Vorst shook her head and tried to imagine what it would be like to walk among hundreds of tall humans. The thought made her stomach churn in angry knots. “We will be fine,” she said, trying to convince herself more than anyone.
With a sigh, Gravlox quickened his pace. “I can kill any of them…” he mused. “If they try to touch us, I will.”
“No,” Vorst replied flatly. “Let Gideon and the other paladins protect us. We need to earn their trust, not slaughter them.” She stopped walking and forced Gravlox to turn and meet her gaze. Uneasy tension hung in the air like morning fog.
“Why?” was all that Gravlox said.
Vorst stared at him and crossed her arms. “Why?” she angrily repeated. “Why? Because I cannot return to the mountain. That’s why.” She readjusted her meager clothing and trudged past Gravlox.
In the back of her mind, Vorst let her consciousness slither back to the familiar connections of her kin. She probed across the vast distance to the network of interwoven minds that made up the goblin race. While the thoughts of Lady Scrapple were too far removed to be anything more than vague and fleeting, Vorst knew beyond a doubt the emotion they expressed: hatred.
Suddenly, the magical bird circling high above the travelling group let out a piercing screech that made several of the humans cry out in pain.
“What in Vrysinoch’s name?” one of them shouted and cursed. He clutched his hands over his ears and staggered. “Have we angered it?” the man shouted.
With a rapid beating of its wings, the bird dove to the ground behind the group and loosed another painful caw.
The bird reared back on its magical legs and at once, the paladins were filled with terror.
“Run!” Gideon shouted above the clamor of confusion. “Vrysinoch be damned, run!” he screamed again, grabbing a dazed paladin by the shoulder as he sped past him with Asterion’s stretcher secured under one of his muscled arms.
Most of the soldiers fell into step behind Gideon and ran for their lives. A third grating screech, accompanied by a powerful gust of wind, emanated from the bird’s white beak.
“What’s happening?” an older paladin yelled with fear as the wind lifted his legs from the ground. Terrified, the man continued to ferociously pump his legs.
“That old man knew what he was doing after all,” Corvus said, smiling as the celestial wind lifted him from the ground. “Jump!” he yelled to the others, “and keep running!”
As the wind grew stronger, their feet were gradually lifted from the ground until they were all sprinting an arm’s length above the rocks and dirt.
After only an hour or so of running with Vrysinoch’s magical aid, the bird dissipated and the paladins tumbled to the ground on top of a gentle rise that afforded them an excellent view of the plains—and the smoke billowing up into the sky.
The smell of fires and burning meat hung in the air. “They’re in trouble,” Corvus growled, doubled over and breathing heavily from exhaustion. “We have to save them!”
“Save what?” Gideon spat, setting Asterion on the ground and rubbing the new blisters on his hands. “The refugees are dead, just like I said.”
Gravlox and Vorst crested the rise with a sheen of sweat on their brows, but otherwise physically better off than the humans. “It could be a trap,” Vorst thought aloud, stretching her thin legs.
“We must go!” Corvus implored, turning to face the rest of the paladins, but unsure of where to look.
Seamus touched the blind paladin’s shoulder and directed him toward the gathering men. “Where we gon’ leave the priest?” Seamus chided the over-zealous leader. “Leave ‘im here to die?”
“Ugh,” Corvus sighed, crestfallen. “Someone must stay behind and guard him.”
Gideon inched closer to the columns of smoke on the horizon. “I’d rather kill orcs and minotaurs than sit here while others reap the glory,” he said under his breath.
“We will stay,” Vorst spoke up. We have to watch the priest while they search for survivors, she tapped in the goblin code against Gravlox’s palm.
I should go with the warriors, Gravlox responded, flexing his arm to show his strength.
“An orc nearly killed you!” Vorst shouted at the shaman in the high-pitched goblin language, startling Corvus with her sudden outburst. “You need to heal the priest,” she added, turning her back to end the discussion.
“I’m for stayin’ too,” Seamus chimed in with a smile.
