Suggested Listening

The first attack on the barrier was meant to be the last. Elruin stood at the tree line, drew a slow, steady breath, then extended her arms forward, hands flat against one another like she was preparing a high dive. Everything she could muster into a single black bolt of power, invisible in the night fog that Calenda helped to create.

Elruin dropped to her knees, exhausted of strength. She didn't bring down the barrier, she didn't need to, all she had to do was weaken it enough.

.....

"Here's the most vulnerable spot," Cali said as she pointed on her map in the dirt. "Southeast corner. They don't have enough shielding shards, so the barrier's especially thin at this point. Also just so happens to be furthest from their barracks, so by the time they get men there, we can tunnel under the walls and come up the other side. We sacrifice the element of surprise, but there was never any chance of keeping surprise and getting through the wall. Near the north of the camp is our second best spot. We'll target both. Ell, you'll give the signal."

Elruin nodded. "I have an idea, too. We'll need as much water as we can get."

.....

Elruin dipped her hand into the bucket of crackling black energy, allowing her stored necromantic pool to return to her body. She had no way to know, but what she was doing would have killed most necromancers.

"Troll! It's a tr-!!" A sickening crunch ended the warning cry. Scratch's troll broke through less than a minute after the barrier was damaged, and punched its hand through the closest guard's faceguard.

Another soldier appeared in moments, propelled by superhuman speed he severed the troll's forearm with a single swing of his axe, then continued forward and sank into the troll's chest. A true strike which left the troll's heart bisected by steel.

As resilient as trolls are, even that might not have killed it, but then the attacker gripped the back of the blade for the killing move. "Ignition." One whispered word caused the innards of the troll zombie to erupt into flame.

In a twist of irony, an undead troll was in many ways weaker than a live one, as its natural regeneration was sacrificed. Against fire, the situation was reversed as the the bolstered toughness and strength of a walking corpse cared not about whether its organs had been reduced to ash. The woman with the ax did everything right to fight a troll. She did everything wrong to fight a zombie.

A clawed, burning talon lashed out, gripped the woman's hand, and the ax it held, then began to squeeze with enough strength to crush her armor, and then her bones. The other, severed, limb twitched around, grabbed her leg, and began crushing that as well. Metal folded, bone splintered, and blood pooled in the ruined pieces of armor.

She screamed, kicked out, shattered the troll's leg, and did not see the two goblins come out of the dirt with their spears. Nobody would ever realize it was her own brother's weapon that slid beneath the backplate of her armor and inflicted the wound that would kill her.

She bought time, however, for a dozen other armed men to arrive at the point of conflict. Armed with spears, the goblins were dangerous, but being undead they lacked the native goblinoid instincts and biology that made the creatures truly terrifying. Intelligence sacrificed for strength and toughness, useful in some situations, but being overrun was not the right circumstance.

Then they swallowed.

.....

"We'll give the goblins some of the spare weapons," Cali said. "I know, goblin bodies would be better suited as archers, but we didn't stock up on bows, and the goblins stopped making toxins when they died. Bit of a blessing in disguise, I bet they'll take the time to get anti-poison magic ready before they go out to fight goblins, only to find there's no poison to fear."

"Might I suggest something?" Lemia said. "I've been looking into the venomfire and its reactions. The way silmid use it, it explodes into a flammable powder, but if we, say, dropped a pellet in goblin toxins, we could get a pretty nasty explosion."

"Still facing the same problem of the poison being dried."

"Not inside their stomachs."

.....

The ball of necrotized flame exploded outward from the now-annihilated goblin corpses, capturing a total of nine people in their blast. For half, it was minor burns, for the other half it was enough heat to burn their unshielded eyes or lungs. They fell back, retreating from the explosion as those with healing magic found that their spells struggled against the wounds inflicted.

The troll, now the sole body remaining of this necrotic cluster, recovered in strength. Its bones forced themselves back into proper shape, and the severed limb pulled back into place, as if held by magnetism. The wounded, the blinded, they were easy prey.

It ignored the three closest, those dying on the ground from goblin-bone shrapnel which found itself in the open points of their armor.

"There's more!" A man shouted from another wall. "The goblins are coming this way, too! Dozens of them!"

A man shouted orders, then began to rush the troll while more men were sent toward the wall. He drove the beast back with a powerful blow of his guisarme, taking care to use the flat of the blade, instead of the edge that ran the risk of getting stuck in the monster.

