The Call (The Magnificent 12 1)

“Ahhhhh!” Mack cried, knowing even as he made that whinnying sound that he was confirming his unsuitability as a hero.

Stefan said, “If I can’t box kangaroos, I’ll pound me some elves,” and struck a defensive combat pose in full G.I. Joe mode.

Three of the elves were on him in a heartbeat. Down went Stefan, flat on his back.

Two more grabbed Mack. Their thin, delicate fingers weren’t terribly strong, so he squirmed and broke one elf’s grip. But then he caught a glimpse of short clubs that looked, improbably, like bowling pins.

He had a chance to see one up close when it smashed against his nose.

“Owww!” Mack yelled. His eyes were full of tears. He knew blood was gushing from his nose. He wanted to run, but when last he checked he was on a mesa that ended in sheer thousand-foot cliffs.

Mack punched and missed, punched and missed again.

Another blow from an elfin club hit him behind the knee. The knee collapsed, and he stumbled to his left. That was lucky: he staggered out of the way of a vicious blow that just caught his ear.

The pain was intense, but the same blow hitting his head would have knocked him out.

Mack saw a dimly lit Jarrah lash out with a well-aimed kick that caught her elf assailant right where it should have really hurt.

“Ha! You know nothing of elf anatomy, you stupid, reeking sack of human secretions!”

The battle was going very badly. All four of them were either on their backs or on their knees within a few seconds. The elves weren’t very strong, but there were a lot of them. Six to one. The odds were bad.

In a startlingly short time it was over. Mack was facedown with his hands and feet tied with a loop tying his bound hands to his bound feet. This bent him into a U.

A crying, angry, terrified U.

Stefan, Jarrah, and Karri were likewise hog-tied.

Meanwhile, the sun was dropping below the horizon. Soon it would be completely dark.

The elves—it was going to take Mack some time to accept that he was actually using that word—formed a little circle around them. They were as elaborately polite to each other as they had been abusive to Mack and his friends.

“What shall we do with them, brothers, friends, boon companions?” one of the elves asked.

“My own suggestion, made with utmost humility in the company of so many intelligent and experienced elves, is that we kill them.”

“Would you suggest throat slitting? Or do you favor a simple stab to the heart, wise and good friend?”

“I mention—only in the expectation of correction from my betters—that strangulation can be a solution,” another elf chimed in.

The leader, if that’s what he was, said, “I blame myself for perhaps not making this clear, dear brothers, but our contract with the princess requires that we make an effort if possible to deliver them alive.”

“Ah, so she wishes to kill them herself?”

“No doubt, good friend. As usual, you have gone straight to the heart of the matter.”

This seemed to have been a witticism, and the elves tittered politely, clapping the speaker on the back in congratulations.

Mack wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of seeing Risky again. But it seemed preferable to being strangled, stabbed, or slit.

The time had come, he decided, to attempt Grimluk’s magic spell once again. So he said, “Ret click-ur!”

That stopped the elves cold. But not because the spell worked. It didn’t.

“Dare you to use the Vargran tongue against us?” the head elf shrieked. “You worm! You pestilent malignancy! Do you imagine that you have the enlightened puissance? A foul, reeking toad like you?”

“Well…it worked once,” Mack said lamely.