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61. Crouching Fighter, Hidden Bandit


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#1 Guest_Oryx_*

Posted 18 July 2004 - 02:42 AM

61. Crouching Fighter, Hidden Bandit

"It's over!" Edwina blew her nose into the sleeve of her crimson robe. Crouching over the moonlit stream bank, she let her tears disappear into the swift cold current. "All over...no more prestigious tuteledge from the finest conjurers in Thay (save myself once I reach full power, of course), I am surrounded by hedge-wizards now!...no more feasts of native cuisine, with the most exotic spices and wines; only cram and gruel for the rest of my days!...no more decadent orgies with flocks of comely concubines; what good are my electrifying countenance and deific charm when no local rustic is worth them?"

She broke down into sobs once more, reaching to one of her robes' many pockets for a tissue, which she promptly exhumed her nasal passages against, only to draw it away to realize she'd just blown her nose into a magical scroll. Gritting her teeth in chagrin and stretching the scroll out for reading, she could still make out through the streaky veneer of customized editing the original runes. "Find Familiar? Another measly cantrip from Thalantyr's stash not worth what we traded to the witch's meat shields, alas..." She tossed the scroll aside; it nearly fell into the water, and stared with baggy dejected eyes across the stream. "Now the valkyrie has an amazonian counterpart, the orphan her elven tutor, the necromancer and thief thick as...thieves, and the dwarf drowns gleefully in our ever-heightening stacks of gold (thanks primarily to my own acumen at destruction)...but Edwina Odesserion cannot even conjure a friend." Her gaze fell, and rested on the scroll again. She began to think...and think...just as the gradually shifting current lapped up the bank a hair and nipped at the parchment. Tugged loose suddenly, it was pulled free, but Edwina threw herself out and bellyflopped into the water, emerging a second later, long black tresses hanging heavy and wet about her shoulders and neckline, robe cold and clinging, but scroll now clutched in her hand.

"I really ought to remove myself from this brook," she shivered, "Less I end up with a fish familiar to tote around in a jar." She clutched herself, teeth rattling, and crawled up the bank and away from the stream, and found a place to sit on dry grass in a patch of low predawn moonlight. "It matters little, though," she told herself, unfurling the scroll once more, "Exactly where I cast, for without a doubt it shall be some magnificently diabolical fiend sent from the Hells to do my bidding forevermore." Once the shiver left her voice, she commenced the Draconic spellchant from the scroll in her imperious alto voice, and at its conclusion the writing vanished from the parchment, which crumbled in a small cloud of smoke. Edwina looked eagerly around for the telltale sulfur-and-brimstone puff of an imp gating from the lower planes. As the second ticked by, she grew excited, then nervous, then impatient and irritated, then fearful. Annoyed, she felt an itch low under her robes, and reached down to assuage it with her hand only to feel the tickling itch spread across her thigh. Her nails followed, but now she hissed and giggled as her stomach tickled, and she shrieked in horror when a mottled black streak of fur emerged from her cleavage, paws clamping on her amulet while whiskers tickled her skin and a rat bared its teeth up at her.

"Heya there, Ed, new look, eh?" Fynk's squeaking echoed as hissed words in Edwina's mind. "If only ol' Boris could see ye now, he'd take a right fancy to ye, miss moffet. Heh heh heh..."

"Fynk!?" Edwina shrieked, "You dirty little...rat! You should have rotted with that prehistoric Malarite of a tracker!" She leaped up and squeezed her breasts together, sending the rat shooting out like a sling bullet. It clamped a lock of her midnight hair in its teeth though, and went swinging around the side of her head like some tiny swashbuckler, and perched on her left shoulder clutching fast to the crimson fabric.

Edwina sighed in defeat, and slumped down in dejection. She didn’t miss Boris, far from it, but it just now hit her fully, how with Denak’s death, all those months of tracking the Rashemanis east was utterly for naught. Annoyingly, she was still bitten by curiosity as to what the Wychalarn sought, even though it no longer mattered to her, there would be no report to her superiors, no successful assignment and promotion. She was a rogue wizard now, an exile.

"The strong survive, pal," Fynk hissed into Edwina's thoughts while tickling her ear with his whiskers. "And that's precisely what ye need to get through that big domed human skull of yers. Quit thinking about Denak, enough about your father and uncle, away with the Tharchions and Zulkirs! If I'm stuck as yer familiar, then ye better be a worthy wizard, or wizardess, or whichever. And today, Edwina the Fearless Peerless Conjuress has got a brand new bag..."

