Unexpected Visitors

"Alright - let's get it on, then," Karata grumbled, strapping on her helm.

Skitter gave us a gap-toothed grin. Our warlock rolled up the sleeves of his filthy black robe, spoke his invocation and the portal opened.

A fog bank rose from the forest floor, enveloping us. Havok walked into the mist and vanished. Karata followed. Then me.

I knew the miserable spelltosser had missed his mark when, instead of stepping into the opulent bedchamber of Leveret Ma'cubus, I smashed nose and teeth first into slimy brickwork. The force of the impact surprised me - I'd barely taken two steps, but I struck the wall at a dead run. Dazed, I fell to the ground.

Blinking away my doubled vision, I saw Skitter's tumbling, rag-clad form barreling towards me. I threw up my hands to no effect and we both went flying into a stack of crates, then lay in a dizzy heap. I groaned.

"Yeslik curse yer moldy bones!" Karata growled. Her split lip dribbled blood into her wiry beard. She seized Skitter by the collar and yanked him off me with one meaty paw. I heard his teeth rattle as she shook him.

"Where'n the Nineteen Hells did ye land us, worm brain?"

A pertinent question. I looked around - dark, dank and chilly. Racks of bottles and rows of wooden casks crowded the place from its unworked stone floor to the low ceiling. It looked nothing like the spot I'd seen in Skitter's vision pool but a suspicion snuck up on me.

"We're in his fokken hooch cellar," Havok declared, sitting up and shaking off the ruins of a wine rack. His pear of a nose was broken, as usual, and he reeked of even more booze than normal. He found his claymore and stood, cracking the ceiling as much as his big hard noggin. Since the jarl had to duck, I figured the roof could be no more than seven feet above us. Aye, underground alright.

"Why're we in the Leveret's gods-buggin' basement, I ask me gallery o' peanuts," Karata snarled. She shook Skitter again. This time his joints creaked.

"I, wh-, well! What I think-"

"Bah! Means crab crap to me," Karata said. She pitched Skitter aside, then jabbed me ribs with a hard elbow. "Lugus. G'won and have a peep about, eh?"

I drew my nastiest piece - the Islander yataghan, perfect for keeping things quiet whether creeping a tunnel northwise or storming a Sithe stronghold. I navigated the basement's warren of aisles lightless and found a heavy door atop the narrow staircase. I lay an ear to its wood. Nothing.

I prayed the Trickster that Ma'cubus kept his hinges oiled and eased it open. Gomblegolly smiled on me and not a squeak sounded. I crept down a long stone hallway, passing darkened alcoves stuffed with castle clutter, storerooms overfilled for the sake of a siege or simple hoarder's delight. I peered inside one crate at random and rolled me eyes. What breed of prancing ponce needed so many bloody juniper candles?

Footsteps echoed and I hurried back the way I'd come. Near to the door through which I'd ranged I secreted myself behind a low stack of boxes, trading my yataghan for a flicking dirk. I crouched at the ready, straining my ears as torches bloomed to life. I heard the dark-blind buggers' voices, their speech lilting and crammed overfull with vowels. I wrinkled my nose - ugh, Sithe prattle.

Four of the lanky mantis-like twits came, all clad in silvery mail and open-faced helmets. House guards, I thought, not proper soldiers - for shame, Leveret. Even the shortest towered two feet above me, lithe and beefy as a hummingbird. I squinted, unable to discern whether this wisp was a female. All elves looked the same to me so I couldn't be sure.

It didn't matter. What struck me as far more alarming was their dress. Apart from the glinting pikes they carried, the small round shields strapped to their forearms bore a coat of arms which looked far more to my eye like a wolverine than the hare I'd expected. Also their livery - green and orange, but didn't the Leveret's goons wear green and gold?

No time to ponder sissyman fashions now, I thought. Whatver their colors, elves were elves. I drew a second thrower with my other hand as the guards conferred. They scanned the passageway, looking for whatever had drawn them down here. By the Battlewarden's shield their keen eyes missed my hunched form. I hoped they'd split up to investigate. I could take two, maybe even three if I got the drop on them.

