The Road to Death

20

“Tell me,” Kandler asked Lathon Halpum, after relating the tale of how he and his companions had come to be in the halfling leader’s grace, “how do you know Burch?”

The halfling leader put down his massive flagon of ale and wiped the foam from his mouth with the back of hand. “Now that is a story worth telling, my friend.”

The other conversations around the massive dining table all ground to a halt at the sound of the lathon’s voice. Until now, he’d spent most of the meal chatting with Burch like brothers, but their conversation had been private. Kandler had been fine with that for a while, but he couldn’t contain his curiosity any longer. He’d known Burch for years, and the shifter rarely spoke of his time in the Talenta Plains, much less any friendship with the most powerful of the halfling chiefs.

“You and me, we met in Cyre,” Burch said to Kandler, a savage smile on his face, “but I had a life before that.”

The shifter seemed, well, happy. Kandler didn’t think he’d seen him so relaxed since they’d left Metrol for Sharn over four years ago. The Day of Mourning weighed on Burch as much as on Kandler, and the shifter had never felt at peace in Mardakine, Kandler knew. He sympathized with his friend. Since that fateful day, he hadn’t much been himself either.

“I’d like to hear that story,” Sallah said, mischief glinting in her shamrock-green eyes.

“Later,” Kandler said, trying to avoid the subject. That tale involved Esprina too, and Kandler wanted to steer Sallah’s thoughts away from his dead wife. He felt a pang of guilt at that. He’d always been a faithful husband, and since her death he’d dedicated himself to founding Mardakine and taking care of Esprë. Thoughts of romance had not crossed his mind for years, and they seemed so alien that he felt like a schoolboy again, both giddy and nervous. “We’ll have plenty of time on the road tomorrow.”

Sallah’s smile set Kandler’s heart beating. He turned back toward the lathon, who took one last slug from his beer before launching into his story.

“I was a young lath. I’d earned my rank only three seasons before, and I was still eager to prove myself at every chance. My tribe, the Red Wolves, wandered the eastern part of the plains in those days, on the edge of the Blade Desert, in the long shadows of the Endworld Mountains. We traded sometimes with the yuan-ti of Krezent. The tribe of serpent people there mastered growing succulent desert fruits we coveted, and they enjoyed the pelts we could provide them.

“Just after a visit to Krezent, we began to lose people from our tribe. The first two were old, past their prime, and we assumed that they had gotten careless and fallen victim to some predator of the plains. Then my daughter Monja went missing. She was just shy of coming of age then, already a promising student of Balinor, the god of the hunt. If she had disappeared, then something terrible was wrong.

“I led the search party that went looking for Monja. Seven moons spun in the sky that night. Barrakas, the largest, rode low and full, the perfect, silvery hunter’s lamp.”

Burch interrupted at this point, and the lathon let him take over the story with a smile.

“Me, I’d been hunting all sorts of werecreatures for years at that point, and I was hot on the trail of one I’d been chasing for days. I’d tracked him over the Endworld Mountains from Q’barra, where he’d been terrorizing the people of Whitecliff. I think he’d been part of the black-scale lizardfolk who live around Haka’torvhak, home of the dragon-god Rhashaak.

“That’s one nasty group of souls there, and his was blacker than any of the rest. Gigantic, too, even for a yuan-ti. After he’d eaten a dozen of his own kind, more or less alive, they forced him out into the wider world so he could torture innocent folks instead.

“His name was Ss’lange, or at least it had been back when he’d had a mind of his own. After the lycanthropy took him over, most of his conversations started and ended with him tearing out someone’s throat. He needed putting down. That’s where I came in.”

“This Ss’lange,” the lathon said, taking over the narrative again, “came over the mountains looking for fresh prey, and he found it in our tribe. When he took Monja from us, I knew we only had a matter of hours before he killed her. He liked to terrify his prey before killing them. He thought it made their blood taste better.

“From the fact that the killings had started with the filling of the moons, I figured that some sort of werebeast was using us for its larder. I just didn’t know what kind, so when this monster comes barging out of the darkness,” the lathon chucked Burch in the shoulder with a rocky fist at this point, “you can guess what we thought.”

Burch flashed a toothy smile. “I was trying to warn them about Ss’lange, and they filled me with arrows instead. Luckily, halflings only loose toothpicks, or I might have been hurt.”

As the two spoke, Kandler noticed a young halfling enter the room and slip into a darkened corner. Her golden, sun-bleached hair was tied back in a loose braid woven through with stalks of grass and a single red ribbon no thicker than a child’s thumb. Her wide, blue eyes danced along with the torchlight in the tent, like sapphires set in her wide, merry, well-tanned face. She wore a short, simple tunic made of the dappled skin of a thunder lizard, a knife belted at her waist. She carried a short, plain-carved staff in one hand. A wolf’s red-haired tail hung from its tip.

The lathon smacked Burch harder this time, and the shifter laughed. “You howled loud enough when you took one of mine in your shoulder,” the halfling leader said.

“That was me trying to warn you about Ss’lange,” Burch said, laughing harder. “Halflings can’t tell one kind of howl from another.”

