Unwilling to Acquiesce – 29

Come the morning, the companions strike camp and pack for the day’s march to Windspear. In the west the hills are visible, grey rocky outcrops pushing up between viridian carpeted slopes. As Adamant slings his marching pack over his shoulder the top flap comes open momentarily and inside, Nalia sights what looks like a folded length of cloth-of-gold. She is about to ask him what it is when Anomen comes up next to her.

“I want to thank you again, Lady,” he says happily. “Your gift is a great honour.”

“I don’t doubt you will do it honour,” she replies. Nalia and Anomen then take up their own kits and join the other party members already on the march.

The companions make good time for the most of the day, enjoying clear skies and finding an ancient cobbled road heading straight east to the Windspear Hills. Nalia tells them that the road is used constantly by all manner of folk heading from east to west or vice-versa. For many generations the stones of the road were mined by locals, used to build houses, barns and wells. The ready dressed stones of the road are easier to use than cutting from virgin rock. However, because of the road’s importance to trade, her father had forbidden the practice. In places the cobblestones fall away to patches of dark earth and mud, but nonetheless the road makes the journey swift and direct.

As the sun sets, the shadows of twilight rise from the forested hills. In the uncertain light, the party hears the sound of an armed group somewhere ahead through the trees. The clash of armour and the clatter of battle tack echoes through the trees. The companions look to one another and then prepare for combat. Weapons are drawn as quietly as possible; Yoshimo nocks an arrow to his bow and Nalia draws a wand from her belt pouch. Readied for a fight, the adventurers sneak forward as best they can, staying close to the trunks of trees, away from the middle of the old roadway. Ahead they manage to make out the movement of several figures. Even in the failing light an ogre is unmistakable, but there are many other shapes; the combination of creatures is puzzling. The party can see a gnoll armed with a steel-bladed halberd. Also among the number is an orc archer and a winged beast that appears to be a young wyvern. Studying the monsters, the companions are uncertain what it is they are witnessing.

“Are these the ogres?” whispers Anomen, uncertainty in his voice.

“It would seem so,” answers Yoshimo. “Conveniently located too.”

“Bandits would likely work near a road like this,” muses Adamant. “But this feels wrong to me. Something is afoot here.”

“I agree,” Jaheira says. “Such a mix of creatures is not common. Their nature is as much to prey upon one another as upon mortals. We should be cautious.”

Jaheira’s warning comes too late though, for one of the creatures, an ogre mage by his height and smooth blue skin, points to the lurking adventurers and shouts a warning to his evil comrades. The monsters quickly gather into a battle formation, hefting their weapons.

“I suspect they don’t mean to welcome us,” Yoshi says, smiling in anticipation of the coming battle. “Do we stand or flee?”

“They’d surely run us down,” says Anomen as he adjusts the weight of his shield strap on his arm.

“Stand and fight or run and die; not the hardest choice,” says Adamant. He smiles back at Yoshi, then steps into the middle of the road, pointing towards the monsters with the Chaos Blade. “Hear me! I am Adamant, an Inquisitor, and I have been sent by the Lord of these lands to bring you to justice. Surrender to us now and you will not be harmed. You may submit to just trial or die here; what is your answer?” Behind him the rest of the party walks out into the road. From his right shoulder Adamant hears Yoshimo’s voice.

“Some day you must let me teach you the virtue of stealth,” says the bounty hunter, not unhappily.

“Good luck with that,” quips Jaheira.

The monsters appear to confer with each other about Adamant’s challenge. As they do, Nalia’s voice can be heard from the rear of the company, quietly intoning magic. She completes her spell and hasting power flows out over the party. Suddenly the world seems to move so much more slowly. The wind seems to slacken and the waving branches flex slowly like caressing fingers. Falling leaves seem to float in the sunset air; the buzzing insects float on the breeze like lazy gulls on the wing. To Adamant it is as if he is a racehorse that has been tied to an overloaded cart and now he has slipped his traces and is free to run.

The monsters shout their response to the party’s challenge. The words are drawn out long and slow. They flow through the air like cold treacle. “Keep…your…tricks…monster,” cries the ogre mage. “We…will…slay…you…this…day!”

The words are strange, but the threat is undeniable, as the orc looses a flight shaft aimed directly at Adamant’s armoured chest. The other monsters charge forward but it seems as though they are merely ambling lazily. Yoshimo’s bow hums with arrow after arrow flying in a deadly, swift-flowing stream towards the assailing creatures. Adamant, Jaheira and Anomen also charge, but their feet push them forward in a quicksilver surge, their armoured forms nearly blurring with speed. Although the companions have known each other barely days, their hardships together are already building the kind of instinctive combat teamwork that is the hallmark of elite warriors.

Adamant bats the orc arrow aside with the Chaos Blade and then, mere seconds later crashes into the charging monster line. Jaheira and Anomen are at his side. Nalia conjures mystical arrows constructed of pure acid and these slam home against a troll, now visible in the monsters’ ranks. Jaheira’s club glows with enchanted power and the Flail of Ages in Anomen’s hand glows with flame, frost and acid of its own. For his part, Adamant revels in an open field in which to swing his sword. The confined indoor spaces where the companions had lately fought made the use of a two handed sword difficult, but the clearing about the road offers no such problems. With long fluid strokes, the Chaos Blade achieves a grace and precision that seems impossible for so large and heavy a weapon. Under the influence of the hasting magic, the blade becomes a blur of deadly silver light.

