by Ari Marmell
But then, this was Gork—Gork the clever, Gork the formidable (in his own mind, at any rate), Gork the stealthy-as-an-embezzling-rat—and there wasn't a crowd in the world with enough eyes to keep him from sneaking wherever needed to be snuck. And so, despite being the recipient of the occasional curse here, being smacked in the face by the occasional hanging scabbard there, and finding himself tangled in flowing skirts a time or two, he succeeded in keeping Bekay in his sights until the big man finally moved off the road and bulled through the door of a short and stubby establishment.
Run-down, filthy, and apparently assembled by a drunkard with delusions of carpentry, the building crouched on the side of the roadway as though begging for scraps. The door didn't entirely fit in its frame; the windows were a greasy parchment that looked to have been used to polish old chamber pots. Through that dull opacity, Gork saw an amorphous shape—presumably Bekay—drift in from the direction of the door and seat himself at the counter that ran the entire length of the far wall.
Gork stepped back, glancing around for any sort of signage, and located it above his head: a thin wooden plank hanging from a rusty metal pole.
It depicted a stylized figure that, if viewed through a tight squint at just the right angle, bore a very faint resemblance to Gork himself. It was capering about, one knee raised above its waist while it balanced on the toes of its other foot. Beneath the image, the name was spelled out for that portion of the citizenry who'd actually learned their letters.
He, of course, couldn't read a word of it, but it didn't take more than a few minutes of loitering before he heard the name spoken by passing customers.
The Capering Kobold.
Gork's left eyelid developed a violent twitch.
His internal debate, as to whether he should go in there and start slitting throats or just burn the place down, was fortuitously curtailed by a barrage of shouts from within. While most was far too distorted to be intelligible from his vantage, he had little difficulty identifying the word “Out!” The door flew open, clinging to its cheap hinges by fingernails it shouldn't, as a door, have possessed, and a crowd of half-drunk patrons exploded from the tavern in a mad rush, the combined weight of their breath sufficient to make Gork himself tipsy. When the bartender joined the fleeing crowd, carrying the tankard he'd been cleaning, Gork couldn't help but grin.
They keep making it so easy for us….
He watched and waited for a few more minutes, blending into the shadows of a doorway across the street. The fuzzy shape that had to be Bekay remained at the bar, what appeared to be an entire ale barrel standing on the counter before him. Every so often, a potential customer—either frightfully unobservant or catastrophically stupid—would step through the front door and move toward the seated warrior. Gork still couldn't make out more than a few words, but he recognized the questioning tone, inevitably followed by an animal bellow, even more inevitably followed by said customer scurrying back out the door in search of someplace less suicidal to drink.
Finally, when he was thoroughly convinced that Bekay wasn't going anywhere for a good long while—except possibly under the table—Gork wove his way through the packed streets back toward the temple. Several times a ripe, plump coin purse hove into view, and he felt his fingers twitching of their own accord. And yet he forced himself to hold off, cursing every step of the way. He couldn't afford to take the risk. Getting caught swiping someone's pouch or picking someone's pocket, however improbable, would be far more strain than his already delicate disguise could handle. He tossed the coin purse from hand to hand, the repetitive gesture easing his frustration, helping him concentrate so as not to…
Coin purse? Gork stared with a sinking feeling in his stomach at the leather pouch in his fist. Where had this come from?! How dare his hands make that sort of decision without consulting him? A look of unease scribbled across his face, the kobold walked the remainder of the way with his arms firmly crossed inside the folds of his robe, each hand clutching a purse to keep it occupied….
Each hand? Oh, dragonshit!
It was a profoundly disturbed Gork who finally rejoined the squad, where they'd assembled a block or so from the temple. There they'd stood for minutes on end, occasionally muttering the name of this or that god and making various pious gestures toward the temple and the guardsmen who were scurrying all over it like ants on a dead raccoon.
“It's about fucking time, Shorty!” Cræosh snarled, waving politely at a nearby citizen. “You get lost?”
“I need help,” the kobold murmured, his gaze slightly unfocused, clearly having heard not a word the orc said.
