Ren of Atikala Read online

  I LEARNT A LOT BY watching No-Kill. The gnome was smarter with her prisoners than I was. The first thing No-Kill did was take the rope from my backpack, keeping it as one long length and using it to bind my hands behind my back and then to each foot. Now not only were hands, spells, or weapons useless, but I could only walk in a jerking shuffle, almost guaranteeing that if I ran, I would trip and fall. My weapons were strapped to No-Kill’s backpack, securely tied on and completely out of reach, with Khavi’s blade laid across the top. All of this was done under the hovering fist of the elemental.

  Khavi had not moved at all. He was still breathing, but between the spider bites, the elemental’s work, and the fall, his body had clearly had enough. I hoped he would survive.

  The ropes burned and chafed my scales. “Is this really necessary?” I complained, grinding my teeth together.

  No-Kill waggled a finger at me. “No kill, kobold.” Then No-Kill pointed down the corridor, back the way they had come, away from the gnomish city. “March.”

  With little other recourse, I began to walk, one foot in front of the other. I trudged down the corridor, each step taking me farther away from the gnome city. This time, however, No-Kill set the pace. Slow, almost agonisingly slow. The gnome walked behind me, her hands around the length of rope, guiding me like some kind of slave or pet.

  The bitter taste of defeat filled my mouth. I was an idiot. Khavi and I had planned on what, exactly? Two kobolds marching to the gates of the gnome city with a single hostage? Of course the gnomes would have guardians. Powerful guardians. If they hadn’t, our people would have long ago torn down their walls with our vast army. There was a reason none crossed through the mists except the Darkguard.

  I had nothing to say to No-Kill, and the gnome said nothing to me, so the two of us marched in silence, my claws scraping on the stone, the slow pace affecting my gait. At first it was merely uncomfortable, but when No-Kill stopped to rest, finally, the greater relief was with me.

  “Too tight,” I said, jabbing at the rope. “Too tight!”

  “No talk,” said No-Kill.

  “Listen, stupid gnome breath, the rope is too tight!”

  “No talk!”

  I hissed at her, baring my sharp teeth. “I’m telling you that the rope is hurting me!”

  No-Kill looped the rope around my muzzle and jammed it between my teeth.

  “March.”

  I used my tongue to push the rope out a bit, enough to speak. “What will happen to Khavi?”

  “No talk.”

  I tried again. The words were hard to form, painful, but I was a caster. I had trained extensively to speak with all manner of difficulties. “I am his patrol leader, I am responsible for him.”

  No-Kill pulled the rope tighter. “No talk. March.”

  And so we did, each step tugging the rope tauter, the thick fibres rubbing against my scales and chafing my tongue and jaws. No-Kill walked too slow and took too many breaks, her preferred pace an ungainly waddle. Finally, many hours later, we arrived back at the fork in the tunnel where we had fought her. The area was still littered with the bodies of No-Kill’s gnome companions, and the smell of death filled the corridor. I clamped my claw over my nose to shield against the putrid stink of rotting bodies. No-Kill swatted it away.

  “Smell,” she said. “You kill, you smell.”

  The aroma was sickeningly sweet, of flesh that had started to rot and bloat, mixed in with the thick stench of fecal matter. It was cold in the underworld; the stones have little heat, so the corpses were still mostly fresh. However the gnomes had emptied themselves upon death.

  My classes had told me of these facts. Battle sites were best plundered and then abandoned, for the stink and the rot would set in faster than any thought possible. Numerous scavengers crawled in the underworld’s perpetual twilight and would soon descend upon the carnage. Before the day’s end, the bodies would be gone, dragged off to some lair and consumed.

  This had not happened yet. Now I was the scavenger, the worm to deal with the flesh of the dead.

  “Dig,” instructed No-Kill.

  I waggled my bound arms helplessly. No-Kill loosened the rope, and I pushed it out with my tongue again. “With my tail?”

  “Many spell, kobold. No claws. No spells.”

  “No claws,” I said, “no dig.”

  We were at an impasse. My tongue hurt, and I let the rope slip back between my teeth. No-Kill knew the truth as well as I did, assuming she understood what I was telling her. Finally she reached out and carefully undid the rope, sliding it out of my mouth, but was mindful to loop the thick cord around my throat several times, giving a firm tug. The moment I began to cast the gnome would choke the air from my lungs.

  “Dig,” No-Kill said again.

