“Dororam's armies are marching,” he'd said without preamble. “Obviously we've mobilized, but it's going to be a hell of a war.”
“So where are we assigned?” Cræosh had asked (a bit too gleefully for his companions’ tastes).
“You're not. You're going nowhere near the front.”
The briefing had then paused while everyone worked at calming the enraged orc. Cræosh, in what Gork and Gimmol both took as a convincing sign of lunacy, had been eagerly looking forward to the spring thaw. Apparently, he'd gotten through the prior months by assuming everything they'd done was a mere prelude to the massive carnage to come. He didn't take at all well to the discovery that said battles would be waged without him.
“Now,” Rhannik had continued, staring across the empty room (empty because Cræosh had reduced the table to kindling), “where were we?” Cræosh, held immobile by Belrotha's fists on his shoulders, had snorted. “Before we destroyed the furniture, I mean.
“Ah, right. Your assignment. As I was saying, you'll not be at the front…” Cræosh had growled again. “…because you'll be well past it.”
That, finally, had gotten the orc's attention. “Do what now?”
“Ananias duMark is Dororam's greatest sorcerer, but he's far from the only one. Dororam's own entourage includes close to a dozen wizards, elven spellweavers, giloral enchanters…not to mention the rather sizable number of advisors and generals who are also part of said entourage.”
“Sounds like it'd be heavily guarded,” Gork had noted.
“It is. Which is why a full unit would never get near enough to do us any good. But a small group…”
Rhannik had grinned as understanding dawned on the faces of the Demon Squad. “I’m so glad you see it my way. You understand, though, that we cannot afford to allow any hint of your approach to reach Dororam. Therefore, you are ordered, in no uncertain terms, to avoid any confrontation with the enemy until you've reached your objective. If that means running from a single human soldier with a rusty sword, so be it.”
Scowls all around, at that, but no one had protested.
“If you have no other choice but to engage, it's as much as your lives are worth to let even one enemy escape and report back. Are we clear?”
The squad had nodded as one.
“Good. Understand something else, too. Get in, do the job, and go. Do not attempt to strike at Dororam himself. He'll be far too well guarded. More to the point, if you kill him, you make him a martyr. Your first objective is to take out as many of his damn wizards as you can. Secondary target includes his generals and advisors. After that, you get the fuck out.”
And they'd been off.
That had been close to a week ago. They'd crossed through the Brimstone Mountains without incident, using passes so winding and tiny that neither side could be bothered to guard them, and were now well beyond Kirol Syrreth's borders. And since then, they'd done…nothing.
Time after time, they'd been forced to hide from Dororam's outriders. Any one of them would've been an easy kill, but the squad hadn't quite gotten impatient enough to ignore Rhannik's more-than-explicit orders. Not when there was a real risk of discovery by an entire army. Not even Belrotha was that stupid, nor Katim that psychotic.
Since said army consisted of hundreds of thousands of humans, elves, and dwarves, plus the occasional halfling and giloral, plus horses, supply wagons, and disassembled siege engines, the entire thing stretched on for days. It was larger, in fact, than some of the smaller nations that had contributed to it.
And somewhere, in the midst of all that, rode Dororam's own entourage.
“It shouldn't actually be all that difficult,” Gimmol said the next morning. They were crouched atop a small hill, staring across an endless sea of flesh and steel. The people below scurried about madly, a hive of ants whose hill had been not only smacked with a stick but doused in oil and set afire.
“And how precisely do you figure that?” Cræosh asked irritably.
“Well, this is King Dororam we're talking about. All we really have to do is find the largest single concentration of guards and servants amid the soldiers, and he should be right there.”
Katim snorted once, and Cræosh rolled his eyes. “Just fucking great, Gimmol. As a tactician, you make a wonderful scratching post. Did it ever occur to you that you can't see the whole thing? This fucking army stretches on for miles! If we can find a high enough vantage to see more than a sixth of it, I'll be stunned!”
“That doesn't take much,” Gimmol muttered.
