The Goblin Reign Boxed Set

by Gerhard Gehrke

  The tribal leader then shouted. The rest of his men grew silent, and then their voices wove together in a joined whisper, a susurration that reminded Alma of the prayers the faithful back in the delta made to the Three-Who-Are-One. It rose in volume until it became a full-throated chant.

  Another shout from the leader, and the tribesmen stopped. He put a hand to his ear as he stood at the edge.

  “He won’t answer,” Alma said.

  The tribal leader turned to glare at her, anger flashing in his eyes.

  “You understand my words. Your dragon lord. He’s gone. We drove him out. We hurt him. You must have heard the explosions and his cries of pain. You could hurt him too. You don’t have to serve him like slaves. He’s nothing but an animal. Like a lion or a bear. Surely you don’t worship the monster that feeds on your children if you turn your back on him?”

  “Shut up,” Blades hissed.

  The man stepped towards her and looked her over. “If our master is hurt, then your blood will feed him and make him strong.”

  The tribal leader grunted and made a chopping motion towards the edge of the precipice. The meaning was plain. One of the tribesmen grabbed Redruth by the arm. He screamed and struggled, but the tribal warrior had no problem dragging him to the ledge. With a firm shove, Redruth was pitched over. His cry was short and only briefly echoed up the canyon.

  Blades was to be next. “No! Stop! You can’t do this! We have more gold! Horses!”

  The tribesmen’s low murmur began again as he was brought forward.

  The leader had a knife on his belt. Alma grabbed it and drove it into the man, catching him under the breastbone. He let out a gurgling and pawed at her. But Alma didn’t wait for him to die. Withdrawing the stone blade, she slashed the hand that grabbed at her and then sprang at the tribal, sinking the weapon into the man’s belly. As he stumbled back, the knife still in him, she ripped the spear from his hand.

  A man with a skull painted on his chest charged at her. He held a stone hatchet. She smacked him with the butt of the spear before turning it and driving it down into him. She let out a roar. Three of the remaining tribesmen formed up around her.

  She pivoted the spear tip from man to man. No one wanted to be first.

  The one holding Blades near the edge screamed. Blades was pulling a thin knife from the man’s side. With a push he shoved the tribal over the ledge. But the three around Alma weren’t distracted. As if by some unspoken cue, they attacked.

  She braced the base of the spear against her foot and impaled a man brandishing a club in the abdomen. He thrashed and fell. The other two thrust tentatively at her with their spears. She stumbled back, avoiding them.

  The leader’s body lay at her feet. Attached to his pack was her bow. She snatched it up in time to avoid a spear tip stabbing at her chest. With a vicious swing, she smashed the bow across the side of the man’s head. The second one almost caught her with a jab. She closed inside the reach of his weapon and drove the heel of her hand into his jaw and followed up with a knee to the groin. His spear slipped from his hand as he staggered. She dropped the bow and grabbed the spear. She drove it down into him and held him pinned to the ground until he stopped moving.

  Someone rushed at her, a volcanic glass knife gleaming. Blades caught the man with a spear. The man groaned as he was struck through. Blades maneuvered him to the ledge.

  “Bye-bye.”

  He shoved the skewered man, spear and all, over the side.

  “What, no thanks?” Blades said.

  Alma began going through pockets. “Get whatever food and weapons you can gather.”

  She expected a protest or at least Blades’s usual whining. But like the professional mercenary he was, he helped loot the bodies.

  Chapter Five

  It was the dragon who woke Spicy the next morning. The sun was just rising on another gray day. The patch of stone where they had slept remained warm, but the air was freezing. Frost covered everything.

  “It’s time to leave, isn’t it?” Spicy asked groggily.

  Fath nudged the satchel next to him. “Time for letters.”

  He rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Slumber came easy when lying near a dragon. Fath had Spicy work on his writing every morning, and he took to it eagerly even though it was difficult to please Fath. Three pages of the ledger now held lines of the strange characters that had marked the dragon lair’s walls.

