Reckoning of Fallen Gods

by R. A. Salvatore

  “You can’no!” Talmadge argued, but Aydrian grabbed him by the arm and, with frightening strength, tugged him out of the cover, running down across the open field. They hadn’t gone halfway when the mountain goblins began to hoot at them. As soon as they entered the trees across the way, Aydrian shoved Talmadge along, then drew his sword and looked about, surveying the battlefield.

  “Go!” he shouted at Talmadge, who hesitated.

  “You’ll die!”

  “Then you’ll die as well if you stay, and your friends in the town are doomed!”

  To Aydrian’s relief, Talmadge sprinted away. And not a moment too soon, the man who had been king realized, for the lead mountain goblins were in sight, closing fast for the kill.

  “Here we go, then,” Aydrian whispered, and he rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck and realized it had been a long time since he had been in a fight.

  He called upon the bloodstone and dolomite set into his breastplate, infusing himself with toughness and strength, and set an arrow. As the first mountain goblins came into sight, he drew back the darkfern bow with its silverel string, leveled quickly, and let fly. The broadhead arrow hit the goblin in the chest and sent it flying backward, dead before it hit ground, tripping up two more coming in behind.

  Aydrian let fly again and a third time, and those two, as well, went spinning down to the grave. Then a fourth, but now a swarm was closing.

  Aydrian dropped the bow and drew forth Tempest, the blade made by the elves for Aydrian’s great uncle Mather, one of the famed rangers. The sword alone was nearly without equal in craftsmanship and materials, yet Aydrian had improved upon it, adding gemstones, because Aydrian, like his mother, could use these magical gems with great proficiency.

  In came the next goblins, leaping from on high to fly down at Aydrian, who turned, ducked, slashed left, and stabbed ahead, all in perfect balance, leaving one mountain goblin crashing down behind him, a second falling off to the side, grabbing at its slashed hip, and a third impaled.

  Aydrian backpedaled quickly, sliding his blade free, the goblin dropping to its knees, grasping helplessly at the air.

  Ahead went the man, angling by the skewered thing, which he did not even bother to finish, for the wound was surely mortal. The next pair came in at him more cautiously.

  But they wouldn’t fare any better. Aydrian pointed his left foot forward and put his back foot perpendicular to that, and moved at them swiftly, never crossing his feet, never losing his balanced posture. Ahead he went, then back, then ahead once more, where he snapped off a sudden stab, too fast for his opponent to even realize the attack.

  This was Bi’nelle Dasada, the elven sword dance, a fighting form that allowed the small Touel’alfar to battle much heavier and stronger opponents. Forward and back, always balanced. Strike with the speed of a serpent and retreat.

  Aydrian was no lithe elf, though, and so the dance was but a part of his fighting repertoire. As he retracted his blade from the mountain goblin’s chest, he broke from the dance pattern and brought his weapon out hard to the side, slashing more conventionally, as he would with the heavier weapons more common in the land, and with devastating effect, chopping the goblin down.

  More were already there to take its place.

  * * *

  Further down the mountain, Talmadge came around a boulder and paused for just a moment to catch his breath. He glanced back with great concern, and saw the first exchanges, saw the goblin flying over his companion, saw a second veer out and crumble, a third kneeling and looking dead.

  He watched the second fight, his jaw dropping open at the speed of Aydrian’s blade and movements—he was still trying to sort out the stab on the first of this group when the second went spinning suddenly under the weight of a sword slash.

  But more were coming and Talmadge grimaced and almost cried out, then did yelp in startlement as Aydrian’s sword became a line of bright flames!

  The mountain goblins shrieked and skidded to a stop before the surprising man.

  Talmadge ran on, leaping stones and roots and ducking branches, and nearly cracking his skull on one low branch that crossed his path. Not long after, he began calling out, for Fasach Crann came into view.

  “To arms! To the boats! The sidhe are upon you!”

  To his relief, the folk were already astir, for sound carries well across the water, and the battle in Carrachan Shoal had alerted them, along with the fleet of that nearby village putting out to the open water.

