A Lone Patrol - by Craig Butler
back to main background“Did you hear sumthin’?”
Tomlin glanced around. The stagnant, heavy air of the swamp was so thick with moisture it almost felt like swimming. Swarms of little bloodsucking insects buzzed and whined around his ears so constantly that he had given up trying to bat them away. All he could see around him was the same endless moss-covered trees, standing water, and mud. “Probly a frog ‘er sumthin’,” he told his men, “keep goin’.”
They trudged on through the endless bayou, trying to keep on solid ground. Already they had spent hours digging out two of their number who had fallen into bogs and quicksand traps. “How much longer we gonna stay out here?” Dirk asked from the middle of the line. He was covered in mud almost to the waist from a nasty pit a few miles back, and had been complaining ever since.
“We gotta check it out,” Tomlin reminded him, stepping over a large rock. For whatever reason, they’d been the ones chosen to check out why the locals had been vanishing into the swamps of late. Tomlin thought it all too likely they had just been caught in quicksand, but the Centurion would have him lashed if that was his report. And rightly so – the locals here probably knew their swamps as well as Tomlin knew the fields where he’d grown up. Something was happening in here, and he intended to find out what it was.
“There it is again!” Ban whispered, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Listen!”
Tomlin listened. The swamps were unusually still, but that didn’t mean anything – for all he knew about swamps, there could be fairies dancing on the water – but it seemed unnatural, all the same. Somewhere, something croaked, a long, gutteral sound. What it was he couldn’t guess.
“What’sa matter?” Tomlin demanded, losing his patience, ” ‘Twasn’t but four year ago we were facin’ a charge by twice our number of orcs, and I didn’t hear you whining then. It’s just a bloody swamp!”
“It is getting late,” Jular pointed out, pragmatic as always, “are we to bivouac in this gods-accursed place?”
“We should head back!” Dirk said, “we don’t wanna be out here at night!”
“Shaddap!” Tomlin shouted. There was a sudden, disturbing silence all around them at the sound of his voice. “We keep going, ‘til we find something or get to the other side. I’m not sleeping in a place like this, but if we head back with nothing more than a little mud on our boots, we’ll wish we’d stayed here a week. Now keep movin’!” He started off again, knowing they would follow dutifully behind.
With unexpected suddenness, he found himself on a small island in the bog. It was a wide, flat, dry space out of which only a few trees grew. But what caught Tomlin’s attention was the horrific display arranged neatly in the center of the clearing. He heard his patrol coming into the clearing behind him and stop, staring as he was.
“I guess we found ‘em,” Jular said dryly.
A dozen or so wooden stakes had been planted in the ground. At the top of each, a skull had been spiked. A few still bore rotting patches of skin hanging limply from the bones. Behind him, someone retched.
“Something’s movin’ in the water!” Ban cried, steel scraping on steel as he drew his sword. Tomlin tore his eyes from the skulls and looked to where Ban was pointing. Something was moving in the water. Many somethings, in fact, moving just under the surface, sometimes rising so that slick and scaly skin glistened in the twilit swamp.
“To me!” Tomlin cried, drawing his sword, “Rally! To me!” The sound of swords being drawn rang through the small clearing as the patrol crowded around Tomlin to form a living box of steel. Around the clearing-island, the water churned and burbled.
“They’re all around us!” Dirk screamed. “Look!” Tomlin saw immediately; in the trees around them, shapes were flitting back and forth, coming closer. The swamp, so quite a few moments before, was alive with movement. Even as he watched, shapes began to emerge from the shallow water. They seemed more akin to lizards than men, though they walked upright and carried weapons in their hands. Most seemed to bear only spears and other primitive weapons, but a few carried rusty swords and axes. Their yellow eyes lolled in their reptilian heads, their jaws yawned open to display slithering tongues and rows of fang-like teeth.
“What are these things?” someone yelled, terrified. “What do they want? What do we do?”
“We fight,” Tomlin said, readying his sword for combat. As they approached, the lizard-things chanted and gargled, as though speaking in their own foul language.
“Come forth, slimy vermin!” he challenged them, “Come taste our steel!”
As one, the lizardmen charged. Many fell, to be reclaimed again by the swamps. But no Men made it back to report on the new inhabitants of the swamplands. By the time they realized the threat, it would be too late.