Expectation, Part I
By Joseph Duncan Carriker [Author Info]"Retreat!" cried the slight figure, its wide alarmed eyes flashing red in the deepest black of the cavern.
"What?" roared the squad leader, his mail-coifed head snapping up, distracting him even in his battle-madness from the kill he had just made. At his feet a serpentine thing died, writhing in its own oily fluids. Its brutal fangs -- fangs which had torn out the throats of several of his men -- were still clamped ineffectually on his lizard-hide boots.
But even this squad leader, who had much to lose from the stain of retreat to his reputation, nearly panicked as he saw the slithering things descending the walls, and coming over the rise where the cavern tunnel sloped downward into their nest. Clinging monstrously to floor, wall and ceiling by clawed hands, feet and prehensile tails, they came, seemingly unaware of their comrades’ deaths -- indeed they were heedless of their own deaths, unless their spines were completely severed. It was a weak point, perhaps the creatures’only one. Patrol Commander Riav’s men had paid with their lives to learn that lesson, a lesson which hardly made a difference now.
Perhaps that was what unnerved Lyallis the most -- their ability to continue fighting so long as their limbs were still attached, so long as their minds were still linked to their extremities. In the few short minutes of combat, he had seen a dozen impossibilities: snake men whose legs were hacked off dragging themselves forward, throats slashed by slim drow weapons, spewing oily blood which served only to blind the wielders of those weapons. It certainly didn’t seem to slow the monsters down.
Baerrav was strangled by one of the things after he spilled its guts and turned his back to attack another. Lyallis hoped to never again see anyone strangled by his attacker’s intestines, wielded like a garrote.
"Damn it, Raiv -- you said that the nest held only a dozen of them, at most!" shrieked Doazz’ir, the Patrol Commander’s younger brother and second in command. "You were wrong, and now we are all dead!"
"No," Raiv hissed at his brother, his eyes turned cold, purplish lips upturned in a sneer. "You are dead."
Raiv and Lyallis watched as Doazz’ir slid to the floor, his jet black face staring in disbelief at the sword that slid neatly into his solar plexus, its enchantment cleaving the armor and hard bone like so much gristle. Riav stepped back, cleaning and sheathing his sword in one practiced motion. Riav turned towards the advancing serpent men and gestured.
A globe of pitch-black nothingness enveloped the most concentrated area of the battle. The serpent things utilized heat to sense things, like pit vipers, so Lyallis knew that Raiv’s darkness wasn’t to halt them. Rather, it was a confusion ploy.
A confusion ploy that, Lyallis had to admit, worked. The battling drow, with small cries of disbelief became easy fodder for the serpents, unhindered by the darkness. The dark elves had been stunned by the enemy’s strength and perseverance, but now the sudden, unexpected blindness signaled their end. The cavern echoed with rasping, scraping sounds as the reptilian flood surged forward. Only the sounds of death and the dying followed.
Riav turned and sprinted for the exit to the cavern. Lyallis followed only seconds later, as did two of the others who made their escapes.
The sound of pursuing serpent men was unmistakable -- even if they could ignore the sounds of dry scales along dryer stone, the hissing, the sound of their in-drawn breaths, scenting for elusive heat, was unmistakable.
As the four drow rushed to reach the outcropping that served as the lone entrance to the serpent-man lair, the things burst out of the darkness, faster than any could have anticipated. They bore down on the retreating dark elves, moving in a precise, sinuous fashion. A scream echoed through the cavern as they captured one of the fleeing drow. Some slithered onward, past those who stopped to enjoy their vainly struggling catch.
With a cry, the three remaining black figures threw themselves off the cliff, activating powers of levitation, allowing their speed, height and trajectory to carry them to the other side of the massive cavern, over the fungus forest they had been forced to circumvent earlier.
The scouts had not recognized many of the strange growths therein, and so they elected to avoid them. Where earlier they had spent an additional two hours finding a path around the fungi, now they flew over it in seconds, trusting in natural abilities to carry them past.
Or, almost past. The long overhang, extended past the entrance, was their goal. Two of the drow, Riav and Ka’horyc, calculated their descents carefully, their agile hands catching the lip of the overhang at just the right moment to allow them to dispel their levitative powers and swing themselves into the deep dryness of the tunnel beyond.
Lyallis was not so fortunate. He miscalculated slightly and slammed the upper part of his body into the overhang itself. He reeled in the stunning shock but the soft sound of meaty thuds behind him quickly drew his attention. Crawling to his feet despite the painful inability to breathe, he felt slightly sick as he realized it was the serpent-things, surging inexorably over the lip of their cavern lair, not even allowing the crippling fall to stop them.
