Redemption

Chapter Eighteen Ragh’s Goblin Brigade

The goblins followed Ragh closely. Each bore an expectant look on his smashed-in face. Yagmurth was especially happy, his smile showing off yellowed, broken teeth. The draconian had to ward off the stench from his army, raising his head toward fresh air.

Fiona purposefully stood downwind. However, she was interested in Yagmurth, who seemed to carry himself with confidence and speak louder than the rest. The smallest goblins had the thinnest voices, and one scrawny, brown one sounded like a mewling cat. For the most part, the bigger the goblin, the more noise it made and the greater its stink.

The female Knight watched their expressions and listened to their craggy voices. She picked out occasional words in the common tongue—words that either didn’t exist in the goblin language or were universal in all languages: “sivak,” “Takhisis,” “general.”

“General?” she repeated to herself, cocking her head and noticing that the one who kept saying “General” was now watching her closely. “General… who?”

This goblin separated himself from the pack. He was nearly three feet tall, with a nose that reminded her of a turnip and skin the color of rust. His eyes seemed too large for his pug nose, and his hair fell in scattered patches of uneven lengths. There was a bone ring in the goblin’s right ear, from which dangled two bluejay feathers and a clay bead.

She sucked in her breath in an effort not to chuckle at the strange-looking creature.

“General,” the goblin said, followed by a string of nonsensical—to her—clicks and snarls. “General.”

“Yes, General. Forgive me for speaking aloud. I had no intention of drawing your attention. Go away.”

The little, strange-looking goblin didn’t go away. In fact, he drew nearer. The goblin babbled animatedly, including the word “General” a few more times. The goblin’s voice yipped excitedly, reminding her of a small and annoying dog. The goblin clearly wanted her to say something in response, but she raised her lip in a snarl to quiet the thing.

“Ragh!” Fiona called. “Your goblin friends are bothering me. Can’t you do something with your ‘army’?”

The draconian shouted in the goblin tongue for them all to quiet down.

Instantly, the old goblin named Yagmurth thumped the haft of his spear against the ground, calling all his fellows to attention. Then he gently thwacked the haft against Ragh’s leg. When the draconian looked down, Yagmurth started chattering loudly.

“I know,” Ragh answered in their guttural tongue. “You are waiting for me to lead you against the hobgoblins and their leader General Kruth. But I, the greatest of Takhisis’ creations, believe there might be a better, slyer way of winning the day.”

The draconian registered the disappointment on the goblins’ faces. Yagmurth thumped the spear again.

“Perfect child,” Yagmurth asked in the goblin tongue. “How is there a better way than battle?”

Ragh shrugged his shoulders. Years before he fell in with Dhamon, Ragh settled nearly all his problems by combat. There were a few exceptions. For example, he had learned if his problem was bigger and nastier than himself, it was wise to avoid a fight.

“There are always alternatives to fighting,” Ragh dissembled smoothly. “This is an opportunity that calls for stealth and intelligence—two things I’ll bet you have plenty of, and two things I’m certain your hobgoblin enemies have never heard of.”

The goblins swelled with pride. By the tone of their excited voices and expressions, even Fiona could tell they were won over by Ragh’s flattery and listened to his plan. As he huddled with his army, Fiona, tired of their banter and their stink, stepped away from the crowd and held her own strategy session—with the sword.

“I seek revenge,” she told it. “I seek….”

The sword gave her the answer she sought.

“Fiona.” The draconian stamped his foot. “Fiona!”

She looked up, frowning to note that the draconian had interrupted her dialogue with the sword. The draconian was watching her closely. In truth, Ragh remained half-afraid the female Knight, in her madness, might lash out at him or the goblins.

She twisted her head to look at Ragh, raising an eyebrow. “What?”

“We need your help.”

The frown disappeared, replaced by an almost wistful expression, but her eyes looked distracted, flitting over Ragh and then shifting away, studying something in the distance that perhaps only she could see. “You need my help with your plan?”

He nodded.

“Oh, yes, you need me,” Fiona agreed. “That’s why I stayed with you, sivak. You need me because I look human. I’m the only one who can walk into that village and scout what’s happening, see where Riki and Varek and Dhamon’s baby are, how they are doing. I can see if they know that they’re in serious danger if they stick around this place.”

