"I'll not leave the other unscathed!" the wizard cried to no one present. He clenched his fist, his ring sparkled, and he stamped his staff on the stone. A blinding light, a puff of smoke, and Wulfgar and the mage were gone amid a thunder ous rumble along the spur.
"Wizards," Morik spat with utter contempt, just before the spur, with Morik halfway up it, collapsed.
*****
He was in the audience hall of a castle. The incessant black tendril continued to wrap him stubbornly in its grip, looping his torso several times, trying to pin his powerful arms. Wulfgar punched at it, but it was a pliable thing, and it merely bent under the blows, absorbing all the energy. He grabbed at the tendril, tried to twist and tear it, but even as his hands worked one area, the long end of the tendril, released from the wizard's hand, looped his legs and tripped him up, bringing him crashing to the hard floor. Wulfgar rolled and squirmed and wriggled to no avail. He was caught.
The barbarian used his arms to keep the thing from wrapping his neck, and when he was at last sure that it could not harm him, he turned his attention more fully to the area around him. There stood the wizard before a pair of chairs, wherein sat a man in his mid-twenties and a younger, undeniably beautiful woman-a woman Wulfgar recognized all too well.
Beside them stood an old man, and in a chair to the side sat a plump woman of perhaps forty winters. Wulfgar also noted that several soldiers lined the room, grim-faced and wellarmed.
"As I promised," the wizard said, bowing before the man on the throne. "Now, if you please, there is the small matter of my payment."
"You will find the gold awaiting you in the quarters I provided," the man replied. "I never doubted you, good sir. Your merchant mentor Galway recommended you most highly."
The wizard bowed again. "Are my services further required?" he asked.
"How long will it last?" the man asked, indicating the tendril holding Wulfgar.
"A long time," the wizard promised. "Long enough for you to question and condemn him, certainly, then to drag him down to your dungeon or kill him where he lies."
"Then you may go. Will you dine with us this night?"
"I fear that I have pressing business at the Hosttower," the wizard replied. "Well met, Lord Feringal." He bowed again and walked out, chuckling as he passed the prone barbarian.
To everyone's surprise, Wulfgar growled and grabbed the tendril in both hands and tore it apart. He had just managed to gain his feet, many voices screaming about him, when a dozen soldiers descended, pounding him with mailed fists and heavy clubs. Still fighting against the tendril, Wulfgar managed to free his hand for one punch, sending a soldier flying, and to grab another by the neck and slam him facedown on the floor. Wulfgar went down, dazed and battered. As the wizard magically dispelled the remnants of the tendril, the barbarian's arms were brought behind him and looped with heavy chains.
"If it were just me and you, wizard, would you have anything left with which to stop me?" the stubborn barbarian growled.
"I would have killed you out in the mountains," snapped the mage, obviously embarrassed by the failure of his magic.
Wulfgar launched a ball of spit that struck the man in the face. "How many can you take?" he asked.
The enraged wizard began waggling his fingers, but before he could get far Wulfgar plowed through the ring of soldiers and shoulder-slammed the man, sending him flying away. The barbarian was subdued again almost immediately, but the shaken wizard climbed up from the floor and skittered out of the room.
"Impressive display," Lord Feringal said sarcastically, scowling. "Am I to applaud you before I castrate you?"
That got Wulfgar's attention. He started to respond, but a guard slugged him to keep him quiet.
Lord Feringal looked to the young woman seated beside him. "Is this the man?" he asked, venom in every word.
Wulfgar stared hard at the woman, at the woman he had stopped Morik from harming on the road, at the woman he had released unscathed. He saw something there in her rich, green eyes, some emotion he could not quite fathom. Sorrow, perhaps? Certainly not anger.
"I … don't think so," the woman said and looked away.
Lord Feringal's eyes widened, indeed. The old man standing beside him gasped openly, as did the other woman.
"Look again, Meralda," Feringal commanded sharply. "Is it him?"
No answer, and Wulfgar could clearly see the pain in the woman's eyes.
"Answer me!" the lord of Auckney demanded.
"No!" the woman cried, refusing to meet any gaze.
"Fetch Liam," Lord Feringal yelled. Behind Wulfgar, a soldier rushed out of the room, returning a moment later with an old gnome.
"Oh, be sure it is," the gnome said, coming around to stare Wulfgar right in the eye. "You thinking I won't know you?" he asked. "You got me good, with your little rat friend distracting my eyes and you swinging down. I know you, thieving dog, for I seen you afore you hit me!" He turned to Lord Feringal. "Aye," he said. "He's the one."
Feringal eyed the woman beside him for a long, long time. "You are certain?" he asked Liam, his eyes still on the woman.
"I've not been bested often, my lord," Liam replied. "You've named me as the finest fighter in Auckney, which's why you entrusted me with your lady. I failed you, and I'm not taking that lightly. He's the one, I say, and oh, but what I'd pay you to let me fight him fairly."
He turned back and glared into Wulfgar's eyes. Wulfgar matched that stare, and though he had no doubt he could snap this gnome in half with hardly an effort, he said nothing. Wulfgar couldn't escape the fact that he had wronged the diminutive fellow.
"Have you anything to say for yourself?" Lord Feringal asked Wulfgar. Before the barbarian could begin to reply, the young lord rushed forward, brushing Liam aside to stand very close. "I have a dungeon for you," he whispered harshly. "A dark place, filled with the waste and bones of the previous occupants. Filled with rats and biting spiders. Yes, fool, I have a place for you to fill until I decide the time has come to kill you most horribly."
Wulfgar knew the procedure well by this point in his life and merely heaved a heavy sigh. He was promptly dragged away.
*****
In the corner of the audience hall, Steward Temigast watched it all very carefully, shifting his gaze from Wulfgar to Meralda and back again. He noted Priscilla, sitting quietly, no doubt taking it all in, as well.
He noted the venom on Priscilla's face as she regarded Meralda. She was thinking that the woman had enjoyed being ravished by the barbarian, Temigast realized. She was thinking that, perhaps, it hadn't really been a rape.
Given the size of the man, Temigast couldn't agree with that assessment.
*****
The cell was everything Lord Feringal had promised, a wretched, dark and damp place filled with the awful stench of death. Wulfgar couldn't see a thing, not his own hand if he held it an inch in front of his face. He scrabbled around in the mud and worse, pushing past sharp bones in a futile attempt to find some piece of dry ground upon which he might sit. And all the while he slapped at the spiders and other crawling things that scurried in to learn what new meal had been delivered to them.
To most, this dungeon would have seemed worse than Luskan's prison tunnels, mostly because of its purest sense of emptiness and solitude, but Wulfgar feared neither rats nor spiders. His terrors ran much deeper than that. Here in the dark he found he was somewhat able to fend off those horrors.
And so the day passed. Sometime during the next one, the barbarian awoke to torchlight and the sound of a guard slipping a plate of rotten food through the small slit in the half-barred, half-metal hatch that sealed the filthy burrow cell from the wet tunnels beyond. Wulfgar started to eat but spat it out, thinking he might be better off trying to catch and skin a rat.