As Brand turned away toward the village, something caught Saul’s eye. Something glistening among the trees, an evil yellow color.

An eye.

In a rush of perception, he saw the bow, the arrow, and the small bowman who had remained hidden in the foliage, disguised by a cloak of brown and green, and by the dark forest green of his own skin. But the bowman’s evil gleaming yellow eye and his sharp fangs alerted Saul to his presence with only a moment to spare.

“Brand!” Saul cried.

He had no time. He flung himself across the space between himself and the younger man and slammed into him, knocking Brand to the ground as the goblin archer in the undergrowth let fly his glistening, black-tipped arrow.

Brand and Saul went down in a heap together, and Saul felt a searing pain across his upper right shoulder.

He grunted, rolled, and leaped to his feet. Brand had not seen the archer, but he saw the arrow as it flew through the air and past them to thud into the ground a few feet away.

Saul glanced at his shoulder and saw torn fabric, raw flesh, and running red blood. There was pain—stinging pain, more than there should have been for such a light cut. The arrow had grazed his shoulder in passing.

It could have been worse. Much worse.

Pushing the pain aside, he dashed toward the goblin archer, who frantically tried to fit another arrow to his bow.

Saul reached the goblin first. He was carrying no weapon other than the heavy staff he’d used for training, and his magic was still in on cooldown.

Gratitude for his time of steady, consistent training was his main emotion as he hefted the staff as if it had been a longsword. The goblin dropped the short, ugly bow he’d been carrying and drew a curved scimitar from its sheath, but Saul brought his hardwood staff down onto the archer’s head with a blow that stunned the smaller creature.

The goblin’s knees buckled, and Saul swung the staff a second time. He cracked the goblin on the side of its skull. Unconscious—possibly dead—the goblin toppled over and lay still.

Shrieking noises rose all around them. From the trees appeared five more goblins. They were small, two thirds of Saul’s height at most, but they quivered with nervous, sinewy energy, and their mean yellow eyes blazed with anger, fear, and battle rage.

Saul felt something…something that was not the enemies, not himself, not the forest. He could not quite place it, but it reminded him of something.

There was no time to wonder. A moment ago, he’d been satisfied with his victory against the forest trolls.

Now, he found himself wounded, unarmored, without magic, armed only with a wooden stick whilst facing five enemies with swords.

He danced back, whacking one goblin on the wrist with his staff and shattering the wrist and arm. The goblin howled and dropped its blade. One down, four to go.

At that moment, Brand charged in from the side. Saul had not forgotten the youth, but he had not been expecting any help from that quarter.

To his credit, Brand made up with energy for what he lacked in skill and training.

His only weapon was his rusty old sword. The blade was dull and a bit too long for him and, from the way he held it, Saul guessed the extent of his training had been watching the soldiers at their drills.

However, a sword was a sword even in the hands of an untrained amateur. Brand stuck it into a goblin and drove it home. Green blood fountained from the goblin’s belly and back where the blade had punched through.

The other goblins—three remaining now—turned on this new threat. Brand’s eyes widened as he discovered his weapon was now lodged in the ribs of the goblin he had killed, and he could not wrench the blade free.

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Saul moved his staff to his left hand and swept up the goblin scimitar. Though it was short for his height and not particularly sharp, it was better to have a blade of any sort.

He used the scimitar like a dagger, punching it through hard leather armor into the lower back of one of the goblins harassing Brand. Then, he yanked the blade out again and, fending off a blow from one goblin with his staff, he kicked the legs out from under another.

Then, he turned to the goblin closest to Brand and stabbed it through the heart with the scimitar. The last goblin leaped up.

It looked as if it wanted to flee, but something stopped it.

The goblin stood, wavering for a moment.

A moment was all Saul needed. Without hesitation, he sprang forward and, dropping his weapons, grabbed the goblin by the head and jerked sharply upward and to the left.

There was a satisfying snap, and the goblin fell to the ground as limp as a sack of grain.

