Minecraft Dungeons, Page 2

  “Don’t just stand there gawking at me,” Thord said, his voice curdled with humiliation and disgust. “Help me out!”

  Archie wanted to mock Thord in the evoker’s moment of weakness, but he worried that Thord might still have enough energy to attack him with a spell. He leaped forward to try to support the evoker, who was wobbling precariously on his feet. Weak as he was, Thord smacked Archie away with the back of his hand. The smaller Illager tumbled to the ground, clutching at his stinging cheek.

  “As if a weakling like you could hold me up,” Thord said with a shaky, frustrated sneer. “Find me a staff—or at least a sword!”

  “But the undead are all destroyed, and that hero’s gone too,” Archie said, both uncertain and suspicious about Thord’s intentions.

  “Lucky for him!” Thord said as he staggered forward. “And for you. Now get me that sword!”

  Archie glanced around frantically and found the weapon Thord was pointing at. It was battered and notched, but at least still in one piece. He snatched it up and handed it to the evoker without bothering to clean it off.

  Thord didn’t seem to care a bit about how battered it was. He just grabbed the weapon by the hilt, stabbed it into the ground, and used it as a crutch. Then, finally stabilized, he gazed out over the battlefield and frowned.

  Archie didn’t say a word. He knew from experience that anything he did could send Thord into a fit of rage, and he didn’t want to trigger that. Not now for sure.

  After a long moment, Thord spoke, his voice rough and low. “So, it’s just you and me then, is it?”

  Archie nodded.

  Thord sucked at his teeth and grimaced. “You’re going to pay for this.”

  Archie’s jaw dropped. “But I didn’t have anything to do with this! I barely fought at all!”

  “Exactly,” Thord said. “When your people needed you most, you curled up in a ball and ignored them while they screamed for help. They fought on valiantly while you sat there and let them be defeated.”

  “I-I-I…” Archie couldn’t believe what Thord was saying. How could anyone think that of him? He hadn’t wanted his people to lose! True, he hadn’t done much to prevent that, but that was beyond his control. As Thord and the others had taught him over and over throughout his life, he was a weak creature who couldn’t make a difference in anything, no matter how hard he might try. And now Thord was going to hold him responsible for that?

  Archie cringed in fear. “I’m worthless! I always have been. I didn’t even want to be here in the first place!”

  “And that’s my point! You would have happily allowed that hero to defeat us all—the entire tribe if you’d had your choice. You don’t care about any of us. You let that hero destroy us, and don’t think I’m going to let you get away with it.”

  Archie collapsed to the ground, unable to bear the horrors of the accusation. If Thord managed to limp back to the tribe and tell them such awful things about him, they’d probably destroy him on the spot. The best he’d be able to hope for would be eternal banishment.

  “Oh, please no!” Archie gawked at Thord in dismay. “I knew this would go wrong. I just knew it! I told you!”

  Thord scoffed at him. “Like mere words ever helped with anything.”

  It pained Archie to hear a sentiment like that. As weak as he was—and as little as he knew of magic—a sword was useless to him. All he had was words.

  “I knew exactly what was going to happen as soon as that hero arrived, and I tried to warn you,” Archie said, trying to explain. “I wanted to save you. I wanted to save us all!”

  Thord snorted at Archie as if the pathetic Illager had just fallen into an outhouse and crawled out of the filth on his hands and knees. “You go ahead and try to tell that to the others. See what they have to say.” He started staggering back in the direction of the Illager mansion, deep in the nearby dark forest.

  “Wait!” Archie said as he scampered after Thord. “Why torture me? I’m no threat to you. It’s that horrible hero you should be angry at.”

  Thord didn’t bother glancing over his shoulder at Archie. “He’s not at fault here. Can you really blame a hero for being a hero?”

  “It wasn’t me who destroyed the others.” Archie scrambled to catch up. “I’m no hero! Haven’t you had enough of them pushing us all around?”

  “Illagers never run from a fight. Never!”

  “We ran from the hero.”

  “We were regrouping!”

  Archie ignored the lie. “But we couldn’t have beaten one of them with a single patrol like that. We didn’t have a chance. That was my whole and entire point!”

  Archie grabbed Thord by the elbow. Thord ground to a halt with a painful wince and glared down at him. “You coward.” He spat at him, striking him square on the side of his face.

  Archie wiped his cheek clean. “We should have gone for help. We could have rallied the entire tribe together to take care of him. Think what that would mean!”

  Thord rubbed his chin while he considered this. “Mobilizing the entire tribe to gang up on a single hero?”

  “Exactly!” Hope leaped in Archie’s chest. “Think about it! Think about how many Illagers there are compared to the heroes. If we could just gather every Illager we can find and pit them against the heroes, nothing could stop us!”

  Thord snorted in disgust. “You really are the most worthless Illager I’ve ever known.”

  “Imagine five patrols working together. Or ten! Or twenty!”

  “I’m in charge here! If we brought all those Illagers together, who would be in charge then?”

  Archie knew that it was all about power for Thord—much as it was for most Illagers. If only he weren’t so shortsighted! “But we fight heroes all the time! And how often do we win?”

