Defenders of the Valley

by K. J. Coble

  Now even the vile trolls mustered at Groon’s passing.

  “Deadly One!” Vraka called breathlessly as he halted. “I bring more recruits to our banner and news!”

  Brathug hissed, glowering at the unfamiliar goblin shivering at Vraka’s side. “Fenskulkers!”

  The newcomer goblin spat. “And you’d be a Foulstench. We could smell you coming a day out, even upwind!”

  Brathug cackled and reached for one of the swords crossed at his back. “We’d do better to move on without these troll-lovers!”

  Groon clapped his hand over Brathug’s before the chieftain could draw his blade. “Save your rivalries, vermin, or you’ll find Blood-Drinker steel in your gullet!” He released the goblin’s hand after a glaring moment and regarded the Fenskulker. “My lieutenant spoke of news?”

  The Fenskulker bowed. “You are the Blood-Drinker, then. I bring you word of intruders in our domain, ones that point the way.”

  Groon glanced at Akrak, who nodded wildly, shaking spittle loose in his excitement. “Hear him, Deadly One! I have seen this.”

  “What intruders?” Groon asked.

  “Dwarves with a she-human leader,” the Fenskulker answered. “Our kin to the north have seen them and harried them.”

  “Dwarves...” Groon spat, a tendril of it hitting Brathug’s arm. “What brings the hole-diggers out of their tunnels?”

  “They follow the Old Way,” the Fenskulker replied. “They move to the ruins under the mountain, the place our witches whisper that those we once served dwelt within, ages long gone.”

  “Ones we once served?” Groon looked at Akrak.

  “The Ancient Ones, lord,” the shaman whispered. “The Tyrants.”

  “Vuls?” Groon asked, felt his throat constrict as if he’d just spoken the name of a god. “It is they that call to you?”

  “To us,” Akrak corrected. “She calls; she whose name was forgotten and is now—”

  Groon waved off the by now oft-repeated incantation. He asked the Fenskulker, “How far ahead of us are the hole-diggers?”

  “Over a week,” the Fenskulker replied.

  Groon nodded. “Then we waste time standing here.” He waved the Fenskulker ahead of him. “You have the lead. Guide us astray and your kind dies to a one.”

  “And when we succeed, you die anyway,” Brathug began to murmur before Groon’s backhanded blow knocked the helm from his head.

  The Fenskulker offered a gap-toothed grin and turned to raise a horn to his lips. Its mournful note echoed among the hills. In the woods below, howls answered and motion boiled through the trees.

  The horde of Groon Blood-Drinker surged into the Valley after them.

  SARCHA CROUCHED AT Clegg’s side behind a boulder, shivering as a mournful breeze bit through her cloaks. The Labyrinthines towered around them, craggy tops carving sharp shadows out of sunlight deepening into the wine-shades of dusk. Above, at the top of a rocky incline, a cave mouth gaped from the side of a mountain whose peak was lost in haze.

  “There,” Clegg said, pointing. “Do you see?”

  Sarcha dared to rise from behind the rocks. Squinting, she made out among rocky shards crumbled column sections, some still adorned with carvings of faces that the ages and elements had robbed of detail. Over the cave entrance, askew and buckled from tons of bedrock above, the outline of an arch could still be picked out. Winds scraped dust from faint hatch-marked script, no longer legible but familiar enough to set Sarcha’s pulse to racing.

  “This is it!” Sarcha began to say, but Clegg’s harsh grip dragged her down.

  Gibbering speech carried over the moan of the breeze. Yellow flickers in the cave gloom became the eyes of stooping figures, emerging into the light. Goblins shaded their faces against the sun’s hateful glare, jostling one another in some brutish humor, a pair tumbling to one side in spontaneous brawling that set the others to amused titters. A lone goblin stepped to the top of the incline, stretched, and proceeded to urinate down the rocks. Its foul runnel seeped as far as Sarcha’s hiding place, carrying a sour reek of poor diet with it.

  “They’ve been warned of our coming,” Clegg whispered.

  “How many do you think?” Sarcha asked.

  Clegg ran calloused fingers through his beard. “There’s not enough of a guard for this to be a lair. I’d say it’s an outpost, probably set to watch for us.” He shrugged. “There are maybe a hundred, not counting whatever patrols they have out.”

