Legends of Belariath

Detritus

The Bandits

It had been a bad day for Detritus. He had been upset that the girl known as Pink had panicked at his sight again, but he only just found out why. She had been ravaged. Taken against her will by an evil troll shaman and his henchmen. A series of bandits hiding somewhere in the western woods. He had also heard they had kidnapped three other girls. So detritus had followed them. He had charged to the woods with no second thoughts, his club in hand and his nose to guide him. Now, on his third day out he had to say with complete and utter certainty, that he had NO idea where he was.

Rock troll's are NOT renowned for their sense of direction. They are renowned for their strength, size, honor and ferocity, their nearly impervious hides, and their incredible stamina. But not their sense of direction. No one ever said "travel as the rock troll walks" as that would delay that person for several days. Add to the fact that there was a forest around, and that’s just asking for trouble. Not that a forest really hinders a rock troll, they tend to treat tree's a rather thick form of organic fog and just walk right through them.

Still Detritus is not your normal rock troll. While your typical rock troll couldn’t count past one without an abacus, Detritus is even dumber. All these factors have come together to place him in his current situation. Which is.. Lost. Capital "L" Lost.

And as he trudged through the woods little did he know that he himself was being stalked.

-----

You see he hadn’t had to go very far at all. The bandits were hunting HIM. In fact they had been for the past two days, and had used a number of rather nasty traps on him. He just hadn't noticed them.

This had rather puzzled the bandits. They had tried all the right traps. The spiky pit trap, which he got his leg stuck in for a moment. The snare trap, that had snapped and he was STILL dragging the tree. They had even tries the swinging logs from both sides trap. he had simply looked up and held out his hand.. checking for rain.

The fact was, they were puzzled. This had never happened before.

"Ish not right! Him just walkin’ through all our traps like that" said Oswold, he was the senior human of the group, the oldest by far, a human warrior of many years. But he had never had much skill, and he had eventually turned to banditry for his living. as it turned out, he was actually rather cruel, and had quickly been accepted into the group.

"Its rude is what it is! We go through all the trouble of choppin' up them logs, and he just tosses 'em aside like they was nuthin!" This was Gern. He was another human fighter, and rather a bit thick.

"Yeah Is impolite! could at least have the common decency of fallen over dead when we kills 'em." said another fighter. This one was called Troz.

Orack put his head in his hands. He had, over the years, led a number of lackeys, from ogres to goblins to other trolls. He had finally decided to try humans as they were supposed to be a smart group. Apparently he was mistaken. humans aren’t REALLY smarter than the other races, they're just stupid in different ways.

"Shut up. we need to think about this." said Orack. You see Orack is a Swamp troll, smaller and more dexterous than normal trolls, they also can get deviously intelligent. Orack also looked, for all the world, like an evil eight foot mutated Kermit the frog. Another interesting thing about swamp trolls is their hatred for Rock trolls. No one knows why this is, but the two breeds have never gotten along, Rock trolls are stronger, dumber and harder to kill, but swamp trolls are faster, smarter and just more all around evil minded buggers. This wasn’t about money in his eyes. This was about the differences of breed.

"We need to take him on our turf" said the trollish shaman, "we'll lure him to our hideout. I can draw the most power from the standing stones there." He frowned and looked back at the humans behind him. They weren’t moving.

"Well? What’s the hold up?!" he snarled and the humans backed off a bit. Finally one of them, sneaky McFarthung a thief stepped forward.

"Its just sir.. erm.. how do we goes about luring him anywhere?" he asked tentatively. Orack may have been thin and frail by Troll standards, but he was still strong enough to snap a human in two when annoyed, and had in fact done this on two occasions. This made McFarthung rather keen on the idea of being just out of his bosses reach.

But Orack didnt attack. Rather he paused and thought. How DO you lure something like that? He sat back and decided to approach this from the most basic level. he needed a blaring neon sign.

-----

A few hours later Detritus did in fact, come across a sign in the road. It had "Bandits hideout. this way--" painted on it, as neon has yet to be invented. Detritus stopped. this is actually a feat in and of itself and had really begun more than eighty feet back. Inertia hadn’t been invented either, but it exists anyway. He stood there for quite some time. from the bushes nearby the two thieves, McFarthung and Tod were watching carefully.

"Wuts he doin'?" asked Tod

"I dunno. He's just standing there." replied McFarthung, who scratched his head. he blinked suddenly.

"Ey.. wut if this bugger can't read?" he said a touch of panic in his voice. The two thieves looked at each other and than glanced over the hedgerow. They stared at Detritus, who was scratching his head, sticking his tongue out and trying to make sense of the sign. They crouched back down and looked at each other.

"Oh bugger he cant!! What'll we do?!"

