because they had even more objectionable personal habits.
Unlike hradani, with their low fertility rates, ghouls had been specifically designed to reproduce quickly and mature rapidly, which meant even a relatively small infestation of them could grow to frightening size with dismaying speed. They weren’t precisely what anyone might call fastidious eaters, either, and any given band or village of ghouls had no friends, even among their fellow ghouls.
Physically, ghouls resembled trolls. They were a bit shorter-few of them stood much over eight and a half feet in height-and more lightly built, but their frames were deceptively powerful and their reflexes were unbelievably swift. According to Wencit of Rum, who certainly ought to know, that speed had been arcanely engineered into them along with their reproduction rate, and they paid for it with ravenous appetites and shortened lifespans. It was unusual for any ghoul to attain as much as forty years of age, and most of them died before they were thirty- five, which was no more than half the lifespan of a troll. They were almost as hard to kill as a troll, though, and like trolls, they recovered with almost unbelievable speed from any wound which didn’t kill them outright. Indeed, they healed much faster even than hradani; it wasn’t unheard of for a troll’s or a ghoul’s blood-spouting wound to close itself and actually begin healing in the course of the same battle in which it had been inflicted. The only way to be certain of killing one of them was to take its head; otherwise, what a warrior might have been certain was a corpse was all too likely to recover and rip his head off from behind.
What made ghouls even worse than trolls was threefold. First, their greater speed made them far more dangerous in a fight, far more difficult to outrun, and far more difficult to run down if they tried to evade. Second, unlike trolls, ghouls used weapons other than their own admittedly efficient talons and fangs. They were crude weapons, fashioned out of stone and wood, not iron or steel, but a chipped flint javelin head could kill a man just as dead as one forged from the finest Dwarvenhame steel, and the sawlike obsidian teeth which fringed their wooden war clubs might be fragile, but they were also razor-sharp. And third, and worst of all, they were smart.
The one true blessing about trolls was that they were stupid, little more than mobile appetites. That had its downsides, since it meant they were unlikely to recognize times when discretion was the better part of valor, but it also meant every small band of trolls operated entirely on its own. The idea of cooperating with anyone outside the immediate family group simply didn’t occur to them.
Ghouls understood the advantages of cooperation. Like trolls, they were egg layers, and-also like trolls-they were carnivores. The one good thing about their intelligence (from anyone else’s perspective, at least) was that they understood the value of raising their own meat animals, and as long as there was sufficient chicken, mutton, goat, or beef from their own flocks and herds, they were content to stay home. Unfortunately, it took a lot of meat to keep a village of ghouls fed. Even their willingness to eat their own eggs-or their own young-often failed to keep their populations down to something their herds could support, and when that happened, they went raiding.
And since they were prepared to eat their own young, they saw no reason they shouldn’t eat anyone else’s, as well. Which, coupled with the fact that-like the trolls from which, according to Wencit, they’d been bred-they preferred their food living, pretty much explained why they were not preferred neighbors.
Both the hradani and the Sothoii had tried at one time or another to sweep the Ghoul Moor clear and exterminate them once and for all. Unfortunately, a single female could produce literally scores of eggs in her lifetime, which was the reason even a handful of trolls or ghouls could grow to astounding numbers in an astonishingly short time. Even worse, both Troll Garth and the Ghoul Moor backed up against Barren Fell, and Barren Fell was terrible terrain to follow them into. Hilly, uneven, heavily overgrown, it offered ideal hiding places or spots from which they could ambush pursuers. And, worse yet, directly on the far side of Barren Fell, lay the Forest of the Sharmi. No one in his right mind went into the Sharmi, and upon occasion things much worse than any troll or ghoul came out of the Sharmi. At least twice, the Sothoii had believed they’d actually finished the ghouls off, only to have them re-emerge from the Sharmi and Barren Fell to reclaim the Ghoul Moor once again.
