Blood in the Valley Read online

  Vohl stiffened, spilling part of the ale on his thigh. The light glimmered from under the flap of his knapsack. Pack’s on fire! With a curse and a splash of dropped mug, he lunged for his belongings, crashing into Muddle, who had leapt up at the same thought. Thrusting his way through the tangle of his partner’s limbs and protests, Vohl scrambled to the pack and began beating its leather sides. The glow intensified and he picked the knapsack up, gave it a shake.

  “Idiot, you’re going to make it worse,” Muddle snarled, reached out a hand to seize the pack from Vohl.

  The candlestick from Jayce dropped free, the dazzle of its cyan flame driving a startled cry from both of them. They exchanged a glance and Vohl hesitantly reached for the candle, then froze as otherworldly light swelled from the strange azure wax marked with wizard’s runes.

  The flame took on the likeness of a miniature Jayce Zerron.

  “Vohl?” the flame-figure asked.

  Muddle, poised at Vohl’s shoulder, sighed and murmured, “Wizards...”

  “Jayce?” Vohl asked, uncertain in his drunkenness if he wasn’t going mad.

  “Thank the gods you’re there!” Jayce’s voice crackled like embers. “I was afraid I wouldn’t get through.”

  “I...uh...” Vohl glanced at Muddle, who’d sat up and was draining his ale. “What can I do for you, Jayce?”

  “Is Dodso there?”

  “No, he...ah...well, we’re sort of shirking duty right now.”

  “You need to find him and tell him word-for-word what it is I’m about to tell you.”

  Vohl frowned, felt the warm, heavy happiness in his gut turn sour. “What’s wrong?”

  Jayce told them of Eredynn, Candolum, and goblins. By the time the wizard’s image was finished with its tale, Vohl’s drunkenness had transformed into nausea and the ringing headache of an instant hangover. At his side, Muddle was a shadowy statue, split with cracks of barely suppressed fury.

  “Gods and Spirits, Jayce,” Vohl breathed. “How did this all happen so quickly?”

  “I don’t know,” the image replied. “Illah and I both feel that this has something to do with the barbarian uprising.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense, Jayce.”

  “Nevertheless, it is what we feel.” It may have been the strange medium through which they communicated, but the vision of Jayce seemed haggard. “I have to go now. I don’t know how much time this link allows us.” Vohl noticed absently that the candle wax had already melted two thirds of the way down its length. “You must talk to Dodso. The Expeditionary Force must return.”

  “We’ll do our best,” Vohl said. He frowned, thinking of what else Jayce had told him, about his plans. “You really think is wise to venture forth, go south, towards the disturbance? You could wait for us at Eredynn.”

  “That may be too late,” Jayce replied, his image shaking its head.

  “Too late for what?”

  “That’s what we have to find out.”

  Vohl snorted in exasperation. “You’re crazy.” Something cold coiled in his gut. He couldn’t shake the sudden premonition that he’d never see the wizard again. Or Illah. The thought drew a hoarse note into his voice. “Well...be careful. And good luck.”

  “And to you,” the image replied. The cyan flame fluttered and went dead.

  Muddle turned back to the keg, poured himself another ale and drained the mug in one drag. Wiping foam from his lips, he asked, “We’re going to meet Dodso then?”

  Vohl nodded and gestured at the keg. “We’d better bring that with us; I have a feeling he’s going to need a drink.”

  Chapter Five

  Darkness Ascendant

  The Valley Legion had camped that night just north of Maelvynn’s Down, where the land dipped low to the Aleil, the river sometimes swelling up over its banks to flood the highway in the spring. The red band of dawn had brought bugle calls to rousing the men with a chatter of groans, roused animals, and clattering armor. Like a laborer long-accustomed to early mornings on the job, the Legion shuffled to its feet and resumed its plodding southward.

  Vennitius took his place, mounted with Paelito at the head of the column, sagging slightly in the saddle, his head roaring with the previous evening’s revelry. In this state the morning took on a sluggish quality about him, fog blanketing the ground at knee-height, bunching down at the river’s banks, the air wet, heavy, and brown in the nostrils. Moisture speckled his armor, left the skin slimy under his clothes and clammy where exposed. He took a deep breath to settle the jostling of his vision and the churn of his gut.

