The bull ran flat out for a short burst, then skidded to an abrupt stop, cutting hard to the right, then back to the left. Again Roger held on for all his life, even grabbing one of the bull’s horns. On the second cut the bull overbalanced, and quick-thinking Roger saw his chance. He pulled one leg up under him and tugged with all his might on the horn, turning the bull’s head even farther.
The bull pitched over and Roger leaped away, hitting the ground in a stumble that quickly turned into a dead run. He made the rail fence before the squirming bull even managed to regain its footing, and was over in the blink of an eye.
The bull trotted up to the fence; Roger, though he saw goblins running both ways along the rail back by the town, paused long enough to boast, “I could have broken your fat neck.” He ended by snapping his fingers in the air just in front of the bull’s nose.
The bull snorted and pawed the ground, then ducked its head.
Roger’s mouth fell open. “You cannot understand me,” he protested.
The point was moot; the bull charged the fence.
Roger bolted for the woods. The bull thrashed and kicked, taking out rails, knocking logs high into the air.
Then it was free, bursting onto the small clearing just beyond the corral. Goblins were closing in both directions by then, and suddenly the bull was on Roger’s side.
“Aiyeeee!“one of the goblins squealed. Considered a quick-thinker among its dim-witted friends, the goblin grabbed its nearest companion and threw the poor fool right in the bull’s path.
That goblin was soon airborne, spinning two complete somersaults before landing hard on the ground. It crawled away, trying not to groan, trying not to do anything that would get the bull’s attention, for the enraged beast was giving chase to the rest of the fleeing goblins.
From a tree not so far away, Roger watched with sincere amusement. His chuckles turned into a sympathetic groan, though, when the bull gored one scrambling goblin, the sharp horn stabbing into the back of the goblin’s leg, then coming right out through its kneecap. The bull snapped its head back, and over the goblin went, screaming, falling flat out across the bull’s huge neck. The bull ran on, bucking wildly, the goblin flopping all about, until finally the horn tore free of the knee and the goblin pitched away. The bull wasn’t done with it, though, and turned about, throwing sod, running down the goblin before it could begin to crawl away.
Up in the tree, Roger moved along the limb, out from the trunk, and leaped out to the branch of another tree, making his way to the north, back toward the encampment.
“Another night,” he promised himself, remembering the chain and padlock. He could create more than a little mischief for the powries with those items, he mused. So even though he hadn’t gotten into the larders, and in spite of the encounter with the bull, the ever-optimistic Roger considered the night a success, and it was with a light heart and dancing feet that he came down from the trees and began picking his trails back to the first two powries. He spotted them from a distance, both sitting on the ground, trying to pull their ankles out of the rope. The commotion in town had stirred them, and the rope had tripped them, it seemed.
Roger was sorry he had missed it. He took some satisfaction in the two pipes lying in the dirt, and in the muttered curses of his victims. That only made his heart skip lighter, a mischievous grin widening across his face as he made his way into the deep forest.
But then he heard the baying.
“What?” the young man asked, pausing, studying the strange sound. He had no experience with hunting dogs and didn’t understand that they were calling out a trail, his trail. He knew from the continuing sound, though, that they were getting closer, and so he scrambled up a tall and wide oak set apart from any other trees and peered back into the darkness.
Far to the south he saw the glow of torches. “Stubborn,” he muttered, shaking his head, confident that the monsters would never find him in the dark woods.
He started back down the tree, but reversed his course almost immediately as snarling sounds came up at him. From a low branch he could make out the four forms. Roger had seen dogs beforeRosin Delaval kept a pair for working his herd. But those dogs were small and friendly, always wagging their tails, always happy to play with him, or anyone else, for that matter. These dogs seemed to Roger to be a different species altogether. The tone of their barking was not friendly, but threatening, and deep and resonating, the stuff of nightmares. He couldn’t make out much detail in the darkness, but realized from the sound of the barking and the black silhouettes that these dogs were much larger than Rosin’s.
