The Unsung

Washerwomen don't get enough credit. They are the unsung heroes that make it possible for the rest of us to tread the Realms in search of glory and riches. They set us apart from the very xvarts and gibberlings we vanquish in the process. I dedicate this scroll to these indispensable, modest woker-bees. May your wrinkled strong hands forever beat, soap and wring out our blood-soaked tunics and breeches. This will make sense later, I promise.

I bring your attention now back to myself, of course. If you've paid any attention at all, you are well aware that along with the healthy dose of filial inadequacy I was graced with more schooling in wilderness survival than I cared for. Yet I've always found it a hard going following Elanee through the forest. The day we made for the Maiden Glade, branches seem to part for Elanee only to slap our faces with an unmistakable smugness. Her small foot did not leave a track on the mossy floor, but Khelgar sank to his knees. Mosquitoes politely flicked their wings at the druid then went to satisfy their thirst from Neeshka. I stabbed my toes on a dozen of rocks that scraped mud from Elanee's boots.

"Here, demon girl, take this," Khelgar muttered offering Neeshka a huge fern leaf. She fanned herself and actually smiled at the dwarf: "Next time we get in a thicket, take the axe to the stupid trees, will ya?" Khelgar shrugged: "The druid's not going like it. A pity that." Neeshka made a sad face: "A terrible pity."

I retied my hair , pulled apart by a particularly playful pine and rubbed my face in a hopeless effort to scrape away some of the mud and sweat. Neeshka rolled her eyes: "You're just movin' it around, Father." Loud howls broke the stifling silence of the late afternoon, and I deemed it an adequate response to her remark. Credit where credit is due, the critters expressed my feelings precisely and much better than I would have done.

"Ain't the wolves supposed to be out at night or something?" Neeshka asked, crudely ignoring my emotional state. "No." Elanee stepped out of what looked like a perfectly featureless shrubbery, "Wolves are most active at dawn and dusk, but they will hunt at other times if they are desperately hungry." "Oh, great to know," Neeshka said, "a bunch of ravenous wolves on our heels is just peachy." "Those are not ordinary conversations among the pack. Something dark and twisted and sinister pushes the animals," Elanee continued, her face apprehensive. "Oh, look, it gets better and better!" Neeshka exclaimed. "We should have stayed on the road," Kehelgar grunted, "easier to kill the bastards." My exact sentiment. If the trend continued, I would not need to open my mouth at all.

However, as a spiritual leader of the party, I had to break the dark spell that was descending upon my companions: "A couple of mangy wolves, how bad can it be?"

"Well, if we go with the mosquitoes as a measure of the dark and twisted, we'll have to fight for dear life, " Neeshka said, "didn't I tell you, those bug weren't natural?"

Elanee lifted her palm in a calming gesture, lifted her face up and howled in a questioning tone (even druids can be creepy at times). The responding howls came loud, angry and mocking.

"En garde!" Elanee screamed. Five enormous wolves burst out of the underbrush, their teeth bared and eyes glowing with rage. My spear ripped through the biggest beast's throat – one of the luckiest hits of my life, no doubt. Elanee chanted forcefully by my side, and two of the pack wailed and veered away from her, diving back into the forest.

I pulled my spear free and hefted it at the fourth wolf. It did not stop. A wild hatred was driving it up a tree. Its claws ripped the bark in chunks, its jaws dripped saliva, and its yellow eyes were intent on his prey. Neeshka squatted on the lower branch, losing arrows. Two, three… the beast finally turned its head, and snapped at one, than another, spanned in a tight circle… and dropped dead. Neeshka wiped her brow, and took another aim. No need. Khalgar's handywork did away with the last beast. We regrouped around Neeshka's tree, scanning the blood-splattered forest for more predators.

"They are gone," Elanee said after sniffing the air attentively. "For now. Let's proceed, but we must avoid the further killing. These animals do not know what they are doing."

"Are you MAD? Those ain't puppies tinklin' on the carpet!" Neeshka exclaimed from her perch."

"If we don't kill them, they'll kill us," Khelgar nodded.

"I can confuse them for long enough for us to sneak by," Elanee objected.

"Normally, I don't have problems with the sneakin' part," Neeshka argued, "but wouldn't that mean we have a bunch of wolves stalking us, once they're out of the stupor?"

"I don't know," Elanee frowned, "they might be driven to fighting amongst themselves as well as attacking the intruders… but we must spare as much as we can before we cleans the grove of this evil."

Arguing in the middle of the wolf-infested forest was bringing us no closer to the civilization. "We'll do what we can, to spare the critters," I told Elanee. "BUT, if it doesn't work, we'll do what we have to do," I addressed that to the newly best-friended Neeshka and Khlegar. "Let's push on. I have no desire to camp here." Neeshka shuddered and leaped out of the tree.

