The Goblin Corps (40 page)

“Elementary tactics, Dororam. I know all this.”

“Then why do you object every time I come up with a plan to eliminate the sentries on some of the smaller passes?”

“Because it would compromise my source, as I’ve already explained.”
If your foolishness hasn’t already done so.
DuMark didn’t utter the last bit aloud, but Dororam could see it written clearly in his expression. “If you’d just wait, perhaps until the spring thaw, that would be fine. As it is, launching any such attack, so soon after this information came to me, would be far too suspicious a coincidence. My source could learn he’s been compromised, and we’d learn nothing more from him. Plus, if you strike too soon, Morthûl has time to reestablish those watch posts, and you’ll have accomplished nothing.”

Dororam threw up his hands. It was an argument they’d already had, and yet he couldn’t stop himself from pursuing it as doggedly as an actor in a play. “I disagree, duMark. We’d be making a mistake by waiting. If we give the new deployments time to dig in, grow accustomed to their new terrain, they’ll be that much harder to root out. Hit them now—and I mean hard, enough to wipe out the posts entirely—and we sow chaos in the ranks. It would take Morthûl time to draw off enough soldiers from other positions to reestablish those units.”

“But he
has
time! Spring is still many weeks away, Dororam! You might clear the passes, true, but you could never hold them that long!”

“I can’t,” the king admitted, a sudden smile on his face.
Time to go off script.
“But Thane Granitemane and his dwarves certainly can.”

The sorcerer actually blinked once in surprise.
Score one for the foolish human
, Dororam gloated. “The dwarves are involved in this operation?” duMark asked.

“Absolutely. Granitemane cannot spare enough of his people to
clear
the passes, but he
can
contribute enough to
hold
them.

“So it comes to this. My soldiers clear the passes now, while the Iron Keep’s new units are being deployed. Once that’s done, we fall back, allowing a platoon of Granitemane’s dwarves to set up shop in the nearby caves. They remain there for the next few weeks, randomly eliminating any additional units Morthûl sends—all over the area, not just in the passes we intend to use. This makes it effectively impossible for the Charnel King to reinforce the Brimstone Mountains. And thus, it leaves the passes open for our secondary forces once our main armies hit the Serpent’s.”

“Whereas,” duMark concluded, a grudging admiration in his voice, “if you wait until just before your armies march to take the guard posts, you run the risk of being unable to dislodge them.”

Dororam smiled, a faint echo of the true camaraderie the two had once shared. “You see, Ananias? I’m not quite such a senile old man yet, am I?”

“No, Dororam, perhaps not quite as senile as all that. You could have told me of the dwarves’ involvement earlier.”

“I was working out the details with Granitemane.”
And I want you to remember who’s actually in charge here.
“I am also not completely oblivious to your own concerns, Ananias. Is this really liable to cause so many problems with your spy in Kirol Syrreth?”

“I hope not,” the half-elf sighed, resting his chin thoughtfully on one hand. “If he does prove reluctant, I suppose I’ll simply have to provide some additional motivation.”

“I find myself,” Gork said sourly as Cræosh abruptly loomed behind him, “starting to lose any real sense of motivation for this whole thing.”

The orc snickered. “Ah, don’t sweat it, Shorty. Hell, it’s just a big, thick, ugly, black, twisted, nasty, evil forest. What could you possibly have to worry about?”

Gork’s scowl suggested very clearly where the orc could shove his encouragement. And possibly the aforementioned trees.

The mismatched pair waited but a few short moments before the rest of the squad appeared. Her eyebrows raised marginally as she, too, surveyed the woodlands, Katim said, “There’s still several…hours of daylight remaining. Are we planning to…continue on?”

Cræosh glanced sideways at her. “What do you think?” he asked, his tone just a bit snappish.

For another moment, the troll peered at the expanse of trees. “I’d suggest camping here,” she said finally. “Rupert told…us that the forest would require…most of a day to traverse. I’d as…soon camp out here where I can…see a foe approaching, and enter…the trees at dawn.”

The orc nodded. “My thoughts exactly. Thus, just in case you hadn’t noticed the telltale clue that your feet aren’t moving, we’ve stopped.”

The troll grimaced. “Your wit, Cræosh, never…ceases to fail to astound me.”

