Conundrum

by Jeff Crook

  “Come on,” Razmous whispered to his companions. “We’ll be very stealthy.”

  He was creeping away on his tiptoes before anyone could object. The others followed with a great degree of trepidation. Sir Grumdish shook and chattered his teeth like a frightened child, all desire for testing the UANP vanished from his mind-upon reflection, the weapon appeared woefully inadequate. They edged far too close to those enormous bloodshot eyes (one of which was always scanning its surroundings), flapping ears, and piggish nostrils-and especially its prognathous out-thrust jaw with its goblinoid tusks dripping with saliva that hissed when it struck the water.

  But the monster had not heard, scented, or seen them. Perhaps their black frogsuits blended with the shadows of the forest or covered their scent sufficiently, or perhaps the monster was too busy with its own activities to notice them. It seemed most intent on something in the water. It stood still as a stone, only its massive chest swelling with each breath, as it eyed something in the water.

  Suddenly, it dove after some fish or other creature, chasing it round and round the pool with much noisy thrashing and angry snarling. So huge was the monster that its violence sent huge waves crashing halfway up the bank to the explorers” hiding place. It smashed the water with its gigantic black-clawed hands, lunged this way and that, angrily snapped its jaws, and plunged beneath the surface, revealing a broad back studded with bony protrusions.

  “What is that thing?” Conundrum whispered in awe.

  “Probably a chaos beast,” Razmous answered. “All sorts of strange monsters were born from the Chaos War. Probably, he’s attracted to this area because of the shipwrecks. It’s a fact that shipwrecks often-”

  At that moment, the beast surfaced, its three eyes smoldering and its claws empty. It glared around at the surrounding forest, its flat, piggish nostrils testing the air currents. The gnomes held their breath, the gully dwarf cowering behind them. But the fearless kender crept another step closer.

  Though Razmous made no sound, the monster suddenly crouched, all three eyes swiveling around to probe the dense underbrush where the gnomes hid.

  “Who is there?” it howled in a voice that was somewhere between the rumble of a crocodile and the bellow of a charging bull. The smaller trees shook at the volume of its voice. Out on the Indestructible, everyone suddenly looked up in wonder at the strange noise.

  “Who is there?” the monster demanded again. It took a step back and crouched low in the water. “You might as well show yourselves. You can’t escape me. My three eyes are sharper than an eagle’s, my nose more sensitive than a hound’s. I can hear the heartbeat of a mouse at a hundred paces, or the water passing through a fish’s gills at ten. There is no place to hide in this barren wilderness, no stone under which you can cower that I can’t overturn. Come out and let me see you and tell me the nature of your ship and how many survived, for I have eaten many of your kind, farers of the salty sea, but-” Here it paused and tested the air with its flaring nostrils-“I cannot place your smell. What are you?”

  “Nothing!” Razmous squeaked cleverly in his high kender voice. His words came out of the forest like an echo, scattered by the trunks of the trees so that it was difficult for the monster to determine its exact origin. However, his companions were beside themselves in fear and rage at his foolishness.

  “Who is it who is nothing yet answers my questions?” the monster asked as it crouched a little lower in the water.

  “Nobody,” Razmous squawked again, suppressing a giggle. Conundrum clawed at his arm, trying to pull him down and shut him up, but the kender merely turned on him with a grin spreading from pointed ear to pointed ear, and stepped out from their covering screen of trees.

  “Don’t worry,” he chided over his shoulder. “I read this in a book somewhere.”

  9

  “You’re mad!” Sir Grumdish howled. “You’ll get us all X killed.”

  “Don’t worry,” Razmous repeated confidently. Those accustomed to traveling with kender learn a number of words and phrases that, when spoken by non-kender, are not indicative of anything especially alarming, but when voiced by the merry adventurous race usually portend some disaster or otherwise unpleasant event. “Oh, look!” “Wow! I wonder if…” “You must have dropped it!” and the much dreaded “Did I ever tell you about the time…” are some of the more common cues to either flee without looking back, or grab the kender before he gets himself chopped. Yet few words ever spoken by kender conjure up such fear as “Don’t worry.” Except perhaps “Oops!”

