by Paul S. Kemp
Boughstrong himself stepped up to the goblin king, his blades poised, ready to strike. From a distance, the green-skinned leader of the Starrock tribe looked quite large. But standing next to the muscular elf, Ertyk Uhl looked abso shy;lutely huge.
Boughstrong cut into the hulking goblin with four quick attacks. His blades struck the king dead center in the chest, sending chunks of foul fur flying in all directions. Ertyk Uhl looked down on the elf with his goopy, half-closed eyes, as if he'd just noticed a fly buzzing around his nose. Then, with a sigh and a heave, the goblin king came down on Boughstrong with his war club. The basket of the ruined trebuchet picked up speed as it came over the goblin's enor shy;mous shoulder, and catapulted over the top of the lever arm, hitting its target.
Boughstrong's head disappeared between his shoulders, pounded down through his neck and into his chest. The elf's arms went limp, and his whole body fell sideways-he was killed instantly from the impact. The goblin king kicked the corpse down the hill, watching it roll into a pile of dead worgs.
Purdun felt his stomach seize up, then drop. He could sense the energy and vigor draining from the men, watching their friend-and their best hope for success-fail and fall.
Behind him, the call went up: "Zerith Hold has fallen!"
Purdun turned to see the portcullis all the way up and the drawbridge covered with scurrying red and yellow bodies. He could see into the courtyard to the doors beyond. The goblins had reached the entry and filled the hallways. His home was lost. All he had fought for was gone.
A sharp pain brought him back to the battle-a worg clamping down on his arm. With the hilt of his sword, Purdun smashed the beast in the back of the head, pounding the heavy metal against the creature's skull. Then another bit down on his leg. Growling and snapping, it tore at his shin and calf.
Tammsel appeared out of the fray, grabbing hold of both worgs with his powerful claws and trying to pry them loose. But the more they struggled, the more the creatures' fangs dug past Purdun's armor and into his flesh. He thrashed from side to side, trying to break free of the worgs. Then his ears were filled with a jarring snap. His body shuddered in pain and his vision went white.
A calm settled over the Lord of Zerith Hold, and he felt his fatigued body slip backward. His leg was broken, his shoulder dislocated, and he bled from several dozen teeth wounds. He could hear the screams of the people inside Zerith Hold as the entire goblin army rushed through the gates.
He looked up at Tammsel. His friend had a look of utter determination on his face. Nothing was going to stop him. If anyone was going to make it out of this alive, it would be Jivam Tammsel. Purdun considered himself lucky to have counted the half-steel dragon among his friends.
As he fell onto his back, the worgs let go. Tammsel managed to pull them away, tossing one back into the thinning press of goblins-and tearing the other to shreds with his bare hands. Everything seemed to slow, and the battle swirling around Zerith Hold came almost to a standstill.
In the near distance, trumpets sounded. Purdun wasn't sure if they were really there or if he'd imagined them as he drifted off into unconsciousness. Turning his head he looked up the hill to see horses riding into view.
Atop the lead horse, Purdun recognized a familiar face, and hope returned him from the brink.
"Korox!" he breathed, sitting up and holding his torn shoulder against his body with his good arm.
King Valon Morkann and his crusader son Korox had returned, riding triumphantly at the head of fifty men. But it was not the men who were going to save Zerith Hold. It was the five-hundred Shieldbreaker Ogres who marched behind them.
Each ogre was easily the same size as the goblin king. Filthy, ugly creatures, they wore tattered cow hides and bits of scavenged metal with improvised spikes jutting out at odd angles. Many carried broken tree trunks or large rocks in their massive hands. Others wielded the bones of dead animals or the occasional rusty steel sword.
"To the hold!" shouted King Valon, and the men rode into battle, their unlikely allies right behind.
Mass panic broke out among the goblin raiders. King Ertyk Uhl let out what sounded like a strangled wail, then he fled the battlefield, lumbering off the same way he had come. A dozen ogres padded after him, their footfalls shaking the ground as they chased the goblin king.
Spotting Purdun and Tammsel on the ground, Korox kicked his horse and pounded into the fray. He swung his sword like a mallet, in long, looping circles, taking the heads from three goblins as he made his way to the crusaders.
