The Cleric Quintet: The Fallen Fortress

 

Shayleigh considered putting an arrow into the tumbling thing, but heard the three corridors behind her fast filling with enemy soldiers. Instead, she turned about and launched the arrow into the thickening mass behind her, not waiting to see if she had scored a hit The giant, though very much alive and very much enraged, lay on its back, its head toward Shayleigh and its feet still far up the staircase. It struggled to right itsetf, but its bulk filled the not-too-wide stairs, and in that awkward position, with both legs injured, it floundered miserably.

Shayleigh drew out her short sword and leaped ahead, skipping off the monster's face, nearly tripping on its huge nose. The giant grabbed at her with its hands, but she dodged them and stuck one when it got too near. The giant lifted a huge leg and curled it in at the knee, forming a barrier of flesh, but Shayleigh drove her sword deeply into the thick thigh and the barrier flew away. As she cleared the huge torso, the elf saw Pike! coming the other way, rushing under the one upraised leg.

Shayleigh called out, thinking that Pikel would surely be crushed, but the dwarf was already wedged tightly between the stairs and the giant's huge buttocks.

A swarm of enemies came to the bottom of the stairs, some clambering to get atop the giant, others drawing out bows and taking a bead on Shayleigh and on Ivan as the yellow-bearded dwarf rushed down to grab the elf maiden.

Pikel's pet snake bit the giant on the fleshy backside, and the monster's predictable hop gave the dwarf all the momentum he needed. Bracing his shoulder, the powerful little dwarf heaved and groaned, turning the behemoth up onto its shoulders, lifting a wall of flesh between his friends and the enemies. The giant grunted several times as it intercepted arrows, and then, with Pikel's stubby legs driving relentlessly, it went right over, wedging tightly into the low, narrow stairway entrance.

Pikel gave his snake a pat on the head and tucked it back into his sleeve, then rushed to join his friends, taking his club back from Ivan as he hopped past

Shayleigh stood shaking her head once more.

"Stronger than ye thought, ain't he?" Ivan asked, tugging her along.

They met no foes at the top of the stairs, and Ivan and Pikel immediately lined up side by side and resumed their battle charge, Shayleigh heard no sounds about them other than the echoes of dwarven sandals and boots, and while that fact gave her some comfort, she realized that this blind rush through the complex would Hkely get them nowhere.

Finally Shayleigh was able to stop the brothers' wild run, reminding them that they had to sort out the maze of tunnels and try to find Cadderly and Danica.

When the dwarves had quieted, they did hear some noise, a general murmur, down a corridor to the left Shayleigh was about to whisper that she should go ahead and stealthily check out the place, but her words were buried under Pikel's hearty "Oo oi!" and the resounding clamor of the renewed charge.

The Fifth Corner

There," the prisoner said to Cadderly and Danica, pointing across a last intersection to an unremarkable door. "That is the entrance to the wizard's chambers." Cadderly.

The call came again in the young priest's mind, from somewhere not so far away. Cadderly closed his eyes and concentrated, coming to understand that the call came from somewhere beyond the unremarkable door. When he opened his eyes once more, he found Danica eyeing him curiously.

"The man does not lie," Cadderly said to her. The prisoner seemed to relax at that "Then why are there no guards?" Danica asked, more to the prisoner than to Cadderly. TTie man had no answer for her. "This is a wizard," Cadderly reminded them both. "A powerful wizard by all that we have heard. There may indeed be a guardian or some protective magic."

Danica roughly pushed the prisoner forward. "You shall lead," she said coldly.

Cadderly immediately moved up beside the man, catching his arm to hold him back, and looked across him to regard Danica,

"We go together?" he asked as much as stated.

Danica looked to the door, to Cadderiy and the other man. She understood her love's sympathy and protective-ness toward the helpless prisoner, understood that Cadderly, convinced that this was not an evil man, would not use the prisoner as fodder.

"He and I lead," Danica decided, pulling the man from Cadderly*s light grasp. "You follow."

The monk soft-stepped up to the intersection, bent low and peered both ways. She turned back to Cadderly and offered a shrug, then motioned for the prisoner to keep pace and skittered across to the door - almost

The creature seemed to unfold from the air itself, becoming first a black line, then expanding left and right, two dimensional, then three dimensional. Five serpentine heads waved in front of the startled companions.

A hydra.

Danica skidded to a stop and hurled herself to the left, rolling from the lunging reach of three great heads. The prisoner, not as quick as the monk, managed only a single step before a monstrous maw clamped down across his waist

He screamed and batted futilely at the scaly head as the needle-sharp teeth ripped him. A second maw descended over the man's unprotected head, stifling his scream fully. Both heads working in unison, the hydra tore the man in half.

