Best Served Cold

by Ari Marmell

Chapter Four: Revenge Is a Dish...

Marcov spotted the modest hut to which the priest had directed him, spent a moment invoking the haunting spirits, and broke into a sprint. He leaped, hurling his whole weight against the shuttered window nearest the front door. Wood burst inward, splinters flying—all in utter silence, for the ghosts of that long-dead village had spread their intangible substances through the surrounding air, muting all sound.

A trio of animated skeletons—Marcov guessed they'd been chosen over fleshier undead so as to cut down on the stench—lurched and staggered from across the room. Bone fingers wrapped around cheap swords, or curled into tearing claws. The clacking and clicking probably would have been disturbing, if he could hear any of it.

Marcov spun, sweeping the legs from under the nearest corpse. Bastard sword held high, he parried a stroke from the second, then brought the heavy pommel of the weapon down in a diagonal arc. The skeleton's collarbone shattered, causing the undead to stagger and nearly topple.

With a quick yank on the thing's opposite shoulder, Marcov removed "nearly" from the equation. The animated bones fell atop the first skeleton, pinning it down just as it tried to rise. Marcov reversed his grip and plunged the blade through both rib cages and deep into the wooden floor. Neither skeleton would be getting up anytime soon.

The third and final guardian was just clever enough to lunge, taking advantage of the intruder's newly disarmed state. It seemed a good idea, right up until Marcov pounded the thing into a heap of splintered bone with a small end table that had been standing in a corner.

A few additional swings took care of the two pinned to the floor. Marcov retrieved his sword and continued, still wrapped in silence.

Doubtless the skeletons had been intended to scare away any potential intruders, and delay an attacker long enough for Khydol to prepare. Except Khydol hadn't heard a peep.

The cleric stood in the next room beside a makeshift shrine to Calistria, surrounded by rickety shelves of mementos—crockery, books, children's toys, candlesticks—presumably lost by those displaced during the General's purge of clerics from Touvette. The tome he'd been perusing fell open to the floor, its pages crumpling, as Marcov appeared in the doorway.

The half-elf's eyes widened at the sight of the unnaturally stealthy intruder. He raised holy symbol wrought of pewter and began to intone a prayer to his goddess.

Sorry, Marcov mouthed around a vicious grin, then raised his blade and advanced at a saunter.

He was halfway through cleaning his blade when the silence lapsed and the room abruptly filled with the whisper of cloth on steel. A moment later, he heard the faint crunching of someone climbing in through the broken shutters.

"Marcov?"

"Next room!" he called back. "You're a little late, Loursa."

"Khydol's dead?" Her footsteps, drawing nearer the open doorway, weren't quite loud enough to mask the peculiar tone of her question.

"Dead as Aroden. Figured I'd ask him a couple of—"

It was pure luck that saved him. Had Loursa arrived before the ghosts had dismissed the unnatural hush, or had his struggle with the skeletons not scattered so many chips of wood and bone, she'd have been on him with no warning at all.

As it was, Marcov heard the sudden rush across the debris and was able to hurl himself aside. The blow that would otherwise have punched through his hauberk and into his back instead left only a fiery trail of blood and pain across his ribs.

"What the hell? Loursa—"

The guard kept coming, her blade thrusting as fiercely as it had against the bandits. Marcov, wincing at every blow, found himself barely able to parry despite his heavier sword.

For a moment there was only steel on steel and shuffling feet. Marcov retreated as far as Khydol's body, then leaped over it, putting a bit of distance between him and his traitorous opponent.

"So what is it, then?" he growled. "Just waiting until you didn't need me anymore to get rid of me?"

"Something like that," she told him softly.

He mumbled briefly under his breath. Then, "Lovely show of gratitude, Loursa."

Again she came at him, teeth bared in a feral snarl.

Marcov clenched his left fist. Wisps of shadow, phantom limbs invisible to mortal senses, swirled.

Khydol's body floated up into Loursa's path just as she made to step over it.

Marcov lunged, burning with betrayed fury. Flesh and bone parted, and his former companion deflated with a soft sigh before sliding from the tip of his blade. For an instant, Khydol's floating body held Loursa upright, then both corpses thumped awkwardly to the floor.

He'd actually grown comfortable, letting someone fight at his side again. Should've known better. Stupid, stupid...

Again he cleaned his sword, then leaned it aside and knelt over the bodies. He began to call upon the surrounding spirits, prepared to ask them to revive Khydol's memories long enough to get some answers...

And paused. His gaze flickered to Loursa's slackened face, a bitter spring of pain bubbling unexpectedly to the surface of his anger.

When his hand came down, he felt the ghosts moving, but it wasn't into the body of the priest he directed them.

Loursa's jaw twitched. Her unfocused eyes turned toward him.

"Why did you try to kill me?" He cursed himself for the plaintive tone he couldn't quite banish.

"Ellithir... tells me... you want to harm her, as... you have so many others. I... have to... kill you first."

"Who's Ellithir?"

"My dearest... friend."

A horrible suspicion began to crawl on millipede legs up Marcov's spine. "How long have you known her?"

"Few hours."

"Then why are you such dear friends?"

"Words. She speaks... strange, pretty words."

The brutal simplicity of the dead. Marcov rose, staggered backward until he thumped against the nearest shelves. Several dishes and other trophies fell, shattering around his feet. He didn't notice.

Loursa hadn't liked him; he'd known that from the beginning, and hadn't cared. But she'd fought beside him. She hadn't betrayed him, not intentionally. Marcov knew magic when he heard it.

And he'd killed her for it.

Marcov rubbed at his forehead and looked back at the corpse, but it was once again an empty, lifeless husk.

"I'm sorry." His voice was oddly hoarse, the words dusty from years of disuse.

Marcov slung his blade over his shoulder and stalked out into the street, his rage growing hot once more. Someone in this town knew who Ellithir was, and Marcov felt more than ready to make whoever it was tell him.

∗ ∗ ∗

A few customers wandered the aisles of the general store when Marcov arrived. For several minutes, as he pulled goods aside and hunted for hidden secrets, the patrons stared at him in confusion. When one of them confronted him, asking what he thought he was doing, the gaunt foreigner was only too happy to let his ghosts toss a few objects around the room until he'd sent everyone into panicked flight.

It took some doing, and nearly ten more minutes; that damn mosquito-repelling herbal smoke, which seemed to be everywhere he went in the River Kingdoms lately, had given him a right headache by the time he was through.

Finally, however, with the spirits subtly guiding him when he got too far off track, he located the hidden trapdoor behind the counter.

He was forced to duck, walking at almost a crouch down the upper portion of the stairs, until he was deep enough below the ceiling to stand straight.

The chamber was earth and soil, barely supported by sagging beams of wood. A stone-rimmed pool sat within, a granite pillar protruding from its center. Both the stink of acrid incense and a faint glow that was the cellar's only illumination spilled from a pair of braziers. Marcov saw no one else here, heard no one, but a lifetime's instincts screamed of lurking danger. Again, he began whispering to the ghosts, asking them to guide his strikes, to warn him of attack, to—

The shadows at the chamber's far end shifted and lightened, revealing a slender silhouette. A voice hissed something only vaguely like words, and Marcov's sword began to glow. He heard skin sizzle even before he felt the searing pain, and threw the weapon aside with a startled shout. It scraped the edge of the pool, settling point-first in the water. Steam hissed upward to join the clouds of incense.

Marcov ran, and not an instant too soon. A thunderous crash shook the chamber, centered where he'd been standing. Dirt fell from the ceiling and water sloshed over the edges of the font. The burst of noise hit him like a physical blow, staggering him, making his ears ring; he could only imagine how much worse it might have been had he suffered the brunt.

Another three paces and Marcov jumped for the low ceiling. A brilliant beam of light flashed beneath him, so close he could feel the heat of its passing. Had gravity taken its normal course, his leap would not have stopped him from plummeting into the path of the ray.

He felt a phantom current wrap around his fingers and feet, holding him to the ceiling. Hanging upside down above the pool like a humanoid spider, he began scurrying sideways.

The darkened figure emerged somewhat from the gloom, revealing a golden-haired elf whose features might have been deemed soft, had they not been twisted in a rictus of anger and hate.

"Ellithir, I presume?"

She grunted an affirmation. "And you would be Draeven. You're a damned nuisance, you know that?"

"So I've been told. What's this all about?"

Ellithir didn't answer, but the flicker of her eyes toward the granite pillar was all the confirmation Marcov needed. He knew a shrine when he saw one, even if he didn't recognize the deity.

Ellithir conjures an abhorrent infestation.

"So, this is a religious thing. Just not Calistrian."

He was stalling, and he knew that she knew he was stalling, but still she answered. "Khydol was useful, as was his faith." She shrugged. "His grudge was genuine. I just... encouraged him to expand his horizons."

"To what end? All this bloodshed and suffering... For what?"

"Bloodshed and suffering is the end, Draeven! We—"

Ellithir flung out her hand in the midst of speaking, clearly hoping to catch him unprepared.

Marcov hurled himself forward and leaped from the ceiling, wondering what fell invocation he'd avoided. Even as he landed, his sword flew from the pool into his waiting grasp, cool to the touch once more. He swung.

The sword crashed into a glimmering aura that sprang into life around the elf, the blade stopping inches from her skin.

Again, Ellithir screeched something that was only vaguely a language. This time Marcov recognized a word—or perhaps a name?—repeated from her first incantation: Gyronna.

The elf's right eye bulged, suddenly bloodshot and grossly swollen, as if pushed partly from her skull by the rage and magic within her. She slapped a hand against his armored chest.

Agony drove him to his knees. Worse than any wound, any illness he'd endured, it felt as though something ate away at him from within.

Then something wriggled, a wet and flaccid tickle that brushed the inside of his ribs and burrowed toward his gut, and he realized that was precisely what was happening. It was all he could do not to retch, then to scream his horror until his mind was gone.

"Idiot!" Ellithir kicked him in the face, sending him sprawling. "We are a plague! We are as the worms consuming your flesh! You haven't stopped me. Even if you'd killed me, you could never—"

The murdered souls that haunted Marcov could do nothing against the unnatural parasites that riddled him. But as they'd guided his limbs before, granting him strength, so did the spirits enable him to act now—more slowly and feebly than he would have preferred, but far more effectively than Ellithir could have anticipated. He stumbled upward.

Again, the glimmering aura prevented a killing stroke.

"Remember how you fought," Marcov whispered, coughing, to the spirits surrounding him. "Remember the men who swept over you, over your families, your children. Remember how you fought..."

Wisps of nothingness swirled, blended, assumed substance and form—until a plain longsword, chipped and battered and vaguely transparent, hung behind the elven cleric.

Ellithir gasped as the blade plunged between her shoulders, unhindered by her aura. She staggered forward, this time into Marcov's waiting grip.

A simple touch was all it took. Flesh split, blood flowed, muscles burst beneath the ghosts' fury.

Ellithir fell, first to her knees, then to one side. Ever thirsty, the earthen floor drank the growing pool of blood around her.

Marcov, too, collapsed once more, panting, shuddering in pain. "A drink and a whore if I live through this," he mumbled, though whether to himself or the spirits was unclear. "Not necessarily in that order."

"Cel—celebrating?" Ellithir's words emerged as a burbling, blood-soaked cough. "Don't. We—we are everywhere. The River Kingdoms belong to us! The flesh is filth. The world is pain. To see is to hate. And the Hag... the Hag sees..."

A final rattle, a pinkish froth, and Ellithir was gone.

Moments later, the agony of the worms began to fade, and Marcov nearly wept in relief. He felt as though he'd just swum the Inner Sea while suckling a mewling vampire, but the worst of the pain was gone.

Then, with the image of Loursa's dead face floating before his mind's eye, he realized he was wrong. It was only the physical pain that had ebbed.

Groaning, he dragged himself upright, leaning on his sword like an old man's cane. His gaze flickered first to the strange stone shrine, then to the dead priestess at his feet.

He thought of Ellithir's dying words—of cults like this spread throughout the River Kingdoms—and the spirits stirred within him.

Just this once, maybe he wouldn't mind the job that lay ahead.

Coming Next Week: The past returns to haunt a group of retired adventurers in the first chapter of Josh Vogt's "The Weeping Blade."

Ari Marmell is an author and game designer, and has written extensively for Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, World of Darkness, and more. His fiction includes the independent dark fantasy novels The Conqueror's Shadow and The Warlord's Legacy, the young adult fantasy Thief's Covenant, and the Iron Kingdoms novel In Thunder Forged, among others. For more information, see his website at mousferatu.com.

Illustration by Damon Westenhofer

Best Served Cold

by Ari Marmell

Chapter Three: An Array of Evils

Loursa moved to Draeven's side, limping, sword dragging point-first through the dirt. "I thought you said there'd only be a few of them!"

