by Ari Marmell
As he lectured, Gork ceased paying attention to his words. Instead, he listened to the tone of the creature's voice and watched the sharp gestures and the way he moved. Changing form was one thing; behaviors and mannerisms learned over a lifetime, something else entirely. It dawned on Gork that, with a few moments of study, he might just learn how to spot these creatures regardless of form. That, he decided, might just prove handy at some point in the—
His attention suddenly snapped back to the shapeshifter's words, and he didn't care at all for what he was hearing.
“What?! Someone as ‘careless’ as I am might what?”
The faux-kobold blinked at him. “Might, I was saying, prove detrimental to the squad as a unit. You are here for squad duty, yes? It seems unlikely that you'd be hanging around Timas Khoreth, let alone following the orc and the bugbear, otherwise.”
“So what if I am?” Gork growled.
“So, I don't intend to trust my life to a creature without sufficient sense to kill his victims.”
“Listen here, you faceless insect! I—” But the kobold's tirade was lost in the cacophony of the crowd, for the shapeshifter had already wandered away, his form warping once more, blending in flawlessly with all the other humans who, to Gork, still managed to look the same.
Gork growled a lengthy curse that had no equivalent in any language besides Kobold—but had something to do with the other's ancestry, various underground vermin, and a sharp stick—and drifted away from the marketplace. Not only had the damn shifter ruined his shot at the human's fat purse, but he'd delayed long enough that Gork could no longer even risk another attempt. If he was to arrive at the barracks in time, he had to be on his way. Muttering in his native tongue, he wandered the streets in the direction the orc and the bugbear had been taken.
He'd gotten perhaps four blocks when a voice called out from behind. “There, Officers! That's the one!”
Gork spun, one clawed hand reaching for the kah-rahahk at his waist—but he swiftly changed his mind upon seeing the half dozen guards rushing toward him, weapons already in hand. Instead, he raised his hands up by his ears in a clumsy imitation of the movements he'd seen humans make in the past to indicate (he hoped) surrender. “Is there a problem, Officers?”
Rather than answering, however, the largest of the humans simply grabbed him by the collar and dragged him forward. “Is this him?” he asked gruffly.
“Oh, yes, sir! That's most definitely the one!”
Gork stared in astonishment, his ears flattened against the sides of his head. It was the human from the marketplace, the one whose purse he'd almost stolen. But the man couldn't have seen him! Besides, he hadn't actually taken the damn purse! It didn't make…
And then Gork watched as the human gestured at the guards, describing—in detail—the kobold's attempted theft. Watched the sharp, alien tilt to the movements, listened with rapt attention to the faintest trace of accent…
“All right,” the guard told him, “let's go.”
Gork looked up, forcing his eyes wide. “But, Officer, I—”
Whatever else he might have said was driven from his lungs, along with the rest of his breath, by the soldier's boot slamming into his stomach. The kobold collapsed to all fours, hanging limp and offering no resistance as the guards lifted him bodily off the ground and began carrying him in the direction of what he assumed was the local gaol. Still, as he was hefted away, he had the strength to raise his head and meet the gaze of the “human” standing at the end of the street and watching them fade into the distance.
You, Gork projected at him silently, are so going to die. If it takes a hundred years, I will kill you.
It was not a vow Gork made often, or lightly, and it was one that he fully intended to keep. Assuming he ever got away from these damn humans….
The orc sneered in revulsion at the cramped, filthy courtyard and the creaky, dilapidated buildings that surrounded it. Litter and dead rodents formed a patchwork carpet, and the structures were built of wood so rotted that Cræosh wouldn't have trusted it to support the weight of his own testicles. So far, nothing about the human city had impressed him, but this shithole corner of town was even worse.
“This is the barracks?” he asked finally.
“In a manner of speaking,” the guide answered. “It's the old barracks. We haven't used ‘em in years. Hell, we haven't even cleaned ‘em in years. But this is where we've hosted Demon Squads before, and no one's told us that you lot get any special treatment.”
