The sky transformed as the sun dipped low against the saw-toothed hills, filling it with angry orange and red hues. With every moment, the light dimmed, and I knew we’d soon be plunged into total darkness. We rode hard up the steep face of the foothill, creating a plume of dust that made that dwindling light even murkier.

Raiders dismounted and herded their mounts to the crest of the hill. They formed quick battle lines on the slope beneath the hilltop. Slade joined them, leaving his horse in the care of a raider who was ushering the horses up to the top.

Seeing Max and Emma do the same, I dismounted. Another raider scrambled by taking our reins and leading a pack of mounts upward.

Princess protested. When the raider tried to take her reins, she skittered backward and said, “No,”

She whinnied and shook her head, but I clearly heard “No.”

“Wait, what?” I stammered, talking to my horse, “You can talk?”

The horse tipped its head, “Of course, you just needed to knock the ticks out of your tiny ears to hear. Listening helps, too.”

“I’m talking to a horse,” I said to Princess.

“If only you’d done it sooner,” Princess said. “We could have galloped around this fine mess you humans have gotten us into.”

“Hey, Victoria,” Max said, stepping forward to touch my shoulder, “What are you doing?”

“I’m talking to a horse,” I repeated, this time to Max.

“You mean like you can understand him?” he asked.

“Her. And yeah,” I said, still in shock and disbelief. “I can totally understand her. Shit. Of course. I took Speak With Animals as a skill in our last level up.”

“No way!” Emma said, “I always wanted to talk to ponies.”

“How does this help our current situation?” Max said.

“I literally don’t know,” I said, “It just seemed like a cool skill to have at the time.”

“Ahem!” Princess interrupted with a snort. “This ruffian keeps trying to take my reins. Could you maybe ask him to stop it?”

“Oh, sorry,” I said to my horse. I waved the raider off, and he took Max and Emma’s horses with him up the slope. The two horses looked back almost as if to question why Princess got to stay, and they were being taken away.

Princess walked over and gave me a nudge with her head. She whispered, “Listen, I’ve seen what’s happening before. These lot mean to fight those lot down below. Let’s get out of here. Hop on my back, and I can ride through them like the wind.”

“I can’t leave my friends,” I explained.

“Oof. Politics of the herd. That will always get you killed. With more certainty than a hungry pack of wolves.

I was now beginning to be able to tell the two dialects apart. The horse language was full of wines and whinnies about what you’d expect from horses. If I listened carefully, I could make out the sounds, but they carried the meaning of conversation with them.

“Promise you’ll stay with me,” I told Princess. She nodded but didn’t look terribly pleased.

“What’s she saying?” asked Emma, still star-eyed at the thought of talking to ponies.

“Well,” I said, still trying to wrap my head around talking to a horse. “She’s a horse and isn’t terribly keen on being in a big battle. She’s begging me to bail.”

Max eyed Princess thoughtfully, I imagined he was trying to determine if or how animal speak would better help him master control of the game.

Through the dusty haze of the last light, I could see packs of goblins scurrying around and across the foothills below. Some packs were mounted, others were on foot, but there were many of them. They seemed to be forming a cordon beneath us to prevent us from fleeing. They gave our foothills a wide berth, not quite ready to attack us just yet.

What had we gotten into? We were supposed to just be adventuring across the lands. Here we were, leading a small party against an army. None of the games I’d played had anything like this. I wondered why they hadn’t sent a strategy wargamer with us. Maybe they hadn’t found one whose last name started with P.

The goblin horns blew again. One was directly south of our front, and the other two were on either side of that. Each blasted with a different series of notes as if having a conversation. The group to our front formed lines at the bottom of our hill. In that group, most of the goblins were on foot. Counting the rows and columns, there looked to be sixty-ish, well outnumbering our twenty.

Slade and the lieutenants were having an animated conversation about how to hold the line if the goblin foot soldiers charged forward. They seemed to think we’d have an easy time of it. Behind the goblin spear wielders were two rows of archers, those apparently would be a problem. It seemed I was the only person in our party with a bow.

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Max and Emma joined me.

“Think we can still talk to them?” Max asked.

“I hope so,” I said. “That’s just one group. There are two more groups coming up from behind them.”

Finished with the lieutenants, Slade left the forming skirmish line and approached us.

“Looks like we’re in for a hell of a fight,” Slade said. He seemed almost confident we’d win.

Max stole the words from me, “We should try to negotiate. That goblin Squintnose promised us safe passage in his name. If that was BS, maybe there's something else we can offer. He seemed interested in the possibility of co-existence with humans in the lands to the north.”

“He seemed more interested in saving his own hide,” Slade said. “I suspect he’d have said anything to stop being our prisoner.”

“True that,” I said. “But there’s a lot of goblins down there. I don’t know that we can win this one.”

Slade stroked his chin, “But you say that every time, Victoria.”

“Well, maybe,” I said, “But look. That’s a lot of freaking goblins. Emma can heal, and Max has some new tricks… but that’s a lot of freaking goblins.”

“I get it,” Slade said. “But I don’t trust them. Every help entry says goblins are treacherous. They may say anything, promise anything, and then stab us in the back when we are most vulnerable. We have a decent position here. Giving it up may get us killed. Emma? What do you think.”

