Nancy Berberick - The Inheritance

The goblin who had found sign of Brand's outlaws in the borderland was like-minded to the more accepting of his brethren. Ithk was his name, and trotting into the goblin town on the east side of the Forest-Down-Around-the-Hammer-Rock-But-Not-Too-Close, his breath streaming in the chill air, Ithk greeted guards and was passed through, recognized. As with all goblin towns, this one used to be a village where humans lived. Some had been hunters who took game out of the Qualinesti forest when they dared, some were farmers who scratched a living out of the stony soil, but the true value of the town had been its inn, a place known for the fineness of its ale and wine-some of that wine got from elven traders who didn't mind stepping out of the forest to do business-and the thickness of its feather beds. Travelers found that inn a good place to stop, and it became a favorite of traders and mercenaries and folk getting from one place to another. And so there were baker shops-two-and a butcher and a herbalist and even a chandler and a blacksmith. It had been a fine little village, as these borderland places go, and ripe for picking.

Ithk jogged down the street, his weapons ringing on him as he looked around in the frosty morning. The hovels he saw had once been trim houses and tidy shops set around a square in which one great house stood higher than all. This used to be the inn. Now it was where Gnash lived. He hadn't done the taking of this village, not him. Golch, father of Golch-the son murdered at the hands of those stinking outlaws out at Hammer Rock-had done the taking back at the end of spring. Golch the father had lived at the inn, quite comfortably until Gnash came in, him and his army thrice the size of the one that Golch commanded. After his army overwhelmed this goblin town, he'd taken Golch the father and dragged him out of his house. Before all, he'd plucked out his eyes, cut out his tongue, then lopped off his head. Father and son, it turned out that they’d had more than la name in common.

Thus had Gnash declared himself the ruler here and taken all those who had belonged to Golch and made them part of his army.

Ithk banged his fist on the hob’s door.

"In!" shouted the hobgoblin.

A wave of heat rushed out the door from a roaring hearth-fire. Burnished armor lay all around the front room, that wide space that would have been the inn’s common room. The armor rose up in heaps-breastplates and greaves, shinguards and helms, all stolen from the corpses of the killed. Daggers and swords lay on the floor among the bones of old feasts. Among the broken crockery on the wide table, jewels glittered, ornaments pilfered from luckless travelers-necklaces from maidens who perished of fear or worse, rings from the fingers of matrons and piles of furs and feathers taken in the autumn from a barbarian Plainsman lost in the stonelands on his way to Qualinost. Atop one of these piles the hob sprawled, sucking his teeth and scratching for lice in places you don't like to get lice.

Standing on the threshold of this dire den, the wind blowing in snow at his heels, Ithk delivered his news, already imagining his reward.

"Master, the outlaw Brand is on the move."

The roar swelled up in Gnash's chest, rising from his belly like steam swelling in some dire invention of gnomes, something sure to explode and kill all those in reach. Piggy eyes opened as wide as they could, and the green-skinned hobgoblin bellowed, "Where?"

Ithk closed the door behind him. He looked once around, saw the scavenger dump that had once been a well-appointed inn, and shuddered. Over in the comer lay two corpses he hadn't seen before. Gnash had been busy, working or amusing himself.

"Out in the borderland, away down by the Notch. All of ‘em from what I sees-the humans, the damned bastard lying dwarf, the elf, and the two women. But more women than that. They got an elf woman with 'em, and she looks like a prisoner."

The hob leaned forward. Things shifted around him, his pile of booty slipping a little as a knight's helm and three golden goblets rolled down the side of a bale of furs. It is the thing about hobs that they are more long-headed than their smaller kin. They have more room in their skulls for brains and generally know how to make that situation work for them. Gnash was, among hobs, a fairly intelligent specimen.

"How’d she look? Used? Beaten? Starved?"

"Hungry, but they all looked hungry. She was closely guarded, like something they didn't want to lose."

And what good, the hob thought, would she be to them with winter walking into the borderland? None. She'd eat food, drink water, and sooner or later they’d get tired of her. In winter, when it’s cold and hungry and not much food to be had, you get tired of passing the prisoners around and would rather have the water they drink and the food they eat.

"Hostage," Gnash said, belching. He scratched under his arm. "For ransom." He twisted a cruel grin. "Ain't like that’s not been done before, eh? Goblins been known to lose their heads over Brand's hostage-taking. We know what he got from Golch. I wonder what he's looking for from the elves?"

Ithk, who had been a particular friend of the younger Golch the Beheaded, did not reply.

Gnash slid from atop his hill of pilfered goods, big and green and warty, and he nodded to the little goblin. "Help yourself."

The goblin didn't move or even look at anything in the room. The last one to help himself too quickly was handless and about starved to death by now because no one could think of a reason to feed a useless, handless goblin. But when Gnash had left, gone roaring out into the streets to gather up a considered portion of his army, the goblin darted quickly to the heap his master had lately lounged upon. He snatched a fur from the top of the nearest bale, a bear's pelt with the head still dangling, and flung it round his shoulders for a cloak Winter was indeed walking into the borderland, and Ithk had a bit of wit himself.

Gnash wasn't long at getting his army moving. He took only the little time he needed to look around his cluttered quarters for a thing he'd been carrying with him from one place to another since he'd first found it, a long time ago in the spring. It was a thing from the mountains, found in deep and secret places under the southern part of the borderland between Qualinesti and Thorbardin. It didn't look like much. He might have walked right past it when first he saw it, but something about the crooked staff had called to him-not with a voice, no. It was more like a tickling in the brain that would have been the raising up of hair had that tickling been on the outside of his head.

He had a small talent for magic, did Gnash. Not all hobs do, but it isn't impossible to find those who have managed to make a magical device or two work. Gnash had done that, and he'd had a high time in the borderland, reveling in the destruction he caused in the process. He hadn't had to use the staff much to affect his conquests of the three goblin towns he now owned. Alas, he sometimes thought. But, after all, he'd needed the towns to house his growing army. He certainly couldn't kill too many of the goblins. That had left him with few opportunities to play with his weapon, but at last, here was one come right down the borderland to him.

And so, Gnash got his staff, and he got his army moving. It wasn't a great portion of his army, only a part, and these he didn't have to threaten or argue or cajole. They were afraid of him, doubly so when they saw that staff in his hand, the old gnarled wood. They’d do anything he demanded, but this he didn't have to demand. Best of all goblins loved fighting and killing. They were happy to go south toward the Notch and see what kind of blood they could spill. And they were goblins; they didn't care if they had to run by night and make their way under clouded skies. They rejoiced in the cover and ran harder, all the way down to just above the Notch. There they stopped, because their master demanded, and there they held. They made no camp, and they killed no animal for supper. They slipped into gullies and crevices and didn't complain. They knew all the places to hide-little caves, the abandoned dens of foxes, the gaps between boulders. One after another, the goblins made themselves invisible in the borderland and prepared to wait till the gods came back to Krynn, or until the Great Gnash told them to move again.