I came awake, bathed in a warm glow. It felt as if I were cocooned in a thick blanket on a frigid winter morning. Dreamily, I opened my eyes. It was still dark, but I could see Emma hovering over me, her face illuminated faintly by swirling fireflies of light.

“Thank goodness,” Emma breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m so glad you’re back.”

“What happened?” I croaked. The snuggly blanket feeling had passed, and I found myself lying in rocky soil.

“You were hit with an arrow that caused a bleed effect. You ignored it, and it almost drained you.”

I tried to sit up and felt a horrible knifing pain in my inner thigh.

“Relax,” Emma said as she tried to ease me back down into a lying position. “You’re not fully healed.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“I’ve only got so many spells I can cast,” Emma explained. “There’s two more waves coming. I’ve got to conserve what we have.”

Damn it, I thought, I’d been sleeping while the fighting continued. I could now hear the clatter and din of men in chainmail armor moving about. In the distance, I could hear something else, a pounding of some sort.

I forced myself, wincing as my injured leg protested. I asked Emma, “How’s my health bar?

As if the game knew I was curious, it flashed an image of it on the lower left of my vision. The bar was three-quarters full. As my leg painfully reminded me, I wasn’t at full health, and there were still more goblins advancing. Resting was not an option.

Glancing around, I saw I’d been taken to the hill crest. It was somewhat flat at the top, but the slope fell off sharply on all sides. The chasm to the north loomed. I turned to the south and could hear the raiders preparing for battle. Beyond them, far down the slope, was the pounding sound.

“Victoria,” Emma called after me, “Just rest a little longer.”

“I can’t,” I said as I started down the jagged slope, “I’m our only archer.”

I made my way to the raider lines. It wasn’t terribly difficult to find Slade. He was hunched down in the center of the line with Max and the two lieutenants. I scrabbled down the incline to them.

“They will form a front as wide or wider than our own,” Eric said, “then try to break one of our flanks.”

“Maybe we should split up,” Slade said, pointing to Max, “And each defend at opposite ends of the line?”

“It's not a bad idea for the core heroes to split up,” William said. “We need one big commander in the center. It could be me, or it could be you.”

“I should stay in the center,” Max said. “I’ll need to be able to cast spells in front of the entire line, not one end.”

I slid down to join them. I whispered, “I should stay in the center as well. I can cover the entire line with arrows.”

Slade, Max, and the two lieutenants all turned to look at me. Both Slade and Max looked rough. Shallow cuts crisscrossed Slade’s arms. Max, though, looked like he’d been beaten badly. Both his eyes were blackened, and his nose was an angry red and crooked as if broken.

Slade and Max smiled and nodded, And thankfully, that was all the emotion expressed.

“I’ll start in the middle as well, then,” Slade said. “William, Eric, you should each bolster an opposite end of the line.”

The lieutenants nodded, shook each other's hands, and then split apart. Eric moved to the right flank while William moved to the left.

A rivulet of soil and rocks poured down the slope toward us as Victoria joined us at the center of the defensive line.

“How is he?” Max asked Emma.

“I’m sorry,” Emma whispered, “I can’t spare any more spells right now. Thunderhoof is alive, but barely.”

Max nodded glumly but said nothing.

The pounding from below continued, and I realized it was the stomping of many feet. It was unsettling, and in the dark, it made me imagine a vast army stamping towards us. Were the goblins savvy enough to try psyching us out?

I could only see about thirty yards down the slope because of the darkness of night. When I squinted, everything brightened, and I could see to the bottom of the slope. The goblins were only fifty yards from us.

There was a line of goblins several deep, maybe sixty of them altogether. At the rear of their line, a large goblin would stomp his foot. Beside him, a drummer beat a drum to each foot stomp. The goblin soldiers would step forward and stamp their feet. This was the drumming sound. They made their way slowly up the slope.

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“Fifty yards below!” I shouted, letting Slade and the others know what was hidden in the dark. I hesitated to yell out their numbers, wondering if that might demoralize our raider allies. Ultimately, I decided to let everyone know rather than keep secrets. “About sixty goblin foot soldiers.”

Slade and the raiders defending had their weapons out and raised them, ready to fight. It would still be a few minutes before they reached out line, so we could do nothing but wait for them to reach us.

Except that I could do something.

I looked at the mass of stomping goblins. There was no way I could kill them all before they got to us. I was trying to determine who to shoot when I realized how much the pounding drum bothered me. I placed a Hunter’s Mark on the drummer.

Drawing an arrow, I paused for just a moment. Why not? I thought, then used my camouflage skill to fade into stealth. I loosed the arrow and watched as it arced towards the drummer. It landed solidly in his chest, right between drum beats.

Sneak Attack: Bonus Damage

The drummer staggered back and switched into a cube. The goblin leader missed his stomp, and so did the mass of soldiers. There was a moment of confusion, and the entire war band stopped for a moment.

