The Land of Broken Roads

The room went silent, the Duke’s family growing pale and fearful and the man himself biting back annoyance to maintain his dignified demeanor. A moment later, a second alarm sounded from outside, only faintly audible through the sunlit windows.

“An army,” muttered the Duke. “My guests, I regret that my company will shortly be required elsewhere. For the second time in one day, I may be called out to oversee a battle. You don’t happen to know anything about that, do you?”

-We do not have any armies. What is it an army of?- asked Socks.

“Goblins, I would say; I might be more certain had our first little invasion not been a harmless boy and a giant wolf. They have been an unreasonable nuisance the last few years.”

-Will the men in metal armor fight them?- asked Socks, perking up. -Will they ride horses like in the painting?-

“Socks,” said Ignasi, “I bet if you go put the gate back up where you found it, we can talk him into sending some men with horses and armor.”

Socks looked over at the Duke, ears perked up in eagerness.

“We’ll help fight them, too,” said Dirt, in case this was something the Duke needed convinced about.

-No, Dirt will not help fight unless he is needed. He will scare the other humans. But I’ll help kill the goblins if the men in armor come along,- said Socks.

The Duke needed very little time to think and soon turned to one of his servants, a fidgety man who seemed anxious for everyone to get moving, and said, “Go tell the quartermaster to get enough workmen to reattach the gate. I want them there immediately with tools and supplies. And you, Miquel, go tell Ramon that the Palace Guard will be attending me in person, in full strength. I want my horse and armor. Run, before my city is plundered.”

The two men left at full sprints, leaving through different doors and not even closing them behind themselves.

Socks stood, wagging his tail eagerly. -Will you fight too, since you are the father human?-

The Duke said, “If a hundred men are sent, the hundred-and-first will add very little. Whether I fight will depend on how badly I am needed.”

-My Father would be worth more than a hundred of me,- said Socks.

“My Lord,” said the Duchess, resting her fingers on his arm, then rising from her chair gracefully and sweeping herself into his arms for a hug. “Take no risks. Come back in one piece.”

He kissed her hair and said, “As you command, my Lady.” Dirt felt a puff of affection between them despite the interference of too many local minds.

The Duke’s two children approached on timid feet. He grinned and gripped them both on the shoulder and gave them a quick hug at the same time. “No need to fret just yet. It is surely not that serious.”

Dirt suspected that the reason the Duke mentioned the severity of the threat at all was because he suspected otherwise. “I’ll go with him. Socks probably won’t let me charge in by myself anyway while he’s holding the gate up. He’ll be safe.”

The Duke smiled in a way that Dirt found somewhat condescending. “I appreciate that, little Dirt, but a battle is no place for children. I will want a stronger guard around me.”

Hèctor said, “I wouldn’t underestimate the boy, your Grace. You may be glad to have him. He’s plenty capable.”

-As far as I can tell, he is the only strong human at all,- said Socks. ­-If he is not with you, then he will be with me.-

“I cannot have an unarmored boy at my side in the middle of a battle,” said the Duke with finality.

“Dirt, why don’t you jump up there and touch the ceiling?” said Ignasi with a sparkle in his eye.

The room went silent, with even the unnoticed servants freezing in their tracks and slyly turning to watch. Dirt remained still, though, unsure if he should do it. Humans didn’t seem to like that sort of thing, and Socks had told him not to.

Into the silence, Ignasi said, “What, you thought a boy with a friend like Socks would be otherwise ordinary? Is there anything about those two that strikes you as ordinary? Anything at all?”

“Thanks, Ignasi, but it’s okay. I’ll just go with Socks. Nothing will get past us anyway. But my Lord the Duke, your Grace, please don’t have anyone shoot me with an arrow if I do something surprising. Once is enough for one day,” said Dirt.

“You only need to say one title at a time,” muttered Marina.

He took his little backpack off and set it on his chair. “Oh, you don’t have to put any of that food away yet. We’ll be right back,” he told a servant.

“How long do you think this will take?” asked the Duke, showing a bit of indignation for the first time. “We are under attack!”

“How long do you think this will take?” replied Dirt coolly. “Come on, Socks. Let’s hurry.”

