The Druid Legacy by Mark Miller

5:00 AM | Labels: Excerpt

Chapter 3 Grelkin

Shouts rang out throughout the camp I had stumbled into, and little green men were grabbing spears, clubs, and axes. My reaction to being quickly surrounded by at least twenty of these creatures was to simply collapse and drop my little knife. I was presented with the absolute certainty that this was how I was going to go. I covered my face with my hands and waited for the end. Looking back on this, I can say that although it was not my most heroic moment, it probably saved my life.

I was grabbed roughly under the armpits and hauled forward with my feet dragging behind me. I had a strange thought at this time that they might be about to kill and eat me, but at least I gave them stinky armpit hands. I was grinning about this and chuckling about sharing this thought with my mother, “See mom, I was right! Bathing is bad!” I was so engrossed in my thoughts, that I didn’t even realize we had come to a stop until I was yanked upright.

“I am glad you find this amusing, young man.”

I was so unprepared to hear human speech that I was thunderstruck. Standing in front of a hide tent, glaring at me with his arms folded across his chest, was a large, heavily muscled bald man. He wore the same boiled leather with the yellow symbol on his chest. Strapped to his back I could see the hilt of my father’s great sword. I couldn’t speak as I tried to digest what this meant.

The man spoke again. His voice was deep and he spoke slowly, like this language was not his first. “What is wrong, boy? Did my grelkin eat your tongue?”

I had heard of grelkin before, but only in childhood stories. Before last year I would have been positive they didn’t exist. I remembered from the stories they were a type of goblin, and of course, they hid under beds and stole bad children. I didn’t remember any stories where they worked for a big, bald man and took parents.

“Actually, one of your grelkin whacked me in the head back on the trail there, but I stabbed him in the foot. These two next to me here will be wearing my armpit stink on their hands, so I would say I won that round.”

The bald man looked at the two grelkin with their hands still jammed into my pits and started laughing. I glanced at the grelkin to my right and he looked confused. That made me start laughing. Finally, the man spoke again, but this time to the grelkin. “Shrup dia kundast lech xilil.” As he spoke he gestured at the two grelkin holding me and then pointed at me. The grelkin on my right pulled his hand from my pit and smelled his fingers as the other grelkin started hopping around hooting and laughing. Stinky fingers looked confused and sniffed again at his fingers and finally shrugged his shoulders. Apparently, his fingers stunk all the time because it didn’t seem to bother him. He jammed his hand back in my pits. Slowly, the laughter in the mob subsided and all eyes turned to the bald man again.

He put one hand on his chin as he stared at me. Slowly, he spoke again. Now I was sure I was hearing an accent from a foreign land.

“I think I will not kill you, boy. I can’t sell you, but I think I might use you as my personal house slave when we return to the fort. You will be a slave to Durrani. What do you think of that?” When he said his name, he thumped his chest with his fist. I am sure he thought it made him look very manly.

Looking around at the mob of well-armed grelkin around me, I felt like I had fairly limited options. So I decided to go with a tactic that always got me into more trouble at home with my parents. I shrugged and said, “As wonderful as that sounds, I will have to decline. I have a brace of rabbits to clean and my own house to be a slave to.”