The Stricken Field - A Handful of Men Book 3

by Dave Duncan

  Only once did Grunth comment. When Rap described the new protocol he hoped would bring peace to the world, she projected a fragrant image of an ill-kept barnyard. Somehow that did not seem like a very hopeful sign.

  As soon as he had done, her son flashed some queries at her. To his astonishment, Rap now learned that the two of them had been corresponding mundanely, by messenger, ever since Thrugg reached the forest. He had never bothered to mention the fact, but many of the trolls he and Rap had met on their journey had then gone off to summon known sorcerers to this meeting, here at Shaggi’s castle. Outside the Mosweeps no one would believe that trolls were capable of such organization, and the idea of them acting as messengers would be a joke, a contradiction in terms.

  Grunth’s scowl grew more hostile, and for a moment she sat in silence, giving away nothing.

  “Well?” her son demanded. “Did they come?”

  ”Some,” she admitted. She turned her gruesome glare on Rap. “You bring trouble! If that dwarf monster suspects what you do here, then he will enslave us all. No one can resist the power he wields.”

  “Will you do nothing? He will come for you anyway, when he gets around to it. He’ll settle with Lith’rian first, I expect, then he’ll come for you.”

  He thought he had scored a point; angry flames flickered again.

  “How many sorcerers are there in the Mosweeps?” he demanded.

  Thrugg was sitting with his knees up like a child, chewing a wad of leaves. “Thousands!”

  “Silence!” His mother hurled a bed-size boulder at him in the ambience.

  He deflected it easily, grinning a disgusting cud at her. “How many, then? ”

  “Fifty, maybe. No more.”

  Fifty sorcerers together would wield power to move mountains!

  Grunth jumped on Rap’s thought. “So they would, faun, but how do you find them all? How do you bribe a troll, faun? And do you think all fifty together could hurt the Covin?”

  Worry it a little, maybe. And how did one bribe a troll? Apparently Thrugg had invited some of those sorcerers to come here for the meeting. Either they had declined, or the witch had sent them home again, or she was keeping them out of sight. Rap had always known that she might refuse to aid his quest, but he had never considered that she might seek to block it. She was vastly more powerful than he was, and so was her son. Although Thrugg seemed more inclined to support Rap at the moment, surely in a crunch he would side with his mother?

  Perhaps Rap had endured this nightmare journey to no purpose—the thought was crippling.

  “And how many in the Nogids, would you suppose?” The witch’s muzzle wrinkled in a sneer. “None.”

  Rap’s heart sank even farther. He sat down again to give himself a moment to consider and took a swig of cold beer. “Zinixo got them already?”

  She nodded contemptuously. “You thought you were so smart that no one else would think of that?”

  The dwarf had once been warlock of the west. He would have investigated the anthropophagi’s islands very thoroughly in those days.

  “When?” Rap demanded.

  “About three months ago.” There was a hesitancy there, though. It showed in the ambience, where lies were impossible and even evasion improbable.

  “And he conscripted all the sorcerers?”

  “Most.” She would volunteer nothing.

  Rap took another drink, feeling more despondent than ever. His quest was starting to seem utterly hopeless. Thrugg gulped down his fodder and said aloud, ”Come on, you mangy old hag! What’re you hiding behind that new shielding?”

  Her response was a blinding bolt of lightning that shattered rocks in front of his toes. The cave rocked with the blast, the three mundanes yelled out in terror—and Thrugg just sat and leered while gravel ricocheted off his hide. As the echoes died away and ears stopped ringing, a newcomer came strolling out of those sinister shadows at the back. Darad growled. Rap scrambled to his feet. He had never seen such an apparition before.

  The man’s skin was a dark molasses shade, but his face and chest and limbs were scrolled with bright white and blue and green tattoos. In size he would rank as taller than an average imp and skinnier, but it was only fat that was missing—the muscles were there and he moved with grace, even barefoot on rock. He wore an apron of white beads that jangled as he moved. He had a red flower in the bush of his hair and a bone through his nose, and when he flashed a smile at Grunth, he revealed very white teeth that had been filed to points.

