Goblin Hero (14 page)

Yes, Jig was definitely a Reluctant Hero. Given what she had seen, Jig was a Dragged-Along-Kicking-and-Fighting-the-Whole-Time Hero.

How had he survived everything that happened to him in “The Song of Jig”? He wasn’t strong. He looked more like a child than a full-grown goblin. His poor vision handicapped him further, even with those ridiculous lenses. His magic seemed to be limited to fixing wounds. Faced with an impending battle against the ogres, his whole heroic plan was to run away.

Veka moved past him, keeping her head and shoulders high to project an air of confidence. Whatever luck had saved Jig in the past, it didn’t appear to be helping him now. He didn’t know what to do.

She beckoned to Slash. “Come with me.” His silent obedience was proof of how far she had come since leaving the goblin lair.

Crumbling, sloping rock marked the end of the tunnel. The ground tilted downward, and it would have been easy for her to lose her footing and fall. Bracing the end of her staff against the opposite wall, she pressed her other hand to the stone and crept forward until she could see out into the pit.

Orange light from Slash’s nose barely reached the far side of the pit. The wind rushed downward, sending a low hum through her bones as it passed the tunnel entrance. Slash had stopped a few paces back. His tiny pupils never left the emptiness beyond.

Veka leaned forward and looked up, trying to see how high the pit went. The pit itself seemed to extend as far upward as it did down. She supposed it couldn’t go up forever. The mountain itself only went so high. That started her wondering if the pit were truly bottomless. Not that it mattered much. If the bottom was deep enough, a regular pit was just as effective as a bottomless one. A bottomless pit just sounded more impressive.

A good thirty or so feet up, a dark shape arched over the center of the pit. That would be the bridge at the center of the Necromancer’s maze. This last tunnel had sloped deeper down than she had realized. “Bring your nose closer.”

Slash took a half step, then folded his arms, refusing to take another. Veka squinted, trying to make out the details of the bridge. She could see square gaps where the blocks or tiles or whatever they were had fallen loose, but the bridge itself still appeared to be stable. All they had to do was reach it.

“The ogres will be here soon,” Grell commented. “If you’re through sightseeing, maybe we ought to figure out how to fight them.”

Veka was tempted to wait. Once the others were dead and dying, she would stride through to stand in the center of the tunnel. The ogres would pull back, momentarily confused by her confidence. There, with the wind rushing past her face, fluttering her cloak in a dramatic fashion, she would slam her staff against the ground and say in a booming voice, “Go home, you stupid ogres!”

No . . . that wasn’t dramatic enough. Slamming the staff was good, but the dialog needed work. She would have to sit down with
The Path of the Hero
and reread Appendix C: Heroic Declarations and Witty Remarks.

The end of her staff slipped, and she fell back, kicking to keep from falling. On second thought, maybe fighting wasn’t such a great idea. Not when a misstep could send even a Hero tumbling into the darkness.

She could hear Jig mumbling to the others, trying to come up with some sort of battle plan. She ignored him, setting her staff to one side as she yanked the pages of her spellbook from her pocket. The pages rustled and slapped her hands in the wind, fighting to escape, but she held tight until she found the burned page with her levitation charm. Still prone on the ground, she tucked that page beneath her arm and shoved the rest back into her pocket.

She had to sit up in order to read the charm. Slash had turned away to listen to Jig’s plan, but he was still bright enough for her to skim the words that hadn’t been seared away. A quick binding spell to tap into the magic. A second to anchor the spell to her staff. She ignored the margin notes and a doodle of an overly endowed elf girl as she read the true heart of the charm.

“Another straightforward bit of sympathetic magic, with the magical component providing the necessary leverage.” Whatever that meant. She tucked the page back into her cloak pocket, grabbed her staff, and finished the charm, carefully enunciating each tongue-twisting syllable.

Slash yelped as his head bounced against the roof of the tunnel. He kept yelling as he floated and bobbed, so the damage couldn’t have been too bad.

“Veka, if we’re going to fight the ogres, we’ll need that hobgoblin!” Jig shouted.

She could hear the ogres running, and the far end of the tunnel had begun to take on a pinkish tinge. “Not yet,” she muttered. “I’m not ready.”