--

Nearer dawn, synchronized scimitars curved through the air in sweeps like falling leaves, one technique flowing seamlessly to the next like rushing water rounding a bed, attack and parry interlaced. Jade mimiced Kivan in each movement of foot and arm, not a moment behind in her anticipation and assimilation of the flow of the new form. They ended with the final up-crescent slashes and a drawing back into a guard posture, and finally she kept her finale graceful, smoothly coming to stillness, but with an abrupt stop as she had before; perfect follow-through.

"I find a joy, and a peace in our practice," Kivan spoke with a wistful air as they walked lightly back through the woods to the camp. "Something I have not had...for some time."

Jade smiled, and tossed her hair back, noticing the two week's growth since leaving Candlekeep upon a day already overdue for a trim. "Same for me. Being hunted, hunting in return...”

"...revenge is not a quest that sits easy with the soul," Kivan took her hand, and they walked the rest of the way in a shared silence. At the camp, Montaron and Kagain had Gullykin sausages skewered and roasting over a fire, across which Branwen and Shar-Teel were exchanging sociological critiques of the culture, as if they'd known one another for a tenday. Xzar was putting the finishing touches of preparing Denak's skull for a spell component. It was the necromancer who first sprang up, and gasped, pale and breathless as Korax as he stared into the dark forest, down the slope where the nearest stream ran. The others heard footfalls and surmised Edwina's return, but paid no mind to Xzar's typical enough hyperactivity. Kivan first went stunned, as if he'd pricked himself with an arrow, and stared along with the necromancer; then other heads turned to gaze through the dim predawn light. It was Edwina sure enough, with her long dark hair, everpresent amulet above the scandalously low neckline assumed by her adventurer's robes...which were now a dusky rose pink.

"Don't just stare like the slackjawed yokels your breeding would imply you are!" Edwina declared with a flip of her hand, "Allow me to introduce myself, Comely and Cunning Conjuress, Edwina the Pink!"

"Pink, just like that?" Jade raised an eyebrow.

"The Favorite Color Rule," Xzar grinned.

"Aye, it be a Wizard Thing, like we told ye," Montaron nodded.

"...'the pink'?"" Shar-Teel gurgled in disbelief. Then repeated herself with a bellow, "The pink? What kind of gender-stereotyping weakling masquerading chauvinist are you?" She leapt up and looked close to throttling the Thayvian until Branwen stood too and laid a hand upon her shoulder.

Edwina smiled sweetly and replied to the fuming she-warrior, "...perhaps the kind to ignore the fashion critique of an unwashed berserker bandit (with enough body hair to weave a tapestry)?"

Shar-Teel growled, and was about to lunge at the conjuress despite Branwen, when she found Xzar slipping in front of her. The starry-eyed necromancer bowed formally to Edwina, took her hand and rained kisses upon the back. Edwina recoiled after a moment of shock, "Get your claws off, you necromaniac!"

"But..." Xzar stared moonily at her like a kitten, "My esteemed conjuring colleague, you look positive fetching in that color, yesterday's scuffle is most certainly Thay's loss and not thine! And..." he noticed Fynk mostly hidden under the hair cascading from the conjuress's shoulder, "...A familiar? Oh, he's so cute! I'd feed him some moldy cheese and rotten eggs, but I'm running low for my stinking clouds as it is." He reached out, only to have the rat bite his fingertip. "Aieee! Curvaceous conjuresses with vivacious vermin!" he screeched, flailing his hand until the rodent went flying through the air, and clutched to a passing branch, then dropped down to his mistress's shoulder once more.

Edwina grabbed the rodent and held him out in the palm of her hand. "Fynk, inbred monkeys. Inbred monkeys, Fynk."

Jade wrinkled her nose. "Um...congratulations. Is it...hygienic?" Fynk hissed angrily at her, frothing at the mouth, then raced back up Edwina's arm and managed to disappear amongst the hair and robes. "Right then," Jade sighed. "Onward...I want to find the bandit camp by dawn."

"Oh yes!" Xzar clasped Edwina's hand before the conjuress could pull away. "It's a date!"

