Firehurler (Twinborn Trilogy) (26 page)

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Elsewhere in Scar Harbor that night …

“Just wait! It has been like this three nights running
now,” whispered a timid-looking man crouched by the corner of an unassuming
building. The building bore an indecipherable sign with no picture to indicate
whose shop it was or what they sold.

“Mister Lierson, you are trying me. What is this all
about anyway?” The figure next to the timid-looking man was less timid by far,
going perhaps as far from timid as “stern,” “annoyed,” or “put upon and about
to give someone an impolite haranguing.” That type of expression came naturally
to constables, and they were quick to put it on when they felt their time was
being wasted.

“Sorry, Constable, but you won’t believe me telling
you. Just wait, it can’t be long now, I promise,” Lierson said.

Constable Darren let out an impatient sigh but said
nothing.

They waited nearly twenty minutes, and the good
constable was very nearly ready to dress down Lierson for wasting his valuable
time, but there was a stirring inside. A light came on, bright enough that it
peeked through the shutters of the storefront.

“Haru bedaessi leoki kwatuan gelora,”
came a muffled voice from within.

Constable Darren turned to Lierson, who widened his
eyes and gestured with his head back toward the window in an unmistakable “Yes,
this is what I was talking about” manner. Constable Darren then moved closer to
the window to try and see in. The shutters did not fit quite perfectly, and he
was able to catch an edge with a fingernail and pull them outward until the
latch caught and stopped them. It was enough.

The room inside was lit with an unnatural glow, tinged
slightly blue, and seemed to fill the room with no shadowed corners the way a
lamp would. Hovering in the air were a number of quills, no hand touching them,
that the constable saw dip themselves in an ink pot one at a time and move out
of the narrow view the shutters afforded. He heard scribbling, though, as if
the quills had begun to work on their own.

“Haru bedaessi leoki kwatuan gelora.”
The voice was somewhat clearer this time.

Then Constable Darren saw a teacup float past his
view. A moment later, a youngish man walked into view, sipping tea and looking
down, presumably overseeing the quills at their work.

Constable Darren ducked down and crept as quietly as
he could back to where Lierson crouched. He took Lierson by the arm and led him
to the building next door, a building sporting a shoe and boot for a sign. It
was Lierson’s shop, Mr. Lierson being a cobbler and the neighbor of one Kyrus
Hinterdale: scrivener and, it would seen, amateur wizard. Lierson’s bedroom was
also above his shop and happened to be directly across from Kyrus’s bedroom.

“For three nights now, Constable. He makes these awful
chants, and things glow and float and whatnot. I do not consider myself a
superstitious man, sir, but
that
is witchcraft!” Lierson said. “I do not
feel safe living next door to someone using black magic.”

“Well, I did not think I was superstitious, either,
until now. What I saw, though, just is not natural, and I cannot abide that
sort of thing going on unchecked. If he’s at it again tomorrow night, we shall
catch him in the act, and I’ll have more men with me to apprehend him.”

“Thank you, Constable Darren. I shall put in a very
good word with your superiors after this mess is sorted out. My name may not
carry much weight, but I am a law-abiding citizen and concerned for the safety
of the city.

“I believe the penalty for witchcraft is burning, is
it not?” Lierson added.

“Well, um, no, sir. Before they stopped executing
criminals, I believe it was hanging,” Constable Darren replied. “Never saw a
real case of it before, though.”

“Oh, I’m sure they’ll make an exception this time. We
won’t be safe so long as that Mr. Hinterdale lives.”

Chapter 15 - Rook Takes Pawn

Jinzan awoke refreshed. He felt better than he had in
a long time. His plan was finally about to start paying back all the work he
had put into it.

As he pushed back the flap and exited his tent, he
found quite a different attitude among his goblin hosts. The autumn air had
grown frosty, and the frail, scrawny creatures had little love for the cold.
The camp was filled with bored goblins huddling around sorcerer-warmed stones,
bundled up in raccoon furs and trying to keep busy until the remainder of their
forces arrived.

They had been camped on the forested hills just outside
of Illard’s Glen for two days. The small farming and trade community sat across
the Neverthaw River. The Neverthaw was a deep, wide river that would bar any
reasonable attempt by the goblins to cross, short of building ships. Illard’s
Glen had a wide bridge that would allow the army to cross.

Despite their proximity to the town, they were
reasonably secure in their ability to remain undetected. Illard’s Glen was
woefully understaffed with sorcerers. The goblins’ own magic-users had been
keeping up a constant veil of illusory trees to keep them out of view of the
town itself, making the nearby woodlands seem denser to conceal G’thk’s
encampment. The few Kadrins who had ventured near enough to notice something
amiss had been enspelled to believe they had seen nothing. One of the goblins
had even hunted a deer and stuck one of the humans’ arrows in it before sending
them on their way with their prize.

