Chapter 3
Hefthon stood at the gates of the fairy city, nervously sliding his sweaty hand along the grip of his spear, tightening his palm around the leather thongs that wound its shaft. “I should go in,” he said.
“Wait for your father,” Tressa said. “It’s not safe here for Veil.”
“He could need me,” Hefthon snapped. “There hasn’t been a sound since he went in.”
“He could need you,” his mother replied. “But Veil does need you. Restrain yourself.”
Hefthon jabbed the butt of his spear into the earth and sank to his haunches. “You’re right, I’m sorry.”
“She’s always right, Hefthon. One of the first lessons I learned after wedding her.”
Hefthon glanced up and saw his father and Geuel approaching the gate, just turned from a side street. Hefthon leapt to his feet. “What is it? Goblins? Is the city lost?” he asked.
Reheuel clapped him on the shoulder. “No, she is not lost, though there are many dead. They’ve taken Ariel’s Tear as well.”
Hefthon tore his spear from the earth. “We have to pursue them,” he said.
Reheuel shook his head. “We don’t have to do anything. You and Geuel will stay here with Veil and your mother.”
Tressa looked up quickly. “Reh,” she said, “what are you thinking? Reh? Look at me.”
Reheuel sighed. “I can’t let them take it, Tressa. Without that tear, this city won’t last the month. It’ll fade. It’s only standing now by the power of a few exhausted fairies. If they don’t get the Tear back, the world will lose another wonder.”
“You don’t know how many there are.”
Reheuel whistled for his horse which stood grazing a few yards off.
“Reh, look at me. You’re not twenty. Wait till you can get your men.”
Reheuel shook his head. “There’s no time. I have to stop them before they reach the mountains.”
Geuel took the bow and quiver from his horse. “Father,” he said, holding them out. “You’ll need these more than I.”
“String?”
“In the pouch on the side of the quiver. Good luck.”
Reheuel strapped the bow into place on his own horse. “Thank you, son. Take care of our family. Lock down the gates and barricade yourself with the fairies. If I’m not back in two days, head for Gath Odrenoch. I’ll meet you there.”
Veil ran forward and clasped him around the waist. “Don’t go,” she begged.
Reheuel dropped down to his knees and grabbed his daughter by the shoulders. “I know you’re afraid, Love. But I have to go. There are people who need my help. What have I told you about help, Veil?”
“The stronger are gifted for the weaker,” Veil recited, tears running down her cheeks.
Reheuel smiled. “That’s right, my Passion. And right now there are a great many of the weak who need my help. What is strength?”
“Selflessness,” Veil answered quietly, sniffing back her tears.
“Be strong, Veil,” Reheuel whispered.
He stood and kissed his wife on the lips. “I’ll be back,” he said. Then he leapt on his horse and turned it to the north, tapping his spurs against its flanks.
* * *
“We should go inside,” Geuel said. He extended his arm to Tressa. “Come, Mother.” He smiled. “I’m sure he’ll be safe.”
Hefthon gathered the reins of the remaining horses and followed behind, staring at the scars of the Fairy City as they walked.
Geuel led his family away from the city’s keep, carefully avoiding the center of the battle. But still, tiny bodies occasionally littered their path. Veil trembled as she passed them, unable to pull her eyes away from the pitiful remains. After he had found a building to stay in, Geuel turned to his brother. “Stay with them. I’m going to lock down the gates.”
Hefthon nodded.
“And brother? Keep them out of the streets,” Geuel said. “There are things they shouldn’t see.”
As he walked to the main gate, Geuel heard a fluttering behind him and turned. Ariel was flying toward him, washed now and clean of blood.
“Did Reheuel pursue them?” she asked.
“He did,” Geuel answered. “You knew he would.”
“You think he is wrong?” Ariel asked.
“It’s your problem,” Geuel replied. “I’m sorry for your pain, but he owes you nothing.”
“So men have no stake in our affairs?”
Geuel began walking again. “Only the stake they impose on themselves.”
“And have you seen no beauty here worth saving?” Ariel asked.
“None worth my father’s blood.”
“You have changed,” Ariel said sadly. “As a child, you were so full. You are not merely older, you are—lesser, harder.”
“When we met, I was a child.”
“You’re right,” Ariel said. “Your family owes me nothing. But you have done my people great service today. And if your father succeeds, I will grant your family the greatest gift that mankind has ever known . . . Consider that your stake.” She turned and carved a path back toward the keep, her red streak dimmer than usual.
After he had closed the gates, Geuel headed for the keep, planning to clean away the traces of battle before Veil and Tressa had to see them. He entered the main door and paused beside the stairs. Three fairies, including Ariel, were picking their way across the hall, dragging twig biers to remove their dead. It was an oddly pathetic sight, three winged beings of ethereal beauty trapped on the ground dragging carnage.
Geuel removed his leather vest and lay it beside the stairs. Carefully, he began gathering little corpses from the silver floor and laying them on his vest. The bodies felt even frailer than they looked, like broken sparrows. He constantly feared that he would break one.
