Sixteen Feet of Steel Chapter 14

*Before…

“So they are camped close?”
He looks at us and he nods. “It’s the only explanation; there must be a murderhole close by.”
I look at him. “A murderhole?”
Hawk was drinking from one of our skins and she passes it to me. I take it and drink. It’s wild cherry wine from one of the places we were at. The liquor is welcome.
“Goblins live in the mountains, or under them, they hate the sunlight it hurts their eyes so they live in the darkness and in caves. We usually end up following their ranges and know where their territories are at but every once in a while they’ll dig, they’ll join cavern to cavern to underground streams and the like until they can get passed our lines and then they’ll amass a large raiding force…that place is called a murderhole.”
I take a few more drinks but pass it back because my body is wanting me to drink it all and that wouldn’t be a good idea. I look at the others. “So what do we do? Do we go and track them? Do we look to our wounds and the horses? Do we move as fast as we can and try and warn others?”

*And Now…

I’m looking at the others and they’re looking at each other. Then I fall down my legs give out and I’ve feeling sick and like my limbs are like lead and I’m really dizzy.

Taylor comes over fast and he’s looking me over and checking my pulse and my eyes and then he slips off really fast and he passes me a jar of preserves and a stick of dried and lightly salted fish.

“Sip the syrup first and slowly then little bites of the food you’ve got stripped blood.”

“Stripped blood…oh my sugars are low.”

He blinks at me. “Aye that’s likely it you’re the wisdom.”

I sip and they’re sour plums but the syrup is semi-sweet and I sip a little more and then take a bite of the fish…the salt will help me right now.

I look at them. “So what are we going to do?”

Jessa’s doing her bounty thing but says. “We could get killed going after them. We’re spent and we’re hurt and we can’t take Nicole’s rig into there most likely.”

Taylor says. “We’ve got to go by the time we get anywhere for word who knows what they’ll have done and we still won’t know what’s there or where there is.”

Then Nicole says. “We go, I can take the rig as far as we can with Taylor and Hawk up front and scouting and if you think that I’m going to be heard coming then we’ll stop and I’ll pin it up.”

Pinning it up is sliding locking pins into the gear boxes making it immobile as locks have been picked in the past.

I eat a plum…oooh really, tart. “I think that I can keep up with Nicole.”

She looks at me. “We can fit you inside with me for at least part of the journey, you’re spent with this over the training and you need to rest.”

I eat another plum…at this stage I’m hardly caring about the taste. “Right now you won’t get an argument from me.”

I keep eating and the others are bust with Hawk cutting bounty and Taylor getting things together for a very large looking fire…oh… “We’re going to burn the bodies?” I ask.

Jessa says. “Goblins are toxic to most things and they’ll do more damage than not if we leave them and we can use it as a signal hopefully.”

Taylor… “Aye nothing smells like burning Goblin and hopefully it’ll carry to someone who knows or someone will see it.”

Nicole’s grabbing bodies. “We’ll need evergreen boughs then too so it’ll whiten up the smoke. It’s getting dark.”

We all get a little quiet at that, I don’t think we though over much of going to hunt Goblins in the dark of night.

Jessa says. “At least we’ll have the moon for it.”

I finish the plums and drain the last of the syrup out of the jar. “I need to clean up. Taylor? Where’s that spring spot is it close?”

He nods. “Aye close enough for Nic to pull us there with her rig and we’ll likely have a chance of finding the horses there and we needs to clean up too before we go haring off after thet murderhole.”

It seems long but it’s not too long I suppose since they’re not likely to move anytime soon with the whole point of their camp being hidden and all. Hawk says as I help out with the salvage?...oh…looting the bodies….again no idea that was a thing…so I work at the Warg Saddles. “They’ll raid sometimes fer days straight until they get trounced or are chased they’ll not be expected back in a rush.”

There’s some money there too…they all have some to different degrees I guess and there’s Tin? But there’s coppers (some clipped.) and there’s a few brass coins and bronze ones both rare home and there’s some odd bite of silver mostly in hack-silver like bits. The rest are odd things like the odd bit of silverware and the like and a couple of fine looking pewter small plates and there’s a few good looking knives and daggers too and a few glass flasks.

