by Jeff Grubb
The Rock Gate was made of sterner and older stuff than the new walls, and Jugger almost slowed as it crumbled into fragments. Now the troops were mobilizing, but morale evaporated as quickly as mobilization when the humans in the rear echelons saw the humans in front reduced to red, splotchy pulps in the cobblestone.
Toede banged the right side of the device, and they swung toward Toede's old manor. They charged up the front steps (reducing them to a gravel slope in the process). Then, all of a sudden, a powerful explosion rocked Jugger and sent Toede sprawling to the pavement. He felt something give in his ankle, but skittered clear, so when Jugger tipped and fell, thankfully, Toede was not underneath.
Thunder echoed in Toede's ears. He raised himself on the spear to see what happened. Jugger was on its side, swaying back and forth, its great wheels spinning helplessly in the air. A small collection of humans in vestments, gathered by the north wing of the manor house, had been the source of the effective attack.
Wizards. Hopsloth had no true priestly powers, so like the old frauds and charlatans of the prewar days, he had hired spellcasters who drew their powers from impure sources. Pity, too, because real priests were unlikely to have the ability to summon and fling magical lightning bolts.
The wizards walked slowly toward the tipped, rocking juggernaut, behind a wall of spearmen who showed uncommon sense by not scattering in fear. Several were congratulating each other as they neared, as if the surrounding carnage were nothing more than an everyday field exercise. Toede thought again of the dead, beached whale, and the pygmies who came out to watch it bake in the sun.
None of the wizards or spearmen noticed Toede yet. Toede saw that Jugger's rocking had become more pronounced, not less. The infernal device was starting to move in wider arcs. Leaning on the spear as a staff, Toede hobbled up the stairs of the manor, knowing what would come next.
The mages didn't notice that the juggernaut was figuring out how to right itself until they were about twenty paces away. Actually, the mages regarded the rocking as one more interesting phenomenon, and it was the spearmen who realized what the rocking truly meant. They started to fall away in panic as the last great swing of the machine's body brought the rollers back in contact with pavement. A jet of cobblestones shot backward as Jugger stood up and charged the astonished crowd.
Half the spearmen fell instantly under the massive wheels, as well as some of the more powerful (and incautious) wizards. One spread his arms and began to rise in the air, but Jugger's sharpened top jaw caught him, and only the upper torso continued to float upward, raining blood beneath. A few of the mages in the rear ran, as Jugger pursued.
It's in the nine hundreds now, thought Toede. He shouted to Jugger, but to no avail. Eventually, Jugger would realize no one was pounding on its back, but likely not before several more buildings were leveled. And if it hit a barracks, well, that would spell the end of his cursed presence on this plane of existence.
Toede limped up the steps to the double doors of his manor, picking up a discarded and uncrushed dagger from the smashed body of its previous owner. He jammed the dagger into his belt. He estimated the length of the spear and the width of the door, and pried open one of the door's twin panels.
"I'm home, dear," he bellowed into the manor.
With the door forced open, he could see the renovations made by Lord Hopsloth. The entire rear section of the building and his sacred throne had been lost in the flames and /or removed entirely.
All that could be seen was a stone scaffolding lined with plates of rare sheet glass. The front hallway was now a balcony, with a long staircase leading down into a pool, surrounded by fronds and other plants. The sun had set behind Toede, so the pool was as dark and inky as a sleeping octopus.
"Hope you have supper ready," continued Toede. He saw ripples in the water and remained in the doorway, holding the spear.
"I don't know about you, but I feel like eating frogs' legs tonight," he shouted with a grin. At that, the shadowy hulk of Hopsloth emerged from the depths, at the edge of where the stairs vanished into the water.
"You're… back," grunted the amphidragon.
"Can't say I like what you've done with the place," said Toede, ignoring what sounded like an explosion behind him and to the left.
"You did… this," came the grunt.
"So I got peeved," smiled Toede. "I'll call it off if you agree to surrender. Now," he added, hoping that Jugger wouldn't vanish for at least the next five minutes.
