The draconian nodded again.
“I can see what the hobgoblins are up to. Yes, you need me.”
Ragh loosely translated what she had said to Yagmurth, who’d skittered up to his side and was staring at the female Knight with curiosity and fear.
“That’s the only reason I stayed with you. For the sake of Riki and Varek and the baby Otherwise I’d be following Dhamon. Sooner or later I will make him pay, you know.”
“Yes, yes. You’ll make him pay,” Ragh grumbled. The small army of goblins had gathered behind him, chattering in their thin voices, making their clicks and snarls. “But for the moment, Fiona…”
Yagmurth thumped his spear and waved for silence.
“You can count on me, Ragh,” Fiona said, after the goblin chatter died down. She smiled wide then, but her smile looked odd, and her eyes remained unfocused.
Ragh instantly wondered if he really could count on her. “On the other hand, Fiona, maybe—”
“I like Riki enough,” she continued brightly. “I’d like to help her. And her baby. I won’t be having a baby of my own, sivak. I won’t be getting married. Ever. I won’t be having a family of my own. Now that Rig’s dead…”
“Maybe instead we should—”
“The village is just around that rise, right?” Fiona stepped away. “I can’t see it from here.” She sheathed her sword. “I’ll go now,” she announced, “for a baby I can’t have.”
She started north. Ragh quickly hurried after her, putting a clawed hand on her shoulder. “About Varek, Fiona. If you talk to Varek you probably shouldn’t mention to him that—”
“That the baby isn’t his?” She smiled more genuinely. “Of course the baby is Varek’s. It can’t be Dhamon’s because Dhamon is going to die when I see him next. He’ll pay for what he did to Rig. He will pay for everything, sooner or later, I swear.”
Mad as a hare, Ragh thought. He cursed himself as he watched her go, digging his claws into his palms in silent frustration. “Damn, but I should have gone with Dhamon instead. Why by the number of the Dark Queen’s heads did I volunteer to retrieve the half-elf and her family? Why?” He ground his heel into the packed earth. “Some part of me thinks I should’ve just disappeared into the swamp a long time ago—leaving Dhamon and Maldred and Fiona to their own foolishness. Disappeared… and….” He scratched at his head. “Done what with myself?”
The old yellow goblin gently rapped his spear against the draconian’s leg to get his attention. “Human slaves,” Yagmurth sniffed. “They are so unreliable. It’s better just to eat them—they’re tasty when they’re young—but I think this one’ll do as you command.”
The two stared across the Throt landscape. It reminded Ragh of a desert in its barrenness and severity. He could count the trees he saw on both hands, and he spied only a few birds. There were places on Krynn as desolate, he knew—he’d been to them. There were climates more hostile. This was certainly tolerable, but he didn’t care for it.
“Don’t like goblins,” he muttered in his own speech, leaving Yagmurth scratching his head. “Don’t like waiting for a crazed Solamnic Knight. Don’t like not knowing about Dhamon. My friend Dhamon.”
He shook his scaly head at his predicament. “Why didn’t I just disappear into the swamp?”
Ragh didn’t budge from the spot until Fiona came back two hours later. Her breath was ragged, her face streaked with sweat and dirt. The sword she clung to was bloodied.
The draconian rushed to her, still wary of the sword she carried. “Fiona, what happened? Are you hurt? What did you—”
Yagmurth chattered and hopped between the pair, trying to make them speak in a language he could understand.
She gave the goblin a sneer and kicked Yagmurth away, brushing at a strand of hair. “The village is small from the looks of it. Very. I couldn’t get in close, though. The hobgoblins belong to the Knights of Takhisis. I can tell from the emblems on their armor.”
“Hobgoblins in armor? Wonderful.”
“Leather and chain for the most part. It was wonderful to fight against an armored opponent again, after all this time—even if they were filthy hobgoblins. I stopped thinking about Rig for a few minutes when I was busy fighting. Everything seemed so clear.” She paused to take a deep breath, her eyes wide and glittering.
“Battle suits you,” Ragh said simply.
“I ran into three of them, hobgoblins, on the south end of the village. Sentries, obviously. They wouldn’t let me pass into the village, and though I couldn’t understand them I figured out the gist of the situation. The town was blockaded.”
He pointed to her sword.
She shrugged. “I killed two of them, the third ran. I would have given chase, but thought I might find myself outnumbered. I came back to report to you.”
A rare sane decision, Ragh thought. “Good. I worried.”
She spat at the ground.
“They’ll reinforce the south end of the village now, of course,” he said.
“I suppose,” she agreed. Suddenly the distracted look was back in her eyes. She turned back toward the village, but Ragh stepped in front of her, edging away from her sword.
“Let’s not be hasty.”
“I am a Solamnic Knight, sivak. My report to you is concluded. I will now go back to the village and slay whatever reinforcements they’ve gathered to the south.”
The draconian groaned. Against his better judgment he put his arm around her protectively and tugged her away from the rise, to the west. “No, Fiona. They’ll be expecting someone coming again from the south. We’ll fool them, pick another direction.”
“Another? OK. West. Let’s charge in from the west.” She gripped the pommel of the sword firmly.
“Tell your little, stinky friends about the plan, and let’s see if they can keep up.”
Ragh was already telling Yagmurth and the others that had gathered around them. The draconian directed the goblin force to follow him and stay as quiet as possible. He could only pray that Fiona herself would stay quiet and not prove a liability. He had to rush to catch up to her, the two of them leading their ragtag army around to the west and a bit north, circling the village and using a copse of pine and oak trees as cover.
There were some hobgoblins just inside the treeline, and Ragh didn’t notice them until it was too late.
A pair of armored sentries sniffed the air suspiciously, scenting their approach. Though related in some ways to their small cousins, the hobgoblins bore little real resemblance to the smaller, uglier creatures.
These sentries and soldiers were the size of men, and vaguely man-shaped in their limbs, with coarse brown-gray hair covering their bodies.
Their faces looked batlike, ears large and pointed, snouts wet and snuffling, sharply pointed teeth, and constant drool spilling over swollen lips.
“Move!” Ragh barked. “Get them!”
Thrilled to be commanded by Takhisis’ perfect child, the whooping, shouting goblins descended on the hobgoblins.
“Victory!” Yagmurth cried in Goblin. “Ours is victory!”
The goblins moved hungrily, stabbing hobgoblins right and left. They fought well, but several of them were also killed in the initial melee.
“Monsters!” Fiona shouted. “Foul things!” The Solamnic pushed her way through the ranks, drawing her sword and swinging it wildly until the blade whistled.
The impressed goblins folded in behind her, shouting encouragements. Fiona closed with a large hobgoblin. Small ones behind her jabbed at the hobgoblin’s legs, yip-ping maniacally as the large hobgoblin found itself pressed from all around.