The troll slogged through the muck, long arms reaching about to grasp at skeletal dead trees and pull itself along.
The hungry beast knew that its prey was near. Acrid smoke curled about the trees, mixing with the ever-present fog of the quagmire known as the Evermoors. A foul odor to most, to the troll it smelled like a fine supper.
Long green fingers with claw-like nails grasped the darkened trunk of a dead tree and the troll yanked itself forward, tearing its thin legs and enormous feet from the muck. It pulled itself past the trunk and came to drier ground, then loped along, propelled by its insatiable hunger as the curling smoke thickened.
A pointed tongue flickered eagerly through sharp yellow teeth, and the troll gasped quickly so that its breathing sounded like raspy laughter, and behind that, the monster whispered, “Come out. Come out.”
“Huffin’ and puffin’, I hear me a troll,” came a grumbling voice from the underbrush ahead. “So I’m swingin’ me balls to give it a roll! To drop it down low, snap legs like they’re twigs, and stop it from growin’ with the feet o’ me pig! Bwahahaha!”
Leaping out from the brush came a most curious sight, a black-bearded dwarf, his beard braided three ways and tipped with dung, sat atop a large boar—but not any boar, for this one had smoke coming from its nostrils and puffs of flame exploding from its stamping feet. The dwarf held a pair of heavy glassteel morningstars with spiked heads bouncing about at the end of adamantine chains.
The troll’s eyes lit up, its tongue flicking hungrily, and as the dwarf kicked his war pig into a charge, so too did the monster launch itself forward.
They came together in a wild tangle, troll hands clawing, troll teeth biting. The ugly beast came in fearlessly, knowing that any wounds the dwarf and his meaty hell boar might inflict would heal quickly.
That look of eagerness and hunger changed quickly, though, when the morningstars swung about, for one was coated now, magically so, with a peculiar oil that exploded mightily when it connected against the troll’s side. Before the monster could dig its claws into the dwarf, it was flying, sidelong, launched by the weight of the strike and the power of the oil of impact.
It broke through a dead tree, splintering the wood, and impaling itself through its hip on the broken remainder of the trunk. With a snarl and a wad of green spit, the troll looked back at the dwarf and began to lift itself straight up, sliding free of the trunk.
Almost free, for the dwarf came on, the war pig galloping and snorting fire. They wouldn’t reach the troll in time, so it seemed, but then the boar drove its front hooves into the muck and bucked hard, launching the dwarf from its back—and the dwarf didn’t look the least bit surprised.
Indeed, he seemed rather exuberant as he arced forward, both hands on his mighty flails, held up high over his head. He had spun them about each other, so they seemed like a singular two-headed weapon. Down he came and down the weapon came, crashing mightily on the troll’s shoulder and back and driving it back down hard on the sharpened spear of the broken tree.
The troll went into a frenzy, clawing and biting and spitting green bile. One sweeping hand caught the dwarf on the cheek and dug a deep line through his beard, red blood pouring.
But the dwarf proved as fearless as his enemy, and he didn’t flinch and didn’t shy away at all.
He just sang and rhymed and swatted tirelessly. The morningstars, swung deftly into two weapons once more, crunched troll bones and tore at the beast’s skin. One troll arm stopped working in short order, dangling uselessly, but at last the troll managed to extract itself and rise up to its ten-foot height, towering over the dwarf.
But over the dwarf came the war boar, leaping right into the troll’s chest and knocking it backward and to the ground. With its good remaining arm, the troll threw the goring and biting beast aside, but as it tried then to stand up, in came the dwarf, leaping from the broken tree trunk, up high and descending quickly.
Down came the dwarf.
Down came the morningstars.
“Bwahahaha!” he cried, and then came a retort as sharp and loud as a large tree snapping in half.
Skull shattered, head pulverized, the troll continued to flail and strike out, as trolls were wont to do. Trolls do not die as most creatures might. If a troll was cut into ten pieces and scattered about, they’d wriggle and crawl together. And if they could not reconnect, each would grow into a new troll, so powerful was the troll regenerative process!
