[Greyhawk 05] - Queen of the Demonweb Pits Read online

  GREYHAWK

  Queen of the

  Demonweb Pits

  Greyhawk - 05

  Paul Kidd

  (A Flandrel & Undead Scan v1.0)

  The Beginning…

  CY 583

  This time, it had all gone wrong.

  Deep in the heart of conquered territory, a resistance war raged. Harsh, pitiless, and savage, a war without rest, without honor, without glory. A war where small bands of men made the minions of Iuz pay for their deeds in blood.

  The hordes of Iuz had swept over villages, towns, and cities, obliterating those who fled from them. Men, women, children, and animals had been butchered, then raised as rotting, shambling legions of the damned. Iuz had stormed forward with his undead monsters, slaughtering everything in his path, but in the lands behind him, he had unknowingly left a cancer that gnawed at his heart.

  The roving bands of freedom fighters were good at slaughter. They had been formed from the hard, silent men of the wilds, the rangers who had failed to protect the borders and the sacred wilderness, the men who had been guardians but who had been helpless against the demon hordes. The armies of Iuz had come—demons and rotting corpses covered by vast clouds of carrion flies—leaving the once-fertile lands covered in slime and ash. The armies had moved on, and behind them a scattered handful of rangers rose to fight.

  They were few, and they were terrible. The homeless warriors tore into Iuz’s supply columns, slaughtered his couriers, and assassinated his scouts. Blades killed sentries in the night. Wells were poisoned and roads strewn with traps. Soon it took entire regiments to escort a single messenger, and supply columns were convoyed by legions of guards. Iuz stripped troops from the conquering armies to try to stamp out the enemies within, and still the killers struck. They fought endlessly, viciously, with infinite cunning and utterly without mercy. Leaving nothing but corpses in their wake, they mutilated even their own dead to render them useless to Iuz’s necromancers. They had failed to protect their own people—and now they paid for it with their suicidal struggle.

  The tide had finally turned against them. Iuz had abandoned his plans of conquest to hunt for the roving bands of freedom fighters. Half their numbers had died in a few short weeks. The rest fought with ten times the fury, morning, noon, and night.

  Iuz turned inward, pruning his conquering armies of men, and the humans, elves, and dwarves from the surrounding nations began to hammer the demons back, step by step. Iuz had lost the war. Exhausted, harried, and dying man by man, the freedom fighters continued to fight, knowing they had won. They had paid their debt.

  These were the last days of the war, a time when a man could lay low and know that the horror soon would pass. But for some, the fight and slaughter had been sweet. There was a power that came with action, an intensity that became a drug, intoxicating and addictive.

  Of all the war band leaders, the most savage, the most daring, was Recca—swordmaster and last lord of the grass elves. He had taught the art of the blade for three hundred years, taking only the most dedicated, most cunning, and most perfect students. His blade struck faster than thought, and he moved through a fight as if it were a dance. His sword, jet black with a wolf skull pommel, was sharp enough to carve a war-horse in two.

  As Iuz’s war ground to an end, Recca had eleven followers remaining—rangers and battle-mages hardened in this thankless war. He also had a single student, an apprentice as unlike him as iron was to silk: brooding, massive, humorless, a man who no longer had a name.

  Recca was charismatic, a cavalier, dapper and sly, cunning and adored. He had taken on this apprentice because the boy looked like he had the devotion to listen and learn. Recca had taught the boy to fight, to track, to hunt, and above all to think. They had been companions through many long, silent missions—teacher and student, leader and learner. The apprentice’s devotion was based on a strange sense of honor that he cherished deep inside his soul. Recca despaired of ever teaching the boy proper practicality.

  Master and apprentice lay in the heather, side by side. Recca’s armor, though bearing scrapes and scratches from many battles, still had a worn flamboyance about it, and his steel helmet was fashioned like a screaming eagle. Next to his master, the apprentice was in gear rugged, tested, and unadorned. Where Recca was thin and rakishly handsome with amber eyes and golden hair as soft as silk, his apprentice, almost invisible in the weeds beside him, was huge and unappealing. When they’d first met, Recca had thought the boy too big and too powerful to move in stealth, yet the human was always somehow silent as a cat. No, not a cat, a bear—dark, terrifying, and immense.

