to the chiefs trophy hall.
"I can't hear anything." said Breme.
The two guards looked at each other, then one spoke up. "Well
they were, just a minute ago."
"They've stopped." said the other guard.
Breme looked from one to the other trying to decide if he believed
them. "Come on then, we will go and see." he decided.
* * *
Inside the hall the stag was causing havoc, it passed through
chair and table like a mist. The weapons of the scouts did not even
touch the beast, but its horns and hooves had drawn blood from both.
Edouard reeled back, his forehead bleeding, grazed by a jabbing horn, he
had ducked back just in time or he would have lost an eye. His brother had
been kicked aside and nearly trampled, but Gytha had pulled him free. The
red-haired cleric waved a cudgel at the beast.
"By the Saint's mighty hand I call his wrath upon you." she
cried and flung her cudgel toward its head. The wood shimmered as it flew
and seemed to expand till it was of a giant size. It struck the stag a
good solid blow across the head and made it rear up and stagger to the
side. it nearly lost its footing and glided its ghostly shape through a
table top.
Talberth had put his wand away, he'd slid it up his sleeve, then
called up a spell he thought would wound the beast. "Zimee-ari-kno" he
said with force behind his words. He flung out his hands as if to toss
away a stone and five streaking darts of glowing blue raced toward the
stag. They struck its insubstantial side and left gaping holes along
its blood red coat.
A sweeping blade layed across the stag, it wheeled, but dragged a
wounded leg, then was struck again. Harald swung his new found sword
and with its ensorceled blade carved broad gashes through its ghostly
hide. The stag lashed out, then bent its head and thrust a dozen pointed
tines into the rangers face. Harald brought his claymore down and sent
a clattering of severed horns falling to the ground.
Gytha motioned with her hands and, several feet away, the giant
cudgel smashed down and cracked against both solid bone and translucent
skull.
The stag lifted its broken head and gave one final coughing moan,
then shriveled like paper set to flame. The horns fell with a crash
and shattered on the floor, they broke apart, brittle as if they had been
made of ice.
* * *
The nights were always long for Ingigerd, she had a thousand pains
that during the day she paid no mind, but when she tried to rest each
stabbed at her with knives and teeth, they bit and jabbed within.
Still she would lie quiet in her room, four giant maids at her
beck and call, and close her eyes. And if she did not sleep, she dreamed
of times when she was young, long ages past. A young warrior, who never
survived his betrothal quest, was pictured in her head. But she let him go
and sat up and wiped away what might have been a tear.
A far off noise came warbling in, it rattled down the hall and
even woke her lazy girls from their deep snoring sleep. Shouts and
screams, those heads that the old chiefs boy had set upon the walls,
the ugly things or though they seemed to her.
"Get up." she told the four sleeping giant girls. "Alditha go to
the tower and have them sound the warning alarm. The rest of you, grab
something and follow me."
"Grab something?" quavered Alditha the youngest of the maids.
Ingigerd gave her a withering glance, "Not you, Alditha." she said
"You will go to the tower and tell them 'Ingigerd says raise the alarm,
those words exactly. Now go and waste no more time." She watched as the
young giant maid ran out the door, barefoot and in her shift, and sped
away down the darkened hall.
* * *
(To Be Continued)