The Ambush at Silver Stag

he Silver Stag had grown quieter still.

The fire had settled low in the hearth, and in its failing glow the room seemed smaller than it had before, as though the night beyond the walls had drawn closer while no one was looking. Most of the remaining patrons had sunk into the heavy silence of people too tired to continue drinking but not yet willing to seek their beds. Near the counter, the innkeeper counted coin into his purse one piece at a time, each small clink briefly distinct beneath the rain.

Joshua noticed her before he understood why.

Nothing about the woman openly demanded attention. That was perhaps what caught his. The Silver Stag moved around her in small, ordinary ways—a chair scraping back, a man reaching across his table for bread, firelight shifting as someone crossed before the hearth—but the woman remained untouched by any of it. She stood near one of the timber posts where the glow thinned into shadow. She neither ate nor drank.

She was watching them.

Joshua kept his head toward the table, the faintest hint of a smile at his mouth. “It appears we are being hunted, dwarf.”

Kenneth glanced up from his mug. “Eh?”

“Far wall. Left of the hearth.”

The dwarf followed the direction with considerably less discretion. He found her, looked a moment too long, then lowered his voice. “Aye. See her.”

Dark leather beneath a rain-damp cloak. No ornament that might catch a hand or blade, nothing loose except her hair, and even that had been swept clear of her face. Twin daggers rested at her hips where either hand might find them without searching. She would have been easy enough to lose in another crowd were it not for her cold sapphire-blue eyes, which moved from person to person without curiosity. She looked at things the way a locksmith might regard a door: not wondering what lay beyond it, only where it would give.

Joshua rose in one smooth motion and crossed toward Neil. Kenneth sighed, abandoned his mug with obvious reluctance, and followed.

“You’ve got a way of findin’ trouble quicker than most, ranger...”

Neil saw them coming and straightened in his seat. “What is it?”

“We’re being watched.”

The paladin found the woman almost at once. He stood and swept his cloak behind him. “Stay.”

They did not.

Neil crossed the room without hurry, Joshua and Kenneth following several steps behind. He slowed as he reached the woman in black, leaving enough space that neither of them could mistake the approach for an attack.

“If you have intent,” he said, “name it.”

She looked at him properly then. There was no surprise in her face, only the faint satisfaction of something having proceeded as expected.

“You,” she said. “Or what’s left of you.”

Neil’s expression did not change. “Why?”

Her attention passed over him, then the ranger and the dwarf. “You have blood on you.”

Kenneth looked down at his clothes.

“Not yours,” she added. “And not from anything that belongs this far west.”

“You can tell that?” Neil asked.

“I can smell that.”

Kenneth shifted his weight. “Well, that’s not somethin’ I care to hear after a long night.”

She ignored him. “Nashrou?”

None of them answered.

“Canomorphs?”

Again, silence.

“Barghests?”

“So you know Orath’s creatures,” Neil said.

She chuckled. “Do you?”

“We’re heading toward the Ironspine.”

That reached her. The change was slight, a sharpening rather than a reaction, but Joshua saw it.

“And the five of you intend to do what, exactly?” she mused.

“If Orath means to kill us,” Neil said, “I’d sooner make it work for the privilege.”

For the first time she seemed to consider him rather than merely measure him.

Neil let the silence sit between them. “If you know what we’re walking toward, we’d welcome your company.”

Kenneth glanced at him, surprised by the bluntness.

The woman’s eyes moved past Neil and settled upon the ranger behind him. “No.”

Joshua gave a quiet scoff. “Please. You’ve watched us for half the night. You’re not as disinterested as you pretend.”

“And you five are not as heroic as you pretend. I saw the market.”

The answer found its mark. Joshua showed little of it, but something hardened behind his eyes.

“An assassin speaking of heroics is rich.”

“You speak boldly for someone who prefers the far edges of a room.”

Joshua did not shift beneath it. “Yet here we are. Finding you.”

She reached up and lowered her hood. Long elven ears rose through the dark fall of her hair. “I choose when I’m seen.”

“So do I.”

Her eyes narrowed. “No, child. You react. There’s a difference.”

Joshua stepped a fraction closer, just enough that the space between them became deliberate. “If I were reacting, you’d already be under my boot wondering how you got there.”

Kenneth released a long breath behind them. “Ah, kin, I’m thinkin’ now is not the place for this. I have ale waiting...”

The elf’s hand drifted toward the hilt of one dagger and checked itself a fraction short of the leather, the motion so slight it might have been nothing more than a shift of weight. Her attention slipped almost idly toward the nearest window. Beyond the rain-warped glass, two shapes stood in the lantern spill: one tall and robed, the other shorter, both figures half-erased. The instant her eyes found them, they drew back as one, melting into the dark of the yard. She watched the empty glass a moment longer before returning her attention to Joshua.

