Duel At Grimwood Creek (Book 2) Read online

  Possibly this was a poor way to begin the series, but I hope it was still enjoyable. With the finale, I wanted a nice slow build-up to a typical Western-style showdown in the dust (or snow).

  I hope I achieved.

  All the same, it was a difficult process to keep motivated with the second book. Not being the kind of writer who has friends and family to call upon to make loads of reviews, I had to rely instead on my readers to provide input, and for the most part I was happy with the reception. You said some nice things.

  But it does sometimes leave you looking at your sales figures and wondering if you’re doing well enough to bother carrying on. Whether it’s worth it?

  I hope so. Because the journey has been as tough as Nysta’s. Though not quite as stabby. Along the way, I’ve found inspiration in the strangest of places.

  Naturally, my lovely wife has been the most encouraging. And my cover artist, Amir Zand has continued to be enthusiastic and amazing. I feel he’s completely outdone himself with this new cover and am wondering if I can get it put on a tshirt or poster or something.

  Outside of that, I have to thank my inspirations.

  The music of The Cramps (Lux Interior, you are missed). The books of Steven Erikson and Mickey Spillane (now there’s a combination you won’t make too often).

  Doctor Who. Oh, Rory. Who killed you this time?

  Jessica Ennis and Usain Bolt - two amazing shows during the Olympics.

  Guild Wars 2 - you’re making me drool.

  Greg Inglis playing for Souths in the NRL. What a FEND! Greg, you’re going to break someone in half one day.

  Torkan comics. Why can’t we buy these?

  And chocolate cake.

  Because life is so much better with chocolate cake. Don’t you think?

  The Longrunners

  The five goblins surveyed their territory.

  It had been their territory for roughly fifteen minutes, and so far they were enjoying it. Goblin territories were, by their own definition, as far as their eyes could see. Right then, thanks to the height of the Roughcap mushroom and the fact it was growing on a particularly noble hill surrounded by Ghostlight mushrooms, they could see a few hundred metres in many directions.

  They sat on a Roughcap, a large variety about ten metres high and with a tall umbonate cap. The cap was a dreary shade of blue and purple. It smelled, the Goblins thought, of a Giant’s armpit and although none of them had ever been near enough to a Giant to get a good hearty sniff of his armpit, the description was nonetheless rather apt.

  Looking out, the Goblins saw a forest of Roughcaps whose tall stalks swept upward like mighty towers. Mist swirled in grey tendrils among the stalks and breathed its icy breath across the frost-glistening ground. Under these giant mushrooms grew Ghostlights. Much smaller in size than the Roughcaps, Ghostlights were fat and squat but gave off a pale blue luminescence that fed the Forest with light. Adding to the small sea of lights which expanded out as far as they could see were speckling clumps of tiny yellow Sicklight toadstools. Thick ribbons of green Giantsblood moss added to the glowing lights with its own vibrant green pulse and here and there the red flowers of Trollcup toadstools blushed merrily for a little extra colour.

  For a place which had existed in mostly dim darkness, since the Great God Eventide caused it to be cowled in a thick blanket of black fog, there did seem to be an awful lot of light in the Forest of Decay.

  Bossyou, the leader of the Longrunner Goblins, felt this was probably the biggest territory they’d ever had since leaving the Darkspark Swamps to the west. “Good idea,” he sighed contentedly.

  “What a good idea?” Fistguts asked.

  “Leaving fucking Darkspark, that idea! Look,” he made an expansive motion with his little arms. “All our territory! We rich now. Eventide must say we Greatest Goblins ever.”

  The Goblins nodded their round heads with enthusiasm. They saw the logic in that.

  “Wise,” Flyrunner said solemnly.

  The Longrunners were dressed in ragged scraps of brown clothing, most of which had been taken from the corpses of Hobgoblins who strayed too close to some of the more exotic plantlife which grew in the Forest of Decay. The Goblins quickly discovered that a Hobgoblin caught in a web of sticky vines was easy prey. A quick slash across his throat and the little Gang could take what they pleased.

  The last Hobgoblin they’d pounced on had provided Fistguts with the ear he was busy chewing on.

