Jeff Grubb - Lord Toede

And over the heads of the spearmen in the front line. The archers loosed one more volley at the gnolls (and at Toede's mount that screamed as the arrows riddled its broken, twitching body). Those closest to Toede dropped their bows and drew their swords, short wide blades that could gut a hog with one swipe.

Then the stones struck among them, and two out of ten archers fell to hoopak accuracy. The remainder moved back a few paces, and Toede scrambled among retreaters and the bodies. Pain gripped his shoulder-the same one Rogate had shot over a year ago-but he was otherwise unharmed. He touched his breast pocket, and found his secret weapon still intact.

The mercenaries wavered but did not panic as the gnolls slammed into their lines. Toede had to scramble again to avoid being trampled by the human troops falling back. The archers had mostly abandoned their missile weapons and were slashing at those gnolls who had pierced the line of mercenaries.

Still, Groag's mercenaries did not break, and Toede had to wonder exactly what the smaller hobgoblin had promised in exchange for their services.

A particularly burly mercenary swaggered toward him and was rewarded with death as Toede cut the man off at the ankles. The hobgoblin then spun and sunk his blade into another mere. Apparently the missile troops were better with bow than with sword, and lightly armored to boot.

A cry went up, this time from human throats, and Toede could see fresh enemy troops pour into the fray. At least fresh in that they had not yet fought Toede's kender/gnoll army. Many of them were bloodied and had the look of men who had fought the undead, and were now glad to battle flesh-and-blood opponents who have the sense to lie down and die.

Slowly, the mercenary line stiffened, then began to drive the combined gnolls and kender backward, away from the wall. Toede was still trapped on the wrong side of the lines.

And then the dead whale appeared, and everything changed.

It was even larger than in Toede's memory. Most of the skin had peeled away, and the rotting blubber had turned a sickly yellow-green. The ribs poked out one of its sides, and its massive eye was a runny pustule of white ichor.

It had erupted from the beach, where Toede's men had buried it long ago, leaping about two hundred feet in a high arc toward the battlefield. Alas, it would not clear the entire distance, but the airborne necro-whale did cause three things to happen:

Some (not all, but enough) gnolls gawked at the great mass of animated cetacean flesh in midleap.

Some (not all, but enough) humans turned to see what the gnolls were looking at with such fascination and awe.

And some (not all, but enough) kender took advantage of those humans with their backs turned.

The spearmen's line crumbled in a dozen places as the humans toppled, either from daggers set squarely in their backs or calf tendons severed, bringing their unprotected necks closer to the ground (and nearer to kender swords).

Toede was pressed to the ground by a toppling human.

He rolled with the body, struggled, and pushed it off him at last. He rose to find himself alone in the gap of the wall. Alone in the sense that he was the only one present who wasn't dead or close enough to death to deceive the casual observer. He did not recognize any of the dead except Smoker, who had sprouted a double‹lozen arrows in a deadly bouquet and lay there, open eyes staring at Toede accusingly.

Toede cocked an ear and heard distance shouts, battle cries, and the clash of metal against metal. It was all around him, throughout the city, the battlefront broken into a hundred clashes, fought in alleys and plazas and storefronts. The kender would be in their element here, an entire terrain of places in which to run and hide.

The gnolls would make for the Rock Wall, and Renders and the other battle leaders with them. Toede picked through the bodies and moved toward the headland, noting in passing that none of the mercenaries wore the gold disks he had seen in his last incarnation.

He had to double back twice as his path was blocked by intense fighting, and once had to redirect a bloodstained unit of kender to a likely battle scene, but at last he made it. He had no idea how long it took him, but Toede reached the headland wall.

The wall was undefended, the gates to the Rock open. It was comparatively quiet, the battle raging elsewhere in the city. The defenders had abandoned their posts, but had they fled out of fear of flying whales, or plunged into the heat of battle? Or were they lurking in ambush?

Toede strode cautiously up to the gate as a large shadow appeared on the other side. It was gnoll-sized, but had the head of a great ox, and carried a massive, double-headed axe.

It was a minotaur, but this one's skin was the color of paper left in the sun too long, its eyes as sightless as Smoker's or, for that matter, the dead whale's.

Toede sighed and stepped forward. "Hi, Bob," he said.

"Greetings, Toede," said the undead mix of human and bovine traits. "You seem to have expected me."

"Sooner or later," said Toede in a conversational voice, slowly closing the distance between them. He reached back and slid his bloodied sword back into its scabbard. "How long have you planned this, working for both sides?"

The minotaur zombie managed a shrug. "Since before your return. And while it would have been easier had I captured you before the kender did, fortune allowed me to turn that happenstance to my advantage."

Toede smiled. "So you appeared to Groag and offered to protect him in exchange for…"

"For the dead," said the minotaur zombie, "same as you. And of course, everyone will be the dead soon."

"So you wanted Flotsam for yourself, eh?" said Toede, now standing all of five feet away from his opponent.

"As a start," said the zombie. "Even now the first of your battlefield dead are twitching as the bones reknit and the flesh empties. They will be my new army, to slay the survivors of the city and further swell my legions. Then, when I have sufficient ships, I will launch raids along the entire coast, until I have a small nation of undead humans, kender, ogres, hobgoblins, and even dragons under my control!"

Toede sighed again, reaching into his short jacket as if trying to physically slow his beating heart. "Dream no small dreams," he said. "Well I have news for you, Necromancer. Murrurrurume!" His voice had dropped to an unintelligible mumble.

The minotaur zombie cocked its head for a moment, then said, "You said something?"

"I said…" Toede again dropped his voice. "Murrurrurume!"

The minotaur zombie managed a smile and dropped to one knee to hear better. It kept its axe in one hand, to gut the hobgoblin should he try to pull anything. "Once more," it chided.

"I said have some perfume!" said Toede, and pulled Tay-win's atomizer from his jacket. Before the minotaur zombie could react, he sprayed the contents full-force into the undead creature's face.

The minotaur zombie screamed as the holy water, prepared by the kender priest, boiled away what remained of its face, revealing the skull beneath the flesh. Toede's sword flew from his scabbard as he brought it in a neat line across the minotaur's shoulders, separating its head from its body.

Toede smiled, but the smile was short-lived, as the now-headless creature tottered to its feet and hefted its axe.

"Oh, come now," gurgled the remains of the minotaur-zombie skull, "you of all people should know that death is not a career-ending injury around here."

The zombie brought its axe down, hard, and splintered the pavement as Toede jumped to one side. The minotaur was still mighty dangerous, albeit blind.

Blind? No, Toede corrected himself. Rather the minotaur's skull was still relaying orders, although at a disadvantage due to its lowered vantage point.