Melegal and Venir sat at a table beside the cold fireplace at the Drunken Octopus. The big cat, Octopus, lay on the raised stone hearth, asleep. Venir stuffed the stitched-up sack that mystically stored the armament inside his rucksack on the table and buckled the straps.
“I really think this is a bad idea, Vee.” Melegal traced his finger around the rim of his goblet. “I say we slip in on our own. This plan with Altan Rey is shady.”
A smile cracked over Venir’s strong jaw. “I thought shady was right up your alley.”
“We hardly know the man. Why don’t you put on that getup and just go in there and kill them all?”
“Now you want to do things my way? Could you put that on a scroll for me?”
“Eh, I just realize there is no other way.”
“No, there isn’t, but we can’t scare the rats away before they strike either. The only way to get close enough is to gamble.”
“Hah,” Melegal said. “This isn’t a tavern skim. You are rolling the rocks on a man’s word that you don’t even know. How do you know that what he says is true? The underlings may be hosting fighting in the pits, and they may not.”
With his hand on his pack, Venir said, “I just have to take the chance that things will work out.” He patted the rucksack. “We’ll see.”
“You shouldn’t put your faith in that bag. It’s let you down before.”
“You don’t have to come. I wouldn’t blame you one bit.” Venir lifted a clay tumbler half filled with grog from the table. He drained it and set it rim down with a clank. “Fight or die.”
“Aye.” Melegal finished off his wine. “Fight or die, lout.”
An hour later, Creed and Corrin joined them. The tavern was very quiet. The usual carousing that lifted men’s spirits had fled the lively place months ago. The fraction of hard-faced people remaining talked very low or didn’t talk at all. Sam, the barkeep, wiped glasses out with a rag and loaded them underneath the bar. A drunkard at the bar drummed his fingers on the table. The tension was thick. Melegal didn’t understand why until the front tavern door opened, and underling soldiers strolled in. Three appeared at first. Then six.
The tavern dwellers practically sank beneath their tables. Their eyes were pinned to the floor.
“This is it.” Creed’s gaze drifted toward the underlings. “How hard do we need to sell it?”
“Altan Rey said not to overdo it,” Melegal said. “They’ll slit you for blinking too fast.” He spied Altan Rey disguised as an underling. The citrine eyes locked on Melegal’s, and he gave Melegal a wink and a nod toward the back. Melegal removed his cap and stuffed it into his trousers. “I say we see if we can excuse ourselves, quickly.”
They’d already laid out the plan with Altan Rey. He wanted the group to resist or run, depending on the circumstances. Altan Rey would secure their gear and take them to the royals’ castle dungeons where the pit fights would be hosted. Altan Rey would be available to let them out when the time to strike against Sinway and the underlings came.
“Them!” Altan Rey, posing as Kazzar, hissed. “I want them. Big men. That is what our pits desire.”
Corrin slid out of his seat first and headed toward the kitchen behind the bar. There was an exit leading to the alleys in back.
“You, take your seat!” Altan yelled at Corrin.
“Go! Go!” Venir said to Corrin and Melegal. Venir and Creed filled the planks between the underlings and the smaller men. Melegal and Corrin bolted.
Altan Rey’s fingers charged up with citrine light. Shards of diamond-shaped energy cut into the towering warriors and barred their path.
“Argh!” Venir dropped to a knee. An underling soldier came at him, swinging a club at his skull. Venir grabbed the underling by the arms, picked him up over his head, and hurled the little fiend like a child into the soldiers. He caught Creed by the arm and shoved him toward the kitchen. “Run!”
“Mercy! What did that devil shoot me with?” Creed wheeled around the bar. “It felt like hornets stinging me underneath my skin.”
“Just keep moving.” Venir slammed the kitchen door behind them.
Melegal and Corrin hung by the exit, waving them on. “Come on now!” Corrin flung the door open.
Venir and Creed rushed out of the exit and into the alley.
Melegal slammed the door shut as he stepped into the alley. He turned. Venir and Creed’s shoulders filled the narrow alley. They were stopped in their tracks. Their arms jerked up in front of their faces. Angry chitters and too-wah, too-wah, too-wah sounds erupted. The men’s arms were struck by long needles like splinters.
