by RW Krpoun
It was really an unusual scene, the young Arturian realized: the untidy ranks of Goblin warriors standing with their wicker shields and short spears ready, the summer sunlight winking off their belt buckles and polished copper jewelry and bringing out the white in their tunics of multi-colored goat’s hair cord armor, the light breeze dancing around the clearing just like any other day. He had never been so close to a war band of Goblins without fighting going on, and he watched them with frank interest.
Axel coughed, snapping him back to reality: the Lieutenant was a slow five count from the start of the fight. Henri looked straight up, into the rich blue summer sky with its scattering of snowy cloud-wisps and took a deep breath of warm summer air.
Summoning the power within himself, he whispered the incantation and thrust out his hand as Axel traced spark-lines in the air. The lightning bolt leaping from his palm jolted him as always, a sort of marrow-deep shudder that made his eyes water and his teeth ache. The bolt blasted the Goblin commander into a blackened manikin as the shaman and her guards, coated in clinging frost, collapsed, and a six-foot high wall of fire exploded ten feet long in the front ranks of the Goblin forces, roaring madly for several seconds before winking out as suddenly as it appeared.
Things were moving in the weird, disjointed manner than they always did in a fight, where one moved half by instinct and training and half by conscious intentions that seemed oddly sluggish. As he prepared a second bolt Henri heard the rest of the Badgers open fire (or at least, those on his right side) and saw Turhan and Nagel shoot down both tamall. The interpreter was stunningly fast, however: slapping aside Hanns’ crossbow, he ripped a hidden stiletto from one voluminous sleeve and drove it into the smuggler’s throat.
Henri sent his second bolt into what was left of the command group as another wall of fire erupted across the jugatas’ front ranks and a sudden flurry of hail swept down into the Spider ranks. The proximity of the second flame-wall brought home the fact that the Goblins, however surprised, battered, and now partially leaderless, were charging. ‘You can’t fault the little bastards in terms of courage,’ the wizard reflected a bit crazily as he snatched up his crossbow and fired, missing completely. Tossing the spent weapon aside, he was dimly aware that Turhan had chased the interpreter down and was beating his head in against a rock as the nine tamak fled across the stream and into the brush on the far bank; plucking a fold of silk from where he had tucked it between his belt and dagger scabbard he uttered the command word and threw it, creating a whirling dust storm in the lead ranks of the closing Goblins as a third wall of fire and another flurry of hailstones struck.
Two dust storms ripped through the Goblin ranks, close enough to stir the clothes of the Badgers as Henri killed a charging Pa, or Goblin Corporal, with a brilliant beam of light and then drew his sabre and dagger. Turhan, broadsword and Goblin small axe in either hand, roared into the jugata ranks from the side, berserk with fury, cutting down two before a spear point caught him in the lower back; the Human fell, and a circle of Goblins briefly swirled around him with much yelling and downward-thrusting of spears.
The lead jugata closed with the Badgers with howled war-cries bellowed from both sides, the stream bank resounding with the crash of weapons, screams of pain, and curses in several languages. Henri deflected a spear with his sword blade and lunged in with his long main gauche, the parrying dagger’s slender blade going in over the neck of the cord armor tunic and angling down through the Goblin’s throat and major blood vessels. Twisting the blade as he withdrew, Henri kicked the jugata in the belly to knock him away and laid open the thigh of a Goblin who was fighting Nagel. Rolf had come up on his left side to protect Axel, the long length of the great sword Moonblade already slick with Goblin blood.
Eclipse crouched behind a log, a shaft nocked in her bow and three arrows laid out close to hand, silent and waiting. Three yasama were crouched behind a clump of brush thirty yards from her position, guarding the flank of the trade group further to the south. These Goblins and the three other groups would be an impediment to the main body’s advance to aid the deception group, and it was her job to kill or at least distract the scouts while the main body closed. She was at the east end of the Goblin screen, while Starr was at the west; the two Badgers were to attack down the line of groups as best they could to speed the progress of the main body.
