The doom of Kings

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Thuun didn’t curse or cry out. In an instant, Vounn heard his long, heavy strides coming after her. She looked around for help, but all of the goblin servants seemed to have vanished like mice. The lady seneschal fumbled for her stiletto as she ran, but couldn’t get at it. She drew breath to scream for help-and a strong arm wrapped around her and lifted her off her feet. Her unseen shield could do little against such a direct attack. A hand went over her face, holding a wet rag across her nose and mouth.

The rag reeked powerfully of distilled alcohol and something else she couldn’t quite identify. It was herbal, both bitter and sweet, and it reminded her vaguely of a tea-like beverage she’d once been served at a feast thrown by the half-orcs of House Tharashk. She tried to hit Thuun with her elbows and her feet, hard defensive blows with no mercy. One backward kick came close to landing in his groin, but he twisted and took the blow on his leg instead. She heard him grunt, then he brought his mouth close to her ear.

“Struggle harder, Vounn of Deneith. You can do it.”

He was no longer speaking Goblin. She threw herself into another furious struggle, but he just kept twisting and letting her blows slide off him. After a few moments, though, it seemed to Vounn that her arms and legs were strangely heavy, that her blows were sluggish, and she realized what a mistake she’d made. Struggling harder had made her breath more deeply, inhaling greater quantities of the fumes from the rag. They seemed to penetrate her mind and rob her of will. Her vision drifted; she couldn’t focus on anything for more than a moment. Her body went limp in Thuun’s grasp.

The hobgoblin eased her to the ground, supporting her if she were a drunkard while he tucked the rag away in a pouch at his belt. She caught a glimpse of a small brown bottle. “What have you done to me?” she tried to ask him, but the words came out slurred.

He must have guessed at what she was saying. “Essence of gaeth’ad,” he said. “Created by bounty hunters from the gaeth’ad tea of the Shadow Marches. Normally you’d have to drink it, but mixing it with strong alcohol gives the fumes some effect and allows for an easier delivery.”

She was certain of the tea scent now. “Tharashk,” she managed to say with some clarity.

Thuun chuckled. “No, just freelance.”

Some servants were peeking back out into the corridor again. Thuun waved them away. “Too much to drink,” he said in Goblin. “Taking her for fresh air.” With a professional ease, he steered her stumbling body along the corridor and, after a few moments, into a small courtyard. Servants and even guards bustled about, many of them staring at a column of smoke that could be seen through a tall gate. No one paid much attention to the soldier with the human woman under his arm.

No one except two more soldiers who came to help, one with a cloak over his arm. Some part of Vounn knew they weren’t really soldiers. They wore the red corded armbands of Khaar Mbar’ost, but their armor was rough and unpolished, the hair tucked under their helmets lank and greasy.

“Help,” she called, hoping someone might hear her. No one did. The word was a croak. The cloak was whirled about her, leaving her with only a narrow gap in the hood to peer through. The three hobgoblins walked her out the gate without anyone challenging them.

At first the streets of Rhukaan Draal seemed quiet, but the farther they went, the more the sounds of chaos filled the air. Vounn could see little through her narrow field of vision, and her drug-addled senses seemed to make everything worse. People were running back and forth. A few were screaming. She caught snatches of rumors: that the storehouses of the city were burning, that there were riots over a new supply of food, that Lhesh Haruuc had imposed martial law in the streets. She could smell smoke, heavy and choking. She mostly saw running legs and darting figures. They started to turn down one street but pulled back-Vounn saw fighting ahead. They went another way. The hobgoblins’ pace, set by the traitorous Thuun, was fast. Vounn stumbled helplessly. She shook her head, trying to throw off the hood. She managed to get it half off. Thuun grabbed it and pulled it back down, but not before she’d gotten a look at him.

He was no longer Thuun. He wore Thuun’s armor, and she would have sworn that his hands had never left his arms, but he was not Thuun. Instead of the familiar face of the guard Haruuc had assigned to her, she saw a stranger, some anonymous hobgoblin who could have gone unnoticed in any crowd.

“Changeling,” she said thickly. This had never been Thuun, but one of the secretive, deceiving race of shapechangers.

Thuun-she couldn’t think of him by any other name-didn’t give her a response.

“Patrol,” said one of the others. Vounn thought he might actually be a hobgoblin.

“This way,” said Thuun. He dragged Vounn around a corner and into another street.

And stopped. Vounn raised her head and saw a mounted patrol just in front of them. “You there!” called a voice in Goblin. “You wear my uniform. What are you doing?”

My uniform? Vounn focused her wits and peered at the patrol. Soldiers in armor painted with the red blade and spiked crown surrounded a number of other figures. One of the most prominent was a big hobgoblin with twin axes in his belt. Another wore a spiked crown on his head. Vanii and Haruuc, she realized. They’d stumbled on the lhesh himself. She tried to push her voice out of her throat. To throw off the hood. Anything to get his attention.

