But then they saw the smoke, rising like demon fingers above a ridge lined with trees. All three had seen such plumes before, and knew it was from no campfire or hearth.
Despite the urgency of their mission, despite the high stakes, no one questioned their course. Elbryan and Pony together turned their mounts to the south, riding hard for the ridge, then up the grassy slope to the tree line. Juraviel, bow in hand, fluttered away from Greystone as soon as they made those trees, the elf climbing high to better scout out the area.
Elbryan and Pony slowed and dismounted, then walked over the lip of the ridge cautiously. Spread below them, along the main road in a bowl-shaped valley, was a caravan of wagons, laden with goods and turned into a defensive, roughly circular formation. Several wagons were burning, and Elbryan and Pony could hear the shouts from the men below, calling for water, or for preparation of the defenses. The pair could see, too, that many people were down, and the agonized screams of the wounded rolled up out of the bowl.
“Merchants,” the ranger remarked.
“We should go down to them,” Pony said. “Or at the least, I should, bringing the soul stone.”
Elbryan looked at her skeptically, not wanting to use that stone, or any other, so near to St.-Mere-Abelle. “Wait for Juraviel’s return,” he bade her. “I see no dead monsters about the ring, and so it seems likely that this battle has just begun.”
Pony nodded her agreement, though the wails of the wounded pained her greatly.
Juraviel was back soon enough, fluttering to a tree limb just above their heads. “The scene is both good and bad,” the elf explained. “First and most importantly, the attackers were goblins, and not powries, a lesser foe by far. But they are four score in number, and preparing a second strike.” He pointed across the dell, to the southern ridge. “Beyond the trees.”
Elbryan, ever the tactician, and understanding goblins’ ways, surveyed the area. “They are confident?” he asked Juraviel.
The elf nodded. “I saw few wounded, and none in argument of further attack.”
“Then they will come in right over that ridge,” the ranger reasoned, “using the down slope to speed their run at the merchants. Goblins never concern themselves about their own dead. They’ll not expend the time or the effort to coordinate a more comprehensive attack.”
“Nor will they have to,” Juraviel added, looking down at the wagons and the pitiful attempt at defense. “The merchants and their guards cannot hope to hold them off.”
“Unless we help them,” Pony was quick to put in, and her hand subconsciously slipped to the pouch of gemstones, a motion Elbryan did not miss.
He looked Pony in the eye and shook his head. “Do not use the gems unless we absolutely need them,” he instructed.
“Four score,” Juraviel remarked.
“But they are only goblins,” said the ranger. “If we can kill one of four, the rest will likely flee. Let us prepare the battlefield.”
“I will go and watch the goblins,” the elf said, and he disappeared from sight so quickly that both Elbryan and Pony blinked in disbelief.
The two led the horses around the dell, moving down across the road, out of sight of the merchant wagons, then up the southern slope to the tree line. “They are hungry and frightened,” Elbryan noted.
“The merchants or the goblins?”
“Likely both,” the ranger replied. “But I speak of the goblins. They are hungry and frightened and desperate, and that makes them doubly dangerous.”
“So if we kill one in four, they will not run?” Pony asked.
The ranger shrugged. “They are too far from home, with no prospects of getting back. I suspect the rumors are true, that the powries deserted them out here, in a land filled with enemies.”
Pony gave him a sidelong glance. “Do you intend to offer mercy?” she asked.
The ranger chuckled at the thought. “Not for goblins,” he said firmly. “Not after Dundalis. I pray they do not flee, for then they will live to cause more sadness. Let four score come over the hill, and let four score die at our hands.”
They were up to the top of the ridge by then, and the goblins were in sight, huddled on the side of a ridge half a mile to the south.
There weren’t many trees between the two positions and the goblins, but both Pony and Elbryan quickly discounted any ideas of spotting Juraviel as he made his way down to them. They turned instead to the tree line, to see what surprises they could put together for the oncoming horde. Pony moved to the underbrush, looking for young trees suitable for snares, while the ranger focused on one large and dead elm, precariously perched on the very edge of the ridge.