  “Begging your parson, your Omnivorous,” the newcomer said apologetically, “I feel it is time for me to include on your deliverations. ” He turned his chilling smile on Rap and advanced with both hands out and the white beads of his garment clattering. They were human finger bones.

  He was a sight to curdle the blood, and yet an enormously exciting one. He was a sorcerer, and probably a strong one. He was also an anthropophagus. Rap knew almost nothing of such people, and had never heard of them leaving their native Nogids, because any other race would kill them on sight. Was this some of Grunth’s doing? Or a Zinixo trick? He bore no loyalty spell that Rap could detect; could even the powers of the Covin achieve that?

  “Your repudiation has proceeded you, your Majesty King Rap. I am horrid to make your acquaintance.”

  “I am likewise honored,” Rap said warily, submitting to an embrace. He thought of a stormy night many years ago, and a terrified sailor boy running along a beach with several hundred cannibals in close pursuit. None had come this close, fortunately. Those gruesome teeth were smiling much too close as the man continued his speech.

  “My full name you would find quite unrenounceable, but you may abominate it to Tok.” The dark eyes shone with amusement over the ends of the bone. It was probably a clavicle. “My title is Tik, convoying a heretical right to certain delicacies when my village feasts. My friends call me Tik Tok.”

  “And you call me Rap. I visited your native lands once, Tik Tok, but only briefly.”

  “Ah!” The anthropophagus sighed. “It was a shame you could not stay for dinner.”

  “The invitation was extended, but I felt I had to rush off.”

  Sharpened teeth showed again. “But your green friend remained behind? That was at Fort Emshandar. I was there, as a child. My first feast! But I should like to hear the perpendiculars from you some time.”

  “You mean that was how the goblin escaped? You let him go?”

  “Of course. My grandfather and some others defected his destiny. Even we do not argue with the Gods, Majesty Rap!”

  “You speak impish very well.”

  Mischief gleamed in the shiny black eyes. “I picked it up as a youngster, in the kitchens.” Tik Tok swung around in a clink of bones to face the trolls. “And I am delighted to meet Sorcerer Thrugg, the great libertine. Your brother has been telling me how you emasculated so many slaves!”

  Thrugg did not rise. “Looks as if I have some more to free,” he said, still grinning like a hungry grizzly.

  A line of trolls came lumbering out of that shadowed corner—male and female, ranging in age from a couple of youths up to white-haired oldsters. Big as it was, the chamber began to seem crowded. There was not enough level floor for them all, and some climbed up the slopes and peered down like living gargoyles from shadowed ledges. Darad was backing to the door, looking worried by such impossible odds. Shaggi wore a shamed expression at this treatment of guests.

  Three of the newcomers barely showed at all in the ambience and thus were probably not full sorcerers. The other eight were. Every one of the eleven wore a sheen of ensorcelment. Grunth’s occult image seemed to swell and solidify, and her glower had become even more threatening. These were her votaries. No question who ruled here.

  Rap cursed himself for a reckless fool. He had blithely let himself be trapped in a shielded building at the mercy of a deposed witch. What sort of woman lurked within that hideous bulk? She was very old. She had been overthrown after ruling a quarter of
the world for twenty years, falling back from absolute power to heaving rocks around in a jungle. Had she managed to convince herself that she was enjoying an honorable retirement, or did she see it as humiliating exile? Either way, she would not want him intruding and reopening the wound. And why the gown? All the other trolls were nude. It showed she was not the innocent savage she must have been in her youth. She must know from her years in Hub how trolls were regarded by the rest of the world—and she could read his thoughts much better than he could read hers.

  “Will you go now, faun?” she barked. “Or must I use force?”

  Again the ambience gave her away, and Rap felt a surge of hope. She was not quite as implacable as she was trying to convey. Moreover, the limber anthropophagus at his side seemed completely unworried. He was studying the trolls, wriggling his nose thoughtfully to make the bone in it wiggle up and down.

