Goblin Nation

A DARK KNIGHT’S WORST NIGHTMARE

A few hundred knights had walked ahead of Bera so she couldn’t see what was happening to those in the front ranks. She started to dash forward, but Isaam’s arm shot out and caught her. Despite his spindly appearance, the sorcerer was surprisingly strong.

“Commander.” It was the only word Isaam needed to say.

Bera’s training and experience kicked in. “Retreat!” she shouted, an order she loathed to give that was repeated through the ranks of the men who’d hastened before her. Retreat, she thought, until she could assess the situation. Get them out of whatever trap she’d let them march straight into.

She guessed roughly a third of her knights had headed toward the bluff-maybe three hundred fighters. The rest stretched out in uneven ranks behind her and reversed their course, spreading out to make space for their retreating brethren.

She wanted to be up at the front, to see what nasty little trap the goblins had set. More shouts and another scream cut through the air.

Bera wanted to call for Zocci. She prayed it was not him. No, it couldn’t be. Zocci would not scream like a baby.

The men started to fall back, but only the ones closest to her made it inside the tree line. Incredibly, the rest were being sucked down by the earth, attacked by the trees, and pummeled by goblins that had appeared seemingly out of nowhere.

“By all the dark gods,” Bera breathed. “A fool, me.” How could she have underestimated the goblins? Rats, she’d called them. But they were instead a Dark Knight’s worst nightmare. They were clever rats, and there were a lot of them everywhere.

The ground had looked solid enough when the knights had started across it. But many suddenly dropped into bowl-like depressions that had been camouflaged by dirt and thatch strewn over them. Before the knights who hadn’t fallen could help their comrades, the goblins had descended. Some spilled out of the earth bowls; others dropped from the trees. More came up over the bluff like a swarm of ants headed for something sweet.

Bera drew her sword. “Regroup!” She repeated the order, not needing to shout with Isaam deploying a simple spell to magnify her voice. “Retreat! On my line! Now!”

Her men tried to obey while at the same time fighting the goblins that clearly outnumbered and beleaguered them. Bera jumped forward, throwing her free arm out and pulling a young knight back. She tugged at another as she drove the pommel of her sword down on the top of the head of a goblin that had appeared right in front of her. She barely heard the crunch of his skull as he dropped, or perhaps she’d just imagined the sound.

“Doleman, Carthor, get your men and follow me! Eyes on the ground!” Bera crept forward. “Anders, bring up the archers.”

The racket grew, goblins yelling out to each other in their ugly, guttural language, words that she couldn’t understand, her knights shouting, some of her knights hollering in pain. Goblins screamed too. She watched an Ergothian named Garold gut two goblins with one heavy swing. Swords clashed against knives, and suddenly added to that was the constant thwup of arrows.

When had the goblins become proficient with bows? She’d thought their only weapons were primitive ones, along with whatever they’d stolen from the dead knights in Steel Town. She edged farther past the tree line, gesturing wildly for more knights to retreat.

Her bowmen came into play, sending a volley into a wave of goblins descending from the east.

“Commander!” Her lieutenants Doleman and Carthor carefully brought two dozen men along with them.

“We get everyone back!” she shouted to Doleman. “Fighting retreat! We’re the rear guard!”

The field before her was chaos, not the slay fest Bera had imagined on the trail. She’d more than underestimated the rats, and she was paying for it with the lives of some of her men. She had to get them out of there, regroup, and organize an attack.

Her chest felt impossibly tight. Calling a retreat, from goblins! Men lost to goblins! She had to turn the situation around and fast. She had to get her troops back to a safer spot, plan a different advance, make the sorcerer punch a hole in their “windowless house,” and get a good look at what she was up against.

She had to get Isaam to find Grallik.

“Isaam!” A glance over her shoulder showed that the sorcerer was caught up in casting some spell. There was no use interrupting him; she sprang forward to engage a pair of goblins trying to cut off the escape of one of her half-elf knights.

Bera waded forward, slashing to keep a goblin back, and with her free hand, reached out to help a knight who’d fallen in one of the shallow pits. “Brosha! Give me your hand!” He waved her off and pointed to his leg, twisted unnaturally, blood seeping out from a gap between the greave and knee piece.

“Doleman! Bring two men!” It would take at least two to carry Brosha out. She waited until Doleman headed her way. Slashing again at a goblin darting near and drawing a thick line of blood across his belly, she moved toward the next pit and extended her hand as another knight came in behind her and finished off the injured goblin.

