Emily shivered, wondering which of the two stories was actually true. This world didn’t have television and reporters to bring people the news directly into their homes; it didn’t even have newspapers, just broadsheet readers and heralds. A rumor could grow completely out of proportion by the time it crossed from one end of the Allied Lands to the other, creating a myth that bore no resemblance to reality. No wonder that the Allied Lands didn’t seem to take necromancy and the necromancers quite seriously. There was always an air of detachment in the news she heard rather than the immediacy she remembered from back home.
Jade frowned thoughtfully. “No one has ever tried to replant the area?”
“They’ve tried,” Miles said. “It’s never worked. I think that some of the nearby countries believe the desert is actually expanding, very slowly. Given time, it may swallow up the entire continent.”
“I hope that’s not true,” Emily said, shaking her head in disbelief. Back home, they’d managed to stop deserts from advancing, but here there was magic involved. Wild magic tainted with necromancy, if the second story was the true one. “What are they going to do if the desert reaches their Kingdoms?”
“Pray,” Harkin said. He chuckled darkly. “What else can they do?”
“Sergeant,” a voice shouted. Bran and Cat had gone ahead of the rest of the team. “The tent!”
Harkin sprang forward, running ahead of Emily and Jade. They followed him, running around the edge of the forest, only to see a pile of ashes where their tent–and supplies–had been. Emily stared in numb horror as the Sergeant slowed to a halt, looking down at the ashes. Their rucksacks, their food, their blankets ... they had all been destroyed. And there was a strange, almost oily scent in the air.
“Hellfire,” Sergeant Harkin muttered. He glanced from side to side, sniffing the air. “Draw your swords, all of you. And ready your defensive spells.”
Emily obeyed automatically. The short sword she’d been given hadn’t been charmed to be unstoppable–apparently, there was no such thing as an unstoppable weapon–but she knew how to use it, she reminded herself. She was tempted to also draw her dagger as the team looked around, searching for possible threats. The strange stink in the air was growing stronger.
“We’re sitting targets here,” Harkin said after a moment. “When I give the word, move back towards the tunnel at speed, but keep your swords at the ready. If something appears that isn’t one of us, hit first and ask questions later. And keep your voices down.”
Emily glanced at Jade, but he looked as puzzled as she was. If their tents had been burned, someone or something was hunting them, probably something intelligent. Was this a test of some kind, Emily asked herself silently as she braced herself to move, or was it real? She couldn’t believe that the Sergeants would throw away everything in the rucksacks, including the potions, just for a test. But they’d surprised her before.
“That stink is almost certainly goblins,” Miles muttered. He was making passes through the air, casting spying spells in the hopes of catching sight of their enemy. “And probably backed up by Orcs. I think there’s definitely some Orc in the air.”
“Or maybe they’re just trying to confuse us,” Harkin muttered back. He raised his voice. “Jade, Emily, Cat: follow Miles back to the tunnel. The rest of you, stay here at the ready.”
Emily felt her heart pounding in her chest as she started to move, eyes darting around desperately for unseen threats. Goblins, according to the books she’d read, could be clever and dangerous; Orcs were rarely clever, but those that were tended to be smarter than the average human. And both semi-human races infested lands held by the necromancers. She kept looking around, seeing nothing, until they reached the tunnel. Miles jumped back as blades lashed out at him, trying to drive them back from the tunnel mouth.
“Damn it,” Jade said. He raised his sword as blades kept slashing out of the tunnel’s mouth. “We’re being hunted!”
Emily looked back at the forest and saw a small wave of inhuman figures appearing out of the darkness. “Use your magic,” Harkin ordered sharply. Unlike the Redshirts, he didn’t sound as though he were on the verge of panic. “Take down as many of them as you can, now!”
“Use Berserker,” Jade said as the goblins advanced. The largest barely came up to Emily’s abdomen, but there was nothing weak about them. They were carrying swords that were bigger than they were. “You cannot fight them without it.”
