Garaghan reached the edge of the human encampment and motioned for the rest of us to huddle up on him. “Olerandera will go with Harriet and the maidens. Balminazer and I will stay here with Alaric and Tia.”
“I would rather go with…” Alaric puffed out his metallic chest, but Tia grabbed his waist.
“Please stay here with me, cousin Alaric!” Her voice squeaked and she pulled on him as if she might move him with her spindly little arms.
The rest of the group stared at Alaric and willed him to be the big brother Tia needed in the moment. For my part, I thought I should wait back with Tia and Garaghan, but my sensei had proven himself a dozen times over. I wasn’t going to question him now.
Alaric wilted under Tia’s begging and proved himself greater than I’d ever thought. “No problem squirt. I’ll wait here with Uncle Garaghan and the dragon.”
Tia beamed at him and waved at the rest of us. “They’ll be fine. They’re only goblins.”
A chill ran down my spine at her words. The maidens checked their weapons and armor against each other while Yierie drew her thin, curved blade and checked the edge.
“Have you fought goblins before?” I whispered the question and Yierie blinked at me with a smile.
“Of course. But today I think Olerandera and I will supervise.”
“What are you talking about?”
She flipped her hair and pointed to Garaghan, who’s eyes glittered against the fading sun. “He wants it that way. You and the three former Ualno need to be properly blooded. This is a first time for them as well.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” I pulled myself closer to her. “And what about the time problem, will months slip by while we’re gone?”
Yierie shook her head and pointed to Balminazer. “Not as long as we keep the dragons close by.”
“What do you mean?” My eyes narrowed at her as I asked.
“They stabilize time when they focus on doing so. But it means you cannot rely on their magical or martial assistance in the battle ahead.”
“They can stabilize time? Really?”
Yierie kissed my cheek, she was far to jovial about this. “Indeed. If they hadn’t already agreed to ferry us back to the ship, we would have returned and sought them out when we learned about the temporal anomalies.”
I wanted to press her, to learn more about time slipping away and how the dragons could help. But Garaghan was growing impatient. “I do not want any more of these humans’ lives on my conscience, nor do you I suspect. Balminazer and I will walk the defensive lines while Alaric protects the girl at my side. The five of you should get going.” He cast a focused glare in Yierie’s direction and I noted a subtle nod from her.
Before I could ask what that look meant, she turned to me and said, “it’s time to practice moving stealthily. Go!” She sprang forward, the wind of her passages ruffling my hair and the tips of Roo’s fringe. One, Two and Three flanked me and waited like coiled springs for me to move. The moment I set off, they matched my pace perfectly.
Among the five, I made the most noise with my steps. I was always the one who managed to knock a stone over or scrape my bare foot across a bed of loose material. None of the others hushed me, but I suspected that was because they knew I could hear the clamor of my own passage.
The slower I moved, the quieter I was. Yierie moved like a rabbit in the dark, darting to and fro between cover and splitting her attention between us and potential dangers in the night. When she stilled at a low outcropping, the rest of us moved behind her and hunkered down.
She tapped the side of the rubble and peeked over the cover. I did the same and followed the direction she indicated with her eyes. A dark figure passed from shadow to shadow up ahead, moving with incredible stealth. If not for Yierie, I did not think any of us would have caught the figure in the long shadows of dusk.
“What do we do?” I lowered my voice as much as possible, and still the figure froze in one of their shadows and pressed themselves deeper in. If I hadn’t had eyes on them already, I would not have known where they moved.
Yierie brought her fingers to her ear and flicked her lobe in some kind of signal. Two and Three darted away from our hiding spot and vanished into shadows of their own. Yierie pointed to one and tapped her thumb and forefinger together. One nodded and moved to my right, putting me between her and Yierie. Once the others had set into motion, Yierie’s voice came out from the night like the brush of a leaf falling against the grass. “You will stay here with One and the others will check out our spy.” Yierie gave One a long look who nodded in response.
“Is that all…” Before I could finish my question, Yierie sprang over the rubble. Though she planted her feet right in the middle of the pile, she moved without shifting so much as a grain of the mass. My enhanced senses could not detect any part of her passage. She moved into a shadow and I lost sight of her, reassured in a way that she was better at hiding than our quarry.
The figure still had not moved out of their shadow and waited like a frightened beast, unaware that hunters had already set out for them. I watched through the descending light for signs of the three elven women, finding none.
I stilled and found myself staring into the void without meaning to. Three streaks of light, one red and larger than the other two bounded toward a figure in the center with a dingy green aura. What surprised me was the minor lake of brown and twisted grey auras less than a hundred yards away, scattered at the edges of buildings and peering at my group from distant shadows.