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A stream of necromantic energy caught him by surprise, numbing his limbs and for a moment blinding him. He shuddered, fell to his knees, then jumped to the side when another stream of power nearly struck him. "Necromancer on the wall!" he shouted at what few able-bodied men remained near him.

To the north, men began to gather on the wall, looking out into the fog. "Where are the goblins?" One of them demanded of the guard who'd called them.

"Right there, come closer!" The soldier shouted, pointing down into the fog. "There!"

The other soldier leaned over to get a better look. "Where? I don't s- aaah!" He screamed as he fell off the wall, and landed face first on the ground below. The twelve foot drop probably wouldn't kill him, which was better than Scratch's new puppet could claim when he was impaled by one of his own friends. Then the wall rumbled beneath them.

Scratch used his now-dead puppet to laugh. He hadn't had this much fun in centuries.

.....

"Once the ambush has started, Scratch will abandon his troll, find some soldier, and lure others onto the north wall, where Ketak, Lemia, and the rest of our goblins will be waiting. Scratch sends a signal, then the wall comes down. I'm sure he'll think of something obvious."

"Can-do, Sis." Scratch forced his troll to salute, as best it could given anatomical limitations.

"Let the goblins take lead, they do the fighting and the dying first, we can always get more later. Lemia, you need to spot their champions, then you and Ketak take them down."

"Where will you be?" Ketak asked.

"On the other wall, with Elruin." Cali said. "What looks at first to be the distraction will instead be the first wave of our pincer attack."

.....

A little girl began to sing.

On the northern side of the camp, the wall rumbled and collapsed, claiming six more lives. Six more goblins, also already dead, rushed over the collapsed segment and savaged those who by luck or skill survived the falling stone.

A burst of lighting lashed out, catching all the goblins and several bandits in brain-destroying electrical death. All fell, but the goblins rose again. Without a nervous system, without a brain, only the heat of the lightning had any effect on them. It was not enough.

Moments later, another lightning bolt shot back over the wall, catching the mage. He was tougher than most lightning mages, but he was still amongst the most fragile castes of magic wielder. He stumbled back, used a windstorm to force the goblins away from him. Then he fell to the ground, gasping for breath as he drew on his sarite to replenish his strength so that he might escape.

His eyes widened in terror when Ketak walked through his windstorm. Like most dwarves, she stood under four feet tall and weighed over five hundred pounds, it was rare to find a wind that would so much as slow her down. He brought his hand up, to cast another spell. A single swipe from hers left nothing but cauterized stumps where his fingers once sat.

"Good news, of sorts," she said. "Surrender, and you li'e. Or 'ight and die. Your choice, but i' I were you, I'd choose to die."

The magic started to collapse around them, as the mage made his choice. He rolled onto his stomach, keeping his head down while the goblins ran around him into the compound seeking more bandits.

"You're a bra'e man, or a 'oolish one," Ketak muttered. "I suppose 'ere is no di'erence, when it comes to humans."

On the other side of the fort, the man with the guisarme jumped up to the wall to face the necromancer. "A child?" He smirked. "Or something that's meant to look like a child, at any rate."

Elruin did not stop singing, for she could not. There were too many dead, too many who would come back soon. The storm of death and taint continued to grow with every passing second, far beyond the pit Scratch had created.

The man twirled his weapon behind him, striking the second troll, the one that Elruin maintained control over. In that moment of vulnerability, a dagger tainted with goblin venom struck from behind. The man ducked under, which resulted in a troll with a dagger wedged in its forehead. A minor inconvenience at worst for the corpse.

Now began the real offensive, as Calenda began her all-out offensive with the troll as her flanking partner. He had to face her down, as she had speed and strength to match his own, while treating the troll as a secondary threat. Between the two he had no hope of approaching the child necromancer. They kept moving, both fighting defensively while the troll lost bodypart after bodypart in the clash.

Soon, it came down to the two of them. He was panting, while Calenda remained in peak form, despite having consumed much of her spare strength. Still, when it came to skill and strength, he had her beat. Were this battle to continue, she would lose.

Pity, then, that she was already dead. Elruin sang, and she knew it was time. She allowed herself to falter, to make a minor mistake that resulted in the guisarme wedged deep in her chest.

She just grabbed hold of the shaft. She wanted to issue a taunt, but the metal had blocked her wind pipe. Instead, she just smiled as a stream of necromantic power struck her from behind, and passed through her into him.

He didn't have time to look surprised, before he fell dead.

