The 20th Day of Winter
The children huddled together to stave off the blistering cold. While some of the frailer, weaker children like Topah enjoyed the warmth of being in the interior of the group, the bigger boys, like Curry and Micki, and the Protector stayed on the outside to shield the interior from the windchill. Through the cold and cloudy days and the freezing nights, the Bokoblins marched four by four along the narrow, familiar path.
At first, the route was recognizable. The marching line escorted the children through a pathway made for the Kokiri to traverse safely from their village to the Deku's. It was also the only path Father allowed the children to traverse when venturing outside the village. Though the foliage was dense along the edges of the road, the children knew these fruits and greens, growing abundantly in between the trees, were safe for picking. The road stretched on through the thick canopy until it reached Deko-Ra village, the only known Deku settlement to the Kokiri.
Pulling the cage on wheels, the giant Bulblin, twice the height of its kin, trudged forward mindlessly and left a foul smell that never left a child's nose. Directly behind the children was the King Bulblin, or so they assumed based on three distinctions: his spear length horns were the longest of the Bulblins, his red pupils closely watched them, and his massive bullos was massive, twice as large as any one that his subordinates rode. Always giving the orders, and never the other way around, the King only spoke in his gruntish, native tongue to his heavily armed retainers who then issued the King's orders to the rank-and-file using the mutually known Deku tongue.
"Make camp!" The order would be shouted many times down the marching line before each Blin separated from the marching line to mark a space to sleep for the night. In several minutes, spots of fire began to take sprout throughout the thick woods, a major infraction of Father's sacred rule to never start a fire outside the village, and soon the entire blin army turned the entire forest floor into a glowing sea of light. While the Blins warmed themselves haphazardly with their fires, the children took turns rotating those on the outside with those who had warmed themselves by being in the center of the group.
Of the accommodations given to the Kokiri, between a giant cage for them to sleep in, a single chamberpot to share, a vat to collect rainwater, and an endless supply of meat, the food was the hardest part to adjust to.
On Topah's first day since being thrown in the prison, a hunting party presented to the King hundreds of keese, five goats, three deer, and a fat wild boar. Seeing the dead forest creatures tied and then gutted open caused a great number of children to cry. They were in no shape to eat the first meal the Blins served to the Kokiri captives, which was leftover meat from the ribs, something they had never seen before in a society that only foraged vegetables, herbs, and fruits. When they all smelled roasted flesh for the first time, many of them cried even harder, and the others wretched. Not a single child even dared to go near the meat, so a dark red Bokoblin snatched the food away for himself. The day after, another platter of the King's leftover meat scraps and bones was left before them, and again, no one dared go near the food.
On the third day, one of the Bulblin commanders threw a platter of a fresh cut of meat. Though each child initially felt sick from the smell, the aroma eventually permeated its way into some of the children's hunger, which was causing the meat to smell better and better. The first to approach the foul meat was Merry, a sister who had a weak constitution even when she was healthy and was known for her voracious appetite at all the public feasts.
Protests erupted from her friends, "No don't, Merry! That came from the deer!" "That's my favorite animal!" "You're going to eat one of our friends!"
"ENOUGH!" screamed the Protector over everyone, "We need to survive, so we need to eat! Merry," her expression melted into understanding, "go on ahead. Take a bite for all of us and let us know how it tastes."
Merry reluctantly nodded and then crawled to the browned flesh. She picked up a piece of meat with a bone shoved through and then took a bite. Upon tasting the meat, however, she spat out the chunk of food with disgust.
This had also caught the attention of the King Bulblin, who roared furiously at his men when Merry forcefully coughed out his offering. His voice thundered so loudly that it scattered his Bulblin soldiers and Bokoblin minions in all directions for their lives. They panicked in their own language, but when they settled, they began to complain across species using Deku about wetting themselves.
Finally, a Bokoblin with red, flabby skin and cheeks that drooped beneath his chin approached the children, "Please tell, what do your people eat?" Though he looked frail on the outside, the wooden beaded necklace and his long walking stick with a Blin skull stuck through gave him a venerable silence as all Blins watched the old man converse with the Kokiri.