  Which is why Sir Grumdish launched himself from his slightly higher position and grabbed Razmous by the topknot. Not very gently he jerked the kender back to the cover of the trees. Razmous emitted a squeal of pain, great tears starting in his eyes.

  With a loud, “Ah-ha!” the monster lurched forward, its arms spread wide. A huge wave of water rose before it and washed up the forested bank. Before the six adventurers could move, water surged around their legs and swept them from their feet. It carried them a short distance up the hillside, then swept them back, dragging them down through the trees toward the lake, where the creature waited with glaring eyes and champing, slavering jaws.

  The gnomes scrabbled desperately at the branches, clinging to any twig or root within their grasp. First Razmous, then Conundrum, managed to catch themselves before they were swept completely away. Ensign Gob, being the smallest and the lightest, was thrown farthest up the bank by the surging wave and fortunately left high and dry out of harm’s reach. Conundrum managed to grab Chief Portlost by the beard as he swept by, while Sir Gram-dish snatched a handful of the kender’s sopping-wet topknot and held on for dear life. But both gnomes lost their UANPs to the flood.

  The unfortunate Ensign Wigpillow tried to hold on to his weapon, and as a result slipped away from the hands reaching out to catch him. As a last desperate act, he tried to fire his weapon at the chaos beast, only to have a powerful jet of water exit the rear of the UANP and propel him forward, down the last few feet of the bank. He slid and tumbled through the mud and leaves and vanished into the water at the monster’s knees.

  With a cry of delight, the chaos beast reached down and snatched him up in one massive, black-clawed hand and lifted the hapless gnome to its huge toothy maw. His companions on the bank turned away or hid their faces in their hands. Razmous peeked. As he neared those gaping jaws, however, the shrieking Ensign Wigpillow struggled against the monster’s ironlike grip and pop! He squirted free like a watermelon seed.

  Wigpillow scribed a long screaming arc across the desert sky. The monster craned its head round to watch in nothing less than slack-jawed surprise. Razmous simply said, “Wow!” and then had to be physically restrained to keep him from rushing down to the water and begging the monster to squirt him, too.

  Ensign Wigpillow ended his flight with a thunderous splash a hundred or so yards upstream. The monster turned and surged off after him, a huge wake spreading out from its chest like the bow wave of a man-o-war under full sail.

  “Come on!” Sir Grumdish roared as he pulled everyone to their feet. “Let’s get out of here!”

  “But Wigpillow!” Conundrum cried.

  “He’s creating a diversion, noble lad,” Chief Portlost said. “To give us time to escape back to the ship.”

  Sir Grumdish had to push the others up the hill, shooting a quick glance over the ground in the faint hope that his UANP might not have been washed into the lake, but finding nothing.

  “Hurry! Back to the ship!” he shouted, but no one needed his advice. Once again led by Razmous, they were already out of sight.

  Despite his shorter legs, Ensign Gob was the first to reach the beach. Those observing from the Indestructible wondered at his haste. When it became apparent that he had no intention of stopping at the water’s edge, they began to wave and shout, “No!”

  But the gully dwarf ignored them, charged straight into the water, and fell flat on his glass-helmeted face. He thrashed his arms
in the shallow surf, trying to swim, and throwing more sand than water. His companions, arriving immediately behind him, dragged him by his helmet back to the beach. Conundrum pointed at the gully dwarfs duckfeet, lying there in the sand next to the others, but Gob seemed not to understand, and so they demonstrated by frantically getting into their own helmets, bladderpacks, and duckfeet.

  Chief Portlost was the first into his gear. He grabbed the gully dwarf and forced him into the duckfeet, then pushed him toward the water. Finally getting the idea, Gob started off, slowly dragging his heavy shoes through the sand. The chief followed, a little more quickly, and was himself followed more quickly still by Razmous. Next came Sir Grumdish and Conundrum, grunting with the water barrel between them, now filled with fresh water.

