by Ari Marmell
“Pacing helps me think,” he snapped at her.
“No. Pacing helps you feel. If you were thinking, you'd have come up with something already.”
With a defeated sigh, the stately half-breed planted his rear on the bed. Only slightly self-conscious, Lidia sat beside him.
“He must know by now,” duMark said—as he'd been saying, now, for days on end. “A blind leech with brain damage could see Dororam's armies gathering. So why hasn't he done anything?”
“Maybe your own efforts are distracting him? You said you had a few schemes working…”
“Not possible. They haven't progressed far enough.”
Slowly, almost fearfully, Lidia extended a comforting hand and placed it on duMark's shoulder. She was, she realized with bitter self-loathing, absurdly grateful when he didn't brush it away. “It's not as though he's ignoring the threat,” she told him, her voice calming. “You yourself told me that the patrols around the Serpent's Pass have increased fourfold. Why—”
“But that's not like him!” DuMark surged to his feet, allowing Lidia's hand to fall uselessly to the mattress. “Morthûl doesn't think defensively! Never has, never will! No, he's plotting something, all right. I'd bet my beard.”
“You don't have a beard,” Lidia told him curtly. “And what are you doing using a dwarven expression, anyway?”
DuMark glowered at her for a full minute. “Are you through?” he asked finally.
She shrugged, her bobbing shoulders making her red curls dance around her head. “For the moment.”
“Good.”
“Look,” she said, heartily sick of the whole thing. “You're so hot and bothered because you can't figure out what Morthûl may or may not be doing? Why don't you find out already? What's your magic good for, anyway?”
The sorcerer shook his head. “The Iron Keep's not the sort of place you can just scry on, Lidia. The Charnel King protects himself against that sort of thing.”
“So? When was the last time you took the easy way out?” Not counting me…
Slowly, a grin stole over duMark's features. “You know, Lidia, you might just have a point after all. I think I will go find out what his Bony-ness is up to.”
“And how are you planning to accomplish that?”
“Well, I thought if I were polite enough about it, I might just find someone to ask.”
Gork found himself screaming, just a little bit, as he materialized about fifteen feet above the frozen tundra and plummeted into the snow.
He screamed a lot louder when Cræosh appeared directly over him a moment later.
The orc, arms flailing, fell into the snow with a resounding whump. Grumbling mightily, he dragged himself to his feet and had barely vacated his self-made hole before the next of his companions (Jhurpess, it so happened) appeared from thin air above his head and plunged groundward.
Once the last of the Demon Squad had arrived—the troll, who was the only member of the group to actually land on her feet—Cræosh began examining his surroundings, trying to determine exactly how deep the shit they were in might be.
Very, was his first conclusion.
“It's fucking cold,” was his second. “I think my testicles are somewhere near my throat.” His companions, for whatever reason, didn't feel the need to comment on that particular pronouncement.
“Where are the mountains?” Gimmol asked, trying to look every way at once. “Didn't Shreckt say something about mountains?”
“Where food?” Jhurpess chimed in with his usual priorities. “Jhurpess hungry!”
“Jhurpess always hungry,” Cræosh muttered. “Jhurpess better shut the hell up, or Jhurpess may find himself eating his club.”
“For that matter,” Fezeill said before the bugbear could respond to the orc's taunts, “where's the kobold?” He didn't actually say “I don't want that little bastard out of my sight!” but everyone heard it in his voice, even if they weren't certain why.
Cræosh's brow wrinkled. “You know, I didn't see him land.”
“Must…have arrived before…you did.”
But the orc merely shook his head at the troll's suggestion. “I dunno. I think I would have seen—”
Gork's head popped from the snow a few yards away. A murderous glint in his beady little eyes, the kobold literally dragged himself free and stalked toward Cræosh, brushing clinging clumps of white off him as he went.
“You—you stupid elephant! You nearly killed me!”
“Beg pardon?” Cræosh asked, stepping back out of sheer instinct. “What're you talking about?”
“You! It's all very well to be built like a damn brick when you're bowling people over or—or eating buildings, or whatever it is you do, but it doesn't help you fly, does it?”
