The Doom of Kings_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [118]
Somewhere in the forest, a wolf howled. It seemed to Ashi that there was a malevolent joy in the sound. The shouts of the bugbears grew louder—then one of them turned to a scream before ending abruptly.
“Marrow’s reward,” Chetiin said as he emerged from the flames. “Once she’s finished hunting, she’ll go back to keeping watch over the horses.”
Ekhaas and Dagii were already over the slope and down into the valley. Geth followed. Ashi stopped outside the burning barricade, a sudden hollow in the pit of her stomach. “Makka—the chief—he still has my sword!”
Geth looked back at her, then at Chetiin. The goblin shook his head. “We can’t wait, Ashi,” he said. “We need to be out of sight before the bugbears come back. We can’t fight all of them.”
“But my sword—” She turned to Geth. “It was my grandfather’s. It was Kagan’s.”
“I’m sorry, Ashi,” said Geth. “We have to leave it. We have to go.”
“Your sword or our lives,” Chetiin added.
Marrow howled again, closer than she’d been before. Ashi looked over at the edge of the forest, just in time to see Midian pop out of the trees and run like fox across the fire-lit vale.
“What are you waiting for?” he shouted. “Go! Go!”
Ashi pressed her lips together and ran down into the valley.
For the third time, Ashi plunged into the thorns that ran along the forest edge. There was a path through them now, thanks partly to their hacking a passage on the way out and partly to the trolls’ headlong pursuit of them. The brambles were bent and chopped, twisted and trampled, and getting through them was no longer a torturous ordeal. Ashi barely noticed. The loss of her sword, the Sentinel Marshal honor blade that had been her first connection to House Deneith, ate at her like sorrow.
Geth kept only a single torch burning so that she could see, extinguishing the others before the light could reveal them to the bugbears. They heard the tribe return to the burning camp just as they cleared the thorns and made it into the cover of the trees. Shouts of fear and anger drifted down into the valley, followed by shrieks of joy—the children of the tribe must have emerged from the longhouse. There was also one long roar of rage. Ashi knew in her gut that it was Makka, furious at the destruction wrought in the rescue of his prisoners. His wasn’t the only voice of rage to rise from the camp, though. The tribe, it seemed, was angry with their chief. She wondered if they would consider killing him with the stolen sword and leaving it and his body behind as they fled.
The dream was comforting, but unlikely.
“Sage’s shadow,” said Midian as they paused at the inner edge of the forest. “Did any of you happen to carry my everbright lantern out of the camp?”
“Quiet, Midian,” growled Geth.
“I’m not going to be happy if those bugbears still have it. That lantern was really useful.”
The shifter turned on him. “I said, quiet!”
Midian flinched and closed his mouth. Geth caught Ashi’s eye as he turned away from the gnome. She gave him a grateful half-smile.
“You know, we may have fire now,” said Dagii, “but I still don’t like the idea of fighting through the trolls to get back to those stairs.”
“We’ve got another deterrent.” Geth pulled off the bloody bundle that he’d carried across his back and opened it. A troll’s head stared at them. Dagii’s ears twitched back.
“We cut off two of those before,” he pointed out. “It didn’t even slow the other trolls down.”
“This one’s different,” Geth said. He pulled out a long torch, hacked the wooden shaft into a long, sharp stake, and stuck it into the stump of the troll’s neck. Holding the head up like a gruesome standard, he said, “This one’s dead.”
“Dead?” asked Ekhaas. “Dead dead?”
“Dead and not coming back. We found a way to kill them.”
“Maabet! Why don’t we use it?” said Dagii.
“We will if we need to,” said Chetiin. “It will be even better if we can keep the trolls from attacking us in the