A twitch of her staff shot Slash out of the tunnel and into the pit. His shrieks grew higher in pitch as his arms and legs whirled, as if he were trying to swim through the air itself. Veka slowly spun her staff, rotating him until he was facing the tunnel.

“What are you doing?” Braf asked.

“Saving our lives,” said Veka. She gave him a fierce grin as she cast the charm again.

Nothing happened. She tried a second time, tracing the binding with her free hand, then connecting Braf to her staff. He should have floated out to join Slash in the pit. She had done the spell correctly. Why wasn’t he flying?

“You’re doing that?” Jig asked, pointing to Slash.

She nodded.

Jig glanced at the approaching light, then back at Slash. Sliding his sword into its sheath, he moved to the end of the tunnel, muttering, “I hate magic.” When he reached the end he braced himself and leaped. His arms clamped around Slash’s waist, his legs locked around the hobgoblin’s knees.

“Get off of me, you stupid goblin!”

“Don’t squirm,” Jig yelled. “Do you want me to bite you to keep from falling?”

Slash stopped moving. A wise choice, given where Jig’s face had ended up.

“Bring him closer to the tunnel,” Jig yelled. “If we all pile onto Slash, can you float us up to the bridge?”

This was
her
plan! Why was Jig giving orders? She scowled, trying to come up with a reason it wouldn’t work. But she was having no trouble levitating the additional weight, and the bridge wasn’t too far away. It would probably work, darn it all.

She turned away. “Grell, you go next,” she said quickly, before Jig could make the decision.

Grell tucked her canes through her belt and limped to the edge of the tunnel. Veka twitched her staff, bringing Slash and Jig closer . . . closer. . . . Slash stretched out his arms, trying to reach the rock. Veka spun him around again, rapping his head against the stone for good measure. “None of that, you.”

She lowered him a bit, and Grell half stepped, half skidded off the edge. Her arms circled Slash’s neck, and one of her feet kicked Jig in the ear.

A high-pitched scream echoed through the pit, and for a moment, she thought Jig had fallen. She froze, trying to sort out whether she should feel guilty or relieved. Perhaps a little of both? But as the scream repeated, she realized it was too loud and too high to have come from goblin lungs.

“Veka, we have a problem,” Jig shouted.

A flick of her staff moved them to one side as she peered into the pit. Far below, a giant bat flew toward them, its huge wings flapping hard against the wind.

“You there, goblin!” Two ogres had come into view. One pointed a crude wooden spear at her and Braf. “We’ve come for Jig Dragonslayer.”

Veka felt as though the ogre had walked up and slammed a fist into her stomach. “Jig?” she repeated. “You want
Jig
? I’m the one doing all the work!”

Beside her, Braf squeezed past to leap onto Slash. She was too stunned to even notice whether or not he made it. After everything she had done, the ogres wanted Jig. She was the Hero here, not him. She was the one wielding the magical energies. Didn’t they see the floating, glowing hobgoblin?

“Veka,” Jig shouted. “The bat!”

She ignored him. “Why do you want Jig?”

“That’s not your concern, goblin.” The two ogres began to move forward. The pixie still hadn’t shown herself.

“Veka, stop playing around and do something about this bat,” Grell shouted, her tone so sharp Veka started to obey without even realizing it.

The other ogre shoved past his companion. “Jig is there, in the pit. Kill the fat goblin and grab him before he escapes.”

Kill the fat goblin. She was nothing but an obstacle to be tossed aside. Her fangs bit into her cheeks, and her hands shook with the grand injustice of it all. Nothing she did would ever be good enough to erase the mighty Jig Dragonslayer. Forget her victory over the pixies, forget her mastery of powers Jig couldn’t even understand, none of it made one bit of difference. She was nothing. Nobody.

A squeal from the pit told her the bat was here, its wings adding to the wind as it hovered beside Slash and the others. Feet with claws as long as her hands stretched toward Braf. He dangled at the bottom of the group, clinging to his hook-tooth, which was hooked through Slash’s belt.

Braf kicked uselessly, nearly dislodging himself. “Jig, help!”

