DemonWars Saga Volume 1 (65 page)

"Did I say goblins?" Chipmunk asked innocently, trying to backtrack.

"Ye did!" Bradwarden roared, ending any forthcoming lies from the man and his two companions. "Ye said goblins, and if there be goblins about, and ye know o' them, then tell yer tale in full, or be sure that I'll trample ye down to the dirt!"

"Goblins," Paulson said grimly. "Thousands of goblins. We seen them, and want no part o' them." He went on to recount the tale in full, and ended by dropping four goblin ears to the ground before Bradwarden.

Paulson then asked the centaur to be gone so that he and his friends might finish their packing and be on their way, but Bradwarden wouldn't let them get away that easily. They would go with him, the centaur decided, to find Elbryan and Pony and tell their tale once again. The three trappers weren't keen on the idea of wasting a single moment, but neither were they ready to battle the fierce centaur.

They found the pair and Brother Avelyn at Elbryan's camp just north of Dundalis, nestled within the shelter of a grove of closely growing spruce trees.

Bradwarden called out long before his group approached — Elbryan could set a trap as well as any elf, and the ranger was always on his guard. The ranger invited the centaur in, of course, but was surprised indeed to find his half-horse friend in the company of such rogues.

"I believe that Mr. Paulson there has a tale ye'll be wanting to hear,"

Bradwarden explained.

Paulson laid it out simply and to the point, and his words hit especially hard on Pony and on Elbryan. For Pony, the possibility of an approaching goblin army sent her mind careening back to the day of the tragedy, threatening to overwhelm her with feelings she had only recently reconciled.

For Elbryan, though, the trapper's tale was more complicated. While he, too, carried those terrible memories within him, he also had his sense of duty.

How many times had the ranger told himself that he would not allow such a tragedy to befall Dundalis again? And here, before him, loomed the threat, the same threat. For Pony, it took great strength to master her fears, to keep her wits about her; for Elbryan, it was simply a matter of duty and pride.

The ranger took a stick from the edge of the low fire and drew a rough map of the area on the ground. "Show me the exact location," he ordered Paulson, and the man readily complied, understanding that if Elbryan wasn't satisfied, the ranger would probably force him to go along, the better to investigate.

Elbryan paced about the campfire, looking down often at the map.

"They must be told," Pony said.

Elbryan nodded.

"On the word of these three?" Bradwarden asked incredulously.

The ranger looked from Paulson to the centaur, then nodded again. "It is never too soon to issue a warning," he said.

Paulson appeared vindicated, but Elbryan wasn't ready to concede that the man's words were true. "I will go north," the ranger said, "to this place described."

"I'll not go with ye," Paulson protested.

Elbryan shook his head, " I will fly fast, too fast for you." He looked at Bradwarden, and the centaur nodded, understanding the plea and more than ready to go along with his ranger friend.

"You," Elbryan said to Paulson, "and your friends will go to End-o'-the-World, bearing word of warning."

Paulson held out his hand to quiet Cric and Chipmunk, their protests and fears bubbling up in the form of unintelligible whimpers. "And then?" Paulson wanted to know.

"Where your heart takes you," Elbryan replied. "You owe me nothing, I say, beyond this one favor."

"We're owing ye even that?" Paulson asked skeptically.

Elbryan's grim nod was all the reply that the man was going to get, a poignant reminder of that day in the trappers' shack when the ranger had shown mercy.

"End-o'-the-World," Paulson agreed angrily. "And we'll tell the fools, but I'm not thinking that they'll be listening."

Elbryan nodded and looked at Pony. "Weedy Meadow," he instructed. "You and Avelyn."

"And what of Dundalis?" the woman asked.

"Bradwarden and I will return to Dundalis with word of the goblins," the ranger explained. "But first, we will return here." The ranger pointed down at the map with his stick, to a spot on the map northwest of Dundalis, a point nearly equidistant from Dundalis and Weedy Meadow, and not much further from End-o'-the-World.

"The grove?" Pony asked.