--

Kivan walked well ahead of the rest of the party, scouting for the bandit camp; it ought to be asleep and actually still quiet at this still-predawn hour, their purpose in such an early breaking of their own camp. Just as the sky began to lighten, he saw through the dark trees bulbous shapes; large crude domes of timber and hide, large tents really. He had found it, an educated guess after years of tracking that it would lay near the stream they had been following parallel since Gullykin; and they were about as far afield of the Coast Way as he had expected. Far enough to render unlikely any discovery by the Fist - or at least, anyone who would then survive to tell of it – yet close enough for the convenience of their raids and travel.

He reached to his belt, quaffed a potion of invisibility, and moved forward. The silence of his footfalls surprised even himself; Jade had ‘encouraged’ Montaron to ‘lend’ him the boots of stealth. The stingy halfling had been surprisingly easygoing about it, seeming to find his bare feet quiet and comfortable enough as it was.

Kivan grimaced as he drew closer to the clearing of the camp to find it was no true meadow, rather it seemed the bandits had hewed out a niche in the forest. The ground among the tents was stripped, eroding, and muddy after the rains that had been falling of late. And the air was rank with the numerous stenches of hobgoblin and men, his nostrils and note of the wind direction told him, with a disgusting plainness, that the hobgoblins, the Chill, were encamped to his left, the western tents, and the human Black Talons to his right. He also picked up the scent of gnolls mixed with earth and decay, and noted across the camp a rock outcropping bearing a cavern mouth. Kivan closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply, resisting the urge to gag and scenting for a scent that had been burned into his mind by a tenday of captivity and torture, the smell of ogre. It was faint, but it lingered, from the largest and obviously primary tent to the northeast, set up upon an erected woodwork deck, many sacks and chests upon its boards.

There were guards up at this hour, a few hobgoblins and a few men each lazily watching over their respective subcamps, closer to dozing than vigilance, sitting upon barrels in the centers of the triangles of dome tents each mercenary company would be calling its own. Unseen and unheard, Kivan studied for a few minutes more, then slipped back into the forest.

He punched a tree hard enough to drop the invisibility and announce his return. His seven companions had held back at a small ruin, a grid of roofless, freestanding stone walls about a rectangular columned dais unpleasantly similar to the one the Red Wizards had been found atop the day before. Otherwise, it was of otherworldly beauty in the glow of predawn, stones luminescent, many violet wildflowers carpeting what once must have been earthen floors. A picnic site of storybook quality it would have made, were it not for the memories of Denak’s sinister quartet, and the thought of imminent bandit gangs.

The other six milled quietly upon the steps of the dais, but Jade had moved off nearly into the trees, and knelt in these flowers, eyes closed, nose inhaling, and she fingered the ruby chessknight that hung from her neck, over her mithril chain which glowed softly just like the flowers.

"I have never done this before, not to you, not to anyone," Jade whispered, an arm over her forward knee, head bowed. "But nor have I sought to outmatch an entire encampment in combat...but no, not with sheer strength and steel, but with strategy. Red Knight, I pray for the insight to outwit a greater foe, to devise a plan, to lead my allies, and the skill to execute. All my life I've been training, learning how to fight. For this I pray. I must discover for myself, why to fight."

She rose, and returned to the others and smiled that Kivan was back too. The timing was perfect; the camp would still be asleep, yet the sky would have lightened some. As most of them were humans, but the bandits were many hobgoblins, she hadn't fancied a fight in the midnight dark. The ranger knelt before the steps of the dais, tracing in the dirt with a stick, a map of the encampment, relating all he had seen, heard, and smelt. While Kagain shared a few observations about the information; the Black Talon and Chill, and bandits and hobgoblins in general, Jade thought, pursing her lips and blowing out a cool stream of air while her mind whirred.

Not for the first time in their travels, Kagain thought out loud, “The hobgobs an’ the humans will hate each other more than anything else. The Talon and Chill were and are competitors, not a pretty sight that a Throne-sponsored half-ogre could get ‘em to coordinate, much less share a camp.”

“Tensions would still be high, wouldn’t they?” Jade asked, and the dwarf nodded. “For days the thought to attack the two bands separately has been in all our minds, but as they are together, perhaps they can be set against one another. Kivan, you and I will go invisible, circle to opposite ends of the camp. You on the east, it’s closer to the main tent, and if you ever catch sight of him, I doubt you need my beseeching to take a kill shot. From beyond the human guards, fire at the barrels the hobgoblins at my end of camp sit on. I’ll be past them at the camp’s edge, and I’ll fire back at the humans on your side. With any luck, the men and the monsters will begin blaming each other. At worst we should delay their alarms and counterattacks, and best we’ll set them against one another. Once the ruse succeeds or fails, use the fire arrows from the kobold kommandos under Firewine. I say we burn the camp to the ground. Leave only the main tent, any salient documents would likely be there. Not likely anything strategic in the other tents; and no treasure worth looting will so easily melt or burn.”

