A Tale of Hussst and Inky
By Dr. Michael Alexander

It was morning, and I was still in bed, hungover. Outside, some accursed dog was barking his head off—not my favorite way to wake up.

“Inky,” I yelled irritably to the next room where my friend was staying, “what is that stupid dog going on about?” Like all forest gnomes, Inky could speak with and understand small animals, dogs included. I wanted Inky to shut the dog up quickly so I could go back to sleep and nurse my hangover.

Inky listened for a second, then ran into my room. “It’s about Jen Erica!”

It took a second for the name to sink in. Jen was a pretty young lady in the full bloom of maidenhood who had given my horse, Buttercup, a sugar cube every day since we rode into town. The folks at the tavern had told me that she was the granddaughter of Akemi, the proprietor of the local magic shop. Apparently, she loved animals—dogs, cats, horses, etc.—and the people in town were all fond of her.

“What about her?” I asked.

“The dog just saw her get kidnapped.”

“OK,” I said. “Now that the dog has told us, will he shut up?” Jen might be cute, and she might be good to Buttercup, but I did not see this as any of my business, at least not if the dog would just be quiet!

“We have to help her!”

As a bandit, I am not big on getting involved with the doings of normal people. “Why? What’s in it for us?”

At first, Inky just glared at me. Then, I saw his eyes widen as he listened more to that yapping dog. “Minotaurs! Jen was kidnapped by two minotaurs!”

OK, that was enough to get me out of bed, and fast. Not that I care that much about minotaurs, but Inky had history. We met about a week ago, and most nights he woke up screaming about them. He had been held captive for several years by minotaurs and hated them with a passion. The trauma of the kidnapping had left him pathologically shy. It really was only due to the telepathic links I am able to create that we could communicate. But those links had led to a fast friendship between us, and loyalty to my companion meant that I was under an obligation to take him seriously for the sake of his peace of mind.

I quickly grabbed my equipment. I was a dragonborn, a cross between a dragon and a human, so I had no need to get into armor. I just put on a pair of pants, grabbed my pack, and I was ready to go. Inky, I noticed, was already dressed, but I don’t think, in the short time we had been together, that I had ever seen him not dressed and ready for combat.

We hurried downstairs. As I watched, Inky went to the dog. He noticed a small piece of paper that the dog was now barking at.

Inky picked the paper up, read it, gasped, and, grabbing a piece of charcoal from his pack, scrawled something on it, muttering, “Hussst, Inky, and Buttercup are on it,” and then spoke to the dog. He rapidly untied the dog, who picked up the paper and ran to the magic shop. Then, Inky ran towards Buttercup and jumped on her back—all this in the very short time it took me to untie her.

“Quick,” he said, “we have to go after them—NOW!”

“Right, let’s round up some of the others…”

“No time!” he shouted, pointing to the sky.

If you have any tracking experience, you know that minotaur tracks are easy to spot: a pair of hoof prints dug into the dirt and snow, neatly set a few feet apart; a distinctive musky smell, easy enough for a trained horse like Buttercup to sniff out. Following them would not be a problem.

But it was starting to sleet. The combination of rain and ice doesn’t take long to wash away and cover the hoof prints, and the smell gets washed away. We had to move quickly before all traces of the minotaurs’ passage were gone. Inky was right; we did not have time to roust the others.

I quickly mounted Buttercup, snatching up Inky unceremoniously and setting him on the horse’s back behind me. We were off.

It was tricky, trying to move quickly. Minotaurs are not known for maintaining a lumbering pace, although their hostage doubtless would slow them down. Further, between the sleet and the dimness of the morning light—a dimness intensified by those same clouds that were dropping the sleet—tracking was hard.

Fortunately, the minotaurs seemed to be staying on the main road. The road was well cleared, and we were able to navigate it without too much trouble, even if a lot slower than we would have liked.

“What did the paper say?” I asked Inky.

“It was instructions from someone higher up in the minotaur hierarchy. It had a picture of Jen and told them to kidnap her so that they could ‘sell her back’ to Akemi for ‘lots of magical loot.’ I wrote a note on the back to Akemi saying ‘Hussst, Inky, and Buttercup are on it,’” (just like a forest gnome to include the horse) “and told the dog to take it to Akemi.”

I nodded. A solid plan on the minotaurs’ part—surprising for what Inky had described to me as a relatively stupid and brutish race. The magic store would have magical defenses and be unassailable. However, a lone girl on the street would unlikely have much in the way of magical defenses, even despite her grandmother’s shop, certainly not enough to stop a determined pair of monsters. And Akemi doted on her granddaughter—everyone in town seemed to, which meant that Jen would probably command a handsome ransom.

We might have lost them altogether, but Inky spotted a small woodpecker hiding in a knot in a tree from the sleet. He spoke to the bird, and fortunately for us, the bird had seen the minotaurs and their captive and was able to give us directions.

Eventually, we came across them. By now it was sleeting so hard and so loud that we nearly tripped upon them before we saw them. But fortunately, the loud sleet also kept them from hearing us as we approached.

I had heard of minotaurs, of course, in scary stories told around campfires. And Inky had shared his experiences. But nothing had prepared me for the sheer size of them, their fur matted with blood, and the great axes they carried with an odd mixture of ferocity and casualness, almost like they were an extension of their bodies. After a lifetime of successfully dominating in any situation, I was intimidated.

Inky said, “They are melee fighters. You have arrows….”

“That doesn’t work. In the rain, the bow can warp, and the wet string interferes with aiming. I can’t be sure of hitting the target…or of not hitting Jen.”

“Firebolts?”

“In the sleet, it is going to be hard to aim them, too, and the weather will cause the bolts to be considerably weaker. And, before you ask, my dragon breath will not be enough to do anything other than make them madder than they already are.”

