The Goblin Corps (29 page)

The ogre shrugged. “Me not see problem. Us just walk through water. Me get wet before.”

“Prove it,” Gork muttered, holding his nose.

“That’s just fine for you, Belrotha,” Gimmol said with substantially more courtesy, “but it won’t work for all of us. I’d probably drown before you were in up to your waist.”

“So me carry you?”

Reluctantly, the gremlin glanced at Gork, who was tapping his foot impatiently on the sodden ground. “What about him?” he asked, tossing a thumb over his shoulder. “He’s even shorter than I am.”

The ogre cocked her head. “Him not as nice as you. But me can probably carry both.”

“You’re all heart,” Gork said.

“Jhurpess not want to get fur all wet and dirty,” the bugbear wailed. “Jhurpess will smell bad, and prey will run away.”

“Prey?” Cræosh asked. “You planning to hunt, Nature-boy?”

“Jhurpess hungry!”

“Now there’s a surprise. Why don’t you eat my—”

“If
I may?” Katim asked in a tone that suggested she didn’t really give a damn whether she might or not. “I believe we…were supposed to be accomplishing…something.”

“Yeah, we’re trying!” Cræosh barked. “If you’ve got an idea, now’d be a great time for it.”

“What we need is…a skiff or a raft of some…sort.”

Fezeill raised a scale-covered hand, a gesture more appropriate to a schoolchild than a troglodyte. “I don’t mean to ssspit on your delusions, Katim, but even assssuming any of usss had the proper ssskills to build a raft—and any of you who think it’sss really as sssimple as tying a few logsss together are welcome to try it—I doubt we could make one big enough for Tree-trunk over here.”

Belrotha scowled. “You make fun of me?”

“Not at all. Would you like me to?”

“What I had in…mind,” Katim interjected yet again, “was for the rest…of us to make use of the…skiff, and for…Belrotha to pull it.”

“Oh.” Fezeill blinked. “Actually, that’sss not a bad idea. But we ssstill don’t have a ssskiff.”

“No.” The troll’s uneven teeth shifted and glinted in her evil grin. “But…it shouldn’t be too hard…to find someone who does. Right…Gork?”

The kobold jumped, then frowned, and finally nodded. “She’s right, actually. You won’t find anyone stupid enough to go deep, but the very edges of Jureb Nahl aren’t
too
bad. A few spots worth cultivating, plenty of snakes and gators to eat. Never any way of knowing exactly where, but there’s always a few down-and-out folks eking out a living. Goblins and exiled kobolds, mostly, sometimes some humans. We used to dare each other to sneak out at night and steal from them, when I was a kit.”

“Could take a while to find them,” Cræosh said.

“Less time, and certainly…less discomfort than to cross…the swamp otherwise, wouldn’t…you say?”

It actually took only a few hours’ travel, paralleling the eastern edge of the marsh, to prove both Katim and Gork right. A rickety old shack stood upon a small rise, a few dozen yards beyond dry land. It looked to have been constructed with the castoff of other, better homes: the door hung askew, too small for the frame; uneven boards left gaps in the walls; and the chimney was so full of holes that no smoke would ever have reached the top.

“I don’t get it,” Gimmol said. “Why?”

The orc shrugged. “Kicked out of their homes, maybe. Criminals, or refugees, or just too poor to afford to live wherever they lived. Hell, some people are just fucked in the head; maybe they
prefer
being out here by themselves.”

“Jhurpess would rather this to big city,” the bugbear said.

Cræosh nodded. “See? Fucked in the head.”

Katim snorted, studying the shanty. “Regardless, if they live…here, I can guarantee…they have some method…of traveling the waters.”

Sure enough, even as they spoke, a gangly human appeared from behind the shack. He seemed to float, and it quickly became apparent that he stood upon a shallow-water skiff. A single pole provided propulsion, shoved over and over against the mud beneath the swamp.

“Wow,” Fezeill said. “Built to order. Did sssomebody sssend word ahead with our sssspessssifications?”

“All skiffs are pretty much the same, lizard-breath,” Gork replied.

“Whatcha want?” the old man asked, the skiff drifting to a halt a few yards from shore. His eyelids danced as they tried to simultaneously narrow in suspicion and widen in fear. “We don’ see many of your kind here. ‘Cept for the little guy, there. See too many of his.”

“No such thing,” Gork muttered.