Cræosh advanced on the soldier, hulking over him. “And what if we don't want to stay here?”
The human solider swallowed once, but held his ground. “Take it up with the captain, then. Not much I can do about it, is there?”
The orc debated ripping the man apart anyway—might have, in fact, had the next of his teammates not suddenly appeared from around a nearby corner.
“Oh, shit!”
At the alarm in his companion's voice, the bugbear immediately spun from where he'd been examining a small, hollylike weed that had cropped up on the far end of the courtyard (to see if it was edible, no doubt). As soon as he caught sight of the newcomer, however, he let out one of his high-pitched whines and covered his head with one arm—keeping the other fully extended, however, club in hand. Clearly, Jhurpess was prepared to cower or fight to the death, whichever proved most viable.
The figure loomed over them all, though it was substantially more slender than the broadly built orc. A thin layer of coarse fur, far shorter than the bugbear's shaggy coat, covered the creature from fore to aft in a spotted, patchy pattern resembling a bobcat's. Armor, leggings, tunic, and boots, all clearly tanned from the hide of a single gargantuan beast, made up the entirety of the creature's wardrobe—all except for a necklace of humanoid and goblin ribs. A huge snout protruded from the thing's face, something not unlike a wolf, or a coyote, or a hyena—and yet, not quite like any of them, either. Even as they watched, the horrible maw gaped in what could only be a hideous smile, exposing multiple layers of jagged teeth that actually flexed in and out when the creature spoke.
Or, presumably, bit.
A thin stream of drool trickled from its lower lip. In an abrasive, mind-numbing voice, interrupted constantly by the intake of a raspy, trembling breath, the thing said, “Pleased…to make…your acquaintance. I…am T’chakatimlamitilnog, of…the House of Ru.”
“Ancestors,” Cræosh whispered hoarsely. “What did I do to deserve getting stuck with a troll? And how do I atone for it?”
And then silence fell across the courtyard, except for the rasping breath of the troll and the rapid patter of retreating footsteps that were the only remaining evidence of the human who'd brought them here.
Slowly, being very careful to keep two arm's-lengths between them, Cræosh examined the new arrival. It—she? Yes, those were definitely teats hidden beneath the leather breastplate, and in multiple rows to boot. All right then. She was nearly a foot taller than his own six feet, and her slender body made her look even taller. He figured he was probably stronger, pound for pound, but damn, he didn't want to have to find out. Trolls were considered, bar none, the most cruel-minded, violent, vicious, and brutal creatures ever to serve in Morthûl's armies. In combat, or so he'd heard, they were more animal than sentient being, ripping apart their foes with an unholy glee. They casually perpetrated horrors too gruesome even for an orc's liking, and it was said that the concept of taking prisoners was completely foreign to them.
But what made them so wildly unpopular with the other goblin soldiers, and what inspired the decision to allow trollish units to fight alone, unassisted by the other races, was their attitude toward their fellows. Trolls had proved thoroughly incapable of grasping the concept of “ally” as it applied to any outside their own race. In a moment of anger, hunger, or even simple boredom, a troll's teammates were just as apt to end up dead, or even eaten, as anyone else. Cræosh found himself pondering the notion that he might just be better off,
consequences or no, if he were to simply kill her now, before their working relationship became an issue.
Before he could come to a decision one way or the other, however, he and the troll were both startled nigh unto violence as yet another piercing scream burst from somewhere within Jhurpess's furry throat. More extreme even than that elicited by the troll's appearance, it was enough to convince Cræosh that they must be facing nothing less than a great dragon or the Charnel King himself. He twisted about madly, one hand groping again for his sword.
What he saw was certainly neither the Dark Lord nor a dragon. No, the creature approaching from across the run-down courtyard was…
“It's just…a gremlin,” the troll rasped, her breath gurgling in the back of her throat as she struggled to make her bestial jaws form the words. “What is…the matter with your…bugbear?”
“You got me stumped,” Cræosh told her. “But I sure as shit intend to find out.” With that he advanced, reached out, and grabbed Jhurpess by the scruff of the neck. The bugbear didn't seem to notice, so intently was he staring at the gremlin.