"I did," he said. "Didn't figure every last one of them would be up and armed at midnight, either."

Understanding pounded over Loursa thicker than the falling soil. "They knew we were coming."

"We did, at that." From the mass of ragged but uncomfortably well-armed brigands, two figures advanced. Loursa knew instinctively that the one in the lead was the "Zarred" Draeven had mentioned. Steel breastplate over leather, an axe that looked like it had actually seen professional care, scars on top of scars... A bandit chief if ever there was one.

The other, the speaker, was a scarlet-haired half-elf who wore his chainmail awkwardly. His sleeves shone gold in the brigands' torchlight, and his left hand fiddled absently with a silver pendant that dangled from his neck.

Zarred is a bandit chief if there ever was one.

"How?" Draeven demanded.

The half-elf shrugged. "Message from a friend."

"But—"

"You stupid, Khydol?" This from Zarred. "Son of a bitch is stalling, is all. Let's just get it done, yeah?"

"Well, I'd have liked to know why this fellow's interfering, but I suppose it doesn't matter. Go ahead."

Zarred barked. Almost a dozen bandits raised crossbows. Loursa sucked in a deep breath, determined to at least die with dignity. Pity it had to be in this bastard's company.

And Draeven, after a moment of muttering to himself... laughed.

A chorus of low howls thickened the air around the condemned pair. Dirt kicked up and fallen twigs flew, yet not a single gust touched Loursa. Triggers clicked. A flock of bolts flew toward the pair and were just as swiftly hurled aside by the spectral forces. None even came close.

The bowmen recoiled, crying their dismay, but the half-elf—Khydol, Zarred had called him—advanced. Shouting, he raised the pendant around his neck. Loursa could just make out its three-pronged engraving, and while she knew little about magic of any sort, she recognized a spell when she saw it.

Whatever power Khydol hoped to invoke, however, was just as swiftly lost. Draeven raised his own hand in a peculiar hooking gesture. The tenor of the howling changed, ever so faintly, and the amulet tore itself from the chain around the half-elf's neck and hurtled through the phantom gale into the foreigner's waiting grip.

Khydol gawped, apparently having been stripped of language skills along with his pendant. Not so for Zarred. "Kill them!" thundered the bandit leader.

Loursa met the first of the attackers, blade clashing on blade. She allowed herself to be pushed back, retreating, watching as his strikes fell into a pattern common to the vicious but untrained. Strike, parry, step, strike, parry...

The guard from Kelbran delivered a short, swift kick, catching the bandit's ankle in midair with an audible crack. He'd barely begun to howl when her sword took him in the throat.

Loursa's withdrawal had taken her away from the man's companions, granting her an instant to catch her breath. She shot a quick glance behind to see how her own unpleasant companion was holding up...

She nearly choked. Draeven was staggering, reeling from blows that skittered across his hauberk or rang from his blade. The blood of several shallow cuts ran down his arms, dripped from between his fingers. He retreated before the enemy, worked to parry any weapon that came too close, but otherwise seemed lost in his own little world. The bulk of the gang was focused on him, Zarred included, and it was nothing more than simple geometry—only a few could reach him at any given time—that kept Draeven from being overwhelmed.

Another brigand, an ape of a man whose face was all beard and rotten teeth, demanded Loursa's undivided attention with his falling mace. His first blow numbed her arm from knuckles to elbow, nearly knocking the sword from her hand. A third attacker appeared from around the mace-wielder, jabbing with a spear. Loursa spun aside, dropped an arm over the shaft and twisted. The weapon flew from the bandit's grip, but by then the big guy was closing again, mace blotting out the sun...

An unearthly screech, high-pitched and keening, echoed over the village. Loursa was startled enough, but her foes seemed shocked into near paralysis; she disemboweled the nearer of the two bandits with a quick swipe before turning to see what had just occurred.

Draeven hung in the air a dozen feet above his opponents, slowly rotating in a phantom whirlwind Loursa could sense but not see or hear. His jaw gaped, distended almost to the point of breaking, yet the scream—only now beginning to fade—was not in his voice and seemed to come from around him as much as from within. Blood slid from his blade, painting an abstract pattern of spatters on the upturned faces of his foes.

Without warning, he dropped back into the bandits' midst, a blur of flashing steel and fists. As Loursa had witnessed back in Kelbran, ghostly arms seemed to guide Draeven's blade, driving it into organs. No matter the ferocity of the enemy that confronted him, he attacked with relentless resolve. Strokes that should have spilled his blood, even dismembered limbs, turned aside at the last moment, repelled by invisible forces. Brigands began to fall.

Screaming in rage—and perhaps a touch of fear—Zarred burst from between his men, axe hurtling in an arc that might have split a healthy bole in a single blow. Draeven crouched, spinning, so that the heavy blade passed clear overhead. Halfway through the turn he rose, sword outstretched.

The bandit chieftain was fast. Instead of being spitted, Zarred yanked himself from the sword's path.

It didn't help. Draeven thrust out his empty hand, slapping it against Zarred's chest.

Spirits groaned. Zarred screamed. And then he... withered. The flesh of his arms and face shrank against the bone, his eyes dulled in sudden pain; even his hair seemed to go limp.

It wasn't lethal, whatever the foreigner had done. But the next time Draeven's hand-and-a-half came around, it plunged clean through Zarred's chest with no hint of resistance.

The remaining bandits fled so quickly their own horses might have had trouble keeping up. Khydol was gone as well, apparently having run after he'd lost his pendant.

This time, Draeven didn't bother to pursue the survivors. Instead, after looking about to ensure no more bandits remained, he wandered over to the nearest house, shoved the door open, and vanished inside.

Loursa followed. She found Draeven slumped in an old chair beside a scarred and food-stained table. He gulped deep breaths of air—whether from physical exhaustion or because of something else, she could not tell.

"Why did you let them beat on you like that?" It wasn't the question she wanted to ask; she was working up to that one.

Draeven shrugged. "I can hear the ghosts' thoughts in my mind, but they don't read mine. I have to explain what I'm asking of them. Sometimes takes longer than might be convenient."

"Who the hell are they? Draeven, what are you?"

∗ ∗ ∗

Marcov hadn't planned on answering the questions. He never had before, and Loursa certainly wasn't the first to have asked. A curse was already squirming on his tongue.

It died unborn, smothered by a low moan deep in the recesses of his soul—a moan that only grew louder, more oppressive, the longer he kept silent.

"You have got to be kidding me!"

The moan became a shriek, nearly knocking him from the chair. The legs of the table began to vibrate.

"All right, all right!"

He steadied himself, only to notice Loursa staring at him. She looked as if she were trying desperately to figure out which of them had actually gone mad.

"Apparently," he growled, "they want me to tell you. No idea why, but I'm getting disgustingly used to that.

"I was a sellsword, and a damn good one. Did most of my work as part of a mercenary band, led by a guy named Craddek. Real bastard, the kind whose own mother would travel a week out of her way to avoid. But then, so were the rest of us."

"I'd never have guessed," Loursa said dryly.

Marcov ignored her. "It was back in early '08. We hit a town called... Shit, I don't remember what it was called. Not sure I ever knew, come to think of it. Few miles east of Saringallow, down in Isger. No war, no part of any contract. Just something we did occasionally between jobs to keep the purses full and the urges sated."

He grinned without humor as Loursa gasped and stepped back. "Not all that worldly, are you, ‘m'lady'? Most who earn a living with steel? Not much different than the men we killed earlier. They're just the bad guys when it's your home they're hitting."

A long silence, then. Marcov, despite his fatigue, rose from the chair and began to pace. "Things got out of hand this time," he said finally. "Peasants fought back harder than we expected. Killed a couple of the boys before we subdued them. Craddek was pissed, and the rest of us not much calmer.

"We killed them. All of them. The whole town was muddy with the mess, and when we were done, there wasn't a man, woman, or child left breathing."

The color drained from Loursa's cheeks.

"The thing of it is," he continued, "being dead didn't keep them from being angry. Really, really angry.

"I don't know why they picked me out of everybody there. Maybe it was random. Maybe I killed someone special. Hell, maybe it's 'cause I was born in Ustalav; we've got a whole culture built on ghost stories. Damned if I know, and they're not talking."

He stopped at the table, leaned on his knuckles. "I remember a howl, like a hurricane, and then screams... Countless screams, echoing forever. When I woke up, Craddek and the others were long gone—and I had myself a new band of traveling companions.

"I haven't lived my own life in years. They're with me constantly, Loursa. Every minute of every day, every second of every dream. They don't speak, unless it's through the bodies of the dead, but they're not shy about letting me know what they want me to do. They'll help me accomplish my ‘assignments'—you've seen them manifest their powers—but they don't ever take no for an answer.

"I wasn't in the River Kingdoms for you people. I was in Daggermark, trying to find Craddek. Keep hoping that if I can find him and the others, kill them, just maybe the damned ghosts'll be satisfied. You want to know why I showed up here? Why I give a tarnished copper about a few towns in Touvette? Because they do. Not the first time they've gotten me involved in this sort of crap, either. Guess it reminds them of, well, them."

He looked up into his companion's face, pale as the dead of whom he spoke, and wondered briefly what his own looked like. He'd never told the story before, couldn't even begin to separate and identify the emotions it stirred up now.

"That's who I am, Loursa. That's what I am. So you want to stand there looking horrified at me? Or shall we discuss what we can do to keep any more of Touvette's peasantry from joining the ghosts themselves?"

∗ ∗ ∗

"I'm terribly sorry, Master... what did you say your name was?"

"Oh, you got me," Marcov said. "I deliberately didn't mention it earlier, but you've tripped me up with your clever ruse. How did I let you outsmart me like that?"

The priest's scowl deepened the already severe crags of his aged face. "Whatever. I'm afraid I haven't the slightest idea who you're—"

"Must we? Half-elf. Goes by the name Khydol. Priest of Calistria."

It had been easy enough to figure out that much in the aftermath of yesterday's struggle at Alvren. Even if Zarred's corpse hadn't told them as much, the holy symbol etched into the stolen pendant was blatant enough.

Calistria, goddess of—among other things—retribution. So yeah, made sense that one of her priests might seek revenge on Touvette for the expulsion of the churches, especially if he or those he cared for were among the displaced. Loursa, given her attitudes toward religion in general, had been quick to accept that explanation.

Marcov was less convinced. He'd known a few Calistrians, back in his mercenary days. They could be savage when wronged, sure, but slaughtering whole villages of peasants—that seemed a little hard, even for them. And he still couldn't help but wonder who'd warned Khydol that he and Loursa were coming.

Conflicted and uncertain—Zarred knew only what he'd been paid to do, not why—they'd followed the dead bandit chief's directions to Khydol's home, a ramshackle town just across the border in Pitax. Once there, they couldn't split up fast enough for Loursa's tastes. Marcov almost smiled at her eagerness to seek out Khydol through the town's social gatherings, while he took the religious tack.

It's almost as if my story made her dislike me or something.

Now Marcov stood in a slope-roofed wooden structure built more like a northern feast hall than a church. Still, it was a sight one would never see in neighboring Touvette. Rows of kneeling cushions and blocks on which to sit faced a generic shrine over which draped an array of altar cloths, each embroidered with the symbol of a different god.

It was the town's only center of worship. Marcov knew it, and the priest knew Marcov knew it.

"There's zero chance," Marcov concluded, "that you don't know a fellow priest in a flyspeck like this one. So can we just skip all the denials?"

"Yes, I know Khydol," the priest admitted, tone as stiff as his back. "We forbade him from leading prayers here. He was stirring up trouble, preaching violence against Touvette."

"Decided to do more than preach it, holy man."

"Maybe so. But I'll still—" They both paused as a village matron strode through the door and knelt beside the shrine. "Still not deliver him to a thug like you!" the old man continued, his voice lowered.

Now Marcov did smile. "Sure you will."

"If you think you can intimidate me into—"

"Khydol is responsible for the destruction of half a dozen villages in Touvette, and the deaths of hundreds. You live near the border; you must know how the General's knights respond to those who threaten their people."

"We're safe here," the priest insisted, though his face had blanched. "King Irovetti—"

"Irovetti," Marcov interrupted, "is desperate for people to take Pitax seriously as a kingdom, rather than a den of thieves and beggars. If he were told that a nothing little community like yours was harboring an enemy of Touvette, at about the same time the General's men showed up looking for a little payback, you think he wouldn't grant them permission to do what they want with the ‘criminals'?"

The clergyman's jaw sagged; his hands visibly shook.

"Khydol dies either way, priest. Only question is, you want everyone else here to go with him?"

