Goblin Corps, The

by Ari Marmell

  The other two nagas froze for only an instant, but that was an instant too long. Grasping her chirrusk just beneath the hook, rather than by the handle at the chain's tail end, Katim dove from atop the stones.

  The nearest of the nagas crumpled in a tangle of arms, legs, and tail, struck down by a ballistic troll to the ribs. Katim, who'd begun her roll before the mud could even stick to her armor, jabbed one prong of the chirrusk's hook under the creature's chin even as she rose to her feet. Allowing the chain to flow through her fist and over her shoulder until she grasped the handle, she gave it a good solid yank. The serpentine creature literally left the ground as she drove the barbed prong up through its jaw and into its brain.

  Katim moved aside, drawing her axe and allowing the chirrusk to fall. Warily she circled, watching for an opening, ears alert for any hint of the unseen fourth naga.

  The one before her circled as she did, its blade held high, but even in its cold and unblinking visage, Katim recognized fear. The snake had been anticipating simple slaughter, not a duel with a troll. That knife wouldn't even slow her down, and the naga knew it.

  The creature finally ceased circling, leaving its back to the slumbering goblins, and made a tentative stab that Katim barely even had to dodge.

  Do they really think I’m that stupid? She had to struggle not to laugh. With no hesitation she spun, axe outstretched, and lopped the head off the fourth naga who'd been sneaking up behind her. It was, after all, the only reason the one she'd been dueling could have been foolish enough to put his back to the squad, no matter how certain it was that none had awoken. She allowed the momentum of her swing to carry her back around, so that she once more faced the remaining naga even before its companion's head had finished bouncing.

  That, apparently, was the final straw. With a hiss that was actually more of a squeak, the naga spun and launched itself with its powerful tail, sliding into the murky waters beside the knoll.

  Katim ground her teeth, and then shrugged. She certainly wasn't going into the water after him, but three dead in a minute—plus the sentinel from earlier—was certainly accomplishment enough. With a sharp crack (the loudest noise, in fact, of the eerily quiet skirmish) she retrieved her chirrusk from the body in which it was lodged. Come morning, when she could do so without waking her companions, she'd remove a couple of naga ribs to add to her necklace.

  Then, satisfied with her efforts, she moved to wake Gimmol for his belated watch, eagerly anticipating the expression of shock on his face.

  “Shock” was, perhaps, an understatement. Gimmol was still trying to make his jaw work when Katim went to sleep. The last sound she heard before drifting off was Belrotha asking the tiny gremlin, “How dead snake-men sneak up on us?”

  And then she was being shaken by a calloused hand, and might well have lashed out if she hadn't recognized the scent of the orc's breath. “…the fuck were you thinking?” he was screaming as she came awake. “I don't give a pixie's ass if we're being attacked by crippled basset hounds! Something happens on watch, you wake us the fuck up! Jagged buggering hell, you yelled at Gimmol for the same damn thing, remember? What if one of them had gotten past you? We'd all be fucking dead, that's what!”

  “And the downside…would be what?” she asked sleepily.

  “Don't push me on this one, Dog-face!” And indeed, his tone lacked the usual undercurrent of suppressed worry that she normally found so amusing every time he spoke to her. “I got the whole squad behind me on this!” She spotted several movements in her peripheral vision that she interpreted as nods. “Well,” Cræosh clarified, “except Jhurpess and Belrotha. But you know why, and they don't count. Don't fucking do this again!”

  Best give them this one. “You're right. I…apologize, Cræosh. It won't happen…again.”

  The apology, which was about as sincere as a dragon's well-wishes, nevertheless accomplished what it was intended to. Namely, it stunned the orc into speechlessness long enough for Katim to get back to sleep.

  She awoke once more, just as the horizon began to gleam with the approach of dawn, when Fezeill kicked her in the shin. “Get up!” he whispered, and she could tell by his voice alone that he'd once more taken the form of a bugbear. Instantly awake, Katim rose to her feet, looked swiftly around, and…

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah,” Cræosh said, his tone still more than a little irritated. “Seems your friends have come back to talk.”