In an instant, I recognized that the green figure was not in fact a goblin or monster of any kind, but a human boy, perhaps fifteen years old. But the twisted shapes were definitely goblins, assembled in a mass as if waiting their chance to attack and overwhelm our meager defenses.
With no other course before me, I stood up and shouted in Elven, “Goblins in the distance, one hundred yards!”
The boy shook and spun back to me when I revealed my position so carelessly. At the same time, half a dozen bolts and arrows arced out of the ruins in the distance and headed for me. A steel grey semicircle whipped out from next to me, cutting the first few missiles away. But my azure field rose and diverted the deadly weapons with a thought.
A few cries in the distance alerted me to the goblins’ charge as my vision dropped out of the void. Even without the inner luminescence of the void, I could see the goblins charging. Rather than let them come on, I called up a rune ward, and added a simple rune bearing the word, “goblin” to my phrase. A great ring of white light exploded out of my form and a small portion of my energy flew with it.
White tracers showed me the edge of the ring as it grew. Tiny flares sprang up from goblins as they ran into the ring and fell to my rune casting. Cries of anguish tore at my chest, but all I had to do was recall the girl who would lose her foot in a day, or the boy who would never awaken to quell my sympathy for the little beasts.
More missiles fell about me and I ignored their flight as One cut them down before they reached my blue barrier anyway. In the periphery of my vision, Yierie and a blue streak met with the boy where he huddled. I didn’t see their interaction or hear their conversation, but the results were clear as daylight. The boy rose when bidden and raced back to me.
By then, the goblins had redirected their fire and I screamed at Yierie, who kept her eyes on me. But a yellow semicircle cut down the arrows headed for her and kept my beloved safe from the goblins’ attacks. I had not even seen Three move and did not know for certain where she lurked in the fading light.
Yierie held the boy by his ragged collar as she jumped over our barricade into our midsts. “I am fairly certain I told you to wait here.”
“But you didn’t say anything about erecting a ward and protecting us.” With the full group behind the rubble, my barrier had fewer and few occasions to flare up and divert goblin fire. After a few seconds, Yierie swore in Elven and tapped Three on the shoulder. The elf nodded at Yierie and darted away from us back toward the human settlement. “What’s going on?” I demanded an answer from Yierie as she started to give new orders to Two.
“The goblins are attacking en masse. We will be fine behind your barrier, but if they decide to skirt the ward and attack the humans…”
Shit. “I didn’t think about that…”
Yierie cut me off with a gesture. “Nor did I, but now we know it’s a risk and we were charged to help the villagers, not make their lives more dangerous.”
“What do we do?” My voice quivered as I asked.
“For now, keep your runeward in tact and do not let it drop. Three has gone to warn my father and I am sending Two to see if the goblins are spreading out their line.” Yierie nodded to Two, who nodded back and sprang away. “As for you, keep her safe,” Yierie pointed to One and back to the boy and shifted to English, “as for you, young man, what are you doing here?”
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Though Yierie had asked him a direct question, he kept his eyes locked on me. “You’re her, aren’t you?” He pointed to me as he asked.
“Her? I don’t know what you mean?”
“You’re why my mom died!” He produced a dagger from his belt and lunged at me with impossible speed. My barrier did nothing to stop melee weapons so I squeezed my eyes shut and I braced myself for an attack. But when I opened my eyes, I found One with the pommel of her blade returning from hitting the boy’s arm and Yierie shifting to wrap him up in a pinning move.
He flexed his arms and surged against Yierie’s grip. What surprised me more than the attack was how he made Yierie shift and struggle to hold him. Before he managed anything else, One wove a short rune pattern over him and touched him between the eyes.
Glitter fell around his face, his eyes fluttered and he went limp. “Shit, tell me you put him to sleep!”
One nodded and scoffed, as if insulted by the suggestion she would ever need to kill such a soft target as a teenaged human boy. From what I’d seen, he wasn’t that soft a target at all, but I wasn’t going to complain to One or Yierie for saving my life without killing him.
Yierie hissed instructions to One, and darted away from the three of us, the boy lay asleep at the base of the rubble pile snoring lightly. One wove her fingers into a complex dance of unfamiliar ones and glowed briefly to my sight. She straightened behind the pile and took a deep breath to steady herself.
With her eyes over the horizon of the barricade, One scanned the ruins, waiting for goblins to break through my wards. I didn’t know how she knew it would happen herself, but I could feel it coming with a sense of inevitability. Without a physical anchor for the wards, I had to hold the focus right below my ribs, in my hara.