“Well no shit, Gork. I could've told you that. You wanna tell me where the hell Bekay's gotten to?”
“Bekay?” Gork asked, glancing up for the first time.
“Yeah. You know, Kuren Bekay? Big man? Muscular? Bald? Dark skin? The man you were supposed to be following? Any of this ringing a fucking bell?”
“Oh!” Gork shook his head. “Right, Bekay. He's in a tavern about a mile off. By himself, no less.”
“By himself?” Gimmol asked, stepping closer to better hear the kobold's report. “In a tavern in a city this size? How'd that happen?”
“It may,” Gork said sagely, “have had something to do with the fact that he pretty much walked in and told everyone to get the bleeding hell out. Only a lot less politely.”
“Yeah, that might just do it,” Cræosh agreed. “That's one big son of a bitch.”
“So you've said,” Katim rasped. “Gork, what's the…name of this tavern?”
Gork's eyelid twitched again. “Didn't catch it. I can find it again, though.”
“Good enough,” Cræosh said. “Let's go. Uh, not too quickly, though. Might as well give the man a chance to get good and soused first.”
They set off at a sedate pace, arms crossed, heads bobbing up and down in “silent prayer.” Citizens nodded from afar, or expressed whispered condolences as they passed. But they remained relatively undisturbed, and no one impeded their progress.
“How long you think these disguises are likely to hold up?” Gimmol asked as they walked. “Right now everyone's running around in blind panic, but sooner or later someone with half a brain is going to associate the ‘deformed monks' with what happened.”
“Not long,” Cræosh acknowledged. “So we'd better make damn fucking sure this doesn't take too long.”
For all their impatience, however, the orc and the gremlin both had to pause for a few moments to recover once they'd finally spotted the tavern and, more importantly, the sign. Katim chuckled slightly, and even Jhurpess and Belrotha, who could see the picture if not read the words, grinned widely.
“Didn't catch the name, Shorty?” Cræosh asked when he'd finally gotten his mirth under control.
“Shut up.”
“Oh, come on, Gork,” Gimmol said, his grin threatening to split his face wide open. “You're flexible. I'm sure you can do better than that. Come on, let's see! Dance for us, Gork!”
Slowly, ignoring the fact that Cræosh had again exploded into helpless laughter, Gork approached the smiling gremlin. “Have you,” he asked, his voice low, “ever considered a career as a eunuch?”
“Thought about it,” Gimmol said slyly. “But I decided I don't really have the balls for it.”
Cræosh howled, bending double and holding his gut. Only the realization that his “persona” was in jeopardy, that people were starting to stare at the strange, laughing monk, finally calmed him down.
“Are you through?” Gork asked coldly. Cræosh snorted, his lips quivering, but he held his mouth firmly shut. “I'm so glad,” the kobold continued. “Were we planning to actually accomplish anything here, or did you all just come to see the show?”
“Okay,” Gimmol said, also sobering up. “So what's the plan?”
Jhurpess peered askance at the building. “Squad could burn it down,” the bugbear suggested. Unlikely as it was, Cræosh chose to believe that his hairy companion was
joking.
“Anything else?” he asked.
Katim shrugged. “The man is in there alone…and it's fairly private. Let's just…walk in and kill him.”
“Works for me,” Cræosh said. “Any objections?”
“I don't know,” Gork said. “According to Havarren, he's supposed to be seriously strong, remember? Magically strong, even, thanks to his association with duMark.”
Belrotha cracked her knuckles. Cræosh was fairly certain that he couldn't have reproduced that sound with a pickaxe and a granite wall. “Me stronger than human,” she announced.
“Belrotha,” Gimmol said seriously, “Bekay's strength is magic. He actually might be stronger than you are.”
The ogre shrugged. “Me doubt it. But if him stronger, that okay too. Me just outsmart him.”
“I think,” Cræosh said, a truly odd hitch in his voice, “that we better do this already.”
They slipped into a nearby alley—not entirely sure whether it was the thick shadows or the thicker miasma of rotten food and dead rats that concealed them from casual view—and began passing out the heavy weapons from Belrotha's sack. The robes did a piss-poor job of hiding said armaments, but it should be sufficient for a quick dash across the street. Jhurpess even took a moment to restring his bow, though nobody thought he'd have the chance to use it in the close-quarters melee to come.