I take a few of the knives and the daggers some have sheaths and I clean them as best as I’m able to. I will say this though they’d been using them and as bloodthirsty as they are they’ve kept them sharp.

Some are oil, some are hard drink and we don’t try any because of where goblin lips might have touched but we do take them as flammables.

We get Nicole to push the wagon to the small stream and the waterfall and it is a really pretty spot too with a spring coming out of a rock outcropping and a bit of a stream and a pool but there’s a made clearing and the area’s nice too with a decently large stand of spruce and fir trees but some cedars as well.

It’s a good place to camp and it would have been cozy too if we were going to stay here but instead we tie everything up and Nicole covers what we bury out of sight with her Squire’sknight and some large logs and then we’re off.

Taylor and Hawk scouting ahead and I’m cleaned up yet damp in the rig cage with Nicole like before and I brought a pad this time for my back so I’m not wedged against the back of the Squire’sknight’s cage and I ate some more and drank some tea and used to pot and once we’re going I drift off to sleep.

It’s sleep if you can call it that it’s mostly the attack on repeat and I’m woken by us stopping to light the bodies and then we’re moving again. I shouldn’t be sleepy but I’m very tired still and the movement of Nicole’s Squire’sknight is rocking me to sleep.

I wake when we stop again and I blink and rub the sleep out of my eyes. “Are we close?”

Nicole says. “Yes, we’re close according to the trail sign.”

“Okay, let’s get ready.”

We get out and we stretch and Nicole drinks and we both have a pee and we start going over our gear with Nicole getting things out of the pack cabinet in the back like the pins and some more armor.

Taylor slips in to where we’re at and scares the blessings out of the both of us and I’m already sending a dagger flung with power at his head and Nicole drew her sword. I stop the dagger in time.

“Gods and devils Taylor give a warning.” Nicole hisses and we’re both looking at him and I pull the dagger back. “You’re as quiet as a ranger you know that right?” I say as I slip the dagger back.

He just grins at me. “We’ve found them and they’re camped.”

Nicole blinks. “Camped?”

“Aye it’s in a hollow but there’s no cave thet we kin see.”

I look to them both. “No cave?”

He shrugs. “Not a one it’s decidedly odd for true.”

I look at Nicole. “Take the Squire’s knight?”

She shrugs and looks to Taylor. He nods. “There be a goodly sized camp.”

She stows her things again and we look at him and we follow or he goes and leaves markings for the trail and I’m behind him and Nicole’s slowly making her way closer and closer with her Squire’sknight trying to keep the sounds down to a minimum.

I’m nervous, fighting to defend ourselves is one thing and I still haven’t had time to process what happened with all of that but this, this is going through the night and it’s hunting trouble.

I cast out with my powers and I’m feeling for their metal and that of ours and…

Oh…there’s a lot of them and there’s a lot of metal with them, blades, and spears and other weapons and even some in some heavier armor. I do a quick count of them…and I hold my place until Nicole comes to me and she’s moving it very slowly now deliberate steps and we’re or at least I’m hoping that it’s enough that the noises of their camp will cover the sounds.

When she gets to me I say. “There’s close to three dozen of them and some of them are in some pretty heavy metal armors.”

I hear her say without using the speaking cone but through the vents. “That’s a lot, and it’s damned unusual for them to have been camped at all.”

“But not unheard of right?”

“Actually this far into our lands yes.”

“So what does it mean?”

“Death raid? I’m not sure since there hasn’t been Goblins doing death raids in decades.” She sounds unsure of what’s going on.

“What’s a death raid, I mean I think I know.”

“It’s bad news because it’s them killing as much as they can to weaken an enemy…but the real bad news of it is that it’s only a prelude to a horde building.”

“Horde…?” I so don’t like the sound of that.

“Several thousand strong or even more.”

“Oh shite.”

“Language young lady.” She scoffs at me. “But it still doesn’t track as Jessa would say.”

“Why not?”

“We never heard of any raids until now and we’re too far in good country for that not to have happened.”

I look at her. “So what does that mean?”

