A. Hartley - Will Power

“Good,” said Sorrail. “The worst is past. After this last descent, our way becomes easier.”

He slipped easily down the tree and turned smilingly upon us. Then his head tipped slightly to one side and he became very still. I began to ask what the matter was, but he cut me off with a quick gesture of his hand. He was listening intently, his eyes squeezed shut.

So we listened, too, and, for a while, heard nothing. Then, distantly, as if carried on the breeze, we heard a low booming which I might have ignored were it not so steadily, deliberately repeated. Drums, I thought, and getting louder.

Sorrail turned on his heel and stared back the way we had come, eyes flashing hard and alert across the steep sides of the mountain. Then, after the briefest double take, his gaze rested on a point midway up one of the slopes. His face, which had been pale but full of energy, faded somehow. I turned.

Barely visible in the gray haze which slept on the armored head of Naishiim, shapes were moving. They were moving down the mountain toward us and they were moving fast. The drums were clearly audible now and, if I wasn’t mistaken, there were voices among them which chanted darkly, though I did not know the words.

“This is a most evil fortune,” gasped Sorrail, his eyes wide. “We must fly! Down the path into the valley. Fast as you can go! Run!”

I looked from him back to the mountain and saw, though I couldn’t-wouldn’t-believe it, bears: dozens of them. And on their backs were forms like armored men with lances. But they were not men. Aghast, I looked back to the others, stunned into inaction.

“Don’t you understand?” shouted Sorrail. “We cannot fight such a force. Even on foot they are dreadful: cruel and strong. Mounted they are terrible. We must flee! Now!”

He waited for no further comment, just pulled at Mithos’s stretcher, dragging Orgos after him. Renthrette looked back once and then bounded off on the heels of the others down the path which dropped into the valley.

Ironically, I was the last to run, though that had more to do with disbelief and stupidity than with valor, in case that still needs pointing out. I watched them run and felt the possibility of armed goblins mounted on giant bears offering itself for debate. Then, just as my brain was settling into a comfortable chair with a drop of whiskey and a satisfied, slightly ironic smile, all ready to leisurely prove the nonexistence of goblins, talking bears, magic moonbeams, and pots of gold under rainbows, there came a cry. It was a blend of an animal roar and a human, or near-human, scream of hatred and aggression. Others joined in until the mountains resounded with a single dreadful voice. It came from a force which bristled with teeth and sprouted lance heads like a forest. I began to run, faster than I would have thought I was capable of, all sense of irony gone. And, as if the gates of Hell had burst apart, the goblins came after.

Renthrette quickly took the lead, sprinting ahead with leaping gazelle strides as the cinder path plummeted down the incline and turned into scree. Sorrail and Orgos, struggling with the wounded Mithos, slowed painfully till even I passed them, though I was too scared to take much notice. Behind us the noise of pursuit was growing ever louder and I fancied I could feel the earth itself shake. I tripped and slid on the loose stones of the downward slope, barely keeping myself upright as my momentum carried me on and out of control.

Then Renthrette, who had hit the level and tussocky ground of the valley floor at breakneck speed, pulled up short and scuttered to a halt. Turning, she looked past me and her mouth fell open in a soundless cry. I had no choice but to keep running, not daring to risk looking back and losing my footing completely. It took me no more than a second to reach her, but in that time she had drawn her sword and was climbing back up the treacherous slope.

“What the hell?. .” I gasped, wheezing heavily as I came to an awkward standstill. She ignored me. Looking up the way we had come I saw the bears charging forward at a speed that a fast horse would struggle to match, their heads low, their shoulders high and angular, and their vast paws eating up the ground in great bounds. Astride each was a dark rider with helmet and armor, a keen lance, and a round shield. The immense bulk of the bears roared forward toward, less than a hundred yards in front of them, the body of Mithos. He was lying on the ground with Orgos standing over him, sword outstretched and body braced futilely against the inevitable impact.

Sorrail, a little further down, shouted wildly up at Orgos. “Fly! You cannot help him! Save yourself!”

“Go!” Orgos replied. “I will stand by my friend.”

Without another word Sorrail turned back toward where I stood, his eyes wild, then began once more to run. Then he saw Renthrette advancing, and managed to slow himself before colliding with her. He seized her sword arm briefly. “You must leave him! You cannot hope to repel such an enemy.”

He gave a desperate gesture back up the slope. Five or six of the bears with their goblin riders were only paces from Orgos, and two more were coming down each side toward us, one with a pair of huge drums slung across the beast’s back. How many more were behind them I could not say: a dozen at the very least.

Doubt flickered through Renthrette’s eyes as Sorrail pulled at her. She hesitated a moment and then ran with him, down into the valley, at the same moment that one of the bears reached Orgos’s position, reared, and struck him a heavy swash of its forepaw across his left shoulder. He did not have time to land even a single stroke from his sword. He was knocked back and sideways with the incredible force of the blow and fell against a boulder where he lay quite still. With precise brutality they set upon him, fallen though he was, and upon his friend of so many years, who lay defenseless close by. The onslaught hemmed them in until I could see their bodies no more.

“Orgos!” I screamed, but the foul beasts and their fouler riders were everywhere now, and still pouring toward us. I turned and began to run once more.

And I kept running. There was nothing else for it, and no one in their right mind would say otherwise. Sorrail had had to virtually drag Renthrette away, and she wept bitter tears as he pulled her, but I was watching my own path. Since where I was going mattered less than what I was getting away from, I paid little heed to the direction or to my companions. I dashed between the bushes and hollows of the vale which, as it turned out, was marshy and pocked with still, leaden pools. The grass was waist deep, so I was running blind, with no sense of where I might hit a rock or a pothole. I got the latter.

My foot sank calf-deep into a boggy hole and I pitched forward. I fought to get up, but my boot slid in the mud. Then it occurred to me that I might have more chance of survival lying low in the long grass and swamp than trying to outrun the enemy. So I hugged the ground and desperately tried to shrug off the pictures that rose, uncalled for, to my mind: claws and lance tips tearing flesh, great ursine jaws closing on limbs. Perhaps if I had not seen it happen, the images would have been less terrible, less savagely real. Then again, perhaps not.

I tried gingerly inching up enough to look through the grass for Sorrail and Renthrette, but they were nowhere to be seen. I lay on the edge of a pit, cold water seeping into my clothes, face down in the hard grass and rushes that grew around it, and wondered how I could have been so stupid as to lose them. I felt a sudden terrifying and unexpected grief for Orgos and Mithos welling up inside me, so I focused on the fear that I was nursing like a hole in the belly. This seemed to help. Perhaps it’s just me, but other people’s fates seem less pressing when you’re waiting to have your throat torn out by a creature you didn’t believe in a few hours ago.