Lord Toede (20 page)

hide. Resistance had appeared, finally, in the form of a unit of crossbowmen, who took up
position beneath a statue of Lord Hopsloth. The crossbowmen were trying to pick off the
“driver” of the device and were protected by some (very nervous) spearmen in the front
line. Toede flung himself down on the top of the juggernaut, and shouted, “Take out the
statue, too!” Toede did not see the statue explode, but he certainly heard it, combined
with a rain of spears, and Jugger's declaration, “Eight-zero-five!” Toede grabbed one of
the spears and started using it to steer, banging on one side of the juggernaut, then the
other. He soon learned that Jugger took notice of buildings in the same manner as humans
noticed wildflowers when charging across a field, and if he tapped too early (or late),
the corner of a building would disappear in a shower of masonry. Another unit of crossbows
and spears in front of the Rock Gate raised the total to eight-fifty- something, and Toede
began worrying that Jugger would hit its quota long before Toede reached his own quarry.
Then he would be left alone in the middle of the destruction, with some very angry and
organized citizens surrounding him. The Rock Gate was made of sterner and older stuff than
the new walls, and Jugger almost slowed as it crumbled into fragments. Now the troops were
mobilizing, but morale evaporated as quickly as mobilization when the humans in the rear
echelons saw the humans in front reduced to red, splotchy pulps in the cobblestone. Toede
banged the right side of the device, and they swung toward Toede's old manor. They charged
up the front steps (reducing them to a gravel slope in the process). Then, all of a
sudden, a powerful explosion rocked Jugger and sent Toede sprawling to the pavement. He
felt something give in his ankle, but skittered clear, so when Jugger tipped and fell,
thankfully, Toede was not underneath. Thunder echoed in Toede's ears. He raised himself on
the spear to see what happened. Jugger was on its side, swaying back and forth, its great
wheels spinning helplessly in the air. A small collection of humans in vestments, gathered
by the north wing of the manor house, had been the source of the effective attack.
Wizards. Hopsloth had no true priestly powers, so like the old frauds and charlatans of
the prewar days, he had hired spellcasters who drew their powers from impure sources.
Pity, too, because real priests were unlikely to have the ability to summon and fling
magical lightning bolts. The wizards walked slowly toward the tipped, rocking juggernaut,
behind a wall of spearmen who showed uncommon sense by not scattering in fear. Several
were congratulating each other as they neared, as if the surrounding carnage were nothing
more than an everyday field exercise. Toede thought again of the dead, beached whale, and
the pygmies who came out to watch it bake in the sun. None of the wizards or spearmen
noticed Toede yet. Toede saw that Jugger's rocking had become more pronounced, not less.
The infernal device was starting to move in wider arcs. Leaning on the spear as a staff,
Toede hobbled up the stairs of the manor, knowing what would come next. The mages didn't
notice that the juggernaut was figuring out how to right itself until they were about
twenty paces away. Actually, the mages regarded the rocking as one more interesting
phenomenon, and it was the spearmen who realized what the rocking truly meant. They
started to fall away in panic as the last great swing of the machine's body brought the
rollers back in contact with pavement. A jet of cobblestones shot backward as Jugger stood
up and charged the astonished crowd. Half the spearmen fell instantly under the massive
wheels, as well as some of the more powerful (and incautious) wizards. One spread his arms
and began to rise in the air, but Jugger's sharpened top jaw caught him, and only the
upper torso continued to float upward, raining blood beneath. A few of the mages in the
rear ran, as Jugger pursued. It's in the nine hundreds now, thought Toede. He shouted to
Jugger, but to no avail. Eventually, Jugger would realize no one was pounding on its back,
but likely not before several more buildings were leveled. And if it hit a barracks, well,
that would spell the end of his cursed presence on this plane of existence.

Toede limped up the steps to the double doors of his manor, picking up a discarded and
uncrushed dagger from the smashed body of its previous owner. He jammed the dagger into
his belt. He estimated the length of the spear and the width of the door, and pried open
one of the door's twin panels.