The Protector, who had up until then done her best to look as strong as the first day, responded fiercely, "My siblings do NOT eat the flesh of the murdered!"
The frail elder kept his poise, "The question was not what do you not eat, the question was what DO you eat?"
"We are a peaceful people who live off the fruits, the seeds, and the greens of the forest!"
The elder nodded and translated the message to the Bulblin King, who then roared new orders to one of his personal guards, a shorter Bulblin wearing a fearsome pauldron with two spearheads attached, who then broke off with his own retinue of Bokoblin riders.
However, the first several attempts were not successful. Out of the dozens of different, colorful flora presented before the children, about a third of them were actually animal parts, another third were known, poisonous plants, and the majority of the rest were parts of unidentified foliage. That left only a child's handful of raw Deku flowers for some of them to chew on. The proportion of edible foods increased day by day, though it took the Blins several days before the edible flora finally outnumbered the monster limbs, and even then there was not enough to go around. However, It was not long before one of the children, a runt named Wikly, decided to nibble on one of the thin keese wings, and other children, including Topah, soon followed his example. He found that though he was not consuming anything, the juices helped satiate his appetite.
By the end of a tendo of marching, none of the children had any clue as to where they were. Some time ago, the Blins had marched off the path and into the deep thick of the Lost Woods. Though the thick canopy allowed no light through, the marching line had more than enough torches to keep the darkness and the monsters of the forest away. How did they manage to travel all the way through the woods without getting lost? Topah wondered.
Though morale was at an all time low for the children, that did not stop the Protector from cheering up her brothers and sisters. "See that one?" she whispered to a giggling Curry, "His head looks like a bird took a dung right on top o' his shiny bald spot." The big boy rolled over laughing, while the Bokoblins looked at him confused. The Protector then tapped the shoulder of Berrywinkle, the shorter girl who liked to play in the village playground, "That one looks like a Deku Baba with his thin arms and his big, fat, blue head." Then Berrywinkle started to giggle uncontrollably and passed on that observation to the next brother and sister, who then caught on to the girl's contagious laughter.
Making fun of their captors was how the children spent most of their time. While surviving took priority, keeping up spirits became equally as important. At least to Topah, snickering about the stupidity of the Blins slightly restored his sense of control over his grim reality. Prodding and probing the rank-and-file members with taunts and spit, the Kokiri immediately learned that the none of the Blins were allowed to retaliate. The one Bokoblin who let his speartip get a hair's width too close to the cage bars set an example for anyone who dared retaliate. However, the gruesome beheading left the children crying and silent once more.
Even worse, the creatures of the night made themselves present to hunt some easy, unsuspecting Blins. Every night Topah would hear at least two screams before the sun rose, and then the day after, gossip was filled who died when and where. However, even the reports of desertion amongst the King's ranks did little to draw his attention. He was so focused on reaching the end goal that he had ignored every warning of his advisors. "March on!" the King's retainers translated the King's command to their own retinues.
Much of their time traveling through the woods was done with the chatter of the Bokoblins' native language surrounding the cage. The grunts spoke more sharply and quickly than their enormous Bulblin counterparts did. Though there were many Bokoblins almost as tall as a Bulblin, they did not possess its muscular build, singular, grayish blue skin color across its species, or the thick bones sprouting from the sides of their heads. The difference in anatomy between species was enough to justify one's authority over another.
The highest authorities all had one thing in common, a bullos upon which to flaunt their status. Upright alone, the top of a bullos's head reached shoulder height to a full grown Bulblin, and their massive tusk on each side of its piggish snout was the length of a sword blade. The King, the largest of his tribe, had also fittingly chose the largest Bullbos of its breed to ride around, and wherever he went, his horde of retainers followed him diligently.
Most of the time it was to ride up and down along the marching line to gather reports from his immediate inferiors, but after a fortnight of marching, something was different. When the marching line halted to a dead stop, the King rode ahead to the front of the line and disappeared deep into the path ahead of him. The children huddled close to one another, awaiting their fate. Even the sudden order that cried out routinely every single day just before sunset, "Make caaamp!" could not settle their nerves.
