The Gates of Thorbardin, page 9
As the occlusion of the visible moons began, the figure unfastened and removed the faceplate. The moonlight revealed the face behind it: a woman’s face, stern and dark-eyed. A face that might have been beautiful, had it chosen to be, but that had made other choices from which there had been no turning back.
As the dark moon of Krynn eclipsed the first of the visible moons, the woman drew a thong from beneath her breastplate, a thong from which was suspended a dark, misshapen lump. “Caliban,” she said.
The voice that responded was a dry, husky whisper, heard within her ears—an ancient, querulous voice. “Why does she call me now,” it breathed. “She does not need me here. There is nothing here that she cannot do for herself.”
The woman frowned. “Caliban, the moons. What does it mean?”
“ ‘The moons,’ she says,” the dry voice had whispered. “She wants to know the story of the moons.”
“Tell me!”
“It is another of the Queen’s omens,” the husky voice rasped. “She tells the Highlords that the time is almost at hand for their invasion of Ansalon, and she tells whatever gods may notice that she claims this time and this world as hers. She warns them not to interfere.”
“Another omen,” the armed woman snapped. “Is there a message there for me?”
“Ah,” the dry voice said. “She seeks messages for herself.”
“Tell me!” the armor-clad woman ordered.
“If there is a message for her, it is only this: she has promised the Highlord that she will take and hold access to the fortress Thorbardin. The Queen will not tolerate any who fail in what they promise on her behalf.”
“I will not fail!” the woman said sharply. “Even though I have nothing but … these—” she swept her free arm contemptuously, indicating the dark camps of the waiting goblin horde “—to assist me. I asked the Highlord for a strike force. He gave me stinking goblins. But I will succeed. Thorbardin will fall when he is ready.”
“She has no need to tell me of this,” the dry voice said. “It is her concern, not mine. Now she will let me rest until there is a better reason for me to awaken.”
“I will do what I choose!” she started to say, then hissed through clenched teeth as tiny lightnings laced from the dark thing to sting her hand. Quickly, she dropped it back into the shelter of her armor. She could feel it pulsate slightly as it came to rest between her breasts.
“Omens,” she muttered. “I need no omens to accomplish what I set out to do.”
Her gaze fixed then on the sky, not where the moons were telling their story, but westward, where the line of ridges that formed the valley’s east rim stood like jagged teeth against the night sky. There, far in the distance beyond the ridges, was a crimson glow—a light that was neither moonlight nor firelight, but that hung in the sky beyond the mountains like an echo of Lunitari’s light.
Between her breasts the dark thing moved, and again she heard the dry, ancient voice. “Ah, but there is a message for her, it seems. Someone else is abroad this night, seeking the lost way to Thorbardin.”
Full daylight lay on the valley when Chane Feldstone awoke. For an instant he didn’t know where he was. He blinked and looked around. The hut was wide open, shutters thrown back and door standing ajar. Cabinets stood open and empty, and the cool breezes of autumn wafted through, carrying the sounds of birdcall and small creatures—sounds that Chane abruptly realized he hadn’t heard since coming into this strange valley in the wilderness. Near the door, the wizard Glenshadow lay asleep on a rush mat.
Chane stretched and stood, feeling stiff from sleeping at the table, his hammer still slung on his back. Recalling the night before, he fumbled with the lashing on his pouch and looked inside. The red crystal was there, secure. He touched his forehead, then brought his hammer around, using its polished surface as a mirror. The red spot was still on his face, just above his nose, but it was less vivid now, less noticeable. Still, his mind was full of information that he knew had not been there before.
He looked around at a small sound. The kender was just strolling in through the open door.
“The Irda is gone,” the small creature said sadly. “I can’t find her anywhere. And I guess she took her kitty cats with her, because I didn’t find any of them, either.”
“Then I guess she was through here,” Chane said, assembling his packs and straps. “It doesn’t matter, though. I know which way to go from here.”
