“Be fast! Be deadly!” Direfang shouted as he closed. The cry was repeated by hundreds of goblins in the swarm until the words swelled to a roar that echoed off the mountains and added to the hellish din.
The hobgoblin leader raced straight toward the tylor’s snapping mouth, his sword pointed like a lance and his free hand waving the goblins in front of him out of his path. Direfang threw back his head and howled something in the goblin tongue. An instant later he drove the sword into the beast’s tongue, the blade sinking through to its bottom jaw and lodging there. Unable to pull the sword free, Direfang snatched up a knife lying by a goblin corpse and darted to the beast’s side, barely missing a blow from its wildly swinging head.
Direfang scrambled over stone that was breaking apart at the tylor’s feet, jumped in to strike powerfully with his knife, and leaped back.
“It is free!” That came from Spikehollow, who was wielding two long knives dripping red with the tylor’s blood. “Be fast! Be deadly, Direfang! The monster is loose!”
The tylor shimmered brightly, and Direfang and Spikehollow charged in unison, stabbing repeatedly at its side and finding that the mottled green-brown patches were softer. They worked at a frenzied pace, urging their fellows to do the same, all caught up in the bloodlust.
The beast started to fade, and for a moment it seemed that it would disappear and shift away to safety, but Direfang continued his relentless assault, as did Spikehollow and the others.
Then the tylor stopped shimmering and opened its maw and released an ear-splitting howl so loud and painful that it dropped the nearest goblins to their knees. Direfang momentarily lost his grip on the knife, pressed his palms against his ears, squeezed his eyes shut, and stumbled back.
Another lance of fire shot down, and the tylor crumpled.
“It is dead!” Saro-Saro cried. “The dragon is dead!” The cagey old goblin had remained at the edge of the throng, standing on a mound of rubble from the collapsed ridge. He continued to shout, but the cheering of hundreds of his kinsmen blotted out all other sounds.
Saro-Saro climbed down from the rubble and pushed his way through the press of goblins. Age granted him respect, and his kinsmen moved aside. Spikehollow helped him to climb up on the tylor’s side. The old, yellow-skinned goblin balanced on the beast’s shoulder, raised his arms, and waited for the clamor to subside. It took several moments.
“A feast this night,” Saro-Saro began, waiting again until the cheers dwindled. “A feast in the memory of fallen friends.” He pointed to the bodies scattered around the tylor. He patted his stomach and lowered his head as if in reverence.
“A feast!” Spikehollow echoed. “Saro-Saro calls for a feast!”
Direfang watched the old goblin pontificate atop the dead beast. Direfang’s head pounded from all the noise, and he ached all over, though he knew his injuries were not so bad as many of his fellows’.
He spotted a young goblin named Chima cradling a broken arm, her dark orange skin marking her as a member of the Flamegrass clan.
Another goblin of the same clan, Olabode, rocked back and forth on his hips, bottom lip held between his teeth to prevent him from crying out. A piece of bone jutted up through his thigh.
All around, others were nursing similar and worse wounds.
“Priest!” Direfang called, craning his neck this way and that. “Skull man! It is time to render aid!”
But Horace did not answer and was nowhere to be seen.
SECRETS
Mudwort found Horace beneath a mound of goblin children. She thought the priest was dead and tried to roll him over so she could get at the jug of water that hung from his belt. But he was heavy, and after a few attempts, he groaned and startled her.
“Should be dead,” she muttered. “Too bad the skull man’s not dead.” Louder, she said, “Direfang!” Mudwort gestured to the hovering children. “Get Direfang, now!” Mudwort poked her finger at the tallest to get them moving. “Be fast!”
They scurried off, only two of them heading Direfang’s way, the rest scattering. She glanced once more at the priest, who was making a snuffling sound against the dirt, and wrinkled her nose. He smelled of sweat and blood. Though he wasn’t much more stinky than her kinsmen, he carried the aroma of a Dark Knight. The smell reminded her of the mine where she’d slaved for too many years.
“Hate the skull men,” she hissed. She spit at the priest, kicked his leg, and turned to survey the bloody scene. Saro-Saro had put his clan in charge of butchering the tylor, and the yellow-skinned goblins were busy scrabbling over the carcass that was silhouetted by the setting sun.
Mudwort had watched the battle against the beast from high on the ridge and managed to avoid any injury when part of it collapsed. She’d thought the tylor a hideous monster then, but it looked worse in death, glistening from the hundreds of wounds the goblins and hobgoblins had inflicted on it. Pieces of hide hung loose, the edges fluttering in the breeze. A rib showed at its middle where a hole had been hacked so the goblins could get at its insides. Insects swarmed around it, thick like a haze, and she would swear she could hear the incessant buzzing even at that distance.
There’d been insects in the mine too, tasty beetles mostly. There had been more insects around the slave pens too, at times thick as ooze, biting and getting in the goblins’ eyes and mouths. Perhaps there would not be so many flying insects in the Qualinesti Forest, she mused. And perhaps she would ask Direfang or one of the young goblins to bring her a nice tasty piece of tylor meat so she would not have to stand in the bug-cloud and wait for her turn.
Direfang intended to lead all of them to the Qualinesti Forest, a place she had discovered in one of her earth-visions. The Dark Knights said the place was distant, far across a sea. Perhaps the bugs stopped at the sea.
She watched members of the Flamegrass clan drag the dead goblins into a pile quite a ways from the carcass. Insects were swarming there too.
Less than one hundred goblins were dead, she guessed, maybe sixty or seventy-a hefty loss but not terrible. It was bearable. She knew someone in the Flamegrass clan would count the bodies, and someone else would try to collect names for the remembering ceremony. Certainly she’d known some of the goblins who had been killed by the beast, though perhaps she had not known them by name.
Mudwort had not been close to any of them.
A loner, she counted only Direfang as a friend, and that was because he had forced his friendship upon her. When he was a foreman in the mines he had taken it upon himself to make sure she ate and stayed strong. He had recognized her magic and respected her ability, believing in her earth-visions.
In Steel Town she had claimed a corner of one of the slave pens, and though she was never afforded much space, the other goblins and slaves for the most part left her alone. She knew that many of them considered her mad, though she also knew that she’d gained in their esteem since she predicted the earthquakes.
Only a handful of them claimed to understand her magic, and they were goblins with a similar talent. Moon-eye had special magic in him too; she wished he had not lagged behind and died. She would miss mingling spells with him, and she would miss his bad singing.
Boliver could easily mingle his magic with hers. She drew her face into a scrunch as she peered at the food lines and searched for him. She didn’t spot him in the milling mass, and for a moment she feared that perhaps he was among the pile of bodies. But a few seconds later she spotted him, nearing his turn at the carcass. She thought it possible Boliver had more talent than she did. Was he keeping the true extent of his power a secret from her?