by K. J. Coble
“Speaker,” he said without inflection.
“Strategos,” Dodso replied, to his credit not batting an eye.
“Your talent for dramatics endures, I see.”
“Well...” Dodso shifted on his feet, a hint of discomfort getting through his bluster. “There is a touch of the theater to politics, wouldn’t you agree?”
The corner of Vennitius’ lip twitched upward.
“Perhaps a drink for our good lord...?” Dodso turned to gesture for one of the barmaids.
“I realize that drunken mobs are a more receptive audience for your ravings than the real business of the Assembly,” Vennitius cut Dodso off in smooth tones, “but I must ask that you limit your speeches to that august body from henceforth.”
Dodso met the Strategos’ glare. “I wasn’t aware that the goings-on of a tavern were an Imperial concern.”
“They are when I hear the kind of talk that has seeped out of this hole tonight,” Vennitius’ said in a voice gone hard.
“The people have a right to be heard,” Dodso managed after a false-start. “With the north in chaos, certainly they should be heard!”
“And they will be,” Vennitius replied sternly. “I have called for the Speakers to assemble. Some, such as your self, are already here. Others will arrive within days or will be represented by proxy. We will debate an answer to the menace that agitates everyone so. But it will be done in the Assembly, as is appropriate; not in a barroom!”
Dodso fumbled for something to say. Finally, he raised his bottle. “Well, then...the people can ask for no more.”
“No,” Vennitius replied with the chill of a viper eyeing prey, “they can’t.” He looked around the room again. “You all have my apologies for any disruption my presence has caused. But I wanted it known that the Imperial government of the Remordan Valley is neither deaf nor unaware of the crisis at hand, and it is prepared to act.” He offered Dodso a cold smiled before bowing to the crowd. “Good night to you, good citizens.” He spun and departed, his Legionnaires retreating after him, Aigann pausing to offer Dodso a satisfied smirk.
Vohl felt the cheer of the crowd flee like heat through a window opened to winter chill. Patrons downed last swigs of ale and moved for the door. A few die-hards would keep at it till the embers glimmered low in the hearth, but the heart of business for the night had just stopped beating. He ground his teeth, glaring at Dodso, who stood still atop the table, watching his audience desert with a dejected droop to his beard.
“You still want me to get him?” Muddle asked.
Dodso lifted the wine bottle to his lips and tilted his head back.
“No,” Vohl replied bitterly, “let him stew in his juices alone.”
The bottle emptied, Dodso regarded the earthenware container with glassy eyes. A strange little smile creased his face and his eyes clouded over. A moment later, he fell face-first onto the table then rolled off onto the floor with a crash.
“CURSE THAT LITTLE SNAKE!” Aigann raged at Vennitius’ back as they mounted the stairs leading into the Imperial Palace antechamber. “He’s at his seditious prattle again!”
Vennitius rubbed the back of his neck, where the headache coiled, undaunted by drink and the kneading of his hands. A servant approached and he unclasped his cloak, handing it to the man then following with his helm. He sighed as he began undoing the ties to his corslet, barely fitting now over his paunch. How I grow tired of these games.
“We had the men,” Aigann pressed. “Why did we not just arrest him?”
“And then what, Kodror?” Vennitius asked wearily.
The Procurator opened and closed his mouth like a netted fish struggling for breath.
“I didn’t think so.” Vennitius plucked his helmet back from the servant and waved it before his subordinate. “You want to wear the crest of Strategos? Don’t lie; I know you desire it.”
Aigann looked away. “I meant no disrespect...”
“Someone in my position, Kodror, must think deeper than what can be done with force.” Vennitius tossed the helm back to the servant, who barely managed to catch it without dropping the Strategos’ cloak. “By the gods, man, you’d solve a problem requiring a scalpel with a sledgehammer!”
“The gnome spreads his poison while we debate how best to coddle him,” Aigann replied bitterly. He summoned a little professional composure before asking, “What does the Strategos in his wisdom recommend?”
