"A choice?"
"To do something for them. Until you do evil."
"If I don't do what they want, they'll come for me."
"Maybe they will, maybe they won't."
"And if they come for me ..." She stops to retch. "They'll destroy me."
"They're demons. Your choice might be between being destroyed, and destroying others. Many others."
She waits for him to say more. "Is that all you have to say?"
"What's your name?"
"Vasilissa."
"Vasilissa, I'm Gad. I don't know you. I've only seen you for a few moments. The worst of your life, is that safe to say?" He is using the technique.
"Yes."
"Yet still I see strength in you," he says. It could be true. She might be strong; she might be weak. He has no idea. "When you hear that voice in your head, use your strength. You can do it. You can still choose rightly."
She spits out a glob of puke and phlegm. "Is that all you're going to do?"
The words catch in his throat. "I have urgent business elsewhere."
"Words. All you have for me are words."
"Words are everything, Vasilissa."
He leaves her, trying not to hear as she calls after him. Dawn throws a diffuse and tentative light along the eastern horizon. His head races from lack of sleep. He tries to remember where he was in his thinking, before the demon and Vasilissa.
Oh yes: the wardstones. The crusaders erected wardstones. Magical obelisks that stand along the borders. Priests must maintain them, and paladins must defend them from demon attack. But the wardstones repel the worst of the demons, or did until recently.
Gad can't stop the demons entirely. He can't seal up the wound in the earth from which they issue. But demons shouldn't be able to get as far as Krega. They should be stuck at the western border, sealed in by the wardstones.
They've found a way to break the rules. They're running a rip. They're gaffling the whole of Mendev, and possibly the cosmos itself. And if it's a con, maybe Gad can stop it.
Whatever they've found that lets them do it, Gad will take it away from them.
One day and about ten leagues later, Gad stumbles toward the village of Dubrov. He has slept and eaten. His food and shelter he has earned almost honestly. The shoulder hurts less, but he favors his right leg now. The left ankle is twisted. It happened when he scuttled for cover as a loathsome dragonfly-thing winged overhead.
Dubrov, like Krega to the south, hugs the western edge of the Estrovian Forest. It is home to the people who make what Mendev uses up. They fletch arrows, carve bows, spin bowstrings. It is a place for half-breeds. Legend says it was founded by warrior half-brothers who shared a human mother. One was half orc, the other half elf. Gad considers the legend improbable but likes it all the same.
He moves through the stubble of a hemp field. When spring comes, it will be planted again. Gad watches the sky for more flying demons. As the cottages of Dubrov come into view, part of him expects to see them ablaze. They stand undisturbed, their thatched roofs touched by stray flakes of snow, their plaster walls straight and true.
Ahead, a perturbed crowd murmurs, gathered outside a cottage near the heart of the village. Nearby towers an ancient oak, like a legate from the nearby forest. Its long arm reaches over the village. A rope hangs from it. At its end swings a noose.
Gad hastens his step.
He guesses the crowd at fifty people strong, give or take. More are coming, drifting from cottages and the woodlands' edge. Soon all the adults in Dubrov will be here. The village mongrels pant and huff, pressing between legs for a better view. Its cats circle warily around.
"Beneath the most patient exterior," declaims a grating voice, "the worst corruption can lie!"
"This is nonsense!" booms another.
The grating voice wavers as it fights to deepen its tone: "And one who argues for a cultist might also be one."
Gad approaches the crowd's outer ring. He scans in search of a half-lovely young thing. His choice is blonde, buxom, and flat-nosed. Her orc blood shows only a little, in the depth of her brow and a greenish undertone in her complexion. Gad graces her with his full smile. When she blushes, the last vestiges of green disappear. She turns aside, letting him shoulder past her into the middle of the crowd.
Eight men have taken a prisoner. All nine wear the rustic garb of village peasants: linen tunics and dyed black trousers. Piped up each leg is Dubrov's distinctive white embroidery pattern, a series of stylized arrowheads. From these markings Gad sees that accused and accusers are all locals.
