Don Bassingthwaite - The doom of Kings

Geth twisted to his feet, caught another charging hobgoblin with a slash between the ribs, and looked to the duur’kala. Her illusory duplicates were gone, and she was bleeding from a wound to her left shoulder. But she had Ashi and Midian fighting beside her now, and they were beating back the attackers. Ashi’s scarf had come loose, and Geth could see the fierce joy of battle on her dragon-marked and blood-spattered face. Midian’s expression was more grim and focused, but he fought surprisingly well for a researcher. Geth spun around, taking in their situation. The campsite was washed in blood. The bodies of their attackers were everywhere and almost seemed to outnumber those still standing. A few hobgoblins still faced the wedge of Tariic and his soldiers, a few more were being forced back toward the edge of the gully by Ekhaas, Ashi, and Midian. Another pair closed tentatively on Geth.

He could hear sounds of retreat in the gully. The hobgoblins, large as their numbers were, had picked a target too tough for them. He turned to the two hobgoblins still facing him and pointed Wrath at them. “Skiir,” he growled at them. Run.

For a moment it looked like they might have considered it, then the gaze of one of them, a lean whip of a hobgoblin with one scarred ear, moved past Geth. The shifter glanced over his shoulder, following it.

Vounn stood alone and undefended at the fire.

In the heartbeat that he was distracted, the hobgoblin with the scarred ear moved, thrusting his hapless companion at Geth and surging toward Vounn with his sword raised. The startled hobgoblin who had been pushed at Geth flailed wildly with his weapon. Geth bashed him with his gauntlet and felt bone crunch, but he was an instant too late. The hobgoblin with the scarred ear ran past him. No one else was any closer to Vounn. Through Wrath, Geth heard and understood the words the hobgoblin screamed out as he charged: “You die here, Deneith!”

Vounn’s eyes narrowed, and the dragonmark that peeked out from her sleeve on the inside of her right wrist seemed to flash in the firelight. The air rippled around the lady seneschal just as the hobgoblin’s sword fell-and the blade skimmed aside, deflected by the power of the Mark of Sentinel. Left off-balance by the failed blow, the hobgoblin stumbled. Vounn parted a fold of her robes, and with a motion that had the swift certainty of years of practice, pulled a long thin stiletto from a hidden sheath. One precise blow drove the needle-like blade into the soft point at the back of his neck and up into his skull. The hobgoblin jerked, then dropped forward, sliding off the stiletto.

Vounn saw Geth’s expression of amazement and answered it with a thin smile. “I am a daughter of Deneith,” she said. “I can defend myself.”

The last of the hobgoblins fighting Tariic cried out and fled down into the gully to join their retreating fellows. The final two attackers who had been facing Ekhaas and the others tried to do the same, but they didn’t make it. Midian hooked the legs of one with the blade of his pick, then swung the weapon to deadly effect as the hobgoblin fell. The other made it to the brink of the gully before staggering back with his hands over a gash in his belly. Chetiin appeared, curved dagger dripping with blood. Ekhaas grimaced and ended her opponent’s agony with a swift blow of her sword.

Ashi was the first to speak into the silence that followed. “You can fight,” she said to Midian appreciatively.

The gnome shrugged. “I do my field work in Darguun. I have to fight.”

“If these are the bandits you warned us about, Tariic, they’re more bold than you thought,” said Vounn.

But Tariic looked around and shook his head. “I don’t think they were bandits,” he said. “They fought too well. Those fought in formation.” He pointed at the three who had attacked Geth in a wedge. “Chetiin, follow the survivors. See if you can learn anything. Krakuul, Thuun-look for Aruget.”

“Mazo,” said Chetiin. He bent and cleaned his dagger on the clothes of a corpse before putting it away. Geth stepped up beside him.

“I’m coming with you.”

Chetiin glanced at Tariic, who nodded. “Ban,” said the goblin.

The first thing they found, though, was Aruget. The hobgoblin soldier lay along the gully at the end of a trail of blood, almost under a collapsed sand bank. Blood covered his scalp and he lay very still, but Chetiin felt his neck and nodded. “Still alive,” he said. “Lucky.” He whistled to signal Thuun and Krakuul, then led Geth on along the streambed.

They didn’t come across any survivors, though they did find the bodies of two hobgoblins who had succumbed to wounds suffered during the fight. The others had gotten away. Along the streambed, carefully out of sight of the road, they discovered how: the dung of horses, still fresh, and a multitude of hoofprints leading up out of the streambed and into the night. There was one more body, too, but the only wound this one had suffered was a knife in the back.

“The leader, I think,” said Chetiin. “Killed because he took his people into a bad fight.” He began feeling through the corpse’s clothes and grunted. “Tariic was right. They were no bandits. This one was too well fed.”

Geth inspected the hoofprints left by the horses and, interspersed among them, the prints of hobgoblin boots. If it had been daylight they should have brought Ashi-she was an expert tracker. He’d learned some skills himself, though, and the story told in the dusty ground wasn’t hard to read. “They rode in after dark,” he said, “then waited until deep night to approach. There were a lot of horses-the survivors must have taken all of them or let them loose to try to confuse pursuit.”

But the soft sound of shifting hooves drew him up the slope of the well-churned bank. One horse still stood there, grazing on a patch of dry grass, and there was a bundle still lashed behind its saddle. The horse shifted nervously as he approached, probably smelling the blood on him, but it stood still long enough for him to free the bundle before galloping away. Chetiin joined him, and Geth shook the bundle open. Clothes fell out. Good clothes, far better than the pretend bandits had been wearing. Chetiin reached out and plucked one item from the pile, a banner like the ones Aruget and the other soldiers wore as they rode.

This banner was yellow and marked with the crest of what looked like a snarling dog. Chetiin’s ears rose. “Gan’duur,” he said. “Eaters of Sorrow.”

“Another clan?” Geth guessed.

“A clan that has chafed under Haruuc’s rule. Tariic will be interested in this.”

Geth’s eyes narrowed. “The hobgoblin that attacked Vounn knew she was Deneith.”

“I heard him,” said Chetiin. “They knew who we are-or at least who she is. If something happened to Vounn, Haruuc would be shamed and weakened in the eyes of the clans. The Gan’duur would gain strength.”

“They knew we were coming. Do you think they were the ones following us today, somewhere off the road?”

Chetiin shook his head and pointed to the wide path of hoof-prints that led away from the streambed. Geth looked at it again, frowned, then looked again and finally recognized what the goblin had seen.

Only one swathe of hoofprints cut across the landscape. Their attackers had come from and fled into the east.

Their party had ridden out of the west.

“They didn’t follow us,” Chetiin said, “but they knew where to find us.”

They rode hard for the next three days, pushing to reach the Deneith stronghold at the Gathering Stone. Ashi was glad for the speed and endurance of Tariic’s magebred horses and doubly glad of the riding lessons Vounn had made her take-before she’d gone to House Deneith, she’d ridden only rarely and always at a much slower pace. Tariic had taken news of Geth and Chetiin’s discoveries with bared teeth and flattened ears. Vounn and he had agreed: they needed to complete their journey as quickly as possible. If someone wanted to stop them, they had the measure of the party’s strength now. Another attack wouldn’t be so easily defeated.