Hazelhearth Hires Heroes

by D. H. Willison

  Once pointed out, the outline of the toad was obvious, like a shape in the clouds. It simply required a resetting of expectations, especially regarding size.

  “That’s a toad?” It was a pointless question since Shin had just said so, yet Sam couldn’t help himself. “It’s bigger than a mastiff. Are they dangerous?”

  “Just about anything can be dangerous. But the tusk toad devours its prey whole, and since we’re a little too large for that, it won’t come after us. As long as we keep our distance.”

  Sam stared at the toad many long seconds, fascinated and more than a little terrified. The toad again blinked its one visible reddish-orange eye. Sam shuddered a little, the two filled a pair of small casks with water, returning to the campsite to find the friendly yellow-orange flames of a campfire pushing back the encroaching gloom.

  The group settled in, sharing an evening meal, a stew of boiled barley with dried vegetables mixed in, topped with a generous portion of emu jerky—a gift from Breta’s family.

  Lee bit off a chunk of emu jerky with gusto. “Nice having all this gear with us. I’ve slept on bare ground before, and I tell you, the reed mats are a real luxury in comparison.”

  “Needed the cart to bring back the messenger dragonflies,” said Gnebnik. “But they won’t take up the entire cart. Might as well use the space for something.”

  Sam couldn’t get the image of the barrel-sized toad out of his mind. “So what do tusk toads normally prey on?”

  “Fish, serpents, deer, caprids. Children if they get the chance.”

  “Children,” said Lee. “I guess playing in the local creek is off-limits for kids on Arvia. Must be a grim childhood.”

  “Nah,” said Gnebnik. “Just need ta stay in groups and bring weapons with ’em. Kids are fine. They gotta learn somehow.”

  The party settled in for the night, a stock of firewood to hold back dark and cold, weapons at the ready to hold back nocturnal predators. So they hoped.

  Lee had the third watch, and, being unused to watches, was groggy as Gnebnik settled into his bedroll to catch a few hours sleep. The campfire had by now heated all the surrounding stone, and so long as he remained close, the orange embers and tongues of flame drove off the biting mountain cold. Gnebnik had told them a fire was a mixed blessing, keeping certain creatures away, while drawing others. Some creatures had no fear of fire and some were even sentient, understanding that where there was fire, there might be slumbering adventurers ripe for the picking. But in this region, in this situation, the pluses outweighed the minuses.

  He tossed a pair of branches on the fire and gazed slowly around the landscape. The trees within sight were evergreens, a few saplings, one with a trunk so large a dozen people holding hands couldn’t reach around it. Beyond it, a few more individual trees were visible under the moonlight and further than that everything disappeared into an inky haze.

  He gripped the hilt of his longsword, a loan from Gnebnik, clenching it tightly in his fist. It wasn’t quite the extension of his body that some warriors claimed, but it was familiar by now: from the feel of the hilt he knew how it was oriented, where the tip would be even without looking. Drawing it the first few inches, he hesitated. Shin, especially, was a light sleeper, and it would be a shame to wake him accidentally.

  It had been a while since he’d spent a night in the wilderness. It was quiet at first, but the more he paid attention, the more sounds he picked up. The rustling of wind through branches of nearby trees, the chirp of an insect, the occasional pop and accompanying jet of flame from the fire.

  He glanced at an arrow scratched into the dirt, a reminder to himself to look above as well: a watch needed to be wary of creatures coming from any direction. His eyes fixed upon a knobby outcropping of rock just at the edge of the cavern’s mouth. A shape he could swear had not been there before. He stared at it a minute long. Despite his initial suspicion, it didn’t look like any of the dozens of creatures Gnebnik had described as potentially dangerous. It was simply a rounded lump. No visible limbs or claws or wings.

  “Idiot,” he mumbled under his breath. Focus too much on a single thing, something else can jump you from another direction.

  He took a sip of firebean brew from a tin camp mug, a beverage that might have passed for coffee mixed with chili peppers were it not for its crimson color, and resumed a methodical scan of the boulders and trees visible from the mouth of the cavern.

