"He's in there," the old woman groaned. "I know he be! Oh, the poor child."
"Might be that he's dead already," said another, a man of about thirty winters. "That would be the most merciful. Poor child."
A group of a dozen villagers crouched on a bluff a quarter mile north of their old home, Caer Tinella, watching the powries and the goblins. A pair of fomorian giants had also been in the town earlier that day, but were out now, probably hunting refugees.
"He should not have gone down there, and I told him so," the old woman asserted. "Too many, too many."
Off to the side, Tomas Gingerwart gave a knowing smile. These people didn't understand the lad named Roger. To them he was Roger Billingsbury, an orphan boy who had been taken in by the town. When Roger's parents had both died, the common thinking was to send him south to Palmaris, perhaps to the monks of St. Pre-cious. But the folk of Caer Tinella, truly a bonded community, de-cided to keep Roger with them, with all of them helping him get through the trials of grief and sickness.
For Roger was a poor, skinny waif, so obviously frail. His physi-cal development had been stunted at the age of eleven, stolen by the same fever that killed his parents, and his two sisters, as well.
That was several years ago, but to these worried townsfolk, Roger, who looked much the same, was still that little lost boy.
Tomas knew better. The lad's name was no longer Billingsbury, but Lockless, Roger Lockless, a tag given him for good reason in-deed. There was nothing Roger couldn't open, or slip through, or sneak around. Tomas reminded himself of that often as he looked to Caer Tinella, for in truth, he was also a bit worried. But only a bit.
"A line o' them," the old woman cackled, pointing emphatically toward the town. Her eyes were sharp, for indeed a group of gob-lins moved across the town square, escorting a line of ragged-looking human prisoners - those people of Caer Tinella and the neighboring community of Landsdown who had not been quick enough or hidden deep enough in the woods. Now the monsters were using the towns as encampments, and the captured humans as slaves.
All of the refugees understood what grim fate would befall those captives when they were no longer useful to the powries and goblins.
"You should not be looking upon them," came a voice, and the group turned as one to see the approach of a portly man, Belster O'Comely. "And we are all too close to the towns, I fear. Would you have us all captured?" Despite his best efforts, Belster, the jovial innkeeper who used to run the very respectable Howling Sheila in Dundalis, could not manage too sharp an edge to his voice. He had come south with the refugees from the three towns of the Timberlands: Dundalis, Weedy Meadow, and End-o'-the-World. Belster's companions from the northland were a far different group, though, quite unlike the more recently displaced people of Caer Tinella and Landsdown, and those of the handful of other smaller communities along the road south to the great port city of Palmaris. Belster's group, trained by the mysterious ranger known as Nightbird, were far from pitiful and far from afraid. They hid from the goblins, to be sure, but when they found the terms favor-able, they became the hunters, with goblins, powries, even giants, their prey.
"We will make a try for them, as I promised," Belster continued. "But not so soon. Oh no. We'll be no good to our fellows dead! Now come along."
"Is there nothing to be done?" the old woman said angrily.
"Pray, dear lady," Belster replied in all sincerity. "Pray for them all."
Tomas Gingerwart nodded his agreement. And pray for the gob-lins, he silently added, thinking that Roger must be having a grand time of it by now.
Belster didn't miss the smirk, and moved to speak with Tomas alone.
"You wish that I would do more," the portly innkeeper said qui-etly, misinterpreting Tomas' look. "And so do I, my friend. But I have a hundred and fifty under my care."
"Closer to a hundred and eighty, counting those from Caer Tinella and about," Tomas corrected.
"And only two score and ten fit for fighting, to guard them all with," Belster remarked. "How might I risk my warriors on a raid against the town with so many lives at stake?"
"I do not doubt your wisdom, Master O'Comely," Tomas said sincerely. "You vow to raid the town when the time is right, but I fear that you will find no such time. The goblins are lax, but the powries not so. A cunning lot, well trained for war. Their guard will not drop."
"Then what am I to do?" asked a distressed Belster.
"Keep to your duty," Tomas replied. "And that duty is to the hundred and eighty, not to those already in powrie clutches."
Belster eyed the man unblinkingly for a long while, and Tomas could see the pain in the gentle man's eyes. The innkeeper did not want to let a single human slip through his protective web.
"You cannot save them all," Tomas said simply.
"But I must try."
Tomas was shaking his head before Belster finished. "Do not play the fool's game," he scolded, and Belster realized for the first time that Tomas' earlier smirk was not derisive, was not in re-sponse to his hesitance in going into Caer Tinella. "If you attack openly," Tomas continued, "then expect to be routed. And I fear that our powrie and goblin friends would not be satisfied with that, but would expand their search of the forest until all of us were hunted down and taken prisoner - or slain, in the case of many, the older folk and children too young to be of any use."
