“I don't get it,” Gimmol said. “Why?”
The orc shrugged. “Kicked out of their homes, maybe. Criminals, or refugees, or just too poor to afford to live wherever they lived. Hell, some people are just fucked in the head; maybe they prefer being out here by themselves.”
“Jhurpess would rather this to big city,” the bugbear said.
Cræosh nodded. “See? Fucked in the head.”
Katim snorted, studying the shanty. “Regardless, if they live…here, I can guarantee…they have some method…of traveling the waters.”
Sure enough, even as they spoke, a gangly human appeared from behind the shack. He seemed to float, and it quickly became apparent that he stood upon a shallow-water skiff. A single pole provided propulsion, shoved over and over against the mud beneath the swamp.
“Wow,” Fezeill said. “Built to order. Did sssomebody sssend word ahead with our sssspessssifications?”
“All skiffs are pretty much the same, lizard-breath,” Gork replied.
“Whatcha want?” the old man asked, the skiff drifting to a halt a few yards from shore. His eyelids danced as they tried to simultaneously narrow in suspicion and widen in fear. “We don’ see many of your kind here. ‘Cept for the little guy, there. See too many of his.”
“No such thing,” Gork muttered.
“Well, you're seeing us now,” Cræosh said, ignoring the kobold and giving the man a good once-over. Most of the hair had fallen from his head, most of the teeth from his gums. An old battered tunic and breeches, just barely of sufficient quality for Cræosh to have wiped his ass with, was all that hid the questionable glories of his lanky, half-starved frame.
“We travel to…Jureb Nahl,” Katim told him, deliberately ignoring the orc's frantic gestures to shut up. “We need the use of…your skiff.”
“Do you now?” The old man rubbed a stubble-coated chin. “I suppose I can see my way to rentin’ it out. Gonna cost you, though.”
“Of course,” Katim said, taking a step into deeper water. “How much?”
The human made a show of pondering. “Umm, well, I think twenty oughta about do it, don’ you?”
Cræosh scoffed. “You'd better be talking copper, scrotum-face. I wouldn't—”
Katim's hand rose, clutching not her coin purse but her chirrusk. Steel gouged into wood, and the troll gave a fearsome yank. The skiff lunged toward her while the old man toppled backward into the water, his cries emerging as nothing but a stream of filthy bubbles. She leapt, clearing the skiff entirely, and hit the water on all fours. When she resurfaced a moment later, she did so alone.
It took a moment before Cræosh, or any of the others, could form a coherent sentence. “What the fuck was that?” the orc finally managed.
Katim emerged from the shallow water, yanked the chirrusk from the raft, and shook herself off like a wolf. “We need the…skiff.”
“Yeah, but…”
“Squeamish, orc? That's…not like you at all.”
Cræosh shook his head. How to explain? It wasn't the old man's death that bothered him, though he saw neither advantage nor honor in it. It was the casual way she committed even unnecessary murder. It confirmed his worst suspicions, and ensured many a sleepless night to come.
But of course, he couldn't come out and say that it made him even more frightened of the troll, could he? “It's just wasteful, that's all,” he said finally.
Katim shrugged. “Shall we get…moving?”
The skiff was just large enough to accommodate the squad—minus Belrotha, of course—and not a one of them was happy with the rather intimate accommodation. Cræosh lashed a length of rope to one end, handed the other to Belrotha with a warning that he'd “better get the damn thing back in one piece,” and they were off.
For about half a minute. Before they'd gotten more than a few ogre-sized paces, Katim tugged on the rope. “Stop here,” she ordered.
The ogre glanced around, puzzled. “We not there yet.”
“No. There is something I…have to do.”
Cræosh began to ask what the hell she was about now until he followed her gaze to the old man's hut. The lunatic gleam growing in her eyes abruptly made all too much sense.
“Women and children, Katim?” he asked, mouth twisted in a grimace of disgust. “Great and mighty opponents, a fitting tribute to a troll.”
