A Beautiful Day

unlight followed them home.

It was a beautiful day.

It came broken through the canopy, gathering on the road in pale, shifting pools and flashing white across the stream wherever the trees opened enough to admit it. Neil walked between Gregory and Shara with three rabbits slung over one shoulder, their bound feet knocking softly against the back of his cloak. The priestess carried the roots and berries they had gathered in a satchel at her hip, while Gregory had balanced the water vessels from either end of his staff and wrapped the remaining plants among broad green leaves. Every few steps, the wizard murmured another careful word over them, coaxing the morning’s coolness to linger.

The road curved gently away from the stream. Behind them, water babbled over stone with such patience that, for a little while, the violence of the night before seemed to belong to another world. Even Neil’s attention, which had raged without rest across the brush and branches since they left the cave, had begun to settle. He listened as Shara corrected Gregory’s pronunciation of an old Rian blessing he had encountered years ago in an Irvine manuscript, the wizard objecting that the original transcription had omitted three distinctions of breath no reader could reasonably have inferred.

“You could simply admit you said it incorrectly,” Neil told him.

“Nonsense.” Gregory shifted one end of the staff before the swinging water vessel could strike his knee. “Irvine wizards are always correct and simply become more correct over time.”

Shara’s laughter slipped ahead of them down the road. Neil smiled despite himself. Around them, the woods had grown so quiet and easy that conversation gradually fell away, each of them drifting into thoughts of their own.

The crack above them broke the morning in two.

Neil had only begun to lift his head when branches thrashed and something heavy plunged through the leaves. It struck the road at his feet with a single wet, sickening impact, scattering dust over his boots and sending the rabbits swinging from his shoulder. His sword cleared its sheath before the body finished rolling. Light raced up the paladin’s blade as he turned it toward the canopy, while Gregory tore his staff free of the water cords and Shara recoiled with one hand raised, gold gathering between her fingers.

Nothing moved. At their feet lay a goblin larger than any that had entered the Silver Stag. Pieced mail covered shoulders too broad for a Mottled, but neither the armor nor the size troubled Neil as much as the skin beneath it: mottled and uneven, painted from brow to throat in narrow bars of black. An arrow had entered behind one temple and emerged through the other. The creature’s face remained fixed in the blunt astonishment of its final instant while dark blood threaded slowly into the road dust beneath its cheek.

Overhead, a shadow detached itself from the branches. A raven-haired woman in green leathers dropped from the canopy, caught a low limb with one hand, and swung the remaining distance to the road. She landed beside the corpse with bow in hand.

“Scout.” Lindsey planted one small boot triumphantly between the creature’s shoulders. “You’re welcome.”

Neil slowly began to sheath his blade. “How long have you been following us?”

“Following you?” Lindsey stepped over the goblin’s head and worked her arrow loose with a twist. “I was just enjoying a stroll in the forest.”

“By yourself?” Gregory asked.

“Oh no, not alone. You know me,” the sister said, wiping the arrowhead against the goblin’s tunic and sliding it back into her quiver. “Lots of animals.”

Her eyes found Neil’s.

Neil blinked, then cleared his throat before crouching beside the corpse. The black paint continued beneath its collar, the markings too deliberate for dirt and too regular for ornament scratched on in passing. A small horn hung from a thong at its neck, carved from pale bone and no longer than his hand. Wax had been pressed into the mouth.

“This goblin is not Mottled or Rust. Nor Crimson.”

“It followed you for almost an hour,” Lindsey said.

Neil looked up at her.

The satisfaction had left her voice entirely. “Never came close enough for any of you to hear it. Used the branches when it could. When you stopped, it stopped. When you moved, it moved.” She nudged the horn with the toe of her boot.

Shara’s raised hand slowly closed, extinguishing the light between her fingers. “I have never heard of goblins scouting before.”

Gregory stared at the dead creature, then at the trees around them. His grip shifted on the staff. “There’s never just one...”

The forest seemed to recover its voice all at once. The stream gurgled beyond the trees. Leaves rustled overhead. Somewhere deep in the green, a bird called twice and fell silent. Neil turned south along the road, toward the long bend that hid their camp beyond.

Shara understood first. “Ashley. Kenneth. And—”

Neil stood and threw the rabbits into the dust. “Back to the cave. Now.”

