The spears the peasants had been issued were stacked in good order in the manor hall, and the archery targets on the common pasture had seen a lot of use. All good signs of a community ready to defend itself, even if the weapons they had were paltry and there was no friendly stronghold within a day’s march.
I had a light lunch with Andswerian as I listened to the man gush about the progress Menthem had made since my last visit, and his plans for the future. Hunger, alas, still stalked the place. The food stores his Hundred had brought were almost depleted, and while hunting was good and fishing was fantastic, their hopes really depended upon Huin’s bounty at the harvest. I assured him I’d have more barley and corn sent, if they needed it, and the man was satisfied with the meeting. I cast some basic wardings and a fireban on the small settlement, as I normally did, and departed satisfied.
I was riding away that afternoon toward the next settlement when a boy about Ruderal’s age breathlessly caught up with me, shouting my name.
“My lord! My lord! Master Andswerian says to return, if the gods please, for a most urgent conference!” he blurted out, his eyes wide with fear.
“What? Why?” I asked, confused. Andswerian had been pretty exhaustive in his reporting.
“Goblins, my lord – they’ve been spotted in the western fields!” he declared, his thin face bright red.
“How many?” I asked, just as I felt the wards around the hamlet zing in my mind. And again. And again.
“No telling, m’lord, but we fear—” he stopped as the sound of the old copper pot being frantically struck rang in the distance.
“Let’s get back to the manor, then,” I decided, holding out my hand. I don’t think the lad realized what I was doing, but suddenly he was in front of me on the horse and we were galloping back toward Menthem.
While the boy held on, terrified, I used the Magolith to search the wards and establish just what was happening. To my surprise, there was more than one or two scouts creeping around the border, as I suspected. There were more than a dozen, and four fat fell hounds . . . in this sortie. The Magolith told me a second and possibly a third company of gurvani were lurking just beyond the wards.
This wasn’t a scouting party, I realized. This was a raid.
I tossed the lad to the ground as soon as the rouncey came to a halt in front of the manor house, sliding down next to him as the manor yard exploded in activity. A young girl was still banging on the copper pot while someone broke out the spears and others ran for their bows.
“It’s a raid,” I blurted out to the anxious-looking reeve, Anderswain, when he met me at the manor door with a short sword in his hand. “Ten or twelve, in the far western meadow. At least,” I corrected, before he could speak. “I’m guessing that they’re positioned to drive you all into the arms of a larger party in the southeast,” I said, pointing. I hadn’t seen any sign of such a force on my scryings, but then I hadn’t seen the first group until they’d crossed the wards.
“Slavers,” Anderswain said, grimly. “They promised if we ran off they’d come and get us, and we’d wish we’d died under the lash. Your orders, my lord?” he asked, formally. I could see the tangible look of relief in his eye as he realized that he wasn’t technically in charge. I was.
Thankfully, it was a fairly simple tactical situation. The goblins were counting on surprise and ferocity to create a panic, picking off the armed men while the rest fled, I suspected. They’d use the hounds to create a perimeter, and then push everyone else back.
“Get the women and children into the manor,” I ordered. “Two men on the roof with bows. Six with spears around the place, two more at the door. Everyone else grab a spear or an axe and rally in the road.”
He nodded, gratefully, and began bellowing orders like a seasoned ancient. I was pleased to see them obeyed, for the most part, and soon a steady stream of frightened-looking women and squealing children was being pushed into the small manor hall. Men took positions more or less as I’d instructed.
I considered reaching one of my fellow warmagi mind-to-mind and calling for assistance, but was concerned that they wouldn’t reach us in time. Besides, this was a good test of the village defenses . . . and if the Spellmonger couldn’t fend off one little goblin raid, then I didn’t deserve to be count. Instead, I directed the archers to their best positions for a surprise volley and sniping.
While that was being done, I laid a far more impressive defensive spellwork around the hall, using a lavish amount of power and the insight of the Magolith to hang spells to discourage a direct attack or the use of fire. Then I prepared my personal combat spells. I didn’t have my armor with me, but I was not unprepared.
