“A little help here!” she yelled, realizing that the girallon was not yet dead. Two of its clawed hands grasped at the shaft of the spear before it, trying to force its way backward. The other two snatched and clawed in Gredchen’s direction. She saw red in the girallon’s spittle and red in its eyes.
Meanwhile Vanderjack had kicked free of his attacker and shoved himself backward through the vines. When the girallon took a swipe at him, he fell onto another thick cluster of tendrils and creepers. “One moment,” he shouted back, burrowing in and catching his breath. “Little busy.”
Vanderjack’s girallon leaped down through the gap in the vines above to follow its prey. The sellsword slid aside and watched it fall past, coming to a stop about ten feet below him. It snarled and looked around to find the human, but Vanderjack was pulling broad leaves over himself to hide.
They seemed hopelessly outmatched. Vanderjack looked over to where he thought Gredchen’s voice was coming from and spotted one of the girallons with its back to him, a spear emerging from the matted fur. Well, he thought, she isn’t doing too badly. His expression shifted when he saw the creature pull itself off the spear and toss it aside.
“Vanderjack!” Gredchen yelled, unarmed. “Any time now!”
The sellsword wiped the sweat from his face. No ghosts to be his eyes and ears meant that he was forced throughout the whole miserable fight to do all the work himself. It wasn’t that he couldn’t, but he realized he’d grown overly dependent on them.
“Ackal’s Teeth, woman!” he called back, instantly regretting it. His girallon opponent whirled around and looked up, locking eyes with him. “Hold onto your skirts, can’t you see I’m a little busy myself at the moment!”
With a high-pitched battle cry, Vanderjack gripped Lifecleaver in both hands and leaped from the trees, straight toward the girallon below him. The ape lifted its four arms before its face, but the sellsword’s momentum propelled him heavily. Both boots struck the girallon’s broad, muscular shoulders, forcing the beast back a step. Vanderjack brought the sword down as hard as he could, inflicting a vicious wound in the girallon’s back. It screamed, arms shooting upward to dislodge the human who had brought it such pain, but Vanderjack had already let the leaping movement carry him past. Springing away, he landed a little more than a yard from Gredchen’s foe.
“We’re in big trouble,” Vanderjack called to Gredchen, over the second girallon’s shoulder.
“No kidding,” Gredchen responded.
Gredchen’s girallon spun around swiftly, knocking Vanderjack back and into the trunk of a banyan. Gredchen swore and stepped back around her own tree, roughly in the direction of where the girallon had thrown the gnome’s polearm.
The first girallon swung across to where its companion had knocked Vanderjack. The leafy canopy and thick floor beneath them all shook with the added weight; trunks bowed inward. Both girallons, bleeding and frothing at the mouth, had somehow become even more terrifying and dangerous when wounded, than they were before they’d been hurt.
Gredchen glanced around but couldn’t see the polearm anywhere. She guessed it had fallen below, somewhere in the darkness of the jungle floor. Rain began to filter through the upper canopies, making the dim light around them even greener. The girallons bellowed fiercely as they moved for a fresh attack.
Vanderjack’s vision swam red before him, filled with motes of white light and pulsing with the blood in his temples. The fingers of one hand were still wrapped around the slick grip of his sword, despite the blow from the ape. All of his training as a mercenary and soldier kept him from fumbling the weapon, but he didn’t have much strength left-a problem if the girallons carried on the way they were going. He closed his eyes, then opened them again.
The Hunter was standing there, ephemeral, translucent, the two girallons visible through his spectral body.
“Is that you, or me hallucinating?” he muttered, blood on his lips.
“Get to your feet,” the Hunter said.
“You need to jump,” said the Cavalier, materializing beside the Hunter.
“Help is coming,” said the Apothecary, appearing on the other side, blue-white at the edge of Vanderjack’s vision.
“Tell the woman,” said the Aristocrat, heard more than seen, probably behind him.
“You need to jump,” said the Philosopher, echoing the Cavalier.
Vanderjack reached out his free hand, wrapped it around a thick, ropy vine, and slowly pulled himself up. He felt as if he might black out with the effort. The girallons were advancing methodically, spending more of their time screaming and roaring at him than actually lifting a claw in his direction. They must have known he was near unconsciousness; they were playing with him.
“I’m … trying,” he said.
“Vanderjack! Get up!” he heard Gredchen call out.
“I’m … trying!” he repeated. He got to one knee and felt the tremors beneath.
“You need to jump,” said the Conjurer from off to the left or the right.
The girallons tensed, their muscles twitching, bunching up to leap at Vanderjack and tear him to pieces.
The Balladeer hovered nearby, in front of a dense wall of vegetation and foliage. “Help is coming,” the ghost said.
Vanderjack found his footing. The eyes of the girallons were locked on his, their fangs and teeth slick with their own ravening. Vanderjack could smell their rancid breath from where he stood. It smelled like rotting meat.
“You need to jump,” said the new voice of the Cook, right beside him.
In that last second, the girallons pounced, Gredchen finally succumbed to a scream, and the leaves and trees and thick, twisting vines all around them flew apart as if released from years of wound-up tension. Something even larger than the girallons tore through the wall of leaves behind the Balladeer. It flew straight through the ghost as if he weren’t there; a huge brass cat with wings furled close to its body, tiger-striped all over where the scales did not reach. On its back rode a gnome, clutching a familiar polearm under one arm like a lance, the other arm holding tightly to the fur at the back of the creature’s neck.
“You got it, fella,” Vanderjack responded to Etharion’s ghost and threw himself sideways, toward the gnome and his scaly mount. The girallons landed right where he had been, smashing through the foliage. More leaves filled the air. Gredchen lunged and grabbed the cat from the other side as the gnome cried, “Go, Star, go!”
Another heartbeat later and the green hell that was the Sahket Jungle exploded in sound and noise, the tiger roaring a pure and triumphant note, carrying its passengers high above the highest canopy and skyward.
The Sword Chorus faded again from sight, but Vanderjack, lying across the back of the dragon-tiger, didn’t care. He was blissfully, finally, unconscious.
Highmaster Rivven Cairn stood nose to belly with an ogre, but onlookers would have sworn later that they were the same height.
The fully armored and helmed half-elf, sword on her back and gauntlets firmly pressed against her hips, was always an intimidating sight. The ogres, half-ogres, and ogre kin presently dominating Willik weren’t smart, and they weren’t accustomed to seeing their spiritual leader challenged. In the case of a high-ranking dragonarmy officer, however, they were smart enough and wise enough to know that creating trouble for the highmaster was like poking a stick into a basilisk’s nest. That was doubly true in the case of Highmaster Cairn, for Rivven had been there many times before. It was Rivven who had overthrown the large town for the spiritual leader she was presently holding her own against, a fact she never let him forget. At the moment, though, she needed him out of there.
Cheron Skerish was a veritable giant. He was nine feet tall and thick around the shoulders and arms, though stooped and bent with age. The ogre must have been in whatever passed for middle age in an ogre, with a mane of greasy, gray hair surrounding a shiny bald pate covered in age spots and warts. Some ogres couldn’t grow beards, but Skerish sported a long, droopy mustache and a forest of spiky hair at his chin, making him look wizened. As a shaman, Skerish affected numerous trinkets, talismans, and grisly amulets crafted from the body parts of animals and worse. Tattoos and scarification covered his bare arms, symbols of his dedication to his mighty god, Sargonnas.