“Wait a minute,” Gimmol said. He muttered a moment, fingers twisting around one another, a ball of russet slugs. Then, ever so slowly, he faded away.
“Where he go?” Belrotha asked, her jaw slack.
“I'm right here,” the gremlin's voice replied. And now that they knew where to look, they could indeed see him again, though he looked somehow fuzzy, as though their eyes refused entirely to focus.
“I don't get it,” Gork said.
“I can't do real invisibility, but it's sort of a mental camouflage,” the gremlin explained. “If you're looking for me, you can find me okay, but if you're concentrating on anything else, you just kind of fail to notice I'm here.”
“That might've been a useful trick to show us earlier, you know,” Cræosh complained. “A few times, even.”
“I can't do it for more than a few minutes, tops, and it pretty much wipes me out. I have to concentrate harder than everyone around me can look. This is just in case Bekay does prove too strong for a head-to-head fight. Gork's a good sneak and all, but…”
“But,” Cræosh agreed. “And we can't just send you in to kill the bastard by yourself, because you need us to make sure he's distracted enough for the magic to work. Right?”
Gimmol nodded, or he seemed to. Cræosh couldn't be sure.
“All right, then,” the orc said. “Are we ready?”
“We better be,” Gimmol muttered. “This is starting to hurt.”
“One more thing,” Katim said, stooping to retrieve a small stone—or actually, a chunk of brick—lying nearby. She paused a moment, feeling the weight and heft, and then hurled it down the street. An old man, returning home with an armful of produce from the market, cried out sharply and collapsed, his head bleeding. Everyone nearby immediately focused their attention on him.
“They might have found it…odd to see a group of monks…wandering into a tavern,” Katim said. “Let's go while…no one's watching.”
They had no time for subtlety, not with a juggernaut like Bekay. The orc slammed the door open and charged, his massive sword swinging before he'd even reached his target. If the alcohol had slowed the man enough, this could be over in a single burst of blood.
No such luck. Roaring, the huge man rolled smoothly off his stool, his grace belying both his size and the copious quantities of ale he'd consumed. He didn't even reach over his shoulder for the titanic axe he carried, just smacked Cræosh's sword aside with an open palm against the flat of the blade.
Well, it looked like he'd just used an open hand, but it felt like he'd parried the attack with something far larger. Such as, say, a rhinoceros. The sword struggled to vibrate itself clear out of Cræosh's numbed fingers, and only mule-headed determination—and the fact that he probably couldn't have relaxed his grip if he'd wanted to, until he regained some control over his digits—allowed him to retain the weapon.
He tensed, recoiling, watching for a counterstroke, and found himself facing an empty expanse of wall and window.
Window? No bar? No Bekay? What the…?
He realized, only then, that Bekay's parry had spun him completely around; had his companions not engaged the enemy, he'd have been left absolutely open to any imaginable counterattack.
His shoulders hunched, his steps careful, Cræosh advanced once more upon the foe. Havarren's scribbled warnings and all the various tales hadn't done Bekay justice, and the orc was starting to wonder if he really was stronger even than Belrotha herself. Cræosh sidled around the tavern's furniture, his mind racing, watching for any sign of an opening.
It was not, he observed grimly, going well for his companions. Belrotha was picking herself up amid the splintered wreckage of one of the tavern's large tables. Blood coursed down her face from her split forehead, but even through that mask of crimson, her astonishment was easy enough to read. Clearly, no matter Gimmol's warning, the ogre had been unable to grasp the possibility of a human stronger than she. Her flight through the tavern, and the tavern's table, had finally taught her otherwise.
Jhurpess vaulted the bar, his long limbs spread, reeking of spirits spilled from shattered bottles. Howling and gibbering, he brought his gargantuan cudgel sharply downward, determined to introduce Bekay's chin to his own pelvis.
