Baldur's Gate (10 page)

His broadsword was under the straw bed. He could get to it, but it would be obvious he was going for a weapon and would take time. If it was Montaron, Abdel had no doubt that the wily thief could stab him in the back before he could bring the sword to bear. Abdel was sleeping in his sweaty bliaut, his chain mail tunic under the bed next to his sword. A dagger could slide through cotton easily enough.

Abdel didn’t clench his fist, still not wanting to betray to the intruder that he was awake. Two more steps, Abdel figured. He counted them: one—two—and he was up. He swung his hand around behind him and spun on his rump, bringing his feet to the floor and standing as he sliced his left hand up, grabbed soft material with a lot of slack in it, then swung in with his right. He pulled the punch a little. He was trying to heed Jaheira’s advice. After he killed Mulahey she’d lectured him about something she called “interrogation,” which was some kind of new practice of asking questions of an enemy before killing him.

The punch connected with skin that was surprisingly soft. There was no scrape of stubble, and Abdel realized he’d hit a woman. He relaxed a little, and the woman pulled back, but he didn’t let go. He’d met women who could kill him as easily as any man. His eyes were starting to adjust to the light, and he could see the outline of the intruder’s face. Her jaw was strong, and her face wide and her nose— it was Jaheira.

“Abdel,” she whispered huskily, “don’t.”

“Jaheira?” he said, also whispering, though he hadn’t made a conscious decision to.

He let go of her, his hands suddenly starting to sweat. The fabric was silk, soft and expensive. He crossed on shaking knees to the little table in the corner and lit the rusted lamp that was the room’s only accessory. The room was bathed in an orange glow, and he could see Jaheira close the door, her back to him. She put a hand to her face and turned around slowly, not making eye contact. Abdel could see that her nose was bleeding.

“Jaheira,” he said, surprised by the gentle embarrassment in his voice. He cleared his throat and felt ridiculous.

“It’s all right,” she whispered. “I’m all right.”

“What are you doing here?”

She met his eyes then and looked at him as if she thought he ought to know the answer to that question.

“Khalid and I—” she started to say, then turned back to the door and mumbled, “I’m sorry. Go back to sleep.”

He watched her body slide under the silk nightgown, and the sight of it almost made him gasp. She slipped out the door, and he let her go. He blew out the lamp and went back to bed, but didn’t sleep.

Morning came damp and gray to the slowly dying town of Nashkel. The inn was busy even less than an hour after dawn. Guests were settling their accounts, removing their horses from the stable, and taking to the suddenly more crowded Coast Way. With mile upon mile of humanoid-infested wilderness to the east and the rocky, unforgiving surf of the Sword Coast on the other side of the Cloud Peaks to the west, there were only two choices for those not willing to tough it out in Nashkel. Some headed for Amn, hoping to find something there before they headed farther south to Tethyr and Calimshan. Others, like Abdel and his three companions, went north past Cragmyr Keep to Beregost. Abdel figured most of the refugees would continue north to Baldur’s Gate, maybe settling as far north as Waterdeep.

Abdel, tired of walking, had tried to find horses before the others woke but had no luck. There were horses for sale, but with the iron plague-fueled exodus only beginning, the going price for a decent steed was easily ten times what Abdel thought the four of them might muster. He had nothing left, though he thought about trading the acid he still hadn’t found a use for. Xan was penniless, didn’t even have a sword, and Abdel had no idea how much gold Jaheira and Khalid were carrying, but he couldn’t imagine it would be enough.

He returned to the inn on foot, already tired and weary of a road that now just seemed pointless. He saw Xan first, the elf was still limping a bit but was otherwise fit for the road. Abdel returned his new friend’s warm smile and asked, “The others?”

“Here,” Khalid said from behind him. Xan peered around Abdel’s hulking frame and a look of stern disapproval crossed his face. Abdel turned and there, both clad once more in their well-worn armor, were Khalid and Jaheira. The woman’s beautiful round face was marred by a purplish bruise, and there was a decided swelling to her otherwise strong nose. She’d washed, but there was still a trace of dried blood around one nostril.

Xan sighed and said to Abdel, “I cannot ride with a man who beats his woman.”

Abdel flushed, wondering how Xan could have known, then he was ashamed.

