Chapter Seven: Encounter

Sāmekh stood behind her husband swaying while trying to remain upright. Her lips were parched and beginning to crack because her broken nose forced her to breathe solely through her mouth. Her left eye had swollen shut and she could only see through a slit of her blackened right eye. Though it meant that she was almost blind, she was oddly thankful because it protected her from the bright morning sun which was causing the pain in her head to crescendo to the point of nausea. They had received food and water earlier but she remained quite weak from her injuries.

Eighteen prisoners stood in three lines of six. Two guards, the huge Dante and the Albino, were set to lead the phalanx of captives. Dante carried a heavy sledgehammer, which would have been carried with difficulty by a normal sized man using two hands, but he looked like he could easily use it to crush an opponent with one hand. The Albino was armed with two long daggers hanging from his belt. Fury towards her cowardly assailant, which burned like fire in veins, was the only thing that kept Sāmekh from returning to unconsciousness. Her body needed more rest to heal itself but they were being prepared to be herded down the valley.

The rear of the group of captives was being guarded by two men, one of whom carried a shotgun. The other had a sling hanging from his belt. She recognized neither of them.

Sāmekh turned to watch a tall dreadlocked woman climbing the side of the valley to her left and a second guard doing the same to her right. They took their positions at the crest of the hill on each side of the valley. Both these flanking guards carried a rifle. Apparently they were valuable cargo.

Her husband turned his head and whispered over his shoulder, “That woman was one of the gang that took us here.”

“No talking!” roared Dante and he drove his meaty first into Dàleth’s gut.

The punch caught Dàleth unexpected and he fell to the ground with a groan. After a moment gaining his breath on the ground, he got up and his blue eyes stared at Dante, until the larger man turned away.

As with the rest of the camp, save the slaves, their guards wore black t-shirts tucked into blue jeans, a leather vest, and a green bandana tied to their arms. It appeared to Sāmekh that all their guards were of the same rank. They had been given their orders by a Goblin with a red grimacing goblin sewed onto the left breast of his vest. She had observed that there appeared to be one Red Goblin for each twenty-five regular foot soldiers.


The siblings moved quickly towards the treed area where they would stage their attack. As they moved, they discussed their strategy.

“Do you think you could use your magic to swallow up the guards, Yodh?” Aleph asked.

“I’m worried that I don’t have enough control yet and might hurt mum and dad. I think its best if I stick with my bow.”

Pointing to the rifle strung across his back, Hei said, “I’m not going to be able to use this unless we want the whole camp to come running.” As he took a practice swing with his quarterstaff, he added, “Al and I are going to have to get right up close to use our weapons”.

“Okay, you guys find a place down on the valley floor and I’ll find a place up on the side of the valley. I’m going to need to take out any of the guards armed with guns, as quickly as I can. We don’t want them shooting off their guns either”, said Yodh, moving away from the boys up the mountain and hiding herself against the rock face behind a tree on the south-west side of the valley with a clear line of sight to the valley floor. She took her bow off her shoulders and prepared her arrows in front of her. She knew that she would have to be quick to kill the guards so that none would let off a shot and alert the rest of the Goblins. She also took three deep breaths to calm herself to enter a state of mindfulness. As she closed her eyes she could sense that her parents were beginning the march towards them. She then returned all her concentration to the task at hand.


“Hei, you go on this side of the path and I’ll go on the other, but we should stay hidden until Yodh has fired her first shot” said Aleph. He drew his blade from the scabbard across his back and hid himself in a copse of bushes, steps away from the path where their parents and their guards would likely pass.

They remained silent and immobile while they waited. Time moved very slowly but after a time the siblings heard the sound of the approaching phalanx of prisoners, their feet scuffing along the valley floor and guards periodically barking orders. The adrenaline was building up in Hei’s arms and he had to alternatively flex and unflex to remain still. He pulled on his hood, as it made him feel more hidden, perhaps a small amount of his real age coming out.

Yodh saw them first and signaled to her brothers below that their parents were in sight. She notched an arrow and observed her targets. She saw two guards in front, followed by the three sets of six slaves, followed by two other guards. Her keen eyes spotted only one guard with a gun at the rear of the group.

Hei and Aleph prepared their weapons and, though their muscles were tingling from the blood coursing through their veins, they held perfectly still, knowing that springing their trap too soon would eliminate their advantage of surprise. Yodh signaled down that there was only one gun amongst the guards and that there were two pairs of Goblins guarding their parents.


