“What?”
“This morning. How did you know there was something happening at your house?” he asked. “You’ve been worried about it all day.”
“Does it matter?” she said. “We’re here now. We have proof that they’re in my house, wrecking my stuff, stealing my things!”
“I want to know,” he said.
“Why?” she said, throwing her hands up in frustration. “Look, if you don’t want to help, that’s fine. You’re not working for me. I’ll clean these things out on my own and come find you when I’m done.”
She started to storm away, but Djeri grabbed her arm.
“Let go of me!” Tarah said, jerking out of his grip
Neddy picked that moment to appear, walking around the edge of the thicket. The mule saw their expressions and gave them a reproachful look. He sniffed at the dead gorc, then snorted and kicked dirt on it.
“I’m going,” Tarah said.
“Just listen to me for one minute, woman!” Djeri commanded. He fixed her with a focused gaze. There wasn’t any anger in his eyes, just frustration and determination and . . . maybe a little of something else? Worry? Tarah wasn’t sure. “I am going to help you whether you tell me what’s going on or not. I’m not completely sure why. But I am. Just please, as a favor to me . . . give me something, because two and two aren’t coming together here.”
Tarah wasn’t quite sure what he meant, but she found herself nodding. “I had a dream last night. I-I can’t explain it, but I had a dream that monsters were in my house and I when I woke up . . . I just knew that it was true.”
“Oh,” Djeri said, all doubt fading from his eyes. He gave her a relieved chuckle. “Why didn’t you just say that this morning? I mean, good grief, I’ve been feeling led about by the nose all day.”
“I don’t get you,” Tarah said in confusion.
“I knew from the moment you asked me that you weren’t being straight with me about why you wanted to go home. But you tried to be convincing and I decided to trust that you had your reasons,” he said. “But the farther we’ve walked away from our mission goal, the more its been bothering me.”
“But I couldn’t explain that to you,” Tarah said. “It was a dream.”
“Why not? I would have understood. Dreams are important. My father dreamt of my mother a week before he met her for the first time,” he said earnestly. “He taught me that dreams are fate’s way of communicating with us.”
Tarah cocked her head at him. “But my dreams have never meant anything before.”
“They did today,” He said, kicking at the dead gorc for emphasis. “So what’s your plan now? Did your dream tell you what to do next?”
“Well . . .” She tried to think of any clue in her dream; something that could help. “Not really. Just stay away from giants, I guess.”
“Giants?” Djeri said. “Are there giants at your house?”
“I don’t think so, but we’ll find out soon. First, though.” She knelt down and began undoing the buttons on her grampa’s shirt. “I’m taking my stuff back from this gorc.”
The gorc didn’t have much else on him. Tarah found one of her spoons in its pockets, but that was it. When she was done searching it, they tossed the corpse deep into the thickets where it wouldn’t be easily found if one of its friends arrived. Then Tarah convinced Djeri to wait with Neddy while she scouted ahead.
She headed on towards her house and saw signs of the intruders right away. She found more of Ursus’ tracks, criss-crossed with tracks from several other goblinoids. She inspected the tracks and with each one she touched, more of the situation became clear. She returned to Djeri within the hour, her anger stoked.
“So what did you find?” the dwarf asked.
“There’s ten of ‘em. All are goblinoids. Two orcs, four gorcs, and three goblins. They’ve been staying in my house for six months waiting for me to return,” she said, her lips twisted in rage. “Six months! Nature knows what they’ve done to it in that time!” She raised a hand to her eyes, tears flowing. Oh papa! Grampa. I’m sorry!
“That’s okay,” Djeri said, patting her back. “If you can fight like the people of Pinewood say, we can handle that many.”
Her hand creaked on her staff. “Tarah Woodblade can fight,” she promised.
“Another thing. You said there were ten of them,” Djeri pointed out. “But you counted off nine just now.”