  “The Down is ahead,” rasped Paelito, who’d had his share of wine around the campfire. “Scouts report the river is swollen and the ground soggy, but passable.”

  “Little blessings,” Vennitius growled in return.

  Dawn brightened the countryside into grays, browns, and speckles of gold where the sun’s new rays painted treetops and the hills on their left, to the east. The mists shrunk from the light in grudging tendrils, retreating before the Legion to the dark of the surrounding woods or clotting about the river. The disembodied quality of sound crystallized, became the metallic music of an army on the move.

  “Did your scouts report sign of goblinoid movement?” Vennitius asked, feeling a little of the old fire crackle in his chest. They’d be in sight of Candolum by early afternoon. This would be a day to remember; he was certain.

  “Just the smoke from yesterday afternoon, Strategos,” Paelito replied.

  “They must be hard-pressed in Candolum.”

  “Yes,” Paelito said with a hint of unease. “I must confess, I had hoped for some word or sign from them.”

  Vennitius glanced at the Praetor, noted the other man’s tension-pinched features in the newborn light. “You worry too much, old friend,” he replied, suddenly not as certain of his words as he had been moments before. “The walls of Candolum would not be easily breached.”

  “Of course, Strategos.”

  The ground dipped ahead, the highway swinging low into the Down. The mists clung here with tenacity, purling amongst the glitter of pools of standing water. The Legion slogged into the muck-ridden bowl. The air grew heavy again about them, pressing in on men weary and uncomfortable, slackening speech to hoarse grunts from file-closers and officers. Even the rising sun seemed to have not yet conquered this place of holdout dark.

  Muffled hoof beats sounded ahead, coupled with the splash of fetid water and mud. Terse shouts of challenge sounded from the outriders. Voices relaxed in recognition and harsh chuckles echoed, some brittle humor passing amongst nervous riders. The hoof beats renewed and a pair of horsemen emerged from the soupy fog ahead.

  Paelito held up a hand to signal one of the Cavalry Cohort’s buglers. The call to halt sounded with a damp sputter that was answered several times in half-hearted succession along the Legion’s column. Vennitius reined in his mount, noting with annoyance the unconscious tremor of his hands. The riders approached, saluting as they brought their own steeds to a stop.

  “What word?” Paelito called.

  “It’s strange, Praetor,” the leader of the pair replied. “The road to the south remains open and quiet. We hadn’t reached Candolum yet—couldn’t see a cursed thing with this mist—when the Decurion ordered us to double-back and bring you tidings to approach with caution.”

  “Then the goblin-scum are still tied-up around Candolum?” Vennitius asked.

  “It appears so.” The riders exchanged a hesitant glance.

  “What?” Unease and discomfort hardened Vennitius’ tone into one of ragged impatience. “What more is there? Speak, men!”

  “It was...even stranger, Strategos,” the leader said. “On our way back we happened upon a girl, alone on the road. She...she wasn’t there when we passed south. We couldn’t have missed her, sir. And...” His throat bobbed with obvious unwillingness to go on.

  “What, you fool?”

  “Sir, she asked for you personally, said she had words for
you.”

  Hair stood in waves across Vennitius’ shoulders. The sourness of his wine-ridden stomach solidified into a chilly lump of fear. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. “Did she say who she was?”

  “No, sir.”

  Vennitius looked at Paelito, whose features showed starkly pale under the mud-spattered gray of his iron helm. The Praetor glared at the riders. “You said no sign of hostiles?”

  “None, Praetor.”

  Paelito looked at Vennitius. “I can’t say that I like it.”

  “What’s to like?” Vennitius growled. He glanced over his shoulder at the cavalrymen waiting behind them, some of their eyes on the conversation, whispers carrying its meaning along the column. They watched him, watched for his lead. He gave himself another shake, cast off the unease with an annoyed snort. “It’s one girl. If she’s asking for me, let’s go see what she wants.”

  “Very good, Strategos,” Paelito said, his tone not quite convincing.

  “The first five files of the cavalry with us,” Vennitius ordered. “The rest remain behind, sending details to water their horses. The infantry is to stand at rest but remain ready to resume the march.” He touched his boots his mount’s flanks, edging the horse forward. “This won’t take long.”

