Ton's as good a place as the gods provide, short of bare hilltops. One to watch along the road and down the cliffs, and two to face the forest along the neck of it, here, tie up our horses below and be-damned to anyone trying to use the road by night, and we're set," Rolian grunted.
Paeregur gave a wordless grunt as his only answer. The tone of that grunt sounded unconvinced. The silence of fear hung heavy over the camp that night, and evenfeast was eaten in hushed tones.
"We're as close to death as we've ever been," the halfling muttered as they rolled themselves in their cloaks, laid weapons to hand, and watched the stars come out over the water.
"Will you belt up about dying?" Rolian hissed. "No one can come at us unseen, we've set a heavy watch, the dippers and the shields are ready for a fast wakening. .. what more can we do?"
"Ride out of here and go back to Tethyr," Avras said quietly...yet the camp had grown so still that most of them heard him. Several heads turned, wearing scowls .. . but no one said a word in reply.
Overhead, as deep night came down, the stars began to come out in earnest.
"What's that?" Rolian breathed, beside Paeregur's ear. "D'you hear it?"
"Of course I hear it," the warrior replied quietly, rising silently to his feet and turning slowly, his drawn blade glinting in the light of the new-risen moon. He could hear it best to the west, somewhere very close by, a thin, aimless chiming sound. A bridle? A bell on a minstrel's instrument, or on the harness of a wayward horse? Or...the little fey ones, come calling?
After a moment he took a few cautious crouching steps across the rock spur, picking his way between the still forms of his sleeping fellows. A thin thread of mist was drifting in the lee of the rock spur...strange, that, with the moon rising...but there was nothing to be seen. Not even seabirds, or an owl. In fact, that was why this was so eerie...the woods were still. No scuffling, no night cries or the shrieks of small animals being caught by larger prowlers... nothing. Paeregur shook his head in puzzlement, and turned slowly to go back. There it was again, that faint chiming.
He turned back to the west again and became a listening statue. After a time the chiming was gone. The tall warrior shrugged, glanced down at the horses below the prow...and froze.
Where were the horses? He took two quick strides to the other side of the prow, in case they'd all shifted to the east of the overhang...their lead-reins were long enough...but, no. They were gone. "Rolian," he growled, beckoning sharply, and ran along the prow to its very tip, where the still, cowled form of Avras sat facing out to sea, his sword across his knees. Hah! Some watch guard he'd turned out to be!
"Avras!" he hissed, clapping a heavy hand on the warrior's shoulder, "where are the horses? If you've been drinking again, so help me I'm g..."
The shoulder under his hand crumpled like a thing of dry leaves and kindling, and the faceless husk of Avras pivoted toward him for a moment before collapsing into ash. The man's skull tumbled out to bounce off Paeregur's boot before falling out and down to the road below with a dull clatter.
Paeregur almost fell off the spur recoiling in horror. Then he scrambled back along it to the first of his sleeping companions, and turned the blankets back with the point of his blade. A skull grinned up at him.
"Gods," he sobbed, slashing with his sword tip at the next cloak. His blade caught on the garment and dragged it half off, bones spilled out in a confusion of ash and collapse. Paeregur knew real gut-wrenching terror for the first time in his life. He wanted to run, anywhere, away from here.
Rolian was taking a damned long time to arrive.
Paeregur glanced along the spur to where Rolian had been sitting beside him, facing the forest...had been whispering to him, only a few breaths ago. Where had...?
The chiming, coming again...only this time, from among the wall of dark trees they'd been facing-sounded almost mocking. A little mist was curling around their trunks, and Rolian...
Rolian was standing in those trees with his sword in the crook of his arm and the laces of his codpiece in his hands, in the eternal wide-legged pose of men relieving themselves in the woods, facing away into the darkness. Paeregur started to relax, then fresh fear coiled in the pit of his stomach. Rolian was standing very still. Too still.
"Frostfire awake!" Paeregur roared, with all the volume he could muster, the very rocks rang back his shout, and an echo came back faintly from the depths of the forest. He was running as he bellowed, back along the spine of the spur toward Rolian … already knowing what he'd find.
He came to a stop behind that still form and tried to peer past it. Fangs? Eyes? Waiting blades? Nothing, the moonlight was enough to show him nothing but trees. He stretched out his sword gently. "Rolian?"
The warrior gave a long, formless sigh as he toppled forward into the trees. He broke into three pieces before he hit the ground, his blade bouncing away among dead leaves ... and left Paeregur staring at a pair of empty boots and a tangle of slumped clothing. Ye bloody grave-sucking gods!
The tall warrior took two quick steps back from that place and spun around. Was he the only one left alive? Had any...but no. He almost shouted with relief: the mage Lhaerand was on his feet, face pinched with sleepy disapproval, as was the giant among them, slow-witted but loyal Phostral, his full plate armor make him a gleaming mountain in the moonlight. Two. Two of them all.
