by Paul Kidd
Monsters lurked outside the eastern gate. As civilians from the city fled, Lolth's hidden troops rose from the muck. Bugbears led by massive trolls hammered into packed masses of refugees, forcing their captives up against the city walls. Drow officers stopped the slaughter, and the lesser monsters all obeyed. The city itself was in flames, and varrangoin, gargoyles, and other nightmarish shapes swooped through the smoke. The Justicar watched for a few moments as Keggle Bend was obliterated, then he withdrew into the reeds.
This far bank of the river was deserted. Jus slithered belly first out of the mud and lay gasping, wiping his face. His leg stung and throbbed where the chain had hit his boot, and his muscles were still stiff with electric shock from Tielle's lightning bolt. Rolling over, the Justicar pulled out the portable hole and opened it wide, dropping it onto a level patch of mud. Half-drowned and gasping, Henry and Polk struggled out of the hole. Polk coughed the sewer water from his snout.
"Son! Son, are we out?"
"We're out." The Justicar lay back and fought for breath, his huge chest heaving. "We're safe."
"Well don't just lie there, son. Our enemies can track us! Crystal ball, son-that's magic!" Polk shook out his fur. "You have to get moving, boy. Get some distance. We'll stay in here and tend to the injured. You get running. And run fast!"
Rolling onto his side, the Justicar blinked. "Crystal ball?" He groped, and Henry handed him Benelux. "What… what stops a crystal ball?"
"You'll find a way, son. I have faith in you. I've taught you everything I know." Polk turned and muttered loudly into Henry's ear. "Wants me to molly-coddle him all the way. Boy's scared to stand on his own two feet!"
Cinders was handed up out of the portable hole, looking muddy and sadly bedraggled. He saw Jus and gave a wag of his droopy tail.
Hi.
"Hey."
Bad day. Cinders want fetch stick game, then bed.
"I'll see what I can do."
Managing to sit, Jus drew the bedraggled hell hound over his back and tied him into place over his helm. Staying flat, the Justicar folded up the portable hole and stuck it through his belt, then slithered backward through the mud, dragging his sword behind him.
Benelux seethed with indignation. My scabbard is smothered in mud!
"It isn't just mud."
Pushing carefully backward, Jus kept belts of reeds between himself and the city. He was watching for flying monsters, but Lolth's air armada was flocking to devour meaty fragments on the city walls. He made his way back through flooded weeds and grass until he reached an eroded mud brick wall. Hidden from immediate sight, he took a swift look for signs of pursuit from the river, then paused to scan the city.
Carnage was everywhere. People were being thrown from the walls or tossed like rags by the monstrous hordes at the gates, but the survivors were being systematically herded into mobs by the servants of Lolth. A scatter of slaughtered bodies were left behind as the terrorized citizens were driven like sheep. Savagely angry, embittered and helpless, the Justicar could do nothing but withdraw.
Outside the eastern gate, five hundred prisoners had been dragged into a huge circle two hundred yards across. While drow priests drew magic symbols in human blood, monsters killed the prisoners and strung their body parts into the titanic glyph. The circle flashed with power, turning brilliant white.…
And a vast bronze spider leg crept into view.
The magic circle now formed the base of a shimmering dome-a vast gateway into the Abyss. The gate looked into a place where the ground itself was formed from screaming souls, and where the air rang eternally with screams. From this nightmare heaved a spider shape so huge that it made trolls and ogres scatter like mice.
It was a machine-a palace made from a sickly bronze-green metal. It stood on eight vast legs, with countless windows sparkling like malevolent eyes. A hundred feet tall-the ground shuddered as it walked. Great fangs made of black steel arched above the armies of the damned.
With a hiss and roar, the spider palace trundled forward step by thunderous step, then halted beside the city walls. Its head hunted back and forth like a beast scenting prey. In the fields below, the drow, spiders, trolls, and troglodytes shook blood-spattered weapons and screamed in acclaim.
A door opened in the side of the palace. The vast metal spider sank down slowly, a staircase extending like an obscene tongue from between its jaws. As the palace settled into place with a deafening clang of brass, a small black figure emerged in the doorway.
