The troglodyte nodded once, as though he'd expected that. “You,” he said then, turning to encompass the entire group in his stare, “are ssstrangers here.”
“Really?” Cræosh barked back. “How could you tell?”
Apparently, troglodytes didn't entirely grasp the concept of sarcasm. “We have never ssseen your kind around here before. Therefore, you are ssstrangers.”
“Okay, fine. So what now?”
The spokeslizard cocked his head. “You have invaded our home.”
Various hands clenched on various weapons. Before the squad could do anything foolish, however, he continued, “But we have no wish to fight. You did not harm the little one; our enemy would not have been ssso mersssiful.”
Cræosh decided that this was not the appropriate venue in which to clarify that they might well have killed the “little one”—lizard was good eating—if they'd had more time. “Yeah,” he said instead. “Well, we ain't real interested in fighting you lot either. So what's the next step?”
“Ssstep?” Obviously, the old troglodyte hadn't mastered all aspects of Gremlin; he was glancing at his feet.
“No,” Cræosh said, stifling an aggravated sigh. “I mean, what do we do now?”
“Ah. Now, perhapsss, you should leave our lands. Before we risssk any further…misssunderssstandings.”
“Nothing better, Scales. Only problem is, we can't leave just now. We haven't found what we're looking for.”
“And thisss would be?”
The orc threw a quick glance over at Katim and Gork, both of whom hesitated for a moment and then nodded in unison. Cræosh agreed; it didn't seem like it would do any harm to tell them….
“A tower,” he said then. “Some wizard's tower.”
A wave of hisses swept through the crowd, and Cræosh wondered if they hadn't just made a rather sizable mistake. The old lizard quickly raised a talon for silence, however.
“There is one tower in the ssswampsss that we know of,” the troglodyte said, “other than thossse in the ruinsss. Come inssside. We have papersss that might help you.”
Alert for anything that even vaguely resembled a trap, the goblins returned through the huge entryway, footsteps echoing on, and squelching through, the warped, decaying planks that had once served as doors.
It was obvious that the reptiles had been making their homes here for some time. A rather pungent musk permeated the chamber. Several portions of the floor, corresponding with the ragged holes in the roof that Jhurpess and Fezeill had noted earlier, were coated in bird droppings. It looked as though the troglodytes had made some effort at cleaning them, and then largely given up. Huge bookshelves loomed along every wall, covered in mold and mildew. They contained only a few scattered tomes, and the heap of ash in the far corner was more than ample evidence of what had happened to the others.
“Well, this was the library,” Gimmol said from his perch atop the ogre's shoulder. “I wouldn't lay odds on anything helpful having survived this long, though.”
“That's just great, you little bug-fucker,” Cræosh snapped. “Always the optimist.”
“Oh, quit your jaw-flapping, you unevolved simian!”
The orc—not to mention the rest of the squad—was sufficiently startled by the gremlin's retort that he refrained from carrying the conversation any further.
The elderly troglodyte stopped at a makeshift table formed from planks of wood that had once been part of the bookcases and a stone base scavenged from the town's crumbling walls. Other troglodytes laid a long parchment scroll atop that table, unrolling it with reverential fingers.
What appeared from across the room to be a huge blot of green ink resolved itself into the very map Cræosh and Gork had wished for. The rise on which Jureb Nahl sat occupied one side, and the ancient cartographer had even attempted a rudimentary sketch of the town's layout. (Useless, now, thanks to the intervening centuries, but a valiant effort all the same.) Toward the north, a small circular design indicated the druidic henge Gork had spotted from atop the remaining watchtower.
And a few leagues beyond that, a solitary structure stood in what was, if not the middle of nowhere, then certainly within nowhere's borders.
“Sociable bastard, wasn't he?” Cræosh said. “Fucking wizards.”
“What are these?” Katim asked, pointing to several charcoal notations. A large circle had been sketched around a portion of the northern swamps—including the henge and the tower, of course—and a few uneven scratches alongside probably represented a primitive dialect of Troglodyte.
