Outside, the moon has made it’s appearance in the sky. The sun still visible as a red ball of flame in the horizon. Masnark was surprised that his litany has taken so long. He started out wanting to tell a simple tale, but as he was talking, the memories overwhelmed him and demanded to be heard. Friends of the past have shown their faces to him again. He was reminded why he was so tied to his friends in the present. More than Masnark told the story, the story told itself. It took on a life of its own. The children, surprisingly, were still attentive, though the tavern seemed to have emptied somewhat. Masnark smiled at the eager faces and ordered them all dinner. As he was eating, he tried to be as unobtrusive as possible, to let the children talk to each other. To see how they were taking his tale. At some point, their discussion turned towards the part the Brits took in the fighting. There was a heated argument between two of the Bolgs and the young Elf. The Bolgs were saying that the Hibernian forces did not need the help of the snobbish Brits. The Elf was contending that without that help the Hibernian’s would have tasted bitter defeat. Masnark did not interject. At some point, there was a lull in the conversation, and the little keen looked at the old Enchanter and asked him
"What do you think Mathter Enthanter? Did we need the Britth to win that day?"
Masnark looked at them and took a pull at his tea, buying time to try and put it as gently as he could.
"
ou see children, our existence is very fragile. In our histories we can see times when our peoples had temporary truces with the residents of Camelot. If you look back enough into the past, when I was still young and agile, you will see that there was even a time when our kind did not raise their swords against the Trolls of Jordheim.." at the gasp that came from some of the children, Masnark smiled.
"How quickly we forget." he mused to himself.
"And if we do not forget, we make sure our children never know." He continued talking to them.
"es, there was a time, at the beginning of it all when the forces of Albion were so strong, that the Celts and Norse felt the need to stop fighting each other and fight the Armies of Albion. But after each such happening, we always went back to fighting, the inherent greed, distrust and hatred that is between us always winning. As for your question, little one. Well. The answer is that we will never know if we would have survived. It is my belief though that without the help of the Brits, we would have died that day and that Nottmoore would have fallen. We were outnumbered five to one and the Norse had a magnificent amount of siege engines at their disposal while all we had were two." One of the Bolgs seemed like he disagreed, he murmured under his breath:
"My dad said we don’t need no stinking Brits." But otherwise he bit his tongue.
"What I do know for sure, children, is this. The thing that happened in the Relic Keep at Grallarhorn was a mistake. A mistake that we should not have done. The Sad Night at Grallarhorn is aptly named. We were too confident in our alliance with Albion. And we paid for it. We paid for it dearly"
Masnark continued his story.
Very very well written! 