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Pipsqueak, or so he was called by his packmates, held no loyalty nor love for his master Halftooth. In fact, such feelings barely colored any portion of the small and disused abstraction that was his soul, and entered into his thoughts not at all. He could not have explained, especially not to himself, why he had not fled with the others. Instead the little goblin found himself gripping his long spear tightly, a short javelin by human standards, and running across the emptied room.
The man seemed to hesitate. His sword hovered before Halftooth's unarmored and undefended chest. He stood there arm outstretched, Halftooth's life his for the taking, merely a thrust of the sword, the strength of his arm and shoulder behind the blade, and that would be that. But he wanted something more.
"Open your eyes, you vile beast, and see your fate!" Emiel said, spitting it out as a curse, and Halftooth did so, as if some spell commanded him. And as he did so, as he obeyed that command, he saw his fate, and it was not as he had expected.
The man before him dropped his blade. It clattered to the floor. A steel point seemed to grow suddenly from his lower chest, and as the man swung about in a semi-circle, Halftooth could see the longer part of a javelin sticking from his lower back.
The man fell to the ground and lay still. Behind him stood one of the Halftooth's goblin pack with an absurdly startled look on its face.
"You crazy little bugger." said Halftooth.
A thought flashed by Halftooth. Outside the house there would be others. No little goblin would likely save him from death again. He acted with decision. Reaching down he grabbed the man's small sword. Halftooth's left hand was useless and his right arm was wounded bad. He would not leave unarmed but his own sword would be too much, this little blade would be for best, at least till he healed.
"Get my sword!" he barked at Pipsqueak, and as he ran for the the back exit called out, "And grab that spear of your's as well."
* * *
When the ogre fell at last, some unseen cord which had held Ragnar upon his feet snapped away and he fell beside the monster.
Getting to his feet again had been hard. His ribs sent rivers of pain through his chest. Walking was an agony. It should have been simple, but Ragnar was finding even the slightest movement difficult.
One, Two, One, Two, he forced himself forward and silently shouted the command for his feet to move, Left, Right. He managed a breathless staggered walk.
The porch was less than waist high but the steps were gone, shattered beneath the ogre's ponderous weight. Ragnar stopped, then braced himself at its edge.
The house had become deadly quiet. He had taken too much time dealing with the ogre. Ragnar rolled himself onto the porch. Before he could bring himself to stand, he crawled, and coughed a rough liquid cough laced with blood.
He braced the heel of his axe against the porch floor and rose slowly to his feet like an old man using a cane to get up from his dinner chair. Ragnar entered the house with axe raised. His eyes searched for movement, for the flash of weapons or the presence of enemies. He saw only blood, debris and death.
The body of some tortured man lay across a table, the crumpled body of a gnoll was to his right, against the wall. He stepped further inside. To his left, first he saw the body of a goblin, beyond that lay Emiel.
"Damn!" he cursed. He'd sworn to protect these men. In this he'd failed.
When Emiel pushed himself to his feet Ragnar recoiled in surprise.
* * *
"Emiel!" Ragnar shouted "You're Alive!"
"Of course I'm alive." Emiel said as he rose from the ground. He moved slowly and gave a twisting stretch, then rubbed the back of his head. "I had one of those orcs cornered, then something hit me from behind, knocked me out for a minute."
"The others have run." Ragnar looked toward the black square of open door along the back wall. "They have gone deeper in or maybe fled the house."
"Fled no doubt." Emiel said. "I saw most of them run when I came in." Then rubbing the back of his head again he said, "Thought they'd all gone or I wouldn't have been taken by surprise." He looked around at the wreckage scattered about the room then back at Ragnar. "Where is Thaddeus?" he asked.
A flush came over Ragnar's face, glad to find Emiel alive though he was, Ted's death beneath the hands of the ogre troubled him. "He's dead."
"Who's dead?" a voice asked from the front doorway.
Ragnar turned to face the voice and with an incredulous tone he said ,"You are, damnit man. I saw you die!"
"You saw wrong." Ted said and walked into the room.
"What is all this Ragnar?" Emiel asked "Everyone looks dead to you tonight." He looked over Ragnar then, with a critical eye, noting the battle worn shabbiness, the fatigue, the bruises, cuts and abrasions splashed with the blood of the ogre as well as his own. "But it's you that looks the better half of dead."
Ted, on the other hand, looked disheveled but in good health. True, he was streaked with a coating of dirt and mud, and his hair was a birds nest of twigs and brambles, but between the two, Ragnar looked far closer to deaths door.
"I heard the snap of your neck." Ragnar came up to him and looked at Ted suspiciously.
Ted rotated his head from side to side then reached a dirty hand up to scratch a patch of drying mud under his chin. "You heard him snap my spear in two no doubt. Then he gave me a slap like I'd give a urchin in the market, knocked me off my feet." then cheerfully said "I'm glad you killed the beast. I would have tried to help, but its little slap had the kick of a mule."
"Maybe." Ragnar said unhappily. He did not like to doubt his senses, though when he was enraged he saw and felt much that was beyond his normal ken.
"Over here!" Emiel called, pulling Ragnar's attention away from Ted.
He stood near the long, scarred, wooden table, a relic of the manors past, now holding the sad remains of the monsters last victim. "This is not who we were to meet."
Ragnar paced over, moving carefully so as to avoid jarring his ribs. "How can you tell?" the northman asked. "He has no face."
Emiel looked away for a moment then said in an emotionless voice, "Because the person we were to meet is my wife."
"And you wanted us to wait." Ragnar spluttered out.
A flash of anger crossed Emiel's face, his shoulders stiffened and a vein along the temple of his head throbbed.
Ted spoke up from behind them. "You do not know." Ted said. "You have not seen what we have. You have not lived in fear and hiding, year after year."
"You could have left." Ragnar said in defense, embarrassed.
"I could have left. Emiel could have left. Even his wife could have left...." Ted began but Emiel interrupted.
"Many people have left Geoff. Those who were quick or strong or lucky. There were thousands who couldn't. I don't know if there are thousands anymore, maybe it's just hundreds...I have seen so many dead. Skeletons bleaching in the fields, in piles of refuse the giants have had hauled from the towns, forgotten in the ruins of home after home." Then Emiel stared Ragnar in the eye. "But there are still people here who cannot leave, not without help. And I will never leave. This is my home, and if I am the only one left to fight the giants and their vermin, I'll stay here and fight alone."
"We fight when we can and how we can." Ted said. "A lot of times we can't just go and fight, even when we want to the most."
"You speak well." Ragnar said with grudging respect. "But I do not see that turning away from a fight, even a fight you will lose, I do not see that as a good thing. You southerns, you think you can lose a battle. Vatun wants brave men for his hall in the after life. In the north we know that a warrior is born to die in battle, not in bed. The man or beast that takes my life does not defeat me, he opens the doors to Vatun's hall and lets me in."
* * *
(To Be Continued)