  Standing in a rough semicircle in the waters beyond the hill were multiple distinct rows of nagas. Some were of a single dark hue, some mottled, some with patterns of bright colors in any number of rings, but they all boasted two features in common: They clasped weapons in their scaly hands, and they peered unblinkingly at the squad through cold, dead orbs.

  “You've fought them,” Cræosh hissed, struggling to suppress his ire for the time being. “What're our chances?”

  Katim just shook her head. “I caught them by…surprise, and unprepared for…battle.”

  “In other words, you haven't got a fucking clue.”

  “In essence.”

  “Shit.” He noticed Gork edging toward the deep shadows of the henge, doubtless preparing another of his disappearing acts. “Wouldn't bother this time, Shorty. You see those tongues? They're scenting the air, the way snakes do. Probably smell a mosquito fart in a hurricane; no way you're sneaking up on this many of them.”

  Gork muttered and held his position.

  But the moments crept by as though trying to sneak away before they were discovered, and the anticipated attack failed to materialize. Just as the sentinel of the previous night had done, the nagas did nothing but stare at the Demon Squad, tongues flickering, occasionally hissing to one another but otherwise silent.

  Although obscured by the thick cypress and hanging moss, dawn finally hauled itself, panting and heaving, over the eastern horizon. The nagas began to mill about, shifting aside. In unconscious echo of the troglodytes, they opened an aisle so that something might move through.

  Something too big to be real.

  Cræosh thought, at first, that it must be a dragon, and he felt his groin and his stomach clench. Then it drew near, and he wondered if maybe a dragon wouldn't have been preferable.

  “Ancestors!” It emerged as a faint gasp, and a part of him was amazed he'd even gotten that out. Gimmol stood speechless once again, Gork was spouting an array of sounds in Kobold that could only have been the foulest profanities, Jhurpess was already scampering up the nearest of the standing stones, and even Katim's jaw had dropped.

  It wasn't the naga itself; save for the red-and-black diamond pattern in its scales, it looked just like the others. It was, instead, the fact that said naga was curled up in a howdah atop the back of an alligator that had to measure no less than eighty feet from snout to tail-tip! It crushed plants beneath its tread, uprooted small trees, and shoved them aside as it passed. A pair of chains ran from the naga's left hand to a barbed metal rod lodged deep in the beast's mouth, but Cræosh couldn't imagine how any contraption could possibly control the thing if it decided it no longer wanted to be controlled.

  “Any suggestions?” Cræosh whispered to Katim.

  “This is exactly…the sort of thing we have the…ogre for.”

  The orc glanced back at Belrotha, then at the approaching monster. “I don't know….”

  But the alligator stopped some forty feet from the hill. It settled its body into the water and mud so that only its back and snout were visible. Letting the chains go slack, the naga raised itself up on its tail—a blatantly theatrical gesture, so it could loom over its audience.

  “You,” it hissed. “You ssslay many…” It trailed off in a sibilant breath somewhere between an actual snake and Katim's ugly wet rasp.

  “Oh, great,” Gork muttered from beside the slab of stone. “They talk like the damn trogs.” And then, suddenly, his whiskers perked up and he began to smile.

  Cræosh's hackles rose, but he didn't have time to worry abou
t what the kobold might have planned. He advanced a step or two, enough to suggest he spoke for the squad, not far enough that he couldn't retreat to their sides. “Yeah, we did. But you were planning to murder us, Needle-tongue. Don't go getting all pissy about it now, just because we kicked your cloacae all up and down the swamp.”

  Gimmol's ears actually drooped. “We're staring down the gullet of an alligator the size of the Iron Keep, and he still can't even define diplomacy.”

  Katim, at roughly the same moment, asked, “What do you mean…we, orc?”

  “Yesss, we attack,” the naga said. “You invade home. We protect!”

  “Oh, here we go again,” Cræosh sighed. “All right, look, dammit! We aren't invading your home. We don't give a damn about any of you!”

  “Then why here?”

  The orc opened his mouth to reply—and Gork appeared before him from nowhere. “We're here because of the troglodytes,” he said loudly. “The, uh, lizard-people.”

