Лиза Смедман - Extinction

Andzrel itched to be a part of it. To be crawling the jagged twists and turns of the Dark Dominion’s narrow passageways, sword in hand, fighting his enemy face-to-face in the tight confines of the tunnels. Instead he was perched on a column of broken stalagmite, directing the troops that flowed past him into battle while he remained behind. He tried picturing himself as a spider at the center of the web—sensitive to the vibrations of battle coming from all directions and responding to them—but it didn’t help. He wanted an excuse to draw his sword, for Lolth’s sake, to engage the enemy in glorious battle as he had at the Pillars of Woe, when he’d snatched victory from the fangs of deceit.

But the defense of the tunnels was going too well. Alerted by Triel’s warning, the matron mothers had poured troops into the Dark Dominions southeast of the city, forcing the enemy advance to grind to a halt. The duergar seemed to have withdrawn, leaving only the tanarukks to fight. And while the Scoured Legion might have thousands of troops, forcing an army through those narrow tunnels was like trying to shove a melon through the neck of a bottle. Yet they continued to send troops forward. It was almost as if they’d expected the tunnels to be undefended.

Sighing, Andzrel allowed his attention to wander. His eye settled on one of the wisps of smoke that had had been drifting in for some time from the tunnel to his left. It rose steadily upward, drawn by air currents that were surprisingly swift, toward a narrow crack that ran the length of the ceiling. Then it slipped inside the crack and was gone.

It was followed, a moment later, by another drift of smoke—one that was curiously shaped, with tendrils that looked like arms and legs. It, too, vanished into the crack. Then a third puff of smoke appeared, one with a bulge at the front of it that looked, for all the world, like a shaggy—

Suddenly realizing what he was seeing, Andzrel barked an order at the junior officer who stood beside him.

“Lieutenant! The smoke... shoot it!”

With a swiftness born of strict training and absolute obedience, the lieutenant whipped up his arm and fired his wrist crossbow in the direction indicated. A poisoned bolt whizzed through the air toward its target.

Instead of passing through the “smoke” and striking the stone behind it, the bolt sank into something soft, with a dull thud. An instant later, a tanarukk materialized out of thin air. It tumbled, arms and legs thrashing, toward the floor of the cavern, the battle-axe it had been carrying landing with a loud clang beside it. The tanarukk was dead even before it slammed into the stone floor, the virulent drow poison having done its work.

The lieutenant immediately fitted another bolt into the crossbow at his wrist and scanned the ceiling.

“Master Andzrel,” he croaked, “where did it come from?”

Andzrel peered down the corridor from which the two-dimensional tanarukk had come. No more wisps of “smoke” appeared. The dead one seemed to have been bringing up the rear.

Short and stocky, with a prominent lower jaw and curving tusks, the tanarukk had a ridge of horn across its forehead that gave it a thick, unintelligent look. The trick it and its fellows had played on the drow, however, was anything but stupid.

“The mote important question, lieutenant, is where the tanarukks were headed,” Andzrel said, “and how many have slipped past us already. If I remember my geography correctly, that crack leads to the main cavern.”

A runner emerged from a side tunnel.

“Good news, sir,” the man panted. “We’re not only holding them... they seem to be falling back. The enemy has all but disappeared.”

As Andzrel cursed—surprising the runner, who’d obviously expected elation on his commander’s part—the forefront of a company from House Barrison Del’Armgo trotted into the room. They were reinforcements sent in at last by the Second House, only after House Baenre’s troops had secured the tunnels.

Leaping down from the broken stalagmite, Andzrel strode toward the captain who commanded them, a slender female in adamantine armor with white hair drawn up in a topknot.

“Captain!” he barked, foregoing the usual bow that was a ranking officer’s due—and the Barrison Del’Armgo captain, being female, certainly did outrank him. “Turn your company around. March back to the main cavern at once.”

The captain’s eyes blazed an even deeper red as her cheeks flushed with anger. She jerked to a halt, and the soldiers following her did the same.

“Who in the Nine Hells do you think you are?” she said, glaring down at him. “You may be weapons master of House Baenre, but you’re only a—”

“This isn’t the time for arguments,” Andzrel said in a tense voice, his intensity making up for his lack of height. “The enemy has slipped past us and are about to enter the city. House Barrison Del’Armgo lies directly in their path. Is your pride really worth your House, captain?”

The other captain hesitated, sword gripped in her hand, then she spun on her heel.

“Turn about!” she barked. “Back to the main cavern. Double speed!”

The look she gave Andzrel over her shoulder as she sped away behind her company, however, was as sharp as a dagger point. When the fight with the tanarukks and duergar was over, win or lose, Andzrel knew he would have a second battle to face.

He spun to face the House Baenre lieutenant and said, “You’re in charge. Order half of our company to fall back to the main cavern, while the other half continue to hold the tunnels.”

The lieutenant’s white eyebrows lifted. “And you, sir?” he asked. “Where will you be?”

Then, realizing his impertinence, he dropped his gaze to the floor.

“I’ll be making sure that Barrison Del’Armgo captain follows her orders,” he said with a grin. He drew his sword. “And hopefully, I’ll be giving the tanarukks a taste of this.”

Triel, flanked by her House wizard and the priestess currently serving as her personal attendant, stood on the balcony that encircled the Great Mound at the point where stalagmite and stalactite met. From far below, at the base of the Qu’ellarz’orl plateau, came the clash of troops in battle. A band of tanarukks had somehow slipped past the troops she’d ordered into the tunnels and had reached the mushroom forest. The wide caps of the mushrooms prevented Triel from seeing much, but every now and then one of the puffballs would explode as a sword or axe struck it, filling the air with a cloud of luminescent blue spores.

Among the combatants, Triel could pick out the silver uniforms of her own troops. The House Baenre company under Andzrel, together with a company from House Barrison Del’Armgo, were fighting a containing action, preventing the tanarukks from advancing farther into the main cavern. As the foot soldiers repeatedly charged the tanarukks, trying to drive them back through the fence, two squadrons of House Baenre’s mounted troops made an assault on the enemy flanks, their lizards scurrying along the walls.

The enemy was gradually forced back against the wall of the great cavern. But just when Triel was certain they would either be shoved back into the tunnel like a cork into a bottle or smashed flat where they stood, the tanarukks closest to the tunnel mouth parted. Triel strained forward, expecting to see a tanarukk general stride through the gap in their ranks, but what emerged instead from the tunnel mouth made her chuckle.

It was a jade spider. Three times the height of a drow, the magical construct was one of those that guarded each of the entrances to Menzoberranzan. Made from magically treated jade, it moved with fluid grace. It was as captivating in its beauty as it was deadly.