  Vennitius and his entourage cantered forward into the mists, the scouts falling in to the flanks, one of them uncasing a shortbow and knocking an arrow. They followed the highway as it rose from the Down, up out of the mists into the hard light and crisp, angling shadows of early morning. The air smelled better here, wet grass and hints of early flowers replacing the weighty drudge.

  A figure waited ahead, a womanly silhouette in glimmers of fine black robes. A lazy breeze caught her hair and shook it out into a billowing mane of gold. Something familiar about—Vennitius’ breath lodged in his throat. It can’t be!

  “Greetings, Satu Vennitius.”

  “Sarcha!” Vennitius wheezed, as if kicked in the gut. “What are you—we had no word of your expedition!”

  Shock gave way to unease, an electric prickle of alarm across the flesh. Sarcha Urkaimat, bored Thyrrian aristocrat, had come north to Remordan on a sort of treasure hunt, seeking things that should likely remain buried. He’d let her go with half-hearted encouragement, assumed she’d get lost, or even more bored. But what she’d sought came back to him in a rush—as did the realization it all seemed to have coincided with the torrent of calamities in the Valley.

  Swallowing down a suddenly ashy throat, he asked, “Are you all right?”

  “Oh, I’m fine,” she replied, her lips curving into a cruel smile. “The girl you knew has found a new life in me.”

  “What is this?” Paelito began to ask.

  “What are you doing here, my lady?” Vennitius asked, fighting against an invisible fist that seemed to knot about his windpipe. “This is no place for you!”

  “This is precisely the place for me.” Sarcha—the thing that appeared to be Sarcha—met Vennitius’ gaze with a glare that seemed to blaze with twin pinpricks of hellfire. He could not look away, felt that grip on his throat tighten further. “Are you afraid, Strategos?”

  Vennitius battled with himself to deny it, shivered as icy sweat beaded across his face. The words came as if ripped from his mind. “Yes, I am afraid.”

  Sarcha nodded, the harsh grin widened to reveal teeth bared with hate from beyond the mortal world. “That is good,” she said, “because you are about to die.”

  The air hissed. The scout rider to Vennitius’ left dropped from the saddle with arrows quivering in his chest. Cries of shock and pain burst from behind Vennitius. He turned, saw cavalrymen flailing in their saddles as projectiles clanged against armor. Barked orders brought swords flashing from sheaths. A horse went down with a cackle of bone, squealing as it rolled over its rider in agony.

  Bow-legged, green-black shapes boiled from the wild grasses around the entourage, some pausing to loose more arrows, others coming on at a howling sprint with crude weapons raised. Hundreds erupted from the forest to the left or surged from the band of trees and undergrowth along the river, converging on Vennitius’ band. The hills ululated with thousands of goblinoid throats and the mournful chorus of their horns.

  “Back—” Paelito’s scream cut out with a gurgle as an arrow punched through his windpipe. Both hands fumbled about the bloody shaft, his eyes going enormous with shock and unrealized pain. A goblin dodged the sword stroke of one of the escorts and got under Paelito’s mount, gripped a boot and dragged the man under. Tulwar bit leather and meat with a sickening, wet crunch.

  An arrow glanced off Vennitius’ chest but didn’t pierce the corslet. The tingling pain of an already-forming bruise drove aside his shock. He drew his sword and wheeled his steed about, hollering, “Back to the Legion!”

  Those riders still mounted tore themselves loose of the tangle and lurched after him. They galloped down the slope, pummeling through throngs of goblins swarming into the highway. Horns continued their harsh wail, nearly drowning out the feeble, tinny reply of the Legion’s bugles below in the churning mists. Vennitius swung at a goblin fumbling to grip the reins of his mount, his sword taking off a flap of skull. A second fiend came in after the first and Vennitius reversed the stroke, sent Thyrrian steel blasting through the meat between shoulder and neck in a geyser of goblinoid gore that momentarily blinded him. He nearly wobbled from the saddle, was only held aloft by the hands of a Legionnaire pressing him on.