Ariel cast him a sad smile of thanks as she worked.
On the stairs, the green-dressed fairy Randiriel sat shaking one of the bodies. “Maeva? Maeva?” she whispered. “It’s time to wake up.”
The body she shook was torn in the middle, nearly halved. Only the spine and a few threads of flesh still connected its abdomen.
Geuel stared for a few seconds. “Can’t you—do something?” he asked Ariel. “She’s going mad.”
“With the Tear, maybe,” Ariel replied, lowering the bier she dragged and glancing back at Randiriel. “I could try to heal her. There’s nothing now though. The Tear was a link. It united our thoughts and emotions. Without it, each fairy is alone—many for the first time that they can remember.”
Despite the number of bodies, it took Geuel and the council members only an hour or so to gather them all together. They made a pathetically small pile—scores upon scores of bodies and still not enough to fill a coffin. Even with the nine goblins, the physical remains painted a poor picture of the battle’s true cost.
As Geuel deposited the last of the bodies in an empty building behind the keep, Ariel landed beside him. “Go back to your family,” she said. “We can clean the blood.”
Geuel nodded. “I’m sorry, Ariel,” he whispered, visibly shaken. He stared at the mangled little corpses on the floor. Most still had their eyes open—and those tiny eyes, animal in size but otherwise all too human, sent a chill down his spine. “Perhaps—perhaps my father was right.”
A few minutes later, Geuel entered the archway of the house where his family was staying.
“Any news?” Hefthon asked.
“Nothing new,” he replied.
“Are you hurt?” Veil asked, drawing closer and pointing to his bloodstained hands.
Geuel glanced down and saw the drying red stains that ran up his wrists and spread across the undersides of his sleeves. He resisted the urge to thrust them behind his back and began backing toward the door. “No, no, I’m fine, Veil. Just excuse me for a moment.”
He left and drifted toward the main gate. There were troughs there, channels carved to allow water from the Faeja to run out through the portions of the city that rested on solid earth. He could wash there. When he reached the gate, he paused and studied the walls. They looked different than they had in the morning, duller, like silver coins after years of use. The gems hardly reflected the sunlight. He shook himself, assuming that he was fatigued.
* * *
“Whoa, Etteni,” Reheuel said, drawing his horse to a halt on the edge of a dense pine forest. He eyed the trees distrustfully, studying the boughs for movement. The goblins would gain time in the forest. Their slender, agile builds allowed them to move more quickly swinging through the trees than traveling on the ground. But he still hesitated to follow, knowing that he would be vulnerable beneath the branches.
He nudged his horse forward into a gentle walk, constantly scanning the boughs overhead as he rode. Occasionally, he saw the white of freshly broken branches where a swinging goblin had misjudged its hold. He pulled open his water skin and took a quick pull, knowing he would need to be fresh if it came to hard riding.
He rode for several miles, occasionally pausing to listen for movement. But no sound ever greeted him. Eventually he pushed his horse to a heavy canter, still staring upward, constantly searching for movement in the trees.
Night fell as he exited the forest. The trees had slowed him, and he knew that the goblins would keep moving through the night. But they would be tired, perhaps more tired than he was after their long trek to the city.
He patted Etteni’s neck. “Sorry, girl, can’t let you stop tonight.” Hours passed as he rode, constantly sighting himself with the distant peak of Ondurin. As long as he kept himself in line with the peak, he could forego tracking. He knew where the goblins were heading.
The grim outline of the mountain, silver-edged in the light of a half-moon, stirred his memories of the old war, the battle to build Gath Odrenoch. The builders had begun with the walls first, carting in old pines from the feet of the mountain and sinking them, entire, as posts. The cart drivers carried crossbows beneath their seats, often drawn and bolted. The laborers never shed their swords.
For months, the goblins had made their little salvos, taking a lone laborer who wandered too far from his group, a stray goat from the pastures. And then, the very night that the wall was completed, they had attacked, crawling over the walls in the darkness while the elated men slept off an evening of revelry.
Dozens had died.
Reheuel could still remember the weeping, the screams of the wounded, the cold of the rain in the morning as he marched with the laborers, the cut of the shale as he slid down gorges with his ax strapped to his back and his spear in his hands.
They had reached the goblin city in the daylight, and they had stormed it. No plan, no leader, just angry husbands and sons and fathers—eager for blood. It was a miracle that most survived, a greater miracle that they won. Reheuel counted in his mind the cost of that battle: his brother, his uncle, his cousins—forty-seven laborers and twenty guards in all. Gath Odrenoch had never been the same after. It had grown, blossomed even with a new generation rising to take the place of the fallen. But its founders still remembered. They dwelt on blood-stained ground.
“Should have killed them when we had the chance,” Reheuel whispered to his horse, “should have followed them from their city and down into the caves, slaughtered every last one of them.”
