Cory Herndon - The Fifth Dawn

“Raksha, this is safe enough. You say you didn’t destroy Taj Nar, and that Lyese is a phony?” Glissa said. “Convince me.”

The leonin stopped pacing for a moment, inhaled deeply, and let out a long, sighing growl. “Your sister. The trouble began about an hour after we parted ways and you left for the Mephidross.”

Kha Raksha Golden Cub and the Tel-Jilad warrior Lyese of Viridia marched up the winding moutain path, following a bound and defeated Alderok Vektro, who stumbled drunkenly ahead. The leonin split his attention between the prisoner and the iron walls of the narrow draw. The walls rose higher the farther up the path they went, and could easily conceal another goblin ambush, or worse.

Raksha did not like the mountains in the first place, but the claustrophobic confines of this narrow mountain trail made him downright jumpy.

Fortunately, he found it helped his nerves to shove Alderok Vektro every once in a while, and the Vulshok priest seemed glad to give Raksha frequent opportunities to do so. Vektro would stop walking without warning, and often cocked his head as if listening for something. Not surprisingly, the Vulshok refused to tell Raksha what he was listening for no matter how the leonin tried to coerce him. The Kha knew many, many ways to coerce people, including a few he really didn’t want to use in front of the elf girl. Yet Alderok Vektro had said very little even when they removed his gag, and would give them only the sparest of directions.

As it turned out, Glissa’s insistence that Lyese accompany him had proved fortuitous. The young elf had proven a serviceable tracker, and assured the Kha that they were following fresh goblin footprints.

Raksha and Lyese had been separated from Glissa for a little over two hours when Vektro stopped in his staggering tracks yet again. Without warning, the Vulshok collapsed in a heap on the rusty iron path.

“This had better not be a trick, Vektro,” the leonin growled. Lyese and Raksha crouched over the fallen human, and with an effort they rolled the big man onto his back.

Alderok Vektro’s glassy eyes stared up at the sky. His mouth was wrenched open in a grinning rictus, and his tongue lolled out, swollen and dry. Bright red blood trickled from the human’s nose, ears, and mouth.

“Correct us if we are wrong,” Raksha said, “but this human appears to be dead.”

Lyese patted Vektro’s lifeless form, and Raksha did likewise. There wasn’t a mark on the dead priest that they couldn’t account for, and certainly no arrows or other projectiles had struck him.

“Raksha, I think he just…died,” Lyese finally admitted.

“Do humans do that often?” the Kha asked. “Perhaps because of the stress of capture?” It wasn’t that far-fetched. In his youth, he’d spent many a season capturing live animals to be slaughtered for royal feasts. For special occasions, the leonin would forgo typical prey animals for more dangerous game. But he’d learned that many of the strongest natural predators went catatonic when locked in a cage, unable to hunt, run, or roam their territory.

“Humans aren’t that different, as far as I know,” Lyese replied. “Not this different. But sometimes people just die.”

“They certainly do, but the timing is suspicious in the extreme. It must be foul play,” Raksha whispered. “Keep your voice down.” He scanned the high walls of the draw again, but could spot no movement. The shadows in the craggy ironstone cliffs could be hiding almost anything, even from his sharp feline eyes.

“What should we do?” Lyese asked. “Head back? Or should we try to find this Dwugget on our own? Vektro wasn’t a very good guide, anyway. I think I can follow these tracks to-”

A thunderous crash erupted from high above, cutting the elf girl short. The pair stood and craned their necks upward at the sound. “What was that?” Raksha asked and drew his longknife, Vektro suddenly forgotten.

His answer came in the form of a gigantic humanoid figure that leaped from the walls above and crashed onto the narrow trail several yards ahead. The ogre’s feet, each one half as big as the leonin monarch, fractured the path beneath and knocked Raksha and Lyese onto their backs. The hulking monster was the color of rusted ironstone and stood almost twenty feet high, wearing a loincloth made of dried goblin skins tied crudely together. Wiry, tangled hair covered the creature’s head and arms but couldn’t hide a complex network of scars. The ogre drew a deep breath with a rush of wind, then its toothy mouth split open to release a deafening roar that forced Raksha and Lyese to cover their ears.

With a slow, deliberate movement, the misshapen creature reached out with a simian arm and wrenched a tree stump from the ground. As easily as Raksha might pick up a sword, the ogre raised the stump overhead like a club.

“Raksha,” Lyese said as they helped each other stand, “I think maybe we should get back to Taj Nar. Right now.”

“Perhaps a new plan is called for,” he agreed.

Raksha grabbed the elf girl by the arm and began to back away from the ogre. Sudden movements might have made the creature charge. Instead of pursuing them, it slammed the tree stump club into Alderok Vektro’s corpse and flattened the dead Vulshok to a pulp with one strike. The ogre raised its heavy head to glare at them, and there was little doubt about the target of its next strike. Raksha’s instincts finally overcame his resolve, and the pair broke into a dead run back down the path.

They shouldn’t have bothered. The gigantic ogre caught up to them with only three steps. It tossed the stump club aside and easily scooped each of them up in a massive hamfist. The ogre was displaying remarkable restraint, Raksha noted as he wriggled in vain to break free. It could have squeezed him into jelly if it wanted to, but the monster exerted only enough pressure to keep them restrained.

The ogre held Lyese up to its scarred, pitted face and sniffed her gingerly. The elf girl screamed, twisting in the creature’s grip. Then the ogre did the very last thing Raksha would have expected. The gaping maw it wore for a mouth broke into a wide smile, and it burst into mad, thundering laughter.

“Raksha, what’s it doing?” Lyese shouted.

“How should we know?” the leonin bellowed.

He hadn’t expected an answer-ogres weren’t known for their eloquence-but the monster spoke. Its voice was a deep rumble that sounded like crumbling ironstone grating on copper ore, with something else-a quality at once familiar and chilling-running underneath.

“Quiet,” the ogre said, and knocked Raksha’s head against the elf girl’s. Everything went black.

“Now hold on,” Glissa interrupted. “You said Lyese was dead.”

“Who’s telling this story?” Raksha said.

“All right then, I’m listening,” Glissa sighed. “None of this is remotely like the story I got at Krark-Home.”

“It was within Krark-Home that I awoke,” Raksha said. “It was very different then.”

“Raksha,” Lyese said. “Raaaaksha.”

The Kha felt something scratching at the top of his head and realized it was a set of elven claws. He opened his eyes and saw the elf girl courched over him, her hand atop his head and-

“Are you scratching our ears? ” the leonin demanded as he brushed the elf girl’s hand away.

“I was trying to wake you up,” Lyese replied. “You’ve been out for a while. We’re safe now.”

“Yes, safe, huh?” a gravelly voice broke in, and Raksha blinked to take in his surroundings. He was inside a large underground room with walls cut from the same ironstone they had been hiking through for most of the day. They had to be inside the mountain.

A tiny, wrinkled goblin in rust-red priest’s robes very similar in cut and design to what Vektro had worn stood next to a smoldering brazier near the center of the room. Rickety copper shelves lined one wall, filled with bottles, beakers, tubes, and several thick, weathered books that looked very old. A heavy iron door hung in an ill-fitting frame on the opposite wall. He could see no one else in the room. He smelled the tang of incense and the unmistakeable odor of goblin, but only a lingering trace of ogre. The creature was nowhere to be seen.