Prodigal

[Morgar]

Four months ago...

*Thunk*

The tree shuddered as the axe cut deep into it and was torn back out again. Grunting, the axeman examined the blow. It was no good, at least two inches above the mark, the sloppy work of an amateur. Morgar paused, wiping the sweat from his eyes, and tried to concentrate. Stripped bare to the waist, lit by a lantern hung from a nearby sapling, alone but for nature and his thoughts – this was when he felt most alive, was able to think clearly. But the calm serenity of his work was constantly being intruded upon by a deep, seething rage. He was not a man normally given to anger, and the tumult of emotion made him nauseous. He’d been making several mistakes, axe blows off-mark, and his hands shook. Just when you thought-

Suddenly, he span around, gripping the felling-axe like it was a life-line.
“Who goes there!?” he shouted into the darkness, fumbling to grab the lantern and lift it aloft. There! Among the shadows! There was...nothing. No-one sneaking up on him. He was entirely alone, and safe, inasmuch as someone unarmoured and alone at night in the woods of Cove could be safe. The thought was not very comforting. With a deep sigh, he turned back to his work, his grip shifting automatically, the momentum of the heavy blade effortlessly directed, and as it struck its mark, he tried again to lose himself in his work. But the thoughts came back, unbidden. Thoughts of that day.

In Trinsic, he was a man much in demand. Smiling, building a barricade for the co-opted guard tower... Taken on by the Yewish Militia to make one for them, too... a long cycle of cutting lumber, preparing it, hammering and sawing. And it had been rewarding work, too. Apparently being the only carpenter around, he could make enough money to enjoy the week in the thriving city. And so, when the man approached him, asking for his services at a high price, the niggling ‘Too good to be true’ danger sense had been ignored. 

Locked in a room in an empty house on the shady side of the river, he’d known there was little chance. Defiant to the last, he’d pulled out his felling axe and charged the man, slamming the haft into his belly and then bringing the blade round to bear. But by then the incantation had been said, and a blinding flash of energy threw him across the room, causing burns across his chest and knocking him cold. Blink. Yellow slabs, chafing rope around his wrists. Blink. Another incantation. A blue portal. A rough shove. Blink. A room. Small, high windows. Slowly, consciousness had come. Ropes tightly around his arms and legs. A cold chair under him. He’d tried to be clever and tried to talk his way out of it. But words didn’t come very well to him. The exact words weren’t clear in his memory; his head had been full of cotton and pain. But he remembered the conclusion – he was to be sold.
----

Shaking his head, Morgar tried to put the horrible memory out of mind. Focussing on the job at hand, he swung a savage blow at the creaking trunk in front of him, almost wrenching his shoulder with the force. The tree twisted around the deep wound in its belly when he hauled the axe free, then began to fall with a rapid succession of cracks. Not having intended to fell it so soon, it took Morgar a moment to collect himself, before he shouted, ‘TIMBER!’. Tracking it as it fell, he gave the collapsing tree a practiced nudge with his boot, angling it away from another near it and nearly into the spot where he’d actually intended it to fall. Satisfied, he smiled, and wiped the sweat from his brow, only for more to form seconds later. He laid the felling axe to one side and pulled out a hatchet, then, kneeling down, began to strip the tree of its branches. But the hacking motion, practiced and monotonous, set his mind wandering again – back into the past.

Again, that spell, and another blue gate, this time to the dark, dead ground of Umbra. He’d vomited when he’d landed in the dirt, face-first, through the portal, then been pulled to standing by the rope around his wrists. That had hurt. Half-marched, half-dragged through the sinister cityscape, no-one had raised any comment. And then the she-drow had approached. A bag of coin went one way, and the rope went the other. Yet another piece of magecraft and he’d been confronted with a horrible building, somewhere in the wilderness. Black, spiked stone with shackles set into them, and on the steps leading to it, a pile of bones, some of them belonging to suspiciously bipedal skeletons. He’d been thrown in among the pile, then, as he’d struggled against his sickness, horror and weakness to stand, a pair of shackles had been closed around his forearms.

She’d abused him there, beating and slapping him, cursing him and demanding to know what he could do; what she’d paid for. A woodcutter, he’d said, hoping she might furnish him with an axe, then after another blow to the face that had sent him spinning back to the ground, he’d admitted he was also a carpenter. She’d gone into her horrible structure, leaving him alone for a few minutes, then, just as he’d worked out he had at most three metres’ room to move with his chains, the drow had reappeared, dumping tools at his feet. Pointing to a stack of wood, half-concealed among the bones, she’d ordered him to work, striking him when he was slow to respond. When at one point she became particularly angry, she’d spoken arcane words he’d never heard before, and then smirked as Morgar’s body had convulsed in agony.

Finally, when she’d tired of his labour and he had been about to pass out entirely, she’d ordered him to hammer a pair of nails into a plank, about a foot apart. She’d turned the plank over, taken his trembling, barely-resisting hand, and placed it palm-down over the tip of the nail. A second later, she had pushed down with all her strength, and a rush of pain and blood and, deeper than that, the intellectual sense of severe wrongness and injury, had overwhelmed him. She repeated her work, impaling his other hand, all the while not laughing or smiling but merely concentrating as if performing a precise, worthwhile task that merited great effort. Then, as he had sat dazedly, having lost the strength even to scream any longer, a final gate had been opened and he had been thrown bodily through it, to the now-deserted gates of Trinsic.
----

Morgar looked down at his work and sighed, dissatisfied with his sloppy blows. Trying to block out the needling memory, he clumsily tied the log up and began dragging it back to his simple log hut. Dropping it beside his working area, he looked across the yard to where his new armour, hard, proud plate and darkened chainmail, lay in a vaguely-neat heap. Beside it was a pair of axes designed for something more difficult than jacking lumber. Morgar stared at them for a moment, as the thought came unbidden: Something more enjoyable, too. He closed his eyes, looking for a moment as though he was about to begin crying, and then went inside to sleep.
The next day, his house was empty but for the furniture and the freshly-felled log.