The Goblin War

by Hilari Bell

  “Where’s Tobin?” he shouted at them. “Look for my brother, curse you!”

  The sounds of battle were fading, almost as swiftly as they’d begun. Jeriah saw scattered groups of Realm knights staggering off to one side of the battlefield or the other, He was relieved, in the small corner of his mind that wasn’t furiously searching the sea of white-painted faces, that the warriors let them go. The barbarians headed with single-minded purpose for the great gate.

  The leading edge of the barbarian force rode through. Jeriah could see them galloping onward in that other world, clearing the way for others to follow, claiming that alien place. They were probably almost as responsible as the spirits for its creation. They deserved whatever fate they—

  “There!” Trevenscourt shouted. “There he is!”

  One brown head in all that mob, one unpainted face. Tobin was easy to see, but Jeriah’s heart sank: The entire width of the barbarian army surged between him and his brother, and Tobin’s guards were leading their captive’s horse at the same brisk canter as their own. They were halfway to the gate already.

  There was nothing he could do except try.

  “Go!” Jeriah clapped his heels to Glory’s sides, and his whole troop launched themselves out of the concealing trees and into battle.

  If the barbarians had cared about killing them, they’d probably all have died in the next ten seconds. Once he was inside the moving mass of men and horses, Jeriah realized that all the barbarians were focused on the shimmering curtain ahead of them.

  The only time barbarians even launched a blow at him was when he got in their way. Jeriah thanked the Bright Gods for Glory’s agility and guided her through the charging mob like a sheepdog through its flock.

  Most of the Southlanders had fallen behind, fighting with small knots of barbarians. Jeriah hoped the fools had the sense to quit before they got themselves killed. A flash of guilt, for thrusting them into the position Commander Sower had tried to keep them out of. But most of Jeriah’s attention was fixed, not on Tobin, but on reaching the place at the opposite side of the field that Tobin and his guards would have to pass in order to enter the gate.

  Glory leaped aside from one determined rider’s path, only to put Jeriah in front of another, who cursed and lifted his sword. Jeriah traded several blows with the man. Then one of Tobin’s friends, who were still clinging doggedly to his heels, swept in and launched a blow at the barbarian’s unprotected head that toppled the man from his saddle.

  Jeriah didn’t know or care if the barbarian died. He spun his horse, looking frantically for his brother. Tobin and his guards were almost to the place where Jeriah had hoped to intercept them. If they passed it . . .

  He shouted, and Glory sprang forward once more. But there were too many rough-coated horses, too many barbarians in his path.

  Jeriah saw one barbarian raise a bow, aiming at the huddle of priests gathered on each side of the gate. His warning shout died as another barbarian swung a sword that almost cut off the archer’s arm. The priests who held that gate were the safest people on the battlefield, as long as that gate stayed open.

  But what about Tobin? Did his guards have orders to kill him if it looked like he might escape? That was horribly possible, but Jeriah couldn’t do anything about it.

  One of Tobin’s friends cried out as his horse stumbled and went down, rolling among the pounding hooves. Jeriah set his teeth and pressed on. He had only a hundred yards to go, but that ground was packed with a moving mass of bodies. Tobin and his guards were almost at the interception point.

  He wasn’t going to make it. Even as he pounded his heels against Glory’s heaving sides, despair swept over him . . . and one of the barbarian horses began to buck, right in front of Tobin’s guards.

  A hail of stones erupted from the bushes and vines on that side of the field, and the lumpy goblins they called Stoners tumbled out of the underbrush to keep it from impeding their aim.

  Jeriah shouted encouragement and urged Glory forward again, but Tobin’s guards had recognized the danger.

  They cut away from the goblins, away from the small, stubby arrows that were stampeding horses and even bringing down a few riders. The Stoners worked with deadly accuracy, and one of Tobin’s guards dropped unconscious from the saddle. But the others dragged Tobin out of the goblins’ range. It brought them closer to Jeriah, but they were also closer to the gate.

  Tobin’s friends had been pulled away, leaving Jeriah on his own, but the mob was beginning to thin. He was now galloping toward the gate, moving with the crowd, so the going was easier. But the barbarians who led Tobin’s horse were moving faster too.

