Nightlord: Sunset (89 page)

THURSDAY, MARCH 2
ND

T
he days have rolled by quickly, along with the miles.  Bronze truly does seem to be tireless.  She isn’t complaining, anyway, and if she’s straining at all, I can’t tell.  We’ve passed several villages in the past nights; I don’t think anyone noticed us.  But it lets us know where we are; another two days like this and we’ll hit Eastgate.

Riddle is going to be a politician or a professional pickpocket.  He’s swiped something from everyone at some point.  As per instructions, he gives it back, whatever it is—usually a few minutes after he’s taken it.  He’s been caught several times, but the vast majority of his thefts are successful—or successful enough to let him get a good head start, which is all that counts.

The good news is it has kept people amused.  Almost everyone has taken his little pilferings in a good humor and thrown him gently out of their wagon.  Mainly, I suspect, to keep him from teaching the other kids how to swipe stuff.  I could be wrong.

I finally stuffed him into a wagon with several squires—the kids were all a year or more older than Riddle, but I told them to hustle up teaching Riddle how to be a good squire.  They saluted.

It’s a bit creepy to see such a serious-eyed look from children.

Tort, meanwhile, is skin and bones.  Riddle’s thin, but she’s wasted away.  Tamara decided to keep her in the main wagon and stuff food into her.  Tort doesn’t go anywhere, generally; she is indeed missing her left foot.  I didn’t notice it amid the bundles of clothes and the blanket.  I’m told her foot was badly broken some months ago by a hobnailed boot; that was deliberate.  Grumpy—the guy in charge of the gang—tended toward violence when frustrated, and both Tort and Riddle were convenient targets.  When the broken foot began to fester, though, it had to be cut off; that ruined Tort as a potential thief or streetwalker.

She’s lucky to be alive at all.  She wouldn’t be if Riddle hadn’t half-hidden her in the attic and brought her food.

Tamara is mothering her.  Maybe that’s just for practice, but I know I get all soft and mushy whenever I see Tort.  Hurt children get me all bent out of shape.  I’m thinking about ways to encourage her to grow a new foot, but that will take both time and a lot of attention.  With luck, though, later…

Meanwhile, I have our carpenter whittling up a false foot.  Maybe she won’t run like other kids, but she
will
walk without a crutch—or I’m not a wizard.

Our minstrels have taken to teaching people new songs.  Worse, they appear to be songs our minstrels have composed; I’ve heard at least two marching songs that allude to a wall of blades and a dragon.  The lyrical quality is about on par with most of the marching cadences I’ve heard in movies.  They’re not really too bad as songs go, but I’m still a little embarrassed about that sort of thing.

We did have a couple of small incidents that could have been ugly.  Brakemen shouldn’t fall asleep.  We were stopping for the morning meal and leg-stretch and one of them barely jerked awake in time to jerk the brake.  Nobody was hurt, but the wagon he was on came within a hair of ramming the one in front of it.  That sort of thing is sheer carelessness.  We’ve got the brakemen in shifts, now.  Bronze is also slowing down a lot more gradually and we try to park on a gentle upward incline.  That’s getting easier as we get closer to the mountains.

Tamara is another story entirely; she’s enjoying the trip far more than I would have thought.  We have all the privacy of a one-bedroom apartment with six people, but she isn’t demanding or pushy.  She just touches me whenever she can and is happy—it’s a trick I wish I had!  I’m working on it.  I find that I like her touching me.  If I weren’t deliriously happy, I’d be disgusted at our sappy, romantic, sugarcloud sweetness.

As it is, I wouldn’t dream of having things any other way.

Now, that brings us up to the present.

Earlier this evening, I was riding Bronze and keeping an eye on things, as usual.  I don’t need headlights to see the road, so I’m generally up there at night.  It’s just as well I make a habit of that; I saw some figures lurking in the underbrush on either side of the road.

