“What?” the bugbear squeaked.
“Of the…chain, you…brainless imbecile! Not…the piton!”
“Oh.” A very small, quiet voice now. “Okay.”
A moment more Katim waited, summoning the reserves she would need to pull off this particular miracle. And then, a simple whispered “Now!”
The bugbear released the chirrusk, abandoning the screaming gremlin to his fate.
So much of this half-assed plan could go wrong. If she'd misjudged the remaining length of chain, or the height of the swing, or her own pain-dulled and cold-addled reflexes…If anything went wrong, they were dead.
Even as Jhurpess let go of the chain, Katim was once again hauling with all her might. The bugbear's weight was hardly negligible, but without the added load of gremlin, she managed to thrust him up toward her axe. Using it as a step, and jamming the piton into the wall as he went, Jhurpess scurried over the edge of the slope.
Katim didn't see it. The instant she was no longer holding the bugbear, she lunged, both arms stretched—one in each direction—boots scrabbling for just a few seconds of purchase on the same rock that had saved Gimmol's life.
She'd ordered Jhurpess to let go at the highest point of the arc, so when Gimmol had sailed off to her right, he'd also been traveling up. And that gave Katim the extra instants she needed. At the very last second, just before the gremlin plummeted out of reach, her fingers snagged the butt of the chirrusk's handle. Katim shuddered in pain as the arm with which she held the axe dislocated itself at the shoulder, but she had him.
And her chirrusk!
Wrapping the chain over and over about her wrist, she hauled the gremlin up until she could grasp his collar, and then hurled him back over the lip of the canyon, trusting that one of her companions would catch him before he slid back down. And finally, though it took some doing with only one good arm, she hauled herself up and over the axe that she would never take for granted again.
For long moments, the squad just sat—well away from the slope—and gasped for breath. A loud pop and a howl of pain suggested that Katim had dealt, brutally but effectively, with her dislocated shoulder.
Gork wandered over to Gimmol, who lay faceup and panting, in the snow. “Hey,” he said to the supine gremlin. “You owe me a new piton.”
Gimmol punched the kobold in the testicles and then lay back, smiling, as Gork toppled over beside him.
Even Cræosh, anxious as he was to keep moving, recognized the need for a few moments’ rest. As the minutes passed and the sun slid closer to the horizon, however, he decided they'd had long enough.
“All right, kits and cubs, naptime's over! Feet: On ‘em!”
Jhurpess immediately climbed to his feet, and Fezeill was already standing—but Gork, Katim, and Gimmol just glowered, united in their sudden burning hatred of the orc.
Cræosh decided to try something unexpected and reason with them.
“Those yetis,” he said, “are still out there. If they come back and find you all lying here like pimples on a dwarf's ass, they'll pop you accordingly.”
“And we'll do any better if we're walking when they find us?” Gimmol asked sullenly.
But Katim, though wincing at every movement, was slowly standing. “I'd rather have…the option of running. And if we can…bring them together, the…yetis remain our best chance…of studying Jhurpess's worm…creatures in action.” She very specifically turned on Gimmol. “Unless you…want the chance to…examine them again. Up…close and personal.”
The gremlin quickly stood. Gork, cursing all orcs and gremlins, realized he was the only holdout and did the same.
Thankfully, they didn't have to go far. They'd followed the tracks for little more than another mile before they stumbled across the yetis.
Or what remained of the yetis.
“Ancestors!” Cræosh whispered. Gork muttered something similar invoking the Stars, and Katim just hissed.
Strewn about, the snow around them churned and bloodied by what must have been a ferocious battle, were five large corpses. Each had been chewed by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tiny mouths. Most were stripped bare of skin, partially bare of flesh and muscle; one was nothing but a blood-encrusted skeleton. And the positions in which they lay—limbs splayed, jaws agape—suggested that they'd been very much alive even as they became something's banquet.
The squad swiveled as one toward the faintly trembling bugbear. “Jhurpess not like worms,” he confided in them.
“No shit ‘Jhurpess not like worms!’” Cræosh barked. “You escaped from these fuckers?”
