T Lain - The Sundered Arms

“Ah,” said the bard, “but remember what’s on the door. ‘Come silently through the secret under the mountain.’ That’s two hints about Dumathoin.”

“He’s right!” said Lidda. “That’s got to be important. Maybe the real secret door is under the face of Dumathoin.”

“Perhaps,” said Tordek, “but there’s a slag drain there, and it’s working. That’s no secret entrance.”

“Maybe the passage was through the face of Dumathoin,” suggested Vadania.

“Yeah,” said Devis. “In his ear or up his nose, maybe.”

“Still your profane tongue, half-breed!” snapped Tordek, raising his voice enough to cause an echo. He saw his companions look around nervously and lowered his volume. “Just speak of the gods with respect, is all I am saying.”

“I’ll climb up and have a look,” volunteered Lidda.

“Up his nose indeed,” muttered Tordek, glowering at Devis. The half-elf grimaced an apology.

Lidda clambered up the cliff face as nimbly as a monkey. Tordek had seen her perform similar feats a dozen times, but he still marveled at her skill. He would need a stout rope to get up there, and to be careful he would need to haul up his armor separately. He watched as Lidda braced herself and began feeling the bare stone face for secrets. Her slender fingers probed the cliff for only a few minutes before she called down to them.

“There’s something here! It’s small, but I think I can open it!” Lidda grinned down at them, a fierce grin on her face. It vanished when her gaze fell upon Gulo. Big, huge, gigantic Gulo.

Vadania caught the meaning of the look and put her slim hand on the dire wolverine’s massive shoulder. “I am sorry, my friend. You can surely make the climb, but the passage is too meager for so great a warrior to pass.”

Tordek knew that the dire wolverine could not understand Common, but he was sure he took the elf’s meaning nonetheless. With a deep whimper that was anything but ferocious, he slunk slowly away along the shore, sniffing for a spot upstream where he could cross without entering the tainted water.

Vadania looked after her animal friend with a sad expression in her almond-shaped eyes. Tordek stood beside her. “Where will he go?”

“We have walked many trails together,” she said. “He will remain nearby until I call for him.”

“Come on,” urged Devis. He held a knotted rope and had one foot on the cliff face. Thirty feet above, Lidda sat in the mouth of a narrow opening with the other end tied around her waist and played through her gloved hands.

Devis started climbing. He reached the halfway point when Vadania hissed a warning. Devis froze, crouching low to the wall while craning his neck to look down over his shoulder.

The druid was listening intently, so Tordek did the same. He heard nothing but the gurgling of the stream behind them.

“Something’s coming!” hissed Vadania. “Something that buzzes.” She flapped her hands at Devis, urging him to climb faster as she grasped the rope below. “Hurry!”

Tordek hesitated only a second before snatching up his bow and setting an arrow to the string. By the time he had the weapon ready, he heard the buzzing that had alerted Vadania. A moment later, he spied the first of them.

The thing was like a hornet the size of a boar, with four dangling red meat hooks for legs. The creature’s body was a suit of lacquered yellow armor with black splotches, its wings a dark leathery blur. Its eight multifaceted eyes reflected a hundred tiny images of the sky, the cliff, and the ground beneath. A crude harness encircled its fat abdomen, securing a saddle between its wings. There perched a lean goblin resting a short bow across its knees.

The rider spotted Devis crawling into the hole where Dumathoin’s eye once lay just as Tordek raised his bow. As the goblin lifted an arm to point at the climber and opened his mouth to shout, Tordek’s arrow shot through its chest and slammed it out of the saddle. The goblin tumbled backward over its gigantic mount and dangled, already dead, from one leg still trapped in its stirrup.

Even without its rider to goad it on, the spider-eater flew toward the secret entrance. Devis was already inside the shelter of the stone, but Vadania still climbed frantically toward it. Even while Tordek reached for another arrow, he knew she would never make it in time. As he fired at the monstrous insect, two more of the things buzzed around the promontory.

On one of them rode another goblin, already rising in its saddle to shoot at Vadania. On the other, Tordek caught a brief glimpse of a creature even smaller than a goblin, knotty and twisted like an old piece of moldy wood. Before he could identify the wretch, it vanished. When he heard weird, piping laughter from atop the flying insect, he realized its rider had turned invisible.

He cried a warning to those above, but they were already too busy to heed him.

With its hanging rider forgotten, the first spider-eater descended on the druid. Devis reached down to help her up into the secret passage, but just before their hands met, the gigantic insect bumped Vadania and glided gently away to hover over the poisoned river.

From Tordek’s perspective, it seemed like such a gentle blow that he didn’t realize the peril until he heard Vadania’s painful cry. She clutched at her thigh and lost her grip on the rope. Before she could fall to the ground, Devis lunged down and grabbed her with both hands. Behind him, Lidda held onto his ankles and jammed her feet and shoulders against the walls of the tiny passage for support.

Unable to help them from the ground, Tordek fired at the second goblin. The first arrow from his mighty longbow passed completely through the goblin’s right arm, severing the bone and leaving the limb and the weapon it still clutched hanging by a ragged strip of flesh. A bright stream of blood blew into a dull mist in the wake of the spider-eater’s droning wings.

Tordek spared a quick look up to see that Lidda and Devis had dragged Vadania into their shelter. That was a relief, but it left Tordek alone to face three furious insects and their invisible commander. He bellowed curses at them, hoping to draw one close enough to test his axe against its shell. Before they got within axe reach, he fired two more arrows at the one that stung Vadania. One glanced off the insect’s chitinous hide, but the other cracked the surface and sank deep. Thick ichor dripped down the arrow shaft and blew away in black streamers.

The attack had its desired effect. The insect flew straight toward Tordek, followed closely by its companion with the invisible rider. The dwarf barely had time to drop his bow and reach for his war axe. As he gripped the weapon’s haft, an icy thrill gripped his spine and shot out through every nerve until his body trembled with ineffable fear. He gritted his teeth against the unmanly emotion, but still his weapon shook in his grip. The spider-eater closed and struck at him, and he turned away to run. He felt the monstrous stinger scrape across his armor. The metal saved him from the foe he could not face. Tordek bit his lip and cursed himself for cowardice as he ran. That the terror undoubtedly came from a spell cast by the invisible foe did nothing to cool the shame.

Despite the fear, fury rose up from Tordek’s belly, filling his heart with gleeful hatred. It routed the magical fear and drove it from his body. With a roar, he wheeled around and heaved his axe up in a powerful overhand arc, cutting through the tough sinew connecting the insect’s membranous wing to its body. The spider-eater hurtled past him, spinning out of control, until it crashed on the shore of the polluted stream. Its remaining wing beat uselessly against the pebbles.

Tordek whirled again to face his unseen enemy, but the invisible rider was too cagey to be lured close. The spider-eater hovered well out of reach. The drone of its wings barely covered the nervous muttering of its unseen master. Before the monster could complete whatever foul spell it was about to utter, the air above the spider-eater shimmered, and its rider was invisible no more.