When the King returned, he ordered the enormous Bulblin grunt to pull the cart down the path, which had been cleared for a straight walk through, and then rode at the pace at which his mute, gigantic grunt could pull a cart full of Kokiri, who awaited their fate in total silence. Topah had no idea exactly how long the marching line was, but it must have taken the whole night for the children to cross the whole army camp site. Seeing the sheer number of campfires spread out across the whole forest floor made him wonder just how many Bokoblins were in the army. There could easily have been thousands, if not more. There was no way the Kokiri could have defended against this many.
Once the sun began to peek over the horizon, the morning's first light shined its first rays upon the wooden embattlements encircling an enormous section of the forest. Each wooden stake was uniformly shaped, sized, and sharpened at the tip, and four tall watchtowers, as far as Topah could count from his point of view, were perched above the wall. After turning around a bend in the forest, the children saw the wooden gate toward which the King was leading them.
Though the city walls were designed to keep any Blin from entering, the drawbridge lay open over the moat encircling the battlements, welcoming the King and his captives. On one side of the drawbridge were tents made of animal skins surrounding crudely made fires. On the other side of the drawbridge was a crowd of Deku, dressed in all sorts of colorful, floral dresses, come to have a peek at the newcomers. Inside the walls, the Deku had built wooden homes with well thatched roofs, and they were organized neatly into blocks with aged lumber streets connecting the homes and shops of the unknown city.
Shortly after the Kokiri had passed through the gate, the number of curious bystanders dropped. Once that crowd had thinned down to several young Deku children, their parents came to scoop them up. The rest of the pedestrians that had to make way for the massive cage of prisoners glared at the children with dirty looks in their beady, orange eyes. Though the Deku shared a signature, wooden flesh and a permanent gape for a mouth, their diversity flourished in their variety in clothing, many of which were sewn outside the forest, and the colorful flowers atop their heads. Once the King turned around a corner, a great marketplace square lay in front of them, and beyond that was the great palace that was going to receive them.
But the Kokiri never reached that far. Just as the heavy cage boarded the bridgeway connected to the wooden plaza suspended over a lake, a Deku leader, sitting atop a litter carried by four reptilian savages from the outskirts of the forest and surrounded by a retinue of his own guard of Deku spearmen, approached the King Bulblin and his dozen of generals from the opposite side of the plaza.
The first difference Topah noticed between the Deku and the Blins was the level of weaponry. While the Bulblin King's personal guards equipped themselves with thick tree trunks and sharpened sticks, the Deku leader's spearmen had pikes with metal spear tips and metal shields to protect them. To compensate for their smaller frames, the Deku soldiers wore padded armor and organized in tight ranks and files. Though Topah had never known the Deku for being warrior-like, these guards nevertheless looked like they were serious about hurting people.
Once both parties met at the center, the Deku litter bearers lowered the leader, who turned out to be much shorter than his peers and his bodyguards, so he could welcome the King with open arms. He stepped down from his miniature, mobile fortress wearing a cape lined with furs, whose size was clearly meant for a Hylian. "Welcome!" greeted the short Deku with the natural squeak needed to speak the language fluently.
The Bokoblin elder who acted as a translator for the Kokiri accompanied the Bulblin King and helped interpret the greeting. "The King would like to see the weapons you promised," responded the elder.
"Ha!" it was hard to tell if the leader was genuinely amused or being sarcastic, "I like how you skip straight to the heart of the matter!" The Deku leader signaled for one of his men to bring forth a wagon, pulled by two Lizalfos and full of steel weapons: maces, flails, spears, and all shapes and sizes of swords. There were so many that when the wagon entered the plaza, the combined weight of the mound of steel caused the entire platform to shake violently non stop. Many standing on foot, including the elder and several Deku guardsmen, were knocked off balance until the wagon came to a complete stop.
The Bulblin King rode around the wagon to inspect the weapons, and when he picked up a greatsword to test its weight and balance, a satisfied and evil grin crept on his lips. He lifted his massive sword into the air with one hand and roared a command to the subordinate pulling the cage, who grunted in response and released the handle to take hold of the wagon full of weapons. The two Lizalfos who pulled the wagon earlier then switched spots with the Bulblin giant and began dragging the children towards the Deku.
