by Jeff Grubb
The Castellan frowned and moved to another case, shoving aside, in his quest for the correct bottle, containers filled with last essences of sinners, murderers, and government bureaucrats.
"I would be lying," smiled the Abbot of Misrule, "if thex results of Toede's failure were not pleasing to me. Yet another small metropolis spun into disorder through the greed of a few. But you should be pleased as well." He motioned to the shelf, where a new bottle, shining like ancient coins, glistened, its draconian captive howling in eternal green flames. "One more addition to the collection." He smirked.
The Castellan of the Condemned just harrumphed. "The problem…" he began and stopped. 'The problem is we were unclear about the initial edict. 'Live nobly' we instructed. Apparently that was too vague for our subject. Note that he quickly transposed it from an order or directive to a promise or assurance, that if he returned to his old sinecure, all would be set aright and he would be granted all that he desired. He expected to be treated as a noble soul, and as such did nothing to help make that happen."
"I sense you are trying to weasel out of your bet," said the Abbot.
"This isn't about the bet," lied his portly companion. "It's about an interesting experiment. We gave flawed instructions and in turn gained flawed results. What do mortals do when confronted with a failure?"
"Retire to the local inn and get blotto," said the taller one. "Speaking of which, have you found that saint's blood yet?"
"No," said the Castellan, correcting his companion's response (though not his request, for he produced a small flask carved from a single ruby). "Humans pick themselves up and try again."
"You're dinking of domes," muttered the Abbot, with the stopper in his teeth. He spat it out and repeated. "You're thinking of gnomes. Humans prefer to get blotto after a failure, whether it's a lost battle or a dead calf."
The Castellan would not be swayed. "Similarly," he said, "we can assume that our mortal agent would learn from previous experience, and, with more precise orders, demonstrate whether nobility is possible in his hardened little heart."
"I don't think I care for where this discussion is leading," muttered the Abbot, leaning back against a red-hot wall.
"I'd like to run this experiment one more time," said the Castellan.
"I have no interest in risking my earnings against some additional scheme," interjected the taller abishai.
"Double or nothing on the bet," said the Castellan quickly.
The taller abishai licked his lips at the prospect, and at length lifted his goblet in a toast to the smaller creature. "Perhaps your argument has merit after all, particularly at double or nothing. When do we start?"
Chapter 10
In which Our Protagonist is returned again to the land of the living and is made to realize he has a higher calling whether he likes it or not. Further, he learns that no act of kindness is without both vested interest and inherent punishment.
Toede awoke with a queasy feeling, a sour ache in the pit of his stomach. Digestive problems, something going down the wrong way.
No. The something going down the wrong way was him, going down the gullet of Hopsloth. Had it all been a dream, or…?
He looked at himself, still dressed in the sturdy gray trousers, shirt, and brocaded vest that he had battled Gildentongue in. A little combat-scarred, but none the worse for wear. Certainly his clothes did not look like he had taken a trip through the digestive system of a dragon-spawned abomination.
The battle with Gildentongue was not a dream, however, nor was the confrontation with Hopsloth. They were slices of reality, carved off and sent spinning into the void. He had died, again, Toede mused, and scowled at the thought, in the hopes it would retreat meekly from his mind. He had died twice now, with dragons and their kin responsible for both deaths. And something or someone had brought him back each time.
Something throbbed red and painful in his mind, and he closed his eyes to think about it. Something that happened after he had been pulled into the maw of the holy Water Prophet, but before waking up here. It was like catching the tattered remnants of a dream, but all at once it came into sharp and singular focus.
He had been on some otherworldly, metaphysical plane. Those godly figures were back, towering brutes of great power, the same who told him earlier that he was to be granted nobility. The figures seemed displeased with his actions, particularly the wider figure who seemed wider than the widest ocean. Their voices boomed like thunder, rattling him from forehead to heels.
This time they had not promised anything. They had told Toede only to "live nobly," not that he would become a nobleman. His mission was to live in as noble a manner as possible, said the other one, who was taller than the tallest mountain.
