Goblin Nation

by Jean Rabe

  And if—when—she was successful, the Order might reward her with a high advancement in rank. At her age she might not get such an opportunity again to achieve and impress.

  “Tavor?”

  The scout shook his head. “No landmarks yet, Commander. But from the map, I still believe we are headed in the correct direction. This forest is so vast, though, it is hard to read.”

  “Read it regardless,” she said. “And read it quickly.”

  “We’re getting close, I can tell.” Tavor pointed to a cluster of high bushes surrounding a grove of trees. “Purple robe locust is on this map,” he said, “and weeping bottlebrush.”

  The former grew fifty feet tall or more and was covered with spectacular clusters of purple and pink flowers that hung like grapes. The latter was the height of a man and profusely dotted with scarlet flowers on which a swarm of hummingbirds feasted.

  Bera nodded approvingly. “I am surprised you know so much about trees. That’s not in your record, Tavor.”

  “Rare plants, I’m interested in. And I’ve noticed several since we’ve been in this forest. The purple robe were atypical trees when the map was penned more than three decades ago. Not many of them then, so rarer still perhaps now. And see the dry bed?”

  Bera remembered that the bed had been marked on the map, with a notation that a thin, straight river had dried up overnight. The ground cover stopped at the edge, the bottom of the river bed looked like fish scales baked in the sun. Even after thirty years, nothing had dared to grow or flow there.

  “Does the map say what happened to the river?”

  “A battle between two Qualinesti sorcerers, and the river lost.” The scout shrugged and replaced the map among his belongings. “We’re very close, Commander. I’ll wager that if the goblins are on the bluff, they’ll hear us coming soon.”

  “We do make a considerable racket, don’t we?” Bera motioned to Isaam then glanced up as a hawk shot from a tree with a piercing cry, darting to the north and following a small flock of black birds. “Maybe we shouldn’t make so much noise, eh? We should not spook our quarry. It would be a shame if they scattered and we didn’t get them all. Every last little stinking one.”

  The sorcerer rubbed at the bridge of his nose and let out a low breath. He leaned his weight on his right foot then his left; he’d told Bera the previous night how much his ankles were aching.

  “You can make us quiet, old friend?”

  “Commander, I can make us as quiet as death,” Isaam said. The sorcerer’s eyes rolled back until they looked like solid white stones.

  Bera had seen her old friend perform that trick before, though not involving hundreds of soldiers. She could tell that her scout, and even Zocci, seemed unnerved by Isaam’s eerie mien.

  The sorcerer’s mouth twitched, and his fingers spread, looking like knobby bird’s feet. His shoulders shook once; the sleeves that had been rolled up came loose and fell down over his skeletal-thin arms.

  “No noise from metal,” Isaam whispered. His voice sounded hollow. “No words from flesh. No sounds from life.” Wispy tendrils extended from his fingertips, bearing the appearance of smoke but being too dark and heavy for it. The tendrils thickened and swirled around the sorcerer then floated to the ground, the effect of the enchantment leaving his skin looking ashen. He spoke more, but Bera couldn’t hear him. He threw his head back and appeared to shout; again, nothing could be heard.

  Next, the vapors swirled around Bera’s feet. She sucked in a breath, not wanting to inhale the dark magic as it rose and spun around her. The tendrils played along her face as if a lover caressed her then disappeared in the locks of her hair, only to reappear behind her, traveling down her back and wafting over to Zocci.

  The process took quite some time, the black fog covering one Dark Knight after the other, sometimes encompassing three or four at one time. Isaam glided along with the spell, directing it and making sure no knight was left out, not even the prisoner Horace. The ashen complexion marked each man and woman who was touched by the strange magic.

  Bera thought they looked like the newly dead, their color having just fled but their flesh looking still pliant and warm. The magic was almost too effective. She couldn’t hear herself breathe, nor could she hear the swish of Isaam’s robe as he strode toward her, still only the whites of his eyes showing. When he took his place in the line behind Zocci, he blinked and his eyes turned normal.

