orog's head. The monster dropped heavily, star-shaped welts from the embossed symbols of Shilmista crossing the side of its piggish face.
Shayleigh, now with a sword in hand, came up beside the elven king and together they waded confidently into the goblins.
With no options readily before them, the trapped goblins began to fight back. Three surrounded Danica, hacking wfldty with their short swords. They couldn't keep up with her darting movements, dips and dodges, though, and weren't really coming very close to connecting.
Danica bided her time. One frustrated creature whipped its sword across in a harmlessly wide arc. Before the goblin could recover from its overbalanced swing, Danica's foot snapped straight up, connected under its chin, and drove its jaw up under its nose. The goblin promptly disappeared under the brush.
A second beast rushed at the distracted woman's back.
Bolts of magical energy flashed down from the tree above, burning into its head and neck. The goblin howled and grabbed at the wound, and Danica, fully balanced at all times, spun a half-circle, one foot flying wide, and circle-kicked it across the face. Its head looking far back over one shoulder, the goblin joined its dead companion on the ground.
Danica managed to nod her thanks to Tintagel as she waded into the lone goblin racing her, her hands and feet flying in from all sides, finding opening after opening in the pitiful creature's defenses. One kick knocked its sword away and, before it could cry out a surrender, Danica's stiffened fingers rifled into its throat, tearing out its windpipe.
Suddenly, it was over, with no more monsters to hit. The four companions, three of them covered in the blood of their enemies, stood solemn and grim, surveying their necessary handiwork.
"Ye know, elf," Ivan said when Elbereth and the others came back to the group on the trail, "this is getting too easy." The dwarf spat in both hands and grasped his axe handle, the blade of his weapon buried deeply into an orog's thick head. With a sickening crack, Ivan pulled the mighty weapon free.
"First fight in a week," Ivan continued, "and this group seemed more keen on running than fighting!"
Elbereth couldn't deny the dwarfs observations, but he was far from upset at what the goblins' retreat indicated.
"If we are fortunate, it will be another week before we find the need to fight again," he replied.
Ivan balked, and drove his gore-stained blade into the earth to clean it. As Elbereth moved away, the dwarf muttered to his brother, "Spoken like a true elf."
Heartfelt
ou sit here and wait while all of our dreams - all of the dreams Talona herself gave you - fall to pieces!" Dorigen Kel Lamond, second most powerful wizard in all of Castle Trinity, sat back in her chair, somewhat sin-prised by her uncharacteristic outburst. Her amber eyes looked away from Aballister, her mentor and superior.
The hollow-featured, older wizard seemed to take no of-fense. He rocked back in his comfortable chair, his sticklike fingers tap-tapping in front of him and an amused expression upon his gaunt face.
"Pieces?" he asked after a silence designed to make Dorigen uncomfortable. "Shilmista has been, or soon will be, reclaimed by the elves, that much is true," he admitted. "But their insignificant number has been halved by all reports - less than a hundred of them remain to defend the forest."
"And we lost more than a thousand soldiers," Dorigen snapped sharply. "Thousands more have fled our dominion, gone back to then- mountain holes."
"Where we might reclaim them," AbalHster assured her, "when the time is right."
Dorigen fumed but remained silent. She brushed a bead of sweat from her crooked nose and again looked away. Sporting two broken hands, the woman felt vulnerable with both unpredictable Aballister and upstart Bogo Rath in the private room, to say nothing of Druzil, Aballister's pet imp. That was one of the problems in working beside such evil men, Dorigen reminded herself. She could never be certain when Aballister might think he would be better off without her.
"Vfe still have three thousand soldiers - mostly human - at our immediate disposal," Aballister went on. "The gob-linoids will be brought back when we need them - after the winter, perhaps, when the season is favorable for an invasion"
"How many will we need?" he asked, more to Bogo than to Dorigen. "Shilmista is but a semblance of itself, and the Edificant Library has been severely wounded. That leaves only Carradoon." The tone of Aballister's voice showed dearly how he felt about the