The Golden Power
Chapter 11: Serve with Honor
The Great Pyramid Summit, The Southern Swamp
Somehow, Link was not particularly surprised to get his first glimpse of daylight after stepping through that portal, and wind up taking it from the top of the pyramid dominating the island's center. It somehow seemed correct to land out of a trans-spatial distortion at the pinnacle of a towering, dread ziggurat. Whence that sentiment came, he could not say with any certainty, because the next moment he realized just how utterly exposed he was and ducked to his belly. Finding himself alone on the ten-foot-square platform surrounding the skylight down to the sacrifice chamber below, Link crawled quickly to the nearest ledge to take a look around.
Almost immediately, the veteran's face set into a grimace of bitter disgust. The city below was an abandoned, smoking ruin, a burnt-out shell of its former bustling self, its shabby wooden grid pattern marred by a path of devastation most akin to a tornado. The thing he'd fought had entered the city in a furor of blind rage, and it had not been picky about who or what it vented upon. Whatever else he'd done, he'd broken its mystical loyalty to the trolls who'd summoned it, and it had reveled in the opportunity to spread death and sorrow against opponents with less fight in them than Link had shown.
A city of many thousands of residents was now a ghost-town, the populace having scattered, now nowhere to be seen in the brilliant daylight. Here and there a group of armed trolls was moving about the task of accounting for all the damage, but in all, the place might as well have been completely abandoned. Perhaps because of these few, there weren't even any obvious looters or other such vagrants common to disaster areas and battlefields everywhere.
This much, at least, made the work of slipping out of the city that much easier. After making certain that the troll patrols were all preoccupied, Link made his way down the eight-foot drops between different levels of the step-pyramid. He quickly found the dry flood-channel he'd used to infiltrate the city earlier, now scattered with innumerable footprints from the human escapees and their pursuers both, and followed it to the city's limits without incident. Once he was out to the island's more rural areas, he became cautious of stumbling across troll refugees, but even here the great swampy isle's population had vanished. He reached the same general area where he'd arrived on the island in no time at all, located his commandeered boat right where he'd hidden it, and was out onto the vast swamp lake in due course.
Now, at last, Link began to find signs of those who'd been fleeing for their lives while he fought for his in the dark pit. Many boats had run afoul of alligators, drifting obstacles, and mud-bars, leaving a smattering of gnawed corpses and shattered vessels to float as a testament to the haste of the migration. He was acutely aware that he could soon expect to face refugees and soldiers resting amid the 'safety' of the far bank, and took pains to keep far away from where he knew the nearest dock to be.
The journey from where he put in on the far shore to the dock he intended to begin his search for the human escapees from was a rather nightmarish slog through the worst kind of terrain imaginable. As he made the trip, Link cursed its necessity, once again wishing for his claw-shots. He could have been zipping through the treetops right now, not slogging through murderously thick underbrush.
Eventually, the sound of trollish activity became quite clear, and Link knew he was close to the docks. He then climbed a wiry tree with a view into the nearby coastal clearing. Whipping his eagle-eye out, Link searched through the gathered masses of refugees there, carefully scanning around from his high vantage until, at last, he spotted what he wanted.
A group of troll warriors in particularly elaborate headdresses were standing around a bit of soft earth, discussing the elaborate map they'd etched into it with their javelins. Zooming in all the way, he could make out the rocks and twigs that represented landmarks, waterways, and solid trails. In a fumbling manner, made clumsy by the need to cling to the tree, Link produced the map he'd scratched out with his grease pencil on the way into the swamp, turning it about until he had a frame of reference and hastily etching in as many details from the troll's diorama as he could.
There was noise from below, and Link's tree rattled ominously as a crowd of veraq-riders brushed by its base and loped into the clearing, scattering refugees without care as they made their way to the map-post. In loud, guttural trollish, the veraq-rider captain reported to the trolls at the diorama, who quickly added further detail to it, marking some areas with standing twigs like notice flags and scratching other areas out with javelin-tips. Paths lain in smooth river pebbles etched out toward each of the twig-markers from two common points, and as he came to understand the meaning of the large rock quite close to that point, Link recognized the diorama's overall purpose. The prisoners had come ashore and split up, and this map was a compilation of the hunting parties' reports. Any proof he needed to support that wild, intuitive leap was provided easily by the gaggle of fresh human heads he spotted dangling from the riders' saddles.
Link analyzed the information on the map, even as the trolls did. With the benefit of his insider information, he made much more of it than one might expect. For example, because he knew the exact count of prisoners, he could estimate that they'd split down to twos, or close, because otherwise there couldn't possibly be so many separate trails. Unlike the trolls, who could have little idea just how many stragglers remained, Link felt his guts wrench with regret at the piddling six to ten he estimated.
Manuel certainly had the princess with him, and the fact that the search still went on with such fervor was a strong indication that they'd yet to be taken, giving Link back some of his weathered hope. Examining the marks he took to mean places where trails had been picked up and then lost, Link tried in turn to divine which remaining group might be Manuel and Jeanette.
The warrior's efforts were interrupted by a new sound, this time of the scout party clamoring and clattering as they re-equipped and readied to leave again in the now much-narrowed search area. Wasting no time at all, Link zipped back down the tree in a series of leaps, bounds, and acrobatically caught branches. He was careless, for the milling civilians raised a fuss about the unseen creature in the trees and a cadre of soldiers went to investigate where he'd been. He used a bit more caution in his movements after that and managed to make his way north of the docks without further incident. Here he climbed another tree, this one reaching over the heavily beaten veraq trail any search party heading to the zones designated on the map Link had espied would need to take. There he stood in ambush, waiting for his prey.
Not twenty seconds after he came to rest, Link heard a patrol party coming up the path and tensed himself. The next moment, they were flashing beneath him, a rush of reptilian bodies and lanky troll muscles. He waited until he'd counted out the whole of their number, and then dropped down upon the last one as his lizard-cat sprinted below.