Ka’horyc’s voice, one that Lyallis knew well, broke the sudden fearful fist of fear around his heart.
"Down, you fool!"
Lyallis threw himself to the ground. It was moist with decaying fungus and dusty with the spores that would renew the cycle of growth and decay in the forest of fungus.
Unfortunately, he threw himself into a patch of strangely shaped fungi. He had only a glimpse of the strange greenish patterns on the head-sized leprous white globes before they exploded into a blinding patch of spores, choking and bitter.
He did not see the brilliant bolt of blue-white lightning which lit the cavern, flowing from the tensed hands of Ka’horyc, into the lithe form of the foremost serpent-thing. The lightning arced in little leaps from one serpent-thing to another, jolting each one, but not harming it.
The same could not be said for the target of the bolt. Its chest a smoking ruin, the corpse bore witness to the fact that these things were not invulnerable.
The creatures stopped, sensing the air with black forked tongues. Obviously they realized the danger too. Backing away, they fled the fungi caverns, scurrying up the slime-slick wall back to their lair where safety awaited them as did feast of drow corpses.
"Are you all right?" Ka’horyc asked.
Lyallis nodded his head, still gagging on the spores as he crawled out of the patch. Weakened, he climbed to his feet, accepting Ka’horyc’s proffered hand.
"Where in the Nine Hells was that spell when we needed it most, Ka’horyc?" demanded Riav,
grabbing and pinning the slight magus to the wall.
Shaking off the jolt and Riav, Ka’horyc narrowed his gaze at the squad leader, his red eyes liquid hate.
"Answer me, you bastard!"
"I am answerable only to the Collegium for my actions, Riav! If the Council has aught to say about my performance, they may bring it to the attention of my Masters there."
"Secondly," he snarled, shoving Riav further away, "I will thank you to not question the wisdom of my actions. Those caverns were impregnated with iron ore -- I would have fried each and every one of us had I cast that spell."
Riav narrowed his eyes and spun on his heel, stalking away into the darkness.
"He won’t thank you for that, you know," coughed Lyallis, hoarsely clearing his throat and nose of the bone-dry spores.
"No, of course not. But he knows I’m right. And he daren’t denounce me to the Council -- I’m the only one in the Collegium who will agree to work with him. He’s alienated everyone else with his brutality."
"He’s one of the House Orthodox," shrugged Lyallis.
"He’s a throwback to the days before the Concord, Lyallis, and he uses that brutal religion that he follows as an excuse to intimidate and brutalize everyone around him -- including you. I don’t know why you tolerate him, personally."
"He’s my cousin, Ka’horyc."
The magus snorted.
"You say that as though you had a duty to endure his brutality because of your kinship." He threw up his hands at Lyallis’ exasperated sigh, forestalling the explanation he had heard for most of his acquaintance with Lyallis.
"No, no. I know. You consider it a great honor to belong to one of the Great Houses of Old. Well, so be it, Lyallis. You’re made of sterner -- or maybe just more stubborn -- stuff than I."
"Still," said Lyallis, with a rueful glance behind him, at the yawning black cavern that had just fled, "he shouldn’t have killed Do’azzir." Ky’horyc placed a hand on his shoulder, in mute agreement.
"That sort of treachery was common in the days of old, Lyallis. Though I will bring it before the Council, I doubt that anyone will genuinely address it. Most Councilors take that stance that if the Old Houses wish to kill one another in their internal struggles, let them do so. Its only if their infighting affects the populace that they will take action.
"What I’m concerned about is the other soldiers. He left them there to die, Lyallis. Callously expended them in order to save his own hide. That is utterly against our Code and there will be a reckoning with the Council for that."
Ky’horyc looked at Lyallis’ downcast face. With a sigh, he reached over and laid a hand on his best friend’s shoulder. Lyallis eyes burned to Ky’horyc’s darkvision with unshed tears.
"You have no control over your family, Lyallis. You have to stop assuming the guilt for their actions. Mother knows, they don’t." Lyallis smiled his crooked gryn and nodded, looking away.
"Come on," said Ky’horyc. "Lets get back to the encampment. I have a report to write up."
The two slowly walked away quickly, trying desperately to ignore the faint screams of the dying.
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Copyright © 1999 by Joseph Duncan Carriker. This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, v.04 1998 or later (the latest version is presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/).
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