The Goblin Corps (58 page)

“Listen, Blondie,” Cræosh said, “I’m flattered beyond fucking measure that you think that highly of us, but there’s no way we can take on an army of those things. Hell, we almost got our asses kicked the last time, and there were a
lot
fewer of ‘em.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Havarren snapped. Then he smiled. “As well tell the sea not to be wet, I suppose. Still,
try
to think for a moment. We don’t want you to attack the worms.”

“No?” Cræosh asked suspiciously. “Then what?”

“It’s rather obvious…actually,” Katim said from across the table. “They want us to kill King…Sabryen.”

Havarren nodded as the others gawked at the troll. “Perhaps you’re not
all
as stupid as all that,” he admitted.

“What is he?” Gork asked. “I mean, if it’s the same Sabryen who used to rule here, he’s obviously not any more human than King Morthûl, is he?”

“You’d be surprised what’s possible. But no, he’s not human, not anymore.” Havarren sighed. “Far be it from me to question our lord,” he said, his tone bland, “but I’m afraid that this is one instance where he erred. Badly. Rather than slaying his foe outright, Morthûl cursed him.

“I don’t know the exact wording of the curse, but I know that it was meant to play on Sabryen’s greatest terrors.” He smiled. “Sabryen was terribly disgusted by Morthûl’s—shall we say, pets? He had a real horror of insects. Our Charnel King felt it poetic to curse Sabryen to an eternity in a similar state.”

“He turned him into a bug?” Gimmol asked.

“Worm,” Havarren corrected. “And I wouldn’t say ‘turned into,’ precisely. Say instead the king was granted certain wormy attributes. He was supposed to wander off into a distant corner of the land and go slowly mad.” The wizard shook his head. “I’m afraid His Majesty and I both rather badly underestimated the man’s will. He went mad, yes, but not exactly as we’d intended.

“And he’s obviously found a way to spread his curse. Hence, his invertebrate minions.”

Cræosh, who’d been staring thoughtfully at the table, looked up. “Is this a coincidence, then?” he asked. “Or was this assault timed deliberately?”

“As in, does Sabryen know we’re about to go to war?”

The orc nodded.

Havarren shrugged. “We don’t know for certain, but…” He chewed his cheek, apparently considering how much to reveal. “It’s no secret that we’ve been mobilizing, but we don’t know how much rational thought Sabryen retains. King Morthûl believes that our enemies might even have
inspired
him to act now. Whatever the case, we must assume that he knows exactly what he’s doing.”

“Okay,” Katim said, her nostrils flaring. “This is all well and…good, but it doesn’t give us any…insight into how to go about killing…him.”

“Ah,” Havarren said with a smile.
“That’s
where things get interesting.”

“I really,
really
hate that word,” Gork muttered.

The gaunt wizard snapped his fingers. The door creaked open, admitting a stooped, white-haired old man. He shuffled to the table, a wooden box clasped tight in palsied hands. Havarren took it without comment, and the old servant departed as swiftly as age would permit.

It was pretty mundane, that box: walnut brown, unmarred by any ornamentation, held shut with a simple catch. Havarren, however, caressed it reverently as he laid it on the table.

“The initial challenge, obviously, is reaching Sabryen in the first place. Our dear Lord Worm isn’t the type to lead his troops from the fore. To get to him, you’ll have to maneuver through a rather sizable force of his crawling soldiers.”

“Define ‘sizable,’” Cræosh demanded.

“Quite possibly all of them.”

The orc started to rise. “If you think I’m gonna fucking sit here and—”

“Cræosh!” Rhannik snapped. “Sit down before I
put
you down!”

He sat. Katim leaned over toward Gork. “If I’d known it was that…easy,” she whispered, “I’d have tried it a long…time ago.”

“You!” the general barked across the table. “Shut up!”

Katim’s ears laid back and her snout wrinkled, but she held her tongue.

“Perhaps I overstate the case,” Havarren continued calmly. “It won’t be
all
of Sabryen’s forces, because a large population of his creatures are currently occupying Darsus. You’ll just have to get through the remaining thousands of them in Krohketh.”

