Friedrich transformed into a fox and held his nose up. He started to sniff, desperately trying to pick out Teleri’s scent amongst the pine trees and the juniper berries. Unable to detect her, he pressed his nose to the ground and watched between his eyes as his fox nose twitched.

He turned back into a human and looked to Marina and Pheston. “I smell her, but it’s faint.”

“Oh, thank Jorren,” sighed Marina, but Friedrich shook his head.

“That’s not the only thing that I smelled,” he said, tapping the mask hanging around his neck.

“Goblins?” asked Pheston. “Oh, how I’ve longed to hear the pained scream of a goblin as its head is crushed beneath Vigr. What are we waiting for?”

“You two watch our surroundings and I’ll sniff them out,” said Friedrich, shrinking into a small pile of sleek gold hair.

He continued to sniff and started to walk forward slowly as he picked apart the aromas and followed Teleri and the goblins to where their smells were strongest. He walked among the trees for a while before the scents were met by pairs of tracks in the stone and needle-strewn forest floor.

After a short while, the Teleri’s scent had grown much fresher, so much so that he believed he could have smelled her even as a human. In fact, he turned back to try and realised he was being foolish, transforming back into a fox without answering Marina’s question about why he was going back and forth between forms.

The trio continued to wander through the cold and Aurin’s ears pricked up as he heard a wailing scream.

“What’s that sound?” asked Pheston, having heard it too.

“What sound?” asked Marina.

“Goblins screaming,” said Friedrich as a human.

He ran along the path, diverting his route into the trees and spied a wooden palisade nearby. He drew his sword and shield, readying himself to kill whatever goblins had taken Teleri. She must have been trying to break her way free, so ferocious were their screams.

“Die, you beasts!” she called and Friedrich heard the whooshing of an arrow followed by high-pitched yelp.

He ran through the ajar gate and into what had once been an outpost, but was now occupied by goblins. Goblins whose bodies were piling up one by one as Teleri unleashed arrows into them. Each one that dared chase her found themselves unable to catch her as she vaulted over them and clambered onto the wooden walkway lining the palisade. He hadn’t seen her fighting this acrobatically since they were last in Mercia; the sand-covered island of Kai’roh had not given her what she needed. Here, amongst the trees and structures, she was in her element.

The goblins of Corobath were less tanned than the goblins of the sands and less green than the goblins of Mercia who dwelled among the lush plains and thick woodlands. These goblins, who lived among pine and stone were almost blue in hue, a deep teal with smatterings of white bone adornments that camouflaged them among the frosty trees. Unfortunately for the goblins, they had ventured out from the trees and were clearly visible for the humans and the elf to see.

A lightning blast whizzed past Friedrich as he made for a goblin, blowing it into tiny chunks. He switched targets and slammed his shield into another goblin’s swinging sword, flinging it back with his magic. He leapt into the air and plunged his sword into the goblin’s chest, killing it instantly.

From behind him came a thick cracking crunch as another goblin found its head crushed into the frosty soil by a mighty hammer. Pheston let out a fervorous laugh as he kicked the remains of the goblin across the ground.

A dancing goblin wearing a belt of skulls and a ragged loincloth twirled his staff through the air unleashed a puff of green gas that spread throughout the outpost. Knowing better than to breathe it in, Friedrich held his breath as he charged into the swirling mist and lobbed the goblin shaman’s head clean off before diving back out into the fresh air.

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Whizz. Whizz. Whizz. Squish. Squish. Squish.

Three arrows from Teleri brought the deaths of the final three goblins. Friedrich and Pheston cleaned their weapons on the goblin’s rags and stowed them away as Teleri scanned the forest over the fence for further goblins who may have been stupid enough to walk through the gates.

“Are you alright?” Marina called up to her.

“Yes,” replied the high elf quietly.

Once she was satisfied that the threat was extinguished, she hopped back onto the grass and approached the trio who had come to her aid. Pheston clenched his jaw and braced himself for another argument as Teleri stared at him.

“I,” she said and he scrunched up his face, “am sorry for the way I treated you.”

“Huh?” grunted Pheston, taken aback.

“I would prefer not to repeat myself,” said Teleri, “but if you did not hear my correctly, I said that I am sorry for the way that I treated you, Pheston. Due to…bad experiences, I have trouble trusting new people. You were the outsider coming into our group and you have done nothing but try to help since you got here.”

