Demon Wars 01 - The Demon Awakens

by The Demon Awakens [lit]

  "Aw, who's to care for the folk o' Dundalis?" asked a frightened Cric. "They never cared any for us."

  "Yeah," added Chipmunk.

  "It's more than for them," said Paulson. "For ourselves. If goblins're coming hard, then we'd be wise to go south for a bit."

  "Can't we just go south then, anyway?" asked Cric.

  "Shut yer mouth and keep yer sword ready," Paulson ordered. "Goblins ain't so tough - it's their numbers ye got to fear. And their friends," he added grimly, "for goblins and giants get on well."

  The other two were trembling.

  "But all we got to do is see them afore they see us," the burly man went on. "Might be that there's a bounty on goblin ears."

  That seemed to catch the pair's attention.

  The three went back to the trap first, Paulson unceremoniously cutting the goblin down, then slicing off its ears and putting them in a pouch, pausing only to note that the creature was surprisingly well armed for one of its kind and that it wore an insignia on its leather jerkin, a black emblem of a batlike creature on a light gray background. Paulson didn't think too much of it, figuring that the jerkin was stolen anyway.

  "Not been here more than a few hours," Paulson announced, after a quick inspection, of the body. "If this one traveled with friends, then they're likely still about." The creature's tracks through the copse were not hard to follow, but any marks it had made on the open field beyond had been erased by the wind. Still, just by the direction from which it had entered the copse, the trackers could make a reasonable guess about where it had come from, and so they set off quickly across the field and into the forest.

  Chipmunk found the first goblin sign - three sets of tracks with one branching back the way the three men had come, the other two moving off down a different fork in the trail.

  "Well, now we're outnumbering them," Paulson said wickedly, the big man never fearful of a fight.

  Less than a mile on, they spotted the goblin pair, resting amid a tumble of rocks on a forested hillside. Paulson drew out his large sword and motioned for Cric to go in at his side, while Chipmunk was to go to the higher ground around to the right, getting an angle for his dagger throws.

  "Hard and fast?" Cric whispered.

  Paulson considered the words, then shook his head. He held Cric back, hiding behind some scrub, while agile Chipmunk worked his way into position. Then Paulson started out, slowly, pacing evenly and calmly toward the goblin pair. He and Cric were within a dozen strides before the goblins spotted them, and then how the creatures howled!

  They jumped to their feet, one producing a long, iron-tipped spear, the other a well-fashioned short sword. Paulson was surprised that these two, like their dead comrade, were so well armed and also that their jerkins so closely resembled the one on the dead goblin, even down to the emblem. The large man's knowledge of goblins simply didn't reconcile with this sight before him.

  Nor did the goblins act in any manner that Paulson would have expected. He and Cric came on fast, but only one goblin, the spear wielder, jumped out to meet them, blocking the way, covering its companion's sudden retreat.

  Both swordsmen came in fast; the goblin swished the spear back and forth, the weapon's sharp tip scratching Cric's arm and holding him at bay. Paulson stepped inside the range and caught the spear by the shaft and rushed up its length, quickly and efficiently embedding his sword deep in the creature's chest.

  "Two more ears!" Cric laughed, but Paulson wasn't thinking along those lines just then.

  "Get him, Chipmunk!" he called.

  The fleeing goblin angled up the hill, and Chipmunk moved to intercept, sliding to his knees and sending a pair of daggers spinning at the goblin. The creature managed to dodge one, but the other caught it on the hip and hung there:

  The goblin squealed but hardly slowed, even when Chipmunk's next blade stuck deep into its shoulder.

  Then the goblin was out of throwing range, and Chipmunk fell in with Paulson and Cric, taking up the chase. Tall Cric was by far the fastest of the three and he forged ahead, gaining steadily on the goblin as it scrambled down the back side of the hill, then over the wooded floor of the next valley. The creature went up over a rise, Cric in close pursuit, and Paulson howled out for his companion to "take the damned thing down!"

  Cric went up to the top of the hill, eager, sword ready, and then, to the surprise of his two friends, he skidded to a stop.

