Chapter 20

Toede awoke feeling flat, or at least a little smashed. Was there a party the previous evening? No, that was with the gnolls a few evenings back, and was followed by all sorts of unpleasantness. His last clear memory was of a tremendous force behind him, thrusting him through the windows of the manor and giving him a very brief look at the Blood Sea from a very high altitude.

Toede looked around and saw that he was once again on the bank of the same creek as before, beneath the same maple, several days' journey south of Flotsam. The trees were fresh with new leaves that caught the sun, shading the water in myriad hues of green and amber. A few lazy flies buzzed, and far to his left, a wood thrush began its throaty call.

"I understand now," said Toede. "It's all a plot to make me pay for my sins. The rest of eternity I'll be sent back here to suffer and die again and again."

He shuddered, but in the darkest corners of his hobgoblin heart, he had to stand back in awe and wonder at the fiendish genius who could come up with so elegant and cruel a punishment. Would that he someday might have an opportunity to use it on someone else!

Toede scanned the horizon and realized he was holding his breath, waiting for something to leap out of the bushes and throttle him. Or an army of gnolls on the horizon. Something. Anything.

The wood thrush continued, then petered out. A stiff breeze came up and shook the willows and maples. The sound of leaves rustling was akin to the crashing of the surf. Still nothing.

Toede pulled his legs up and wrapped his arms tightly around them, rocking slightly, thinking mightily. He was back, and it was a good guess that six months had elapsed since his last sojourn in the world. The question was, what to do with his restored life this time?

"Live nobly," the voices-sea-wide and mountain-tall-had said again, leaving it at that. Thank you very much. Perhaps this time, Toede reflected, he would concentrate on the first word, and let the second word come along at its own speed.

The first time, he had gone downstream and turned left at the swamp, found kender and trouble, and died soon afterward.

The second time, he had gone downstream and turned right at the swamp, found gnolls and scholars and trouble, and died soon afterward.

So this time, perhaps he should head upstream, into the hills, find some cave and hide there for a few years until he was certain that no one was left to capture, lure, or ambush him.

Or he could remain where he was, which had the added benefit of not having to travel far, and in the likely event he died and was restored again, he wouldn't have to go to much effort.

Toede looked at his surroundings with the eye of an amateur camper sizing up a potential resting spot for the night. The willows by the creek were supple enough to form a rude frame, like those the kender used. And the maples could be easily stripped of their bark for cross supports. He could lash bundles of grass to it, at least until he got good enough to catch and skin a beaver or moose or other suitable furbearer (He had never skinned a wild animal skin before, but how different could they be from a human?). He'd have to locate berry bushes and other edibles. Perhaps even launch a small raid on the kender encampment, if it was still there…

There was a sharp snap of a breaking branch, and the brush behind him and to his right gave a brief, animated shake. Toede saw it from the corner of his eye, and instantly was alert and on his feet. Subconsciously he reached for the dagger jammed in his belt. When his fingers closed on empty air, he made a mental note to die with a scabbard on, next time, so he would be reborn with a weapon handy.

The brush continued to shake. Toede saw that someone or something was trying to force its way through the brambles. He could see an arm wielding a sword that glinted in the sunlight as it came down, hard, on the underbrush ahead of it.

Toede cursed. Bending halfway over to conceal himself as best he could, he made for the sidelines. Somehow, he just knew he should not hang around and hope no one would bother him. He dived into some brush about the same time the figure worked itself into the open.

Toede held himself very still in the tall grass and weeds, crouched under a particularly large bush. From his vantage point he could see little, but the thrashing to his left indicated that the intruder was now strolling the bank where previously Toede had been.

Toede saw a pair of boots-calf-high and made of some dusty gray leather-pass by. A set of trouser legs, once blue but faded into a sea-gray shade, was stuffed into them. Nothing else was visible, and the human (or elf, Toede allowed) was facing the opposite direction.

The boots went past his hiding spot and stopped, then turned around and went past again. Again, three paces past him they stopped, and turned around yet a third time. This time they stopped in front of Toede's lair.

Then they turned directly toward where Toede was hiding.

Toede exploded from the brush, head down, arms together and ahead of him, hands clenched in pudgy fists, literally diving upward at his pursuer. He hoped to catch his visitor in the stomach (or perhaps a little lower) and to knock him senseless enough to either affect an escape or grab his foe's weapon and turn the tables.

He was not expecting his adversary to explode at first touch into a cloud of fluffy gray tomb dust. Nor for the upper torso of said adversary to pitch backward from the force of the blow, leaving the legs standing there for a moment, then to collapse slowly onto themselves, twisting slightly as they did so.

Toede the victor stood over his conquest, coughing and sneezing on the dust that danced and sparkled in the spring sun. The battle had all the excitement, and the precise results, of kicking a puffball mushroom.

His vanquished foe lay face-up in two separate pieces on the river bank. Toede looked in the face (what remained of it) of his opponent, and saw why the creature put up so little fight.

The face of his would-be stalker was nothing more than a gray mask of dried skin, pulled tightly over the yellowed remnants of skull. The lips were slightly parted, the creature's teeth like pegs knocked out of their peg-holes, all askew.

A zombie. He was in the middle of the wilderness, caught between gnolls and kender and gods-knew what else, and here he encounters an armed and armored zombie in the first five minutes of his new life. What, he thought bitterly, had he done to deserve this?

And more importantly, he added to himself, who had he done it to?

One suspect rose immediately in Toede's mind. The fabled necromancer could call up a single zombie, or a dozen, in his free time between tea and supper, without even breaking a sweat. However, said necromancer would not know exactly where Toede's location was when he reappeared, nor would the death-mage have any particular reason to want Toede dead.

