The Iron Teeth

A Tradesman's Tools 6

Blacknail immediately pulled himself up from the tangle of sheets around him, and growled menacingly. The sound of his anger echoed throughout his small room, as he shot to his feet. Someone was trying to be sneaky and invade his tribe's lair!

"Enemies," he hissed to himself.

The hobgoblin felt his drowsiness burn away under the relentless waves of his rage. His lips rose to reveal his teeth as he snarled. Whoever these people were, they were about to get a very nasty surprise. He was going to stab them, a lot.

Blacknail didn't waste any time. He quickly began throwing on his clothes and arming himself, as he carefully listened in on the enemies' progress.

The footsteps were slowly but steadily crossing the roof. At first the hobgoblin assumed they were coming to attack him, but he realized that was unlikely. No one knew who he was, or where he'd stashed his cheese.

That meant they must be after Herad! They were assassins, and aiming to murder Blacknail's chieftain the same way the hobgoblin had killed the other chiefs.

Well, it wouldn't work, because they were much worse at it than Blacknail. The hobgoblin had already discovered them, and not being detected before reaching the target was the most important bit.

He pulled on his mask, slipped quietly through his door, and stalked quickly forward down the hallway towards Herad's room. The hallway was dark except for a single candle set on a small table, and there was a sleepy looking guard leaning against the wall beside it.

The man was apparently a light sleeper though because the hobgoblin's outraged growl woke him. He blinked and turned to see what was going on, and then jumped in alarm when he saw the masked and cloaked hobgoblin descending upon him.

"Shh, quiet," Blacknail hissed as he raised a finger to his mouth. "There are-ss people on the roof,"

"What?" the man whispered in confusion, as he began to recognize Blacknail and started calming down.

"Assassins on the roof!" Blacknail whispered back.

Why did he always have to repeat himself? Human hearing wasn't that bad, even if they had tiny pink ears.

Herad's guard flinched as the hobgoblin's words finally sunk in. He then threw a quick glance upwards, as if he expected to see something. Blacknail sighed in frustration; he wasn't impressed.

"We need to raise the alarm," the man said a few seconds later.

"No, then-ss they would run. Give-ss me door key, and then go raise alarm, silently. Herad would-ss want us to warn her, and then trap them so they end up dead," Blacknail argued.

There was no way Herad would want to pass up an opportunity to kill some of her enemies. She was pretty consistent that way.

The guard seemed to agree with Blacknail's judgment of Herad's character, because he nodded reluctantly in agreement and then handed Blacknail the key.

"I'll be right back. You wake the boss then. Better you than me anyway; she's not a morning person," the man told him.

He then quickly disappeared into a side room, and several seconds later the hobgoblin could hear him begin whispering to someone else.

Blacknail was tense and nervous as he unlocked the door and walked through it. Not because of the assassins, but rather because he was pretty sure the guard was right about how Herad wouldn't like being disturbed. She would however like not being informed of the assassins even less, which meant there really weren't any good options.

The chieftain's room was dark, except for the slivers of moonlight that squeezed through the cracks of the one small shuttered window, and the light of the candle in the hallway that shone out from under the closed door behind Blacknail.