The Goblin Corps (35 page)

“No, probably not. You seem wise enough to learn from your lesson here today. Still, I must be certain. A brief test, then.”

Branden’s heart fluttered wildly.
Test?

“A test of your obedience, and your fear. This should do.” The soldier’s eyes grew even wider and his stomach shriveled as Morthûl tossed Erik’s blackened heart at Branden’s feet.

“You may leave,” the Dark Lord said, “as soon as you’ve finished. Unless you’d prefer…” He snapped his leather fingers, and Dale’s open skull appeared briefly in the window, as though he were merely some curious passerby. “Do eat up, Branden. You’ve a long journey ahead of you, and you’ll need your strength.”

The Charnel King’s laughter filled the room as Branden lifted the frigid mass to his tear-streaked face and slowly began to eat.

“I don’t like it,” Gork said from the wet tuft of grasses on which he was unrolling his blankets. “I think we ought to just kill the damn thing.”

Fezeill nodded what was currently a human head. “For once, the kobold and I are in complete agreement. Who knows what it might do to us in our sleep?”

With a gruff sigh and a rustle of bedroll, Cræosh rolled over to face the griping duo. “That’s why we set a watch, shapeshifter. Look, we’ve been over this. I’m all for kicking their scaly asses from here to Timas Khoreth and back again if they start fucking with us. But as of now, they haven’t done shit, and we’ve got enough trouble without borrowing extra. I say, if they want to sit and watch us, let ‘em stare till their eyes bug out. Doesn’t hurt my feelings any.”

“Yeah,
right now
they’re just watching,” Gork muttered. He cast a glance at Katim, currently crouched in the twisted cypress boughs above. “Let’s see if they’re so peaceful when it’s me or Gimmol on watch.”

They had, in fact, agreed to stand guard in pairs—save for Katim, who’d refused a partner, and since they were one short anyway, that worked out nicely. The purpose was in part to make it clear to the watchers that they were ready for anything, and in part to avoid leaving their fate entirely in the hands of sentinels as intellectually challenged as Belrotha or Jhurpess alone.

Cræosh, having clearly decided to ignore the kobold’s bitching, was asleep instantly, his tectonic snores sending ripples through the marsh. It took more time for the others, but within half an hour, all but Katim were sleeping the sleep of the just (or at least the just plain exhausted).

They’d found the circle of stones atop a shallow rise, smaller cousin to the one supporting the ruins of Jureb Nahl. The ground was sodden, swarming with insects, and filthy as an orc’s vocabulary, but in its favor, it offered a campsite that lacked the very real threat of drowning in one’s sleep. In fact, with the exception of the night spent in the troglodyte-infested library, it was the most comfortable they’d passed since losing the skiff.

Or it would have been, had a strange pair of eyes not watched constantly from atop the stones. That lone naga, perhaps a sentry or a scout, had remained where they’d first spotted it, observing them with cold, black orbs. Unmoving and unblinking, only the occasional twitch of tail or tongue convinced Katim the thing lived at all.

It looked just as she’d described it to the troglodytes, as she’d heard in many a folktale. Half man and half snake, covered in squamous skin, possessed of ugly slits rather than a recognizable nose, and with a mouth far wider than any human’s. It clutched a long spear in one fist, wore a blunt, axelike weapon on a leather harness. And still it did…Absolutely…Nothing.

Katim frowned, her snout twisting violently. Her fur stood on end and her mind gibbered at her that something was massively, horribly wrong.

To which she could only respond
Of course there is! But
what?
What am I missing?

The troll took a deep, rasping breath, consciously relaxed her shoulders. Then, calm and casual as she could manage, she raised her head once more. She scanned slowly from left to right, her nostrils gaping as she scented the night air.

Her companions, snoring and drooling, were clumped at the base of the largest stone. From the edge of their camp, the ground sloped sharply, the hillock’s edge plunging back into the depths of the swamp. Katim shivered at that, a sign of fear that none of the others would ever be allowed to see. She dreaded the thought of that foul water creeping any higher, of reaching any point in Jureb Nahl where she couldn’t keep her head above the surface.

A second shudder…Because Katim didn’t know how to swim.