The sturdy creature hardly noticed his extra weight, and before its handler could even be surprised by his arrival, Link wrapped his neck in a choke hold and snapped his spine with a violent wrenching motion that also tossed him from the saddle. His corpse tumbled to the jungle floor, and Link already had his bow out. The trolls ahead of him were gathered in a line to march, their mounts hardly even bobbing on this well-worn trail. In other words, they were sitting ducks, and Link quickly dispatched three with shots through their hearts. Of the last two, one had time to turn and look back in confusion before an arrow split his skull, and the lead rider not even that much as twinned arrows took him in the chest and skull simultaneously.
Riderless veraqs slowed to a numb-witted halt and turned to consider the sudden meals that had tumbled from their backs. The dim beast between Link's legs increased its pace at his urging, happy enough to have a lighter weight on its back and utterly obedient to the rule of the hands at its saddle-crown. The escaped prisoners had at most a half-night of hard running as a head start on him, and had certainly gone to ground to hide for the day. If he followed the trail he was on, Link would be at the farthest bounds of the quickly-narrowing search zone in an hour and a half. From there, he could slaughter any patrols he encountered and investigate the leads he'd plucked from the trolls' own search diagram. He'd be the first to admit that he wasn't much of a tracker, but he had a feeling that if he ran down enough troll search parties in the wilderness, he was bound to stumble across their common target eventually. Unfortunately, 'eventually' and 'in time' were totally different beasts.
A Clearing Near The White Plains Border, The Southern Swamp
Count Piel de Bayshore clattered into the swampy clearing on his horse, his two bodyguards at either side, and tried not to sweat too profusely. Although they were less than a mile from the open grasslands, the daytime swamp was already a twisting and incomprehensible maze, fraught with danger and biting insects. Danger he was well-used to, but the filthy mosquitoes were the size of cocktail sausages. That and the ominous, secretive nature of his mission here led him to wish desperately for the time when he could put this antechamber to hell behind him forevermore.
In fortunate collusion with his anxiety, he was not kept waiting. The delegation from the troll nation, the name of which he'd been told but had no ability to pronounce, arrived in the clearing only seconds later, as though they'd had someone watching the Ghentese delegation approach. Piel mopped his brow and dismounted, his hands fumbling with the messenger's pouch at his side where the treaty papers resided.
All nobles were required to spend a certain number of months manning one of the southern fortresses, and he'd distinguished himself by not being a total waste of effort from the career-soldiers who spent the better part of their lives in such dreary climes. The lead troll of the agreed-upon three member delegation was one of the largest trolls the middle-aged veteran had ever seen in all the skirmishes he'd ever witnessed. It had an incredible crest of hair on its otherwise shaven head that was greased-upward with fat and rubbed with an outrageous orange dye that sharply contrasted with its green-purple skin. The two warriors flanking him were wearing the heavy breastplate of the troll-guard rather than the rag-tag equipment of tribal raiders he usually encountered, and past the bitter tang of fear in his throat, he recognized the monumental nature of this meeting.
"Hullo there, ambassador," Piel said, stopping a few steps away from his silent hosts. Rather than answer, the three trolls closed the space between them in a sudden sprint and attacked. To his shame, this betrayal caught him entirely off guard, and he had only enough time to stagger back one step in surprise before a leather-wrapped club clipped him along the side of this head. Everything went dark.
When he woke, there was a strong smell of roasting meet. His vision cleared, and he found himself sitting uncomfortably close to a cooking pit, all trussed up like a tied hog. Because he couldn't turn himself, he had little choice but to gaze into the pit, and soon enough the billowing smoke cleared enough for him to see a human torso, skinned, gutted, and decapitated, rotating slowly on the cooking-spit over the glowing coals. He struggled valiantly, but still vomited all over himself, unable even to turn far enough to save his dignity.
Harsh laughter crowded him from all directions out of his view, and soon rough hands grabbed him by the bonds behind his back and dragged him away from the pit. When he stopped, he was aware that there were at least a half dozen beings looming over him, and a guttural command had him kicked in the back, and then levered over until he could just twist up and see a makeshift throne. The aqua-skinned female troll sitting there was topless, wearing nothing but a necklace of human and troll ears and an ankle-length skirt of questionable leather.
"You be da 'uman emissary, den?" She asked, in harshly accented Ghentese. She seemed minimally interested in him and in fact quite distracted by a bubbling cauldron over to one side of her. It was venting a constant stream of virulent green mist, and her eyes were transfixed on its boiling fumes. "Take care wit ya ansah now, ya brutha was a liar, an' now he's dinnah."
Despite the state of affairs in the modern Ghentese nobility, Piel had been hand-picked for this mission because of his competence, although he was beginning to fear his expendability had also come into play. Therefore, he quickly gathered how imminently life-threatening his situation was, and moved to preserve his skin with consummate skill.
"Yes. I am the emissary." He answered as simply as possible, making it clear how cowed he was. "You will find the treaty documents in my satchel. Although I gather there will be no treaty now…?" He was less concerned with that mission now than he was about proving the providence of his claim, even though he calculated his chance of surviving this nightmare situation as slim to none, no matter what he said.
"No treaty," she shook her head listlessly as she gazed into the pot. "You be takin' a message back to da Duke. It be mah formahl declahration ahv wah."
At first, the flush of relief he felt at this news of their intention to let him live overcame his senses. It was a long moment before he recognized the truly important content of that phrase.
"War? But… but our agreement—!"
"Our agreement is dead," the troll leader spat, "De 'uman warriah who ruined mah beautiful city ensured dat much. All de tribe-chiefs ah screemin' fah 'uman blood, and dat meens ya country is gonna burn so ah can keep dem undah mah thumb. It's definahtly not how ah wanted ta spend mah army's strength—'yrule is still what ah want. But dats de wey it's gotta be."