She looked up from the dirt diagram to Xzar and Edwina. “You’ve scribed and prepared those scrolls on the Firewine mage?”

“Oh yes mommy,” Xzar grinned, “I took Lightning Bolt, ‘wina took Fireball. It did match her robes, and still does,” he batted his eyelashes at the conjuress, who rolled her own eyes. “I’ve got a Skull Trap ready today too. Denak had such a big head, you know. This ought to be a blast.”

Jade sighed, “Torch with spells once we start with the arrows…and do be discriminate. Watch the big tent. Edwina, you take that end with Kivan; Kagain and Montaron join them but don’t attack until the Hells break loose. X, with me; same Branwen and Shar. We have enough potions for everyone, but don’t attack and appear until it’s ripe. Stay back in the trees, I want to wipe out the camp, or better yet watch it wipe itself out, and I mean everyone, before we venture into the main tent. If we find trouble in there, we can’t afford also getting flanked and boxed in by goons blocking the door behind us, or trapped and burned alive ourselves.”

She rose and drew back, and the others with her. They split as accorded, following her northwest or Kivan northeast, each drinking an invisibility potion once the archers did and gripping the shoulder of the person in front, while Jade and Kivan readied their bows. The two half-parties veered further apart and through the forest to opposite ends of the campsite, coming in from the woods at the extreme east and west, hiding behind the last trees invisible though they already were. The two subcamps’ guard squads were no more alert than before, despite the now light but still predawn sky, blissfully unaware of their ambushers while Jade past the camp’s west end drew back her bow, aiming past the hobgoblin guards to the barrel seating of the humans across camp, beyond which invisible Kivan aimed back at the hobgoblin squad. The elf took aim, and along almost the exact sightline, he saw half of Jade’s body become visible around a tree as she fired her arrow. It flew past the barrels the human guards and skipped along the dirt. Kivan shot his own back across camp; it thunked into a barrel, right between its throned hobgoblin’s feet.

Jade winced at her miss and hastily strung a second arrow while she heard Kivan’s land. She shot her second past the hobgoblins just as the one with the arrow under his crotch grunted and stirred, and now she was right on target, her arrow striking the barrel between the legs of a human guard. He flinched awake too, stared down at the source of the noise, and seeing the arrow looked in the direction of the shaft, which pointed directly back to the Chill guards. He grunted some muddled alarm to his two shift-mates while the disturbed hobgoblin was making much the same inference and guttural cry, and the two trios now waddled through the mud towards one another, shouting angrily and brandishing ill-kept swords. Jade listened while quaffing a second invisibility potion, and while they were speaking Common, she could infer nothing more than that; the hobgoblins’ speech guttural and gravelly, and the men’s too salty and slang-ridden. Voices and tempers rose, and from body language she got the sense they weren’t actually discussing the arrows anymore, rather fallen back to some routine of insult-exchanging that must have been common between the two bandit outfits.

Soon enough more bandits emerged from the tents on both sides, men and hobgoblins who seemed to have slept in musty leather armors, swords and an occasional bow not far from their sides, and now all joined the rowdy stand-off in the center of the camp. The original arrow-woken man yelled in his hobgoblish counterpart's face, was shoved back by the monstrous humanoid, and shoved in return. Jade suddenly was struck by memories of her brother and his half-orcish childhood friend muscling past each other in rugby pals in the yards of Candlekeep, for now a line of Chill and a line of Black Talon were shoving up against one another, brawling but too for fisticuffs, packed in by the bandit comrades crowding around. A spurt of blackish blood flew up into the air, and she saw a hairy brown fist reeling back from a broken human nose, then a dull glint of half-rusted steel in the morning light and a dagger sank into the hobgoblin puncher's belly. Now a few men turned and fled back to one of the tents, calling for a Taugosz Khosann; a few hobgoblins were running to the other end of camp likewise shouting the name Ardenor Crush. The Chill's presumed leader emerged from his tent, an almost giantish hobgoblin with a pronounced tusked underbite, in woody brown studded leather armor. He hefted a sharp and oiled bastard sword up in his right hand and donned a hobgoblin-suitable helm with his left; black-burnished metal with wings that caricatured the large batlike ears of his kind. At the camp's east end appeared the Black Talon chieftain of a stature like Minsc's, already helmed and just fitting the left gauntlet of a suit of full platemail like in make to Branwen's, overlapping and interlocking like a carpet of steel leaves, polished and unrusted. One other bandit man buckled to the chieftain's left forearm a shield of oak and brass, also resembling Branwen's magical armanent. A second man placed in Taugosz's right hand a heavy warhammer of imposing make.

