The Goblin Corps (31 page)

“The ground ssslopesss upward jussst a mile or ssso from here,” he said, his head poking up just a few inches from the surface. “I sssaw a few sssections of what appearsss to have been a ssstone wall. I believe that we’ve finally reached the ruinsss.”

Cræosh’s first instinct was to fall to his knees and thank the Ancestors, but he decided that such an act of obeisance could wait until it wouldn’t submerge him completely.

The wall indeed proved to be one length of a larger ruin. Even better, it was constructed on a stretch of land high enough to stand completely out of the water. Sure, the air itself remained so choked with moisture that breathing and drinking were damn near synonymous, but still, it was something. Cræosh allowed himself a moment’s respite, leaning back against the moss-covered stones and making some token gestures at wiping the worst of the sludge from his armor. “I am not,” he announced, “looking forward to the trip
out.”

Katim, glancing about with narrowed eyes and flared nostrils, nodded absently. “Perhaps we can find…an old boat, or the materials…to construct another skiff. But I wonder…if we shouldn’t first concern…ourselves with what we have here.”

Cræosh righted himself and meandered over to stand between Katim and a thick cypress. “Oh,” he said, peering past one furry shoulder. “Yeah, maybe we should, at that.”

Portions of the wall, most of which were so dilapidated that they barely reached the orc’s elbows, stretched into the haze in both directions. Great gaps revealed where over half of that fortification had long since crumbled into the wet and malleable earth. Copious grasses spouted from what had once been tightly mortared cracks. Molds and fungi coated the stones like a light dusting of snow.

Yet enough of the wall remained to show that it had once been a solid bastion. Surely these ruins must indeed be ancient Jureb Nahl itself.

The once-great town beyond that wall was equally pathetic. Some of the main roads remained visible, barely, as lighter stripes wending through the foliage. Walls and parts of walls were tombstones, marking the corpses of homes and shops and temples. One or two of the ruins retained their roofs, but most were nothing but sporadic bricks hidden among the weeds or trapped in the branches of ancient trees.

From where they stood, Cræosh and Katim could see the remains of the once-proud keep that had dominated the town’s center, its four watchtowers piercing the sky above, allowing sentinels a clear view over what, at the time, had been open fields of crops. Several of the buildings actually looked to be in halfway decent shape, but heaps of craggy, broken stone were all that remained of two of those towers, while a third had been sheared down to a height of about ten feet by the rigors of past centuries. The northwest tower still stood, but open wounds gaped in the brick, and powdered mortar sifted earthward at the slightest breeze. The entire thing leaned subtly toward the sunset, and Cræosh didn’t trust it to support the weight of a corpulent owl.

“If this dead wizard’s tower is in the same prime condition as this one,” he said, “I think we can count on going back to Queen Anne empty-handed.”

“Or at least…empty-headed,” Katim said.
“I’m
not going…to be the one to tell her…we failed. If she says…it’s here, perhaps we should at least…look?”

“Okay, fine. So where in the name of my green and crusty orifice
is
it?”

The troll looked again at the watchtower. “If it were somewhat…sturdier,” she mused, “it would provide…an excellent vantage point.”

“Swell. And if Grandpa had been an ogre, Grandma would be hollow. You think your ‘if’ will support our weight?”

“Not at all,” Katim told him. “But it might…support a kobold’s.” Cræosh began to smile.

It was perhaps not all that surprising that Gork himself was less than anxious to test that idea.

“Hell no,” was his actual response.

“Look, Shorty,” Cræosh told him, “you’re the only here who can do it.”

“Then it doesn’t get done.”

“I’d ask Jhurpess, but he’s too heavy to pull it off!”

“I’ll pull something else off if you don’t get off my case about—”

“Gork,” Katim said, “try to be…reasonable.”

“Okay, wait. You and the Great Green Pig want me to climb that…that death trap, and
I’m
the one being unreasonable? I think that squid-thing held you underwater too long, Katim. The only falling I plan to do any time soon is asleep.”

“But—”

“Ask the doppelganger. He can be a kobold—sort of—and
he
can climb the damn thing.”

“You’re a far more ssskilled climber,” Fezeill said smugly. “Regardlesss of form.”

“So turn into something with wings and take a look around that way.”

“Such as what? A giloral?” The troglodyte shuddered. “Even if I wanted to—and I’d rather bed an elf—it’sss a far cry from
having
wingsss to knowing how to ussse them. Not happening.”

