D& D - Greyhawk - Night Watch (28 page)

Blossom coughed. Apparently, she’d swallowed some water in her unexpected dunking. Still, she beat Burge to the shallow side of the trench. “Find me a rock!” she shouted at Garett as she bent and groped along the bottom. “A stone—anything!” she insisted. Straightening, she held out her fist and opened it. Nothing but silt and mud streamed between her fingers.

The worm was too close. They ran again, the water reaching to their thighs, impeding them. A wide copse of mangaroos loomed on their right, and Garett steered them toward it. Suddenly, the sky was aflutter with hundreds of panicked birds. The worm rose up with astounding speed, opened its maw, and snared four or five of the most unfortunate fowls from midair. It paused only a moment to swallow and to survey the sky, which was now empty, for more birds. Then Garett felt those unnatural eyes turn his way again, and the chase was on.

As soon as they scrambled out of the water and up onto the first clump of roots, Blossom began to struggle with the leather thong that bound her braid. “Help me!” she demanded of Burge. “The knot’s gotten wet. Untie it!” Burge had the thong’s small knot untied in no time, and

Blossom yanked it from her hair. It was not just a thong, Garett saw, but a sling. Swiftly her fingers worked, making two loops in either end of the slender pouch. “Find me a stone!” she demanded as they ran deeper into the copse, tripping and stumbling on the mad tangle of interwoven roots that formed the ground under them.

“Can you hit anything with that?” Garett shouted as he glanced back in time to see the worm dive and vanish under the water. It had found the trench, too. It would be at the copse in only moments, but here he hoped the thicker limbs and branches and the closeness of the mighty mangaroo trunks might further slow it down.

“I can castrate a rooster at a hundred paces,” Blossom boasted, her sarcasm not diminished by desperation or danger. “But not without a rock!”

Garett caught her arm and jerked her to a stop. “Can you do it here? Right here?”

Blossom looked at him, then gazed around, realizing at once why he’d led them into the copse. “Yeah,” she answered, “all this should slow it down enough to make it a sure bet.”

Burge stepped up. His breath came in long, ragged gasps. At the top of the bandage around his chest, a trace of red showed through the dirt and the sweat stains. All his exertion had opened his wounds. “I don’t mean to be a pessimist,” he said, “but this is a swamp. You’ll be damn lucky to find a rock you can use in that thing anywhere.”

Garett thrust a hand under his wide belt and pulled out his coin purse. It was all coming together, he thought madly as he struggled with the drawstrings. It couldn’t be accidental. It couldn’t be coincidence. It wasn’t a dream at all. Mordenkainen had been real. He had intended for Garett to come here.

Garett poured the contents of the purse onto his palm, letting the copper commons and the silver nobles, even an electrum lucky, spill between his fingers. “Use these,” he said. The five amethyst crystals glowed on his palm with a

violet light, throbbing with their own inner fire.

“Duncan’s dice!” Burge muttered with hoarse surprise. “They’re worth a poor man’s fortune!”

“My life’s worth more!” Blossom answered him practically, snatching one of the small crystals and holding it to the sling’s pouch. “They’re not very big, but they’ve got a good weight. Give me room!”

She pushed her companions back with one arm and turned to wait for the worm. With a gush and splash, it rose out of the water at the edge of the copse. Blossom began whirling the sling above her head, holding out her right arm before her to take careful aim. The worm swayed in the air for a moment, then crashed down upon the edge of the root floor and began to slither out.

The impact of its weight set the roots to trembling and shifting. Blossom gave a startled cry and pitched backward into Burge’s arms. The stone went plummeting from the sling’s pouch and fell between the roots and was lost.

“Another!” she shouted, holding out her hand, regaining her balance as the worm wriggled toward them. She snatched the crystal that Garett held out to her. Again the worm rose up, shattering branches above its head. A cascade of leaves and limbs fell around it. Almost as if possessed of some intelligence, the creature hit the floor again. The entire root floor rocked and shifted, but this time Blossom kept her footing. The sling whirred around her head, faster and faster, until the air fairly sang. Then she let fly.

A streak of violet fire shot through the gloom, straight for the monster’s left eye. The beast’s maw gaped in a strange, soundless scream as the crystal struck its mark. The eye flashed with green fire, and an unnatural smoke exuded from the wound. A thick ichor streamed out upon its rubbery flesh as its great body lashed back and forth in obvious pain.

