The doom of Kings

CHAPTER NINE

They reached the crest of the pass at dusk. The red light of the setting sun fell full on a massive keep that blocked the pass from side to side. The closer they drew to the keep, however, the less certain Geth was that it really was just a keep. The nearest side of the fortress was largely a blank wall with a reinforced ramp leading up to a single gate wide enough for three wagons to drive through at the same time. The road ended at the wall of the keep, though unlike at Sterngate, it didn’t run directly to the keep’s gate-ramp and gate were strangely misaligned, off-center with the road by a good ten paces. Parapets topped the wall, but behind them were a cluster of towers that rose so high it seemed as if they’d been built on top of the keep. Even odder were the buttresses filling the narrow gaps between the keep and the natural walls of the pass. Geth was no engineer, but it looked as if they were an afterthought, as if the entire keep had been dropped into the pass and efforts made afterward to make it fit the space.

Hobgoblins and bugbears guarded the ramp, gate, and parapets. Geth could hear them calling to each other as the mounted party approached and they recognized Haruuc’s banner. When their party was about fifty paces from the great wall, Aruget, Krakuul, and Thuun dismounted. Facing the keep, they gave a kind of salute by thumping their chests with a fist. Tariic saluted as well, though he remained mounted.

The guards at the foot of the ramp returned the salute. Tariic led the way forward once again, riding up to a hobgoblin wearing polished armor painted with a silhouette of what Geth assumed were jagged teeth, then realized were actually mountains.

Geth leaned over to Ekhaas. “What is this place?”

“Matshuc Zaal,” she said. “The Stolen Fortress. Once it belonged to Breland as Veldarren, the largest of the mobile fortresses built during the Last War. They tried to bring it against Haruuc in 970 in the Battle of Marguul Pass. It was a disaster for them. Haruuc’s general trapped Veldarren in the pass and brought it down. Darguun’s triumph here forced Breland to sue for peace. It’s a tradition for Darguul soldiers to honor the dead of the battle whenever they approach. Matshuc Zaal will never move again, but now it marks the border of Darguun.”

They spent their first night in Darguun within the walls of Matshuc Zaal. Geth could truthfully say it was unlike any other fortress he’d ever been in. There were frequent reminders of Matshuc Zaal’s first life as Veldarren-splashes of Brelish blue paint, human-styled carvings, and a layout familiar to anyone with military experience-but it was all dominated by thirty years of occupation by Darguuls. Most of the carvings and decorations that might have appealed to a human sensibility had been hacked away at some point in the past and replaced, where decoration was called for, with garish fixtures of brass and banners depicting clan symbols. What Geth might have expected to be crew quarters, and probably had been intended as such, was instead the mess hall, with the open space of the mess hall turned into, from the sounds he heard as they passed, a training space.

A strange smell hung in the air, the odor of different races eating unfamiliar foods, and the entire fortress seemed strangely quiet. The mercenary company he’d served with during the Last War hadn’t been unruly, but there had been a friendly camaraderie when they’d been off duty. During the time that he’d spent more recently among an orc horde in the Shadow Marches, he’d gotten used to boisterous nights of drinking and fighting, bonding with the other warriors. Matshuc Zaal, on the other hand, was pervaded by a sense of goblin discipline so strong it left him speaking in hushed tones and fighting back an urge to polish something.

The fortress was also dark. Not merely night dark, which wouldn’t have presented him with a problem, but as dark as a cave or a vault. The Darguuls had no difficulty, of course-goblin sight was different from a shifter’s nightvision-but only a few paces in from the big gates, Geth found himself as blind as Ashi or Vounn. Fortunately Midian had a small everbright lantern in his capacious pack, and that provided enough light for them to make their way without needing to be led.

There was a third distinct difference. As they were escorted through the fortress to their quarters for the night, Geth caught glimpses of huddled goblins or stick-thin hobgoblins, even a couple of scaly kobolds. Compared to the uniformed garrison of Matshuc Zaal, these creatures were dressed in tatters and rags. When Geth and his companions reached their quarters, another of the goblins was lighting a fire in the hearth. When they entered, she glanced up and actually cringed as if trying to make herself even smaller. She finished her work and all but fled out the door. Geth stared after her. Not even the menial goblins in the cities were so timid.

