The Goblin Corps (12 page)

“Oh, great. Yeah, that’s
just
what we need.”

“I remain myself,” Fezeill assured the frustrated orc. “I may gain my form’s physical traits, but I retain my own mind. Mentally, Jhurpess is still quite…unique.”

The true bugbear beamed at the unexpected praise.

“Whatever,” Cræosh conceded. There wasn’t time to argue. Already, his rich swampy skin tones were paling beneath the frigid bite of the tundra’s winds. “Okay, then, troll. Looks like it’s up to you and those superior peepers of yours. I need you to scout ahead, and—”

“Do not…call me ‘troll.’ I…do not call you ‘orc’…do I?”

Damn it all, they
really
didn’t have time for this! “Well, I can’t just call you ‘you,’ can I?”

“My name…is T’chakatimlamitilnog…of the House—”

“Yeah, yeah, of the House of Ru. I got
that
part down, thanks. So what if we just call you Ru?”

“No. That…would be disrespectful.”

Cræosh decided not to bother asking why. Instead he struggled to commit the convoluted name to memory. The name, unfortunately, was winning.

It was Gork who finally came forward with a suggestion. “How about ‘Katim’?”

The orc shrugged. It sounded enough like
some
part of that damn name, to his ears if not her own. “How about it,
troll?”

She scowled, her jagged fangs shifting about in their gums. “It is…crude.” Then, however, she shrugged as well, the gesture a mirror image of the orc’s. “But so…are you all. I suppose…it will do.”

“Great. Well, now that we have
that
urgent issue settled…Katim, would you be so kind as to scout ahead? Ain’t a one of us here who can see the mountains besides you.”
And I doubt anything around here’s so stupid as to attack a troll.

Katim set out with a long-legged canter that quickly carried her to the limits of the orc’s own sight. And there she stayed, idly twirling her
chirrusk
and waiting for her companions to get a move on.

Which, after no small amount of prodding from Cræosh, they did. Jhurpess and Fezeill loped ahead with relative ease, their four-legged gait providing extra leverage against the shifting powder. Gimmol, Cræosh, and Gork, however, were forced to rely as best they could on only two legs.

The orc gave up almost immediately on keeping the squad in any kind of military formation. Gimmol was, perhaps understandably, unwilling to get within fifteen feet of Jhurpess; and Gork, his short legs mired in the deep snow, simply couldn’t keep pace with the others. Still, their footing solidified some as they moved from their landing spot, and soon the snow was packed tightly enough that the light kobold could stride across it. They made far better time after that, and when twilight began to fall, Cræosh himself could see the faint outline of the mountains, beckoning from the horizon.

By the time they caught up with Katim, the troll was already ensconced in a hollow between two “dunes” of snow, a hearty fire crackling away before her. Instantly, most of the squad dashed ahead, eager for the warmth of the dancing flames, arguing and shoving over the best spaces. Cræosh wandered past the fire, however, ignoring the sight of the two bugbears wrestling with one another. He saw the ass-end of the kobold vanishing over the top of a small rise and heard a moment later the thump of a fist landing and Gimmol’s voice cry out in pain, but he disregarded that as well.

Instead, he settled into the snow beside the troll, pulling a chunk of jerky from his traveling pack and warming it in the fire. After several minutes of silence, broken only by the crunch of snow from the battling squad members and his own chewing, the orc finally faced his bestial companion.

“When I told you to scout ahead,” he said around a mouthful of meat, “I sort of assumed that would include reporting back to us on occasion. We haven’t seen hide nor fur of you in six hours!”

Katim twisted until her long snout was directly in Cræosh’s face. Although the scent was enough to choke a swamp dragon, the warm breath actually felt good after a day of marching through the snow and frigid winds. “Did you…come across anything of note…as you walked?” The hideous rasp of her breath sounded even worse so close up.

“What are you, kidding? This is the fucking ass-end of Kirol Syrreth. The only thing ‘of note’ is the fact that my most important parts have all quit in disgust at the cold and gone home.”

“That…is why I reported nothing back…to you. There is…precious little to report.”

Cræosh nodded after a time. “All right, I guess you’ve got a point. But—”

“And you did not…tell me to scout…ahead. You
asked
me. Do…not get above yourself.”