The bugbear nodded. “Worms not run very fast.”
Katim nodded. “Useful information…Cræosh. In case your…brilliant leadership and strategic…skills should prove…insufficient.”
“All right, you listen, you dog-faced, flea-ridden—”
Fezeill screamed in a convincing imitation of a real bugbear and pointed a shaking finger behind them.
From the depths of the snow rose three figures, humanoid but blatantly inhuman. Their outlines writhed in the glow of the setting sun, while centipedes and maggots dripped from them in a horrible perspiration. Their features were nothing but gaping hollows, and their hands were raised, extended toward the exhausted goblins.
Cræosh glanced back the way they'd come, mouth open to order a retreat, and nearly swallowed his tongue. A fourth worm-creature had appeared from behind, but this was no more humanoid than Cræosh was a halfling. Yes, it had two arms and two legs, but it stood eight feet tall, and it was wider than three orcs side by side. In fact, it almost resembled…
“A yeti,” Gork breathed from somewhere off to his left. “It's the damn yeti!”
He was right, the orc realized with a sudden surge of terror. Six yetis, but only five corpses. They must have arrived before the worms could do—whatever it was that they did—to the other bodies.
And…Oh, Ancestors! It meant that there were worse fates out on the tundra than death. The sun sat, mocking him, mere inches above the western horizon. Damn, damn, damn! If the fucking creatures had just waited another hour or so, we'd have been away from this frozen hell and back—
Four crawling arms rose, four wiggling hands opened, and a veritable storm of worms and centipedes hurtled at the Demon Squad.
Cræosh dove and rolled, coming to his feet well away from the wriggling projectiles now freezing to death in the snow. Unwilling to give his foes the opportunity to—was “reload” the right word?—he set his blade, took a single deep breath as he willed away his fatigue and his fear, and charged.
Close up, the writhing mass of component vermin was even worse, revolting on a purely instinctive level. He'd been told that King Morthûl sometimes gave a similar impression, what with the various crawling things infesting his half-dead body, but this was worse than anything Cræosh had heard about his Dark Lord.
He dealt with it—the fear, the revulsion, all of it—in typical orcish fashion: by trying to kill whatever it was that made him uncomfortable. The massive, jagged blade plunged through the roiling chest. A spray of dead and dying creatures, worms and centipedes primarily, spurted from the wound and splashed across the combatants’ feet. The thing staggered a moment, and the vermin that formed the “flesh” near the injury wavered and twitched, almost falling free as though whatever magic held them in place had wavered.
A moment of weakness, perhaps, but a moment only. The creature straightened and shambled forward a step, moving inside Cræosh's reach, arms outstretched in horrid mockery of an embrace.
The sword, Cræosh noted sourly as he backpedaled, was clearly not the proper instrument for this particular endeavor. He knew that the things could be hurt, and he assumed that meant they could be killed, but it would take some special effort to make it happen.
A quick glance told him that the others weren't having that much better a time of it. Jhurpess bounced from foot to hand to foot, capering about his chosen foe in a spastic dance. His cudgel rose and
fell, first in this fist, then in that, and each swipe crushed a sizable heap of worms. Cræosh wasn't sure if he could actually kill the thing that way or not, but as long as he could keep moving, not let it lay a grotesque hand on him, he had a shot.
Katim, naturally, had faced off against the swarm that had taken the form of the missing yeti, rather than any of the smaller ones. Her axe, presumably as useless as the orc's sword, still hung at her back, but her chirrusk was a steel cyclone, sweeping through the creature's form again and again, hurling the tiny creatures away by the score. With each whistling revolution, the faux yeti staggered, but again, Cræosh couldn't be certain if the damage was lasting.
The others weren't having even that amount of luck. Gimmol and Fezeill stabbed again and again, their short-bladed weapons proving all but useless, and Gork had once more disappeared entirely.
And then Cræosh's foe lunged, the hollow of its mouth agape in what could only be described as a silent roar, and the orc, parrying desperately, had no attention left to devote to the others. He could only hope that someone would come up with a bright idea of what to do next.