  Their Goblinknives were made from broad chunks of metal crudely hammered into rough knife shapes. For handles they used leg bones which had been gnawed down to a comfortable length. The leg bones, too, had been taken from Hobgoblin corpses. There seemed an unusual number of Hobgoblins around, but Bossyou refused to look a gift wyrm in the mouth. Or anywhere else for that matter.

  Of all the greenskin races which lived in the Fnordic Lands, the Goblins were the shortest. Barely making a metre in height, they had wide oval-shaped faces and long curved ears jutting out horizontally from their heads. Their mouths gaped almost the full length to their ears when they grinned. Their teeth were sharp and sawtoothed. Cunning were their green eyes which glowed almost poisonously. Their noses were squat and small in the centre of their face and seemed to be there more as something for their fingers to pick than for sniffing of various smells.

  Their fingers were short and tipped with hard claws. Though the Goblins seemed slender of build, they were like the Elfs in that their strength was more catlike than their hulking cousins the Hobgoblins. They could leap like frogs and used their lean strength with a ferocity which surprised many, though the Goblins picked and chose their fights very carefully.

  There was a common belief that to turn one’s back on a Goblin was simply inviting trouble because once they managed to attach themselves, you couldn’t tear them free before the little green fucker had stabbed a zillion holes in your back.

  Worse still, if you saw a Goblin on his own you could guarantee he had up to half a dozen of his pals skulking about in the shadows ready to jump you as soon as they saw an opening.

  General agreement was the only real way to survive meeting a Gang on your own was to kill the bastards before they killed you. Goblins maintain this is just a racial stereotype and was, as such, blatantly untrue.

  Not many people died on the roads of the Fnordic Lands, however, without at least one hole in their bodies which could be attributed to Goblinknives.

  “What that?” Flyrunner asked leaning forward to peer into the gloom.

  “What that what?” Bossyou growled.

  “That that!” Flyrunner hissed, pointing to a black shape running through the mushrooms.

  Mushrooms which, Bossyou thought with a frown, were definitely not the shape’s mushrooms, because Bossyou was quite certain he could see those mushrooms so they were definitely, and without even a shadow of a doubt, his mushrooms.

  “I tell you what it is,” Bossyou said, noting with good cheer that the shape was also most definitely not bigger than any one of his gang.

  “What?” his boys asked in unison.

  “Dead.”

  And, as one, they leapt down from the Roughcap and jogged through the mushrooms toward the fleeing shape.

  A thought tugged at the corner of Bossyou’s mind, but that thought eluded him for the moment. Something about why the thing was running. And why there were so many of the Emperor’s Hobgoblins around. He knew if it was important though, it would come to him in time.

  He was a leader. Not a thinker. Thinking was for Elfs, he reasoned. And Bossyou was certain he wasn’t an Elf.

  As he ran, he patted his face to be sure, though. Anything was possible.

  The Longrunners drew their wicked Goblinknives as they ran.

  Drawing his jagged blade, Spitblood hawked up a big cheekful of phlegm and spat at a Rouchcap’s wide stalk. “Little fucker,” he growled.

  “What the mushroom do to you?” Onespud asked. Onespud was fatter than the rest. The mystery of hi
s rotund belly was something Bossyou thought he’d need to ask the Great God Eventide for an answer to.

  “Not the ‘shroom,” Spitblood said. “The filthy sod runnin’ this way.”

  “Not this way,” Fistguts said. “He changed way! That way!”

  “Which way?” Bossyou demanded. “Which that way?”

  Fistguts waved off to their left. “That that way!”

  “Let’s get it, then,” Bossyou said, stabbing his Goblinknife in the direction of the fleeing shape.

  His boys nodded as one and they barrelled between the wide stalks like ghosts. The shape was still legging it some five minutes later, slipping between the large stalks. Fistguts was leading the chase, and Bossyou was beginning to suspect Fistguts was just running them in circles.

  One more that way, he thought, and I chop him in head.

  He was busy making these important leadership decisions when he pretty much tripped over the shape they had been chasing all along.

  Falling on his face, Bossyou lay stunned for a moment, looking up at Flyrunner, who kept on running. Nothing new there.

  Realising the shape was now behind him and that having anything at your back was a dangerous thing, Bossyou squealed and rolled over. He brought his Goblinknife up fast and blocked a strike which didn’t come.