She was perfect-lean, skin black as midnight and with silk-white hair so long that it trailed on the ground. Clad only in jewels, the apparition spread a pall of nightmare about herself. Lolth, Queen of Spiders, Mistress of the Drow, emerged from her palace to gaze upon her conquest.
Behind Lolth slithered a tanar'ri with a woman's torso, six arms, and a lower body shaped like a snake. Trim and sparse, the demon followed after Lolth and snapped commands to the troops, making them pull away from their prey.
The Justicar risked a moment more to watch the distant figure, and then he pulled carefully away.
"Lolth."
Cinders think is time to go.
"Absolutely."
The Justicar was alone and on the run again, with a nightmarish army all around him. It was as if the old, savage days were alive again. The Justicar remembered a figure in eagle armor holding a huge black sword, then shook the image off and kept himself in harsh reality.
Old times, old friends, old enemies were gone.…
It was a full invasion. Lolth had made a gate, and she would stage more troops into the Flanaess. The Justicar slid back through reeds, kept his sword naked in his hand, then ran west toward the hills. His leg hurt, and his body was in shock, but he pushed himself into a run that soon put the town of Keggle Bend far behind.
Behind the departing ranger, climbing from the monstrous brazen palace, a figure stirred. Hissing cold with undeath, the figure killed the grass beneath its feet. Trolls and gibbering demons backed away from it in terror. Rusted eagle armor gleamed with patches of frost.
Dead eyes scanned the city and dismissed it. Dead eyes looked at roads and weeds and all the thousands of hidden places only a trained eye could see-and then settled on a slight swirl in the mud beside the riverbanks. A few bricks were hidden by the reeds.
The sign of man-made works feeding into the river.
The cadaver in its eagle armor stirred. It abandoned Lolth and her demons, leaving the burning city at its back. Walking down into the water, the cadaver disappeared with a sullen hiss of icy steam.…
9
The minions of the Demon Queen molded Lolth a throne from the flayed bodies of her victims. She shifted her weight. One or two of the furnishings were not quite dead, and Lolth idly threw a spell intended to keep it that way. She took the skull of the local high priest and poured herself a drink, regarding the fallen city with a sigh.
Bodies were being dragged from the still-burning city to the gates where frost imps froze them for storage. Hundreds of survivors had been herded into great lines beside the city walls. Relaxing with her drink, Lolth raised one brow as she saw Morag slithering along beside the prisoners and diligently counting heads.
Lolth gave a weary sigh and said, "Morag, you drabble-tail! What are you doing?"
"Accounting, Magnificence." The tanar'ri wrote upon pages made from human skin.
A human lunged out of the line of prisoners, armed with a jagged piece of iron. He threw himself straight at Morag's back. One idle flick of Morag's tail caught her attacker and slammed him against the nearby wall. Disgusted, Morag changed an entry in her files.
Annoyed by the display, Lolth leaned one elbow upon her squirming throne.
"Morag? Why, pray tell, are you counting cadavers?"
"I am tallying our stocks, Magnificence." The secretary stabbed at her parchments with her pen. "A little mathematics will tell us how long our stores will last."
Lolth sighed. "Morag, these wretches are to fe
ed my teeming hordes. Now what is the one dominant characteristic of a teeming horde?"
Morag raised one elegant brow. "The smell, Magnificence?"
"No. They teem, Morag! They breed, they die, they subdivide like germs! They do not have fixed numbers and little record sheets!" The demon queen folded up her arms. "This is chaos, Morag! Chaos is expressive, adaptable, and incalculable! Sometimes you can be so… so baatezu!"
Morag folded up her notes. "Magnificence, we need to know how long the troops can be fed."
"We are attacking another city tomorrow, Morag. Then another and another. That's the way a conquest works. Eventually the entire population of the Flanaess will be our slaves and cattle through all eternity." Lolth slurped from her skull cup. "Improvise once in a while, Morag! I do. It's called genius."
Morag muttered something sour that the goddess failed to catch. Lolth sniffed and turned her eerie, flame-filled eyes upon her secretary. "Morag, are you wearing perfume?"
"I am wearing scent, Magnificence. Black lotus."
"How absurd. Whatever for?"
