The battle had paused. The familiar pains—her fingers sore from gripping her blade and her joints aching—mixed with the stabbing agony in her ruined hip. Aldric was still up somehow, though his shield had been cleaved nearly in two. He breathed doggedly, eyes glowing with the Goddess’s light.

A dozen goblins lay dead around him, and he barely saw Karin roll to her stomach and push herself up onto one knee. The pain was full-forced this time but bearable thanks to the Goddess’s blessing. She followed Aldric’s gaze toward the biggest goblin she’d ever seen.

His skin was gray and green, the color of something the monastery’s dogs might cough up, and covered in patches of blackish hair. At first, she thought he had to be an orc. He was big enough. But no, his eyes had the feral, crimson glow of his smaller kin, and his needle-sharp teeth were definitely goblin-like. A hob, maybe? Or a half-hob?

He lifted his cleaver. The blade had once been a greatsword before the tip had shattered. Now, it was the finest weapon in the whole swarm. The blade stopped high over his head, ready to slash down onto her Shield.

“Enough!” Karin said. She raised her visor and, with a groan of pain that erupted from her chest, pushed herself to a standing position. Her eyes blazed silver-white light, and the gigantic goblin champion locked his gaze on hers. “I challenge you in the name of my Goddess and your overlord. If you win, you can kill us both and keep the children. If I win, the eight of us go free.”

“Or we kill you both now,” the goblin yowled.

He was right. Karin had to act.

Her greatsword extended until the tip hovered less than a foot from his eye. She strained with the weight; she couldn’t look weak, not now. “If you try, the Goddess will smite your swarm through me, and your people will be gone. Fight honorably or face your doom.”

A single red eye locked onto hers. It stared at her, sizing her up. Then, the goblin’s spiny teeth flashed in a predatory smile. “Then we fight.”

Karin’s visor snapped down. She shifted to a striking position with the sword over her head.

“Great Grandmother, what are you doing?” Aldric shouted from the ground. She couldn’t look at him, but she could imagine the worry on his face. What chance did she have against this foe? Its arms were thicker, its blade a match for hers, and its armor the best hodge-podge the swarm could steal, loot, or salvage. And she was hurt—perhaps mortally. Her shattered hip could tear into her veins at any moment.

But she had the Goddess on her side.

“The Goddess protects,” she said to Aldric.

The goblin charged. The battle wrath took her. She let it.

Her enemy’s sword swung toward her in a crushing downward blow. The force behind it sent shockwaves up her hands to her elbows, but her blade caught his and deflected it to the side.

He was off-balance, but her blow came in too slowly. She couldn’t put her whole weight behind it—not without relying on her hip. It cut the goblin, but only a thin, blood-soaked line across his cheek. Karin bit back a curse as he shrieked and swung his cleaver like a hammer.

She blocked the first blow. The second. Her hands were numb by the time the third hit, and she couldn’t counter. All she could do was weather the storm, favoring her injured leg. The fourth strike almost knocked her sword from her hands.

She took a deep breath; there couldn’t be a fifth. She watched the cleaver go up for another hammer blow. As it came down, she put her entire weight on her hip and spun.

The cleaver slammed into the earth past her, dragging the hob down with it. He hit the mud, cleaver flying to land between him and Karin. She tried to slice the greatsword across her foe’s chest, but her hip crumpled, and she joined the goblin on the ground.

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She stared at the cage hanging from the old sycamore for a moment. A familiar-looking boy peered out from between the crude wooden bars. The village woman’s grandson? Somewhere to her side, Aldric shouted something—she couldn’t tell what. And she could hear the goblin scrabbling on the ground, trying to reach his cleaver.

“Rise and protect in my name,” the Goddess said.

Karin looked. Behind the goblin stood a familiar figure—sandled, with her robes girded and an ancient breastplate covering her chest. The Goddess carried a long spear. Its bronze tip flashed in the sun, but she made no move to wield it. “This fight is yours. I will see you through it, but you must finish it.”

