The Goblin Corps (30 page)

He could just ask her to lower the wards and allow him to depart. He could walk out the door and teleport from outside. But either option meant letting her know that he was going, and while there was no
inherent
reason she shouldn’t know he was reporting back to Morthûl and Falchion, the Demon Squad had been assigned to her—and that included the sergeant. He wasn’t sure how she’d take it if he started going over her head.

So he’d gone back and forth, mentally and physically, for days now. And just like that, he was sick of it.

Let
the queen object! Let her try to stop him from reporting to King Morthûl. That would be just the leverage he needed to see her punished, if only moderately, for mistreating a demon of the Pit! Shreckt spun in the middle of a step and headed for the door.

It drifted slowly open before he’d crossed halfway across the room. Scowling, Shreckt drifted up until he stood at his customary height above the floor, the better to see and deal with…

“Rupert,” he muttered.
The queen’s homemade toy.
“Thanks so much for knocking.”

The brown hood nodded. “And a good day to you, honored guest.”

Shreckt chuckled. “Still performing, Rupert? The audience left a few days ago, and I ain’t buying it one bit.”

“No?”

“Nope. In fact, it’s starting to irritate me. You could have said something about the wards, you know.”

“We assumed that, as you
surely
wouldn’t be attempting to do anything improper, you’d never encounter them.”

“Ah.” Shreckt took a few steps nearer the door. “And if I asked you to lower them now?”

“That would, of course, be up to Her Majesty to decide.”

“Then let’s go.”

“Ah, yes. I’m afraid that won’t be possible just now.”

Your average human or goblin would have asked why, or made some protest. But Shreckt knew a threat when he heard it.

A bolt of lightning crackled from the imp’s hands, blasted across the chamber, but Rupert was already moving. Passing
through
the wall and the heavy wooden door, he darted aside at the last instant, leaving only the trailing hem of his robe to be scorched, and then only lightly, by the levinbolt.

An invisible but all too tangible weight fell on the imp, smashing him to the floor hard enough to crack the flagstone. The breath blasted from his lungs, and if he’d actually been a creature that
needed
to breathe, he’d surely have passed out on the spot. He struggled to rise, but couldn’t move so much as a wingtip. He calmed his thoughts, drawing upon a spell that would blast Rupert, however insubstantial he might be, into whatever afterlife awaited a creature never truly alive.

Nothing happened. The pressure pinning Shreckt to the floor had snuffed the flame of his magics as surely as the castle had thwarted his teleportation. For the first time in—well, ever—Shreckt began to fear.

“Queen Anne…” the imp croaked, straining even to speak. “She won’t—”

“Queen Anne won’t what?” The voice drifting through the doorway was soft, lyrical. A hem of green velvet glided into his peripheral vision, and he couldn’t even turn his head to look. “Queen Anne won’t allow this? Queen Anne won’t be happy? My dear imp, Rupert does
nothing
without my order.”

A muscle twitched at the back of Shreckt’s neck. “Should have guessed…Too powerful for Rupert…”

“Yes, indeed,” the queen said softly. “But with the right preparation, hardly beyond
me
.”

“Squad?”

The hem shifted. “Are you actually concerned about them, imp? No, of course you aren’t. You wouldn’t know how. You’re just hoping they’ll last long enough to rescue you.

“Well, I intend no harm to your soldiers, Sergeant. But I can assure you, they will not be racing to your rescue. My tasks should keep them busy for quite some time to come; I doubt they’ll even notice you’re missing, or that they’ll care if they do. And once those tasks are completed, I intend to be quite finished with you, so it’s really a moot point, isn’t it?”

Shreckt’s view of the room shifted as Rupert lifted him from the floor. And while the imp had been frightened at the ease with which the queen had neutralized his magics, and frightened further still at the thought of becoming part of whatever twisted experiment or scheme she had in mind, he was
terrified
now. For Rupert had lifted him high enough to look into the queen’s face, and he had seen a madness burning in her eyes with the same fervor as the Charnel King’s own unholy glow.

