Delver Magic Book III: Balance of Fate Read online

Chapter 2

  Intermittent screams of fear and pain echoed through the shadowed alleys of Pinesway. Tall grass and abandoned carts muffled the sounds in spots, but there was little else to cover the sporadic sounds of panic. There was no alarm, no shouts of militia, no bark of guard dogs—no sound of any organized resistance whatsoever. It was during broad daylight, yet there were no markets full of suddenly panicked shoppers, no offices filled with curious clerks, and no stalls busy with concerned laborers. As the few but unmistakable sounds of sheer terror initially blistered through the streets, a light breeze scattered dust across the empty roads, very little of anything else stirred.

  The bulk of Pinesway’s residents abandoned the town immediately after the very first goblin raid. Those that remained after the initial raid quickly realized that their lack of numbers now made them an even greater target. When a river rogue staked a territorial claim at the town’s northwestern edge and shags started making frequent appearances to the south, even the hardy homesteaders that needed little to scratch a living decided to leave as well. When the dormant season took hold of the small town, the resident population was mostly made up of vagrants, petty bandits, opportunistic thieves, homeless wanderers, and a handful of stubborn citizens that refused to leave their homes for any reason.

  Joel Portsmith was a citizen of the latter. He was considered an old cantankerous man by his neighbors before the magic returned to Uton. He didn’t care. He didn’t particularly like people. He worked his whole life at the docks of towns along the western shores. He saved his money, found a woman that could stand him enough to marry him, and the two of them eventually moved inland, away from the ocean he never truly cared for. He built his house with his own hands, and then served as a volunteer in the town’s militia as a way to defend his home. His woman was killed in that first goblin raid. He buried her in his backyard when others loaded their carts to run for Connel or some other larger city. He wouldn’t run—he would stay, no matter what.

  Joel let the exterior of his own home appear to be as abandoned as those around it. He broke boards with nails in them and scattered them around the porch. He didn’t plan to sit out there as a target for a goblin arrow, so why should he care if the new decorations made the porch more of a hazard than a pleasant place to relax. He broke the front gate in a locked position so it was near impossible to move. Only he knew that the section of fence two posts down to the left could swing open for easy entry. He let the weeds and grass grow long, nailed shut the windows, and threw broken glass about the front walk. He pulled the shutters closed and nailed them in place. He left the front door barred from the inside and out. A walk-down basement door was sufficient for his use, so the loss of the front entrance was inconsequential.

  From the street, his house looked dark, decaying and long devoid of any real care, as if it had been the town eyesore even before the other residents abandoned their homes. And that was exactly what he wanted. A clean, well-kept looking house was an invitation to other less desirable visitors to this town, visitors he had no desire to entertain. Let the vagrants and bandits choose another home to camp in.

  Inside, however, the house was clean and simply organized. He had everything he needed to survive—warm clothes, utensils, blankets, comfortable places to sit and sleep, as well as a few diversions such as books, wood carving tools, and a spy glass to keep an eye on the surrounding streets. Those supplies he would run out of over time—food, water, and wood for a fire in a small stove that he would only burn at night—these items he could collect easily from other abandoned buildings in town or from the nearby forest. Since he didn’t mind being alone, he was content to stay and live with the threat of river rogues, shags, and goblin raids.

  It was from inside his house that he heard the first indications of the current unrest. He immediately knew that something very odd was going on outside. He had grown aware of certain sounds, learned to listen for hints of dark creatures and how these noises differed from a brigand fight or the mugging of a hapless wanderer. The current commotion clearly indicated a goblin attack even though the sun was now shining bright and goblins usually used the cover of darkness. This in itself perplexed Joel, but more ominous was the combination of additional noises that indicated something much more than a goblin raid was occurring outside his door.

  The shrieking caw of a hook hawk flying overhead could not be dismissed at any time of day. The fact that it mixed in with the guttural rants of goblins nearby made Joel cringe. During previous days to pass the time, he had watched hook hawks from afar. He learned that these flying nightmares particularly enjoyed snacking on goblins, thus goblins usually scattered when one was nearby. For whatever reason, they were not scattering now.

  The sounds he could currently make out from the goblins in the distance were not the fearful squeals of disorganized panic as he would expect, but more of war shouts, and these sounded as if they extended all around the town. That also confused Joel. Goblins usually ran in, quickly took what they deemed important, and then ran out. They didn’t take time to whoop and holler. Mixed in with these indiscernible ravings, Joel could make out the screams of humans. It almost sounded as if the goblins were actually targeting the thieves that nested in this otherwise deserted place. Shrieks from these hunted victims continued to grow and Joel began to wonder just what he was up against.

  Through past experience, he knew enough when to sit tight and when to move out. It all depended on the situation and the enemy. Human bandits and thieves that entered the town with the intent to stir up trouble wouldn’t go house to house looking for valuables, they were too lazy. They normally appraised targets from the outside. They looked for sizable warehouses or fancy large houses with grand ornamentation, thus his home was always ignored. Goblins, however, weren’t as picky.

  With goblins, Joel could never be completely sure of their intentions. He watched them in darkness on several different occasions to assess their tactics. For the most part, he could predict their movements once he figured out what they really wanted. If they were just eyeing some finished wood or a cart, they would just take what they wanted and leave. If they were in search of weapons or tools, they would seek larger buildings, enter, and ransack the place. Every now and then, however, they would also enter ordinary residences and come out with blankets, clothes, and even drawers full of useless junk—as if the piles of worthless scrap actually held some true value. These particular raids were the most worrisome for Joel, because if Goblins simply wanted to collect odds and ends, they might enter his house if they happened to turn up his street. These were the times Joel would not allow himself to be caught trapped inside with no way of escape.

