particular job didn't pan out as well as he had hoped. If only he had been given decent help, maybe he could have held on to those Solace slaves: Riverwind, Goldmoon, and that gold-skinned youngster, Raistlin. If only he had held on to those slaves, then things might have been different. Ah, well.
At least Verminaard had the good grace to perish in battle with those aforementioned luminaries. A carefully phrased report, a quiet tour watching over the conquered and burned landscape, and Toede had moved on to Flotsam for a new posting.
It was the only thing the highlords could do with someone of his talent. It wasn't as if they could suddenly put him in charge of a wing command, or ask him to lead an army into battle. They tried, at the close of the war-a brevet command to highlord of a dragon wing, a temporary position at best.
But the real work (and real dying) was done by human subordinates, and within days the highlords found a suitable replacement on the field. No, Toede was of more use far from the action, and Flotsam was a quiet enough backwater that they risked little of the war effort by leaving him in charge there.
Of course they had to give him his own mount, a frog-dragon crossbreed named Hopsloth, and a draconian advisor named Gildentongue, and all the perks. It was a pleasant sinecure, for the most part.
Then the evil dragons fell in on themselves, and it suddenly became important to hang on to what you had. The move to remain behind, to not lead a dragon wing into combat, suddenly seemed to be puissant wisdom. Quickly the sleepy little seaport had a lot more to do with piracy and rogues and all the other evils that inhabited those later days, and more than ever needed a capable administrator.
Toede smiled again, for he had been dealt a good hand, even if he had a devil of a time getting taxes collected and keeping the human chattel in line. And those kender in the hinterlands, always poaching and raiding.
The thought of kender brought Toede back to the real world. With his own retainers and guards driven off, kender might be anywhere, lying in wait to ambush him. He was suddenly painfully aware of his unarmed status. He'd bring a pretty penny in ransom, he would, the high-master of Flotsam.
No, live like a nobleman. High lord of Flotsam. That's what he should be called. With the dragonarmies squabbling among themselves, nobody would begrudge him. He liked the sound of it. It had a nice rhythm. Lord of Flotsam. Lord of Flotsam. Lord of Flotsam.
He already had his own court and his personal guards, though most of them had scattered before the dragon. Toede snorted again. The cowards! He'd see each one of them tortured. No, publicly flogged. Human nobles were into that kind of spectacle, and it would show he didn't play favorites among his own race.
Lord of Flotsam. Lord of Flotsam. Lord of Flotsplosh!
The shock of cold water snapped him out of his reverie as the ground opened up before him. Toede had stepped into a small, shallow pool of water. The vale here widened and the embankment lowered, such that the stream became a wide marsh, dotted with water-filled sinkholes. One such sinkhole had positioned itself in Toede's path, and inconveniently he had tumbled into it.
The water, only knee-deep to a normal man, rose to Toede's hips, completely soaking his leggings and boots.
With a curse, and a remonstration on keeping his mind on matters at hand, Toede scrambled out of the hole in a less-than-lordly fashion and surveyed the land ahead.
The grass grew thicker and was dotted with tails (of cat and horse varieties) as the sinkholes joined together to form a solid, impassible marsh. From Toede's (admittedly low-level) viewpoint, there was no sight of relief or dry land ahead. So much for the theory of all streams leading to the sea. With another curse, Toede turned toward the left-hand, eastern ridge and began to carefully navigate his way along the edge of the swamp.
This land would have been perfect for Hopsloth, thought Toede, with another sudden wave of emotion and nostalgia. He truly missed his assigned mount, a behemoth amphidragon the highlords had granted him when he took over Flotsam. The beast was a fat, sluggish, warty creature, a twisted melding of dragon and amphibian, inheriting the worst of both worlds. Hopsloth had a wide mouth, an insatiable appetite, a pea-sized brain, and a 4azy demeanor. Not surprisingly, Hopsloth and Toede had found common ground at once, and the beast responded well to his orders even if it confined its comments to the deep-seated, belching ribbit or two.