King Dororam bent thoughtfully over the long table that ran down the middle of what had once been his study. He proudly wore a fine hauberk of chain; proudly because it had been crafted in his youth, but he remained able (albeit it with some huffing and puffing) to squeeze into it. He wore it every waking moment, along with the broadsword at his side, conditioning himself for the day when he would wear them at the head of his army as they marched on Kirol Syrreth.

His study, too, had been dressed for war. The books had been removed to the library, all save the treatises on battle and tactics, and the furniture replaced with a lengthy table brought from the soldiers’ mess. Several immaculately drawn maps occupied that table, transforming the room into the strategic center for the upcoming campaign.

“I don’t know, Theiolyn,” Dororam was saying. “I don’t think I can get a large enough force through that pass to matter.”

The elf shook her head, coming close to smacking Dororam with her platinum-blonde topknot. “You misunderstand me, Dororam,” she said in her melodic accent. “It is my own forces who will penetrate through this pass. We will serve as a diversion to draw attention from the larger force—yours—who will be coming through…” She jabbed a finger down on the map.
“Here
instead.”

“Ah.” Dororam glanced around at his compatriots. In addition to Theiolyn, the Speaking Prince (“prince” being a unisex title among the elven nations), the room was occupied by Thane Granitemane, a grim dwarf with a knee-length beard, who spoke for the assembled clans; Thizzwhff, one of the giloral Council of Chiefs, whose kaleidoscopic butterfly-wings were constantly bumping into everyone around the table; and the kings, queens, and/or regents of half a dozen other human nations. These sundry rulers were each accompanied by anywhere from one to four generals, ready to offer their own advice.

Only the halflings were absent, and that was because they hadn’t anything resembling a government. When the others marched, any given halfling would either choose to march with them, or not.

“It has possibilities,” Dororam said, staring at the map. “But if we move through here, we leave Thane Granitemane and his forces isolated.”

The bearded figure snorted contemptuously. “We are dwarves, King Dororam. We fear little. Fighting on our own least of all.”

“I don’t mean to disparage your abilities,” replied a large man with a handlebar mustache, one of Dororam’s generals, “or those of your people. But if our main force on the Serpent’s Pass doesn’t draw the entirety of their resistance, you could find yourself not merely outnumbered, but surrounded. Are you certain that—?”

The door to the inner sanctum, one that was supposed to be guarded by a dozen soldiers, burst open, apparently struck by an invisible battering ram. A violent breeze swept through the room, ruffling hair and displacing several score sheets of paper.

His mouth locked in a scowl so stony it might have been etched onto his face, Ananias duMark stood in the doorway. The hem of his robe flapped in the fading wind, and one fist was clenched, white-knuckled, on his thick wooden staff.

King Dororam breathed a quiet sigh of relief. “DuMark,” he said in greeting, “we were just—”

“Everyone else out!”

Most in the room were generals and kings, and certainly unaccustomed to being ordered about. Nonetheless, within two minutes, duMark and Dororam stood alone. The sorcerer crooked a finger, and the door slammed itself shut behind the last straggler.

Dororam’s expression deepened into a scowl to equal the wizard’s. “I give you
substantial
leeway, duMark,” he said softly. “But you will not barge into my castle—my
home
—in this manner. You will not order about my guests, particularly royal visitors. And you will not—”

“Dororam, shut the hell up.”

It was sheer astonishment, more than anything else, that compelled Dororam to comply.

“Good,” the half-elf continued. “Tell me, then. Is it true?”

The king frowned. “Is what true?”

“Don’t play games with me! Rumor has it that you sent a scouting party into Kirol Syrreth! Is it true?”

This
, Dororam had not been looking forward to. “Yes,” he said. “It’s true.”

DuMark collapsed into the nearest chair. “Dororam, when did you become such a fool? I asked you not to take any action. I
told
you that I have my own source of information, and my own efforts under way to hamper the Charnel King’s efforts. Why would you risk interfering with either?”

The king shrugged. “You yourself told me that your source is less than reliable. I needed to confirm that you can count on his information
now
, before the war effort begins to depend on its veracity.”

“As I recall, I also told you that my source would probably vanish completely if you acted too soon. If the Dark Lord figures out that we’ve an informant in his lands, he’ll take steps. And despite my magics, a dead spy is of little more use to me than he is to you.