  Lee glanced at the fire. Embers glowed cheerfully in reds and oranges, while tongues of yellow and blue flame danced between the larger logs. It smelled of the alder and hickory from the meat smoker of his uncle’s farm. His mouth watered at the thought of smoked pork. He poked at a y-shaped log, charred and glowing on one side. A shadow caught the corner of his eye.

  A boulder seemed to shift, stopping just as he focused on it. He squinted, hoping to see something. A claw? An eye? Something to justify waking the others.

  Something to justify the abhorrent unease in his gut.

  He nudged Sam, who responded with a groggy, “Is it morning already?”

  “No,” whispered Lee. “There’s something strange going on.”

  Sam froze, jerked his head to look at Lee, eyes now wide open. “Shouldn’t you wake Shin? Or Gnebnik?”

  “I don’t know if there’s something wrong or not. If I’m wrong and I wake them up for nothing? They need their sleep. We’ve got two more days on the road.”

  “OK, OK. What’s wrong?”

  Lee pointed to the outcropping. “That rock. I think it’s getting closer.”

  Sam sat up, glaring the direction Lee indicated. The cavern wall was a mosaic of shadows, shifting in the flickering light of the campfire. Textures looked like stone, colors were hard to make out in the dark, yet one particular mass seemed off. A misshapen, out-of-place lump. He patted the ground next to his bedroll, hand finally finding the stock of his crossbow.

  “Could it be a troll? Aren’t they made of rock or something?”

  “They turn to stone in the daylight,” said Lee. “According to some legends on Earth. But I have no idea what real trolls are like.”

  There and then Lee made the commitment to study every bestiary tome he could find.

  The two froze in place several long minutes. The lump shifted, sliding forward: not a jerky motion of a creature propelled by legs, but a slow, smooth sliding, one that would pass unnoticed had they not been intently watching.

  “Wake up.” Lee shook Gnebnik’s shoulder.

  “The squirrels givin’ ya the evil eye or what?”

  “The rocks are moving.”

  Gnebnik jerked upright, reaching for his shield, his sword already in hand, apparently with him in his bedroll.

  Sam needed to speak no words to Shin; he awoke as Sam’s hand came within a handbreadth of his shoulder, eyes snapping open.

  Gnebnik needed only the briefest glance to identify the rocky mass, now sliding from the cavern wall to the floor. “Gastropoid,” he barked to Shin.

  Shin didn’t so much leap to his feet as roll: twisting, somersaulting, finally sliding upright against a shadowy section of the cavern wall, somehow managing to collect his crossbow as he did.

  “Shield up,” said Gnebnik. “An’ get that fire burning brighter if ya can.”

  “What are gastropoids?” said Sam, not recalling the word from the bestiary tome. “Some kind of trolls?”

  “Keep your shield in front of you,” said Gnebnik. “They move slow, but they spit venom darts. Watch out for their tentacles.”

  A rocky mass the size of a carriage seemed to separate from the background, rising off the ground atop a thick fleshy foot that extended below it. A tube thicker than the piling of a pier extended from what was now apparent as the creature’s front, finally splitting into a half-dozen writhing tentacles, each one slightly different than the others. The longest of these branched out further as it extended, fanning out like a newly grown palm frond.

  “The big one’s fer sniffing out prey
. Keep your shield up.”

  The fan-shaped tentacle swayed side to side, hungrily tasting the air for the scent of prey. An inky-black orb emerged from a sheath at the tip of a second tentacle, shifted Lee’s direction, focusing on him—it was one of the creature’s eyes. A third, thicker stalk took aim, yet this was no eye. The creature’s ghostly silence abruptly broke. It was a powerful sound: deep, slimy and wet, like a congested elephant sneezing a snot-covered cucumber through its trunk, as the first venom dart hurled toward Lee. It hit the edge of his shield, ricocheted and clunked onto the cavern floor. A fourth and fifth tentacle, another eye stalk and dart spitter, focused on him.

  A crossbow bolt pierced the creature’s flesh, disappearing entirely into it. An eye stalk swirled to focus on the source of the projectile, but the creature didn’t seem to react in pain. Did it even feel pain?

  Gnebnik lunged, jabbing his short sword into the creature’s flesh. The blade trailed strings of white and purple mucus as he withdrew it, like strands of melted cheese stuck to his sword. He hunched his shoulders, concealing the bulk of his stout form behind the tall shield strapped to his left forearm.