We walked warily, a tree and a bush at a time, and I had to concede that the animal life was acting unusually aggressive. Ants joined the mosquitoes that clouded Neeshka. A songbird plunged from the tree at Khelgar with what I could only describe as a war cry (he swatted it as he would a fly). A snake abandoned its chase after a rabbit to menace us. Even the formerly-snake-chased rabbit ineffectually flailed at us (and was stored for supper in Khelgar's pack for his troubles). Faced with such unilateral and inexplicable hostility, we fell silent and wary. The heat of the afternoon was becoming ever more oppressive, and I started to feel that we'd never leave the accursed forest.

I was almost relieved to hear him roar.

He was a huge bear, easily twice as tall as I was, rippling with muscle and rage.

"Kaleil!" Elanee shouted over the beast's deafening rumble.

"A pet of yours?" Neeshka interjected icily.

"No! A druid! Kaleil!"

The bear gave her a tiniest of glances and took a swipe at me with a paw the size of my head, and claws twice as long, if my memory serves me right. I dodged and trust a spear in the great shaggy mass. But, as poetic justice would have it, this time it was the foe that had the best hit of his life. I heard the boiled leather of my armor rip, the steel, and then with an unerring certainty the cruel claws sank in my stomach under the rib cage. For the first time in my life I felt the final horrible pain of a mortal wound. Tossed aside as a useless rag doll, I screamed or tried to scream, and red froth flooded my mouth, my eyes, the world. The wound burned beyond any comprehension and I saw a blue vial fly over my head, then, finally, mercifully, I blacked out.

I willed my eyes to open up. It was dark, and, finally, very cool. Fire crackled merrily. It was very confusing. Where was Daeghun?

"Father?" An Elven face swam into view. A woman's face. A wrong face. Before I could place her, she pinched my nose, hard, and poured something warm and bitter down my mouth that gaped for a breath. I swallowed some, coughed out the rest.

"Elanee?" I've asked. "Kaleil?"

"He's free from his madness," she said gravely. I took it that the bear that nearly finished me was dead. Poetic justice, yes? I closed my eyes and searched for my Lord. "You are too weak." Elanee argued. "Do you have anything to offer but the…" I sniffed the air- "…the willow-tree bark?" "No," she said, "not yet." I bit my lip and tried to think beyond pain and weariness. The big issues. The universal justice… the… Finally, I walked away from the mundane, and like the tiniest sliver of the moon, my Faith illuminated me. There, with the willow-tree bark and a prayer, I was hale. Regret, almost as painful as the ripped flesh came over me for a moment that I did not have it in me back when Amie fell to the ground.

"Your Father wouldn't have approved. You've risked too much to heal yourself," Elanee shook her head at me.

"It worked, and my Father…" I frowned. "How can you possibly know anything about my Father?"

"I have seen him," Elanee responded evenly. "You have caught my interest, so I gleaned Daeghun as well a few times."

"You spied on me?!" I asked incredulously. "Back in the West Harbor?"

"You are unusual," the druid said without as much as a shade of embarrassment.

I sat up, and pulled the blankets tighter around myself, finally noting that I was stark naked. My clothes were drying over the fire, giving away steam. My body felt very clean and herby. I tried to suppress my anger, but I couldn't.

"It figures," I muttered with spite, "that you had no compulsion to undress me, since we are so familiar."

"I had to cleanse and dress the wound," Elanee sighed in exasperation. "It did not occur to me that you would choose death for the sake of modesty. You did not seem the type to hide your assets from the women's eyes."

"You spied one me," I repeated stubbornly, "don't think that I would forget that just because you did my laundry."

"That was petty, Lan Farlong," Elanee pursed her lips.

"Hey! She wouldn't dirty her lily-whites with anything so mundane!" chirped in a familiar voice. Neeshka. I detected more than a hint of glee.

"I assure you I had no intention to take credit for washing your breeches," Elanee said coldly, "just for keeping you alive. Your Father has already lost much. He does not deserve another gravesite to visit for your foolhardiness."

I looked at the elf's clenched jaw (more and more chiseled by the moment), the golden sadness of her eyes, and the understanding dawned. I could not believe how thick I was. "I am sorry," was all I said, "I am sorry, I did not know." The elf nodded her acceptance: "You better rest, Lan Farlong."

Neeshka exhaled loudly, perpetually frustrated. I turned to her, wishing to explain what has just passed between Elanee and myself, but I could not very well go about spilling other people's secrets to the world.

Instead, I touched her shoulder and told her exactly what I wrote in the beginning of this chapter for you, my perceptive Reader. Didn't I tell you that it would all make sense in the end?

And, yes, it made her laugh.