She recognized her mistake just a split second before the loud thump reached her ears. She briefly squeezed her eyes shut in pain, suddenly understanding the reasons for Cræosh's constant bad attitude. “Jhurpess,” she said, steadfastly refusing to turn around. “I meant…carry the orc…over your shoulder.”
“Oh. That does make more sense to Jhurpess, yes.”
For the first time ever, Katim felt the urge to whimper. Still, it was less than half an hour until sundown, and then Shreckt would get them out of this frozen wasteland.
She could barely wait.
In the comfort of the gently rocking carriage, a cup of tea halfway to her lips, Queen Anne abruptly froze. “Oh, dear.”
Belrotha, who was still, after so many hours, squirming about in search of a comfortable position that didn't wedge her butt painfully between the armrests of her chair, tensed. Her nerves were stretched near the breaking point already, so the consternation in the queen's voice was absolutely not what she needed to hear.
“What?!” she asked in as close to a squeak as an ogre could possibly get. “What wrong?”
“Nothing to concern yourself over,” Queen Anne assured her with the faintest shake of her head. “Just something I had better deal with. We can't have them dying on us just now, can we?”
“Who? What? Huh?”
“Precisely, my child. Excuse me just a moment, please.” And with that, the queen…shimmered.
Belrotha blanched. Queen Anne had, and had not, disappeared. A vague image—transparent and blurry, almost a soggy watercolor—remained in the chamber. But the strange apparition was utterly motionless, failing even to rock with the swaying of the carriage. The ogre hauled her knees up to her chest, causing the chair to groan in pain, and tried her damnedest to curl into a ball.
The moon had reached its zenith and begun the long descent toward morning by the time the squad arrived, limping and battered, in the craggy foothills. Shambling as awkwardly as the worm-men they'd battled, they stumbled into a tiny valley: little more than a crack between two steep slopes. It was cramped enough that every one of the goblins had either a protrusion of stone or someone's elbow poking them in the ribs, but the hills kept the worst of the frigid winds off them. They could probably have found a better location, if they'd bothered to look before it was already dark, but they hadn't.
They hadn't expected to need one.
After some minutes of panic, the goblins of the Demon Squad had tentatively decided that the “four days” must have included the final night as well. Shreckt would come for them in the morning.
He'd damn well better.
With a low groan, Jhurpess toppled face-first to the ground, allowing Cræosh to slip from his shoulder like a sack of elf giblets. The combined impact of orc and bugbear sent up a cloud of dust and snow thick enough to lean on. Katim, who had stubbornly insisted on walking under her own power the entire way, retained just enough dignity to slide to the earth beside them, rather than following them over in a near faint. And Fezeill hadn't fully recovered from his ill-fated attempt at kicking his breathing habit.
This left Gork and Gimmol responsible for making camp and setting watch, and since the kobold was already asleep by the time he thought to broach the topic, the gremlin kindly volunteered to take the first shift.
Aggravating, but it could've been worse. Gimmol was exhausted, sure, but he felt warmer than he had in days, and any tribulation was worth a few hours of silence and solitude. Gods and demons, could none of the uneducated cretins shut up for more than two minutes? It was enough to drive a gremlin mad! But while they slept, there was peace.
Until, of course, the apparition rose from the rock beside his sleeping teammates.
With a silence Gork might have envied, Gimmol crept nearer the phantom, fingering the hilt of what had, so far, proved to be a remarkably useless sword. The figure was transparent, allowing him a distorted view of the terrain beyond. It—she? It looked vaguely like a “she”—was facing away from him, but she appeared more or less human, dark of hair, garbed in flowing emerald green. He drew breath to call a warning, but she was already reaching down, running the back of her hand down Cræosh's jaw.
Gimmol's abortive shout became a gasp as the orc's flesh rippled.
That gasp, silent as it was, carried across the tiny vale. The apparition spun, and Gimmol raised his hands, prepared to do whatever he could to ward off the attack he knew was coming.
Except that it didn't. The tiny scraps of light cast by the dying embers touched the phantom's face, a face that Gimmol had seen in many a portrait throughout Kirol Syrreth.
