A. Hartley - Will Power

“What about the creatures we fought last night?” I asked, figuring that I may as well play along. “What were they?”

“It is better not to speak of such things,” said Sorrail, his eyes meeting mine for the first time. “The enemy is abroad and his shapes are many. This land is full of his spies. We will talk of this in more secure surroundings, not before.”

Right you are, squire, I thought. You stay in your heroic tale and I’ll ignore it as best I can. Now that I thought about it, if no one mentioned our little encounter with those. . whatever they were till we were back in Stavis, I’d be positively ecstatic.

So Sorrail strode on, Mithos slung between him and Orgos, his eyes seeking out every stump of tree or boulder that could be hiding the servants of this nebulous “enemy.” Renthrette brought up the rear, a good twenty yards back, her sword drawn. On the pretext of getting a stone from my shoe, I dropped back. Though she loitered as long as she could, she eventually caught up.

“Listen,” I said, dropping my eyes, “about last night. .”

“Forget it,” she said, picking up the pace a little.

“No, I mean,” I began, though I wasn’t sure what I did mean. She kept walking and I, after a pause to gather resolution, scampered after her like a puppy and blurted, “I mean, I’m sorry.”

She stopped and turned to me. “I said, forget it,” she said.

“I was well out of line,” I persisted, “and I’m sorry.”

It was a relief to say it, and I took a deep breath. She looked at me in that careful, scrutinizing way of hers, like someone picking over meat that was suspiciously under-priced, then said, “It was an honest mistake, I suppose.”

This was curious.

“Was it?” I said, uncertainly.

“I suppose. It wasn’t very clever tactically. . ”

“What are we talking about?” I interrupted.

“I thought we were talking about you throwing the stone that nearly got us all killed,” she said. “Aren’t we?”

“No,” I gasped. “I’m saying sorry for the story by the fire last night. I thought I was being clever, you know, stringing together a few bits of information and filling in the blanks with guesswork. But I didn’t mean, you know. .”

There was the briefest pause, a momentary hesitation on her part that was completely unreadable. “Forget it,” she said. The words were the same, but her face had frozen over like the surface of a pond, hiding whatever lay in its depths. A wall had gone up around her and, like a face seen through thick, imperfect glass, she was momentarily distorted by it: barely recognizable. Then she brushed her hair from her face and walked away.

After about an hour, the path began to descend, winding in a slow, erratic spiral down the side of a great russet peak whose stone gleamed with flecks of metal ores. Sorrail said its name was Naishiim, but it was commonly called The Armored One. I suppressed a derisive snort of laughter and stared at it to hide my grins. Absurdly melodramatic though it was, the title did seem appropriate, since the mountain had steep shoulders and a rise in the center which, at certain angles, looked like a head. It stood as a giant sentinel on the edge of the clustered range, glowering down on the path, which traced its way into a series of lower rises, sheer-sided, but mere swelling hills in comparison.

“It is good that we have passed the mountain,” said Sorrail as we paused to rest. His eyes moved from the path ahead back to the foreboding mountain. “From here on, the journey will be easier and we will be in less danger of assault. Dread creatures dwell on the upper slopes of The Armored One, and it is just as well that our journey has kept us largely at its feet. Few have passed a night on its top unscathed, and recently the place has become a haunt for still fouler beasts than those you saw last night. A company of goblins passed through here some months ago, and it is thought that they have made their home in one of its foul crevices.”

“Excuse me, what?” I stuttered, not bothering to mask my incredulity. “I think I misheard. What passed through here?”

“Goblins,” said Sorrail, his face straighter than an Empire road. “About two hundred of them, large and well equipped. The road has been barely used since.”

“No doubt,” I said, brushing aside his traffic concerns. “And what exactly do you mean by goblins? I mean, where I come from, goblins are nasty fairies or something that you tell children about to make them eat their porridge.”

“Indeed?” said Sorrail, serious as before. “I fail to see the connection.”

“I mean,” I said with a sigh at having to spell it out, “they aren’t real and never have been. They are just a barely remembered ingredient from old folktales that relied on nasty beasties running around so the good guys would have something to kill without feeling bad about it. You know what I mean? I guess, for some reason, you use the same word for something more mundane. Some large and unpleasant squirrels, perhaps, or some bad tempered beavers, or. .”

He cut me off with a word and a stern glance that was almost offended. “These are not squirrels,” he said.

“Well, no,” I persisted, “probably not. I’m just saying that they are probably something that we call by another name. . ”

“These are the spawn of the enemy and they are not to be made light of,” he said coldly. “They are creatures of darkness and hatred, corrupt to the core. They are like men but twisted by the evil which dwells in each of them and shows forth in their speech and their deeds, even in their very countenance. You would look upon them, Mr. Hawthorne, and despair. They are dreadful, and since they have become organized and armed, they lead the enemy against all which is true and fair in the world. You would do well to speak of them less frivolously.”

Well, that, not for the first time, was me told. I shut up and we marched on. The others did not speak and avoided my eyes when I rolled them in their direction. Goblins? What was he on? I shut up, feeling irritated, righteous, and a bit confused, and started to lag a little behind-separate enough to show my discontent, close enough to have support should I get assaulted by some shrieking hoard of mythical monsters. Mixed feelings, in other words. My brain said that this was lunacy, but I had to admit to having seen beasts that moved with human deliberation, birds that conversed, and the flash of unearthly light from a long spear.

Not long ago you didn’t believe in magic swords, either , I reminded myself.

And then there was the mystery of how we had got to this place. We had no idea where we were, after all. We could be a thousand miles away from Stavis, on a different continent entirely. Maybe the bears did talk here. Maybe there were whole cities of cats and monkeys ruled by a big blue pig.

No. It was all bollocks. Some wolves had decided that following a bear got them the scraps the bear didn’t eat. Simple as that. I could believe in flashes of power from swords and spears-just. But goblins? Come on. I’d accept lions playing poker before that. At least lions existed.

If the others questioned the fact that all semblance of reality as we knew it had been abandoned the moment we set foot in this place, they gave no indication of it. I shot Orgos an inquiring glance and pulled a comically skeptical face, mouthing “Goblins?” soundlessly. He did not respond except to give me a hard look, as loaded with dour concern as it was long. I drew closer to the rest of the company and kept my eyes open.

A couple of hundred yards farther on, a yew tree grew beside the path. It was windblown and stunted so that its limbs were twisted up as if with long anguish. Sorrail set his foot onto one of the lowest branches, and, in seconds he was fifteen or twenty feet up, scanning the land about us. The mountain was behind us and ahead, just visible through a fine morning mist, I could make out a valley that spread wide below us. I caught my breath with surprise. So much had my attention been fixed on the slopes at our sides and rear that I had barely noticed the territory in front.