these were huge hobgoblins with fanged muzzles, snapping and growling like berserk beasts. One slashed at him with a studded sword, and the duke was barely able to parry the blow, before pulling his own weapon back and stabbing the brute through the chest. Even as the hob died, several of his comrades swarmed around, slashing at Thelgaard with an array of wicked weapons. The duke had no choice but to stumble back with the rest of his army.
At least such of his army as still survived. There were dead humans everywhere, and others who had been wounded badly crawling or limping or piteously moaning. The attackers swept past the injured for now, concentrating their efforts on knights who still wielded their weapons. Thelgaard hacked right and left, cleaved hobgoblin after hobgoblin right through their leering muzzles, but the knights couldn’t stem the tide.
A flash of greenish light caught his eye, and he saw a monstrous barbarian striding among the enemy. The creature looked to be a giant, and he wielded a spear the size of a small tree trunk. The tip of that weapon was the source of the eerie glow, and when the monster waved it above his head it seemed to inspire his brutal warriors into even greater depths of savagery.
This was Ankhar, the duke understood. Ankhar who had beaten him, humiliated him, destroying his prized army on the field of battle.
Thelgaard’s crossbowmen made a last stand at the end of the tents, firing volley after volley into the horde, driving back the foe for a few precious minutes so their comrades could slip past, try to form a last line, a semicircle in the rear of the camp, adjoining the riverbank. The duke roared at the archers to retreat, but before his orders could be heeded the valiant arrow-men were taken in both flanks, goblins chopping and hacking, even biting, as they swarmed from the sides and behind. Of a hundred brave men, barely a score staggered away from the gruesome massacre.
Now the whole horde of the attackers swept against the tenuous line of ultimate defense, and in seconds the position was breached all along its front. Knights fought and died to allow a few of their comrades to escape, until there was no front, no position any more. There was only madness, a welter of bloodletting presided over by frenzied goblins and hobgoblins.
The handful of desperate men who survived had fled to the riverbank, many of them skidding down the steep dirt slope into the muddy shallows. They were pushed into the waters of the Vingaard that had become a churning mass of blood, flesh, and fear. The Duke of Thelgaard lost his sword as he skidded down the bank. He was almost trampled by a fear-maddened horse as the steed lunged past him, knocking him face down in the brown water.
The duke came up gasping, heading for deeper water. Men were casting aside their armor, seizing the manes and tails of fleeing horses, starting to swim. Those who couldn’t swim, couldn’t grasp some form of support, soon drowned.
Sobbing in fury and dismay, Thelgaard wriggled his way out of his heavy breastplate, the crown-emblazoned piece of armor that had been in his family for a dozen generations. It vanished into the muddy waters as the duke swam toward the far bank, strong strokes carrying him away from the deadly shore.
Behind him, the howls of thousands of triumphant goblins sang in his ears, a chorus of humiliation and shame that would echo in his memory, he knew, for every day of the rest of his life.
Despite the down mattress and sturdy bed that was a part of his army’s equipment every time it took to the field, the Duke of Caergoth had spent an extremely restless night. Every time he drifted off to sleep, it seemed as though secret voices were whispering in his ear, warning him of dangers before, behind, to every side. Some of the whispers were lies, he knew-but others were truths!
How to tell them apart?
He awoke in a sweat, breathing hard, staring wildly around the large tent. Despite the four bright lanterns his aides kept burning through the night, it seemed terribly dark, dangerous, with unseen menace hovering in every shadowy alcove. At dawn he had a terribly upset stomach and sent immediately for his breakfast. As it arrived he had learned that two messengers had arrived from the Duke of Solanthus, but he wasn’t ready to meet them, not at first. Instead, he sent even his trusted aides away and paced nervously on the lush carpets that lined the floor of his tent, leaving the two messengers from Solanthus cooling their heels outside in the rain.
Finally, he let one of his aides in and asked about the messages carried from Duke Rathskell. “They appeared most inconveniently, you know,” Duke Walker sniffed, picking at his crepes and fresh oranges. “Now they disrupt my breakfast!”
“Excellency, it does seem to be a matter of some urgency,” said the aide. “Captain Marckus has suggested that we muster immediately, cross the river in support. There is word of a massive goblin flanking maneuver, the horde reportedly far inland of the duke’s army, coming into position to threaten the city of Luinstat.”
Duke Walker had already given initial orders, and his army was gradually coming to life around him-though he would not yet authorize the striking of his grand tent. No, he needed to keep the rain off of himself while he pondered this important decision.
Where to go? Of course, to Marckus it was all so simple: just march right up to the enemy and engage in battle! The duke had to be aware of more subtle concerns-feints and deceptions, concealed intentions, even false information. Indeed, any move to cross the river, now, would inevitably expose his army to a whole host of unknown counter-moves. It seemed best to wait here, patiently awaiting word on further developments.
A half hour later, a thoroughly soaked, bloodied, and chastened Duke of Thelgaard appeared, with report of an attack on his own camp, his army routed, driven through the river. Thousands of gobs and hobs, Thelgaard said. They were too many, too disciplined, led by a canny half-giant who had struck at the knights’ weaknesses.
“See!” declared Caergoth accusingly, addressing the messengers from Solanthus. “This is why I don’t make hasty decisions! No, far better for us to remain here, on our side of the river and wait to see what’s going to happen next!”
“Aye, Excellency,” said the men.
“Now, duke, why don’t you dry yourself off and get that wound looked at by one of my healers. Have some hot tea. Take a good nap. Things will look better tomorrow.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
T he ridge cresting the Vingaard Mountains rose like an inverted sawblade across the horizon, dramatically marking the end of hundreds of miles of tabletop-flat plain. The four travelers were headed for a certain valley, where, in the middle of the range, a pair of anvil-shaped summits stood like watchtowers.
“Ah, I can smell the pines,” Dram Feldspar said, drawing a luxurious breath through his ample nose. “All these weeks of trekking across the flatland is a foreign thing to a mountain dwarf. When we get into the high valleys, I’m going to take my boots off and soak my feet in an icy stream until they turn blue.”
“Why would you want blue feet?” asked Sulfie. She tried to act cross, but it was obvious even the literal- minded gnome was pleased at the prospect of leaving the plains for forests and high ground.
Dram broke into a trot, with the two gnomes hastening behind. Jaymes’s long strides meant he had no trouble keeping up. Of the four, he was the only one who wasn’t staring in awe at the mountains. Instead, his eyes, squinting and suspicious, swept across the flatlands to the right, the left, and behind them.
They hadn’t seen any other goblins or humans for the past three weeks. The goblin raiders and the human armies apparently remained behind in the area of the Upper Vingaard River and the plains lying directly below the Garnet Mountains. The travelers had avoided small towns and farmsteads and in more than a score of days and several hundred miles had come upon no other travelers.
Nor, in the weeks since their crossing of Mason’s Ford, had they seen any group of trees larger than a small copse of cottonwoods, no elevation more pronounced than the eroded bank of a stream or gully. The rains, thankfully, had finally dwindled, though that meant the landscape became a swath of dusty brown soil, scored by greenery only where the infrequent streams cut sluggishly across the featureless land. Just this morning they had skirted a small verdant grove centered around a pond, on the grounds of an abandoned and collapsing manor house, which they decided not to investigate.
