Dark Obligations: Book One of the Phantom Badgers (37 page)

“That may be, but he says he will lead us to the main storage point for the arms they trade to the Goblins; if we wait, other officers within the cult who escape the Mayor’s actions will arrange for them to be moved and traded in order to get a stake with which to begin again.”

“True enough, but what can we do wit
h several hundredweight of arms? We can’t destroy them or move ‘em any great distance in the time we’ve got,” Kroh shrugged.

“No, but we could locate them, and if they’re still where they were hidden, we can leave a couple people there in ambush, to pick off any cultists who come looking for them.”

The Waybrother nodded. “That could work, but what does
he
get out of this?”

The little Badger waved a hand. “A friendly voice at his trial; for that matter, he’ll
get
a trial, instead of a summary execution. Maybe he’ll get lucky and dodge the hangman. A decade building Imperial roads and maintaining the Ward would be preferable to a noose.”

“Can’t argue with that.” The Dwarf glowered at the brewer, who was trying to look both helpful and cowed, as he drew forth his book of notes. “But that’s just a promise; I want to see a little good faith up front. Tell me t
he names of the entire Assembly, and mind you we know a number of them already, so lying will only serve to put you right back to where you were before you started talking.”

“With all respect, I’d like to keep something in reserve for the Imperial Magistrate,” Forst suggested diffidently.

“Right, it’s a beheading, then,” Kroh tossed his book to Starr and drew out his axe.

“But perhaps not,” Forst interjected. “I don’t know
all
the names, you understand, but I do know some.”

“That’s the spirit,” the Dwarf grinned, reclaiming his book. “Start with the four who killed Emil.”

Felix Kahn studied another line of entries, brow furrowed in concentration, occasionally jotting a note on a sheet of parchment, pausing only when the Mayor tapped him on the shoulder. “I hate to disturb you in your investigation, Felix, but I need facts, and soon. The sun is fully up and the people are getting very restless; we have to locate the Inner Assembly members before they can flee or organize.”

“There are fifty-seven coded symbols used in their roster and individual records, as well as sixty-one code words, not counting the false names the cultists use.” The clerk pulled a fresh sheet of paper to him and began writing swiftly and in a clear hand. “I have deciphered twenty-five symbols and thirteen words so far, much aided by master Halabarian’s knowledge of cults and by studying the tattoos on those cultists we have in possession. I concur with Doctor Drewes in his count of the Assembly...”

“All right, all right, kudos and credits later,” Sleiger interrupted impatiently. “Do you have any names of cultist
s whom we don’t have in custody?”

“Five, so far,” Kahn handed the sheet to the Mayor. “Inspect these households, and if you would, sir, bring any prisoners to me at once so I may compare their tattoos to this ledger. I feel I am not far from
cracking the core code...” The clerk was once again alone in Meyer’s office. Shrugging, he turned back to the ledger.

Halabarian trotted up as the Mayor was issuing orders to his squad leaders; when Sleiger was finished the Lanthrell tossed him a salute. “No one has left Hohenfels since we’ve started this business, and the w
all-guards are reasonably alert. I can’t vouch for the river front, but it would seem that we’ve kept most of the Inner Assembly assembled within.”

“Kilner sent two of his lads to count boats; if we’ve lost any on the river (and we’ve guards watching the docks), it hasn’t been many. We’ve taken two more men alive, and shot a female cultist after she wounded two militiamen, bringing our count of the Inner Assembly to eleven captured, two killed, and three believed to be outside of Hohenfels, sixteen out of twenty-three. And now Kahn has come up with five names out of that ledger. Providing none of the Outer Assembly are in town, we should have them to heel shortly.”

“You believe that Forst, Meyer, and the third Watch officer have left town?”

“It seems very likely, either that or they’re damned well hidden. While we’ve been waiting for Kahn to crack the codes I’ve had squads of Militia searching the warehouses and checking all members of the Militia not under arms (and then calling them to duty), and anyone who has had close dealings with any known cultists, but it’s damned slow going by that route: between Forst and Meyer,
everyone
in this town’s had some dealings with cultists.”

