Follis Wood

Jared glanced down the narrow alley as they passed its mouth. His companions wouldn’t be able to see it, but Mrs. Wiggums‘ cat was stalking a rat in the weeds by the palisade. Her name wasn’t Wiggums, of course, but she was married to Mr. Wiggums, and that had been his name ever since Jared had observed him on a windy day some years ago.

Silver started to whistle, then cut it off as Jared glanced angrily at him. What was the point of listening for trouble before it found you if your comrades made so much noise? Ogre, to Jared’s right, couldn’t help how loudly he breathed, and didn’t see the point in preparation for a fight, anyway. Ogre‘s attitude was, once the fight started, he finished it.

“That’s my attitude, too, of course”, he thought as he glanced up towards the fingernail-thin sliver of Luna in the sky. “I just don’t see any point in getting more hurt in a fight than need be.” He didn’t put words to it, but he felt again the iron hate for the thin elven bones his parent had bequeathed him. He would never have Ogre‘s bulk, or his ability to be reckless in a fight.

Silver understood. He was fully human, but he was also more agile than strong. Jared could hear Silver‘s thumbnail flick the edge of one of his throwing knives, a restless fidget that didn’t mean anything, but that irritated the edges of Jared’s senses.

Jared hated night patrol. He hated most things, but night patrol brought out everything in him that he wished was different. He could see the heated forms of Flaccus the bum and his latest prostitute through the thin wall of his tent. He could hear the scrape and flutter as the bats and rats went about their nightly errands. He was aware of an entire world that his comrades were entirely unaware of, and he hated the mark of difference that it put on him.

“At least Celene won’t be up to any tricks,” he thought, glancing up at Luna. The big moon caused trouble in her own way, of course, as she pulled on Jared’s blood the way she pulled on the waters of the harbor, but Celene — the small moon led a dance that culminated on Godsday of every festival week, and She made Jared … dance.

Jared wasn’t terribly literate, but to the degree he thought in such terms, Celene was definitely capitalized, even in Her pronouns. She lit fire in his veins that peaked four times a year, and sometimes at the new moon and quarters, depending upon the year and how tired Jared was. On those nights, Jared used whatever excuses he could — once he had even abandoned his patrol-mates, and gotten a beating from Mic — in order to find a quiet, private place to dance. Celene was also one entity to whom Jared didn’t dare assign a nickname.

But, no, Celene was waxing towards the first quarter tonight, and wouldn’t cause him any embarrassment. Jared ducked under the low-hanging sign-board of the Grumpy Troll Tavern — it had been abandoned since the owner had disappeared three years ago, and the sign was going to fall into the street one of these days, but it was a kind of local entertainment when passers-by got smacked in the face by it.

Emerging at the next intersection, the lights of the Temple bloomed across their faces, spoiling Jared’s night vision. It was a Godsday, he realized, as he heard the light plucking of Charity’s harp. “It must be a processional,” he thought, since there was no one singing along to the music. He listened for the chime of the thurifer as it swung on its chain, but Silver nudged him in the ribs and they turned into the next street, the Temple fading into the darkness behind them as a whiff of salt water and rotten fish met their nostrils.

Jared had fallen a step or two behind, “Not because I want to hear more of the music,” he thought, when Ogre cried out and fell heavily on his face in the mud of the street. Pausing another moment for his eyes to adjust to the renewed darkness, Jared could now see the seed bag on the ground. “It must be soaked with mud,” he thought, for it lay in a trickle of water that always led from the well to the harbor, and he and Silver shushed Ogre like mothers as they helped him up off the ground.

“I’d send you back to Mic right now,” Silver was saying, “if it wasn’t so dark that no one will notice that you’re covered in mud. But I’ll do it if you don’t stop that cursing! It’s not professional.”

Jared grimaced in the darkness. While it was true that the merchant they were going to escort was one who cared about appearances, he always had trouble calling what the gang did “professional.” Ogre finally calmed down enough that they thought they could continue, but Jared could hear the big man’s heart racing, and the occasional cracking of his knuckles as he flexed his fists. This would be a bad night for trouble, and he fished in his pouch for a copper to throw across Norebo’s threshold when the passed the shrine a couple of streets down.

The merchant’s house was well lit, and a lamp-boy stood by the door waiting for them. When the trio emerged from the shadows in the middle of the street, the boy rapped sharply on the door, and the merchant emerged rather quickly, as though he had been waiting for them.