The orc finally got it. “I, uh, landed on you, didn't I?”
“You're damn right you did, you monstrosity! You're lucky I didn't decide to carve my way out! You—”
Seeing the orc—and, for that matter, the rest of the squad—collapse into gales of helpless laughter was quite certainly not the effect Gork had been shooting for. With a final disgusted grunt, he spun on his heel and wandered some forty or fifty feet from the others, where he then proceeded to sulk.
“All right,” Cræosh said, once he'd finally regained some semblance of control. “Our first step is to figure out where the hell we are. Then, we have to decide how to go about surviving this miserable place for four days.”
“Why,” the goblin lamented sadly, “couldn't he have let us pack some extra clothes?”
“Wouldn't be much of a test, then, would it, runt? Shit, anybody can survive the Northern Steppes if they're prepared for it.” His brow, however, twisted in thought. “You were right about one thing, though. The imp did say something about mountains. Guarding the passes, and all that.”
“There is…a mountain range off to…the east. I can…just barely see it.”
Cræosh wandered over, squinting. “I don't see anything but snow, snow, and—wait! Is that—why, yes it is. More snow!”
Except for a quick sideways glower, the orc's sarcasm went ignored. “Trolls…have very good…sight. Better than…other races.”
“All other races?” he asked distrustfully.
Was it his imagination, or was that actually a look of mild embarrassment stealing over the troll's features? “Still cannot match…elven sight.”
“Well, don't take it so hard. You wouldn't want to be an elf. At least you're not named Bunnybugger or Treeface or something.”
“I’m so…relieved.”
“If you two would allow me?”
The orc and the troll turned as Fezeill stepped between them. As he passed, Cræosh could see the doppelganger's legs lengthening, his torso narrowing, his ears shifting beneath his hair. Even though he knew who it was before him, had watched the Fezeill take on an elven shape, the orc had to brutally repress the urge to murder the horrid creature on sight.
Finally, after a few minutes of staring through elven pupils, Fezeill said, “There is indeed a mountain range many miles to the east. But it's far, far too small to be the Brimstone Mountains.”
“Well, that narrows it down, anyway,” Cræosh said. He paused, dredging up old lessons in geography. “There's only, what, two or three ranges in the Steppes, right? So all we have to do is figure out which one it is, and we're set.”
“Set? All it…tells us is where we are. There…remains the small matter of…survival.”
“So we survive.” The orc—who, despite his blithe façade was preventing himself from shivering violently through sheer stubbornness—signaled those who had lagged behind to catch up. “Let's move it, people!”
Gimmol, Jhurpess, and then, somewhat grudgingly, Gork, all gathered. “Move?” the gremlin asked, his face puzzled. “Where do we have to go?”
Cræosh pointed forcefully in the direction Fezeill-the-elf was staring. “There. Mountains.”
“Oh?” Gork asked, voice still sullen. “And who decid
ed we were going that way?”
His face fixed in a tight grin, the orc lifted his tiny companion from the snow, palming the kobold's head as if it were a melon. “I did. Any objections?”
“Mrmph,” Gork reassured him.
“I’m so glad to hear it.” Thump. “Any other questions?”
Jhurpess, Gimmol, and Fezeill watched the kobold stand up and once more dust the snow from his shoulders. As one, they shook their heads.
The troll, however, calmly returned his glower. “You are quite quick…to take over, yes? If I…were to object, what…would you do?”
Cræosh blanched internally, but he wasn't about to back down in front of the others. “Care to find out?”
The temperature dropped far enough to freeze the snow into solid ice. The rest of the squad stood as motionless as if they, too, had been frozen, terrified that the slightest movement might set one or another of their deadly companions off.
And then…
“Not…just now. I have…no objections.”
Cræosh breathed a subdued sigh of relief.
“But if…I did, you would certainly…be the first to know.”
In other words, the orc translated, this ain't over.
Well, he'd deal with that when it came up. For now, there was the pesky matter of survival, and standing around with their thumbs up their respective asses wasn't particularly conducive to that goal.