"This… this is madness!" Piel felt his bladder tighten and his aching stomach flop around. What she was suggesting was nothing short of a disaster—a complete reversal of everything Orlouge had been planning. If the trolls weren't going to sit back during the invasion of Hyrule, an invasion the troops were probably mobilizing to carry out at this very moment, then there was nothing but the border forts between them and the vulnerable heart of the White Plains. The only thing keeping him from passing out in utter horror was the fact that he had reason to believe he'd get a chance to warn everyone.
"Mahdness ya sey? Mebbe. But spekin' de truth now—ah was jahst gonna use da power waitin' in 'yrule ta destroy ya country, anyway. Adaptin' ya plan to changin' circumstahnces is de sahn ahv a good leadah don'cha know."
"If… if that is how it is to be…" Piel thought he would heave again, despite having nothing in his stomach to vent. He was given no intelligence of any importance as a contingency for just this situation—no amount of torture could make him tell what he didn't know. Still, he strongly suspected that the new King had planned exactly the same double-cross for the trolls, and he wondered if his liege knew that they were currently a step ahead of him. "I'll be glad to convey whatever declaration of war you wish… sooner rather than later… I hope…"
That last phrase was said with little hope indeed, because Piel had been chosen specifically for his brains. By now, he was acutely aware that he'd heard too much to be allowed to leave with his life, much less with a message, and that they'd never hesitated to speak in front of him had meant he'd never been meant to carry the message in the traditional way after all.
"Ahm afraid dat ya sahveces won't be necessary in dat pahticulah respect." The troll gestured to some of her warriors, and they moved casually back into activity after their brief rest to watch the audience play out. Huge, powerful troll paws suddenly came out of nowhere and clamped onto either side of his head, compressing the region of his jaw. By reflex, he struggled to keep his mouth closed, but he was quickly losing ground against the insistent grip.
"Ya see mistah messenjah, trolls 'ave a different way ta declah total wah." Piel was pulled to one side as she made that parting statement, and now the grip on his jaw redoubled, and his mouth popped open despite his every effort. Out of the side of his field of view came a troll carrying a bundle of forms all coated in wax seals that he immediately recognized as the treaty.
"We prefah ta maek da messenjah, inta da messahge." That was the last thing he heard before the thunder of his own pulse in his ears drowned out all other sounds. Before his very eyes, the troll lit the bundle up over the campfire his bodyguard was currently roasting above. The paper took light powerfully, and Piel had enough time to vent a scream before the troll turned and jammed the wad of blazing paper right down his open gullet.
Deep in the Trackless Wilderness, The Southern Swamp
Jeanette woke from fitful sleep as she felt the hard ground underneath her vibrate with an irregular beat. For a moment, her disorientation was total. Then the burning agony of every inch of flesh beneath her shins reminded her of the past weeks in a terrible rush of misery. She dragged herself up from her sprawl to wake Manuel to the approaching danger, only to find him already up. He was blocking the entrance of the small cave he'd found for them to use as cover, gently arranging the foliage he'd found to use as camouflage into better coverage. She could just barely see his muscular frame haloed by the golden light of the evening sun leaking in past the foliage.
"What is it?" she whispered, only to be shushed. He waited a moment, and then answered in a whisper of his own.
"I covered our tracks as well as I could, so with the Goddess' blessing, they'll pass right by us. That said, now would be a good time to start praying."
Unabashedly, Jeanette folded her hands together and shut her eyes tight. Recent events had made her previously casual faith a far more controlling force in her mind, and while she had little reason to believe prayer was any part of why the Goddess intervened on her behalf, it certainly couldn't hurt. The rumbling grew closer and closer, until they could make out the distinctive sounds of the hunters' approach, and then even their shouting voices as they coordinated their search.
The veraq footfalls came to a sudden stop, so close that they could hear the stomping feet of the dismounting trolls over their heads. The distance between the roof of the cave and the surface above them was only about six inches of stone and two or three of topsoil, so they were painfully aware of how close their pursuers were now. Jeanette's heart was beating at triple time as her empty stomach gurgled with nausea. She finished her prayer and held her breath.
Above them, the trolls spoke among themselves in quieter voices that they could still clearly hear. There were no humans anywhere who could make any sense of the grinding, ugly language they spoke, but their meaning was clear enough from their tone. They were close and they knew it, and hope was quickly sputtering out in her heart. At this point, all they had to do was make their way down off the jutting cliff they were standing on into the swampy grotto below and in front of them. At that point, they'd have an open line of sight to the cave mouth that was currently beneath their feet. Manuel's camouflage job would not defeat any kind of determined search.
To her horror, the trolls finished commiserating and set out on foot again, cementing the air of doom that threatened to choke her to death all by itself. She risked a shallow breath to avoid passing out, but regretted even that barely-audible noise. She was positive they could smell the dry blood painting her feet, despite the smelly medicinal herbs Manuel had wrapped into her poultices, and in her heart, they'd already been found.
The crowd of armed searchers was in the grotto now, and despite the danger, both fugitives found small holes in the camouflage screen through which to watch them come. They had circled around the sloping ridge and now stood on the opposite side of the grotto, moving along the valley floor, which was steeped in a forest of shrubs that were waist-high to a troll, and came up to about Jeanette's chest. Their loose formation looked ready to pursue any prey that should try to bolt suddenly and make this into a chase again, although Manual looked like that was what he'd like to try anyway. Still, their war-javelins and hatchets gleamed in troll's red steel, and their light armor marked them as elite military scouts rather than the rabble of irregular tribal hunters that they'd been suffering near-brushes with for so long now. Quite like the nightmare of not so long ago, all hope seemed to have vanished.
The trolls were searching carefully through the thick brush as they came, making a huge racket as they beat their way forward. It was such a din, in fact, that they didn't hear the bushes parting behind them. Manuel and Jeanette saw it though, that shape which had melted out of the tree-line at the end of the grotto and melded into the shrubs, and neither one could believe their eyes.
