Sci Fi & Fantasy / Stygmarsh Chapter 12. The Black Chain Goblins

Chapter 12. The Black Chain Goblins

Brother Michael was the sole witness of the abduction of Manon by the Goblins, but he was too confused to do anything of immediate use. When it finally dawned on him what was happening he tried to call for help. Not all the Goblins, however, had left the camp. As Michael turned, the Goblin captain, Kurnelius, stepped from behind a rock in front of him. The Goblin was carrying something bulky in both hands and with a yellow-toothed grin he cast it at Michael. The spinning net opened under the weights tied to its edges and wrapped itself about the Priest.
Some yards off amongst the jumble of rocks, Tarn was scrambling up to the ledge of the huge split boulder. He found Tricky already crouched there holding his hunting bow. They eyed each other suspiciously until Isambard pulled himself up too, bow in hand.
“What’s going on chaps? See anything?” the Squire asked. Tricky shrugged just as Brother Michael started screaming. They turned towards the noises.
“Over there,” Tarn pointed over beyond a rock to where silhouettes were dragging what looked like a huge sack into the shadows near the camp fire.
“Goblins!” Isambard shouted. “Shoot the bounders!”
The human camp now fought back, two arrows striking the heavily mailed Kurnelius in thigh and groin, knocking him back from Brother Michael, lying totally enmeshed in the Goblin’s net. Kurnelius let go to drag his shield from his back and to pull a begrimed sword into his hand snarling curses in Goblish. On the other side of the human campsite Jim heard the commotion at his back and, mouthing Thanish swearwords to himself, made his way through the boulders, changing bow for sword. Kurnelius spied his approach the same time Jim saw him. The Goblin captain stood his ground crouched behind his shield and his Goblish curses became orders. In response another Goblin, a huge-shouldered brute called Aktavian clad in leather armour studded with metal tabs, closed up to his side, shield to shield. Jim bounded toward them, stepping carefully over Michael, and drove at the Goblins with his sword.
The Goblins proved skillful and fierce together. They traded blows carefully, batting aside Jim’s thrusts with their shields and fending off arrows that the Squire and Tricky continued to direct at them as opportunity allowed. Jim threw himself at them time and again, but their wall would not waver. Then the Squire’s third arrow struck true into the belly of the Goblin Aktavian. Kurnelius saw his comrade stagger, barked an order and began retreating. But Aktavian was too slow. As he turned to retreat after his companion Jim, casting his sword away, leapt onto his back in a mad grapple. With the surge of their momentum, Jim dashed the Goblin headlong into a tall rock and threw him sideways into the hot embers of the campfire. Aktavian bellowed with pain. Jim wrestled with the heavy brute, finally twisting the Goblin onto its back and pinioning it there. Isambard threw down his bow and jumped off the ledge to help. Under the point of the Squire’s sword the Goblin croaked its surrender. Meantime Kurnelius was backing off warily under the cover of his shield, Tricky’s arrows zinging about him. When the Goblin captain reached the safety of the shadows beyond the campfire, he turned and fled into the dark. The ranger unwrapped the Priest, collected his bow and reloaded, staring in all directions against renewed attack, but it was over. Tricky joined them, picking up his unbroken arrows. Of the Goblins or Manon there was no sign.
The lizard’s battle was over almost as soon as it had begun. Orlokk disemboweled his huge adversary, although the lizard captain sustained a deep gash across its own belly from the Goblin’s axe in the process. The other Goblins simply melted away, leaving two of their number dying on the rocky plain. Grinn and Grune brought back their captain and the shaman lizards immediately began to tend Orlokk’s bloody wound. Jim came jogging over to them in time to witness how surprisingly skilful they were in that, staunching the bleeding with a binding, smeared with some unguent the elder Or-likk took from its root-pouch.
Tarn meantime, questioned the gasping Aktavian, holding the Goblin down with his boot.
“Where they taking him?” Tarn snarled in Goblish, “Speak or you’ll die here!”
“Ye traitorous dog! Ye spineless son of a whore-kob!” the bleeding Goblin gasped defiantly. “Ye’ll know the wrath of the Master!” and he spat blood and ashes at Tarn.
Seeing this, though not understanding the words, Isambard decided he’d better take over. As he approached the Goblin, however, it suddenly thrust at him with a knife that had lain concealed in some pocket. The Squire, his eyes ablaze with anger, acted with ruthless instinct, smashing the Goblin’s knife-arm against the spine of the nearby rock. It dropped the weapon with a scream and the sound of splintering bone. Tarn, reacting slower to the Goblin’s surprise attack, clouted Aktavian’s broken arm. In his rage the Squire reached his hands round the Goblins’ throat and shook it violently.
