The Ghost King

CHAPTER 11

LIVING NIGHTMARE
I need to get you new mounts," Jarlaxle said with an exaggerated sigh. "We done a thousand miles and more from Mithral Hall," Bruenor reminded. "And pushed them hard all the way. Even with the shoes...." He shook his head. Indeed, the fine mules had reached their limit, for the time being at least, but had performed brilliantly. From dawn to dusk, they had pulled the wagon, every day. Aided by the magical shoes and the fine design and construction of their load, they had covered more ground each and every day than an average team might cross in a tenday.
"True enough," the drow admitted. "But they are weary indeed." Drizzt and Bruenor looked at each other curiously as Pwent shouted, "I want one o' them!" and pointed at Athrogate's fire-spitting boar.
"Bwahaha!" Athrogate yelled back. "Be sure that I'm feeling big, ridin' into battle on me fiery pig! And when them orcs figure out me game, I squeeze him on the flanks and fart them into flame! Bwahaha!"
"Bwahaha!" Thibbledorf Pwent echoed.
"Can we just harness them two up to pull the damned wagon?" Bruenor asked, waving a hand at the other two dwarves. "I'll nail the magical shoes on their feet."
"You understand the pain I've known for the last decade," Jarlaxle said.
"Yet you keep him around," Drizzt pointed out.
"Because he is strong against my enemies and can hold back their charge," said Jarlaxle. "And I can outrun him should we need to retreat."
Jarlaxle handed the mule off to Drizzt, who slowly walked the weary beast around to the back of the wagon, where he had just tethered its partner. Their days of pulling the wagon were over, for a while at least.
The hells-born nightmare resisted Jarlaxle's tug as he tried to put it in the harness.
"He's not liking that," said Bruenor.
"He has no choice in the matter," Jarlaxle replied, and he managed at last to harness the beast. He clapped the dirt off his hands and moved to climb up beside Pwent and Bruenor on the jockey box. "Keep the pace strong and steady, good dwarf. You will find the demon horse more than up to the ..." He paused, and in pulling himself up, encountered the skeptical expressions of both dwarves. "I give you my mount, and you would have me walk?" Jarlaxle asked as if wounded.
Pwent looked to Bruenor.
"Let him up," Bruenor decided.
"I'll protect ye, me king!" Pwent declared as Jarlaxle took his seat next to the battlerager, with Pwent between the mercenary and Bruenor.
"He'd kill you before you ever knew the fight had started," Drizzt remarked as he walked past.
Pwent's eyes went wide with alarm.
"Oh, it is true," Jarlaxle assured him.
Pwent started to stutter and stammer, but Bruenor nudged him hard.
"What, me king?" the battlerager asked.
"Just shut up," said Bruenor, and Jarlaxle laughed.
The dwarf king snapped the reins, but instead of moving ahead, the nightmare snorted fire and turned its head around in protest.
"Please, allow me," Jarlaxle said with obvious alarm as he grabbed at the reins, which Bruenor relinquished.
With no movement of the reins at all, Jarlaxle willed the nightmare forward. The demonic creature had no trouble pulling the wagon. The only thing that slowed the pace was the drow's deference to the two mules tied to the back, both exhausted from the long road.
And indeed it had been long, for they had covered most of the leagues by morning, and the Snowflake Mountains were in sight, though fully a day's travel away.
Jarlaxle assured them that his magical beast could continue after the sun had set, that it could even see in the dark, but out of continued deference to the mules, who had given the journey their all, Bruenor called for a halt that mid afternoon. They went about setting their camp in the foothills.
Jarlaxle dismissed his nightmare back to its home on a lower plane, and Athrogate did likewise with his demonic boar. Then Athrogate and Pwent went out to find logs and boulders to fashion some defenses for their camp. They had barely started moving, though, and Jarlaxle and Bruenor had just untied the mules when the beasts began shifting nervously and snorting in protest.
"What's that about?" Bruenor asked.
Jarlaxle tugged the reins of his mule straight down, hard, but the creature snorted in protest and pulled back.
"Wait," Drizzt said to them. He was in the wagon, standing beside the seated Catti-brie, and when the others looked to him for clarification, they went silent, seeing the ranger on his guard, his eyes locked on the trees across the road.
"What're ye seeing, elf?" Bruenor whispered, but Drizzt just shook his hand, which was outstretched toward the dwarf, bidding him to silence.
Jarlaxle quietly retied the mules to the wagon, his gaze darting between Drizzt and the trees.
Drizzt slid Taulmaril off his shoulder and strung it.
"Elf?" Bruenor whispered.
"What in the Nine Hells?" Thibbledorf Pwent howled then, from behind the trio.
