Beneath tattered boards of the once useful viaduct squatted a grudgingly old and despicably untrustworthy ogre. People of the village had once named this discouraging villain Or. He was vaguely human like in appearance only quite larger than any man. Or's repellent brown fur became scarred from fights with dogs, bears, and from sleeping on the ground. It gave off a vile odder. Forkbeard's horses had become repulsed by the smell of danger emitted by Or and a sense of precariousness as they neared the bridge.
Or set, his large, ugly, teeth curled into a bestial snarl. As he listened, with canine hearing, the men and horses approached him. He waited for the caravan to pass over him. A sensitive conference told him the last animal in that procession was the weakest. From a sequestered position, after they had passed over him, all except the last animal, beneath the crossway, he scrambled up the sloping side of the ravine, and jumped eruptively on the back of that final horse's neck. Monstrous and abominable in his vindication, Or dragged the weak old horse rapidly into the dirty moat. The ogre lay open the nag's throat with his sharp teeth before Landregal could call out to, Utanba, the man who rode directly in front of him.
"Stop!" Landregal yelled excitedly to the trio of men who rode cautiously in front of him. "Something has gotten one of our horses!"
Forkbeard rode expectantly to the edge of the small stream and looked with circumspect vigilance into the shallow gully. Or growled back at the men as he dragged Landregal's harmless horse under the bridge. The beseeching and dilapidated animal had sighed a last condescending breath before acqui-escing in the brutal attack.
"Ride down the other side of the bridge into the gorge," Forkbeard or-dered Chin Le. "Be careful not to get too near the giant with your horse."
Very large compared to a man, ogres weighed as much as a thousand pounds. They were hard to kill with an arrow and dangerous to attack with one's sword. Slovenly, yet intelligent, ogres were troublesome at seeing in the daytime. They were more efficient hunters at night and sometimes traveled in small groups or clans. Truly, the only efficient way to capture an ogre, such as Or, was in daylight with a pack of well-trained dogs.
Or glowered back at the men and stood threateningly over his kill. Forkbeard rushed at Or with his horse then backed off as the huge ogre menacingly charged his alert steed. To no avail, the two men taunted the devious giant. One man charged the ogre while the other drew him away from the bridge with his horse. Forkbeard sent several of his metal tipped shafts into a hulking bulwark of the huge beast's side. His well-aimed ar-rows did little except to infuriate the formidable monster. It was plain they were to surrender their elk, along with one of the horses, to the carnivo-rous demon.
As he scowled with iniquitous purpose, the ogre snarled at them in a grisly and forbidding grumble. "Get away now, don't bother Or," the ogre threatened in a portending growl. "Get away from my bridge or I will kill you and eat your horses."
As the two men scrambled out of the river bed, wet from the stream's shallow water, Forkbeard angrily cursed at Or. "Burn the bridge down," he contended. "At least we'll leave the monster without his hiding place."
Utanba Tu placed a dry kindling at one side of the overpass and waited patiently for spark from his flint to ignite the wooden bridge. He had never seen an ogre before and was hesitantly cautious. They rode away from the span of smoking timbers angry over the loss of their food and pack animal. Landregal was disheartened. He feared, with Archean dread, that the hairy demon would pursue them. He glanced periodically over his shoulder to watch for its menacing approach. Flaming wooden supports smoldered behind them. In the demolished city he found rope, shoes, and a clean robe. Landregal fastened the rope around his stomach and was thankful for the feel of a thick winter blanket against Aboregale's slowly cooling climate. Forkbeard, Chin Le and Utanba collected armaments and useful utensils for packing wares about with them on the horses before continuing on.
"It is best we do not linger long in this valley," insisted Forkbeard to his two compatriots. "Forces that send ogres and mystical instigation are bad omens. The lowland is wrapped in the wraith of an evil paroxysm. I am afraid we will find more of the dauntless contention that seems to cover the dale unless we accelerate from its mortification. The power of dead spirits haunt this area. Let us not tarry. Another baneful apparition may thwart our journey and conquest if we delay." Landregal adjusted his new cloths, mounted his shaky old pony, and rode with the inflexible group of men as they made quick tracks from the decimated village.
"May I ask what the flinty moron who acts as your leader intends to do in Aboregale after winter sets in?" Landregal asked Utanba as they traveled a crooked path leading from the ruined town. The furtive black man stared back at him with a dry insipid frown.
"He cares only for gold," Utanba told Landregal in a steady low voice. "If gods were to offer Saoel Forkbeard immortality he would turn it down for thrill of another battle and temptation of more riches."
"When does he intend to return to Trome," speculated Landregal? "Only when he has slaves and enough silver that horses and men stagger from the weight of his treasure will Forkbeard return to Trome and Lord Volki," answered Utanba Tu. "Men of his region love only one thing, that precious metal they dig out of the ground. He desires it more than he does a woman, even more than he loves to fight. In Moslem provinces a man can buy a harem of the finest brides, choose whom he will from an assembly of beautiful companions, and drink until his misery becomes suppressed if he has ample amounts of silver." The captured hunter continued to ride in disconcerted bewilderment. The sun showed itself conservatively behind mountains of pallid gray clouds that raced over the burned and barren fields. Landregal Waterhunter folded his hands inauspiciously over his horse's bridle. He still became perplexed: by the agitation of energy above the toppled church, materialization of, Or, the satanic ogre, and Forkbeard's order to burn the bridge behind them as they traveled on in search of treasure. The hunter prayed repetitively to Odin, father of his gods. Odin was responsible for creation of the men and giants in his culture's mythology.
