Gifted

The following day was more of the same, with the bulwark being extended across the road so that we couldn’t be easily flanked. I had a quiet hope in my stomach that some traders or adventurers would pass through, buoying our numbers. It never happened though. We were on our own, and while keeping busy seemed to help with the fear, it remained like a haze hanging over almost everyone present. Not for the first time, I cursed the Warden and his choice to leave. Gramps had quietly explained that a Warden’s job was to scout and report, that Warden Thomas was just doing his duty. I still thought it reeked of cowardice but perhaps I was just angry at the loss of one more able bodied warrior.

Over twenty piles of wood now decorated the backyard courtesy of the work of us kids, each one treated with some oils from Magatha, who by the afternoon had vanished back to her cottage — no one else had been invited despite a few suggestions from worried parents. Night was approaching and everyone was on edge, Hurin’s words claiming that this could be the moment the Necromancer arrived.

The other children had all taken to carrying their wooden practice swords with them everywhere they went, as though it could protect them from any harm. I was not immune, carrying my own, along with the knife I had nicked from the kitchen tucked inside my fur coat.

As the sun began to set, rather than holing up inside the outpost, a great bonfire was set up in the backyard just beyond Mum’s garden and next to my obstacle course. Wood was piled up as tall as Gramps, and the crackling of burning timber mixed with the strong smell of smoke. Everyone pulled out chairs from the common room, and a table was carried out before being piled high with food. Mostly nuts, dried fruit, and jerky alongside pitchers of ale. A few of the miners were yelled at by their wives for attempting to over-indulge on the latter but to me it just looked like everyone was trying to drown their fears and worries in community and a little alcohol.

I sat separately on a chair I had dragged out from the kitchen, Etta by my side on her own. More than once I caught my Mum glancing at me as though she was making sure I hadn’t run off into the darkness. As if I would. I was weird, not crazy, and the darkness tonight was more dangerous than usual.

Slowly, the other kids drifted over to Etta and I, grabbing seats on bits of cloth or spare clothes as they gathered around me. Cora was first, plopping down by Etta’s feet and pulling her knees up to her chin. The twins followed shortly afterwards, Roan and Fenn dragging over a small, wooden, step ladder that they sat on together. The pair had their wooden swords on their hips.They ducked their heads in acknowledgement as they joined us. Soren and Brin were the last two of the younger generation to join us, each carrying over a wooden seat.

It was Brin who broke the silence. “What do we do?”

I was surprised when the question was addressed towards me. The nine year old girl was the clear leader of the Pick Pack kids, her rule absolute by dint of age and size. Yet here, in this moment before everything went to shit, she asked me, a boy almost half her age, for direction.

My eyes went to the adults, not answering immediately. The miners all carried makeshift weapons. Metal picks or shovels held in hands that shook in the darkness, whether from the cold, alcohol, or adrenaline I couldn’t say. Their wives huddled close to them or to each other, trying to draw strength from the group.

Frederick Kellin sat next to his wife and babe, a hammer as long as his forearm resting on his lap, and a leather vest meant for blacksmithing cinched across his chest. The vest was Martin’s spare, the blacksmith himself wearing his own leather vest with a much larger hammer in his own hands. The squat but powerful man looked like a child playing at war next to his wife. Griselda wore actual leather armour, vambraces wrapped around her wrists, a thick vest across her chest, and padding over her thighs. Her head was adorned with a leather cap, fur poking out from beneath. On each hip hung a hatchet, their blades wicked, sharp, and glinting in the firelight. A wooden buckler strapped with leather sat beside her within arms’ reach. The half-orc woman looked ready for war, and she wasn’t the only one.

George wore a coat over the top of it, hiding it from sight, but Etta had told me beneath it was a metal breastplate. On his hip, his sword hung loosely, angled away from the ground so as not to drag the point through the dirt and stone. Hurin was with them, bow strung and a hatchet on his hip. Finally, there was Gramps, wearing dark, leather armour over his chest and padding across his thighs. He was also the only one besides Griselda to be wearing head protection, a leather cap tied down but leaving his eyes clear.

The wives all carried small cooking mallets or had knives on their hips as well. No one, not even us kids, was unarmed.

Finally done taking in the adults, I turned to face Brin. All the kids leaned forward, hanging on my words. “We do what we’re told. We stay out of the way of the adults. We help our mums inside the outpost. That’s all we can do.”

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“I can fight!” Soren whispered harshly.

I looked at the seven year old boy. “You couldn’t even beat me. We’d just get in the way. And worse, distract the others. Our parents would be too busy trying to make sure we’re safe instead of fighting this necromancer.”