PART II
WINGOVER’S WAY
CHAPTER 9
———
THERE WAS A TIME ONCE, RUMOR HAD IT, WHEN TRADE routes had linked the realms of Ansalon in a more or less reliable fashion from Palanthas and Vingaard Keep in the north, through Solamnia, Abanasinia, and Pax Tharkas, all the way south to Thorbardin. And maybe even beyond.
Wingover had heard the stories and felt that they probably were true, though he had never met anyone who could confirm them. He had seen a good bit of the known world in his forty or so years and had dealt with all kinds of people. He knew the value that the elves of Qualinost put on grains and foodstuffs from Solamnia. Mountain-bound Thorbardin traded for grains and spices, as did his own homeland of Abanasinia. And he had seen in Abanasinia and Solamnia—among those who could afford them—plenty of tools and weapons created by the dwarves of Thorbardin, as well as fine textiles from Qualinost.
Fibers and fabrics, feathers and furs … comestibles, combustibles, and exotic baubles—every land he had seen in his travels possessed an abundance in some commodities and shortages in others.
Somewhere in the past there had probably been extensive trade all over Ansalon. But trade now—and for all the lifetime Wingover and those he knew could remember—was erratic and hazardous. “It’s the way of the world,” he himself had said more than once. “There’s always someone more determined to make a killing than the rest are to make a living.”
“Poor, ravaged Krynn,” some poets called the world. But Wingover had no real quarrel with the nature of things. It was the only world he had ever known, and in some respects the very combativeness of its races aided him in his endeavors. Their aloofness, their distrust of one another, made the commodities they all sought even more precious. Sometimes Wingover hired out as a trail guide, sometimes as an escort for traders. And sometimes, as now, he carried a pack himself—usually on a bet.
This time the bet was with the mountain dwarf trader, Rogar Goldbuckle. Over tankards of ale at the Inn of the Flying Pigs in Barter, Goldbuckle had wagered that Wingover could never make it alive from Barter to Pax Tharkas and back, carrying a pack of goods from his agents at Pax Tharkas.
The return on the sealed pack would be small compared to what it would cost Rogar Goldbuckle to pay his gambling debt.
It had been no mean adventure, this journey. Wingover had chosen his routes with care, going north to Pax Tharkas by one route and returning by another to avoid ambushers and other unpleasantries of the wilderness. He had ridden alert and slept with his senses awake, and still there had been incidents—the cave ogre that had almost killed him on a mountain trail somewhere near Wayreth Forest; the landslide that had blocked his path just south of Pax Tharkas; the band of murderous thieves that had picked up his trail on Regret Ridge and pursued until he was forced to teach them some manners; the flooded ford that had forced him to change course. It was that flooded ford that led him into the hidden valley where the bird had screamed a warning at him, and where he had barely escaped with his life when a pack of huge hunting cats chased him.
All that, and goblins, too.
Wingover shook his head now in perplexity. Why were there goblins south of Pax Tharkas? He had never heard of goblins in these lands. Other places, of course, but not here. It reminded him of the talk he had heard in Pax Tharkas—dire rumors, all hazy and confusing, of omens and prophesies, of strange sightings in remote places.
There were even rumors of people somewhere to the north who swore they had seen dragons.
And just the past night—a double eclipse of the moons. Wingover had heard philosophers and stargazers speculate on such things, but he had never before seen such a sight. It had almost cost him his horse and his pack. Geekay had spooked at the sight and pulled loose from his halter, and Wingover had chased the animal for a half-mile before catching him.
Did it mean something? He thought of Garon Wendesthalas and wondered where he was. Elves usually knew more about such phenomena than most people. Maybe he would see the elf in Barter, and could ask him about it then.
Wingover twisted about in his saddle, easing the fatigue of travel, and pulled his elkhide jacket tighter about him. The horse was rounding a bend in the sloping trail, and a fresh wind had sprung up. It was cold at this altitude, even in early autumn.
Cold and—he noticed abruptly—strangely quiet. He looked around. The usual daytime sounds of the mountains, the chittering of small creatures, the myriad calls of cliff-birds, had gone silent. The only sound was the wind sighing forlornly.
