T Lain - The Sundered Arms

She stepped close to look into Tordek’s face, but he kept his gaze locked on the goblin, striving to burn his hatred into the creature’s skull by force of will. Vadania’s words seemed far away.

“We can’t keep guarding them all, and it will be dark soon.”

“All right. Just give me a few more moments.” He put his face right up to the goblin’s scabby visage. “Who led you there?”

The goblin shrieked a protest in its native language. Unlike some of his kin, Tordek never bothered to learn the corrupt tongue of the least of the dwarves’ eternal foes. Lidda could talk their gutter-speech, but he preferred not to have a translator for this. It made the goblin work harder to tell the truth, and that pleased Tordek. He shifted his grip again, digging his hard fingers into the goblin’s armpits.

“Who?”

“ Har—!” shrieked the goblin. Twin fears fought over the word in its mouth like two feral dogs over a bone. Perhaps the goblin thought its master was more fearsome than Tordek. Perhaps it would need a lesson to correct that mistake.

“Tordek!” said Vadania. The elf’s normally cool voice was shrill with urgency, but Tordek barely heard it. He felt as if his head was spinning, and hot blood surged just behind his bulging eyes.

“What did you say?” roared Tordek, squeezing the goblin so hard that he felt the creature’s ribs begin to creak.

The goblin gurgled, “ Harg…Harg…”

As his fury grew, Tordek wanted nothing more than to crush a skull between his fists, no matter that this particular goblin was not the foe he truly wanted to murder.

“Tordek!” shouted Vadania, shoving him hard and pointing at the ground. “Look!”

Tordek shook his head, but the gesture did little to dispel his dizziness. Looking down where Vadania directed, he saw that he was standing in a deep depression in the mud.

“What?” he said, keeping a tight grip on the squirming goblin.

“Step back and look,” said Vadania.

He did as she instructed and realized the depression was actually a gigantic, three-taloned footprint. From its middle toe to the dewclaw, the print was nearly as tall as Lidda. After a good rain, any two of the companions could have taken a bath in the concavity. Water was only just beginning to ooze into the print, and Tordek didn’t need Vadania’s wood-cunning to understand that meant the track was fresh.

Tordek stared for a moment, his mind unable to calculate the size of the monster that must have left that print.

“We have to leave,” said Vadania. “Now.”

Tordek nodded dumbly, still stunned by the size of the footprint. He lowered the goblin to the ground but maintained a grip on its collar.

“Does he have the hammer?” Tordek demanded.

Without warning, the goblin leaped at him, knocking Tordek back a step. The anger came rushing back into his limbs, but before he could retaliate, he felt the burning-cold spot on his ribcage and saw the other side of the short javelin protruding from the goblin’s back. From the butt of the weapon dangled fetishes of frog bones and vulture feathers.

Tordek realized the goblin had not attacked him after all.

Vadania helped him pry the dead goblin away. The corpse took with it the javelin that had penetrated its entire body with enough force to pierce Tordek’s armor and sink deep into his side. Only after the shock of the goblin’s final, sudden, and involuntary lurch began to fade did the wound begin hurting.

The druid called a warning to the others as she and Tordek crouched for concealment. A few more javelins arced down from clusters of weeds and leafy shrubs in the west. None of them was as accurate as the weapon that had silenced the goblin.

“They are testing us,” said Tordek, “to lure us into a hasty response.”

“Then we had best run now, before they see how few we are,” she said.

“Psst!” Lidda parted a clump of grass behind them. “Come on! We need to draw them off so the villagers can get away.”

Before Tordek could protest, the halfling fired an arrow in the direction of the incoming javelins. With a sharp twang, Devis’s crossbow joined her bow.

“By Abbathor’s thumbs!” grumbled Tordek. Crouching, he recovered his axe. Vadania pressed a leaf of mistletoe to his bloody side and chanted a word of healing. He smelled a fleeting odor of pine needles and felt the warm magic suffuse his torn flesh, knitting the deep wound back into seamless skin.

After healing Tordek, Vadania readied her sling, but no more javelins fell near them. Tordek listened for any sound of approaching troglodytes. He heard nothing but the sloshing of the marsh water around them, but Vadania tucked her sling into her belt and drew her scimitar from its scabbard. She crouched, ready to spring. Tordek followed her example.

Gulo’s roar announced the start of the hand-to-hand struggle. A chorus of rasping, hissing screams answered Gulo’s cry, and a dozen reptilian warriors surged out of the marsh. They stood tall as elves but slouched forward, their lean bodies balanced by long, heavy tails. Sharp teeth jutted from their crocodilian jaws, above which their yellow eyes flicked with amphibian double eyelids. Vestigial horns pricked up upon their brows, and tall dorsal ridges jutted atop their heads. Some wore scavenged or makeshift harnesses festooned with teeth and skull fragments. Half of them bore long spears and javelins, while the rest loped forward with fangs bared and claws grasping.

Devis put a bolt in a trog’s throat, but still the lizard rushed forward. Lidda’s arrow found the same target, crossing the first missile deep inside the trog’s thick neck. The reptilian hunter fell with a red splash.

Four troglodytes thrust their spears at Gulo’s face, forcing the great animal to rear up on his haunches. They stabbed at the wolverine’s exposed belly, and two sharp spearheads sank deep. Gulo snapped one of the offending spears in half while the other weapon whipped back for another thrust.

Vadania turned her head and grimaced at the plight of her bestial friend, but she faced two foes of her own. She slashed at the first, but it caught her scimitar on a bark shield. The second trog leaped at her. She stepped back barely in time to evade its sharp claws. She did not see the third one rising up out of the muck behind her.

Tordek spied the trap and called out a warning. Two troglodytes stood between him and the druid. Neither creature was armed, but Tordek knew that their teeth and claws were more than sufficient to tear away even his plate armor. He knew these reptiles were keen-minded warriors who probably expected him to keep them at bay with the advantage of his weapon’s reach.

Tordek lowered his head and rushed them.

The first troglodyte crouched, arms wide to grapple the rushing dwarf. Briefly, Tordek thought of the human villager who had tried catching him that way a few days earlier. He knew the reptile-man was more cunning and far more powerful than any villager. Just before he came within its grasp, Tordek leaped up and stomped on the trog’s thigh. The creature trumpeted its pain as Tordek continued running over its body. His armor-bolstered weight drove the surprised trog down into the mire. Tordek’s trampling attack was so unexpected that the second trog charged past the point where it expected him to be. Tordek continued running toward Vadania and her three assailants.

The elf struggled to free her sword arm from the grip of the trog that grasped her from behind, but she could not match its reptilian strength. The trog pinned her as its two fellows closed in to rip her apart with their razor-sharp claws. Unseen by either of them, Lidda’s short sword licked out, biting one troglodyte on the hip and drawing its attention away from the druid. The frill upon the trog’s neck rose in a threatening fan as the gaze of its beady, black eyes fixed on the halfling.