Emma looked up, “They can’t be trusted. They tried to kill the Enneaxi. I had a dream where we burned them all. I say we do just that. Kill them all.”

Disturbing, I thought. Emma had gone from a sweet, quiet thing to murder-hobo pretty quickly.

“Both sides have merit,” Slade said.

This day was too much for me. Talking horses, murder-lusting little girls, and now Slade was saying something resembling sense, I felt positively overwhelmed by all of it.

Slade continued, “But we need to act as a team. Unity is our strength. I think we need a coin toss.”

Max pointed down the slope, “Actually, we may not.”

Three goblin riders mounted on swiftscales plodded up the incline. The largest goblin was in the lead, flanked by the other two. One of the flankers had a pole with a white streamer. Okay, it was mostly white. It was white-ish.

“I should go talk to them.” Slade said. “Victoria, can you come with? You can translate if needed.”

“I’d like to go too.” Max said. Slade just nodded and started walking to our battle line.

“Slade, you need a mount.” I yelled.

He turned, “Why?”

“Because you’re the freaking king. You don’t do business looking up at goblins.” I replied.

Slade put his hands on his hips and beamed. “Great call. You’ve got your horse. Can you ride and fetch ours?”

I answered with a sigh, irritated that even after giving him great advice, I was instantly reduced to errand girl. Then again, I did have a horse, like literally right here, and it would make everything quicker. I hopped on Princess and pulled on the reins.

“You know,” she said. “You don’t have to use those things. You could just tell me where you want to go.”

“Sorry, up to the top of the hill.”

“Are we running? Because if so, I think I can make that jump.” Princess said.

“Make what jump?”

“Across the chasm to the other side of the hill. Those lot down there would never expect it. And we could be miles from here in a heartbeat.”

I wondered if Princess was being overconfident or if there was some sort of horse-terror thing going on. I get that horses are nervous and avoid fights by running away, but she was getting downright pushy about it.

“No,” I said, “We just need to get my friend's horses.”

“Which ones?” Princess asked while struggling to clamber up the rough slope.

“The big human man, and the umm… little human man.”

“You want Midnight and Thunderhoof then,” Princess informed me.

“Alright. I guess so.” I said, and then a thought occurred to me, " What's your name? Your horse-name, I guess?”

“I’m called Windchaser,” she said. “But Princess is nice. I like it. You can call me Princess. It's cute in humany ways.”

“Princess Windchaser it is. I’m Victoria.”

“Nice to meet you, Victoria,” my horse greeted me. “It's lovely to have you on my back. But we should gallop more often. If you don’t get us all killed tonight.”

“Deal,” I said, “On both accounts. More running and less getting killed.”

We finally arrived at the hilltop. A few raider guards were keeping the horses corralled.

Princess reined back and yelled, which sounded like a loud whinny, “Midnight, Thunderfoot, come on! You‘re needed. Follow us back down this hill.”

Slade’s black horse came quickly, “Are we fleeing this madness?”

“Not yet,” Princess said, “But my owner is clever and will get us through this.”

The red horse that belonged to Max came shoving his way through the other steeds. It just nodded and followed. I didn’t need to gather the reins of either of the other horses they simply followed along. Maybe I had really lucked out picking Speak With Animals, it was certainly helpful right now.

When we returned to Slade and Max they mounted their horses without any words. We carefully made our way down the slope to where the goblin party had stopped halfway. The further we moved away from our battle line the more vulnerable I felt. They were only a hundred yards away, but uphill.

“Hail Human King.” The larger goblin said from the back of his swiftscale. “We come to talk terms of your surrender.”

Without missing a beat, Slade replied, “That’s a real fucking shame because I came down to talk about your surrender.”

The goblins laughed. The leader shooshed them with an arm gesture, and continued, “And why would we surrender? Before you are three cohorts of goblin warriors. You have a mere scouting band, twenty fools on a death’s quest.”

“Our quest is to talk with your king. Let us pass unharmed and we will return the favor. We were already granted safe passage by Squintnose.”

Princess knickered, “What’s being said? Are they letting us go?”

I gave her a pet on the neck but thought it might look weird if I started whinnying.

“Squintnose told us of this promise. And he suggested we use it as a ruse to trap you. I had him impaled for impertinence.”

Slade turned and whispered to me, “There’s our safe passage. A trick to betray us.”

“Fuck,” I groaned. “We can’t fight them, there’s too many.”

“Looks like we got no choice now,” Slade said. He turned back to the goblins and drew the jagged blade he’d gotten from the last fight, “Last chance to let us pass, or I’ll add your blade to my collection.”

The goblins laughed, and the leader said as he drew out his own ragged-looking blade, “You will get my sword, humy, when I stab it through your beating heart.”

Still brandishing the sword, the goblin leader held both arms overhead. The group of three turned and began descending the slope, making their way back to the goblin hordes.

“Well, that went well,” Max said as we watched the goblins depart.

“Alright,” Slade said, “Let’s get back to…”

His words were cut off when the goblin leader suddenly dropped his arms. The two rows of goblin archers all notched arrows and drew back. I watched in horror as they released at once.

I knew in an instant the negotiations had been a ruse. The goblins had lured us into a trap. They wanted to kill our leadership in one blow.

I could do nothing but watch as a few dozen arrows arced through the air toward us.