"She Was A Storm, Paladin"

he outside had gone quiet at last.

Goblins lay where Gaz’s spell had flung them: Mottled twisted through the grass beside the heavier bodies of Rusts; Crimsons folded strangely among them, their long limbs robbed of every advantage they had possessed in motion. Shadow hounds sprawled in black heaps between the dead. The breeze had returned to the Downs and moved freely through the wreckage, lifting torn cloth, carrying the smell of scorched earth and sour blood toward the hills.

Av’elyth lay just inside the cave.

Navian had carried her only far enough to clear the mouth before Oesora ordered him to stop. Now the rogue rested on several cloaks spread hastily over the stone, her head turned to one side, the other bruised arm lying loose beside her. Blood, thick and still flowing, had soaked through the black leather along her ribs until the damage beneath it was difficult to judge. Her shoulder had been opened deeply. One leg was red from thigh to calf. The wound at her side was worse: a goblin blade had cut her there first, and a shadow hound had torn through nearly the same place afterward.

Every breath pulled at it.

Navian knelt beside her and pressed two fingers beneath her jaw.

Her pulse came weakly against the tips, disappearing long enough to make him lean closer before returning.

“Oesora.”

The priestess heard his pleading inside her name. White light had already gathered beneath her palms, no brighter than candleflame, sinking slowly through blood-slick leather into the wound beneath. It worked with patient, punishing slowness, drawing torn flesh closer where it could and stilling vessels one at a time.

“She has lost too much blood,” Oesora said. The control in her voice cost her something. “Moving her again would be...”

Navian looked through the ivy hanging over the cave mouth. Beyond it, the clearing remained empty, although the dead no longer made emptiness feel safe.

“But we can’t stay here, Oesora.”

“I know.”

“They’ll come again.”

“I also know.”

His attention returned to Av’elyth. “How long?”

Oesora shifted one hand lower. The light trembled before strengthening again. “Long enough that I cannot make promises.”

Jaeshu slowly entered from the clearing, wiping black blood from his knife before sliding it into its sheath. He had spent the last several minutes moving among the bodies and watching the treeline, making certain nothing had survived Gaz’s spell well enough to crawl away and return with company. One look at Av’elyth brought him down beside her. They spoke quietly.

“I have something.”

Oesora glanced over as he opened two of the small pouches at his belt.

“It is no magic. Just Brokenbriar woodland craft.” The ranger unwrapped a bundle of grey-green leaves, then a strip of cloth containing a dark resin that smelled of pine and bitter roots. “This slows bleeding. The resin will help hold the deeper wounds after you close them.”

“Can I use it beneath the light?”

“Never tried it before, but it should work better there, yes.”

That was enough for her. Jaeshu crushed the leaves between his fingers until their oils darkened his skin and showed the priestess where to press them along the torn flesh. He worked without ceremony, moving from Av’elyth’s side to her shoulder and then to the cut along her leg. His hands had none of Oesora’s gentleness, but they had precision—the steadiness of someone who had learned to tend wounds because there had often been no one else nearby to do it.

“This one will sting if she wakes,” he warned.

Navian watched the elf’s face and shook his head.

“She won’t. Just...”

Jaeshu looked at him once and returned to the wound.

The priestess folded the ranger’s work into her own, the white glow passing through them. Slowly the bleeding along Av’elyth’s side began to ease. The shoulder followed. Her leg took longer, but eventually even that ceased its steady dripping onto the stone.

Oesora allowed herself one breath before leaning in again. “Navian, if she does wake, she will not be able to walk.”

His jaw tightened.

Lunara had remained near the cave entrance, bow hanging at her side while she watched the trees. Now she turned.

“The Silver Stag.”

Navian and Jaeshu looked at her.

“The stable behind it. There were horses.”

“There were,” Karneth said from nearby. “Before the ugly little bastards tore the place apart.”

“If even one survived, we can carry her.”

Jaeshu was already repacking the unused herbs. “It’s close enough.”

