The Goblin Corps (76 page)

“It was perfectly safe, Shorty,” Cræosh answered on Jhurpess’s behalf.

“Safe? How the fuck was it safe? The man had a crossbow aimed up my nose!”

“Yeah, but I was fairly sure he was gonna miss
me”
Cræosh said sardonically.

“What?”

“Jhurpess sure, too,” from above.

“Why you lumbering behemoths, I—!”

“Alec? Alec, you over there?”

The entire squad froze, Gork’s mouth hanging open in mid-diatribe. They had
maybe
a minute before the rest of the patrol came into view, not enough time for them all to clear the wall—certainly not while lugging a captive.

“Jhurpess!” Katim scurried forward, tossing the bugbear one of their coils of rope. “Leave it hanging on…the
outside
of the wall! Dump the…body next to it and get…back down here! Belrotha! Get the prisoner…out of the wheelbarrow! Gork!” She pointed one taloned digit. “Get that…door open! Your way, not…mine.”

Gork followed her finger and nodded, perhaps in sudden understanding. Cræosh, who did
not
understand, could only count heartbeats as the squad rushed to do the troll’s bidding, and pray to the Ancestors that she knew what she was doing.

The citizens of Brenald were up in arms, the commander of the city watch was forced to resign (and to go into hiding, lest he find himself lynched), but they never did catch the blackguards responsible for the horrors of that night. The guards had handily spotted the dangling rope, and the corpse lying just outside the wall. Instantly they’d mobilized, scouring the roads, the woods,
everywhere
for the fleeing fugitives. They seized every wagon, searched every farmhouse, beat every bush, even climbed every tree, within
hours
of the wall. Nothing.

They found the wheelbarrow of corpses, of course (though it contained only four; the other two guards were never found, and presumed lost somewhere in the city’s back alleys). Between that, and the tales told by various soldiers and citizens, the authorities recognized that the assassins had moved through town disguised as monks and had used the bodies as cover to make their way to the cemetery and escape. The watch conducted a search of Brenald itself, in case the murderers had accomplices, but since they’d obviously escaped the walls already—the rope and the body were evidence enough of that—it was a cursory effort.

The city’s reeve, left in charge in the absence of King Dororam, called for five days of mourning: one for each of the great heroes, and another for the guards who had fallen. Black tunics, black dresses, and black banners transformed the streets of Brenald into a net of darkness. Dirges sounded from street musicians, and tavern owners offered everyone a free drink in honor of the lost (and then, of course, raised the prices on every subsequent drink, turning a healthy profit). Priests read lengthy sermons, but never at the central temple. It was closed for the days of mourning, in honor of Father Thomas.

But finally, on the sixth day, life slowly edged back toward the routine. People dressed normally once again, businesses kept normal hours, and the extra sentries on the walls returned to their normal duties.

And only then did the Demon Squad—who had passed those six hellish days in the cramped, crowded, and rapidly suffocating confines of the graveyard’s largest mausoleum, surviving on the flesh of those two missing corpses—emerge from hiding. None of them were speaking, for that was the only way they’d kept from killing each other, and they reeked of decomposing flesh, body odor, spilled blood, urine and feces (they’d used the coffin as a chamber pot), and the vomit of their prisoner, whom they’d had to force feed. They crept out in the middle of the night, sent Gork to scout and make
sure
there were no guards on the wall nearby, and then scurried over another rope and ran as though the ghosts of the men they’d eaten were nipping at their heels.

The following days, though exhausting and not precisely pleasant, proved both uneventful and far more comfortable than being cooped up in that damn crypt. They kept their distance from the main roads; though there were no soldiers to be seen, the entire army having gotten much farther ahead, the highways remained crowded with farmers, merchants, and other wanderers. Cræosh cursed every extra moment their circuitous routes and constant hiding cost them—especially now that, without Gimmol, they had to make the return journey in normal time—but it was better than being torn apart by a mob of angry humans.

Lidia made only a few abortive attempts to escape. Her struggles with her bonds were apparently enough to convince her that they hadn’t left her any slack, and a vicious snarl from the troll made it clear that the goblins didn’t appreciate her efforts. Twice per day, they loosened her bonds enough for her to choke down a few gulps of water and morsels of food, as well as to relieve herself. Under full guard, of course. Cræosh and the others couldn’t give a halfling’s ass about human notions of privacy or propriety, but neither were they interested in lugging a captive covered in her own wastes.

