Unclean hl-1

by Richard Lee Byers

  The gnolls stared at him for another moment, and then one, with a ruddy tinge to his fur and longer ears than the rest, laughed his piercing, crazy-sounding cackle. "Sorry, human. It can't be done."

  "Why not?" Bareris demanded.

  "Because the slaves go to Delhumide."

  For a moment, Bareris didn't understand. They were all in Delhumide, and what of it? Then he realized the gnoll wasn't speaking of the tharch but of the abandoned city of the same name.

  Twenty-three centuries before, when Thay had been a Mulhorandi colony, Delhumide had been one of its greatest cities and bastions of power, and when the Red Wizards rebelled, they'd deemed it necessary to destroy the place. They'd evidently used the darkest sort of sorcery to accomplish their purpose, for by all accounts, the ground was still unclean today. Demons walked there, and a man could contract madness or leprosy just by venturing down the wrong street. No one visited Delhumide except the most reckless sort of treasure hunter, and few of those ever returned.

  "Are you sure?" Bareris asked. It was, of course, a stupid question, born of surprise, and he didn't wait for an answer. "Why?"

  "We don't know," said the gnoll. "We have better sense than to go into Delhumide ourselves."

  "Even if we could," said Wesk. After listening to his broken Mulhorandi, Bareris found it odd to hear him speak fluently, but he naturally had no difficulty conversing in his own racial language. "Soldiers guard the place by day, and at night, the things come out. I don't know if they're the fiends that have always haunted the place or pets of the Red Wizards-maybe some of both-and it doesn't matter anyway. They're there, and they're nasty."

  "I understand," Bareris said, "but you fellows are experts at going unseen. You told me so yourself, and I witnessed your skill firsthand when you hid the both of us. I'll wager your legion used you as expert scouts and skirmishers."

  "Sometimes," said Wesk.

  "Well, I'm a fair hand at creeping and skulking myself, so long as I'm not crippled. With luck, we could sneak in and out of Delhumide without having to fight every warrior or lurking horror in the ruins."

  "To steal back your mate," said the gnoll who'd jeered at him before.

  "Yes. I've never seen Delhumide, but you've scouted it from the outside anyway. You can figure out the safest path in. Together, we can rescue Tammith, and in gratitude for your help, I'll make you rich enough to live in luxury in Eltabbar or Bezantur until the end of your days. Just give me back my pouch and sword belt."

  The gnolls exchanged looks, then one of them fetched the articles he'd requested from the shade beneath one of the lean-tos. As he'd expected, the gnoll removed his sword from its scabbard first, and when he looked inside the pigskin bag, the coins were gone.

  But the gnolls hadn't discovered the secret pocket in the bottom of the purse. He lifted the bag to his mouth and exhaled into it. His breath activated a petty enchantment, and the hidden seam separated. He removed the sheets of parchment, unfolded them, and held them up for the gnolls to see. "Letters of credit from the merchant houses of Turmish and Impiltur. A little the worse for wear, but still valid."

  Wesk snorted. "None of us can read, singer, nor has any idea how such papers are supposed to look. Maybe you guessed that and decided to try and fool us."

  "No, but I can offer you a different form of wealth if that's what you prefer." He started opening the concealed pockets in the sword belt and was relieved to find that the gnolls hadn't found those either.

  He brought out rubies, sapphires, and clear, smooth tapered king's tears. It was an absurd amount of wealth to purchase the services of half a dozen gnolls, yet for this moment anyway, he felt a sudden, unexpected spasm of loathing for the stones. If he'd never departed Bezantur to win them, he could have prevented Tammith from selling herself into slavery, and what good had they done him since? He had to resist a wild impulse to empty the belt entirely.

  He spread the jewels on the ground with a flourish, like a juggler performing a trick. "Here. Take them if you're willing to help me."

  The gnoll with the prominent ears laughed. "What's to stop us from taking them without helping you, then cutting up that pouch and belt and all your belongings to see if anything else is stashed inside? Wesk liked seeing you lop a Red Wizard's fingers off. It made him curious enough to haul you back here and find out who you are, but we're not your friends, or friends to any human. We rob and eat hairless runts like you."