“If we could drop this in their midst, it would cause more than a little confusion,” the ranger remarked when Pony moved to join him.
“If we had a team of plow horses, we might indeed,” Pony replied sarcastically, for the dead tree was indeed huge.
But Elbryan had an answer to that. He reached into a pouch and took out a packet of red gel. “A gift of the elves,” he explained. “And I think this trunk might be rotted enough for it to work.”
Pony nodded. She had seen Elbryan use that same gel in Aida, to weaken a metal bar so completely that a single swipe of his sword had cut right through it. “I’ve already set one snare, and I can see possibilities for several more,” she said. “Also, a few sharpened sticks in the underbrush might cause some havoc.”
The ranger nodded absently, too immersed in his own work to even notice as Pony went back to hers.
Elbryan found the weakest point along the trunk and tested its width and give. He was convinced that with several mighty swings of Tempest, he could fell the tree, but that would not be good enough, for he would never find the time in the midst of a horde of goblins. But if he could properly prepare it now…
He took up his sword and gave a light chop, then fell back cautiously as he heard the responding crackles of buckling wood. Again he found the proper place and cut into the tree, and then again. He went to the packet next and tore it open, then smeared a line of the reddish substancea mixture the elves used to weaken itemsacross the critical point, putting it in line with a pair of trees farther down the slope.
As he finished, Pony came back to him, riding Greystone. “We should tell them,” she said, motioning toward the merchant caravan.
“They know that someone is up here already,” the ranger replied.
“But they should know of our plans to help,” Pony reasoned, “that they might properly prepare a complementary defense. We cannot hope to stop all the goblins, no matter how effective our traps and swords.” She pointed down the slope to a stump barely visible above the tip of the tall grass. “The descent is steep there, and the lead goblins will be at full speed and in range of any bows the merchants might have,” she explained. “That could be a critical point. If I can string a trip rope, we could slow the goblins’ progress and allow the merchants many more shots.”
“Three hundred feet,” Elbryan replied, surveying the distance from the stomp to the nearest cover.
“The merchants likely have that length of rope and more to spare,” said Pony. She waited for his nod, then turned Greystone about and moved cautiously down the slope. Two-thirds of the way, less than fifty yards from the caravan and wide open in the grass, she noted the many bows leveled at her, though more and more were dipping low as the archers recognized that she was no goblin.
“My greetings,” she said, moving right up to the wagons and addressing a heavy man wearing clothing of the finest fabrics, who seemed, by his posture, to be one of the leaders of the embattled band. “I am no enemy, but an ally.”
The man nodded cautiously, offering no response.
“The goblins have not gone far, and are preparing to come back,” Pony said, and she turned and pointed back up the slope. “From there,” she explained. “My friend and I are preparing a few tricks for them, but we’ll not stop them fully, I fear.”
“When did this become your fight?” the merchant asked suspiciously.
“We always make battles against goblins our own,” she replied without hesitation. “Unless you would prefer that we do not help, and let the four-score goblins swarm over you.”
That took away a good measure of the man’s bluster. “How can you know they will come from the south?” he asked.
“We know goblins,” was Pony’s reply. “We know their tactics, or lack thereof. They are gathered in the south, and have not the patience to swing about and coordinate an attack from several different directions. Not when they think they have their prey cornered and defeated.”
“We’ll give ‘em a fight!” one archer declared, shaking his bow in the air, a movement followed only halfheartedly by the other ten or so holding bows. All told, the caravan could offer less than forty able-bodied fighters, Pony surmised, and a single score of bows, likely wielded by inexperienced and untrained archers, would hardly dent the goblin onslaught before hand-to-hand combat was joined about the wagons. Elbryan could fight goblins three against one, even four to one, with a reasonable expectation of victory, but to the average man or woman, a single goblin could prove too difficult a foe.
Pony knew that, and so, apparently, did the merchant, for his shoulders sagged. “What do you offer?” he asked.