Reaching his friends, he leaped from his horse, sending the goblins and worgs scattering.
"No luck in Tethyr, I gather?" asked Tammsel, eyeing the fifty riders making their way to the drawbridge. "At least you got away with your life."
Korox shook his head. "We didn't go to Tethyr," replied the newest prince of Erlkazar. "My father managed to negotiate help a little closer to home."
The battle wasn't over, but it was clear the tide had changed. Without their king, the goblins were in disarray, and they scattered before the ogre forces.
Korox and Tammsel helped lift Purdun back to his feet, hefting his weight between the two of them.
"How did you manage to get the ogres to agree to an alliance?" asked Purdun, wincing from the pain in his shoulder.
"Turns out they hate the goblins even more than we do," replied Korox. "Come on. This fight's not over yet, and we need to get you fixed up before it is."
And the men left the battlefield to begin preparations for retaking Zerith Hold.
MERCY'S REWARD
Mark Sehestedt
The Year of the Serpent (1359 DR)
"Wake."
The side of Gethred's face stung, and there was a high-pitched ringing in his ears.
"Wake."
He felt it on the other cheek this time. Someone slapped him. Hard.
"Open your eyes or I cut the lids off. Now."
The voice was deep and had the precise pronun shy;ciation of one not used to speaking Common.
Gethred opened his eyes and winced. A meager gray light suffused the gloom, but even that was enough to stab through to the center of his head. He groaned and tried to reach for his forehead. His hands didn't move, so he tried harder, and he felt the bite of rope cutting into his arms.
Massive hands grabbed him by the shoulders, hauled him into a sitting position, then let go. Gethred fell back, and his head bounced off a stone wall. He cried out and squeezed his eyes shut.
"I said open your eyes."
Gritting his teeth, Gethred forced his eyes to open.
The gray light wrapped around the edges of a massive figure standing before him. In the gloom, the man seemed as tall as an ogre. Standing between Gethred and the source of light, the man's features were hidden, but he could make out a great mass of hair, though where it ended and the man's clothes began, Gethred could not tell. The man dressed all in skins and furs. Most wise. So near the edge of the open steppe at the base of the mountains, the winter cold could kill quicker than the Horde.
Around the massive man Gethred could see what only the most magnanimous man ever born would have graced to call a hovel. It was a cave, dry but far from clean, with only the barest signs of human habitation-a few hide blankets, a pack, and a smattering of bones. Bits of flesh still clung to one wolf skull.
The man nudged Gethred with his boot and said, "Who are you?"
"Just a starving, half-frozen traveler," said Gethred.
The man crouched, and the sound he made sounded half sigh and half growl. "You're a liar. You're no Rashemi, and Westerners don't wander these foothills with no supplies. But you're no Thayan by your coloring. You're a mystery. A mystery I don't care to solve. You robbed my trap. Why?"
"The wolf was suffering."
"So were you."
"I only wanted to show another creature a little kindness before I lay down to die."
"Hmph. You had your first wish. I'll grant your second." A moment's silence, then
, "You don't know them, then?"
"Them?"
The man just crouched there, watching. Gethred squinted and tried to make out the man's features. He could not. But the stench he emitted said enough.
"If you lie," said the man, "I'll hurt you before you die. Hurt you a long time."
"Lie?" said Gethred. "About what? I… don't understand."
The man took a deep breath through his nose. "You hold your tongue, but I can sense you're hiding something. I smell it. But you don't hold the stink of the shen gusen. And you're a man. Magic, then?"
"Magic?"
"The shen gusen are cunning. Powerful. You could be a spy."
Gethred swallowed. His throat hurt. "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what a shen gusen is. I swear."
"You swear to your gods?"
"Yes."
"Good," said the man. "Let's send you to them."
The man stood, reached behind his back, and when his hand reappeared Gethred saw the light glinting off the edge of a huge dagger. The blade was almost as wide as Gethred's palm. It looked more like a cleaver with a point, and when the man turned it, brandishing the blade, Gethred saw runes carved into the metal-sharp etchings that he could not read but which nevertheless made the back of his eyelids itch.