In seconds, the troll furthest back in their sloppily staggered line fell backwards into the undergrowth without any noise that could be heard over the others' searching. A moment later, another one was jerked violently under the tall greenery, and still the rest were oblivious. Now all the rest were more or less abreast of one another, and so the silent assassin changed tactics. There was a tremendous creaking of bent wood that couldn't be missed, but the unaware trolls thought nothing of it, not until the far left troll was blown forward off his feet by the force of the arrow that exploded into his chest. There was a moment of frozen incomprehension among the remaining scouts, and by then the awful creaking had repeated twice, an arrow taking the top of a troll's head off and another troll catching a bolt in his ribs at an angle that was certain to meet his heart.
The rest of the trolls showed some initiative at last, and simultaneously hit the dirt. The grotto was visibly abandoned now, all the combatants hidden beneath the swaying, rustling brush-bushes. There were violent shouts and sounds of anger and frustration, silenced when a gurgling scream and a spray of blood up over the hedges announced that the unseen assailant had claimed another troll. They were all reduced to maneuvering quietly in the maze of branches and leaves that fenced them all together, none daring to give away his position with more talk.
The quiet lasted mere moments before a troll sprang up from the brush in a scream of triumph, javelin held high like a spear to stab someone below him. An iron-shod boot zipped up from the undergrowth and caught him in the privates, raising the pitch of his scream by a few octaves, and when he bent over in agony, a short dagger pierced through his chin and up into his skull. The blood-fountaining corpse collapsed into the brush, and there was a flurry of rustling as what was left of the trolls tired to close on that spot.
The grotto once again dropped down into strained silence, only the occasional rattle of a shrub announcing where one of the combatants had passed. The game of maneuver and counter-maneuver went on for nearly two minutes of severe, heart-pumping tension before a sudden burst of activity brought it to the end.
The last three troll scouts had somehow coordinated a pincer motion, and now two of them came up in one area and the last from the opposite direction, all poised to strike with their javelins or hatchets as they bellowed a simultaneous war-cry. A man rose up from between them like a leaping hare and sprang directly at one of the pair fencing him in on his right. In an incredible bout of acrobatics, he planted a hand on the shocked troll's shoulder and vaulted right over him in a twirling flip, a flash of steel cracking its skull as he planted that dagger of his in its forehead on the way.
Before the corpse could fall, he'd plucked a hatchet off its belt and buried it into ribcage of its ally, who'd just managed to turn around. There was a bellow of agony and a short wrestling match, the last troll taking aim with its javelin, but hesitating as he watched his ally grapple with the enemy. The match ended when a sawing motion drew the hatchet across the engaged troll's belly and spilled its guts. The warrior drew back and neatly scalped the tumbling victim to finish the job, then ducked through a roll to avoid a flying javelin. When he again broke from the underbrush, he immediately flung the hatchet, and it twirled neatly through the air to crack the final troll on the head… handle first. The troll stumbled, stunned by the blow, and the warrior cursed loudly, apparently at himself, before he drew out his bow and fired a shot that neatly bisected the troll's skull.
Inside the cave, Manuel and Jeanette were speechless. One man had just killed eight professional troll warriors, and he was currently more concerned about berating himself in Hylian about learning to throw weapons better than he was by the feat he'd just accomplished with such finesse. It was perhaps that last fact, his vulgar Hylian bantering, that forced their minds to catch up with their eyes at last. When hers did, Jeanette couldn't contain her scream of happiness.
"Link!" she shouted as she burst out of the covered cave mouth before Manuel even had a chance to stop her. She got about three steps on her ruined feet before she stumbled forward and skinned her hands and knees on the stone outcropping below the cave's mouth, just where the grotto's bushes gave out.
The man in question turned in a start, apparently surprised beyond reckoning to hear his name yelled in this of all places. When he noticed who it was who'd called him, his face softened into a mixture of confusion and pleasure.
"Ah, your majesty, fancy meeting you here!" Link called, and bowed at the waist, but then went ahead to start looting the corpses of the troll scouts. "If you'll just give me a moment here, we'll start planning our escape. I see you managed to hold on to Seargeant D'tennon for me, too."
Jeanette sat up, hissing at the unfamiliar experience of being in severe, aching pain. Before this nightmare, she could count the number of times she'd bled in her entire life on just her fingers, and more than half of those were from her recently begun fertility cycles. Agony was definitely an unfamiliar concept, but she found herself becoming acquainted with it all too quickly. Manuel walked up behind her and helped her to sit up, then knelt by her side with the strangest pensive look on his face. Both of them were shocked to see the Hylian warrior still breathing, but he seemed to have far more depth to his feelings on the matter than Jeanette's simple joy and relief.
"So, chance brings us together yet again," Link said, when he finally finished ensuring the dead trolls would stay down and picking them over for valuables. "Sorry if I gave you a scare the other day with that bit of falling, but as you can see, it wasn't anything I couldn't deal with. Now, how are all of you doing?"
"Speaking for myself, Monsieur Link, I am happy to see you alive," Jeanette told him without hesitation, her Hylian showing deep accent with her fatigue. "These beasts were all too close to recapturing me, as you no doubt already realized. Honestly, I can't imagine how they found us."
"Probably the same way I found them, and you," Link said. He reached into one of his ubiquitous pouches and withdrew a leather cord strung with human and troll teeth. The grisly fetish was focused around a charm of fine black hair woven into a knot, and the whole affair was currently straining to get at Jeanette like it had an internal force driving it. "I looted this from the last group of scouts I ambushed on my way north. There was another one among this lot. Apparently I wasn't the only one who knew about the charm your people cast to keep tabs on you"
"Ah… yes… so I see." Jeanette fingered the stuffed animal tied into her rags with a look of bewildered nerves, the toy now coated in blood and sweat as well as tears. "But, other concerns aside, your talking stone had a few things to say to us last night."
"My...?" Link's eyebrow rose, then he grinned. Jeanette proffered a hand, and there lay the gleaming violet gem. "Goodness, I thought that lost for good. Thanks for holding onto it for me. So… she talked to you, huh?" Link's labored expression suggested that he had considered and discarded several lies before deciding to just wait and find out how much she knew.
