Downfall

"Gran'papa, don't listen to him!" A gangly youth poked his head through a slit in the canvas and climbed up front. "He's only one man."

"He should listen to him, son." Dhamon stepped from behind a boulder, broadsword in hand, blade catching the sun and reflecting it so brightly that the old man squinted. The skin was red and peeling on his shoulders, cheeks, and nose, the rest of his sweaty skin so darkened from the sun that it looked like he was carved from oiled cedar. He looked unkempt and primitive, with his feet bare, remnants of thin scab lines across his naked chest, dressed only in the shredded remains of his trousers- which did little to hide the strange-looking scale on his leg. He'd not shaved since Rikali tended to him, so his jaw looked shadowed, clouded by his new beard. When he curled his lip upward in a snarl and narrowed his black eyes, the youth quivered.

Rikali slid from behind an outcropping on the other side of the pass, long knife outstretched and pointed at the dark-ski

"Get down, old man, and raise your hands," Maldred's voice was steady and commanding. "And tell the others to do the same. Your lives are worth more than whatever it is you're hauling. We need your cooperation. I don't want to have to say it again."

There were three wagons stopped in the pass, each heavy and each pulled by several large draft horses. A "sumptuous find," Rikali eagerly pronounced it when she spotted the small procession on her scouting trip.

The old man swallowed hard, dropping the reins. He whispered something to the boy and shakily climbed down from the wagon, trembling from fear and casting his eyes back and forth between Maldred and the weird kobold creature. The youth followed him down, glaring at Maldred and casting worried looks Dhamon's way.

"Brigands," the old man wheezed when he'd found his voice again. "Never been robbed in all my life. Never." Louder, he said. "Better do what they say, son. Everybody out!" To Maldred he added, "Don't you hurt none of my people. Not a one! You hear me?"

"Hands away from your sides," Maldred continued, nodding to Dhamon. In response, Dhamon crept forward, taking a thin knife from the old man's belt, tossing it to the far side of the trail, cautiously eyeing the youth for weapons.

"Now stand over there. And be quiet," Dhamon ordered. He gestured with his sword to the opposite side of the trail, where a gray rocky wall stretched toward the cloudless, bright blue sky. "All I want to hear is the sun baking your sorry faces."

Fetch scampered around to the back of the small caravan, hoopak in hand, using it to prod the rest of the merchants forward. The man who climbed off the last wagon moved too slowly for the kobold's liking, so he thwacked him across the back of the knees. The man fell, and Fetch whacked him with the hoopak a few times. He was quick to rise.

Without his hooded cloak, which Rikali said had to be thrown away because it was so smelly, the kobold presented a frightening figure to the humans, despite his small size. He spat at a portly middle-aged woman who clutched a canvas sack in front of her, and he pointed with his hoopak, indicating she should drop it on the ground. She shook her head furiously, held it tighter, and shouted "Demon!"

"Leave her be," Rikali said as she joined the kobold. "There's plenty of other things for us. Let the ol' bag keep her precious ol' bag." She chuckled at her own keen sense of humor.

Rikali and Fetch shoved the merchants forward. There were nine all together, eight adults and two of those, by their dusky skin, Ergothians like Rig-a long way from home. All were alternating expressions of fear with whispering curses. The grizzled man was the loudest.

"You can't earn an honest way in the world! Shame!" he muttered.

"This is honest enough to suit us," Rikali shot back. She lined the merchants up and looked each one over carefully, her hand darting out to snatch the arm of one of the Ergothians. "The silver bracelet. Take it off. That's it. Now hand it over to me. No tricks. Slow. Ah, it's a beauty." She tried to slide it on her wrist, but found it much too large. She hollered for Fetch, and the kobold scrambled over and hooked the bracelet around her knee, just above her boot cuff.

"Yer welcome, Riki dear," the kobold told her, gri

"Fetch!" This time Dhamon was calling for him. "Check the wagons. Make sure there're no surprises inside." Dhamon and Maldred turned their full attention to the line of merchants, hot and defeated and looking for some measure of mercy.

Dhamon sneered at the Ergothians and drummed the fingers of his free hand against his belt. His eyes narrowed, as if telling them "give me an excuse for a fight."

"No need for anyone to get hurt," Maldred said, offering the merchants a bit of reassurance.

A few of them relaxed at his words. But the Ergothians watched Dhamon warily. The old man showed a little courage and ground his heel into the edge of the trail. "Hurt? Stealing from us isn't hurting us? You're taking everything we…"

"Shush, Abril," the portly woman whispered. "Don't provoke them. They've a little demon that serves them."

Without warning the mountain rumbled. But rather than quickly dissipating, the quake grew in intensity, pitching the old man to the ground and causing Dhamon and everyone else to scramble to keep their balance. Fetch had been climbing into the lead wagon when the trembler struck, and he cursed shrilly in his odd language as his head thumped against a crate inside. He cursed again and poked his head out from under the canvas flap, hollering in an odd, snarling language.

"It's nothing," the big man consoled Fetch. "A slight tremor. Happens all the time in the Kalkhists-ever since the Chaos War."

"It's not a tremor. It's the very earth angry at you!" the portly woman said. "Stealing from good people! The spirits of the gods are furious with you!" She instantly stepped back and rounded her shoulders, terrified of the bandits and that her words might provoke them.

The others seemed cowed too, except for the old man who continued to glare as Maldred explained that there was a stream about two days away by foot, perhaps a little more, where they could get something to drink and rest for the night before moving on. He tossed them his largest waterskin to share sparingly until they got there. And beyond that, Maldred said, there was a trail to the south that would eventually take them to either of two dwarven towns-though the farthest might have fewer accommodations available.

"But likely you know about those towns," he finished.

"You were probably heading to one of them, or to a larger human settlement even farther south."

"No. They were heading to the coast," Dhamon guessed, smiling thinly when a surly look from the youth acknowledged the correctness of his suspicion. He padded by the Ergothians, noting they too had relaxed a bit. All bluster, he thought. "Maybe to Kalin Ak-phan. It's got some size to it. They're toting enough goods to sell to a ship captain there. Especially with all these horses."

"Well then," Maldred said. "We've saved them quite a trip, haven't we? The coast is a considerable distance, too far to travel in this heat."

"So feel free to thank us," Rikali taunted. She dug the tip of her boot into the gravelly ground and stirred it up. "Indeed, we…" She stopped as she spotted a flash of gold peeking out beneath the sleeve of one Ergothian, and she slipped closer to examine it. In a heartbeat, the once-seemingly acquiescent man darted forward and managed to grab her, spi