Tenebroum

Chapter 24: Muddy Waters

Everything was in motion now. The swamp was used to having days and weeks to plan and decide, but for reasons not entirely within its control it didn’t have that luxury now. One moment it was designing its first spirit traps, and commanding its dark messenger to lay a few of them up and down the river, so it could test them, and the next it looked up and everything was burning.

The Viscount at least was safe enough still, the swamp thought as it briefly checked on their progress. The men he commanded had spent days putting up temporary structures on the area that had once been the lizard men’s camp, and before that the mage’s island. It was only now that they were getting ready to build something more permanent, although they seemed more interested in setting up a smithy and a kiln than building anything that had any true purpose.

There was no time to study the folly of men now, though, because the Golden Skull horde had run rampant in the west, and village after village had been burned to the ground. The only people that had survived the onslaught were the ones that had fled.

The first thing that the swamp did was to force the infernal creatures to slow their advances, and the second thing it did was to slowly pull the horde back together as it moved east and south. The green skins could only succeed like this as long as they faced no real resistance. Against an army, or even a large patrol, they would be hopelessly shattered, but they were much too stupid to understand that.

It was only when this was done, that it reached out to the minds of the region that had been infected with the Bard’s songs to find out where the human warriors and adventurers were. It wasn’t a difficult search. It found a few clustered around campfires, halfway between the fertile lands around Fallravea and the villages that were currently being sacked by the bulk of the goblin forces.

It wasn’t just a middling group of adventurers, either. The minds he could peer through the dreams of were just men-at-arms in a much larger force that numbered over a hundred men, including knights and a corps of trained crossbowmen that had loaders and pavises. Apparently, Kelvun’s oldest brother had decided to step out of the shadow that the darkness had placed over him with his younger brother’s victory in the most forceful way possible.

That wouldn’t do at all, the swamp decided as it felt anger circulate through it like a deep current. Even if it wasn’t already hungry for the older boy’s death, and eager to drive another knife in to the old count’s heart, he never would have allowed so many of his pawns to be displaced without gaining something more valuable in their place, and it had no hold on this man.

There were no easy answers, though. Not without revealing its undead to the world so long after it had withdrawn them. No - it would need another course of action.

After two days of deliberation, it woke Krulm’venor with a bonfire large enough that it had a mind to speak with. This time it did not toy with it. Instead, it made the prideful godling an offer.

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“Serve me and I will allow you to live and prosper, Krulm’venor,” the darkness intoned voicelessly. “Cross me and you will only be of further use in my experiments.”

“Why would I ever give a monster like you anything,” the spirit crackled. “You have already taken everything from me!”

“I did, and I can do it again. I beat you, so now I use you how I will,” the swamp agreed, “But if you were useful to me, I might be willing to give you back a few of the things you held most dear. Fuel. Influence. Blood.”

“You think I would serve you for a single bonfire?” the fire spirit spat.

“You think that is all I can offer you?” the darkness would have laughed if it was capable of such a thing. Instead, it just pitied the poor limited mind that was barely more capable than the smoke it was made of. “Even now, my goblins ravage the west. Soon they will take a human army. Every village that burns could be your feast, and some of the blood that falls could be yours to lap up.”

“You would treat me like a dog?!” The idea seemed to enrage Krulm’venor even more, but even boiling over, it didn’t say no.

“Like a loyal hound,” the Lich agreed. “As long as you obey my commands, I will give you your freedom, and you will feast almost as well as I do.”

“What must I do,” the fire spirit said, admitting defeat, even if its pride would never let it truly kneel.

“You must help the goblins raze the human kingdom to ashes until I decide they have created enough fear and death to suit my needs,” the swamp commanded. “Do this, and you will be a servant instead of a prisoner.”

The ripples in the smoke and fire spoke of frustrated rage, but in the end it didn’t argue further, and agreed to help the swamp in the battles that were to come. The Lich had no doubt that the spirit was doing this for its own selfish reasons and that its only hope was to gather enough power to escape the grip that the darkness had on it. Normally, fire and the light it created was the mortal enemy of the dark, but in this case the swamp wasn’t too concerned. Such a paltry mind could never outwit the legion of souls that swirled within its core.

