“Ssspawn kill man. Man should not kill ssspawn,” the creature behind him hissed. “Man should not kill my sisssters.” The creature bit him again. This time it clamped down and did not let go. Rig managed to thrust the blade forward, somehow in the darkness finding another spawn. The sword lodged firmly in the thing, and he dropped to his knees, his weight pulling the sword loose while also tearing himself free from the jaws of the creature behind him. Struggling to rise, he swept the blade in a forward arc and again was rewarded with a howl and a painful shower of acid. Behind him, he heard one creature crashing away through the foliage. Rig flailed about. No more spawn, no trees, only vines that sought to entangle him. He turned again and barely caught himself from stumbling over a broken tree limb. Leading with the sword and edging forward, he made his way past the limb and through a swath of branches and mud.
“Rig? Rig!” Fiona was panting, thoroughly spent and in agony from the burning acid unleashed by the spawn she’d killed. “They’re gone. Dead or gone.” Fiona sheathed her sword and felt around until she found a tree to lean against. “Rig?”
“I’m here,” came the exhausted reply. “Wherever here is. Keep talking so I can find you.”
It took several minutes, before they found themselves at the base of the same tree. Rig boosted her up, urging that it was safer than resting on the ground. Climbing was torture, straining wounds and already overtaxed muscles. Somehow they made it to thick, low limbs, ones they could straddle with their backs propped against the trunk. They emptied one of their water skins trying to wash away the acid. Nearly all the other water was shared down their throats.
“You know, there might be snakes—or worse—in this tree,” Fiona said.
“Only thing worse than a snake is Dhamon Grimwulf,” came Rig’s hoarse reply.
“Right. Damn him. If I hadn’t trusted him, hoped that he could help me….”
“Fiona, with luck we’ll never see him again.”
“Yes, but maybe we shouldn’t have parted company with them quite so quick,” Fiona mused, her voice a cracked whisper. “I shouldn’t have let my anger guide me. Maybe we should’ve got some food first. Found some extra water skins. Maybe…. Oh, I don’t know.”
Rig knew she couldn’t see his shrug. He rested one hand on the pommel of his sword. The other arm he looped about a branch to help steady himself. He closed his eyes, and despite his aches and his pain-wracked shoulder where the spawn had bitten him, within a few heartbeats he was soundly asleep.
“You were right, Rig. At least we shouldn’t have left the clearing without taking a few torches with us,” Fiona said after a while. “Shouldn’t have trusted Dhamon.” She paused when she heard the mariner gently snoring.
“Should have never doubted you,” she added softly. “I really do love you, Rig.”
They woke well into the morning, still sore from the fight, wounds festering. Fiona insisted they move again before Rig could even attempt to find breakfast. The mariner decided he could wait a few hours to eat. Before he knew it the day had melted away. As the light began to fade, they sought another tree to pass the night. Fiona was eyeing a dying shaggy-bark with wide limbs when Rig pointed through a gap in a veil of willow leaves.
“There’s a light over there. Low to the ground and wide, like it’s a campfire. Smells like something’s cooking over it, too. We should take a closer look.” His stomach growled. He hadn’t eaten in well more than forty-eight hours.
“Hope we didn’t get turned around in the dark,” Fiona said. “Solamnus knows, we could very well be lost. Hope it’s not Dhamon and Maldred’s campfire.” A small part of her hoped that it was. She’d rehearsed several times in her mind a tirade she would unleash on them. She took a deep breath and brushed aside the leaves and edged a few steps closer to the fire.
Chapter Three
Glittering Promises
The inn fire crackled softly behind Dhamon Grimwulf, tinging the air with the sharp smoky scent of too-green birch and the more welcome fragrance of slowly roasting pig. Both scents were more pleasurable than the other odors present: ogre sweat and the unidentifiable smell of food and drink that had been spilled who knew how long ago and never wiped up.
“Dhamon, it’s much too hot today to have a fire going like that.” The grumbling came from Maldred, a giant of a man with a shock of sun-lightened hair that spilled low over his brow. Beads of sweat liberally dotted his bronzed skin. He sighed, shook his head, and pulled his chair a few inches closer to the table—and thereby a few inches farther away from the flames. “Hot,” he repeated, the word sounding like a curse. “I ought to tell the proprietor to douse this fire. It’s just too damned hot.”
“Aye, my friend, this end of summer is a particularly spiteful beast. But I fancy having some of that pig for dinner, and so I’ll tolerate a little extra heat. Besides, the firelight’s being more than a little useful.” Dhamon gestured to a map it illuminated. The parchment was stretched across the top of a weathered table, four empty mugs holding the corners and keeping it in place. “You’re the one who said we needed a place where we could stretch out this supposed treasure map and get a better look at it. You picked this hole. And this table.”
Maldred grumbled an unintelligible reply. A moment later he added, “You’re the one who needed someplace to rest—after this afternoon’s bout with the scale on your leg.”
Dhamon kept his eyes on the parchment. “Finding the pirate treasure you say this map leads to will help my pockets, but it isn’t going to do anything to help my problem with the scale.” Dhamon’s words were barely above a whisper, meant for himself rather than for his companion. “I’ve no hope of a cure. Ever.”
The big man replied anyway, keeping his voice low so the other patrons couldn’t hear. “I think you might be wrong, my friend. I think, if my memory of folklore serves me, the treasure at the end of this map will solve everything.”
Dhamon’s eyebrows rose, then he lifted his gaze to take in their surroundings. They were in the far corner of a squalid tavern, a long day’s travel from Blöten, the capital of the ogre lands. They were as far away as they could get from the dirt-streaked window through which strolling ogres glanced. There were ogres inside the tavern, too, a quartet of them a few tables away, all drinking and gambling and occasionally looking hostilely in Dhamon and Maldred’s direction. Dhamon knew there would be more ogres soon when the sun set in an hour or so, signaling for any race a traditional time for drinks and fellowship.
“We’re out of place here,” Maldred said. “Haven’t seen a human walk by the window. Bet there isn’t one in this entire town. There were more humans in Blöten.”
“We’re out of place?” Dhamon repeated with a laugh. “No, my friend. I’m out of place here. These are your people—though they wouldn’t know it from the looks of you. They can’t see beneath that magical shell you’ve painted. No matter, we’ll be away from this tavern and town soon enough. A few more days and we’ll be blessedly out of ogre country. Forever.” He stabbed a finger at the map.
“Now, about this treasure. The map looks different than when we saw it at your father’s. Don’t you think?”
Maldred leaned over the parchment and gave a nod. “Different. But there’s something about it….”
It was old, the ink faded so badly in places most of the words couldn’t be discerned. Even some of the features the firelight caught were so pale from age that Maldred and Dhamon had to guess whether the blotches were meant to indicate forests or lakes.