In spite of the monsters’ obvious power, the companions take the victory with swift certainty, their tactics of three melee combatants supported by archer and mage prove the equal of the foe. A half formed curse comes from the lips of the final ogre as he falls face first to the stones of the road. With the suddenness of unexpected thunder, the hasting fades and fatigue falls on the companions like a hammer blow. Anomen and Jaheira gasp audibly for breath, their chests heaving desperately. Adamant leans on the Chaos Blade like a crutch and Nalia falls involuntarily to one knee. From the trees beside the road comes the sound of a person emerging form the underbrush, and a voice raised in astonishment.

“What can this be?” calls a man in buckskins as he emerges onto the road, shadows making his face virtually invisible. “I was hiding from what I was sure was two forces of monstrous creatures in conflict. Now that the battle is over I see humans, knights and warriors.”

At the stranger’s words, Adamant and the companions look about them and clearly see that the bodies of what they thought were monsters are in fact the corpses of men in armour, much of it fine and well kept. There is no doubt that this group were knights and squires of some sort.

“No!” cries Anomen in anguish. “Sir Ajantis? I know this man!” He points to one corpse torn through the chest by a sword slash. “And here is Tal’eck, his squire! Slain by my own flail strike!” Tears well up in the priest’s eyes as he kneels at the body of a young man, still not out of his teens, with its head crushed by the heavy blows of the Flail of Ages. From nearby the others can hear Nalia begin to weep as well.

“We have been deceived,” Jaheira says tersely, as though the very words hurt her to speak.

“A dire trick,” Yoshimo agrees. “No wonder they would not surrender. They saw us as we saw them.”

The words of the ogre mage, who in fact was a grey haired knight of advanced years and noble mien, echo in Adamant’s head; “keep your tricks, monster”. From deep inside him, in the place where the blackest of his blood flows, he hears the whispering voice of his heritage.

“Blood! Vengeance! Slaughter! You have been wronged,” it whispers, insidious. “Your righteousness is smeared by this; they have robbed you of your honour. Find them and slay them! Torture their families before their eyes! Exterminate their bloodline! Erase them from history and let even the memory of them die!”

Adamant’s hand grips the hilt of the Chaos Blade in white-knuckled fury. As if it can hear the whispers of Adamant’s dark soul the sword seems to tremble in his grip, in anticipation or excitement. Like the cheering of a gladiatorial crowd, the clamour for bloodshed rises in the young knight’s ears. He stands stock still, terrified that if he does not hold then the fury will wash him away and he will drown in it, becoming lost forever in the power of his father’s evil.

“Adamant?” Jaheira’s voice finally pierces the clamour. “I asked what you think we should do?”

“Do?”

“Yes. Garren Windspear, he has offered to shelter us in his cabin; it is nearby!”

“Garren Windspear?” Adamant’s voice sounds as if it comes from far away, carried on an errant breeze. His eyes are fixed, nearly into a stare. He looks to Garren, the lone man standing by and seeming eager to help. With deliberate, almost forced, actions Adamant invokes the power of his faith to sense if there is any evil about the man. The mystic power turns up no hint of darkness. If only I had thought to do this with Ajantis and the others.

“Adamant?” Jaheira tries to prompt her comrade to a decision while the others all look on, awaiting direction. None of them has ever seen him so indecisive and it worries them.

“Go…go with Garren,” Adamant instructs.

“What of you?” asks Jaheira, sensing the separation implied in the commands.

“I will…remain, to bury the dead; and to pray.” And hopefully silence the clamour.

“I will assist you,” Anomen volunteers, tears streaking down his face and visible by the light of the rising moon.

“No.”

“But they are knights of the Order, my brothers in faith. I must be allowed…”

“NO!” Adamant nearly shouts, his voice harder than iron. Then he softens. “This is something I must do…alone.”

“But I must pray…!” protests Anomen, his eyes filled with passionate grief. The two men lock eyes in the moonlight. Adamant knows that Anomen’s grief is as real as his own, that the priest needs to mourn and provide for the dead every bit as much as himself. But he cannot allow Anomen or any of the others to remain. The bonds which Admant uses to hold his bhaalspawn nature in check have been worn very thin, too thin for safety. The chains must be reforged and he needs solitude for that.

“Tomorrow, Anomen,” he promises. “With dawn tomorrow, rise and come to see them on their way to Helm. Tonight it must be me alone.”

Anomen shakes his head with incomprehension, but he allows himself to be lead away by Nalia’s gentle hand. The two walk with Yoshimo, following Garren Windspear as he picks his way through the darkened forest. Jaheira waits for a moment, watching her young friend wrestle with his own inner darkness. She lights a lantern for Adamant from her own pack, trusting to her elfsight to find the trail Garren has made to his home, then she leaves. Alone on the road Adamant begins to search for kindling and firewood to build a pyre. Then he sets the bodies for the fire, tearing the dead men’s cloaks into strips in order to bind them for burial. And through every moment the clamouring rings in his ears and the bloodlust demands and cajoles, begs and pleads, just to be released.

The night seems very long.