“There’s nine I know of for sure. Then there’s their leader. The one with the sword.” Oh how she hoped she was wrong about the sword. “I didn’t see any of his tracks, so I’m not sure what he is. All I could tell was that the others fear him.” There had been a lot of fear in the tracks, but only brief flashes of their commander, barely enough to tell that he was ugly and muscular. “I think he’s big, though. Probably an orc.”
“You know that much even though you didn’t see his tracks?” Djeri asked.
Tarah shrugged. “I told you I’m good.” It wasn’t a very good answer, but the dwarf didn’t push her on it.
“Okay, so three orcs.” Djeri rolled his shoulders. “This could be a good fight, then. Do you know how they’re set up?” he asked as he walked to the mule and removed his half-helm.
“I didn’t get close enough to see their formation, but their tracks did give me a good idea of their movements.” She thought for a moment, trying to decide how much she could tell him. “The three remaining gorcs and two of the goblins are archers. They take turns staying in hidden places around the house for much of the day in case I show up, but they spend the rest of their time wandering around. Hunting mostly.”
Djeri nodded as she talked, untying his full-helm from its saddle and tying his half-helm in its place. He turned to face her, his helmet stuck under his arm. “Archers put us at a disadvantage. Do you think you can kill one and take its bow? I’d like to have you on the perimeter, taking out as many of them as you can from afar.”
Tarah’s nose twitched at the thought of using a goblinoid bow, but she said, “That shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Good, then here’s the plan,” he said. “You head out. Get a bow. Kill their scouts and archers as quietly as you can. I’ll give you a half hour.”
“Then what are you going to do?” she asked.
He reached back and grabbed the head of his enormous mace and pulled it from the straps on his back. It was a wicked thing, almost as long as he was tall and the head was a spiky octagon. He grasped the handle with one hand and rested the weapon on his shoulder. “I’m going to walk up to the front door.”
Tarah smiled despite herself. “You can handle that?”
Djeri chuckled. “I know you’ve never had the chance to see me fight, so I’ll let that remark slide.”
“It does seem like a rather incomplete plan, though,” she said. “What if we get there and find more trouble than I thought?”
He raised an eyebrow, “Could the great Tarah Woodblade be wrong?”
“No,” she said automatically. “But the plan still seems a little bare bones.”
“I like to improvise,” Djeri explained.
“And what do we do about Neddy?”
“We leave him here and come back for him later,” he said. “We’ll tie him of course, so he doesn’t get lost.”
The mule snorted in disdain at the idea.
“I don’t think we’ll need to tie him,” Tarah said. She walked over to the mule and placed a hand on his forehead. “You’ll wait for us, won’t you, Neddy?” Neddy snorted and pawed the ground. She nodded. “He’ll wait.”
Djeri shrugged. “Fine, but hear me, mule. If you take off with our things, we’ll hunt you down. And I’m not afraid of eating mule steaks.”
The mule’s eyes narrowed.
“Alright,” Tarah said. She took her quiver from the mule’s saddle and slung it over her shoulder. “I’m off, then. Head straight north from here and you’ll see the path to my house.”
“Remember, you have a half hour,” Dj
eri said. He placed the full helm on his head. She could barely see his eyes through the slits in the metal. “Be quick. I don’t want to have to take them all on by myself.”
Tarah nodded and ran ahead, her staff held loosely. Her thoughts churned. Djeri was putting a lot of faith in her and he barely knew her. She had to take out a lot of the goblinoids before he arrived, or he wouldn’t survive. The thought of his death disturbed her more than she expected.
She focused on finding an archer.
The secret to taking out a bowman with a staff is to get as close to him as possible without being seen, her grampa instructed.
“Yeah-yeah,” Tarah mumbled and pushed his thoughts away. She knew what to do.
Tarah headed towards her house, keeping her footfalls as silent as possible. At the same time, she listened for movement and looked for tracks. Most of the ones she saw were old and of no current use, but she began to see a pattern. The old tracks were fainter, the footfalls light as if the goblinoids had been more careful about leaving obvious tracks. But the newer the tracks, the sloppier they were.