Then he awoke, the metaphysical door hitting his backside on the way out. Toede wondered if this was what it was like to be a priest, with one's deity always nosing about and making damnable orders.
Also, he wondered how one was to live nobly if one was not a noble already-unless one acted as a do-gooder like the Solamnic Knights and that breed? Toede assumed that people like that were born with silver short swords in their mouths.
Toede opened his eyes. He was back on the banks of the stream, the same stream where he had awakened earlier, beneath the same maple as before. Spring and high summer had passed in his absence, and now the scenery was a brilliant shade of yellow. The first leaves were drifting down in the breeze and settling on his prostrate form.
Toede squinted, looking at the brilliantly garbed tree and wondering if it had been created specifically to bother him. Perhaps next time they would send him back with an axe to take care of such beauteous offenses.
No. He almost forgot. Noble people did not threaten trees just because they did not care for their looks. He reached out and patted the trunk. "Nice tree," he said aloud, feeling immediately foolish. For all he knew, noble-acting people felt foolish all the time.
There was an excited chittering overhead, and Toede looked up to see a squirrel, bushy-tailed and red-gray, taunting him from an upper branch. Again, his first thought was to grab a stone and put the little rural rodent out its misery, but he caught himself. "Hello, Master Squirrel. Sorry to disturb you," he said, pointing at the squirrel with two fingers, imagining them in his mind to be a crossbow aimed at the creature's heart.
The squirrel chattered for a few more moments, then fled, obviously perplexed. Anyone who might have been able to talk to this squirrel in the next two months would have heard a story about how the squirrel saw a drunken hobgoblin appear out of nowhere and speak sweetly to the trees and flowers. Fortunately for Toede's reputation, no one did query the squirrel in this manner, and after two months the squirrel's memory had returned to more important facts, like remembering where all its nut-caches had been stored.
Toede stood, rocked on his unsteady heels, and stumbled to the shore. He splashed water on his face. Again his stomach rebelled. He knelt over the stream but could manage nothing more than dry heaves. Just as well. There was no way (at least no way that Toede knew of) to vomit in a noble fashion.
Toede sat on the shore for the longest time, trying to determine his next move. He was probably a wanted man in Flotsam by whatever government had replaced Gilden-tongue's bogus faith. And he couldn't stay where he was. There were kender in the hills.
He toyed with the idea of retreating from it all, much like Groag, being nothing more than a servile slave to a beneficent master. Groag seemed to have matured in the process. Adaptive, that's what he had said. On reflection, Toede would have called it imitative. Aping the mannerisms of his superiors. Still, it had proven a sure survival trait.
Toede shook his head. Poor Groag, nothing but smoked hobgoblin on a stick, now.
Toede took stock. Whatever had returned him to life had not thought to send any food, supplies, or weapons along with him. A most inconvenient oversight on their part, particularly with kender stalking the woods.
The thought of kender made Toede un
easy. True, they'd taken in Groag as a slave and tried to rehabilitate him, but Groag didn't smash a kender guard in the face and try to drown Kronin's dippy daughter. They might not be very happy to see Toede, and after all, he was weaponless.
The lack of weapons also mitigated against an immediate return to Flotsam. Without knowing who was running things, it would be a safe bet that the new powers-that-be would be as unwilling to hand the throne to Toede as Gildentongue. Without a small army backing him up, Toede was unlikely to get past the gates.
In the end the wisest choice was to put distance between himself and Flotsam and stay away from the kender as well. Move somewhere else, somewhere near Balifor, where one's past could be safely forgotten, or even back to Solace. Surely, no one was left alive there who might remember him. If, in the course of his travels, he happened to encounter a band of hobgoblins of the old-style, whom he could razzle-dazzle and convince to capture a city, well, then, what harm would there be? It would even be a noble thing, almost, bringing his people out of savagery and into a better world.
More cheerfully, Toede started on a trail along the creek, careful to keep his thoughts sufficiently intact to avoid any spills and watching for the beginning of the swamp.
