LEGENDS: Fifteen Tales of Sword and Sorcery

by Colt, K. J.

  Pewdt manoeuvred my limbs like they were soft clay, opening my grip, leaving the inside of my shield arm exposed. The dagger, slick with Faala’s blood, hovered near my forearm. “I wonder, dear creature, are you gold to the core? Bones and all? How deep does your colouration go?”

  The edge of the dagger pressed to my scales. He began to cut, peeling off several of my scales, flicking each one over his shoulder with a jerk of his wrist. My golden blood trickled out, running down my arm, and onto the stone.

  “Oh, ho, ho, she bleeds gold as well. Fascinating. Let’s explore together, shall we?”

  Pewdt cut deeper into my flesh. The pain from the poison was now a secondary feeling; my arm was on fire. I thought he would dig to the bone, would open my arm up completely, but he stopped.

  “But wait, what’s this?”

  The tip slid out from my flesh and the agony abated. The gnome moved around and behind me, disappearing from my sight, and I heard him pick something up. I knew what it was.

  My haversack.

  “An egg? No, two. Two little kobold eggs.”

  No. He couldn’t have them. They hadn’t done anything and had no part in the racial conflict between gnomes and kobolds.

  He moved back into my vision, gaily tossing the eggs into the air, juggling them with one hand, dagger flawlessly balanced in his other. His coordination and grace were perfect; he didn’t even look as he caught one, returned it to flight, then caught the other.

  “It looks freshly laid. Smells faintly of blood. Perhaps within a day, three at most. Yours?” Pewdt looked at me quizzically, then glanced down at the corpse of Faala, still frozen in the same position she was in when the dagger pierced her brain. “No, such pervasive gold would have coloured your eggs, too. The dark one is hers then, and the other…” His thin smile widened as his gaze wandered back up to meet mine. “Cannot be far away. Perhaps you can tell me more about them, yes?”

  The same impossible request. The same horrid joke. He waited, genuinely expecting an answer. I tried as hard as I could to give it to him, in sword or spell, but my limbs wouldn’t answer my screaming mind. Blood continued to trickle down my arm to my elbow, dripping and forming a golden pool on the grey stone.

  “Of course not. Not even a kobold with scales of pure gold could be so kind as to answer a simple question. That’s why I kill kobolds, you know. Because you’re all just so rude.”

  He tossed the eggs a little higher, snatching open a flap on his belt pouch. The eggs disappeared inside, one by one.

  At least they were safe. Faala may be dead, but her legacy would live on, assuming I could get them off him.

  With casual nonchalance, Pewdt began reloading his crossbow. “See this?” He held it up, so I could see. “Wasp-Men manufacture. Flying bastards from the south. Their real name is impossible to pronounce with almost any tongue except their own—too many clicks—so everyone just calls them Wasp-Men. Savage bastards, they love stuff like this. Poison, that is. They have poisoned crossbows, poisoned spears, arrows, swords, daggers—everything. I heard they even poison their siege weaponry, just in case one strikes flesh instead.” He slowly twisted the crossbow around, so I could see every side of it. “They make the ammunition too, and sell all manner of poisons to go with them. Sleep poison, pain poison, fatal poison. Poisons to make you dumb, poisons to make you lose wit and kill anyone around you. Poisons to make you forget who you are. Me, well, I prefer a blend of the paralytic and agoniser. I like causing pain, you see, but I dislike the noise. I feel that sound should be an art.”

  As much as I tried to shut out his words and focus on getting my limbs back, Pewdt’s voice was smooth and eloquent, soothing in a strange kind of way. His draconic was sophisticated and perfectly articulated. Had this gnome been raised in Atikala?

  And then he began to sing. A beautiful haunting melody that reverberated in the stone cavern, giving his voice an ethereal, empty quality. I didn’t understand the words. I didn’t have to. It was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard, and although I knew he was speaking the hated fey tongue I could sense the raw, pure emotion in his voice, an enchanting, soft tune that stole every ounce of my attention away from other trivial tasks.

  He started cutting again.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  PEWDT’S DAGGER SLIPPED BACK INTO the hole in my arm and began rocking back and forth, slicing through my hide. He made a thin slit almost an inch long, working delicately, cutting a small section of my scales away, my golden blood mixing with Faala’s black ichor and splattering onto Pewdt’s delicate hands.

