So Toede, finding a spot to cross the stream, turned right this time. The land was flatter on the far side of the creek and rose only slightly to a low series of hillocks and ridges, dotted by russet maples and divided by other small streams feeding the swamp. A couple times Toede had to double back as the ground ahead became marshy and impassible.
The journey was harder than Toede had expected, and the exertion began to wear on him. His thighs complained brutally. Add to that the regular complaints his empty stomach now made, and Lord Toede was soon thinking less of a sainted position in the annals of men than of a soft bed and hot gooseflesh suspended over a fire. Indeed, his last rest had been in the cottage before reaching Flotsam, and his last "meal" that foul-tasting concoction that cured his shattered shoulder.
Reflexively he touched the once-wounded shoulder. While the flesh was still puckered in a small scar where the bolt hadWruck him, he was otherwise uninjured. Indeed, it was the only part of his body that was not complaining of the unjust strain being placed on it.
Toede could scavenge as well as the best of his kind, but the bogs seemed to be notably free of any edible wildlife beyond a few worms and squidge-beetles that scurried away from overturned rocks. He considered them for a few moments, then moved on. He recognized some raspberry bushes, but they had already turned a grayish tan and were festooned with dead leaves. So much for previous experience coming in handy.
Finally, after the third small hillock and the third marsh directly behind it, Toede flung himself on a relatively dry patch of ground and surrendered to exhaustion. The squidge-beetles were starting to look good. He toyed for a moment with the idea of starving himself to death, imagining himself appearing before the two spirits as big as seas and mountains and (rightfully) claiming that he had done no harm to anyone during his last sojourn on Ansa-lon, so what could be more noble than that?
Toede's stomach replied with a low whine. The hobgoblin patted it with a fleshy hand. "Beetles it is, then," he muttered.
Then he heard another whine, one that did not come from any part of his own pain-wracked anatomy.
Toede cocked his head. It was there to his right, down the hillock's slope, issuing from a particularly brushy-looking patch of marsh. It was a sharp repetition of high-pitched squeals. Some sort of animal in pain.
Toede's mind immediately leaped to the thought of some giant suckling pig whose entire purpose in life was to wander into this dismal swamp and into some dire predicament. Say, perhaps, into the jaws of a trap laid several months ago by a forgetful kender poacher, a trap baited with pig-attracting turnips. And now, on its last legs, said hog was crying for someone, anyone, to put it out of its misery.
Toede set off in the direction of the whining, ignoring the reflection that if he always expected the best, he would without a doubt always be disappointed. As it was, Toede was bound to be disappointed, first because it took a short while to locate the source of the sound, and second by the nature of the sound itself.
It was a dog, or something that looked like a dog, mired in the bog. The poor creature was trapped in the viscous and unavoidable draw of an oily patch of quickmud. The swamp was full of such patches, Toede imagined, where the water contained enough dirt and other debris to look like solid ground, yet was slippery enough to become a mini-quagmire.
The dog-thing was trapped, its gold-yellow head and muzzle straining to remain above the water line. Mud caked its fur up to the jawline, and Toede could see that it was in the last throes of its struggle. The dog looked like one of the kender's mastiffs, with a few exceptions accountable to differences in breed. The nose was more pointed, like that of a weasel. The ears, set farther back on the head, were triangular and upright. The neck (what was showing) was significantly muscular and hunched.
And the look in its eyes was the dumbest-dog-look Toede had ever seen, exceeding even the stupidest of his hunting hounds. The eyes regarded Toede with a look halfway between pleading (please get me out), unadulterated hatred (how dare you not drown with me), and mild pleasure (did you bring any food?). Even as it regarded him, the pathetic dog-thing ceased to struggle, and sank a half inch farther into the muck.
Toede cursed. Not because of the cruelty of fate that apparently led the animal to its near demise. And not because Toede expected better food on the hoof.
Toede cursed because the creature was about fifteen feet out in a nearly circular pond of mud. Here was dinner, almost dead and ready to be served up, and it was out of his reach!
The mud-hole was surrounded by willows and other bushy trees, a few of which had sufficient overhang for a normal male hobgoblin to reach the animal. Unfortunately, Toede was much less than a normal male (in the height department, at least) and would still be unable to reach and grasp, much less haul up, a struggling animal.
Toede wracked his brains while the dog whined at him. "I'm thinking," he snarled, as if the dog would immediately understand and die quietly rather than disturb him. The dog whined again.
"Simple. Got it," said Toede. "Don't go away," he told the dog, "I'll be right back." And Toede set off for higher, drier ground, returning a minute later with two pieces of wood, one a long, misshapened pole about five feet in length, the other a truncated club. He put the club next to the base of one of the younger willows and, holding the pole in one stubby mitt, began to shimmy up the sapling.
The willow bent as he ascended, a little at first, then more and more until its trunk was running parallel to the surface of the mud. Toede was prepared to abandon his plan at the first sound of the tree cracking, but he had chosen well, for the sapling was supple enough to bend, but strong enough to hold his weight easily.
As he climbed, Toede talked to the dog in the same manner as he talked to his own hounds when coaxing them out of their dens for another hunt. "Okay, boy"-all dogs were "boy" to Toede, unless proved otherwise by bearing puppies-"I'm going to climb up here and steady myself. Then I'm going to take the pole, and you're going to take it with your mouth. Bite it. Then I'm going to drag you back to shore. Okay?" Toede silently added: And then I'm going to bash your skull in before you regain your strength. Part of his brain was already thinking of dog carcass roasting on an open fire.
Throughout all this the dog remained inert, no longer struggling and sinking. The creature's lower muzzle was only an inch above the muddy water, and it no longer whined, or for that matter, growled. It continued to regard Toede pathetically with its dumb-dog looks.
"Okay, I'm steady now," said Toede, locking his legs around the bending bole of the tree. "Now you're going to bite the stick. Bite the stick, boy. Come on, bite it." He whistled at the creature and clicked his tongue.
It was then that the dog did a very undoglike thing. A huge, muscular arm, its fur caked in muck, rose from the water by the creature's head and grasped firmly on Toede's stick, pulling hard on the makeshift pole Toede had lowered.
Toede panicked and immediately dropped the pole, trying to shimmy back down the willow sapling without unlocking his legs. But even as he dropped the pole, the giant undoglike creature reached out and grabbed a nearby branch of the Toede-bent willow, and slowly began hauling itself out of the water, moving hand-overhand toward the shore.
Toede shimmied backward even faster, in the process reducing the weight on the willow and helping the creature emerge that much faster. The doglike head and huge neck were mounted on a great humanoid body, with a broad, muscular chest. Its arms were each the diameter of Toede's paunch and another half-Toede for good measure. Toede's mind raced to think of creatures that matched its unusual appearance.