There was a reason the River Brigands confined themselves almost entirely to their settlements and towns close to the shores of the Spear and the Lake of Storms. There was also a reason Bloody Swords near the fringes of Troll Garth lived in palisaded towns, not on individual farmsteads, and always posted sentries at night. And there was a reason Prince Bahnak and Baron Tellian had decided the best they could hope for was to clear a strip along the Hangnysti and secure it with fortified camps and patrols.
But to do even that, they had to clear out the ghoul villages in that area, and that was always hard, dangerous, and ugly. Ghouls matured physically quickly, but there were always dozens of their young-for the life of him, Vaijon simply could not apply the word “children” to them-in any village. Ranging in size from twenty or thirty pounds up to as much as a hundred, they were just as vicious as their fully grown parents, but killing them bothered him far more than it did to kill a full adult. Unfortunately, there was no way to convince any ghoul-cub or adult-to surrender. The only two approaches to any other living creature which they seemed to grasp were to attack and devour or to run away, and running away was usually their second choice.
Tomanak, he thought now wryly, I know I just told Yurgazh the weather was up to Chemalka, but if You could see Your way to giving Her a nudge and getting this fog out of here, I’d appreciate it.
There was no direct reply, although he did think he might sense someone else’s rueful amusement in the back of his brain. Not that he’d really expected a reply. A champion of Tomanak didn’t count on his deity to lead him about by the hand.
“Well,” he sighed finally, pulling his dwarf-made watch from his belt pouch and consulting its face, “it’s about time, Yurgazh.”
“Lovely,” Yurgazh grunted, and glanced over his shoulder.
Vaijon and the twenty or so human members of the Hurgrum Chapter who were present were the only mounted troops in Yurgazh’s entire force. Now the Bloody Sword turned to look at those motionless, waiting ranks of infantry with the fog drifting about them and shook his head.
“All right, lads,” he told his officers. “You see the Phrobus-damned fog as well as I do. So it’s going to be cold steel instead of arrows.” No one said a word, but no one had to. Although the majority of Bloody Swords continued to feel archery was an effete and possibly even immoral way for a proper warrior to settle a quarrel, none of them looked forward to letting a ghoul into sword range. “Keep your ranks, keep those damned shields up, and keep your heads,” Yurgazh continued in that same pre-battle growl, raising his voice to reach the companies closest to hand. “We want as many kills as we can get here so we won’t have to kill ’em later, but I’d just as soon take as many of you home afterward as I can. Keep that in mind.”
Something almost like a chuckle rolled along the waiting lines of infantry, and he smiled.
“In that case, let’s summon the Rage and be about it!” He glanced at the bugler beside him. “Sound it,” he said flatly.
“Hear that, Milord?” Sir Yarran said sharply as the clear, rapid notes came soaring through the fog, faint with distance, and Trianal nodded.
“I told you they wouldn’t leave us hanging about by ourselves, didn’t I?”
“That you did, Milord.”
Trianal flashed the older man a smile, then looked at his own bugler.
“Be ready,” he said.
Vaijon moved forward behind the double line of infantry Yurgazh had deployed to lead his attack.
No one was going to confuse Confederation troops with the Royal and Imperial Army, but hradani tactics had improved immensely under Bahnak Karathson’s influence. Yurgazh had placed two of his battalions in a line five hundred men wide and two ranks deep while his other two battalions followed in platoon columns, prepared to deploy to either flank or to reinforce the front line. Vaijon and the double handful of mounted Sothoii members of the Order of Tomanak rode between the columns, followed by fifty dismounted brothers- and one sister; let’s not forget that, Vaijon thought just a bit sourly, deliberately not glancing back at Sharkah Bahnaksdaughter-all ready to counterattack any unexpected break in the hradani lines. Not that any such break was likely to occur.
There were two schools of thought about the best way to attack a ghoul village. One was to sneak up on it as unobtrusively as possible and attack with the advantage of surprise. The other was to let it know you were