He had followed her glance only halfway before looking again at the blades at her hips.

“Medford Forest steel. Short curve. Weighted toward the hand.” Joshua lifted his eyes to hers. “You didn’t leave there by choice.”

She examined him more openly now, beginning with the weathered edge of his cloak and ending with the repairs along his boots.

“Ah. La Mirada.”

Kenneth took a step back. “Here we go...”

The elf tilted her head. “I recall the place. Quiet roads. Empty stretches. Very... simple humans.” Her lips curved faintly. “You learned patience because there was nothing else to learn.”

Joshua gave her nothing. “And you learned to hide because if you’re seen at home again, they’ll kill you.”

The amusement vanished from her face.

“Being seen gets you killed everywhere,” she replied. “You’d know that if you’d ever been in a real battle.”

Joshua’s expression hardened. “I’ve known enough rogues. You never hold a line in battle. Only slip through it alone.”

Her fingers settled on the dagger.

“And you’ve never had to be the knife,” she said. “Only the man who hopes it arrives in time.”

Kenneth winced.

Neil moved between them, resting his forearm loosely across the pommel of his sheathed sword. “Enough. Both of you.”

Joshua looked around him anyway. “There is nothing she can do that I cannot. She is, at best, a redundancy. We don’t need her, Neil.”

“Careful, ranger. You’re starting to sound as though you think we’re the same.”

Neil looked from one to the other. “If the two of you are determined to kill each other, I’d at least like to know the names of the corpses I’m burying.”

The elf’s thumb rested beneath the dagger’s guard.

“Ashley,” she said. “The last rogue this ranger will ever see.”

Joshua sneered. “Rogues are simply inferior rangers.”

In a flash of silver, daggers slid up to her fingers and the ranger threw back his cloak.

Brilliant violet light flooded the Silver Stag.

Neil spun toward the windows. Joshua froze. Ashley held a hand to her eyes. Kenneth had barely begun to turn when something struck the front of the inn with such force that his mug jumped from his grasp and shattered at his feet.

“No,” Neil said.

The second blow tore the latch loose. The impact shook through the wooden beams and along the length of the tavern, knocking lanterns and candles free. Children screamed.

A window shattered behind them. Lindsey came through feetfirst, struck the floor on one knee, and nearly lost her bow as she rolled from the broken glass.

“Neil!”

Gregory burst through the rear passage a breath later, staff already raised, rain gleaming along one shoulder of his robe.

“...an ambush!”

A final, thundering boom brought the doors down.

A spray of oak exploded across the room in jagged pieces, and through it came a black hound so large its shoulders were level with the tabletops. Rain shone across its hide. Its eyes burned red beneath a skull too broad for any natural beast, and its open mouth showed teeth wet enough to catch the firelight. Goblins poured through the breach behind it—small, twisted figures in ragged black mail, curved blades drawn—and two more hounds shouldered through the wreckage at their heels.

For one terrible instant, the Silver Stag only stared.

Then the room erupted.

Patrons overturned chairs in their scramble from the entrance. A table vanished beneath the chest of the first hound and broke apart, sending bowls and mugs spinning beneath its paws. Neil drew his sword and went straight for the breach; Kenneth charged with him and passed him almost immediately, while Joshua moved by instinct toward the wall where the light failed. None of them looked to see what the others had done.

Indigo fire tore across the room before anyone could react. The spell struck the shoulder of a charging shadow hound and spun it into a table, black fur sizzling, but the blast scattered burning splinters across the floor and forced Lindsey sideways just as she drew her bow. Her first arrow flew wide enough to bury itself in the ceiling.

Kenneth met the nearest attacker with the flat of his axe and struck so hard the creature left the floor. He laughed once—a hard, dwarven bark—and followed it into the crush. Another goblin came from his left; he caught the blow on his shoulder guard, buried the axe in its ribs, saw two more beyond it, and went toward them because that was where the work was.

“Ken!”

He never heard Neil call.

A shadow hound crossed between them. Neil turned into it by instinct, raising his sword as the beast struck him square in the chest. Its weight drove him backward, claws scraping over mail, and for an instant there was nothing in the world but red eyes and the stink of its breath. He thrust upward beneath the breastbone. The hound folded around the blade, nearly dragging him down before he tore the sword free.

The dwarf had already disappeared behind bodies.

“Hold together!” Neil shouted.

Nobody heard him.