However, instead of taking them straight towards the palace, the Deku directed their Lizalfo servants towards the right, "Take them to the warehouse!" As the children passed by the wagon of weapons, Topah overheard the Deku leader complain to the King, "Wait a moment! Are you trying to cheat me?"
The King grunted at the elder's translation and asked the Deku leader, "The King would like to know if there was a problem."
"I thought there was more of them! I was told there would be at least three hundred! There's barely over a hundred of them!" protested the leader jumping in fury.
"The King says they rounded up all the eemteebah that were unable to reach the safety of the great tree."
"It's just a tree! Why weren't your forces able to best a single tree in the forest?"
When the elder translated the message, the King roared furiously, "The King invites you to waste your forces against the great tree in his stead then."
The Deku leader scoffed, "How dare you! We had an agreement! One weapon per eemteebah! I brought three hundred because you promised me three hundred!"
This did not make the King any happier. He roared again, but this time, he expressed his rage by swinging his new sword at the spears of the guardsmen, cleaving the tips off with one mighty swing. His aggressive gesture alarmed the rest of the guardsmen, who rallied around the leader to his defense. The King and his mighty Bullos backed off from the armed Deku and retreated into his own, personal detail of mounted guards, and that was the last time Topah ever saw the Bulblin King.
The Lizalfos continued pulling the cage through the narrow wooden streets and followed the city guards. The dozen or so guards accompanying them wore leafy foliage over wooden plates for protection. Their helmets allowed the flower on their heads a space for it to grow. However, even with all that armor on, their short stature and round eyes could not make their captors look intimidating. They marched in twos led by a guard with a thicker helmet, who ultimately led them to a warehouse, a three story log structure built around a massive tree. Upon entering the building, Topah had never seen an interior so big holding so many people held in captivity. Layers upon levels of Bokoblins, Lizalfos, Hylians, and even a Bulblin were either chained to the walls or thrown in wooden cages. The sound of wailing and despair never left Topah's ears. Upon seeing the conditions of his new home, he immediately counted his blessing being stuck in one cage with all his siblings.
Many smaller cages were awaiting the Kokiri, and as they were unloaded, they were counted and separated into groups. Only the Protector was singled out. "Careful with that one! She slew a Bulblin captain all by herself," cautioned the head of the city guard to the two Deku guards grabbing her by the wrist. That was a poor decision on their part, for neither one of them was ready to deal with her explosive strength. With a well placed foot, the Protector kicked one of the the guards right in his gaping, round snot, and then she used her free hand to throw the other guard and pin him to the ground. With two quick punches from her left hand, the Deku was out.
When the rest of the guards joined to restrain the Protector, they still were no match for her strength, and it took at least ten Deku to hold the girl down. Even then, she did not calm down until a guard dipped a metal dagger into a bowl of a clear liquid and then scratched her ever so lightly with it. "Protector!" cried every child in vain. Shortly after, the Protector stopped resisting, and when she was lifted onto her feet, her half dazed eyes seemed unaware of the two guards escorting her to her own, separate cage where she lay down and slept soundly.
Stored away in a dark corner alongside many other captured Lizalfos, Topah huddled quietly and closely with the twenty six boys in his group as the monstrous captives like the Blins wailed and cried all through the night. One Deku guard stood outside each cage equipped with a staff. Even worse than the sight was the smell. Each cage only had a small opening in the corner for the captives to dispose of any wastes, though what stung his nose so much was not the smell of bodily fluids, but of death. Somewhere in this gigantic room, someone had been dead for quite some time.
Earlier, the Deku and the Blins referred to the children as "eemteebah", and unknown definition of the word drove Topah's curiosity mad, until he finally asked the guard outside his cage, "Excuse me, what does the word 'eemteebah' mean?"
This particular Deku guard had aged quite some time by the look of the splinters on the underside of his mouth. "In your language," with a low pitch, he spoke in accented Hylian, "I believe that word means, 'slave'." Topah had no idea what the word "slave" meant, but he was about to.