  I held up my broken claws, still flecked with gold blood from digging through buried Atikala. No-Kill inspected them closely. She seemed saddened by the sight, almost compassionate, but then she hardened. “Kobold dig.”

  And so I dug, scratching my bloody claws into the dirt, crying out in pain whenever my I scraped rock. In the moments when my pain was obvious No-Kill seemed to be sympathetic, but always the same instruction came.

  “Dig.”

  Hours later I had dug a shallow hole wide enough to fit all the bodies. I nursed my broken claws, licking each of them in turn, tasting dirt and blood.

  No-Kill pointed her thick, stubby, scaleless claw at the dead body of her companion and back towards the hole.

  Groaning, I reached for the first body, my claws digging into the rotting flesh. A dark fluid leaked from the gnome’s punctured skin. I dragged its bloated body into the hole and dropped it in.

  An angry howl interrupted my work. I looked up in time to see a familiar rust scaled kobold, his face splattered with blood, leap upon No-Kill, biting and clawing.

  “Khavi!”

  I scrambled to get out of the pit to help. Khavi and No-Kill thrashed around on the ground, punching and clawing, but despite Khavi’s wild assault, No-Kill seemed to have the upper hand. She wrapped her fingers around his throat.

  The advantage didn’t last long. I crested the grave and let my bite lead the way, chomping and snapping at No-Kill’s hands and earning a punch on the snout for my trouble. We brawled unarmed, but that was going to change. Khavi scrambled for the blades strapped to No-Kill’s back, grabbing hold of the two-handed sword’s handle and yanking. No-Kill jerked around violently.

  My teeth sank into No-Kill’s shoulder, and she jerked. I twisted my neck, tearing into gnomish skin and tasting coppery blood. We rolled around on the hard stone, claws and teeth and fists flying, until finally Khavi’s great strength combined with my good grip on her shoulder managed to get us the advantage. Khavi held one of No-Kill’s hands down, and I released my bite on her shoulder long enough to grasp her other hand.

  With her limbs secured, No-Kill could only shriek in her own tongue, kicking repeatedly. The pain made it difficult to hold on, but I squeezed my claws into No-Kill’s skin, gripping her arms tight enough to hurt.

  Khavi used his claws to slash the bonds on his blade and pulled it free of No-Kill’s backpack. No-Kill continued to struggle, and for a moment, I almost lost her hold on her.

  Then she was staring down the business end of Khavi’s blade, and the fight went out of her.

  “Let’s chop its filthy head off,” said Khavi, panting and gasping, black blood running freely from his swollen and bruised snout. He’d lost a tooth in his front row; painful, but it would grow back in a week or so. “The monster led us directly into a trap.”

  “No kill!”

  “Shut your mouth!” I snarled, squeezing No-Kill’s arms and digging my claws in. I turned to Khavi. “Look, we could just bypass the gnomes entirely and head to Ssarsdale. We don’t have to have anything to do with them at all.”

  Khavi’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “You can’t seriously be suggesting that we just walk on by, can you? These beasts destroyed Atikala, brought
the stone down on our homes, killed tens of thousands of kobolds, and you’re suggesting that we just let them be? That we allow slaughter to go unpunished?”

  I looked to the bloated and festering gnome bodies scattered around. “No, but I think these ones have paid the first installment of their debt. When we get to Ssarsdale, we’ll tell our cousins what happened, and they’ll rally their armies. The Ssarsdale kobolds have spellcasters, they have warriors and assassins—they’ll repay the loss of Atikalan blood a hundred fold. That’s a better way.”

  Khavi jabbed his sword towards No-Kill, almost skewering her. “We can’t,” he said. “It doesn’t seem right. A handful of gnomes for tens of thousands? That’s bad comedy. We should at least pass by them, see if we can pick off another patrol or two, or maybe even more.”

  No-Kill started kicking again. I bared my teeth, still stained with her blood, and the gnome stopped. “I want them all dead as much as you do,” I said, “but I think that Ssarsdale’s army is the best way to deal with it.” I risked rubbing my bruised side, glaring down at No-Kill. “Urgh. My whole body hurts.”

  “You’re telling me,” said Khavi. “That water-thing packs a punch. I think I have bruises on my bruises.”

  “I’m surprised you’re still upright.”

  “Well,” he said, “I’m tough, remember?”

  I had seen Khavi shrug off blows that would fell a lesser kobold, especially when his blood was boiling, but the way he held his sword limp was a worry to me. Beneath his thick scales he’d been bruised, quite heavily, although I didn’t think anything was broken. Khavi was in a bad way, running purely on fury and hate, but that would only last so long. We could neither throw ourselves at the gnomish settlement, nor make the dangerous trek to Ssarsdale in our current state. Thirst for revenge would only carry us so far.

