The Broken Knife

As the party followed Ogden off the platform, two guards stepped up. One was even taller than Kaz, and they each wore a gray leather breastplate. The leather was made from the skin of a yanchong, a long, boneless creature whose slime could melt almost anything. When the skin was shaped and cleaned through a process known only to the Graybellys, it became armor almost as hard as stone. In no small part, it was this armor which had allowed the Graybellys to rise to power.

Ogden clapped Kaz on the back once more, before vanishing into the darkness of the tunnel beyond the guards. Kaz understood. This final show of friendliness was the best the male could do, short of placing the whole party under his protection. As much as he liked Kaz, the husede could lose his own life if someone he vouched for violated the Graybelly’s rules, and he didn’t know the humans.

It was enough. The guards, who had raised their granite hammers, visibly relaxed, though they didn’t lower their weapons.

“Name and tribe,” the taller one barked, looking at Kaz.

Kaz’s ears lowered slightly, but he straightened his shoulders and said, “Kaz. Br-” He shook his head. Oda had left too many enemies behind. It was probably better to use the name his sister had given their new, combined tribe. “Longknife. These are humans. I’m guiding them to the Deep.”

The guards exchanged glances, clearly uncertain. They knew all the allies and enemies of their tribe, and Longknife wasn’t among them. Plus, humans were little more than a myth to most kobolds, so there was certainly nothing in their orders about what to do with them.

The broad hammers didn’t waver, however, and at last the shorter male growled, “Stay!” while the taller one lifted his muzzle and howled. The sound echoed up the shaft, and answering yips and barks seemed to come from everywhere. A few more calls were exchanged, and the guards lowered their weapons, though they didn’t put them away.

“Come,” the taller guard said, turning to walk down a tunnel opposite the one Ogden had taken. Kaz obediently fell in behind him, and the humans followed Kaz, though he sensed Gaoda’s impatience. The shorter guard followed behind Raff, who was at the back of the party. Chi Yincang was nowhere to be seen.

They traveled for a good distance, and though Kaz’s sense of direction was too good to allow him to get lost, he also didn’t know where they were. The Broken Knives and the Graybellys had never been allies, so Kaz and the other gatherers never ventured into the tunnels marked by their totems. If necessary, Kaz could get them back to the shaft upwards, and from there he could find his way to the Broken Knives old territory, but he hoped to convince the Graybellys to let them use a path down inside their territory instead, so he didn’t have to get that close to the Ironclaws.

As they turned another corner, Kaz could hear snippets of a conversation coming from ahead.

“...bad idea. Lignan wouldn’t…”

“...isn’t here. Ren says…”

The speakers came into view; two more male warriors, standing guard at the entrance to a large cave that Kaz suspected was the beginning of the Graybelly den. One of them was very familiar, and Kaz’s tail began to wag.

The copper-colored male froze as he saw Kaz, and his tail swished once before he took in the humans visible behind him. Deep orange-colored eyes took in the situation, and he shook his head, sighing.

“Why is it always you, pup? What has that curiosity of yours gotten you into this time?” The copper male raised his hand. “Pol, Nat, stand down. This is my sister’s-son, Kaz.” He frowned, lip curling. “Though the howl said unknown clan. Did Oda trade you away already?”

Kaz shook his head, his words nearly tumbling over themselves. “Oda and Rega have joined the ancestors. Katri is chief now. She merged our tribe with the Longtooths, and the combined tribe is called Longknife. I didn’t know if you were still here, or if you would even want to claim me, so-”

The male rubbed his muzzle. “Calm down, pup. I’m sorry to hear about Rega, and… we don’t get much news of upper tribes, but I know I heard Ren and Lignan mention the Longtooths. They were nearly ready to descend, weren’t they?”

Kaz hesitated. How much should he say about what the humans had done? Saying too much could easily make them more of a threat than an oddity, and put the kobolds surrounding them on edge again. All Gaoda would have to do was be himself, and there could be a massacre.