“And we can make better time than anyone else,” Lunara said.

Navian looked from one to the other. “Do you need a third?”

“No,” she answered. “We’re faster as two.”

The ranger stood. “And quieter.”

Outside, a soft wind moved through the grass where the goblins had fallen, then eased again. Navian considered the distance, the failing light, and everything the creatures had learned since the road began.

“Straight there,” he said. “No detours. No heroics. If there are no horses, you come back under starlight. Enough has been lost today.”

His sister had already turned toward the cave mouth when she stopped. “One thing. I only found a few usable arrows left in here.”

Gaz gestured toward the clearing. “Just take whatever you need from the ones outside.”

Lunara stared at him. “I would. But it seems someone incinerated them all.”

The wizard looked past her toward the scorched field. His mouth tightened.

“Ah.”

“Unless you have a spell to resurrect arrows?”

Gaz said nothing.

Jaeshu adjusted the bow across his shoulder. “The ones she has will get us there. We’ll find straight wood on the way back. Make more.”

She gave Gaz one last look, then followed the ranger through the ivy. Within moments the two of them had crossed the clearing and vanished among the trees.

The cave seemed to draw inward after they were gone.

Gaz took up his place near the entrance and planted the end of his staff against the stone. He murmured several words beneath his breath, traced two fingers through the air, and the ivy shivered despite the stillness inside. Light bent strangely across the cave mouth. The opening did not disappear, but its edges became difficult to follow, stone and shadow slipping into one another until, from a distance, the hollow looked like no hollow at all.

The wizard watched the ward settle.

Oesora was still working.

For a time Gaz said nothing. The scholar who had turned half the clearing green now stood with both hands around his staff and watched a glow scarcely larger than Oesora’s palms accomplish something a thousand of his spells never could.

“I should have learned that years ago,” he said.

“Healing?” Oesora asked.

“Anything useful after the fighting ends.”

Karneth gave a tired snort. He had dropped himself onto a rock and was wiping one of his axes with a strip of cloth. “Ye flattened half the Downs, boy. Would be nothin’ around for the little one to heal were it not for you.”

“Or I could be helping her right now, as well.”

The dwarf peeled a sliver of black tooth from the leather wrapped around his axe handle and flicked it onto the floor. “Well, if those bastards come back, we’ve still got that green nightmare of yours.”

Gaz glanced toward him. Karneth's hands stopped.

“We do have it, aye?”

Gaz shifted the staff beneath one arm. “Assuming our next enemy is a goblin.”

Karneth stared at him. “What?”

“It was devised generations ago, when Orath’s first attacks began." Gaz waved his hand. “Long before I was born. The spell was built for one purpose: to work against goblins.”

“So if we’re attacked by anything that ain’t a goblin,” Karneth said, “that spell’s useless.”

The wizard’s hand thoughtfully slid down the length of his staff. He tapped its end once against the stone. “Correct. Even if I were capable of casting it again tonight, that is—which I am not.”

The dwarf stopped smiling. He resumed cleaning his axe, though by then there was little left to remove. The cave quieted around the scrape of cloth against steel and the low hum of Oesora’s light. He worked at the same section of blade several times before speaking.

“They’re different now.”

Navian looked toward him.

Karneth kept his eyes on the axe. “Not just more of ’em.”

Gaz leaned slightly against his staff.

“You weren’t here. The green ones kept us busy while the brown ones did the heavy liftin’. Reds worked the edges. Others... hardly fought at all.” Karneth rubbed his thumb across the leather of the handle. “Watched more than they killed.”

“The feathered one?” Navian asked.

Karneth’s massive hand tightened.

“That clever bastard watched everything.”

He pulled another chip of tooth from the haft.

“Used to be, goblins saw ye and just came screaming. Didn’t matter what was between you and them. Didn’t matter if half their friends were already dead. But these ones…” He looked toward the ivy. “These ones kept tryin' to put us where they wanted us.”

“This cave,” Gaz said.

