Authors: R.A. Salvatore
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CHAPTER 39
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The Difference
They were readying to attack Weedy Meadow. Elbryan knew that, could hear it in the shriek of every bird, in the movements of squirrels, agitated by the presence of such numbers, by the thunder of a giant’s step or the rolling war machines, by the croaks of powrie generals, the eager whines of bloodthirsty goblins.
They were readying to attack Weedy Meadow, and Avelyn and Pony had not been able to convince the townsfolk to leave—not many, anyway, though now with the storm cloud that was the goblin army hovering about the village, many of the folk began to recognize their folly.
From a high vantage point some two miles south of the village, Elbryan saw the villagers shoring up walls, scrambling about in preparation. None of it would make any difference, the ranger knew. The only hope for Weedy Meadow’s four score people was to get out of the village and far away. And with the goblins moving in from all sides, the only possibility of that was with the help of the ranger and his friends.
But Elbryan had so few to work with. Besides Pony and Avelyn, who were somewhere down amid that scrambling group, Elbryan had only the three trappers and Bradwarden. The refugees from End-o’-the-World were nowhere near ready for another fight; half of them hadn’t even uttered a word yet. The one advantage on the ranger’s side was his knowledge of the region surrounding Weedy Meadow. The village was nestled in a land of steep hillsides and narrow valleys, where a hundred sneaking people might pass unnoticed only a few dozen yards away. This was a place of natural noises: running streams, cackling birds, and chattering animals. A living forest, with enough pine and spruce to offer cover even now, with winter fast holding the land.
“What’re ye thinking?” Bradwarden asked, moving up quietly beside the ranger.
“We have to get them out.”
“Not so easy a task, I’d be betting,” replied the centaur, “else Avelyn and Pony’d have them far away already.” Bradwarden paused, watching Elbryan’s pained features as the man continued to stare to the north. The centaur understood what the man was feeling, the sense of his own loss those years before and the helplessness now in the face of a repeat of that disaster. Bradwarden had watched Elbryan closely these last two days, since he had evaded the monsters about End-o’-the-World and had crawled out of the forest. Always had the ranger seemed stoic and often stern, but never as grim as now.
“We’ll get Pony and Avelyn, at least,” the centaur offered, “and some others, I’m not doubting. Most won’t go. Ye know that. They’ll be staying with their homes until they see the enemy, then they’ll know their doom. Then, it’ll be too late for them.”
Elbryan cocked an eyebrow. “Will it?” he asked simply.
Bradwarden didn’t quite understand. Even if Elbryan and the trappers, all the refugees from End-o’-the-World, and all the folk of Dundalis went in to bolster the defenses of Weedy Meadow, the village would be flattened within an hour. Elbryan knew that as surely as did the centaur, and yet, the sudden gleam of determination on Elbryan’s face left the centaur believing that the man had some plan.
“There,” Elbryan said, pointing to a position just east of the village, to a pair of two-thousand-foot-tall mountains, their steep sides white with snow, crossed by the dark lines of many leafless trees.
“The valley between those hills is full of boulders and pine groves,” the ranger explained. “Cover enough, if we move the folk quickly.” Elbryan looked down and patted Symphony’s muscled neck, knowing full well that the horse not only understood the plan but would help facilitate it.
“Ye’d choose the low ground for yer escape?” the centaur asked incredulously.
“Too many trees,” Elbryan answered without hesitation as the puzzle sorted out before him. “They will get no clear shots or spear throws from above.”
“They’ll come down like a mass o’ swooping hawks,” Bradwarden protested.
Elbryan smiled wickedly as he considered those steep hillsides, all of varied angles and deep with virgin snow. He thought of Avelyn and the magic stones and some of the properties the monk had explained to him. He thought of Paulson, Cric, and Chipmunk, and their undeniable skills. “Will they?” he said calmly, his tone so even and assured that the centaur sucked in his breath and argued no more.
“How did you get in here?” Pony asked breathlessly, grabbing Elbryan in a hug as soon as she spotted him entering the common room at Weedy Meadow. “We know the goblins are all about.”