Ahead, she watched one of her men snatched up by the branch of a red maple. A heartbeat later, the tree hurled him over the edge of the bluff. The branch reached for another but was thwarted by a lieutenant who cut the offending branch off with one swing.

Bera knew what was happening with the trees and branches-a druid was at work somewhere, animating the oaks as though they were an army of creatures fighting on the side of the goblins. She hadn’t realized goblins possessed such magic …

“Get behind Isaam!” That was shouted by Carthor, who had fought his way past Bera and busy tugging another one of her men out of a pit. “Everyone, get behind Isaam now!”

Bera worked her way up to Carthor, slicing the arm off one skinny brown goblin, and lopping the head off another. Individually, the goblins presented scant challenge. But there were so many of them … the ground was covered with their odorous, ugly forms. There were hobgoblins too, and all of the enemy wielded one sort of weapon or another-knives, spears, clubs. Again a hail of arrows rained down from the goblins, most of them bouncing off the Dark Knights’ armor, but some finding their way into gaps between gorgets and shoulder pieces. A few arrows drove through the steel cuisse sections that covered knights’ thighs and even punched into their breast plates.

Another return volley was launched by her knights, their arrows proving more effective against the goblins, only a few of whom wore anything resembling armor.

Though more goblins than knights were dying, Bera raged that any of her men had been killed. It was not supposed to have happened that way. It was her fault for underestimating the goblins, not considering them to be worthy opponents.

“Regroup!” she bellowed. She wrapped both hands around the pommel of her sword and drove the blade down on a barrel-chested, red-skinned goblin that rushed frenetically at her. His spear broke against the overlapping plates on her hips, and she split his head partway in two. “Behind Isaam. Regroup!”

A glance back toward the tree line showed that more of her men had fought their way there. Not one goblin had pursued them. Isaam’s spell made a shield wall, she realized, invisible and effective, keeping the goblins to their section of the scabrous land. She looked to the bluff, where about a hundred knights remained. They maneuvered around the pits, alternately fighting goblins and hobgoblins and tree branches that continued to whip down and lash at them. Several knights were being held in wooden grips a dozen or more feet off the ground.

She spotted Zocci at the edge of the bluff, his axe scarlet from the goblins he’d slain. There was a mound of dead goblins around him, and Bera’s heart leaped to see that he was still unscathed. The edge of his blade glowed faintly blue, and she remembered Isaam had said it reeked of magic. He swept it in a wide arc, cutting one goblin in half at the waist and lodging it halfway into the chest of another. Zocci brought his leg up to push the goblin off his weapon so he could continue the fight.

Bera never felt more alive than when she was fighting such a battle. The ache in her arms from her repeated swings was welcome. The warm flush in her face invigorated her. They were an enemy she hated, so the slaying was all the more rewarding. She envied Zocci for having a weapon that was impossibly sharp.

She resisted the urge to fight her way to him and join in fighting by his side, sharing the bloodbath he was creating.

But she was in charge, so her goal was to get her men to safety so she could plan a fresh assault. “Retreat! Regroup!” She would not call for a surrender. She’d never surrender to the likes of those creatures. “Slay them all,” her superior had told her. “Every last one.”

First she had to pull her forces back by those rare trees Tavor had spotted. Then the fight would be on her terms-not theirs. Tavor? No doubt the goblins had gotten him first.

Zocci faced two hobgoblins. One was nearly as tall as he and ugly from all the scars that crisscrossed its face and arms. The other looked old with stooped shoulders. The older one wielded a thick spear, prodding methodically with it, then jabbing forward, as if he’d had some training with the weapon.

Where? Bera wondered. Where could goblins possibly get weapons training? But many clearly had, as they nimbly darted in and swept their knives in fluid arcs, aiming at the joints in the knights’ leg plates and now and then meeting with success. The knights had the longer reach and better weapons, so they could often kill a goblin before it was able to slip in close enough. But some managed to duck beneath Dark Knights’ blades.

“So damn many rats,” she cursed as she cut down one after another. “Too damn many.” And where was Grallik? She’d only observed goblins and hobgoblins. “Where is the traitor?”

She fought with renewed urgency. “Get behind me. Get back to Isaam.” She gestured to a trio fighting a throng of brown-skinned goblins with shrunken heads dangling from their belts. What did that mean, shrunken heads? “Damnable creatures. Regroup!”