Katim finally cleared her throat. “If I may put forth…a theory?”
“Put forth anything you want,” Cræosh glowered. “We don't seem to be going much of anywhere.”
The troll's gaze met his. “Where did we get our orders…from?” she asked.
“What are you, stupid? General Rhannik.”
“Very good, little…orc. So where do you suppose…those soldiers down there are getting…their orders from?”
Cræosh blinked, and then very softly began to curse.
“Me not understand,” Belrotha admitted in a whisper that could've puffed down a small house. “Katim saying that human soldiers also getting orders from General Rhannik?”
“No, Belrotha,” Gimmol explained. He couldn't even take pleasure in the orc's consternation, since he was feeling equally stupid. “She's saying that the soldiers get their orders from their generals, same way we do.”
The ogre looked no less puzzled.
“What our little red mage is trying to spit out,” Cræosh said, “is that all we have to do is backtrack any one of the runners who delivers the orders, and they'll eventually take us right back up the chain of command.”
“To where king is!” she exclaimed, finally getting it.
“Very good,” the orc said. “But me not see any chain.” Cræosh very nearly sobbed.
Said reasoning, of course, still left the goblins with a fairly significant problem: namely, it seemed improbable, at best, that any of them could infiltrate Dororam's forces without being spotted more or less immediately.
“I never thought I'd hear myself say it,” Cræosh admitted around noon, “but we could really have used Fezeill here.” They sat atop that same hill, proposing and rejecting idea after idea as the army passed slowly below them.
“Eh,” Gork said, waving one hand dismissively. “We don't need him. I can sneak through the crowd well enough to follow the messengers.”
“I’m uncertain,” Katim said—not the first time she'd objected to this particular suggestion. “Even at night, there…are a great number of guards you…would have to avoid.”
“I can do it. Getting the lot of you past the outer guards is going to be more of a challenge, but as far as locating—”
“Perhaps this is the sort of situation in which my assistance might prove valuable.”
Six heads rotated in tandem. Ebonwind stood behind them, one foot on a small stump, resting an elbow on his bent knee. His gray cloak floated serenely about his legs, despite the absence of any breeze, and his familiar sat upon that foot, preening one of its floppy wings.
“I thought we'd made our position clear, dakórren,” Cræosh growled. “We don't need your kind of help. Not at your price, anyway.”
“Me either,” the kobold said, abruptly stepping forward. “Not anymore.”
The mage's eyes bulged so wide, Cræosh briefly wondered if he wasn't turning into a toad for some unfathomable purpose. “Gork, what are you—”
“They know, Ebonwind. Katim and I told them everything.”
Ebonwind's mouth twisted. “You!” he spat, pointing a quivering finger at the troll. “I knew you were trouble. I should have killed you up north!”
“Perhaps,” Katim admitted with a slight shrug. “But you…did not.”
“I can rectify that now,” the dakórren threatened.
“Before you do,” Gork said, “you may want to read this.” He produced a thin ebony tube, capped with
a plug of carved bone. General Rhannik had handed it to him as their briefing dispersed, with the cryptic mutter “Havarren says to give this to your old friend if he shows up again.”
Reluctantly, Ebonwind took the case and began to unscrew the cap.
“Your little friend's being awfully quiet,” Gimmol pointed out. “Little fellow catch a cold?”
“Ibrif! Nur erpin!” the thing squeaked.
“He's sulking,” Ebonwind answered absently, working at the strangely stubborn case. “He's been running off by himself recently, so I yelled at him. He always sulks when I—” With a sudden pop, the cap came off in his hand.
No parchment or scroll slid out, but instead a blue-tinged, clinging mist. It poured to the ground, forming an almost liquid puddle of haze at Ebonwind's feet. Tendrils wafted that way and this, a newborn thing seeking to understand the world around it. And then, without warning, without any transition from one to the next, the mist was gone and King Morthûl loomed over them.
Most of the squad were scrabbling back like startled crabs, and even Ebonwind recoiled before the truth set in. Not the Charnel King himself, this, but an image formed of the shifting mists. Closer (and calmer) scrutiny revealed faint wavering in the frightening figure, subtle shifting of its component vapors.
