The Land of Broken Roads

“I really thought this wouldn’t take very long,” said Dirt, sighing and thinking about their meal getting cold, sitting there on the table. He wondered if Ignasi and the others had resumed eating, since they weren’t here. “How many are coming? Is it the same kind?”

-Enough are coming for me to smell them from too far away to see, but I don’t know how many that is,- replied Socks. He shook from tail to nose, flinging the last of the dust from the collapsed house away. The crowd of guardsmen parted to allow him through, not that it mattered; he could step right over them. Reaching Dirt and the gate, he sniffed both, then gave Dirt a little lick. -You really stuck the gate in there tight.-

“It doesn’t do any good if it falls off or the goblins chop their way through,” said Dirt.

-It depends on which direction it falls off,- said Socks.

Dirt grinned and looked around to see if anyone else thought that was funny. Mostly, they looked unsure whether wolves could tell jokes.

The Duke waved for Dirt to come over, then stood expectantly with his hands behind his back. Dirt nodded and slipped through to go meet him with Socks following right behind.

“I am impressed, little Dirt. There is much I will ask, once we have time for a long conversation under more pleasant circumstances,” said the Duke. He furrowed his brow and looked at the ground, thinking. “I… hmm.”

-Dirt can shape wood, speak to plants and animals, call wind down from the sky, create lights, and several other things. He can also fight. He learned some of it from the trees and some of it from me. There. Now you don’t have to think of a way to ask,- said Socks, his voice tinged with amusement. -And before you ask, he really is a human. I already said that.-

“You did indeed, friend. You did indeed, and you are the expert on the matter,” said the Duke. “Our confusion is simply that humans do not do what Dirt has done.”

-That is probably why you are dying out,- said Socks.

“Well answered. But we are not dying out today.” said the Duke. He turned and gestured at the now-permanent gate. “Or any time soon. With the only remaining entry closed, the city is secure. We will watch until the goblins leave, but they will disperse once they start getting hungry. They never come with provisions. In the meantime, we must consider what is to be done about the others you smelled on the wind.”

-They will climb over the walls when they get here.-

“Firstly, have you smelled them before? At any point on your travel down from Llovella?”

-No, never. I don’t know what they are.-

“Neither do I. Secondly, could you be mistaken? Perhaps you smelled them because that is where they live,” said the Duke.

“Loose!” shouted an archer. Dirt and the rest turned to see the archers atop the wall shot their arrows at something on the other side.

“Report!” shouted the Duke.

Before anyone answered, a monstrous hand reached up, bloody and pierced with at least four arrows, and tried to grab one of the archers. The man dove off inside the wall at the last moment, saving his life at risk of breaking his ankles. He had the good fortune to be caught by Socks, though, and set down safely.

The creature’s hand reached for another archer but got only a vicious sword wound for its efforts. It grabbed the lip of the wall with its long, green fingers, and pulled an entire rectangular stone down, leaving a section of walkway bare of exterior railing. The rock was so heavy that Dirt felt the thump of it hitting the ground all the way from here.

Socks raised his hackles and drew his lips back into a snarl. -I want to growl but I will scare the horses. Come, Dirt, we will fight.-

“Surely you don’t mean to take the boy out there?” asked the Duke, reaching forward to place his hand protectively between Socks and Dirt.

-Dirt is like me. We are very nice until it is time to be ferocious. I want to scare off all the goblins before those other things come, or they will get in the way and it will be complicated.-

“How long do you think we have?” asked Dirt. He sat down and untied a shoestring, then pulled it off and put it in his pack.

-There are a lot of goblins,- said Socks.

“Wait,” said the Duke. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t want to get blood all over my clothes, so I’m taking them off. Don’t tell Marina,” said Dirt. He pulled his other shoe off, then his socks, and put them in his pack. Then he stood back up and hopped out of his pants. He rolled those up before putting them away. “Can you hold this for me?” he asked, handing the backpack out for the Duke.

“You can’t be serious,” said the Duke, his perfectly disciplined demeanor slipping. A tinge of worry appeared at the edge of his eyes, a tightness in his lips under his finely-oiled mustache. “You can’t go out there like that.”

“I’m not. I have this sheath for my dagger. That counts,” said Dirt, hoping to elicit a smile. It didn’t.

“Boy,” said the Duke sternly.

“Please just hold this?” said Dirt. He turned to the armored man next to the Duke and pressed the backpack into his stomach. “Or maybe you can? I don’t know your name. But can you hold this for me until I come back? I don’t want to lose it."