∗ ∗ ∗

"Can I help you, miss?"

Loursa gave a tired smile as she allowed the door to swing shut behind her. "Hope so. I'm looking for a man by the name of Khydol. People tell me he frequents your establishment."

"He certainly does," Ellithir said, her grin equally friendly. "Why don't you come in, and I'll see what I can tell you."

Coming Next Week: Deadly machinations and unforeseen encounters in the final chapter of Ari Marmell's "Best Served Cold."

Ari Marmell is an author and game designer, and has written extensively for Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, World of Darkness, and more. His fiction includes the independent dark fantasy novels The Conqueror's Shadow and The Warlord's Legacy, the young adult fantasy Thief's Covenant, and the Iron Kingdoms novel In Thunder Forged, among others. For more information, see his website at mouseferatu.com.

Illustration by Damon Westenhofer

Best Served Cold

by Ari Marmell

Chapter Two: Worse Than the Disease

The faintest shower of sleet, scarcely more than an icy fog, began to fall over the battlefield that had been the town of Kelbran. Just another instance of the peculiar freezes and unnatural weather afflicting eastern Touvette in recent months, but this time—as visibility grew cloudy and the churned muck of the earth thickened—it almost seemed a harbinger of the oncoming stranger.

They heard his approach before he appeared; citizens, bandits, corpses—all turned toward the clatter and splash of a warhorse thundering across the frost-kissed grass. Pounding in from the north, it grew louder, then louder still, until it was joined by the wordless cry of a warrior seeking blood.

All of which left the brigands more than a little bewildered when the mounted figure appeared from the west, bursting through the flimsy curtain of sleet in absolute, almost phantasmal, silence. Dark of hair, dark of armor, he wielded a massive blade from atop a russet stallion that appeared to be all muscle and resentment. The man swung his sword with a walloping force that seemed beyond the ability of a normal man. Striking like steel lightning, his blade sliced through the mist, hewing down foes as the warhorse bulled ahead. Four of the bandits fell, life gushing into the soil, before the others could even guess at the unbound fury that faced them.

Loursa had no idea whom their savior might be, and for the moment, she wasn't about to question. Instead, with a cry, she led Kelbran's survivors in a renewed attack on their assailants.

"Loursa leads Kelbran's survivors against the enemy."

Even fighting for her life, she couldn't quite take her eyes off the stranger. Whoever—whatever—he was, he was no more natural than the walking dead, and not merely for his abnormal strength. Blade and bludgeon veered at the last instant, sliding past rather than biting into his flesh or even the steel protecting it. In his wake, men who had fallen to seemingly nonfatal wounds twitched, shuddered, and died all the same. He lashed out with his empty hand, as well as his sword, and those he struck fell screaming, limbs withered or skin split.

Perhaps of greater import than any of his eerie abilities was his utter lack of fear. Against one foe or a dozen, living or undead, his arm never wavered, his expression never changed. Where even the bravest of Loursa's companions hesitated to draw near the bandits' shambling allies, the newcomer mercilessly drove his mount to close, his blade filleting desiccated flesh from rotting bone.

When the last handful of surviving bandits fled into the falling sleet, the citizens of Kelbran gave a ragged cheer, Loursa loudest of them all.

Not the stranger. Apparently unsatisfied still, he wheeled his horse and charged after the raiders. Loursa cringed as the din of slaughter and unanswered pleas sounded long after the lot of them had disappeared from sight.

The guard and her neighbors exchanged uncertain glances, then set about gathering the wounded. They'd been at it for perhaps five minutes when the horse reappeared at a walk. The rider dropped from the saddle, sword leaning on one shoulder. As he neared, Loursa could see that nothing about him other than that sword seemed to be in any worthwhile shape, and that the sleet melting down his skin was probably the nearest he'd come to bathing in weeks.

"Draeven," he announced in a bored tone, as though common courtesies were a burden he could do without. "Marcov Draeven. Who commands here?"

Loursa shrugged. "I suppose I do, now. My name is Loursa—"

"Fine." Draeven spun his blade, drove it point-first into the soil and left it standing. He stretched, arching his shoulders and craning his neck to one side. The resulting crack rivaled a small siege engine. "Anything to drink around here?"

"I'm sure we can find you something," Loursa said through clenched teeth. "I want to thank you for—"

"Don't. I didn't do this for you, and I don't especially want to be here." Then, before she could reply further, he idly kicked an arm that had, until recently, been attached to a shambling corpse. "Walking dead. I never heard anything about your bandit problem being an undead problem."

"Neither had we. I think this is the first time those—those things appeared. Maybe because Kelbran is the first town those bastards couldn't take on their own."

"Maybe." For the first time, his expression changed, sliding into a nasty grin. "Bet you're wishing about now that you hadn't booted all the clerics, aren't you?"

Mutters rippled through the citizens, and Loursa drew herself up rigid. "The churches turned on Touvette. They were a bad element. We've been better off since the General ousted them and set up the charities in their stead."

"Oh, yeah." The man allowed his gaze to fall heavily upon the moaning, crying wounded. "I can see that. They look much better off."

"I appreciate your help, Draeven," she said coldly, "but unless you've been granted a traveling pass, I think maybe it's time you left. Or would you rather I escort you to the nearest judge and you can explain to him why you're not a spy and shouldn't hang?"

Draeven waved his hand dismissively. "Lost it in battle, I'm afraid. But I have a feeling you'll be issuing me a new one shortly, Loursa. Otherwise, you'll never find out who's been launching these attacks, and I won't be able to send him to the nearest convenient hell. I'm not leaving without an answer. Or that drink."

"You didn't leave anyone alive who could provide any answers!"

Again, Draeven offered that ugly, crooked smile. "That's not too much of an inconvenience, really."

After a brief and apparently perfunctory examination, the foreigner knelt beside a deceased bandit. The man had fallen from a nasty slash through his ribs; Loursa grew more and more puzzled as Draeven prodded at the corpse's mouth and head. He looked for all the world like a gourmand examining a haunch of beef.

She grew more bewildered still when Draeven said, "All right, you bastards. Make yourselves useful and get in there." Not only did it not make sense, but his head was twisted to one side while he spoke, as if he addressed neither the dead body nor Loursa herself, but some nonexistent entity between them.

Loursa staggered, unable to repress a startled breath, when the dead man's jaw creaked open of its own accord. Horrified gasps and angry murmurs ran through the gathered townsfolk. Loursa wondered briefly if some of them weren't actually planning to attack Draeven.

She listened with rapt attention as they talked, these two unnatural creatures. Draeven spoke under his breath, his words intended for the corpse alone. The sounds that emerged from the body itself scarcely seemed to be words at all. Soft wheezes and croaking whispers, kneaded by dead lips into shapes that only vaguely resembled syllables, occasionally wafted to Loursa's ears, but she was too distant to make any sense of them. The sleet ceased falling, the wind stilled, and gradually the low drone of those voices became the world's only sound.

When Draeven finally concluded his "conversation" and stood, it was all Loursa could do not to either draw her sword or back away. Both urges were only strengthened when she realized that the man's hair, and the sleeves of his tunic, billowed in the unmoving air.

"You know Alvren?" he asked.

"I—what?"

Draeven sighed. "Alvren. Do. You. Know it?"

"It's a small hillside community," Loursa replied, now definitely leaning more toward the "draw her sword" option. "It's about fifteen miles north, on the border with Pitax."

"Good. Let's go."

"Why the hell you'd believe I'd go anywhere with you—"

"Because," he drawled, "I need a local to guide me. And like it or not, you owe me for saving your hide." Then, just as she was drawing breath to retort: "And we want the same thing. At least, I assume so. You do want these raids to stop, right? I'm not giving you too much credit, there?"

"No." That single word was icier than all the fallen sleet.

"Then can we get moving already?"

Spitting curses, more than a few of which called upon or profaned gods her people no longer worshiped, Loursa stalked back into Kelbran to gather supplies.

∗ ∗ ∗

The basement was pungent with soil and mildew, a stench utterly unconcealed by acrid fumes of ceremonial incense. Walls of damp earth bulged, supported by a haphazard array of mold-covered wooden beams that sagged, exhausted, under the heavy load. An equally rickety staircase slouched up to a trapdoor that was the cellar's only exit.

Well, its only nonmagical exit.

The inhabitants of the chamber sat, crouched, or sprawled around the cellar's peculiar centerpiece: a circular well of granite, sunk deep into the earth and filled to overflowing with filthy, stagnant water. A stone obelisk, rough-surfaced but perfectly cylindrical, rose from the precise center of the foul pool. Only if viewed from directly above would the peculiar monument appear as a representation of a staring, disembodied eye.

Ellithir leaned back from the edge and brushed a stray lock of hair behind a pointed ear. Over the simple woolen tunic and leggings with which her customers in the store above were familiar, she now sported a voluminous black tabard, torn ragged around the hems. "Well, sisters." She waved idly at the images that were only now fading from the pool. "What do we make of this?"

"Death swaddles him." This from a figure hunched in the shadows across the dark water, a silhouette that might or might not have been human. Her voice was dull, monotonous, like a woman entranced. "An infant's blanket and a burial shroud, both at once. He walks with ghosts. They ride him, as a stallion newly broken."

"Yes, dear, I think we all got that." It was a third who spoke now, a long and lanky shape whose height and proportion, though generally humanoid, were clearly anything but human. "I could barely see the morsel, for all the phantom energies swirling about him. But I believe our sister's point was that we ought really to decide what to do about him."

"More or less what I meant, yes," Ellithir said. "We didn't plan for anyone like him, but we knew someone would interfere eventually." The coven had summoned a host of foul creatures through a variety of spells—some far worse than the undead Khydol had raised—and set them loose along the highways of Touvette. They'd kept the General's knights nicely distracted from the bandits, but the coven knew well that their diversions couldn't last indefinitely.

"Do we call it done, then, dearie? Leave the cleric and his thugs to their fate? The bloodshed's already been heavier than we could have demanded. Perhaps we've accomplished enough for now."

"The priest's wrath rages hot, still," the other shadowed woman droned. "We can burn plenty more, before the conflagration dies."

Ellithir nodded. "I'll send a warning to Khydol, making sure he thinks the message came from some supposed ‘survivor' of the Kelbran battle. He and the rest of Zarred's bandits should be more than enough for this newcomer, once they know he's coming."

The larger figure shifted, stretching. "And if they're not enough?"

"Mm. Can the two of you assist me in renewing the weather magics before you depart? Wouldn't do to have the ‘punishment of the gods' suddenly let up."

"Those spells shouldn't require renewing until the day after tomorrow."

"No, but I intend to be busy for the next few days. Contingencies, in case—as you suggest—Khydol and Zarred don't come through. One way or another, ghosts or no, it behooves us to ensure that this Draeven is just another corpse on the pile.

"The flesh is filth, my sisters," she concluded, her tone abruptly formal, ritualistic. "The world is pain. To see is to hate."

From the others, in unison, "And the Hag sees all."

∗ ∗ ∗

Slipping, Marcov, you wretched fool. Should have known this was too easy...

Should have known—and would have known, only a few years ago, when his arm and eye were honed by a life behind the sword. Before the fury and frustration. Before the drink.

Before the ghosts.

They'd reached Alvren quickly enough, stopping only for a few hours to rest up after the battle at Kelbran. It proved an easy journey, over open fields with only the occasional rolling hill, and often across trails tramped flat by years of passing feet, human and animal alike.

And they'd taken every precaution. Marcov had learned much from the corpse he'd interrogated. He knew that the bandit leader—named Zarred—had depopulated Alvren and taken it as a base camp for his band. He knew there were several dozen men left in that band, but Alvren should house only a fraction of them at any given time. He knew the band had been hired by someone to make these raids, though presumably only Zarred and his immediate lieutenants knew who.

What Marcov hadn't known, Loursa had. Familiar with the geography and—though he would never deign to admit it—possessed of a sharp sense of tactics, she'd planned a nighttime approach that kept them hidden behind Alvren's own houses and barns.

Between their swords and what advantages Marcov could squeeze from the souls who rode him, they'd cut down a trio of riders patrolling near the hill, and a pair of sentries at the edge of town. They'd been so silent, in fact, that the choir of frogs and crickets—those that had survived the recent freeze—hadn't been sufficiently disturbed to cease their calls.

So why, why, after battling a throng of bloody undead, was I too stupid to check for magical defenses?

It had erupted from the earth, a blast of thunderous force that shattered the night, nearly deafening him even as it hurled him and Loursa from their feet. Soil and splinters rained around them, and the world seemed subtly tilted as Marcov struggled to rise.

