Margaret Weis - Heroes And Fools

The jays fell silent. The wind turned, carrying the near scent of sweat and horses. I rounded the bend and saw them, two riders abreast. Griff had his sword out, the steel shining in a fall of sunlight. Behind him, like a trap closing, came ten ragged figures, some human, some goblin. They made a half-circle across the road, catching us between them and the fallen trees.

“Back!” I shouted. “Behind you!”

An arrow hissed past my ear, and a second flashed past the eye of the red mare. The beast bolted. Olwynn screamed, flung over the mare’s back, Cae clutched to her breast as she fell onto the road. She lay there, helpless, the breath blasted from her as her child shrieked. Griff was off his horse and over her at once. To see him, you’d have thought he was protecting his own dear daughter, so fierce and fiery were his eyes now. He was protecting, all right. Not Olwynn, no, but something more-his road to revenge.

I leaped past Griff, swinging Reaper hard, and took out the knees of a tall, thin goblin who fell screaming. He struggled, trying to gain his feet, and I saw that here was the rag-eared fellow who’d gone suddenly missing from the Swan. Reaper harvested, smashing that goblin’s skull to bloody bits.

Olwynn shouted, “Broc! Behind!”

I turned on my heel, Reaper already swinging. Bone crunched, someone howled in agony, and a stocky human fell to the ground.

Olwynn cried out again in wordless terror, and I jerked around in time to see her hunched over her wailing child, trying desperately to protect herself and her baby as two goblins rushed her. With her, they must be certain, lay the pouch full of steel coins their fellow had seen in the tavern.

With his wild, terrible war cry-ah, that cry the same as the first one he ever shouted-Griff leaped over Olwynn’s huddled body. His sword glinted as he plunged it into the gut of a goblin, the gleam quenched in red, red blood. Yet seven remained, five humans and two goblins, all of them certain of their skills, certain of the treasure they had come for.

I grabbed the mare’s reins as she dashed past and grabbed Olwynn’s pack from the saddle horn. Griff snatched his pied gelding and his own pack. One swift glance passed between us. With slaps and cries we sent the horses plunging into the knot of ambushers.

“Run!” I shouted, flinging Olwynn’s pack at her as Griff grabbed her wrist and yanked her to her feet. “No! Not ahead! The way is blocked! Into the wood!”

We scrambled off the side of the road, into Darken Wood, and none of us wasted time looking over our shoulders.

We ran, but not for long. The wood was sparse along the verge, but we soon found that beyond there it grew thick and close. Trees leaned together, brush clogged what clear spaces might have been, while roots reached up from the ground to trip us. Olwynn’s breathing came in gasps and sobs, ragged with effort and fear. Cae wailed constantly, her cries muffled against her mother’s breast but still loud enough to be followed. Shouts and curses echoed behind us as the bandits untangled themselves from the horses and plunged into the wood. One long keening cry rose up, someone discovering his dead.

“Faster,” I said to Griff as I ducked past him, looking for the slender trails I knew.

He grabbed Olwynn’s wrist again, dragging her stumbling behind. The girl and her screaming child in tow, we splashed across a swollen stream. Once up the other side Griff stopped, still gripping Olwynn by the arm.

“Shut the brat up!” he growled, head up, ears keen for sound of pursuit.

We heard enough of that. Behind us, bodies crashed heavily through the brush, harsh voices shouting oaths and threats. All round us, though, lay silence. No creature of the wood made a sound. In that silence Olwynn shrugged from under Griff’s hand, drawing herself away from him. Sweating in the cold air, her arms trembling as she held the infant to her, she said, “Cae is hungry and cold and frightened. Find me a quiet place, and I will quiet her.”

Cae wailed louder. Griff put his hand on the grip of his sword, a slow, considered motion. The pulse leaped in Olwynn’s throat. She didn’t back away, though, and softly she said, “I have hired you, Griff Rees, to protect me. Surely you don’t threaten me now because my child is hungry and tired?”

She held her ground. Griff smiled the way you’d think Winter itself would smile, heartless and icy. “Am I not keeping your father’s precious treasure well enough, Mistress Haugh? You’re still here and standing, aren’t you?”

Back behind us a rough voice raised up, and another answered. In silence, I cursed. I’d taken this job for easy money, and it seemed to me the money was getting harder all the time.

“Griff,” I said, “let’s get going.”

Snarling, he said, “Broc, take us to some place quiet so Mistress Haugh can tend her child.”

Well enough, I knew where to go-who better than the Dwarf of Darken Wood? — and so I went, thrusting through the low growth, leaving Griff to shoulder through the tall with Olwynn, her child in full voice, behind.

Closer now, the rough voice shouted, “Hear ‘em? Up ahead!” The bandits came crashing along our trail, led by Cae’s wails. We heard one of them howl with glee in the very moment I found the two crossing trails I sought, one broad and clear, the other narrow and twisting. I smelled the stink of goblin on the wind. Maybe Olwynn did, too, for she closed her eyes and breathed softly, as if she were praying.

“All right, then,” I said, pointing to the narrow trail winding out like a snake. “That’s our path, Griff. At the end the ground rises. You’ll find three caves. You want the middle one. It’s deepest, and a spring wells up in the back. Go there, and don’t leave the path, or you’ll be lost before I miss you.”

Behind us a deer leaped, crashing through the brush. Pursuit came closer.

“And you?” Griff said.

I gave him my pack, then pointed to the ground. “Covering the marks of your big boots.”

He laughed grimly and got Olwynn moving again. They took the winding path, Griff ducking low, once or twice holding a whipping branch back for Olwynn when he thought to. I waited until they were gone up the path, then swiftly covered the marks of their passing. That done, I made a trail for the pursuit, my own clear boot prints, indeterminate marks off to the side, and some scuffing that looked as if someone had fallen a time or two and scrabbled up again. A spring bubbled up on the left of the trail not far ahead. I crossed it and left wet prints on the stony ground beyond.

Standing still off the path, I listened. A gravelly voice drifted to me on the wind, a goblin speaking in his own coarse language. Satisfied, I ducked into cover, making myself invisible in thickets as the bandits came closer, my rusty clothing fading into the rusty bracken. Eyes on the trail, ears straining for the sound of wailing Cae, I waited, breath held. Breath held, and Reaper held, just in case.

One goblin came, then another, and several humans followed.

“I’ll wear their skins for breeches,” the first goblin said. He had a look about him that reminded me of the rag-eared fellow I’d killed on the road. Kin, doubtless.

To the west, a crow cried again. Something fainter, smaller, seemed to answer. Cae! The goblin who was looking for new breeches stopped, obliging the others to do the same. He cocked his head, his pointed ears swivel-ing, just like a cat’s.

“Ar, it’s nothin”‘ growled a tall human. “Just a rabbit caught outside its hole.”

The goblin hung on his heel, listening. No other cry sounded. He took his companion’s word and went on. One by one, they passed me, all of them looking as if they’d had a hard time with thorny thickets. Smiling, I watched them. They kept their eyes on the trail and their noses to the wind. I heard them splash in the spring, heard them go on, and congratulated myself on work well done.