Toede went through a mental list of individuals who might want to see him restricted to shambling on undead feet through some unlit passageway for all eternity and was distressed to find that it was so long.

Or it could be someone else entirely.

It could be a chance encounter; maybe this zombie got bored doing his mundane tasks and decided to go for a spring stroll.

Toede smiled, but his a smile was without mirth. He took the long sword and the dagger from the undead creature's deathlike grip, snapping a few finger bones in the process. The dagger he shoved in his belt, and the scabbard he slung over his shoulder, since if he wore it on his belt the tip would leave a faint furrow in the soft ground.

Then he headed north, upstream along the creek, wondering where he could find some kind of defensible place to call home.

The climb was relatively easy, as the stream divided into two smaller creeks, and the rightmost creek into two smaller brooks, and the rightmost brook in a series of rock-strewn trickles and tributaries.

As the creek bed rose above the vale below, Toede turned and regarded his world. He was facing south and could see a landscape dotted with the light greens and cyans of new buds, and a sprinkling of wildflowers. Far toward the horizon was the accursed swamp, a thick miasma of haze blurring its outlines.

Toede resumed climbing, congratulating himself on his cunning. Were someone like the necromancer pursuing him, he would assume Toede took the easiest route: downstream.

The tributary Toede had been following finally ended in a natural spring bubbling up from the rock. The brush had surrendered utterly to rocky ground, dotted by a few gnarled, ancient trees. Not the best territory to eke out an existence, but sufficient for protection, Toede noted.

Whatever fates there existed were with him when he spotted an old, half-tumbled hovel halfway up the hill above the spring. It was little more than an entrance hall, and ran about fifteen feet back into the hill, with a low ceiling that sloped downward in the back to join the floor. The cabin had been abandoned. The rotted remains of a musty bedroll, tarnished platterware, and termite-infested wood littered the small one-room interior. The dry smell of food that had spoiled, rotted, or evaporated hung heavy on the air. An open sack of flour stood on one low shelf. Toede tested it with his dagger point; it had solidified into a powdery white brick.

Toede imagined that this had been the home of some dwarven miner, guessing from the low ceilings and amount of rusted iron present. Probably there was an excavation somewhere nearby, or a shaft back into the hills. Probably, said shaft ended with a cave-in and a pair of dwarven boots sticking out of the rubble.

Toede cleared out the garbage (that is to say in general, emptied the cabin), but declared the bedroll serviceable after removing it, thwopping it against a boulder a few dozen times, and standing back as enough dust billowed from its insides to gag a mummy.

By the time he had finished reintroducing the concept of livability to the hovel, the sun was already nuzzling the horizon, and Toede's stomach was grumbling. He sat on his front porch (a patch of dusty ground, actually) and nibbled on dinner (the last bit of smoked meat that looked semi-edible). In the morning he would have to look for some berry bushes, maybe set a few traps (a deadfall was a deadfall, regardless of what it was falling on), and scout for neighbors.

The last of the sun retreated, leaving a band of reddish fire along the horizon. In the distance there was the howl of a wolf or wild dog. The air was cooling, and Toede thought briefly of building a fire, but he had no idea what else was living in the neighborhood, and there was no need to advertise his presence just yet.

Toede rose, sighed, and leaned against the frame of the doorless entrance to the hovel (that creaked alarmingly). The reddish hue along the horizon was ebbing, and the stars were coming out overhead.

"Perhaps," he said to no one in particular, "this is the answer. No Flotsam. No Balifor. No kender or gnolls or scholars. Perhaps."

So he retired to bed, lying face-up, his fingers threaded behind his head, considering his options. Maybe this was what the shadowy figures were saying: travel and die or remain in place and build your own little lordship. Not a bad concept, and maybe it would do for a while. Even if a week passed, and he became bored beyond belief, that would be three days longer than he had survived before.

There was the wolf howl again, and Toede's last thought was that he would have to fix up a decent door. That resolution belonged on the upper end of his "things-yet-to-be-done" list.

Toede awoke to a deep growling. He opened his eyes to see a large, shaggy black hound sniffing his face. The idea of a decent door moved even higher into the top ten of his "to-do" list. The creature was as black as soot, with pale green eyes. It would have been considered huge even if Toede were not lying on his back looking up into its slavering jaws. The hound sniffed at Toede and growled again.

Toede's eyes never left the hound, but his hand spidered along the bedroll until it closed on the hilt of the zombie's short blade.

Still in silence, he swiftly brought the dagger up between himself and the dog. The creature had some experience with weapons, because it backed up a few paces. Toede rose, snaking his other hand out to grab the zombie's sword from its scabbard. Now with two weapons, he advanced on the creature.

The creature backed up a few more steps. From his position Toede could see no more animals, and assumed that this one was a stray or loner. Toede moved forward another couple of paces, as the creature backed fully out of the cabin, into the moonlight beyond.

In the moonlight, the creature seemed to shrink in size and menace. Indeed it was a dog, a large mastiff, inky dark and mud-spattered. It stretched its back out, pushed forward on its paws, and wagged its tail, its tongue hanging out the left side of its mouth. It whined at him.

Toede smiled, thinking of when he had first met Charka, and assumed the gnoll was a dog. Perhaps this dog was a dog, and would prove some help in hunting. Either that or make for a good meal in a tight spot.

Toede tucked the dagger in his belt (keeping a firm hand on his long sword) and stepped through the doorway, reaching out to pet the animal, making small, affectionate clicking noises with his tongue.

"Gotcha, you rat!" said a vaguely familiar voice as the back of Toede's neck exploded in a spasm of pain. The ground came up very fast (the dog leaping out of the way), and he was swallowed by blackness.

But not before another, more familiar voice said, "Oh, pooh, I think you hurt him."