“It is a formidable task,” Halabarian nodded. “At least we’ve the upper hand.”

“For the moment,” the Mayor nodded glumly. “But there are twenty-seven cultists unaccounted for, including that bastard Forst, their leader. I would give a year’s profits to know where that conniving bastard is right now.”

Starr’s little command was marching east, further away from Hohenfels with every step and the growing distance was beginning to make the little Badger uneasy, but the idea seemed valid and in any case she doubted that any cultist could surprise her in a woods. Both captive cultists had been carefully searched, and had their wrists bound in front of them and tied to their belts

The little Threll stayed sixty yards ahead of her force, scouting, rejoining them every twenty minutes to make
sure everything was all right. At noon they halted on the bank of a stream and ate their noonday meal, while the cultists had to make do with water.

The weight of command and the sneaking suspicion that she was being played for a fool b
y Forst kept nagging at Starr. She knew from lectures that Durek gave around the campfire at night that the most dangerous time in a campaign was when you were winning fight after fight, as the danger lay in that you could confuse
winning
with
won
. It wasn’t over, Kroh liked to say, until the last blow is swung.

Chewing a chunk of hard sausage, the little Threll studied Forst; she had seen that his torso was covered with an intricate net of tattoos that surely marked him as a high officer of the cult, probably the Master Guide, and thought that it was unlikely that such a man would try and trade his way out of trouble. But she could see no advantage in sending them on a wild goose chase out here: they had killed or captured eight of the cultists who lived outside of Hohenfels, and she doubted there were enough left to seriously threaten five warriors such as made up her little squad. What else could the brewer be planning?

The noise wouldn’t have attracted anyone’s attention but a nervous Lanthrell’s; Starr took a slow bite of trail bread and held the piece in her mouth so the noise of her chewing would not diminish her hearing. There, she heard it again: the sound of someone very good slipping through the brush behind her, twenty yards away and closing. Causally tapping the biscuit against her bow, she glanced across the shallow stream bed; yes, there were more: Goblins closing in on at least two sides, Tribal Goblin scouts, called
yasama,
as good in their woodcraft as the best Human woodsmen or a young Threll.

Catching Rolf’s eye, Starr made a hand gesture meaning ‘ambush imminent’, and moved her thumb, held close to her body to hide it from watchers, in the direction of the nearest
yasama
. Yawning, Rolf stretched, tapping Kroh as he did so, and when the Waybrother looked up the big Badger passed on the signals.

Moving her jaw to make it appear that she was chewing, the little Badger stroked her bow and looked about the snowy stream bank, measuring, picking her spots; the other two would act on her lead, and hopefully Hergar and Gremheld would catch on fast. She looked
at Forst, who was watching her, and realized the cultist knew what was going on. He must have known that there would be a Goblin force in this area, and had guided her into them in the hopes of escaping in the confusion, right into the arms of his allies. She had to restrain herself from raising her bow and killing him there and now, enraged that his plan might very well work.

Forcing down the emotions with an archer’s trained concentration, she shifted her legs, glanced at her two Badgers, winked, and in one fluid motion spat the
hardtack from her mouth, dropped the biscuit, swept up her bow, nocked, aimed, released a shaft, and darted behind a stump. Across the stream a
yasama
shrieked in hopeless agony, but Starr was past that, focusing on the next arrow as she nocked and drew.

The cold winter air was shattered by Goblin howls, the whipping noise of arrows slashing past, and the sounds of bodies racing through the brush as the enemy closed. Kroh dropped a charging
yasama
with a bullet to the chest, slung his crossbow as he rolled to his feet, and met the blurring leap of a Titan spider the size of a large hound with the edge of his axe, the force of his stroke knocking the dying creature a dozen feet from him. An arrow struck Rolf’s crossbow just as he took aim, the impact both knocking the weapon aside and jarring the catch loose so that the quarrel plowed into the dirt of the stream bank. Discarding the weapon, the big half-Orc sprang to his feet with his axe in hand, noticing in passing that Hajo Ehrler lay on his back, three Goblin arrows jutting from his chest.