Without seeming to have noticed—one learned such skills if one would survive in the wildernesses of Ansalon—Wingover eased his sword around so that its hilt rested across the vent of his saddle, inches from his hand. Eyes that missed little scanned the landscape, searching for anything out of place or out of order.
Wingover’s eyes were as pale as the frost on his reddish whiskers, and as alert as those of the darting shoal-kite for which he was named. He studied the rising stonefall to his left, the bouldered slope falling away to the right, the gametrail winding out of sight ahead, and—stretching around as one too long a’saddle—his own backtrail. Nothing caught his eye, nothing out of the ordinary, and yet the silence hung and all his senses responded to it.
Angling near a wide cleft in the stonefall, he reined the horse into cover and stopped, listening. At first there was nothing to hear, then from somewhere came a faint scuffling sound, as of shod feet creeping through gravel. Many shod feet. And now the errant wind carried a smell that alerted him. It was an odor he recognized. A cloying, unpleasant odor.
Wingover frowned, testing the air. Goblins again! What were goblins doing this far south?
Again he heard the furtive, scuffling noises, and this time he heard metalic sounds as well—little clinks as of weapons being drawn. Silently he dismounted, slipping his animal’s reins into a crack in the rock. He freed the lashes behind his saddle and righted the flinthide shield there, pulling its strap onto his left arm, gripping the guidon with hard fingers. Sword drawn, Wingover crouched, slipped from the cover of the rocks, and sprinted forward on soft-soled feet, following the gametrail. Just ahead someone was in trouble.
Fifty yards from where the man had dismounted, the dim trail topped a ridge and disappeared. Crawling the last few feet, Wingover looked beyond. The game trail veered away to the right, following a slope. Some distance away it made a switchback turn, angling downward toward a distant, meadowed valley. On the trail below, a single walker strode along—a tall, lithe figure clad in furs and leathers against the cold. Wingover could not see his face, but he knew his race. Distance and angle could not hide the lean, graceful form, the gliding stride of an elf.
The elf turned slightly, surveying the landscape, and Wingover recognized him. An old friend. Garon Wendesthalas. The elf carried a pack and a bow, and Wingover suspected he was going to Barter as he was.
But on the brushy slope between them, crouching in cover and watching the elf approach, were goblins—armed, armored goblins waiting in ambush. He counted eight that he could see and cover where two or three more might be.
Wingover crouched, waiting. There was no question what was about to happen. For whatever reason goblins might have—curiosity about what was in the elf’s pack, perhaps, or simply for sport—the goblins were ready to pounce on the elf, to bring him down with their weapons.
Garon Wendesthalas has been taking care of himself for a long time, Wingover told himself, slitted eyes studying the goblins. The goblins may wish they had never met this elf.
Still, he told himself as goblin faces turned toward one another, wide mouths grinning in wicked anticipation, what are friends for, if not to interfere?
With a shrug he got his feet under him, howled a battle cry as wild as any goblin could ever have heard, and plunged down the slope, directly into the crouched goblins’ ambush.
With gravity doubling the speed of his long legs, Wingover descended on them and through them, spinning completely around as he pierced their line. His sword was a flashing rage, singing around him, first bright-bladed and then suddenly dark with goblin blood. A goblin head bounced from a rock and rolled down the slope ahead of him. Two more goblins died before they could turn, one severed from shoulder to breastbone, one cloven through the back, through ribs and spine. Another raised an axe and was bowled over by Wingover’s flinthide shield. Still another tried to lift a short sword and failed because he had no arm.
In an instant of howling fury, the man was through them and beyond, flailing for balance as he plunged on down the slope. “Goblins!” he shouted. “Ambush!”
Directly below now, the elf dropped his pack, brought around his bow, drew, and let fly. The arrow whisked past Wingover, and somewhere above and behind the man a gurgle and a thud sounded. At a glance he saw the severed head of the first goblin, bouncing merrily along beside him.
A thrown axe sailed past Wingover, embedding itself in loose stone just at the elf’s feet. Another of his arrows flew to answer it. On the path, Wingover braced his legs, skidded and somersaulted to a jarring halt … then got his feet under him again and dodged as a bronze dart whisked past him from uphill.