“Slaves,” said Vounn with disgust in her voice. Ever since her praise of Tariic’s horses at Sterngate, Geth had noticed that she’d been playing on her charm. The comment was the first hint of disapproval she’d expressed since the morning.

“Our people have kept slaves since before Dhakaan, Vounn,” said Tariic. His ears dropped apologetically. “It’s a difficult tradition to suppress, but since Haruuc embraced the worship of Dol Dorn and the Sovereign Host, progress has been made. He has freed his personal slaves and forbids others to bring slaves into his fortress. Warlords and clan leaders who seek his favor are following his example.”

“It holds you back, Tariic,” Vounn said. “If Darguun wants to be truly accepted as a civilized nation, then Haruuc-or his successor-needs to eliminate it.”

Tariic spread his hands. “You wash the bather, Vounn. I freed my slaves the day my uncle freed his.”

“The Dhakaani owned slaves?” Geth asked Ekhaas.

The duur’kala nodded. “Not all the people of the empire were heroes. The modern Dhakaani clans still keep slaves. Before I left Darguun I thought little of it, but the time I spent in the larger world has convinced me that the traditions of Dhakaan are wrong in that at least. Our people change slowly, though. Haruuc’s position has not added to his popularity.”

When slaves brought them dinner later, Vounn insisted that they eat a portion of the food as well. When they left, she had one of Tariic’s soldiers accompany them back to the kitchens with a harsh message that she’d been the one to feed them and that anyone who objected should come to her. No one came.

Pipes and drums signaling the change of a duty shift in the fortress roused their party before dawn, and they rode out of Matshuc Zaal’s eastern gate in thin but welcome light. They spent the second day of their journey in the descent of the pass and camped below the mountains that night. A well-used fire ring showed where many other groups had camped on the site.

“I’m surprised House Ghallanda hasn’t set up an inn here,” said Ashi.

“They did,” said one of the soldiers-Aruget, Geth thought. The hobgoblin pointed to the far side of the road. “You can still see the foundation over there.”

“What happened to it?” Geth asked.

The hobgoblin smiled. “Darguun.”

When they rose the next morning, they armed themselves as Tariic had suggested, putting their strength on display for any bandits that might otherwise be tempted to test them. Tariic and his soldiers donned armor of chain mail and linked plates, spiked at the joints. Ekhaas wore leather armor set with dark studs of steel. Midian produced a stiff leather vest. Neither Ashi nor Chetiin wore armor-they both fought fast and light, Geth knew, relying on skill and the steel of their weapons to protect them. Vounn didn’t don armor either, but just sat and watched the others with a smile of mild amusement.

For himself, Geth reached into his pack and pulled out a bundle wrapped in soft oiled leather. The bundle had taken up most of the space in the pack, and without its bulk the pack sagged like a discarded boot. He traveled light, but the bundle contained one of his most prized possessions. Setting it on a rock, he folded back the leather.

The plates of black magewrought steel that formed his great gauntlet gleamed dully in the morning light. Geth checked over each plate and every strap and buckle, then drew the gauntlet on. Interlocking strips of metal bulged around his upper arm, running all the way up to the plates of the wide, heavy shoulder guard. Flat spikes lined the ridge of his forearm and protruded from his knuckles, and three low, hooked blades rose from the back of his hand. Geth tightened the straps that held the gauntlet in place, then curled his fingers into a fist. The black steel whispered like a sword drawn from a scabbard.

The Darguuls had stopped to watch him. “Paatcha,” Tariic said approvingly.

Aruget grunted. “Nice armor,” he said in his thick accent. “Where’s the rest of it?”

Geth bent and straightened his arm, testing the fit. “I don’t need more,” he said in a low growl. The gauntlet had cost him a full year of his wages and bonuses as a mercenary, paid to an artificer in the now-dead city of Metrol. It had been worth every last silver sovereign.

The company must have made, he guessed, an impressive sight as they rode, sunlight flashing on armor, the banners worn by the soldiers snapping. The trade road was flat and straight as it emerged from the foothills, and they let Tariic’s magebred horses run. The speed that the animals’ walking gait had hinted at was no false promise. Under a cloudless sky so bright that its blue seemed almost white, the horses raced along the road, necks outstretched and hooves drumming like music, as if running were all they had been born to do.