  “Your scouts didn’t see any others,” Sarcha said.

  “No, they didn’t,” Clegg replied. “That doesn’t mean there aren’t more.”

  Sarcha nodded. “All right. Say there are a hundred. Can your lads handle them?”

  Clegg met her gaze. “It’ll be a hard fight.”

  Sarcha touched the dwarf’s arm, knowing she could not push the charm upon him too far. “But you can do it.”

  Clegg’s eyes glazed momentarily. He blinked the vacant expression away, seemed to remember where he was. “I...yes, we can. We’ll need to wait, though. The sun is getting low at our backs. If we have to fight, I’d rather do it in full light. We’ll wait for noon tomorrow and try to draw some of them out where it will weaken them.”

  “What of those who aren’t drawn out?”

  “That’s the hard part.” Clegg shrugged. “I don’t see any other way, my lady.”

  Sarcha chanced another look at the cave. So close. Impatience warred with caution. I cannot push him, though. The spell holds him so long as he thinks it will work, thinks it is partly his will.

  “Where do we camp?” she asked.

  “We don’t,” Clegg replied. “We withdraw to that ravine we passed through and wait out the night, everyone awake and at guard, hands on their weapons.” He smiled unpleasantly. “And we’ll set no fires. It’ll be a chilly time.”

  Sarcha blew warm breath into cupped hands. “If you think that’s the best way.”

  “It’s the only way.”

  Clegg tugged at her cloak to follow him back down through the maze of boulders. She sensed more than saw dwarf scouts shadowing their movements through the rocks. As they neared the foot of the mountain, she glanced upwards once more, her blood aquiver with anticipation.

  Soon...soon I will worship at the feet of real gods...

  SATU VENNITIUS LEANED back in his chair, folding his hands together in feigned attentiveness as the priests chattered on. He had a headache that even an early dinner’s bottle of wine hadn’t dissipated. A scribe recorded the meeting in his stateroom to one side, the skinny man’s quill pen etching across parchment with a scratch-scratch that set the Strategos’ nerves on edge. To his other side, Kodror Aigann’s fidgeting only made the annoyance worse.

  “The signs are unmistakable,” the priest of Saint Reniburn out of Candolum insisted. “Grave things are in motion in our Valley.”

  Vennitius unlaced his fingers to knead the bridge of his nose. Two or three times a year these fools saw doom in thunderstorms and early freezes and still-born calves. He had administered this far-flung district of the empire for decades but had yet to develop an understanding of the provincials’ superstitious need to see the apocalypse in every tilt of the constellations. It had been worse in Thyrr, he supposed, where the aristocracy could drive themselves to riot over minor points of theology. But he longed often for the bustle of a real city, its intrigues, art, sophistication.

  Its women.

  He wondered momentarily how Sarcha Urkaimat fared. He’d been glad to be rid of her city-bred arrogance, but his bed hadn’t been warmed with the passions of a woman with a taste for deviance in a long time. He hoped that her fool’s errand into the wilds hadn’t met with some mishap. More, he hoped she returned, tattered and chastened by the empty promises of the lost past and eager for the touch of something more civilized before she was on her way.

  “Strategos?” Aigann whispered into his ear.

  Vennitius blinked away his reverie. “Yes...you were saying, Eminence?”


  “The church wishes to know what you plan to do, lord,” Aigann reminded him.

  “Yes...well...I suppose we can spare you an engineer to see to repairs.”

  “My lord,” the Reniburn priest said with a disbelieving arch of his eyebrows, “what of the signs?”

  Vennitius blew out a breath to still his frustration. “Your Eminence, I cannot call the Inquisition out of Thyrr because a statue fell down.” And more than that, which these simpletons did not realize, the dread religious militants had a bad habit of finding sin, even when there was none.

  “The effigy has stood since the formation of the Empire!” the priest squawked. “Certainly, you see the significance?”

  Vennitius glanced at the other priests clustered to one side, men in gold-trimmed whites and a woman in the stern brown sack of a vow of poverty. “What do the sages of Hyrus or Habbah say?”

  “We have spoken to you often of the rise of lawlessness in the region, my lord,” a white-bearded elder said. “Hyrus despises disorder above all other sins.”

