by Tim Craire
We stopped for only one break, during the early afternoon, and it didn’t seem as if any of them really needed it. Korf may have just been cautious about them wearing themselves out with their enthusiasm. A number stood around for some minutes, hands on hips and panting with their tongues out. Others kept trotting, but in circles, and a few pairs sparred with each other with swords or spears. Loud conversations between kobolds continued, just as they had during the march.
I noticed that they were much louder when they spoke than any of their kin in Red Gorge City had been. These adventurers had the pride of their freedom and their mission, I supposed, whereas the dunters’ servants were constantly subdued and wary.
Korf looked a bit annoyed that so many of his followers were not resting, but he just shook his head and we resumed the march. We kept on until nightfall and the kobolds decided on a fire. I helped gather wood.
Later Korf, a few of his older guards, and Arken the translator sat with me next to the fire. Korf gestured toward me and spoke.
“Chief Korf asks what your plan would be for us in Red Gorge City,” Arken asked me.
The question took me by surprise. I had not suggested any plan before the group departed the warren, and I did not think they would be much interested in anything I did come up with.
Korf just stared at me with unblinking eyes. He looked powerful, even at rest, although a bit tired. He was relatively old, and this journey may have been harder on him than on the younger kobolds. I’m sure the heavy chain mail he wore and Maghran’s weighty axe, on top of his other equipment, did not make it any easier.
I paused to think, and then Arken continued to relay our words back and forth as Korf questioned me.
“I believe,” I started, “you should make yourselves known to the local kobolds, and give your message to a few of them. Tell them to rise up against their masters. Tell them to take keys, take weapons, and join you.”
“And how exactly are we to do that?”
“When we were there we frequently saw kobolds working in the fields, or doing other errands outside the city. I would think you would start with them.”
“And do they have a leader we would ask for?”
“I don’t know. I’m not aware that they do. I assume you would know better than I if those kobolds are set up in that way. Do you happen to know?”
Korf ignored this question and asked something else:
“How do you think the dunters will respond to this attempt to seize control of Red Gorge?”
“Not well,” I admitted. “That’s why I think it will be important to coordinate and take their powder, disable their weapons as much as possible, and stop their food supply. All of that should be done first.”
Korf and his guards watched me as I spoke, with little expression on their faces.
I wondered what the point of these questions was. Were they having second thoughts? Had they really marched out of their warren with no plan, and were only now trying to come up with ideas?
But this seemed unlikely for them. They were clearly an organized group, and able to plan ahead. I seriously doubted they would have taken up the campaign had they not been confident of their moves.
“And what will happen,” Arken now asked, “to the dunter army that is outside Emmervale if we succeed?”
“I suppose they will return to Red Gorge,” I said. “You’ll need to be ready for them of course. But again, it would help if the kobolds who are out there with that army, just like those who stayed behind, took measures to hobble those dunters as much as possible.”
“This will all be difficult.”
“I agree,” I said. “I will be around to provide any help I can. Although I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to do.”
Now Korf glanced at his guards, and then back at me. He gave me a brief nod and spoke a few final words.
“Chief Korf says you are a level-headed young man,” Arken said.
This gave me the impression that all these questions had just been a test, somehow.
“Well,” I said. “Thank him for me.”
Arken duly told the chief this in his language, but Korf was already standing up and looking away.
That night I slept by myself, near the horse, some distance from the remains of the fire. The kobolds, for their part, slept in one large group, arms and legs splayed over one another. They were not quiet sleepers. Throughout the night I heard them yelping to themselves and growling softly in their apparently heroic dreams.
We traveled the next day and another night, about the same amount of time I had taken to round Red Gorge and get to the kobold warren. Eventually we neared the dunter capital again. I felt I was getting to know the place; I recognized the same grades to the hills, the same views of the horizon. I wondered how few men alive could claim the dubious skill of being able to identify the outskirts of Red Gorge City.
The group of kobolds and I cleared the top of a hill, and there it was—the smoke and sprawl. The cohort grew quiet, for once, gazing out at the unhandsome city.
We were near the rambling crop fields. In one, off to our right, there were four figures. They were kobolds. Arken pointed them out to everyone else, and then the chatter of the expedition resumed.
The kobolds spoke to each other and gestured toward the farmworkers. In a moment they were all nodding, apparently having come to some sort of agreement.
And then I watched a very interesting exercise:
They formed up into lines; six of them, of six kobolds each. Korf and one of his lieutenants stood off to one side, near me. They all must have practiced before, because they did this quickly and seemed to know where to go.
The columns formed a small block. There was enough space between each of the six lines for a kobold to fit in between, and I soon saw why:
They started trotting toward the field. I spurred my horse and followed.
As they ran, they all chanted some sort of marching song, or I should say running song. I could not make out a word of it, of course, but it sounded disciplined and kept them all in step.
