The chieftain remembered the third denizen of this stone house. He looked toward the infant bed and saw that Laka was peering over the lip of the cradle. Caught up in the blood-frenzy, Bonechisel raised his club and howled aloud, starting toward the last of his enemies.
To his surprise, Laka reached into the cradle, snatched up the infant, then turned and snarled at the chieftain with a startling display of big teeth. Her eyes blazed, and the import of her actions was clear and defiant.
“Give me babe!” demanded the hobgoblin. “I kill! I am Bonechisel Giant-Slayer!”
“This babe mine!” she declared. “Go kill someplace else!”
The infant was squalling and fussing, and the hobgoblin would have liked nothing better than to smash its little brains out on the floor, but he noted the glare of determination, of pure courage, in his mate’s eye. He decided that killing this baby was not worth subjecting himself to the female wrath and recrimination that would follow.
Even as he stared in disbelief, his pig-eyes squinting, Laka slumped down to the floor, opened her tunic, and gave the baby one of her breasts for suckling. The baby half-breed’s annoying wails faded to a surprised squawk, then a soft slurping as he fastened himself to the teat and began to nurse.
Laka called her babe Ankhar, and she cared for the half-giant infant with as much love and attention as if he had been born of her own flesh. From the first greedy suckle, Ankhar clung to his new mother with desperation, forming an inseparable bond.
Generally the adopted hobgoblin spent his time avoiding the mature males of the tribe, although he became the natural leader of the gobs of his own age. Not only did he outweigh all of his contemporaries by at least a factor of two, but he was quick to anger and ruthless in retaliation, inflicting countless broken bones during any outbreaks of rough play. Fear being a primary influence upon goblin relationships, Ankhar’s prowess made his fellows obsequious, and he was quick to take advantage of the worship he inspired. He would dispatch the young ogres to bring him food and drink, to perform his designated chores (he especially hated firewood hauling and stone breaking).
During these years the tribe moved around a lot, never settling in the same place for more than a season or two at a time. At first Bonechisel was one of many hobgoblin chiefs in the foothills around the Garnet Range, but he gradually made a name for himself as one of the most successful when it came to raiding the settlements of humans, leading his tribe in such a way that the gobs had plenty to eat-even during the waning months of winter when starvation made a rampant sweep through the bands and clans of leaders who showed less foresight.
In Ankhar’s sixteenth year the War of Souls ended unnoticed by the goblin population of the Garnet Range. However, the savage creatures did notice that once again two moons moved through the skies. Not long after, Laka came upon a shiny green rock in a mountain cavern. She listened to the rock and heard the words of the Prince of Lies, Hiddukel. Hiddukel was pleased with her, the rock said, and she began to tell the other hobs and gobs about his wickedly successful ways.
Drawn in part by the might of the brutal chieftain, in part by the compelling words of the primitive high priestess Laka, more and more of the small goblin clans were absorbed into the Bonechisel tribe. By the time of Ankhar’s eighteenth year Bonechisel’s followers numbered many hundreds-and in fact was the most formidable horde along the entire circumference of the mountain range. Burly hobgoblins, seasoned veterans with scars and trophies to prove their prowess, bowed down to Bonechisel these days, and brought him gifts of food and drink and treasure. Bounty hunters stayed well away from the brutish tribe.
In the late spring following Ankhar’s eighteenth winter, the gobs and hobgoblins of the Garnet Range held a great gathering during the week preceding the summer solstice. The site of the gathering was a town that had once been called Tin Cup, a formerly prosperous mining settlement of two score houses and a dozen larger buildings. Bonechisel’s warriors had attacked Tin Cup the year before, slaughtering all the miners who had dared to remain. Since then, no human had visited the place.
Bonechisel held court in the upper floor of a stone mill-house. His tribemates were scattered through the houses of the town, while the clans and tribes of all the other gobs and hobs for two hundred miles around made camps in the surrounding valley and the many deep, dry mine shafts. Every night a huge bonfire raged in the village square, and the field and the narrow streets thronged with festive warriors and wenches. Alcohol flowed freely, a mixture of captured spirits brewed by human and dwarf and many vats of the vile, flat coal-beer brewed by goblin alchemists over the previous winter.
This was the year when Ankhar began to feel the pulse of the council, the dancing and the drumming and the sweat and the smell. By this time, of course, he was a well-recognized member of the tribe. By virtue of his blood parentage, he stood ten feet tall when he raised his head, a height that lifted him two or more feet above the largest of the hobgoblins in all the Garnet tribes. He was not a greedy soul, for he had not yet developed a taste for females or strong drink, and in these days there was plenty of food to go around, and he was often courted and feted at the campfires of all the lesser lords.
He was counseled in private by his foster mother. Laka spoke to him of many truths, truths that had been revealed to her by the Prince of Lies. Hearing these words, Ankhar began to see his own destiny and to think in terms of his own choices… his power.
Through these nights, Bonechisel watched his tribe’s adopted son with increasingly narrowed eyes. A strapping hobgoblin, the aging chieftain was still no match for the young, lumbering Ankhar. The chieftain always wore a green medallion of stone formed from the first talisman of Hiddukel that his wife had discovered, and now he fondled that glowing disk, worrying. His simple mind perceived that the youth was a menace, and no doubt he regretted that he had not taken decisive action when his prospective rival had been but an infant. Now it was too late, at least for a direct confrontation.
Although he was not the most subtle of schemers, Bonechisel began to consider other ways to deal with the hulking hill giant whom most considered his adopted son. He whispered of his wishes to several lesser chieftain, suggesting that great rewards-money, liquor, gob-wenches-might come the way of one who removed the threat from his midst. The hob was not particular: poison, a knife in the back, assault by a bloodthirsty mob, all seemed workable solutions. Unfortunately, he found no takers for his schemes, not even among the most aggressive and ambitious of the sub-lords. Several even looked askance at Bonechisel when he ventured a few hints. More than one of these would-be schemers, it may be assumed, reported the chieftain’s wishes to Laka or to Ankhar himself.
For his part the half-giant foster child was a good-hearted fellow, and avoided politics and other entanglements. He stayed out of Bonechisel’s way out of long-established habit, remembering all too well many a bruising kick, slap, or bite that he had suffered during his younger years. Of late he noticed that the chieftain had ceased to harass him directly, though he saw the brooding glances and observed the surly attitude. Ankhar willingly accepted the hospitality of the other chieftains as he made the rounds of the vast encampment. So it was that he had become known to all of them by the the last night of the great council, when the solstice itself brightened the night. It happened to be a cloudless sky, and the silvery orb of Solinari commanded the heavens and the world.
The bonfire that night was the biggest in the memory of even the oldest gob granny. Trunks of whole pine trees were stacked into an enormous tepee, and when they were ignited the heat was such that the whole circle of watchers could not close to more than three dozen paces away from the base of the fire.