The castle was set at the edge of the jungle, and was darker on the inside, save for the spots where windows had been smashed to let light through. Something about it tickled the back of Torbek’s mind, and he took the time being carried through the shabby hallways to look around and try to get his bearings.

It came to him in a flash, and once they were dumped in a makeshift cell (probably once the ablutions block, with the door locked from the outside), he shared what he knew with the others.

“This is Grighte Castle,” he told them in a hoarse whisper.

“Well bully for it. How exactly is knowing its name supposed to help us escape?” Sestra retorted, and not for the first time, Torbek longed to slap her saucy face. Always with a comeback. Always with a comment. Everything about her seemed so unnecessary and he wondered why on earth she had been chosen.

“Any information right now may help us to form a plan,” the she-elf said, and Torbek nodded appreciatively. Good point, for a woman. It was nice to know that at least one of his companions wasn’t completely useless. Unlike the human boy. Goddesses above, if the halfling wasn’t bad enough, they had been saddled with Bill, the walking, whimpering, wailing milksop.

“So what’s Grighte Castle? What do you know about it?”

“It used to be the Queen’s home, as far as I know, before she and her family moved to Londe,” Torbek said, feeling almost smug at the knowledge he had that the others clearly didn’t.

“She’s really let things go,” Sestra muttered, earning a scowl from Torbek.

“So what are we going to do?” Bill asked.

What indeed?

~*~

Judging by the angle of the shafts of light entering their prison, Torbek could tell that a number of hours had passed. It was now late afternoon, or so he judged it to be. One of the frogmen had been by, unlocked the door, and dumped a pot of some sort of oatmeal mush type mixture in front of them, barking at them that it was “lunch”.

Lunch? Torbek hardly thought so. He hadn’t touched the lukewarm mess. He hungered for roast beast and crispy, crunchy parsnip fries. His mouth watered at the thought, and his mood turned even darker as his stomach rumbled in response. The only thing keeping him from lashing out was the elfling, Elion, who was chattering away beside him.

“Do you ever shut up?” he asked abruptly, but there was no malice in his voice or in his thoughts.

“Not usually. My mum says it’s because I didn’t talk until I was almost four, and I was so chuffed with myself that now I’m afraid I’ll somehow end up back in that stage, unable to talk… why, am I bothering you? Sometimes I bother people when I really get going and I never can tell until after they’re well and truly vexed.”

“Nay, you’re not bothering me, elfling.” Torbek reached over and ruffled Elion’s hair, though he stopped when the young elf winced. Oh yes, the head wound inflicted by Gekak. “Truth be told, you’re the one thing keeping me sane. A man could be driven to terrible things, sitting in this cellar surrounded by this bunch, and given naught but gruel to eat.”

The company, aside from the elfling, was decidedly sub-par. He’d known going into this quest that there would be times where he would be obliged to grit his teeth and bite his tongue, but he hadn’t reckoned on almost having bit through his tongue barely three days in.

The women… well, he hadn’t expected much from women. The dwarf woman he’d traveled part of the way to Lerastir with, so he knew just how touchy and argumentative she could be. It seemed like every time Torbek opened his mouth, she’d had something say about it. But for all her infernal yapping, she was quiet now, sitting in the corner looking wounded and sneaking glances at the elf woman now and then.

The elf woman, for her part, looked confused and distant, and that was about as much as Torbek could say for her. He wasn’t even entirely sure he’d learned her name yet—certainly, if he were called upon to give her name while he was held at sword point, he would be in mortal danger. All he really knew about her was that she was a ranger, and he only knew that because of her bow and quiver.

And the young ones, as he’d come to call the boy and the halfling, were sitting in the opposite corner, squabbling again. They’d cobbled together some sort of game by picking up stones here and there where they had fallen, but it didn’t seem like they could get through more than a few minutes without bickering over whose turn it was, or whether one or the other of them was cheating. Utterly useless, the pair of them.

