Up close, the monsters were even more fearsome. Two paces tall, they were built like well-muscled humans, but their faces and scales spoiled any human resemblance. Dish-like eyes with vertical pupils, slit nostrils and thin gashes of mouths, and small ear holes made the creatures resemble oversized lizards rather than men.
Another lizard-man came pounding out of the mist, sword upraised. Tol flung the dead creature’s flail at him, then stood, reaching for the pommel of his saber. He got it out just in time to parry his foe’s powerful overhand attack. Tol’s hand stung from the force of the blow. When he forced the lizard-man back with a riposte, he saw his iron blade was deeply nicked.
The sun was up now, brightening the sky, but the encircling trees kept the clearing in shadow. The remaining creatures closed in. Tol traded cuts with two of them, then three. Parrying a chop, he thrust home, his saber biting hard flesh. Hissing, the monster spun away, clutching its armpit. Tol followed, impaling his wounded opponent through the back. It had enough life left to backslash at Tol, the heavy falchion scoring a line of hot blood from Tol’s ear to his chin.
Tol gasped, feeling like a blazing brand had been pressed to his face. He drew back, wiping blood from his jaw. Shock quickly gave way to deep fury. They would pay for this!
He faced seven lizard-men now. The surviving foes surrounded him.
Parrying overhand, he twisted to his left and slashed sideways at one, burying his battered blade in the creature’s ribs. Fighting with his dagger in his left hand, Tol fended off another pair of axe-wielding monsters. The shield on his arm slowed him, so he slung it off.
“Juramona!” he cried, in case there was anyone who could rally to his side. “Juramona!”
No one came to his aid. His only hope was to end the battle sooner rather than later, before the lizards wore him down.
The fourth lizard-man succumbed to a feint with the saber, followed by a close-in thrust of the dagger into its belly. Tol made sure of his kill, finishing his dagger thrust with a hard twist. Spine severed, the lizard-man went down and did not twitch.
A tremendous blow caught Tol on the side of the head. The iron helmet saved his skull, but he went sprawling in the mist, stunned. Fortunately, the sun had finally topped the tree line. As it shone down on the fog in the clearing, it reflected enough light to make the mist seem opaque. Flat on his belly below the surface, Tol was momentarily invisible.
He finally shook off the blow and hauled himself up to a crouch. He could see the legs of his enemies as they prowled the fog for him. With a bow he could have picked them off easily, but he had no bow. Instead, he located the spear he had dropped.
The ground around him was littered with stumps and tree limbs. With the butt end of the spear braced against a stump, he raised the point to waist height and supported it with a forked hardwood branch.
Rising suddenly out of the fog, he shouted, “Scaleface! Here I am!”
They came at him helter-skelter. Tol leaped sideways onto a stump. The blade of an axe snagged his tunic, and he whacked the passing lizard-man on the back of his blunt head. A second attacker spitted himself neatly on the spear, running full tilt into the iron tip hidden by the fog. He howled and fell, thrashing out his life as the mist at last began to thin.
Panting and aching from his accumulated hurts, Tol was still outnumbered five to one, though one of the lizards was staggering from Tol’s blow to his head. Spying a gleam of metal at his feet, Tol took up a lizard-man’s axe. He used it to block the sword of one of his charging foes, then brought his saber down in full swing on his opponent’s bare shoulder. Split from neck nearly to breastbone, the lizard-man fell back screeching, tripping his oncoming comrades. Tol backed away, whirling the axe in wide circles to clear fighting room.
Shaken by the skill of the lone warrior, the remaining lizard-men turned tail. Grateful to see the last of them, Tol let them go.
The mist was almost clear when he staggered to his camp. All around the blockhouse his men were stirring, blinking in the sunshine, coughing from their long sleep on the damp ground. Tol found Egrin standing on shaky legs, clinging to the iron tripod over the cold campfire.
“My lord!” Egrin said. “How do you come to be hurt?”
