20. Counsel Takers

“Having assembled the chiefs and shamans of the Grorginite Empire, I no longer wish to be The Small King. My attempts to articulate what had happened, or how we might remedy the issue, was lost on nearly all of those gathered.

And, when most did finally understand that Agrak was gone, a pair of huge goblins began to fight over who would lead the Grorginite Empire. The violence spread into a brawl that resulted in a score wounded and several dead.

Thankfully, Chief Zalak ripped out the throats of the two most vocal dissidents and declared that I, Izzig, was now The Small King. To elucidate his point he nearly slashed through my neck, which created an otherwise fatal wound which swiftly healed.

Seemingly impressed by my survival, and by the show of vicious violence, those gathered agreed with Zalak that I was indeed the new leader of the Empire. A role which I wish to swiftly vacate.

‘There will be war,’ the lithe Chief declared. ‘Be ready.’

This announcement pleased everyone, and the fighting gave way to a celebration.

When the raucous clamor, still echoing in my mind, had finally ended I spoke with Zalak to tell him that we must find Agrak and restore him to his throne.

‘You are The Small King,’ he answered.

‘We must find the old one.’

‘We will look,’ Zalak conceded. ‘Sometimes small things going missing.’ These words he had said with a savage smirk, my dried blood still spattered across his angular features.

‘Do not threaten me,’ I feebly warned.

‘No threats, Small King. We must work together. If he can be found, he will be found.’”

Harak reclined in his latticework throne, the backing blackened to bear the symbol of a half moon, while he listened to the rhythmic humming of Dargo the Small. The air lay hazy and sour, stinging Harak’s eyes, because of all the shaman’s seering smokes.

Dargo seered from the flat of his back, his splayed figure not much larger than a goblin youngling. His large eyes, set in a rounded skull, trembled under wrinkled green lids.

Between Harak’s dark green ankles, which rested on a manling desk, sat a battered old box of iron. It was the only thing on the squat brown desk that was not made of bone, or dried flesh, or plucked feathers. The tent around the Great Chief and his shaman, woven of long grasses and branches in and around the trunk of a thick tree, stood adorned with all manner of trophies, and trinkets made from the dead. Manling, goblin, or otherwise.

Dargo murmured, and his eyelids flickered open, pupils shifting from white to black. “Things are as I seered.”

Harak answered the shrieking proclamation with a doubtful grunt. “Sarak and Ugu? Together…?”

“Yes,” said Dargo in his shrill voice. He pushed up to seat himself on crossed legs. “And the dark one remains in the Pass.”

“How can it be…? Where do they come from?”

“From the same place as the Old Enemy. It is not for us to know, my Chief.”

Harak hissed through his teeth. “How can that be…? They come to our lands, but we cannot go to theirs. You say they have fierce magic. Then they pose a threat to us all.”

“No, my Chief,” Dargo dismissed. “We are as younglings to them. Insects. They do—”

“That is even worse!” Harak spat. “The goblins should be respected!”

Dargo tittered, shrugged, and crawled around the tent blowing out the seering smokes.

Great Chief Harak ground his own teeth together. He had knelt before the giant Braguk on promise of a great victory in Southwestern Tymir and the beginning of a new war to take back the Quiet Isles. Instead the Moonbear left never to return. And what word did reach Harak’s ear had been foul to hear. Great Chiefs slaughtered to the last. Braguk fled.

Gudmund the Wolf victorious once more.

New manlings heroes, Fire Giant and Spearslayer, making their own legends while Harak sat waiting in the Pass. He had avoided death, at least. Though Dargo did not believe that this would be a truth for much longer. “Why do they come?”

“I have told you,” said Dargo as if Harak were the youngling, and the Great Chief was not four times the size of the diminutive shaman. “For the box.”

Harak grunted, nudging the well wrought box of iron with his foot. Then the box jumped in answer, as if something were still living in there. “So we trade.”

“We must not,” said Dargo.

“So we fight.”

“We cannot.”

Harak snarled, baring his teeth at the shaman. He could understand why Ugu had killed Forgo, though such a thing was still unforgivable. Shamans were to be respected by every member of every clan. No matter how small or annoying. “You should offer me guidance, shaman,” the Great Chief grumbled. “Instead you say we cannot give the box. But if we fight then we will die. I do not wish to die, shaman. Nor the clan.”

“Nor I,” agreed Dargo. “That is why we should flee.”

