Nine Goblins(14)

Then her feet appeared to discover it, as well, because she seemed to be charging at the wizard. Why, feet? Why now? Why can’t you be more like—oh, the spleen, say? The spleen never charges anybody!

Her feet ignored her. Her vocal cords appeared to have gotten the hint, because she wasn’t yelling any more, or perhaps her blood was just pounding in her ears too loudly to tell.

She wondered if anybody was actually following her.

Not daring to look behind her for fear of finding that she was making a suicide charge all on her own, she continued forward. The ground slipped and slid and squelched under her broad feet. At this stage of the fight, footing was often more dangerous than the other guys having swords—all those feet running and jumping and tearing over the hillside had churned it into dirt and mud and slippery bits. If you fell down, you slid, until you hit somebody else—a dead body if you were lucky, a live, angry body carrying a blunt instrument if you weren’t.

Goblins actually have an advantage in this terrain since their feet are so huge, but there are limits. She tripped over something—goodness, I hope that wasn’t what it looked like—and stumbled down the slope, not entirely in control of her own course.

An elf appeared in front of her. He had a sword. Unable to stop, and for lack of anything better to do, she ran directly into him, at full speed. He squawked and went down. So did she.

Overhead, another bolt of blue shot out and dropped a nearby goblin like a rock.

Sometimes whoever gets up first wins, and since Nessilka was sitting on the elf’s legs, she had a tenuous advantage. The elf kicked and bucked under her. She slammed her club down on his knee, which put a stop to that, rolled to her feet, took aim, and stomped, hard.

Male elves are no different from any other humanoid species in some regards. He probably wouldn’t die, but he’d certainly wish he had, and Nessilka didn’t have time to stick around, with the wizard still spitting bolts of blue everywhere.

She slid and squelched forward. Then she got onto a patch that still had grass on it—oh glory!—and got traction and pounded forward.

She was twenty feet away, and it occurred to her that her entire plan was “hit wizard with club and hope for the best.” This was not a bad plan, as such things go, but it did not seem to have a contingency for the wizard spitting blueness at her.

There were footsteps behind her. Somebody yelled.

The wizard looked up, and his eyes went wide.

Nessilka had to do it. She darted a glance behind her.

The entire Nineteenth Infantry, from Algol down to Blanchett’s teddy-bear, were right behind her.

Shock warred with gratitude warred with the horror that she was going to get them all killed. Nessilka left her emotions to sort the matter out on their own time, raised her club, and thundered up the last few feet to the wizard.

“Whooooohaaaaa!”

The wizard stopped shooting blue. His mouth opened again, but this time in what looked like a cry of terror, and he reached both hands to one side and grabbed at thin air.

Nessilka wondered briefly if he’d gone mad with terror or was trying to milk an invisible cow.

Then—and even for magic this was weird—he grabbed the air and yanked.

The air tore open—really tore, as if it were a big sheet of canvas with the world painted on it—and there was something on the other side. Darkness, shot with green, that moved.

Sergeant Nessilka did not know much about magic, but she was pretty sure that tearing holes in the air meant no good for anybody.

She tried to stop.

The Nineteenth Infantry, led by Algol, crashed into her back.

Her feet went out from under her and she crashed into the wizard, who in turn crashed into the hole in the air.

The hole went “glorp!”

The wizard went “Arrrrgh!”

Nessilka went “Craaaap!”

Algol went “Sarge?”

The world went black.





EIGHT





Sings-to-Trees was tired, but he felt good. This was his normal state of being, so he didn’t stop to notice it.

The bone doe, now with a splint and a tightly wrapped cast, had melted into the trees, followed by her brooding companion. The stag hadn’t liked him messing around with the doe’s leg and had rattled near-constantly, like a furious rattlesnake, until the doe had turned her head and snapped her exposed teeth in the stag’s direction.

Sings-to-Trees gazed off in the middle distance with a vague, pleasant expression, the way that most people do when present at other people’s minor domestic disputes, and after a moment, the stag had stopped rattling, and the doe had turned back and rested her chin trustingly on Sings-to-Trees’ shoulder.

This would have been a touching gesture, if her chin hadn’t been made of painfully pointy blades of bone. It was like being snuggled by an affectionate plow.