Tales of Eternity by Blake Arthur Peel

Author:Blake Arthur Peel [Peel, Blake Arthur]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blake Arthur Peel
Published: 2019-02-14T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Three

Thunder rumbled in the distance, rolling through the forested hills like the drums of war. An icy breeze soon followed, rustling the trees with a long and forbidding hiss.

Camdyn groaned, eyes fluttering open as he shifted uncomfortably beneath a tremendous weight.

Divines above, he thought to himself, head pounding. Where am I? .... What happened?

He took a breath and heaved, pushing against the weight pressing down on him. It moved grudgingly, inch by inch, but eventually he managed to push the mass off of him, his lungs filling to capacity for the first time in hours.

Blinking against the dim morning light, he propped himself up on an elbow and glanced around. His surroundings caused memories from the previous night to flood his mind.

All around him the dead littered the ground. The scent of blood and decay hung heavy in the air, lingering over the ruined camp despite the mountain winds. He looked and saw that the weight that had been crushing him was a body as well, the cold remains of a goblin with an arrow stuck in its back.

Lovely, Cam thought, getting uneasily to his feet.

The attack had been a slaughter. The goblins had overwhelmed the caravan defenders with their superior numbers, and by the looks of things, they had not left any survivors. The camp was completely destroyed, the wagons ransacked and the goods carted off. No horses were anywhere to be seen, and several of the wagons had been put to the torch, their charred remains little more than smoking piles of debris.

Head pounding, eyes burning, Cam began picking his way through the wreckage, searching for something, anything worth salvaging. He found his sword buried under another corpse, but there was little else to be found. Memories came unbidden to his mind of past battlefields in distant lands, of legions of casualties and the countless friends he had lost.

They were not pleasant thoughts.

Laying on the ground where he had fallen, Ulric stared sightlessly into the sky, his left eye a bloody ruin. His limbs were contorted in an unnatural position, and the gore which pooled beneath his head had turned dark and crusty overnight. Flies buzzed around him, crawling on his open lips and in his grisly wound.

Finding an old blanket among the wreckage, Cam draped it over Ulric’s body as a sign of respect and offered a silent prayer for his soul. “Rest well, soldier,” Cam murmured, clasping his hands in front of him. “Rest well.”

A gust of wind rushed by, blowing smoke and ruffling his hair. He sighed and turned his attention back to the remnants of the caravan.

Most of the merchandise, including the polished rosewood box he had seen P’dash cradling, had been looted. Cam had no doubt that they had been added to a hoard or a nest somewhere nearby. Goblins were dangerous creatures, but they were also predictable. Aside from keeping themselves fed, they only cared about one thing: finding and gathering treasure. They typically did not venture far from their nests and only went out at night, spending the daytime hours breeding and sleeping.

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