  Thord shook his head at Archie like he was an especially stupid child who’d been struck in the head far too many times. “We don’t hunt heroes. We just hunt, and we take down whatever we can. That’s our way, and it always has been. There’s no reason to change it.”

  Archie pointed back at the battlefield where they’d suffered such a terrible loss. “Isn’t that reason enough?”

  Thord grunted. “What would you have us do? Start farming? Build villages? Become civilized and weak?” He sneered down at the smaller Illager. “I suppose you’re already halfway there.”

  “We have to try something new,” Archie said. “What we’ve been doing clearly isn’t working. New heroes arrive here every day. It won’t be too long until they build a village of their own. Maybe a city, even.”

  “You’re a fool.”

  “And when that happens, they’ll be unstoppable. We won’t just lose a raiding party to them. We’ll lose our entire tribe.”

  “That’s coward’s talk!”

  “Instead of the hunters, we’ll be the prey. They’ll track us down and destroy every last Illager in the land!”

  Even as injured as he was, Thord moved faster than Archie could see. One instant he was leaning on his sword as a crutch, and the next the flat of the blade smacked into the side of Archie’s head.

  The impact knocked Archie sprawling backward, stars spinning in his eyes. It took him a terrifying moment to recover his senses, during which he fully expected Thord to finish him off.

  When he finally regained himself, though, Archie saw that Thord hadn’t bothered to keep at him. He’d just started off toward the dark forest once more without uttering a single new word.

  If anything, that terrified Archie even more.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “You can’t tell everyone this is my fault!” Archie said. “You can’t!”

  He’d snatched up a blade of his own, one too heavy for him to wield properly, although there wasn’t much to be done about that. The entire way back to the Illager mansion, he’d kept well behind T
hord, making sure to stay far out of range of the bigger Illager’s spells.

  He’d paid the price for being too careless around Thord once today already. He didn’t care to make that mistake again.

  For his part, Thord ignored Archie’s pleas, with the exception of the occasional smug chuckle. Archie knew the evoker would sell him out the moment they got back to the Illager mansion, but he didn’t see what he could do about it. He kept begging until his voice grew hoarse, and then he finally gave up.

  When they came within a bowshot of the mansion—a large, three-story building that housed most of the tribe—the other Illagers rushed out to greet them, and Archie’s stomach twisted in his guts. He knew exactly how they were going to take the news of the raiding party’s defeat and who they were going to blame—if he let them.

  An idea blazing in his head, Archie set his jaw, braced himself, and raced out in front of Thord. The evoker growled at him as he passed him by, but with his injuries, he couldn’t keep up. He barely even seemed to try.

  The Illager leader—a tall, skinny one by the name of Walda—stepped forward from the pack of anxious people who had gathered for news of the raiding party. Archie could tell by the disgusted looks on their faces that they already suspected how awful the raid had gone. No one ever came back alone from such a venture with good news.

  “A hero did it,” Archie told Walda. “He came up while we were fighting the undead mobs—and beating them—and stole our victory!”

  A few of the Illagers in the back of the crowd growled in contempt. While every Illager knew the risks involved in being part of a raiding party, they took any such loss personally.

  “And how did this happen?” Walda asked, a deep frown creasing her face.

  Archie pointed back toward Thord. “It was all because that worthless fool thought he could take on a hero all by himself. It’s all his fault!”

  It worried Archie to do this—to openly turn against a fellow Illager as powerful and conniving as the evoker—but Thord had announced his intentions to do the very same thing to him. The only way Archie could prevent being banished was to start his campaign of lies first. It was a long shot—one that he might suffer for—but he didn’t see that he had any other choice.

  A gasp went up in the crowd. The people here knew Thord well. They understood he was a braggart and a bully—but they also held him up as one of their most powerful evokers. The idea that he would make such a horrible mistake that would cost them an entire raiding party horrified them.

  Archie realized he was going to have to sell his story hard—and fast. Thord was getting closer every second. “Thord was our designated leader,” he told Walda. “You appointed him yourself.”

  She hesitated then nodded. “That I did.”

  “Then he bears the ultimate blame for our failure, doesn’t he?”

  Walda’s shoulders wobbled at this as she tried to absorb the implications of Archie’s words. “Perhaps. By that logic, you might be able to say the blame is mine.”

  Archie gasped in dismay, sensing that he’d perhaps gone too far. “I would never—”

  Walda dismissed his impending apology with an impatient wave, and he continued. “It’s more than that. He didn’t set a watch to look for troubles like a hero. He just plunged straight into the battle against the undead without taking any precautions at all.”

  Walda didn’t seem moved by that, and the others nearby had begun staring at Archie as if he’d gone mad. “I mean, wouldn’t that seem wise? To set a watch to make sure we didn’t get ambushed by someone else while we were in battle? That’s exactly how the last raiding party we lost died!”

  “That was many years ago,” Walda said with a pitying look. She clearly remembered that both of Archie’s parents had perished in that incident.