“Our apologies, Master Oaklock”, Silver smarmed, bowing to the wealthy man Jared thought of as Whiteface, for the powder he put on his cheeks to hide the blush of his heavy drinking.

Oaklock looked them up and down with a critical eye and sighed, resigning himself to the escort. “Thank you, Matt,” he huffed. “Perhaps Lester can wait outside?” Ogre huffed a little at this, but kept his mouth shut, and Silver continued verbally smoothing the feathers of their client as they continued towards the docks.

Jared inwardly rolled his eyes at the lamp-boy, even though he knew that the obstacle Ogre had tripped over wasn’t the only one between here and the docks, and the others couldn’t see in the dark the way he could. Still, he silently slid away from Silver and Whiteface, letting the darkness hide him, and becoming more aware of the other shapes that were concealed in the darkness.

The sound of the surf against the breakwater was loud in his ears as they came up to the Pentapus, the arcane shellfish splaying its five legs across the weather-beaten sign above the door. There was a big longshoreman leaning in at one of the tavern’s windows, so Jared silently steered Ogre to the other one. That way, he reasoned, he’d be in on any action, but wouldn’t upset Master Whiteface with his muddy clothes. Besides, he didn’t like to think of the exit being barred by that longshoreman.

Silver held the door for the merchant and the lamp-boy trimmed his lamp to wait for them to emerge. After Silver and Whiteface had disappeared inside, Jared counted three and followed them.

At least Silver was along this time, he thought. Mic seemed to have an idea that Jared was persuasive, and kept trying to cast him as the face-man. Silver could talk the scales off a flounder, as the saying went, and then charge it for the privilege. Jared thought of himself as muscle — less blunt and unimaginative than Ogre, but pointed and piercing. His eyes were two of his weapons. He leaned against the wall next to the bar and started counting.

Four longshoremen, that was certain, he thought. One man, a half-orc?, might be a sailor off the ship in the harbor, called the Ghoul. The merchant from the ship, Whiteface’s counterpart, was a fat and greasy man with deep folds on his face and stains all over his rich robes. There was half a goose in pieces on a trencher in front of him, and he scarcely looked up at Whiteface as the local merchant sat down across from him, loudly greeting him and proclaiming how good it was to see him.

“Swine?” Jared thought. No, Swine might be a better name for the half-orc, whose greenish snout was very piglike, and whose little eyes glittered as he looked around the room. Jared could see that Swine was the reason that Oil-tub (that name worked) was so nonchalant about the open bag of coins on the table next to him. The extra bulk to his tunic might be the orcish muscles Jared had heard about, but it might be armor. Jared glanced at the board and flipped a two-copper piece on the bar as he ordered a short beer, loosening a dagger beneath his cloak with his other hand as he did so.

Oil-tub wiped his greasy fingers on Swine’s cloak, and Jared was unhappy that he couldn’t read the half-breed’s expression well enough to see if he cared. One of the longshoremen had gotten up and was moving behind Silver, seeming to be looking at the dart-board on the wall behind him. The one at the window leaned out and glanced towards where Ogre slouched, impassively, at the other window. Jared ordered another beer, commenting, “For my friend,” with a gesture to Silver, when the barman looked quizzically at him. He sipped from the first beer, glad that they served in bottles down here at the docks, and feeling the heft of the glass, the balance of the bottle as he drank it down. When the balance changed, he swapped for the other bottle, getting another look from the barman.

Whiteface was starting to lose his composure. There were sheaves of parchment on the table now, and he was reading from one of them, his mouth moving as he followed the letters. Oil-tub was watching him more carefully now, although he affected nonchalance, and Jared saw that his right hand disappeared into the folds of his robe time and again. Jared exhaled and took a sip of beer every time the hand emerged empty, but he could tell things were not going well.

Silver, meanwhile, had shifted his position so that the longshoreman was no longer right behind him, and he was making facial expressions and whispering to Swine both to distract him, and to size him up. The big Half-orc didn’t react in any way, and Jared found himself wondering if the creature was just too stupid to follow a conversation. Although his head was on a swivel, and the little pig-eyes kept taking in the whole of the room, he didn’t move in any other way, and Jared had not yet seen a weapon on him.

Dismayed, Jared realized that he had become distracted. Without his noticing, the greasy merchant now held a dagger just below the table, and he had begun to lean forward. Silver was glancing back at the longshoreman behind him and Ogre seemed disengaged — perhaps he was thinking of coming in for a beer, despite orders.