“Dodso ‘the likeable’ they call him,” Vennitius said with a sardonic headshake. He put his arm around Aigann’s shoulders, leading the Procurator past the servant, through a door into his reception hall. “He is popular amongst his folk. Hell, he is popular through the Valley! Arrest him and that ‘poison’ you fear so much will accumulate to a lethal dosage. We will have uprisings to make this barbarian problem look like a skirmish.”
Aigann waited in barely concealed impatience as Vennitius stripped off his leathers and cast them onto a couch. Vennitius moved to the fire and stirred its ember warmth back to life with a poker. “Dodso is a problem, yes, has always been one,” Vennitius said. “But in problems there are opportunities. We will work with the gnome, let him string out the rope, and when he thinks himself most empowered, we will hang him with it.”
Aigann frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“I know.” Vennitius smiled sadly, thinking of the crested helm his ambitious second so desired, yet should never wear. “But you will. This barbarian uprising is a problem, and one that presents opportunity, as well. When the debate comes before the Assembly, you will see how Dodso and the barbarians will help each other to solve our problems.”
Chapter Nine
Light at the End of the Tunnel
Noon brought a change of the guard to the cave entrance. The head of the morning watch immediately launched into a tirade with his successor, complaining in his kind’s harsh, curse-laced gutturals about the tardiness of the relief.
The wave of dwarves erupting from the rocks below and either flank caught both goblins dumbfounded.
Sarcha lingered to the rear of the attack with some of the expedition’s walking wounded. She watched with an eye out for surprises, but none came. Clegg and his warriors closed in a steel circle about the goblin party, butchering them in a whirlwind of axe and hammer strokes that could barely be called a fight. Dying shrieks drew more of the little brutes into the sunlight to perish, spattering the rocks and dust in their black ichor. A scattering of survivors fell back into the gloom with the dwarves roaring after them.
The dwarf at Sarcha’s side, a younger, fiery-bearded youth whose arm an earlier ambush had left in a sling, waved for her to follow and they bounded uphill. Reaching the cave entrance, he unslung his war hammer and stepped among the goblin fallen, pausing beside a mortally wounded creature to pulverize its skull with a one-handed swing.
Other members of the reserve, all with minor injuries that kept them from the main assault, checked amongst the dead and dying, delivering blows and thrusts that were more caution than mercy. They fanned out and set a new guard, vigilant of the surrounding crags.
Screams and the crash of steel echoed from within the cave. Sarcha glanced at her escort, who turned to one of his comrades and said, “Dorin, you have the watch! The lady is with me.” The other dwarf nodded and Sarcha’s companion gestured for her to follow him.
Blackness that seemed a living presence enveloped them as they descended. The red-bearded dwarf paused to pick up a guttering torch from the claws of a goblin corpse. He handed it to Sarcha then proceeded without explanation.
She followed, eyeing the surrounding tunnels, careful not to look too closely at dark forms sprawled in black splashes about her feet. Her heart hammered with terror that should have been debilitating; she was no soldier and this whole business of fighting set the civilized part of her to nausea. But the nearness of her goal, the thrum of ancient power she sensed reverberating in these walls, compelled her onward.
The sounds of figh
ting echoed strangely in the confined space, sounding both near and far. Sarcha thought she made out Clegg’s bellow between squalls of metal on metal. Another clump of dead materialized at the edge of her torch’s illumination. A stockier form lay amongst the red-black tangle, a blood-splashed beard and dead staring eyes glimmering in the torchlight. Sarcha’s escort slowed with a soft curse and knelt at the slain dwarf’s side.
Hoarse breaths puffed in the dark ahead. Sarcha and her companion tensed. Dragging footsteps carried a figure forth into the light that became a wounded dwarf.
“Tadal!” Sarcha’s escort cried and ran to his comrade’s side. He eased the bloodied dwarf to the floor and checked over him, but the older warrior waved his ministrations away, wheezing, “We punched through them but...there were side passages...goblin parties filtering through...”
Screams of rage tore the dark. Pairs of yellowy embers flashed up the tunnel. An instant later, five goblins burst into the feeble circle of Sarcha’s torchlight. The wounded dwarf, Tadal, burst to his feet to plant the curve of his axe in the nearest attacker’s gut. Others flowed past him, trampling one another in the tight space to get at Sarcha.