“Aye.”

Karneth’s eyes drifted toward Av’elyth.

“That elf saw the gaps before we did.”

His cloth stopped moving across the steel.

“Every time one got around me or the ranger, she was there. Took one across the shoulder stoppin' a blade I never saw.” He swallowed. “Never said a damn word.”

Oesora’s hands moved lower along Av’elyth’s ribs. Karneth watched them. For several moments only her magic made any sound.

He stared at the axe between his hands with glazed eyes.

“There was a point when they were pilin’ up outside the mouth and…” He rubbed his thumb once across the edge of the cloth. “I thought that was it.”

No one interrupted him.

“Then that hound rider.”

His eyes moved back to Av’elyth.

“She saw it.”

A faint, incredulous smile touched his face.

“Jumped over both our bloody heads like a rabbit.”

Gaz lowered his eyes.

“Straight into them. No ground under her. No way back.” Karneth shook his head slowly. “Still found the rider on the way past. You shoulda seen it.”

The smile disappeared.

“She bought us room.”

His voice had changed.

“Every breath him and I got, she paid for.”

Karneth turned toward Navian, and for the first time in all his years, the paladin witnessed a dwarven tear.

“She was a damn storm, paladin.”

Navian said nothing, placing a hand on the dwarf’s shoulder.

The fire crackled.

“Should’ve been me, Navian.”

Karneth sniffed once, the leather of his glove squeaking as his grip tightened around the handle of his axe.

“Aye.” He nodded. “I’m the dwarf.”

He reached for his other axe.

“Should’ve been me.”

The cave stayed quiet. Outside, an owl called, and somewhere beyond the ivy the insects had gently begun to sing again.

Oesora continued working until the glow beneath her palms began to weaken. She lifted one hand carefully from Av’elyth’s side and watched the wound.

The bleeding did not return.

Navian saw it.

“Better?”

Oesora pressed two fingers gently beside the wound. Av’elyth gave no response. Navian watched her.

“She knew she was wounded. She should have come to you. Let you heal her.”

Oesora’s eyes remained on her work. “I think she wanted to prove something.”

“Prove what? To who?” he asked. “Everyone already accepts her as—”

“To *you*.” Oesora glanced up at him, locked eyes with him, then slowly went back to Av’elyth’s wounds.

Navian’s expression did not change immediately.

“Why?”

Oesora lowered her eyes again before her answer could become anything more.

Navian leaned back against the stone.

Outside, daylight was thinning over the Downs.

Dusk had reached the Silver Stag before Lunara and Jaeshu did.

The remains of the smoldering tavern emerged slowly between the trees, first as an uneven shape against the sky and then as the ruin they remembered. Half the roof had collapsed. The windows were black openings. One wall had burned nearly to its frame, leaving charred beams exposed to the night. The smell of smoke had faded since they were last there, leaving damp timber, old ash, and blood.

Neither of them spoke. And their boots were even quieter.

They approached beneath the trees rather than the road. Jaeshu went first, keeping low whenever the ground opened and stopping whenever the wind changed. Lunara followed several paces behind with an arrow laid against the string, placing her feet almost exactly over where his had gone.

The Silver Stag had once been impossible to approach quietly. Even outside there had been voices, music, shutters opening and closing, someone laughing too loudly through the walls. Now the smallest things seemed loud. A loose board knocking against another. Grass whipping against stone.

Jaeshu raised his hand. Lunara stopped.

He nodded toward the stable. Half of it remained standing. They moved along the inn wall until the smell reached them.

Lunara’s face changed first.

What remained of one thoroughbred lay outside a shattered stall, most of its hindquarter eaten away. Three Mottled crouched around the carcass. Their hands and mouths were wet. One tore at a strip of flesh with its teeth while another worked a crude knife between the ribs. Wet chewing and soft squelching filled the stable, broken by low, guttural grunts of satisfaction as they swallowed.

Behind them, in the farthest stall, a grey mare stood pressed against the boards.