  Out on the Indestructible, Commodore Brigg observed this flurry of activity with growing curiosity. “The shore party seems in an awful hurry, wouldn’t you say?” he asked Snork, who had joined him on the bridge. A few crew members stood along the aft deck, pausing in their duties to watch. “And where is Pigwillow?”

  “Wigpillow,” Snork said, glancing up from his navigational log. “Aye, that they are.”

  Chief Portlost’s head vanished under the water. Razmous paused when the water was up to his neck and waved something in a frantic manner, but neither the commodore nor Snork could tell what he meant by it. Dragging the heavy barrel filled with fresh water, Conundrum and Sir Grumdish had barely entered the water, while the gully dwarf was still several dozen feet from the shore.

  “I don’t see Pigwillow,” the commodore repeated.

  “Wigpillow, sir,” Snork corrected again.

  “Probably lollygagging,” the commodore snorted.

  Snork fished a glass of farseeing from his navigator’s pouch, extended it to its six-foot length, and aimed it at the shore. “There’s something coming through the forest. Maybe it’s Ensign Wig… pi…” His voice trailed off, and his jaw dropped open.

  “Well, is it him?” the commodore demanded. “Don’t stand there like you’ve seen a naked mer…” His voice trailed off as well, for neither one of them needed the navigator’s farseeing glass to see the gigantic monster hulling through the trees like a steam catapult broken loose from its moorings. With its clawed fists, the monster shattered into matchsticks huge thorn willows and towering palms, ripping them from the ground and tossing them aside like weeds. Sighting the gully dwarf still struggling toward the water, the fearsome creature loosed a thunderous bellow.

  Chief Portlost and Razmous Pinchpocket were already safely underwater, their progress marked by two small surface eruptions of bubbles winding their way toward the boat, but Conundrum and Sir Grumdish were barely up to their knees. Ensign Gob clearly was doomed. The monster was bearing down upon him.

  Commodore Brigg opened the hatch and shouted below, “All hands to battle stations! Bring the ship about!”

  With bits of black frogsuit hanging in tatters from its champing tusks, the monster closed on its new quarry. As it ran, it scooped up a handful of sand in one massive paw and hurled it at the gully dwarf. The mass of wet sand was huge and struck Gob square in the back, knocking him out of his heavy shoes.

  That was all the gully dwarf needed to set him free. In a flash, he was up, circling back away from the water and toward the forest. For a few moments, the beast paused in confusion, glancing first at the two gnomes struggling through waist deep water, then at the gully dwarf plunging into the forest. Quickly making up its mind, it leaped into the sea.

  Glancing over his shoulder, Sir Grumdish yelled, “Forget the barrel, boy! Save yourself!” He plunged ahead, kicking out of his duckfeet and swimming with his arms.

  Conundrum struggled through the surf, thrashing at the water with both arms. His heavy shoes made even walking a chore, and he was already weary. Fear lent him strength, but hardly enough to escape the monster.

  The chaos beast paused in its charge as it reached the water barrel. Half suspecting some kind of trap, it approached the barrel warily, sniffing suspiciously and reaching out one massive hand to touch it. Finding it filled only with water and ballast stones, it snatched it up and hurled it at Conundrum, missing the gnome by inches.

  The barrel exploding nearby startled him briefly, and that was all the monster needed to catch up. Desperately, Conundrum dove beneath the waves, but a gigantic hand clapped down over him. Terrible, rending black claws dug into the sand around his feet, then squeezed like strangling tentacles around his legs and lifted him out of the water. He struggled and twisted, trying to squirt free as Ensign Wigpillow had done, but it did him little good. The sand kept him firmly in the monster’s steely grip. Its jaws gaped wide, huge ivory tusks wreathed in gruesome tatters of gnomish flesh and frogsuit. Conundrum gagged as its stinking breath penetrated though his bladderpack and filled his glass helm with its reek. But this was nothing to the horror of being lifted ever closer to that slavering mouth and looking into those three monstrous eyeballs.