She watched quietly as the distance between her brothers and her parents narrowed. When only five metres separated the two parties, she prayed silently to every deity she could think of, including Gaia, and let the arrow fly. The moment her two fingers let go of the string she was overcome with foreboding as the realization that they had seen six guards earlier overwhelmed her. “Where were the other guards?” her voiced screamed inside her head.


The sound of the arrow whirring through the air followed by the wet thwack of it penetrating its target brought the boys out of hiding. Hei jumped from behind the tree in time to see the man holding the rifle fall to the ground with an arrow in his neck. Through the crowd of slaves he saw a second guard remove a sling from his belt and load a rock. His vision of this man was soon blocked by a giant carrying a huge sledgehammer. Using the element of surprise, Hei struck out at the giant with his quarterstaff, stabbing him in the gut with it before he could react.

Though the wind must have been knocked out of him, the giant was quick to respond. With a batter’s swing, the hammer whooshed through the air. Hei ducked under the blow which came close enough to him to knock off his hood. Thinking quickly, Hei brought his staff through the giant’s legs, catching his back leg, and drove his shoulder into his belly. The momentum of the hammer, the shoulder to the midsection, and the staff tripping him up, worked together to bring the giant down. An “umphhh” escaped the man’s lips as he fell hard on the ground. As he tried to get up, he was overwhelmed by a group of prisoners who had shuffled over and were now pummeling him with bare fists. Though he could not regain his feet, even with six to one odds the big man was still able to crack a few heads together, and Hei saw this as an opportunity to join in the frey.


A pasty white man with two long daggers already drawn from his belt stood before Aleph. The Albino’s blades slashed through the air in a complex series of arcs. “Either this guy really knows what he is doing”, Aleph thought, “or he’s doing a heck of a job faking it.” Aleph set himself in fighting stance and leveled his sword at his opponent, feeling like he might be outmanned. As the Albino stepped forward to attack, he was hurled backwards by two sets of hands on his shoulders, landing roughly on the top of his shoulders and back of his head. The unexpected direction of the attack caused the Albino to lose the grip on the dagger in his left hand. Before he could move to stab his attackers with his other dagger, Sāmekh’s foot stepped hard on his right wrist. She eyed him with hot fury through the slit of black and blue swollen flesh that nearly covered her right eye. He let out a scream of anger and pain. As the thought crossed his mind to grab her leg with his free hand, another foot stamped hand on his left hand, breaking the bone, and he looked up to see the foot belonged to Dàleth. Suddenly he was gasping for air since the rope which bound the couple together was now drawn tightly across his neck, causing him to finally gain some colour. His eyes bulged from their sockets and his white face began to go red. The anger that had driven him now turned to fear.

As the lifeforce drained from the Albino, Sāmekh spoke out, “As much as I hate this vile being I can’t bring myself to end his life like this.” Instead, she brought her foot up and with her full force and weight behind it drove her heel into the bridge of the man’s nose, flattening it and causing blood to spurt over his face.

The man’s eyes rolled back in head for a moment but he managed to retain consciousness. He looked directly at Sāmekh. “You whore”, he gurgled out.

Dàleth brought his heavy boot down on the man’s head, ending any further niceties from this scum.

Seeing his parents had taken of the Albino, Aleph set out after the man with the sling. He quickly observed that the crowd had taken care of that threat for him. The man had no chance to use his long distance weapon and was besieged by the third group of prisoners. Instead Aleph set his sword to work cutting the bonds of the prisoners so that they could run free.


Yodh was watching the fighting from above, pleased that their plan had worked but eyes still searching for the other two guards. She notched a second arrow. Maybe they hadn’t joined the march, she thought. Then she heard boots crunching the sand on the ledge above her. She pressed herself firmly against the rock face, calming her breathing, so that she would be neither seen nor heard. She chanced a glance above her head and could see an armed guard scanning the attack below, obviously trying to figure out how best to get involved. She knew she must be at the edge of his downward field of vision and that further movement would give away her position. A look to the horizon on the opposite side of the valley confirmed that the other guard, the dreadlocked woman, was on the other hillside. As Yodh watched, the woman trained her gun on the action below, and Yodh knew she must act. She brought her bow up and fired in a fluid movement, a skill developed through her years as the family hunter. The arrow flew true across the valley, but before it hit its mark, the rifle cracked off a shot. Before she could determine if either the bullet or the arrow hit their targets, the guard from above was upon her, alerted by the twang of her bowstring and the movement of the arrow.

