Without another word, Opal began walking away, but then Othello caught her by the shoulder. She immediately pulled out of his grasp and flashed him a dangerous look.
“I’ll go,” he said, nocking an arrow in his longbow.
Lilac thought Opal would surely argue. But slowly, Opal’s countenance eased into a civil expression. Othello then strode past the woman, moving quickly but quietly through the trees.
As Opal watched him go, Lilac remembered another time Othello had managed to reason with the fiery-tempered woman. It had been during the Renegades’ raid on Fort Faith. She, Othello, Klye, and Plake had stumbled upon Opal while searching for Prince Eliot.
Opal had leveled her crossbow at Klye, but then Othello had placed himself between the Renegade Leader and the woman. Opal had wanted nothing more than to put a bolt through Klye’s heart, but Othello had talked her out of it.
Lilac marveled at the effect he seemed to have on the woman. Surely, Opal wasn’t smitten with the taciturn forester—or was she? Suddenly, as though sensing Lilac’s eyes upon her, Opal spun around. Her expression soured when their eyes met, but Lilac noted a faint blush painted across her cheeks.
Opal found a spot a couple of yards away, sat down, and stared out into the forest, avoiding the direction Othello had chosen. Lilac was happy to leave Opal alone. She was far too stubborn—not to mention hostile—for her liking. But even though the two of them sat in silence, Lilac didn’t hear someone approach a few minutes later.
She jumped to her feet, her hand on the hilt of the vorpal sword, before she realized Othello had returned from a different direction. Pointedly ignoring Opal, who was walking over to join them, Lilac tried to pass off her alarm as eagerness.
“Well, that was fast,” she said to Othello. “I’m so hungry, I could…”
Then she noticed that the man was empty-handed.
“There is something you must see,” he said, looking at each woman in turn.
Without further explanation, Othello headed back into the trees, leaving Lilac and Opal to exchange uncertain glances before hurrying after him. Lilac felt her heartbeat quicken with every step. She couldn’t imagine what Othello had found, but she doubted it was anything good.
Lilac began to notice peculiar things about the environment. Branches and vines littered the forest floor, cleanly severed from where they had previously hung. Also, the leaves on the ground had been trampled flat. A large group had come this way.
She looked over at Opal to see if the other woman saw what she was seeing, but Opal kept her gaze fixed straight ahead.
We’re following a party of goblins, Lilac thought, and she was tempted to stop Othello right there and demand an explanation. By her calculations, they were heading due north. If the goblins—it had to be goblins—had come this way, then they should be heading in any direction but this one.
Then Othello stopped, and the scene that met her eyes was as unexpected as it was gruesome.
A dozen or more corpses lay scattered in what must have been at one time a green meadow. The clearing had been reduced to mud beneath the feet of many combatants. Whatever growth had survived the battle was stained black with goblin blood.
The forest was unnaturally still, as though even the carrion eaters were appalled by the dead monsters. Or perhaps it was the smell. Lilac brought her hand up to cover her nose, but that did little to deflect the nauseating stench surrounding the carnage.
“Who could have done this?” Opal asked.
Lilac could have wagered a guess.
Othello started forward once more, stepping over the bodies in his path. He stopped again a few yards away and crouched down by something shiny on the ground. When Lilac joined him and saw what that sparkling object was, her suspicion was confirmed.
There at her feet was Chrysaal-rûn.
“No.”
The single word sounded impossibly far away, even though Opal was standing right beside her.
The mocking caw of a crow disrupted the mournful silence, sending a jolt of apprehension through Lilac. When she realized that it was only a bird—and not the allies of the fallen goblins—she expelled her breath in relief. Her eyes lingered on the solitary blackbird, however, for the sheer size of the thing was remarkable. Its oily black feathers seemed to defy the sunlight, and there was something about its eyes that didn’t seem quite right.
The crow let out another shrill caw before taking flight and leaving the three humans to ponder the mystery of their missing companions.
