The Goblin Corps (20 page)

The bugbear directed his attention at the next in line—and squinted, puzzled, as it just pointed at him….

A brilliant blue gleam formed around the thing’s fingers. Jhurpess barely had time to yelp before two needles of ice coalesced in the air beneath that hand and launched themselves his way. And then the bugbear was lying on his back in the snow, blood soaking the ground around him.

Magic! Not fair!
Jhurpess struggled to rise, but his left arm proved unwilling to obey his frantic commands, and his right—though mobile—was uncomfortably numb. Thrashing the arm back and forth, impressing half an angel into the snow, the bugbear snagged the end of his club more by luck than intent. Using the massive weapon as a cane, he hauled himself to his feet.

They were coming! The swarm-creatures shambled inexorably forward, the nearest practically within arm’s reach. Screaming stridently—he seemed to be doing a lot of that, lately—Jhurpess spun and raced back the way he had come, as fast as a two-legged gait could go. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw several of his pursuers lift their hands as though to cast another spell, but the rises in the tundra’s snows swiftly blocked them from his sight. He whimpered, but he never slowed.

So they
definitely
should have run across the fuzzy bastard by now. Cræosh was starting to wonder, in a distant sort of way, if maybe Katim hadn’t been right. Could Jhurpess have been so stupid, in such a blind terror, that he had barged over a rise of ice and snow to plunge into one of the ancillary canyons of the Demias Gap? Was his corpse even now scattered like lichen across some rock face?

Alternatively, had something just eaten his face?

Probably neither, but one could always hope.

The rising wind began to whistle as it whipped through the rocky crags of the mountains that were
finally
drawing near. Except no, Cræosh realized, that was no trick of the wind at all. Now that he was paying attention, he recognized it as a scream—and a very familiar one, at that.

Jhurpess appeared over a snow dune and charged toward the squad, running, for some reason, on two legs rather than four.

“Well, it’s about fucking time, Nature-boy,” Cræosh snapped. “Where the hell have you…?”

Five heads swiveled, staring, as the bugbear continued past them without slowing even a little bit, vanishing again into the distance back the way they’d just come.

“Um,” Cræosh finally observed, tearing the quilt of stunned silence that had settled over them.

“Should we follow him?” Gork asked.

“He was running from something,” Fezeill said. “Perhaps we ought to go see what it is.”

“No. He’ll be…back. And we can let whatever…he’s running from come to…us.” Katim snorted in disgust. “Assuming it’s…anything at all. Skittish…creature.”

The orc was already sculpting a hollow in the snow, to serve as a makeshift chair. “‘Skittish’ is putting it mildly. I’m surprised Monkeybutt doesn’t drop dead of shock every time his dick slaps his calf. And frankly, I’m sick and fucking tired of chasing his ass.” He started to lean back, froze beneath Gork’s and Fezeill’s shocked stares. “What?”

“Slaps his
calf?”
the kobold demanded.

“Yeah.” Cræosh sounded puzzled. “What about it?”

The others traded suspicious looks. “Is he messing with us?” Gork asked.

“I don’t know,” the doppelganger said with a shrug, “but I’m going over there to turn into an orc and find out.”

Cræosh shrugged as they wandered away—
Who the hell understands these guys?
—and settled in, relaxing with a wide stretch. “Give a yell when Jhurpess shows up. Or whatever was chasing him, either way.”

Jhurpess did indeed return only moments later, running as fast as two feet could carry him and howling loudly enough that Cræosh didn’t need the others to yell. His sides heaving, his mouth panting out gusts that steamed in the cold air, the bugbear collapsed. Sprawled at his companions’ feet, he stretched his arms wide, pointing both ways at once.

“Yetis! Worms! Yetis! Worms!”

Gimmol whimpered. “What’s he talking about?”

Cræosh and Katim traded glances. “The yetis are that close?”

The troll shrugged. “It would seem…we didn’t gain as much ground…on them as we’d hoped.”

“And these worms he’s blithering about?”

A second, identical shrug. “Whatever they are…they would seem to be heading…this way. Why not…just move off the trail…Jhurpess left and allow them…to meet each other?”

“Great idea!” Gork piped up. “Really, I mean it. Good luck!” And with that, the tiny creature dove into the snow and burrowed out of sight.