  Tobin’s wrists were tied to the saddle pommel and his ankles to the stirrups. He was so near the gate that its silver light illuminated the horror and despair on his bruised face.

  Jeriah was too far off to stop them, but he was close enough to see a small form—hardly larger than a rabbit—that darted through the avalanche of pounding hooves and leaped to grab the saddle girth as Tobin’s horse ran by.

  Daroo clung to the strap for several long moments. Then Tobin’s horse bucked and shrieked and its saddle slipped sideways, carrying Tobin with it as the severed girth dumped him in a tangle of leather straps.

  His wrists were still bound, but that didn’t stop Tobin from rolling up and flinging first the sturdy saddle and then himself over Daroo’s fragile body.

  They were less than twenty feet from the glowing gate. Barbarians raced past with a heedless haste that could trample a fallen man, much less a small-boned goblin boy.

  One of Tobin’s guards rode on through the gate, but two turned back. Jeriah’s worst fears were realized when, still mounted, one of them drew his sword and prepared to bring it down on Tobin’s exposed neck.

  But the mob had thinned even more. Jeriah shouted as Glory charged forward and knocked the smaller horse off its feet.

  Tobin cried out in protest as hooves tramped and thudded around him, but he didn’t move from the crouch that sheltered his savior. Jeriah reined Glory around between Tobin and the last mounted guard.

  The man who’d fallen when Glory toppled his horse looked at Jeriah, then looked at the gate and exclaimed in alarm.

  The gate had begun to waver, silver flooding in spinning wisps over their view of the Spiritworld.

  Clutching his ribs, the barbarian staggered to his feet and ran for the Spiritworld. His mounted companion had already made the same choice and beaten him through. The handful of barbarians who remained shouted and urged their horses to a gallop.

  Peering into that strange world, Jeriah saw the leading edge of the barbarian army stagger and slow, as if their horses had stumbled into a bog. But the area around them didn’t look like marshland.

  The few barbarians who remained on this side of the gate didn’t care about the terrain on the other side. None of them wanted to waste time fighting Jeriah, rushing instead to follow their comrades as the gate flickered and dimmed.

  But it wasn’t till the last of them had hurtled through that the great portal shimmered and winked out.

  Jeriah thought he heard a distant echo, as if an immense clap of thunder had sounded in that other world so briefly connected to his. But then it was gone, and Jeriah tumbled off Glory’s back and knelt beside his brother.

  Tobin sat up too slowly, and his battered face had lines in it Jeriah hadn’t seen before. But the urgency with which he struggled to lift the saddle was pure Tobin.

  “Hold still,” said Jeriah. He cut Tobin’s wrists loose, then lifted the heavy saddle aside.

  Daroo had been crouched beneath it, in much the same posture Tobin had assumed above, but he was already stirring when Jeriah raised the saddle.

  “Are you all right?” Daroo asked Tobin. “Fa said you weren’t in any condition to go down rough, so we tried to find another way to stop you. But toward the end I didn’t see another choice. Are you all right?”

  Tobin looked from Daroo to Jeriah, and his eyes fil
led with tears.

  “I’m fine,” he whispered. “I’m better than fine, now.”

  Tobin was also leaning against his brother so heavily, Jeriah was pretty sure he couldn’t sit up on his own.

  “No, you’re not,” Jeriah said. “Of all the idiotic, ridiculous . . .”

  But someone else was approaching, and one look at the dread in Makenna’s face distracted him.

  “He’s fine,” Jeriah told her. “Or at least he’s alive, so he’ll be fine eventually. Thank you for making the gate waver like that. I’d have had a fight on my hands if you hadn’t.”

  “It wasn’t hard.” She was pale, her short hair wet with sweat. Looking past her, Jeriah saw that most of the priests who’d cast the gate were sitting down, and those who weren’t were lying down. He deduced that creating the largest gate anyone had ever considered—let alone attempted—hadn’t been easy.

  Tobin’s friends were beginning to converge from the parts of the field where the barbarians’ final rush had swept them.

