“Agreed,” Rozloom said firmly. He struck a heroic pose, one meaty fist clasped over his heart. “I will stand guard here.”
With an amused smile, Raven nodded to the aperusa. A coward he undoubtedly was, but even if he were as brave as a dracon, he’d have to stay behind. Rozloom stood several inches above six feet and was prodigiously broad; she doubted he’d fit the tunnel ahead.
Rozloom forgotten, Raven turned her attention back to the tunnel. It sloped downhill at an alarming angle and rounded a sharp corner after a few feet. It was wide enough, but none too tall. Either the orcs on this world were a petite variety, or they’d stumbled upon the servant’s entrance, noted the disguised dragon.
She slipped into the tunnel, followed by the elves and gnome. Fortunately her elven body came equipped with night vision, so she was able to discern patterns of heat in the rock. There was little heat to be had anywhere on Armistice, but a faint red glow gradually increased as they made their way along the winding path.
Finally they came out on a walkway that overlooked a vast, natural cavern. Raven grabbed Gaston’s arm and pulled him down behind the cover of a large boulder, then she motioned for the others to do the same. Thus hidden, she turned her attention to the bizarre scene that sprawled out before them.
A large hot spring bubbled and gushed in the center of the chamber – that would account for the heat, Raven supposed, not counting the scattering of dung-fueled fires. Phosphorescent fungi grew along the base of the walls and lent a sickly green glow to the cavern. This light was augmented by a few oil lamps made from large mollusk shells. The lamps emitted more rancid smoke than light, but after the darkness of the tunnel the chamber seemed as bright as highsun.
Although the scenery was as dismal as any Raven had seen, more disturbing was the chamber’s occupants. The place was littered with goblinkin of every description. There were the squat, deeply furred bugbears the first elven party had mistaken for yeti, packs of tiny, pale gray kobolds, and slightly larger goblins. The orcs were the most grotesque mutation. Although they still had the tusks, wolflike ears, and upturned snouts common to orcs, centuries of living underground had compacted more orc into less space. They appeared to be no taller than five feet, and their barrellike chests and large arms brought to mind dwarven warriors. They had no fur, but their hides appeared to have thickened to an unnatural degree. All of the creatures ranged in color from pale gray to dirty white, and almost without exception they were unclothed. Most of the weapons Raven saw were crude mallets: carved stone lashed to a long bone with a length of dried sinew. A few orcs carried deeply pitted blades or axes-family heirlooms or war trophies, Raven supposed. Armistice was metal-poor and lacked fur-bearing animals, so the goblin races didn’t have much to work with. The “culture” that had evolved was squalid, brutal, and apparently chaotic.
But someone had brought order to it. After she watched for a while, Raven could make out certain patterns. Amid the chaos, the creatures went about tending their motley vessels in an inefficient but purposeful manner.
“Ships?” she asked in a whisper. “If this is their fishing fleet, I’ll put good odds on the fish.”
Om shook her tiny brown head. “Spelljammers. Working spelljammers.”
The first mate rounded on the gnome. “Impossible,” Gaston hissed.
In the longest speech any of the others had ever heard from her, the gnome insisted that the ships, despite their appearance, were spaceworthy and ready for flight. Om concluded her argument by pointing up. The others looked. Far overhead was an opening big enough to reveal all three moons. The cone-shaped cavern apparently was the interior of a long-dead volcano. Raven guessed that any ship in the motley fleet easily could make it through.
“I’ve seen enough,” Gaston announced. The others nodded, and they made their way out as quickly as possible, fighting both the steep incline and the punishing gravity force.
Rozloom was where they had left him, half-frozen and edgy. He claimed he’d seen nothing, which struck Raven as odd. She would have expected him to invent a battle with fearsome creatures, a story that cast him in the hero’s role. Dismissing the aperusa, she headed back toward the shore. She would have liked to stick around for a better look, but Gaston Willowmere was nearly turning himself inside out in his anxiety to return to the swan ship to report.
By the time they reached the longboat, Rozloom had regained his usual ebullient nature. As he rowed, he sang an obscene aperusa ditty in his deep bass voice, punctuating it with an occasional wink or leer. By the time they reached the swan ship, Raven was ready to throttle him.
