The goblins began to pull the impaled thrings in with hooks and nets, and cut them up with axes on the shore of the Bean to be thrown onto pyres. They had been lucky everyone said, though the crossing had been made to slow to a stop. Only a few trolls and goblins were dragged away into the depths of the lake, and in comparison they had just destroyed someone’s army. As they ate fish, clams and gator meat around the fires that night, the mood was up and ten thousand goblins had sworn that they would lead the continued march across the Wet Way in the morning.
Kulith armed them all with thring lances the next say and sent them across. He waited until they were about a mile out, then he started across himself with a large group of trolls. He guessed that most of the thrings that had been thrown at them on the march were fodder, or had been used in a test of their strength. Their almost total failure had made whatever intellect behind the attack stop the tactic, and wait for them to cross over onto Big Stone. Off to his left sailed Ovodag, who had put almost a thousand buggers onto his fleet of boats and barges and was using oars, poles, and the wind to move them along the skirt of the shallows. He landed them separately from the Wet Way, on a headland with some low white cliffs about a half mile to the south, and began to set up a camp.
There were six inhabited islands in the Tooth Swamp and dozens of smaller villages, docks, and work platforms scattered around beside them. These watched cautiously as Kulith’s army moved by, as the trolls dealt with the thrings effectively, and the major battle they had expected went differently than what anyone had expected. Their portcullis lifted up and the gates opened, and the fishers and wood rowers returned to plying in their skiffs. By the time Kulith reached the other side of the Wet Way and walked up onto the rocky north shore of Big Stone, a dozen different chiefs and potentates were there waiting for him with gifts, ready to discuss their capitulation and an alliance.
They made camp over on the headland that Ovodag had occupied, and workers began to build a series of docks from wood and rock out along the shoreline. With each new band or allied group that came across the Wet Way, new rings of tents were added outward, across the farmland and fields. Kulith had only moved about two thirds his horde across by nightfall and he did not have enough food to feed all the ones that were there. But there was an awareness that made up for it, and he saw it in the eyes of the goblins, the thyrs and the trolls.
They could be killed in the next five minutes by one of their pot mates, but they understood that the combined horde they fought in now was unbeatable, like a great, eternal organism with one purpose. They were the kings of the Stones that night and nothing, not even a little hunger could stand in their way. Tomorrow, everything seemed attainable. There had always been a feeling of risk, of impending doom when fighting and pillaging out in the West Lands or in the Golok March, but that was not the way it was here. It may have been the first time in their lives that most of them felt safe, if only for a fleeting night. Kulith let them fill their bellies with that.
That night the rest of the troops he had left on the Bean were attacked by a combined force of swamp goblins and thrings, and by the morning light he saw that the situation had changed more than he had imagined it could. There were several large rowing longboats, of the kind used by the marsh lords along the west coast of the Dimm sitting at anchor near the east tip of the Bean. They belonged to Sterina’s coastal guard, or to one of the other thring lords. Closer in, one was also wrecked on the shore and another overturned and burning in the water. His army’s stores appeared to have been attacked and damaged to some extent, and a smudge of smoke rose up along the shore from several places through the trees. Were they thring fires, he wondered?
He didn’t know the outcome and he cursed Ovodag for showing off the day before and not being in command of the troops he had left on the Bean. If he had been, Kulith was sure it would have been better fought, and he would have known by now what had happened there. He went and looked for Ovodag among those watching the action going on in the distance.
His brother was interested in the fires and battle, but showed no surprise or worry. “They were playing with something that was too big for them,” he told Kulith, who had not calculated the benches on the coastal longboats to figure how many troops had been involved. “It looks like Chief Morol of the Shell has captured those four undamaged ships, and the fifth can probably be repaired. I can order them all to row around the north side of the Bean and over here, and then we can use them to ferry food and supplies from North Stone and the Shore.”
Kulith nodded, as he understood what he was experiencing: something he had not figured on. Like a thring lord, he was now relying on his field commanders, and getting reports instead of seeing directly what happened. He did not feel elevated by it. He instead felt diminished, like he had lost some of the control that had caused things to so far work out.
“Send a launch over and tell them what to do,” he said. “Have the rest of the horde carry everything over onto Big Stone. There is too much weakness in us being divided on both sides of the Tooth Swamp.”
“What about the Stones between us?” Ovodag asked him. “With us off the Bean there will be no one left to make sure the warren chiefs stay loyal, or that our food carts are not attacked and taken.”
“Most of the chiefs who remain on the Sword have given us warriors, but that is no surety of their loyalty.” Kulith thought about it. “Even if we cannot guarantee the road down the Sword, we can still use the Hook and the Spear. Our options are limited as far as the Wet Way and the Bean, and I think defending them forever is not going to work well for us. We have daunting numbers, and Big Stone is full of food if we just go out and take it. We will disperse the army to pillage the countryside and secure stores there, and then they will have a bigger problem than focusing on stopping our supplies at the Bean. The army will disperse tomorrow, and begin their attacks. How many more boats can you get to move supplies over the lake to this camp?”
