“What makes you think they haven’t already fled?” A knight who had been watching from a polite distance asked softly.
“Because they’re not stupid.” Not like I once thought they were, she added silently to herself. “They know we’ll come at them again and again and again. So they’ll make their stand because they have no choice. And they’ll make it here because of all their clever little pits.”
“And because they’re tired of running,” Isaam added. “I know I would be tired of running from us.” The sorcerer put the lantern on the ground and peered away into the growing darkness where the vast ranks of Dark Knights waited, some standing, some sitting, none of them having removed their armor, many of them eagerly polishing and sharpening their weapons for the coming fight.
He backed away and let the growing shadows to the south swallow him.
Bera pointed at her crude map again, a gesture that drew Doleman down close by her. “Here and here and here. Yes, they’ll be expecting us, but this time they’ll be the ones trying to retreat.”
“And failing.” Doleman seemed to be persuaded, pointing to the line Bera had drawn to indicate Isaam’s shield spell. “They’ll be caught against an unseen wall conjured by Isaam, and we’ll pin them with our arrows.”
“And with Isaam’s fire magic. They like to burn the corpses of their fallen? We’ll burn them alive. Victory will be ours at first light.” Bera rose and brushed the dirt off her knees. “Pass the orders to the other lieutenants. Set up a watch.” She stared at the men and lowered her voice. “How many did we lose, Lieutenant?”
He stood and spoke equally as softly. “Fifty-one, Commander. Others are badly wounded.”
“That’s fifty-one too many.” She stepped carefully through the underbrush, relying on the emerging stars for light. It took her a while to find Isaam as he’d walked farther south than she’d expected. He stood, his gaze searching ahead.
He turned to meet her eyes. “You blame yourself for the battle’s loss. But you must realize the outcome of this day was not your fault.” Isaam could say such things to Bera because of their years together. “I doubt any other commander would have done things differently. You knew where the goblins were and you-”
“I don’t know if I loved him, Isaam.”
“But you cared for him.”
“Yes. He made me feel young again.”
“Then grieve, Commander. Grieve while I go to work.”
“The goblins smell horrible, Isaam. Good that the wind blows toward them. It keeps away their stink. They are hideous, and they chatter endlessly in a vile, vile tongue that sounds like wild dogs in heat yapping. The clothes they wear mock men. Shirts too big, hanging on them like rags. Most of them have yellow eyes like raw egg yolks, making them look sick. Bumpy skin, scabrous, looking worse than sickness. A veritable disease, I say they are, on this land. They sully the earth. They killed him, Isaam.”
“Grieve, Commander.”
Tears hung at the corners of her eyes, but she would not surrender to them. “After the last goblin is dead, old friend. And after the traitor Grallik N’sera has been burned. Then, perhaps, I will allow myself to grieve.”
She watched Isaam, who went down on his hands and knees at the base of a dying oak. The sorcerer began to speak in a sing-song pattern from a language Bera guessed was old and magical. She squinted, thinking she saw the earth crack around Isaam’s fingers. She looked closer, just as leaves fell from the oak, curling and drying up. More leaves fell as she watched. Isaam’s breath grew ragged.
“Drawing the life out of the woods,” Bera observed.
“Consider this in memory of your Zocci, Commander.”
“How far does your magic range, my old friend? As far south as the bluff, where the goblins are surely burning their dead? Is your enchantment that strong?” She pictured their funeral pyres. The wind continued to blow toward the river, so the stench traveled in the opposite direction, away from her nostrils. “I can’t smell their stink, but I can well imagine it. Will your magic stretch that far, my old friend?”
The sorcerer didn’t answer, the ancient words tumbling faster from his lips. He threw his head back, and Bera saw that his face was fuller, his eyes shining dark in the pale light. His lips were puffy, as if he took the moisture of the woods into himself. His hands looked fleshier. Or was that her imagination?
“To your last measure, Isaam. Until you’ve only a faint heartbeat left. Drink in the life of this accursed forest. And let it be the death of the damnable goblins that took Zocci and my men.”
Bera watched the sorcerer until the sky grew darker and the stars brighter. How long did she watch him? How long had they been there? An hour? More?
Her legs were stiff from standing still so long.
“They come!” She turned, startled.
She heard the call only faintly because of the distance Isaam had put between himself and the rest of her men.
The warning grew louder as other voices joined. “The goblins are coming for us!”
Bera ran back toward her camp.
THE KILLING WOODS
Isaam did not have the skills of a druid, which he judged considerable, and so the presence of a druid with the goblins bothered him. Was it a goblin? A hobgoblin that boasted nature magic? Or had the foul creatures found a human or an elf ally in the woods?
And if the latter was the case, was the druid so attuned to the Qualinesti Forest that alone he was a more formidable foe than all the goblins put together? Isaam remembered vividly the trees fighting the knights near the bluff. The trees were thicker in the knights’ camp and would pose a greater threat to the Dark Knights.
“To my last measure for Commander Kata,” he vowed silently.
Isaam’s enchantments were aimed at the druid, aimed at rending his nature magic useless.
“Let them all die for Commander Kata.”
Grallik N’sera was a nuisance compared to what a druid in the woods could do, so Isaam did not trouble himself over the traitorous Gray Robe.
Isaam struck at the greater threat, the druid, and therefore at the very forest itself. He would try to keep the druid neutralized and let Bera deal with the foul creatures that so vexed her. Let her find some joy in slaying them in great number.
To his last breath, he would help her.
The Qualinesti Forest was too vast for Isaam to take on in its entirety by himself, but his part of it … that perhaps he could manage. He could suck the life out of his little section.
If the trees in the area dried up and died, the druid would be hard pressed to animate them and could scarcely use the withered limbs to whip at the knights. If the grasses and moss that covered the forest floor became brittle, the druid couldn’t effectively use them to trip or entangle the Dark Knights.
“Death to these woods.”
Isaam embraced the darkest of magics, “death magic,” as some referred to it. He preferred to call it necromancy, liking the sound of the word on his tongue. It had taken a great deal of effort to pull the life from that section of the Qualinesti Forest with his spells, and at the same time the enchantment refreshed him. In enervating the plants, he took their life essence into himself and felt somehow stronger.
When he stood, he no longer felt stiff from kneeling so long. When he rolled his shoulders, he felt invigorated, as if years had melted off his thin frame. But that was only the physical effect, and it would not last long. Mentally, he’d exhausted himself. And his next piece of magic would truly tax him.
Isaam had well heard the warnings: first Lieutenant Doleman shouting that the goblins were coming then other voices and commotion. He knew Bera was readying the men and spreading them out. She would be furious and desperate, railing against the thought that her plan to take the fight to the goblins had been nipped in the bud.