Goblin Corps, The

by Ari Marmell

  By the time they'd fully scoured the entire ground level, they'd determined Castle Eldritch had as many secret doors as normal ones—but that none of them offered so much as a trace of any possible entrance to the central tower. They had also failed to find one single sign of human life; even the smaller guard towers were empty.

  “Is anyone besides me starting to get just a tad nervous about all this?” Gimmol asked when Gork dropped back down from his check of the fourth guard tower.

  The kobold dusted his hands off on the sides of his pants. “I take exception to your use of the word ‘tad.’ And the word ‘starting,’ for that matter. Anyone who's not already as nervous as a halfling virgin at a dwarven orgy is an idiot.”

  Cræosh, who had been staring intently down a nearby corridor, glanced sharply at Gork. “’Halfling virgin?’” He grinned widely. “You've been traveling with me too long, Shorty.”

  “Well shit, Cræosh, I could've told you that.”

  “I don't suppose,” Katim rasped sourly, “that…I might impose on you to…take just a moment of your…time and focus on the reason we're…here?”

  “Sure you can impose,” Cræosh said. “Just as soon as you have the slightest fucking clue what we should do next, you can impose to your heart's content.”

  “Is there anyplace we haven't looked?” Fezeill asked.

  “Are we in the…tower?”

  “Umm…No, not really.”

  “Then I'd say there's at least…one place we haven't looked.”

  Fezeill glowered at her. “Wise-ass troll…”

  “What was that?”

  “Um, I said you're a wise troll.”

  “Yes, I know. It was…decent of you to point it out…however.”

  The doppelganger continued to mumble.

  “Queen Anne is wizard?” Belrotha asked suddenly.

  “Yes, Belrotha,” Gimmol said patiently. “Queen Anne is a wizard.”

  “Then why we look for door to tower? Maybe Queen Anne not build door to tower. Wizard not need door. Wizard can just go wigglety-poof with fingers and be in tower already.”

  “‘Wigglety-poof?’” Cræosh asked mildly.

  “She's got a valid point, though,” Gimmol acknowledged, trying not to sound too surprised. “Queen Anne could make do without a door, at that.”

  “It don't wash, Gimmol,” Cræosh disagreed. “Even if she's too out of her skull to care, it was King Sabryen who designed this castle, remember? And kings have to think strategically.”

  “Doesn't that make it more likely, then?” Gork asked, stepping up to join the discussion. “I mean, a tower with no doors is pretty safe from siege, wouldn't you say?”

  The orc shook his head. “Yeah, but it also means that he can't move large numbers of supplies or assistants in and out. Plus, there's those wards King Morthûl mentioned. He'd have to lower them every time he wanted to move in and out of the tower, and that'd expose him to outside sorceries. Not a wise idea. There's got to be an entrance, even if only for emergencies.”

  “I hadn't thought of that,” Gimmol admitted.

  “But that puts us back where we started,” Fezeill said. “Knowing it's here doesn't help if we can't find the damn thing.”

  “We haven't checked upstairs…yet,” Katim reminded them.

  “There's nothing but sleeping chambers and guest rooms upstairs, remember?” Fezeill said.

  “So far as we…know. Perhaps one of those rooms is…more than it seems.”

  Gork wilted. “You mean we've got to search every one of the upstairs rooms?”

  The piercing gaze of his companions was answer enough.

  The kobold was still sulking as he stomped along the first of the seemingly endless upstairs corridors. It felt as though he'd spent the last ten years of his life doing nothing but searching through this and digging through that, and it was starting to wear thin.

  Normally, Gork liked the opportunity to explore other people's homes and possessions, but the “risk versus reward” equation here seemed unduly weighted toward risk. He'd rather have been home, or in a nicely crowded city with lots of loose purses, or hell, anywhere else. Gork had never wanted to be a soldier, let alone assigned to a Demon Squad. The direction that his life had taken recently was starting to eat at him, a parasite in his gut that he couldn't quite ignore.

