The Darke Crusade (19 page)

The chieftain bellows its death-cry and keels over backwards to hit the water with a mighty splash. Now leaderless, the remaining Ciquali turn away from the boat and disappear as quickly as they had come, slipping back to the cold, dark safety of their hiding places beneath the surface. Silence returns, and for a long moment you stand alert, suspecting trickery. Then slowly you relax; they have gone.

Aided by your healing skills, Prarg makes a speedy recovery from the battering he sustained in combat with the Ciquali chieftain. The boat, too, has survived the attack and you are able to continue without further delay. As soon as you pass the obstruction, you hoist the sail and catch the prevailing wind which propels you northwards along the channel beyond.

You are hungry after your encounter. Unless you possess Grand Huntmastery, you must now eat a Meal or lose 3
ENDURANCE
points.

To continue,
turn to 322
.

Quickly you tend to your companion's wound, using your Magnakai Curing skills to neutralize the venom before it does its fatal work. Your swift action saves him but it drains you of energy: lose 2
ENDURANCE
points.

To continue,
turn to 325
.

You move deeper into the forest, maintaining a steady pace. Here, in this part of the Tozaz, the snowfall underfoot is light because of the canopy of thick branches overhead, and you make good progress. You have been walking for an hour when a shivery rustle brings you abruptly to a halt. You look up and a miniature snowslide falls from a branch overhead, covering your face and shoulders with a deluge of powdery snow. Prarg laughs as he watches you spluttering, and as you wipe your eyes, you glimpse a grey-winged bird fluttering away to the west.

‘By the gods, I'm hungry,’ exclaims Prarg, leaning weakly against a tree trunk. ‘What I'd give for a side of beef and a plate of boiled beets.’

The captain has not eaten since before you reached Shugkona and you can see that after the rigours of his capture and escape, he is sorely in need of food. Unless he eats soon he will be unable to go much further.

If you possess a Meal,
turn to 68
.

If you do not,
turn to 282
.

You awake at first light and make a search of all the cabins, but they have either been despoiled by Giaks or stripped bare and you discover nothing of practical use. However, you do uncover enough scraps of food, preserved by the cold, to make quite a decent breakfast: restore 3
ENDURANCE
points.

After your meal, you gather together your equipment and set off along the river bank, heading west. The surrounding landscape is a harsh black and white desolation, devoid of all colour. The bleakness is deepened by the constant moaning wind and the occasional cawing of distant carrion crows. Five miles downstream you happen upon a hut at the edge of the river. You are expecting it to be empty, like the others at the ferry stage, so it comes as a welcome surprise to find it contains a rowboat and a pair of oars, both in good condition. Heartened by your discovery, you launch the boat into the water and begin your voyage towards Darke.

Pick a number from the
Random Number Table
.

If the number you have picked is 0–4,
turn to 73
.

If it is 5–9,
turn to 293
.

Prarg makes a wide detour to the west in order to avoid the risk of walking straight into the arms of your enemies. The detour takes you across a steep and rugged part of the forest previously unexplored by your guide, and progress here is slowed dramatically. You have covered less than six miles when the failing light — and the increasing sightings of Drakkarim patrols — forces you to halt and make camp for the night.

From the safety of a treetop, fifty feet above the forest floor, you rope yourself to the trunk before settling down to sleep. You are hungry and, unless you possess the Discipline of Grand Huntmastery, you must now eat a Meal or lose 3
ENDURANCE
points.

Turn to 90
.

You draw upon your psychic strength to create, in the depths of your mind, three radiant pulses of pure energy. As you watch the advancing Gorodon, rapidly these glowing cores increase in size and power until they resemble a cluster of fiery meteors. The Gorodons increase their speed and come pounding through the shallows, their eyes blazing and their horns lowered in eager readiness to impale you on their razor-sharp tips. They are almost upon you when, with a blink of your eyes, you hurl your psychic pulses directly into their brains. The effect is instantaneous and devastating. It is as if all three have been felled simultaneously by a massive hammer blow to the skull.
¹¹

The Gorodons' forelegs buckle and they are brought down head-first into the muddy shallows. Their horns sink deeply into the silt whilst their heavy torsos are thrown forwards by the momentum of their charge. For a few seconds they cartwheel end-over-end; then, with a chilling abruptness, they cease moving and settle into the mud. Your psychic attack was devastating but it did not kill them outright; it was the massive strain placed upon their necks when they fell that ultimately sealed their doom.

Turn to 284
.

You leap over the corpse and run down the corridor with Prarg close on your heels. Soon you reach a junction where you are forced to choose a direction, left or right. You call upon your Kai skills and immediately you sense a strong presence of evil lurking at the end of the right-hand passage. You focus on the source of this evil and determine that it is the Doomstone. You tell Prarg and together you advance along the passage until you reach a closed door.

If you possess Grand Huntmastery or Grand Pathsmanship,
turn to 214
.

If you possess neither of these Disciplines,
turn to 229
.

Before you lies a vast frozen lake, more than a mile wide at the point at which you now stand. An icy wind whips across its glistening surface, stirring freshly fallen snow into eddies which whirl and dance like spinning tops. Silently you stare across the lake at the distant tree-line and your mind is filled with doubt. The Temple of Antah lies beyond, of that you are sure, and the quickest way to reach it would be to traverse the lake, but there is no cover and no way of knowing if the ice is thick enough to support you all the way across. Yet, to go around the lake would delay you by hours, giving your pursuers ample time to catch up and attack.

