Eira lifted her hands, frost forming over her skin. Second passed.

“Hurggit, Password Guard Change!” the voice repeated, his voice louder and a bit annoyed. “No password, Tiggis alarm sound!”

I realized, suddenly, that none of the others had understood. Of course, they hadn’t. “Passcode Guard Change!” I shouted back.

It was a guess, but a good one. It didn’t pay to get too creative when working with goblins. Even without a cinnamon addiction, goblins thought in straight lines. Their ballads tended to rhyme, their music to simple reels; they preferred jokes to riddles, and most jokes ended with someone getting slapped in the face.

I felt Larendil’s hard gaze on me as I spoke, which really didn’t help my nerves. She mouthed something like, “what?” and I tried to explain with gestures, but she just looked confused. It’d be much easier if I knew those hand signals. Maybe if we got a break from horrible things trying to murder us, one of them could teach me a few.

There was a long pause. Then, from around the corner, “You Hurggit not?”

“Hurggit stomach sick,” I lied.

Another pause. Then, Tiggis bellowed, “No! Hurggit iron stomach!”

I was usually better at lying.

Okay, not really. I was usually better at telling people what they wanted to hear. It was a fine line.

And then there was a horrible clanging sound, like monstrous cymbals, as Tiggle shouted loudly enough to shake some of the powder from the above grouted stone blocks, “Spy! Alarm! Enemy inside!”

Larendil did not look happy. “What did you say to him?”

“He didn’t believe I was her.” I pointed at the dead hobgoblin. “I tried!”

The sound of cymbals and shouting “Alarm! Alarm!” grew even louder, accompanied by thudding hobgoblin feet as Tiggis thundered into the room.

Eira cursed in Dwarvish, and the air chilled as she blasted ice from her outstretched hand. It hit Tiggis square in the face, and he sputtered, shaking it back and forth as a shell of ice formed over his skin. He slammed one of the cymbals into the side of his head. That cracked the ice, but the force of it also made him stagger sideways.

“Ughhrrr,” he groaned, falling to one knee. “Hurts!”

Zareb stepped in, plunging his broadsword into the hobgoblin’s chest.

In the distance came the sounds of shouting. I distinctly heard something like, “Now stew kill! Messy dinner!”

“We cannot fight all of them,” Zareb said.

Larendil pressed her lips into a tight line, then shrugged. “Eira, can you ice over that archway?”

“Too big,” Eira said.

I glanced at the entrance. Aside from the two dead hobgoblins, we really had nothing else to block it with. And even if I was the “let’s plug the hole with the corpses of our slain foes” type, we didn’t have time. But we might be able to slow them down some. “Eira, I’m sure this is a stupid idea, but maybe we ice the floor?”

Eira glanced at me and raised a white-blonde brow. “Not bad, bard. Can’t do the whole thing, but…” She dropped to one knee in front of the dead hobgoblin and laid her hand flat against the floor. Ice flowed from it like water, coating the area around the hobgoblin and behind, filling the area below the archway and spilling a little into the hall.

“Goblins are supposed to stay out of the portal room,” I said, waving the group towards it. “That’s why the guard was there. To keep them out.”

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“Them? Not us?” Eira asked.

I nodded. “They’re not great with the traps.”

Eira glanced at Tiggis. He’d called for backup and then charged in well ahead of it. Worse, the spiderweb of cracked ice and ugly navy bruising on his temple and cheek showed evidence of his doing almost knocking himself out, leaving himself open to Zareb’s sword. “Bard has a point,” Eira said. “Goblins aren’t that bright.”

“Some are,” I protested. “Most really. Except when they get near cinnamon. That’s why it’s banned in the true Goblin courts. When I was in the Fireheart--”

“While this is all very interesting,” Larendil said, cutting me off, which was probably for the best. “Maybe we could try figuring out how to operate this portal before we’re overrun?”

I liked this plan.

“Eira, with me. You’re the best with magic. The rest of you, slow those goblins down. We’ll mark a path through the traps.”

Zareb nodded as Xy’lint hissed an affirmative. Xy’lint stood at one side of the archway, and Zareb at the other. The sounds of advancing goblins came closer. The entrance was wide enough to fit a wagon with a file of guards on either side, so the three of us, even with Zareb and the towering, terrifying Xy’lint wouldn’t be enough to stop them if they all came at once. But the ice would confuse things. And Mischief and I could muddle things more.