More importantly, I didn’t have the kind of desperate feeling I did the night at Minden’s Hall, when the gurvani first invaded my home. Then, I was near panicked and half-drunk. Now, I was confident, powerful, and stone-cold sober.
“They’re ready, m’lord!” a husky-looking plowman assured me, hefting his broad-bladed axe in front of his chest to prove it. Behind him nearly sixty men had found their way to the front of the manor. About half had great Wilderlands longbows in hand, while the rest carried spears, axes, or even shovels. They looked anxious. They did not look panicked.
“Acting petty-captains, to me,” I called, finding an unoccupied and reasonably flat piece of dirt in the yard. I summoned Blizzard and began sketching with the steel toe. “All right, they don’t think we know where they are, but they’re right here,” I said, after drawing a rough circle representing the hill and added some prominent features. “They know we’re not surprised, so there’s that. I think they’ll come up the hill here, through this wood, and skirt between this field and this one to use the hedge as a cover,” I said, earning a few nods around the circle of self-appointed petty-captains.
“That’s Brin’s house,” nodded one man. “He’s o’er in the south meadows today moving sheep.”
“Brin’s going to have a mess to clean up when he gets home,” I assured. “Archers quietly – quietly! – make your way around this hedge to here, where you’ll be out of sight and downwind of those hounds. Remember, goblins have big ears and can hear like hounds.
“Spearmen take positions here and here. When they get to here, I’ll get their attention and draw them out to here,” I said, making a mark. “When I give the signal, I want the archers to loose two, three volleys. Then stop, draw your blades and hold. I’ll lead the rest of you into whatever’s left. If we do it quick and hard, there likely won’t be much more to contend with afterwards than explaining to Brin what happened to his yard.” That got me a couple of chuckles. Nothing dispels fear like humor.
Nor were these white-knuckled peasants fighting for the first time. They’d endured so much at the gnarled paws of the gurvani that many were eager to defend themselves and the land they’d worked so hard for. While they weren’t precisely quiet when they moved into position, they did have the saving grace of being unarmored, which would have made them twice as loud.
I climbed on to the thatched roof of one of the new cottages and peered out over the peak. With one eye on my scrying, I watched the raiders skulk along the far end of Goodman Brin’s holding, while their dogs, their riders dismounted, loped around the edges of the advance.
Anderswain was right about their purpose. There were a few who held those short bows of theirs, but most of the gurvani were carrying ropes, not swords. Menthem was just the sort of village that they were used to raiding: remote, unfortified, and with little in the way of defense to keep a determined party out. There were more than a dozen of them, now, the Magolith instructed me. Some of those riders must have been riding double, I realized. I slid back down and looked around the men who were concealed behind the cottage.
“You, lad!” I said, finding the boy who’d been sent for me. He was standing around with a few of his fellows, looking for something to do to help out. They were too young to be issued arms, but they each had a knife or a staff in hand, anywa
y. “I know you can run – I want you to race from here over to that crossing . . . but not too fast!” I cautioned. “Once you get there, stop until you see them. Make sure they see you . . . and then run over here,” I said, indicating the direction I wanted the goblins to take. “Can I count on you?”
“Aye, m’lord!” he assured me, puffing up his scrawny chest bravely before he carefully began running.
The rest of us prepared, hefting our weapons and watching the lad’s feet pound on the unpaved roadway. He made it to within fifty feet of the hedge when he stopped, as one of the gurvani revealed himself with a toothy grin and a lasso. About the same time, I felt a twinge in my mind as more gurvani crossed the wards – the other cohort I’d predicted, I guessed. That could complicate things later, but they shouldn’t have an impact on this battle, I decided.
The boy squealed convincingly and began to sprint away in the proper direction, screaming his head off. That earned some harsh laughter from the slit-eyed goblins as they tumbled through the hedgerow and gave chase. Whistles brought the fell hounds toward the lad’s escape, as I’d figured.
