“Run!” Avilla cried urgently, darting past me. “Only half a mile to the
edge!”
I followed her, throwing out more blades to fend off a renewed attack
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from the trees. “You won’t make it!” I argued. “Not with those wounds.”
“Cerise has demonic vitality,” Avilla informed me.
“Avilla’s body is spell-wrought,” Cerise countered. “One arrow won’t
stop us, but ten will. Move! We can outrun goblins.”
I ran.
It was a mad, nightmare race. With no time to clear a path we had to
weave our way between the trees, fending off lashing branches and grasping
underbrush again. More goblins were moving to intercept us, and every time
we thought we’d lost them another flight of arrows would pelt us from a new
direction.
They were smaller projectiles than a human bow would launch, with a lot
less force behind them, and that was the only thing that saved us. Sometimes I
got a force wall up in time, but more often than not another arrow would lodge
itself in one of our number. I took one in the arm and another in the chest, and
had to waste precious seconds ripping the second one free and stopping the
bleeding. The witches gasped out protective charms as they ran, but even so
they were starting to look like pincushions. Poor Avilla even had one sticking
out of her breast, which had to hurt like hell.
Finally we smashed through yet another thicket, and found ourselves at the
edge of a wide cleared space. I threw up a barrier behind us as soon as the
lack of cover registered on my weary mind, and we all stumbled forward. Two
heartbeats later another volley of arrows rattled off my shield.
There was a cluster of ruins that might once have been a village a few
hundred yards from the edge of the forest. The buildings had been burned,
recently enough that thin trails of smoke still rose here and there. There were
moving figures between us and the ruins, and for one heart-stopping moment I
thought we’d been herded into another band of monsters.
Then I realized they were human.
There was a line of carts and wagons drawn up in an open field next to
the ruins, with several groups of people gathered around them. Several were
already shouting and pointing in our direction. Most were civilians, a crowd of
men and women in ragged clothes clutching bundles of belongings. But a good
percentage of them were soldiers, dressed in chain mail and bearing a varied
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assortment of spears, swords and bows.
“Keep running,” I gasped out, and stumbled to a stop. They girls took my
advice, making a beeline for the hoped-for safety of the guards while I turned
to face the way we’d come.
They might just take us all in out of the goodness of their hearts, but I
wasn’t counting on it. Soldiers weren’t going to turn away a pair of cute young
girls, but I’d better make an impression.
A half-dozen goblins burst from the trees and stopped, looking around
wildly for a second as they took in the scene. I threw a hail of force blades
downrange with a dramatic gesture and completely unnecessary incantation.
Two of the little monsters went down, one decapitated and the other cut clean
in half, and the others retreated into the trees. A few arrows rained down
around me, several bouncing off my shield.
I exchanged fire with the creatures for a few seconds, but that didn’t seem
to be getting us anywhere. A couple of the soldiers snapped off shots of their
own, and a squad of them began cautiously approaching me with their shields
raised. Then the lumbering form of a troll emerged from the woods, and they
decided maybe it would be wiser to watch from a distance.
An especially wrinkly goblin wearing a feathered headdress and about a
dozen amulets sat on its shoulder, waving a length of carved bone at me
menacingly.
“You no stop Gug!” The creature shouted proudly. “Spirits of earth
protect! Gug, smash puny human!”
More goblins appeared along the edge of the woods, capering and
cheering.
I cracked my knuckles, and conjured a ball of flame in one hand. “Come
and get it, ugly.”
The troll grinned, exposing far too many teeth, and charged me.
I stood watching as nonchalantly as I could manage, trying desperately to
pretend this was just another raid. I could see the bubble of protective magic
around the troll, and my previous tactics weren’t going to work. A gaggle of
invisible spirits stood ready to oppose any earth spells I attempted, and the
troll was warded against fire. A second ward confused me for a moment, until
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I realized it was a protection against physical attacks. It wasn’t terribly strong,
but it would turn light blows aside and blunt the force of heavy ones a bit. All
in all it was a pretty impressive setup.
Too bad for the goblin he was up against me. When the troll was maybe
twenty feet away I conjured an invisible force wall right in front of him, with a
thin spike of force two feet long projecting out of it at chest level. The troll’s
own momentum impaled it on the spike a heartbeat later.
The shaman’s eyes went wide as I strolled up to the confused troll, still
maintaining the wall and spike.
“No way!” He exclaimed. “Die! Die die die die!”
He hurled a flurry of little balls of lightning at me with the wand, but they
just bounced off the force wall. I put a hand on my side of the barrier, right
over the spike.
“Oh, yes,” I said with a nasty grin. Then I fed power into the spike,
making it grow into a forest of blades that forced their way out in all
directions. The troll’s body came apart in a shower of gore, and the shaman
fell into the blades. He didn’t fare any better.
I turned my gaze on the edge of the woods, and the goblins there fell back
in a panic. In moments they were gone.
Wearily I let the spell drop, and set to work digging the arrow out of my
arm.
There was a rattle of chain mail nearby, and a man in armor stepped up
beside me. “That was impressive work, sir.”
I shrugged. “Usually I make my way as a healer, but it seems I have a
knack for that sort of thing. Daniel Black, wandering adept.”
According to Cerise that meant I was a formally trained wizard, but not an
official member of any of the various factions that vied for control of the
magical world here. Such men were rare but not completely unheard of, and
they tended to be sought after by nobles who wanted magical services without
too many strings attached.
“Marcus Rain, Captain of the 5th Margold foot.”
He offered his hand, and I shook it with as firm a grip as I could muster.
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“Well met, Captain. An interesting group you have there. I take it you’re out
collecting survivors?”
He nodded grimly. “We were dispatched to suppress a string of goblin
attacks, but then our priest told us the Golden City itself is beset and the
monsters aren’t going to stop coming. A troll got him the next day, more’s the
pity. We’ve been fighting a slow retreat ever since.”
“Well, I’m afraid that agrees with my own information. It looks like this
is Ragnarok, and things are going to get a lot worse before there’s any hope of
getting better.”
He nodded. “I was afraid of that. It looks like they’ve already gotten