“I never agreed to carry bags for children,” said the man, taking the backpack from Dirt and handing it to the Duke.

“Sir Vidal?” asked the Duke, eyes widening as surprise removed another layer of his discipline.

“My oaths are about fighting, not carrying. Let us join them, my Lord. If the wolf is willing to lift us over the wall, we will take the field. We’ll leave the horses and fight on foot. I’ll keep the boy safe if I can,” said the armored fighter.

“How will you get back in if you have to flee?” asked the Duke, his worry no longer concealed in the slightest.

“We’ll stack the bodies and walk over, my Lord. We had but a taste of blood today and wish ourselves another portion,” said the man, radiating resolve.

The Duke looked him in the eyes, clear respect showing through his worry.

“Please, my Lord.”

“I forbid it,” said the Duke. He handed Dirt’s backpack to an un-armored servant.

“My Lord!” begged the armored man.

“I forbid it! I’m not leaving the fate of my duchy and the King’s people to a puppy, a naked boy, and a band of knights with an absent Lord! Armor! Armor, now!” shouted the Duke. He pulled his thick, multicolored shirt off by himself, leaving a much thinner undershirt, and tossed it to the same servant who held Dirt’s backpack. The man barely caught it before it hit the ground.

From there it was one of the most elegant dances Dirt had ever seen. Four young men dressed the duke, first in padded clothing, and then layer after layer of armor. The Duke moved with perfect accuracy to assist them, holding out an arm or leg at just the right time and angle. Even with so many practiced hands, it took a surprisingly long time to get the Duke into his armor. There were straps to pull, then test, then pull again. Bits and pieces to adjust, more than Dirt could keep track of. He and Socks had the same thought, which was to be impressed at the incredible artistry that went into crafting it, now that they could see enough to appreciate it.

And it truly was something to appreciate. To Dirt, armor was simple. The most complicated armor his people had used was rows of metal plates fastened to a shirt. Most of the armor in the Sunset Empire had been solid metal, not an intricate work of thousands of perfectly-shaped bits of metal. At least, if his people had had anything like this, Prisca’s memories didn’t contain it. And judging from his gut reaction to what he was seeing, he was sure such armor was a new thing in the world, fashioned long after his era.

A few minutes later, the Duke was encased in solid, gleaming metal, and snapped his visor down with a loud clack. He stood turned to face his armored men, and said, “We will fight in formation. Defend your neighbors and do not allow yourselves to be killed. Tonight our children shall sleep to lullabies, not lamentations and dirges. Socks, if you would be so kind as to lift us over the wall, it would be our honor to join you on the field of battle.”

-You never asked me. What if I say no, after you spent all that time putting your armor on?- said Socks. His voice was serious, but his tongue was out and he was wagging his tail, giving him away.

Dirt grinned as the band of armored men swallowed the cheer they’d been about to erupt into. “Be nice, Socks,” he said.

-I am only teasing. It is good for the father human to fight with his brood,- said Socks. -You little humans are very brave. Almost as brave as Dirt. Come. I can’t lift you all up at once. Dirt, go clear a spot for them to land.-

“Finally!” shouted Dirt. He ran back through the growing crowd of onlookers as he inhaled a full measure of mana, then jumped right over the wall. At the height of his jump, he raised the staff and gave an excited shout, which he intended for a battle cry but didn’t sound like one.

To his left, the creature was unmoving and trampled by goblins, finally killed for good. It had about fifty arrows in its round little body, and at least that many more in its malformed limbs. Dirt swung his staff down with both hands to crush the skull of the goblin he was about to land on, then expended a surge of mana to spin and fling them all away to start making room.

The Home-staff swung with inexorable weight, the massive tree’s momentum crushing so far into goblin flesh that it ripped arms apart and burst chests open in a spray of gore. And just like that, Dirt proved he’d been right to undress first. Not even long enough in the field to blink twice, and his front was coated in red.

Dirt swung the staff in wide arcs, holding it on the bare end, crushing screaming goblins and flinging their mangled bodies left and right in heaps. Being so close to them again reminded him anew how much he hated them. The scent of their breath and skin, their exaggerated features. Their eyes, so close to human but lacking any intelligence at all. Dirt hated even the taste of their blood, which got past his closed lips and flavored his teeth, but his disgust was offset by the satisfying cracks of their bones, their screams of fury whimpering out into death rattles.

They rushed him from behind, their claws sliding uselessly off his mana-protected skin, and he spun, letting Home do her work and throwing their dying bodies into their crowding fellows.