Goblins threw themselves into the wards, only to scream and stumble out of the painful magical field. But each impact drained a portion of my energy and made holding onto the ward harder and harder after ever body bounced off. I didn’t know what we’d done to attract this horde of monsters the community, but I was glad Yierie and the others were here helping me. Otherwise, I might have blundered and sent the goblins into the undefended settlement.
When my ward broke, it felt like a tendon or muscle tore in my gut. I fell forward on the rubble ahead of us and One uttered a delicate Elven curse. The goblins shouted when the barrier fell and I could sense them streaming over the remnants of my power.
Dozens, then hundreds filled the gap and spread out among the runes. I looked over the top of the rubble and uttered my own curse. There were too many goblins here for us to defeat single-handedly, surely.
No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than my legs turned to jelly and threatened to lock up. As I contemplated my various escape routes, a pair of arcing forms burst into the wings of the approaching goblin army.
Blue and red arcs swung out from the pair, laying whole crowds of goblins low. They moved like darting dragonflies, in and out of the mass of goblins without lingering for a step. Each inward spring killed a whole mass of goblins. Yierie and Two moved so quickly, I had trouble tracking them.
One swore and pushed me behind her as she hefted the unconscious boy and shoved him into my arms.
Her other hand came up and split an arrow midair into two parts, which landed to either side of me. One’s eyes flicked back to me to confirm she’d deflected the shaft and then back toward the encroaching horde. Despite the damage Two and Yierie had done to them, the goblins had not slowed in the least. If anything, more of them streamed over the ruins now than before.
The fastest of their number entered the final strands of fading light and revealed themselves. They wore bloody bandanas on their faces, their bodies streaked with gore and naked but for the facial coverings and serrated daggers in both hands. Moving like dancers, the lead goblins distracted me as One pushed me back with her left hand. At the same time, I dragged the unconscious boy with me.
Two goblins leapt over our barricade and toward One. Her blade flashed out with a silver arc and all four daggers fell to the earth as the goblins screamed. A second flashing cut and the goblin’s voices ended as their heads spun away from their jaws, separated by One’s incredible skill.
With a single look back at me and a wave, One stepped closer to the approaching tsunami of goblins as they flooded over the rubble into our space.
One moved almost as fast as master Garaghan as she spun and cut. I was paralyzed with fear and awe as she spun and cut, producing a second, smaller blade from somewhere on her person. In brief snippets, like a film projection degraded to a slideshow, I witnessed impossible martial feats from One. She caught dagger tips in the joints of her armor, using her momentum to fling the daggers and her attackers away in a single incredible motion. The frame advanced and she dropped her dagger briefly to cut a rune in the air. At the same time, her right hand decapitated a line of three goblins. Before her dagger dropped, she snatched it out of the air. At the conclusion of her rune cast, a wave of air blasted into the wall of goblins and gave her a moment of rest.
With that rest in hand, One darted back to me and began to weave her blade in the air like a spider repairing her web. When she cried out, I touched her back and entered the void.
A single blade had found its mark, sneaking through the gaps in her armor and nicking her ribcage. Black magic seeped from that wound into One’s body. I screamed into the void and shoved my own power into One’s body. The black magic receded from my power and poured out of her frame. At the same time, I reknit the injury on her chest and filled her with more magic.
I could feel the minuscule droop in her shoulders end as One stood a fraction taller. A break appeared in the mass of goblins and One shifted to face off with it. A massive bear-headed monster with distended lower fangs roared and shook its head at us. It batted a few hapless goblins out of its way and charged One.
She prayed as she braced herself for the bear-creature’s charge and raised her blade to parry its axe fall. A red arc exploded from the darkness and sliced through the bear creature with a single motion. It faltered and rocked back and forth in the course of its charge, then its head fell from its neck and Yierie appeared at its side to kick it away.
More goblins squealed and pressed through the breach toward us. Now these occasionally wore armor of their own and lacked the bloody masks of the forerunners. Primitive axes, clubs, and rough swords swung down at us from the scantily armored bodies. With Yierie at her side, One’s energy rose even further. The two elves formed an impenetrable bulwark against the tide of goblins, pressed back only by the mass of dead bodies and the press of the living.
Two darted in from the left, toppling a contingent of the little beasts and took up a position on the flank with One in the center. Their blades coordinated and cut down any of the goblins that neared them, protecting me and the fallen boy faultlessly.
We fell back nonetheless, giving yards to the army as the goblin ranks began to thin. The latter goblins wore full suits of armor with long spiked weapons in their hands. They stood back and swung through their own ranks to reach the elves. But all three of them deflected the attacks and sent the front ranks tumbling away missing limbs or heads.
A roar shook the ground and the pole arm wielding goblins made a concerted retreat from the fore. One of the was too slow and a massive club swung out and clipped him in the side. It snapped the goblin’s neck in an eye blink and sent him tumbling into his neighbor.