The draconian nodded again.

“I can see what the hobgoblins are up to. Yes, you need me.”

Ragh loosely translated what she had said to Yagmurth, who’d skittered up to his side and was staring at the female Knight with curiosity and fear.

“That’s the only reason I stayed with you. For the sake of Riki and Varek and the baby Otherwise I’d be following Dhamon. Sooner or later I will make him pay, you know.”

“Yes, yes. You’ll make him pay,” Ragh grumbled. The small army of goblins had gathered behind him, chattering in their thin voices, making their clicks and snarls. “But for the moment, Fiona…”

Yagmurth thumped his spear and waved for silence.

“You can count on me, Ragh,” Fiona said, after the goblin chatter died down. She smiled wide then, but her smile looked odd, and her eyes remained unfocused.

Ragh instantly wondered if he really could count on her. “On the other hand, Fiona, maybe—”

“I like Riki enough,” she continued brightly. “I’d like to help her. And her baby. I won’t be having a baby of my own, sivak. I won’t be getting married. Ever. I won’t be having a family of my own. Now that Rig’s dead…”

“Maybe instead we should—”

“The village is just around that rise, right?” Fiona stepped away. “I can’t see it from here.” She sheathed her sword. “I’ll go now,” she announced, “for a baby I can’t have.”

She started north. Ragh quickly hurried after her, putting a clawed hand on her shoulder. “About Varek, Fiona. If you talk to Varek you probably shouldn’t mention to him that—”

“That the baby isn’t his?” She smiled more genuinely. “Of course the baby is Varek’s. It can’t be Dhamon’s because Dhamon is going to die when I see him next. He’ll pay for what he did to Rig. He will pay for everything, sooner or later, I swear.”

Mad as a hare, Ragh thought. He cursed himself as he watched her go, digging his claws into his palms in silent frustration. “Damn, but I should have gone with Dhamon instead. Why by the number of the Dark Queen’s heads did I volunteer to retrieve the half-elf and her family? Why?” He ground his heel into the packed earth. “Some part of me thinks I should’ve just disappeared into the swamp a long time ago—leaving Dhamon and Maldred and Fiona to their own foolishness. Disappeared… and….” He scratched at his head. “Done what with myself?”

The old yellow goblin gently rapped his spear against the draconian’s leg to get his attention. “Human slaves,” Yagmurth sniffed. “They are so unreliable. It’s better just to eat them—they’re tasty when they’re young—but I think this one’ll do as you command.”

The two stared across the Throt landscape. It reminded Ragh of a desert in its barrenness and severity. He could count the trees he saw on both hands, and he spied only a few birds. There were places on Krynn as desolate, he knew—he’d been to them. There were climates more hostile. This was certainly tolerable, but he didn’t care for it.

“Don’t like goblins,” he muttered in his own speech, leaving Yagmurth scratching his head. “Don’t like waiting for a crazed Solamnic Knight. Don’t like not knowing about Dhamon. My friend Dhamon.”

He shook his scaly head at his predicament. “Why didn’t I just disappear into the swamp?”

Ragh didn’t budge from the spot until Fiona came back two hours later. Her breath was ragged, her face streaked with sweat and dirt. The sword she clung to was bloodied.

The draconian rushed to her, still wary of the sword she carried. “Fiona, what happened? Are you hurt? What did you—”

Yagmurth chattered and hopped between the pair, trying to make them speak in a language he could understand.

She gave the goblin a sneer and kicked Yagmurth away, brushing at a strand of hair. “The village is small from the looks of it. Very. I couldn’t get in close, though. The hobgoblins belong to the Knights of Takhisis. I can tell from the emblems on their armor.”

“Hobgoblins in armor? Wonderful.”

“Leather and chain for the most part. It was wonderful to fight against an armored opponent again, after all this time—even if they were filthy hobgoblins. I stopped thinking about Rig for a few minutes when I was busy fighting. Everything seemed so clear.” She paused to take a deep breath, her eyes wide and glittering.

“Battle suits you,” Ragh said simply.

“I ran into three of them, hobgoblins, on the south end of the village. Sentries, obviously. They wouldn’t let me pass into the village, and though I couldn’t understand them I figured out the gist of the situation. The town was blockaded.”

He pointed to her sword.