Now, cursing himself for an idiot and the phantoms for dragging him into this mess, he finally staggered to his feet. One more abrupt lean almost sent him sprawling again, and then the earth righted itself enough for Marcov to see what he faced.

"Well... shit."

Coming Next Week: The sins of the past revealed in Chapter Three of Ari Marmell's "Best Served Cold."

Ari Marmell is an author and game designer, and has written extensively for Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, World of Darkness, and more. His fiction includes the independent dark fantasy novels The Conqueror's Shadow and The Warlord's Legacy, the young adult fantasy Thief's Covenant, and the Iron Kingdoms novel In Thunder Forged, among others. For more information, see his website at mouseferatu.com.

Illustration by Damon Westenhofer

Best Served Cold

Ari Marmell

Chapter One: Echoes of the Past

Rattling shutters and gaps between the wooden slats of walls allowed a faint breeze into the store. The establishment smelled of dust, mildew, and the acrid aroma of burning leaves that kept the ubiquitous mosquitoes and flies from riding the weather inside. It wasn't that much of a store, all in all; but then, it wasn't that much of a town, either.

The bulk of the voices—and there were always voices, despite the store's ramshackle appearance—wafted from the counter opposite the door, and from the racks of meats and baked goods alongside. Ellithir allowed the locals to loiter, picking at the foods and paying for whatever they consumed, rather than insisting they buy in bulk. Just another way to compete with the eateries and taverns in town—all two of them. Even over the sounds of those voices, though, the willowy elf heard rickety floorboards beneath a hesitant tread, and the faint rustling and thumping of someone browsing idly through the aisles of various tools.

The visitor eventually emerged from the second aisle over, between haphazard coils of hempen rope and a portcullis of dangling rakes. Beneath a mop of unruly red hair, Khydol's face was morose. The gold-hued tunic he normally favored was hidden by a cloak and mantle of drab brown—as was the holy pendant he usually wore exposed for all to see.

Gracefully, her own steps squeezing nary a squeak from the floorboards, Ellithir stepped from behind the other counter—the one where she normally tallied up purchases—and produced a three-legged stool for her guest.

"Thank you." Clearly a response born solely of instinct; his eyes hadn't even focused on her. Ellithir studied him further: the abnormal garb, the pensive gaze, the faintly pointed ears indicating that he shared a portion of her own racial heritage.

Studied him, and waited for him to come to it in his own time.

"It's done," he said finally.

She nodded. She'd expected as much. "And this troubles you?"

"It..." he shrugged. "Yes. Somewhat. It's just... a lot to take on."

"I know it is." She reached out, gripping his shoulder tight. "We've talked about this, Khydol. You're doing the right thing. Look at what else is happening over there! Hail, in this season? Wilting crops? If the gods are finally showing their wrath at those apostates, surely your anger is justified!" It was an old discussion, one they'd held half a dozen times before. Khydol agreed with her, she knew that; he just had to be reminded.

"And besides," Ellithir continued, jabbing a finger at the half-elf's unseen holy icon, "what else would she ask of you but vengeance?"

Reverentially, Khydol reached beneath the woolen mantle and withdrew the heavy pendant. There, worked into the silver, were the triple daggers of the Savored Sting: Calistria, mistress of lust, deception... and retribution.

"The goddess be praised," Khydol murmured, softly but sincerely. Across the store, the voices began to taper off as men and women glanced out the windows, saw the first streamers of smoke writhing from over the horizon—and over the border.

"The goddess be praised," Ellithir echoed, her thin lips quirked in the faintest of smiles.

∗ ∗ ∗

The ghosts of Marcov Draeven's past have taken their toll.

In some taverns, a brawl means something has gone very wrong, and it's time to yell for the watch. In others, it just means that sailors are in port, or teamsters are between deliveries, and someone's imbibed a bit too freely.

And then there are those in which a brawl simply means "We're open."

The stranger—one of many—slouched in a rickety chair, trying to absorb the last dregs of warmth from the hearth's dying embers, and watched with profound disinterest as the last of this evening's rowdies were hurled out the door by the husband-and-wife team of half-orc bouncers. The fight hadn't even been fun to watch; those killjoy bouncers had stepped in too early.

He couldn't be bothered to remember the tavern's name. The latest in an endless line, tracing a pathway of pain across the Inner Sea, it was nothing to him but another place to drink, and maybe chase a few hours' slumber. It wasn't even a good place; that damn insect-repelling herbal smoke that had recently grown so popular throughout the River Kingdoms was giving him a headache.

Not that Marcov Draeven appeared any more special than the shabby ale hall. Grease-matted hair that might, if clean, have appeared a rich brown hung past his shoulders in ragged strings. Unshaven cheeks went beyond gaunt into sunken, and red-rimmed, deep-set eyes suggested many recent sleepless nights. An old and often-patched chain hauberk left rust stains on a tunic almost too dark to show them. Only his weapon, a monster of a hand-and-a-half sword, demonstrated any signs of care. It currently leaned against the wall, unscabbarded, like any old walking stick.

Any of the patrons who noticed him at all—and if they did, it was only for that naked blade—had certainly dismissed him as just another sellsword, gone somewhat to seed, haunted by past years.

They had no idea how right they were.

To those potential observers, it would surely have seemed just another drunken mishap as fingers fumbled and lost their grip. They might have chuckled as the mug toppled and bounced across the floor, leaving tiny chips to mingle with the layers of broken crockery that served as the tavern's carpet.

Only Marcov himself knew that he'd placed the damn thing solidly on the table, that his hand was a good four or five inches away when it had suddenly gone skidding over the edge.

"Pharasma take you!" His low growl was surely inaudible to any nearby ears. "Leave me alone! Just one evening, damn you..."

His sword wobbled against the wall, threatening to tilt.

Spitting curses, Marcov stumbled a few steps from the chair—not drunk, entirely, but not precisely sober either—and dropped to one knee, hand outstretched to retrieve the fallen tankard.

That lean brought him just near enough to the next table to overhear the conversation over the ambient cacophony. Which, he realized sourly, had been the entire point.

Their entire point.

"...third town in as many weeks!"

"Bandits, maybe? Been a rough harvest. Lots of folks goin' hungry over there."

"Bandits steal, ya idiot. Kill a few; rape some, maybe. What kinda bandits burn whole towns to the ground?"

"I dunno. Angry ones?"

"Idiot."

"Yer both idiots. It's divine vengeance, it is. Knew it was comin' to 'em sooner or later."

"No!" Marcov hissed as he rose, wayward flagon forgotten. "Not my business. Not my problem!"

The mug at his feet shattered as though crushed beneath an unseen heel. His sword against the wall, and the chair he'd so recently vacated, began to rock.

"No, gods damn you!" He already had a goal, had somewhere to be! Why wouldn't they just—?

The chair toppled, one leg snapping loose. The embers in the fireplace burst upward, then extinguished themselves in a sizzling, sifting rain of ash.

And the howling began.

A single voice, at first. Then a dozen... three dozen... a hundred... more. Shrieks of terror, wails of despair, screams of agony, sobs of grief. The final gasps of the dying, and the hopeless moans of the damned.

Nobody else heard them—Marcov knew that all too well from prior experience—but that didn't make them any less deafening to him! Once more he fell to his knees, hands clasped to his ears, eyes squeezed so tightly shut that flickers of color flashed across his lids.

"Stop it! Stop it! Leave me alone!"

The howling only grew louder. The sword fell, sliding across the hearth, quillons grating on brick. Crockery atop the surrounding tables began to shake and clatter.

Strong-willed, stubborn, and prideful was Marcov Draeven. Even in the face of the unnatural onslaught, the gale of angry souls, it took him nearly a full minute to bend.

"All right! All right, you bastards, enough!" The sellsword's hands dropped from his ears to the floor, where he crouched like a wounded animal. "Enough," he repeated, far more softly.

The howling stopped. The surrounding objects ceased their impossible dance. And Marcov opened his eyes.

The room around him had changed, and not just by the will of the dead. Chairs and tables lay strewn where patrons had bolted to their feet and retreated from the spectral maelstrom. Quite a few had fled, to judge by the gaping door (and, in a some instances, windows). Most of those who remained stood, wide-eyed and sweating, pressed against the farthest walls, but a few edged forward, hands reaching for weapons.

Marcov slowly rose, stretched out his hand, and hissed something at his phantasmal retinue. The broad-bladed bastard sword flew from its spot by the hearth to land in his waiting palm with a muted slap.

The bravery rushed out of those few courageous souls, along with gasps and muted shrieks. They, too, fell back against the walls once more.

Marcov needed only a moment to find one of the men on whose conversation he had eavesdropped. "The towns you were talking about—where are they?"

"I... That... Towns? Sir, I don't want any—"

"Where. Are. They?"

"Touvette!" It was scarcely a squeak. "Eastern Touvette!"

A sharp nod, and then Marcov turned toward the shivering barkeep. "For the damages." He fumbled at his belt a moment before he found his coin purse, not due to any lingering intoxication—Marcov was quite sober now—but because his possessions had a bad habit of never remaining precisely where he'd put them. Finally, he scooped out a handful of silver, which he casually dropped to the floor when the barkeep showed no interest in coming anywhere near him. Then, sword still unsheathed resting flat upon his shoulder, Marcov strode toward the stables.

∗ ∗ ∗

The reinforced leather of Loursa's armor absorbed the stroke that would otherwise have split kidney and spine both. Still, she staggered a step across the churned and muddy field before spinning around, whipping sweaty strands of hair from her face, and slamming the heavy stock of the crossbow against the brigand's jaw. Something cracked—bone or wood, she wasn't certain, but the man collapsed. Loursa took that momentary respite to draw her own blade, catch a few deep breaths, and assess.

Kelbran hadn't been much better off than any of the other tiny communities scattered near Touvette's easternmost borders. The unseasonable ice storms had ravaged the settlement's crops as badly as its neighbors'; its people were just as desperate, just as destitute. But when the invaders came, and the first of the villages fell, Kelbran had welcomed survivors, rather than turning them away to seek refuge elsewhere. It was a decision that Loursa and the other guards had questioned when Samrev first made it, but the old village reeve had been adamant. "We have no charities in Kelbran to provide such services, as the great cities do," he'd said, "but we can show charity all the same."

He'd had a practical motive as well, it turned out. When the invaders finally came to Kelbran, the sixth community to suffer their depredations, Loursa and the other guards had met them with a much larger force than they'd anticipated—a force made up partly of refugees who, though starved and exhausted, burned with the need to avenge their own lost homes. Nobody knew how these bandits had managed to avoid the military patrols that scoured Touvette's major roads, but for the first time, it looked as though they might not be unstoppable.

Still, Kelbran had paid the price; Loursa wasn't sure, but she might well be the only guard left, and at least a third of the townsfolk lay hacked and mutilated. The rest fought in groups, overwhelming bandits alone or in pairs, making up in numbers and ferocity what they lacked in equipment and training. Loursa again brushed sandy hair from her face—she couldn't even remember when she'd lost her helmet—and hefted her sword, ready to go and assist. As long as nothing else changed, victory was just a matter of—

Everything disintegrated in a chorus of screams as the first of the dead shambled over the nearby knolls.

They weren't many, as compared to the townsfolk or bandits. But then, they didn't need to be. Dozens of villagers broke and ran. Those that remained stood rooted in shock, if only for an instant, and in that instant the invaders attacked with renewed vigor. The walking corpses had turned the tide in favor of their living allies before they'd even drawn near enough to strike.

The screaming only grew louder—not merely in pain or in panic, though both were plentiful enough, but in appalled recognition. Loursa's heart, already beating like a charging hound, climbed into her throat as she recognized many of these creatures as the dead citizens of other fallen towns.

The last few dozen survivors of Kelbran found themselves in a chaotic mass, their homes behind them, bandits and the shambling dead to all other sides. Loursa squeezed the hilt of her sword, struggling to hold tight despite the patina of sweat, and prayed for a miracle. Any miracle.

Had she known what sort of miracle was coming, her prayers might have been a bit more specific.

Coming Next Week: A mysterious cult lurks in the shadows in Chapter Two of Ari Marmell's "Best Served Cold."

Ari Marmell is an author and game designer, and has written extensively for Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, World of Darkness, and more. His fiction includes the independent dark fantasy novels The Conqueror's Shadow and The Warlord's Legacy, the young adult fantasy Thief's Covenant, and the Iron Kingdoms novel In Thunder Forged, among others. For more information, see his website at mousferatu.com.

Illustration by Damon Westenhofer

Hell or High Water

by Ari Marmell

Chapter Four: In the Lair of the White Leech

"Which one's the Gullet want?"

"Don't think he cares, long as it ain't one of the new ones. Someone been in there at least a few days."

