Dragonlance - Preludes 2 Vol 3 - Tanis, the Shadow Years by Barbara Siegel & Scott Siegel

Author:Barbara Siegel & Scott Siegel
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

*****

Tanis bolted awake. A sound had penetrated his slumber. Blinking his eyes in the gray, misty dawn,

he saw that the torch had gone out. He sat up and listened again, wondering what had awakened

him. Was it an animal in the brush? Could it simply have been a dream? Had Scowarr snored too

loudly?

"Snored!" Tanis expostulated softly. "Scowarr!"

The slender human only shifted and murmured. The sound that had awakened him came again from

farther down the trail, echoing in the cavernous forest. It was a scream, faint but unmistakable.

"Get up!" Tanis cried, leaping to his feet and grabbing

his sword.

"Huh?" Scowarr mumbled. He stared with glassy eyes.

"I wasn't asleep!"

Brandella rose cautiously to her feet. She could have been a deer, her feet moved so silently through

the glade. She said nothing, but her eyes were questioning.

"Follow after me, but keep quiet," Tanis said. "Don't show yourselves if you can help it." And with that, Tanis took off at a dead run down the trail.

He left the scabbard behind; his exposed sword glowed red with anticipation. Trees flashed by as he

raced down the path. The screaming was louder now. He was getting close, and he slowed. The

cries seemed to be coming from just beyond the bend.

The trail turned, and so did he—right into a band of four goblins who were attacking the dwarf,

Mertwig, I and his wife, Yeblidod. She was screaming, and pelting f the orange creatures with

rocks. Mertwig was bleeding, ' but he continued to battle the beasts. However, there were simply

too many of the creatures for the game dwarf. He swung his powerful battle-axe, yet it was not

enough. He had been stabbed several times, and a long, broken goblin tooth protruded from his

right leg. Nevertheless, he fought on.

Tanis charged into the goblins, shouting curses at them with every swing of his blade.

The creatures, who tended to enjoy a fight as long as the odds were heavily in their favor, didn't

seem to mind a second opponent. Two to one weren't bad odds, after all, and the exhausted dwarf

was ready to fall.

The tallest of the goblins, a dirty orange monster with lemon yellow eyes, stood closest to Tanis. It

swiveled to face the half-elf, holding a broadsword in one hand and a dub that looked suspiciously

like a human thigh bone in the other. With a simple flick of his wrist, the tall goblin threw the club directly at Tanis's head. It flew end over end, and Tanis used his sword to split the bone in half—

the long way!

The startled creature who had tossed the club snorted and muttered a word in goblin. Tanis, who

spoke a few phrases of the goblin tongue, smiled humorlessly. The word had been "Luck!" The

goblin swung his sword at the oncoming stranger, obviously expecting Tanis to foolishly run right

into the cutting edge of his blade. Tanis kept coming. Luck, indeed.

Tanis did run into the arc of the swinging edge of the goblin's sword, but he deftly parried the blow.

Stepping in close, he swung his balled fist into the creature's throat. The goblin fell to the ground, choking.

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