When Goblins Rage (Book 3) (2 page)

Just a normal, if cramped, looking home were it not for the brutal scene played out in sticky red sprays.

On the bed, the Caspiellan woman's throat had been cut. A grotesque line through pale skin. Blonde hair thick with black blood. More blood had jetted across the wall behind the bed. A sign of her heart's desperation to stay alive.

The strength of her life had sprayed across the room. Had probably hit whoever cut her by the look of the bloody bootprints.

The two children huddled together in the corner, near the tub. Hand in hand. The elf's eyes narrowed as her gaze drifted across the tiny fingers still clasped together.

They'd tried to hide behind the curtain.

A neat dark hole speared into each fragile chest.

They hadn't even tried to run. Were probably frozen in fear at the time.

Nysta knelt beside the Fnordic man's body, caught by the manner of his death which looked so much more different to the rest of his family.

He lay on his stomach in front of the bed. One arm tucked under his torso. A thick puddle of old blood spread out underneath him.

There was something odd about his skin. Something she'd seen a few times lately.

Deep cracks ran like black veins across every inch of flesh she could see. His arms. Back of his neck. Side of his face.

Frost powdered his skin despite the relative warmth in the cabin.

And he looked dry. Solid.

Without touching him, she knew he would feel like a block of ice wrapped in the clothes he'd worn before he'd been murdered.

Almost like he'd been left outside in the snow for months.

The elf frowned. Cocked her head to get a closer look at the face half-hidden beneath lank glistening hair.

The eye socket was empty.

Thick black ooze trailed down his cheek toward a grisly lump soaking into the bloodstain beside his head.

She considered rolling him over, but changed her mind.

Ran the back of her hand across her mouth, grimacing in distaste as she caught a subtle scent of something acrid mingling with the awful stench of the bodies. Though the stink of death was terrible enough, the new smell brought bile up the back of her throat.

Magic.

A spellslinger had been here. Which could explain how the man had died.

Brushing her fingers on her pants, the elf lifted herself to her feet. Let a sigh ease across her lips. Accepted there was nothing she could do for them, and felt no particular need to bury their bodies.

This was the Deadlands.

Plenty of people, both good and bad, died here already. Plenty more would. Burying them wouldn't do much to break that cycle. She knew this from bitter experience.

And this wasn't the first such farmhouse she'd found like this in the past few weeks. There'd been many more. Always with one or two of the victims having the same hideous wound and cracked flesh.

Calmly positioning herself in the doorway, she sucked at the cold air. Clean night air which carried with it the dusty smell of fresh snow. And drove the rancid stink of torn flesh from her nostrils.

She stood there for a while, mind drifting aimlessly.

Then, without looking back, headed toward the small barn off to the right of the cabin. Stepped around a goblin's corpse rather than over it.

Paused at the barn's fragile doors. Took another look around the moonlit farm and dropped a hand to an empty sheath at her hip. A sheath which once was home to a knife called
A Flaw in the Glass
, which she'd lost in Grimwood Creek far to the south.

A town which had seen its own share of death.

The elf rubbed the scar on her cheek.

The farm was a nice place, she reflected silently. Maybe if Talek hadn't been murdered, the cabin she'd built in a valley not too far from this place might've one day looked like this.

Like a home.

Maybe they could've had children.

She felt again the bubble in her heart and let out a soft sigh.

That was the stuff of dreams. And she had no use for dreams. Not anymore. The Deadlands was no place to raise children.

No place for the innocent.

She knuckled her forehead, feeling the mist curling around her thoughts like an ethereal fist. Bringing back the sledge-like ache.

And listened to the sound of her own breathing.

“Reckon it's only right it didn't work for me,” she told the absent ghosts at last. “Out here, a family that stays together only gets slayed together.”

CHAPTER TWO

The elf's soft-spoken comment drifted into the silence of the barn, and its echoes murmured in her ears while she slept. Which meant she didn't sleep well.