Her sides trembled. One rear hoof touched the ground every few breaths, softly enough that fear itself seemed to have taught the animal silence.

Jaeshu crouched beside a broken fence rail, and Lunara came down beside him. He raised three fingers, touched his chest, then held two toward her. One for him. Two for her. She would have to be quick to her quiver for the second goblin, so he would ready another arrow as well, just in case.

Her eyes narrowed briefly, and she nodded.

They rose together, slow and measured, bringing their bows up with them. Two bowstrings drew taut, the soft scrape of wood nearly enough to turn one of the feeding Mottled. Jaeshu waited until its attention settled again, then glanced toward Lunara and gave the smallest nod.

They released.

His arrow struck first, pitching the middle goblin forward into the carcass. Almost simultaneously, the other two jerked violently and collapsed on either side of it.

Jaeshu stayed behind his bow for half a breath.

Two arrows protruded from the fallen creatures.

He looked back up at Lunara. She was lowering her bow, the fingers of her drawing hand still spread where two shafts had rested.

Jaeshu’s eyes narrowed. Lunara gave him the faintest shrug.

“Clear,” she whispered.

They crossed the yard.

Jaeshu checked the bodies while Lunara entered the stall. The mare recoiled at once, whites showing around its eyes, and Lunara stopped before it could throw itself against the boards. She lowered the bow and let her free hand hang open between them. The mare’s nostrils flared. It stretched its neck, caught her scent, and jerked away.

“Easy.”

The ranger found a bridle still hanging from a broken peg and approached from the opposite side. Between them they got the mare out without a kick, although she trembled badly as they passed the dead horse. Lunara shifted herself between the animal and the carcass, blocking as much of it as she could.

Jaeshu crouched to inspect the mare’s legs. “No wounds.”

“Can she carry Av’elyth?”

“If we don’t push her.”

Lunara glanced back toward the inn.

The Silver Stag stood hollow in the darkness, and for a moment it was easy to remember all the things that should have occupied those broken spaces: lamplight behind glass, mugs striking tables, the kitchen door swinging open, voices leaking out into the night. It had not been long. That was the strange thing. The ruin looked ancient.

Jaeshu stood. “We should go.”

Lunara nodded. He mounted first, and she climbed up behind him with one hand lightly against his shoulder, bow held in the other.

They had barely left the ruins behind when Jaeshu felt the mare’s ears twitch beneath him. The animal turned sharply toward the trees, and he pulled the reins to a stop as Lunara’s hand left his shoulder. For a time there was only darkness between the trunks—no movement, no call, nothing he could point to. The mare continued staring.

“Jaeshu.”

He turned his head to the side, never taking his eyes off the dark tree line.

“Remember,” she said. “We’re down to two arrows.”

Jaeshu listened until the night became ordinary again, then urged her forward.

They had not gone far when he slowed her a second time.

“Again?” Lunara asked, leaning slightly around him.

Jaeshu swung one leg over the saddle and dropped to the ground. He took the reins and continued beside the mare. “She’ll have Av’elyth to carry for the next few days. No reason to make her carry me now.”

“That is surprisingly considerate.”

“She’s the only horse we have.”

The ranger continued beneath the trees, the mare settling easily into his pace. The forest seemed deeper at night, as though the darkness had laid hands upon it and was slowly pulling it apart, widening the black spaces between the trees. A light fog hung among them, carrying the moonlight with it. They had gone another hundred yards before Lunara glanced at her quiver.

“We still need to make new arrows.”

Jaeshu looked back at her, then toward the trees. “Right.” He stopped beside a young ash and began testing the straighter shoots.

Lunara stared at him. “What are you doing?”

“Getting wood for arrows.”

“With ash?”

Jaeshu looked at the branch in his hand. “Yes.”

“Cedar.”

“Ash is stronger.”

“Cedar is lighter. Faster flight, flatter at range.”

“Ash hits harder and doesn’t split as easily.”

“If the arrow lands where it should, it doesn’t need to survive a war afterward.”