"Something has killed all the others," Paeregur told them tightly. "Something that can slay in a moment, and silently."
"Oh?" Lhaerand snarled. "Then what's that?"
It was the chiming again, only loud and insistent now, as if standing in triumph over them. Suddenly the mist was back, sliding past their feet and bringing its own chill with it as it drifted along the spur. Paeregur's eyes narrowed.
"Lhaerand," he said suddenly, "can you hurl fire?"
"Yes, of course," the mage snapped. "At who? I..."
"At that!" Paeregur shouted, fear making his voice almost a scream. "Now!"
And as if it could hear his words, the mist thickened into bright smoke, and struck, snakelike, at Phostral. The giant warrior had raised his blade and moved to challenge it even before Paeregur's cry, his companions could only see his back, and hear a faint sighing...was that a sizzle, at the heart of it? A gurgle?...in the instant before his blade fell from his hand. The gauntlet went with it, and nothing was left behind: the vambrace ended in a stump. Then, slowly, Phostral turned to face his companions.
His helm was empty, his head entirely burnt away, but something was filling it or at least holding it where it should be, above the armored wall of the warrior's chest. The thing that had been Phostral staggered toward them, moving slowly and tentatively. The mage stepped back and started to stammer out a spell.
Instantly the gigantic armored form turned toward him and toppled, crashing down on its face...or where its face had been...as a white whirlwind boiled up out of it, chiming. Paeregur shouted in fear, waving his sword and knowing it would avail him nothing...but Lhaerand shrieked and sprinted the length of the spur, with the mist-thing in cold and chiming pursuit.
The mage never tried to turn and fight. He ran as fast as he could and leaped, high and far, out over the road to somewhere above the cliffs beyond...where he howled all the way down to a wet and splintering end.
So that was a despairing death. Paeregur swallowed. What better would a heroic one be?
And how would any minstrel know, once he was bones and ash?
The whirlwind came back along the spur slowly, chiming almost coyly...as if it was toying with him.
The tall warrior set his jaw and raised his sword. When he judged the mist was near enough, he slashed at it and danced to one side, then planted himself to drive a vicious backhand back through its chiming whiteness.
Unsurprisingly, his blade met nothing, though its edge seemed to acquire a line of sparks. Even as he noticed them, in his frantic trot along the spur, they winked out.
He circled, tripping on someone's helm and almost falling, to lash out with his blade again. Once more he clove nothing, gasped his way aside from looming mist, and slashed through it again with the same utter lack of effect. The mist swirled, leaping over his head, and he dodged aside to avoid having it fall on him. It continued its sinuous rush, curving around his vainly thrusting blade to dart in along his sword arm.
At the last instant, it turned into him rather than grazing past...and blazing agony exploded through him. Paeregur was dazedly aware that he was screaming and staggering away vainly slapping at empty air with his arm.
His only arm.
Nothing remained on the other side but a twisted mass of seared flesh and leather, all melted together. There was no blood ... but there was no arm left at all. His sword arm. Paeregur looked wildly about as the ribbon of mist floated almost mockingly past, and saw his sword lying atop a huddled mess that had once been a priest of Tymora. Much good Lady Luck had brought them all, to be sure. He ran unsteadily, not used to one side of him being a lot lighter than the other, over to his blade and scooped it up.
He was still straightening when the burning pain came again and he fell heavily onto his tailbone on the rock, watching an empty boot spin away. It had taken his leg.
He struggled to rise, to move at all, his remaining boot heel kicking vainly against the uneven stone, and waved his blade defiantly. The mist closed in and he made of himself a desperate whirlwind, spinning around and around with his blade constantly slashing the air. He rang it off the stone around him twice, once hard enough to chip the edge, and cared not. He was going to die here ... what good is a pristine blade to a dead man?
The mist came at him again in an almost gloating dive, its chiming rising around him as he twisted and slashed desperately. When the burning came again, it was in his intact thigh and he was rolling helplessly over, flailing at nothing with his useless sword. One limb at a time...it was toying with him.
Was he going to be reduced to a helpless torso, unable to do anything but stare as it slew him very slowly?
A few panting breaths later, as he stared up at the uncaring stars through swimming eyes, he knew the answer was going to be...yes.
He wondered just how long the mist would make him suffer, then decided he was past caring. Almost his last thought was a rueful realization that all who die slowly enough to know what is happening must come to a place beyond caring.
He was ... he was Paeregur Amaethur Donlas, and he had come to his cold end here on a rock in the wilder-lands of the accursed High Duchy of Langalos in the early summer of the year seven hundred and sixty-seven (as Dalereckoning ran) with no one to mourn or mark his passing, and his dead comrades all around him.