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  “No,” Showithal said softly. “You go, all speed.”

  “I’ll grant you a head start.”

  The two halflings, friends for all their lives, comrades in arms for decades, shared a long look, one of friendship and brotherly love.

  And of acceptance.

  “Go,” Showithal said.

  Still Doregardo shook his head.

  “You will make a waste of my valor,” said Showithal.

  Doregardo started to respond, but there was really nothing he could say. He didn’t believe that either of them would get out of the forest alive, but if one had a chance, given a head start here, it would, of course, be him. “Pray Regis—Spider, makes Waterdeep,” he said.

  “Pray Doregardo makes Bleeding Vines,” Showithal replied. “And pray he gets Lady Donnola and all the others down to the safety of King Bruenor’s mighty gates.”

  “I will see you there, then, my friend,” Doregardo said. “In Gauntlgrym, where the demon horde will falter.”

  Showithal nodded, but couldn’t find the strength to audibly respond. He yanked back on the reins, then slapped Doregardo’s black pony on the rump as it moved past him.

  Doregardo charged away and Showithal Terdidy drew his sword.

  It seemed a meager weapon indeed, measured against the hulking forms scrambling about the shadows.

  So be it.

  Despite the pursuit, Regis had to slow Rumblebelly as he descended a steep decline. Reins tight in his left hand, the halfling grasped the small hand crossbow hung about his neck and kept glancing back, expecting a huge demon to come leaping down upon him. They were close, he knew, and yet none had attacked thus far.

  He breathed a bit of relief when the ground leveled, and cut right around a boulder at the bottom of the decline, gathering up to a gallop once more on the level trail.

  But Regis was riding blind here, in an area he did not know, and the trail proved a false one, a dead end. A wall of trees loomed ahead. He had nowhere to go.

  He pulled up short and swung about, his only options to go back the way he had come or to abandon Rumblebelly and run off on foot through the tangle.

  Around the boulder, not too far behind, came a pair of monsters: the giant four-armed dog-faced demon, thrice the halfling’s height, and another, not much smaller, that resembled a weird cross between a large humanoid and a buzzard.

  Regis considered his puny weapons, fully confident that either of these monsters alone could easily tear him apart.

  “We die together, Rumblebelly,” he said as the pair slowly approached, their stalking angles clearly coordinated and leaving him no room to charge past them and break free. “I could not find a more valiant companion with whom to share these last, most glorious moments. What ho!”

  Rumblebelly reared and whinnied as if in agreement, and as the pony came back to all fours, Regis moved to kick him into a charge.

  He held, though, and tugged the reins more forcefully to hold back the sweating steed, for across the way, the demons had turned—not back, but upon each other!

  The vulture demon, a vrock, started it, swinging about suddenly—so abruptly that it stumbled upon its companion, giving some strange, strained shriek, then leaping high, flapping its winglike arms, and falling down hard on the four-armed monster, snapping its head forward to drive its pointed beak powerfully into demon flesh. It aimed for the neck, and almost got it, which would have ended the fight immediately, but the glabrezu turned just enough to take the hit in its shoulder. Both of its pincer arms immediately clamped about the vrock, and the much heavier glabrezu continued its turn, throwing itself and its attacker off balance, to fall upon the ground in a heap, where they rolled and thrashed, punching, biting, pecking. And those great and terrible pincers snapped and dragged, digging deep gouges in the vrock, from which spurted green bile and black blood.

  Regis didn’t know how to decipher the scene before him. He knew demons were chaotic in the extreme, knew that they would kill anything, even each other. But never could he have expected this sudden turn, not with a plump halfling and a plumper pony right there for easy feasting.

  So shocked was he that he didn’t, couldn’t, respond for many moments as the two fiendish behemoths rolled and gored each other with demonic abandon. He did wince, though, repeatedly, at the ghastly sounds emanating from the monstrous battle, and Rumblebelly flattened his ears and backed away nervously. Regis was a seasoned enough rider to recognize that his poor pony was near the edge of collapse here, with fright if not exhaustion.

  That brought the halfling from his trance. He leaned forward and whispered assurances in his pony’s ear.