“Thicker than you believe,” Elbryan agreed, returning the hug tenfold. It felt so good to him, so warm and fulfilling, that a very large part of the stoic ranger wanted to whisk Pony away into the night, to run far away from this place and its troubles and just live peacefully and lovingly.
He could not do that, could not forsake his duty and the destiny that he had been shown by the Touel’alfar. For every thought of running away with Pony, the ranger held five memories of the tragedy that had befallen his own family and community.
Avelyn bounded over to the pair a moment later, the boisterous monk seeming not so animated now. “Ah, but they wouldn’t go,” he wailed at Elbryan. “They would not listen to our words, and even now, with darkness looming in the forest, many insist that they will stay and fight.”
“Any who choose to stay and fight will surely die,” Elbryan said, loud enough for several nearby townsfolk to hear. A pair of grizzly men at a table near the common room entrance stood up, one kicking the table away as he rose. They glared at Elbryan for a long moment, but finally walked away, moving to the other side of the large hall.
Undaunted, Elbryan moved to the long table that served as the bar, and hopped atop it. “I tell you this only one time,” the ranger proclaimed, and the score of men and half that number of women in the room looked his way, most disdainfully but some too fearful to show any outrage. “I have just crawled through the ranks of our enemy, deep lines of goblins and giants and powrie dwarves.”
“Powries?” one woman echoed.
“Bah, a tale o’ lies,” someone answered from one corner.
“Your only chance will be to get far from this place,” Elbryan said bluntly, tossing the bloodred beret to the floor. “And even now, escape will not be easy. I will take those that I can with me tonight, soon after the moon has set.” The ranger paused and glanced around, locking stares with each of the patrons, letting them see the intensity of his green eyes, the determination on his face. “As for the rest of you, your window through the monstrous force will be small and any hesitation will cost you dearly.”
“Who are you to come in here and give orders?” one man demanded. Agreeing protests rang from every corner of the room.
True to his word, the ranger did not repeat his message. He hopped down from the table, gathered Pony and Avelyn in his wake, and bade them follow him outside, where they might talk in private.
Elbryan didn’t flinch nor did he look back threateningly when a mug shattered against the wall beside the exit, a missile obviously aimed at the back of his head.
Elbryan conferred with Avelyn first, to confirm the potential of the magical stones. Then he talked more to Pony, who better understood the terrain of this region, with its hilly forests and many streams.
“They, too, will come in through that valley,” Pony reasoned as Elbryan laid out the plan before her. “If they are as organized as your description of the assault on End-o’-the-World indicates, they will not leave so open a route behind them. They will come in through that valley, and will take the tops of both hills.”
“Not many will make it through,” the ranger promised. “The goblin line will be thin, and speed and surprise will be our allies. As for those on the hills, three friends are already preparing for them.”
Pony nodded, not doubting the ranger’s words, but still, another part of the plan troubled her deeply. “How can we place so much hope on animals?” she asked.
Elbryan looked to Avelyn. “The turquoise,” he explained. “It has given me insight into Symphony’s thoughts. I can talk to the horse with my mind, and he understands. Of that I am sure.”
Avelyn nodded, not doubting the power of the turquoise. The stone, as if it were something sentient, had called to the monk on that day when he had presented it to Elbryan and Symphony, and Avelyn, who had floated down the face of a cliff, who had walked on water and unleashed tremendous fireballs, who had held the power of a thunderstorm in his puny, mortal hands, would not discount any possibilities of its God-given power.
“We have few options,” Pony admitted.
“No other,” Elbryan replied.
Avelyn saw the look that passed between them and he walked away, at first aimlessly but then turning toward the cabin of the one family—a widow and her three small children—that the three friends had agreed should leave with the ranger this night
Pony and Elbryan spent a long and quiet moment together, ending it wordlessly with a kiss that passed as a promise from Elbryan to the woman that she would not be abandoned, and as a promise from Pony that she and those who would leave would be ready when the moment of opportunity was upon them.
The ranger left Weedy Meadow that night, moving through the winding valley east of the village with the fleeing family. The forest was quiet, but, as Elbryan had suspected, it was not empty.