“Anyhow,” the lathon said, “one of his howls happens to come out in something that sounds almost like Halfling, and he’s saying, ‘Don’t hurt me!’ Well, no werebeast I ever met stopped to chat with me before, so I figure it’s worth giving him his say.”

“I’m in the middle of explaining to these runts who I’m after when this creature comes out of nowhere and attacks us. We made such a ruckus, it wasn’t like it had to hunt too hard for us.”

“I’d never seen anything like it before,” the lathon said, spreading his arms wide as he spoke. “Huge, with fangs as long as your arm, and covered all over with scales.”

“Huge for you, you mean,” said Burch. “Truth was, it wasn’t any bigger than me.”

“You said Ss’lange was gigantic,” Brendis said.

“Hey, the boy’s listening,” the lathon said, waving for a server carrying a pitcher of ale to come over. “Be sure to top off his glass,” he said, pointing at the young knight. “He’s far too clearheaded.”

“Here’s the kicker, kid,” Burch said. “This critter wasn’t Ss’lange. I’d been tracking him through the region for about a week, and it turns out he’d gone and infected one of his surviving victims—on purpose. He figured it might throw me off the scent. Nothing else he’d tried up until then had worked.

“I’ve seen him before though. Fought him once, even. I can tell right away that this critter’s nothing like him, and I figure out what’s happened, so I do what I have to.

“What’s that?” asked Sallah from the edge of her seat.

“I smack it once, hard, to get its attention, to get it to chase me away from the others. Thought they might have blown all their arrows on me. Once I had it to myself, I beat it half to death.”

“Of course, as he’s doing that, we spread out to look for him. Just then Ss’lange pops up out of the grass and tears into us. He was a cunning hunter, waiting for us to get far enough apart he could take us on one at a time.

“I’ve hunted dozens of different breeds of thunder lizards, but this weresnake was something else. He gutted two of us and ripped the throat out of a third before we realized there were two of them running around with us in the night—three if you count Burch. He came after me next, but I made him pay for it. I gashed open his chest with my spear.”

“About then, I showed up to save the day,” said Burch.

Halpum threw an arm around the shifter and pointed at him. “This crazed shifter launches himself at Ss’lange so hard and fast I thought it was a rabid clawfoot.”

“Clawfoots get rabies?” Burch asked.

“I don’t know,” the lathon said with a laugh. “It’s a strange world. Who can tell?

“So there we are with two of these monstrous critters trying to claw each other to death right in front of us. The smart thing to do is run, but we’re too thickheaded for that. I figure the furry one hasn’t done us any harm yet, so I call for a charge, and we all stab our spears into the scaly one, who’s got his coils all wrapped around Burch by then, crushing the wind out of him.”

“This doesn’t do much good,” Burch says. “Ss’lange cleaned his fangs on bigger sticks.”

“But it gets Ss’lange’s attention.”

“Which is all I need.” The shifter grabbed his neck with a ripping motion. “Next thing, the weresnake’s on the ground, missing a throat.”

Halpum nodded, smiling. “Fight over.” He paused for a moment. “Course, that’s not the end of it.”

Burch shook his head. “There was still his daughter to find. Plus the fact Ss’lange gored my shoulder with his fangs before he went down.”

“You’re still here,” Brendis said.

“Barely,” Halpum said. “He spent the better part of a month with us, recovering. It wasn’t the wound so much as the poison.”

“And the girl?” Kandler asked. Esprë weighed heavy on his mind as he spoke.

“Ask her yourself,” the lathon said, jerking his head toward the young halfling who had entered the room earlier.

Burch leaped across the table before Kandler could even turn his head. The shifter landed in front of the newcomer, sweeping her up into his arms like a long-lost child.

“I thought I scented you,” he said. “It’s been a long time. Too long.”

Monja giggled as he held her out away from him at arm’s length to get a better look at her. “Children do grow,” she said.

Burch hugged the halfling to him before setting her back on her feet and kneeling down next to her. Then he stopped marveling at her and reached up to caress the wolf’s tail hanging from her staff. His black eyes grew wide.

“You’re the clan shaman now?” he said. “I’m getting older than I thought.”

Monja shook her head. “Wodager is still with us. I’m next in line.”

Burch grinned, showing all his long, sharp teeth. “That’s a proud line.” He rubbed his shoulder, where Kandler guessed the scars from Ss’lange’s fangs rested under the shifter’s thick fur.

“I didn’t call for you for a reunion, daughter,” Halpum said from the other side of the table, “no matter how happy it may be. Our friends here, new and old, can’t stay long. Kandler there, a kidnapper races north with his girl. To Karrnath at least, maybe beyond.”

Monja stepped forward to where Kandler sat on the ground, his legs folded under the low table at which he ate. She put her hand on his shoulder. “I am with you, then, until we find her. Your cause is mine.”

Kandler started to protest, but the words caught on his tongue. He turned to Halpum and forced them through. “I cannot risk your daughter to save mine.”

Monja grabbed Kandler’s chin and turned his head to look at her. “I am no child. I am likely older than you.”

The justicar started to open his mouth again, but the halfling shushed him. “Don’t look to him.” She stepped closer, near enough he could taste her breath. It smelled of anise. “I’ve known the terror of a kidnapped child. Your cause is mine.”