“There is no honour in that. Goblins do not flee.”

“Then we will die, my Chief… with honour.”

Harak’s eyes narrowed as he scowled at the shaman, still looking down on him even though he was seated. His claws dug into the flesh of his own palm.

“Goblins do not kill their shamans, either,” Dargo reminded with a smile.

Harak grated out a sigh. “Ugu would have killed you.”

“Lucky it is that you are my chief, then, Harak.”

“Lucky,” Harak bitterly repeated. “We are not lucky. You say we are doomed.”

“By your choice,” Dargo reminded.

Harak clicked his tongue, and stared at the iron box, which rattled once more. “I should not abandon the box?”

“You should not.”

“I cannot prevail against those who wish to take it?”

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“You cannot.”

“What of the clan…?”

Dargo shrugged. “What of them?”

“Does it matter if they stay or leave?”

“I would think no.”

“Then lead them away, Chief Dargo,” he pointedly instructed. “I will stay on my own.”

“That is a good idea,” declared the shrill shaman, as if he were surprised. “But I will stay, my Chief. Marag can take the others up into the Middle Lands.”

“There is no need,” assured Harak.

“You are my Chief, Harak,” insisted the diminutive shaman. “I will die with you… with honour. And we can show the outworlders that even insects can bite.”

***

Loffi stood in blackness, in company with the titanic goblin known as Orog and the diminutive ancient known as The Small King. He had left his clan of goblins named Moonkin in a cavern nearby, knowing that his monarch preferred the peace and quiet to the constant scratching and murmurings of Loffi’s clan.

“How should we proceed?” Orog’s voice rumbled through the darkness like thunder.

“Proceed?” the Small King asked, his shrill tone distracted. “It would appear that we are being watched.”

Orog reached behind his back for an enormous axe. “I heard none approach.”

“Distantly.” The Small King shook his head. “It is a benign entity. The one that so follows Chance.”

“Can you dispel it?” Orog asked. “Or shall we leave?”

“‘Are you watching me, Watcher?’” the Small King muttered. “No. I suspect it has no way to intercede.” He rasped his long claws together. “As to you, Loffi, what news?”

“Zelerath rejects the request,” said Loffi. “She believes you a deceiver.”

“And here I thought deceit was meant to be an enigma to those giant rats.”

“Perhaps Rubinold is the laughing head of a man with snake arms?”

“What…?”

“I believe,” Orog answered, “that Loffi is suggesting that King Rubinold is the happy countenance of a community more treacherous than it would otherwise seem.”

“Zelerath and Hubbard are arms,” Loffi agreed.

“We could assume then that Zelerath and Hubbard were of import in Rubinold’s old court. And that Rubinold himself is the least of the threats,” mused the Small King. “Though his invention of hand cannons might suggest otherwise.”

“Happenstance,” Orog grunted. “Those I have seen are salvaged pipes from the plumbing of dwarven cities. Stuffed with small rocks and a mix of explosive powders. Struck on the hole of a removed valve until it catches fire.”

“Bang in your hands,” Loffi agreed. “Rat men made red and dead.” He paused. “Loffi saw a manling in the caverns.”

“We know of the human guards… they are largely dead.”

“Slayer of Ragadin. Fire Giant.”

“Oh?” the Small King asked. “When?”

“Loffi knows not,” Loffi spoke in a troubled tone. “Brugg with me before Loffi sent to Zelerath. Finds Fire Giant. Offers to help manling find his clan. Loffi hoped to see Brugg when he returned, but Brugg returns not. Loffi thinks Brugg is made red and dead. Loffi hopes Pool remembers Brugg.”

“I see,” the Small King answered. “I am sure he will be remembered. You can return to your clan now, Loffi.”

“Loffi goes.”

The Small King waited for the goblin’s scampering departure. “Perhaps it as you say, Orog. Chance leads us by strings like a puppeteer.”

“Perhaps.”

“And what course would you now recommend?”

“We are committed,” answered Orog. “If you still wish to take vengeance on Chance then you will need a base of power. And if you refuse to establish that overland, then we will need to wrest control of livable tunnels. I would suggest that we unseat one of the three leaders, Zelerath perhaps, and then try to arrange a suitable peace.”

“To what end? They lack intelligence and purpose. It would be better to destroy them all and be done with it.”