Joshua had taken the outer edge of the fight, where overturned furniture broke the firelight and shadow gave him places to vanish. A goblin passed too close to the wall; he caught it from behind, dragged it into the dark, and opened its throat with wire before the creature understood where it had gone. The ranger slipped away from the falling body, found another opening, then another.

By the time he realized what he had done, no one stood within six strides of him.

The first hound came through the chairs.

He never saw the second.

Joshua backed toward the wall and reached for an arrow, but there was no room to draw. The hound lunged. He caught his shortbow in both hands and rammed it crosswise between the animal’s jaws. The beast bit down. Wood groaned beneath the pressure as he braced one boot against its chest, every muscle in his arms locked against the bow bending between its teeth.

Something moved behind him, close enough that he felt breath against the back of his neck.

Across the room, Ashley had reached the broken window.

Rain blew cold through the opening. Beyond the sill lay darkness, open yard, and the road. For one clean instant nothing stood between her and leaving.

Her eyes went to the clear, tempting night.

“Bah.”

She turned back to the room.

A goblin rushing past the timber post never saw her move. One moment the rogue was beside the window; the next both daggers were driven beneath its jaw. She tore them free as the creature fell, pivoted from another blade, and drove one weapon backward beneath a second attacker’s ribs without looking. No one guarded her flank.

She had expected no one to.

The next goblin came close enough that its blade split her cloak where her shoulder had been a heartbeat before. The rogue stumbled more from surprise than pain.

“Damn.”

Across the burning hall, Lindsey loosed at a goblin moving between two tables. The creature caught the arrow on its buckler; the shaft glanced away and buried itself in the floorboards between Gregory’s feet, still trembling when he hurled himself behind an overturned bench.

“Lindsey!”

“I’m sorry!”

“Aim your apologies at them!”

Lindsey spun, and her next arrow crossed the room, burying itself in the hound pinning Joshua to the wall. The beast jerked sideways. Joshua ripped the arrow from its body as it howled and drove the bloody shaft through its eye. There was no time to look for whoever had made the shot. The second hound was already coming.

The battle did not take shape—it scattered.

Kenneth saw a boot strike the floor near him. At first he thought someone had fallen. But then it kicked again.

The dwarven bartender writhed between two overturned benches a few paces away, a shadow hound over her. Its jaws had sunk so deeply into her throat that its muzzle disappeared into blood, each savage pull worsening the ruin beneath her jaw while her boots hammered helplessly against the boards. One hand clawed at the beast’s neck. Around the other wrist, a torn strip of blue cloth stood impossibly bright against all that red.

Kenneth stopped, and her eyes found him. The hand clawing blindly across the floor changed direction.

For him.

Kenneth moved. A goblin caught him from behind, fingers hooking the strap across his shoulder, and he tore himself free and struck backward without looking. The axe bit. Something fell. He scarcely noticed. The woman was still reaching as the hound dragged her farther beneath the bench, her mouth stretching open around a scream her ruined throat could no longer make.

He lunged.

The hound wrenched its head sideways with a wet crack, and her hand fell to the boards.

For half a heartbeat Kenneth could see nothing else: the open palm, the trembling fingers gone still, the strip of blue cloth beside them.

He roared and buried his axe in the nearest goblin.

The sound disappeared among all the others.

Neil heard the dwarven warrior somewhere beyond the smoke and tried to turn toward him, but the remains of the bar had become a battle of their own. The innkeeper stood pinned against the counter with a stool braced between himself and a hound while another creature climbed over the wreckage to reach him.

He changed direction.

A blade scraped across his backplate. Another hooked behind his knee. He stumbled, and three goblins rushed him together.

The innkeeper cried out.

White light broke beneath the paladin’s armor.

The creatures recoiled as if a furnace door had opened between them. Neil drove one away with his shield arm, cut another across the belly, then forced himself toward the counter. Every step he took toward the innkeeper opened another path for the creatures behind him.

“Neil!”

Lindsey.

He looked. She had been driven against the hearth, bow raised, a goblin almost upon her.

Neil turned one step toward her.

Behind him, the stool cracked.

The innkeeper screamed once.

Neil wheeled back. The hound lifted its head above the counter. Something hung from its mouth.

For a moment he simply stared. The lesson had always been simple: when someone cried out, paladins moved toward the cry. No one had ever taught him what to do when the cries came from two opposite sides of the room.

A goblin struck his armor and drove him back into the battle.

Near the gallery, Joshua tried to cut across the room toward the others, but the path vanished almost as soon as he saw it. One hound drove him against the wall while another came through the overturned chairs, forcing him upward instead. He caught the edge of a support beam, kicked off the plaster, and gained the stairs a moment before teeth snapped shut where his leg had been. Above him, a goblin dragged a fleeing man over the railing. They fell together and struck the floor below with a sickening crack that ended both at once.