Veka screamed. She tilted her staff, flinging Slash and the goblins aside. At the same time, she reached out with her other hand, her fingers curled into claws. Magic swirled through her arm as she bound the bat to herself, forcing the binding spell into the bat’s body, until her power pulsed through every vein, every bone, every drop of blood. Like a magical web, her will closed around the bat, controlling its every motion.

Veka closed her eyes and leaped from the tunnel. She could still see, using the bat’s own senses. To the bat, Veka was a sharply defined shadow arching into the emptiness, and it was a simple matter to fly beneath and catch her.

The bristling fur stank, and the pounding wings nearly dislodged her, but she clung with one hand to the bony edge of the wing where it joined the body. Pulling herself up, she pressed her knees into the bat’s side. For one horrifying moment, she thought the bat would be unable to carry her, but this was an animal built to snatch and carry prey even larger than Veka. Wings pounded, moving them away from the tunnel and wrenching Veka’s arms as she clung. She opened her eyes, seeing the others both with her own vision and with the colorless shadow-senses of the bat. Never had she seen so sharply, and the bat’s hearing made goblin ears seem feeble and weak as a human’s. She heard every footstep the ogres took, every curse Slash whispered, everything.

Giddy excitement swelled through her. She fought to keep from laughing, afraid she wouldn’t be able to stop. Even Jig was staring at her, fear and awe etched on his scrawny face. Let Jig Dragonslayer try to take credit for this rescue. Never again would she have to suffer the mockery of goblin guards or the disdain of a hobgoblin. She was Veka the Batrider. She . . . she . . .

She had no absolutely idea how she had cast that last spell. The bat tilted to one side, fighting to break free of her control. It didn’t appear to be going after Slash and the others anymore. It simply wanted to get away. And it wanted to be rid of the goblin clinging to its back.

“No, fly up to the bridge, you stupid bat.” She moved her staff, floating the others higher. Why wouldn’t the bat obey? “Of course. It can’t understand me. I have to control its actions.”

The bat was a stupid animal. When Veka first sent it flying beneath her, it had assumed the idea was its own, and taken over. All she had to do was start it moving, and the bat would keep going until something changed its mind.

Something like bait. She made the bat raise its head, fixing its attention on Slash and the others. At the same time she increased the speed of its wings, forcing it higher. “You want to eat them, you ugly, filthy, smelly creature. Eat them!”

Slowly the bat seemed to get the idea. A spear flew past, barely missing Veka’s arm as the bat flew upward. The ogres stood at the edge of the tunnel, staring.

Veka moved Slash higher, twitching him back and forth to keep the bat’s interest. “That’s right,” she said. “You’re hungry. You’d rather eat a good meal than worry about me.”

“Hurry up, goblin,” Slash shouted. “My legs and shoulders are killing me, and if that fool Braf keeps squirming, I’m going to lose my trousers!”

In a moment of inspiration, Veka moved them toward the wall of the pit, directly above the ogres. If the ogres leaned out to try to throw their spears, they would probably fall into the pit. As long as Veka kept them close to the wall, they should be safe. “Unless the pixie comes out after us.”

They were about halfway to the bridge when a flicker of motion caught her eye. She closed her eyes, allowing the bat’s senses to take over. It saw much more clearly than she ever could. She spotted another crack in the wall, a tunnel immediately ahead of Slash and the goblins. Standing at the edge of the tunnel, an ogre flung a thin line into the pit. A loop of rope settled around Slash and the others, drawing them toward the tunnel.

Before she could react, a second rope flew out, cinching her to the bat. She could feel the bat fighting to breathe as the rope tightened around its throat.

She tried briefly to goad the bat into flying back, dragging the ogre into the pit, but the bat was already tired from carrying Veka, and it was too panicked to obey. The harder it struggled to breathe, the faster it used what little air remained in its lungs. Soon Veka found herself swinging toward the rock, tied to an unconscious bat. The bat hit first, cushioning the impact. She twitched her staff, trying to use her levitation charm on Slash to drag the other ogre down, but they were too strong.

So be it. Fighting was more heroic than fleeing any day. She tightened her grip on her staff and prepared for battle.

CHAPTER 7