  There were no barbarian warriors. Anywhere.

  The barbarians were gone, and his brother was leaning against him, hurt, perhaps, but alive.

  Koryn would have to forgive him now.

  It occurred to Jeriah that while Tobin might be the hero, he’d had a lot of help. In real life, heroism seemed to be more of a group effort than it was in the ballads.

  Jeriah opened his mouth to tell Tobin what an idiot he was for trying to do this all by himself—and nearly getting killed in the process—but Makenna’s cold voice interrupted.

  “I’ve seen more than one underplanned, reckless, half-assed stunt—but this one beats them all!”

  Jeriah closed his mouth and listened with amused respect to a general’s furious harangue about sacrifice tactics, and leaving your ill-informed allies to scramble after you, trying to fill in the conspicuous gaps in your plan. It was a better, fiercer scolding than a brother’s. And as she reached out to touch Tobin’s face with a gentleness that belied every harsh word, Jeriah realized, with a surge of stunned delight, that it sprang from the same source.

  This girl loved his brother. He didn’t think Tobin had realized it yet, and he was certain she hadn’t, but Makenna was going to be his sister-in-law.

  She was currently comparing Tobin’s strategic ability—unfavorably—to that of a bunch of rabbits running in circles.

  His father would consider her a practical person, and the girls would love anyone Tobin brought home. His mother . . . Jeriah thought of Makenna at war with his mother and cringed. Then he thought of what might happen if she allied with his mother, and his blood ran cold.

  Maybe Jeriah could join the sunsguard. Since their mad plan had worked, Commander Sower would probably forgive him. And even if he didn’t, someone was bound to mount an expedition to cross the great desert and explore the lands the barbarians had left behind. He would miss Koryn . . . but why should he have to miss her? With her insatiable thirst for knowledge, maybe she’d be willing to join him. An exploratory expedition would need clerks.

  If it didn’t occur to the Hierarch, Jeriah would have to suggest it. The great desert was just about the right amount of space to put between himself and the chaos that Makenna and his mother could create if they got together to . . . to enforce the goblins’ entry into human society? Or find something to do with those lesser barbarians Tobin was so concerned about? Or something even wilder and worse?

  Judging by Daroo’s disgusted expression, the goblin boy had observed the same thing about Tobin and Makenna that Jeriah had, and Daroo was young enough to disapprove. Jeriah owed the goblins enough to stay for a while, at least. And if new in-laws, chaos, and goblin court battles weren’t sufficiently interesting to keep him occupied—or if they became too horrific—a desert full of adventure would always be waiting.

  About the Author

  HILARI BELL used to work as a reference librarian, but she now writes science fiction and fantasy for kids and teens from her home base in Denver, Colorado. Hilari’s favorite activity is camping, when she spends all her time reading and hiking. She says, “Camping is the only time I can get in enough reading. Well, I take that back—when it comes to reading, there’s no such thing as enough.” You can visit her online at www.sfwa.org/members/bell.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  Also by HILARI BELL

  THE GOBLIN WOOD

  THE GOBLIN GATE

  and

  The Knight & Rogue Novels

  The Last Knight

  Rogue’s Home

  Player’s Ruse

  and

  The Prophecy

  The Wizard Test

  A Matter of Profit

  Credits

  Jacket art © 2011 by Cliff Nielsen

  Jacket design by Hilary Zarycky

  Copyright

  The Goblin War

  Copyright © 2011 by Hilari Bell

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bell, Hilari.

  The goblin war / by Hilari Bell. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Sequel to: The goblin gate.

  Summary: After crossing over from the Otherworld where they have been trapped in mortal danger, Tobin and Makenna must figure out how to help Jeriah stop an army of barbarians from taking over their Realm.

  ISBN 978-0-06-165105-2 (trade bdg.)

  [1. Goblins—Fiction. 2. Magic—Fiction. 3. War—Fiction. 4. Fantasy.] I. Title.

  PZ7.B38894Gnr 2011

  [F]—dc22

  0210040322

  CIP

  AC

  * * *

  EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780062093332

  11 12 13 14 15 LP/RRDB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  FIRST EDITION

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