Cræosh and the squad exchanged puzzled looks. Krohketh was yet another of Kirol Syrreth’s ancient cities that had fallen at the height of its prominence. (There were, several of the squad couldn’t help but note, a rather substantial number of those in the kingdom’s history. It was one of the reasons so many of the goblin races tended toward the nomadic, or at least smaller communities.)

Krohketh’s demise, however, had been rather more dramatic than the slow decay of Darsus or the gradual flooding of Jureb Nahl. Centuries ago, the city’s citizens had awakened one morning to what originally felt like a mild earthquake. By that evening, the city was gone, and the Demias Gap—having grown by close to forty percent in a matter of hours—gaped hungrily where Krohketh once stood.

Cræosh, who had decided that nothing would ever surprise him again after the events of the past few months, said, “You think part of Krohketh survived down there?”

Havarren nodded. “Our studies suggest that large portions of the terrain actually
sank
as the gorge widened, rather than plummeting over the precipice. It’s quite possible that a surprisingly large portion of the city remains partly intact.”

“So you want us to infiltrate a ruined city filled with these worms, find their king, kill him, and get back out?”

“Well,” the mage said with a slow smile, “if you find it all too much, I suppose getting back out could be made optional.”

“Fuck you, Havarren.”

This time, General Rhannik didn’t bother to chastise him.

“There are two factors that might just enable you to succeed, orc—
and
return alive,” Havarren said, his grin fading. “First is this.” With a contemptuous gesture, he sent the wooden box sliding across the table.

Haltingly, Cræosh flipped open the catch and removed one of over a dozen ceramic vials, about three inches tall and as thick around as a small apple. “So what’re these about?”

“His Majesty had me concoct these specially. It doesn’t do us much good if our Demon Squad gets eaten and subsumed by the enemy, does it? Should you find any of those damn creatures burrowing into your flesh, you drink one of those. It should kill the, ah,
intruders.
Digging them out is up to you, but at least they won’t keep burrowing.”

“Wonderful,” Cræosh muttered, eyeing the vial in his hand as though it were about to bite his fingers off. “And the other factor?”

“Not even you can be expected to deal with thousands of these things,” General Rhannik said. “So that’s why I’m here.”

Fezeill snorted. “No disrespect intended, General…”

“He never intends any disrespect,” Gork whispered to Katim. “It just comes naturally.” The troll chuckled.

“…but you haven’t fought these things. When they take one of their humanoid forms, Sabryen’s worms are nigh unstoppable. It takes an obscene amount of damage to kill them, they can hurl their worms for yards, and some even seem capable of casting spells. If you lead a brigade down there with us, all you’ll be doing is feeding them. And while I have no inherent objection to watching a large number of the lower races consumed by worms, I’d prefer the dead didn’t, in turn, rise up and come after me.”

“Lower races?” the kobold asked sarcastically. “Gosh, Fezeill, does that mean we’re not friends anymore?”

“I’m well aware of the situation, doppelganger,” the general told him. “And I’ve no intention of wasting good men on your worthless carcass. No, I’ve cooked up something else entirely.”

Havarren rose before any of them could ask for clarification. “Go get some sleep,” he ordered abruptly. “You report to the gap tomorrow morning. Don’t forget your drinks.” And just like that, he was gone.

“Normally,” Katim announced to the squad around her, “I don’t have…much use for orcs.” She paused as another of Rhannik’s catapults launched its payload of flaming pitch and naphtha into the Demias Gap. “But I think I could get to…like the general.”

The entire squad, along with Havarren, stood perhaps twenty yards from the edge, directly opposite the town of Darsus. They’d arrived to discover a legion of Rhannik’s soldiers in the final stages of reassembling a sizable number of engines—mostly light catapults, but even a few trebuchets. The wizard and the general had consulted for a few moments, tweaking the weapons’ trajectories until they lined up perfectly with Havarren’s best estimates of Krohketh’s location, and then Rhannik had begun a bombardment that was now entering its third hour.

The idea, as Katim understood it, was for there to be little left to oppose the squad when they finally descended.

“Of course,” Havarren pointed out, “this will only take care of the vermin that are actually exposed to the flame. It’s entirely possible that many will survive inside ruined buildings or in a lower level of the gorge. But this should, if nothing else, make your task simpler.” He appeared even more distant than usual this morning, often staring into space and ignoring those around him completely. He hadn’t even bothered to insult them, much. Clearly, he had issues other than King Sabryen’s worms on his mind.