The prisoner stands two heads taller than anyone else. He is wide of shoulder and thick of neck. Knob-knuckled fists hang like twin boulders at his side. He favors his orc parent, with leathery skin the color of a drying oak leaf. Two canine tusks protrude from his lower row of teeth. The face is bottom-heavy, leading from a massive jaw to an almost conical cranium. A coarse topknot, held in place by a ropy band of hemp, emphasizes his skull's triangularity. He would seem fearsome, were it not for his placid eyes. The men around him hold pitchforks, spades, and a rusty short sword. The prisoner shrinks from them, though not out of fear. It is the captors, or some of them, who betray their fear. The captive's heavy shoulders slump in sorrow.
"Tiberio," Gad says.
The prisoner turns, his posture straightening. "Gad!"
The men who have captured him are mostly part elf. The shortest of them, a balding man whose pointed ears do not quite match, turns his pitchfork toward the new arrival. "Hold it," he says. "Who might you be?" The grating voice is his.
Gad grins. "Let's not point sharp things at one another."
"Identify yourself!"
"Name's Gad. An old friend of Tiberio's. Merely passing through. And you might be ...?"
"I am a native son of this village and need not give my name to strangers."
Gad bows. "In the past, I have known Dubrov as a hospitable place. What hardens your heart, my friend?"
"Corruption besets us. We are gnawed from within, by demonic influence."
"It looks tranquil enough." Gad pulls down his cloak and tunic to show off his purpled shoulder. "I got this in Krega. Demons boiled from the sky. Swarmed everywhere. I was lucky. Many lives were cruelly ended."
The inquisitorial villager loses the crowd's attention as the news passes through the crowd. A woman taps Gad's clothed shoulder.
"Krega, you say?"
Gad nods.
The woman is gray and worn, her face wrinkled like a chestnut. "I have a son there. Richza the barrel maker. He wasn't ..."
"I hope not. I don't know your son, but saw no harm come to a cooper." From a sidelong glance, Gad sees Grating Voice's anger grow. "What is your name?" he asks the old mother.
"Izmaragd," she answers.
He manages to pronounce it: "Izmaragd, introduce me to this gentleman here." He indicates Grating Voice.
"Why, this is Dobreliel." Wrinkles appear over her wrinkles. "He is throwing accusations around, again."
"And he is your priest?"
"No, he is our finest fletcher."
Dobreliel steps forward to seize the attention of his neighbors. "Are you all such mooncalves that you cannot acknowledge the danger we face? As this stranger says, demonkind grows ever closer to our door!"
"It's true," says Gad.
Dobreliel, thrown off, turns his way.
"I saw a winged demon with a whip of flame fell an entire squad of crusaders." Gad adopts the rising cadences of a preacher. "Half of Krega he consigned to flames. Yet we must also be alert to subtler forms of demonic attack. Isn't that so, Dobreliel?"
"Ah," says Dobreliel. "Y-yes. We must."
"And you say my friend Tiberio has turned to demon worship?"
"Yes! He was seen t
aking instructions from a night-black cat!"
Gad plucks the pitchfork from Dobreliel's startled grasp and rounds on Tiberio. "Tiberio! How could you?"
"I didn't!" Tiberio protests.
The tines of Gad's newly acquired pitchfork jab at Tiberio's wide chest. The half-orc's face crumples. "When I knew you, Tiberio, you were the bravest, most selfless fellow I could name!"
A white-braided half-orc matron protests from the crowd. "He still is!"
Gad ignores her. "You retired from the freebooter's life because you could stand to do no man injury!"
Another voice, from the back: "So he did!"
"And if demons came to Dubrov, I would expect you to be the first to fight them! Yet Dobreliel here says you're now in league with them."
Tiberio drops his voice. "You can't believe him," he pleads.