Vallus received their news with alarm and insisted that they must send word of this development to elven high command as quickly as possible. The elves redoubled their efforts to repair the swan ship, but not for this reason alone.
The three moons of Armistice were almost in alignment.
*****
“Well, where is it?” snapped Grimnosh.
The bionoids of Clan Kir, now back in their elven forms, exchanged uncertain glances. They barely had docked their shrike ships aboard the Elfsbane when the scro general came striding into their midst, followed by his surly, gray-green adjutant. Wynlar, who usually dealt with the insectare and scro, had not yet arrived.
“Sir?” one of the bionoids ventured.
“The cloak!” thundered Grimnosh. He grabbed the bionoid who had spoken by the front of his shirt. “Where is Teldin Moore’s cloak?”
Another bionoid, a female warrior with the crooked nose and fierce amber eyes of a hawk, stepped forward and met the scro’s glare squarely. “I am Ronia, a lieutenant under Captain Wynlar. In his absence I will speak for the battle clan. We do not have the human or his cloak.”
Grimnosh’s lip curled into a disdaining sneer. He tossed aside the first bionoid and faced down the female warrior. “Teldin Moore was lost with the swan ship? That was careless, even for elf-spawned insects.”
Ronia’s amber eyes narrowed to slits at the deadly insult. “In a manner of speaking, he was lost, but carelessness had nothing to do with it.”
“Enough of these elven subtleties,” Grimnosh snarled. “Give your report, Lieutenant.”
The bionoid warrior was soldier enough to respond to a direct order, and she drew herself up to attention. “When we withdrew from the elven vessel, it was damaged but not destroyed. I do not know what course the swan ship took, but almost certainly the human was still aboard.”
“Withdrew? Against orders, you retreated?” Grimnosh echoed, his voice rising in a roar of rage and disbelief. In perfect Elvish he began to berate the group for their ineptitude and cowardice. By using the language of a race the bionoids both resembled and despised, he amplified his already scathing insults threefold.
At length Ronia could take no more. The Change came over her as she closed the distance between her and the general. In her insectoid form she loomed a good three feet over the ranting scro. One armored, spike-studded hand shot out toward the general’s throat, circling his massive neck and effectively cutting off his tirade. She easily hoisted the seven-foot scro so that his snout was inches away from her multifaceted eyes. The glowing crystal eye in the center of her forehead cast an angry red light on the scro’s pale hide, turning it a ghastly purplish blue as he struggled for air.
Two other bionoids quickly transformed into their monster forms and moved to hold back the general’s adjutant. The gray-green scro put up a token struggle, but he watched his superior’s distress with a manic gleam in his yellow eyes.
“You name us cowards, orc pig,” Ronia told Grimnosh coldly, “when even a kobold knows that a bionoid warrior never withdraws from a fight of his own accord. If any showed cowardice, it was your minion, K’tide. He called off the attack.”
Contemptuously, the monstrous insect tossed the scro to the ground, then folded her massive, armor-plated arms in a gesture of defiance.
For several moments Grimnosh dragged in long, ragged breaths, one white paw gin
gerly massaging his throat. When he rose to his feet, he had collected himself and his unnerving, urbane facade was firmly back in place. “You state your case forcibly, Lieutenant,” he managed to croak out. “Where is our green friend?”
“I don’t know. Several of the clan are missing as well.”
“What is that damnable insect up to?” Grimnosh muttered to himself. He turned to regard the bionoid who had attacked him, giving the audacious monster a lengthy appraisal. She would suffer for her actions later, but at the moment he had a use for her. “Tell me, Captain Ronia, how much longer before the orcs of Armistice are flight ready?”
“They’re ready now,” the bionoid responded warily. Her voice revealed her suspicion with both the question and the promotion. “They have been ready for some time.”
Grimnosh’s colorless eyes narrowed. “I beg your pardon?”
“Some twenty ships are ready, complete with functioning helms. Many more are near completion.”