Jaeshu gave her a look. “You planning to recover every arrow you loose?”

“I’m planning to hit what I shoot.”

He considered that while she cut two straight cedar shoots nearby.

“We can test them when we get back,” the young archer said. “Your ash against my cedar.”

Jaeshu resumed cutting. “I know better than to challenge an archer to a marksman’s game.”

Lunara smiled. “Good. You’re learning.”

The ranger glanced at her. “Perhaps if we spar with swords afterward?”

Jaeshu went back to cutting the ash, smiling.

She said nothing more.

The Silver Stag disappeared by degrees behind them, its walls swallowed first, then the roofline, and finally the thin black shape of its chimney against the night.

They moved on beneath the trees, two splinters in the dark.

Exhaustion finally claimed the cave.

The fire had burned down to a shallow bed of coals. Gaz’s ward still breathed faintly across the entrance whenever the wind disturbed the ivy, but the scholar himself sat asleep against the wall with his staff laid across his knees. Karneth had lasted longer. He had insisted he was only resting his eyes and then fallen asleep with one arm folded across his chest and an axe close enough for his fingers to find without looking.

A few feet away, still within the fire’s warmth, Oesora slept.

She had stopped healing only when the light beneath her hands began to tremble more than the wounds did. Her cloak was drawn around her shoulders now, one hand resting on the stone between them as though slumber had interrupted her work rather than ended it.

Jaeshu and Lunara had been gone longer than Navian liked, and so he remained awake. From where he sat he could see through the hanging ivy to a narrow strip of darkness beyond, and every so often his attention drifted there, listening for hoofbeats or voices or anything that might tell him the two had returned. Nothing came. Inevitably, his eyes found their way back to Av’elyth.

The worst of her blood had dried. Oesora had drawn another cloak over her sometime earlier, leaving only her shoulders and pale face exposed to the dim glow of the coals. Without the narrowed eyes and constant calculation, without that faint suggestion that she had discovered something irritating about whoever happened to be nearest, the elf looked younger than he remembered. Smaller, somehow. Navian found that he preferred her difficult.

A howl carried across the Downs, distant enough to have no shape beyond the sound itself. Beside him, Av’elyth breathed on, each shallow rise and fall of her chest so slight that he caught himself waiting for the next before allowing his attention to wander again. He looked toward the cave mouth, listened, then returned to her. Another breath came. Then another. By the time he realized he had begun counting them, he had already lost count twice.

A strand of black hair had fallen across her cheek. Navian lifted a hand toward it and stopped halfway, suddenly aware of the others scattered around the dying fire. Karneth slept against the far wall. Gaz had not moved in some time. Oesora lay nearest the coals with her back partly turned toward him, her breathing slow and even.

Only then did he look back at Av’elyth.

“You didn’t have to do that,” he whispered.

For once, she offered no argument.

Something almost like a smile touched his mouth. He brushed the loose strand from her face, his fingertips passing lightly across her temple before his hand came to rest beside him again.

He said nothing more for a while. The coals shifted softly in the fire, collapsing inward with a faint hiss, and beyond the ivy the night remained stubbornly empty. Navian watched it, but his thoughts no longer seemed willing to stay there.

When he looked back at the little rogue, the irritation he had worn toward her so many times felt impossibly far away.

He leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to her forehead.

“Stupid fool.”

For a moment he lingered there, as though some old tale might prove true, and so small a kindness might be enough to call her back to waking.

Nothing.

Such mercies belong to children’s stories, anyway, he thought.

He pulled the cloak over her shoulder, straightened himself and returned his hand to the sword beside him. He stepped to the cave mouth once more, as though the night had required his attention all along.

Across the dying fire, the priestess watched through half-lidded eyes. In its soft orange glow, she saw the paladin lean close to Av’elyth—the touch, the kiss against her brow.

She did not stir. She watched only for a moment.

Then her eyes closed again, her breathing settled, and stillness returned to the cave.