The Doom of Kings_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [108]
He pointed not in the direction Ekhaas and the others had gone, but along the forest edge toward a tall and sturdy tree. Geth would have hesitated—the trolls were vulnerable again—but Chetiin grabbed him and pushed him toward the tree. They sprinted for it, Geth making the most noise of any of them, and even that the barest whisper. Midian ran like a rabbit and Chetiin like a shadow. The trolls were still howling, covering up any sound their quarry made. Midian flicked something else back along their trail. Geth heard a soggy splat and caught a whiff of a terrible, pungent odor. The trolls, caught in whatever Midian had thrown, moaned as if angry skunks had been thrust under their noses.
They reached the tree while the trolls were still reeling under the effects of the lights and the stink. Chetiin scrambled up it faster than Geth would have thought possible, seeming to run right up the trunk. Geth paused to give Midian a boost, then sheathed Wrath and pulled himself up. A shifter’s heavy nails weren’t sharp enough to be much use in a fight, but they dug into bark easily enough. In only moments, even with one hand encased in his gauntlet, he had reached the lowest branches.
“Higher!” urged Midian. The gnome was climbing with ease.
Geth growled and kept going until the leaves below all but concealed the forest floor, and moonlight came through the leaves above—moonlight and a view of the valley’s grassy slope, of the torches carried by the bugbears standing above, of the three figures that broke from the thorns and raced up the slope.
Ekhaas’s powerful voice echoed in the night. Without Wrath in his grasp, he couldn’t understand the Goblin words she spoke, but he understood the urgency in them. Even as she called to the bugbears, though, the two trolls that had gone after them burst out of the thorns and the bugbears reacted. Torches and pitch pots whirled. One of the largest bugbears shouted something that sounded like a challenge. Confronted, the trolls backed down and retreated into the thorns. The three figures that were Ashi, Ekhaas, and Dagii began to climb again. Geth felt a rush of elation—they’d found allies!
Then the large bugbear shouted again. Another bugbear threw something, and one of the figures dropped to the ground.
“Tiger’s blood!” Geth said. “What—?”
“Hush!” Chetiin perched on a branch just above him. The goblin pointed down through the masking leaves.
The trolls were prowling beneath the tree. Geth bit his tongue and held still.
It didn’t seem as if the monsters had seen them climb. They stalked around the tree, roaming through the forest and growling quietly at each other. Geth raised his head and looked back to the slope of the valley. The bugbears had closed in. The two remaining figures on the slope—Ashi and Dagii, he could tell from the stances—had put their backs together, but bugbears had the advantage of numbers. His friends went down beneath the crush of their big, hairy bodies. Geth heard Ashi shouting and cursing in the language of the clans of the Shadow Marches. When the knot of bugbears opened again, the massive goblins carried two struggling forms on their shoulders, along with a third that was limp and unresisting. Under moonlight and torchlight, the bugbears streamed out of the valley and back to the camp in the vale.
Geth bared his teeth in silent rage.
On the forest floor, the growls of the trolls changed and moved away, then were joined by new voices. The two trolls driven back by the bugbears had returned. They didn’t seem happy to learn that they’d been denied all of their prey. The growls grew soft. Geth, listening carefully, caught the sound of feet moving on the forest litter. The trolls had split up to search for them.
He turned to look up at Chetiin and, on another branch nearby, Midian. “What now?” he whispered.
“We could stay here until morning,” Chetiin said. “The trolls didn’t seem to be active during the day.”
“What about Ashi, Ekhaas, and Dagii? What are the bugbears going to do to them?”
Chetiin’s face was somber. “The tribes of the Marguul deal with prisoners