Chapter Seventeen

  Sir Torald Haroldson listened to the sound of Lord Ulbert sleep. ‘I didn’t really know if demons slept or not, I suppose most things do, even vampires sleep. I guess it’s just less than the rest of us.’ He pondered as he looked at the back of his eyelids.

  ‘Evidently they can snore louder though… much… much louder.’ Torald kept his urge to laugh at bay, despite the fact that his traveling companion, his ‘charge’ such as it were, was as far from human as anyone could be. ‘You’d think I’d be more anxious, given that he’s a demon, but… I don’t know. For some reason he strikes me as surprisingly human.’

  And what he bore witness to through the window? ‘That was magnificent. Demons are supposed to be mere destroyers, forces of nature, spirit beings who make it to the mortal plane to wreak havoc in pursuit of power. They never build. But this one, does? Could he really be one of the ‘Players’ of myth?’

  The stories of the gods, the ‘Players’ of the world of Yggdrasil were told in temples great and small all over the Kingdoms of men. Though there was little enough information about just what Yggdrasil was or why its beings were so supremely powerful, and as to how they arrived… who could say?

  What was sure? ‘Whoever can make something so beautiful as that fountain, who can casually simply meet a need on a whim, even if it was to glorify his coming and nothing more, is no mere ‘destroyer’. He is a lord worth following, and that’s something our country has been far too short of for far too long.’

  Thoughts of that sort did a great deal to keep Torald awake, and in order to finally find a few hours sleep at least, he sought the rhythm of the creator demon’s breathing, and in that manner, he finally found his rest, for at least the last three hours before dawn broke the darkness.

  He awoke when the sun hit his eyes. This was a routine habit for Torald, rising with the dawn was as natural for a knight as anything could be, he looked across the room to where Ulbert slept, and found that his human form vanished, leaving him looking almost comically absurd asleep in bed as he was. A goat’s head at one end, hooves on the other, and a blanket draped over his body, giving the appearance that a farm animal had snuck into the master’s house to take a nap.

  Torald rose, set his feet on the cool wooden floor, stood up, and stretched. He then ventured over to the window while swinging his arms back and forth, the sore muscles stretched and old wounds ached ever so slightly. The sort of injuries that left you not just forever marked, but always a sliver slower than you were before… unless you compensated with martial arts.

  Outside, Torald could see the wondering stares of the population who saw the fountain standing tall and proud, the cascading water within easy reach had a twofold effect on the population.

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  Some stood and stared with dumb disbelief, while others oohed and aaaahed… unsurprisingly, the vocal ones were the first to wheel around and run into their tents and homes to get buckets to collect water for their use. ‘There’s going to be a stampede.’ He thought, but shrugged. While he didn’t see the peasants as mere animals, numbers to be used and thrown away, as some of his class did, there was nonetheless a dim view of them.

  ‘Undisciplined and whimsical, flighty, weak, and unreliable… they’ll trample each other over a new resource just because it’s new, even though there’s no reason to think they’ll run out of it.’ He exhaled hard, ‘If a few get trampled to death… well, they have nobody but themselves to blame.’

  He looked over his shoulder toward Ulbert, the demon drooled a little out of the side of his mouth, and Torald had to bite his tongue to keep back any noise of amusement. ‘I might as well get things ready for him, we have no reason to rush, but even so… it is the Queen, I can only expect so much patience from her, even to greet a hero.’

  So he went about his routine, dumping cold water over himself outside to both wake himself up and wash himself off, drying with a rough rag, throwing and putting on his armor again. He ordered breakfast brought to the door of his room as soon as possible, and when he was inside and waiting for Ulbert to awaken, he stood directly in front of the entrance until the knock came and he could accept the delivery without allowing the person to see within.

  That was the thing to wake the wandering demon, the heavy thudding knock.

  When Torald backed himself into the room again after stepping out to accept the tray with the two bowls of potato stew, Ulbert was just sitting up. “I slept later than I intended, did I keep you waiting?” Ulbert asked, and Torald quickly denied it.

  “Not at all, m’lord. I’m ready to travel whenever you are. But I had breakfast brought up, I put a little extra toward the inn when we arrived yesterday, so you should have some meat with your potato stew. Perhaps not much, but until we can rebuild our cattle, goat, and pig herds in the east, it’s the best I can do.” Torald said and sat the bowl on the table. “If it pleases you, would you like to go through the routine one more time?”

  “Again? You don’t mind?” Ulbert asked and narrowed his eyes a little as he reactivated his spell to give his body a proper ‘human’ shape. ‘Putting his own money into some extra food, the lessons… sending away his guards…?’

  “Why are you doing this for a demon?” Ulbert asked.

  “Why did you do that, for humans, m’lord?” Torald asked and gestured to the window. “Or anything you’ve done since you appeared?”

  Ulbert couldn’t really answer it clearly, not in a way that made sense, so he simply said, “I wanted to.”

  “Then that is my answer.” Torald replied, and they set about another round of royal etiquette before they left again. The delay was not a long one, but to Ulbert’s surprise as they left the inn an hour later, the name of the Game Changer was being heralded as a true god, not only by the common people, but as the priests who danced beneath the flowing waters as a desperate want was miraculously resolved.

  ‘I suppose being thought of as a god wouldn’t be so bad.’ Ulbert mused as they left the town of Sasbay behind, and continued on the long road to the hall of the Draconic Queen, but unlike before, there were no other accompanying knights, it was he, and Torald, alone.