"Please-"
"Please what?" said the man.
"I'm no spy," said Gethred. "I swear. Please."
"But you are a robber. And it pleases me to give you justice."
Gethred tried to scramble away, but ropes bound his ankles, knees, and thighs, and he could do little more than wiggle like a stiff caterpillar. He only succeeded in sliding farther along the back wall of the cave.
"Nowhere to go." The man laughed and snatched the ropes around Gethred's ankles. He pulled his legs up and planted the point of his dagger in Gethred's crotch. "Think your gods will mind if you come to them less than a man?"
"Please!"
Gethred closed his eyes and stiffened his entire body. The agony in his head was forgotten as he lay there, panting and waiting for the steel to pierce.
Nothing. Gethred opened his eyes. The man stood over him, still as stone, head cocked as if listening. He didn't even seem to be breathing.
In the sudden silence Gethred heard it too. Horses approaching. Not at a gallop, but there was no mistaking the slow, careful approach of several horses.
Growling, the man dropped Gethred's legs and turned away. Blinding light filled the cave as he opened the thick matt of sticks and twigs that served as a door. He looked over his shoulder once-his eyes were still deep in the shadow of his great tangle of hair-then left the cave, slamming the rickety door behind him.
In the gloom of the cave Gethred lay listening, straining to hear beyond the sound of his own panicked breathing.
The first words he heard were in one of the Tuigan dialects, calling from a near distance.
Then the voice of the massive man-"Speak a tongue a man's ears can bear to hear, not your slathering steppe speech."
The other speaker replied in hesitant Rashemi, "We ride from the horde of the Yamun Khahan. We ride from victory at the Citadel Rashemar. For five days we ride, hunting spies of the west who escaped the vengeance of the Yamun Khahan. Two days before now, we caught them. We fought. Three of our warriors died killing the spies. But one escaped. We followed his trail to a valley a few miles from here. Then we followed larger tracks. Yours, I believe, now that I see you."
"And what is this to me?" said the man. "I have no hospitality for beggars off the steppe. Go back to your Khahan."
"We do not ask for your hospitality. We seek the spy."
"Why?"
"We will take him back to the Yamun Khahan. Our lords wish to question him."
There was a long silence. Gethred thought he might have heard a horse whicker, then stomp the snow. The man spoke again. "I know of no spy. I have only one thief. And he is mine."
"This thief," said the Tuigan, still speaking a hesitant Rashemi, "our spy he might be."
"Your spy? You have nothing but those nags upon which you sit and the stink that follows you."
A longer silence followed. Gethred wondered how many Tuigan were out there. It couldn't be too many for one man to speak so boldly to them.
"We ask that you let us see this thief," said the Tuigan.
"No."
"The Yamun Khahan asks you to let us see this thief."
"Then let him come and ask me himself."
"We ask in his name."
"After my meal tonight I will piss your Khahan's name in the snow."
Shouts-two that seemed genuinely surprised at the man's effrontery, then many raised in anger-followed by the sounds of hoofbeats. No careful approach this time.
This was a charge. Gethred could feel the ground shaking beneath him.
He thought he heard a brief shout of surprise, fear even, then a roar so loud that dust fell from the cave ceiling. After that, the din was so deafening and so many sounds mixed together that Gethred could not separate them-the cries of men, the all-too-humanlike sound of a dying horse, bodies running, and over it all the roaring of some great animal.
The clamor slackened, then died off into a deafening silence, the only sound that of dirt and grit raining down upon Gethred. Then something else. He actually felt the approach of footsteps before he heard them.
The door was wrenched back so hard that one of the hinges tore free. Two Tuigan, both holding swords, one bloodied, slunk into the cave. Their eyes were wide with fear and their skin flushed with exertion. The one with the unbloodied sword pointed it at Gethred and said something in his native tongue. Gethred could not understand their speech, save for one word: "Cormyrean."
The Tuigan dragged Gethred from the cave. The bright light of midafternoon blazed off the snow pocketing the valley. He winced but forced his eyes to stay open to survey the scene.