“You wouldn't…understand, orc.” Katim slid over the side of the skiff; the water, here, came up to about her ribs. “I won't be…long.”
“No, you won't,” Cræosh said. “Because you're not going.”
“Oh? And are you…going to stop me?”
Every nerve, every instinct, screamed at Cræosh to back off. He really didn't want to take on the troll, certainly not on behalf of some scraggly humans. But there were some limits even to orc depravity, and no soldier went after the kids unless there was good reason; it just wasn't done.
Plus, and far more importantly, now that he'd made his position clear, he couldn't afford to back down in front of the others.
Ah, hell, it had to happen sooner or later.
Swallowing the bile in his throat, he too slid into the water. It would slow him, but hopefully not too much. “If I have to, troll, then yeah, why not?”
Katim smiled. “Priorities, Cræosh?” she asked, one hand grasping the haft of her axe, the other sliding toward that hideous chain.
“Yeah, right.” The orc's fist closed over his own hilt. “Priorities.”
Perhaps it did have to happen sooner or later, but it wouldn't be now.
A harsh tearing sound roared through the swamp as Belrotha ripped a rotted cypress from the mud. Tottering beneath the weight of the twenty-foot log, she took four unsteady steps and hurled it like a caber.
It struck—a wooded, waterlogged, wobbling bolt of lightning—directly atop the decrepit shanty. The hut disintegrated into flotsam amid a cacophony of snaps and splinters, and perhaps a scream or two.
“You—you…” The rest of the squad, had they not been equally dumbstruck, might have taken a moment to appreciate the sight of Cræosh at a loss for words.
Katim, however, managed to keep a hold on her vocabulary, if only just. “Damn you, what…did you do?!”
Belrotha shrugged. “Me solve problem.”
“You bitch! You stupid…half-witted cretin!”
“No need to call names.”
“Names? Names? You…idiot! They're no…good to me if…you kill them!”
The ogre shrugged again. “Me end argument? Troll and orc both alive?”
“…Yes.”
“Then us done here. You get back on raft before me have to put you there.” The ogre bent low to meet the troll's gaze. “You not call me names again, either. Ogres in Itho used to call me names. Them stop when me tie them together and throw them off mountain. There not mountains in swamp, but me can—uhh…What word?”
“Improvise?” Gimmol suggested quietly from the back of the skiff.
“Yeah. That.” Then, having said her piece, she stomped back to the skiff and fished the tow-rope from the water.
Cræosh and Katim stared at the ogre, then at one another. Then, as one, they sheathed their weapons and clambered back aboard the skiff. Belrotha grunted once, and they were moving once more.
After a few moments, Cræosh carefully maneuvered his way to the front of the raft. “Hey, Belrotha!”
“What you want?” she asked without looking back.
“What'd you find that was strong enough?”
“What?”
“To hold an ogre. You said you tied a few ogres together and threw them off a mountain. What'd you tie them together with?”
“Oh, that. Me not use anything. Me just tie their arms together.”
“Yeah, but with…Oh.” Cræosh stopped, finally getting it. “As in, you actually tied their arms together?”
Belrotha nodded, causing the hair on the back of her head to slap up and down, leaving greasy spots on her neck. “Yeah. Arms tied g
ood, too. Almost got double knot, but me forgot how to make one.”
“Oh,” Cræosh said again. Then, “Ouch.”
“Ouch,” Belrotha agreed. “Me think it would hurt, too. Couldn't ask, though. Them not stop screaming long enough to answer.”
Cræosh sat back on the raft and watched, lost in thought, as they passed between the twisted, moss-encrusted trees. By the time twilight fell, they'd moved far into the darkest depths of the swamp.
Somewhere ahead, across another several days of marsh, lay the ruins of Jureb Nahl. If even a quarter of Gork's folktales were true, Cræosh wondered if he might not've been happier if the troll had just filleted him and gotten it over with.
Here in his private chamber, with no one about to see him, Shreckt kept his feet planted on the floor as he paced. Designed for people who were the size of—well, people—the room gave the tiny imp substantial space for his constant to-and-fro. Just as well, since if the walls had risked getting in his way, he might have tried blasting them with something.