“Queen Anne!” The gremlin dropped to one knee in a courtly bow, one far more elegant than his companions could have imagined. “Forgive me, I—”
“Have done nothing wrong.” Her voice brought a touch of warmth to the frigid shadows. “You acted to protect your companions, as any good soldier should.”
Gimmol nodded, emboldened by her indulgence. “Your Majesty, if it is not too presumptuous…What are you doing here? This is no place for—”
“Relax, my child. I’m not here.”
Gimmol squinted. Yep; he could, at the proper angle, still see completely through her.
“I merely felt,” she continued, “that you could use my assistance. This is my first gift to you.” She gestured at the slumbering orc. His skin had ceased its strange, liquid motion, and the bruises and cuts, the abrasions and burns, had faded! To look at him, you'd think Cræosh hadn't seen battle in weeks.
Beneath Gimmol's marveling gaze, the image of the queen visited each of the goblins in turn, easing their hurts. She skipped only Gimmol himself, who had so far avoided substantial injury (despite his troll-powered flight).
“Who are we,” he asked, his voice hushed, “that you would take such interest in us?”
The queen smiled. “Surely you have guessed that you are all important to my husband's plans for the upcoming war. Is that not reason enough to watch over you?”
No, actually it's not. Morthûl had too many minions at his disposal, some of whom weren't that much less potent, or frightening, than the Charnel King himself. The notion that he would send his queen to perform any such task was ludicrous. But Gimmol was far too wise to say so aloud.
“It is indeed, Your Majesty. But you said this was the first?”
“I did.” The ghostly form began to fade. “You shall meet the other tomorrow. A pleasant night to you, dear gremlin.”
“And to you.” But Queen Anne was already gone.
His brow furrowed, Gimmol resumed his post. So lost in thought was he, he didn't realize how much time had passed until a half hour after his shift should have ended. Questions rolling around like marbles inside his skull, the goblin went to wake Gork for his turn at watch.
The dawn, punctual as ever, arrived precisely on schedule. Shreckt did not.
“I thought I saw her,” a restored Cræosh commented to Gimmol over a breakfast of—what else?—yeti meat. “But I figured it was a dream.”
“No dream,” the gremlin said. “She was here, sort of. I talked to her, but she didn't seem particularly inclined to tell me why she'd come. She was nice enough, though, and she helped you guys out, so…” His jaw snapped shut abruptly as Katim smacked him in the head with a yeti femur.
“Nonetheless, you should…have woken us.”
Gimmol nodded in understanding, clutching his head so it didn't fall off in the process.
“Okay,” Cræosh said, pushing away the last of his own breakfast. “I think it's safe to say the little hell-turd ain't gonna show anytime soon. So either something's gotten real fucked up back home, and he can't come get us, or he's deliberately letting us dangle in the breeze.”
“I know which one my money's on,” Gork muttered.
The orc frowned. “For once, Shorty, I agree with you. Anybody know the best way to kill an imp?”
Katim snorted. “You try to kill…Shreckt, you are entirely…on your own.”
br /> “Cowardice, troll? That ain't like you.”
“Suicide is not…like me either. Small or not…Shreckt is a demon. And attacking him…is most definitely…suicide.” The corners of her mouth angled downward. “As is calling me…a coward twice. That was…one.”
Cræosh was saved the trouble of responding—or the humiliation of not responding—by Jhurpess. In a flash of fur, the bugbear was hopping up and down, slamming his massive cudgel against the rock so furiously that splinters of wood spun off across the campsite.
“What the fuck now?” Cræosh demanded. But Fezeill saw them too, now, and began backing away from the snow-slick hillside. “Worms!” he shouted, a finger pointing at the bugbear's feet.
And at the worms, the centipedes, everything the squad had hoped they'd left far behind, sliding through cracks and crevices in the stone.
“We're leaving!” Cræosh shouted, scrambling up out of the tiny shelter. It was, for once, an order that nobody felt the need to argue.
