by Thomas Head
The tiny hairs on the back of my neck rose. Halvgar rubbed his neck. He pinched the bridge of his nose, and we all knew not that these were the prints of goblins, creatures so strong, fast, and vile that they could down the horses they chased without any weapon but the bony shards that were their teeth.
The fact that a horse was left alive meant it was likely left alive on purpose, as a trap. The beasts that had done were out there. Somewhere. They doubtless already knew that we were here.
“Kill them as you would a man or a dwarf,” Frobhur whispered to me.
“Just make certain, lad,” Uncle Jickie added, “that you kill them twice as much!”
Chapter 25
As we descended further into the vast and stony way, it more difficult to maintain any real sense of direction. The high, rolling thunderclouds overhead let eerie squirts of sunlight play across the scree. The moving shadows made the sheer piles seem to lean, an illusion of motion that was sometimes real as towers of rock sent pebbles scrabbling down beside. All the while, we picked our way through gap after winding gap.
Noises like snaps and whistles could be heard echoing in the distance as we crept along, ever cautiously. We all thought of the unseen voyeurs, perhaps waiting in ambush already, perhaps salivating at the sight of us.
We had traveled only some six hours more before Halvgar paused. He made a motion for us to halt. He pointed silently to a distant ridge, which was some three hundred yards to the south.
There we witnessed a pair of goats, moving swiftly across the stones.
“Flushed from the east,” he whispered.
We moved more slowly, more silently, after that.
We paused often, looking around. Now the vertical rolls of loose shale were less steep. But it was as if they only offered a better view of things merely to show that we were in an endless sea of these desperate, nightmarish pits. It seemed you could drown in this place. More than once, I felt disoriented and dizzy. All day, we could never see far off, not until we crested a rise, and by then there would be no sound or movement, just the undulating ocean of stone.
We were was always leaning, always trying to avoid the deep and scattered cavities that may or may not have led straight to frozen depths of hell. A hill before us, which cast us all in shadow, looked like a wave of it jagged stone. Beyond it the hillocks became steeper again, and more numerous.
Then it happened.
We began to hear the distant, unmistakable yelp of the goblin. It was both wolfish and owl-like at once, and three times louder than either.
“Take care, sirs!” My uncle whispered to us. “We’re not long for a fight!”
“And not long for another after,” Frobhur added. The goblins stay near the Thunderwyrm, near any dragon for that matter, for not even the black ones will eat the disgusting beasts!”
Neither piece of information soothed our nerves. Always, we took draw of our blades at the sound of the crumble of stone. In time, we were looking behind us as much as we were looking ahead.
And now there was a fog, thick and peculiar, rising from the valleys and troughs.
* * *
Night came shrouded in the mists of the fog, and in this unpleasant habitat I could not always hold my panic at bay. We stood back to back in a circle, forming a shield wedge. We all gripped our axes, holding the old oaken shields aloft. Stillness underscored the moving fog. Soon, we again heard the distant yelping of goblins.
There was a nearby thump, then a crumble of stone.
“Ooh, thundering hell…” Jickie whispered.
He looked around.
Then I saw his eyes widen.
“Run!” he squalled.
Hairs rose on my arm, and before I could make out what he had seen, my feet were moving, carrying me in mad darts across the stones. Yelps were rising throughout the stony way. Goblins were emerging from everywhere, from every nook and pit, as if the earth was spitting them at us.
I followed the fellows as they darted across the rocks. All the while, forms scurried in the dark and the fog, following us with a mad chorus of yelping.
The bleak landscape alive with motion and horrifying noise, I ran to catch up with the fellows. They allowed me the central position, and no sooner had I gained my spot than I finally saw some of them. Five goblin warriors stared at us, unmoving as we scampered towards them. Feral, covered with mangy hair even though they looked vaguely reptilian, their terrible heads were sullen with the deep gazes of predators. But, deep inside me, I sensed something in them that I calculated as more than a predatory danger. I could feel the ancient blackness of their hate. They were just standing there.