  “What do you think of the odds, Tik Tok?” Rap asked cautiously.

  “Mouth watering!”

  If one’s taste ran to such beef, there was certainly a year’s supply in view.

  “The lady can overpower us,” Rap said, fishing for information.

  “But it would be unwise under the circumcisions.”

  “What circum . .. To what do you refer, exactly?”

  Tik Tok smiled his nightmare smile. “When the Covin invaded my homeland, I was not the only one to allude capture. Several of us made our escapade in a large canoe and came in search of her Omniscience. My companions are not far off, and are aware of my thereabouts.” “And how many companions do you have?”

  “Nineteen sorcerers and five mages.”

  God of Battle! Rap felt a rush of relief and excitement. The witch was outnumbered! . . . but was she any worse than a cannibal chief would be?

  Only Thrugg was still sitting, munching noisily on the stub end of a branch. ”You will have to repeat your proposal, faun. They were behind the shielding.”

  Rap glanced at Grunth but she made no move to stop him. Quickly, in case she changed her mind, he repeated the story he had related earlier, outlining the new protocol. The trolls listened with stolid faces, unmoved.

  But Tik Tok beamed and slapped him powerfully on the shoulder. “This is a preposition of hysterical significance, your Majesty! I should like to hear our meaty friends’ reactants.”

  “Well, Mother?” Thrugg asked, picking splinters out of his teeth with a claw.

  “They don’t approve!” she snapped. “Trolls do not make war.”

  Rumbles of agreement echoed through the great chamber, momentarily drowning out the rush of the waterfall. “But their views cannot differ from yours,” her son said. He rose to his feet, moving lightly despite his enormous bulk. Then he could look down on her. “Why is what you have done to them better than what the imps do to us?” Amen! Mother and son bared teeth at each other as if this was a long-standing dispute between them.

  “Both would appear to be invaluable solitude,” Tik Tok murmured.

  Failing to move Thrugg, the old woman turned her anger on Rap. “I repeat that war is not our way. And suppose I did agree? I could loan them to you, to aid your cause. If I free them, they will just vanish into the jungles.”

  “No!” Rap said. “They join of their own free will, or not, as they please. They will not need to use violence. If they wish to limit their help to defense, I will still welcome them. We do not seek to destroy the usurper’s agents, but to liberate them.”

  “There is much to be said for violets,” Tik Tok muttered.

  ”Mother?” Thrugg demanded. He towered in the mundane chamber as a column of muscle, and in the ambience he was still the most solid of them all.

  Grunth sighed and waved a great paw. “Do it then.” The ambience blazed as the young sorcerer stripped away the loyalty spells. For a moment the released votaries just stood and stared, mumbling with surprise as they adjusted to their new thinking. Then, with deafening roars, they converged on their liberator, men and women both, some even leaping down bodily on him from their higher perches. Thrugg disappeared below a bellowing, squirming riot of monsters. Dust rose in clouds.

  Tik Tok sighed and licked his lips.

  Speech was impossible in that din. “Well, your Omnipotence? ” Rap sent. “You seem to be mistaken so far. Will you also join our cause?”

  The witch nodded sourly. “I suppose someone must keep you from blundering into disaster.”

  Incredible! Rap yelled in glee and, when he could not hear that himself, flashed a blaze of rose-pink joy in the ambience. He had founded an army—a small army, but a start on something greater. His sufferings had not been wasted after all. “Thirteen trolls and twenty-five anthropophagi?”

  “And a faun for dessert.” The bone in Tik Tok’s nose wiggled. “That makes thirty-nine of us, if my calcifications are correct. An impassive display of millinery power!”

  3

  The horde had enjoyed an unusually good day. As was his custom, Death Bird had deployed his men in two columns. When they converged at sunset, they entrapped a large band of refugees. Camp was pitched earlier than usual to enjoy the spoils: women for rape, horses for food, men for sport—everything a goblin’s heart could desire.