“Greetings, Nurien Ebonwind.” The voice, at least, was as solid and as present as the real thing. “For some time, I have been aware of a spy in our midst. And now, thanks to my Demon Squad, I know that you are he. So be it. You wish information? Then listen well.
“Many leagues south of Shauntille, in the midst of the elven kingdoms, sits a small town called Tirfeylan. As with many fae villages, it is currently inhabited only by women, children, the old and infirm; only those who could not or would not answer the call to ride alongside Dororam.
“The moment you opened this scroll case, you triggered an invocation. A particularly vile one, if I say so myself. I’m pushing things somewhat, spending power that could be useful in my other endeavors, but I think you'll agree it's worth my time. In the woods surrounding Tirfeylan, madness creeps through the minds of the wildlife. Rabbits, squirrels, sparrows, deer, owls…All irrevocably altered. They have become vicious, irritable, and quite, quite carnivorous.
“You may find the notion of a meat-eating squirrel, or a vicious sparrow, an amusing one, Ebonwind. But what of a hundred of them? A thousand? Even as you listen to this, a veritable tide of such creatures—all the innocent, peaceful dwellers of the woods—crashes down over the town. When next the gaze of the living falls upon Tirfeylan, it will be a bloody ruin, occupied only by the ravaged skeletons of its women and children.”
A shiver swept through Cræosh's flesh at the words of the monster he so willingly served. He'd committed horrors of his own, borne witness to many more, but this chilled him to his soul. Women and children…This was not the way to wage a war.
“If you are who I believe you to be,” the image concluded, “then this is ample punishment for your interference. If you are not, if the evidence has led me to an erroneous conclusion…” The Dark Lord actually shrugged. “Well, one can never kill too many elves, can one?” And just like that, the image was gone.
Ebonwind had indeed gone whiter than the snows of the tundra in which they'd met. “Why?” he whispered, gawping at Gork. “Why would you do this?”
“Call me crazy, Ebonwind, but I don't enjoy being betrayed.”
“Betrayed? You imbecile! I would have kept my part of the bargain! You would have known reward your feeble little mind cannot comprehend!”
“Yeah, after you reported everything I said to Dororam.”
“What are you talking about?” the dakórren demanded, and for the first time, Gork looked suddenly uncertain.
“If you really are dakórren,” Cræosh snarled, “why the fuck is any of this bothering you?”
“Because some of my people are in the eilurren woods! That's why we were monitoring Dororam's troop movements, remember? So that we could strike at the elves unopposed! I have no idea how widespread Morthûl's spell may be. Hundreds of my people could be caught in it!”
Cræosh shrugged. “War's a bitch.”
Ebonwind's hands rose, fingers wide—and instantly the squad spread wider, moving to encircle the raging wizard. “Try it, Ebonwind,” Cræosh suggested, his sword held low. “You'll probably even get one or two of us before the rest have you spitted and carved up like a fucking roast. That'll really help your poor lost little soldiers, won't it?”
The air crackled with building ozone; the grass around the dakórren's feet curled and browned. And then, with an enraged howl nearly loud enough to be heard even in the chaos of the marching armies beyond the hill, he was gone.
For several long minutes, the squad stared at one another across an empty circle. It was Gork who finally broke the silence.
“You know,” he said slowly, “he kind of sounded sincere.”
“He did, didn't he?” Cræosh said.
“Could we have made a mistake?” Gork was practically vibrating as he grew ever more agitated. He must have been thinking of the reward he'd thrown away, and Cræosh's lip curled in amusement as the kobold actually clutched a hand to his heart.
“I don't think…so,” Katim said after a moment. “We know that…the enemy was acting on…information given to Ebonwind. If…he was not the spy, then…someone he had contact with…was.”
The squad returned to puzzling out some way to pass unseen through thousands of enemy soldiers, and—save for Gork's occasional nervous twitch—put all thought of spies and dakórren behind them.
