The Goblin Corps (57 page)

For reasons Cræosh couldn’t begin to guess, Gork flinched.

The orc opened his mouth to say something, and that’s when they were hit. A rain of arrows arced from a nearby copse of trees, and only the fact that they were mounted saved the three of them from becoming inverse porcupines. Reflexes honed by years of combat—or, in Gork’s case, years of constructive cowardice—prompted them to drop beneath their horses. The unfortunate animals had taken the arrows in their stead, squealing and thrashing their death throes as they toppled.

Even as the next flight of arrows darkened the sky, the goblins surged from behind the fallen animals and charged, the surviving members of the column close on their heels. Abandoning their bows, the ambushers moved to meet them.

They wore no uniforms, no insignias, but Cræosh thought it bloody obvious that these were Dororam’s men. With a sinking feeling in his gut, he realized that this suicide squad—for they must surely have known there could be no escape from the Charnel King’s forces once they penetrated the Brimstone Mountains—would not have attacked just any random caravan. They had to have known exactly who they were waiting for.

Someone tipped them off to General Falchion’s itinerary.

Falchion himself led the counterattack, slashing furiously with his curved blade. He seemed oblivious to any danger, taking blows on his armor that should have knocked a normal man off his feet if not broken bones and ruptured organs, but he never balked, never slowed.

In the end they won, but at a fearsome cost. In addition to the Demon Squad and Falchion himself, their column had originally consisted of sixty men. When the last of the attackers fell, his face split wide by Katim’s axe, only eight of those men remained on their feet, and only seven of the ones who had fallen could be saved. The ambushers had planned perfectly; fully half of Falchion’s men went down in the first rain of missiles.

Leaning against the provision-and-supply wagon, having finally caught his wind, Cræosh scanned the battlefield. For better or worse, the entire squad had survived relatively unscathed.
Say what you will about us, but we’re some tough bastards, aren’t we?
He actually felt proud.

Grass crunched beneath a heavy tread, and Cræosh snapped to attention, ignoring the twinge of protest in his ribs. His jaw opened—ready to offer some report or salute or whatever happened to emerge—and stayed open, hanging as loose as when Queen Anne had nearly broken it.

General Falchion didn’t seem to have noticed, but a swath of chain had been ripped from his hauberk in the battle, and what lay beneath looked to have been scraped off a stove. “Burned” was woefully inadequate; the flesh was charred black, save for a few glistening cracks where it had split to reveal the muscle beneath. Even worse, there was a
smoothness
to it. It looked, Cræosh realized with a lurch, as though it had been literally melted and then allowed to jell into a form
almost
matching what it had held before. He could see, too, where rivulets of viscous flesh had oozed between the links of chain before hardening. Falchion never removed his armor because he
couldn’t.

Following the orc’s gaze to the rent in his armor, Falchion shook his head. The movement was scarcely visible, causing the great helm to rotate only a bit. “I’ll have to find a competent blacksmith in the next town,” he said. “Unless…You’re a smith yourself, aren’t you, soldier?”

“Um, passingly, sir. But ah, I’m not sure I’d dare. Wouldn’t I have to work on it while, um…?”

“While I wore it, yes.”

“Wouldn’t that fucking
hurt?”
Probably not the proper language for addressing the general, but Cræosh was, well, Cræosh.

“What is pain to me now?” Falchion lifted a stray arrow from the grass at his feet and plunged it into the flesh exposed by the severed links. He didn’t flinch, and no blood emerged—only a puff of fetid air, as though he’d punctured a pocket trapped somewhere within.

“Is
everyone
running this country already dead?” Cræosh demanded. Then, “Um, sir,” he added. He’d heard rumors that the general had been badly injured recently—something about an incursion into the Iron Keep itself—but he’d never believed, never imagined…

“King Morthûl,” Falchion said dully, “takes our oaths of fealty
very
seriously. You might do well to remember that yourself.”

“I…Oh.” Then, “I, uh, should probably see to gathering all the salvageable equipment off the field, sir.”

“Splendid idea, soldier. Why don’t you do that?”

Some few dozen yards away, Gork wandered from corpse to corpse, happily looting. He took only small items that wouldn’t be missed—money and ornamental jewelry, for the most part—and he stole indiscriminately, regardless of which side the dead man had served. This was the part that made such skirmishes worthwhile, and the kobold found himself humming.

