by Dave Gross
By my reckoning, our predicament constituted the twenty-third time Radovan had been obliged to delay an attacker while I withdrew from the field. In my memory library, I left a mental note to add an extra purse of gold to our next accounting.
More imminently, I intended to repay Radovan’s courage by ensuring his efforts were not in vain. If I could reach the scrolls in my satchel, I would awe the bandits with a mighty spell.
Our bearers were in full rout, their once-stubborn pack animals now perversely eager to follow their handlers. They carried off all of the expedition’s supplies, the bulk of our money, and the remaining healing potions we would require in the unlikely event that we should survive the attack.
The guards had been the first to flee, kicking their horses into a gallop moments before we spotted the bandits brandishing their eponymous falcon-head swords—flared and hooked things somewhere between falchions and machetes. Collusion between our men and the robbers was now all but certain. I regretted my failure to heed my initial suspicions about the port functionary who recommended them. In the future, I would insist that Radovan personally select our guards.
The treachery was only the latest in a series of disheartening misadventures.
What began as a mission to collect the husk of a celestial pearl from an agent in Minkai became a full-blown expedition across Tian Xia. No land in all of Golarion lay farther from Absalom and the headquarters of the Pathfinder Society, the august community of explorers and scholars to which I belong. Yet while my masked superiors in the Decemvirate arranged for a conjurer to teleport us instantaneously to Minkai, upon arriving we found the provider of our return transport murdered and the object of our mission stolen. Rather than return empty-handed, we secured sea transport to mainland Tian Xia and marched across half of the Successor States to entreat the King of Quain for an identical husk from his royal vault.
I spied my satchel under the arm of a bearer mounted on my steed.
“Halt!”
The man replied with an insolent smile. His irregular teeth resembled stained wooden pegs.
“Come back here this instant!”
He slapped the reins and vanished over the next hill. With him went all of my personal belongings, including my precious spellbook. If only I had kept all of my riffle scrolls on my person, I should have reduced him to cinders, horse and all.
Arnisant butted my hip, urging me to continue our inglorious retreat. He had already dispatched two of our attackers, but his instinct was that of a guardian, not a berserker.
As we crested the next hill, I dared a glance back. There stood Radovan bristling with fiery arrows. In an instant he became an inferno. I held my breath in anticipation of the metamorphosis. In a flicker of flames, it was done.
Seven feet tall and covered with long bony spurs at every joint, Radovan’s infernal form resembled the nightmare of a shiver addict. Steely coils roiled beneath his copper skin, which now flowed across him as if turned to molten metal. Even in his original form, Radovan’s teeth were the stuff of street legend in our home city of Egorian. After the change they resembled a mound of shattered blades left by a retreating army.
While many of Radovan’s devilish qualities were the product of his unfortunate parentage, these new fiendish transformations were something else entirely, and began during our investigation into a diabolic cult. Unfortunately, I was not witness to the first incident and had observed others only during the distraction of combat. If only Radovan had acceded to a few experiments under controlled conditions, through research and consultation I might have guided him into a fuller understanding of his condition.
Always it was a great conflagration that triggered the change. From my extemporaneous observations, I knew that Radovan’s usual resistance to fire was greatly enhanced in his present state, so he was in no danger of incineration. His strength increased in proportion to his size, and conversely his temper shrank.
I was happy not to count myself among the brigands.
The whinny of my stolen mount captured my attention. Two hills away, the horse reared up in defiance of its untutored rider. Alas, it did not manage to shake the wretch from the saddle. I pointed at the thief.
“Arnisant, fetch!”
The loyal wolfhound streaked forward, and I ran after him. Briefly I regretted not having prepared a second scroll to summon a magical steed. The one I had cast earlier for Radovan, who could not approach a natural horse without causing a fracas, had already expired. While I could not ride the fiery red mount I had conjured for him, it might have at least allowed him to escape after securing my retreat.
Arnisant closed in on the thief. Whether in fear of the massive hound or from a misguided obedience to its usurper, the horse bolted. By the time I crested the third hill, it was clear that even Arnisant could never catch up. I whistled to call him back to my side.
Back at the site of the ambush, Radovan faced our attackers alone. There could be no question of his loyalty, and I more than half suspected he would fight to the bitter end to buy my escape. Were he simply a hireling, I should have left him to his duty. Yet over the years and especially in recent months, he had become more than a servant to me. I would not allow him to sacrifice himself.
With Arnisant at my side, I sped back to the fight.
Expecting a scene of carnage, I was dumbfounded to find only a number of abandoned bows and a single corpse clutching the empty frame of a Tian war banner. Near the crest of the hill on which we first made our stand, an immense heat had scorched a circle into the grass. Nowhere could I see Radovan.
Our attackers, however, soon returned.
They held their swords at the ready, wary of the spells they had seen me unleash. I felt my belt for any scroll I had overlooked earlier, but of course my tally was correct. None remained.
“Seize him,” commanded their chief. He was tall and becoming, apart from the scar that drew an arc from his left eye to the edge of his lip. His wavering tone told me that something had shaken his confidence, and I knew what that must be.
