Messenger of the Dark Prophet (The Bowl of Souls: Book Two) (22 page)

“Fist!
What’s going on? Are you okay?” The two children, Cedric and
Lina
, darted out from behind her in the doorway and ran to the ogre, laughing and yelling “Fist!
Fist!”

“No! Stay inside!” the ogre commanded. As the kids pouted and walked back, Fist looked to their mother. “Where is Tamboor?”

“Why he left a little while ago and told us we had to stay in the house. Evidently there is a big fire in the village or something because smoke is everywhere.”

“Not just fire,” Fist moaned. “Goblins and monsters
is
attacking the peoples in the town.”

“How many goblins?” she asked. Every once in a while a troop of goblins would come too close to Jack’s Rest. Usually the tough men of the town handled such raids easily.

 “Too many,” Fist said impatiently. He looked up the road that led to the town. The army could come down on them at any moment. “
A
army comes! We must take Cedric and
Lina
away. We must keep them safe!”

Efflina
looked uncertainly at the pillars of smoke coming from Jack’s Rest and then looked back at the ogre.

“Please,” Fist begged. “Trust me.”

Efflina
bit her lip. She hated to leave her home; the home that Tamboor had built with his own hands. But she trusted the ogre. She turned to the children.

“Cedric,
Lina
, gather the ‘run packs’. We are going with Fist for a while.” Her husband had demanded they always keep emergency supplies for just such an occasion.
Lina
squealed with delight, but Cedric frowned. He knew what those packs meant even if
Lina
didn’t. The children ran towards their rooms.

“What about Tamboor?”
Efflina
asked.

Fist had fought alongside the retired academy warrior several times during the last year against savage beasts and had great faith in his prowess. He could only hope that Tamboor would survive the attack.

“He will come.
Hurry!”

Efflina
ran back inside the house and Fist could hear her directing the children in the things they had to bring. Fist paced on the porch, knowing that every moment before they left was a moment wasted. Then he heard goblin voices. Bile rose in his throat. He crept to the edge of the porch and looked down the road.

He ran back to the house and yelled through the doorway, “Wait! Hide! They
is
here!”

The goblinoids streamed from the trees and headed up the hill towards the house. More than a score of them came, goblins, gorcs and orcs.

“Protect the tribe,” he whispered and Squirrel left his shoulder to run into the house.

Fist did not know what to do. He doubted that he could defeat twenty of these creatures by himself, but if he failed, his tribe would be killed. He took a deep breath and steadied himself. He would not fail.

He walked off of the porch and stood in the road where the goblinoids would see him. The goblinoids seemed unconcerned about the appearance of an ogre. They stopped in front of Fist and one of the bigger orcs stepped forward.

“Ogre!
I am
Pintok
, square leader. What you here alone for?
Why you not killing
mens
at the village?”

Fist thought quickly and shouted back, “I followed
mens
to this house and killed them.” He showed his bloody mace and forearms. The orc smiled evilly.

“You kill them all and leave none for us? Not even
womens
?” the orc asked.

Fist had to force a growl out of his throat. “No. I kill them all.”

The goblinoids scowled in disappointment. The orc sighed. “Then we
takes
foods and burn the house.”

“No!” Fist shouted, and tried to think of a good excuse.

“Why not?”
The orc drew his wicked sword and sneered at the ogre.

Fist fumbled about for a bit, but finally found some words. “This house has been claimed by my tribe!”

Pintok
clenched his teeth with anger. “What tribe is that?”

“The Rock People,” Fist claimed, randomly picking an ogre tribe that he thought would have joined the army.

The orc pointed his sword at the ground.
“
Gerstag’s
tribe?”

Fist finally remembered who
Gerstag
was. He was mighty warrior of the Rock People tribe. Fist had fought him once years ago, when the Rock People had stolen some of the Thunder People’s women.
Fist had gained the upper hand and been about to kill him when the leaders of the tribe had stopped their fight.

“Yes,” Fist said with new confidence. “
Gerstag
wants this house and the foods inside.” He was beginning to think that this just might work. The orc didn’t look too happy about Fist’s declaration and appeared as if he was thinking about going in the house anyway, but finally he grunted and turned to the other goblinoids.

“
Gerstag’s
claimed this house. We go down the road to find other foods!” The goblins started to leave and Fist was about to breathe a sigh of relief when a cry rang out by the road.

A small goblin ran up to the orc leader. “Human’s coming!” it declared and
Pintok
grinned.

The orc directed the goblinoids to prepare
themselves
. Five archers stood just in front of their leader, while the rest ran into the trees on either side of the road that led up to the house from Jack’s Rest.

Fist stood by the porch, waiting to act until he knew what was happening. From his higher vantage point, he saw who was approaching before the orc did. It was Tamboor, followed by two villagers that Fist knew on sight, a solid looking dwarf named
Ryebald
, who carried a heavy axe and a human named
Petyr
, with a long slender sword and a small shield. Both of them were retired academy graduates, just like Tamboor. They were running towards the house as fast as they could.

The orc leader saw their approach and grunted out a command. On cue, the goblinoid archers pulled back their arrows.

