Read The Lore Anthology: Lore of the Underlings: Episodes 1 - 5 for Free Online Page B

to rise. The boys struggled but held him down.
    Then another fall began… one of fine needles… thousands of them… shed like a shower of silver tears… teardrops from the pining Liar’s Tree for the leaves it lost a season too soon…
    Lacking any shelter or shield, Morio bent as best he could to let his rucks’ padded back take the bulk. It worked… in a way… except that he now stood pinned and poked from shoulder to shoe in a topcoat of quills.
    “Looks like a prickupine,” someone smirked, “Plump and ripe for plucking.”
    “Or a porkling peppered with prickly cloves and skewered for the spit.”
    “But no. S ee how the needles crown him? He’s more Lord of the Lard than pig in a poke.”
    “Yes , swillbag,” hissed Finder Hamyx, suddenly sprung to life again and recovering from his long silence of shame. “All hail the Semperor of Swine!”
    “The Liar King!” roared elderwoman Pum, who too had awoken as if from a spell.
    Boxbo and Ixit joined in together with a girlish giggle:
     
    Truth lies in a royal pain
    So don’t mind if we pick your brain
     
    “That sounds offal, Boxbo.”
    “Exactly, Ixit.”
    At last Morio’s knee buckled under the heartless barrage and he seemed almost certain to succumb, bough-beaten and buried by the unforgiving fall. A moment more and it would all be over. The battle lost. The man gone.
    But just then the rains abruptly stopped and the winds turned a new direction, gusting strong and warm from the south. Morio filled his lungs with a new breath, a puff of life, and a wonder befell him — a small wonder well aimed, as if by an unseen hand. From high atop the Liar’s Tree a heavy seedcone tumbled down, down at a dead drop like a hard truth cast from heaven. The cone had the shape of a wildeboar’s heart, with four full pods and every edge tipped in an irony fang, so it met no match in the snaky vine that tethered him to his hell-bound berth. It cut the cord and the man ran for his life, given again.
     
    The folk were confounded.
    “He lives!”
    “Huh?!”
    “It can’t be. How?”
    “Who cares how? You owe me. Now — pay up, pay up, the lot of you!”
    “Not so fast, Lunxy. Look where he goes.”
    “Back to the Black and Blue?!”
    “No…”
    Out from under the ironwood’s reach, Morio stopped for a moment and shed his mortally wounded ruckskin. “Pity,” he blurted, out of breath. “You were a fine old friend.” He made to tuck his tattered shirt but suddenly stiffened, looking legward, with a boyish blush. “Whoopsie! There we go. Hooo…” After a solid minute or so, he shook one leg and then the other, his face flush but serene. “Some business just won’t wait!” he proclaimed, pouring forth with a frothy laugh.
    Three of the onfoot outer Gu ard moved in and quickly surrounded him. They pressed their pikes to his back and sides. “Go now!” ordered one.
    “ I’d love to sir,” said Morio. “That’s oh so kind of you, but… ‘Mission accomplished’ and ‘Anchors aweigh’ already, I am relieved to say!”
    The Guard put a boot to Morio’s buttocks and kicked him into gear. That launched a long march toward the thicket of troops with a poke or prod for every step forward.
    “Who knew that a pant could be so absorbent ?” marveled the prisoner as they went. “And then treat the nose to such a scent… of heaven-sent mersy petals to boot?!”
    The Guard, less enamored of Morio’s pants, gave him another whack in the back.
    A column of pikesmen , more armor than flesh, lined the last of their course. As Morio passed they thrust weapons aloft and chanted low the verses of a wordless dirge ominous and old. Ahead at the heart of the hold they marked, a glow of soft gold awaited… cast by a bale of light, sweet crude… spun oil just now laid down and lit.
    Here Morio’s keeper sent him sprawling, headlong into the haloed ground with one final blow from behind. “Down, clown prince.” The hammering nailed him — bound to be