“Then this may be your last chance.”
“Last chance for what?” Rap did not want to raise his voice, and yet obviously the fire and the sound of his ax had already proclaimed their location like a carillon.
“Your last chance to share your word with me, of course. An adept would be in no danger, but I doubt that my talent will work well enough on these fellows. Spit it out, Rap! Quick!”
“I have no word!” Rap protested, horrified. Had Andor been thinking him a liar all this time?
Andor threw down the knife he had been using on the pemmican and put his mitted hands on his knees. “Last chance, Master Rap!”
“Andor…” Rap felt his world crumbling. His terror of the goblins faded before a heartbreaking sense of betrayal. “Is this all a trick? The king isn’t dying?”
“Oh, he’s dying. That doesn’t matter much now, does it? You know what the goblins will do to us, don’t you?”
They were closing in now, the circle shrinking. Yet eyes could not have detected them, and they made no sound. Only a seer could have known.
Rap wavered on the brink of panic.
“I have no word to tell! You tell me yours, then! If I do have one, then two will make me an adept, won’t it? Then I can save us!”
Ander uttered a snort of derision. “Not likely!” He climbed to his feet. “Which way are they coming?”
Rap searched with his mind. The circle had stopped shrinking and there was a knot of men advancing. “That way.”
“You’re quite sure you won’t tell me? It would be nicer than having bits pulled off.”
“I can’t! Tell me yours!”
Andor shook his head in exasperation. “That wouldn’t work! You’d need time to learn to control it. I don’t even need to become an adept, really—not for this. All I need your word for is to boost the talent I already have, more power. Then I’ll win over the goblins, and we’ll be made welcome. So you have to tell me yours, don’t you see?”
Talent? Win? How could he have ignored the obvious for so long? “It’s not just girls, is it?” Rap said bitterly. “It’s all people. Men, too. You tricked me.” Andor had done to Rap what Rap had done to Firedragon’s mares. Thief! Traitor!
Andor shrugged heavy, furred shoulders. “The goblins are no trick, and I don’t intend to stay around to entertain them. You’re being foolish, Master Rap.”
Then he turned to face the arrivals.
Three shadowy figures had emerged from the dark into the edge of the firelight, visible even to eyes.
If goblins valued courage, then they were not going to be impressed by Rap’s quivering jaw, or the way he was keeping his knees pressed together. He resisted the temptation to sidle in behind Andor and hide.
The three came slowly closer, spears raised, inspecting their catch with care. They were short and very broad. They wore jerkins and trousers and boots, but made of buckskin instead of fur, gaudily decorated with fringes and beadwork. The fire’s glimmer showed hard, unfriendly faces, dark-skinned and marked by complicated tattoo patterns around the eyes.
The one in the center seemed older than the others. He had the most ornate decorations on his clothes and on his face, and he spoke first, barking out a question that Rap could not understand, accompanied by a threatening movement of the spear.
Andor seemed to straighten up, tall and imposing. He rolled off a long answer in the same tongue, and his voice was harsher and much deeper than usual. Rap jumped with surprise when he heard it. It had never occurred to him that the goblins spoke another language.
Then he wondered how Andor knew it.
The spear points dipped slightly. The leader spoke another question, sounding surprised.
Andor replied and pointed to his face. Now Rap could catch a word or two. It was a strangely coarse dialect, but not a totally different tongue.
The chief snapped an order to his two companions and then advanced alone, holding his spear at waist height now. He peered up into Andor’s hood.
Rap had just noticed that he could barely see over Andor’s shoulder. Andor was much taller than he ought to be and certainly much broader. His parka strained over massive arms and shoulders. He looked wrong to Rap’s eyes, and also to his farsight. There was a bigger man in there than Andor.
The chief had rattled off more questions, Andor replying. The chief showed irregular teeth in a broad grin. He reached out a mitt and turned Andor around. He wanted to see Andor’s tattoos in the firelight, but in doing so he showed that face to Rap.
It was not Andor. It was a huge man, a man with the ugliest and most terrifying face Rap had ever seen—nose crushed over to one side, one corner of his mouth lifted by a scar, the corner of one eye pulled awry by another. Andor’s dark, stubbly beard had vanished—this man looked newly shaved. He was not a goblin, but he had goblin tattoos around his eyes—pale jotunn’s eyes, which now met Rap’s and crinkled with contemptuous amusement. He grinned. His front teeth were missing, top and bottom, giving him a most hideous and sinister wolfish leer.
Rap backed away in dismay, almost into the campfire. “Where is Andor?”
“You won’t be seeing him again, not likely.”
Rap’s heart was spinning, and he thought he might be going to faint. Andor had been there only minutes before. “Who are you?” he cried.!
“A friend of his,” the big man said. “I’m Darad. You were warned about me.”
5
The chief inspected Darad’s tattoos by the trembling light of the campfire and apparently approved of them. He smiled and dropped his spear, attempted to embrace the giant, and received a bear hug in return. That ought to be a good sign for Darad, but who was going to hug Rap?
The chief’s two companions were smiling also and coming forward for introductions and more embraces. The rest of the goblins floated in from the trees, silent as moonbeams, appearing suddenly in the firelight like ghosts. They were younger men, mostly, bearing spears or bows, and all wearing the same fringed and beaded buckskins.
What was going on? Obviously there was some sort of sorcery at work, yet Andor was most certainly not a sorcerer. Sorcerers need not endure the hardships of long days' trekking through the wastelands; they had abilities to avoid such dangers and discomfort. If Andor was a sorcerer and wanted that damnable magic word that he thought Rap possessed, he would surely have revealed his powers sooner.
And who was this Darad, against whom Jalon had warned him, this Darad who so conveniently bore goblins' tattoos and spoke their tongue? Rap trembled as he thought of Kranderbad and the others who had tried to fight Andor and had then been so callously maimed. The idea that the soft-spoken, kindly Andor might commit such atrocities, even in the heat of a fight, was just as unthinkable as the notion that he might be a sorcerer. Darad, however, looked capable of anything. Perhaps Darad was a demon that came to Andor’s rescue when he was in trouble. If so, and if the goblins were going to be friendly, would Andor now reappear?
But the goblins were not being totally friendly. The four horses had been caught and led forward into the firelight, tugged unwillingly by their manes; too weak and dispirited to resist. Darad and the chief were in guttural argument with much pointing and waving of hands. As the voices rose, Rap began to catch a few of the words: horse and four and saddle. The old chief turned and looked at Rap, who quivered instantly and reminded himself sternly that goblins respected courage. The thought brought him little comfort.
The chief asked a question, Darad replied. Rap made out his own name, but little else. The argument seemed to go back to the horses, then to him again.
Darad stepped over, took Rap’s arm in a grip that made his bones creak, and turned him away from the fire, toward the dark of the forest.