“Besides, I can assure you that even with his army’s ongoing training exercises, the Brimstone Mountains are guarded well enough to repel any attack. You needn’t have sent a party to learn
that.”

Dororam dragged over a chair and sat beside the wizard. “I’m not looking for a hole in his defenses, duMark. I simply want my men to corroborate for me that those exercises are, in fact, ongoing. If I can confirm that your source is accurate on
this
, I’ll feel better about trusting it later, when it matters.”

DuMark closed his eyes.
Gods, but the man can be such an idiot! Ever since his daughter died, he hasn’t been his old self.
The half-elf had to stop himself from shaking his head in despair.
It’s not as if Dororam’s too old to make another one….

Well, what was done was done. “Your scouts understand their orders?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” Dororam assured him. “They are to observe enemy activity near the borders only, and determine if the patrols are indeed less numerous than before. No incursions, no contact, and certainly no combat. Trust me, the Iron Keep will never even know they were there.”

The trees—twisted, half-dead monstrosities groaning beneath the weight of mosses and fungi—obscured and even absorbed the sunlight far out of proportion to the amount of cover they provided. Even at the height of noon, the swamps of Jureb Nahl were brightened by little more than a diffuse, sickly gray luminescence.

Here and there the waters rippled as some animal moved beneath the ubiquitous layer of green scum. Rats clambered on clicking claws across the boughs. Huge spiderwebs lay draped over and around the trees, sometimes three or four at a stretch. And always, always lurked the alligators and constrictors, some big enough to be easily mistaken for logs until they opened maws bristling with dagger-sized teeth.

A constant drone jiggled within their ears, tickling at the fringes of consciousness. Insects sang mindless paeans to the world; the waters lapped and gurgled; birds hooted in the distance, falling silent only briefly as the goblins drew near. All were deadened and mangled into a single dreary tone by the weight of the air, still and humid despite the chill, giving the entire orchestra an eerie, dreamlike feel.

Then, of course, there was the constant miasma: the scent of dead and stagnant things, so pervasive that even the most bestial members of the squad struggled not to gag and resolved to burn their outfits once they’d returned to civilization.

But all of this,
all
of it, would have remained tolerable if they hadn’t lost the bloody damn skiff!

It had been just after dawn on their third day in Jureb Nahl. They were debating the merits of stopping off on a small, moss- and peat-coated hillock and having a quick breakfast when the “hill” decided it had plans of its own.

Enormous tentacles rose from the water, lashing and pummeling, seeking prey for this strange wetlands predator. The goblins, save Belrotha, found themselves tumbling pell-mell into the water. Struggling to their feet, coughing pestilential gunk from their lungs, they’d found themselves facing what they could only refer to later, in Cræosh’s words, as “a huge fucking hard-shelled swamptopus.”

They’d succeeded in killing the damn thing—or, in other words, Cræosh and Katim had distracted it while Belrotha drove her massive sword through its body and then pummeled it into paste with a log, while the others danced around in the water and the clinging muck, trying to contribute and failing miserably—but not before the flailing tentacles had reduced the skiff to what would, in drier conditions, have been kindling.

And after all that, Jhurpess had pulled a face and announced that the thing didn’t even taste very good.

That was three days ago, and since then, lacking any other recourse, they’d walked, waded, and (in the cases of the shorter members) swum through Jureb Nahl.

Hell no longer held any fear for the soldiers of this particular Demon Squad. After slogging through those green-scummed, vermin-infested waters, any or all of them would have cheerfully chosen an eternity in the worst depths of the Pit over one more night in the Ancestors/Stars/gods-damned swamp! The insects used the lot of them as an endless buffet of flesh and blood. The filthy, stinging mud had coated them (albeit, in Belrotha’s case, only from the knees down), and the two shortest goblins had finally been forced to hitch a ride. Gimmol sat perched upon one of the ogre’s broad shoulders; the kobold stood inside her backpack. Where he could, Jhurpess traveled via the branches above, but even he could not avoid the muck entirely.

Only Fezeill, in his scale-covered form, had escaped largely unscathed. The faux troglodyte had taken to scouting, and finally,
finally
he returned with the news they’d all been dying (and in some cases, very nearly killing) to hear.