Gork wished desperately to the Stars that he had any idea of what to do next. Peeking from the lip of his latest burrow, he peered at the raging chaos and gave serious thought to just waiting it out. It wasn't cowardice that kept him out of the fight—well, not just cowardice—but rather an absolute conviction that his presence wouldn't make the slightest difference. His kah-rahahk wouldn't do any more good than Gimmol's short sword, not against enemies without solid flesh, let alone internal organs. He sure as hell wasn't prepared to bite the damn thing, and that didn't leave him any other options….
Well, maybe one.
The vapors of an idea beginning to coalesce beneath his ears, and the kobold tore into his backpack.
Katim howled in bestial exultation as the worm-yeti finally lost cohesion, the entire swarm of vermin scattering beneath the weight and the wind of her spinning chirrusk. Like halflings fleeing a burning building—and yes, she'd seen it happen, so the comparison felt justified—the tiny creatures fled every which way, some burrowing into the snow, some freezing where they landed, some literally bursting in what must have been some sort of mystic backlash from whatever magics had bound them together. Her voice rose even higher as she cried her triumph for all the worlds to hear, for if these horrors could cast spells, as Jhurpess claimed, then they must possess intelligence—intelligence that would be hers.
Welcome it, my pets, she cooed internally, delighting at the thought of such a horror serving her in the next life. Welcome it, and make it room. It will be with us all a very long time.
She knew, though, that she had precious little time for celebration. Three more swarms remained, and the others were not doing so well as she. Jhurpess seemed to be having some effect, his thrashing club having taken its toll; the creature looked somehow smaller, less substantial than it had. But he seemed, too, to have hit some sort of plateau, a point beyond which he could not injure it further, could not land a final blow. He pranced around it, remaining a step ahead of the thrashing limbs, but that was all.
Cræosh had turned to the flat of his blade, wielding it as a cudgel, but the awkward grip and his previous yeti-dealt wounds were slowing him. He hadn't done even so well as Jhurpess, and though he fought hard, the eventual outcome was plain for all to see.
But he could stand a few moments more; it was Gimmol and Fezeill who most needed her aid. Even as she watched, the bugbear-wearing-doppelganger staggered, struck across the chest by a vicious backhand. He screamed, a sound more terror than pain, and began wildly grasping at his own chest. It took Katim a moment, from where she stood, to see that Fezeill was desperately yanking worms and centipedes from his own flesh! Her chirrusk spinning once more, the troll leapt upon the shapeshifter's writhing foe.
Good! Gork gasped in heartfelt relief as the troll hurtled through the air to drive her whistling chain through the thing's body. He'd have been mortified if he'd had to come to Gimmol's rescue again, and he definitely wasn't putting his stony ass on the line for Fezeill!
That left Jhurpess and Cræosh, though, each battling his respective foe, and the plan was as ready as it would ever be. A brief sigh, a final prayer to the Stars, and the kobold emerged from his burrow and began a squirming crawl toward the bugbear, scowling at the taste of wood in his mouth.
In his peripheral vision, Cræosh saw Katim's expression twist in rapture as the second worm-thing finally burst apart beneath her whirling chain. That left only the two, and damn, he hoped he could finish his off before Jhurpess did. That'd be embarrassing, if his was the last….
And then the one he faced took a step back, for the shambling monstrosities had clearly decided they were done playing fair. In perfect unison they raised their arms, and four glittering shards of crackling, semisolid fire shot from their fingers.
Katim was lifted from the snow and thrown back to the ground as two of the arcane missiles slammed into her. Wisps of smoke rose from her burned leather armor and scorched fur, and Cræosh smelled the aroma of roast meat. She climbed quickly to her feet, a snarl of fury rumbling from her throat, but she winced with every movement, every rasping breath.
The third flaming bolt struck the bugbear, spinning him in place, and the fourth…
Cræosh raised his sword, hoping to deflect the last one—it wasn't moving that quickly—but the damn thing swerved around the blade! A moment of searing agony, the world did a few quick somersaults around him, and the orc found himself lying sprawled some yards from where he'd started.
