She spent the next several minutes using the knife to cut the sleeves off the shirt and to shorten it. Then she cut a strap off one of the packs and fashioned it into a belt so her new black tunic would not hang so loosely. Finished, she hung the knife from the belt and stood, leaning against the tree to keep the weight off her sore leg. All the while the birds sang; Mudwort took that as a sign they approved of her killing the knights.
Finally, she selected the pack in the best condition, a dark leather one that its owner had oiled and rubbed. She put the food she hadn’t eaten in it along with another tunic she’d found; an ivory-handled razor; and a small, leather-bound book with scribbling in it. Half the book was blank. Direfang might like it, Mudwort thought. Maybe he could read the first part of it to her. She tucked the tin with dirt inside.
She slung it over her good shoulder and with great effort stood and staggered away from the tree. Another quick spell and the earth flowed over the other packs, burying them. More magic buried the tent pitched behind a pair of elms. She kept one of the tent stakes, breaking it in two and using it as a cane to help her limp around. It took her well more than an hour to circle outward from the camp and coax the dirt into shifting to cover all traces of the knights’ footsteps and presence.
Exhausted and uncomfortable from her injuries, she found a rotting limb that worked better as a walking stick and hobbled from the clearing in the direction she was certain Direfang’s city sprawled. The broken tent post was eaten by the earth.
She hadn’t been able to look in on Direfang’s city before her capture, and she wondered if she should try again. She could contact Thya or one of the other goblins with a spark of magic inside … maybe even Grallik. Someone could come to her and help her, bring a hobgoblin to carry her. Or she could get Grallik to carry her in exchange for the promise of teaching him more magic.
“Direfang should know about the knights,” she said. It would take her a long time to reach the bluff over the river, going as slow as she had to hobble. Thinking about it, she decided if she summoned help, she would have to explain what she’d been doing there. They would ask and learn about the spear. No one must know of the spear, she decided. Mudwort’s spear.
Moving slowly and painfully was all right, she decided, and it was better to go it alone, asking the earth to cover up her tracks as she went and occasionally looking over her shoulder to make sure it was complying. The walk would give her time to think about how to explain her unfortunate adventure to Direfang and how to reveal the news about the five hundred and forty knights. The walk would give her time to dream up a credible story.
It was dark and two hard, painful days later by the time she reached the infant city.
A ruined city.
Mudwort stared and poked through the shadows. Homes were knocked over and destroyed. Trees were stripped of leaves and fingerling branches, and the ground had a diseased look to it, as if it were skin ravaged with boils by some plague. There was an odd, acrid stench that hung heavily in the air, and there was an all-too-familiar scent, goblin corpses that had been burned on a fire. There was also the odor of cooked meat, a strange meat, unfamiliar, but welcome. She wondered if there was anything left that she might nibble on.
Goblins were working in the shadows, though Mudwort could not tell what they were doing and had no desire to look closer, their usual conversations mingling with the sounds of crickets and small, green tree frogs and other muted night noises.
She stayed on the outskirts for several minutes, catching her breath and steadying herself, wondering what had befallen the city. What disaster had arrived? Would she have been able to help if she’d been there? Would her magic have made a difference?
She shook her head. “Maybe would have died,” she told herself. “Maybe would be a burned husk now.” She sniffed the air again. “A lot of dead goblins.”
She dropped the walking stick and lurched toward the home she knew was being built for the gnoll and the human healer. It was one of the few places that seemed to have survived the disaster.
Several goblins chattered hello and questions to her as she passed. She dismissed all their questions and concerns and waved them away with a gesture and a snarl.
The gnoll was not at Qel’s home site, which pleased her. She thought him more intense than the healer, and more curious. He might ask her too many questions about where she had been, and he was fluent in goblinspeak, so she couldn’t pretend she didn’t understand him.
“Qel?”
The human had been sitting with her back to a small fire, and when she turned, Mudwort thought she saw traces of tears on her cheeks.
“Mudwort, you’re back! And you’re hurt!”
Mudwort nodded and shuffled toward her.
“What did you do? Where have you been? Did the dragon hurt you?”
Dragon?
“Mudwort?” Direfang had materialized. She hadn’t noticed him nearby, but then she’d been intent on finding the healer. “Mudwort limps. What happened?”
“What happened here?” the goblin returned.
Direfang explained then pointed to her twisted leg and her mangled fingers.
“Fell in the woods,” Mudwort answered almost too quickly. “Stupid, clumsy, tripped. Fell in the woods.” She’d intended to warn him about the Dark Knights. He’d understand better the notion of five hundred and forty of the enemy pursuing them. But on her way to the city, she began to worry he’d move them all again, farther from her spear, or that he’d prevent any of them from leaving the city for fear of them being captured by Dark Knights.
She couldn’t let either of those things happen.
“All alone, walking and paying no attention while a dragon came here. Fell in the woods, tumbled down rocks and stuff, and got hurt bad, Direfang. Qel can help, though.”
The healer stretched forward her unnaturally cold hands.
PREPARING FOR WAR
Lurreg, a muscular goblin of middle years with mudbrown skin and olive-colored eyes, was leader of the Fernwold clan. He’d made it clear that he and his fellows did not like the Skinweavers, wrinkling their noses at the shrunken elf heads and refusing to return any friendly gestures.
Yet Lurreg toiled by Draath’s side, expending more effort and energy than he had when building his ruined home.
The two clans had fashioned spears from the thick, straight branches that could be salvaged from roofs. Those who had axes and knives cut logs that had once formed walls to make more spears, the best and thickest pieces becoming clubs. They discarded pieces that were cracked or bent like a supple willow or had been weakened too much by the chlorine.
Draath sat on a scarred piece of ground with a half dozen spear hafts in front of him and a pile of black, fist-sized rocks. Lurreg was nearby and watching the Skinweaver’s hands … refusing to look him in the eyes. Draath patted the smallest of his shrunken heads, a ritual he followed when he worked on each weapon; reached for a stone; and touched it to the end of a haft.
“This is obsidian,” Draath explained. “Dark as its purpose, to slay. Black as death.” His fingers moved over the stone, which shimmered and became as malleable as clay. “Obsidian is the best for this. Crystals work too, but those are more difficult to find.” The stone flowed over the end of the haft, capping it and firmly affixing itself. His thumb ran along the edges, forming it into something that looked like an arrowhead, but the thin edges were larger and appeared sharper, gleaming in the bright morning sunlight.
“Looks like glass,” Lurreg said. “This clan saw glass on the other side of the mountains. It was in a village in the Plains of Dust. An empty village. Obsidian looks like glass that reflects the night sky. Looks brittle. It will break easily.”