The Screaming Skull Read online

  For a moment, I couldn’t figure out where Amabored was pointing. Then I saw them, coming down the broad dirt avenue that passed through the village toward the gate: the last cattle drive of the season. Somewhere near 5,000 head of cattle, herded between several dozen mounted cowboys armed with short swords and crossbows slung at their backs. Both cattle and horses shuffled wearily, kicking up immense clouds of dust as a starving mob gathered on either side of the avenue to cast ravenous gazes upon the mooing slabs of meat. Some of them were ready to skip the cattle and start straight in on the cowboys.

  Somewhere nearby, we hoped, Barlan had gathered the children together. As the herd drew near the city wall, the full thirty-foot height of the Chimera Gate began to swing open. Redhauke Guards lined the walls and stood at the gate entrance, ready to let in the herd but kill anything else that dared to pass through.

  I tried to piece it together. Unconscious wizard plus a massive herd of cattle plus us equaled—what? There was no time for questions, however, as Amabored motioned for us to hoist up the cage again.

  “Head for the rear of the herd!” Amabored called. As we cut an arc around the rumbling beasts, we saw that a squad of Bully Boyz had rallied and were now bearing down on us. Lithaine resumed his perch on the cage and let fly, and two more half-imps went tumbling with feathered shafts piercing their vitals. Then the elf’s bowstring snapped. His bow sailed from his hands.

  “Fucking hell—I rolled a one!” Lithaine called to us. “Keep going!” With a snarling stream of elvish invective, he drew his sword, launched himself from the cage, and flew crashing into the hellspawn.

  Amabored cast an admiring look over his shoulder. “He may be a poncy magic-boy,” he called back, “but he has style!”

  25

  That was the last we saw of Lithaine. Hauling the cage around shacks, through crowds of peasants, and over campfires, we soon found ourselves standing in the middle of the road directly behind the herd. Cow shit lay everywhere, the smell of which filled my wheezing nose as we dropped the cage again.

  Amabored wasted no time. He stepped up to the cage, lifted his loincloth, and started pissing on the wizard’s head. If you’ve never been pissed on, then you’re lucky. It’s not pleasant—unless that’s what you’re into. After a second or two of this golden shower, Redulfo started. He rolled upright.

  “All right, all right, ALL RIGHT!” he cried.

  “You’re on,” Amabored told the wizard as he lowered his loincloth. He produced a small hickory wand from his belt pack and tossed it into the cage. “Check your target at twelve o’clock.”

  Redulfo fumbled for his glasses with piss still dripping from his nose. He found them, quickly assessed the situation, and reached for the wand.

  “Stand back,” the wizard told us, his voice barely audible over the mooing din of the cattle. “I’m not sure what this thing will do.”

  He aimed the wand out of the cage and directly at the tail end of the shuffling herd. “Anál nathrach, orth’ bháis’s bethad, do chél dénmha!” he chanted.

  There came a brief flurry of flute-like notes from the wand, and then its business-end exploded. A house-sized mushroom cloud of napalm condensed out of the atmosphere, balled itself up into a miniature sun, and surged forth with a massive sonic boom. Every man-jack within fifty yards hit the deck. The concussion threw Amabored and me back a good twenty feet. The recoil flung Redulfo through the now-demolished cage and halfway down the road.

  The fireball exploded at the rear of the herd. Several hundred cattle were incinerated instantly. Several hundred more were now aflame, their hides burning lustily. A few dozen of the cowboys found themselves on fire, and they leaped from their flaming horses to roll screaming in the dirt. A score or more of the surrounding huts were now also ablaze. The sky was a roiling chaos of smoke, cinders, and flame.

  Redulfo’s fireball marked the first time I had witnessed truly badass sorcery. It would eventually become old hat. I’ve seen magic that would turn your hair white, your brain into banana puree, and your balls into raisins. But, man, that first time really sticks with you. Good or Evil, Lawful or Chaotic—no matter your alignment, once you get a taste of that kind of power, you want to get your hands on it. Later, I learned that Redulfo’s wand, which he claimed to have purchased at a pawnshop on the Were Coast, held a Level Twelve fireball—and since he was only a First-Level mage, he was in violation of Wizard Guild policies and subject to summary expulsion. Redulfo later told us that the wand shouldn’t have worked for him at all, although he didn’t seem too curious as to why. The recoil flung him so far away that no witnesses could ever pin it on him.

