Lord of the Rose (10 page)

The power of his spell was broken in that instant, and Dram stumbled free. “How did you get away from his magic?” he demanded of his companion.

The warrior pulled off his left glove, revealing a golden ring that glowed on the middle finger of his left hand. “A gift—from a lady who knows a thing or two about magic.”

The dwarf nodded knowingly as the warrior was already hurrying toward the door.

“Time to go,” the swordsman said. “This town is getting too religious for me.”

I
n the years of the Dragon Overlords Khellendros and Beryl, the savage tribes dwelling in the Garnet Mountains were hard pressed to find sustenance. The hobgoblins disbanded their great clanholds to scatter into the heights. Eating grubs and roots, they considered themselves lucky to discover such provender. They survived primarily through raiding, inflicting terror on many of the human settlements skirting the fringe of the range, pillaging from the hill dwarves with the aid of their teeming goblin lackeys. These raids inevitably led to reprisals from the Solamnic Knights, whose patrols drove the raiders higher and higher into the mountains.

One such band of hobs was captained by a former veteran of Lord Ariakan’s, a surly brute by the name of Bonechisel Hobgoblin. Despite the ferocity of his warrior followers, Bonechisel had not found easy pickings during the overlord years.

Bonechisel’s mate was named Laka. She had once been a comely wench—for a hobgoblin. In fact, it was her beauty that had drawn the chief’s attentions. She had been mated previously to a young warrior, but Bonechisel secured a divorce for her by the simple expedient of bashing his rival’s head until the poor fellows brains had run out and pooled upon the ground. The chief
had stepped over the mess, taken Laka by the wrist, and informed her that now she was the chief’s woman.

After several years of rudimentary efforts on Bonechisel’s part, Laka had given birth to a son. Born at the very onset of winter, the infant was sickly and small, though the hob female attended to her tiny charge with all the diligence and care that one could hope for from a member of her brutish, savage race. Whether from malnutrition or simply the early onset of winter’s dampness and chill, the suffering little hob perished in the second week of its short life.

Bonechisel took no note of the fact, and Laka sadly laid the little corpse to rest in a mossy alcove beside a flowing stream, the only place where deep snow didn’t cover the ground. Not far away in the snowy wilds, the chief shivered, gloomy at the prospect of another long, cold season of hunt and roam.

He caught a tantalizing scent on a waft of wind, which bore a promise of warmth, comfort, and shelter, for it smelled of a fire of pine wood. Emerging from the forest, Bonechisel found the scent of smoke even stronger. The vapors emerged from the chimney of a small cabin, wafting upward, bearing hot red sparks on the winter wind. In those glowing embers Boneshisel saw doom for whomever skulked within the cabin and fed that alluring fire.

Bonechisel lifted his axe, which, though crude in the extreme, boasted a heavy chunk of sharp-edged granite for its blade, mounted securely atop a cudgel that was as thick around as a strong man’s arm. He flexed and swung, crashing the stone head into the boards. Two blows were enough to make a crack, and three more swings shattered the door into two halves. One half, attached to leather hinges, still clung in place, while the other piece toppled inward to crash on the dry stone floor.

Bonechisel growled as he stepped through the entrance. Laka followed close behind him, pressed by other warriors, three or four more hobs and goblins each brandishing a heavy club of their own.

The first thing the hob-wench noticed was the warmth, a splendid blanket of moist, slightly cloudy air that surrounded
her. The taint of smoke in the shelter was a welcome scent, and the low light cast by the embers fading in the fireplace was a pleasant welcome after the unmitigated gray-white of winter’s first storm.

The second thing to draw Laka’s attention was the small cradle, lined with furs, resting over on one side of the single chamber. She took no note of the huge creature seated at the table, the giant who still cradled his head in his hands, so lost in despair that he hadn’t yet noticed the intruders. Carefully, the hob-wench sidled toward the cradle, drawn by an instinct deeper than her race. She heard the plaintive cry, and her breasts began to leak their milk.

Bonechisel, for his part, was fully aware of the giant seated at the table in the middle of the room. He had been prepared to rush in and attack the denizens of this shelter. Deep in his heart he had hoped they would be humans, preferably defenseless women and children, but he had steeled himself to fight goblins, hobgoblins, a knight or two, had even considered the dread thought that he might have to face an ogre. It was a measure of how cold, how frightened he was, that he was even willing to chance the latter possibility.

This! This was such an extraordinary
giant!

He gave serious thought to running away. His cunning mind considered the throng of hobs and gobs behind him, and he figured that he could easily pull several of them into the house, knocking them to the floor even as he made his escape. By the time the giant was through smashing those hapless offerings, Bonechisel could be safely back in the woods …

On second thought, this did not seem like an ideal course of action. He well knew how cold those woods were, how snowy and barren. The tribe might survive another night out there. (Actually, Bonechisel himself would probably survive the night; the welfare of the tribe as whole could not be said to be much of a consideration.) But after another night with no food and no shelter, the upcoming days inevitably looked bleak, while the warmth of this stone-walled house was undeniably attractive.