Admittedly, Cræosh couldn't help but note, that was one disconcerting mother of a gremlin. At four feet tall, he was a giant among his own race, and his muscles literally bulged—which, in a gremlin's case, just meant that you couldn't actually trace the lines of the bones in his arm from twenty paces away. A thin mat of stubble, which constituted a full head of hair for his people, was just barely notable beneath the floppy, porkpie hat he wore crammed between spindly ears. He was well protected beneath a full suit of hardened leather armor, but it was a suit that had clearly been scrounged, piece by piece, from the field of battle, as not one component resembled any of the others. The gremlin had done his best to compensate for that particular mismatch by dyeing the entire suit a brilliant red that was enough to cause madness, blindness, or both. Even the moth-eaten hat and the wilted ostrich feather atop it had been colored to match. So all right, he wasn't an image of beauty, and he had obviously never even heard the word “stealth,” but that hardly made him a figure to be feared (except, perhaps, for the possibility of going blind in his proximity).
“So what's the problem this time?” Cræosh asked, his impatience ringing clearly in his voice. “I thought we'd settled this whole collapsing-and-pissing-myself bullshit back in the market.”
But this time, all the bugbear would do was whimper unintelligibly, and even being bodily lifted off the ground and shaken accomplished nothing. Finally, Cræosh dropped him back to earth with a grunt of disgust and left him in an untidy heap that more or less resembled a shag carpet sucking its thumb. The gremlin, newly arrived, opened his mouth to introduce himself—and stopped, staring openly at the quivering bugbear.
“I give up,” Cræosh announced to the world at large. “On the one hand, I've got a friggin’ troll, who's probably loyal enough that I can count on her not to eat me when anybody's watching. On the other, they stick me with a bugbear who makes a habit of crawling up his own ass and hiding whenever the wind shifts. And bringing up the rear,” he added, pointing at the startled gremlin, “we have the incredible Walking Rosebud. This ain't a Demon Squad, it's a fucking side-show lineup.” Since the bugbear had cowered out of reach, and the gremlin was several strides away, he settled for walking straight up to the troll—foolhardy as it might have been—and jabbing her in the sternum with a finger. “You can tell the boss, whoever or whatever he might turn out to be, that I’m going home. Have him send me a message when he's got a real squad together.”
The troll grinned, and Cræosh was just about bowled over by a wave of hot, fetid breath. “Fingers…are stringy. But still…one of the tastiest parts…of an orc.” She glanced down. “Are you…making an offer?”
Cræosh, who was almost certain she was jesting, yanked his hand back anyway, just in case.
The bestial creature laughed sharply, a grating sound that made the orc's ears hurt, and wandered over to lean against the nearest wall. Idly, she spun a chirrusk—a length of weighted chain with a razor-sharp four-pronged hook at one end—in a slow circle. The low-pitched whistling it caused as it whirled was extremely—and, Cræosh was certain, quite deliberately—annoying. Despite his threat, he did nothing more than mutter a few choice curses in Orcish and settle back against the wall; not, he made certain, the same one on which the troll was leaning
As though spring-loaded, the glowing gremlin popped up into his field of vision. “Hello!” he beamed, thrusting out a hand in a greeting custom that many of the goblin races had picked up from watching the humans. “It's really a pleasure to meet you! I mean, I've heard about these Demon Squads from time to time, but I never thought that I'd actually get the chance to be part of one! It's so exciting, isn't it? Oh, I’m sorry! Where are my manners? I’m Gimmol Phicereune. And you are?”
“Getting very annoyed,” Cræosh responded.
“Ah. Yes, well, I can see how that might be the case, what with all this waiting and all. I mean, you'd think that they'd have someone ready to meet us. They called us here, right? Why, you wouldn't believe what I had to go through to get in the gate! They—”
Cræosh backhanded the small creature across the courtyard, remembering only at the last instant to pull his punch enough so that he wouldn't kill the chatty bugger. Then, actually sighing with pleasure at the newborn silence, the orc leaned his head back against the stone and resigned himself to patience.