Lindsey’s grace overtook them even before the first bend. She left the road without breaking stride, seized the lowest branch of an oak, and vanished upward, green leather passing through green leaves until only the trembling canopy marked her course. Gregory ripped the cords from his staff and abandoned the water where it fell. Shara gathered her skirts above one knee and ran beside them.

The forest resisted their return. Roots caught at their boots where none had troubled them before, branches whipped their shoulders and recoiled into whoever followed, and the distance they had crossed so easily that morning seemed to burden them now beneath the new urgency. Neil listened for a clash of steel or Kenneth’s impossible voice carrying half a mile through the trees.

Nothing. That frightened him more.

Then a flock of thrushes burst screaming from the woods ahead. A distant howl followed, deep enough to carry through the earth beneath Neil’s boots. Gregory brought his staff forward as he ran. Indigo light gathered around the crystal, brightening with every stride, until Neil looked back and raised one hand.

“Save it.”

Gregory understood at once. The light collapsed into the crystal, and they ran on.

Joshua and Kenneth had long since given up the clearing. They had only refused to surrender the ground beneath their feet.

The two stood back-to-back before the cave, surrounded by torn grass, black blood, and bodies. More than a dozen Mottled had interrupted their rest and come upon them in the first rush. Two shadow hounds now slipped among the attackers wherever their blades could not easily follow. There were only the pair of them in the clearing—one dwarf, one ranger—and the creatures seemed to understand it. Every time Kenneth committed to one side, something tested the other. Every time Joshua moved to close a gap, another opened behind him. They were not losing quickly. They were simply running out of places to win.

A hound sprang over the dwarf’s shoulder. Joshua met it in the air with both blades crossed beneath its jaw, gave with the impact instead of fighting it, and turned hard enough to send the animal crashing sideways into two advancing goblins. He staggered after it, recovered, and looked over his shoulder at Kenneth with an exhausted smile.

“Kill the one behind you.”

The dwarf turned just as a cleaver came down. He caught the weapon between the crossed hafts of his axes, stopping it inches above his skull. The Mottled goblin leaned against him with its full weight, yellow teeth bared near his face, its breath hot with old meat and wet soil. The dwarf winced.

“There goes breakfast.”

He wrenched the cleaver aside and drove his forehead into the creature’s nose. Bone collapsed with a damp crack. Before the goblin could fall, Joshua’s short sword entered beneath its arm and found the heart.

Twice Kenneth had tried to cut a path toward the cave, but every step forward had opened space at Joshua’s back, and the ranger had ordered him to stop wasting ground they could not hold. Unable to see anyone else around them, Kenneth had seized the ranger by the shoulder and shouted the obvious into his ear: there were two of them here now, not seven. Whatever ground Kenneth took, Joshua had to keep.

So Kenneth stopped trying to win the clearing. He simply became the place the goblins could not pass.

Four Mottled goblins lay dead in the grass around him. A fifth dragged itself toward the trees with one ruined leg, leaving a black trail behind. Yet the others no longer rushed his axes. They approached in pairs, sometimes three at once, and retreated the instant Kenneth committed to a swing. One Mottled would show him a shield while another watched his hands. The hounds circled beyond reach and waited for the two men to separate again. Each creature seemed to understand a little more than the one before it, as though some crude mind moved among them and learned each time another body fell.

Joshua noticed it as well. “They’re learning.”

A thin horn sounded beyond the treeline, and every creature in the clearing reacted.

The eastern brush erupted. Armored Rusts shouldered into the clearing, broader than their Mottled kin and wrapped in scavenged plates that knocked together as they ran. Lean Crimsons slipped between them with long teeth bared, their red limbs carrying them over the broken ground with unnerving speed. Behind both came a single Mottled astride a shadow hound, its crude saddle bound around the beast with bloodstained leather and strips of cloth taken from the dead.

Eyes wide, Joshua watched the rider clear the grass. “That’s new.”

“Shit,” Kenneth muttered, spinning his axes to his hands.

Above them, the oak shivered. A shadowy blur dropped from its branches and vanished among the Mottled bodies below. Relief struck Kenneth before certainty did.

“Elf!”