Karin nodded. Her fingers tightened on her greatsword’s grip, both hands squeezing it for all she had. The goblin’s cleaver scraped on the ground; Karin could hear the monster closing in. She took a shallow breath. Another.

The goblin’s feet slipped in the mud.

She rolled. Her greatsword whipped through the air. It crashed into the goblin’s cleaver—crashed through the goblin’s cleaver and into its wrist. She followed the blow with a sweeping strike that crushed the monster’s gray-green thigh, then pushed herself up, throwing her weight on the greatsword’s pommel. The blade’s tip punched into the wounded hob’s chest, and he rattled out a breath and died.

The darkness at the edge of her vision collapsed inward. She couldn’t see anything save for a tiny point of light—one filled by a smiling, robed woman. The Goddess’s spear was gone; in its place, she held out an open hand. Karin reached out for it, only to see it withdrawn.

The robed woman’s brow grew stern. “I said I hoped not to see you soon. I still have need of your services, my Sword. But for now, let yourself rest and recover.”

“The Goddess protects,” Karin replied. She fell to one knee, but something caught her under her arms before she could collapse. It lifted her, but she couldn’t move her head to see. Her hip screamed in agony, and she let the darkness take her.

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Karin, the Goddess’s Sword, tightened her grip on her greatsword and reins. The goblin swarm’s lair was long behind her, but her fingers wouldn’t loosen around the hilt or the leather. Aldric, the Goddess’s newest Shield, limped along behind the children. For their part, they didn’t complain about the walk, though their eyes flickered between exhaustion and fear. They’d long since stopped trying to talk to either paladin; he gasped below his battered helmet with every step, and it was all she could do to keep in her saddle.

But Riverbend was in sight.

The fires had been put out in the hours she’d been gone, though the scent of smoke hung heavy in the air. A dozen men and women manned the wall, carrying torches against the night. As the two paladins and their charges approached the walls, one of them shouted something, and a tin bell clanged. The village’s gate creaked open, and Karin’s horse almost panicked as the half-dozen children burst into stumbling, tear-filled runs toward any adult they could find.

Karin nodded slowly at the woman whose grandson had been taken. As the boy embraced his grandmother, she nodded quietly in thanks. Karin returned the nod, but it wasn’t aimed at the villager. Her eyes were locked on the robed woman standing behind her.

“You can rest now, my Sword. Your service is done.”

She sighed in relief. Hands caught her as she slipped off her mare’s back, lowering her gently to the ground. But even as her body relaxed, her hands tightened around the greatsword again.

They loosened on her chair’s armrests. The instructors’ shouts filled her ears where, a second before, villagers’ grateful cries had been. And a brass bell clanged in the distance.

Karin had made it back to the Order’s monastery. The Goddess had helped her bear the pain as priests set her hip and holy magic coursed through it, knitting her bones and tendons back together. Then, she’d endured a month of recovery and two more of learning to move again. For the first time since riding back from the goblins’ lair, she sat in front of the barracks instead of in the infirmary. Her greatsword was back in its chest, her armor repaired and shining on its stand.

She watched the initiates training. The knights and priests patrolled the parade ground, correcting forms in the youngest soon-to-be paladins and offering pointers to the Sword and Shield pairs still mastering their roles. She sat contentedly. Soon, it would be her time to pass the silver door instead of the iron one, and when it was, her greatsword would be passed on—perhaps to Aldric. He’d make a fine Sword, too.

The bell rang. A month had passed, the Highlord had returned, and the monthly roll call was once again upon the Order of the Holy Sword. Her seat had been empty for three months, leaving the assembled knights at four hundred ninety-nine. Today, she’d sit in it again.

Karin’s name wouldn’t be called at the beginning when the Highlord named the fallen. And it wouldn’t be called when he listed the Order’s next tasks. But she didn’t mind. The Goddess would call on her Sword when she needed one, and Karin would be ready—for a call to battle or a call to come home.

Her turn would come. She’d enter the Goddess’s silver door as her loyal servant.

And until then, she’d serve.