-We will meet you there. They are getting in already. Remember to come with your armored men so I can watch them fight,- Socks told the Duke.

Dirt started walking across the room to go back out, but the Duke said, “Wait!”

He and Socks stopped and looked back.

“I must come with you so my men know not to attack,” said the man, striding forward. “If they are already breaching our walls, then there is no time to waste. Gonçal, tell the others to meet me there. I will be armored on the field. Bring my horse. Socks, will you give me a ride?”

Dirt grinned, proud to see the man’s daring, and looked at Socks.

The pup said, ­-I like this human. Come. They should make a painting about us.- He bent under the doorway and led Dirt and the Duke down the hall, around the entranceway, and back out the building.

The armored soldiers outside were already moving into lines, with more and more of them running across the plaza from different places to get into formation. The sound of their metal boots pounding on the stone clattered loudly, even over the chaos of the crowd clamoring for news from behind the short fencing surrounding the palace.

“My Lord!” shouted one of them, whose extra decorations marked him as a leader of some kind.

“Come when you are ready. I’ll be going on ahead,” said the Duke, standing regal and calm. He raised a hand, gently beckoning Socks. “How shall I get up?”

The pup lifted the Duke with his mind and set him down on Dirt’s spot. The crowd of soldiers and men reacted in shock and horror, many screaming. Some stepped forward to help, and others stepped backward to flee. But the man raised his hand again, smiling freely and without fear. He waved at his people until they got the idea and calmed down somewhat.

Dirt jumped up as well, sat down in the Duke’s lap, and said, “Don’t worry about falling off. Socks won’t drop us. But if you get nervous you can hold onto me.”

“I have never felt more secure,” said the Duke. “This is quite comfortable.”

“Good,” said Dirt. “Okay, Socks, we’re ready.”

The pup left at full speed, leaping over countless people to land in a small open space, then jumping again. The Duke held back a scream at great difficulty, clutching Dirt with surprising strength and making a long whimpering sound instead.

Dirt laughed and shouted, “Faster!”

The Duke hissed in fear, but stopped when Socks hit the ground and sprinted with all his might, moving so fast they couldn’t hear anything over the wind. The Duke hugged Dirt so tightly he could tell the man was holding his breath, so he patted his arm, not that it would do any good.

Only a moment later, and they were back at the gate. Socks slowed and stopped, and the Duke let out a loud gasp, then took a deep breath and did his best to regain his composure. The man’s heart was beating at triple speed, but he smoothed out his fine clothing and hair and regained most of his dignity.

“It’s fun, isn’t it?” said Dirt, teasing the poor man.

It was the wrong time for a joke, though, because the area was a mess. A surprising horde of goblins assaulted the few dozen soldiers pressed together in the gateway, blocking with their shields while the second row thrust swords and spears through to fight back. The line held, but it wobbled and bent under the press of wretched green flesh.

At least fifty of the horrible creatures had gotten through. Some had rushed into houses and were making it hard to get them back out while others moved through the street in clusters, daring anyone to come charge them, snarling and gnashing their crooked yellow teeth. Screams and alarms rang out from everywhere and the nice gray paving stones were already slick with blood and corpses, not all of them green.

Socks grabbed the nearest clump of goblins with his mind, all six of them, and tossed them back over the wall, high enough they’d crunch when they came back down. He yanked two more through a house window and ripped them in half, then tossed the remains over the wall as well. Then another group, and another, to the horrified awe of the men who’d been struggling with their lives to bring them down.

The men fought desperately, boldness giving way to despair. The acrid, unmistakable scent of fear mixed with the reek of blood and injuries as women and children screamed from inside houses they’d been too slow to flee, helplessly watching the carnage in the streets.

The Duke sat through it all, riding regally with one hand resting on Dirt’s shoulder, but he gripped ever tighter with each new horror. Dirt was content to keep sitting there for a bit, because it looked like the humans were doing fine for the moment and if he jumped down, he’d get his shoes bloody.

A goblin from inside tried rushing the rear of the soldiers holding the line and Socks jumped forward and ripped it in half between his teeth and right paw. He stepped right up to the line of soldiers, sniffing around and looking to get a good idea what was going on, then filled the air outside the gate with sparks.