“There will never be enough,” Ovodag said, turning to look back at Kulith. “These costal boats they have sent over from the marsh shore: is it just the thrings doing things their own way, or do you expect another such attack?”
“I know there are big armies over there,” Kulith replied. Sarik had boasted of them a few times, and Sterina had shadowed his horde during the West Lands campaign with a smaller one of her own. What had happened to them, he had no idea.
“There are undead warriors there smart enough to be in good order and use steel,” he said, “and also a great many buggers in their vassalage. Sterina is just toying with us right now. Wait a bit longer and you will see: she will come after us for real.”
Ovodag sighed out, concerned. “Don’t tell the other buggers that,” he said, and walked away back up the beach.
Kulith turned back himself after a little more watching and went to find the troll and goblin chieftains, and with them he went out to the high ground and scouted out the first warrens and castles they could see in the distance, south across the countryside of Big Stone. It was assumed that every one of them would make a fight of it, as they all had vassalage and fear of Vous Vox, the thring who controlled the Stone Pile for Sterina, even if by right of combat it should now belong to Kulith. Perhaps that was too much to presume. It was unprecedented that a troll should control the Stone Pile, and the Vagrim had been unable to take it over. He was instead undone by an alliance between Vous Vox and Sterina. The Vagrim had been beaten by them, almost disposed of for good. Kulith had fought the Vagrim in this damaged condition, and it had undoubtedly figured into his victory.
They were near a stone monument set on the top of the hill. It was an old column, of good workmanship and probably dated back to the Mancan presence there. The goblins and trolls usually preferred to pull them down, but some had become so locked in with local tradition as landmarks that they remained. There was an old foundation cut a little farther down the hill, and some ruins now covered over with a layer of soil and grass. He looked back an
d saw that the chieftains were all standing in a rough line, probably waiting for someone to come and tell them what to do, just as Sarik had trained them, as the Growler had done with their fathers and several generations of those before them.
Some of the chieftains looked relieved to have made it, or to have after all picked the winning side. Others seemed reminded of their anger, and were looking out to the south at where the battles would eventually take place. Most looked haughty and proud, daring those who returned their gaze to try and do anything to stop them. They were as strong as the goblins and trolls had ever been, and without a thring to rule them, which was perhaps now also their greatest weakness.
Would these feelings be enough to keep them together? Kulith thought it could not last, and experienced then a great personal disappointment. Several of the leaders standing there had long running feuds and claims against each other. These would become important to them again right after the Stone Pile was taken.
Kulith didn’t control them. He never had, he never would, and he did not pretend to. The sword he carried let them counter the greater thrings, and he had the experience to fight and defeat the other bugger and thring alliances that now existed on the Stones. He still owed a ghostly apparition the destruction of Vous Vox, and he was going to go and do it, riding forward always on the wave of troll and goblin warriors around him.
He walked back up the chiefs and looked about, nodding to them. They were drinking cups of watered down tump, mixed with edge berry in a large silver cauldron on a trivet they had looted out of one of the castles on the Sword. Kulith took a cup and absently wondered why it had become so important to him to kill Vous Vox. Sarik had been his real enemy, and an enemy to all the other buggers. Then there had been the Vagrim, and then Sterina next for insisting they march down the same old path of attrition and destruction. He supposed that Vous Vox just made it all possible, through his support, eternal existence, and the knowledge he possessed.
“What do the goblin lords want to do first?” he asked them, looking back and forth between the two that usually spoke for the rest. It was too early in the day for them to be drinking tump, but he drank the sweet red mixture with them now. It put them a notch above the masses of warriors that they commanded below, now chewing on bones outside their tents.
“We need more food,” one said. “Your brother promised us it, you promised us it, but we are still waiting.” It was Narus the Nail, who lead almost a thousand buggers from the Hook.
“I am sending Ovodag back today to Doom Wall and the East Shore for more food. We will learn how to use those coastal ships that attacked the Bean to move it. There should also be at least two hundred foot carts fording across the Wet Way today.”
“I think he’s saying that we’re out of food,” the goblin chief Kroson said to the others. They looked about sourly and cursed, but then continued to stand there and drink the tump.
“I did not say I would give every warrior a chunk of steak, a mug of tump and a warm sow every night,” Kulith returned. “That was never how we did things out in the West Lands. These are the kinds of problems that Old Roarer had too. And what did he do about it? He never got any farther than the Sand Castle. Then the thrings laid siege to it and that was the end. They were well fed and then they were dead. What I am more worried about today is our water.”
“How so? We are surrounded by water,” one of them said.
“We’ll have to boil it first, and eventually we will have to move away from the coast. Every well on this island is polluted, is about to be polluted, or is in jeopardy of being so. I’m worried that as we march forward, the warriors will begin drinking out of the bad wells and get sick, then die, and go white.”
“You want to have them all drink root tea?” one asked him. “They will not like that. It dulls the senses and makes it almost impossible to drink tump.”