"I am meeting someone, Magnificence. An incubus."
Lolth looked at her secretary in mocking amazement. "An incubus! You?" The demon queen tried not to laugh. "Whatever do you do together?"
"We read." Stung, Morag sensed Lolth's laughter. "He happens to be highly intellectual!"
Wiping a mock tear from her eyes, Lolth tried to keep her face straight. "Oh, Morag, I always wondered why we never bothered having a court jester." The goddess's voice rang like a choir as she sighed in mirth. "Go slither off to your chores. Tell the commanders I will see them immediately. We need to start shuffling more troops onto this delightful little world."
The secretary thrashed her coils. Proud and angry, Morag jammed her notebooks beneath her arms. As she moved away, Lolth's mocking voice called after her. "Morag? Where did our cadaverous friend trot off to?"
"He left, Magnificence." Morag dropped her voice to a mutter. "About the time you plumped your mammalian arse on that chair."
Cocking a sharp eye at Morag, Lolth reached for another drink. "Excellent. Another little plan coming to glorious fruition!" The demon queen raised her skull-cup to her secretary. "Off you go! If you need me, my mammalian arse and I shall be right here."
Seething, Morag slid off through the bodies, blood, and rubble.
10
The Justicar had fought against supernatural enemies for his entire adult life. Blocking a scrying spell was far beyond him, but he could make Tielle's crystal ball almost useless to her. He kept himself in shrubs and trees, choosing nondescript terrain. He gave her no streams, no roads, no hillcrests as markers. Jus moved at a dogged run-loping relentlessly at a speed that would have soon left even cavalry behind him. These were the old skills learned in the wars against Iuz. Skills as natural to Jus as breathing air and walking earth.
He needed to find a stream, a place without rock outcrops and jagged bends-nothing a faerie might pick out from the air. The Justicar paused in the bushes above the banks, looking out over a clear rivulet with a bright stony bottom. Coming to a halt at last, the big man squatted like a troll and scanned the wilderness for dangers.
Nothing.
"Cinders?"
Birds gone. No tasty animal.
Jus nodded. Lolth's presence spread a pall of evil all over the wilderness. The sun seemed dim-colors were changing, like an old tapestry leeched and warped by time. He slithered down to the water, flipped open the portable hole, and kept his eyes on the skies as he heaved his friends out into the open air.
"Get in the stream and wash. There's soap in the equipment boxes. Use grit to scour your skins clean."
He propped Cinders over a bush, where the hell hound's senses could act as guard. Moving swiftly, Jus let Henry pass Polk up from the hole. Escalla the snake was passed gently into Jus's hands, then Enid came, out, yard after yard, loop after loop. Henry scrabbled out, still armor clad and with his empty crossbow set aside in favor of his sword. The boy looked quickly about the stream, then squatted at the Justicar's side.
"Sir?"
"We wash here. Wash all your gear. Get rid of the filth before we catch a disease. We need to kill the scent in case Tielle has hounds. Wash out the portable hole and scour it clean."
Aware that magical eyes might be watching and magical ears listening, Henry asked no questions. He threw his crossbow aside and began struggling with his damp leather belts.
"I'll wash Enid," he said.
"I'll do Escalla, then Polk."
"Sir, the women are in shock." Henry winced. "We need a fire."
"No fire." Jus carefully laid Escalla's whimpering little length out along a warm, flat rock. "We'll deal with it when we're clean. Do your own gear first. The snakes go last."
The Justicar moved fast, stripping away his dragon-scale armor, his boots, his socks, even the bone ring that shielded him against charm spells. He took them all off and plunged naked into the stream. Jus sank, perfectly at home in the water, and brutally scoured himself with gravel, silt, then soap. He quickly did the same to his sword, scabbard, armor, boots, and clothes. Benelux squawked loudly as she plunged into the stream.
Sir! Sir Justicar! The proper technique is to use an oiled silk-awwwk!
The Justicar had been caring for swords for twenty years. He scrubbed blood away with grass, then silt, then grass again. Benelux's alien metal-hard matter from the plane of positive energy-never needed sharpening. Jus briskly wiped her with an oiled cloth, dried the wolf-skull pommel that now adorned the sword, and left her standing ready to hand on the shore. The sword cursed and sputtered all the more when her hilt was used to hold Jus's underwear out to dry.
