Anthology - Untold Adventures - A Dungeons and Dragons Anthology

His uncle reloaded the crossbow and shot again. The second bolt also struck home. The beast coughed and called out weirdly in the voice of the dandy: “Ah, the blood, the blood.”

A heavy body crashed down from the guards’ walk at the top of the wall. Gustin rolled over and stared down the length of his body. Framed between his boot toes was a hideous blend of a stag’s legs with a lion’s body and a giant badger’s head. A tufted tail lashed from side to side as the wounded creature struggled to its hooves. It kicked out at Gustin but a blaze of fire from the advancing widow drove it briefly away from the boy.

Gustin scrambled to his feet. The badger head swayed back and forth, the open mouth blowing out a carrion breath that made him gag. Bony ridges lined the inside of its black lips, clearly visible, far too close to his nose.

Raising his own hands, Gustin repeated the spell being shouted by the widow. It was louder and longer than the one that she had taught him to light a candle. Smoke rather than fire blossomed at his fingertips. Cursing his fumble of the spell, he flung the smoke at the beast’s eyes. Baffled and choking on the thick black smoke streaming from Gustin’s hands, it wheeled around, racing away from Gustin to the safety of the trees.

A third bolt from his uncle’s crossbow pierced the creature’s throat. It tumbled over its hooves, crumbling into the grass.

With three strides, Gustin’s uncle reached him and swept him up in a hard one-armed embrace. Then he dropped Gustin with a thump. “I told you to stay away from magic,” he growled. “I told you to stay away from those men.”

“Ah,” said the widow, crushing Gustin in her own mint-scented embrace. “Leave the boy alone. How was he to know there was a leucrotta in these ruins?”

Gustin wiggled his way out of the widow’s hug. “Where are they?” he said, looking around for the tall fighter and his dwarf companion.

“Run off!” snorted his uncle. “We saw them on the road.”

“He’s been searching for you all morning,” the widow whispered in Gustin’s ear.

“But why?”

“Because you are family,” grunted his uncle, shouldering his crossbow and stepping around the dead beast in the meadow.

“That’s worth something,” the widow said, pointing at the leucrotta’s body.

His uncle shrugged. “Send them out from the village to fetch it. It’s magic and I’ll have none of it.”

“It wasn’t magic that killed her,” the widow said. “And it won’t be magic that kills this boy.”

His uncle shook his head and stomped off. The widow sighed. “There goes a stubborn man. It wasn’t magic, that’s what I keep telling him.”

“Who? Who died?” But even as he asked, he knew the answers. It was as close to his heart as her book about Waterdeep.

“Your mother was always twice the wizard that I was,” said the widow. “And restless with it. That farm was far too small to hold her. But it stole the laughter from him when she took to wandering. She was all the family he had.”

“He has me.” Gustin knew even as he said it that the day was coming when he would follow his mother’s footsteps out of the village. The adventurers might have tricked him, even run off and left him, but it didn’t make their tales any less appealing. He would go to Waterdeep and see the City of Splendors for himself.

“Make me a promise,” said the widow as they walked through the woods. “The next time you leave, tell us both good-bye. Don’t make her mistake and go running off without a word.”

“I promise,” Gustin said, and with a whisper of magic, he made his words echo from all the treetops.

Bab threw himself into the ditch just in time. The foul, gritty red dust went up his nose and sifted into his curly brown hair, but he held his breath until the urge to sneeze passed. Not that anyone could have heard it, of course. He gripped his hammer until his fingertips could have pierced through the thick leather wrappings on the handle. The solid metal gave him comfort. Passed down from his grandfather’s many-times grandfather, it was ingrained with virtues that helped him shape metal or slay enemies usually beyond the capability of a halfling.

His four companions stayed low as the file of chained orcs and goblins marched by, passing into the notorious Crossroads on the edge of the Chaos Scar. Whips cracked over their heads. The slave master in charge of the company shouted curses. Bab listened appreciatively to the language. Creative, he thought. A phrase or two like that would be useful to help keep the smithereens down while he was hammering metal on his forge in the middle of Wenly Halt. If he should ever see his forge or his home or the village again. A halfling like him should stay where it was safe, but he had no choice. All this was his own fault, sort of. He had been successful where others had failed, and that was the wrong thing to have done.

The tiny green thread tied around his wrist dimmed. He waited, counting to twenty before he raised his head.

The others sensed his movement rather than heard it. They were still within the hour affected by the silence charm given them by Priest Nock. Bab had three more of the precious blue beads still on the string around his neck. Besides costing a week’s wages, they were made from mystical ingredients including a precious stone and a hair from his sleeping baby daughter’s head, but he’d rather have them on hand than a hundred gems or an enchanted sword. While they were within the sphere of its magic, they could hear outside sounds, but no one could hear them. Three of his six had already been spent to get them past other perils in the wilderness. He guessed they would have no beads left to get them home again.

The lack of silencing spells would probably not matter. By the time they were through with their aim, he imagined, the question of getting home would be moot.

At least, if he didn’t go back, he wouldn’t have to paint the cottage again. Winter had been hard on the little house. The whitewash was definitely beginning to peel. But it was home. He imagined he could hear the swallows in the eaves chirping, his neighbor’s dog barking, his wife Nomi nagging… the fond, familiar sounds that kept him going. He could get a day’s worth of effort out of a good nag from Nomi. The woman had a gift.

Heartened by the memory, Bab gestured to the others. They scrambled out of the ditch one after the other: Adda, Scorri, Coran, and Legg. Legg’s mouth was moving, though no sound came out of it. Then the charm elapsed. The bead burst and sifted into powder down Bab’s chest. As it did, the old man’s sharp whisper cut through the twilight air like a claw.

“… I do not believe that I let you talk me into coming back here again! Not when we nearly died the first time. All of us! May your feet come apart between the toes! May your head…!”

“Shhh!” Bab hissed. “Don’t say those kinds of things here when we’re so close to the… You-Know-What! They might come true!”

Legg clapped a hand over his mouth. He was tall for a halfling, nearly a dwarf’s height. He had meant no harm. Bab knew it. They were all feeling the strain of gritting their teeth while doing something no sane man would ever do-nor insane man either-unless there was no other way. But there was no other way. The glowing blue-green chunk of rock in the pouch on Bab’s belt was a fact that gave them no choice.

Oh, the stone had sounded like a sending from the gods. The legend of the fallen star had been one that fathers told their little ones during the dark of the moon to make their hair stand up on the backs of their necks. Bab had loved those stories. He knew at least a few of them were true, since on a moonless night he could see the green fire in the skies to the west, over the cursed mountains beyond the king’s wall. There were also weird beasts that turned up on the outskirts from time to time, misshapen creatures that looked as if they’d been born of two species at once: spider-squirrels, owl-cats, and a piteous thing that was part halfling, but no one in the village dared guess what the other part had been. The priest had given it water and said a blessing over it, but it had died. Monsters and other horrors had come out of the deep valley, tearing up the countryside. Most of them had been turned away from Wenly Halt, by force of arms or by the blessed well at its heart.