The Nether Scroll

"Druhallen—?" she called, making sure he was ready to back her up.

"I'm ready," he replied and brushed his right hand along his left sleeve, plucking a cold ember from the cloth before he drew his sword partway from its scabbard.

The fallen goblin bounded to his feet. He snarled something at his companions that quieted them, then he pointed his spear at Rozt'a's gut.

"Tell him, if he takes one step toward me, I'll kill him. Tell him he needn't worry what happens next, because he'll be dead."

Sheemzher dutifully translated and added, "That one young, good woman. That one claim good woman. Good woman belong that one. Mistake, yes?"

"Belong to him!" Rozt'a sputtered. "Is he out of his mind?"

"Sheemzher not know, good woman."

"Well, you tell him—you tell all of them that I've got a good husband and a bad temper."

Some of the goblins chuckled before Sheemzher translated a word, confirming Dru's suspicion that they understood the language they wouldn't speak. The instigator goblin wasn't laughing, or lowering his spear.

"When you're done with that, Sheemzher," Dru said loudly, "tell everyone that I'm her husband and that my temper is worse."

He drew the sword and held it the way he'd have held one of his axe shafts. The stance must have been convincing. The instigator stood down, and they were moving again.

More goblins came out of the camp to meet them, mostly children, all of them boys. The goblin women stayed behind knee-high walls on the midden mound. A wearier collection of mothers and daughters Druhallen had never seen. Rozt'a fell back to walk beside him.

"This place turns my blood cold," she whispered. "The slave market hasn't closed. They've only stopped selling their women to the Zhentarim."

"They never sold their women to the Zhentarim," Dru whispered back. "Count them. There are more males than females, but a lot more boys than girls."

She did the arithmetic. "There must be another camp."

"I doubt it."

"What—?"

"Shsssh. Later."

Dru suspected that if they knew where to dig, they'd find too many tiny burials—or maybe the goblins didn't bury the daughters they chose not to raise. His own five brothers notwithstanding, sentient populations tended naturally to balance themselves between males and females. It took con- siderable intervention to create the disparity here in Ghistpok's camp. The brutal and ultimately self- defeating irony was that the same goblins who'd go to any length to enlarge their harems would reject their daughters. Women tended to be scarce when women were despised, and a race or tribe where men outnumbered women never camped far from brink of extinction.

The Dekanter goblins dwelt near that edge. They were still abandoning their daughters— witness the preponderance of boys running loose—but they were missing many of their adult males. The survivors—the goblins pointing their spears at the tallest woman they'd possibly ever seen—might think they were better off than their fathers, but Dru had studied trade and history; he knew better. Ghistpok's gender-skewed tribe was the strongest evidence he'd see to support Amarandaris's notion that there was a war going on in the Greypeak Mountains. Quite possibly a war of annihilation rather than one of conquest.

Suppose the Beast Lord was fighting a war, not with the Zhentarim nor with the goblins nor with anything above ground. Suppose it worked its athanor every day, hatching out swordswingers to protect its slaves and empty pools. Suppose it, too, needed something like a sentience shield to keep its enemies away. If it were fighting a war under Dekanter, the Beast Lord needed bodies—and what better way to get them than from its worshipers?

Dru's concentration lagged as he considered the questions he'd posed to himself. Outhzin had led them into the camp. They were walking across the midden mounds, following a rutted track that wound around the low walls and up to the abandoned Zhentarim headquarters. The stench was astonishing; it overwhelmed concentration and compassion. Animals didn't live so poorly. Squalor on this scale required sentience.

With every step and breath, Druhallen resented the idea that the meat off Hopper's bones would wind up in these stomachs. Tiep was right, honest Hopper deserved something better, but their course was set now.

Outhzin signaled a stop within the headquarters' morning shadow. Female goblins watched them from broken, gaping windows. Their faces were a little fuller, if not cleaner than those they saw behind the low walls. There was some benefit, then, to being part of Ghistpok's harem.