She shrugged. “I killed two of them, the third ran. I would have given chase, but thought I might find myself outnumbered. I came back to report to you.”

A rare sane decision, Ragh thought. “Good. I worried.”

She spat at the ground.

“They’ll reinforce the south end of the village now, of course,” he said.

“I suppose,” she agreed. Suddenly the distracted look was back in her eyes. She turned back toward the village, but Ragh stepped in front of her, edging away from her sword.

“Let’s not be hasty.”

“I am a Solamnic Knight, sivak. My report to you is concluded. I will now go back to the village and slay whatever reinforcements they’ve gathered to the south.”

The draconian groaned. Against his better judgment he put his arm around her protectively and tugged her away from the rise, to the west. “No, Fiona. They’ll be expecting someone coming again from the south. We’ll fool them, pick another direction.”

“Another? OK. West. Let’s charge in from the west.” She gripped the pommel of the sword firmly.

“Tell your little, stinky friends about the plan, and let’s see if they can keep up.”

Ragh was already telling Yagmurth and the others that had gathered around them. The draconian directed the goblin force to follow him and stay as quiet as possible. He could only pray that Fiona herself would stay quiet and not prove a liability. He had to rush to catch up to her, the two of them leading their ragtag army around to the west and a bit north, circling the village and using a copse of pine and oak trees as cover.

There were some hobgoblins just inside the treeline, and Ragh didn’t notice them until it was too late.

A pair of armored sentries sniffed the air suspiciously, scenting their approach. Though related in some ways to their small cousins, the hobgoblins bore little real resemblance to the smaller, uglier creatures.

These sentries and soldiers were the size of men, and vaguely man-shaped in their limbs, with coarse brown-gray hair covering their bodies.

Their faces looked batlike, ears large and pointed, snouts wet and snuffling, sharply pointed teeth, and constant drool spilling over swollen lips.

“Move!” Ragh barked. “Get them!”

Thrilled to be commanded by Takhisis’ perfect child, the whooping, shouting goblins descended on the hobgoblins.

“Victory!” Yagmurth cried in Goblin. “Ours is victory!”

The goblins moved hungrily, stabbing hobgoblins right and left. They fought well, but several of them were also killed in the initial melee.

“Monsters!” Fiona shouted. “Foul things!” The Solamnic pushed her way through the ranks, drawing her sword and swinging it wildly until the blade whistled.

The impressed goblins folded in behind her, shouting encouragements. Fiona closed with a large hobgoblin. Small ones behind her jabbed at the hobgoblin’s legs, yip-ping maniacally as the large hobgoblin found itself pressed from all around.

Ragh narrowly avoided a spear thrust from one hobgoblin and nearly tripped over Yagmurth. His hobgoblin foe jabbed his spear again, this time scraping Ragh’s ribcage.

“I felt that!” Ragh grunted.

Smirking, the hobgoblin redoubled his effort.

All around him goblins and hobgoblins were shouting and fighting. A few feet away, Fiona was still squared off against her big hobgoblin. Just at that moment, she lunged in and sliced at the hobgoblin’s hands, shearing off a few of its fingers. The hobgoblin howled and flailed wildly, trying to push Fiona back with a charge, but at the same time it was assailed by a flurry of goblins, stabbing at its legs with their short spears.

“The creature is mine!” Fiona yelled. She drew her lips into a tight line and delivered more blows. The first finished her opponent, but the press of goblins held the creature up with their incessant stabbing until one of her swings lopped its head off.

“Victory!” Yagmurth howled again. “Ours is victory!”

Ragh’s opponent threw back his head and screamed a string of obscenities as he saw Fiona finish off his comrade. He screamed louder as the corpse was quickly swarmed by goblins.

Ragh’s opponent was the last hobgoblin on his feet. “You’re too far from the village,” Ragh hissed.

“Too far for anyone to hear your alarm.” The draconian dropped beneath a spear thrust, then darted in so close the hobgoblin’s long weapon was ineffective. Ragh stretched a hand up to the creature’s throat, slashing wildly with his claws, tugging his opponent down, and biting down on the hobgoblin’s neck.

“Foul monster!” Fiona shouted, as she waded in to help.