I stepped to the side, out of direct view of the soon to be charging goblin horde. The sheet of ice went a bit past the archway and spread in a blob like spilled water, thinning at the edges. I took care to avoid it. My poor bare feet had already suffered enough just dealing with the stone floors and random debris.

Zareb reached into his pack, pulling out a length of rope and tossed an end over to Xy’lint. The scalemaw caught it, and together they pulled it taut as the shadow of the oncoming horde hit the passageway in a cacophony of shouts, stamps, and jangling armor.

I put my fingers to the lute. My mana was halfway done at this point, and I fed more to Mischief with the image of grabbing up one of the cymbals to make music against goblin heads.

Mischief’s laughter chimed through my mind as it took my mana and extended itself in fingers from the lute’s strings.

I played the only Goblin reel I knew with the confidence of practice, but there were too many of them and they were too busy charging the archway to listen.

“Spies we kill!” came a cry from outside. Then the hammering of bare feet on stone, then screeching, “Cold! Cold!” as the first wave careened into the rope. It caught the normal goblins in the upper chest and throat, and the one hobgoblin in the knees. Gasps and coughs and cries of “Ow! Ow! Ow!” came, and the hobgoblin tumbled over the rope, careening into the ice, which crunched beneath him.

Mischief whipped the cymbal into the hobgoblin’s face.

CLANG!

The hobgoblin groaned, grabbing for the cymbal, but Mischief whipped it through the air towards one of the rat-dogs that had ducked under the rope. The rat whimpered and scrabbled, losing its footing and sliding back through the archway.

“Retreat!” another goblin shouted from the farside of the archway. “Blunderbuss forward bring!”

Uh-oh. Goblin explosives were just as likely to blow up the user as their opponent, usually at the same time. But goblin incompetence wouldn’t make us any less dead.

“Run!” I shouted to Zareb and Xy’lint. “Explosives!”

Xy’lint’s ears went flat against zher head. Zareb looked like he wanted to argue, but we all heard the rumble of what sounded like a cart, and my nose twitched at the smell of smoke.

It would take a few minutes to get the cart set up and aimed. Maybe we’d get lucky and the goblins would blow themselves up in the process. It had happened in a couple of particularly comedic songs I knew. But I couldn’t base my survival around ballads like The Baker’s Wife Revenge.

Maybe the portal room was reinforced. Or, if we were lucky, we could escape through the portal. Either way, better not to stay in the line of fire.

Zareb swung his sword through another sniffer rat who had leapt through, dragging a goblin at the end of its chain. The goblin screeched expletives as he and the rat skidded, jaw chomping. Mischief swung the symbol into the goblin’s face with another resounding clang, and the goblin dropped.

Mischief wobbled in midair. Alarm chimed in my mind as the cymbal slipped from the spirit’s magic grip. Simply carrying the cymbal had stretched Mischief’s limits, and two impacts, though the force had come mostly from the running-sliding goblins had unraveled it. Mischief sent me a low tone of regret as the cymbal dropped, clattered, and slid.

I called Mischief home, and the spirit whipped back into the lute.

Despite the Goblin orders to fall back, a handful of the stupid ones continued their charge, and I heard yelps and cries from the corridor as some were clearly caught in or under whatever cart they were using to haul their explosive device.

Blunderbuss, in Goblin, could mean anything from a hand-held powder gun to a cannon. Considering the noise and screaming, I was unfortunately leaning towards the latter.

Zareb let go the rope, dropped to his knees, his lips moving in prayer as he held his hand out in front of him towards the open passageway. Xy’lint, in a smooth set of motions that spoke to practice, wound the rope around zher arm.

“By Khemri!” Zareb shouted. A ray of sunlight poured from his hand. I should have blinded me, and from the renewed screams in the corridor beyond, it had blinded at least some of our foes. The sunlight lingered, putting spots in my eyes, and a rush of icy water — melted Eira’s spell — washed over my bare feet.

Zareb waved towards the portal room, and I didn’t need training in the group’s hand speech to get his meaning.

We ran.