Tenebroum

Chapter 9: Heroes for Hire

Kaligos looked back for the fifth time that hour and glared hard at Solovino until the dandy noticed and wilted back into silence. Sneaking through the knee deep waters of the swamp was impossible, but he’d made it very clear before they’d gotten off the boat that the group needed to stay as quiet as possible to avoid hunting packs and ambushes. Lizardmen were only a little stronger than men after all, and the most dangerous part of fighting them was the element of surprise. The scaly bastards could lie in wait in the water and mud for hours, catching just about anyone off guard.

Most of the group at least tried, and some, like Marko and his woman, were even good at it, but their pet arcanist had been abysmal since his slippers had touched the mud and the bard that the count’s court had saddled them with was even worse. Kaligos sighed. Between them he felt like they were doing everything they could to turn this milk run into a catastrophe.

It wasn’t that he didn’t understand why the Count wanted a poet along to immortalize their deeds. He was paying 2 regals a tail and a 50% bonus on top of that if they cleared out the main nest before high season. That wasn’t just good money for a week's work. It was a ridiculous sum. It might be enough that he and his flock could take the whole war season off this year. Not that they would. No matter how many coins found their way into their hands, they would always slip through their fingers and into the pockets of innkeepers and whores on the way to the next battlefield. That wasn’t his problem though. He’d long ago lost the right to save their souls - he’d just have to settle for saving their skins for as long as he could. As the leader of the Unwritten Rule that was his main job; that and making sure they got paid.

“What’s the big deal, your holiness?” Regg asked, his voice just above a whisper as he closed the gap with Kaligos. “We’ve already killed 8 of those snakes so far. It wasn’t even hard! A few well aimed arrows and an occasional icy blast from Von Wandren and they fall like dominos.”

“Sure, when you can see them,” Kaligos shot back, not letting his focus drop. The further they pushed into the swamp the thicker the fog got, and the harder that job became. Last night they’d found the remains of an old temple to sleep in, and honestly that might be where they headed back to tonight, depending on whether or not they got a good lead on the lizards' nest today.

“But that’s Von Wandren’s job. He says his spell can find them 500 feet away. That’s further than any of us can shoot, and a damn sight farther than they can throw those spears of theirs. With that kind of advantage they don’t—” Regg’s whispered appeal stopped with a sputtering sound and a sudden thud. Kaligos didn’t even have to look to understand that his friend had gotten himself skewered for trusting a mage’s spell more than his own eyes.

“To arms!” He shouted even though he hoped that any warrior serving underneath him would have seen enough already to pull out his sword before being told to. “They’re here! The cold blooded bastards are here!”

He didn’t have to look at Regg’s collapsing form to know how bad the wound probably was, but he did anyway as he jumped away while pulling out his sword. He had to. There was always the chance that he could be saved by his meager healing talents. As he looked at the obsidian tip puncturing through the front of the young man’s jerkin he saw it was hopeless though. No one could survive a spear through the heart.

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It was a thrown spear at least, and after a quick check, Kaligos found the culprit on a sandbar off to his left. He wasn’t alone though. Several other cold-blooded killers were rising up immediately before him, as well as between their merry band of misfits and the spear throwers assembling on the hill. Lizardmen were dangerous ambushers - but rarely hunted in groups larger than three, and never in more than packs of five, so why the hell were there over a dozen here, with more appearing every second.

“Retreat,” he yelled, “Find cover!” He didn’t listen to his own advice, and strode forward to meet the two closest to him. The next volley of spears would be coming any second and the only way to avoid it was to get tangled up with some of their own tribe, so Kaligos did just that, swinging his giant two-handed claymore in huge deadly arcs. The blade was heavily notched, but had always served him well. It had broken more than a few steel blades in its day, and the wood and bone that these lizards used didn’t stand a chance. The first warrior that attempted to parry his blow lost its head and the second lost an arm for the trouble. It retreated after that, and he found a new monster to tangle with, sparing only a quick look back at his men.

Most of them looked like they’d made it back to some high ground of their own, so he just had to hold his own for a little while before the arrows and spells would start falling like rain and give him the chance he needed to break away from this muddy pit. The next five minutes were ugly. One of the cold-blooded bastards managed to take a bite out of his shoulder even as he drove his sword like a spear through its heart. He had to drop the sword after that and pull out the throwing axes he carried as a backup. There was no way he was pulling five feet of steel out of 300 pounds of dead lizard while these things were trying to bleed him out.

Eventually though, the tide turned and the few scaly survivors retreated. Kaligos didn’t see what had happened to the rest of his men while he’d been fighting for his life, but by the time he got back to where they made their stand he could see they’d taken an ugly toll as well. They’d been late in coming to his aid because they’d been ambushed a second time, and almost everyone that was left was bleeding, and they were all clamoring for his aid.

