Tarah Woodblade (21 page)

Djeri shrugged. “Fine, but hear me, mule. If you take off with our things, we’ll hunt you down. And I’m not afraid of eating mule steaks.”

The mule’s eyes narrowed.

“Alright,” Tarah said. She took her quiver from the mule’s saddle and slung it over her shoulder. “I’m off, then. Head straight north from here and you’ll see the path to my house.”

“Remember, you have a half hour,” Djeri said. He placed the full helm on his head. She could barely see his eyes through the slits in the metal. “Be quick. I don’t want to have to take them all on by myself.”

Tarah nodded and ran ahead, her staff held loosely. Her thoughts churned. Djeri was putting a lot of faith in her and he barely knew her. She had to take out a lot of the goblinoids before he arrived, or he wouldn’t survive. The thought of his death disturbed her more than she expected.

She focused on finding an archer.

The secret to taking out a bowman with a staff is to get as close to him as possible without being seen
, her grampa instructed.

“Yeah-yeah,” Tarah mumbled and pushed his thoughts away. She knew what to do.

Tarah headed towards her house, keeping her footfalls as silent as possible. At the same time, she listened for movement and looked for tracks. Most of the ones she saw were old and of no current use, but she began to see a pattern. The old tracks were fainter, the footfalls light as if the goblinoids had been more careful about leaving obvious tracks. But the newer the tracks, the sloppier they were.

Tarah touched a few of them and sure enough, her suspicions turned out to be correct. From the flashes of thought that passed through her mind at each track, Tarah understood that the six months of waiting had taken a toll on the goblinoids. In the beginning, all of them had been fervent believers. They were diligent because their mistress had commanded them to follow Clobber to this place and wait for Tarah Woodblade’s return. Then time passed and their patience had worn thin.

They had run out of provisions and become unruly. There had been fifteen of them in the beginning, but Clobber had been forced to kill four of them to keep the others in line. The more time went by, the more apathetic the goblinoids had become. Now they had to search farther and farther to find food and they stopped bothering to cover their tracks.

She began thinking of ways to use that against them. Tarah was so focused in her thoughts that she didn’t sense the first goblin coming until they were both in sight of each other. They both blinked stupidly for a moment before Tarah darted towards him.

The goblin let loose a short squeak of fear before unsheathing a rusty short sword. The creature was fairly small, perhaps four feet tall, and scrawny, its mottled green skin stretched across a crooked frame. Its baggy clothing was cinched by one of her Grampa Rolf’s belts.

Tarah felt a moment of disappointment that it wasn’t one of the archers before she swung her staff. She leaned into the blow, focusing her weight onto the tip. The goblin tried to defend itself, but the hard red wood knocked aside its hasty block. Her staff caught the goblin in the side of the head.

There was a muted sound, like a rock striking a rotted stump. The goblin’s feet flew out from under it and its head struck the ground with enough force that, if it hadn’t already been dead, the impact alone would have killed it.

Tarah didn’t bother to check this one’s body. There would be time for that later. She dragged it into a bush and kept on, her mind refocused. She had limited time to find and kill the archers before Djeri arrived at her door.

She followed the goblin’s tracks for a while and learned that it had been with some others, but had left them to hunt on its own. Evidently the other two were gorc archers. They had shot a rabbit and had refused to share their kill with the goblin. They were going to cook it and eat it far away from their leader Clobber so he wouldn’t try to claim a share.

Two archers. Tarah nodded, biting her lip in concern. She headed in their direction, having a good idea where they were from the pictures in the goblin’s memory. This could be tricky. To take out both archers she would need to catch them by surprise. Hopefully they were eating next to each other.

The smell of smoke soon caught her nostrils and Tarah slowed down. She moved towards the cook fire on silent feet. The scent of the burnt fur caused Tarah to grimace in distaste. The gorcs hadn’t even bothered to skin their catch first.

She heard them before she saw them. The two gorcs were muttering to each other, arguing about how to divide their meal. They were hunched over an impromptu spit, their fire set in the middle of a pile of leaves. Tarah frowned, surprised that six months of messy fires like that hadn’t burned the forest down.