“Not going to lie, Blackjack,” said the smith, raising an eyebrow. “I was expecting me to give me a thump and another telling off.”

“No, that was not my intention. I wish to move on.”

“Well now, I don’t know what else to say other than that sounds good to me.”

Pheston held out his thick hand and Teleri looked at it tepidly before shaking it lightly. As Pheston turned to Marina and beamed, Friedrich caught Teleri wiping her hand on her leg and had to fight not to laugh. A sharp look from the green-eyed elf quashed that instinct quickly.

“What happened?” asked the Mercian, eager to move along. “Were you taken by the goblins?”

Teleri looked affronted. “Taken? I thought you knew me better than that. No, the goblins tried to capture me, but I killed five of them swiftly and chased the rest of their party back here when they fled. I have no doubt that I could have cleaned out this entire outpost without any help.”

“Is that so?”

“That is so,” said Teleri, before pausing to think for a second. “But I appreciate that the three of you cared enough to help.”

“Speaking of goblins,” said Marina. “I wonder if they have anything valuable on them?”

“Nothing beats looting a goblin camp,” said Pheston, clapping his hands together. “No sense letting any of the spoils of battle be trodden into the dirt.”

The four scoured the camp, looking in every small building, on the corpse of every goblin and even in the small holes that Friedrich was convinced they’d been digging to hide treasure, but there was little to be found. Once their search had been finished, the entirety of their loot was the goblin shaman’s staff, a handful of fresh arrows that the human former residents had left behind and seventeen kupons.

“It’s better than nothing,” said Marina, putting a finger to her chin. “It’s more than we would have had if we hadn’t come here.”

“All the same, it’s disappointing,” said Friedrich.

“There’s nothing disappointing about wiping out goblins, my friend,” said Pheston, slapping Friedrich on the back. “We’ve done some good work today and we can buy ourselves a meal from it.”

“Agreed,” said Teleri. “Perhaps this goblin staff will be worth more than it appears.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s a human skull at the top,” said Marina. “I don’t know what sort of shop will take that. Maybe we’re better smashing it to pieces so that it can’t be used again.”

“Nonsense,” said Pheston, waving her away. “I know plenty of places that will take this.”

“If they’re still in business.”

“Nah, they will be,” said the smith confidently. “Family-run businesses in Corobath are passed down from generation to generation. Even my own father was a smith, going as far back as my great-great-great grandfather. That’s the way of things here.”

“Do you think any of your children are blacksmiths?” asked Friedrich.

“I can only hope!” called out Pheston with gusto. “Nothing would make me prouder than wielding a weapon crafted by my own flesh.”

“What if it isn’t as powerful as Vigr?” asked Marina.

Pheston shook his head and tapped on the hammer by his side. “Then I will hide Vigr and pretend I’m going to use the new weapon until my son is out of sight. Once I’m in the clear, I’ll switch back to ol’ reliable here.”

“Can we talk about this as we walk?” asked Marina, shivering. “It’s getting colder by the second.”

“Yes, we should find somewhere safer along the path if we’re to rest.”

“I was hoping we would be close to a town. Do you know anywhere nearby Pheston?”

“If memory serves,” he said, “Millstone is only a few miles further along. We’ll find somewhere to sleep there.”

“In a real bed, yes?” asked Marina pointedly.

“For you, yes.”

“I would appreciate it if you would stay indoors,” said Teleri. “It would bolster my confidence in you, assuring me that you are not as much of a wildcard as I once believed.”

Pheston sighed. “I will try,” he said.

Friedrich picked up the staff. “I suppose I’ll carry this,” he said, slinging it over his shoulder. “It had better not explode and plant fragments of bone in my skull or something.”

“It isn’t going to spontaneously explode,” scoffed Marina, leading the way out of the enclosure.

“You don’t know that,” said Friedrich, following her.

“Fine, I’ll carry it.”

“No, I said I’ll do it.”

“Then stop being a baby about it.”

Pheston leaned into Teleri. “Isn’t it nice that we’re not the ones bickering over nothing?”

Teleri nodded and the two followed the Mercians whose argument only grew louder as they walked back to the path.