Douglas Niles - Lord of the Rose

“Go!” cried Bonechisel, clapping one of his lackeys on the shoulder. “Kill giant!”

The goblin yelped as his chieftain pushed him forward. Two other warriors, equally slow and witless, lurched after, propelled by strong kicks to their posteriors.

“Attack!” cried Bonechisel, raising his club and advancing behind the screen of the three milling goblins.

The giant shook his head and blinked. His eyes went to something at the edge of the room-a bed for an infant, the hobgoblin perceived in a quick glance-and the giant’s muscles tensed as he was suddenly galvanized by fear. At the same time, the three goblins in front of Bonechisel hesitated.

Disgusted, the hobgoblin charged between his cohorts in a bull rush. His axe, already raised above his head, whistled downward in a wild swing just as the giant sprang to his feet. The jagged edge of granite struck the fellow right in the middle of his forehead, the blow knocking him back into his seat then sending the chair toppling over backward, spilling the giant onto the floor where he lay motionless.

With a wild whoop of triumph, Bonechisel brought the axe down again, and again. The three other goblins, inspired by their chieftain’s example, joined in the fun, rushing forward with their own stone clubs to batter and bash the helpless giant, until his body had been reduced to a shapeless pulp.

Bonechisel danced around the corpse of his slain foe in an ecstasy of triumph. “I am Giant-Slayer!” he crowed. He clubbed one of his lackeys. “Call me Giant-Slayer!” he ordered.

“Hail Bonechisel Giant-Slayer!” the goblin, no fool, shouted.

The hobgoblin danced to the back of the room then yelped when he realized that the great bed was occupied-by the mate of the giant. He bashed his club against the female and was startled by her utter lack of reaction. Leaning in, he sniffed. The scent of death filled his nostrils. Pulling back the quilt, he saw this was an ogress, not a giantess. A shrewder brain that Bonechisel’s might have deduced that this oddly matched couple were outcasts from both giant and ogre tribes.

The chieftain remembered the third denizen of this stone house. He looked toward the infant bed and saw that Laka was peering over the lip of the cradle. Caught up in the blood-frenzy, Bonechisel raised his club and howled aloud, starting toward the last of his enemies.

To his surprise, Laka reached into the cradle, snatched up the infant, then turned and snarled at the chieftain with a startling display of big teeth. Her eyes blazed, and the import of her actions was clear and defiant.

“Give me babe!” demanded the hobgoblin. “I kill! I am Bonechisel Giant-Slayer!”

“This babe mine!” she declared. “Go kill someplace else!”

The infant was squalling and fussing, and the hobgoblin would have liked nothing better than to smash its little brains out on the floor, but he noted the glare of determination, of pure courage, in his mate’s eye. He decided that killing this baby was not worth subjecting himself to the female wrath and recrimination that would follow.

Even as he stared in disbelief, his pig-eyes squinting, Laka slumped down to the floor, opened her tunic, and gave the baby one of her breasts for suckling. The baby half-breed’s annoying wails faded to a surprised squawk, then a soft slurping as he fastened himself to the teat and began to nurse.

Laka called her babe Ankhar, and she cared for the half-giant infant with as much love and attention as if he had been born of her own flesh. From the first greedy suckle, Ankhar clung to his new mother with desperation, forming an inseparable bond.

Generally the adopted hobgoblin spent his time avoiding the mature males of the tribe, although he became the natural leader of the gobs of his own age. Not only did he outweigh all of his contemporaries by at least a factor of two, but he was quick to anger and ruthless in retaliation, inflicting countless broken bones during any outbreaks of rough play. Fear being a primary influence upon goblin relationships, Ankhar’s prowess made his fellows obsequious, and he was quick to take advantage of the worship he inspired. He would dispatch the young ogres to bring him food and drink, to perform his designated chores (he especially hated firewood hauling and stone breaking).

During these years the tribe moved around a lot, never settling in the same place for more than a season or two at a time. At first Bonechisel was one of many hobgoblin chiefs in the foothills around the Garnet Range, but he gradually made a name for himself as one of the most successful when it came to raiding the settlements of humans, leading his tribe in such a way that the gobs had plenty to eat-even during the waning months of winter when starvation made a rampant sweep through the bands and clans of leaders who showed less foresight.

In Ankhar’s sixteenth year the War of Souls ended unnoticed by the goblin population of the Garnet Range. However, the savage creatures did notice that once again two moons moved through the skies. Not long after, Laka came upon a shiny green rock in a mountain cavern. She listened to the rock and heard the words of the Prince of Lies, Hiddukel. Hiddukel was pleased with her, the rock said, and she began to tell the other hobs and gobs about his wickedly successful ways.

Drawn in part by the might of the brutal chieftain, in part by the compelling words of the primitive high priestess Laka, more and more of the small goblin clans were absorbed into the Bonechisel tribe. By the time of Ankhar’s eighteenth year Bonechisel’s followers numbered many hundreds-and in fact was the most formidable horde along the entire circumference of the mountain range. Burly hobgoblins, seasoned veterans with scars and trophies to prove their prowess, bowed down to Bonechisel these days, and brought him gifts of food and drink and treasure. Bounty hunters stayed well away from the brutish tribe.

In the late spring following Ankhar’s eighteenth winter, the gobs and hobgoblins of the Garnet Range held a great gathering during the week preceding the summer solstice. The site of the gathering was a town that had once been called Tin Cup, a formerly prosperous mining settlement of two score houses and a dozen larger buildings. Bonechisel’s warriors had attacked Tin Cup the year before, slaughtering all the miners who had dared to remain. Since then, no human had visited the place.

Bonechisel held court in the upper floor of a stone mill-house. His tribemates were scattered through the houses of the town, while the clans and tribes of all the other gobs and hobs for two hundred miles around made camps in the surrounding valley and the many deep, dry mine shafts. Every night a huge bonfire raged in the village square, and the field and the narrow streets thronged with festive warriors and wenches. Alcohol flowed freely, a mixture of captured spirits brewed by human and dwarf and many vats of the vile, flat coal-beer brewed by goblin alchemists over the previous winter.

This was the year when Ankhar began to feel the pulse of the council, the dancing and the drumming and the sweat and the smell. By this time, of course, he was a well-recognized member of the tribe. By virtue of his blood parentage, he stood ten feet tall when he raised his head, a height that lifted him two or more feet above the largest of the hobgoblins in all the Garnet tribes. He was not a greedy soul, for he had not yet developed a taste for females or strong drink, and in these days there was plenty of food to go around, and he was often courted and feted at the campfires of all the lesser lords.

He was counseled in private by his foster mother. Laka spoke to him of many truths, truths that had been revealed to her by the Prince of Lies. Hearing these words, Ankhar began to see his own destiny and to think in terms of his own choices… his power.