"So you agree with my decision to hold? Even to retreat our line?"
"Reluctantly," Tomas replied. "As reluctantly as do you. You are a man of conscience, Belster O'Comely, and fortunate are we of Caer Tinella that you and yours have come south."
Belster took the compliment in stride, needing the support. He couldn't help another glance in the direction of the occupied town, though, his heart breaking at the thought of the torment those poor prisoners must now be experiencing.
Another curious onlooker was watching the procession of slaves as the goblins led them to the dark forest on the edge of Caer Tinella. Roger Lockless knew the workings of the town better than any other. Ever since the invasion, he had been in Caer Tinella nearly every night, moving from shadow to shadow, listening to the goblins and powries lay their plans for the area, or overhearing talk of the greater war being waged not so far to the south. More than anything else, the crafty Roger Lockless knew his enemy, and knew where they were vulnerable. When he left the town before dawn each day, his slight frame was usually laden with goods for the refugees in the nearby woods. And so careful was he in his stealing that the monsters rarely realized they were being robbed.
His work three nights previous remained his shining achieve-ment to date. He had stolen a pony, the boss powrie's favorite mount, and taken it in such a way as to implicate a pair of goblin sentries, who, as Roger had previously discovered through some fine spying, happened by coincidence to be feasting that very night on a horse.
Both were hanged in the town square the next morning - Roger watched that, too.
The young man, barely more than a boy, knew that today was different. Today the goblins meant to kill one of their prisoners; he had heard them talking about it before dawn, which prompted him to stay around as the day brightened. The goblins had caught Mrs. Kelso stuffing her mouth with an extra biscuit, and the powrie boss, a thoroughly disagreeable fellow named Kos-kosio Begulne, or-dered her slain in the morning as an example to the others.
She was out there, chopping at the trees with the rest of the poor prisoners, oblivious to the fact that she had only hours left to live.
Roger had witnessed much cruelty in the last few weeks, had seen several people butchered for no better reason than the fact that a goblin or powrie didn't like the way they looked. Always, the pragmatic young thief would shake his head and look the other way. "Not my business," he often reminded himself.
This was different. Mrs. Kelso was a friend, a dear friend who had often fed him when he was younger, an orphaned waif running the streets of Caer Tinella. He had spent years sleeping in her barn, for though her husband had little use for him and kept telling him to get away, gentle Mrs. Kelso usually ushered the man aside, glancing back and winking at Roger, then nodding toward the barn.
She was a good lady, and Roger found it hard this day to shake his head and say, "Not my business."
But what could he do? He was no fighter, and even if he were, there were a pair of huge fomorians in or about Caer Tinella, more than a hundred goblins, half that number of powries, and probably ten times that number of monsters running around in the forest and the neighboring villages. He had hoped to get Mrs. Kelso out of town before the dawn, but by the time he heard the grim plans for her, the prisoners had already been roused, lined up, and placed under heavy guard.
One problem at a time, Roger repeatedly told himself. The pris-oners were chained to each other ankle-to-ankle, separated by five-foot lengths of chain, each person chained to two others. For added security, the shackles on each prisoner were not a matching pair and were finely made, with one chained to the shackle on the leg of a slave to the right, the other chained to a slave on the left. Roger es-timated he would need nearly a full minute to get through both locks, and that only if Mrs. Kelso and the two prisoners chained to her kept still and cooperated.
A minute was a long time with powrie crossbowmen nearby.
"Diversion, diversion, diversion," the young thief muttered re-peatedly, slipping from shadow to shadow about the occupied town. "A call to arms? No no no. A fire?"
Roger paused, focusing his thoughts on a pair of goblins taking some rest on the piles of last season's hay just inside Yosi Hoosier's barn. One of them had a pipe stuck in its mouth and was blowing gigantic rings of noxious smoke.
"Oh, but I love fire," Roger whispered. Off he went, silent and quick as a hunting cat, taking a wide circuit of the barn, slipping into the structure - as he had so often in the last few years - through a broken board far in the back. Soon he was crouched be-hind the hay within a few feet of the oblivious goblins. He waited patiently for nearly ten minutes, until the smoker tapped out his pipe and began loading fresh weed.
Roger was good at making fires - another of his many talents. He moved back so he wouldn't be heard, then struck flint to steel over a few pieces of straw.
Then he crept back and pushed the straw in carefully, in the gen-eral area where the smoker had tapped out his pipe.
Then he was gone, back out of the barn before the first wisps of smoke tickled the noses of the goblin pair.