The goblins scrambled, spiderlike, up over the edges of the valley and broke into a chaotic run along the edges of the range. The faster pulled swiftly ahead—figuring that they only had to outrun their slowest companions, not the worms—and Cræosh felt no burning urge to rein them in. Once they'd put some distance between them and this latest mass of creeping death, then he'd worry about proper formation and military discipline. For now, he put his head down, pumped his legs, and made damn sure he wasn't last in line.
After some moments, when no trace of the worms remained in sight, Cræosh skidded to a halt. Katim stood ahead of him, peering thoughtfully up one of the smaller mountains. “Sightseeing?” he asked irritably.
“Up there,” the troll growled, oblivious to his irritation. “Look.”
He looked. Some fifteen feet up the slope, a wide ledge—large enough for the squad, with room left over for the troll's ego—protruded from the stone. It looked, to Cræosh, as though the mountain were sticking its tongue—or perhaps a particularly wide finger—out at the world.
Yeah, brother, you and me both.
“Suggesting we fort up?” he asked.
The troll shrugged her fur-covered shoulders. “We cannot run…forever. Up there, they might…pass us by unnoticed, and…if not, the place is…defensible.”
Despite himself, the orc nodded. “Provides a pretty good field of view, too. And yeah, I'll admit I’m not happy with all this running away.”
“No? Then why…were you so quick to—?”
“Don't finish that sentence, Dog-face.”
Katim chuckled.
“All right!” Cræosh yelled to the others. “We're heading up! Gork?” Ancestors damn him, where was the little…
“Yes, oh obstreperous one?”
Cræosh glanced upward. The kobold's stony head hung over the edge of the shelf.
Fucking show-off.
“I want you to check out the ledge,” he continued, as though he'd fully expected to see the little shit up there. “Make sure it's clear.”
“It's clear,” Gork said. “Nothing up here but me and bat shit.” Then, “Don't say it!”
“Wouldn't dream. Okay, boys and bitch, get climbing!”
Gork's report, they saw once they'd ascended, had been pretty accurate: just a flat expanse of stone, featureless but for large accumulations of snow and old guano. They settled in, alert for the tiniest sign of anything remotely abnormal.
But they were only looking down. Not a one of them noticed as, some distance above, a horse and carriage that could not possibly have navigated the narrow, winding mountain passes appeared from between a pair of crags. It drew to a halt, the door drifting open….
“There!” It was Gimmol who first spotted them, rising from behind an outcropping of stone some few hillsides away. “Over there!”
“We,” Gork said, strangely matter-of-fact, “are a lot dead.”
Five enormous figures loomed from the rocks below: five writhing, wiggling, and very familiar figures. The worms, and whatever grotesque sorcery gave them shape, had finally finished with the other yeti corpses.
“We barely survived four!” Gimmol murmured, his voice suddenly hoarse. “And three of them were smaller!”
Cræosh hefted his sword, almost as though to parry the gremlin's despair.
Gork twisted toward his companions. “Hey, Gimmol, before we die, I want you to know something. All those times where I said I thought you were a fuck-up…”
“Yes?”
“I meant every word.”
Katim rolled her eyes and shook loose her chirrusk, the clanking of the chain echoing through the peaks. She'd chosen a good spot, she knew these things could die, and dammit, she'd take at least one or two more to join her before the squad was overrun!
Even she had to admit, though, that given her druthers, this was not how she'd have chosen to go.
Focusing past the sounds around him as best he could—even the damned kobold, hard as he was making it—Gimmol peered over the ledge and chewed the inside of his cheek. He really, really hadn't wanted to have to do this, certainly not in front of the others. And hell, he probably couldn't do much, not against five of those things! But he had to try.
Sucking in a deep breath, the gremlin raised two empty hands, fingers spread….
But someone else beat him to it.
The creatures had gathered in a fearsome pack, the nearest scarcely an arm's length from the slope, when the sun went away.
A small moon hung briefly in the sky, transforming day into dusk over a tiny patch of rock and ice in the midst of the Northern Steppes. Then it continued its arc, and it wasn't a moon at all but a gigantic boulder, jagged and uneven, ripped from the face of the mountain. It plummeted past them, near enough that the entire squad felt the wind of its passing, and crashed into the assembled creatures below.