  Spicy got his pencil ready. The dragon scratched a complex mark into the stone. Spicy copied it onto the paper.

  “That’s not right,” Fath said.

  Spicy compared the word written by the dragon on the stone and what he had produced in the ledger. The marks looked identical. But then he spotted it. The complex character had a tiny flourish above one line that he had missed. He added it. The dragon snorted and drew another word. Spicy’s stomach growled.

  “We might have a ways to go today,” Spicy said.

  Fath tapped a claw impatiently. “You said you’d learn this.”

  “Yes. I want to. But surely there’ll be time for writing later. You haven’t even told me what any of it means. These letters are all different from the ones I’ve been taught.”

  “This is no child’s language. And the meaning isn’t important. Preserving it is.”

  Spicy nodded as if he understood. “Preserve it. But also keep it out of everyone’s hands, right?”

  A yawn bellowed up from the trees. Hog was stretching her massive arms over her head. Her hands were able to clutch the higher branches. After producing several turbulent body noises, she stared up at Spicy and the dragon. Spicy gave a small wave. Hog sniffed the air and lumbered out of sight.

  “Disgusting,” Fath said.

  Spicy shrugged. “She grows on you.”

  The dragon began etching a new word into the granite.

  The foraging was meager as they continued to travel southward. Spicy kept the map he had found out of sight. He hadn’t had time to properly examine it in daytime but couldn’t chance Fath seeing it. If Rime and the children were in Bliss, he had to go there and find them.

  The first sign of human civilization was a clearing of cut trees near a dry stream. A pitted dirt lane ran out to the coast road. Woodsmoke hung in the air. Spicy told Hog and Fath to wait while he went on ahead alone.

  On the other side of the road were several fields. Beyond the cut earth and managed hedges was a town lined with a wall. The rooftops of several buildings were visible. Smoke rose from chimneys. The smells of the forest were mixed with a smell he couldn’t place. The town was set partially on the water of the Inland Sea and a dock stretched out beyond the reach of the wall.

  The thought of a human town was both marvelous and frightening. They built structures so much larger than in any goblin village. For a species spoken of as being in its twilight, sustaining a town of this size meant they had to be prospering.

  Spicy cut through the brush as he descended towards one of the fields.

  He couldn’t tell what was growing in the dirt. A small waterwheel was set up at the head of a network of irrigation channels that lined each field. There were people working, three human women along with a pair of goblins. Spicy paused to watch. The wall of the town featured an open gate under an archway. Beneath it, a chained dog and a single sentry stood guard. But the dog appeared to be asleep, and the sentry had his back turned and was speaking with someone just out of sight.

  One goblin was planting seeds along a nearby furrow. Spicy moved to get closer, keeping low and sticking to the edge of one of the muddy irrigation channels. He got closer to the worker, but the goblin didn’t notice.

  The goblin worked mechanically, plucking seeds from a pouch on an apron and pressing them into the soil. He was barefoot and wore a tattered shirt and pants that had been mended with multiple patches. Fitted around his throat was a collar.

  A slave, Spicy decided.

  Spicy hissed. “Hey. Hello?”

  The slave looked up. Spicy smile
d. The slave screamed. The other field workers were staring now, and one of the human women began to shout.

  “Help! Help!”

  Spicy looked around, confused, thinking perhaps the dragon or Hog had come up behind him, but there was no one else.

  “It’s okay, I’m not here to hurt anyone!”

  The goblin slave ran away towards the gate, seeds spilling from his apron. The others followed. The dog was barking now, straining at its tether. A second guard emerged. They looked in Spicy’s direction as the goblin slave fell at their feet, pointing back.

  Spicy sprinted away.

  It didn’t make sense. He wasn’t armed. There was no troll or dragon. What was wrong with these people?

