by Mel Odom
“He killed our friends,” Raisho growled.
Juhg looked at the young sailor. “And I’ll not suffer the loss of another if I can help it. This ship is a dead thing, Raisho. Even if we don’t kill the wizard, he won’t make it out of these waters alive. Not without a ship’s crew. Not without a ship.”
Two goblinkin broke free of Navin’s boarding party. Sailors shouted warnings to Raisho. Wheeling quickly, the young sailor met the blades of the goblins with his own, knocking the creatures aside. Moving into the creatures he stomped on one goblin’s knee, breaking the limb with a short, vicious crack, then slitting his opponent’s throat with his dagger as the goblin fell. He made a cunning twist against the other goblin and dropped the creature’s headless corpse to the deck.
Standing, breathing hard and covered in goblin gore, Raisho looked at Juhg. “All right, then. Belowdecks it is. We’ll get that book, an’ if that wizard still lives, I swear I’ll make him pay for the lives of our mates.”
Juhg shuddered at the ferocity of the oath. He had never truly seen this side of his friend during the time they had shared together.
Raisho jerked his head toward the middle hold only a few feet behind the line Navin and the other boarders held. He pushed Juhg into motion and fell in beside and one step ahead of him.
Blowfly tilted sharply, twisting back toward her stern as she slid over another tall wave and Windchaser held her back. The slippery blood caused Juhg’s feet to go out from under him. He fell, skidded, and caught himself. Just as he was about to grab onto the hold and heave himself inside, a loose sprawl of canvas from the fallen sails slid over the hold and covered it to block the way.
“No,” Juhg wailed, pulling at the heavy canvas. The sail proved too heavy for him to manage by himself. For a moment, he thought the canvas had been cast there by some spell on the wizard’s part, but a glance back at Ertonomous Dron showed the man still holding on to the stern railing to support himself.
Without warning, Gust dropped to the deck beside Juhg. The little monk shrilled and shook his hairy fingers at Juhg, then grabbed the sailcloth and tugged. Unable to move the sailcloth, Gust shrilled angrily and shook his hands at Juhg.
“Move aside,” Raisho commanded in a voice strained by emotion. “Ye too, ye flea-bitten imp.”
Feeling helpless, Juhg scrambled to one side. Gust leapt up and caught the lowest section of nearby rigging. He chattered the whole time as if disgusted and feeling abused.
Raisho plunged his cutlass into the center of the canvas covering the hold. The blade sliced through the sailcloth easily. The young sailor withdrew the cutlass and slashed again, inscribing a large X that defined the perimeters of the hatch opening.
“There,” Raisho said as he drew the cutlass back again.
Juhg peered down into the hold and caught a metallic glint. He dodged back just in time to avoid the spear thrust that nearly caught him in the eye.
“Goblin!” Juhg yelped as the goblin thrust again with the spear.
Raisho lifted his foot, then slammed his boot into the creature’s face. Knocked from the ladder, the goblin fell back into the waist.
“Well,” Raisho commented, “at least it’s not gonna be dull down there.” He took a fresh grip on his cutlass. “Ye stay back aways, then, bookworm. I’ll clear the way.” He swung over the hold’s side and onto the ladder, clutching it with his left hand crooked so he could grip with his wrist and maintain the hold on the dagger.
Peering down into the darkened hold, Juhg was suddenly of a mind that perhaps confronting the wizard in the grim daylight provided by the storm conditions might be a better option than running through the narrow confines of the decks below. By that time, though, Raisho had already set off into the waist, heading—no doubt—for the wizard’s quarters.
Move, Juhg commanded himself. You can’t let Raisho go alone to brave those enchantments that protect the book.
Gathering his courage, he threw a leg over the side of the hold and descended into the shadowy darkness below. The goblin that had fallen at the foot of the ladder suffered from a broken neck. Juhg knew that at once by the grotesque twist of the creature’s head because it was very nearly looking at its own back.
The stench of the goblinkin ship was almost overwhelming, even worse than Juhg remembered. Of course, that might have something to do with expecting one of them to come lunging out of the darkness at any moment. Memory of the sailors felled by Ertonomous Dron’s wizardly magic pummeled his thoughts and chipped away at his confidence as he stumbled over Blowfly’s uneven deck while the ship pitched and yawed and fought her tethers to Windchaser.