  The war had taught the boy failure, hate, and emptiness. He had a stark brilliance with the sword, which Recca found annoying. No flamboyance, no style—merely a brutal, unforgiving efficiency. Recca’s reputation had been founded on his brilliance, his merciless speed, and his raffish charisma. But in dark times, men looked to tireless, efficient men for comfort. Men like Recca’s apprentice.

  With the turning of the war, decent targets had become fewer and fewer. The only troops of Iuz to be seen were armies in retreat, and the small band of freedom fighters could do little but harry their scouts.

  But here, all of a sudden, a mistake had been made. A general was bringing troops to build field fortifications. Besides the general, there would be officers and officials—and they were guarded only by shambling, rotting zombies armed with shovels and stakes. There were no abyssal bats, no demons. A general of Iuz would fall, the greatest coup achieved by any band through the entire war. Recca’s reputation would be immortalized.

  The war was ending, and it was time to look to the future. A new generation would be searching for heroes—for kings. As the hero of the resistance, Recca’s name would ring upon a hundred thousand tongues….

  Recca thought the new attack would be easy, but his apprentice failed to agree. The big human studied the scattered parties of zombies digging ditches and hauling rocks. He looked at the general’s tents and the few guards set on hills and ridgelines, and he drew back into cover.

  “Withdraw.” His voice was bass—quiet, grim, definite. “It’s a trap.”

  The elf rolled to look at his apprentice and raised one brow. “And we know this how?”

  “It smells wrong.”

  “What? Have you become part man, part hell hound?” Recca slid an amused sidewise glance at his apprentice. “The problem with humans is that they cannot accept being clever! There is a superiority that comes with intelligence and training. I have trained you superbly. Every movement you make is properly honed.” Recca smiled. “Remember—evil may have cunning, but it never has wit or style.”

  If the apprentice had been a bear, he would have growled. The big man made to speak, but Recca had already slithered back down from the ridge to give orders to his men.

  They collected there under cover—painted men, camouflaged and almost invisible. Eleven of them sat and listened, trusting their leader to give shape to their lives. Recca looked about the empty wilderness and filled his mind with images of his victory—his glory.

  “They’re coming! More Iuz vermin to kill! A general, and without an escort in sight!” The elven warlord infected his men with his confidence. “We’ll slaughter a general!”

  An Iuz general. The only demonic warlord to be slain in this war, and his head would fall to Recca! Recca parted the weeds and showed his men his plan for victory.

  “They’re fortifying this valley. That means their army is coming, so we must work fast.” Recca looked the scene over with all the care of a true artist at work. “They’ll survey this ridge. This is the obvious
point to use as the crest of their line. So we hide, and when the general comes, we fight. I want you all to attack the workers in one group. This will draw attention to your position. I will then slay their general. We flee down the gully, here into the trees, so lay traps to kill the pursuit—usual mix. Rendezvous at broken pine an hour after dusk.” He slapped his men on the shoulders and bade them go. “Good hunting!”

  The apprentice did not leave. He hovered, huge and unsmiling, beside his teacher. He never smiled, never laughed, and never tired. His sword jutted through his belt, always poised for a lightning-draw.

  “I will cover your back, Master Recca.”

  “I do not need you.” The elf rested one hand languidly on his sword—the black sword of the swordmaster of the elves. “My blade and I have work to do.”

  The apprentice was unmoved. “Then I will make sure you are free to do it.”

  The apprentice led the way into the best possible cover—not the obvious place to hide, it was a place in which only a ranger could disappear. He used his sword to slit a thin carpet of the dead, dry grass, and he slid beneath it, disappearing totally from view. Unwilling to follow a mere student’s lead, Recca stood proud and alone on the hilltop until prudence dictated that he hide at last.

