Chapter 9 Trailblazing
Nightbird had not named his horse. The name had come to him magically, an extension, a gift, the only mantle that would fit the magnificent black stallion. And now Symphony lived up to that name fully, navigating the fog-shrouded forest as easily as most horses could run through an open field. The horse cut fast and thundered ahead, leaping trees downed by the heavy snow of the early winter and swerving safely wide of low- hanging branches. Nightbird did not guide him; rather, he let his wishes be known to Symphony, then put his complete faith in the horse.
And they were gaining on the goblin ahead.
They cut around a small line of thick spruces, Symphony's hooves dig-ging hard against the turf.
Ahead in the fog, Nightbird saw a movement: the goblin on the small horse, galloping flat out.
Symphony leaped in pursuit, closing still more ground, and soon the goblin was in range and the ranger lifted Hawkwing.
Frantic, the goblin kicked harder at the small horse's flanks, and the horse put its head down and sprinted ahead. But the goblin, knowing that it was being chased, knowing that its enemy was closing fast, was looking back and only glanced ahead in time to see the thick limb close the last few inches to its face.
The riderless horse continued on, but slowed with each stride.
Nightbird and Symphony trotted up to the squirming, squealing goblin, the creature rolling about on the ground, clutching its broken face. The ranger had Tempest out and struck down hard and true, and the wretched creature lay still.
Nightbird wiped the sword on the goblin's cloak, then slipped it back into its sheath on the side of Symphony's saddle. He glanced about the misty forest, then clamped his legs tight about the horse, and Symphony turned and thundered off the other way. Within seconds, the pair had spotted another fleeing goblin, and Symphony pursued.
This one was running, ducking from tree to tree, but it made the mis-take of crossing the ranger's path only a dozen yards ahead of the running horse. Nightbird recognized the small, hunched silhouette; and Hawkwing hummed, the arrow catching the wretched creature in the side, boring through both lungs and throwing it, dying, to the ground.
A noise from behind had the ranger glancing back, to spot another goblin bursting from the brush and running wildly the other way. Nightbird didn't even think to turn Symphony, but rather turned himself by throwing one leg over the saddle, facing backward, and loosing an arrow.
For the third time in a matter of half a minute, a goblin fell dead.
Perched in a tree not far away, Belli'mar Juraviel considered the ranger's shot with something more than respect, something bordering on awe. The elves had trained Nightbird, but to say that they had taught him everything he knew, Juraviel realized, would have been a tremendous falsehood. What the elves had taught Nightbird was quick thinking and how to bring his body in line with his plans, but the human's creative use of that knowledge was stunning.
As was the ranger's technique, Juraviel thought, looking at the goblin shot through the head, a perfect hit by the ranger while his horse was in full gallop the other way!
Juraviel's keen eyes continued to scan through the fog as he shook his head. There, he saw suddenly, in the same brush from which the last goblin had bolted, hid yet another creature, curled and cowering. Up came the elf's bow. He wanted a clean kill, but could hardly make out any critical points on the diminutive creature through the branches and the fog. He shot at center mass instead, his small arrow disappearing into the black figure.
With a scream of pain, the goblin leaped out, and Juraviel promptly shot it again, then a third time before it got fully onto the path, and then a fourth time as it took its first running steps. He raised his bow for the fifth shot, but saw the creature staggering, and knew that his task was done.
Callously, Juraviel turned his attention away, scanning the rest of the area and lamenting that it had cost him nearly a fifth of his arrows to kill a single goblin. Still, there were other ways, Juraviel knew, and so he started back on his original course, fluttering from branch to branch until he found a perch on a low, thick limb that crossed the path just above the height of a rider's head. Laying his bow to the side, arrow ready across bowstring, the elf took out his slender, strong silverel cord.
The centaur, too, was running through the forest, screaming taunt after taunt at the terrified goblins. When he discovered that several of the gob-lins were riding horses - something very unusual - Bradwarden took up hisbagpipes and played a different tune, one of quiet, calming music and not screaming insults. Bradwarden had to work hard to concentrate on the melody; for decades, he had run the forests of the Timberlands as protector of the wild horses, and now the mere thought of a smelly goblin atop so graceful and beautiful a creature outraged him.
