Indecision
Felkin looked around at his eight companions, feeling terribly insecure despite the company. They had come probing deep into Shilmista on orders from Ragnor, the brutish, unmerciful ogrillon. Felkin hadn't questioned the orders at all, not even to his fellow goblins, thinking that whatever dangers awaited them in the elven wood could not match the sure doom of Ragnor's wrath!
Now Felkin wasn't so sure. They had seen nothing, heard nothing, but every member of the nine-goblin scouting party sensed that they were not alone.
They crossed one sandy ridge and came into a deep patch of tall green ferns growing in the shadows of wide-spreading elms.
"What was that?" one goblin croaked, dipping into a defensive crouch and trying to visually follow an elusive, darting figure through the deepening shadows. All in the group danced about nervously, sensing they were vulnerable.
"Quiets!" Felkin scolded, fearing the noise more than any suspected spies.
"What was - " the goblin tried to ask again, but its words were cut short as an arrow pierced its throat.
The eight remaining goblins scrambled for cover, dropping under the ferns and crawling for the elms. Felkin heard a noise like a snapping stick, and the goblin closest to him soared into the air, kicking and gasping, as a vine noose tightened about its neck.
That proved too much for two of the others. They jumped up and broke into a run for the trees. Neither got more than a few short strides before arrows took them down.
"Where was they?" Felkin called to his companions.
"Left!" cried one goblin.
"Right!" screamed another.
There came a flurry of bow shots, arrows slicing through the ferns and knocking into trees, then all went quiet. The goblin in the air stopped its thrashing and began turning slowly with the wind.
Felkin crept over to one of his companions, lying still in the ferns. "Five of usses left," Felkin reasoned. When the other didn't answer, Felkin roughly turned him about.
A green arrow shaft protruded from one of the goblin's eyes. The other eye stared ahead blankly.
Felkin dropped the corpse and scrambled wildly away, drawing several bow shots in his noisy wake. Somewhere to the side, another goblin tried to run and was cut down with brutal efficiency.
"There remain no more than four of you," said a melodic voice in the goblin tongue, but with the unmistakable accent of a female elf. "Perhaps only three. Do you wish to come out and fight me fairly?"
"Me?" Felkin echoed quietly, confused. "Only one elf?" His entire party had been trimmed by a single elf? Boldly, the goblin poked his head above the ferns and saw the elven warrior, sword in hand, standing beside an elm, with her bow leaning against the tree, within easy reach.
Felkin looked to his own crude spear, wondering if he could make the shot. One of his companions apparently entertained the same notion, for the goblin leaped from the ferns and hurled its spear.
The elf, not caught unaware, dropped to her knees, and the spear flew harmlessly high. Faster than Felkin could follow, she took up her bow and put two shots into the air. The foolish goblin hadn't even the chance to drop back into the fern cover. The first arrow thudded into its chest and the second caught the goblin in the throat.
Felkin looked at his spear again, glad that one of the others had shown him his folly. By his count, only he and one other remained still two against one if they could get close to the elf warrior.
"Felkin!" He heard a call, and he recognized the voice of Rake, a fine fighter. "How many of usses?"
"Two!" he replied, then he called to the elf. "Two of usses, elf. Will you puts your nasty bow down and fights us fair-like?"
The elf leaned her bow back against the tree and took up her sword. "Come on, then," she said. "The day grows long and my supper awaits!"
"Yous is ready, Rake?" Felkin cried.
"Ready!" the other goblin replied eagerly.
Felkin licked his cracked lips and set his floppy feet for a good start. He'd send Rake into action against the elf and use the diversion to run away into the forest. "Ready?" he called again.
"Ready!" Rake assured him.
"Charge!" came Felkin's cry, and he heard the rustle as Rake, far to his right, leaped from the ferns. Felkin, too, leaped up, but ran off to the left, away from the elf. He looked back once, thinking himself clever, and saw that Rake had similarly retreated to the right. The elf, now wearing an amused smile, took up her bow.
Felkin put his head down and sprinted into the shadows, running as fast as his spindly goblin legs would carry him. There came a distant twang of a bowstring and Rake's steady stream of curses. Felkin's hopes returned with the knowledge that the elf had gone after his companion.
There came an agonized scream, and Felkin knew he was alone. He ran on, not daring to slow. Only a few minutes later, Felkin thought he heard a rustle behind him.
"Don't kills me! Don't kills me!" Felkin cried pitifully and breathlessly over and over. Panicking, he looked behind him once again and turned back just in time to see that he had veered straight into an oak tree.
Felkin went down in a heap, folding neatly into a leafy crook between the huge roots at the great tree's base. He didn't hear the footsteps pass him by, a few strides to the side, didn't hear anything at all.
*****
"Are you in contact with Aballister?" Dorigen asked Druzil, seeing the imp in a contemplative stance.
Druzil laughed at her. "Why?" he asked innocently. "I have nothing to tell him."