Until a hand yanked him off his feet and tossed him against the nearest tree. The breath exploded from Gork’s lungs; his head rang like a drunken church bell, and the treasures he’d just collected slid to the ground from loosened fists. Gork looked up to see a trio of trolls, their features black, silhouetted by the noonday sun. He blinked, willing his eyes to uncross, and the trio of Katims merged back into one.

“What the hell was that for?” Gork mumbled, wincing as his own voice poked and prodded at the pounding in his head.

Katim bent down, putting her face inches from his. Gork fought the instinct to recoil from the troll’s rancid breath. “Don’t you think that this…has gone just about far…enough?”

The kobold focused past the pain to scrunch his face into a look of pure innocence. “What do you mean?”

The troll snarled, and Gork smacked his own head against the tree again as he flinched. “Don’t play stupid with me, little…thief. You know damn well what…I’m talking about.”

“It’s a coincidence,” Gork insisted.

“You told him about the…patrols. The ones that were…later ambushed.”

“I only mentioned that I’d heard they were out there. I didn’t know exactly where, so how could I have told him?”

“Once he knew to look…for them, it wouldn’t have been that…hard.”

“Coincidence,” he said again.

“Four times?”

Gork looked away.

“And what of the battle…we’ve just waged?”

“Dororam’s men were just looking for some of our soldiers to ambush,” Gork protested, but it sounded lame even in his own ears.

“They were here specifically…for Falchion. Humans aren’t so foolhardy…or fanatical that they’d throw their…lives away to destroy some random…force.”

Gork opened his mouth to protest again, and then sighed as he saw the gold and riches promised by Ebonwind fading away. “Why? The dakórren have no reason to betray us! They hate the elves more than we do! Why would he have told Dororam
anything?”

“Perhaps your friend is not…what he seems.”

“What do we do?”

“That, little kobold, is the part…I’m still deciding. Pray to your stars…that I come up with something
other
…than turning you in.”

One of the surviving soldiers interrupted them then—Gork could have almost kissed him—and announced that the general wanted to see the entire Demon Squad back at the supply wagon.

Where one of King Morthûl’s messenger wraiths was waiting for them.

At the intersection of Kirol Syrreth’s major highways loomed Fort Mahadriss, a bloated spider in a web of roads. Built of a drab and dirty stone, ringed by smaller keeps—one for each road—Mahadriss made no nod at all toward aesthetics. This was a bastion built for war, and it wore that fact as a badge of honor.

It had also, thanks to the collapse of a certain Castle Eldritch, just moved up from the third-most important installation in Kirol Syrreth to the second, behind only the Iron Keep itself. There was no way for the structure to actually appear smug about this, but it managed to anyway.

The Demon Squad was allowed entry only after proving their identities at no fewer than three separate checkpoints, and once they were in, Cræosh gave some serious thought to heading back outside to wait. The fortress halls were packed wall-to-wall with chaos that could only marginally be called “controlled.” Soldiers, messengers, and servants by the hundreds shoved through dense pockets of other soldiers, messengers, and servants, each absolutely convinced that his own assignment was of far higher priority than anyone else’s, and must absolutely be completed
right now
, and why couldn’t everyone just “Get the hell out of my way before I start breaking faces!”? Bodies collided in the corridors, pressed close in unwitting parody of intimacy; equipment tumbled down stairs, chased by whoever had dropped it; and fistfights broke out at the drop of a hat. (Literally, in one instance, as a careless soldier knocked a page’s cap from his head, for which the page jabbed him in the groin with a wooden scroll case.)

And yet, despite or perhaps because of that boiling anarchy, everything that needed to happen, happened: equipment stored, weapons checked, reinforcements assigned to this post or that. Despite how it looked to the uninitiated—or some of the initiated—Cræosh recognized, with some measure of respect, that the garrisons of Fort Mahadriss would be fully prepped well before Dororam’s forces neared the Brimstone Mountains.

But he still didn’t want to be standing around in the middle of it.

“Hey! Yeah, you!” It carried even over the crowded hall, a gruff tone clearly accustomed to making itself heard.