Hardly caring for the goblins scrambling about on foot, the centaur picked out his next target and took up the chase. He knew how to talk to a horse, any horse, with his pipes; and instead of arrows, he sent music in pursuit. A grin turned up the corners of Bradwarden's mouth - he had to resist the urge to burst out in laughter so that he might keep filling his pipes with air - when he ducked under a branch and plowed through some brush, breaking out onto a small dirt clearing. There, some ten feet ahead of him, sat the frantic goblin, kicking desperately at the horse's flanks and wildly jostling the impromptu rope bridle.
But the horse had heard the call of the centaur and would not move.
It took some fancy finger work, but Bradwarden held the tune, playing with one hand while he took up his heavy cudgel in the other and quietly and methodically advanced. The goblin looked back at him briefly, but then only kicked and pulled more desperately, hopping up and down in its stationary seat.
The horse nickered softly, but did not move.
Now the centaur did laugh aloud, tucking his pipes away under his arm. "Ye about done there?" he asked matter-of-factly.
The goblin stopped its jostling and slowly turned its ugly head to regard the powerful centaur, who was standing right beside. It started to scream then, but the cry was cut short by the cudgel crushing skull and shattering neck bone. The goblin bounced from its perch and dropped heavily to the ground, twitching in the last moments of its life.
Bradwarden paid it no heed. "Now ye go and hide yerself in the woods," he said to the horse, pulling off its bridle, then sending it away with a solid slap on the rump. "I'll be callin' for ye when it's time for leavin'. "
Now Bradwarden did look down at the goblin, still twitching, and he shook his head in disbelief. This was the second goblin he had caught as it tried to ride away, but at least the first had found the sense to get down off the damned stopped horse!
This one was a strong rider, for a goblin, Nightbird realized as Symphony worked hard to close ground. The goblin knew the area fairly well, the ranger also surmised, for it moved off the trails only at brief intervals and then only to get onto yet another narrow path. And even running its horse full out, the goblin knew when to duck and when to swerve.
Symphony was more than prepared to meet the challenge, and the great stallion pounded on gracefully, closing.
Now the goblin was a ghostly gray form in the fog ahead. Nightbird tightened his legs about Symphony and raised Hawkwing. He pulled back and fired, but the goblin's horse turned, and the arrow flew harmlessly past.
Nightbird worked hard to get down low as Symphony thundered around that same bend. As the path straightened, up came Hawkwing again, but right before the ranger let fly, the goblin ducked under a low branch that crossed the path and the shot was lost.
Growling with frustration, the ranger, too, went under the branch. He feared that this would prove to be a long chase, though, for the path ahead was anything but straight. He did catch sight of the goblin at last, riding hard. It sat up straight for just a moment, glancing back.
And then, suddenly, it was jerked free of its seat, sent flying back through the air as the horse galloped on.
The creature's arms and legs flailed wildly for just a second, and then it hung limp in midair, twisting slowly. Nightbird understood as he neared and saw Belli'mar Juraviel perched on a branch above the goblin's head, one end of his elven cord fastened to the branch, the other around the goblin's skinny neck.
"Saving your arrows?" the ranger asked sarcastically.
Before Juraviel could answer, a commotion in the forest sent the elf flut-tering higher up the tree. Even from the higher vantage point, he couldn't see much through the fog, but his keen ears brought him all the information he needed. "It would seem as if our moment of surprise is ended," he called down. "The goblins are regrouping. "
No sooner had the words left his mouth than another voice rang out strong and clear in the morning air. "So nice for ye to oblige," came Bradwarden's roar. "Gettin' yerselves all in one place for me!"
And that, predictably, was soon followed by sounds of renewed fighting.
"Bradwarden decided to regroup with them," Juraviel said dryly, and off the elf went, hopping and flying from branch to branch.
Symphony leaped away at Nightbird's bidding, off the path, cutting a straight line through the brush, following the centaur's voice. Pressing for speed, neither rider nor mount could avoid much of the underbrush, and both got scratched by sharp branches and bushes. Turning one bend around a thick tree a bit too tightly, the horse crunched Nightbird's leg. The ranger didn't complain, though, just threw his arm up in front of his face to protect his eyes, held on more tightly, squeezed his legs in as close as possible to Symphony's sides, and lay low across the horse's neck.
Sensing the urgency, intelligent enough to understand that a friend was in peril, Symphony, too, accepted the minor cuts and did not slow. In a few moments, they broke through the last of the underbrush, onto the rim of a bowl-shaped depression.