“Think of this as an opportunity to learn new skills, then.”

Katim smiled, not precisely the reaction that Gork would have hoped for. “Listen, kobold, and…listen well. We cannot leave here…until we’ve found Trelaine’s…tower.”

“So we find another way to do it.”

“We’d have to search…hundreds of square yards, perhaps…miles of swamp. Do you…want to go back in there?”

Little kobold teeth gleamed in the dim light.
“I’m
riding an ogre.
You’re
the one getting wet and sticky.”

“Precisely my…point.”

Gork saw it coming and tried to duck away. Unfortunately, Cræosh had slinked around behind him during the argument, waiting for precisely that. The kobold screamed, thrashed, and bit down hard on Katim’s arms; nothing helped. Shrieking and spitting troll fur the entire way, Gork sailed through the air toward the top of the leaning tower.

Oddly, though, his only
coherent
thought was,
If I hear so much as a single chuckle from Gimmol, I’ll drown the useless turd.

Even he had to admit—later, when he could think clearly—that it’d been a good throw. Katim arced him up and over the crumbling crenellations, rather than tossing him directly into the stone. (He didn’t pretend it had been for his sake; she just didn’t want to risk knocking the teetering thing over.) His landing was surprisingly gentle, and though the rock grated beneath him, sending more powder sifting out over the swamp, nothing actually fell.

For long and aching minutes, Gork lay spread-eagle atop the rickety stone platform, waiting for his heart to return to something resembling a healthy pace. Then he waited a few minutes more, until he could force himself to think about something other than slowly feeding Katim to a hive of rock spiders.
Then
he rose to his feet, taking mincing little steps, and examined the lands beyond.

He saw, first and foremost, that the trees and other growth thinned considerably to the north, until only an occasional gnarled and knotted trunk protruded from the marsh. Beyond them, a wavering phantom in the low-lying haze, stood a circle of great, rectangular stones—some standing on end, others lying horizontally atop them. The circle was incomplete, broken where the earth had eroded away and allowed part of the henge to topple into the swamp. Enough remained, however, for Gork to identify it—from tales he’d heard, and even a charcoal sketch he’d once seen—as a druidic circle, an altar to some god or power forgotten since before the rise of the Charnel King.

All of which might’ve been fascinating to a historian, but was useless to the kobold, since the circle was neither a wizard’s tower nor of any immediate monetary value. And of that tower, there was no trace. Other than that henge of stones far to the north, he saw nothing but the thick trees and foul waters of the swamp.

“Fuck!” he shouted at the uncaring expanse. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

“Problem, Shorty?” Cræosh asked from somewhere below.

“Yeah, there’s a problem! The problem is I hate this place! I hate this place, I hate this whole mission, and I’m not real joyously fond of any of you right now, either!”

There was a brief pause. “I’m gonna go out on a limb, here,” the orc finally said, “and guess that you haven’t found anything?”

“‘Out on a limb,’ he says,” Gork murmured savagely. “Why doesn’t he climb up here; I’ll show him out on a limb….”

Still muttering resentfully, the kobold began the arduous climb back to earth. It was certainly a near thing; more than once, he felt his grip giving way as mortar and stone crumbled beneath the pressure of even his tiny hands. Finally, however, he was low enough to drop onto the ogre’s head—eliciting an abbreviated bleat—and from there to the top of one of the broken walls.

“So what now?” he asked, not giving Cræosh time to spew whatever smart-ass comment was assuredly forthcoming.

“I’d say we’ve got two choices,” Cræosh said instead. “One, we comb this entire ruin, top to bottom, and hope like hell we find some clue as to where this goat-fucker Trelaine might have shoved his tower.”

“That could take sssome time,” Fezeill said. Then, as the weight of their disdain crashed down upon him, “I’m jussst sssaying…”

“The other option?” Katim prompted.

“Right. Option two is that we wander back out into the swamp and search aimlessly until we stumble over the damn thing or drop dead.”

For a moment, no one spoke. Then, “I’ll search what’s left of the keep,” Gork volunteered. “Hell, I’ve already seen most of it from up top, anyway.”

The troll nodded. “I’ll go with…him,” she said. Then, at the naked hostility in the kobold’s expression, she added, “We’ve already seen what…sorts of things live in…this swamp. It would be…foolish for you to wander off…on your own.”

