by Chris Sharp
Then he saw the infernal troll lumbering down the street outside the stockade wall with a stupid sword in his hand and a tiny goblin at his heels. Even among the quickly spreading chaos, the giant was impossible to miss . . . but Neither-Nor had watched Slud die. Maybe he really has been spat up from me nightmares?
Slud glanced up to catch his gaze with the yawning hunger of the void behind his eyes. The troll gave a curt nod, and Neither-Nor found himself nodding back, though he wasn’t sure why. If the scarred goblin thought there was a chance of hitting him from there, he probably would have started chucking his knives. Slud pointed at the chimney and then hooked his finger down, before continuing on his way to disappear behind a two-story log building with the miniature goblin scrambling after.
“The fuck does that mean?”
The night-hag stopped chanting behind him. “Down the chimney you go. He says to get those hall doors open and bleed the ones that killed you. He’ll take care of the rest.” She grinned at him with her hideous teeth, then thankfully turned her disturbing eyes back to the sky and started chanting again. The wolves renewed the frantic orgy of violence as goblins screamed and horns blasted from all corners.
“That fuckin’ troll’s the one who killed me last four times, by my count,” he muttered as he scanned the chaotic courtyard and high stockade walls that surrounded him. Nowhere to run. He gave the witch a last glance and moved toward the chimney. The rope was pre-looped with a fine knot for the girth of the smokestack. He tossed it around with a tug and peered over the edge, seeing nothing but a face full of smoke. He reeled back with a cough that felt like bee stings across his body and almost lost his footing on the slant. “The fuck?”
The night-hag stopped halfway through an ugly-sounding word in another language. “Wet rag ’round your arm, tie it ’round your face, yes. I trimmed the rope; it may be a bit short, but I took care of the archers.” She looked back to the sky and the flow of weird words resumed.
Indeed, there was a wet rag tied in a tight knot around his bicep. “Fuckin’ troll.” Neither-Nor took it off and tied it tightly over his nose and mouth. It was hard to breathe through the damp cloth, but better than lungs filled with unfiltered smoke. He slid toward the chimney again and lifted the rag to spit into his palms, rubbing them together before he grabbed the rope and began to lower it into the chimney. No one seemed to make a fuss about it, so he kept going until he ran out of slack.
“Dumbest fuckin’ thing I ever done,” he muttered as he took a deep breath, threw a leg over, and started down.
DINGLE STUDIED SLUD as he poked his head out from behind the building to watch Neither-Nor slip down the chimney. The troll immediately reversed direction, away from the stockade gate, toward a small one-story rock hut with a domed roof and no windows—not treated pine and mud brick like everything else of Rock Wolf make. Dingle had spent his whole miserable life in the compound, and he had somehow never noticed the existence of this odd hut before. The troll scanned the crudely drawn map that Harog had penciled, then he kicked the heavy door off its hinges with a loud boom and a splintering of wood and iron.
The tiny goblin chewed on his thumb with excitement. He only wished he had a nice sheaf of paper and some charcoal to record the moment in detail: the way the troll’s gaze absorbed the map in an instant, and the low grunt that escaped his throat when his boot met the wood. Every gesture was worthy of a poet’s pen. Dingle alone could see what the others did not; Neither-Nor, Fixelcrick, Bone Master, Harog, even Black Agnes were all just pieces in Slud’s evolving game.
The hut had no light within, but the day through the doorway showed a wide stone stairwell heading down. Slud ducked and descended without hesitation, as unhindered by the darkness that waited as he was by the inevitable death that lurked somewhere beyond it.
Dingle scrambled after him with four quick steps to cover the same ground as every one of the troll’s. The tunnel stretched into inky blackness, lined with rough-hewn rock on all sides. It had been engineered with a big goblin in mind, but Slud was a tight squeeze. Soon enough, Dingle couldn’t see a thing, but he could hear the heavy steps of the Death Lord ahead, the scrape of his shoulders against the walls, and the stinking breath that never seemed to waver. He would follow wherever it led.
