The Goblin War (19 page)
Her order would weigh more with Cogswhallop than anything the goblin might owe Jeriah, and Jeriah clearly knew it. Makenna withdrew her knife and sheathed it.
“Cogswhallop hasn’t found him yet. Or if he has, he hasn’t come back to tell me about it.”
The young knight sat up in bed but made no move to seize her, clasping his hands around his knees instead. “It’s been too long, hasn’t it?”
Her own worst fears echoed in his voice.
“Aye, it’s too long. Something must have happened to him. And my goblins are your best bet to find out what it is, so you’d best do as I ask!”
“That depends on what you want.” The tone was still polite, but there was a stubborn set to his mouth. Young he might be, and worried about his brother, but he wouldn’t strike a bargain blindly.
Makenna sighed. “I need to talk to the Hierarch. Alone—or at least, without that vulture Brallorscourt hovering. I need him to attend to what I say and not arrest me at the end of it. If you can arrange that, Jeriah Rovan, you’ll get Cogswhallop’s report right after I do. And if you can’t arrange it, then you’d best start looking for your brother on your own, for you’ll never hear word of him from any goblin who owes loyalty to me.”
T
OBIN CONTINUED TO WORK WITH
the Duris’ horses, hoping to learn more about their battle plans. But as the days dragged past, he heard nothing but complaints about how much territory they were expected to cover, boasts about their wrestling prowess, and a few arguments over women. That first mention of their new tactics had been a fluke—he could eavesdrop on their casual conversations for years without hearing anything that mattered.
So when a Duri warrior from another camp rode in and demanded to meet with the battle commanders, Tobin waited till they’d settled in one of the large gathering tents, picked up a halter that needed some work, and sat down in the shade behind the tent to mend it.
The rumble of voices, clearly translated by his amulet, was only slightly muted by the leather wall.
“. . . prove excellent news for both our camps.” Tobin thought it was the stranger speaking, though he couldn’t be sure. “But it must be dealt with properly, in strict accordance with our law/tradition, or we risk—”
A blow to the side of his head sent Tobin sprawling. He stared dazedly up at one of the Duri who’d accompanied the stranger.
“What are you doing here?” the man . . . no, the guard . . . demanded.
No chanduri protested any treatment the Duri meted out, for fear they might be labeled troublesome.
“Nothing, master.” Tobin fumbled for the halter and held up the worn strap. “I was just—”
“Well, you don’t do it here, not when there’s a war council in session. Take yourself off.”
Aware of the danger, Tobin rolled with the kick and managed to collect his gear and scramble away before he earned another.
Were there always guards on this tent when the council met? If so, they would thwart any chance he had to learn about those “new battle tactics.”
He watched, unobtrusively, from the door of Vruud’s tent, where he’d taken his mending. The two guards kept only a casual eye on the camp, but they never left the tent, and they walked around it every few minutes. Tobin decided he had gotten off lightly. If they’d become suspicious, he could have been badly beaten, which might have brought a few of the camp’s own warriors out. And they might have become suspicious enough to look at him closely and see more than the storyteller’s Bear Clan servant.
Despite his realization that he’d lucked out, the left side of his face ached and throbbed. Vruud exclaimed in shock when he rode in from his trip to instruct the young storyteller he feared was training to take his place.
“What did you get yourself into?”
Tobin took Mouse’s reins, shrugging the bruise aside. “I was mending a halter, and some Duri who came in with a messenger took exception to where I was doing it. Nothing’s broken.”
It pulsed pain with every beat of his heart, and he didn’t know how he was going to eat with his jaw so sore, but nothing was broken.
“Trying to spy on the council?” Vruud’s voice had dropped, but he didn’t sound surprised. “I could have warned you not to do that, if you’d asked.”
Tobin lowered his voice too. “Vruud, do you know anything about some new battle tactic that’s supposed to be very effective against the Realm?”
Why hadn’t he ever thought to ask? He knew Vruud had no loyalty to the Duri.
“I don’t know much.” The storyteller’s single eye regarded Tobin shrewdly. “Take care of Mouse, then meet me in my tent. We can talk while I do something about that bruise.”
Tobin unsaddled, groomed, and watered the mule, then made his way to his master’s tent. Vruud put down a hollow reed he’d been carving into a flute—he played when his audience tired of stories—and dug into his chest for a pot of salve he handed to Tobin.
“Rub it in thoroughly, but don’t use too much. Since the Duri heal themselves by magic, there’s not a lot of salve made.”
“I’d rather hurt than be healed by magic made with someone else’s death.” Tobin had plunged a finger into the greasy stuff before it occurred to him. . . . “This isn’t made with death magic, is it?”
Vruud snorted. “Herbs and goose grease. No magic for the chan, young Softer.”
Tobin put the finger he’d yanked away back into the pot and smeared a thin layer over his bruised skin. “Do you know anything about these new battle tactics?”
“I’ve heard them mentioned,” the storyteller admitted. “It worries me. Because if the Duri succeed in wiping out the Softer army . . .”
“. . . you’ll die soon after,” Tobin finished for him.
“If I knew, I’d tell you,” Vruud went on. “But I didn’t think trying to learn about them was worth risking our escape. I still don’t.”
Tobin took a deep breath. “Well, I do. And since you can’t stop me, you might as well help. If I can’t listen in on the war council, where else would they be talking about it? In the men’s tent?”
The single men of the camp gathered in one of the large tents every third or fourth night, mostly to drink, as far as Tobin could tell. Vruud often performed for them, but since the warriors who comprised his audience were the people Tobin most wanted to avoid, he hadn’t accompanied his master.
