Blood in the Valley Read online

  The River Imp plowed into the confusion. Many of the civilian ships were crowded to the gunwales with what appeared to be citizens of Eredynn intent on evacuation. The faster or larger ones struggled clear of the goblinoid swarm, clawing northward, but those that couldn’t became fat, easy prey. Vohl had to look away, couldn’t let him self linger too long on the sight of goblins swarming onto decks with tulwars flashing, trailing splashes of bright red while voices rose to butchered-animal squeals.

  “The fools,” Muddle said hollowly. “They should have stayed within the walls. What were they thinking?”

  Goblin craft closed about the Imp, the monsters waving weapons and bawling taunts. A skiff threw itself across the ship’s path. Wood crackled as the bow slammed the makeshift vessel to starboard, sent it into a wild spin. A goblin flailed and got a grip one of the oars, was lifted free of the water as the oarsmen strained to keep up their strokes. Taul Rising-Gale, struggling to keep his massive bulk upright on the swaying deck, sighted his bow and loosed. The goblin shrieked and fell from the oar. The skiff loaded with its comrades fell behind, jeering.

  “We’ve got to get through,” Dodso growled through clenched teeth.

  “We will,” Vohl replied. He looked over his shoulder. The Expeditionary fleet crashed into the goblinoid opportunists behind them, their heavier hulls, filled with armed men desperate to reach their homes, punching through the pitiful craft. The deep green of the lake streaked black with goblinoid death.

  Ahead, the harbor of Eredynn smoldered as goblin craft came ashore and disgorged their howling compliments to pillage. But men aided by the armored detachments of the Legion rushed down to meet them, massacring the beasts in the surf. The few goblins that got through were cut down in the narrow streets that funneled any route of attack from the harbor into easily-defended bottlenecks.

  “Chaos!” Dodso shouted over the din. “What the hells has happened here? Where is Vennitius in all of this? I must see him!”

  “You’ll get your chance,” Vohl said.

  The Imp drew near one of the intact piers. Goblins had established a foothold there and were scrambling down its length. Vohl clenched his sword close, confusion fading behind a crimson-hued tide of rage. He turned aft and saw the ship’s compliment that wasn’t working the oars armed and watching him for orders. Behind them, the centaurs pawed the deck, hooves gouging the planks as they struggled to keep their balance. My own little army, Vohl thought bemusedly. He held up the sword.

  “Last one to the Loving Imp buys for the rest!”

  The bow of the River Imp groaned against the supports of the pier. Vohl and his crew boiled over the gunwales with a roar.

  LONADIEL WATCHED FLAMES ring Eredynn.

  There had been only token resistance as the lead elements of the horde neared the city, a scattering of Legion outriders and militia peppering the goblinoids with short bow arrows in brief clashes. As the horde spilled over the band of low knolls southeast of the city, the riders withdrew into the city gates. There was no resistance at all as goblins reached the shanty town outside the walls and their torches feasted upon the abandoned hovels, sending fire snarling higher than Eredynn’s battlements.

  The appearance of the Expeditionary Force ships in the harbor, just as the goblins were filling it with their makeshift fleet, had been an unexpected and unpleasant surprise.

  Satayebeb appeared at Lonadiel’s side, eyeing the chaos out on the water. “I had hoped for more,” she said with a sigh.

  “The harbor is narrow and partially-shielded by the breakwaters,” Lonadiel replied with a shrug. “It would have made for a difficult landing, even had the Expedition not returned.”

  “We will have to force the walls, then,” Satayebeb said. Her gaze wandered and Lonadiel followed it to the spires of the Imperial Palace and the surrounding domes and bell towers dedicated to the worship of several of the humans’ pantheon of deities.

  “Will we have the aid of your powers in that task?” Lonadiel asked.

  Satayebeb shook her head. “No, it will not be as it was at Candolum, where it was only doddering, old Reniburn. Here the presence of the Elder Ones, who the humans foolishly mistake for gods, holds particular thrall.” She touched Lonadiel’s arm, sent through him the currents of heat that no longer brought fear. “We must do this the old-fashioned way.”

  Lonadiel nodded, had already sensed the answer, but had hoped, nonetheless.