Move far away, that was the right idea, reflected Toede. Perhaps even enter into some holy order or another, like the Solamnic Knights or the Tower of High Sorcery. Learn, relax, gather one's strength, then take over some small town or hamlet in the name of goodness. That would give him a chance to flaunt his nobility, or at least enough nobility to keep his shadowy masters happy.
Perhaps a lordship would come in time, he mused, for humans were always singling out those of their number who acted in a noble or selfless fashion, and providing all manner of rewards to them. Perhaps individuals would come from miles around to listen to Toede's wisdom and to seek his advice, for a noble being would undoubtedly be considered wise.
Lord Toede the Wise. Saint Toede the Protector. Toede, Master of All Noble-Splash!
Toede had found the edge of the swamp again, in his customary fashion. Unmiring himself, he noted that the cattails began in earnest another hundred feet away. To the left, the rising hills led to the kender encampment- not the best group of people to be around at the moment.
So Toede, finding a spot to cross the stream, turned right this time. The land was flatter on the far side of the creek and rose only slightly to a low series of hillocks and ridges, dotted by russet maples and divided by other small streams feeding the swamp. A couple times Toede had to double back as the ground ahead became marshy and impassible.
The journey was harder than Toede had expected, and the exertion began to wear on him. His thighs complained brutally. Add to that the regular complaints his empty stomach now made, and Lord Toede was soon thinking less of a sainted position in the annals of men than of a soft bed and hot gooseflesh suspended over a fire. Indeed, his last rest had been in the cottage before reaching Flotsam, and his last "meal" that foul-tasting concoction that cured his shattered shoulder.
Reflexively he touched the once-wounded shoulder. While the flesh was still puckered in a small scar where the bolt hadWruck him, he was otherwise uninjured. Indeed, it was the only part of his body that was not complaining of the unjust strain being placed on it.
Toede could scavenge as well as the best of his kind, but the bogs seemed to be notably free of any edible wildlife beyond a few worms and squidge-beetles that scurried away from overturned rocks. He considered them for a few moments, then moved on. He recognized some raspberry bushes, but they had already turned a grayish tan and were festooned with dead leaves. So much for previous experience coming in handy.
Finally, after the third small hillock and the third marsh directly behind it, Toede flung himself on a relatively dry patch of ground and surrendered to exhaustion. The squidge-beetles were starting to look good. He toyed for a moment with the idea of starving himself to death, imagining himself appearing before the two spirits as big as seas and mountains and (rightfully) claiming that he had done no harm to anyone during his last sojourn on Ansa-lon, so what could be more noble than that?
Toede's stomach replied with a low whine. The hobgoblin patted it with a fleshy hand. "Beetles it is, then," he muttered.
Then he heard another whine, one that did not come from any part of his own pain-wracked anatomy.
Toede cocked his head. It was there to his right, down the hillock's slope, issuing from a particularly brushy-looking patch of marsh. It was a sharp repetition of high-pitched squeals. Some sort of animal in pain.
Toede's mind immediately leaped to the thought of some giant suckling pig whose entire purpose in life was to wander into this dismal swamp and into some dire predicament. Say, perhaps, into the jaws of a trap laid several months ago by a forgetful kender poacher, a trap baited with pig-attracting turnips. And now, on its last legs, said hog was crying for someone, anyone, to put it out of its misery.
Toede set off in the direction of the whining, ignoring the reflection that if he always expected the best, he would without a doubt always be disappointed. As it was, Toede was bound to be disappointed, first because it took a short while to locate the source of the sound, and second by the nature of the sound itself.
It was a dog, or something that looked like a dog, mired in the bog. The poor creature was trapped in the viscous and unavoidable draw of an oily patch of quickmud. The swamp was full of such patches, Toede imagined, where the water contained enough dirt and other debris to look like solid ground, yet was slippery enough to become a mini-quagmire.