But Thuun was already saluting. “Lhesh, we have a prisoner we’re escorting to Khaar Mbar’ost.”

“You’ve lost your way,” said Vanii. He pointed very nearly back the way they had come. “Khaar Mbar’ost is that way.”

Thuun nodded. “We were forced back by fighting.”

“Leave your prisoner with the first patrol you see and get back to your posts,” ordered Haruuc. He turned his horse. Thuun saluted again and pulled Vounn in the direction Vanii had pointed.

She doubted they would follow that path for long. Thuun was taking her somewhere, and she couldn’t let the opportunity for escape pass her by.

Vounn dragged all of her energy together and stomped hard on the shin of the hobgoblin who held her opposite Thuun. He cursed and hopped in pain. The moment that his grip weakened, she let herself drop.

It was far from dignified but it worked. She slipped out of the hobgoblin’s grasp and went down to her knees in the filthy street. Thuun’s hand tightened immediately, holding her firmly. She had what she needed, though. One hand free, she clawed at the cloak, ripping back the hood. “Haruuc!” she gasped.

She saw the lhesh’s head turn, then Thuun had her hood up again. Had Haruuc seen her? The other false guards grabbed her. She resisted and kicked, not at them, but backward out from under the edge of the cloak. The enveloping fabric rode up, exposing not the clothes of someone seized on the streets, but the fine dress and shoes of a courtier.

“Halt!” Haruuc’s voice was thunder. Vounn heard the whinny of horses turned hard, then a curse from Thuun. His hands released her. She spun as the other guards, not as quick to react, continued to grab for her. Her hood slipped back and she saw Haruuc riding straight for her.

The lhesh stood in his stirrups, as powerful a warrior as she had ever seen. The deep yellow of his skin was like dark gold against the steel of his armor. The spikes of his crown and those set into the joints of his armor flashed as if he were surrounded by blades, but only one blade really stood out-the shaarat’kor, the famous scarlet blade, was a streak of blood on the air as Haruuc drew it. The hobgoblins grappling her saw him as well. They screamed and dropped her, fleeing after Thuun. Vounn fell, unable to catch herself, unable to take her eyes from Haruuc’s charge.

This was what the troops of Breland and Cyre had seen thirty years ago. A king among the goblins. An unstoppable force. A warrior clad in gold and steel and blood. Her breath caught in her throat. If she had been standing against him, she didn’t think she could have raised a weapon to save her life.

His horse passed so close she felt the drumming of its hooves in the ground and caught its smell on the wind of its passage. She twisted around, captivated. The first hobgoblin hadn’t gotten far. The shaarat’kor cut the air. Blood sprayed out, spattering her like warm rain. The hobgoblin’s body toppled back, motion arrested by the force of Haruuc’s blow. A section of his head landed on the ground just in front of her.

The second hobgoblin threw himself at the door of a house. The wood splintered under the impact but held. He pulled back to try again. Before he could, something hissed above Vounn’s head. The hobgoblin jerked back, then slid down the doorframe with one of Vanii’s axes splitting his breastbone.

Then there was just Thuun, running hard and weaving from side to side as he sought an escape. Haruuc galloped after him. He didn’t raise his sword again, but just ran him down. Thuun shrieked as the horse’s bulk knocked him to the street and the animal’s hooves hammered his body. He curled into a ball and stayed that way as Haruuc wheeled his horses around. Thuun screamed again, but Haruuc reined in his mount and slid from the saddle. Thuun’s scream faded away and he looked up to find the lhesh standing over him, red sword dripping blood onto the ground. Thuun whimpered.

Vanii dismounted beside Vounn and helped her stand. “Have you been harmed?”

The fumes of the rag still made her head spin a little, but they were easing. “No,” she said, then called out to Haruuc. “He kidnapped me in Khaar Mbar’ost by pretending to be Thuun. He’s a changeling.”

Haruuc’s ears went back. “Show me your true face, gaa’ma,” he growled.

Thuun nodded and his hobgoblin features seemed to melt and flow across his face. Nose and mouth faded, becoming almost half-formed. His eyes became wide and milky, his hair white. His skin turned soft and dusky gray. His body shrank a little as well, so that Thuun’s armor was loose on him. Gaa’ma, the Goblin term for changelings, literally meant “wax baby,” Vounn knew. It suited the creature that lay still under Haruuc’s sword.

The lhesh shifted the blade so the blood that ran off it fell in drops on the changeling’s face. “You were hired to kidnap Lady Seneschal Vounn d’Deneith?”

The changeling nodded.

“By who?”