"Quite. 'She' had some choice words for me when I suggested you were no longer with the living," Jeanette seemed bemused at the nervous front he presented during this exchange, especially considering how nonchalant he'd been about violence.
"Hmph—why would you go and tell her something like that?" Link half-joked, nervous about where this conversation was going. Apparently all it took to fluster this warrior was a pretty girl bandying word games. "It was only a little pit of black despair. It wasn't even bottomless."
Link stopped joking as he saw her wince, then dab at the welling blood on her knees with the dripping blood on her fingers, managing little more than to smear it around. Link noticed the motion and the wounds, and frowned in sympathy, kneeling before her for a closer look.
"I must… apologize to her for doubting you both…" Jeanette said, and then was blushing too hard to keep talking as the older man handled her bare legs to check her wounds. For the first time since escaping, she was acutely aware of how absolutely indecent she was. Why Manuel had never had the same effect on her was a mystery to her, but quite obvious to anyone who understood a young girl with a crippling crush. The change in her mannerisms, bearing, and posture was absolute. Suddenly, she was fluttering her eyelashes and pursing her lips, not to mention breathing in shallow gasps that put her developing breasts on display.
"Yeah, well, I'm underestimated quite a lot," Link told her, giving her a quizzical glance and raised eyebrow for her sudden change in bearing. For a moment he didn't know what to make of such absurdly inappropriate body language under the circumstances, and his chosen response was to ignore it and focus on her wounds. "Here," he reached behind his back and fumbled in his crowded equipment harness, hand threading between various bags and quivers until it finally came back with a small case of stiff, padded leather. He flipped open the lid and revealed a row of fine crystal bottles, each one containing a different color of brightest hue. He chose a bottle containing a bare inch of ruby-red and held it out. "This is some seriously powerful medicine. I don't know what the local equivalent is, but back home, we make this stuff out of chu-chu jelly."
Perhaps fortunately for her, comparative zoological terms hadn't been part of Jeanette's education in Hylian, not beyond what was necessary to discuss trade goods. She gave Link a blank look and considered the medicine with open suspicion. Finally, Manuel took it and handed it to her himself, sparing a dirty look for the foreigner, who'd obviously never realized the girl would find what he told her utterly repugnant had she actually understood. "We use this kind of medicine in the army all the time," he assured her, "Don't worry where it comes from. It'll fix you up, Your Majesty, trust me."
With that further reinforcement, Jeanette took the bottle, allowing Manuel to pop its tight cork for her. She took a sniff, and then sipped at it, wincing at its powerful head-surge and bitter aftertaste. A rush of heat ran across her skin, and the cuts on her knees and palms closed with a tingling sensation. The pain in her feet had disappeared completely, although she could tell she was still cut up. Heartened, she quickly downed the rest of the bottle, the magical surge rushing right to her ruined feet and wrapping them around with a hot, numb, tingling. She could almost have cried at the relief, and the lack of scars was an unexpected delight. The part of her that was still her mother's delicate flower, the part that she'd had to strangle into silence after the first dark night of captivity, had been quietly despairing that she'd wind up disfigured for life.
As she dissolved into almost incoherent bouts of effusive gratitude in fast-paced, half-weeping Ghentese, Link proceeded to replace his now empty medicine bottle and took the opportunity to pack up the rest of his swag too. From his spare equipment satchel, he pulled a bundle of various small items, weightiest among these being a thick brace of identical daggers. They all looked exactly like the knives he'd been bandying around during that brush fight, and Manuel need only a moment of close examination to identify them.
"Scout's Badges…!" Manuel gasped, barely able to believe his eyes. "But… so many!" The exceptionally sharp, seven-inch stabbing weapons were awarded to troll scouts in their own arcane promotion rituals, and were famously used to gut and carve civilians that the troll army's raiding vanguard often managed to capture, turning them into butchered cuts of meat. Link's leather thong-bound brace of daggers had to include at least thirty individual specimens, not counting the eight he'd just now claimed.
"Oh… well, yeah," Link said, adding his new trophies to the collection, "All of these hard-nosed bastards seem to carry one. I figured I'd grab a few, seeing as how steel this fine fetches such a handsome price. I guess I got a little carried away though—it's been a pain fitting these in with my other equipment."
Manuel stared at Link with an expression of furious, pointed disbelief. Nothing about him seemed like it could be real, from the way he fought at such a ridiculous and unmatched level, to the way he behaved as though it was perfectly banal and ordinary to go up against murderous odds and win without receiving a single scratch. With this final straw, he couldn't stand it anymore, and he let his suspicions burst out of him in nearly a shout, only curtailing it to a harried whisper at the last moment in consideration for Her Majesty. He need not have bothered really, because the princess was currently bent over, holding her head like some great ache had split her skull, and was quite distracted.
"How did you know my full name?" The inquiry had daggers in it.
"Oh?" Link, totally nonplussed by his counterpart's anger, tried to remember when he'd let that fact slip. When he spotted just where, he grimaced. "Ah, well, I didn't want to advertise it," Link's conspiratorial whisper was heavy with a sort of snarky embarrassment at being caught, "but I bumped into your family outside of Monseille on my way around the country. It was totally random, nothing at all to do with what I've been up to in the area, but they were all as hospitable as can be. They told me all about you, so much that I recognized you right away. Small world, huh?"
"My… family?" Manuel's anger deflated. The moment he considered it, he could perfectly imagine his two beautiful girls playing greeting committee to such a vagabond as this, Monica for one would love him to death. Of course, from that moment his overriding prerogative changed completely. "Do you have news of them?"
"Christine and Monica, along with little Jaques, are all just fine. I'm afraid that your brother, however, was not so fortunate."
"Martin? What's that gigantic ass done?" Manuel had plenty of vitriol to spare for his estranged brother, even as he rejoiced to hear some news of his family at last, despite its questionable providence.
"Well, he was hoodwinked by the Duke, and took the fall for the assassination attempt on the king." Link spoke over Manuel's shocked expression to complete the story, "His family managed to flee the city with yours, so that none of it could fall on them, and the lot of them are waiting in this town where your sister-in-law had distant family. Last I heard, your brother was rotting in a cell, waiting to be drawn and quartered."
