55. Thrice Tried
“Horvorr’s Great Lake is often seen as a peculiar mystery. It is thought to be near circular and the depth is sheer from the embankments. In my years here, I have seen no men swim in it, and those that fall in almost always drown. I have heard myths that the water is haunted, and those that fall are dragged in by spirits keen for company. Perhaps that is why the Godi disappeared all those years ago.
I have heard as well that Gahr’rul, or some older goblin leader, had the Lake made as an enormous spawning pool. The story goes that they tried thrice to breed from it before they yielded a clan’s worth of enormous goblins. The Tales of The Landing would place the Lake’s making long before Gahr’rul, but I often wonder how he, or any other goblin, managed to breed the Great Chiefs.”
Chief Gudmund stood atop the towering wall-walk of Horvorr. He overlooked the barren plain that encircled his town, watching as wind swept up writhing curtains of debris and dust. It was a dawn so blustering that it would have brought a tear to the eyes of Bruma Stormcaller. He wore his red armour and the matching helmet, though he had hacked the horns off. He had Grettir’s iron-hafted axe, his father’s gleaming sword, and even an ornate bow, which leaned against the parapet.
Eirik stood behind him, blond hair topped by a dented helmet. He had clad himself in padded wool, reinforced with leather coverings for his knees, legs and chest, both bolstered by a muddy coat of mail. He held a painted shield that had been too battered and scraped to depict anything, but he had it in mind that it once bore a hawk plucking out the eyes of a goat; despite the vividness of his memory, he still had a hard time believing that a man would ever paint such a thing on the shield.
“I never did ask!” Gudmund made great effort to defy the wind, but didn’t bother to turn. “Why did you back me?”
Eirik shook his head. “You know I’m not sure if it’s funny or tragic that you’ve managed to win loyalties by accident!” He sighed into the wind. “You were the one who let me on Horvorr’s Guard. I had to join because my father had died, and my mother had real no work of our own. Grettir said that I was too small, said I didn’t know enough about fighting, that I would only ever get myself killed. And you said that it was fine, because I could serve in your household guard, where no man would ever think to raise a sword… and that saved me a life working in the mines!”
Gudmund slowly turned, eyes narrowed behind his visor. “Did you say something?” He rapped knuckles against the broken horns. “I can’t hear a thing in this helmet other than the wind!”
Malformed roars reached the walls of Horvorr, soon joined by wind-whipped whispers of shrill horns. Gudmund turned back to the parapet, and laughed a joyful laugh.
The bone white and ash grey of the plain was flooded over by shades of filthy green. The horde of goblins flooded out from the snow-topped trees of The Blackwood Forest. They rippled out onto the plain like a creature of a thousand limbs, come to plague and consume men, women and children.
Gudmund’s momentary mirth that he was not, as he had begun to fear, both mad and paranoid was replaced by the realization that all his people were likely going to die. That this endless host must have left Fenkirk broken and burnt amid the distant trees. He had left his region to be swallowed up whilst he wallowed in grief. Horvorr was surrounded, soon to be overrun, and that fate would be gifted in turn to the fisher folk of Wymount.
He could at least take some solace that this might well be the end of Tymir in entirety. The goblins wouldn’t even have to conquer Timilir, they could march up the Midderlands Pass and strike the young son of Jarl Harrod on his blind side. “Why would I take solace in that?” he thought, weighed by a sudden sadness. “Is this the end of our people?”
“Gods above.” Eirik stepped forward, eyes wide in horror. “Is Timilir really coming?”
“No.” Gudmund chuckled. “We’re on our own.”
He was sure of that, even though he might have seen three more converging forces had he looked to the trees south of the goblin host, to the mountainous northern pass, and to the western valley that led to Wymount. He instead turned to look down on his excavated town. He had left only one clear way into Horvorr from the main gate, which led towards Brolli’s place. The oxen pen had been dug up, replaced with a watery pit and a manned barricade that blocked off the Ritual House. The main road had been changed into a long ditch then partly staked. The embankments of the Great Lakes were much the same, and most of the town lay pocked by holes or blocked by barricades. He took a silver horn from his belt and handed it to Eirik.
Gudmund frowned down, wondering how long it would take for the goblins to swarm the walls and pad the gaps with corpses. He watched the huddled figures of men and women, those preparing to die as the silver horn sounded down to them all.
The Chief of Horvorr had done what he could. He knew it wasn’t enough.
