Diaries of a Dwarven Rifleman

“We've had our wars, we dwarves. Mostly small affairs; a tussle with one of the trade-cities now and again, some fairly sizable raids by renegade goblins. But 'War to the Knife' is not a thing that we've had to face, not since the revolt against The Maker. We've always known that it could happen and spent centuries readying ourselves for such an event, never really believing we'd need those preparations. Lord and Lady forbid that I should live to see such a thing in my own lifetime.”

From the diaries of Engvyr Gunnarson

By mid-morning the next day Engvyr was back at the Eyrie. He rode with a wary eye on the countryside, his carbine across the saddle-bow at the ready.

The first thing he noted was that the corpses were missing and the tracks of goblin boots were everywhere. He started at the ambush site and rode slowly outward in a spiral studying the signs, then headed up toward the pass. As he looked up from under the brim of his hat he caught a flash of light from high up the slope above the tree line. It might be sunlight off a bit of quartz or mica, or it might not.

The story that the tracks told was disturbing. Sometime the previous night, a large force of goblins at least as large as the mounted party from the Makepeace Steading had come down from the Eyrie and collected the dead goblins. They had searched the area then returned over the pass.

He dismounted to inspect the boot prints more closely. Then he moved off and examined the prints in another place, then another. Two troubling things made themselves apparent.

The first was that he saw the flash up on the hillside again. The angle was different so it could not be a simple reflection. Someone up there was watching him with a spyglass.

The second had to do with the tracks. In the North Country folk made their own footwear, and its style and the details of its construction could vary significantly. Because of this, it was often possible to tell where a person was from or who their family was from their tracks. The same was true for goblins. But these tracks were too uniform; every pair of boots was exactly the same style and pattern. There was only one place he had seen tracks all alike before, during his time in the 3rd Rifles. He was looking at the tracks of an army. He'd planned on riding over the pass and poking around a little more but this was not news that would wait. Turning his horse he headed back to the steading.

If it were me leading these goblins, he thought, I'd have an ambush set for me along the road back. There was a joke among the Rangers that went, 'Sure, I'm paranoid… but am I paranoid enough?'

He cut off the road and retraced their steps from the previous day, going down Goren's Creek for some distance before taking to the hills. He picked his way through the forest below the ridge-line then cut back down to a ravine that paralleled the road, keeping a sharp eye out the whole way. He circled the edge of the valley and approached the steading from the south as the sun was going down.

Rather than caring for his own pony he left it with Ynghilda's groom and went into the Great Hall. Ynghilda and Taarven were talking by the fire and they looked up as he entered.

“Supper's past but there's bread, cheese and some sausage,” Ynghilda told him, gesturing to one of her people who vanished into the kitchen. Then she looked at him sharply, “Engvyr?”

He told them about what he had found and concluded, “You're going to want to put your people on alert, Ma'am.”

Taarven shook his head, “Hell of a time for me to be laid-up.”

Ynghilda looked thoughtful and said, “I can put people on their guard and set up some patrols, but we can't afford to pull folks into the palisade, not with the crops in and folks starting to move their livestock up into the hills to graze.”

Someone put a plate in front of him and he looked up to thank them. It was Deandra, and she looked worried. He must have looked surprised because she gave him a crooked smile.

“Figured since we're here I might as well lend a hand,” she said.

He returned her smile with a half-smile of his own and a nod of thanks. Deandra poured him some coffee as he tucked into the food.

Ynghilda moved around the hall speaking to several of her folk, and each one she spoke to departed in a hurry. He was almost done when she returned.

“Well, word's going out,” She told him, then asked, “What's next?”