  My vision became blurry and grey, the pain overwhelming. Yet he continued to sing that soft haunting tune, the music compelling me to listen.

  “That’s beautiful,” came Khavi’s voice, “is that you—”

  The crossbow snapped again, firing another dart within the music of Pewdt’s song. It struck Khavi in the thigh; he slapped his claw out, brushing the tiny device away before all its poison could be injected.

  His face contorted and his claws twitched, but either Khavi’s strength and toughness, or his recent exposure to Six-Legs’ venom, gave him a resilience I didn’t have. He kept moving.

  The singing stopped, and Pewdt’s dagger left my flesh. “Impressive.”

  “Gnome!” hissed Jedra, her spear clutched in both hands. She moved to step in front of Khavi, but he held out his hand.

  “Give me that,” he said, his eyes burning with a bright fire I had not seen in many weeks. “I’ll take care of this.”

  Jedra handed over the spear without question. Khavi gave it a gentle bob, bouncing it in his hand, testing the weight. He shuffled his fingers, dropping into a combat stance, holding the spear out before him in perfect form.

  The racial memory of our kind again. Pewdt seemed impressed and dropped his crossbow. He drew a second dagger from his belt, another thin stiletto.

  Khavi shuffled forward, spear tip pointed at Pewdt’s body. “Come on then,” he hissed. “What are you, afraid?”

  Pewdt just smiled a cold, mocking smile, then extended his dagger into the drip of my blood. “My blade has the blood of two kobolds on it already—how quickly can I make it three?”

  “Save your breath,” Khavi snarled, slipping closer and lunging with the spear.

  The gnome deflected it easily, turning aside the spear’s edge with his dagger. Khavi made a series of jabs, short and controlled, but Pewdt avoided them with equal ease. Pewdt stepped into Khavi’s reach, slicing out wide to Khavi’s side. A thin line of blood appeared on Khavi’s forearm, the strike so quick I hardly saw it. Pewdt skipped away, laughing gaily. “Three!”

  Khavi was outmatched. Pewdt was playing with him. Jedra flexed her claws and began to move; I wanted to tell her no, to stay back, but my muscles still wouldn’t answer my call.

  Pewdt seemed surprised as Jedra moved in to engage him, but not discomforted. He continued to turn aside Khavi’s blows, skipping out of the way whenever it was inconvenient to block.

  “Coming at me without a weapon? You are as brave as you are foolish.” The fight became a three-way battle, Khavi’s spear on one side, each of Pewdt’s daggers in the middle, and Jedra’s claws and snapping jaw on the other. Pewdt happily moved between them, his arms outstretched in either direction, the awkward fighting posture hardly seeming to affect him. His wrists, deceptively thin and weak, confidently positioned his daggers to turn aside Khavi’s spear or to jab at Jedra’s encroaching claws.

  Faala’s body twitched and went limp, her dead limbs collapsing onto the stone. The pain in my veins receded. Moving was still impossible, but the pain was much less. I focused all my energy inward, trying to move just one of my fingers. Just the tip of my smallest finger. They needed my magic; Khavi and Jedra were going to die if I couldn’t help them.

  I looked at my finger with an eye that watered with pain from an unblinking stare, willing it into action. Move. Move!

  The faintest twitch. It was all I needed. Like a crack in a ston
e wall, the poison’s hold on me weakened, and in an explosion of movement, my limbs freed. Clumsy and painful, but I could move again.

  Dragonfire bubbled within, so hot and eager to kill it couldn’t be contained. I roared out the words of my spell, holding my finger out to guide the fire. The wave of flame crashed into the gnome. He pulled his hood down to protect his face. When the fire had passed, he threw off the burning fabric.

  I dare not cast again with Jedra and Khavi in so close, but I still had my steel. “You don’t have three arms, gnome,” I snarled, my weapon in hand as I advanced, looking for an opening.

  “Let’s even the odds. Playing with a spellcaster is hardly fair.” He laughed and, as though he could have done it at any time, jabbed a dagger at Jedra’s throat. The blade sank in up to its hilt again. “Four.”

