Betrayal

Chapter Two Fiona’s Ire

“Damn Dhamon Grimwulf, damn him to the Abyss!” the Solamnic Knight Fiona cursed as she plunged deeper into the swamp. “If I hadn’t trusted him and his ogre friend, we’d be out of this ghastly place by now. We must be miles from Shrentak. Damn him!”

She was threading her way through a tangle of vines and working to skirt a moss-choked pond. The guttering torch she carried chased shadows up trees. Chittering insects swarmed around her as she held the torch close in a futile effort to chase them away—but that only made her hotter. Despite it being well past sunset, the swamp was steamy with the brutal heat of a particularly hot summer. The heat was suffocating and had caused her to abandon her precious plate mail. Sweat plastered her long red hair against her face and glued her tattered leggings and tabard to her skin. She shrugged out of the shredded remains of her cloak and tossed it aside, a gesture which did nothing to cool her off. Her feet were so sweaty inside her leather boots that they slipped with each step, creating painful blisters.

She breathed deep, trying to clear her lungs. Instead the heat and the moisture dug in, taking root in her chest and making her mouth and throat feel sticky. Her head pounded.

“Fiona, wait!”

She barely heard the words, and hadn’t realized that Rig Mer-Krel had shouted her name three times. She paused, allowing him to catch up.

“Fiona, this is madness! We shouldn’t be traveling in the swamp at night. That torch is a beacon to whatever’s hungry and lying out there waiting for us. Might as well be ringing the cook’s bell in the galley—one sea barbarian and one Solamnic Knight served up to order. Young and lean, downright tasty!”

She scowled and turned to face her comrade. Rig’s dark skin was slick with sweat, and his vest and pants were so wet they looked as if they were painted on him. His expression remained stern only for a moment longer, his eyes softening as they caught hers.

“Fiona, we—”

“It’s cooler at night,” she said stubbornly. “I want to keep going.”

He opened his mouth to argue with her, then stopped himself. He knew from the set of her jaw that the words would be wasted.

“Besides,” she continued, “I’m not tired. Not much, anyway. I want to make some progress toward Shrentak.”

That last word sent a shiver down the mariner’s spine. The ruined city of Shrentak was the lair of Sable, the massive black dragon overlord who had turned this once-temperate land into a fetid swamp and claimed it and every creature in it as her own.

“As long as Solamnic Knights are being held in Sable’s dungeons, I don’t want to waste time,”

Fiona said. She frowned, brushing away gnats that had landed and become glued to the sweat on her face. “Perhaps my brother is there too, in Shrentak—alive, or dead, as you saw in the vision.”

“I want to free them as much as you do, Fiona. Going after the knights—and whoever else is prisoner there—that was as much my idea as yours.”

“Damn Dhamon Grimwulf.”

He reached a finger up to nudge a dampened curl away from her eyes and noticed that she was holding back tears.

“I believed him, Rig. Trusted him. He and Maldred, that… that…”

“Ogre. I know,” he said, tracing her lower lip with his thumb. “I guess some part of me believed them, too. Or at least wanted to.”

Weeks ago Fiona had sought out Dhamon Grimwulf, despite knowing that the once honorable hero had fallen in with thieves and worse. She needed to raise a ransom to free her brother from Sable’s clutches, and she hit upon Dhamon as the possible means to do so. After all, the Solamnic Council had refused to help. Dhamon had involved her in a certain errand for Donnag, the ogre-chieftain of Blöde. The errand, which involved killing some trolls in the mountains, yielded a chest full of coins and gems for her to use as a ransom.

Dhamon, his friend Maldred, and forty ogre guards were assigned to escort the ransom. Rather, that’s what they said were doing. In truth, Dhamon and his friends were headed to Sable’s silver mines, where many of Donnag’s ogres were being worked to death as slaves. The chest of coins and gems was just a ruse to get her and Rig to come along and help. The ogre-chieftain had been impressed with her and the mariner’s skills and wanted to add their sword arms to the mission. It wasn’t until they reached the clearing outside the silver mine that she realized she’d been duped.