“Xan, no,” Jaheira said, her voice sounded as embarrassed as Abdel felt. “It’s not—”

“It is,” Xan said, his leaden gaze shifting to Khalid, “what it is. Isn’t that right, breed?”

Abdel shook his head and held up a hand. He’d heard half-elves called “breed” before and a fight always followed—always.

Khalid, though, actually smiled. “Easy, my friend, you’ve made a mistake.”

Xan stood straight and said, “I cannot ride with this Amnian half-breed.”

“Why are you riding with us anyway, elf?” Khalid shot back.

“That’s enough,” Jaheira said. “Xan, Khalid did not strike me. He never has, and he knows well enough not to try.”—the two shared a knowing glance—”My nose is as the rest of me—my own business.”

Xan heard her and understood as much as he was able. “As you wish,” he conceded. “We should ride.” “Actually,” Abdel said, “we’re walking.” “To Beregost?” the elf asked. “Are you mad? It’ll take a tenday!”

“A bit less maybe,” Khalid said, “but we may be able to—”

“No,” Abdel cut in, “we’re walking.” He looked at Jaheira and nodded, hoping the gesture would say, “good morning,” “I’m sorry,” and “why did you come into my room in the middle of the night in the first place?” all at once. From the look he got back from the woman, he figured it did.

“So we’re off,” she said, and they set off onto the northbound Coast Way.

“Why are you coming with us, anyway?” Abdel asked Xan as they fell into step behind Jaheira and Khalid. Abdel was hoping to fill an uncomfortable moment as the married couple whispered heatedly between themselves.

“This Tazok,” the elf answered, “this ogre… whoever he is, was keeping me in a cave, closed in like a veal calf, to work as slave labor for this Iron Throne of his. Why wouldn’t I come with you to help kill him?”

“I didn’t say I meant to kill him.”

Xan actually laughed at this. “As you wish, my friend, but—”

“Don’t tell me you care!” Jaheira shouted at Khalid, loudly, and practically ran ahead. Khalid paused, letting her go. The half-elf didn’t turn around, but the back of his neck blushed. When she’d passed him by a dozen paces or so he continued on behind her.

“Well,” Xan muttered so only Abdel could hear, “this is going to be an even longer walk than I thought.”

“Beregost,” Abdel said, nine days later, as they crossed into the dusty, crowded, vile-smelling town. “What a hole.”

“Indeed,” Xan agreed. “Precisely the sort of hole in which one might find an ogre hiring kobolds to sabotage an iron mine.”

Abdel returned the elf’s smile and said, “Two days, Xan, no more.”

“I understand, Abdel,” Xan replied. “It will take at least that long for me to find gold enough for a decent sword, longer maybe to find a sword worth that gold—human swords, to think…”

“And it will take us that long to find Tazok,” Jaheira added. She seemed sad, maybe even frightened that Abdel was taking leave of them, but she didn’t try to stop him.

“Don’t kill him,” Abdel told her, then turned his gaze to include the two men, “until I get back.”

The wide-bladed broadsword came out of Abdel’s back sheath with a metallic ring that echoed across the flat plains north of the Way of the Lion. He’d come to Gorion’s grave to finally return the corpse to Candlekeep where breath would once again be breathed into his father by the grace of Oghma, or where the old monk would lie in peace forever. What he found would have made him retch if it hadn’t made him so angry. Maybe anger wasn’t even the right word. He was angry—he hated, he was consumed with hate.

He’d expected to find Gorion’s holy symbol gone, even cursed himself for being so rash—so distraught—that he’d left it there in the first place. Instead he found the grave not merely desecrated, but completely exhumed. Gorion’s body was nowhere to be found. There was blood, strips of viscera that might have been flesh or tendon, and was that part of a ribcage in the hole there next to one of the ghouls?

Abdel’s mind went completely away, and he succumbed, as he’d done too many times in his life, to red, murderous fury. Any other man on the face of Toril might have at least hesitated before jumping into an open grave with two reeking, putrescent, flesh-gorged ghouls. Abdel not only didn’t hesitate but grew frustrated with the unhurried pull of gravity on the way down.

One of the ghouls let out a little girl’s shriek at the sight of this completely dedicated young man, nearly seven feet tall and rippling with muscle, practically flying at them with a huge broadsword swinging back then up and down then in.

