Part 19 - Terror of the Trdlo - Not Exactly a Witch

 “You’re a witch!” exclaimed Sister Ludmilla, her wide-eyed, missing-toothed face gawping. 

Zdenka tensed.  She had realized by now that Ludmilla’s insulting observations were not intentional attacks, but were merely the famous “Hill Country forthrightness” taken to an extreme, but Sieglinde had not, unlike the others, gotten to know the socially maladroit hermitess over 200 versts of road.   

Zdenka opened her mouth to say something politic to this strange and powerful lady who had just saved all their lives, but Sieglinde had already calmly replied to the hermitess: “Not exactly.” 

Ludmilla had not noticed, but Zdenka had, that Sieglinde had also given Silvernose’s hand a squeeze, to forestall any gallant but vehement response from him.

“How did you find the way down to my hermitage?”  Ludmilla asked.

“I had been unsure of the location,” replied Sieglinde, “Beyond a vague ‘near Skalica’ - but I heard Beata’s hymn-singing on the air all the way in the village: ‘All praise and honor to God in the highest’…”

“How did you get from Skalica to the ravine so quickly?”

“I can travel very fast when I am alone.”

“Well, I thank you, and thank your friends, for helping me and for saving my life,” said the hermitess.

Once they reached the pretty stone-walled town of Horalka, Ludmilla parted from her new friends to make a whirlwind tour of grassroots local leaders and Church officials she knew.  Doubtless, she could relax with them in speaking her thickest Hill Country dialect.  She told Beata to meet her just before sunset at the gates of a certain convent’s garden. 

“Well, thanks be to God and St. Liptov, I’ve organized myself a fine new place to hang my cloak,” 

Sister Ludmilla said when they met again, beaming to Beata and the others with her missing-toothed smile.  “The good sisters here will put me up for the night in their noisy dormitory in town, but tomorrow I have an empty hut reserved for me in the sprawling – and quiet – grounds of a pious noblewoman’s wild park just outside of town.  Since her husband passed away, she has collected hermits, you see, and two others live widely-spaced in her husband’s former game park.”

Zdenka and her friends congratulated Sister Ludmilla, bid her farewell, and retired to their inn for a meal of Hill Country halušky dumplings.   

The following days, sunny babí léto or “Summer in Her elderly womanhood” weather accompanied them on their leisurely pedestrian travel through the changing leaves of the Hill Country forests en route to the city of Prešpurk, part of an unhurried southern loop back to Vodníkov.  Sheepskin cloaks kept them warm enough to camp under the stars, which they did between towns big enough to sport inns.

They never saw Sieglinde sleep, although several times in camp they saw Sieglinde stroking Silvernose’s head in her lap and watching him sleep. 

“I don’t see any bite marks on Silvernose’s neck, nor on yours or mine, so I’m not worried,” Zdenka answered Beata’s question in their private room at the inn in Prešpurk.

Every few weeks, Sieglinde became visibly run-down, but would excuse herself to go off on some mysterious errand in nature for a few days (and nights) – and then catch up to the others on the road, refreshed and energetic.   

At one point, the friends stopped to visit a lovely old pilgrimage chapel dedicated to Saints Mňága and Žďorp.  Beata was happy to see Sieglinde kneel in prayers with them, and surprised she knew these prayers better than Zdenka and Silvernose.

From LibrePhoto - Martin V

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Happy May Day!  Hope you're enjoying it safely.

Please join us for The Terror of the Trdlo's exciting conclusion, Part 20, next post!

The story so far...
The Terror of the Trdlo, Serialized:

Part I - The Adventure Begins (But Not Really the Terror, Yet)
Part II - Zdenka vs. The Green-Eyed Monster (Jealousy - That Is)
Part III - Nun: The Wiser
Part IV - The Hermitess
Part V - Silvernose Arrives Minus His Weird Girlfriend
Part VI - She's Gone Feral
Part VII - A Little Traveling Music
Part VIII - Horror at the Hermitage
Part IX - The Rutting Moon
Part X - Herbal Interlude
Part XI - "It's Blood"
Part XII - Empty, Disturbed, Dead
Part 13 - Hut Stinking of Musk
Part 14 - The Howling, Squealing Horde
Part 15 - Something Wicked This Way Comes...UP
Part 16 - A Heaving Sea of Beasts
Part 17 - Hymns Above the Battle's Din
Part 18- Wreathed in Blue Fire 

Part 18 - Terror of the Trdlo - Wreathed in Blue Fire

A blindingly bright blue light shone around the outline of the hermitage’s front door, and through the gnawed gap underneath.  The door bowed inward, straining against the stout oak plank barring it, then creaked, whined, and exploded.  

