Blood in Snow (24 page)

“What’s happening?” called somebody from one of the groups following the King’s guard.

“Shut up!” the King shouted back. “We’re trying to sneak up on some blasted goblins!”

Edmund leaned closer to the King and whispered, “In a little bit, we’ll come to an intersection of four passages—sharp left, left, straight, and sharp right.”

“Which way to the goblins?”

“They’ll be all around us soon.”

“Splendid!” The King shook his sword. “Splendid!”

“We’re going to take the right-hand passage, which’ll lead us to the prisoners. It’s a huge cavern, big enough to hold a thousand goblins or more. Do you want me to draw you a picture of it again?”

“No, no! Don’t bore me with your details. Let’s go and hope it’s jam-packed with vermin!”

“I suggest,” said Edmund, “you station some men at the crossroads, and then you can lead the rest into the cavern, killing every goblin we find.”

“Exactly! My god, Edwin, you and I are cut from the same cloth!” Then the King added, “Of course, my share of the cloth is substantially more impressive than your share.”

“Yes, sire. Also, I suggest we make an effort to not let any goblins escape from the cavern alive. We don’t want to raise the alarm until we absolutely have to.”

“Oh, fine!” the King said, disappointed. “We’ll kill them quickly, but the fun had better last longer than it has. I want real battle! None of this ‘two or three goblins at a time’ crap. It’s frustrating as hell.”

“There are five major exits from the cavern,” Edmund went on. “We’ll need to push in and quickly cut off any chance of escape.”

“Yes, yes! I understand. Let’s go kill something!”

Edmund checked with the King’s bodyguards to ensure they’d heard what he said. They all nodded, smoke from the torch lingering around them like a black fog.

Waving for them to follow, Edmund crept down the passage, stepping over the goblins’ bodies. Minutes crawled by while whispers and clinking armor echoed in the darkness.

When they’d reached the intersection, Edmund stopped to whisper to the King, but before he could, a goblin toting a bundle of mining picks rounded the corner. The King leapt at him, crying, “Mine! Mine! He’s mine!”

The goblin screamed and tried to flee. But King Lionel was on him in a flash, impaling the shrieking creature through the back with one expert sword thrust.

“Finally!” the King said, wiping the gore from his blade.

Alerted by the cry, goblins trickled into the intersection, curious to see what had happened. Knights pounced on them, swords swinging with deadly precision.

“Aha!” the King cried, stabbing a goblin through the chest while bashing another with his shield. “This is more like it!”

He sliced off the arm of a goblin trying to run away.

“What fun!” King Lionel shouted. “Edwin! Another hundred of these foul creatures and you shall have your crappy little kingdom!”

A goblin blew a horn.

The groups of additional knights ran up to join the fray but were blocked by the King’s guard, who were fighting the goblins pouring into the tunnel.

“Spread out!” Edmund shouted. “Don’t get bunched up! Spread out!”

“To the right!” The King hacked at goblins barring his way. “Come on, men! To the right! Follow me! Ha!”

The King and his guards cleaved their way down the right-hand passage as the knights coming from behind surged forward. Goblins screeched and scattered before them or were hacked to pieces by swords flashing in the torchlight. The stench of blood filled the tunnel.

“This way!” Edmund called to Lord Harris, who was leading his company up the passageway. “Keep moving! This way!”

The King and his guards drove the goblins before them with ease, pushing them back as great waves fell dead. The stone floor became slippery with guts and blood. Edmund tripped over dismembered bodies, getting nearly trampled by Lionel’s men as they ran to keep up with their shouting King.

From somewhere in front of the surging tide of knights, King Lionel laughed. “Aha! Take that! And that!”

They entered a huge chamber reeking of human sweat and feces, walls lined with blazing torches. Goblins scattered this way and that, shouting and blowing horns. Following their King, the guards raced in, attacking wherever goblins stood their ground. Edmund hung back by the cavern’s entrance, directing the lords and knights streaming in.

Goblins on high platforms sent arrows whistling down onto the King’s men. Edmund pointed to them and shouted to Lord Harris, “Get them! Pull them down! Get the archers!”

Lord Harris, waving his sword, charged the nearest scaffold, his company swarming up the timbers as red-feathered arrows pelted their shields and armor.

Two knights fell, one with an arrow in his visor, blood spurting through the eye slit.

