The vast majority of the rest of the morning was spent patching various wounds, shifting the dead out of the road, and plucking shards of broken bronze out of both the wagons and dwarf alike. After a brief consultation with Servu, Commander Othtar had been rescued from his tree-top perch by the judicious application of several well thrown rocks, and was now back on patrol with a spring in his step and a rather fetching bandage wrapped around his head.
After various false starts, which revealed some of the wagons to not be as well maintained as previously thought, the dwarven wagon train had lumbered back to speed. Despite the scars of the journey, the odd missing wheel, and the occasional missing limb, the dwarves were in rather high spirits.
“Anananan, tha’s wha’ I sees.” Kubluk eloquently explained to Dirulal, who was pressing for details on the leader’s encounter with the gods.
His companion briefly considered the deep philosophical implications of the reality of Nomoddon, home of the gods. If reality really was as flexible as it seemed, if ideas could become truth by deep enough introspection, then what considerations did that hold for his very existence?
“Hic,” he explained.
Kubluk continued. “Big as a, big as a really big dog. A really big dog. No, not a dog. I mean the oth’r thing.”
“A bear?”
“Yus, a big hairy bear. Jus’ drinking wit’ the rest of them. As ordin..en..a hairy bear.”
Dirulal considered the image of a bear drinking alcohol. He then considered the image of himself drinking alcohol. He drank some more alcohol.
The wagons clattered along the roadway, shedding a fine wake of discarded provisions, broken bottles, and the odd drunken dwarf who found the moving surface of the wagons a little too much to cope with. As the horizon bobbed up and down in the distance, Kubluk noticed a rather menacing shape slowly forming in the distance ahead of them.
“Othtar!” he shouted, after a couple of failed attempts at the commander’s name. Within moments, the burly dwarf had leapt aboard the wagon, and was scanning the horizon with Servu’s magnifying tube.
“Was’it?” Kubluk asked. “Sisisit dragons? We can kill dragn’s.” He stood up, rather wobbly in the wagon and raised his fist. “Come on drangs! Come get some dwarf!”
Othtar chuckled. “No, it’s not dragons Kubluk.”
“Is not dragn’s? Must be hydra! All t’ more heads to smash!”
“No, I don’t believe it’s hydra either.”
Dirulal chipped in from his perch atop a barrel. “S'it a big hairy bear?” he asked, before toppling backwards into the wagon’s load.
“No. I don’t believe it is.” Othtar snapped shut the tube, and shouted for the wagons to come to a halt. He paused, and allowed the clattering to subside.
“That shape on the horizon, my friends, is trees. Dwarves, we’ve reached the Spiritwood.”
Author
Topic: The Captain's Log- Spiritwood (Read 61681 times)