“Hold it,” the orc whispered. “Wait, hold it . . .
Fi
-”
Pintok
stopped in mid-word and looked down at the bloody tip of Fist’s spear that protruded from its chest. The archers didn’t even hear their leader fall over. With one powerful swing of his mace, Fist sent two of the goblin archers to the ground crushed and bleeding.

“Tamboor!
Goblins in the trees!”
Fist bellowed and kicked another goblin in the face, caving it in, sending teeth and eyeballs flying.

Tamboor heard Fist yell, but didn’t stop. He turned his head and shouted something to the two companions that were with him. The other two, simply nodded and followed Tamboor’s lead. They were combat veterans, unafraid of goblinoid riffraff.

Fist crushed the head of another archer with his mace, but the fifth one, an orc, saw him coming. It shot an arrow from five feet away. The arrow struck Fist between the eyes. The tip of the arrow ricocheted off of his hard skull and burrowed upwards under his skin to protrude weirdly out the top of his scalp. The
fletchings
came to a stop right above his nose.

Fist’s head snapped back and he
stumbled
a couple of feet, his head ringing from the blow. His vision blurred for a moment. He saw two orcs instead of one slowly reaching into a quiver behind their shoulders to pull out another arrow. But it was okay because as he raised his arm and stumbled forward, he saw that he had two maces.

Things didn’t move that slowly for the orc archer, though. It hadn’t expected the ogre to keep coming after it an arrow stuck in his head. The archer backpedaled as it tried to fit another arrow to its bow, but the ogre was faster.

The mace whipped across, breaking both of the
orc’s
arms and knocking the bow away. The orc stood, vacantly staring at his arms which were bent in weird angles, as the ogre’s giant mace came back around and connected with the side of its head.

As Tamboor and his two friends neared the house, the trees on either side of the road erupted in a flurry of motion. The remaining goblinoids rushed out of the foliage with weapons held high. The companions were lucky that the ogre had warned them, because if they hadn’t been prepared for the strike, they likely would have died in the first few moments of the fight.

Fortunately all three of them knew how to fight against overwhelming odds.
Ryebald
, the dwarf, roared and plowed headfirst into the orcs that came rushing at him, surprising them with his fury. Tamboor and
Petyr
stood back to back and fought in concert, Tamboor’s savagery and
Petyr’s
style of calm, piercing attacks set the attackers off balance.

Fist stood over the body of the orc and shook his head. He was still dazed and blood began streaming into his eyes from his garish head wound. He could hear the fight between the goblinoids and the warriors, but he could not join the battle if he couldn’t see.

Fist grasped the tip of the arrow that stuck out at the top of his scalp and broke the arrowhead off. Then he grasped the fletched end and pulled the arrow shaft out of the hole over his nose. The removal of the arrow brought a fresh rush of blood, but that was good. The blood would help clean the wound. The ogre wiped his eyes and rushed towards the battle.

Only moments had passed since the battle started and neither Tamboor nor
Petyr
had been severely injured. However, the humans hadn’t taken much of a toll on the monsters either. So far, they had only killed two of them and those were just goblins. They were so busy defending attacks from several opponents at once, that it was hard to get an offensive strike in. The two humans made a great team, but both were tiring as they had been fighting all morning back at the village.

Ryebald
, on the other hand, seemed to be tireless. His fighting style was much more straightforward, which was more effective in this case. The dwarf made great sweeps of his ax, aiming low to the ground, taking out legs and bellies of the creatures. So far, he had killed three and wounded several more. Unfortunately, this tactic left him open for attack. He had been struck several times, but each hit just seemed only to enrage him further.

As Fist reached the fight both
Ryebald
and
Petyr
saw him and cried out to Tamboor in warning.

“Don’t worry about the ogre! He’s a friend!” Tamboor shouted.

His words were confirmed a moment later, when Fist waded into the battle with his mace, sending dying goblinoids sprawling every which way. At this point, the momentum swung into the townsfolk’s favor and the goblinoids began to flee. Soon, there were only six left and they only remained because they were too afraid to run.

It looked as though the fight was over, but no one saw the small ball that rolled across the ground from the trees. When it reached the center of the fight, a strange buzzing noise filled the air. All of the combatants froze in place.

Chapter Fifteen

Fist’s mace was stopped an inch from a
gorc’s
head. His body had frozen in place. What had just happened? He strained and strained, but not a muscle would move. The only things moving were his lungs as he breathed and the sweat and blood dripping off of his body.

There was a rustling in the trees beside the road and a large group of orcs with spears stepped onto the road. They were followed by one very large ogre. The painted symbol on its forehead marked it as a member of the Rock People.

Fist would have
swore
if he had been able to move his mouth. It was
Gerstag
, the leader of the army attacking the town. The ogre had evidently taken advantage of his position in the army because he no longer carried the crude club Fist remembered from their fight. He now had a fine weapon, a huge trident as tall as he was, with three cruel, hooked prongs.

“My-my!” a voice called out. “
Gerstag
, are these the warriors that escaped you back at the village?” Out from behind the ogre, stepped a puny looking human with greasy hair and a sickly pallor to his skin.
Gerstag
responded to the question with a sullen grunt. The skinny human laughed and clapped his hands. The fingers writhed about
bonelessly
as if each finger was an individual snake.