One goblin was down, its head split wide. Another rolled about, howling in pain and clutching its smashed shoulder. But eight more of the creatures remained, surrounding Bradwarden, prodding at him with spears and swords, forcing the centaur to work furiously to keep the goblins at bay so that they couldn't follow through and stick him deep. Bradwarden kicked and spun, and swished his great club with mighty swings, roaring threats. He couldn't hope to maintain that frantic pace, though, and as each turn came a bit slower, the goblins managed to move a bit closer and stick him a bit deeper.
On one such turn, the centaur spotted Nightbird and Symphony leaping down to join the fray. "Taked ye long enough!" Bradwarden roared; and with new hope came new energy. He spun back the other way and charged ahead, driving the goblins back and luring those behind, thus distracting them from the charge of the ranger.
Nightbird threw his left leg over the saddle, pulled his right foot from the stirrup, and replaced it with the left, leaving him standing atop the running horse. As they neared the closest goblins, the creatures finally turning to meet the charge, the ranger dropped from the horse and Symphony dug in his hooves and veered hard to the left.
His forward momentum unbroken, the ranger rushed ahead suddenly, stabbing Tempest out straight. The goblin made a fair attempt to block the thrust, but it couldn't comprehend how fast the weapon closed the space.
Nightbird ran right by, tearing Tempest free of the goblin's chest. He dove into a roll to help slow his progress, and came up on one knee with a mighty slashing parry of the next goblin's thrusting spear.
Overbalanced as the front half of its weapon got sheared away, the goblin stumbled toward the ranger, who stabbed straight out, sticking the goblin deep in the chest. With a powerful heave, Nightbird lifted the impaled creature and tossed it to the ground behind him, then rose quickly, slapping his blade against the sword of the next goblin as it came in at him. Deftly - this one was a fine warrior by goblin standards - the goblin sent its sword in repeatedly, once, twice, thrice, but each attack was neatly parried by the ranger's flashing sword. Its momentum lost, the goblin tried to retreat, but that gave the ranger the opportunity to attack.
Now Tempest came in, once, twice, thrice. To the goblin's credit, it man-aged to parry the first two blows.
Spurred by the appearance of his ally, Bradwarden had not been idle, though he hadn't scored any definitive blows. But neither had the goblins, obviously distracted by the appearance of the ranger, of Nightbird, whose name they had heard whispered in their worst nightmares. When the third fell to the slashing Tempest, the other five had seen enough, and they turned and scattered for the cover of the trees.
Nightbird started to follow, but he pulled up short, startled, as some-thing zipped past his face. He understood when the object - one of Juraviel's small arrows - buried itself deep into the hamstring of a goblin,turning its retreat into a slow stagger. Another arrow came flying past, catching the next goblin in line, but the elf's aim was a bit too high, and the creature only ran off all the faster with the arrow stuck into its buttocks.
"Oh, don't ye be runnin', I'm tired o' runnin'!" Bradwarden wailed, and in frustration, the centaur threw his club at the closest fleeing creature. The weapon skipped past harmlessly, but the goblin did stop to notice, and then glanced back - noting that Nightbird had disappeared into the brush at the side, following the one Juraviel had crippled. Behind the goblin, Bradwarden's club settled into the brush.
An evil grin spread across the goblin's ugly face. "Now yous got no weapon," it reasoned, lifting its sword and charging back at Bradwarden.
"Dumb," the centaur mumbled. "Was that yer brother sittin' stupid on the horse?" With a great spinning leap, Bradwarden pivoted about, throw-ing his rump in line with the charging goblin. His hind legs touched down. Then he hopped and kicked, muscled legs shooting past the goblin's puny arm and puny weapon, one hoof catching the goblin's shoulder, the other its chest. Muscles extending, the centaur's kick hurled the goblin twenty feet backward, its arms and legs flailing wildly, to crash hard into the brush.
The centaur calmly walked past the broken, dazed creature, to retrieve his club. Then he came back, towering over the goblin. "Got no weapon, eh?" he taunted, and the cudgel came crashing down.
Back in the center of the bowl, Juraviel finished off those squirming on the ground, then moved out into the brush, to find the one he had ham-strung. It lay dead in a pool of blood, the result of a single, efficient sword thrust under the back of its skull.
"Where's the ranger?" the centaur asked when Juraviel emerged. Sym-phony, standing beside the centaur, stamped the ground hard.
"Hunting, I would guess," the elf replied casually.
Bradwarden looked at the misty forest and smiled.
The goblin leaned against a tree, slapping the side of its rump in a futile attempt to alleviate the pain, not daring to touch the arrow Juraviel had put into its butt. Then the creature froze at a nearby sound, eyes wide with terror, but it relaxed as two of its companions came skittering over.