* * *
Fingers dug painfully into the flesh of his upper arms. His feet dragged limply across the ground. It was certainly a strange way to travel, but even though he knew he should be moving his legs, he couldn’t find the will to do so.
Colt’s mind struggled trying to comprehend what was going on. It felt as though his entire body were made of steel, though he wasn’t wearing any armor.
One of his eyes was swollen shut, but he was able to open the other. Brightness accosted the sensitive organ, and he couldn’t see anything at first. After a few more steps—theirs, not his—his eye adjusted to the light. He even managed to lift his head a bit.
The scene that stretched out before him was hardly a rewarding one. It might have been a logging camp at one time. Hundreds of trees had been cleared from the area, their stumps scattered around the legion of tents that blanketed the clearing as densely as the trees once had.
A putrid odor hung heavy in the air—the smell of poorly ventilated forges, rotting food, and too many bodies sharing close proximity. Since he found it impossible to breathe out of his nose at the moment—possibly, it was broken—Colt was forced to taste the tainted atmosphere with every breath. A perpetual din of activity further polluted the forest air, though he couldn’t understand a single word of what was being said.
The sight of so many goblins in one place was beyond disheartening.
It was only when his captors brought him to a halt near the edge of the camp that he perceived the pain in his feet. A glance down at the limbs revealed that they were bereft of boots and socks. The tops of his feet were raw and bleeding from scraping against the ground. He also became aware of various other hurts all over his body. If not for the grudging support of his captors, he would have surely collapsed.
He could not guess how long they waited outside the far-most ring of tents. The nearest shelter was remarkable only in that it stood two feet taller than the other tents. He wondered if they were waiting for permission to enter—not that he and the goblins around him could have all fit inside at once.
Then the goblins on either side of him straightened up and tightened their clamp-like hold on his arms. Squinting with his one good eye, he saw their improved posture was due to the arrival of three new goblins. The trio wore an assortment of armor. He figured the one in the middle was the highest-ranking, judging by the quality and condition of its gear.
Ironically, that goblin wore a breastplate emblazoned with the sun-and-sword standard of Superius.
As the lead goblin spoke to his comrades, using that harsh-sounding, unintelligible language he had been hearing for the past few days, he studied the creature in Knights’ armor. Like all of the other goblins he had battled—with the exception of T’slect, he supposed—this officer wore a costume as mixed and motley as any harlequin. Aside from the Superian breastplate and standard-issue boots, Colt didn’t recognize the design of the other accoutrements. Possibly, they had been smuggled from battlefields in other countries.
But what held his attention was what that goblin was carrying—a scepter as long as a quarterstaff, bedecked with inky black feathers and topped with a leering skull.
Without warning, he was thrust into the largest tent. Despite his wobbly legs, he managed to catch himself before he fell. Dazed, he took in his new surroundings. While the canopy was tall enough for him to stand upright, the tent itself was far from spacious. Two cots lying side-by-side nearly filled the entire floor of the tent.
> One of the cots was occupied, but he caught no more than a glance before he was again shoved from behind.
He landed face-first on the vacant cot, causing new waves of pain to wash over his nose. Fighting the impulse to pass out, he forced his head to turn so that he was looking at the other bed. There, stretched out on the cot and lying in a most unnaturally stiff pose, was a man.
His body was gaunt; his skin, a deathly white. The man’s eyes, which were fixed, unblinking on some distant place, added to the impression that he was, in fact, deceased.
Colt tried to watch the man’s chest to gauge whether he breathed or not, but then he was being moved once more. He neither helped nor hindered the creature that flipped him onto his back. Then he was looking up at the goblin with the scepter.
By all appearances, the others goblins had left, and the two of them were alone. Colt thought he saw something red glint inside the sockets of the skull, but his interest in the staff was instantly forgotten when the monster began to speak.
“You have made a grievous error in stepping outside your fortress, Commander.”
At first, he thought that the goblin was speaking his language, as T’slect had, but then realized he didn’t hear the words so much as know them—like another voice inside his head.
