“Knights at the command of elves!? Is he mad?” said the king.
“He said you’d say that, sire, and asked me to remind you, with all humility, what Robert the Bruce said to them before he won the Battle of Bannochburn against your father, Edward Longshanks,
“I must join my own people, the Scots among whom I was born. I ask that Artemis the Wizard and the Blacksmith of Brae, come with me and be my councillors for that day.”
And Reblish added, for his own emphasis, “I would listen to the wizard, my liege, before you find your own house under siege.”
The king looked ready to call one of the royal guards to haul Reblish away to the dungeon, but knew he was right. He couldn’t allow pride to overrule his counsellor who was actually there in the war. That would be an arrogant error of massive proportions.
The king paused for a few moments as if deep in thought, motioning with a finger in the air for Reblish to not speak another word.
“Knave, I have an idea!” Edward finally spoke.
“Yes, sire?”
“I will dispatch a company of knights and send them to Artemis to use in any fashion he sees fit,” he said very regally, “and I shall require that reports be made to me regularly so that I may command the war from here. Go now and inform the wizard this is the command of your king.” And with that he waved his hand to dismiss the jester.
“Of course, sire, at once,” Reblish replied, bowing his head and walking backwards out of the throne room.
Grar of Gilgamesh did not remain with Helmet’s party to rest. He had to find his brother Marquart in order to tell him what transpired at Caithness. When he found the other ogres on the beach preparing to sail, Marquart was not among them. It was Quell of Ogminion who was commanding the others to drag the boats into the water.
“Quell, where is Marquart?” he asked.
“He is dead, brother. Reap ordered me to kill him for reporting the loss at Caithness,” Quell said, sadly.
Grar could not help but let out a loud roar and a moan that seemed to last for a full minute. The others joined in and the air was filled with grief. They stood on the beach looking seaward and all bowed their heads, saying prayers to Og that their brother would find peace from this world in the afterlife, and that they would one day join him and all the ogres that had passed before them.
Grar told all of them the account of the happenings at Caithness, and they moaned again at the loss of the dozens there.
“The humans made a covenant of friendship?” Quell questioned Grar. “But they killed our brothers, we must have revenge.”
“They did kill our brothers, but it was an honourable battle and they acted in self-defence, brother. And they have asked for the ogres help in defeating Reap and Nucklevee to save their world from the plague, which we ourselves have dishonoured our fathers for taking part in,” Grar replied.
“But how can we when the evil beings have control of us?” Quell wondered.
Amongst the ogres, Grar was a Rhab (pronounced ‘rab’ which meant ‘teacher’), a person who was a keeper of their history and an interpreter of their custom and laws.
He said to Quell, “It was the Sea Witch of the North who first enslaved us, as payment for Og’s trespasses against the Seal People, whom she protected. He almost wiped out their race before he himself disappeared into the Swelkie. From that time until now, ogre law has bound us to serve at her leisure, and she has given us to Reap to help spread this evil plague and destroy the world of men. But the Book of Og says that a chattel enslavement to evil may be disregarded if the Ogre are bidden by a covenant of friendship from those who fight for good. Everyone has always been afraid of us and none has bothered to ever ask for our friendship, until now.”
“You mean the spell is broken?” Quell asked.
“It is, brother,” Grar said and smiled.
Quell immediately drew his club and headed in the direction of Reap’s lair, intending to execute him on the spot.
“No brother! You must not!” Grar cried out.
“Stand aside, Grar, I must kill that rodent beast for my brother’s honour! Out of my way!” shoving Grar to the ground.
Unable to stop Quell who was bigger and stronger than he, Grar motioned to the others what must be done and they pursued him and brought him back to the beach. There were tears of sorrow and anger in his eyes and he moaned loudly.
“You cannot do this now, my brother, for you will surely fail, Reap has an army at his disposal, and the advantage for our new friends will be lost. The war will be over before we have even had the chance to help, you must listen to me,” Grar pleaded.
Quell knew that Grar was right, but still had to be restrained for several minutes by the others before he could gain control of himself enough to calm down. A rampaging ogre is very hard to deter from their course of action and they will often run headlong into trouble or be unstoppable in destroying (and usually eating) whatever the target of their wrath is.