***
The Western Clans swept down from the northern forests like a dark green sea, ferrying a latticework of rafts upon their hunched backs. A dozen or so were larger than the others, but for the main they were either chubby and porcine with stubby fingers, or wiry and bat-faced with bone claws.
Dalpho stood apart by a measure of enormity, standing as round and as tall as most two-storey buildings. Lazarus alighted on his shoulder, as if a favored bird or a cosmic guide, though he was the one who would not be swayed. “This is a mistake,” Dalpho bellowed. “You need not do this.”
“Do not discourage them, my friend,” Lazarus insisted in a hiss. “We are to go to war, and they do not need to be confused by your unhappy grumblings. Onward!”
“Onward!” Dalpho echoed. “Set the wood into the water! Forward to Horvorr!”
Goblins began to reach the banks and hurl themselves and their rafts onto the dark water. The efforts of the Western Clans sounded out with an endless splash and a enormous clonking of wood. Goblins that had been thrown clear of their vessels began to scrabble and gurgle in attempt to clamber back to safety, while others weathered the cold and only tried to cling to the sides, most crunched as rafts collided.
The merry screeches of goblins who had better luck pierced through the chorus of chaos, and they made best effort to keep afloat while the crowded rafts began to bob forward on the choppy and windswept water.
“Paddle if you have to!” Dalpho shouted after them, overseeing the industrious and manic flotilla. He waited for the last rafts to go crashing into the water, then made a gentle effort with his huge hands to urge the discordant mass across the lake.
The goblins glanced in confusion at one another, unsure where they would tread next, until some set keen eyes towards the embankments of Horvorr, which appeared both abandoned and unguarded, save for a sturdy barricade of boats and crates.
Lazarus stood foremost amongst the flotilla and witnessed with muted excitement now the first raft smashed into the embankments, sending up a burst of spray. “Charge!” he screeched. “Destroy Horvorr!”
“Charge!” Dalpho bellowed from across the water. “Kill manlings!”
Goblins began a frantic effort of reaching solid ground. Vessels landed, smashing and clonking against each other, sinking some, others taking on water as their passengers scrambled onto safer rafts. Which made them less cautious when they all leapt onto a road that had been dug up, staked, and now lay slick with watery mud.
Lazarus hesitated for as long as it took for another goblin to shove him forward.
He twisted his body to narrowly avoid landing on a wooden spike. He landed with a soft splash, slipped between the stakes, and grimaced now goblins came splatting down after him. He heard flesh punctured and bones break, heard goblins trip and scratch and scream while they were crushed underfoot.
He used his sleek claws to hack through the stakes that were reasonably sharp then made an attempt to clear the way for those soon to come, narrowly avoiding those that were making a mad splash in the muddy and bloody pit.
“Loose!” Ralf ordered from behind the embankment barricade.
Bowstrings thrummed and arrows zipped into the ditch. Goblins screeched when they were skewered by shafts. Lazarus swiped an arrow mid-flight then rolled forward through the thick mud. He ripped into the ditch wall while more water and goblins came crashing down behind him. He ravaged the earth enough with his desperate effort that it crumbled into a ramp. He glanced back at the broken bodies, at dozens of muddied goblins now paralyzed by their idiocy and fear.
“Follow me!” Lazarus screeched. “Follow me! I am Chief!”
“Follow Lazarus!” Dalpho’s voice rolled through the air above them. “Follow Lazarus!”
“Loose!” Ralph called again. “Kill as many as you can!”
“I am Lazarus!” Lazarus declared. “Follow me!” He clambered away without waiting for the goblins of his clan to follow, narrowly twisting his lithe frame clear of a young man’s sword. He ripped out the manling’s crotch, and ran forward, stopped by a staked ditch and fence between a pair of rundown fisher shacks.
Lazarus clawed through the nearest wall, kept slicing through a scattered mix of fisher rods, through the skeleton of a fisherman—whose death had escaped all notice, despite constant mentions towards a bad smell—then he forced his way through the small room and hacked out the back wall. Lazarus rounded the shack, then took the fence out at the back, kicking the wood into the ditch to give a clear path for the goblins now clambering up from the slope he provided.
“This way!” Lazarus ordered, beckoning with his long claws. “Hunt those that you can! Try not to waste your lives!”
He studied the town ahead of him, swathes of churned earth and wooden structures. He recognised little beyond the imposing hall and the horizon of huge log walls.
Lazarus snarled, shaking his head, then clambered up a nearby shack. He had view of the blockade of boats and walls where dozens of women and men hid with their arrows, loosing them at goblins still floating forward on their rafts.