  “Come, Rumblebelly,” he said. “Easy now and let us get past these beasts.”

  He edged his pony forward, veering to the side, and if a pony could be said to tiptoe, Rumblebelly was doing exactly that.

  Regis didn’t turn to regard the rolling, battling demons. He stayed low, continuing to whisper into Rumblebelly’s ear, preparing to launch the pony into a leap and run. He was about to do just that when both he and his pony jerked suddenly, startled. Regis sat up straight, while Rumblebelly desperately backed up once more, head going high in surprise and terror as a dark form flew across in front of them.

  That form, the body of the vrock, hit a tree and wrapped halfway around it, sliding down to the ground at its base, black smoke rising from the corpse as the dead thing sank back across the planes of existence to the smoldering Abyss.

  That left the glabrezu, rising up to its full height, battered but very much alive, and very, very angry.

  The demon moved out from the side of the trail, four arms out wide as if daring the halfling to try to ride past it.

  Regis knew he couldn’t make it. He thought to dismount and attack, opening the way for his beloved pony.

  But where might Rumblebelly go?

  “We fight, my valiant steed,” he said aloud, trying to exude confidence and lifting his fine rapier up into the air before him. “For Rumblebelly, for Bleeding Vines, for the Companions of the Hall!”

  By the time Doregardo regained full control of his startled mount, he had put some distance between himself and Showithal, and had left his friend out of sight as his pony dodged down and around some trees, then crested a short ridge and clambered down the back side. The leader of the Grinning Ponies pulled the reins hard, his pony leaning back and skidding to a stop. Then, with legs and expert control of the bridle, Doregardo had his mount quickly into a gallop.

  Horse and rider nearly got run over then as Showithal’s pony charged past.

  Showithal’s riderless pony.

  Only then did Doregardo recognize the screams behind him, the wails of his friend. He kicked his pony and leaped away, but skidded again at the sound of a last, desperate dying shriek.

  Doregardo’s friendship demanded that he go back for Showithal.

  Doregardo’s responsibility to his people demanded that he continue in the retreat, organizing and warning any allies he could find.

  But it was Doregardo’s pledge to Lady Donnola that left no choice in the matter. Bleeding Vines had to be forewarned or hundreds would die.

  “Fare well in the Green Fields of Mount Celestia, my friend,” he whispered to the night wind, and he pulled his mount around again and charged away for the halfling town.

  For all his regret, and there was indeed much, Doregardo understood that he had chosen right when he was spotted by the night sentries of Bleeding Vines, hailing him and, he quickly learned, fully oblivious to the coming army of fiends.

  “To arms! To arms!” the halfling sentries shouted, a call carried down the line, all about, and then through the small village as candles showed in every house.

  Doregardo charged his mount straight for Lady Donnola’s modest home, and met her coming out her door.

  “We cannot fight them,” he shouted before even properly greeting her. “To arms, nay! To Gauntlgrym, or we all shall die!”

  “Them?”


  “Demons, milady. Such a horde as I have never seen, and never heard in the songs of bards. Demons to rival the flights of dragons that laid waste to Vaasa in the time of the Witch King!”

  Lady Donnola, who of course was well aware of Doregardo’s penchant for hyperbole, arched her eyebrow at that.

  “Showithal is dead, milady,” Doregardo told her somberly, and it so happened that Showithal’s pony was not far away, standing forlornly, untethered and unattended.

  “Where is Regis?” she asked with sudden urgency.

  “Determined to get word to Waterdeep.”

  “You just said . . .” she started to reply, but her voice trailed off.

  Doregardo understood her resignation here, for they both knew that Regis would not be easily turned from such a mission when it was clearly so critical for the survival of Bleeding Vines. “We cannot fight them,” Doregardo told her. “We cannot stop them. To Gauntlgrym, I beg, and let us pray that King Bruenor’s defenses will hold back the horde.”

  “You question the might of Gauntlgrym?” Donnola retorted, shaking her head.

  Doregardo didn’t answer, but just sat stone-faced upon his stallion.