“Tricked,” she hissed now at Rig, recalling it all so clearly.

She would have left Dhamon and the others right then and there, and that night she ought to have stormed off to Shrentak. But she abhorred slavery, so she had decided to help free the ogres first.

“I was lied to by Dhamon, people I had faith in.”

They had battled spawn and draconians to free the ogres, along with a smattering of humans and dwarves also held as slaves. In the aftermath of the fight, a strange child with copper-colored hair appeared and cast a spell that trapped her and Rig and wrapped itself around Maldred and changed him. “Revealing him,” the waif had said in an eerie voice. “Chasing away the spell that paints a beautiful human form over his ugly ogre body. Revealing the son of Donnag—my mistress’s enemy!”

When the transformation was complete, Maldred stood more than nine feet tall, an ogre more awesome and physically imposing than any of the ogres with them. His human-sized clothes fell in tatters, barely covering his massive body. Fiona stared. Maldred, the human-looking Maldred, had made her feel things for him, trust him, made her doubt her love for Rig.

“Lies,” she repeated now bitterly to Rig. “It was all lies. The ransom was never mine to keep. Maldred was never human. Dhamon was never trustworthy. Lies. Lies. All of it….”

Her cruel work done, the child had melted away into mists of the swamp, taking Rig’s magical glaive with her. Dhamon and Maldred announced they would escort the freed slaves back to Donnag, inviting Fiona and Rig to come with them. It would be safer. Instead, the Solamnic marched off into the swamp, Rig following. Maldred and Dhamon had called out to them for a time, until their voices grew distant and the animal and insect noises finally drowned them out.

“Damn Dhamon Grimwulf.” Fiona whirled to resume her trek. “And Maldred, too. Damn the lying lot of them.”

“I never did like Dhamon,” Rig muttered as he fell in step behind her. He added softly, after they had traveled only a short distance, “I would like to get my glaive back.”

The ground was marshy, thick with mud and rotting plants. It pulled at their heels with each step. Walking was hard work, but the harsh conditions only made Fiona more determined. A sudden gust of wind whipped out of nowhere and extinguished her torch. The inky blackness of Sable’s swamp reached out and covered them from all directions. The air stilled. The leafy canopy high above them was so dense no hint of starlight filtered down. Everything was blackest black.

“Fiona?”

“Shhh.”

“Fiona, I can’t see anything.”

“I know.”

“I don’t hear anything either.”

“I know. That’s the problem.”

The insects had stopped buzzing. The silence was unnerving. The silence, the heat, the darkness, and the dampness of the place. A prickly sensation ran down the Solamnic’s spine, a feeling that suggested someone or something was watching them. Something that could see without any problem in this cavelike blackness.

Rig had never considered himself a man to scare easily. He had a respectable fear of the dragons and of strong storms at sea. He didn’t fear much else. Now, though, he felt a horrible, constricting fear. He considered grabbing Fiona and retreating and wondered if he could even manage to retrace his steps and find his way back to the clearing with the silver mine. He wondered if they might yet catch up with Dhamon and Maldred. Rig knew Fiona had to be frightened, too. He hated the notion of rejoining Maldred and Dhamon, but it would be the prudent thing to do. It was suicide to stand here practically helpless in the dark. The insects resumed their constant drone, and the irritating noise made them both breathe a little easier.

“Can’t see a damn thing, Fiona,” Rig grumbled. “Not even the hand in front of my face. Maybe we should go back to the clearing. Get some torches. Maybe there’s some lanterns in the mine. Maybe some food. We left too fast, without collecting something to eat.”

“No. No. No.”

“Fine.” Rig let out a deep breath, the wind whistling through his clenched teeth.

“There has to be a clearing somewhere ahead where we’ll be able to see.” She dropped the useless torch and flailed about with her hand until she found Rig and laced her fingers with his. They pressed on like blind people, brushing by the thick trunk of a shaggybark, slogging through a stagnant pool of water, wincing as thorn bushes scratched their legs. They walked through an enormous spiderweb and had to stop for several minutes to pull off the gummy mass.

