Pixie Noir (Pixie for Hire Book 1)

by Cedar Sanderson

  Melcar arrived with a rustle, and exchanged nods with Ash and Olive, who were probably also related to him. I think all wood elves are connected somehow. He held out his hand to me, and I shook.

  “You’re coming with us?” I was surprised the King would let his best healer go on a dangerous mission.

  “I think I will be needed,” he replied simply.

  “No offense, but I hope you won’t.”

  He looked around. “There are six of us? Then I will let Joe know to send a matching number. He has a list of volunteers we evaluated.”

  “I appreciate that. When they are ready, we will head out.”

  “It is late.” Alger came up while we were talking and pointed out the obvious.

  “There won’t be a party tonight for you to attend. And down here, time is meaningless.” I turned to face the group, which was swelling as Joe’s men arrived. Now there were a full dozen, and the team was complete.

  Chapter 25 - Sealing the Halls

  “Anyone tired?”

  A chorus of negative replies. I looked back at Alger. “I don’t want to go far, but I do want to shake down and get everyone in the proper mood.”

  It didn’t take long to get everyone ready. We’d never worked together as a team, but I didn’t have anything complicated in mind. If we had to clear out two halls at once, send six guys in each. Alger would set wards as we went, essentially creating tripwires that would alarm if enemies or unidentified passed through them (or rather, tried to), and we’d repeat until we had gotten to the heart of the tor.

  If it went well, the goblins would retreat in front of us, back into their underground lairs that lay even deeper than the Court. We’d seal any entrances we found, and the King would set up routine patrols to make sure new ones weren’t dug later. If it went badly... I’d blow that bridge up when we got to it.

  I put Melcar and Alger in the middle of the group. Neither was a fighter in any trained sense, although Alger was a tough old bastard, I’d give him that. Dean took point. Dean always took point, and I wasn’t going to argue with him.

  We started out in the level below where Bella and I had made our stand against the initial invasion. There was still a mess down here, sooty footprints showing where at least one of the trolls had jogged down the hall deeper into the hill. With smudging and carpet, we couldn’t be certain if there had been one, or more. I remembered three for certain from the fight, and when we found a nasty mess of congealed blood, we knew I’d injured one.

  “What’s behind us, sir?”

  “William, right?”

  He nodded. I went on “Joe and the clean-up crew checked the halls and set a ward there...” I pointed at the cross hallway. “So we are going to start here, but we’ll check that stub before we go any further in.”

  I gestured. “Dean, Take William and...” The other man I indicated supplied his name.

  “Henry, sir.”

  “Go with them. Let Dean take point. He’s a bad-guy magnet, so he’ll take fire and you guys can mop up after him.”

  That was the way it worked with Dean. He was a sucker for thrills, and a berserker in a fight. Not a team player, but still, useful in a fight.

  Dean walked close to the wall to avoid the debris, and they disappeared around the corner. I turned to Alger.

  “What can we expect from here?”

  He picked up a splinter of broken beam and looked at it. “Holy Oberon, what did she use?”

  “Excavating spell,” I supplied laconically. I didn’t want to get into an after action report.

  “Clever girl,” he said admiringly, then used the splinter to sketch in the sooty carpet. Where he raised the nap of the cloth it worked well to draw.

  There were three parallel great halls for at least another short ways, then there were only two. Deepest into the tor, there was one.

  “Once,” he commented in a mournful voice as he drew it, “Lined with benches and tables, and rushes scattered on the stone floor. It was the hall of warriors, and horns of ale were drunk while songs of valor were sung.”

  “You’re not that old.” I pointed out.

  He sighed, “no, but it was a simpler time.”

  “And a short, nasty, brutish life was all you could expect. All right, that is our destination, to clear to the...” I pointed at his sketch. “What is that?”

  “Fireplace. Big enough to roast an ox in.”

  “No doubt stolen from some poor human farmer. No wonder our ancestors had such a bad reputation.”

  “Very true,” he agreed.