  Bera thunked her fingers against her breastplate—soundless. She tried to hear any of her men—nothing. She saw the branches moving from the breeze she felt wafting across her face, but there wasn’t even the faintest accompanying sound. There were plenty of birds in the trees—crows with their beaks opening and closing, jays preening, sparrows flitting from one branch to the next. A small red-tailed hawk worked at a nest in a lofty spot. It was strange not being able to hear any of the birds’ activity.

  She raised her arm and motioned the knights forward. Bera had practically memorized the most recent map her scout used, which he claimed was three decades old. They had newer maps of sections along the coast and to the north, but that was not where their quarry was hiding.

  Why the Qualinesti Forest? she asked herself for the hundredth time. Why did the goblins come there when they would have been safer, and their journey shorter, had they joined up with the established goblin territory in Northern Ergoth? She intended to keep one alive just long enough to ask that question and sate her curiosity.

  It was unnatural, walking in silence. She missed the clink-clank of armor, the labored breathing of Isaam, the snapping branches, and the birdsong. With so many birds, she should hear them. Could Isaam hear, although the rest of them couldn’t?

  For nearly an hour, they followed a path her scout had found. Tavor stopped occasionally, bending and nudging the dirt, turning over fallen leaves, and inspecting fern fronds and low bushes. She wanted to ask him what he was looking for and decided she’d never know. When battle came she’d forget all of that, the boring part of the hunt.

  Tavor motioned for everyone to stay still, and he slipped ahead. It looked as if he were taking care how he walked—force of habit, as he wasn’t thinking about the silence spell. When he disappeared from view, Zocci brushed his hand against Bera’s neck. She jumped but quickly regained her composure, not turning around and keeping her eyes focused on where Tavor had gone.

  Minutes passed, but Tavor did not return. Bera tapped her foot impatiently and flexed her fingers, cracking them without hearing the crack.

  She felt another touch, on the back of her hand, the sensation softer: Isaam. He edged ahead of her and peered into the foliage, shrugging and shaking his head. Beads of sweat were thick on his brow and dripped off his nose. It was a warm day, but Bera suspected that maintaining the silent enchantment was what really put him under strain. He gestured at her, and she cocked her head, misunderstanding. He rolled his eyes in frustration, picked up a twig and snapped it: no sound.

  Soon, he mouthed.

  She understood. His spell was wearing thin. Very soon they would be clinking and clanking and rustling against the trees and bushes.

  She raised her arm and motioned the men forward. Minutes later she reached the edge of a tree line and emerged onto a rise where the trees ahead had been considerably thinned. Stumps dotted a landscape that dropped gently away then rose to a bluff. She could hear the branches gently clicking, and she thought she could hear the rush of water—the river on the map.

  “They’re gone,” Zocci said, gesturing. “The goblins are all gone.”

  “But they were here,” Bera said.

  The remains of small cooking fires were scattered across the ground, and here and there burned and broken logs were strewn. There were piles of leaves and twigs and ashes—plenty of evidence that a vast number had inhabited the place.

  “Not a soul,” Isaam said.

  Bera took a step forward. She didn’t like the look or the smell of the place. Death was in the air. The vet
eran of many battles, she recognized the sour-sweet of burned bodies. There was also a faint acrid scent she couldn’t identify at first.

  “Chlorine.” Bera cupped her hand over her eyes. “Faint but evident. Why chlorine?” The sun was setting, yet it shone through gaps in the maples as an orange glare that made her squint.

  “And death,” Isaam whispered. “But not so faint.”

  “Aye, plenty of death. I noticed that.” Bera continued to study the ground. Though she wasn’t a tracker, she could tell it had been disturbed by a great many goblin feet swarming and marching. “And there is no sign of Tavor. Where is my scout?”

  “Perhaps he went over the bluff, searching ahead.” That was said by Zocci. His expression was wary, troubled. “I’ll find him.” He moved ahead, long, measured strides that took him past a pile of charred wood. The wind scattered some of the ashes.

  “They knew we were coming,” Isaam said. “Somehow they knew, and they fled.”