“Die, you fiends!” Venir charged the smaller men. He hit them like a clumsy ox, crushing a few underneath his muscle-bound frame as he fell.
The spitting continued. Melegal and Corrin ducked and dodged just as Creed fell. The kitchen door burst open. The underlings inside the tavern closed in on them. Melegal took a needle in the neck and another in the face.
Corrin, peppered head to toe in needles, collapsed like limp noodles.
Melegal’s legs went numb. He staggered backward with his eyes on Altan Rey. The man’s underling face spun round and round until the moonlit sky turned black. Melegal lay on a bed of black water, half aware that the underlings were carrying him away. When the jostling stopped, he wasn’t inside a castle. His lazy eyes stared at the gallows. Stupid lout. An underling stepped into his view and struck him in the head. He blacked out.
CHAPTER 14
Georgio tossed his head back. “Gah!” His ribs pinched into his lungs. The giant’s fingers had him wrapped tight. He was about the size of a stump of wood in the giant’s hands. The face of the humongous man was burned up and scarred. His shirt and trousers were ragged. A drooping eyeball stared at Georgio, unblinking.
“Please.” Georgio spit. “Let me go.”
“Noooo!” the giant said in an angry, childish voice. “You invaded my living space. You must die. You will be eaten.”
“Fine, just don’t squeeze me to death. Just swallow me whole.” Georgio’s free arms pushed against the giant’s massive fingers. “And spare my friend. He’s not big enough for you to eat.”
The shaggy-haired giant swung his gaze toward the tree and tilted his head. “Where’d he go?”
Puffing for breath, Georgio said, “You’re asking me?”
The giant cradled Georgio to his chest like a child’s stuffed animal. “Call to your friend.”
Georgio dipped his chin and shook his head. “He is the only friend I have left. His name is Lefty. He’s a halfling.”
“A whatling?” the giant asked.
“A halfling!” Georgio yelled. “They are little people. Like children. He’s harmless. Leave him alone.”
“I have to think about that.” The giant traipsed around the garden, searching high and low. He shoved the branches in the trees aside. “Is there more than one? I want to see these little people. I like little, though I am big, big. Come out, little people. I want to see you. Come out!”
Georgio fought against his captor’s embrace. The giant was three times as strong as an ogre. His own strength was like that of a toddler by comparison. He wormed and squirmed anyway.
“Stop wiggling, curly man,” the giant warned. “I’ll snap your bones like dry sticks.” The giant crushed Georgio into the dirty smoke of the shirt covering his chest.
“Aaah, stop that!” Georgio moaned. Then, as the giant applied more suffocating pressure, Georgio farted.
The giant lurched. His grip loosened. “What? What was that sound? Do it again?”
Red-faced by both suffocation and weird embarrassment, Georgio fired back, “I can’t just do that!” It wasn’t entirely true. Georgio had notorious control over his flatulence.
The giant pumped Georgio under his elbow like he was playing a bagpipe instrument. Georgio’s rear end erupted. The giant dropped Georgio and fell on his backside, filled with gusty laughter. “Bwah-haaha-haaaaa!”
Lying on t
he ground, gasping for his breath, Georgio started laughing. He laughed as hard as the giant, wincing and clutching his ribs as he did so. The childish antics of the giant were cracking him up.
“Do it again,” the giant said in his long, drawn-out, child-like voice.
Georgio crawled over to the giant on his knees. The giant pulled his feet back into a cross-legged position and patted his hands together. Georgio batted one eye. “Here we go.” He turned loose a mighty toot.
The giant roared with laughter. Clapping, the giant said, “Do it again! Do it again!”
Georgio let out everything he had, goofing a different pose for each time he did so. The giant fell on his back in stitches. His feet stomped the ground, and his arms flailed wildly from side to side. Then, a rare memory hit Georgio like a lightning bolt from the sky. He said to the giant, “I know who you are. You are—”
Lefty’s little hands clamped over Georgio’s mouth. The halfling shushed him in his ear. “Don’t say it. Let me handle this,” Lefty said. “Introduce me.”