  Instead, the black shape pressed itself even harder against the Roughcap stalk and tried to cover itself in the muck it was pulling off the forest floor in great fistfuls. “Quiet,” hissed the black shape. “It’ll hear us!”

  Scrambling to his feet just as his boys stepped into the small clearing, Bossyou strutted forward, his Goblinknife steady now the shape had shown itself to be not only smaller, but also a coward. Goblin law strictly stated that every advantage had to be taken when offered, and as far as Bossyou could tell, this was a fucking good advantage.

  One which didn’t come along too often.

  In fact, Bossyou was sure Goblin legends were made of these sorts of moments.

  “Don’t say me be quiet!” he spat. “I say you be quiet!”

  “You tell ‘im, Boss,” Fistguts said.

  “I’m telling you,” Bossyou growled at the shape. He prodded it with his Goblinknife. “You be quiet!”

  “I am,” the shape squeaked desperately. “Please! You be quiet, too!”

  “No! You don’t tell me!” Bossyou roared, his fist grabbing hold of the shape’s shirt and roughly pulling it to its feet. “You be quiet! And you don’t say fucking thing! And tell me now who you, before I drag Ripneck across your neck!”

  He threw the shape with all his power onto the ground again and the shape’s cowl flew off his head to expose his Goblin features. The Longrunners hissed and stepped closer, aiming their daggers at the blinking Goblin.

  “Ripneck good name for knife,” the Goblin said, rubbing his head.

  Bossyou frowned. “I thought it myself.”

  “You leader?”

  “I Bossyou,” Bossyou proclaimed. “Who you?”

  “I Rummage. Broketoof Mob.”

  The Longrunners sneered at the Goblin.

  “Rummage,” Spitblood said, wiping his stumpy nose with the back of a finger. “That most stupid name ever.”

  “He namefucked,” agreed Onespud.

  “Broketoof Gang?” Bossyou peered closer at the Goblin, who instead of looking afraid of the Longrunners, kept looking out into the darkness. “Where Broketoof Leader? Ripneck cut his neck. Ear to ear.”

  “He dead,” Rummage said.

  “Other Broketoof? Ripneck cut their necks, too.”

  “Dead,” Rummage said. “It got ‘em.”

  “What it?” Bossyou asked. The nagging thought which had tugged at his mind came suspiciously close to being realised. He shook his head to drive it away. Couldn’t be thinking now. There wasn’t time.

  “It! Big it! Hugest it!”

  “You full of shit,” Fistguts said. “You all alone. No big chasers. We woulda seen.”

  “Fistguts got big eyes,” Bossyou said. “Biggest eyes in Fnordic Lands. Ask Eventide. He knows.”

  “Okay,” Rummage said. “I ask Eventide. But big it coming! Was coming.”

  “Where it?”

  Rummage scratched at his head. “Don’t know. Was there.”

  “Where there?”

  “There there,” Rummage said, pointing into the dark from where he’d come.

  “We go,” Spitblood said. “We go see it. We kill it.”

  “It big,” Rummage warned with a shudder.

  “We the Greatest,” Flyrunner grinned. “Eventide said so.”

  “Really?” Rummage asked. “Bosslots said we was Greatest. Said Eventide said so.”

  “Who Bosslots?” Bossyou growled, looking around. “Where he? Ripneck cut his neck.”

  “Bosslots dead.”

  “Can’t have been Greatest, then,” Fistguts said.

  “Wise,” Flyrunner agreed.

  “What we do?” Onespud asked. “We go find it?”

  “How big it?” Flyrunner asked Rummage.

  “Big!”

  “Big,” Flyrunner repeated. “Maybe we not go that way. Go this way.”

  “Which way?” Bossyou asked.

  “We Greatest!” Spitblood said. “You said so. Eventide said so. Bossyou said so. We kill it.”

  “We Greatest at many things,” Fistguts said. “Even running.”

  “Wise,” Flyrunner said.

  “What we do with him?” Onespud asked, jerking a green thumb at the prisoner.

  “Ripneck cut his neck,” Bossyou shrugged.

  “Wait!” Rummage said.

  “What for?” Bossyou asked.