“I’ve not the faintest actually.”

I was going to say something but I notice Taylor’s sensations and he’s moving through the woods in the hollow and I can feel him sliding up behind Goblin sentries and there a movement of metal that’s fast…then another and another…heart, liver? And his last is cutting the throat.

“Taylor’s taking out sentries. He’s…he’s just a keep-lad is he?”

“He is, but he’s literally grown up in the company of fighting men and being low born and a bit of a drifter he’s got freedom that the lady uses.”

I can feel little bits of metal being cast out by his feeling. “He’s scattering out caltrops too.”

“Good, the better hampered they are the better.”

I start feeling out for Hawk but she’s even harder to find than Taylor is. “Do we even have a plan?”

“Distance, Taylor’s got his crossbow and Hawk has her bow and she’s likely finding the best place to use her bow at and then I’ll close in and go full melee with them.”

“And me?”

“Stay back and close to the mouth of the hollow and fry anything that might be fleeing past us or stun them but stay…”

I say as I find Hawk up in some trees. “Stay out of the way because I’m not trained enough.”

“Chrissy it’s true and you’re still recovering from the last battle we fought and you’re a good medic too plus…”

“Plus?”

“We’re leaving you with the flasks so you can firebomb them if you need to.”

“I throw like a girl.” I joke. Joke? Really I think that I’m picking up habits from them all.
Nicole chuckles which is kind of an eerie sound in the semi echo of the Squire’sknight’s chest. I take a breath and turn and look at Nicole. “I should get those flasks then.”

Nicole opens her chest hatch and passes me a cloth bag. “Here be careful though, that alcohol might go up fast with your spark.”

“I will…Okay I think Jessa’s ready.”

I can sense her out there by the metal profile and something that’s getting better? Like my head’s filling in the details and I can feel/picture her in the tree and she’s braced into two large branches with these metal sandals? Something on the bottom of her boots that’s covered in spikes and they’re giving her all the footing that she needs.

It’s all sort of there but it’s like everything is greywashed without color except the magnetic metals which seem to be brighter with how the quality of the metal is.

We wait a few moments and I’m cutting off strips of skirt and stuffing them into my flasks and tipping them upside down. The wick like this has to be soaked so you get a good flame. And I actually know what I’m doing with this since it’s one of the things I was taught with fighting in a castle and defending it. Even if I might not have been the one using them I had to be able to make firebombs to make them and so I could show others.

It oddly reminds me of how even the rancid fats and oils were kept in the lower levels because they could always burn or be boiled for defense.

I just get them ready when it happens. I don’t know what signal went off or was done but one of the Goblin’s near a campfire has a quarrel in his chest and he’s pitching over and then there’s long clothyard arrows from a longbow in the air.

It’s like she’s not even aiming just one after another drawn and fired into the air, but I suppose no one knows that these first shafts are even coming and it’s not like being around a campfire is exactly being evasively defensive.

I got to see some of it in our last fight but here at a distance the sight of a longbow in action is well…I’ve never seen arrows go through people before or drive them off of their feet.

Five are down from her before they react and start screaming, Taylor drops a Warg with his crossbow. Then three more are dropped by arrows as they’re rallying and screaming out alarms.

They’re starting to organize and to look to the trees and two stragglers not grabbing things fast enough go down and this one in armor a bit bigger than the others with a curved sword is shouting something and he gurgles out something as there’s a crossbow bolt sticking out of his mouth from the back of his head and then Nicole’s on then move.

They’re turning to face her because they can hear her bamming and crashing as she’d building up to a run and some are growling and screaming but others are running and going to mount up onto Wargs to escape and more arrows are flying.

They can’t see Hawk because she’s out and in cover and the fire’s killing their nightvision but she has to be running low on arrows soon I know some had broken in the last battle. Some are getting away though some get past Nicole…two don’t…one of those she cleaves with her sword cutting through the Warg at its mouth and then blade just kept going shearing the Goblin off at the legs…the second she just ran at and then she literally ran over it a thousand pounds plus of steel stomping over it.

I’d never been able to get my leg that high but she could…and she just kept going and plowed right into the camp.

