gouging her painfully. For a moment, all Ashi could do was try to draw breath. She heard a third thump, then the light of the camp’s big firepit was cut off as the bugbears dropped a big piece of leather across the doorway of the hut. It took her another moment to realize what the third thump had been.
“Ekhaas!” Ashi writhed beneath Dagii, trying to get out from under him. He moved slowly, rolling over like a drunkard. She kicked him. He grunted and gave her the room to get up on her knees and shuffle to where Ekhaas lay.
The duur’kala, her hands tied as well, had curled up like a child. Her breathing was shallow. The hut was not well constructed, and in the firelight that fell through the many gaps in its walls, Ashi could see a massive mark across the side of Ekhaas’s head. Her yellow skin was dimpled with the imprint of the hurled club that had brought her down. She’d have a big bruise when she woke up. If the bugbears gave her a chance to wake up.
Ashi sat back and cursed again, giving vent to her rage in the guttural blasphemies of Azhani.
“How is she?” asked Dagii.
Ashi twisted around to look at him. He’d struggled upright, and it looked like he’d have a few bruises across his face as well. “The blow was hard,” Ashi said. “It doesn’t look good, but it could be worse. If I could touch her, I might be able to tell more, but…” She twitched her bound hands.
Dagii, bound as she was, pushed himself over to her and examined Ekhaas carefully. “Her color is good and her ears are up,” he said. “If they were down, it would be bad. She’ll wake when she’s ready.”
“If she doesn’t, I’ll tear this camp apart with my teeth.”
Dagii sat back and stared at her. “You fight like a wolverine.”
“I come from a clan in the Shadow Marches,” she told him. “Raiding between clans was common. If you don’t fight, you’re too weak to live.”
His ears flicked in surprise. “You weren’t born to Deneith? But you act so much like one of them, I thought-”
The assumption stung Ashi. She acted like any member of Deneith? “You thought wrong,” she said, cutting him off. She wondered what Vounn would have said.
She looked around the hut. The light that filtered through the walls revealed bundles of stiff hides, maybe intended for trading with other bugbear tribes. There was nothing that could cut her bonds or be used as an effective weapon, even if she could get them loose. The bugbears had taken her sword and all of her knives. Dagii had been stripped of weapons, too, and Ekhaas as well.
“What are they likely to do with us?” she asked.
“Slavery. Sacrifice. They probably aren’t going to kill us outright. They would have done it already.”
“Ransom?”
“Not likely.” He clenched his jaw and looked her in the eye. “We have to assume we’re on our own.”
Ashi knew what he meant. Geth, Chetiin, and Midian hadn’t been captured, but that didn’t mean they were still alive or in any situation to come to their rescue. In her mind, she saw again the two trolls that had come crashing out of the thorns in the valley. Geth wouldn’t have let them pass without trying to stop them, but then again Ekhaas had caught five trolls in her spell. Five to three-bad odds for Geth and the others to hold back all their opponents.
Bad odds to survive.
She put steel in her heart and turned her attention to the cracks in the walls of the hut. They probably could have broken through the walls, but the shadows that moved frequently against them suggested the camp beyond was busy. They wouldn’t have gotten far, especially with Ekhaas still down. Ashi crawled to the wall and squatted at one of the wider gaps, peering out.
The camp was as busy as she’d guessed. The fire in the great pit had been built up high, and torches stuck into the ground burned everywhere that she could see. Bugbear children were busy scooping pine pitch out of crude troughs made from hollowed logs, transferring it into smaller pots. Older youths were preparing the leather slings by which the burning pots could be swung and hurled. Most of the adult bugbears were standing by the barricade, watching the darkness beyond. It looked like the tribe was afraid the trolls might come back in the night.
“How many trolls did we see, Dagii?” Ashi asked. “Ten?”
“Nine,” the hobgoblin said, speaking through his teeth. He was still crouched beside Ekhaas, his arms straining as if he were trying to snap the leather thongs that bound him-or maybe just stretch them enough to work a hand free. He relaxed for a moment and caught his breath. “Chetiin described a nest of them, but I don’t think there could be many more. Trolls are ravenous. Even if the bugbears are throwing meat to them, I don’t see how the valley could support many more.”
