Broccli_Head said:
Is that the end of Flood Season?
Nope, we've got a fair stretch to go yet.
I'm heading out of town for a business conference, and will be back on Monday. Don't let the thread die!
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Chapter 58
The aftermath of the battle with Tongueater and his bandit minions was a collection of close calls and quick recoveries. With the death of their leader, the last few surviving bandits had been quick to flee. The rogue fighting Illewyn didn’t quite make it; as he darted back for the hallway he stumbled on the debris of the chair that had been part of the barricade, and by the time he got back up Arun’s hammer was there to end it.
Zenna lived, and Illewyn was quick to restore her to consciousness using her divinely-granted healing. Dannel was brought around using the same method, and once conscious he used his own healing wand to restore all of them to health. Mole made a cursory search of Tongueater and the dead bandits, and found several more potions, several of which looked like healing elixirs. More remarkable was the leather pack that the apeman had worn as a pouch; Mole found to her delight that the item was an example of the magical bag known as
Heward’s handy haversack. The gnome quickly transferred the contents of her current pack into the bag, which barely made a dent in the enhanced capacity of the container.
The companions made their preparations in silence, the heavy weight of what had almost happened hanging over them like a shroud. All of them were quite aware that even one more bandit attacker might have turned the tide, and even a few seconds delay could have led to the deaths of both Zenna and Dannel.
Even though magical healing had restored her to full health, Zenna felt that sense of fate quite acutely. On top of this, her thoughts were troubled by the implications of what she had done to save Dannel. The holy symbol of Azuth was back within her pocket, and its now-familiar weight was a constant reminder of its presence. None of the others had seen what had happened; Dannel, the beneficiary of her actions, had been unconscious throughout, and as far as he knew, had been brought around by Illewyn.
How could this had happened? Everything that Zenna had learned had reinforced that divine and arcane magic were two entirely different things, one drawing from the power of the gods, the other tapping into the mystical energies of the Weave. Yet even as she had called upon what she presumed was the power of Azuth through the amulet, casting a spell no wizard could cast, she had felt a strange sense of familiarity, a link to that power that she channeled through the patterns that she stored in her mind through the mechanism of her memorized spells.
She resolved to speak once more with Esbar, upon their return to Cauldron. But there was no more time now for reflection, as the companions prepared once more to move out. None of them wanted to linger here, in this chamber now transformed into yet another gory battlefield. Already Zenna’s nose wrinkled at the smells of death, as the forms of what had once been living, breathing men and women were now transformed into organic debris.
“We have to find Sarcem,” Illewyn said as she straightened from treating Arun’s injuries, her face betraying her exhaustion but her eyes shining with determination as she repeated her familiar mantra.
“Remain wary,” Dannel said, as he tucked his healing wand back away and recovered his bow. “The remaining bandits will likely flee, given the death of their leader, but there may be holdouts who may yet be waiting in ambush.”
“Bah, bring them on,” Arun said. But despite his words, the dwarf’s face too showed hints of weariness, and there was a shadow in them as he looked down one last time at the slain body of the lyncanthrope.
The companions made their way back downstairs, following the route of the last few bandits who had fled from the battle at its conclusion. There were at least two, they calculated; the second archer who hadn’t joined in the melee, and the warrior whose arm Arun had crushed with his hammer. Illewyn had recovered one of the torches dropped by the bandits, and the flickering light of brand sent long shadows ahead of them as they made their way back downstairs.
The common room was again as they had left it, although the stench of death now hung heavier in the chamber. A door in the eastern part of the room near the stairs that had been shut earlier was now open, so they headed in that direction. A hallway led beyond that opened onto a number of small rooms that had the look of offices and quarters for the staff that ran the roadhouse. They saw no signs of the bandits, save for the general destruction and looting that had characterized the rest of the place, so continued on to the end of the hall.
The last door opened onto the kitchen, a spacious room with several other exits. To their right were a pair of shuttered windows flanking a set of double doors that opened onto the night outside. The doors were slightly open, the locking mechanism clearly bashed open, and a small half-circle of wet from the storm outside had already formed in front of the opening. A staircase led up to the second story directly to their left as they entered, with a heavy iron stove standing against its base, while a massive hearth stood cold and empty in the opposite wall. A single lamp burned fitfully in a wall sconce, its flame dancing in the damp wind that blew in through the open doors, and another half-dozen lamps were burned out and unlit about the chamber.
To their left, a heavy table stood against one of the interior walls. Standing there was a woman in armor who was hurriedly transferring handfuls of coins from the tabletop into a fat burlap sack. Other coins were scattered across the floor, forming a trail of sorts to the open doors. As they entered she looked up and saw them. She dropped the sack, some of the coins falling to roll across the floor, and reached for the longsword at her hip.
“Give it up,” Arun said, stepping into the room. “Your leader’s dead, and so are the rest of your comrades.” Behind the dwarf, Dannel entered, an arrow to his bow and the string half-drawn, ready to fire at an instant’s notice.
For a long moment the woman warrior only looked at them in silence, her face torn between expressions of anger and fear. Then a scream from beyond the half-open outer doors broke the standoff, followed by a bestial roar and a tearing noise that sounded quite unpleasant indeed.
“What the...” Arun said, shifting his attention to the disturbance.
The woman bandit leapt into action, but instead of charging the companions she spun and fled, darting toward one of the doors in the far wall that led into another part of the roadhouse. Dannel lifted his bow and drew the arrow to his cheek, but held his fire as the woman disappeared. Zenna, standing behind him, noticed but did not say anything as they followed Arun into the room and toward the doors.
“Oh, no!” Illewyn cried, a sound that pushed the border between sanity and hysteria, drawing their attention around.
The priestess’s torch had illuminated what had looked like a mount or sconce attached to the wall near the table. As the light drove back the shadows, however, it quickly became clear that the object was in fact a human head, severed and impaled on the wooden surface. Illewyn’s behavior revealed the identity of the grisly token, even before she sobbed the answer.
“Sarcem... Sarcem!” she cried, falling to her knees, her body shaking.
Mole and Zenna were at her side in an instant, offering what sympathy they could, while Dannel moved over to remove the impaled head from the wall. Before he could reach it, however, another roar sounded from outside, followed by what sounded like a patter of feet on the muddy ground, drawing nearer.
“I don’t think we’re done here yet,” Arun said to them, while he moved to the door with his hammer at the ready.
His words were proven true a heartbeat later. A drenched human appeared in the opening, staggering toward the sanctuary offered by the roadhouse, his face a rictus of pain as he clutched gashes in his side that oozed blood. Even as he spotted Arun a darker, bigger form rose up out of the rain behind the fleeing bandit, lunging for him from behind. The bandit reached for the doors even as the shadow struck, and he screamed as it tore into him, driving him forward. The bandit and his pursuer hit the doors, slamming them shut with incredible force, and behind them the companions could hear the sounds of rending flesh.
Then, a few minutes later, silence returned to the roadhouse kitchen, broken only by the faint sounds of the rain outside.