Whatever
, Cræosh thought. What he said instead, at a much higher volume, was, “Fall in!”

It required a bit more than that—actually, it required him tromping around the small encampment and physically tossing almost every squad member toward the fire—but he eventually got them all assembled.

“We have preparations to make,” he told them, “if we’re gonna live through one night here, let alone four. And then we have to set a watch. Get to it!”

They got. Hollows were dug in the tightly packed snow, providing a surprising amount of shelter from the frigid nighttime temperatures—and, for that matter, a place other than the middle of the camp for the goblins to relieve themselves. After savoring its warming glow for a final few moments, they thoroughly doused the fire. No sense, Cræosh told them, of alerting anyone within twenty miles to their presence.

“I got first watch,” the orc announced, once everyone was about ready to turn in.

“Watch?” Jhurpess asked, his voice perplexed.

Grimacing, Gork tugged on the bugbear’s arm and whispered rapidly in his ear.

“Oh.” Jhurpess blinked. “Something going to happen tonight?”

“I don’t know, Nature-boy,” Cræosh said. “It’s just
in case
something happens tonight.”

“Oh,” he said again. “Jhurpess will go second, then.”

The others shouted, barked, or muttered their own preferences. With all six of them, there would be no need for shifts of longer than an hour or so—a prospect particularly attractive to the kobold, who bitched long and loud about needing his beauty sleep.

The first hour passed uneventfully, or so Jhurpess assumed when he was rudely awakened by the orc’s hard-toed boot in his side.

“Up and at ‘em, Jhurpess.”

Grumbling, the bugbear rose. His club carving a deep furrow in the snow behind him, he trudged along the featureless field of white until he was perhaps fifteen yards from camp. From there, he could easily see the entire squad. Satisfied with his brilliant selection of vantage points, the bugbear plopped down in the snow and promptly closed his eyes.

They didn’t stay closed long. Jhurpess uttered a startled yelp as he was sent flying by a meaty blow to the side of his head.

“You fucking idiot!” Cræosh railed at him. “It doesn’t do us any good if you go to sleep! You’re supposed to stay
awake
on watch!”

“Jhurpess sorry,” the simian creature said, rising again to his feet. “No one told Jhurpess about that part.”

“No one told—Just how, exactly, did you expect to keep alert for danger without staying awake?!”

The bugbear shrugged philosophically. “Jhurpess had sort of wondered about that part. Jhurpess assumed it would be more obvious when the time came.”

Cræosh winced in sudden pain, then wandered back to his hole. “And put the damn skull-cracker away, would you?” he called over his shoulder. “Anything attacks you from the open tundra, that bow of yours is gonna be a whole lot more helpful.”

The bugbear waved happily in thanks, yanked the bow free of the rudimentary sling in which he carried it, and immediately set about stringing the primitive but powerful weapon.

It was only after the orc’s vigorous snoring had begun wafting toward him over the prone bodies of his squad-mates that Jhurpess realized he had no idea how long an “hour” was. He was a creature of the wild, though, and a quick glance at the moon and stars told him exactly how long he’d been asleep. Well, he’d simply watch for that same duration, and then wake—umm—Fezeill. Yeah, that was it.

Although fully determined that nothing should slip past him, Jhurpess found his attention drawn more and more frequently to the gleaming stars overhead. With wonder in his eyes, the bugbear stared, dazzled, at their subtle twinkling. He was familiar with them, of course, having lived most of his life out-of-doors—but somehow, away from the constant frame of the trees and foliage, separated from him only by distance and the cold, crisp air of the Northern Steppes, they appeared larger, brighter. More real.

The familiar constellations were all there, exactly as every bugbear cub learned them. The Ogre, the Mother, the Wolf, the Deer, the Beetle, the Greater and Lesser Corpses, the Rotting Tree with a Thousand Beehives—all shone down upon Jhurpess, illuminating the night and giving the snow a ghostly luminescence.

But
something
was wrong. The bugbear glanced about, but saw nothing amiss. Sniffing, he aimed his nose into the wind, trying to detect something, anything. There was nothing save the icy wind, biting into his nostrils.

The scenery!
That’s
what was bothering him! The moon and stars painted faint shadows across the canopy of white…

And those shadows were moving.