“I'm home, dear,” he bellowed into the manor. With the door forced open, he could see the
renovations made by Lord Hopsloth. The entire rear section of the building and his sacred
throne had been lost in the flames and /or removed entirely. All that could be seen was a
stone scaffolding lined with plates of rare sheet glass. The front hallway was now a
balcony, with a long staircase leading down into a pool, surrounded by fronds and other
plants. The sun had set behind Toede, so the pool was as dark and inky as a sleeping
octopus. “Hope you have supper ready,” continued Toede. He saw ripples in the water and
remained in the doorway, holding the spear. “I don't know about you, but I feel like
eating frogs' legs tonight,” he shouted with a grin. At that, the shadowy hulk of Hopsloth
emerged from the depths, at the edge of where the stairs vanished into the water. “You're
... back,” grunted the amphidragon. “Can't say I like what you've done with the place,”
said Toede, ignoring what sounded like an explosion behind him and to the left. “You did
... this,” came the grunt. “So I got peeved,” smiled Toede. “I'll call it off if you agree
to surrender. Now,” he added, hoping that Jugger wouldn't vanish for at least the next
five minutes. “Killed you . . . once. Kill you . . . again,” murmured Hopsloth. His tongue
lashed outward and upward, striking Toede full in the chest. Toede had only a second's
warning, but was ready for Hopsloth this time, and used the second to full advantage. He
turned the spear so it would form a bar across the outer door, a foot overlapping the
frame on either side. Even so, Toede's arm was nearly ripped from its socket as the
tongue-tip lassoed him and tried to suck him back into the amphidragon's maw. Toede bit
down on the pain he felt. With his free hand, he pulled the dagger. “Doe!” shouted
Hopsloth, which was “No!” with your tongue moored fifteen feet away. “Sorry, Hopsey,”
muttered Toede, “but you had your chance.” And he drove the dagger into the creature's
outstretched tongue. Hopsloth arced in a spasm of pain. He tried to lunge (slowly) up the
stairs, toward his tormentor. Toede drove the blade in up to the hilt and started to make
a sawing motion. Greenish blood coated his torso and lower limbs, while the arm anchoring
the spear grew numb. Toede knew that Hopsloth could not immediately disengage his tongue.
Everything depended on Hopsloth losing more blood on the way up the stairs than in the end
he would need to bite Toede in two. Hopsloth closed the distance in slow motion, or at
least it seemed so from Toede's standpoint as he jammed the dagger into the flexing,
writhing muscle that held him aloft, anchored only by the spear across the door frame. Ten
feet between them. Then five. And then Hopsloth was close enough to leap forward and
swallow Toede in one bite. Again. “Nine-nine-seven” came a powerful bellow that Toede felt
more than heard, and he swiveled his head to see Jug-ger charging up the stairs. One last
foolish mage was aiming a wand at the juggernaut, and was rewarded with a shriek and the
solemn declaration, “Nine-nine-eight!” Toede saw what was going to happen and closed his
eyes. Hopsloth realized a moment later. His eyes grew wide and wild, exactly like those of
a frog's caught in a sudden flash of light. Jugger struck Toede and Hopsloth, and all
three pitched off the balcony, over the pool. The far wall shattered like a dry crust of
sugar, and Hopsloth's body was left twitching on the remaining spurs of stone.
“Nine-nine-nine!” bellowed Jugger. “And a thousand!” Jugger and Toede's remains flew over
the deep red waters. Jugger began to fade, and only Toede's

body reached the hungry jaws of the sharks circling below.

Interlude

We return again to the Abyss, surrounded by the spirits of the damned, for analysis, color
com- mentary, and accusations. “Well, it was entertaining,” said the Abbot of Misrule,
lining up his next shot carefully. “Much better the second time around. Or third in his
case. See you in a few years, my friend. I'll keep your charges safe.”

He stepped up to the chalk-marked line and let go of the paladin's skull in a smooth,
underhanded motion. The skull bounced erratically down the hallway of the crypt, striking
a triangularly- arranged set of soul-bottles. The skull struck the most forward of these
bottles, sending all but two hurtling in various directions. All but two.