The dog-thing was trapped, its gold-yellow head and muzzle straining to remain above the water line. Mud caked its fur up to the jawline, and Toede could see that it was in the last throes of its struggle. The dog looked like one of the kender's mastiffs, with a few exceptions accountable to differences in breed. The nose was more pointed, like that of a weasel. The ears, set farther back on the head, were triangular and upright. The neck (what was showing) was significantly muscular and hunched.
And the look in its eyes was the dumbest-dog-look Toede had ever seen, exceeding even the stupidest of his hunting hounds. The eyes regarded Toede with a look halfway between pleading (please get me out), unadulterated hatred (how dare you not drown with me), and mild pleasure (did you bring any food?). Even as it regarded him, the pathetic dog-thing ceased to struggle, and sank a half inch farther into the muck.
Toede cursed. Not because of the cruelty of fate that apparently led the animal to its near demise. And not because Toede expected better food on the hoof.
Toede cursed because the creature was about fifteen feet out in a nearly circular pond of mud. Here was dinner, almost dead and ready to be served up, and it was out of his reach!
The mud-hole was surrounded by willows and other bushy trees, a few of which had sufficient overhang for a normal male hobgoblin to reach the animal. Unfortunately, Toede was much less than a normal male (in the height department, at least) and would still be unable to reach and grasp, much less haul up, a struggling animal.
Toede wracked his brains while the dog whined at him. "I'm thinking," he snarled, as if the dog would immediately understand and die quietly rather than disturb him. The dog whined again.
"Simple. Got it," said Toede. "Don't go away," he told the dog, "I'll be right back." And Toede set off for higher, drier ground, returning a minute later with two pieces of wood, one a long, misshapened pole about five feet in length, the other a truncated club. He put the club next to the base of one of the younger willows and, holding the pole in one stubby mitt, began to shimmy up the sapling.
The willow bent as he ascended, a little at first, then more and more until its trunk was running parallel to the surface of the mud. Toede was prepared to abandon his plan at the first sound of the tree cracking, but he had chosen well, for the sapling was supple enough to bend, but strong enough to hold his weight easily.
As he climbed, Toede talked to the dog in the same manner as
he talked to his own hounds when coaxing them out of their dens for another hunt. "Okay, boy"-all dogs were "boy" to Toede, unless proved otherwise by bearing puppies-"I'm going to climb up here and steady myself. Then I'm going to take the pole, and you're going to take it with your mouth. Bite it. Then I'm going to drag you back to shore. Okay?" Toede silently added: And then I'm going to bash your skull in before you regain your strength. Part of his brain was already thinking of dog carcass roasting on an open fire.
Throughout all this the dog remained inert, no longer struggling and sinking. The creature's lower muzzle was only an inch above the muddy water, and it no longer whined, or for that matter, growled. It continued to regard Toede pathetically with its dumb-dog looks.
"Okay, I'm steady now," said Toede, locking his legs around the bending bole of the tree. "Now you're going to bite the stick. Bite the stick, boy. Come on, bite it." He whistled at the creature and clicked his tongue.
It was then that the dog did a very undoglike thing. A huge, muscular arm, its fur caked in muck, rose from the water by the creature's head and grasped firmly on Toede's stick, pulling hard on the makeshift pole Toede had lowered.
Toede panicked and immediately dropped the pole, trying to shimmy back down the willow sapling without unlocking his legs. But even as he dropped the pole, the giant undoglike creature reached out and grabbed a nearby branch of the Toede-bent willow, and slowly began hauling itself out of the water, moving hand-overhand toward the shore.
Toede shimmied backward even faster, in the process reducing the weight on the willow and helping the creature emerge that much faster. The doglike head and huge neck were mounted on a great humanoid body, with a broad, muscular chest. Its arms were each the diameter of Toede's paunch and another half-Toede for good measure. Toede's mind raced to think of creatures that matched its unusual appearance.
Gnoll. The undoglike dog was not a dog but a gnoll. Toede's mind reviewed what he knew of the hyena-headed humanoids, noted for their low intelligence, nasty dispositions, and voracious appetites. Toede's mind wondered, How could anyone be so stupid as to think this was a dog? Toede's mind looked shamefully at his feet.