The Demon Awakens (58 page)

And again, they were shadowed, every step, and even led, though they did not know it, by the ranger as he scouted out the perfect spot for the ambush. Elbryan had found just what he was looking for, a narrow pass between a steep, high ridge and a muddy pond, and was returning to lay out the plans when he found that his hand was being forced.

Pony’s expression was the first indication that something was wrong, and as soon as he gained a vantage point on the monsters, the ranger figured it out. A dispute had arisen between one or more of the prisoners and their goblin captors, and now the humans were being punished once more. Elbryan winced with every blow, feeling the pain as acutely as if the goblin’s club had been aimed at him; but again, he tried to hold back, tried to keep perspective and hold the greater goal above his emotions.

But then one prisoner, a young man of about the same age Elbryan had been when Dundalis was first overrun, was pulled from the line. The goblins’ intentions for this one soon became obvious; they meant to make him an example. The young man was forced to his knees, his head pulled low, exposing the back of his neck.

“No, no, no,” Elbryan whispered, and truly he was torn. All the plan and all the prisoners had a better chance if the ambush was carefully plotted and choreographed, and yet how could the ranger stand idly by and watch this unfortunate young man be sacrificed?

Elbryan could
not
watch idly, of course, and as soon as Hawkwing came up, the others realized that the time for action was upon them.

The goblin’s sword went up high, but fell harmlessly to the ground as Elbryan’s arrow slammed into the creature’s chest. Elbryan came charging through the trees, screaming wildly, readying another arrow.

Goblins scrambled, one calling out commands—until its words became a gurgle, its mouth filled with its own blood, Elbryan’s second arrow deep in its throat.

“Oh, hurry!” Avelyn cried to Pony, for the two had laid plans of how they might get to the prisoners.

Pony was trying to hurry, concentrating with all her will on the malachite. She had done this before, in practice with Avelyn, but now the pressure was intense, the price of failure too great.

“Ho, ho, what!” Avelyn howled at her. “You know that you can do it, and do it well, my girl!”

The encouragement pushed her over the edge, into the depths of the stone’s magic. She felt her weight lessening, felt as light as a feather.

Avelyn lifted her easily from the ground and threw her in the direction of the monstrous caravan. Pony floated up as she went, grabbing the branches of trees and propelling herself along. She crossed over Elbryan, the ranger engaged with sword now, battling a line of goblins and, amazingly, driving them back.

She crossed over the goblins, scrambling high and keeping quiet, until she was, at last, directly above the huddled group of prisoners. Pony held her breath, noting the movements of the goblins, thinking by their actions and by the snatches of screamed commands she caught that they were indeed planning to harm the human prisoners.

The woman looked worriedly at the other stone Avelyn had given her, then at her own sword, wondering which she would be better to trust. Either way, her situation was about to become desperate.

Elbryan’s rage did not relent. Two goblins rushed to intercept him, but he batted their weapons aside with a furious two-handed swipe of Hawkwing. He dropped the bow as it moved past the creatures, and in the same lightning-fast movement, drew out Tempest, thrusting it into the belly of the closest creature. The ranger punched out with his free hand, connecting solidly on the other goblin’s chin, and he charged on, tearing free his sword.

The stunned goblin rubbed its chin and tried to rise to follow, but Bradwarden was right on the ranger’s heels and was quick to trample the wretched thing into the dust.

Then the centaur was beside Elbryan, singing at the top of his voice, running goblins down and clubbing goblins down. Their momentum carried them deep into the goblin ranks, but began to ebb as the creatures finally organized a defense about them.

The goblins came at them in a semicircular formation, but the integrity of the monstrous line was compromised quickly, for Belli’mar Juraviel, perched on a branch some distance away, plucked at them with his tiny but deadly bow.

At the same time, Paulson and Chipmunk caught up to their fighting companions, the small man leading his way in with a line of hurled daggers.

“On me back!” the centaur roared to Elbryan. “We’ll get to the prisoners!”

But not in time, Elbryan thought, looking past the goblin ranks to the pitiful group. He prayed that Pony and Avelyn would do their part well, and wondered if his rage had betrayed them all.