Constantly tossing and turning. Lips moving to the beat of her husband's name.

Talek
.
 

Whose body was lying in the cold ground near the cabin which was such a poor imitation of this one.

On his grave, the rotting head of the man responsible for killing him. Her half-brother, Raste. She'd hunted Raste across the Deadlands. Killed him at the southernmost border before cutting off his head.

She recalled the grisly weight as she'd carried it. Its stink.

The same stink which crawled from the open doors of the cabin.

A stink like the breath of ghosts.

And maybe it was.

When she finally woke, she shivered in the mean light of early morning.

Rubbed the last broken fragments of nightmare from her eyes, growled a few curses, and left the barn. Kept pressing her fingers to her temples as the echoes of nocturnal horror mutated into a throbbing ache.

And above the ache, dulling her thoughts, the ever-present drifting fingers of mist.

More snow had fallen during the night, partially covering the twisted bodies of the goblins. If an odd limb here and there hadn't been sticking up through the pale blanket, she might even have believed the skirmish had also been a nightmare.

Looking around the yard, she found a small well.

A waist-high wall had been built around the hole in the ground. Assembled with more hope than skill, the crumbling wall didn't look solid enough to take her weight. She leaned against it anyway.

Pursed her lips in satisfaction as it held. Looked down and saw stray sparks of light flickering off the water shrouded in shadows. A small wooden bucket lay on its side on top of the wall and she tossed it in with a casual flick of her wrist.

Heard the sharp splash of water. Ran her tongue across dry teeth.

Ice gripped the rope tied to the bucket and her hands were numb by the time she'd hauled up a full load.

Bracing herself against the cold, she speedily dipped her hands into the near-frozen water before splashing her face. It was so cold it was like she'd splashed glass shards against her cheeks. A gasp, torn from her lungs, exploded into the silence like bats taking flight.

Followed quickly by another curse.

Then she removed her jacket and bracers. Scowled at fresh bruises forming a broken ladder up her arm before continuing the uncomfortable process of washing in cold water.

She worked as quickly as she could, aware it was unsafe to stay this close to so many bodies. She'd already risked much just to get a few hours of sleep. Corpses attracted some of the worst monsters which lived in the Deadlands.

Especially this far north. Where the terrible shadows of the Bloods, a jagged mountain range forming the northern border of the Deadlands, clawed across the ice-scarred forests.

Trolls loved to hunt in the forests. Their hooting cries resonated often, announcing the pleasure of fresh meat. Draugs also haunted the trees.

And worse still, were the Dhampirs. Large misshapen creatures with a thirst for blood. They normally ranged across the mountains, but would drift down into the forests if the Winter was particularly cold. And this one had been bitter.

Long, too.

It'd been four months since she'd left Talek's grave. Four months of unending cold. Blizzards had scoured the Deadlands, freezing the very earth and raking its frozen fingers through her bones.

Talk in every town lately was that the Winter would never end. That maybe the Dark Lord lived again. That he once more spread his frozen fingers across the land from his entombed fortress, Winterkeep.

Everyone agreed there hadn't been a Winter like it.

Then there were those who argued that spellslingers, locked in the towers of Godsfall, were meddling with darker magics and could now control the weather. That, in their hatred of Rule, they sent storms raging southward toward the Caspiellan lands.

At thought of spellslingers, the elf frowned. And wondered what had happened to Chukshene. She'd last seen him muttering to himself as he headed east of Grimwood Creek in hope of catching ship to Dragonclaw. And, from there, making his way to Godsfall.

With a snort, the elf splashed more water along the back of her neck, ignoring the slither of something crawling over her skin.

Knowing the warlock, he probably fell overboard.

Was eaten by sharks.

At least, she thought with a curl of her lip, she could only hope so. She hadn't entirely trusted him.

In any case, she figured it wasn't the Dead God rising from his grave which kept the icy clouds spewing snow across the Deadlands. Nor was it the cursed mages of Godsfall unleashing magics beyond their control.

