The goblins weren’t finished.
Yet.
The village wasn’t saved.
Yet.
Karin couldn’t rest.
Yet.
Her aching fingers tightened on her greatsword again. She knocked another crude spear aside by rote. The goblins had breached her shining armor, stabbed into her side, cut the back of her knee, and cut grooves across the golden filigree.
Her wounds barely bothered her. They were all flesh wounds. They’d heal.
The blade fell on a screaming, swamp-green figure no larger than her great-nephew. It howled, a fishy smell filling the air as she cut into its stomach. The sword’s tip hit the ground, the impact ringing in Karin’s aching fingers.
The battle wrath that had filled her hadn’t returned. It rarely did after the Goddess used her as a conduit. The Goddess’s wrath and the Goddess’s mercy were two aspects of the same being, and Swords her favorite conduit for mercy—just as Shields were her favorite for wrath. Somewhere behind her, Karin could hear that battle wrath washing over Aldric. Would he give in to it? She couldn’t be sure. If he did, she’d hand him her greatsword gladly.
If not? He’d still be a great Shield. Not Zorin. No one could be a better Shield than the man who’d broken Hell with her. But a great one in his own right.
Her muscles screamed. Her greatsword raised. It crashed down through a goblin’s shield. Shattered it—shield and goblin both. The rest of the horde broke around her, backing away from the heavy steel blade and the iron-clad holy warrior wielding it.
Then they stopped backing away and fled, screaming. Crude weapons clattered on the cobbles as the goblins routed, and for a moment, she thought about letting them leave unpursued.
But one threw a torch into a thatched-roof hovel as they ran by.
The battle wrath returned in a flood of righteous fury, and she took three steps into the fleeing monsters. The greatsword swung, cutting the air with a horrific hissing sound. Her feet slipped from under her. Her legs buckled. And she hit the cobbles.
Stars erupted in her eyes behind the greathelm’s visor. Her hip wasn’t sore anymore. No, it shot sharp stabs of agony down her leg and up her back. She closed her eyes—a quick blink.
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When she opened them, her helmet was off and the villagers had piled old wives’ cures for a dozen ailments around her: wort for calming, lemongrass for pain, and a dozen others. She ignored them and pushed herself, right hip protesting with sharp waves of agony, to a sitting position.
She was in a home.
It wouldn’t be quite right to call it a hovel because that implied filth and chaos and impermanence. Someone had lived their lives on these dirt floors, and their mothers and grandmothers had lived theirs here, and their mothers and grandmothers, too. The bed she lay on—still in her gambeson, but with her plate harness piled in the corner—was a far cry from the bunk she’d had for seven decades in the Order’s barracks. Not more than a pile of straw, but at the same time, it smelled like someone had kept it as clean and fresh as they could.
And the Goddess sat on a shelf over the fireplace, her sharp wood-carved eyes looking toward Karin. Her robes were rough-spun linen but perfectly matched the marble-carved ones at the monastery. Karin stared at her for a long time. Then she tried to stand.
Her hip protested. She could scarcely swing her legs out over the straw mattress’s edge, and when she tried to put weight on them, another spike of pain rippled through her. Her vision blackened, and she gasped.
The door opened. “You’d be best off laying back down. Breaks like that don’t heal quickly,” another woman’s voice said quickly. She lacked the formality of the Order, so she had to be one of Riverbend’s villagers. And her voice cracked with a half-suppressed grief.
Karin tried to protest, but the weathered hand on her shoulder insisted, and when she tried to fight it, her hip flared even worse. The village woman was stronger than her—for now. But as her head hit the pillow, she forced her eyes open. The mission wasn’t complete until she knew everyone she could save had been saved.
The woman across from her could have been her sister.
She wasn’t. But she was the right age. Where Karin’s face had scars from her battles, this woman’s had wrinkles and liver spots. Her hair curled more than Karin’s; she took great strides to keep it short and straight. It was easier to maintain in the field that way. And the villager’s green eyes didn’t burn like hers. They shone with tears.
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“I’m brewing a poultice that should numb the pain and let you ride back to your monastery. My herbalism’s good enough for that. But I’ve felt around, and your hip’s shattered. It’d take the Goddess herself appearing for you to ride faster than a walk. I’m not sure you can even mount as it is.”
“Aldric?” Karin breathed, the word clipped and cut off like a gasped breath.
“The knight escorting you?”
“The Goddess’s Shield. A Sword for wrath, a Shield for restraint. Where is he?” she said softly. She wanted to sit back up but couldn’t. A chill rushed through her, and she shivered.
“He went on.”
The chill grew until it was an icy fist gripping her heart. This was her divine purpose, and she was trapped in a bed with a broken hip. She took a breath and centered herself in the familiar calming ritual. Aldric had gone on. If he’d gone on without her, routing the goblins hadn’t been enough. They’d taken prisoners.
The village wasn’t safe. Not all of them. Not yet.