After a few paces, the kobold in the back of each column trotted up to the front of his respective line. Each line did this, so six kobolds moved at once. Then they all took a few more steps in formation, and the new batch of six who were in back repeated the move. They kept doing this little running drill all the way across the field. The song they sang broke into a sharp eight-count refrain every time the ones in back hurried up front.
It was very impressive. Between their outfitting, their sturdy health, and this marching maneuver of theirs, the kobolds looked sharp.
I also noticed that the drill made it seem like there were more of them than there actually were. Perhaps someone watching would have assumed there were fifty, rather than the actual thirty-eight—it was not a huge difference—but still, it seemed to fortify their numbers.
And I realized furthermore that this small phalanx would be ten times more impressive to the kobolds of Red Gorge than it was to me, because they would have never in their lives seen anything like it. Strong and well-armed kobolds. And trotting in formation straight into the heart of the dunter territory; the story would race through the city.
By the time we reached the middle of the field where the Red Gorge kobolds stood, the four of them were gaping. They had been hoeing but now stood motionless with their tools idle. I noticed they were dressed in miserable rags.
The phalanx came near them and stopped, all on cue. Korf then spoke loudly to the four. He sounded confident, and they listened intently. He asked them a few questions, and one answered.
The phalanx stood silent as he spoke.
Then he nodded toward one of the fieldworkers, who promptly turned and ran off toward the city. Korf looked over to me and then began pacing in front of his soldiers.
Arken had wound up at the back of one of the six lines. He now stepped out and walked over to me.
“What did he say?” I asked.
“As you can gu
ess. He told them that the dunters have deserted the city, and they should take it. He said we are here to help, and to wake them up. Then he told them to go bring their important ones.”
“Important ones,” I said. “Do you know if the kobolds here have leaders? He asked me about that. I didn’t know the answer.”
He shook his head. “They do not. Nothing like a chief. Korf just wants to speak to the oldest, the smartest, the strongest.”
Soon other Red Gorge kobolds began to arrive. We could see a trickle of them making their way through the fields. They walked up cautiously in ones and twos and eyed the phalanx of their kin as if they were looking at a giant new locomotive. Korf spoke to them, and his audience grew. The new arrivals looked either older or larger than the average kobold, so these indeed must have been the “important ones” he wanted.
All of them that approached only glanced at me, and did not seem to concern themselves with my presence, until one particular pair walked up. They looked at the phalanx, and then at Korf, and finally at me—and they stopped cold.
They were young males, looking lithe and sinewy. They did not take their eyes off me, and then I recognized one of them: he had a black patch of hair. These were two of the group that had captured me and handed me over to Crotchet in his manor. They looked as I remembered that small group—young and alert. They regarded me silently for a minute or two, and then resumed their approach. They came up to the Kurtenvold kobolds and ignored me.
After awhile the crowd had grown to several dozen local kobolds. Korf called out something to Arken. It went on for a moment and included a nod toward me.
“We go forward, now,” he told me. “They have told us of an empty fortification.We stay there, and then Korf wants to talk to you.”
The kobolds moved toward the city, but quietly now. The Kurtenvold group kept its shape but no longer trotted or performed its line changes.
The abandoned fortification the local kobolds brought us to was not much closer to the city than the disintegrating shed the dwarves and Britta and I had used as our own base. It had walls of boulders and logs, jumbled together like a pile of debris a flooding river might have left behind. The structure did have a turret, however, rising a man’s chest height over the main roof.
The building had been placed, just like old Crotchet’s manor, on a shallow earthwork that elevated it somewhat above the surrounding fields. Also like that manor, this one had a few dunter skulls placed in the outer walls. It was a rambling construction with several corners to it, not just four; and one of these had tumbled down. If the local kobolds had been using it as a meeting place for very long, the disrepair must have suited them, because they had made no attempt to fix it up. It occurred to me that they would have left it that way no matter what, so as not to draw attention from their dunter masters.
The various kobolds walked into the old manor, clambering up the embankment and disappearing inside an open door. Soon I saw a few of their heads pop up over the walls of the turret. The Kurtenvold kobolds surveyed the fields while the locals seemed to look proud of themselves.
Arken walked up to me.
“Safe house for us,” he said. “You can see the signs.”
He nodded toward the bottom of the doorway they were all using, and I saw what he meant: a stick figure of a kobold had been drawn at the bottom, near the ground. It looked something like a kobold with its arms spread. Next to it were two circles interlocked.
“Safe, and seldom visited by dunters,” he explained.
“A code,” I said. “The kobolds here must be more organized than I thought.”
“Nothing hard to make signs,” Arken said. “But we can—teach them. Bring them together.”
