NPCs (6 page)

Eric was surprised by how sweet the night air smelled. The tight goblin perimeter had contained much of the soot and violence, so much so that, once on the other side of the buildings, the world seemed almost peaceful. There were still a few more traps and hurdles to get around, but as Eric looked out into the dark depths of the forest, reality set in.

He’d made it. He was free.

* * *

In different circumstances, Gabrielle might have made it. Her idea had been a sound one: sneak behind the bulk of the warriors to a secret get-away path she knew about. It was near the main entrance, obscured enough that one wouldn’t find it unless they knew it was there. Her movements were controlled, careful, and precise. She knew this camp well, and if any of the goblin warriors noticed her making for the exit, they did nothing to impede her. For one thing, she’d been around so much they considered her a friend. For another, they had far bigger problems on their hands.

The demon in the center of the warriors was beginning to show signs of wear. Tough though its hide was, the sheer number of arrows and polearms were beginning to tear away bits of its flesh. The one near the building seemed to be faring better — not enough of the goblins were focused on it — and the monster was dropping their numbers with nearly every swipe of its claws. Gabrielle couldn’t make out the one that had jumped across the camp, but she assumed it was probably doing well, too. For a time, she didn’t know where the fourth demon had landed. Then she arrived at her exit point.

At first, her heart felt lighter as she saw the swarm of goblins around the demon. This many would end it swiftly and then they could focus on the other two. The tribe might just have a shot at this. Then she noticed how quickly they were falling and realized few of them had armor or weapons. A quick glance toward the area where the secret get-away was located showed that the entrance was blocked.

Blocked with goblin corpses.

The reason there were so many goblins around it was because the demon had caught onto their escape attempt and sealed it. Now it stood between them and escape on the main road. It wasn’t being swarmed with warriors, it was cutting a swath of death through the children and peaceful-goblins that had been trying to evacuate.

* * *

Thistle moved with all the speed his crooked, gnomish body could muster, which was, unsurprisingly, not a lot. Thankfully, the focus on the incursion of demons made sure he was the last concern on the minds of the goblins he gently moved past. Along the way, he followed his own advice and snagged a pair of mismatched daggers from the corpses of fallen archers. They weren’t as well-made as the ones he’d taken from the dead rogue, but they had pointy ends he could stab into people and that was really all that mattered in a dagger.

Of the four, he was the last to reach his destination, both because of the difficulty of what he was moving through and his hobbled size. He did make it without incident, which was more than he imagined the other two would have pulled off. Thistle hoped those two would be safe. Maybe if they survived, they could recruit new people to fill the party’s holes and draw the king’s ire from their town. It was what Thistle would have done; however, he was less confident in his own survival than theirs. They still had the strength and determination of youth. It was then that Thistle broke through the mass of goblins into the area where Grumph was, and all thought of the humans’ safety flitted from his mind.

Seven fresh goblin corpses littered the ground around the demon, their light purple blood already soaking into the dirt. A few feet away, Grumph lay on his side, struggling to get up with the one arm that wasn’t covered in blood. A shattered goblin polearm stuck out from the demon’s hide, wedged into the shoulder above its right claw.

In an instant, Thistle knew what had happened; he saw the goblin regiment’s death, followed by Grumph rushing in and smashing the demon with a weapon not designed to bear his strength, snapping it off in red flesh only to have his own half-orc body savaged by the monster’s counterattack. Thistle put it all together, and in the span of a heartbeat, he extended the scene moments into the future, seeing what would play out as plain as a sunlight spell:

Grumph was about to die.

7.

There were surely better ways to die than this. Going down in battle was a point of pride, certainly, but it was supposed to be while making a grand last stand for some important cause. All Grumph had done was whack a polearm against a demon while it was killing several goblins. From the pain in his shoulder and the sizable chunk of missing flesh, he didn’t imagine this was going to be a peaceful death. The demon was approaching steadily, but cautiously. Grumph let out a weary sigh that sounded like the wheeze of a broken organ. He’d wanted to be one of the few half-orcs to die out of battle. Oh well.