"They'll need some damn big horses for that job!" Manuel said, even as he paled. He might have his differences with Martin, but the man was still his brother, and while his bourgeoisie wife had always rubbed him the wrong way, he absolutely adored his nephews. "But better it not happen at all. Martin is a jackass, not a traitor, and his subordinates will never stand to see him executed like one. But still, they couldn't possibly delay it forever. We have to expose that snake!"
"Yes, we must!" Jeanette, who had been listening closely and discreetly for some time now, cut in with an expression of utter resolution. "I'm not sure what was in that potion, but I feel much renewed. I'm not exactly sure what's been wrong with my head, but it's as though I've finally found myself again," she said, and indeed looked like a new person now that she was healed and had gathered herself, "and that means its past time to put this matter to rest. I've only had second-hand accounts so far, but it seems to me that all the sources are trustworthy enough, and so I must assume that my uncle has betrayed us all. If he imagines I'll stand for that, he's about to learn otherwise."
Link and Manuel just stared at her for a long moment. They took a break to glance at one another for confirmation, and then back to her for another, closer look. Certainly stress did adverse things to people, but where the hell had she been hiding all that? Eventually, Link shrugged. For all he knew, all princesses were like that. Manuel was left blinking.
Although renowned for her beauty and grace, not much was said about the Sapphire of Ghent's level of acuity. If she had always been as smart as she was revealing herself to be, the fact that it was kept quiet made a certain sense. From what little he knew of politics, they were looking north to the Caredan Confederation for her suitor. They'd have a hard time luring any of the Caredan Dons into the royal family if she didn't seem to conform to the 'dumb and pretty' standard of those sweltering northern climes. Whatever the nature of the deception, they'd see the truth one way or another soon enough.
"Yes, well, the sooner we get going, the better," Link settled things by packing up most of his equipment. "Now, what am I forgetting?"
"Ahem!" The Princess was crouched over, using her still-impressive hair to help cover the sad, sad remnants of her long-obliterated nightgown. Her blush was prominent. With her sudden awareness of her state, perhaps linked to her sudden recovery from that fog of puerile complacency that had carried her so docilely along thus far, the men too cringed away in embarrassment.
"Err… I have a spare tunic, but it's with my horse on the outskirts of the swamp. Besides, it would fit you like a tent, Your Majesty." Suddenly, she was definitely a 'Your Majesty,' and not Jeanette, despite her youth and the circumstances. The change in everything from her bearing to her expression was nothing short of uncanny. Not even a minute past, she'd been putting out flirty vibes so clear that even Link noticed them. Now she looked ready to murder him with a cold stare if he didn't find some way to clothe her in a damn hurry.
"Then, sir, I expect you to improvise," there was no girl-crush in her tone now. Imperiousness was not something he was unused to dealing with, but the reversal of the situation left Link grimacing in confusion.
"I'll give you a choice between the shirt off my back, or my blanket," Link said, trying not to let his annoyance show in his tone. "I'm sure Manuel here would have offered as much if you'd mentioned something earlier."
"Indeed I would have, Your Majesty," Manuel cut in on his cue, and then fell silent himself. He was at fault entirely for not having clothed her at least to that extent much earlier. It hadn't occurred to him specifically because she hadn't said anything and he was enjoying it a little more than he'd like to admit.
"I'll take the blanket, it should serve until we can reach some form of civilization, or at least your horse." Dutifully, Link extracted his camp kit, which was wrapped in his blanket until it formed a tight bundle. He unbundled it, dumping the kit into his empty bomb bag, and then handed her the huge, coarse, waxen mass of his waterproof sleeping bundle. She accepted it with a sound of somewhat more calm, genuine gratitude, only to find that it was far, far larger than she'd imagined.
"My goddess, is this a horse blanket?" she asked, commenting on its size, and only then realizing what an insult that might be taken as. Link, finally brightening up again, took the opportunity for all it was worth.
"No, I'm afraid my horse blanket is with my horse too," he smirked, "but I did buy both from the same clothier. You certainly have a good eye, Your Majesty."
A sound came out from under the blanket that might have been an effete, girlish chuckle, but there was no way to tell for sure.
"Anyway, back to the issue of getting out of here. This lot," he poked a thumb at where the corpses were shrouded by bushes, "left their veraqs up on the cliff top. I'm thinking that'll get us out of here fastest."
"Hmph," Manuel guffawed with some insult or another in Ghentese, "you can't ride a veraq. They attack any non-troll they see! Everyone knows that."
"Oh come, I've stolen three so far today just searching for you two. 'Impossible' is not how I'd call it, but it's a little tricky. Come on, I'll show you how it's done."
"What in the world are you suggesting?"
"Well, I've found that all the fight goes right out of the ornery bastards after the very first time you boot 'em in the nose. Once you're on their backs, they don't care what species you are anymore. Princess, are you coming?"
A hand burst out of the concealing mass of blanket and held out a purple gem.
"You should tell her you're alright. She was terribly affected when we thought you dead."
Link eyed the stone for a moment before pocketing it. That was an interesting bit of news.
"Hey Seargeant, tell me something," Link continued, as they walked over toward where the troll patrol had left their veraqs. "I've been meaning to ask, I had the sort of extending claw-things when we were back under that pyramid..."
Reanalds Mansion, Hyrule Province
Zelda sat back in her fine desk chair while her eyes saw the room without seeing it. Staring off into space, she was not making the best of impressions on her Minister of Agriculture, a stuffy little holdover from the regency that was sufficiently anal-retentive to never feel the touch of corruption that had infected so much of that administration. The elderly man in his official robe huffed in indignation when he was finally satisfied with the sound of his own voice to such an extent that he could bother to notice her inattentive expression.