Cadderly nearly swooned at the sight. He got his loaded crossbow up in front of him, shifting it this way and that, trying to follow the almost hypnotic motion of the wearing heads.

Where to fire?

He shot for the center of the great body, and the hydra roared in rage as the dart hit and exploded. Two heads still snapped at the dodging Danica, two continued their feast on the slaughtered man, and the fifth shot forward, far short of Cadderly, but compelling the hydra's bulky body into a short rush at the young priest

Danica started for Cadder'.y, but reversed direction abruptly as the hydra shuffled by, and chose instead to work her way behind the beast. She cried out for Cadderly to run, though she could not see him around the bulk of the monster.

The lead maw came, straight as an arrow, for the young priest, testing his nerve as he struggled to get his weapon readied a second time. The serpentine maw was barely two feet away when Cadderly's arm at last came up, and he fired, the quarrel skipping off six-inch fangs, diving intc the mobster's mouth and blasting in a muffled explosion.

The head and neck dropped in a line on the floor, slowing the charge.

The two heads that had been after Danica, and the one finished with the dead prisoner, came sv/ooping in, though, and the young priest wisely fell back, desperately bringing up his walking stick to fend off the nearest attack.

He knew that he had to get fa- enough away to reload the crossbow, had to fall into the song of Deneir and pull something, anything, from the notes. But with the maze of darting heads, the creature pacing his every retreat, Cadderly couldn't begin to hear the song, had to concentrate simply on whipping his walking stick back and forth in front of him. He did connect once, luckily, the enchanted ram's head knocking a tooth from the closest maw. That head went up to issue a roar, and Cadderly, purely on instinct, rushed under it, used the serpentine neck as a shield against the other two pursuing heads.

The fourth head, the other one to the right, spit aside the dead man's torso and would have had the young priest then, except that Danic? came around from behind and snapped a kick under its jaw.

The monster's maw smacked shut; its flickering tongue fell severed to the floor.

Cadderly continued toward the door, concentrating on readying the crossbow- Danica came, too, by his side, looking back as the hydra lumbered about, dragging its one dead head along the floor as it turned.

"Get in!" she called, but Cadderly, for all his desperation, kept his wits enough to keep clear of the door. It was warded, he knew, sensing the magics upon it. Shoulder to shoulder with Danica, he brought his crossbow up again as if to shoot at the hydra. But then he turned, firing instead at the lock on the door, blowing a wide hole in the wood.

Danica hit Cadderly on the shoulder, throwing him aside. He came up against the wall, dazed, to see his love engulfed by four eagerly snapping hydra heads.

She rushed straight for the beast, ran inside its initial bites, twisting and turning, swatting blindly at anything that came near. A head turned enough to get at her, and she grabbed it by the horn, twisting with a jerk that angled the maw so that it could not wrap around her, so that the snout butted her in the ribs. Danica's other hand shot out the other way, her stiffened fingers driving through the eye of still another snapping head.

All the hydra's heads were turned completely about, facing its bulky torso. Danica grabbed the half-blinded head, threw her back against the thick serpentine neck, then dodged away as another head rushed in, its wide-opened maw biting hard into its own companion's neck. Before the hydra even realized its error, the other head fell dead.

Danica was still pinned in that hellish spot, but a quarrel skipped off the side of one turned neck - off the side of one to solidly strike a second. The first head that had been struck wheeled about to view the newest attacker, while the force of the ensuing explosion drove the second head aside, opening a hole for Danica to rush out The door is warded!" Cadderly cried at Danica as she darted straight for the loose-hanging portal.

It was a moot point, for Danica had no intentions of going through. She stopped and, sensing a maw rushing at her back, leaped up high, catching the top of the jamb and pulling herself straight up. The hydra's head burst through the door.

Lightning flashed several times; fire roared out from every side of the magically trapped doorjamb.

Only two heads remaining, the blasted hydra backed away. Serpentine necks crossed; reptilian eyes regarded the two companions with sudden respect

Cadderly tried to line one up for a shot, but he hesitated, not wanting to risk a miss.

"Damn," he hissed, frustrated, after a long and unproductive moment had slipped past He fired the bolt into the hydra's bulk, apparently doing no real damage, but driving it back another step. The hydra's living heads roared in unison. It hopped to the side, three dead necks bouncing along.

"Shoot for my back," Danica instructed and before Cadderly could ask her what she was talking about, she rushed forward, charged right between the swaying heads, drawing them in to her. "Now!" Danica ordered.

Cadderly had to trust in her. His crossbow clicked, and Danica dropped suddenly to her back, the quarrel crossing above her and splattering a very surprised serpentine face.

