Varien wasn’t the only one whose sleep was
interrupted by dreams that night.
Bob dreamt of golden dragons and awoke with sore
shoulder blades to discover a smattering of new scales along his forearms.
Alec dreamt of ambushes deep in Neverwinter Wood
and awoke with the names of his mercenary comrades on his lips.
Erwen, of course, was living his dream, nestled
snugly against Qelline’s considerable cleavage.
Radegast dreamt of King Malcer Silverstrike of
Phandelver’s Pact and awoke in a sweat, prompting swooning as she recalled his
rugged hands encased in enchanted gauntlets, and the damage they caused the
orcs of Uruth Ukrypt.
“Oh my,” she said to her empty room.
The next morning, the party assembled in the
common room of the Stonehill Inn for breakfast.
Varien slumped into a chair, ignoring the bowl of
porridge that Stonehill’s wife set before him. There were dark black and
blue circles under his eyes, a silent testimony to his troubled sleep.
Radegast politely paid Toblen Stonehill for one
of his plates and then threw it forcefully into the hearth, shattering it. She
cheerfully turned and walked away as Toblen stared at the copper coins she had
left at the bar for him.
Erwen sauntered in from the Alderleaf farmstead.
He hopped up on a chair and dug into Varien’s bowl of porridge.
“Who hasn’t come back yet,” Erwen said quietly.
Varien grunted.
“I’m going to go look for him,” Erwen said around
a mouthful of porridge. “See you guys at Helm’s Hold.”
Varien grunted.
Erwen licked the spoon clean and set it down next
to Varien’s bowl, hopped down from the chair, and sauntered out.
“So, what’s got you down, Sulky Butt?” Radegast
asked, taking a seat next to Varien.
Varien grunted. “Bad memories asserting
themselves, nothing more.”
“Okay then!” Radegast said with a grin. She
reached out and prodded at Varien’s face, mashing his features into a semblance
of a smile. “Cheer up, we’ve got some adventuring to do!”
The Trevelyan brothers came downstairs and
grabbed some chairs. Alec wolfed down the porridge, grabbing for Varien’s bowl
when his was empty.
Varien grunted.
“Okay, so we’ve got a two-day hike in front of
us,” Radegast said, indicating the rations she had purchased for them at
Barthen’s Provisions. “Bob, load those into your bag, there’s a good lad.”
Bob grunted.
“And cheer up, fellows! It’s the first day of
Tarsakh, so let’s get up and get going!”
The party members grunted.
“I’ve got some great traveling stories
lined up,” Radegast continued. “There’s this one about a Halfling, a Wizard and 13
dwarves who set out to steal a gem from a dragon.”
The party set out along one of the trails
leaving Phandalin and made their way onto the Triboar Trail, Radegast telling a
rambling tale as they marched in sullen silence.
After a cold night under the stars, the
party got going early and found the High Road, turning north and leaving the
uncertain Triboar Trail behind. To the west was the Sea of Swords, and
somewhere to the north lay both Helm’s Hold and Neverwinter. The green smudge
of Neverwinter Wood menaced the party from afar, giving the adventurers the
sense that the trees were watching their progress.
Alec called his familiar, which took the
form of a hunting dog.
“I think I shall name you Shadow!” Alec
said, scratching behind the dog’s ears.
“ Woof ,” Shadow said unconvincingly.
“Err, bark .”
“You’ll get it,” Alec said.
Shadow’s hackles raised and a low growl,
tinged with an ethereal echo, escaped its lips, which drew back from its
mouthful of fangs.
“What is it, boy?” Alec said.
The dog nodded its muzzle northward.
Alec saw something ahead of them on the
road. He reached for Clockdrive’s goggles and fit them over his eyes, fiddling
with the setting dial. A white crystal clicked down over the eyepiece and the
image instantly magnified, as if he had closed the distance in the blink of an
eye.
It was a merchant’s wagon, askew on the
road. A thick-bodied man, wearing too many furs for the mild spring day, was
engaged in some sort of argument with someone that Alec couldn’t see, obscured
by the bulk of the slat-sided enclosed wagon.
“Could be trouble ahead,” Alec said. “Wagon
in the middle of the road.”
“A likely story,” Varien said, moving off
the road. “Take it nice and slow, fellows.”
As the party approached, the man’s voice
was carried on the breeze.
“Come now Parsifal, we have an appointment
to keep!” the party heard the man shout.
The man was answered by the stubborn bray
of a donkey.