  Sam leveled his crossbow at the creature. But where to aim? The monster’s shell looked like stone. Would a crossbow bolt even penetrate it? And though a large mass of twisted flesh protruded out, its anatomy was otherworldly, no obvious head, nor vulnerable areas—simply a writhing fleshy mass. “Where should I shoot it?” he yelled.

  “Anywhere. Just distract it,” barked Gnebnik. “Piercing weapons don’t do much damage. Lee and I have to cut off the eye stalks and dart spitters.”

  Another bolt from Shin’s crossbow drew the attention of two of the three eye stalks. Gnebnik seized the moment, slashing at an eye stalk—not a clean cut, but deep enough to sever the nerve running through the center of the muscular tube of flesh. The creature whipped both remaining eye stalks to face him, spitting darts from two of its tentacles in quick succession—the first clanking off Gnebnik’s shield, the second hitting his helm, nearly grazing his ear.

  How long between darts, thought Lee. Overriding such contemplative analysis, he lunged at the nearest tentacle, slashing with his longsword. His slash cut deep, but not quite to the core: the dart spitters were thicker than the monster’s eye stalks. Yet Lee’s lunge exposed Sam. Who had not equipped a shield.

  The creature loosed a dart, hitting Sam just above his right knee. The dart was smaller than a crossbow bolt, and not nearly as hard-hitting. Had he been wearing even leather armor, it might have been stopped. But the double layer of wool and cotton sleeping apparel gave no protection and the tooth-like projectile pierced an inch deep into the flesh of his thigh.

  The shock was intense more than outright painful, like falling into a freezing lake. He convulsed, let out a stifled scream. The cavern tipped sideways as he fell on his side, eyes wide open, drawing quick shallow breaths.

  Had he been more of a thinker, Lee might have jumped to the question of anti-venom. His adrenaline-fueled mind managed only aggression—he lunged and hacked at the tentacle that had just felled his friend, this time slicing it clean off with a single furious stroke.

  “Solid hit, lad,” barked Gnebnik.

  A crossbow bolt from Shin pierced the creature’s body, penetrating almost far enough to reach one of its two hearts. Yet falling short as it did, the effect was like poking a jellyfish with a toothpick.

  The last of the creature’s offensive tentacles, an eight foot long tube of flesh, reared up, unsheathing a harpoon-like tooth. This tentacle weapon, the largest of the three, could impale a human-sized creature, inflicting a fatal wound by sheer force alone.

  And it dripped with sticky venom.

  The creature shifted sideways, gliding sluggishly but silently, its single gelatinous foot capable of moving any direction with ease. How much thought the creature could muster was unclear. Yet it advanced on the three moving targets. Three remaining bundles of nutrition which might still escape.

  Sam still drew breath. Short, stifled breaths, drawing in barely enough air to stay conscious. He could see, could hear, could smell, but couldn’t move. Not the slightest twitch of his fingers or wiggle of his toes. He could only watch. Watch as the three fought the mass of remaining tentacles in what seemed, from his vantage point, to be a standoff. Yet even as they did, his worm’s eye view caught sight of another appendage. This one snaked from within the shell, slithering in the shadows of the stony cavern floor.

  Another poison dart to finish the kill? The fleshy tip prodded his midriff: soft, vulnerable human flesh normally covered with a breastplate, yet now protected by thin layers of flannel. Sam was a piece of meat on the butcher’s block waiting to be sliced open. Would a toothy dagger pierce him through to his spine? Or perhaps puncture his abdomen and suck out his organs? Sam’s numb flesh only felt pressure, a heavy mass like a wiggling sandbag. The appendage flared into a fleshy funnel. This tentacle was the creature’s mouth. It prodded Sam’s body, searching instinctively for the head, like a blind anaconda preparing to devour its prey.

  Gnebnik sidestepped his way to the campfire, and grabbed a smoldering log. He tossed it at the base of the creature’s body, the glowing embers at the tip provoking a cloud of steam. If the creature possessed vocal cords, the wound might have elicited a yelp of pain. But the only sound was a dull hiss as the embers were snuffed out by a mass of wet, sticky ooze.