A single ground-eating stride carried the human just beyond the bugbear's reach. Even as the bludgeon swept past his face, he grabbed the weapon with both hands, halting it as firmly as though it were frozen in ice. It was impossible—indeed, as Cræosh had suspected, even Belrotha couldn't have pulled that off, at least not without a lot more strain than Bekay evidenced—and yet, he'd just seen it happen.
Bekay shoved, driving the narrow end of the club back as though it were a spear. It shot from the bugbear's intertwined fingers and punched into his gut. A semisolid mass, equal parts air and the remains of his most recent meal, exploded from Jhurpess's mouth. He fell to the ground with a limp thump, curling into a hairy, shuddering ball.
Katim slid past the crumpled bugbear, her axe swinging. Bekay bent double into a sideways V, angling his stomach out of the path of the wicked blade. It was precisely what Katim had expected, and even as the weapon passed a fraction of an inch from the human's skin, she twisted. Not even the troll's phenomenal control could turn it into a killing blow, but she angled the blade upward so it scraped viciously against the base of Bekay's rib cage, rather than slicing empty air where his gut had been.
It wasn't a deep wound; wasn't even particularly incapacitating, costing Bekay little more than a wide strip of skin. But for the first time, the blood that flowed was human. The goblins scented the pungent, metallic tang, saw pain in the set of Bekay's jaw, and their spirits rallied.
He retreated, cursing, one hand pressed to the shallow wound, the other reaching over his back toward his mammoth weapon.
“Watch the axe!” Cræosh shouted—probably unnecessarily.
Bekay was already outside the reach of Katim's own blade, but that didn't make him safe. From her left hand, her spinning chirrusk arced toward him, moving to snag his arm before he could draw.
But again the impossible human surprised them. The bloodstained hand with which he'd grabbed at his wound—lulling them, Cræosh saw now, faking some measure of his pain—blurred into motion. The chain ceased its high-pitched whistle, and Katim's nostrils flared at the realization that her enemy now clutched the barbed hook of her favorite weapon in his unbreakable grasp.
She must have known—she had to know—what was coming next, and still she could not react fast enough, could not release her own grip before he hauled her forward.
Staggering, stumbling, Katim r
aised her own axe, not in any attack but in a last-ditch defense. Bekay's own weapon plummeted toward her skull, the prodigious blade seeming to crush the air, rather than slice through it. The troll's arm shuddered at the impact, her ears laid back at the terrible screech of metal on metal, and she flinched away from the shower of sparks raining over her snout. Her knees buckled, her arm trembled, and the rounded edge of the human's axe hovered less than a hand's span from her scalp.
All of which left her completely helpless to avoid the fist, wrapped in the links of her own chirrusk, that plunged into her gut like the head of a frenzied boar.
Katim staggered, dropping the other end of the chirrusk and very nearly her axe along with it. The breath billowing in and out between her shifting teeth as she struggled to replace the wind Bekay had knocked from her carried flecks of blood. She glared at the orc, her expression demanding to know why he hung back, accusing him of the cowardice she'd always suspected he harbored in the depths of his soul.
Was Cræosh frightened? Say, at the least, that he'd developed a healthy aversion to Bekay's proximity. But call it cowardice or call it wisdom, that was not the reason Cræosh held back. No, he lurked at the periphery, creeping but never closing, so that Bekay would eventually have to move, or at least turn, to follow his movements. Would have to move to put his back to the bar.
And to the faint shimmer in the air behind the bar.
When the man finally turned his way, exposing a broad expanse of naked back to the hidden gremlin, Cræosh struggled to repress a grin. Kuren Bekay could be as strong as he fucking well wanted; it wouldn't do him any good with a short sword jammed through his spine.
Later, throughout the days to come, the squad would discuss it over and over, replaying every second time and again, desperate for some sense of understanding, of what could have gone so terribly wrong. Maybe Gimmol made some accidental noise the rest of them missed in the heat of battle, something that alerted Bekay to his presence. Perhaps the man's battle-honed instincts, forged over a lifetime of combat, perceived something his conscious mind never registered. Or maybe, in addition to his phenomenal strength, duMark's magic had granted his ally an enhanced awareness as well.