  For Kadie it had been an exceedingly bad day. The weather was unbearably hot now, bringing dust and insects, but in the last few weeks she had learned to endure those. Her cramps and nausea did not come from weather alone. Even goblins came down with fever, and why should she expect to be tougher than them? Trouble was, sickness was weakness in this army. The ones who couldn’t keep up were killed by their friends. Sympathy was about as common hereabouts as killer whales. By afternoon, she was barely managing to stay on Allena’s back. Running alongside as always, Blood Beak naturally noticed her distress, but he jeered much less than she expected. Indeed, he seemed almost concerned.

  The goblin army camped by totems. The prince himself was a Raven, but his bodyguards came from a wide variety of tribes. The little band would attach itself to a different group each night. Blood Beak was gaining authority. The men had begun to regard him more as their leader than their ward, and would generally do what he said, as long as he did not try to overrule their standing orders. This night he insisted on joining the Beavers, who were setting up alongside an unburned barn. He got his way, probably because it was a good campsite, near a well.

  With the magnanimous air of an imperor bestowing a dukedom, he told Kadie she could have the barn. Shelter and privacy were rare treats, and she was grateful. Then he ordered one of the guards to unsaddle the mare for her, and again was obeyed, although not very willingly. Blood Beak could be quite pleasant at times, for a goblin.

  Ignoring her own light-headedness and aches, Kadie first established Allena in a corner by the door with hay and water, and only then made a nook for herself at the far end, behind some bales of straw. She had no desire to eat, but she felt even more sticky and filthy than usual. She must wash before sleeping, she decided.

  That was when she discovered what the trouble was. Her mother had warned her, of course, that such things would happen. Most of her friends had started long ago, and back in Krasnegar she had been quite worried that she was taking so long. Lately she hadn’t thought about it. Well, now it had started. It should be an exciting milestone in her life, the start of womanhood. Thousands of leagues from home in the middle of a barbarian host, it was a very unwelcome development indeed. Fortunately she had some spare garments to use as rags—there was no shortage of such plunder and it wasn’t really stealing because anything she did not rescue would just be burned by the goblins.

  As the sky grew dark, she settled down to try to sleep, sore and unhappy. She laid her magic rapier within reach as she always did and pulled a tattered old cloak over herself for warmth. More than anything, she thought she would like a hot brick wrapped in a blanket, just to cuddle. She had barely closed her eyes before a nerve-curdling shriek rang out close by. It was followed at once by another, even louder. The goblins
had begun the evening’s entertainment, and the Beavers’ fire was right outside her barn. She was used to it by now, of course. Even Allena hardly flicked her ears any more at the sounds or smells of torture, but it was rarely so close. There was rarely so much of it.

  Every time Kadie began to settle, another scream would jar her awake. The night outside was bright with moonlight and campfires, and loud with torment, far and near-agony and raucous merriment in Evil-spawned choruses.

  Tonight of all nights she needed to sleep. She needed her mother, whom she had not seen in over two months. In fact, she had not spoken with any woman in that time. She spoke to hardly anyone except Blood Beak.

  Blood Beak, her future husband, the goblin prince. By his standards, she supposed, she would now class as nubile. The wedding could come any time now. She wished she had a breviary, to know the right prayers to say and the right Gods to invoke. But she would not be able to read it in the dark, and probably there was no proper prayer for this situation. Mom had told her that exact words didn’t really matter. She hoped they didn’t, because she’d done a lot of very unorthodox praying lately. She’d even prayed to the God of Rescues, and she wasn’t at all sure that there was a God of Rescues. Perhaps she had prayed wrongly—to the God of Battles to send the legions and kill all the goblins, for example. The God of Battles had not heeded her appeal. And the God of Rescues, if there was one, was not rescuing those poor men and women outside. At least nothing that bad had happened to her, at least not yet.

  If only they would be quiet outside there and let her sleep! There were so many victims tonight that the torments might go on till dawn.

  “Kadie?”

  Perhaps she had floated off into a half sleep. It was not a scream that wakened her, it was a whisper. She sat up with a stifled cry that was half a groan. Her hand fumbled for her sword. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s me.”