Free The Warble by Victoria Simcox

It was foggy, damp, and miserably cold out.     
“It’s no use; he’s not out here,” one of the ravens said.
    “That’s what I’m
thinking, and I’m getting hungry,” another raven chimed in.
    Then suddenly, they
heard some rustling.
    “Quiet!” Roage said,
tilting his head sideways to look down from the tree where they were perched.
At the base of it, huddled under a small gray blanket with the queen’s portrait
embroidered on it, lay Ugan, sleeping soundly. The five ravens dropped to the
ground and hopped toward the gray mound. They grabbed hold of the blanket with
their beaks and, all at once, yanked it off of Ugan.
    Ugan woke abruptly.
“What, when, where am I?” he said, still half-asleep. With their wings
stretched out, the ravens circled around him, cawing loudly. “What do you want
from me?” Ugan backed himself up against the tree.
    “We know who you are,”
one of the ravens said.
    “A dirty traitor,”
another one said.
    “You work for that
wicked Queen Sentiz,” Roage said.
    “You don’t understand.
I’m really only her slave,” Ugan responded.
    But the ravens had no
mercy, and they began to close in on him. They pecked at him with their long,
pointed beaks. Ugan managed to kick them away, but they had already torn his
pants and nipped his legs until they were bloody. When he finally broke free of
them, he began to run as fast as his little legs could carry him. Through the
foggy forest, the ravens tailed close behind him, swooping down and pecking at
his head, making it very hard for him to see in which direction he was going.
But he dared not stop; he had heard stories of ravens like these actually
killing dwarfs. These stories were always thought to be no more than old
dwarfs’ tales, the kind that would be told late at night while sitting around
bonfires, nevertheless, he wasn’t taking any chances.
    As the chase went on,
the weather changed, and it started to rain heavily. Lightning struck a tree
and it fell, almost hitting Ugan on the head; luckily he managed to outrun it,
but just barely. The ravens were also having a hard time chasing him in the
heavy rain, and so they flew up to a tree branch to rest.
    “He’s lucky this
time—the traitor! But I’d better not catch him again in our neck of the woods,”
Roage said as he and the other four sat drenched on the branch.
    As Ugan kept running,
the forest started to look familiar. The rain began to lighten up, and he
noticed that the ravens were gone. He finally stopped and leaned against a tree
to catch his breath. While panting heavily, he stared through the tall, mossy
trees, and to his surprise, he could see, directly in front of him, his brother
Rumalock’s cottage.

 
 
12
 
    It was quite a surprise
for Ugan that he had run all the way to Rumalock’s cottage, for he was
expecting the journey to take much longer. He leaned against a tree, trying to
catch his breath, and with a shaky hand, he wiped the sweat off his brow and
thought about the task that lay ahead of him. He really wasn’t looking forward
to it, especially with his nerves so wrenched from the frightful chase and his
legs in pain from the cuts that the nasty ravens had made. Leading the three
human children into Her Majesty’s trap only gave him a sick feeling in his
stomach to add to it all.
    Her Majesty—what an
unsuitable title for such a horrible being, he thought. But
that was beside the point; his life was at stake, and what had to be done just
had to be done. He hated to be deceitful, but at the same time, he wasn’t going
to risk maybe being banished to Treachery Island. He had been there many times
with the queen, and it was not a pretty place. Prisoners were held in locks and
chains, in cold damp cells, and he could still recall their screams of anguish.
Most of them would go insane over time from being there too long. The mere
thought of it sent a chill down his spine.
    A hope of a new
Bernovem was something Ugan didn’t have. The