From alt.pub.dragons-inn Mon Mar 6 10:43:34 1995 Xref: netcom.com alt.pub.dragons-inn:8186 Path: netcom.com!ix.netcom.com!howland.reston.ans.net!torn!newshost.uwo.ca!ts9-7.slip.uwo.ca!mdevries From: mdevries@julian.uwo.ca Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn Subject: [WAYFARERS] dreams... Date: Sat, 4 Mar 1995 13:34:11 LOCAL Organization: ITS, UWO Lines: 145 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: ts9-7.slip.uwo.ca X-Authenticated: mdevries@ts9-7.slip.uwo.ca X-Newsreader: Trumpet for Windows [Version 1.0 Rev B final beta #4] (Copyright 1995, all rights reserved) Authors: E. Laycock Sleeaeth (E.A.Laycock@sheffield.ac.uk) M. DeVries Tyloril (mdevries@julian.uwo.ca) S. Vanhorn Jason (svanhorn@xmission.com) "Have you seen something" said Sleeaeth, looking at the elf, "what could have done this?" She starts suddenly, "The horses!" she says and sprints back through the barn, cloak billowing damply behind her. She reappears a few minutes later, looking much more relieved. "They're OK" she says," I've brought them in and tied them up, I'll wait with them, if you don't mind". She wanders off and the sounds of horses being brushed and fed reaches the elf's ears. While the others returned to the barn, Tyloril continued to stare at the tracks until the disappeared beneath the pounding rain. The elf pulled the hood of his cloak over his head and started off for the farmhouse at a run. Even running, the water managed to soak through his cloak before he reached the door to the small house. Slowly, he pushed open the door and stepped inside, letting his eyes slip into the heat-sensing sight of his kind. Tyloril found himself in the sitting room. A quick survey showed a kitchen and two bedrooms, though all were unoccupied. The back door leading into the kitchen had been ripped from its hinges and the tables and two of the chairs lay in splinters beside a stairway most likely leading to the cellar. The stairs groaned in protest as Tyloril descdended. He stopped at the bottom and scanned the room. Their were some forms on the ground but the elf had trouble distinguishing them from the cold ground on which they lay. Tyloril concentrated for a moment and a sphere of green light appeared above his shoulder covering the room in light. Shelves lined the walls, containing jars with various foodstuffs preserved for the winter months, and roots hung from the ceiling, but it was not these items that drew the elf's attention. Four bodies lay on the ground, or rather what was left of them. They were in much the same shape as the livestock, mostly eaten except for their heads. A man, a woman, and two children looked up through sightless eyes at the elf. Falling to his knees, Tylorin vommitted heavily until there was nothing left in his stomach. After a minute he forced the light from existence, unwilling to look at the gruesome scene again, although he knew it would be their when he slept. Sleeaeth raised her head from the dagger she was sharpening and Jason stopped his task of making a bed as the elf entered the barn. His clothes were soaked through to the skin, although he seemed not to care, his face pale as a sheet, his steps halting. This fate of the livestock had unnerved her earlier, and then the elf's running off and his appearance now did little to alleviate such fears. "What is it?" the half-elf asked, the dagger continuing to sing across the oiled stone. Tyloril took a moment to compose himself as best he could. "A family lived in that house, two children and their parents," he began, his voice soft. "They met the same fate as the animals that were here." Sleeaeth looked at the elf's face, and noted the way he trembled slightly. She rummaged in the bottom of her pack and produced a small pewter flask with a picture of three horses and complicated spiral patterns. She unstoppers the flask and offers it to the elf. "Here," she says, "this will make you feel better." The contents smell strong, but not nasty. Tyloril drinks deeply from the flask before stopping abruptly. He coughs, dropping the flask, which Sleeaeth catches and swiftly re-stoppers. "What is that stuff?" the elf gasps, colour returning to his face in a hot flush. Sleeaeth throws the flask over towards her pack and catches the elf as his knees buckle. She helps the still sodden elf over to the bed that Jason had prepared and lets him down onto the soft hay. She takes off the wet cloak and hangs it up. Turning to Jason she says "You don't mind, do you?" and covers the elf with her blanket and her cloak. Tyloril smiled softly in his sleep. She turns to Jason. "He's had a shock, this is the best cure that I know, although he did drink more than I thought...". "Would you like some," she says, proffering the flask, "it's not too bad, I think they make it with some vegetable or something." "Don't worry about him, he'll be out until the morning, we can ask questions then,>there's nothing we can do tonight in this weather." She pauses. "I'll take first watch, I slept earlier today, and I feel more at home in the dark." She swings easily up onto a beam and wedges herself comfortably against one of the main support posts, about seven feet up. Soon you hear the sound of a knife being sharpened. Alarm spread through the village, the cries of man, woman, and child alike piercing the air, sending fear thruogh all who listened. All but the attackers. They moved as a tide of death leaving a path of blood in their wake. A child was picked up by his mother, hidden in a cupboard as she walked away to die by her husband. The child watch as the creatures, the things burst through the door. Their dark grey skin only visible on thier faces, their seven foot frames covered in matted brown fur. Eyes of red glared and the child thought they looked straight to him before he cut his mother with the swipe of a claw and knelt down to feed on her body. The room changed and wavered repaced by dim green light. A cellar perhaps. Barely recognizable bodies lay strewn about the ground, with only a few features to show that they were once human. A man, a woman, a child, all dead to the world because of a desire to kill. A voice floated through the air, "This could have been you..." Tyloril awoke with a start. It was already full light, the sun having risen an hour or two ago. Sleeaeth was tending to her gear but Jason was no where to be seen. Seeing he was awake, the half-elf approached and lifted a cloak from his body, wrapping it around her own body. "Sorry," she said. "I should have warned you not to drink so much." She noticed that his face was still pale as it had been the night before. "Are you okay? Maybe you've caught a chill from being out in the rain." "No," Tyloril replied, a little too sharply for his ears. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to snap. It's just that...well sometimes dreams make us remember things better left in the past." Sleeaeth nodded, but whether she understood or not, Tyloril did not know. "Are you up to explaining what you know?" "My guess would be trolls," the elf said. "I've...had some experience with them before. This seems consistent with what I've encountered. I couldn't guess how many though." "Trolls..." said Sleeaeth unhappily, "bleargh!" Then she brightened. There's some bacon, it's a bit cold by now, Jason was up and about early, and woke me up. "We went over to the farmhouse and.. err ..cleared up...I mean we buried the... well, it's not as if..." She shruged, thinking of the bits that she'd helped herself to from the house, the bacon, some preserves, the few bits of coin. She's left the wedding band on the finger of the man though, she wasn't that desperate! Jason had also dissapeared for a while, still that was his affair, and the dead had no need for supplies, like the living did. Moving the remains of the corpses had been unpleasant, but not the worst thing she'd had to do, and digging the shallow graveswas just muddy work after all the rain. Still, they might have to go back into the cellar to get more provisions, and stepping over ripe corpses was not something Sleeaeth enjoyed doing particularly. She though for a moment about the comment about dreams. A little too close to the quick for her, lookig down she noted she was rubbing her wrists where the manacles had been, and stopped suddenly, and involuntarily shivered. "It's good to have my cloak back," she says, "this shirt isn't half as warm as my other one." You notice a shirt and some other items of clothing drying in the morning sun, steaming gently. "Do you want the bacon?" she enquires, "I wonder what Jason's doing." ___________________________ And there lay the rider distorted and pale, With the dew on his brow, and rust on his mail: And the tents were all silent--the banners alone-- The lances unlifted--the trumpet unblown. Lord Byron