Undaunted by anything that had happened, Raisho forged ahead. The lanterns mounted on the hallway walls streamed thin wisps of smoke up against the ceiling.
A goblin charged from the other end of the hallway with an uplifted axe. Another climbed up from the hold below with a lighted lantern in one hand.
Raisho roared a battle cry and rushed forward at once. He caught the goblin’s axe with his dagger and halted the weapon’s descent. Still pushing, Raisho shoved the goblin back into the creature behind it, revealing yet a third goblin climbing up from the hold.
The lantern light gleamed as it played over the goblins. The realization that the goblins were wet unleashed a new fear inside Juhg.
We’re sinking! Perhaps he might have been jumping to conclusions, but he figured that line of thought was much better than thinking everything was all right when in fact it wasn’t.
A blood-curdling yell behind Juhg caused him to jump. Glancing over his shoulder, he spotted two more goblins coming from the prow end of the ship.
Raisho had his hands full with the three goblins he’d already taken on.
Knowing he couldn’t take the goblins on in armed combat and hope to survive, Juhg ran. A desperate plan formed in his mind as he spotted the door to the wizard’s quarters. He only hoped that Ertonomous Dron hadn’t relocated in the last two days.
He grabbed the handle and twisted. Locked! He tried the handle again with the same result. Of course it would be locked. And probably better than it was last time.
By that time, the lead goblin was almost upon him. Juhg turned to face the brute. He lifted his hands before him, knowing that Raisho would not arrive in time to save him.
“Halfer,” the goblin grinned as it faced Juhg. The word held all the contempt the goblins had for the dwellers. It pulled its heavy battle-axe back and prepared to swing. “I’m gonna chop you into tiny bits, and then make soup outta what’s left.”
Always with the speeches, Juhg thought. They don’t threaten Raisho when they fight him. His thinking skated crazily in his mind, propelled by terror and the certainty that he was doomed. But he prepared himself. Struggling in the goblin mines and venturing out across the mainland with Grandmagister Lamplighter had prepared him to take his fate in his own hands when he had no choice.
And the Old Ones had blessed dwellers with uncommon quickness. Juhg noticed the way the goblin’s upper body tensed, then ducked under a horrendous blow that would have cleaved him in twain had it hit. Desperately, Juhg grabbed the goblin’s foot while it was off balance and yanked with all his might.
Behind Juhg, the door broke loose from its moorings under the goblin’s forceful blow and fell inward. The goblin’s foot came up as the creature rocked back with the axe blow, and Juhg kept the limb moving till his opponent fell backward.
The goblin landed on its nether regions and also knocked the nearest goblin down. The felled creature glared up at Juhg with murderous fury. “Now you’re gonna die, halfer.”
As if that wasn’t the plan in the first place, Juhg thought. He regretted the time spent thinking the thought. Sarcasm, as it turned out—even when it was instinctive and quick—cut into the time one had to manufacture one’s escape.
Shoving himself to his feet, Juhg bolted for the wizard’s room because there simply was no place else to go. And I’ve got to be here anyway. His first step
, however, sent him sprawling as he tripped over the broken door knocked off its hinges by the goblin’s axe blow.
Juhg landed on his face, bruising his chin terribly and almost knocking himself senseless. He groaned and rolled over weakly, barely managing to keep his mind focused. He glanced up as the first goblin grabbed the doorframe and hauled itself into the room.
“This is the wizard’s room,” one of the goblins behind the first cried out.
“I know it is,” the first goblin said. “Do you think I’m stupid?”
“It’s death to be in the wizard’s room. The cap’n told us. The wizard himself told us.”
“Would you rather go back to the wizard and tell him we allowed the halfer to rummage through his things?”
The second goblin looked perplexed. “No…”
“Well, then, let’s kill the halfer and be quick about it.” The first goblin took its battle-axe in both hands.
“Remember the snakes from the other night?” the second goblin asked. “They almost done for us.”
“The snakes are gone.”
“There’ll be other … things.”
