Bladesinger - Keith Francis Strohm [32]
The odious beast held a fair amount of power, but he was, like all of his kind, a treacherous, venomous vermin that needed an almost constant lash of discipline and bullying to insure his loyalty.
"Oh yes," the cleric answered, baring a double row of yellowed, razor-sharp teeth as she did so. "Razk desires a certain series of rites that I happen to know. He will follow my lead until such time as he receives his reward."
"See to it that he does," Yulda warned. "Without his presence, the goblins will be far more difficult to manage. What of the others?"
"The bugbears and hobgoblins wait for our signal, as does Nanraak, the wild goblin king," the priestess replied. "They will join our forces once we have begun to attack in earnest. The rest of our army gathers here. In two days' time, we will complete all of the final preparations."
"Ah, that is good," Yulda said, moving toward the desk once more and gathering a number of maps in her hand. "Then the plan remains the same?" she asked.
"Yes," Durakh confirmed. "Several contingents of goblins, ogres, and spiders will move swiftly north and west, harrying and raiding the villages several days' ride from Mulptan, while our main force will sweep out of the mountains and strike first at the Mines of Tethkel and then, once we control the mines, will move to capture or destroy the villages and cities of Lower Rashemen."
Durakh's eyes gleamed with anticipation as she recounted the plan, and Yulda's own doubts were swept away by that cruel glance. She had indeed chosen her lieutenant wisely. The witch smiled in response.
"It is a good plan, if I do say so myself," she said to the cleric, purposefully ignoring the priestess's own integral contributions. It would not do to allow the cleric to become too sure of herself. "Are we certain that the Iron Lord will react to the village raids?" Yulda asked.
The half-orc idly fingered her holy symbol as she considered the question.
"I believe that he will," Durakh responded finally. "My spies say that he grows ever restless locked in his citadel of iron, surrounded by warlords who boast of past victories and drink themselves into oblivion hoping for future glory. Besides," Durakh noted with more than a hint of malice in her voice, "the last assassin that we sent after the Iron Lord nearly slit his throat while he slept. Once Volas Dyervolk hears of the raids, he will gather together his army of berserkers and run headlong into battle like an owlbear protecting its cubs."
Yulda threw the maps down on the table, sending several parchments skittering and rolling to the floor.
"Leaving the bulk of Lower Rashemen open to our attack. Soon," the witch said to no one in particular, "it will all be mine."
"And the wychlaran?" asked Durakh.
Yulda turned to gaze at the cleric. Though the half-orc had asked the question with the same inflection she gave everything else, the Rashemi witch heard something beneath the simple inquiry-an undertone of fear? Hope? It was difficult to tell.
Nevertheless, Yulda fixed the black point of her eldritch gaze upon Durakh.
"Leave them to me," Yulda said in a chill voice.
During the course of the past year, the witch had gathered a growing coterie of sorcerers, wizards, and hags in the wilds of the High Country. Frustrated by the yoke of the wychlaran, choked and broken by their own lust for power, they came to her, eager to trade their own freedom for the scraps from her table. There were more of them than she could ever have imagined. The wychlaran were blinded by their traditional rule of power. Carefree and overly complacent in their hereditary role in Rashemen, they could not even conceive of anyone resisting the natural order of things. There were shadows in their mirrors and weeds in their garden that would choke the very life out of them, and they did not even take notice.
Her coterie would travel with the bulk of the army, stirring up the more impetuous of the telthor and turning their arcane power against the spells of the wychlaran,