Sure enough, as the party drew closer, they
could see the rotund gentleman pulling on the reins of a donkey, which was
hitched up to the wagon, but at the moment was having none of the man’s
increasingly shrill entreaties to get a move on.
“Ahoy there,” Varien said, hand on the hilt
of his sword.
The man started and turned around. “Why, uh,
ahoy yourselves!” He shot the donkey a cross look. “See now Parsifal, you’ve
embarrassed me in front of new people.”
The man turned back. The adventurers could
see that he carried a walking stick fashioned from the tusk of some animal, and
that he was nearly as wide as he was tall, clad in heavy furs. Sweat stood out
on his flushed face.
“I am Dorn Buckwald,” he said. “Where might
you fellows be heading? And lady, of course!” he nodded at Radegast.
“We’re heading in the direction of
Neverwinter,” Varien said cautiously, half-expecting a band of brigands to jump
out from the wagon’s tailgate at any moment.
“Why, so am I, that is, if I can get this
obstinate jackass moving again!” Buckwald said, giving the reins a tug.
The donkey sat back on its haunches and
yawned.
“Damn it, Parsifal!” Buckwald shouted.
“So what have you got in the wagon?”
Radegast ventured.
“Ah, yes, of course!” Buckwald dropped the
reins and stabbed at the side of his wagon with the tip of his walking stick.
There was a clicking sound as a catch disengaged and the side of the wagon
opened up like a drawbridge, revealing hides, pelts, and furs arranged in an
eye-catching display. A fur-trimmed awning cantilevered open over the side of
the wagon.
“Buckwald’s the name, and fur is my game!”
Buckwald said, twirling his walking stick. “You won’t find better hides between
Waterdeep and Luskan, I daresay!”
“It’s getting a little warm for fur, isn’t
it?” Bob said.
“It’s never too warm for fur!” Buckwald
said, tugging at his sweat-stained collar.
“Quite,” Varien said.
Radegast retrieved a ten-foot pole from the
party’s supplies and fished around for a carrot. She tied the carrot on a
length of string. “Mind if I try whetting your mule’s appetite?”
“Not at all, dear!” Buckwald said, folding
up his wares.
Radegast climbed into the driver’s seat and
set the pole over the donkey’s head. The carrot dangled enticingly as the bard
climbed down.
Parsifal’s ears flicked and the donkey
brayed as it caught sight of the treat before it. He lurched to his feet and
began trotting, the wagon jerking into motion behind him.
“Hey now!” Dorn said as the donkey picked
up speed. “Wait for me, Parsifal!” As he puffed along behind the wagon, he
turned and shouted “Look me up when you get to Neverwinter, friends! A good day
to you!” Then he grabbed for the wagon’s tailgate and hauled his considerable
bulk aboard.
“Okay then,” Varien said as the wagon
disappeared into the distance. “Maybe the next straggler will be a weapons
merchant or something.”
The party continued on northward.
“So, the Halfling distracted the trolls
long enough for dawn to break, turning them to stone,” Radegast’s story
continued. “And so he was able to free his dwarven allies from the-”
“What’s that?” Alec pointed northward,
where a cloud of dust was expanding over the High Road.
Something cleared the hill, moving towards
them at great speed.
It was Parsifal and Dorn Buckwald.
The donkey was galloping away, straining at its bridle as it tried to bite down
on the carrot, which still dangled uneaten at the end of the string, like a
compass’s needle. Buckwald sat on the edge of the wagon’s seat, whipping poor
Parsifal as a string of profanities from his mouth turned the air a darker
shade of blue.
“What’s got him so spooked?” Bob asked.
There was a commotion behind the
approaching wagon as two more objects crested the hill.
There were two giants chasing the wagon.
“Oh!” Bob said. “I see.”
The giants were both at least 20 feet tall,
jogging at a leisurely pace that belied the frantic speed at which the wagon
was barreling down the High Road.
“Oh, they’re toying with him,” Radegast
said. “That’s not sporting.”
“Right, let’s do this,” Alec said. He
pointed a finger at the giant on the right. A fire bolt blazed forth and shot towards the approaching giant, just
missing Dorn Buckwald’s wagon before it exploded harmlessly in mid-air.
Dorn’s profane tirade spiraled up an
octave.
“Whoops!” Alec said. He raised his other
hand, which held the drow crossbow he’d received from Ragnar, and pulled the
trigger.
The bolt went wide.
“Damn!” Alec said.
“Step aside,” Varien said, conjuring his
celestial bow and drawing an arrow from his quiver. He nocked the arrow to the
ethereal bowstring, drew back, and fired.
