The Hob's Bargain(67)

"Ware, to arms, to arms," I bellowed. If I was grinning, it was because I was imagining the expression on Caefawn's face. He must think I'd lost my mind. Only shock could have stopped him from catching me. "Attack coming from the hills! Hillgrims!" Not that anyone in the camp would know what a hillgrim was, but the name sounded nasty enough to carry its own warning.

As I pelted across the smooth part of the field, heading toward the rise where their camp was, it occurred to me that running into a camp of nervous raiders who thought I was the enemy wasn't a bright idea. I was armed only with a knife; the crossbow was hanging under a tree on the other side of the field. It would be hard enough to crawl through the muck, and I hadn't wanted to do it with my crossbow because the harness that held it to my back wasn't tight enough to hold it steady while I crawled. I'd have to fix that, but for tonight I'd left it on a tree.

I had time, running across the field, to wonder why I was so worried about hillgrims munching on a few raiders.

"Beware, hillgrims," bellowed a deeper voice just behind me.

It wasn't the hob, so it must have been the shaper. I glanced to my right and was treated to the sight of a hundred-year-old man running like a deer. He grinned at me happily. I didn't see Caefawn.

The men were on their feet and armed as I topped the rise. Most of them were looking at me - the moon was still old enough so they could see me in its light - so I pointed frantically behind them.

"The west, the west!" I screamed.

But from the swearing beginning on the hill side of their camp, I suspected that my cries wouldn't be necessary much longer. There was a howling battle cry, and most of the men turned from me and ran to face the real threat.

Unfortunately, two of them remained. One of them was staring at the old man, who grabbed a stout stick from the woodpile and jumped over an empty cooking pot half as high as he was, all the while howling madly, "Hillgrims! Hillgrims! Fun to kill hillgrims!"

The other took a step closer to me, sword at the ready. "You?"

It was Quilliar. The other Quilliar.

I nodded. When he didn't strike immediately, I headed for the woodpile, too.

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.