Neri set his boot on the centaur’s haunch and pulled his spear out. Its tip was getting dull from piercing the tough and gummy hide of the ill made creatures. He would likely have to take a new weapon from the supply cache Prince Lobuhl had brought along.

This centaur was five of nine, and already he had grown weary of hunting and fighting them. The one saving grace had been the pattern to their movements. They had spread through the Coldwood in a growing spiral, much like the formation Vallus had suggested. It was beginning to seem to Neri that the centaurs were moving in a hunting pattern, but what they hunted he couldn’t tell.

Lobuhl was busy with a foresting axe mincing the front end of the beast. Thrush had never made it to the Sholai Stockade. He was killed within sight of it by the ninth centaur, which was later run off by a horde of dwarven soldiers patrolling the northern shore of the Nazrad. They then sent an actual thrush with a coded scroll to Obrus. Gund was going to ride out himself to see the creatures killed, but Lobuhl had taken the task upon himself.

“It’s just a wedding,” Neri said as they worked chopping the centaur to ribbons. They made small, strong chops and dragged their axe heads down to pare the flesh, then they bashed the bones with the blunt ends of their axeheads. This technique sent less of the centaurs’ hideous meaty parts flying through the air, making for a cleaner dicing and more thorough burning.

“I hate Salimod,” the prince said bluntly.

“Won’t the humans be staying for some time, Dread Highness?”

“A month at least. We’ll do a sweep for more gnoll packs after we kill this nine of nine. Should take us at least a fortnight, and I can find something else to eat up the rest of the time.”

“They’re getting harder to fight, each new one we find.”

“How so?”

Neri looked over to the two dead goblins and the mangled arm of Orrel, his second. “We’re losing people, and taking more injuries.”

“The first one killed three of our men.”

“Ridzak says that wasn’t the first one. He’s difficult to understand, but…”

“I know Driggz. He befriended my nephew, somehow. He’s touched in the head, but well informed. Did he say the centaurs have some sort of pecking order?”

Neri nodded. Just then Piichi, a goblin with skin so light it was almost yellow, dropped from a tree and bowed. Piichi had a fresh gash on his cheek that he wiped with his hand, smearing dark blue blood across his face. He was a wiry creature, with long and sinewy arms. His ears were less clinked than Ridzak or Grandell’s, with just two rows of uniform studs on his left lobe and a half dozen chains dangling from his right.

“Find another one?” asked the Prince.

“We found something better.” Piichi drew his narubit sword from his belt and went to work on the centaur. Neri had never before had the chance to study a narubit up close. The times he’d fought against goblins were few, and they were all poorly equipped bandits. The Grim Whimsey, though, were as disciplined and well geared as any military unit. Neri whistled with admiration at the ease with which the heavy cleaver tore the flesh off the centaur’s contorted skeleton. The forward curve to the blade gave it a mean look as well. Piichi handed it to Neri when the centaur had burned. “It’s yours,” he said, “I’ll get me another.”

Neri had grown to like Piichi. Most of the Whimsey were silent in the presence of the elves, dwarves and humans, only talking to each other and doing so quietly. Piichi spoke openly to everyone, and was far easier to understand than their boss, Ridzak. As he lead them through the forest, Piichi would occasionally stop to wet his braid of lightning-blue hair in streams and ponds.

“I keep finding bits of horse-man in it,” he said one time.

Evening had set in, and the warmish air was again growing chill. The peculiar fog had fled the forest, though Neri saw wisps of it around Obrus’s middle slopes when glancing back from a raised clearing. He was happy to be rid of it. It wasn’t a typical fog. It felt heavy, making it harder to breathe and walk through. At times it felt to him as if it were clutching at his boots, like so many dead hands trying to drag him into the ground.

Arrows of light shot down through webs of branches as they passed into the deeper parts of the Coldwood. Here the ground was less crowded with undergrowth, and now and then they’d pass a large hillock or a dark cave with glowing eyes peering out. It seemed not all life had fled from the centaurs. Birds of prey wheeled overhead, snails crawled along branches, and Neri even caught a whiff of blood from some predator’s kill.