A severed troll hand could fight. It could not see, but it could claw and it could burrow.
And so the troll thrashed and fought on, and the dwarf’s powerful arms pumped repeatedly, driving the heavy morningstars down with punishing force. And the dwarf laughed, for he knew the secret.
A troll was hard to kill, aye, and would grow back and mend faster than almost any living creature—unless its wounds were sealed with fire.
And this dwarf had a war boar, a red-skinned hell boar, actually, and the fire of its hooves was no illusion, but true, biting flames.
The magical boar scrambled over and began its work, hopping around the fallen troll, puffing out flames that bit at troll flesh and bubbled troll blood, and killed the bits of troll life that normally would not die.
For a long while, the dwarf pummeled the fallen creature, crushing and stomping any part that moved. Then he stepped back, admiring his work, and summoned his hell boar to climb atop the monster and begin its fiery hopping once more.
Flames rolled out from smoking hooves and bit hard, and caught on, and soon the boar leaped away, and the troll lay there, burning, unmoving, destroyed.
“Well come on then, Snort,” he called to his pet boar. “Lights o’ the town’re in me eyes and we’ve not long left to ride.”
As he climbed atop the magical steed, Athrogate muttered more than a few curses at Jarlaxle for sending him to this forsaken place. “Trolls, trolls,” he muttered, looking back at the latest in a long line of smoking troll corpses he had left in his wake in skimming the northern end of the Evermoors, a place also known, and rightly so, as the Trollmoors.
“And here, we part ways,” Jarlaxle said at the bottom of a long climbing path. Up ahead and far to the right, the south, loomed the towering ice wall of the Glacier of the White Wyrm, and directly up the trail, the trio could just make out the crenulated top of the highest stone keep of the large structure known as the Monastery of the Yellow Rose. “Though not for long, I hope.”
“And my hope was to escort you into the monastery beside me,” Brother Afafrenfere replied, “As my guest. There is much of interest to see within those walls, a vast repository of knowledge.”
“You are not returning to the monastery in good standing,” Jarlaxle reminded.
“Aye, he’s got a point,” said Ambergris.
“And I doubt that bringing along a drow elf would do much to engender the trust of the Brothers of the Yellow Rose,” Jarlaxle added with a laugh.
Afafrenfere nodded, conceding the point, and he seemed genuinely dismayed.
“Make me the offer again when such a visit will not threaten your own standing within the order,” Jarlaxle said. “You will have no trouble convincing me to visit if the libraries of the monastery are as I remember, and your brethren will have me.”
Afafrenfere brightened at that and happily nodded.
“Hold then! What?” Ambergris said, however, and she added incredulously, “As ye remember?”
Afafrenfere looked at her curiously, then back at Jarlaxle, catching on to the reasoning. “You have been there before?”
The drow laughed and pulled out a small onyx figurine, dropping it to the ground at his feet. “I am Jarlaxle,” he explained. “I have been everywhere.” With that, he summoned his magical hell horse and pulled himself up onto the saddle.
“I have business in Heliogabalus,” he explained. “It could be finished quickly, or perhaps it will take me tendays to sort it out. In any case, I will return to this place and send word to you, and if you
choose, perhaps we will have roads yet to travel together. Perhaps I will have news of Effron and Artemis Entreri, as well.” He tipped his hat.
“If ye won’t go into the place, then how’ll ye send word to us?” Ambergris asked.
The dark elf laughed. “I am Jarlaxle,” he answered, as if that explained everything.
It did.
“Stand and be recognized!” the guard shouted down from Nesmé’s high and stout southern wall.
“Bah, ye’re not to know me,” retorted Athrogate, who was walking now, having dismissed his hell boar back to its home on the lower planes before coming in sight of the town. He doubted that riding up on a fire-snorting pig would create the trust he needed to be allowed into the famously xenophobic city.
“Then perhaps you would do well to introduce yourself, good dwarf,” said another voice, a woman this time, “before we shoot you dead where you stand.”