Jinzan breathed in the cold morning air and found it
invigorating. He wandered over to the cooking area and grabbed two bowls of the
goblins’ mush dawn-feast rations. The soggy mixture steamed lightly, the
cauldron of it having been warmed over a few stones the sorcerers had heated to
a reddish glow. The goblins were not fond of winter, and even the autumn mornings
were more than enough to sour them on the weather. Jinzan had spend much of his
youth in colder climates, and found the morning unworthy of a heavy cloak. The
smaller, thinner bodies of the goblins just did not hold heat well. They
typically dwelt underground in the winter, with their communities half above
and half below ground in more temperate weather.

[Good morning, sorcerer,] came a voice from behind
Jinzan as he searched for a place to sit with his food.

“Good morning yourself, General,” Jinzan replied,
recognizing G’thk’s voice. He turned to look at the goblin, not wishing to be
any more disrespectful than usual.

[How you are not cold continues amazing me. You humans
are either crazy or half bear. Join me over here while you take morning meal.]
G’thk gestured to the seat beside him on a cut log.

It always amused the sorcerer that the goblins made
furniture for their general whenever they stopped for more than a day or so.
They were industrious little creatures even if they were weaklings individually,
and he took full advantage. When Jinzan’s secret weapons arrived, he was eager
to see just how clever they had been.

“Any word of the assassin?” Jinzan had almost added
“that you sent” to the end of his question but did not want to be diverted over
an argument of who was to blame for his disappearance.

[It has been too long,] G’thk conceded. He had been
insisting for days that the assassin would be back any time. It was the first
time he admitted something might be wrong. [We have no choice but to pray he
was successful, and continue with the plan. We will not turn back.]

Jinzan had been pressing for details every night since
the assassin was sent to dispatch the Kadrin survivors. He knew little about
Gkt’Lr’s skills, but G’thk seemed to have every confidence that he would be
able to finish off the half-score or so of humans that had been left after the
battle at the river.

“Do you think he might have had troubles with that
magical sword?” Jinzan suggested. “We expected the ambush to destroy them as well;
perhaps we have underestimated them a second time.”

G’thk’s eyes narrowed as he glared at Jinzan. [I
dislike you sometimes, sorcerer. You are right too many times when we disagree.
I think this time you are only half right, though. For my guess, I say that the
sorcerer the humans had was stronger than we reasoned. The scorched spot where
there was an aether burn; there was no human body in that spot. Maybe the
sorcerer of theirs survived. If he was strong enough to battle three of our own
sorcerers, perhaps he was able to thwart Gkt’Lr. A human sword-knight should
not have seen Gkt’Lr coming, but maybe a sorcerer did.]

“It is possible, I suppose. I wonder how much use
anyone who caused that aether burn would be, though, so soon after. He must
have overextended himself severely to do that sort of damage just with excess
aether. I would rather think that they just kept his body. The Kadrins think
much more of sorcerers than they do of their dead soldiers. But if the assassin
was defeated, I could see a sorcerer’s part in that. I know I do not fear him,”
Jinzan boasted, not entirely idly. While the assassin might well kill him in
his sleep, he was not so easy a mark to sneak up on as most.

Jinzan was adept enough that he could perceive the
aether even while using his normal sight. It was a half measure of attention to
be sure, like a sort of peripheral vision, but the assassin’s Source was
stronger than most, and Jinzan was generally aware of all Sources within a few
paces of himself at all times. Most sorcerers, at least among humans, really
only saw aether when they blocked out their normal sight. It was yet another
reason sorcerers kept out of pitched battles as a rule. Jinzan was not so sure
how goblins perceived aether and reality at the same time, though. He suspected
that the ability to watch aether and reality at once might be somewhat less
rare among their sorcerers, and might possibly be why they were more willing to
fight with magic.

[Either way, if the assassin was not able to stop the
humans reaching help, we may have to deal with reinforcements. I doubt the
humans will be able to rally enough forces to stop us, though, especially if
your weapons work as well as you claim.]

“They will. Your artisans are skilled. I think they
will be able to follow the plans I gave them. If they build them right, we will
have no troubles. Illard’s Glen will be a test. We could take the town with
just normal forces, but we want to be certain that the new weapons are working
as intended.”

[I am eager to see them in action. You are very
certain of their effectiveness for something that has never been made before.]

Jinzan simply smiled.

*
* * * * * * *

It was that same afternoon that the rest of the
goblins forces arrived. Their presence would be nearly impossible to hide with
the number of troops swelling to over one hundred thousand, filling nearly
every available part of the forest within a mile of the tree line.

As waves of goblins and entire herds of oxen ambled
into the general area of the original campsite, Jinzan searched out the
quartermasters of the goblin army. Fortunately for Jinzan, the goblins were a
nimble people generally, and Jinzan saw the path before him clear as he moved.
To the goblins, he might as well have been an ogre. There was much chattering
as he passed, with many of the newcomers never having seen a human before.
Jinzan had a hard enough time picking up conversational goblin-speech in small
groups, but to his ears, the multitudes might well have been crickets chirping
or hens clucking for all the sense he could make of it.

As he passed, he would pick out officers by their
uniform and ask a single question in his rudimentary goblin: [Where new
weapon?]

[Back, at end,] he kept hearing.