Rigidly holding his neck straight so that his ringing head would stay attached, Cræosh tried to struggle to his feet. And noted, with more confusion than pain, that his legs refused to cooperate.
Well, this is not good. And now he knew he'd been hurt worse than he thought, because he was clearly hallucinating! He hadn't really seen a flaming kobold burst from the snow. Flaming kobolds weren't native to the Steppes, were they? The snow—Cræosh actually found himself fighting back a giggle—the snow would put them out, right?
And then, mercifully, he passed out before he had the chance to say any of this out loud and really embarrass himself.
Gork was not, in fact, on fire—self-immolation would certainly have been an unexpected way to end the fight, but probably not the most effective one—but the torches he held in each fist most certainly were. He rose from his crouch behind the creature that had been battling Jhurpess, and struck before it even knew he was there.
The first blazing torch slid easily into the swarm. Charred vermin fell to the earth with a muffled whumph. Gork swung the second torch high, lunging on his tiptoes, and drove it into the creature's chin. Another instant of crackling and sizzling, and then the kobold was showered with dead and dying bugs.
Between the kobold's torches and the troll's chirrusk, the final swarm was gone in moments.
“Well,” Gork muttered, extinguishing both torches in the snow, “so much for the easy part.”
Katim dropped her gaze on him like an anvil. “Easy?”
“Hell, yeah!” He waved one blackened brand at the comatose orc. “Now we've got to get him back on his feet!”
Katim nodded slowly. “Indeed. That…could prove difficult. I—” And then, with a pained and rather puzzled scowl, she too collapsed at the kobold's feet.
“Well, shit.” Gork waved the others over to give him a hand as best they could. In the distance, another pack of yetis howled their fury at the rising moon.
“Well, that was productive,” the doppelganger said some time later, his voice so thick with sarcasm it threatened to freeze in the cold. “So what do you suggest we do now?”
Gork glanced up from the sprawling heap of orc and troll that lay before them, his jaw clenched in impotent fury. “I don't have the first fucking clue, Fezeill. Why don't you turn into a horse so we can carry them?”
“I can't do anything the size of a horse, kobold.”
&nb
sp; “No? You seem to be doing quite well as a horse's a—”
“Shut…up.”
Everyone turned to the prostrate troll. “We thought you were unconscious,” Gimmol muttered.
“That's because…you're all stupid,” she said, glossing over the fact that she damn well had been. “Help…me stand.”
It took the combined efforts of Jhurpess and Fezeill, but they did just that. Katim couldn't take more than a few steps without stumbling, but she was upright.
“We can't stay here,” Gork pointed out. “Either the yetis or the worms could come back with reinforcements.”
“I know. Is that…why you dumped the orc…and me in that rather…undignified pile?”
The kobold kicked the snow at his feet. “We thought that once we'd gathered you up, it'd be easier to move, or at least it'd keep you from freezing….”
Katim raised a hand. “Spare me the…details. How do you…plan to move the orc?”
Gork, Gimmol, and Fezeill traded guilty glances. “Actually…” the gremlin began reluctantly.
“You were going…to leave him,” Katim concluded. She laid just a touch of emphasis on him, making it damn clear that what she meant was us.
“Well,” Gimmol said defensively, “it's not as though anybody likes him! And more importantly,” he added quickly when Katim scowled, “we have to survive! That means we can't stay here! And—”
Katim growled. “We need him. We…wouldn't have survived…this long without him.”
Fezeill snorted. “That, and if you let him die here, you can't claim huurrk…“
The doppelganger dangled, thrashing and flopping, from Katim's fist.
“Jhurpess thought Katim was injured,” the bugbear said.
“I thought Fezeill was faster than that,” Gimmol added.
Gork grinned. “And I wonder how long doppelgangers can hold their breath.” Indeed, the bugbear face Fezeill was wearing at the time was turning an impressive, floral shade of violet.
Alas, his burning question would forever be unanswered. Katim opened her fist with a snort of disgust and then stepped over the gasping figure by her feet. “Jhurpess, throw…the orc over your shoulder…and let's move.”