“Help me hold her head up,” Addison said.
“We don’t even know that this is a healing potion,” Anthony said, one hand on the back of the elven ranger’s head and the other on her shoulders. “How can you be sure? It could be toxic, you might kill her.”
“I’m not,” Addison said, holding the elven ranger’s jaw in one hand as she forced the open end of the metal flask into the elven ranger’s mouth. “But healing potions are a thing in fantasy, we’re in a fantasy world of some kind, and if this thing isn’t a healing potion, she’s definitely dead, because we can’t leave this cavern safely to get to emergency medical services. And neither of us is a brain surgeon or qualified magical healer.”
Anthony grunted, shaking his head. “I should have picked a healer class,” he said. “Damnit, Addison, this seems really reckless. Even if it is a healing potion, if she’s too far gone, it might just not work…”
“Drinky-drinky,” Addison told the unconscious ranger as she ignored her brother, tilting the flask and roughly rubbing the underside of the ranger’s chin.
A pale violet liquid fizzed as it spilled out of the edges of the ranger’s mouth. The ranger struggled, sputtering. She swallowed, then coughed, spraying some of the effervescent fluid in Addison’s face, then swallowed again.
Addison pulled the flask away and sat back, wiping her face. “Eww… okay, let’s look and see what we’ve got here” Undoing the ranger’s belt, Addison slid the punctured studded leather tunic upward, passing the hem to Anthony.
Anthony took the hem and pulled it up further, peering at a bent metal plate punched halfway through the cloth backing. “Oh, I was just reading about this last week,” Anthony said. “Studded leather is really a misreading of brigandine armor. This is just a light brigandine, not really studded leather.”
“No, look at her stomach,” Addison said, pointing at the bloody smear.
Anthony’s gaze roamed lower, catching for a long and awkward moment on the intermediate position of the ranger’s exposed chest before reaching the position of Addison’s finger on the ranger’s stomach. “Oh. Yeah, there’s no puncture wound anymore.” He paused, then smiled. “We did it! We saved her!”
Addison rolled her eyes. “Yes, I was going to maybe kill her with poison, but we saved her,” she said, reaching up and tugging the hem of the tunic halfway back down the elven ranger’s torso, covering the unconscious woman’s rib cage.
Anthony had the sense to flush in embarrassment.
Addison took out a small piece of cloth and wiped away the smear of blood on the elf ranger’s stomach, slowing as she felt the muscles flex in response. The elven ranger was incredibly slender by human standards, but she was quite powerfully muscled for her size – in contrast to Addison’s own version of the elven physique, which could generously be described as “ethereal” or less generously “insubstantial.” Maybe putting a four in my Strength score was a bad idea, Addison thought to herself as she felt the ranger’s abs.
The ranger’s eyes fluttered open. She lifted her head on her own, reaching out with a finger, pulling Addison’s chin up to meet her gaze. “Oh. Look at that, you’re quite a lovely girl. Very pleased to have rescued you.” The ranger let go of Addison’s chin and yawned, one of her arms bumping into Anthony’s face. The ranger froze, bending over backwards mid-stretch to get an upside-down look at the seated dwarven twin. “You really are an ugly mini-George,” she said, then lay back down with a boneless flopping motion, confidently placing her head on Anthony’s uninjured leg.
Anthony stared in confusion as the ranger started snoring. He wasn’t sure if he should feel insulted about being called an “ugly mini-George,” as apparently that meant his lap was a suitable pillow.
“Could I have some of that?” Anthony said, gesturing at the metal flask. “My leg…”
Addison sighed, holding out the flask. “I was thinking we might save it for an emergency, but if your leg gets infected, we could be in trouble. Fine.”
Anthony sipped from the flask. Warmth flared around his injured leg.
You have healed 3 hit points.
Status:
Hit points:
7/10
Armor class:
6
XP:
260/2000
“I’m not at full,” Anthony said. “But… maybe we should save the last sip. Just in case.”
----------------------------------------
Linda crossed her arms over her chest. “Look,” she told the blacksmith, shifting her weight impatiently from hoof to hoof. “Do you really need two apprentices? This is a small town, it’s not like both of them can inherit your shop. Finnegan just does not have the temperament to run a business. You know that, I know that, and that’s why you’ve loaned him out weekends as a… what did he call it… farrier-in-residence for the inn, instead of letting him handle customers like Seamus.”
The blacksmith sighed. “Do you think I don’t know that? But he’s the apple of his mother’s eye. I can’t just send him off.”
Linda snorted, tapping one of her hooves against the anvil with a loud clink. “Did you know he’s also the apple of the miller’s daughter’s eye? After what I walked in on in the stables, I wouldn’t be surprised if she comes up pregnant. Odds may be against it for a first time, but I very much doubt that it was their first such encounter, or even their tenth. Boy has adventure written all over him, you can either let him find it elsewhere or wait for him to create adventures for you here.”