I would have shouted and drawn Firebrand, but Bronze was hitched to the wagons.  I need a quick-release system for that horsecollar.  So, what to do?  I dismounted, told her hold it down to a slow walk, and dashed ahead.

Crossbows annoy the hell out of me.  I damn well want my vest back.

The good news is I was well-fed and healthy.  The better news is that my reflexes are a lot faster at night than I ever dreamed.  I
caught
one of the bolts and threw it down.  I still had time to bat another aside before the rest of the ragged volley hit me.  I took two in the chest and one in the belly.

It hurt, but not as much as I expected.  Besides, my body spat them out a second or two later.  The regeneration forced them out of the flesh.  That’s never happened before, but I don’t mind a bit.  I felt fine after that.

The crossbowmen made noises I interpreted as surprise and fear.  I don’t blame them.  I ran forward at full speed and was
there
, with them, picking them up and lofting them twenty feet into the air to land in the road.  In the space of seconds, I had all six of them lying on the hard-packed dirt and trying to pick themselves up.

They were goblins.  Nasty little buggers with short swords, crossbows, and soot-blackened ring mail.  I knocked heads together—gently—until they stopped moving.  Then I waited for Bronze to catch up.  I moved the unconscious forms aside as she approached, then signaled a halt.  Bouger was the lead brakeman at the time.  He insists on taking a watch even when I’m up.  He had Raeth woken.

Together, we bound and interrogated our prisoners.  I needed the help; I don’t speak goblin very well at all.  I
understand
it just fine, but I can’t think of the words I want.  A few more goblins for dinner, perhaps, and maybe that won’t be a problem.

Raeth and Bouger both speak goblin.  Bouger is better at it; his father’s domain has a goblin problem on the border.  Both of them picked up a lot from their time in the mines.  Since we had an interpreter, we didn’t need to speak the merchant pidgin language—it takes a lot of effort to get anything but transactions across in that tongue, but you have a chance of talking to almost anybody in the world with it.  Maybe not a good chance, but a chance.

We dragged them off the road, posted guards to keep us private, and waited until they were all awake and looking surly.  Nasty headaches will do that to you, but goblins have a natural bent for it.

“Who are you?” Bouger asked the first one.  The goblin shook its head and spat at him.

I picked the little guy up in full sight of the other prisoners, bared my fangs in a hiss, and bit the goblin in the neck.  Yuck.  It was blood, but it wasn’t what I call tasty.  I drained it as dry as a rattling sack of sticks, dropped the remains, hacked the body into small pieces, and cut off the head.  I punted the head as high and as hard as I could.  Then I grinned, fangs out, and pointed at the next goblin to interrogate.

Bouger barely finished asking a question before the goblin was answering it.  The others were trying to contribute more information.

They didn’t know a lot.  They were part of a scouting force that was looking over the territory around their new city and killing anyone they found.  Nobody was supposed to get away.  Nobody was even supposed to know about them.  They would have just let us go by if I hadn’t obviously seen them.  Later, other forces would have grabbed us; their little scout troop would have picked off anyone who tried to flee.

As for who they were serving, they didn’t know exactly.  There was a prophet that promised a dominion in the fertile land outside the Eastrange, and they had joined up.  Now they just did what their sergeants told them to—in this case, Bakaru, a rather unpleasant
orku
.

“Where is Bakaru?” Bouger demanded.

“He’s back in his tent, waiting for us.  We’re supposed to go back and report before sunup.”

“Why sunup?” I asked; Bouger translated.

I got looked at with a mixture of fear and pity.  “Because we’re goblins.”

Bouger pointed out, “They hate sunlight, sir.  Most breeds won’t be out during the day for anything less than an
orku
with a whip at their backs.”

“Fair enough.  Tie them together in a line and let me have them; I’ll see what this
orku
has to say for himself.”

“Sir?”

“Well, I want to know what we’re getting into.  I heard the part about ‘our new city,’ and I don’t think it’s because they just built one.”