“Lazarus!” a squat goblin, Dugg, shouted from below. “Go which way?”
***
Ralf and the other archers crouched atop an upturned boat, overlooking the ditch on the embankments. They aimed for a large porcine goblin, Dugg, who had the foresight to throw rafts down into the ditch, which crushed those who had slipped but helped those still to come. He had been bright enough to hold one up to shield himself as well, which made the arrows, along with others loosed, useless.
Dugg set to work making a wonky wall of rafts along the ditch, meaning to shelter those on their way up the slope, where they would likely follow the path that Lazarus had cut through the line of huts and shacks.
Lazarus himself then broke out from one dusty structure and into the open street, wood tumbling away to give him a view of a tall grey structure on his right and a street of abandoned shacks ahead. “Follow me!” Lazarus veered to his left, heading back to the embankments, and gained sight of the barricade where men and women loosed arrows on unsuspecting goblins. “Charge!”
Ralf turned at the sound of the shrill screeching. He warned the two dozen plain-clothed folk with him and they dropped their bows and scrambled for an untidy pile of spears and axes. Ralf made a last effort, with the help of an old man, to move one of the boats and wall them in on all sides.
“For the Small King!” Lazarus screeched, leading the charge. “For Gahr’rul!”
***
Arfast scratched at his bald head, scowling down at the embankments.
He stood guard on the balcony of Grettir’s house with his own group, with no way to reach the others in time. The ditch had been floored by rafts and dozens of goblins had already made their way up the ramp and into Horvorr. A few wandered aimlessly along the shore but the rest had come up behind Ralf and his band of volunteer fighters.
Arfast could do nothing but watch the unchanging fate of the makeshift blockade.
Metal clashed. Goblins roared and screeched.
Men and women answered with their own cries.
He sighed when a boat was pushed out from the blockade, expecting the goblins to come full circle, but a stout guard stumbled out instead then an old man scrambled up behind him. They set to work dragging people through the barricade by their hands.
The rafts left had mostly been abandoned, but the larger goblin, Dugg, and a dozen others remained in the pit, digging up any kin that had fallen down but still lived.
Dugg noticed the escaping manlings, and smashed down his own raft wall. “Charge! Kill the manlings!”
The old man and Ralf had only got a dozen folk through when goblins closed at both sides.
“Rush them!” Ralf ordered, leaping into the ditch. He cleared far less distance than he expected, missing his axe swing, stumbling close enough to be grabbed by the large goblin. The old man roared above though, hurling a fishing spear that punctured Dugg’s head. The goblin toppled over dead, which discouraged the smaller kin with him, and sent them screeching and scrambling up and out the pit.
Arfast watched with relief while Ralf and his remnant band slogged through the mud. They paid no mind to the goblins breaking down the barricade behind them.
Lazarus watched the retreat as well, but had little luck convincing goblins of the wisdom of leaping into the dangerous pit that they had just escaped out of, so he cursed in anger and led them towards the tall grey structure instead.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
***
“Lady take me,” Gudmund whispered, elbows resting on a window sill.
He had view, obscured by his own imposing hall, of most of the town from Horvorr’s Barracks. Wretched goblins had already cleared the embankments and destroyed the blockade. They now raided at random on their own or in scattered groups that smashed down doors and dragged screaming families out to be eaten.
Gudmund tore his gaze away from the desperate efforts of people who had tried to survive on their own. He looked towards the single gathered mass of goblins that was on its way to Brolli’s place, and hoped that the three old men would put up a better fight than terrified women and children.
“What is it?” Eirik asked.
“Ralf’s dead.” Gudmund stalked back from the window. “Along with dozens of others.”
The benches and tables of the barracks’ taproom had been broken or upturned to board the door and obscure the windows, allowing only enough of a view to loose a bow.
Gudmund had Eirik with him, three other men of Horvorr’s Guard who he didn’t know the names of, and some women wearing mail and bows, which he considered bad company to keep, but not as bad as the lanky blond man who now wore a leather cap and had a bow ready as if he meant to hold the barracks from behind his bar.
“They’ve broken the embankments,” Eirik spoke in a faraway voice. “I thought you were joking about goblins on rafts.”
Edgar blanched behind his counter. “Are we dead, then?”
“Of course not,” Gudmund snapped. “It doesn’t matter if a few goblins swam in. Arfast will take care of it, and if not him, then there’s those three other old bastards waiting at Brolli’s. Our job is to—”
A massive blow rocked the huge gate, crushing wood and stressing hinges.
