Baldur's Gate (3 page)

Now there was little time for those thoughts. The sound was getting closer, and getting closer fast.

It was like a chorus of angry dogs competing for attention with a thousand bards whose tongues had been cut out so all they could do was wail and mutter, grunt and shout. The sound made Abdel afraid, and that was a rare thing.

He had to force himself back against the stone marker, so strong was his urge to slash out into the night at that fear. Abdel assumed he was in for a fight with whatever was making that godsforsaken racket. Whatever it was it sounded like a lot of somethings, and he’d have to fight as much with his mind as with his arm to make up for the odds.

The stone felt rough and wet against his back, and he realized he’d removed his chain mail tunic when he lay down to sleep. The night was dark, still overcast from the afternoon and evening’s rain. Abdel set his eyes to slits to try to cut through the darkness and see what was making this noise, which was now so loud the sellsword’s ears began to sting. The chorus of incoherent vocalizations threatened to drive Abdel mad with fear and rage.

He saw the whole thing first as a mass of shadow, like it was one thing, huge, moving along the ground to the south of the crossroads. The mass hit a tree—not a huge tree, but sizeable—and seemed to suck it under without hesitating. Then the mass started to take on shapes inside it, and Abdel realized to his horror and frustration that this loud gibbering mass was a horde of individual creatures—hundreds of them—that walked like men.

Abdel drew in a breath slowly, his jaw slack so he wouldn’t hiss and give himself away. Though the moon was tucked behind a mantle of cloud and not a single star was visible, Abdel was thankful suddenly that he wasn’t wearing his armor. A reflection might have attracted the attention of any one member of this impossible swarm and sent the entire horde in his direction. Even Abdel couldn’t possibly defend himself against this tide of dark-skinned bodies. Just then Abdel saw the glint of steel among the shadows of the horde. They’ve got swords, he thought, they’re armed with swords. This made him realize he was holding a lot of telltale steel himself, and he silently slipped the broadsword blade behind his back.

He didn’t gasp when he heard he rustle of gravel behind him, on the other side of the crossroads marker. He tightened his grip on his sword and tried to think of a prayer to Torm. The sound behind him stopped, but he didn’t dare turn around.

His attention behind him, Abdel didn’t hear the thing approach from his left side, but he could smell it. Before he even realized what he was doing, he brought his blade back around in front of him, twisted his wrist, and slashed low across his left side. The blade met with resistance, and though Abdel couldn’t see the beast in the darkness, he knew by the fact that it didn’t scream that he’d killed it instantly. There was a flurry of babbling, yelling, guttural throat noises that burst into Abdel’s hearing right after that though, and he realized there were more, lots more, and they’d seen him.

As much trouble as Abdel was having seeing anything but the vague outline of his enemy, the horde things seemed to have no trouble seeing him. Rusted, pitted, jagged blades slashed at Abdel and the noise was deafening. He flicked back one attack after another, killed one of the things, then another, all the time keeping his back against the stone marker.

He kept his blade slashing in front of him to make a sort of wall of steel, but the occasional slice got through. The wound in his side began to hurt again, but he had to ignore it and keep fighting. When he killed another one of the screaming, babbling things another stepped on the back of its fallen hordemate and came at Abdel anew. Abdel began to realize he was going to die that night.

There was a subtle change in the tenor of the mass sound and after a few seconds of an altogether different keening wail, the horde turned as one and came north. North, to Abdel.

Abdel kept batting them away, one after another until he was covered in blood, some of it his. It seemed like hours, like forever, but only seconds passed before a sudden burst of light blinded the sellsword.

There was no noise, no thunder, but Abdel was sure it must have been lightning striking the stone over his head. He’d had his eyes wide open, drinking in any meager scrap of light he could, when the yellow flash came out of nowhere. He screamed in pain and clenched his eyes tight. Tears streamed down his gore-spattered face, and the rhythm of his defensive slashes faltered.

The sound the horde of creatures made in reaction to the light was deafening. A thousand varieties of keening wail sent shivers through Abdel’s body. It sounded like a whole village being slaughtered at the same time. They stopped attacking, and as Abdel bunked past huge amorphous blobs of purple and electric blue that filled his vision, he saw the horde retreat. The creatures—ugly, naked humanoids with sickly purple hides stretched over taut muscles and heads like distorted lions with wiry black manes—fled the light that still burned brightly, but with no heat, above Abdel’s head.