Completely bewildered, Colt couldn’t decide which was more astonishing—what the goblin was saying or the fact that he could comprehend the words in the first place.
“Yes, I know who you are, Commander. This one was unable to provide me with any satisfactory information regarding you or your fort.” The goblin nodded its bald head at the emaciated man. “He knew your name and the number of Knights stationed at Fort Faith, but of the other inhabitants, he was altogether ignorant. He knew nothing of the midge or Klye Tristan’s Renegades.”
The goblin’s toothy smile widened in response to Colt’s horrified reaction. They had theorized that the goblins had learned a lot about Capricon’s defenses thanks to T’slect’s usurpation of the prince’s identity. But hearing confirmation from the monster’s mouth was all too dreadful.
Then another terrifying thought occurred to him. One goblin above all others would have known about the occupants of Fort Faith. T’slect, the shaman who had paraded as Prince Eliot Borrom, had seen both Klye and Noel firsthand.
“T’slect,” Colt said, though it came out as a wheeze.
A smile splayed its dark lips. “You think I am the prince? I suppose you never saw him in his natural form, did you? No, Commander, I am not T’slect, and you won’t see him again. It was thanks to that shortsighted fool that we were forced to begin the invasion before reinforcements arrived.”
“Who—?” Colt started to ask, but his voice gave out. A series of painful coughs wracked his body.
The goblin merely watched him with a bemused expression on its face.
“You want to know who I am? I suppose I could satiate your curiosity. My name is Drekk’t. Before T’slect’s…discharge, I served as the general of the Capricon Campaign’s Eastern Army. Now, I lead both the Eastern and the Western Armies.”
Two armies, Colt thought with an involuntary shudder. Gods help us…
“The prince did me a favor by betraying our presence here, I suppose.” Drekk’t continued. “The men were growing restless. We are a race of warriors, you see, trained for battle from birth. It’s not easy to restrain an army of goblins when the enemy is so near.
“I suppose I owe you and your magical sword a debt of thanks as well. When you bested T’slect…that self-righteous blunderer…you sealed his doom and made my promotion possible.”
Colt was trying to make sense of what the goblin general was saying. Although he could somehow comprehend what the creature was saying, he was finding it increasingly difficult to find the meaning in it all.
I have to concentrate, he thought. I must learn everything I can.
“You are ignorant of our culture,” Drekk’t said. “Most of our enemies are. But I’ll let you in on a secret. I just slandered one of the Chosen of the Chosen and one of the Emperor’s own sons, at that!
“To speak ill of any shaman is punishable by death. Even though most all of my soldiers would agree that T’slect was a self-serving bastard, they would never utter it aloud. You are the only one in this camp whom I could ever dare speak my true thoughts to. It’s ironic, wouldn’t you say?”
Colt didn’t answer. While he was pleased to hear that T’slect was out of the picture, he couldn’t find much comfort in it, since Drekk’t was obviously a shaman himself. What else, aside from vuudu, could explain how they were able to communicate?
He tried to dissect Drekk’t’s comments. What did Chosen of the Chosen mean? Was that just another way of saying shaman? How many of the goblins could use vuudu?
Those questions and more swam around and around in Colt’s head. He couldn’t seem to hold onto any one of them for long, however. His hold on consciousness had grown tenuous at best.
“There are many things that I will ask you,” the goblin told him, “but I can see that you are in no condition to talk now. But believe me when I say you’ll fare far worse before this is over. You’ll come to wish your death had been as quick as the dwarf’s.”
Drekk’t raised the skull-topped scepter, and this time he was certain he saw the eye sockets glow a deep red. Something strong but unseen seemed to coat his body like a second skin.
He couldn’t move. The knowledge might have caused him to panic, but at the moment, he could barely comprehend the implications. One thought and one thought alone monopolized his mind—the very last thing Drekk’t had said.
No matter how he tried to reason it out, he couldn’t understand how he had forgotten that his dear friend, Cholk, was dead.
Passage IV
“Shut up, Plake.”