"Do you and your dogs want to die?" the enormous Taugosz Khosann bellowed as he marched toward the camp's center, flanked by the two men and staring over the melee at the hobgoblin leader.

Ardenor Crush likewise closed and growled, "Puny humans afraid of dark, blame Chill for nightmare? We happily put Black Talon to more peaceful sleep."

"I knew your kind would be traitors!" Taugosz shouted in reply, sweeping his warhammer out past his shield. "Mongrels have no place in the Zhentarim, everyone knows that. Let us put you back in your place."

Jade heard a nervous hiss from the invisible Xzar over her shoulder. Across camp, Kivan heard the same from Montaron, and wondered whether they'd been wrong in their leads to date, or Tazok had misled his hired help. Also invisible again but still crouching low and peeking around his tree, Kivan remained focused on the door of the great tent rather than the growing brawl in the camp's center; its unchecked spiraling actually disheartened the elf. He would have thought Tazok should have emerged by now to quell both sides, and worried now the half-ogre was not to be found; imminent vengeance seemed to slip from his grasp now. Behind her tree at the camp's west end, Jade had a thin ear-to-ear smile; her idea was playing itself out beautifully.

Taugosz Khosann and Ardenor Crush waded into the melee, hacking and smashing each other's men with their great weapons; but almost immediately every man and hobgoblin either leapt at the opposing chieftain or guarded his own. Taugosz and Ardenor were swarmed before they could close with one another, beset by blades large and small spearing past their de facto bodyguards. Ardenor's studded leather was punctured all over and the giantish hobgoblin began bleeding brackish blood from a dozen wounds. Endless metallic scraping sounds issued from around Taugosz in his armor, no visible wounds just yet as he pounded hammer and shield down on hobgoblin heads. One of the Chill brutes with a spear thrust it overhead and into the face of the human leader's helm even while he was gutted by the sword of a Black Talon. He fell back and as the spear pulled out of the helm a jet of bright blood followed and sprayed over the heads of the already-bloody bandits. Taugosz reeled back, shield over his face hiding the nature of the wound, but Ardenor took this chance to plunge forward with all his might, trying to wade through the men only to fall upon a half-dozen ready Black Talon swords and drop beneath the heads of the others, gurgling. A pair of hobgoblins had run around the throng, grabbed Taugosz and pulled him backwards. The man fell over, clang of armor dulled by the squishing of mud, and the two hobgoblins slid daggers through his armor until they were both cleft down by Black Talon.

"They might scatter now," Jade hissed, "Attack." She drew back and let fly a fire arrow, the first of three shots into each Chill tent. The moment she began, Xzar and Branwen commenced castings, and across camp Kivan made his own volley of fire arrows and Edwina chanted under her breath. A skull flew across the sky from the trees to the west, and a fireball from the east, exploding in bone and flame in the center of the bandit melee, which become both quieter and louder at once. The din of dozens of voices grew thinner, but a few were far louder with horrific screams, many of those cut short as men and hobgoblins froze in place. Most already lay still, burnt and shredded in the mud; those that lived writhed in agony, fought each other still, or looked around in stupefaction. The nearest tent, hit by the fireball, shot up in flames, and now a noxious green cloud filled the air around the bandits, and spiderwebs sprayed all over the ground. Men fell after tripping over stuck feet or simply passing out, and only a few escaped the death trap and scattered back to the ends of camp.