“There are at least twenty adult bugbears out there, and they’re armed with fire. Why do you think they leave the trolls in the valley? Wouldn’t it be easier to burn them out instead of trying to appease them?”
“There’s something strange about these trolls,” said Dagii. “They’re organized. They use tactics. I’ve never heard of trolls doing that before. It makes them more dangerous. Usually they just charge into battle and fight until their opponents are dead. You might as well ask why the trolls tolerate the bugbears living here.” He strained against the thongs again.
Ashi shifted to another crack in the wall and found herself with a view of the massive bugbear with the trident, presumably the chief of the tribe. He stood close to the fire with three other large bugbears. They were speaking emphatically, but with low voices as if they didn’t want other members of the tribe to hear. Every so often, one of them would gesture toward the hut from which she watched. Their fate, it seemed, was still being decided.
Then the chief turned and strode for the hut, two of the large bugbears following in his wake.
Ashi jerked away from the wall. “Dagii! The chief is coming!”
Dagii’s head snapped up and he rose awkwardly to his feet, wincing has he put weight on the ankle that had been injured. “Stand!” he said. “Don’t face him on your knees or he’ll think you’re submitting.”
Just like among the Bonetree clan. If you don’t fight, you’re too weak to live. Ashi rose and moved to stand beside Dagii just as the hide over the doorway was torn aside and the chief entered.
He was nearly as tall as a troll and big enough that the hut seemed small as soon as he was inside. The smell of pine pitch clung to the thick hair of his body. Big ears, not nearly as mobile as those of hobgoblins, turned like scoops in their direction. A black button-nose that was comically bearlike wrinkled as if the chief was sniffing them like a dog.
He had her sword thrust into his belt. “Khyberit gentis!” Ashi snarled. She might have hurled herself at him if Dagii hadn’t twisted to block her way.
The two bugbears who had entered with the chief stiffened and lifted their weapons, a big mace and a heavy sword. The chief growled at them. He planted the butt of his trident in the dusty earth floor of the tent and said in thunderous Goblin, “I am Makka! This is my territory.” His free hand pointed at Dagii. “You, low-lander. What is your tribe?”
Dagii stood against the roar of the bugbear’s voice like a wall standing against a gale. “I am Dagii of Mur Talaan.” He pointed at Ekhaas where she lay on the ground. “She is also Mur Talaan.”
A blunt lie. Ashi wondered if the bugbears of the Marguul tribes had some complaint against the Kech Volaar. Makka didn’t challenge Dagii, though. His black nose wrinkled again, and his mouth curved in a sneer. “This means nothing to me. I have never heard of the Mur Talaan.” Ashi saw Dagii bristle at this insult to his clan, but Makka’s thick finger shifted to point at her. “The human carries a dragonmark. What is her clan?”
Dagii’s ears rose slightly and he looked at Ashi sharply. “I don’t think he speaks your language,” he said in the human tongue before she could answer Makka in Goblin. “Don’t let him know you understand what he’s saying. It could be an advantage. Do you want me to tell him your House?”
Ashi watched Makka and the other two bugbears carefully for any sign of reaction to what Dagii had just said. The only thing she saw was impatience. They hadn’t understood him. “Yes,” she said. “Say whatever you think you need to.”
He nodded and turned back to Makka. “She belongs to the mighty clan Deneith,” he said, speaking Goblin once more, “whose armies are so vast that Lhesh Haruuc Shaarat’kor sends his soldiers to fight for them.”
The bugbear who carried a mace opened his eyes wide and murmured something to Makka that was too soft for Ashi to hear, but the chief only growled at him. “I don’t care what Haruuc does-he bows to humans like a goblin!” he told Dagii. His sneer faded, though, and he looked speculatively at Ashi for moment, then pointed again, this time at Ekhaas. “We heard singing in the valley, the song of a duur’kala. Her?”