Klye gave the order without thinking. It had become an automatic response to the rancher’s ceaseless complaining.
He was convinced sharing a sickroom with Plake was punishment for all of the bad things he had done in his life. The threat of eternity in Abaddon had nothing on a week stuck with Plake Nelway?
“I would’ve thought the Knights were smarter than this,” Plake said, undaunted. “I mean, what kind of a chance do six people have against an entire army of goblins? We were a band of ten, and now there’re only nine of us. We barely made it to Fort Faith with our lives. And I don’t care if Colt does have a magical sword. All it’ll take is a handful of those poisoned arrows, and they’re all dead.”
“He certainly is an optimistic one, isn’t he?” Aric said from her place at Matthew Fisk’s bedside.
Klye scoffed. “He’s just mad because Lilac is one of the six.”
“Is he sweet on her?” Aric asked, not looking up from her work.
“You might say that,” Klye replied.
Plake was on his feet and glaring down at him before the first word made it past his lips.
“You shut your mouth, Klye. You don’t know half as much as you think you do!”
Klye didn’t flinch. “If I am mistaken, why have you been condemning me for letting Lilac go with Colt but haven’t said a word about Othello?”
He watched Plake’s face turn bright red. “I’ll tell you why…I…I forgot Othello went with them. You have to admit he’s an easy guy to forget. He has a way of disappearing when you’re not looking right at him…and it’s not like he says a whole lot.”
Good cover, Klye thought wryly. “Sorry, I must have been mistaken.”
Plake glared. Throwing himself back down on his bed, the rancher crossed his arms and brooded. Klye could hardly contain a smile. So that’s how you get Plake to shut up, he thought.
Klye might have teased him more, but he wasn’t a cruel man. He had the distinct impression Lilac didn’t return Plake’s affection.
Plake’s sulky silence was short-lived. “Anyway, they might both be dead by now…Lilac and Othello, I mean. Only that merchant guy is actually from this miserable island, and
he’s the least likely to survive. They’re probably all six of them dead already.”
Sister Aric whirled around suddenly that Plake jumped.
“Haven’t you ever heard the expression, ‘If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all’?” she demanded.
Plake stared up at the woman, his mouth agape.
“If Plake adhered to that adage, he’d be as mute as Othello,” Klye said, earning him another dark look from the rancher.
“I don’t have to take this!” Plake shouted, leaping out of his sickbed again. “Even listening Scout prattle on about ancient history is better than getting insulted all day long.”
Before slamming the door behind him, he added, “And if my health fails because you chased me out of bed too soon, it’ll be on your head, Klye Tristan!”
Now Klye could contain his mirth no longer, and for the next few minutes, he leaned back against his pillow and laughed wholeheartedly. It felt good. When there was so much wrong in the world and so many bad things just waiting to happen, one has to laugh every now and then, he thought.
In truth, Klye was just as worried about the absent Renegades as Plake was. While Othello remained, for the most part, an enigma, he wholly respected the archer, and Lilac had become a friend and confidant.
Klye feared for the other members of the troupe too. He knew next to nothing about Mitto, and while neither Cholk nor Opal had ever had a kind word for him, he nevertheless hoped all three of them were all right.
He thought often about Colt, wondering what kind of leader the young Knight would prove to be. Although he and Colt had been nemeses up until recently, Klye had come to like the man. He truly hoped he would see him again.
“I think you hit a nerve,” Aric said, taking a seat on the edge of Plake’s bed to face Klye. “However did the two of you end up together? You’re like water and oil.”
“When Horcalus, Ragellan, Othello, and I were fleeing from Superius, we skirted the Paramese border. We stole some horses from a ranch owned by Plake’s uncle. I still don’t know whether the man sent his nephew after us, or if Plake decided to follow us on his own. All I know is that a day or two later, Plake charged into our camp, wielding a tree branch and demanding we return his uncle’s animals.”
Williams, D M - Renegade Chronicles [Collection 1-3] Page 74