Her second arrow dropped a Goblin archer
as he completed his draw, and her third slew a
Pa
as he directed his section to flank the little group. Realizing that their position was hopeless, Starr made her piercing finger-whistle. “Pull back, run
south
,” she shouted, hating the high, girlish pitch of her voice. Janna Maidenwalk could bark an order in a voice that made veterans snap to, but no matter what she said or how she said it her own voice still invited a smile and a wink.

Rolling out from behind her arrow-studded stump, she killed a charging
jugata
with a snap shot that punched through his cord-armor tunic as if it were made of dandelion fluff, and raced away through the trees, hoping the others could follow. Skipping through a thicket, she slid to a stop behind a thick-trunked oak and nocked another arrow; seconds later Rolf, Kroh, and Gremheld thundered into view, moving fast, bloody weapons at the ready. “Over here,” she called, keeping her voice low. “Where’s Hergar?”

“Dead,” Kroh broke the head off an arrow jutting through Rolf’s left forearm and pulled the shaft back through, making the half-Orc gasp. “Titan landed on him and got a neck-bite; he killed it, but the venom slowed him down
, and before he got clear there were a half-dozen Goblins on him. He got two, and the rest got him.”

The Lanthrell maiden closed her eyes against the sudden,
painful tightening of her chest: the smith had died because his leader, Starr, had been tricked into walking into an ambush. When she opened her eyes, the little Threll’s face was hard, and her gaze bleak. Being a leader no longer seemed like such a fine thing, nor would it ever again.

“Forst and the other cultist
?”

“Ehrler’s dead,” Rolf wrapped a
bandage around the wound and pulled the knot tight with his teeth. “Goblins shot him down at the start, while Forst just disappeared.”

Neither Gremheld or
Kroh had seen the brewer after the fight started. “Damn him! Here they come, listen, head to that trail-fork where we saw the great owl and wait; I’ll keep the Goblins busy for a bit.”

Starr rejoined her companions a half hour after they reached the rally point, wet from the snow and brush-scarred, her quiver half-empty. “We were attacked by a
Serao
which was part of a Purple Spider
Afora
; say two hundred and thirty Goblins all told.”

“That’s a weak
Afora
,” Kroh observed, passing the Threll his flask. “Of course the Purple Spider’s seen too much fighting these last few years to mass decent numbers.”

“There’s more than a few less, now,” Starr gagged at the taste of the ale, but took another drink anywa
y as she had lost her flask back at the stream when the fight started. “Forst is alive, the Goblins welcomed him like a member of the family. And you’ll never guess who else was there: our old friend Captain Meyer and some other Humans, three or four, I think.”

“Forst must have sent Meyer to rally up a force of Goblins,” Rolf observed. “I guess they were hoping to catch the Militia off-guard.”

“Something like that,” Starr nodded. “And the bastard played me like a harp, walked us right into them.” The Dwarf smith’s face flashed before her.

“Don’t worry too much about it, little one,” Kroh patted her shoulder. “We all fell for it. Hergar was unlucky, that’s all.”

“Anyway, you three head back to Hohenfels and bring the news that they’ve got Goblins on the way; I’m going to circle back around and see if I can get a shot at the Goblin commander, maybe ruin their appetite for a fight today, or at least slow them down.”

The Waybrother scowled at her. “Alone? No.”

“A Lanthrell can walk past any Goblin sentry, Kroh,” Starr smiled bitterly. “But not a Dwarf. I need to go alone if I’m to have a chance. No Goblin can find me in the woods if I don’t want to be found.”

“It
’s too risky,” the Dwarf persisted.