  “The tricky bit is going to be the three halls. I’m not sure I want to split us up into groups of four.”

  “We could always start off with the central one, ward off the side, and clear them one at a time down to here...” Melcar pointed at the angled joining of the third hall into the center one.

  “Works. Alger, ward off the far hall, then. Let’s wait for Dean and the boys, and tonight we’ll head for there, then camp.”

  I straightened up from my crouch stiffly. I was still achy from last night, but moving would help that. I really didn’t want to back goblins into a warded corner, so we would come back here and clear from top to bottom in each hall, driving them (hopefully) toward the exits.

  We were a sloppy bunch. No attempt at military precision marching. None of us had the training for that. But there were enough hunters with us, used to moving slowly, quietly, and patiently, that I wasn’t worried. We were a big enough group that walking into an ambush seemed unlikely. I sent a cluster of light globes spiralling into the hall, and we filed around the debris pile and deeper into the dark.

  I had decreed that the rooms off all the halls were simply to be warded and sealed. We didn’t have the time or manpower to clear each one of them. Even so, our progress was slowed by having to stop every so often and do this. Dean prowled ahead, restlessly. We had almost reached the junction when he came back and headed straight for me.

  “Found something,” he reported. I followed him back up the hall, Alger tagging along in curiosity.

  Something turned out to be a familiar pattern in the dust. We bent over it, studying what the signs said.

  “Someone brought in the trolls,” I stated the obvious, looking at the starburst of a burst spell, and the three sets of dusty tracks coming out of it. Wherever they had come from, they had been wet, and their feet had thus made a little mud for the first few steps, which had dried into a crusty outline of footsteps. Tiny crumbles of this continued toward the front of Court for a few feet, and as we moved, some of those wavered and fell. The powdery dust didn’t hold up well.

  “Not that long ago,” agreed Dean.

  “Not a lot of people knew where Bella and I were going last night. This... clears up something.”

  I flicked a message spell into being and murmured a memo to Joe, then sent it spinning off in flight toward him. All three of us watched it go. The mole in the court was the only one who would have tried to ambush us last night.

  “What about the goblins, then?” Dean asked, looking down the hall again, into the weird shadows.

  “They are less controllable. I’m guessing that was a long-term plan, and the trolls were a hasty improvisation. We still have an infestation.”

  I took a few steps deeper into the hall, avoiding the evidence. Facing the shadows, I spoke in goblin.

  “Go back to where you came from. Only fire and death await you here.”

  There was a scrabbling sound in the dark, but nothing else. I shrugged. It wasn’t likely to work, but anything was worth a try. The rest of the group came up behind me.

  “Keep moving. They are here, but not attacking yet. If you are hit, and it breaks the skin, see Melcar right away, even if it’s just a scratch.” I looked around, and made sure everyone understood me. Dean led off, at a slow amble. He wasn’t as relaxed as he was making out, though, and I saw his hand slip into a pocket for a spell to fondle as he walked.

  I was a rarity amongst my
group, I pondered as we moved from door to door. I carried two guns, and had the ability to ‘port more within seconds from my armory. The Folke relied on their magic, but I couldn’t do that, with my disability. Today, I was carrying a shotgun slung under my arm, because a load of #4 shot would work just fine on goblins, and had a nice spread that might eliminate more than one.

  We reached the junction. There was the angled hall off to our left, and on our right, a cross corridor to the other hall we would have to clear. Alger stalked from side to side at the end of the hall, muttering and waving his twig wand. I sighed. We still had two more to do, and this was getting tedious.

  “Drink something, then let’s get back to the left hall.” I ordered, taking a pull at my water bag myself.

  We didn’t quite doubletime back to the top, but it was a much faster move now that we didn’t have to worry about sealing doors. Alger set his wand to the seal between the cross corridor and the left hall, and I nodded. He brought it down, and as it came down, there was a shower of goblin arrows flying through it.