Then they squatted, readying themselves. Each was strapped about the ankles and wrists with thongs of horse hide. They were the dwarves’ equal in height, but they were lithe and sinewy. They flashed terrible, growling mouths and brandished primitive clubs of bone and rock.
We ran toward them, crying out the crazed, dwarven bellows of war.
Then fear hoisted us. We each leapt, crashing down on their skulls and upheld arms with mighty chops. And no sooner had we cut through them than we swung back, splitting their jaws or ripping the gray leathery hide of their bellies. Even as we ran past them, battered and ripped though they were, they followed, hobbling like gruesome dogs along the rocks, squalling.
With each step closer, they yelped and growled.
We dashed onto a massive, high stone that was encircled by a stream. When we halted, the goblins were coming still. Halvgar fell behind us. He pulled the small tartan he wore at his waist around a large bite the back of his arm, growling in pain as the goblins scampered up the rock.
The first of them fell on its own broken legs, tripping the next two. Then one leapt over them all. I chopped sideways, bringing my blade across its scar-pocked chest.
Halvgar emerged in the same instant and ripped it across the throat. The body rocked back and forth, clutching crazily for a head that was no longer attached. Then it collapsed.
Another leapt.
Roaring, I rolled around on and came down hard enough on the first one to shave off one of its arms. Back on its heels, the next bit at Mighty Kenzo, only to go flying away from us in two halves. Uncle Jickie cut with surprising strength too, sending the other two without their hands, then rattled at us to run as he split one of their faces on the rocks with the pummel of his axe.
Quick as that, we ran again for higher ground.
They were coming from everywhere now.
With help from Halvgar, we scalped two, even as we ran together, zigging up the crumbling stones of a steep landslide. One stabbed at me with a pointy shard of stone fixed to a horse’s thigh bone, and I landed my axe in the back of its neck. Then I ripped the blade in a deep awkward gouge across the spine. The goblin’s body seized and fell away. It was jerking as it rolled downhill.
Still others came, rising toward us in leaps.
Before Halvgar could turn, one leapt on him. As Halvgar ducked, rolling with the beast, he planted his foot and grabbed it by the arm, then flung it even as he grabbed his axe and swiped across the creature’s arse as it flew. The move was off and weak. It bounded back in the next instant, and it came down on top of Frobhur. As he fell backwards, Frobhur’s lips curled in pain, he had to chop toward his own body, which he did deftly enough to cleave the goblin without chopping himself too deeply. He scrambled to stand, the goblin’s blood smeared and dripping down his longshirt. The beast was still grabbing at him, and Halvgar turned, hacking it nearly in half.
As it dropped, we ran again, chopping backwards. We were severing goblin spines and heads before we turned at the summit to gut and behead more of them from high vantage.
One gripped my hair, sending me crashing down. Delthal was down too, holding his split cheek. And we both saw an army of goblins approaching, even as one clamped down on my foot and shook terribly, undulating as he grabbed my wrist and tried to snap it. Delthal growled as the body flopped and started fish-rolling like mad.<
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It finally ceased, and I saw Delthal rise from its headless body, the very goblin he had slain from the ground.
I stood again, and winced with the viscous pain.
A brute of a goblin bounded ahead of the others. It was gigantic, a monster, taller than me and twice as wide. It was crushing several of the other as it rushed up the hill. The others halted and fell to their bellies, groveling before it as it passed.
It roared.
As did I.
It kept running.
Fear gripped me, thrusting me into the insane action of running right at it. I barreled sideways into it, my knees slamming its face before it tossed me some ten feet behind my fellows.
Delthal hacked into its shins, only to find his axe kicked away.
Uncle Jickie and Frobhur slashed wildly, cleaving into its ribs and belly. But it flung them aside like dolls before biting at Mighty Kenzo, who recoiled, but came up from a squat. He split its jaw before he spun and chopped once more, lopping of the top of its skull, which fell to the ground like some gruesome cup.