Cræosh saw her eyes flicker from Katim to Belrotha a time or two, and wondered if she was going to appeal to them in the name of gender unity and sisterhood.
Yeah, good luck with that.

The squad forced themselves to maintain a punishing pace, sleeping only a few hours at a stretch, pushing onward even as calves ached, sides split, lungs burned. Day after day after day, until vision went bleary and tempers frayed even shorter than normal—but eventually, with agonizing sluggishness, the Brimstone Mountains began to peek over the horizon ahead.

And still they spotted no sign of even the straggling tail end of Dororam’s armies. The orc started to fret, and he actually grew more alert, his fatigue digested by the worry now roiling through his gut.

“We need to start being careful,” Cræosh said that afternoon. “We’ve no fucking clue how the war’s going so far, but it looks as though Dororam’s already gotten farther than he should have. If we don’t run into his men between here and the mountains, you can fucking bet that we’ll meet them in the passes. Keep your eyes open.”

“Eyes open,” Gork said. “Got it. Anything else we should know, or did you want the rest to be a surprise?”

“Gork?”

“Yes?”

“Shut your fucking hole.”

The kobold looked innocently around at the others. “Touchy today, isn’t he?”

Very deliberately, Belrotha placed one enormous fist over Gork’s face. It was a move she’d seen Cræosh pull more than once. Normally, her hand would’ve enveloped his skull entirely, but since she hadn’t resumed her normal size, it was just the proper width for a good, solid grip.

Of course, it was still a long
stronger
than the orc’s.

“Me not remember,” she said, and Cræosh wouldn’t have laid odds on whether she was exaggerating for Gork’s benefit, or honestly confused. “Do me lift? Or just squeeze?”

“Mmph! Mpfrm rmf!”

“Actually,” Katim observed laconically, “I believe that you’ve…done quite enough.”

Belrotha nodded and released her grasp.

“Air!” Gork croaked.

“Are we through now?” Cræosh asked the gasping kobold.

Gork nodded, panting.

“Good. Then let’s move.” He glanced over at the bundle slung over the ogre’s shoulder. “Somebody tighten those ropes.”

Another few days, equally miserable and, if anything, even more arduous, finally brought them to the Brimstone Mountains themselves. And there, it became apparent that something was, indeed, very wrong.

Moving carefully, the squad picked their way through mounds of corpses in various states of dismemberment and decay. Humans lay beside orcs, elves beside trolls, each and every one of them the victim of violent death. The Charnel King’s troglodytes, ancestral guardians of the mountain passes, were scattered among them, lying where they’d fallen defending their homes. Flies buzzed in swarms thick enough to darken the sun; buzzards circled above in quantities large enough to be considered swarms themselves. The stench made their eyes water and their stomachs heave—this from creatures who had, short weeks before, subsisted on a pair of rotting bodies without hesitation. Katim spun and lunged toward the startled ogre, barely ripping the gag from the captive’s mouth in time to prevent her from choking on her own vomit.

Of course, the carnage, although perhaps somewhat more prodigious than they might have anticipated, was only to be expected. What proved far more worrisome was not the presence of the dead within the passes, but the absence of the living. Even had the Allied armies somehow taken the passes swiftly and easily, an unimaginable feat at best, they most assuredly wouldn’t have left them unguarded! The Serpent’s Pass, as well as the smaller byways, were vital for messengers and supply trains, easy targets for counterattack. The only way anyone could
possibly
justify such a peculiar decision, according to Cræosh’s understanding of basic strategies…

Was if Kirol Syrreth had already fallen.

“Impossible!” Katim protested when the orc hesitantly explained his assessment. “There’s no way the armies…could have crossed even a fraction…of Kirol Syrreth. They must be…
months
from the Sea of Tears!”

“I know that!” Cræosh snapped back at her. “I know how fucking slowly armies move, and how this whole fucking war is supposed to work! I’m just telling you what I see!”

“Watch your tone…orc,” the troll rumbled, scarcely more than a whisper. “At this stage in our…mission, one sword, more or…less, will not matter. And one more…corpse on the field wouldn’t even…be noticed.”

Steel sang against leather as Cræosh’s sword leapt from its scabbard, severing the last feeble strands of his patience. “Now, is it?” he asked, his own voice turned to gravel. “Fine, then. Whenever you’re ready.”