More knights stormed in, led by Lord Griffin.

“There!” Edmund pointed to a tunnel across the cavern where heavily armed goblin soldiers raced in. “Stop them! Bottle up that passageway. Don’t let them come in uncontested.”

Lord Griffin scanned the carnage and saw where Edmund meant; goblins gathered at the cavern’s far end, amassing their strength so that they could attack King Lionel’s flank. Hollering and waving his sword, Lord Griffin led his company into the melee.

More knights in tightly packed formations surged into the cavern, attacking goblins wherever they gathered. Soon fighting raged everywhere, the ringing of swords and the clash of shields all but overpowering the screams of pain and battle cries.

The pit dwellers!

Seizing a ladder leaning against the cavern wall, Edmund ran to a pit and called to the startled inhabitants. “Hurry!” He slid the ladder into the darkness.

One by one, haggard men climbed the rungs and stood blinking at the rampant bloodshed around them.

“Grab a sword!” Edmund snatched a scimitar lying next to a dead goblin guard and pushed it into the hands of a bewildered pit dweller. “Grab a sword and fight! Kill something!”

Some immediately grabbed weapons and fell upon the closest goblins with reckless abandon. Some, however, fled to the nearest undefended tunnel, while others simply stood by their pits, sobbing.

Edmund dashed from pit to pit, hastening people up the ladder as the battle throbbed. He gathered weapons from the fallen—scimitars, knives, clubs, anything that could kill—and tossed them to the pit dwellers who gaped at the carnage. He slid the ladder into the hole and called for the pit dwellers to scrabble up.

“Filth?” said familiar a voice.

“Vomit?”

Vomit climbed up the ladder. Behind him, ascending one rung at a time, followed Tiny Turd.

Vomit still looked as old and as tired as before, but Turd was now nearly cadaverous, the bones of his broad frame poking out beneath tight, dirty skin.

Edmund took a step back, unable to even gasp.

“Filth!” Vomit reached the top of the pit. “It is you!”

“V-V-V, Vomit!” Edmund cried. “Turd!”

Turd emerged, hunched over as if carrying an unbearable weight. He glanced around.

Knights had killed hundreds of goblins; as many as three hundred corpses had bloodied the ground, slashed to pieces. Not far away, King Lionel and his men had surrounded an ogre, dancing around it as though playing a game. When the ogre swung its club at one knight, three others would lunge in and attack it from behind, stabbing at its knees. But more goblins were pouring into the cavern from the far end, fresh and unfought.

Turd surveyed the situation with deadened eyes, then glared at Edmund.

“Take a weapon,” Edmund shouted over the clamor. He handed Vomit and Turd scimitars.

Turd’s fingers tightened around the hilt.

“Get everyone you can! The pit dwellers. Get everyone you can, and get them out of here!” Edmund pointed to the passage through which they’d entered. “Take that tunnel and turn left when you can. Left! Then keep going until you’re out!”

“We can’t!” Vomit gestured to his naked body. “Not like this. What are we going to eat?”

“Supplies!” Edmund hollered. “We have—”

Turd leapt forward and thrust the scimitar into Edmund’s chest. The blade snapped against the black chainmail hidden under Edmund’s outer clothes as he fell backward from the force of the blow, crashing to the ground next to the opening of the pit.

Turd lunged for Edmund’s neck, but Vomit got between them.

“Turd! We’re free! Free! We’re finally free! Do you want to die here?”

Turd’s gaze flitted about the cavern. Goblins ran screaming in every direction, some missing limbs, others with deep gashes across their bodies. Knights slaughtered any guards who dared to fight them. Nobody was paying any attention to the pit dwellers.

Retreating a limping step, Turd pointed the broken scimitar at the still-prone Edmund.

“I’ll get you for what you did to me.” He hobbled to nearest tunnel, one foot dragging lifelessly behind him. “I’ll kill you and everybody you love. Magic user or not! I’ll get you!”

He disappeared into a dark passage.

Vomit helped Edmund up.

“He was always a pain in the ass.” Edmund rubbed his chest where Turd had stabbed him. Several rings of the chainmail had been driven into his flesh.

“He’s gotten worse since they recaptured him.”

Knights fell back as more and more goblins gained control of the opposite side of the cavern.