“Our job is—”
The gate shuddered under another strike.
“Is to—”
A deafening din of metal snapping and wood crunching sounded through the air, leaving the gate broken half open.
“Hold the gate!” Gudmund finished, to his own relief. “So hold the gate!”
Hinges burst loose under the force of enormous weight.
The main gate broke apart and collapsed into a tumble of giant logs that rumbled against one another, crunching wood and hissing dust, slamming into the wall or the ground or each other with a shuddering impact, only to roll away or topple back onto a gathered mass of goblins. Clouds of dust went up, shrouding hundreds of figures in a brown haze while they were crushed outright or flattened after.
The sound of grinding earth and hissing dust had a hold on the world until the broken logs stopped rolling.
A prodigious creature loomed in the newly made entryway, taller than the barracks, draped in a dusty cloak of patchwork furs.
Gudmund’s desperate band voiced their fears and shouted questions, while their armoured leader laughed. He had never seen Braguk Moonbear before but this fit Brolli’s description of an ugly crone in an ugly cloak well enough.
It even had bright green eyes and a staff sized like a tree.
Gudmund was as disappointed as his people were relieved when Braguk Moonbear stepped back from the town to leave a squatter gold-adorned goblin leading the charge.
Grugg swept out his rounded green arms and bellowed loudly in encouragement now hundreds of goblins charged forward. They seemed not to notice or care that a great staked ditch had replaced the main road of Horvorr. They sprinted towards their deaths, screams unheard under the deep bellows of their gleaming leader.
Grugg stood watching from the ruin of the gate, squinting in confusion as his clan seemed to sink into the earth. He looked a little further and noticed that the ground had been dug and trapped. “Stop!” he bellowed, then decided that they had already travelled most the way. “Charge! Charge! Find me the Young Wolf!”
He squinted about the open streets but saw nothing but things made of wood. “Find me manlings!”
Pain began to prick at Grugg’s cheek and shoulder, so he lumbered around to see what was causing it, then he noticed manlings inside of the big-and-black mud-encased hut.
“Destroy that!” Grugg swept out a great gold-spangled arm. “Kill the manlings in the mud hut!” He grumbled when none bothered to heed his words then charged forwards on his own. He was almost of a size with the place, so when he shouldered into it the earth encasement broke apart, walls fissured or crunched inward, and almost all the folk inside were sent stumbling from their feet.
“Get back up!” Gudmund snarled, shaking his head. “This is a waste of time! Eirik! Take them to Brolli’s!”
“What about…” Eirik trailed off.
Gudmund leapt out of the broken wall. He felt quite happy with his jump, but then the massive goblin stepped back.
Gudmund had a slew of regrets competing in his mind, foremost among them that he was about to land and shatter his bones with the weight of his armour. He mainly hoped that he would have enough wits left about him to cut his own throat.
Grugg roared, throwing all his weight behind a huge fist. He struck the wall and something shiny and heavy landed on his arm as he did, then pricked his skin.
Gudmund laughed madly, burying his father’s sword into green flesh before the goblin tried to shake him off, which dragged the blade down through the full length of the goblin’s limb.
Grugg staggered back, squealing in terror now dark blood spilled out all over the ground. He felt pricks in his feet at first, but then he was looking up at the pale sky instead, while more pricks buried into his back. It was all scary and confusing.
Gudmund struggled to his feet, helmet limiting his vision to the sight of a massive goblin now skewered in the ditch. He thought to thank the gods, remembered he had no faith in them, then leapt on top of the rounded green belly. He hacked down with Grettir’s axe, burrowing into the stomach before the goblin could snatch him.
Grugg smacked at his own bleeding stomach with his one good arm, but he couldn’t see the shiny manling. He tried to roll over, but the pricks had him stuck. “Stop, please,” he cried. “I don’t want to fight no more. You win. You win!”
Gudmund had started to drown in the blood. He could feel the reverberation of the goblin sobbing. He couldn’t clamber up with the weight of his armour, so he held his breath and started to hack through the guts.
Gudmund burst out from the flesh and into the open air, thankful again of something, of nothing. He waded through the muddy ditch, soaked in foul-smelling blood, hacking at any goblins he happened to pass. Gudmund laughed aloud, tears trickling from his blood-stained cheeks, thinking all the while that his brother would have loved this.
***
The militia of Fenkirk and the hunters of The Blackwood slowed in their march now they saw the sea of enemies breaking against the walls of Horvorr. They had come up from the forest path, and had just begun to cross onto the plains, formed into a spearhead and led from the front by four men and one woman.