“Easy Sqvire! Easy Sqvire!” Tricky cried in mock alarm. Yet he made no move to stop him and in truth he was loving it.
“Where have you taken the human?” Isambard demanded in a shrill scream. But under the assault, the Goblin fainted away and when the Squire released it, it lay dead, blood bubbling from its mouth. The Squire released his grip and immediately rounded on Tarn with disgust.
“You did that on purpose!” Isambard shouted.
“I done nothing. You killed it!” Tarn growled back.
“Who cares anyvay?” Tricky commented with a smirk. “It’s dead now.”
“He was our only chance to get Manon back!” the Squire rounded on the Nasturian in turn, “we could have bartered with it!”
“Yeah?” Tricky sneered sarcastically.
“Why you little..” the Squire snarled through clenched teeth. He moved towards the Nasturian and it might have gone further but for the return of Jim at that moment.
“Stoppit!” he roared, getting between them. “This will do no good! Tis getting lighter. I shall try to pick up the trail of the Goblin you wounded. Everyone pack their stuff. Now!”
Isambard calmed down and they all began to collect their belongings in silence. As they were breaking camp Kharoon came over.
“Good. Soon go,” he said poking at the dead Goblin with his baton but passing no other comment.
“They’ve taken Manon!” Michael said in a voice choked with emotion. “We have to find him.”
“Bad,” Kharoon said, blinking. “Go soon,”
“Don’t you see? They meant to take one of us! The fire was just a diversion!” the Squire berated Kharoon. The shaman looked at him blankly and pointed towards the way ahead.
“Go soon. On,” it said.
“We will look for our friend first!” Jim said quietly but deadly clear, folding his arms. Jim realised that the lizards were not going to help find Manon at the same time he realised he had formed a liking for the lad. In the firelight the stocky ranger looked as immovable as stone. The Squire, Brother Michael and Tarn stood up, and quietly assembled at the rangers side. At this Tricky joined them with a half-shrug. The shaman looked up at them each in turn, returning to Jim’s menacing hazel stare.
“O-kkay,” Kharoon said. “You go. Kom back when find. Plis.”
“We come back when we’re ready,” Jim said in a low tone, sharpening his sword.
They set off as quick as they could pack, leaving Kharoon’s lizards straggling behind. If the shaman seemed not to care, Isambard thought it was because they were going up the gorge in the direction the lizards wished. Jim easily followed the trail of bloodspots that the Goblin captain left. The spots described a wide arc about the camps and proceeded east across the plain to where the canyon walls closed in and the gorge reformed. After a mile or so the trail came to a muddy pool where it was joined by the boot prints of others. Here all traces of blood stopped amid a heap of blood-stained bindings.
“We’ve lost him.” Michael spoke the thoughts of the others. There was despair hovering in his words. But Jim’s trained eyes picked out a faint trail in the morning dew of the caverns and with a determined growl of, “No we ‘avn’t,” he led them on.
Nobody dared to question the look of savage concentration on Jim’s face or make chatter. Accompanied by the intermittent piping echoing from ahead, all was haste, all was concern. As they skirted another mud hole Jim came upon a discarded sack bulging with kindling wood, and took it with him.
“There be five now,” Jim reported from a careful study of the tracks. “And two be carrying sommat heavy.”
They followed the ranger all that morning as the trail climbed uphill, winding about the rock-strewn corridor between the high-walled canyon. The sun had already turned onto their backs when they arrived at a great widening in the gorge. To their right the wall of the canyon thrust out a spur of rock. Jim gruffly indicated that the tracks led toward it. As they approached Jim pointed out where the trail were joined by maybe two more pairs of Goblin shoes. The numbers made the tracking easier and swifter, though nobody spoke of the increased danger they represented. Soon they rounded the spur where the canyon branched, one forming another gorge going steadily upward while the other doubled-back west round the spur and began sloping downhill. They paused to rest and take some water. Looking down at the way the Goblins had taken they saw the canyon gradually disappear into a wall of misty vapours after a few hundred yards. Furthermore the weird piping was definitely louder than before. Michael suppressed a chill as he gazed towards these foreboding mists.