Elbryan nodded. "A diamond-shaped grove of fir trees," he explained to the trappers.

"I'm knowing the spot," said Paulson, "and not much caring for it."

Elbryan wasn't surprised by that response — likely the — same elven magic that drew the ranger to the grove made a rogue like Paulson feel uncomfortable around it. "One week, then," the ranger explained. He looked to Paulson. "If you go straight to the south from End-o'-the-World, be certain that the folk of the town know where I can be found."

Paulson waved him away, the man seeming, quite displeased by it all.

Elbryan motioned to Bradwarden. "Symphony is about," the ranger said confidently.

Before the next dawn, the ranger and the centaur were racing to the north, Bradwarden working hard to keep up with magnificent Symphony.

Avelyn and Pony, walking side by side, set a more gradual pace, for they figured that they could arrive in Weedy Meadow before the nightfall.

The road was a bit longer for Paulson, Cric, and Chipmunk, but though the latter two pressed Paulson hard for desertion, telling him every step of the way that they should abandon End-o'-the-World and go straight on to the south — all the way to Palmaris, perhaps — the big man, duty-bound for the first time in years, would hear nothing of it. He had given his word, to the ranger that he would go and warn the folk of End-o'-the-World, and so he would.

Pony and Avelyn had underestimated the distance and camped outside Weedy Meadow that night, the monk reasoning that it would be better for them to go into town with such grim warnings during the brightness of day. They rested easily in the quiet forest, having learned much of camp building from Elbryan over the last few days, and Pony was soon asleep.

She awakened to the screams of Avelyn, the fat man in the throes of a nightmare, rolling about on the ground. Finally Pony managed to stir him from his slumber, and the look upon his face as he stared at her was one of madness, one that sent chills up and down Pony's spine.

Avelyn lifted his hand and opened it, revealing several small stones, the burned smoky quartz that he had taken from the corpse of Brother Quintall.

"I felt that they had magic left in them," the fat monk explained.

"Distance sight is their trademark."

"You looked for the goblins," Pony reasoned.

"And I saw them, my girl," said Avelyn, "a vast host. Paulson did not exaggerate!"

Pony breathed hard and nodded.

"But that was not all!" Avelyn said to her, grabbing and shaking her. "I was compelled beyond the army. Compelled I say, pulled by the magic of the stones, by a distant power that long ago attuned itself to these special stones."

Pony looked at him curiously, not really understanding.

"Something terrible is awake in Corona, my girl!" Avelyn spouted. "The dactyl walks Corona!"

The words were nothing new to Pony; Avelyn had been making such claims for a very long time. Indeed, he had spouted similar words in the common room in Tinson on the night Pony had first met him. This time, though, there was something more to the claim, something personal. Always Avelyn had been firm in his belief, but now his expression showed him to be far beyond simple belief At that moment, in the light of a dying fire, Pony had no doubt that Avelyn's knowledge of the awakened dactyl was now something more than the suspicions aroused by ancient texts. It was something entirely personal.

"So there ye have it," Bradwarden said quietly, ominously, he and Elbryan looking out over a vast field of dark tents. "Them three wasn't lying."

"Or even exaggerating," Elbryan added in subdued tones. When first he had crested this ridge, looking down upon the massive army setting its camp, the ranger's heart had dropped. How could the folk of Dundalis, Weedy Meadow, and End-o'-the-World resist such an army, even if all of them stood together behind fortified walls?

They could not, of course.

And it was quite obvious that this' force was moving southward. The army was many miles below the spot where Paulson, Cric, arid Chipmunk had indicated they had seen it, and the swath the goblins and giants had cut in the forest on the northern side of the encampment was visible even from this southern ridge.

"We'll find us a hole to hide in," Bradwarden said calmly. "Goblins been through afore, and'll be through again. I've waited them out afore, and I'll wait them out again!'."

"We need to know more of their intentions," Elbryan said suddenly, drawing a curious stare from the centaur.

"Not so hard to figure out what a goblin means to do," Bradwarden replied dryly.