Wreathed in blue fire, a pale, petite woman with black hair and a fixed stare strode inside the cabin.   

Her hands were tensed into the shape of claws.  She moved her arms in wide arcs, ruffling the long, draping sleeves of her robe, sending a ripple through wide writhing swaths of trdlo-shapes.  As her gesture swept over them, they groaned, quivered, and shriveled down by the hundreds into heaps of brittle, mummified cylinders.

“Sieglinde!” cried Silvernose, overjoyed, smashing a trdlo between his boot and the side of the oven below his perch.

An odd smile broke over Sieglinde’s face, although her staring eyes and claw-handed gestures continued their trdlo-murdering work without interruption. 

Sister Ludmilla’s much-lined face peered upside-down through the opening in the rafters.  Her long white hair drooped down and her eyes were wide.  She swung around and dropped onto the crowded bed-platform.  She urged Silvernose and the others to precede her down the hand- and foot-holds built into the oven.  She continued to push them through the space Sieglinde had cleared on the floor inside the front door.  Their feet crunched on the desiccated corpses of blackened trdla. 

Ludmilla stooped to pick up her basket of icons, cursed when she followed the handle down with her eyes to where it disappeared into a heap of trdlo corpses.  She shook off the dried husks of a hundred trdla, hoisted the basket, quickly extricated her iron skillet from another pile of bodies, and bade Sieglinde follow her out of the hermitage.

“I got a fire going up there pretty good,” she explained to Silvernose outside, grinning like a madwoman.  “If I’d known your friend was coming, I wouldn’t have done it!”

There was a wide path paved by shrunken trdlo carcasses leading across the ravine.  Even the trdla not directly in the path Sieglinde had made were lethargic and groaning instead of jumping, shrieking and howling.

Sieglinde made a pointing gesture above her head, and an orb of blue light floated, hovering above her as she walked.   She entwined her hand gently in Silvernose’s and led the group along the path, the odd smile still on her face. 

“We must hurry,” she said without turning around.  “The forest spirits tell me that these beings never swarm in these numbers, and this aggressively, but for a particularly rare conjunction of the Rutting Moon with the baleful influence of certain stars positioned just right.

“I have strength now, but I cannot defend you against another swarm of this size.  We must speed to a landscape with different soils, different flora, which will be inhospitable to them,” she continued.

Sister Ludmilla asked if the town of Horalka lay in an inhospitable environment for the trdlo, and Sieglinde said it would be safe. The hermitess reaffirmed everyone’s approval for her plan of being dropped off there.  Flames were licking out of the roof of the hermitage behind them.

They passed the grisly sight of their dead horses, still in harness, unable to flee when their legs were viciously attacked while they were attached to the wagon. The burning hermitage on the other side of the ravine imparted a lurid glow to the bloodied corpses.

They devoted a few heartbeats to trying to salvage what they could from the wagon.  At least one trdlo had somehow climbed into it, ripped apart their bags and firkins of food, and dispersed the contents as a hopeless mess.  But Beata was able to retrieve her second custom-built repeater crossbow, and the others were able to take out their leather bags of extra weapons and clothing which were largely intact and not befouled with a musky, oil spoor. 

“Do you have your own horse and wagon on the main road?” Ludmilla asked Sieglinde.  Sieglinde shook her head. 

“We must walk.”

They walked in silence up the rutted forest path with overstretching treetops that led away from the ravine and the hermitage, which was now burning to the ground with thousands of trdlo corpses in it.

They walked along the main road, but not in the direction of abandoned Skalica.  Instead they walked toward the Hill Country urban triangle of Horalka, Tatranka, and Jesenka, which Sieglinde had assured them would be trdlo-free.  A glorious profusion of autumnal yellow and red leaves became increasingly visible in the landscape with the improving light.

“I missed you,” Sieglinde said to Silvernose as dawn faded the stars and reddened the sky.  “I asked for you at St. Vlasta’s as soon as my lonely errand was complete. They told me where you went. I thought you and our friends could benefit from my help.”   

The orb of light above her head winked out.

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More to come on the 1st of May

"It was late in the evening - the 1st of May/
 Twilit May - the time of love..."

- K.H. Macha, Máj (1836)

If you're in lockdown with loved ones, smooch 'em under a flowering tree, preferably a cherry tree, on May 1st for maximum Czech thinly-veiled-pagan traditional resonance - and also so the womenfolk don't "dry out" (Sigmund Freud should have said something about this custom - he was born in Příbor, Moravia, after all).