  “Let’s find a place to sleep,” I said. “Hole up for a day or two. Then we can make a decision about what we’re going to do. But first, cut these ropes off me. They burn my scales something fierce.”

  Khavi obliged, and my relief was immediate. As Khavi tied No-Kill up, I let go, rubbing where the rope had burned me, several scales coming loose as I tried to sooth my injuries.

  “No kill,” said No-Kill, the tremble in her voice returning.

  I glared at her. “No promises.”

  We half carried, half dragged the bruised, bitten, bleeding No-Kill until the stink of the gnomish dead was far behind us, then neither of us could stand it any longer. Khavi collapsed in a tunnel. As I stared at him the strength flowed out of me. I knew that we had to restrain No-Kill, but the weariness on the gnome’s face was clear. There was no fight left in her, and she just sprawled out face down on the stone, covered once again in body tears.

  I knew that we should set watches, should keep a tight eye on our prisoner, and should learn from No-Kill’s treatment of me, but the exhaustion and battle fatigue was too much for both of us. Wordlessly, Khavi and I lay on the stone, letting our aching bodies recover. Moments later we were both fast asleep.

  I did not know how long we lay on the cold stone, stretched out in an uncomfortable position and completely unguarded, but it was much later when my mind brought me back to the world. I had slept a dreamless sleep, one wrought of exhaustion, but I knew that the rest had done its work. The wellspring of my magic had recovered, perhaps not full to the brim, but better than last night. Propping myself up on stiff and sore elbows, I stretched out my hind legs and tail, my body chaffed from sleeping a night in mail. A glance down at my fingers and I saw that the broken nails had begun to fall out. Several of them lay on the stone, and the nubs of fresh claws were already growing.

  No-Kill sat cross-legged in front of me, her bloodied shoulder wrapped in the tattered remnants of her sleeve, her eyes puffy and bruised. Our weapons laid before her feet.

  “What do you want?” I asked. “Why didn’t you just kill us?”

  No-Kill pointed to the weapons and back down the corridor they had come from. “Dig,” she said, but it didn’t carry the same weight, the same tone that it had before. This was a request, not an order. “Please.”

  I eased myself to her knees, regarding the sitting gnome. “You want to bury the bodies of the gnomes, yes?”

  “Dig,” No-Kill said again, then pointed to my blade. “Dig, and give.”

  I understood. “Dig,” I walked over to Khavi. “Wake up.”

  “Why?” Khavi groaned, his eyes flicking open. “It’s my shift already?”

  I shook my head. “No shifts tonight.” I crouched down beside him, reaching out and touching his flank. “Listen, Khavi, I have a request of you.”

  Khavi slowly sat up, glaring at No-Kill. “You want me to kill it for you, don’t you?”

  Did he always think this way? Of killing and fighting? “No. I want you to help me bury the gnomes we killed, and do it properly before the scavengers get them.”

  He scrunched up his face. “You…want to cover our trail? Are we being pursued?”

  “No, I just want to give the gnomes a proper burial.”

  Khavi’s disgust at the prospect was palpable. “Why?” he asked, his upper lip curling back in disgust. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “It’s just something I want to do. I can’t explain why. Look, No-Kill could have just squashed you flat with that elemental, but she didn’t. She walked away from her home, her feet bleeding, because she wanted to go back to bury them. I think if we do this one thing, she’ll stop resisting.”

  “Let it try,” snarled Khavi. “I’m getting sick of it anyway. I want to see what its guts look like.”

  I tried something else. “Everything else aside, you’ve got to look at the bigger picture. Try to see it this way—that spider nearly killed us. The elemental nearly killed us. We don’t know what other surprises lay out beyond the mist since neither of us have been this high before. If we spent an hour putting some fey in the ground, then we might be able to secure No-Kill’s cooperation. A calm hostage is much easier to control and will serve our purposes much better.”

  “I don’t like it,” Khavi said, glaring at No-Kill again, “but you’re the patrol leader, and you’re the sorcerer. It’s your job to lead and mine to follow. If that’s what your orders are, then that’s what I’ll do.”

  There was resentment in his voice. I was testing his loyalty, and perhaps I was testing it too far, but I knew that he would follow my orders. “Very well then,” he said after a length. “Let’s get it done. Then we can get back to killing.”