A few days later, when the blacksmith’s forges were lit at what the men had started to call Kelvun’s Landing, it was done with a spark of Krulm’venor’s fire. Later that night the first of the goblin shamans started to feel its power flow through them, and as that poor little hamlet burst into flames, a dozen other goblins quickly harnessed the power as well.

The fire godling was no longer just a flickering flame. Even under the thumb of the Lich it was already more powerful than it had been in years. The darkness doubted that such a detail mattered to the haughty spirit. No matter how much power Krulm’venor gained, its pride would always be the stronger force.

That would be a problem for another day, though. Now all that mattered were that the goblins were unified, and they had the weapons they needed to boil the human knights in their own armor. It was something that the Lich needed, because even with all the gifts it had given Grod, the goblin’s strength and viciousness would do precious little good against plate mail.

After that, the darkness began to steer his war bands north, and night by night they got closer to the Greshen force.

The place that the Lich ultimately chose for the battle wasn’t special. It was just a hill, slightly taller than those around in the middle of the plains. The ground here was still fertile enough that farmers lived here and there, eking out a living. It was far away from anywhere that mattered, though, and at least two dozen miles outside the Lich’s blood-soaked domain. That would have made all the difference in the world if it was using its undead minions for this fight, but the goblins could kill anywhere with equal ease, as long as it was night out.

For the past few weeks, Grod’s war bands had been moving from barn to hamlet to homestead, killing anything they could get their hands on before moving on to the next meal, but tonight they would get the fight they had been spoiling for ever since they’d left the red hills. Grod was a brutal warchief, and he didn’t just want death, he wanted victory.

The night started off as quiet as any other, and the small army of men laid out their camp quite sensibly on a defensible hilltop with picket lines, watchmen, and plenty of fires to keep the night at bay. They took no chances, but even their caution wouldn’t save them. Shortly before midnight, a fog began to boil up out of the lowlands that shrouded the surrounding hills. It wasn’t as thick or as overwhelming as the Lich would have been able to create in the bounds of its own territory, but it was the most it could do from this distance using its dark messenger and a few trinkets it had created in the course of its experiments on water spirit traps.

That fog wouldn’t have been enough to hide the torches and the horses of a human army, but for bands of goblins, it was more than enough. They crept through the dark, and the wily greenskins were practically on top of the men before they even knew to sound the alarms. The horns eventually sounded, but not before screams of pain had already shattered the stillness of the night.

A hundred men are a fearsome force, but only if they’re wearing more than their small clothes before the battle starts. Some of the warriors had a chance to put on their boots and pants before they charged into battle, but most only had time to pull out their sword or load their crossbow before the fight was joined. Even then, a desperate man with a sharp blade can kill his weight in goblins before he’s brought down, but that hardly mattered when they were so completely outnumbered.

There were a hundred warriors when the fight started, and without anywhere to escape to, even the cowards fought bravely, but a few minutes later, only half that number were still standing. Bravery wasn’t nearly as effective as the charge of heavy cavalry or a suit of chain mail you were actually wearing. Lying with those fifty dead warriors on the ground were almost three hundred dead goblins, but that barely put a dent in a force that measured well over two thousand strong.

In the flickering firelight of the final moments of the battle, the darkness noticed that the Count’s eldest son fought exceptionally well. He was so like his father, the swamp decided, in both skill and vanity. The elder Leon Garvin had been able to fight well too, but that had availed him as little in his duel with the swamp dragon all those years ago, as it would help his son in his battle against the green tide tonight.

In other circumstances he might have grown up to be a true hero, but that was not to be. He’d gone west looking for an easy victory that he could use to return to the spotlight, but he’d found only a painful death instead. Tonight he would be just one more body for the goblins to feast on.

The goblins celebrated their monstrous victory until dawn began to color the sky in the east. Only then did they seek out places to hide from its rays, leaving the sun to find only a corpse strewn field. The hill wasn’t a battlefield, it was a massacre, and over the next few days the carrion eaters that circled would grow so thick that they would all but blot out the sun.

No one but the Lich was ever to see such a beautiful sight, though, because now that there was no real military force outside Fallravea to stop the tide of blood that the goblins were unleashing as they once more moved in all directions to slaughter the simple people of the land before word of the violence could spread fast enough to put the villages that lay ahead on the defensive.