  “Sidhe!” Talmadge kept yelling all the way into the town, where the warriors were gathering and many others were fleeing for the beach and the boats. “Too many!” he added breathlessly. “Run! Flee!”

  “How many?” demanded Catriona, rushing over to grab him and halt his run. Talmadge could see in her eyes that she had no intention of running from such beasts.

  “Too many,” he answered.

  “There is no such number,” said another man, and while all those of the village too old or too young to fight headed for the boats, the warriors, men and women alike, formed into groups and moved for cover, crouching behind one house or another.

  * * *

  Despite the dangers of the lake monster, despite the flooding tide that had just struck several of the villages and had devastated more than one, Loch Beag served as a sanctuary for the lakemen. When the Usgar came, with magic they could not fight, the men and women of the targeted lake town piled onto their boats and rowed and sailed out onto the loch. Let the Usgar take some supplies, and yes, sometimes an unfortunate person who could not get to the boats, but the village would survive.

  This time, though, the sanctuary seemed far less secure for those first fleeing Carrachan Shoal.

  Khotai watched helplessly, so outraged by her inability to join in the battle ashore that she wasn’t even terrified of being out on the open water, something she had not done since that fateful day those years ago.

  She thought of Talmadge, and of how she had treated him, sending him away coldly, not even allowing her shock at seeing him alive diminish enough to express her love for him.

  No, she could not. She was no woman anymore, certainly no wife. She was a beggar on a rolling plank, ever dirty and usually helpless. And now he was probably dead anyway, for he had gone up onto the mountain, where the sidhe had come from.

  More boats splashed out of the cove, with bloodied warriors, but so few! Just a handful, though near to a hundred warriors had formed the defense in the town. Gasps and moans rolled from the first wave of those fleeing, from people who feared they would never see their loved ones again.

  “So few!” one woman wailed.

  And the mountain goblins were still about the town, where smoke was now rising from burning houses. Ominously, the sounds of battle had all but died away.

  Sighs of relief were heard as more boats showed around the edge of the cove, rowing awkwardly and with slapping oars for the open water.

  Short-lived, they were, for some of those boats were not crewed by the rest of the defenders, but by mountain goblins.

  “Sails! Sails!” came the cries, from the waiting boats and from those few approaching. “West, west, to Fasach Crann!”

  Fighting began back at the mouth of the cove, boat to boat, man and goblin tangling and tumbling and splashing into the water. The few boats nearer the main flotilla did not turn back to help their kin, but kept coming with all speed and calling for retreat across the waters.

  Khotai’s boat began to turn.

  “No!” she shouted at the same burly man who had carried her to the craft and was now manning the rudder. “No, we have to help them!”

  “Help them how?” he snapped back at her.

  Khotai had no immediate answer. She turned back to the unfolding tragedy, and noted one boat of villagers floundering nearer to the shore, and with a smaller boat overloaded with several heavy mountain goblins closing in.

  “There!” Khotai yelled to the big man. “There! We can help them. Yo
ur brothers and sisters. Would you leave them to die?”

  “Bah!” the man snorted, but he did indeed turn for the shore, and even leaped forward, pushing a much smaller man out of the way and grabbing up the oars. “You’re to get us all killed, fool woman,” he complained, but he rowed, how he rowed, with all of his great strength, lifting the prow so violently that Khotai almost pitched over.

  The lakemen of Carrachan Shoal, like those of the other villages, were expert sailors. Their oars did not splash at the water like those of the goblin-crewed craft, and those steering the boats knew the angles to take to intercept schools of fish or other boats.

  It quickly became apparent why this one boat of fleeing warriors was having such problems. They had lost more than one oar, and carried nearly ten villagers in a craft designed for half that number. They were near to the shore because they were looking for a place to beach the boat and run off to the west along the lakeshore.

  But they weren’t going to make it. The pursuing boat stayed with them, apparently well aware of their troubles and eager for the fight.