The cave pierced the base of one of the hills that ringed the feet of the Sunrise Mountains. Many boulders had been strewn about through the ages, and pines blanketed the slopes. The past night's snowfall lay heavy everywhere except under the boughs, making the world a blinding white-except for the bodies.
A horse lay sprawled not fifty feet from the cave, its head hanging on by only a few strips of flesh. Blood had fountained out ten feet in every direction. Three Tuigan warriors lay nearby. Two were missing limbs, and one seemed to have run a good forty feet before death took him. His entrails were spread the final twenty feet behind him. More Tuigan-half a dozen at least, all mounted-milled around, two of them holding spare horses. Of the massive man who had held Gethred captive, there was no sign.
The two Tuigan dragged Gethred over the ground, heedless of the stones cutting him and the snow seeming to find every crevice and gap through his clothes. They threw him over a spare horse, not even bothering to cut his bonds, and in moments the entire troop was galloping east for the open steppe.
By the time they stopped, Gethred could no longer feel his face. They'd fled at full gallop for what seemed like a dozen miles at least, with Gethred tied lengthwise and facedown over the back of a horse. Had he eaten anything over the past three days, he surely would have lost every bit of it. The Tuigan horses had a smooth gait, but the land so near the mountains was rough and broken by many gulches that would fill with water come spring. Gethred was jostled, shaken, and seemingly beaten over every mile, and the ropes holding him into the saddle bit into his skin. But the Tuigan did not slow, and the wind flowing over his exposed face froze his skin to numbness. He felt sure that the only thing holding the frostbite out of his nose and ears was the thick heat given off by the horse.
Their leader called a halt as the sun slipped behind the mountains and the snow-covered steppe took on the flower-petal blue of evening. They made camp in a wide gully that ran north to south and would protect them from the wind off the mountains.
As the rest of the Tuigan made camp, one of them-Gethred recognized him as the one who had come in th
e cave bearing the unbloodied sword-came to the horse, loosened the ropes binding Gethred to the saddle, and threw him to the ground. He led the horse away, leaving Gethred bound in the snow. Something hard-a rock or an old root-jabbed between his shoulders, but he was too exhausted and sore to move.
The Tuigan warrior returned with another. They grabbed the ropes binding Gethred's ankles and dragged him to the nearest fire. The warriors had lit only three, and they took Gethred to the smallest.
The two warriors stood over Gethred, glowering down. Both had knives in their hands. Gethred heard footsteps crunching through the snow, then a third warrior came into view. He was taller than the other two, and two braids descended from his fur cap. His features were younger and leaner than his companions', and Gethred thought he saw the last curls of a tattoo protruding from the collar of his wool kalat, the large knee-length tunic worn by many of the Tuigan.
This third warrior knelt and spoke in Common. "I am Holwan, of the Khassidi. My brothers here are of the Oigur. They do not know these lands, nor your tongue. I speak for us."
Not knowing what else to say, Gethred said, "Brothers?"
One of the two Oigur said something to Holwan. It sounded harsh, and Holwan flinched. He returned his attention to Gethred and said, "Since the coming of Yamun Khahan, it is said that all Tuigan are brothers."
"Do you say this?"
Holwan's scowl deepened and he said, "How did you come to be in the house of the shu t'met?"
Gethred swallowed. His mouth felt dry as windswept rock. He said, "Shootemet?"
"The large man in whose house we found you."
A shudder began in Gethred's chest and spread outward till his teeth were chattering. "H-he. . captured me. Y-yesterd shy;day, I think."
"Captured?"
"Please," said Gethred. "Water."
Gethred had fled the sack of Citadel Rashemar with four others, all Cormyreans sent by King Azoun himself, for word of the gathering Horde had reached even Cormyr. Melloren had died before they were out of sight of the citadel, a Tuigan arrow lodged in his eye. The survivors fled. But all of that Gethred left out of his tale. Likely Holwan and his companions knew or suspected much of it already. True or not, Gethred wasn't going to confess. He had little doubt he was a dead man. If not today, then certainly when this lot returned him to the Horde. But he would not betray the memory of his companions, nor their mission. He would not stand before Mielikki in the afterlife a traitor and coward.