The hay went up like a giant candle, and how the goblins howled!
"Attack!" some yelled. "Enemies! Enemies!" cried others. But when they went to investigate and saw their comrades batting wildly at the flames, including one goblin with a lit pipe still stuck in its mouth, they changed their song.
Those goblins out with the woodcutting prisoners did not go in to fight fire, but their attention was diverted enough for Roger to easily scamper around the back of the group, coming to a stop be-hind the large oak that Mrs. Kelso was halfheartedly chopping. She let out a chirp when he peeked around, but he quickly hushed her and those nearby.
"Hear me quick," he whispered, crawling halfway around, his hands immediately going to work on her shackles while he locked Mrs. Kelso's gaze with his own. "Now stand still! They mean to kill you. I heard them."
"You cannot take her out or they'll kill us all!" one man com-plained, his voice loud enough to draw a growl and an order to "Work!" from the goblin guards.
"You must take us all, then," demanded another.
"That I cannot do," Roger replied. "But they won't kill you, they won't even blame you."
"But - " the first man started, before Roger hushed him with a look.
"When I get her free, I will put her shackles about that sapling," he explained. "Give us a five-count to get away, then here is what you do..."
"Stupid Grimy Snorts and that smelly pipe o' his," one of the goblin guards remarked, sorting out the mess in the town proper. "Ugly Kos-kosio ain't to be giving us extra food tonight."
The other laughed. "Might that we'll be eating Grimy Snorts!"
"Demon!" came a cry that sent the goblins spinning. They saw the prisoner line, tools thrown down, the people struggling mightily, trying to run away.
" 'Ere now!" one of the goblins yelled, charging up to the nearest human and laying her low with a shield rush. " 'Ere now!"
"Demon!" yelled the other humans, precisely as Roger had in-structed them. "Demon dactyl!"
"He turned her into a tree!" one woman shrieked. The goblin guards looked on curiously, even scratched their heads, dumb-struck, for the two lines of prisoners - and there did seem to be two lines now - were stretched out to the length of the chains, and were both anchored by a small but sturdy sapling.
"A tree?" one goblin croaked.
"Blimey," said another.
All the attention of the encampment shifted from the now dying fire in the barn to the bustle at the forest's edge. Many goblins ran over, along with the powrie host, led by their merciless leader, Kos-kosio Begulne.
"What'd ye see?" the powrie demanded of the man who had been chained to Mrs. Kelso's right and was now closest to the sapling.
"Demon," the man sputtered.
"Demon?" Kos-kosio echoed skeptically. "And what'd the demon look like?"
"Big and black," the man stammered. "Big winged shadow. I... I didn't stay nearby to watch. He... it turned poor Mrs. Kelso into a tree!"
"Mrs. Kelso?" Kos-kosio Begulne repeated a couple of times, until he remembered the woman and the fate he had planned for her. Had Bestesbulzibar, the demon dactyl, the lord of the dark army, returned? Was this a signal from the dactyl that it was again with him, Kos-kosio, watching over his operation?
A shudder coursed up the powrie's spine as he remembered the fate of a former leader of this band, a goblin named Gothra. In a fit of its all- too-typical rage, Bestesbulzibar had ripped the skin from the goblin while it remained alive to watch and to feel. That was when Kos-kosio had been put in charge, and the powrie had known from the beginning that this was a tentative command.
The powrie studied the tree closely, trying to remember, with-out success, if the sapling had been there all along. Had Bestesbul-zibar really returned, or was it a trick? the ever-suspicious powrie wondered.
"Search all the area!" Kos-kosio ordered his minions, and when they started out cautiously, eyes darting about, the powrie roared even louder, promising death to any who did not hustle.
"And yerself, human dog," Kos-kosio said to the man nearest the tree. "Pick up yer stinking axe and cut Mrs. Kelso down!"
The man's horrified expression was convincing enough to bring a smile to the ugly powrie's square-chinned face.
Roger realized he was taking a chance in coming back near the town, but with Mrs. Kelso safely on her way to Tomas and the others, he simply couldn't resist the sport of it all. He relaxed com-fortably, his back against a tree, as two stupid goblins wandered right below him. When that patrol had moved farther along and no others were in the immediate area, he moved in even closer, climbing into the same oak he had slithered around to get to Mrs. Kelso in the first place.
Then he watched contentedly. The humans were back to work - the two men who had been flanking Mrs. Kelso now shackled together - and the powries had returned to the town, leaving a handful of goblins to guard the humans, and another dozen or so of the nervous wretches searching the woods.
Yes, it was a perfectly wonderful situation, Roger mused, for never in his young life had he found so much fun.