That wounded head did not die, though, and Danica, on her back, now had two snapping maws above her.

"No!" Cadderly cried out, and he charged ahead boldly, both hands tight on his ram's-head walking stick.

Danica kicked up, one foot and then the other, keeping the heads at bay. Cadderly saw that the head he had shot appeared fully blind, and he leaped right across Danica's prone form, smashing the head with a two-handed overhead chop. The head recoiled, and Cadderly pursued, smacking it repeatedly.

The second head rushed in at Cadderly's back, but Dan-ica threw her legs up and then down, snapping her back in a quick arch and hurling herself to her feet A single stride brought her alongside the chasing head and she dipped low, drawing a dagger from her boot, then shot back up, driving the knife up to its silver dragon-sculpted hilt into the bottom jaw.

Cadderly's arms pumped relentlessly, beating the already disfigured head into a bloody pulp.

The remaining head soared up high, but Danica locked her arm over the neck and went along for the ride, holding fast to her stuck dagger. She curled up around the neck, bringing her boot to her free hand and managing to extract her second dagger.

Then she held on, stubbornly, as the monster bucked and whipped. When its frenzy finally abated, Danica plunged her second knife into its eye, pulled it back, and drove it home a second time.

Again came the monstrous frenzy. Cadderly, trying to get to Danica, got clipped on one rushing pass and was hurled ten feet down the corridor.

But Danica held on, kept both her daggers buried, working them back and forth, turning their handles around in her palms. She fell hard to her back, smacking against the stone, the monstrous neck dropping over her.

Stunned, the monk could not find her breath, could not focus her gaze, and was hardly conscious of her grip on her knives. Her instincts screamed out at her to react, to wriggle away. Her instincts screamed out at her that she was vulnerable, that the hydra head could easily shake free and snap her in half.

But the hydra was no longer moving, and a moment later, Cadderly was standing above Danica, pulling her arms free,

shifting the bulky serpentine neck off her.

Shayleigh heard a murmuring up ahead, the drone of many muffled voices. She started to call out a warning to the Bouldershoulder brothers, but the dwarves had apparently heard the sound as well, for they lowered their heads and picked up the pace, Pikel's sandals slapping and Ivan's boots thumping.

Shayleigh slipped along silently right behind them, her bow ready. Around a bend in the corridor they saw a straight run past two intersections and ending at a set of double doors.

Too many!" the elf maiden whispered harshly, slowing her pace. Too many!"

Double doors blocked their way, then double doors hung awkwardly on broken hinges. Ivan and Pikel burst in, weapons high.

"Uh-oh," muttered the green-bearded dwarf, echoing his brother's sentiments exactly, for they had come into a huge hall, a dining area, now apparently doubling as a command post, lined with dozens of tables and more than a few enemies. Shayleigh sighed helplessly and rushed to catch up with the furious dwarves, who, in their momentum, had already charged past the first empty tables.

A group of ores sitting closest to the door barely had the time to look up from their bowls before the dwarves fell over them, hacking and kicking, Ivan butting with his deer-antlered helmet, and Pikel a flurry of flying knees and elbows, butting forehead, and tree-trunk club.

Only one of the six ores even managed to get out of its chair, but before the startled creature took two steps away, an arrow sliced through the side of its head, dropping it dead to the floor.

On ran the dwarves and on chased Shayleigh. Their only hope was in movement, the elf maiden knew, in rushing through too quickly for the multitude of enemies in this hall to organize against them. In full flight, she put an arrow to the side, catching a man in the shoulder as he tried to raise a bow of his own.

Tables overturned, chairs skidded aside, as the men and monsters scrambled to get out of harm's way. One unfortunate goblin got tangled up in its companion's chair. When the dwarves had passed, both the goblin and that chair lay flattened on the floor. One ogre did not run, but crossed its huge arms over its chest and stood with legs firmly planted, thinking itself an imposing barrier.

It got wounded in more than its pride when Ivan rushed right through those widespread legs, the dwarf's axe up high over his head. The ogre lurched, grabbing at its torn loins, and Pikel ran beside it, caving in the side of its knee. The ogre hadn't even hit the floor yet when Shayleigh sprang up, planting one foot on die cheek of its turned face, another on its ribs as she ran right down the falling creature's side.

There seemed to be no method to the dwarven rush, no aim above the general chaos. Then Pikel spotted the serving area, a long counter running along the back wall

"Oooo!" the green-bearded dwarf squeaked, his stubby finger pointing the way.

One of the three servers lifted a crossbow, but Shay-leigh's arrow took him down. A second lifted a wooden tray before him like a shield, but Ivan's axe cleaved it in two and cleaved the man's face in two as well. The third man's shield, an iron pot, seemed more formidable, but Pikel's club hit it head on, and the pot snapped back to hit the man head-on.