  “And the crops are slow to quicken, this spring,” the woman representing the shrine of Habbah added. “The Dagda Maur’s chill holds on long and even the trees moan of corruption in the winds.”

  Vennitius shook his head and hefted himself to his feet from behind his desk. “Crumbled statues, crime and crops...truly these are the concerns of angry gods.” He trudged to a side window through which a cool breeze fluttered. A bottle of wine rested on a tray beside it and he reached out to grasp its comforting chill.

  A bell chimed through the window, the deep notes of the Imperial cupola rising highest of the spires over the palace. Vennitius looked out, brows furrowing as he listened, heard a babble rising from the city below. He set the bottle back down and turned to Aigann. “What fool is ringing that out of sequence? The sun has not yet set!”

  Aigann rushed to his side and gazed out over the city. “Something is happening at the docks. A ship is come in.” He leaned out, brushing aside curtains then retracting as if he’d seen a rat. “Oh...”

  “What is it?” Vennitius squinted but could not make out the newcomer, his vision not what it once had been.

  “The River Imp has returned.” Aigann looked at Vennitius with a sour expression. “Vohl Rhenn.”

  “Rhenn...” Vennitius turned to glare at the priests. “You want a harbinger of doom?” He waved disgustedly out the window. “Now that is a tiding of ill omen!”

  VOHL SET HIS SWORD back into its crook, crossed with Muddle’s freshly-notched battle-axe over the mantle in the Loving Imp’s main room. Satisfied, he turned to regard the bustle that his return to Eredynn with the Edonite refugees and their tales of woe had brought to the tavern.

  Dodso paced up and down atop a tabletop, a mug sloshing ale over its rim as he gesticulated to highlight points in his telling of the fall of Edon Village. Tavern regulars sat alongside displaced Edonites, many of whom Vohl had grudgingly agreed to billet in the upstairs rooms, enraptured with the gnome’s oratory, some of the survivors adding their own bits to the tale when Dodso indicated them.

  It was standing room only this evening and Vohl had to use his size to wrestle his way through to the bar. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a tray of drinks held high over the crammed heads by Teelee’s skinny arm as the barmaid plied her course through the human sea. One thing was for certain, Vohl thought as he slipped behind the bar, the catastrophe was good for business. He might recoup his losses yet.

  Muddle leaned over the bar, smoke from his pipe winding lazily about his misshapen head. One the other side, lounging in a stool, Jayce watched Dodso with an amused smile. A mug of ale sat at his elbow, hardly touched, moisture sweating through terracotta to leave a ring on the gouged bar. Vohl had rarely known the wizard to drink, though his appreciation of more exotic substances was no secret.

  “Why, it is only by the grace of the gods that I stand before you now, friends!” Dodso boomed, offering up his mug to deities Vohl knew the gnome disbelieved. “There were thousands of them and the good folk of Edon would have drowned in the ocean of their barbarian lust had it not been for the heroism of our hosts!” He turned and raised the mug to Vohl and Muddle.

  Cheers followed, deafening in the enclosed space, as most of the patrons turned to offer acclamation. Vohl exchanged a dubious glance with Muddle before half-smiling and giving a modest wave. More cheers erupted and some drunk tried to start up a song that was lost quickly in the barroom babble. Despite a flush warming his face, Vohl had to admit; it was good to be alive at that moment.

  As long as everyone was paying.

  “Oh, he’s good at this,” Jayce said to Vohl. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Dodso in action before.”

  Muddle snorted. Vohl ran a hand through his hair, wondering if he shouldn’t discourage the girls from feeding the gnome too many more drinks. “Yeah, I’ve heard he’s quite the terror on the floor of the Assembly.”

  “I might add,” Dodso said after quaffing half his mug, “that it was good citizens, neighbors that saved the day! The people helping themselves! Not, you will notice, our glorious legions!”

  The crowd roared, drunken cheer giving way before a hint of something uglier. Muddle put his hand to his forehead and growled, “Here we go again.”

  “Where were your taxes when Edon Village burned, my friends?” Dodso turned slowly with arms upraised. “Where were our Imperial masters?” More roaring. “I’ll tell you where: commissioning new frescos for the antechamber of the Strategos’ palace!”