The Abbot harrumphed and contorted his face into a mask of disappointment. “Seven-ten
split. This must be the plane of punishment.” The Castellan of the Condemned held an angry
silence as his companion recovered the tossed skull. Then he said with a low threat in his
voice, “You cheated.”

“Cheated?” said the taller abishai, trying to transform his lizardlike features into a
semblance of honesty. “Me?” he touched the spot where his heart would beif he had onejust
for effect. “You . . .” said the Castellan, slamming a fist down. "You sent that vision to
Toede, led him down the Abyss-

intended path to that anachronistic creature Jugger. And appeared to his companion when he
was just about to be rescued. A heavenly figure in blue and white, indeed! That had your
greasy clawprints all over it.“ ”Oh, I see,“ said the Abbot, drawing himself up to full
height. ”And I am supposed to abandon my own appointed tasks just because of some silly
bet," he said crossly.

“It's not a bet,” snarled the Castellan. “It's an experiment, one that was going
swimmingly. The test subject was starting to put things together for us. Then you decided
to pitch him in over his head!” “I won't argue with you about terms,” said the Abbot, who
was of course arguing about terms. “But it is in my portfolio to make sure bad advice is
heeded, correct?”

The Castellan was silent for a moment, then muttered, “Right.” “And through my bad advice,
an ancient evil was freed, a city was wrecked and left leaderless, and a great repository
of early ogre erotic epics destroyed,” said the Abbot, leaning against a counter made of
obsidian, polished with the ashes of fallen heroes. “I am just doing my job. In fact, I
might even get a promotion out of this.” “If Judith doesn't sack you for goofing off in
the first place,” muttered the Castellan. The Abbot winced but let that comment slide.
Instead the taller fiend gave a snarl. “And it's not as if I were the first to influence
our little pet noble-to-be.” “I had nothing to do with that coin flip,” said the Castellan
hotly. “Coin flip?” said the Abbot, looking innocent as the driven sleet. “I wouldn't even
suggest that you would have meddled so blatantly in your valuable experiment, to interfere
with an affair of chance. I always thought you had more style than that. It never even
entered my mind.” He let his voice trail off, as if the idea were entering his mind. “So?”
prompted the Castellan. The abishai nibbled on a problem nail, then admired his handiwork.
"There was a little matter of the

first assassination attempt, back at that little barthe Jetties, was it?“ The Castellan
was silent, but nodded. ”Think of it,“ said the Abbot, ”A crowded room emptying of its
patrons. Pandemonium erupting on all sides. The assassin wounds our subject in the
shoulder with a crossbow bolt, then engages in mortal combat with his companion. Our
subject limps across the room during this fray to a deceased barbarian prince, pulls a
dagger,“the abishai mimed the action”and lets fly.“ The Abbot flung the imaginary dagger
at the Castellan, who continued to regard his fellow abishai in stony silence. ”Wounded
thrower, off-balance, tossing a weapon that is not designed to be thrown at a target
engaged in melee,“ summarized the Abbot. ”And yet it not only hits the intended target but
strikes in such a way that it renders said target insensate immediately. And through it
all no one present regarded this circumstance as odd.“ The taller abishai finished with a
flourish. ”If there was an area where I would have acted, where I would have influenced
the normal course of events, that would have been it.“ The silence hung in the air like a
convicted criminal at the end of his last rope. The Castellan bit his words off. ”You
never mentioned that before.“ The Abbot made a broad sweep of his arms, at least as broad
as he could manage without scraping some soul-bottles to the floor. ”I was not accused of
impropriety, before.“ Another silence. Then the Castellan sighed and said, ”Well, we'll
have to do it again.“ The taller abishai rose, palms outward. ”We have wasted enough time
away from our official duties. If Judith found out...“ 'Triple or nothing,” put in the
Castellan. “We'll be missed from our posts for sure,” said the Abbot, smiling as if being
caught missing were not truly a problem. “Quadruple or nothing,” added the Castellan. “And
all for some little bet,” put in the Abbot. “It's not a bet!” shouted the Castellan, then
added more softly, “Quintuple or nothing. Five years on the line.” “But then, what is life
without risk?” said the Abbot of Misrule, hefting the pickle jar with Toede's name on it.
He smiled. “Shall we proceed?”

