Don Bassingthwaite - The doom of Kings

The tales he had seen in the night throbbed in Geth’s head. The heroes of Kuun wouldn’t have waited. Neither would he. Geth drew a deep breath, braced himself, and stood. A wave of dizziness came over him, but he fought it back and took Wrath when Senen offered the sword to him.

“Do it,” he told Dagii. “We ride at dusk.”

Their first night out of Rhukaan Draal was the most difficult, at least for Geth. Although he’d broken his fast with a tremendous meal and slept through most of the day, the effects of his vigil on the roof of Khaar Mbar’ost lingered in his bones. He swayed in the saddle and kept falling asleep as they rode. More than once he wondered if maybe they should have waited until the morning, but he knew that the stories of the past wouldn’t have let him. They churned inside him, demanding action. The entire party-Ekhaas and Ashi, Dagii, Chetiin, and Midian-felt the urgency to be on the road, though. Haruuc hadn’t returned to Khaar Mbar’ost by nightfall, but reports of events beyond the Ghaal River had: the Gan’duur’s descent on the fields had been swift and thorough. A significant portion of the crops, summer-dry and almost ready for harvest, had burned, and the Gan’duur raiding parties were still roaming the countryside, causing more havoc.

When they stopped near dawn, Geth all but tumbled out of his saddle. Dagii let none of them sleep for long, however. By midafternoon, they were riding again. It became their pattern to ride through the afternoon and evening and late into the night, sleeping through the dawn and morning hours. As Chetiin explained to Geth, in a land where most of the population was as comfortable at night as during the day, dawn was the least active time and the safest period to rest.

Geth missed riding with the goblin behind him, but Chetiin had, as he’d said, acquired a mount of his own, one that was almost as silent as he was. While the rest of the party clopped along on Tariic’s magebred horses-or in Midian’s case on his magical pony-Chetiin rode a great black wolf that padded beside them like a shadow. There was a disturbing, malevolent sharpness in the animal’s eyes, and when Ashi commented that first night that she felt like the wolf was watching them all, the snarl that came from its muzzle sounded eerily like speech.

“She is watching you,” Chetiin said, “and she’d prefer if you didn’t call her ‘the wolf.’ Her name is Marrow. She’s a worg.” He scratched behind his mount’s ears. “Her pack has an ancient alliance with the taarka’khesh. She’s agreed to travel with me as a favor.”

“How can she run with the horses?” Geth asked. “I’d have thought they’d be terrified.”

Chetiin produced a vial of slightly milky liquid. “A taarka’khesh preparation. She smells like a horse.” Marrow growled and Chetiin added, “Not that she’s happy about it.”

Like the landscape between Matshuc Zaal and the Gathering Stone, the ruins of human habitation marked the country that they rode through south of Rhukaan Draal. It lacked, however, the feeling of emptiness and desolation. The fields and orchards that had run wild alongside the trade road had been tamed, though in many places it wasn’t farmers working the soil, but slaves. Through the long afternoons, the distant crack of overseers’ whips was as common as birdsong. In Matshuc Zaal, the slaves had been goblins, hobgoblins, and kobolds, but Geth was shocked to see humans, dwarves, and shifters in the fields as well. Ekhaas looked ashamed when he asked her about it. “Captives taken during the war or in raids,” she said “If Haruuc were riding this way, you wouldn’t see them. The overseers would hide them until he passed.”

“He must know they’re there,” growled Geth. “Why doesn’t he free them?”

“Haruuc holds a sword by the blade,” said Ekhaas. “Promises of plunder-including slaves-were one of Haruuc’s first tools in uniting the clans. Now he’s paying for that. Warlords like Daavn of the Marhaan are hungry for more wealth and he can’t give it to them. He has to balance his desire to show a civilized face to the Five Nations with a need to keep appeased the clans that support him.”

“If he ordered them to free their slaves, they’d turn against him faster than the Gan’duur have,” said Midian.

Ekhaas scowled but nodded at the gnome’s blunt assessment.

They traveled more slowly than they had along the trade road. They still followed roads, but the byways were old and not well-maintained. It was only a little better than riding across open country. At least they didn’t always need to camp rough. On several nights, Dagii led them to the stronghold of one or another clan. Sometimes the strongholds were large and sometimes they were small, but they always welcomed Dagii and the rest of the party with grace and honor. The first few times they found shelter in a clan stronghold, Geth assumed their welcome came because they traveled under Haruuc’s banner, but then one night he happened to let his hand rest on Wrath as Dagii and the local warlord exchanged greetings.

“We come with peace in our hearts and our blades in their sheaths,” Dagii said in a phrase that sounded like ritual. “We ride on behalf of Lhesh Haruuc, who asks you to take us in as your guests for a night.”

The warlord, a powerfully built hobgoblin wearing the crest of a sundered shield, laughed at the ritual. “The lhesh might ask, but I’ll take you in because you are the one at my gate, Dagii. Welcome, brother!”

“Brother?” Geth asked Chetiin.

“It’s an old courtesy between friendly clan chiefs.” When surprise passed across Geth’s face, Chetiin’s ears twitched up. “You didn’t realize? Dagii is chief of the Mur Talaan.”

“I didn’t know that. I thought he was just a member of the clan, the way Tariic’s a member of the Rhukaan Taash.” Geth stared at Dagii’s back as he followed the local warlord into his stronghold. “What does his clan do while he’s serving Haruuc?”

“The Mur Talaan is a very small clan. It was never big and war made it smaller. I wouldn’t ask him about it-it’s a private matter to him. What’s left of the clan gets along well enough without his interference.”

“Where is Mur Talaan’s territory?”

“Rhukaan Draal.”

Geth looked at the goblin in amazement. Chetiin shrugged. “The Cyran town that Haruuc conquered to build Rhukaan Draal was at the edge of Mur Talaan territory. Fenic, Dagii’s father and the first of Haruuc’s shava, ceded it to Haruuc as a place that would be neutral to all the clans of Darguun. Over time, the rest of their territory was lost, but the land beneath Rhukaan Draal still technically belongs to the Mur Talaan, even if the lhesh controls the city. It brings them-and Dagii-a great deal of honor, although very little else.”

“If a human clan owned all the land under a city the size of Rhukaan Draal, they’d be as wealthy as a dragonmarked house.”

Chetiin’s ears twitched again. “Can you imagine trying to collect rents or taxes in Rhukaan Draal?”

“I guess not.” Geth glanced again at Dagii, still talking with the local warlord, and tried to imagine the warrior who wore Haruuc’s crest as a warlord in his own right. Maybe the responsibilities of a clan chief were the reason he seemed so stiff.

As they traveled farther from Rhukaan Draal, roads became paths and the strongholds of warlords became increasingly far apart. Territories were larger and some areas were simply unclaimed by any warlord. Bandits roamed these areas-and local strongmen who were simply bandits settled down and gone to seed. When they camped under the moons, they posted watches; when they stayed under a roof, it was less Dagii’s invocation of Haruuc’s name that earned them hospitality than Ekhaas’s promise of stories told with the skill of a duur’kala.