Avelyn could hardly see the goblin ranks and knew not at all which creature was in charge. As soon as Pony was away, the monk searched for some hiding spot for his bulky frame, but realized that he had little time to spare. He settled for a clump of birch trees, throwing his body into their midst as he threw his mind into the hematite he tightly clutched. He was into his spirit-walking, already rushing fast away, before his great bulk ever settled amid the tangled branches.

The monk’s spirit flew past Juraviel, the sensitive elf taking note, though the ghostly form was surely invisible. He swept past Paulson and Chipmunk, past Bradwarden and Elbryan, past the front ranks of goblins, until he came to the miserable prisoners and the monstrous guards about them. One in particular was calling out commands, and Avelyn’s spirit made a straight line to that body, pushed into the physical form, and battled for control.

Possession was never easily accomplished, a difficult and dangerous practice, but no one in all the world could summon the powers of the stones as thoroughly as Avelyn Desbris, and the monk was desperate now, for the safety of others and not for himself.

He ejected the goblin’s spirit almost immediately and continued barking out commands, but these did not concern the prisoners at all. “Flee!” he yelled to his charges. “Run to the trees, into the forest. Run away! Run away!”

Many goblins did just that, more than eager to be gone since the furious ranger and the powerful centaur were crushing through their ranks.

Others, though, meant to get their taste of human blood before they left.

Pony saw them, two of them, running from the area of the fight but angling their course and their weapons to pound the prisoners as they passed. The woman’s concentration was taxed to its limit as she tried to fall into her other stone while maintaining the weightlessness of the malachite, all the while, keeping her eyes on the monsters, measuring their progress.

She was out of time. Her mind let go of the malachite and she dropped the ten feet to the ground, landing right between the surprised goblins.

They screamed, Pony screamed, and they spun about, bringing their weapons to bear, as the woman grabbed their shoulders.

Pony was quicker, falling into the stone, the graphite.

There came a sharp crack, a sudden black flash, and the two goblins fell to the ground, twitching violently as they died.

“Forget the woman!” Avelyn the goblin chief cried to another monster that was swinging about to bear down on Pony, and the monk rushed to intercept. He tried something new then, connecting his mind back to his physical body and bringing in new magic from a second stone that his own form clutched, as he went.

“Kill humans!” the goblin howled in Avelyn’s face, but the monk reached up with an arm that more resembled that of a tiger than of a human or a goblin. He took away the creature’s protest as he took away its face.

“Ho, ho, what!” the monk-turned-goblin roared, eyeing the transformed arm. “It worked!”

Indeed it had; Avelyn had reached out across the distance, had connected with his own physical being while holding control of the goblin’s form. But the strain had been great, too great, and the monk felt himself losing control immediately, his spirit soaring back past the fighting, back to the birch trees. In his last effort of will, right before he lost consciousness, the monk reached back out to the goblin’s body, and as the creature became aware of its physical form once more, it found its own arm—or at least an arm that was connected to its body—moving up to claw viciously at its own face.

The surprised, confused creature stumbled backward, its other, normal appendage grabbing at its torn face. Surprise turned to horror, to agony, as it stumbled near Pony, and the woman drove her sword into its back, its tip poking right through the goblin’s chest.

Pony then turned her attention to the prisoners, bidding them to run off, out of harm’s way. Most of the men and a few women would not go, however. Wearing masks of grief, no doubt for loved ones this monstrous band had slain, they charged the other way, into those monsters battling Elbryan and the others, fighting with weapons they snatched from goblin dead, with sticks or rocks found on the ground, or with their bare hands.

It was over in a matter of minutes, with more than a score of goblins lying dead, the rest running, scattering into the forest. Several humans had been injured, as had Bradwarden—though the tough centaur thought little of his cuts and bruises—and Avelyn returned to them shortly, on unsteady legs, carrying the worst headache the monk had ever known. Still, without complaint, the good monk used his hematite once more, this time to lessen the wounds of the injured.

Elbryan gathered up Paulson and Chipmunk and called to Juraviel, the four moving out from the gathering to ensure the goblins were not rallying for any counterattack.