  “Jedra!” shouted Khavi, attacking with the spear, striking Pewdt’s flank and deflecting off some unseen armour beneath his clothing.

  Jedra stumbled back, clutching her neck, gurgling as black blood trickled from the side of her mouth. She slumped against the wall, splashing in the water as she struggled to keep her lifeblood inside her body.

  I let my blade lead the way, stabbing wildly at Pewdt, my anger and fury guiding me. His dagger glanced my blade, but it was enough to turn the cut away from his body. I blocked his counter attack with my shield.

  “So you want to play with spells, do you?” Pewdt said, stabbing at Khavi, the blade missing by an inch. “Want to see a magic trick?”

  Pewdt tossed his daggers into the air. He began juggling them, tossing each weapon from hand to hand. I knew better than to attack, though. A warrior so skilled wouldn’t do such a thing without reason. I could only hope Khavi had the same feeling.

  I shifted so that I faced his flank. Pewdt reached for the belt pouch containing the eggs, snatching the two ovals within and adding them to the circle.

  Khavi roared and thrust his spear forward, but Pewdt caught one of his daggers just in time and deflected it.

  “Careful,” said Pewdt, “next time it might not be a blade.”

  Dagger, egg, dagger, egg. The circle spun too fast for me to follow it. Khavi and I stalked around him, trying to find a way through.

  A standoff. Pewdt juggled, and we waited for an opportunity.

  “Attack me,” he said, smiling. “I want to see you attack me.”

  “No.” I lowered my rapier. I wasn’t going to play his game.

  “As you wish.” He caught one of the eggs, the lighter-shelled one I knew to be Jedra’s, and squeezed it in his hand. I closed my eyes at the sound of breaking eggshell, but I couldn’t close my ears. Fluid and eggshells splattered onto the ground.

  “Is that five? Does it count if it doesn’t touch the dagger?”

  I had failed the unborn child, but I had to use my eyes to see. I forced them open, watching the egg fluid drip onto the floor as Pewdt stole the future of our bloodline away.

  “You monster!” I snarled and stabbed between the flying daggers, but Pewdt ducked out of the way.

  “Oh come now, I’m not the monster, you are. You and your dragon loving kind.” Khavi’s spear dug into Pewdt’s hip, finding flesh; the gnome grimaced in pain and skipped back.

  “One,” said Khavi, dangling the tip of his weapon before Pewdt, slick with red blood.

  “Quaint, but I’ve had scars before. You think you’re the first runty little bastard to wound me?”

  I hissed, baring my teeth at him, dragonfire rumbling within me. “Sounds like you’re getting angry.”

  “I don’t get angry, gold one, I’m above such base emotions.” He sneered at me, tossing the remaining egg with bloodstained hands. “Above you.”

  I lunged forward, but not at him. He was too quick, too skilled. Instead I thrust my rapier into the flying dagger, slapping it away to clink off the stone.

  “Clever little dog,” he said.

  “I’m full of tricks,” I said, hissing the last syllable, raising my claw again. Instead of flame, I summoned my magical darts; flying needles of force slammed into the gnome’s chest. “Suffer, monster!”

  I could smell his blood. I knew I’d hurt him.

  “Thank you for playing,” Pewdt said, “but I tire of this game.”

  He stopped juggling, catching his remaining dagger and egg in his left hand, gesturing intricately with his right. I knew the signs of a spellcaster when I saw one, but I also knew how to defeat them. We both did. Khavi jabbed his spear forward, and I stabbed with my rapier, both of us striking home; Khavi and I thought identically, both aiming for his unarmoured forearms, both striking wicked hits.

  But the gnome’s spell completed, and he vanished before our eyes.

  I stabbed in the vacant space but ringing, mocking laughter, and retreating footsteps were all I found.

  “Oh kobold?” came Pewdt’s disembodied voice. “This egg will make a fine gift for my master.”

  “I’ll kill you for this!”

  “No,” said the retreating voice of the gnome, “you won’t.”

  Then he was gone.

  “Shit of the dead Gods.” I sheathed my rapier and moved over to Jedra, crouching before her and reaching out for her neck.

  She was dead, her eyes glassy and empty. I followed where she had been looking. Right at where the gnome was standing before he had disappeared.

