The Dwarf Kingdoms (Book 5) (5 page)

Making no more sound than shadows, the three Goblins spread out and began to walk in the same direction taken by the lupins. Behind his oak tree, Elerian hesitated a moment, unsure of what to do next.

“I should have come better prepared,” he silently berated himself. “A bow would have been more useful than my two knives. Still, I must do what I can. With their keens noses, the lupins are almost certain to discover Ascilius’s company. If the Goblins report to their commander that there are Dwarves afoot in the forest all is lost.”

Taking care not to make the slightest sound, Elerian began to follow the enemy scouts.

A BRUSH WITH DEATH

Unaware that they were being followed, the two Mordi archers gradually fell back until they were out of earshot of the Uruc leading them. Elerian could not help but admire the way they slipped silently through the forest, as at home in it as any of the wild creatures that lived there. Their pointed ears and dark eyes kept them informed of all that went on around them, but they were not sufficiently keen to detect the deadly foe who followed so closely behind them.

“I wish we could slip away from here and be on our own, Brada,” Elerian heard one of the Wood Goblins whisper softly. “I grow weary of being under the thumb of these high and mighty Urucs. We Mordi toil and die while they stand by and garner all the rewards. Torquatus ever favors his Urucs over the poor Wood Goblins.”

“He gives us Man meat and Dwarf to eat, Lurio,” Brada reminded his companion. “What could be better?”

“Meat that is not thin and starved,” hissed Lurio angrily. “These slaves they give us are so far gone they barely jump when you stick a knife in them, and the flesh is wasted from their bones. I want fresh, plump meat that screams and bleeds when you torture it. What better sauce is there for the appetite than the fear and horror engendered in a fit captive by a proper flaying, a slow roast over the coals, fingernails plucked slowly and delicately one by one, or the crunch of bones slowly broken?”

Unseen and unheard, Elerian watched with disgust as Lurio licked his thin lips and fangs with a long, pointed tongue, as if remembering past feasts and the tortures associated with them.

“I agree with you,” replied Brada hungrily, “but remember that Torquatus destroyed the Elves who were our chief enemies and that soon he will rule all of the Middle Realm. Even the Mordi will share in the bounty then.”

“Do not believe all that you hear,” whispered Lurio contemptuously. “There are rumors that the war is not going well. I have heard that the horse herders crushed our forces in Tarsius, slaying countless Mordi and mutare, and you have seen for yourself that the Dwarves of Galenus continue to resist our every attack. If things turn sour, I mean to jump ship. There are still places in the Broken Lands out of the Dark King’s reach.”

“You'd best keep that thought to yourself,” said Brada in an uneasy voice. “You never know where Torquatus is going to pop up. I was playing with a prisoner one time trying to get information and when I looked up there he was, hanging in the air as if he was looking at me through a window and enjoying the show.”

“Cut the chatter and pay attention,” Gorgonius suddenly snarled over his right shoulder before Brada could reply. The two Mordi immediately fell into a sullen silence. Following like a shadow behind the Wood Goblins, Elerian knew that he could delay no longer.

“I must take them now while they are preoccupied with their anger,” he thought to himself. His mind made up, he rushed silently up behind the two archers, a silver-hafted knife in each hand. There were two brief flashes of white light as the blades struck home, each one burying itself in the base of a Mordi’s slender neck. Warned by the sound of the limp bodies of the Wood Goblins falling heavily to the ground Gorgonius spun around to confront Elerian. Deceived by the illusion spell that Elerian wore as a matter of habit, he mistook him for a Tarsi.

“I do not know from whence you have sprung, horse herder,” Gorgonius hissed, glaring contemptuously at Elerian, “but those blades will not protect you from my wrath. Be assured that your death will not be an easy one.”

Casting aside his bow, Gorgonius drew two black bladed knives from his belt, holding one in each of his long hands.

“My knives will give me no advantage in this contest,” was Elerian’s wary thought when he examined the Uruc’s weapons, for intricate threads of argentum suffused with a crimson glow were inlaid in their blades.

 The victor of hundreds of knife fights over the course of his long life, Gorgonius approached Elerian with a fluid, confident stride, his pointed teeth bared in anticipation. Just out of knife range, he turned smoothly sideways, standing lightly balanced on the balls of his feet with his right foot forward. Right arm extended, he menaced Elerian with the long knife he held point up in his right hand. His left hand was hidden behind his back. Elerian’s eyes narrowed when he saw the black, viscous material coating the edge of the Uruc’s blade.

