betrayed any trace of what thoughts or emotions might lurk behind the ritual phrases.
As he stepped into the expanse of the great Hall of Shields, however, the door steward was flushed and trembling. Ashi felt a prick of anticipation. She wasn’t the only one to notice. A soft murmur swept through the other men and women who stood in ranks on the dais at one end of the hall. The woman who stood- strong and stiff in spite of the fifty or so years that lined her face and streaked her black hair with iron-gray-at the front of the dais, beside and just forward of Ashi, turned her head slightly and glanced over her shoulder. The murmur died.
The door steward cleared his throat. “Lady Seneschal Vounn, my lords and my ladies of Deneith,” he said, his voice echoing like a shout in a canyon. “Sentinel Tower admits Tariic of Rhukaan Taash, son of Haluun, nephew and personal emissary of Lhesh Haruuc Shaarat’kor of Darguun!”
The words were hardly out of his mouth before the great age-blackened doors of the hall were thrown wide, seemingly blasted open by a noise that wailed in Ashi’s ears and punched into her belly. The door steward broke and ran for the side of the hall.
Through the doors passed the source of the staggering sound: two rows of musicians marching three abreast. The punch of the music came from big drums beaten with short rods nearly as thick as Ashi’s wrist. The wail of it came from strange pipes with two brass stems sticking up from an inflated sack of bright leopard skin held under the musician’s arm and a third, pointing down, with wind holes for the musician to play-three powerful tones from a single instrument. It was war music, meant to inspire troops and terrify enemies. Ashi’s heart raced to the sound of it. She leaned forward, as if the weight of the music was enough to support her.
Lady Seneschal Vounn d’Deneith glanced back a second time, this time directly at her. Behind the veil that hid her face and covered her thick, dark gold hair, Ashi clenched her teeth and stood straight again.
The musicians seemed to see nothing of the grandeur around them or of the delegation waiting at the far end of the hall. They marched and played with perfect discipline. All six were hobgoblins, tall as humans but broader in chest and arms, with dark skin that varied from deep orange-red to rich brown-yellow. When one of the pipers opened his mouth to gulp air and reinflate his pipe-sack, sharp teeth flashed behind thin lips. Like the small eyes above his flat nose, the hobgoblin’s ears-long and tall like a wolf’s-were fixed straight ahead.
Ashi knew a hobgoblin, though she had seen no more of her in the last eight months than she had any of the other friends she’d left behind in giving herself to Deneith. Ekhaas of the Kech Volaar clan was a fine fighter, a sword-wielding storyteller-a duur’kala or “dirge-singer” in her own language. The last time Ashi had seen her, Ekhaas had been on her way to Darguun to carry to her clan elders the story of the adventures that they and their other friends had shared. Ashi had learned first-hand from Ekhaas what kind of focus and discipline hobgoblins were capable of. To see that focus from a friend and ally was one thing. To see it in advancing troops, even a ceremonial guard, was awe-inspiring. Maybe not so ceremonial, Ashi thought. All of the musicians wore light armor of leather studded with polished brass, as if ready to drop their instruments on command and throw themselves into battle. She wouldn’t have been surprised if that was exactly the case.
Behind the musicians walked half a dozen banner-bearers, not hobgoblins but short and lithe goblins. They might have been only half the size of the hobgoblins, but side by side, the relation of the two races was emphasized. They had similar colors and shared the same flat, thin-lipped faces, though the goblin noses were larger and their ears wider and more stiff. They marched with the same stern discipline as their larger cousins, holding up tall, narrow banners with strange symbols: the crests of the major clans of Darguun. A crown of sharp blades. A fanged maw wreathed in flames. A beast in chains, a brutal spiked flail, and others. The banner with the crown of blades was at the center of the display and was carried slightly higher than the others. Of all the clan crests, it was the only one Ashi recognized because it was the sign of Rhukaan Taash, the “Razor Crown,” the clan to which the emissary Tariic-and Lhesh Haruuc-belonged.
As the banner-bearers passed through the door, they parted, and for a moment the musicians’ savage music paused. In the unexpected quiet, the gasp that rose from the humans on the dais was clearly audible. Following the banner-bearers were two more hobgoblins, this time mounted, but not on horses. The hobgoblins that guided their mounts through the doors of the Hall of Shields rode on tigers.