Instead, thunder roared from the cellar. The door tore free of its hinges as Havok bulled into them. The first he trampled, knocking the ranking elf sprawling. His huge claymore cleaved the second guard clean in half, blood spraying in a fan. The hulking jarl rushed the body, crushing a third elf against the wall beneath it.

Arrows streaked over my head from behind - more Sithe! They struck the giant in the arms and chest. Havok snarled, booting the fourth elf in the groin then stomping him as he collapsed until ribs splintered. He tossed the body atop the growing pile and bellowed a warcry.

I popped up to take out the archers but the sensation of swarming fire ants filled my skull. I groaned, smelling the wet dog stink of sorcery heavy in the air. I dropped my daggers and clawed at my face, burning from within. I screamed.

From the corner of my watering eye I saw Havok swing his claymore through empty air which had until a moment before held a green-robed elf. A musical chuckle grated on my nerves and the giant's brow furrowed. His movements slowed as his rage wound down. For the first time Havok seemed to notice he'd been shot.

Four more elves arrived, pikes piercing him from behind. It took all of them to pound the jarl into submission but they finally managed to do it. I longed to join the fight but the agony in my skull had given way to a sluggishness in my muscles and a general dopey apathy. I only watched, dull as a beggar's breadknife.

Karata sprang from the doorway as one guard leaned down to help up the dazed leader.

Her warclub crumpled the guard's silver helm and the soft elf melon it encased. Two arrows burrowed into her oak shield but a third zipped straight through her muscled calf. Karata staggered and the remaining elves pounced on her, a hyena pack tearing apart their prey. Derg skulls were thick as granite so even with her headgear pried off it took a great deal of thumping to put out her lights.

The infernal itch in my mind delayed the terrifying realization that I could move not a muscle of my own. I stared helpless, unable to even blink, as the air in front of me shimmered. The green-robed elf stepped out of thin air, his long golden braid already swaying as he danced up another spell.

Havok surged out of the pile burying him, flinging Sithe every which way. His blade thrust for the mage's guts but with a wave of a spidery hand the caster turned the claymore's fine Ongol steel to liquid metal. Havok gaped as his sword melted, puddling on the floor. The wizard guffawed.

"Me mutter gived me that blade!" the jarl screeched. Havok lunged, seizing the wizard's delicate wrist in one huge mitt. He wrenched it around and the laughter turned to screams as bones from hand to elbow shattered and punched through the mage's tattooed skin. His cries became shrill. He fell and Havok raised a foot to squash his head.

A sparkling blob of light streaked down the hall and struck the giant in the belly. Inwardly I cringed - how many bloody sorcerors did they have here? The giant grunted, looking mule-kicked. He turned his head to the side and chucked up a couple dinner's worth. The guards he'd hosed took him down without much resistance.

My eyes streamed twin trails of fire, so long without a blink I worried I'd go blind. Karata's bleary stare fixed on something behind me. The guards hogtied her then started piling chains on the jarl. But where in the Nineteen Hells was Skitter?

As if summoned by my curiosity, a familiar squawk of outrage sounded.

Another elf, this one a fop bedecked in a king's ransom of silks and jewelry, stepped into my line of sight. His thin lips curled into a cruel smile as he waggled a slender ivory wand. Skitter drifted up from the cellar, struggling in vain to arrest his movement. His feet kicked like an irate infant's, suspended above the ground. His levitating form came to a halt and he fixed the wizard with a manic gaze.

"Ware, cur! Best ye set me down and beg mercy, 'fore I call up me eatin' demons!"

The newcomer flicked his wand. Skitter's head knocked against the stone wall once, twice and again. The third blow left him slumped, boneless in midair. The mage tucked his wand away and Skitter crashed to the floor atop our trussed commander. The guards looked eager to stretch our necks but their leader deferred  to the wizard. He gave a curt shake of his head, so the surviving guards only tied Skitter up and linked his chains to the others. He who'd nearly wiped us out singlehandedly addressed his subordinates in a common tongue much like the one most used by the Dhonn.

"Fellejha, deliver these burrowing ticks to my dungeons once they've been properly beaten back down to their station."

With that, he left. The leader of the troop we'd mangled grinned. The guards spent a healthy whack of minutes thrashing, stomping and generally embruisining us head to toe. Fellejha, the sexless captain, seemed to take a visceral pleasure in punting me right in the paralyzed grapes. I thanked the gods when a harrier with the features of a fine china doll finally bludgeoned me into unconsciousness.