  A furious hissing swept through the assembled nagas. Even the alligator shifted pensively, though it may simply have been reacting to the noise. Cræosh couldn't decide between strangling the little shit or turning and fleeing like he was being chased by an amorous yeti.

  “You?” the lead naga asked, its eyes dangerously narrow. “Friends of the invaders?”

  “Friends?” Gork laughed. “They hate us!”

  Cræosh, who had come to a decision and was raising a fist to beat the tiny creature into the earth, halted in midswing. What's he doing?

  “Go on,” the naga hissed curiously.

  “They pretended to help us,” the kobold said. “Told us where to find the tower we're looking for.”

  The snake-man nodded. “Tower. Yesss. We know tower.”

  “Right. Well, I heard them after dark, when they thought we were all asleep. They were talking about how stupid your people are.”

  The naga hissed again, violently.

  “Way they figured, they could trick you into doing their dirty work for them. See, they didn't have to risk their precious hides killing us. They'd just send us here, and you'd do it for them. And if we killed a bunch of you in the process, hey, even better.” He stepped forward again, to the water's edge. “They're sitting on their asses back there,” he said, gesturing vaguely southward, “and laughing at you.”

  For a very long time, silence reigned. Then, “Tower you ssseek that way. Go nowhere elssse in our landsss, or naga ssslay. Yesss?”

  “Yes,” Gork agreed solemnly.

  The naga yanked on the chain, and the giant alligator once more came to life. Without a word, the beast turned to the south and shambled away. In equal silence, the rest of the nagas followed suit, until the squad was once more alone in the swamp.

  Only when they were absolutely certain that the very last of the nagas had passed from both sight and hearing did everyone present turn to stare down at the smug little kobold.

  “I don't believe you just did that!” Gimmol said finally. “That was…That was…I don't even know what that was!”

  “It doesn't bother you at all,” Cræosh rumbled, leaning down to Gork's level, “that the people who you just sicced the snakes on were more than happy to help us out?”

  “Maybe you'd rather have fought the bastards ourselves instead?” Gork asked.

  The orc grinned, a nasty expression that revealed lots of broken teeth. “Calm down, Shorty. I was making an observation, is all. Quick thinking, actually. Good job.

  “Now let's go find that damn tower while we have the chance.”

  Like everything else in this stupid swamp, actually managing that proved harder than finding a needle in a baby. They'd trudged and waded the rest of that day, and a good chunk of the next, until they stood at the borders of an open and empty expanse of marsh. The hillocks had flattened, the trees grown sparse, leaving what could almost be described as a plain of swamp, allowing them to see for miles in all directions except back the way they'd come.

  And what they saw, in those many empty miles, was a lifetime supply of nothing.

  “I don't get it,” Cræosh said. “If that map was even remotely accurate, we should already see the damn thing.”

  “And is it only now…occurring to you,” Katim asked pointedly, “that it might well…not have been?”

  “You had doubts, you should've said something at the time, Dogface. Doesn't do us a kobold's ass worth of good now.”

  “Hey!” Gork protested. Cræosh ignored him.

  “What other choice…did we have? If I…had said something at the…time, we still would have had no…way to find the tower…would we?”

  “Maybe not,” Cræosh said, striding a few steps into the open marsh, waving his hands in frustration. “But this doesn't seem to have worked, either. Fucking waste of time. Maybe we should've—”

  He never did tell them what they should have done, because he chose that exact moment—or perhaps, more accurately, that moment chose him—to disappear. Just like that, the orc was simply gone.

  “What in…?” Katim dropped into a combat-ready crouch, one that brought her snout to just above the water level. Jhurpess growled once, something between a roar and a whine. Belrotha, who started so violently that she nearly tossed Gimmol and Gork from their perches, started to look under logs and behind hanging curtains of moss.

  And then, with a loud gasp, Cræosh's head broke the surface. Spitting great mouthfuls of the foul stuff, the mud-encrusted orc half swam and half staggered his way back to the squad.