“Who did they take?” she asked as the village woman tended her fire. The kettle cooking over it smelled like mint, sage, and sadness, but also like a long, long rest.
The woman looked like she’d been slapped. “My grandson. They took a half-dozen younglings, and my grandson was with them,” she mumbled.
Karin’s heart went cold. “Please leave,” she asked the village woman. Their eyes met, and she could see hers blazing silver-white in the tiny, tear-covered reflections. The other woman—her nurse—looked like she’d back down first.
Then the tear-filled eyes hardened, and she turned her back on Karin. “What do you think you can do? Your injury’s too much; it would have killed a woman like me. It’s a miracle it didn’t put you in a grave. Let yourself recover, and let the young knight do what must be done.”
A pang of something—not pain, but sympathy, maybe?—rose inside of Karin. This woman only wanted to help her, and she was hurt. Worse, the village woman was right; an injury like this could easily be her death. But her ice-cold heart beat cold blood through her veins. The goblins had taken children. This was why the Goddess had sent her here.
“Please. Leave,” she repeated slowly.
The woman opened her mouth to respond, then met Karin’s eyes again. For a moment, neither spoke. They stared at each other, matching wills. Her opponent was powerful, and she'd have won against anyone from the village. But Karin had stared down the king of Hell, crossed blades with ancient, thousand-year-old undead, and defied the Highlord’s orders to lead a strike team across the Fairwine and break the orcs’ siege of Bridgeport.
After a moment, the village woman nodded, eyes cast to the ground, and fled the hut.
Karin rolled onto her side, slowly lowered herself to the floor next to the straw bed, and took a few deep breaths. The pain subsided, and she stared at the Goddess’s figurine. “Tell me how I’ve failed you, Goddess, that you’d punish me so. I have been yours for decades. At least tell me where I’ve been measured and found wanting—and if not, give me the strength to persevere in spite of this.”
The Goddess was silent.
But she was there. Karin could feel it. She sat silently—she’d been heard, and she knew it. Now, she could only wait for the Goddess’s response.
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When the Goddess spoke to her, Karin’s ice-gripped heart thawed.
“You have not failed me. This is not a punishment, my Sword. Nay, this is a challenge, but not one that will break you.”
She stared at the statue, silver-white fighting with black at the edges of her vision. Her hip throbbed—she hadn’t been able to pull herself back up onto the bed. “How far behind am I?”
“The goblins departed Riverbend five hours past; your Shield pursued a half-hour later, on foot. His horse was wounded, and yours would not carry him. If you wish to follow, you need only stand.”
She need only stand? Her hip was broken; how could she stand? Karin sat on the floor as the statue’s silverwood eyes stared at her from the shelf. There was no way she could stand, much less push herself for hours to catch up with the goblins and Aldric. If this was a challenge, it would be one she couldn’t help but fail.
And yet…the Goddess didn’t believe it would break her.
Hadn’t she thought her end had come when the lich Calthurax’s legions broke through the Taron Mountains and threatened to pour onto the plains, held back by only a half-dozen paladins at a tight spot on the pass? She’d overcome that challenge, holding the line until the kingdom’s army could arrive and bottle the undead up in the pass. And when Zorin fell on the escape from Hell, hadn’t she carried him on her shoulders for leagues and leagues until she staggered through the monastery’s gates?
Karin didn’t let impossible challenges defeat her. She overcame them with her iron will, her strength, and her faith in the Goddess. That her fingers didn’t grip her greatsword as firmly was no failure. Her will and faith had only grown stronger.
Her will and faith would see her through this challenge.
She gathered her legs under her, gripped the mattress with both hands, and pulled. The hay shifted. Some of it ripped up, and she held back a quiet curse as her hand slipped. She adjusted her weight carefully, hissing as a jolt of pain passed up her spine. Then she tried again. “Goddess, help me,” she whispered as her good leg got under her and pushed her up onto one foot.
Next, the hard part. Her hip burned as she lowered her weak foot to the ground. Her boot-clad toes touched the dirt floor gingerly, then more surely, until her entire foot rested flat. Then, with delicate care, she added weight.
Pain streaked through her. It consumed her. She couldn’t possibly mount her horse, much less ride it into battle. Not like this. What was she thinking? Why had she felt her will and her faith would see her through—
The pain faded.
Not by much. But even that slight relief was enough. It felt like the Goddess touching her hip and dulling her nerves. She limped over to the armor in the corner and, piece by piece, strapped it into place. She yanked the strap around her hip so tight she could hardly bend it. She could hear the villagers outside whispering to themselves the whole maddeningly long hour it took to armor herself, but no one came to check on her. The village woman must have warned them not to.
But they were all there when she strode painlessly out of the hut and pulled herself onto her mare. They watched in disbelief as the Goddess’s Sword flicked the reins and cantered out the still-smoking village gates. The Goddess had truly blessed her, and she was again ready to serve.