Bruenor and Jarlaxle both looked back at him to see a long-armed, short-legged creature with bloated gray and black skin dragging itself over the boulders toward Pwent and Athrogate. Drizzt never turned his gaze from the trees, and soon enough saw another of the same monster crash out of the underbrush.
The drow froze - he knew those strange creatures all too well, those clawing, huddled, shadowy things. He had gone to their umbral home.
Catti-brie was there.
And Regis.
Had he gone there again? He lifted his bow and leveled it for a shot, but took a deep breath, thinking that he might again be in that state of mental confusion. Would he let fly only to put an arrow through Bruenor's heart?
"Shoot it, Drizzt," he heard Jarlaxle say in Deep Drow - a language Drizzt hadn't heard spoken in a long time. It was as if Jarlaxle had read his thoughts perfectly. "You are not imagining this!"
Drizzt pulled back and let fly, and the magical bow launched a searing line of energy, like lightning, at the fleshy beast, splattering its chest and throwing it back into the brush.
But where there was one, there were many, and a shout behind from the two dwarves clued Drizzt in to that fact even as more of them crashed out onto the road before him.
The ranger pumped his arms furiously, reaching into his magical quiver to draw forth arrow after arrow, nock it, and let it fly, tearing the darkness with sizzling lines of bright lightning. So thick were the beasts that almost every arrow hit a fleshy mass, some burning through to strike a second monster behind the first. The stench of burning flesh fouled the air, and a sickly bubbling and popping sound filled the dead calm between the thunderous blasts of Taulmaril.
Despite the devastation he rained on the crawlers, they came on. Many crossed the road and neared the wagon. Drizzt let fly another shot, then had to drop Taulmaril and draw out his blades to meet the onslaught.
Beside him, Bruenor leaped down from the wagon, banging his old, trusted shield, emblazoned with the foaming mug of Clan Battlehammer. He gripped his many-notched axe, a weapon he had carried for decades upon decades. As the dwarf leaped down, Jarlaxle sprang up onto the seat and drew out a pair of thin wands, including the one he had used earlier to restrain Drizzt.
"Fireball," he explained to Bruenor, who looked at him, about to ask why he wasn't on the ground with a weapon in his hand.
"Then light 'em up!"
But Jarlaxle considered for a moment, and shook his head, unsure of the casting. If his other wand malfunctioned, he might glue himself to the wagon, but if this one backfired, he'd light himself up, and Bruenor and Catti-brie, too.
To the dwarf's surprise, Jarlaxle shifted both wands to his left hand, then snapped his right wrist, bringing forth a blade from his magical bracer. A second snap of his wrist elongated that blade to a short sword. A third and final thrust made it a long sword.
Jarlaxle moved to put the fireball wand away, but changed his mind and slid the other one into his belt. If the situation deteriorated to where he needed to use a device, he decided, he'd have to take the chance.
* * * * *
Athrogate worked his morningstars magnificently, the heavy spiked balls humming at the ends of their chains, weaving out before him, to this side and that, and over his head.
"Get out yer weapon!" he yelled at Thibbledorf Pwent.
"I am me weapon, ye dolt!" the battlerager yelled back, and as the fleshy creature crawled nearer, just before Athrogate stepped forward to launch a barrage of flying morningstars, Pwent charged and dived upon the enemy, fists pumping, knees thumping. Locked in place with his fist spikes, the trapped creature flailing and biting at him, Pwent went into a wild and furious gyration, a violent convulsion, a seizure of sorts, it seemed.
The dwarf's ridged armor tore apart the beast's flesh, fast reducing the monster to a misshapen lump of pulped meat.
"Bwahaha!" Athrogate cheered, grinning, saluting and belly-laughing as he leaped past Pwent and went into an arm-rolling assault of morningstar over morningstar at the next beast coming in.
The blunt weapons weren't quite as lethal against the thick and malleable flesh, which gave way under the weight of their punishment. A typical fighter with a normal morningstar would have found himself in sorry shape against the shadowy crawlers, but Athrogate was no typical fighter. His strength was that of a giant, his skills honed over centuries of battle, and his morningstars, too, were far from the usual.
He worked the weapons expertly, maneuvering himself right in front of the battered creature before coming in with a mighty overhead chop that splattered the crawler across the stone before him.
He had no time to salute himself, and just enough time to tell Pwent to get up, before another three beasts came in hard at him, with many more following.
Black clawing hands reached at him repeatedly, but Athrogate kept his morningstars spinning, driving them back. Out of the corner of his eye, though, the dwarf saw another monster, on the branch of a tree not far away, and when that beast leaped at him, Athrogate had no manner of defense.
He did manage to close his eyes.