At length you decide to take your chances and cross the lake. At first the going is smooth and you make easy progress, but as you near the centre, suddenly you sense that something is wrong.

If you possess Grand Pathsmanship
and
have reached the Kai rank of Sun Knight,
turn to 55
.

If you do not possess this skill, or if you have yet to reach this level of Kai Mastery,
turn to 37
.

You begin the descent and soon discover that the rough chasm wall makes for an ideal climbing surface. With confidence you descend towards the river, but you are almost caught unawares when you reach a section of the chasm wall which is treacherous in the extreme. It is smooth, dry, and crumbly, making it suddenly impossible for you to find safe purchase for your toes and fingers.

Pick a number from the
Random Number Table
. If you have Grand Huntmastery, add 2 to the number you have picked. If you possess a Rope, add 1. If your present Kai rank is Grand Guardian or higher, add 1.

If your total score is now 6 or less,
turn to 210
.

If it is 7 or more,
turn to 114
.

As the deadly shafts scream towards you and Prarg, you open your hand and thrust your palm into his back, pushing him aside. This swift action saves him from the first bolt, but it robs you of time in which to react to the second. It strikes and red-hot pain flares up your leg as the iron-tipped bolt gouges a deep furrow of flesh from the back of your calf: lose 4
ENDURANCE
points.
¹²

Turn to 60
.

You step over the body of the fallen lancer and pull yourself into the saddle of his warhorse. Seizing the reins you spur the horse forward and it takes off across the square at a gallop. Then you unholster the lance and bring it to bear as you race headlong towards the backs of the Drakkarim soldiers who are standing between you and the platform.

Turn to 63
.

Your keen senses detect an unpleasant odour wafting towards you on the damp air. It is the scent of a hostile animal. It is not lurking in this chamber but it is somewhere close by.

Cautiously you head towards an archway in the far wall, taking great care not to fall as you traverse the slippery mounds of rubble which litter the floor of this dank and unwholesome chamber. A short tunnel awaits you beyond the arch. It ends at a junction where a wider passageway crosses from west to east.

The animal odour is stronger here; it is wafting from out of the west tunnel. Forewarned, you shun this tunnel and set off to the east.

Turn to 26
.

In a corner of the cellar you see two booted and bloodstained feet protruding from beneath a mass of collapsed flooring. You move closer and discover they belong to a Lencian soldier who is badly wounded and barely conscious. Schera helps you to clear away the charred timbers that are pinning him to the ground and, using your Kai healing skills, you attend to the man's wounds. After a few minutes he recovers consciousness just long enough to tell you his name — Hul Sendal.

You both carry the man back to the river and place him carefully into your boat. The captain's men have managed to clear a passage wide enough for the flotilla to pass through in single file, and as you continue your journey down-river, you spend some time nursing the injured soldier back to consciousness. He tells you of the battle that destroyed his regiment, of how Magnaarn used his sceptre to set the town ablaze, and of how he has survived the last six days sustained by nothing more than a few handfuls of snow. His account of the battle is chilling and it leaves you with a gnawing fear that maybe it is already too late to prevent Warlord Magnaarn from regaining control of Darke.

Turn to 208
.

You unsheathe your weapon and rush forward to strike the soldier down, determined to finish him quickly before he can raise the alarm.

Drakkarim Sergeant:
COMBAT SKILL
 32   
ENDURANCE
 29

Due to the speed of your attack, ignore any
ENDURANCE
loss you may sustain in the first round of this combat.

If you win the combat,
turn to 53
.

The arrows miss you by an arm's length, but as you hit the ground you gash the palms of your hands on the trunk of a fallen tree: lose 1
ENDURANCE
point.

Turn to 141
.

From out of the shadows of the secret passage steps Warlord Magnaarn. He is a huge man — not much over six feet tall but massively built. His body is sheathed in finely crafted armour that fits his frame like a glove, and his features are coarse and foreboding, accentuated by a fresh battle scar which runs diagonally from the top of his red-haired scalp to a point near the lobe of his left ear.

Arrogantly he approaches the portcullis and stares unblinkingly into your eyes. For a moment you consider attacking him, but your senses detect that he is surrounded by a field of energy so strong that already you feel it leeching your psychic powers. He reaches to a pocket inside his cloak and takes out a large black gemstone, which he holds level with his sneering face. Scarlet veins glow within the depths of this stone, swirling and undulating as if they are alive. Waves of dizziness force you to your knees as the evil power of the Doomstone of Darke washes over you, bleeding you of the strength and will to resist.

Illustration XI
—The massively built Warlord Magnaarn steps out of the shadows and stares arrogantly into your eyes.

‘I've been waiting for you, Lone Wolf,’ says Magnaarn, with a condescending tone. ‘I've known your plan ever since my spies told me of your arrival at Vadera. After all, there could be but one reason why the great Grand Master of the Kai would come to Lencia at this time. Yet, as you can see, Grand Master, you are already too late to stop me.’

Magnaarn turns to his Tukodak guards and orders them to take Prarg away. You try to protest but you cannot find strength enough to voice the words. The warlord smiles at your weakness.

‘Know you this, Grand Master. Now that I possess the stone of power, nothing can stand in my way. You were the only threat to my victory, but now you're a threat no longer.’

With this he steps away from the portcullis and turns to follow his guards as they drag Prarg into the secret passage.

‘Farewell,’ he says, sardonically, before disappearing into the portal, ‘and remember my first words to you: welcome to your tomb.’

With these chilling words echoing in your mind, you watch as he disappears into the passage and the wall closes behind him.

Turn to 43
.