"Killed you… once. Kill you… again," murmured Hopsloth. His tongue lashed outward and upward, striking Toede full in the chest.
Toede had only a second's warning, but was ready for Hopsloth this time, and used the second to full advantage. He turned the spear so it would form a bar across the outer door, a foot overlapping the frame on either side. Even so, Toede's arm was nearly ripped from its socket as the tongue-tip lassoed him and tried to suck him back into the amphidragon's maw.
Toede bit down on the pain he felt. With his free hand, he pulled the dagger.
"Doe!" shouted Hopsloth, which was "No!" with your tongue moored fifteen feet away.
"Sorry, Hopsey," muttered Toede, "but you had your chance." And he drove the dagger into the creature's outstretched tongue.
Hopsloth arced in a spasm of pain. He tried to lunge (slowly) up the stairs, toward his tormentor. Toede drove the blade in up to the hilt and started to make a sawing motion. Greenish blood coated his torso and lower limbs, while the arm anchoring the spear grew numb.
Toede knew that Hopsloth could not immediately disengage his tongue. Everything depended on Hopsloth losing more blood on the way up the stairs than in the end he would need to bite Toede in two.
Hopsloth closed the distance in slow motion, or at least it seemed so from Toede's standpoint as he jammed the dagger into the flexing, writhing muscle that held him aloft, anchored only by the spear across the door frame. Ten feet between them. Then five. And then Hopsloth was close enough to leap forward and swallow Toede in one bite. Again.
"Nine-nine-seven" came a powerful bellow that Toede felt more than heard, and he swiveled his head to see Jug-ger charging up the stairs. One last foolish mage was aiming a wand at the juggernaut, and was rewarded with a shriek and the solemn declaration, "Nine-nine-eight!"
Toede saw what was going to happen and closed his eyes. Hopsloth realized a moment later. His eyes grew wide and wild, exactly like those of a frog's caught in a sudden flash of light.
Jugger struck Toede and Hopsloth, and all three pitched off the balcony, over the pool. The far wall shattered like a dry crust of sugar, and Hopsloth's body was left twitching on the remaining spurs of stone.
"Nine-nine-nine!" bellowed Jugger. "And a thousand!"
Jugger and Toede's remains flew over the deep red waters. Jugger began to fade, and only Toede's body reached the hungry jaws of the sharks circling below.
Interlude
We return again to the Abyss, surrounded by the spirits of the damned, for analysis, color commentary, and accusations.
"Well, it was entertaining," said the Abbot of Misrule, lining up his next shot carefully. "Much better the second time around. Or third in his case. See you in a few years, my friend. I'll keep your charges safe."
He stepped up to the chalk-marked line and let go of the paladin's skull in a smooth, underhanded motion. The skull bounced erratically down the hallway of the crypt, striking a triangularly-arranged set of soul-bottles. The skull struck the most forward of these bottles, sending all but two hurtling in various directions. All but two.
The Abbot harrumphed and contorted his face into a mask of disappointment. "Seven-ten split. This must be the plane of punishment."
The Castellan of the Condemned held an angry silence as his companion recovered the tossed skull. Then he said with a low threat in his voice, "You cheated."
"Cheated?" said the taller abishai, trying to transform his lizardlike features into a semblance of honesty. "Me?" he touched the spot
where his heart would be-if he had one-just for effect.
"You…" said the Castellan, slamming a fist down. "You sent that vision to Toede, led him down the Abyss-
intended path to that anachronistic creature Jugger. And appeared to his companion when he was just about to be rescued. A heavenly figure in blue and white, indeed! That had your greasy clawprints all over it."
"Oh, I see," said the Abbot, drawing himself up to full height. "And I am supposed to abandon my own appointed tasks just because of some silly bet," he said crossly.
"It's not a bet," snarled the Castellan. "It's an experiment, one that was going swimmingly. The test subject was starting to put things together for us. Then you decided to pitch him in over his head!"