Away from the mountains, the land became as flat as the road, broken only by the occasional gentle hill and by streambeds that were cracked and dry with the beginning of late summer. They passed ruins frequently, not Dhakaani but human, the skeletons of farms and hamlets destroyed by Haruuc’s armies thirty years before. Fields and orchards ran wild, offering a bountiful but neglected harvest. “Where are your people?” Geth asked Chetiin. “I thought I’d see more of them.”

“Not here. Most live away from the mountains where rain falls more frequently and life is easier.”

His voice was strangely muffled and Geth glanced over his shoulder to look at him. Chetiin was facing backward, looking back the way they had come. “What is it?” Geth asked.

The shaarat’khesh elder turned to face him again. “We’re being followed.”

The road behind them was empty except for the thinning dust of their own passage. The Seawall Mountains receded in the distance, but Geth thought he could see all the way back to the pass. No one was on the road. “Where? And if we are being followed, how are they keeping up with us?”

Chetiin shook his head. “I don’t know where, but I can feel it.” His ears twitched. “And maybe they won’t keep up, but I’ll talk to Tariic anyway. We should set a double guard tonight.”

Tariic listened when Chetiin told him of his concerns, and that night they made camp with the road on one side of them and the steep gullies of a dry forking streambed on two others. They drew straws for watches, Vounn and Ashi excluded because of their inability to see in the dark. Geth drew second watch opposite Aruget. When he climbed from his bedroll, shaken awake by Midian as the gnome retired from his turn on watch, Aruget pointed him roughly to the side of the camp that faced southeast. He had already claimed the northwest side of the camp. Geth shrugged, adjusted his great gauntlet, and went where he was told. The view from either side of the camp was equally empty under the combined lights of the risen moons.

In fact, Geth had no objection to sitting watch on his own. He appreciated being alone for the first time that day. As Midian and the soldier Krakuul, who had drawn first watch, found their bedrolls and their breathing faded into the same easy rhythm as those already asleep, Geth touched the collar of rune-etched black stones he wore around his neck and looked up at the hazy brightness of the Ring of Siberys.

It was the fourth day of Barrakas. Exactly one year ago, the Bonetree hunters and their monstrous dolgrim allies had attacked Bull Hollow, the little hamlet on the remote edge of the Eldeen Reaches that had become his haven after the Last War. They had been pursuing Dandra, and they’d destroyed much of Bull Hollow in their attempt to draw her out. In the process, they had killed Adolan, the hamlet’s defender and Geth’s friend.

Geth squeezed the stones of the collar. With his last breath, Adolan had told him to take it. The collar was a relic of the sect of druids, the Gatekeepers, to which Adolan had belonged. Through his adventures in the months that followed, the ancient magic of the collar had given him protection and guidance, turning icy cold whenever he’d been threatened by the sanity-twisting forces behind the tainted dragon Dah’mir’s power.

Now it was no cooler than the night air, but it seemed to Geth that the stones were very, very heavy. He sighed and let them go. The collar fell back against his neck.

There was a rustling behind him, and he looked over his shoulder to see Ashi silhouetted against the dim glow of the banked campfire. “Can I join you?” she asked softly.

He patted the ground beside him, and she sat. “A year ago,” she said.

Get looked back up at the Ring of Siberys, at the stars and the moons. “You remembered.” She’d been among the hunters who had attacked Bull Hollow.

“How could I forget? I’m sorry, Geth.”

“You’re a friend now, Ashi. You turned your back on the Bone-tree clan. There’s nothing to apologize for. Anyway, you’ve said sorry before.” He watched the sky for a little longer, then asked, “The hunter who killed Adolan-really big, fought with an axe- what was his name?”

Ashi looked at him sideways. “You killed him.”

“I know.” The memory of that kill, of driving his sword-not Wrath then, but a plain sword from his days as a mercenary-up through the hunter’s belly and into his chest, would stay with him for a long, long time. “I still want to know his name.”

“He was Hand-wit,” said Ashi. “He wasn’t smart, but he had a steady hand for tattooing and piercing.” She tapped the rings in her lip. “He did this for me.”

“Ah,” said Geth.