  Bareris wondered if Wesk would take exception to his clan brother's assertion. He didn't, though, and perhaps it wasn't surprising. Bareris had claimed he was capable of leading the gnolls in a dangerous enterprise. If so, he should be competent to stand up for himself when a member of the band sought to intimidate him.

  Or maybe the whim that had moved Wesk to rescue him originally had simply been a transient aberration, and now the towering creature was all gnoll again, feral and murderous as the foulest of his kin.

  Either way, it scarcely mattered. Bareris had known that displaying the jewels was likely to provoke a crisis, and now he had to cope as best he could. "Take the stones and give nothing in return?" he sneered. "Strange, that's just what the Red Wizards and blood orcs tried to do, and I thought you deemed yourselves better than they are."

  The gnoll with the long ears bared his fangs. "We are better. They couldn't kill you and take your treasure, but we can."

  "No," said Bareris, "you can't. It doesn't matter that you withheld my sword or that you outnumber me." In reality, it almost certainly would, but he did his best to project utter self-confidence. "I'm a bard, a spellcaster, and my powers are what will enable us to make jackasses of the Red Wizards. I'll show you."

  He picked up one of the king's tears and sang words of power. Tiny sparks flared and died within the crystal, and a sweet smell like incense suffused the air. Alarmed, some of the gnolls jumped up and snatched for their weapons or else lunged and grabbed for Bareris with their empty hands.

  None of them acted in time, and light burned from within the jewel. It had no power to injure the gnolls. That would inevitably have resulted in a genuine battle, which was the last thing he wanted, but the hyenafolk were essentially nocturnal by nature, and the sudden flare dazzled and balked them. Coupled with the charms of influence Bareris had already spun, it might, with luck, even impress them more than it actually deserved to.

  At once, while they were still recoiling, the bard sprang to his feet and punched as hard as ever in his life. The uppercut caught the gnoll with the long ears under the jaw. His teeth clicked together, and he stumbled backward.

  "That," Bareris rapped, "was for impudence. Threaten me again and I'll tear you apart."

  He then brandished the luminous king's tear as if it were a talisman of extraordinary power, and as he spoke on, he infused his words with additional magic-not a spell of coercion, precisely, but an enchantment to bolster the courage and confidence of all who heard it.

  "It comes down to this," he said. "Even if you could kill me and steal the gems, it wouldn't matter. You'd still be a legion's castoffs, worthless in everyone's eyes including your own, but I'm offering you a chance to take revenge on the sort of folk who shamed you, and more than that, to regain your honor. Don't you see, if you join me in this venture, then you're not mere contemptible scavengers anymore. You're mercenaries, soldiers once again.

  "Or perhaps you don't care about honor," he continued. "Maybe you never had it in the first place. That's what people say about gnolls, that in their hearts and minds, they're vile as rats. You tell me if it's true."

  Pupils shrunk small by the magical glare, Wesk glowered for a moment. Then he growled, "Put out the light and we'll talk some more."

  Bareris's muscles went limp with relief, because while he still had little confidence that the gnolls would prove reliable if things became difficult, he discerned that, for the present at least, they meant to follow him.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  29 Mirtul, the Year of Risen Elfkin

  A
oth and Brightwing studied Dulos, the hamlet far below. For a moment, the place looked ordinary enough, the usual collection of sod-roofed huts and barns, but then the griffon rider observed that no one was working the fields and that sheep, pigs, and oxen lay torn and rotting in their pens. Then, his senses linked to his familiar's, he caught the carrion stink.

  "The undead have been here," he said.

  "No, really?" Brightwing replied.

  Aoth was too intent on the work at hand, and perhaps too full of memories of the massacres at Thazar Keep and beside the river, to respond to the sarcasm in kind. "The question is, are they still here, or have they moved on?"

  "I can't tell from up here."

  "Neither can I. Perhaps the Burning Braziers can. Or the necromancers. Let's return to the company."