Two days ago, he might have lumped the elfling in with those two, but now he knew better. He had an astonishing amount of respect for the young elf to his right after the Incident of the Wolves In The Nighttime, as he was mentally calling it.

“Slim pickings, wouldn’t you say, elfling?” he said, interrupting the elfling’s flow of chatter. “The young ones don’t seem as if they’re about to jump up and save the day, and the women are too busy having what looks like a cross between a staring contest and a peek-a-boo tournament. It’s up to the men to save us all.”

“What can I do?”

“That lute of yours, could you do magic with it?”

“A few spells. You’ve pretty much seen the extent of what I can do: a bit of a luck spell, a pain spell, and a spell to help you swing a bit faster. Nothing too flashy or useful.”

Torbek pondered the possibilities. “If we could find it, you could… grant me luck?”

“Wouldn’t they hear me strumming? And that’s only if we could find it.”

That was a good point, and one that Torbek unfortunately had not considered, focused as he had been on finding their belongings and not the practicalities of using them. “You’re right, elfling. So we are back to the drawing board.”

It was a good question. How were they going to get out of there?

~*~

As the late afternoon turned to evening, Torbek continued to ponder. Eventually he resigned himself to the idea that brute strength would be necessary to escape their current predicament. If the six of them all worked together, they could potentially break down the door. After all, how strong could it possibly be?

The last of the sunlight had left the small room before the frogman with the pots of food came back around, dumping a second pot of the tasteless mush in the middle of the room before retreating.

The boy made a face, but approached the pot to eat his share. Torbek hung back. He was hungry, but still not hungry enough for mush.

After Bill had taken a big mouthful, and made the requisite “this tastes appalling” noises, the halfling pulled a roll of cloth from somewhere about her tiny person.

“Anyone else ready to get out of here?” she asked, in a voice that Torbek knew was supposed to be casual but just struck him as cocky and self indulgent.

“Oh, of course—I’ll just open the door and we can stride on out,” Torbek retorted. “The only reason I’ve waited this long is because I fancied a nice leisurely rest and some free food!”

From the roll of cloth, the halfling pulled a long metal… something, and another, equally inexplicable thing. She coated them with a substance from a bottle, and inserted them in the lock.

Seconds later, it opened with a metallic clunk. “You were saying?” the halfling smirked. She opened the door with an elaborate flourish, but Torbek, suppressing his rage at the fact she had made them sit and stew for this long without telling them that she could open the door, stopped them from trooping out.

“We go prancing out there willy-nilly, they’re just going to catch us and lock us up again!”

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“He’s right,” the she-dwarf said, surprisingly backing him up. It was the first thing she’d said all day. “We need some sort of plan.”

“Well it seems to me that the most sensible thing is to let me scout ahead,” the halfling said. “I’m the smallest, the fastest, and the least… obvious.” At this, she shot Torbek a look, and he had to slide his hands behind the breastplate of his armor to keep from smacking her. “And I’m not a clumsy oaf,” she went on, this time looking pointedly at the boy. He scowled at her.

“So you will go, and scout, and then report back on a way out of here?” the she-elf clarified.

“Yup. Nothing to it.”

There was a pause, while all six of them looked at each other, silently weighing up the plan against their other options (which did not exist), and then Torbek nodded. “Off with you then.”

The halfling skipped out of the door and turned left down the hallway, while five pairs of eyes watched her go.

~*~

The boy had made an elaborate count of the seconds, minutes, and hours since the halfling had left. By Torbek’s reckoning, they were up to an hour and twelve minutes, assuming of course that the boy’s count was accurate, which he privately thought to be doubtful. No one was saying anything, but Torbek was sure they were all thinking the same thing: that either the cocky, mouthy little halfling had been caught and probably eaten, and that was the end of her… or she had escaped by herself and left them there. His emotions were mixed: he had no love for the halfling, but even he had to grudgingly admit that she was their only real chance at escape.