“I’m not saying that,” Kulith replied, “but you need to be careful about what they are drinking to get by. The thrings won’t need to lift a finger if this army kills itself with disease.”
“We need to attack one of the big warrens, to take its stores and its wells,” Kroson told the others.
“He’s right,” Kulith said. “One of the warrens that is too big to want to poison their own wells, one of the ones with a lot of food waiting inside of it. The wells and food will be good up until they see they are losing, and then they will be used to bargain with.”
“We will go and saw that wood then,” Narus the Nail said, figuratively. He pointed out toward the south. “I advise that we attack that one there. It’s very strong looking, but my scouts have reported that it has a weak section of wall on the other side. Perhaps Vous Vox did not trust them very well?”
Kulith nodded, and the goblin had just mentioned wood, which they would need more of now to make thring lances, and for cooking and attacking the Stone Pile. It all lay waiting for them just to the south west, starting at the foot of the ridge that ran across the center of the island. They could clearly see the green and gold tops of trees that descended down for several miles until they met with swampy areas, or the water’s edge.
“Some of us will have to go and secure the forest, and that means taking the Red Tower that sits within it,” he told them. “There’s a thring in there, something called the Whisper. It’s a bad one, from what I have heard. There are also root caves in that forest, used as barracks to hold the bodies of lesser thrings.”
“Why not just cut at the edge of the forest?” one of the goblin leaders asked.
“Then they will use the Red Tower as a base against us. It’s just far enough away from the Stone Pile to make it ideal. If Big Stone has moved and hid food, it is most likely to be there. And before its gates runs the only thing close to a river on this island.” The chiefs looked back and forth and nodded.
“It seems a worthy prize for us to capture,” Narus said.
“I’ll need to get more information about this monster, if I am to counter it with some strategy,” Kulith admitted. “In the meantime, start moving south. Spread out from our camp and capture everything worth the effort in your path. Do we have enough warriors to do that?”
“And then some,” Kroson affirmed.
“Hold the others in reserve behind the line, or find something for them to do. When the ones out in front meet resistance, have the others come up and help them. I’ve heard that there are wolf and pony cavalry in some of these warrens, and you’ll need to have bows and lances out ready for them. It’s not called Big Stone for nothing. In the meantime, I’ll go see what I can do about the food.”
The chiefs grunted and nodded in agreement, and moved forward to look at the rough outline they had made of Big Stone in the dirt with some of the features placed in by using piles of rocks, the stoppers of tump jars, and other pieces of trash. Kulith moved back, and then left them in the middle of their discussion about how they would lay themselves out and move southward over the island.
Kulith was using one of the shelters they had looted on the Sword as a kitchen and sleeping room, the hide bleached almost white and in good condition. It was decorated on the outside with designs done in blue indigo and the dark green of water bugs. Little Toad and the White Knife warriors looked up when he approached, and one of them offered him a long spit of alligator meat off the fire, seasoned with salt, onions, and marsh herbs.
“What are you going to do?” Little Toad asked him, after he had just sat down. He eyed her and considered her reason for asking him such a question. It seemed like she sometimes become bored, and spoke now to relieve it.
“March them all up to the Stone Pile, destroying and killing everything that stands in our way,” Kulith told her, because he felt generous today, and because it had gone well with the chiefs just now. The tent had become a relief after dancing around all the potential dagger points and pitfalls laid out for him. The buggers suspected that they were going to win this war, and some of them now jealously hated him for it.
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nbsp; Kulith hoped that the spirit that had manifested itself before might come back and provide him with some helpful advice, but he only had the sword’s magic steel and his own illusions to bolster him. He knew that there were cursed thring objects that could posses and command their unwilling users, but he did not know if such a thing could happen through an object like the one he had taken from the West Lands. It seemed improbable, as the human kingdoms were almost completely dearth of magic and enchanted objects. And the thrings made nothing helpful but for themselves: it was all a hammering out of curses for malefic purpose. The sword smelled different to him.
“Little Toad, go get me some tump,” he said.
She jerked up and gagged at the mere mention of the liquid. It seemed that her dose of black root tea was still potent enough to protect her. The archer just snarled and limped away on his crutch to go get it for him. He pulled another piece of alligator meat from the stick with his fingers and chewed on it, and looked over to the new suit of armor they had completed for him.
It was made of leather, with iron plates and chain over it, a bit more elaborately than the ones that had been put together for many of the other trolls. The pieces of gold he had taken from a dead goblin chief and the champion he had slain at Doom Wall had been polished and affixed on the front of the gorget, to show his rank and importance.
The countess recovered herself, but still held one of her hands up on her chest, protectively. She looked skinny, through the green sow shift she now wore, and he realized she was wasting away. He didn’t need her dying before it came time to placate the West Lands, and he might need her later for the pledge she had made to him. He poked his finger at the archer after he had given him over his cup.
A War of Stones: Book One of the Traveler Knight Page 19