Broken Rule | Chapter 26

This post is chapter twenty-six of my not-previously-published epic fantasy novel Broken Rule, which I'm serializing here on Steemit.

The story so far:
Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

---

Duke Gavril looked at what was left of one of his forward patrols after it had been taken by a goblin ambush. The men were all dead, most of them horribly mutilated. Some body parts were missing. Bits and pieces of equipment were missing, too. The goblins liked to take things. Trophies, probably. “Greenhouse, where the hell are you?” he shouted.

Tony came running up. “Right here, Your Grace.”

Gavril detested the boy. He was a constant reminder of sacrifices made in order to build political support that had turned out to be irrelevant. He should have selected a squire based on ability, rather than to buy the loyalty of the boy's father. But it was too late for regrets now. The boy had all the brains of a tree stump, but Gavril was intent on teaching him something. He regretted the arrangement, but had no intention of reneging on his obligation. “Look here, do you see this?” he said, indicating a hole in the ground, partially hidden by the roots of a small bush.

“That hole, Your Grace? What about it?”

“A goblin was hiding here.”

“Are you sure, Your Grace? It looks awfully small.”

“Damn it, boy, use your eyes. Don't you see the tracks? It pulled itself out and ran over that way. Most Holy, if the patrol was that far into the ambush before the goblins showed themselves, no wonder they were slaughtered.”

“But how could even a goblin fit in there?”

“Haven't you ever seen those people at the fair, that can fold themselves into a box? They must have goblins like that, too. Or maybe their twisted little bodies just fit naturally.”

Gavril surveyed the area. Now that he knew what to look for, he saw a few more holes nearby. These goblins were tricky little bastards. He had assumed that Benedek's expedition failed because Benedek was sloppy, but now he saw just how crafty these goblins were. He had made the same mistakes Benedek had. “Most Holy, that should have been my first clue. I'm using the same tactics as that old fool. No wonder I'm losing men.”

“Your Grace?” asked Tony.

“We've been hunting them, searching for them, the way we'd go after bandits hiding in the hills. But they don't think like bandits, at least not when they're here. The way they see it, these mountains are their home. Their castle. We need to start assaulting them the way we'd assault a fortress. No more patrols, no more reconnaissance. From now on, we treat every pass like a breach in a wall. We move through in force, and we secure the defenses behind us as we move. We wouldn't let defenders on walls take us from behind, and I'll be damned if I let the goblins do it anymore.”

---

Gavril completed his circuit of the camp, having encouraged the last of the stragglers to get their gear properly packed for the next march. As he stopped to warm his hands at the last of the campfires, he took in the familiar sight of Tony running towards him again. What was it now? And why was the damned boy always so far away that he needed to run to get back to him? Tony stopped in front of him, puffing. “Your Grace, they found something up ahead that they want you to see.”

Gavril scowled at the boy. “Lead on, then.” He followed him through the recently captured pass, and saw a group of his men clustered up ahead. Archers had bows at the ready. “What is it?” he asked, but then the smell hit him. Wafting out of a small cave ahead was a smell worse than any midden he'd ever encountered. He doubled over for a moment, worried that he might be sick. Eventually he recovered his composure and moved up to where he could see more clearly. He noticed that many of the men had cloths drawn over their noses and mouths, but he wondered if mere cloth was enough to deter the stench.

“We think it's a nest,” offered Sir Leszek, who was in command of the men. “If you crouch down, you can see them moving in the back.”

Gavril crouched down and was stunned by what he saw. The mouth of the cave was indeed small, and the ceiling was very low as far as he could see, little more than a foot or two high in places. But it opened up much wider farther back, and it was deep, very deep. He couldn't even come close to seeing the back of the cave due to the mass of goblins. The ones at the front were clearly aware of him and his men, aware of the deadly rain of arrows that would be coming their way if they tried to charge out of the cave. But behind them, it was like a mound of sickening insects, goblins crawling all over one another, their hideous little limbs pushing this way and that. So many of them!

“Bring some wood and oil,” Gavril ordered. “Let's see how bad they smell when they burn.”