“The other eye!” Garett shouted, pushing a crystal into Blossom’s hands as she stood, awe-struck, regarding the result of her first missile. Limbs and leaves rained down around them as the swaying hulk bashed the trees and branches. The roots trembled and shook under their feet.

Blossom fit the crystal to the sling and took aim. It would be harder this time since the beast now thrashed mindlessly. Garett watched the determination on her face as she whirled the sling. She gave a gasp as she let go. A second streak of violet fire, arcane in its brightness, sped through the air. Green fire flashed in the worm’s right eye. The beast arched at the impact. Again, impossibly, smoke seeped out of the wound in great steaming curls, and a flood of viscous liquid rushed from the blinded orb.

The worm smashed down upon the root floor, thrashing madly. The tangle of roots underfoot began to yawn and gape. Without warning, Burge gave a cry as one foot fell suddenly through a hole that hadn’t been there a moment earlier. He might easily have broken his leg. Curling his fist around the remaining two crystals, Garett helped him out. “Get around the tree trunk!” he ordered, grabbing Blossom by the arm. They ran to the nearest mangaroo and, joining hands, wrapped their arms around it and held on until the tremors stopped and the great worm lay dead.

Cautiously Garett let go of his friends and crept toward it. Much of the worm’s body trailed away back into the water. He could not guess its length, but lying motionlessly on its side, it was twice again his height in thickness.

The smoking glow in those eyes had not yet faded. It ebbed and dimmed like a candle flame at the end of its wick. Ichor pooled around the monstrous head, sheening with that queer glow, and one of the translucent gills, still open, also reflected the dying emerald luster. As Garett stood watching, it suddenly relaxed and closed with a muffled thump.

“Thump,” Burge repeated. “It was the sound of its breathing.”

“Thump, thump,” Garett said quietly, remembering Mordenkainen’s words as he returned the remaining two amethyst dice to his coin purse. “The heart of the swamp.”

Burge stared up at the creature as he walked around the edge of the pool of ichor that drained from its eyes. The pool did not spread much. It seeped between the roots and into the swamp water beneath. “This is probably why there aren’t any lizard men in this part of the marsh anymore,” he said.

“Well, if he keeps throwing money around the way he did back there,” Blossom said, grinning at Garett as she rewound the leather sling around her freshly braided hair, “I’m sure they’ll be back.”

Suddenly, the green glow faded completely from the great worm’s eyes. The three watchmen stood together in the gloom, abruptly aware of the gathering dark. Night was falling upon the world, and they were still in the marsh, lost.

Then the carcass of the worm gave a tremor. They leaped back, hands going for swords, but the worm did not rise or show any sign of life. A sound echoed suddenly around them and rose up into the trees, a tearing, a ripping. An emerald light of aching intensity shot upward, lighting the landscape with a verdant radiance.

The ripping was the ripping of flesh and tissue. A long fissure opened high on the corpse of the worm. A dark, bilious fluid gushed out, and a mass of entrails spilled from the wound onto the root floor. The fissure opened wider, as if a surgeon were doing work from the inside, and the light grew brighter still, such that Garett raised a hand to shield his eyes. The light came from inside the worm!

From up out of that fissure, out of that horrible corpse, rose a brilliant green star. Its pure fire banished gloom and exiled the shadows. To all corners of the marsh it poured its light, and darkness fled away. Burge and Blossom stumbled back, their eyes and mouths wide with awe that bordered on fear, but Garett walked forward, his eyes unshielded as he stared into its white heart and stretched out his hand.

The star came down to meet it. The fire enveloped him, and he flung back his head and cried out as every nerve in his body came alive with ecstasy. Then the light began to ebb, not with a flicker as it had in the eyes of the worm, but with a slow and steady diminishment. A sword became visible through that glow, with Garett’s hand wrapped around the hilt. Still the light faded, until only the runes carved into the blade burned with any brightness. Finally, that glow, too, was gone.

Garett drew the blade close to his body and hugged it. “This is Guardian,” he said to his friends. “The sword that Mordenkainen sent me for.”

“I’m impressed,” Burge said simply, coming closer for a better look at the mystic blade.

Blossom, though, seemed inclined to keep her distance. “I’d be more impressed,” she said caustically, glancing around at the gloom that once more surrounded them, “if it had kept glowing ’til we’d gotten out of here.”

