Cory Herndon - The Fifth Dawn

The leonin sat up and growled. His longknife was still tucked securely in his belt, and he was not bound or restrained in any way, so he decided to take a diplomatic approach.

“Dwugget, we presume?” Raksha asked. “Where are we?”

“Yes, that’s me, huh?” the old goblin said. “Dwugget of the Krark.” He looked distinctly uncomfortable, but gave the leonin a quick, nervous bow. Nervous, no doubt, because of the goblin’s proximity to a fully conscious leonin warrior.

“Raksha,” Lyese said, interjecting herself between the two, “They’re going to help. We’ve been talking.”

“You have been talking?” Raksha snarled. “On what authority do you, an elf, negotiate for the leonin people?”

Lyese looked like she’d been slapped. “On the authority that I was the only one awake? That I was the one that woke up and surprised that ogre with a knife to the palm that made it drop us? Maybe the authority granted to me by dragging your unconscious carcass all the way to this cave and finding the goblins, who were able to chase off the ogre, which chased me all the way up this damned mountain?”

“Please, no fighting, huh?” Dwugget interrupted before Raksha could respond. “All friends now. Kha, we talk, you and Dwugget, huh? Give you all the details?”

The leonin composed himself and returned to the elf girl, his ear pointed forward in embarrassment. “We apologize, Lyese,” Raksha said. “We are grateful to be alive, and thank you for opening the negotiations.” He bowed deeply, which he did only rarely, and returned to the goblin, who shifted from foot to foot. Raksha supposed he would be nervous too, in Dwugget’s place. “Dwugget, your people attacked us. Is that how you negotiate?”

“Mistake, huh?” Dwugget said. “Have to defend my people.”

Raksha appraised the little creature before him. The leonin had been raised to think of goblins as inferior beings. Even Slobad, though a friend, had really been little more than a slave. But he could understand this goblin. He was a leader, like Raksha. Of course he had sent guards to meet them. What would the leonin have done if he had encountered a gang of well-armed goblins trying to enter Taj Nar?

“Dwugget of the Krark,” Raksha said, “is there a place we three negotiators may go to work out the details?”

Dwugget led Raksha and Lyese to a door the leonin had not noticed before. They followed the goblin through a short tunnel lit with flame-tubes. “We go eat, and talk, huh?” Dwugget said. “Food and negotiation.”

The meal, as it turned out, took longer than the negotiations themselves. Raksha had been out for almost a day and a half, and he was impressed to see how well Lyese had done in the interim. The Krark would prove to be valuable allies, now that the initial confusion was cleared up. He had seen them fight, and knew the goblins were fiercer than he’d once believed.

They spent one more night in Krark-Home. Dwugget threw a banquet in their honor, which included as entertainment his own account of the tale of Krark, the legendary goblin hero who long ago discovered the world was hollow-a tale that had originally spurred Glissa to seek out Memnarch in the core. Raksha was struck by the story’s similarity, at points, to the myths and legends surrounding Great Dakan, his own leonin ancestor and the first to unite the leonin under a single Kha.

The next day, they set off down the path from Krark-Home for Taj Nar, accompanied by forty of Dwugget’s finest fighters. More would come later. This force was no more than a token, but would serve to convince the leonin army that the goblins would honor their commitment.

Raksha didn’t know it at the time, but Lyese was already dead.

“Already dead?” Glissa snapped. “It doesn’t sound like it.”

“I did not learn what really happened until much later,” Raksha said. “I told you it was confusing.”

“So when did you figure it out?” Glissa said.

“Two years after the treaty was signed,” Raksha said. “The day Taj Nar fell.”

Now they were getting somewhere. “Bruenna refused to talk about that,” the elf girl said. “But what does it have to do with Lyese?”

“She had become attached to Yshkar,” Raksha said. “Or so I thought. I had little time to give her, and thought she was doing all she could to fit in. Lyese asked to join the forces on the ground, and I could not deny her the right of combat. She’d already spent a year helping me co-ordinate with the goblins as an ambassador, which kept her clear of the fighting for the most part. I’d hoped it would be what you wanted. I still harbored hope that you lived, though no one had heard from you for so long. Bruenna had not given up hope, and spent much time trying to figure out a way into the Lumengrid. She thought there might be knowledge there that could free you.”

“There was,” Glissa said.

“Once Lyese took the field, it took only a few weeks for Yshkar to promote her,” Raksha said. “She proved to be an amazing fighter. Yshkar and Lyese soon became inseparable off the field as well. I encouraged this, again in what I thought were your sister’s best interests. I could not watch over her all the time, the responsibility of the Kha did not allow it.”

“Makes sense,” Glissa said. “You gave her the best protector you could. Your own blood.”

“Yes, and I had to focus on the ultimate defense of Taj Nar, but my inattention ultimately led to the loss of the home den,” Raksha said. “The war had been raging relentlessly. Yshkar-perhaps under the influence of the false Lyese, perhaps through his own bullheadedness-made a grave tactical error that cost us the last outpost den in the ’void. I ordered him to pull all of our forces back home. He initially resisted, and cost us more men. When he finally called the retreat, the nim followed hot on his heels, and closed in on all sides.”

“What about the Krark?” Glissa asked.

“The Krark were under siege themselves. They spared us what fighters they could,” Raksha said. “Dwugget and I assigned them to protect the supply lines running between Taj Nar and Krark-Home. As it turned out, that’s the only reason the leonin survived at all.”

“The mana bomb,” Glissa said. “There was really a mana bomb, right?”

“Yes, though I certainly did not set it. There is no honor in such a death, despite the imposter’s convoluted explanations. Yshkar refused to hear my words. Taj Nar could have easily resisted a siege, under the plan we’d formulated,” Raksha said. “But not the enemy within.”

The Kha held a long-range spotting scope to one eye and looked out over the roiling mass of nim. Even with the magically augmented lens, Raksha could not see where the nim ended and the horizon began. Silver aerophins circled in formation, almost too distant to make out against the golden sun. The constructs looked like scavengers waiting for carrion. The levelers had not been seen, and the scouts he’d sent to track them had not returned.

With a frustrated growl, he closed up the telescoping eyesight and hooked it onto his belt. Raksha didn’t need the scope to see that the nim would breach the wall soon. It was inevitable. The sheer volume of nim corpses was forming a natural ramp, and every one that died brought the grisly mounds of stinking corpses and chittering vanguard attackers that much closer to the top.

Raksha heard a reptilian screech, and tossed a wave at the skyhunter that flashed by. The skyhunters were always in the air now, beating back the attempts of clumsy flying nim. The slow-moving undead were no match for the pteron riders in a dogfight, but the tactic was successfully keeping the leonin flyers tied up. Had they been able to spare skyhunters to attack the nim on the ground …