005 Count Delur

  By the time I finally left the Great Forest, the sky had begun to glow with the first hints of dawn. The cool air carried the st whispers of the night, and the horizon ahead stretched wide and open. Behind me, the towering trees stood like silent sentinels, marking the boundary of what was once an elven domain.

  The Great Forest had always been considered the home of the elves, though they never ruled it the way a king might rule his nds. There was no central government. Just scattered vilges, each fending for themselves. But the forest was undeniably theirs. They knew its paths instinctively, never losing their way, no matter how deep they ventured. It was part of who they were.

  I wasn’t so lucky.

  I had followed the raiders’ tracks, but I had underestimated their speed. At first, the trail had been clear: trampled grass, broken branches, occasional drops of dried blood. But the farther I went, the fainter the signs became, until finally, I was staring at open fields with nothing to guide me. They had outpaced me.

  "Damn it," I muttered, tightening my grip on the bow slung across my back. “They are in a hurry, aren’t they?”

  Frustrated, I pulled out the map I had taken from the vilge chief’s house. It was crude, more a collection of ndmarks than a precise chart, but one marking stood out. It was a rge, obvious circle drawn over a mountainous region. The name scrawled beside it was Rague.

  "Rague, huh?" I exhaled, tracing the ink with my finger.

  That was either their base of operations or at least one of their major destinations. It was my only lead now.

  I adjusted my quiver and started walking. If I couldn’t track them, I’d have to outthink them. I needed to reach Rague before they disappeared into whatever hellhole they operated from.

  I stayed on the main roads, hoping and praying I’d run into a wagon, a merchant, or even a traveling bard with a cart and a half-broken wheel. Anything that could carry me faster than my legs could take me. The raiders had a serious head start, and every second that passed felt like another mile between me and Mindy. Admittedly, I knew this could happen too.

  The sun had just broken over the treetops, warm and golden, but my stomach twisted with frustration.

  “Come on,” I muttered to myself. “Someone’s gotta be traveling today.”

  Leaf, as it turned out, had been more of a stay-at-home kind of guy. His life before the raid revolved around the forest, the hunt, and the vilge. There wasn’t much in his memories to help me navigate life on the open road. No great adventures, no far-off travels. Still, that didn’t mean I was completely in the dark.

  He could read. That alone was a blessing I hadn’t fully appreciated until now.

  Road signs, maps, bels on supplies… I could make sense of all of them. Leaf also had a decent grasp of general knowledge. Names of cities, regions, even political structures floated around in his head, vague but serviceable.

  One of those names kept repeating itself the more I thought about it: the Terra Kingdom.

  According to Leaf’s memories, it was the rgest and most dominant human nation, located just beyond the Great Forest’s northern border. To the elves, the Terra Kingdom was practically synonymous with human evil. They were the ones who had, as Leaf had learned from the vilge elders, “invented svery, torture, and every miserable cruelty under the sun.”

  And yet, strangely enough, most elves didn’t live in fear of them.

  Why? Because humans, apparently, were too busy killing each other.

  Leaf’s memories painted a picture of a fractured species: one kingdom rising, another falling, all of them too consumed with their own squabbles to unify long enough to unch a full-scale war on the forest. For the most part, elven vilges simply stayed out of the way, and the chaos took care of itself.

  But things were changing.

  The raid on the vilge, the organized branding, and the sheer scale of the violence? It didn’t feel like a rogue band of svers. It felt like something bigger. Coordinated. Funded.

  As I trudged along the dusty road, a cart finally appeared in the distance. My heart leapt, but I didn’t move yet. I watched. It was drawn by a pair of shaggy oxen, creaking along under the weight of stacked barrels and sacks. The driver was an old man, hunched over, half-asleep.

  I raised a hand and stepped into view.

  “Hey there!” I called.

  The man jolted upright and squinted in my direction. “You armed?” he barked.

  I let him see the bow slung across my back and the dagger at my hip. “Yeah, but I’m not here to rob you. I’m looking to buy a ride if you’ve got space.”

  He eyed me for a long moment, then grunted. “Coin first.”

  I fished out a few of the coins I’d taken from the ruined vilge and the dead Terran, silver and bronze, mostly. Leaf’s memories kicked in just in time to keep me from overpaying.

  He took them, spat to the side, and motioned with his chin. “Climb in. Don’t touch the barrels.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” I said, hopping on.

  As the cart creaked forward again, I sat among burp sacks that smelled faintly of onions and grain. My eyes drifted to the horizon, to the distant outline of mountains I knew had to be close to Rague.

  I wasn’t there yet, but I was getting closer.

  I settled onto the edge of the cart, the wooden pnks creaking under my weight. The old man didn’t seem interested in conversation, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to try.

  “So,” I began casually, watching the scenery roll by, “where you heading?”

  He didn’t even gnce at me. “Redwood Vilge.”

  Short and simple. I raised an eyebrow.

  “Not much of a talker, huh?”

  Still nothing. Just the rhythmic clop of oxen hooves and the occasional creak of the wagon. That kind of silence could mean one of two things: either he was just naturally tight-lipped, or he didn’t like elves or people who looked like elves.

