Dark Obligations: Book One of the Phantom Badgers (25 page)

Javelins began to drop amongst the Badgers from a line of Goblins on a ledge some distance up the fault’s sid
e as the two
komad
, now free of their pack saddles, roared into the Goblin ranks with much the same enthusiasm as Kroh, followed closely by Janna and Arian. Bridget cursed and dropped her sword, raising her hands to chant in a high and carrying voice as Johann, Trellan, and a wooden Robin, who had stolidly unsheathed Moonblade, set about keeping the Goblins off the children and ex-slaves.

B
efore the Goblins could send down a third volley a linked series of exploding fireballs rippled across the length of the ledge, the flashes of light and flame briefly revealing the uppermost regions of the fault. The effort left her drained and spent, magically speaking, but about a third of the Goblin missile troops fell shrieking from the ledge, their clothing blazing, and the rest fled back into the mountain.

In the rearguard position Starr and
Durek had received the warning of impending danger, but before the Captain could order one of the guards on the children to come back and relieve him Kroh’s bellowing shout was heard, followed instantly by the higher-pitched howls of the attacking Goblins.

The Captain cursed bitterly. “Help ward the children,” he motioned Starr forward as he trotted towards the head of the column. “Stay close to the others and don’t try to be a hero.” Dropping a Goblin with a snap shot,
Durek discarded his crossbow and brought his axe to the ready position.

Snow Leopard in hand, the little Lanthrell slipped past the ex-slaves as the fault rebounded with screams and the crash and wail of battle; javelins began to drop amongst them, and one of the ex-slaves shrieked like a wounded rabbit, the cry tapering off into wet howls.

She had no time to see what had happened to the man, for new cries and wails broke out in front of her: a knot of Goblins had reached the center of the formation, such as it was, and the Badgers were in danger of being overrun. Bridget was on the floor struggling with a knife-wielding Goblin while a short distance away Robin, his face as blank as a stone slab, had set his back to a solid section of the fault’s wall and was defending himself, the three dead Goblins at his feet deterring any other attackers from trying their luck. Johann and Trellan were trying to keep the Goblins off of the children and had their hands full doing it. At least the missile fire from above had stopped.

A Goblin warrior
whose metal cap and short sword marked him as a
Het
(junior officer) just as surely as his insignia, had the last girl in a file of four by the hair and was dragging her and her companions back towards a narrow crevice; he was too intent on his prize to notice Starr until the crystal blue blade slid into his kidneys. Jerking her blade free, she gave him a good chop to the throat the way Kroh had showed her and booted the dying Goblin in the ribs, knocking him aside.

Deflecting
a spear point with her buckler, she drew a line of red down the wielder’s arm, the oddity of left-handed swordsmanship giving her a slight edge in this fight. Parrying with her shield, she slapped the end child on the rump with the flat of her sword, herding the girl, and the others she was tied to, back to the center of the fault. Bridget was back on her feet, she saw, sword-rapier and dagger in hand.

The two
komad
had plowed into the Goblin ranks which were still disordered from Kroh’s passage, knocking the short humanoids aside and trampling those who could not jump clear. They cut a wide swath, their bulk and ferocity intimidating the Goblins who knew that the pig’s tough hides and subdermal fat were nearly as good as mail against clubs and light impact weapons, and that a spear would only penetrate if braced, an action which took more nerve and confidence than any of the
komad’s
foes were able to muster at the moment. The sudden volley of burning Goblins crashing down from above did nothing to raise the ambushers’ morale or aid their leaders’ attempts to rally the unit’s crumbling cohesion.

Behind the pigs
Janna was a stone-faced engine of destruction, working her broadsword and shield for all she was worth, Arian covering her back. Not that it was very tough fighting, as compared to some fights: the Goblins were so hopelessly scattered that her engagements were one-on-one, single actions where she had a superior weapon, longer reach, better armor, and greater experience. Methodically, never losing sight of the fact that a misstep or lucky blow could kill, she worked her way down the fault, killing or driving off every Goblin in her path.