Just as he was about to voice the very real possibility that she had died, there were footsteps in the corridor. Instantly, they were all on their guard. The elfling, Torbek noted with approval, seemed just as battle-ready as he was, despite the obvious disparity in their training and experience. The boy, he noted with scorn, was cowering behind the rest.

“It’s me,” came a whisper, and the she-dwarf tugged the door open for her.

“What news?”

“There’s a way out, but we have to hurry. They’ve all pigged themselves stupid on Hevla only knows what, and they’re sleeping it off in one of the big rooms. I think it was a ballroom? I hunted around and found our stuff, too. They dumped it in a pile in a room near that ballroom place. They are… not smart.”

A piece of good news at last! There was a certain amount of clanking and clattering of armor that couldn’t be helped as they mobilized, but for the most part they were fairly silent, creeping out of their cell behind the halfling.

She led the way along the corridor, up a couple of flights of stairs, down two more hallways. Then she paused, holding up a hand.

“We’ll have to crawl,” she breathed. “This is where they’re sleeping. If we wake them, we’ll have to fight them.”

Torbek couldn’t remember the last time he had moved so slowly, so cautiously. Each step felt like it took a minute or more. He could feel sweat dripping down his spine as he crept—yes, crept—past the doorway to the now-defunct ballroom where the frogmen as one were sleeping off their meal. He ventured a glance through the partially open door and shuddered. The floor was blanketed with the nasty, slimy little creatures, and the croaking, rasping snoring was almost deafening.

When he looked back at the others, they seemed similarly cautious, moving at a glacial pace in the name of silence. They inched past the door… and made it safely to the other side. All that needed to be done now was for the halfling to lead them to their weapons, then out of the castle, and they could make a run for it.

And then Bill sneezed.

“Sorry!” he gasped, but the damage was done. As one, almost two hundred frogmen jolted awake. The party looked at each other in horror.

“Run!” Elion yelped, and they began to run, full tilt, after the halfling who scurried out in front.

It turned out that the frogmen were not so stupid as to leave the main castle entrance unguarded. Torbek rather thought they might be, given that there were no sentries posted at their cell door. In fact, there were at least ten frogmen near the main entrance—a fact the halfling had neglected to mention.

He could berate her for that later.

“Charge!” he roared, and reached for his sword… But his sword, of course, was in the pile with the rest of their weaponry, in a room somewhere near. It may as well have been in Arazad, for how easily he could get to it, with ten frogmen in front of him, and the rest coming up behind.

Beside him, Elion was rummaging in his pocket. He pulled something out and handed it off to the boy, whispering rapidly.

“Hey everyone,” Elion said, quietly and urgently. “Remember what happened last time Bill cast a spell?”

The boy started chanting in Ehvari, and just in time, Torbek and the others hid their faces in the crook of their elbows or behind their hands. The castle’s dim entranceway was flooded with dazzling light. Torbek looked up, as the worst of the light passed, just like it had done during the incident of the Wolves In The Nighttime.

The frogmen were cowering, blinded, and once the halfling had desperately pointed out the room in which their things were being kept, Torbek made a break for it. In moments, he was flinging the door open, spotting their weapons, and tossing them out to their various owners.

Armed, the party stood their ground, for about two seconds. Torbek would have quite cheerfully stayed and fought, because what right did these revolting little frogpeople have to take prisoners, to lock up free people for no other crime than walking in the wrong place?

But the she-dwarf, much in the same way as she had cut off some of his finer rants in their short acquaintance, cut off this thought process by nudging him sharply. “I see that look in your eye,” she murmured. “Now is not the time for fighting. Now is the time for escaping with our lives.”

That she was right, did not make the words rankle any less.

Grumbling, Torbek seized the boy, who was midway through another spell—best not to let that come to fruition—and began to back toward the main castle door.

“You stay,” the spokesfrog croaked. “No go. You Gekak makamaka. We kill!”

