They fought like beasts, not men.

- The Island of Dr. Moreau




18. The Gnoll Witch Project

The tracker scrunched his beady eyes, peering through the cloaking dark of the Wood of Sharp Teeth. He lifted his nose, perked his ears, and sniffed the air like a beast.

He knew not what his boss or their quarry intended, but surely it wouldn't be long now. They'd been trekking west for months. Themselves starting from Thay, they'd picked up the trail leading out of Rasheman, tailed it west across Thesk, and around the northern side of the Sea of Fallen Stars. In Sembia they'd caught up to their quarry, but his boss had insisted on shadowing them, providing no reasons, but ample threats. Then through Cormyr. Finally, the western heartlands. Now the Sea of Swords was only another day or two west; he could already detect the faint salty tinge on the air, although that would still have been beyond most men.

Most wouldn't be able to, but he'd always been like that. It was part of what made him such a tracker. Some said he looked to have orc-blood; he couldn't say, half of his lineage was utterly unknown to him, the other half, he only knew what he saw. His mother'd been a low-grade prostitute-slave, one of so many in Eltabbar. She hadn't offered him much of a future, but he'd been a big enough boy to bully and mug around his ghetto and help his mother make ends meet. But he was a slave of the same master as his mother, of course, the thought brought a grown man's tear even now, and eventually her profession caught up to her in a brutal rape-murder at their master's hands. He'd killed the bastard of course, but highborn red-robe the man was, and Thay being Thay, he'd had to run out of town, and he'd probably have torn clear out of Red Empire if he hadn't fallen in with a Cossack bandit gang of men, hobgoblins, gnolls, and everything in between, where he made a decent enough living plying his same mugging trade on the open road, now with real weapons in his hands and real comrades by his side. The chieftain had taught him the ways of Malar, and he'd been one of the Beastlord's rangers ever since. Probably would have made chieftain himself if the Red authorities hadn't caught up to their gang.

But, maybe that'd led to a better opportunity, to this. Thay being Thay, most of the gang had been executed but the best recruited. If anyone had recognized the boyhood murderer of a Red Wizard he was, he'd be long dead, but Thay being Thay, no one kept account of long-missing slaves very carefully. After a few skirmishes against Rashemani rangers, and proving his formidible tracking skills in the service of the ruling Red Wizards, he'd been assigned a queer mission under one in particular. He only knew what he was told, which wasn't much, and that was that they were tracking a Wychalarn. Even before catching sight of them Sembia, the tracks'd made it obvious she too was accompanied by a bodyguard who was more than her double in foot and weight.

On the big man's shoulder sat an enormous, grisly street rat. Its sinewy pinkish flesh sprouted matted, mangy black hair, numerous grey scars, and its mouth sprouted fanglike incisors dripping with froth.

This rat had been born in a ghetto gutter not far from the birthplace of his current 'mount', as he thought of the man. The smallest of a litter one too many for his mother's teats, he the runt had been pushed aside by his mother and siblings, all greedy for her milk. So, he the newborn life had done what all life should - whatever it took to survive. Small he was but born already with two teeth, and he had sunk them into the next-smallest of the litter, piercing her membranous peach skin, slaying her so easily and relishing the blood almost as much as he then could their mother's milk. The next two weeks had been the only bliss he had ever known, for a wagon wheel had crushed his entire family, and even caught the tip of his snout, which was horribly misshapen to this day.

Ever since, the young rat had fended for himself on the sewers and streets, scurrying, biting, scratching, eating, fornicating. The streets of Eltabbar were all disease and fighting and death, and one battle with a psychotic old raccoon had given him a great tatter in one ear, and the rabies he had to this day.

In Thay, terribly cunning cats - some the familiars of decadent wizards - made life in the wealthier districts, which should have been all good feasting and napping, even more dangerous. He, however, could outsmart even these ferocious felines, and had lived quite comfortably for awhile upon the lavish foods in a great household ruled by a black-bearded man and a woman of long raven hair, with many other humans. Servants scurrying around, and a spoiled boy obsessed with jewelry, clothing, books, and magic.

