Brand turned as though she'd not spoken. He retrieved his sword, belted it on, and said, "Char, make sure there's no sign of us here for anyone to find. Arawn, you and Chaser in the rear." Then he turned to Dell, his eyes glittering. "’You and Swain at the point. Let Ley and Tianna guide. We're heading east. You have a problem with that?"
Tension crackled between them, like lightning in a storm-sky. Her voice low and tight, Dell said, "I have a problem with running from an easy kill."
"Then get out of here. Take on the goblins if you like." He pointed to Elansa, his finger stabbing the air between them. "You," he said to her, "come here."
Held, she took a step but was not released. The knife's blade pressed closer to her throat.
Brand cocked his head, a slight gesture and dangerous. "Let her go, Dell."
Nearby, Char lifted his head, listening as he kicked out a campfire. In his hand Elansa saw the throwing axe that had, a moment before, been tucked into his belt. What Elansa saw, Dell did. Elansa felt it in the reluctant loosening of the woman's grip, the lifting of the knife.
"Touchy all of a sudden, aren't you, Brand?"
Brand shook his head, not to say he wasn't, to say she'd better not pursue the matter further.
With a rough shove, Dell pushed Elansa toward Char. "Here's your charge, dwarf. You know what to do."
The dwarf kept Elansa close as his own shadow while the outlaws broke camp. Each one stripped the meat from the night's leavings, stuffing it into their pouches, even marrow-bones. Char saw to it that campfire ashes were scattered, burned wood flung wide, the naked bones of last night's supper buried. In short time, two dozen outlaws departed the site of their night camp.
When she looked back over her shoulder, Elansa saw little sign that anyone had occupied that stony ground. She saw the thin gray line of the Qualinesti forest. It no longer ran beside her. Now it disappeared behind, swallowed as though the leaden sky had come down and eaten it. Throughout the long morning she thought of the goblin who had been Brand's hostage only days before. She thought of the and how the goblin’s severed head had made Brand's point to the leader of a goblin town: I despise you, and this is how much.
Should his quest for ransom fail, for whatever reason, would the outlaw send her own head back to Qualinesti, simply for the satisfaction?
Elansa did not doubt that he would.
They were twelve running north to find Stagger Stream. Twelve goblins, most of them orange-skinned, but one or two with that blue-brown hide that looks like rotting meat. They were, as Char had guessed, looking for water. Nearly every creature with any kind of sense of self-preservation was looking for water these days, but these traveled under orders. The goblin town to which they had belonged, which had lately become the headquarters of the hob they’d learned to refer to as the Great Gnash, had become too small for their new master's army. Goblins were moving into the place and drinking up the water in the puny stream that ran in the gully. Gnash wanted more water, he wanted more room, and he wanted a bigger goblin town from which to reign over the three he now ruled. He wanted four goblin towns and the seat of his power to be a new one.
Find a village fat for plunder. Find water.
Simple orders, and the twelve set out to do just that. They were the canniest scouts in Gnash’s army, clever even for their savage kind. They would find what Gnash needed, and each one was certain great reward would follow. Not advancement, for goblins don't think that far ahead. Not one of them envies the position of whichever brute may be ahead of him in power or favor. Goblins envy weapons, treasure, and possessions. When they aren't fighting and killing, goblins like to have things to use and spend.
One of these twelve, a fellow with mottled blue-brown skin, was more eager for reward than the others. He wandered a little afield. He went a little east out of his way. He thought he heard water running, and he was right. A small trickle in a dusty gulch: water. And he saw the flung bones of what at first glance seemed to be some scavenger's meal. When he looked closer, he saw that the dead thing had been a hare, and the thighbone of the eaten hare had been inexpertly cracked for the marrow.
Looking around, the enterprising goblin discovered more bones, these buried in haste. He was a quick reckoner. By the number of supper-bones he found, he supposed there had been a dozen, maybe two, camping there. He thought he should call to his fellows, and then he changed his mind. He'd been south and had not seen two dozen men traveling. Off to the west, no sign, nothing in the north. Whoever had camped here had gone east. Curious and hopeful of gain, the goblin moved off in that direction. Soon he found signs to confirm his guess, the dark splashes on earth and stone to show where travelers had relieved themselves, scraped stone where boots had glanced. And only a little while after his fellows had discovered him gone, he saw a dim line moving across the stonelands.
He stood on a high hill. He couldn't count them or see if they were elves or humans or more goblins. The latter, he doubted. Goblins don't clean a campsite, or even try to. He went down the hill, slipping along behind in shadows until he came close enough to see who traveled.
Grinning, his sharp teeth glittering in the gray light of the overcast day, the goblin thought there would be great reward for him, indeed, if he took this news to Gnash. A whole tribe of human outlaws, that stinking troop with the elf and the one-eyed dwarf and damned Brand himself, was headed east and a little north.
Interestingly, they had a prisoner, and by the look of her gear she was not a woman from a rival band. Those boots were of finest leather, her ripped blouse of silk, her cloak woven in Qualinost or near there. The goblin wondered what that meant-an elven prisoner marching carefully guarded.
Whatever it was about, he reckoned Gnash would like to know, and quickly. Not so much because the elf woman would be of more interest to him than anyone he could eventually sell down to Tarsis. He'd be interested because along with the army of the goblin Golch, who'd lost his son's head in a bad bargain, Gnash had inherited Golch’s hatred of the outlaw Brand, the feud coming to him just as had the weapons, females, and house of the unlucky Golch.
Quickly, the goblin went back along his own trail until he came to a place where it seemed best to turn south toward the goblin town. This he did, and he ran swiftly, like the shadow of a storm-driven cloud, silent on the earth. In only a day and a night of running, he came to the goblin town, and what he'd hoped turned out to be true.
The Great Gnash was, indeed, happy to hear the news that Brand was on the move. He didn't much care to wonder why this was so. What interested him was that there were only two dozen of them, and he had a newly swollen army of goblins to try out. Some of them, it might be imagined, would be anxious to prosecute the old feud between themselves and the human, and Gnash himself hadn't killed anyone since he'd overtaken this goblin town of Golch‘s.
The thing that interested Gnash most, however, was that he'd have a chance to try out a weapon he'd found away south. He'd been carrying it around since he'd discovered it, secret and hidden far beneath the mountains. It had taken a bit of figuring out. He'd done all his conquering and killing in the goblin towns along the Qualinesti border with ever-reliable steel. Now, though, Gnash thought it was time to see if what he'd discovered in darkness might prove to be worth more even than steel.
Chapter 5
Restless, Prince Kethrenan walked, pacing the paths, the byways, and the fair roads of the golden city. His cousin took quick steps to keep up, for Keth stretched his long legs with every stride as though he must put as much distance behind him as possible. Not for the first time Lindenlea thought she and the prince were well matched in spirit but not in length of leg.