“Well, you’re seeing us now,” Cræosh said, ignoring the kobold and giving the man a good once-over. Most of the hair had fallen from his head, most of the teeth from his gums. An old battered tunic and breeches, just barely of sufficient quality for Cræosh to have wiped his ass with, was all that hid the questionable glories of his lanky, half-starved frame.

“We travel to…Jureb Nahl,” Katim told him, deliberately ignoring the orc’s frantic gestures to shut up. “We need the use of…your skiff.”

“Do you now?” The old man rubbed a stubble-coated chin. “I suppose I can see my way to rentin’ it out. Gonna cost you, though.”

“Of course,” Katim said, taking a step into deeper water. “How much?”

The human made a show of pondering. “Umm, well, I think twenty oughta about do it, don’ you?”

Cræosh scoffed. “You’d better be talking
copper
, scrotum-face. I wouldn’t—”

Katim’s hand rose, clutching not her coin purse but her
chirrusk.
Steel gouged into wood, and the troll gave a fearsome yank. The skiff lunged toward her while the old man toppled backward into the water, his cries emerging as nothing but a stream of filthy bubbles. She leapt, clearing the skiff entirely, and hit the water on all fours. When she resurfaced a moment later, she did so alone.

It took a moment before Cræosh, or any of the others, could form a coherent sentence. “What the fuck was
that?”
the orc finally managed.

Katim emerged from the shallow water, yanked the
chirrusk
from the raft, and shook herself off like a wolf. “We need the…skiff.”

“Yeah, but…”

“Squeamish, orc? That’s…not like you at all.”

Cræosh shook his head. How to explain? It wasn’t the old man’s death that bothered him, though he saw neither advantage nor honor in it. It was the casual way she committed even
unnecessary
murder. It confirmed his worst suspicions, and ensured many a sleepless night to come.

But of course, he couldn’t come out and
say
that it made him even more frightened of the troll, could he? “It’s just wasteful, that’s all,” he said finally.

Katim shrugged. “Shall we get…moving?”

The skiff was just large enough to accommodate the squad—minus Belrotha, of course—and not a one of them was happy with the rather intimate accommodation. Cræosh lashed a length of rope to one end, handed the other to Belrotha with a warning that he’d “better get the damn thing back in one piece,” and they were off.

For about half a minute. Before they’d gotten more than a few ogre-sized paces, Katim tugged on the rope. “Stop here,” she ordered.

The ogre glanced around, puzzled. “We not there yet.”

“No. There is something I…have to do.”

Cræosh began to ask what the hell she was about now until he followed her gaze to the old man’s hut. The lunatic gleam growing in her eyes abruptly made all too much sense.

“Women and children, Katim?” he asked, mouth twisted in a grimace of disgust. “Great and mighty opponents, a fitting tribute to a troll.”

“You wouldn’t…understand, orc.” Katim slid over the side of the skiff; the water, here, came up to about her ribs. “I won’t be…long.”

“No, you won’t,” Cræosh said. “Because you’re not going.”

“Oh? And are you…going to stop me?”

Every nerve, every instinct, screamed at Cræosh to back off. He
really
didn’t want to take on the troll, certainly not on behalf of some scraggly humans. But there were
some
limits even to orc depravity, and no soldier went after the kids unless there was good reason; it just wasn’t done.

Plus, and far more importantly, now that he’d made his position clear, he couldn’t afford to back down in front of the others.

Ah, hell, it had to happen sooner or later.

Swallowing the bile in his throat, he too slid into the water. It would slow him, but hopefully not too much. “If I have to, troll, then yeah, why not?”

Katim smiled. “Priorities, Cræosh?” she asked, one hand grasping the haft of her axe, the other sliding toward that hideous chain.

“Yeah, right.” The orc’s fist closed over his own hilt. “Priorities.”

Perhaps it
did
have to happen sooner or later, but it wouldn’t be now.

A harsh tearing sound roared through the swamp as Belrotha ripped a rotted cypress from the mud. Tottering beneath the weight of the twenty-foot log, she took four unsteady steps and hurled it like a caber.

It struck—a wooded, waterlogged, wobbling bolt of lightning—directly atop the decrepit shanty. The hut disintegrated into flotsam amid a cacophony of snaps and splinters, and perhaps a scream or two.

“You—you…” The rest of the squad, had they not been equally dumbstruck, might have taken a moment to appreciate the sight of Cræosh at a loss for words.

