Scoundrels' Jig (The Chronicles of Eridia) Read online

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  “Where in Nün’s mad mind did that son of a cunt get to?” General Blood asked as he scanned the trees.

  He and his two assistants—Slobog (the slimy gorgim) and Hetchiglingum (the short gorgim)—stood in a semicircle around the corpse of the bird-gorgim, whom Slobog knew slightly, though not all that well—kind of a friend of a friend sort of thing—and whose name was Widdle. They had spent the last twenty minutes hunting about for any sign of the flying human who had set fire to the village of Bij-Tet and killed Widdle and countless other gorgim. It was during this search that they had realized the male and female humans who had warned them of the impending terrorist attacks were likewise nowhere to be found. While it was possible that the humans had run off to pursue the terrorists on their own, or had even been abducted or killed by terrorists, General Blood and the others concurred that it was far more likely that the two humans had been either terrorists themselves or up to some other nefarious activities here in Umperskap. Those fucking humans just couldn’t be trusted at all.

  “General Blood!” called a deep, growling voice from the edge of the woods. The General thought the voice sounded familiar, though he couldn’t place a face to it. “General Blood, are you there?”

  “Yes! Who is it?”

  After a moment came the sounds of something large and heavy stomping through the woods toward them. As it drew closer, its rough breathing became audible. General Blood’s hand drifted to the hilt of his sword, just in case. It sounded like a gorgim, but you never knew. Better safe than dead.

  It was a gorgim. More specifically, it was Gojan, the ten-foot-tall reptilian gorgim who had been assigned to guard the Briarwood Bridge tonight. Gojan strode forward, his orange eyes glowing in the darkness, something long and flexible and wrapped in a white sheet slung over his left shoulder.

  “In the trickster’s infinite names,” Gojan said. It was a standard official greeting among the gorgim.

  “In the trickster’s infinite names,” General Blood replied. “Why are you not at your post, soldier?”

  Gojan flung the sheet-wrapped object to the ground. “This is why.” He looked around, spotted Hetchiglingum, and nodded. “Ah. The necromage is with you. Good. We’ll be needing her skills.”

  Slobog peered at the sheet-wrapped object. “Is that a body, then?”

  Gojan nodded. “Yup. Five humans attacked both of the guardhouses on the Briarwood Bridge with firebombs.”

  “Both guardhouses?” General Blood asked. “The human one, too?”

  “Yup.”

  “Odd.”

  “And I see something similar happened to Bij-Tet,” Gojan said, jerking one scaly, clawed thumb toward the still-burning gorgim village.

  “It sounds as if those two humans might have been telling the truth about terrorists after all,” Slobog said.

  “Let’s find out,” General Blood said. He bent down, grabbed one end of the sheet, and yanked hard. The sheet unrolled and the charred corpse of a young human male tumbled out.

  General Blood studied the body, then looked up at Gojan. “Your handiwork?”

  “Yup.”

  “When was the attack? How long has he been dead?”

  “An hour. Maybe a little more. As soon as me and Ju Jeven Ji got the fires put out, I wrapped the body up and set out to find you.”

  “Good work, soldier.” General Blood turned to Hetchiglingum. “Well?”

  She stepped forward and knelt beside the corpse. “It’s still fresh enough. It won’t be a problem.”

  Taking a deep breath, she laid her hands on the corpse’s temples and closed her eyes. The other gorgim watched in respectful and somewhat fearful silence.

  Minutes ticked past. Hetchiglingum’s breathing grew harsher, faster, more labored. The wind picked up, making the trees rustle and hiss and bringing with it the scent of burning wood.

  Finally Hetchiglingum let out a low moan, and an instant later the corpse jerked as if it had been given an electric shock. Its dry, blackened eyelids flew open, revealing a pair of eyeballs coated with a dark, sooty film.

  “What is your name?” Hetchiglingum asked without opening her eyes.

  The corpse’s burned lips peeled back from its teeth with a faint crackling sound. Then the teeth parted, and a seared, peeling tongue moved in the corpse’s mouth.

  In a low, slow, raspy whisper, like that of someone with laryngitis talking in their sleep, it said, “I be the gladulous Bone Boy, chuzzers.”

  General Blood frowned. “What did it say?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Hetchiglingum. Then to the corpse, she said, “Tell us why you came to Umperskap.”

  “Oh,” the corpse said, “me and my buzzers got cocklers of some jay-el glitz.”

  General Blood shook his head. “I’m not following any of this.”

  “It sounds to me like some kind of lingo,” Slobog offered. “I’ve heard that humans enjoy such idiocies.”

  “Speak the common tongue only,” Hetchiglingum told the corpse. “No lingo.”

  “Okay,” Bone Boy’s corpse said with a sad sigh. “We’re after a block of gold that old Ichabod Quakenbush said was as big as a troll’s head.”

  “Gold?” General Blood said. “Here in Umperskap?”

  “Nah. The gold’s in a building at the end of Ghost Gulch. We’re all just passing through on our way there.”

  “Who’s ‘we’? Who’s after this gold?”

  “Everybody who was in Moe’s Tavern earlier tonight.”

  “How many exactly?”

  “Around two dozen.”

  General Blood pondered this information while absently stroking his beard. The other gorgim waited in silence.

  Finally he nodded at Hetchiglingum. “That’s good. I think we know all we need to know for now.”

  She nodded, then let go of the corpse’s head. All animation immediately left its face.

  Slobog gave the General a sidelong look. “Well, we know it’s not terrorists. What do we do now?”

  General Blood smiled. “We go to Ghost Gulch.”

  “What?”

  “I would rather that much gold be in the hands of Umperskap than in the hands of a bunch of fucking humans.”

  “Shall I organize the division, then?”

  The General’s smile broadened yet became more humorless and sinister at the same time.

  “No,” he said. “There’s no time for that. Only we four will go. And we leave now; there’s no telling how far ahead some of these wretched humans are. Come on.”