The two warriors—muscle-bound, covered in scars of both battle and pestilence—waded into the waters, making for the stump from which the pulley could be operated.

"What about that gussied-up Shackles pirate we took? He oughta be about ripe by now, yeah?"

"Yeah, what is he? Two down, four over?" The White Leech reached for the mildewed rope, tugged—and nothing happened. A puzzled glance upward, and he could just barely make out an amorphous shape in the darkness, perched on the block-and-tackle.

"Hey, what—!"

The blood-smeared tooth wasn't much of a weapon, and her left hand was all but useless. But when Ameyanda dropped upon the first of her captors, a feral snarl erupting through bared teeth, it made no difference.

∗∗∗

"Issisk..." Somehow, though the iron stakes allowed little range of movement, Seyusth seemed to slump. "You must understand—"

"Understand? Understand that you murdered your own cohort on your journey to the Terwa? That you snuck back to Haa-Ok and killed Errash, your own mentor, before skulking home with your tales of ambush? You never knew Hasseth survived, did you?"

"I—"

"He ran, Seyusth. The greatest warrior of Haa-ok, and he fled. He thought that, because it was you who tried to kill him, it must have been the will of the shaman. It was not until I spoke to him, in his dying days, and told him that Errash had also been murdered, and the lies you spun of what had occurred, that he knew it was you alone who had betrayed him. Betrayed us!"

"Issisk, listen! Errash wanted the alliance for his own gain, not because the spirits told him so. The others, you... None of you understand what the Terwa Lords are! What we would become, were we to ally with them... The horrors we would have to accept, to inflict... I died with every Haa-Ok life I took, but I could not allow the delegation to deliver us into a devil's bargain for the soul of our people!"

"I do not know the Terwa Lords," Issisk said stiffly. "I know only what you told me of them. How can I know, now, what of that is true?"

"All of it. Issisk, I swear—"

"What I know is that the blood of several Haa-Ok is on your talons. And that this was not your decision to make.

"Some day, Seyusth, the eyes of the White Leech will grow careless, and I will escape. Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps a year from now. But I will make my way home, and I will tell all Haa-Ok what you did. That it was not the wrath of the spirits that allowed an assassin to reach our shaman, but a traitor who knew his magics. And they will make their own choice, as they should have long ago."

"Issisk, please!" It was not a word that came easily to the lizardfolk, above all a practical and pragmatic people. "Please, if your anger is with me, take it out on me. But you will be doing Haa-Ok only harm if you—"

"You have no more words I wish to hear, traitor."

Seyusth was still pleading as his cousin disappeared through the open doorway, followed by the shambling Hasseth. If his people were capable of it, he would have wept.

It was the commotion from outside—running, howling, the thump of fists on armor as wild men worked themselves into a frenzy—that snapped him out of it a few moments later. From here, he could see absolutely nothing of what was happening. All he could tell was that it wasn't a fire.

Which, given the rather damp state of affairs, he'd have known anyway.

The sounds faded into the distance, the night now filled with nothing but the hum of insects and the hoot of a hunting bird. And then...

"Hsst! Seyusth!"

"Issisk knows things he shouldn't."

Ameyanda slipped in through the doorway, carrying one of the White Leech blades. The human looked awful—her eyes were slightly wild, she winced with every step—but it seemed that most of the blood splattered across her armor and skin was not hers.

"We don't have long," she told him, limping across the open chamber. "I left a trail down to the water's edge, and pushed one of the small rafts into the current. Not one with the dead who, uh, row," she clarified. "But we have only minutes before they catch up and realize I'm not aboard."

"Then we had better act, and discuss the details of your miraculous escape another day."

She nodded and halted before him, examining the rough wooden cross.

"Seyusth," she said softly, "there's no way to do this gently, not in the time we have."

"I understand." He squeezed his eyes shut. "Do it."

Even in the blackness, the room spun as she pulled the cross from the corner, twisted it clumsily, and laid it flat. He felt her fingers squeeze between his scales and the curved iron pinning his right arm; saw her flinch from the touch of the necromantic runes; heard the scrape as she braced her feet on the wood.

Wood splintered. Iron screeched. And despite his most adamant efforts, Seyusth screamed.

∗∗∗

When it was done, they lay sprawled on the floor, chests heaving, growing sticky with the lizardman's blood. Ameyanda tried not to stare at the raw meat and exposed tendon visible through the rents in her companion's flesh.

Especially when they began to twitch.

"They still work well enough..." he muttered. His arm shaking, he reached a hand out to the huntress's shoulder.

"Seyusth..."

But he was already speaking in his own reptilian tongue.

Ameyanda gasped as an icy shock ran down her arm, as though someone had replaced her blood with mountain runoff. It faded swiftly, however, and so too did much of the agony in her hand.

Not all—and it still burned with a sickly heat—but any relief was welcome.

"Tomorrow," the shaman said softly, "I can cure the infection. I fear you will have to bear it until then."

"Thank you. I—"

Again he spoke in his own language, and the worst of his wounds began to close over. Much like her own, it was far from a complete cure, but impressive for all that.

"What of Issisk?" she asked, staggering roughly to her feet.

Seyusth's face went tight, as though he'd only just remembered why they'd come.

"He is here. He... ran into the swamp when the commotion began. I must find him before they do."

"Wait just a—"

The shaman staggered through the door, shifting into some sort of ibis, and took to the night skies.

"Grandfather Gozreh damn that lizard! I should—"

The thump-squelch of ponderous footsteps in the mud, and a high-pitched wheezing of animal fury, announced that her time had run out.

They announced, too, who approached.

The room was empty, save for the broken cross. Nowhere to hide. And even after Seyusth's curative magics, Ameyanda didn't think she had it in her to face the Gullet directly.

Her frantic gaze alighted upon the shaman's blood, only just beginning to seep into the saturated wooden floor. With no other choice, she dropped to her knees and began to arrange things just so...

A grunt as he came through the door, a faint creak of wood beneath his feet. She knew what the walking avalanche of flesh must see: Her body, lying crumpled in the midst of a sizable blood pool, her stolen weapon lying beside her. Using techniques she'd learned long ago to avoid the sensitive ears of prey and predator both, she breathed lightly, softly. In the feeble lighting, it should appear she didn't breathe at all.

She hoped.

"Well, haven't you been trouble?" the high, breathy voice asked from behind. "Not as ripe as I'd like, but you'll still taste fine. And more of you to go around, with fewer mouths to feed."

She felt flabby fingers close around an ankle, lift in preparation to drag her from the room...

Ameyanda rolled upright, stomach muscles screaming, and struck. The iron spike that had nailed Seyusth's feet to the cross now plunged through Galgur's own. The lumbering giant shrieked, a sound almost too high to hear, and crumpled, grasping reflexively at the sudden agony.

The huntress's other hand, clutching one of the sharpened brackets that had held the shaman's arms, punched between those toothy ridges and down that screaming gullet. She felt things tear around her makeshift weapon, the skin of his throat quivering obscenely at the touch of the thing's vile magics.

"How does that taste, you motherless hyena?"

Galgur managed a single, wet choke. Blood bubbled up around Ameyanda's hand, and she yanked it back, leaving the cursed bracket behind.

The room shook as the Gullet's body rolled to the floor. Ameyanda decided to believe that her brief gasp was a result of that shuddering, and not a near-sob of relief at the creature's death.

All right, now what?

She had no idea of how quickly the others would return, and she'd never find her way out of here wounded, in the dark, without Seyusth. So what could she possibly...

Ameyanda studied the massive corpse, then the blade on the floor beside the puddle of blood, and heaved a thick sigh. In a day of sickening tasks, what's one more?

At least now she had somewhere to hide...

∗∗∗

"I knew you would run."

Seyusth dropped through the branches, shifting out of bird-form as he landed with a muddy thump. "After what you told me, I knew you would see the sudden commotion as your opportunity. Perhaps even a gift from the spirits."

Issisk straightened, hand hovering near the blade at his belt. "What do you intend?"

"Issisk, please. I will help you get home, and submit myself to whatever penance you see fit, but do not tell the others! Their belief may be all that keeps us from the Terwa!"

"I am not you, Seyusth. I will not deceive our people. I will let them make their own choice. And where Hasseth and the others were tribesmates, I am family. I do not believe you would murder me to keep your secret."

Seyusth lowered his gaze, and Issisk turned to walk away.

∗∗∗

For several days they traveled. They rested as well as they could, in the best shelters they could find, and said little. Finally, they awoke one morning to the welcome sight of the Mwangi jungles against the eastern horizon.

Ameyanda rose, stretched, preparing herself for another day's hike. She eyed the rough blade she carried with distaste and more than a little sadness. Those mambeles had been her trusted companions for years. She could acquire new ones readily enough, but it wouldn't be the same.

Seyusth appeared beside her, also ready for travel—and apparently still digesting what she'd told him over breakfast.

"You really hid inside—"

She shuddered with the memory of the charnel stench, the wet coils looping around her arms, the hot, reeking fat closing in around her. "It worked. And I don't want to talk about it."

"I understand."

"And Issisk?" She hadn't planned to ask; the fact that Seyusth had returned alone was evidence enough of the lizardman's fate. The question just burst out in response to the unwanted imagery he'd inflicted on her with his own comment, however unintended.

"The White Leech reached him before I did," Seyusth's attention fixed on the distant jungle. "I was unable to save him."

"So this was all for nothing."

"I... fear so."

Ameyanda growled and started walking—then stopped once more when she realized the lizardman was still behind her.

"Isn't this about where you turn north, if you're returning to Haa-Ok?"

"I am not returning yet. I owe you—"

"No, we're even. I was repaying a debt."

"Yes, you accompanied me as repayment. But then you saved me, when it would have been wiser to make your own escape from the White Leech."

"I'm not keeping count. And I have my own tasks, Seyusth."

"And I will assist you."

"You owe me nothing, shaman. Go home."

The huntress began to walk once more, and this time she did not look back.

∗∗∗

"Go home."

It sounded nice enough. But Seyusth wasn't certain he had a home any longer. The visage of every relative would be Issisk's dying face; every glance, his eyes; every raised voice, an accusation.

Issisk had been right. He'd felt guilt before, but not until it was one of his own family had he felt like a traitor.

Seyusth had meant to save Issisk, he truly had. But the tribe must be protected. Haa-Ok was safe. The people still believed the spirits disapproved of the Terwa Lords. They were in no danger of losing their identity, their culture, their souls to those monsters. And Seyusth's own apprentice could serve their spiritual and mystical needs for many moons to come.

I can do more good here. Allies among the humans will prove useful, someday, when the Terwa do come to Mwangi.

So he told himself again, and again, in the hopes that he would start believe. Because responsibility was easier to bear than guilt.

Seyusth sighed a very human sigh, and set off after his distant companion.

Coming Next Week: A free sample chapter of Tim Pratt's new high-tech, jungle-exploring adventure City of the Fallen Sky!

Ari Marmell is an author and game designer, and has written extensively for Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, World of Darkness, and more. His novels include the independent dark fantasy novels The Conqueror's Shadow and The Warlord's Legacy, the young adult fantasy Thief's Covenant, and the morbidly humorous The Goblin Corps, among others. For more information, see his website at mouseferatu.com.

Illustration by Jim Pavelec.

Hell or High Water

by Ari Marmell

Chapter Three: Over Their Heads

The undead crocodile lashed out with its tail now, rather than its mangled jaw, and Ameyanda could not entirely avoid the blow. She staggered almost to the edge of the wobbling—and now disintegrating—tussock.

For an instant, she seriously considered drawing a mambele across her own throat. Considered, and dismissed.

If they keep me alive, that's their mistake.

Still, she'd prefer not to leave herself helpless. Again she cast about, desperate for any advantage...

And saw it, almost buried in the muck and sticks.

The White Leech who'd struck down Seyusth was moving in on her, again with club rather than blade raised. Even through the rain, the sour reek of old sweat, rotting teeth, and poorly tanned hides was worse than the undead.

She let the club come, raising crossed mambeles to parry only at the last instant, allowing the blow to send her sprawling.

Oh, Grandmother Sun, this is going to hurt!

Agony, white hot and piercing, as her hand came down upon the tiny prize she'd noted a moment earlier. It was crippling, nauseating; her whole body spasmed, and she could feel the object shifting inside the flesh of her palm.

But they wouldn't find it there, and the rain should wash away the worst of the blood before the enemy could grow suspicious.

Racked by pain, Ameyanda didn't have to fake helplessness as the White Leech swarmed over her, confiscating her weapons and tying her arms with rough hemp before dropping her like a sack of tubers into the massive skiff.

∗∗∗

She didn't pass out precisely, but the wash of pain, exacerbated by the rough handling, smothered her mind in a thick caul. It was some moments before she once more became aware of her surroundings.