“I think,” the orc said sullenly, after a moment of puzzling that through, “that we ought to make camp.”

“I couldn’t agree…more. Not with you…anyway.”

Gork walked away, having neither sufficient interest nor sufficient patience to hear out the latest spat. Sooner or later, those two were going to kill each other; until then, he was sick of listening as they slowly worked their way up to it.

It had been constant in the weeks since Jureb Nahl. All the way back to Castle Eldritch, all during their rest and recuperation, all throughout the subsequent errands they’d run for Queen Anne—during which they had fetched her an array of peculiar leaves, the stone heart of a man who had been petrified by a basilisk, and finally a cobweb spun by a spider that had fed on flies who had themselves supped on the decaying corpse of a virgin faerie—the troll and the orc had bickered like an old, psychotic married couple. Gork was sick of them, sick of Queen Anne’s peculiar needs, sick of the rest of the squad…

Sick of Nurien Ebonwind, who’d appeared to him three times during those weeks, pressing him for more on the Charnel King’s armies. (At least the constant antagonism between Cræosh and Katim had distracted the troll enough for him to
have
these meetings.) Gork, who’d spent most of this time racing this way and that across Kirol Syrreth like a chicken whose head was about to be cut off, had snippily repeated the various rumors he’d heard.

“Look,” the kobold had finally challenged the dakórren as he was about to depart their latest clandestine rendezvous, “it’s not that I don’t want the reward you promised me, but I’ve got to ask…You could get this same information from any soldier plucked from some craphole tavern. Probably better. Why do you keep coming to me?”

Ebonwind had smiled, his familiar had said something that might have been “Oopo vlimp,” and they were gone.

Gork, not being an idiot, knew that meant one of two things, if not both. One, he was just
one
of Ebonwind’s sources. Two, Ebonwind was, despite his protestations to the contrary, curious about a lot more than troop movements. Gork knew, or might know, or would know something that he
couldn’t
get elsewhere.

I need out of this deal. Or I need to ask for more money.

And for that matter, how does he keep teleporting to me wherever I am, when even Queen Anne couldn’t send us somewhere she’d never seen?

He’d been pondering his problems during another few days of precious downtime at Castle Eldritch when, without warning, Queen Anne had joined them one morning for breakfast.

“It’s rather funny,” she had said, her gaze ever so slightly unfocused, “that you ran across that druid circle in Jureb Nahl. As it turns out, you’re going someplace similar.”

Cræosh had grinned. “If you’re asking us to bring back one of those damn stones, we’re gonna need a few more ogres.”

“Not at all, dear Cræosh. What I need, actually, is a religious relic.”

“Well, that ought to be easy enough…” he’d begun.

“Symbolism, my dear, remember? Symbolism is everything in magic. Not just any religious icon will do, no, not at all. This must be the relic of a forgotten god.”

For a moment, the entire table had been silent. Slowly, Gimmol had raised a hand.

“Yes?”

“Umm, Your Majesty? If you know of this god, he wouldn’t exactly be forgotten, would he?”

The queen had sighed. “I meant, in this context, a god no longer worshipped, my little ones. ‘Forgotten’ just has so much nicer a ring to it, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Great,” Cræosh had said. “We’re about to go charging off on some deadly assignment, and she’s worried about theatrics.”

“Symbolism,” she had repeated once more. “Not theatrics.”

“Whatever.”

“This land,” the queen had said, moving on, “was populated by a rather surprising variety of druidic religions before my husband set things right.” The squad members had exchanged uncertain glances at that pronouncement, but felt it wiser not to question the queen’s assessment of her husband’s achievements. “Now, as best I’ve been able to determine, quite a few of these cults were wiped out completely. In most cases, that doesn’t help us; druids are notorious for using plants as holy icons—holly, oak, berries, that sort of silliness—and that doesn’t leave us much to retrieve, does it? But my understanding is that the Circle of Ymmech Thewl might have kept what we now require.”

Katim’s ears had twitched in recognition. “Ymmech Thewl? As in…the forest of Thewl?”

Queen Anne had nodded. “The same.”

“The
forest of Ymmech…Thewl?”

“No matter how you choose to enunciate it, yes.”

