human body could be expected to withstand. As he lay unmoving on the stone paving, the pellucid bubble surrounding him made a slight popping sound—and was gone. Blood trickled from his nostrils and the corner of his mouth, staining his simple cotton clothing.
Those deliberating mages who had gathered below to defer to the greatest among them now formed a circle around the intact but motionless body. The expressions on their faces sent a cold, damp chill running down the length of Goughfree's spine. Looking up and back, one disconsolate wizard met the general's stare—and slowly began to shake his head from side to side. Goughfree's jaws tightened until his teeth began to ache. It was impossible, it was madness—Susnam Evyndd could not be dead. He couldn't be!
But he was. While the concussive power of the black cylinder had not shattered his body, its force had broken something within his skull. As the circle of melancholy mages gathered up the limp form of he who had been foremost among them and prepared to carry him safely away from the scene of battle, a distraught Goughfree realized that the defenders of Kyll-Bar-Bennid would have to make do without him.
It must be said that no one gave ground easily. The guardians of the city did not break and run. But when Khaxan Mundurucu took personal charge of the assault and started across the Hidradny Bridge, flinging fire and destruction in every direction from amorphous, black-shrouded hands, Goughfree knew in his heart of hearts that all was lost. Fears of defeat became a certainty when first the Salmisti tower, then the one on the Hidradny, fell to the invaders' relentless onslaught. To save the remainder of the army from complete destruction, and to preserve what he could of the city on the river, he and the rest of the general staff agreed to a full and complete surrender. There was nothing to be gained by trying to hold only the castle against the kind of otherworldly might they had just seen so overpoweringly demonstrated.
They met the enemy officers in the wide, central square. It was quiet, the clocks in the town towers silent, the crackle and roar of burning buildings much less than would have been the case had Goughfree and his colleagues chosen to fight to the last. Heroic bronzes of heroes and artists looked on in silence, unable to influence or comment upon the disturbing proceedings. Ranks of sullen, exhausted soldiers tried to maintain a semblance of order as they were forced to gaze across the two-inch-square individual paving stones at smirking, triumphant men, women, and spear-carrying creatures that were neither.
Standing near the center of the square, apart from the ranks, Goughfree, Chaupunell, and the others waited stoically. Their aim was to save the city and preserve as much of the Gowdlands as possible from pillage, rapine, and worse. Anxious eyes searched the lines of monsters and men for their enemy counterparts.
The forward line of the enemy suddenly parted to allow three figures to step forward. Two were men, tall of body and brutal of aspect. Goughfree was unsettled by their appearance, but did not let it show. What did he expect—court dandies fitted out in elegant silks and brocade? The third figure was much shorter, an impossible progeny of rodent and human, with a long orange-red face, a small mouth full of thin, sharp teeth, and downward- slanting, mournful eyes.
Behind them came the massive, black-clad shape of the diabolical wizard Khaxan Mundurucu. Searching in vain for a face, Goughfree and the others saw only an ambulating tower of lumpy black cloth.
'I am General Drauchec,' announced the foremost of the three warriors. 'Myself and generals Boroko and Feelleq-aQua are here to present the terms of capitulation.' So saying, a mailed hand passed over a sheaf of papers that appeared to have been inscribed in blood—though the blood of what, Goughfree could not have said.
Glancing down, he began to read aloud. 'This part the third,' he muttered, 'that concerns the turning over of stores. If we give everything we possess into your charge, what is to guarantee that my troops will have food enough to see them back to their often distant homes?'
'No guarantees, no guarantees!'
The defeated general staff of the Gowdlands looked up sharply at the source of the voice. Even the three Totumakk officers turned. None of them had spoken. The objection had come from the hulking figure that loomed behind them.
The voice, though clear and delivered with some force, had been surprisingly tinny, with an oddly reverberant echo. Almost, Goughfree thought, as if it had issued simultaneously from multiple throats.
Black cloth began to slough away from the figure. Behind Chaupunell, the colonel of horse gasped, and murmurs of confusion could be heard from other members of the staff as the true and natural aspect of Khaxan Mundurucu was at last revealed. Goughfree was no less stunned than any of them. The much-feared Khaxan Mundurucu was not a person, not an individual.