  Had this been just about any other foe, the creature might have turned tail. But gastropoids, slow ambush predators, simply didn’t have the concept of flight encoded into their instinctive set of behaviors. They would fight until every one of their prey fled out of range, had been neutralized with neurotoxic venom, or they would die trying.

  Additionally, they did not possess tails.

  The harpoon-tipped tentacle, last of the creature’s weapons, waved and bobbed, focusing on Lee like a cobra on a snake charmer. It jerked twice, feigning a strike, before plunging around Lee’s shield, striking the top of his shoulder. Lee, being on watch, was the only member of the party in armor, yet the force of the blow pierced partway through his pauldron, knocking him to his knees.

  Gnebnik slashed at the tentacle now embedded in Lee’s pauldron, while Shin lunged forward with his javelin, this time connecting with one of the creature’s two hearts.

  “I don’t feel schow guud,” mumbled Lee, collapsing face first onto the stony cavern floor.

  Chapter 11

  Sam felt pressure on his hand. He couldn’t feel exactly what it was, but since he hadn’t expected to wake up at all, even this slight sensation was welcome.

  He blinked, vision clearing, blackness shifting to gray. Stone gray. Details came into focus. The cavern was bright. Daylight. There was motion around him, but he was unable to turn his head to see exactly what.

  He spoke. “Waahaaapa.”

  A face loomed over him. It was Lee.

  Lee turned to speak to someone else. “Hey, he’s coming ’round.”

  A second, gnomish face came into view. He felt his body abruptly shift as Gnebnik propped him to a sitting position.

  “Whaahaapen?”

  “Gastropoid neurotoxin takes a while to wear off.” It was Shin’s voice, though Sam still couldn’t turn his head to actually see Shin.

  “Arewe alloright?”

  “Ther’s good news an’ ther’s bad news.”

  Sam moved his head just a little to gaze at Gnebnik. Each thought flashing through his head was darker than the former: Permanent nerve damage? Partial paralysis? A limb melted off by acid?

  “First the bad news. One of our most important party members took a much bigger dose.”

  “Is Shin OK?”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” said Lee.

  “An’ I was referring to the donkey,” said Gnebnik.

  “Is Lee OK?” said Sam, wiggling his toes. All ten seemed to be responding.

  Lee shook his head. “At least we know you’re OK.”

 
“We can’t move the cart without the donkey,” said Gnebnik. “And we can’t complete the mission without the cart.”

  “And Sally can’t pull it?”

  “Harness is wrong. And we need Sally and Shin scouting ahead.”

  “Right.” Sam was now able to turn his head, while a feeling of pins and needles in his fingertips gave hope that his limb count hadn’t diminished overnight. Lee and Gnebnik were beside him, while Shin knelt over the fallen donkey. Sally was standing, apparently uninjured. Toward the mouth of the cavern the campfire was burning cleanly, the trail of smoke almost transparent against streaks of blue sky and white puffy clouds. It was the type of rustic outdoor landscape that might make for a nice oil painting. Except for the otherworldly object at the mouth of the cavern. The shell of the gastropoid, the size of a carriage, was tipped on its side, and from it spilled a bizarre mass of flesh. It might have been the carcass of a giant squid, slimy white flesh, draping tentacles, entrails spilling from the gashes the party had inflicted. Pools of the creature’s viscous white blood congealed in depressions of the uneven cavern floor.

  Sam took a deep breath, immediately wishing he hadn’t. The stench was acidic, yet fishy, like spoiled oysters mixed with vinegar.

  “So what’s the good news?” said Sam.

  “The venom ducts will fetch a good price in Irondale,” said Gnebnik. “Just have to get ’em there before they spoil. An’ the beastie’s mucus glands are also useful.”

  Two pieces of good news? There must be a catch, thought Sam.

  “Useful for what?” he asked.

  “Well, once we get moving again, Shin says it should be an easy trip,” said Lee. “He says most creatures give gastropoids a wide berth.”

  Sam put the pieces together quickly. There was the catch. “So, what? We smear ourselves with…”

  “Yup,” said Gnebnik. “Gastropoid mucus. It’s about the best scent mask there is.”

  “Also, we’re the ones who have to dissect the corpse,” said Lee.

  Oooh, a second catch, thought Sam. Bonus catch today. Aren’t I lucky.