The scro nodded slowly. “Yes, of course. Do you know the gate into the Armistice atmosphere? You do. Very well, Captain, you will take one shrike ship to the ice world and prepare the orc recruits for an immediate mission. The rest of you, prepare yourselves for battle. All of you, meet in my study at four bells to receive further assignments and tactics. Go now.”
The scro spun and stalked out of the bionoids’ quarters, silently berating himself as he went. He should have known better than to let K’tide out of his sight even for a moment. He should have squashed the insectare like the bug he was.
Grimnosh had no doubt about K’tide’s goal; the insectare was obsessed with the destruction of Lionheart. It had not escaped the scro’s attention that the klicklikak – the insectare’s hideous ship – was no longer aboard the dinotherium. K’tide apparently had taken a crack crew of bionoids with him, and where else would they go but Armistice? The klicklikak had been stripped for cargo, and K’tide and his crew easily could load a secondary marauder and its attendant priest in the hold. K’tide would then chase down the swan ship, use the bionoid warriors to overtake the elven crew, and use the swan ship and the elflike bionoids to smuggle the marauder into the elven base. Not a bad plan, Grimnosh admitted grudgingly, providing one was willing to go one step further.
So far Teldin Moore had escaped every attempt to relieve him of his cloak. The human and his elven allies could not stand against the force that he, Grimnosh, would bring against them. In battle the Elfsbane alone was more than a match for a swan ship. K’tide might have culled the bionoid force somewhat, but a dozen of the monsters still remained under Grimnosh’s banner as well as three shrike ships, and soon a fleet of orcs would complete his personal navy. To ensure victory, Grimnosh would direct the battle himself.
Once the Cloak of the First Pilot was in his possession, his first act would be to take revenge on the presumptuous K’tide. Grimnosh personally would peel the insectare’s exoskeleton away plate by plate, then have the creature slowly flayed to death with its own antennae. The scro’s fierce scowl relaxed under the soothing prospect of pleasures to come.
Once he had dealt with K’tide, he would borrow the traitor’s scheme to use the bionoids, the captured swan ship, and the Witchlight Marauder to bring down Lionheart. Grimnosh was a practical scro, and he saw no reason why the insectare’s plan should die when the spy master did.
Chapter Sixteen
When the first morning rays of sunlight touched the swan ship, they fell upon a frenzy of activity. Only two days remained until the three moons of Armistice would come fully into alignment. According to Vallus, this event occurred every twenty-eight local days, and at such times the planet was racked with earthquakes, volcanic activity, and violent high tides. Getting off Armistice as soon as possible absorbed every member of the crew.
To Teldin’s way of thinking, things couldn’t get much worse. Turbulent seas already were buffeting the swan ship, and rumblings could be heard not only from the shore, but deep in the seabed beneath them. Blizzards were almost a daily occurrence, many of them punctuated with bone-shaking thunder and lightning.
During one such storm, a random flash of lightning caught Teldin’s attention. As he watched, a long, insistent streak blazed above the snow-covered ground, touching down between the shoreline and the mountains. Teldin stood at the upper deck’s railing for a long time, squinting in the direction of the vanished light.
Something about the flash stirred his memory. As he thought it over, Teldin recognized the true nature of the light. When last he’d seen the night sky lit by such a streak, a spelljamming vessel had crashed on his farm and had begun the nightmare he now lived. Time slipped away, and for a moment Teldin was a bewildered farmer again, helplessly cradling a dying reigar woman in his arms.
Not again, Teldin vowed silently. It was not likely that he could do anything for the crew of the vessel, but he had to at least try. With a surge of resolve, Teldin strode off in search of his improbable ally: Raven Stormwalker.
He found the moon elf down on the main deck, in what remained of the storage area. She directed Chirp and Trivit’s efforts to patch the gaping hole in the roof where the ballista had crashed through. A group of elves disassembled the ballista according to Om’s terse instructions, preparing to take the weapon above to the upper deck to be remounted.
Although Teldin was gratified to see the work progressing so well, the bustle was not conducive to his mission. Teldin walked up to the moon elf and quietly spoke a few words to her. She nodded, and he slipped away to the cargo hold. Within moments Raven joined him, wearing the warmest clothes she could find aboard ship.