“Foul tasting,” the draconian said as he spat out a chunk of hair-covered skin. “Filthy, flea-ridden beast.” He stepped away as the hobgoblin fell backward. Fiona stabbed it to be certain it was dead, and the goblins swarmed over it, tearing it to bloody pieces.

“Yagmurth,” Ragh said, pushing his way through the goblin throng.

The old goblin struggled to reach the draconian, tugging along with him a small goblin, possibly his son, whom he was scolding for taking part in the unseemly rending.

“Good job,” Ragh said.

The old goblin smiled and ran his leathery tongue over his teeth. “Some places goblins and hobgoblins are kin,” Yagmurth said, “but not in Goblin Home. Here we are enemies.” He expounded on the situation.

Ragh missed a few of the words, ones stemming from a dialect he wasn’t familiar with, but he learned that the majority of hobgoblin tribes in Throt had thrown their lot in with the Knights of Takhisis, serving as soldiers, as errand-runners, taking land from goblins once their allies at human behest.

“So the Knights of Takhisis want this town guarded by the hobgoblins for some reason,” Ragh mused.

Ragh brushed several goblins aside to stare at the homely visage of the hobgoblin he’d fought and killed.

The draconian closed his eyes and shut out the awestruck murmurs of his goblin-followers and focused on his inner magic.

Moments passed before Ragh’s form shimmered like molten silver. The draconian’s legs and arms became thinner and longer, his fingers crooked like twigs, his chest broadened into a barrel shape. The silvery scales lost their shine and turned into a splotchy, reddish-brown hide. A moment more and that hide was covered with coarse, uneven hair. His ears grew long and pointed, his snout became broader and shorter, and his tail all but vanished. His eyes flashed, then became dull and wide-set.

Ragh, like all sivaks, was able to assume the form of any creature he killed. He did not employ this talent much. He greatly preferred his draconian body and was proud of the way his keen sivak eyes perceived the world. A hobgoblin had a disconcertingly narrow range of vision because of the close-set placement of its eyes.

Ragh flexed hobgoblin arm and leg muscles, finding them adequate but clumsy. The hands, especially, took some getting used to. The fingers were too long. He twisted his neck this way and that and rotated his shoulders, trying to feel comfortable.

“Wretched creature,” the draconian observed. “Unfortunate, pathetic creature.” But taking on the body of the hobgoblin could prove advantageous, Ragh explained to the amazed goblins.

“Perfect child of our revered god,” Yagmurth said, bowing respectfully.

Ragh snorted in amusement. When he spoke to Yagmurth now, his voice was different—still hoarse but deeper and somewhat unpleasant to his pointy ears.

“You are most powerful and most wise, Ragh—greatest of Takhisis’ creations,” repeated Yagmurth.

“I am most… something,” Ragh returned with a chuckle. “Here’s what I intend to do.”

“What did you tell him?” Fiona demanded when he had finished in the goblin tongue, and his army had ceased their chattering. “And just what did he say to you?”

“I told him I intend to stroll into the hobgoblin camp and see just how many are in their force and why the village is under guard. Then I’ll lure some of the beasts out so you can bloody your sword some more.”

“Acceptable,” she pronounced after thinking for a moment. “Do not tarry long. We must make sure that Riki and her baby are safe, then I must go after Dhamon before his tracks are old. He must pay.”

“Of course he must pay,” Ragh muttered, shaking his hobgoblin head as he lumbered away, his goblin entourage falling in line behind him and trying to shush each other. “Follow me,” he called over his shoulder, “and I’ll show you where to hide and wait.”

Fiona stared at the hobgoblin corpses and the bodies of eight goblins that had been left behind. She hurriedly covered them all up with fallen branches, then followed after the goblins. “Dhamon will pay,” she said to herself.

In less than an hour, Ragh encountered two more sentries and quietly dispatched them, making his way into the hobgoblin camp. There he learned that more than sixty hobgoblins were on duty. It was a small force but equal to the number of dwellers in the village. Sixty was certainly more than his ragtag two dozen goblins.

Too, Ragh learned, the people in the village boasted no real weapons. The hobgoblins had expropriated all their swords, spears, and bows. They left the villagers a few knives for cooking, but the village was unarmed, defenseless.