Scraped bright red and raw, Jus tenderly lifted Escalla from her bed. He took her into the cold water and washed her as gently as his big hands could. The wound was bad-big, deep, and already inflamed. Jus's spells could deal with injuries, even disease, but his small reserve of magic had been exhausted for now. For the moment, they had to rely on simpler resources. The Justicar thought on the problem as he lifted Escalla from the stream.
"Cinders? The big rock there-the red one."
With his flames run down to a low ebb, Cinders could only manage the merest lick of fire. Jus laid the hell hound beside a large red rock, and Cinders heated it slowly. Escalla's snake body was laid out on a bed of dry grass beside the rock. Down in the stream, Henry carefully finished washing Enid. Jus helped him wrestle the huge snake out of the water and laid her gently down beside the stone.
Jus's bare ribs were livid black and purple-and two of them were clearly broken. He moved carefully, the pain clawing at him. He sat beside Escalla, glad of the slowly warming rock as he cradled her head in his hand.
"Escalla?"
She had no eyelids to open or close, and her snake eyes glittered. Was she awake or unconscious? Jus slowly stroked her satin scales, trying to be tender and insistent.
"Escalla, change back. We need you back to faerie form."
The little snake shuddered and groaned. An icy bath had done nothing to cure her shock. Finally a forked tongue quivered. In a tiny voice, Escalla breathed a few painful words out into the air.
"Enid?"
"She's with us. She's still a snake."
"I have to… to ch-change." Escalla tried to lift her head but couldn't. She flopped back down, then stared at the injuries all over Jus's side. She lay there, panting and stiff with shock. The Justicar kissed her softly just behind the jaw.
Intelligence came back, quick and clear, into Escalla's eye. She looked at Jus's broken ribs.
"Jus?"
"I'm with you."
"Jus, where are we?"
She was hoarse. Jus's helmet served as a cup. He helped the snake to drink as he spoke.
"About twelve miles from the town."
"Is… is it the same day?"
"You've been unconscious for two hours."
With one hand, Jus threw his tunic onto the hot rock,
where it sizzled and steamed. Cinders's flames had finally given out, and the hound lay exhausted, panting.
Escalla quietly regarded the Justicar. "You… you ran for two hours with… broken ribs?"
"You needed me to."
Escalla collapsed, weak with pain. She looked at Jus as she lay in his hands. "You have got to be the dumbest, most heroic bastard on the Flanaess."
The snake closed its mouth and went still-tensed-then shimmered in a magic field. An instant later its shape writhed, and Escalla turned back to her own form. The little woman lay gasping and absolutely shocked with pain. Her injuries took on a savage new life.
She had been burned by acid all over one leg, her hip, and back. Her wings hung limp and half melted. Giving her no hint of her desperate state, the Justicar carefully patted the burns dry. His healing spells had closed the deepest parts of the wounds, but the rest of the burns were livid and raw.
The burns were already badly infected. Escalla shivered, a fever starting to take her.
"Is it bad?"
Jus adoringly caressed her wet hair back from her face. "It'll do."
"Warriors for justice can't lie for crap."
Escalla reached out to Enid. Anxiously cradling the big snake, Henry moved Enid closer. Escalla shook with effort, framed a spell, and canceled the magic she had cast over Enid's body. The huge snake shimmered, then bunched and expanded to become a full grown gynosphinx.
Enid was burned across her back where she had shielded Escalla. The little faerie lay weak and shaking in Jus's arms, looking in horror at Enid's wounds.
"It was some… kind of… acid or something. It shot out of a drinking horn."
"Shhh. It's all right now." Jus carefully slid her off his lap. "Henry, keep them both warm. I need to give someone a W-A-S-H."
Cinders gave a a yelp and a wail, thrashing his tail and howling like a dog chased by a horde of scorpions. It was to no avail. With his flames run down, he had no chance to protest as he was dunked in the river, washed, scrubbed, wrung out-then sniffed, washed and dried again. Jus deposited him on the hot rock, where his fur steamed and seethed. Sulking, Cinders glared at the Justicar.