Elbryan was shaking his head before the centaur ever finished. "This is different," he explained. "Goblins and giants should not be together in so large a group. And working in concert," he added, sweeping his arm across the panorama of the encampment, indicating the disciplined manner in which the creatures were organizing their camp. "And what of those?" he went on, pointing to a dozen huge war engines circled on the far end of the camp.

"They're a bit hungrier this time, is all," replied Bradwarden. "So they'll kill a few more than usual, maybe sack two towns instead of one. It's an old tale, me friend, repeated again and again, though always do ye human folk seem surprised when it falls on yer heads."

Elbryan didn't believe it, not this time, not in looking at that military camp. He glanced to the left, taking note that the sun was touching the horizon.

"I have to go" he remarked.

"Do ye now?" the centaur asked sarcastically.

Elbryan slipped down from Symphony and handed his reins to Bradwarden.

"Scout the area," he said. "See if any branches of the army have moved past our location. I will return at the setting of Sheila to this spot or to the back of the next ridge if the goblins have claimed this area as their own."

Bradwarden knew that it was futile to argue with the stubborn ranger.

Elbryan made his way from tree to tree, to bush and to the back of hills, moving ever closer to the great army. Soon, goblin scouts were about him, walking through the trees, talking in their whining voices, complaining about this or that, about the fit of their uniforms or some particularly nasty commander who talked more with his whip than his voice. Elbryan couldn't make out every word; the goblins were using the language spoken by the common folk of Corona, but the creatures' accents were so thick, their slang so heavy, that the ranger could only get a general impression of their conversation.

That impression did little to calm Elbryan's fears. The goblins were speaking of being a part of an army, that much was certain.

Elbryan got his next surprise an hour later. The ranger was up in a tree, lying low across a thick branch barely ten feet from the ground when a group of soldiers walked into the clearing below the tree. Three were goblins, but the fourth, holding the torch, was a creature the ranger had never before seen, a dwarf, barrelchested but spindly limbed, wearing a red cap.

A cap red with blood, Elbryan knew, for though he had never seen a powrie before, he remembered well the childhood tales of the wicked dwarves.

The four decided to rest right at the base of the wide-spreading tree.

Fortunately for Elbryan, none of the creatures bothered to look up into the tangle of branches.

The ranger wasn't sure how to proceed. He, felt that he should steal that bloody cap, as further proof for the townsfolk that danger was sweeping their way. Reports of goblins would do little more than stir up some interest and maybe incite a few patrols, Elbryan knew, a response he remembered from his own days as a villager. But a bloody cap tossed in their midst, proof that powries were in the region, might scare more than a few folk from their homes, might send them running down the road to the south.

How to get the cap, though?

Stealthy thievery seemed the order of the day. The four were down and resting; perhaps they would drift off to sleep. One of the goblins brought out a bulging waterskin, and as soon as the creature poured some of the foaming liquid into a mug, Elbryan knew that it held some potent drink indeed.

Elbryan's blood began to boil with rage as the goblins talked of flattening the towns and killing all the men, as they described in detail the pleasures that might be had before they killed the women.

The young man found his breath hard to draw; the brutish talk brought him back to that awful day in his youth, made him see again the carnage in Dundalis, made him hear again the screams of his family and his friends.

All thoughts of stealthy thievery flew from the fierce ranger's mind.

A few minutes later, one of the goblins went off a short distance into the brush to relieve itself. Elbryan could still see the creature, a darker spot in the brush, its back to him, swaying back and forth as it watered a bush.

The ranger shifted slowly to a sitting position. He lifted an arrow to Hawkwing's string and gently pulled back. He glanced down at the other three, growing louder and more boisterous as they drank deeply. The dwarf was telling some rowdy story, the two goblins laughing riotously at every grotesque detail.

Elbryan measured the words, waiting a moment longer, sensing that the dwarf was at some high point.

Hawkwing's bowstring hummed, the arrow flying true, diving into the back of the peeing goblin's head. The creature gave a slight moan and tumbled headlong into the brush.