Lord of the Rose

by Doug Niles

  Bonechisel took no note of the fact, and Laka sadly laid the little corpse to rest in a mossy alcove beside a flowing stream, the only place where deep snow didn’t cover the ground. Not far away in the snowy wilds, the chief shivered, gloomy at the prospect of another long, cold season of hunt and roam.

  He caught a tantalizing scent on a waft of wind, which bore a promise of warmth, comfort, and shelter, for it smelled of a fire of pine wood. Emerging from the forest, Bonechisel found the scent of smoke even stronger. The vapors emerged from the chimney of a small cabin, wafting upward, bearing hot red sparks on the winter wind. In those glowing embers Boneshisel saw doom for whomever skulked within the cabin and fed that alluring fire.

  Bonechisel lifted his axe, which, though crude in the extreme, boasted a heavy chunk of sharp-edged granite for its blade, mounted securely atop a cudgel that was as thick around as a strong man’s arm. He flexed and swung, crashing the stone head into the boards. Two blows were enough to make a crack, and three more swings shattered the door into two halves. One half, attached to leather hinges, still clung in place, while the other piece toppled inward to crash on the dry stone floor.

  Bonechisel growled as he stepped through the entrance. Laka followed close behind him, pressed by other warriors, three or four more hobs and goblins each brandishing a heavy club of their own.

  The first thing the hob-wench noticed was the warmth, a splendid blanket of moist, slightly cloudy air that surrounded her. The taint of smoke in the shelter was a welcome scent, and the low light cast by the embers fading in the fireplace was a pleasant welcome after the unmitigated gray-white of winter’s first storm.

  The second thing to draw Laka’s attention was the small cradle, lined with furs, resting over on one side of the single chamber. She took no note of the huge creature seated at the table, the giant who still cradled his head in his hands, so lost in despair that he hadn’t yet noticed the intruders. Carefully, the hob-wench sidled toward the cradle, drawn by an instinct deeper than her race. She heard the plaintive cry, and her breasts began to leak their milk.

  Bonechisel, for his part, was fully aware of the giant seated at the table in the middle of the room. He had been prepared to rush in and attack the denizens of this shelter. Deep in his heart he had hoped they would be humans, preferably defenseless women and children, but he had steeled himself to fight goblins, hobgoblins, a knight or two, had even considered the dread thought that he might have to face an ogre. It was a measure of how cold, how frightened he was, that he was even willing to chance the latter possibility.

  This! This was such an extraordinary giant!

  He gave serious thought to running away. His cunning mind considered the throng of hobs and gobs behind him, and he figured that he could easily pull several of them into the house, knocking them to the floor even as he made his escape. By the time the giant was through smashing those hapless offerings, Bonechisel could be safely back in the woods …

  On second thought, this did not seem like an ideal course of action. He well knew how cold those woods were, how snowy and barren. The tribe might survive another night out there. (Actually, Bonechisel himself would probably survive the night; the welfare of the tribe as whole could not be said to be much of a consideration.) But after another night with no food and no shelter, the upcoming days inevitably looked bleak, while the warmth of this stone-walled house was undeniably attractive.

  In an instant the hobgoblin’s eyes took in the mountain of firewood stacked against the back wall. In a dark alcove near the back he could see haunches of dried meat, many of them. There was a great bed in the corner, a bed fit for an exalted chieftain such as Bonechisel Hob.

  The issue was decided by the apathetic nature of this giant himself. The fellow had only now raised his head to blink stupidly at the strangers who had just spent several minutes smashing in his front door. Clearly, this giant was not blessed with lightning-quick reactions. The expression on his face bespoke an utter lack of intelligence and imagination. Perhaps it would not be madness to battle him for the prize of this shelter. Indeed, Bonechisel thought, a sudden, swarming attack might be the best option.

  “Go!” cried Bonechisel, clapping one of his lackeys on the shoulder. “Kill giant!”

  The goblin yelped as his chieftain pushed him forward. Two other warriors, equally slow and witless, lurched after, propelled by strong kicks to their posteriors.

