flies whirling around him.
He certainly hadn’t been the one who snapped that
stick I’d heard. Then, I saw who did. About twenty-five
feet from me was a dwarf in an oilskin cloak. His back
was to me. He bent over another fallen hobgoblin, his
chain mail links clinked under the cloak. The dwarf
straightened. He carried a bright, spike-backed war axe
clutched in a leather-gloved fist. Then, looking around
warily, he turned in my direction, revealing a wet and
tangled brown beard, thick dark eyebrows, and small
black eyes that widened violently when he saw me.
“Reorx!” the dwarf gasped. He swung the spike-
backed axe in his right hand, his left arm coming up to
block me if I rushed him. He took a half-crouch, feet set
in a stance that could shift him in any direction. Another
veteran of the war.
I raised my hands – palms out, fingers spread – and
shook my head slowly. The dwarf didn’t take the hint, still
readied for an attack. The sight of him clutching that
polished axe struck me as amusing, but I didn’t smile.
I moved sideways to get away from the ledge, having
none of the unsteadiness I’d felt earlier. The dwarf rotated
to keep facing me.
I moved my lips to say something to him, but nothing
came out. It took a moment to figure out why; then I drew
a breath to fill my lungs. Part of my rib cage expanded,
but there was an unpleasant sucking sound from my
sternum and the sensation that the left side of my chest
was not filling. I quickly reached up and placed my right
hand inside the neckline of my surcoat to cover the bolt
wound. I tried again.
“Don’t worry,” I said – and was startled to hear my
own voice. It was burned hoarse, as if I had swallowed
acid. I forced another breath in. “I won’t hurt you,” I
finished with a gasp.
The dwarf gulped, never taking his eyes off me. A
muscle twitched in his left cheek. “‘Preciate the thought,”
he muttered. “I’ll keep it in mind.”
I was curious about the dead hobgoblins. I gave the
dwarf an unconcerned shrug before kneeling to examine
one of the fly-covered bodies. As I’d suspected, the bolt
head projecting from the hobgoblin’s neck was exactly the
same type as the one that had hit me. I let my right hand
drop from inside my shirt and reached out to examine the
dirtied tip.
I quickly pulled my hand back. A strand of black tar
clung to the bolt head, worked into some of the grooves. I
had seen that stuff before, at Neraka. Black wax, my
commander had called it. Deadly poison. A handful of the
Nerakan humans had used it on their weapons, their idea
of a special welcome for us. The gods only knew where
they had gotten it; the Nerakans themselves hadn’t known
how to handle it. We would regularly find their bodies,
snuggled into ambush points, with little spots of black wax
on their careless lips or fingers.
I remembered the sensation of nothingness spreading
inside me as I died, the bolt through my chest. I’d been the
first that night to feel the poison’s kiss. I figured my
cousins must have felt it earlier still. Too bad I hadn’t
thought to examine their bodies.
I leaned over to continue checking the hobgoblin, who
had probably outweighed me by a hundred pounds in life.
He was a thick-necked brute; his clothes and armor were
as dirty as his skin. Knife slashes had opened up his belt
pouch, now empty, and the sides of his armor and boots.
He was also missing his left ear. It appeared to have been
cut cleanly away, below his helmet line.
I looked up at the dwarf, who hadn’t moved,
remembering to put my hand inside my shirt before I
spoke. “What about him?” I asked hoarsely, pointing a
clawlike finger at the dead hobgoblin behind him. I
sounded like an animal learning to talk.
The dwarf eased up, but only by a hair. He stepped
away from the body behind him, clearing my view. This