She shivered, and realized that she lay in water two fingers deep—accumulation from the rain. She was lying on the deck of the skiff, which was now surging through the swamp with that unnatural speed she'd noticed earlier.

And now she saw how.

Clamped to the rear corners of the raft with thick iron spikes, a pair of undead torsos worked effortlessly and tirelessly with heavy poles to keep the craft in motion. Someone had taken a few sizable bites of excess flesh out of one of the torso's shoulders.

Swallowing bile, she scooted to look around. To her right lay one of the men the White Leech had attacked, also bound. Apparently hostilities had resumed after the mutual enemy was down. He sported fresh bite wounds, and was already shivering with fever.

Instinctively, she glanced down at her stomach and legs, searching for similar bites.

"You will not find any," breathed a weak voice from her left. "The obese one did that to him in battle, not after capture."

"Seyusth?" She twisted and flopped to face her companion. "Are you—oh, gods and spirits!"

"It appears," the lizardman said, "that the White Leech has experience countering a shaman's magics."

A pair of small logs had been lashed together with leather straps and hemp, forming a rough T.

And to that, Seyusth had been crucified.

A squared metal stake pinned both feet to the heavy branch. Each arm was nailed down with a length of iron curved in a rough U, penetrating palms and wrists both. Ugly, primitive sigils, etched in corrosion and flaking rust, wound in uneven spirals around the spikes.

No spellcasting, not without his hands. And no shape-changing, presumably, not pinned as he was. Amayanda needed no eldritch knowledge to sense the magics, cold and sickly, emanating from that profane iron.

She couldn't help him. All she could offer was the courtesy of not asking something stupid like, "Are you all right?"

Instead, she asked, "What do we know?"

"Galgur the Gullet always has room for one more prisoner."

Seyusth took a few deep breaths before answering. "Their leader is the big one. The men call him ‘Galgur the Gullet.' From what little I overheard, while he may answer to the White Leech chieftain..."

"Montirro the Thrice-Blind," Ameyanda reminded him.

"Yes. He may answer to this Montirro, but not often. His band controls this region of White Leech domain with relative autonomy."

"Good. I thought we were in trouble there, for a moment."

The lizardman couldn't muster a laugh, but his snout pulled back from his teeth in what Ameyanda assumed was a polite grin.

"Issisk?" she asked after a moment's pause.

"Not here. I never saw the unliving one close, but he appeared the wrong build to be Issisk."

Ameyanda nodded, shifted without thinking, then gasped at the renewed pain.

"I am sorry," Seyusth told her.

"It's not as though I could expect you to rush to help me," she said, struggling for a light tone.

"No. It is my fault you are here. My fault either of us had to be here."

"How is that, precisely?" This was starting to sound disturbingly like a deathbed confession—did lizardfolk do that?—but Ameyanda hardly cared what he was saying. As long as he kept speaking, he was conscious; as long as he was conscious, he wasn't dead.

"Years ago, emissaries of the Terwa Lords approached us. They wanted Haa-Ok to serve them, as a—a stepping stone—in Mwangi. I opposed this, as did many others. To join with the Terwa would be to betray our traditions, our heritage; to become something the world never intended of us. But I was merely an apprentice shaman, and my protests carried little weight. My mentor, Errash, supported the alliance. Further, he claimed the spirits of the Expanse supported it as well."

Seyusth's words were coming slower, now, between heaving, labored breaths. "After several moons of debate and consideration, Haa-Ok sent some of our own to announce our assent to the Terwa Lords. The band was led by Hasseth, our greatest warrior, as a sign of respect. I was to go with them as well, to offer what magical protections I could along the way.

"I proved insufficient. Perhaps we took too long for the Terwa's liking? Perhaps they had some other plot. We never knew. We were attacked along the way; only I survived, due to my magics, and then only barely. But worse, when I finally made my way home, I found that Errash had been slain in his sleep! No agent of the Terwa should have proved able to infiltrate our home, murder our shaman, and depart undetected!

"It could only mean that the spirits had removed their protections from him. They could not, after all, favor such a hideous alliance. Some good came from the catastrophe, then, for while a few of my people still argue, even to this day, to join the Terwa, most are wise enough to heed the spirits' signs."

Seyusth lapsed into a fit of coughing, which in turn tugged at the spikes and set his wounds bleeding anew. Several of the men up front glanced their way, attracted by the sudden spasm. A few laughed; one flicked his tongue in and out, like a reptile.

"How does that make what happened to Issisk your fault?" she insisted. Keep talking. Stay awake...

"I... After becoming shaman to Haa-Ok, I spoke long about the evils of the Terwa Lords and those who follow them. And many of our youth took those lessons deeply to heart. We sent hunting bands far from our territories, in part, to patrol against Terwa incursion from the Sodden Lands. And Issisk's band... I found them well beyond their accustomed terrain. I fear they went looking for the enemy, and it was this that brought them to the White Leech."

"And we're so delighted it did!"

The voice was soft—not with kindness, but like a smothering pillow—and high as a young girl's. Ameyanda looked up at the obese bulk that now kept much of the rain from her skin; she could not even imagine how a body that fleshy could approach so quietly. Or without rocking the entire skiff.

He squatted so that the jiggling of his thighs threatened to slap against their feet. Ameyanda could smell not merely sweat, but mildew and the seepage of open sores.

She could see, too, the cause of his misshapen jaw. His teeth had been removed and replaced, via foreign magics or surgeries, with twin ridges of serrated bone.

As much to keep from gagging as anything else, Ameyanda spoke. "‘Delighted'? Why?"

Galgur ignored the question. "Did we hear," he asked Seyusth, "that you dislike the Terwa lizards? Oh, that's really too bad, since we'll be trading you to them. Not for a while, though. We've a friend who would dearly love to speak with you first!"

The shaman hissed, deep in his throat.

"And you two..." He turned to Ameyanda and the other captive. "We'll put you in the swamp for a time. You'll be so much more succulent after you've softened and ripened!"

It wasn't the laughter and cheers of the White Leech that sent a shiver through Ameyanda's spine, but the string of anticipatory drool that dangled from Galgur the Gullet's maw.

∗∗∗

The village had been built in part on a gentle hillside. It had probably been beautiful, pastoral gardens and fields of crops. But that was before the coming of the eternal storm.

Now most of it was permanently submerged, the wooden buildings rotted to skeletons of what they'd been. A few, however, stood tall enough, and high enough on the hill, that a story or two protruded from the swamp. These, too, harbored the restless stench of decay and rough smears of various molds. Still, with the use of uncountable patches and slapdash repairs, they remained good enough for some.

Galgur's faction of the White Leech called them home.

They'd approached the hillside through a veritable thicket of peculiar reeds. Protruding stiffly, reaching almost a man's height above the waters, they didn't appear remotely natural to their surroundings.

And now Ameyanda knew why.

"We'll put you in the swamp for a time. You'll be so much more succulent after you've softened and ripened!"

Despite her best efforts, or the shame it brought, she'd finally panicked. First the bag, yanked over her head and sealed around the neck with some viscous sludge. It smelled of light tanning and animal fat, and it had one of those long reeds—long, hollow reeds—protruding from one side.

And then she'd felt herself manhandled, strapped by leather cords to a heavy log, and tossed in to lie amidst the others.

They didn't even mean to kill her first. Let her lie, submerged in the marsh, half-buried in muck, until her waterlogged skin came loose on her flesh. Only then, she knew, would they haul her up—a primitive rope-and-pulley system dangled from an overhanging cypress branch—to feast.

So yes, as the world went away save for the sound of the torpid waters beyond the bag and the patter of rain on the surface, gradually slowing as the squall finally passed, she'd thrashed, bucked, screamed in panic.

But only for a moment.

No large animals, was her first rational thought. Galgur and his men wouldn't want anything to rob them of a meal, so they must have some means of keeping the bigger predators away from their "crop." Nets in the water, perhaps. It meant there was nothing—well, nothing large enough to kill her outright—to be attracted by the blood.

And there would be a lot of blood.

Ameyanda pulled her left wrist toward her shoulder, as far as the straps would allow—and then kept pulling. For minutes beyond count, she pressed the ball of her hand against the leather, against the soft wood of the log. The pain was enough to draw another scream. So be it; let them think she howled in terror, if they could hear at all through the breathing reed.

She pushed; she twisted. And slowly, agonizingly, the jagged crocodile tooth—one she'd knocked from the unliving creature's mouth, the thing she'd deliberately fallen upon and concealed within her own meat—slid from her skin.

She'd expected that she might need to free herself of bonds; she'd never begun to imagine the circumstances in which that need would arise.

Her fingers seized up, twitching, and she almost dropped it. The breath caught in her throat as she bobbled at it, and she almost cried in relief when she once more held it firm. The hand was weak, limp with pain and a growing infection she could already feel.

But it would do. It had to do.

In tiny twitches, Ameyanda began to run the edge of the tooth over the leather, again and again.

∗∗∗

"I know what you did."

It was hearing his own language, more than the words themselves, that yanked Seyusth awake through the fog of pain. The room smelled of rotten wood, and as he pried his eyes open, he could see huge blotches of mold and water damage on the walls.

The room was also at a slight angle—no, he was at a slight angle. They hadn't even bothered to stand the stake to which he was crucified straight up; just leaned it in the corner.

And then full awareness finally flooded through him, and he lowered his gaze to the one who'd addressed him.

"Issisk! Leaves and scales, you live!"

The younger lizardfolk stood in the chamber's open doorway, perhaps a bit scrawnier than Seyusth recalled, but healthy enough. He nodded once, but otherwise offered no response.

"They allow you to move freely?" Seyusth asked.

"Largely. They keep eyes on me, to ensure I do not attempt to leave, but otherwise I do as I will."

"A strange sort of imprisonment."

"And what makes you believe I am a prisoner, Seyusth?"

It was, somehow, shocking to the core of his soul and the precise answer he'd anticipated, both at once. "I don't understand. Issisk, why—?"

"They needed another of our people," Issisk said, his voice oddly flat, even for a reptile. "They grew accustomed to having one of us work alongside them, to serve as spy in Terwa territory, or negotiator with their patrols, or scout who could swim farther than any human."

"Accustomed to..." Seyusth was feeling dizzy, and not only from his wounds or the precarious angle.

"The one who had been with them was dying. They were hunting our kind when they came across my patrol. I was the fortunate survivor, and I chose cooperation over consumption. And I had some time to converse with my tribesmate before he died of his illness."

"Who... Who was...?"

"I thought you would never ask."

Issisk stepped aside, and a second lizardman strode—no, shambled—through the door. The dull scales and gaping holes were sufficient to tell Seyusth that this was the undead who had attacked him in the swamp.

But this near, he could also see details he'd missed at the time—including a face that, though partially worn away, he recognized.

"Oh, spirits. Hasseth..."

"As I said, murderer," the younger one hissed, "I know what you did."

Coming Next Week: The gritty, rain-soaked conclusion of Ari Marmell's "Hell or High Water."

Ari Marmell is an author and game designer, and has written extensively for Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, World of Darkness, and more. His novels include the independent dark fantasy novels The Conqueror's Shadow and The Warlord's Legacy, the young adult fantasy Thief's Covenant, and the morbidly humorous The Goblin Corps, among others. For more information, see his website at mouseferatu.com.

Illustration by Jim Pavelec.

Hell or High Water

by Ari Marmell

Chapter Two: Murky Waters

"I know that the Imjaka, dwelling so near those reaches, have made a greater study of these ‘scavenger gangs' than I," Seyusth continued. "That, Ameyanda, is why I come to you, though finding you proved far from simple."

This time, Ameyanda didn't bother to suppress her sigh. "All right," she said, once more hefting her pack. "Lead the way, shaman, and tell me what you know."

Seyusth spoke of his travails as they began to walk, and the huntress—so far as her exertions allowed—listened.

"It was over half a moon," he explained, "before we realized that the hunting patrol was overdue. Another moon, and more, before I could make my own apprentice ready to see to Haa-Ok's needs during my prolonged absence. And then, as I told you, almost another moon still before I finally tracked down the remains of Issisk's band."

"Remains?" If this lizard is hauling me into the Sodden Lands to retrieve a body...

"A smattering of parts, not entirely rotted into the soil. No intact bodies, and no remaining tracks. So I spoke a time with the serpents and birds and toads of the area."

"Of course. Who wouldn't?"

"It was then I learned that Issisk was led away in chains, the others slain and their bodies taken. And I learned that the attackers were not my people but humans, both living and unliving."

Ameyanda staggered to a halt, her skin breaking out in goosebumps despite the sapping heat. She swallowed hard. "Unliving? Your cousin was taken by the dead-who-walk?" She'd never faced such horrors herself, but the folklore of her people was rife with them.