I’d have watched the carnage but I’m seeing three of them coming at me on Wargs and with a flick of my powers I fling out my daggers and keep them floating and I spark up the flasks and start with those…I don’t have to hit dead on just close and have them explode and burn.

As it turns out I should have wrapped them in metal and done it that way because two miss and one hits but only partly and I miss him with the next one after that and then I nail him with the last flask of alcohol in the face of his Warg lighting them both up.

Then there’s two of them now on me and circling and I spin the daggers around me trying to keep the Wargs from savaging me and I grip my staff in my hands.

Twirl and circle and use my staff to knock aside the spears they’re using and the Wargs lunge and I poke with the daggers and we do it again and again this little dance of ours and then they really must be getting mad because they throw the spears at me and it’s a lot different than an arrow though I don’t know why but I do the shield thing this time but like a shove and drive the spears into the ground.

That got them to draw their swords and I let loose with the lightning now that they’re holding very wicked and pointy lightning rods…I shove it out, I push hard and arc out two bolts with one hand and it’s hard but I keep focus…my friends fighting, and the villagers and all of the people that I know if we don’t stop them…cut down and then there’s fires and there’s screaming in my mind and home’s burning and…and…

The Goblins blow back off the Wargs and they’re burned and they lunge jaws frothing mad from battle lust and pain and I think and send the daggers into them as hard as I can and I drive the heel of my staff into the throat of one of them in a hard jab making it really driven in there and it rips the staff from my hands and then the other one is on me jaws snapping and claws cutting and tearing at the woolen long coat I have shredding what scant protection that it’s giving me.

And I’m going in and out of flashback and I punch, I punch and I kick and I scream and I get a hand on one of the handles of the dagger and I stab and I stab and I stab and I start to put the magnet force behind it and I think it clawed me as I drive the dagger into its skull so hard I snap off the blade.

(Pant…pant…) I get up and that last Warg is still choking on my quarter staff and it’s still trying to pull it out but I think that it was weight driven into the soft tissues. I limp over to one of the spears and pull it from the ground and I use it to kill the beast driving it through its eye socket and then I do the same to the Warg and Goblin that had been set on fire from the flasks who were on the grass burned into a slaggy blistery mass, the Goblin was actually welded to the saddle by the melting of his own flesh…and that was torn away in a sheet from it they were breathing still sort of still alive when I deliver the mercy strokes.

I breathe hard and I sense and “look” and try and follow the battle with my friends and all I see is two people and the Squire’sknight standing there and I think maybe that the were watching me. I “look” around for more but we’re alone.

I start to look myself over and my leg…my leg is cut and bleeding with four long pretty deep cuts on the top and outer side of my thing from the Warg and blood is running quite freely down my leg.

That’s when that familiar feeling comes over me from when I first met Nic and Hawk and I fire off a mini bolt of lightning off and up as I fall and darkness takes me.

……………….. “Aaaaah!” I scream and it wakes me and I’m being held down as my leg is burning and it hurts so bad!

I see Nicole upside-down in my face.

“Chrissy, it’s me, it’s me you’re safe!”

“Someone’s driving a spear in my bloody leg!”

“Nic just hit her again.” That’s Hawk and she’s bent over with needle and thread and a flask that smells very much like some of the apple vinegar from our wagon and she’s pouring it in my wounds on my leg and oh dammit to the hells…I scream and Nic’s holding me down as Hawk’s sewing another gash out of the four shut.

And she keeps going too…Taylor shows and gives me a clean bit of wood to shove between my teeth and he’s there and he stays close by with his crossbow still and Nicole she holds me down and holds me still as possible when I writhe from the pain and I sweat…and see colors, not fainting but my vision swims for certain.

It’s my first major war wound and while I never thought of not having one now that reality of really being hurt it’s here and it’s front and center.

I think the pain is keeping me going from the rush of it all. And as soon as my cuts are washed out and sewn up Jessa has those cloths that Tedric used to use and she layers then against my thing and then she wraps me in bandages really well.

I look at her. “Thank you.”

She passes me one of the cleansing cloths. “It’s being comrades, you’ll scar Chrissy and you’ll be awhile healing those was deep, not deep enough to hit gushers but they were deep.”