Suddenly, Oil-tub lashed out with his left hand, grabbing Whiteface by the wrist of the hand that held the parchment. As the dagger began coming back and prepared to rise above the table, Jared threw the bottle of beer he had been nursing. It stung the fat merchant on the elbow and shattered, the pain causing the man to drop the knife into the folds of his robe. However, Jared’s movement had not gone unnoticed.

Swine swung a heavy club — a thick stick with a band of iron around the end — and almost caught Silver in the face as he glanced back from the longshoreman. Silver dived forward and grabbed Whiteface, pulling him under the table while he called for Lester to help.

Things moved very quickly after that. Someone threw a knife at Jared that caught him in the left shoulder. The Half-orc now had an axe in one of his hands, and Silver’s back was unprotected, sticking out from beneath the table. Jared threw his dagger, intending to hit the Half-orc in the shoulder joint, gasping as the half-man lurched into the path of the blade and took it in the throat.

The longshoreman at the window was in the tavern now, having been thrown head-first through the window by Ogre, who entered the room by the door laughing wildly. Silver was on his back, kicking at a couple of longshoremen who were trying to pull him up and away by his legs, while Whiteface hid wretchedly under the table.

Jared threw the other beer bottle, and grabbed a wine bottle before the barman could put it out of reach behind the bar. Smashing the end off the bottle to make a satisfyingly jagged edge, he leapt forward from the bar to the side of the obese merchant.

“Call off the dogs,” he snarled, nicking the man slightly with the sharp glass. While he held the bottle mostly steady, he found the fallen knife in the man’s robes and retrieved it. He didn’t hear Oil-tub give the stand-down order.

He didn’t see Ogre fly into two of the longshoremen, bearing them bodily to the ground. He didn’t see Silver get to his feet, and then punch one of the longshoremen who renewed the attack when they saw that Ogre hadn’t stopped.

He seemed to hear a heartbeat, though it was not with his ears. The little pig-eyes of the half-breed locked onto his, and Swine reached up, pulled on Jared’s dagger, and died. Jared didn’t know what it was, but he seemed to feel it as the Half-orc’s spirit rushed out of his body and into the darkness.

He came to himself when one of the longshoremen tackled him, and he wrestled himself free, smashing the man’s face into the floor. Silver had somehow gotten Oaklock to the door, so Jared retrieved his dagger from the fallen Half-orc and picked up the latter’s club to help Ogre pacify the remaining longshoremen. He took a moment to knock the greasy merchant unconscious during the melee, aware that he might have things more dangerous than daggers hidden in his robes.

When the last of the longshoremen was moaning on the floor and Ogre looked around to find no more foes, he jerked his head towards the door and the two of them followed Silver and Whiteface into the darkness, Jared stopping only long enough to pick up the bag of coins from the table on the way.

As he glanced through the window as they began their way back, he saw the stiff, ungainly corpse of the Half-orc. What affinity had passed between them as that man died, he wondered. Was it simply that they were alike, the ugly and the handsome, both cast-offs of monsters who had left them to find their own way in the world of humans?

Dew dripped heavily from the twigs of the surrounding trees as the warlocks chanted. The clerics burned bits of incense that stank like the fourth circle as they wove the spell together. It was a ceremony, and would take nearly an hour for the first candidate to be ready.

As the ritual neared the first milestone, the temperature in the glade dropped, and as the hierarch raised the ornate dagger and plunged it into the chest of the candidate, the dripping stopped altogether, the dewdrops frozen with the blast of cold that emanated from the weathered stone slab.

Bloodsip shivered inside his woolen robes, and focused on the chant. He wasn’t sure it was required — certainly he felt no power flowing through him. At least, it felt nothing like the power he channeled when he unleashed an eldritch blast, but he was not going to be responsible for the failure of this ritual.

Snerdbane Edgeslice opened his eyes, vaguely aware that the blood dripping from the dagger above his face was his own. An aching pain in his chest made him think he knew where he had been stabbed, and he tried to lash out at the masked figure above him. However, it wasn’t the ropes that bound him to the stone slab that prevented him. Other chains, resting on his soul rather than his limbs, bound him.

As the ropes fell free from his body, he rose from the slab and knelt before the Dread Hierarch. He hated the man with every fiber of his being, but he could only obey. The hierarch extended a sword to him, the surface of which writhed with runes that glowed in Snerdbane’s vision. He reached out and took the sword, and his body was wracked with pains as the blade became his soul. Or possessed his soul. Or — he wasn’t sure exactly what had happened. However, strength now flowed into his body from the blade, and he stood, aware that the Hierarch had granted him permission.

