Don Bassingthwaite - The doom of Kings

“Changeling,” she said thickly. This had never been Thuun, but one of the secretive, deceiving race of shapechangers.

Thuun-she couldn’t think of him by any other name-didn’t give her a response.

“Patrol,” said one of the others. Vounn thought he might actually be a hobgoblin.

“This way,” said Thuun. He dragged Vounn around a corner and into another street.

And stopped. Vounn raised her head and saw a mounted patrol just in front of them. “You there!” called a voice in Goblin. “You wear my uniform. What are you doing?”

My uniform? Vounn focused her wits and peered at the patrol. Soldiers in armor painted with the red blade and spiked crown surrounded a number of other figures. One of the most prominent was a big hobgoblin with twin axes in his belt. Another wore a spiked crown on his head. Vanii and Haruuc, she realized. They’d stumbled on the lhesh himself. She tried to push her voice out of her throat. To throw off the hood. Anything to get his attention.

But Thuun was already saluting. “Lhesh, we have a prisoner we’re escorting to Khaar Mbar’ost.”

“You’ve lost your way,” said Vanii. He pointed very nearly back the way they had come. “Khaar Mbar’ost is that way.”

Thuun nodded. “We were forced back by fighting.”

“Leave your prisoner with the first patrol you see and get back to your posts,” ordered Haruuc. He turned his horse. Thuun saluted again and pulled Vounn in the direction Vanii had pointed.

She doubted they would follow that path for long. Thuun was taking her somewhere, and she couldn’t let the opportunity for escape pass her by.

Vounn dragged all of her energy together and stomped hard on the shin of the hobgoblin who held her opposite Thuun. He cursed and hopped in pain. The moment that his grip weakened, she let herself drop.

It was far from dignified but it worked. She slipped out of the hobgoblin’s grasp and went down to her knees in the filthy street. Thuun’s hand tightened immediately, holding her firmly. She had what she needed, though. One hand free, she clawed at the cloak, ripping back the hood. “Haruuc!” she gasped.

She saw the lhesh’s head turn, then Thuun had her hood up again. Had Haruuc seen her? The other false guards grabbed her. She resisted and kicked, not at them, but backward out from under the edge of the cloak. The enveloping fabric rode up, exposing not the clothes of someone seized on the streets, but the fine dress and shoes of a courtier.

“Halt!” Haruuc’s voice was thunder. Vounn heard the whinny of horses turned hard, then a curse from Thuun. His hands released her. She spun as the other guards, not as quick to react, continued to grab for her. Her hood slipped back and she saw Haruuc riding straight for her.

The lhesh stood in his stirrups, as powerful a warrior as she had ever seen. The deep yellow of his skin was like dark gold against the steel of his armor. The spikes of his crown and those set into the joints of his armor flashed as if he were surrounded by blades, but only one blade really stood out-the shaarat’kor, the famous scarlet blade, was a streak of blood on the air as Haruuc drew it. The hobgoblins grappling her saw him as well. They screamed and dropped her, fleeing after Thuun. Vounn fell, unable to catch herself, unable to take her eyes from Haruuc’s charge.

This was what the troops of Breland and Cyre had seen thirty years ago. A king among the goblins. An unstoppable force. A warrior clad in gold and steel and blood. Her breath caught in her throat. If she had been standing against him, she didn’t think she could have raised a weapon to save her life.

His horse passed so close she felt the drumming of its hooves in the ground and caught its smell on the wind of its passage. She twisted around, captivated. The first hobgoblin hadn’t gotten far. The shaarat’kor cut the air. Blood sprayed out, spattering her like warm rain. The hobgoblin’s body toppled back, motion arrested by the force of Haruuc’s blow. A section of his head landed on the ground just in front of her.

The second hobgoblin threw himself at the door of a house. The wood splintered under the impact but held. He pulled back to try again. Before he could, something hissed above Vounn’s head. The hobgoblin jerked back, then slid down the doorframe with one of Vanii’s axes splitting his breastbone.

Then there was just Thuun, running hard and weaving from side to side as he sought an escape. Haruuc galloped after him. He didn’t raise his sword again, but just ran him down. Thuun shrieked as the horse’s bulk knocked him to the street and the animal’s hooves hammered his body. He curled into a ball and stayed that way as Haruuc wheeled his horses around. Thuun screamed again, but Haruuc reined in his mount and slid from the saddle. Thuun’s scream faded away and he looked up to find the lhesh standing over him, red sword dripping blood onto the ground. Thuun whimpered.

Vanii dismounted beside Vounn and helped her stand. “Have you been harmed?”

The fumes of the rag still made her head spin a little, but they were easing. “No,” she said, then called out to Haruuc. “He kidnapped me in Khaar Mbar’ost by pretending to be Thuun. He’s a changeling.”

Haruuc’s ears went back. “Show me your true face, gaa’ma,” he growled.

Thuun nodded and his hobgoblin features seemed to melt and flow across his face. Nose and mouth faded, becoming almost half-formed. His eyes became wide and milky, his hair white. His skin turned soft and dusky gray. His body shrank a little as well, so that Thuun’s armor was loose on him. Gaa’ma, the Goblin term for changelings, literally meant “wax baby,” Vounn knew. It suited the creature that lay still under Haruuc’s sword.

The lhesh shifted the blade so the blood that ran off it fell in drops on the changeling’s face. “You were hired to kidnap Lady Seneschal Vounn d’Deneith?”

The changeling nodded.

“By who?”

“A hobgoblin-he wore a mask and called himself Wuud.”

“Like all the others,” Vanii murmured.

Vounn glanced at him, but he said nothing else.

Haruuc’s face betrayed nothing except anger and contempt. “You give away easily what you know,” he said.

“I was paid to snatch the Deneith envoy, not fight the lhesh,” the changeling said. “I’ll tell you anything you want, but there isn’t much I know.”

“I didn’t imagine there was. Where were you taking her?”

“A boat waiting outside of Rhukaan Draal, above the first cataract of the Ghaal. Wuud’s men will take her from there.”

Haruuc looked to one of the soldiers who had been with him. “You-gather a squad and investigate. Bring back anyone you find” His glance shifted to two others. “You take this taat back to Khaar Mbar’ost. I want him held in an isolated cell-we may need his word later.”

The soldiers hastened to obey their commands. When the changeling had been seized and led away, Haruuc came over to Vounn, still standing with Vanii’s support. “I apologize, Lady Vounn,” he said. “Such things shouldn’t happen in Khaar Mbar’ost. I can assure you that the real Thuun is no changeling.”

“I’m fine,” Vounn said. “I hope Thuun is too.”

The stiffening of Haruuc’s ears, however, suggested that he suspected the same thing she did: the real Thuun was dead, removed so that the changeling could take his place without threat of being revealed. Vounn moved on to something else. “When the changeling mentioned a masked hobgoblin, Vanii said, ‘Like all the others.’ What does that mean? Have there been other kidnappings?”

Haruuc gave his shava a disapproving look and shook his head. “No, but all those captured near the burning buildings so far have been locals, all hired by a masked hobgoblin calling himself Wuud. The fires and your kidnapping were coordinated.”