  And the cattle—Jesus. I’ve been in the middle of a few massive earthquakes, but never again would I feel the earth move with anything like the force of those 20,000-odd hooves beating the ground away from that fireball. The terrible trembling tossed us around on the road like scallions sautéing in a frying pan. Five thousand head of cattle, terrified beyond all bovine reason, thundered with a brain-hammering roar toward their only means of escape—through the Chimera Gate’s long tunnel and into the city. Like the wrath of the Hebrew God, the herd demolished everything in its path: carts, huts, barns, wagons. Had Odin himself descended from Valhalla and taken a massive steaming dump outside the gate, he could have done no more damage. None of us dared contemplate the human cost.

  Amabored and I eventually found our feet. Unconscious again, Redulfo lay in a heap. A singed, maddened horse raced toward us up the road, and Amabored made a flailing leap for the saddle. He caught the stirrups and was dragged a good ten yards before he managed to swing up onto the animal’s back. He yanked back hard on the reins and dug in the bit. The horse screamed and reared until the barbarian fought the beast to a tense standoff on the road.

  “Grab the wizard!” Amabored called to me.

  I ran for the supine Redulfo, slung him over my shoulder like a sack of laundry, and then loped toward Amabored, who rode to meet me. He hauled the wizard up and over the saddle. Then something caught his eye, and he pointed to the rear of the herd.

  Following his gaze, I saw Lithaine balancing atop a racing cow in the middle of the thundering herd, his arms extended as if surfing the breaks around Hydra Rock. We watched him until the herd reached the open Chimera Gate. The surging tsunami of cow flesh sent the thirty-foot-high gate doors spinning like dinner plates from their massive hinges, which twisted free from their stone moorings as brick and mortar shrapnel exploded onto the street. The elf was lost in the churning maelstrom of dust and the hailstorm of debris. The herd had entered the city. The gods help those inside, I thought.

  Amabored threw back his head and laughed. “I love it when a plan comes together!” He motioned for me to get on the horse. “Let’s get inside.”

  I shook my head. “We need to make sure Barlan gets those kids inside.”

  Amabored considered this, then nodded. “Fair enough. You find the farmer. I’ll stay near the gate and take care of any trouble coming from the other side.”

  The barbarian rammed his heels into the horse’s flanks. The horse leaped forward and galloped into the swirling hurricane of dust. Through the choking clouds, I could see the remains of the Chimera Gate yawning open. Turning away from my salvation, I ran back down the road to find Barlan.

  I found a long, irregular column made up of carts, wagons, and wheelbarrows, most pulled by men but for a few oxen and mules, and upon all of which were perched terrified children clutching each other. Pulling on handles and hauling at reigns, their parents and guardians were dragging the makeshift transports forward toward the ruined gate. When I saw that Barlan had roped every piece of transportation together in one long daisy chain, I silently toasted him—for a peasant, he was surprisingly competent.

  Barlan had posted himself at the head of the column, where he led a single emaciated ox lashed to a hay wagon burgeoning with swaying children. He waved to me—and then an arrow slammed into his chest, fired by one of the guards top
ping the Shield Wall battlements. He fell to his knees. More arrows dropped around him, narrowly missing the kids. I ran to him.

  “Never mind me!” Barlan croaked, blood spurting from his lips. “Get them inside before any more die!”

  I could do no less. Expecting an arrow in my heart at any moment, I lifted the heavy wooden yoke from the ox and hoisted it onto my shoulders. Summoning every ounce of strength the girdle offered, I hauled on the yoke. My muscles burning, my lungs swelling like the bellows of an iron forge, I hauled the caravan forward. Stone giant strength—if this was how strong they were, I hoped never to meet one.

  Arrows rained down, but the dust was so thick that the marksmen atop the Shield Wall battlements couldn’t make out any clear targets. I trudged forward, dragging the caravan behind me. When at last the dust cleared a bit, I finally saw it: the ruined Chimera gate yawning wide open to reveal the city of my dreams. Even better, Lithaine stood atop a pile of charred cow carcasses firing arrows up at the battlements. With his infrared elf-o-vision, the dust presented no hindrance to his aim.