Gregory planted his feet and raised his staff. The first word of the incantation came low and exact, then the second, each syllable placed with the care of something that could become dangerous if spoken poorly. Violet light gathered in the carved channels of the staff.

A goblin rushed him before the third word.

The wizard twisted aside. The incantation broke with the motion, and what should have been aimed was simply released.

The bolt streaked across the burning room toward Ashley.

She saw it at the last instant. One hand shot out, caught the nearest goblin by the collar, and hauled it bodily into the spell. The creature vanished behind a burst of purple flame as Ashley ducked beneath the smoking corpse and shot the wizard a murderous look.

She had no intention of remaining where the room was closing around her. Ashley stepped onto a bench, crossed a table in three running strides, and leapt for the second-floor gallery. Her hands found the rail. For an instant she hung above the crush, already drawing one knee upward to vault over.

A boot appeared on the other side as Joshua came over the same railing from the stairs.

Neither saw the other until there was nowhere left to go.

They struck shoulder-first in midair and crashed through what remained of a table. Ashley’s face had just enough time to register elven outrage before impact sent her dagger spinning beneath a bench. Joshua caught the broken edge hard enough to drive every breath from his body; Ashley rolled from him and came up on one knee while he was still trying to force air back into his lungs.

Their eyes met.

For the first time since lowering her hood, Ashley had no remark ready.

A hound charged. They moved in opposite directions, and the beast tore between them.

Near the hearth, Lindsey found a narrow lane between two overturned tables and tried to make it hers. She put an arrow through the throat of one goblin and reached over her shoulder for another.

Then she saw the boy.

He was down near the far wall, still clutching a loaf of bread beneath one arm. He had crawled beneath a table, or tried to; one leg protruded beyond it, and a shadow hound had him by the boot. The boy kicked wildly with his free leg, fingers locked around the table brace as the beast dragged him backward into the open.

Lindsey drew, found the narrow space above the boy’s shoulder, and waited for the hound to give her its throat. The animal released his boot and lunged for his neck.

Her fingers opened.

At nearly the same instant, violet fire cut across the room.

Lindsey saw it only after the arrow had left her string. The spell’s tail clipped the shaft from the side, snapping it violently out of line. For an instant, the broken arrow spun black through the violet glare before it burst apart in a scatter of burning feathers.

“No—”

The shadow hound pounced, and reached the boy.

Gregory’s fire continued past them and struck a goblin across the room squarely in the chest, carrying it backward into the wall. The creature had been standing over a woman curled beneath the stairs, its blade already raised. When the smoking body fell away, she stared at the empty space where it had been, then scrambled on her hands and knees toward the rear passage.

Lindsey barely saw her. The boy screamed once. The hound jerked its head sideways, and he did not scream again.

Across the room, Gregory lowered his staff, relief touching his face as he watched the woman disappear through the rear passage. Then he followed Lindsey’s stare.

The relief was gone.

Smoke had begun to gather beneath the ceiling. Broken furniture divided the floor into crooked passages that changed every time somebody fell. The front doors were gone, and rain swept through the opening in silver gusts, hissing wherever it touched embers. Near the stairs, a wounded patron dragged himself forward with one arm until bodies hid him from view. Somewhere, a woman was screaming a name over and over, though by then Neil could no longer tell whether the person she called for was alive.

He could not see his sister.

He had lost his brother again.

The ranger appeared near the gallery and vanished behind a pair of crimson goblins. The elf was nowhere at all. Every time Neil found one of them, someone crossed between them and the room became different.

The dwarf found Neil at last, though neither had intended to reach the other. They collided shoulder to shoulder amid the crush, both bloodied, both breathing hard.

“Where’s Lindsey?” Neil demanded.

“I don’t know!”

“Gregory?”

“I don’t know! Joshua?”

Neil searched the room.

Fire. Broken tables. The ruined bar. A woman being eaten near the rear passage.

“I don’t know.”

Kenneth stared at him.

A patron screamed near the doorway. Neil turned toward the sound and saw a hand rise above the dark back of a hound, fingers spread wide and reaching for anyone who might see. Then the hand disappeared.

The market returned to him—not as a street or a collection of faces, but as recognition. A voice from somewhere he could not reach. Another behind him. The instant spent deciding which way to turn. Strength arriving only after strength no longer mattered.

The Silver Stag came back around him. Rain crossed the shattered doorway. He looked down as blood moved slowly between the floorboards until it touched the toe of his boot.

Not his.

A drop of his own fell into it, a ripple pulling it into the mix, and disappeared.

They were losing.

And all around them, the cost of their failure was being paid in lives not their own.

Once again.