Rick Cook - Wizard’s Bane

"Fools! Buffoons!" roared Atros. "Must I do your work for you? There is no magic here. Only two humans. Finish them. Now."

"Magic, Master!" the goblin soldier begged.

"Idiot!" Atros kicked the creature in the face, sending him sprawling. The other goblins shifted and muttered. Atros realized he was dangerously close to overplaying his hand with these servants.

"Attack again," he ordered. "Attack now. If they use magic then I will loose my powers against them."

The goblins muttered more but they began to sort themselves out for an attack.

Atros watched, frowning. He still wasn’t sure the alien wizard was with this group and he didn’t want to use his magic unnecessarily. Whatever was going on in the City of Night was nullifying or weakening spells. Demons were not responding reliably to his call, so he could not learn the identity of his adversary. He did not know his strengths or weaknesses and the feel of the magic was maddeningly unfamiliar. Worse, he could not establish contact with his fellow wizards. He was on his own and deprived of his most reliable weapons.

If the wizard was in that room, then he would crush him. But there was no sign of great power and if the wizard was not there, Atros would rather sacrifice this band of goblins than reveal and weaken himself.

He stood aside as the goblins formed up, ignoring their sidelong glances and their mutterings. One more attack and he would have those humans. Then he would know.

"Lord, we have to get out of here," Kenneth said over his shoulder. "They’re reforming just around the bend."

"Uh? Oh, right. Let’s get going. Gather round close everybody." He put an arm around Moira’s waist and drew her to him. Donal stepped in close behind and at the last second Kenneth spun away from the door and raced to them. Wiz lifted his staff. backslashtransport… he began and then stopped.

"Damn," Wiz said under his braeth.

"What is it?" Moira asked.

"I don’t have enough power to make the transport. I can’t make the spell work with all those worms active."

"I would suggest, Lord, that you come up with an alternative," said Kenneth quietly, nocking an arrow, "and do so quickly." He returned to the door and stared down the weirdly lit corridor.

"I’ll have to shut down the worms. It’ll just take a few minutes."

"We may not have them," Kenneth replied, drawing his bow and stepping quickly into the corridor to loose a shaft. There was a roar of pain and then other roars and yells as the attackers charged.

Again, Kenneth brought down two more before they closed. By the time he laid his bow aside and drew his sword, Donal’s two-handed sword was cleaving a glittering arc of death in the air before them. The leading goblin charged unheeding and died twitching and flopping at the guardsman’s feet, his arm and shoulder nearly shorn from his body.

The other goblins hesitated for a fraction. Experienced fighters all, they knew that their situation was not as favorable as it looked to Moira gaping from the doorway. True, they had the humans outnumbered 20 to 1, but the tunnel was so narrow they could only come on three abreast, and a tightly packed three abreast at that. Their armor was good, but their weapons were for guard work, not a battle with armored men at close quarters. They had no archers, only a few pole arms and no shields.

Still, they were seasoned warriors and if the effects of the magical assault on the City of Night had unnerved them, they had no doubt they could win this fight. They dressed their lines and advanced in a packed mass. Barbed spears and cruelly hooked halberds reached out from the back ranks toward the two men.

Donal skipped forward, beating the pole arms aside and down with an overhead sweep of his blade. The goblins to his right were tied up by the tangle of weapons but the one to his left raised his sword for a killing stroke.

Before the blow could land Kenneth thrust home into the creature’s exposed armpit. The light mail under the arm popped and snapped and the goblin went down shrieking. Donal gave ground, parrying with his great sword as the weapons of the back ranks thrust at him. Donal took advantage of the gap created by the falling goblin to slash the face of his rank mate and then leapt away so that the swords of the goblins cut empty air.

The goblins pressed forward as the humans retreated, the ones on the left stumbling on the bodies of their fallen comrades. Kenneth reached to his belt and drew a small war axe with his left hand. Donal parried a spear thrust from the rear ranks and riposted with a quick thrust to the head of the right-most goblin. The blade slid off the creature’s knobbed helmet, but the force of the blow jarred the goblin and made him break step. The middle goblin aimed a whistling low cut at Kenneth’s leg and gave Donal the opening he had been waiting for.

Kenneth stepped in and thrust to the goblin’s neck. At the same time he brought the hatchet up and caught the left-most goblin’s sword stroke between the haft and bit. A twist of his wrist and the sword was levered out of its owner’s grasp and flying across the tunnel. The creature gaped in tusked amazement and then his eyes glazed in death as Kenneth’s sword found his vitals.

But before Kenneth could skip out of range, a halberd licked out from among the goblin’s legs. With a vicious jerk the hook on the back of the blade sank into the unprotected rear of Kenneth’s calf. The guardsman hissed in pain and dropped. Donal slashed mightily with his great sword to cover his fallen companion, but the goblins pressed forward inexorably. Goblin blades flashed out, three and four at once. Rings popped on Donal’s mail and a bright red gash opened in his side.

Wiz turned from his half-built spell at Moira’s gasp in time to see Donal reel backward from the blows.

" cancel!" he shouted and pointed his staff at the packed mass. " for 1 to 10 flash do" he shouted. " exe!"

Instantly the corridor went from a bluish gloom to a light more brilliant than the brightest summer noon. Then it went pitch dark and then the light again and again and again. The goblins howled in pain from the blasts of light. In the strobe of the bolts Wiz could see them weirdly frozen, trying to shield their eyes and ignoring the two helpless men on the floor.

Wiz pointed his staff at the goblins and muttered another command. " Bibbity boppity boo!"

A ravening lance of flame shot from the end of the staff and struck the foremost goblin squarely. The creature shrieked, a high, almost womanish sound, as the fire took it. Another bolt shot from Wiz’s staff and another goblin turned into a living torch. Again and again Wiz’s staff shot fire and more goblins burned.

That was too much. The goblins broke and fled, the ones in the fore trampling their fellows behind them in their haste to escape.

Wiz closed his eyes and breathed a silent prayer. Moira dashed out into the corridor to the wounded men.

Kenneth had an ugly wound in his calf but he could limp back with only a little assistance. Donal was in a worse way, conscious but groggy and bleeding heavily from the wound in his side. Moira and Wiz got the two inside and laid them on the dirty straw.

"My bow," Kenneth commanded and Wiz rushed back to get it. When he returned he found the guardsman had dragged himself to the door and was standing propped against the jamb.

"Thank you, Lord," he said as Wiz handed him the bow. "I will keep watch from here. But we need to be gone quickly."

"I’m trying," Wiz told him, "but this is more complicated than I bargained for. I don’t think those damned worms were such a hot idea after all."

"Make haste Lord," Kenneth panted. "They have not gone far and they will come again soon."