  The griffon wheeled, and her wings, shining gold in the sunlight, swept up and down. Soon Aoth's patrol appeared below.

  The force was considerably smaller than the army that had met disaster in the mouth of the Pass of Thazar. Supposedly, once the undead horde gained access to the central plateau, they'd dispersed into smaller bands. Thus, Nymia Focar's host had no choice but to do the same if they hoped to eradicate the creatures as rapidly as possible.

  When Brightwing landed, Aoth's lieutenants were waiting to confer with him, or at least they were supposed to be his lieutenants. Nymia had declared him in charge, but Red Wizards had little inclination to recognize the authority of anyone not robed in scarlet, while the militant priests of Kossuth had somehow acquired the notion that Szass Tam and the other zulkirs had all but begged Iphegor Nath to dispatch them on this mission and accordingly believed everyone ought to defer to them.

  Aoth tried to diminish the potential for dissension by making sure to solicit everyone's opinions before making a decision and by pretending to weigh them seriously even when they betrayed complete ignorance of the craft of war. It seemed to be working so far.

  "The enemy," he said, swinging himself off Brightwing's back, "attacked the village."

  Her red metal torch weapon dangling in her hand, the scent of smoke clinging to her, Chathi Oandem frowned. The hazel-eyed priestess of Kossuth had old burn scars stippling her left cheek, the result, perhaps, of some devotion gone awry, but Aoth found her rather comely nonetheless, partly because of her air of energy and quick intelligence.

  "They've come this far west then, this close to Eltabbar."

  "Yes," said Aoth. "It makes me wonder if they might even have been bold enough to attack Surag and Thazrumaros." They were larger towns that might have had some hope of fending off an assault. "But for the time being, our concern is here. Can someone cast a divination to see if the settlement is still infested?"

  Chathi opened her mouth, no doubt to say that she'd do it, but Urhur Hahpet jumped in ahead of her. Evidently not content with a single garment denoting his status, the sallow, pinch-faced necromancer wore a robe, cape, and shoulder-length overcape, all dyed and lined with various shades of red, as well as a clinking necklace of human vertebrae and finger bones.

  "If it will help," he said, with the air of a lord granting a boon to a petitioner, "but we need to move up within sight of the place."

  So they did, and Aoth made sure everyone advanced in formation, weapons at the ready, despite the fact that he and Brightwing had just surveyed the approach to the hamlet from the air and hadn't observed any potential threats. After seeing the lacedons rise from the river, he didn't intend to leave anything to chance.

  Nothing molested them, and when he was ready, Urhur whispered a sibilant incantation and spun his staff, a rod of femurs fused end to end, through a mystic pass. The air darkened around him as if a cloud had drifted in front of the sun, reminding Aoth unpleasantly of the nighthaunt's ability to smother light.

  "There are undead," the wizard said. "A fair number of them."

  "Then we'll have to root them out," said Aoth.

  Urhur smiled a condescending smile. "I think you mean burn them out. Surely that's the safest, easiest course, and it will give our cleric friends a chance to play with their new toys."

  The Burning Braziers bristled. Aoth, however, did his best to mask his own annoyance. "Safest and easiest, perhaps, but it's possible there are still people alive in there."

  "Unlikely, and in any case, you're talking about peasants."

  "Destroying the village would also make it impossible to gather additional intelligence about our foes."

  "What do you think there is to learn?"

  "We'll know when we find it." Aoth remembered his resolve to lead by consensus, or at least to give the appearance, and looked around at the other officers in the circle. "What do the rest of you think?"

  As expected, the other necromancers sided with Urhur, but rather to Aoth's relief, the Burning Braziers stood with him, perhaps because Urhur so plainly considered himself their superior as well. It gave the griffon rider the leeway to choose as he wanted to choose without unduly provoking the Red Wizards, or at least he hoped it did.

  "Much as I respect your opinions," he said to Urhur, "I think that this time we need to do it the hard way. We'll divide the company into squads who will search house to house. We need at least one necromancer or priest in every group, and we want the monks and Black Flame Zealots sticking close to the Burning Braziers in case a quell or something similar appears. Clear?"