I could see he wanted to argue more, but Brin calmed him down. Fear, I decided, made people do stupid things, and I reminded myself to breathe in and out, letting my fears go. I believed in Gramps, George, Griselda, and everyone else.

The food and conversation continued for another hour, the night in full swing now as clouds covered the sky, hiding the moon. The bonfire kept us all in the light, but every few minutes one person or another would turn toward the darkness and the treeline beyond. No laughter was heard as we all waited on the precipice, quietly hoping that tonight would not be the night.

Our hopes had always been doomed to go unanswered. It was Hurin who noticed it first, the forester standing and pointing at the trees beyond the bulwark. I stood up on my chair, shading my eyes from the smoke and fire to try to see what had caught his attention. Vague movements that could’ve just been small trees swaying were all I could make out until the first body stepped beyond the tree line.

I didn’t see who threw the first bottle but I caught Griselda throwing the second. Then there were ten of them in the air. Not all the throws were accurate, some of the thin glass bottles crashed down onto stone and dirt, creating small pools of fire that barely lit up a metre or so around them as they sputtered and consumed the fuel of whatever Magatha had concocted. Enough landed on the piles of wood that us kids had created though, and for the ones that missed, Gramps was there shooting out small balls of flame as the land beyond the outpost was set ablaze with over twenty piles of sticks catching fire and lighting up the night.

As the flames pushed back the darkness, I got my first view of our enemy. The creature was hard to make out given the distance, but I thought I saw yellowed bones standing as tall as me, a tiny silhouette against the shadows behind it. But then another joined it, and another. All of a sudden, everyone was moving. My mother was shepherding me inside as the other children’s mothers did the same for them. Not all the women headed for the door though as I saw at least two of the miners’ wives move up to join their husbands behind one of the earthen bulwarks.

Chairs were left behind as those of us not defending the outpost piled in through the kitchen, setting up in the common room. I wanted to go to my room, but Mum told me to stay with everyone else so I went to the back window off the corner of the common room. The rest of the kids followed me, shoving and jostling to try and get a view outside through the small window. One of the twins went to shove Etta out of the way only to back off when I shot them a warning glance. In the end, it was Etta, Brin, and I who got a full view with Soren and the twins trying to peek around us. Cora had returned to her mother.

Through the window, with smoke pouring into the sky in great plumes from the alchemical enhanced fire, I witnessed the growing size of the enemy’s forces. More and more goblin skeletons, holding weapons of rusted metal and stone, clambered out of the tree line. They waited, standing creepily still in a line that stretched across the entire backyard.

I couldn’t count them in the darkness, but I thought that there were already at least fifty of the skeletons.

“So many,” Etta whispered, and I saw Brin nod her agreement.

“Our parents can handle it,” I said reassuringly.

As though to put lie to my words, an unholy howl sounded from the east of the outpost. The baying noise was taken up by an entire pack of what I could only guess were the undead wolves Hurin had mentioned. They’d clearly circled around and I thought that didn’t bode well. Still, we had bulwarks and spikes in that direction too, and through the window I saw Martin, Griselda, and two of the miners circling around the outpost in that direction. I wasn’t sure they would be enough.

Etta gasped. I had been too busy following Griselda’s movements and hadn’t been watching the tree line. My eyes moved back in time to see a gigantic skeleton push its way out into the light, toppling a few smaller trees in the process. A Horndale bear. That’s what Hurin had said it had been in life. In death it was no less fearsome. Towering over the skeletal goblins, its back would’ve easily stood above our kitchen ceiling, and that was with it down on all fours.

Beside me, Brin began to softly cry.

Etta reached over to comfort the girl while the boys looked on worriedly. Behind us, some of the mothers were gasping, hands moving to mouths as they looked over our heads out the window. My eyes were on Gramps and George. They were speaking, but I couldn’t hear their words. Whatever passed between them though, George nodded and drew his sword, moving up to the edge of the bulwark.

I had half expected there to be some grand battlecry, or worse, some unearthly droning from the dead. But neither of those things happened. A ripple passed through the skeletal goblins and then they began marching forward before stopping in lockstep as though moved by a singular will. I watched as over thirty of the undead drew back bows made of bone, before a hail of ivory-tipped arrows flew at the bulwarks.

Gramps, Hurin, and a few of the miners hid beneath tables as poorly made arrows rained down around them. George was the only one who didn’t, sliding up right behind a bulwark that seemed to shift enough to give him an overhang to weather the storm beneath.

One of the miners screamed as an arrow managed to angle down beneath the table, piercing into his upper thigh. First blood had been spilled and it was not in our favour.

Brin started crying louder, but it was Soren who my attention flicked to as he screamed at the top of his lungs.

“DAD!”