The knife moved so fast Grumph didn’t actually see it fly. One moment, he was staring up at impending death in the form of a rat-faced monster, the next, he was looking at a rat-faced monster with a knife sticking out of one eye. The beast let out a howl that made all who heard it remember times when they sat in the dark, certain something was moving there, coming after them. The demon twisted to the side, searching with one eye for the source of its agony. It did not prove difficult to find.

“Hey, One-eye, that’s a good look for you!” called Thistle, twirling the other blade casually in his hand. “Bit uneven, though. Want me to get the other one too? Then you won’t have to see how ugly you really are.”

The demon snarled, and its clacking grew faster. Whether it understood the words or merely that this small figure had stabbed it in the eye was debatable: what was clear, however, was the effectiveness of Thistle’s strategy. Immediately, the demon changed targets, Grumph all but forgotten as it moved toward the gnome.

Grumph felt the bottom of his half-orc stomach drop away as realization hit him. Yes, there were better ways to die, but there were also worse ones. Like watching your only friend be sliced to shreds first.

* * *

Later, when the blood had dried and the dawn had broken, Gabrielle would reflect on how it all happened. She’d face the fact that perhaps this sort of thing had been building in her for years — an inevitable reaction to concealing the life she loved for a duty to the family she had. That would be when she finally faced how much this tribe had meant to her; how she’d loved the way they taught her, hunted with her, and treated her like a capable, functioning person, instead of a delicate doll to be loved and protected. All that would come later, though.

In that moment, when she realized she was watching the indiscriminate slaughter of the weaker goblins, all that existed in her soul was an explosion of incomprehensible fury. There were no thoughts, no fears, no debates: only action. With a primordial scream that none would have believed came from her, Gabrielle gripped the axe at her side and charged forward. It should have been too heavy, her inexperience too much to overcome, yet none of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was the sight of those demon claws tearing through unprotected goblin flesh.

To its credit, the demon did look up when it heard her undisguised charge. Had it been a mindless killer it would have shifted its attention to the new target. These, however, were thinking demons, so it paid almost no heed to the thin woman with the oversized axe. It raised one claw in a purely obligatory blocking maneuver and went back to skewering goblins.

The error of that strategy sank in right around the time it heard a heavy object hit the dirt, looked down, and realized it was its own claw, along with a sizable portion of its arm. The axe had cleaved straight through its tough flesh and bones, so quickly that the pain hadn’t even registered yet. It did an instant later, however, and the demon screeched shrilly at the loss of its limb.

“
Don’t touch my fucking tribe
!” Gabrielle screamed back, twirling the axe back to a ready position. She swung again, approaching its now-unprotected right side to go for its head. The demon didn’t take her lightly this time, extending its remaining arm at awkward angles to block the blade with its claw.

They danced like this for countless moments, Gabrielle possessing righteous rage, and the demon using honed battle instincts. It seemed a stalemate, but it soon became clear that wasn’t the case. With each swing, the axe felt a little heavier in her hands, the ache in her muscles grew more pronounced. She’d gotten its arm, but she wasn’t certain she’d get another chance like that. Still, Gabrielle pressed on, because, while she kept it occupied, the children and non-warrior goblins slipped past, making their way to safety and freedom.

Then, with only ten or so left, she swung too far, overextended, and the demon capitalized with a deep slice across her stomach. Gabrielle stumbled back, bringing the weapon up to a defensive position, but only barely. Intense pain from her wound was filling her mind, trying to choke out the anger that had fueled her so far in the battle. From the amount of blood pouring onto her tunic, she suspected that soon she’d be too weak to even stand, let alone keep attacking. It seemed this was as far as she could go.

The demon thought so, too. It snarled in what one could presume was joy, lurching forward a step and preparing to finish the job. With a swift motion, it tried to raise its claw for the killing blow, only to find the appendage unwilling to move. Neither it nor Gabrielle could quite believe what they were seeing.