Tarah touched a few of them and sure enough, her suspicions turned out to be correct. From the flashes of thought that passed through her mind at each track, Tarah understood that the six months of waiting had taken a toll on the goblinoids. In the beginning, all of them had been fervent believers. They were diligent because their mistress had commanded them to follow Clobber to this place and wait for Tarah Woodblade’s return. Then time passed and their patience had worn thin.
They had run out of provisions and become unruly. There had been fifteen of them in the beginning, but Clobber had been forced to kill four of them to keep the others in line. The more time went by, the more apathetic the goblinoids had become. Now they had to search farther and farther to find food and they stopped bothering to cover their tracks.
She began thinking of ways to use that against them. Tarah was so focused in her thoughts that she didn’t sense the first goblin coming until they were both in sight of each other. They both blinked stupidly for a moment before Tarah darted towards him.
The goblin let loose a short squeak of fear before unsheathing a rusty short sword. The creature was fairly small, perhaps four feet tall, and scrawny, its mottled green skin stretched across a crooked frame. Its baggy clothing was cinched by one of her Grampa Rolf’s belts.
Tarah felt a moment of disappointment that it wasn’t one of the archers before she swung her staff. She leaned into the blow, focusing her weight onto the tip. The goblin tried to defend itself, but the hard red wood knocked aside its hasty block. Her staff caught the goblin in the side of the head.
There was a muted sound, like a rock striking a rotted stump. The goblin’s feet flew out from under it and its head struck the ground with enough force that, if it hadn’t already been dead, the impact alone would have killed it.
Tarah didn’t bother to check this one’s body. There would be time for that later. She dragged it into a bush and kept on, her mind refocused. She had limited time to find and kill the archers before Djeri arrived at her door.
She followed the goblin’s tracks for a while and learned that it had been with some others, but had left them to hunt on its own. Evidently the other two were gorc archers. They had shot a rabbit and had refused to share their kill with the goblin. They were going to cook it and eat it far away from their leader Clobber so he wouldn’t try to claim a share.
Two archers. Tarah nodded, biting her lip in concern. She headed in their direction, having a good idea where they were from the pictures in the goblin’s memory. This could be tricky. To take out both archers she would need to catch them by surprise. Hopefully they were eating next to each other.
The smell of smoke soon caught her nostrils and Tarah slowed down. She moved towards the cook fire on silent feet. The scent of the burnt fur caused Tarah to grimace in distaste. The gorcs hadn’t even bothered to skin their catch first.
She heard them before she saw them. The two gorcs were muttering to each other, arguing about how to divide their meal. They were hunched over an impromptu spit, their fire set in the middle of a pile of leaves. Tarah frowned, surprised that six months of messy fires like that hadn’t burned the forest down.
She was pleased by one thing, though. The archers were standing close together. Their bows were lying on the ground behind them. Tarah shifted from tree to tree, making sure their backs were to her as she closed in. Finally she was as close to them as she could get. It was time to break cover and attack.
Tarah moved from behind the tree and crept towards them, feeling a surge of fear. She became angry with herself. Why did this happen? Why was it that every time she faced danger, she became a coward? Tarah Woodblade didn’t feel fear!
She was almost within striking distance when one of them glanced over his shoulder. Its forehead was covered by a moonrat eye tattoo similar to the one on Ursus. The gorc’s eyes met hers and it cried out. Tarah shoved her fear aside and ran forward, her staff in mid-swing.
It raised its arms defensively. Her blow knocked it to the ground and from the sound of its cry of pain, Tarah was pretty sure that she had broken both limbs. She spun, her staff in motion, but its companion had backed out of reach. This second gorc giggled at her, unconcerned for its friend. Unlike the others, its tattoo was on its temple.
“The Woodblade!” it said in recognition, a feverish gleam in its eye. It held a narrow sword in its hand. Tarah felt a chill of warning. She had not heard it draw the blade. The sword was clean and made of good steel, telling her that it was something stolen during the war. It twirled the sword with a flourish, showing practiced hands. “The mistress will be pleased!”