He had been careless, once, lured by an innocent-looking piece of cheese, and the evil boy had caught him! But instead of just feeding him to his mother's cat or somesuch, this studious boy had caged him, then put him through endless, maddening mazes to get to more cheese, or cast strange magics upon him, and perhaps his thought processes had been more acute, or more deranged, ever since.

One day the boy, now a bearded young man, had packed some of his things and gone to the front door to meet a large stranger. It was then he felt the pull of the Beastlord, and with his magnificent rat-brain had picked at his cage-lock with his claws and tail and gotten free, and scurried out, only to find himself drawn to the stranger, who had served as his mount ever since. And profitable it had been - this mount loved to kill and eat, and was a constant source of food, be it flesh of man or beast. In battle he leapt rabidly from his mount's shoulder or bald head, scratching and biting the face of the enemy, frothing from his fangs like a small furry demon, doing the things he always did to survive. Now he was a big and strong and fierce rat, and he would act like it, he would never play the runt again!

"You hear that Fynk?" his mount grunted.

The man clutched his spear and crept forward through the trees and the night, moving with stealth uncanny for such a large lumbering figure. Glowing red, his eyes which couldn't have been quite human pierced the darkness. He could make out the smaller figure, the Wychalarn, her heat blurred by her tent. Outside it, the bodyguard, that accursed Mielikkite, sat on a rock, gripping a large blade in one hand, his other palm open.

"What is it Boo?" the man cried into his palm, in an idiotic drawl of the Rashemanian tongue, "The Hamster Nose of Evil Sniffing says foul aroma of wicked work is afoot? Stand fast, vigilant hamster, but if things go bump in the night, then the boot of Minsc shall give their backsides another bump they will not soon forget!"

The man tensed, fearing some meaning to this simpleton's ramblings, that perhaps he was made out. Then he noticed a party of glowing-red shapes much further away in the wood. They were large, larger even than himself and this rival ranger, their legs bent crookedly, like large canine hind legs.

As their red heatforms drew closer through the forest, his ears perked, his not-quite-human senses taking in their guttural barking.

"Finn kvinnehekset!"

Fynk squeaked angrily, and the tracker turned and ran back through the woods for his boss's tent.

The young Red Wizard sat cross-legged within, spellbook laid out on his lap, and as his eyes bored at it, one hand filed the long, finely pointed nails of the other with a golden file.

"What merits this interruption?" the young Red Wizard sneered in crisp noble Thayvian, deigning after a moment to look up at his tracker's bald head in the doorway. "The value of my time is beyond the reckoning of a barbaric commoner (especially one who fetishizes a mutant rodent I should have fed to mother's familiar long ago)."

"Sorry boss," his tracker grunted in a slave dialect, looking down while Fynk snarled atop his shoulder. "Gnolls. Coming through the woods. They seek the Wychalarn."

The wizard laughed. "Boris knows Gnoll? (I should have guessed as much. He smells much like one. A dead one. Several weeks dead.)" He waved his wrists to shoo Boris from the doorway, then gathered his robes, grabbed his quarterstaff, and stood outside the tent. "Lead on. You are my tracker, are you not? (If what he says his true, we must not let her come to harm. That right belongs to Edwin Odesserion...soon.)"

Boris led the wizard through the dark forest, and came back to the small campsite of the Rashemanians. The gnolls were close now, clearly audible, and the witch's large bodyguard stood, greatsword in hand, and had put out their campfire.

The moon was full and bright, though, and even Edwin could make out details like the purple tattoo on the other ranger's head. The young wizard's short, apprehensive breath intook sharply when the Wychalarn bloomed from her tent, her curvy form and chocolate skin alluded, not occluded, by indigo robes.

