The hesitation fell from her face and she smiled. “Okay, big guy. Lead on.”

  The moment she said that, another roar echoed through the canyon and Fist looked out towards the shoreline. A large winged figure walked into view. It was partially obscured by the mist, but it looked like a dragon.

  “Are you still sure about this?” Maryanne said.

  “We don’t have to fight that thing,” the ogre replied, hoping he was telling the truth. “At least it wasn’t in my dream. We just need to find another way to the Thunder People territory.”

  Fist turned around and led them back the way they had come. It went a lot faster this time since the path had already been cleared. In an hours time, they were back at the canyon’s end. They headed eastward, looking for an alternate path. As it turned out, they didn’t have far to go.

  A half hour’s travel across the frozen mountainside led them to a second canyon-like pass, this one wider and with a downward slope. Though Fist didn’t recognize it at the time, he had been through this pass once before in the first few weeks after meeting Squirrel. They had made it through without incident, but this trail was used mainly by goblinoid tribes during their major hunts.

  At the moment, it looked quite inviting. The blanket of snow over the trail was much thinner than in the previous pass, only calf deep on the ogre. Fist grew confident that this was the right way. This path would lead them down to the shoreline. The smell coming through the pass seemed to confirm that belief, though the air wasn’t warm like it had been in the higher pass.

  “Something about this isn’t right,” Maryanne said as they made their way down the gentle sloping trail. “It seems too easy.”

  “Why?” Fist asked, beginning to have a similar feeling, but not wanting to believe it. “Why does it need to be hard?”

  She shook her head. “We’re heading right down to the source of the evil. If the trail was this easy, why haven’t monsters infested with those larvae just walked up and out of there and spread all over the mountainside?”

  “That’s a good question,” Fist admitted as they came around a bend in the pass. “Maybe . . . oh.”

  In front of them, reaching half way up the canyon wall, was a cave-in. A section of the cliff face had collapsed inward during the heaviest of the winter months, bringing tons of ice and snow down with it. Fist walked down to the base of it and looked up.

  “Do you want to try climbing it?” he asked

  Maryanne pursed her lips as she sized it up. “It’s fairly steep, but not worse than some of the other climbs we’ve made. The only question is how stable it is. Only some of this is rock. If we knock the wrong thing loose, we could collapse it on top of us.”

  “We also don’t know what’s on the other side,” Fist added.

  I will see, said Squirrel excitedly. I am a scout.

  “You’re volunteering to do this?” Fist asked. In the past, when wanting Squirrel to do something that required extra effort, he’d had to beg and plead.

  I will see, Squirrel repeated. He leapt from the ogre’s shoulder and began scampering up the blockage.

  “Squirrel is going up to see,” he said to Maryanne with a shrug. In the meantime, Fist got down on one knee and plunged one large hand into the snow, placing his palm on the solid earth underneath.

  He closed his eyes and sent his magic energies through, probing the rock. Darlan’s focus in her work with him had been war spells, but Fist had also taken classes with other earth magic students. One of the first things they had been taught was to look into the rock, see what useful elements were within.

  In this case, Fist sent his magic under the cave-in and upward, traveling from rock to rock to see how stable it was. As far as he could tell the side of the blockage closest to the right wall was mostly boulders that had come down in the initial collapse. Everything to the left was snow and ice and on the far side . . .

  Dead bodies, Squirrel announced from his new perch far above. Fist grimaced and stood, having guessed much the same thing.

  “What did you find?” Maryanne asked.

  “We are on the right path,” Fist said trying to sound positive. “If we stay to the right, we can climb the cave-in safely.”

  “Then why do you look like you just bit into a live snail?” she asked dubiously.

  “The far side is packed with dead bodies,” he said with a sigh.

  She squinted at him. “What do you mean packed?”

  “I think it was like you said. A bunch of people infested with the worms-.”

  Goblins and orcs, Squirrel reported, still sitting atop the blockage, shelling a seed as he looked down.

  “Mainly goblinoids,” Fist continued. “Tried to leave through the pass. It looks like they froze while trying to climb it.”

  “So you’re saying we can climb to the top, but on the way down, we’ll be climbing over a bunch of dead goblinoids.” The gnome laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation. “Sounds like a dream I had once. Let’s go.”

  She began to climb, her nimble movements taking her halfway up the pile before Fist had climbed more than a few feet. Fist grit his teeth and climbed after her, much more careful with his movements since his six-hundred-pound frame was much more likely to pull the whole thing down on top of himself.

  When he reached the apex, Maryanne was sitting next to Squirrel with her elbows on her knees as she looked onto the scene below. “I sure hope they are as frozen as they look.”

  Leaning against the bottom of the pile, their arms reaching upwards, were dozens of the creatures, all frozen in some state of decay. Beyond them were many more that were simply lying on the ground, unmoving.

  Fist scratched his head. “I guess I’ll go down first. I can use lightning to fight them if I need to. If they start moving, just be ready to shoot them.”

