The Doom of Kings: Legacy of Dhakaan - Book 1 (37 page)

T
hat’s Midian!” said Ekhaas. She climbed to her feet and walked unsteadily to the wall. Ashi nodded without taking her eyes from the gap. It was Midian. There was no mistaking his voice, though she could pick out no sign of the gnome in the darkness. Her heart was beating faster. If Midian had made it out of the valley, there was a good chance Geth and Chetiin had too.

Dagii, however, was almost growling as he moved from crack to crack, trying to find the best view. “What is he thinking, bringing the horses here?”

“How
did he bring the horses?” Ashi whispered back to him. “That’s the wrong side of the camp! We left the horses along the south trail.”

Dagii’s growling stopped abruptly.

By the barricade, Guun had his head bent close to Makka, and Ashi had to strain to make out what he said. “The lowlander said they left six behind in the valley.”

“The lowlander lied,” said Makka. For a moment, Ashi’s gut twisted, then the bugbear chief clenched a fist around his trident, and snarled, “Do you smell all those horses? Flayed god’s skin, there were more than six!”

Guun looked worried. “They couldn’t all have escaped the trolls. How many do you think there really are?”

Makka’s lips peeled back from his teeth. “Let’s find out.” He raised his voice. “What will you give us for them?”

Another voice came out of the dark trees a surprising distance from where the first had. “Your lives!”

Ashi started. The second voice was unfamiliar. “Who is that?”

“Midian again,” said Ekhaas.
“Khaavolaar
, I didn’t know he was such a good mimic.”

“We already have our lives!” Makka roared. “You would have to take them from us.”

A third voice answered from yet another spot, and this time Ashi thought she caught the subtle inflections that identified Midian. “We can do that.”

The gnome must have been moving quickly to cover the ground necessary to give the illusion of a hidden force, even a force of just three. Ashi wondered where Geth and Chetiin were—if they were indeed alive. Maybe it was just Midian out there.

Makka wasn’t the only one responding to the challenge from the night now, though. Other bugbears had joined in, shouting and shaking their weapons at their hidden assailants. Their shouts covered up Guun and Makka as they spoke. Ashi cursed, but then Makka turned back toward the forest and shook his trident in the air. “If you think you can, come and take us!”

The shouts of the tribe rose to a deafening volume. There was no response until they fell, then Midian’s own voice came out of the night again. “What challenge would that be? Bugbears are supposed to be masters of stealth and ambush, aren’t they? Come meet us and prove it”—There was a flash of white among the trees, the hint of a horse’s flank like a taunt, and Midian’s voice took on a mocking note—“
gaa’taat.”

Ashi didn’t know the word, but she could guess at it.
Gaa
was Goblin for “baby” and
taat
was an insulting term for someone of low status. Combined, the words must have been extremely insulting. Makka’s thick hair bristled, and his dark eyes flashed in the firelight. He thrust his trident high above his head and roared, “Gold and flesh for every tongue!
Itaa!”

The tribe answered with a matching roar. Bugbears surged out of the gate in the barricade, charging for the forest, leaving only a few guards to watch the camp. There was little stealth in the attack—Midian had managed to infuriate Makka and his
tribe beyond any point of sense. Makka was like a battering ram at the head of the charge. Even if there had been an army hidden in the trees, Ashi didn’t think they would have been able to stop the bugbear chief.

“I hope Midian knows what he’s doing,” Ekhaas murmured.

“I think he does,” said Dagii, stepping back from the wall. “He’s drawn off more than enough of the tribe for us to make a run for—”

The cracking of wood interrupted him. All three of the prisoners spun around. A chunk of the hut’s wall had been broken out—just big enough for Chetiin, curved dagger in hand, to slip through. “It would be easier to run,” the goblin said, “if someone cut your hands free for you.”

“Rond betch!”
Ashi was the first one over to Chetiin, turning so that he could slice at her bonds. “What about Geth? Where is he?”

The sound of fighting outside the hut answered her question. Ashi felt the thongs on her wrists part. “Go help him,” said Chetiin.