Racing to find the head of his column,
Durek found that it had far outdistanced him; reaching the abandoned pack saddles, he saw two Goblins cutting the ropes that held Gabriella’s body to the top of the nearest saddle in order to get to the goods strapped on beneath. The Captain cut one down before they could scramble to their feet, and dealt with the other before it could flee. As the pack saddles and all their loot were left alone but for a few skulking Goblins, the Captain unhappily remained in place to secure the unit’s supplies, cursing his luck.

In twos and threes Goblins darted out of crevices and side passages hoping to drag a pack or file of children off, keeping the four Badgers (Robin maintained his position against the wall of the fault, slaying any Goblin who came within reach of Moonblade) darting back and forth between files of screaming children and howling pack-bearers, some of the latter having armed themselves with weapons from the fallen Goblins.

Slapping aside a spear point, Starr drove Snow Leopard through the Goblin’s throat, twi
sted, and ripped the blade free, glad that for once she faced opponents with a similar reach. Leaping back and looking about, she saw that a half-dozen Goblins had dragged a file to a side-passage opening and had severed the ropes leashing the children together; Duna had landed on a Goblin’s back and was flailing madly, if ineptly, with her knife while Picken clung to the leg of another attacker, bashing at its thigh with a rock. The other, younger, children were being dragged into the passage. Shouting a warning that went unheard, the diminutive Badger sprang to help, only to find herself facing two unengaged Goblins. She was no Janna, no master swordswoman able to parry and feint with sufficient skill to overwhelm multiple opponents, and it was all she could do to hold these two at bay.

Then Trellan was racing past her, his sabre flickering out to hamstring one of her foes; as the surprised Goblin staggered back she
leaned in, taking a club-swing on her buckler that numbed her right hand as she ripped the second warrior’s face open with a vicious thrust. Dancing back, she sidestepped and finished off the crippled Goblin as the club-wielder fled.

For sheer confusion this fight was wo
rse than any boarding action he had ever been in; Trellan wouldn’t have even noticed the children being taken if he hadn’t stumbled on a discarded Goblin shield and ended up facing in that direction. Leaving Starr to deal with the two guards, he raced towards the passageway, running the point of his sabre through the throat of the Goblin who was trying to get the screaming, kicking, and wildly slashing Duna off his back as he passed by.

The
Pa
in charge of this bunch had gotten Picken off his leg by rapping the boy above the ear with the butt of his small axe, careful not to kill the child. The ex-sailor caught the ‘beard’, or down swept bottom edge of the axe blade on the top of his sabre and jerked upwards as he stepped in, sweeping the weapon out of the way and following with a thrust with his off-hand dagger. Leaving the dagger wedged in the mortally wounded
Pa’s
chest, he leapt into the passageway, deathly afraid of bearding the Goblins in their den, and praying that Starr was doing well enough to follow.

Starr grabbed Duna’s shoulder and dragged the girl from where she was enthusiastically kicking in
the face of the dead Goblin. “Grab Picken and take him to Robin and stay there,” Starr shouted, pointing to the swordsman who still held his position against the wall of the fault, indifferent to the fight around him; if the swordsman wouldn’t go to the defense of the children, she would send the children to him.

The crevice was no
t much more than shoulder-wide, and up ahead the Goblins had halted for some reason and were struggling; the light in here was too poor to see why, but Trellan was grateful of the delay. Running on his toes, his soft buskins making little noise, he was on them before they knew he was there. The delay, he saw as he closed, was due to the child being dragged off by the lead Goblin having gotten in a lucky blow to her captor’s groin; he still had a fistful of hair, but he was in no position to move forward and the Goblin behind him could not pass in the narrow passageway without releasing his own captive. Trellan stabbed the second Goblin in the base of the neck, cursing as his sabre’s point caught between two vertebrae and snapped, costing him an inch of blade. Smashing the convulsing warrior in the face with his sword’s guard, he ripped the child free of its grasp and half-shoved, half-threw the boy down the passage towards the fault.

