Minutes passed, but Tavor did not return. Bera tapped her foot impatiently and flexed her fingers, cracking them without hearing the crack.
She felt another touch, on the back of her hand, the sensation softer: Isaam. He edged ahead of her and peered into the foliage, shrugging and shaking his head. Beads of sweat were thick on his brow and dripped off his nose. It was a warm day, but Bera suspected that maintaining the silent enchantment was what really put him under strain. He gestured at her, and she cocked her head, misunderstanding. He rolled his eyes in frustration, picked up a twig and snapped it: no sound.
Soon, he mouthed.
She understood. His spell was wearing thin. Very soon they would be clinking and clanking and rustling against the trees and bushes.
She raised her arm and motioned the men forward. Minutes later she reached the edge of a tree line and emerged onto a rise where the trees ahead had been considerably thinned. Stumps dotted a landscape that dropped gently away then rose to a bluff. She could hear the branches gently clicking, and she thought she could hear the rush of water-the river on the map.
“They’re gone,” Zocci said, gesturing. “The goblins are all gone.”
“But they were here,” Bera said.
The remains of small cooking fires were scattered across the ground, and here and there burned and broken logs were strewn. There were piles of leaves and twigs and ashes-plenty of evidence that a vast number had inhabited the place.
“Not a soul,” Isaam said.
Bera took a step forward. She didn’t like the look or the smell of the place. Death was in the air. The veteran of many battles, she recognized the sour-sweet of burned bodies. There was also a faint acrid scent she couldn’t identify at first.
“Chlorine.” Bera cupped her hand over her eyes. “Faint but evident. Why chlorine?” The sun was setting, yet it shone through gaps in the maples as an orange glare that made her squint.
“And death,” Isaam whispered. “But not so faint.”
“Aye, plenty of death. I noticed that.” Bera continued to study the ground. Though she wasn’t a tracker, she could tell it had been disturbed by a great many goblin feet swarming and marching. “And there is no sign of Tavor. Where is my scout?”
“Perhaps he went over the bluff, searching ahead.” That was said by Zocci. His expression was wary, troubled. “I’ll find him.” He moved ahead, long, measured strides that took him past a pile of charred wood. The wind scattered some of the ashes.
“They knew we were coming,” Isaam said. “Somehow they knew, and they fled.”
Bera sneered and motioned the men forward, making a circle with her hand to signal the soldiers to spread out and search. She remained back with Isaam. “Find out where they went, old friend. We’ll track them somehow with your magic. Your magic will serve us far better than our scouts. Focus on Grallik, find a way to poke a window in their blocking spell and … find them fast. We’ll follow them to the Abyss if we have to. I’ll not let this go. In fact …” Bera looked up into the trees, suddenly noticing something else that was weird.
“Birds,” she pronounced. “There are none here. Everywhere else in the forest but not here.” She cut Isaam a worried glance then said, “Zoccinder, bring everyone back right-”
One man screamed then another.
A DARK KNIGHT’S WORST NIGHTMARE
A few hundred knights had walked ahead of Bera so she couldn’t see what was happening to those in the front ranks. She started to dash forward, but Isaam’s arm shot out and caught her. Despite his spindly appearance, the sorcerer was surprisingly strong.
“Commander.” It was the only word Isaam needed to say.
Bera’s training and experience kicked in. “Retreat!” she shouted, an order she loathed to give that was repeated through the ranks of the men who’d hastened before her. Retreat, she thought, until she could assess the situation. Get them out of whatever trap she’d let them march straight into.
She guessed roughly a third of her knights had headed toward the bluff-maybe three hundred fighters. The rest stretched out in uneven ranks behind her and reversed their course, spreading out to make space for their retreating brethren.
She wanted to be up at the front, to see what nasty little trap the goblins had set. More shouts and another scream cut through the air.
Bera wanted to call for Zocci. She prayed it was not him. No, it couldn’t be. Zocci would not scream like a baby.
The men started to fall back, but only the ones closest to her made it inside the tree line. Incredibly, the rest were being sucked down by the earth, attacked by the trees, and pummeled by goblins that had appeared seemingly out of nowhere.
“By all the dark gods,” Bera breathed. “A fool, me.” How could she have underestimated the goblins? Rats, she’d called them. But they were instead a Dark Knight’s worst nightmare. They were clever rats, and there were a lot of them everywhere.
The ground had looked solid enough when the knights had started across it. But many suddenly dropped into bowl-like depressions that had been camouflaged by dirt and thatch strewn over them. Before the knights who hadn’t fallen could help their comrades, the goblins had descended. Some spilled out of the earth bowls; others dropped from the trees. More came up over the bluff like a swarm of ants headed for something sweet.
Bera drew her sword. “Regroup!” She repeated the order, not needing to shout with Isaam deploying a simple spell to magnify her voice. “Retreat! On my line! Now!”
Her men tried to obey while at the same time fighting the goblins that clearly outnumbered and beleaguered them. Bera jumped forward, throwing her free arm out and pulling a young knight back. She tugged at another as she drove the pommel of her sword down on the top of the head of a goblin that had appeared right in front of her. She barely heard the crunch of his skull as he dropped, or perhaps she’d just imagined the sound.
“Doleman, Carthor, get your men and follow me! Eyes on the ground!” Bera crept forward. “Anders, bring up the archers.”
The racket grew, goblins yelling out to each other in their ugly, guttural language, words that she couldn’t understand, her knights shouting, some of her knights hollering in pain. Goblins screamed too. She watched an Ergothian named Garold gut two goblins with one heavy swing. Swords clashed against knives, and suddenly added to that was the constant thwup of arrows.
When had the goblins become proficient with bows? She’d thought their only weapons were primitive ones, along with whatever they’d stolen from the dead knights in Steel Town. She edged farther past the tree line, gesturing wildly for more knights to retreat.
Her bowmen came into play, sending a volley into a wave of goblins descending from the east.
“Commander!” Her lieutenants Doleman and Carthor carefully brought two dozen men along with them.
“We get everyone back!” she shouted to Doleman. “Fighting retreat! We’re the rear guard!”
The field before her was chaos, not the slay fest Bera had imagined on the trail. She’d more than underestimated the rats, and she was paying for it with the lives of some of her men. She had to get them out of there, regroup, and organize an attack.
Her chest felt impossibly tight. Calling a retreat, from goblins! Men lost to goblins! She had to turn the situation around and fast. She had to get her troops back to a safer spot, plan a different advance, make the sorcerer punch a hole in their “windowless house,” and get a good look at what she was up against.
She had to get Isaam to find Grallik.
“Isaam!” A glance over her shoulder showed that the sorcerer was caught up in casting some spell. There was no use interrupting him; she sprang forward to engage a pair of goblins trying to cut off the escape of one of her half-elf knights.