“Really?”
“Just do it.”
“Um, giant? Giant!” He shouted the second time. “I would like you to meet someone. This is my little friend, Lefty. The halfling.”
The giant sat up, rubbing the tears from his damaged eye. “Eww, you are a little one. I like little ones. Come here.”
Lefty cringed. “You won’t hurt me, will you?”
“No, no, I won’t hurt you. Can you make big sound from your behind like curly-head man?”
Lefty flipped his slender hands out. “Actually, halflings can’t do that.”
Georgio rolled his eyes.
Lefty climbed up on the giant’s knee, which was now in a cross-legged position again. Touching his chest, he announced, “I am Lefty, and your name is?”
The giant shook his head. “Oh, I can’t tell you that. It is my secret.”
Georgio caught Lefty looking at him. They were both thinking the same thing, or at least mostly. Venir spoke about a giant he encountered in the mist called Barton. Georgio didn’t remember much, but he did remember most of Venir’s stories. He was often fuzzy on the details. That was where Lefty came in. The halfling remembered everything.
“Giant, we are lost. Can you take us to Bish?”
The giant shook his head. “No, no, no, you are going to stay with me forever.”
“We would like that, but we miss our friends, and they miss us. Are you sure that we can’t change your mind?”
The giant glared at him. “No! You have to say my name if you want the sunshine and the rain!”
“So, I’m allowed to guess it then?” Lefty mused. “I like playing games.”
“You’ll never guess it. It’s impossible,” the giant said with a crafty intelligence lurking behind his eyes. “There are countless names. But I don’t want to play guessing games. I want to play something else. Curly-headed man, make more toots.”
Scratching his behind, Georgio said, “Why don’t you make a toot? I’d like to hear that.”
The giant flexed his arms and shoulders and let one rip. POOOOOMPH!
The gust of hot, smelly wind blew Georgio’s locks behind his face. He hit a knee, coughing and gagging. Punching his fist on the ground, he said, “That was nasty.”
The giant let out more gusty chortles. “Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
Pinching his nose, Lefty held up a finger. “Please, please let me guess your name.”
Frowning, the giant said, “Fine. One guess per day. That’s all.”
“But I can’t tell the day from the night here.”
“I can. My home. My rules.” The giant leaned right into Lefty’s face. His breath was warm as steam and rank. “Guess, little squirrel man.”
“Barton.”
“Impossible!” Barton’s swat sent Lefty tumbling through the misty sky. Face reddening, he set his good eye on Georgio. “You will die! Impossible!”
CHAPTER 15
Boon set his face against the hot winds of the sky. Blackie’s winged bulk cut across the skyline moons. The wizened mage snickered. He liked Cass as well as any fine woman, but he had more than one trick up his sleeve. He too had a bond with Blackie. They’d become adversaries and friends in an unusual arrangement forged when he was a prisoner of the giants.
The black hulk lifted up through the streaking clouds and down again. Boon delighted in the flight. He patted the dragon on the neck. “Blackie.”
The dragon’s neck coiled back. He turned his earhole slightly in Boon’s direction.
“Down, my friend. It’s time to catch some bait.”
The dragon dove at a gentle angle, circling lower. The underling army had gathered around the Black Columns in tens of thousands. Swarms of underlings and spiders spilled into the black channels. Boon fixed his sight beyond the warring fields. Underlings massed in all directions. Less than a league away, a knot of the black-skinned fiends gathered.
“Those black hearts look ripe for the picking.” Boons fingers fidgeted in intricate patterns. His lips mumbled clear and quick syllables. A mystic net of webbing spooled out of his hand. “Dive, Blackie! Dive! Burn the ones on the left. I’ll snare the ones on the right.”
The dragon skimmed over the ground. His great wings beat, whump, whump, whump, increasing his speed.
Gem-speckled eyes glowing in the night turned to face the black doom coming their way.
Blackie’s fiery breath set the underlings on fire. The flames swallowed up dozens. The flock of evil burned.
Boon’s net snatched up a dozen more in unbreakable coils of smaragdine magic. The coils constricted. The underlings screamed. Boon laughed. Holding the netful of evil fish, he shouted to Blackie, “Well done, friend! Now take us to the Mist.”