Arrows, quarrels, and bullets flew from the trees, felling most before they could take cover, but one Black Talon spotted the eastern quarter of adventurers and charged, longsword in hand, face burnt and torn beyond recognition. He beelined for Kivan, who seemed to ignore him and shoot down a fellow bandit, but suddenly he flew to the ground, sans legs; Kagain appeared at once, axe in hand and bloody. The bandit's body crashed and rolled in the mud, his two legs stood for a moment, and then fell over. The bandit's howl was cut short by a head-splitting chop from the dwarf; Montaron snickered and continued launching bolts at the wounded survivors elsewhere about camp while Edwina annihilated several more and an already-burning tent with a second fireball. At the west end of camp, Shar-Teel like Kagain used her invisibility to cleave open the hobgoblin who got nearest, then stood visible and guarding her allies while Jade sent arrows into the last few writhing bandits until they ceased.

Both half-parties drew back a few paces into the trees and waited, looking for any more signs of life while all the tents, save the large one, burned to the ground; shoddy structures collapsing after a few minutes in flame. Each gave out a great billow of smoke as it collapsed, like a stepped-upon mushroom releasing spores, and the conditions made it difficult to see if anyone was alive, yet also seem likely that they would be. Jade was perpetually nervous the main tent would catch fire, but there had been no wind and it did not. Kivan still wondered about the cave from which he had smelt gnolls, but none had appeared. As the smoke cleared, the adventurers all crept from their hiding spots, amongst the flaming ashen wood and bodies strewn about a muddy, bloody field, stench of burning flesh thick and nauseating. The two groups each ran for the main tent, climbing up onto the wooden deck, then backing up against its exterior walls far to each side of the door, and slowly and quietly they slunk toward, trying both to keep themselves unheard, and listen for whoever might be within.

It was utterly quiet in the camp now, though, and seemed just as if the main tent were deserted. Slinking up on the left side of the door, back to the wall, Jade turned slowly, just barely peeking around the doorframe and through the edge of the door-flap. Even though it was nigh dawn, the great domed tent was dark within. She strained and stained, and then gasped as she heard a faint twanging sound and felt a sharp pain in her back. She yanked herself away from the door, and cried out as the arrow broke and twisted in her, the back half still poking through the tent-wall where it had been shot as she threw herself to the deck and her allies did likewise. She felt a burning sensation radiating rapidly from the wound, and reached behind herself to jerk it out. Kivan rolled an elixir to her and slid off the deck, stealth boots planting into the mud, and he ran back around his side of the tent, and into the forest. She quaffed the indigo vial, which neutralized the poison and healed the bleeding wound. Still her back throbbed, and her chainmail would be slit. She watched as Kivan dashed through the trees until he circled around the edge of the camp in the direction the tent door faced, and drew his bow, aiming across the muddy campsite and at the door.

Jade rolled over and looked over to Xzar, crouched behind a chest. "Make them dance," she hissed, and the necromancer rose to a kneel; head bowed behind the chest, and he spellcast. He threw his hands up over the chest, releasing a lightning bolt out of his forearms at a shallow angle through the door, burning away the tent flap. Guttural shouts echoed out as the lightning bolt ricocheted around the enclosed tent, and the stench of seared flesh and fur wafted out the door. It went quiet, inside and out, for another minute, then an arrow streaked out of the door of the tent, sailed across the campsite, and struck Kivan in the shoulder. The half-obscured elf sank to a knee pulling totally behind his tree, grimaced, pulled out the arrow and downed a potion of his own while a second arrow, just as accurate as the last, flew past where he'd been. Kivan rose again, leaning around the tree and back behind while his arrow shot back into the tent.

The elven ranger and the unseen sniper traded another dozen arrows, each of Kivan's flying across the burned-down camp and into the door of the tent, but earning no cry of pain if they were hitting, and each time an arrow flew back, landing in the wood of Kivan's tree or whistling past, one scraping the elf's leather studs. Jade grew tense for his state, and anger at herself for being at a loss to help, but when one of his arrows shot through the doorway and was echoed by a low hobgoblish howl, she wasted no time in charging into the room with her bow drawn.

In an eye blink she absorbed her new surroundings; the main tent was in a dirty, disarrayed attempt at lavishness, rugs and cushions and treasure chests strewn about, the walls hung with the macabre standards of the Black Talon and the Chill, and a huge throne, suitable for a half-ogre like Tazok, looming at the raised far end of the room. Its back was struck like a target with Kivan’s arrows. If only the ranger’s ogrish archnemesis had actually been sitting there now, Jade thought. As for persons, three lay burnt and likely dead from Xzar’s lightning bolt; a face-down human swordsman, a gnoll halberdier with smoking fur, and a crumpled mustard yellow wizard’s robe that housed a charred body, probably human. A fourth figured hung from the back wall in shackles, dead-looking but not from electricity, and the fifth was very much alive. A hobgoblin archer, his bow a faint purplish and far too elegant a weapon for such a brute. He howled still, clutching his face, yet Jade didn’t see an arrow embedded anywhere in his body. She remedied that, though, by loosing one into his heart. The hobgoblin dropped his bow and fell to his knees with a deep grunt, and his hand fell from his face. Jade saw a rodent gnawing and clawing; a disgusting mutilation of what must have already been an ugly face.