Suddenly, there was no sound in the clearing save Saul’s ragged breathing and the chattering of young Brand’s teeth.

Observe, orientate, Saul thought.

He glanced around the clearing, looking everywhere for more enemies. There was no one, no more goblins, no more trolls, no sign of anyone. But there was still that sense of something here that he could not pin down.

Not a presence, exactly, but something…

“You all right?” he asked.

Brand was pale and shaken, but his mouth was set in a grim line. He looked down at his own body, checking himself for wounds before he met Saul’s eye and nodded once.

After that, Brand stepped up and grabbed his dropped sword. With a foot on the chest of the dead goblin, Brand wrenched his bloodied weapon free.

Saul focused again on the strange feeling in the glade.

What did it remind him of?

That’s when it hit him. He’d been running through the trees after killing Tyren back at the coven’s hideout, and he’d felt dark fingers of magic creeping through the air around him, searching.

That was what it reminded him of.

“Warlock magic,” he thought. “There’s warlock magic in this grove.”

He suddenly clapped a hand to his forehead. Of course! That was the other strange thing here.

Those goblins had attacked, but they had fought to the last member of their party. That was unlike goblins which, if they find themselves in a fight they are losing, tend to flee straight away.

But these ones had not fled. The last one had wavered as if he’d wanted to run but could not. Was there some controlling force at play here, making the goblins act in ways that were contrary to their nature?

Saul looked again but, this time, he focused on the feeling of magic in the air. What was the source of it?

Magic use: Ten-minute cooldown complete

Spellcasting available.

Well, that was useful. Brand approached Saul and went to speak, but Saul held up a hand for silence.

There. Over by the ruined tower where the forest trolls had been.

That was the source of the spell.

Saul looked that way and, in the instant, he noticed a dark-clad figure slip from the shelter of a stone where he’d been hiding and move away, deeper into the forest.

“There!” Saul said, pointing.

The figure glanced back over his shoulder. Saul caught a glimpse of a pale face, pointed features, cunning eyes, and a fall of greasy black hair. His black robes, ragged at the hem and sleeve, glowed with pale light of runes, just as had the armor of Katkin and Tyren at the hideout.

The warlock was up and sprinting. He was fast, and Saul didn’t know if he could catch him, but he decided to give it a shot.

“With me,” he said to Brand and, to his surprise and satisfaction, the youth fell in next to him.

They gave chase, dashing through the trees, past the ruined tower and the corpses of the forest trolls but, after a few minutes, Saul realized the warlock was too quick for them. His black-cloaked figure flowed like a shadow from tree to tree, disappearing into the woods.

“All right,” Saul panted, “he’s gone. Let’s not pursue him farther for now.”

Brand nodded silently, leaning on his sword while he caught his breath.

“You’re bleeding,” he told Saul. “You’re bleeding quite a lot.”

Saul looked at his wounded shoulder. Brand was right.

He would have expected the cut from the passing arrow to have healed up by now but, instead, it was pumping a steady stream of blood out with every heartbeat. Saul suddenly felt a wave of dizziness, and he remembered the glistening wet tip of the goblin’s black arrow.

Poison. The arrow must have been treated with a poison that inhibited the natural clotting of blood.

He swayed, then steadied himself.

“Let’s get back to the village,” Brand said decisively.

“Okay,” Saul said, “but first, let me do something about this wound.”

They went back to the ruined tower now, and Saul sat on a stone. He tore a strip from his tunic and bound it round the wound on his shoulder. As he sat for a moment, his eye was caught by something leaning on a big stone nearby. The stone the warlock had hidden behind.

“Look there,” he said to Brand, smiling. “Looks like our friend the warlock left something behind.”

Brand looked. His mouth dropped open, and his eyes widened in surprise. He stepped forward and picked it up.

“Well?” Saul said.

Brand held up the item. It was a curved shortbow of black wood, and the whole surface gleamed with pale, white, glowing runes.