“What would you have me do, Grar?” Quell finally asked.
“Command us, but command us so that we and the humans win,” Grar answered.
“And then, brother, I will personally cook your rat meat for you and we will all join you in the meal,” he added, all of them growling their approval.
Twelve knights and the messenger were crossing the Sea of Orcs in two boats, a bright full moon directly overhead and the sea was glassy and calm. They were approaching the coast about to round a point where they were told Helmet’s men would meet them. Helmet had posted sentries, one at the top of a cliff overlooking the firth, and two more within a few yards of the cave opening where they rested. The little elf on the cliff top was chosen for that post because of his extraordinary eyesight, making him perfect for the assignment. He had caught himself napping, for it was very late, and would from time to time startle himself into wakefulness, standing up suddenly out of fear he’d been discovered. He’d just done so again, to his own irritation, for there is nothing worse than half-sleepy dreaminess combined with an anxious necessity for staying wide-awake, when he noticed a boat approaching from the south, about four hundred yards from the coast, rounding what Grar had called Swelkie Point. In it he could see, because of the brilliance of the moonlight which made the water shine like day, metal men. They were knights he knew (for this is what he was told to look for), but did not realize they would be wearing polished silver, obviously armour. He could also see Ro-ammi, who was the only elf girl that was with their oodle and was the messenger Artemis sent. He waved to her, wondering if she could see him on top of the mountain, and she waved back, excitedly. They called her Ro-ammi because she was an orphan and not related to anyone they knew of in any elfin clan. She was found sleeping in the milkery of a farmer nearby Sith Brae, curled up snug as a bug in a feed trough about to be chomped by a milk cow reaching for a mouthful of hay. The elf boy that saved her was carrying home an earring from that very dairyman’s daughter, swiped during a night of mischief. One of the elders had said he heard of a name in the human language, Ro-ammi, which meant “not my sister” and she’s been called that ever since. It just made sense, as certainly she was no one’s sister in Scotland, anyway. It was a mystery.
“Look!” she cried out to the First Captain of the knights, who stood up on one knee to get a better view, and saw someone waving at the top of the cliff. “That’s....oooh, I can’t quite make him out, but I think that’s Orville!”
It was Orville (he and she being very good friends), and he was cheered at the sight of the reinforcements, especially fighters as renowned as King’s Knights.
At the very same time, the First Captain and Orville, though one high and one low, saw something move on the beach just a couple of hundred yards away. It was as if the whole beach was moving, from the tree line behind all the way to the water, and this mass of moving stuff was black as night, but was highlighted against the background of the white sands. In just a few moments of adjusting their eyes, they both saw what it was, a vast number of black rats moving as one to the surf’s edge and diving in by the hundreds and thousands, like penguins into the sea.
“Oh, no…” was all Orville could whisper to the darkness before he got up and ran for the cave.
When he, Helmet, and Gander returned to the cliff top to see what was happening, they got the shock of their lives. Around both of the boats were thousands of rats splashing in the water, pushing the boats out further off the point, headed right for the Swelkie. They could see the knights desperately fighting the rats, slashing them with their swords and certainly killing hundreds of them but as many as they dispatched that many more just replaced them. Soon the current of the whirlpool grabbed the boats and they began to spin as if they were in some nightmarish dance, one opposite the other around the circumference of the outer swirls of the monstrous whirlpool, spinning a waltz of death. Though at the top of the cliff the elf captains could hear nothing but the screams of Ro-ammi and hopeless shouts of the men, the people inside those boats were hearing the deafening roar of one of the most frightening and powerful things on planet earth. They had no chance to avoid their terrible fate.
Several of the knights in a last effort to save their lives abandoned the crafts and tried to swim but their armour made them sink like stones. The remainder of the “Lost Knights of Swelkie” as they would later be called, including Ro-ammi (who was knighted herself posthumously at the end of the war) as well as every last rat, were sucked into the swirling monster and sent screaming to the bottom of the sea, much to the horror of the three looking down from high above.
“Ro-ammi was my best friend,” Orville said, crying.