I awoke sometime later, sore all over and blood-sticky. Despite the chains on my arms and the shackles holding fast my ankles I smiled, relieved that I could move once more. While my companions grumbled themselves back to our predicament, I pieced together what I'd slept through. We'd been stripped of all our weapons and most of our clothing. I chuckled as Karata sat up, her body hair so thick that she still appeared to be wearing a padded underjon.

"What yer eyeballin', Lugus?" she growled.

I winked. She followed my gaze, then cuffed me upside the head. We'd been manacled hands to feet and all to one another, but I didn't mind. Our cozy little rathole offered us nowhere to go, in addition to being devoid of food, water and light. This last bothered only Havok, since the rest of us had all been blessed by Yeslik Hisself, the first Imdergsman who gave his dark-seeing blood to every one of his stony descendants. While the Jarleg squinted into the gloom, Karata trotted out the first bone of contention.

"Battlewarden mash yer soft skull 'neath his bootheel, Skit! Ye really boffed the pig now, didn't ye?" She kicked the warlock. "So - who's this twit what's got me bundled up like a table turkey?"

She wrenched her chains for emphasis, which jerked me to the side. I fell face down in her lap, the first decent bit of luck I'd had all day. The former captain of our once much larger crew, sadly, did not share my disposition. She thumped me with her shackles again when I lingered.

"Portal musta misdirected," Skitter mused. He snickered as I rubbed yet another sore spot on my already lumpy head. I flipped him the fig and he tossed it back.

"Thought that up all by yourself, did you?" I sneered. "Bravo. We'll not be pissin' crooked following after such a vast intellect. How, do tell us, did you miss the target?"

"Dunno. Musta been somethin' hearabouts what tugged on me spell. I aimed right fer the Leveret direct. Maybe he were just here, porkin' with the ponce what chucked us in this stinkin' pit."

I held no firm grasp on the rootworkings of magic but I inferred that he meant something about this place had enough of a residual impression of, or similarity to, Leveret Ma'cubus to yank us out of the Greys and dump us here. Bogwitch's luck, or the Minstrel's own.

"It's a Sithe castle fulla pompous tits, governored by a connivin' spellflinger," Karata said. "'Zactly like the bleedin' Leveret's!"

"See?" Skitter bugged his eyes at her.

"See what, numb nuts? All I see's yer gettin' us killed 'cause yer a milk-fed addle-brains who can't tell a tit from a toe."

"Hells I can't! I've been tellin' toes from tits since -"

"Hoi, shut up a minute," Havok rumbled, having tired of prodding his undressed arrow wounds. The shafts had been removed, perhaps to keep us from fashioning them into jabbers. The bickering pair huffed, then both frowned at the jarl.

"Somethin' ye needed, oaf, or just by yer leave we're too fokket loud?" our captain wondered.

"Got an idear."

"What, yer hopin' this next one'll be fool enough to let ye get a grabber on him too? Not bloody likely."

Havok shook his head. "Skitter. Why don't ya just spell us outta here and back home?"

The warlock blinked. "Say, ox. Yer ain't half dumb as ye look. Course, I'd've thought o' that meself, only that fairyman dashed out a scoop o' me best noodles."

"If ye lost so much as a drip o' brains ye'd have naught but an empty pannier," Karata muttered. Skitter stuck out his tongue.

"Mind yer manners, lest I forget to bring ye with us. Grab paws, chums." We did. Skitter recited his incantation. A thin white mist seeped up from the cracks between the floor stones.

"Alrighty. Now - " Skitter broke off, his face contorting into a rictus of horror. Until that moment, the most bloodcurdling sound I'd ever had the misfortune of catching earwise was the piteous yowl of a warhound who'd taken a slather of flaming tar during a siege. That cry had haunted me for years, but the screeching of our warlock in that gaol cellar drove the doomed dog from my mind entire.

He spasmed, frothing at the mouth and straining against his chains. Skitter's whiskers curled, his face and hands blistering to a crisp lobster red. The stench of burnt hair and scorched flesh choked us. After the longest minute of my life Skitter slumped, still breathing but looking like he wished he wasn't. A mocking chuckle from behind us sent my skin crawling.

