The Hob's Bargain

Quilliar was still waiting when I turned, his sword blocking the other man, who apparently had recovered enough from the sight of the shaper to decide I was a threat.

"Why did you warn us?" Quilliar asked.

Why indeed? Because I trusted Caefawn's judgment, I'd come to accept that the village might need them to survive. Acceptance was a long way from risking my life to save them. They'd killed my family. When I thought of it, I knew I would kill the raiders I'd killed again if I were given the chance. Why fight for them, then? The answer, when it came, bothered me. I shoved it to the side and gave them a simple answer they could accept.

"Have you ever seen a hillgrim?" I asked, an arm-long stick in each hand. "If you had, you wouldn't ask me. Besides, I suspect our village and your company are going to need each other once the wild fully recovers. The hob tells me that goblins and trolls are hard to fight."

He weighed my answer, then turned to the other man. "She's with us. At least for now."

He was right. I would welcome the chance to die for the village because I didn't believe they'd ever let me live with them. A sort of variation upon the adolescent theme of "I'll die, and then they'll be sorry." I would always be alone.

I heard the shaper's howl again and, involuntarily, I grinned. I wasn't alone. I had the earth spirit's guard and the hob.

I started toward the sounds of battle, more because I was distracted by my thoughts than because I was eager to fight. Because something had occurred to me.

I had never really been alone. Why had I thought that Quill and I were the only ones hiding what we were?

Fallbrook and Beresford both were thick with magic. There wasn't a family in either village who didn't have a near relative taken by the bloodmages in the last three generations. I could even make a fair stab at guessing who the village mageborn were: the ones who hated me the most. I'd felt so alone after Quilliar died. It hadn't occurred to me that I wasn't.

I darted around a tent and found a raider struggling with a hillgrim on his back. He'd dropped his sword and was trying to pry it off, but the 'grim had locked its jaws in the thick leather of a gaudy protective collar the raider wore around his throat.

My weapons were too stout to do what I intended, so I grabbed a pair of wooden tent spikes set nearby. Stepping behind them both, I slid my chosen weapons between them. I braced the free end of each stick against the raider's leather-armored back and used the leverage to force the hillgrim to break its hold or let my sticks crush its throat.

It released the raider, reached behind, and grabbed me across the shoulder, wedging its claws in the soft flesh under my arm.

A crossbow bolt took the 'grim through the skull, about two fingerspans from my nose, with a dull sound. With such a close-up view, I could tell it was from my bow.

"Thanks, Caefawn," I murmured, shaking free of the dead hillgrim.

Trust the hob to do the most useful thing and grab my crossbow. No doubt he was perched high in one of the trees, killing hillgrims much more efficiently than any of us on the ground.

"Thanks, brother," said the man, whose back was bleeding from the scratches the hillgrim had made.

He picked up his sword. He turned to me, and his jaw dropped. I tapped him on the head with a spike. Gently.

"Close your mouth and watch your front," I said, nodding at the hillgrim darting under someone's legs to attack him. Then, remembering the odd stillness that had held me when the hillgrim had attacked me on the Hob, I added, "Don't meet their eyes."

As I left the raider to aid another man with a similar problem, I called a belated "You're welcome."

This time I didn't try subtlety, I just jabbed one end of my right spike into the hillgrim's ear with the weight of my body behind it. The end of the spike was sharp and slid easily for a few inches. I pulled my knife and used the handle to hammer the spike in deeply enough to kill the hillgrim. I had to pry the creature's jaw open to free the raider, who'd fallen to his face, crying for help from the One God. A true believer, I thought. There were no more unoccupied hillgrims in the immediate area, so I took a good look at the raider's wound.

"The One God was with you today," I announced briskly. "The 'grim got a mouthful of your leather armor, but not even a bit of flesh."

He turned over, a lad even younger than Quilliar. The bridge of his nose was freckled. He looked at me for a moment, then took my hand when I offered it, and got to his feet.

Without a word we both turned back to the fight.

It didn't take me long to realize that I was able to help the other fighters because anytime a wildling started for me, it was felled with a crossbow bolt. Caefawn was good; no, better than good, because I was good and he was better.