One of the ghouls lost an arm. It went spiraling away and caught the lip of the grave, falling back in and was itself cut in half by another slash of Abdel’s blade. The sellsword let out an inhuman scream of rage and went at the rapidly back-stepping ghoul again. The blade ripped through the undead thing’s chest, and it screamed and flailed its blood-crusted claws at him. Abdel was aware of the stench of his father’s rotted flesh on the ghoul’s breath, and his scream became a shriek. The ghoul echoed the cry but with an edge of cowardice and panic not at all present in Abdel’s. The thing got in a lucky swipe with a claw, and Abdel’s left hand came off his sword and popped up, though the sellsword kept hold of his weapon with his right hand. The ghoul grabbed Abdel’s left wrist with speed born of mortal terror. This thing didn’t want to die again.

Abdel spun his sword through his fingertips, whirling it back behind him. He was too close, and he knew it. The ghoul brought his left hand to its mouth and bit down hard. Abdel could feel the pain and the cold of the bite, and he roared again in rage. He passed his blade in front of him hard and fast and opened the ghoul’s belly. One of Gorion’s eyes rolled out with the meat and guts, and Abdel screamed from hatred of these ghouls and horror at the sight of his dead father’s body parts. The ghoul went down without twitching, its twisted face serene and begging for some mercy it would never find in whatever hell it went back to.

Abdel’s muscles started to stiffen right away, and though it only took him a few seconds to climb out of the open grave, it seemed to take hours. The other ghoul had run off, and when Abdel’s eyes finally crested the muddy lip of the grave he could see its receding back. It was fleeing to the north, away from the road, toward a clump of trees that spread out in the direction of Gorion’s grave like a tendril thrown off from the distant Cloak Wood.

Abdel followed but each step was harder to place than the last and he stumbled twice, following still, working his cramping legs as best he could. Still blinded with rage he didn’t stop to ponder his sudden paralysis. He kept after the fleeing ghoul one painful step at time. He staggered again, stumbled, and fell, his chin hitting the coarse, wet grass hard. A fly or a bee buzzed in his ear, and he grunted at the effort of pulling his arm in and under him. He cut himself—not seriously—on his sword when he tried to stand, and the pain sent a burst of energy through him like he’d been splashed with cold water. He stood and, one step at a time, gave chase.

Abdel took no more than half a dozen steps before falling again. This time he had to stop and think. He couldn’t move at all.

He lay there for what seemed like forever, just wanting to get up and run after that hideous stinking piece of undead garbage that had done this unspeakable thing. The horrid creature had eaten Gorion’s body. Gorion—a man who had led a life in the service of Torm at the monastery of Candlekeep, raised an orphan child for no apparent reason other than that it was the right thing to do for that child—was now food for useless carrion eaters, two members of a leech species that should be eradicated—burned— from the face of Toril.

Abdel became a paralyzed mass of white-hot indignation, and he screamed loud enough to scare birds from trees miles away. A child in Candlekeep started to cry, and his parents didn’t know why. A whale swimming past the rocky edge of the Sword Coast took note of the sound and formed a rumbling response that gave the sahuagin communities pause. A god, then another glanced down, but it was by sheer force of will that Abdel made himself stand.

A scream—less forceful, more terrified, weaker—came from a thick clump of trees almost big enough to be called a forest several yards in front of him. Dragging his feet like they were booted in lead, Abdel followed the still echoing sound into the trees. It was dark in there, and he blinked his eyes trying to get them to adjust, but like his feet they reacted slowly. He was holding his sword—too tight, but he couldn’t relax. He doubted he could fight, but he might be able to kill, and the way he was feeling now, might be was good enough.

He tripped over something wet and heavy that smelled so bad he actually started to vomit before his face hit the ground. He made himself roll, and it took long enough that some of the meal he’d eaten that morning splashed back into his face. He grunted in anger and disgust, but not at himself. He’d tripped over the ghoul, and a wave of disappointment washed over him. The thing was already dead.

“I told them,” a strangely familiar, inhuman voice came from above. “I told them not to eat that one—not that one.”

“Korak,” Abdel grunted more than spoke the ghoul’s name. He managed to get to his feet again, and when he wiped the vomit from his face he could smell the ghoul and actually regretted wiping the vomit away.

“Korak, yes, that’s me,” the ghoul said. It was sitting in a tree above him, and Abdel brought his sword up, sure the ghoul was going to try to drop on him.