“Just a little farther,” Fiona whispered, determined to put more miles between herself and the silver mines. “Farther… away from Dhamon and Maldred.”

A great cat snarled in the distance. Closer, something hissed. Directly overhead, a branch rustled, though there was no breeze in the swamp. A stench hung in the air, perhaps a large animal rotting nearby. There was the strong, pungent odor of dead plants decaying in the loamy marsh. The hot air and overall oppressive scent of this great bog nearly caused Fiona to gag.

“A little farther, Rig. Just a little….”

“So hot,” he said. The mariner was listening to a bird with an odd, throaty call, to frogs croaking noisily, to something making a rhythmic clacking sound. He wished for a breeze, another lone gust of wind, anything to stir up the air.

Fiona’s pace slowed, her body admitting a fatigue her mind railed against. They stumbled over logs and fallen vines and blindly groped their way through clumps of willow-birches. A break in the canopy above painted their world in shifting grays. Not starlight, Rig could tell, for the bit of sky was lightening, heading toward dawn. It was a welcome, if brief, change, however. They passed beyond the break, plunging again into utter darkness. Suddenly the mariner tensed. He gently squeezed Fiona’s hand.

“What?” she asked.

“I hear something.”

“Maldred? Dhamon?”

He shook his head, then realized she couldn’t even see him. “I don’t think so. Doesn’t sound like boots. Hear it?” His voice was so soft she had to strain to catch it. “I think…”

He dropped her hand and took a few steps away from her, drew his sword and swung hard in a wide arc, the blade whistling in the air and glancing off… something. Wood? A tree? The mariner desperately needed to see!

There was more rustling, to the side this time, followed by a snarl that trailed off into a loud hiss. Rig spun and swung again, connecting with something softer. His unseen foe howled, the rustling plants hinting that the thing was trying to circle around behind them. What were they up against?

“Fiona! Stay put!” he shouted. “I don’t want to strike you by mistake.”

Rig heard the hiss of the Solamnic’s sword being drawn, and he concentrated on the soft sounds in front of him, the leaves being brushed aside. He pivoted on the balls of his feet, following the sound and thrusting forward. Nothing! He pulled back and stabbed farther to his right. Another howl, and this time Rig knew he’d seriously wounded the creature, as acidic blood sprayed out, sizzling against the foliage and splashing against his arm.

“Ow!” Rig shouted. “Fiona! It’s a damnable draconian. Stay put!”

Fiona heard noises in another direction, and she shifted her weight from foot to foot, listening intently. “Two draconians, Rig,” she corrected. “You stay put, too!”

“Not draconiansss,” a voice to her right hissed. “We are ssspawn.”

“Draconians, spawn, what’s the difference?” Rig spat. “You’re monsters.”

Fiona whirled, tripping over an exposed root and flying forward. But her fingers held tight to her sword, which was extended and somehow grazed spawn flesh. There were more sloshing footsteps, a series of hissing growls. There were more than two of them, she instantly realized. How many?

She scrambled to her feet, swinging wildly to keep the creatures back, or, better yet, to hurt them. She grazed something again, an angry snarl vouching that it was a spawn and not the mariner. At the same time, she felt sharp claws dig into her back. Fiona bit down on her lip to keep from crying out.

“Woman is clumsssy,” one cackled.

“Man clumsssy, too,” another added.

“At least I’m not ugly,” Rig countered. He wanted Fiona to hear his voice so she’d know where he was. “And you’re about as ugly as anything gets.”

Though he couldn’t see them, he knew what they looked like: hulking manlike creatures with claws and wings, covered in glossy black scales.

There was movement directly in front of him now. Lunging forward, he felt his sword sink deep into muscular flesh. He rammed the weapon in up to the hilt and found himself drenched with stinging acid. He knew that black spawn exploded in a burst of acid as they died, and he wondered if the burning acid would leave scars.