In which Our Protagonist decides to defy convention and not go anywhere or get involved
with anything. Not that this does him any good, but it's the thought that counts. Toede
awoke feeling flat, or at least a little smashed. Was there a party the previous evening?
No, that was with the gnolls a few evenings back, and was followed by all sorts of
unpleasantness. His last clear memory was of a tremendous force behind him, thrusting him
through the windows of the manor and giving him a very brief look at the Blood Sea from a
very high altitude.

Toede looked around and saw that he was once again on the bank of the same creek as
before, beneath the same maple, several days' journey south of Flotsam. The trees were
fresh with new leaves that caught the sun, shading the water in myriad hues of green and
amber. A few lazy flies buzzed, and far to his left, a wood thrush began its throaty call.

“I understand now,” said Toede. “It's all a plot to make me pay for my sins. The rest of
eternity I'll be sent back here to suffer and die again and again.” He shuddered, but in
the darkest corners of his hobgoblin heart, he had to stand back in awe and wonder at the
fiendish genius who could come up with so elegant and cruel a punishment. Would

that he someday might have an opportunity to use it on someone else! Toede scanned the
horizon and realized he was holding his breath, waiting for something to leap out of the
bushes and throttle him. Or an army of gnolls on the horizon. Something. Anything. The
wood thrush continued, then petered out. A stiff breeze came up and shook the willows and
maples. The sound of leaves rustling was akin to the crashing of the surf. Still nothing.
Toede pulled his legs up and wrapped his arms tightly around them, rocking slightly,
thinking mightily. He was back, and it was a good guess that six months had elapsed since
his last sojourn in the world. The question was, what to do with his restored life this
time? “Live nobly,” the voicessea-wide and mountain-tallhad said again, leaving it at
that. Thank you very much. Perhaps this time, Toede reflected, he would concentrate on the
first word, and let the second word come along at its own speed. The first time, he had
gone downstream and turned left at the swamp, found kender and trouble, and died soon
afterward. The second time, he had gone downstream and turned right at the swamp, found
gnolls and scholars and trouble, and died soon afterward. So this time, perhaps he should
head upstream, into the hills, find some cave and hide there for a few years until he was
certain that no one was left to capture, lure, or ambush him. Or he could remain where he
was, which had the added benefit of not having to travel far, and in the likely event he
died and was restored again, he wouldn't have to go to much effort. Toede looked at his
surroundings with the eye of an amateur camper sizing up a potential resting spot for the
night. The willows by the creek were supple enough to form a rude frame, like those the
kender used. And the maples could be easily stripped of their bark for cross supports. He
could lash bundles of grass to it, at least until he got good enough to catch and skin a
beaver or moose or other suitable furbearer (He had never skinned a wild animal skin
before, but how different could they be from a human?). He'd have to locate berry bushes
and other edibles. Perhaps even launch a small raid on the kender encampment, if it was
still there.... There was a sharp snap of a breaking branch, and the brush behind him and
to his right gave a brief, animated shake. Toede saw it from the corner of his eye, and
instantly was alert and on his feet. Subconsciously he reached for the dagger jammed in
his belt. When his fingers closed on empty air, he made a mental note to die with a
scabbard on, next time, so he would be reborn with a weapon handy. The brush continued to
shake. Toede saw that someone or something was trying to force its way through the
brambles. He could see an arm wielding a sword that glinted in the sunlight as it came
down, hard, on the underbrush ahead of it. Toede cursed. Bending halfway over to conceal
himself as best he could, he made for the sidelines. Somehow, he just knew he should not
hang around and hope no one would bother him. He dived into some brush about the same time
the figure worked itself into the open. Toede held himself very still in the tall grass
and weeds, crouched under a particularly large bush. From his vantage point he could see
little, but the thrashing to his left indicated that the intruder was now strolling the
bank where previously Toede had been. Toede saw a pair of bootscalf-high and made of some
dusty gray leatherpass by. A set of trouser legs, once blue but faded into a sea-gray
shade, was stuffed into them. Nothing else was visible, and the human (or elf, Toede
allowed) was facing the opposite direction. The boots went past his hiding spot and
stopped, then turned around and went past again. Again, three paces past him they stopped,
and turned around yet a third time. This time they stopped in front of Toede's lair. Then
they turned directly toward where Toede was hiding. Toede exploded from the brush, head
down, arms together and ahead of him, hands clenched in pudgy fists, literally diving
upward at his pursuer. He hoped to catch his visitor in the stomach (or perhaps a little
lower) and to knock him senseless enough to either affect an escape or grab his foe's
weapon and turn the tables. He was not expecting his adversary to explode at first touch
into a cloud of fluffy gray tomb dust. Nor for the upper torso of said adversary to pitch
backward from the force of the blow, leaving the

