Realms of War

Puffpipe shook his head. 'She died,' he whispered. 'Earlier today. They couldn't heal her.'

Weasel took a sloppy pull of his ale and wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. 'Who are you-' Then he saw the cornucopia Puffpipe held in his lap. The wicker was torn, stained with dried blood.

'Oh.' The pride drained out of Weasel in a rush. He set the ale mug on a window ledge and fell into a squat beside Puffpipe. He drummed his fingers against his thighs, for once, not quite knowing what to say. Flames flickered; he balled his fists, extinguishing them.

Puffpipe looked up. Tears glinted in the moonlight. 'Willametta was too weak to heal herself. And the other clerics couldn't… ' He sighed. A tear dripped from his jowly chin. 'She was the reason I was fighting.' He waved a hand. 'This village. But now…'

Weasel squeezed his fists tighter. 'Now you're gonna quit?' he guessed.

Puffpipe's jaw clenched. 'No. Now I've even more reason to fight.' One hand groped for his pipe; the stem trembled as he tamped tobacco into it. Weasel leaned forward and offered him a light.

Puffpipe sucked on the stem and exhaled a long, sad stream of smoke. Tear-puffy eyes met Weasels. 'Why are you in uniform?' he asked. 'Did you… lose someone?'

Weasel bit back the retort that he wasn't in uniform-the trousers, armor vest, and helmet he'd been issued were too loose when in spriggan form, too tight when he enlarged. He wore his own clothes, instead. He glanced down at the feather in his vest. 'I was doing it for the reward. But after today… ' His gaze drifted to the blood-splattered wall beside Puffpipe.

The halfling nodded and took a deep draw on his pipe. Its ruddy glow illuminated his face. 'You're one of us.'

Weasel blinked in surprise. That hadn't been what he'd meant. His ale-bleary thinking had been more along the lines of his having blown his one chance at getting rich-that perhaps it was time to finally leave 'this hin's army.' To gather up all the swag he'd been able to filch and move along. But his feet weren't following orders. Instead of marching him smartly along the trail that led to the spriggans' highsummer Gather, they'd meandered him back to his billet.

Weasel stood, fumbled the feather out of his buttonhole, and handed it to Puffpipe.

The halfling looked up, startled. 'What… But I didn't… '

'It's for Willametta. She should have something pretty on her grave.'

The Year of Monstrous Appetites (-65 DR)

Weasel tore his way through the thick undergrowth, cursing each vine and fern and bush that got in his way. The Gloomthicket was tougher than any obstacle course he'd ever run in training. He leaped over logs, crawled through thorn bushes, ran teetering along fallen tree trunks, and scrambled up and down boulder-strewn slopes. He changed size more times than he could count, enlarging when he needed to make a leap, resuming his normal size in tight-squeeze spots.

All the while, he heard Malar's Hunt braying in pursuit. By the sound of it, they were sticking to animal form, to follow his scent. That meant they had to move along the ground. By climbing a tree and moving through branches, Weasel might have been able to lose them.

Unfortunately, he couldn't. Not with a broken finger.

Still, he managed a trick or two to slow them down.

He spotted sparks inside a hole in the ground: the underground den of a pair of shocker lizards. He laid a false scent-trail into it, first forcing the electric-sparking creatures deeper into their tunnel with a dose of magical fear, then backing out again. He backtracked away from the den to a stream he'd crossed earlier and waded up it, grinning at his trick. The shocker lizards were small, but they'd be defending their eggs; with luck, they'd combine their attacks to deliver a lethal shock to the first wolf that nosed into their hole.

Later, Weasel passed a large, leafy lump, only to realize, with a jolt of fear, that he'd just run right past a night-slumbering greenvise. He stopped just out of range and threw stones at its bulbous head to wake it up. The plant reared up on its tendril legs and creaked its mouth open, releasing a choking, acidic fog. When the clerics got a whiff of that, it wouldn't be pleasant. Hopefully, the sentient plant would stay awake long enough-and be angry enough-to swallow one of them whole.

