The male had a dagger and the female a pistol. Faster than she could take aim, I whipped the blade across to strike the weapon. I’d only intended to knock it from her grip, but Chopper’s magical blade cut through it like butter, leaving a glowing blue streak in the air.
Even though I could have finished her off, Willard’s words came to mind. I spun on my heel and launched a low side kick. My boot slammed into her small chest, and she flew backward into the grass.
Her companion lunged at me with his dagger. His black eyes were glazed, and he didn’t react to his comrade being kicked away. As I skittered back to avoid the sharp blade, he stabbed at me with a combination of robotic movements.
Like many magical beings, he was faster than the typical human, but my elven blood also gave me extra speed, and I was accustomed to quick and agile opponents. When he committed himself to a lunge, stabbing straight ahead with the dagger, I glided to the side and toward him, close enough to bend down and catch his wrist. I twisted it, but to my surprise he didn’t yelp in pain or drop the weapon. He didn’t make a noise at all as he tried to pull his arm away.
I hefted him into the air, knocked his hand against a nearby tree trunk, and finally his dagger fell to the dirt.
A roar came from the grass, and a disarmed and bleeding kobold sailed over my head and into the woods.
“Don’t kill them,” I yelled as I struggled to keep my prisoner subdued, so we could question him later.
They are not yielding to my superior power, Sindari told me, sounding exasperated. Another kobold flew into the woods. It is impossible to stop them without harming them greatly.
The one I held struggled and managed to get a fist past my guard. It clipped me in the chin enough to hurt, and I had to resist the urge to fling him away—or bash him in the head with Chopper.
Even as he battled me, his expression never changed and his eyes remained glazed. Someone was definitely controlling these guys.
I twisted the kobold so that his back was to me and pinned his arms, pulling him against my hip so he couldn’t move.
To my left, the tall grasses parted to reveal the tip of an arrow pointing at me. The bowman hesitated, maybe afraid to hit his buddy, but he was too far away for me to reach with my sword. I plunged Chopper into the ground and yanked out Fezzik and fired.
My shot cracked through the top of the bowstave as I jumped back in case the kobold got the shot off. But I’d been fast enough. The arrow fell limply to the ground.
Sindari plowed into my would-be sniper from behind and batted him into a bramble patch with a swipe of his paw. The kobold’s bow fell from his grip as he tumbled into the thorny vines. Like the male I’d captured, he did not cry out. Robotically, he tried to extricate himself.
They’re going to keep coming if we don’t do something to stop them, Sindari pointed out.
The two he’d first sent sailing had regained their feet and were stalking back toward us, even though they’d lost their weapons. The one I held kept squirming and trying to escape.
“Chopper,” I blurted, a realization smacking me.
You wish to behead them? Sindari paused to knock another of the returning kobolds back into the woods. They only weighed about forty pounds, which meant his blows could send them far.
I winced as that one clipped a trunk with bone-crunching force. But it still had a dagger, and we couldn’t let them continue to attack us without defending ourselves.
“No.” I shifted my burden around and tried to put my sword’s hilt in the kobold’s hand without losing control of the blade. “Chopper’s magic has protected me many times from mental attacks. Maybe it could break whatever hold is on him.”
The kobold’s small fingers wrapped around the hilt, and he tried to lift it, to use it to brain me. I was stronger than he was, but he made a valiant effort, and I started to think I had made a mistake.
Until he blinked in surprise and stopped struggling. He gaped at me, glanced around, and screamed.
It was right in my ear, and I almost dropped him just to get him away from me—or make it stop—but I needed to question someone.
“Stop,” I said. “I’m not going to hurt you, and if you answer some questions, I’ll let you go.”
I hoped he understood English. Most of the magical refugees that had been on Earth and in America for years knew enough to get by, with some being experts at blending in, but newer arrivals often didn’t know the language.
He screamed again. I couldn’t tell if he didn’t understand me or he didn’t believe me.
Sindari sprang close and roared at the kobold.
“That’s not going to help anything,” I said.
But the kobold, eyes widening even further, stopped screaming… and wet himself.
I groaned and held him out at arm’s length. “Gross, Sindari.”
My apologies. I didn’t anticipate that result.
“What usually happens when you roar at people?”
Stupefied acquiescence.
“This probably qualifies. He got my hip.”
