Crack! The resounding crash of wood striking bone broke the spell over the crowd. The elemental reeled from the blow, pinkish-clear blood seeping from a crack in the smooth carapace of its leg. The tribe roared in approval of Hakk's assault, and the chieftain launched another blow while the creature was still reeling. The gnoll ran straight at the fiend, his club pointed toward its skeletal chest like a battering ram driven against a city's gate.
Just before the wooden club drove home, the fiend twitted sideways and let the chieftain charge past. Long, icicle-like claws flashed, and suddenly the dirty white snow was splattered with red. Hakk wobbled and then dropped to his knees, his fingers clutching at his side in a futile attempt to stanch the flow of blood. The gnoll's massive chest rose and fell in desperate pants. He dropped his club and doggedly lurched to his feet, sword in hand.
The fiend seemed to be in no hurry. Mockingly it waggled its bloodstained claws, flicking little drops of blood over the onlookers. The gnolls shifted and wavered with uneasiness, but none made a move to intercede. Krote's hand, firm on Martine's shoulder, restrained her from fleeing.
"I'll kill you," Hakk croaked as he advanced, more cautiously now, having gained a new respect for his foe.
The naturally armored fiend responded with a trilling buzz that Martine imagined was laughter. It was a morbid and heartless humor that the fiend punctuated by clacking snaps of its gleaming jaw. "Come, then, and kill me," it intoned.
Hakk was not to be goaded so easily, and the two circled round each other. The tribe formed a ring surrounding the
duelists, the warriors at the front with their spears and swords held in readiness. Krote pushed Martine, whom he still held firmly, into the forefront. There the shaman fingered his charms and amulets, his lips moving silently. Martine wondered if it was a prayer and, if so, what the shaman was praying for.
All at once the fiend staggered as its wounded leg wobbled beneath it. One clawed hand dropped to the snow as it recovered its balance, and in that brief instant, Hakk sprang forward with a wild, howling rush.
In a blur of movement, the fiend struck, and Martine saw instantly that its apparent weakness had been a trap. As the chieftain's golden-furred body lunged beneath the fiend's intentionally clumsy sweep, Hakk overconfidently left his side exposed. Even as Hakk's sword flashed upward for the kill, the fiend's head lashed downward, striking faster than Martine could imagine. Hakk's strangled shriek mingled with a pulping crunch as the fiend's razorlike teeth clamped on the gnoll's neck. Elk-Slayer's thrust was never completed, with the nerves that linked thought to action severed. The pair plunged to the ground, and the air filled with a buzzing roar as the fiend tore at the spasmodically flailing gnoll like a terrier with a rat. Blood splattered the snow. The gnolls recoiled from the gruesome scene, widening the circle around the carnage.
The end came with painful slowness. Even though the jerking convulsions had long since stopped, the creature still huddled over the body, savagely gnawing at the gnoll's neck. The tribe was held frozen in shocked surprise, the first yips of fear radiating from the edges of the throng. Martine could only gaze helplessly in disbelief, suddenly terrified at how easy it would be to pick her out of the crowd. Warily she tried to edge backward, to put bodies between her and the fiend. The shaman noted her movement and seemed to nod conspiratorially. In any case, although he didn't let her slip free, the gnoll pulled her back a step into the crowd.
As if on a signal, howls rose from the foremost gnolls. The pain and fear behind their voices was unmistakable. At the dueling ground's center, amid the crimson-soaked snow, the fiend rose to its full height. Red streaked the ivory armor of its body, and blood glistened from its quivering, sharp chin. One bonelike arm reached over its head, and clutched in those claws was the severed head of Hakk Elk-Slayer, his dead eyes seeming to gaze out upon his tribe.
"Warm thingz!" the creature shrilled to the stunned gnols, whirling about to face them all. "I am your leader now. You are mg slavez!"
The gnolls wavered, caught between fear and their own traditions. Those closest to the shaman looked to him for guidance, but the Word-Maker had no answer.
As they hesitated, the fiend hurled the still warm head at the assembled warriors and sprang in a bounding hop upon the nearest gnoll. Seizing the terrified tribesman in its long claws, the fiend shrilled, "I am your master! Vreesar is your master!" Each claim was punctuated by a brutal shake.
"Y-Y-You… are… chieftain," the gnoll stammered. Gradually the chant was taken up by those nearby until it grew into a fear-stricken chorus of confirmation.
Vreesar flung the quivering gnoll aside with an easy toss and triumphantly turned to survey its new subjects. All at once it stopped and pushed its way through the rapidly parting sea of gnolls.
Martine suddenly felt the burning gaze of the fiend's eyes. Its foul voiced buzzed in her ears.
"Human, you are here! You must come to my new throne!"
Seven
A biting wind deadened Martine's limbs as she stood before the dais of the great Vreesar, new chieftain of the Burnt Fur. With its conquest, the fiend had taken possession of Elk-Slayer's lodge and quickly found the accommodations not to its liking. Heaping a miscellany of wood and baskets at the entrance, Vreesar sat poised on a throne made from a cradleboard laid between two stools. This crude dais was much more to the fiend's liking, since it was safely away from the scorching fire pit at the far end of the lodge. Elk-Slayer's furs and robes were banished, eagerly snapped up by the tribe members determined to gain something from the chaos. Instead of rich bearskins, the platform was coated with a heap of caked, dirty snow dug from the clearing. The door flap, formerly sealed with care against the hostile outdoors, was now pulled wide open to let the bitter breeze blow through.
No gnolls lounged half-naked in the steaming heat, as they had the night before. Those tribe members in the lodge huddled tightly together as far back from the entrance as they could, trying to capture the precious warmth of the smoldering fire pit.
It was a warmth the ranger did not feel from where she stood in the bare earth between Vreesar's throne and the clustered gnolls. Since the occupation of the lodge, Vreesar had kept her near its crude throne. No more than three paces behind her, Krote squatted, waiting for the new chieftain's words.
Atop the ice-encrusted dais, Vreesar gave no heed to the suffering of its subjects. The fiend was in no discomfort, clearly relishing the frozen winds that blasted through the open doorway. Martine suspected that it enjoyed more than just the cold, for it seemed to deliberately prolong every action as a means to torment all those assembled with the freezing cold.
"Where iz my tribute? Did your chieftain have nothing? You!" Vreesar hummed as it jabbed a finger at Krote. 'You wait and wait like an ennchi waiting to tear the hope out of a carrioned soul."
Martine shivered in cold fear. She did not know what an ennchi was, or a carrioned soul, but together they did not sound good.
Krote must have thought so, too, for his answer was long in coming. "This is Hakk's longhouse. What he owned is here." The shaman guestured to the spread of goods on the dirt floor in front of Vreesar. Standing just behind the array of items, Martine felt as if she were being presented as property, too.
The Harper held her breath as Vreesar languidly drifted one clawed foot over the fine of Hakk's goods, pausing to touch a peculiar stone that rested among the dented breastplates, bone necklaces, and wooden carvings. Martine worried about what one sharp tap of the fiend's toe might do to Jazrac's seal. The wizard had warned her, after all, that the