"I beg your pardon, Your Majesty," he croaked, "but I said—"
"You said the corn fields of the eastern provinces have been showing a declining production trend, although you used quite a few more words than that… or than were at all necessary, for that matter," Zelda berated him without paying any more real attention to him than before. "I'll have an order to the Royal Survey drafted by the end of the week, commissioning new lands to be earmarked for settlement and public plowing. In the meantime, I will encourage the grain magnates to begin rotating crops for greater soil endurance instead of glutting it all to maximize profits. Does that plan sound satisfactory?"
"Er…" the man was stunned. He'd have bet his life that she wasn't listening, but she just presented to him a perfect echo of his own thoughts on the matter, and a mite bit more generous a plan besides. Commissioning a new project from the Royal Survey and opening new land would put a real pinch on the already stretched treasury. "It's a brilliant strategy, Your Majesty," he admitted. Considering it was what he'd have done himself, he could say no less. Besides, he had no desire to join the Treasury Minister in his fate.
"Very well, if there is nothing else, you are dismissed." The curt coldness in her tone was a recent affection that all of her ministers and staff had noticed, even though it had only been there for a day. The Minister of Agriculture retreated, nursing his confusion and hurt pride, and the Princess was left in silence.
At length, she sent one of her always-present pages off to summon Auru and dismissed everyone else from her presence. Afflicted by the chill of unpleasantness that had been radiating from her all day long, no one raised an eyebrow at the unusual request. When she was alone, she took out the whispering stone and set it openly on her desk. She then sat and stared at it, as if she could make Link safe and well by force of pure will concentrated into the ancient charm. She became so absorbed in dozens of recursive loops of speculation, each more dire than the last, that she actually didn't notice when the elderly Foreign Minister slipped in and sat across from her.
"Ever it is the female vice to enjoy the sparkle of jewels," he announced himself after waiting in amused patience for her to notice him, and being disappointed. Zelda looked up, giving him a bleak stare that immediately chilled his amusement to a jarring startle. He felt his blood run cold as he saw into the swirling typhoon of intellect behind those eyes, an emotionless doppelganger to the amazing depth he'd found there before. That moment could have lasted an eternity, but at just that instant, the silence was shattered by a high-pitched clattering as the gem vibrated loudly against the hardwood desktop.
As gentle candle light pushed back the dusky darkness, both princess and minister glanced down at it in surprise, and now shock was equal on both sides. Zelda had expected no call, she hadn't even instructed her Ghentese counterparts on how to use the whispering stone. Auru had no reason to suspect a stone could suddenly burst into motion at all.
In an instant, burgeoning hope overcame any and all sense of caution, and Zelda touched it in the way that would signal the all-clear, despite her uninitiated audience. The voice that sprang forth immediately set her heart to a springing two-step beat, and the relief that rushed her body nearly sent her into a swoon. As it was, she could hardly afford such an affront to her dignity, and clamped down to a mere smile and sigh.
"So yeah," Link began, "I hear someone's been telling tales of my untimely demise. I gotta say, while it would have been a damn heroic way to go out, it's gonna take a little more than a deep hole to keep me down."
"That's incredibly relieving news," Zelda didn't try to hide her happiness, even as she suddenly remembered that Auru was sitting across from her with an expression of deeply perplexed bemusement. He couldn't help but recognize the voice, making this situation a near-total surprise, if not at all unpleasant. But still, she'd decided to consult him in the first place, if not having quite decided to inform him of all this, and this sort of settled the question. "But, just as a warning, I have Auru here with me Link. I decided to bring him in to help plan the Ghentese Civil War."
"The what?" Auru and Link echoed each other's surprise. Zelda waved away Auru's sudden burst of upset curiosity with a gesture that promised details at a later date. He sat back in his chair with his face creased in concern, but remained silent.
"Oh great, somehow, 'The Ghentese Civil War,' sounds like a whole lot of work for me." Link sounded resigned rather than genuinely upset, and Zelda found herself smirking. "That being the case, I suppose I'll have to fill you in on my heroic heroing later. Unless you're trying to hear that story now?"
"Another time, perhaps," Zelda declined, not without some regret. The tale of how he survived falling into a bottomless pit sounded like quite the ballad material. "Right now, I need to consult with Auru before I can recommend a new goal. Please stay on the line if at all possible."
In a truly prodigious feat of summarizing, Zelda briefed Auru on the Ghentese situation as it had developed over the past weeks. While he began his audience to this tale with a look of mild disbelief and then spent much more of it with a look of utter disbelief, he finally settled into a sort of wide-eyed shock were nothing more could phase him. Zelda's voice was even and her explanation was extremely concise, although Link did break in with one extra detail here and there when he felt one necessary. Soon, Auru was asking questions about facets of the situation that neither of the less experienced parties had ever even considered, drawing forth even more information than they'd realized they possessed. In the end, he had a look of bright-eyed excitement, a youthful glow returning to his tanned, wrinkled skin as he was swept up in the incredible air of adventure that permeated this entire gathering.
"So, now we have a dispossessed royal who is the unchallengeable heir to the throne, but has no military support to speak of, and the better part of the nobility believes her lost, dead, or cloistered in some far-away place." Auru held up one hand as if to palm that entire side of the conflict into a single category. "On the other is a pretender who holds no legitimacy beyond what he has snatched with his blood-soaked hands and the halberds of his immediately loyal vassals. His main advantage is the legitimacy of bloody force, and the fact that he is above suspicion of his intent to seize all power."
"Yep, that sounds about right. Damn, when you put it that way, this is going to be even more work than I was afraid of. Since that's the way it is, we'd damn well better get started." No where in Link's tone was any suggestion that he thought the task beyond them.
"Personally, I thought it best to present the princess at one of the border forts and attempt to gain some power to go along with her obvious legitimacy." Zelda presented the plan she'd barely been able to sketch out past her worry over Link. "If we attempt to take her straight to the capital, there's far too great a chance that Orlouge will manage to make her disappear somehow. Besides, that's where all of his personally loyal troops are quartered—there's far too great a chance that any order to have him detained from the young princess will be totally ignored."