legs standing there for a moment, then to collapse slowly onto themselves, twisting
slightly as they did so. Toede the victor stood over his conquest, coughing and sneezing
on the dust that danced and sparkled in the spring sun. The battle had all the excitement,
and the precise results, of kicking a puffball mushroom.

His vanquished foe lay face-up in two separate pieces on the river bank. Toede looked in
the face (what remained of it) of his opponent, and saw why the creature put up so little
fight. The face of his would-be stalker was nothing more than a gray mask of dried skin,
pulled tightly over the yellowed remnants of skull. The lips were slightly parted, the
creature's teeth like pegs knocked out of their peg-holes, all askew.

A zombie. He was in the middle of the wilderness, caught between gnolls and kender and
gods- knew what else, and here he encounters an armed and armored zombie in the first five
minutes of his new life. What, he thought bitterly, had he done to deserve this? And more
importantly, he added to himself, who had he done it to? One suspect rose immediately in
Toede's mind. The

fabled necromancer could call up a single zombie, or a dozen, in his free time between tea
and supper, without even breaking a sweat. However, said necromancer would not know
exactly where Toede's location was when he reappeared, nor would the death-mage have any
particular reason to want Toede dead. Toede went through a mental list of individuals who
might want to see him restricted to shambling on undead feet through some unlit passageway
for all eternity and was distressed to find that it was so long. Or it could be someone
else entirely. It could be a chance encounter; maybe this zombie got bored doing his
mundane tasks and decided to go for a spring stroll. Toede smiled, but his a smile was
without mirth. He took the long sword and the dagger from the undead creature's deathlike
grip, snapping a few finger bones in the process. The dagger he shoved in his belt, and
the scabbard he slung over his shoulder, since if he wore it on his belt the tip would
leave a faint furrow in the soft ground. Then he headed north, upstream along the creek,
wondering where he could find some kind of defensible place to call home. The climb was
relatively easy, as the stream divided into two smaller creeks, and the rightmost creek
into two smaller brooks, and the rightmost brook in a series of rock-strewn trickles and
tributaries. As the creek bed rose above the vale below, Toede turned and regarded his
world. He was facing south and could see a landscape dotted with the light greens and
cyans of new buds, and a sprinkling of wildflowers. Far toward the horizon was the
accursed swamp, a thick miasma of haze blurring its outlines. Toede resumed climbing,
congratulating himself on his cunning. Were someone like the necromancer pursuing him, he
would assume Toede took the easiest route: downstream. The tributary Toede had been
following finally ended in a natural spring bubbling up from the rock. The brush had
surrendered utterly to rocky ground, dotted by a few gnarled, ancient trees. Not the best
territory to eke out an existence, but sufficient for protection, Toede noted. Whatever
fates there existed were with him when he spotted an old, half-tumbled hovel halfway up
the hill above the spring. It was little more than an entrance hall, and ran about fifteen
feet back into the hill, with a low ceiling that sloped downward in the back to join the
floor. The cabin had been abandoned. The rotted remains of a musty bedroll, tarnished
platterware, and termite-infested wood littered the small one-room interior. The dry smell
of food that had spoiled, rotted, or evaporated hung heavy on the air. An open sack of
flour stood on one low shelf. Toede tested it with his dagger point; it had solidified
into a powdery white brick. Toede imagined that this had been the home of some dwarven
miner, guessing from the low ceilings and amount of rusted iron present. Probably there
was an excavation somewhere nearby, or a shaft