Perhaps you can roll in the fertilizer on the way out.
I don’t see how that would help.
It would mask the odor.
So I’d smell like blood and fish instead?
Yes. Those are far more appealing scents.
If you say so. I pulled my sword out of the kobold’s grip before realizing that might allow the mind-control to reassert itself.
But the glaze didn’t return to the kobold’s eyes. He struggled weakly—nothing like he had before—and stared at Sindari.
Two more kobolds, still under the mind-control influence, rushed at us. Once again, Sindari knocked them back into the brush. Though bruised and bleeding, they rose and came at us again.
I will keep that one from escaping, Sindari said. You’re going to have to let them all hold your sword to break the spell.
I didn’t hesitate to thrust my unwelcome and damp burden at him. As I trotted forward to catch the closest returning attacker, Sindari flattened our prisoner to the ground with a paw. He was kind enough to retract his claws.
It took several long moments to go through the process with the other five kobolds, and I grimaced at one holding a broken arm and limping, but Chopper successfully shattered the mind-control compulsion on all of them. As soon as they realized where they were and who they faced—one of them whispered my most common moniker, Ruin Bringer—they fled.
Since we had a prisoner already, I didn’t try to detain them. I had rope back in the Jeep, but I assumed the kobolds would cease to be a problem once we took care of whoever was controlling them. Or whatever. I glanced at the windmill, an ominous, dilapidated gray structure that looked to be a hundred years old, worried about Sindari’s warning about a dragon.
“I hope we kept one who understands English.” I walked up to Sindari, the prisoner still pinned on his back under a paw, after the others disappeared into the trees. I hadn’t missed that they had all run away from the windmill rather than toward it.
“I understand,” the kobold whispered, staring up at me. He had a split lip that was bleeding. “You are the Ruin Bringer. We didn’t do it.”
“You didn’t kill the pigs?”
He hesitated. “We didn’t take the children. I mean, we didn’t want to take the children.”
“But you took the pigs of your own free will?”
Another hesitation. “No. We were forced.”
“Why do I think you’re lying?”
He probed his bloody, puffy lip with his tongue. “Pigs are delicious?”
He’s not wrong, Sindari said. On Del’noth, we have wild boars that are succulent.
“Your kind would have an easier time hiding out in this world if you went vegan,” I said.
You don’t think the locals would also object to carrots being stolen from their gardens? Sindari asked.
“They might blame rabbits.”
The kobold looked confused.
“Kobold—uh, what’s your name?” Again, I thought of my mother’s advice to make friends with the magical, with those who weren’t criminals. I supposed I could at least be more polite. Maybe if fewer people loathed me, that would help with the issues I was reluctantly working on with the therapist.
“Bob.”
I raised my eyebrows, suspecting another lie, but this one didn’t matter. “Where are the children, Bob? Are they still alive?”
His eyes rolled toward the windmill. He couldn’t have seen it through the tall grass, but he was looking in precisely the right direction. As a full-blooded magical being, he would sense its magic even more easily than I.
“We took them there,” he said. “I do not know if they still live. He may have eaten them.”
“He who? Who’s been controlling you?” I should have asked that question first, but I dreaded the answer.
“The dragon,” Bob whispered. “If you go there, he’ll control you too. Or he’ll kill you like the other human who went there.”
Uh oh, was that the forest-ranger contact Willard had mentioned?
“Was it a black dragon?” I asked.
It didn’t make sense that Zav would be killing people, when he’d pointed out more than once that he wasn’t a criminal and that he was only here to take criminals back to his own realm for punishment and rehabilitation. But I would prefer to deal with the dragon I knew rather than some mysterious new dragon.
The kobold shook his head. “He’s silver and as big as that windmill.” Bob lowered his voice. “And meaner than a tragothor.”
Is that as mean as it sounds, Sindari?
Yes.
“He’ll kill you.” Bob grabbed Sindari’s leg. “Please let me go. He’ll kill me if he finds out I talked.”
I waved a hand for Sindari to release him. Unfortunately, I didn’t think the kobold was lying anymore.
I wished I had a way to contact Zav, not that he would deign to give me information about his fellow dragons. Or about anything. But he had given me a sample of his blood after I’d recovered his artifact for him. We hadn’t parted on antagonistic grounds, never mind that he wanted to cart me around the world as his slave-bait to lure magical criminals to him.