Chapter 11 - Where wild things dwell (Rookie Games arc)

　　"Will you take it," the artisan commanded more than questioned, thrusting the hammer toward the dazed prince. "It is more burden than benefit to me now that I am otherwise encumbered," he continued, motioning at the hefty red-glowing buckler on his back. "But the hammer is needed still."

　　"Thirty times a goblin? Are we so cursed then that our hell is unending?" Cedric had no eye for the world, blundered his way over the roots and vines of the forest floor. "What is..."

　　"The hammer," the artisan broke in, tilting the handle into the hip of the prince. "You are as useful to me as the weight you absolve me of—and the hammer is about as heavy as the strain of your word."

　　"Tone, friend artisan." The prince bristled as he seized the hammer`s handle, trailing the tool in half-drag behind him. "Guard your tongue, lest I do it for you. It has proven more foe than friend to me." Sliding now into single file formation, the three of them threaded through the thicket.

　　"Artisan?" the man sneered. "Is that the epithet for this hoodlum, hobbling and halting in the dark?"

　　"Would you rather another—hobbling fiend... or crafty lowlife perhaps? Both are fitting, titles that strike a chord with the cadence of self-deprecation. Better to bring yourself low before another does it for you—is that the reason to your rhyme? A coward`s way to defence. But still a shade above pilfering the pocket of a brother-in-arms." Cedric tilted his head toward the buckler strapped to the artisan`s back. His buckler—in principle at least. If only he could wield it without the ring.

　　"Did I denounce it, then?" Swinging his clubfoot in stumbling step, the artisan strived to maintain pace. Faltered. "It is a fine name for one who has gone long without." Labouring hard but losing breath, the man started swaying, sweat streaking a line along the wild-grown soil of the woodland. "I shall take it for myself as I have your shield. Artisan. Let that be my name forthwith." Arching back to assess the sun and its stance, the light filtering faintly through the canopy... Artisan stopped mid-stride, leaning further back to learn the lay of the land and the hour of the noon. But leaning too far.

　　Cedric caught the man staggering back... and the huntress caught him—stout and strong, she turned her shoulder into the weight of the two men come toppling.

　　The prince and the huntress, together then, grabbed gently around the waist and the bent torso of Artisan, easing the man down against the trunk of an oak rising stark and strong along the path.

　　"The sun is fierce... I need but a moment... gather strength or what best I have in stead—I`m older than I look, mind you. And worse for wear still." Artisan sagged into the shade of the tree, seeming smaller than he had and more withered.

　　Crouching low beside him, the bound huntress spared the man a long look, brow furrowed in wonder and perhaps in worry—it was not normal for a goblin to fall to the sun and not the sword.

　　"Magestone ores..." Artisan mused, and Cedric was not sure if the man was there in mind or half-adream.

　　"Up ahead, a lake... a cave near the lake. Magestone blue, it shimmers like the waves. The hammer to turn the ore to dust. Take all you can but no less than a hand well and full." Artisan clasped both hands together, fingers working at the ring, starting to slide it off. "I have your word, prince?" he asked, halting as he sought in Cedric`s eye. "Your word that you`ll return it?"

　　"We are not friends," said the prince, his tone grave and earnest. "But we are allies." Grasping the man briefly by the shoulder, Cedric moved to rise, taking the ring and then the buckler, strapping the latter securely to his back.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

　　The binds that held the huntress seemed to the prince now misplaced—she had proven faithful and strong, and there was no need to keep her like a beast in chains.

　　Cedric placed a hand on hers, standing regal and grand before her as he would in times past, arriving like a war-streaked saint to the ardent women and men—those who would swear to him, undyingly, irrevocably... flocking battle-ready below his banner.

　　Beholding him with the reverent gaze the prince thought always and ever vital, the huntress nodded—a slight act at first but then steadily more fierce. Yes, she was to be trusted. Yes, she would harken to him in times of peril. There was the hint of red glowing in her cheeks as Cedric undid the knotted rope.

　　"Mark path... never lost," Artisan offered, groaning under the strain of a broken body and a lesser mind—without the ring he was not all he was. "Seek shade... high trees... and this," plucking a thin-capped mushroom with a fell blue ridge, and moving it in one motion towards the mouth.

　　Cedric`s arm shot out in a flash of instinct, holding back the wrist of this sun-beaten man so gripped with delirium that the poison of the forest—Venenum Silva—seemed somehow palatable.

　　A thin laugh squeaked past Artisan`s lips. "Auro..." he started saying, his speech encumbered by the loss of intellect.

　　"Aurora Azureum," Cedric broke in. The blue dawn. A term so antiquated it was stricken from the Compendium Botanica—it was too fair a name for the blue-capped death, with its poison so potent it would rot clean through the gastric sac, streaking sapphire along the stomach, its fragile lining.

　　But that was in humans.

　　It was a feast to woodland critters and to wrathful things as well, beasts of all sorts, made of a sterner something than the fragile fabric of man.

　　Cedric released the man`s arm, watched Artisan savour the taste... and the prince, too, felt the rumblings deep in his goblin gut. Together they dug in, the huntress joining suit. Slathering their mouths with the salt and the crop of the earth.

　　Then the prince rose and turned away, stalking off toward the lake and toward the cave, carrying with him the dagger and the buckler, the hammer and a sheet of leather, and the red of an indulgent shame smeared across his goblin cheeks.

　　He would follow the trail of the blue-capped death—or the blue-capped dinner now—its growth abounding in the dampest and darkest parts of the woods.

　　Occasionally on his march he paused, making markings on the trees and on the ground, etching his dagger in a pattern so familiar he could not mistake it for anything but his own. The Blackrose crest. The old one—the dark and wilting rose from their time as vassals, serving a foreign crown. As he etched, he etched deep, thinking of the soil as though it were the heart of the man who had brought him so low. Gendrin. Every line, every raking stab. Gendrin.

　　And wherever he saw the Aurora sprouting, he would bend low, marking the soil as he gorged. Bitter and alone and grateful still for the bounty of earth.

　　But long before his belly was full, the woodland path wound to its natural end, opening to a field of green, specked with a dragonthorned grass jutting in wild-grown spurts across the plains.

　　There, too, he saw the water. Fringed by blossoms of moonpetal orchids and firecrown lilies, the lake lay still, its surface like a sheet of glass, glinting and glimmering—a sun-dappled splendour that made the prince think of home. It made him think of Gael.

　　In his heart he dwelt alone. But in the heart of nature there loomed ever a darker presence.

　　Setting foot in the forest sanctum, the prince heard a stir and then a skitter... the sound of claws or of talons, ripping at the leaves and trees, scraping hard lines through the dirt. A fractured cry came rising from the thicket—the voice of a thing so tangled and rotten it could not but cut short the noise of its own anguish.

　　Cedric strode on into the open plains, pivoting and twisting and keeping a clear perimeter. Scanning for whatever it was that would emerge.

　　It was still for a while, but a second cry rose and then a third. The first had been a clarion call, or so it seemed, for there came then a mounting and mounting—more of the soulless somethings reaching out and pulling in, the wails as sudden as their halting.

　　One by one they broke into sight, slicing through the dirt and shade.

　　Goblins.

　　But not the ones the prince had seen and known. These were not at all like Artisan. Nothing even like the huntress, who had shown a semblance of mind and its inner workings. Cognition in some nascent form.

　　Here was only the wild. Crawling now in multitudes toward him, the prince saw only the loathsome and only the foul, fang-bearers of the night.

　　Goblins left to the woods.