Katim, however, managed to keep a hold on her vocabulary, if only just. “Damn you, what…did you
do?!”

Belrotha shrugged. “Me solve problem.”

“You
bitch!
You stupid…half-witted cretin!”

“No need to call names.”

“Names?
Names?
You…idiot! They’re no…good to me if…
you
kill them!”

The ogre shrugged again. “Me end argument? Troll and orc both alive?”

“…Yes.”

“Then us done here. You get back on raft before me have to put you there.” The ogre bent low to meet the troll’s gaze. “You not call me names again, either. Ogres in Itho used to call me names. Them stop when me tie them together and throw them off mountain. There not mountains in swamp, but me can—uhh…What word?”

“Improvise?” Gimmol suggested quietly from the back of the skiff.

“Yeah. That.” Then, having said her piece, she stomped back to the skiff and fished the tow-rope from the water.

Cræosh and Katim stared at the ogre, then at one another. Then, as one, they sheathed their weapons and clambered back aboard the skiff. Belrotha grunted once, and they were moving once more.

After a few moments, Cræosh carefully maneuvered his way to the front of the raft. “Hey, Belrotha!”

“What you want?” she asked without looking back.

“What’d you find that was strong enough?”

“What?”

“To hold an ogre. You said you tied a few ogres together and threw them off a mountain. What’d you tie them together with?”

“Oh, that. Me not use anything. Me just tie their arms together.”

“Yeah, but with…Oh.” Cræosh stopped, finally getting it. “As in, you actually tied their
arms
together?”

Belrotha nodded, causing the hair on the back of her head to slap up and down, leaving greasy spots on her neck. “Yeah. Arms tied good, too. Almost got double knot, but me forgot how to make one.”

“Oh,” Cræosh said again. Then, “Ouch.”

“Ouch,” Belrotha agreed. “Me think it would hurt, too. Couldn’t ask, though. Them not stop screaming long enough to answer.”

Cræosh sat back on the raft and watched, lost in thought, as they passed between the twisted, moss-encrusted trees. By the time twilight fell, they’d moved far into the darkest depths of the swamp.

Somewhere ahead, across another several days of marsh, lay the ruins of Jureb Nahl. If even a quarter of Gork’s folktales were true, Cræosh wondered if he might not’ve been happier if the troll had just filleted him and gotten it over with.

H
ere in his private chamber, with no one about to see him, Shreckt kept his feet planted on the floor as he paced. Designed for people who were the size of—well, people—the room gave the tiny imp substantial space for his constant to-and-fro. Just as well, since if the walls had risked getting in his way, he might have tried blasting them with something.

How
dare
Queen Anne treat him that way? No matter how powerful she might be, no matter who her husband was, she was just a
mortal
, a paltry creature ruling a paltry kingdom in the ass-end of reality. Shreckt had been present at the fall of empires that spanned entire worlds, had danced on the graves of creatures that could have duplicated Queen Anne’s most potent spells in their sleep!

He sighed, then, a heartfelt gesture—or it would’ve been if he had a heart. None of it mattered; not what he’d done, not where or even
what
he’d been, nothing. Here, in this world, he was bound to the form in which he’d been summoned, and to the whim of his summoner. Here, he was an imp in the service of King Morthûl.

And killing Morthûl’s wife—even if he could somehow pull it off, with what little power he had available—would assuredly result in unpleasant consequences. So, with the utmost reluctance, Shreckt dragged his attention away from contemplating a dozen agonizing deaths for the Charnel King’s slut and turned instead to more immediate problems.

Namely, that he hadn’t been able to report back to King Morthûl, or to mention those worm creatures to General Falchion, since he got here. He’d fully intended to do so, once they’d gotten settled in at Castle Eldritch. Well, he was as settled as he was going to get, and the rest of the squad had already moved out on their next assignment, so now would have been a great time.

Except that he couldn’t teleport!

He’d panicked into near-incoherence when he’d first tried, with a grand result of nothing for his trouble. He couldn’t teleport to General Falchion, or to his own home in Timas Khoreth, or even—once he’d summoned up the nerve to try—into the throne room of Morthûl himself.

Once the imp had calmed down and taken stock, he’d finally realized that there was nothing wrong with him; it was something about the Castle Eldritch itself, perhaps a security measure on Queen Anne’s part. And that left him in a new dilemma.