  They had been waiting for us, knowing we would get around to that ward eventually. Dean skipped back about two steps, Alger just stood calmly, the arrows that hit him sparking and falling to the ground. The rest of us were out of range. Goblins didn’t have the pull to effectively use the longbow, for which I was profoundly grateful.

  They do favor a massed charge, and that was what we were facing now. Saliva dripped from jagged teeth as the leaders screamed and hurled themselves headlong at us. Dean flicked a spell that seemed to be an airburst of sticky liquid, while I calmly fired into the bodies of those nearest. Goblins are more translucent than anything, having evolved with their centuries underground, but their green ichor makes them look green. Especially as they explode.

  Alger had calmly chucked a single spell into their midst, and as it arced to head-height on a goblin, about waist high to me, it detonated. There was, for a stunned split second, a spherical void, which then collapsed with a terrific ‘boom.’ I knew that noise. Alger was using the spell Bella had wrought such destruction with only last night. The difference was, he wasn’t using it to drop the structure on our enemy (and incidentally, ourselves), he was using it to displace the bodies of the enemy.

  The result was that we were all splattered with green goo as halves and bits of goblins rained back down on the floor of the hall. The ceiling was... indescribable. If there were any comments behind me, I couldn’t hear them, partly deafened from the spell. I strode forward, the ground alternating between crunchy and slippery with every step. I was going to have to retire these boots after this mission. Dean’s liquid had hardened instantaneously, with the result that at the leading edge, there were masses of clear resin with goblins trapped in them. It was a surreal scene.

  I let Dean get clear out in front, and waved back Alger, irritably, gesturing for two of Joe’s guys to get up with me and put him closer to center. I figured we were all a little deaf, and didn’t even try to speak. A goblin came up out of a pile of corpse... bits, knife in hand, and face contorted in a snarl. I shot him, then reloaded. I only carried six shots, and that was with one ready to go.

  Behind me, as I reached the far edge of the carnage, I could hear a muffled thump and curse as someone fell in the mess. I shouted over my shoulder, “See Melcar!” but didn’t slow down, moving at a fast trot with weapon ready. There were doors ahead, one on each side of the hall, and some of the fleeing horde would have taken refuge in there.

  I had a warding spell, and slapped it on the closed door. Dean, already on the other side of them, circled back and we took up stances on each side of the door that was hanging ajar slightly, the hinges rusted through so it was at an odd angle. It wasn’t going to be easy to close or open; when they’d built Court they had liked to use solid materials, and this door was twice my height, and made of carved oak thick enough to stop bullets. I waved Alger forward.

  “Can you seal it and somehow get the oxygen out of it?”

  I spoke in a low voice, not a whisper. Whispers carry, and I wasn’t worried about alarming the goblins. They knew we were there. I’d like for them not to make a suicidal charge, though, so I used words they were unlikely to understand.

  Alger nodded. “A deflagration should work.”

  I eyed him suspiciously. He held out a spell, rosy pink and warm to the touch. I sighed. “This had better not burn the Court down around us.”

  He just grinned broadly, which worried me more than a fervent denial would have. He cupped his hand together and muttered into them, revealing a spell orb after a moment.

  “Yours, then mine. Ready?”

  I threw the spell in, triggering it at the apex of my toss. Alger slapped the spell he’d just made on the door lintel, and as the wall of flame hit the doorway, it stopped it cold.

  “I thought you said no fire!” I yelled, jumping back a little in sheer surprise. The conflagration in the room was complete, a roaring inferno of heat and flame.

  Chapter 26 - But No Fire, Dammit!

  “No, I said I wouldn’t burn down Court.” He pulled out a pipe. “This won’t take too long, that’s not a big room.”

  I watched in fascination as the flames slowly died out, starving themselves of oxygen. He’d done what I asked, I just had hoped for a less difficult to control solution. The walls and ceiling were blackened, and the floor littered with things I didn’t care to contemplate, but there was no structural damage. Dean, who had leaned his leather-clad shoulders against the wall to smoke while the fire went out, stood and stretched.

  “Ready to go, boss?”

