They were armed with a mix of weapons-falchions, battle-axes, and even a morning-star flail. Tol held them off with his longer-reaching spear, jabbing at their faces and chests. One of the creatures dodged a little too slowly, and the iron head of Tol’s spear raked over its shoulder. The monster let out a tremendous hiss while simultaneously spreading a wide, leathery frill that had been furled around its neck. The frill of skin filled with blood, turning bright scarlet.
The sight was too much for Cloud. The terrified horse began to rear and buck.
Tol dropped his spear and clutched at the reins, but to no avail. With a clang, he landed on his back in the mist. Cloud cantered away, eyes rolling wildly.
Shaken by the fall, Tol could hear his enemies padding toward him through the fog. He rolled onto one knee and started to draw his saber, then thought better of it. They couldn’t see him under the veil of vapor, but the scrape of iron would give him away. Quietly he took out his war dagger, kept in a suede sheath under his left arm. Two spans of cold iron would have to do.
Sweeping the mist in front of him with his flail, the nearest creature grunted and squawked to his comrades. Tol heard the studded flail swish over his head. He sprang forward, driving his dagger between the creature’s ribs. He aim must have been true, because his hand and arm were promptly drenched with blood. Gravely wounded though it was, the creature cracked Tol on the jaw with the handle of his flail. Tol reeled to the ground and spit out two of his back teeth. His strength spent, the creature collapsed with no more than a grunt.
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.