Emily took a deep breath, concentrated and triggered the spell.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
THE SPELL TOOK EFFECT AT ONCE. Time seemed to slow down as Emily lifted her sword, seeing the goblins inching towards them in terrifying slow motion. Part of her mind noted that they were ugly creatures, humanoid with big eyes, bigger ears and very sharp teeth; the rest of her focused on fighting them. She sprang forward as the goblins lifted their weapons and sliced through the lead goblin’s neck. The goblin collapsed, greenish blood leaking from its neck, but Emily barely noticed–or cared. Berserker hummed through her system as she threw herself at the goblins, moving far faster than the tiny savages could hope to match. It was easy to avoid their stabbing blows and slice them apart.
A goblin lashed out at her, but he moved slowly and Emily found it easy to dodge. Her confidence was building rapidly, along with her strength; she slammed her sword into the goblin’s makeshift armor and sent the little creature stumbling backwards. Another goblin leapt in and cut her with a knife, but Emily felt nothing. Berserker countered pain while the spell was operating, leaving her unheeding of the blood trickling down her arm. She knew that she would pay for that afterwards–the sense of invulnerability was an illusion–but she found it hard to care. The spell held her firmly in its grasp.
Magic flared beside her as Jade and the rest of the team fought with their various powers. Goblins died in flame or froze solid before toppling over and dying. The Sergeants fought with a cold precision and power that was all the more terrifying for having no Berserker aiding them. Emily felt her blood pound in her ears as she lashed out at the final goblin and cut it apart, just before the world started to spin around her ...
The world faded to black.
The next thing she noticed was that the sun was starting to set. She was lying on the ground, dazed. Her head was spinning and she felt incredibly weak, while her body ached with pain. It took her several minutes to remember the goblins and the blurred memories of the fight, where she’d killed at least a dozen creatures while lost in the battle-trance of Berserker. The memories rose up in front of her and she swallowed hard, unable to repress the feeling of sickness at what she’d done. She’d killed intelligent creatures, creatures that might be cousins to humanity ... and she’d done so without even caring. Even the knowledge that the goblins would have killed them all if they hadn’t been killed first didn’t make her feel any better.
Jade knelt down beside her and tapped her shoulder. “Are you all right?”
“Dizzy,” Emily said after a moment. Berserker took a lot out of her; in hindsight, it might not have been the best choice of spell for the battle. But without it ... would she have been able to fight so effectively? “What ... what happened?”
“You killed a dozen goblins, then collapsed,” Jade said. “I think you won the battle single-handedly. We killed the remainder and then fled away from the tunnels, carrying you with us.”
“Keep your voice down,” a gruff voice added. Emily twisted her neck–it was suddenly difficult to move–and saw Sergeant Harkin standing there. “We’re still being hunted.”
Emily tried to stumble to her feet, only to be held down gently by Jade. “You need to drink another potion,” Jade said, passing her a gourd. He must have carried it with him through the city, rather than leaving it in the tent. “Berserker nearly killed you.”
“I know,” Emily admitted. Mistress Irene had warned her that the sensation of power, of being utterly fearless and invulnerable, was addictive. But the spell drained magic and the
n it went onwards to drain life force. If she’d been alone...eventually, the spell would have failed, leaving her in the midst of angry enemies and drained of all her power. “Why...why didn’t you use it?”
“You didn’t have enough experience to fight without it,” Harkin said. There was something in his tone that bothered Emily, before she realized that she’d turned into a liability. She would barely be able to walk for hours after using the spell. “Can you walk now?”
Emily finished drinking the potion–it tasted foul, unsurprisingly–and managed to stumble to her feet with Jade’s help. Her legs felt like useless sacks of potatoes, no matter how hard she tried to force them to move. Only the sense that she was slowing down the rest of the team kept her upright as she leaned against Jade, eyes darting from side to side. They were hidden within a small forest of trees, with no sign of any more goblins, but she couldn’t escape the sense that they were being watched.