One grasped the arrow shaft and started to extract the bolt, but the goblin cried out in pain, and the other stopped and slapped a hand over its mouth.
"Quiet!" said the third in a harsh whisper. "Yous wants to bring the Nightbird and the horse-man on us? Yous already left a line of blood. . . . "
The goblin's voice trailed off, and all three looked down at the unmistak-ably clear trail of the wounded goblin's passage.
Three sets of eyes came up, the terrified goblins staring at each other, none daring to speak.
Nightbird dropped from a branch to land right in the midst of them. Out went his fist to strike one goblin, out went the pommel of his sword, then ahead came the flashing blade. A backhand strike took down the second goblin, slashing diagonally from shoulder to hip as it staggered from the force of the pommel, and then the ranger spun around, landing a powerful overhead chop on the first goblin as it tried to recover from the punch in the face and tried to bring its unwieldy spear to bear.
It took the ranger longer to extract Tempest from the goblin's split head than it had to kil
l all three.
Elbryan found his friends waiting for him back on the road a short while later, the two resting comfortably in the unseasonably warm sun, passing Bradwarden's heavy wineskin - which Elbryan knew to be filled withQuestel ni'touel, the fine elvish wine more commonly known as boggle - back and forth.
"Am I to hunt alone then?" the ranger said with feigned anger. "Three escape us, with three of us to give chase, and yet I find myself out alone in the forest. "
"And just how many did ye get, ranger?" the centaur asked.
"They were all together," Elbryan explained.
"Easy enough, then," reasoned Juraviel.
"And still ye're whinin'," Bradwarden remarked, taking another swig of the potent liquor, then lifting it toward the ranger.
Elbryan declined with a smile. "I do not drink much boggle," he said. "Every time I try to lift a flask of it to my lips, my arms ache with pain," he explained, an obvious reference to his early days of training with the Touel'alfar, when he had gone out to the bog every morning to collect the milk stones, then take them to the gathering trough where he had to squeeze the flavored juice out of them until his arms had ached.
It was said as a joke, of course, but Bradwarden was ever the master at turning a joke back on the speaker. "Whinin' again," he moaned. "Ye know, elf, yerself and yer kin'd be better takin' in me own folk for yer ranger trainin'. "
"We have tried, good Bradwarden," said Juraviel, pulling back the wine-skin. "And a fierce fighter indeed is an elven-trained centaur, though short on cunning, I fear. "
Bradwarden gave a low growl. "Insultin' me even as he steals me boggle," he said to Elbryan as the ranger moved to slide his sword back into its sheath on Symphony's saddle. That done, Elbryan checked the horse carefully, noting one especially painful-looking scratch along the side of Symphony's strong neck. The wound had already been tended, he was glad to see, by gentle elven hands. "Is this how I am to spend the rest of my life?" he asked suddenly, his serious tone drawing the complete atten-tion of both centaur and elf. "Traveling forest paths, hunting down rogue monsters?"
"At your present pace, you will clear all the region soon enough," Juraviel said with a smile, but those words brought a look of horror to the faces of the other two.
"I certainly hope not!" Elbryan replied with a laugh, walking over and pulling the wineskin from Juraviel's grasp.
The other two laughed as well, for when they thought about it, they understood the ranger's reasoning. The presence of goblins and giants and powries had certainly been a terrible thing for the folk of the region, a bitter war that had shattered homes and families, that had left many innocents dead. But there was something else that had come with the darkness and the tragedy, a sense of purpose and of camaraderie, a necessary joining of folk who might not even have been friends in peaceful circumstances. And also, undeniably, this phase of the war, the last hunting, the reclaiming of lands when all of the helpless, innocent folk were out of harm's way, proved truly exhilarating. Just as it had on that very morning, when riding point for Tomas Gingerwart's caravan, the three friends had spotted the encamp-ment of a dozen or so goblins. They formed quick plans and the fight, and then the chase, was on.
Elbryan, by far the youngest of the three, felt the excitement most keenly. At those times when he could put his elven training to use and become this other persona, Nightbird, he was most alive.
"Gingerwart," Bradwarden remarked, seeing smoke rising down the road to the south. At last the fog was beginning to clear.
Elbryan regarded the distant sign of approach. The way was clear for another day's travel; they would be in Dundalis, or in what remained of the place, in a matter of two or three days.