A wall of fire erupted and burst forward, filling the air with searing heat and the scent of burning flesh. Socks drew deeply on his mana and made the fire hot, so hot that most of the goblins caught right inside it died before they could do much screaming. Then he made a second wave of sparks a bit farther out and erupted that into a much wider fire. Now that he had some room, he stepped right over rows of soldiers who cowered and hid their faces from the heat, and out onto the sizzling ground outside the gate.

-That is a lot of goblins,- Socks said. And he was right. Too many to count, well into the hundreds, and possibly thousands. More goblins than there had been digger-beasts, for certain.

“I wonder if it’s the same army that killed everyone in Llovella,” said Dirt mentally, since there was too much screaming going on to talk with his voice. “This could be really bad. I’m not sure we can chase this many off.”

-They won’t be able to get through the gate, no matter how many there are,- said Socks. -That’s why the city is still here.-

The roaring shriek of the screaming goblin army sickened him as much as its appearance did. They made a roiling sea of green flesh, paler than his ferns but just as dense, with too many twisted, stretched faces and gnarled teeth. Ears curled or straight and pointy, many of them damaged or sliced. They stood so close together that they hardly had room to raise their fists, many of which held clubs or rusty swords. Dirt had hated them before he’d seen a crowd of humans, and now that he had something to compare goblins to, he hated them twice over.

“The gate!” the Duke shouted. “Go back in!”

“Wait, let’s try something first real quick!” shouted Dirt. Then with his mind he told Socks, “Make one more fire. I’m going to try blowing it with wind and see what happens.”

Socks obliged and cast a field of sparks over the next goblins, who were already gathering their courage to rush forward over their suffering, dying kin. The flames erupted with a roar and a wave of force that seared lungs and melted flesh, causing eyes to burst and killing broad swathes at once.

Dirt raised the Home-staff and drew on his mana to call a wind into being, blowing down from the sky to spread the flames farther across the horde. It spread the flames with ease but did little to make them stronger, since there wasn’t any proper fuel to ignite. Socks’ fires died out, killing fewer goblins than before, but singeing others enough to make them angry.

-Well, it was a good idea,” said Socks. He looked out anxiously over the army of goblins, stiffening his hackles slightly with growing trepidation. He padded back in through the gate, stepping over the soldiers and letting them cut down the goblins who had been too close to burn.

The gate wasn’t where Socks had left it. Someone had attached ropes and dragged it most of the way back to the wall, where it still lay flat on the ground. Perhaps the humans could have gotten it up and into place by themselves if they’d had enough time, but they had none. Socks hefted it upright with his mind and moved it over to its place, where he held it overhead, waiting for room.

“Back three! Back three!” shouted the Duke, hands around his mouth to make a horn. They heard him over the chaos and repeated the call, then the Major, Marc, shouted, “One! Two! Three!”

With each count, the whole line moved back as one, all stepping at the same time and keeping the line intact. A man who’d been dawdling at the periphery dove forward to pull a fallen soldier out of the gateway, just in time.

The gate slammed down into place, turning a whole row of goblins into severed bits and paste that splattered a surprising distance. After such a shock, the ones who’d made it inside were easy work for the soldiers and soon after, the work of killing ceased inside the city.

It didn’t get quiet, exactly, but it did get quieter. The gate blocked most of the noise from the goblins, but could not silence their screams. Those blurred into an unpleasant roar that rolled over the gates and made everyone’s heart tremble.

“Please let me down, Socks,” said the Duke, releasing the tight grip he’d had on Dirt’s shoulder this whole time. “I must see to my men.”

-You will get blood on your shoes,­- said Socks.

“I have other shoes,” said the Duke.

Socks lifted him with his mind and set him down gently, feet first, in an open spot a few feet away, one of the few patches near the gate where the stones were still clean.

He strode directly up to the Major and said, “Report.”

“My Lord!” said Marc. “They rushed us out of nowhere, already massed. We were so focused on helping move the gate we didn’t see them until they’d entered the plain. They came right for us and it’s my opinion they knew about the gap. We got a line up in time, but they broke through around the left side once and a third of your men are going house by house to hunt them down.”