"So, the dergan rats sought to scurry past my wards - a most stunning display of idiocy, but one can hardly be surprised," the wizard who'd paralyzed me said. He waved a hand at us, dismissive. "Fellejha, Fontasian. Deliver these parasites to my chamber hall. It's time we had a little chat."

The captain and another wearing a similar insignia grinned, a whole troop of the buggers having snuck up on us. By Yeslik's beard, I swore to never again underestimate the tenderfootedness of Sithe forest skinks. The officers unbarred the door and eight guards swarmed in to subdue us. Though we only put up a cursory resistance, they whooped us soundly before yanking us out - more elf hospitality.

Thus we travelled, the wizard's goons dragging us down the hallway by our chains. As we banged our way along, I studied our tormentors. From their names I judged the satchel-kicker to be a woman. Squinting at their chiseled, hairless faces and the prancing way they moved, I couldn't for the life of me see the difference. I'd never been so close to a pure blooded elf before and it fascinated me in the same way one might dawdle staring at a particularly gruesome wagon wreck.

"See something green, rodent?" Fellejha growled, jabbing me in the gut with the haft of her pike before I could answer. Another Sithe wrenched on my chains and tumbled me across the floor, laughing as we all fell. I scowled at the arsehole, meaning to address my growing list of grievances later. I flipped him, or her, the fig.

After what felt like leagues of our jaunty march, our heads and hinds pinging off of every solid surface we passed, our escorts brought us to a bright throne room done up in typical gaudy elf colors. The white marble walls reached thirty feet upwards, housing enormous glass windows which spilled golden sunlight across a glittering mosaic floor. The sparkling images sucked at the arse of Sithe nobility, so I spat on them. Fellejha pitched me forward and I thudded to the stone at the base of the gleaming ivory stairs. My companions  groaned as they were dumped in a heap behind me.

Upon the raised dais our smirking host reclined on a mahogany throne inlaid with gold and precious gems. His Haughtiness sat a set of red velvet cushions and sipped tea from a dainty porcelain cup. Now this, to my mind, was a real elf. I tried to stand but Fellejha's pike snaked between my legs and tripped me.

"Kneel!" the Sithe captain barked. Since I was already on my knees, I didn't move. A soft leather boot lashed out, snapping my head to the side. She shoved my face into the floor and pressed her foot down on the back of my neck.

"Supplicate!" She speared me in the ribs.

"Well, since you asked so sweetly–"

Another kick set my ears to ringing. Behind, I heard my comrades being likewise driven into submission. I hazarded a look back and grinned - it took a full half dozen dandy stickmen to keep Havok on the ground, taking their own lumps in the process. We were all spoiling for a row, a fair one, without any bloody sorcery butting in.

I rated that unlikely. A whole score of guards now swarmed the chamber, including the spelldancer our jarl had mauled, his wing bandaged up to the shoulder. He glared knifepoints at us but, like everyone else, he deferred to the high arse on the snoot seat. I cast a fisheye up at the androgynous figure using me for a footrest. Fellejha drew a finger across her throat, then winked.

"Much better," the host of this grand soirée purred once we were all prostrate. "I know the Imdergsfolk are so recently ascended from the miasmic pools of creation that you're little more than algae wearing pantaloons, but it behooves one to show their betters the proper respect. Even pond scum ought to strive for gentility."

"I ain't no derg," Havok grumbled before Fontasian bludgeoned him back into silence.

"How droll," the Sithe observed. "Of course you aren't. You, beast, are a mud-blooded stack of excrement that some poor fool with the patience of ages has apparently taught to speak. Nevertheless, you shall scrape from my boot just the same - I am a staunch believer in equality amongst vulgar trash."

"Who are you, anyways?" I wondered. This time Fellejha speared me with the sharp end of her pike.

"Come now, Captain. Let us not descend into barbarism before lunch," the wizard chided. "This festering pustule posits a valid question. Not that I have any intention of providing him with my name, mind you."

His steely gaze stripped back layers of my skin, dissecting my insides as if my life held no more worth than an insect's. For a moment I felt cold all over, staring into those empty orbs. Then he smiled, the expression hinting at a boundless capacity for cruelty.