“Of course,” Gork said through grinding teeth.

“Nature-boy can check the trees,” Cræosh continued, gesturing vaguely upward. “I somehow doubt there’s anything useful up there, but maybe he’ll spot a building or something we can’t see from the ground.”

The bugbear smiled. “Jhurpess like trees.”

“You don’t say. Fezeill, you get to check
under
the water, see if anything’s sunken but intact. Me and Belrotha—and Gimmol, I suppose—are gonna look through whatever other buildings are still standing.”

He was off before he finished speaking, tromping through the broken walls. Belrotha followed a moment later, Gimmol trailing behind. Jhurpess and Fezeill headed toward the back end of town. Gork and Katim stood alone, by the dilapidated walls of the ancient fort.

“You try to toss me again,” he told her, puffed up as big as he could, “you’re going to lose a finger.”

He anticipated a threat, a sarcastic remark, something,
anything
other than the knowing smile that crept almost sensuously across the troll’s twisted snout. Shaken and not entirely sure why, Gork turned and moved toward the cracked walls of what had once been Jureb Nahl’s beating heart.

Initially, other than rotted sludge that might once have been furniture, and a
whole lot
of vermin, the keep’s main structure didn’t provide much. While the outer walls had survived, the same couldn’t be said of most of the interior.

It was only as they were departing what had probably been a barracks, picking their way through broken flagstones and clinging weeds, that something caught Katim’s notice. Recognizing what might have been a hand protruding from beneath, the troll hurled aside a mess of sodden wood that had once been a bed, or perhaps a table, to reveal a partial skeleton, half buried in the soft dirt.

“What was it?” Gork asked, peering around her left knee.

Katim squinted. The skeleton was only visible from the thighs up, and a great portion of the rib cage appeared to have been shattered by a narrow object: a blunt axe perhaps, or possibly a gardening tool. The skull had also been partly crushed, this time by the furniture collapsing atop it, but she recognized the shape of a snout, shorter and broader than her own….

“I think,” Katim said slowly, “that this…might’ve been a troglodyte.”

Now it was Gork’s turn to peer closer. “You know, you may be right. I thought they only lived in the Brimstone Mountains. Too cold elsewhere, or something.”

The troll shrugged. “I thought the…same, but here…he is.”

Gork poked a hand into the soil by the skeleton. “Damn swamp! Things rot so
fast.
I can’t tell if this skeleton’s been here ten weeks or ten years.”

“Does it really…matter?”

“Well, I’d sort of like to know if there’s a bunch of troglodytes with sharp, pointy things waiting for me around the next tree.”

“When you figure…it out, let me know. We…haven’t checked the outer…structures yet.”

The first one of those, another barracks, smaller and far more cramped, was even grimmer. Several rows of bunks stood rotting along the walls, half a dozen of which were occupied by the corpses of their former owners. Just to be thorough, Katim moved body to body, checking the remaining scraps of cloth and the smaller footlockers beside each bed.

“Can you tell what killed them?” the kobold asked nervously. “Dying of plague’s not real high on my list of things to do.”

“No plague,” Katim reassured him, moving on to the fourth skeleton.
Could you even catch plague from bones?
She wasn’t sure, and she wasn’t about to admit her ignorance. “Two of the ones…I’ve examined have scoring or…scratch marks on the…neck. These men had…their throats slit.”

“Oh. Good.” A pause, then, “I wonder why? It’s not like Jureb Nahl fell in a war or anything.”

“My guess would…be that these men stayed behind…to guard against looting or…some such. I’d say…they didn’t succeed.”

“Nothing in the lockers, huh?” Gork asked disappointedly.

Katim had reached the fifth corpse. “Not a thing worth
aaaah!
”

Even as she recoiled, the kobold was skittering up the nearest decrepit wall, presumably fleeing from whatever had elicited her cry. She heard him calling out for help as he climbed.
“Belrotha! Cræosh! Jhurpess!”
And then, far more quietly, “Fezeill…”

It hung from Katim’s forearm, mandibles chewing unmercifully through fur and hide and flesh. It was something akin to a normal millipede—if one discounted the fact that, judging just from the portion she could actually see, it had to be almost as long as she was tall. It must have been coiled tight within the corpse, or perhaps lairing in the mattress beneath.