The arrow slammed into the wagon just above
Dorn’s head. The merchant looked up at it and continued cursing.
“Whoops!” Varien said, pulling back on
another arrow and letting fly.
The arrow sailed into the sky and
disappeared.
“Damn!” Varien said.
Shadow’s barks echoed across the road as
the creaking wagon drew closer.
Radegast tried a little thaumaturgy to
amplify her voice. “Ahoy there, friends!” she shouted. “How hails thee?”
The giants did not respond.
Radegast sighed. “Well, I tried.”
“This is embarrassing,” Bob said. He
pointed at one of the giants and let loose with a twinned guiding bolt . The magical darts hurtled well clear of Buckwald’s
wagon and split, veering off towards each of the giants. They detonated
simultaneously, causing one of the giants to stumble.
“Ha! That got ‘em!” Bob said triumphantly.
One of the giants stooped and scooped up a
boulder, hurling it overhand towards Bob.
“Uh oh!” Bob said beneath the shadow of the
boulder. He had time to activate a shield
before the boulder crashed down, shattering into gravel around the sorcerer.
Not to be outdone, the other giant grabbed
a large rock but fumbled it as he tried to run and throw at the same time. The
boulder bounced harmlessly down into the ditch.
Alec drew his sword, letting loose a battle
cry as he charged forward towards the nearest giant. He cast another fire bolt , this one on the money, and as
flamed curled up from the giant’s beard, he sank his sword deep into the
monster’s thigh.
Varien fired another arrow, which struck
the second giant in the neck.
Dorn continued to whip his mule as the
wagon blew past the adventurers. “Help me!” he shouted, flinging a handful of
gold coins at the party as he rushed on by.
Shadow howled as Parsifal trampled right
over him, followed closely by the wagon. There was a flash of celestial light,
and then the familiar was gone.
“Don’t tell Alec,” Radegast whispered. She
pulled out her own longbow and fired a shot at the giant, which missed.
She turned to Bob. “Err, a little to the
right, I guess.”
“Thanks for the assist!” Bob said. He cast
another fire bolt , which struck true,
and then cast bless on Alec, Varien,
and Radegast.
Alec’s opponent looked down at him as he
pulled the sword free.
Alec looked up at the giant, impressed in
spite of himself. “Damn, aren't you a tall glass of-”
The giant roared and slammed his axe down
on the fight in two cleaving strokes. Alec stumbled back, bleeding profusely
from the savage attack.
Radegast did what she could, using cutting words to throw the giant off his
game by telling a rude joke about the creature’s mother. Of course, she wasn’t
sure the giant even spoke Common. Her running commentary didn’t help her aim
any as her next bowshot failed to find its target.
Alec shook his head to clear the reddish
haze that threatened to blot out his vision. Being mauled by werewolves was one
thing, but being sliced and diced by a giant was something else entirely.
Finding his second wind, he disengaged and backed away from the giant and his
giant axe.
Varien rushed forward to aid his companion,
but couldn’t connect with his target. He stared at his suddenly useless hands.
“What did Alekki do to me?” he cried.
“Enough of this!” Radegast said, running
towards the giant and throwing her longbow aside. “Time to put the hurt on you!”
She grabbed hold of the giant’s hairy leg
with both hands and cast inflict wounds .
The giant stiffened and roared in agony as the flesh around Radegast’s hands
began to rot and wither, falling away in meaty handfuls as necrotic magic ate
through skin, tendons and muscle.
“Softened him up for you, I have,” Radegast
said to Bob.
Bob cast spiritual weapon as he danced to the beat of an invisible drum. “Oh
Sune, I call upon your graceful hands to smite this ghastly creature where the
sun doesn’t shine!”
The spectral outlines of a floating flail,
the favoured weapon of clerics and paladins of Sune, came into being in the air
before Bob, and he pointed at the approaching giant. There was a metallic
jingling as the three golden spiked balls tugged on the chains that fastened
them to the weapon’s shaft.
The flail flew through the air, swinging
with divine force as it struck the giant right between the legs, the spiked
balls driving deep into the giant’s gonads. Then the shaft yanked the flail’s
spiky bits away, scourging the giant’s nether regions.
The giant whimpered and fell to his knees,
keeling over as he pressed his hands between his legs.
The second giant shouted in rage at the
death of his companion and rushed at Bob, each step sending shockwaves through
the earth. He raised his axe.
“You know, up close you’re smaller than you
look!” Radegast shouted at the giant. “Zing!”
