The Iron Teeth

Queen of Swords 13

As Blacknail slipped through the trees and around the nearby thorny bushes, a bird sang out from up above in the trees and drew his attention for a second. It had been a while since he last remembered hearing such a sound. There weren't a lot of songbirds among the dirty streets of Daggerpoint.

He could reminisce later though; right now he had people to hunt. Or were they hunting him? It was a little confusing...

The rustling of plants reminded the hobgoblin that Malthus was chasing him. Blacknail threw a quick look over his shoulder and was surprised when he saw nothing but living green plants and a canopy of leaves fading to red and autumn gold.

He could no longer see the shaped stones and squat buildings of Daggerpoint. The hobgoblin stretched and straightened his posture as he felt an unseen weight leave his shoulders. It was good to be back among nature and away from the places humans had made their own.

He reached up towards his face with a clawed hand and pulled his smiling mask off. The hobgoblin then tossed it aside into a bush where he could retrieve it later. This was not a place for wearing masks. His green angular face broke out into a wide toothy smile as it was exposed to the world.

In the wild, even in this little isolated patch of it, things were different, purer. There was nothing to hold him back or make him question himself. His thoughts could run free without restraint or the weakness that came from hesitation.

A branch snapped off to his left and the hobgoblin's long green ears twitched as they picked up the noise. Without a doubt it was Malthus and his pack. The assassins were making quite a bit of noise as they moved through the woods, much more than Blacknail.

The area here was more brush than true forest. The trees were small and spread apart enough that there was no real canopy to block the light. That just made the undergrowth thicker, though. There were bushes and tall stands of plants everywhere for him to hide in, and walking in straight line was difficult.

The hobgoblin had assumed the assassins would be unaccustomed to wilder places, and it sounded like he'd been right. He was having no trouble keeping track of them and slipping ahead of them unseen.

He wasn't even trying to conceal his trail but they didn't seem to be able to follow it regardless. Thus, he would have to remember to make some noise every once in a while. The humans couldn't be allowed to believe he had escaped. He needed them to follow him.

It was a delicate game he was playing with these hunters of men. There was an uneasy balance that had to be kept. To win and claim his prize Blacknail would have to prey upon their instincts and shape their desires to his own end.

He had to appear weak and vulnerable so to lure them in, and yet he couldn't allow them to draw in too close. He had to get them to walk into his trap and believe that it had been their own idea. Luckily, most humans were very stupid.

As he approached a cluster of thin white barked trees the hobgoblin heard movement off in the bushes from a fair distance behind him. A second later he heard the rustle of leaves from out of sight and over to his left. Blacknail took a second to look over his shoulder and scan the forest behind him.

It really was quite easy to track Malthus and his men in here. He could hear their untrained footsteps crunching twigs and leaves as they pushed their way through the brush. The assassins were spread out but it sounded like they were keeping in sight of each other as they combed through the grass and bushes for any sign of him.

Right now his prey was falling too far behind for his liking. Blacknail coughed and sputtered loudly, as if he was in pain and couldn't help it.

He wanted them to think he was wounded and vulnerable, and not thinking about how stupid of an idea it was to have followed him in here. The more they underestimated him the easier it would be to trick them. The coughing wasn't really fake though, he had just fallen off a roof after all. That had hurt a lot.