  Bera sneered and motioned the men forward, making a circle with her hand to signal the soldiers to spread out and search. She remained back with Isaam. “Find out where they went, old friend. We’ll track them somehow with your magic. Your magic will serve us far better than our scouts. Focus on Grallik, find a way to poke a window in their blocking spell and … find them fast. We’ll follow them to the Abyss if we have to. I’ll not let this go. In fact …” Bera looked up into the trees, suddenly noticing something else that was weird.

  “Birds,” she pronounced. “There are none here. Everywhere else in the forest but not here.” She cut Isaam a worried glance then said, “Zoccinder, bring everyone back right—”

  One man screamed then another.

  24

  THE STONETELLERS

  A DARK KNIGHT’S WORST NIGHTMARE

  A few hundred knights had walked ahead of Bera so she couldn’t see what was happening to those in the front ranks. She started to dash forward, but Isaam’s arm shot out and caught her. Despite his spindly appearance, the sorcerer was surprisingly strong.

  “Commander.” It was the only word Isaam needed to say.

  Bera’s training and experience kicked in. “Retreat!” she shouted, an order she loathed to give that was repeated through the ranks of the men who’d hastened before her. Retreat, she thought, until she could assess the situation. Get them out of whatever trap she’d let them march straight into.

  She guessed roughly a third of her knights had headed toward the bluff—maybe three hundred fighters. The rest stretched out in uneven ranks behind her and reversed their course, spreading out to make space for their retreating brethren.

  She wanted to be up at the front, to see what nasty little trap the goblins had set. More shouts and another scream cut through the air.

  Bera wanted to call for Zocci. She prayed it was not him. No, it couldn’t be. Zocci would not scream like a baby.

  The men started to fall back, but only the ones closest to her made it inside the tree line. Incredibly, the rest were being sucked down by the earth, attacked by the trees, and pummeled by goblins that had appeared seemingly out of nowhere.

  “By all the dark gods,” Bera breathed. “A fool, me.” How could she have underestimated the goblins? Rats, she’d called them. But they were instead a Dark Knight’s worst nightmare. They were clever rats, and there were a lot of them everywhere.

  The ground had looked solid enough when the knights had started across it. But many suddenly dropped into bowl-like depressions that had been camouflaged by dirt and thatch strewn over them. Before the knights who hadn’t fallen could help their comrades, the goblins had descended. Some spilled out of the earth bowls; others dropped from the trees. More came up over the bluff like a swarm of ants headed for something sweet.

  Bera drew her sword. “Regroup!” She repeated the order, not needing to shout with Isaam deploying a simple spell to magnify her voice. “Retreat! On my line! Now!”

  Her men tried to obey while at the same time fighting the goblins that clearly outnumbered and beleaguered them. Bera jumped forward, throwing her free arm out and pulling a young knight back. She tugged at another as she drove the pommel of her sword down on the top of the head of a goblin that had appeared right in front of her. She barely heard the crunch of his skull as he dropped, or perhaps she’d just imagined the sound.

  “Doleman, Carthor, get your men and follow me! Eyes on the ground!” Bera crept forward. “Anders, bring up the archers.”

  The racket grew, goblins yelling out to each other in their ugly, guttural language, words that she couldn’t understand, her knights shouting, some of her knights hollering in pain. Goblins screamed too. She watched an Ergothian named Garold gut two goblins with one heavy swing. Swords clashed against knives, and suddenly added to that was the constant thwup of arrows.

  When had the goblins become proficient with bows? She’d thought their only weapons were primitive ones, along with whatever they’d stolen from the dead knights in Steel Town. She edged farther past the tree line, gesturing wildly for more knights to retreat.

  Her bowmen came into play, sending a volley into a wave of goblins descending from the east.

  “Commander!” Her lieutenants Doleman and Carthor carefully brought two dozen men along with them.

  “We get everyone back!” she shouted to Doleman. “Fighting retreat! We’re the rear guard!”

