The Hob's Bargain

Koret charged down the ladder, drawing his sword and leaving me to shoot at will. I loosed a bolt at another movement in the shadows.

Finally, from the darkness of the side street, a swarm of… something boiled into the street. In the uncertain light, I couldn't see them well. Better, I thought, if I didn't.

As ferociously as the villagers fought, we could not press back the tide of creatures. They were smaller than a man—I could see that much—perhaps only half as tall, though wider in the shoulders. Like a plague of locusts, there seemed to be no end to them.

They weren't hillgrims. If they had been, there would have been a lot more villagers lying in the mounting pile of bodies. Instead of the graceful movements of the grims, these new creatures moved with the stolid slowness of a great bull. Their arms hung almost to the ground, muscular and wickedly powerful—but mercifully slow. The villagers quickly learned to avoid the blows, and after the first few minutes I didn't see anyone fall. All the same, they pressed the villagers back by sheer strength of numbers.

Before I ran out of quarrels, Manta dashed up the stairs with two handfuls of bloody shafts.

"Here," he said shortly. "Koret sent these, says to stay where you are. You're doing more damage here than you would in the thick of things."

He was gone before I could thank him. The arrows were warm and damp, and I wished for my gloves, which were, I supposed, somewhere in the inn with my clothes.

In the end it was the sun that saved us. As dawn began to show over Faran's Ridge, the creatures turned and sped away faster than they had come.

Spent, I slipped from my post on the railing. Laughter came unbidden—for once my sight had been in time. Just this once—but it helped make up for all the other times when I'd been too late. It was quiet laughter with a slightly hysterical touch, so I let it drift to silence beneath the soft moaning of the wounded lying in the streets.

I wiped my bloody hands on the tail of my borrowed nightshirt. It was unmannerly to stain someone else's clothing, but I couldn't bear the feel of the blood any longer. My hands ached from setting the goatsfoot. Training made me load the crossbow once more before I climbed down the stairs to see what it was I'd been killing.

Geol the cooper was surrounded by a group of people trying to stanch several wounds. Talon the smith sported a nasty gash on his forearm that he was awkwardly trying to bandage. Before I could offer my help, his wife bustled up to him. The bootmaker, Haronal, had a throwing ax embedded in his skull.

I didn't see any of the creatures bodies. At last I saw Koret kneeling beside a shuddering form near an alleyway, and went to him. The body was one of the things we'd been fighting.

It was vaguely human in feature, more so than the hillgrim. Standing, it (or rather he—the creature wore no clothes) might have been waist high. Curly, dark hair covered his head and the lower part of his jaw. His features were manlike, except he had no eyes. A horrible wound opened his belly, revealing internal organs.

"Is this what attacked you on the Hob?" asked Merewich, who'd joined us.

I shook my head, staring at the dying creature. If it had been human—a raider, maybe—I'd have been down on my knees holding the wound together and calling for someone to sew him up. It wasn't human, but it wasn't… Before I could decide if I wanted to try to save it, it died.

"Maybe the hob will know what he was," I said hollowly.

"Wait until you see this," said Koret intensely. "Wait."

The weak morning light touched the body, allowing me to see clearly what was happening to it. The tip of his nose and the ends of his fingers and hands changed, darkened, began to flake off.

Cracks split the skin of his face. The bloody gash in his abdomen quivered, filling suddenly with a dark, ashy matter that covered the details of the wound. The process sped up as it progressed. Each break in the creature's skin gave way to a multitude, until there was no body left.

Koret squatted on his heels and put his hand in the residual substance. My lips curled back in disgust as he rubbed it back and forth between his fingers, then held it up to his nose to smell.

"Mulm," he said, standing up and dusting his fingers lightly together. "Good planting soil."

"Pirates," commented Merewich sadly. "They have no sensibilities."

"Ah," replied Koret with a grin that told me at least part of his nonchalant manner was for our benefit. "I have noticed how delicate your sensibilities are, Merewich. That is why I didn't taste it." He wiped his hands on his pant leg. "So Aren," he said, "what made you come out here and ring the bell?"

"I dreamed," I said. "I dreamed I was burrowing up through the basement of Belis's house, prepared for battle. When I woke up, I realized it hadn't been a dream."

"How did you know that it wasn't a dream?" asked Merewich.