  Now a second boat, Khotai’s boat, closed, but the mountain goblins did not relent, and rather howled with anticipation, even veering a bit as if hoping to engage both craft, one on either side.

  “So, we’re in for a fight,” the burly man growled. “Good enough, then.”

  Khotai had a different idea, though. She focused solely on that enemy boat, noting how low it was running, surprised, actually, that it hadn’t already tipped under.

  “Try to come alongside,” Khotai called back to the big man.

  “What do you think we’re doing?” he yelled back at her.

  “Not our sister boat,” she corrected. “Alongside the goblins!”

  The man’s rowing slowed as he turned about to stare at her incredulously.

  “How high can you throw me?” Khotai said with a wry smile.

  He stared a bit longer, then seemed to catch on and offered a nod before digging his oars in once more, driving the boat as instructed.

  They drew closer now to both. Khotai recognized some of those in the fleeing Carrachan Shoal boat. Not her favorite people, truly, but that didn’t matter. She had wanted her fight and now she was getting it. She had wanted to die in battle, and now, that seemed all but certain.

  “Help us!” the ten in the fleeing boat called out.

  “An oar! We need an oar!” one man yelled.

  But Khotai’s boat veered away from them.

  Spears flew out from the goblin boat, bouncing all about. Khotai slapped one aside with her flailing arm, good fortune alone saving her. But she didn’t flinch.

  “So be it,” she said.

  The boats were barely five strides apart, the goblins trying to turn so that Khotai’s boat didn’t go right past them. But Khotai’s rowers put up oars suddenly and the big man grabbed Khotai under the arms and so easily hoisted her up into the air.

  “One shot,” Khotai said to him. “Aim well and then be gone.”

  And she was flying, high into the air, thrown like a sack. She fought to right herself, to keep her focus. She saw spears lifting toward her, and indeed got one through the shoulder as she crashed down, but the burly man’s aim had been true, and she fell just to the side of the overloaded boat, turning and grabbing the rail as she splashed down, her momentum pulling the side of the craft with her just enough before her grip faltered for her to take that rail beneath the water.

  The woman flailed as she sank from the sunlight, but she took heart and knew joy, for she had surely swamped the mountain goblin boat.

  The light suddenly disappeared, lost in the shadow of a thick enemy, leaping in after her. She wasn’t as deep as she had thought, she realized when the creature grabbed her and began thrashing her about.

  Blood filled the water, pouring from her wound, and all about was turmoil and slapping sounds. Khotai tried to get her hands in the monster’s face, to gouge out its eyes or just to hold it under with her, drowning it beside her.

  Farewell, my love Talmadge, she silently recited.

  More splashing, more slapping, more darkness.

  The goblin holding her let go, but did not flee, just hung there weirdly in the water.

  Khotai didn’t know what to think when more hands reached for her.

  She fought back, punching, scratching. Good, she’d kill two!

  But she was grabbed and hugged too close, and it was not a goblin, but a man, a young man named Asef.

  Her sensibilities left her then, and the world grew darker still.

  * * *

  Talmadge gave up trying to convince the villagers to take to the boats—they had sent the infirm, the young, the old, to the beach—but no more. Once the fighting began, the frontiersman was glad to be in their midst, glad to be a part of this defense of a place he believed worth fighting for. He wasn’t afraid and he didn’t shy. He took a hit, more than one, but he fought through the fear and didn’t even really feel the pain.

  He believed in this fight, and so he waged it beside Catriona and the others willingly, and with every turn of the tide that seemed against them, he actually came to fear that Catriona or someone else would call for a retreat to the lake. Better to bleed, better to die even, than to surrender Fasach Crann without a fight.

  In the midst of all the other jumbled thoughts and tension and immediacy of peril, it did occur to Talmadge that this was the first time in his life he had ever felt such a thing. He had heard of it before, so many times, but he had never felt it. Not like this.

  Like when he felt love for Khotai.

