The doom of Kings

CHAPTER TWENTY

That’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.”

“We’ve got another deterrent.” Geth pulled off the bloody bundle that he’d carried across his back and opened it. A troll’s head stared at them. Dagii’s ears twitched back.

“We cut off two of those before,” he pointed out. “It didn’t even slow the other trolls down.”

“This one’s different,” Geth said. He pulled out a long torch, hacked the wooden shaft into a long, sharp stake, and stuck it into the stump of the troll’s neck. Holding the head up like a gruesome standard, he said, “This one’s dead.”

“Dead?” asked Ekhaas. “Dead dead?”

“Dead and not coming back. We found a way to kill them.”

“Maabet! Why don’t we use it?” said Dagii.

“We will if we need to,” said Chetiin. “It will be even better if we can keep the trolls from attacking us in the first place, though.”

Geth-troll head in one hand, Wrath in the other-and Chetiin led the way into the dark forest. Ashi, Ekhaas, and Midian followed with smoldering pitch pots and relit torches. Under the trees, they didn’t need to worry about the bugbears seeing the light, and the open flame was something else to give the trolls pause. As he had before, Dagii came at the end of their party, watching the trail behind.

Ashi carried a pitch pot in each hand, slowly swinging them back and forth in their leather slings so that the thin veil of blue fire atop each hissed and popped. Pungent, resinous smoke made a faint, swirling trail behind her. The forest felt somehow less disturbing the third time through, Ashi thought. Maybe she was getting used to the silent atmosphere. Maybe she was numbed by the loss of Kagan’s sword. Maybe she was just exhausted-she would have happily camped for the remainder of the night and continued in the morning, but there was nowhere to camp. Caught between the bugbears and the trolls, their only choice was to keep going all the way back to the mysterious stairs.

Hiss, went the pots as she swung them. Hiss, hiss, pop, hiss-

Chetiin stopped. “Troll,” he said softly.

“Where?” asked Geth.

Chetiin pointed, then pointed again. And again.

“Behind us, too,” said Dagii. “Two more. Five altogether.”

“Light more torches,” Chetiin said. “One for each of us.”

“Not me,” Ashi told him. She took a careful step away from Ekhaas and Midian and began to spin the pitch pots as the bugbears had when they’d confronted the trolls on the valley’s slope. The slow hiss turned into a steady rush. The pots became blurred, blue-glowing orbs. As more torches were lit and the circle of light around them grew, the blue glow seemed to fade, but the sound of the flame was still there. Hiissshh…

The expanding illumination caught the trolls at its edge. Their lumpy, blue-green flesh seemed to meld with the mossy trees. They almost could have been trees, tall and thin and twisted, still as old wood, their dark eyes like shadowed knots. Geth turned slowly, looking at each of them in turn and making sure that they saw the head that he carried.

“Dead,” he said. “This one is dead. No healing. No coming back. Do you understand?”

They gave no indication that they even heard him.

“They reacted when Makka challenged them,” said Dagii. “Try Goblin.”

“Let me.” Ekhaas moved forward to stand beside Geth. The tallest of the trolls stood directly in front of them, and Ekhaas faced it. She stood up straight and spoke in Goblin, “Let us pass! We carry fire. We can hurt you.” She let her voice drop into a whisper that matched the rush of Ashi’s whirling pots. “We can kill you.” She pointed at the severed head.

The tallest troll blinked and tilted its head slowly, looking first at the severed head, then at Ekhaas. Its warty, rubbery face betrayed nothing more.

“Let us pass,” said Ekhaas again. “We mean you no harm. Let us pass and we will not hurt you.”

Silence again, a silence that stretched out. Ekhaas didn’t move but just kept looking at the troll. None of the other trolls around them moved, nor did Chetiin or Geth. Midian moved, squirming. Dagii moved, tightening his grip on sword and on torch. Ashi tried not to move, but she found herself swinging the pitch pots faster so that their hiss grew louder and more shrill.

Then the troll moved, throwing back its head and letting out a weird hooting sound. Ashi gasped in surprise and might have released both pitch pots right at it if Ekhaas hadn’t thrust out a hand. “Do nothing!” she said. Her eyes were bright. “It’s calling something-or someone.”

They held still. A few moments later, they heard the sound of something being dragged through the forest. Two somethings, Ashi realized, as the sound drew closer. Two trolls came to the edge of the light, each of them pulling another troll. They released their burdens, then stepped back into the darkness.

The first troll must have been the one Geth’s head belonged to. Its neck was cut through and the stump showed no signs of healing. The rubbery flesh of the corpse had turned gray. There was no doubt that the troll was dead.

There was equally no doubt that the second troll was alive. It groaned and wept quietly, moaning like someone with a fever. The injuries that tortured it, however, were far worse. It was the troll they had defeated near the stairs, the one Ashi had cut open and Midian had burned. Its back was an open wound, a mess of scorched bone and flesh that was either black and charred or red and weeping.

“Rond betch,” she murmured. She saw Chetiin throw a hard glance at Midian. The gnome’s face was expressionless.

The tallest troll hooted again, softly this time, then growled and brought up a gangly arm. It pointed at the dead troll, then at the weeping one. It looked at Ekhaas and hooted again.

“You want us to kill it,” the duur’kala said slowly.

The tallest troll hooted a third time. Once again it pointed from one troll to the other, but this time it followed the gesture by stepping aside for a moment. Its message was clear: Kill the injured troll and they would be allowed to pass.

“These are not normal trolls,” said Dagii under his breath.

Ekhaas looked at Geth, who looked at Chetiin. The goblin nodded. He approached the weeping troll cautiously, drawing the dagger he kept on his right wrist. Ashi didn’t get a good look at the weapon, but what she could see left her with a strange chill. She let the twirling pitch pots slow to a gentle swinging once more.

Chetiin struck with the speed of a serpent, plunging the dagger into the base of the troll’s neck and up into its skull. The troll’s weeping stopped. Its body stiffened for an instant, then relaxed. When Chetiin pulled the dagger out, the blade-dull gray steel set with a thin blue-black crystal-was absolutely clean. He returned the dagger to its sheath and moved back.

The tallest troll looked down at the still, silent body for a long moment, then stepped out of their way. The other trolls around them moved back into the shadows. “Go,” whispered Ekhaas.

“You trust them?” asked Ashi.

“For now,” Ekhaas said. “The next time we meet them, no.”

They filed past the troll, so close Ashi could smell the wet canvas stink of it. Ekhaas and Geth stood where they were until the others had gone, then followed. The troll, however, gave one last hoot and pointed at the headless body.

Ekhaas frowned. “I think it wants-”

“I know what it wants,” said Geth. He went back to the body and laid the severed head beside it, then returned to Ekhaas and the others, taking his place at the head of the party once more. “Let’s get out of here and find those stairs,” he said.

Ashi glanced back at the dead trolls before the light of the torches had completely gone. All of the living trolls had gathered around them as if mourning. It was an eerie, almost tender sight. “I wouldn’t have expected that,” she said to Midian.

Before they’d gone much farther, though, new sounds broke the silence of the valley. Wet tearing. Dry crunching. Popping. Chewing.

“I hate this place,” said Midian.