  When Paulson and Chipmunk caught up to him, they understood his hesitance, for there, in a wide valley below the ridge, loomed the largest army that any of the three had ever seen - and both Cric and Paulson had spent a few years in the Kingsmen. All the valley was filled with tents and campfires; a thousand, thousand forms milled about down below, most seeming about goblin sized, some even smaller, but with a fair number of fomorian giants among them. Even more surprising to the three men were the war engines, a dozen at least, great catapults and spear-throwing ballistae, and huge corkscrew devices, obviously for burrowing through fortified walls.

  "How far south were you planning to move?" Cric asked Paulson.

  To the barrel-chested man at that moment, Behren seemed a distinct possibility.

  "I'm knowing that ye're up to something no good!" the centaur roared. "An assumption I'm sure to make every time I glance upon yer ugly faces!" Bradwarden had heard the stirring in the small ramshackle hut and, upon investigation, had found the three trappers packing their gear, stripping everything from the shack walls.

  The three men glanced nervously at one another. Even huge Paulson seemed a small thing indeed when standing before the eight-hundred-pound centaur - and the creature's demeanor at that moment made him even more imposing.

  "Well?" boomed Bradwarden. "Have ye an explanation?"

  "We're leaving, that's all," said Chipmunk.

  "Leaving?"

  "Going south," Cric added, ready to concoct an appropriate lie, but when Paulson glared at him, the tall, bald man went silent.

  "What did ye do, then?" demanded Bradwarden. "I know ye - ye'd not be leaving if ye hadn't angered someone." The centaur backed off a bit, then smiled, thinking he had it figured out. "Ye got Nightbird on yer trail," he reasoned.

  "We ain't seen the ranger in weeks," Paulson protested.

  "But ye've seen his friends," said Bradwarden. "Might be that ye've killed one o' his friends."

  "No such thing!" growled Paulson.

  "Goblins ain't no friend o' the Nightbird!" added Chipmunk before he could properly think his words through. Cric pushed the skinny man hard, and Paulson's glare promised Chipmunk that he meant to do him even more harm for his slip.

  Bradwarden backed off a step, eyeing the three curiously. "Goblins?"

  "Did I say goblins?" Chipmunk asked innocently, trying to backtrack.

  "Ye did!" Bradwarden roared, ending any forthcoming lies from the man and his two companions. "Ye said goblins, and if there be goblins about, and ye know o' them, then tell yer tale in full, or be sure that I'll trample ye down to the dirt!"

  "Goblins," Paulson said grimly. "Thousands of goblins. We seen them, and want no part o' them." He went on to recount the tale in full, and ended by dropping four goblin ears to the ground before Bradwarden.

  Paulson then asked the centaur to be gone so that he and his friends might finish their packing and be on their way, but Bradwarden wouldn't let them get away that easily. They would go with him, the centaur decided, to find Elbryan and Pony and tell their tale once again. The three trappers weren't keen on the idea of wasting a single moment, but neither were they ready to battle the fierce centaur.

  They found the pair and Brother Avelyn at Elbryan's camp just north of Dundalis, nestled within the shelter of a grove of closely growing spruce trees.

  Bradwarden called out long before his group approached - Elbryan could set a trap as well as any elf, and the ranger was always on his guard. The ranger invited the centaur in, of course, but was surprised indeed to find his half-horse friend in the company of such
rogues.

  "I believe that Mr. Paulson there has a tale ye'll be wanting to hear," Bradwarden explained.

  Paulson laid it out simply and to the point, and his words hit especially hard on Pony and on Elbryan. For Pony, the possibility of an approaching goblin army sent her mind careening back to the day of the tragedy, threatening to overwhelm her with feelings she had only recently reconciled.

  For Elbryan, though, the trapper's tale was more complicated. While he, too, carried those terrible memories within him, he also had his sense of duty. How many times had the ranger told himself that he would not allow such a tragedy to befall Dundalis again? And here, before him, loomed the threat, the same threat. For Pony, it took great strength to master her fears, to keep her wits about her; for Elbryan, it was simply a matter of duty and pride.

  The ranger took a stick from the edge of the low fire and drew a rough map of the area on the ground. "Show me the exact location," he ordered Paulson, and the man readily complied, understanding that if Elbryan wasn't satisfied, the ranger would probably force him to go along, the better to investigate.