The massive horde was still groveling, whimpering now like beaten dogs. A they sunk into the black crags or scampered away, the enormous beast seemed to heave a moment, then the great mass of it fell backward, landing on its back with a gravelly crunch.
The brain rolled out with a fleshy bounce.
All of us were panting, impossibly exhausted.
Kenzo clasped Frobhur on the shoulder and sheathed his bloody axe. He shook his head, and wiped the blood from his gloved on his shirt.
“I’ll be damned, Frobbie old boy! That big one wanted me worse than your sister!”
Frobhur made a disgusted noise, then the desolate hills exploded with our wild hoots of laughter.
Chapter 26
The morning found us sore, and soaked with so much sweat and blood that we glistened.
Halvgar and Delthal, badly bitten, went immediately about washing their wounds. And I had no idea how they even did that much. Cleave my arse, but I struggled to even keep upright, so utterly spent that I worried I might pass out.
It was almost fortunate that I had been bitten on the ankle, for it meant that I could sit to clean the wound.
The light also revealed that we had run through several camps of the beasts. But calling them “camps” was being generous indeed. I sat, tenderly scrubbing my wound, looking about: They were just nests of stone and hide, really, with bones and dung scattered everywhere. Every nook, cleft, and cranny was filled with them. But though the hillsides were abandoned, the wind was still stinking with the smell of the creatures themselves. It was a harsh, musky scent not unlike sulfur.
And we once again walked, ever wearily, ever slow.
Rains were gathering and starting to dampen the hills, adding to the odor. It was a light rain, but noisy weather for all the flat rocks and the echoes of the hillside. But it felt good on our grimy faces. In time, the rains picked up, and as our strength returned, we trotted up a tree line to escape the cold downpour.
We all stood wet and motionless, our adrenaline still pumping through our veins. There were several small pits with stinking, empty nest at the bottom. Some of the fellows sat. While a few of them settled in for a smoke or a nap, Delthal and I crested a nearby hill as lookouts.
First, though, we had to sink slowly deeper into a hollow before the ravine rose again, bringing us up the opposite slop. Crooked, shrubby pine jutted across our path. The needles were black with some moldy disease. We pulled ourselves along a fallen tree, sitting, holding our axes close.
There were a dozen or fourteen young goblins staring at us from a distant hill. They were more halted than the others, and much smaller. Their bellies were protracted from malnutrition. They looked around often.
There was something pitiful about the beasts, and something pitiful about my own mind, worrying whether or not we had made orphans of those vile things.
Through the better part of the morning, Delthal and I waited there, watching them, breathless and dripping from the intermittent fall of rain. And the day was a long affair, being so stiff, so very well exhausted, and cold. Nearing afternoon, the young goblins began to sit or leave. Some just kept staring. Others pulled their supplies in crude, brown fiber packs beside them and slept.
Delthal and I took turns sleeping, watching with great care, but under the bleak and rainy skies, I must admit, I dozed off a few times on my watch.
Once, when I woke, the young goblins had disappeared
Panicking, I looked around for them and saw nothing. I turned to see the older fellows, snoring away blissfully under the tree line. But there was no sign of the young goblins to be seen.
They might have just slinked off to build new nests.
But I had a peculiar feeling….
Suddenly, movement exploded from behind me. Everything blurred into molten shadows like a nightmare. My heart raced. I could only vaguely sense being surrounded, and no sooner had I realized it arms, fists, and steel were whirling in every direction. Axes arrows flashed in impossible sweeps; it was impossible to distinguish the bite of one from the sting of another. Delthal bore his teeth, lunging into the confusing mayhem before he was even awake. The fearsome thwacks and pings were chorusing my own grunts now as I recognized my foe—they were dwarfs. Females. The warmaids from Beergarden roared with animalistic wailing. And as Delthal went tearing his way through the tumult, chopping, his axe was pulled from his hands, and the strength gushed out of my legs as one thwacked me atop the skull.
