The Longest Day

Eabha turns away but cannot avoid the sickening stench of seared flesh. Nor can she avoid the screams of agony as A'mal presses the red-hot brand into the erc spellcaster's skin.

Mercifully, the abomination lapses into unconsciousness at this point, slumping in the chair she is bound to. A'mal returns the brand to the brazier.

The other erc, the male, is unconscious as well, but Eabha knows that A'mal will soon rouse him to begin another round of "questioning".

This has been the longest day of my life, Eabha thinks.

She is exhausted, hungry, and more than a little frightened. In the last several hours, she has seen A'mal go from furious to downright maniacal. His dark eyes are wild and he looks like a lunatic now, forcing the male erc back from the edge of death and tightening the thumbscrews to the point of unendurable pain.

Of course, he's been through more than any of us have tonight.

The erc is half-hysterical. The pain must be unimaginable, yet he laughs, ranting about "boys in black" and "black sheep."

Gilthain and Thrysp are nearby, their eyes weary-looking and bloodshot. Gil has participated in the torture; Thrysp has not. The inscrutable Monk simply stands there, unflinching, and Eabha wonders if she watches to ensure that no lines are crossed. And just where are the lines?

The time when things made any sense is long past, and they have entered that realm where everything is dream-like.

Eabha can hardly believe they are torturing these creatures. Yet earlier in the night, when they'd finally caught them--after a tough slog through the filth of the town's sewers and a lengthy combat--the group had agreed that torture was the only way to get them to talk, to fill in missing details on the spice trade in Stollhaaven. Only Wassup was spared as A'mal lied to him about their intentions and sent him home to sleep.

Now what the rest of them want more than anything is to return to The Green Dragon and sleep for about a week. Eabha wonders what happened to Morihana, and if she is back at the inn.

* * *

It all started in the sewers.

Standing on Right Street in the rain, looking down the manhole, Eabha tried to look on the bright side.

"At least the rain has cleared away some of the sludge."

And it did smell cleaner than it had earlier. They rigged up a harness for Ashling and descended, one by one, into the sewers.

Eabha and Ashling took the lead, followed closely by A'mal, who wielded a wand that detected the presence of secret doorways.

The water was flowing quite fast because of the rain, but remarkably, Eabha was able to find traces of recent travel in the form of scuff marks in the scum coating the sides of the tunnels and spots where someone had reached out to steady him or herself. And even Ashling seemed to be able to pick up the scent, despite the foul smell of human waste.

But the most dangerous creatures they found down there were a few rats, which were easily taken care of, and after a long while the trail led them to a dead end.

Above there was another grate. Perhaps the man and woman had exited the sewers here and now the group would have to track them above ground. They climbed back to the surface and saw only normal night time activity on the streets. Neither Eabha nor Ashling could find a trail so A'mal speculated that they had missed a hidden door in the sewers.

And when they went back down, A'mal's guess proved correct; right there at the dead end was a well-concealed door leading to a long passage ending at a ladder up and a trap door.

Eabha climbed up, listened at the trap door and came back down to report that she heard loud breathing and shuffling. The quiet Monk ascended the ladder and took a peak. A horse, she said.

Eabha said she could keep the horse calm and quiet if the rest could use the harness to lift Ashling out of the sewer. Soon, they were all above ground and looking around.

They were in a stable behind the Pawn Shop. Eabha took Ashling for a quick and quiet walk around the property. She could see that the front was a pawn shop and the back part, a residence. Ashling wagged his tail excitedly; the scent he'd been tracking was all over this place. Eabha signalled this to the rest and they gathered at the back door.

The lock was a good one, but A'mal used a spell to open it and they slipped into the room, which turned out to be a kitchen.

They'd been quiet and had hopes of a surprise but within seconds were attacked by invisible foes. Ashling yelped as something with claws, no doubt the winged beast, scratched at his side. It did not stay invisible long as Wassup murmured to himself and the creature appeared in the air above the wolf.

"What is that thing?" Eabha whispered.

"A quazzit," A'mal said. "It's her familiar."

On the staircase, Thrysp was hit by another invisible assailant and it became clear that the winged animal had already raised the alarm and their foes were waiting for them.

The party charged up the staircase after the Monk and the newly visible attacker--the man they'd tracked earlier that night--but in the confined space of the hall they found it difficult to manoeuvre.

A'mal tried to tumble down the hallway to flank him. However, he could not quite make it and fell prone at the man's feet where he was promptly attacked. Scrambling away, the Sorcerer responded with several bright rays of fire that badly wounded his opponent.

The female spellcaster appeared next from one of the rooms off the upstairs hallway and aimed a bolt of lightning down the corridor at the party. Everyone leapt to the side in time, and it missed them all.

Gilthain, meanwhile, had been tracking the quazzit, but had lost track of it when it flew out an open window at the top of the stairs.

Gradually, and taking a great deal of damage themselves, the party trapped the two in the far room where the woman pulled a wand and blasted Gilthain with a ray of frozen air, and the man stabbed brutally at Thrysp. The Monk, badly wounded, crawled back down the hallway to be attended to by Wassup.