“Oda declared luegat against them, and now-” Kaz shrugged, letting the assumptions he knew the males would make fill in the lies he didn’t want to speak. Quickly turning to his companions, he motioned to each in turn, introducing them. Finally, he looked back at the copper-furred male and said, “This is my uncle, Kellin. He was traded to the Graybelly tribe when we lived here.” And that, too, left a great deal hiding behind a simple truth.

Kellin nodded to the humans. “My mate, Ren, will wish to speak to you. She was in council, so it will take a little while.” He looked at Gaoda, who, as always, had his ball of light hovering over his shoulder. Kaz chose not to correct his uncle’s clear assumption that the human was the lead female; it was easier than convincing Gaoda to let Lianhua speak instead, if she would even want to do so.

It took several more minutes, during which Gaoda grew increasingly unhappy, before a harried-looking female, presumably Ren, hurried out of the den. Kaz and the other males lowered their heads, and all of them but Kellin stepped back, yielding to her.

She stopped, staring at Gaoda and the others, though her gaze lingered on Gaoda’s ball of power. When she managed to look away, she said, “I’m told you claim to be humans. Is this true?”

Gaoda nodded, lip curled in a sneer. “Yes. And I’m tired of waiting. We could have been halfway to the next level in the time we’ve been standing here.”

The female’s eyes narrowed. “No one passes through Graybelly territory without our permission.” Her eyes flicked from Kellin to Kaz, but she didn’t speak to either male. “You say you wish to go deeper? Then perhaps we can make a deal.” Her lip pulled back. “Recently, a rockfall closed the one passage down that lies within our territory. That leaves the stairs as the only path to the next level. Unfortunately, the Ironclaw tribe controls them, and they are demanding… an excessive toll. That has left us cut off from the part of our tribe that lives on the two levels below us, including our chief, Lignan.”

Gaoda snorted and waved his hand. “Then what are we wasting our time here for? It sounds like we should be speaking to the Ironclaws.”

Ren growled softly, making the males around her stiffen and put their hands on their weapons. “You need to get to the stairs first, and that will be difficult when every Graybelly attacks you on sight.”

Kaz suppressed a whimper. This was not going well. If Gaoda made the female any angrier, there would be blood. He edged closer to Lianhua before speaking to Gaoda.

“She’s right. The path down I was going to have us use is only a short distance from here, but the stairs are hours away, and we’ll spend nearly all that time in Graybelly territory.”

Gaoda glared at him, but glanced at Lianhua before sighing and turning back to the female kobold. “Fine. It seems I’m doomed to do the bidding of beasts. What do you want?”

Hackles lifted all around them, but Ren just said, “Convince them to let you through. Take a message to Lignan. That’s it.”

“I take it you don’t care if there are any Ironclaws left once we do this ‘convincing’?” Gaoda asked with a smirk.

She glanced away. “I simply asked you to carry a message. The Graybellys have no responsibility for your actions once you leave our territory.”

Gaoda clapped his hands together sharply, making everyone jump, and Kaz let out a yip of surprise. “Then give me this message, and we’ll be gone.”

The female blinked, looking like she hadn’t expected such easy capitulation. Then she shook her head and pulled a piece of vellum from beneath the broad gray belt wrapped around her middle. It was intricately folded, and a drop of fresh blood was smeared across the surface. She held it out. “This is it. Deliver it, unopened, and you will have free passage through Graybelly territory for one year from the moment you place it in Lignan’s hand.”

Gaoda rolled his eyes. “As if we’ll ever return to this barbaric pile of rocks.” Nonetheless, he accepted the sheet and put it into his pouch. “Can we go now?”

Turning to Kellin, Ren gestured for him to come closer. They spoke quietly for a moment before Kellin stepped back. Someone who didn’t know him wouldn’t have noticed, but Kaz could see that he was unhappy. Turning to the humans, Kellin said, “I’ll lead you there.”