The shaft in her bow was one of the assassin arrows the Company had acquired in the past; Janna had loaned it to her, while Starr had some of her own, although she had lost one in the fight with the Felher. Eclipse, smug over her ability to approach three Goblin scouts without being seen, had already aligned the arrow with what appeared to her to be the senior yasama, and was just waiting for the sounds of battle to begin her ambush.
A sudden chorus of howls and screams from the direction of the stream made her jump and cost her a precious second; popping up from behind her log, she fired the assassin-arrow, snatched up an ordinary shaft, nocked, aimed, and fired, catching a Goblin square in the chest. The third, and now only unwounded yasama, snapped an arrow at her that missed by inches; hurling herself to the side as the arrow whupted past her, Duna landed on her two ready arrows, snapping the shafts and bruising herself badly.
Cursing and sobbing with pain, she dragged an arrow free of her quiver as the main body crashed through the brush towards her. Peeping over her log, she saw the last Goblin fleeing through the trees, a wounded comrade slung across his shoulders. She fired, hoping, but a branch deflected the arrow ten yards short. Seconds later Badgers were in view, heading towards the fighting. Rolling to her knees, she shouted her name, anxious to avoid a case of mistaken identity and a friendly crossbow bolt.
After the line of Badgers had swept past her she sprinted to the crumpled yasama, drawing her short sword as she ran, hoping that it was the Goblin who had been hit with the enchanted shaft. Giving the yasama a quick thrust to the base of the neck as she had been taught, she rolled the corpse over and sighed with relief: the borrowed assassin-arrow jutted from the scout’s chest.
The ‘smugglers’ were holding their ground, having formed up on line so as to support each other and using the skiffs and sand-filled packs as an improvised bulwark; Henri parried, riposted, ducked, blocked, and parried, concentrating more on defending himself than on killing Goblins, a course which would have been very unwise had he not known that help was not far away. The Goblins’ formation was hopelessly shattered and too many of their leaders had been killed or wounded in the opening seconds of the fight; without a formation, each warrior in place and working together, the jugata were nothing but a mob, disorganized and ineffective.
They were beginning to pull back, whether to reorganize and come again or simply to withdraw the young wizard would not care to speculate, when a handful of Goblins burst from the trees to the north, yelling a warning; moments later Durek lead the main body of the Badgers through the trees and into the fray.
A bit forewarned, most of the jugata had begun to pull back to their starting line, but a handful of stubborn types who had stayed to face the ‘smugglers’ were taken on the flank and rolled up, being attacked on two sides at once and cut down without delay. Those Badgers in the smuggler group that were still on their feet finished off any Goblin wounded in front of their position and took a break, loosening armor and taking a desperately-needed drink of water while the main body charged what was left of the serao. Durek held back from pressing too hard as the Goblins still outnumbered them, and he had no intention of losing any of his Company in a skirmish. The damage to the Spider force had already been done.
Leading his force back to the clearing on the stream bank, Durek hummed a little tune under his breath, pausing to behead a fallen jugata to ensure that the humanoid was in fact dead, a sensible precaution common to every veteran. Axel met him at the clearing’s edge, pale and tired, his clothing dirty and blood-spattered. Behind him the grass of the clearing was badly tramped and charred in great swaths from the Orbs of Wa
rding; bodies lay here and there, along with puddles of blood, discarded weapons and shields, spent bolts, arrows, and throwing weapons, and all the usual debris of battle. The spring breeze was clearing the air, but still the stench of blood, fear, excrement, burnt grass, and dust clung to every breath.
“How goes it?” the Captain asked as Bridget hurried past towards the skiffs (the prearranged point for gathering the wounded), blowing her husband a kiss as she passed.
“Fair; seven wounded in our group, but all should live with Healing, although one or two are chancy. Two of the smugglers are dead, and the third is badly wounded, he’ll need Healing to survive.”
“Finish him off; we need the power for our own people, and there was nothing in our agreement that we would provide such treatment. No, I’ll do it myself.”