No answer came, only a goblin’s scream and the brief crossing of silver inside the press.

The mounted hound lunged. Kenneth struck its muzzle, tearing the axe across one foreleg as it passed. The animal landed badly and threw its rider, which Joshua opened from hip to ribs before it could rise. The hound scrambled toward the trees on three legs, leaving a black trail through the grass.

At the eastern edge of the clearing, Ashley drove both daggers into the collar of a broad Rust wearing a mantle of overlapping iron rings. One blade found the gap beneath its jaw; the other struck bone. But the goblin convulsed as it fell, its twisting weight wrenching both daggers from her hands and dragging her down with it. She planted one boot against the corpse and reached for the golden hilts.
A shadow hound came following low through the grass.

She saw it and abandoned the daggers. The hound struck her at the hip and drove her backward over the body. She hit the ground hard enough to lose her breath. Jaws snapped above her throat. Ashley caught the beast beneath its muzzle with one forearm while her free hand searched empty earth.

Joshua saw her from the corner of his eye.

He left Kenneth.

The absence registered immediately. Pressure collapsed into the space where the ranger had been. Kenneth turned just enough to understand what had happened as he smashed his fist through a wooden shield and into the goblin’s face behind it.

“Go!”

Joshua was already moving. A Crimson stepped across his path. Joshua dropped beneath its blade, rolled through the grass, and sprang from the crouch, planting a boot atop the creature’s chest. His other foot struck the crown of its head as he vaulted over it, pitching the Crimson face-first into the dirt.

Wire whispered from his wrist before his feet touched earth. He looped it around the throat of a nearby goblin and jerked sideways, throwing the creature directly into the path of a charging hound. Goblin and beast collided in a knot of limbs and teeth. That bought him the window he needed.

He reached into his belt and hurled a small leather packet. It struck the ground beside Ashley and burst into an opaque cloud of white smoke, swallowing elf, hound, and the fallen armored goblin together. Nearby goblins recoiled from the sudden whiteness. Inside the cloud, the hound lifted its head from Ashley and turned toward the sound of Joshua’s approach, red eyes finding only shifting vapor.

Sprinting into the smoke, Joshua swung his shortbow free, drew, and fired. His arrow disappeared into the cloud and struck between the hound’s ribs. The beast whirled toward the impact, jaws snapping closed on empty air. The ranger entered the smoke in a low slide, found the Rust’s corpse by the iron rings beneath his boot, and stamped its shoulder away from the lodged daggers. Metal tore free of bone.

“Hands!” he shouted, kicking both daggers across the dirt through the legs of the confused goblins.

One skittered over the ground until its hilt struck Ashley’s palm and she caught it. The second rattled past her. For one terrible instant, Joshua thought she had lost it. Then the elf’s free hand darted sideways and closed around the handle just as the hound looked down and gathered itself over her.

Both daggers rose into its jaw.

Ashley drove them through flesh and palate and rolled as the animal’s weight carried it past her, its legs folding as it struck the ground. The rogue rolled clear and came up in a crouch in the thinning smoke, black hair loose across her face, and found Joshua beyond the haze with his bow still raised.

“Out here,” he said. “This is mine.”

The elf vanished in a swirl of shadow. Joshua had time to be annoyed before something wet struck the back of his cloak.

He turned.

Ashley stood behind him with one dagger buried through the crown of a Crimson’s skull. It hung upright by the blade alone, its feet kicking once above the grass before she wrenched the weapon free and let the corpse fold to the ground. The elf caught Joshua by the cloak and dragged him toward the cave.

“Never, ever do that again.”

Joshua looked at her. She was already watching the dwarf. Whatever answer he might have given died there, and they ran.

In front of the cave, Kenneth stood alone, an island of ruined grass. One axe lay buried in the chest of a Crimson at his feet. Another creature staggered nearby, clutching what remained of its hand. The last Mottled had somehow found itself trapped beneath Kenneth’s arm, its heels scraping furiously across the earth while the dwarf squeezed its neck against his side and watched Ashley and Joshua run up beside him.

Kenneth spat blood onto the ground.

“Welcome back,” he growled, cracking the goblin’s neck under his arm.

Ashley walked around the two of them and faced the clearing, her silver daggers at the ready. Three of them, for the first time, side by side.