  The crowd bawled its approval, some of the Edonites rising to their feet with drinks bought by others, applauding. Vohl hissed and grabbed Muddle’s arm, saying, “Anyone who refills that little vermin’s mug is fired!” He started to come around from behind the bar, set on dragging Dodso down from his stage by the beard, if he had to. He got hardly a step before the sight coming down from the upstairs rooms halted him.

  Illah stood on the steps, overlooking the main room. She wore a powder blue tunic one of the girls had found for her, cinched at the waist by her sword belt. She leaned heavily on one leg, her hand resting upon the hilt of her saber. Her hair, tied before in a stern ponytail now hung free with the glimmer of the fireplace picking out red highlights in wavy auburn tresses. Bruises marred her angular features, but did not dim the jade gleam of her eyes as she smiled faintly at Dodso’s oratory.

  “Ouch,” Vohl said.

  “Yes,” Jayce agreed in a soft voice. Appreciation showed in the Verraxian’s normally unreadable smile. “But it’s more than a pretty face, Vohl. Remember where she’s been.”

  “I suppose you did see her first,” Vohl said with hands upraised in mock surrender.

  Jayce laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “I was merely trying to spare a friend more pain.”

  “Maybe I like it rough.”

  Illah descended into the main room. Her passing drew stares that drunken revelers did not bother to disguise. She ignored them, striding towards the bar with vague menace that parted the crowd before her. Men held back hands that might otherwise brush her sides in playful invitation, seeing in her motions balance and control that wasted no energy, carried only hard purpose best left uninterrupted.

  “Good evening, my lady,” Vohl said with an exaggerated bow as she joined his little group at the bar. “If I haven’t already done so, allow me to welcome you to my place. I trust you’ve found your lodgings acceptable?”

  “If I’m not covered in flea-bites by dawn, I’ll consider myself fortunate.”

  Vohl chuckled. “Well, I assure you, I can offer you more comfortable company, if you desire?”

  Illah rolled her eyes. “I’ll take my chances with the fleas.” She nodded towards Dodso. “I wasn’t aware there would be show, as well.”

  His attention drawn back to the gnome, Vohl’s smile faded. Dodso was finishing his mug. Wiping ale spume from his whiskers, he glanced around for a refill and found Teelee and the others strateg
ically distanced from him. Undaunted, he swiped a bottle from a wobbling drunk who proceeded to crash to the floor to laughter.

  Dodso held the bottle high. “Victory!” The crowd howled, raising their own drinks. “Victory is what we had, without Imperial help,” Dodso resumed. “It makes a citizen think, does it not friends? What do we need them for?”

  “That’s it,” Vohl hissed. He sidled past Illah and tried to move into the crowd, but the press of bodies held him back. He turned and gestured furiously for Muddle to bring his bulk into play.

  “Now, I’m not calling for a New Order, here, friends,” Dodso proclaimed. “No, those words have the smack of a bureaucrat’s lies. What I am asking you to think on is a New Awakening, a New Harmony where folk work for one another, deciding their destinies together!” More cheers, though it was more enthusiasm for ale than any real thought to the gnome’s words. “Now, we’ve a lot of work before us, before that, friends. The barbarian menace will need to be dealt with. I’ll need your help for that. We’ll all need each other! But we will bring their degenerate uprising down! Together! And after that, we will march on Vennitius, himself, and demand that our words be heard!”

  Vohl struggled against the roaring, tossing mass. “Damn him...he’s really gone mad this time!” He shoved a man aside and turned to wave Muddle after, but the half-breed caught him by the arm and dragged him back. “What the—”

  Muddle pointed to the front door and Vohl’s blood ran to ice.

  Imperial Legionnaires shouldered through the door in full battledress, oiled leathers gleaming, arms through the loops of studded shields, gauntleted fists ready at sword grips. A hush went through the room as patrons rippled away from the disturbance. Dodso, taking a pull on the bottle, was the last to notice, sputtering at his stolen thunder and spinning to face the newcomers.

  The Legionnaires, six of them, shook out into a loose semicircle, hunched and ready to draw their weapons for a brawl. They waited in silence, steely eyes promising death, as a pair of men stepped through the door behind them. Kodror Aigann glared fury at the crowd, swearing at a drunk who wobbled too near his carefully ordered robes. Vennitius followed, clad in silver-chased lamellar with a crested helm cradled dramatically under an arm. He looked around the room before turning a polar stare on Dodso.