Garett had to admit she had a point.

For some time after claiming the sword Guardian, Garett, Blossom, and Burge wandered in what they hoped was the right direction. The larger of Greyhawk’s two moons, Kule, had appeared palely through a gap in the forest canopy. For almost an hour they waited, crouched on a knot of mangaroo roots, watching the moon crawl across that gap. Wisps and tendrils of mist drifted ghostlike through the air, obscuring it, threatening to hide it entirely. Yet they were patient, and the mist held back until they were able to judge from the moon’s observed motion which way was west.

At last they reached the outer edge of the mangaroos. The grassy wetlands stretched ahead of them like a strange sea. A gentle, constant wind rippled over the tall blades, and the large moon shimmered on a fine, clinging fog that hugged the water. After their ordeal in the interior, it was a welcome—if unnatural—beauty to behold.

There was no sign of Rudi, nor was there any way of knowing if they were north or south of the place where they

had left him with their horses. There was, however, a smell of roasting meat in the air. Though it was faint, it was enough to set their mouths to watering, a more than adequate reminder that they had eaten nothing but a bit of cheese and biscuits all day. They followed their noses northward and spied a small campfire far sooner than they had any right to expect.

Burge plucked off the tip of a blade of grass, put it between his lips and gave a sharp whistle.

A shadowy figure stood up suddenly on the campfire’s near side. “Forget it!” came Rudi’s voice, and the sound rolled over the grasses. “I blew that damn stuff ’til my lips were blistered. And I think I’m allergic to it, too! You want me, I’m over here!”

Their friend was just where they’d left him, perched on a knot of mangaroos. Somehow, he’d not only found dry wood for a fire, but caught a bird to roast and eat. Feathers lay scattered all around, along with the shells of what appeared to be three goose eggs. Half the fowl was already gone, but half remained.

Blossom went straight to the spit and knelt. “You’re burning it, damn it! ” she snapped, without so much as a good-to-see-you. “Where’d you ever learn to cook, anyway?” She snatched up one end of the spit in her bare fingers, then snatched them away with a quick curse.

Rudi pointed to his wide leather belt, which lay by the fire. It was greasy with his handprints and marred with a scorch mark. Blossom understood immediately. She picked it up and folded it over the hot end of the stick. Now she had something to grip with.

“The same place I learned to throw a dagger,” Rudi answered proudly, if somewhat defensively. “Help yourself, by the way.” He settled down again with his back to the trunk of the mangaroo and patted his stomach. “I’ve already had my fill.”

Burge looked down at the young sergeant with a new appreciation. “You killed a bird with a dagger throw?”

Garett grinned as he knelt by the fire and balanced Guardian across his knees. He leaned forward to strip off a piece of the goose before Blossom devoured it all. “Why do you think I let him hang around?” he said. “I told you the kid’s good.”

Rudi feigned modesty. “It wasn’t that hard,” he explained. “I saw the nest up in the tree. That’s where I got the dry wood, too, by the way. Plenty of old dead stuff up there that hasn’t fallen down. Anyway, I thought I’d just eat the eggs.” He waved a hand at the broken shells, indicating he’d already done so. “Then I thought, No, wait. The mother bird will be back soon. And when she came back, I picked her off. With her sitting still, it was easy. Even Blossom could have done it.”

Blossom glanced up from the steaming piece of bird she clutched in her fingers, long enough to give him a wide, remind-me-to-kill-you-later kind of smile. Then, grease dripping down her chin, she returned to her meal.

Rudi eyed the sword across Garett’s knees. The flames glittered red on the naked blade. “Is that it?” he asked simply, pointing.

Garett glanced up and nodded, unable to answer with his mouth full.

“Hey, leave me some,” Burge said, squatting between Garett and Blossom. He reached out and stripped off a large, stringy portion of breast and smacked his lips. “Wild goose. What we need now is a good wine!”

“You’ll have to make do with water,” Rudi answered with an expansive gesture. “But there’s plenty of that.” When there was nothing left of the goose but bones, Garett, Blossom, and Burge stripped off their clothes. None of them even bothered to feign modesty. The discovery of another leech on the back of Garett’s right shoulder was enough to break down any reluctance. Naked, they explored each other in the firelight while Rudi stood ready with Burge’s diminishing packet of salt.