  The horde came on, spilling like a great, sloppy beast across the plains to the northwest of Eredynn and completing a massive semi-circle that left the city hemmed in with its back to the lake. With dusk coming, the glimmer of the burning shanties cast the city walls in strange cavorting shadows. Amongst the blazes, goblins wheeling and danced, hurling torches uselessly and taunts even more so. Defenders watched from the battlements, sullen and silent as firelight glinted off their armor.

  Satayebeb put a hand to the bridge of her nose and pinched. The lines of effort and fatigue Lonadiel had noted on her features in Candolum, near the Shrine of Saint Reniburn, returned. Alarmed, he put his hand on her shoulder. “Mistress?”

  She batted him away, eyes momentary stoked to hellfire. “Don’t,” she rasped. “You must not. None must see or get any hint.”

  Lonadiel rubbed his rebuked hand. “You have my apologies, Mistress.” He stepped close, letting his voice drop. “Is it the presence, as you said, of the Elder Ones?”

  “Zaiden...Habbah...” Her face pinched into disgust as she murmured the names. “Yes, it’s them. But more, it is the will needed to hold all of this—” she gestured widely across the horde “—together. Once I commanded armies of Vuls, made as much of machine as of magic, things lost in this benighted era! Now, fate leaves me these vermin, venal creatures we would not have allowed to clean the bed pans of our servants!”

  Knowing now not to disturb her in one of her moods, Lonadiel waited in silence. He noticed Groon Blood-drinker approaching with Foulstench and some of the brighter goblin chieftains. They fell to their knees and awaited Satayebeb’s pleasure.

  “What is it?” Lonadiel asked.

  Blood-drinker looked up, casting a glance at Satayebeb before grudgingly meeting his gaze. “My Blood-drinkers and most of the larger goblin tribes have come up. The giants will be with us by midnight. The rest are still strung out along the road.”

  “How shocking,” Satayebeb muttered and the warlord flinched at the sneering tone. She’d not openly savaged him for his failure to find Illah’s wizard companion, but all sensed her displeausure, her favor for the hobgoblin chieftain souring.

  “I fear they will not fully arrive before dawn tomorrow,” Blood-drinker said hesitantly.

  “The army’s delay has cost us,” Satyebeb hissed. She pointed at the harbor. “A half a day quicker and those newly-arrived ships might have arrived to find the city in flames.”

  Blood-drinker cowered, putting his forehead to the dirt. “If the Mistress is displeased, I...I offer myself as responsible.”

  Lonadiel noted the glitter of cyan energies about his mistress’ fingers and looked away, expecting a bone-charring blast. When it didn’t come, he forced himself to gaze again upon the shivering warlord, knowing how easily it could be him, pleading at the boots of the demon-goddess.

  Satayebeb snorted and the glow faded from her hands. “Leave me, fools, and prepare to attack.”

  “What of the oth—”

  “You defy me?” Satayebeb shrieked at Blood-drinker.

  The hobgoblin warlord yelped and buried his head under crossed arms, blubbering, “No, of course not, Most Unholy Mistress!”

  “Then do as I say! We will not wait for the others! We will attack!” She bared her teeth as her hell-shot eyes rose to take in Eredynn. “I have terms to deliver to these cowards. Now, go!”

  Lonadiel watched the goblinoids scamper away. Satayebeb turned to him, rubbing her temples. “You see how it is? They teeter on the brink of reverting to their old ways. How I must work to keep them
together!”

  “What can I do, Mistress?” Lonadiel asked.

  “Nothing for now.” She blew out a long breath. Suddenly a smile split her features, chased back the grim mask of weariness and fury. “You’ve not spoken of my gift to you. Are you not happy?”

  Lonadiel managed a smile, though his guts knotted. “I...have not had time for her.”

  “You lie,” Satayebeb said slyly. She clucked in disapproval. “Still she holds that hint of power over you.”

  “No,” Lonadiel replied, forcing conviction into his voice that he tried to believe. “It’s not that. It is...making her understand that worries me.”

  Satayebeb sighed. “She will not come around, I told you.” Before he could offer up a protest, she hurried to add, “But that is why I gave her to you. She still has that to teach you.” She caressed his back. “Go to her, then. Enjoy her. Learn.”

