“Zocci, get out of there!” Panic seized Bera’s heart, and her chest felt tight. The big hobgoblin looked pretty skilled.
Then a number of goblins swarmed around Zocci’s legs. He kicked at them. Their puny knives couldn’t penetrate his heavy, blued armor. He laughed again, louder. She imagined he’d be angry later that they’d scratched and dented it, though. She’d have to help him work out the imperfections.
“Zocci!” She started toward him. “I’ll bring you back myself if I have to!”
He kicked a yellow-skinned goblin in the face, planted his foot on the belly of another, then swept wide with his other leg, knocking a red-skinned goblin off the bluff.
The tall hobgoblin, who had been crouching beneath Zocci’s swing, sprang up and rammed his long knife into a seam where the knight’s cuirass breast plate met a mailed skirt.
The blow had to have glanced off, Bera thought. Her eyes widened as she saw the hobgoblin try to pull the knife free and instead pulled his blood-soaked hand back. The hobgoblin swung with the axe, keeping close to Zocci and turning, turning, forcing the Dark Knight toward the very edge of the bluff.
“No.” Bera rushed toward them, slipping on blood-drenched ground and sliding into a pit. There were goblins and one of her knights dead at the bottom, and she scrambled over them to get out.
The hobgoblin was hacking into Zocci as if he were so much firewood. The blued plate was dented, a rent in the center of the knight’s chest piece. Blood poured out everywhere, and Zocci fell to his knees. The hobgoblin pulled Zocci’s axe out of his hands, spun the weapon, and slammed it into Zocci, knocking him down.
“No!” Carthor and Doleman grabbed her shoulders, pulling her back. “Zocci!”
“Commander, we have to get out of here.” She couldn’t tell which of them had said it. “Commander, that was your order.”
Zocci lay on his stomach, unmoving. The big hobgoblin raised the great axe and brought it down on Zocci’s neck then bent over and grabbed his victim’s head, holding it high in the air. A moment more, and the hobgoblin hurled the head over the side of the bluff. Two hands on the axe handle, the hobgoblin looked across the battlefield and locked eyes with Bera.
“Your orders, Commander,” Doleman said. “Regroup.”
She whirled and headed toward Isaam, Doleman, and Carthor and a few other knights straggling behind. They dodged flailing tree limbs and batted away arrows. Carthor fell just short of safety, colorful magical darts from Grallik piercing his armor and killing him instantly. Bera kept moving away, away.
NOT MUCH OF A LOOK
Rustymane had turned back late in the morning of the third day. He told Qel he was sorry, but he didn’t think it was right to leave Direfang, what with all the misfortune that had befallen the city. Direfang needed him. He said he should have never agreed to escort her to the ocean.
“S’dard,” Rustymane said, thumping his thumb against his chest. “S’dard to go from the city. S’dard more to be here in the woods. Time to go home.”
What city? Qel thought. What home? Nearly everything is destroyed.
He’d patted her on the shoulder, wished her good fortune, and left her in the hobgoblin Gralin’s care.
That was two days earlier, maybe three, and Qel hadn’t protested. As she walked, she wondered if she should have tried to talk him out of it. The forest was a little more intimidating with only one hobgoblin for an escort-and he a chatty one who seemed perfectly happy to talk to himself when she wasn’t in the mood answer his myriad questions. She had no idea where exactly they were in the massive woods, as she lacked her friend Orvago’s nature skills.
Perhaps they were lost; she certainly felt lost, utterly, hopelessly wandering from one berry bush to the next, eating and walking and getting sore feet while drawing no closer to the shore.
Could Gralin truly lead her to the coast? Or was he as clueless as he appeared?
“S’dard, me, for coming here, Gralin. And more the s’dard for wandering with you for days and days. We’re lost.”
“Qel said that yesterday.”
“And the day before, I believe.”
He gave a clipped laugh. “A pretty voice, Qel has. But Qel does not use it often enough. Even if it is to complain, Qel does not talk very much. I prefer her talking to silence.”
“When I do talk, it is more often than not to call myself a fool.”
The laugh was louder at that. “Qel worries too much and talks too little. It will not be so hard to find the shore. Just takes time. Don’t need Rustymane for finding big water.” The hobgoblin paused and tugged at a hair growing crookedly on his chin. “Rustymane’s a better tracker, though. Rustymane hunts better, knows how to spot wolf prints and boar signs. Finds better food. Wouldn’t mind that. Right now only need to find the ocean, and that won’t be hard. Promise. Said that yesterday too.”
Did the hobgoblin sense her nervousness? Was he trying to reassure her?
“Qel can talk some more now, even if it is to complain.”
She lapsed back into her usual grouchy silence.
Gralin was on the short side for his species. He stood only five and a half feet tall. His skin was the color of dead oak leaves, and its smoothness suggested to her he was quite young in years. He was the least marred of the hobgoblins she’d known, having only one scar of any significant size: a jagged line that looked like a lightning bolt stretching down his forearm to his wrist. He’d told her he got that a year before, wrestling a ferocious wild pig in the Plains of Dust.
“Fault is here,” he’d said, smacking the palm of his hand against his forehead. “Lazy, careless. S’dard to not pay attention and watch out for pig tusks.” He’d laughed too, long and loud and gave her a goofy grin. She didn’t want to admit it, but over the days she’d found herself enjoying his company.
Gralin had not been a slave in the Dark Knights’ mines, so he’d never been whipped or beaten, and thus he possessed the optimism of one who’d never been under another’s thumb. He was with one of the groups of hobgoblins and goblins who had answered Mudwort’s call through the earth and had traveled west across the Plains of Dust and over the dwarf mountains.
“I can’t hear the ocean, Gralin. I thought we’d be able to hear it by now,” Qel finally piped up.
“Good, Qel talks again. Otherwise just birds to listen to,” he said. “Hear lots of birds. Sounds good, though, all the birds. Like to listen to them. Maybe Qel should have decided to go home earlier-before Direfang led the goblins to the bluff to build the city. Decided earlier, then ocean wouldn’t have been so far away. You should listen to birds too, Qel. Very peaceful.”
“The ocean will sound much better to me than birdsong.”
“Ocean not far away. Then Qel can find a ship and go home to the island.”
“Schallsea Island,” she said wistfully. “It will be good to go home.”
He let out a deep breath and shook out his hands, clenching and unclenching his fingers. “Home is good, yes. Soon all the goblins will have a good home here. It will be bigger than the nation in Northern Ergoth. The Qualinesti Forest will be known as the homeland of goblinkind.” He paused and pawed at a web he’d walked through. “Direfang’s city will be a very good home, Qel. Never been to Schallsea, but maybe see it someday. Graytoes and some of the others talked about the island. Said the buildings were pretty and the grass was too short to get tangled in. Said everything smelled like the sea and like flowers.”
She smiled. “I’d never much paid attention to the way it smelled. I guess you have to leave home to realize you don’t want to or need to.”
He raised a hairy eyebrow.
“Sometimes I don’t explain myself very well.”
He cocked his head.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is that maybe you have to travel somewhere else to realize just how good your own home is.” She reached a hand up and plucked at some webbing he’d missed across his forehead. “I was raised on Schallsea Island, Gralin, never knew anyplace else. And I’d never thought of giving the world a look until Direfang’s ships came into port. Oh, ships were always coming into port, but this was different. So many goblins, and so full of purpose and hope. My curiosity won out, so I came here with them … to give the world a look.”