The Goblin Corps (17 page)

“No. That is, it did, but I suppose it shouldn’t have.”

“Come,” the elf said, rising smoothly to his feet. “Let’s move a little ways away, shall we? Then we can talk.”

Amid the raucous orchestra of snoring and the multitude of twitching limbs, a single pair of eyes opened and watched intently as the smallest squad member sneaked his way outside. And they narrowed, not in surprise, but in the first stirrings of anger. The little bastard would be the death of them all! Best to wake the others now, confront him before…

No. No, that
wouldn’t
be best, would it? A twisted grin appeared beneath those suspicious eyes. Cræosh and the others were too frightened of Morthûl to even
consider
Ebonwind’s proposal, while Gork was too greedy to do anything
else.
But for the right person, at the right time, the options remained open. Gork’s indiscretions were known, now. If it looked as though his little scheme might actually succeed, well, he’d be more than willing to share with a silent partner if it meant that partner
stayed
silent. And if not, if he appeared apt to bring the wrath of the Dark Lord down upon them…

The grin grew wider, teeth shifting within the jaw. If so, the Charnel King would surely be gracious toward the one who reported the traitor in their midst.

Feeling truly self-satisfied—and grateful, for the first time, that she’d been assigned to this bunch of incompetents—Katim watched in rapt fascination as the kobold and the elf walked into the frigid gloom, and wished only that she could hear exactly what they said.

As though it required the strength of a thousand gremlins, Gimmol struggled in vain to lift his eyelids. He didn’t understand this at all! He hadn’t been wounded, not unless something had happened as he slumbered. He wasn’t in any pain—well, no more than the act of forcing himself awake every morning always caused. And yet, try as he might, he couldn’t seem to open…

And then he screamed, an earsplitting banshee’s call, as he suddenly realized the terrifying truth. His eyes
were
open; he just couldn’t see! He was blind!

He screamed again, and again, and only then, as the last of them echoed away into oblivion, did he realize that his voice shouldn’t be echoing at all. And his back…Why did his back hurt? It felt just like that night when he’d spent six hours in a gopher hole, trying to escape the notice of the troll war party. He…

“Hey!” It was Cræosh’s voice, clearly unhappy, and it was followed by a sudden
clang
, one that shook the entire world. “Keep it the fuck down in there! I get
real
irritable before breakfast.”

In there?
What in the blazes did that…?

He was inside the damned cauldron!

With a final shout that was half determination and half fear, Gimmol burst upward, flinging the iron lid halfway across the hut. Murder writ large across his face, he dragged himself over the lip of the huge pot—grateful indeed that no one had gotten around to lighting a fire—and dropped to his feet.

“Who the fuck did that?”
he demanded, trying (without a great deal of success) to sound dangerous.

Cræosh began to chuckle. In a spreading wildfire of mirth, Fezeill, Gork, and even Jhurpess all joined in. Within moments, the entire squad was laughing hysterically, tears rolling down their cheeks.

All, that is, but two. Gimmol himself, of course, felt that the situation fell somewhat short of amusing; and Katim had also failed to join in the general merriment. His pride getting the better of his instinctive fear, the gremlin wandered over and seated himself beside the troll, who was currently sipping on a mug of what looked to be half-congealed blood. One whiff as he drew near, and Gimmol decided not to ask if it was, indeed, what it looked like.

What he said instead was, “I see that
someone
here has the good sense to take me seriously. When I get my hands on whoever did this…”

Katim nodded, mug held to her misshapen snout. “I think that would prove…most interesting indeed.”

Gimmol glanced her way, but she seemed disinclined to elaborate any further. “Well, in any case,” he continued, “thanks for not laughing at me.”

“There was…no reason to laugh at you.”

“Oh? You didn’t think it was funny either, then?”

“I didn’t say…that. There was no need…to laugh at you…” The huge trollish jaw gaped in a mirthful grin. “…because I already laughed…myself silly over it…last night when I…put you in there.”

Gimmol backed away, his face ashen, as the room around him exploded into new gales of hilarity. Then, his lip quivering, he bolted outside.