She was pleased by one thing, though. The archers were standing close together. Their bows were lying on the ground behind them. Tarah shifted from tree to tree, making sure their backs were to her as she closed in. Finally she was as close to them as she could get. It was time to break cover and attack.

Tarah moved from behind the tree and crept towards them, feeling a surge of fear. She became angry with herself. Why did this happen? Why was it that every time she faced danger, she became a coward? Tarah Woodblade didn’t feel fear!

She was almost within striking distance when one of them glanced over his shoulder. Its forehead was covered by a moonrat eye tattoo similar to the one on Ursus. The gorc’s eyes met hers and it cried out. Tarah shoved her fear aside and ran forward, her staff in mid-swing.

It raised its arms defensively. Her blow knocked it to the ground and from the sound of its cry of pain, Tarah was pretty sure that she had broken both limbs. She spun, her staff in motion, but its companion had backed out of reach. This second gorc giggled at her, unconcerned for its friend. Unlike the others, its tattoo was on its temple.

“The Woodblade!” it said in recognition, a feverish gleam in its eye. It held a narrow sword in its hand. Tarah felt a chill of warning. She had not heard it draw the blade. The sword was clean and made of good steel, telling her that it was something stolen during the war. It twirled the sword with a flourish, showing practiced hands. “The mistress will be pleased!”

“I’m sure she will be,” Tarah said. She spun her staff several times and stopped in attack posture. “You can tell her all about me, soon.”

She sent two swift strikes at the gorc, but to her chagrin, it dodged both blows and darted forward with a counter strike. Tarah was barely able to bring her staff back around to block the attack. This gorc was good. She couldn’t afford to mess around.

“Oh, the rewards will be great!” the gorc taunted. “When I bring Clobber your head, he wi-!”

Tarah dove forward, her staff a blur. The gorc blocked the first strike, but the follow up snapped its elbow. She pivoted and sent four more strikes in. To the gorc’s credit, it managed to dodge one of them, but she scored heavy hits to its hip, its knee, and finally the wrist of its sword hand.

The gorc looked shocked as the hilt of the sword fell from its useless fingers. Tarah spun and swung her staff in one more heavy blow, destroying the gorc’s face. It fell dead.

“Die, Woodblade,” said another voice. Tarah turned just in time to see that the first gorc was standing. It pulled an arrow back on its bow.

She had been wrong. She had misjudged the blow and hadn’t broken its arms. That was the thought that passed through Tarah’s mind as it released the arrow. To her relief, the arrow shot out to the far right and she saw that she hadn’t been completely wrong after all. The arm that held the bow hadn’t broken, but the wrist on its other arm was bent at an odd angle. It was surprising that the gorc had been able to pull back an arrow at all. Perhaps the stress it was under had numbed it to the pain. The gorc reached back to draw another arrow, but its hand missed the quiver.

Tarah didn’t give it a chance to try again. She drove the butt of her staff deep into its abdomen. It fell forward and she delivered a finishing blow to the back of the gorcs head, cracking its skull.

“Now I have a bow,” she said. But as she picked up its bow, she frowned in distaste. The orc’s bow was warped. The stupid thing hadn’t cared for the weapon and had let it sit wet. Tarah snarled and cast the useless thing aside, then looked for the other bow.

Fortunately, the other gorc had taken better care of his weapon. The bow wasn’t of great quality, but it was at least serviceable. She paused for a moment, looking down at its corpse.

The creature had been exceptional for a gorc. What had made it so? How had it become so skilled with the blade? For a moment she felt compelled to reach out and touch the gorc’s ruined face. Part of her wanted to try and absorb memories from its corpse in the same way that she absorbed them from tracks. There had to be a way to understand such a creature. There had to be a way to use it.

Tarah stopped her hand from touching the corpse. That last thought hadn’t come from her own mind. Tarah glared warily at her staff. Sure enough, it had absorbed some of the gorc’s blood

There were times she wondered about the weapon. It seemed as though it had desires of its own or some unknown purpose beyond tracking. She felt it strongest after a kill. The staff was eager. It wanted something more from the gorc, and drinking its blood was only part of it.

