The days in Brest were growing very short. It was already getting dark, though it was not yet five of an evening. The long shadows cast all afternoon by the trees on either side of the road were melding into a single impenetrable blanket. It hadn’t snowed yet and indeed was not yet cold enough, but one could already feel the biting chill on the wind as it swept down across the rolling hills and wooded meadows on its way from the Skagarack.
I tugged my hood around my face and pulled my cloak up tight over my shining steel armor. In the gathering gloom, the cloak’s brilliant crimson, for the last six months the official color of the House of Dewberry, looked almost black. It was emblazoned with my new coat of arms—white on red, with a reclining wyvern, a bar sinister, and a pie rampant. In case you did not know, a bar sinister is a bar coming from the left, which is why it is called a bar sinister, because left is the most evil direction.
My noble steed Hysteria was decked out just as I was. She wore bright steel barding, which is armor for horses, over which she wore a skrim sheet, which is a sort of cloak for horses, which was the same crimson as my cloak and featured the Dewberry coat of arms on either side of her flank. She didn’t care much for the barding, as it added a good hundred pounds to the weight she carried, but she quite liked the skrim sheet, as Hysteria was a rather vain horse.
My noble steed and I were both very tired, having been on the road all day, and more to the point, having been away from home for almost two weeks. We had of course spent many years traveling, but six months of easy living and rich food had left us perhaps not as hearty as we had once been—especially Hysteria. I of course, had recognized this and had jumped at the chance to take off on an adventure when we had been sent a mission, by special courier, from Her Majesty the Queen of Aerithraine, with whom I once spent a night of passion.
I heard the faint rustling in the trees off to my right. Hysteria snorted unhappily.
“Yes, I hear them,” I told her.
I had heard movement among the trees for the last two miles. I was rather hoping it was monkey people, but I suspected it was goblins. Imagine my surprise then when a group of robbers popped out of the woods and surrounded me. Two of them took position in front of me and three in back, proving that they were a cowardly lot. All five men had a lean, hungry look about them as robbers are wont to have.
“Give us your money, fop,” said one of the robbers in front of me.
“What do you mean by calling me a fop?” I asked.
“I mean dandy, popinjay, coxcomb, fool with more money than sense.”
“Clearly you have me confused with someone else,” said I. “I am Eaglethorpe Buxton, Lord Dewberry, Knight of the Realm, and a most famous storyteller. All the country knows the name of Eaglethorpe Buxton and it knows that he is not one to hand over money to robbers. Rather he is one to kill robbers and rid the roads of menace.”
“I know that name,” said the other robber in front of me. “Isn’t it Eaglethorpe Buxton who burnt down the entire city of Aerithraine?”
“That is an exaggeration,” said I. “Sixteen or seventeen city blocks at the most.”
“Isn’t it Eaglethorpe Buxton who burglarized the treasury of the King of Breeria?” asked one robber behind me.
“I haven’t been to Breeria in years,” said I.
“Isn’t it Eaglethorpe Buxton who robbed the guild houses in Theen?” asked the one in front.
“It most certainly has not been proven in court,” said I.
“You are an even bigger criminal that we are,” said the one who had spoken first. “But we must still rob you. It is a matter of professional pride. Once we stop someone, we have to rob them.”
I sighed.
“I was going to let you live,” said I. “Now I find that I must kill you all to protect the reputation of the House of Dewberry.”
“But there are five of us,” he said.
“That is good to know,” said I. “I was unsure if you had accomplices still hiding in the trees.”
“Just the five of us,” he said. “We’ve been waiting here all day for someone to come along, but the road just isn’t very busy this time of year.”
“You haven’t been following me for the past two miles?”
“No.”
“Monkey people,” I said hopefully, but at that moment two dozen goblins burst from the trees.
These goblins had to be counted as outstanding members of their race, for it is seldom that such creatures would attack with odds weighted this much against them. There were twenty-four goblins, but there were six humans, and an armed man could usually be counted on to take on at least four of the little sods. Plus there was a sturdy war horse, because the goblins had no way of knowing that Hysteria was unnerved by the sound of combat.
I gave no more thought to my previous conflict, which is to say my potential fight with the robbers, and turned my full attention instead to the goblins. Several rushed towards me, two of them jumping onto the shoulders of two others to give them a boost up to my level. They landed in my lap and began poking at me with their nasty little knives before I could reach my sword hilt. Fortunately I was mostly protected by my armor. Since I couldn’t draw my blade, I instead pulled my fork from my cloak pocket and poked it in the eye of one. He screamed and fell to the ground. The other goblin stopped to look at the eye impaled upon my fork. He grabbed his stomach and started laughing uproariously. I delivered a back-hand slap to his face that sent him flying in the opposite direction as his now one-eyed friend.
Hysteria was no slouch either. She reared up and brought her two front hooves down on the heads of the two goblins that had helped up the other two, one of which was now trying to cut her legs and the other of which had stopped to pick his nose. I glanced behind me to see that two of the robbers had fallen and were now being cut to pieces. The other robber behind me was doing much better, as were the two in front, who seemed sturdier fellows. They had each dispatched several goblins. I whipped out my sword. Unfortunately, the shhtink sound that a sword makes as it comes out of a scabbard is one sound that sends Hysteria into a panic and she shot forward. I sliced through a couple of goblin heads as we passed and then we were on our way down the road.
“As that was six goblins for me,” I called back over my shoulder. “I think we can all agree that I did my fair share!”