blocks. Emboldened by hiss success and the increased darkness, Teldin followed closer, Finally, well into dusk, he was close enough to hear small bits of the pair's wind-borne conversation.
'Vandoorm won't like…' spoke the smaller of the two.
'I don't care… Vandoorm can go…' came bits of Brun's snarling reply. '…whole thing isn't…' The two rounded a house and Teldin lost the conversation.
When he finally peeked around the corner, Teldin found that the pair had reached an old, run-down section of the harbor. They were headed along a deserted quay with a tumble-down collection of abandoned storehouses and drafty shanties to one side and crumbling piers to the other. Small fishing dories, some barely seaworthy, bobbed on the black, sewage-rich water and thumped against rotting pilings. Teldin ignored the thick smell of dead fish and waste, slipped behind a row of old lobster pots, and crept close enough to hear more.
'Why does Vandoorm… meet here anyway?' griped the nameless mercenary. The two were standing just on the other side of the wooden traps, their backs to Teldin's hiding place.
'Shut up, and don't… questions,' snapped Brun. 'It's where… our employers. My guess… they want to know…' The rest of Brun's words were drowned out by other voices. In the dim light from the nearby shanties, Teldin could barely see the short, swaggering figure of Vandoorm leading a small band of men, no more than ten of his original score. The farmer noted with no small satisfaction that more than a few hobbled painfully. Confident that he couldn't be seen, Teldin pressed himself forward against the damp traps, trying to hear as much as possible.
'Hail, Brun,' called Vandoorm. 'What luck?'
'We saw him, but he lost us,' Brun answered glumly. 'He was down here, by the waterfront.' Vandoorm swore, naming Brun's ancestors in a blistering tirade.
The one-eyed mercenary bristled. His hand went to his sword and he took a step forward, only to be restrained by his companion. 'I don't remember you holding him well, either.' Brun sneered. The words brought Vandoorm's rant to a halt. The lame men behind the captain tensed, their eyes hard and narrow.
'Do not speak about thing you don't know,' Vandoorm icily reminded Brun. 'Good men die – you do not.' The captain slowly circled Brun, never taking his eyes off his lieutenant. Brun, under Vandoorm's and the others' withering gazes, seemed to shrink.
'We've learned something at least,' the one-eyed warrior boasted in defense. 'Our goat said he was going to Mount Nevermind – on Sancrist!' Brun, puffed up with his tidbit of information, strutted toward Vandoorm.
'Sancrisssst?' a new voice spoke with prolonged syllables. The speaker's whispery call echoed through the dark waterfront. 'Gone to Sancrissst he hasss?'
All the mercenaries save one wheeled to face the mysterious speaker. Swords flashed as battle-instincts seized the men. Only Vandoorm turned calmly, surprised but unruffled by the new appearance. 'So I report, noble – uh – one.” The captain hesitated slightly, searching for the right word with which to address the mysterious speaker.
A small, horrific shape moved to the edge of the shadows. Though it was still half-veiled in darkness, Teldin, peering through the slats of the lobster pots, Instantly recognized the creature. He had seen it before, though only vaguely then. It was a neogi, like the ones he had glimpsed that dreadful night on his farm.
In the shadows, the creature seemed no larger than a child and there was no sign of the hulking brutes Teldin had seen in his last encounter with these hateful beings. The monster took a few clicking steps forward, its spider- like legs moving it in strange rhythms, ever more into the light. The furry, boulder-shaped body was cloaked in a silken wrap. The gloom was too heavy for Teldin to tell what color the creature might be. Its head, supported by a long, snaking neck, weaved in and out of the light. The little face was a cross between an evil serpent’s and a raving dog’s, with a rigorous smile, all fangs and thin lips.
“Ssancrisst iss where, sservant-sslave?” demanded the neogi. Its eight legs clicked with impatience on the cobblestone pavement
'Information costs money, creature-sir,' Vandoorm shot back. His men, quickly recovering from their shock, warily formed into a line behind their captain. With small gestures, Brun marshalled them into position, past differences already forgotten. From his hiding place Teldin found it harder to see what was going on. Vandoorm and the neogi-the alliance filled Teldin with even greater contempt for his ex-friend and mentor.