  “That many?” Donnola asked.

  “Run, lady, I beg. Do not even try to stop them or slow them. Just run.”

  The word went out from Donnola to her personal guards, and from them to the sentries. And so the retreat to Gauntlgrym echoed all through the small town. Halflings grabbed whatever they could carry and ran for the tunnel entrance to the dwarven city, where one tram was always stationed at the ready and another could be quickly retrieved from the mountain depths.

  On Donnola’s order, Doregardo rode over to the tram platform to organize the retreat at that most critical choke point.

  Other members of the Grinning Ponies and the Kneebreakers filtered into the town from the surrounding hills and forests, many carrying wounds from skirmishes with the demonic horde. Any who could help did so, the disciplined group aiding the other halflings to board the carts, then sending the tram away into the dark decline to Gauntlgrym as soon as the next one’s lights were spotted in the return tunnel.

  Families, children, horses, livestock, pets, and treasure came with every group, all rushing to board the tram, and despite the lack of notice, the evacuation seemed to be progressing smoothly.

  But then the demonic howls began to echo, carried on the wind, and a great buzzing sound filled the air as a swarm of flying chasmes bore down on the doomed village.

  Doregardo shouted orders every which way, his subordinates relaying them.

  “Flying monsters!” one told him.

  “Call the gals and boys together,” Doregardo determinedly replied. “We fight to the last, that our friends will escape.”

  Not a Grinning Pony, not a Kneebreaker blinked at that expected command—in many ways, it was unnecessary for Doregardo to utter it. They formed up without complaint.

  Pony ears went flat all up and down that line when the dark cloud of chasmes appeared over a nearby hill, black against the starry sky, and in that moment, Doregardo feared that most of the village would be slaughtered.

  That feeling only deepened when another black cloud appeared, this one right overhead, filled with flashes of lightning.

  “What demon magic, this?” one of the halfling band cried.

  “Nah,” came a gruff response that had the halflings, Doregardo included, looking back toward the tram, to see an old dwarf staring back at them. “That’s just me brudder,” Ivan Bouldershoulder explained as the thunder began to rumble.

  A strong wind kicked up, blowing straight in the ugly faces of the flying demons, slowing their approach. Bolts of lightning shot out of the cloud, not randomly but aimed, slicing into the monstrous flock.

  “Me brudder,” Ivan Bouldershoulder said with a proud smile, mimicking Pikel’s strange accent.

  The second loaded tram rolled from the elevated station into the dark cave, diving down into the mountain. Up came the third, rambling into place, and this one was filled with dwarven warriors, Clan Battlehammer soldiers, who leaped out and formed a defensive line, ushering fleeing halflings through.

  Doregardo’s chest swelled with pride and hope at the precision and discipline of his own people and their brave neighbors. Still, he knew that he and his charges would be in desperate battle soon, for the magical cloud would not be enough to fully halt the demonic aerial swarm.

  Holding heavy crossbows, a host of Battlehammer dwarves ran in front of Doregardo’s defensive cavalry line. As one, they fell to a knee, leaving enough space between each for a pony to pass through, and lifted their weapons at the coming threat. Down at the right end of the line, not far from Doregardo, the dwarven commander barked out her command to hold.

  Despite the dire circumstances, Doregardo couldn’t suppress his grin when he regarded the dwarven woman. He wasn’t sure whether it was Fist or Fury, Tannabritches or Mallabritches, the twin queens of Gauntlgrym. It was one of them, though, a wife of King Bruenor himself, out here on the very front line to hold back a horde of demons.

  The chasmes closed. Another bolt of lightning reached out, shooting a line of destruction down the middle of the pack, blasting some to shreds, searing the delicate wings off many others so that they fell spinning to the ground. But Pikel’s cloud was dissipating, and many of the demons remained.

  “Let fly!” the dwarven commander yelled, and as one, the crossbowmen fired, a swarm of heavy bolts reaching into the night sky—a few converging on the same target, as the skilled Battlehammers chose their marks accordingly. A dozen more chasmes fell out of the air.

  “Load!” came the immediate order, already being carried out.

