Fletcher turned to the colonists. More had gathered around at the sight of the exhausted soldiers. Fletcher saw the children and the elderly among them. Too many to fit on his wagon.
“Listen to me,” Fletcher said, his eyes boring into theirs as he swept his gaze through the gathered men and women. “In less than an hour, thousands of goblins will be spreading across the land. Sir Caulder and Rotherham have stayed behind to hold them off. Their sacrifice will give us mere minutes. I will not let them die while we waste their last gift to us arguing over your possessions. We are leaving. Anyone who wants to stay can do so. Hell, you’d be doing us a favor—killing you would slow them down.”
He knew his words were harsh, but the truth rang loud with every syllable.
“Those who cannot keep up will join the wounded in our wagon—elders, children. The rest of you, leave everything but the clothes on your backs. Now, come on!”
The soldiers had caught up by now, and the wagon barely stopped as the elderly and youngest children were loaded on through the back. With the added weight, the boars strained at their traces, and the vehicle moved slowly along the ground, more so than Fletcher would have liked.
Already the gremlins were leaping out to lighten the load, scampering alongside easily enough, even with their short legs.
“Swap out our boars with a fresh pair,” he ordered Gallo as the wagon trundled onto the grass, the dirt road blocked by the crippled convoy. “And bring along as many as you can, and let the slowest ride them. We’ll need to swap them out with the wagon regularly if we want to reach Corcillum.”
The noise of battle was thick in his mind, and then Athena was swooping dizzily from the rocks above. Ten goblins were limping away from the channel, while Sir Caulder, bloodied but triumphant, held his sword aloft in salute to the Gryphowl. Rotherham leaned heavily on the Phantaur’s side, clutching a wound in his thigh, but grinning as he yelled over the demon’s bulk.
The horn sounded again, so loud that Fletcher winced as the noise reverberated around his skull. And then the hordes charged across the canyon, trampling over the retreating band of scouts they had sent before.
“No,” Fletcher breathed as Athena circled above.
He concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other but could not tear his eyes away from the scene unfolding in the crystal at his eye.
Twice more the goblins charged, and again and again the enemy was hurled back by the veterans’ skill and courage. An invading army, stoppered in the bottleneck to an empire by two brave old men. Fletcher’s heart swelled with pride, even as tendrils of despair began to take hold. It couldn’t last.
Goblins were climbing over the Phantaur’s corpse, hurling javelins and spears, forcing the embattled men to retreat. The two men fought back-to-back, their swords flashing and jabbing, sending goblin after goblin to their deaths as the squealing masses pressed in. An orc shouldered his way through and lashed his whip at their feet, tugging Rotherham to his knees.
Sir Caulder hurled his sword, skewering the orc in its throat. Then he stiffened, a spear going deep into his back.
“It’s time to leave, Athena,” Fletcher whispered, ordering the Gryphowl away.
He caught one last glimpse of the two men, surrounded by the baying hordes. Sir Caulder on his knees, Rotherham beside him, his sword raised in defiance. A howl of victory from the goblins as they crowded in.
Then they were out of sight.
Fletcher felt the bitter tears stream down his face, even as Berdon silently put his arm around his shoulders.
“They’re gone,” Fletcher said.
Because his two friends had died fighting—and Raleighshire had fallen.
CHAPTER
59
ATHENA COULD NOT LINGER, for the demons that had battled Ignatius in the skies had finally returned. Fletcher hugged her to his chest when she landed beside him, absorbing the love and comfort that was there. He missed his friends.
The going was slow, the wagon overloaded with the wounded and the old. Even when the children got off to piggyback with their parents, the pace felt to Fletcher like that of a funeral procession. Here and there, he could see the signs of where the gremlins had passed on, a smattering of fruit rinds here, the droppings of a small mammal there. Blue and Halfear chittered happily at the sight, even sniffing dung and kneading it to determine their distance ahead.
As the minutes ticked by, Fletcher distracted himself with his responsibilities, making sure the boars were swapped out every half hour as they hauled their heavy load across the poor dirt road and sending Athena to keep an eye on the land behind them.
It took no more than an hour before she saw the dust cloud of the goblin pursuit, staining the horizon like a bruise. The goblins were traveling at a furious pace, of that he was certain.
And all the while his heart sank, twisting in his chest. Because as the enemy edged nearer, he knew they would not make it. Not to Corcillum.
They would be lucky if they even reached the bridge in time. But still, he pushed on. Watford Bridge was a place to do battle, where his soldiers could stand ten abreast and fight the goblins to the last man. Perhaps the rest of them would have a chance then, hiding among the rough, uneven landscape as the goblins turned their eyes on Corcillum.
“Genevieve, anything?” Fletcher called. The young officer was stumbling like a sleepwalker, her eyes fixed on the scrying crystal in her hands. She shook her head dumbly.
So they trekked on through the savannah, watched by curious antelopes and a lazy pride of lions. Fletcher kept back, hurrying along the stragglers and watching the ever-growing haze of dust that followed in their wake.
Soon Athena could see the gray forms of goblins that followed, ranging in a great horde that spread out over plains. The front-runners were no more than a few minutes behind now.
Fletcher heard calls ahead of him. There was an incline there, part of a broad hill, up which the dirt road continued before the bridge. The boars were struggling to pull their heavy load up the path, exhausted after their full-tilt pace across the savannah. Worse still, the track had become rutted after all the trade convoys that had passed that way in the recent months, and now the wheels spun weakly in the deep channels.
Berdon and the others added their weight to the back of the carriage, hoping to shift it upward, but it was no use—the boars refused to pull, one of them collapsing to its front knees in fatigue.
“Lord Raleigh,” Mason yelled.
Fletcher turned, only to see the first goblins advancing through the long grass toward them. They had less than a minute until they were upon them. Behind them, the hulking forms of the orcs could be seen in the shimmering heat, their war paint stark against their gray skin.