David Mcintee - The Light of Heaven

Gabriella shook her head. "I don't enjoy killing."

He shrugged. "You should do. You're good at it."

Gabriella ignored him and squatted between a decapitated goblin and a disembowelled one. She prodded at the headless corpse's ribcage, disturbing the flies that had begun to settle on the skin.

"Look how starved they were," she said.

"You thinking of setting up a Mission to look after them?" Crowe mocked. "A gobbo soup kitchen? I can see that going down well in Scholten. Look, God-girl; all that them being starved means is they'll fight twice as hard to get a bite of somebody, you see? It doesn't mean we should be understanding them."

"What it means, sinner, is that they came along a route that didn't offer much food." Her brow furrowed. "If they had tried to go to Fayence they'd have been slaughtered." She heard a racking cough from nearby. "This one's still alive!"

Crowe made to draw his sword but Gabriella stopped him.

"Get a Healer and some rope," she said and began hauling the goblin into the church. "Erak," she called, and he ran to join her. "Come on." Together they carried the goblin into the church.

Crowe shook his head in wonder. "These religious types are touched in the head," he muttered to himself.

Kratok-Chal exploded into wakefulness as cold water was splashed over his face. He coughed and realised he could still breathe. His belly no longer ached with hunger, but there was cold fire burning in his lungs and his side. He could smell his own blood.

He tried to rise, but found himself tied down. Several humans were looking down at him and he wanted to claw their faces off.

"What are your people doing up here?" one asked. It had short hair the colour of a blooded copper blade, and Kratok-Chal thought it was a female, though it wore mail and armour.

He spat black sludge. "We're only the first, human girl. More follow. Revenge follows."

The female frowned. "Revenge? Revenge for what?"

"Don't lie, human girl. You know what for."

"Imagine I don't."

Kratok-Chal coughed and spat again. "We had a good home. Good land. Good hunting. Until the humans came."

"What humans?"

"The invaders. Men with swords of many tribes. They burned out our nests and killed our young as they slept."

"Where did all this happen?" she asked.

Kratok-Chal spat in her face. "You know where. Your people know where. That is how they can come."

"Pretend I don't know."

"Even if you don't know, human girl, I will not tell. Not tell and let more humans come to the Glass — " He fell silent with a hiss, knowing he had said too much.

"The Glass what?"

"The Glass Mountain."

"Glass Mountain? I've never heard of that town."

"Not a town. Mountain. Mountain made of glass. Humans call it Freedom.'"

The human female rocked back on her heels and Kratok-Chal was amused. Perhaps she was impressed by his stamina, or shocked that he had known the humans' secrets. It made him laugh, in the goblin fashion.

Unlike most victims of the battle, Kratok-Chal died happy.

Travis Crowe poked forlornly at the remnants of a wine jug with the toe of his boot. Unless he was willing to get down on his knees and lap up the damp sawdust from the church floor, he wasn't going to taste any of it. He looked out at the sky. Andon wasn't more than a couple of days' ride north of here. It'd be easy enough to disappear.

He went out into the square, wondering how much of a lead he would get before anyone noticed his absence. He also wondered how far he would get before running into more goblin warbands, because he couldn't believe this would be the only one. They would be avoiding the bigger cities, but the savannah was ideal territory for them.

All around, men and women, even children, were helping to repair the nearest buildings Crowe couldn't tell whether they were rebuilding in the belief that the danger was past or reinforcing the defences. A little of both, probably, he decided. In the plaza, the bodies of goblins were smouldering in a pyramid of leathery flesh. Crows circled around the smoke column. The dead among the defenders had been laid out along one wall of the church, covered by sheets that were weighted down with stones to keep the carrion creatures off them until they could be decently buried in a proper Faith ceremony.

Crowe saw Gabriella and Erak emerge from the church.

"So, did you get much intelligent conversation out of your pet gobbo?" he asked.

"Not much," Gabriella said dryly.

"Now there's a shocker." Crowe snorted. "Let me guess: he snarled a lot, talked about killing everybody in town and eating your mum and dad, that kind of thing?"

"That's about the size of it. He said… He said humans had stolen their home, at a… a Glass Mountain."

To Gabriella's surprise, Crowe blanched. She had never seen him display anything so resembling a weakness. His mouth moved silently for a moment, then he managed to say: "A glass mountain?"

"Yes. It sounds ridiculous, but he seemed to believe it."

"Gobboes will believe anything…" He sounded distant. He added an "a bit like you God-botherers," but it was obvious that his heart wasn't in it. "Protect," he murmured to himself.

"Crowe?"

It felt as if something very small and very heavy had sunk from his stomach into some bottomless pit and he could feel himself teetering on the edge of it. The scarring on his shoulders, left arm and neck tingled and ached more than they had since… Well, since he rowed into Vosburg's coastal suburb of Dellendorf two years ago.

A mountain of glass…

Crowe heard a voice, distant but clear. It was a voice he hadn't heard in a long time, but he recognised its sibilant clarity. "Protect," it said. "Protect."

A flash of pain exploded in Crowe's cheek and he looked up at Gabriella. She had her hand raised to slap him again. "You all right?"

"Yes. Why did you hit me?"

"You didn't respond the first five times I asked if you were all right. You just stared."

He forced a grin. "Well, you are a pretty girl."

"No…" She looked at him curiously "You weren't staring at me. I can tell the difference."

"Then what was I staring at?"

"Nothing. Nothing I could see, anyway." She gave him that curious look again. "Does 'Freedom' mean anything to you?"

He shrugged. "My freedom means everything to me, why?"

"Never mind, it's nothing."

Another day passed and there was, thankfully, no second goblin attack. The arrival of twenty Knights of the Swords, and a hundred mercenaries of various companies, summoned by Kannis' messengers, had eased the burden of rebuilding the town and the last few goblins nested at the foot of the escarpment were being hunted down.

For all that, Erak Brand couldn't shake the goblin's words from his head. He and Gabriella still had their bed in the cloister cell and when the pair had finally been relieved by the arriving Knights, they had made love. The past few days' events were hardly arousing, but it was somehow natural to counter the nearness of death with the ultimate expression of life.

Afterwards, they had slept as if dead to the world. Erak's dreams had been filled with goblins and fire and he had woken rested, but sweating. Gabriella rested beside him, totally at peace. If she was dreaming of death and destruction, it didn't show.

When she woke, she let out a long breath, as if having to get used to the idea of being in the world again. As they rose and dressed, Erak couldn't help but speak his mind. "If things are coming out of World's Ridge then what else could be behind them? What else might have been driven out?"

"Things like goblins are just animals, Erak. They die under the sword, just like anything else."

"If you say so."

"I do say so. What I want to do is go to the archive at Andon to research this further. I'm sure I've heard the phrase 'glass mountain' before, in an old story that my mother used to tell me."