Elaine Cunningham - The Best of the Realms, Book I

"How did you do that?" Bodvar demanded."Sleep magic doesn't work against the bog people!"

"Clearly, you have been misinformed."Melegaunt held his arm out toward the nearest wagon, extending the shadow-walkto within three paces of the driver's bench. "Do you think …"

Bodvar was already sprinting down the shadow-walk,borrowed sword in hand. When he reached the end, he launched himself into a wildleap over the horns of a mired ox, bounding off its half-submerged shoulders,and came down on the seat between the slumbering driver and the old man slumpedbeside her. Despite Melegaunt's warning to handle the weapon lightly, he set towork on the sleeping bog people with an ardor that left little doubt about theprimitive state of Vaasan weaponsmithing. Melegaunt saw him cut two enemiescleanly apart across the torso and cleave through three of the wagon'ssideboards before he could no longer bear to watch and turned his attention tothe mired warriors.

The nearest vanished beneath the surface as Melegauntapproached, and two more cried out in alarm. Seeing he had no hope of rescuingeven a dozen of the remaining warriors, he tossed his tarp line onto the surfaceand uttered a long spell. The far end raised itself out of the peat, and theblack rope began to slither forward. He pointed at the nearest of the warriors,and the line angled in the man's direction.

"As the rope comes by…."

That was all Melegaunt needed to say. The firstwarrior snatched the line and, slipping free of his trousers, allowed it topull him free. He slid across the slippery surface for three paces, then rolledonto his back and began to hack at something beneath the surface with hissword. Seeing that he had at least a reasonable chance of defending himself,Melegaunt directed the rope to the next warrior in line, who also came freewithout his pants or boots, and there were two Vaasans slashing at their unseenpursuer.

They seemed to slay it after a dozen yards, but bythen Melegaunt had three more warriors on the line, and two of them were beingtrailed by the tell-tale rise of a bog person traveling just beneath thesurface. He summoned the rope over to his shadow-walk and used his last shadowbolt to kill one of their pursuers, and the warriors themselves took care ofthe last one before bounding off after Bodvar to help defend the wagons.

Melegaunt glanced toward the mountains. To his alarm,the distant fliers were so close that he could make out not only the whitebodies hanging beneath their wings, but their bandy legs and curved swords aswell. Whatever the creatures were-and he had yet to see their like in a centuryand a half of wandering the world-they were as fast as baatezu. He only hopedthey were not as adept as the pit fiends at defeating shadow magic.

Melegaunt sent the rescue rope out again and managedto pull in six more warriors before the bog people claimed the rest. Though hewas not happy to fail so many-the number had to be nearly twenty-the Vaasanstook their losses in stride, pausing only to grunt a half-understood word ofthanks before rushing back to join Bodvar and their fellows in defending thewomen and children.

Seeing there was no more to be done, Melegauntretrieved his tarp line and turned toward the mired wagons. With the half-nakedwarriors he had rescued rushing back to help, the women and old men were holdingthe bog people at bay with surprising displays of swordsmanship and bravery. Nomatter how well they fought, though, it was clear that the younger children andolder clansmen lacked the agility to leap from wagon to wagon-especially overthe heads of panicked oxen-as the warriors were doing.

Melegaunt rushed alongside the caravan, laying hisshadow-walk close enough that the trapped Vaasans could jump from their wagonsonto the path behind him. The bog people redoubled their attacks, glugging upalongside the walk in a near-solid wall. But all of Bodvar's clansmen were aswell-trained and disciplined as his warriors, and they repelled the attackseasily. Though Melegaunt failed to understand why the bog people did not usetheir rotting magic on the wagons themselves, he was relieved that they werenot. Perhaps their magic-user had run out of spells, or maybe the enchantmenttook too long to cast.

With their panicked masters rushing past, the miredoxen bellowed for help that would never come. Given time, Melegauntcould certainly have freed the creatures and saved the cargo in their wagons, butas things were he would be doing well to lose no more of their masters. As heneared the end of the caravan, he was astonished to see that the bog people hadnot pulled even one of the beasts from its yoke. Whatever their reason forattacking the Moor Eagles, it had less to do with hunger than wanting to wipeout the tribe.

Melegaunt was twenty paces past the last mired wagonwhen a trio of bog people emerged before him, snatching at his legs with theirwebbed hands. He drilled the middle one with a black shadow bolt, then heardhooked finger-talons clattering off his spell-armor as the other two attemptedto slash his legs from beneath him. He brought his boot heel down on a slopingforehead and heard a loud pop as the skull caved in, then he caught hisother attacker by the arm and jerked it out of the peat. Save that the bog manwas covered in slimy brown scales and had a flat, lobsterlike tail in place oflegs and feet, it looked more or less humanoid, with powerfully-built shouldersand a navel that suggested it was born rather than hatched.

It slashed at Melegaunt with its free hand severaltimes. When its claws continued to bounce harmlessly off the wizard's shadowarmor, it gave up and opened its mouth, attacking with a long, barb-tippedtongue so fast Melegaunt barely had time to tip his head aside and save his eye.He caught the tongue as it shot back toward the creature's mouth, then whirledaround to find Bodvar and the rest of the Vaasans staring at him withexpressions that were equal part awe and terror.

"Don't just stand there," Melegaunt ordered,"kill it!" Only Bodvar had possession enough of his wits to obey,slashing the thing across the waist so hard that his borrowed sword came ahair's breadth from opening Melegaunt's ample belly as well. Eyeing thechieftain sidelong, Melegaunt tossed aside the lifeless torso, then pointed ata long line of bog people rising out of the peat beside the gape-mouthedVaasans.

"Lift your jaws and see to your enemies!" Without waiting to see whether they obeyed, he turned and extended theshadow-walk the rest of the way to the logs, then he led the way to therelatively solid footing of the road. The bog people had no choice but to giveup their attack, for all the Vaasans had to do to be safe was retreat to themiddle of the road where they could not be reached. The creatures flying infrom the mountains were another matter. Only a few hundred yards distant, theywere close enough that Melegaunt could make out scaly white bodieswith long, pointed tails, and also craggy saurian heads with long snouts,swept-back horns, and huge yellow eyes. One of the creatures flung something intheir direction and began to make spell gestures.

Melegaunt flattened a ball of shadowsilk between hispalms, then flung it toward the approaching dragonmen and uttered a few wordsin ancient Netherese. A hazy disk of darkness appeared between the two groupsand began to bleed black tendrils of shadow into the sky, but Melegaunt had notbeen quick enough to raise his spell shield. He felt a familiar softeningunderfoot, and the Vaasans cried out and began to stampede up the road. It wasexactly the wrong thing to do. The rotting logs came apart all the faster,plunging the entire tribe to their knees in sodden peat.

In an attempt to spread their weight and slow theirdescent, they immediately threw themselves to their bellies and splayed theirarms. Still standing atop the peat by virtue of the spells he had cast beforethe battle, Melegaunt cursed and laid his shadow-walk again, then turned tomeet the dragonmen.