“Good morning,” he shouted to the elf, then filled his lungs, let loose another battle howl, and headed back up the slope. The elf was right behind him.
The slope above was a confusion of goblins—most of them dead or dying, but some still very much alive. For a moment some of these scrambled, clawing upward, trying to climb the slope. But one, a creature slightly larger than the others and heavily armored, shouted guttural orders and regrouped them.
Going uphill was far slower than coming down had been, and now Wingover and the elf found themselves facing a ready enemy who held the higher ground.
Darts and thrown stones landed about them. Wingover held the lead, wielding his shield to deflect what he could. But a dart scored the human’s leg, leaving a bloody gash. Two goblins hoisted a huge stone between them, raising it above their heads.
Behind Wingover, the elf said, “Drop.”
He dropped, half-covered by his shield, and the elf loosed an arrow. It took a goblin full in the throat. The second one staggered back under the sudden weight of the stone, and fell.
With a hiss, the goblin leader lifted the fallen creature to his feet and gripped the back of his neck with one strong hand. In the other he held a heavy broadaxe. Pushing his companion ahead of him he charged down on Wingover, who was just scrambling to his feet. Before he could get his shield up, the goblins were on him. His sword impaled one, but the weapon was wrenched aside as the leader flung the expendable one forward and raised his axe in both hands.
Dropping sword and shield, Wingover flung himself upward and grappled the creature. Goblin stench seared his nostrils as he gripped the axehandle, struggling to keep it from completing its swing. Goblin teeth snapped at his throat, grazing the skin. Claws of a goblin hand raked his face, going for his eyes, and a hard-soled boot flailed at his legs. He twisted, thrust, and threw the goblin onto its back, going down with it. Instantly, the locked pair were rolling and bouncing down the slope, grappling and pummeling as they went.
The broadaxe, jarred free, skidded down the slope ahead of them and came to rest on the trail. The rolling combat landed beside it, the goblin on top, going for Wingover’s throat. With a heave, Wingover threw the creature over his head, spun, and leaped just as the goblin struggled to hands and knees. Straddling the creature, the man got his toes under the base of its brass chest-plate, hooked his fingers under the back-plate, and put all his strength into prying them apart. Held by stout straps, the two pieces of armor closed like a trap around the goblin’s neck. Wingover strained harder. Clawing at the man’s booted feet, the goblin staggered upright, reeling and struggling to breathe as the clamp tightened at its neck. Its face seemed to swell, its eyes bulged, it staggered and fell, carrying the man with it. A broadaxe descended and crunched into the ground, barely missing both of them, and Wingover’s hold slipped. He heard another of the elf’s arrows pierce armor somewhere near.
Panting, he stood. On the ground, the goblin gasped for breath, then rolled and came to its feet, wild eyes glaring, taloned fingers reaching.
“I’ve had enough of this,” Wingover decided. With a long stride he ducked the goblin’s arms and drove a hard fist full into its face. The creature toppled like a felled tree and lay still.
Stone clattered, and Garon Wendesthalas came down the slope. He glanced at Wingover, then crouched beside the goblin. “Alive,” he said. “One of them got away, up the hillside. He was out of reach before I could bring him down.”
“I left my horse up there,” Wingover panted.
“Well, if that goblin is going to find him, it already has. What are they doing here? I haven’t heard of goblins in these lands … at least not any time lately.” The elf looked up quizzically. “And by the way, good morning to you, too, Wingover.”
“Hope you didn’t mind my crashing your party,” the man said.
“Not at all. There were plenty to go around. Frankly, I’m glad you showed up. I knew they were here—smelled them a ways back—but I didn’t know how many, or exactly where they were. But I still can’t imagine what they’re doing this far south.”
“That’s what I want to know, too.” Wingover squatted on his heels, tilting his head to study the wide, feral face of the unconscious goblin. Dark blood seeped from its nose and mouth. “Maybe he’ll tell us about it, if he wakes up.”