The troll gave herself a mental slap and returned her attention to her surroundings. The naga coiled, bathed in the rays of moonlight that penetrated the heavy clouds, atop the stones. It waited proud, immobile, as though the entire henge had been constructed solely to showcase the creature’s magnificence.

Stupid, slithering, arrogant…Ah, shit…

Katim could’ve kicked herself as understanding finally dawned (though she felt more like kicking one of the others, truth be told). They’d spent so long studying the creature, watching for any sign of movement, of treachery, of danger—and that was the
point.
The thing wasn’t just a sentinel, it was a
diversion.

The troll drew her axe and sprang from the branches. And finally, the naga moved.

It spun toward her, hissing madly, tail thrashing, as she landed in a crouch atop the stone. The monolith teetered beneath her, but held. Its spear useless at such short range, the naga reached down with the speed (unsurprisingly) of a striking snake and yanked the peculiar club/axe thing from its harness.

Katim watched its eyes, saw them flicker aside as it moved to draw, extended her own weapon in that same direction to draw its attention even further…

And in that split second of distraction, hurled her
chirrusk
with the other hand.

Fast as it was, the naga probably could have dodged or parried the blow, had it not been reaching for its weapon. But it was, and it couldn’t.

The serpentine head rocked back as the weighty hook slammed it across what would have been the bridge of its nose if it had one. Blood poured from split skin and from the nostril slits below. Katim took a single step and swung, deliberately striking with only the tip of her axe blade, slitting its throat rather than beheading it outright.

A second step and she
embraced
the toppling body, holding it immobile atop the tottering stone. It spasmed in her arms, spilling warm death across her breast and stomach, and finally hung limp. She allowed herself a brief smile of satisfaction—how many trolls could claim a naga in the next life’s stable?—and then it was time to get back to work.

Still moving as silently as circumstances would permit, Katim gently lay the corpse down atop the stones, hung over the edge, and hooked the naga’s fallen spear with her
chirrusk.
She hauled the weapon back up and, with some careful balancing and a few rasped profanities, used it to prop the body upright. It was clear from up close what she’d done, but hopefully it would be enough to fool anyone at a distance.

And there would, she was quite certain, be quite a few “anyones” showing up before long. She didn’t know
how
the lone sentry had signaled them, but she knew, she
knew
, that it had.

Lying flat beside the corpse, struggling to ignore the reptilian musk and more casually disregarding the acrid stench of recent death, Katim waited. Patiently, long into the darkest hours, well beyond the hour she was supposed to awaken Gimmol and Belrotha for their turn at watch, she waited.

The waters off to one side of the hill rippled. It was a subtle movement, quiet and peaceful, barely more than a fish or a toad caressing the surface. Easy enough to miss, had Katim not been specifically watching for it.

It? No.
Them.
Three, if she had to guess by the patterns and the wakes slowly revealing themselves in the scum-covered marsh. Although she saw no sign of it, she was certain there must be a fourth, approaching the tree in which she’d first begun her watch. More than enough to slay the squad in their sleep.

Katim almost felt sorry for them. Her fist closed on the shaft that held the dead snake upright.

The first naga’s head broke the surface. With a stealth Gork might have envied, it rose from the slimy water and crept up the slope, propelled in silent surges by its powerful tail. It clasped a long-bladed knife, a tool designed for murder, not battle. As it moved, it raised the knife and twisted it in the air: a signal, Katim realized, to the creature she’d slain. She reached out to twitch one of its hands and hoped the nagas on the ground were not awaiting a more intricate response.

Two more figures rose, swamp water flowing from them in torrents, and slithered after the first. She still saw no fourth naga, but an abrupt hiss from the vicinity of the tree proved its presence, and proved as well that they’d discovered she wasn’t where she was supposed to be.

Rising into a low crouch, Katim yanked the spear from behind the corpse—unconcerned, now, with letting the dead thing fall—and cast. The lead naga, which had only just begun to turn in reply to its companion’s hissed warning, fell to the earth with a sodden thump, the spear quivering obscenely between its shoulder blades.

The other two nagas froze for only an instant, but that was an instant too long. Grasping her
chirrusk
just beneath the hook, rather than by the handle at the chain’s tail end, Katim dove from atop the stones.