"You, dretch, shall address me as 'Lord High Marshall,'" he said. "Should this prove too taxing to your lizard brain, 'Lord' will suffice."

He paused, expectant. The promise of violence hung thick in the air. More than a little tired of the rough handling, I caved. I grinned, displaying a bloody yellow picket fence. "Much obliged, Lord Marshall."

"So, it is possible to teach a dog how to bark like a man - splendid! Imagine what else we might have these worms do at our behest given the proper encouragement, eh?"

The collected elves chuckled, a mirthless chorus which brought to mind vultures clucking over the spread as they piled plates high at a massacre. The wizard waved them silent, his skewer-stare again fixing upon me.

"But before I free you from your need for breath, sate my curiosity. Who in Oblivion are you, and how do you come to trespass in my home?"

"We ain't even comed here, 'cept by mistakin', ye flitterin' prig," Karata growled. Her remark invited a vicious stomping. Over the sound of boots thudding into hard muscle, the wizard spoke calmly.

"Fontasian, do be sure to slay this fellow at once should he interrupt again. His peasant accent grates upon the drums of my ears like chalkboard nails, and his body's odor slanders the noble sinus."

"Karata's a woman, Lord," I interjected before our leader's sharp tongue could end her life. The Marshall screwed up his face at me, as if I'd just claimed the moon was in truth a giant tunafish.

"You jest. That's no woman. It's hardly even a mammal."

Karata Bonespiker stood every bit as tall as I, a wiry hair above five feet and a fingerspan. The gods had carved her from a slab of granite, her body a solid drum of sinew with only a modest belly. Like most armhackers, she chopped her hair short but her brown braided beard hung long enough to tuck into her belt no different than any other respectable derg. Her sky-colored eyes glared out from beneath a pronounced brow and she still had more than half her teeth, meaning she could out-gnaw any of us. For the life of me I couldn't see what the elf found so objectionable.

"Karata's a catch fit for both hands, Lord," I said. The ponce on the throne only scowled.

"Merciful gods," he muttered. "Do you mean to tell me that all Imdergswomen are so... hirsute?"

"Shaggy from the nape of the neck to the crooks of the toes, just how we like 'em. The Battlewarden built our ladies to keep us warm all winter, like a thick wool blanket." I winked at Karata. By her expression, I realized the Sithe might not be the most dangerous person in the room to my continued existence.

"Feh," the Marshall spat. "Much as the female of your ignoble species resembles a cat's regurgitation, I've digressed. Explain your presence in my castle or Fellejha shall feed you feet first to my hounds."

"Lord Sir, we are but humble mercenaries –"

"Mercenaries?" His eyes narrowed. "Though you affect the base deficiencies of common sellswords, I think that is but a ruse. And those accents... I dare say you have the look of Kneebreakers about you."

"We've broken many things, Your Highness," I quipped. "But we've no quarrel with you, Lord High Marshall, sir."

I offered a bow. It struck as a good time to be ingratiating. The Sithe hated Imdergsfolk as much as we did them, but such petty beefs paled in comparison to the visceral fury aroused in these Ailanders at the mere mention of the Dhonn Empire. The last thing I wanted was for this bugger to think we were some off the books military unit on a mission sanctioned by the elves' grand new foemen - especially since that was almost technically true.

"Why are you here." Flat. His eyes said he spoke to a corpse.

"Fell luck alone brings us bumbling by. We desire nothing so much as to be quit of your company the moment you permit it."

His thin lips curled into a cat's smug smile. "I supposed this scorched streak of slime with the fetishes in his dreadlocks is the engineer of your folly? He is your hoodoo man, your witchdoctor, or some such tripe?"

"Aye, Your Excellency. Skitter's our mage."

"Mage! A slur upon the grandest of professions,  to name him such. I rate this fuddler as no more than a stain upon the undergarments of the Art." 

Skitter stuck out his tongue since his arms were still twisted up beneath him and he couldn't shoot the fig. The Marshall ignored him.