The lead Goblin heard the commotion over the shrieking of his captive, but he was too slow in releas
ing the girl and turning around, and Trellan opened the warrior’s throat before the short humanoid could bring his club to bear. Grabbing the girl, Trellan pushed her towards the fault. “Run, run!” Movement caught his eye as he straightened; looking down the passageway away from the fault he saw a half-dozen Goblins hurrying towards him, evil grins on their malignant little faces.

“I’ll be keel-hauled and hung from the yardarm,” he cursed bitterly, backing carefully past his two dying victims, pausing to pull his boot-knife free of its scabbard and briefly wishing he still had his
dagger. He was twenty feet from the fault and ten from the trotting warriors. “Damn you for a pack of land-loving nancy-boys,” he roared, moving a step back. “Come on, come on, one line, we’ll dance a hornpipe and double drink for all hands when the detail’s done.”

The lead Goblin stumbled over the body of one of the two would-be abductors in his haste to close and nearly fell; Trellan
lunged forward and stabbed him through the throat before the warrior could recover, immediately skipping back a couple steps towards the fault. “Watch your footing there, mate: an untidy deck’s a dangerous thing.”

He backed up another step as a club wielding Goblin moved up at a more careful pace, its beady eyes gleaming in the poor light. “You remind me of an old whore I knew in the Suflands, forget the port,” Trellan observed, feinting with his boot dagger. The Goblin
swung mightily only to have the Badger sidestep and plant four inches of sabre in its belly, twisting as he withdrew to widen the wound. “She never kept her mind on the job, either.”

He caught the movement further up the passageway as the wounded Goblin staggered back, clutching at the bulge of intestines protruding through the rent in its rat-leather tunic, but it was too quick to react to: a hurled javelin flashed in and caught him in the left side, punching through his mail shirt and driving in between two ribs. The pain was a red-blue flash before his eyes; his knife clattered to the floor as he instinctively grabbed the shaft of the javelin as the weapon’s weight caused the shaft to sink to
wards the floor and the head levered upwards between his ribs.

A Goblin
Lapla
, or serjeant, wearing a studded tunic and carrying a buckler and short sword knocked the mortally wounded club-wielder aside and rushed to close with Trellan, seizing the shaft of the javelin and shoving hard as he thrust with his sword.

His grip on the shaft and staggering a half-step backwards helped, but still the javelin’s head slid in deeper; Trellan ducked the
Goblin’s blade, which tore a line of fire across his cheek and hung agonizingly on his ear, in order to lash out with his sabre at the
Lapla’s
javelin-hand. Screeching, the Goblin released the shaft having lost most of the first two fingers. Ignoring the blood filling his mouth from his rent cheek, Trellan dropped his sabre and slid the javelin free of his body, using the bloody weapon’s shaft to parry the next swing from the short sword and managing to gain another step back towards the fault. He had covered half the distance back to his goal, he realized dimly through the pain, but he was beginning to doubt that he would make it the rest of the way.

It took everything he had, but he reversed his grip on the javelin with a shaky flip of his wrist, brought the weapon to his shoulder as he hopped back a step, and
cast. It was a desperation move to throw his only weapon, but it was getting hard to breathe and some of the blood in his mouth was coming up his windpipe; if he didn’t get back to Bridget and her Healing very soon, he might not get back at all.

Luck or the Eight favored him: the Goblin saw the throw coming and blocked with his buckler, but the wounded hand wasn’t up to the job, merely deflecting the cast so that the javelin slapped the
Lapla
across the face sideways, breaking his snout. The Goblin reeled back into its comrades as Trellan staggered down the passageway and into the fault.

Starr wa
s holding off two more Goblins when he emerged, hard-pressed but doing all right, and the two children he had rescued from the passage were by Robin with the other two, safe as houses for now. Bridget and Johann were back to back a short ways up the fault, but the Goblins seemed to be losing their taste for the fight: even as he stepped out and bent painfully to rock his dagger free of the corpse at his feet the two in front of Starr disengaged and raced for the far wall of the fault. His legs gave way as he tried to straighten back up, toppling him onto the ground.