[ News ] [ Magazines ] [ Books ] [ Silver Age Bookshop ] [ Authors ] [ Entertainment ] [ Characters ] [ Info and Links ]

III Dragon’s Bane

[ Up ]

Barzad Kroif tried to look eye-to-eye with the smelly dwarf who had just challenged him to a game of shiudball but due to the dwarf’s diminutive stature he only managed a fierce knee-to-eye stare-out,

All about them the rough assortment of people that frequented the Grivean alehouse were speedily laying bets on who the winner would be. He was rather dismayed by the fact that though the smoke-filled room was full he only heard one man place a bet on him. A grimace crossed his coarse face as the tall thin man started to make his way through the crowd to him. Barzad didn’t want any luck given to him by this fellow as he looked rather shifty. However he seemed to have some standing among this group as they parted to let him through.

As Barzad watched the dwarf’s trainers furiously massaging his huge biceps the man reached him and shook Barzad’s hand. Barzad did not like the look of his long sharp nails.

“Well met, Barzad Kroif Troll Man-Friend,” said the fellow in a low voice. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Jon Tomas, a merchant of Halvion. I’ve got a proposition for you, but I can’t talk about it here. Come to this place after you’ve finished.”

He thrust a piece of paper into the speechless Barzad’s hand, and then slipped out of a side door. The troll returned his attention to the shiudball game.

A wooden drinking table had been hastily cleared of drunks to make way for the sport. On the dwarf’s side of the table there was a bench so that he would be able to reach the tabletop.

A few stray hobbits had been collected and put on the table, with every other halfling facing his way. He counted twenty hobbits altogether, so that meant he would have to squash ten heads before the little dwarf did. The first being to finish would be the winner, and could collect the prize that lay at the very end of the table – a formidable pile of groats­.

The crowd went quiet and cleared the area round the table as the two sportsmen approached the table. As the referee asked them to keep the whole business gentlemanly the dwarf spat in his face, and Barzad noticed that the first hobbit on his side wore a mithril-chained shirt and carried a rune-­inscripted ring in a leather pouch.

He took a couple of deep breaths, and after what seemed like an eternity the referee shouted for them to begin. Both beings leaped into action, Barzad pulverizing the first hobbit’s head with a single blow and the dwarf dealing death to his plump victim with two swift punches. They continued like this for the first five hobbits each before Barzad realised that the pygmy was getting ahead.

“Can’t have this!” he said in his gruff voice, as he leant over a bit too far and pulped the dwarf’s skull. As the, not surprisingly, dead dwarf fell to the ground Barzad rushed to the end of the table and grabbed the groats, shoving them into a pouch.

He turned to see the baneful eyes of the crowd centred upon him, their red eyes filled with anger at their lost money.

“Hey,” he said rather lamely, “accidents will happen.”

“To you they are going to, anyway,” said the dwarf’s fierce coach, and then the crowd surged towards the troll.

“Oh dear, why do things like this always happen to me?” he said sadly to himself as he dismembered the first two men to reach him with his bare hands. Then he threw the next man to come back at the others before dashing out of the side door that Tomas had taken.

He slammed the door shut behind him so hard that it splintered the frames wood, jamming the door into the doorway. He heard cries of frustration behind him as he ran off into the night.

Once he had left the tavern far behind he paused by a lamp-post to try and read the address that was on the paper Tomas had given him. He recognised that one side was a betting slip, and was annoyed to find that the human hadn’t been too confident of his chances in the game, and had bet a dismal groat.

He turned the paper over to the other side where he saw some arcane squiggles which he could not comprehend despite staring at them for some time. He wished that he had not neglected to tell Tomas of his illiteracy, but the mood soon passed and he began to walk again until he reached the river at the north side of the city.

Across the water he could see the black, brooding mass of Darkwood, and it cast a shadow into his heart making him have to turn round four times before he got to sleep under a small bush.

He dreamed of wild troll-maidens for some reason. This was surprising as there were not, had never been, and never would be any troll-maidens. As everyone knew the trolls were hewn own of the living rock at the heart of Trollmount. Whoever it was that had carved Barzad, their chisel must have slipped when they were working on his brain.

He awoke to find a small hairy mud-covered field animal trying to force its way into his mouth. He mused upon the fortuitousness of this for a moment before swallowing it whole. He belched appreciatively, then got up and looked around. Behind him he saw some rough-looking Grivean farmers combing their fields, giant axes cradled in their arms.

“Ah,” said the simpleton, “they must have a problem with very large field mice.”

Not knowing of anywhere better to go he jumped into the river and began to swim across, oblivious to the giant pike that started to gnaw at his boot. After it had got through the leather and two out of his seventeen toes he turned round and thumped it on the head before continuing.

Once he reached the far shore he sat down under one of the trees of Darkwood and examined his ruined boot.

“Not much good as boots now,” he decided, and promptly ate them both.

He got up to his feet and began to stomp into the forest, ignoring the fires of indigestion that were burning away inside him.

