Whipping his scimitar in front of him, Haarn barely managed to block the skeleton's claws from his throat. The clang of metal against bone echoed over the marshlands as Broadfoot roared a challenge.

The druid moved slowly. With moccasins caked in mud, his feet felt heavy, awkward, and his reflexes were slowed as a result. The skeleton gave him no time to use spells, and Haarn was forced to simply defend himself.

Turning, setting himself in the mud, the druid blocked the skeleton's attacks. As he parried just to keep himself alive, Haarn caught glimpses of Broadfoot closing in. Above, on the ridgeline, Druz began her descent, sliding down the steep, mud-encrusted mountainside. Haarn knew with grim certainty that the fighting would be over long before Druz could reach him. Only Broadfoot stood a chance of reaching him in time to help.

He parried the skeleton's strikes again and again, giving up step after step of the muddy ground, leaving a ragged battlefield in his wake.

Despite the ravaged ground and the thick mud, the skeleton had no problem pursuing Haarn. It lunged after him, taking long, slapping strides through the mud. Without a true mouth and only a leathery husk for a tongue, the undead thing's voice came out as a barely audible, growling hiss.

There was no finesse to the skeleton's attack. It swung its arms like bludgeons, depending on its sharp talons to flay him.

The skeleton was far stronger than Haarn had at first realized. The creature was an inhuman dreadnought that kept on coming. As it struck, the ruby jewel inside its chest rattled against its rib cage. Sunlight splintered from it in a cascade of crimson colors so bright they almost hurt the druid's eyes.

Haarn dodged behind a tree, and the skeleton lashed out again. Narrowly avoiding the blow, Haarn narrowed his eyes as the heavy claws ripped through bark. A cloud of splinters flew into the air, and the sound of the impact was like nothing Haarn had ever heard before. A shiny patch of white marred the tree where a patch of bark nearly the size of Haarn's head had been.

Haarn brought the scimitar up in both hands, driving it toward the skeleton's skull. The undead thing managed to get a hand up first, though, and the clang of bone against metal rang across the marshlands. Mud sucked at Haarn's feet as he shifted. He struck again, but the skeleton managed to block him once more, though this time a finger bone flew from one of its hands. They were moving so fast that the druid couldn't tell which finger had been lost.

Abandoning all hesitation, the skeleton threw itself at Haarn.

Knowing his undead opponent's weight would drive him into the mud and trap him, Haarn jumped to one side, trying for as much distance as he could. He knew Broadfoot was almost on them now, and he trusted the great bear to help guard his back.

Before the skeleton could reach Haarn, who struggled to extricate himself from the mud, Broadfoot's shoulder hit the skeleton so hard that bone shattered and broke. Knocked off its feet by the terrific force, the skeleton flew through the air, scattering pieces of itself as it flipped and cartwheeled.

Haarn shoved himself to his feet and spat mud. Slimy muck caked his face and blurred the edges of his vision. He started forward as the skeleton struggled to draw itself to its feet once again. It stood on unstable legs in the splintered shadows that tracked the ground beneath the trees shivering gently in the breeze.

The skeleton's jaw moved, and it leaned down to seize a broken tree limb that floated on the water. As the skeleton turned, drawing back the limb in a threatening manner, the jewel inside its rib cage twisted and gleamed like a coal that had just been hit by a blast from a smith's bellows.

As if surprised, the skeleton glanced down at its broken rib cage. Within its ivory prison, the jewel glimmered and spun, rattling in wild abandon. The skeleton loosed an ululating wail as if in pain, sinking to its knees and holding its arms across its rib cage. The ruby light squeezed between its arms and lanced at the ground.

An invisible force scooped up a load of muck-encrusted earth. Water and young toads spilled off the sides of the earthen burden, plopping down into the hole that rapidly drained the nearby marshlands.

Taking cover behind a young elderberry tree, inhaling the sweet scent of the blossoms and aware of the bees working the flowers around him with no concern at all, Haarn prepared a spell, sheathing his scimitar. He touched the symbol of Silvanus at his throat and threw out his hand.

The trees around the skeleton bent and snaked their branches down toward the undead creature.

The beam of red light leaping from the jewel slashed through the tree branches. The smoldering limbs dropped into the shallow water of the marshlands, hissed, and sank beneath the dirty surface.

The clump of mud writhed and jerked into motion. The mud flew into the air and came down in a sprawling mass.

Not believing what he was seeing, Haarn watched as a creature forced itself to an erect position.

Shamblers, also called shambling mounds, lived in warm wetlands and underground caverns. Carnivores, they hunted animals even as big as they were. Haarn generally left them alone unless they unduly threatened a local animal population.

Like the other shamblers Haarn had seen, this one resembled a huge mass of rotting vegetation until it stood and revealed its humanoid shape. Two massive tree trunk legs, each sprouting root-like appendages as thick as Haarn's forearms, supported the creature. While the body of the shambler was yellowish brown, the same as the mud and muck of the marshlands, the two arms showed green as if freshly grown. The arms stretched out over twice the shambler's height, and moved like whips. Only a short distance from the shoulder, the arms each flared out into two pieces that looked like vines.

The shambler snapped out one of its vinelike arms. The arm sailed through the air with uncanny accuracy for a creature that seemed to have no eyes, and struck Broadfoot's shoulder. The attack ripped through the bear's fur and opened a crimson gash nearly a foot long.

Blood wept from the bear's terrible wound and matted fur. Angry and in pain, Broadfoot reared to his full height and started for the shambler. The shambler reacted at once, flailing the bear with the lashlike appendages that made up its arms. More bloody welts opened up on Broadfoot's body, but the bear didn't give ground.

"No!" Haarn yelled, yanking his scimitar free again.

He pushed away from the tree and ran at the shambler, certain Broadfoot would be slain before he could get away. Behind the shambler, the skeleton turned and started into the forest, making its way east again. Before Haarn covered the distance to the shambler, the skeleton had disappeared.

The shambler drew back its right arm again and whipped it forward. The smack of tentacles against the bear's flesh was interrupted by a sucking sound. As Haarn braced himself in the mud, he saw the blue-dyed fletching of an arrow jutting from the lump atop the shambler's shoulders. As he chopped at the tentacle that wrapped around one of the bear's legs, Haarn saw another arrow pierce the shambler not two inches from the first.

Haarn hacked at the arm holding Broadfoot. He brought the scimitar down in a two-handed swing. The blade cleaved deeply into the creature's muck and vegetation flesh and left gaping wounds that would have killed anything mortal. Even the shamblers Haarn had encountered before would have been seriously injured and probably withdrawn from the fight.

The creature released its hold on Broadfoot.

"Back," Haarn told the bear, grabbing a handful of fur and urging Broadfoot away from the shambler.