THE HUNGER OVERWHELMED LUTHER. He didn’t care about anything else, ready to meet his end if only he did so with a belly full of goblin. He and Riga sprinted across the fallen tree toward the compound, only half aware that none of the defensive ballista or bows fired at their approach. The goblins’ attention had shifted to the sudden attack within their walls. The giant crossbows fired down into the streets as wolves yelped and died. None of the ballista teams saw the black and gray wolves on the tree until it was too late.
Luther swallowed a barely chewed arm with rings and a bracelet still on it as Riga bit down on the sinew of a goblin throat and shook the juice out. It wasn’t nearly enough for either of them. They kept moving down the line, driven faster and made more ravenous by the scene of carnage that opened on both sides.
As he ran, Luther’s eyes picked out the twisted figure standing on the highest rooftop, with her hooked claws raised over her head and her vicious tongue sealing the doom of the clan. Only Luther and Riga, among all the thousands of wolves in the compound, could resist the dark words of the night-hag compelling them to madness. But Luther didn’t want to resist; her magick spoke to an unfulfilled need he carried in his blood. He’d always feared the dark thing that waited within, unsure of its motives and provenance, but he’d also always been curious to see what it could do if he let it out fully. Perhaps this would be the day.
A goblin archer turned toward them with a wild shot just as Luther’s jaws took him down by his shoulder and Riga bit through the wide artery in his leg. Both of them gnawed until the metallic tang was hot in their mouths and the thrashing stopped. They would have loved to bury their snouts in the body, wrest the heart free, and roll in the slop, but there was no time to savor.
The Wolf King sprang back to the run, and Riga followed. They cleared the long stretch of open trunk and tore into the branch maze. He could feel the attention of the raven upon him from high above, but there was nothing he could do about that now. Even his hunger for Agnes and the goblin warlock could wait. With the wolves of the clan at war, the Khan was vulnerable, and his was the heart that Luther and his queen needed to taste.
TWENTY-THREE: Door Jam
THE COMMOTION STARTED when Neither-Nor was ten hands down the climb. He’d cleared the stubby chimney, dangling midair in the billowing smoke as the hollers of terrified goblins were joined by the snarling of wolves, and then the choking wail of a harsh death. His eyes were clenched shut with the burn of the smoke, and the coarse rope tugged at the skin on his fingers and ankles. He heard the meaty clamor of bodies being trampled, but true to the night-hag’s claims above, no arrows flew. He kept going.
Neither-Nor had snapped out of the post-death malaise once he’d started down, shocked back into the rhythm of life through adrenaline and necessity. But his breathing grew progressively more ragged behind the wet cloth, and not being able to see would soon become problematic. The heat of the fire pit rose to meet him, and he knew its light couldn’t be far behind. Still, he lowered himself farther down the rope before he started to swing—leaning back and kicking his legs on the upswing before tucking them under as he swung back. After a couple lengthening arcs, he was able to clear the smoke on both sides.
He pried open his watering eyes as the blurry room began to materialize below. Luckily, he was still in the shadows, but still more than thirty feet over the hard stones and hot fire where he’d last died. There was a clamor throughout the hall, but he went through the stinging smoke again, unsure which way was which. The only things in relative focus were the two closest rafters—still a drop below him on either side. The freaky witch on the roof had trimmed the rope too short.
Neither-Nor slid down to the last handhold on the rope, and
as he came through the smoke plume this time, the heat singed the bottoms of his naked feet and jarred him from the plan. His toes retracted before the landing on the rafter he was aiming for, and he swung back through the scorched air while reaching out in the opposite direction. His toes found the solidity of wood, and he came to an unsteady perch on the beam, one arm out for balance and the other stretched up with a fingertip’s grip on the butt of the rope.
He froze and tried to blink his eyes clear. No one seemed to have noticed. The bandit cloth around his face was black with soot, and he could feel the runes shifting on his chest and back to make his lungs right again, but he was a lot farther from the doors than he would have liked. A cluster of goblin backs moved toward the exit, followed by one of the big wolves. The beast had a merchant in fancy robes between its jaws, and it shook its prey as manicured hands pounded on its unforgiving snout. Another goblin with shiny armor was trying to crawl away, but the crazed wolf pounced on his back with enough force to flatten the flimsy bronze plates and crush his ribs beneath. It tossed the merchant aside and snapped at another pair of retreating goblin legs.