  “Attack!” cried Bonechisel, raising his club and advancing behind the screen of the three milling goblins.

  The giant shook his head and blinked. His eyes went to something at the edge of the room—a bed for an infant, the hobgoblin perceived in a quick glance—and the giant’s muscles tensed as he was suddenly galvanized by fear. At the same time, the three goblins in front of Bonechisel hesitated.

  Disgusted, the hobgoblin charged between his cohorts in a bull rush. His axe, already raised above his head, whistled downward in a wild swing just as the giant sprang to his feet. The jagged edge of granite struck the fellow right in the middle of his forehead, the blow knocking him back into his seat then sending the chair toppling over backward, spilling the giant onto the floor where he lay motionless.

  With a wild whoop of triumph, Bonechisel brought the axe down again, and again. The three other goblins, inspired by their chieftain’s example, joined in the fun, rushing forward with their own stone clubs to batter and bash the helpless giant, until his body had been reduced to a shapeless pulp.

  Bonechisel danced around the corpse of his slain foe in an ecstasy of triumph. “I am Giant-Slayer!” he crowed. He clubbed one of his lackeys. “Call me Giant-Slayer!” he ordered.

  “Hail Bonechisel Giant-Slayer!” the goblin, no fool, shouted.

  The hobgoblin danced to the back of the room then yelped when he realized that the great bed was occupied—by the mate of the giant. He bashed his club against the female and was startled by her utter lack of reaction. Leaning in, he sniffed. The scent of death filled his nostrils. Pulling back the quilt, he saw this was an ogress, not a giantess. A shrewder brain that Bonechisel’s might have deduced that this oddly matched couple were outcasts from both giant and ogre tribes.

  The chieftain remembered the third denizen of this stone house. He looked toward the infant bed and saw that Laka was peering over the lip of the cradle. Caught up in the blood-frenzy, Bonechisel raised his club and howled aloud, starting toward the last of his enemies.

  To his surprise, Laka reached into the cradle, snatched up the infant, then turned and snarled at the chieftain with a startling display of big teeth. Her eyes blazed, and the import of her actions was clear and defiant.

  “Give me babe!” demanded the hobgoblin. “I kill! I am Bonechisel Giant-Slayer!”

  “This babe mine!” she declared. “Go kill someplace else!”

  The infant was squalling and fussing, and the hobgoblin would have liked nothing better than to smash its little brains out on the floor, but he noted the glare of determination, of pure courage, in his mate’s eye. He decided that killing this baby was not worth subjecting himself to the female wrath and recrimination that would follow.

  Even as he stared in disbelief, his pig-eyes squinting, Laka slumped down to the floor, opened her tunic, and gave the baby one of her breasts for suckling. The baby half-breed’s annoying wails faded to a surprised squawk, then a soft slurping as he fastened himself to the teat and began to nurse.

  Laka called her babe Ankhar, and she cared for the half-giant infant with as much love and attention as if he had been born of her own flesh. From the first greedy suckle, Ankhar clung to his new mother with desperation, forming an inseparable bond.

  Generally the adopted hobgoblin spent his time avoiding the mature males of the tribe, although he became the natural leader of the gobs of his own age. Not only did he outweigh all of his contemporaries by at least a factor of two, but he was quick to anger and ruthless in retaliation, inflicting countless broken bones during any outbreaks of rough pla
y. Fear being a primary influence upon goblin relationships, Ankhar’s prowess made his fellows obsequious, and he was quick to take advantage of the worship he inspired. He would dispatch the young ogres to bring him food and drink, to perform his designated chores (he especially hated firewood hauling and stone breaking).

  During these years the tribe moved around a lot, never settling in the same place for more than a season or two at a time. At first Bonechisel was one of many hobgoblin chiefs in the foothills around the Garnet Range, but he gradually made a name for himself as one of the most successful when it came to raiding the settlements of humans, leading his tribe in such a way that the gobs had plenty to eat—even during the waning months of winter when starvation made a rampant sweep through the bands and clans of leaders who showed less foresight.