“I don’t see no—” The first goblin suddenly screamed in fear. “It’s got me! It’s got me! I’m blind! I’m blind, I tell you!”
In total disbelief, surprised that he wasn’t already dead, Juhg glanced up and saw that Gust had somehow found his way into the ship’s hold. Evidently the monk had seen the danger Juhg was in and chose to do something about it. He squatted on the first goblin’s shoulders and held his hands over the goblin’s eyes.
“It’s a monk,” the second goblin said.
“A monk?”
“Aye. A monk.”
“Well, get it off me before it puts my eyes out.”
The second goblin reached for the monk. Seeing his danger, Gust vaulted into the room and landed on Juhg. Immediately, the monk clambered atop Juhg’s head and wrapped his arms tight around his neck and under his jaw.
The goblin drew back the battle-axe again.
Abandoning his attempts to free the monk from around his head, Juhg threw himself at the desk where the book was kept. Confident of themselves against a dweller and a monk, the goblins thundered after him. In front of the desk, Juhg caught the handle to the drawer, felt the tingle of whatever magical spell protected the book, and yanked the drawer open.
All three goblins gathered around the desk. The creatures grinned in wicked anticipation.
“Ah, little halfer,” the first goblin said, “you’ve certainly picked the wrong place to hide.”
Juhg, with Gust still wrapped around his head and a hairy arm over his right eye so he could only see from his left, sat on the floor under the desk in mortal terror. He pressed his back against the wall behind him and bitterly cursed the luck that he was having. Evidently the wizard had removed the spell of protection.
“C’mere, halfer,” the first goblin coaxed, reaching under the desk for Juhg. “Let me fetch you out of there so’s I can get a clean chop. I swears I’ll have you outta your misery quick-like.”
Gust howled mournfully in Juhg’s ear, obviously fully aware that the end of his own existence was at hand.
Just before the goblin’s massive hand clutched Juhg’s ankle, shadows suddenly twisted inside the room. Memory told Juhg that the only light had been a thick candle on the desk that barely served to beat back the darkness. Against the opposite wall behind the trio of goblins, the bobbing shadows looked massive.
“Oh no,” one of the goblins whispered in a hoarse voice as it looked up at the desktop.
Screams out in the hallway let Juhg know that Raisho was still hard at work fighting goblins.
The goblin that had hold of Juhg’s ankle looked up as well, then swore a vicious oath. In the next instant, Juhg watched as a snake head the size of a water barrel snapped down and gulped the goblin down to its head and shoulders. The goblin screamed in terror, but it sounded like its voice was coming out of a cave.
The snakes were much bigger than Juhg remembered. Instead of ending the enchantment that protected the book, Ertonomous Dron had obviously strengthened them. Fat coils of impossibly huge snakes started hitting the floor and kept coming.
The snake that had hold of the goblin that had hold of Juhg pulled. The goblin went up into the air and Juhg came out from under the desk.
“Yaaaaahhhhhh!” one of the two free goblins yelled. The creatures pushed at one another in their haste to flee the room. Before the goblins got far, the second snake whipped down and snatched one of the two up. Coils of snake blocked the third goblin’s escape.
Screaming in terror himself, Juhg kicked out at the goblin holding him by the ankle and tried to pry the monk from around his neck. Gust had a stranglehold on Juhg that shut his wind off.
The goblin’s strength, especially when frightened, proved too strong to break, but luckily when the snake opened its venomous jaws to take a bigger chomp of its intended repast, it knocked free the goblin’s hand from Juhg’s ankle.
Horrified at the sight before him, Juhg watched as the snake’s head came low to the floor, then tilted up so the mouth pointed toward the ceiling. The goblin’s legs kicked frantically as it yelled for help. Then the snake’s head swelled as the jaws slid all the way down the goblin. In the next instant, the goblin’s boots shivered just beyond the snake’s snout, then they too disappeared.
Juhg grabbed Gust’s fingers quite by accident, only because one of them had slipped into his eye and created stabbing pain. Still half-blind, his wounded eye smarting severely, he managed to disentangle himself from the monk. He looked up just in time to bump noses with the giant snake.