Engaging a tired and unsuspecting hobgoblin in conversation, Ragh drew out this intelligence, that the hobgoblin force had blockaded the village on the Knights of Takhisis’ orders because most of the village residents were Solamnic or Legion of Steel sympathizers. Several locals had passed information to enemies of the Knights of Takhisis and had harbored spies in the past. The hobgoblins had been ordered to kill any Solamnics or Legion of Steel Knights they captured, as a warning to nearby villages.

Ragh recalled that Riki’s husband had past ties to the Legion of Steel and guessed that might be why his young family was here. Varek probably kept up his old allegiances.

“I’ll trick some of the hobgoblins into following me to this stand of trees,” Ragh explained to the assembled goblin army. He repeated his comments in Common for Fiona. “I expect you and your people to ambush them, Yagmurth, but let Fiona, the human woman, tackle the biggest ones.” He also said in Goblin but didn’t translate into common tongue, “Let the woman-slave take on the most dangerous of the hobgoblins. That way you’ll be safe. Her life is not as valuable as yours.” He didn’t have the heart to tell Yagmurth that Fiona was a better fighter than any dozen of them.

The draconian posing as a hobgoblin had stolen a suit of armor that was a mix of chain and plate.

During his spying expedition, Ragh had found the general of the hobgoblins and had tricked him into going behind a rise. There the draconian slew him and assumed his body. This bigger hobgoblin body was a little more pleasing to the draconian, for the general was in better shape than the sentry. However, he was saddled with slightly bowed legs on which he couldn’t quite walk comfortably.

“Now the hobgoblins think I’m their general,” Ragh told the goblins with a grin. “I’m not going to try anything so suspicious as ordering them all to leave. I’d wager some of them would contest me. But I’ll order them to come out here with me in small groups that you can manage. Enough will follow my orders that we can decrease their number, I think.”

“As we follow the orders of the greatest of Takhisis’ creations,” Yagmurth pronounced. “As we serve the perfect child.”

It took several hours but the plan worked brilliantly—so brilliantly that Ragh, disguised as the hobgoblin general, was able to lure every one of the hobgoblins out to the forest, in relay groups, until the entire force was vanquished, killed, or fled. Unfortunately, however, this tactic cost nearly a dozen goblin lives. Only fourteen of Yagmurth’s people survived the sometimes chaotic fighting. Yagmurth himself survived and was eager to follow Ragh to any other battle he might suggest, but the draconian was able to dismiss the goblin leader and his dwindling army with a false promise to meet them in two days at the stream where they had first confronted the umberhulk. Sadly, as though he suspected the truth, Yagmurth shook Ragh’s hands and left with the goblins.

Fiona had loved the fighting, and now she detested Ragh for sending the brave goblins away. “Liar.

Liar. Liar,” she muttered as she watched them retreat from view.

Ragh shook out his shoulders, shedding his hobgoblin form and returning to his wingless sivak shape.

“You lied to them, sivak.”

“Yes, Fiona. I lied to them,” the draconian admitted, “and I’ll probably have to tell some more lies in order to get Riki and her baby and Varek away from here safely”

She tossed her head. “Yes, Riki and Varek and… the baby That is my mission now.”

“We’ll go together,” Ragh said tersely. As much as he would prefer to send her back alone—for the humans were bound to wonder at the disappearance of all the hobgoblins and the sudden, alarming presence of a draconian—he still couldn’t bring himself to fully trust Fiona. Her eyes no longer flashed any semblance of sanity.

“Together, then,” she reluctantly agreed. “Then I must hurry after Dhamon.”

Things didn’t go well. The alarmed villagers had already prepared themselves for some crisis and started at the sight of Ragh strolling down their main street. The draconian was wounded by a badly tossed hobgoblin spear before he could shout anything to quell their fears. Now he was in the care of Riki, who had him seated on a chair inside her small house—the only chair she trusted to support his considerable weight—and she was bandaging the sivak. She smoothed ointment on his ribs where he had been gouged and blotted blood from his forearm and shoulder, where he had been pelted with rocks.

“Pigs, but they got you good, beastie!” the half-elf said. Riki fussed over the draconian, as Varek and Fiona looked on. “My new friends in this place didn’t know you weren’t no evil beastie. They were just tired of all the…”

“Hobgoblins,” Ragh supplied.