“It is settled,” Corvus announced to the gathered paladins. “Seamus and the goblins will stay behind to protect Asterion as we reunite with the refugee caravan.” His voice rang out over the eager men as they drew their weapons and formed interlocking columns. Scattered murmurs of dissent flitted through the ranks, but most of the men trusted the unusual goblin pair to protect their comrade.
Without further debate, the paladins began singing a hymn to Vrysinoch as they marched toward the billowing smoke.
Gideon begrudgingly fell into line at the edge of the first row. He held a throwing axe in each hand and felt the cool comfort of Nevidal’s scabbard against his back. The air was cold, but scents of death and smoke lingered on the wind.
“There won’t be any left,” the stoic man angrily spat.
“Orcs or refugees?” the paladin at Gideon’s left asked between verses of the battle hymn.
“Ha,” Gideon chortled. “Either. Orcs aren’t likely to stay once the plunder is gone. We are only certain to find one thing.”
The shield-bearing paladin shook his head and swallowed. “What’s that?” he asked, but he already knew the answer.
“Corpses.”
“GURR, WE MUST wait!” Snarlsnout the Gluttonous bellowed at the warlord over a bag of severed human heads. Undrakk smiled and picked at his teeth with a whittled stick.
“The Wolf Jaw Clan has already fallen to that group of paladins,” the half-orc shaman stated as though he was describing the weather. “The Half Goats would surely perish at their hands as well.” With a twirl of his staff, Undrakk turned away and strolled toward a nearby cook fire.
“Wolf Jaws are weak!” Gurr yelled, sending a huge glob of spit onto the face of one of Snarlsnout’s slaves. “Look!” Gurr pointed at the four rows of warriors marching in the distance. “There are less than…” Struggling to come up with the largest number he knew, Gurr resorted to counting on his blood-soaked fingers. “Less than many of them!” he finally bellowed, letting his frustration out in the form of a war cry.
Some of the nearby Half Goat orcs stomped and howled with their weapons held high at the sound of their warlord’s bloodthirsty cry. With his monstrous feet, Snarlsnout directed his slaves to turn his stone dais around to face his clan. “I am your chief!” he shouted above the din. “We wait!”
“How long?” Gurr shouted back for all the orcs to hear.
“The minotaur clans from the north should be joining us before the next full moon,” Snarlsnout explained. His voice carried an undeniable weight of authority that soothed the ferocious Half Goats and temporarily slaked their thirst for carnage. “We wait for the minotaurs… and then we kill!” Snarlsnout let out a booming laugh that shook his enormous body to the core.
Despite the clear logic laid out before him, Gurr’s rage would not dissipate. The imposing warlord ripped open the clan’s bag of battle banners and quickly found the only one he recognized, the symbol for an all-out charge.
“Put it down, Gurr,” Snarlsnout warned from his dais. “Those men will cut you to ribbons before your half-witted brain can even think enough to scream.”
Gurr stared his chieftain in the eyes for a long moment. Undrakk wandered back toward the dais as he pulled a mouthful of roasted pig flesh from a skewer. Finally, Gurr turned back to the assembled clan and lifted the banner into the air.
“Kill!” Gurr shouted at the top of his lungs.
Exasperated, Snarlsnout lifted his gouty hands as high from his throne as he could and called out to the warriors. “If yo
u charge, you will die,” he bellowed out solemnly. The orcs nearest to the dais heard his words and some of them stopped, causing an uneasy ripple of confused emotions to reverberate through the clan.
Without waiting for any further words to be exchanged, Gurr drew his sword and took off at a sprint for the marching paladins.
“Hold, Half Goats, we must hold,” Snarlsnout pled. Several of the orcs closest to Gurr followed the warlord’s suicidal charge, but nearly all of the green-skinned warriors obeyed their chieftain.
“Well spoken,” Undrakk mocked once he finished his meat and properly cleaned his hands. “Although you will have to find a new warlord to replace Gurr in the morning.”
Snarlsnout let out a frustrated sigh that quickly devolved into a painful fit of coughing. “How many did the Wolf Jaw Clan lose?” he managed to ask after several moments of wheezing.