All the other kobolds had now gone in. I still stood outside, with the horse, unsure. I had never felt so far from Emmervale; not when Jed and I had been surrounded by dunters, and not when I had reconnoitered the manor and locomotive on my own in the city. Not even when I had walked down into the kobold warren in Kurtenvold. Always in those instances I had been with a companion or companions, or at any rate not far from them. Even in Kurtenvold I felt that I knew those woods somewhat, and I was near the odd but clever Duchess at least. But here, I was risking my skin again on the outskirts of Red Gorge City, and this time I had no one nearby. My closest companions at this point were kobolds who had once fired a pistol at me; my other kobold allies included a few who had abducted me. Beyond this group lay nothing but filth and dunters. I supposed I should have entered the manor with the rest of them and downed some zhirnga, but I did not want to. Even the horse seemed reluctant to get any closer.
Chief Korf now saved me. He walked out, unexpectedly. He spoke to Arken.
“We must head out,” Arken then told me. “The chief wants to move. To the force near your home. We cannot have them—” he searched for a word—“whole, to come back here.”
“When? Do you mean right now?”
Arken nodded. “Chief Korf wants to get out there as soon as we can. And we assume you may not be interested in joining us in our grand hall for—fellowship.”
I was about to protest out of politeness, and insist on entering, when I noticed a look in the kobold’s eyes; it was, oddly, exactly how the dwarves looked when they made their rare and unexpected jokes.
“You know I miss my own people, Arken, and I want to see them. So I am willing to leave now, of course. But this horse needs rest.”
“Could you ride it just until dark? Not long now.”
“Yes.”
“Then Chief Korf wants to. It is not wise for us to have a man and a horse with us here. We will not draw attention, as just more kobolds, but you will.”
“Very good.”
Now Korf turned and gestured toward the manor. He barely waved his hand, and directly three kobolds emerged and trotted over.
One of them was a lieutenant I had seen before, one of Korf’s cousins. The other two were locals, and sure enough I noticed that one was of the pair that had kidnapped me; the leader, with the black hair. I rolled my eyes, which Arken saw.
“You know them?” he asked.
“I know one.”
“How?”
“You can ask him.”
Arken spoke with Korf, as the three reached us, and then the chief had a conversation with my captor. It went on for some time.
Eventually Korf turned to me and spoke.
“So you have met Wukk, here,” Arken relayed.
“Indeed.”
“Must you fight him?”
“What?” I wondered if Arken was mistranslating. “Fight him?”
“For your honor.”
“No, Arken,” I said. “He will be one of the ambassadors?”
“The what?”
“He will come with us, now.”
“Yes.”
“I accept that. If Korf wants him.”
Korf spoke further, then. Arken told me:
“The Chief says that Wukk is a kobold with ideas. He leads. He used the money he got from you to keep these kobolds together.”
“I understand.”
Korf said more, and gave me a wry look.
“The Chief says you should have been more careful concealing yourself.”
“Indeed.”
Now I looked more closely at my new colleague, Wukk. He wore a simple gray robe, but had a belt with a fine studded leather scabbard and sword. I had not noticed these before. He certainly had not had such a weapon back in Crotchet’s hall. I realized that the Kurtenvold kobolds must have brought it along as a gift. I guessed that the other Red Gorge kobolds serving the expeditionary army out near Emmervale would likely be impressed that Korf was able to share such equipment with strangers. It had been a very strategic present.
I was surprised when Wukk now spoke to me, and more surprised that he addressed me in Oppidan.
“I am glad you are well,” he said, in the wizards’ language. “We knew that Earl Satrafy would not harm you. You would have been w
orth too much to him.”
“Earl Satrafy. So that was his name,” I said. “Yes, he treated me well enough.”
“He is a thief who must die,” Wukk added. “A punisher of kobolds.”
He said this without changing his tone, but his anger was clear.
“I think Chief Korf here can help you take over,” I said.
“So do we. Why are you with him?”
I realized they apparently did not know that this entire liberation journey had been my suggestion to Korf. I decided it was just as well; let them think that Korf had planned it all himself.
“I am from Emmervale,” I said. “My people hope to work with Korf. I am an envoy.”
I was portraying him as a ruler, fit to receive diplomats! Korf owed me, now.
“How,” I asked, “did you come to speak Oppidan?”
“I was a slave in Caranniam. I was sold to Satrafy some time ago.”
“But now you are free?”
“I am no longer owned,” he answered. “But none of us is free.”
Soon we moved. I learned from Arken that the lieutenant was named Karrar, and Wukk’s companion was his brother Agarak. I don’t believe Agarak was one of my captors, even though he was family with Wukk. Agarak, just like Wukk, wore a new sword at his side which was a gift from Korf.
The six of us headed east. This time it was Agarak who would sometimes drop down and run on all fours; the rest of them were older, too proud to do so.
We stopped just past nightfall, and the next day continued. We headed east-northeast, and I felt indescribably glad to be returning toward Emmervale for what I hoped would be the last time. My mood brightened even though I was still surrounded by kobolds.