  Thus it was that when the light went out—all the light, from the still-burning torches in their sconces to the dull sunlight penetrating the narrow windows—Gork reacted not as a soldier, but as a thief. With a stifled cry, the kobold hurled himself toward the nearest wall. He knew, from before the darkness had fallen, that he was only a few steps from one of the bedroom doors. His hands scrabbled across the stone, frantically seeking the knob, and escape from whatever was coming.

  Gimmol dropped into a crouch, mouth and hands moving in the beginnings of an incantation. Belrotha and Jhurpess both put their backs to the nearest wall, arms stretched out in the hopes of intercepting anything that drew near. Fezeill shifted through a multitude of forms, hoping that the heightened senses of the elves or the catlike vision of the troglodytes might penetrate the unnatural shadow; the sporadic but vehement cursing suggested that they failed. Cræosh and Katim stood back-to-back. The orc's heavy sword methodically sliced through empty space, and Katim's chirrusk whistled menacingly in the dark.

  It was a dark not merely of sight, but of soul. Thoughts came sluggishly, through a haze of forgetfulness. The hum of the troll's chain, the heavy breathing of the unnerved ogre, the distant thump of what sounded like a slamming door—all took on a low, muffled feel, as if the entire squad had been submerged in something cold and clammy. Cræosh's skin crawled, and he felt the hair standing up on the troll behind him.

  The voice, when it came, was not distorted by the ebon blanket that covered the hallway, but rang out instead like a clarion.

  “And a pleasant day to you all, my dear friends. I trust you find the accommodations satisfactory?”

  “Rupert,” Cræosh greeted him, eyes flickering madly in search of any sign of light, of life. “You might want to have a word with the servants. They seem to have let the torches burn out.”

  The dark-robed seneschal chuckled softly. “And to think, dear Cræosh, there are those who accuse you of being humorless.”

  “I’m not humorless. I've got lots of humor. I’m so full of humor that my bladder's about to burst. Why don't you do something about this darkness and I can actually show you?”

  “I’m afraid that wouldn't be convenient,” Rupert said with a sigh so melodramatic it really needed its own cloak to swirl about its ankles. “The dark should make it so much easier to slaughter the lot of you.”

  “Slaughter us?” Cræosh played up the shock, stalling for time. “Wouldn't that upset Queen Anne?”

  “Queen Anne is aware of your betrayal, you miserable little orc!” Rupert's voice was suddenly ice. “If she weren't otherwise engaged, I’m sure she'd have loved to attend to you herself.

  “But I’m glad she can't. I’m rather looking forward to doing this myself. And you can stop waving your sword about like a ninny, Cræosh. I can see quite well enough to avoid it, thank you much.”

  Cræosh's mind transformed every sound to tickle his ears, every touch of breeze on his face, into the precursor to an attack. He stabbed or parried desperately, striking only empty air. And all the while, he knew that Rupert lurked, laughing silently as he drifted nearer, nearer….

  And then Gimmol, hunched beside the ogre's calf, released his spell.

  Everyone in the hallway froze, including the queen's startled seneschal. The gremlin hadn't the magic to completely counter the unnatural darkness. The torches shone as little more than beacons in the gloom-swaddled hall, and the windows glowed only faintly. As though standing outside on a cloud-dimmed night, the goblins could see only a few feet beyond their noses, stood in a world of abstract shapes and shadows.

  But it was enough.

  Cræosh slashed murdero
usly at the brown-robed figure that had appeared only a few feet away. Rupert hurled himself aside, barely avoiding the whistling steel.

  “Now ain't that interesting,” Cræosh remarked. “I don't know what you are under all the wrappings, but you're as scared of a sword as the next man, aren't you?”

  Rupert snorted and rose to hover several feet above the carpet. “You cannot possibly comprehend what I am, little pig. And your sword is harmless if it cannot land a blow.” Sparks arced between the seneschal's outstretched fingers, then crackled across the hall. A loud sizzling, the pungent aroma of roasting meat, and Cræosh screamed in pain, flinging his sword away as though it had bitten him. Smoke rose from the palm of his hand, and several strips of well-cooked flesh clung to the weapon's hilt. A few sparks popped from the tip of the sword, and several tongues of flame flared on the carpet, only to die again just as quickly.