Raeth nodded.  “He’s right.  We’ll wait here.”

“Good.”

With my remaining guides, I headed off to meet Bakaru.

Bakaru was doing maintenance on his equipment when we got to his camp.  He spoke a version of Rethven’s pidgin or merchant tongue; apparently, goblins and orcs don’t speak the same language. 

As a side note, the Rethven language has more than one dialect—much like the difference between the Queen’s English and the English spoken in the deep South of the
United States.  The elves, goblins, orcs, viksagi, and Kamshasan people, to name a few, also have differing languages or dialects.  The merchant tongue is actually an ugly mix of all of them, good enough to get a point across when trying to trade—and not much else.  It is not a language of eloquence or poetry, but it works.  Where such language is used, I have expanded on it to reflect the spirit and meaning of the conversation.  So if a goblin seems more eloquent than you’d expect, it’s because I made him sound that way.  That said, I’ll probably not mention it again.  But I have a new appreciation for translation spells.

Bakaru was a little over six feet tall and covered in muscle.  When his arms moved, it looked like a demolition derby under his skin.  His skin was a mottled sort of gray.  He had large eyes under thick brows and a forehead that sloped back more sharply than a man’s.  He reminded me of pictures of
Homo Neanderthalus,
with just a touch more of a gorilla in the face.  His hair was held back in a tail by a leather thong.  He was wearing leather and chainmail and had a nasty-looking serrated dagger in hand.  He stood up when he saw the first goblin.

“You!  What are you doing here so early!” he demanded, gesturing with the dagger.  “Coward!  Lazy!  I’ll have your heads for this!”

Then he caught sight of the rest of them as they shuffled forward—and the rope binding their hands.  He dropped the dagger to grab a spear and sword as he glared into the darkness.

“Who’s there?”

What the heck.  I stepped from the shadows and into the moonlight, smiling at him.  “Me.”

He snarled and lifted his spear.  I hissed and drew Firebrand.  He dropped his spear and sword and went to his knees.  I blinked in surprise.

“Master!” he declared, knocking his forehead on the ground.

I think the goblins could have taken me right then, if they had tried.  I was dumbfounded.

“Who are you?” I asked.

He didn’t get up, but he did stop pounding his head on the dirt.  “I am Bakaru of the Cracked Tusk Clan, leader of these miserable goblins in your service, Lord of Blood!”

I wondered what the hell he was talking about.  Still, if he’d mistaken me for someone else, this was a good time to quiz him.

“What is your mission, and where is your commander?”

“Master!  I am to drive these scum to kill any who might try to escape your new domain.  I was sent from the city your forces have captured; there you will find my commander.”

That matched up nicely with the goblins’ report.

“What was the human name for the city?”

“Gate of the East, master.”

Crap.  I made a mental note to beat Murphy over the head if I ever saw him.

“Good work.  Now, you will keep my presence a secret.  Neither I nor the people I am with were here.  Forget us entirely.  Do you understand?”

“Yes, master!”

“On your feet.  Get back to what you were doing, and ignore any sign of us.”

He leaped to his feet and started to berate his goblins for coming back to camp; I untied them and left them to be yelled at.

Back at the wagon train, I called a huddle in the command wagon—Tamara’s wagon, my wagon, the one I called home.  I explained what just happened and asked for suggestions.

“Is there no way through to the place you have prepared?” Bouger asked.

“Could be, for people on foot, but I doubt it.  I don’t know if there’s a way through a horse—a
normal
horse—could follow.  There’s likely some climbing involved.”

Raeth looked thoughtful.  He had been thinking while I’d been telling the tale.

“If there is an easy way—which I strongly doubt—we will have to destroy it behind us.  If there is not, then we should go south to Baret and take ship around the Eastrange, though it will cost us time.  We should also come to know the forces that occupy Eastgate; if they are all as subservient as this
orku,
we may have little difficulty.  If there are few enough, perhaps the way can be cleared.”