Demise imparted by leaders such as Thorvald lead Landregal's life into inescapable and archaic degeneration. Through precarious battles, filled with fatuous and violent overindulgence, Landregal learned to accustom himself, both, to existence and subsistence in which lust for blood, the glory of war, was the most highly praised trait among his people.
Saoel Forkbeard's party continued to forage until they came upon the vestige of an old castle. Shrouded in a deep mantle of undergrowth, its discerning belfry and uninviting minarets towered in a levitation of limestone that attracted profane adulation on behalf of the men. Chin Le Tang scrutinized the spired fortress and probed its entrance with inquisitorial interest. Huge pylons before a great drawbridge held its mighty access half way suspended in the air. A blockhouse's colossal outline lay plundered, in scattered disarrangement behind the partially opened entrance.
The dormant structure seemed bleak and repulsive at first glimpse; it lay abandoned in its vacant, unwelcome serenity. As the querying foursome approached the placid prominence of artfully sculptured earth and stone, Chin Le argued with Forkbeard over points of random variance. His dissension with the archer lay in the ecumenical shrewdness of Forkbeard's determination.
"Well disposed judgment may be advised here," contended Chin Le. "Though the inhabitants who resided in the structure appear to be gone, they may have left some form of sentinel. It appears that the dwellers deserted this structure rather than defend it against the onslaught of Lord Volki's army."
"The array of orderliness left in the structure leads me to believe that too," agreed Forkbeard. "Its security was withdrawn, possibly to Torymorton's citadel, before the incursion of our forces got to it. I see nothing of the visage of battle. The structure of the fortress became damaged but no exterior signs of a fight exist: no bodies, scattered munitions, or scaling ladders, nothing."
"I suggest we give the manor careful scrutiny before embarking into the amiable cover it provides," advocated the Mongol horseman. "I sense a certain treachery in the welcome disposition of this estate. It seems too pleasing and agreeable, somehow too gracious, that Trome's army would abandon it to forces of nature as well as its defenders."
"We will conceal ourselves and observe its entrance during the night," agreed Forkbeard.
The three men and the laggardly captured hunter set to creation of a well-concealed position for themselves and their horses. Unseen, among obfuscation of shrubs, saplings and trees, in a nearby forest, they waited for dark. As they sat idly in the bushes, waiting for someone to enter or leave the castle, Landregal pulled a remaining portion of cooked elk from his new vestment. The four men ate the only remaining portion of the hunter's kill. They waited in the woods for dark, quietly discussing the abandoned structure at an arbitrated distance.
In a shaft, buried in platonic darkness, beneath limestone walls of the castle, surges of water issued from a sunken stream. The saturation of moisture bubbled with effused thriving in darkness that was deep and hollow. An excavation to the water basin, from a sealed hatchway covering an indentation inside the blockhouse, ushered down a dark passage to underground embankments beside clammy, still, insipidness of a subterranean tributary. In adoration to builders of the immense fortification, this source of water crept beneath the castle walls. It provided defenders with unvarying amounts of fresh, lucidly cold, water. This cavern became filled with the castle's most valuable treasures. Items of value, which were too heavy to become carted away, lined its walls and covered the stone floors. Massive chests of luxurious treasure weighing half a ton sat neglected in the darkness. Filled with expensive silver ornaments, eating utensils, decorative armor and adornment depicting the castle's heraldry, a great quantity of riches filled the underground hall.
A vigilant and repulsive creature, Lardock, splashed morbidly in that cavern's darkness. A piteous villain, he had once been a powerful magician and theurgist, the master of an extensive estate. Beneath stone tiles of floors in the building that had become headquarters to hundreds of soldiers and their weapons, the forlorn demon scowled. He wished for freedom from his cold, sluggish, tomb. His blind eyes blinked reflexively against moisture in the excavation. In issuance to an ancient calling, the shivering cold vertebrate crawled to a corner of his confine. He curled tightly around an earthen jar, containing an unbroken seal, with a Runic inscription. A redundant clicking sound, interspersed by shrill whistles and a barking chatter, broke the motionless and equable calm midst an abyss on the unruffled well's surface.
"I am Lardock Trappler," it proclaimed in a noise that was, both, ill boding and inhuman, to no one but the impassive peacefulness of the lethargic dark grotto, "the wizard Marmalock's patient servant who waits for his return, keeper of men's complex and mystifying secrets."
On the container's lid was written, in Futhark, a warning. The inscription, in an abbreviated Viking alphabet, warned irresponsible trespassers of danger involved in transgression with grievous contents held in the vessel. Lardock Trappler had sharp teeth and armor like scales that overlapped in protective layers over his unclad, wet, epidermis. His unsightly lizard like features shook and were ghostly from the eternal darkness of confinement. Cracks in his pitted outer structure contorted characteristically to a chilling dankness.
As he had done thousands of times before, disputatious Lardock Lagarias Trappler climbed over mountainous piles of neglected treasure, expanded his crannied webbed hand and felt the fractured rough exterior of a heavy urn. As though its external surfaces were an abdomen, the jar's contents a motionless