“As frightfully hospitable as your offer sounds, we’re going to have to respectfully decline,” piped up the halfling, astounding Torbek with an eloquence that he had not heard from her before. He heard Elion actually tittering at the words, and despite the dire situation, smirked himself.

“Then let’s go!” he roared, and, with the boy still safely tucked under his arm, he sped up, backing the remaining distance to the door.

One particularly bold frogman decided to challenge him, but he was officially tired of kowtowing to these vile little creatures. Not for a second did he consider putting the boy down—instead, he used his remaining hand to swing his beloved sword, slicing the head off the frogman.

“Anyone else?” he challenged, then cringed as a wave of frogmen advanced. But by then, they were at the door, and the five of them (the sixth being the boy, still safely under Torbek’s arm) ran.

He knew they would be pursued. He concentrated on running, putting one foot in front of the other, and he could sense the others around him, each managing to keep up. Except the halfling, who was falling behind—until the she-elf scooped her up, much like he was carrying the boy.

Torbek ran, until he could run no more, away from Grighte Castle, away from the jungle, until his lungs burned and spots danced in front of his eyes. Only then did he stop, dump the boy on the ground, and turn to brandish his sword… to find that they had been pursued this far by rather more than a handful of frogmen.

And even as he tried to judge which one to target first, Elion was breathlessly strumming his lute, singing off-key in a language Torbek wasn’t familiar with, his face dark red with effort. Purple light, bright, acidic, and frankly off-putting, surrounded the lute, and sweat poured down his face, but he blinked it away and kept strumming, the song loud and discordant, but ever increasing in intensity.

With a final, pained howl, Elion finished his “song”. He slammed the lute end-first to the ground in front of him, and the purple light shot upwards into the air.

It returned in the form of a bolt of actual lightning, which struck the remaining frogmen. They were killed instantly.

Elion crumpled to the ground, unconscious.

“Frog bastards!” Torbek cried, dropping his sword and grabbing for the little elf, pulling him into his arms. “You will pay for this!”

“They already have!” the she-elf pointed out, gesturing at the charred remains of their bodies. “Let us just get out of here as quickly as possible.”

“Is he okay?” the halfling wanted to know. Torbek looked down at the young elf in his arms, fear gripping his chest.

“I don’t know,” he replied gruffly. “But I’d imagine we would do well to take ourselves far from here. When he wakes—”

“If he wakes,” the halfling muttered.

“When he wakes,” Torbek continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “he will be weak and probably in need of rest. We should put as much distance between us and the frog beasts as we can.”

He strapped his sword to his back one handed, not wanting to set Elion down even long enough to do that. He kept the unconscious elf cradled to his chest as he strode out away from the dead frogmen, heading he didn’t know where.

“Where do we go now?” he heard the boy asking.

“We need a map,” he said decisively. “Enough of this blundering around and hoping for the best. Frankly I am ashamed we did not think of this before leaving Lerastir.”

“We thought we knew the terrain,” the she-elf put in, and Torbek scowled.

“And yet we pranced right into forbidden territory, were captured, and almost eaten. It is enough. We make for the next city we can find.”

“I… I have some idea where we may find out,” the she-dwarf put in delicately. “But it’s not a city in the traditional sense.”

“Can we obtain a map there?”

The she-dwarf hesitated. “Maybe. I’ve never been there, I couldn’t say for certain.”

Torbek shifted Elion’s weight gently in his arms. “Then we go there,” he declared. “I will hear nothing against this plan. A map, and medical care for our… our friend.” His eyes stung, and he blinked furiously. “And woe betide any frogman who gets between me and the elfling’s salvation.”

Friend? Where had that come from? But as much as he may not have wanted to admit it, Torbek knew: he cared for the elf. Elion was his friend, despite their short acquaintance. How could he fail to respect and care about a being who had risked everything in the name of bravery and loyalty, not once but multiple times? The answer was, he could not.

Still, there was no way he was going to allow any of the others to see this newfound emotion. He lifted his chin high as he looked around, chose a course, and started out on it.