=+=+=+=

By the time the Broken Knives reached this level, they were already too weak to take any territory from another tribe, so they ended up living in the spaces between. In this case, between the Graybelly tribe and the Ironclaws. The Ironclaws were relatively new at that time as well, though they were going down, rather than up, and they hadn’t yet settled in.

Oda had seized the opportunity to claim a den with easy access to water and other resources, and Idil had been extremely displeased when she realized what she had missed out on, but she didn’t yet feel confident in being able to defeat a tribe who had come up from the Deep. That had been the beginning of the antipathy between the two females.

Kellin led them through many of the same tunnels the Broken Knife tribe had escaped through when Oda finally pushed Idil too far. While they had stumbled and taken a hundred wrong turns, Kaz’s uncle now moved on swift, sure paws, never straying from the most direct route. He didn’t try to engage them in conversation, either, which Kaz both regretted and was grateful for. He had missed his uncle, but he didn’t really want to have to explain the details of how Katri came to be chief so suddenly.

Several times, they came on small groups of guards or gatherers. Each time, Kellin waved the kobolds away, saying nothing. Twice, they passed through dens, smaller spaces probably occupied by a single family, and Kaz wondered what it was like to have a tribe so large that they couldn’t all live together. He saw single families larger than his entire tribe.

Kaz’s paws were beginning to hurt and his belly was rumbling by the time Kellin raised his hand for them to stop. His uncle pointed to a Graybelly totem, then another, different totem slightly further down the passage ahead.

“This is the end of our territory. Kaz, you should know the way from here. We’re practically in old Broken Knife territory, after all.”

Kaz blinked, bringing himself back from the almost trancelike state he’d allowed himself to lapse into. He’d felt a bit like a young pup again, following an adult through the passages on the way to gather. It was a comforting feeling, and he felt a pang of loss as it faded away.

He frowned as he looked around, matching the unusual shape of a cracked stalagmite to the map in his head. “They’ve expanded this much?” he asked, shaking his head. “And right up to Graybelly territory?” Usually, unallied tribes left a good amount of unclaimed space around each tribe’s territory. These spaces often helped prevent ‘misunderstandings’ if a kobold ventured too far afield.

Kellin nodded. “And more in every other direction. They said nothing, simply moved their totems further and further out, and few of our tribe ever come this way, so we didn’t notice until it was too late.”

He fixed Kaz with a fierce stare. “Be careful, Kaz. Idil seems amicable enough, but she hides as much ambition as Oda, though without as much arrogance. Ren is… not entirely sure the rockfall was natural. She fears Idil may have a reason for cutting us off from the lower levels. Don’t turn your back on her.”

Kaz nodded, and his uncle hesitated before clapping him on the shoulder, then turning away. He disappeared down the passage behind them, and Gaoda clicked his fingers. Chi Yincang appeared for the first time since the group entered Graybelly territory.

“You heard?” Gaoda asked.

Chi Yincang nodded.

Gaoda sighed. “Who knew kobolds were worse than cultivators about stabbing each other in the back? When we get close enough, if they don’t just attack us, go find this Idil and see if she’s as bad as they say.” He looked at Kaz. “What happens if we just kill her?”

“It depends,” he said, reluctantly. “The Ironclaws are much stronger than the Longtooths. They’re not used to yielding. If Idil has an heir, everyone in the tribe will unite behind the new chief and try to kill us. If she doesn’t have a clear heir, or if there are factions within the tribe, everyone will panic and try to kill us. Plus, the deeper we go, the more the tribes talk to each other, and if word gets out that you’re killing chiefs, every kobold in the mountain will try to kill us.”

The human clicked his tongue. “So annoying. Fine. Chi Yincang, don’t do anything but gather intelligence without a direct order.”

The dark-furred human nodded again and vanished. Gaoda flicked his wrist at Kaz, and the group moved forward again.