"Alongside the living, yes."

She felt her lips moving in silence. Seyusth watched her, unblinking.

"Does this pose a problem for you?" he asked finally.

"A problem? I think this is a bit more severe than a ‘problem'!" Still, it was enough to stiffen her resolve. She'd almost announced that she was going back, but no.

The Imjaka repay our debts. Ameyanda would not be the one to violate that tradition, no matter what.

Especially not when that one detail—the presence of the dead-who-walk—was indeed sufficient to suggest to her which of the savenger gangs they sought.

The White Leech. Grandmother Sun, help us...

"Seyusth is a powerful shaman, but woefully ignorant regarding the Sodden Lands."

"All right, shaman. Follow me; I know who you're searching for."

They trekked beneath shrouding canopies of leaves and low-hanging lianas, over fallen logs and rotten fungi, through brambles and ferns glistening with condensation and sticky secretions. Seyusth slipped through without effort; thorns and foliage ran off him like water. Ameyanda, for all her skill, had a harder time. More than one scrape or sting brought a grunted curse, and her resentful gaze on the lizardman's back nearly set his vest to smoldering.

Embarrassment, more than pain, chafed her. It had been many years since Ameyanda had required anyone else to slow their passage through even the wildest jungle.

"You are certain this White Leech is the band we seek?" Seyusth asked.

"They're the only border scavengers who make use of the dead-who-walk. Rumor and tales have it that their chieftain, Montirro the Thrice-Blind, learned his necromancies from the Koboto people themselves."

"I had heard that the Koboto sacrifice anyone who nears their lands."

"True."

"Then how—?"

Ameyanda shrugged. "As I said, rumor and tales. But that the White Leech raises the dead is no mere tale. I know warriors who have seen it themselves."

"But can you be certain the White Leech is the only such band?" he pressed.

"As certain as you can be that Issisk still lives."

The following miles passed without further conversation.

∗∗∗

They crossed no border. No fences, no signposts; no mighty river or towering escarpment marked the transition.

The trees grew sparser, their roots and branches more crooked. Fern leaves and winding briars gave way to hanging mosses and slender reeds. The lush scent of loam and sprouting things wafted away beneath the odor of rot and stagnant pools.

The mud grew thicker, more greedy as it tugged at scaled or sandal-wrapped heels. Worse, it became vaguely caustic, just enough to cause irritation and a sanity-threatening itch.

By the time they'd passed beyond the mud flats into the swamp proper, the filthy, lukewarm water was almost a relief.

This far from the sea and the eternal hurricane dubbed the Eye of Abendego, the Sodden Lands were indeed simply a swamp, if a swamp with abnormally deep patches and river-like currents. Ameyanda knew that the further west they progressed, the worse it would become. Mires of impossible size, plague-bearing floodwaters as deep as any lake, a barrage of wind and rain so constant as to wear down the heaviest stone.

They shouldn't have to go so far—to the huntress's knowledge, the White Leech operated primarily here in the outskirts—but even this was far from pleasant.

When the shallow marsh began to develop waves high enough to slap at her chest, and a tepid, breath-like gust began to herald the promise of rain, Ameyanda pulled a face and reached out to stop her companion in his tracks. Already she had to raise her voice to be heard over the building winds.

"We're not going much farther in this without a raft of some sort," she told him, running a hand through the stubble on her scalp. It itched, and retained a surprising amount of water, but she hadn't had the opportunity to shave her head in days.

Seyusth stepped aside to haul a thick vine from a nearby cypress. "Use this to secure yourself."

"Secure myself to wh-augh!"

Ameyanda leapt backward, splashing murky water in all directions, as the shaman shifted. One moment, a lizardman; the next, over the span of seconds, his limbs drew into his body and thickened, his torso elongated, his snout lengthened. His pebbly flesh bulged in some spots, smoothed in others.

Lurking in the water, eyes and nostrils protruding menacingly, was a full-sized crocodile.

"Warn me before you do that!"

The crocodile, in a very familiar and languid expression, blinked.

"You can't speak when you've turned yourself into an animal?"

Blink.

"Oh." Ameyanda stepped forward—less gingerly than she felt—looped the vine around the reptile's chest, and climbed aboard. Not the most comfortable mount, but it must beat walking.

After hours of being tossed about by the beast's wriggling swim, her arms and legs bruised raw against its knobby hide and savaged mercilessly by vermin both above the water and below, she wasn't so sure of that anymore.

Early the following day—not that one could tell it was day, given that the pounding rains still hadn't moved on—Seyusth apparently scented or detected something. With an abrupt twitch that nearly unseated his partner, the crocodile shot through the swamps on a new course.

Ameyanda, who knew that asking him what they were doing was a waste of time and breath, instead wasted that same time and breath in a litany of curses.

A reed-covered hillock was their destination. Seyusth had barely climbed atop the rise before shifting back into his natural shape. Anyone with lesser reflexes than the huntress would have been sent sprawling.

"You have some steed etiquette to master," she groused at him. "Why—?"

"There." Black talons pushed a tuft of reeds so she could see. "Are those White Leech?"

In what amounted to a wide corridor of swamp hemmed in by cypress walls, a pair of skiffs moved sluggishly across the water. The wood of the haphazard vessels was stained with old blood—old and dry enough that the rain washed absolutely none of it away. The men aboard were clad in tatters and leather scraps, held together by everything from cowhide straps to sodden twine, and armed with roughly hammered and sharpened scrap metal. One man poled each of the skiffs, while the others argued over the choicest cuts of... something that had once drawn breath.

"Difficult to tell," Ameyanda told him, struggling to peer through the downpour. "We're in their territory, but I wouldn't know how to tell the White Leech by sight. They... No," she said with sudden certainty. "They're not White Leech."

"How do you know?"

"Because," she said, pointing at the ominous shapes suddenly looming from the corridor of trees, or rising from beneath the swamp to surround the skiffs and their frantic crew, "I'm fairly sure those are the White Leech."

They seemed no more than phantoms, obscured by the downpour. Some of the silhouettes that formed from within the trees, or from deep within the murky waters, appeared humanoid. Others were most assuredly nothing of the kind.

That the first group they'd spotted were thrown into utter panic by the arrival of the second was clear enough, but precisely who the newcomers were, or what about them was so horrifying, neither the brown-skinned huntress nor the green-scaled shaman could see.

The feeblest remnants of what might have been shouts or screams drifted through the downpour.

"We must get nearer!" Seyusth yelled in her ear.

"How wise of you, great shaman," Ameyanda retorted with bitter sarcasm. "And how do you suggest we..." But the lizardman had already dived into the choppy swamp.

"Spirit-damned lizard," she hissed at the fading ripples. He'd retained his natural shape, but even so, Ameyanda knew she couldn't match his speed in the water. Still grumbling under her breath, she hung her quiver of spears across the thickest reeds—the weapons would just float away anyway—checked that both mambeles were snug in their sheathes, and waded reluctantly into the waters.

Even over the course of only a few dozen paces, the treacherous mud, the submerged and rotting logs, and the abnormal waves conspired to constantly alter the depth of the swamp. At times she was submerged to the waist; at others, the crests of those waves passed over her head, slapping her across the face with filthy water and reeking algae. Still, she preferred to wade, though she was a strong swimmer; she wanted to keep her feet under her and her eyes at least mostly clear.

She finally clambered once more onto a solid surface—a floating tussock of sticks, moss, and mud—and spent a moment gasping for breath, coughing up water, and trying with all her might to strangle the lizardman with her eyes. "Some of us," she began, "do not swim like—"

"Look."

Whatever protests remained died in Amayanda's throat.

One of the primitive skiffs had already been overturned, partly smashed to kindling by a reptilian juggernaut of flaking scales and protruding bone. Two more crocodiles—though these two were alive—had surfaced alongside the undead monstrosity to snap at men in the water. Nearby, bobbing almost peacefully in the currents and waves, five of the dead-who-walk, naked and sloughing waterlogged flesh, advanced on the remaining raft.

Beyond those, the huntress could begin to make out the details of the larger force emerging from the tree line. A skiff of prodigious size, stained white, led the way, followed by two of more traditional girth. The men standing on those skiffs, hooting worse than the charau-ka and waving rusted blades overhead, wore leather armor clearly formed from a wide variety of creatures. Not a single greave, spaulder, or breastplate matched any other, and while some were obviously crafted from the tanned hides of swamp beasts—crocodiles and great snakes, primarily—others appeared mammalian and even, on occasion, humanoid in origin. A few of the latter still sported locks of hair, flapping wildly in the rain.

At the forefront, bellowing to shame an enraged elephant, was the most monstrous man—if man he was—Ameyanda had ever seen. Easily half again as tall as she and monstrously obese, he must have outweighed any three of the others put together. Rolls of fat, maggot-pale and glistening with rainwater, bulged from between the slapdash components of his armor. He carried a hammer, its head large enough for a halfling to have used as an anvil, waving it about with apparent ease. His head and jaw seemed subtly misshapen, but that could have been an illusion of distance, combined with his straggly, sickly hair—thinning up front, hanging to his shoulder blades behind.

That mass of flesh and his smaller allies blocked Ameyanda's sight of whoever or whatever poled the skiff from the rear, but it shot forward with startling speed, seeming to crush the waves before it. Already they were near enough to their victims for the most lithe of the White Leech warriors to leap from one raft to the other.

"We," Seyusth announced suddenly, a gleam in his golden eyes, "could certainly do with local allies. The enemy of my enemy, as your people say..."

Had Ameyanda not been so astonished, so horrified and repulsed, by the blasphemies of the White Leech—had she not still been trying to gather her breath—she might have stopped him. As it was, by the time she registered what he was doing, it was already too late.

"Seyusth! Damn it!"

The shaman rose, arms held high. The combatants might not have noticed his appearance, distracted as they were, until the first of the lightning bolts roared from the heavens.

Several of the White Leech fell to the deck of the skiff or into the ever-hungry waters, their bodies blackened. Their gelatinous mountain of a leader recoiled, one arm raised to protect his face. The skin along that arm, and across his gut, turned red, then black, but he hardly seemed to notice.

Almost immediately, every eye present scanned their surroundings and fixed on Seyusth. Though the attack had not come from him directly, nobody was stupid enough to think the stroke a coincidence.

The lizardman opened his mouth, perhaps to shout something to the men he'd meant to rescue, when the entire mass of humanity and undead—including those whom the White Leech had just been slaughtering—began shoving their rafts through the water, closing on the startled shaman.

"The scavenger gangs," Ameyanda hissed through heaving breaths, "always band together against outsiders!"

"I see..."

"Get us out of here!"

Seysuth stepped to the far side of the floating tussock, presumably to once again assume his own crocodile form and carry them beyond the reach of the slower skiffs.

The undead crocodile erupted from the swamp like a breaching whale.

The snout, a battering ram of dead scales, rotting flesh, and stained bone, slammed the shaman backward to land sprawled, half in the swamp. It spun, its jaws a gaping pit to the Abyss. The overwhelming miasma of decay, to say nothing of the sprayed droplets of liquefying muscle, nearly paralyzed the Imjaka warrior.

Nearly.

Ameyanda leapt from the quivering mass of vegetation, tucking her knees high, just barely clearing the oncoming snout. Crying aloud, she kicked down with both legs, slamming the jaws together and down into the tussock. Now crouched atop the shambling horror, she drove both mambeles deep into its flesh.

Muscle tore; bone splintered; chipped teeth flew to land scattered amidst the twigs. For a living creature, a fatal blow.

For the unliving crocodile, an inconvenience.

"Seyusth!" She stepped off the mangled snout, blades raised. "I could do with some—"

The sound of splashing water, thrashing limbs, and the impact of something on roughened flesh suggested that the shaman had his own problems.

The crocodile snapped, attempting to skewer her with the edge of a broken jaw. Ameyanda backpedaled, seeking any escape, and glanced over her shoulder just in time to see Seyusth fall.

A handful of the dead-who-walk had followed their crocodilian ally through the waters and clambered atop the floating isle. One lay, truly dead, lacerated by the shaman's spear; another had been brought down by a second lightning bolt from on high. But even as Seyusth turned to handle a third, a head broke the surface of the swamp—a humanoid head not mammalian, but reptilian.

Seyusth froze, his whole expression slack. Ameyanda could only assume he was trying to tell if the unliving thing was the missing Issisk. And in that moment of distraction, one of the White Leech leapt from the skiff—gods and spirits, how did that ponderous vessel move so swiftly?—and slammed a thick cudgel into the lizardman's skull.

A cudgel... yet he carried a serrated falchion in his other hand.

