Gifted

An hour later, Etta and I crossed the road back to the outpost holding only our practice swords. After soundly defeating the Pick Pack, we had left the wooden blades with them so they could practice as needed. Play time was over though and it was time for my next lesson with Gramps.

We were halfway through our lesson on aethersensing when I heard a loud bang. My head whipped around at the noise, and I quickly followed Gramps out of his office to investigate with Etta trailing behind me. I was second into the kitchen and found Gramps already checking over Hurin. The old forester looked like he’d been having it tougher than usual. His fur coat and pants always looked a bit stained with random threads woven through them to mend the many rips from his time outdoors. Those tears had multiplied and were left hanging. The man himself was puffing as sweat dripped from his beard and forehead.

“Goblin… Necromancer… marching on… the outpost…” Hurin managed to get out as he took ragged breaths.

My hands shook from a spike of adrenaline at his words. I didn’t know much about what Necromancers were capable of in this world, but based on the fear written clear in Hurin’s brown eyes I knew it couldn’t be good and that scared me.

“How long?” Gramps asked, tensing up just as I had.

Hurin took a second to answer, still trying to catch his breath. “Two days… maybe three…”

Gramps patted Hurin’s back as he nodded with a seriousness I had rarely seen. “Catch your breath. I’m going to get George. Bastian, let your Mum know.”

I bolted out of the room to inform Mum, finding her in the common room taking stock of our supplies in a ledger.

The words tumbled out of my mouth all jumbled. “Hurin says goblin Necromancer coming! Gramps went to get George!”

The fear seemed to be spreading like an infection, with Hurin passing it to Gramps and I, now seeping into my mother through my words. But, even while afflicted, it didn’t stop her from comforting me, and that was enough to calm me down a little. I was told in no uncertain terms to stay in the outpost as Mum swept out the door in a swish of skirts to inform the Kellins and our new neighbours among the Horndale Mining Co.

The next two hours were some of the most hectic and fraught of my life. Slowly, everyone gathered in the Outpost. It was the first time we had come together as a community with so many of the tables and chairs being filled. The Pick Pack kids were quieter than usual, as any roughhousing or raucous play was immediately shouted down by the adults present. Those same parents slowly moved in circles, discussing the approaching threat in hushed voices.

After two hours, almost everyone who lived on the mountain was present. The Warden, his two sons, and wife sat separately from everyone else, an island among the ocean of outcasts and hopefuls of the Horndale mountains. Magatha sat beside Hurin and Griselda with Martin close to his wife, ignoring the quietly muttered comments from the Horndale Mining Co. families who took up two tables on their own, not including the younger kids. The older pair were allowed a seat at the table. The Kellins sat with my mother, Jennifer gently rocking her one year old son. Grandma Lucille, George, and Kaylee joined them at the table. The Pick Pack kids, Etta, and I were behind the bar, keeping out of sight and from being yelled at by the short tempered, scared adults of the room.

Gramps kicked off the town meeting, if it could be called that.

“You’ve all heard the news. Many of you know Hurin, and if you don’t know him personally, you know of him. He’s lived on this mountain longer than most of us and he knows its trails like the back of his hand. After the thaw set in, he went north, and he returned at speed, risking injury, to warn us of what he’s seen. A goblin necromancer, seen with his own two eyes, marching directly towards our community here.”

Gramps paused, letting everyone digest his words. The silence was deafening, but I could see the worry in the way people sat at having the rumours that brought them here confirmed. Peeking over the bar, my hands resting on its wooden surface, I could feel how my own skin grew slightly clammy at the pervasive fear on display.

“Hurin says he only saw two living goblins among the pack, but he counted their forces to be at least a hundred skeletal goblins strong, along with a skeletal wolfpack of close to twenty… and a Horndale bear skeleton,” Gramps stated into the silence.

The room immediately devolved into an uproar.

“That’s too many…”

“We should run…”

“I’m not leaving all our silver!”

Gramps waved his hands to get everyone to calm down, but it was Warden Thomas standing that caused the ruckus to die down.

Everyone waited quietly to hear what the Warden had to say.

“I will be leaving for Dinalby to report this to Lord Haskins Firthholm. I would advise you all to vacate the area.”

The words were stated as fact, and the moment he was done, Warden Thomas motioned to his family to stand, departing the room as everyone watched them go. I was shocked for a moment, having expected that the Warden would stay and fight to defend our community. Ruminating on Thomas’ reasons would have to wait though since, as soon as the Warden was out the door, the room once more turned into a shouting match.

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“Even the Warden is leaving! Why aren’t we?!”

“I told you, woman. We can’t move all the ore!”

“What about the children?!”

While they shouted, I looked at Gramps. He didn’t have time to look back at me, the old man too busy trying to calm the room. Where he failed, it was Griselda who silenced the room.

“I will not leave. This is my home. I will fight.”

The half-orc’s statement was loud enough to cut through the arguments like a hot knife through butter.

“You and what army, half-blood?” sneered one of the miners.

“Me, for one,” Martin countered, looking at Gramps. “How about it, Cornelius?”