  The last thing Jedra had seen was the gnome crush her freshly laid egg.

  We were two kobolds again, and the killer of my kin, killer of unhatched eggs, was free. I howled to the ceiling, balling my hand into fists, screaming at the roof of my world. Why had this happened? Khavi, Jedra, and Faala had done their duty, Faala, in particular, had suffered through a difficult birth, and now her egg was lost.

  It was in the clutches of the gnome monster. Pewdt. He would pay with his life.

  I stood and straightened my back, wiping the tears from my face.

  “Khavi?”

  He stared at the corpses of the two females. “Yes?”

  “I want to kill this one.”

  We chased Pewdt for hours, knowing that his magic could not last forever, but it didn’t have to. He was bleeding and fairly badly; all we had to do was follow the drops of blood, the scent of his body tears, and his own body would betray him. I bandaged my wounds, Khavi bandaged his, and we stalked our prey.

  We were hunters playing the long game. I wanted that egg back more than anything, but I knew we couldn’t fight him unless we evened the odds. He was a dangerous opponent, and I didn’t think that the two of us could take him, so we aimed to wear him down, never getting close enough to fight, never getting so far away that he would think himself safe. We wanted him tired, weak, suffering.

  As the hours passed, Pewdt’s blood stopped flowing. Clearly he had staunched his wounds. That didn’t matter. I could smell his body tears, and I knew they were tainted with the scent of fear. His confidence was weakening, so he was climbing, making for the surface. I sensed the difference in altitude, the air growing thinner and thinner. Soon we were exhausted and had to rest.

  This was fine. Pewdt would be tired too, and from what I had seen of No-Kill and her sleeping habits, we would rest less than he. The longer we waited the worse he would fight when we caught him. Time favoured us.

  As we followed our quarry through the underworld tunnels, one thing became clear. Pewdt was making for the surface. Sanctuary would be found there, we knew, so we drew closer. His body tears stopped. He was resting, preparing himself.

  We would not give him that opportunity. As one, Khavi and I circled out around in front of his path, preparing an ambush. We laid in wait for him to arrive, to spring our trap, to destroy him utterly and save the egg he’d taken.

  Instead we ambushed his outerfeet.

  His outerfeet walked on their own, mindlessly strolling down the tunnel. I thought he might be invisible again, so stabbed with my weapon at air, even slicing right above where the ankle should be, but the outerfeet marched on.
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  Khavi cut them to ribbons. Their magic drained out in a flurry of wild sparks, the items reduced to scraps.

  We knew, then, that he had gotten away.

  We backtracked, but it was hopeless. We had no trail left, no hint where we could go.

  “We should keep hunting,” I said. “He couldn’t have gotten too far.” I wanted to. I desperately wanted to, but I knew deep in my heart there was no point.

  “It’s been hours,” said Khavi, shrugging off his pack. “He’s probably at the surface by now or down any number of tunnels. We’ll never catch him.”

  “You give up too easily.” My body was tired, and I needed rest, but the thought of Faala and Jedra, and their two eggs spurred me on. We needed vengeance.

  He shrugged. “I know when I’m beaten.”

  I couldn’t believe he was so willing to let the egg go. So willing to let the child he’d sired fall to some terrible fate. “What if we did another pass, we could find where he split himself from his outerfeet?”

  “I’m sure he’d like that. He knows the area, clearly, and he’s full of tricks. He’d get endless amusement from watching us chase our own tails.”

  I knew it was true. “At least we have the map. It might have a list of other exits.” I snatched it off my belt. “Passages. Places where, places where...w-where...”

  Khavi glared at me. “Are you crying?”

  I was. Khavi’s frustration at my weakness pained me further, but I didn’t care. I mourned for Faala and Jedra, for their eggs, for my inability to save them all.

  “No.”

  Khavi sighed and sat down in the corridor. “We should camp here.”

  I shrugged off my haversack. We would never catch Pewdt. “Take first watch,” I said. “I’ll try to think of something.”

  Khavi put the spear, Jedra’s old spear, in his lap, and I prepared to sleep. I threw all my equipment into a pile, curled up in a ball, and tried to rest, but my mind was too active. Unable to stop myself, unable to keep the pain inside any longer, I continued to cry.