  “Yeah. We’ll clear to the end of the hall, then set up camp and get dinner.”

  The next two doors held no surprises, and Alger sealed the end of the hall while I sent a pre-packaged message to Joe that we were ready for dinner. Joe showed up with it himself.

  “Need a report?” I asked him wearily. I’d sat down on my bedroll and pulled my boots and socks off with a huge sigh of relief.

  “And to give you one,” he confirmed. Melcar came by and knelt to look at my feet.

  “No blisters, doc, just sore and stinky. How’s the boy that fell?”

  “Leo will go back to the courts. He did get scratched on the hand, and it is already swollen and very painful.”

  “Do you need a replacement?” Joe offered.

  I shook my head. “We really are just tripping over one another in the halls. Later, maybe. But there will be time for that. Today was tedium punctuated by a skirmish with goblins.”

  “A skirmish?”

  I nodded. “There were only about fifty of them. Not that I had time to count, mind you.”

  “You expect more?” he looked concerned. I didn’t blame him, we’d already had a casualty.

  “Yeah, I expect the Great Hall to be crawling with them, and it won’t just be a hunting party.” I wondered if I looked as grim as I felt. I’d only had to go in after goblins once, and Kipling was on to something with his female deadlier than the male poem. I planned to call for back up then. I’m no hero. I also wasn’t planning on relying only on magic.

  “Tonight, I want food, sleep, and to check my messages, not necessarily in that order. Did the King have any instructions?”

  “Only to carry on. He received your message earlier, and is implementing your suggestion.”

  “Ah, good. That will be your end of the action, I’m afraid, although I doubt it will be anything as direct as this is.”

  I got up and padded to the food and got a plate full. “Excuse me,” I told Joe with no compunctions. I needed to eat, it had been a damn long day with too much effort and too little food. He just nodded understanding and went off to talk with others.

  I’d chosen a spot outlying the group. Only Dean was further out, so as I sat and ate, I summoned my message spells. One at a time, set on my earlobe, I heard the voices of the senders. The first one yielded my mother’s voice.

  “I’ve heard all about this foolishnes
s, and don’t worry, I will deal with it. Bella is such a sweet girl, and will make a wonderful addition to the family. Margot and I are putting our heads together, and I am sure this will blow over before you return.”

  I closed my eyes in sheer disbelief. Mother had taken the bit between her teeth, decided she had seen something that wasn’t there, and was likely to make Bella’s life even more miserable. But at least it would distract her from being alone. I listened to the next message.

  Scratch the alone. Ellie would already be with her, her terse message simply said, “yes.” I went on to the next-to-last message. Devon’s young voice, excited and voluble, chimed in on the matter.

  “So, I went to see Bella, and I took Dorothy, because, you know, proprieties. Anyway, she is so beautiful, you didn’t tell me that. And smart, and nice...”

  I sighed. The boy was smitten, and in front of his girlfriend, too, who I liked. Dorothy’s short brown hair, pointed ears, and steady good nature made her very endearing. He went on, and I listened with a smile.

  “She talked to us about Alaska, and some of the adventures you two had - why didn’t you tell me about those? We told her everything we could think of about Court, who to watch out for, and that sort of thing, to help her out. Dorothy and I agree that if she needs to be rescued, we want to help, Lom.”

  His voice was very serious at the end, and I felt the chuckle roll up before I knew it was coming. The last thing Bella would need was rescuing, like some fairy tale princess... more likely, the kids would step in it, and she would have to rescue them. I rolled the last spell around in my hand, wondering who it was from, and finally put it to my ear.

  And immediately jerked it away again. The only thing coming out was an eerie, high-pitched wailing. The hair on the back of my neck rose, as I realized where I had heard that sound before. I’d thought she was dead, all these years, and to get a message, especially this message, from her now was a bad sign. I looked around the well lit area, with my men trying to sleep, and wondered who the banshee’s wail was for. It wouldn’t be me, or I wouldn’t have gotten the message. And I’d rather it was me than one of them.