Fezeill shifted into a near-mirror image of Gork himself and followed. Soon two kobold burrows dotted the landscape, already fading from view as the snow caved in behind them. Jhurpess dragged himself to all fours and crawled behind a small rise.

Again, the orc and the troll exchanged looks. “I can fit behind the rise with Nature-boy,” Cræosh said, “and I know how fast you can run. What about the strawberry?”

Katim glanced down at Gimmol, who gawped nervously back up at her. “I—I could dig!” he said frantically. “Maybe not as well as Gork, but—”

“No. Any part…of your outfit would stand out…pretty dramatically against the snow. Even Cræosh…couldn’t miss it.”

“That’s right,” the orc agreed. “I—Wait a minute!”

The ground began to vibrate before the argument could escalate. “Not much time,” Cræosh told her. “Whatever you got in mind, better do it now.”

Katim lunged, grabbing the gremlin by collar and crotch. Then, before the startled creature had even drawn breath to cry out, she took three running steps and flung. The gremlin soared like a very red eagle, screaming all the way, before he finally vanished behind a dune.

“Not bad,” Cræosh complimented his companion. “Nice heft, good distance.”

“Thank you.”

“Could’ve used more of a spin, though.”

“What…can I say? I’m…right-handed.”

“Something to keep in mind, though.”

The troll nodded. “For…next time.”

And then, that more or less having covered it, they scattered.

It was a smaller pack, as such things go: just the same six that Cræosh had spotted earlier. Still, a half dozen pissed-off yetis was not something to scoff at. The apish brutes sniffed the air as they passed, searching this way and that; but whether it was the influence of the Stars, the Ancestors, or just the prevailing winds, they clearly detected no trace of the hidden goblins. They took a moment to study the trail of churned snow Jhurpess had left in his constant back-and-forth, roared in unison, and loped onward.

Another two minutes or so went by before the first of several heads and limbs appeared from the featureless white. “Are they gone?” Gork asked, scalp protruding from his burrow only enough to reveal his eyes.

“Yeah, they’re gone,” Cræosh told him. “I tell you, I’m starting to think this whole damn tundra is just plain unfriendly. Hostile, even.”

Katim emerged from behind a hillock some distance away and jogged over. “Maybe they just…don’t like you.”

“Nah. I can’t believe that.”

“Try harder.”

Gork, quite sick and tired of the pair of them, popped into the open. “How about this? You
both
rot! How does that grab you, huh?”

Several vicious glowers landed on the little creature, but the kobold was far too worked up to notice. “I mean,” he continued, voice rising, “if it were up to the two of you, we’d already have died so horribly our mothers would feel it! We just had a pack—a
pack
—of yetis pass by so close that I’m amazed they couldn’t hear my scrotum contracting in the cold! And they’ve just run off, in the direction we have to go—and where some other big worm-thing is probably waiting to burrow into our brains through our eyeballs! We’re nostril-deep in dragonshit, and the two of you would rather strut around like rutting wefkoos than get dirty digging us out of it!”

Gork was gasping heavily by this point, even sweating lightly despite the chill—and not because of his sudden outburst. It had finally dawned on him, right about a sentence and a half ago, exactly who he was ranting at.

Cræosh advanced a single pace, wearing an odd expression. “Exactly what the fuck,” he asked, “is a wefkoo?”

“Umm.” It wasn’t precisely the reaction the kobold had been expecting. He swallowed. “It’s a small creature, about this high…. We, umm, we raise them as food stock. Kobolds, that is. Underground. We think they might be distantly related to birds, although they certainly can’t fly….”

“Preening creatures, are they?”

Gork nodded. “Unimpressive, though. Slower than rock melting, and not real bright.”

“I figured.” Cræosh took another step. “You feel better now, Gork?”

The kobold forced a grin across his face. “For the moment.”

“Good. Then get your ass moving. Let’s go see what’s up with our furry friends and Jhurpess’s worms.”

Gork blinked, but he wasn’t about to question the unexpected reprieve. He quickly fell in with Jhurpess and Fezeill as the squad set about tracking the yetis, and
backtracking
the bugbear.

Katim fell back to march beside Cræosh, who was bringing up the rear.

“I am somewhat…surprised,” she said.

“What, that I didn’t squeeze his head till it popped like a rotten grape?”