In more than an hour of searching, the foursome found only a pair of goblins hiding in one spot, and another running stupidly in circles.

So the ambush had worked, near to perfection, and the prisoners were free, but that left the ranger with a new dilemma and a new and unasked-for responsibility.

“Belster is no doubt many miles to the south by now,” Avelyn reasoned, “out of our reach. Even if I use the stones to contact him, we’ll not easily get to him and hand off our new friends.”

“They are a tough lot,” Pony added hopefully, “but inexperienced with goblins and the like.”

Paulson gave her a sidelong, incredulous glance.

“With these goblins, at least,” the woman corrected. “They’ve not battled the army of the dactyl before.”

Paulson conceded that point.

“It would take us weeks to prepare them correctly, that they might have a chance of escaping on their own,” the woman finished.

Elbryan absorbed all their words, sifted through their suggestions. After a moment, his gaze settled on Paulson and Chipmunk.

The big man understood that gaze well; Elbryan had never asked him and Chipmunk to come along, had, in fact absolved them of all responsibilities. But the ranger was about to place a new responsibility on the pair, Paulson realized. He wanted Paulson and Chipmunk to shoulder the burden of the new refugees and find a way to take them south. Paulson, full of anger at the loss of his dear friend, did not want to abandon this quest and neither did Chipmunk, but they would for the sake of the refugees. That realization struck the big man profoundly; for the first time in many years, he felt like a part of something larger than himself, a cohesive circle of comrades, of friends.

“There is another choice before us,” Belli’mar Juraviel said from the low branches of a nearby tree. The elf had been keeping a low profile, not wanting to frighten the skittish refugees. The sight of Bradwarden had unnerved the folk almost as much as had the sight of the goblins, and the elf thought it better to hit them with one surprise at a time.

The group looked up to the elf, resting easily, his legs crossed at the ankles, feet dangling a few yards above their heads.

“There is a place where they might know shelter, not so far from here,” the elf remarked.

Hopeful nods came from every head, except for Elbryan. Juraviel’s tone intimated something more profound to the ranger, that not only was there a mere place for shelter, but a very special place indeed. Elbryan remembered the run that had brought him to Dundalis, Nightbird’s first journey. He had crossed the Moorlands, coming from the west. Now he and his troop were once again west of the Moorlands, though miles farther north.

“We can get them there, then, and continue on our way,” Pony reasoned.

“Not we,” Juraviel replied, “but I alone. This place is not so far, but not so close, a week’s march, perhaps.”

“In a week, we could bring them almost all the way back to Dundalis,” Bradwarden reasoned.

“To what end?” asked the elf. “No one remains to help them there, and all that area is full of monsters. The place I speak of holds many allies, and there are no monsters, of that I am sure.”

“You speak of Andur’Blough Inninness,” Elbryan reasoned, and when the elf didn’t immediately deny it, the ranger knew that his guess was correct. “But will your Lady accept so many humans into the elven home? The place is secret, its borders closed and well hidden.”

“The times are not normal,” Juraviel replied. “Lady Dasslerond gave a score of us leave to join in your struggles, to go out and take stock of the happenings in the wider world. She will not refuse entry to the humans, not now, with darkness all about them.” The elf gave a smile. “Oh, do not doubt that we shall put enchantments over them, a bit of boggle in their meals, perhaps, to keep them disoriented that our paths remain hidden when they are turned out into the wider world once more.”

“We should all go,” reasoned Pony, who desperately wanted to view the elven home, who could sit for hours and hours to listen to Elbryan’s tales of the magical place.

Elbryan, too, was tempted, would have loved to see Andur’Blough Inninness again, especially now, to bolster his resolve before he completed this all-important, perilous journey. The ranger knew better, though. “Every day we spend moving to the south, and every day it takes us to get back even to this spot, our enemies strike deeper into our homeland and more people die,” he said calmly.

“I shall take them alone,” Juraviel announced. “As you recognized your destiny, Brother Avelyn, so I recognize my own. You will introduce me to the folk in the morning and I will lead them away to safety.”