T Lain - The Sundered Arms

“Hurry, you fool!” cried the druid. “I cannot do that again.”

Tordek lowered his head and ran for his life, muttering a brief prayer of thanks to Moradin, who had forged his soul and watched over it, even when he made such blunders as this one. The monster’s howls of pain turned to roars of anger as it regained its feet and chased after its prey. Even with their slight lead, Tordek knew the monster’s vast strides would soon close the distance.

They ran until Tordek felt his pulse throbbing in his head. Ahead of him, Vadania and Devis slowed their pace so that he and Lidda might keep up. Tordek heard a mighty splashing behind him and saw Devis staring agape.

“Don’t look!” shouted the bard. “Just run!”

Devis turned and obeyed his own advice, as did Vadania and Gulo. They ran for hundreds of yards, and each one felt like ten for all the clinging mud and rough terrain. They ran until their breath came in harsh wheezes. They ran until they could no longer feel their legs.

Tordek barely noticed when he slammed into a tall pole and knocked it down into the marshy ground. He stomped on some leathery fetish that had been mounted on its tip, but he spared it not so much as a glance.

He ran until his heart leaped to escape his chest, his eyes swelled almost to bursting, and his legs turned to rubber. At last he knew that the last stand from which Vadania had just spared him was indeed fated for this day. Once again, he planted his feet, grabbed his war axe, and turned to face his doom.

He saw nothing but empty swamp.

As his throbbing pulse slowed, Tordek could hear the distant splashing of giant feet running in the opposite direction. Soon after, a horn sounded in the distance. It came again a moment later, more distant still. The trogs were retreating.

For a long while they stood gasping for air, their bodies bent over, their hands clutching at their knees for support. Devis tried to speak, but all that came out was a harsh whistle. Gradually, their panting slowed, and they blinked away the dizziness.

“Well,” said Vadania, “it wasn’t Gulo who frightened off the mob this time.”

“Maybe not,” replied Tordek, “but something surely did the trick.”

“Maybe it was one of these,” suggested Lidda. She shook a tall pole with a troglodyte’s head mounted atop it. Some of the bones that rattled beneath the rotting head looked more human than reptilian.

“Uh, oh,” said Devis. “I have a bad feeling I know where we are.”

They looked around in all directions, crouching low in an effort to see before they were seen—by exactly what, they were not certain, making them feel all the more exposed and vulnerable. They spread out slightly, keeping in sight of each other as they searched the area.

“There,” said Vadania, pointing toward the northeast.

On a relatively dry mound of earth stood a homely cottage no better than those they had seen in Croaker Norge. All around it stood similarly gruesome warning poles, some mounted by skulls, others with frightful talismans of sticks and bones and skin.

“Shall we have a peek?” said Devis.

“No!” said everyone else.

“Aren’t you curious about the fabled Sandrine?”

“We’ll skirt the cottage,” decided Tordek. He looked up to judge the sun’s distance from the horizon. It was hard to tell how much daylight was left when precious little of it reached them through the mist.

“There could be treasure,” crooned Devis, drawing out the last word in a manner obviously meant to tempt a dwarf. “Gold and jewels and fabulous trinkets plucked from her victims over the years.”

“Knock it off, Bunny,” said Lidda. “You just want to see whether she’s beautiful.”

“Well…”

Tordek turned his back on the argument and led the way around the cottage, staying as close to the totems as possible. Lidda and Vadania soon followed him, as did Gulo, who was gradually looking more and more ferocious after his embarrassing retreat from the bigger foe. Slowly, reluctantly, Devis followed them through the totem poles and north, away from the story of Sandrine the poisoner.

They trudged through the mire for hours, determined to get out of the swamp and into the hills near Andaron’s Delve before setting camp. The stink of the mire and of its reptilian inhabitants still dulled their heads, but as the sun touched the horizon they settled for a dry spot in the lowlands to make their camp.

“Tell me those dwarves didn’t build their forge in this swamp,” said Lidda.

“Those dwarves didn’t build their forge in this swamp,” Devis assured her.

“No,” agreed Tordek, “but they were mindful of its value as a barrier to the south. Few armies would choose this path.”

“No kidding,” said Devis, flinging a particularly nasty bit of black slime from his sleeve.

Vadania nearly exhausted her spells healing Gulo, who had suffered by far the worst wounds of the day’s battle. The great wolverine did not seem to mind the smell and the muck that clung to them, but Devis complained steadily until the druid promised to conjure some clean water for their morning ablutions.

They rested uneasily after the fattening moon rose up to whiten the treetops and cast the rest of the world in stark shadow. The double-watch left only Vadania enough time to recuperate from the day’s trials. The elf never truly slept but merely meditated in reverie while Tordek and Lidda watched over her and the gently snoring Devis. When Lidda grew sleepy eyed, Tordek indulged her in a silent game of finger signs. He scowled each time she bested him, and she grinned in triumph as they turned away after each brief match to look outward from the banked campfire to spy any threatening movement beneath the trees.

True to her word, Vadania conjured a small pool of fresh water at dawn. After everyone including Gulo had drunk from it, Devis stripped off his clothes and made a hasty bath. Lidda joked about the effects of the cool water on his retractable bits, but the bard didn’t seem to mind the teasing. He was happy to be clean again. After he was finished, the others washed quickly before setting off once more.

Vadania led them out of the wet terrain and up into rocky hills before noon. Tordek sighed in relief as he felt the firm ground beneath his feet once more. He could feel the solid bedrock through his boot soles and the topsoil. The realm of frogs and serpents was behind them, and even the rain abated as they climbed higher into the hills. They were entering dwarf country.

On the second night after leaving the swamp, the full moon soared high in a cloudless sky. Lidda and Devis slept under the shelter of a deep outcropping while Tordek kept watch with Vadania nearer the hilltop for a far vantage, careful not to climb so high as to present a silhouette against the moon.

“There,” said the elf, pointing toward the northwestern horizon. “Jorgund Peak.”

Tordek squinted at the point she indicated. He saw a roughly triangular promontory jutting from the forested hills like the prow of a half-sunken ship sailing southeast. It was too small to be a mountain, too sharp and conspicuous to be merely a hill. Trees covered its crest and ran down the gently sloping back of its northwestern face. Its western and eastern sides formed sheer cliffs streaked black and white with years of droppings. Tordek hoped that what flocked there were merely birds, but a cold premonition settled in his stomach. At Vadania’s indication, he spied a trio of pale oval spots running along the limestone cliffs before vanishing into shadow, their alignment suggesting a regular progression around the escarpment.

“Eight of them,” said Vadania. “They look as though something large was cut away from the stone.”