The fire
, said her papa’s voice and Tarah shook her head, pushing the uncomfortable thoughts aside. He was right. She should put out the gorcs’ sloppy fire, but another concern popped up. How much time had passed? Had it been a half hour yet?

 With a curse, she tossed aside the half-cooked rabbit carcass and stomped out the flames. It would be best to bury the embers, but she settled for kicking the leaves away from the spot before continuing on.

There were seven goblinoids left and two of them were archers. She needed to find them fast. She touched the tracks of the two gorcs she’d killed, but only felt their desire to eat their kill and hide it from their leader. She circled around towards her house, keeping to the trees.

Her ears caught the sound of running through the leaves and she turned in time to see a gorc running to the north and west of her. There was a bow in its hand and a full quiver on its back. Tarah shoved her staff through the harness on her back and started after it, drawing an arrow.

Djeri paced back and forth next to the mule, grumbling, his great mace heavy in his hands. He hated this part of battle; the waiting. Every moment that went by brought a jumble of emotions: anticipation for the fight, worry, fear of death, relief that the fighting had not yet begun. This time was worse than usual. He was still trying to process the enigma that was Tarah Woodblade.

He kicked at a rock, sending it tumbling through the leaves. They called him Djeri the Looker. It was an odd name, badly worded, but he was proud of it. He was observant. It was a gift he’d always had. He could look at a situation and immediately recognize the intricacies. It was the same with people. If Djeri just spent a few hours with a person, he could usually understand them.

Tarah Woodblade, though. That girl was different. Every time he thought he had her figured out, she turned him on his ear. Mostly she was smart and confident, a seasoned adventurer. But at times she was insecure and frightened, like a young girl out on the trail for the first time. At times she came off as fake. For a while he had been sure she was acting or putting on a show, as if her entire persona was a carnival act. But he couldn’t deny her skill. The girl knew what she was doing. She was able to learn things from tracks that Djeri found hard to believe. He needed to know more about the girl’s history.

He let the head of his mace hit the ground and lifted his visor, eyeing the mule. “What do you think, Neddy? What’s with Tarah?” The mule snorted and bent down, pushing leaves aside with his lips, looking for something to eat underneath.

Djeri narrowed his eyes. Neddy knew what he was asking. It was smarter than it looked. Tarah had seen that.

He sighed. It was time to go. He patted the mule’s neck. “Listen here. You stay like Tarah told you. We’ll be back before dark.”

He set off in the direction Tarah had shown him, setting the weight of his mace onto his shoulder. His anxiety began to fade. He found the weight of his mail and weapon comforting as he walked. It was a reminder. He had work to do.

That was the thing most people didn’t understand about the Defense Guild. Most people thought the armor they wore was about safety. There were even academy graduates that thought wearing platemail was a cowardly choice.

During the war, he’d heard jeers from his friends, saying men in the Defense Guild were just afraid of getting hit. No, it just allowed them to get hit harder. They could take heavy blows and keep fighting, taking down foes that were larger or stronger or even more skilled. In that way, the platemail they wore was just as much a weapon as their swords and axes.

Tarah hadn’t understood either. The night before, when he’d refused to take off his armor, it wasn’t because of some sense of prudishness. It wasn’t embarrassment over her seeing him unclothed, despite what he had told her that night. Why had he told her that anyway? The image of Tarah’s body flashed through his mind and Djeri’s face flushed. He shoved the thought away. It truly hadn’t been because of some insecurity over being in that defenseless state, sitting at the fireside next to a statuesque . . .

Djeri’s steps slowed briefly, his mind wandering. Then he growled and strode forward faster. He took the mace off of his shoulder and let the weight of it rest in his hands. No, his reluctance to remove his armor had been about the code of the Defense Guild. He was on a job. His armor was his tool and he had work to do. That’s all.

He churned through the leaves, swinging his mace from time to time as he walked. It was going to feel good to crush something again. He came across a large rotting stump and, on a whim, swung at it. With a satisfying thump and a hail of splinters, the mace sunk into the wood.

Djeri nodded in satisfaction, but when he tried to remove it, the head was stuck. With a curse, he pulled on it and worked the mace back and forth, wrenching it free. He looked down at the mace in his hands.