"I dunno! Maybe.. one of us should go read it to him?"

"Sod that! I like my face where it is thank you very much!"

"Well maybe if we wear a disguise! Heroes aint never notice no-one whats in a good proper disguise!"

"Yeah that’s brilliant that is! Erm.. what kinda disguise we gonna wear?"

McFarthung shifted through his belongings.

"I think I still have me 'old beggar ladies outfit. No one ever suspects the old beggar lady!" he smiled triumphantly and pulled it out. He hands it over to Tod. Tod looked down at it.

"Well what’s this for?"

"Your disguise dummy!"

"Looks like a tattered old cloak and a bit of wood with a string on it!"

"Well that’s what it is! You tie the bit'a wood to yer nose so its all crooked and proper and put on the cloak, instant old lady!"

"Actually I think it's a disguise to make you look like a silly bugger with bad clothing and a bit of wood tied to his nose. There isn’t even a proper apple is there?"

"A what?"

"An Apple, everyone knows little old ladies marchen' thru the woods are sellin' apples. Shouldn't buy any though as they might be POISONED."

"What utter rubbish! That sounds just plain silly!"

"Not as silly as havin' a bit of wood tied to your nose!"

"Stop your complaining and put it on!"

"I aint goin’ out there, it’s YOUR disguise YOU wear it!"

"Thats just unreasonable. I'm supplyin' it ain't i?"

"Yup.. ess ownlee fayr dat yew war ett"

"Well bugger if you both think... so..." Tod looked up at the smiling grin of Detritus.

Despite what many people may think, Detritus CAN read, it just takes him awhile. And what the thieves had unfortunately forgotten, was that he can also hear.

"Erm" was what McFathang said. Which is really quite sad, as the last thing someone says should always be more dramatic than "erm".

----

Orack was annoyed. He hadn’t heard from the thieves yet. One of them should have returned by now while the other continued to shadow the blasted Rock Troll. Something was not right.

He was on top of one of the rocks. He had been lucky to find this place. A place of high magical buildup. The stones acted as a focal point, and let him cast more powerful spells here. it should even the odds against the monster to just the point Orack likes them. Completely in his favor.

But something was wrong. He looked down below. The other large rocks, each weighing several tons at least, were shifted slightly by time, and the elements. Moss covered them, and behind them, Orack had constructed a small set of houses and tents. His hope was to begin a bandit army, and mayhap take over the land. he watched his human lackeys hiding behind the large rocks. They were stupid, but capable, and this was ONLY a rock troll, all they had to do was get him to hold still long enough for his spells to defeat the brute. Then they would chain him up, and sell him to the highest bidder. A monster of that size would fetch a fair price.

He glanced back again, towards his empty village. Far more houses than people staying there. but the money from this rock troll would let him attract many more followers. Especially after he sells those girls in the cage into slavery as well. Yes, it was going to be good. If only he knew where the bastard was.

He had tormented the girls earlier, the Merchanteer Yasmin, the cat girl warrior Rhiannon and that human mage Tanith. They didn’t like him much, but he didn’t care, as long as they were in a cage they could not harm him. And he was fairly certain he didn’t smell half as bad as Yasmin told him he did.

Detritus had just found the place, his troll sense of direction at work again. He knew the bandits were waiting there. It was obviously a trap, even by his standards of intelligence this was a bit blatant. He looked at the clearing from just beyond the edge, eyeing the standing stones.

Orack growled, shifting back and forth. The damn stupid brute must have gotten lost again. He needed a new plan. He looked down and made yelled "Get out here! We'll have to go look for him!"

The men came out of hiding and moved together and clustered under the rock, looking up at Orack as lay on top of the rock thinking. The men began to talk amongst themselves mostly about what was for lunch. Detritus blinked when he saw the five humans. With a smirk and a growl, he charged.

The men looked up and as one, they panicked. Detritus is not designed to move fast, so when he does its never a pretty sight, and usually fatal to the viewer. Its not that he cant build up speed, or move at a reasonable rate steadily, it’s that he doesn’t STOP very well. One of the soldiers, a man named Vinchenzo, who I wont describe any further because it really doesn’t matter, found this out the hard way.

Orack blinked. The bastard had waited! It had WAITED ‘til his men had come out of hiding! How could it be so damn smart?! He snarled and stood up on top of the rock, his hands moving in complex symbols as he draws power from the standing stones, preparing to throw it at the other troll.

Detritus meanwhile was just coming to a stop, he was having trouble as his feet where slippery with the remains of Vinchenzo. He turned slowly and looked at the remaining humans, the gripped their weapons in a determined manner, still more afraid of Orack than of the monster in front of them. Det roared and swung his club engaging in battle. This was a surprisingly fair fight, as there were too many humans for Detritus to concentrate he was having trouble hitting them, but they hit him easily enough, only not hard enough to actually HURT him. They were at a standstill.

