The Goblin Corps (62 page)

The darkness cooked away, sizzling beneath bolts of flame that Gimmol, face squeezed tight with effort, hurled from his trembling fists. They were feeble indeed, thanks to the gremlin’s fatigue, but Sabryen flinched, if only a little. Behind him, waiting for just such an opening, Gork struck. The
kah-rahahk
tore through the limp flesh of the worm-thing’s back, just above the ragged edge.

It proved about as useful as the
chirrusk.
Looking more irritated than pained, Sabryen pulled away from the barbed weapon, leaving reeking gobbets of flesh stuck to the blade. The creature twisted, reaching a hand toward the kobold, yet Gork refused to run.

Had Sabryen actually
known
Gork, he’d have recognized that for the suspicious gesture that it was.

From the shadows to the left, Jhurpess lunged at his distracted foe. With every muscle in his simian body, the bugbear swung his heavy club into the side of Sabryen’s skull.

The crack of impact reverberated throughout the chasm; Sabryen shuddered and fell, flopping limply on the stone. Jhurpess and Gork grinned at one another, perhaps pleased at having defeated their enemy, perhaps at having shown up Cræosh and Katim both.

Those grins dropped away swiftly enough when the cursed king, looking none the worse for wear save for a new flap of skin hanging loose from his scalp, rose smoothly to his full height.

“I
GROW
TIRED
OF
THEE
.” His lips quivered, his fingers twitched, and Gimmol hurled himself to the floor, shrieking
“Spell!”

A wave of force, unseen but for a brief shimmer as it passed and the swirling dust in its wake, burst from the old king. Blood fountained from Jhurpess’s nose and mouth; he was thrown back by a blow Belrotha could scarcely have matched, sliding across the stone until he fetched up against the base of a great stalagmite. One hand clasping his club, the other scrabbling at the stone, he struggled to rise—and for a few moments he failed, weighed down by muscles that refused to obey and a pounding ache that refused to fade.

Cræosh was slashing away at Sabryen once more, screaming at his allies not to let up for an instant. For long minutes, the battle raged. Cræosh and Katim and Gork slashed and stabbed, delivering wound after wound that should have slain any living thing. And Sabryen ignored each wound as he had the first, immune to pain, too mighty to fall. The goblins’ only victory, if victory you could call it, was that they had so far prevented him from casting any further magics.

It was a losing strategy, and the orc knew it. Sooner or later, one of goblins would tire; not much, perhaps, but enough. Sabryen would cast another spell, or land a blow solid enough to put one of them down for good. And then the others would follow within seconds. So they continued to fight a battle they could not win—their efforts punctuated occasionally by the sudden report of one of Belrotha’s stones landing across the chamber—because every other option was even worse.

Cræosh retreated a few steps, allowing Katim to dart across and open another rent in Sabryen’s torso. The creature lashed out, not at the troll passing before him, but at the more distant orc. Worms, hurled by Sabryen as they’d been by his servitors in the tundra, pattered across Cræosh’s chest in a stinking rain. He fell back, screaming, beating at the skin exposed above the steel of his breastplate, muscles already burning as the first of the parasites burrowed into his flesh.

And then Gimmol was beside him, thrusting a ceramic vial at the flailing orc. “Drink!
Drink
, dammit!”

The orc was already too far gone to recognize why he was being given such an order; clearly, it hadn’t penetrated his gibbering mind that he should just have grabbed one of his own elixirs. Nevertheless, he obeyed. The bitter fluid sluiced down his throat, choking him, but the worms ceased their digging the instant the stuff reached his gut. One last instant of agony, as the dying creatures spasmed within his body, and then they were still. With a heartfelt nod to the gremlin, bulling through his lingering pain and a growing pall of despair, Cræosh struggled upright once more.

If dying on his feet was the last victory he could hope for, then by all his ancestors, die on his feet he would.

Clinging to the base of the stalagmite for balance, Jhurpess watched as his friend nearly fell to the terrible worms, as the tiny gremlin saved him in the nick of time. He gasped in grateful relief—he’d already put so much work into the orc, he’d hate to have to start over—and then froze. He watched, not as Cræosh hurled himself back into the fray, but as Gimmol’s hand dropped to his pouch, fingering the last of his elixirs. And the bugbear’s entire face lit up with inspiration.

