Cold Counsel

by Chris Sharp

  The old goblin in the corner was muttering again, but Dingle couldn’t hear what he was saying beneath the crickets. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been left to hang there, dripping sweat as his arms and feet went numb, but morning light streamed through the high window, and the clamor and howling of daytime had begun. He supposed it was better than bleeding out and getting pecked to death in the cage, but he wasn’t sure what all the intense stares and syringes full of his blood would lead to upon the feathered goblin’s return. Every time the doktor’s evil eye looked at him, he shuddered and felt like he might puke into the gag.

  Dingle had come too far to choke on his own vomit. He’d met the Lord of Death and lived; his service was not finished. He needed to find a way to escape the hut, to somehow get past the stockade guards, and then to find Slud. So far, he hadn’t even come close to figuring out the first part.

  There was a loud cracking sound outside, and at once the cricket colony went eerily silent. Dingle could hear a series of distant pops, followed by an escalating creak, like a giant door swinging on rusty hinges . . .

  All at once the world lurched. The window shattered, pots and jars flew off shelves, and a couple thousand crickets were spooked into the air simultaneously. Dingle found himself heading toward the packed-earth floor with a muffled yelp.

  He turned his head at the last minute and met the ground with his shoulder as a flash of white took his vision. It returned just in time for him to see the heavy rain of crickets fall across the room. His shoulder had snapped out of its socket, and the wind was knocked out of his chest. With a high-pitched wheeze he searched for air, catching it again along with a nose full of dirt. He sneezed with another shock of pain, and a cluster of skittish crickets leapt clear of his trajectory. The floor outside the pen was now littered with them.

  Through the broken window he could hear hundreds of goblins shouting, calling out for help or barking frantic orders as a series of horn blasts sounded across the compound. Dingle found the restrictive bindings around him loosened by the odd angle of his arm, and with a teeth-clenched squeal he managed to work his other hand out of the loop behind his back. The old goblin master lay on the floor across the room with his one remaining eye open wide toward him. A string of drool clung to his droopy bottom lip, but luckily a bloodstained bandage covered the hole where his evil eye had been.

  Dingle’s dislocated shoulder was locked and the arm hung uselessly below. He wriggled his dead hand free from the rope, the odd tingling sensation throbbing along with the eye-watering pain. He should have died at least five times in the last two days—perhaps pain was just the Lord of Death’s way of reminding him of the gift of life?

  He grunted and squeaked his way out of the bindings, using his good arm to yank and untie as crickets scattered from his erratic movements. Tears streamed down his cheeks by the time he was free, but he fought his way to unsteady feet and tugged the gag from his mouth. “F-f-fuck!” he screamed. The old goblin was still staring at him expectantly.

  His feet and fingers felt like they were on fire as blood rushed back into them, and the throbbing in his misaligned shoulder died down beneath the warm buzz. He stumbled to the door, only to discover that it had been locked via some elaborate homemade mechanism. A wooden beam was mounted on springs and hinges, braced across the thick frame and latched into a metal cage that only opened with a key.

  Dingle scanned the room for an ax or hatchet, but he doubted he’d be able to chop his way free even if he had the use of both arms. His eyes swung back to the shattered window eight feet up. Beyond, the shouting had taken on a more frenetic tone. He scrambled to the tallest bookshelf against the wall and pushed with his good arm—it didn’t budge. The books were thick and old, bound with leather, fur, and unfamiliar leaves. He’d never seen so much condensed information in one place before. All that precious paper and ink, right there at his fingertips, but Death cared not for distractions.

  He tossed them to the ground atop a few unlucky crickets. The haphazard pile grew, and all the while, the old warlock watched him silently from the other side of the room. The bookshelf was more than twice Dingle’s height, but once empty he was able to shoulder it with his good side for a few scraped inches at a time across the dirt.

  After some high-pitched grunting and more tears, he got it below the window, but climbing up with one hand seemed impossible. He heard bows releasing and the whistle of arrows outside. It’s him! Slud. He’s come for me! He grabbed the highest shelf he could reach and stepped onto the first shelf as his other arm dangled like a limp fish. His good hand skipped up to the next shelf and he stepped higher.

