Aruget touched Vounn’s arm and she made out his gesture as he pointed to the street. She nodded. If they wanted to avoid encountering Tariic on the street, they needed to go. They slipped out of the alley and ran as swiftly as she could manage. The moonlight gave just enough light for her to see where she was going and that the street was still empty. There were sounds of violent confrontation in the distance. The famine marchers had encountered Haruuc’s soldiers.
As they reached the street that led to Khaar Mbar’ost, Vounn glanced back. Tariic was only just emerging from the house beside the alley. They would return to the fortress ahead of him. She slowed gratefully to a brisk walk.
“What we heard tonight,” said Aruget, “was not treason. Tariic did not act or plot against the lhesh.”
“He didn’t,” Vounn agreed. She couldn’t help thinking of what Haruuc had told her in Khaar Mbar’ost’s hall of honor: “Tariic understands muut, but he is drawn to atcha.”
Aruget’s head turned in the moonlight and he looked at her. “Still, I feel Tariic would not appreciate that we know these things. We will have this secret between us, lady?”
She thought for a moment before answering. Aruget saw secrets. She saw diplomacy-and the essence of diplomacy was using what people wanted to get what you needed. Tariic had wanted atcha and the future support of the Marhaan. Why had Daavn needed to know about Haruuc’s quest?
Vounn pressed her lips together, then looked back at the hobgoblin. “We will, Aruget,” she said. “Just between us.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
As he charged back through the trees, Geth heard Ekhaas, Ashi, and Dagii beating their way into the hedge of thorns at the edge of the forest. The dust-blind trolls heard, too, and turned their ugly heads toward the sound, screaming their frustration.
At Geth’s heels, Midian said, “You’re insane.”
“I’m beginning to think that myself.” Geth reached inside himself and shifted once more, feeling the rush of invulnerability that was his heritage flood his body. He tightened his grip on Wrath and the sword pulsed in his hand. If nothing else, he thought, he was going to die like a hero.
Then they were on the trolls. Intent on their escaping prey, the monsters didn’t notice them until it was too late. Geth roared and hit the first troll in his path, trying to inflict the most damage he could, striking not to kill but to disable. Wrath sheared through its hip. The creature toppled over as its leg collapsed, but the wound was already closing. Geth didn’t stop. He moved on to the next troll. A swing took off its hand. The follow-through severed its knee from behind. The troll, still blind from Ekhaas’s spell, squealed and groped for the limbs as it went down. Geth kicked them out of its reach.
Midian, joined by Chetiin, was also striking for knees. The gnome’s pick shattered bone, and a twist of the weapon ruined the joint. The damage was temporary, but it brought trolls low while quick work with Chetiin’s curved dagger opened horrific wounds at critical points that would take longer to heal. In only moments, they had taken down four trolls. Geth turned to the last of the trolls-and was met with dark eyes clear of Ekhaas’s magical dust. A wide hand lashed out.
The troll’s talons gouged his shifting-toughened skin but didn’t break through. If they had, Geth might have been staring at his own guts as they spilled across the ground. The blow was still powerful, though. It threw Geth off his feet and slammed him hard into the trunk of a tree. Shadows swirled across Geth’s vision, but he blinked them back and pushed himself up again, Wrath ready to meet the troll’s charge.
It didn’t come. Hooting at the downed trolls as if in command, the creature turned and ran after Ekhaas and the others. The troll Geth had slashed across the hip rose and went with it, its lurching gait smoothing out with every stride. They disappeared into the brambles, heedless of the thorns that tore at their rubbery hides. The remaining trolls, free from the blinding magic, glared at their attackers and let loose a flurry of howls. Half-healed joints popped as they moved. Half-healed limbs clawed at them. Geth slapped aside a soft, raw hand with his gauntlet and whirled Wrath in a short arc that carved a gash in a troll’s torso, then jumped away before the monster could attack again.
Chetiin and Midian ran to his side. “Two between us and the others,” said Chetiin as the trolls tried to crawl toward them. “Three here.”
“We can take them down again,” said Geth.
Midian cursed. “Enough fighting, big man! Learn from a gnome!” He dug into a side pocket of his pack, pulled something out, and ordered, “Look away!”
Geth caught a glimpse of two tiny objects as Midian hurled them at the clustered trolls, then he quickly obeyed the gnome’s orders. And was glad he had as two intense flashes of light erupted with muffled bangs and new shrieks from the trolls. Blind again, they staggered back.
“Now run,” said Midian. “That way-as quiet as possible!”
He pointed not in the direction Ekhaas and the others had gone, but along the forest edge toward a tall and sturdy tree. Geth would have hesitated-the trolls were vulnerable again-but Chetiin grabbed him and pushed him toward the tree. They sprinted for it, Geth making the most noise of any of them, and even that the barest whisper. Midian ran like a rabbit and Chetiin like a shadow. The trolls were still howling, covering up any sound their quarry made. Midian flicked something else back along their trail. Geth heard a soggy splat and caught a whiff of a terrible, pungent odor. The trolls, caught in whatever Midian had thrown, moaned as if angry skunks had been thrust under their noses.
They reached the tree while the trolls were still reeling under the effects of the lights and the stink. Chetiin scrambled up it faster than Geth would have thought possible, seeming to run right up the trunk. Geth paused to give Midian a boost, then sheathed Wrath and pulled himself up. A shifter’s heavy nails weren’t sharp enough to be much use in a fight, but they dug into bark easily enough. In only moments, even with one hand encased in his gauntlet, he had reached the lowest branches.
“Higher!” urged Midian. The gnome was climbing with ease.
Geth growled and kept going until the leaves below all but concealed the forest floor, and moonlight came through the leaves above-moonlight and a view of the valley’s grassy slope, of the torches carried by the bugbears standing above, of the three figures that broke from the thorns and raced up the slope.
Ekhaas’s powerful voice echoed in the night. Without Wrath in his grasp, he couldn’t understand the Goblin words she spoke, but he understood the urgency in them. Even as she called to the bugbears, though, the two trolls that had gone after them burst out of the thorns and the bugbears reacted. Torches and pitch pots whirled. One of the largest bugbears shouted something that sounded like a challenge. Confronted, the trolls backed down and retreated into the thorns. The three figures that were Ashi, Ekhaas, and Dagii began to climb again. Geth felt a rush of elation-they’d found allies!
Then the large bugbear shouted again. Another bugbear threw something, and one of the figures dropped to the ground.
“Tiger’s blood!” Geth said. “What-?”
“Hush!” Chetiin perched on a branch just above him. The goblin pointed down through the masking leaves.
The trolls were prowling beneath the tree. Geth bit his tongue and held still.
It didn’t seem as if the monsters had seen them climb. They stalked around the tree, roaming through the forest and growling quietly at each other. Geth raised his head and looked back to the slope of the valley. The bugbears had closed in. The two remaining figures on the slope-Ashi and Dagii, he could tell from the stances-had put their backs together, but bugbears had the advantage of numbers. His friends went down beneath the crush of their big, hairy bodies. Geth heard Ashi shouting and cursing in the language of the clans of the Shadow Marches. When the knot of bugbears opened again, the massive goblins carried two struggling forms on their shoulders, along with a third that was limp and unresisting. Under moonlight and torchlight, the bugbears streamed out of the valley and back to the camp in the vale.
Geth bared his teeth in silent rage.
On the forest floor, the growls of the trolls changed and moved away, then were joined by new voices. The