“Nearly half of their best warriors, by all accounts,” Undrakk replied. “But worry is not suited to the regal air of a chieftain. When the minotaur clans arrive, you will have more than enough fighters to kill every living thing from here to Talonrend.”
Undrakk’s words did more to unsettle the leader than comfort him. “I hope you are right,” Snarlsnout remarked. “I hope you are right…”
“WHAT DID I tell you?” Gideon growled as he stepped over the burned remains of a covered wagon. The stench of scorched flesh assaulted his senses and made him gag.
“They’re… dead…” Corvus didn’t need vision to picture the carnage before him. “Search for survivors. Salvage what you can,” he commanded the paladins, “we will leave as soon as possible.” The eager battle hymn quickly died as the men began searching through what was once several miles of refugees.
“Help me…” a voice drifted from underneath a toppled wagon. Gideon and one of the paladins rushed to move the wreckage from atop the struggling girl. No more than ten, she had blood streaming down her face from a garish cut across her forehead. Her left arm was bent grotesquely backward under her body and the small bones of her wrist poked through the skin of her hand. It was a wonder she was alive.
“Can you heal her?” the paladin at Gideon’s side asked with a hopeful voice. Solemnly, Gideon shook his head and looked away.
“Several years ago, perhaps,” he stated. His mind drifted away from the horrible scene in front of him and he thought to his years of training at the Tower. “Outside of battle, Vrysinoch does not speak to me,” he said, more to himself than the dying girl.
“I can heal minor cuts and wounds, but this…” the man sputtered. He lifted the girl’s head from the dirty ground and used his fingers to push the sliced skin of her forehead back into position. Despite the wound already clotting and scabbing at the edges, it still leaked hot blood over his fingers.
“We’ll get you patched up,” the man attempted to comfort the bloody girl. “What’s your name?” he asked as he cradled her.
“Corshana,” she weakly replied. The skin of her face pulled awkwardly as she spoke, sending another fresh line of blood down her cheek.
Much more violently than he intended, Gideon grabbed the paladin under the arm and ripped him away from the girl. “We can’t help her,” Gideon whispered into the man’s face. He turned his back on the girl and took one of his throwing axes from his belt.
“What in Vrysinoch’s name do you think you’re doing?” the man shrieked, doing little to keep his voice from reaching the girl’s ears. “We can’t just kill her.”
Gideon sighed and cracked his neck. “We can,” he said. “And we will.” Horror filled the younger man’s eyes and he knew Gideon was serious. “Even if she sustained these kinds of injuries back in Talonrend and not on the open road, it would have taken the priests weeks to treat her. We either kill her now, or let a fever take her in the night.”
The paladin started to speak but couldn’t find the words to argue. Lost, he turned back to the girl and tried to keep his own tears at bay. “Corshana,” he whispered as he knelt at her side. Gideon moved silently behind her with an axe in his hand. “Where did your family go, Corshana?”
Struggling to shake her head, she managed a feeble shrug.
“I’m so sorry,” the paladin whispered past the lump in his throat. “Vrysinoch be with you,” he muttered as Gideon’s axe cleaved into her skull. Blood splattered the man’s armor and clothes. He held the girl in his arms and rocked her back and forth for a long moment while Gideon rummaged through the nearest wagons for anything useful.
“There’s no one here,” Gideon said upon his return. He lifted the man from the ground and watched Corshana’s corpse slide from his grasp.
After several more minutes of searching, Gideon returned to Corvus at the front of what was left of the column. “How many survived?” Gideon asked.
Corvus noted the obvious lack of optimism in his voice. “Several dozen,” he cheerfully responded, pointing in the direction of several relatively undamaged wagons. “The survivors are being grouped there,” he explained. “We need to spread out and search the area south as well. Many of the refuges likely fled when the orcs arrived and may still be hiding among the trees and boulders.”
A glint of movement caught Gideon’s attention and reeled him back toward the west. “We won’t have time,” he shouted at the blind paladin. “They’re coming.”
Orc battle cries drifted to their ears from a distant ridge. “Can you see them?” Corvus begged with a voice that plainly displayed his panic. “How many are there?”