Than the blast hit, Detritus roared, arching back as raw magic surged through him, he fell to his knees while smoke came from his back, and Orack, atop his rock laughed and danced.

"Kill him! Kill him now while he's weakened!!" shouted the swamp troll pointing. Troz blinked and tentatively stepped forward. Detritus was panting as he lay there, the blast had hurt him, rather badly and he wasn’t sure he could move yet. Then someone kicked him. He grunted and remained still, ignoring the blow. Troz looked back

"He can't move!! Let’s get the two ton twit!" he shouted happily, Oswald , Gern and the other bandit, a man named oddly enough Fuzzykins, charged forward to kick and pummel the downed troll. Detritus didn’t really feel them, he was panting because of the magic bolt.. it had really hurt him. With a growl he reached out with surprising speed, snapping up poor Fuzzykins and turned hurtling the man at Orack with all his strength!

The thing with Detritus's aim is, its horrible. He couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn from three feet away with a laser guided automatic machine gun. The body of poor Fuzzykins missed by a good ten feet. It struck the large standing stone that Orack was hopping up and down on instead. Orack grinned and prepared another spell, but stopped when he noticed that Detritus seemed to be moving to the left with out actually WALKING.

The stone was sliding. It was falling, its already loose position jostled by the mighty blow, Fuzzykins bloody corpse was stuck to the front, like a big red, sticky, corpse thing.

Orack gripped the top in horror as it slowly moved. Because it is the nature of the universe for large objects perilously balanced close to each other to do so, the stone Orack gripped hit the stone to its right, which in turn struck the stone to IT'S right, and so forth until they had all fallen down, and the battle field was covered in a cloud of debris.

In the center of the cloud of dust Detritus strode out. The two human fighters who remained (Oswald and Gern) where laying on their stomachs, covering their heads from the falling debris. Detritus ignored them as he made his way to the pile of stones. Club in one hand he approached cautiously, moving around the large wreckage.

With a furious Roar Orack leapt from behind. Swamp trolls are amphibious and have developed both webbed hands, and large vicious claws; these claws are very strong, strong enough to cut through even a rock troll's skin. Detritus staggers forward, nearly falling over, blood leaks from his back. Already weakened by the spell he gasps for breath and slowly regains his footing. He turned around and barely lifted his club in time to block the next swipe. Orack roars furiously, his magic forgotten to his most basic killing instincts, raising a foot he kicks at the larger troll and knocks him back. Slamming into one of the fallen stones it crumbles and a series of rocks half-bury Detritus, who is too weak to fight any more. Oswald and Gern come up from behind Orack and bring their weapons to bear, NOW The rock troll would be an easy kill.

Orack smirked and panted. He raises a hand and points "Make sure its dead," he says. Oswald grins and Gern who nods his head, the two draw their swords and take step forward. Then with a heavy thud, Oswald falls to the ground. With a blink Orack turns up and sees the smiling face of Yasmin, the girl was holding an iron bar and she grinned Orack.

"Looks like your cage broke stinky!" she said with a hateful grin. As Gern turned to face the new threat a savage roar knocked him down. Spinning around Orack watches as Rhiannon finishes slicing the mans throat with her claws. She grins standing up slowly, tail waving back and forth. Orack snarls at them.

"It doesn’t matter, I can still kill all three of you myself," he growled and then stopped, where was the third girl? The mage? Whirling around his eyes widen as he sees her, standing over the pile of rubble and casting a spell.

"NOO!!" he yells leaping forward to try and stop her. Tanith simply laughs and hops back

"Too late" she says with a wink. The pile of rocks burst up as Detritus frees himself from the clutter. Restored, he lifts his club and ROARS at Orack. Orack backs away but Detritus takes a long step and with a powerful swing bashes Orack across the top of his skull. The smaller troll staggers back bleeding profusely.

"No wwaiit!!! Please!! Stop.. anything just STOP!!" he pleaded hands up as he fell to his knee's. Detritus ignores his pleas and swings his club from below him, with a horrible noise blood splatters across the battlefield and Detritus leans over the corpse.. straining, he pulls and the head slowly is torn off. he glances at the girls and smiles.

"thenk yew" he says simply and starts to trudge back to the Lonely inn. Silently, the three girls look at each other, and follow.

Yasmin watched him go and shook her head slowly. "I think I like him.. unlike that Orack fellow, he never loses his head" She grins ear to ear as Tanith and Rhianna stare at her.

"What?" said Yasmin innocently and the two others shake their heads and follow the troll.

BACK