“What’s on your mind, Captain?”
Fleetingly, Teldin wondered at her use Of the title. Raven always called him that, with subtle but deliberate emphasis. Was she baiting him, or perhaps mocking his pretensions toward commanding the Spelljammer? He added it to the bottom of the list of questions he planned to ask her – if and when they got back from Rakhar.
“Can you shapechange?” he asked bluntly. When Raven quirked an inquiring eyebrow, he hastened to explain the ability his cloak gave him to change his appearance at will. Raven listened, a strange smile curving her lips and speculation glinting in her gold and silver eyes.
“That presents some interesting possibilities,” she said at last, more to herself than to Teldin. “Why do you ask?”
Teldin quickly told her about the fallen ship and his decision to investigate and, if possible, help survivors. “If we took the form of one of the native races, we’d be less likely to run into trouble,” he concluded.
“Unless someone speaks to you in Orcish,” she pointed out.
Teldin shrugged away her objection and gathered up a handful of his cloak. “It translates.”
“Hmmm. Handy garment to have, Captain.” She pulled the sapphire pendant from its hiding place beneath her jerkin. “This trinket has a different set of tricks, but shapechanging happens to be one of my hobbies,” she said in a wry tone. “As for changing into goblin form, that might best be done a safe distance from the swan ship. If it’s all the same to you, I’m in no mood to be fireballed by a bunch of elven wizards.”
Teldin conceded her point with an uncertain smile, and they worked together to drag a spare longboat from the cargo hold. A ballista was mounted at the bow of the lower level, and they lowered the longboat through the opening the weapon port provided. The longboat was painted a silvery white, making it deliberately conspicuous in wildspace but providing effective camouflage in the icy water. The boat was almost invisible in the churning waters, which tossed the small craft about as effortlessly as if it were a fisherman’s float.
For more than an hour, the pair struggled with the oars. Merely staying afloat was an accomplishment, but at the end of the hour they still were no more than an arrow’s shot from the swan ship.
“Time to change,” Teldin gasped out.
Raven nodded, brushing a frozen lock of hair out of her face and securing her oar in the
gunwale. “I’ve seen the creatures. I’ll go first.”
She closed her eyes. Immediately her outline blurred and her elven form was replaced by a nebulous gray haze. As Teldin watched, fascinated, the gray mist shifted and expanded, like a boat comes into focus as it emerges from a fog bank, so the details of her new features began to sharpen. The transformation was over in a matter of seconds, and Teldin recoiled instinctively from what Raven had become.
Beside him was a huge, vaguely humanoid creature covered with a dingy, whitish fur. Seated, the creature towered over Teldin, and its massive torso and thick arms gave mute testimony to its strength. Its shoulders were as wide as a broadsword, and its short, squat legs ended in the clawed feet of a bear. Indeed, much about the creature was bearlike. Its prominent snout had the distinctive pug shape of a bear, and its mouth was full of sharp, curved fangs. Its eyes were a pale, sickly green with blood-red pupils, and the tips of short, wedge-shaped ears protruded from the thatch of white hair that crowned its sloped forehead.
“Should I be glad I don’t have a mirror?” the creature asked in Raven’s wry voice. Teldin nodded dumbly, and her tusks glinted as she smiled at the dumbfounded man. “Your turn, and hurry. I’m heavier than you now, and the boat’s listing my way something awful. I don’t fancy trying to swim in this fur coat.”
Teldin stared intently at Raven, taking in the details of her new face and form. He closed his eyes and conjured a mental image of himself, replacing it in his mind with a replica of the creature beside him. He knew the transformation was complete when he heard long, ripping sounds, followed by a woman’s laugh. Belatedly he remembered his clothing. He cracked one eye open and looked down. His fine, elf-crafted garments were not equal to the transformation and they hung about his massive new body in ribbons.
Raven shook her shaggy white head. “Don’t think ahead much, do you?” she said with a chuckle. “Might as well toss those rags, Captain, though you’ll raise some eyebrows when you change back to human form.”
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