  A bell at the gate was ringing. Spicy expected at any moment that the dog would be let loose, but it didn’t come. And Spicy didn’t take the time to look behind him until he was across the road and running through the cut trees back to where Hog and Fath waited.

  “Haven’t tasted dog meat,” Hog said casually.

  “Well, with the dog comes men with weapons,” Spicy said. “Be glad it didn’t chase me. We shouldn’t wait around for them to decide to come find me.”

  They were at the top of a short waterfall where only the tiniest trickle of water cut its way downstream. Judging by the banks, the stream would grow when it rained and when the snow in the higher elevations melted. Their location was a perfect vantage point of the forest below them.

  Fath curled himself up on the rocks along the bank and set his head down. “I don’t smell anyone coming.”

  “That doesn’t mean they’re not looking,” Spicy said. The humans could be stealthy. They had taken his village by surprise and had tracked him all the way from the sea to Spirit Rock. Plus the dogs could move so quickly and had excellent noses.

  “Human towns stink worse than the water,” Hog said, her green nose wrinkling.

  Spicy felt himself calming down. There didn’t appear to be anyone coming. He didn’t understand why the goblin had cried out. It was a slave. It hadn’t been chained up. Why hadn’t it run with him? His worry for Rime and the others only grew. He thought of the hobbled goblin girl he had come upon at the first goblin village near the sea.

  What abuses were Rime and the children suffering that would likewise break their spirit?

  Hog nudged Spicy. “We go back? Kill the men? Eat the dog?”

  “No, we can’t go straight in. They have a wall. And we don’t know how many there are. Your spear wound is still healing. And they will also have fire. Let’s wait until tonight. Go in quiet. But it should be just me.”

  “Dragon stinks too. I’ll go with you.”

  Spicy cringed and waited for Fath to take offense, but the dragon was asleep.

  “Okay. We’ll scout together. The town is built over the water. There might be a way in there. But you can’t come with me inside. Understand?”

  Hog finally gave a nod. Spicy patted her on the arm. Then he got out the ledger and puzzled at the mysterious words he had written that morning.

  Chapter Six

  Alma and Blades waited at the top of the ridge until first light. Descending in the dark would have been too dangerous.

  The tribesmen had little in the way of salvageable clothes to help fend off the biting cold. Blades’s teeth chattered and he shivered audibly. Alma caught a few fitful moments of rest while crouched against a rock and hugging her knees. She had to rise several times to move and regain circulation.

  If she huddled with Blades, she knew they could stay a little warmer, but the thought disgusted her.

  The only man who had ever interested her beyond a quick fling was Lord. She had invited him to share her bedroll on more than one occasion, but he had refused. His fascination with his ledger and books had been an obsession. His behavior should have been a warning flag a hundred times over. Yet like the rest of the platoon who had followed him into the archduke’s service and then into the Monster Lands, Alma had joined Lord in his quest.

  All it had taken was the promise of wealth. Lord hadn’t offered anything else, had given no proof, and the promises had all been lies. Yet she had believed every one of them. The man knew how to make a sales pitch.

  “Wake up,” Alma said.

  Blades was curled on a patch of dry weeds. “It’s still too dark.”

  “It’s light enough to see.” She collected what little gear she thought would be useful. One tribal had a bundle of dried meats, mushrooms, and seeds, which she ate. She could only hope the mushrooms didn’t have any hallucinatory effects.

  Even as Blades struggled to rise, she began to hike down the trail. He caught up in a stumbling hobble, using the tribal’s spear as his walking stick.

  If what Redruth had said was true, their horses were gone. It meant they had days to hike before reaching their boats. Last she had heard, the untamed mountain tribes were all loosely united against the Inland Empire and all the towns and villages loyal to Pater the Zealot. But she held no illusions that mercenaries who had once served the archduke of Pinnacle, or even anyone ostensibly unaffiliated, would receive any better treatment from the tribals than they already had.