“That so?” Athrogate asked, hands on hips. He took a deep breath even as he spoke the words, though, and glanced over his shoulder at the tangled morass that bordered the town. He could well imagine that these hardy folk battled trolls every tenday.
“Name’s Athrogate o’ Felbarr,” he called out. “Though I ain’t been there in a hunnerd years and more.”
“And is that where you’re headed?” the woman asked.
“Nah, Mithral Hall’s more likely.”
“You are friend to King Connerad, then?”
“Nah, ne’er met him, but he’ll be letting me in, don’t ye doubt. I called his predecessor me friend once.”
“His predecessor?”
“Aye, King Bruenor,” Athrogate boasted, thinking the name would buy him some political capital. He didn’t quite get the response he was expecting.
“Then Mithral Hall will be welcoming you,” the woman called, and she seemed clearly annoyed. “So be on your way.”
“Eh?”
“Be gone,” the other guard said.
“I been walking through the muck for tenday,” Athrogate protested. “Left a dozen trolls dead in me wake.”
“Then they are probably moving close behind you even as we speak,” the woman said.
“I’m knowin’ enough to burn the damned things.” Athrogate turned around and pointed to the southwest. “Left one dead there, not a thousand steps back. Go and see.”
“Perhaps we will.”
Athrogate shrugged and plopped down in the dirt, sitting with his arms crossed. He began singing to himself, nonsensical rhymes mostly, including a few he improvised to insult guards at unwelcoming gates.
Within a few heartbeats, the gate cracked open and a trio of riders came forth. As soon as they exited, the gate was closed once more, but Athrogate had made no move for it in any case.
They rode right up to the dwarf, staring down at him from their tall horses.
“What?” he asked.
“You said you killed a troll nearby,” said the tallest of the group. “Show us.”
“Ye did’no bring me a horse.”
The man smirked, but made no move, and didn’t offer his hand.
With a sigh, Athrogate pulled himself to his feet. He thought of walking, but only briefly before deciding that it really didn’t make any difference, given their dour demeanor. Maybe showing them a bit of the power he possessed would be a good thing.
He pulled out the onyx figurine of his hell boar, a gift long ago from Jarlaxle, and with a nod at the guards, dropped it to the ground and called for his mount.
The horses reared and stepped back, snorting in fear, when the diabolical beast appeared, all puffs of fire and snorting meanness.
“See if ye can keep up,” the dwarf said, sliding onto the saddle and kicking Snort hard in the flanks. The boar leaped away.
By the time the foursome returned to Nesmé’s south gate, they were laughing and swapping tales of killing trolls, and the guards walked Athrogate right into the town, even bade him to keep his hell boar around for a bit so that others could see the wondrous thing.
Indeed the dwarf had made quite an entrance, and the people of Nesmé, reputedly—rightfully, as wary of visitors—held a bit of gratitude for any who killed a troll or ten, especially those who destroyed the beasts correctly, so they couldn’t regenerate!
Still, it wasn’t all open arms and friendship for Athrogate, for the guards kept him near to the gate.
“Why have you come?” asked one, and Athrogate recognized the voice as that of the woman who had questioned him from the wall.
The dwarf pointed up at the darkened sky. “Heared there be things not right in the Silver Marches,” he said. “Come to see what’s what for me old friends, the Battlehammers.”
“Your friends are not much appreciated in Nesmé,” the woman said.
“Aye, ye telled me as much.”
“Nor in Everlund,” said another. “Or Sundabar or Silverymoon.”
“I’m listenin’,” Athrogate assured him when he stopped.
“The orcs have marched from Dark Arrow Keep, in force,” the woman said.
Athrogate nodded as the woman continued, though it was all coming clear to him. He knew about the old treaty of Garumn’s Gorge, had even read it on the pedestal on the bridge across the chasm in Mithral Hall that had given the treaty its name, and so he wasn’t surprised that those looking to escape responsibility would glance back a century and point to it as the impetus for their current problems.