  Lonadiel fought for something more to say but found nothing, only the mocking look on his mistress’ face. He turned and headed over the rise of the knoll, towards the wagon train where Illah waited, imprisoned, helpless, his.

  Satayebeb’s chilly cackle followed him down the reverse slope.

  JAYCE SURFACED FROM an icy dark and flailed. For an instant, he imagined himself back in the currents of the Aleil, being carried downstream, barely strong enough to keep his head above water. He might have shouted. But then he opened his eyes and his vision steadied upon the dusk-painted canopy of the forest on western side of the river.

  He gave himself a shake and sat up, was instantly sorry as his head swam. He slumped back against the tree under which he’d sprawled for—hours? Slow, deep breaths brought the world back into focus and he noted the deepening gloom of the woods, knew he had been in and out of consciousness, gathering his strength for the better part of a day.

  A day...

  With alarm pumping chilly currents through his body, he tried to sit up again. Memory came back to him fragments, visions of the previous night interposed like hellish shards adrift in a pool of fatigue. He saw the undead seeking him, the hobgoblins hunting, his flight into the river, and then an endless, desperate struggle against shock, pain, and drowning. He only vaguely recalled dragging his battered form onto the western banks. The slow, agonizing process of pulling himself to this refuge, in a narrow gulley under the massive oak seemed like it had happened to someone else.

  Jayce tried for a trance, but pain frustrated his efforts. He reached with his left hand around his right shoulder and felt for the wound there, where the hobgoblin arrow had glanced but thankfully not lodged. His fingertips came back dotted with bright red and the tear in his tunic was crusted to the still-weeping cut. Fever left sweat beading across his skin, dampening his clothes to him. Shivering, he wondered if the arrowhead had been poisoned, as the hobgoblins were rumored to do, or if it were simply infection.

  Illah...

  Grimacing, Jayce pulled his legs together, crossing them as he slowed his breathing and tried to enter a meditative state again. In Zerrax, Acolytes of the Sun were drilled while naked, exposed to the elements, flies buzzing about them, picking their flesh, and after days of fasting. The young men of the Order used to growl under their breaths that their masters were sadists, taking pleasure in their agonies.

  Experience had shown Jayce that their cruelties had had a purpose, however. Finally achieving a shallow trance, part of him sent prayers of thanks out into the cosmos where those hard-faced souls might sense them.

  Illah, hear me.

  Nothing. The cosmos rippled with some distant disturbance, but lay relatively navigable compared to the storms of before. The spark of Illah’s presence simply could not be found. Either she had lost the stone, or she was no longer alive to sense his call.

  Jayce’s trance nearly faltered at the thought. That she had come to mean so much to him hit like a fist to the solar plexus. He gave himself an inward shake, could not linger on the sudden, yawning emptiness. There was too much at stake. And besides...he could still hope.

  A guttural voice, very much in the here and now, intruded upon the trance and Jayce let it drop, his skin tingling as he pulled himself in deeper under the tree. More voices joined the first in the woods around him, followed by harsh laughter. Part of Jayce rejoiced that it was the living, at least, that hounded him now. The rest of him concentrated, drawing what strength remained to him as he whispered words of invisibility.

  Deadfall crackled and undergrowth hissed as the newcomers approached from the river bank a hundred yards away. Feet scuffed the dirt above and behind him. He heard shallow, excited breathing. A nasal voice jabbered something. Sinews crackled, accompanied by a grunt of exertion, and a goblin leapt from the web of roots spread over Jayce’s head to land in the gulley scant feet away.

  I am not here, Jayce silently intoned. I am air. Energies tickled under his skin and the throb of his shoulder worsened as the endurance to resist flagged before his spell-casting efforts. I am nothing.

  The goblin glanced about, jabbing the dirt with the point of its tulwar in boredom. It turned, jaundiced eyes coming to rest on Jayce and seeing...nothing.

  Another voice called and the brute answered in a sputter of terse phrases. A pair of goblins emerged from the foliage above the gulley opposite Jayce, carrying shortbows casually knocked. They exchanged a few more words, some sort of taunt that brought a snarl from their compatriot in the gulley. The stink of them, rotten gums, body waste, half-digested wine and foul meat, burnt Jayce’s nostrils, set his eyes to watering. The goblin in the gulley waved his tulwar and the three moved on to the west.