  Soon, shambling footfalls sounded on the turf. The undead servants came to build their master’s wall. With them came their overlords—a general, his scribes, and advisors—all feeling perfectly safe so far behind their lines. Soon the sounds of the attack came—rangers’ war cries and the sounds of spells. Recca saw his target standing and staring at the commotion. The elf rose in silence, sliding forward to strike from behind—

  And then everything went wrong.

  Eleven of Recca’s men engaged the undead in battle, and the air rang to the sound of piercing screams. Shambling, rotting corpses on the hillside split open as shapes inside the dead flesh exploded into the air. The zombies burst and took shape as filth-spattered, howling monsters with dead grey skin, fangs, and claws. Carnivorous and mad with rage, they flung themselves on the freedom fighters, fighting in a frenzy of speed.

  Wights!

  Recca swiped with his sword, but his target was merely an illusion—a spell sent by an enemy that mocked him. From within the enemy tents, more shapes exploded into the sky—abyssal bats and huge rotting demons, skull-headed and spewing acid as they flew. A blast of fluid ploughed through Recca’s men, turning three into skeletons and scattering the others.

  A laughing toadlike demon lurched up the hillside toward Recca. The huge demon was covered in pustules and bristled with fangs. It struck sparks from the boulders with its claws. Towering over the elf, the demon leaped and capered on the hill, bellowing in lust and glee.

  As the monster drew near, three of the wights attacked Recca. He spun past one, cut, spun, cut again. The sole surviving monster threw itself at him. Recca ran and jumped, twirling like an acrobat. He landed behind his prey, lanced backward with his sword, and felt it strike home. He jerked his blade free, turned, and decapitated his enemy in a single blinding stroke.

  Behind him, he heard a blade striking with incredible speed—once, twice, thrice—strokes that hit home with massive force. Recca saw his apprentice standing, smeared with soil and dust. Two wights lay dead at his feet, each one almost sheared in two. Seeing the abyssal bats and wights charging into the other men, Recca turned and lunged toward the valley with its gully and its traps.

  “Retreat!” Recca bellowed. “Now!”

  Recca ran. He sped as only a grass elf could—the swiftest runners of the Flanaess. Amongst thick brush and boulders too thick for the titanic bats to penetrate, Recca ducked past traps, reached safety, and then looked back up the hill.

  His apprentice had obeyed him, running with the heavy, lumbering stride of a big man. He reached the boulders, turned, and saw his comrades fighting not far away. There were now only five survivors, but they were making for the gully, and the enemy had left themselves open to attack. The apprentice flicked an eye over the fight, then moved forward.

  “Master, I’ll go left. You can hit from behind once they see me charge.”

  Recca looked at the fight and sheathed his blade. “No.”

  His apprentice stared, his eyes searching Recca for an answer, unable to comprehend. “Why?”

  Honor! Men like Recca and his marauding rangers could not afford the luxury of honor. Survival was a practical art, and only survivors returned to fight and kill and win. Recca raked his apprentice with a glance that despaired of the human’s petty intellect.

  “You suffer from an overdeveloped sense of justice.”

  “We can save them!”

  “We can’t save them!” Recca shoved his apprentice onward. “We’ve lost, so we go while we still can, and we live to avenge them!”

  The apprentice stared, shocked and lost. “They did what you asked them to!”

  “Because they were sworn to!” Recca’s voice rose in anger at his student looming over him in the gully. “People are tools! You leave them when you’re done with them!”

  Recca turned to go. His student watched him leave, turned… then charged.

  He was young, but he had a violence in him that could detonate mountains. The big man burst through the weeds and ploughed his sword through an abyssal bat, cleaving off its wing. The bat screamed and spurted out a column of acid. The apprentice dived and rolled, and the acid missed him, blasting a second bat off its feet. The huge man lifted a hand, and a spell made grass burst into life and grapple a bat to the ground. He stabbed down with his sword in one swift blow—and two bats were dead and down.