When their vanguard crossed the point I’d marked in my mind’s eye, I activated a spell – a sudden burst of noise and light like a thunderclap over the road. A moment later a score of bowstrings twanged almost at once, and those gurvani who weren’t stunned by my magic were howling and bleeding under a rain of arrows. The archers did not content themselves with a mere three volleys – more than five were launched before I bellowed for them to cease fire and led my impromptu infantry into the remainder.
I didn’t even have time to yell “Charge!” The moment the last arrow arched overhead, the men of Menthem were screaming and advancing in a formless mob, their weapons poised to strike. The archers hadn’t left much of the raiders – three of the dogs were laying supine in the street, dead or dying, and the fourth loped around, howling in pain from the two shafts protruding from his back. A single gurvan had escaped the deadly volley unscathed. In moments he was a smear of blood and black hair on the roadway.
The men cheered wildly, when the last goblin was dead . . . but their cries turned to screams as a rain of black bolts tore through the crowd.
The second team of gurvani slavers was much larger than the first, and better armed. There was a score of them, at least – and they were the heavier, taller brutes that the dark lords had been breeding with sorcerous assistance.
Broad shouldered and long-armed and legged, they lacked a complete covering of hair, like the native gurvani. They were trained from birth to be vicious warriors, not part-time tribal infantry, as was normal in gurvani society. They wore human-style armor more comfortably, including helms fitted for their odd-shaped heads, and they used short, broad-bladed infantry swords as adeptly as a human soldier.
This time, they were armed with a new weapon: crossbows. While the gurvani had certainly used the devices in the past, mostly captured weapons looted from Wilderlands castles, I was troubled to see these arbalests were of their own manufacture. They were heavier than a hunting crossbow, each bragging nearly two hundred pounds of draw. Instead of the slide mechanism or a more cumbersome windlass, the great goblins had contrived an ingenious new innovation: a double pair of sharpened iron blades protruding from the front of the bow that doubled as a cocking mechanism.
With professional objectivity, I saw the advantage of the rig even as the heavy iron darts they were shooting mowed down the men of Menthem. After firing the goblins immediately drove the blades into the ground, or used the leverage of a nearby rock or tree to brace their bows as they reloaded them with fiendish speed. A second ragged volley came even as the screams from the first erupted across Menthem.
“Cover!” I bellowed, as I tried to find a good position from which to respond. The goblins were approaching the manor from the southeast, advancing across the fields of half-grown barley and wheat in a broken skirmish line in a manner that would have inspired fury in any self-respecting peasant, regardless of the circumstances. Their shots were coming individually, now, not in volleys. The nearly-silent bolts flew with a flat, powerful trajectory that would have doomed any who were hit . . . had they been sharpened.
As we later learned, the deadliness of the iron bolts had been modified with smooth wooden knobs. While they could knock a man senseless, or raise a powerful bruise, they were not designed to kill. The gurvani wanted slaves, not lunch.
Nor did they expect the peasants to be as well-armed as they were, not to mention having a warmage present. While their volley had surprised and demoralized the spearmen in front of the manor, the archers behind the hedge were unharmed. They didn’t hesitate to return fire, demonstrating just how fast and powerful a Wilderlands bow can be. A quarter of the goblins fell from arrows as they approached. But they continued their advance, engaging in an archery duel as they approached.
That gave the spearmen time to rally. Most had crawled to the concealment of hedges or other obstructions, evaluating their wounds and determining their situation. I was impressed that none ran from the threat – this was not a timid peasantry. Instead they grouped around their petty captains and begged for orders.
They could have charged the skirmishers in a mob, knowing that only a few of them would die in the attempt. That was likely what they would have done, had I not been there. But I was, and I wasn’t about to let this little manor get plucked like an unripe fruit before it even had time to grow.
I pulled Blizzard in front of me and used it to target the leading three skirmishers. Not their bodies – their bows. Then I drew Twilight and advanced, waiting for them to load their weapons and take a bead on me. The moment they raised their arbalests I activated my spell . . . and all three bowstrings snapped.