  And then the creature paused, jaws agape, the gnome gripped in one fist. Its three bloodshot eyes swiveled around to focus on the Indestructible, now turned about, its bow pointing directly at the giant beast. The commodore crouched in the conning tower, sighting along the lubber’s line with one eye closed and head cocked toward the open hatch at his feet.

  “Fire!” he shouted.

  The ship lurched backward and to starboard, while from the portside bow a cloud of bubbles exploded. Out from the cloud shot a projectile of enormous proportions. Just beneath the surface of the water it coursed, like a great long silver-nosed barracuda, a perfect triangular wave spreading to either side, a trail of tiny bubbles following in its wake. The UAEP crossed the coral lagoon in three slow elephantine heartbeats. The monster watched as if hypnotized, saw it skim over the reefs, clipping stony projections without altering course or slowing. The monster stared at it until it arrived to bury itself in its bloated belly.

  It continued to stare for three more agonizing heartbeats as its black blood spread in the water around the enormous arrow that had skewered it like a pig. Ever did its grip tighten on Conundrum’s legs as it watched its life pour out into the sea. The little gnome bit his lips to stifle his own scream of crushed pain.

  And then the monster staggered, screaming as though the doors of the Abyss itself had been opened. It convulsed, every muscle tightening like steel cords, including those of its hands. Conundrum felt every joint of his legs wrenching from its socket, every muscle fiber tearing, every tendon fraying like old rope, ready to snap, and then, like an arrow plucked by the archer, he was free. Free and sailing high in the air. He opened his eyes in relief, and then wished he hadn’t.

  It was with something between horror and curiosity that he watched the Indestructible pass below him. Down below his feet, the whole bay spread like an illustrated map in a cartographer’s shop. He saw the chaos beast clutching at the giant arrow sprouting from its belly, then fall backward in the water. Elsewhere, the dark shadows of numerous sharks diverted from their course toward Sir Grumdish, still swimming with strong strokes toward the Indestructible, and honed in on the bleeding corpse of the beast. Conundrum also saw his other two remaining companions, two tiny figures peacefully walking along the bottom of the bay between mountainous reefs of coral. He saw the dozens of ships that had wrecked here, lying in various states of decay on the ocean floor.

  In fact, one in particular caught his attention. It lay almost at the mouth of the harbor, and he was plummeting toward it.

  Despite the tremendous squeezing he had received, he still wore one duckfoot. It was this leaden weight that kept him upright upon entry. Still, his splashdown drove every particle of air from his lungs, and seemed to drive his knees into his bowels. The impact nearly ripped his helmet off his head, and as it was, he cracked his nose against the interior of the helmet and blood streamed into his beard. The splash thundered in his ears, stunning him, and as he swiftly sank the bladderpack tried to slip from his should
ers. With his last particle of strength, he fought to keep hold of it, knowing that it meant his life. Dark spots swam in his vision, and for a moment he thought he was going to faint.

  The spots grew larger, and it was then that he realized they were sharks, swimming toward his bubble trail down through the deep blue water. His downward progress slowed as he lost momentum. His one duckfoot was barely heavy enough to counteract the buoyancy of his bladder-pack. He was glad about one thing-his bloody nose wasn’t leaking into the water. Slowly now he sank toward the deck of the sunken ship while the sharks circled above.

  Finally, with a soft bump he came to rest on the wooden deck. The ship, some sort of caravel, lay on its keel, its deck nearly level. The entire deck was littered with broken swords and cloven shields, and hundreds of spent arrows stood everywhere, eerily balanced on their steel points. The wave created by his landing, soft as it was, sent several dozen dancing away from him in all directions, gently skittering across the deck like frightened faeries of the deep. A few leaped the ship’s rail and vanished over the sides.

  In addition to weapons, all sorts of other common items lay scattered in profusion, everything from a small silver hand mirror that might have belonged in some lady’s bedchamber, to a huge copper kettle used to boil water for the laundry. Part of the deck appeared to have been scored by fire, but of the ship’s former occupants and crew there was no sign.