The three friends were over the counter in a flash, Shayleigh spinning about and setting her bow into frantic motion, for many enemies were now in pursuit She scored hit after hit, but there seemed no way that she could possibly stop the closing horde.

Ivan and Pikel leaped atop the counter to either side of her, armed with stacks of metal plates. The dwarves opened up a barrage of flying metal. Dishes whizzed through the air, spinning and swerving, battering the approaching enemies.

Battering them and holding them up long enough for Shayleigh to methodically cut them down.

"Hee hee nee," chuckled Pikel, and he hopped down from the counter and grabbed up a pot of thick green soup. Over it went, splashing and spilling, setting up the obstacle of a slippery floor for those enemies that came too near.

The dwarf also scooped up a huge ladle of boiling water before he climbed back atop the counter.

An arrow skipped right past Ivan's ear, knocking into the wall behind the dwarf. Shayleigh, intent on the largest approaching monster, another ogre, noted the archer to the side, crouched beside an overturned table.

"Yerself takes the bowmen!" Ivan cried. "Me and me brother!! take on them fools that come close!"

The reasoning seemed sound, and the etf maiden forced herself to hold her nerve, forced herself to ignore the closest threats and trust in her companions. She swerved her bow to the side, saw the bowman's hip foolishly hanging out from the barrier while he reloaded, and promptly stuck an arrow into him.

The approaching ogre carried four arrows in its chest but still stubbornly came on, right for Pikel and the helpless Shayleigh.

The dwarf's eyes widened in feigned fear, and Pikel seemed to cower, causing Shayleigh to cry out Pikel came up straight at the last moment, though, whipping out the ladle, splashing the surprised ogre's eyes and face with boiling water.

Predictably, the ogre lurched, throwing its arms up over its burned eyes. The shift cost the beast its already tentative balance in the green soup, and it skidded in to slam its knees against the sturdy stone counter. Down low, trying to recover its balance and its sight, the ogre felt a burning flash, a club-inspired explosion that caved in the top of its head.

Pikel laid his brain-stained club aside and took up more plates, sent them spinning off at enemies who were suddenly more interested in getting out of harm's way than in getting to the intruders.

"None better at kitchen fighting than a Bouldershoul-der," Ivan remarked, and, looking at the chaos and carnage, Shayieigh wasn't about to disagree.

But the elf knew that more than the initial fury would be needed to win this battle. Dozens of enemies remained, for more had come into the room, overturning tables before them, getting down under cover. She saw another archer peek up over the top rim of a table to the side, saw his bow come up.

Shayleigh was the quicker on the draw, and the better shot. While the man's arrow flew harmlessly high and wide, Shayleigh's got him between the eyes. The elf s satisfaction was short-lived as she realized that she had only five arrows remaining, and exhausted, too, was Ivan and Plkel's supply of metal plates.

*****

Cadderly kneeled above what was left of his prisoner, the man's torn head and shoulders. Black shadows of guilt assaulted the young priest*s sensibilities, hovering images judging him, telling him that this helpless man's death was his fault.

Danica was beside the young priest, urging him to his feet.

Cadderly pulled his arm free and stared hard at the gruesome sight He thought of going into the realm of spirits, to find the dead man and...

And what? Cadderly realized. Might he bring the spirit back? He looked behind him, to the man's chewed lower torso. Bring the spirit back to where? Did he possess the magics to mend the torn body?

"It is not your fault," Danica whispered, his thoughts obvious to her. "You gave the man a chance. That iwnore than most would have offered in our situation."

Cadderly swallowed hard, swallowed Danica's wise words and let them push away his dark thoughts, his guilt

"It could have been any one of us," Danica reminded him.

Cadderly nodded and rose from the corpse. The hydra had come at all three of them, could have snapped Danica in half, and would have if she had not been so quick. Even if Cadderly had allowed the prisoner to keep his weapon, he could have offered no defense against the hydra's brutal initial charge.

"We have to be gone from here," Danica said, and again Cadderly nodded, turning to face the loose-hanging, scorched, and blasted door. He and Danica walked through it together, side by side, coming into a small anteroom. No living enemies presented themselves immediately, but that fact did little to calm the nervous companions, for leering gargoyles stared down at them from a ledge running around the top of the room, holding needle-sharp daggers, Talona's favored weapon. Demonic bas reliefs covered the stone of supporting pillars, hordes of ghastly things dancing about the deceptively beautiful Lady of Poison. Tapestries surrounded the room, all depicting gory scenes of battle wherein evil hordes of goblins and ores, their weapons dripping blood and poison, overran hosts of fleeing humans and elves.