  “You got it,” she said eagerly, stringing her bow and selecting an arrow.

  Fist slowly climbed down the stack, watching for movement. He had made it half way down without an incident, when a roar echoed up the pass. A smaller roar followed it and the bodies lying on the ground stirred weakly.

  Fist looked back up at Maryanne. “How many arrows do you have?”

  “Twenty,” the gnome replied. “But only six of them are shock arrows.”

  “Then just be smart about the way you use them,” Fist said. “Space them out so that you’ll get one back when you need it.”

  Maryanne frowned at him. “Never tell a gnome warrior how to fight. Go on. I’m right behind you.” She stood and began hopping agilely down the rocks, using only her feet, keeping an arrow notched at all times.

  Fist slid the last few feet, kicking aside the frozen goblinoids at the bottom. A few of the corpses stirred again. One of them struggled to sit up until an arrow struck it between the eyes. There was an audible electric zap. The larvae inside the corpse’s body burst and it fell still.

  Maryanne dropped down at his side, drawing another arrow from her quiver. Squirrel leapt to Fist’s shoulder. Go!

  More of the bodies began to move.

  “Go,” Fist agreed and they ran down the path, dodging sluggish half-frozen bodies as they went. They rounded a bend and found more bodies lying on the ground. They must have been close to nearing the end of the passage, because it was warmer here. The bodies weren’t frozen at all. They began moving immediately.

  “When this melts in the springtime, they’re going to come pouring out of here,” Maryanne commented, firing another arrow and dropping another corpse, an orc that had only half a face.

  “You’re right,” Fist realized and slowed to a stop. He reached out and put both hands against one of the cliff walls.

  “What are you doing?” the gnome said worriedly, firing again.

  “Just give me a second.” Fist sent his energies into the wall, looking for any small fissures he could exploit, widening tiny cracks here and there. Satisfied, he moved to the other wall.

  A steady stream of infested dead goblinoids were approaching from the way Fist and Maryanne had come, wakened by their passage. Fist threw up a hand. A jagged column of rock rose from the ground in front of the oncoming corpses. It was only waist high, but Fist just needed to slow them down and didn’t want to use too much energy.

  Another roar echoed from up ahead, but Fist ignored it, focusing on the second wall. He sent his energy through, widening cracks here and there. His plan was to back up a good ways and set the whole thing off from a distance, but he was just a little overzealous. A huge section of the cliff face split and began to sway inward.

  Fist’s eyes widened and he turned, grabbing Maryanne’s arm. “Run!” The two of them did so, shoving past the slow moving dead.

  The wall behind them fell forward, slamming into the opposite side, which Fist had already destabilized. A twenty-foot-wide section of the cliff crumbled, sending a plume of dust and snow and debris blasting past the ogre and gnome, knocking them forward. Maryanne kept her balance, allowing the force of the plume to push her faster.

  Fist stumbled and tripped over a body that was just awakening. He crashed to the ground, chest first, his mace and shield pulling free from his harness and sliding across the ground ahead of him. Squirrel, thinking ahead, had jumped onto Maryanne’s shoulder as soon as he realized what Fist was up to and had come out of the situation unscathed.

  Fist’s breastplate absorbed the fall and he quickly pushed himself up to his knees. Hands grabbed his leg and he felt pressure on his ankle as the dead gorc he had tripped over tried to bite through his boot. Grunting in surprise, Fist sent a surge of electricity down his leg and shocked the corpse still.

  He grabbed his shield and mace off the ground and looked back at the blockage of rock that was his handiwork. He smiled, pleased with himself. “They won’t be getting through that in the spring.”

  “I guess that means we can’t go back the way we came in then,” said Maryanne, her voice numb.

  Fist turned to see that the gnome had walked several yards further down the passage and was staring around the bend, wide-eyed. Squirrel, on her shoulder, stared with her, his tiny mouth agape. Uh-oh.

  Grimacing with trepidation, Fist stepped forward and followed their gaze.

  Stretching out before them were the shores of the black lake. The larvae-filled sludge that made up its waters didn’t move like the waters of a normal lake, but sat there, shuddering like a black pudding. The lake gave off a wave of unpleasant warmth and the air was filled with mist and swirling swarms of flies.

  The rocky shores themselves were littered with the bodies of the dead, infested, but resting with no instructions to carry out. They were mainly made up of goblinoids, but scattered throughout were humans, ogres, and even a couple giants. Hundreds of them had raised their heads at the sound of the passage’s collapse and were now looking in Fist’s direction.

  “Okay, that may have been a mistake,” the ogre admitted.

  A few hundred yards down the beach, its back to them, was the beast they had seen earlier. It was a great black dragon, its shoulders twice Fist’s height. Its wings were shredded and useless, one of them broken, and the back half of its tail hung limp. It hadn’t been in that bad of shape when Fist had seen it from above.