After two hours of fearless marching he slumped to the floor and fell to sleep, his last thoughts before oblivion claimed him being, “Must have been the boots.”

He awoke some time later. He looked at the position of the sun in the sky and decided that it wasn’t night time. Getting to his feet he was as astounded as such a dunderhead as he could possibly be to find new leather boots upon his feet. His indigestion was gone, and his stomach felt comfortably full. Although he was a little surprised at the eagle he found tattooed upon his chest he felt as good as he ever had.

He started to tramp on his way his eye was caught by a sign which was stuck on a post in the centre of the clearing. He was saddened that he could not read the words:

The mysterious Urgs have struck!

but he banished the pain from his heart and went on his way.

He walked many miles until the Darkwood came to an end and he arrived at the Blasted Plains, scene of many a trampled flower. Some miles in the distance he espied a large green dragon, which was lazily swatting passing myrflies with its tail. Struck with horror, he saw his old school-friend Bill Troll hand-feeding it delicacies which Barzad could not discern.

“I can’t have this!” he said, punching himself in the stomach for some extra emphasis.

He pondered his thoughts for a very short moment. For his thoughts then, as at any other moment, were pitifully few. At last he resolved to free his old friend from the grip of the evil dragon. Despite his resolution he knew that he would not be able to defeat the dragon as he was so he decided after some thinking to go and visit the hermit Helnrik, who might be able to aid him in his quest for all knew him to be wise and helpful.

Barzad turned 90 degrees and began to march once more. After a half-day’s travel he found himself on the outskirts of Darkwood once more. Wary of risking the evil powers that lay within a second time he declined to enter and turned north once more.

After crossing the Swiftflow River he decided that it would be swifter to travel to Rondar and hire a boat there than to walk across the great flat area of the plains to the Lonely Isle, so he continued northwards, humming an old troll folksong.

Approximately a year later, after being lost many times and falling asleep many more he found himself in Rondar, great warrior city of the north. Ready to slake his thirst after going without ale for so long he staggered into a tavern.

“A barrel of your finest chilled beer,” he yelled raucously at the barman.

The barman looked enquiringly at Barzad’s clothes before asking, “Will Sir be able to pay the bill?”

“No,” said the troll, raising himself up to his full stature, towering over the human. “But who’s gonna argue?”

“We are!” cried five sturdy men who stood up from the bar.

“Oh no,” moaned Barzad dejectedly, as he hated having to fight before a drink. He liked to relax in pubs but people were always challenging him for no reason he could fathom out. Was it my hairstyle, he wondered, before realising he had no hair.

Ten minutes later he sat with his feet up on the table, fully revitalised by the beer and singing crude songs. He continued to sit there in a state of semi-consciousness for a month before he got over his hangover.

He departed from the tavern feeling much better than he had before entering it. Now ready to tackle the thorny business of hiring a boat without any money he found his way to the riverbank.

‘Twas a day of good fortune for him, as lying in a small jolly-boat tethered to a post stuck in the bank he saw an old drunk.

“Hail troll-friend,” halloed the oaf, “that’s a jolly little jolly-boat, to be sure.”

“Oieeeegiiiuu,” wailed the paralytic boatman.

“I know,” said Barzad, for some reason only he knew. “Tell you what, let’s make a bet. Whaddaya think, eh bud?”

“Bingy bongy boo!” shouted the man in the boat, strangely enough.

“Good,” said our old friend the cretinous troll, “I like bets.”

“Oink!”

Barzad looked puzzled a moment before he carried on, “I bet I can kill you before you can pull all my fingers off. Do ya wanna bet on it?”

“Bop du wop bop.”

The troll took this as an affirmative answer, and said to the drunk, his brow furrowed with the effort of doing so much talking, “If I win I get your boat, and if you win I get very angry but I won’t kill you. Good bets, eh?”

“I think you’re rather ugly,” said the boatman in a moment of fleetingly brief lucidity, “but zoink! zoink! zoink! kapow!”

“Right then,” said the troll.

He jumped into the boat and ripped the boatman’s head off. He held it up before his face, grasping it by the hair, the blood dripping to the floor.

“Try to pull my fingers off, will you?” he shouted at the soulless eyes, and then threw it out into the river. He dumped the body in the waters of the River Worldspan before untying the rope that held the jolly little jolly­boat in place.

The boat rushed off down the river, leaving the poor hero behind. He stared at its form receding into the distance forlornly, then he banished his remorse and leaped into the water, letting the current carry him along.

Soon, but after he had bashed in a few rocks with his head, he collided with the jolly-boat. A-ha,” he cried as he climbed into the jolly-boat, for they were his favourite musicians, “my jolly little jolly-boat.” Suddenly he felt dizzy and collapsed into the bottom of the boat, his head ringing with pain.

“I am the great god Hraiten-Shu,” said an unseen voice (which was not all that amazing because most people’s voices are invisible, apart from, of course, the famous Mykl son of Baskturr, who had such bad halitosis that one could see the smell when he spoke!) inside the troll’s head, “and I command that you don’t use the words ‘Jolly little jolly-boat’ again, as the joke is getting a bit worn out.”