“All right. Rolf’s collecting ears and finishing any wounded, although the half-Goblin in charge of the portage train was quick-thinking: using his guards he got a goodly number of Goblin wounded into the carts and fled, unless you caught them.”
“No, the carts got away clean; we killed a couple jugata and let them go, they were sorting themselves out, and I didn’t want to risk any lives. We’ve done as much harm as we can for today. Starr and Duna are all right, we passed them on the way in. Who’s tallying the loot?”
“Henri. They abandoned the slaves they brought to trade, and two of the slave cart-drivers escaped in all the confusion.”
“Good, put ‘em to work loading the smuggler’s goods onto the fishing boats. I’m going to recommend Bridget for a Topaz Claw for this plan, it worked like a charm.”
The Captain killed the unconscious Nagel with a single clean stroke of his axe and then stacked a couple sand-filled backpacks to make himself a seat a good distance from the half of the clearing where the fighting had taken place, digging out his pipe and pouch for a smoke while he directed his Company’s operations. Janna deployed the unwounded Badgers into defensive positions while Axel supervised the slaves and Kroh took a detail and stripped the dead Goblins of their arms, armor, and valuables.
Starr and Duna showed up, the pair both dirty and grinning. “I got between two groups on the skirmish line and killed all six with the assassin-arrows,” the little Lanthrell reported. “One arrow’s enchantment failed after striking. Eclipse killed one and wounded another, and ran the group off. The fourth group ran before either of us could get to them.”
“Good work. Go find the Goblins and shadow them until you’re sure they’re pulling out, then head back to New Fork.”
Rolf was the next to report. “Thirty-one dead Goblins, Captain; we lost a bunch being hauled off in the carts. There was the shaman and her two guards, the two traders, the interpreter, seven yasama, and nineteen jugata of various ranks.”
“It’s a pity they got so many of their wounded out, but that’s how the shoring cracks, sometimes; you’ve done well, Rolf. Now go spell Axel, he looks pretty tired.”
Smashing the last clay pot, Henri tossed the Goblin small axe into deeper water and waded ashore to dry his feet and put his boots on. The moving water would dissolve the milky sap in an hour or two, preventing the Goblins from recovering the stuff. Trudging over to where the Captain was giving Kroh new orders, the young wizard waited to make his report.
“We captured all the loot, Captain: five pounds of raw gold, small nuggets and dust from panning in mountain streams I would guess; two hundred-odd beaver pelts, around seventy-five ermine furs, sixty or so fox, forty-five mink hides, and ten one-quart clay pots of peteca sap. I’ve already gotten rid of the sap.”
“Excellent; give the gold to Rolf to carry and have the slaves, ex-slaves now I suppose, load the furs onto the boats. How good are the pelts, by the way?”
“I don’t know much about fur quality.”
“It doesn’t matter, they’re found money.”
It was late afternoon by the time the Badgers left the clearing to return to New Fork; before departing they made a bonfire of deadwood and burned the Goblin’s weapons and armor, leaving the enemy dead where they fell and bringing back the three dead smugglers to be buried with the rest of their fellows at the new cemetery across the river from New Fork. The wounded Badgers were brought out on the boats, while the rescued slaves walked back with the Badgers, carrying loads of the smuggler’s goods in order to make room on the boats for the captured furs and the wounded Badgers.
Durek was pleased: a hard blow to the Spider, plenty of loot taken, and both Healers were guardedly confident that all their charges would recover with time. Another victory for the Company, and another sharp reminder to the Purple Spider that the Phantom Badgers were not to be taken lightly. There would be more fighting ahead, he knew, but it would not find them wanting.
Chapter Thirteen
“This is a very lovely pouch,” Tonya smiled at Gerhard; the two were drinking wine in his office a day short of a week after the mock court party. “And it matches the belt perfectly, thank you.”
