The mingled screams of a horse and a man quickly brought Tas back to his senses. One remaining hobgoblin struggled to grab the horse's bridle while another fought, almost playfully, with the human, who was defending himself rather badly with a large mallet.
Tas crouched and snatched a thin, straight dagger from his legging, then sprinted toward the fight. Without slowing, he ran straight by the first hobgoblin. As he passed, the dagger flicked out and sliced through the knotted flesh inches below the creature's buttock. The monster howled in pain and shock, then stumbled as the now useless muscles of its hamstrung leg gave out. Dragging its leg and yelping horribly, it staggered into the forest and disappeared.
The last of the creatures, toying with the human, was distracted by the sound. What it saw made its jaw drop. Three of its companions lay dead in the mud, a fourth was critically wounded and fleeing, and a kender with a bloody dagger was smirking at it.
The kender winced as the human's mallet crashed into the back of the hobgoblin's skull. Its eyes rolled back and the body flopped to the soft ground. The human, foaming and hysterical, hammered on the limp form until its head disappeared in a churning froth of blood, mud, and bone.
"I think it's pretty well dead," Tas concluded.
Looking in horror at what he'd done, the man dropped the mallet and leaned against the tree behind him, panting and shaking for several minutes. "Thanks for your help, stranger," he managed at last. "I knew it was too early in the season to hit the roads, I knew it was. Did I listen to myself? No, I gave in to Hepsiba. 'We need money. It's springtime! Get out on the road, you lazy fool.' That's what she said. So I left, mostly to get away from her nagging, I'll admit. And now here I am, in the middle of nowhere, fighting for my life, my wagon up to its axle in mud. This trip is surely cursed by the gods!" He gave a vague snarl skyward.
"What are you complaining about?" Tas wondered. "You're alive and they're not." He nodded toward the carnage behind him. "I would say you've had a spectacular day, aside from what's happened to your wagon." Tas skipped across the muddy potholes to the side of the wagon. Tugging up his leggings, he hunkered over and peered under the vehicle.
"She looks stuck, all right. But I once saw Beetleater Thugwart-he was a half-ogre who lived in Kendermore-heft a wagon out of mud like this all by himself. It was too bad he broke the axle doing it, but his heart was in the right place. Anyway, he just turned it over and Willie Wontori-he was the wainwright in Kendermore-fixed it right up, good as new."
"Who in blazes are you, anyway?" the man finally managed to squeeze in.
The kender pulled himself up proudly to his full four feet and extended his fine-boned hand. "Tasslehoff Burr-foot, at your service. And who might you be?"
"I might be the Speaker of the Sun," the man sighed, still leaning against the tree, "but don't count on it."
"Oh, I wouldn't," Tasslehoff said, casually slipping his unshaken hand into the pocket of his leggings. "He's an elf, and you're a human. Besides, why would someone as important as the leader of the Qualinesti elves drive a broken-down old trader's wagon himself? Surely he'd have servants for that."
The man's parchment-colored face wrinkled up in a frown. "Did my wife send you after me, or is it your own idea to make me feel worse?" he asked rhetorically.
Tasslehoff shook his head. "I'm sure I don't know your wife, unless she was at the inn in Solace last night. I'm not from around here."
"My wife at an inn? No, that would cost money and be too much fun. Lord, even when I'm on the road, I am hounded," muttered the human.
Tas crossed from the wagon back to where the dead hobgoblin lay, impaled on the kender's hoopak. "Yuck," he pronounced, his lips drawing up in disgust. Propping the body on its side, he placed one foot against its ribs and pulled the weapon out. He held it by his fingertips at arm's length, then carried it to the side of the road and proceeded to scrape it clean in a small patch of snow.
The man snorted at the sight and turned his attention to his wagon. Carefully he picked his way past the body at his feet. "What are these things, anyway?" he asked, frowning at the grisly sight.
"Hobgoblins. Don't feel bad about killing one. They're evil from ears to brisket. They rarely listen to reason. I avoid them when I can, because otherwise you pretty much have to kill them. And once they get their smell on something, it never comes off. I can see I'm going to have to spend this evening making a new hoopak-this one will never be the same again."
Tasslehoff returned to the wagon and climbed onto the driver's seat. "What's so bad about your wife?" he asked.
"These creatures remind me of her: evil, scheming, unreasonable. She's going to make my life a living hell when she finds out about this costly fiasco, too."
"Why tell her about it?" Tasslehoff asked.
"Because she'll know by how much money I didn't make on this trip that something went wrong. And then in that nagging way of hers she'll wheedle the truth out of me, like a butcher tugging the gizzard from a chicken!" The man closed his eyes and gave a long shudder.
"She doesn't sound very nice," Tas said, bouncing on the seat. "Surely she can't blame you for the nasty things hobgoblins do, or for the roads being mired in mud."
The man sighed and ran a hand through his thinning hair. "You don't know my wife. She'll say I drove into that ambush on purpose, just to spite her, or some such nonsense."
"We'll just have to get you out of the mud and on your way, then. What is it that you do, anyway?"
"I'm a tinker," he replied. "I fix pots and pans, sharpen knives, clean lamps. I do just about everything."
Tasslehoff jumped down and stepped back from the wagon, then leaned against his hoopak to study the situation. He watched the old nag chew brown grass. "Why don't you just use your horse to pull the wagon out?"
The tinker chuckled. "That old thing? Bella hardly has the strength to pull her own weight on a straightaway anymore, let alone get this wagon out of a rut. And she hates mud, always has. Soon as she feels it on her hooves, she stops cold."
"Why don't you replace her?"
"Hepsiba says she's good enough. Besides, I'm kinda fond of the old girl. The horse, that is."
Tasslehoff jumped off the wagon and drove the end of his hoopak down through the muck in the rut until he found solid ground. "Hmm, about the length of my forearm. That's not too deep. I'll bet if you push the wagon from behind, I can coax Bella into taking a couple of steps."
The man leaned against the side of the wagon. "I can't see why anyone should spend so much effort fighting fate. If this is where providence wants me, this is where I'll stay, in spite of your efforts or mine."
Tas looked at him for a moment before speaking. "That's nonsense. Why would fate want your wagon stuck in a muddy ditch?"
"I don't know, but here I am! I don't make a practice of trying to change my destiny." As if the matter was settled, the tinker pulled a small knife from his pocket and began cleaning his fingernails.
The kender considered that for a moment but then shook his head as if to clear the thoughts away. He decided to try a fresh approach. "Look, let's say it is your destiny to get stuck in this ditch. But it is also your destiny to have me come by and get you out, because I refuse to walk away and leave you here. What do you say to that?"
The tinker scratched his chin. "I suppose if you can get her to move, that would be a pretty convincing argument for your view."