Anthology - Untold Adventures - A Dungeons and Dragons Anthology

“Some illusion again!” Outrage, as well as the first inklings of fear, filled the ogre’s voice. “You said you would use only your sword!”

From behind him, a powerful feline shape stepped forward and gestured. A pale essence coalesced around Mulk, engulfing him in otherness. As a strand of it grew dense around his throat, the frightened ogre spun and swung wildly, striking at the smoke. As soon as he faced the ogre, Bijendra swung his enchanted sword around in a wide, powerful arc, striking With the flat of his blade. As it made contact with the side of the ogre’s skull, Mulk let out a gurgle. His eyes rolled backward into his head and he collapsed into a pile of unconscious, motionless meat. Stepping forward, Bijendra stared down at the unmoving body.

“I lied. It’s clear you don’t know much of anything about my kind or you would be aware that we are known for deception in word as well as in image.” Wiping clean the gore-streaked blade on the ogre’s backside, he slid it neatly into the sheath slung against his back as he turned and strode toward the bar. Brave and confident dwarf that he was, Norgen was ready for him.

“Drink?” the dwarf mumbled, swallowing hard as he held out the sloshing goblet. “On the house.”

Bijendra looked over his shoulder and said, “Three mighty ogres in a heap, who upon awakening will wish that they were dead. I could oblige them that, but I must not linger here. I have leagues to cross still, and they would be better traversed without having to always look behind me.”

Norgen knew what the rakshasa was getting at, and said, “The ogres have other kinsfolk in Hammerfast. And there’s always the outside chance that Goldspinner, the leader of the Merchant Guild and the current High Master of the town, might take an official’s interest in the brawl-though we dwarves tend to look first after our own.”

“That being the case,” Bijendra said, “I’ll content myself that I have one friendly witness to the fight on my side. It would be easy enough to persuade the individual in question.” The ranger reached in the direction of his longsword.

Sensible coward that he was, Norgen tried to bury himself in the lower reaches of the back bar. “Please, noble sir! I beg of you, mind twist me if you must, but spare my life! I am but a day removed from departing hence for the wedding of my second cousin’s eldest sister, and if my body arrives without its head it will most surely put a damper on the nuptials!”

Stopping well short of his sword, Bijendra’s hand dipped into a purse sequestered in his belt sash. He flung a couple of gold pieces onto the bar. “Calm yourself, good innkeeper. I seek your silence and possibly your witnessing, not your blood.”

Peeping tentatively out from his hasty hiding place, Norgen eyed the stranger uncertainly. Then he spotted the glint of gold on the bar and emerged the rest of the way. The coins looked real enough. So did the stranger’s grin, though it revealed all too many teeth for the dwarf’s liking.

“Silence you shall have, noble rakshasa.” He quickly scooped the coins off the scarred and gouged wood. “Are you truly a ranger?”

His long thick tail switching sharply back and forth, the visitor with the face and body of a backward-handed snow leopard and the bearing of a knight paused at the entrance to the inn.

“I go where I will, unconstrained by house, family, or friend. I journey freely and without encumbrance. No obligation lies upon my head as I travel to the Gray Downs.”

Norgen emerged further from behind the bar. “The Gray Downs! You’ll find nothing there but bare rock and cold memories. Why would a nobleman such as yourself seek such a place when temptation and good comfort lie the same distance away to the south in Fallcrest?”

“You may have heard me say that I seek a legend, told to me since youth of a place in the Gray Downs. It is called the Sword Barrow, and I would seek it out to learn the truth of the story. For I am on a journey on behalf of another more so than for myself.”

“Sword Barrow.” Norgen shook his head sadly as he regarded the stranger. “You have come a long way in search of a trash heap. Nothing lies there but rusting blades of ancient design.”

“Then I will return home satisfied in self and content in mind that I have done my best to learn that truth. Your concern is touching, innkeeper.”

“As is your gold.” One thick-fingered fist clutched the two coins the stranger had given him. “Journey well, then, noble cat-face. Journey safe. And beware the ancient warding magic they say lingers about that place like an outhouse stink.”

“I will be careful.” Bijendra indicated the unconscious ogres. “Will you be able to manage this lot? When they wake up, they will be discontented.”

Norgen smiled through his beard as he turned to take a sip from the untouched goblet. No sense in wasting good ale. “I have excellent clean-up people. Do not worry yourself on that score, stranger. Stranger?”

But in an elegant swirl of silks and scent, money and musk, the rakshasa ranger had disappeared.

On the southern edge of the Winterbole Forest, the Gray Downs formed an unhappy bulge between the Nentir and Winter Rivers. All soil fled, little but tough grass and determined bracken grew on the otherwise bare stone. Diced and broken by the contortions of a disturbed geology, the Downs promised a visitor rough walking and the likely prospect of a turned ankle.

Hailing from higher mountains, Bijendra was not intimidated by the crushed terrain. Picking his way westward, he soon found himself in the depths of the Downs themselves. Around him there was no sign of higher life, no calling of boars or bugling of deer-far less that of civilized conversation. Even the rats and mice, of whose presence there was ample evidence, were reluctant to show themselves in that place.

The Downs presented a prospect that was bleak enough during the day. Night was worse. The nearly treeless, rolling landscape lay barren and silent beneath a full moon, as if the spirit of life itself lay chained and jailed beneath the rocks. He had timed his traveling to be there on just such a night, because the legend told that it was then that She might appear.

It was when he entered the Sword Barrow that his hitherto austere surrounds for the first time took on a quietly threatening tone. Without having to search, his footsteps turned up first one half-buried blade, then another, and still another. Of ancient design and still retaining hints of superb workmanship, they lay scattered wherever he looked. Blades broken and whole poked out of the turned ground from among pockets of gravel or between split stones. At first they appeared to have nothing in common. On closer inspection, he saw that regardless of size or shape, design or composition, all pointed toward the center of the barrow.

That made it easier for him to find it.

So did the dozen or so rotting, disarticulating skeletons of those who had come before him.

Choosing a level platform among the rocks, he drew Furcleave. Holding it vertically before him with its point aimed straight at the ground, he murmured a soft incantation. Though the handle twisted violently in his clenched hands, he held it firmly. On the hilt, the two cat-faces ceased arguing. After a pause of consideration, they realigned themselves so that both were facing in the same direction.

Opening his eyes, Bijendra started in the direction they were staring and searched carefully until he found what he was looking for. By the light of the full moon it was easy enough to locate: a slot between two slabs of stone where he could carefully insert the blade, point first. Once that was done, he stepped back, stretched out both hands, and backward clawed the night air as he recited the words he had been told to say.