Not, despite what his companions thought of him, as foreign a sensation to Jhurpess as it was to Belrotha. Sure, he was a creature of instinct, not intellect; his options were primarily drawn from the rather limited selection of “eat it, kill it, fuck it, or flee.” A bugbear’s life was, on the whole, not a complex one.

But while Jhurpess might not know much, what he knew, he knew
well.
And Jhurpess knew nature. He knew its ins and outs, its patterns, and—as Gimmol had learned to his chagrin the day they first met—he knew its hazards.

Slowly Jhurpess stood, shifting his balance from the stone to his own two feet. He forced himself to be patient, methodical, despite the raging battle; to ensure that each limb was pulling its own weight, that Sabryen’s magic had caused no crippling wound. Only then, satisfied that everything worked despite the lingering pain, did he begin a wide circle around the fray.

Careful step after careful step; between one and the next, Jhurpess reached into the tiny pouch he wore slung on the same harness that bound his bow to his leather armor. From it, he removed the first of his own ceramic vials.

Sabryen struck, sending Katim staggering. Only her phenomenal dexterity kept her on her feet, and even then it was a near thing. Cræosh stepped in to fill the gap, offering Katim a few precious seconds to recover—and Jhurpess the instant he needed.

He was beside her in a flash, reaching out with a hairy hand. “Mouth,” he grunted, placing the vial in Katim’s palm.

“I’ve got my own, Jhurpess, I…do not need—”

“Not Katim’s mouth. King’s mouth! If gunk poisons
little
worms…”

Katim’s eyes grew wide and her jaw actually gaped. “Then maybe it poisons the…
big
worm,” she breathed. “I’m an idiot!

Jhurpess shrugged. “That okay. Katim has other redeeming qualities.”

The troll nodded and flowed fluidly back into the fray. Jhurpess wrapped both hands around his club and waited.

“Cræosh!”

The orc spared a millisecond to glance at the approaching troll. “You alive?”

“Back off!” she commanded. “Take a moment to…catch your breath.”

“That’ll give him time to cast something, you idiot!” he shouted, barely interposing his sword in time to catch a dreadful overhand blow that threatened to cave in his skull.

“That’s the point!”

“What?
I—”

One of Sabryen’s wormy innards swept low, nearly taking the orc’s feet out from under him and leaving a swath of slime across his ankles. Cræosh staggered, and the cursed king smacked him aside with a casual backhand.

Come on—come on…

Sabryen raised his hands as she’d hoped he would and opened his mouth to begin the incantation that would have rained fire down upon his foes, or swept them aside in an eldritch wave, or dissolved the flesh from their bones.

Katim almost,
almost
wished she had someone to pray to as she cocked back an arm and threw.

The whiplike snap of Sabryen’s jawbone dislocating was lost in the tinkling, musical sound of teeth raining in pieces onto the floor. He staggered, gagging, reaching up to tug the strange obstruction from between his jaws. His cheeks spasmed as muscles strained against one another, and it was only the vial itself—cracked but not shattered—that kept his unattached jawbone from flopping loosely this way and that.

And then Jhurpess stepped in and swung a devastating underhand blow, bringing the tip of his club up into Sabryen’s chin.

The creature’s head snapped back, the shattering ceramic audible despite the layer of muffling flesh around it. Shards of vial—and indeed, of bone—imbedded themselves in the roof of Sabryen’s mouth, severing his tongue at the roots. Jets of Havarren’s elixir spurted from between his lips, tinged black with Sabryen’s tarlike blood.

Limbs flailing, broken visage tilted impossibly back, the ancient king of Kirol Syrreth screamed to shake the foundations of the earth in which they stood.

“You think one vial’s enough?” Cræosh shouted dubiously, wincing away from the unending sound.

Gork popped up from the rocks behind Sabryen like some mad gopher. “Let’s find out!” The kobold jumped, latching onto the fleshy torso. Claws clinging despite the creature’s violent spasms, he scampered up until he could get a solid grasp around the king’s head. He yanked back and down, clinging to Sabryen’s forehead, forcing wide the bloodfilled maw. “Who’s first?” the kobold yelled, his legs dangling beneath him in mockery of Sabryen’s own thrashing limbs.

Cræosh and Katim grinned, already reaching for their packs.