Bruenor reminded himself that Catti-brie lay helpless behind him in the wagon. With that thought in the dwarf's mind, the first crawler dragging itself at him got cut in half, head to crotch, by a mighty two-handed overhead chop. Ignoring a fountain of blood and gore, Bruenor kicked his way through the mess and took out a second with a sidelong cut, blocking the third's slashing claws with his heavy buckler.
He felt a fourth coming from the other way and instinctively cut across hard with his axe, not realizing until it was too late that it was a drow, not a fleshy beast.
But the nimble Jarlaxle leaped up and tucked in his legs. "Careful, friend," he said as he landed, though he slurred his words for the wand he carried in his teeth. He stepped in front of the surprised dwarf, stabbing forward with two swords, popping deep holes in the chest of the next approaching monster.
"Could've warned me," Bruenor grumbled, and went back to chopping and slashing. A screech behind him and to his right warned him that the beasts had reached the mules.
* * * * *
Drizzt didn't even have a moment to take in the sight of Bruenor and Jarlaxle fighting side by side, something he never expected to see. He rushed in front of the duo, slashing with every stride, and into a fast spin, blades cutting hard and barely even slowing when they sliced through the meaty body of a crawler. A second spin followed, the mighty ranger moving along as he turned, and he came out of it with three running strides, stabbing repeatedly. He pulled up short and turned, then leaped and flipped sidelong over another of the creatures, managing to stab down twice as he went over. Drizzt landed lightly on the other side of it, immediately falling into another spin, his scimitars humming through the air and through gray-black flesh all around him.
The drow turned back toward the wagon then, and took heart in seeing Jarlaxle's nightmare punishing any crawlers that came too near, the hellish steed stomping its hooves and blasting out miniature fireballs.
Drizzt cut in behind it, his eyes going wide as he saw a beast coming over the opposite side rail. The drow hit the jockey box in full stride and leaped over the rail without slowing. He darted in front of Catti-brie at full speed, his scimitars cutting apart the beast as he passed.
How he wanted to stay with her! But he couldn't, not with the mules tugging and thrashing in terror.
He sprang down right between them, agilely avoiding their kicks and stomps, and deftly clearing away enemies with precision thrusts and stabs.
Just behind the mules, he stopped and veered again, thinking to re-run the route.
No need, he realized as soon as he took note of Jarlaxle and Bruenor, fighting together as if they had shared a mentor and a hundred battles. Jarlaxle's fighting style, favoring forward-rolling his blades and stabbing, compared to Drizzt's wide-armed slashes, complemented Bruenor's straight-ahead ferocity. In tandem, they worked in short, angled bursts for one to engage a creature, then hand it off to his partner for the killing blow.
With a surprised grin, Drizzt slipped behind them instead of in front of them, running a circuit of the wagon and taking care to give the furiously thrashing nightmare a wide berth.
* * * * *
Athrogate yelled out, thinking himself doomed, but a second form flew through the air, head down, helmet spike leveled. Thibbledorf Pwent hit the leaping crawler squarely, skewering it with his spiked helm and pushing it aside with him as he crashed to the rocky ground. He bounced up and began hopping about, the fleshy beast bouncing atop his head, fully stuck and dying fast.
"Oh, but that's great!" Athrogate cried. "That's just great!"
Too enraged to hear him, the fierce battlerager charged into a group of the beasts, thrashing and punching and kneeing and kicking, even biting when one clawed hand came too near his face.
Athrogate rushed up beside him, morningstars spinning furiously, splattering black flesh with every powerful swing. Side by side, the dwarves advanced, enemies flying all about, one still bobbing in its death throes atop the helmet spike of Thibbledorf Pwent.
Bruenor and Jarlaxle fought a more defensive battle, holding their ground with measured chops and stabs. As the ranks of monsters thinned and the wagon became secure, Drizzt hopped up on the bench, retrieved his bow, and began firing toward the tree line with flashing arrows, further thinning the horde coming at Bruenor and Jarlaxle.
Pwent and Athrogate, their rocky campsite cleared, joined the others, and Drizzt again dropped the bow and drew out his scimitars. With a communal nod and knowing grins, the five went out in a line of devastation, sweeping clear the grassy patch near the road and sweeping clear the road as well before turning and running as one back to the wagon.
With nothing left to hit, four of the group, the dwarves and Jarlaxle, each took up positions north, south, east, and west around the wagon. Drizzt scrambled into the wagon bed beside Catti-brie, Taulmaril the Heartseeker in hand, ready to support his comrades.
His attention was soon turned to his beloved cargo, though, and he looked down to see Catti-brie jerking spasmodically, standing upright though she was not trying to walk. She floated off the ground, her eyes rolling back in her head.
"Oh, no," Drizzt muttered, and he had to fall back. Most agonizing of all, he had to step away from his tortured wife.