  Jayce didn’t relax. The goblinoid stench hung about him still and the woods whispered with the movement of many more passersby. More, a new odor wafted up the gulley from the river and heavy footfalls thudded. Jayce held his breath as a hulking shadow fell over him.

  A hunchbacked horror stomped up the gulley to pause near Jayce. A flaking hide the color of rot and the consistency of bark made the troll look like a cross between a tree and a corpse. Its long, hooked nose wrinkled as the monster sniffed the air and its narrow, pointed jaw work as fangs clamped in anticipation. Its head turned slowly, tiny yellow-red eyes flickering out from deep, skull-like sockets. The glimmer of that gaze brightened as its nostrils flared again. A tendril of drool slopped from lips curved into something like a smile.

  I am not here...

  The troll stooped low, four-digeted fingers pawing the earth near Jayce’s knee. He didn’t move. Movement would give him away more than letting the thing touch him. He fought to hold his breath, his vision beginning to flicker as lungs starved. His heart pummeled the inside of his ribcage. Terrified, he wondered if the beast would hear.

  A goblin came up behind the troll and kicked it in the behind. The creature whirled and roared into the goblin’s face. The goblin hollered back and slapped the troll’s thigh with the flat of its sword then gestured with the weapon westward. The meaning was clear, but the troll resisted, rumbling something. More goblins appeared above, chattering at the monstrous pair, clearly annoyed at the holdup. Battered by the annoyance of its apparent betters, the troll snorted and stomped onward, the goblins jeering in its wake.

  Jayce let his breath leave in a low sigh. The wobble of his vision and accompanying nausea cleared. He let the invisibility spell slip and nearly sagged at the drain of conducting the magical energies.

  The voices and tromping faded into the distance. But Jayce could hear others all around. He calculated that they had brought whatever watercraft they had to the banks nearby in their search of the area. Their haphazard methods suggested a lack of enthusiasm for the task. In their simple minds, seeking the probably-dead wizard would be a fool’s errand and they were missing out on whatever depredations their kin were now enjoying to the north.

  Jayce struggled to his feet and crept down the gulley, eastwards, towards the river. If I could appropriate one of their boats... He came around a bend and flinched back behind a tree. No help that
way. They had left guards at their vessels and more were paddling towards the bank, bringing dozens of goblins to widen the search.

  Hopelessness slammed down on Jayce. No way out. He dragged himself back to his original spot and slid down in the shade of the tree again. It was a trap. No way out...no...no, Jayce, you’ve got to think. There’s no way to fight them yourself. You’re too weak and there’s too many. But...but if you had some kind of help...

  Jayce crossed his legs again, fought to remain in control. Panic tightened in his stomach, burrowed its way up into his chest. He drove it back down, thinking furiously. He remembering teaching Danelle, back at his tower, of summoning things from the Beyond, an exercise in power at the time, but a lesson for him, too. He was too weak to manage the strain of holding even a minor power of the Void in thrall—but something more mundane?

  He smiled, having some kind of task he could accomplish chase back some of panic’s jibbering voice. There had been beasts of the wood and mountain that had plagued the Valley’s earliest settlers, continued to menace the folk even now, though hunting and vigilance had thinned them nearly to extinction. The people of Edon Village had put aside their disdain for him to seek his aid in chasing such creatures away when they began preying upon their livestock.

  Winged beasts of an ancient and alien lineage.

  Jayce reentered his trance, a hand rising seemingly of its own volition to pluck up a twig and begin to draw a reptilian shape in the dirt.

  The jabber and commotion of goblins closed in around him.

  A HOBGOBLIN REACHED through the bars of the prison-cart, improvised from wrought iron wreckage from Candolum, and jabbed at Illah’s foot with a bone. Illah retracted her leg and curled into the corner of the cage furthest from her tormentor. Two more hobgoblins circled to the cart’s far side, hemming her in, cackling and drawing knives. With one foot chained to the bars and her wrists bound, she had little freedom to avoid them.