KINGDOM OF THE STONE -- a Wattpad featured novel

Chapter Thirty

The cold winds of fall stripped the trees of their foliage and brought with them dull gray skies.  The villagers of Korion-Crusomosc hid in their doorways peering out at the gold covered stone on its column of rock.  No one wanted to get too close for fear of starting another riot as when the milk first stopped flowing, yet no one wanted to miss it if the milk started again.

After the riot, the elders attempted to organize the milk's distribution.  This ensured that everyone got a fair share until one day when the barrel stopped refilling.  A couple of days passed and the villagers were becoming desperate before it was discovered that a woman named Thaesori had hidden a bowl of milk against future deprivations and was sneaking off to sip from it.  Once the bowl was emptied, the milk began to flow.

Then the milk stopped again.  This led to a frantic but fruitless search of everyone's houses, desperate accusations and finally violence.  A number were injured and Thaesori was seriously hurt.  The elders finally decided that the milk had stopped on its own and that no milk remained hidden, and so they waited and watched and grew desperate as fall set in.

Haydonae sat in her doorway listlessly staring at the stone when she thought she heard a faint trickle.  She sat up straighter.  A small stream of milk flowed into the barrel and stopped.  Other villagers took notice from their doorways.  They made eye contact and then, as if by some silently signaled agreement, rushed to the barrel.  Haydonae crashed into Methus.  He caromed off and fell against the rock column scraping his arm and cutting his hand.  Someone bigger and stronger got to the milk first, and held off the others as he drank.  He quickly emptied the barrel while others swiped at its sides with strips of cloth that they would suck, hoping to get the last few drops.

Methus climbed to his feet, smearing one bloody hand across the stone as he did so.  Immediately milk gushed out, over filing the barrel before trickling to a stop.  Once again the villagers stood around the stone and stared, not at the barrel full of milk, but at the blood smeared across the stone's golden surface.

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"What is it about the angorym always fighting in the winter?" Bazma complained, stamping his feet by the fire and staring out over the snow covered pass they guarded.

"I don't know, Baz," Macander snapped irritably.  "Maybe it has something to do with the fact they come from the frozen north.  Fighting in winter certainly inconveniences use more than them.  Maybe they know that."  The cold and the waiting were getting on his nerves.  He had grown a lot over the summer in both size and confidence.  Though he still sometimes felt like a big kid, he had repeatedly demonstrated his fighting ability on the practice field to all the men he had helped train.

"It is, perhaps, too much to hope the angorym will wait until spring and give us the time we need to prepare," Pedias offered.  Though one of the dwerka, he was helping the humans stand guard.

"You don't think they'd pick a moonless night like tonight to attack, do you?" Bazma asked.

Macander just gave him a disbelieving look.

Each of them led a "hand of hands" of reavers guarding a hastily erected wooden barricade across the pass between the Pelavale and the southern valley.  Guards had been stationed at intervals along the fence and at the tops of the hills which had been incorporated into the barrier.

The dwerka, who had devised the barrier and helped them construct it, apparently thought on large scales. The idea of walling off entire valleys was not strange to them. They assured the humans the barrier was necessary because of the drwg. The angorym would use the giant wolves to flank their enemies or attack them from the rear, while the angorym launched a frontal assault.