Despite Inky’s hatred of minotaurs, we had to keep focused. We didn’t have to kill them; we just had to save Jen. We might not have had brawn on our side, but we had brains—we just had to use them.

We found two trees and tied a rope around one, laying the rope along the ground.

Inky dismounted from Buttercup, sneaking to one side. When he was out of sight, I released a thunderclap. A thunderclap doesn’t do much damage from more than five feet away, but it is loud, and that’s what I wanted.

The minotaurs heard the noise, leaped up, and saw me. They charged. They were fast, but Buttercup was faster. She galloped just fast enough to stay ahead of the minotaurs, which frustrated them no end. Taking advantage of a forest gnome’s ability to create minor illusions, Inky, hidden out of sight, used a ventriloquist’s trick to yell “pathitikós” from my direction. (Later, he told me that “pathitikós” means “pathetic” in the minotaur’s language and was one of their strongest insults.)

At this point, they picked up their pace. The only intelligent thing to do was to urge Buttercup to her fastest. But that wasn’t what I did. Instead, I had Buttercup whirl to face the minotaurs.

Had they been brighter, they might have realized it was a trap. But they continued to charge. That’s what minotaurs do. At the last minute, I used my telekinetic mage hand to pull the rope tight as they charged past the trees. The way they tripped was truly impressive. The rope broke (that will teach me to use cheap rope), but they fell and skidded, face down.

Buttercup leapt over them. I was able to snap my fingers and hit both of them with a thunderclap—a wave of pure thunder. It didn’t do much damage, but boy, did it ever tick them off. That was what I wanted. All their focus was on me, none of it on Jen, or equally important, on Inky.

Inky had made it to where Jen was. His knife was incredibly fast, and he sliced her bonds in seconds. But her legs had been tied long enough that she had no circulation and could barely walk, let alone run. And Inky was too small to pick her up and carry her. He wasn’t weak for a gnome, but he wasn’t big enough to lift an adult her size.

I had to buy more time. I looked to the bushes nearby. There weren’t a lot of leaves—the cold saw to that—but there were enough. Buttercup and I headed for them and then dove in. Then, we stopped running, but using my mage hand, I rattled the bushes, making it look like we had turned and were heading south. The minotaurs were fooled and dove into the bushes, thinking we were there.

I could hear the minotaurs grunting and shouting. But then, I heard a yelp of pain from Jen as her legs collapsed under her. The minotaurs heard it too, and they crawled out of the bushes to see their charge and the gnome trying to escape. The minotaurs turned from me, enraged, to attack Inky and Jen.

I was faster than them, but behind them. I couldn’t get to Inky and Jen without going through the minotaurs, and that would be suicide.

But they were close enough together that I could get them both with a blast of dragon breath. The air roiled with visible energy as the blast struck them. It hurt them, I could tell, but not nearly enough to matter.

Then, Inky did something absolutely brilliant! As the minotaurs approached, ignoring the damage from my breath, Inky grabbed a bundle of sticks and threw them at the minotaurs. He reached out with his mind, meeting mine, and sent out a single word: “Campfire.”

Our minds in sync, I used my skills in prestidigitation to light the sticks on fire from the short distance away. The fire flared, and the minotaurs landing on the hot fire yelped and jumped to avoid being burned. Inky grabbed Jen, and the two of them hit the ground and rolled. With a small flash of smoke, they disappeared.

Thanks to the mental link between us, Inky had timed his illusion perfectly. The smoke wasn’t real, and the minotaurs were not fooled; they were sure it was an illusion. But they paused just long enough for Inky and Jen to hide themselves behind a nearby tree. The minotaurs figured out it was an illusion and charged into what they thought was an illusory tree. But the tree was not an illusion; it was real. The minotaurs hit the tree full on. In the process They did more damage to themselves than I had managed to do. Equally important, when they hit the tree, they lost their footing in the icy forest and once again were on the ground.

Still hiding behind the tree, Inky lost no time in creating an image of him and Jen running into the forest. Dazed and livid with anger, the minotaurs followed the image. Not for long, but long enough for me to scoop up Inky and Jen onto the back of Buttercup and head off at a full gallop. Carrying the three of us slowed Buttercup down, but whenever the minotaurs got too close, we would zig-zag, and the minotaurs, used to charging straight, were unable to zig-zag in turn. Slowly, they fell far enough behind us that Buttercup’s superior stamina made all the difference.

We got back to town well ahead of the minotaurs, screeching for help at the top of our lungs. A posse had already been formed, and the minotaurs, being stupid but not that stupid, turned tail and left.

The shopkeeper, Akemi, was in tears in front of her shop. When she saw her granddaughter on the back of Buttercup, she wept tears of joy and hugged her like a bugbear hugging its mate.

Escaping her grandmother’s embrace for a moment, Jen ran over to Inky and I and kissed both of us on the cheeks. My face flushed in the bright blue shade of my draconic ancestors. Inky almost fainted from embarrassment.

Inky wanted to leave to avoid being part of a public scene, and, frankly, I wanted sleep and warmer clothes. But Jen took us both by the hand and dragged us over to meet her grandmother, and Akemi insisted that we come into the shop so she could thank us. She offered us a reward for rescuing her beloved granddaughter, but we both declined. For Inky, the satisfaction of having defeated minotaurs was more of a reward than anyone, even Akemi, could match. And I realized that if I were to accept anything, it would lower my regard in Inky’s eyes, and his goodwill was worth more to me than any magical trinkets.

So instead, I went back to our lodgings and got a good sleep. Don’t ask me what Inky did—I was too busy sleeping to pay attention.