Switching targets, I moved my Hunter’s Mark to the goblin leader. I wish I could say it was because I’d thought about his role and knew it would demoralize the goblin army, but the truth was he just happened to be next to my last target. I let my arrow fly the moment I drew it back.

When the arrow hit the goblin leader in a shoulder, he staggered back and roared. His health bar appeared, and a quarter of it vanished.

Sneak Attack: Bonus Damage

Still roaring, the goblin leader reached up and ripped my arrow from his shoulder. The line of goblins all began shouting, and then they rushed screaming at us. The leader followed the horde closely.

“Here they come!” I screamed.

Our own line of raiders all began yelling. Slade roared, “Come and get some!”

The goblins charged forward as fast as they could up the steep slope. I saw the Hunter’s Mark on the leader behind the charging mass. He was hidden behind the charging goblins. I switched my aim and started firing arrows into the middle of the front line. Several vanished into cubes. Others had health bars appear half empty. But there were so many I could have shot arrows all day and still not killed them all.

When the goblins got within thirty yards, I no longer had to squint to see them. I kept firing arrows, knowing that when they got up to our line, I’d have a lot of problems shooting around our own people. For now I just kept firing and seeing my bonus damage messages.

The ground in front of us, about ten yards away, began to bubble up as slippery oil covered the slope. Max was chanting beside me, also stealthed.

“Slade!” I yelled. “Throw a torch into that oil once the goblins are in it.”

“Got it!” he yelled back. A torch appeared in his left hand, casting a flickering red light on our lines. The battleaxe in his right hand looked especially dangerous in the flickering light. I was glad I wasn’t going to be on the receiving end of it.

I was able to release a few more arrows when the goblins got to the oil slick. The center of the goblin line was missing five or six in the front row. That was all I’d been able to kill with arrows as they charged at us. The oil slick was only about ten goblins wide, right in the middle of their formation. When they ran into it, they started slipping and falling, slowing the entire center down. The goblins on the left and right continued on, smashing into the raiders defending. The goblin lines were now a rough V shape, with the center mired in oil and the sides engaged in battle with our troops.

Slade tossed the torch, and the center of the goblin lines erupted into a wall of flames. A dozen goblins screamed, becoming cubes, while the rest fled away from the burning center. We were now fighting two goblin mobs while our line remained solid.

I watched the Hunter’s Mark behind the flaming oil move to the left. The goblin leader moved to the left group of goblins. I shouted this out and turned to face the group already engaged with our raider defenders. Whenever I saw an unobscured goblin, I fired an arrow. Several fell before they were too close to the defenders. I wasn’t willing to risk hitting our raider on own side in the back of the head.

Looking all the way to the left, I could see that the original goblin horde had wrapped around the end of our defensive line. At the very end, William was outnumbered, fighting off a half dozen goblins by himself. I helped with several carefully aimed shots, removing two goblins from overwhelming him and making a few others easier kills for him by whitling their health bars down.

Slade howled out his warcry and rushed into battle way too close to the flames for my liking. He slammed through several goblins, knocking them aside. One even went flying into the burning oil, dying quickly. The goblin leader was at the end of his charge, and they both started hammering each other. Sword and battleaxe rang loudly as they exchanged blows.

A swarm of light streaks shot past me, zig-zagging overhead to zip down into individual goblins. They didn’t do much damage, but it was enough for the raiders to finish killing the goblins that had been hit.

Stepping back with a drawn arrow, I waited, aiming at the goblin leader. I still had the Hunter’s Mark on him and just needed a single moment of opening to fire an arrow around Slade. Fighting raged in front and to my left. It felt like I was wasting time by not shooting, and I was not helping, but I wanted to get rid of that boss.

The moment came. Slade and the goblin struck each other's weapons, and Slade dodged away for just a moment. The arrow leaped out of my hand and pierced the goblin leader right through the throat. He staggered back, its health bar shrinking to a tenth of its normal size. It wasn’t enough to kill it, but Slade took care of that with a powerful blow through its skull. A gold and blue cube remained.

Seeing their leader die, the goblin line to the left lost all interest in the fight. The goblins scattered, racing down the slope into the darkness at breakneck speed.

Slade wasted no time turning to the right, screaming his warcry, and rushing to the other horde. Max shifted to the right, and I watched as a dozen little meteor-like streaks shot from his hands toward the remaining mob. I fired where I could, but it was all over pretty fast.

When the right group of goblins saw more and more raiders swarming around the smoldering oil slick, they realized the fight would not be in their favor. They fled instead.

“Woo! Hoo!” Slade screamed out triumphantly. “Another victory!”

I wanted to join in his excitement, but I knew a third group of goblins was down in the dark below. They reminded everyone else by blasting their horn. Another attack was incoming.