"And the beastial dergess serves what purpose, apart from bedwarming? She is a wildwoman, a Fury?" I nodded. The Sithe snorted. "And the token Jarleg imbecile, hired muscle, a meat shield. That fills all the stereotypical roles save for one. So what, pray tell, is your function? You are too scrawny to be a warrior, too ugly to be a rake and too irreverent to be a priest."

"I'm an explorer, Your Graciousness. A jack of all the trades, a wearer of innumerable hats. I'm a woodsman, a minstrel, a worlds-traveller, a guide and a tactician. I–"

"You're the bloody thief! I should have known. What did you come here to steal, filcher?"

"Not so much as a toothpick, Your Honor! We have no cause to assail your valuables. As soon as I had a look around –"

"Aha! You've come to pilfer information. You're a thief of knowledge!"

"Wouldn't that make me a spy?"

"So, you admit it - fantastic," he said with a snap of his fingers. "Fellejha, blind this spy."

"I'm not a spy!" I writhed in her grasp as the Sithe captain snatched me up by my hair.

"Shut up, thief, or I'll have your tongue out too," she snapped. Fellejha hit me with the blade of her hand in the throat and I gagged. She drew a stiletto, lining up a crippling poke.

Skitter's foggy mind unclouded itself long enough to intervene. "We din't mean to drop in on yer at all, erm, yer Lordliness."

The Marshall stayed my warder's glinting point as it loomed large before my peepers. "Explain, louse."

"Bogwitch's luck, what bugged us," Skitter admitted. "Ol' Gomblegolly musta closed his eyes on all I been burnin' at his altar all these years."

The Sithe steepled his fingers. "Why does it not surprise me you proto-primates engage yourselves in backwoods superstition? Answer me this - which root of magic did you twist with your grubby little paws to render you in to my domicile?"

Skitter beetled his brow, parsing the wizard's question. I held my breath. Our warlock was an obstinant, unpredictable arse at the best of times. We attributed his occasional fits of lunacy to his being a Dam Dergsman from the isles, born far and away from the Feldrine Mountains' grounding stone, but Skitter toted a canyon of a crack in his batty skull too. I'd once seen him use magic to enliven the carcass of a baked chicken, then hold an amiable conversation with the roast beast as he devoured it. He still wore his tasty chum's wishbone in his nose.

I prayed every god who had a beard Skitter wouldn't become volatile with our dangerous captor. I didn't want to be blind. I really enjoyed looking at things. After an excruciating moment, I found that Gomblegolly had not yet abandoned me, jester that he was.

"Tis a home doin', one what I muddled up meself. I call it 'skitterin',' on account o' when I work it me and me chummies go a-skitterin' far and wide." He grinned, putting a handful of moldy teeth on proud display.

The Lord Marshall sneered. "Yet somehow my wine cellar acquired a few barrels of dergan dregs, so where was your intended destination?"

Skitter chewed his bottom lip. "Well, er, yer Lordness, it's like this. We was just off to chat up some old mugs what we usta know–"

"Silence, you simpering carbuncle!" the wizard shouted. "Lie to me, speak but a single word of untruth, and I'll pull out your tongue with rusty tongs! Go on!"

Skitter quailed. "Eh, oh. Now I recall rightly. We meant to call upon a mage we have a powerful dislikin' towards, is all."

The Marshall's eyes skewered the twitchy warlock. "And this magus you've targeted, he is Sithehenn?"

Skitter nodded, his eyes downcast.

"His name?"

Our warlock only shook his head. The wizard barked a command and the elves pounced, boots and clubs falling heartily. After a few minutes of tenderizing, the half-conscious derg gasped out an answer.

"What! What did he say!" the Marshall roared, leaping up from his seat. His teacup shattered as it hit the floor. "Tell me what that maggot said!"

"Leveret Ma'cubus," one of the guards reported, wiping blood from his gauntlet. Skitter lay insensate in the fetal position.

"The thrice damned Leveret," our captor swore, sinking back into his cushions. "You sodden lumps of offal meant to drop in on that accursed cur and do - what?" The Marshall swiveled his deadly attention to me. "For your life, thief."

"We had it in mind to address our grievances to him direct," I said before Fellejha poked any more holes in my hide. The Marshall's expression darkened at my dissembling but Havok clarified.

"I'm fer twistin' his neck a smidgeon, afore I tug his spine out."