The voice went silent for an uncertain moment, then it returned, “Hey, there is somebody in there, isn’t there?”

The troll answered with a low moan.

“Good.” Then in a quieter aside, “If only this guy had two brain cells to rub together.

“Farewell, brave warrior.”

Then the voice was gone, together with the dizziness in Barzad’s head. Barzad decided that this would be a convenient point in the tale to fall asleep, and so he did.

He awoke some days later from a deep, contented sleep to find himself in the darkness. The floor beneath him was wet and slimey and yukky and pulsating strangely. But of course our masculine hero was too busy yawning to notice any of these things.

As he stood up he become disorientated for a few days before his brain got into gear.

“Duh!” he said dully on the fourth day.

On the fifth day he opened his eyes.

“Duh!” he said again on the sixth day.

On the seventh day he went back to sleep.

On the eighth day the giant serpent, which had wrenched Barzad from the jolly-boat and swallowed him whole whilst on one of it’s few visits inland, but could not digest him began to feel a pain in it’s gullet, so it turned round and swam back down the Swiftflow River to the Lonely Isle where its personal GP, Hermit Helnrik, had his abode.

On the ninth day Barzad was shaken awake by the hermit, who had crept down the serpent’s mouth to find the cause of the problem. “Awake, friend,” said Helnrik to the sleepy troll, “‘tis wakey-uppy time.”

Barzad yawned a yawn that blew the old man’s hat off, then sat up.

“What ails you,” he asked the hermit, “that you must wake a person who has barely slept?”

“I’m sorry,” said the aged one, “but I thought you might find it more comfortable in my house.”

“Uh uh,” said the troll, shaking his head with a grim look on his face, “I’ve heard about people like you who come to these places to satisfy their depraved pleasures.”

“Errr,” said the hermit, screwing his face up so that he looked a bit like ye olde Rowane Atkinsone on Blackaddere, the famous travelling show. “Not you misunderstand me, I’m not like that at all really. It’s just that sometimes I get a bit lonely.

“Anyway, I am Helnrik Hermit, respected and revolted by everyone in the land.” He stopped speaking, not sure if he had said something wrong because of long years of solitude, but the troll didn’t react so he continued, “let me help you weary traveller!” He spread out his arms in what he hoped was an appealing manner.

“Okay,” said the troll, a rather dull gleam of intelligence in his eye, “there’s this itsy bitsy teeny weeny dragon I know…”

Five years later Barzad Kroif once more entered the Blasted Plains and espied his old friend hand-feeding the dragon, but this time he had Helnrik the Hermit perched upon his shoulders.

“Whaddaya think?” asked the troll.

“Can’t really tell much from here I’m afraid, old beanchip. You’ll have to get us a bit closer.” So Barzad started walking once more, and six months later their long and winding route drew closer to within a hundred yards of the dragon, where they crouched under a rock, having a secret conference.

“Sorry,” said the hermit, “no can do. He’s too big for me to handle.”

“Like hell he is!” said Barzad, fearful for his friend’s life.

And so he picked up the unsuspecting Helnrik and cast him before the green dragon, which started to gnaw absently at the screaming body. Bill the Troll looked on with glazed eyes, a bowl of freshly crushed flowers grasped in his stout fingers.

Barzad crept out from the rock and circled round behind the great green behemoth, untying his giant double-bitted axe from where it had hung unnoticed around his belt all this time.

And while his ally the hermit kept the beast occupied he ran up its scaly green back and started to hack away at its neck with his axe. When he had cut nearly half of the way through the dragon realised what was happening and turned around with an annoyed look in its eyes. But Barzad carried on hewing away and the dragon’s head was severed before it could get round in its lazy way to doing anything.

The fearless troll looked at Helnrik’s half-eaten body sadly. In his eyes it was a waste of good food, but he dared not eat what the dragon had touched because of all the diseases flying around.

Suddenly remembering his friend Barzad leaped to Bill’s side and shook him until his eyes threatened to fall out.

“Bill,” said Barzad, “Bill I say.”

“Why do you call me Bill?” said the now recovered troll.

“For that is thy name, as I know it to be.”

“Well done!” laughed Bill the Troll, “You win a fat cigar!” And with that they both started doing rather poor Groucho Marx impressions. “Ho ho ho,” giggled Barzad, in the strange manner that trolls giggle,

“So you remember our Troll College days together?”

“Of course I do,” said Bill, “I was merely jesting. Ha! If you had another brain cell you’d be twice as intelligent. But pray tell, what am I doing here upon the Blasted Plains, next to a decapitated dragon and a half eaten morsel of tasty flesh?”

“‘Tis a long story,” said Barzad cheerfully, “and I shall tell it after we have returned to Zhirov’s Inn, but I tell you that you have been under the spell of a dragon.”

And so they both walked off together into the sunset doing terrible Groucho Marx impressions. Some day, far in the future, they would reach Zhirov’s Inn to find it converted into a supermarket, but that is another, less absorbing, story.