“Stand with me, Bob!” Varien said,
unslinging his shield and pulling Talon from its scabbard. “Together, we can-”
There was a clang as the giant’s axe head
brushed the paladin effortlessly aside and bit deeply into Bob’s body.
Bob grit his teeth. “I can take it!”
Alec looked around and couldn't see his
familiar anywhere. He drew the wrong conclusion from that and strode towards
the giant, sword in hand.
“This is for Shadow!” he shouted.
“But Alec, the giant didn’t-” Radegast
started.
Alec cast witch bolt and then surged forward with renewed ferocity, casting a
fire bolt that blasted the giant
before slashing him with the Sword of Trevelyan.
The giant, bleeding from a number of wounds,
stumbled back.
Varien sensed that his time had come. He
bent his knees and then sprang into the air, calling down a divine smite as he leaped up over the
giant’s head.
The giant looked up, stupefied at the utterly
unfathomable notion of death coming from above.
Varien’s sword sliced deep into the giant’s
chest and the paladin hauled on it as he completed the downward arc of his
jump, opening the monster’s torso up like a tin can. He landed amid a torrent
of gore as the giant’s intestines volleyed forth from the terrible gash in his
abdomen, dousing Radegast, Alec and Bob in blood and ichor.
“Oh gross, it got inside my boots!”
Radegast said. “It’s squishing between my toes!”
The disemboweled giant fell back dead with
a crash.
The party wasted no time in looting the
giants’ bodies. Each of the creatures had been toting a hefty sack full of
stolen goods – mostly foodstuffs by the look of things, as though the pair had
knocked over a granary. Given their size, they might have literally knocked one
over.
There were also curious items inside the
giants’ sacks – Radegast discovered a heavy iron bell, like the kind usually
found in a church steeple, and a smaller bag full of strange, dried mushrooms.
Alec pulled out a child’s stuffed animal –
a dog. A single manly tear welled up in his eye.
The party also found coin purses and a
coffer bearing the sigil of the Manycoins Bank that contained a fair amount of
gold and silver.
“A bank in Neverwinter, perhaps?” Bob said,
having never been within a thousand miles of the Jewel of the North before.
“If I didn't know any better, and may I
remind that I do know better, I would say that these guys were frost giants,”
Radegast said. “Tribal raiders, led by jarls, you know, that sort of thing.”
“Frost giants?” Varien said, feeling
generally better about his performance now that he’d laid one of the creatures
out. “What are they doing this far south?”
“South?” Radegast repeated. “May I remind
you that we’re in the northern part of the Sword Coast, and-”
“North?” Varien snorted. “You don’t know
north! There are lakes with water so cold that a summer swim will kill you dead
– permafrost a mile thick – things you can’t imagine! You don’t know north!”
“Have you been to the Towers of Willful
Suffering in the summertime?” Radegast said. “You would bake in your armor.
Trust me, this is pretty far north!”
“Well, maybe the southern part of the
north,” Varien said. “But I grew up on a glacier-”
“THIS IS ALL WEST!” Bob shouted.
Varien and Radegast stopped arguing and
stared at Bob.
Of Dorn Buckwald and his wagon, there was
no sign – the merchant had vanished, save for a trail of dissipating dust down
the High Road. At Parsifal’s breakneck pace they could have been halfway to
Leilon for all the adventurers knew.
Packing away their goods into Bob’s bag of holding , the party headed north.
The path towards Helm’s Hold forked away
from the High Road to the northeast, and before long, the party could see the
grand edifice of the Cathedral of Helm that gave the hold its name rising above
a stone-and-timber wall of impressive thickness. The monastery was built of
pale grey stone and stood tall watching over the High Road and Neverwinter Wood
alike with the same impassivity as Helm, the Vigilant One.
Alec confidently strode on ahead, glad to
be so near to his home away from home.
The road that led towards the fortified
monastery’s main gate passed through farmer’s fields, the soil of which had
been recently disturbed, but not by sowers – here and there the adventurers
could see the stooped forms of peasants digging through the dirt and pulling
out seeds.
They’re
eating the seeds instead of waiting for the harvest? Radegast thought to herself.
The fields soon gave way to flattened
plains upon which had been pitched a motley collection of tents, yurts, and
other temporary dwellings in increasing density the closer the road led to
Helm’s Hold.
A
refugee camp? Radegast thought. But Helm’s Hold is itself a refuge, is it
not?
The camp sprawled on either side of the
main road that led to the gates. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of bedraggled
refugees clustered around campfires or stood shiftlessly in huddled groups.
Here and there, clerics in traditional
nurse’s habits ministered to the sick and bedridden.