She ran from the hut, throwing aside the hide over the doorway to emerge into the nearly empty camp. Just a few paces away, Geth fought with one of the few bugbears who had remained at the camp, a big brute wielding a massive club. The shifter darted and dodged as the club came down like a falling tree. Ashi didn’t think the great gauntlet would be any defense against that weapon. One good strike and Geth would be flattened. The blows he returned seemed strangely weak, and she saw that the shoulder of his sword arm had been bandaged. New blood was already seeping through the linen strips. Clenching her jaw, Ashi threw herself in behind the bugbear, rolling against his legs. His arms flailed as he tried to keep his balance. Geth seized the opening—Wrath cut a deep, deadly gash across the bugbear’s belly—then finished him with another blow across his chest.

Ashi came to her feet and gave Geth a smile. “It’s good to see you.”

“Same,” he said, then turned to meet two more bugbears, one with an axe, the other wielding two swords. They were Ekhaas and
Dagii’s swords, Ashi realized, and the big goblin was swinging both of them as easily as she might have swung one.

Cursing Makka for making off with her sword, she bent down and wrapped her hands around the shaft of the first bugbear’s club. The weapon was heavy and inelegant, but it was also almost unstoppable. The bugbear with the axe came at her. Ashi spun in a circle, hauling the club into an arc that clipped the bugbear’s shoulder before he could dodge away. The momentary contact was enough to spin him around. Ashi tightened her swing and raised the club higher.

As the bugbear turned back to her, she slammed the club into the side of his head. He wore a helmet, but it didn’t do him much good. The metal rang like a bell as he went down, blood spraying from his nose and mouth in a red mist.

Dagii raced past her to grab one of the arms of the bugbear that Geth fought. With an angry snarl, he wrenched the limb back sharply, and Ashi heard a pop. The bugbear shouted in pain, a shout that was cut short as Geth slashed her throat. She slumped forward as Dagii released her. Geth spun, searching the camp for more attackers.

There were none. The last guard was fleeing for the forest. Geth wiped Wrath quickly and slammed the weapon into its scabbard. Ashi scooped up Ekhaas’s sword and handed it to her as she emerged from the hut with Chetiin. Dagii reclaimed his own sword and wrenched the helmet off the head of the bugbear Ashi had killed. It was his helmet, she realized, now so dented it was unwearable. “Sorry,” she said.

“I wouldn’t have been able to use it anyway,” he said, spinning it around to show her the crack that had been opened in it to fit over the bugbear’s head. He hurled it away into the darkness.

“Don’t just stand there,” ordered Geth. “Grab as many torches and pitch pots as you can carry.” He already had three steaming pots dangling by their leather straps from his gauntleted hand and another two, presumably cool, slung over his shoulder along with a strange, bloody bundle. Two unlit torches were jammed into his belt. A third, burning bright, was in his other hand.

“What?” Ashi asked. “Why?”

“For the trolls. We’re going back into the valley.”

“When?”

He nudged another pitch pot with his toe, touched the burning torch to the pitch within, then kicked the pot against the wall of the hut in which they had been imprisoned. The clay of the pot shattered and burning pitch spattered across the wood. “As soon as the camp is on fire.” he said. “Burn it and the bugbears won’t have anything to come back to.”

Ashi stared, then went after him as he moved around the camp, setting fire to the huts. “Not the longhouse!” she said. “The tribe’s children—”

“I know,” he said. “Chetiin and I saw. We came in over the barricade on the other side while Midian had the tribe’s attention. We’ll leave the longhouse, but everything burns. If they’ve got nothing to come back to here, it will make it easier for us to get out of the valley again. Now hurry! We don’t have much time.”

Ashi started grabbing pitch pots. The huts roared up into columns of flame that lit the night. Shouts came from the forest as the bugbears realized that they’d been tricked and that their camp was burning. No sound came from the longhouse, and she could imagine the bugbear children huddled inside, staying silent in the hope of avoiding attention—maybe they even had another way out through the slope the house was built against. She hoped so. “How did you get the horses to the other side of the camp?”