Harkin was right; they were being hunted.
“We had to carry you as we fled the Dark City,” Jade said, filling her in as the Sergeant walked back to the watchers. “They said that going into the tunnels would be too dangerous; we’d either be caught by the goblins or attract attention from other creatures as we fought our way through them. But we’ve heard sounds from other goblin hunting parties...”
Cat looked up as Emily staggered back into the group. “I’ve never heard of goblins operating in unison,” he said, grimly. There was a fresh nasty-looking scar running down his cheek, far worse than the scar they’d inflicted on Emily in the fight. Someone had bound the wound, bandaging it with a shirt. “They’re not known for being friendly souls.”
“Maybe someone has been encouraging them,” Jade offered. He picked up a fruit and passed it to Emily, who was too tired to care what it was. She nibbled it gratefully and dropped the remains in the hole they’d dug to bury all traces of their passing. “We’re not that far from the necromancers.”
Emily shivered. Had the goblins set out to capture her? The thought was a terrifying one, yet she couldn’t see how the goblins had known in advance that she would be coming, let alone get organized in time to try to snatch her. And they had tried to kill her when she’d been fighting them...the memories welled up in front of her eyes and she felt sick. She’d killed–slaughtered–intelligent creatures and felt nothing, not until afterwards. Had they deserved to die?
“It could be a great deal worse,” Harkin said, keeping his voice low. “We all assumed that the mountains blocked the necromancers from advancing forward, unless they went through the pass. But if they’ve managed to find a tunnel, or cut one, that allows them to outflank Whitehall - we could be in some considerable trouble.”
He looked around, his dark face furrowed in thought. “We’re going to have to move out in two minutes. Your orders are simple: you are to head back to Whitehall and inform the Grandmaster, whatever happens. Someone has to report that there may be a tunnel allowing the necromancers access to the Allied Lands.”
Jade frowned. “Don’t you have a mirror?”
“One isn’t working and the others were lost in the fire,” Harkin admitted. “We have to assume the worst.”
And the worst, Emily knew, was that the goblins were being led by a powerful magician, one powerful enough to cow the inhuman creatures and jam the mirror Harkin would otherwise use to summon help. A necromancer wasn’t needed specifically to disrupt communications spells–any Dark Wizard could do that - but the Sergeant was right; they had to assume the worst. A full-fledged necromancer might be following them, intent on killing them to add their life energies to his power.
She scowled as they hid the remaining traces of their presence and prepared to move out. If they were lucky, if there was a necromancer chasing them, they would be able to outsmart him and escape. All the sources agreed that necromancers were prone to arrogance, overconfidence and self-delusion. But they’d also been very unclear on how to actually defeat a necromancer in open combat.
Don’t be silly, she told herself as they started to slip up the pathway around the nearest mountain. None of you are ready to fight a necromancer. Even Void only gave Shadye a bloody nose and ran.
The march rapidly became a nightmare. Emily felt tired, so tired that she knew if she closed her eyes she would fall asleep and never get up again. But she had to keep going, somehow. Twilight had fallen, leaving the shadows to spill across the ground and creating brief suggestions that something was watching them.
Emily clutched her sword tightly, looking into the darkness as if she could catch something and skewer it before whatever it was could react. The sensation of being hunted kept growing stronger, even though they saw and heard nothing, not even birds in the sky, or small animals on the ground. After experiencing the life running through the lands surrounding Whitehall, Emily found that ominous.
Harkin dropped back to walk beside her for a long moment, his twisted face concerned, even worried. Emily wanted to tell him to leave her, knowing she was slowing down the entire team, but she held her tongue. She was really too tired to speak.
“It never gets any easier,” Harkin said softly.
Emily blinked in surprise. Compassionate words from the Sergeant–either of the Sergeants–were few and far between.
“Killing goblins isn’t too far from killing humans,” he said.
