The Hob's Bargain

know.”
    Hmm , I thought, if their leader is that spooked, the men mustn’t be far behind .
    â€œWhat we going to do about him?” challenged the man on the ground. “I ain’t leaving Henwit behind to get chewed up by whatever happens upon him.”
    The big man threw up his hands. “Take him back, then. You explain to the captain what happened.”
    The raider tried his best, but the unconscious man weighed more than he did. It was obvious he couldn’t carry the limp body very far. Had Caefawn chosen the heaviest man on purpose?
    Finally two of the raiders took the heavy man and staggered off with him. The rest of the party headed away from where Caefawn and I crouched. Almost a third of this bunch was out of the fight, without our killing a soul.
    I twisted to look at the hob. He grinned back. It still looked rather alarming when done with fangs, but I was getting used to it. When he began backing quietly out of the brush, I followed.
    I decided I needed to be armed with something better than a knife. Kith said by the time you could use a knife, you were too close. Even an idiot could kill you. Especially if you were fighting someone bigger, stronger, and better armed. Most of the people we’d be encountering would be all three. When we came to a tree with good stout branches, I stopped.
    â€œYou’re too serious,” Caefawn said, watching me hack at a solid branch of oak. “This should be fun.”
    I stopped hacking and turned to stare at him.
    â€œOf course,” he said, “it never hurts to be prepared.”
    He reached over and took the branch, breaking it off the tree as if it were a twig. Holding it in both hands, he fell to one knee and presented it to me, his tail curled around his feet.
    â€œYour tree branch, my lady.”
    As he’d intended me to, I laughed as I took it from him—though for some reason his actions brought back that last morning with Daryn. I stripped the branch of its leaves and thought, This one’s for you, my heart’s desire .
    The hob shook his head at me. “So sad.” He reached over and touched my cheek with one black claw. “Come, let’s find some more raiders to tease before you make me weep.”
    The second group we came upon had ten men in it as well. This time the man Caefawn chose wasn’t big enough to take two men to carry. When the rest of the group headed out, the direction they chose was right over the top of us.
    Caefawn erupted from the underbrush before they knew we were there. The sight of him—ears, fangs, and tail—stopped them where they stood. I knocked one unconscious with a clout of my stick before any of them started fighting.
    Satisfaction lent strength to my blows and speed to my reactions. I’d been waiting all spring and half the summer for this. While I swung my branch, I remembered Daryn defending my father’s body with a walking stick.
    These were lowlanders not much bigger than I was, but I wasn’t as strong as a man my size would be. However, they were startled and off balance, whereas I…I jammed the end of the staff into the diaphragm of the man who’d tried to take me from behind. If Kith knew what rage I was feeding into my blows, he’d have my head. Anger might make me careless, but it felt really good.
    The man I fought was not as good as Ice but better than Manta. If I’d been a man, I would have lost because he was better than I was, too. But he underestimated me. He brought his sword at my staff, thinking I’d be stupid and try to block it. Instead, I let it slide past and pushed his sword farther from his body, stepping into the opening I’d made. It worked just the way it had in practice.
    Neither my staff nor his sword was usable in such close quarters. I dropped the branch and drew my knife. It was so easy, so smooth. I jammed the knife under his ribs and touched his heart.
    His body took my knife as he fell, but I bent down and snatched up my staff. There were only two raiders left on their feet, and they were concentrating all their efforts on the hob, seeing him as the larger threat.
    As I watched, Caefawn’s tail caught the foot of the man to his left while he bashed the head of the other with his staff. He spun around in a jingle of beads and feathers and tapped the head of the man still tangled in hob tail. He did it without effort. So much stronger and faster than the men he was fighting, he