Her escort parried a tulwar thrust with his hammer and reversed the swing, smashing out goblin fangs with the head of his weapon. Another goblin lunged for his side with a spear. To Sarcha’s astonishment, the dwarf turned his back to the assault. His shield, strapped still over his shoulders, deflected the spear point, snapping the shaft of the weapon behind it. He whirled back to face the goblin, swinging low. His hammer hooked under a leg and flipped the goblin to the floor to receive a killing blow.
Tadal bawled in pain and defiance as a goblin spear slipped under his guard and pierced the chain mail over his belly. He gripped the shaft and turned, dragging its wielder with it into the path of another attacker. Sarcha’s escort rushed to his comrade’s side, felling the re-directed goblin with a wet scrutch to the creature’s throat then turning on the spear carrier, pummeling the goblin into the ground with a storm of hammer-blows. Tadal sagged to the floor, breathing in short gasps.
“Vors...”
Sarcha’s escort rushed to the fallen dwarf’s side. He dropped his hammer and tried to pry the spear loose, but this only set Tadal to groaning and pushing the younger dwarf back. Sarcha hovered close, allowing her light to shine over the pair. Blood pooled about Tadal’s legs and color drained from his whiskered face.
“Hold on, you old brute,” Sarcha’s escort—Vors, she finally knew—whispered.
“No, no...” Tadal breathed with a weak smile. “Go on, lad.”
A shape materialized in the tunnel ahead and Sarcha jumped with a gasp. Vors lunged for his hammer but relaxed before he rose. The newcomer was Clegg Greatclug, his beard streaked with black gore.
“The fight is done,” he said hollowly. He regarded the pair of dwarves a moment before waving Sarcha to join him.
“Shouldn’t we help?” she asked Clegg as he led her away.
“There is nothing left to do,” he replied, glancing once over his shoulder. Sarcha did the same and saw Vors weeping silently at Tadal’s side, the other dwarf’s head lolling forward as the departing torchlight left them in dark. “There is something you should see,” Clegg said.
The tunnel wound ahead of them. Cracked outlines of columns protruded from the walls and they had to step around occasional shards of masonry protruding from the floor. Small groups of dwarves, some with wounded, made way for them, bowing to their foreman, flashes of dull anger lighting their eyes as he passed and they beheld Sarcha. Voices echoed ahead and the passage seemed to widen.
Sarcha and Clegg stepped out into an open chamber, wide and tall enough that her torch could not illuminate the highest reaches where shadows gathered in stubborn clots. Dwarves looked up from piles of slain goblins at their arrival. A fire sputtered in the middle of the room, choking the air with sooty stink. Judging by the mound of goblin dead ringing the flames, it appeared to be where the last stalwarts had made their stand.
Sarcha rotated on one foot, holding the torch out to light her way. Splintered columns rose into the gloom, adorned with leering gargoyle faces that mocked the intruders to this still, dusty place. Carved stonework made up the floor, what had obviously at one time been some sort of square.
Buckled rock bulged in between the columns from all sides, save directly opposite the cave through which they had come. There a rectangular doorway twice as high as a man beckoned. A pair of columns flanked it, fashioned into figures. As Sarcha stepped close, she saw they were in the likenesses of a man and women, in regal, hooded cloaks, clasped near the throat by tiny skull brooches like the one in Sarcha’s pack. Swallowing, she glanced at Clegg to see if any recognition flared in his eyes.
“What are they?” he asked, apparently unknowing.
Sarcha hid a sigh of relief by turning back to regard them. The stone pair held their hands before their chests in attitudes of prayer. Folded batwings sprouting at their shoulders belied any such piety, though, as did the strange twist to smirking lips. The woman’s eyes were closed but the man’s were not, one socket a crumbled emptiness but the other set with a gemstone that seemed to wink at her in the torchlight.
“The Tyrants,” Sarcha answered Clegg, kneeling at the foot of the male effigy. She blew an inch of dust away from writings scrawled about the base of the column. Most were worn to illegibility, but enough remained to set her heart to racing.