  In Ankhar’s sixteenth year the War of Souls ended unnoticed by the goblin population of the Garnet Range. However, the savage creatures did notice that once again two moons moved through the skies. Not long after, Laka came upon a shiny green rock in a mountain cavern. She listened to the rock and heard the words of the Prince of Lies, Hiddukel. Hiddukel was pleased with her, the rock said, and she began to tell the other hobs and gobs about his wickedly successful ways.

  Drawn in part by the might of the brutal chieftain, in part by the compelling words of the primitive high priestess Laka, more and more of the small goblin clans were absorbed into the Bonechisel tribe. By the time of Ankhar’s eighteenth year Bonechisel’s followers numbered many hundreds—and in fact was the most formidable horde along the entire circumference of the mountain range. Burly hobgoblins, seasoned veterans with scars and trophies to prove their prowess, bowed down to Bonechisel these days, and brought him gifts of food and drink and treasure. Bounty hunters stayed well away from the brutish tribe.

  In the late spring following Ankhar’s eighteenth winter, the gobs and hobgoblins of the Garnet Range held a great gathering during the week preceding the summer solstice. The site of the gathering was a town that had once been called Tin Cup, a formerly prosperous mining settlement of two score houses and a dozen larger buildings. Bonechisel’s warriors had attacked Tin Cup the year before, slaughtering all the miners who had dared to remain. Since then, no human had visited the place.

  Bonechisel held court in the upper floor of a stone mill-house. His tribemates were scattered through the houses of the town, while the clans and tribes of all the other gobs and hobs for two hundred miles around made camps in the surrounding valley and the many deep, dry mine shafts. Every night a huge bonfire raged in the village square, and the field and the narrow streets thronged with festive warriors and wenches. Alcohol flowed freely, a mixture of captured spirits brewed by human and dwarf and many vats of the vile, flat coal-beer brewed by goblin alchemists over the previous winter.

  This was the year when Ankhar began to feel the pulse of the council, the dancing and the drumming and the sweat and the smell. By this time, of course, he was a well-recognized member of the tribe. By virtue of his blood parentage, he stood ten feet tall when he raised his head, a height that lifted him two or more feet above the largest of the hobgoblins in all the Garnet tribes. He was not a greedy soul, for he had not yet developed a taste for females or strong drink, and in these days there was plenty of food to go around, and he was often courted and feted at the campfires of all the lesser lords.

  He was counseled in private by his foster mother. Laka spoke to him of many truths, truths that had been revealed to her by the Prince of Lies. Hearing these words, Ankhar began to see his own destiny and to think in terms of his own choices … his power.

  Through these nights, Bonechisel watched his tribe’s adopted son with increasingly narrowed eyes. A strapping hobgoblin, the aging chieftain was still no match for the young, lumbering Ankhar. The chieftain always wore a green medallion of stone formed from the first talisman of Hiddukel that his wife had discovered, and now he fondled that glowing disk, worrying. His simple mind perceived that the youth was a menace, and no doubt he regretted that he had not taken decisive action when his prospective rival had been but an infant. Now it was too late, at least for a direct confrontation.

  Although he was not the most subtle of schemers, Bonechisel began to consider other ways to deal with the hulking hill giant whom most considered his adopted son. He whispered of his wishes to several lesser chieftain, suggesting that great rewards—money, liquor, gob-wenches—might come the way of one who removed the threat from his midst. The hob was not particular: poison, a knife in the back, assault by a bloodthirsty mob, all seemed workable solutions. Unfortunately, he found no takers for his schemes, not even among the most aggressive and ambitious of the sub-lords. Several even looked askance at Bonechisel when he ventured a few hints. More than one of these would-be schemers, it may be assumed, reported the chieftain’s wishes to Laka or to Ankhar himself.