Katim stepped forward, placing herself directly before the wizard. “We know who the spy…is,” she told him.

Instantly she had his full attention—not to mention the rest of her squad’s. “What?” Havarren asked, his facade of bored contempt cracking. “What did you say?”

“Rumor around Mahadriss was that…you’ve been searching for a…spy. His name is Nurien Ebonwind. He is…one of the dakórren.”

Gork was making very faint strangling noises.

“And how do you know this?” Havarren asked coldly.

“Gork has been feeding him…all his information.”

The kobold stopped choking; the kobold, in fact, went completely silent. He might have tried to vanish, but with soldiers to every side, where could he go?

“Has he now?” The lanky face went as hard as Katim had ever seen it.

“Of course,” she continued, her tone calm. “It was the only…way to trap him.”

“What?” And now the expression was one of utter confusion. So, for that matter, was Gork’s. “What are you talking about?” the wizard demanded.

“Ebonwind approached us in the…tundra. We knew if we rejected…his offer, he’d just find someone…less loyal in the ranks. But if…we could feed him just enough to…keep him coming back, we could…maneuver him into a position where…we could determine exactly who he…worked for. Then you or General Falchion could…capture him alive. Gork was…truly distraught at the lives lost…due to the information we handed…over. But better to lose a few…units now because of…this spy than to lose the…war. After the attacks on…the security patrols and the assault…on General Falchion, we could be certain…that Ebonwind was spying for…Dororam.”

Havarren pondered for a moment, and then beckoned Gork to step forward. “Is this true?”

Gork shrugged. “It seemed like the right idea at the time.”

“I will report this to King Morthûl. If you have indeed discovered the spy we’ve been searching for, you will be rewarded. You should have told us immediately, mind you—you haven’t the authority to initiate an operation of this sort—but if it worked, I think we can overlook it.
This
time.

“I must go immediately; Rhannik will inform you when it’s time to begin your phase of the operation.” A wave of his hand, a few whispered syllables, and he was gone.

Slowly, Gork sidled over to stand beside Katim. Together they stared at the flaming barrels raining down into the chasm. “Why?” Gork finally asked.

“It seemed like the right…idea at the time.”

The kobold scowled. “If you expect me to believe for one tiny, minuscule, insignificant second that you did this out of the goodness of your hearts, you must think I’m dumber than she is.” He gestured in the vague direction of the ogre, who was trying hard to grasp Gimmol’s patient explanation as to why they couldn’t just fill the entire chasm with oil and light it all at once.

The troll grinned, a far nastier expression than Gork had ever seen.

“Just remember that you
do
…owe me, Gork. A great deal. That…fact might just be relevant someday.”

Gork stared up at the face of the troll and wondered briefly if a torturous death at the hands of the Charnel King could really be all that bad.

Another hour died screaming before Rhannik decided that the bombardment had been sufficient, and a couple more after that until the flames below had diminished enough to make a sortie possible. The squad assembled at the edge of the chasm, beside both the general and an insanely thick rope that trailed down into the depths.

“Best guess is that it’s three to four hundred feet down,” he reminded them. “What with the various overhangs and the ruins of the city, there are certainly fires still burning that we can’t see from up here.”

Cræosh sniffed. “We’re about to walk into the lair of those fucking worms from hell. I find myself less than concerned about a few stray bonfires.”

“Hopefully,” Rhannik continued with a glower at the other orc, “the rain of pitch was enough to wipe out most of the resistance. With a smattering of luck, and those elixirs, you might just find Sabryen himself and kill the bastard.” He paused long enough to look each and every one of them in the eye. Katim found herself impressed, despite herself; very few beings—Morthûl notwithstanding—could hold her gaze for long. “This is important,” he said finally, once he was sure he had their attention. “You’re on deadline. You have three days to come back.”

“And after that?” Gimmol asked nervously.

“Morthûl would prefer to have you kill Sabryen personally,” the general said, “so we can
confirm
that he’s dead. But if you aren’t back in three days, my orders are to resume bombardment.”

Something in the general’s tone made the hair on Cræosh’s neck stand tall. “For how long?” he asked carefully.