PART II: Into the Iron Mitten (of Doom)

Rolltar was pinned beneath that snaking monstrosity for who knows how long (certainly Rolltar did not know -- he was never taught to tell time -- he just knew "now" and "then" and "huh?"). He was kept relatively warm by its immense bulk, and he was able to subsist on its blue, gelatinous, semi-transparent, and super-disgusting innards. So, he was in no particularly huge hurry. But he started to get bored after a while (and it really made him depressed to imagine that his existence would be -- essentially -- a quasi-alive, barbarian-shaped boil on the abdomen of a wholly dead snow-ipede forever and ever more).

One day while pondering these matters (and thinking "huh?" over a brunch of gelatinous sorbet and semi-transparent souffle), he decided to finally get up from underneath his slowly decomposing comforter. Unfortunately, the creature was so incredibly long and heavy (even after Rolltar had dined on quite a bit of it), that no matter how high he lifted one of its chitinous segments off the frozen ground, he still could not get out from under the beast. Whenever he started to scoot out of the way on his masculinely chiseled and amazingly prehensile buttocks, he found that he was no longer in a position to lift its humungoidness off of him. He would then find himself squished once more. He, of course, had other courses of action open to him, but if you learn one thing about Rolltar (besides his heroically clefted chin and mountainous biceps and flowing, golden hair and his surprisingly sweet singing voice and his --), you, uh...

If you learn another thing about Rolltar, to add to all the other things, you must learn that he never tries any other courses of action besides the first one. He either forgets the first thing he tries (so he just attempts it again believing it had just occurred to him), or he simply refuses to comprehend that he could possibly improve on anything he would do. In any case, Rolltar stayed there for a while longer, just waiting to forget what he had just tried.

After yet another indeterminate amount of time, our mightily snoring and awesomely drooling hero awoke to a distant, piteous cry that echoed in the dark around him. It was night, naturally, which is why he could not see anything. But he insisted on assuming that he had not yet opened his eyes. So, he spent the next few minutes trying to pry his eyelids even further open, which did pretty much nothing for the blackness. As the sounds came closer, he came to know what it was out there that was closing in on him as he lay there helpless. It was the bark of the murderous ice weasels that he heard. Creatures so malign, so utterly blood-thirsty and foul, that once Rolltar even considered being afraid of them. I myself can say without regret that I wet my little minstrel under-trousers just about every night from the thought of them.

They are just complete little, shitty bastards.

So there our protagonist lay, unable to move, unable to defend himself, unable to open his eyes, even unable to wipe the frozen drool stalactites from his barbarian chin-cleft. While out there, in the dark, the terrible howl of the weasels drew ever nearer and nearer. He was unable to reach the blade of his master, the now rather headless Snow-Eyes, so he instead attempted to tear off a couple of the snow-ipede's clawed legs to use as improvisational nunchuks. Luckily, his plan worked the first time he tried it, so he wouldn't have to waste all that time failing at it over and over again. He whirled them around a few times yelling stuff like, "hah! Hoo-yah! Yi-yi-yah! Hooo-hah! Kee-YAH! Cha!"

For some reason, the weasels were now much more determined to kill him. He could hear several of them pattering across the snow on their bastardy clawed feet. But one thing about ice weasels... if they wish to, they can be perfectly silent as they slither along on their bellies like furry serpents. So, I am guessing, the noises he heard were only very clever decoys intended to make their victim believe the attack was coming from one direction, when in truth, they were really coming from the opposite way. Cunning little whisker-faced buttheads, aren't they?

Though Rolltar had assumed his eyes were closed, when he turned his head towards the noise, he could see the soft glow of the white expanse of snowy terrain as far as his eyes could reach. Suddenly, there came into view, white blurs snaking closer and closer to him across the icy ground. These indistinct shapes were the source of the patterings, and soon hissing, throaty growls joined in. Rolltar could now see the glittering of beady, little, evil eyes racing his way. Snow-Eyes had warned the youth not to be out in the frozen wastes at night as the scent of human flesh summoned the ice weasels from out of the dark. Rolltar had typically ignored or done the opposite of what the old man told him, but something made him obey when it came to observing a respectful curfew over the blinding wastelands. As the sounds grew nearer, he could make out three of the blurry, white shapes (which, at the time, was coincidentally how high Rolltar could count).