Gilthain stepped forward in the tiny space and with a flick of his wrist, used his sword to knock the wand from the woman's hands as A'mal aimed several more rays of fire at the man, who finally fell to the floor, dying.

Now unarmed and seeing that they were trapped, the woman grabbed her partner and they both promptly disappeared, leaving behind only her wand in the middle of the floor.

"Quiet!" A'mal hissed at the rest, and they all stopped, listening for the sound of the two rematerializing. He figured they probably had not gone far, but none of them heard a thing.

"They haven't left the area," A'mal guessed. "Check out the windows!"

And they peer out every window available on the upper level, but it was well after midnight, the streets were dark and there was no sign of anyone.

"Someone needs to go out there and look," A'mal said. And Gilthain and Thrysp volunteered to jump down from the windows and investigate what was happening on the street.

Eabha and Ashling, meanwhile, moved back down to the bottom of the staircase. The main floor was quiet. A'mal joined Eabha and the wolf in the kitchen and together they were investigating the front rooms--a lounge and an office--when they all heard the scream.

It was a woman's scream, and it came from below them, a basement. Thrysp and Gilthain rushed back into the house.

They located the door to the basement easily, but it was several long moments before they could knock the sturdy thing down and proceed down the steps towards the source of the shriek.

They did not find a woman, but rather four ercs, armed and waiting in ambush. They attacked Gilthain, Eabha and Ashling as they reached the bottom of the steps.

"A quad!" Gilthain shouted. "Don't let them surround you!"

Eabha remembered what he had said a few days ago about ercs being deadly in fours.

A'mal, from the staircase, pointed at the four abominations and seconds later, they were engulfed in a ball of fire that just missed his allies. The walls and floor smouldered around them.

But something about it, about the way they burned or moved alerted Wassup, who yelled, "They're not real!"

A'mal looked back at the creatures. One slashed at Gilthain and blood spurted from the gash. Thrysp, having leapt down the stairs, tripped one then savagely kicked at it, and it groaned in pain. They looked real enough.

Eabha, Ashling and Gilthain also believed they were the real thing, but when Thrysp tripped another and it vanished as though dissolved, she understood. They'd been placed here to delay them as their foes made their escape.

Another few seconds and the rest vanished as well. And again, the companions were without an enemy.

What they could see was a doorway to a laboratory, and a load of items stacked up, probably belonging to the original owners of the business, the pawnbrokers.

A'mal was certain that the scream had come from the basement, and looking at the configuration of walls and doors, determined that there was a void space they had not yet looked into. But his wand did not reveal any hidden doors.

Back in the kitchen, they used Eabha's axes to hack at the floor over the spot where they thought the void space was. But when they hit stone, they had to stop. Moving to the adjacent storeroom, they chopped another hole and this time, made it through. They dangled a sunrod down into the hole, finding a room filled with instruments of torture: a brazier, a rack of metal objects, whips and chains.

A'mal jumped down.

"I can see into the corridor," he shouted up, incredulously. "The one where the illusory ercs attacked us."

Seconds later the rest jumped down to join him and realized that the wall had also been an illusion, easily stepped through if they had only known. No wonder A'mal's wand failed to detect the presence of the room.

And it turned out there were more cell-like rooms, and inside these they found the source of the scream.

In the first cell, a naked female elf, dead, with a hole through her skull. Her body showed signs of having been tortured. It was Cendra.

"Dead two or three hours," Wassup figured after examining the body.

In the second cell, they found Flo, beheaded.

"Just several minutes ago," Wassup said.

A'mal cursed. She'd been alive as they fought upstairs. They'd been so close to saving her.

The third cell was empty. And there was still no sign of the man, woman or the quazzit.

Barely able to hide his anger and frustration, A'mal pulled his wand again and searched for hidden doors. He found one compartment that contained a few documents that looked important, included one that was encoded, but no way of escaping.

"Check the walls," he ordered the rest.

And minutes later, they found one last illusory wall by the bottom of the stairs. Ashling whined and pointed at the wall, indicating that he'd picked up the trail again.

Through the illusory wall they found a tunnel, though not part of the sewer system, that led them more than a couple hundred feet and to another illusory wall. A'mal stuck his hand into it, and then just walked through it. Seconds later, the others heard a splash as he fell 20 feet into the well.

Once they'd hauled the Sorcerer out and all climbed to the surface, they found themselves at the well behind Flo's place. It was still before dawn and no one was about.

"Eabha, Ashling and Thrysp, go through the front door. The rest of us will go through the back. We may not have the element of surprise on our side now, but we're not letting them get away this time," A'mal said.

The quazzit was again on watch and took a swipe at Ashling as they rushed through the door. Thrysp ignored the beast and raced up the steps only to be confronted by a few dozen magical lights, floating in the air at the top of the stairs. Strangely, she was fascinated by these lights and could do nothing but watch as Eabha and Ashling rushed past her, ignoring the lights and attacking the woman who had cast the spell.

A'mal, Gilthain and Wassup followed and the Healer stopped to shake the Monk from her stupor.

The man appeared just then in a doorway, and the female magic user spoke rapidly, attempting to use her powers to trap Eabha, Ashling and A'mal in a circle of ice. But the spell failed; the ice formed then immediately splintered and fell. A'mal used this opportunity to slam the man with a handful of bolts of force.