Carving a path through the throng with open palm and jabbing elbow, oblivious to the sullen glares he earned in exchange, was an orc. He was perhaps three inches shorter than Cræosh but a tad wider at the shoulders, with a touch of filthy gray to both his swamp-green skin and his mud-brown hair. He wore a blackened steel breastplate embossed with the silver crown of Morthûl, and an enormous warhammer at his belt. The beaked end of the weapon stuck out, drawing lines of blood on those who drew too near in the packed hall, but they proved unwilling to complain.

“What?” Cræosh barked back—and then, finally noticing the stripes of rank embossed on the armor’s right breast, correcting himself to “What,
sir?”

“Better. You Cræosh?”

“Yes, sir!”

“So this would be your Demon Squad then.” The orc frowned at the others (and up at Belrotha). “Sorry-looking bunch, but I suppose you’ll do. I’m General Rhannik.”

Cræosh’s spine went straight as an arrow, and the others snapped to attention as well—well, those of them who did that sort of thing, anyway. Widely considered to be among the top contenders to replace Falchion should anything happen to the steel-cocooned commander, Rhannik’s was a name well known throughout the rank-and-file.

“What are we doing here, sir?” Cræosh asked. Then, “The wraith told us to come, but he didn’t say why.” He pretended not to notice Katim and Gork both staring at him in mild shock.
Yes, I
do
know how to be polite. Try not to faint, you fuckers.

“…away from this bloody crowd,” Rhannik was saying as Cræosh turned his attention back to the officer, “before we talk about this.
Move!”
he bellowed into the mob. Soldiers and workers fell over each other clearing a path, and the general led the squad to a small, unobtrusive door. “Through here.”

The contents of the room were few: a single round table, perhaps a dozen chairs—and Vigo Havarren, casually leaning back with his feet up on the table, sipping on a glass of what appeared to be brandy.

“Hello again,” Morthûl’s lieutenant said blandly. “I so greatly missed the sparkling conversation from our last meeting that I simply had to come and chat with you again.”

“Sarcastic bastard, aren’t you?” Cræosh asked as he selected a chair, as far from Havarren as the table would allow, and sat.

“Hardly a bastard. My parents would have to have been unwed.”

“So?”

“So what makes you think I have parents?”

Cræosh chose not to dignify that with a response and settled for glaring and grinding his teeth as General Rhannik and the rest of the squad took their seats. Belrotha shoved several chairs out of her way and planted herself cross-legged on the floor.

The orc couldn’t help but notice, even with most of his attention devoted to imagining the murder of the aggravating wizard, that the furniture had clearly been borrowed from the mess hall: the table, though recently cleaned, bore the stains of grease and beer. The room itself had been swept only moments before, as evidenced by a few heaps of dust in the corners, and smelled faintly stale. Clearly, the chamber didn’t see a whole lot of use.

Cræosh felt a serpentine twisting in his gut. This briefing hadn’t been planned in advance; they’d just grabbed the most convenient furnishing and the nearest empty room that could fit the entire squad. For Havarren and Rhannik to be present at what could only be an emergency meeting foretold extreme unpleasantness ahead.

“General?” Havarren said with a languid wave. “Would you be so kind?”

“Of course.” Rhannik leaned over the table, his large hands flat against the wood. “Some days back, possibly as long as two weeks or more, King Sabryen’s worms emerged, in force, from the Demias Gap.”

None of the squad spoke, but a veritable web of meaningful glances wove itself between them. They’d never heard the things associated with the former king of Kirol Syrreth, but none of them had any doubt as to which worms were being discussed.

“At this point,” Rhannik continued, “we’ve only lost Darsus. But we have
utterly
lost it. As near as we can tell, the entire population has been, ah, consumed.

“For the time being, they seem content to wait, most likely gathering their forces. None of our agents have returned from Darsus itself, but a few have gotten
close.
They report a slow but constant flow of worms, centipedes, and other critters coming over the lip of the gap. King Morthûl and General Falchion both feel that it’s only a matter of time before they strike at other targets.”

“As I’m sure even you cretins can imagine,” Havarren interjected, “this couldn’t have come at a worse time. We have less than a month before Dororam marches. We cannot possibly recall enough soldiers from the border to deal with this, not and return them to their posts in time. Further, His Majesty and I both need to conserve our powers for the war, until and unless we have no other option. Thus we find ourselves forced to turn to a third alternative.” He wiggled his fingers at the goblins in sarcastic greeting. “Hello, third alternative.”