Ashi was silent for a moment, then added, “It will be a year tomorrow since Medala killed my father for failing to capture Dandra at Bull Hollow. She burned his mind out while he was talking to her.”

“I know,” Geth said. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. Do you ever think about going back to Bull Hollow?”

He thought about it, then leaned back. “There’s nothing for me there but questions. Maybe I’m some kind of hero out here, but I don’t want to be a hero there-” His words were cut off by a bellow from the other side of the camp.

“Toh!” Beware!

A wet thump ended the cry, but Geth and Ashi were already on their feet. “Aruget!” shouted Geth, drawing Wrath from its scabbard. “Up! Everyone up!”

The sleeping forms by the fire thrashed and rolled from their blankets to grab for weapons, but dark figures were already rushing in on the camp. With screams of “Itaa!”-Wrath in hand, Geth heard “Attack!”-hobgoblins dressed in ragged clothing and armor came bursting out of the dry gully on his side of the camp.

“Grandfather Rat!” he snarled. The streambeds they’d chosen for protection of their campsite had become a path to lead their attackers closer. They still had to claw their way up the steep sides of the gullies, but that wouldn’t slow them much. Some of the hobgoblins were already helping to hoist others higher, and even more attackers were sprinting down the streambed, any attempt at stealth abandoned.

Geth jumped forward and swung Wrath at the first hobgoblin out of the gully. The heavy blade of the sword bit deep into his neck, nearly severing his head, before he even had a chance to rise up from his knees. The blow had nothing honorable about it, but Geth wasn’t an honorable fighter. He kicked the body before it could collapse, and it toppled back into the gully, knocking down two more climbers.

But attackers were swarming up the bank everywhere. Another crawling hobgoblin stabbed at his calf with a dagger. Ashi’s sword darted out, piercing the hobgoblin’s arm, then flicking high to slash across his face. He cried out and rolled away.

His thrashing almost brought Ashi down as well. She stepped back and nearly fell a second time as her foot caught on a root. “Ashi, get back to the fire!” Geth ordered. “Fight where you can see!” He swung Wrath again.

“I can see just fine!” Ashi protested.

Geth swept her feet out from under her and snapped his right arm up into the space where her shoulders had been. A hobgoblin’s sword crashed into his great gauntlet and went skittering along the black steel. Geth twisted, sweeping the sword aside and hacking upward with Wrath in the same motion. The twilight purple blade cut through leather armor and into the flesh beneath. The hobgoblin fell back. Ashi pushed herself to her feet and sprinted back to the fire without another word.

The others in their party were all up and fighting now, but their attackers were coming in from multiple directions and outnumbered them easily. Vounn was the only one not fighting, but she crouched by the fire, stirring it up into a blaze that threw light and shadows into the night as Ashi fought back anyone who tried to approach. Tariic and the soldiers Thuun and Krakuul stood shoulder to shoulder in tight formation. There was no sign of Aruget. Ekhaas fought on her own, beating back blows from an attacker wielding a heavy spiked mace. Chetiin leaped from shadow to shadow, striking low with one of the curved daggers he wore on his wrists and leaving squirming, wailing enemies in his wake. Geth glimpsed Midian standing still, a polished metal baton in his left hand, as a hobgoblin advanced on him-then the gnome snapped his wrist and a long, slim head swung out of the baton’s shaft, locking in place and transforming the baton into a deadly little pick. Midian spun, and the point of the pick punched into the meat of his attacker’s leg. The hobgoblin dropped to his knees. A second blow put a neat hole in his skull.

More attackers were coming over the sides of the gully near Geth. Three hobgoblins came at him at once, advancing in a wedge like Tariic and his soldiers, and Geth began to regret sending Ashi away. He spun to one side as the wedge came at him and swung Wrath in a raking arc. The nearest hobgoblin deflected the blow with a shield, but Geth followed it up by throwing his entire weight against the shield. The hobgoblin staggered back under the unexpected tactic, and the wedge collapsed. Geth put his opponent down with a punch that left the imprints of knuckle spikes on his temple, then rolled to his feet. The remaining two hobgoblins of the wedge had recovered and had been joined by two more.

Four to one with more enemies climbing up. Geth cursed and shouted, “I need help!”

From the corner of his eye, he saw Ekhaas finish her attacker with a long slash across his chest, then turn to him. “Stand back!” she called, then drew a deep breath and sang.

