Chapter One The Bell Of Minden’s Hall -5

I stuck my head back around the corner and reactivated my magesight to see them in the dark. I picked out a small group of goblins on the edge of the mass, slightly separated from the others. They looked bored with what they were doing, so I gave them something else to think about.

"Archers with me!" I commanded, rounding up the few bowmen, including Tyndal. "Listen carefully. I'm going to count to ten. I imagine you all can count that high. On three, step out into that space between the barn and the house – that will give you a field of fire on the largest group of them, the ones guarding the gates. Try to keep to one straight line. On Five, nock arrows. On Seven, fire. On Nine you turn and come back here. Very simple. Ready? One!"

As I chanted my archers performed more or less as they were supposed to, although their timing was not the best. Still, they sent a flight of shafts at our foe at the same time I opened up with both wands. At least half of them hit, from the screams. By "ten" we had retreated to safety in good order and awaited a reprisal.

Sure enough, a band of ten or so dark furries loped across the commons toward our position. When they were out of sight of the rest of their brood Arstol and his axe men lept out at them, bellowing at the top of their lungs. Half the crew panicked immediately and turned to flee. The other half was paralyzed enough by the confusion to get caught by the mob of villagers at my command. The archers didn't let anyone escape.

"Ten down, ten times that to go," I said, grinning. "Alright, let's see if we can do that again. No arrows this time – we only want a piece of them, not the whole army! I'll do the leading, the rest of you do what you did last time." With that I sheathed my wands and brandished my staff as I slipped around the corner.

Now, my staff is not a warstaff, as I have said. It is a perfectly ordinary magical tool that is very useful for making a light in the dark, judging the depth of puddles, and impressing the locals with my mystical wisdom. One doesn't go to War College, though, without picking up a little of the rampant paranoia that flies around so liberally there. While the tool wasn't a full-fledged warstaff, I had put a few special enchantments on it. The current situation justified my efforts. I had the perfect spell.

This one is fairly subtle, and I was unsure if it worked on gurvani, but it was worth the attempt. Upon my silent command it releases a tendril of magical energy that gets into the target's brain and tells them "hey, there's something over here that needs to be looked at!" It's a distraction spell that we used in the jungles of Farise to eliminate sentries or remove pickets from their posts. As it turns out, the goblins were just as susceptible, and a largish clump of eight or nine got caught in it. In moments they were shuffling towards the far side of the barn with what I expect were the gurvani equivalent of blank looks on their faces.

I took my place with the main force and waited. As the last of the gurvani passed the edge of the barn, all three axe men launched themselves at their backs, Arstol in the lead with his rusty old broadsword. It was enough of a distraction to break the spell, but by that time the goblins were whirling confusedly, trying to figure out just why they were there in the first place – which gave my belligerent shopkeepers and artisans an opportunity to lay into them.

We managed to slaughter all of them with only two minor injuries. The townsfolk were elated at the minor victory, and I had to keep them from cheering loudly. I would have felt better about it if we taken care of more than a drop in the bucket.

Our melee attracted attention from both the gurvani and a few other straggling townsfolk. We picked off another three goblins as they tried to figure out what was happening, and we collected three more men, another one with a bow. That heartened me – with our smaller numbers, more missile weapons would be welcome.

Which got me thinking . . .

"Arstol, good work! Now, take your axemen and as many volunteers as you can find and make your way around to the other side of the belltower. Kill anything that has more hair than you do!"

That brought a round of laughs and catcalls – Arstol was a hairy, hairy man.

"Once you get to the far side take up defensive positions – behind buildings, through windows, whatever – just make sure your backs are covered. Collect whoever else you can along the way. You, archer – Goodman Henir? Stay here with Tyndal; I'll need you two to cover me. When your men are in position, Arstol, give a holler. I'm going to get these bastards riled up, and then I'm going to scare the shit out of them! Be ready to slay as many as possible."

Arstol nodded like he knew what I was talking about and started picking volunteers. Nearly everyone wanted to go. That was fine. The whole point of sending off the erstwhile "taskforce" was to get them out of the way and keep as many of them as possible from getting hurt.

A few stayed with me, and we kept ourselves busy by ambushing whatever gurvani nosed around the side of that barn. The archers and I took turns sniping, they with bows and me with my warwand, while we waited. Eventually I heard the shout from Arstol, and I prepared my spell.

It was sheer bluff. My warwand was running out of power and my staff only had a few useless enchantments left on it. But the rank and file gurvani aren't too bright, and I was counting on this. I had the archer, Henir – a lad of sixteen, the son of the town weaver – tie an oil-soaked cloth to an arrow and send it sailing to the near edge of the invader's siege. It stuck there, unnoticed except for a few curious goblins, and burned pitifully.

But long enough. I summoned as much power as I could, draining every reserve in my staff, and fed oxygen to that little flame until it was consuming the entire arrow. Then I started altering the flow of power to craft an illusion. Before three deep breaths had passed, a "fire giant" nine feet high had sprung into life behind the gurvani troops, lighting their hairy backs with a bright yellow flame. It was a crude illusion -- I was expending control of detail for size – but it was effective. Fire is the easiest element to sculpt, after all.

One moment the tribesmen were wailing against a few miserable peasants in a rickety stone tower, the next they were being attacked by a flame demon from some forgotten hell. The light from my illusion illuminated the village square, and for the first time I saw the true numbers of the invaders, somewhere around a hundred and fifty, I guessed.

It was a fairly simple cantrip to add a loud voice to the giant. I knew only a few phrases in gurvani, none of which was appropriate to the occasion, but I also knew that many of the little buggers also spoke a dialect of the speech of the Tree Folk, with whom they were known to trade.