  The hand shot up and he climbed again, amazed at how easily it all came to him. A week earlier, Dingle wouldn’t have been able to do any of this. A week earlier, Dingle’s primary function had been collecting wolf shit from the scout pens. Almost two hundred wolves, and except for the rare occasions when he was forced to go on the even more unpleasant scouting runs, it was his job every morning and night to gather all their crap in a big wheelbarrow and haul it over to the Dung Boys for processing.

  Now I’m the minion of a wanted enemy of the clan. I tasted his potion. We’re linked. He smiled as he climbed to the top shelf and peered out of the shattered window. His jaw dropped.

  The sugar pine that was the twin of the Clan tree that had stood at the upper edge of the ridge for the entirety of his life and the thousand years before it had come down in Clan Center. A big branch had shattered the hut across the street, and the massive trunk stretched out of sight in both directions. Dingle hoisted himself up for a better view as the bookshelf wobbled on the uneven ground.

  The egg merchant from the nightmarish world above lay in the street amid the wreckage of his cage. The spikes had jammed through him in the fall, and a few of the bars had twisted up to pierce his back and stick out of his stomach. His legs were bent in absurd ways, and the blood flowed out of him in a fast-growing pool. Despite it, his bulging eyeballs still moved, snapping up to meet Dingle’s horrified stare.

  “The egg goes splat, but we still eat. For birds or wolves, we’ll be their meat.” The egg merchant smiled as his gaze went slack.

  Dingle dry heaved as the bookshelf teetered and then settled again. This would have been his fate had the feathered-goblin not carried him down the night before. Everything was happening for a reason. He was meant to help Slud further.

  That was when he saw him, the Lord of Death himself, lumbering along the top of the fallen tree in a bearskin coat with a huge ax in his hands and the scarred goblin at his heels.

  His cracked little voice tried to rise over the din. “Mmmaster! It’s D-D-Dingle!”

  But Slud and Neither-Nor kept going, dodging arrows and ducking around branches as they headed toward the inner stockade.

  “Master!” Dingle grabbed at the windowsill, cutting his finger on the jagged glass that ringed its edges. He yelped and yanked his hand back as the bookshelf tipped away from the wall. As he fell he saw Slud moving on without him, and then the full weight of the shelf came down on his already useless shoulder and the cluster of hapless crickets beneath.

  This time, he managed to black out.

  THE ALPHA WOLVES paced back and forth at the base of the throne, stopping every few passes with shifting ears as another muffled scream rose outside. The big tree had come down with such force that most of the oil lamps had fallen, and the Khan’s untouched pine-ale jug had shattered on the steps. One of the roof’s support beams had caught flame and was still smoldering, and some of the entrails that hung from the rafters had slopped down to the floor. The furry leg of the new Herald hadn’t stopped shaking in minutes.

  Arokkhan wanted answers and more ale, but he hadn’t assigned a new Big Boss of the scouts to tell him what was going on, and the want of drink was a more pressing task for the old one. “Hairy Herald, fetch a fresh jug!” The furry freak shuffled off behind the throne with his lame foot scraping behind him.

  Arokkhan had
doubled the guards at the doors inside the hall and put two packs of twenty riders just outside. He had fifteen crossbowmen perched in murder boxes along each wall with bolts dipped in a fast-acting paralytic toxin that his Poison Boys had crafted from a particularly nasty kind of mountain spider. And the mercenaries he’d brought in from the lowland clans were spread throughout the nervous gathering of his typical lackeys. Though they were as ready a band of killers as he’d ever seen, he was starting to regret having sent his two best, Short-Fuse and Long-Pig, to the front lines.

  The Herald shambled around the throne with a fresh jug of ale as one of the wolves gave a low growl. The two beasts still hadn’t warmed up to the hairy bastard, snarling whenever he got too close to the Khan. Arok enjoyed watching him cringe, but at least this Herald knew how to keep his mouth shut, unlike the last screeching fool whose head was mounted outside the doors.