The gnolls burst through the last trees. Six flanked the obvious leader - foremost, largest, and best equipped. He carried not an ordinary metal-and-wood halberd like his mates, but one of pure, glowing metal that was not only double-bladed but also double-ended, the four blades glistening fiery red, icy blue, electric yellow, and acidic green. More strangely still, Edwin observed, his armor was enchanted and specially crafted - for a gnoll.

"(These dumb beasts possess no such craft!)" he mumbled to himself. "(Whose work....???)"

"Der! Finn kvinnehekset!"

Boris processed the same Gnoll again, and lurched forward, spear in hand.

"Stand fast, you fool!" Edwin hissed. "We must not reveal our presence unless necessary! (This would be much too early...but a contigency plan may indeed be required...think, o magnificent brain of mine, think!)"

As the gnolls closed with the Rashemanians, their ranger lifted his sword and cried, "Evil dog-men will be housebroken by the obedience school that is Hamster Justice!"

"Calm thyself," his witch snapped with authoritarian calm as her bodyguard attempted a great stride forward. "Thou must stay at my side and defend me."

Her rich voice descended into syllables of magery as the gnolls barked wildly and bounded forward with a queer lope that was bipedal, yet distinctly canine. Her bodyguard stood his ground before her, shifting his greatsword to his left hand and yanking from his belt a throwing axe with his right. He hurled it at the advancing line of gnolls as the witch opened her hands, palms together forward, and with a womanly shout sent a gaseous green ball forward through the night. It exploded into a sickly green-grey cloud around the advancing gnolls, and two fell gagging and vomiting, one tripping over its halberds and the other impaling itself. The ranger's axe glanced like a toy off the bright armor of the chief gnoll.

The chief barked, and the gnolls furthest to each side dashed forward and outward in a flanking manuever against the pair. The ranger grimaced, took his sword in two hands, and battle-cried, "Go for the eyes, Boo, go for the eyes! Raarrrghhh!!" He lurched aside at one of the flanking gnolls, screaming, and brought his great blade down with such strength that it cleft through the gnoll's halberd shaft and its chest. The ranger ripped his sword out, spun and lurched the other way, towards the second gnoll. It swung its halberd blade up toward him, but the ranger snapped sideways, his bald head narrowly dodging, and cleft with his sword clean through both of the beast's legs, sending it down and helpless.

The witch snapped her hands forward, slinging a pair of bright red magic missiles at the chief gnoll. He grunted angrily as they passed ghostlike through his armor and burned his flesh, but it hardly phased the great gnoll. The ranger returned to his place square in front of the his witch just as the gnoll chief came upon him.

It was a furious duel, the man almost as monstrous as the beast. The ranger hammered at his opponent with great swings of his greatsword, but the gnoll was both unusually strong, not phased by impact and making his own, and uncannily controlled, easily positioning to parry and counterstrike, his movements more calm, more human than those of his brethren, or his chaotic opponent. He easily kept his opponent busy while his remaining mates circled around them toward the witch. She reduced one to a flaming mass of dog-fur with a gas-orange jet of scorching flame, but then the other was upon her back, and hoisted her up over one shoulder, grunting triumphantly as her arms waved helplessly and the last of her fire wisped toward the sky.

"Now!" Edwin hissed to Boris from their hidden position. "Attack, go in, my bald gorilla of a tracker! (The situation grows dire.)"

While the Thayvian ranger bounded toward the fray, the Rashemanian saw his flailing witch being hoisted off out of the corner of his eye. "Dyaneheir!! Nooooo!!! RAAARRRRGHGGHGHGHGH!!!" The great man burst into frenzy, froth flinging in arcs from his lips as he swung wildly at the great gnoll, who backed up, his animal eyes gleaming with intelligence. The monster feigned back from a wide swing, and pushed forward with one haft of his halberd. The flat of the electric blade smashed against the bald ranger's forehead, as if the circular tattoo had been a bullseye. It silenced and felled the man abruptly. His large body all but shook the ground, and terrified hamster-squeaks echoed.