Fontasian drew his sword. I cringed, expecting to meet the Bonegardener any second. To our collected surprise, the Lord High Marshall burst out laughing.

"Why, that's... delightful," he snickered. "I am almost inclined to forgive your bumbling trespass. Yes, your inopportune arrival interrupted my own scrying attempt upon that pestilent malcontent. Tell me, which of you rodent scrotes is the commander of this expedition? Certainly not this brown-nosing thief."

Karata worked her bruised jaw. "I be our dog-topper."

"I'll assume that is a none too subtle remark about the proclivities of your kind. Ah - now the fur makes sense! Very well, topdog. Perform for me a task and I shall sublimate the urge to unmake you. Refuse and die horribly at my leisure. Speak, mutt, for the lives of your men."

"I'd sooner pick me arse with yer hand than shake it, stickman, but truth is, I've grown quite fond o' these fleas o' mine."

"Such indefatigable gall. No wonder there's so many accursed Imdergsfolk mucking about. What unwashed primate could resist such vulgar charm?"

As the Sithe impugned our females, I put a hard eye to one of his. Fellejha towered over me on long, slim legs which led to a waist narrow as my wrist and no gut worthy of the name. Her dainty shoulders held up under the fragile chain mesh she wore but would no doubt bow to the floor beneath the weight of even modest armor. Her sharp face housed large liquid green eyes, a straight nose and a small mouth full of equally straight white teeth. Besides her long horse's tail, her long lashes and her sculpted brows the rest of her looked utterly hairless, smooth as porcelain. I tried to envision such a lithe form nude.

Fellejha drew back a boot to silence me as I gagged. I cursed my vivid thinkworks and held still. Battlewarden's bones! It was a wonder these freaks reproduced at all. No wonder elves couldn't see in the dark.

The Lord Marshall ignored me, arching a brow. "Mine are a long lived folk, but do not presume that I fancy wasting my time, plentiful as it may be."

Karata spat. "Then cut the jabber and cough up yer jobber."

"Despite this mud-rutting goblin's lack of manner," the Marshall droned, addressing us all, "I grant you my mercy. Go forth, and carry out your assassination. Once you've slain the Leveret, return to your humdrum lives and consider our business two ends of a sword-slashed rope. Fail me, though, and the Leveret will be the least of your troubles. Perhaps I ought to turn one of you into a poodle for my hunting dogs to ravage, lest you think me unserious."

"We graciously accept your generous terms, Lord High Marshall," I piped up before Karata could bugger the deal. "Consider the Leveret already disposed of, for while we may not always unerringly traverse the courseways of the Greys, none is the number of those who've evaded our justice."

"Ho, hum. You blather, thus I rest assured. Is there anything else rattling about in your peach pit of a brain that cannot restrain itself from gushing forth?"

I smiled. "Out of an abundance of curiosity, it's my duty to ask what Ma'cubus did to incur your considerable ire. It might help us in our task, to collect as much background information as possible."

He made a face. "Not that it's any business of yours, but that oozing boil absconded with my wife after seducing her with ensorcellments most prurient. Aside from his being a lustful colt in need of gelding, the Leveret is a coward who even now hides from my challenge of an honor duel. The craven fled to his manor which, despite my potency, proves most impossible to locate. I have little faith that your idiot's skittering will succeed where my superior arcana stumbles but it troubles me not at all if you come to ruin trying to dig my tick of a brother out from beneath the world's skin."

"Your brother, Lord? Were we to effect rescue of your noble lady love as well?"

The Sithe cackled. "I care not what fate comes to claim that hateful beast, so long as she is anything but returned to me. I would never permit her to exist in my presence, save for perhaps as a wall hanging. If you happen across that unloyal slattern, a wise mind would put her scheming duff to the sword at once."

"Yer witcher melted me sword," Havok griped, throwing an accusatory glare at the lesser wizard scowling in the doorway clutching his shattered arm. The Marshall waved off the giant's protest.

"You're a beefy lad. Crush their skulls with your paws. Fling a boulder at them. Maul them with a tree limb or some other barbaric jarl nonsense." He returned his attention to me. "For my own amusement, how upon Mabon's surface did the dastard manage to garner your company's ignoble wrath? The Leveret is a salamander, but I've never known him to associate with such base creatures as dwarves."

