| abstract
| - Three days later a group of four wizards climbed onto the huge western tower of Castle Chairn, turned into ravens and started to fly west. After several arduous "birdy" days the group crossed the Kalsedorian Strete and followed the course of the river Ydanos for five days. Then they passed the woody and bushy Beragea Wilderness. Two days later prairies and smooth meadows replaced the woods. In the late afternoon Brox spotted a party of riders on the ground. "Oh no!" he cried, "da furies aw still in Azidaka!" "The furies, you say?" Gigantus-raven cried. "And they are really naked? Uhm, for a better look I need to get closer!" He sheered out of the line and approached to the group of riders. "Get back!" Kip-raven cried. "This is not our business!" "Come on, just a little loop way! Don't be no killjoy!" Gigantus-raven answered, but then he cried gruesomely "Ahh...!" Instantly Brox catched that Gigantus-raven was pierced by an arrow before his shape changed to the human form and he fell undamped to earth. After two seconds his shape changed again - he disappeared. "Fortunately Gigantus knows the spider spell," Mordimer-raven remarked. "So he'll survive the fall." Brox-raven approached to Kip-raven and crowed: "He got what he disawved. We should go fawth now." But the wizard of the House of Fox denied. "No way. We must help him. If we maroon him, we become suspicious." He gathered a landing place not too far away, mocked a turn of the route, flew in a great circle and landed on a small, grassy hill. Then they changed to the human shape. Kip tried to explain the next steps to be done, when he heard approaching horses. "Damnation!" he railed. "Take defensive position!" Seconds later they faced the group of raiding, screeching, axe-swinging warrioresses. "Fireballs!" commanded Kip Adar. Three missiles flashed against the attackers: A big, bright one from Mordimer, a smaller one from Kip and Brox' fireball can hardly be mentioned. But what was that? When they hit their opponents, they just crepitated. An axe reeled through the air and splitted Mordimers staff. With a cry of pain he fell to the earth, the two parts of his staff landed in front of him. "See?" Brox shouted. "Aw magic has no effect on dem!" "Yes." Kip agreed. "This is no fun. We must surrender. Get down!" They both buckled to the ground and streched their arms apart as a gesture of resignation. Brox, still laying low in the grass saw from the corner of his eye an older woman on a horse looking down on them and speaking some content words to her younger comrades. Then she gave an advice in the unknown language of the Syawnee, and one warrioress got down from her horse and took Brox' and Kip's staff. Finally she picked up the two parts of Mordimer's staff. By doing so she noticed that Mordimer wallowed in pain. She gave the two intact staffs to one of her fellows and explored the remaining parts. She sticked them together at it's fracture. Instantly Mordimer sighed with a tone of relief. Then she moved them apart again, and Mordimer cried from a maddening pain. Apparently this warrioress felt no empathy but a weird kind of fun, because she laughed at her campainers and repeated this cruel experiment seveal times. Finally Brox could not stand it any more. He sit up and spoke in Azidakian language: "Don't you see that you are torturing him to death?" The warrioresses turned to him. The older woman who was in command wondered. "What is that?" she asked in a broken Azidakan, "Are there still wizards in this country?" "No. We are coming from the East and wer'e out on business to visit some friends in Dor." Brox answered. "Are there wizards in Dor?" the woman asked suprisedly. Brox had no clue. But he replied: "Pretty mighty ones, and they are well worth a visit from far away. But you have shot one of us although we didn't do something to you!" "This is our country. Everything what we find here is ours and we do with it whatever we like. Besides, your feathered friend tried to attack us." "No - " Brox shouted, but the woman interrupted him: "So I think you deserve no protection. Guess I'll better destroy these magic staffs. Dangerous playthings, by the way!" "No!" cried Brox. "Not the staffs!" Kip understood instantly and began to haul. "Not the staffs!" he cried in Carnivoran language. And, hoping that no one of the enemies was able to understand, he continued hauwling by saying "Tell them that we must die when the staffs are destroyed. So she will lose her interrogation subjects." "Please leave the staffs intact!" Brox begged in Azidakan language. "Our lives are connected with them and if they become destroyed we must die!" The woman-in-command became upset: "Uh, what a rotten kind of magic you have! Altering reality, tsts.... and delivering your precious lifes to bewitched artifacts. This kind of perversion becomes always revealed by our chthonic enchantments. With my spiritual eye I could see you - not as ravens but as a swarm of red-clothed sorcerors in the sky. Really, I like to finish your pathetic existence right now, but you may be of interest for our Magistra who besieges Elliel. Perhaps she knows a better disposal for you." The commander instructed her warrioress to patch up Mordimers staff. So he was able to walk on his own feet. Guarded by the Syawnee Kip, Brox and Mordimer headed as prisoners to an unknown destination. After a while they found Gigantus, being guarded by other women. The infringement by the arrow was annealed already, but he was bound and the women held his staff. So the four sorcerors got united in a punky way. The march continued until they arrived at a destroyed grange. The women guided them to the ruins of a cowshed and forced them to sit down on the ground. They fixed a strong hemp rope at a metal ring on the wall and tied them around their necks so that every wrong movement would tighten up the bondage and squeese the breath out of them. Then the furies enchained the sorceror's hands with loose hemp breds and saluted their own knotwork. "Don' move, cawmpanions!" Brox murmured superfluously. "Very clever!" Kip replied. "Any other questions, besides?" "Right," Brox rejoined. "What's abawt dees staffs? Must we weally die when dey get dastwoyed? Does a sawceror's life depend on it?" "Yours not." Mordimer answered. "You're a freshman. But the longer you have the staff and the longer you use it, it will become the hub of your life." "Didn't you know that an owner of a staff can live forever?" Gigantus asked. Involuntarily Brox shook his head but soon the others cried "Hey! You're strangeling us!" The fury guards were amused by the doltish behavior of their prisoners. "And I thought it would be fun to admire a flock of naked girls in the wild." blustered Gigantus. "Now I am afraid that I will not be able to lay down a chick any more. Causes nightmares ..." The warrioresses had their fun with the poorness of their enemies. Finally one of them got an idea. She obtained a bucket full of water and put it in front of the captives. The women grinned and made encouraging gestures of drinking. However, every try to bend the head for drinking would have been ended in a strangulation. "Oh no, I am thirsdy indeed!" sought Gigantus. "Almost naked, hot blooded waitresses seve me lots of fresh water, and I am popping off!"
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)