The great gnoll lifted his halberd overhead for an executioner-style chop, but snarled and turned his head to see a second enormous human charming with a spear brandished like a lance. To the gnoll holding the struggling Wychalarn he barked, "Ta kvinneheks til hoyborg. Ta hennes levende til gul menneskelig helgen. Ingen eteing!"

The lackey obliged and fled in the direction of their first ambush, snorting as it loped through the dissipating stinking cloud, the witch it gripped over one shoulder struggling and screaming, physical restrained and unable to cast properly, but doing her meager best to claw with fine long nails at her captor's furry hide.

"Die scum!" the chief gnoll barked at Boris in gravelly common, and used his executioner's wind-up to bring his magical halberd down toward the advancing man, who leapt aside off one stiding leg and dodged the halberd, then thrust at the gnoll's midsection with his spear, but the beast's armor deflected the tip.

Watching, Edwin grimaced from his hiding place, clasped his quarterstaff in one armpit, and as quietly as he could invoked chosen arcane syllables, and grabbed from pouches at his belt, flinginng powder and liquid into the air. The smell of chlorine filled his nostrils, and as his chant punctuated, the powder ignited, ripping apart the hydrogen in the air. It bonded with the spray, and when Edwin pushed his forearm through it, shaping elegantly with his palms and fingers, forming a greenish arrow of hydrochloric acid that sailed from his fingertips and he jerked them back. It sped through the night air and splashed into the back of the gnoll that carried the witch away. The beast yelped, faltered, and before it could regain its pace, a pair of magic missiles slammed into its back even as the acid burned through fur and flesh. It growled angrily, nearly dropping the witch. Another pair of magic missiles, frying its internal organs as acid dissolved a link in its spine, and it fell, dead.

The witch landed atop her late captor, and rolled of its steaming body. She saw her own bodyguard down, the chief gnoll dueling an unfamilar but uncannily similar beefy bald warrior, and in a blink juxtaposed that with the strange barrage of spells that had saved her.

She knew.

Scruffling noises sounded from nearby, and the moonlight shone down one the gnoll that had been gassed but not self-impaled by her stinking cloud. She faced the wakening creature and began to cast.

The gnoll chief slashed clean through Boris's splintmail and into his lower left ribcage, the blade's magical fire cooking his liver. An acid arrow shot from the darkness and slashed against his shoulder, seeping through the cracks in his armor-plates and burning beneath. The gnoll's eyes darted around as he pulled his halberd out of his foe and spun full circle, taking in his lackey charging the Wychalarn, and his brain deduced the presence of another wizard, somewhere. He completed his spin, slamming the cold-blade of his magnificent halberd into the human warrior's upper arm, to the bone, severing the bicep and cutting short the man's spear thrust.

"Now you die human," the great gnoll growled into Boris's horrified face, as if about to bite off his head. "Tell Malar that Gnamesh is beast king here!"

Another acid arrow struck Gnamesh, splashing over the side of his face. He reflexively closed one eye, and luckily it dribbled over his deep brow without eroding the precious lid. Then a small but vicious rodent leapt from the human's shoulder, and clawed at the other side of Gnamesh's face rabidly, drawing blood. While the gnoll grabbed for the squirming rodent, batting it away into the air, the maimed Boris took the initiative, backing up, and thrusting the spear forward in his one good right arm. Gnamesh pulled his halberd haft down and knocked it aside, then pushed the pointed spike between the blades straight into Boris's chest. The spike pierced his heart, and he could feel poison polluting his arteries, his own heart's last beats killing him by pumping it around his body.

"You're just a monster," Boris grunted weakly. A pair of magic missiles out of the darkness slammed into Gnamesh, but the gnoll barely flinched.

Beyond them, the Wychalarn chanted, raised her hands together, and opened one palm downward toward the charging gnoll, as if letting water flow from it. Instead, a screaming rainbow of clashing colors arced forth, and the gnoll's eyes widened, the beady pupils flashing, and it frothed as if with seizure. The beast fell over, catatonic, and sliced its own neck open with the edge of its halberd blade.