  Apparently it was. Though after he turned away, he heard Urhur murmur to one of his fellows that it was a crime that a jumped-up little toad of a Rashemi should be permitted to risk Mulan lives merely to pursue a forlorn hope of rescuing others of his kind.

  The nature of the battle to come required fighting on the ground, and as the company advanced, Aoth and Brightwing strode side by side.

  "You should have punished Urhur Hahpet for his disrespect," the griffon said.

  "And wound up chained in a dungeon for my temerity," Aoth replied, "if not now, then when the campaign is over."

  "Not if you frightened him properly."

  "His specialty is manipulating the forces of undeath. How easily do you think he scares?"

  Still, maybe Brightwing was right. The Firelord knew, Aoth had never aspired to be a leader of men-he only needed good food, strong drink, women, magic, and flying to make him happy-and he still found it ironic that he'd ascended to a position of authority essentially by surviving a pair of military disasters. Contributing to a victory or two struck him as a far more legitimate qualification.

  Which was to say, he was certain of his competence as a griffon rider and battle mage but less so of his ability as a captain. Still, here he was, with no option but to try his best.

  "Maybe Urhur won't survive the battle," Brightwing said. "Maybe that would be better all around." It was one of those moments when the griffon revealed that, for all her augmented intelligence and immersion in the human world, she remained a beast of prey at heart.

  "No," Aoth said. "It would be too risky, and wasteful besides, to murder one of our most valuable allies when we still have a war to fight. Anyway, it wouldn't sit right with me."

  The griffon gave her wings a shake, a gesture denoting impatience. Her plumage rattled. "This squeamishness is why they never gave you a red robe."

  "And here I thought I was just too short."

  As the company neared the village, Aoth heard the flies buzzing over the carcasses in the corral, and the stink of spilled gore and decay grew thicker and fouler. The sound and smell clashed with the warmth and clear blue sky of a fine late-spring day, a day when lurking undead constituted a preposterous incongruity.

  It occurred to him that if he could only expose them to the light of the sun shining brightly overhead, they might not lurk for long. He pointed his spear at the barn he and his squad were approaching, a structure sufficiently large that it seemed likely two or more families had owned it in common.

  "Can you tear holes in the roof?"

  Brightwing didn't ask why. She was intelligent enough to comprehend and
might well have discerned the reason through their psychic link even if she weren't. "Yes." She unfurled her wings.

  He stepped away to give her room to flap them. "Just be careful."

  She screeched-derisively, he thought-and leaped into the air.

  Aoth led his remaining companions to the door. He started through then hesitated. Should a captain take the lead going into danger or send common and presumably more expendable warriors in ahead? After a moment's hesitation, he proceeded. He'd rather be thought reckless than timid.

  Inside, the mangled bodies of plow horses and goats lay where they'd dropped. The buzzing of the flies seemed louder and the stench more nauseating, as if the stale, hot, trapped air amplified them. Overhead, the roof cracked and crunched, and a first sunbeam stabbed down into the shadowy interior. Particles of dust floated in the light.

  For a moment, nothing stirred except the swarming flies and the drifting motes. Then a thing that had once been a man floundered up from underneath a pile of hay. Clutching a saw as if it hoped to use the tool as a makeshift sword, it shuffled forward.

  The zombie wore homespun peasant garb and showed little sign of decay, but no one who observed the glassy eyes and slack features could have mistaken it for a living thing. It made a wordless croaking sound, and its fellows reared up from their places of concealment.

  Aoth leveled his spear to thrust at any foe that came within reach and considered the spells he carried ready for the casting. Before he could select one, however, Chathi stepped to the front line. Not bothering with her torch, she simply glared at the zombies and rattled off an invocation to her god. Blue and yellow fire danced on her upper body, and Aoth stepped back from the sudden heat. All but one of the zombies burst into flame and burned to ash in an instant. His face contorted with rage and loathing, a soldier armed with a battle-axe confronted the one remaining, first sidestepping the clumsy stroke of a cudgel and lopping off the gray hand that gripped it then smashing the undead creatures skull.