Gramps’ eyes slowly panned around the room, taking in the roughly twenty adults spread across the common room of the outpost. I could tell his gaze lingered on Mum and I before he finally nodded.

“I will fight.”

“I will as well,” George stated, standing up.

A couple of the original prospectors stood up. “Us too.”

The miners’ willingness to fight surprised me since they had fled to the mountains to avoid fighting against the orc raids. Now that they had some wealth to protect, I guessed they had changed their mind. They were willing to risk their lives if the price was right.

How very mercenary of them, I thought.

Like an avalanche gaining momentum, the room’s opinion shifted from fleeing to fighting, and with the change came the need for plans. Like a kicked ants’ nest, tasks were assigned and people began moving. No one was spared from work. The miners, with their picks and shovels, were set to creating earthen bulwarks in the space beyond my obstacle course.

Griselda and Martin left only to return with tools for felling trees and shaping the wood as the half-orc woman began building huge stakes to break up the bulwarks. Just beyond the earthen wall, two small trenches were carved by George using his Earth Magic. Less than a foot deep, they would still slow down the skeletal charge as the defenses were expanded enough to wrap around the outpost all the way to the road. I was told the following day would see the defenses expanded to include the opposite side of the road.

The children were not spared from helping. Under the watchful eye of some of the mothers from the Horndale Mining Co., we were put to work collecting pieces of wood that were then converted into unlit campfires in the land beyond the bulwark. Magatha returned in the late afternoon with a clinking bag of potions that she poured onto our many piles, set for burning. I’d managed to get Gramps alone to ask him why we were making the fires.

“If the Necromancer is smart, he’ll attack at night. The dead do not use their eyes to see, as they have none. The fires are for us, to light up the battlefield so we can make them out,” he explained, though I could tell he was holding something back.

“Couldn’t you just use your fire magic?” I asked.

“I could, but every speck of aether will count. It’s best to save it for when it’s needed since we can create these fires without it. Magatha’s oils will burn for a long time and she’s making some combustible potions for us to light them. I’ll light any that fail myself, but this is how battle is done Bastian. You have to use what you have efficiently. Besides… once the fire is created, I can make use of it for my spells.”

I nodded in understanding, dropping my bundle of sticks onto the pile which was already heaped up to my chest height.

“Aren’t you more powerful than a goblin necromancer?” I asked, trying not to let my worry leak into my voice. I failed miserably.

“Hmm… probably, on its own, I would be. But goblins don’t live as long as humans, which means they advance down their Paths faster. It’s probably not on its Advanced Class Path, but it could be, if it’s a little older. That’s not the real problem though. Necromancers are hunted down and killed in every country I have ever heard of, because once they have raised the dead, those dead are self-sustaining. Do you know what this means?”

I shook my head, even now trying to downplay my understanding of complex ideas.

“It means that they can keep growing their forces as long as they get more material. And the only materials Necromancers care for are the dead.”

“Can we win?”

Gramps looked at the forest to the north, deep blue eyes searching the treeline.

“We will win,” he stated.

I wanted to keep talking to Gramps, to drink in his confidence till it filled me to the brim. Instead, he was called away at that moment and I returned sullenly to my task of fetching wood. When the sun was finally starting to set, the once clear ground behind the outpost had been turned into a fortification of dirt, rocks, and wood. Wooden spikes jutted out of the ground towards the distant forest between mounds of dirt and stone that stood taller than me. Just beyond them lay an uneven ditch that circled all the way around the outpost to the road on either side.

I noticed that Etta’s home wasn’t within the barricade with Grandma Lucille and Kaylee ferrying over items like clothes and blankets to the outpost. I guessed that tonight, Etta would be sleeping in my room.

I was both right and wrong in my assumption that I would be sharing my room with Etta. It wasn’t just Etta’s parents that were setting up in the outpost. The Kellins were given one of the rooms on the second floor, another taken up by Martin and Griselda, while the last room went to Hurin. The families of the Horndale Mining Co. began setting up in the common room, with tables and chairs pushed to the side to make room for piles of clothes, pillows, and blankets so they could sleep on the floor, each family claiming their own section of the room. The outpost had gone from inn to refuge in a single day as almost the entire community came together.

Only Magatha didn’t participate. Not that she didn’t help, but it seemed that she would not stay for the battle. Contributing potions and concoctions to aid the battle was her way but when the fighting began she would be safely ensconced in her cottage. I wondered if she had a way to hide it, or make creatures avoid it. Perhaps that was why she had been so angry when Gramps revealed its location to the Shining Light Guild.

That night, after a cold dinner, I sat in my room with Etta, the pair of us looking out the window at the soon to be warzone behind the outpost.

“I’m scared,” Etta whispered quietly.

I was too. But I didn’t say it. Didn’t even show it. I could be brave, and the brave took action. So, I did the only thing I could — I tried to reassure my friend.

“Don’t worry,” I said quietly. “Between Gramps and your dad, we can’t lose.”

Sadly, my Path of Deception gained another step.