“A hobgoblin-he wore a mask and called himself Wuud.”

“Like all the others,” Vanii murmured.

Vounn glanced at him, but he said nothing else.

Haruuc’s face betrayed nothing except anger and contempt. “You give away easily what you know,” he said.

“I was paid to snatch the Deneith envoy, not fight the lhesh,” the changeling said. “I’ll tell you anything you want, but there isn’t much I know.”

“I didn’t imagine there was. Where were you taking her?”

“A boat waiting outside of Rhukaan Draal, above the first cataract of the Ghaal. Wuud’s men will take her from there.”

Haruuc looked to one of the soldiers who had been with him. “You-gather a squad and investigate. Bring back anyone you find” His glance shifted to two others. “You take this taat back to Khaar Mbar’ost. I want him held in an isolated cell-we may need his word later.”

The soldiers hastened to obey their commands. When the changeling had been seized and led away, Haruuc came over to Vounn, still standing with Vanii’s support. “I apologize, Lady Vounn,” he said. “Such things shouldn’t happen in Khaar Mbar’ost. I can assure you that the real Thuun is no changeling.”

“I’m fine,” Vounn said. “I hope Thuun is too.”

The stiffening of Haruuc’s ears, however, suggested that he suspected the same thing she did: the real Thuun was dead, removed so that the changeling could take his place without threat of being revealed. Vounn moved on to something else. “When the changeling mentioned a masked hobgoblin, Vanii said, ‘Like all the others.’ What does that mean? Have there been other kidnappings?”

Haruuc gave his shava a disapproving look and shook his head. “No, but all those captured near the burning buildings so far have been locals, all hired by a masked hobgoblin calling himself Wuud. The fires and your kidnapping were coordinated.”

“Keraal,” said Vounn. The Gan’duur had tried to kidnap her once before. The disappearance of a senior member of House Deneith would be as embarrassing for Haruuc now as it would have been then.

“There’s no evidence to prove it,” Haruuc said. “More important, how could he have been here to hire them? We’ve been watching Gan’duur territory.” He shook his head again. “But you should worry about these things in Khaar Mbar’ost. Go back to your chambers and rest.” He gestured for another guard. “Escort Lady Vounn. Let her ride your horse if she needs.”

“Thank you, but no,” Vounn said. “I need to get to the Deneith enclave.”

“We’ve been past it,” Haruuc told her. “It suffered less damage than the other targets we’ve seen. Your clerks know their duty- there were crates full of records being carried away from the flames. I offered them the shelter of Khaar Mbar’ost.”

Vounn nodded. “Thank you, lhesh.”

“Thank me by returning to Khaar Mbar’ost until the city is quiet again.” He held the soldier’s mount for her and she nodded her thanks again.

As she urged the animal around to face Haruuc’s fortress, a messenger on a wild-eyed horse came clattering along the street. “Lhesh!” he called. “There’s been an arrest-a group entering the city by the south who refused to surrender their arms. They claim they have come to see you.”

Haruuc stiffened and met Vounn’s eyes for a moment, then looked back to the messenger. “Two hobgoblins, a goblin, a gnome, a shifter, and a human?”

The messenger looked startled, then frightened. “They shouldn’t be arrested?”

“Did they have any message for me?” Haruuc demanded.

The messenger just looked more frightened. “They said, ‘Success,’ lhesh.”

Vounn saw the pallor that crept under Haruuc’s skin, but his face and the hand that he held on her horse were steady. “Take a message back to your commander,” he told the messenger. “The travelers are to be escorted to Khaar Mbar’ost immediately!”

“Mazo,” the messenger said and rode off.

Haruuc looked to Vounn and Vanii.

“Maabet, they’ve done it!” Vanii said. “They’ve returned!”

“So they have,” Haruuc said-and Vounn saw the glint of a plan form in his eyes. “Vounn, I need you to take a message to Munta at Khaar Mbar’ost for me. Tell him that Geth and the others are to be given refreshments but kept away from everyone. Tell him to recall the warlords immediately and to summon all the dignitaries in Rhukaan Draal to my throne room.”

“You want a full court to see the rod presented to you,” said Vounn.

“Cho-that, too.” Haruuc’s eyes were very bright. “Tell Munta to order troops and supplies drawn up as well. Gantii Vus and Rhukaan Taash to start. I think others will join us, but I want an army ready to march north within four days.”

Vounn’s eyebrows rose.

Vanii’s ears stiffened. “We’re attacking the Gan’duur?” the shava asked. “But Keraal still has us trapped. The other warlords won’t accept-”

“Keraal has me trapped,” said Haruuc, “but Geth has brought something back with him that’s nearly as valuable as the rod right now.” He looked at Vounn. “Ride! Munta must act!”