Radovan yet lived.
There was no way this man and his minions could have defeated my bodyguard in his infernal state. While I did not know where Radovan had gone, I had only to delay the brigands long enough for him to return and rescue me.
The first brigand to approach shouted as Arnisant intercepted him. Seconds later, the man shrieked as he saw his severed fingers in the wolfhound’s jaws.
“Kill the dog,” said the chief. The bandits lifted their bows.
“Arnisant,” I said in Taldane. “Fetch Radovan.”
The hound never hesitated. He was a pewter-colored blur following Radovan’s invisible scent trail, out of range before the first of our foes could shoot an arrow.
“You have defeated me, gallant sir,” I said, addressing the bandit chief in his native tongue. I bowed and offered the chief my sword in the local fashion. “My family will pay a handsome bounty for my safe return.”
The bandit tilted his head, an expression I had seen more than a few times in recent weeks. The Tian did not expect to hear their language spoken by an outlander, especially one so obviously half-human. He waited until one of his men snatched the blade from my hands—a wise if rude precaution—before approaching to feel the embroidered fabric of my coat. I bristled at his unseemly gesture. This prince of bandits was taller than the average Tian, only three inches shorter than I, and of a deep copper complexion that would have caused my fellow Chelaxians to wonder whether he, like Radovan, had a touch of infernal blood. He nodded, perhaps judging by the richness of my attire that I could easily compensate him for the lives he had spent capturing me.
Without warning, he kicked me in the chest, knocking me to the ground.
“Take his clothes,” he ordered his men. He tugged loose the scarlet kerchief at his throat. “I want them.”
My companion was a sweaty peasant named Mon Choi. He explained that he had been taken the previous day by the notorious Falcon-Head Sword Gang, who prowled the nearby hills in hopes of kidnapping pilgrims to the famous Dragon Temple.
Mon Choi was one such hopeful, or had been one until his capture. Now the brawny farmer expected to live a short life in servitude. In other circumstances, his tale might have provided an interesting footnote in my next dispatch to the Pathfinder Society, but I was barely listening to him. At any moment, I knew, Arnisant would return with Radovan.
The worst indignity of the march was enduring the torment of wearing the bandit chief’s garments. Not only were they coarse and damp, but I was more than half certain they harbored a colony of lice. My skin crawled so much that I could not know whether it was in my imagination or upon my flesh that a hundred tiny mandibles gnawed.
The bandit chief luxuriated in my fine Chelish garments, although to me he appeared no nobler than an orc swathed in velvet. He had even taken my jewelry, although he lacked the intellect to appreciate the magical powers inherent in the rings and medallion.
How I loathed this lowborn brigand who failed to perceive the value of treating a noble captive with courtesy. While they live half a world away, the customs of the Tian people are not so alien from those of my native Cheliax that I would accept any apology for his monstrous behavior. Once Radovan arrived, I would see the bandits beg for the forgiveness that I was in no vein to grant.
From the back of the column, a man screamed. I turned, already smiling in anticipation of rescue. Yet it was not Radovan who had caused the alarm.
A huge white shape soared over a low hill above the road, leaving a trail of blood on the spring grass.
“The white tiger!” A terrified brigand stood alone where his companion had vanished.
The bandits panicked as deep growls sounded from the cover of the nearby woods. I discerned at least three separate sources of the menacing rumbles from both above the trail and below.
“Slay the captives!” shouted their leader.
To his credit, there was more decisiveness than fear in his voice. Despite its imminent threat to me, I admired the logic of his order. If his men were to leave fresh corpses as tribute to the beasts, they might buy time to escape.
“Watch out!” shouted Mon Choi. He pushed me aside and raised his hands to catch the sword our nearest captor slashed at my head. He caught the blade on the leather straps that bound his manacles together. Wrapping the straps around the blade’s hook so that the bandit couldn’t withdraw, he sawed his bonds back and forth, freeing his hands.
I hesitated, astonished by my companion’s prowess. Of course a temple aspirant would need a modicum of martial skill, but I had mistaken Mon Choi for a bumpkin with more ambition than ability. For my part, I stamped on the bandit’s insole, causing him to hop, curse, and release his sword. Mon Choi caught the grip of the blade and brandished it at the bandit, who needed no further incentive to flee.
“Your hands,” said Mon Choi. I raised my manacles, and he cut the thick leather thongs.
More screams heralded the arrival of two more of the gargantuan feline predators. While they did indeed resemble white tigers, they were the size of draft horses. Their ice-blue eyes glittered with pitiless hunger. One had already pinned a pair of bandits under its enormous paws. Blood from the first man’s opened chest dripped from the big cat’s whiskers, while the terrified screams of the other man rose above the cacophony as the beast tore out his vitals.
“Run.” I demonstrated my meaning.
“We cannot outrun the tigers!”
“We need not outrun the beasts.” It was time to employ my enemy’s stratagem. “We need only outrun as many men as it takes to fill their bellies.”