Jhurpess shrieked as it lunged from the blank expanse of snow. Huge, fur-coated arms reached with claw-fingered hands; an equally huge maw, more apelike than Jhurpess’s own, gaped to sever the bugbear’s head with a single, hideous chomp. So closely did the beast’s coloration match the surrounding snows that it had stood invisible mere paces from Jhurpess’s cleverly chosen vantage.

Every one of the bugbear’s limbs thrashed and twisted as the creature slammed into him, and the bow—though useless, now, for its intended purpose—proved sufficient to deflect the blow that would have shattered Jhurpess’s skull.

It was, at best, a temporary reprieve. Jhurpess found himself pressed into the snow beneath a bulk three times his own. Although he was, for the moment, safe from the ravaging claws and clashing teeth, the weight alone was enough to steadily drive the breath from his lungs. If it rose, it would maul him; if it stayed, he would suffocate. A mind far sharper than his own would’ve proved hard-pressed to find an escape.

But the creature rose! Air rushed into the bugbear’s chest, sweet as baby’s blood despite its deathly chill. A low-pitched growl in its throat, the monster lifted a meaty paw, ready to tenderize its dinner for good and all.

And Jhurpess’s voice rose with it in a screech as shrill as his battered lungs could beget. For a single instant, the startled creature hesitated.

One single instant makes an astounding difference.

“Hey! Snowball!”

Jhurpess grinned at the sound of that voice.

“That’s
my
bugbear,” Cræosh continued as he neared. “You can’t play with it.”

The beast roared, a thunderous bellow that ceased as abruptly as it began when Cræosh brought his wicked blade up under the creature’s chin.

The blow would have cleaved a human entirely in two, shredded the brain of an ogre, even cracked the bony carapace of a rock spider. But although the blood flew far and the beast reeled in agony, the hide beneath the fur prevented the sword from killing.

Ancestors!
The orc retreated a step. He’d heard tales of the great yetis of the Northern Steppes, heard that nothing here save the ice dragons or the arctic eels were more fearsome, but he’d never have believed that
anything
could withstand such punishment! For a moment, the mighty Cræosh allowed himself to fear.

But only a moment.

Okay, so it had survived one of his mightiest blows. So what? It bled, and that meant it could die. By the time the others had appeared at his side, the last stirrings of doubt had faded. Cræosh was, once more, an orc.

A keening war cry rose to the uncaring heavens, and it took the startled Cræosh a moment to realize that it had come from the gremlin! “For King Morthûl! For the Demon Squad!” Gimmol shouted, eyes gleaming with fervor and anticipation—and then, glistening blade a shining beacon above his head, he charged madly in the wrong direction.

“Gremlins,” Fezeill observed as the stunned party watched him go, “do not have particularly good night vision.”

And then the yeti, blood already freezing solid around its gaping wound, was upon them with another earthshaking roar.

Cræosh parried madly, his blade barely fast enough to intercept those terrible claws on their course toward his own precious flesh. Fezeill, cursing in frustration, had clearly discovered that bugbear hands were not built to handle his thin-hilted sword, and was reduced to flailing awkwardly at whatever parts of the beast came within reach. Katim slowly circled the melee, a wickedly barbed battleaxe in one hand,
chirrusk
loudly spinning from the other. And Gork…

Where the hell
was
Gork? It only then occurred to Cræosh that he hadn’t seen the little shit since the bugbear’s wail had popped his slumber like a spit bubble. If he’d run out on them, Cræosh was determined to make damn sure the cowardly kobold regretted it.

The yeti lunged, jaws snapping shut just inches from Cræosh’s face. He could actually hear the crack of small icicles of saliva shattering between the pitted fangs. He spun his blade up and out, determined to take advantage of such a tempting target, but the yeti jerked its head just out of range. Cræosh tried to follow up, but was forced instead to parry yet another attempt by the yeti to drag his stomach out through his navel.

Damn it all!
All he needed was
one
opening, one break in the yeti’s relentless assault, to slip his blade past those claws….

And the Ancestors heard his plea. Gork erupted from the snow behind the raging beast,
kah-rahahk
clenched tightly in his left fist, and hamstrung it.

The tendons were too strong, and the flesh too tough, for Gork’s attack to cripple the yeti—but it was more than enough to distract. Howling in pain and fury, the creature lashed down and back at the source of this new pain.