  The elf’s cover fire drove off the few remaining guards, and I was finally able to drag the caravan unmolested through the blood-streaked debris, around the scores of cow carcasses, and into the city. Since my father had banished me from his kingdom, a full four months had passed: four months of malnutrition, dysentery, and despair; four months of hardscrabble survival, with only the vague promise of better times to come. Now, my every hope for the future was embodied by the sight of those wide-open gates beckoning me within. Tears stung my eyes—from the dust or from relief, I couldn’t say. I felt as if I were returning to the womb.

  So I entered the Free City of Redhauke.

  BOOK II

  Let Me Tell You About My Prostate

  1

  Let me tell you about my prostate. Until age forty or so, I never thought about this infernal organ. Why would I? I’m still unsure of exactly what it is or why I have one; apparently, it’s the organ that connects your dick to your balls. You never notice it until it goes bad. Once it does so, you’re hard-pressed to think of anything but the ostrich egg-sized piece of hot lead shoved up your asshole, the urge to piss every fifteen minutes, and the humiliation you feel at the pathetic dribbling that passes for said urination. A prostate infection is a minor fuck you from the gods: not sexy enough to garner any sympathy from friends, but painful enough to fuck with your mood, your job performance, and your sex life. In the eyes of your mates, you become a pathetic whining asshole, and you catch glimpses of their secret desire to cut you loose. So does the herd range ahead of the lame.

  And don’t even think about getting cured. Wizards have crafted potions, unguents, and salves for me. Clerics have blessed my hindquarters. Apothecaries have shoved their arms, up to their elbows, into my rectum. Nothing has worked. After a trip to the healer, I feel like a prison bitch. Imagine the inner life of a man who spends his days looking up assholes for a living. As the man once said, proctology isn’t a science; it’s a calling.

  2

  I bring up my prostate for two reasons. The first is that this swollen organ contributes to my current malaise. I have become a brooding, inconsolable, immovable monarch; ass glued to his throne, powerless before his kingdom, impotent before his woman. My albatross isn’t hanging around my neck—it’s shoved up my colon. My asshole is swollen and sore. My balls feel like they’re being squeezed in a vice. Fuck it—I’ll I just sit here until I fall over dead, or the Seven destroy the Woerth. Either outcome is all right with me.

  My prostate also reminds me of how we finally killed Redulfo the second time, after he had returned to Woerth in the form of a fully mature black dragon. Poor bastard died not once, but twice, and both times he was fucked over by his friends. So what if the Bad Brain turned him Lawful Evil, and he conspired with the Crimson Hand to kill us all and give the Woerth over to the Violet Queen? Every friendship has its ups and downs.

  This was after Lithaine began to wield Starfall, after the Siege of Helene, and after Jo Ki-Rin had warned us that defeating Koschei the Deathless would destroy our fellowship and send at least one of us to his death. We ignored all the warning signs. All we knew was that we needed the Bad Brain to complete our Quest—and since said brain currently resided inside Redulfo’s dragon skull, we were prepared to slaughter anything that stood in the way of us performing a craniotomy on our unfortunate friend. We were all around Tenth-Level adventurers at the time—badasses, but still vulnerable to something with a lot of hit points and special abilities. Like a black dragon.

  Redulfo had set up shop in the former digs of Gygax and Rigsby: the Valley of Sorcerers, a highly defensible piece of real estate in the Shadow Mountains accessible only by a treacherous pass guarded by cloud giants, bugbears, and spiders big enough to eat a Buick. The Quest reassembled, we set out into the Valley—Amabored, Lithaine, James, Malcolm, Wilberd, and me—to send the wizard once again to his reward. We were all fighters, rangers, and paladins, with only Malcolm’s few spells to combat Redulfo’s sorcery, and only the monk to heal our wounds. We could kill anything that moved, but we were at a serious disadvantage against a wizard. So what? We were still young and headstrong, and we didn’t know from death.

  Our first night in the Shadow Pass, we ran into trouble. Weather was setting in; it was October, and the snow had already begun to fall on the lower mountain peaks. As we scaled the pass, we left the deciduous forests behind, and began to encounter the hardier whatever-bushes and don’t-know-what-they’re-called trees that meant we were entering bugbear country. Soon enough, the bugbears ambushed us.