All of the remaining goblins had, upon seeing Gabrielle injured, changed direction. They rushed forward, all thoughts of self-preservation cast aside, leaping onto the demon’s remaining arm and weighing it down. The monster tried once more to lift it, only to find that the goblins who couldn’t find a place to grab its arm had latched onto other goblins in an effort to increase the weight. The demon let out a rasp of frustration.

Gabrielle, on the other hand, took a deep breath. She blocked out the pain and focused on the anger. She looked at the goblin corpses that surrounded her, listened to the screams of others dying behind them, and imagined how many of her people had heard that damn clacking as their final memory on this plane. Her rage built upon itself, a fire rekindled, until she could stay still not a moment longer.

This charge was, somehow, clumsier than before, not to mention shorter, given her proximity to the demon. It snarled and tried to raise its arm for defense, only to find the goblins clutching tighter than ever. The awkward bird feet attempted to shuffle backwards; however, their sheer power left little dexterity with which to reorient in battle. Before it had any other chance to react, Gabrielle was upon it.

Her axe moved so quickly that a soft whistle penetrated the carnage-filled night air, a single sound of beauty amid the turmoil. The only thing more pleasing to her ears was the audible thump of the demon’s head as it landed on the ground. She surveyed her work with a deep sense of satisfaction and turned to the goblins who were now untangling themselves from a demon corpse.

“Hurry and go; it should be sa—” Gabrielle’s next words were lost as the tremendous physical exertion and blood loss struck. Without so much as a staggered step to stop herself, Gabrielle collapsed in the dirt, mere inches away from the remains of the demon.

* * *

The battle with the demon by the storage building was still going poorly. Despite more goblins stepping in to help, it was simply too strong, and resistant to their weaponry. They’d managed to push it back, moving it toward the building from which it had emerged, but the effort had cost them several goblin lives.

One of the warriors, midway through stepping over another goblin’s corpse to take its place, had the very un-goblin-like thought about the futility of this. He would die soon and another would take his place, as had always been the goblin way. But they were dying so quickly; what would happen if they ran out of goblins? That thought plagued him as he struck the monster with his weapon, barely impacting the beast’s thick hide. He tried aiming for a vital spot such as the throat or the eyes, but the demon was protective of those areas, knocking blows away. The efforts weren’t helped by the noticeable size difference between the demon and the goblins. With one desperate effort, this warrior leapt up and thrust the blade of his polearm toward the eye of the demon. Its claw swept the weapon away effortlessly, sending the goblin sprawling on his back. He looked upward, waiting for the end to come.

Because of this vantage point, he was the only one not to see the dark shape dart out from the building and swing a short sword into the monster’s back. He did, however, hear the earsplitting screech of pain it let out moments later. Taking advantage of the distraction, he rolled away, grabbed another polearm, and retook his position.

The demon turned to search for the attacker, but it found only empty buildings and darkness. Never ones to ignore an opportunity, the goblins struck while its back was turned, managing to gouge a few bits of flesh from its hide.

With a clacking of claws, the demon turned back around, cutting down any goblins it could reach. The figure stepped out of the shadows once more, padding up to it in near silence and delivering another blow. The goblins didn’t know why these strikes were hurting the demon so much more than theirs, nor did they care. This time, when the demon whipped about, it stayed that way for several seconds, allowing the goblins to open up more wounds across its back. Eventually, it turned around and renewed the attack, though it was clear that its focus was split.

The stranger came again, but this time, after the strike, the demon jerked its claw behind its back without turning, missing the man while still snagging his dark cloak. As the material came away, the goblins saw it was the male human prisoner they’d taken earlier that day. Now more visible, he retreated slowly, blade close to his body to block the impending claws.

As the demon turned, the goblin warrior saw an opening. One of his fellow polearm wielders had torn away some flesh on the torso, exposing a pair of misshapen ribs. Without a moment to think, the goblin repeated his earlier attempt, only this time, he aimed his thrust between those ribs. He struck true and the former weakness of their weaponry became an immediate strength. Because the polearm was designed for smaller creatures, both the blade and shaft slid through the ribs. The warrior kept pushing as hard as he could until he felt his weapon strike a solid mass somewhere in the demon’s chest.