“I’m sure she will be,” Tarah said. She spun her staff several times and stopped in attack posture. “You can tell her all about me, soon.”
She sent two swift strikes at the gorc, but to her chagrin, it dodged both blows and darted forward with a counter strike. Tarah was barely able to bring her staff back around to block the attack. This gorc was good. She couldn’t afford to mess around.
“Oh, the rewards will be great!” the gorc taunted. “When I bring Clobber your head, he wi-!”
Tarah dove forward, her staff a blur. The gorc blocked the first strike, but the follow up snapped its elbow. She pivoted and sent four more strikes in. To the gorc’s credit, it managed to dodge one of them, but she scored heavy hits to its hip, its knee, and finally the wrist of its sword hand.
The gorc looked shocked as the hilt of the sword fell from its useless fingers. Tarah spun and swung her staff in one more heavy blow, destroying the gorc’s face. It fell dead.
“Die, Woodblade,” said another voice. Tarah turned just in time to see that the first gorc was standing. It pulled an arrow back on its bow.
She had been wrong. She had misjudged the blow and hadn’t broken its arms. That was the thought that passed through Tarah’s mind as it released the arrow. To her relief, the arrow shot out to the far right and she saw that she hadn’t been completely wrong after all. The arm that held the bow hadn’t broken, but the wrist on its other arm was bent at an odd angle. It was surprising that the gorc had been able to pull back an arrow at all. Perhaps the stress it was under had numbed it to the pain. The gorc reached back to draw another arrow, but its hand missed the quiver.
Tarah didn’t give it a chance to try again. She drove the butt of her staff deep into its abdomen. It fell forward and she delivered a finishing blow to the back of the gorcs head, cracking its skull.
“Now I have a bow,” she said. But as she picked up its bow, she frowned in distaste. The orc’s bow was warped. The stupid thing hadn’t cared for the weapon and had let it sit wet. Tarah snarled and cast the useless thing aside, then looked for the other bow.
Fortunately, the other gorc had taken better care of his weapon. The bow wasn’t of great quality, but it was at least serviceable. She paused for a moment, looking down at its corpse.
The creature had b
een exceptional for a gorc. What had made it so? How had it become so skilled with the blade? For a moment she felt compelled to reach out and touch the gorc’s ruined face. Part of her wanted to try and absorb memories from its corpse in the same way that she absorbed them from tracks. There had to be a way to understand such a creature. There had to be a way to use it.
Tarah stopped her hand from touching the corpse. That last thought hadn’t come from her own mind. Tarah glared warily at her staff. Sure enough, it had absorbed some of the gorc’s blood
There were times she wondered about the weapon. It seemed as though it had desires of its own or some unknown purpose beyond tracking. She felt it strongest after a kill. The staff was eager. It wanted something more from the gorc, and drinking its blood was only part of it.
The fire, said her papa’s voice and Tarah shook her head, pushing the uncomfortable thoughts aside. He was right. She should put out the gorcs’ sloppy fire, but another concern popped up. How much time had passed? Had it been a half hour yet?
With a curse, she tossed aside the half-cooked rabbit carcass and stomped out the flames. It would be best to bury the embers, but she settled for kicking the leaves away from the spot before continuing on.
There were seven goblinoids left and two of them were archers. She needed to find them fast. She touched the tracks of the two gorcs she’d killed, but only felt their desire to eat their kill and hide it from their leader. She circled around towards her house, keeping to the trees.
Her ears caught the sound of running through the leaves and she turned in time to see a gorc running to the north and west of her. There was a bow in its hand and a full quiver on its back. Tarah shoved her staff through the harness on her back and started after it, drawing an arrow.
Djeri paced back and forth next to the mule, grumbling, his great mace heavy in his hands. He hated this part of battle; the waiting. Every moment that went by brought a jumble of emotions: anticipation for the fight, worry, fear of death, relief that the fighting had not yet begun. This time was worse than usual. He was still trying to process the enigma that was Tarah Woodblade.
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