  Elbryan paced about the campfire, looking down often at the map.

  "They must be told," Pony said.

  Elbryan nodded.

  "On the word of these three?" Bradwarden asked incredulously.

  The ranger looked from Paulson to the centaur, then nodded again. "It is never too soon to issue a warning," he said.

  Paulson appeared vindicated, but Elbryan wasn't ready to concede that the man's words were true. "I will go north," the ranger said, "to this place described."

  "I'll not go with ye," Paulson protested.

  Elbryan shook his head, "I will fly fast, too fast for you." He looked at Bradwarden, and the centaur nodded, understanding the plea and more than ready to go along with his ranger friend.

  "You," Elbryan said to Paulson, "and your friends will go to End-o'-the-World, bearing word of warning."

  Paulson held out his hand to quiet Cric and Chipmunk, their protests and fears bubbling up in the form of unintelligible whimpers. "And then?" Paulson wanted to know.

  "Where your heart takes you," Elbryan replied. "You owe me nothing, I say, beyond this one favor."

  "We're owing ye even that?" Paulson asked skeptically.

  Elbryan's grim nod was all the reply that the man was going to get, a poignant reminder of that day in the trappers' shack when the ranger had shown mercy.

  "End-o'-the-World," Paulson agreed angrily. "And we'll tell the fools, but I'm not thinking that they'll be listening."

  Elbryan nodded and looked at Pony. "Weedy Meadow," he instructed. "You and Avelyn."

  "And what of Dundalis?" the woman asked.

  "Bradwarden and I will return to Dundalis with word of the goblins," the ranger explained. "But first, we will return here." The ranger pointed down at the map with his stick, to a spot on the map northwest of Dundalis, a point nearly equidistant from Dundalis and Weedy Meadow, and not much further from End-o'-the-World.

  "The grove?" Pony asked.

  Elbryan nodded. "A diamond-shaped grove of fir trees," he explained to the trappers.

  "I'm knowing the spot," said Paulson, "and not much caring for it."

  Elbryan wasn't surprised by that response - likely the same elven magic that drew the ranger to the grove made a rogue like Paulson feel uncomfortable around it. "One week, then," the ranger explained. He looked to Paulson. "If you go straight to the south from End-o'-the-World, be certain that the folk of the town know where I can be found."

  Paulson waved him away, the man seeming quite displeased by it all.

  Elbryan motioned to Bradwarden. "Symphony is about," the ranger said confidently.

  Before the next dawn, the ranger and the centaur were racing to the north, Bradwarden working hard to keep up with magnificent Symphony.

  Avelyn and Pony, walking side by side, set a more gradual pace, for they figured that they could arrive in Weedy Meadow before the nightfall.

  The road was a bit longer for Paulson, Cric, and Chipmunk, but though the latter two pressed Paulson hard for desertion, telling him every step of the way that they should abandon End-o'-the-World and go straight on to the south - all the way to Palmaris, perhaps - the big man, duty-bound for the first time in years, would hear nothing of it. He had given his word to the ranger that he would go and warn the folk of End-o'-the-World, and so he would.

  Pony and Avelyn had underestimated the distance and camped outside Weedy Meadow that night, the monk reasoning that it would be better for them to go into town with such grim warnings during the brightness of day. They rested easily in the quiet forest, having learned much of camp building from Elbryan over the last few days, and Pony was soon asleep.

  She awakened to the screams of Avelyn, the fat man in the throes of a nightmare, rolling about on the ground. Finally Pony managed to stir him from his slumber, and the look upon his face as he stared at her was one of madness, one that sent chills up and down Pony's spine.

  Avelyn lifted his hand and opened it, revealing several small stones, the burned smoky quartz that he had taken from the corpse of Brother Quintall.

  "I felt that they had magic left in them," the fat monk explained. "Distance sight is their trademark."

  "You looked for the goblins," Pony reasoned.

  "And I saw them, my girl," said Avelyn, "a vast host. Paulson did not exaggerate!"

  Pony breathed hard and nodded.