  “Katim?” Cræosh asked, his left hand clenched around his right and his voice made hoarse with pain.

  “Yes?”

  “Whatever Rupert is, your collection doesn't have one, does it?”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps you ought to rectify that.”

  Rupert pivoted toward the advancing troll. She grinned, her twisted jaw opening, her horrible teeth shifting roughly in their sockets. Her gums brushed against the insides of her lips, and a thin trail of saliva fell to vanish into the carpet.

  “Attractive,” Rupert said, raising his hands to point at Katim's chest.

  “Yeah,” Cræosh agreed. “And distracting, too.”

  Belrotha drove both fists into Rupert's robe from behind and began to tear.

  An inhuman wail sounded from deep—far, far too deep—within Rupert's hood. His hands thrashed wildly, and even the ogre rocked back as they slammed against her. Cræosh could only wonder, marveling, at the strength contained within that flimsy robe. But Belrotha held fast, ignoring the deep mottled bruises, ignoring the streams of blood that slowly trickled down her face, dribbling over her lips. The form beneath that robe was wrong, gave impossibly as she twisted and yanked. No bones broke and no flesh tore, for whatever the robe contained, it appeared to possess neither.

  Again Rupert reached out, but this time he was not striking at the ogre. A shimmering rainbow light rose from his palm to burst before Belrotha's face. Her eyes glazed over, pupils dilating, and her grip went limp. She stood frozen, staring deeply at nothing at all, or at least nothing that any of the others could see.

  Rupert yanked himself free of Belrotha's slackened fists just in time to catch Katim's chirrusk across his head and Fezeill's blade in his back. Writhing, the robed figure twisted aside, hauling himself off the doppelganger's sword. Beneath the prongs of the hook, the left half of his hood tore completely off the robe.

  Cræosh felt his jaw drop and saw Katim's do the same as the hooked end of her chirrusk fell unnoticed to the carpet. Vaguely, he thought he heard Gimmol gasp, and Jhurpess—who'd just been approaching Rupert with club held high—fell back whimpering.

  Staring at Rupert's head, or rather where his head should have been, was akin to staring down an ambulatory hole. The hallway beyond was visible through him, but distant, distorted—like looking through the wrong end of a dwarven spyglass. Cræosh had to lower his gaze, to look at the robed torso rather than through that “head,” lest he be overcome with vertigo.

  “I do hope your curiosity is satisfied,” Rupert said. “But it's dreadfully impolite to stare so.”

  The others snapped back to attention, but the phantasmal seneschal had taken advantage of their stunned immobility, drifting some way down the hall, putting himself well beyond reach of the Demon Squad's weapons. Already his hands were raised for another spell. Cræosh, Katim, and Fezeill bounded forward; Jhurpess dropped his club and was desperately fitting an arrow to his bow; but none of them needed Gimmol's frightened shout to know that they could not cover the distance before Rupert unleashed his magics.

  Behind Rupert, the door to one of the hallway's many bedrooms creaked slowly open, revealing a single gleaming eye.

  Gork had no love for his companions—in point of fact, he hated most of them—but as the battle raged, two thoughts kept floating to the surface of his devious little mind:

  If they all die, Morthûl's gonna be really pissed at me. And…

  If they all die, I’m gonna be stuck facing Rupert and Queen Anne on my own!

  And so, as he had against the yetis, the kobold waited until he was sure he could make a difference, and then he charged. His kah-rahahk remained firmly in its sheath; he'd seen enough to know that Rupert had no corporeal body to stab, and while Belrotha's tearing at the robe itself had clearly caused him pain, Gork knew that he couldn't shred it with his tiny blade, not before the creature roasted him like a kitten on a spit.

  But thanks to the neatly made bed within the chamber he'd chosen as a hiding place, that jagged dagger was not the kobold's only weapon.

  Gork burst from concealment, pounded down the hall in a matter of seconds, and leapt. Using both feet and one hand, he scrabbled and crawled his way up the strangely moving, almost viscous robe, appeared over Rupert's shoulder, and allowed himself to drop down in front of him….