  “For me think.”

  “Thinking is for Elfs. You Elf?”

  “I’m no Elf!” snarled the little Goblin. He tore his Goblinknife free of his belt and held it up. “You say again, Bellyrip cut you open!”

  “Bellyrip good name for a knife,” Bossyou said reluctantly. His boys nodded their heads in agreement. “But you Broketoof. We Longrunner. We enemies.”

  “Not Broketoof no more! Bosslots dead.”

  “Wanna be Longrunner?” Spitblood asked.

  “Or be dead?” Bossyou growled, holding up his Goblinknife.

  “Longrunner!”

  “Then you show way to big it. We kill it,” Bossyou said.

  “I show,” Rummage said reluctantly.

  “Wait!” Fistguts cried.

  “What for?” Bossyou asked with a bewildered look.

  “He Rummage. That Broketoof name.”

  “Stupid name,” Spitblood said.

  “Fucked up,” Flyrunner agreed.

  “Didn’t like it anyway,” Rummage said. “Me get new one?”

  “Sure,” Bossyou said, twisting his face up as he tried to think of a name. “You Blackeye.”

  “Why Blackeye?” Rummage asked.

  “You point Goblinknife at me,” he said, nodding to the other’s weapon. Rummage looked down and seemed shocked to see the knife in his hands. He began to tuck it away even as Bossyou’s fist smashed hard into the Goblin’s head. Bossyou watched with a satisfied grin as the little Goblin rolled around on the ground groaning and clutching his face. “Now you Blackeye.”

  Minutes later, the Goblin Gang was jogging once more through the mushroom forest, this time in search of the it.

  Finally they found a small hill and Blackeye paused at the bottom of it. He scratched his head and chewed his bottom lip. “It there,” he said. “Over hill.”

  “We go see,” Bossyou said.

  “Wait,” Spitblood said.

  “What now wait for?” Bossyou groaned.

  “Broketoof all dead?”

  “He said so,” Bossyou said, nodding to Blackeye.

  “Then we all go, we all die, maybe.”

  “Maybe,” Bossyou said reluctantly. Dying was never part of any of his plans.

  “Then one go. One go look. Come back and say what’s what,” Fistguts said.
<
br />   “What what?”

  “When they see what, we know what.”

  “Oh. Good idea. We do that.”

  “Wise,” Flyrunner said.

  “Who goes, then?” Spitblood asked.

  “Who goes might die,” Fistguts said.

  “Loused job,” Onespud said. “I not want it.”

  “I neither,” Blackeye said with a shudder. “Me seen it.”

  “We do it fair,” Bossyou said. He held out a fist. The other Goblins held out their fists, too.

  Bossyou raised one fist and slammed it down on Onespud’s, who stood next to him. “One potato,” he said, and knocked down on the next Goblin with “Two potato,” and so forth until finally Onespud was it.

  “It decided,” Bossyou said. “Onespud goes.”

  Onespud looked down at his fist in a forlorn manner. “I always one potato,” he said. “I always go.”

  “You Onespud,” Fistguts explained, clapping the Goblin on the shoulder.

  Onespud sighed and headed up the hill without further argument.

  The others gathered around as he disappeared into the gloom.

  “What we do while wait?” Fistguts asked.

  “You got anything to eat?” Blackeye asked.

  “Hobgoblin ear.”

  “Swap? I have bits of bat.”

  “I like bats,” Fistguts said. He nodded with a grin. “Swap.”

  The two Goblins started to dig into their pouches.

  Bossyou frowned. The thought which had been nagging him. Yes. That’s right. The wounded Hobgoblin they’d killed. The one who wouldn’t stop talking. They’d found him just outside of the Forest of Decay. He’d been fighting some Trolls. Something he said as Ripneck let his blood out.

  A shrill scream pierced his thoughts and he shook his head before it filled up with thoughts and stopped him from knowing what to do.

  “That Onespud,” Spitblood said.

  “He dead?” Bossyou asked.

  “Nah. He running,” Fistguts said. “Fast.”

  “Which way?”

  “This way.”

  “What we do?” Flyrunner asked.

  Bossyou cocked his head as the annoying thought tickled his mind again.

  It didn’t want to go away.