How dare Queen Anne treat him that way? No matter how powerful she might be, no matter who her husband was, she was just a mortal, a paltry creature ruling a paltry kingdom in the ass-end of reality. Shreckt had been present at the fall of empires that spanned entire worlds, had danced on the graves of creatures that could have duplicated Queen Anne's most potent spells in their sleep!
He sighed, then, a heartfelt gesture—or it would've been if he had a heart. None of it mattered; not what he'd done, not where or even what he'd been, nothing. Here, in this world, he was bound to the form in which he'd been summoned, and to the whim of his summoner. Here, he was an imp in the service of King Morthûl.
And killing Morthûl's wife—even if he could somehow pull it off, with what little power he had available—would assuredly result in unpleasant consequences. So, with the utmost reluctance, Shreckt dragged his attention away from contemplating a dozen agonizing deaths for the Charnel King's slut and turned instead to more immediate problems.
Namely, that he hadn't been able to report back to King Morthûl, or to mention those worm creatures to General Falchion, since he got here. He'd fully intended to do so, once they'd gotten settled in at Castle Eldritch. Well, he was as settled as he was going to get, and the rest of the squad had already moved out on their next assignment, so now would have been a great time.
Except that he couldn't teleport!
He'd panicked into near-incoherence when he'd first tried, with a grand result of nothing for his trouble. He couldn't teleport to General Falchion, or to his own home in Timas Khoreth, or even—once he'd summoned up the nerve to try—into the throne room of Morthûl himself.
Once the imp had calmed down and taken stock, he'd finally realized that there was nothing wrong with him; it was something about the Castle Eldritch itself, perhaps a security measure on Queen Anne's part. And that left him in a new dilemma.
He could just ask her to lower the wards and allow him to depart. He could walk out the door and teleport from outside. But either option meant letting her know that he was going, and while there was no inherent reason she shouldn't know he was reporting back to Morthûl and Falchion, the Demon Squad had been assigned to her—and that included the sergeant. He wasn't sure how she'd take it if he started going over her head.
So he'd gone back and forth, mentally and physically, for days now. And just like that, he was sick of it.
Let the queen object! Let her try to stop him from reporting to King Morthûl. That would be just the leverage he needed to see her punished, if only moderately, for mistreating a demon of the Pit! Shreckt spun in the middle of a step and headed for the door.
It drifted slowly open before he'd crossed halfway across the room. Scowling, Shreckt drifted up until he stood at his customary height above the floor, the better to see and deal with…
“Rupert,” he muttered. The queen's homemade toy. “Thanks so much for knocking.”
The brown hood nodded. “And a good day to you, honored guest.”
Shreckt chuckled. “Still performing, Rupert? The audience left a few days ago, and I ain't buying it one bit.”
“No?”
“Nope. In fact, it's starting to irritate me. You could have said something about the wards, you know.”
“We assumed that, as you surely wouldn't be attempting to do anything improper, you'd never encounter them.”
“Ah.” Shreckt took a few steps nearer the door. “And if I asked you to lower them now?”
“That would, of course, be up to Her Majesty to decide.”
“Then let's go.”
“Ah, yes. I’m afraid that won't be possible just now.”
Your average human or goblin would have asked why, or made some protest. But Shreckt knew a threat when he heard it.
A bolt of lightning crackled from the imp's hands, blasted across the chamber, but Rupert was already moving. Passing through the wall and the heavy wooden door, he darted aside at the last instant, leaving only the trailing hem of his robe to be scorched, and then only lightly, by the levinbolt.
An invisible but all too tangible weight fell on the imp, smashing him to the floor hard enough to crack the flagstone. The breath blasted from his lungs, and if he'd actually been a creature that needed to breathe, he'd surely have passed out on the spot. He struggled to rise, but couldn't move so much as a wingtip. He calmed his thoughts, drawing upon a spell that would blast Rupert, however insubstantial he might be, into whatever afterlife awaited a creature never truly alive.