  For his part the half-giant foster child was a good-hearted fellow, and avoided politics and other entanglements. He stayed out of Bonechisel’s way out of long-established habit, remembering all too well many a bruising kick, slap, or bite that he had suffered during his younger years. Of late he noticed that the chieftain had ceased to harass him directly, though he saw the brooding glances and observed the surly attitude. Ankhar willingly accepted the hospitality of the other chieftains as he made the rounds of the vast encampment. So it was that he had become known to all of them by the the last night of the great council, when the solstice itself brightened the night. It happened to be a cloudless sky, and the silvery orb of Solinari commanded the heavens and the world.

  The bonfire that night was the biggest in the memory of even the oldest gob granny. Trunks of whole pine trees were stacked into an enormous tepee, and when they were ignited the heat was such that the whole circle of watchers could not close to more than three dozen paces away from the base of the fire.

  The throng of goblins, hobgoblins, and the odd ogre and draconian filled the valley, with many gathered on the hills that rose to either side of the former mining village. The moon bathed them all in pristine light, and the gobs were so thick on the ground that when they drummed and danced it seemed as though the whole landscape was thrumming with the power of the tribe.

  Ankhar mingled with the throng, delighting in the drumming, raising his face and howling at the silver moon as loudly as any of the rest of them. He shook a spear over his head, a weapon he had carved himself from a straight sapling of elm. He had affixed a steel spearhead to the shaft, the hard metal treasure something that he had claimed from one of the villages overwhelmed by Bonechisel’s band. Now his long arm and the even longer staff of wood raised that spearhead high above the rest of the pulsing throng, and the deep bellow emanating from the adolescent hill giant’s chest roared as a steady, basso undertone to the shrill cries of several thousand drunken, frenzied warriors.

  Bonechisel emerged from the front door of the large mill house. The hobgoblin was dressed in his ceremonial finest: a stiff shirt of dried bear-hide, with wide shoulder epaulets formed from the blades of captured short swords. His gleaming belt rattled with grisly trophies, a dozen human skulls that dangled from the golden links. His face was painted with white clay, except for circles of shining red around his eyes and his mouth—the crimson of fresh blood, stolen from a captive human child who had been sacrificed minutes before, simply to provide the bright facial paint. In each hand he carried a dagger with a curved blade, and he held these weapons over his head, edges crossed, and roared out a command:

  “Hear me, my warriors!”

  The chieftain scowled and clashed the blades of his two daggers together as the drumming continued, drowning out his words from all but the nearest of his listeners. These few ceased their dancing, facing Bonechisel in an expectant semicircle—though a few cast envious glances over their shoulders at their still reveling comrades. When the hobgoblin repeated his command, the crowd began to settle. Drums faltered, and more and more of the gobs turned their attention to thei
r leader.

  The firelight illuminated Bonechisel as he stood on a high stone porch, well above the crowd. A number of sub-chiefs crowded upon the steps leading up to the platform, jostling to be closest to the exalted one.

  Finally the last of the drumming faded away, and the revelry settled to a few isolated whoops, cries, and howls. Ankhar was one of the last to settle down, so that the lofting of his spear and his deep, ululating cry stood out. Bonechisel scowled at his tribe’s adopted son until even Ankhar quieted resentfully.

  “My hobs and gobs!” Bonechisel roared. “I have brought you here, a great horde of warriors, and now I will tell you my plans!”

  It was at that moment that the impulse came to Ankhar, and he acted without further thought. Later he would wonder if the question he had dared to ask had been inspired by Hiddukel himself.

  “Why do you stay in the big house—and we sleep out here, in the rain?” Ankhar roared in a deep bellow, more commanding than any hobgoblin voice.

  Bonechisel blinked in surprise and groped for a train of thought. “It has not rained all week!” he protested lamely. The crowd of gobs began to mutter among themselves, some glowering at the young giant, others echoing the question indignantly.

  “We should all share the big house,” retorted Ankhar, sensing the majority of the crowd was rumbling in agreement with him. Some instinct caused him to repeat the offending phrase. “The big house!”

  “Big house! Big house!” The chant began as a wild whoop by some of the drunken young gobs near Ankhar, but in seconds it spread through the gathering, rising as a chorus, echoing from the surrounding hills.

  “Stop!” cried Bonechisel, momentarily taken aback, holding up his hands. The crowd ignored him.