No sooner had he raised up his snow-ipede leg-chuks, that he felt a sharp pain in his right forearm. He dropped the makeshift weapon held there, and spun his head around to see an ice weasel that was clamped into his flesh. It had approached silently and attacked before the barbarian knew it. "Hey!" he shouted as he instinctively swung his arm across his chest. Luckily, the weasel's body slammed into one of the beasts that had closed in from the other side. He turned back to face the three, and was narrowly able to swing the segmented leg into the jaws of another one of the weasels. He swept the first creature back across his chest, whomping against the hard ground. Then, in what would become a very Rolltar-esque maneuver, he brought the weasel clinging to his arm and the one attached to the leg smacking into each other in mid-air. The two monsters made a very satisfying whddt! sound (and also two barely audible squeaks like two bath toys thrown against a brick wall).

Both of the weasels let go and tumbled across the ground, but another one dashed at him and got a frightening grip on his throat -- the trademark death-grip of the ice vermin. The creature would next tear a gash in Rolltar's mightily veined and powerfully Adam's-appled neck (Adam being, as you know, the lost earl of Schliblog who had that lumpy thing in throat that was so large, he had a team of eunuchs with puffy, sequined pants carry it around for him -- and the rule is, if you have eunuchs carry something around for you, you get it named after you... that's just the way it is). But Rolltar was as quick as a Gyrfinkin racing chicken, and he immediately grasped the beast at the back of the neck and squeezed. This opened its jaws (but then, of course, the thing scraped the heck out of Rolltar's chin cleft as it wiggled around furiously). Be advised, our hero is very particular about the care and condition and grooming of his chin cleft. At this transgression, Rolltar took the weasel's head and whacked it hard into his own, essentially performing a weasel-butt (a term that to this day makes him giggle like a pig-tailed little girl).

Some of the weasels that were earlier stunned were now scrambling to their feet in a blink. They hissed menacingly and prepared to advance once more upon the young warrior. Rolltar, meanwhile, gently dabbed his cleft with his free hand. Feeling tiny droplets of blood there, the blue-fire behind his eyes suddenly rose into a terrible inferno. What started as a low growl, ascended into a roar that echoed across the frozen wastes. If ice weasels could know fear in their merciless hearts, they would have felt it then. Instead, they charged at the barbarian youth, their razor sharp jaws snapping and slavering. Um-yum-yum-yum-yum!

One by one, Rolltar plucked the whiskered fiends out of mid-air as they launched themselves at him with murderous abandon. In a blink, the orphan of awesome has two of the creatures clutched tightly in each hand as they continued to gnash their mouthfuls of wicked daggers together. In one deft movement, Rolltar pressed the accursed albino death ferrets against the lifeless girth of the snow-ipede. The creatures perhaps did not know exactly what they were chewing into, but before Rolltar could count to that-number-that-comes-after-three, the quartet of wasteland predators had gnawed clear through the body of the deceased snow beast.

Our hero released the bloodthirsty critters as he scrambled to his feet. Before he could seek out his master's blade that was embedded somewhere in the snow-ipede's carcass, the weasels had got a whiff of him again, and were curving their way around to bring him directly into their path once more. In the nick of time, Rolltar leaped up to one of the severed halves of the enormous monster and he began to run down its winding length. The weasels were in close pursuit, devouring great swaths of the dead creature like a powerful acid. But Rolltar was not running away -- NO! He was not even making a strategic withdrawal (as he has said to me time and time again, 'strategy is for those who can't beat you by punching you straight in the face.'). He was simply looking for Snow-Eyes' trusty punchin' stick -- what he would one day learn to call 'a sword.'

Just as the rapacious ice-demons were about to add barbarian boot to their menu, Rolltar sprung forward, grasped the hilt of Snow-Eyes' weapon that was still buried in the creature's armored plating, and somersaulted on his shoulder then twisted so that he was facing his pursuers, blade poised to strike. Three swipes and three weasel bodies fell to the frozen ground without their heads. The fourth creature let out a blood-chilling howl before becoming impaled on the point of Rolltar's outstretched weapon. The four beasts continued to flail and convulse about as though there was still a battle to be won...

But the battle belonged only to Rolltar on this day!   

The next time anyone had met a sunfire-haired youth wearing much less clothing than would have been appropriate striding across the western wastes of Valgrim's Gauntlet, it would have been weeks or even a month or two after Snow-Eyes had breathed his last and the Dragon Clan mysteriously disappeared from the songs of the skalds. The man-warrior that emerged from the swirling winds and blinding snow was so different from the lost child that had wandered into the unknown after accidentally decapitating his blind foster father. The hunters of the nomadic Elk Clan saw a young man walking towards them with four weasel skulls skewered on his sword and two snow-ipede mandibles cradled under his arm. The cry went up back to the hunters' encampment:

"Can we get him some pants?"

Oh, and get him pants they did... pants with a side of legend.