“I was thinking more…like a badger, but yes.”

Cræosh decided firmly not to ask
why
trolls had an expression in their language for popping badgers. “Thought about it. Really seriously thought about it. Gork’s useful, though, in his own way. And the fact is, the little turd’s absolutely right. We’ve gotta have other priorities right now.”

Katim grinned, a semifrozen tendril of drool dropping from her maw. “But as soon…as there are no other…priorities?”

Yeah, I don’t think she’s talkin’ about Gork anymore.
“I’ve fought humans, elves, and dwarves, soldiers and wizards, even a small dragon once, and not a one of them could kill me. You can be sure as shit squishes that I don’t intend to let one of my own team do it.” Deep within, a part of him cringed at so openly confronting the troll, but if there was fear in his soul, there was certainly none in his voice.

The troll’s smile widened. “Are you so certain…I mean you harm?”

“I’m ‘worthy,’ remember?”

“Indeed you are. Look on the bright…side, Cræosh. For the…moment, we still have…
priorities.”

Cræosh wasn’t certain how (or if?) he would have responded to that, had not Fezeill’s voice come drifting back to them. “Mind your step up here,” he called. “The ground’s getting a little rocky and uneven. I think there’s one of those chasms Katim mentioned off to the right. We shouldn’t get too close.”

The orc suddenly stopped short. “What’s the problem…now?” Katim asked.

“Um…Which way did you throw Gimmol, exactly?”

The troll glanced about, taking her bearings, and pointed.

Ahead and off to the right.

For an instant, her jaw worked without the faintest sound. It was the first time Cræosh had seen her speechless.

“Oh,” she said finally.

“Yeah,” Cræosh agreed. “Oh.”

Another moment of silence.

“Do we…actually care what happened…to him?”

“We don’t. Shreckt might.”

They dashed ahead, quickly overtaking Fezeill and the others. There was, indeed, a gorge—narrow but
very
deep—plunging away into the frozen earth, not far off their intended path. After a woefully inadequate explanation of the situation, Cræosh ordered them all to spread out and advance slowly upon the gorge, searching for a gremlin who might or might not already be a part of the landscape.

It was Gork who finally stumbled over him. The ground here sloped toward the chasm, gradually at first but dangerously steep near the edge. Several piles in the snow suggested that something roughly gremlin-sized
might
have landed nearby and then tumbled down the incline.

Or it could’ve just been the gusting wind. Gork had already climbed as far down that slope as he was willing to risk (not very), and was just about to haul himself back up when he heard whimpering.

Damn.
“Gimmol? That you?”

“Help!!!!”

“I’ll interpret that as a yes,” Gork muttered, rubbing an ear. “All right, hold on! “
Stars dammit all, why’d
I
have to be the one to find him?
He gave serious thought to walking away, pretending he’d never found the annoying little scab, but the others had seen him come down this way to search. If he walked away empty-handed, and one of them found Gimmol later on, they’d certainly figure out what had happened—and then
Gork
might be the one lying broken at the bottom of the chasm.

So instead he dug into his traveling pack and hauled out a worn but sturdy length of rope and a small piton. Clearing away a patch of snow, he hammered the steel spike into the rock, wrapped the other end of the rope about his waist, and crawled down the slope on all fours.

And then…“Found him!”

Yeah, found. But
reaching
him, Gork realized with a snout-long scowl, was something else again. Back pressed to the rock as though glued, Gimmol lay at the very edge of the slope, inches above the chasm’s lip. Only a protruding stone, onto which the gremlin had jammed his left foot, prevented him from sliding over the edge and plunging into darkness.

Steep grade, snow-wet stone, fingers numbed by the cold, and not a handhold to be seen. “You’re
really
buggered,” Gork told him helpfully.

Using the rope as a pendulum, Gork swung over beside the trapped gremlin and clung to the rock with his claws. Gimmol’s eyes were tightly shut, but his twitch suggested that he heard the kobold coming.

For no reason the kobold could discern, a few streaks of the cliff face beneath Gimmol’s precarious perch were not only free of frost but seared black, as though touched by a recent fire. “Okay,” Gork said, studying the situation, “we’ll get you out of here, but first I want to know—”

“Look down,” Gimmol whispered.

“I already
know
it’s a long drop!” Gork barked. “That’s why I’m
not—
”