The goblins inside the nest went mad when Gavril's men began tossing burning logs into the cave. With the fires properly started, Gavril's men shoved a few of the tiny pine trees that grew in this area into the mouth of the cave. They went up like torches, blocking the exit. Most of the goblins ripped each other apart in their frenzy to escape the fire, others were burned in the flames as they tried to make it out, and the few that made it all the way to the mouth of the cave were filled with arrows. One of them, engulfed in flames with rolls of fat sizzling and sputtering and filled with so many arrows that he looked like a pincushion, still kept coming. Gavril barked an order and men fell on it with swords, hacking and chopping until it was a charred and bloody mess on the ground.

The tide had turned against the goblins. Now it was only a question of how long it would take to hunt down all their filthy nests, and how much more firewood they'd be able to find in the Wolf's Teeth to repeat the procedure.

---

“Greenhouse, I don't need you any more tonight. But have everything prepared for the morning. I wish to ride with the men at dawn. I've been spending too much time with the rearguard, the men at the front need to know their leader is out there with them as well.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” Tony replied.

At least his squire had been close enough to receive his orders this time, and Gavril didn't have to shout for him. That was an improvement, of a sort. Gavril walked into his tent and closed the flap behind him. He turned up the oil in his hanging lantern to get some light, and picked up the papers he'd received earlier from his officers. He read the reports again, but there was still nothing of interest there. He had cracked the goblin defense, and there seemed to be little else to do but wait until victory was achieved. He put the papers down and poured himself a mug of wine. He took it and sat down in his camp chair with a sigh.

A gentle breeze shook the canvas walls for a moment, and then a beautiful woman stepped into his tent. He tried to take her in, but his eyes seemed to be playing tricks on him. She was blonde now, but surely she had been a brunette when she stepped in. With sparkling green eyes, or were they blue? He concentrated, and saw now that she was changing even as he watched. Her red dress became purple, and then black, and then gray, and then white. Her hair was cut short, now long and flowing, now braided. She smiled at him, a confident seductive smile.

“Who are you?” he stammered.

The woman began to pace back and forth in front of the duke as she answered. “Who am I? Such a harmless little question. But will you like the answer? My name is Natasza, but that tells you so little about me. I have been locked away in these mountains for so many years, locked away under the earth. Locked away with nothing to amuse me but my magic. My illusions. Even before I was locked away, I was learning to control what people could sense. What they could see, or hear, or touch, or taste, or smell. For years and years I practiced, and mastered them all. But then, with long years still to wait, I realized there are other senses.” She locked eyes with Gavril, and he had the unmistakable sense of falling. He frantically clutched for the arms of his chair, and she laughed.

“Are... Are you a demon?” he asked.

Natasza stopped pacing and thought for a moment. “You know, I think I must be, now. I didn't start that way, but what else could I be? For long years I've been whispering evil thoughts to the goblins, and now it has finally drawn you to me.” As she spoke, the shifting of her image slowed. Her eyes and skin became a deep blood red, her hair a thick curly black. Large batlike wings unfolded from her shoulders.

“But you've interrupted my story,” she scolded, shaking a finger at him. “All those years in the dark, I thought of so many illusions to cast, so many senses to control. And I developed a theory. When people speak of good and evil, they speak of a sense of right and wrong. I believe it is a sense. I taught the goblin shamans how to burn it out of a man, the same way he might be blinded or deafened. But more subtle manipulation is possible. Now, I know that you are a married man, and that you swore an oath to be bound by the knightly code, and by the rules laid down in your Blessed Book. I wouldn't want you to do anything you would regret, anything your conscience couldn't abide. I'm here before you now, what does your heart tell you to do?”

Gavril stared at her, and tried to speak several times, only for words to fail him when he opened his mouth. Every sentence he started to form felt wrong, somehow, as if he was just reciting some memorized words, not speaking for himself. He stopped trying to force the words out, and started really thinking about the question. Finally he looked her up and down, and said, “My heart tells me to take what I can, when I can.”

“Wonderful!” she answered, seating herself in his lap. “You'll be so much fun to play with.”