“We didn’t,” said Chetiin, coming up on the other side of her with an armload of torches. “The horse you saw was Midian’s pony. He had the horseshoe in his pack.”

“What about the horses the bugbears smelled?”

“The
shaarat’khesh
preparation that kept our mounts calm around Marrow,” he said. “If we escape, I’ll have to ride well away from you on the return journey.”

Ashi stared at him. “Midian couldn’t have spread all that around himself.”

“He had help. We brought Marrow into the plan, too. She’s helping Midian keep the bugbears distracted.” He looked around. “Are we done?”

All of them were laden with torches and pitch pots. The huts were burning. Even the barricade was on fire, the pine pitch that had smeared the sharpened logs set ablaze. “We’re done,” said
Geth. “Let’s go.” He headed for the gate in the barricade, the only part of the ring that wasn’t burning. Chetiin jogged back toward the great firepit, flung something into it, then sprinted away. An instant later, a ball of white flame burst from the pit with a piercing whistle and streaked high into the night sky.

Somewhere in the forest, a wolf howled. It seemed to Ashi that there was a malevolent joy in the sound. The shouts of the bugbears grew louder—then one of them turned to a scream before ending abruptly.

“Marrow’s reward,” Chetiin said as he emerged from the flames. “Once she’s finished hunting, she’ll go back to keeping watch over the horses.”

Ekhaas and Dagii were already over the slope and down into the valley. Geth followed. Ashi stopped outside the burning barricade, a sudden hollow in the pit of her stomach. “Makka—the chief—he still has my sword!”

Geth looked back at her, then at Chetiin. The goblin shook his head. “We can’t wait, Ashi,” he said. “We need to be out of sight before the bugbears come back. We can’t fight all of them.”

“But my sword—” She turned to Geth. “It was my grandfather’s. It was Kagan’s.”

“I’m sorry, Ashi,” said Geth. “We have to leave it. We have to go.”

“Your sword or our lives,” Chetiin added.

Marrow howled again, closer than she’d been before. Ashi looked over at the edge of the forest, just in time to see Midian pop out of the trees and run like fox across the fire-lit vale.

“What are you waiting for?” he shouted. “Go! Go!”

Ashi pressed her lips together and ran down into the valley.

For the third time, Ashi plunged into the thorns that ran along the forest edge. There was a path through them now, thanks partly to their hacking a passage on the way out and partly to the trolls’ headlong pursuit of them. The brambles were bent and chopped, twisted and trampled, and getting through them was no longer a torturous ordeal. Ashi barely noticed. The loss of her sword, the
Sentinel Marshal honor blade that had been her first connection to House Deneith, ate at her like sorrow.

Geth kept only a single torch burning so that she could see, extinguishing the others before the light could reveal them to the bugbears. They heard the tribe return to the burning camp just as they cleared the thorns and made it into the cover of the trees. Shouts of fear and anger drifted down into the valley, followed by shrieks of joy—the children of the tribe must have emerged from the longhouse. There was also one long roar of rage. Ashi knew in her gut that it was Makka, furious at the destruction wrought in the rescue of his prisoners. His wasn’t the only voice of rage to rise from the camp, though. The tribe, it seemed, was angry with their chief. She wondered if they would consider killing him with the stolen sword and leaving it and his body behind as they fled.

The dream was comforting, but unlikely.

“Sage’s shadow,” said Midian as they paused at the inner edge of the forest. “Did any of you happen to carry my everbright lantern out of the camp?”

“Quiet, Midian,” growled Geth.

“I’m not going to be happy if those bugbears still have it. That lantern was really useful.”

The shifter turned on him. “I said, quiet!”

Midian flinched and closed his mouth. Geth caught Ashi’s eye as he turned away from the gnome. She gave him a grateful half-smile.

“You know, we may have fire now,” said Dagii, “but I still don’t like the idea of fighting through the trolls to get back to those stairs.”