I saw Karata flinch at the slur but I let it go. "He dealt to us a grave personal affront, Lord, and he nearly destroyed our livelihood."

"Do tell me more - I have a soft spot for the misery of those whom I loathe. Did he overturn the rock under which you dwell, I wonder?"

"The buggerin' Leveret done torched our tavern!" Skitter cried, unable to hold back any longer. I seethed, the slights still raw on my pride as well. The Marshall only gaped.

"My imbecile brother set fire to a dergan bar? Why bother stamping out one roach nest when there exists countless others?"

"He waltzed in road grimy and saddle stinkin', orderin' folks about. He told our keep to splash him some poofer wine but we ain't shelf nothin' but boot brew and proper spirits," Skitter said. "Oi, bugger. Sithe wine? Druther gulp goat squirt."

"Pusser lit off after, tossin' brands about when Mugget told him to beat feet," Karata put in, animated now that the wound had been reopened. “We ain't mashin' no grapes fer bleedin' sissyjuice,' says Mug, then whuffer! Mug's a-flamin' like a marshmallow on a campfire and the whole buggin' place caught the drift."

"The bastard Leveret burnt up all our drinks!" Havok shouted, wrenching his chains. Skitter bobbled his head in accord, raw grief splashed across his face.

"Me dear ol' mum lost half her beard, even!"

"Gods high and low, what manner of fool's grog have I uncorked?" The Marshall pinched the bridge of his nose and counted under his breath. At three, he clapped his hands and everyone shut their gobs.

"It would appear we have a mutual interest, peculiar a notion as that may be. I have lowered my wards so that the frog with the unbearded matron might enact his shifting spell - once! - without broiling himself. For the mercy of the Moon's Mistress, depart yourselves from my sight immediately."

"So's you're thinkin' to put us on yer jobber unarmed and half nekkid? Some fella, yerself," Karata grumbled. 

The wizard snorted, then cut the air with a dismissive hand. A bulging burlap sack appeared and disgorged its contents into our laps. We sorted through the jangle of accouterments and hastily dressed, kitting ourselves out near to whole.

"Take your trash and vanish," the Marshall said, his tone suggesting that he'd be inclined to assist us with this last, should we dally. "And be forewarned that I send you forth bearing a wisp of contingent sorcery, should the notion of shirking your duties cross your reptilian brains. If the Leveret still draws breath in one week's time, your intestines shall liquefy and gush from your living bodies like scoops of hot pudding."

I blanched. "That's a little extreme, don't you think?"

Fellejha grinned, her delicate hands pantomiming a fair approximation of what such a discharge would look like. The glee in her eyes begged me not to succeed. The Lord High Marshall, however, only appeared bored now that the business of threats and demands had been concluded.

"I'm fond of incentives. Now, begone from my sight before I retract my generosity."

Karata spat on his mosaic. "Alright, lads - let's get it on, then."

Skitter opened his portal. Moments later we hurtled through the Greys. We crashed down in a tangled pile, gear flying and chains rattling. Relief flooded my aching form to see we were back in the clearing where we'd begun this ill-fated adventure. Weary, sore and much worse for the wearing, we rose.

Havok snapped the chains around his wrists and ankles. He freed the rest of us, barely straining to burst the thick iron links. He smiled, sheepish.

"I coulda done it afore, only I din't wanna chance him witchin’ me again. Felt like he swatted me satchel with a warclub."

"Probably a sage move," I winked. Karata sized me up, then dusted me off.

"Lugus. Yer feelin' pert and hale?"

"I've been worse– "

She slugged me full fist in the belly. I gagged, falling to the ground. I tried not to retch and failed.

"Why," I managed.

"Wool blanket," Karata winked. She hauled me up and clapped me on the back. Once I caught my wind, she nodded.

"I've never been one fer ploppin' me innards out, so how's about we go dirt this stinkin' Leveret?"

Skitter grinned. "I think this time I can shag the mark."

"Dag Da, preserve us," our commander muttered. She hefted her shield. Havok uprooted a small tree. Ready for whatever may come, we joined hands. White mist rose from the meadow. Skitter opened the portal.

Havok entered the fog. Karata followed. Then me.