Then, with the abruptness of a startled animal, I regained consciousness just in time to see one of them telling the others to hold.
* * *
Being bound, then dragged along the gravels like a carcass, I looked up at the backside of a dwarf maid with long black hair and legs as powerful as a mule. She had a muscular arse and was growling rubbish about how much I weighed.
My fellows, readying their bows, halted when they saw the warmaids’ prizes, namely Delthal and I, hog-tied by our wrists and ankles.
“Master Dwarves, Merry Cutters, Wyrmkillers, hear us!” the one carrying me called.
“Thundering hell!” Uncle Jickie roared. “Now what’s all this!”
“In Beergarden, your own Master Gilli decreed that if any among us were stout or clever enough to down anyone of you, then we would be allowed to accompany you on your mission!”
I knew it!, I thought. There had to be more to the tale! Unpaid prostitutes don’t travel across rugged countryside seeking vengeance.
“The one you speak of, the fine dwarf who uttered that decree, is buried in the black grasses of the Naked Ones.”
“Yet, as one of your warparty, are you not bound by honor to keep his word?”
“Pah! And who are you to question the bounds of honor?”
“The ones who took not one, but two of your best dwarves!”
“Best?!” Mighty Kenzo thundered. “You’ve done nothing, maids, but unburdened us of our two horniest fools!”
At which all the fellows had a hard-earned and much-needed round of laughs.
The dwarf maid looked down and eyed me suspiciously. I looked up at her, and shrugged.
She growled. “Stubborn old oafs!” she roared back them. “Do you have anything resembling a plan?”
“Quite so!” Uncle Jickie called, waving them in. “Why, my dears, already we’ve caught some helpers with our bait, now haven’t we?”
Chapter 27
I was stunned to see the old boys welcome the maids so readily. Indeed, as they went crookedly up the sandy rocks, the rain a full-blow storm now, a volley of hullos greeted the dwarf maids like they were long-lost friends.
No hearty greetings escaped the maids’ lips, however. Twenty of them, the full score of them who I had seen dancing half naked in Beergarden’s Nilbi’s Nest, lofted a goblin head each upon the ground to send the snarling, lifeless faces crashing down the stony hillsides.
“I am Ollief,” the one that drug me
said. “And these, my honorable fellows, are the Dancing Warmaids of Beergarden. Each of has lost a husband, or else brothers or fathers, to the wyrm. We are at your service, old masters!”
“Frobhur Farewell, at your service!”
“Jickie Warbuck, at your service!”
“Halvgar Stonebreaker, at your service!”
“Kenzo Bonewalker, at your service!”
“I am Delthal Blackaxe, at your service!”
“And I, I am Fie Wyrmkiller, at your feet!”
“Hullo, ye Merry Cutters! I would ask what took you so long, but that I knew your friend, Master Gilli, the one called Bellhammer, great, great, grandson of Bardo Bellhammer, made his challenge to us in the haste of drink! And you, Merry Cutters all, are oathed and bound to accept the word of even the least of your warriors,” she said, at which she rolled her eyes downward at me.
The feisty little bitch had a point. And a nice rump, should the rather rugged, muscular and short type be to your liking.
Then the one that drug me motioned another to her side, and she told her to unbind Delthal and me.
In the next instant, a thousand voices seemed to call out, but it was only the maids as they gave such a high-pitched, lilting war cry that I jumped with a start.
“Bloody madmaids!” Mighty Kenzo thundered, then squalled laughing.
As laughs poured like beer from the rest of the fellows, the maids did something that surprised me. I got a little dizzy as I stood, watching a dozen of them break off into pairs, and each pair picked out a dwarf and approached.
Ollief nodded.
“We know where there are the ruins of a castle. It is not far from here. It is on the shore of Heir’s Sea. Let us go there, and you merry folk for battle, and share our designs for the Black One!”
Chapter 28