The room was pretty blatantly intended for purposes other than comfort. The threadbare layer of carpeting over the floor was worn as full of holes as an old sock, and whatever hue it might once have boasted had long been trampled into an unassuming, colorless gray. A single chair, its cushion torn and hemorrhaging stuffing, its wooden frame bending beneath the weight of years, sulked in the corner. The bed frame, in equal disrepair and clearly not on speaking terms with the chair, would have long since collapsed if it hadn't been propped against the wall. Only the wardrobe and its contents—cloaks, leggings, and tunics on one side, breads and salted meats on the other—showed any sign of care.
All told, far less homey than the small cottage for which it served as inadequate replacement. But it was, if nothing else, far more secure, as neither window nor even door provided ingress.
A shimmer in the air, a dull pop, a breeze to stir the dust from the carpet, and he was there. Ranting, through twisted lips, the most profane epithets that a dozen languages had to offer, Nurien Ebonwind actually beat his fists upon the walls. Only once he'd run through each separate profanity two or three times, as well as several more that he made up on the spot, did he finally calm down sufficiently to think. The oddity that was his familiar fluttered from him to perch haphazardly upon the chair, which groaned once at this added indignity.
“Damn the Charnel King, and damn that wretched kobold….” It was a final, petty snipe, followed by a loud creaking as the dakórren sank onto the shabby mattress. “All right,” he continued, “how do we warn them?” It was an old habit, speaking to his familiar, since the little creature was his only constant companion.
“I can't just teleport to them. The eilurren have warded their woods against our magics since our last war.” Narrow fingers drummed idly on the mattress, or would have if the mattress had been capable of producing anything approaching a drumming sound. More accurately, they “fumped” idly on the mattress. “I'd have to enter on foot, and by the time I could find them…Agh! Bastards!” He rose and began to pace once more, though this time the walls were spared the fury of his fists.
“Oh, they'll suffer for this betrayal, the kobold and eventually the Charnel King himself! Once the eilurren have fallen, they'll—”
“I think not, dakórren.”
Ebonwind barely had time even to register the voice, let alone recover sufficiently from his shock to
react to it, before the sound bowled him over. Thunder—thunder so weighty as to tangibly fill the room—burst over him. The walls shuddered, the wardrobe toppled to spill its contents across the floor, even the mattress exhaled its down with a feeble puff of breath. The dakórren found himself sprawled against the far wall. His head rang, his ears throbbed with pain; he struggled to stand and found his equilibrium so skewed that he couldn't even begin to rise.
And only then did the real pain wash over him. Agony climbed his body like a mountain, digging into him with blazing pitons. It chewed at his nerves, bit at his mind, shredded his concentration like wet paper. He thrashed, bit his lip in an effort to regain control—and gawped, in sudden, abject horror, at the charred, steaming ribbons of meat that had, not long ago, been his legs.
Of course. It was almost funny, somehow. With so much thunder, there had to be lightning.
Random flopping of muscles finally twisted him about, enough to stare at the chair in the corner and the creature who had launched the eldritch assault.
His familiar was no longer seated upon rickety wood, but upon the shoulder of a man who now occupied the chair. In his other hand, the cloak-wrapped stranger clasped a heavy staff. He peered at Ebonwind through features not all that dissimilar to Ebonwind's own.
“Well,” the stranger said, idly scratching the cooing creature under the chin, “I’m glad I'll not be doing that again.”
“Who…?” Ebonwind's difficulty in finding his voice was not due solely to the physical pain. “What about my…?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Your familiar's actually been mine for quite some time. You cannot begin to imagine how subtly I had to balance the magics, not just to usurp the link but to keep you from sensing it. I lost my connection to a familiar once, myself. Put me out for two weeks. It's been exhausting, to tell you the truth.”
“You—you're…”
“Ananias duMark, at your service.” The half-elf bowed from the waist, so far as the chair would permit. The creature danced on his shoulder, trying to retain its perch. “Well, for a few more minutes. After that, even my services wouldn't do you much good.”