Ithk move restlessly. Demlin kicked him quiet as Kethrenan squinted, trying to see. In the end, he could discern only smoke. Human village or goblin town, it didn't matter. They were outlanders, not even to be accorded the grudging respect granted such former allies as dwarves.
"Your word, my prince?" Lea asked.
"Follow Demlin."
Demlin kicked the goblin again, and Ithk set out down the slope. Tethered, he leaped from stone to stone, and he had enough slack to keep him from tripping over himself or Demlin’s mount, but no more than that.
Lindenlea called the order, her voice sharp as a blade’s edge on the icy air, her breath streaming back in frosty plumes. Side by side, the lord of Qualinesti’s warriors and his cousin sent their mounts plunging down the steep slope. They ran like quicksilver, madly galloping their horses over treacherous ground. Sunlight leaped in bright darts off their helms and mail shirts and shot from the tips of their lances.
Before all went maimed Demlin and Ithk All the way down the hill, the goblin ran as though he feared the horses would trample him, and when he reached the floor of the little vale, he stopped and scrambled onto a pile of stone high as a horse's shoulder. Quivering with cold, Ithk looked around, his head swiveling on his scrawny neck. His skin color changed to a gray hue.
Demlin cried, "My lord prince!"
Something hunched up from the snowy ground, a burned body. Kethrenan swerved his mount in time to miss another such lump, and then they saw bodies all around.
Every corpse was a goblin's corpse, and Keth guessed they'd have starved in the winter if they hadn't been killed. Killed they had been, though-some with arrows and swords, some more cruelly than that. Snow covered them, but not wholly, and Keth saw that some had been beheaded, others had had the hands cut from their wrists or their feet from their ankles. The stretched jaws showed that the severing had happened before the killing.
Across the snowy ground they saw hands thrusting up from‘the drifts, clawing as if reaching for the last of life. Faces stared up, eye sockets empty. Ravens had feasted, and all around the gore of a great massacre lay frozen, glittering with ice crystals like diamonds on ruby fields.
"Dear gods," Lindenlea whispered.
"It's Gnash’s work," Ithk said. He pointed north where smoke hung dark on the sky. "It’s him. He's makin' another goblin town his own." His mouth, lips so thin as to seem nonexistent, twisted. "These didn't like the idea, and Gnash didn't like their not likin’."
"What did he do," Lea said, "kill every one of the goblins in the town?"
Ithk shook his head. "Nah. Half these are his. Gnash, he's got the fire, and he's got the belly for killing. He does what he does. Me, I does what I does." He jerked his head toward Hammer Rock. "Brand, he been in there, first when he got yer woman, again not long ago."
Kethrenan’s blood quickened. "You know this, how?"
Ithk’s eyes shifted right, then left. "I know," he said, and only that.
Horses snorted, not liking the death-smell, the goblin-stink All around, the wind moaned low, having slid down the hillsides as though in the wake of the elven band. To Kethrenan it sounded like the voices of ghosts. Close to the pooling shadow of Hammer Rock, the prince dismounted and tossed the reins to Lindenlea.
"Wait here," he said. He pointed to Demlin and one other warrior, Lathal, a mage of the Birchbright clan. "Come with me."
With tethered Ithk, they walked into the shadows beneath Hammer Rock, and they found the way in. Lathal lit a torch, and they took the stairs.
"I smell old fires," Lathal said. He held the torch higher, and the light spread out through the darkness.
The scents of old fires became embodied in the rough rounds of stones marking long dead cookfires. In the dim light, the elves breathed and smelled, faintly, the greasy scents of cooked food and the clinging scent of rough wet wool. Guided by the goblin, they walked around the dark smudges of campfires on the stony floor. They found niches in the stone walls and burned brands scattered. Kethrenan prowled among the campfires, and he looked like a dog trailing a scent.
"My lord prince!"
Kethrenan turned to look at Demlin, the servant’s white face gleaming in the torchlight. Long eyes shone bright, and in the shadows his mouth looked like a dark gash in his face. He held up a strip of cloth: the green hem of a cloak.
It's hers.
The thought rang in Kethrenan’s heart, even before his fingers closed round the cloth, before he felt the satin underlay and saw the careful, tiny stitches running the length. Hem-stitches, lovely, for each was shaped like a tiny elven rune to signify health and luck. They were proud of their work, the tailors of Qualinost. The one who had made the cloak from which this piece had been torn had likely been very proud indeed. He'd been working for a princess.
Blood stained the scrap of cloth, a darkness soaked into the fiber, rough as a scab. The prince ran his finger over the stain and scraped it with his nail. Rusty flakes fell away, but most of it was long soaked in.
He felt it again: the coppery salt-taste at the back of his mouth, as though blood seeped thick and warm near his throat.
Ithk said, "Come with me. I'll show you what else I know."
They went through the cavern and into a narrow passage where the sound of trickling water became loud in their ears, bouncing to echo off the close stone. The little passage turned, then widened, and the torchlight threw their shadows ahead, long and dark. When the goblin looked back, his eyes glowed as a dog's eyes, eerie and orange in the dim light.
A little farther they went, until the way opened and the glow of the light glinted on running water. Here they smelled a foul combination of odors-lantern oil, perhaps, wet wool, body waste…
Demlin shot a glance at his master, and the prince shrugged. Lathal came forward past the prince, past them all. His torchlight bobbed in the air, floating; its beams illuminated a running black stream and spangled the surface with silver. The ground dropped down in two ledges like broad steps. Across the water a small trickle slipped out of a crack in the far stone wall. So long had it run that it had hollowed the rock into a shallow bowl.
The goblin trotted along the edge of the stream on Demlin’s leash. The elf lowered his torch, for day's light shafted down from the far ceiling. The roof of this cave was not solid, and upon some of the stone higher up snow had sifted in. Hemmed by silent stone, with only the voice of water and the breathing of elves, the goblin turned his back on the stream and the small fountain. He pointed toward a niche in the wall behind them, a hollowing as though a god's hand had smoothed and indented the rough wall.
"There."
Demlin’s breath hissed between his teeth. Others murmured in surprise. The faint streaming light fell upon a weapons cache. They were not fools, whoever had hidden this hoard. Oiled woolen cloaks wrapped the long blades of swords and the beaked faces of axes. None of the precious steel would rust for lack of care, even here in this damp cavern.
Ithk said, "Some o’ what Brand got off you, eh?"
Demlin yanked on the tether. The goblin staggered, but the sly light in his eyes didn't falter.
"Some, but not all. He's got it stashed all over the mountain. Some here, some other places…"
Not prepared to believe the answer, Ketluenan said, "You know them all?"
Ithk shook his head. "l know all the ones I know. Found six stashes just like this one. None north of here, all south."
All south. Brand would keep close to them. He'd be sure to stay within range of his weapon caches. Kethrenan walked round the little hoard, the small part of what Brand had stolen. He snorted, a humorless sound.
"Steel's not all they store here."
He nudged something small and round near the edge of the hoard. What he kicked had a wooden voice. The faint odor of dwarf spirits mingled with the stink of oil-soaked wool.