Slowly, over the course of breakfast, the laughter settled down. “You know,” Cræosh said thoughtfully, “maybe we oughta take it easy on the little puke. I mean, whatever else he may be, he’s a teammate.”

“You’re right,” Fezeill agreed, his voice thoughtful.

“Yeah,” Gork chimed in. “I mean, better him than me, but…”

Katim nodded.

“We’re agreed then,” the orc announced. “We should stop picking on Gimmol.” And then a nasty smirk split his face. “But we’re not going to, are we?”

“Nope.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Wouldn’t…dream of it.”

“Good,” Cræosh declared. “Who wants more yeti?”

They had just about finished breakfast when Fezeill glanced around. “Does anyone know what happened to our host?”

“Dunno that it matters, really,” Cræosh answered. “I mean, we’re planning to turn him down anyway.”

“Granted,” Fezeill said. “Still, I thought he’d wait to hear us tell him ourselves.”

“Maybe he didn’t need to,” Gork suggested. “He
is
a wizard, after all.”

“No,” the orc told him, shaking his large head. “If he could have foreseen our reply, he wouldn’t have had to ask in the first place. I…”

A small stomping sounded at the door. Even as they all looked, Gimmol sulked in and tossed a scrap of parchment down on the table. “I found this tacked to the doorframe,” he announced angrily. Fezeill was the fastest of those who grabbed for it.

My dear guests
,

I apologize profusely for running out on you in this manner, but I fear something has come up that requires my immediate attention. You are welcome to break your fast upon whatever foodstuffs you might find within my home.

“Too late,” the kobold muttered.

I trust you have already come to a decision, one way or the other, but if not, you may look upon this as an extension of your deadline. Do not concern yourself with contacting me; when I have the opportunity, I shall find you. I will, of course, expect your final answer at that time.

Sincerely
,

Nurien Ebonwind
.

PS:
The yetis are growing agitated about something. I’d advise that you not remain in the house for long after breakfast.

“Great,” Cræosh muttered once Fezeill had read the missive aloud. “Just what we need. At least if he’d been here, we could’ve gotten it over with. I’ll tell you something, I’m not looking forward to telling him no. As a rule, I don’t imagine wizards take rejection all that well.”

“What I am more…concerned about,” Katim told him, “is that last…bit.”

Fezeill nodded. “I agree completely. If the yetis are gallivanting about, would that not be a better reason to stay
inside?”

“I’d have thought the same thing,” Gork said. “Maybe—”

“Hsst!” The troll stood motionless, one furry hand raised in a call for silence.

And then the rest of them heard it, too—a faint whistling in the air. As though the sun had reversed its course, the morning began to grow dark outside the hut.

“Oh, shit!” Cræosh was already breaking for the nearest exit. “Incoming!”

The entire squad scattered like frightened roaches before the “-ing” had left the orc’s mouth. Wooden shutters and cheap glass shattered as the hut’s windows burst asunder with fleeing goblins. Katim had somehow compressed herself small enough to fit through the one, Gork had almost cleared the other before several hundred pounds of bugbear launched him the rest of the way through, and Cræosh had followed the “shortest distance is a straight line” theory and hurled himself through the nearest wall.

Just a few heartbeats after the Demon Squad had vacated the cottage, the entire structure was turned into splinters by the arrival of an uninvited boulder of the airborne variety. The ground shook as though the universe had sneezed, knocking Gimmol clear off his feet. Slivers of wood and shards of glass spun across the tundra. Cræosh, already bleeding from a dozen pinprick wounds, threw one arm over his face and dove into the snow. A series of thumps suggested that most of his squad had enough sense to do the same.

And then, as swiftly as it began, it was over. The crushed wood creaked as the boulder teetered a bit and then settled comfortably into the snow, apparently content with its new abode.

Cræosh rose, the sting of his various lacerations aching in the cold. The rest of the squad gathered around him, stained and speckled with the blood of similar injuries.

“I had no…idea,” Katim said, “that yetis grew large enough…to throw something like…this.”

“They don’t,” Fezeill announced authoritatively. “It isn’t possible.”

With a low growl, Cræosh reached toward Fezeill, palmed the back of his bugbear head in one ham-sized fist, and drove him facefirst into the boulder. With a sharp crack, the doppelganger—his nose bleeding a noxious yellow ichor—dropped into the snow.

