I looked around the room. There was a door to the right, apparently leading to the stables. The wood was gray with age and appeared ready to fall apart. It opened with ease.
Beyond the doorway it was very dark. I walked carefully to avoid stumbling over bodies that might be in the way. I didn't find any until I got into the stables themselves.
The hobgoblins had apparently cleaned up the stables and made them into a tidy home. Gray light leaked in from small holes in the ceiling and outer walls. The interior walls had long ago rotted away, but the hobgoblins had shoveled the debris with great efficiency. An ash-filled circle of stones served as a seat by a fire pit. A large mass of rotting cloth, half covering a pile of dry leaves, appeared to make up a bed. It was sufficient, if not cozy.
The body near the fire pit was the room's only occupant. I knelt down by it and took a long look. In life, it would have been the biggest hobgoblin I could have ever imagined — a head and a half taller than me. Even in the near darkness, I could still see a massive burned spot across the front of his hide armor. I'd seen its like only once before, when storm lightning had killed one of my uncle's horses in its pasture.
I looked up. The stables' roof was solid.
On impulse, I got up and walked over to the bed, searching the rags until I found a suitably long strip of cloth. This I wrapped around my chest with a bunched-up rag covering the bolt wound, then tied it off. I tried a few words and discovered that I could speak almost normally now, though I still sounded as if I had rocks in my throat instead of vocal cords.
"Thought I heard you talkin' to yourself," Orun muttered when I came outside. He'd moved closer to the barracks doorway, but the stench was obviously getting to him. He held his nose until he was away from it. "Any ideas what happened to our hob buddies?" He indicated the doorway with the axe.
I shook my head. The dwarf frowned and looked around. "What did for 'em?" he asked absently, then turned back to me. "There anyone else in there 'sides hobs?"
I shook my head no.
"No sign o' another dwarf, maybe? Kinda whitelookin' one, real ugly?"
Again, I shook my head, but more slowly. "Why?"
Orun looked away at the fort and mumbled something that I didn't catch.
"Sewer?" I repeated.
"No," he said in disgust, setting his axe down to rub his hands together. "Damn that runt. Theiwar."
The name was familiar. It had to do with a race of dwarves, I recalled. "Theiwar?"
"Jackals," he said thickly. "All of 'em are. Call 'emselves true dwarves, but no relation I ever heard of. Some of 'em throw spells, the tougher ones do. Never let a Theiwar get behind you 'less he's already dead, and then you'd still better think about it. Born for evil, all of 'em."
A dwarf that threw spells? I'd never heard of such a thing, but I was beyond the point of disbelieving almost anything now that I was dead. "What kind of spells?" I asked.
"Oh," he said, "all sorts. Some of 'em's killer-type spells. Poison-gas spell's one of 'em. Could be what did for our hob buddies in there." He indicated the barracks. "Don't know what all they can do."
"You're hunting a Theiwar?"
Orun grinned self-consciously. "Funny you ask. Am at that." He looked up at me. "Bounty hunter. Come from Kaolyn. You know Kaolyn? Nice place."
Kaolyn was a respectable dwarven mountain kingdom, about eighty miles southwest of Twisting Creek. "Why hunt a Theiwar?"
He stroked his damp beard. "Traitor to Kaolyn. Supposed to've been spyin' on the draconians and hobs for us, chiselin' out a few when he could. Some Theiwar'll help you for the love of steel in their hands; some'll help you for the love of killin'. We put 'em to use." He sighed. "Gotta be done. War is war."
"What happened?"
Orun snorted. "Loved the killin' part too much, that one. Wanted more for 'imself. Sold out to the Blue Dragonarmy, east of here, and got to spyin' on us instead. We caught on and went after 'im. Got away with a band of hobs, and I bet these are them. Same armor, same tribal markin's." He reached up and rubbed his eyes with his broad fingers. "Don't know if he was the one who did for his own band, or why. Been the Dark Queen's own spawn to catch, that's for sure. Got real good with them 'lusions, changing his looks and all." He glanced down at his spikebacked axe, lying against his leg, then picked it up and hefted it, feeling its weight. "Sure was lookin' forward to meetin' 'im."
"What was his name?"
"The Theiwar? Garith. No last name."
My curiosity was aflame. Could it have been the same Garith I'd heard the hobgoblins talking about? I was on the verge of asking more when everything inside my head changed.
The sun had just set. The darkness had diminished perceptibly within the last few moments, but I knew on an even deeper level that the sun had gone. Something inside me woke up. It was like seeing and hearing after being born without eyes or ears. It was as if I knew everything now, everything that really mattered.
"Evredd?" Orun called as I left the fort. "Evredd!" I heard him swear loudly, then hurry after me with a hardthumping gait.
I went to the edge of the cliff overlooking the place where I had been killed. There, past the bodies of the two hobgoblins, I stopped and gazed out to the southwest. Strength gathered in my limbs. My hands began to itch, and my fingers curled and uncurled uncontrollably.
All of a sudden I knew: I needed to head southwest as quickly as I could.
"Damn, you move fast for a dead boy," huffed Orun as he stopped behind me about twenty feet back. "You on to somethin', ain't you? I hear if you a rev'nant, you can smell your killer in the dark. You smell your boy out there?"
I turned and looked back at the dwarf. Another hand or two might be useful for what was coming.
"Follow me," I said, and started for the trail. I kept my stride slow so that Orun could keep up, but even then he had to jog. He followed and peppered me with questions that I ignored, then swore outrageously in frustration.
Ahead of me, miles away in the falling darkness, I sensed a presence moving. It wasn't really smell, and my night-awakened senses couldn't tell me who my killer was, but I knew where he was, exactly where.
If I hurried, maybe he and I could chat.
We walked for the entire night over lightly forested plains and across shallow streams. Orun kept up the pace beside me until he puffed like a horse, his chain-mail armor jingling rapidly as he moved. "Tired yet?" he asked once, but I never responded. The killer was ahead of us by a long distance.
"Doing okay myself," Orun said, sometime later. "Did this durin' the war. Marched two days once and never stopped." His words were almost lost as his breath gave out for a moment. "Fought an army o' hobs with my brothers right after that. Whipped 'em in one hour. Ran 'em right off into a canyon. Good day, you bet."
I said nothing. I was straining to see what else I could detect about my killer. I let my mind be open to everything.
"Like I said, I'm from Kaolyn," Orun went on, between his panting. "You know Kaolyn — up in the Garnets, nice place. I tell you that? Came out to see the world and fight in the war, been here and there ever since. You been to Kaolyn? Gotta see it sometime." I heard Orun pull free of a briar that caught his cloak. His armor clinked like a background song. "Real pretty in the spring."
The dwarf was silent before he asked, in a different tone, "Smell your killer man?"
I said nothing.
"Too damn nosy, that's me," he said with a sigh as he trotted along. "That's what they always said back at Kaolyn. Too damn nosy. I — "