The blacksmith winced. “I warned him to keep a distance from her. But what’s it to you? Why would you care about keeping Finnegan out of trouble? You’ve already found, what, ten full-grown men willing to fight for hire in your raid against the goblins?”
“Eleven,” Linda said. “But those are just hirelings. I think your son would make an excellent henchman for me. He rides well – in more ways than one, as the miller’s daughter can attest and likely soon will to her father – and he’s got the seeds of a great warrior within him.”
The blacksmith eyed her dubiously.
Linda sighed. It was time to pull out the big guns. She twisted away from the blacksmith, rummaging deep in one of her saddlebags, and then pulled out a bright coin. “I’ve a gold crown you can give the missus, telling her it’s an advance on his pay. If you do this, I promise I won’t say a word to the miller.”
The blacksmith took the coin in his calloused hand, staring at it for a long minute. “I’ll tell Fin he’s free to go with you. But you take care of my boy, you hear?”
Linda nodded. “I’ll take care as if he was one of my own grandchildren.”
The blacksmith blinked. “You’re older than you look,” he said, pocketing the coin.
----------------------------------------
With a loud thud, Addison shut her spellbook. “That’s enough of that,” she said, shaking her head. “My head feels full and I want to take a nap. Any change out there?”
Anthony stood on his tip-toes, staring through the crack between the boulder and the sideways table. “Looks like they’re still camped out,” he reported with an involuntary yawn. “Pretty quiet now, actually, I think they might be sleeping.”
Addison yawned back. “Wake me up before you fall asleep yourself,” she said, walking off into the back chamber.
Anthony nodded to acknowledge his sister’s departure, but continued to peer through the crack, staring as if the simple act of looking would cause something to happen.
After a few moments, Julie wandered over and leaned close, wrapping an arm around his chest and murmuring in his ear. “We really can’t stay in here much longer. I have more trail food, but we’re already out of fresh water and you still haven’t slept. We could wait until noon when the light is brightest, but if we wait for nightfall and they don’t leave, we’ll be too exhausted to fight and the ponies will be too tired to gallop.”
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Anthony flushed nervously. “Uh. Yeah, I think that sounds like a good plan. You could, um… you should ride double with my sister.”
Julie laughed. “You’re a dwarf. Your sister is an elf? Funny family.” She stepped back, squeezing Anthony’s biceps before stepping back.
“Yeah, it’s complicated,” Anthony said, turning to face the elven ranger.
“Adopted?” Julie asked. “Maybe stepsiblings?”
“We’re twins,” Anthony said, then rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know how to explain that in a way that makes sense, just trust me.”
“Mmm. Twins. Okay,” Julie nodded. “I’ll take your word for it.” Then she cocked her head to the side. “I hear screaming.”
Anthony turned back to the boulder, standing on his toes again to squint. “I don’t see anything,” he said.
Julie shouldered forward and grabbed the sideways table, pulling it away.
“Hey!” Anthony said, stepping back and away from the moving table. “You almost hit me with that!”
“We need a better view,” Julie said, peering through the gap between the boulder and the roof of the cave. “Wait. One of their tents is burning. Go wake your sister and tell her to get the stuff ready, something’s happening out there. At the worst, it’s a distraction we can use.”
----------------------------------------
Behind Linda’s ear, she heard a loud twang as Finnegan launched another flaming arrow. This one fell short, smoldering in the grass. Yellow-skinned goblins – more of them than Linda thought seemed reasonable – had begun to appear, including two from the flaming tent… and, worse, some gray-skinned figures, each easily twice the size of the goblins. Hobgoblins.
“Remember, men, hold the bridge and their numbers don’t matter,” she said, knocking one of her own arrows to the quiver. “If you can hold three or four of them back at a time, we’ll riddle them full of arrows.”
The pair of militiamen on the bridge with spears and shields looked at each other nervously. Behind them stood four more militiamen, similarly armed. A man with a crossbow spoke up, whining.
“You said you slaughtered every goblin you saw. That’s an awful lot of them for being totally slaughtered.” His voice grated with a whiny edge, but was met with sympathetic nods from the other hirelings.
“And I said I had no idea if there were more of them deeper in the hillside or not. Or if another tribe had moved in. Which is why I hired you,” Linda said, trying to project an air of confidence that she didn’t feel. If the militiamen broke and ran, she didn’t feel certain she could get away quickly enough. “Looks like they brought in another tribe, to me, all the ones I saw last time had yellow skin. Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing.”
Linda aimed, firing an arrow at a hobgoblin she thought looked like a leader. The arrow bounced off the hobgoblin’s mail hauberk, and the gray-skinned humanoid redoubled his efforts. The next arrow went high; a third low; and then a fourth glanced off the hobgoblin’s mail.