“Where did they get those?” the young thief muttered, for indeed the dogs were a new addition to Caer Tinella. He glanced around, looking for a way down the tree, far enough to the side to get him away from the animals.
It struck him almost immediately that to come down from that tree was to be eaten. He had to trust his luck, and up he went to the highest branches of the oak, hoping the dogs would lose sight of him, and lose interest in him.
He didn’t understand the training of these animals. The hounds stayed right at the base of the tree, snuffling and scratching, and then baying. One kept jumping high, scratching at the bark.
Roger glanced anxiously to the south, to see the torches moving closer, closer, following the commotion. He had to shut the dogs up, or find some way to get away from this area.
He didn’t know where to begin. He carried only one weapon, a small knife, better suited to picking locks than fighting, and even if he had a great sword with him, the thought of facing those dogs appalled him. He scratched his head, glancing all around. Why had he gone up this particular tree, so far from any others?
Because he hadn’t understood his enemies.
“I underestimated them,” Roger scolded himself as powries entered the clearing beneath the oak. In moments his tree was encircled by the dwarven brutes, a smiling Kos-kosio Begulne among them. Roger heard the powrie leader’s fellows congratulating him on acquiring the dogsCraggoth hounds, they called them.
Roger understood then that he had been outsmarted.
“Come on down, then,” Kos-kosio Begulne bellowed up the tree. “Yeah, we see ye, so come on down, or blimey, I’ll burn the damned tree out from under ye! And then I’ll let me dogs eat up what’s left of ye,” he added slyly.
Roger knew that the fierce Kos-kosio wasn’t kidding, not at all. With a resigned shrug, he slipped down to the lowest branches of the tree, in clear sight of the powrie leader.
“Down!” Kos-kosio Begulne demanded, the dwarf’s voice suddenly stern and terrifying.
Roger looked doubtfully at the frenzied dogs.
“Ye like me Craggoth hounds?” the powrie asked. “We breed ‘em on the Julianthes just to catch rats like yerself.” Kos-kosio Begulne motioned to several others, and they quickly went to the dogs, looping choke chains and hauling the animals asideno small feat, given the dogs’ level of excitement. Roger got a good look at them then, in the torchlight, and saw, as he had suspected, that these beasts hardly resembled Rosin’s dogs. Their heads and chests were huge, great muscled torsos, tall on thin legs, with coats of short brown and black hair and eyes that blazed red in the forest night, as if with the flames of hell. They seemed to be fully restrained by that point, but still, Roger could hardly bring himself to move.
“Down!” Kos-kosio Begulne said again. “Last time I’m asking.”
Roger dropped lightly to the ground right in front of the powrie leader. “Roger Billingsbury at your service, good dwarf,” he said with a bow.
“Roger Lockless, they call ‘im,” another powrie piped in.
Roger nodded and smiled, taking it as a compliment.
Kos-kosio Begulne laid him low with a heavy punch.
CHAPTER 7
The Long Night of Fighting
Their journey on the road had thus far been surprisingly uneventful. They had encountered a band of goblins on the southern edge of the Moorlands, but disp
atched that group with typical efficiencythree shots from Juraviel’s bow, a lightning bolt from Pony, and Elbryan and Symphony running down those couple that managed to scamper away from the main, doomed group. Searching the area afterward, the ranger and the elf, both expert trackers, had found no signs to indicate that any greater number of the monsters might be in the immediate area, and so the fighting, for the present, was at its end.
Things got even quieter when they left the always wild Moorlands far behind, crossing into the kingdom of Honce-the-Bear, just south of the Timberlands. The northwestern corner of Honce-the-Bear was not heavily populated, and there was really only one path that could be considered a road, that covered the ground between the Wilderlands and the main road connecting Palmaris and Weedy Meadow. Apparently the goblins and powries hadn’t found enough sport in the immediate region, for there was no sign at all that any were about.