The burning underlings scampered over the Outland sand, stomping, screeching, and rolling in the dust. Nothing quenched the flames.
“Heh-heh.” Boon glared at the underlings hung up in the net. Their evil eyes bore into him. Turning around in the dragon’s saddle, he said to them, “Not a speck of good in a one of you. That’s why every one of you must die.”
Blackie picked up speed the farther they went, a black streak in the endless sky. The night became day and night again. The wall appeared. It swallowed up the clouds in an unending field of cotton. The dragon vanished into the mist at full speed.
Boon could barely see his hand in front of his face. The hot air vanished. Chills went up his arms. The hisses and chitters of the underlings fell silent during a journey that seemed to have no end. Boon’s lids became heavy. He fought to keep his dipping chin up. Nothing to see. Not even me. Just think of busty women. Anything to keep my thoughts spry.
They burst out of the mist countless hours later. Long stretches of high grasses appeared below them. The warm sun kissed his face. Boon smiled. “Ah yes, Blackie, well done. Now take me to the home of your former masters. I have a special delivery for them.”
***
“I’m not going to stand around and not swing at anything,” Brak said to Kam. Dwarves were suiting him up in a piecemeal set of armor made from chain-mail, arm, thigh, and leg plates. “I’m a warrior.”
“I know that,” Kam said with a pleading tone. Brak was humongous in the suit of armor. He looked as big as an ogre. “But Mood says you don’t have to fight. Not now. You should stay and defend us.”
“I am defending you.” He stuffed his arms into bracers that covered the meat up to his elbows.
“You are like your father. Bullheaded. You can’t kill them all.”
“No, but I’m going to try.” Brak showed a grin similar to Venir’s.
Kam’s heart ached.
Jubilee clung to Kam’s waist. “If you die, Brak, I’ll hate you for it. Forever.”
In his long and lazy way, he said, “That’s not exactly the fiery speech I was hoping for. You think you’d promise me a kiss or something.”
“Why would I do that?” Jubilee said.
Rattling, Brak walked
over to Chongo. The big dog was geared up in a leather harness and saddle with new armor that wasn’t quite as constricting as the other set. Brak scratched the pooch’s ears. “You’re as hungry for battle as I am, aren’t you?”
The left head licked his face.
“Heh, I don’t think the underlings want to fight us when we are hungry.” He checked the gear on Chongo’s harness. There were small spears and a couple of dwarven swords tucked into saddle sheaths. His hand covered the entire pommel. “That won’t work.” Hanging on the side of the saddle was the white ash cudgel named Spine Breaker. It was from Jubilee’s royal family, the Slergs. He stuck his foot in the stirrup and swung his leg over the saddle. “Time to go.”
Chongo gave a snort and moved on at an easy gait.
“Don’t die, Brak!” Jubilee’s eyes were misty.
He waved. Chongo fell in with a group of blood rangers and black beards. The hearty dwarven men were covered in dwarven mail, scale, and dyed tunics made from thick leather. They made their way into one of the Black Columns’ channels that spidered through the rock. A rocky ledge led them up to higher ground on the outer rocks that faced the Outlands.
Brak lost his breath. He’d never seen so many people in one place before. The underlings were a beach of black ants that scurried over the sands. The huge spiders were more numerous than he could count. His skin crawled. Skirmishes and the clamor of battle and cries of death cried out in the wind from the rocks.
A hard-eyed blood ranger wearing two curved swords on his hips spit on the ground. “I’ve seen worse.” He looked up at Brak. “How about you, young man?”
“No, it’s worse than I ever imagined.” His knuckles turned white on the reins and cudgel. “But it’s as perfect a night to fight or die as any. Let’s ride.”
The dwarves jutted their weapons into the air. “Huzzah!”
CHAPTER 16
Venir woke up with his head throbbing. He rubbed his eyes and sat up against a cold, slimy, wet wall. Chains rattled on his wrists. “Great.”
The Darkslayer: Series 2 Special Edition (Bish and Bone Bundle Books 6-10): Sword and Sorcery Adventures Page 31