Piichi lead them to a large hill crowned with a dense grove of ironwood and willow trees. Death cap mushrooms poked through the soil about their roots, and clumps of elk grass rose to their waists, towering well above the dandelions and white petaled queen of the night flowers that grew at the base of the hill. Piichi took them to the hill's western face where a gentle stream poured into a narrow opening. It was small, a black hole no larger than a dwarf’s torso. The damp rocks and debris around the opening glistened white in the fading sun. Piichi clutched at the top of the hole with his long fingers and swung feet first into the cave beyond. Neri instructed his men to stand guard outside, and he and Lobuhl crawled headlong into the darkness.

Inside was pitch black. They crawled for a short ways until they could hear the stream dropping sharply downward. From the sound of the waterfall, Neri could tell when to turn around and lower himself with his arms. He guessed it to be a fairly short fall, which it was. When he turned to follow Lobuhl and Piichi he was greeted by a mass of glowing yellow eyes and the smell of gnolls and blood, both odors hanging damp and rank in the cool, dusty air.

They must have a lot of wounded, he thought. Some of the gnolls whimpered, likely the injured ones. Others growled softly, their snarling voices strained by fear. His bright dwarven eyes could make out their shapes in the blackness, and he made a rough count of fifty, most of them bitches and pups. Above them in the hollow, roots from the titanic ironwood trees spread like a web of veins, creating a black domed roof of fragmented night. Clumps of dirt fell here and there as worms crawled through the roots like so many black shadows. Piichi signaled for them to stop, then sat cross legged on the ground. In front of them was a pile of stones shaped crudely like a chair. On the chair sat a short and portly gnoll male with small, crinkled ears. He looked more rat than dog, with tusks like a boar’s jutting from his lower jaw. His stiff fur was all black save where streaks of matted blood had stained it red.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“They’re hiding from the stallion,” Ridzak’s smoothly rasped voice echoed in the airy space beneath the hill. He was sitting cross legged on the ground amidst a cluster of naked pups. “Not the first time this has happened.”

“The stallion?” asked Lobuhl.

“Papa horse,” Ridzak said. Piichi whickered.

Lobuhl stepped toward the plump little gnoll on the stoney throne. “You’re the Alpha of this pack?”

The gnoll growled quietly. “Pack? You says pack? Pack three hundred, ten hundred, a hundred hundred. Thees not pack. Errk in grass keel sontur masters, now sontur free to keel gnoll. Thees not pack. Thees what’s left.”

“Elk in grass?” Lobuhl said peevishly. He was not a patient man, and Neri worried he might grow wrathful and provoke these trapped and wounded animals.

“I believe errk means orcs, Dread Highness,” he said. Lobuhl nodded.

“Can you bring the centaurs to heel?” the Prince asked the Alpha.

The Alpha made a choking, cackling sound that Neri took for laughter. “Dog heel! Sontur not dog. We get sontur when new. If new we make ours. But when sontur get free, sontur stay free.”

“I suspected as much,” Neri said.

“So they tame them when their young,” the prince concurred.

“Yung? No. New.” The Alpha stood. He looked about the cave and pointed to an infant suckling on its mother. “Heem yung.” He looked around again and went to a large male, stood behind him, then pressed his way under the male’s arm roaring and waving his claws. “New,” he said, then sat back on his throne.

“And the ninth is the sire,” Neri said, “the stallion.”

Ridzak nodded slowly. “One in a hundred has the gift of splitting, they says. Most likelyhows we have a bit of time, but he needs to die.”

“We need to bypass the others for now and go straight for him,” said a soft voice from among the gnolls. Neri looked toward the sound and squinted. Dathenyn had her hood drawn over her head, and in her fur lined brown leathers was difficult to tell apart from the gnolls. One of their young was perched on her shoulders. It was scrawny and half hairless, its face wide eyed and wet with slobber.

“You’re hard to see with your hair covered,” said Lobuhl.

The Wolfshadow smiled broadly, the elven equivalent of a guffaw. “I learned that when I was his age,” she nodded back at the pup clinging to her shoulders. “It saved me from many a well earned beating. Apparently, my hair frightens gnolls. They kept pointing and snarling. Gosvag told me it was not yet time for the fire. He’s about as understandable as Driggz.”