“Still, you saved my life.”

“It’s not about that love, never is.”

We look at each other and we do the arm clasping arm thing that warriors do and then Nicole and I do the same and she hugs me. “Uhhff…I’m fine…Nic.”

“You’re not, you look half dead.”

“But I’m alive.”

Taylor comes over and he passes me a large chunk of bread and a waterskin and some more of the dried fish. “Here, you’ll need the food, you burned off way too much with all of that…both of you I’ll do better soon.”

I share it with Nicole who I’m noticing is sheathed in sweat or was and she’s a little pale and shaky and she eats with me. “Rig sick?” I ask and she nods her mouth full.

See using a Battleknight is a very hard thing, you train and you train to do it but it’s so demanding that in long battles more than anything else they run so low on sugars in the blood and water too. Actually water’s a bigger deal that the food. Dehydration in a Battleknight can kill you and I imagine a Squire’sknight is no different and she’s fought two hard fights and trekked her and held me down…Nicole’s exhausted plain and simple.

We do manage to move a little. Jessa has this clean spot and it’s near the Goblin camp but it’s stacks of their firewood to make a structure to rest on for a back rest and boughs to cushion and we settle into that and we sort of doze together.

In and out and I see Taylor clearing bodies and using Nicole’s Squire’sknight to do so and I’m a little surprised by the fact he can run it and I’m mentally wincing about the mess the tensions will be in the wires if he didn’t adjust things first. You have to do that, yes you can work any of them but unless it’s tuned you’re running it off balance.

And it’s filthy…covered in dirt and blood and gore too. I look up at Nic since I woke with my head on her shoulder. “That’s going to be a lot of work.”

She snorts. “He’s good like that.”

“Oi! I heard thet, you’ll be cleaning yer own Squire’sknight my sweet dearie.”

Nicole gives him a thumbs up that turns to a middle finger as his back is turned. “Unchivalrous knave.”

I chuckle and it sort of hurts…okay it hurts my leg but lots of other stuff is hurting as well lots of other things.

Then Jessa comes back with cooked food, it’s rabbit and other things? All roasted and on a board that’s actually a large sheet of tree bark and she looks tense and terse.

“You okay?’

“Yes…no…They went on a spree in the time that they were here…not just a death raid but they culled everything they could.”

I take some hot rabbit and eat. “I don’t understand?”

“That game was stockpiled and I cut out all the iffy looking places from their arrows but they killed every living thing that they could, the entire hollow is dead and empty and a lot of the trees are going to die too.”

“The trees?”

“They’ve spiked what they having cut down.”

“Spiked?”

“Goblin metal spikes six or eight inches long and they hammer them into the trees covered in a poison and it’s already killed them they just haven’t died yet.”

“Why?”

She just looks at me. “To kill, to blight the world and to make things suffer.”

Oh…oh I so have a feeling that I’m missing out on so much in like lore and mythos and such. Goblins and Wargs and creature like them are stories, they’re things from decades on decades back or even longer.

Unless you’re here.

I nod and I eat. “Is there anything that we can do?”

Jessa shakes her head. “No, I’ll leave blazes and mark them and when we get to Serenity I’ll tell the Master Ranger and he’ll send people and contact the druids.”

“Okay…this is good, you sure it’s safe?” If it’s not it’s too late I’ve already eaten a whole rabbit leg.

“It’s fine like I said I cut out the bad portions, Goblin poison as it is; is pretty much just filth and their blood.”

“Eeew yuck.” I make a face.

She grins. “There’ll be more coming Taylor’s doing the salvage and I’ll see to the food.”

I sort of nod and reach for another bit of something I think it’s a smaller animal actually it looks whole. Honestly I could eat a boot with a little salt I think though it might be chipmunk or squirrel or something that sized. You know it’s bad when the food actually is beating out the pain in my leg.

I finish it and I doze while watching them. Hawk rescued pots? There’s things she boiled and washed and scrubbed and then there was a long fire built and not too far from us either so the warmth was reaching both of us just nicely and then she did other washing things off that Taylor dropped off and she was sewing pelts to make a…oh…we’re taking bounty.

