Though Razmous made no sound, the monster suddenly crouched, all three eyes swiveling around to probe the dense underbrush where the gnomes hid.
“Who is there?” it howled in a voice that was somewhere between the rumble of a crocodile and the bellow of a charging bull. The smaller trees shook at the volume of its voice. Out on the Indestructible, everyone suddenly looked up in wonder at the strange noise.
“Who is there?” the monster demanded again. It took a step back and crouched low in the water. “You might as well show yourselves. You can’t escape me. My three eyes are sharper than an eagle’s, my nose more sensitive than a hound’s. I can hear the heartbeat of a mouse at a hundred paces, or the water passing through a fish’s gills at ten. There is no place to hide in this barren wilderness, no stone under which you can cower that I can’t overturn. Come out and let me see you and tell me the nature of your ship and how many survived, for I have eaten many of your kind, farers of the salty sea, but-” Here it paused and tested the air with its flaring nostrils-“I cannot place your smell. What are you?”
“Nothing!” Razmous squeaked cleverly in his high kender voice. His words came out of the forest like an echo, scattered by the trunks of the trees so that it was difficult for the monster to determine its exact origin. However, his companions were beside themselves in fear and rage at his foolishness.
“Who is it who is nothing yet answers my questions?” the monster asked as it crouched a little lower in the water.
“Nobody,” Razmous squawked again, suppressing a giggle. Conundrum clawed at his arm, trying to pull him down and shut him up, but the kender merely turned on him with a grin spreading from pointed ear to pointed ear, and stepped out from their covering screen of trees.
“Don’t worry,” he chided over his shoulder. “I read this in a book somewhere.”
Chapter
“You’re mad!” Sir Grumdish howled. “You’ll get us all X killed.”
“Don’t worry,” Razmous repeated confidently. Those accustomed to traveling with kender learn a number of words and phrases that, when spoken by non-kender, are not indicative of anything especially alarming, but when voiced by the merry adventurous race usually portend some disaster or otherwise unpleasant event. “Oh, look!” “Wow! I wonder if…” “You must have dropped it!” and the much dreaded “Did I ever tell you about the time…” are some of the more common cues to either flee without looking back, or grab the kender before he gets himself chopped. Yet few words ever spoken by kender conjure up such fear as “Don’t worry.” Except perhaps “Oops!”
Which is why Sir Grumdish launched himself from his slightly higher position and grabbed Razmous by the topknot. Not very gently he jerked the kender back to the cover of the trees. Razmous emitted a squeal of pain, great tears starting in his eyes.
With a loud, “Ah-ha!” the monster lurched forward, its arms spread wide. A huge wave of water rose before it and washed up the forested bank. Before the six adventurers could move, water surged around their legs and swept them from their feet. It carried them a short distance up the hillside, then swept them back, dragging them down through the trees toward the lake, where the creature waited with glaring eyes and champing, slavering jaws.
The gnomes scrabbled desperately at the branches, clinging to any twig or root within their grasp. First Razmous, then Conundrum, managed to catch themselves before they were swept completely away. Ensign Gob, being the smallest and the lightest, was thrown farthest up the bank by the surging wave and fortunately left high and dry out of harm’s reach. Conundrum managed to grab Chief Portlost by the beard as he swept by, while Sir Gram-dish snatched a handful of the kender’s sopping-wet topknot and held on for dear life. But both gnomes lost their UANPs to the flood.
The unfortunate Ensign Wigpillow tried to hold on to his weapon, and as a result slipped away from the hands reaching out to catch him. As a last desperate act, he tried to fire his weapon at the chaos beast, only to have a powerful jet of water exit the rear of the UANP and propel him forward, down the last few feet of the bank. He slid and tumbled through the mud and leaves and vanished into the water at the monster’s knees.
With a cry of delight, the chaos beast reached down and snatched him up in one massive, black-clawed hand and lifted the hapless gnome to its huge toothy maw. His companions on the bank turned away or hid their faces in their hands. Razmous peeked. As he neared those gaping jaws, however, the shrieking Ensign Wigpillow struggled against the monster’s ironlike grip and pop! He squirted free like a watermelon seed.
Wigpillow scribed a long screaming arc across the desert sky. The monster craned its head round to watch in nothing less than slack-jawed surprise. Razmous simply said, “Wow!” and then had to be physically restrained to keep him from rushing down to the water and begging the monster to squirt him, too.
Ensign Wigpillow ended his flight with a thunderous splash a hundred or so yards upstream. The monster turned and surged off after him, a huge wake spreading out from its chest like the bow wave of a man-o-war under full sail.
“Come on!” Sir Grumdish roared as he pulled everyone to their feet. “Let’s get out of here!”
“But Wigpillow!” Conundrum cried.
“He’s creating a diversion, noble lad,” Chief Portlost said. “To give us time to escape back to the ship.”
Sir Grumdish had to push the others up the hill, shooting a quick glance over the ground in the faint hope that his UANP might not have been washed into the lake, but finding nothing.
“Hurry! Back to the ship!” he shouted, but no one needed his advice. Once again led by Razmous, they were already out of sight.
Despite his shorter legs, Ensign Gob was the first to reach the beach. Those observing from the Indestructible wondered at his haste. When it became apparent that he had no intention of stopping at the water’s edge, they began to wave and shout, “No!”
But the gully dwarf ignored them, charged straight into the water, and fell flat on his glass-helmeted face. He thrashed his arms in the shallow surf, trying to swim, and throwing more sand than water. His companions, arriving immediately behind him, dragged him by his helmet back to the beach. Conundrum pointed at the gully dwarfs duckfeet, lying there in the sand next to the others, but Gob seemed not to understand, and so they demonstrated by frantically getting into their own helmets, bladderpacks, and duckfeet.
Chief Portlost was the first into his gear. He grabbed the gully dwarf and forced him into the duckfeet, then pushed him toward the water. Finally getting the idea, Gob started off, slowly dragging his heavy shoes through the sand. The chief followed, a little more quickly, and was himself followed more quickly still by Razmous. Next came Sir Grumdish and Conundrum, grunting with the water barrel between them, now filled with fresh water.
Out on the Indestructible, Commodore Brigg observed this flurry of activity with growing curiosity. “The shore party seems in an awful hurry, wouldn’t you say?” he asked Snork, who had joined him on the bridge. A few crew members stood along the aft deck, pausing in their duties to watch. “And where is Pigwillow?”
“Wigpillow,” Snork said, glancing up from his navigational log. “Aye, that they are.”
Chief Portlost’s head vanished under the water. Razmous paused when the water was up to his neck and waved something in a frantic manner, but neither the commodore nor Snork could tell what he meant by it. Dragging the heavy barrel filled with fresh water, Conundrum and Sir Grumdish had barely entered the water, while the gully dwarf was still several dozen feet from the shore.