"This is Mendev," Gad barks. "There is no charge more serious than demon worship. Would Dobreliel dare make it with only a third-hand rumor that you spoke to a cat?"
Dobreliel makes a futile reach for his pitchfork. "It is no third-hand rumor. Spiridion saw and heard it himself." He indicates the oldest of his half-elf confederates.
"Anyone who owns a pet speaks to it from time to time. Surely you amassed more evidence before hoisting the noose."
"Milk curdles when he passes. He was the last to speak to young Miakusha before her baby died inside of her. From the woods, dark things cry his name."
"And which of you has seen these dark things?"
Dobreliel's head swivels as he regards his allies. "Among others, I have."
"Now this is evidence!" Gad thumps the pitchfork's haft against the ground. "Seal this wretched traitor's fate. Tell us what the dark things said."
Dobreliel stops short. "Wait ..."
"Tell us what they said, Dobreliel. I'll be the first to pitch stones at his swinging corpse."
"Who are you again?"
"You heard the dark things speak."
"You're trying to fool these people."
"Tell us what the dark things said, Dobreliel."
He swallows. "Of course I will! I am not afraid to damn a demon worshiper. They cried in a strange tongue."
"What did they look like?"
"They were creatures of shadow, swirls within swirls, darkness made manifest."
"And what did they say?"
"They said, Tiberio, come hither, I command you in the name of Yath!"
"Yath?" says Gad. He lets his jaw drop. "Oh, Dobreliel." He takes a step backward. "I don't think you were supposed to utter that name. The mark of Yath has appeared on you."
Dobreliel's hand flies to his forehead, patting it for the raised mark, for the circle and the writhing tower.
"You're the cultist, Dobreliel," says Gad.
Dobreliel continues to pat his forehead. "There's nothing there. There's no mark!"
"Oh, I was lying about that part. But you gave yourself away, because you know where the mark of Yath appears."
He points to Tiberio. "I know it because I saw it on him!"
"No, you didn't," says Gad, hefting the pitchfork. "Because that would have been your best accusation, and you would have used it first if you'd thought of it. Which leaves us with the question of how an ordinary fletcher knows exactly where the mark of Yath appears."
Sensing a brewing fight, the ringing villagers back up. Their movement creates a break in the crowd, behind Dobreliel. He turns and runs for the gap.
Gad clucks his tongue. "Amateur."
A pair of Dobreliel's allies, including Spiridion, the accuser with the cat story, dash to follow him. The others turn on the accuser and his self-revealed confederates. The fletchers of Dubrov close ranks. Fists and feet fly. Soon the cultists lie on the ground, their heads tucked under their bodies. They whimper for mercy.
Near the oak tree, village women tie two more nooses.
"Before he dangles," says Gad, "I need to interrogate him."
The villagers manhandle Dobreliel. He squirms and bucks. With effort they tie him to the trunk of the hanging oak.
Gad claps Tiberio on the shoulder. To do it, he has to reach up.
The half-orc clears his throat. "You didn't truly think me a demon-kisser, did you, Gad?"
"You have to ask?"
"Well ..."
"You've been out of the game too long."
"Was it also untrue that you're here by chance?"
"I refer you to my previous statement."
A villager has climbed into the oak. His fellows toss him the additional nooses.
Tiberio frowns. "They don't deserve to die, do they?"
"They were planning to betray your whole village. Starting with you."
"We caught them before they did anything."
Gad shrugs. "This is war. You should have seen Krega. What happened to the girl who miscarried?"
"She sickened and died."
"You understand that they might have done that to her, so they could frame you?"
Sorrow sinks into Tiberio's brutish face.
Gad strolls over to Dobreliel. "It's cruel to give advice to a man who'll get no chance to use it," he begins, "but you shouldn't have run, you idiot. I didn't have you yet. I would have gotten you, but I hadn't yet."
The prisoner spits. Gad sees it coming and ducks. The wind catches the sputum and blows it back onto Spiridion.