  The field before her was chaos, not the slay fest Bera had imagined on the trail. She’d more than underestimated the rats, and she was paying for it with the lives of some of her men. She had to get them out of there, regroup, and organize an attack.

  Her chest felt impossibly tight. Calling a retreat, from goblins! Men lost to goblins! She had to turn the situation around and fast. She had to get her troops back to a safer spot, plan a different advance, make the sorcerer punch a hole in their “windowless house,” and get a good look at what she was up against.

  She had to get Isaam to find Grallik.

  “Isaam!” A glance over her shoulder showed that the sorcerer was caught up in casting some spell. There was no use interrupting him; she sprang forward to engage a pair of goblins trying to cut off the escape of one of her half-elf knights.

  Bera waded forward, slashing to keep a goblin back, and with her free hand, reached out to help a knight who’d fallen in one of the shallow pits. “Brosha! Give me your hand!” He waved her off and pointed to his leg, twisted unnaturally, blood seeping out from a gap between the greave and knee piece.

  “Doleman! Bring two men!” It would take at least two to carry Brosha out. She waited until Doleman headed her way. Slashing again at a goblin darting near and drawing a thick line of blood across his belly, she moved toward the next pit and extended her hand as another knight came in behind her and finished off the injured goblin.

  Ahead, she watched one of her men snatched up by the branch of a red maple. A heartbeat later, the tree hurled him over the edge of the bluff. The branch reached for another but was thwarted by a lieutenant who cut the offending branch off with one swing.

  Bera knew what was happening with the trees and branches—a druid was at work somewhere, animating the oaks as though they were an army of creatures fighting on the side of the goblins. She hadn’t realized goblins possessed such magic …

  “Get behind Isaam!” That was shouted by Carthor, who had fought his way past Bera and busy tugging another one of her men out of a pit. “Everyone, get behind Isaam now!”

  Bera worked her way up to Carthor, slicing the arm off one skinny brown goblin, and lopping the head off another. Individually, the goblins presented scant challenge. But there were so many of them … the ground was covered with their odorous, ugly forms. There were hobgoblins too, and all of the enemy wielded one sort of weapon or another—knives, spears, clubs. Again a hail of arrows rained down from the goblins, most of them bouncing off the Dark Knights’ armor, but some finding their way into gaps between gorgets and shoulder pieces. A few arrows drove through the steel c
uisse sections that covered knights’ thighs and even punched into their breast plates.

  Another return volley was launched by her knights, their arrows proving more effective against the goblins, only a few of whom wore anything resembling armor.

  Though more goblins than knights were dying, Bera raged that any of her men had been killed. It was not supposed to have happened that way. It was her fault for underestimating the goblins, not considering them to be worthy opponents.

  “Regroup!” she bellowed. She wrapped both hands around the pommel of her sword and drove the blade down on a barrel-chested, red-skinned goblin that rushed frenetically at her. His spear broke against the overlapping plates on her hips, and she split his head partway in two. “Behind Isaam. Regroup!”

  A glance back toward the tree line showed that more of her men had fought their way there. Not one goblin had pursued them. Isaam’s spell made a shield wall, she realized, invisible and effective, keeping the goblins to their section of the scabrous land. She looked to the bluff, where about a hundred knights remained. They maneuvered around the pits, alternately fighting goblins and hobgoblins and tree branches that continued to whip down and lash at them. Several knights were being held in wooden grips a dozen or more feet off the ground.

  She spotted Zocci at the edge of the bluff, his axe scarlet from the goblins he’d slain. There was a mound of dead goblins around him, and Bera’s heart leaped to see that he was still unscathed. The edge of his blade glowed faintly blue, and she remembered Isaam had said it reeked of magic. He swept it in a wide arc, cutting one goblin in half at the waist and lodging it halfway into the chest of another. Zocci brought his leg up to push the goblin off his weapon so he could continue the fight.

  Bera never felt more alive than when she was fighting such a battle. The ache in her arms from her repeated swings was welcome. The warm flush in her face invigorated her. They were an enemy she hated, so the slaying was all the more rewarding. She envied Zocci for having a weapon that was impossibly sharp.