Etteni snorted.
“Suppose you’re right,” Reheuel said with a chuckle. “Just big talk from an old soldier. Nobody wanted to dig more graves.”
Reheuel’s thoughts ran back. He stood, his arms running with scarlet-tinted rain and his chest heaving, staring into the mouth of the goblin caves. As far as he could see, there was only darkness, interspersed with crevices and alcoves in the rock. “We should follow,” he said, pulling his wet hair from his eyes.
The Captain shook his head from where he lay nearby. He spat out the end of a bandage he had been tying with his teeth. “They’re gone, and they won’t come back down the mountain. We’re done here.”
Reheuel turned back from the cave. “For now,” he said under his breath.
Etteni suddenly reared back and whinnied, nearly sending Reheuel to the ground. “Easy, girl!” he said, grasping tightly to the pommel. “What’s the matter?”
As if to answer, a guttural snarl sounded from the darkness and an arrow struck Reheuel’s scabbard, shattering on the steel beneath the leather.
Reheuel turned back his heels and pricked his spurs against Etteni’s flank. “Ride!” he shouted.
Etteni took off in fear, nostrils filled with the scent of goblins and their half-tanned raw-hide clothing. She cut a forty-five degree angle, veering away from the source of the arrow. And, after a few seconds, howling chatter filled the air from every side.
Reheuel drew his sword and hugged close to Etteni’s back, struggling to find a target in the night. But the moon had shielded herself in cloud, and only blurred shadows moved in the darkness. A sharp sting in Reheuel’s thigh told him he’d been hit. The next moment, Etteni crashed forward to her chest, flinging Reheuel over her head to the ground. He rolled to a stop and scrabbled backward to grab his weapon, disoriented and half-blind.
As he grasped the handle of his sword, the edge of a cloud bank slid off the moon and Reheuel saw his enemies. There were only a handful—four, maybe five. All on the far side of his horse. Lifting the sword, he ran to the side of the beast and crouched down beside it. “Sorry, old friend,” he whispered, staring at the arrows embedded in its neck and side.
A hiss caused him to flatten, and another arrow buried itself in the flesh of his mount. Forcing himself tightly against the beast’s side, Reheuel felt a trail of horse blood run down into the back of his shirt. He shuddered at the warm wetness on his spine. An arrow struck the grass beside his foot, causing him to quickly tuck it in. He could hear claws now, scraping the earth on the far side of the horse, easing hesitantly forward with staggered, hungry rushes. The goblins were circling, looking for a clear shot. He slid off his cloak and waited.
After a few seconds, he heard the goblin farthest to his right edge in closer. Too close. He slung his coat out to the left, hoping to draw their fire. Then he ran to the right, screaming inarticulately and trying to ignore the searing pain in his thigh where a snapped shaft tugged at his cotton pants.
He reached the goblin just as it notched a second arrow. Grabbing it by the throat, he spun in a circle and crouched behind its gangly body. Two arrows struck its back, and a third buried itself in the grass at his feet. He slung the corpse aside and ran forward. Two goblins dropped their bows and pulled out sickle-shaped swords, gnashing their teeth on the blades threateningly. The third nocked another arrow.
Reheuel ignored the third and ran between the first two, trying to obscure any shot. Instantly, they closed in, snaking out their long arms and trying to hook his ankles with their blades. Bent almost double to stay at their level, Reheuel batted at their blades and tried to keep them at a distance. Seeing an opening, he then leapt forward and swung downward at the nearest, burying his sword in the sinews of its neck. He quickly knelt and lifted its sickle, no larger than a dagger in his hand, and spun around. Ten yards—two full rotations. He let the sickle fly. An arrow shot wildly to Reheuel’s left as the goblin with the bow staggered backwards.
As Reheuel stood, the last goblin swung, wrapping its sickle around his side. He felt the point strike his back and enter above his kidney. He staggered forward with the force of the blow and grabbed the sickle’s handle. The goblin tugged at it frantically, struggling to finish the blow. Reheuel lowered the tip of his sword to its forehead. “Where are the others?” he asked.
The goblin released the sickle, leaving it hanging, curled around Reheuel’s back like a grotesque belt. It tensed to jump backward, and Reheuel jabbed its forehead, drawing a spurt of blood. “Ah!” he said.
It shuddered and leered angrily. “With the gem,” it said, sputtering and clicking over the words as if finding the common tongue distasteful.
“Where?”
The goblin began edging away, and Reheuel prodded it once more. “Where?”
“We said we’d signal when we finished you.” It snickered. “Haven’t had a full meal in days.”
“Signal,” Reheuel said, gently burrowing his sword tip into its forehead.
The goblin shook its head, and Reheuel kicked its knee, snapping it. “Signal.”
The goblin shrieked from the ground and pulled a horn from its side, quickly blowing three notes.
“Is that it?” Reheuel asked.
The creature nodded. “Free?” it asked, trembling.
“Perhaps on a better night.”