The cries of the enemy had ceased and, after only a few minutes, the sound of their breakneck pursuit had faded to nothing. But I figured that if I stuck my head up I was still liable to have it lopped neatly off, so I stayed where I was, kept my head down, and felt sorry for myself. Little stirred except the wind in the reeds. A warbler burbled happily to itself before taking flight, and a small brownish toad caught sight of me and hopped into invisibility. I speculated darkly that they might be reporting back to creatures considerably larger and nastier than they, but there wasn’t much I could do about it if they were.
Then something moved only a few feet away from the lip of the pool, something large and careful. I held my breath and waited, catching the slightly bitter scent of an animal, then a muted grunt. I kept my head down, but felt-or thought I felt-a fractional chill as of a shadow passing over me. The reeds on the rim of the hollow shifted and snapped, and something huge inhaled, a series of powerful sniffs trying to gather an aroma, a trace, perhaps, of me. If I saw that bloody warbler again I’d give it something to sing about.
With infinite care I tipped my head slightly and looked up. Ten yards away, just on the lip of the pit and surrounded by eight-foot reeds and elephant grass with plumed white ears, was a goblin lancer mounted on a great steel-gray bear. The animal had its left flank toward me and was sniffing, its muzzle to the ground.
The goblin was squat, heavily muscled, and about my height. It was armored with black and rusted mail and heavy leather pads. Its head was unhelmeted and quite bald, its skin cracked and yellow-brown, like old mustard. Then it shifted, turning toward the center of the wet hollow, and I saw its face. It was thin and tight, each bone of the skull showing through the strained skin. It looked like a man, but hairless and with malice smoldering in its small, hollow eyes. The goblin seemed to look at me, but its eyes were focused elsewhere and the reeds screened me for the moment. It spoke, a stream of guttural noises and hard syllables spiked as sharp as the barbs on the lance it brandished in its sinewy right hand, and another goblin answered from close by. I put my head back down and hoped that the rancid stench of the pit itself would confuse the bear or whatever the hell it was.
Back in Cresdon or Stavis, people would pay good money to see a bear that would let you ride on it without demanding bits of your thorax in return. If I ever got out of here, maybe I could take one back with me and corner the market. Such thoughts were, however, premature. As the most experienced merchants will tell you, long-term economic plans must bow to surviving the next thirty seconds. Moving less than an inch at a time I began to slide backward into the cold, thick water of the pit. The movement was painfully slow. The thick, freezing water welled round my thighs, then around my waist, and then my chest, and still the bear and its rider did not stir. I slid back still further, my legs sliding in the slime under the water until they encountered something long and heavy lying on the floor of the pond: a log. I pushed until it shifted and my feet squeezed under it. I felt the water’s icy hand close about my throat.
The bear snorted, shifted, and uttered a sound that might have been a word in the goblin’s own filthy tongue, at which the rider turned to peer into the pool. I breathed in deeply and, eyes tight shut, pushed my head completely under the water. I clutched at a clump of weeds with one fist and pushed the other into the muddy ooze up to the wrist, to keep myself from floating to the surface. My feet squirmed under the fallen log, helping to anchor me in place. Though this all took less than five seconds, I felt that I was running out of air. Wildly I remembered how heroes in stories hid from pursuers by using reeds to breathe through as they floated downstream. Well, it was too damn late for that. Another five seconds passed and my wind pipe contracted and buckled as if I was going to vomit, but I swallowed it down and held on for another few seconds.
Then the log resting on my ankles shifted and-to my horror-swam slowly away. The gorge rose in my throat again and I could hold it no longer. I broke the surface as gently as possible and gasped at the air. The bear had not moved. Terror of the goblin and its mount warred in my breast with the gut-wrenching nausea inspired by whatever the creature in the pond was. Before any decision had been made, I was scrambling out in blind terror of brushing against the chill skin of whatever was under the water. I snaked almost completely out and into the reeds, moving too quickly and thrashing slightly with involuntary revulsion. The goblin heard me.
It turned like a sprung trap and its muscles tautened, eyes and ears concentrated on the pool. It was motionless. I froze and held my breath as if I was still under the reeking water, but I could not look away. Its thin lips were parted slightly and I saw teeth in its immobile jaws. Its small, deep-set eyes flicked around the surface of the pond, and suddenly, as if caused by the hard stare of those eyes, the water broke with a small splash. Ripples coursed away and the body of some great eel or serpent, an oily olive green streaked with gray slime, arced back down to the bed from whence I had roused it. It sent a stream of heavy bubbles to the surface and, as it did so, the goblin’s face and body sagged. He grunted some word to his mount and turned away disinterested. The bear made another semi-articulate sound. There was a momentary pause, and then they moved off with remarkable stealth. I, pulling my feet from the water completely and huddling into a childlike crouch, breathed again.
I waited in the same position till the sun had begun its descent, sure that any movement would bring the monstrous riders back. All that time my eyes moved from the grass around the rim where the goblins might reappear and back to the dark water with its nameless inhabitant. But the shadows were lengthening fast, and this was not my idea of a fun place to spend the evening. If I wasn’t going to spend the night wandering around this desolate hole in total darkness, stumbling into bogs or the jaws of whatever nightmares lived in them, I was going to have to move quickly, goblins or no bloody goblins.
I crawled out and up, conscious that the mud clotting on my skin was beginning to stink even more as it warmed to my body heat. Nice. Peering out and across the valley floor, I scoured the land for signs of the enemy, but could see little through the long, coarse grass. Bugger all, in fact. Nothing of friends or town, road or track. And as if on cue, it began to rain, a cold, misty drizzle which didn’t rinse any of the mud off, but did manage to make me just that bit more miserable.
I clambered awkwardly to my feet and began, for want of a better idea, to move in the vague direction the path had been pointing before it petered out in this swampy wasteland. My mouth and nose were full of the pond’s stinking ooze and grit, and no matter how much I spat, there seemed to be more under my tongue or between my teeth making my drool brownish. I skulked forward, all hunched over, glancing furtively about and dropping to a hurried crouch in the long grass every few seconds like a crippled rabbit with a lot of enemies.
This went on for about two hours. The light began to lessen perceptibly, though I have no idea how far I traveled or if I was still heading in the same direction. With dull alarm I began moving faster and less cautiously, knowing full well that with the grass this long I could slam into the side of a bear without seeing it until it was ready for a second helping. I kept going, pressed on by the swelling darkness, the growing chill, and the absolute certainty that if I had to spend the night out here something would get me.