Gideon wiped Corshana’s blood from his axe and drew a second from his belt. “Begin the chant,” he called over his shoulder as he ran for the other paladins. “Form a line!”
“CAN YOU WAKE him?” Vorst asked Gravlox from her position at Asterion’s side. “He looks sick.” Seamus paced nervously around the grass. He was thankful to not be with the paladins, should battle commence, but felt helpless in the presence of such foreign creatures.
“I don’t know,” Gravlox stated. He took the enchanted circlet from his head and felt along the sides of the smooth metal. It hummed gently in response to his touch. “When I talk to the ground, I only find anger and violence.” Gravlox was uncertain of how to put his magical experiences into words.
“Grav…” Vorst’s voice dropped lower, keeping it from Seamus’ ears despite the language barrier. “Do you remember that time in the woods?” She crept closer to him and placed a hand delicately in his palm. Memories of their rejuvenating kiss skipped through Gravlox’s mind.
“Yes,” he whispered, leaning closer to her.
“You used magic in the forest,” Vorst explained, playfully pulling back from his side. “Not the magic of a shaman speaking to the ground, but something else.” Vorst sat with her legs folded under her for a moment and relished in the memory of their kiss. In that moment, she had never felt so alive.
“I don’t remember how I did it,” Gravlox admitted. “It just… happened. I’m not sure that kind of magic would help a human.” He watched the gentle rise and fall of Asterion’s chest and placed the circlet back between his ears.
As he steadied his breathing, Gravlox closed his eyes and sent his mind weaving down the energetic strands of the earth’s magic he had grown accustomed to. He felt the emotions of the soil, malleable and eager to be manipulated. His mind grasped the stoic and eternal sentiments of the bedrock far below the surface, ready to be captured and summoned. Further into the ground, Gravlox’s mind dove through a seething pocket of magma that recoiled from his touch. As the powerful circlet hummed, Gravlox backed away from the magma and searched elsewhere for the specific power that he sought.
Retreating back closer to the soil above the layers of bedrock, he found the soft magical connections that linked a system of nearby tree roots to the surrounding earth. Gravlox’s consciousness mingled and swirled with the essence of the tree roots, searching for something useful. Instead of violent power waiting to be consumed and utilized, he found an altogether new magical source. It
was not the regenerating and soothing force he had expected and hoped to find. Much to his excitement, Gravlox felt the waiting energy of creation pulsing between the roots of the tree.
Before he could delve further into the intricate web of creation, a distant chorus of screams and shouts shattered his reverie. “What’s happening?” he asked, blinking away the grogginess in his eyes.
“More orcs,” Vorst hurriedly shouted. “They’re attacking the paladins.”
“Should we be running?” Seamus asked with a hint of panic creeping into his voice.
“No,” Gravlox declared, doing his best to make his voice sound as human as possible. Reverting back to his native language, Gravlox stated that he intended to fight if any of the orcs approached them.
“They’re charging right into the paladins…” Vorst watched the tiny figures clash from atop the small rise in the land. None of the attackers seemed to notice the stationary group so far away.
THE PALADINS, KNOWING they were outnumbered at least two to one, formed a small circle of shields around Corvus that could not be outflanked. They all locked their shields magically into place and prepared to weather the assault—all except a single paladin. Gideon strode ahead of the circular shield wall with a throwing axe gripped tightly in each hand. The remaining refugees shrieked and cowered behind whatever meager cover they could find among the wreckage.
Be with me, Vrysinoch, Gideon silently prayed as the orc charge neared. Let me kill these foul beasts in your name! Gideon felt a slight hint of power emanate from Nevidal at his back, but then it was gone. The holy symbol tattooed on his shoulder was as cold and lifeless as his blade. I figured as much, he scoffed at his god. I am no longer your paladin. Because of the girl? She was dead before I ever found her.
The lead orc came into sight and Gideon knew that his physical stature alone would not be enough. Gurr, the mighty Half Goat warlord, held a sword the size of a small tree above his head and howled with wild abandon. Gideon lifted an axe in his direction and beckoned to the crazed orc.
The Goblin Wars Part Two: Death of a King Page 13