Ameyanda saw the grin of the monstrous fat man, the clubs and ropes held by his fellows, and knew they had something far worse than a quick death in mind.

Coming Next Week: Capture by the scavenger gangs in Chapter Three of "Hell or High Water."

Ari Marmell is an author and game designer, and has written extensively for Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, World of Darkness, and more. His novels include the independent dark fantasy novels The Conqueror's Shadow and The Warlord's Legacy, the young adult fantasy Thief's Covenant, and the morbidly humorous The Goblin Corps, among others. For more information, see his website at mouseferatu.com.

Illustration by Jim Pavelec.

Hell or High Water

by Ari Marmell

Chapter One: Death, Debt, Doubt

The first of the charau-ka died before he knew he was in danger.

The huntress had tracked the apes and the traitor from the kraal of the Imjaka, through towering boles and curtains of hanging vines; across mattresses of leaves and fungi-infested soils that greedily retained the prints of passersby. Those who had hunted alongside her had long since turned back, unwilling to press so far from home.

But she would not turn back. The traitor Okamsi had been her friend; that made the tribe's vengeance her responsibility.

When she caught up to the baboon-faced, musk-and-feces-perfumed ape-things, they had halted beneath a thick canopy of branches, apparently arguing in their hooting, grunting language. They numbered three, which worried the huntress—not because she feared such odds, but because they had numbered five, plus Okamsi, when they'd first set out.

So where had the others gone?

She watched, wary of some snare or deception, but eventually the argument came to an end. The trio of charau-ka prepared to set out once more, and still no sign of the missing.

Time, then, to put her doubts aside.

Spears hissed through the canopy, shredding clusters of leaves. The first, a light and springy thing with a broad head of iron, sank into the back of the first ape-man, followed almost instantly by the second. Spears three and four were in the air, seeking fresh targets, before the perforated charau-ka had crumpled to the loam.

Hooting and screeching, the remaining simian warriors leapt aside, allowing the missiles to sink harmlessly into the earth. Hauling thick, knotted cudgels from the leather harnesses that were their only garb, they spun to face their unseen attacker. One slammed his club to the earth, shrieking in challenge. The other leapt for the branches, dangling by one hand and one prehensile foot, sniffing at the air.

Fleet as the jaguar, agile as the gibbon, the huntress leapt from the cover of the trees. She was a lithe, wiry figure, her skin darker and richer than the fertile soils on which she stood, marred only by the faded scars of an old burn spread unevenly across her left shoulder and her neck. Other than the white of her eyes and teeth, the only brighter hue in either her garb or her complexion came from a lion-skin kilt, partially slit so as not to impede her steps. From a belt of cowhide hung her quiver of throwing spears, and a pair of empty sheaths.

In each hand she held the former occupants of those sheaths: her faithful mambeles, wicked crescents of iron, almost like sickles with extra blades protruding at all angles.

She was taller than the charau-ka, but she had seen the strength and ferocity of the foul creatures before and knew better than to be fooled by their size. For an endless instant, human and charau-ka locked burning, unblinking eyes. Then they were coming at her. Their shrieks grew higher until they were a fire in the ears, and they crossed the intervening distance—whether afoot or swinging from the heavy branches—with a speed that astonished even the experienced Imjaka huntress.

Astonished—but not dismayed.

The huntress let fly, sending a mambele whistling through the air as she dove. Leaves and mushrooms crunched, the latter emitting a pungent and unhealthy smell as she rolled on one shoulder, passing just beneath the reach of the tree-borne charau-ka's bludgeon.

Her second enemy, though still roaring his fury, had jerked to a halt at the impact of the many-pointed weapon. It protruded from his chest—not deep enough to reach anything vital, but agonizing enough.

The forward tumble brought her back to her feet—or rather, to her knees, ending in a crouch before her diminutive foe. She yanked the mambele from his chest, twisting to widen the wound. That second jolt of pain, in turn, bought her enough time to bring her arms—and her blades—together across his throat.

"Ameyanda fears no man or beast, but only a fool ventures into the Sodden Lands."

Both mambeles, one already blooded, the other pristine, dug through simian fur and flesh. First a gout of the charau-ka's blood spattered across the earth, followed by his weapon—and then the charau-ka itself.

Hanging now by his feet, the surviving simian hurled a pair of stones, produced from spirits-knew-where. The huntress knocked the first aside with a desperate backhand, iron blade sparking on the jagged rock, but she'd no way to avoid the second. All she could do was rise from her crouch so that she took the stone against leather-warded chest rather than unprotected head.

Dyed the crimson-brown of drying blood, the jerkin was boiled and hardened to turn aside spears and arrows, yet she felt her flesh bruise, her rib shuddering but thankfully not cracking with the impact.

She needed to close, fast. Fortunately, the damn monkey's acrobatics and elevation didn't give him nearly the advantage he anticipated.

Again the mambele flew, followed swiftly by the second. The charau-ka swung aside on one foot, allowing both blades to sink harmlessly into the wood; but then, she'd known full well that he would.

In the brief seconds of his dodge, the huntress broke into a run and leapt. Hands calloused by a life in the wilds of the Mwangi Expanse closed around the rough bark. Even as the charau-ka spun back her way, she swung forward, wrapping her calves around the creature's torso just below his arms. A sharp twist of the waist was enough to shake the bough and, more significantly, yank the ape-man from his perch to land headfirst on the jungle floor.

It wasn't much of a fall, not nearly enough to kill. No, it was the woman landing on him even as he bounded upright, both mambeles once more in her hands and angled sharply downward, that did the trick.

Silence, then, save for the huntress's sharp breaths. Still alert for the missing charau-ka, she carefully cleaned her blades on the creature's hairy hide before sheathing them. She then made her way to the spears, jutting from soil or flesh, retrieving those that might be reused, salvaging the iron tips from those that could not.

"If you seek the human, you will not find him."

She spun to face the thick screen of foliage from which the voice had come. It had an odd sound to it: raspy, slightly mangled, as though spoken by someone unaccustomed to the regional dialect.

Or, she realized when the figure stepped into the open, by a mouth that was never meant to pronounce the words.

He stood perhaps a head taller than she. Scales the murky green of stagnant swamp water faded gradually into a sallow tan across his throat and chest. A crest of similarly colored spines ran from atop his head to the base of his tail. He wore only an open vest and loincloth of some mammalian hide, but his eyes gleamed with cunning and the black talons of one hand were wrapped around a feather-and-bone-bedecked spear.

It was only as she completed her fleeting inspection that she realized she had no way of knowing if "he" was in fact male. She'd just assumed, perhaps due to the voice.

Her own hands lingered near the mambeles, but if the newcomer was hostile, he could have struck from concealment. Warily, she straightened and ran a hand over the prickly stubble that was the only hair atop her scalp. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"I have watched these charau-ka since before midday. They met earlier with one of the great speaking gorillas of Usaro. A wizard, surely, for it disappeared soon after, taking two of the charau-ka and a human with it. They may be anywhere now, perhaps even Usaro itself. As you clearly track them, I assume it is the human you seek?"

She growled something she hoped, afterward, the reptile wouldn't be able to translate. "Yes, damn it. It is."

The lizardman nodded, though whether the gesture meant the same thing coming from him as it would from her, she was unsure.

"I am Ameyanda," she said, remembering at least a sliver of etiquette while the bulk of her attention was focused on figuring out what she was supposed to do now. "Of the Imjaka."

"Seyusth, of Haa-Ok. And I know you already, Ameyanda of Imjaka."

"Grandmother Sun's blessings on—what? You know me?"

"I know you, yes. I am, in fact, seeking you, not those." He gestured with an empty hand toward the apish corpses.

"Why?" Her own hand edged again toward her weapons.

"I seek one of my clan, my..." He paused, blinking languidly, perhaps trying to recall the proper word, or to explain a concept that didn't translate. "‘Cousin,' is the nearest term in your language. You will help me retrieve him."

"Is that so? Seyusth, not only have I my own hunt to—"

"You cannot find your missing human any time soon. You have no means of tracking him."

"Not only have I my own hunt," she repeated through a cage of clenched teeth, "but why, by all the gods, would I involve myself in yours?"

"Because, Ameyanda of the Imjaka, you owe me your life."

A pause; a blink; a breath.

"Oh. You're that lizardman."

∗∗∗

Ameyanda had no difficulty remembering. She still dreamed about it.

She felt the crunch of twigs and fungi beneath her feet, saw the trees and fronds whipping by to either side, heard her own desperate gasps echoed in the panting of Mbamsi and Entandwi. She gagged as the ominous musk—not quite reptile and not quite avian, but distilled from the worst of both—seeped malevolently into those breaths, as if taunting. And she heard the cracking and snapping, hissing and spitting, as the pack closed far, far too rapidly from behind. They were smaller than most of the predatory thunder-lizards of the Mwangi, those raptors, but they were large enough, fierce enough, and horrifyingly cunning enough to take down prey far stronger than the three Imjaka youths. They'd already lost Xabadzi to the raptors' initial ambush.

Ameyanda and her friends would follow him soon enough.

Or they would have, had the grasses themselves not come to the rescue. Wiggling like serpents, they intertwined with the pounding talons of the raptors. Yanked to a halt, some so swiftly that they toppled, the thunder-lizards began to slash and chew at the suddenly hostile flora.

They might, perhaps, have gnawed themselves free soon enough, but the trio's fortune had not yet run out. From a sky largely bereft of clouds, the lightning cracked. When the first of the raptors was seared, shrieking in pain, the others redoubled their efforts. By the time the third had suffered the same agonizing fate, the rest wanted nothing more than to be elsewhere. Finally ripping themselves free, the surviving members of pack scattered, their prey forgotten.

For a moment, as Ameyanda had turned, wide-eyed, toward Mbamsi and Entandwi, she caught a glimpse of one of the mysterious lizardfolk, deep in the jungle's shadows. Ameyanda knew little about magic, then, but she knew that what she'd witnessed had in no way been natural. Tentatively, she raised a hand in greeting.

Her reptilian savior had solemnly returned the gesture before vanishing into the trees.

∗∗∗

Ameyanda dragged her mind across the intervening half-decade and back to the figure she'd never thought to see again.

"I owe you," she admitted, her voice low. "And the Imjaka repay our debts."

"Good," was all Seyusth offered in reply.

Stifling a sigh, the huntress went to retrieve the woven satchel of supplies that she'd left in the hollow of a winding tree root before engaging the charau-ka. "You could explain yourself, at least," she suggested sourly. "Why come to me? Could the other Haa-Ok not—?"

"My people have no desire to assist me. Our journey may take us into the territories of the Terwa Lords."

"And those are who?"

"The..." Again, Seyusth seemed briefly at a loss. "What is your term for my kind?"

"Your...? Oh. Ah, ‘lizardfolk.'"

His snout twitched as though he'd just swallowed something that had decided to bite back. "Yes. The ‘lizardfolk' of the western swamps are not like Haa-Ok, or our neighboring tribes. They are fiercer. More bloodthirsty."

Ameyanda hefted the satchel over her shoulder. "We've had trouble with lizardfolk raids now and then. Them?"

"Most probably. The Terwa Lords—those who rule the swamp tribes—seek expansion and conquest. They have attempted, at times, to annex even tribes far into the Mwangi, either through promise or threat. The former emptier than the latter, I think."

"They're your enemies," she said. "And your tribesmen—uh, tribeslizards?—will not risk invading their lands over one missing person."

"You understand precisely. I attempted to locate Issisk—the missing one—myself, but my knowledge of the region proved insufficient. It cost me an entire moon of wasted effort."

Ameyanda was frowning, tapping a hand idly against her quiver. "I'm a skilled warrior," she said without braggadocio, "and I've seen your power... shaman?"

"As accurate a term as any."

"But I don't believe the two of us can fight an entire nation, Seyusth."

"You misunderstand. While we may pass through their territories, the Terwa do not have Issisk. If he lives, he is in the hands of the swamp's savage humans."

The satchel fell back to the soil with a dull thump. "You mean the scavenger gangs," she hissed, a fair imitation of a reptile herself. "When you say ‘the western swamps'... You mean to take us into the Sodden Lands."

"If that is what you call the storm-drowned territories beyond the jungle's edge," the lizardman told her, "then yes."

Coming Next Week: A journey into hurricane-wracked wastelands in Chapter Two of "Hell or High Water."

Ari Marmell is an author and game designer, and has written extensively for Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, World of Darkness, and more. His novels include the independent dark fantasy novels The Conqueror's Shadow and The Warlord's Legacy, the young adult fantasy Thief's Covenant, and the morbidly humorous The Goblin Corps, among others. For more information, see his website at mouseferatu.com.

Illustration by Jim Pavelec