It was just weather.

Admittedly unusual weather.

But just weather. Nothing mysterious about it.

And it would end soon.

Although, looking up at solemn clouds the colour of dull steel, she knew it wouldn't be ending today.

Nysta sucked a mouthful of water from her cupped hand. Tasted sweat mingled with the subtle earthiness of the water. Her gums tingled in protest at the sudden invasion of cold and she ran her tongue over her teeth.

Her mouth felt fuzzy and numb.

Turning her gaze, she looked up at the Bloods.

The jagged mist-locked peaks tore through the land from the coast to a point too far in the distant east to be thought about. It wasn't hard to imagine them as the remains of an ancient god's spine. Pierced by countless spearblades.

Few paths were gouged through the Bloods. And the only one close was Tannen's Run. Called that simply because it was the name of the town which nestled between two large mountains heralding the beginning of the trail.

A trail known for the ruthless toll it took on those who attempted to travel it.

Because, deep in the heart of the Bloods, there were even worse monsters than Dhampirs.

Evils from the dawn of time were rumoured to live among the inhospitable peaks. From before Grim and Rule claimed the world for their own.

Evils so ancient they were unfathomable.

The elf sucked on her teeth as she stared up at the splintered peaks, accepting it would soon be a trail she would have to tread. And wondered how much more treacherous such a path would be with goblins snapping at her ankles.

Why they'd suddenly decided to hunt her with such unusual persistence bothered her. Goblins weren't known for their ability to concentrate long enough to follow their prey for more than a few hours, let alone days.

More incredible was the realisation it seemed to be every mob of goblins had a grudge. It felt as though all the goblins in the Deadlands had suddenly decided to converge on her. To hunt her.

It made no sense.

But then the last one called her a thief.

And that changed everything.

She tried to think when she'd last seen a goblin who hadn't been determined to kill her. Highwall, she thought. Twenty days ago.

Had something happened to make them chase her?

She couldn't remember anything. But she was having a hard time focussing her thoughts. And about all she could remember of her time in Highwall was the lukewarm beer and a few days of drunken stupor.

Also, a stew cooked by a cackling old woman who claimed the meat floating in stringy lumps was goat.

Didn't taste like goat.

Then there was a fight or two. Maybe three.

Six at most.

But those brawls had been with humans. An ork. Maybe a troll. But definitely not any goblins.

Her fists squeezed tight around the bucket's crude wooden handle.

She couldn't remember anything else.

The elf leaned against the well, stifling a yawn as she wondered what she should do about it.

Killing goblins was no easy thing. They were small. Fast. Tougher than boots. And those heavy goblinknives could take more than their fair share of flesh if they found their target.

She'd killed enough this past few weeks to feel she was getting good at killing them.

But that confidence was brief. Because she knew goblins weren't necessarily dangerous if they were alone. For someone with her training, handling small groups wasn't necessarily difficult most of the time.

But if a mob of six or seven jumped her? Eight? More?

Then, quite simply, she'd be dead.

She couldn't fight that many. Not at once. Even ogres had trouble with a full mob of angry goblins.

The last mob had come in two packs. First a group of three. Who'd been a challenge. Made easy only because the first had tripped on a shovel half-buried in the snow.

Then the two who'd heard the commotion and come investigating. Arrived only as she killed the last of the three. It was only luck that all five hadn't pounced on her at the same time.

Luck she hoped would hold a little longer.

Long enough to get to Tannen's Run. Then she'd pick up some supplies. Hike across the mountains. And disappear into the Fnordic Lands beyond the Great Wall.

Her lips drew back into a sardonic grin. It sounded so easy, yet she knew it wouldn't be.

She gave her jacket a shake before putting it back on. The familiar weight of extra knives made the knotted muscles in her shoulders relax a little.

Absently massaged her shoulder as something unseen crawled across the skin.

The fog lining her brain stopped her from thinking too much about it, even if she'd been ready to think about what might be there.