Jhurpess had shrunk in his seat, clinging to the arms as though drowning in the chair. “Jhurpess not want to go to Thewl,” he’d announced, fingers absently breaking small chunks off the edge of the table. “Thewl bad place. Jhurpess like to eat things, not get eaten by things.” His brow wrinkled in puzzlement as a thought struck him. “What ‘Ymmech Thewl’ mean?” he’d asked.

Cræosh’s fingers had reached, seemingly of their own accord, for the nearest sharp utensil. “Has anyone else noticed,” he’d asked, “that we’re being very deliberately sent into the darkest, most mysterious, and all around fucked-up nastiest places this kingdom has to offer? If you wanted us dead, Your Majesty, there are a lot more efficient ways to pull it off.”

Queen Anne had laughed—a light, almost spiritual sound. “Why, I’ve nothing but the highest hopes for your survival
and
your success, dear one! I send you where the items I need are to be found. If they were not in such dangerous, unpleasant locations, they’d have been retrieved long ago, yes?”

Which, after a few more hours of studying what little was known of Ymmech Thewl’s druids, and another gut-wrenching teleport to get them as near as the queen could manage, had led them here, to the forest’s edge. And to another spat.

But they did, indeed, make camp on the outskirts, whittling away the remaining hours of the day: first by watching the verbal sparring, and then, when that got boring, Gimmol, Gork, and Jhurpess broke into a rousing game of Climb the Ogre. The contest grew rather more challenging when Belrotha grew tired of the sport long before the others did. They finally stopped when Gork found himself lying on his back a hundred yards away, having missed impaling a tree trunk by a matter of inches.

Ah, well. It was getting dark anyway.

Nothing untoward happened that night (except that Gork spent most of his watch actually watching Katim pretending not to watch him, but that doesn’t really count as “happening”). The same held true of their first few hours within the forest of Thewl itself. The place was foreboding enough, swaddled in a blanket of shadows, full of branches that reached like claws from bent and twisted boles, as though eager to grab an unwary goblin and shred him into fleshy confetti. But no danger actually manifested, nothing so much as a rabid squirrel or an irate rabbit….

Actually, as Katim and Jhurpess both pointed out nigh simultaneously, there was no sign of
any
rabbits or squirrels, rabid, irate, or otherwise. No birds perched in the trees, twittering the day away with their inane songs; no deer bounded from clearing to clearing; no wolves lurked to thin out said bounding population. With a single exception, Ymmech Thewl appeared devoid of animal life. And that single exception—a huge, stone-hued snake with a head
on both ends
, that had curled around a towering tree and watched them with four unblinking eyes—didn’t really make them feel any better about the whole thing.

Belrotha finally dealt with her unease by grabbing the snake just below each head and tying it around the tree in a simple but efficient knot.

It was a short-lived comfort, though—one that vanished the instant they found the body.

He’d once been human—that was clear enough. He lay facedown, just off the meandering strip of slightly thinner grass that Katim had laughingly called a game trail. His clothes were tattered, and a few scraps of leather suggested that he had once worn a small pouch but that it had been equally savaged. He appeared to have died desperately reaching for a walking staff lying just a few inches from his outstretched hand.

None of which would have troubled any of the goblins, really, were it not for the tree beside which the body lay. One of its thickest roots extended through the man’s back, passing through him to join with its brethren under the soil. The corpse, Katim noted with a sniff, was quite ripe, far too fresh for
anything
to grow completely through the body, let alone an entire tree root. And Gork, kneeling down to see if the body held anything worth looting, went abruptly pale as he got a good look at the amount of dried blood on the skin and tattered clothing and realized the man must have been
alive
when the root punctured his flesh.

The tree stabbed him?!
Gork felt a sudden need to lie down.

“Oh, it did not!” Cræosh snapped when presented with the kobold’s theory. “You have any fucking idea how stupid that sounds?”

“Yes, I know very damn well how stupid it sounds!” Gork said, a hysterical tremor in his voice. “Of course it sounds stupid! It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, let alone said! And as soon as you come up with a more plausible theory, I’ll be absolutely thrilled to go along with it! So?” The kobold actually crossed his arms and began tapping his foot. “I’m waiting.”