When you suddenly release that much stored potential energy from a spring, it rarely goes smoothly. One of the gurvani dropped his weapon when it snapped. The other two caught bowstrings or other debris from their weapons across the face.
Deprived of their bows, two drew swords while the other cleared his eyes just in time to take an arrow shaft through his throat. The first gurvan to come within my defensive range burst into flame when I pointed Blizzard at him. The second was knocked back fifty feet from a concussive blast.
The rest of the gurvani looked up at their flaming and fallen comrades and realized that this was no common engagement, anymore. So did the peasants. I heard a cheer from behind me as the spearmen began to advance under the cover of the archers.
Two more goblins tried their luck against the wizard. Neither took more than three passes with Twilight before they were dead. That was enough – the others began to retreat. They also began to use sharpened bolts to discourage pursuit.
“My lord Minalan! We are victorious!” Andswerian declared, holding his red-stained blade over his head.
“Police the battlefield,” I ordered, excusing his jubilance at the novelty of victory as the gurvani withdrew. “And bring me my horse – I want to see if there are any more lurking in reserve,” I counseled. “I wouldn’t rule out a third band on the perimeter, ensuring none of you escape.”
That thought took the reeve by surprise, and he grew pale, but he nodded.
I continued to watch the retreating gurvani until they made it to the treeline. I also marked them magically, so that I could track them through the wilderness without trouble. When my rouncey was brought to me I followed them at a cautious pace. I hastily modified my defensive spells to discourage the iron in their quarrels, which they shot at me every few moments to discourage pursuit, but I did not try to close with them. I wanted to see where they were going.
Sure enough, after navigating through the woodlands at the edge of the manor, I emerged in a meadow where another score of gurvani were waiting with a brace of fell hounds. The hounds weren’t ridden, they were harnessed to a long wagon on which a wooden cage of thick hazel boughs had been constructed. It already contained three villagers who had been apprehended in the fields . . . including
poor Goodman Brin. There were a lot more of those crossbows, too. Too many for me to duel with blade, I decided.
Instead, I erupted from the clearing with a barrage of offensive combat spells that shredded the foe. Two waves of concussive force bowled over each side of the group, and a moment later a field of arcane power lit up the pain centers in every gurvani skull like Castabriel at Yule. I continued to throw even deadlier spells as I advanced. I had a lot of good ones I’d recently hung on Blizzard. I used them with lavish abandon as I scrubbed the gurvani filth from my lands with arcane fire.
I didn’t get them all, but that was perfectly fine. I wanted their masters to know that the Magelaw was vigilantly protected, now, protected by magic and the men who were willing to use it, and the survivors would bear that tale. Our people were not fodder for their soup pots, slaves for their workcamps, or grist for their sacrificial stone, anymore. I made certain that the wounded were dispatched and the prisoners freed before I escorted them back to the manor to survey the damage.
Two villagers were dead, and five seriously wounded, Andswerian reported, grimly. One had taken a dart to the bridge of his nose that had smashed his brainpain, the other had his throat torn out as the Menthemi slew the wounded fell hound.
“Considering how many would have died had you not been here, Sire, we are eternally grateful,” he concluded, humbly, at the discussion afterward.
“It’s my job, Andswerian. Let’s not dwell on the dreadful possibilities. Let’s appreciate the bounty the gurvani just gave you in trade for those two fatalities,” I proposed, as I slid back out of the saddle. “A dozen new crossbows – I’ll be taking one of the broken ones, but the rest are yours. As are the arms and armor,” I reminded him. “There should be enough iron there to fashion plenty of tools. The metal is of low quality, but it can be made into serviceable spades and knives. There are four good wagon wheels back in that meadow you can salvage. Search well their pockets, too,” I advised. “Many of the gurvani use emeralds and other gems as currency between themselves, and they love gold as much as men. Whatever you recover is yours,” I said, generously.
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