Nothing happened. The pressure pinning Shreckt to the floor had snuffed the flame of his magics as surely as the castle had thwarted his teleportation. For the first time in—well, ever—Shreckt began to fear.
“Queen Anne…” the imp croaked, straining even to speak. “She won't—”
“Queen Anne won't what?” The voice drifting through the doorway was soft, lyrical. A hem of green velvet glided into his peripheral vision, and he couldn't even turn his head to look. “Queen Anne won't allow this? Queen Anne won't be happy? My dear imp, Rupert does nothing without my order.”
A muscle twitched at the back of Shreckt's neck. “Should have guessed…Too powerful for Rupert…”
“Yes, indeed,” the queen said softly. “But with the right preparation, hardly beyond me.”
“Squad?”
The hem shifted. “Are you actually concerned about them, imp? No, of course you aren't. You wouldn't know how. You're just hoping they'll last long enough to rescue you.
“Well, I intend no harm to your soldiers, Sergeant. But I can assure you, they will not be racing to your rescue. My tasks should keep them busy for quite some time to come; I doubt they'll even notice you're missing, or that they'll care if they do. And once those tasks are completed, I intend to be quite finished with you, so it's really a moot point, isn't it?”
Shreckt's view of the room shifted as Rupert lifted him from the floor. And while the imp had been frightened at the ease with which the queen had neutralized his magics, and frightened further still at the thought of becoming part of whatever twisted experiment or scheme she had in mind, he was terrified now. For Rupert had lifted him high enough to look into the queen's face, and he had seen a madness burning in her eyes with the same fervor as the Charnel King's own unholy glow.
King Dororam bent thoughtfully over the long table that ran down the middle of what had once been his study. He proudly wore a fine hauberk of chain; proudly because it had been crafted in his youth, but he remained able (albeit it with some huffing and puffing) to squeeze into it. He wore it every waking moment, along with the broadsword at his side, conditioning himself for the day when he would wear them at the head of his army as they marched on Kirol Syrreth.
His study, too, had been dressed for war. The books had been removed to the library, all save the treatises on battle and tactics, and the furniture replaced with a lengthy table brought from the soldiers’ mess. Several immaculately drawn maps occupied that t
able, transforming the room into the strategic center for the upcoming campaign.
“I don't know, Theiolyn,” Dororam was saying. “I don't think I can get a large enough force through that pass to matter.”
The elf shook her head, coming close to smacking Dororam with her platinum-blonde topknot. “You misunderstand me, Dororam,” she said in her melodic accent. “It is my own forces who will penetrate through this pass. We will serve as a diversion to draw attention from the larger force—yours—who will be coming through…” She jabbed a finger down on the map. “Here instead.”
“Ah.” Dororam glanced around at his compatriots. In addition to Theiolyn, the Speaking Prince (“prince” being a unisex title among the elven nations), the room was occupied by Thane Granitemane, a grim dwarf with a knee-length beard, who spoke for the assembled clans; Thizzwhff, one of the giloral Council of Chiefs, whose kaleidoscopic butterfly-wings were constantly bumping into everyone around the table; and the kings, queens, and/or regents of half a dozen other human nations. These sundry rulers were each accompanied by anywhere from one to four generals, ready to offer their own advice.
Only the halflings were absent, and that was because they hadn't anything resembling a government. When the others marched, any given halfling would either choose to march with them, or not.
“It has possibilities,” Dororam said, staring at the map. “But if we move through here, we leave Thane Granitemane and his forces isolated.”
The bearded figure snorted contemptuously. “We are dwarves, King Dororam. We fear little. Fighting on our own least of all.”
“I don't mean to disparage your abilities,” replied a large man with a handlebar mustache, one of Dororam's generals, “or those of your people. But if our main force on the Serpent's Pass doesn't draw the entirety of their resistance, you could find yourself not merely outnumbered, but surrounded. Are you certain that—?”