Hate and rage flowed through his mind, and the smug look on the face of a nearby hobgoblin drove him into a frenzy. Hardly knowing what he was doing — had he been a fighter, once? — he clove the humanoid practically in two, swinging the runeblade with a heavy two-handed arc that took the creature completely by surprise.

A sharp cry of surprise — dismay? — broke from one of the surrounding, cloaked figures. Snerdbane smiled with what was more like a sneer and turned to the Dread Hierarch.

“You have done well,” that man said, his voice echoing hollowly in the mask he wore. “You have survived the transformation, and you have killed. Did you feel strength flow into you from the hobgoblin?”

Snerdbane thought a moment, then nodded. Something had flowed up the blade from the creature when he struck it. Glancing down, he saw that the wound over his sternum had closed.

“Good. You have become a Death Knight, and death is your master. When you serve him well, he will reward you with renewed health and vigor. Take the armor that the guard was wearing. It is yours, now, and you will need it shortly.”

Puzzled, the new Death Knight pulled the armor off of the hobgoblin. It fit him passably well, but was damaged from the blow he had given it. No one told me that this would be the way for me to get equipment he grumbled inwardly.

He had hardly finished fastening the final working straps of the leather armor when there was a cry from the stone behind him. Turning, he saw the Hierarch’s knife rising from the chest of another man.

This man, too, rose from the stone and knelt to the Hierarch, but when he took the sword from the hiearch’s hands, he cried out aloud and the blade shattered, leaving him nothing but a shard — hardly a dagger or short sword.

“Gutterspawn!” the Hierarch shouted in fury and disdain. “Worthless wretch! You are unable to hold the gift you have been given!” He turned to Snerdbane, but the Death Knight needed no order. He strode forward quickly and slashed at the gutterspawn, surprised when the wretch blocked with his feeble blade.

The fight was soon over, even with this unexpected resistance. With the creature’s demise, Snerdbane felt even stronger than before, and he seethed when the Hierarch told him to stand aside while others were processed. Some of the clerics were beginning to sound hoarse from chanting so long, although most of them were accustomed to this sort of duty.

After a half-dozen men had been transformed into either Death Knights or gutterspawn, and the latter had been dispatched by the former, one of the newer Death Knights noticed that Snerdbane was wearing armor, and immediately attacked him.

The first Knight was surprised at this action, and suffered a wound before bringing his own runeblade into play, parrying and riposting, slashing at his enemy’s unprotected flesh. It wasn’t long before he had defeated the newcomer, but although he felt more powerful from this victory, he noticed that the wound had not been healed.

Snerdbane approached a cleric that was observing rather than participating in the ritual and demanded that the priest explain what was happening.

“Only the living are able to heal you when you strike them with your runeblade,” the priest said with a cruel smile. Seeming to divine Snerdbane’s next thought, he said, “You are forbidden to harm one of our order.” Indeed, the invisible bonds on Snerdbane’s soul? prevented him from as much as slapping the man.

Furious, he stormed away from the ceremony until he found a small group of humanoids clustered around a smoky fire. He struck one of them down, and was immediately healed of the wound he had received from the other Death Knight. However, he had been careless again, and the armor of this victim was in even worse shape than that he was wearing.

Undeterred, he set upon the entire group, who had attacked him with the death of their comrade, and when he had slain all of them, he was able to piece together a more complete set of armor.

He was puzzled by only one thing. Although the blows he rained on the hobgoblins seemed to heal him, he didn’t feel the increased strength he had felt from killing gutterspawn or Death Knights.

Hardly had fitted the new armor to his body than he was set upon by another Death Knight. This one moved more swiftly than the last, and Snerdbane was soon fighting desperately, growing weary as he fended off the furious attacks of the other.

Finally, the attacker paused and said, “Bow before Delphus Shadowblade, and you shall live.” Snerdbane bowed reluctantly, and Shadowblade inhaled sharply, as though a surge of pleasure had moved him.

Turning from Snerdbane, Shadowblade searched for a new adversary, and the former gripped his sword, ready to run the previous victor through from behind. However, he soon realized that he was completely incapable of striking the one to whom he had bowed. Instead, he followed the victor and joined him in attacking some of the other wandering Death Knights, some of whom had, themselves, joined into small groups.