  “And we still haven’t learned any lessons from that! We still charge into the fight without figuring out what other dangers might lie in wait for us. And we’re still paying the worst price!”

  “And it’s all your fault,” Thord said from right behind him.

  Archie spun around and realized that he’d gotten so caught up with complaining to Walda that he hadn’t heard Thord arrive. On top of that, he’d wasted all the advance time for which he’d run so hard.

  “What?” Archie put a hand to his chest as if his heart might pop out of it in shock. “How is it my fault?”

  Walda raised a hand to silence Archie and then turned toward Thord. “Word from our little friend here is that this disaster is actually your fault.”

  Thord smirked down at the little Illager. “Of course he would say that. Trying to cover his own butt. After he failed to spot that hero coming our way—”

  “And how would I have managed that? I was in the middle of that battle against the undead mobs, just like you. Just like everyone else! Just like you ordered us to do!”

  Thord looked down at Archie and gave him a sad shake of his head. “I understand what you’re trying to do here. After all, why wouldn’t you? What do you have to lose?”

  Archie stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “The lying. All the lies. Just listen to yourself. You can’t bear to think about what you did, so you’re blaming anyone else but yourself.”

  “What I did?” Archie almost fell over in shock. “Are you out of your tiny mind?”

  “See?” Thord said to the crowd hovering around them, but especially to Walda. “The denial runs so deep, I almost wonder if he believes the lies himself.”

  Archie actually gaped at Thord, unable to summon any words to complain.

  “The fact is,” Thord continued, “that I did set a watch over our battlefield, and I gave Archie the job.”

  The little Illager struggled to find his voice. “That’s not true!”

  Thord ignored the interruption. “As you know, he doesn’t much care for fighting, and he complained about having to come along with us and do his duty for the tribe the entire time. By now, we’re all used to that, right? And he’s not much use on the battlefield anyway.”

  A few in the crowd chuckled at that. Archie glared at them, but his naked fury didn’t seem to sting them at all.

  “I figured he at least could lend us his eyes.” Thord peered down at Archie with scathing contempt. “But he couldn’t even manage that.”

  Thord turned fully toward Archie now. “Where were you when the hero showed up? That’s what I can’t figure out. I know you weren’t in the battle. You’re never in a battle if you can help it.”

  There was some truth to that. Archie hated fighting and would have done anything to get out of being part of that patrol if he could have managed it. Now, though, he saw why Thord had brought him along.

  “You knew this was going to go wrong,” Archie said to him, seething. “And when it did, you knew you were going to need a scapegoat. That’s why you chose me.”

  “It’s the duty—actually, the privilege—of every Illager to take their turns in the raiding parties,” Walda said.

  Archie’s heart dropped. The moment she opened her mouth to defend Thord, he knew he was ruined. If he couldn’t convince her of what Thord had done to the raiding party—and especially to him—he was doomed.

  “I didn’t deny that. I went along on the raid. I even brought my own sword.”

  “If you can call that a sword,” Thord said with a barely concealed sneer.

  “And Thord here never assigned me to watch over the battle. He was in charge. That should have been his job. This is all his fault!”

  The crowd of Illagers surrounding Archie and Thord seemed to hold their collective breath. No one said a word, apparently waiting on Walda to render a verdict.

  Eventually she opened her mouth to speak. “It horrifies me that you would accuse each other of such terrible things. Illagers must stick together, even on the field o
f battle. Especially on the field of battle. Otherwise, we stand no chance against our foes.”

  She gazed at both Archie and Thord. The evoker met her steely eyes, but Archie couldn’t help but wither beneath her glare.

  “Do you remember what it was like when we roamed the lands, each to ourselves? The mobs picked us off one by one, destroying us at their will. It was only when we united—when we became a tribe—that we stood any chance against them at all.”

  Walda spread the arms of her robe wide to encompass every person in the tribe, and the other Illagers all muttered in agreement with her. They all knew exactly what she was talking about, as did Archie. While life among the tribe wasn’t always wonderful, it was far better than any time he’d spent wandering alone. He shuddered at the memories that still haunted his sleep.

  “And now you two come to us, still bickering with each other after having suffered such a horrible and complete loss? You complain about each other while the rest of your raiding party is defeated and gone? Clearly you care not about the tribe but about yourselves.”

  “No,” Archie whispered to himself. He could see what was coming next, but he felt powerless to stop it. He racked his brain, trying to come up with something—anything—he could say to bring it all to a screeching halt, to keep Walda from making a decision that would condemn him to the worst fate he could possibly contemplate.

  He looked over to Thord for help. That’s how desperate he was. And the larger Illager reached out and put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

  Then he gave Archie a nasty yet expectant frown. “Why don’t you explain yourself?” he said, enjoying every moment of it. “Tell everyone here how you let the rest of us die.”

  Archie’s jaw dropped. For a moment, he’d let hope creep back into his heart, but just like always, Thord had ripped it clear out of his chest again.

  “You won’t get away with this!” he shouted as he launched himself at Thord. He swung at him wildly with his fists, intending to bash the injured evoker about the head and shoulders.