“Have you any rope?”
The merchant nodded to a man nearby, and he ran to a wagon and pulled aside the tarp, revealing loops and loops of fine cord, thin and strong. Pony motioned for him to bring it. “We will try to even the odds,” she explained. “And I will slow their charge there, along the line of that stump, well within range of your bows. Shoot well.”
She took the rope from the man, then placed it on the saddle behind her and turned Greystone away.
“What is your name, woman?” the merchant asked.
“There will be time for such discussions later,” she replied, kicking the horse into a fast canter to the stump.
Up on top of the hill Elbryan was putting the last touches on his array of traps. He made a lasso and tossed it high into the branches of the dead tree, looping it expertly out to the side, then tying it off on the horn of Symphony’s saddle. Then he guided the horse to a thick copse far to the side and went about disguising the rope, not wanting to tip off the goblins.
“More company,” he heard from above, Juraviel’s voice, as he was just finishing.
The ranger looked up, peering intently, finally discerning the lithe form of the elf.
“To the east,” Juraviel explained. “A band of monks, a dozen perhaps, approaching cautiously.”
“Will they be here in time for the battle?”
Juraviel glanced to the south. “The goblins are already moving,” he explained. “Perhaps the monks could get here in time if they hurried, but I saw no sign of that. They cannot have missed the smoke, but I do not know how anxious they are to join in the fray.”
Elbryan chuckled, somehow not surprised. “Go and tell Pony,” he instructed. “Tell her to keep the stones secure and unused.”
“If the situation demands, she will not hold back the magic,” Juraviel reasoned. “Nor should she.”
“But if she does use them, I suspect we will be fighting a dozen monks soon after the goblins are dispatched,” the ranger replied grimly.
The elf worked his way quickly along the edge of the ridge, taking care to stay out of sight of the men at the circled wagons below. He relayed the message to Pony, then rushed back into position, half flying, half climbingfor his small and fragile wings were getting sorely tiredinto a tree even as the front-running goblins approached. With some relief, but not much surprise, Juraviel noted their helter-skelter formation, no more than a mob rushing into battle. As the three friends had hoped, the goblins did not pause as they crested the ridge, just rambled over the top and began their charge down the other side, not even taking the time to scout out the defenses of their intended prey.
And hardly noticing the misfortunes of some of their fellows, the elf realized, as a goblin tripped into one of Pony’s snares, loosing the bent sapling. The creature shrieked, but it was hardly heard above the battle cries of its companions, and was flipped head over heels and sent spinning into the air, to hang helplessly a few feet from the ground.
Several goblins ran right past their caught companion, paying it no heed, other than to laugh at its misfortune.
To the other side another goblin shrieked in startlement and sudden pain as it plunged into one of the small, nasty trenches Pony had quickly dug and disguised. The creature’s leg straightened violently, then bent too far forward, snapping the bone right below the kneecap. The goblin fell back, clutching its throbbing leg and howling, but again its comrades had no time for it
And then a third went down, roaring in agony, its foot punctured by a carefully concealed spike.
Taking confidence in the goblins’ inattentiveness, Juraviel took up his small bow and started picking out his shots. One unfortunate goblin stopped right at the base of the elf’s tree, leaning on the trunk as it caught its breath. Juraviel’s arrow plowed right into the top of its skull, stunning it, then dropping it to its knees, one hand still braced against the tree trunk. It died in that position.
For all the effort, though, only one in twenty of the goblins had been thus slowed, and the leading runners continued to charge down the grassy slope. Juraviel got another shot, hamstringing a goblin as it broke clear of the tree line, and then he looked out to the west, a bit farther down the hill, to the pair of trees where Nightbird prepared the largest surprise of all.
The ranger was down on one knee, behind the shield of trees, bow leveled horizontally between the trunks. He let the lead goblins get past the trap, trying to hit the main group. In addition to causing the most damage, this would bring the goblins in at the merchants in an even more scattered manner, a few at a time, he hoped.