  Over the din of the ambush, Vennitius clearly heard Sarcha’s malicious, maniac cackle. The mists parted below. Blinking away goblin spume, Vennitius felt his heart drop into a morass of doom.

  A red-black wave of glimmering eyes and flashing metal poured from the forests and hills above Maelvynn’s Down and surged into the bowl in countless thousands.

  The remainder of the Cavalry Cohort left behind with the Legion shook itself out into a line but were shattered before that avalanche force, torn into glittering tatters that fought on only briefly before drowning in the tide. Behind them, the infantry scrambled into blocks that were only partially-formed when the goblins hit. Experience and training held them together for several terrible minutes, the shield walls clapping together, holding slavering fangs, clattering claws and crude weapons at bay.

  But the goblinoid press simply piled up outside their hard perimeter until survivors climbed over the carnage to leap over the shields and dive down into the mix, killing mindlessly until they died, but opening the breaches to let their horrid kin through. Legion blocks split, became smaller blocks that again split, breaking off into clusters that struggled on and died. Thyrria’s finest were cut down, left drowning in blood-deluged muck, trampled by their desperate comrades as their screams degenerated into gurgles and then silence.

  Vennitius spied one of the Legion’s banners, torn and blood-splashed, but still held high and glimmering with ribbons of honor—some of which he, himself, had presented with chest-swelling pride. Desperate beyond rationality, he drove his horse and those few that remained at his sides towards it. Blows crashed against his sides and legs, lamellar parting before metal, blood and terror and pain merging until Vennitius could only bawl his fury at gods that had forsaken him.

  A goblin stepped into his path and thrust a spear up under Vennitius’ mount’s caparison, driving the point into the beast’s chest. The horse reared, shrieking in pain. Vennitius sawed on the reins, got the animal back under control. Another goblin gripped his bleeding leg. Vennitius lopped the brute’s head off. A third pawed at him from the other side and he turned in the saddle, put the point of his sword into the creature’s eye socket.

  Yet another goblin mounted the back of his horse, tried to reach a notched knife around his throat. The cavalryman beside Vennitius turned in time to see the move and thrust his spear over-hand, skewering the fiend. But more goblins boiled up over the man’s defenses, claws clamping about his helm, his face, dragging him backwards off the saddle.

  A tulwar
found its way under Vennitius’ guard, grated through lamellar into his ribs. He thrashed as dozens of taloned hands clamped about his legs, his arms, yanked his sword from his grasp. He felt his balance going, felt himself dragged in those demonic little clutches to the ground. He hit the mud, tasting mud-grit and blood. Blows hammered down, thrusts of icy pain and shock that jolted his vision into a throbbing crimson. He fought for breath. A mass of yellowy eyes and gnashing fangs closed in over him, blotting out the sky.

  Satu Vennitius, Strategos of the Remordan Valley, had a moment to realize how many things he had gotten wrong before he was butchered.

  DODSO STOOD BEFORE the leadership of the Expeditionary Force, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep and a hell of lot of drinking. Vohl knew, watching him from one side; he’d been a part of much of it, after finally convincing him to believe them. The gnome looked smaller than even his natural stature implied, shrunken, beaten down by the pressures of command, even more so by the news Vohl had given him.

  “Still no word?” Raynes of Andendurgh sneered. “You called us back here. More patrol sweeps across creeks and wood lots?”

  Dodso met the man’s gaze with a flicker of anger, but of fear, too. He glanced across the other militia leaders, Taul Rising-Gale, Vohl, and Muddle. His eyes settled at last on Ulomo, the Legion Captain watching Dodso and nodding once in support.

  And Vohl watched him. The officer had no idea what was coming.

  “No,” Dodso said slowly. “No word. But...no more sweeps.”

  The militiamen rumbled amongst themselves and Ulomo frowned in confusion.

  “I have words—orders—of my own.” Dodso raised his voice over the babble. “We are going back.”

  The babble exploded in a mixture of cheers and questions. Vohl tensed, hand near his sword hilt, glanced at Muddle, noted the half-hobgoblin’s hands tightening about his axe haft.

  Ulomo was stepping forward, gone from supportive to severe in an instant. “What is this? You’ve had some communication from the Strategos? I’ve had no such thing! You didn’t share any of this with me!”