The clearing, which moments before had seemed too wide to defend, suddenly belonged to no one. They had a line now. Kenneth gave it weight. Joshua gave it shape. Ashley made every mistake expensive. A Mottled rushed the dwarf and discovered the ranger’s blade waiting where Kenneth’s axe had driven it. A Crimson tried to slip around Joshua and found the elf already inside its reach. A Rust raised its shield against Ashley’s daggers and took Kenneth’s axe through the rim.

The goblins felt the difference before any of the three companions did. Their cries altered, the eager shrieks shortening into clipped sounds passed from one creature to another. They began to withdraw. Some darted into the forest at once, disappearing between the trunks, but others backed away slowly without turning, weapons still raised and eyes fixed on the three before the cave. There was something unsettlingly human in it—not panic, not surrender, but a wary promise. The hounds growled low as they retreated with them into the woods.

Almost as suddenly as the assault had begun, nothing remained within reach. The three companions stood breathing among the dead.

Mottled bodies lay curled around wounds from the cave mouth to the eastern trees. Rust armor shone black beneath the sun. Crimsons lay motionless where speed had failed them. One shadow hound twitched near the oak. Another—the one Kenneth had crippled—stood beneath the trees on three legs and watched. No living goblin remained within twenty paces.

Kenneth drew a long breath through his nose. His shoulders rose and fell beneath his armor. Joshua wiped one blade against his sleeve and became aware of his own pulse hammering in the hand that held it. Ashley turned a dagger once, but the motion lacked its earlier ease. Her fingers closed around the hilt until they steadied.

They had won the clearing. None of them believed it.

But the goblins did not flee.

A creature with black feathers tied into its hair stood just inside the shade. Black bars crossed its face. It barked a sound.

Three Mottled moved—not forward.

Back.

Another gesture sent two Rusts farther north through the trees while a pair of Crimsons slipped south and disappeared into the brush.

Joshua watched. “The painted one.”

Ashley followed his attention. “Giving orders?”

The goblin shouted again. A shield line shifted.

Joshua felt something cold move beneath his ribs. “Trying to.”

A horn answered from the west. Kenneth whirled. A second call came from the north, and all humor left his face.

At first there was only the disturbance of branches where the retreating goblins had passed. Then a thicket moved fifty paces to their right. Brush shuddered farther downslope. A dark figure stepped between two trunks and stopped. Another appeared beside it. One became five. Five became more than Kenneth could count without turning his back on the rest.

Shapes gathered beneath the trees: Mottled in scavenged mail, Rusts with hooked spears and hide shields, Crimsons standing almost motionless among them. Black paint marked faces here and there throughout the formation. Shadow hounds moved low among their legs, red eyes opening in the shade.

The crippled hound limped from the undergrowth and stopped beyond bowshot. It did not come any closer.

None of them did.

The three companions backed toward the cave without speaking until their shoulders met at the narrowing entrance.

Kenneth stared at the treeline. “How many?”

Joshua followed the line south, then north, and lost count long before the goblins ran out. “Too many.”

Still none approached. No Mottled broke from the trees. No hound tested the open grass. No Crimson tried to use its speed before the three could recover. The dead lay beneath the sun between both sides, and the creatures beyond them simply watched.

Joshua would have preferred another charge. “They’re waiting.”

Kenneth’s axes went still. “For what?”

Ashley watched another Rust step into place beside a hide shield. Farther south, something moved through the trees and stopped where the road disappeared behind the brush. Her face changed.

“To finish surrounding us.”

The words left a silence behind them. Ashley looked toward the southern road, the one Neil, Gregory, Shara, and Lindsey had taken that morning in search of breakfast.

The goblin horns sounded again.

A weapon struck a shield beneath the trees. Another answered. Then another. The rhythm gathered slowly, passing from creature to creature until the clearing filled with the dull percussion of iron against hide, wood, and stolen steel. No one charged. No one screamed. The goblins only closed the gaps between them while the sound rolled across the grass and broke against the stone behind the three companions.

Joshua searched the southern hills for their companions. Sunlight lay across them, empty and unbroken. The woods stood green and luminous beneath a cloudless sky, their leaves stirring gently in the morning breeze.

It was a beautiful day.

And no one was coming.