“Rond betch!” Ashi murmured in awe. In Azhani, the language of the Shadow Marches clan she’d been born into, it meant “fierce darkness.” She seldom spoke Azhani anymore, but when it came to cursing, she fell back on it instinctively.
The woman at the front of the dais didn’t even turn her head, but in the music’s lull Ashi still heard her disapproving warning. “Ashi! Language!”
The pipes and drums rose again. Unseen behind her veil, Ashi closed her mouth and tried to hold back her frustration and her excitement. Her part in this spectacle was coming soon. Her hand tightened on the hilt of the sword that hung beneath her robes. The robes concealed both the weapon and the fitted trousers and sleeveless shirt that she wore, as well as the sheen of oil on her lean, muscled arms. It wasn’t typical attire for a formal reception ceremony, but her role was going to be a bit more active than that of most of those gathered on the dais.
For the past month, almost since the moment it was announced that Lhesh Haruuc would be sending an emissary to Sentinel Tower, she had been training in the demanding moves of the sword dance, one of the great traditions of House Deneith. The idea had been Vounn’s, of course, but Ashi had found that she enjoyed the training more than most that the lady seneschal had forced on her. The time to show off the results of her hard work was almost upon her. Ashi put Vounn’s rebuke out of her mind and focused on breathing, pushing an easy calm through her limbs. It wasn’t all that different from the anticipation before a battle.
The musicians, banner-bearers, and riders had moved to the sides of the hall, making way for soldiers dressed in full armor. Goblins in light armor with round shields on one arm and maces in the opposite hand, thin javelins strapped across their backs. Hobgoblins in heavier armor, with tall shields and polished swords. Bugbears- the largest of the three goblin races, a head taller than the largest hobgoblin and heavily muscled-with only partial armor to protect their massive frames, carrying huge spiked morningstars that Ashi thought she might have been able to lift but doubted she could have wielded.
And walking behind them, the emissary from Darguun, Tariic of Rhukaan Taash. A handful of other goblins and hobgoblins, a mix of functionaries and councilors, followed in his wake, but Ashi’s eyes-and she felt certain the eyes of everyone else at the front of the hall-were on Tariic. He walked alone, proud as a prince. He wore armor, too, though his was far finer and more ornate. His gauntlets had been fashioned into claws. Spikes protruded from knees and elbows. A skull had been worked in brass along the overlapping plates that protected his chest, and thick tongues of razor-edged steel crossed over his shoulders. Lhesh Haruuc’s emissary could have walked from the halls of Deneith right onto a battlefield and not been out of place.
The last of the marchers parted and took places along the sides of the hall. The plain-garbed functionaries who followed Tariic stopped just inside the doors. Tariic himself strode forward to stand at the heard of his delegation. The music of the pipes and drums swelled, then fell silent. For a moment, all was quiet in the hall. No one and nothing moved, not even the great tigers. Tariic swept the dais with eyes that were a brown so bright they verged on red.
Ashi’s mouth went dry. Her fingers shifted on her sword. Her time was close. The calm in her limbs tightened.
A single gesture broke the stillness in the hall, a single sound the silence. Throughout the Darguuls’ entry, four ranks of black-clad Deneith guards had stood before the dais without moving or reacting. Now, at their head, a guard wearing the plumed helmet of a captain lifted the spear he held and rapped the butt against the stone-tiled floor.
In perfect unison, the ranks stepped apart, splitting and reforming into four tight squares. The movement was so precise that forty-eight pairs of boots made only one sound. The captain’s spear rapped twice on the floor. Two squares advanced. The other two moved in behind. Spears rose-from the back ranks first- and fell forward, then rose again, like wheat bending and standing before gusting wind. The squares broke apart once more, leaving each man standing alone as the guards moved into a series of stamping, thrusting spear forms.
The display was similar to the Darguuls’ only in its incredible discipline. Where the goblins had moved to the din of drum and pipe, the Deneith guards moved only to the cadence of their own boots, the rap of spear butts, and sometimes a sharp shout punctuating the rhythm. Where the Darguuls had been bright and flashing in polished armor, the guards were dark. Even the heads of their spears had been blackened. Where the Darguuls awed with their presence and natural intensity, Deneith awed with consummate skill that came from long hours of training. If