The guard, figuring that he would easily overpower this little girl, decided that he did not need to waste a bullet and jumped down in front of Yodh from the ledge above. He slung the rifle across his back and pulled a knife from his belt. “Come here missie, let me carve up that pretty face of yours”, he snarled.

“Come and get me”, she taunted, pulling an arrow from the ground behind her.

He lunged at her, with the grace of someone more accustomed to fighting from a distance than with a knife, and she easily dodge out of the way, bringing the shaft of the arrow whipping down on his wrist. Though it smarted enough for him to let out a yelp, he held onto the blade and stepped back, reevaluating his prey.

She added insult to injury, “Is that all you got?”

“Oh…you’ll pay for that pretty little girl.” More cautiously this time, he slashed at her with his knife. She stepped back, this time unable to deliver a blow in response. Again and again he slashed and she stepped away, making sure that she remained just out of reach and retained her balance, planning her next move. Once again he slashed out, finally finding a rhythm to her movements, but his false sense of security quickly became his undoing, since this time she ducked under his guard and drove the tip of her arrow through his armpit into the chest cavity beyond. Just as quickly she stepped back. She watched as he dropped his knife, his mouth move though his last words never made it out of his throat, and fell to the ground.


Hearing the shot moments earlier, Dàleth and Sāmekh dove to the ground and scrambled to a more hidden place. With the echoes in the valley they were unsure of where the shot came originated. From where they lay, behind some bushes that provided poor protection from any bullets, they looked and found that Aleph had found cover close by. They saw other prisoners had also run for hiding places, but from where they hid they could not find their youngest son.


Yodh looked across the valley and saw that her arrow had disabled her target. The rifle was still bumping its way, end over end, down the side of the valley, and the dreadlocked woman stood across the valley clutching at an arrow embedded in her upper arm.

She looked down to the valley floor to find the results of the rifle bullet. She spotted her parents and Aleph quickly and ascertained that they had not been hit. She was already scrambling down the side of hill when she spotted Hei. He was on the ground clutching his side and she could see blood gushing through his fingers. She met his eyes and she could tell he was afraid. Another prisoner, a young Chinese woman, had torn the edge of her skirt and was using it to staunch the blood flow.

“Hei is hurt”, Yodh yelled to her parents, suddenly uncaring that they were still quite close to the main Goblin camp.

The other prisoners had tied up Dante, the unconscious Albino, and the sling carrying guard with the ropes that had formerly bound them together. The dreadlocked woman had taken off towards the main camp.

The family met over the fallen body of Hei, still unsure of the extent of the injury.

“Hey guys...my side hurts”, Hei said with a smile. Thanking the young lady, Sāmekh, removed the makeshift plaster and examined her son’s injury.

“Am I dying?” Hei asked with fear in his voice but with a hint of humour.

“You’ll be just fine if we can get away from the Goblins that are sure to be coming”, Sāmekh responded with a smirk. “Luckily, our dreadlocked friend is not a great shot, and the bullet only grazed you. Here let me help you up.”

Before his badly injured mother could help him to his feet, Aleph and Dàleth stepped in and gently guided him to standing. With his mother’s assurance that he would be alright, Hei’s side hardly hurt any longer.

“Just like when he was a little boy,” thought Sāmekh nostalgically, “he judges whether he is hurt by my reaction”.

Knowing that this band would need a leader, Dàleth addressed the milling crowd, “We can either stay together or go our separate ways. Although it will be easier to hide in small groups, we will need every able body if we intend to fight the Goblins”.

“Fight? I want to go back to my family”, responded one of the brothers who had been tied in with his parents' sextant.

“If we don’t fight they will grow stronger and be back to take us again”, countered the other brother.

“You need to decide quickly since the Goblin search party will be heading this way now. Those that wish to join this fight follow me. We will need to regroup and strategize before we begin the fight.” Turning, he led his family away, not looking back to see if they were to be alone in this struggle against the Goblins. “I will hold no grudge against those that go their separate ways”, he added.

As they walked by the three bound guards, Aleph, encouraged by his father’s bravado, goaded, “You tell the Goblins that the Dobros are coming for them”, and kicked Dante in the side.