Exhausted and relieved, Abdel slid down to his knees, the stone scraping through his thin chemise. He was panting, almost gasping for air, and his sword seemed to weigh a thousand pounds.

“Good enough,” a reedy, gruff voice said, “ye can stop that damn light.”

Abdel wanted to spring to his feet and whirl into a defensive stance against this stranger, but he just couldn’t. He decided to wait until whoever spoke those words came close enough that he could kill him without standing up.

“It’ll go away on its own, right?” another voice asked. “Let’s get a look at our new—our new friend.”

Footsteps came around the stone marker, two sets, and Abdel did manage to stand to meet them, though his chest still heaved. He closed his eyes tight again, holding his sword out in front of him with both hands. He was looking down when he opened his eyes. He saw, past smaller purple flashes this time, a pair of bare, wide feet, covered on the instep with thick, curly red hair. The boots that stood next to those feet were finely made of shiny black leather.

One of the newcomers chuckled and said, “How ye fairin’, boy?”

Abdel had to laugh. He wasn’t fairing very well at all.

“That’s the second time this day,” Abdel said, blinking his watery eyes to finally clear his vision, “that I’ve had to fight for my life. Do you intend to make it a third?”

“Ha!” the one with the hairy feet—Abdel could see now that he was a halfling—exclaimed. “We intend no such thing, lad.”

“By all means, no,” the other one—a tall, thin human draped in black robes—added. “Rest easy—rest easy.”

Abdel studied these two unlikely rescuers. The halfling was odd for his kind, though he was as short, stocky, and fair of complexion as most of his race. He had a devilish quality to him, though, that Abdel had seen in a long parade of sellswords, toughs, thieves, and rogues, but not many halflings. He was wearing thick, reddish-brown leather worked into armor to protect his vitals but cut to leave his arms free. A long sword of excellent make, an imposing weapon for one as small as he, hung at his side in a gold filigreed scabbard. The halfling wriggled his pug nose and smiled back at Abdel’s stare.

“G’day, young sir,” he said in an odd accent that might have been—Waterdeep? Some city, Abdel was certain, which was again unusual for a halfling. “Name’s Montaron, an’ my travellin’ companion ‘ere is Xzar … that’s ‘im set that godsawful bright light up there to interrupt that little party ye were throwin’.”

Abdel nodded to the halfling and turned his attention to the human. The one called Xzar was tall, thin, and twitchy. His face kept moving like there were worms under his skin, and his mouth worked as if he were talking to himself silently all the time. Every once in a while he’d twitch his head violently to one side, as if to shoo away a fly that wasn’t really there.

“Gibberlings,” the human said, “are not quite at all—” a twitch made him pause “—fond of light… at all.”

“Gibberlings?” Abdel repeated, understanding that was the name of the horde of beasts. An apt name for all their incomprehensible vocalizing.

“An’ ye are?” the halfling prompted.

“Abdel,” he said, shifting his sword to his left hand and holding out his right. “I am Abdel… son of Gorion.”

Montaron took Abdel’s hand, and his grip was firm. He smirked a little, as if at some private joke. Xzar rubbed nervously at his own face, absentmindedly tracing lines around the rather prominent tattooed mask surrounding his eyes. When the halfling’s hand fell away, Abdel turned his open palm to Xzar, but the human twitched away from it and made a quarter turn as if to wander off.

“Ye’ll ‘ave to excuse my friend, there,” the halfling said, nodding to Xzar, ‘“e’s not the friendliest sort, but ‘em casties he does makes ‘im might ‘andy in a pinch.”

Abdel thought nothing of it. This Xzar was a strange one, but he’d met stranger.

“I should thank you,” Abdel said to the halfling.

“Aye, ye should,” Montaron chuckled, “if ye ‘ad any manners. I don’t myself, so tend not to expect ‘em in others. This road ain’t an easy walk. Maybe we could offer ye a chance to return the favor, eh?”

“I’m bound for the Friendly Arms,” Abdel said, raising his eyebrows to wait for a response.

Xzar grunted, but Montaron only continued to smile blankly.

“Yell find more work in Nashkel,” the halfling said.

“Nashkel?”

“Aye—” Montaron started when suddenly it was dark again.