The songs with which the duur’kala invoked her magic were wild and powerful, sometimes even primal, as if they echoed the legendary music of the world’s creation. The brief snatch of song that she sang now had a thick but flowing quality to it, like soap or half-melted butter. Geth jumped away-and saw the ground under the advancing hobgoblins’ feet shimmer, then turn greasy and slick.

His attackers’ legs shot out from under them, and they fell like children on an icy pond. The dark stain of the spell spread out behind them, too, dipping down over the edge of the gully. More hobgoblins yelled as they slid down the suddenly slippery slope.

“Paaldaask!” shouted someone-Spellcaster! — and the nearest attackers turned their attention on Ekhaas. Her ears folded back, and she sang another spell. The air around her folded, and abruptly five identical versions of the duur’kala stood on the defensive. Geth knew this magic. It was only an illusion, and it wouldn’t fool their enemies for long. He moved to help her but a hand wrapped around his ankle and he slammed hard to the ground.

One of the hobgoblins caught by Ekhaas’s spell had managed to reach out and grab him. Geth kicked at her but she rolled aside and pulled herself up his leg, slithering out of the magical mess.

Then Chetiin was there, appearing out of the shadows and leaping onto the hobgoblin’s back. He grabbed her hair in one hand, pulled her head back, and slit her throat. Her grip on Geth spasmed once, then relaxed. He pulled away from her and from the blood that flooded out of her body. Chetiin, however, jumped from her to one of the other thrashing hobgoblins, plunged his dagger into him, then leaped to the next and to the next, killing them all in moments without ever touching the slippery ground. He jumped clear of the magic again and looked at Geth, still sitting in the dirt. “Ekhaas?” he reminded the shifter before disappearing into the shadows once more.

Geth twisted to his feet, caught another charging hobgoblin with a slash between the ribs, and looked to the duur’kala. Her illusory duplicates were gone, and she was bleeding from a wound to her left shoulder. But she had Ashi and Midian fighting beside her now, and they were beating back the attackers. Ashi’s scarf had come loose, and Geth could see the fierce joy of battle on her dragon-marked and blood-spattered face. Midian’s expression was more grim and focused, but he fought surprisingly well for a researcher. Geth spun around, taking in their situation. The campsite was washed in blood. The bodies of their attackers were everywhere and almost seemed to outnumber those still standing. A few hobgoblins still faced the wedge of Tariic and his soldiers, a few more were being forced back toward the edge of the gully by Ekhaas, Ashi, and Midian. Another pair closed tentatively on Geth.

He could hear sounds of retreat in the gully. The hobgoblins, large as their numbers were, had picked a target too tough for them. He turned to the two hobgoblins still facing him and pointed Wrath at them. “Skiir,” he growled at them. Run.

For a moment it looked like they might have considered it, then the gaze of one of them, a lean whip of a hobgoblin with one scarred ear, moved past Geth. The shifter glanced over his shoulder, following it.

Vounn stood alone and undefended at the fire.

In the heartbeat that he was distracted, the hobgoblin with the scarred ear moved, thrusting his hapless companion at Geth and surging toward Vounn with his sword raised. The startled hobgoblin who had been pushed at Geth flailed wildly with his weapon. Geth bashed him with his gauntlet and felt bone crunch, but he was an instant too late. The hobgoblin with the scarred ear ran past him. No one else was any closer to Vounn. Through Wrath, Geth heard and understood the words the hobgoblin screamed out as he charged: “You die here, Deneith!”

Vounn’s eyes narrowed, and the dragonmark that peeked out from her sleeve on the inside of her right wrist seemed to flash in the firelight. The air rippled around the lady seneschal just as the hobgoblin’s sword fell-and the blade skimmed aside, deflected by the power of the Mark of Sentinel. Left off-balance by the failed blow, the hobgoblin stumbled. Vounn parted a fold of her robes, and with a motion that had the swift certainty of years of practice, pulled a long thin stiletto from a hidden sheath. One precise blow drove the needle-like blade into the soft point at the back of his neck and up into his skull. The hobgoblin jerked, then dropped forward, sliding off the stiletto.

