The Dragon's Errand Part 2

Dwellers of the Forbidden Isle — Session Two, Part Two

As recorded by the Lantern of the Thirteenth Word

I see many things. Some of them I have already told you.

When last I left them, the company had been given an errand by an ancient red dragon: to clear the jungle goblins out of an old tomb cut into the side of a hill. They found the hill.

They watched its door all day, and nothing came out.

Then, in the third watch of the night, Xavravio fired his pistol at a stirge, and the whole jungle heard it.

So did the hill.

Torchlight

The goblins came out to find the noise.

The company heard them coming and did the sensible thing: they went to ground in the dark. Then they did the necessary thing, which undid the sensible one. Two of them are half-orcs and see well enough by night. The other two are Eisenwalders, who do not, and a man who cannot see cannot fight. So they lit torches.

Light is a fine thing to have in the dark. It is also a fine thing to find.

The goblins found it. Eight of them, small and green and quick, with spears tipped in knapped stone, and they came at the torchlight in a rush.

The company met them with everything they had that could reach, and all of it missed.

Azech's sling stone went wide. Xavravio's pistol flashed and found nothing. Osbert's arrow went off into the night. Sigwulf owns no weapon that works at a distance; he prefers to arrive.

Then the spears were on them.

Osbert killed the first goblin to reach him with one stroke of his broadsword, and for a long and very bad stretch of the night, that was the last thing that went right.

Every so often there is a fight in which the steel will not land, and this was one. The goblins were small and low and fast in the moving light, and the company's blades went over them, past them, into the dirt. Azech missed. Sigwulf missed. Xavravio fired his pistol at point-blank range, close enough to singe, and missed, and then missed again with his rapier. Even Osbert, after that first kill, could not find another.

The spears could. One took Azech, hard. Others found Osbert — once, then again, then again — until he was fighting through his own blood. Smaller wounds opened on Sigwulf and Xavravio. Seven goblins against four men, and the goblins were winning.

Sigwulf saw Azech bleeding and went to him, across the fight and through the spears, to stand at the half-orc's side. That is what knights of Hercules are for.

It bought Azech a breath. He used it.

He did not reach for fire. He did not reach for lightning. In a fight being lost by inches, in a small ring of torchlight with the jungle black all around it, Azech reached for the one thing there was already too much of.

He reached for the dark.

He spoke a few words, low and hard, and stretched out his hand toward the goblin in front of him, and the night came down over its eyes like a hood.

I have seen creatures struck blind by sorcery. It is not quiet. The goblin shrieked, a thin high animal sound that cut through every other noise in the clearing, and began to spin on its heel, stabbing wildly at nothing. The goblins nearest it scrambled out of its way. And for one heartbeat the whole fight hung on that single blind, screaming thing in the torchlight, and nobody, goblin or man, was sure which way it would fall.

The company was sure first.

The steel began to land.

Sigwulf struck a goblin down. Azech struck a wounded one, and it did not get up. Then Sigwulf, feet set and blood up, swung a stroke that went through one goblin and on into the next, and both of them fell. Osbert caught one of Sigwulf's attackers with a blow that nearly cut it in two, and swung on looking for another, and missed.

Two left. Their spears missed. Azech killed one.

The last was the blind one, turning in place, its spear held out at nothing. Osbert finished it where it stood.

Eight dead, and four bloodied men standing in the torchlight, breathing hard, who had very nearly not been standing at all.

Mark where it turned. Not on a sword stroke. On a few words of the smallest spell in the book, laid in exactly the right place at exactly the right moment. I have told you that sorcery is craft. That was craft.

The Fire

They built a fire.

The Eisenwalders needed to see. The wounded needed light to be tended by. And a fire in the jungle at night, within sight of a hill full of goblins, is the brightest thing for a mile.

Some while later, two goblins came out of the hill, sent, I imagine, to learn why eight of their kin had not come home. They stood at the edge of the dark and looked at the fire for a long moment.

Then they went back inside.

I would like to tell you what they said to the others in that hill. I cannot. I can tell you what the others did.

Thirteen of them came out.

Not in a rush, this time. They had learned that much. They came out low and quiet and spread through the brush, meaning to creep up on the fire and take the company where it sat. It was a good plan, and goblins are good at it. I have seen their kind vanish into the undergrowth at sixty feet.

But not that night. Something in the brush moved when it should have been still, and the company saw them coming.

Thirteen

The volley went better than the last one, which is to say that something hit. Osbert put an arrow into a goblin, barely. Xavravio's pistol missed. Azech's sling missed.

Then they were in among the company: four on Sigwulf, three each on Azech and Xavravio, two on Osbert. Stone spears, and a great many of them.

This time, the steel landed.

Osbert killed the first of his before it had finished arriving. Azech put one down hard. Xavravio's rapier missed, and Sigwulf's sword missed, and the goblins answered. A spear found Azech. And three found Xavravio, one after another, in and out and in again, until the thief had three goblins over him and three wounds to show for it.

And then Osbert.

I told you about him once before, in the matter of the rats. The Eisenwalders do not consider a sword stroke finished merely because it has killed something. Osbert killed the goblin in front of him, and the stroke went on into the next and killed that one too, and then it went on again — across, to Xavravio, into one of the three standing over him — and killed that one as well.

Three goblins. One stroke. And the thief had room to breathe.

Azech hit another, hard. Sigwulf cut one down and swung on for the next, and missed.

And Xavravio, who had spent most of the night missing — with pistol and with rapier, at range and at point-blank — slipped behind a goblin whose eyes were on someone else, and put his rapier into its back.

That is what a thief is for.

Azech killed another. Osbert killed another. Sigwulf killed another. Osbert killed another. And the last goblin of the thirteen died the same way: from behind, on the thief's rapier, without ever seeing who did it.

Then it was over.

Morning

I keep accounts, as you know. Twenty-one goblins came out of that hill in the course of a single night, and twenty-one stayed down. Nearly half of them were Osbert's.

The company was in no shape to celebrate. Xavravio had been opened three times in a single exchange. Azech had taken spears in both fights. Osbert had bled through the first of them and kept swinging. Even Sigwulf, whom the rats could not touch, had wounds to count.

When the sun came up, they did not go into the tomb.

I want to be fair to them. They had been told to clear out the goblins, and twenty-one goblins lay dead on the hillside. Anyone would call that a job done.

I wonder whether the dragon will.

They walked back to the trail slowly, the way badly hurt men walk, and left the door in the hill as they had found it: dark, quiet, and open.

I shall be watching.

— The Lantern of the Thirteenth Word