“Hobgoblins and such that been keepin’ us from goin’ anywhere.” She twisted a bandage around his shoulder, one that looked suspiciously like a baby diaper, and stepped back to admire her handiwork.

“That should do you, Ragh.”

The Solamnic had picked up the baby and was cradling it maternally. A baby boy with flashing dark eyes and wheat-blond hair. On the baby’s leg was an odd-shaped birthmark. Fiona traced it with her finger. It looked vaguely like a scale and was hard to the touch. Her finger caressed the baby’s face. The child’s ears were gently rounded, giving no hint as to his mother’s heritage. As far as Fiona could see there was no resemblance to Varek, only to Dhamon. She wondered if Varek had guessed the truth.

“I have to admit I’m surprised you’re alive,” Riki chattered away to the sivak. “You and Dhamon… and Maldred, too, I heard you say.” She wagged a finger at him. “I figured you would all have been hanged months ago. I didn’t mean to just leave you in that jail, but I had the babe to think about. And me and Varek.”

Ragh recalled with a grunt. Riki had denounced them to some Legion of Steel Knights months ago in a gods-forsaken jail on the Plains of Dust. She’d done it to guarantee the safety of Varek and herself, and she’d done it apparently with no remorse.

“Don’t get me wrong, beastie,” Riki added, as she adjusted the bandages one last time. “I’m glad you didn’t die. You’re not a bad sort for a beastie. But I don’t understand how you and your friends avoided that noose.”

“The tale is a long one and for another time, Rikali,” Ragh said wearily.

“I’ll have quite a few such tales to tell my babe when he gets older,” Riki returned merrily. “Tales about this village, too. Them horrid hobgoblins kept us all from goin’ anywhere for quite a few months, and all because Varek and some of the others were workin’ to help the Legion o’ Steel. Doesn’t pay to act good in this sad world.”

The draconian nodded. She was right. It didn’t pay to act good.

“What about the Solamnics?” Fiona cut in. She didn’t look at Riki, she didn’t raise her eyes from the baby’s. “I understand there are Solamnic sympathizers in this village, too.”

“Pigs, but there are!” Riki continued, slapping Ragh on the back to show that the job was done. “All manner of too-good-to-stomach folks here. I’m surprised I was gettin’ along so well with them all—me and Varek and the babe.” She paused and glanced around the one-room home. “Where’s Dhamon? You don’t know where he is?”

Fiona shook her head. “No, but I will find him. I will track him down, I promise you.”

“Good,” Riki said, not completely understanding. She balled her thin hands and planted them on her hips. “You can tell him Varek and me have left here—we’re not wasting time, waitin’ for hobgoblins to come back. We’re goin’ right today. Going to…” The half-elf turned to her husband. “Where did you say we was goin’, Varek?”

“Evansburgh, I think.” He glanced around nervously. It didn’t look as if they had gotten very far with their packing. “Maybe not today, but we should leave soon, Riki. If… when… word gets to the Knights of Takhisis that their little monsters have been—”

“Slain,” Fiona interjected.

“Slain, yes, they’ll send Knights instead of hobgoblins. Evansburgh’s a larger place. Or maybe we’ll go to Haltigoth and lose ourselves there.” He rubbed his palms on his tunic. “I want my family to be safe.

I’m loyal to the Legion, but this is no time for me to risk my life. I’ll not make the same mistake and put Riki and our child in danger.”

Riki glided over to Fiona and took the baby. “Tell Dhamon where we’re probably goin’. Mal, too, OK? You’ll tell them? I wouldn’t mind seeing them again.”

Fiona said nothing.

She turned back to Ragh. “You tell them, and tell them I’m real sorry I turned them over to those Legion o’ Steel Knights a few months back. Did what I had to do, you understand.” She cooed over the baby and gently blew at his forehead. “You tell them.”

“I will tell them,” Ragh said. It was, perhaps, another lie. Then he was at the door, looking out and grimacing to note a knot of curious villagers waiting outside.

Fiona brushed past him out into the bright sunshine. “Yes, you tell Dhamon, sivak, but you’ll have to speak quickly, for when I find him, he won’t have long to live.”

Riki raised an eyebrow, but Ragh had already raced past her, catching up with Fiona, whose sword was drawn, her knuckles white against the pommel, the blade clean and shining.