He waded onward, careful lest he step on one of his
allies and possibly provoke violence. At the distance of a spear throw, he
would take his chances against half an army’s worth of the little runts, but
all about him and armed, he wanted to take extra care to avoid any
misunderstandings.

After half an hour that seemed like a day, Jinzan made
it to the back of the procession. There he found an unusual group. Oxen were
the common beast of burden among the goblins, but this was an animal he had
never seen before. There were several eight-legged lizards, nearly Jinzan’s height
at the shoulder and even broader across, their bellies slung nearly to the
ground. They were massive, powerful creatures who plodded along hauling carts,
each bearing a cargo lashed down with tarps.

Jinzan waved his hands over his head as he approached,
carefully keeping to the side of the gargantuan lizards’ path.

[Hold!] he shouted, or at least tried. He nearly
choked trying to yell in goblin.

The rider of the lead lizard stopped, and the rest
followed suit. Had he not been so eager to inspect their cargo, Jinzan would
have been fascinated by the lizards and their riders. The riders sat not on the
lizards backs, but saddled to their heads. Due to their multitude of legs
working in alternating stride, the backs of the lizards weaved side to side as they
walked, but the heads held very steady. And despite the cold-blooded nature of
lizards and the chill in the air, the lizards seemed plenty warm. In fact,
Jinzan could feel the heat radiating off them as he approached; it seemed to
come from a harness of tubes crisscrossing the beasts, attached to a large
bladder on their backs.

[What, human? What you want?] crackled a wizened old
goblin from the head of the lead lizard. [You the one who drew these devices?]

The goblin was wrinkled and his skin had a more
greyish color to it rather than the typical green hues the younger goblins
showed. From what Jinzan knew of goblins, unless this one knew age-slowing
magic like humans used, he was probably well past thirty. The old goblin wore
thick spectacles and a wide, flattened conical hat that tied under his chin. He
was bundled in raccoon furs like most of the other goblins, but Jinzan noticed
a pack on his back that looked similar to the one on the lizard; presumably the
tubes went underneath his furs.

[Yes. Me one who make—] but the old goblin waved a
hand and cut him off.

[You hurt my old ears. I can understand human speech
just fine. Speak your own tongue and leave ours in peace. By the great dragon
Ni’Hash’Tk, you shriek like an old lady,] the goblin said, then chuckled.

“Fine, then. Yes, I am the one who drew the plans for
these weapons. I wish to see them. Show me,” he demanded.

[Just like a human. No patience,] the old goblin said,
cackling in amusement. He yelled to some of the nearby soldiers to unbind the tarps
and remove them. [My name is K’k’rt. I am the one who oversaw the making of
your weapons. Let me tell you, we are
two days late
because you make,]
and there was a word Jinzan did not know, [like a little child. We had to
remake them right and fix a lot of mistakes.]

Jinzan was a little worried now, as the goblins rushed
over and climbed onto the cart, scrambling up the sides by the very straps they
were about to remove. He was aware that the goblins would have their own way of
doing things, but he thought his specifications were unambiguous. He had hoped
that they had not made them different enough that they did not work now.

Soon enough, he had his answer. As the last of the
goblins got down from the cart, a pair of them pulled off the tarp. K’k’rt swung
the lizard’s head around to get a better view, and the creature contorted its
body so that it was nearly bent in two. The reins of the lizard’s bridle gave
the rider control not only over the lizard’s walking, but over which way it
faced its head.

Jinzan’s breath caught in his throat, and he gasped in
wonder at the sight before him. He approached and reached out to touch the
goblins’ creation: a long cylinder of polished bronze with silvery bands of a
metal he did not recognize reinforcing it toward the open end, for indeed one
end of the device had a hole that extended down inside.

It was a cannon. Jinzan had never actually seen or
felt one before, though it was familiar to him as his own robes were. He had
seen them nightly in his dreams for a long time. The craftsmanship was
exquisite, the surface gleamed, and the bore was straight as a plumb line. It
was better than he had hoped; the goblins had outdone themselves.

[Ha-ha, you like it human?] K’k’rt asked, smiling.
[Once we fixed your mistakes, it worked much better].

Jinzan’s head snapped around, and he looked K’k’rt
with surprise. “You have tried it?”

[Ha-ha, of course. Silly human, we do not make things
and bring them to a battle with no testing. Ha-ha, we had a wonderful time
playing with them before we worked out the models you see here. Your burning
rope triggering for it was the first thing we got rid of.]

Jinzan looked at the breech end of the cannon. There
was no fuse, nor any place he could see to put one. Instead he found a box-like
contraption welded onto the outside with a metal handle dangling from a chain.
The chain seemed not so much to be attached to the box as attached to somewhere
inside the box.

“What is this?” Jinzan asked. “What have you done with
the fuse?”

[Bah, your silly rope. Your exploding powder needs
fire. You put a burning rope in it? Ha-ha, what a bad way to get fire inside.
Too hard to get the timing. We made a mechanism for lighting the blasting
powder that is quicker and more reliable. Just pull the chain and it makes sparks
inside.] The goblin chuckled as he spoke, clearly enjoying the feeling of
superiority over the cannon’s “inventor.”