Not far away, King Lionel swung his longsword two-handed. His shield, now bent and useless, lay by the dead ogre. Seventeen of his thirty guards remained standing, many with blood trickling from gashes in their chainmail.

“Get everybody you can,” Edmund told Vomit, “and get out of here. Take that passage, then turn left. Keep going. We have guards at the exit. Make sure they know you aren’t goblins!”

Vomit shook Edmund’s hand. “Thanks for this, Filth. I, I never thought I’d ever—”

“Go!” Edmund pointed to the exit. “Run!”

Nodding his thanks, Vomit gathered as many of the pit dwellers as he could. Some refused; they wanted to fight. Still, many grabbed weapons and followed him out of the cavern.

Edmund ran to King Lionel, who was leaning on his sword, breathing hard.

“We have to get out of here!” he yelled.

“Nonsense!” The King huffed. “Look at this!” He motioned to the carnage. Knights cut goblins down like grain, yet more kept coming. “It’s glorious!”

The King shouldered his sword and started toward the battle again, but Edmund clutched his blood-covered arm.

“Let’s leave! Remember the plan? You’ll still be able to fight them, but you’ll have two hundred other warriors with you! Think of how many you could kill in the ambush!”

Lionel stopped, again surveying the slaughter. Only about forty of the seventy knights still fought. A new group of goblins leapt into the cavern, behind them came archers.

The King nodded a weary head. “Get me that horn.”

Edmund yanked a horn from a fallen knight’s belt and handed it to the King. The King wiped the gore from its mouthpiece, then blew three short blasts.

“To me!” he called. “To me, knights of Eryn Mas! To me!”

Knights and lords fell back.

The King grinned in satisfaction.

“This has been glorious!” He shook Edmund by the shoulder, leaving a bloody handprint. “You have certainly earned your lands.”

“Your gift won’t mean anything if we don’t get out of here,” Edmund replied.

“Not to worry. These wretched animals are no match for me. Look at how many we’ve already slain! There can’t be many more skulking about.”

“Sire,” Edmund said, “there are thousands of—”

A goblin horn blast shook the cavern. Goblins in full platemail appeared from one of the far tunnels.

“Pull back!” the King hollered to his knights. “Orderly now! Lord Henley? Where’s Lord Henley?”

Somebody shouted that Lord Henley was dead.

“Well, then, somebody else take the lead! My men and I will hold the rearguard. Go! Into the tunnel we came from!”

“Take a left!” Edmund yelled after the withdrawing knights and lords. Nearly all of them appeared to be wounded. “Left at the intersection!”

The goblins, now filling the entire cavern, pressed in upon the King and his men as they guarded the company’s retreat.

Several goblins leapt forward, but the King quickly cut off their heads.

“Edwin!” he laughed, as blood rained down around him. “Thank you! This is the most fun I have ever had!”

Chapter Thirty-One

“What’s wrong?” Edmund shouted to the wall of men in front of him. They’d been fleeing down the passageway toward the black iron door when suddenly everybody had stopped. “What’s going on?”

Nobody knew.

Edmund pushed through the stalled ranks. Reaching the vanguard of the company, he soon realized what the issue was: the lead knights were fighting goblins, and in the bottleneck confines of the tunnel, a handful of goblins could easily hold back an entire army.

“Kill them!” Edmund yelled. “We have to get out of here!”

“We can’t get past,” a lord hollered back. “We can’t get out this way!”

“We must!”

An arrow whizzed overhead.

A knight stumbled in his weariness. Three goblins sprang upon him.

Edmund rushed forth and, crying out, blocked a blow falling toward the knight’s helmetless head. Driving forward, he threw the goblins aside, then slashed at them with his sword; his black blade cleaved into everything it met—armor, weapons, even the passageway’s stone walls.

Shouting for everybody to follow, Edmund continued hacking like a crazy person, driving goblins back, killing two with slashes through their chests, chainmail and ribs cloven asunder.

“Keep up!” he called over his shoulder.

Goblins threw their shields up to block Edmund’s frantic blows, but when the black blade sliced them in two, they flung them aside and fled shrieking into the darkness.

“Come on!” Edmund yelled to the men. “Carry the wounded! We’ll be safe up ahead!”

Tired and injured, the company staggered after Edmund, torches sputtering and dying.

Edmund stopped. Bodies were strewn about the passage in front of him—lots of bodies. Some were goblins; most were pit dwellers.