“Are there always this many downcast and
downtrodden folks at the Hold?” Radegast asked Alec.
Alec shrugged.
At regular intervals along the road were
stakes driven into the earth, upon which hung banners emblazoned with the holy
symbol of Helm – a gauntlet with a watchful, vigilant eye superimposed upon it.
Radegast noticed that this particular symbol blended Helm’s holy symbolism with
that of the Order of the Gauntlet – the logo of which also prominently featured
a gauntlet clasped around a sword. In this version of the sigil, however, the
Helm’s gauntlet was closed in a menacing fist, and the Eye of Helm was rimmed
with stylized tears of gold.
“The Order of the Gilded Eye,” Radegast
sniffed. “Tacky.” She looked around at the despairing crowds. “Well fellows,
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit hungry after our journey, but looking
around I’d say I’m not the only one.” She thought for a moment. “We did recover
a king’s ransom in food from those giants. What say we give it back to the
people?”
Bob nodded assent. He opened his bag of holding and rooted around for the
giants’ sacks of food.
Radegast stepped up onto the deck of a
derelict wagon, steadying herself as it shifted beneath her feet. “Good
people!” she said in her best bard’s voice. “We have brought you food this day!
Please form an orderly queue as we distribute what we have to those who are
able to receive!”
She turned to Varien and Alec. “You might
need to make a show of maintaining order here,” she whispered.
“Right then!” Varien turned to the curious
onlookers. “Queue up here, and we’ll serve you one at a time!”
“Any shoving and you’re out!” added Alec.
Bob and Radegast began handing out parcels
of food to the growing line of grateful refugees. Murmurs began to ripple
through the encampment as more and more people joined the lineup.
Varien and Alec kept one hand on the hilts
of their swords as they stood before the crowd, letting refugees through in
ones and twos to the back of the wagon, where Radegast and Bob doled out their
goods.
After nearly half an hour, Radegast and Bob
were down to the party’s supply of rations, having handed out the last of the
cured hams and somewhat stale loaves of bread. The crowd didn’t seem to care
about the quality of the food, only the space it would take up in their gnawing
bellies.
“Okay now,” Radegast shouted. “We’re down
to the last crumb here, people. Please disperse in an orderly fashion. We thank
you for your patience and will do our best to return with more-”
There were some dismal-sounding mutterings
running through the assembled throng, but the crowd began to break up, though
not thanks to Radegast’s rhetoric.
“Ah,” Varien said. “Here comes the cavalry,
late as ever.”
A squad of soldiers, four of them on
horseback with an escort of six pikemen, parted the crowd with intimidating
glares and the butt end of their pikes as they approached.
Tension rippled through the crowd, and Bob
could feel things teetering on a knife’s edge between calm and anarchy, but
even the most aggressive refugees backed away.
Each of the soldiers wore a tabard
emblazoned with the symbol of the Order of the Gauntlet.
Radegast handed out the last bit of rations
to a blubbering woman who clasped at her sleeves, crying thanks. As she patted
the woman’s head reassuringly, her attention was drawn to one of the knights
who sat astride a snorting horse, holding a lance upright. He was wearing armor
with the Gilded Eye tabard over it, and a cowl of chain mail was drawn up over
his ash-blond hair.
Radegast’s blood ran cold as she realized
she recognized the knight. It was Jamie Lysander, her former lover and spy for
the Order of the Gauntlet. His eyes were boring into her but he betrayed no
emotion on the smooth, angelic angles of his face.
“Uh, hi.” She managed, keeping a lid on the
sudden turmoil of emotions bubbling within her.
Jamie swung his lance down slowly until the
sharp end was pointing vaguely in the party’s direction.
“Welcome to Helm’s Hold,” he said evenly.
“You’re wanted at the main gate.”
“Are…are we under arrest?” Radegast asked.
“No,” Jamie said curtly. “Of course not.
But your good deeds deserve official recognition at the gates.” He nodded to
the pikemen as he brought his horse around and began a slow trot towards the
gate, not looking to see if they were following. The other horsemen kept their
eyes on the adventurers.
“Well then, take us to where you wish to
take us,” Varien said to Jamie’s backside.
Radegast hopped down from the wagon. “Keep
your weapons at the ready, fellows,” she said in a low voice to her companions.
“We might get out of this unscathed, but let me be the one to decide if things
are going south.”
“There is no south,” Bob whispered. “Only
west.”
Radegast sighed. “Just trust me.”
Alec shrugged and followed after the
knight.
The pikemen closed around behind the party
to escort them to the gate.