Ragh narrowly avoided a spear thrust from one hobgoblin and nearly tripped over Yagmurth. His hobgoblin foe jabbed his spear again, this time scraping Ragh’s ribcage.
“I felt that!” Ragh grunted.
Smirking, the hobgoblin redoubled his effort.
All around him goblins and hobgoblins were shouting and fighting. A few feet away, Fiona was still squared off against her big hobgoblin. Just at that moment, she lunged in and sliced at the hobgoblin’s hands, shearing off a few of its fingers. The hobgoblin howled and flailed wildly, trying to push Fiona back with a charge, but at the same time it was assailed by a flurry of goblins, stabbing at its legs with their short spears.
“The creature is mine!” Fiona yelled. She drew her lips into a tight line and delivered more blows. The first finished her opponent, but the press of goblins held the creature up with their incessant stabbing until one of her swings lopped its head off.
“Victory!” Yagmurth howled again. “Ours is victory!”
Ragh’s opponent threw back his head and screamed a string of obscenities as he saw Fiona finish off his comrade. He screamed louder as the corpse was quickly swarmed by goblins.
Ragh’s opponent was the last hobgoblin on his feet. “You’re too far from the village,” Ragh hissed.
“Too far for anyone to hear your alarm.” The draconian dropped beneath a spear thrust, then darted in so close the hobgoblin’s long weapon was ineffective. Ragh stretched a hand up to the creature’s throat, slashing wildly with his claws, tugging his opponent down, and biting down on the hobgoblin’s neck.
“Foul monster!” Fiona shouted, as she waded in to help.
“Foul tasting,” the draconian said as he spat out a chunk of hair-covered skin. “Filthy, flea-ridden beast.” He stepped away as the hobgoblin fell backward. Fiona stabbed it to be certain it was dead, and the goblins swarmed over it, tearing it to bloody pieces.
“Yagmurth,” Ragh said, pushing his way through the goblin throng.
The old goblin struggled to reach the draconian, tugging along with him a small goblin, possibly his son, whom he was scolding for taking part in the unseemly rending.
“Good job,” Ragh said.
The old goblin smiled and ran his leathery tongue over his teeth. “Some places goblins and hobgoblins are kin,” Yagmurth said, “but not in Goblin Home. Here we are enemies.” He expounded on the situation.
Ragh missed a few of the words, ones stemming from a dialect he wasn’t familiar with, but he learned that the majority of hobgoblin tribes in Throt had thrown their lot in with the Knights of Takhisis, serving as soldiers, as errand-runners, taking land from goblins once their allies at human behest.
“So the Knights of Takhisis want this town guarded by the hobgoblins for some reason,” Ragh mused.
Ragh brushed several goblins aside to stare at the homely visage of the hobgoblin he’d fought and killed.
The draconian closed his eyes and shut out the awestruck murmurs of his goblin-followers and focused on his inner magic.
Moments passed before Ragh’s form shimmered like molten silver. The draconian’s legs and arms became thinner and longer, his fingers crooked like twigs, his chest broadened into a barrel shape. The silvery scales lost their shine and turned into a splotchy, reddish-brown hide. A moment more and that hide was covered with coarse, uneven hair. His ears grew long and pointed, his snout became broader and shorter, and his tail all but vanished. His eyes flashed, then became dull and wide-set.
Ragh, like all sivaks, was able to assume the form of any creature he killed. He did not employ this talent much. He greatly preferred his draconian body and was proud of the way his keen sivak eyes perceived the world. A hobgoblin had a disconcertingly narrow range of vision because of the close-set placement of its eyes.
Ragh flexed hobgoblin arm and leg muscles, finding them adequate but clumsy. The hands, especially, took some getting used to. The fingers were too long. He twisted his neck this way and that and rotated his shoulders, trying to feel comfortable.
“Wretched creature,” the draconian observed. “Unfortunate, pathetic creature.” But taking on the body of the hobgoblin could prove advantageous, Ragh explained to the amazed goblins.
“Perfect child of our revered god,” Yagmurth said, bowing respectfully.
Ragh snorted in amusement. When he spoke to Yagmurth now, his voice was different—still hoarse but deeper and somewhat unpleasant to his pointy ears.
“You are most powerful and most wise, Ragh—greatest of Takhisis’ creations,” repeated Yagmurth.
“I am most… something,” Ragh returned with a chuckle. “Here’s what I intend to do.”
“What did you tell him?” Fiona demanded when he had finished in the goblin tongue, and his army had ceased their chattering. “And just what did he say to you?”
“I told him I intend to stroll into the hobgoblin camp and see just how many are in their force and why the village is under guard. Then I’ll lure some of the beasts out so you can bloody your sword some more.”
“Acceptable,” she pronounced after thinking for a moment. “Do not tarry long. We must make sure that Riki and her baby are safe, then I must go after Dhamon before his tracks are old. He must pay.”
“Of course he must pay,” Ragh muttered, shaking his hobgoblin head as he lumbered away, his goblin entourage falling in line behind him and trying to shush each other. “Follow me,” he called over his shoulder, “and I’ll show you where to hide and wait.”
Fiona stared at the hobgoblin corpses and the bodies of eight goblins that had been left behind. She hurriedly covered them all up with fallen branches, then followed after the goblins. “Dhamon will pay,” she said to herself.
In less than an hour, Ragh encountered two more sentries and quietly dispatched them, making his way into the hobgoblin camp. There he learned that more than sixty hobgoblins were on duty. It was a small force but equal to the number of dwellers in the village. Sixty was certainly more than his ragtag two dozen goblins.
Too, Ragh learned, the people in the village boasted no real weapons. The hobgoblins had expropriated all their swords, spears, and bows. They left the villagers a few knives for cooking, but the village was unarmed, defenseless.
Engaging a tired and unsuspecting hobgoblin in conversation, Ragh drew out this intelligence, that the hobgoblin force had blockaded the village on the Knights of Takhisis’ orders because most of the village residents were Solamnic or Legion of Steel sympathizers. Several locals had passed information to enemies of the Knights of Takhisis and had harbored spies in the past. The hobgoblins had been ordered to kill any Solamnics or Legion of Steel Knights they captured, as a warning to nearby villages.
Ragh recalled that Riki’s husband had past ties to the Legion of Steel and guessed that might be why his young family was here. Varek probably kept up his old allegiances.
“I’ll trick some of the hobgoblins into following me to this stand of trees,” Ragh explained to the assembled goblin army. He repeated his comments in Common for Fiona. “I expect you and your people to ambush them, Yagmurth, but let Fiona, the human woman, tackle the biggest ones.” He also said in Goblin but didn’t translate into common tongue, “Let the woman-slave take on the most dangerous of the hobgoblins. That way you’ll be safe. Her life is not as valuable as yours.” He didn’t have the heart to tell Yagmurth that Fiona was a better fighter than any dozen of them.
The draconian posing as a hobgoblin had stolen a suit of armor that was a mix of chain and plate.
During his spying expedition, Ragh had found the general of the hobgoblins and had tricked him into going behind a rise. There the draconian slew him and assumed his body. This bigger hobgoblin body was a little more pleasing to the draconian, for the general was in better shape than the sentry. However, he was saddled with slightly bowed legs on which he couldn’t quite walk comfortably.