“Is it too late to turn back?” Ragi asked, with a wry smile across his hard, bearded face.
“For me it is.” Sam followed his words with a parting smile then readied his spear and broke into a charge. He appeared something of a mad man, running bare-chested and bandaged, wearing torn trousers and a scratched leather cap. “For Horvorr!”
“For Horvorr!” Gunnar echoed, giving chase. He still wore his black-stained fur, and his feather-topped cap. He glanced back at the wary host, one green eye sparkling amid the poulticed wrappings of his face. “For Fenkirk!”
“We are running for the south gate!” Engli declared, starting his own run. “Goblins have no discipline! Stop for nothing! If you run without looking back then you will make it the town! You win your lives today or you lose them! There is no turning back!”
The trio of eager men ran with childish abandon. They didn’t bother to look back, though that was likely for the better, because the sight of the rooted and disheartened folk would have only discouraged them as well. The Trapper’s men, who stood near the front, decided that the Trapper would have wanted them to fight for Sam. They decided, as well, that he was a man worth following, so they roared out cries for Fenkirk and for Horvorr, and for an end to the monsters at the hands of men. They started after the three leaders and then Ragi let out his own wordless cry and joined their charge.
Ingrid smirked at those stood still, women and men of all ages, even young children. “You’re just as dead among the trees as you are in the field! The gods are watching!” She lifted her bow from her back, and ran after the Trapper’s men. “Don’t disappoint them!”
As a stone starts a landslide, the hunters of The Blackwood flowed into motion, and those that were scared were no longer fearful of rushing forward but of being left behind.
The war cries and battle shouts of Fenkirk carried across the now windless plain, ferried with the song of sonorous horns. It was a chorus that reached the ears of Gudmund of Horvorr, who discounted it along with the ringing in his ears; Brugg, who decided he would wait near the northern pass and let his brothers risk their lives and clans for a wood wall and a town of fish; Grugg, who only then approached Horvorr’s gate in his ill-fitting attire; Braguk Moonbear, who cursed his luck and urged Grugg and his clan forward, telling him to pay no mind to how his brother had been butchered; Hjorvarth of Horvorr, who heard it play back off of distant mountaintops and thought it some trick of the wind; and Sybille, who had other thoughts to busy her and discounted it in much the same way.
Even Isleif heard the horns, the roar of war, and so he woke in the Ritual House of Muradoon, much his young self again.
The gathered forces from Fenkirk had hundreds of goblins between their host and the southern gate of Horvorr.
Sam led the spearhead with one of his own. He joined battle with a daring thrust that left him open to several counters and dozens of thrown stones, paying no mind to the fact that his nearest ally was a dozen yards away. Fortunately, Sam the Spearslayer was a manling well known as the Great Chief of Fenkirk, who had slain the twins Mabaruk and Muburak, so when he struck it was if he hit the whole host, because they recoiled and retreated and hissed his name.
The chubby goblin that Sam punctured fell dead, allowing him to kick it free from his spear in time for the approach of a goblin twice as tall and broad.
“I challenge you, Spearslayer!” Urug declared, sweeping out his great arms. “Know well that I lead a clan of over—”
“I accept.” Sam hurled his spear through the air, stopping the smile that spread across the goblin’s big face.
It was by luck, and reputation, as well, that Urug feared the trueness of the Spearslayer’s aim, so he desperately tried to leap clear, and instead threw himself into the spear’s flight.
“For Brikorhaan!” Sam roared.
The sturdy clan of Urug screeched in amazement and fear at the fatal throw, infecting the wretched goblins around them with panic.
Sam lifted his second spear from his back. He swept his gaze across other large goblins, who now feared his uncanny ability to guess where they might jump to avoid his spear. The muted awe ended with an abrupt roar and clatter now Gunnar, Engli and Ragi each crashed into the goblin’s fearful ranks. Ingrid and the Trapper’s men came at a slightly slower approach, loosing arrows before they reached for their own blades.
“Charge!” Engli yelled. “Keep forward!”
A dozen Chiefs soon mastered their fear and shock, and growled command for their clans to fight.
Hurled stones smashed into the Trapper’s men, splitting open heads and breaking bones. They would have been bludgeoned to death had not the rest of Fenkirk’s Militia caught up, sending the nearby goblin host into a fearful rout, stumbling into one another and clawing and fighting amongst themselves in their effort to get safe.