back into the hills. Probably, said shaft ended with a cave-in and a pair of dwarven boots
sticking out of the rubble. Toede cleared out the garbage (that is to say in general,
emptied the cabin), but declared the bedroll serviceable after removing it, thwopping it
against a boulder a few dozen times, and standing back as enough dust billowed from its
insides to gag a mummy.

By the time he had finished reintroducing the concept of livability to the hovel, the sun
was already nuzzling the horizon, and Toede's stomach was grumbling. He sat on his front
porch (a patch of dusty ground, actually) and nibbled on dinner (the last bit of smoked
meat that looked semi-edible). In the morning he would have to look for some berry bushes,
maybe set a few traps (a deadfall was a deadfall, regardless of what it was falling on),
and scout for neighbors.

The last of the sun retreated, leaving a band of reddish fire along the horizon. In the
distance there was the howl of a wolf or wild dog. The air was cooling, and Toede thought
briefly of building a fire, but he had no idea what else was living in the neighborhood,
and there was no need to advertise his presence just yet.

Toede rose, sighed, and leaned against the frame of the doorless entrance to the hovel
(that creaked alarmingly). The reddish hue along the horizon was ebbing, and the stars
were coming out overhead. “Perhaps,” he said to no one in particular, “this is the answer.
No Flotsam. No Balifor. No kender or gnolls or scholars. Perhaps.”

So he retired to bed, lying face-up, his fingers threaded behind his head, considering his
options. Maybe this was what the shadowy figures were saying: travel and die or remain in
place and build your own little lordship. Not a bad concept, and maybe it would do for a
while. Even if a week passed, and he became bored beyond belief, that would be three days
longer than he had survived before.

There was the wolf howl again, and Toede's last thought was that he would have to fix up a
decent door. That resolution belonged on the upper end of his “things-yet-to-be-done” list.

*****

Toede awoke to a deep growling. He opened his eyes to see a large, shaggy black hound
sniffing his face. The idea of a decent door moved even higher into the top ten of his
“to-do” list. The creature was as black as soot, with pale green eyes. It would have been
considered huge even if Toede were not lying on his back looking up into its slavering
jaws. The hound sniffed at Toede and growled again.

Toede's eyes never left the hound, but his hand spidered along the bedroll until it closed
on the hilt of the zombie's short blade. Still in silence, he swiftly brought the dagger
up between himself and the dog. The creature had some experience with weapons, because it
backed up a few paces. Toede rose, snaking his other hand out to grab the zombie's sword
from its scabbard. Now with two weapons, he advanced on the creature.

The creature backed up a few more steps. From his position Toede could see no more
animals, and assumed that this one was a stray or loner. Toede moved forward another
couple of paces, as the creature backed fully out of the cabin, into the moonlight beyond.
In the moonlight, the creature seemed to shrink in size and menace. Indeed it was a dog, a
large mastiff, inky dark and mud-spattered. It stretched its back out, pushed forward on
its paws, and wagged its tail, its tongue hanging out the left side of its mouth. It
whined at him.

Toede smiled, thinking of when he had first met Charka, and assumed the gnoll was a dog.
Perhaps this dog was a dog, and would prove some help in hunting. Either that or make for
a good meal in a tight spot. Toede tucked the dagger in his belt (keeping a firm hand on
his long sword) and stepped through the doorway, reaching out to pet the animal, making
small, affectionate clicking noises with his tongue. “Gotcha, you rat!” said a vaguely
familiar voice as the back of Toede's neck exploded in a spasm of

pain. The ground came up very fast (the dog leaping out of the way), and he was swallowed
by blackness. But not before another, more familiar voice said, “Oh, pooh, I think you
hurt him.”