“Tell the archers to hold their arrows for now and send the footmen to make sure none remain inside my walls. This gate will hold. Get me a count of the killed and injured,” said the Duke, hands behind his back as he listened with a calmness that spread to everyone who saw him. “Offer anyone who was bitten their final mercy and send those who refuse to their families for their final hours.”

“Yes, my Lord,” said the Major. He turned and barked orders at the men behind him and the soldiery sprang back into action, spreading out to check every shadow and corner for hiding goblins.

Socks kept holding the gate, which pounded with goblin fists and clubs of bone or wood as the men tried not to stare at it in dread. But then the sounds changed, becoming sharper, and Dirt realized along with everyone else that the goblins were hacking at the wood with weapons of metal now—the rusty swords and axes he’d seen before. A worried murmur passed through the men.

The injured were deposited along the street to rest their heads on whatever cloth could be found for a pillow. Mostly nothing, just the hard ground. One by one they were brought, some with minor wounds and others holding their guts in. The goblins were short, resulting in more injuries to the lower parts of the body; but the wounds were no less gruesome and deadly for that.

Dirt watched one man bleed out from a deceptively deep gash on his inner thigh and breathe his last. The sight affected him more than any other death, and he’d seen plenty. It struck a whole chord of emotions inside him—fear, heartbreak, and a nameless sense of wrongness. He wished he could have seen what happened to the man’s mind for clues about where his soul had gone and at least draw some comfort from that. He couldn’t.

He began to appreciate the desperation of the men around him. Even the Duke felt it, showing it only in the slightest ways, a tightness around his eyes and lips that his commanding dignity couldn’t completely erase. Death hung over everything. Socks and Dirt would make it out regardless, but if this place fell, no one else would. All those people, ripped apart.

“Oh, hey, Socks, would you mind licking some of their wounds? The ones who are going to die soon?” asked Dirt mentally.

-If they bring them to me. I am going to sit down before my feet get sore. The gate is heavy and the goblins hitting it makes it worse. I don’t know how long I have to hold it, because the men to fix it still aren’t here yet,- And sure enough, Socks lay down to rest, paws forward and head up to remain wary.

Dirt slid down and hopped between clear spots on the stone road as he made his way over to the injured. They’d begun field medicine where possible, doing clever things like sewing wounds shut with needle and thread or applying salves and bandages. As tempted as he was to watch and learn how they did everything, it wasn’t the most efficient just now.

“Excuse me,” said Dirt to the nearest uninjured soldier, a man holding a fat roll of bandages that others kept cutting lengths from. “If you want to take the people with the worst injuries over by Socks, he’ll lick their wounds and they’ll get better. People with goblin bites, too.”

The man stared down at him with a blank expression, unable to make sense of what he was being asked. “That won’t help. Just stay out of the way.”

“Yes it will. He does it all the time.”

“Go talk to the Major or the Duke, son. I can’t deal with this right now.”

“Just watch, then,” said Dirt. He stepped through the crowd of soldiers performing desperate medicine until he found a likely candidate, a young beardless man with no hint of a mustache, who was busy applying pressure to a stab wound just under his rib cage. He looked pale and the skin around where he was holding looked bruised and unwell from bleeding on the inside.

“My friend Socks is going to save you. Don’t be scared,” said Dirt.

The young man could hardly focus, turning his head and saying, “What?”

“Just a moment while I carry you over,” said Dirt. He inhaled a good amount of mana and used it to strengthen his muscles, then awkwardly lifted the man in a cradling position and carried him over to Socks. Some of the medics came over and tried to stop Dirt, and the man himself squirmed and moaned in pain and begged to be put down.

Socks looked at the ones approaching and gave a low growl, and that was enough to get them to back off.

Dirt put the man down and held his arms away, pinning him down. He was strong, despite his injuries, but not compared to Dirt using mana. Socks licked the man’s wound, lapping up all the blood and digging in with his huge tongue as deeply as he could. A moment later, the soldier’s breathing relaxed and a bit of life came back into him. Socks lifted his head away and the man sat up, drawing surprised gasps from those watching.

“I’m healed!”

“Mostly,” said Dirt. “It’ll hurt for a day or so. So, anyone else? Just the people who are going to die. How about that guy? Hold his intestines in and bring him over.”