The Hob's Bargain

The hob made little noise threading his way through the trees. I tried to imitate him, but the thin yearling growths of willow snagged at my clothing and rustled as I moved past. Not that I couldn't move quietly in the woods, but I did it by avoiding dry leaves and dense growth like the stuff we were currently wading through.

I was so busy grumbling to myself that when Caefawn dropped to hands and knees, I almost tripped over him. I crouched and followed the motion of his chin to see a small group of raiders talking among themselves not much over a stone's throw away.

They were using the garbled language Wandel called the patois, so I couldn't tell what they were saying. If they'd been quieter, they would have heard me scuttling through the leaves.

The hob drew a hollow reed from a pocket of his cloak and slipped a dart made from a porcupine quill into the reed. Placing the tube against his lips, he blew, propelling the dart toward the raiders. I lost sight of it as it traveled through the air, but one of the men jumped and rubbed his thigh. Battle-roused, the others dropped low and looked for their unseen foe.

I held my breath and tried not to rustle.

The man who'd jumped first shook his head, laughing a little. "Just a bug," he said in the king's tongue.

The others relaxed—so did I. Then the man hit by the dart collapsed in the grass.

Eight of the men remaining held their weapons at the ready and crouched, each looking in a different direction. Both the hob and I held still. The ninth man dropped to his knees next to the hob's victim. From the relief on his face, I could tell the fallen man wasn't dead.

After we'd crouched there long enough for my feet to fall asleep, the raiders relaxed.

"Must have gone," said one, a big man with graying brown hair who seemed to be their leader.

"Or it really was a bug," commented another.

"What do you suppose it was?" asked the man who still crouched on the ground.

The leader shook his head. "How should I know? We've got people what disappear, leaving behind nothing but blood and weaponry. We've got horses lame from bug bites nastier'an anything I've ever seen—not even when we worked the swamps a couple of years back. Food goes foul too fast, and something's been robbing our supplies and scattering them. Now there's some freaking berserker lurking in the woods. Maybe the same bugs what got the horses got Henwit, too. I don't know."

Hmm, I thought, if their leader is that spooked, the men mustn't be far behind.

"What we going to do about him?" challenged the man on the ground. "I ain't leaving Henwit behind to get chewed up by whatever happens upon him."

The big man threw up his hands. "Take him back, then. You explain to the captain what happened."

The raider tried his best, but the unconscious man weighed more than he did. It was obvious he couldn't carry the limp body very far. Had Caefawn chosen the heaviest man on purpose?

Finally two of the raiders took the heavy man and staggered off with him. The rest of the party headed away from where Caefawn and I crouched. Almost a third of this bunch was out of the fight, without our killing a soul.

I twisted to look at the hob. He grinned back. It still looked rather alarming when done with fangs, but I was getting used to it. When he began backing quietly out of the brush, I followed.

I decided I needed to be armed with something better than a knife. Kith said by the time you could use a knife, you were too close. Even an idiot could kill you. Especially if you were fighting someone bigger, stronger, and better armed. Most of the people we'd be encountering would be all three. When we came to a tree with good stout branches, I stopped.

"You're too serious," Caefawn said, watching me hack at a solid branch of oak. "This should be fun."

I stopped hacking and turned to stare at him.

"Of course," he said, "it never hurts to be prepared."

He reached over and took the branch, breaking it off the tree as if it were a twig. Holding it in both hands, he fell to one knee and presented it to me, his tail curled around his feet.

"Your tree branch, my lady."

As he'd intended me to, I laughed as I took it from him—though for some reason his actions brought back that last morning with Daryn. I stripped the branch of its leaves and thought, This one's for you, my Heart's desire.

The hob shook his head at me. "So sad." He reached over and touched my cheek with one black claw. "Come, let's find some more raiders to tease before you make me weep."

The second group we came upon had ten men in it as well. This time the man Caefawn chose wasn't big enough to take two men to carry. When the rest of the group headed out, the direction they chose was right over the top of us.