A feinted slice, a turn of the wrist and a straight ahead stab, and Tempest took down another.
Mather backhanded away a club strike from the right, but a third goblin, running right over its dying companion, thrust with its spear, inside the ranger’s defenses. A quick retraction of the sword severed the spear shaft even as the point dug into Mather’s shoulder, but the goblin thrust took the strength from his arm.
Quick to improvise, Mather simply grabbed up the sword in his left hand and stabbed the goblin in the face, then brought it about powerfully to take a club from an attacker at his left. The ranger pivoted to square up with the creature. With a roar of defiance against the blackness that edged his faltering vision, he brought the sword up in an arc and then down diagonally atop the goblins shoulder, so powerfully that the enchanted silvered blade slashed through the creature’s collarbone, down through its spine, cracking ribs apart and tearing flesh. Another growl and Mather rolled about, the fine blade finishing the cut, exiting the goblin’s other side and dropping the two bloody pieces to the snow.
But four other goblins were about him in a frenzy, two whacking at him with clubs and the others stabbing him with spears.
He connected with one, or thought he had, but took a thump on the back of his head that sent his thoughts spinning, that brought the darkness closer… too close.
And then Mather knew. He could not win this time. Through blurry eyes, he saw the goblin before him slump into the snow, but took no comfort, for another spear found him, digging into his hip.
He knew that Bradwarden would die if he went down, reminded himself of that pointedly, and that thought alone kept him on his feet. He blocked a spear thrust but was hit again on the side of the head. He staggered away, somehow managing to hold his footing. But now one eye was closed, and darkness crept at the edges of his other eye, narrowing and blurring his vision to the point where he could not even see his enemies, could see nothing at all except the pinpoint of light that was the goblin’s fire.
Mather made for the light.
The goblins pursued, hooting and howling, stabbing and smacking the defenseless man through ever step.
But on he went, determinedly putting one foot in front of the other, stepping, stepping, feeling no pain, pushing it away, burying it under the mantle of responsibility, as a ranger and a friend. He hardly saw the light now, but heard the crackle of the fire and knew he was close.
He was hit again, on the back of the head; the blackness swallowed him.
He felt himself falling, falling, thoughts of Olwan and the times they would not share, and he thought of Bradwarden.
Mather roared one last defiant roar and forced himself to stand straight and tall. He swung about, the slicing Tempest forcing the goblins back and that buying him the time he needed to turn again to the fire, to look above it, and using more memory than vision, to aim his cut.
He felt the sword bite at the supporting rope, felt the rush of weight as Bradwarden dropped before him, brushing him and throwing him to the ground.
Then, from somewhere far away, he heard the centaur’s outraged roar, heard the goblin’s shrieks of fear, heard the trample of hooves, the cries of pain.
And then he knew… peace. A cool blackness.
It all came back to Mather in that last fleeting moment, memories of his childhood before the Touel’alfar, his times with Tuntun and the other elves, his days silently protecting Dundalis and Weedy Meadow, unappreciated, but hardly caring.
Doing as he had been trained to do, acting the role of ranger, and of friend.
And he had this night.
Olwan Wyndon, his wife, and their infant son, Elbryan, slept peacefully that night in Dundalis, they and their companion family, the Aults, warmly welcomed by the folk. Listening to the wind howling futilely against the solid common house walls, the rhythmic breathing of his loved ones, Olwan knew he had found his home, a place where his child could grow strong and straight.
He didn’t know that he had lost a brother that night, didn’t know that any goblins had been about, didn’t know that any goblins even existed.
It would stay that way for Olwan, and for all the folk of Dundalis-save the very old, who remembered goblins-for more than a decade.
Following the trail of carnage, Tuntun found a tearful Bradwarden piling stones on Mather’s cold body the next morning.
“It’s the only place,” the centaur explained, referring to the thick and well-tended grove about them, a special place for Mather, where the trees had blocked much of the snow. “Riverhawk’s place for all time.”
“Blood of Alturias,” Tuntun spat, using the insult as a shield against emotions that threatened to overwhelm her. How many times had she said that to Mather over the years?
And how many times must she watch a friend, a ranger, die? There were never more than six rangers at one time, but Tuntun had lived for centuries, and had witnessed so many of them put into the cold ground. None had hurt more than this one, hurt more than Mather, the boy she had personally trained, whom she had cultivated into so fine and strong a man. She thought about her own mortality then, the long, long years in the life of an elf, and, ironically, a smile crept across her delicate features.
“A man might live but a day’s worth of life in an entire year,” she said to Bradwarden. “Or a year’s worth in a single day. Riverhawk had a long life.”
A SONG FOR SADYE
Old Orrin Davii entered the smoky room with his face in his hands and his thin shoulders hunched. Across the way, sitting against the wall between a pair of large crates, the teenage girl watched his every movement, her eyes wary, her every muscle ready to propel her away if he moved threateningly toward her.
But he didn’t. He never did, and gradually, as he moved to the side of the doorway and sat down on another large box, Sadye relaxed. She scolded herself for her paranoia — Orrin had made no moves against her in the weeks of her indenture to him. When the court had ordered her so indentured, Sadye, more a young woman now than a girl, had thought his desire to take her from the court wrought of salacious intent. It usually was, after all, from everything the young street thief had heard. Many of her running mates had been caught and indentured to one or another influential Ursal landowner, and the stories of their subsequent existence after the indenture had rung out a similar, lewd note.
So far at least, Orrin Davii had thankfully not fit that mold.
Sadye regarded him now without the prism of her fear clouding her vision. He was much older than she — four times her fifteen years, she guessed — and obviously wracked by the decades of a difficult existence. His face was leathery and thin, with the stubble of a grizzled gray beard always visible, and his eyes glowed a dull gray. But while those eyes didn’t have the sparkle of excitement common to one of Sadye’s age, the woman did see some life yet within them.
“Your time here is almost finished,” Orrin remarked, drawing her from her contemplation. “Would that you had committed a more serious offense!”
“How touching that you will miss me,” Sadye said, and she didn’t completely fill her voice with sarcasm, at least.
“Indeed,” Orrin replied. “And a pity it is, too, that you were so headstrong and tight with your thoughts when first you came to me. I had big plans for you, young Sadye, but alas, by the time I came to trust in you, time had already run short.”
Sadye couldn’t help but tilt her head at that, though she knew that she was perhaps revealing too much of her intrigue. Never play your hand — that was the lesson she had learned on the streets.
“Did you move quickly enough to put it away this time?” Orrin asked, and he grinned at her and narrowed his gray eyes. “Or did you simply tuck it behind the crate again?”