Emily nodded. Back home, the only person she had ever seriously considered killing was herself. She wasn’t one of those people who took a gun into school and sought bloody revenge for real or imagined slights–and she’d certainly never thought about joining the army. Perhaps that was why Berserker had consumed her. That spell made it impossible to care at the time that she was slaughtering the goblins, which might have been why Jade had ordered her to use it.
She’d had no time for reflection, let alone self-doubt. If she had, it might have killed her.
“They would have killed us, if we had been lucky,” Harkin added a moment later. “And if we had been unlucky, they would have done far worse.”
Emily nodded. She’d read about goblins–and other monsters that infested the mountains–before she’d gone on the field trip. But they rarely bothered humans, unless their victims were completely alone; they knew that the nearby human cities would mount punitive operations. It was quite possible that someone had stirred them up and sent them against the Redshirts, or that the team had simply been very unlucky. There was no way to know for sure.
“Just hold it together until we reach home,” Harkin said. “After that, if you want to talk about it ...”
Emily shook her head and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. In truth, she didn’t know how she felt about killing the goblins. Part of her felt guilty, even though she knew they had intended to kill her; part of her took a secret delight in slicing through the creatures as if they had been made of paper. And all of her training had paid off, even if she had needed to use Berserker. The time she’d spent exercising and practicing swordplay with the Redshirts had not been wasted.
They plunged into darkness as the last remaining flickers of sunlight vanished below the mountains. Jade and Sergeant Miles both cast spells intended to illuminate their path, which shaded the entire world in an eerie grey light that made Emily’s head ache.
She kept going, somehow, keeping a watchful eye out for traps. But she was so tired that she suspected she would just walk into a trap even if she saw it. The semi-darkness outside the range of the illumination spell was playing tricks on her mind. She thought she could see all kinds of creatures lurking beyond the pool of grey light, just waiting for their chance to strike.
All around them, the forest slowly came to life. Emily heard birds and animals calling to one another in the distance, a series of chirps and birdcalls that eventually gave way to hisses and a single terrifying roar. She hadn’t ever been interested in mundane creatures, so she couldn’t remember if there were lions in this world or not, but it certainly sounded like a lion. T
he roar faded away and was replaced by howls, each one more terrifying than the last.
But Sergeant Harkin didn’t seem bothered. In fact, she heard him chuckle quietly under his breath.
“Ah, the children of the night,” he said. “Hear how they sing!”
Emily gave him a sharp glance. Whatever was making those howls didn’t sound like something she wanted to meet, certainly not when she was too tired to use magic or even lift a sword. On the other hand, the sound was certainly encouragement to keep going, rather than slowing down to take a breather. Who knew what else, apart from goblins, might be chasing them in the darkness?
“Get down,” Jade snapped. “Now!”
Emily dropped to the muddy path automatically as something hissed through the air above their heads. Arrows crashed into the trees and fell around them; she realized in horror that they had blundered into another goblin ambush. Harkin had kept them moving hard, hoping they could stay ahead of the goblins, but they’d failed.
The goblins were displaying a degree of cooperation that, according to the books, they never showed. How could they when no goblin could trust his rivals not to betray him? It suggested that they’d definitely acquired a strong leader.
“Crawl forward,” Harkin ordered. He was holding his bow in his hand, searching for targets. “Extend the lighting spell towards them, now!”
The goblins didn’t have lighting spells, Emily realized as she crawled through the slimy dirt; they didn’t need magic to see in the dark. And they apparently couldn’t see the spell that the team had been using to light their way.
Harkin, Miles and Cat shot back as soon as the goblins came into view–the goblins hadn’t bothered to take cover, because they’d known they couldn’t be seen–and three goblins toppled backwards, arrows driven through their skulls. Emily crawled faster at the Sergeant’s command, silently grateful that they’d lost their baggage when the goblins had burned down the tent. It would only have slowed them down, as well as making them a bigger target.
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