“Fine. Fezeill, we should keep a visual fix on the mountains. You'll stay in that form for a while, and—”
“I think not.”
Cræosh snapped his jaw shut. “And why is that?”
Even as the doppelganger answered, he began to shift. “Because elves are just fine sight-wise, but they are somewhat lacking in the insulation department. As you said, ‘It's fucking cold.’” By the time he had finished speaking, a second bugbear—somewhat lighter in hue than Jhurpess, though equally hairy—stood in the elf's place.
“Oh, great. Yeah, that's just what we need.”
“I remain myself,” Fezeill assured the frustrated orc. “I may gain my form's physical traits, but I retain my own mind. Mentally, Jhurpess is still quite…unique.”
The true bugbear beamed at the unexpected praise.
“Whatever,” Cræosh conceded. There wasn't time to argue. Already, his rich swampy skin tones were paling beneath the frigid bite of the tundra's winds. “Okay, then, troll. Looks like it's up to you and those superior peepers of yours. I need you to scout ahead, and—”
“Do not…call me ‘troll.’ I…do not call you ‘orc’…do I?”
Damn it all, they really didn't have time for this! “Well, I can't just call you ‘you,’ can I?”
“My name…is T’chakatimlamitilnog…of the House—”
“Yeah, yeah, of the House of Ru. I got that part down, thanks. So what if we just call you Ru?”
“No. That…would be disrespectful.”
Cræosh decided not to bother asking why. Instead he struggled to commit the convoluted name to memory. The name, unfortunately, was winning.
It was Gork who finally came forward with a suggestion. “How about ‘Katim’?”
The orc shrugged. It sounded enough like some part of that damn name, to his ears if not her own. “How about it, troll?”
She scowled, her jagged fangs shifting about in their gums. “It is…crude.” Then, however, she shrugged as well, the gesture a mirror image of the orc's. “But so…are you all. I suppose…it will do.”
“Great. Well, now that we have that urgent issue settled…Katim, would you be so kind as to scout ahead? Ain't a one of us here who can see the mountains besides you.” And I doubt anything around here's so stupid as to attack a troll.
Katim set out with a long-legged canter that quickly carried her to the limits of the orc's own sight. And there she stayed, idly twirling her chirrusk and waiting for her companions to get a move on.
Which, after no small amount of prodding from Cræosh, they did. Jhurpess and Fezeill loped ahead with relative ease, their four-legged gait providing extra leverage against the shifting powder. Gimmol, Cræosh, and Gork, however, were forced to rely as best they could on only two legs.
The orc gave up almost immediately on keeping the squad in any kind of military formation. Gimmol was, perhaps understandably, unwilling to get within fifteen feet of Jhurpess; and Gork, his short legs mired in the deep snow, simply couldn't keep pace with the others. Still, their footing solidified some as they moved from their landing spot, and soon the snow was packed tightly enough that the light kobold could stride across it. They made far better time after that, and when twilight began to fall, Cræosh himself could see the faint outline of the mountains, beckoning from the horizon.
By the time they caught up with Katim, the troll was already ensconced in a hollow between two “dunes” of snow, a hearty fire crackling away before her. Instantly, most of the squad dashed ahead, eager for the warmth of the dancing flames, arguing and shoving over the best spaces. Cræosh wandered past the fire, however, ignoring the sight of the two bugbears wrestling with one another. He saw the ass-end of the kobold vanishing over the top of a small rise and heard a moment later the thump of a fist landing and Gimmol's voice cry out in pain, but he disregarded that as well.
Instead, he settled into the snow beside the troll, pulling a chunk of jerky from his traveling pack and warming it in the fire. After several minutes of silence, broken only by the crunch of snow from the battling squad members and his own chewing, the orc finally faced his bestial companion.
“When I told you to scout ahead,” he said around a mouthful of meat, “I sort of assumed that would include reporting back to us on occasion. We haven't seen hide nor fur of you in six hours!”
Katim twisted until her long snout was directly in Cræosh's face. Although the scent was enough to choke a swamp dragon, the warm breath actually felt good after a day of marching through the snow and frigid winds. “Did you…come across anything of note…as you walked?” The hideous rasp of her breath sounded even worse so close up.