The rest of the oodle had just been told the awful news, and they all were saddened at the loss of the knights, but particularly at the loss of another elf in the war.
“We know, lad, and we’re very sorry, but we will kill these murderous fiends if it’s the last thing we ever do,” Gander replied, hugging the boy.
“What are we waiting for?!”
“Let’s go and track down these maniacs and get it done with!”
“Kill the monsters!” yelled several soldiers.
“Have the men arm themselves and fall in outside the cave,” Helmet ordered Gander.
The ogres had just arrived and Grar took Helmet aside. “You cannot do this, master, you will all be killed, for there are too many of the enemy for any hope of success.”
“First thing, Grar, I am not your master, I am your friend. Secondly, I command these soldiers and this mission. Although we agreed to fight together, I will not hold you ogres responsible to continue if you feel they cannot win,” he said, as respectfully as he could.
“Sir...Helmet…my friend, I cannot allow you to lead yourself and your men to your certain deaths in the heat of passion for vengeance,” he replied. “Just as I stopped Quell from giving his life away to avenge Marquart, I must do the same with you. You will only delay your own victory by defeat. You may well die in this war, but not today,” he said and waited for Helmet’s answer, though he already knew it.
“I’m sorry, and I thank you for your advice, Grar, but we are going, and that’s that,” Helmet said stubbornly.
“Very well, then we shall join you, and the ogres will see to it that you live to fight another day,” Grar said.
He excused himself to let Helmet tend to his command, and he called over the other ogres to discuss their battle plan.
The count of the soldiers now prepared to assault the compound at Skara Brae was thirty-nine (twenty-nine Elfin soldiers, plus Helmet and Gander, and eight ogres which included Grar and Quell, three lieutenants, and the three that escaped at the Battle of Caithness). Grar and Quell knew the area intimately and had briefed the elves as to the tactical situation.
Within an hour they were behind a sand and grass berm separating several stone and earth-sheltered dwellings. Behind these dwellings, ahead of them were more berms, sand dunes, and the beaches. Behind them they had passed a freshwater lagoon, probably fed by an underground rainwater aquifer. The village looked to be empty.
“Where are they?” whispered Gander to Grar.
“They are near, be sure of it. Be at your ready, I know these creatures, and they can appear from nowhere,” he warned.
Grar ordered one of the ogres to go into one of the largest and the most likely of the buildings to hold Reap or Nucklevee. “Bring back anything that looks like a map or a journal of any kind, perhaps we can discover their plans,” he told the soldier.
When he returned only minutes later, he was carrying some broken pieces of wood that looked like they came from furniture, and a stone pulled from a wall that was clearly a headstone to a doorway. On each there were symbols, none of them recognizable to the elves. “Reap was there, General, but is gone now. I smelled him and there are pieces of human flesh and bone everywhere,” the soldier told him. “These are the only things in the dwelling with writing on them,” he reported.
“What do these symbols mean, Grar, do you know?” Helmet asked.
“No one has lived here in almost a thousand years,” he replied, “but, yes, I know what they say.”
“How?” Helmet asked, astounded.
“Not all ogres are as dumb as everyone thinks us to be. I am a Rhab, which means I am educated in the customs and law of my people, and many of the cultures of this area, but we don’t like to reveal that to others outside our race. It is a definite advantage when your enemy thinks you’re stupid and finds out otherwise, the hard way,” he said, smiling.
Helmet and Gander realized these ogres were not what they had been raised to believe. And in life it isn’t what one knows, it’s what one doesn’t know that can hurt you.
“The stone has the family name of the owner of the house, the symbols on the bed piece are the names of all the family members who slept in that bed (this was obviously a pre-historic family genealogy, so to speak, or like some who write their family trees inside the covers of Bibles). The other piece which has a rune that looks like a picture of the sun, is a picture of the sun, carved into it by a child practicing his art,” Grar replied, a little irritated at being asked to give an archaeology class during the middle of a combat mission.
“Fascinating,” Orville said, rubbing his eyes, a little calmer now but at the same time anxious to stick some steel into someone’s ribs to make them pay for Ro-ammi.