Dorigen closed her eyes and muttered a short chant, casting a simple spell that might allow her to confirm Druzil's claim. When she looked at the imp again, she seemed satisfied.
"That is good," she muttered. "You are not a familiar in the accepted sense of the word, are you, dear Druzil?"
Again the imp laughed in his raspy, breathless voice.
"You do not seem so tied to Aballister," Dorigen explained. "You do not treat him as master."
"Truly you err, Mistress Magic," Druzil replied, wondering if Aballister had arranged a little test of fealty. "I am loyal to my master, he who summoned me from the torment of the Abyss."
Dorigen didn't seem impressed, and Druzil didn't push it. Rumors had said that he had helped kill Barjin, but, in truth, the imp had considered joining the cleric and abandoning Aballister altogether. Then Barjin's grand designs had come crashing down. The rumors worked in Druzil's favor, though. They made upstarts such as Dorigen treat him with a bit of respect and kept Aballister off track in figuring what had really transpired in the Edificant Library's catacombs.
"We work for a single cause," Dorigen said, "a cause given to us by Talona. This entire region will fall to Castle Trinity, do not doubt, and those who stand beside us shall profit greatly but those who stand against us shall suffer even more!"
"You make a threat?" The imp's simple question nearly knocked Dorigen over.
Dorigen took a moment to collect her thoughts, then replied, "If you believe so. Should it be?" She seemed more unsure of herself than Druzil had ever seen her.
"I am loyal to my master," Druzil said again, firmly, "and now to you, the wizard my master has bade me to travel beside."
Dorigen relaxed a bit. "Then let us travel," she said. "The sun is rising, and we are still several days from Shilmista. I do not like the prospects of having Ragnor running about uncontrolled." She called Tiennek, who was gathering water from a nearby stream, back to her and took up her walking stick.
Druzil wholeheartedly agreed. He gave a lazy flap and landed on Dorigen's shoulder, then folded the leathery wings about him to shield him from the sun. He liked his position now. In journeying with Mistress Magic, he could see the progress of Castle Trinity's conquest, and, even more importantly, in Shilmista he would be out of Aballister's reach.
Druzil knew that Cadderly, the young priest who had defeated Barjin, was Aballister's deserted son, and Aballister knew that he knew. The web of intrigue seemed to tighten around Aballister, and the imp did not want to get choked by its strands.
*****
"One of them got away," Shayleigh reported to Tintagel when she returned to the new elven camp, "but eight others are dead."
The elf wizard nodded, having heard similar reports all day. The enemy had backed off after the slaughter in the Dells, and now sent small probing groups mostly goblins deeper into Shilmista. "Perhaps it is good that one escaped," the elf wizard offered, the corners of his blue eyes turning up in a smile. "Let it return to its foul brethren and tell them that only death awaits them under Shilmista's boughs!"
Shayleigh, too, managed a smile, but there was worry reflected in the elf maiden's violet orbs. The enemy scouting parties were being slaughtered, but the fact that their leader apparently accepted the losses only heightened Shayleigh's belief that a huge force indeed had found its way into Shilmista's northern reaches.
"Come," Tintagel said. "Let us go to the king and see what plans he has formulated."
They found Galladel alone in a clearing beyond a shielding wall of thick pines, pacing nervously. The elf king motioned for them to join him, then brought his slender hand up to stroke his raven-black hair, still vibrant and thick, though Galladel had lived many centuries. He stopped his movement when he saw that the hand was trembling, and dropped it back to his side. He glanced at Shayleigh and Tintagel to make sure that they had not seen.
"The slaughter continues," Tintagel announced, trying to calm the nervous king.
"For how long?" Galladel retorted. "The reports, sightings so many sightings of monstrous scum in our fair wood! have continued to come in."
"We will beat them back," Shayleigh pronounced.
Galladel appreciated his fine young commander's confidence, but in the face of the emerging force against him, it seemed only a minor thing.
"For how long?" he asked again, less sharply. "This black tide has rolled over the northern reaches. Our enemy is cunning."
"He sends his troops to be massacred," Tintagel argued.
"He bides his time," the elf king countered. "He sacrifices his weakest fodder to keep us busy. Damn this waiting game."
"Something will happen soon," Shayleigh said. "I can feel the tension. Our enemy will reveal himself in full."
Galladel looked at her curiously, but knew better than to dismiss the elf maiden's intuition. Shayleigh had been the one to argue for, and to organize, the ambush in the Dells, having read the enemy's initial probing actions perfectly. Certainly the king was glad to have her at his side, especially with Elbereth, his son and closest advisor, in the east, trying to gain some insight from the priests of the Edificant Library. Galladel had ordered Elbereth not to go, but lately his commands carried little weight with his headstrong son.
"Soon," Shayleigh said again, seeing that the tension was near to breaking Galladel.
"They are marching now," came a chirping voice from the side. Both Galladel and Shayleigh turned and curiously eyed a large oak tree.