“Goblins,” he mouthed silently to the woman, and he held up his open hand to indicate their number at five. The ranger had an arrow ready on Hawkwing, but he didn’t want to kill any monsters this night, not in this pass, where any bodies might alert the army to a possible hole in its raiding lines.
So they sat tight and waited, the woman working hard to keep her youngest child, a mere infant, from crying.
The goblins moved close, so close that the five could hear their whining voices, so close that the crack of a stick underfoot sounded loud to the ranger and the family.
Elbryan kept them down, tried to reassure them all by patting the other two children softly, by showing them his weapons and that he was ready should they be discovered.
The ranger, lying up front, said nothing when a goblin boot stepped firmly on the cold ground barely three feet from his head. Elbryan held his breath and clutched his hand axe, playing out in his mind the quickest and surest attack should the goblin make any sudden move to indicate that it had spotted the group.
But then the moment had passed, the goblins, wandering on along their patrol route in the valley, oblivious of the man and his refugees. The goblins’ ignorance saved the creatures’ lives that night, for death was barely an arm’s length away; more important, the goblins’ ignorance also saved Elbryan’s plan.
The sky brightened to a dull gray shortly before the dawn, another lazy snowstorm dropping scattered flakes that floated to and fro during their descent. Elbryan and Bradwarden, on that same hill far to the south of Weedy Meadow, watched for the start of it all, for the first signs of the attack they knew would come this day.
“Ye left her there,” the centaur said unexpectedly.
Elbryan cocked a curious eyebrow.
“The girl,” the centaur explained. “Yer lover.”
“More than a lover,” Elbryan replied.
“And ye left her there,” the centaur went on, “with ten thousand monsters moving her way.”
Elbryan continued to stare curiously at his half-equine friend, not sure whether Bradwarden was congratulating him or criticizing him.
“Ye left the woman ye love in harm’s way.”
The words hit Elbryan strangely, showed him a perspective that he had hardly considered. “It was Pony’s choice to stay, her duty—”
“She could die this day.”
“Do you enjoy torturing me with your words?”
Bradwarden looked the ranger squarely in the face and laughed heartily. “Torturing?” he asked. “I’m admiring ye, boy! Ye love the girl, but ye left her in a town that’s about to be sacked!”
“I trust her,” Elbryan protested, too defensive to understand the centaur’s sincerity, “and trust in her.”
“So I’m seeing,” said Bradwarden. He put a hand on Elbryan’s shoulder and gave the man a sincere, admiring look. “And that’s yer strength. Too many of yer folk would’ve forced the girl by their side, to protect her. Ye’re smart enough to see that Pony needs little protecting.”
Elbryan looked back to the north, to Weedy Meadow.
“She could die this day,” Bradwarden said evenly.
“So could we,” Elbryan countered.
“So could ten thousand goblins.” The centaur laughed.
Elbryan joined in, but the mirth was ended when a streaking line of fire cut across the sky, a ball of flaming pitch, soaring for Weedy Meadow.
“Powrie catapult,” Bradwarden said dryly.
“Time to go,” replied Elbryan. He gave one last look at the distant village, at the small fire that had come up. Pony was in there, in harm’s way.
Elbryan grimaced and let it go. He looked at the centaur, moving steadily ahead of him, and at first he was angry with Bradwarden for bringing up the grim possibilities. Until this time, Elbryan hadn’t even considered the danger to Pony on a personal level, so great was his trust in her. She would lead the people out of Weedy Meadow, he had supposed, and though some of them might be killed, Pony would not.
Bradwarden had made him face the truth of this day, and gradually the ranger’s anger became gratitude. He didn’t trust Pony any less; he could control his desires to rush to her side and protect her. Bradwarden had shown him the truth of his relationship, the true depth of his love and trust for this woman who had come back into his life. Elbryan nodded and smiled as he regarded the centaur, sincerely grateful.
“Ho, ho, what!” the monk bellowed, running to the newest fire, clutching the sheet of serpentine in his plump hand. Using the magical protection, Avelyn walked right into the midst of the blaze, standing with flames licking to his shoulders but smiling widely, to the amazement of those villagers witnessing the sight.
The monk fell deeper into the magic of the stone, calling forth its shielding powers, expanding its area of influence until this particular fire was smothered.