Neither-Nor wobbled. Directly below, the other of the Khan’s wolves had backed the big goblin who’d helped dismember him against the wall. The emotionless killer had a hex doktor with a big freaky eye held before him as a shield. Neither-Nor’s gut sticker was at the warlock’s throat, and the big goblin held a curved sword in the other hand, waiting for the wolf to make its move. Neither-Nor wobbled some more as he noticed the severed head nailed to the beam just below his feet. It was wearing his cap and was covered in fresh-cut letters. Neither-Nor could see a crude smiley face carved into the closest cheek.
“There’s a fuckin’ thing to see,” he mumbled as he leaned over to snatch the cap while still clutching the end of the rope by his fingertips. The cap had gone brown and rigid, but he shook it out and flipped it onto his head with comforting familiarity. One way or another, it would get a fresh coat of red soon enough.
A wet cough sounded behind him, and he looked over his shoulder to where the Khan was staring up from the throne only ten feet below. As before, he had the absurd golden sword in one hand and was holding a jug to his mouth with the other.
“Not possible,” the Khan said with widening eyes as ale dribbled down his chin. “Not fuckin’ possible!”
The absurdly hairy goblin who had watched Neither-Nor die from the foot of the stairs noticed him as well, and immediately took off toward the back of the hall at an awkward, lurching run. Nearby, the fat goblin with the feathered cloak tossed a hatchet into the closest wolf’s haunches, and when the snapping jaws turned on him, the winged thug raised his fluttering arms and shot into the air—coming to a hunched perch on the beam on the opposite side of the head from Neither-Nor.
The wolf circled and growled, its feral yellow eyes locked on the feathered goblin above as if oblivious to the hatchet lodged in its ass. It leapt into the air, and the long jaws snapped together with a loud clack just a few feet short of the beam before it crashed back down to the stones.
The moon blade that had been handed down to Neither-Nor from his grandfather was dangling from the fat goblin’s hip. He could almost reach out and grab it, but then the toad-faced bastard noticed his precarious stance on the rafter beside him. It took a moment for him to register what he was seeing.
“Kill him!” screamed the Khan, drawing the attention of the wolf.
Neither-Nor couldn’t handle the Khan, the wolf, and both killers by himself; this was his window. Gotta get them doors open! He sprang up and kicked the fat goblin in the face, before grabbing the rope with both hands and swinging away.
Mid-arc, he realized that he didn’t have the momentum to reach the next rafter, and released at the farthest point to sail down toward the hard floor legs first. It was a long drop, but he relaxed his body on the descent and landed with bent knees before the momentum carried him into an extended roll across his shoulders. He came to his feet beside the recently dead goblins and drew his shitty knives as the near wolf turned on him.
It got a snout full of steel to send it reeling back, and Neither-Nor was sprinting toward the door a second later. He weaved through the host of panicked Rock Wolf elite, but none noticed the bandit-masked ghost among them. The furious wolf plowed into the goblins at his back, and he felt the wind of its bite brush across his neck. Neither-Nor lowered both knives as he ran, slicing goblin legs on both sides to provide easier meat. A big goblin with a big hammer turned to face him directly ahead, blocking his route, so Neither-Nor went right at him to get a feel for the stand-in blades. They danced high and low, opening the femoral artery and throat at the same time.
The knives were sharp enough for now, but they wouldn’t hold the edge for long, and the handles and balance were all wrong. Still, Neither-Nor dodged the spray and kept going toward the doors, which looked much bigger without Slud standing beside them. The crossbeam was a lot more impressive from this side, too.
An unnatural gust of wind whipped across the hall, and the smoke from the fire wafted out in a choking wave. The wolf at the throne yelped for what sounded like the last time, and Neither-Nor glanced back through the chaos to see the mute goblin killer standing over it on the steps with his sword jammed through its head. The Khan, still seated above, pointed again at Neither-Nor and bellowed, “Kill him!”