"Why are we talking?" says Dobreliel. "If you're going to hang me, hang me."
"I'm not going to hang you, you country moron. Your neighbors are. The neighbors you were going to feed to the demons. What did they offer you? Your miserable life?"
"I won't help you. I won't let you bait me."
"Yes, you will, you squawking gull, because you low-rung cultists are all the same. What did you think you were going to get out of this? You thought you'd get to lick the toes of some six-teated demon bitch for all eternity? Do you know what happens to dead souls once they reach the Abyss? They get mulched up like grass in the gut of a cow. Divided into a thousand squirming larvae, each one a building block for a separate demon. Not a jot of your selfhood survives. You become even more insignificant than you are now."
"Not me!" Dobreliel proclaims.
"You're different than all the rest," says Gad.
"Yes. Yes. When you kill me, you realize my destiny! I become a demon lord!"
Gad snorts. "You believe that?"
"I know it! From the source! From the very voice of Yath!"
"Trust me, I know a lie when I hear it. There is no Yath."
Dobreliel lets out a high-pitched half-giggle. "There is, there is. I heard him in my head."
"Mere insanity on your part."
"No, no, the Shimmering Putrescence, I've felt him. The Gate and the Tower. All across Mendev, we who are destined for Abyssal majesty feel him. He has come. None knew his name before, but all will reverberate to it ere long. The wardstones are nothing to him. Those under his mantle pass through them like water through a grate. Mendev falls, you fool. Mendev falls. If I come back as a thousand demons, all one thousand of us shall rend your soul!"
Gad signals to the villagers. They unwrap the prisoner's ropes and tie his hands behind his back. They pull him onto a cart, beside his allies.
Gad and Tiberio walk away.
"You want me for a job?" says Tiberio.
"I wouldn't ask," says Gad, "except it's about this."
"Hmm," says Tiberio.
"So you're in, yes?"
"Where are you going?"
"Nerosyan. To find Calliard."
"I'll go with you that far. It's not safe for you to travel alone."
"I'll need you for longer than that."
"You remember why I stopped, Gad."
Behind them, Dobreliel shrieks incoherently. His voice is suddenly muffled. Tiberio glances back to see that a rag has been stuffed into his neighbor's mouth.
"You told him you were going to fool him into talking, and then he talked."
"That's how it works," says Gad.
"I don't understand. Why did he talk?"
"Because he wanted to. Because it's all he had left."
Behind them, the fletchers of Dubrov pull the cart away from the tree. The three cultists thrash in the air and then are still.
Chapter Three
The Bard
They travel on foot to the fortress-city. On the journey's second day, they compare the meager contents of their purses and consider buying a worn-out draft horse for Tiberio and a mule for Gad. Then along a distant ridge they see flying demons swarm to attack a pair of riders. They'll be harder to spot if they stick to boot power, they decide.
On the last day of their journey they reach the Egelsee River. Charred planks, the remains of a ruined barge, drift across its cold blue surface. A barge-poler's bloated corpse bumps against the river bank. The current finds it and carries it off again toward the west. Below the waterline, pikefish nibble whitened nuggets of flesh from a second body, trapped in the submerged branches of a fallen tree.
"This is what we face, Tiberio."
"I don't hurt people anymore, Gad." The half-orc breaks his gaze from the gruesome sight, loping ahead on long, trunk-thick legs.
Gad struggles to match his pace. "We'll be up against demons, not people."
"There are always people, too."
"Sure. The ones who've thrown in with the Abyss."
"Maybe they deserve to be hurt. But I'm not the one to do it."
"Many more people—innocent people—will be hurt if this new onslaught keeps up."
Tiberio grunts.
Gad presses onward. "Isn't it selfish, when you think about it?"
"What?"
"Letting others die, for your clean conscience?"
"It isn't up to me."
"What if it is?"
Tiberio curls his upper lip over his tusks. "It's not about conscience."
"Then what is it?"
The Worldwound Gambit Page 3