  "But that was not all!" Avelyn said to her, grabbing and shaking her. "I was compelled beyond the army. Compelled I say, pulled by the magic of the stones, by a distant power that long ago attuned itself to these special stones."

  Pony looked at him curiously, not really understanding.

  "Something terrible is awake in Corona, my girl!" Avelyn spouted. "The dactyl walks Corona!"

  The words were nothing new to Pony; Avelyn had been making such claims for a very long time. Indeed, he had spouted similar words in the common room in Tinson on the night Pony had first met him. This time, though, there was something more to the claim, something personal. Always Avelyn had been firm in his belief, but now his expression showed him to be far beyond simple belief. At that moment, in the light of a dying fire, Pony had no doubt that Avelyn's knowledge of the awakened dactyl was now something more than the suspicions aroused by ancient texts. It was something entirely personal.

  "So there ye have it," Bradwarden said quietly, ominously, he and Elbryan looking out over a vast field of dark tents. "Them three wasn't lying."

  "Or even exaggerating," Elbryan added in subdued tones. When first he had crested this ridge, looking down upon the massive army setting its camp, the ranger's heart had dropped. How could the folk of Dundalis, Weedy Meadow, and End-o'-the-World resist such an army, even if all of them stood together behind fortified walls?

  They could not, of course.

  And it was quite obvious that this force was moving southward. The army was many miles below the spot where Paulson, Cric, and Chipmunk had indicated they had seen it, and the swath the goblins and giants had cut in the forest on the northern side of the encampment was visible even from this southern ridge.

  "We'll find us a hole to hide in," Bradwarden said calmly. "Goblins been through afore, and'll be through again. I've waited them out afore, and I'll wait them out again!."

  "We need to know more of their intentions," Elbryan said suddenly, drawing a curious stare from the centaur.

  "Not so hard to figure out what a goblin means to do," Bradwarden replied dryly.

  Elbryan was shaking his head before the centaur ever finished. "This is different," he explained. "Goblins and giants should not be together in so large a group. And working in concert," he added, sweeping his arm across the panorama of the encampment, indicating the disciplined manner in which the creatures were organizing their camp. "And what of those?" he went on, pointing to a dozen huge war engines circled on the far end of the camp.

  "They're a bit hungri
er this time, is all," replied Bradwarden. "So they'll kill a few more than usual, maybe sack two towns instead of one. It's an old tale, me friend, repeated again and again, though always do ye human folk seem surprised when it falls on yer heads."

  Elbryan didn't believe it, not this time, not in looking at that military camp. He glanced to the left, taking note that the sun was touching the horizon. "I have to go," he remarked.

  "Do ye now?" the centaur asked sarcastically.

  Elbryan slipped down from Symphony and handed his reins to Bradwarden. "Scout the area," he said. "See if any branches of the army have moved past our location. I will return at the setting of the moon, to this spot or to the back of the next ridge if the goblins have claimed this area as their own."

  Bradwarden knew that it was futile to argue with the stubborn ranger.

  Elbryan made his way from tree to tree, to bush and to the back of hills, moving ever closer to the great army. Soon, goblin scouts were about him, walking through the trees, talking in their whining voices, complaining about this or that, about the fit of their uniforms or some particularly nasty commander who talked more with his whip than his voice. Elbryan couldn't make out every word; the goblins were using the language spoken by the common folk of Corona, but the creatures' accents were so thick, their slang so heavy, that the ranger could only get a general impression of their conversation.

  That impression did little to calm Elbryan's fears. The goblins were speaking of being a part of an army, that much was certain.

  Elbryan got his next surprise an hour later. The ranger was up in a tree, lying low across a thick branch barely ten feet from the ground when a group of soldiers walked into the clearing below the tree. Three were goblins, but the fourth, holding the torch, was a creature the ranger had never before seen, a dwarf, barrelchested but spindly limbed, wearing a red cap.

  A cap red with blood, Elbryan knew, for though he had never seen a powrie before, he remembered well the childhood tales of the wicked dwarves.

  The four decided to rest right at the base of the wide-spreading tree. Fortunately for Elbryan, none of the creatures bothered to look up into the tangle of branches.