  The problem Joel now faced was that he simply could not fathom exactly what was going on outside from the confusing sounds he was hearing. People were dying, of that he was sure. That disturbed him as he never encountered the goblins actively hunting down the remaining residents of Pinesway. Shags and the river rogue did their share of hunting, but not when a hook hawk was screeching above in the day-lit sky.

  Joel peered out a broken slit in an upstairs shutter with his spyscope hoping to gain a better perspective of what was going on outside. He saw little that made him happy.

  “Blasted goblins are moving in coordinated patterns,” he grumbled to himself. “OK, they’re not raiding the area, they’re securing it. What the blazes are they up to? And a shag standing right next to them with a hook hawk overhead! Not good.”

  Joel didn’t need to see anymore. This was not the time to risk sticking it out in his home, it was better to be on the move. With a decision made, he did what he always does before he opts for different ground. He hid his most important supplies under loose boards in a dark corner of an empty bedroom and more behind a fake wall of the back closet. He surveyed the area making sure that nothing of any value appeared in sight. He threw a dusty, old, moth-eaten blanket over one chair and tipped another one over on its side. He scattered some broken glass he kept in a jar ac
ross the floor and table tops and quickly climbed down the stairs into the cellar.

  When he reached the large tin door that opened upward to the back yard, he realized he was now in a bit of uncharted territory. He never made this type of move in daylight before. Streaks of sunlight broke through the edges of the door and made long glowing lines on the floor.

  “Blasted bright out there,” he grunted lightly to himself. “Ok, how to do this without being seen?”

  He knew where he wanted to go first, and he went over the path he would take in his mind. He believed there would be sufficient cover of overgrown hedges that would block sight of him from street level. The goblins would probably not see him. The hook hawk, however, presented another problem. If the bird decided to circle back in his direction, there were not enough trees to cover his position and the trees that were there were devoid of all leaves.

  “Ok, not much choice,” he muttered.

  With that, he opened the door. A gust of cold air crashed into his face as he crept outside making one quick swooping glance of the skies overhead. Thankfully, the hawk was not in the area. Immediately, but as silently as possible, he moved to his left and his first objective, an abandoned house two doors down that looked as bad as his own home from the outside. He crawled through a hole in the wall that he himself had cut with an axe. He had placed that same axe, as well as a long dagger, swords of various weights and lengths, and a crossbow with plenty of bolts in a hidden cache in this house’s basement.

  Now in the cover of the interior of the house, Joel moved with more speed as he bounded across the bare floor to the basement door and down the creaky stairs. He turned at the bottom and scrambled noiselessly over to a cobweb covered corner. What the eye could not see was a shallow pit because he had covered it with splintered boards. A few large, hairy spiders darted across the planks as he began to disturb the slightly rotted wood. He was never afraid of such insignificant creatures and brushed them away as if they were nothing more than lifeless dust balls. Carefully and quietly, he moved the boards off to the side revealing several sacks and blanket-wrapped mounds. Along with the weapons, the pit contained several other useful supplies such as torches, flints, oils, and armor of different types.

  Joel, almost without thinking, picked up one of his more useful inventions. It was a spiked forearm brace. Made of leather, he could bind it around the lower part of his forearm, covering the entire area from the lower elbow all the way down past the wrist just to the bottom of his palm. The brace was covered with small razor sharp spikes that nestled themselves in rows and jutted out in various directions. He designed and produced the arm covering himself as a way to deal with what he previously viewed as the greatest threat to his safety. That threat was in the shape of human thieves that might fall on him when he was on a supply run. He had witnessed several attacks occurring throughout the town when the bandits first showed up to take advantage of the fact that lawlessness was now the rule.

  With his spyscope, he watched muggings and beatings from his house. The thieves would jump an isolated wanderer rummaging through debris in back alleys. As they outnumbered their target, two or more of the robbers would always grab for the victim’s arms while the one in charge took advantage of the situation. Beatings were often vicious and Joel vowed never to be victimized by such a ploy. He created this armband as a first line of defense.

  More than once when he had ventured out of his house for supplies, he had been set upon by brigands that meant to separate him from any useful equipment. As they did to their other targets, they encircled him and rushed him from the sides. Once upon him, they always tried to grab him by the arms. When they did, they were not happy.

  Joel would begin to twist and pull his arms with the makeshift leather sleeves bound around each forearm, apparently trying to wrest his hands free. Nothing was further from the truth. He wanted the moronic bandits to grab even tighter, which they often did when he began his struggle. This in turn only aggravated their inevitable injuries. The spikes would jab into the palms of their hand. Then, when Joel twisted his own arm, the metal would slice large gouges into their skin. Eventually, they would realize what was happening and let go, but by then it was too late as their hands appeared more like raw, battered meat. While they stood gaping at their own wounds, Joel showed no such hesitation and used the same armored forearm to smash them in the face.

  With the underlings out of the fight, it was then a match between Joel and the lead thug, the one that always waited for the others to move in first, the one that enjoyed beating a helpless victim. While Joel was usually much older than any such bandit leader, he was also always more in control and better trained. Joel rarely showed mercy.

  On this day, however, Joel wasn’t facing a group of thieves. He was facing goblins and he hoped none would get close enough to get a hold of him. Still, he wrapped one brace around his right arm, but decided to leave his left arm open for a sleeve that would hold additional bolts for his crossbow. He also tied a belt around his waist with another two holds on each of his sides for even more crossbow ammo. From what he saw at his window, this was an enemy he wanted to fight from a distance. A sword or dagger was not going to help him and the extra weight would only slow him down.