  Dragging, the entire way, the quilt he'd hauled from the bed. The heavy wool draped over Rupert's head, or whatever it was he had in place of a head, forming a colorful, pastel shroud.

  Gork was leaping again even as his feet touched the floor, passing under the robe and between where Rupert's ankles should have been. Clutching a corner of the quilt in one hand, he reached up and snagged the edge still trailing behind the flailing figure. For just an instant, as Gork clung tightly in the face of Rupert's bucking, the seneschal was well and truly netted.

  Cræosh never slowed his charge. As his pumping legs carried him toward the disoriented foe, he dropped his own blade, reached out with his uninjured hand, and yanked Fezeill's short sword from the doppelganger's fingers. Ignoring the sudden yelp of protest, the orc lowered his shoulder.

  His own wicked blade, after all, was meant for chopping. And just this once, that wasn't what Cræosh wanted. Roaring, he slammed the thrashing figure back a few steps, then shoved the smaller blade through the heavy quilt and through the nonexistent “face” below.

  For an instant, there seemed no substance, no end, beneath the heavy fabric. On and on the blade continued without hint of resistance. Cræosh's hand tore through the rent in the quilt; every muscle tightened, as though he were stretching for something he couldn't quite reach. An impossible cold, worse than anything the Steppes had offered, brushed his skin.

  Finally, though, the blade punched through the back of the quilt and into the heavy wood of the nearest door, pinning the seneschal down, a rare and dying butterfly. The wood splintered, squealing, as the sword, driven by the orc's powerful thrust, sank into the door to the hilt.

  Rupert shrieked, and his voice was the roaring wind. On and on, whipping about them, sending clothes and hair to violent fluttering. His hands thrashed at angles impossible for anything remotely human, reducing the quilt to tatters—all save the patch he wore like a hood, nailing him to the door. Ribbons swirled about the hallway in a flurry of woolen snow.

  The illumination in the hall flickered, dimmed, and then returned to normal as Rupert's incantation of darkness faded away.

  “You know,” Gork said conversationally, “he might just pull out of that eventually.” Even as he spoke, the short sword shifted, the metal pressing against the surrounding wood with another teeth-grinding screech.

  “He might,” Cræosh agreed, kneeling to retrieve his own sword from the floor. “Gimmol?”

  The little gremlin stepped forward, frowning. “It must be the robe that gives him substance,” he offered, though he sounded hesitant. “I can't think of any other reason he'd have avoided your sword, or why Belrotha's attack hurt him.”

  “Me can hurt anything,” the ogre said dreamily, only slowly awakening from her trance.


  “I’m sure you can.” For once, Cræosh was feeling somewhat magnanimous—perhaps because he'd already gotten the chance to stab Rupert in the face. “After you,” he offered Katim, along with a shallow bow.

  Her axe slammed into the twisting seneschal, splitting the door in two. She yanked it down, shredding fabric by the foot. Rupert's gale-force scream grew even more shrill, until every ear in the hallway throbbed. Ignoring the pain as best they could, the orc and the troll took turns, slashing and slicing with mechanical regularity. The door crumbled into so much rubbish—Rupert was pinned, now, to nothing more than a plank of wood, albeit a heavy one—and still they continued, never letting up for even a single heartbeat.

  After a full two minutes of this, Rupert's unending cry finally wavered and faded away. After five, the robe was nothing more than random scraps of cloth, mixed in with the splintered heap that had been the door. Just for good measure, Gork reached up, swiped one of the torches off the wall, and shoved it into the pile. It caught instantly, and the kobold watched with a satisfied smirk as smoke began to stain the ceiling.

  “Have I mentioned how beautiful today is?” Gork asked.

  “How's Belrotha?” Cræosh asked Gimmol, who had gone over to check up on the bewildered giant.

  “Definitely coming out of it,” the gremlin replied, relief etched deeply in his face.

  “Pretty colors,” the ogre said, blinking.

  “I’m sure they were,” Gimmol commiserated.

  “Can Gimmol bring colors back?”

  “That, uh, wouldn't be a good idea, Belrotha.”

  Gork snorted from across the hall. “She can't really be that stupid, can she?”