He never found out if Katim would have backed down or followed through, for Belrotha reached out, lifted a random corpse off the bloodied field—an orc, as it happened, one whose ribs had been caved in by a mace—and used it as a bludgeon to knock the orc and the troll both from their feet. Slowly, gasping for breath and wishing his head would stop ringing, Cræosh dragged himself back up. He was heartened, at least, to see that Katim was moving as hesitantly as he.

“It
not
now!” Belrotha raved, her hands literally waving over her head, the stench of her breath blotting out the surrounding miasma of decay. “Cræosh and Katim want to kill each other, them do it later! Us have other things to do now!”

“Now, look Belrotha—” Cræosh began.

“You shut up!” the ogre yelled, shoving her face so close to Cræosh’s own that her broken nose actually slapped against his. The orc recoiled violently. “That better!” She spun and jabbed a finger at the troll. “You not say anything either!” She stepped back, lowering her fists to her hips. “Until us know what happening, you not fight with each other! You not
talk
to each other unless me there to listen! You not listen to me—you try to fight again—me kill you!”

“I think she’s serious,” Gork muttered to the stunned combatants.

“You shut up too!” Belrotha screamed.

“What? But I didn’t do anything!”

“Me not care! Me not like to hear you talk! Shut up!”

Silence fell, broken only by Belrotha’s heavy breathing, the caws of startled vultures, and the smacking sounds of Jhurpess, off by himself, chewing experimentally on one of the less rotted bodies.

“What us wait for?” Belrotha finally asked, her voice now empty of any trace of anger. “Us have places to go.”

Bewildered expressions on their faces, and tongues clenched firmly between their teeth lest they be tempted to comment, the others followed the ogre north.

“Hey!” Cræosh blinked rapidly, trying to squeeze the light of the dawn and the crust of sleep from his lashes. “You’re big!”

Belrotha, who had reached all the way down from her newly restored and
proper
height to nudge the orc awake, sighed loudly. “Yes, me know.” She turned to the bugbear, who was waving a chunk of meat vaguely in the direction of their small fire, his only concession to the cooking preferences of the others. “Him not very bright, am he?”

“Jhurpess had noticed that,” the bugbear confirmed.

Grumbling, Cræosh rose and wandered off behind a tree to relieve himself before it was time to face the next in an endless parade of really,
really
bad days. He didn’t even bother to ask his companions
why
Belrotha was towering over them again, choosing to assume that if someone had cast a spell on them as he slumbered—as opposed to the enchantment on the ogre simply having worn off—they’d get around to telling him eventually.

And then he’d see if he could be bothered enough to care.

The sights hadn’t grown any more encouraging as they made their way through the wilds of Kirol Syrreth, and as Cræosh had anticipated, today proved no exception. Columns of smoke, thick and uncountable, stretched from all horizons, bloated worms emerging from a corpse. Grasses and plants were trampled flat, marked by the passage of thousands upon thousands of feet that should never have come this far. What little wildlife remained fled at the slightest disturbance; crops were crushed, burned to the ground, or savagely harvested for use by Dororam’s troops.

The squad did detect a few sporadic signs of Kirol Syrreth’s defenders. Pieces of black leather armor, boot prints clearly made by the twisted foot of a troll, corpses hacked by heavy orcish blades—all lay strewn across the roads and fields, easily spotted by those who knew what to look for. But only twice did the Demon Squad actually see anyone who might have left such signs, and those fled before the squad could draw near enough to identify themselves.

Far more frequent were their encounters with soldiers of the other side. As well as the goblins knew the territory, they were able to avoid the
bulk
of the invaders. They crept through woodlands, dashed along back roads, waded through shallow streams, or poled scavenged boats through deeper waters. Much as it galled them, they hid from the enemy when they could, ran when they must. On several occasions, circumstances forced them to engage this unit or that patrol, and then they took a tiny sliver of retribution for what had been done to their nation. The battles were swift, vicious affairs, over in less time than it takes to recount—but while the goblins were never in any danger, not against small handfuls of mere humans, each time they picked up just a few more nicks or scratches, earned a few more scars, left behind a few more drops of blood. They dared not even go
near
the major cities or fortresses en route, for all had clearly been overrun and occupied. Days accumulated into weeks, strides built up into miles built up into leagues, and the members of the Demon Squad grew ever more haggard.