In an instant the hobgoblin’s eyes took in the mountain of
firewood stacked against the back wall. In a dark alcove near the back he could see haunches of dried meat, many of them. There was a great bed in the corner, a bed fit for an exalted chieftain such as Bonechisel Hob.

The issue was decided by the apathetic nature of this giant himself. The fellow had only now raised his head to blink stupidly at the strangers who had just spent several minutes smashing in his front door. Clearly, this giant was not blessed with lightning-quick reactions. The expression on his face bespoke an utter lack of intelligence and imagination. Perhaps it would not be madness to battle him for the prize of this shelter. Indeed, Bonechisel thought, a sudden, swarming attack might be the best option.

“Go!” cried Bonechisel, clapping one of his lackeys on the shoulder. “Kill giant!”

The goblin yelped as his chieftain pushed him forward. Two other warriors, equally slow and witless, lurched after, propelled by strong kicks to their posteriors.

“Attack!” cried Bonechisel, raising his club and advancing behind the screen of the three milling goblins.

The giant shook his head and blinked. His eyes went to something at the edge of the room—a bed for an infant, the hobgoblin perceived in a quick glance—and the giant’s muscles tensed as he was suddenly galvanized by fear. At the same time, the three goblins in front of Bonechisel hesitated.

Disgusted, the hobgoblin charged between his cohorts in a bull rush. His axe, already raised above his head, whistled downward in a wild swing just as the giant sprang to his feet. The jagged edge of granite struck the fellow right in the middle of his forehead, the blow knocking him back into his seat then sending the chair toppling over backward, spilling the giant onto the floor where he lay motionless.

With a wild whoop of triumph, Bonechisel brought the axe down again, and again. The three other goblins, inspired by their chieftain’s example, joined in the fun, rushing forward with their own stone clubs to batter and bash the helpless giant,
until his body had been reduced to a shapeless pulp.

Bonechisel danced around the corpse of his slain foe in an ecstasy of triumph. “I am Giant-Slayer!” he crowed. He clubbed one of his lackeys. “Call me Giant-Slayer!” he ordered.

“Hail Bonechisel Giant-Slayer!” the goblin, no fool, shouted.

The hobgoblin danced to the back of the room then yelped when he realized that the great bed was occupied—by the mate of the giant. He bashed his club against the female and was startled by her utter lack of reaction. Leaning in, he sniffed. The scent of death filled his nostrils. Pulling back the quilt, he saw this was an ogress, not a giantess. A shrewder brain that Bonechisel’s might have deduced that this oddly matched couple were outcasts from both giant and ogre tribes.

The chieftain remembered the third denizen of this stone house. He looked toward the infant bed and saw that Laka was peering over the lip of the cradle. Caught up in the blood-frenzy, Bonechisel raised his club and howled aloud, starting toward the last of his enemies.

To his surprise, Laka reached into the cradle, snatched up the infant, then turned and snarled at the chieftain with a startling display of big teeth. Her eyes blazed, and the import of her actions was clear and defiant.

“Give me babe!” demanded the hobgoblin. “I kill! I am Bonechisel Giant-Slayer!”

“This babe mine!” she declared. “Go kill someplace else!”

The infant was squalling and fussing, and the hobgoblin would have liked nothing better than to smash its little brains out on the floor, but he noted the glare of determination, of pure courage, in his mate’s eye. He decided that killing this baby was not worth subjecting himself to the female wrath and recrimination that would follow.

Even as he stared in disbelief, his pig-eyes squinting, Laka slumped down to the floor, opened her tunic, and gave the baby one of her breasts for suckling. The baby half-breed’s annoying wails faded to a surprised squawk, then a soft slurping as he fastened himself to the teat and began to nurse.

Laka called her babe Ankhar, and she cared for the half-giant infant with as much love and attention as if he had been born of her own flesh. From the first greedy suckle, Ankhar clung to his new mother with desperation, forming an inseparable bond.

Generally the adopted hobgoblin spent his time avoiding the mature males of the tribe, although he became the natural leader of the gobs of his own age. Not only did he outweigh all of his contemporaries by at least a factor of two, but he was quick to anger and ruthless in retaliation, inflicting countless broken bones during any outbreaks of rough play. Fear being a primary influence upon goblin relationships, Ankhar’s prowess made his fellows obsequious, and he was quick to take advantage of the worship he inspired. He would dispatch the young ogres to bring him food and drink, to perform his designated chores (he especially hated firewood hauling and stone breaking).

During these years the tribe moved around a lot, never settling in the same place for more than a season or two at a time. At first Bonechisel was one of many hobgoblin chiefs in the foothills around the Garnet Range, but he gradually made a name for himself as one of the most successful when it came to raiding the settlements of humans, leading his tribe in such a way that the gobs had plenty to eat—even during the waning months of winter when starvation made a rampant sweep through the bands and clans of leaders who showed less foresight.