Soon, though, the trio was farther south, in more populated regions, crossing fields lined by planted hedgerows and stone walls, and with many roads to choose from. And all of those roads showed many sets of tracks, powrie, goblin, and giant, and the deep grooves of the wheels of laden carts and powrie war engines.
“Landsdown,” explained Pony, pointing to a plume of smoke rising in the distance, just over a short hill. She had been through this area only a couple of times, but from even those short passages, knew it far better than either of her companions. When the invading monstrous army had first come to the three towns of the Timberlands, it was Pony who traveled south to warn the folk of Landsdown and the neighboring community of impending danger.
“Occupied by monsters,” the ranger reasoned, for it seemed unlikely to him that humans could still be in the towns, given the sheer number of enemy tracks along the roads. And the smoke was not that of a sacked village, not the angry, billowing blackness of buildings burning, but rather the simple gray plumes of a hearth.
“And likely we’ll find the neighboring town in a similar position,” Belli’mar Juraviel reasoned. “It seems as if our enemies are well-entrenched and mean to stay.”
“Caer Tinella,” Pony remarked after some thought. “The next town in line is Caer Tinella.” She looked back to the north as she spoke, for the group had veered from the one main road, the one between Palmaris and Weedy Meadow. They were moving through the forest, and had come in from the west, below the level of Caer Tinella, the northernmost organized township in Honce-the-Bear, and thus the closest to the three towns of the Timberlands.
“And beyond Caer Tinella?” Elbryan asked.
“The road back home,” Pony answered.
“We should start in the north, then,” the ranger reasoned. “We will swing back around Caer Tinella and see what we might find, then come back to Landsdown to take up the fight.”
“You will probably find a fight waiting for you right over that hill,” Juraviel remarked.
“Our first order of business is to locate the refugees, if there are any in the area,” Elbryan replied, and it was not the first time he had expressed those sentiments. He didn’t say it aloud, but hoped he might find Belster O’Comely and the other folk of Dundalis among any resistance bands operating in this area.
The ranger looked to Pony, saw a smile on her fair face, and knew that she understood the reasoning behind the urgency in his voice, and knew, too, that she was of like heart. It would be good to be among trusted allies again. At Elbryan’s bidding, Pony climbed up behind him on Symphony’s broad back.
“The town is right on the road?” Belli’mar Juraviel asked.
“Both of them are,” Pony replied. “Landsdown to the south and Caer Tinella just a few miles to the north.”
“But we’ll give Caer Tinella a wide berth to the west, going right around the town,” Elbryan explained. “It is possible that any resistance bands would be encamped farther in the north, where the fields and roads are less, and the forest is thicker.”
“You go west,” Juraviel agreed, eyeing the north road. “I will go closer to Caer Tinella to see if I can get a good measure of our enemy’s strength.”
Elbryan, fearing for his diminutive friend, started to protest, but bit the words back, considering the stealthiness of the Touel’alfar. Belli’mar Juraviel could walk right up behind the most alert deer and pat it twice on the rump before it ever knew he was there.
Juraviel wouldn’t have listened to any arguments anyway, Elbryan knew from the sly expression on his angular face, an observation confirmed when Juraviel shot Elbryan and Pony a wink of a golden eye and added, “And our enemy’s weaknesses.”
Then the elf was gone, slipping away, a shadow among shadows.
“Ye will tell me what I wants to know,” Kos-kosio Begulne promised.
Roger sat as straight as his tight bindings would allow and painted a disarming smile on his face.
Kos-kosio Begulne’s head snapped forward, the powrie’s bony forehead crushing Roger’s nose and knocking the man over backward.
Roger sputtered and tried to roll away, but the cords held his arms fast behind the chair back and he could get no leverage. A pair of powries were beside him suddenly, roughly pulling him back up.
“Oh, ye’ll tell me,” Kos-kosio Begulne declared. The powrie smiled evilly and raised one gnarly hand, snapping its fingers.