  I scratched the back of my head, gncing at him from the corner of my eye. Leaf’s ears weren’t exactly subtle.

  “I’m looking for someone,” I said. “Or rather, looking for the bastards who took someone important to me.”

  That got him to gnce in my direction, if only briefly.

  “You see any armed men on horseback pass by here?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer. Just stared at the road like it owed him money.

  I reached into my pouch and pulled out a few more coins. Not a fortune, but enough to loosen a tongue if it wanted loosening. I held them out.

  He looked at the silver, then at me, and took the bribe with all the enthusiasm of someone reluctantly accepting a chore.

  “Passed them on my way to Ekir,” he muttered.

  My eyes sharpened. “Ekir? That a town?”

  “Fishing vilge. West of here. I get my goods from there. That was... few days back.”

  A few days. That tracked. I clenched my jaw.

  “What did you know about them?” I pressed. “Who do they serve?”

  This time, he turned his head a little more and looked right at me. His eyes were pale, like river stones. Tired, but alert.

  “Count Delur’s army,” he said.

  That name nded like a stone in my gut. I’d never heard it before, not in Leaf’s memories, not in anything I had picked up so far. But there was something off about it. Something official.

  “You sure?” I asked. “You recognized the banners?”

  He gave me a grunt and turned back to the road. “Bck wolf on gold. Don’t forget a sigil like that.”

  I didn’t pn to.

  Count Delur. That gave me a name. A title. And a banner.

  Now I just needed to find out where the bastard lived and how many of his teeth I could knock out before I got Mindy back.

  The road curved gently ahead, fnked by scattered trees and tall grass swaying in the breeze. I was still chewing over the name Count Delur when the oxen snorted and came to a sudden halt.

  The old man tugged on the reins, frowning. “What the—?”

  Then I saw them.

  Seven short figures emerged from the brush ahead, green-skinned and hunched, each carrying something that vaguely resembled a weapon—rusty cleavers, chipped axes, even a sharpened stick or two. One had a pot strapped to its head like a helmet.

  Goblins.

  They grinned with crooked yellow teeth, blocking the path like they owned it.

  “Th-the hell is this…” the old man muttered, panic already rising in his voice. He turned to me, eyes wide, hands trembling as they clutched the reins. “I can’t… I can’t fight ‘em. Gods, I’m just a trader! Please—you got weapons, don’t you? You—You’re an elf!”

  “Technically,” I muttered, already standing. I unstrapped the bow from my back. “Don’t expect me to chant a spell or sprout wings, though.” Not that I knew those things were real in this world.

  I counted them again: seven in total. Small, wiry, full of the kind of confidence that came from outnumbering your prey.

  “Please!” the old man begged. “Don’t let them take the cart! They’ll gut me and eat the oxen!”

  One of the goblins shouted something in a garbled tongue and waved his bde overhead. The rest echoed with high-pitched screeches and started toward us.

  I slid an arrow from the quiver and notched it.

  “Alright, ugly,” I whispered. “Let’s dance.”

  The first goblin rushed forward, letting out a screeching battle cry. I let the arrow fly. It pierced his throat mid-charge, and he crumpled with a wet gurgle.

  Six left.

  They hesitated. One of them started to turn and run. The one with the pot helmet barked something and kicked the coward in the back.

  “Guess you’re the boss,” I said, drawing another arrow.

  This time two charged together, fnking wide. I dropped one with a shot to the chest. The second lunged too fast and rushed the wagon. I dropped the bow and drew the dagger from my belt, ducking low as he swung wildly.

  I sshed across his leg, spinning behind him, and drove the bde into the base of his skull.

  Four left.

  “Ha!” I heard the old man cheer from behind me. “That’s it, d! Cut ‘em down!”

  As an elf, I’m technically older than you if just counting the years…

  The goblins were more cautious now, growling in their nasty little nguage, eyes flicking to the corpses of their friends. I retrieved the bow again, breathing steady. My body—Leaf’s body—moved on instinct, flowing with experience I hadn’t earned but could tap into like muscle memory.

  “Come on,” I muttered. “You wanted a fight.”

  Three of them finally charged together. I got one with an arrow to the gut before they closed the distance. I decided to be braver and get practice with my melee as I grew confident of my victory. So I dropped off the wagon and brandished my dagger.

  I kicked the cart’s wheel for support, using it to spring forward into one goblin and knock him to the dirt. We rolled, grappling. He snarled and tried to bite me, so I rammed my forehead into his nose with a sickening crack.

  I stabbed down. Once. Twice. He stopped moving.

  The st one froze. Looked at his dead. Dropped his weapon. And bolted.

  I could’ve taken the shot.

  But I didn’t.

  Let him run. Let him tell others what happened here. Maybe next time they’ll think twice before ambushing a lonely cart.

  I stood over the bodies, panting, blood soaking into my sleeve.

  The old man climbed down from the wagon slowly, still staring wide-eyed. “By the gods… You really did it.”

  “Yeah,” I said, wiping the bde clean on a goblin’s filthy tunic. “Let’s hope that’s the worst of it.”