'Sservant-sslavess do not Nyeasta defy!” threatened the neogi. “Your ansswer worth more than money iss.” The neogi whipped its head about and barked a quick command. By their faces Teldin could tell the tongue was foreign to Vandoorm and his men. Teldin, probably through some power of the cloak, vaguely understood it, though parts did not translate perfectly. “
The response was an immediate movement from the shadows on three sides of Vandoorm’s men. With a loud clattering, giant creatures closed on the mercenaries. “These my umber hulks are. As I bid, they do,” Nyeasta intoned.
As with the neogi, Teldin had seen these larger creatures before. The plated bodies rose out of the shadows, glistening like June beetles’ backs. Their giant mandibles clacked and grated as the beasts lumbered forward, claws almost dragging on the ground. Teldin took care not to look at the creatures’ outermost eyes, remembering the violently disorienting effect their gaze had had on him before.
At that point, one-eyed Brun, overstrung with bravado, rushed forward with his sword raised and charged the nearest creature. “Restrain!” Nyeasta barked. The umber hulk closest to the lunging mercenary swept an arm out and effortlessly seized the lieutenant in its great claws. Even so, Brun tried to complete his slash, but the warrior’s sword skittered off the bony plates that covered the beast’s body and barely left a mark. With a violent twist, the umber hulk pinned its quarry to the ground. There was a soft pop and grunt of agony from Brun. The lieutenant’s sword arm flopped loosely at his side, the shoulder wrenched free from its socket. His teeth clenched to grind hack the pain, Brun squirmed helplessly under the brute’s unyielding grip.
Nyeasta returned its attention to Vandoorm. “Ssancrissst iss where?” the neogi demanded once more.
“Release Brun or I say nothing!” Vandoorm countered, defying the neogi. The little creature turned to its monstrous servant and Vandoorm took a deep breath of relief, confident that the neogi had relented.
Smiling a gruesome smile, the neogi calmly told the lordservant, “Meat kill.” Vandoorm’s triumphant look turned to horror when the umber hulk slashed downward with its arm at the wriggling Brun. The outthrust talons struck in concert with a single wild shriek from the doomed man’s mouth. Before the cry had begun to echo, there was the hard grinding of rock as the beasts’s claws speared Brun’s body and drove into the flagstones of the quay, gouging a huge fistful of bloody rock. Its talons dripping, the umber hulk threw the one-eyed lieutenant's torso into the center of Vandoorm’s company. Blood spattered the legs of the stunned men.
“Now, servant-slave, Ssancrissst Isle iss where? Answer and you and your slaves spared will be.” Here Nyeasta motioned with a tiny claw to Vandoorm’s mercenaries.
Teldin, horrified but locked in place by grotesque fascination, struggled to see clearly without revealing himself. Small tremors palsied the leg and arms of the wrought-up mercenaries, their swords clenched rigid, the tips vibrating with tension. Teldin was hardly surprised to see that even the cool Vandoorm shook, spasms rippling across his back. The captain’s gaze turned from Nyeasta to Brun’s bloody remains and back again. The umber hulks, of which Teldin had counted five, took a step closer to the mass of men.
“West!” blurted Vandoorm, desperate to forestall an unprofitable fight. “West, beyond the isles of Ergoth, at the mouth of the strait that divides north and south.” It all tumbled out at once. “I trained an army of Whitestone there in the war. Nevermind is a peak somewhere in the mountains. Only gnomes live in that part of Sancrist.” The bearded warrior shook, as if speaking had released the tension coiled within him.
“Gnomesss?” hissed Nyeasta. “Gnomess shipss build- there, of course, the cloakmaster will go. Him the spheres call.” The neogi stared toward the sky, rapt in its thoughts.
“Then my information is good, is worth something, creature-sir?” Vandoorm probed, his nerve and his mercenary instincts returning. “We’ll take our pay and go.”
“No promisesss to ssslaves there are,” Nyeasta said in cool, slippery tones. “Kill them,” the neogi ordered in the harsh tongue of its hulking servants.
“To swords and break out right!” Vandoorm shouted as the umber hulks lumbered forward. The order was hardly necessary, for the mercenaries had already sprung futilely into action, but the umber hulks’ strange, multifaceted eyes swirled in hypnotic colors and the seasoned warriors staggered back, dazed and confused. Some struck out blindly while others, hopelessly outmatched for the first time in their careers, cried for mercy, but there was no mercy coming. The broad-bodied, gigantic umber hulks waded among the random, raging mass of