The sound jolted poor Roger’s sensibilities; he could only groan as the door to the small room opened and another powrie entered, leading on a short leash the biggest, meanest dog Roger had ever seen. The dog strained in his direction against the powrie’s strong pull, baring its formidable teeth, growling and snarling and snapping its powerful jaws.
“Craggoth hounds eat lots,” the grinning Kos-kosio Begulne said. “Now, boy, ye got something to tell me?”
Roger took several deep breaths, trying to steady himself, trying hard not to panic. The powries wanted to know the location of the refugee encampment, something Roger was determined he would not divulge, no matter what torture they exacted.
“Too long,” said Kos-kosio Begulne, snapping his fingers again. The powrie dropped the leash and the Craggoth hound came on, leaping for Roger’s throat.
Roger threw himself over backward, but the dog only followed, its fangs scoring the man’s cheek, cracking at his jawline.
“Don’t ye let the beast kill him,” Kos-kosio Begulne instructed the others. “Just make him hurt real bad. He’ll talk to us, don’t ye doubt.” With other matters to attend to, the powrie leader left the room then, though he was surely enjoying the spectacle.
For poor Roger, all the world was blood and snapping jaws.
Belster O’Comely eyed the approaching torches with the greatest fear he had known since leaving Dundalis. According to the returned scouts, the powries had Roger, and now the appearance of so large a monstrous force in the forest, moving unerringly to the north, led the portly man to believe that Roger had been forced to give them up. Maybe Jansen Bridges had been right in his disdain for Roger’s nightly antics.
There was no way that nearly two hundred refugees, many very old and many very young, would get away from such a force, Belster realized, and so he and his fellows had only one apparent option: the able-bodied would go out and fight the powries in the woods, occupy them with hit-and-run tactics until those who could not fight could get far, far away.
Belster wasn’t thrilled with the prospects, and neither was Tomas or the other leaders of the refugee band. Hitting at an organized and prepared group of monsters would cost them greatly and probably spell the end of any real resistance in the region. Belster suspected that any humans surviving this night would have to move farther south and try the dangerous maneuver of slipping around the monster lines to get into Palmaris. Many times over the last couple of weeks, Belster and Tomas had considered just such an option, and each time had dismissed it as too perilous. There simply wasn’t yet enough pressure being exerted on the monsters from the forces of Palmaris; the monster lines were too thick and too well-entrenched.
> Still, the innkeeper had suspected all along that it would come to this, and in fact had known that the primary mission for him and his fellow warriors was to get the noncombatants far from the field of battle. The run to Palmaris would be fraught with danger, but the summer wouldn’t last forever, and many of the old and young would not likely survive the cold nights of winter in the forest.
Belster blew all those thoughts away with a profound and helpless sigh. He had to concentrate on the business at hand, on directing the coming battle. His archers had already gone out to both the east and west of the advancing monstrous horde.
“The eastern flank is ready to strike,” Tomas Gingerwart said, moving near the innkeeper.
“They hit hard, and retreat fast,” Belster explained.
“And those in the west have to come in hard and fast as soon as the monsters make their turn to the east,” Tomas replied appropriately.
Belster nodded. “And then comes our job, Tomas, the most critical of all. We must assess the strength of our enemy at once, and determine if they are weak enough, and disorganized enough, for a full assault. If so, then we send our fighters straight in, and signal for east and west to close like the jaws of a wolf.”
“And if not,” Tomas interrupted, for he had heard all of this before, “those in the west flee into the forest and those in the east come back in hard at the rear of Kos-kosio Begulne’s turning line.”
“While you and I and our fellows go to the others and begin the long circuit to the south,” Belster finished, his deflated tone showing he did not like that prospect.
“You would begin that at once?” Tomas asked, somewhat surprised. He had thought that they would finish the night, however it was to be decided, in the forest, and wait for the revealing daylight to lay their plans.
“If we mean to go southand if this force is on to us, then we have few optionsit would be better that we go while the monsters are preoccupied with our archers,” Belster decided.
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