“His knives are poisoned,” thought Elerian to himself. “One scratch will slow me down enough for this creature to slay me, however slowly he wishes to do it.” 

With blinding speed and snakelike grace, Gorgonius suddenly sprang ferociously at Elerian, striking first with the blade in his right hand and then with his hidden blade. The ring of steel on steel filled the night air and then suddenly ceased as Elerian and Gorgonius locked both their knives together at the hilts. For a moment, the four blades grated harshly together as Elerian and the Goblin strained powerfully against the other. The Uruc’s eyes suddenly shone with a crimson light as the knife in Elerian’s left hand flew into the air, loosened from his grip by a powerful, clever wrench of Gorgonius’s right hand and wrist.

“He is stronger than any Goblin I have ever faced before,” thought Elerian to himself without panic as he deftly grasped Gorgonius’s right wrist with his left hand. With a sudden surge of the sinewy muscles in his hand and arm he tried to break it, but the steely muscles beneath the Uruc’s pale skin resisted his every effort. Eyes burning like coals and the tendons in his neck standing out like cables, Gorgonius struggled mightily to free his right hand from Elerian's iron grip on his wrist. Well versed in the ways of Goblin infighting, Elerian kept his eyes on the Uruc’s face. When Gorgonius suddenly thrust his head forward, intending to bury his sharp teeth in Elerian's throat, Elerian cracked his forehead against the Goblin's, momentarily stunning the Uruc. Dropping suddenly backwards, Elerian pulled Gorgonius with him, tugging mightily on the Goblin’s right wrist with his left hand.

When his back struck the ground, Elerian planted both his feet in the surprised Uruc’s stomach. Releasing the Goblin’s wrist, he thrust powerfully with both legs. As Gorgonius flew through the air over him, Elerian heard the brief grate of steel as the knives they still held locked together came apart. Gorgonius twisted like a cat in midair, intending to land on his feet, but Elerian had cleverly directed him toward a chestnut tree whose thick trunk rose up like a woody wall before him. Before he could land on his feet, The Uruc’s face and chest struck the tree’s rough bark, stunning him and driving the breath from his lungs. As the Goblin slowly turned around on unsteady legs, both knives still gripped in his long hands, Elerian leaped lithely to his feet and hurled Rasor through the air with his right hand. The knife’s slender, leaf shaped blade buried itself to the hilt in the left side of Gorgonius’s chest, piercing his heart.

For an instant, the Uruc stared in disbelief at the knife hilt protruding from his chest, unable to comprehend that his wicked days had finally come to an end. Then, a look of insane rage in his crimson eyes, he cast both his knives at Elerian. With an inhuman quickness, Elerian twisted his body to his left. One Goblin knife fanned his face with the wind of its passage. The second blade scored the leather tunic covering his chest, leaving behind a smear of viscous poison.

With cold gray eyes, Elerian watched as the scarlet fire slowly died in Gorgonius's eyes. When he was sure the Goblin had breathed his last, he pulled Rasor from the Uruc’s chest with his right hand, the magical blade emerging bright and unstained by the black blood that flowed from the wound it had inflicted. Carefully, Elerian slipped Rasor beneath the iron collar the Goblin wore around his neck. When he cut through the dark iron with a sudden flick of his wrist, the argentum inlaid in Rasor’s blade flared white, and Elerian felt a sudden drain on his power. He struck again and the collar fell to the ground in two pieces, its power broken.

“Only luck saved me in this encounter,” thought Elerian somberly to himself as he straightened up and examined the poisoned stained slash on his leather tunic. The leather was cut completely through. Only the thickness of the linen shirt he wore beneath it had separated his flesh from the Uruc’s poisoned blade. As he carefully cleaned the venom from his tunic with a handful of leaves, his thoughts turned to the two lupins which were still somewhere ahead of him. By now, they might have already discovered the presence of the Dwarves on the hidden road.

“They must be dealt with before they alert their masters to the presence of Ascilius’s company,” thought Elerian to himself, “but I cannot do it in the shape that I am wearing now.”