Luna was still high when Delphus Shadowblade took his place on one of the standing stones to the right of the Dread Hierarch. He had been given a suit of armor after defeating many of the other Knights, and was now called Master of Sorrow. Gutterborn and the lesser Death Knights still fought in the shadows beyond the fire pots, and there were no humanoids left within the circle that was permitted to the undead warriors. Generally, those Death Knights who had made the transition first were able to defeat the newer recruits, having collected gear from the unfortunate humanoid soldiers and guards who had surrounded the ritual circle. Others, like the unfortunate Snerdbane, were eventually cut down by warriors with finer mettle, and some of these waited with Shadowblade for the last of the victims to be processed.

In between the fighters and knights who were slaughtered to change them into Death Knights (or gutterborn, for the less fortunate) the clerics slaughtered sacrifices to the dread powers that were granting these transformations. As the Hierarch oversaw the last of these sacrifices — a young girl taken from the lands of the Bandit Kings — the sounds of combat from beyond the grove changed in tone.

While there had been a more-or-less constant clash of arms in the surrounding darkness, there were now the sound of thundering hooves and the shouts of living voices. Light bloomed in the darkness here and there as light spells were cast into the melee, and other lights cast black shadows from tree or standing stone as they emanated from unsheathed blade or uncovered shield.

Before Shadowblade could completely reckon what was happening, a great warhorse charged into the very circle, a tiny elf-maiden clad in shining armor on its back. In her right hand was a heavy lance and on her left arm a shield bearing the emblem of a rose encircled by thorns. She swept past the lesser Death Knights, ignoring even Shadowblade, to charge right up to the Dread Hierarch and strike him with her lance.

The blow would have killed a normal man, but the Dread Hierarch of the Horned Society was no normal man. Possessed of arcane powers and filled with the strength of the Hells, he flew a few feet through the air and landed on his feet.

His disciples immediately sprang into action to defend their master, while Shanks ran up behind the horse to attack the knight from the ground. However, before he could even swing his sword, several other horses charged in to the glade.

Each warhorse carried a warrior, and each warrior was hedged about with a power that made the Master of Sorrow tremble. A good-looking man in impeccable armor charged at Shadowblade, but the Master avoided the wicked-looking lance with ease. In return, he swung his massive hand-and-a-half sword over his head and brought it down upon the Cavalier. Although the runeblade guided his hand in the most effective blow possible, the opposing horseman seemed relatively unfazed by the attack.

Arrius Boldblade slid from his steed, simultaneously drawing his gleaming sword from its sheath as he did so. If the brooding Knight he faced wanted swordplay, he was more than up to the challenge.

To his left, Alianna Glimmersky leaped from her steed’s back as well, calling to the beast to retreat for the time-being. There was an aura of fear around these foes that made the horse restive, and she needed to concentrate on stopping this ritual.

Behind the two of them, Theobaldus the Observant, Guderwinda Everbright, and Clatriel Redmain repeated the maneuver, one they had rehearsed in training until it was as straightforward as breathing.

Calling forth a power he had never used, the Master of Sorrow mentally commanded the foes to despair. Although the elf and another of the warriors blanched for a moment, they pushed their assault on the Death Knights in the glade.

One of the other Knights unleashed a freezing blast of cold. While one of his comrades was inconvenienced by this, the Cavaliers were severely injured, the frost only slowly melting from the polished surfaces of their armor.

Shadowblade considered the cocky horseman before him. The man’s gleaming armor was clearly bound with arcane power that was proof against all but the mightiest swordsman, but he would see if it was protected against elemental forces. Like the lesser Knight had done, Shadowblade focused his power into a blast of cold that staggered his foe, though the man showed great courage on his face.

Across the glade two of the other Death Knights copied this action, blasting the cavaliers just as their joints were beginning to unfreeze from the earlier blast. Another of the Death Knights — Shadowblade couldn’t remember his name — was caught in these cones of cold as well, but if he wasn’t strong enough to shrug the bitter frost off, he wasn’t fit for the title.

The Dread Hierophant called upon his minions to deal with the intruders and vanished, while one of the Warlocks flew up into the sky, pointing his finger at the Elven Paladin to no apparent effect. The Death Knight behind the elf had been swinging his sword at her to no effect, and having lost her primary target, she turned her attention on him. With two mighty blows, she cut viciously through the Knight’s armor, her sword blazing redly as though enjoying the carnage.

The three interlopers across the glade were also hacking away at their foes, seemingly undeterred by the ferocious cold that had sapped them again and again. While Shadowblade glanced around to see what had become of the other Warlock, the one in the air cast a fireball at the elf.