We’re already so close...closer than I’d ever hoped! This is what remains of the High Vuls’ administrative buildings, buried along with the rest of the city when the Seven Cataclysms came and swallowed Vul Aronath! The sepulcher of the Born God cannot be too far!
“The Tyrants...” Clegg repeated in awe. Behind him, the dwarves stood still as they beheld the goal at the end of so much suffering. “So, it has not been in vain,” Clegg whispered prayerfully.
“Did I not tell you?” Sarcha said, unwilling to hide the triumph in her voice.
Clegg drifted to the foot of the column and put out a hand. Sarcha grabbed him before he touched the carving. “Don’t!” She turned to the others. “Everything else we find is fair game, but do not disturb any of the likenesses of the Tyrants you come across such as these, no matter how tempting. I do not know what sorceries still wreath them.”
“It shall be as you say,” Clegg replied, loud enough that it was an order to the others. He nodded towards the doorway. “What is through there?”
Sarcha angled her torch before into the passage. Caved-in slabs of masonry greeted her. She smiled at Clegg. “This is where we start digging.”
FLAMES DEVOURED THE huts of a tiny hunters’ hamlet in the center of a wood-ringed glade. Skinner Elders argued over a pitiful pile of spoils gathered at the heart of the sacked settlement. A low hill rose above the flames, crowned with a circle of ivory stones carved into depictions of woodland animals, the tallest stone chiseled into the likeness of an elderly woman—the Green Mother, Habbah, who the nature-sensitive hunters had apparently revered. Skinner warriors wandered among the stones. One paused to urinate on the Green Mother’s likeness.
Lonadiel frowned, a distant part of him that was still Yntuil repulsed by the desecration.
Ango Morug emerged from a haze of smoke, as if summoned by the carnage. His face wrinkled in concern as he glanced about.
“What?” Lonadiel asked as the wizard joined him.
“Another settlement torched without a fight,” the Verraxian replied. “The Skinners’ vanguard met an ambush at the creek north of here.” He shrugged. “I suppose I expected them to defend their homes.”
“This isn’t like Edon Village, where we had them cornered,” Lonadiel said. “The ambush was probably to buy their kin time to get clear. There’s no sense in dying to a man for no gain.”
“Cowards,” Morug said and spat on soot-stained grass.
Lonadiel ground his teeth to hide a surge of fierce hatred for the sorcerer. Mustering control, he said
, “It isn’t cowardice to avoid suicide. Most of these folk are transient, anyway, and took their most valuable possessions with them on their persons. They had no stake in holding this place.”
Morug snorted. “You admire them.”
“I admire intelligence,” Lonadiel replied. “And it’s good tactics, as well. These ambushes have bled away warriors and slowed the march. We will face a much stiffer fight when we clear these woods and hit the lakeside settlements.”
“Still, our ‘allies’ are in high spirits,” Morug mused, nodding towards the Skinners.
Lonadiel offered him a grim smile. “This is as far south as anyone of them have ever been. Even their grandfathers never achieved so deep a penetration. And it’s been relatively easy, so far.” Though Lonadiel figured the dead at Edon Village would probably disagree.
“But it won’t be easy, much longer,” Morug said.
“No, it won’t.” Lonadiel knelt and set an oblong stone near his toe. “If this is Lake Remordan, then we will come out the forests here—” he pointed at what he reckoned to be the north end of the lake “—near the mouth of the Talos. It’s cleared land south of that, good for a battle. The militias are likely to have been mustered by the time we’re out in the open, maybe even the Legion, or part of it. That’ll be the point of no return.”
“The strength of the Valley will be concentrated on us,” Morug said thoughtfully. “If we crush them there, the rest of the region will be left thinly-defended.”
“Possibly,” Lonadiel said with a shrug, “though a wise commander would leave reserves that could still be mustered for another fight. No matter what happens, even with all the Skinners behind us, we’re still outnumbered. We’re relying on speed and surprise, much of which has already drained away, to catch the Valley folk off-balance and tear them up piecemeal. Once they are concentrated, we are doomed.”