Neither-Nor couldn’t see the goblin with the feathered cloak and knew he wasn’t a good one to lose track of. But someone outside had started pounding on the doors, and the two huge buffalo-shouldered guards ahead had their backs to him. It’s the troll!
Neither-Nor slid up behind a guard and stuck him through the spine. The shit blade in his hand came out with the tip cracked off. Still, that guard went down, and Neither-Nor darted in toward the second. He jammed the other knife through that goblin’s armpit; there was no armor there, and his aim was good, but the thick blade caught on a rib and glanced off target into a lung.
When he pulled it out, a whistle of air followed and the blade had chipped in two places. Neither guard was dead, but they wouldn’t be a problem. The six-hundred-pound beam facing him at eye level would. They’d installed two new iron jambs as well. Gimme a fuckin’ break!
He sheathed one of the blades and grabbed the closest iron rod by the curved top; it was much heavier than he’d hoped. He sheathed the second blade and lifted with both arms, able to get his shoulder under it enough to hoist the bar up to the catch on the door with a winded grunt.
Neither-Nor nudged the paralyzed guard out of the way with his foot, and got a grip on the second jamb—but lost his hold when a throwing hatchet buried itself in his back. He went to his knees and coughed as the fat goblin fluttered to a shaky landing a few paces behind him.
“Like yer knife.” He grinned with filed teeth as he unclasped the moon blade from his belt.
Neither-Nor reached behind his back and with a snarl he yanked the hatchet out at a bad angle. The wound ripped further, but the runes started shifting as he found his feet again, the hatchet in one hand and a chipped knife in the other. He gave the hatchet a spin; it was well crafted and had a good feel to it. “Like yer hatchet.”
The pounding grew louder at the doors, but Slud would have to fend for himself for a bit.
“Name’s Short-Fuse,” said the fat goblin, circling.
“Don’t care,” said Neither-Nor, stepping out to meet him.
“Gonna peel off yer skin this time, copy them letters fer meself.” Short-Fuse feinted with the remaining hatchet, but came around with the moon blade from the other direction. Neither-Nor rolled under it and cut the air where Short-Fuse was supposed to be. The fat goblin fluttered back down a few paces away, chuckling. “Heard ya was faster than that.”
“Never heard of ya at all,” he answered.
Short-Fuse didn’t like that. He leapt, and the wings carried him into a high arc. He raised the moon blade over his head, while flicking the hatchet underhanded at the same time.
The hatchet flipped out and lodged in Neither-Nor’s stomach, but as the moon blade came down, he raised his own hatchet to block it and raked the chipped blade across Short-Fuse’s belly with a spray of bloody feathers.
Short-Fuse launched again and came to a perch on the rafter overhead, clutching his stomach. He thought he had a moment to regain his composure while Neither-Nor dealt with the hatchet lodged in his abdomen, but the scarred goblin was used to pain. He let his stomach muscles tear further as he wound up and chucked the other hatchet into Short-Fuse’s chest.
The fat goblin pitched back and fell to the floor with a meaty thud. Neither-Nor didn’t hesitate. He sprang on top of him and drove the knife up under his jaw. Short-Fuse opened his mouth to protest, but the blade sliced through his tongue, jammed through the roof of his mouth, and pierced his brain. His eyes went wide and his hand gripped Neither-Nor’s shoulder, but a last twist of the hilt ended that. The moon blade clattered to the floor beside him.
Neither-Nor finally buckled over and wrenched the hatchet out of his own stomach with a gag. Blind with pain, he crawled across the floor until his hand found the hilt of his grandfather’s knife. The feel of the long oaken handle in his grip was a comfort as the runes went to work, but he wouldn’t have long before the next fight found him, and the troll was still waiting.
The aberrant wind blew again through the rafters with an ominous keening. The second wolf was still tearing through the frantic host. The Khan had descended the stairs, waving his pretty sword and clutching his precious jug. The other goblin killer had vanished in the shuffle. Then Neither-Nor spotted the tall mute slowly approaching down the side of the hall with his hollow eyes locked on his fallen feathered companion. “Fuck.”