Calenda pulled the weapon out of her. Still unable to speak, she gave it a couple exploratory swings. She knew what share of the treasure she'd be keeping for herself.

Elruin continued to sing, chaining the necromantic storm to her will one section at a time. She fed half of it into Calenda, used the power to stitch her Elder Sister back together even as she jumped into the fray of facing the remaining bandits. There was little left as the battle went, but she needed desperately to scrub the necromantic taint before it became a threat to Lemia, Ketak, and the others she knew weren't fighting.

They soon walked empty streets. Half of Elruin's dollies had been destroyed, as well as Scratch's troll puppet.

"They have puppies?" Elruin spotted the cage first, thanks to her lifesight. She approached the three slender pups that stood up to her hip. Their large fox-like ears folded down, as they hid in the back of their cage. They whimpered and yipped at one another, hiding away from the necromancer.

"Wanna bet this is why the morks were so interested in our help," Scratch said. He was still without a puppet, but in truth he preferred to roam free than be stuck in a corpse. "I'd eat my own ass if these ain't their pups."

"Why would the bad men want mork puppies?" Elruin asked. As frightened as they were, the puppies were adorable. She wanted to give them all hugs.

"Slaves," Cali said. "It's all sorts of criminal, but if you get them young, morks make for useful guard animals. Far stronger and smarter than any normal dog, they can even serve as war mounts. There's quite a price on the black market for intelligent beasts."

"Why didn't they tell us?" Elruin inched closer to the cage. "We won't hurt you." The pups pressed further back into the cage.

"Because then we'd know we had them over the barrel," Scratch said. "We could have negotiated for better terms, perhaps demanded they help fight the bandits with us. By pretending they were only tangentially interested, they got a better deal outta us that they might otherwise."

Lemia ran out of the larger building. "Cali! Elruin!" She stopped, gasping for breath. "We have a problem. They have captives, some are in bad shape." She gave a pointed look at Scratch. "Ell, you need to stay out here and hide your dollies where nobody will be able to see them. Cali, we need your medical knowledge."

This was when Cali learned her dead stomach could still feel queasy. "Right, I'm coming. Ell, stay out here, and leave the mork pups alone. They've been traumatized, and we should leave them until their parents arrived."

Soon, howls began at the walls, followed by excited, desperate yipping from within the cages.

"Speak of the coyote devil," Scratch said. "I'll handle our employers, don't worry, I speak their language better than you humans do. I'll keep things vague without making any promises, but right now we're not in a good position to double-cross them, so I suggest barter."

"We'll meet up in ten to discuss our situation. Lemia, could you take stock of the storage barn? I was about to, but..."

"Sure, you've got the worse job, anyway."

Some time later, they all returned from their respective tasks. Lemia and Ketak kept close to Calenda, so they could whisper to one another outside of Elruin's hearing. "Physically, they'll recover," she whispered to the pair. "The mental scars, I can't begin to guess. And... I didn't have the heart to tell them, but two of them are pregnant."

Lemia closed her eyes, then nodded. She'd feared as much, given the condition she'd found them in. "Let's take inventory, then." She spoke loud enough for the other two members of their team to hear. "We got six more donkeys and three more carts, enough food to last for a while, and more than enough leather for our little side project."

"I lost most of my dollies," Elruin said. "Only two goblins survived. But I got four more dollies to replace them, and Mister Clackybones the Second!"

"Enough weaponry to outfit a small army," Ketak added. "Twenty bows, spears and arming swords, hundreds of arrows, and basic chain or gambesons enough to fully armor fifty people, and enough coin to pay them all for a month. Though it seems they were paid more in alcohol than coin, there are more barrels in storage than we could hope to haul in just four carts. This was not a small operation. Oh, and one living prisoner, who I buried with our remaining goblin 'dollies'. I trust you want to talk to him."

"Four men, seven women," Cali delivered the least happy news. "From what I could gather, they're the remaining prisoners from three separate merchant caravans, being kept until they could be sold for ransom." She left out the other reasons. "Also a great deal of sarite. Most interesting is the shielding sarite on the walls. That stuff is hard to come by, and we can use it to hide ourselves while transporting the prisoners."

"Not back to human lands, though," Scratch said. "They wanna go that direction, they gotta go on their own, because we can't afford to let witnesses survive. Oh, and last but not least, we got three mork pups with their parents eager to get them back. Things will get violent if we say no, and I can't promise they won't get violent if we open the gates."