“Think nothing of it,” the leather worker grinned. Gerhard had taken to bathing regularly in the weeks he had been seeing ‘Tera’, shaving nearly every day, and had had his hair cut three times; there wasn’t much he could do about the coloring on his hands, though. Tonya appreciated the improvement in his personal habits as a small mercy, but she couldn’t look at the man without seeing what he had done at the mock court; he might look like the sort of wistful little artisan of tepid character who would carry deep crushes for local shop girls for years at a time, but she knew what sort of depravity dwelled behind those calf’s eyes.
“That was an interesting party, your friend Rodolf knows his business,” she continued.
“Yes, he’s a master at that sort of thing, you should see some of his more complex work. Would you like to take part in another?”
“Perhaps, if it were lively enough, but I’ve been thinking of something more personal than watching other people have all the fun.”
His eyes lit up. “What did you have in mind?”
“The place where Cens had the mock court party gave me an idea, how the setting is just as important as the playing and your partner. Do you know of any really scary places, you know, somewhere evil, where dark deeds and forbidden acts are consummated, Gerhard?”
The leather worker’s face became elaborately blank, as if in deep thought. “No, I can’t say that any spring to mind.”
“That’s a shame,” she favored him with a pouting sigh and a smoldering look she had been practicing in front of a mirror with Philip’s evaluations of the effect. “I thought it was time you tamed the hawk-woman, hood and train the dream-world bird of prey for your service.”
Sweat coated Gerhard’s forehead as his eyes stared inward at passionate visages. She gave him a few seconds to grasp the idea firmly. “But it would have to be someplace special, somewhere horrid, at least for the first time. Ordinary places would be fine for later, ordinary places and perhaps another woman. Or two.”
The struggle between wild lust and other concerns was plain on his face, but Gerhard was not a man to deny his darker impulses. “I know of a ....very horrid place, but it’s probably too bad for what you’re thinking...”
“Nonsense,” Tonya said firmly. “The absolute worst place you can imagine is the sort of thing I want more than anything else for this first time. Find a bloody enough perch and the hawk-woman will be yours.”
“Yes, well...I’ve heard about this place in the country...”
“Yes?”
“Well, there’s a group of people that do things there, dark things, and it is a very strange place.” Gerhard was staring off into the distance, weighing futures against each other.
“No one else,” Tonya shook her head. “Just the hawk-woman and her master, all alone, for the first time.”
“Oh, no, we can go there when it’s unattended,” Gerhard hastened to assure her, giddy at what she proposed and the possibilities she was opening for the future. “It’s just that, well, y
ou might find what has been done there as appalling.”
“What do they do there, Gerhard?” She half-smiled and raised her eyebrows.
“Well, I’ve heard that they do things to...children, young people, that sort of thing. Sometimes, well, fatal things.” He was clearly worried about her reaction. “It that too horrid?”
A sip of wine gave her time to cover her disgust. “It sounds perfect,” she purred, keeping her voice low to avoid him hearing her real reaction. “You’ll have to bring your toys out there beforehand and sweep up a bit, you know how I feel about dirt, but that sounds perfect. There aren't any rotting bits going to be lying about, are there?” She added as if an afterthought.
“Oh, no, not at all.”
“Good. We can rent a carriage which you can drive; Peter is going to spend the sixteenth out on the river fishing with a crony of his and getting disgustingly drunk, he’ll be gone most of the day, leaving before dawn. If we left just after dawn, we would have most of the day to play, wouldn’t we? Could you have things arranged by then, Gerhard? It’s the day after tomorrow.”
“It will be no problem at all,” Gerhard assured her, fully committed to the idea.
“Things would seem to be progressing nicely,” Maxmillian commented, examining the contents of the sausage sandwich he had just purchased while passing a note which advised Tonya and Philip of which storage point the items they had requested were at. “We may have a line on the site; if it pans out, we’ll only have to find out when the next ceremony is.” He tossed the change from his purchase into the chipped clay bowl a pair of street performers had set out, covertly glancing at the pretty blond girl who was dancing in a bright summer frock while a small man enveloped in a robe and turban inexpertly played a flute. She was a fresh young thing, he mused to himself, if a bit pale.