The trees continued to flail at her men. Goblins were perched above the animated limbs and kept firing with their primitive bows. Her bowmen were targeting them, and as she watched, a broad-shouldered goblin plummeted from its branch.

“Where is Grallik?” And which goblin or hobgoblin could be the druid who forced the trees to take sides in the melee? There were too many goblins for Bera to pick out which one might be responsible for the trees. And there were too many-“Grallik!”

She didn’t spy the wizard, but she did see a thin column of flame shoot down next to a clump of birches. A handful of her knights had backed themselves into that place, and the flames caught them … but miraculously did not touch the goblins they were fighting. The men burned inside their armor, their screams barely audible above the clash of weapons and all the shouting. Grallik had to be responsible for such fire.

“Grallik!” Bera spun one way then the other, swinging wildly to keep the goblins back as she searched for the traitor. Colorful shards cut through the air, melting into the breast plate of one of her best female knights. The woman clutched at her chest and fell backward. A hobgoblin swooped in and picked up her sword as more colorful light shards flew past.

“The traitor is here!” Bera shouted. “Grallik is casting these spells! Zocci! Regroup!”

Bera needed him to fight his way back to safety too. Zocci was too isolated at the edge of the bluff, surrounded by goblins and hobgoblins with not another knight for more than a dozen yards. She could see a wide smile on his face. Like her, he was at his best, his happiest, when he was in a fight with a foe.

“Aye, Bera!” He’d heard her. “I’ll join you in a moment.” He said something else, but she couldn’t hear. Or perhaps he’d only mouthed it: “My love,” she thought it was. “I’ll join you in a moment, my love.”

She thrust her sword into the chest of an overly thin hobgoblin. Pulling her blade out, she heard a nearby hobgoblin cry out, “Rustymane! Rusty!” then begin to sob.

“Sentimental rats,” she snarled. “Zocci! Regroup!”

Zocci only laughed. He was facing a big hobgoblin, roughly Zocci’s height, who warily circled Zocci and jabbed forward with a long knife in one hand then made a chopping motion with an axe in the other.

“Zocci, get out of there!” Panic seized Bera’s heart, and her chest felt tight. The big hobgoblin looked pretty skilled.

Then a number of goblins swarmed around Zocci’s legs. He kicked at them. Their puny knives couldn’t penetrate his heavy, blued armor. He laughed again, louder. She imagined he’d be angry later that they’d scratched and dented it, though. She’d have to help him work out the imperfections.

“Zocci!” She started toward him. “I’ll bring you back myself if I have to!”

He kicked a yellow-skinned goblin in the face, planted his foot on the belly of another, then swept wide with his other leg, knocking a red-skinned goblin off the bluff.

The tall hobgoblin, who had been crouching beneath Zocci’s swing, sprang up and rammed his long knife into a seam where the knight’s cuirass breast plate met a mailed skirt.

The blow had to have glanced off, Bera thought. Her eyes widened as she saw the hobgoblin try to pull the knife free and instead pulled his blood-soaked hand back. The hobgoblin swung with the axe, keeping close to Zocci and turning, turning, forcing the Dark Knight toward the very edge of the bluff.

“No.” Bera rushed toward them, slipping on blood-drenched ground and sliding into a pit. There were goblins and one of her knights dead at the bottom, and she scrambled over them to get out.

The hobgoblin was hacking into Zocci as if he were so much firewood. The blued plate was dented, a rent in the center of the knight’s chest piece. Blood poured out everywhere, and Zocci fell to his knees. The hobgoblin pulled Zocci’s axe out of his hands, spun the weapon, and slammed it into Zocci, knocking him down.

“No!” Carthor and Doleman grabbed her shoulders, pulling her back. “Zocci!”

“Commander, we have to get out of here.” She couldn’t tell which of them had said it. “Commander, that was your order.”

Zocci lay on his stomach, unmoving. The big hobgoblin raised the great axe and brought it down on Zocci’s neck then bent over and grabbed his victim’s head, holding it high in the air. A moment more, and the hobgoblin hurled the head over the side of the bluff. Two hands on the axe handle, the hobgoblin looked across the battlefield and locked eyes with Bera.

“Your orders, Commander,” Doleman said. “Regroup.”

She whirled and headed toward Isaam, Doleman, and Carthor and a few other knights straggling behind. They dodged flailing tree limbs and batted away arrows. Carthor fell just short of safety, colorful magical darts from Grallik piercing his armor and killing him instantly. Bera kept moving away, away.