“I could say the same for any race,” Orog rumbled. “But if you have come to decide that you are the arbiter of what peoples are allowed to live in peace, or at all, then I see you as no different than Chance. Colder, perhaps, but that man deceives and manipulates without thought for the cost in lives or even empires.”

The Small King sighed. “So what path would you have me take?”

“Whichever you please. But there are those where I will not follow you.”

“Well… I’ve no mind to walk this world alone.” The Small King paused. “Arrange things with Loffi and the Chiefs as needed, and then begin an attack on Queen Zelerath.”

***

King Rubinold the Fifteenth held his audience in an expansive domed cavern, which connected at compass points to four substantial tunnels. Though the one behind him, which lead to his personal chambers, was rarely used.

He sat on a throne molded from the earth itself, worked to a standard that suited a child’s talent. He was, by appearance of his face, much akin to a rat without hair, though his frame was bulkier and he had longer claws as if to burrow like a mole.

He and all his people shared these traits, but they covered their nakedness in a mixture of poorly-knitted fur garments and the finer, more colourful clothes, that they had claimed in ransom from Timilir.

King Rubinold himself wore a very fine robe, dyed blood red, trimmed with white fur, traced with golden finery. He held a sparkling scepter of gold, adorned by emerald and rubies both. He had quite small eyes, and a pair of large and impressive teeth.

He had four scrawny, unclothed and unarmed, kobolds in attendance at all times, two standing to either side of him. They were his servants, who helped to scratch and preen him, who held up roots and other food for their monarch to eat, when he so choose to.

The Royal Guard of King Rubinold had equipped itself with the masterwork armaments of the long-fallen dwarven civilization. At each of the four tunnels, two four-foot armoured rats stood guard. They wore conical helmets, chain mail, and kept a hold of stolen spears. They held their positions with a careless bearing.

The approach to the throne of mud lay flanked by two three-tiered benches of earth, where sat nearly fifty other kobolds that appeared much like their venerable monarch. Those with the most power wore the well-woven clothes of Timilir while the rest of the kobolds in attendance wore their simplistic furs.

They had each been gathered to an assembly on the risks posed to the underground kingdom, which had only then descended into screaming, spitting and screeching.

“Enough!” King Rubinold commanded, waving his scepter in anguish. “Enough! Silence! I will have silence!”

The beady gazes of his fanged people turned to regard their monarch. Their eyes reflected the diminutive flames of candles scattered across the cavern, though most of those were arrayed near the mud throne.

“Am I not king here?” Rubinold asked, answered by communal affirmation. “I am, yes. I am. And so I will say what we choose to do next. Our enemies are many, but weak—”

“The Small King is not weak!” hissed a withered kobold who wore no clothes at all and, even sitting upright, bore semblance to a dead and shriveled rat. “He put an end to Rubinold the First!”

King Rubinold swept out his arms, revealing a pink belly beneath his majestic robe. “And, yet, Rudrun the Old, we have held against the goblin onslaught.”

“And what of Zelerath?” another asked, one of the only female kobolds sat among the benches. She wore a purple robe that barely covered the girth of her pregnancy. “She stole your prisoners!”

“You voice that almost as accusation!” Rubinold rebuked. “Am I not king here?” he asked, answered by communal affirmation. “I am, yes. I am. My cousin is a usurper. A coward usurper. And though she has taken my prisoners, I will send a group to take them back. And then we will ransom them to the pink goblins and be done with it.”

“What good will that serve when the green goblins overrun us?” Rudrun the Old pressed. “We must seek peace with Zelerath—”

“No!” King Rubinold declared. “I have never heard a suggestion more ridiculous. Next you will expect me to align myself with that heretic usurper. See, another usurper. Usurpers everywhere! But I must ask again, am I not king here? Yes,” he answered amongst the communal affirmation of his own people, then nodded in triumph. “I am.”

“And who will you send to take back the pink goblins from Zelerath?” asked the pregnant kobold.

“A good question,” Rubinold mused, scratching at his chin, his pink nose twitching. “Ah, I know! Guards! Guards! Bring me the pink goblin!”

An armoured kobold, standing closest to the throne, looked up at his monarch. “Which one?”

“Ah, Rood, there you are,” King Rubinold enthused. “The one that finds the other pink goblins. That one!”

Rood’s beady eyes creased. “The one that escapes?”

“Yes!” King Rubinold the Fifteenth waved his golden scepter through the air. “Bring him!”