“That,” their elderly host said, “representsss the domain of our enemy.”
“You mentioned that before,” Cræosh said. “This enemy. Who is he?”
“They,” the troglodyte corrected darkly, “not ‘he.’ The Rat Eaters.”
The squad exchanged puzzled looks. “Rat Eaters?” Fezeill asked.
“Yesss. Rat Eaters. They wish to drive usss from these ssswampsss you call Jureb Nahl. But we have lived here many generationsss, sssince we sssplit from our tribe in the fire-mountainsss, and we will not be driven out again. There isss plenty of room for usss and the Rat Eaters both, but they are a cruel, ssselfish people. They invade usss often.”
Gork elbowed Katim in the thigh. “That skeleton we found? Killed by these Rat Eaters, you think?”
Katim nodded.
Jhurpess, apparently, could contain himself no longer. “What wrong with eating rats? Jhurpess eats rats. Troglodytes do not eat rats?”
“We eat ratsss if we mussst, and many other foods besssidesss. But they eat only ratsss or other sssmall beasssts, only what they may ssswallow whole.”
“Whole?” Katim's head rose from her study of the map. “These Rat Eaters…are serpentine from the waist…down?”
The troglodyte nodded.
“Humanoid from the waist…up, with scales finer and more…supple than yours?”
Again a nod.
“Nagas,” Cræosh breathed.
“King Morthûl,” Gork said, “is not going to like this.”
“I thought his armies drove those slithering bastards out of Kirol Syrreth centuries ago!” the orc protested. More than a few orcish heroic tales stemmed from those battles, against the snake-men who not only refused to join with the Charnel King, but dared deny his soldiers passage through their lands and slew them in the dark.
“We also thought…there were no troglodytes outside…the mountains,” Katim said with a shrug. “It would seem that Jureb…Nahl keeps many secrets.”
And so does Queen Anne, Cræosh thought but dared not say. Is that why she never sent her own people here? Did she know?
“Thisss,” the troglodyte said, breaking their reverie, “is the tower you ssseek.”
“So?” Gork said, suddenly all energy. “What're we waiting for? Let's get this damn thing over with already!”
“I think not…Gork.” Katim gestured at the fading lances of sunlight that penetrated the roof. “It is coming up…on nightfall. I suggest that we…find a place in town to camp and…set out at dawn. I have no…desire to traverse any more…of the swamp during the night…than I have to.”
“Sorry, Shorty, but I’m with Dog-face on this one.”
“You are too…kind, orc.”
He ignored her. “Let's dig up a suitable—and by that, I mean dry— spot and—”
“You and your companions,” their host interjected, “may ssstay here with usss. None of my people shall harm you, and a pair of my bessst warriors will guide you to the Rat Eaters’ borders in the morning.”
“Don't think we don't appreciate it,” Fezeill said from the back, “but I'd very much like to know why you're being so helpful.”
“I see you forgot to shape your current self a brain,” Gork scoffed at him. “Isn't it obvious? We're heading into the heart of naga territory! You think they're going to let us just saunter on in and take what we please?”
The troglodyte offered a snout-twisting, tongue-baring expr
ession that must have been a smile. “Your short friend is correct,” he breathed at them. “If you are to ssssuccssseed in your objective, you mussst kill many Rat Eaters. Why should we not wish to ssspeed you on your journey?”
“Which means,” Cræosh said, “they've got a much better reason to keep their word than break it. I say we take ‘em up on their offer and stay here. But,” he added with a pointed look at the troglodyte, “we set a watch anyway.”
Cræosh's paranoia, while certainly understandable, proved unnecessary. The troglodytes were as good as their word, and unless one counted a barrage of puzzled looks now and again, the Demon Squad were left unmolested. The next morning, their hosts offered them a modest repast of various leaves, large insects, and unidentifiable hunks of meat—which only Fezeill and Gimmol seemed inclined to refuse—and then the limping elder once more approached, flanked by two of the largest troglodytes the goblins had ever seen.
“Thessse warriors will guide you to our borders,” the old one said. “From there, however, you are on your own. We wish you fortune, but we will not interfere any further.”