  As he watched, its head was rocked back and it roared again, causing the reclining dead to look back in its direction. Fist realized what was going on. This dragon was still alive, which was why it was able to roar, but it was infested with larvae, which was why the dead weren’t attacking it. It was, however, doing battle with something else that he couldn’t see. The fact that the dead around them weren’t helping with the battle told Fist that whatever it was fighting was infested too.

  “We should run,” Fist said pointing northward, away from the lake. Beyond the beach was a sloping rocky hillside and above that, not many miles in the distance, Fist could see the familiar mountainside territory of the Thunder People. “That’s the safest route.” The ground in that direction was also littered with corpses, but fewer in number.

  “Why are we standing here, then?” Maryanne asked. The corpses lining the beach were looking back in their direction again and many of them were beginning to rise.

  “Good question,” Fist said. He set up a field of electricity around his shield and ran, his mace enhancing his speed.

  It wasn’t a straight shot. There was a rocky ledge directly in front of them and they were forced to run parallel to the lake for a short distance before there was a climbable stretch of the hillside. Fist took the lead, weaving past clusters of corpses and blasting aside those individuals that stood in the way.

  Maryanne was right behind him, every once in a while firing a shock arrow at a dead thing that came too close. Fortunately, the bodies controlled by the larvae shambled towards them slowly, their limbs jerking almost as if pulled by strings.

  The dragon on the beach ahead of them, however, was moving fluidly as it battled its foe. Fist rushed forward, hoping to be able to climb the hill before it noticed them, but the quickest route to the slope took him just within its range of vision.

  The dragon didn’t seem to be doing too well against its opponent. Its long snake-like head would dart forward, only to be battered aside. Fist finally reached the bottom of the slope, just as the dragon’s opponent came into view.

  It was big and fierce and dangerous. It was the creature from Fist’s dreams; the one that had attacked him from within Squirrel’s pouch.

  The creature was half the height of the dragon and stood on all fours. Its front end was thick and muscular with silvery black fur, bulging arms and huge hands. Its rear end was that of a huge mountain lion with powerful legs and a tan coat. While Fist watched, it reared up on its back legs and beat its chest with its fists. Its massive black face was full of anger and it opened its mouth to show square teeth bordered by large fangs as it let out a mighty roar.

  His heart jumping, Fist turned and started up the hillside. He took one step before a searing pain flashed through his head. For a moment, the ogre saw double. He saw the hillside ahead of him, dotted with corpses climbing to their feet and he saw the toothy visage of the dragon swaying above him, full of anger and poised to strike.

  Hurts! cried Squirrel, clutching onto Maryanne’s shoulder.

  Fist stumbled and fell to his knees. He closed his eyes and all he saw was the dragon. Rage and fear poured through his mind. Fist’s thoughts blurred as if taken over by rage. It hurt. His whole body hurt. It was the dragon’s fault. He wanted to kill the dragon. He also wanted to drink the black lake. He knew he shouldn’t. The black lake stank. It wasn’t good for him. But he wanted to drink it anyway. Kill the dragon! Drink the black. Kill the dragon! Drink the black.

  “What are you doing?” Maryanne said, depositing a swift kick in the ogre’s posterior. “Keep moving! I’ve got one shock arrow left and it will be a few seconds before Chester brings any back.”

  “Th-the beast!” Fist said, twisting and pointing his mace at it.

  “Yeah, that thing’s weird.” Maryanne said, tugging at his collar. “It’s like a huge gorilla with cat feet. Let’s go before it sees us.”

  “No!” Fist said blinking his eyes. The images faded away, but the thoughts were still there. Drink the black. Kill the dragon!

  Fist stood again and looked up the hillside to the left. There it was, just like in his dream. A boulder, fifteen feet high and just as wide with a flat top. “There!” he said and stumbled towards it.

  “What the hell’re you-? Blast it!” Maryanne said and chased after him, firing two regular arrows along the way.

  Descending the hillside was a ten-foot-tall female giant. Its lips were rotting away, its teeth full of larvae. Maryanne’s arrows sprouted from its knees, locking the joints. The giantess jerked and tumbled forward, rolling down the hill and taking several shambling dead down with her.

  Fist reached the boulder. “Come on! Climb up!”

  “Why? That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard!” she said. “We’ll just get surrounded!”

  “We’re supposed to go up there,” the ogre said. He began climbing up, trying to ignore his splitting headache and sort out the rush of foreign thoughts in his mind. “It’s from my dream!”

  Kill the dragon. Drink the black. No! KILL THE DRAGON!

  “Your dreams are crap!” the gnome shouted, but climbed quickly, arriving on top before him and reaching down to help him up. “Now what?”

  Fist stood and looked back down at the angry beast below. “I think I need to help him.”

  “That thing?” she said in disbelief. Some of the corpses had arrived at the base of the boulder. They were reaching upwards, their mouths open in silent hunger.

  “It’s not a thing. It’s a him,” Fist said. He set down his mace and shield and grasped his head. “His name’s . . . Rufus. I think he’s a rogue horse.”

 

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