The ogres were conferring with one another as Helmet and Gander were bracing the men and positioning them for the moment the fight began. They were sniffing the air, and pointing their fingers different directions, checking which way the wind was blowing.
Grar approached them both and said that one of his soldiers may have seen something over the next berm, and wanted the two captains to come and look. Helmet appointed two elves as sergeants and told them to continue to scout the area and then they followed both Grar and Quell.
“Orville, come, in case we need a messenger to send back,” Gander ordered.
They had walked just over the top of a sand dune and dipped below out of the sight of the oodle, and were actually on the beach itself just yards away from the water’s edge when the general and Grar grabbed the three of them roughly, produced ropes and bound their arms and legs tightly, an easy task as the two brutes could almost have tossed them like cabers across the sea if they wished.
There were two boats waiting for them with three of Quell’s lieutenants who tossed the elves into the bottom of the boat, Grar in one and Quell in the other, the three soldiers getting in the water and towing them along the coastline, attempting to keep their movements hidden. Soon, they began sailing away from the beachhead and Skara Brae.
“What are you doing!?” Helmet screamed.
“Look behind you, my friend,” Quell said.
They stuck their heads above the edges of the boats and saw the massacre beginning. The Bones Army, at least part of it, had been hiding below the water of the lagoon behind where his men had made their hide, and they did not just walk up the banks, but were jumping straight out of the water and traveling some ten or more feet in the air only to land and run as fast as wolves, attacking the oodle before they even knew that the enemy was approaching.
Quell had ordered three of his soldiers to remain behind, and these were knocking over skelty’s with their clubs and fists by the dozens, but like the rats that killed the knights there were more and more, a seemingly unending force of reserves that overwhelmed the brave men they were leaving behind.
“Go baaaack, you motherless bags of offal! I’ll kill you if you leave them, they will die! They’ll be obliterated!” Helmet again cried out and struggled against his bonds. Orville was crying again and put his head down on the bottom of the boat as he could not bear to watch.
“They were dead the moment you decided not to take my advice, my friend, I am sorry,” Quell replied.
Gander had managed to get one of Grar’s toes into his mouth and bit down as hard as he could, severing it cleanly, causing Grar to roar loudly in pain.
Not more than a few minutes went by before the crafts moved to safety in deep water, away from the Swelkie and where even the rats could not catch them, so they stopped to watch the battle.
The elves and the ogres fought bravely, but were beaten down within minutes, many of them lay dead or dying on the grass, on the dunes, and in the small courtyards of the Neolithic homes. The Pict tribe which had lived there a thousand years ago may have fallen in such a similar fashion, reduced to extinction in the blink of an eye by a murdering mob like this one.
Before the escapees lost complete sight of the beach they saw a gruesome sight. Reap and Nucklevee had arrived and were pointing directly at those in the boats, as if saying “Watch this!” Twenty skelty’s emerged from the top of a dune carrying three wounded but still living ogres, tied to crosses made out of tree logs.
They dug holes and dropped the poles into the sand, standing the ogres on their heads, feet pointed toward the sky, upside down. They poured oil over the three helpless beasts, and set them on fire.
Reap lifted a clawed foot into the air, balled into a fist in wicked defiance, and was laughing loudly. Nucklevee had turned his back toward the boats and was shaking his bum, again giggling uncontrollably. Even from far away, they could clearly hear Reap’s booming, creepy voice, not that of a rat but of some demon.
“Tell Artemis to come and join me in a flyting contest and toast some ales by my warmy campfire! We’ll make a covenant of treacherousssss friendship like he did with the Bridge Troll! Tell him that every elf or beast that gets in my way will light my camp as these ogre candles will tonight...and when they are nice and roasted, my rats and I will feast on their corpses! And your elfin friends will become skelty’s, fighting and killing you in the next battle (which was a lie, for this magic did not work on elves)! Tell him that, you fleeing cowards! Do you hear that General Quell? I’m going to eat your brotherssssss for dinner! ” he screamed into the waves.
Even as the troop in the boats landed safely on the shore of Caithness, in the darkness of the night with the stars shining overhead they could still see the glow of the fires of their brothers burning at the stakes.