Vounn saw Geth’s expression of amazement and answered it with a thin smile. “I am a daughter of Deneith,” she said. “I can defend myself.”

The last of the hobgoblins fighting Tariic cried out and fled down into the gully to join their retreating fellows. The final two attackers who had been facing Ekhaas and the others tried to do the same, but they didn’t make it. Midian hooked the legs of one with the blade of his pick, then swung the weapon to deadly effect as the hobgoblin fell. The other made it to the brink of the gully before staggering back with his hands over a gash in his belly. Chetiin appeared, curved dagger dripping with blood. Ekhaas grimaced and ended her opponent’s agony with a swift blow of her sword.

Ashi was the first to speak into the silence that followed. “You can fight,” she said to Midian appreciatively.

The gnome shrugged. “I do my field work in Darguun. I have to fight.”

“If these are the bandits you warned us about, Tariic, they’re more bold than you thought,” said Vounn.

But Tariic looked around and shook his head. “I don’t think they were bandits,” he said. “They fought too well. Those fought in formation.” He pointed at the three who had attacked Geth in a wedge. “Chetiin, follow the survivors. See if you can learn anything. Krakuul, Thuun-look for Aruget.”

“Mazo,” said Chetiin. He bent and cleaned his dagger on the clothes of a corpse before putting it away. Geth stepped up beside him.

“I’m coming with you.”

Chetiin glanced at Tariic, who nodded. “Ban,” said the goblin.

The first thing they found, though, was Aruget. The hobgoblin soldier lay along the gully at the end of a trail of blood, almost under a collapsed sand bank. Blood covered his scalp and he lay very still, but Chetiin felt his neck and nodded. “Still alive,” he said. “Lucky.” He whistled to signal Thuun and Krakuul, then led Geth on along the streambed.

They didn’t come across any survivors, though they did find the bodies of two hobgoblins who had succumbed to wounds suffered during the fight. The others had gotten away. Along the streambed, carefully out of sight of the road, they discovered how: the dung of horses, still fresh, and a multitude of hoofprints leading up out of the streambed and into the night. There was one more body, too, but the only wound this one had suffered was a knife in the back.

“The leader, I think,” said Chetiin. “Killed because he took his people into a bad fight.” He began feeling through the corpse’s clothes and grunted. “Tariic was right. They were no bandits. This one was too well fed.”

Geth inspected the hoofprints left by the horses and, interspersed among them, the prints of hobgoblin boots. If it had been daylight they should have brought Ashi-she was an expert tracker. He’d learned some skills himself, though, and the story told in the dusty ground wasn’t hard to read. “They rode in after dark,” he said, “then waited until deep night to approach. There were a lot of horses-the survivors must have taken all of them or let them loose to try to confuse pursuit.”

But the soft sound of shifting hooves drew him up the slope of the well-churned bank. One horse still stood there, grazing on a patch of dry grass, and there was a bundle still lashed behind its saddle. The horse shifted nervously as he approached, probably smelling the blood on him, but it stood still long enough for him to free the bundle before galloping away. Chetiin joined him, and Geth shook the bundle open. Clothes fell out. Good clothes, far better than the pretend bandits had been wearing. Chetiin reached out and plucked one item from the pile, a banner like the ones Aruget and the other soldiers wore as they rode.

This banner was yellow and marked with the crest of what looked like a snarling dog. Chetiin’s ears rose. “Gan’duur,” he said. “Eaters of Sorrow.”

“Another clan?” Geth guessed.

“A clan that has chafed under Haruuc’s rule. Tariic will be interested in this.”

Geth’s eyes narrowed. “The hobgoblin that attacked Vounn knew she was Deneith.”

“I heard him,” said Chetiin. “They knew who we are-or at least who she is. If something happened to Vounn, Haruuc would be shamed and weakened in the eyes of the clans. The Gan’duur would gain strength.”

“They knew we were coming. Do you think they were the ones following us today, somewhere off the road?”

Chetiin shook his head and pointed to the wide path of hoof-prints that led away from the streambed. Geth looked at it again, frowned, then looked again and finally recognized what the goblin had seen.

Only one swathe of hoofprints cut across the landscape. Their attackers had come from and fled into the east.

Their party had ridden out of the west.

“They didn’t follow us,” Chetiin said, “but they knew where to find us.”