In the flickering light, the eyes of his servant and the shifting glance of a goblin on him, Kethrenan closed his eyes, considering his questions and receiving his answer.
Brand would try for Pax Tharkas. Kethrenan knew it, because he knew that if he were in the same position, beset by enemies, he would try for a place like Pax Tharkas. He would run there because there was no way to keep alive in the caverns, even if he knew all the ins and the outs. Sooner or later, he'd have to hunt, and the risk of that was too great. Brand wouldn't know who'd destroyed his weapons, goblins or elves. Outside, he was a hunted man. Wherever he turned, he was beset and outnumbered.
Kethrenan smiled. This one, this outlaw, knew the outnumbered man on the high ground still had a chance.
"Demlin, douse the torch and follow me."
They went out into the cold and stood on the highest part of the slope, a flat place above the mouth of the cave. Wind whipped their hair, and the goblin clutched his bearskin tight as the elves looked south across the stoneland, shading their eyes. The arms of the Kharolis Mountains reached out into the plain, dark and long. Because he knew his history, Kethrenan knew the fortress of Pax Tharkas spanned the gap between those reaching arms.
"Tell me," the elf prince said to the goblin. "Tell me all the ways you know to Pax Tharkas."
But Ithk shook his head, seemingly puzzled. "None, none. Go south, I only know that. Ain't never been to the Fortress of Ghosts. Don't go there. No one does."
The goblin wore the deepest look of sincerity, yet Kethrenan believed him not at all. Ithk knew ways-maybe secret roads through the borderland, maybe dark paths through the heart of the mountain itself. He could be forced, Kethrenan knew. He began to consider ways of doing that, of bending the goblin to his will, when Demlin’s cry rang out.
"Prince!" He pointed north and a little west. Something bright ran along the stony earth, a swift horse on a stretch of an old road long forgotten. Sunlight leaped from a shining helm and a bright shield. "A rider. It's one of ours, my prince!"
The rider ran against the wind, bright against a pall of dark smoke. Kethrenan nodded to his servant, and Demlin went bounding down the hillside, nimble as a mountain goat, leaping from stone to stone until he reached the low ground and the horses.
On the high place, the goblin shifted from foot to foot, and the elf prince watched his servant ride to meet the warrior. He heard him call out in their native language, shouting, "Friend!" He saw them meet, and he saw them confer. Demlin pointed upward and back to the prince where he stood overlooking the borderland. They turned their horses and rode to the little stream.
Kethrenan felt something on the air. He felt something like a shift in the wind, a change in fortune. He was not superstitious. He was not so devoted to the tending of gods as his lost wife was. Still, he felt something moving, luck or fate.
He went down the hill and kept the goblin at his side. When the messenger said he had word from Lindenlea, Kethrenan tethered Ithk and moved out of earshot. This he did because Demlin reminded him to.
"You think he's one of us, like us in his need for vengeance. He isn't, my lord prince. He's a goblin. I know what your cousin said about how the Stone in the temple showed him to be a liar about something. Don't mistake him, he isn't serving you."
Kethrenan didn't mistake the goblin. He tethered him and went aside to hear the warrior’s message. It was from Lindenlea.
"Have a care, cousin. The hob Gnash is taking his army to Pax Tharkas, all of them burning along the way. If you go much farther south, you'll be caught between the fortress and him."
Kethrenan heard, and he looked once at Demlin, maimed Demlin who had ridden this quest beside him since the first snow broke the grip of the killing cold. "I know," said the servant to his master. "We must go back to the army."
They had to, for they must stop the hobgoblin before he reached Pax Tharkas.
Chapter 14
Ithk’s every thought and plan was inspired by one passion: vengeance.
They didn't think so, the elves. The bastard elves thought he was driven by some kind of treachery, some kind of Gnash-inspired betrayal. He wasn't. Vengeance inspired him, the only true passion he knew. The elves didn't think goblins had hearts. Some few said they had lean hearts. Well, maybe there they were right. Lean hearts, hard hearts, the kind of hearts that liked to kill and take and grab. But their passion, that was vengeance, and they considered it a noble passion.
That was Gnash’s shame and weakness, that he'd put aside the long feud with Brand for ambition. Now ambition was good, and greed was better, but vengeance-well, if goblins had poets, they'd be singing of revenges taken. Gnash would get no song of a goblin poet. Gnash thought of his own glory and let feuds fall. Ithk knew this wasn't the case with feuds. A feud, once lifted, must never be put down unless upon the corpse of the enemy.
And so he'd hunted in the stonelands all through the winter, hunted for Brand when no one else dared the cold or the wind. He'd sheltered in caves, he'd sneaked and he'd skulked, and he'd seen the outlaws at their work of hiding stolen weapons. One goblin against all of them was no chance Ithk would take, and so he'd made a plan. He went to the elves, who had good reason to hate Brand, and promised to lead them to him, the only fee required was that he alone be allowed to kill the outlaw. Kethrenan had agreed. Maybe it had sounded like a good bargain to him, and would have been if Ithk had been minded to keep it. Ithk had other ideas, and he didn't intend that Kethrenan should come back from this venture alive or with his woman. The elf would do the hard work for him, stripping Brand of all his weapons, closing up his hiding holes, then Ithk would be rid of Kethrenan and his servant at the gates of Pax Tharkas. He'd have help at that. He'd thought it might be a good idea to have a way back to Gnash. He hadn't liked what had happened to poor Golch the Beheaded, but the idea of imitating the deed and returning to Gnash with an elf prince's head in a sack seemed like a good one to keep in reserve.
But the damn elf broke the bargain before Ithk could, riding off to his army to stop Gnash from reaching Pax Tharkas. Damn Gnash.
But he had a single mind, did Ithk. He cursed, and he reworked his plan. It was, for him, all about vengeance. Jogging along beside the maimed elf, tethered again, he regretted the lost chance of killing them. He hated the smell of them, the forest-stink clinging to their clothing, their hair, their gear. They reeked of temple incense and scented candles, and they reeked of-Ithk almost gagged--perfumes, soap, and other vile scents. But as he ran along beside the tall horse, he knew that killing would have been pleasure-killing, after all. What he really wanted was to kill for revenge. More than anything he wanted to kill Brand.
Brand had done great slaughter of goblins in his time, and he'd made no secret that he'd liked that killing. He'd killed Ithk’s brother, his father, and his… well, they were probably his cousins, those orange-skinned idiots who'd got in Brand's way up around the Notch last year. Cousins, or close enough, and Brand had killed them. He hadn't hacked off their heads like Golch the Beheaded, but he'd killed them just the same. Wasn't anyone, Ithk thought, in all of Golch’s army-or, Gnash’s now-who couldn't say the same thing about Brand. And he laughed, doing it, the killing.
Ithk hated him, and he'd been happy to trot along after the bastard elves as long as he thought that would get him to Brand and the slaking of his vengeance. Now it looked like that wasn't going to happen. Now it looked like they had other things to do, or other ways to get the woman back. Ithk didn't know. He wasn't privy to their talk, tethered and running and keeping his eye out for stones and gullies and ruts for fear of falling and being dragged.