"My son is dead?" Jerek, barely a foot from Wulfgar, asked.
"Your god was not with him," Wulfgar replied. "For his cause, Valric's cause, was not just."
He knew before he ever finished that his roundabout manner of telling Jerek had done little to calm the man, that the overriding information, that his son was indeed dead, was too powerful and painful for any explanation or justification. With a roar, the chieftain came at Wulfgar but the younger barbarian was ready, lifting his arm high to raise the intended punch, then snapping his hand down and over Jerek's extended arm, pulling the man off-balance. Wulfgar dropped
Aegis-fang and shoved hard on Jerek's chest, releasing his hold and sending the man stumbling backward into the surprised warriors.
Scooping his warhammer as he went, Wulfgar charged forward, but so did the warriors, and the northern barbarian, to his ultimate frustration, knew that he would get nowhere near to Valric. He hoped for an open throwing path that he might take down the shaman before he, too, was killed, but then Valric surprised him, surprised everybody, by leaping forward through the line, howling a chant and throwing a burst of herbs and powders Wulfgar's way.
Wulfgar felt the magical intrusion. Though the other warriors, Jerek included, backed away a few steps, he felt as if great black walls were closing in on him, stealing his strength, forcing him to hold in place.
Waves and waves of immobilizing magic rolled on, Valric hopping about, throwing more powders, strengthening the spell.
Wulfgar felt himself sinking, felt the ground coming up to swallow him.
He was not unfamiliar with such magics, though. Not at all. In his years in the Abyss, Errtu's minions, particularly the wicked succubi, had used similar spells to render him helpless that they might have their way with him. How many times he had felt such intrusions. He had learned how to defeat them.
He put up a wall of the purest rage, warding every magical suggestion of immobility with ten growls of anger, ten memories of Errtu and the succubi. Outwardly, though, the barbarian took great pains to seem defeated, to hold perfectly still, his warhammer dropping down to his side. He heard the chants of "Valric High Eye" and saw out of the corner of his eye several of the warriors turning in ceremonial dance, giving thanks to their god and to Valric, the human manifestation of that god.
"Of what does he speak?" Jerek said to Valric. "What
quest fell upon Torlin?"
"As I told you," the skinny shaman replied, dancing out from the lines to stand before Wulfgar. "A drow elf! This man, seeming so honorable, traveled beside a drow elf! Could any but Torlin have taken the beast magic and defeated this deadly foe?"
"You said that Torlin was on a vision quest," Jerek argued.
"And so I believed," Valric lied. "And perhaps he is. Do not believe the lies of this one! Did you see how easily the power of Uthgar defeated him, holding him helpless before us? More likely he returned because his friends, all three, were slain by powerful Torlin, and because he knew that he could not hope to find vengeance any other way, could not hope to defeat Torlin even with the aid of the drew."
"But Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, did defeat Torlin in the contest of strength," another man remarked.
"That was before he angered Uthgar!" Valric howled. "See him standing now, helpless and defeated-"
The word barely got out of his mouth before Wulfgar exploded into action, stepping forward and clamping one hand over the shaman's skinny face. With frightening power, Wulfgar lifted Valric into the air and slammed him back down to his feet repeatedly, then shook him wildly.
"What god, Valric?" he roared. "What claim have you of Uthgar above my own as a warrior of Tempus?" To illustrate his point, and still with only one hand, Wulfgar tightened the bulging muscles in his arm and lifted Valric high into the air and held him there, perfectly steady, ignoring the man's flailing arms. "Had Torlin killed my friends in honorable battle, then I would not have returned for vengeance," he said honestly to Jerek. "I came not to avenge them, for they are well, all three. I came to avenge Torlin, a man of strength and honor, used so terribly by this wretch."
"Valric is our shaman!" more than one man yelled.
Wulfgar put him down to his feet with a growl, forcing him down to his knees and bent his head far back. Valric grabbed hard onto the man's forearm, crying out, "Kill him!" but Wulfgar only squeezed all the tighter, and Valric's words became a gurgling groan.
Wulfgar looked around at the ring of warriors. Holding Valric so helpless had bought him some time, perhaps, but they would kill him, no doubt, when he was finished with the shaman. Still, it wasn't that thought that gave Wulfgar pause, for he hardly cared about his own life. Rather, it was the expression he saw upon Jerek's face, a look of a man so utterly defeated. Wulfgar had come in with news that could break the proud chieftain, and he knew that if he killed Valric now, and many others in the ensuing battle before he, too, was finally brought down, then Jerek would not likely recover. And neither, he understood, would the Sky Ponies.
He looked down at the pitiful Valric. While he had been contemplating his next move he had inadvertently pushed back and down. The skinny man was practically bent in half and seemed near to breaking. How easy it would have been for Wulfgar to drive his arm down, snapping the man's spine.
How easy and how empty. With a frustrated roar that had nothing to do with compassion, he lifted Valric from the ground again, clapped his free hand against the man's groin, and brought him high overhead. With a roar, he launched the man a dozen feet and more into the side of a tent, sending Valric, skins, and poles tumbling down.
Warriors came at him, but he quickly had Aegis-fang in hand, and a great swipe drove them back, knocking the weapon from one and nearly tearing the man's arm off in the process.
"Hold!" came Jerek's cry. "And you, Valric!" he emphatically added, seeing the shaman pulling himself from the mess, calling for Wulfgar's death.
Jerek walked past his warriors, right up to Wulfgar. The younger man saw the murderous intent in his eyes.
"I will take no pleasure in killing the father of Torlin," Wulfgar said calmly.
That hit a nerve; Wulfgar saw the softening in the older man's face. Without another word, the barbarian turned about and started walking away, and none of the warriors moved to intercept him.
"Kill him!" Valric cried, but before the words had even left his mouth, Wulfgar whirled about and let fly his warhammer, the spinning weapon covering the twenty feet to the kneeling shaman in the blink of an eye, striking him squarely in the chest and laying him out, quite dead, among the jumble of tent poles and skins.
All eyes turned back to Wulfgar, and more than one Sky Pony made a move his way.
But Aegis-fang was back in his hands, suddenly, dramatically, and they fell back.
"His god Tempus is with him!" one man cried.
Wulfgar turned about and started away once more, knowing in his heart that nothing could be further from the truth. He expected Jerek to run him down or to order his warriors to kill him, but the group behind him remained strangely quiet. He heard no commands, no protests, no movement. Nothing at all. He had so overwhelmed the already battered tribe, had stunned Jerek with the truth of his son's fate, and then had stunned them all by his sudden and brutal vengeance on Valric, that they simply didn't know how to react.
No relief came over Wulfgar as he made his way from the encampment. He stormed down the road, angry at damned Valric, at all the damned Sky Ponies, at all the damned world. He kicked a stone from the path, then picked up another sizable rock and hurled it far through the air, shouting a roar of open defiance and pure frustration behind it. He stomped along with no direction in mind, with no sense of where he should go or where he should be. Soon after, he came upon the trail of a party of orcs, likely the same ones who had battled the Sky Ponies the previous night, an easily discernible track of blood, trampled grass, and broken twigs, veering from the main path into a small forest.