“Feels possible enough to me,” Cræosh said. “Anyone feel different?”

Oddly enough, no one spoke up.

“Fine. Now maybe it doesn’t bother the rest of you that we nearly ended up flat as a dwarf at a troll orgy, but I happen to enjoy being six feet tall, and I damn well expect to stay that way.” His mouth twisted as though he’d bitten into something distasteful. “I figure we’ve got us a few more minutes before the yeti—or yetis—show up to see how their little trick worked. And I’d really just as soon not get into a fight with someone who juggles small mountains. So what’re our other options?”

“We could hide,” Gimmol piped in, and then yelped as Katim lifted him off his feet from behind.

“Look around!” she snapped, her breath curling the hairs on the back of his head. “Where…do you think we could…possibly hide?”

The gremlin had to admit she had a point—and not just because she might eat his head if he didn’t. Unless they all squeezed into cracks in the boulder, their options were snow and…Well, snow.

“Right again,” Cræosh continued as the troll forcefully returned Gimmol to earth. “Which, as I see it, leaves only one choice.”

“Withdrawal?” Fezeill asked sarcastically, slowly rising to his feet and gently probing his shattered nose.

“Nah,” Cræosh told him as the first yeti howl sounded in the distance. “I was thinking more of running away.”

Which, though he refrained from waving his arms and screaming, was exactly what they did.

Only once the motley band had vanished from sight did Nurien Ebonwind allow his concentration to lapse. A snowman melting in reverse, he materialized some several yards from the ruins of his house. His gray robe swirling about his ankles and his familiar perched on his shoulder, the dakórren examined the broken, splintered wood.

“Atiree eroo?” the little creature chirped at him.

“Yes,” Ebonwind told it, “I’m afraid it was quite necessary. Yetis aren’t known for their subtlety. Anything less than complete destruction might have raised questions.” The elf sighed. “Ah, well. I can create another just as easily. Maybe somewhere warmer, next time…”

“Edabrelat! Ecci dibu.”

“I know that, too. I
want
my call to attract real yetis. It should give the goblins something other than me to think about. I don’t want them pondering certain questions just yet.” Then, since the Demon Squad was probably still near enough to hear it, he let loose one more yeti wail for good measure.

“That’s done then,” he told his winged companion. “Let’s be off, shall we? We’ve plenty left to do.”

A word from the sorcerer, and they vanished once more, leaving only swirling, snow-flecked winds behind.

T
he name of the village—if “village” was an appropriate term for the chaotic aggregate of buildings that had been thrown together in a small, unnamed hollow in the mountains—was Itho. From a distance, it was just another of the primitive communities that blemished the plains, the grasslands, and the forests that were the skin of Kirol Syrreth. Nothing, other than its peculiar location in the frigid wastes of the Northern Steppes, distinguished it from any of these others.

From a distance.

As one drew near, however, one might notice that the rudimentary wooden gates stood close to three dozen feet in height. Skulls, jammed atop many of the thick stakes and spikes that formed the defensive abatis, showed signs of violent, brutal death. A yeti skull topped the archway over the gate itself, glowering accusingly at the empty tundra as though blaming the snows for what had befallen it.

It wasn’t the tundra’s fault, of course. No, it was the yeti’s own, for in his bestial, mindless hunger, he’d forgotten an important lesson to surviving the Steppes: Stay away from Itho.

Stay away from the ogres.

On this particular morning, the center of Itho bustled with activity that, while not so loud as the markets of Timas Khoreth, was more than sufficient to render an elephant completely sterile. Of course, in Timas Khoreth, the volume was due to hundreds upon hundreds of voices shouting at once. Here in Itho, where the entire population numbered less than eighty, it was due primarily to the fact that ogres are
bloody loud.

Not to mention stubborn, prone to bickering, and stupid enough to give a bugbear fits. Which meant that
governing
ogres called for the absolute best that their race had to offer, and even then, most candidates didn’t last very long. Itho’s current “governor” had been in charge, nominally, for six months now. Not a historical record, but longer than average, which meant that
average
was something the ogre in question most certainly was not.