Thrysp finally freed herself from her fascination with the lights and together the companions advanced on their foes. Eabha, Ashling and Thrysp - dodging the quazzit's sharp claws - surrounded the spellcaster, and Gilthain relentlessly slashed away at the man as Wassup helped from the stairway, firing crossbow bolts.

Gilthain leapt forward to finish the man off, but it was A'mal who actually did it, aiming several deadly bolts of pure force at the man's back.

As he reeled and fell to the ground, Gilthain was startled by what he saw. The man seemed to flicker, and then he was gone, replaced by a soldier he'd seen earlier that night standing behind Eabha at the Hexagon, and then by a young man who'd been with a girl at the joust, then by a middle-aged man he'd seen walking his dog earlier, and then by an elderly man he'd met at the Dragoon a few days ago. Finally, it was an erc lying there, its true form revealed at last.

Eabha, too, saw it when she placed the final axe that killed the woman: a middle-aged woman at the Hexagon, a young woman holding hands with her boyfriend at the joust, a middle-aged woman at the Dragoon, then an erc.

"Did you guys see that?" she asked, bewildered. She and Gilthain explained what they had witnessed.

"Powerful magic," Wassup commented.

Gilthain nodded. "They've been watching us. We weren't too careful."

"Stabilize them both. They're not dying just yet," A'mal said. "And when they do die, I want it to be as painful as possible."

* * *

A'mal and Gilthain hold the female erc's head, prying her mouth open. Eabha holds the hot tongs. She thinks she might be sick, but she does it anyway. She shoves the tongs into the creature's mouth, already made wider when A'mal smashed her teeth out minutes ago, and grasps her tongue tightly.

The erc convulses with pain, struggling futilely against the bonds, and lets out such a pitiful wail that Eabha cannot continue. She drops the tongs to the ground, takes a few steps back, and bends over, placing her hands on her knees.

"Sorry," she mutters. "Not cut out for this."

But A'mal grabs the erc by her neck and asks again about the "boys in black" that the male erc had mentioned.

"S…slaves…" the abomination manages to get out with her broken teeth and horribly burnt tongue.

In the end, what they learn hardly seems worth the time and effort expended. The ercs don't know much about the big picture. They cannot, for example, tell them anything about Shamoof, the mysterious erc who has placed a bounty the heads of A'mal, Thrysp and Gilthain. They also seem to know nothing of military operations, such as the timetable for the invasion from the South.

Certain things, however, do become clear. The "boys in black" are Negro slaves from the South. These slaves can be found at work at the Wool Shoppe, which seems to be the centre of the spice trade in town. Both ercs initially deny knowing how the spice gets to Cockermouth, but they eventually implicate local merchant Benn Gaul, saying that he can be found at The Green Lagoon every other Sunday. Finally, they admit that he brings the spice to town in a wagon train up from the South and that he is attended by four mercenaries that guard him and the shipments. A guard at the back gate, Ancrist, has been paid off to let the spice through.

And they both denied that there were any other erc agents in town or that anything had been planned to disrupt the wedding.

A'mal makes notes on all of this to give to Mather. He also indicates that he does not wish the wool sellers to be arrested just yet. He wants more time to investigate.

Eabha, not much help with the torture, has spent much of the night working on the encoded message they'd found in the office.

It reads:


To Zelonde Raven Crag
From Shamoof

I have to tell a matter import!

The castle and gate at Raven Crag have been disabled. The good news is that Keswick is ours and we can use it to sweep north from there.

I tell you these secrets for a reason. The creatures that delayed the advance are from Cocker. They are the bunch that you reported capturing Oscerous. That was a good kill of yours. Anyway, these humans are reported to be heading back to C.. You will send me their skulls via Musoive at E..

My informant told, before she died, that you are looking for humans, a Sorcerer named A'mal, a Bard named Mingus, and a Monkess, Thrysp. They have been joined by a fighter type, Gilthain, and an elven whore, Cendra. Deltron also told of a Paladin, Lorindel, and a fat Friar Tuck. But their bodies have been found. Delton also mentioned a girl, Flo, and a Barbarian who returned to C. earlier.

I want these heads to present to my Lord. Better yet, my Lord tires of Elven whores. Send me the women and I shall tame them for him. If they return to C. and slip through your fingers, send your head instead. Use all the resources you have.


She shares it with the others but they are too busy with the torture to make sense of it right then.

When they have gotten as much information as they think they can, A'mal, Eabha and Ashling leave Gilthain and Thrysp to clean up and take care of the ercs--that is, kill them--while they run a couple of errands, including arranging for the bodies of Flo and Cendra to be taken to the undertakers.

As they step out of the Pawn Shop, A'mal turns to Eabha.

"Look," he says. "We appreciate your help. We couldn't have tracked these guys without you and Ashling tonight. But your friend? You tell her she'd better be able to give us a damned good reason to keep her around because when we leave town to track the spice, we're not taking any dead weight with us."

Eabha nods. "I understand."

But she has no idea what she's going to say to her old friend when she sees her.