The Raid

As he paced the battlements of Longmane Keep, waiting for the inevitable attack, he was assaulted by images he thought had been stamped out of his memory. It was as if the news of a goblin army headed towards Winterdeep made them all come back, as if the floodgates he’d so carefully shut so many years ago had been smashed down with a vengeance. He could see clearly, for the first time in only the gods knew how long the face of his mother; the long black heir he had inherited flowed down the sides of a pale skinned oval face, with those features that seemed to have been drawn with a soft tipped brush and big hazel eyes; eyes that seemed to hold an unfathomable knowledge, some dark and deep secret that had been revealed to her by the gods themselves. He focused on that beloved, yet forgotten face, as if now that he had recovered it he didn’t want to loose it again; he studied every detail, every gesture he could remember - or maybe imagine – trying to imprint that face in his brain.

The sudden rush of memory made him look around the Keep with an interest he’d shown only once before: the day he’d decided this would be his home. He looked down into the courtyard were his men were assembled, ready to give their lives foe him, all of them volunteers, yet his to command, to be sent to the slaughter. How many of them would never see their loved ones again? How many would become locked away faces, as his mother had been for so many years? How many were willing to give their live so he could live? Saddened by these thoughts he shook his head, and reviewed his weapons, prepared to led them personally, to be at the front of the battle, just as he’d done so many times before in his life. As long as he was able, he would hold the oath he’d taken the day his whole village had been burned to the ground.

Back then he was called only Justin, without a last name to him, as if his mother’s wasn’t good enough, and only his father’s last name – which had been denied to him by the lord who sired him – had any worth at all. Few remembered that Judith, his mother, had once been a high standing member of lord Longmane’s entourage, and might have been made a lady of the court if things had been different. Still, given the way things were Justin didn’t really care. Most of the other children of the village left him alone most of the time, which was fine by him, for that allowed him to sneak out to the cottage of Master Fargo, a once powerful magician who had come to town a few years before Justin was born. Saying he wanted to retire he bought a little cottage on the outskirts of the village, where he remained secluded most of the time.

The only one who went to visit the old man was Justin, and as he was a curious boy, Master Fargo begun teaching him a little of his craft, but the boy’s curiosity made him a very poor study for magic, more interested in tales from the lands where the powerful were an everyday occurrence than in the arcane art of magic. The truth of the matter was that Justin not only wanted to learn magic, he wanted to learn everything there was to know, and so he couldn’t stay focused on any one thing for long.

Justin had another good friend, Jeral Barwon, the innkeeper of the town. Mr. Barwon had been a court bard in his youth, but due to his heavy drinking and gambling was thrown out of the palace, and exiled from the realm; which realm the good natured innkeeper never told anyone. Mr. Barwon wondered the world a few years, until one day he reached the village, and decided this was as good a place as any to set up a permanent residence, and where he could use his talents as a bard, and his love of strong liquor, to run an inn. Like a few other inhabitants of this remote village, the innkeeper was a refugee of the wider world, knowledgeable in the customs of the rich and powerful, which he tried teaching to young Justin, saying that “The boy has the makings of a storyteller, and if he wants to get anywhere in life, the fastest way is to become a bard and be accepted in a court.”

So, between the lessons with Master Fargo, and those with Mr. Barwon, Justin barely had time enough to do his duties back home, and thus much less to play at soldiering with the rest of the boys in the village. For this reason, when the first report of goblins marching down the mountain towards the village reached the Elders, Justin was not included in the rag tag army that was hastily assembled; instead he was assigned as a courier between the town and the few men in the nearby outpost. When the first scouts returned with the ominous news that the goblins were only a few miles away from the town, the mayor decided it was time to start the evacuation, and send the courier to the outpost – which meant Justin – hoping that everything could be done in time.

As Justin rode out to the outpost, the first wave of goblins could be seen on the edge of the surrounding snow covered forest. When they noticed the village men were outnumbered, the women and children, who were supposed to flee to the safety of the encircling mountains decided to turn around and make a stand. Being a rather lousy rider Justin held on to his saddle’s pommel until his knuckles turned white with the strain; quickly the forest that surrounded the village thinned and the sheer walls of Donner Riss appeared on his right side, and a thousand foot drop on his left. Softly murmuring prayers to the Goddess Justin spurred his horse on, anxious to be at the outpost as son as possible, dreading the consequences should he fail to bring aid. His horse went as fast as the snow and the narrow path allowed, which was not really fast enough, so the few miles separating the outpost from the village seemed to stretch out, ever widening, a phenomenon aided by the sheer fright of the run, and the knot in his stomach that signaled the worry over the fate of his village.

When the top of the lookout tower peeked above a bend in the road, Justin felt a surge of hope and lessened the grip on his saddle a little; but this lasted only as long as it took him to realize that the smoke column he could see wasn’t that of a cook fire, or of a fireplace to chase away the cold of winter; that thick black smoke billowing up to the sky could only mean one thing, that the village was doomed. Still, even knowing what awaited him at the top of the rise, Justin urged his horse to go on, desperately hoping that he was wrong, that somehow he was mistaken, but it seemed the gods were not on his side, for the only thing he found was the charred remain of the guardsmen stables and the burning inferno of the outpost proper; of the soldiers there was no sign, at least none he could see – after all he was not a very good tracker, and snow had been falling slowly but steadily – maybe they’d gone down to the village and he’d missed them in the woods, or maybe they were chasing the goblins that had attacked them, which seemed more likely, and that meant only one thing, he had to go back to the village as fast as possible and help the defenders.

If the ride up the ledge had seemed long to Justin, the way down back to the village was even worse. The probability of his horse breaking a leg, or of him falling off his saddle had more than doubled, but still he hung on to the pommel for dear life, and urged the animal to move as fast as was possible. When he finally reached the flat plateau where the village was located, and the clearer ground under the pine cover of the forest, the knot in Justin’s stomach began to unwind a little, for if the village had fallen to the goblins, then he should be able to see the smoke, and the lack of it could only mean the villagers were either victorious or holding on, still, he did not dare hope for the first one too much, just in case he was mistaken. He didn’t know how right he was, and at the same time, how wrong.