Gork tumbled claw-over-cranium across the bumpy floor, coming up to his feet just in time to hear the door slam shut behind him with a ponderous sense of finality. Most of the guards were just doing their jobs, and thus went on the kobold's secondary mental list: that is, People Who Just Need to Suffer a Little Bit. The man who'd tossed him into the cell, however, was going on the Bad List, and would bleed severely at some unforeseen future point. Why, if Gork hadn't been the nimble kobold that he was, that impact with the stone might have damaged a lot more than his pride.
With a faint snort of disgust, he went to examine the various mechanisms on the door. Hmm. The lock itself should prove little more than an inconvenience. Would've been a lot easier if they hadn't taken his picks, but he had enough tools secreted about his person to get the job done.
The bar, though—that was a much more formidable obstacle. Gork was well versed in multiple methods of circumventing just such an obstruction, but those methods required specific tools, substantial time, or both. That he would be free of this cell, Gork had no doubt. Whether it would be in time to meet with the rest of the squad—or, for that matter, before the end of the month—was another question entirely.
“Kobold…”
Oh, dragonshit. Pupils dilating to pierce the darkness of the cell's far corners, Gork faced the cellmate he hadn't realized he had.
Larger than their gremlin cousins, the so-called hobgoblins were by no means the most fearsome of the goblin races. What they were was sufficiently xenophobic to make even trolls seem cuddly. They formed an army within an army, for not even Morthûl could convince them to fight alongside the other goblins, and Gork knew that his proximity to this hobgoblin was enough to cause the creature physical pain.
He knew, too, that there was only one way for the hobgoblin to make that pain go away. The kobold found his back pressed tight to the door, as though he could will himself through the wood.
The hobgoblin—filthy, half-starved, dressed in tattered rags, breath reeking of illness—reached out for him from the shadows, his hatchet-sharp features twisted in loathing. It was, Gork couldn't help but note in the portion of his brain that wasn't too busy gibbering in fear, much like the expression he'd once seen on a human soldier who'd discovered roach sacs in his underwear.
He tried to bite as the creature neared, but the crazed hobgoblin yanked his arm away from the snapping teeth. Even as the hobgoblin's fists closed around his throat, Gork thrust both hands outward, driving small claws into his attacker's stomach. But kobold claws, designed for scampering over jagged rock, wer
e strong without being particularly sharp, and the hobgoblin's hide was more than sufficient to turn them aside.
It appeared, for what it was worth, that Gork needn't worry about choking to death, as the hobgoblin had something rather quicker in mind. The hand not already locked on the kobold's throat latched onto one scaly knee, and he lifted Gork clean overhead. Gork kicked the hobgoblin squarely in the temple with his free leg, once, twice, but though the larger creature staggered and swayed, he lost neither his balance nor his grip.
Gork tensed for a third kick, aiming this time at a bulging eye, and his entire world went white with agony as the hobgoblin slammed him bodily against the stone wall.
The back of his head felt numb—was, in fact, the only part of him other than his toes that didn't hurt—but the kobold retained just enough sensation to recognize the wet trickle of blood. The hobgoblin drew back, now aiming Gork at the wall head-first, apparently planning to use him as a squishy battering ram. Gork tried for one final instant to make his limbs respond, to struggle, to do something—and then the floor flew past beneath him, and the white of his agony faded away to black.
The fact that he awoke at all was enough to send ripples of surprise through the pool of liquid pain that was his brain. From beneath heavy lids, he saw the stone ceiling of the cell above him; through aching snout, he smelled the scent of someone cooking nearby. Carefully, Gork struggled to sit up, but toppled straight back down as his head and stomach tried to travel to opposite corners of the room. He rolled over, emptied said stomach across the stones—what was that, a fingernail?—and prayed to the Stars for a quick death.
“You're the best Hrark could do, huh? I'll have to have a few words with that little puke. And with the guards who tossed you in here in the first place. Ooh, have I got some plans for them!”