Anyway-
The story so far...
The Terror of the Trdlo, Serialized:

Part I - The Adventure Begins (But Not Really the Terror, Yet)
Part II - Zdenka vs. The Green-Eyed Monster (Jealousy - That Is)
Part III - Nun: The Wiser
Part IV - The Hermitess
Part V - Silvernose Arrives Minus His Weird Girlfriend
Part VI - She's Gone Feral
Part VII - A Little Traveling Music
Part VIII - Horror at the Hermitage
Part IX - The Rutting Moon
Part X - Herbal Interlude
Part XI - "It's Blood"
Part XII - Empty, Disturbed, Dead
Part 13 - Hut Stinking of Musk
Part 14 - The Howling, Squealing Horde
Part 15 - Something Wicked This Way Comes...UP
Part 16 - A Heaving Sea of Beasts
Part 17 - Hymns Above the Battle's Din

Part 17 - Terror of the Trdlo - Hymns Above the Battle's Din

Frenzied trdlo launches itself to attack Silvernose from a twitching pile of its dead and living siblings

“They are getting CLOSER!” Silvernose yelled up from his perch on Ludmilla's bed-shelf atop the massive oven - a whitewashed clay island in a rising, roiling sea of blood- and musk-soaked frenzied trdla. “Your aid would be VERY appreciated!”  

Zdenka poked her head down the trapdoor opening.  The musk had become even more rank.  A swaying mountain of dead and half-dead trdla bodies was piling up to the level of the bed-shelf. 

Silvernose had a sword in each hand.  He impaled a leaping trdlo through the center of its tooth-ringed gaping mouth.  It gurgled and spat as he shook the sword to fling it off.  With his other sword, he swiped at dozens of other snarling monstrosities.  His booted legs kicked at the heap of carcasses forming against one side of the oven.  His boots were slick with trdlo blood and musk oil.  Trdla kept leaping forward to replace the dead ones.  Trying to fasten the muscular bands of their o-shaped lips on Silvernose and bite him, the aggressive tubes of flesh and hair looked like they were trying to kiss his boots.

Zdenka hopped down quickly but carefully onto the narrow bed-shelf next to her friend.  She reached into the compartments of her leather armor and drew forth dagger after dagger, which she flung into the howling trdla which had been about to overwhelm her friend.  She retained two as hand daggers, and struck with both of them at any trdlo which came too close.  Beata had climbed down the trapdoor now, too, to kneel on the crowded perch. She was busy shooting the abundant trdla which sprung at Silvernose.

Silvernose’s friends had saved his life, and had helped him make substantial headway in impeding the progress of the corpse-ramp’s mindless construction.

But now the pile of carcasses on the other side of the oven was beginning to catch up with the one which had caused Silvernose such trouble.  Beata had shot all the bolts in her repeating crossbow.  Zdenka was becoming exhausted, spinning from side to side to stab or swipe at the trdla launching themselves from the relentlessly growing body-piles.  Streaks of trdlo oil and blood marred her leather pants, cuirass and boots.

Ludmilla leaned down through the trapdoor, brandishing a tinderbox which Beata had tucked into her belt hours ago.  “I’m going to set my hermitage on fire.  We will die taking trdla with us!” 

Beata began to sing the ancient hymns of Church tradition, singing of the power of God, of unshakeable faith in the face of all despair and overwhelming opposition. Her voice resounded with a bell-like clarity, a supernatural volume beyond what a normal person could achieve.  The glorious sound cut through and rose above the cacophonous panting, squealing, gurgling, and howling. 

Zdenka’s chest swelled with love.  Beata’s voice elevated her for a heartbeat beyond the stink and the violence and the hopelessness of the battle.  

One of the most beautiful things about Beata is her singing, thought Zdenka.  If the roof collapses in flames and I die under a pile of trdlo, at least I will die hearing my lady’s song.

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Are our heroes destined to die gnawed by trdlo teeth?

Find out tomorrow!  Part 18 will post on April 30, 2020.


The story so far...
The Terror of the Trdlo, Serialized:

Part I - The Adventure Begins (But Not Really the Terror, Yet)
Part II - Zdenka vs. The Green-Eyed Monster (Jealousy - That Is)
Part III - Nun: The Wiser
Part IV - The Hermitess
Part V - Silvernose Arrives Minus His Weird Girlfriend
Part VI - She's Gone Feral
Part VII - A Little Traveling Music
Part VIII - Horror at the Hermitage
Part IX - The Rutting Moon
Part X - Herbal Interlude
Part XI - "It's Blood"
Part XII - Empty, Disturbed, Dead
Part 13 - Hut Stinking of Musk
Part 14 - The Howling, Squealing Horde
Part 15 - Something Wicked This Way Comes...UP
Part 16 - A Heaving Sea of Beasts