Her companions were charging into the room after Jade, and she heard Edwina screech. ”Fynk? You…rat! Excellent work, my pet…”

“Your…?” Jade wrinkled her nose as the mangy black rat leapt down from the collapsing hobgoblin like it might abandon a sinking ship, and scurry over the rug to disappear in the conjuress’s rose-hued robes.

Edwina sighed, “…yes, you remember, my new familiar.”

“Disgusting,” Jade sighed, “But practical.”

Seven head turned as a pained brogue called out, “If you wouldn’t mind…if you’re not with him, mayhaps getting me down, or if you are, and it’s time, make it quick.”

The speaker was the man shackled to the back wall; mostly he hid himself under the black hooded garmenting of a rogue, but the outfit bore many tears with crusted blood; he had probably been tortured. When Kivan entered, he scanned the dead enemy party and then the captive, and grimaced; he of course was all too familiar with this man’s situation.

“Time for what? Explain yourself,” Jade demanded, staring at the man, and attempting to be cold even though he lip quivered in disgust and sympathy. An enemy of their enemy was not necessarily a friend, and she did not wish to loose a foe or witness at least just yet.

"My execution, what do you think?” the captive rogue sighed, “You're not with him, are you, though. I thought you were just another faction in this imploding, civil warring camp…but no, I'd smell his rancid breath on you if you were."

"We're not Tazok's lackeys,” Jade admitted. “What's going on here?"

"Aye, you're not...” the man nodded limply. “Well, this whole place is dirty to the core, that's what's going on. These aren't your ordinary bandits. They're part Black Talons and part Chill, chill being a demihuman band, mostly hobgoblins, and led by that creepy smart one, Ardenor Crush. There be others elsewhere, like that priest Mulahey sent to poison the mines of Nashkel. Set himself up as a kobold god returned and legions of the brainless barking fools believed him, ready to do his bidding 'til death do they part..."

Jade bit her lip for a second, then gambled on volunteering more. "Mulahey's dead. He was working for Tazok. Who's Tazok working for?"

"That's the trick, see? Crush and Taugosz Khosann, leader of the Black Talons, both think he's getting orders from the Zhents and Tazok doesn’t' do much to discourage that particular line of thinking. But the Black Talons and Chill are bandit groups, see? They ply the trade routs, avoid the cities, and that's where they go wrong. I'm from the Gate and I can tell you dead as leather that the Zhentarim aren’t behind this."

"How can you be so sure?"

"A desire for silence isn't the only reason I wear soft-soled boots. I wear 'em so I can tell who's toes I'm treading on. I didn't miss with no Zhentarim, I picked my enemies and I missed with one group and one group only - the Iron Throne. And right as rain, here I am as Tazok's personal prisoner. You do the math."

Montaron and Xzar looked at one another, remembering the exchange between the two chieftains, and both sighed in relief. The truth was, neither was sure their own employer wasn’t behind this – for all they knew they were being used by one branch of their own organization against another. The Zhentarim were fairly coherent as far as dark, unethical groups went, but they were also wide-flung and their immediate superiors might have been ignorant of the machinations of other arms of the Dark Network.

Jade gritted her teeth, and then implicitly volunteered more, her own intent. "The Iron Throne. Where can I find them?"

The prisoner answered, "Tazok's been making regular visits to the Cloakwood so that's where I'd start if I were you. There are some documents in that chest that might be worth taking a look at too...Now go step on some toes, alright? And you call then them Ender Sai sent you."

Jade nodded to Shar-Teel, “Let’s free him.” They drew swords and pommeled the shackles to sundering, and Jade caught Ender Sai through one arm before he collapsed to the floor. He had seemed strangely patient and sane for a man in captivity and presumed torture, for gods knew how long; perhaps any agony eventually gave way to boredom; but he was physically weak, starved even. “Forget why you survived,” Jade told him, her voice quiet and cold, “This chapter of your life is closed now.”