“Course not,” Cræosh muttered at him. “Why should we expect any real help from anyone?”
“There is one other issssue,” the troglodyte continued. “If the Rat Eaters capture you, they cannot know that we aided you. We mussst have your word on thisss before we allow you to leave.”
“’Allow’?” Cræosh asked dangerously, subsiding just as swiftly when Katim elbowed him.
“All right, fine!” he wheezed, one hand gently massaging his ribs. “We swear, we promise, whatever. Can we go now?”
The reptiles made no move to go. “You all mussst ssswear,” the old troglodyte told them.
One by one, they so swore. One or two of them might even have meant it.
Their “escort” proved less than helpful. They'd been trudging through the swamps for barely more than an hour before the guards halted.
“What, that's it?!” Cræosh was incensed.
“It,” the smaller of the pair agreed in broken Gremlin. “End of our land. Rat Eaters from thisss. Go we now.”
“Yeah, whatever. Tell the cripple I said thanks for nothing.”
Without further comment, the troglodytes slid beneath the waist-high waters and were gone.
“Fuckers,” Cræosh muttered.
With a great deal of groaning and lamentation, they continued. Jhurpess and Fezeill bitched the loudest: the former because the trees here were sparse, and thus he had to tolerate his precious fur getting wet and slimy; the latter because he'd decided that turning back into a troglodyte was unwise, in case they did run into the nagas, and was thus, for the first time, experiencing the biting, stinging swamp as the others had.
Still, though the next few days were miserable, they proved uneventful. The mosquitoes weren't quite so thick, and no great swamp beast rose up to consume them. (They did take a few moments to carefully scout a suspicious-looking hillock, but it turned out to be a genuine knoll. Belrotha stabbed it anyway, “just in case.”)
Then, as the slow dimming of the afternoon sun heralded the close of another day, they spotted shapes protruding from the waters ahead. The indistinct forms eventually resolved themselves into the henge Gork had spotted earlier. Each of the slabs rose as high as the ogre's ribs, and though many were missing, more than enough remained to suggest the enormous ring they'd once formed.
And it was here, too, that the Demon Squad finally had their first encounter with the dreaded Rat Eaters.
“T his was a really stupid idea, Erik.” The young soldier had to shout to make himself heard over the pitiful whining that permeated the overcrowded room. “King Dororam's gonna string us up by our heels.”
“Shut up, Branden!” the one called Erik retorted just as sharply. “It's better than what old Bone-head would've done if we'd let the Iron Keep know why we were really here.”
“Oh, sure,” Branden muttered, glancing nervously at the two dozen civilians—hostages, really—that huddled miserably on the floor around them. “And the Charnel King won't have any problem with this, will he?”
Erik scowled, but made no other reply.
Other than the color of their hair—Erik's was blond, Branden's brown—and the fact that Erik was a smidge taller, there was little to distinguish them. Both were dressed in light traveling cloaks, both sported dull gray tunics and leggings beneath worn leather armor, and both carried plain arming swords at their waists. Each also struggled to retain the haughty mask of the professional soldier despite the parasite called “fear” that roiled in his guts.
They certainly had every right to be frightened. Branden and Erik were two of three commanding lieutenants for one of Dororam's scouting parties. They'd reached the Brimstone Mountains without incident and easily avoided the sparse patrols along the passes that led into the peaks themselves. Once actually in the mountains, however, the task had grown far more difficult. The Iron Keep assigned some of its best veterans to policing these passes, and the draconian troglodytes who dwelt therein lurked in wait to deal with anything that might slip past the patrols.
Challenging, to say the least, but Erik and his men were some of the best scouts of Shauntille, and they'd run the Brimstone Mountain gauntlet without once being detected. They'd advanced only a few miles into Kirol Syrreth proper, just far enough to determine that a large portion of the Charnel King's military was indeed unaccounted for. Whatever source informed King Dororam that the soldiers had been called north for drills and training was, it appeared, a reliable one. And that determination being made, the unit had fled back toward the mountains, making for the safety of the Allied Kingdoms.
