The Iron Teeth

Playing With Fire 8

Herad scowled at the three minions in front of her. Red Dog and Blacknail were alternating between staring hatefully at each other and looking nervously towards her. Mahedium was trying to stand back and pretend he hadn't been responsible for the fiery explosion at all.

"Sorry, boss. It won't happen again," Red Dog apologized fervently.

"I believe we were all under the serpent's influence and its mental attack was impairing our judgement," Mahedium added respectfully but with a poorly concealed hint of worry.

"It was messing with everyone's heads, yet they didn't all go around throwing exploding goblins in my direction," Herad replied coldly.

The mage's face was carefully blank and his posture stiff, but the rapid movement of his eyes betrayed his worry. He was obviously trying not to let his fear show. Blacknail could respect that but he had a different plan.

"Oh-ss merciful chief, spare me please!" Blacknail groveled as he dropped to his knees and pressed his forehead against the ground. "I will-ss kill a hundred of your enemies in thanks and lay their corpses at your feet,"

Herad blinked in surprise. The three humans looked down at the hobgoblin for several silent seconds. No one seemed to know how to respond.

Blacknail kept groveling. He didn't think he'd said too much. The hobgoblin was pretty much planning to do all that stuff anyway. It was what he did for fun.

"...also, it was all Red Dog's fault, not mine," he added.

"Hey, you little green liar!" exclaimed the bandit lieutenant in question.

The corner of Herad's scowl twitched. A second later, an actual smile broke across her face and she let out a snort like chuckle. Red Dog shut up. Blacknail peeked up at her. He was fairly sure that meant she wasn't going to kill him.

"You're amazingly lucky your stupid plan worked so well, and that I can't afford to be rid all three of you," Herad announced. "I've killed people I liked much more than you for far less."

'Thank you, boss, I'll make it up to you," Red Dog interjected quickly before anyone else could say anything.

"You're right about that," Herad replied. "You owe me one for this, so how are you going to pay me back?"

"Um, whatever you want..." he replied uncertainly until Herad laughed in his face.

"What, you're not going to promise the same as Blacknail?" she asked with a vicious grin.

Red Dog tried to stutter out an answer but Herad cut him off again. Mahedium was still standing off to one side and looked satisfied with his decision not to speak up.

"How about you and Mahedium just get this mess cleaned up. I need to deal with more pressing matters," she told them.

Blacknail took advantage of the momentary shift in her attention to scuttle backwards out of sight. He then got up and slowly backed away. When the boss was mad begging and sucking up worked but it was even better if they simply forgot you existed.

Behind the hobgoblin, Red Dog started yelling out orders and trying to get everything organized. The camp was in shambles. Flattened tents and wounded bandits littered the ground. Blacknail's hearing had fully recovered now so he could hear them moaning and groaning, but that wasn't all he heard.

The hobgoblin's ears twitched as he recognized sir Masnin's voice. Huh, he hadn't been sure the man had survived the explosion. Oh, maybe he was wounded and bleeding out somewhere!

The hobgoblin quickly crept over to the remains of the once tall lumber pile. He crouched behind it and peeked carefully over the top.

Sir Masnin was over on the other side. Unfortunately, he didn't seem to be dying or anything, which was a shame. The man had a lot of very shiny equipment Blacknail would have loved to rescue from neglect.