“What are you, kidding? This is the fucking ass-end of Kirol Syrreth. The only thing ‘of note’ is the fact that my most important parts have all quit in disgust at the cold and gone home.”
“That…is why I reported nothing back…to you. There is…precious little to report.”
Cræosh nodded after a time. “All right, I guess you've got a point. But—”
“And you did not…tell me to scout…ahead. You asked me. Do…not get above yourself.”
Whatever, Cræosh thought. What he said instead, at a much higher volume, was, “Fall in!”
It required a bit more than that—actually, it required him tromping around the small encampment and physically tossing almost every squad member toward the fire—but he eventually got them all assembled.
“We have preparations to make,” he told them, “if we're gonna live through one night here, let alone four. And then we have to set a watch. Get to it!”
They got. Hollows were dug in the tightly packed snow, providing a surprising amount of shelter from the frigid nighttime temperatures—and, for that matter, a place other than the middle of the camp for the goblins to relieve themselves. After savoring its warming glow for a final few moments, they thoroughly doused the fire. No sense, Cræosh told them, of alerting anyone within twenty miles to their presence.
“I got first watch,” the orc announced, once everyone was about ready to turn in.
“Watch?” Jhurpess asked, his voice perplexed.
Grimacing, Gork tugged on the bugbear's arm and whispered rapidly in his ear.
“Oh.” Jhurpess blinked. “Something going to happen tonight?”
“I don't know, Nature-boy,” Cræosh said. “It's just in case something happens tonight.”
“Oh,” he said again. “Jhurpess will go second, then.”
The others shouted, barked, or muttered their own preferences. With all six of them, there would be no ne
ed for shifts of longer than an hour or so—a prospect particularly attractive to the kobold, who bitched long and loud about needing his beauty sleep.
The first hour passed uneventfully, or so Jhurpess assumed when he was rudely awakened by the orc's hard-toed boot in his side.
“Up and at ‘em, Jhurpess.”
Grumbling, the bugbear rose. His club carving a deep furrow in the snow behind him, he trudged along the featureless field of white until he was perhaps fifteen yards from camp. From there, he could easily see the entire squad. Satisfied with his brilliant selection of vantage points, the bugbear plopped down in the snow and promptly closed his eyes.
They didn't stay closed long. Jhurpess uttered a startled yelp as he was sent flying by a meaty blow to the side of his head.
“You fucking idiot!” Cræosh railed at him. “It doesn't do us any good if you go to sleep! You're supposed to stay awake on watch!”
“Jhurpess sorry,” the simian creature said, rising again to his feet. “No one told Jhurpess about that part.”
“No one told—Just how, exactly, did you expect to keep alert for danger without staying awake?!”
The bugbear shrugged philosophically. “Jhurpess had sort of wondered about that part. Jhurpess assumed it would be more obvious when the time came.”
Cræosh winced in sudden pain, then wandered back to his hole. “And put the damn skull-cracker away, would you?” he called over his shoulder. “Anything attacks you from the open tundra, that bow of yours is gonna be a whole lot more helpful.”
The bugbear waved happily in thanks, yanked the bow free of the rudimentary sling in which he carried it, and immediately set about stringing the primitive but powerful weapon.
It was only after the orc's vigorous snoring had begun wafting toward him over the prone bodies of his squad-mates that Jhurpess realized he had no idea how long an “hour” was. He was a creature of the wild, though, and a quick glance at the moon and stars told him exactly how long he'd been asleep. Well, he'd simply watch for that same duration, and then wake—umm—Fezeill. Yeah, that was it.
Although fully determined that nothing should slip past him, Jhurpess found his attention drawn more and more frequently to the gleaming stars overhead. With wonder in his eyes, the bugbear stared, dazzled, at their subtle twinkling. He was familiar with them, of course, having lived most of his life out-of-doors—but somehow, away from the constant frame of the trees and foliage, separated from him only by distance and the cold, crisp air of the Northern Steppes, they appeared larger, brighter. More real.