The magical light went out all at once and seemed to take the sound of the receding horde of humanoids with it.

“Thank the Lord o’ Three Crowns,” Montaron said, his voice suddenly edged with a surprising glee, “I was beginning to think that would never fade away. Things are clearer in the dark, ain’t they Abdel?”

The sellsword only blinked, hoping not to go blind from all the sudden changes in lighting.

“Anyway,” Montaron added, “there’s work fer the taking in Nashkel.”

“I have business at the Friendly Arms.”

“So ye’re not in need o’ work?”

Abdel was, in fact, quite in need of work, but promises had been made, and there was this Khalid and another waiting for Gorion at the Friendly Arms. The gnome-run roadhouse was three days’ travel to the north, and Nashkel was a full tenday in the opposite direction.

“What kind of work?” Abdel asked.

“The kind o’ work I’m guessing ye’re in,” the halfling said, “an lot’s o’ it. Word around the campfires is there’s some trouble in the mines there.”

“I have to go to the Friendly Arms first,” Abdel said flatly. “There are people waiting for me there, but I will be in need of work.”

“So the roadhouse first, then?” Xzar asked matter-of-factly, and in the darkness Abdel couldn’t tell if the mage was talking to him or to the halfling.

Montaron solved the problem by answering, “Aye, the Friendly Arms first, then Nashkel. I could use a night’s sleep in a real bed anyway.”

After spending three days with Montaron and Xzar on the road to the Friendly Arms, Abdel had to admit he kind of liked the gruff halfling. The little guy was odd, to be sure. He would complain incessantly all day that the sunlight was too bright, even though the sky was overcast and dull gray most of the time. His aversion to light was sometimes silly, other times it was disturbing. Montaron seemed amused by his human companion, Xzar, and often teased him by tossing pebbles and twigs at the tall mage’s head as they walked.

Abdel was ready to do more than tease Xzar. Abdel was beginning to think about killing him. As the halfling joked, and the mage pontificated, and the hours dragged on, Abdel would devise elaborate plans to murder Xzar, just to pass the time.

Xzar had a way of speaking that confused and irritated Abdel. He would rearrange and repeat words for no good reason, would remain silent when he should speak and speak when he had nothing useful to say. The mage twitched literally all the time, and though Abdel felt sorry for the obviously disturbed man at first, eventually he couldn’t think about anything but how much he wanted to slap him.

He was able to ignore the twitchy mage for the first day’s walk, but when they’d settled into camp, Xzar told him the one thing Abdel always wanted to hear.

“I know,” Xzar told him, “who your father—your father is.”

Abdel sat up straight and Montaron, who had been chuckling happily in the darkness went suddenly bone still.

“What did you say?” Abdel asked, the only way he could think of to ask the man to continue.

“Xzar,” Montaron started, then just said, “Xzar….” again.

“Your father,” the mage said to Abdel, ignoring the halfling, “your father was—”

“Enough!” Montaron said sharply, and the mage spun to lock eyes with him. “Can’t ye see the boy’s a mite sensitive “bout that?”

“How would you know this?” Abdel asked Xzar, ignoring the halfling. “You don’t even know me. You don’t know who I am, how could you know my father?”

Montaron reached out and put a hand on Xzar’s forearm. The mage jerked away violently.

“He should be happy,” Xzar said to no one in particular, “he should be happy to be the son of a god—of a god.”

Abdel sighed. The man was insane.

“I am the son of a god?” Abdel asked, anger making his voice tight and quiet.

“Oh,” the mage said, his voice dripping condescension, “oh, yes, oh, yes, you most certainly are.”

“My friend,” the halfling said to Abdel, “is obviously a madman, but ‘e can make fire shoot from ‘is fingertips, so I keep ‘im around.”

“Shut your…” Xzar scolded,”… your… your—he’s the son of Bhaal.”

Abdel sighed again and lay down to go to sleep. Xzar muttered to himself for a little while, his voice eventually fading into the sound of the crickets.

“I buried my father,” Abdel said, more for himself than for the delusional mage or the halfling, “the only father I’ll ever need, the day I met you two. He was no god, and neither am I.”

“An’ what if ye were?” Montaron asked, his voice soft on the night’s quiet breeze.

Abdel looked up at him, and even in the darkness he could tell the halfling’s face was set, serious. This made Abdel laugh.