Still later, Weasel nearly blundered into a gully of twigblights before he realized the 'thorn bushes' filling the ravine were, in fact, a group of the treelike creatures huddled together. He took off his vest, tied it with a length of vine to one ankle, then used another vine to swing, left-handed, just above the twigblights, dragging the vest along the ground behind him. By the time he reached the other side of the gully, his vest was full of slivers that oozed poisonous sap. He yanked on the slip knot, releasing it.

Smeared with mud, sweat-wrung, beardlocks frazzled-and still sneezing-he staggered on through the jungle. He'd managed to crudely splint his broken finger-nearly passing out from the pain of pulling it true again-but the whole of his right hand was swollen now, He no longer cared if he lived or died; he just wanted to lie down and weep.

Just a little while longer, he told himself. The forest was lightening; it was almost dawn. He could do it.

If he did, would The Beast keep his word?

Then Weasel heard a sound that made his pulse quicken: the cry of a griffon-the signal a drop was about to be made! He crossed the fingers of his good hand to invoke Tymora's blessing. With luck, it would be the drop for his squad, and not a dump of blightdust or inferno cinders.

A moment later, he heard heavy wingbeats. He fought his way to a gap in the jungle. He looked up with bleary, watering eyes and caught a glimpse of the winged lion circling above. A tiny speck behind its eagle head was the halfling rider; another speck was the bundlebag in its two front paws. Weasel enlarged, and waved frantically, but the rider didn't see him.

The griffon released the bundlebag. The bag was as big as Weasel was tall and heavy, but it fell slowly- drifting like a feather with its marking streamer trailing behind it, thanks to a transmutation. Weasel estimated where it was about to land, and thrashed his way to the spot. Inside the bundlebag would be food, fresh water, sling stones, keenoil-and, most importantly, healing potions.

He could see the bundlebag just ahead. Its streamer had caught on the branch of a tree; the bundlebag hung, twisting, below it. The branch creaked as the transmutation wore off and the bundlebag resumed its normal weight. Strangely, there was more than one bundlebag caught in the tree-what were the odds of that?

A whole bunch to nothing at all.

Those weren't other bundlebags hanging from the tree, but pods. The bundlebag had landed in an orcwort tree.

Weasel heard a splintering sound: one of the pods cracking open. A spriggan-sized wort tumbled out, arms and legs wildly flapping. It hit the ground with a thud and rose a moment later, wrinkly purple skin steaming in the morning heat. Another pod tore open, and another, releasing more worts. Within a matter of moments, fully a score of the shambling creatures stood swaying at the base of the tree. Hands pawed the tree they'd fallen from, leaving smears of sap. As they stroked it, a gaping mouth creaked open in the trunk.

Weasel cursed his ill luck. He was well and truly cogscraggled, now. Wortlings were too stupid to feel fear; he couldn't drive them off by frightening them. Nor could he sneak past them; the wortlings could sense him through whatever plants he touched. One scratch of their splinter-sharp fingers, and Weasel would be asleep. Then they'd feed him to the tree.

'Figures,' Weasel muttered as the wortlings turned and shambled toward him through the steadily lightening jungle. 'Breakfast time, and nothing but me on the menu.'

He pulled back a branch and waited. As soon as the wortlings came within range, he let it go. The branch sprang from his hand and smacked into the nearest wortling, knocking it down.

Weasel sprinted through the gap in their line. Wortlings flailed blindly at him as he leaped over the one he'd knocked down. He headed for the orcwort tree, enlarging himself as he ran. He slammed a shoulder into the bundlebag, knocking it spinning. It slammed into the tree's splinter-fanged mouth as Weasel dodged behind the tree. This time, Tymora favored him: the tree chewed greedily at the bag, gulping it in-then spat it out again when it wasn't blood that flowed, but a mix of ale from ruptured waterskins and bitter-tasting potions from the vials it was crunching.

At least the bag was open now.

Weasel led the wortlings on a ring-a-rosy around the tree. Still on the run, he scooped up one of the white-