“You’ll not get near to Mithral Hall,” the woman ended, and the words jolted the dwarf.
“It is besieged by a great orc army,” she explained, “as are Sundabar and Silverymoon. We have been fortunate here in Nesmé thus far, but there are rumors of orc forces moving about the trails to the north of here. We may know war soon, dwarf, and siege. When it comes …” She paused and nodded her chin at the morningstar balls bouncing about behind him, the weapon secured in place on his back.
“Aye, ye’ll have me bludgeons,” Athrogate promised. “Only thing better’n killin’ a troll’s killin’ an orc, bwahahaha!”
“Come along,” the tall man from the patrol decided then. “The Lord of Nesmé will see you, and we’ll give you your assignment.”
“Assignment? Bah, so I’m workin’ for me food and bed, am I?”
“You object?”
“Bwahahaha!” Athrogate roared, and he waved his hand, indicating that the man should lead on.
TRICKSTER
TEETH. JUST TEETH. BIG TEETH, SHARP TEETH, SHINING TEETH, KILLING TEETH. Teeth, and a low growl rumbling between them. Teeth that could kill him with a single bite, and a growl promising that the monster was about to do just that.
It went on and on, it seemed, interminably so, but in that moment of terror and confusion, enough sensibilities returned for the victim to utter one word.
One name that saved his life.
“Guenhwyvar?”
The teeth receded and the halfling-turned-goblin saw the whole frame of the panther’s beautiful face.
The low growl continued, though now sounding more curious than ominous.
Regis tried to slowly slide his arm up to tap his beret and dispel the illusion, but he had barely started moving it when the panther snarled and slapped a huge paw onto his elbow, painfully pinning the arm to the ground.
“Guen,” he said softly, calmly. Then the halfling swallowed hard as a bow swiveled into view, or more particularly, when the pointed end of an arrow set to a bow shifted right above his eye.
“Drizzt, it’s me. It’s Regis,” he squeaked.
The bow went away and Guenhwyvar backed off. As soon as his arm was free, Regis reached up and tapped his magical beret, dismissing its enchantment. He had always before thought it a good thing that the magic of the beret secured it tightly to his head, that it wouldn’t fall away if he was jostled, but in this instance, he wasn’t so sure of that!
As he blinked through his shifting eyes, he saw a familiar hand reaching for him, offering to help him up. He grabbed
on and started to rise, but a wave of weakness and numbness dispelled that notion and he crumpled back down.
The panther had hit him harder than he had realized.
Drizzt bent down over him, studying him and looking closely, his expression one of concern. “Where?” he asked.
“My side, my back,” the halfling realized, and he reached over and tried to stretch through the tightness and pain.
The drow reached into a pouch and pulled forth a small vial. He flipped the cork off with his thumb and moved the potion of healing—one that Regis had brewed and given to Drizzt—to Regis’s lips.
The halfling felt better immediately as the warm liquid poured into him, its magical healing properties spreading quickly. He lifted one arm for Drizzt to take and this time, they managed to get him sitting up.
“We have a lot to talk about,” the halfling explained.
“You joined in with a group of our enemies, I take it?”
“I was in the camp,” Regis explained. He reached inside his vest and pulled forth some rolled parchments, handing them to Drizzt.
“This is more than a rogue band or a hunting party, or even a raiding party,” Regis explained. “Bruenor predicted a war and it looks like he walked right into the middle of it.”
Drizzt clutched the parchments—he didn’t have enough light to read them, and he wasn’t about to light a torch out in the open. He stood up and extended his hand to the halfling. “Come,” he bade, and when Regis grasped his hand, he helped the halfling to his feet. “Let us go and find our friends.”
“Not yet,” Regis replied. He was a bit shaky on his feet, but felt better already and knew it would pass.
“Our friends are bound for Nesmé now,” said Drizzt.
“So are the orcs,” Regis grimly replied. “And they are numerous enough to easily overrun that town, even with us helping the defenders.”
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