Extinction

Gromph strode up to the captain who stood surveying the silent battlefield, arms folded across his blackened mithral plate mail. Andzrel's eyes held a satisfied glint as he took in the shattered mushroom forest and the tanarukk corpses that littered the ground like felled stems.

"Drag the bodies back to the corrals," the Baenre weapons master told the soldiers who were inspecting the fallen tanarukks. "We can feed them to the lizards."

As he spoke, he cleaned blood from his sword with a scrap of cloth. He inspected his blade, smiled, then shoved it back into the scabbard at his hip.

"I wouldn't put that away just yet," Gromph said. "You'll be needing it."

Andzrel turned, a surprised look on his face.

"Archmage!" he gasped. "Where in the Abyss have you been?"

"Not quite as deep as the Abyss, but close enough," the archmage quipped. "I'll tell you all about it later." He glanced around. "How do things fare here?"

"Everything is under control," Andzrel reported. He gestured at the mouth of a tunnel in the wall of the great cavern. In front of it was a heap of tanarukk dead. "We've driven the enemy back into the Dark Dominions. They're pulling back from the city, regrouping. And Tier Breche?"

"Quiet, for the moment," Gromph answered. "The enemy has also been driven back on that front and the approach well sealed. I expect the duergar will eventually rally, recombine with other units somewhere out in the tunnels, and resume their siege else where. Before they have a chance to do that, however, I need your help with something."

"Something other than corpse disposal?"

Gromph nodded.

Andzrel grinned and said, "Name it."

The archmage glanced at one of the bodies that lay nearby. Part orc, part demon, the tanarukk was a stocky monstrosity covered in patches of coarse hair and scabby-looking scales. A long jaw jutted out from under its abbreviated snout, and the tusks that curled over its upper lip were chipped and yellow. Its low, sloped forehead gave it a stupid appearance?accentuated by the flat glaze of death in its dull red eyes.

"I need to get through the enemy lines," Gromph began. "And I'll need an escort. A soldier, rather than a mage." He nudged the dead tanarukk with his foot. "Tell me, Andzrel, have you ever been polymorphed?"

"Once," Andzrel answered. "Years ago, into a lizard. As a joke, by a prideful upstart who thought that saddling me up and riding me would teach me my place. After I took a bite out of him, he didn't think it was so amusing anymore and changed me back."

Gromph smiled. He remembered well the day that Nauzhror had limped into Sorcere, demanding a cushion because he was unable to sit down. A "riding accident" he'd called it?until one of the other students had used a spell to peer through his robe and had spotted the bite wound on the buttocks. The pompous young Nauzhror had been the butt of many a joke after that.

"I'll try not to give you cause to use your tusks on me," Gromph told Andzrel with mock gravity.

The tanarukk soldiers retreated in disarray through the tunnels, snarling and nipping at each other whenever a narrowing of the walls caused a bottleneck. The air was filled with the clank of weapons and armor, the tang or blood from the wounded who had been rudely shoved aside and abandoned to die?and with the shouts of the sergeants who tried to bring order to the chaos.

Two tanarukks shuffled along behind the rest, taking care to keep apart from the jostling masses, neither giving provocation nor accepting it. One had a more pronounced forehead than his fellows and bristle-stiff patches of white hair. The other was broader across the shoulders and clad in chain mail that seemed slightly stiff. The blade of the battle-axe he carried was streaked with blood. The white-haired one seemed to have lost his weapon and carried a small scrap of fur?a trophy scalp, to all appearances?in one hand. He drew his companion to the side of the tunnel, out of the way of the marching hordes, then whispered a spell while twisting the fur in his hand. He nodded at a narrow fissure to their left.

"He's down this way," Gromph said. "Or at least he was a moment ago. I've lost him again."

"Where does he keep disappearing to?" Andzrel asked, irritated.

The stoop-shouldered posture of his tanarukk body was giving him a backache. He longed to get this mission over with and be back in drow form. And his tanarukk body stank. Gromph had no such problems, however. He'd used a glamer to change his appearance. If he'd polymorphed himself, the material components he needed to work his spells?like that scrap of bloodhound fur, for example?would have been changed into items more suitable to a tanarukk.

Or at least, that's what the archmage had told Andzrel. The Baenre weapons master suspected, however, that Gromph just didn't want to endure the stink of tanarukk sweat on his own skin.

"I don't know what Nimor's up to," Gromph answered. "Reporting to his masters, perhaps. But he keeps returning to this spot. It must be one he knows well."