“Either that was just about all of them, or the count was dead wrong on how long these critters have been infesting his land. What do you think chief? Do we continue on or—” Marko was asking the right questions, but Kaligos didn’t have the time for it now. He didn’t even have time to heal his wounded friends as he made a beeline for their illustrious and often useless wizard.

“What happened, Von Wandren?” Kaligos growled, picking him up by the throat and pinning him against the trunk of a cyprus. “You said you could see them! You said it wouldn’t be a problem!”

“I-I know… I—” the mage choked, but Kaligos cut him off.

“The problem is that you weren’t paying attention.” Kaligos continued. “The problem is you were gossiping with this fop instead of doing what I pay you to do.”

“I’ll have you know —” Solovino started, but Kaligos dropped the sputtering mage and whirled to face him.

“Shut it, fool. You’re here to watch and write, not to tell me what to do,” Kaligos roared.

Everyone was quiet after that, until Von Wandren finally said sulkily, “I wasn’t distracted you know. I still can’t see them. Even the dead ones. Something is blocking my spell. Everything is working as it should though. It still detects crocodiles in this direction, and even a fleeing lizardman,” he said, pointing towards the temple and the river the way they’d come. “But this way though… It’s like the whole swamp is dead."

“So you’re saying we should leave, and now,” Marko said, helping his wounded lover tie a sling on her wounded arm. Without the ability to use her bow she wouldn’t be much good in any future fight he noted.

“No, I’m saying we need to go deeper and see what’s doing this. It should be utterly impossible.” As the mage spoke he could see the looks of skepticism on everyone’s faces, so he turned back to Kaligos. “I bet the count would pay a hefty sum to find something on his land that might alter the very way we look at the arcane.” Kaligos considered both options briefly. A lot of people were hurt, but more than a couple were dead - and all of the sudden the company would need to be paying out a lot more survivor benefits this week than he’d expected.

“I agree with Marko,” he said finally. “That is the Marko from a few minutes ago. I don’t think there’s more than half a dozen of those things left in fighting condition. They’re broken and spent, so we're going to get everyone ready to move, and then we're going to push a little further and see what there is to see.” The shepherd looked over his men and could see some skepticism, but he didn’t let that stop him. “It’s too late to get the wounded back to last night's camp site now as is. We press forward, find somewhere defensible to sleep, and tomorrow we carry a whole load of tails back with us.”

This made at least some sense to everyone, so grudgingly every survivor went along with it, and they spent the next few minutes getting the wounded patched up while keeping a sharp eye out for another attack. Kaligos thought that his healing spells, simple as they were, weren’t working quite as well as they should, but he might have just been tired, so he said nothing. When that was done and everyone could stand again, he retrieved his sword and the one axe he could find, before they continued on.

Five minutes later they were in the lizards' village. It had been utterly abandoned, but they still took the time to crush the eggs they could find, and put a torch to every structure. In the fog it was slow work, but after what had just happened, it was all the more satisfying.

“So do you think this is it?” Kaligos asked, walking up to the wizard who was studying a crude altar flanked by a pair of strange primitive totems.

“No,” the mage shook his head. “This is nothing. For an effect like this, the cause would need to be bigger. Much bigger. Like so big it should be impossible to hide.” As the mage spoke the fog parted briefly and Kaligos saw the silhouette of a tower looming out of the fog.

“Obvious, huh?” Kaligos said, a little amused by the scene. “You mean something a bit - like a tower?” Through the fog he couldn’t make out much more than the outline, which wavered uncertainly - but there was at least the ruin of something there.

“Yeah - like a tower, but it would be close, it has to be! As you can see there’s nothing here. I just can’t put my finger on it…” The mage continued to ramble even after Kaligos lost interest and started walking forward.

“All right everyone - on me,” the shepherd called, cupping his hands to his mouth. “I think I found where we’re staying for the night. That will give Von Wandren here time to figure out how he screwed up and give him plenty of time to find a way to make it up to us in a way we can sell for gold!”

Behind him he could hear the mage ask where the hell that came from, but he was happy to let him stew. All Kaligos cared about was finding something that was at least moderately defendable. In the morning they could chop up these corpses, and cart them back along with the bard. Some of the money would go to the newly minted widows created by today’s ambush but the rest would go a good long way toward drowning everyone’s sorrows until they could buy some new friends.

He was confident that with the eight of them and a few walls to use for cover there wouldn’t be an issue. With the right fortifications he could hold back the gates of hell itself with his handful of warriors. Kaligos smiled. He was going to sleep better tonight than he’d thought he would.