The nearest of the nagas crumpled in a tangle of arms, legs, and tail, struck down by a ballistic troll to the ribs. Katim, who’d begun her roll before the mud could even stick to her armor, jabbed one prong of the
chirrusk’s
hook under the creature’s chin even as she rose to her feet. Allowing the chain to flow through her fist and over her shoulder until she grasped the handle, she gave it a good solid yank. The serpentine creature literally left the ground as she drove the barbed prong up through its jaw and into its brain.

Katim moved aside, drawing her axe and allowing the
chirrusk
to fall. Warily she circled, watching for an opening, ears alert for any hint of the unseen fourth naga.

The one before her circled as she did, its blade held high, but even in its cold and unblinking visage, Katim recognized fear. The snake had been anticipating simple slaughter, not a duel with a troll. That knife wouldn’t even slow her down, and the naga knew it.

The creature finally ceased circling, leaving its back to the slumbering goblins, and made a tentative stab that Katim barely even had to dodge.

Do they really think I’m
that
stupid?
She had to struggle not to laugh. With no hesitation she spun, axe outstretched, and lopped the head off the fourth naga who’d been sneaking up behind her. It was, after all, the only reason the one she’d been dueling could have been foolish enough to put his back to the squad, no matter how certain it was that none had awoken. She allowed the momentum of her swing to carry her back around, so that she once more faced the remaining naga even before its companion’s head had finished bouncing.

That, apparently, was the final straw. With a hiss that was actually more of a squeak, the naga spun and launched itself with its powerful tail, sliding into the murky waters beside the knoll.

Katim ground her teeth, and then shrugged. She certainly wasn’t going into the water after him, but three dead in a minute—plus the sentinel from earlier—was certainly accomplishment enough. With a sharp crack (the loudest noise, in fact, of the eerily quiet skirmish) she retrieved her
chirrusk
from the body in which it was lodged. Come morning, when she could do so without waking her companions, she’d remove a couple of naga ribs to add to her necklace.

Then, satisfied with her efforts, she moved to wake Gimmol for his belated watch, eagerly anticipating the expression of shock on his face.

“Shock” was, perhaps, an understatement. Gimmol was still trying to make his jaw work when Katim went to sleep. The last sound she heard before drifting off was Belrotha asking the tiny gremlin, “How dead snake-men sneak up on us?”

And then she was being shaken by a calloused hand, and might well have lashed out if she hadn’t recognized the scent of the orc’s breath. “
…the fuck were you thinking?”
he was screaming as she came awake. “I don’t give a pixie’s ass if we’re being attacked by crippled basset hounds! Something happens on watch, you wake us the fuck up! Jagged buggering hell, you yelled at Gimmol for the same damn thing, remember? What if one of them had gotten past you? We’d all be fucking dead, that’s what!”

“And the downside…would be what?” she asked sleepily.

“Don’t push me on this one, Dog-face!” And indeed, his tone lacked the usual undercurrent of suppressed worry that she normally found so amusing every time he spoke to her. “I got the whole squad behind me on this!” She spotted several movements in her peripheral vision that she interpreted as nods. “Well,” Cræosh clarified, “except Jhurpess and Belrotha. But you know why, and they don’t count. Don’t fucking do this again!”

Best give them this one.
“You’re right. I…apologize, Cræosh. It won’t happen…again.”

The apology, which was about as sincere as a dragon’s well-wishes, nevertheless accomplished what it was intended to. Namely, it stunned the orc into speechlessness long enough for Katim to get back to sleep.

She awoke once more, just as the horizon began to gleam with the approach of dawn, when Fezeill kicked her in the shin. “Get up!” he whispered, and she could tell by his voice alone that he’d once more taken the form of a bugbear. Instantly awake, Katim rose to her feet, looked swiftly around, and…

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Cræosh said, his tone still more than a little irritated. “Seems your friends have come back to talk.”

Standing in a rough semicircle in the waters beyond the hill were multiple distinct rows of nagas. Some were of a single dark hue, some mottled, some with patterns of bright colors in any number of rings, but they all boasted two features in common: They clasped weapons in their scaly hands, and they peered unblinkingly at the squad through cold, dead orbs.