He was a
It was difficult to say which of the acrobatic goblins that together comprised the hulking form was the ugliest. One by one, they tumbled and leaped from their perches to assemble in a group on the stones of the square. Joined together by strong hands and feet, they had filled the vast black cloth in the shape of a person. Now they stood exposed for what they were: twenty-two goblinlike personages of varying size and appearance, each one of them less pleasant than the next to look upon.
A resigned, slightly fearful Drauchec confirmed what everyone could see for themselves. 'May I present the Clan Mundurucu; Masters of the Mystic Arts, Commanders of the Totumakk Horde, Ravagers of the Earth and Despoilers of Kingdoms Grand and Small, Distributors of Omnipotent Unpleasantness. I, and those beneath me, serve at their pleasure.' So saying, Drauchec and his two equally intimidating fellow officers proceeded to bow low in the direction of the gathering goblins, arms crossed across their chests in a gesture of utter submission.
Chaupunell leaned forward to whisper into Goughfree's ear. 'Surely each of these wee creatures does not possess the power of the whole?'
'Nay,' declared a dumpy figure with big ears and the frenzied face of a maniacal toadfish, 'we must work together to defeat the likes of the late and unlamented Susnam Evyndd, may his pure and noble soul lie corrupted and befouled forever. It is good that our attack drew him forth to a place of openness where we could get at him. But we all also have our individual powers. See, and tremble!' Raising a hand full of fingers like unpeeled carrots, the goblin whispered a few words and gestured.
There was a poofing of air and a putrid, mephitic odor rushed up Goughfree's nostrils. Turning in horror, he saw a frantic rat with the face of one of his fellow generals scamper wildly past his feet. With a cry of delight, a goblin built like a sack of potatoes with a face banned from the land of frogs leaped into the air and landed with both broad, flabby feet on the fleeing thing that the brave Chaupunell had become. Tiny bones snapped and blood squirted out from beneath heavy, oversize boots.
Goughfree swallowed hard. Behind him, someone was throwing up. 'We accept your terms,' he managed to choke out, 'without guarantees, relying on your mercy as victorious soldiers of noble and chivalrous mien.'
'Noble? Chivalrous?' A heavily cowled something resembling a leprous monk sidled up to Goughfree and without warning or hesitation viciously kicked the general in his right knee, cracking the patella and driving the senior officer to the ground, where he lay clutching himself and writhing in pain. 'We be the Khaxan Mundurucu! We take, and you give!' Thick, rubbery lips rolled into a terrifying sneer. 'Give 'nobly,' if you like, but give you will!' The squat horror whirled. 'Drauchec! Boroko! The city is yours. Have at it!' A great cry that was terrible to hear promptly arose from the assembled Horde.
Not everyone died that day in Kyll-Bar-Bennid, though there were many who wished they had. Some few escaped, fleeing in terror back to their farms and far cities, to spread word of what had happened, of the terrible defeat and the slaughter and destruction that had ensued. Little hope of resistance survived anywhere within the Gowdlands. The river Drimaud had been the place to stop the invaders. With most of their best soldiers and fighters now dead or in captivity, the smaller cities and communities could only try to welcome the invaders without resistance, and perhaps to buy them off. It was a feeble hope, a faint wish. Especially in light of what the Khaxan Mundurucu did while much of the city burned below them.
Ascending to the highest tower of the castle keep, the goblinish clan gamboled together while observing with pleasure and satisfaction the fiery turmoil that raged below. Most musically gifted of them all, knob-nosed Kobbod composed deviant arias on the screams that rose from the chasm of the tormented city, while his twisted sisters Kelfeth and Krerwhen put their arms across each others' hunched shoulders and gleefully cackled forth each new morbid stanza invented by their sibling.
Kobkale, generally acknowledged to be the ugliest and therefore the most admired member of the extended family, stood by the edge of the wall appraising the work of the rampaging Horde below. Kushmouth waddled over to his clan-mate, his long-whiskered, flattened face alight with the pleasure to be gained from observing the final damnation of others.