But no, Toede had decided to take a battle stallion on the hunt (and the dark gods only knew where the blasted horse was now). If he had Hopsloth, perhaps he would have avoided all the rest of this mess. He hoped that the courtiers at his manor house remembered to keep his pet well fed. Hopsloth got positively peevish when he was peckish.
The land rose beneath Toede's feet, and he climbed the ridge. About halfway up, the trees began in earnest. Toede turned to look behind him, and saw that the marsh had become a swamp that evolved into a full-fledged lake, without a single sign of sentient habitation or obvious outlet. With a sigh he continued up the hillside, cursing his cowardly courtiers, his runaway stallion, the poaching kender, Hopsloth, Mother, Groag, Verminaard, slaves, and anyone else he could think of. He had reached the top of the hill when a breeze wafted a distinctive smell up toward his sensitive nostrils.
Now, Toede had all the weaknesses of a hobgoblin. Bright lights hurt his eyes, and subtle noises were lost on his battle-dimmed ears. But all hobgoblins retained their sense of smell and taste (if not good taste) throughout their adult lives. Particularly for food.
And that was what Toede smelled now, a goose, no, several geese by the strength of the scent, roasting on spits over an open wood fire (a cultured nose could tell by the amount of fat dripping down on burning logs). He had found someone, and what is more, that someone had had the good sense to cook a meal.
Toede's stomach growled in confirmation. It seemed like it had been ages since he last ate.
Toede quickly followed the scent down the far side of the ridge, careful to move with as much grace and quiet as he could manage. Just because it was food did not mean that it was friendly food. It could mean he'd found his runaway entourage… or poachers.
The brush and undergrowth thickened, which helped keep the small highmaster hidden until he was almost upon the encampment. He closed to within sight of the camp, then moved counterclockwise along its perimeter to a point where he could get a good view, careful not to be seen until he could determine the true nature of those within.
They were poachers, and kender to boot. There were about two dozen huts in a rough circle around a central fire. The huts were made of light willow saplings bent into hemispheres and covered with skins and bull rushes. A few of the kender were lolling about in typical kender fashion-dressed in shirts and leggings made of tanned hide, accented with small flourishes like feathers and bits of metal. The fire itself was a good-sized hearth of stones, indicating this was a semiregular campsite he had stumbled into. A half dozen geese had been dressed and were hanging from tripods over the campfire, their dripping fat causing the tongues of flame to spit and dance. A portly female kender was berating a slower, larger (larger to her, smaller than Toede) creature who was bringing wood for the flames.
Normally Toede would have continued around the encampment, looking for a clear trail out, ignoring his stomach's rumblings. He would have, but at that moment the larger creature dropped the pile of wood he was carrying, and Toede saw his face. A very hobgoblin face. Groag!
Toede was stunned, but only for a moment. Groag's face was thinner, leaner, and not as well tended as Toede remembered, but nonetheless it was his former courtier and chief bootlicker. Same lumpish head, chinless face, and beady eyes that were common to Toede and all hob-goblinsj?ut in addition a nose that looked like it had been flattened by a rock, and a black mop of hair cut bowl-fashion at ear level. Groag's finery had been stripped of him, and the hobgoblin was dressed in worn, tattered buckskins that looked like they had been patched together from several kender's throwaways.
The hobgoblin was shorter than Toede and (in better times) wider, but his presence next to the child-sized kender made him look like an ogre-sized creature next to a human. Groag was nodding dumbly as the kender cook lectured him on some matter of wood hauling. It was then that Toede noticed the manacles on his former lackey's ankles and wrists, and the thick chains that linked them together.
A white fury exploded in Toede's heart. If anyone had the right to toss his servants in irons, it was him, not some ragtag collection of poaching kender. The insult was incredible, he fumed. He should come back after dark and free his companion. This made proper sense, since Groag would probably know the best route out of these marshlands.
At least he should warn Groag to expect something, thought Toede, to prepare for an escape. Careful not to