By the time they’d forced the fourth elixir down the creature’s throat, the spasms had grown too strong for Gork to hang on any longer. The squad now stood and watched as the great King Sabryen lay twitching and frothing on the stone. Something about the wormy tendrils grasping at nothing in particular made the sight particularly revolting.

“Okay,” Cræosh said finally, “he’s not going anywhere, but he’s still alive. Now what?”

Gork grinned his nastiest grin. “Belrotha!”

“Me kind of busy right now!”

In fact, the ogre stood ankle deep in the tide of worms. All about her, huge slabs lay where they’d fallen, puddles of spreading goo serving as testament to the effectiveness of Belrotha’s plan. Nevertheless, she’d been unable to stem the tide. Blood trickled from her ankles and calves to vanish beneath the writhing creatures. Cræosh could only assume that she’d already drunk one of her own elixirs, considering that she wasn’t in the throes of an agonizing death. She held another large rock over her head and was repeatedly smashing at the worms around her feet.

“Belrotha!” Gork shouted again. “We need you over here!”

“Me busy!” she repeated. “You come back after me kill all worms!”

Cræosh tapped Katim on the shoulder and whispered. She nodded, and the hulking pair moved toward Sabryen’s broken body.

“Belrotha, you
can’t
kill all the worms!” Gork shouted in frustration. “There’s too many!”

“That okay! Me not counting!”

Gork gurgled in rage. Fortunately, before he could do anything stupid, the orc and the troll reappeared, carrying the writhing Sabryen between them. He was actually remarkably light; Cræosh supposed that missing one’s legs and portions of one’s internal organs would do that.

“Belrotha!” Cræosh shouted.

“What?”

Cræosh and Katim heaved, and Sabryen landed amid a splatter of worms at the ogre’s feet. The creatures recoiled from the body of their king, perhaps sensing the poisons coursing within.

In an abnormal rush of awareness—perhaps her brain remained warmed up from the novel experience of having a plan—Belrotha offered the orc a crooked grin. “Him say something about mother?”

“Twice,” Cræosh confirmed with a chuckle.

Belrotha allowed her latest rock to tumble into the horde of worms, killing several hundred with a loud bang. Then she lifted King Sabryen off the ground with one hand; with the other, she reached inside his gaping torso and began ripping out anything and everything she could grasp. The sudden stench nearly brought the goblins to their knees, gagging on centuries worth of rot, and the slow tearing sounds would haunt their dreams for years to come.

There wasn’t enough left in him even to scream. Sabryen twitched a final time and fell limp. The maggots that had filled his sockets poured from his skull in a dreadful stream, putrefying before they hit the ground.

The sea of worms simply…stopped. Hundreds of thousands died on the spot, while others returned to their natural state, wriggling aimlessly or dashing for the nearest crevice. In less than a minute the swarm had dispersed, leaving behind only the dying and the dead.

“Has anyone else found these past few weeks just entirely too disgusting?” Gimmol asked.

Cræosh nodded. “I’ll admit to a certain amount of revulsion.”

Katim actually laughed aloud. “You are one of a hand-selected…group of soldiers who directly serves…a dead king with insects…crawling across his body and skittering…from his orifices on a regular…basis. I believe you may have to…redefine your entire
concept
…of disgust.”

“Troll’s got a point,” Gork said.

Cræosh chose not to answer to that.

“Jhurpess has idea,” the bugbear said.

“Well,” Cræosh said, “I hate to admit it, Nature-boy, but your last idea was a pretty damn good one. Let’s hear it.”

“Jhurpess thinks squad should get the hell out of canyon.”

“Ah,” Gork said. “An even better one. Jhurpess, you’re a genius.”

The bugbear grinned happily. Then, a look of sudden concern on his face, he stepped over to stand before the troll.

“Katim not worry too much about being an idiot,” he said in his most comforting tone. “Cræosh not very smart either, but Jhurpess still Cræosh’s friend.”

Cræosh, in the face of the entire squad’s laughter, merely squared his shoulders and moved toward the exit.

“T
hey actually did it, my lord,” Havarren said to Morthûl’s back. His normally bored tone was tinged with just a hint of incredulity. He paced rapidly, his footsteps echoing on the marble floor, as though looking for an angle from which the news would be easier to believe.

“So you’ve said,” the Charnel King replied dully without turning away from the table. “Repeatedly. Don’t let the fact that I have only one ear fool you, Havarren. I heard you quite clearly the first dozen times.”