After retrieving Acer from where it had fallen, he hid both his knives in a clump of ferns. He then took the time to throw the bodies of the three Goblins he had slain into a deep ravine, covering them with leaves to conceal them. Elerian buried the collar in with them, using a stick to pick it up, for he did not want to handle it in any way. Casting a shape-changing spell, he then transformed himself into the familiar form of a large gray panther. His powers of scent in this body were not as acute as a lupin's, but he was still able to pick up the unpleasant odor of the shape changers where their scent lay thickly on the ground ahead of him. Moving on padded feet, he followed the two lupins higher into the hills. When he was close to the Dwarf road, Elerian bunched his powerful, supple muscles and leaped high onto the trunk of a mighty oak. Digging into the fissured bark with his powerful claws, he drew himself up into the tree's thick branches until he was high above the forest floor with a network of thick branches spread out before him. Padding silently over the rough bark of the limbs, he made his surefooted way from tree to tree, bridging any gaps with long, graceful leaps.

Elerian found the lupins a short distance from the road and the sleeping Dwarves. As he crept over the pair on a wide branch, he smelled the fresh scent of blood in the air. Looking over the edge of the limb, he saw that, nearly twenty feet below him, the two lupins were crouched over a Dwarf, who lay unmoving on the ground between them with his throat torn out. The shape changers were quietly lapping up his still flowing blood with their long red tongues, their eyes glowing like coals in the dark.

Baring his teeth in anger, Elerian stepped off the branch. After plummeting silently through the air, he landed squarely astride one of the lupins. A quick bite behind the head, a shake of his own head and powerful neck, and the Goblin was dead. As Elerian released the foul, fur-covered skin of the lupin, the creature’s companion lunged forward, seizing him by the throat with its powerful jaws. He tried to shake it off, but the lupin clung stubbornly to his neck, its powerful jaws grinding closer and closer to the great veins in his neck. Desperately, Elerian tried to strike at the shape changer with his front paws, but the crafty creature, whose strength matched his own, pulled him off balance whenever one of his feet left the ground. Unable to breath, Elerian felt himself weakening. He tried to form a spell, but a red haze now filled his mind and the words refused to come to him.

“My luck has finally run out,” was his last coherent thought.

Sensing that his enemy was weakening, the lupin squeezed its jaws tighter, savoring the blood now flowing into its jaws from the wounds its sharp teeth had inflicted on Elerian’s throat. Then the shape changer’s pleasure abruptly turned to panic when a pair of powerful hands suddenly seized it by the neck, and steely fingers, hardened by years of toil, closed off its windpipe. Squirming frantically to free itself, the lupin let go of Elerian and tried to reach over its right shoulder with its jaws in an attempt to rend this new enemy with its long fangs.

Clamping his powerful fingers tighter around the lupin’s hairy neck, Ascilius stiffened his arms, preventing the desperate shape changer from reaching him with its jaws. Pin points of red floated in his dark eyes as he continued to throttle his enemy, his hatred of the Goblins and all their allies lending even more strength to his immensely powerful hands and arms. Then, as if from a great distance, he heard Elerian speak in his rough panther’s voice.

“You can let go now, Ascilius, unless you mean to squeeze the creature’s head clean off its neck.”

Coming back to himself, Ascilius easily cast the heavy, limp body of the lupin off to his right. He frowned at the great cat crouched at his feet, a disapproving look on his face.

 “I see you still managed to find trouble in spite of my warnings,” said Ascilius reprovingly. “It is fortunate that I was making the rounds of the sentries and heard the sound of your struggle with the lupin.”

“Say rather that trouble found me,” replied Elerian dryly, his breathing still labored from his exertions. Blood stained the sleek gray fur on the sides of his neck, flowing in crimson streams from the wounds the lupin had inflicted on his throat. Even as Ascilius watched, the deep punctures stopped bleeding and closed over as Elerian healed himself. Ascilius waited patiently until Elerian was done, knowing that his companion would be withdrawn and silent during the healing process. Abruptly, Elerian’s panther shape became fluid as his body flowed back into his native form. A moment later his Elven features were masked by the illusion he wore out of habit, so that once more Elerian resembled a middle aged man with dark, graying hair and clear gray eyes.

“I encountered a party of Goblins near the river that were making straight for your company of Dwarves,” said Elerian to Ascilius. “I slew three of them, but these two managed to reach the road. They killed this unfortunate fellow before I caught up with them.”

“His name is Bolanus,” said Ascilius sadly as he closed the dead Dwarf's eyes with gentle fingers. “It is a short season for some with an early harvest at the end of it. His death likely saved the rest of us, however, for if the lupins had not stopped to make a kill and feed, they would have been on their way back to their master by now with the news of our presence.”