“No squabble there,” Ender Sai smirked, and walked unevenly across the tent, the other party members quietly yielding the way. “Got no need to talk and risk letting the Throne hear I’m still alive. I hear Neverwinter’s nice this time of you…”

Shar-Teel grimaced, “It’s nice all year, stupid man, that’s why they call it…” but the rogue was already gone.

Montaron was already inspecting the largest and most bountiful-looking treasure chest near the throne; his stare was suspicious, like in the ruins of Ulcaster and Firewine. Rather than pinching a lockpick first between his fingers, the halfling slid a dagger in behind the lock, then hopped back and held his breath when a springing noise echoed, then he exhaled in relief. Now he went for his lockpicks and jimmied the chest open, and nearly had to climb up to get in the huge chest and begin flinging out its contents, all parchments.

“Just like Mulahey!” Xzar clapped his hands. “Magical scrolls and unmagical scrolls!” Each Zhent scooped up one of the letters and unfurled it for each other and the rest of the adventurers to read.

Tazok,

I hope that everything moves along smoothly. I have written to give you instructions from our superiors. I have been told that a small band of mercenaries might cause the Iron Throne some trouble in the future. You are to insure that they don't live to upset our operations. Obtain the services of the assassin Nimbul, he should serve you well.

DAVAEORN

Tazok,

I have noticed that your shipments of iron ore have slowed as of late. It is imperative that we receive another tone of ore. Step up your raids, and get a shipment to our base in Cloakwood within the next week. We need to stockpile as much ore as possible before our ultimatum is given. Also, Sarevok wants to know what has happened with the band of mercenaries. Have they been killed? You had better insure that they have been, as Sarevok will not take kindly to any other news.

DAVAEORN


“Nimbul…” Kagain snickered. “Flowery nincompoop fulla bull…”

“Sarevok…” the name was cold on Jade’s lips.

She looked at Kagain, the dwarf shrugged. “The boss is a Reiltar Anchev.”

“Could Sarevok be a pseudonym? For his darker deals?”

“Sure,” Kagain stroked his snowy beard, “Or Sarevok could be between Reiltar and Tazok.”

“Or,” Jade thought, “This scheme could be his.” She sighed, sat upon a cushion, and thought while watching Kivan pick up and inspect the hobgoblin sniper’s bow. She had learned from the boastings of Shar-Teel’s former colleagues that her own wanted status was of one source with this monopolistic gambit of the Throne’s, albeit with no idea why. When she had learned of Tazok, she had wondered if that were the monster-man in the spiked armor who had accosted her that night, but what Kivan knew had not matched. The man with the glowing eyes had spoken too personally to Gorion, not like a mercenary doing another’s bidding. Kagain didn’t think the description matched what he knew of Reiltar either, and the Davaeorn her brother had learned about and now pursued in Cloakwood was a wizard. Although she had little reason to believe the name of the man with the glowing eyes was a name she’d heard, she felt sure he was no lackey, and there was only one identified individual now. The one called Sarevok.

Xzar lamented, “These leads only lead ‘round in circles!”

Kagain shrugged, “We already know the Throne’s got a building in the Gate.”

“But,” the necromancer pouted, “The Cloakwood is so lovely…and yet it’s where O-boy and Imoen have already gone!”

Edwina shrugged, “That only matters if they actually make it out alive. (Not likely, thanks more to the addled Rashemani berserker than to any distended arachnid.)”

Jade glared up at the wizardess and hissed, “Don’t say that about them. We are going to see each other again, soon, at the Friendly Arm Inn.”

She rose, sighed, and looked over Kivan’s shoulder as he strung an arrow to the new bow with its almost otherworldly purplish wood etched with sylvan runes, the bowstring like a single golden hair, perhaps from some dryad or nymph. “I’m sorry we didn’t find Tazok,” Jade spoke when Kivan met her eyes, “Truly. I hope this bow serves you well, it’s so much less than you deserve.”

Branwen faced the arrow-perforated throne, and looked over her shoulder now at the elf and younger woman. “I’ve had my revenge. You each deserve yours. And foes as depraved and wicked as these, deserve to die.”

“Thank you both, for your kind words,” Kivan managed a smile, and looked back out the door of the tent, aiming again with the bow, “It will serve me well enough for the rest of your quest; that may be now where mine, too, will end.”




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