  It happened just after the pass narrowed into a steep-walled gorge. The bugbears had scouted us from the top of a superior position until we passed one of their preconstructed traps. With his handy elf-o-vision, Lithaine was the first to spot the scout.

  “Two o’clock,” Lithaine said. “Behind the boulder. You know what that means.”

  “It means hit the fucking dirt!” cried Amabored. Then the avalanche struck.

  3

  For barely sentient half-imp, half-bear man-eaters, bugbears were clever. They had disguised the trap as a tree-lined rock crown on either side of the gorge. When we came within range, their scout gave a rumbling bellow that echoed from the canyon walls. His fellows kicked out the supporting logs, and the entire top of the gorge collapsed in a thundering avalanche of rock and wood.

  We bolted for cover. The raven-haired, elven paladin Malcolm thrust his +4 Force Blade into the air and let loose with a war cry. The sword burst into cold white flame.

  “To me!” He cried, as the gorge collapsed around us. Malcolm took heroism seriously—unlike the rest of us, he wasn’t just in it for the money. As children seeking their mother’s skirt, we ran to him. A thunderclap rolled as the air around Malcolm hardened into a Force Wall extending in a wide hemisphere around the blade. We all reached the interior of the force field safely—all but James, that is, who only managed to get three-quarters of his body inside before the avalanche struck. He screamed as the collapsing rock crushed his left leg into powdered jelly.

  There was no time to help him. Malcolm’s force field dissipated, and we braced for what we knew was next. Down the new tumble of rock, concealed by the immense cloud of choking dust, the bugbears came. Not a few dozen, either; they came by the score. From somewhere off in the dust-shrouded distance, I heard Amabored’s battle cry:

  “COOOOORRRRNNN-HOLE!!!”

  The first bugbear hit me with the force of a charging rhino. Bugbears are big fucking beasts that wear whatever scraps of armor they can find. You aim for the neck or the gut, and you hope for the best. I had long ago given up swords for my trusty battle-axe; what the axe lacked in speed, it more than made up in smiting ability. I simply found a defensible position to protect my back, and I let them come. Attacking me was like raping a buzz saw.

  Spearing the bugbear in the belly with the spike-end of my axe-haft, I hoisted its stinking, flea-ridden c
arcass over my head. Behind it came a dozen more. To my left, Lithaine pumped arrows into the mob, then switched deftly to Starfall as they closed within claw-and-fang range. To my right, Amabored and Malcolm stood backs together, severing limbs and cleaving skulls. Behind me, Wilberd covered my back with his whirling staff and unicorn horn.

  It doesn’t get any better than that.

  After an hour of battle, the remaining dozen or so bugbears ran squealing for the hills. We were all drenched in blood. Amabored had taken a slashing wound across his chest, while Wilberd had been tossed down a sliding fall of jagged rocks. The rest of us emerged from the fracas with only minor claw marks, scrapes, and bite wounds. Wilberd administered a few Cure Wounds blessings and rationed a few vials of Health potions to those who took the worst of it. We managed to heal James’s leg—he’d walk again, eventually—but he wasn’t going anywhere now.

  As we gathered to smoke the ceremonial pipeweed victory bowl, Amabored scowled into the middle distance.

  “That was too coordinated an assault for bugbears,” he said. “They had help.”

  “Redulfo must know we’re coming,” I said.

  “Then this is just the first of it,” said Malcolm. “Gird your loins, gents.”

  Lithaine turned a semicircle and extended a one-finger salute. Since losing his kingdom, his already-short fuse had burned down to a black nub. “We’re on our way, Redulfo! You hear me, you fat fucking lizard? We’re coming!”

  “I’ll drink to that,” I said, reaching for my flask.

  4

  I miss that son-of-a-bitch Redulfo. In those first desperate days inside the walls of Redhauke, I was drawn to both his unflappable demeanor and his unshakeable pessimism. Amabored was larger than life, craving chaos the way some men crave women or drink. Lithaine existed at a continuous slow boil. Redulfo, meanwhile, could stare down Lord Eckberd himself and dismiss him with a single, exquisitely-timed retort laden with withering sarcasm. He became a badass wizard, and one of my truest comrades—but former comrades make the most implacable foes.