  “What happened?” Fezeill asked, his tone suggesting a bored curiosity more than any real interest.

  “What happened,” Cræosh told him, hacking and coughing sludge from his lungs, “is that some idiot decided to build a swamp on uneven ground.”

  Jhurpess and Belrotha looked at him blankly. “Someone build swamp?” the ogre asked. “Them not do good job. Swamp not good for anything.”

  Cræosh growled. Gimmol tapped the ogre on the earlobe. “I think that was sarcasm on his part, Belrotha.”

  “Sarcasm?”

  “Yeah, sarcasm,” Cræosh said. “It's like a sar-cave, but bigger.” Then, before she could ask the next inevitable question, he quickly continued. “The ground drops off pretty dramatically. Fifteen or twenty feet, possibly a whole lot more. I decided not to sink all the way down to find out.”

  “Pansy,” Gork muttered.

  “So we're stuck?” Gimmol asked. “We can't go any farther?”

  “Not unless everyone wants to swim the rest of the way. Fuck! Where's that damn tower?!”

  “Maybe right here,” Katim said thoughtfully.

  “That's it, then,” Cræosh announced to the squad at large. “The troll's gone. Lost her mind, taken leave of her senses. Brain-rot, I'd guess. Must've swallowed something when that ‘swamptopus’ dragged her under a few days ago.”

  “Are you quite…through?” Katim asked.

  “Let me think. Yeah, for the time being, I think so.”

  “I’m so glad. What I…meant, as you might have realized if…you bothered to use your brain for…anything other than ballast, is that…the tower could be here if…it's fallen over.”

  “Of course!” Gimmol looked disgusted with himself. “It's obvious!”

  “Is it really?” Gork spat back. “Perhaps you'd be willing to share your vast wisdom with us mere mortals?”

  “Yeah,” Cræosh said, somewhat less eloquently.

  “Well, it's a wizard's tower,” the gremlin explained. “It would've been built to stand up to about anything, so it can't just be gone, right?”

  “If you say so,” Cræosh said neutrally. “So?”

  “But the ground around it wouldn't have the same magical protection, would it? That drop in the terrain that you, ahem, stumbled onto? If that was caused by currents and erosion and all that, it could have toppled the entire thing! It's why,” he added, “most people don't actually build towers, or much of anything else, in swamps. I heard about this kin
g, once, took him four tries to—”

  “So it's here,” the orc clarified, “just lying on its side under the water?”

  “Quite possibly,” Gimmol said.

  “And wouldn't that suggest, Sir Genius, that it just might be completely filled with water? And thus pretty much impossible to navigate?”

  The gremlin's face fell. “Well, I…That is, that would be a distinct possibility, wouldn't it?”

  “Can I kill him now?” Gork asked plaintively.

  “Wait your turn,” the orc said, a nasty quirk to his lips.

  “Excuse me,” Fezeill interrupted. “While I must admit that I enjoy a platter of roast gremlin as much as the next doppelganger, I feel rather obliged to point out that Queen Anne isn't likely to take well to failure on our part. What say we find the damn tower already, and see if it's navigable or not?”

  Cræosh and Gork both reluctantly agreed to hold off on spitting the gremlin over a fire, and the squad began careful exploration of the “cliff” that the orc had discovered. Fezeill resumed his troglodyte form—after demanding that the others keep very careful watch for nagas—and proceeded to search below. But it was Belrotha, with her added height, who spotted the first trace of the missing structure. It wasn't much, just a peculiar rippling and swirling in the otherwise predictable currents. She pointed it out to Gimmol, who in turn pointed it out to Cræosh, who proceeded to order the doppelganger-turned-troglodyte to check it out.

  The grin on that reptilian snout, when he surfaced some moments later, brought a cheer from the assembled squad.

  The tower was, indeed, lying flat on its side. The disturbance Belrotha had spotted was the edge of the platform that had stood atop that tower, its crenellations far enough from the main body that they came near to breaking the surface. But even the tower itself wasn't far beneath the scummy water, less so than the earth on which they stood now. All but Gork and Gimmol could have walked across it without getting more than their legs wet.