“You are wise, foreigner,” said Mon Choi, passing me within twenty strides.
Just as I began to fear he would leave me behind, an arrow struck him in the calf. Mon Choi tumbled to the ground. I looked back and saw the bandit chief drawing another arrow from his quiver.
I ran to Mon Choi. Half of the arrow shaft protruded from either side of his leg.
“Go, brother,” he said, clutching my garment. “I am dead!”
Gripping the fletching side of the arrow, I broke it short. Mon Choi screamed.
“The dead feel no pain,” I told him. “Thus, you live.”
Mon Choi gaped at something behind me. I turned to see the bandit chief striding toward us, aiming his arrow directly at my face.
“It will not be I who—” said the brigand. Before he could unleash his arrow, one of the enormous tigers fell upon him. He vanished like a mouse beneath an alley cat.
Mon Choi emitted a shriek at the sight of the butchery behind me. I took the opportunity to pull the arrowhead-side of the shaft through his leg, altering the tenor of his scream. He glared in indignation until he realized the favor I had done him, whereupon his expression dissolved into an unbearable epitome of gratitude. I tore the sleeve from his shirt and tied it around the wound.
“Thank you, brother.” His tone of sincerity was most cloying. I nodded away his thanks, not to mention his inappropriate address to a count of Cheliax. I helped him stand, and we hobbled away together.
“This way.” He pointed up the western slope.
Lacking better knowledge of the locale, I obeyed his advice. At the top of the hill, Mon Choi pointed to the mountain rising to the west.
Halfway between the mountain’s foot and its summit rested a walled compound the size of a small town. Over centuries, its stone walls had absorbed the green hue of the moss that spread like liver spots upon its surface. The compound was shaped like a great wheel with four spokes, its quarters sectioned off by interior walls and climbing the steep slope in a series of terraces. Prominent among its many clustered buildings was a stone temple in the classic Tian style. From any greater distance, the signs of human labor would have been invisible, so seamlessly did the structure merge with the existing topography and foliage. Through the plentiful trees within the walls, however, I spied the hint of many other buildings.
“Dragon Temple,” said Mon Choi. “Those who enter its gates are safe from all beasts and spirits.”
“What of brigands?”
We staggered to the crest of the next hill before I dared to glance back. There was little left of the brigands or their other captives. A few other fortunate men had escaped the slaughter, but one or another periodically attracted the attention of one of the tremendous tigers. One of the great beasts turned its massive head toward us.
We fled with as much celerity as three good legs could muster.
“There!” shouted Mon Choi. Four hundred yards away, a procession passed beneath the first of four gates leading up the road to Dragon Temple.
The gate was a freestanding archway with three tiers of tiled roofs. Huge statues flanked it. One was a stone representation of a foo-lion, those grotesque brutes that appear at once feline and canine. The other was a bronze depiction of the fabulous stag-lizard creature known in Tian Xia as a qilin.
Regardless of my curiosity about such details, the nature of the statues would not aid our escape. My heart sank as I noted no walls attached to any of the first three gates, nor any guards outside the central compound nearly a quarter of a mile away. There was nothing to prevent the tigers from chasing us down and devouring us.
Nothing but our own legs and determination.
We hastened down the first slope, narrowly avoiding a tumble
as we crossed a game trail where bloodstained earth and a scattering of bones suggested that we remained in the tigers’ territory. Mon Choi gripped my arm as a growl thundered behind us.
“Hurry!”
The guards of the procession turned at the sound of the tiger. There were twenty men, each bearing a spear with a thick red tassel beneath the blade. They flanked a sextet of muscular porters bearing a covered palanquin. At the head of the procession rode a robed figure of such fair complexion and hair that he might have been an albino or a ghost. Even from such a distance, his air of command was unmistakable. He snapped open a fan and closed it again before pointing it toward the gate. The gesture was an order, for the bearers and guards turned toward the next gate and marched double time, leaving us to fend for ourselves.
Mon Choi cried out for help, but it was to no avail. Any of my peers in Cheliax would have done precisely the same upon seeing a pair of peasants fleeing a dangerous animal, especially when escorting a precious passenger.
We ran. The tiger pursued. The earth shuddered at its every bound.
We made it halfway to the gate before Mon Choi stumbled, taking me down with him. My ankle twisted as we hit the earth.
The great tiger flew inches over our heads and slid down the rocky slope beneath the trail.
We scrambled to our feet, gasping at every agonizing movement. We resumed our retreat as the tiger bounded up toward us. At first it slid upon the loose stones, but its scythelike claws dug into the soil. In two leaps, it closed half the distance.
My ankle gave out, sending a bolt of agony through my leg. I fell.
Before I could voice a cry for help, Mon Choi lifted me over his shoulder like a sack of grain. Screaming at the pain of his own wound, he dashed through the gate and collapsed.
Outside, the tiger unleashed a defiant roar. It directed its attention not at us but rather at the guardian statues. The tiger glared at their impassive stone faces. The standoff reminded me of the samurai of Minkai, the island nation we had visited before landing on the shores of Tian Xia.