And of course, it was at that point, with success close enough they could kiss it, that fate had pushed them down and laughed at them.
The unit had been spotted, not by roving orc patrol or trollish scout, but by a rag-clad goatherd following a stray kid over a small rise in the foothills.
For the sin of poor timing, he would have to die; Erik hadn't cared for the idea, but there was no help for it. They couldn't allow the Dark Lord to learn that an enemy vanguard had been spotted in his lands. His men had known it, too, and hadn't even awaited his command. Feathered shafts had flown, but the goatherd had already dropped his crook and his rogue goat and fled madly back the way he'd come. Feet pounding, the scouting party had given chase, over first one hill, then a second…
Erik had felt his stomach drop into his heels hard enough to bruise. There, nestled in a tiny vale, was an equally tiny village. Lights twinkled in windows; puffs of smoke rose languidly from chimneys.
It was barely a hamlet, home to fewer than fourscore inhabitants. The unit could take the lot of them—indeed, might have to, to keep word of their presence from reaching the Iron Keep. But Erik, who had performed some pretty heinous deeds in the name of duty and his king, was nonetheless unwilling to put an entire village to the sword.
All right, Plan B. If they couldn't hide their presence, they'd confuse the issue. Erik had given the order for his men to ride on the village, steal any obvious valuables, kill one or two of the menfolk—he could live with that amount of bloodshed, if need be—and generally do everything in their power to appear as raiders instead of spies. They'd be reported, sure, but the survivors would describe an attack by bandits, not a military engagement.
And so they'd charged, swords raised high, screaming like lunatics. Most of the villagers had run; a few had attacked with rakes and shovels (and been promptly cut down), and Erik and his men had been doing a pretty convincing job of banditry when they learned fate still wasn't through toying with them. One of the Brimstone Mountain patrols, apparently having spotted the commotion from high in the passes above, had appeared on the lone road leading from the village into the peaks. The unit's only viable escape route had vanished.
Erik, cursing, had tried to remember if he'd missed any major religious observances lately. He'd obviously pissed someone off.
Okay then, Plan C, and it was this to which Erik's friend and fellow officer, Branden, was so adamantly opposed. They'd take the entire village hostage! Erik would demand free passage and the right to keep the riches they'd stolen, in exchange for the townsfolk being left unharmed. It probably wouldn't get the unit out alive—Erik was certain that the Charnel King's men couldn't have cared less about their citizens—but even if it didn't, it would cement their identities as bandits. More importantly, every moment of delay was valuable; the instant the patrol had appeared, Erik ordered his three stealthiest men to flee, to make for the mountains by whatever routes they could find. One of them, at least, must escape to report back!
Now, most of the citizens were locked up in various shops or houses, while Erik, Branden, and three other soldiers watched over the largest single gathering in the town's only tavern. One townsman—the young goatherd who'd spotted them in the first place, in fact—was given a scrawled list of demands and sent to meet the oncoming patrol. Soldiers and citizens alike grew nervous as they awaited an answer.
Perhaps he was giving vent to a hidden streak of cruelty, or perhaps Erik, like most citizens of Shauntille, simply couldn't comprehend why the humans of Kirol Syrreth didn't just rise up against Morthûl. Whatever the case, he lost no opportunity to chip away at the hostages’ hope of rescue.
“The soldiers don't care about you,” he told the huddled citizens for the umpteenth time. “You watch! We'll probably have to kill a few of you just to make them believe we're serious.”
“Erik,” Branden said quietly, “maybe you should stop this….”
“And once they do come,” the larger man continued unheedingly, “it'll be without regard for how many of you go down with us. Hell, maybe they'll deliberately slaughter you, too. Weaklings and parasites have no place in the high-and-mighty empire of the Iron Keep, now do they?”
“Erik—”
“Shut up, Branden! I—”
His forehead plastered with sweat despite winter's chill, the third of the lieutenants—this one a slim, black-haired man by the name of Dale—slammed open the front door and stuck his head inside.