  Unfortunately, the last Herald had been the only one in the clan who knew about the escape tunnel that Arok had built, descending from the back of the throne. He was starting to wonder if Hairy Herald here shouldn’t also learn how to unlock and prep the passage in case of unforeseen complications. The Herald held the jug up toward him and lowered his shaggy face with proper respect. Arokkhan snatched the bottle, bit off the cork, and spat it rolling into the shadows. He closed his eyes as the sharp burn of the brew slid down his throat. This would be one of the only satisfying moments he got for the next twenty-four hours—the first sweet taste of his morning ale was the only thing he could truly rely on.

  When he opened his eyes again, the cold hall was just as he’d left it, clustered with simpering morons and paid friends, stinking of wolves and rotten meat, and with walls too thin to block out the pitiful yelps of his people—just because a tree had reportedly fallen across a few of their houses. The Herald was still waiting at the foot of the stairs with his dark eyes on the stones. “Get outside an’ silence all that fuckin’ fuss!” Arok commanded. “An’ someone get a good fire goin’, or I’ll start burnin’ y’all instead!”

  That really got the murmuring masses moving, and for the second time that morning he felt a glimmer of satisfaction. It sank away behind his usual disconsolate scowl when some damn fool started banging on the doors at the other end of the hall. The heavy knocks echoed about the hall: BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! His next swig spilled out of his mouth as he started screaming. “Kill whoeva thinks they can bang on me doors like that!”

  It took four big goblins to slide the giant beam out of the lock and raise the iron jambs that sank into the floor. The doors slowly swung open with a great creak as the gathering went silent and stepped back to the shadows. The morning light cut a path between them to the fire pit in the room’s center and the towering throne behind it.

  Waiting outside, surrounded by the forty wolf riders, stood Short-Fuse and Long-Pig. The fat goblin was panting and rubbing his thick arms as he entered. The long, black-feathered cloak of the new Chief Doktor was hanging off his shoulders and dragging behind him. The tall mute followed, unfazed and expressionless as ever.

  “The hell are ya doin’ here!” bellowed the Khan.

  The fat goblin huffed like a wild boar as he staggered closer, trying to catch his breath and taking his sweet time with it. He heaved out words between breaths. “Came quick as we could, boss . . . Compound’s under attack . . . This Slud and Neither-Nor . . . Here, now, comin’ fer ya straightaway. Me and Pig’re gonna kill ’em fer ya.”

  The audacity of it all was staggering, and the Khan could feel the blood instantly pounding in his temples, threatening to burst. Luckily it was early, and the booze hadn’t fogged his thoughts yet; he’d always been good at thinking under pressure. He scanned the crowd that clustered around the hearth fire, and his eyes settled on a burly brute of a goblin wearing shiny armor with a wolf-skin cape draped over his shoulders. Arok was pretty sure he was the captain of the guards for the richest merchant in the clan, and the Khan had never much liked either of them.

  He pointed at the big fool and smiled. “You, get ova here!”

  SEVENTEEN: Hack ’n’ Slash

  AN ARROW SLAPPED into the branch just behind Slud’s ear, but he didn’t have time to see where it came from. He’d been a little surprised by the number of fight-ready goblins and wolves left inside the compound, though it was way too late for second-guessing and most of them still had no idea what was going on. Luckily, the increasingly heavy branch maze on the trunk ahead offered good cover leading up to the second stockade. Beyond that, he figured he’d figure something out.

  Neither-Nor had stuck with him, cursing under his breath, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” as he cut and dodged the arrows that came his way.

  Slud took a low swing mid-run and chopped through a thick branch in their path. He nudged the thirty-foot spire to the side and kept running as it crashed through a roof below with a sharp goblin cry. Now that the ax had tasted blood, the cold had settled into his thoughts as well as his hands. Despite the surroundings, he was calm and calculating. Whatever was about to happen, Slud would get in some good killing first.