"I won't argue with you about terms," said the Abbot, who was of course arguing about terms. "But it is in my portfolio to make sure bad advice is heeded, correct?"
The Castellan was silent for a moment, then muttered, "Right."
"And through my bad advice, an ancient evil was freed, a city was wrecked and left leaderless, and a great repository of early ogre erotic epics destroyed," said the Abbot, leaning against a counter made of obsidian, polished with the ashes of fallen heroes. "I am just doing my job. In fact, I might even get a promotion out of this."
"If Judith doesn't sack you for goofing off in the first place," muttered the Castellan. The Abbot winced but let that comment slide.
Instead the taller fiend gave a snarl. "And it's not as if I were the first to influence our little pet noble-to-be."
"I had nothing to do with that coin flip," said the Castellan hotly.
"Coin flip?" said the Abbot, looking innocent as the driven sleet. "I wouldn't even suggest that you would have meddled so blatantly in your valuable experiment, to interfere with an affair of chance. I always thought you had more style than that. It never even entered my mind." He let his voice trail off, as if the idea were entering his mind.
"So?" prompted the Castellan.
The abishai nibbled on a problem nail, then admired his handiwork. "There was a little matter of the first assassination attempt, back at that little bar-the Jetties, was it?"
The Castellan was silent, but nodded.
"Think of it," said the Abbot, "A crowded room emptying of its patrons. Pandemonium erupting on all sides. The assassin wounds our subject in the shoulder with a crossbow bolt, then engages in mortal combat with his companion. Our subject limps across the room during this fray to a deceased barbarian prince, pulls a dagger,"-the abishai mimed the action-"and lets fly."
The Abbot flung the imaginary dagger at the Castellan, who continued to regard his fellow abishai in stony silence. "Wounded thrower, off-balance, tossing a weapon that is not designed to be thrown at a target engaged in melee," summarized the Abbot. "And yet it not only hits the intended target but strikes in such a way that it renders said target insensate immediately. And through it all no one present regarded this circumstance as odd." The taller abishai finished with a flourish. "If there was an area where I would have acted, where I would have influenced the normal course of events, that would have been it."
The silence hung in the air like a convicted criminal at the end of his last rope. The Castellan bit his words off. "You never mentioned that before."
The Abbot made a broad sweep of his arms, at least as broad as he could manage without scraping some soul-bottles to the floor. "I was not accused of impropriety, before."
Another silence. Then the Castellan sighed and said, "Well, we'll have to do it again."
The taller abishai rose, palms outward. "We have wasted enough time away from our official duties. If Judith found out…"
'Triple or nothing," put in the Castellan.
"We'll be missed from our posts for sure," said the
Abbot, smiling as if being caught missing were not truly a problem.
"Quadruple or nothing," added the Castellan.
"And all for some little bet," put in the Abbot.
"It's not a bet!" shouted the Castellan, then added more softly, "Quintuple or nothing. Five years on the line."
"But then, what is life without risk?" said the Abbot of Misrule, hefting the pickle jar with Toede's name on it. He smiled. "Shall we proceed?"
Chapter 20
In which Our Protagonist decides to defy convention and not go anywhere or get involved with anything. Not that this does him any good, but it's the thought that counts.
Toede awoke feeling flat, or at least a little smashed. Was there a party the previous evening? No, that was with the gnolls a few evenings back, and was followed by all sorts of unpleasantness. His last clear memory was of a tremendous force behind him, thrusting him through the windows of the manor and giving him a very brief look at the Blood Sea from a very high altitude.
Toede looked around and saw that he was once again on the bank of the same creek as before, beneath the same maple, several days' journey south of Flotsam. The trees were fresh with new leaves that caught the sun, shading the water in myriad hues of green and amber. A few lazy flies buzzed, and far to his left, a wood thrush began its throaty call.
"I understand now," said Toede. "It's all a plot to make me pay for my sins. The rest of eternity I'll be sent back here to suffer and die again and again."