The hobgoblins, half armed with crossbows and half with halberds, had herded the yellow-skinned goblins in front of them in a charging mass. The goblins outnumbered Linda’s men by a factor of nearly two to one; and with the hobgoblins behind, this was nearly three to one.
“Set for charge!” Linda bellowed.
Miraculously, the men on the bridge obeyed, holding their ground as the wave of goblins smashed into them. One goblin impaled himself on a militiaman’s spear and kept going with his sword outstretched until both of them fell off the side of the bridge; as the goblins pushed forward into the gap, the second rank of men countered, stabbing into the goblins. Three more goblins fell, and a fourth stepped back, wounded; then a stray crossbow bolt from one of the hobgoblins downed another goblin.
In the distance, the square hole in the side of the hill darkened as it was unblocked. Linda’s next arrow lodged in the hobgoblin’s shoulder, and she whooped with joy for a moment before the hobgoblin yanked out the arrow. Two more militiamen fell, and with only three spearmen trying to hold the bridge, the militiamen began to panic, turning to run. Two ran by Linda; the third fell with a crossbow bolt in his back.
“Hold, damn you!” Linda shouted. A trio of figures emerged from the dark hole, leading a pair of ponies. Finnegan, sitting on her back, kept firing. As the hobgoblin leader fell, Linda thanked her lucky stars that she’d decided to put up with the inconvenience of having a blacksmith’s apprentice perched on her back. The kid had no choice but to stick with her, really.
She broke into a trot as the yellow-skinned goblins trailed in her wake, throwing javelins. Finnegan cursed, but kept shooting – not as quickly, and with not as much accuracy as before, at least according to the complaints he was making.
On the other side of the river, one of the three figures, a woman wearing a gown, waved its arms; all but two of the hobgoblins fell like puppets with their strings cut. The other two figures rushed forward; one, a slender woman with a pair of blades, went straight for the fallen hobgoblins to slit their throats. The other, a dwarf with a shield and battleaxe, charged the two standing hobgoblins.
Linda broke into a gallop, circling wide. Finnegan’s next shot went wild, and he said several unkind things about Linda’s mother, Linda’s mother’s husband, and centaurs in general. Nothing she hadn’t heard the worse of before; she’d talk to the boy about it later, she decided, then watched a lucky shot drive into a goblin’s eye.
“Good shot, lad,” she said, keeping a long slow circle back toward the bridge. She could see the dwarf trading blows with a pair of hobgoblins as the slender woman continued cutting throats. Then the gown-wearing woman waved her arms again, and the last two hobgoblins slumped. She risked a look behind her. The goblins had slowed, spreading out cautiously as they started to walk back toward the bridge they had just crossed. She turned, stopping in front of the bridge.
“You fools!” Linda shouted as loudly as she could. “Now, you die!”
She took out her lance, rearing up. Behind her, Finnegan grabbed her waist desperately in surprise, his bow slapping against her forequarters. As Linda watched the goblins scatter, she could hear Finnegan hyperventilating. Forgot I had a rider. If I had thrown him, it would have totally ruined the effect, she thought to herself. She fired a couple of arrows into the distance at the goblins as they retreated, by way of encouragement more than bloodthirstiness.
She heard the ponies’ hooves on the bridge before a familiar voice spoke.
“Hail the conquering hero,” the voice said.
Linda turned, shocked. “Julie? You look…” Linda licked her lips, losing the words she meant to say. “You look amazing.”
Julie blushed. “Linda! You’re looking, uh, different.” Hastily, she took her arm out from around the waist of the begowned elven maiden to her left and off of the shoulder of the ugly dwarf to her right. “You’re… you’re a centaur. And you’re just letting some dude ride you?”
It was Linda’s turn to blush. “He’s my henchman. It was the practical thing to do, he doesn’t own a warhorse. He could ride one of the ponies? Or maybe walk?”
Taking the hint, Finnegan dismounted.
----------------------------------------
With party members Addison, Anthony, Finnegan, and Julie, Linda has defeated 9 hobgoblins and 24 goblins (675 XP, 135 XP each). For defeating 44 hit dice of opponents, Anthony, Finnegan, Julie, and Linda have earned an additional 440 bonus warrior XP. With party members Addison, Anthony, Finnegan, and Julie, Linda has recovered 1054 silver pennies of treasure from the hobgoblins (1054 XP, 211 XP each). Party member Addison has received 200 bonus wizard XP for overcoming problems with the use of spells.
Status (Linda):
Hit points:
11/13
Armor class:
5
XP:
1654/2000
Status (Julie):
Hit points:
2/9
Armor class:
6
XP:
1046/2250
Status (Anthony):
Hit points:
3/10
Armor class:
5
XP:
1046/2000
Status (Addison):
Hit points:
2/2
Armor class:
10
Spells memorized:
None
XP:
896/2500