The snake’s nose was bigger than Juhg’s head. In the candlelight, the scales glittered iridescence and possessed an oily sheen. Plumes of heated air from the snake’s nostrils pushed into Juhg’s face as he sat there hypnotized by the presence of imminent death. Gust was not so enthralled. With a shrill cry of alarm, the monk hurled himself from Juhg’s shoulders and dashed toward the door.
Then the snake grinned, or so it seemed, because the jaws widened to reveal the pink and white mouth and the wickedly curved fangs. Just as Juhg was certain the snake was about to swallow him whole, the goblin came surging back up from the snake’s throat.
Attacked, quite literally, by a case of indigestion, the snake clamped its jaws shut and swallowed its gorge once more.
The action released Juhg from his stunned state and he stood. Information he’d read came to mind. Two days ago when he’d confronted the snakes the first time, he hadn’t been able to think about the source of the spell of protection. During his time at the Vault of All Known Knowledge, he’d read a lot about magic and wizards because the subject had fascinated him. Especially after coming in contact with some of the magical items Grandmagister Lamplighter and he had found over their years of roving. Cobner, the stouthearted dwarf who belonged to Brant’s gang of thieves, still carried a magical axe that they had found when they’d gone questing for the riddle of the Quarhavian Toad Emperor. Cobner also still carried the scars that acquiring that axe had given him.
Spells of protection, Juhg knew, depended on an array of tokens infused with power by a wizard. The problem was that those tokens could be anything. However, they had to be things that were the same, each identical to the other so the necessary resonances could be used by the spell’s energy.
Juhg’s quick eyes scanned the room. There was no hope of escaping through the door because the second snake blocked the way.
“Juhg! Juhg!” Raisho called from the door.
From the corner of his eye, Juhg saw his friend valiantly, but ultimately ineffectually, hacking at the snake’s body with the cutlass and the knife. Neither weapon truly harmed the magical constructs that guarded the mysterious book.
The snakes continued to move restlessly. The second one snatched up the final goblin and started choking the creature down.
Gust scampered around the room, mad with fright and
knowing he was running for his life. His antics drew the attention of the first snake from Juhg.
Then Juhg’s quick eyes noted the bright copper coin set squarely under the snake’s chin as it swiveled its head to follow the monk. He glanced around the room, looking for copper coins, knowing there had to be some.
Candlelight brought the coins, now that he knew what to search for, into bright relief. One was on the other side of the room, and one was inset in the ceiling almost over the snake’s weaving head. Juhg knew more coins had to be placed inside the room to create the protection spell, but he was all out of time.
The snake struck at Gust twice but missed both times.
Knowing he would never get to the other side of the room past the snake, Juhg set his sights on the one inset in the ceiling. All he had to do was pry the coin out. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a tool to do the job. He glanced at Raisho, who was still struggling to cut his way into the room.
“Raisho,” Juhg called. “I need your dagger.”
Reacting at once, Raisho reversed his dagger and held it by the blade. A quick flip spun the knife through the air.
Panic flooded Juhg as he watched the dagger embed deeply into the back of the snake’s thick neck.
Drawn by the sudden pain, the snake lost interest in tracking Gust and turned its baleful attentions to Juhg, as if holding him responsible for the sharp pain in its neck. Knowing he had no choice now, Juhg set his fear aside for the moment as he’d learned to do in the mines when the pit bosses had come along to taunt and terrorize the shackled dwellers digging in the deep earth.
The snake opened its jaws and struck, but Juhg was in motion by then. The snake’s head smashed the writing desk into a thousand pieces. He put a hand at the side of the snake’s jaw and ran forward, vaulting up onto the snake’s back. If he’d been wearing shoes of any kind, except perhaps for Jalderrin Stickyfoot climbing shoes made of Vankashin spider’s web far to the south and knitted with magical dreamthorn, which could grip any surface, he would have slipped and fallen on the tight, smooth scales.
The snake shifted, though, as it coiled back to view the dweller running up its back. The angle of its back straightened and Juhg couldn’t run straight. He dug his toes in and leapt, catching hold of the dagger’s haft and hoping scales would hold it fast. Holding on to the dagger, he flipped and scooted up behind the snake’s head.