“One down, Fiona!” he announced. How many more to go? Without pause, he blindly swung again and again, striking another and slaying it, too.

How many of them? his mind screamed.

There was another sound directly in front of him again, and he jabbed the sword forward, guessing he struck one in the chest. It, too, burst into acid. At the same time, a spawn behind him stepped in and bit down hard on his shoulder, clawing at his arms and trying to pin him down. Another was batting at his sword, trying to knock it from his grip.

“Ssspawn kill man. Man should not kill ssspawn,” the creature behind him hissed. “Man should not kill my sisssters.” The creature bit him again. This time it clamped down and did not let go. Rig managed to thrust the blade forward, somehow in the darkness finding another spawn. The sword lodged firmly in the thing, and he dropped to his knees, his weight pulling the sword loose while also tearing himself free from the jaws of the creature behind him. Struggling to rise, he swept the blade in a forward arc and again was rewarded with a howl and a painful shower of acid. Behind him, he heard one creature crashing away through the foliage. Rig flailed about. No more spawn, no trees, only vines that sought to entangle him. He turned again and barely caught himself from stumbling over a broken tree limb. Leading with the sword and edging forward, he made his way past the limb and through a swath of branches and mud.

“Rig? Rig!” Fiona was panting, thoroughly spent and in agony from the burning acid unleashed by the spawn she’d killed. “They’re gone. Dead or gone.” Fiona sheathed her sword and felt around until she found a tree to lean against. “Rig?”

“I’m here,” came the exhausted reply. “Wherever here is. Keep talking so I can find you.”

It took several minutes, before they found themselves at the base of the same tree. Rig boosted her up, urging that it was safer than resting on the ground. Climbing was torture, straining wounds and already overtaxed muscles. Somehow they made it to thick, low limbs, ones they could straddle with their backs propped against the trunk. They emptied one of their water skins trying to wash away the acid. Nearly all the other water was shared down their throats.

“You know, there might be snakes—or worse—in this tree,” Fiona said.

“Only thing worse than a snake is Dhamon Grimwulf,” came Rig’s hoarse reply.

“Right. Damn him. If I hadn’t trusted him, hoped that he could help me….”

“Fiona, with luck we’ll never see him again.”

“Yes, but maybe we shouldn’t have parted company with them quite so quick,” Fiona mused, her voice a cracked whisper. “I shouldn’t have let my anger guide me. Maybe we should’ve got some food first. Found some extra water skins. Maybe…. Oh, I don’t know.”

Rig knew she couldn’t see his shrug. He rested one hand on the pommel of his sword. The other arm he looped about a branch to help steady himself. He closed his eyes, and despite his aches and his pain-wracked shoulder where the spawn had bitten him, within a few heartbeats he was soundly asleep.

“You were right, Rig. At least we shouldn’t have left the clearing without taking a few torches with us,” Fiona said after a while. “Shouldn’t have trusted Dhamon.” She paused when she heard the mariner gently snoring.

“Should have never doubted you,” she added softly. “I really do love you, Rig.”

They woke well into the morning, still sore from the fight, wounds festering. Fiona insisted they move again before Rig could even attempt to find breakfast. The mariner decided he could wait a few hours to eat. Before he knew it the day had melted away. As the light began to fade, they sought another tree to pass the night. Fiona was eyeing a dying shaggy-bark with wide limbs when Rig pointed through a gap in a veil of willow leaves.

“There’s a light over there. Low to the ground and wide, like it’s a campfire. Smells like something’s cooking over it, too. We should take a closer look.” His stomach growled. He hadn’t eaten in well more than forty-eight hours.

“Hope we didn’t get turned around in the dark,” Fiona said. “Solamnus knows, we could very well be lost. Hope it’s not Dhamon and Maldred’s campfire.” A small part of her hoped that it was. She’d rehearsed several times in her mind a tirade she would unleash on them. She took a deep breath and brushed aside the leaves and edged a few steps closer to the fire.