"Yes, human..." Gnamesh roared in triumph as Boris fell to his knees, his muscles slackened, his mind reeling, his throat closing off with the poison. "We all monsters."

Gnamesh slung his great halberd around, and it crashed deep into Boris's chest, the corner of the edge protruding out his back. He grunted, pulled out his weapon, and turned and dashed after the fleeing witch. She had no hope of running from the beast chief which loped at nearly thrice her foot speed, and no hope of hiding from his heat-seeing eyes and canine ears and nose. She turned and fired a chromatic orb, but Gnamesh flinched without breaking lope and it whizzed by his shoulder. He swept the Wychalarn up in one gigantic forepaw, slung her kicking and screaming over one armored shoulder while dropping his halberd into the other, and raced into the denser forest from which he'd sprung not ten minutes ago, leaving his six lackeys to rot, and howling with glee at the full moon.

The attacking wizard that he had been content to leave undiscovered now crept forward, surveying the damage with an almost regal bearing as he strode with his quarterstaff, red robes billowing behind him. Six dead gnolls and two dead bodyguards. Or were they? The brained Rashemanian was deathly still, but his own quivered, bled, and blubbered.

"You fool!" Edwin hissed down at Boris, who lay clutching the open wound in his chest. "The mission is as good as failed! (What did those overgrown flea-trollies have in mind? I must know. But how? Ah.) What did the proverbial leader of the pack bark to his puppy? Quickly, before you expire!"

His mouth frothing blood-bubbles of air and his chest wheezing, Boris gurgled, "Take woman witch to our stronghold. Take her alive to yellow-spikes-hair sword human. No eating!"

"Intruiging," Edwin scratched his beard, and leaned on his quarterstaff.

"Heal..." Boris whispered.

"Hmm?" Edwin's eyeballs swiveled down, sneering slightly at the annoyances of his interrupted thoughts. "Ah. As much as I still require a bodyguard (not to mention a pack-mule), I'm afraid I downed our last potion after those dreadful mosquito bites I suffered four days past. Even if I could carry or drag your ogrish carcass to whatever pagan temples might dot this barbaric western land, I doubt we've the funds to raise you. (Although intimidating a backwater cleric into 'volunteering' the aforementioned service would be excellent combat-magic practice. And most entertaining.) I shall have to identify this 'stronghold' (some beast-warren most likely...but what of this human?) and perhaps recruit replacement lackeys (regardless of my peerless magical prowess, I will at least need pack-mules...that Nashkel backwater is close now, but tomorrow will be outright unbearable). It would seem we must part ways here, but you served as well as can be expected for one of your caste. I'm sure your heathen beastlord will enjoy repeatedly hunting and devouring your soul for eternity, but your mortal coil is void. Goodbye, Boris."

The Red Wizard gathered his robes, and retreated to his campsite. Boris, already far gone, continued to leak out his life-blood, and within a minute more his heart stilled, his eyes closed, and his soul fled to Tarterus. From the ground nearby, a rodent scurried up onto his chest, and squeeked with rage. His mount was no more!

That was the end of Boris, but not of Fynk. The Thayvian sewer rat lived for a time off the flesh of its former mount, which drew all manner of carrion bird, earthbound vermin, and parasite in the coming weeks. Of the rodents that came, Fynk defended viciously, but rather than driving them off, merely subjugated them into a state whereby they remained, but under the dominance of Fynk. By the time this food source was lost to lower forms of life, Fynk was rat-lord of a pack of field mice, and with an iron paw his dominion grew and grew over the next few years, and even tree-dwelling squirrels and subterranean moles who lived to close, learned to move, or to live under Fynk. The great rat took many a female field-mouse into his burrow, and among his progeny was the dread rat Kluny, who would in time lead a horde of vermin to a place of peaceful rodents known as Redstone Abbey, and Kluny himself would battle against a valiant hamster whose father only is now living and concerned. For that, as furrykind say, is another tail.