Goblins were trampled, had their throats ripped out by their own kin, and were pushed back to drown in Horvorr’s Great Lake. And as the Militia of Fenkirk reveled in that short-lived victory they never even considered whether anyone was actually manning the Southern Gate.
“Open the gate!” was a cry made by many of Fenkirk.
The desperate words heard by no man or woman of Horvorr.
***
“Ilma weaves, and widows grieve, when she seals the thread,” sang the proud voice of a noble bard, echoing back off the many-roofed rafters of the Ritual House. “Muradoon watches with an open eye, and open hands, for the dead.”
“I need a sword.” Isleif licked his lips, and rubbed his wrinkled hands together. “Do any of you good people have a sword?”
The fearful folk huddled around the many-candled stone altars of the Ritual House had no swords for the excitable old man. They offered only suspicious or angry looks then muttered amongst themselves. “That’s no song to sing,” a woman grumbled.
“No?” Isleif asked. “No swords and no songs in here. I’ll find one and make one as I go.” He lifted the bar from the Ritual House door despite the many complaints and threats. “Wish me only the best luck!”
The carved visage of the god of the Spirit World opened to a furor of hopelessness and violence. Small goblins clambered over a make-shift blockade of scrap wood, stakes and carts that had been raised on the other end of the corpse-laden crater which was once the oxen pen.
“It looks like we’re about to broken.” Isleif smiled back at the shadowed and huddled folk. “If I’m remembering rightly you need to flee now, and regather at the southern gate. I’m sure Lovrin knows all about it. He’s involved himself in quite a lot of complicated plots lately, so I’m sure he’ll remember this one easily enough.”
The hunched, purple-robed man scowled under his hood, and nodded his accord all the same.
Isleif let out a satisfied sigh.
He watched while Linden and Anna fought back to back amongst a dozen other bloodied folk, against a growing number of wiry and violent goblins.
Isleif whistled a tune, noticing the pile of axes on the floor. He stood there for a while, picking up axes and hurling them at unsuspecting goblins, who seemed no less oblivious to his presence than those fighting for their lives.
Trugg, his garish clothes stained brown, had finally labored through the oxen pen, and reached the make-shift barrier.
“Step back from that fence!” Isleif ordered with such a forceful and knowing tone that most followed his command.
Trugg smashed his fist into a cart, sending it over along with loose planks and goblin corpses. It crushed a few folk, and the debris knocked down others, but not near as many as it might have moments before.
Anna scowled, her blond hair red with blood. “Isleif?”
“Have we met?” He wore only a tattered night shirt, but had two axes to hand. “You should follow me. I fought in the wars at the Midderlands. I know what I’m doing.”
“You’re naked,” Linden argued, stepping back and cracking open a goblin’s head with his hammer.
“What good are clothes or armour to a thing like that?” Isleif asked.
Trugg clambered up from the broken barrier, his big face furious with the thought of how he had muddied his clothes, made all the worse by the fact that some goblin had ripped out his seamstress’s throat. He smiled at the bleeding blond woman though, hoping that she might know how to sew.
“How odd,” Isleif said, humour in his aged voice. “I suppose it sees the good in clothes more than I do.”
Linden and Anna had forgotten the old man now they hacked and smashed at screeching goblins in a desperate fight for their lives. Behind them both, folk fled from the Ritual House of Muradoon and a once-hunched Godi had his hood back and made best effort to defend his folk with two masterwork knifes, fighting with the grace and skill of a practiced assassin.
“Great Chief!” Isleif gripped both axes, and stared up at the massive goblin. “I challenge you!”
Trugg laughed at the silly thought. “With what name or clan, shrivelled manling?”
“I am Isleif the Bard!” the wispy-haired old man declared. “Slayer of a thousand goblins and a hundred Chiefs.”
Trugg, and all his clan, paused while he considered that for a long time. He stared down with beady eyes, not sure what to make of a manling who seemed so old and wore almost no clothes, who seemed as unlike Trugg as any manling had ever been. “Isleif the Bard… is dead?”
“Do you deny me?” Isleif called. “That I stand here. That I use my own name. Kill me and claim it, or leave this place!”
Dozens of ferine eyes watched the frail manling with a campfire curiosity.
They knew to honour all challenges made to a Great Chief, but they would no more believe that they were looking at Isleif the Bard than they would think to meet Gahr’rul, the Small King, or the Old Enemy.
“Trugg challenges Isleif the Bard,” the rag-garbed goblin declared. “Chief to Chief!”