As Jim stopped to consider what to do next, Kharoon came puffing up with Dannu. Jim could not see the rest of the lizards but they had been following the group all day and must be hidden by the spur. Kharoon pointed toward the misty canyon with his gnarled baton.
“Kapanakk Altan,” The shaman said, snorting out his breath, and shaking his comb, so that spittle sprayed from his jaws. “No ghood.”
“What’s that mean?” Isambard asked indicating the shaman’s strange actions.
“Kapanakk is Fire, aint it?” Jim asked. Dannu conferred with Kharoon and spoke.
“Fire Air there,” the lizard replied nodding, pointing towards the mists. “Sacred. No ghood.”
“Breath of Fire?” Isambard asked, his face screwed up in thought. “What, like a Dragon?!”
“Oh dear,” Brother Michael said, quietly.
“Sign say Kapanakk sleep. You hear air come,” Dannu said, indicating the piping sounds. “No ghood.”
Kharoon clicked at Dannu who bowed and stepped back. The elder shaman rummaged in his sack, produced the barkskin map and, to everyone’s surprise, for the first time laid it on a rock before them. Isambard was the first forward to peer at it. The lizard tapped his claw to the middle of the map where a series of what looked like joined-up circles marked the gorge. “We here,” then jabbing to the end of it, he said, “We go here. Kappu gone. Kapanakk Altan gone. We go. Chosen sick.”
“I think he means we’ll be out of this blasted place by nightfall,” Isambard interpreted after a bit of mental arithmatic.
“That’s good news, isn’t it?” Michael said, uncertainly.
“Well I’m going to follow the trail down there,” Jim said, pointing west, a simmering intensity in his eyes. “The Chosen will just ‘ave to wait a bit.”
Jim got up and the others followed suit. Leaving the shaman lizards at the spur Jim led them down the Goblin trail to where it slipped away with the canyon floor into the mist. The rocks glistened with damp and the trail Jim was relying on disappeared. After a few dozen yards the boulders ahead of them vanished and they found themselves on the edge of a cliff of crumbling rock. Below them the vapours thickened to limit visibility to only a few yards. Jim paused on the crumbling edge with a scowl.
“Shite on a stick,” he swore. “With this ‘ere wet mist about I’ve lost the Goblins trail.”
“Can’t you, er..” Michael’s sentence trailed off.
“I’m done,” Jim said testily. There was an uneasy silence.
“I say, look at that!” Isambard suddenly exclaimed, spotting some sort of a pole sticking in the rocky earth just a few yards ahead down from the ledge. It was reached by the faintest of paths, more a scramble over loose rocks and stones.
The Squire ventured ahead and discovered the pole was a two-foot stave hammered into the earth. It was half-rotten and marked with a line of runes, carved into it and painted black. Furthermore, at the extent of his visibility in the mist, there was another pole further down the otherwise featureless scree run. He pulled the first stake out easily and clambered back up with it.
“Well the way is marked with this pole and I think these are Old Stygian runes,” Isambard said. “Most curious.”
“Are they not blasphemous?” Michael asked tentatively.
“They might say un-angelic things, but it is just the writing of the Old Stygian empire before it collapsed.” Isambard shrugged.
“Aye,” Jim said darkly, “From when it were under the rule of Goblins an’ the Dark Popes.”
“Indeed, yes,” the Squire nodded. “I think that says ‘down’ if I’m not mistaken.” He mentioned nothing of the other stake marking the route lower down. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to rescue Manon, he quite liked the boy, but practically speaking Isambard felt the rescue was beyond them, the risks too great. He waited to see what the others might suggest.
“What shall we do now?” Michael asked.
“Tarn say go down,” the Goblin said, speaking for the first time.
“I’m not going down dere!” Tricky said emphatically. “Der lizards von’t help and dere are too many Goblins for us alone. I say ve go back.”
“I’m afraid I’m inclined to agree with Tricky. Poor Manon is lost now.” Isambard said, slightly disingenuously, hoping nobody noticed.
Jim gave Tricky a scathing look, but knew underneath the man’s cowardice that the Nasturian was right. As they began to discuss the issue, Jim looked carefully about at the other faces. He didn’t fancy having to rely on Tricky to guard his back and in a fight the Squire and Priest would be of little help. That left Tarn. Jim couldn’t even bring himself to consider trusting the Goblin not to side with his kin. Without a trail he could not lead them on anyway and if they did manage to go the right way they were outnumbered and would all end up captured. It was with a heavy heart that Jim had to face these facts. His frown deepened, his shoulders sagged and he relented.