“I’ve considered that,” Vruud said. “When I tell stories or play, I can’t hear what people are saying. No one would think it odd if my servant joined the others who bring food and beer. It’s a little odd that you haven’t done so, but since I’m chanduri myself, no one cares enough to notice how I’m served.”
It would be dangerous, Tobin realized. It might jeopardize their whole plan. On the other hand . . .
“When can I start?”
The young warriors decided it was time to “listen to the glory of our history again” two nights later.
Tobin’s face was still bruised, but his bruises had given him an excuse to grow a bit of stubble. And when he saw how much the young warriors drank, his fears of discovery subsided. Of course, his chances of hearing a coherent account of their new battle tactics dropped along with their sobriety.
He did learn a lot about Duri history and culture that night and in the nights that followed. In the first part of the evening, Vruud told stirring tales of ancient times. The audience’s favorite story was the early war with the spirits, when the Duri shamans had learned how to “strongly seize” the magic of their dying enemies—though Tobin thought steal, or maybe rape, was a better description. The story of the later war wasn’t often told, for it hadn’t gone so well. The short version was that as the spirits had gradually been driven off the land, they’d destroyed it rather than leave it for their conquerors. The Duris’ war with the spirits had lasted for centuries, and the destruction it had left behind was what had finally forced the Duri to cross the desert and attack the Realm.
When they were too drunk to listen, Vruud got out his flute, and Tobin was able to eavesdrop on the Duris’ conversation. It was when they reached that part of the evening, a few days later, that Tobin finally learned what the stranger had told the war council.
A spirit had been sensed, somewhere between the Morovda camp’s territory and that of another camp. The council elders were still working out who would share in its death, under what circumstances.
“Isn’t that a problem for us?” Tobin asked Vruud later that night as he prepared his master’s bed. “If you’re the next one up for sacrifice?”
“I’m not necessarily the next,” said Vruud calmly. “One of the ways they keep us from running is to make sure we never know who’s next. There are two women and another man from our camp who might go before me. Of course, they’re all making the same count and hoping I’m up before them. It also depends on whose shamans capture the spirit. So far they’ve agreed that rather than fight over the spring—that’s where this spirit lives, and it’s not clear whose territory it’s in. But rather than fight each other, they’ve decided that whoever doesn’t capture the spirit will provide the human half of the trust. Since both camps are small, there will be plenty to go around. And all the shamans in both camps are frantically setting traps, even as we speak.”
“What if the other camp’s shamans capture it?” Tobin persisted.
Vruud shrugged. “Then I might be in danger. But capturing a spirit is harder than it sounds. It frequently takes weeks, or even months, and sometimes the spirit moves away from its source. Spirits hate to do that, for they’re bound to the trees, or rocks, or water they inhabit. But sometimes they disappear. And sometimes it turns out that the careless young fool who thought he sensed one was mistaken. We don’t need to panic. Not yet.”
As many more days and a few more men’s gatherings passed, Tobin learned that Vruud was right. The young warriors discussed the spirit’s capture at exhaustive length—far more than they talked about fighting the Softers.
When they grew most inebriated, Tobin would hear long, rambling discussions of the Duris’ greatest ambition, which was to invade the Spiritworld itself.
There they would bathe in their enemies’ deaths, drawing in power till they were as strong as gods, invincible and immortal.
This was usually the stage when they were drunk enough to draw daggers and cut their own flesh, displaying their will and how quickly even the weak magic they possessed would heal them.
The spurting blood turned Tobin’s stomach, but the swiftness with which those wounds healed disturbed him more. He’d patrolled the border long enough to know that for every man who was slain, half a dozen more were taken out by injuries that didn’t kill. If the Duri could take out any knight they injured, and the knights had to kill a Duri to remove him from the fight, there was no way the Realm could win—no matter what tactics either side used.
As far as Tobin could see, the Realm’s only hope was to get its people behind that great defensible wall, just as Master Lazur had said. Tobin had never liked the priest, but he hoped, passionately, that the man was succeeding in his goals.
Tobin might be able to assist the relocation by returning to the Realm and reporting all he’d learned. If they knew the source of the Duris’ power, maybe the priests could do something about it. And if he could only learn what their battle plans were, there might be a way for the Realm’s commanders to counteract them!
But as Tobin listened to the warriors complaining about how long it was taking to capture this accursed clever spirit, he realized there was one thing he could do right now.
He set off for the spring soon after nightfall. The moon was full, and so many warriors had gone to the spring by now that their tracks almost formed a trail. Tobin could have followed them even in dimmer light.
After some thought, he’d left his amulet behind. The Duri didn’t patrol as much at night as they did by day, but it did happen—and they’d all be using their magic-sensing ability in the area near the spirit’s spring. Not to mention how the spirit might react if he showed up wearing a piece of magic made from the death of one of its kin.
It would certainly undercut Tobin’s argument that since they shared a common enemy, they might as well help each other.
Tobin had seen only one spirit in the Otherworld, though the goblin children had told him about them until he grew too weak to listen. Was that hellish place, which had drained his life from his very bones, the Spiritworld the Duri spoke of with such deep bloodlust?
It had to be. The Realm priests who’d first opened gates into the Otherworld couldn’t have known that the spirits lived there. As far as Tobin knew, the Realm’s priests knew nothing about spirits at all. It was the spirits from which the Duris’ amulets protected them, not their “gods.”
Would approaching this spirit, even without an amulet, put Tobin in danger? Maybe, but if there was anything he could do to prevent the Duri from gaining more power, to stop the creation of more of those filthy blood trusts, he had to try.
The spring was farther than he’d expected. The moon rode high by the time he spotted the patch of blackness that in sunlight would be the dense green foliage that appeared around water in dry country.