  “For Queen Mallabritches!” shouted one dwarf near Doregardo, clarifying the commander’s identity for him.

  “Huzzah!” they all yelled, and the halflings joined in.

  Down came the demons, and out leaped the halfling cavalry. “Fours!” Doregardo yelled, and the riders broke into diamond-shaped formations with their mounts.

  “Up tall, Battlehammers,” roared Queen Mallabritches, “and put the high low.”

  Doregardo didn’t quite know what that command might mean, and he was too busy to figure it out at the moment. Leading his foursome, he charged upon a trio of chasmes, the demons rearing, their long stingers twitching in anticipation of the taste of blood.

  Two remained close to the ground to engage the halflings, but the third, the central one at whom Doregardo was charging, lifted up higher suddenly, while its companions sped in, viselike, at Doregardo.

  He spun his pony expertly, sword going one way to fend off one chasme, the pony bucking and kicking out behind to send the other flying.

  Then Doregardo understood the dwarf queen’s command, for a host of crossbow bolts crackled the air above him, slamming into the rising demon as soon as it had gotten clear of Doregardo’s head, killing the beast, putting the “high low,” as she had ordered.

  Doregardo’s three companions came in hard to the fight, a pair overwhelming the chasme he had fended with his sword, driving the ugly half-human, half-insect monster down low with their long spears, then trampling it with their well-trained mounts. To the other side, the chasme stunned by Doregardo’s pony lifted up as the group galloped in, but it flew too high and a volley of dwarven crossbow bolts ripped it apart.

  It was a good start. But it was only a start, Doregardo knew, and his group was under assault again before they had even properly re-formed their diamond. Off to his right came calls for help from other riders as the cavalry worked hard to keep up with the more maneuverable and quicker chasmes.

  But many of those demons swept right over the halflings, facing another crossbow volley in order to close in on those dwarves. Enough got through, though, and Doregardo understood that his aerial support was at its end when Queen Mallabritches commanded, “Axe!”

  The halfling worked his sword across his body at one attacker, then brought it back just
in time to intercept the sudden rush of another, the slashing blade halving the demon’s long proboscis. Doregardo took the moment of reprieve to glance back at Mallabritches’s forces to see if they needed help. His gaze went beyond the dwarven line, though, despite the heavy combat all along it, and he noted the last car of another tram disappearing into the mountain on its way to Gauntlgrym. It was replaced almost immediately by a fourth, another filled with Battlehammer warriors—and not just any Battlehammers, but the famed Gutbuster Brigade. These elite, vicious battleragers leaped from the tram before it had even climbed the platform and settled into place, hitting the ground running, rolling, bouncing—it didn’t matter—contorting themselves every which way to get to the fight as quickly as possible.

  That heartened Doregardo, of course, but it also frightened him. Their only course, he believed, was to cover the last fleeing villagers, then themselves retreat, with all haste, to the greater defenses of Gauntlgrym.

  True to their reputation, the battleragers didn’t seem as if they were in any mood for a retreat. The stubborn fools would probably remain out here in their battle lust even after all the innocents had been evacuated. If that was the case, the halfling leader decided, they would be on their own.

  He turned back with his team, the diamond shifting to go out to the right, where a family of halflings ran for their lives from a pursuing flying demon.

  As they moved to intercept, Doregardo noted rustling from the distant trees. The horde had come, and now it pounced upon them, misshapen humanoid forms, the wretched lesser demons known as manes, shambling out of the brush like an army of humans risen from the dead. Behind them, between them, here and there came their masters, the true demons of all types, enough of them alone, not even counting the multitude of manes and chasmes, to be considered an overwhelming force.

  “Get them in quick, my riders!” he told his three companions.

  They had just put themselves between the halflings and the pursuing beasts, engaging the chasme, when a cracking sound drew the cavalry leader’s eyes to the tree line once more.

  He worried that yet another foe was emerging. Instead he saw, standing before the advancing horde, a lone figure—a green-robed dwarf—one arm raised and waving. The dwarf was calling upon the grasses and trees, Doregardo realized . . . and the plants were listening!