  Their escape had been a near thing. Getting out of the cursed mountains quickly was now her only goal.

  “Come on, let me rest,” Blades said as they slid down a gravel slope.

  “Keep quiet. Your whining, grating voice carries.”

  “Where are we even going? Lord and everyone are dead. The dragon even dragged his satchel of books away out of the fire. Whatever big score we were banking on has evaporated. And now with our horses gone, we need to figure this out.”

  She turned. “What do you mean, he took his bag? The dragon took it?”

  “Yeah. I thought I told you.”

  “Well, you didn’t. Think carefully. You saw that monster—that animal—with Lord’s bag?”

  “It held it in its tail when it finally left. It didn’t make sense then and it makes no sense now.”

  She raised a hand for him to stop talking.

  As tired as she was, an insane possibility stirred in her mind. Was it possible? Was the creature inside the cave somehow intelligent? Lord hadn’t brought them there for any treasure stash. That had all been a lie told to the grunts. But she knew he was seeking something that was going to pay out handsomely, something that involved a secret held by the goblin sages.

  If Lord knew about the monster, he had grossly underestimated it. His quest had ended at the creature’s lair and it had killed him. He had been so certain. So convincing. Had it all been for nothing?

  But if Blades was correct and the dragon had left with the satchel, did it mean there still might be something to be salvaged from the disaster?

  She stored the thought away. No use in wasting time when all the facts weren’t present. She assisted Blades as they traversed a fallen log. The wood was free of all its bark. The blackened interior indicated it had probably been struck by lightning.

  “Can we go a little slower?” Blades asked.

  She let go of his hand as he hurried to keep up. “We killed tribals. That means their tribemates will come looking for us. We can countertrack, but there’s not many alternate routes for us if we’re heading west to lower elevation. And I don’t think going any other direction is an option. We have no supplies. So our only choice is to make the best time possible.”

  “You think there’s more of them?” Blades asked.

  “Yes. So if you have to stop to rest, that’s fine. But from here on out, I’m not waiting. Just remember that the mountain tribes can do much worse than throw you off a cliff to their dragon god.”

  One horse lay dead and showed signs of having been torn at by some kind of scavenger.

  Alma recovered two of the smaller goblin arrows from the rocks as she made a quick survey of the ground. Both arrows went into a makeshift quiver she made from a sack tied to a saddlebag. She couldn’t shake the feeling they were being watched. She hated ignoring he
r instincts.

  “We could build a fire and roast some of the horsemeat,” Blades said.

  “The only thing worse than the smell of smoke for attracting unwanted attention is the aroma of cooking meat. Let’s go.”

  Whatever goblins had attacked the mercenaries guarding the horses were good at covering their tracks. But Alma spotted several traces of shoe prints.

  Goblins.

  The thieves who stole unguarded children. Poisoners of wells. Burners of barns. Anything that vanished without an explanation was always taken by goblins, although few in the delta had ever seen one of the creatures.

  They were held as slaves by some, mainly by people living around the Inland Sea.

  It seemed a matter of course that Lord’s raid would eventually stir up a response. That goblins had followed them so far and even across the sea was noteworthy. The closest thing to a fight they’d had with the creatures was an encounter with a large hunting band that had tried to block their way when the raiders had first entered the Monster Lands via a river valley from the south. But the hunters had been easily killed or scattered.

  She planted her foot next to a smaller footprint. “Pathetic.”

  “What?” Blades said as he struggled to climb down her way.

  “I said keep up. Let’s get out of here.”

  Chapter Seven

  At night the humans of Bliss set lanterns on the wall by the gate. It was hard to tell how many guards they had, but the barking dog reminded Spicy that they wouldn’t need many watchmen to sound an alarm if he made a sound while sneaking in.

  He hadn’t been able to wake Fath up before he left. Spicy hated to leave the dragon sleeping there, but the chance to find Rime and the others couldn’t wait.