"The best swordsn are the ones who make their enemies focus on the wrong blade."
***
A hairline fracture shot up the pillar’s base. Spread like lightning frozen in stone.
The crack widened as it climbed. Split into smaller tributaries that raced across the pillar’s surface.
For a mont, nothing happened.
The stone groaned. A deep, ominous sound that seed to co from the earth itself.
Then gravity rembered how to do its job.
The pillar crumbled. Not slowly. Not dramatically. Just suddenly wasn’t there anymore.
The section of ceiling it had been supporting, a chunk of rock the size of a dinner table, crashed down between us and the goblins with a thunderous impact that shook the tunnel floor. Dust and debris exploded outward. Filled the passage with a cloud of grey-brown fog that made my eyes water and my lungs burn.
When the dust began to settle, I saw what I’d hoped to see.
The goblin leader stood on our side of the rockfall. Cut off from his subordinates by a wall of rubble that reached nearly to the ceiling. His yellow eyes had gone wide with surprise. His mouth hung open to reveal those needle teeth.
Behind the collapse, I could hear his companions scrambling backward into the darkness. Their chittering cries took on a note of panic.
The leader was alone.
And we were four.
"What the—" Thomlin started. His sword lowered slightly as he stared at the rockfall.
"Fortuitous environntal advantage!" Marcus shouted. Apparently decided this was all part of his brilliant strategy and he deserved full credit. He raised his sword again. Pointed it at the trapped goblin with what he probably thought was heroic flair. "The adaptive use of terrain features as outlined in Chapter Twenty-Three has created optimal conditions for engagent! Attack the isolated target!"
You’re welco, you absolute lunatic.
The goblin leader spun toward us. His surprise already faded into rage. Whatever he’d expected from this hunt, getting trapped on the wrong side of a cave-in with four humans wasn’t it.
He was bigger than his followers up close. Scarred and grizzled. Muscles that spoke of years surviving in these tunnels through violence and cunning.
His weapon, a curved blade that might once have been a cavalry saber, glead with sothing that definitely wasn’t rust. Poison, probably. Or dried blood.
Either way, getting cut by that blade would be bad.
But he was alone. And his companions weren’t coming to help.
The fight that followed was neither elegant nor heroic.
Thomlin charged with a wordless battle cry. His sword cut clumsy arcs through the air as he closed the distance. The goblin parried his first strike with contemptuous ease. The saber deflected Thomlin’s blade with a screech of tal on tal.
The riposte ca faster than seed possible. The curved blade whistled toward Thomlin’s exposed throat.
He would have died right there if Marcus hadn’t tripped over his own feet at exactly the wrong mont.
Or the right mont. Depending on perspective.
Marcus crashed into both of them. His flailing limbs tangled with Thomlin’s legs and knocked the goblin off balance. The three of them went down in a heap of thrashing bodies and cursing voices.
The goblin’s saber missed Thomlin’s throat by inches. Instead carved a shallow line across Marcus’s forearm.
I joined the lee with appropriate incompetence.
My sword swung in wild, uncontrolled arcs that threatened my teammates as much as our enemy. The blade whistled past Thomlin’s ear close enough to ruffle his hair. He ducked with a strangled curse.
Another swing nearly took off Marcus’s nose as he struggled to untangle himself from the goblin’s clawed grip.
"Watch where you’re swinging that thing!" Thomlin snarled. Scrambled backward to avoid another of my "accidental" attacks. His face was red with exertion and rage. A vein throbbed visibly in his temple. "Are you trying to kill us?"
"I’m trying!" I wailed back. Let genuine panic creep into my voice as I swung again. Missed the goblin by a comfortable margin. "It’s heavier than it looks! And it keeps moving!"
"Swords don’t move on their own, you idiot!"
They do when I want them to.
The goblin, caught between Marcus’s textbook technique, Thomlin’s brutal pragmatism, and my chaotic flailing, found himself unable to focus on any single threat. Every ti he turned to engage one of us, another attack would co from a different angle.
Marcus was quoting passages from his manual as he fought.
Thomlin was swearing steadily in at least three languages.
And I was screaming like a terrified child while swinging my sword in patterns that seed random but kept forcing the goblin to adjust his stance.
He made the mistake of focusing on the wrong threat.
The goblin ducked under one of my wild swings. His yellow eyes tracked my blade as it passed harmlessly over his head. He stepped forward. Saber rising for a killing thrust that would have opened my belly from hip to sternum.
And stepped directly into Thomlin’s thrust.
The blade punched through his leather armor with a wet, crunching sound.
The goblin’s yellow eyes went wide.
Then dimd.
His saber clattered to the ground. Followed by his body.
We stood there in the sudden silence.
The only sounds were our ragged breathing and the distant chittering of the surviving goblins. Growing fainter as they retreated deeper into the warrens. Dust motes danced in our torchlight. Spun lazy circles through the air.
The tallic tang of blood hung heavy in the passage. Mixed with the earthy sll of disturbed stone and the foul stench of goblin.
"Well," Thomlin said after a long mont. He wiped his blade clean on the goblin’s jerkin. His hands trembled slightly from the adrenaline. "That was... sothing."
"Textbook execution of adaptive tactics!" Marcus declared. Sohow managed to sound proud despite the fact that his "strategy" had nearly gotten us all killed multiple tis. His eyes were wide with excitent. Completely oblivious to how close we’d co to disaster.
"The manual clearly states that environntal factors should be incorporated into battlefield decision-making, and that rockfall created the perfect opportunity for isolated engagent! I’ll need to docunt this encounter for future reference. The application of Pincer Formation Gamma in narrow corridors requires further study, but the initial results are promising."
You’re going to credit yourself for the rockfall too, aren’t you.
Of course you are.
"Marcus," Seraphina interrupted gently.
She pointed to a dark stain spreading across his sleeve.
"You’re bleeding."
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