He shuddered, but in the darkest corners of his hobgoblin heart, he had to stand back in awe and wonder at the fiendish genius who could come up with so elegant and cruel a punishment. Would that he someday might have an opportunity to use it on someone else!
Toede scanned the horizon and realized he was holding his breath, waiting for something to leap out of the bushes and throttle him. Or an army of gnolls on the horizon. Something. Anything.
The wood thrush continued, then petered out. A stiff breeze came up and shook the willows and maples. The sound of leaves rustling was akin to the crashing of the surf. Still nothing.
Toede pulled his legs up and wrapped his arms tightly around them, rocking slightly, thinking mightily. He was back, and it was a good guess that six months had elapsed since his last sojourn in the world. The question was, what to do with his restored life this time?
"Live nobly," the voices-sea-wide and mountain-tall-had said again, leaving it at that. Thank you very much. Perhaps this time, Toede reflected, he would concentrate on the first word, and let the second word come along at its own speed.
The first time, he had gone downstream and turned left at the swamp, found kender and trouble, and died soon afterward.
The second time, he had gone downstream and turned right at the swamp, found gnolls and scholars and trouble, and died soon afterward.
So this time, perhaps he should head upstream, into the hills, find some cave and hide there for a few years until he was certain that no one was left to capture, lure, or ambush him.
Or he could remain where he was, which had the added benefit of not having to travel far, and in the likely event he died and was restored again, he wouldn't have to go to much effort.
Toede looked at his surroundings with the eye of an amateur camper sizing up a potential resting spot for the night. The willows by the creek were supple enough to form a rude frame, like those the kender used. And the maples could be easily stripped of their bark for cross supports. He could lash bundles of grass to it, at least until he got good enough to catch and skin a beaver or moose or other suitable furbearer (He had never skinned a wild animal skin before, but how different could they be from a human?). He'd have to locate berry bushes and other edibles. Perhaps even launch a small raid on the kender encampment, if it was still there…
There was a sharp snap of a breaking branch, and the brush behind him and to his right gave a brief, animated shake. Toede saw it from the corner of his eye, and instantly was alert and on his feet. Subconsciously he reached for the dagger jammed in his belt. When his fingers closed on empty air, he made a mental note to die with a scabbard on, next time, so he would be reborn with a weapon handy.
The brush co
ntinued to shake. Toede saw that someone or something was trying to force its way through the brambles. He could see an arm wielding a sword that glinted in the sunlight as it came down, hard, on the underbrush ahead of it.
Toede cursed. Bending halfway over to conceal himself as best he could, he made for the sidelines. Somehow, he just knew he should not hang around and hope no one would bother him. He dived into some brush about the same time the figure worked itself into the open.
Toede held himself very still in the tall grass and weeds, crouched under a particularly large bush. From his vantage point he could see little, but the thrashing to his left indicated that the intruder was now strolling the bank where previously Toede had been.
Toede saw a pair of boots-calf-high and made of some dusty gray leather-pass by. A set of trouser legs, once blue but faded into a sea-gray shade, was stuffed into them. Nothing else was visible, and the human (or elf, Toede allowed) was facing the opposite direction.
The boots went past his hiding spot and stopped, then turned around and went past again. Again, three paces past him they stopped, and turned around yet a third time. This time they stopped in front of Toede's lair. Then they turned directly toward where Toede was hiding. Toede exploded from the brush, head down, arms together and ahead of him, hands clenched in pudgy fists, literally diving upward at his pursuer. He hoped to catch his visitor in the stomach (or perhaps a little lower) and to knock him senseless enough to either affect an escape or grab his foe's weapon and turn the tables.
He was not expecting his adversary to explode at first touch into a cloud of fluffy gray tomb dust. Nor for the upper torso of said adversary to pitch backward from the force of the blow, leaving the legs standing there for a moment, then to collapse slowly onto themselves, twisting slightly as they did so.