I’m still very much unfamiliar with this whole sort of mercenary sort of thing and the life here.

I’m woken though by the smell of soup and there’s a pot between us of cast iron and a matching ladle and two bowls that I think are ours or Jessa’s and Nicole and I start eating sipping the broth and using a twig like a food spear to shovel the solid bits into me.

Meat…several kinds and organs too anything and anything edible from what she saved and then some mushrooms and a lot of wild herbs and some greens and salt and pepper I’m assuming is hers and some kind of tuber roots. It’s not refined at all or been cook low and slow or anything other than basic but it’s good, it’s really good and the broth is the most of it and there’s lots of it and after my third bowl I drift off again.

I wake when Nicole is replace by Jessa and again when Jessa is replaced by Taylor but only for a while and unlike my short usual sleeping I can’t keep my eyes open. Though Taylor smells like he washed and smelled like spruce needles.

I sleep without too much dreaming or at least for the most part before I get to that point between awake and asleep and that’s when things happen in dreams….first the ambush with the Goblins from before then the fight here and then the attack on home and it blurs together with me getting so angry and that mixing with the flashbacks and then I’m fighting with that Warg again.

I never thought that I’d be like that, be that wrathful and mad, just beyond mad and it’s…not what I thought I’d be like.

I thought That I’d be a lord, not a major one but one that’d be the third son that I’d have an estate in the country and likely be a knight with a holding over one of our villages and I’d be married to some girl of like station to mine and maybe we’d raise crops of some kind. Wheat actually we’ve good lands for it and I had simple thoughts of whisky making maybe…I knew I’d never be a huge warrior with rippling muscles and I’d likely like my brother Stephan a cavalier and do my fighting on horseback or some such thing.

Being Christiana and being orphaned and being a witch or sorceress was never even remotely in the cards and now I have done all of that, slept with a man…and woman and I have used magic over and over again and I have killed.

Up close and personally have killed not giving the order either.

I wake up and it’s not with a jolt but with a thundercloud of too many thoughts and images in my head along with the strong need to pee and I feel my leg out and it hurts, it’s not burning and I don’t feel too hot or too cold so I think I’m so far clear of infection.

I look to Taylor who’s awake like all of them see to do and he’s got his hand on the crossbow and it’s loaded. “I need to get up.” He nods and we get up with him helping me and I bite my bottom lip and use a hand to thump on his shoulder from the pain which just makes him smile a bit and he passes me a set of crutches.

Well they’re two staff sized poles with a fork in them that’s been padded with cloth strips and they’re crude but they work and I smile at him. “You made these?” he nods. “I hadda ye needed them ‘n all.” I lean over and I kiss his cheek. “Thank you Taylor, you all keep coming to my rescue one way or another.”

He just smiles and heads over to the long fire and it’s still lit with heavy coals from logs and I head off someplace private to…I see Nicole pointing to an area where I see our wiping cloths in the jar and I nod and hobble-crutch to go and do my business.

I don’t think that I will ever get used to this and crouching to do it either…nor the fact that it’s what it is…and by no means am used to it yet or even used to looking at it… (Sigh.)… I pull up my panties and muse. “At least my block and tackle aren’t getting jammed up anymore, there’s at least one big plus in all of this.”

I stop and fix my clothes and hobble-crutch my way to the fire and others and I notice Jessa’s missing. “Where’s Hawk?”

Nicole is cleaning her Squire’sknight. “She left for the other camp and to find the horses she was upset at being stumped.”

“Stumped?” I take an offered seat on a log by Taylor who set’s his coat on it to soften it for me I smile and he passes me another bowl of the broth skimmed out of the pot that’s been simmering I take it and blow on it before taking a sip.

Nicole stops rubbing oil into the joints of her Squire’sknight. “She couldn’t track them.”

And Taylor flicks a knife out from nowhere almost and he has a whetstone in hand and he spits and starts to sharpen. “Aye me neither, I looked hither and yon as we were looking to see what was done an all but there was no hole, and even more oddening is the fact thet there be no track from other places to here.”