  The other rangers fled, fighting their way back to the gully. Wights sprang like javelins from the grass, but the apprentice cut them down, sheltering injured comrades as they helped each other walk. He fought as he had never fought before—swift, punishing, and precise. He was death. Swift, pitiless, and unyielding. Recca watched his student fight, and he simply stared.

  His apprentice was holding them back. He was holding them! If survivors returned with tales of Recca fleeing the battle, his ambitions of leadership would be dead. Recca snarled and charged into the fight. He spun in a spectacular acrobatic flip over the enemy, spinning to cut a shapeshifter through the spine.

  Far beyond its warriors, the toad demon watched the fight. The beast reared, its great yellow gut swelling as it roared in challenge. It was a demon none would dare to fight except a swordmaster. Recca sped away from the combat and ran at his chosen foe. He gave an ululating scream, feeling the glory of the eagle in his veins. He was Recca, he was a blademaster, and he was invincible!

  The demon had a sword of its own, but the monster never bothered to draw. It blinked out of sight. Recca stopped, looking wildly about, then staggered as something tore into his back. The demon stood behind him, bawling with joy. Recca spun and cut, but the monster had gone, and again claws ripped him from behind, tearing through his armor and gouging his flesh. Recca lurched, lashed out—then had the sword smashed from his grasp. The demon croaked, its throat pouch puffing. Recca dragged a dagger from his belt and blundered forward, screeching in hatred as the demon laughed.

  The demon struck, punching through armor, ripping Recca’s heart out of his chest. The elf collapsed to his knees, staring in horror. The demon held the heart above its head, screaming in victory—and then suddenly it fell back with a roar. A sword hacked at the creature. The demon dodged, only to be caught by a kick from a massive boot. The demon staggered, and suddenly Recca’s apprentice was there, huge with rage.

  The toad flickered out of sight. The apprentice whirled and swung, but the screaming monster had appeared behind him. It caught the human’s sword and snapped the blade in two. Snarling, the apprentice turned and tore the black blade out of Recca’s dying grasp. He cut, the blow fast and vicious, but the demon disappeared an instant before the blade struck home.

  The apprentice reversed and jammed his sword behind him, striking the demon as it reappea
red. Black, steaming blood burst from the fat toad’s guts. The monster screamed, wrenched free, then flashed out of sight again. Whirling, the apprentice brought his sword down in a massive blow aimed at empty air behind him. The demon flickered back into view, and the blow smashed the demon in two, plowing through skull and chest.

  Other monsters backed away as the bisected monster fell aside. The warrior bellowed, and his enemies fled into the gloom.

  Somehow, Recca still lived. He lived long enough to see his apprentice win the fight that he had failed.

  * * *

  The apprentice worked in silence. Stone-faced, he hacked off Recca’s hand and foot to prevent the corpse being animated as a weapon. He buried the body in the same shallow scrape of dirt that had hidden him before the attack. He placed the heads of Recca’s kills at his head and feet. He made no prayers, for the gods were a mockery who enslaved the weak.

  Recca was gone. It was as if the swordmaster had been judged and found wanting. The apprentice took Recca’s sword to honor him, letting the blade go on to do its work.

  It was growing dark. There were wounded survivors to get to safety, and soon the monsters would return. The apprentice—a warrior who had no name—took one last glance at his master’s final battlefield. He looked once, turned his back, and left the place behind.

  CY 589

  “Bastards!”

  Three malformed slaves hopped back through a palace door, only to be blown apart, their guts and bones spattering on the walls. Demonic servitors dared not flee. They abased themselves, utterly cowed, as their dark mistress stormed by.

  Lolth the Demon Queen, Mistress of Spiders, Queen of the Drow, Dark Empress of abyssal hordes was not pleased. A throne of skulls, a lake of blood, a palace lined with the screaming bodies of the damned… all the pleasures of being a demon queen had turned dull and pale. Orgiastic rites lacked flavor. Torturing victims seemed a pointless bore. Even breeding mutant spider legions had become a total waste of time.