The hulking monster who faced us wore a filthy loincloth and nothing more over its bulbous form. Muscles and fat mottled over the creature’s frame as if it had been warped by tumors. The club it swung was dirty and stained with blood and other viscera. A few bits of scalp and hair decorated the club, which spattered into the ground as the ogre bashed away our previous barricade as if they were toy blocks before a toddler.
With one hand on the ground and the other swinging its club, the ogre roared and charged. Yierie muttered something and rune cast as One switched positions with her. One and Two spread out to the sides as the ogre’s rush brought it into Yierie’s space.
I screamed her name as she ducked under the ogre’s blow. The air whistled over my head and a red flare sent the club careening off into the sky to the left. Stumbling and unbalanced, the ogre could not have anticipated or stopped Yierie if it wanted to. She brought her red-shining blade up and out of the ogre’s body while One and Two formed up behind her.
It howled in rage as Yierie’s sword cut it down, lopping the thing’s leg off along with most of its hip. Yierie spun in place and used the momentum to behead the ogre where it lay. In the meantime, One and Two darted in and out of the pole arm goblins’ reach. Each leap brought one of the taller goblins low, mewling or simply beheaded as they leapt back.
When the ogre fell, the goblins behind froze as if shocked to see their trump card torn apart. There were fewer goblins now than there had been. A few seconds after the last of the pole arm wielders died, the rest of the goblins turned and routed.
Yierie shouted at One and Two over the din and sent them running after the fleeing goblins. They cut down dozens before the goblins reached the safety of the remaining buildings. One and Two returned, picking their way through the bodies and the rubble as they did. Yierie put her hand on my shoulder and smiled. At the same time, a lone arrow, as long as tent pole, arced out of the ruins toward us.
I screamed her name a second time that night only to have my blue radiance fill the dusk and deflect the bolt into the dirt. Yeirie turned to me with a broad smile on her face and cupped my cheek. “Thank you.”
Her skin was covered with red and green blood, but she looked as beautiful under the stars as the first time I’d seen her. I still wasn’t kissing her through the gore. Yierie seemed to understand her circumstances and rune cast herself free of the sticky goblin bits. One and Two strode up and flicked their swords clean before returning them to their sheath.
“By my ruddy, whoring Ancestors.” One spat, “they say goblin killing is dirty work, but I guess I didn’t believe them.”
Two glanced around and hissed. “Where is Olerandera?”
We searched around us for a moment before we collectively looked back at each other. “She’s been missing almost from the beginning.” Yierie spoke our thoughts aloud.
“What do we do?”
“Three is not back either.” One pointed to the village, which had turned all of its lights out in the time during which we’d fought the goblins. “Something is very wrong here.”
I pulled the boy we’d knocked out up and pointed to him. “Should we ask him or should we move back to the village?”
Yierie pulled a silver threaded rope from her side and tied it about the boy’s arms. She patted him down afterwards and removed several move knives and other sharp, bladed weapons. It was like he was a prisoner secreting various deadly shivs over his body.
Yierie nodded to One, who cast a new sequence of runes over the boy. He woke with a start, his eyes going wide at the sight of One and Two’s blood smattered visages. “What the fuck man?” Swinging his head around he eyed me with a fury in his gaze. “You survived, shit.”
“What do you have against me, kid?”
“Mama Pearl died because of you. Brother Jer too, you lying bitch!” He strained against the silver rope holding his hands and I thought I recognized something in him then. The names helped, of course.
“Kyle?”
He shook his head. “No, Kyle died two years ago,” he spat at me, missing my face by several inches. “I’m Ricky, you fucked up evil witch!”
Yierie grabbed his collar and shook him as she pulled him up. “Enough of that, child. What relationship does your village have with the goblins?”
I sucked in air through my teeth. “What are you talking about?”
Ricky grinned. “Haha, you bought Walt’s sob story about them attacking us, stupid bitch.”
“Oh shit. What have they done?”
Ricky sniggered as he pointed back to the village with his nose. “If they’re real lucky, the elders have already murdered your stupid little friends…”
One didn’t let him finish. She shut him down with a short rune cast and Yierie dropped him. I started out for the village, Tia was in trouble…
But Yierie grabbed me. “You need to get on my back.” She pointed to the other two and said, “we will fly the hawk’s route. Look for Olerandera while you’re at it.”
One and Two nodded and sprang away from us. “What’s happening?”
“Three should have returned to us. I suspect foul play.” Yierie grunted as she slid into the shadows.
“No kidding. I mean what are we doing?”
“We are going to rescue our friends from the humans who have taken them.”