  The book of Talmadge’s life grew much thicker this day, and he acquitted himself well on this battlefield, more than one mountain goblin falling before his sword. He fought for Fasach Crann, that it would not die. He fought for Khotai, whom he feared had died. He fought for Aydrian, who must be dead, he feared, since the sidhe had come on and Aydrian had not. Still Talmadge suspected that the goblin horde was thinner than it had been on the mountain, and he knew that to be the work of the man who claimed to have once been a king in the east.

  Around the back of one building, Talmadge and a handful of others, including Catriona, found a short reprieve.

  “Catch your breath and bind anything that’s badly bleeding,” Catriona told them. “Many more’s the sidhe that’re about.”

  “We’ve lost a score and more,” one man said.

  “And a hundred sidhe and more lay dead!” another woman countered. “Oh, but we’ll win the day.”

  Talmadge wasn’t sure of that, or what that even meant. The losses here were mounting, and what of the sidhe who had probably overrun Carrachan Shoal? Perhaps the folk of Fasach Crann would win the day, but what about tomorrow?

  “More on the ridge?” one woman asked, moving to the far corner of the building to get a view to the east of the village.

  “Not a sidhe,” said another. “His sword’s aflame!”

  Talmadge was up and moving quickly, pushing past Catriona and the others to join the two at the far corner.

  “It’s that man, your friend, who walked the water,” the woman at the corner said as he arrived.

  Talmadge hardly heard her, too engrossed in the view of the distant fight, and it was a fight indeed! Aydrian stood high on the side of a rocky bluff east of Fasach Crann, the same ridge the two had climbed upon to first view the trouble in Carrachan Shoal, though that vantage had been much farther back from the water and the town.

  There was Aydrian now, his sword seeming like some magical torch, the blade wrapped in flames that danced and flowed as he brought it side to side, sweeping clear the nearest sidhe. As soon as he had put some room between himself and his foes, he changed his stance, changed his style of fighting altogether, it seemed, and began a forward-and-back approach, stabbing, lightning fast, with that flaming blade.

  A sidhe stumbled back, grabbing its chest. A second charged, thinking it had an opening. But Aydrian had retracted and so struck again, his f
iery sword burying itself so fully in the brute that the witnesses from the village at first thought the fires had gone out. Aydrian drove the blade to the side, though, and snapped his arm down and about with frightening strength, sending the powerful mountain goblin flipping and spinning from the rocks.

  More enemies poured in at the man. Others moved along the ridge up above Aydrian and began throwing rocks down at him, and so precarious seemed his perch that Talmadge almost cried out for him, and might have, except that Adrian simply leaped away, jumping down twenty feet or more to the ground.

  He dropped fast and Talmadge and the others winced, expecting him to land hard, but right as he neared the ground, he slowed and landed lightly, and in a run. Coming straight for the town, he sheathed his sword, pulled out that strange bow, and had it up and ready in a heartbeat, announcing his arrival with a line of well-aimed arrows that sent several sidhe spinning to the ground.

  “To his side!” Talmadge yelled, and he rushed around the building to intercept the charge of Aydrian. So, too, did the others, and with Aydrian in their midst, his sword aflame once more, the lines of mountain goblins began to dissolve.

  The Battle of Fasach Crann turned toward clear victory, and just in time, as several ships from the neighboring village came into view, sails full of wind, oars working hard the water.

  “Go!” Aydrian told Talmadge. “Go and see, and get them all off the water.”

  Talmadge offered an appreciative nod and sprinted away. Aydrian stayed with Catriona and the others, moving house to house, joining in wherever they could to help their comrades overwhelm the scattered groups of enemies.

  As he neared the water, Talmadge began to wave frantically, motioning for the boats to come in—those of Fasach Crann and of Carrachan Shoal. He understood Aydrian’s fear here—anyone who had seen the lake monster up close would certainly understand Aydrian’s fear.

  The first boats in were those of Carrachan Shoal, their warriors leaping out to prepare any defenses that might be needed.

  “They took some of our boats and chased, but I do’no think they’re coming,” Asba told Talmadge as the frontiersman splashed into the water to get beside the man at the front of his boat and help pull it further in.