  Horns blew and arrows flew, but nothing hit as they slipped into the thick branches leading to the tree’s fallen crown. The trunk here no longer touched the earth, suspended twenty feet above the compound and held up by the weight of the base. Slud felt a little sway in his step as he advanced, his keen eyes picking out a spot along the inner stockade where a row of three of the sharp posts had snapped in half.

  He slowed and looked over his shoulder at the pissed-off goblin. Slud almost felt sorry for him. “Oi, get ready to fight. Slud’ll jump in de middle ’n’ get attention. When dey ain’t lookin’, come down quiet ’n’ work de edges real quick.” Slud nodded. “Won’t know what’s happenin’ ’fore it’s over.”

  “Gimme the map, and I’ll do it,” said Neither-Nor.

  Slud patted the bag slung at his back, carrying the butt end of the javelin among the other non-map paraphernalia. He motioned with his chin for the goblin to follow and picked up the pace again. With a last few swings of the ax across their path, he cleared the way of branches and bounded along the increasingly buoyant trunk before launching himself blindly through the high gap in the wall.

  Slud was glad he’d leapt before looking at the number of fighters that waited below. But of the eighty-some pairs of wolf and goblin eyes loitering there, only a few turned his way before he landed among them with a wide horizontal swing. His boot clipped a goblin chin with a loud snap on the descent, and the broad ax blade passed through multiple bodies as effortlessly as if he were cutting stalks of marsh reeds. He spun and swung again, extending the ax to the full length of his reach, cleaving six more riders with barely a drop of blood in the wake of the flash-freezing blade. They hadn’t even found time to scream.

  It was as if the world around him was moving at half speed. The power in his grip was all-consuming. He let out a laugh, rumbling and loud, as he took a wide step and swung the ax lower; wolf heads and goblin legs flew apart like straw dolls in a hard wind. Panic set in among those that remained, wolves leaping in every direction and goblins clinging to their backs with feral shrieks. Slud’s next laugh was louder than any of them, echoing off the stockade walls and shaking the timbers of the great hall between. He spun and swung again and again, sending more limbs tumbling with every pass. He didn’t know if Neither-Nor would follow, and he didn’t care. He’d kill them all himself if he had to. In fact, if he had his way, he’d kill every last soul on the mountain before he was through.

  During his next swing he saw the scarred goblin drop between two retreating riders, and Neither-Nor’s razor-edged blades were already dancing before he hit the ground. The two riders opened and gushed as Neither-Nor rolled between the wolves and came up with a slash across their snouts. Two wolf noses flopped to the snow, and the scarred goblin kept moving toward Slud.

  Slud shifted a boot, and his next swing sent a rush of frigid air over Neither-Nor’s head. It caught a pursuin
g rider mid-chest and exploded out of the other side with a scatter of frozen bits of blood and bone. Neither-Nor darted past him and took two more wolves down at the knees. Slud followed, removing the heads of the screaming riders a second later.

  The two of them worked well together, immediately finding a rhythm. Neither-Nor darted again, moving in a quick burst that the wolves couldn’t react to before his blades struck. Only Slud’s ax could keep up, taking apart the riders an instant later. As the two of them tore through another group in tandem, Slud glimpsed a smirk on the goblin’s rune-covered face.

  A horn blast blew among a cluster of riders as they bolted away down the side of the hall, but reinforcements had already started to bang on the other side of the locked stockade doors. Slud whacked a goblin in the back with a downward swing that also cleaved the wolf below it, but Slud’s attention had already shifted to the next target. A cluster of riders dismounted in front of the gate and moved toward the heavy beam that barred it. A crossbow bolt whipped past his ear from that direction. “Watch Slud’s back,” he growled at Neither-Nor.

  The scarred goblin spun into the space behind him with the moon blade passing through the throat of a bold wolf. His gut sticker lived up to the name an instant later as the goblin rider’s intestines spilled over the dying beast’s back. Slud yanked the javelin from the bag over his shoulder and cocked it as a burly goblin got his hands on the beam and started to lift. The javelin pierced his skull and came out through the bridge of his nose, pinning him to the door with his body doing the dead-man’s-dance over limp legs. The rest of the would-be door openers thought better of it.