The ledge—indeed the entire mountain, or so it felt to them—trembled at the impact. Dirt, snow, and rocks the size of Gork's head all sprayed up and out in a cheerful fountain. The goblins, all of whom had either been hurled prone at the impact or thrown themselves to the ledge at the sight of the boulder, covered their heads with their arms and waited for the detritus to cease its bombardment.
Cræosh, bleeding from a dozen tiny nicks, dragged himself to the edge and looked down. Nothing but greasy smears and a few writhing piles of freezing worms remained of the horrors that had pursued them.
And then, as he twisted to look up, a second impact shook the ledge. Above them all, impossibly tall, loomed a hideous, bruise-hued thing.
“Me Belrotha,” it announced happily, beaming at them with a rotted, broken-toothed grin. “Me part of Demon Squad now. Queen say so.”
Six faces turned toward one another, six pairs of wide eyes stared, and six voices rose as one.
“Okay.”
Thoroughly sick and tired of wandering the tundra with no destination in mind, the squad remained camped at the base of the mountain—within easy reach of the ledge, just in case—for another three days. Boring, perhaps, but thankfully worm-and yeti-free, perhaps due to the presence of their intimidating, boulder-hurling new friend. And warm enough, given the cramped conditions.
Belrotha didn't say much to her new companions. Oh, she talked more than enough; she just didn't say anything. Cræosh and Gork swiftly began to wonder if the worms wouldn't have been the more pleasant option. Fezeill and Katim did their best to ignore her unless addressed directly. Even Jhurpess, one evening, sidled up to the orc's side and admitted, “Jhurpess not want to be mean, but Jhurpess thinks Belrotha might be kind of stupid.”
But the ogre and the gremlin hit it off, oddly enough. “Probably,” Cræosh noted sourly to Fezeill, “because she's too much an idiot to mind his prattling, and he's just thrilled someone'll talk to him.”
And then, finally, just before evening on the third day…
“Fall in, you maggots!”
Instantly the squad lined up, their fury at the conniving imp warring
across their faces with their immense relief at his arrival. Belrotha, who'd served in more than one unit, stood at attention with the rest when Shreckt appeared in a blast of sulfur.
The imp's gargoyle-ish jaw gaped open, prepared to bark another command—and open it stayed, as his gaze rose, and rose, and rose to meet the ogre's own.
“Umm,” Belrotha muttered as the silence dragged on. “Me introduce self now?”
“Kneel!” the imp shouted. Instantly the ogre was on her knees, the impact coating the little sergeant beneath a layer of snow rather like a soft down.
Cræosh snorted, and Gork and Gimmol both choked on guffaws that they knew better than to set free.
“Who the fuck are you?!” Shreckt screamed into the ogre's face.
“Me Belrotha.”
“And?”
Belrotha blinked. “No and. Me just Belrotha.”
Shreckt sighed. “What the hell are you doing with my squad?”
“Me part of squad now. Queen say so.”
It was the imp's turn to blink. “Queen? You mean Queen Anne?”
The ogre frowned. “There other queen? Me not know about other queen!”
“Well, well,” Shreckt said, shaking his head. “Ain't that a tickle?”
“Hey!” Cræosh butted in, his impatience getting the better of him (to no one's surprise). “You're three days late, you little—”
Shreckt's glare was burning, literally. His eyes blazed, and Cræosh noticed smoke rising from his armor.
“—officer,” he concluded.
“Not at all,” Shreckt said with a sudden and very unpleasant smile. “Actually, I’m a week early.” Then, at their stunned expressions, “Well it wouldn't have been much of a survival test if it was only four days, would it?”
“Survival?” Jhurpess asked. “Jhurpess thought little sergeant said combat training.”
Cræosh sneered. “Little sergeant lied his ass off.”
The troll shrugged. “Are you really…surprised? Isn't that what…demons do?”
“All right, then,” Fezeill said, resuming his true shape. “So you're ‘early.’ Why?”