The first group of armored men landed around him, eight of them with swords already drawn. They tightened into a circular formation that Dirt jumped right over.

The goblins were starting to realize the threat Dirt posed and shied away, but the size of the army meant there was nowhere for them to go. Dirt charged the next clump, swatting and striking to erase their hateful faces from his sight, just as the next group of armored men landed and folded seamlessly into the formation.

Glancing back, the Duke wasn’t here yet, so Dirt kept focusing on making room. He snarled in his most wolfish way and leaped on another goblin, spitting the blood of its siblings into its face before crushing its knees with a single stroke. Dirt turned to kill the next ones, and the next, swinging the staff in great arcs. But the one whose knees he’d destroyed grabbed his ankle from the ground and pulled him back, locking its teeth around his calf. Dirt felt the mana there sizzle and spark as it burned away to protect his flesh, and before he could yank his leg away and get back up, another fell atop him, clawing his face and going for his neck with its teeth. Dirt rolled hard and freed his ankle, then burned a puff of mana to pull the other goblin under him. He held the staff widely in both hands and crushed it through the goblin’s hissing mouth, shattering its teeth and breaking its jaw. Another shove downward broke its neck at the base of the skull.

The next group of men landed with the ones after that following close behind, and the armored men quickly started to look like quite the formidable force. They had no need of shields and most had left them in favor of using two weapons. Their armor was sturdy enough to turn aside the rusty weapons and gnarled clubs the goblins wielded, and the soldier’s swords and axes swung with such fury that a haze of red blood-fog formed in the air around them.

The Duke landed with the last group and pushed his way forward to take a position in the front line. He joined in the work of death with the same vigor as his men, showing himself no less of a killer than they.

Finally Socks arrived, tearing in every direction with teeth and claws and mind. To his left he destroyed the goblins with bursts of roaring flames, and to his right he lifted them with his mind five at a time and tore them in half. Dirt ran toward him and jumped, letting Socks grab him from the air with his mind and swing him through the goblin ranks, crushing dozens at a time with the Home-staff.

Dirt estimated that over a hundred goblins must have been killed already, but it was so few compared to the rest of the swarming army that it may as well have been none. Socks fought with glee, leaping from place to place and leaving craters in the field of bodies. The pup’s enthusiasm was so infectious that Dirt found himself laughing as he was yanked from place to place and thrown into groups of goblins to mow them down with his staff.

The army was little more than a chaotic swarm of feral beasts, despite looking like they should have at least some intelligence. It turned out that moving unpredictably throughout the entire army instead of giving them a stationary target to focus on brought them nearly to a standstill. Instead of pushing forward at the gate, packing in so tightly in places that some of them suffocated and fell, they began to wait, unsteady and unsure, for Socks to come to them.

“Split them up! They’re—”

-I see it!- replied Socks exultantly. Now that the goblins lost their reliable targets, they stopped refilling the areas where Socks had landed and killed another pocket. Those areas were starting to form threads, dividing the army roughly into four parts. The armored humans were doing very well for themselves, considering their limitations, in the quarter closest to the gate. The Duke was on the second row now, and Dirt supposed they were swapping out frequently to keep from getting tired.

Socks carried Dirt low to the ground and had him hold the Home-staff forward with both hands. Then they charged right through the goblins, killing a few but mostly trampling over them without doing much damage. They moved from dead zone to dead zone, opening up gaps and pathways between them.

The first little isolated group of goblins at the periphery started backing away from the rest of the army, and Socks turned toward them and barked loudly, a low sound that started as a growl and erupted into a percussive, angry noise. The group faltered and backed up faster.

“It’s working! This is gonna be easy!”

Socks jumped at the group, landing on the edge instead of in the middle, and nipped and clawed and bit to harry them into fleeing. The goblins tried to go around Socks to rejoin the army, hoping for safety in numbers, but Socks cut off their path with a row of sparks that erupted into flame. That was all it took for that segment of the army, perhaps as many as two hundred of them, to retreat with increasing haste.

The pup chased them only briefly, just enough to convince them to keep running, then turned back toward the rest of the army.

Just as he did, the entire army of goblins fell silent. Socks skidded to a halt and pulled Dirt onto his back. As one, every goblin, thousands of them, turned to face them. The wretched things ceased their screaming and wild movements and stepped with purpose into something resembling a formation, closing all the gaps.

Dirt glanced everywhere in confusion and growing anxiety and caught a hint of motion above them. He looked up and saw the ripple in the sky, which had been hovering overhead for some time now, growing in size and descending.

Socks turned his head to look at Dirt. They had no words. Something new was coming.