Tol related the story of his morning battle as Narren and the rest pulled themselves together. Egrin professed shame at having slept through his commander’s struggle.
“It’s no fault of yours,” Tol answered. “You all were laid low by a spell of some kind, a magical mist that made you sleep like the dead.”
Darpo and Narren cleaned their commander’s wounds, applying pungent salve to the long cut on his face. When they were done, Tol led them to where the fallen lizard-men lay. Egrin’s strained face paled further.
“Bakali!” he said. “Draco Paladin preserve us! There haven’t been bakali in the empire since Pakin Zan conquered their last stronghold in the Western Hundred a century ago!”
Tol stood over one of the slain creatures. He’d heard tales of the bakali. It was said that during the Great Dragon War, fought a century before Ackal Ergot founded the empire, a swarm of bakali had appeared in the east, doing the bidding of an alliance of evil dragons. They invaded the Silvanesti realm, inflicting many casualties. The elves used magic to defeat them, but the spells went out of control. In the resulting chaos, thousands died in earthquakes and lightning storms that lasted days at a stretch. Later, isolated colonies of bakali were discovered in the west, where they’d fled to escape the power that had overcome their dragon masters. The early emperors crusaded long and hard against the bakali, finally wiping them out, as Egrin said, during the reign of the vigorous usurper, Pakin Zan.
Narren asked Tol why he hadn’t been affected by the unnatural sleep. Unwilling to reveal the existence of his Irda artifact, Tol shrugged off the question, saying that since he’d slept sitting up, the soporific vapors must not have reached him.
As he told the others of the disappearance of Kiya, Miya, and the Karad-shu men, Tol realized Egrin was still coughing, as were fully half his men. The magical sleep had dissipated with the fog, but the coughing persisted. Oddly, the older warrior’s face was no longer pale, and small red blotches had begun to appear all over his skin. Narren and the others were showing the same strange coloration on face and hands.
Shancy emerged from the blockhouse to fetch a pail of water. When she saw the stricken Ergothians, she gasped, covering her mouth with the hem of her apron.
“The Red Wrack!” she cried, retreating.
Tol felt the pit of his stomach fall away. His men had the plague! Since they’d not encountered any contagion directly, he realized it must be spread by the fog. Neither he nor Egrin could believe the bakali clever enough in sorcery to manufacture the mist themselves, which meant a wizard must be involved.
Five bakali lay lifeless in the clearing, the final wisps of fog clinging to their bodies. The city guardsmen looked over the slain lizard-men and regarded their commander with new respect. Tol brushed aside their admiration.
Shancy and the other woodcutter women were terrified by the sight of the dead lizard-men. They wondered if their men had met the same fate the bakali had obviously intended for Tol’s troop. Tol promised them he would look out for their missing loggers as his troop made its way north.
The soldiers’ coughing was growing worse, and many complained of severe headaches. Although they were obviously suffering, Tol ordered them to prepare to move on. They had to find the missing scouts.
They headed deeper into the wood. Although they called periodically to their missing comrades, their cries attracted no answers. Stealth was out of the question anyway, what with half the men or more coughing ceaselessly. The tiny red splotches were growing, covering the men’s faces with a crimson stain. The Red Wrack was upon them, and Tol didn’t know what to do. Lord Urakan’s army was served by an entire train of healers, yet they were said to have barely held out against the disease.
He contrived to touch both Narren and Egrin with the Irda nullstone, thinking its power might transfer, but their symptoms did not abate.
Tarthan and the thirty men under his command had been farther from the clearing than the rest and seemed less affected by the plague mist. Tol sent them ahead as a vanguard. Before midday Tarthan sent back word they’d found a recent trail.
When the main body caught up with Tarthan, Tol found the warrior standing in a dry creekbed that wound through the woods. A grim expression on his dark face, Tarthan pointed to several bare footprints, surrounded by