“Let’s go back.”
“Oh dear!” Michael said sitting heavily on a stone, equally glum.
“We’ll come back this way, Jim,” the Squire said to ease the painful decision, “Perchance we can ransom him from the Goblins then.”
“I shall pray for him,” Michael added.
With sad faces the company rejoined the lizards who were now camped temporarily by the spur. Kharoon said nothing about the situation and after a short rest, he ordered Pukkos to take the lead. The company spent the remainder of the day struggling up through the gorge in a depressed silence.
The gorge began to open out slightly and there were no more tunnels to go through now. In the mid part of the afternoon there was a major fork in the way and the shaman directed them up the canyon on their right. They began passing through a weird forest, if that name could be properly used to describe it. It comprised of thick woody trunks, a foot wide and ten or more feet tall, with no branch or leaf but instead a thick runkled brown sheath wrapped about the uppermost part. Jim suddenly realised the trunks were monstrous fungi stalks, hard as tree wood and the caps of these mushrooms were closed and wrapping the stem. The area stank of rottenness and decay for the immense mushroom-trees seemed to thrive on the spoor mountains cast down by great colonies of bats roosting on the southern walls of the canyon.
Jim, still grim faced, nevertheless found interest when Dannu translated the lizard name for these wierd growths from old Or-likk, as ‘sleeping tree’. Dannu explained that they were dangerous if approached without care for they would ‘open up to greet Vakknu’ and drop the dust that made sleep. It was sometimes gathered by the herb-shamans of his Nest for use by the Hold.
“That’s probably the poison they used on us in those dirty little darts,” Isambard commented.

During one of the brief rests that the company often made, Jim suddenly jumped up and threw his backpack onto the floor. As the others looked on in bewilderment, the ranger drew his dagger and flicked the buckle open.
“Yeargh!” Brother Michael cried, as a huge blue beetle crawled out onto the ground buzzing its wing cases angrily. Jim quickly stomped on the insect and carefully tipped the rest of his sack out. At the bottom was a nasty mulched up mess of the last of Cairns cheese and the remains of the red plants Jim had placed there. Another two fat grubs, maybe four inches long, came wriggling out of the mess.
“Maybe those plants were harbouring the grubs all along?” opined the Squire as they all checked their packs. Jim puzzled on it. Somehow these creatures had got into his pack, though it had remained closed and buckled.
Towards late-afternoon they passed a great black fissure on the north side of the canyon under the overhang of the cliff. Jim and Tricky went over to look but they didn’t go in, reporting a most horrid stench came from within. Kharoon was not pleased by their actions and clicked and jabbed at the sky, fretting about the sinking of the sun Isambard thought. Finally, after toiling up the side of a scum-laden stream with the low sun casting long shadows ahead of them, the canyon widened out and beyond lay only a darkening sky.
They emerged at the southern side of a reed-choked lake, collected in a bowl at the canyon mouth. To north and south the canyon walls peeled away, becoming a line of low, rocky hills. Ahead of them, several wadis cut their way through the lip of the bowl trickling water into the lake, and after a short climb up one they reached a plateau of damp scrubland. Jim’s first thought was to put a half-mile of scrubland between them and the gorge, with its somber memories, before they made camp but the Lizards had already placed the Chosens cage down. Kharoon sent lizards to fetch water and as the finger of sun poking through the gorge narrowed and dimmed, Jim started to make a fish gruel to avoid his thoughts.
As darkness fell a loud cough came from behind a hazel thicket and out stepped Manon. He was looking very tired and disheveled, his face was red and puffy but that same cheeky smile was there.
“Got any food?” he asked nonchalantly. “I’m famished.”
Jim was so delighted at his reappearance that he immediately grabbed the trickster, tousling his hair and buffeting him roughly. When the lad winced in pain, Jim realised that Manon was rather more bruised than he first appeared, and stopped with concern. Michael stepped forward to greet Manon with a warm handshake and began to inspect his cuts while Isambard passed him the last of Cairns mead. Tricky joked he was ‘too late vor supper’ and the Goblin bared his teeth in a grin. Even Kharoon came strutting over and nodded toward him, spitting a small welcome, before rejoining his kin.
“So what, for Angelssakes, happened to you?” Isambard exclaimed.
“Yeah, you great taradiddler!” Jim said affectionately. “We thought you was.. well.. dead!”
“Thereby,” Manon said grinning, “hangs a tale!”

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