Word of Traitors: Legacy of Dhakaan - Book 2 by Don Bassingthwaite Read Free Book Online

to the tomb, then nodded. “I’ll tell Vounn.”
    She glanced at the arch and the moving crowd beyond one last time. Someone had been watching her. That didn’t mean it was Chetiin. With such a large crowd, it could have been anyone.

CHAPTER
THREE
    W hen the bugbears of the White Stone tribe, savaged in the dark woods by a huge wolf that could only have been part demon, returned to their camp to find every hut ablaze, their children alive only by the dark gods’ whim, and the prisoners who had started it all escaped, their only choice was to flee. The wolf-demon had settled for the moment to feast on the bodies of fallen warriors. Their camp was on fire. The trolls that lived in the cursed valley below, that had for years kept to themselves in return for carcasses thrown down from the bugbear camp, were raging. Overnight, their haven in the Seawall Mountains had become too dangerous to hold.
    So they fled, slipping away down the western approach to their high vale with the flames of their burning camp leaping high into the sky behind them. Then they started looking for someone to blame.
    Makka, who had been the
chib
, the leader, found himself on the other side of their anger.
    “Makka kept the lowlanders that the trolls were chasing!” said Guun, who had been his closest friend. “He should have sent them back, but he kept them! He was greedy for the treasure they sought in the valley!”
    “When the lowlanders’ friends challenged us from the woods, Makka led us out,” said Utaa, whose skill in a fight was a close second to Makka’s. “The human woman had a dragonmark—her magic must have summoned the wolf. Now our camp is gone, seven warriors are dead, and we have nothing!”
    In the tradition of the Marguul tribes of the Seawall Mountains, Makka could have defended his honor in combat against Guun and Utaa, but the wolf had torn into his right arm. It would heal, but until it did all he had were threats. “Guun and Utaa are cowards! They are foxes circling an injured lion. I am Makka! I am your
chib!
I am—”
    The first stone struck him between the shoulders. Roaring, Makka whirled to lash out with his trident at the one who dared attack him from behind, but the blow was weak. More stones, mud, and branches pelted him, splattering the bear hide vest that he wore. The White Stone tribe howled its rage, Tuneer and Wiraar, the mothers of his children, among them. Guun hefted his big mace, Utaa his sword. The two warriors came forward through the rain of debris.
    Marguul tradition valued honor, but not so much as it valued staying alive. Followed by the jeers of his tribe, Makka fled for the second time that night.
    For three days he hid, thoughts of vengeance festering in his mind just as his wounded arm festered. On the fourth day, he went to a brook upstream from the White Stone’s new camp and washed the pus from his arm, praying to the Dark Six that the sluggish water would carry the infection to his former tribe. Then he packed the burning wound with moss and spiderwebs and made his way back to the burned-out camp. Down the mountainside, he found tracks. The footprints of humans and hobgoblins, the hoofprints of horses, the pawprints of wolves, all leading out of the mountains and back to the lowlands.
    The ones responsible for his shame were the three prisoners, two hobgoblins and a human that he had rescued from the trolls—and whatever allies had appeared to help them to escape and lay waste to the White Stone camp. He had learned something about the three prisoners while they were his captives. The hobgoblin warrior had named himself Dagii of Mur Talaan and claimed the hobgoblin woman as a follower, though Makka doubted the claim. The human woman carried the dragonmark of Deneith across her face and arms, and the bright sword that now hung at Makka’s side like an oversize dagger had been hers until he had taken it.
    His shame had been begun by the three. On a mountain side during a thunderstorm,