"That certainly sounds like the best approach, at least based on the information we have." Auru was deep in thought. He'd had a lifetime's experience with the intrigues of the continent's many nations. What was happening in Ghent was still unprecedented, even to him. As far as he knew, regicide and pretendership on this scale had never even been contemplated in the past. Every now and then a second son will have a quarrel with the heir apparent, or cousins and nephews will disagree over who should inherit from an heirless king, and their factions would fight out the issue of legitimacy, but this was entirely different. The entire situation teetered on a balance of deception and misconception that could soon rip an entire nation to shreds in gore-soaked civil war. "Still… still… I am hesitant…" He bit his lip. "We are speaking of fomenting a civil war. Innocent lives will be lost. Is this really what we want?"
"War is the last thing anyone here wants," Zelda dismissed his oblique accusation as beneath her contempt. "In an ideal situation, Orlouge's deception will come to light, and the people will rally behind their rightful monarch. But still, even if it comes to war, we cannot allow ourselves to hesitate for a moment. Orlouge, for some reason or another, has his eyes set on Hyrule. Nothing that Ashei can do will prepare us for a stand-up war with Ghent anytime soon, and so we must stop their army before it can ever march. The most direct method is obviously to give them bigger issues to worry about on their own doorstep. Blood is blood, yes, but Ghentese blood is not Hylian blood."
Auru opened his mouth to protest, a vehement condemnation forming on his lips, but the expression of disgrace on Zelda's face made it die on his tongue. Even if she could not truly feel bad for making that cold-blooded decision, she could still be ashamed by the fact that she could find no better solution. It seemed that with all her intellect, some things were still beyond her. Auru took her for genuinely ashamed, unaware of the utterly ice-cold reasoning behind her contrition.
"I understand." He relented. "Very well, I will give some thought to the issue—"
"Uh guys, I'm gonna need you to excuse me for a minute. I've got company."
A Northbound Veraq Trail, The Southern Swamp
Link thrust his whispering stone back under his armor and gave a waving signal to Manuel, who rode some lengths behind him with the Princess on his back. Under the pretense of the darkening trail, he'd slowed their pace so he could talk with a voice undisturbed by galloping. The signal told his ally to pull back and hide, and he obeyed without concern. He was well aware that guarding the Princess was far more important than the dangerous job of riding point on their ragged convoy.
Up ahead, a fork in the road merged a trail from some western part of the swamp with his going north, and he'd heard the telltale grunting of a Veraq riding hard coming from that direction. Changing up his own pace, he managed to be only two lengths behind the other rider when he rounded the bend in a hard gallop. The troll rider spared a glance backward to check what the noise was, but in the dim light, one could hardly distinguish the features of whoever was on the other trollish mount. Everyone knew only trolls could ride the reptilian creatures, anyway, and the lone rider actually slowed up a little to ask for news from a stranger he doubtless assumed to be a fellow messenger.
Just for fun, Link pulled out one of the claw-shots he'd recovered from Manuel's care and fired it at the rider as the distance between them closed. The spring-loaded claw cracked the troll on the back of the head in a decidedly non-lethal blow that was still so hugely unexpected that it tumbled the rider right off his mount. Chuckling at the sight, Link fired the claw-shot again, this time catching the other veraq's reigns and slowing it to a stop remotely. He eventually pulled his own mount up against the one caught by his claw and stopped them both, hopping off to head back to the fallen troll.
One dead troll later, Manuel and Jeanette had caught up in response to Link's whistling call. They found him poring over piles and piles of beads that he'd evidently looted from a sack on the departed troll's person. The loose chains were quite charming black obsidian and other low-value, high-luster rocks, and Link couldn't understand while Manuel was suddenly cursing virulently and leaping off his mount. The beads were snatched from his hands and held up for closer examination, and Link had to fight to keep his blood cool as a sudden hot urge told him to stab Manuel in the throat, between the ribs for the heart, or across the gut in a disembowelment—whichever seemed most convenient.
"Sweet Goddess… this cannot be…" Manuel gave one last quick glance through the beads, then tossed the entire affair to the dirt. Link was suddenly more interested than he was angry, and both he and the princess waited silently for an explanation. "War beads." Manuel supplied at last. "There are still some on display at the mustering yards in Monseille. They say that the troll leadership hands them out as a signal to all the local chieftains that it is time to march to war."
"But… there have got to be two hundred lengths here!" The princess didn't quite get it yet, although Link did, and was now cursing right along with Manuel. "Why would they need a force that big to track us down? Unless…" She finally caught on, and her expression hardened. Whatever else, she was certainly quick on the uptake. "Unless we have much bigger problems to worry about than dealing with traitors or the rightful line of succession."
"We need to warn the southern forts!" Manuel snapped, climbing onto the Veraq only after giving it a no-nonsense threat with the butt of a troll scout dagger he'd bummed off of Link.
"Tell me something I don't know!" Link complained, as he dashed up the road to collect his Veraq again. Rushing through his mind was the need to recontact Zelda and Auru. He had a feeling they'd agree that this was a far more tolerable 'distraction' for the Ghentese army than a mere civil war.
Second Full Revision Notes
Sweet mercy this chapter needed a crapload of work. In my original opening note, I commented that it would be full of errors because I hadn't bothered editing it before posting it. Well, I literally can't believe how true that comment was. Do you know I actually had a massive, I mean truly egregious continuity error in this chapter? To be specific, Link opened the chapter by making flagrant use of the claw-shots that he lost in chapter 9—the ones he had to have lost to not save himself from falling into the pit. Holy crap, that's really bad! I went back and checked the reviews, and at least one person actually pointed that out to me. Only now do I get around to fixing it. Other than that, the dialect I gave to the trolls was and still remains one of my greatest regrets about this story. It's bad. I mean just terrible. I want to claw my eyes out when I read it. Nothing I seem to do makes it any better, but I haven't the heart to ret-con it out completely, so it stands now in a modified, but still terrible format. I swear, I'm never doing another dialect without some kind of guide or auto-translate software or something.