Neri looked the Alpha in the eye and took a step closer. “Gosvag,” the Alpha’s crinkled ears perked, “we met Nishta.” Goshvag stared blankly. “The Den Mother.”

The gnolls shuddered and stirred. The little one atop Dathenyn screeched and hid behind her hood.

Gosvag stood slowly. “No,” his voice was shaking, “no, she dead. No. You see… “ he shook his head mournfully and sank back onto his throne.

“Who did we see?” asked Neri.

A slight stirring caught his eye. Ridzak had stood and come to his side. The goblin wrapped his long fingers around Neri’s shoulder and whispered in his ear. “Tell him you were mistaken.”

Neri feigned a look of sorrow. “Forgive me, Gosvag. I saw a bit… a gnoll woman, and I thought she might be your Den Mother. I made a mistake. Is there another pack nearby? Perhaps she’s their Den Mother?”

Gosvag let out a single whine. “Yaas, yaas. That must be. Another pack. You saw thur Den Mother. You not see ours, not see Nashvatuk.”

“I don’t understand these creatures,” Lobuhl said when they had left the cave. “If Neri says their Den Mother is alive, then the snozzled bitch is alive.”

“Allowin’ me to illustriate,” Ridzak steepled his fingers together and paced in a circle as he spoke. “A horse-man sees a big, yummy pack o’ gnolls. They got this big, mean, snarly Den Mother, and she presents the fightiest of fights. The horse-man picks up the Den Mother, leans his head back and pops her in his big ole’ gaper. In she goes and out she comes, all covered in horsey goo. She’s a tough lady, still got her bones, and she makes a run for it. Now what, mate? You saw ‘em in there. A bunch o’ scared animals they are. Bitches and pups, right? How’s a scared little doggy act, mate? Like a thinker or a slinker? They watched her come out all slathered in horsey goo and they ran off before she got back up. Far as they’re concentrated, she’s a pile of pulp.”

“We go for the stallion then,” said Lobuhl, unmoved by the Den Mother’s plight, “just as Wolfshadow said.”

“They seem to be appearing opposite of how they were spawned,” said Dathenyn.

“Do we keep killing our way to the ninth then?” Neri said.

“I don’t want to risk that thing splitting again,” said Lobuhl, “so we’ll save the others for afterward. How do we pinpoint the stallion specifically?”

“Piichi has a theory on that,” said Ridzak.

Piichi flourished and then drew spiraling lines in the dirt. “Here’s the pattern we’ve been using. It worked until the Janny Rads made it out to here, and they found nuthin.”

“Janny Rads?” Lobuhl smirked. “I’ll remember that one. So where are they now?”

Piichi traced a zig zag pattern across the spiral. “They’ve been squarin’ off the circle, but the circle is closer to the truth. I got to thinkin’, these horse-men ain’t really horses, or men. They’re just eaters. Sort of like big snails methoughts. Well, ever look close at a snail’s shell?”

“The source curve,” said Lobuhl. “We use it often in construction.”

Piichi nodded excitedly. “It’s everywhere. Slinker’s know it just the same as thinkers. So methinks the horse-snails is spreading out a bit further on the east end.” Piichi traced a longer series of curves in the dirt, then poked holes with his finger where the centaurs they had killed were found, and a final hole a few lines out in the spiral. “Methinks papa snail is here.”

“There’s a catch to this,” said Dathenyn, “if I’m right, we’ll be leaving the strongest centaurs to roam free, risking them breaking the pattern when he dies.”

Ridzak threw his head back and snapped his fingers with both hands. “There’s brains under her fire! The Wolfsniffer’s right. Papa Snail gave his best bits to his first couple o’ splits. They’ll be the toughest for sure. And after eight babies, papa’s all but spent. But we don’t want him restin’ up to make another eight, so we gets him first. Can we get some eyes on the road, Sneakywolf?”

Dathenyn nodded, then ran to a tree and vaulted from limb to limb ‘til she was hidden among the boughs. A shaking of leaves was all that told of her and scouts movement overhead.

Lobuhl sighed. “This isn’t going to take long enough.”