At another time, the Master of Sorrow would have been entertained and impressed at the way the flames broke around the elf without harming her, bringing the Death Knight she faced to his knees as they scorched his cold undead flesh. Now, he was only angry, and unleashed a second blast of cold at the infuriating Cavalier who dared face him. The man staggered and blanched, and the Death Knight took comfort in knowing that his bravery now was mostly bravado. Still, the human warrior’s sword was beginning to take its toll of the Master’s health, and he seemed to be protected from the runeblade’s life-leaching ability.

A lightning bolt tore through the glade, removing the elf’s opponent from the fight, but Shadowblade couldn’t tell if the Paladin had been badly hurt or not. His senses told him not only that she was alive, but that she bore life within her, and he burned with a hate, and a desire to end her.

Keeping his final blast of cold for the elf, he swung at the Cavalier again, but the man deftly caught the blade on his shield and countered with a wounding thrust below Shadowblade’s guard.

Two of the other Death Knights were down, now, though he thought he had seen one of the female Paladins — of Pholtus, by the look of her — go down to a blast of cold. He looked to his right and saw the Elf approaching at the top of her speed, the glowing red sword held in a way that made his insides ache with anticipation.

While planes of shifting colored lights suddenly appeared throughout the glade — no one ever learned what had caused them or what purpose they were intended to serve — the Master of Sorrow focused his rage on the elf and called out, “Die!”

To his surprise, although the frost blasted her fiercely, instead of attacking him, she stretched out her hand to the Cavalier he had been fighting and said, “Courage, my friend,” the touch seeming to revive him.

As the last two of the lesser Death Knights went down before the Paladins, Alianna Glimmersky tested her blade against the skill and armor of the Master of Sorrows. Soon, Theobaldus and Clatriel had joined her, and with the combined attacks of the group, the Master soon lay lifeless, the mockery of undeath ended.

The flying Warlock had headed off around this time, and the other Warlock, on foot, was beginning to run away. Whistling for her steed, Alianna charged her followers to take care of Guderwinda’s body, then swung into the saddle to pursue the fleeing warlock. It wasn’t long before she returned, his senseless, bound body draped across the rear of her horse.

Arrius and the others were guarding a small group of “prisoners”. Alianna’s infravision told her that they were not alive, but undead of the sort she had lately been fighting. Clatriel told her that they had been herded this way by the rest of the force, and that they did not have the same spirit as the Death Knights they had been fighting.

“They don’t have any armor, to speak of, and no swords — look.” She pointed with her glowing longsword at the dagger-like shard one of the fiends was clutching to his chest.

Alianna’s look suddenly changed, as though she were listening to someone else speak, who was not present for the rest of the party, and she smiled.

Spurring forward, she leveled Fedifensor at one of the groveling prisoners, noting the way he avoided looking at the glowing red blade.

“You, there,” she said, accepting the sidelong glance he gave her. “If you wish to be freed of this corruption, and to be avenged on the Horned Society, seek out Pholtus.”

Several of the other gutterspawn murmured that they would also seek out Pholtus, but Alianna stopped a few of them. “No,” she said, commandingly, “you four are to seek out Pelor.” They crept away, seemingly accepting this word.

When the Paladin was about to turn her horse away from the wretches, one of them stood boldly up. Hate filled his face, but there was something else there, too. Perhaps a thirst for vengeance? He was broader than the others, and didn’t seem to fit with them in a number of ways.

“Where would you have me go, mistress?” he asked.

Something like a smile broke on the elf’s face as she saw his boldness. He didn’t cower like the others, although he cradled the broken scrap of a sword against his chest like the rest.

“Heironeous,” she said, emotion touching her voice. With a nod, the gutterspawn turned and strode through the midst of his fellows as though he had a mind to find Heironeous that very night.

Alianna turned her steed and saw that her companions were looking at her with amazement. “Come,” she said, “this one,” she nodded to the shape across her horse’s rump, “has information that the mages can reach, and Goodie needs a cleric to help her rejoin the fight.

“I also need to ask her forgiveness for leading her to a death. The next time we face these monsters, we must be prepared for their cold attacks.”

“What of the ones you released?” asked Theobaldus.

“I don’t know,” she laughed. “My God has a use for them, but what it is is beyond me. Perhaps my husband will be able to tell me when we see him again. In any case, I almost wish I could be there when the undead present themselves at a temple of Pholtus.” She laughed again at the thought, and taking the reins of Guderwinda’s horse in her left hand, she started the way back to the rest of the force, where she hoped to find a cleric who could return her herald to life. Failing that, they would need to return to the fortress before Goodie would be able to ride the horse again, instead of being carried like a sack.