I sip but I furrow my brow. “Did they disguise their tracks? Do Goblins have rangers?”

He’s still sharpening. “Nay, not a group of that size with gear to make a camp there would’ve been trail and clues and there would’ve been dead things…cause even if the goblins held t’their plan whatever it was the Wargs wouldna they hunt and eat anything they kin get their claws on an such and there musta been a force a hundred strong here.”

I do a sort of count in my head. “We didn’t defeat a hundred, maybe sixty or seventy right?”

Taylor says. “Aye t’is why we’ve been keeping a watch because who knows where they be or when they’ll come back from wherever they’ve been raiding.”

“I thought that they didn’t come back from a Death raid.”

Taylor points to what looks like salvage and things that have been cleaned. “They were plain raiding by the look of things.”

I finish my broth and move bottom schooch over until I’m close to the pot of things and it’s more odds and ends like things that are valuable and some of them are common things and some of them are…I pick up some copper pennies and they’re minted with a rooster on one side and a knight on the other. “This is Middle Kingdom coinage.”

I see Taylor nod. “We know and while coin of your realms still is around and abouts they have a goodly amount of it here.”

“But home is so far away across the mountains or under them it took me a long time to get here with a lot of speed from what she did to send me here.”

“Aye tis a mystery Chrissy.”

I look through and there’s a lot of copper coops and even a small pouch with fifty silver pennies called crows which is a good deal of money. How much? Well you can buy a yearling pig with three crows and that’s nothing to sneeze at considering a peasant family will sell a pig or two for monies for the year in addition to what they’ve sold with other things and they might make a total of ten or more crows in a year.

This was good hard coin they had,

I look through and they’ve a bit of a lot of things and then I see something…it’s ripped up some but it’s my favorite shirt. I know it because it still has the stain from the bit of fatty beef we had for that last supper in it and…

Taylor says. “That’s true fine cloth and it’s been unsoiled by them too though they took the buttons off of it. I was thinking of making handkerchiefs outta it.”

I’m moving it over in my hands. “My scent.”

“Yer what?”

“My scent must not have changed enough.”

He’s looking at me and I hold it up. “This is mine, I recognize it and it should of been in the castle washing as I grease spotted it that night at supper.”

I show them both the stain and I show them the tears. “There’s two pieces missing, and one group came after us at our camp.”

Nicole hops off of her Squire’sknight. “But you’re a woman now, you should smell different.”

I look at her. “I do but I still smell like my family and without any other explanation…” I hold up the money. “They were paid to come after me.”

Taylor spits. “Goblins as mercenaries, who in the hells would go so low…”

I look at them both. “Whoever launched the attack on Lyonnes that’s who…and these Goblins being here…it matches with something else that I’ve been trying to figure out.”

Nicole nods. “How did that force at Lyonnes get there without being heard or seen coming from a long ways off?”

I nod. “We all slept until the siege engines started firing…and now this?”

Taylor wipes off that knife. “We should get ready just in case then. They might come back here soon that other group and if not they will come after us for killing theirs and for you.”

I nod. “I think however they did this they figured I’d make for the lands of your lady and I think they might have been set ahead of us and were waiting.”

Nicole nods. “Sounds right but I’ve no idea how…”

I look at them. “I’ve no clue either but we should get ready in case…and so we can leave fast when Hawk comes.”

We get to work doing what we can and that’s not much really in truth and we’re getting tenser and tenser as dawn becomes daylight and I keep using my powers to cast out and to try and feel for Hawk or the goblins and I finally feel her and then the wagon and then I feel others with her…No…they’re not Goblins with Wargs they’re moving too wrong?

I push on with it until it’s goes into that greywashed stated and my sight seems to rush out towards them and I see Jessa on the wagon and she has a nearly a score of people in armor and weapons and horses and…I see…feel lances.

I sit down with actually being relieved when I feel them and the other’s look at me and I’m smiling. “She’s okay, it’s her.”

They look relieved too and more so when we hear a brass horn being sounded to ware the camp.

I’m nervous and tired and excited all at the same time as I see men and women on horse riding in and some of them knights and some of them possibly rangers or other adventuring types riding in.