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    THIRTY


    <h2 style="text-transform: uppercase">GOSLIN</h2>


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    Imprisoned in the dungeon underneath the keep in Fyrie was a situation Goslin never thought he’d experience. The first few hours weren’t too bad since his body needed the rest, but he soon grew restless laying on top of the straw-filled cot.


    The dungeon was a long corridor with cells aligning each wall. Each stone cell was walled off on three sides with bare metal bars facing the corridor. After being deposited in his cell, the men quickly apologized before leaving, promising to return with food and water.


    Goslin listened to the other prisoners shuffling around in their cells, but the ones across from him were all empty.


    “Hello?” he said.


    A voice sounded from down the corridor. “Brother.”


    “Gatling?”


    “To think you’d end up in the muck with me. Oh, how the mighty hath fallen.” He sounded tired and defeated, like he couldn’t even muster the energy to berate Goslin properly.


    “I didn’t know you were brought down here,” Goslin said.


    “And you didn’t think to ask.”


    “You will gain no apology from me,” Goslin said. Just hearing his brother’s voice made him recall all those twisted memories from his childhood and their latest dispute which ended with Goslin having to render his brother unconscious to protect the rhinn travelers.


    “I ask for nothing. There is nothing left of Eldsprak, little brother. All I want now is to have a sword in my hand and the invaders before me.”


    A shrill voice sounded from a different cell, his speech muddled with drink. “Let me out too and I will fight all of them rhinn, for sure I will.”


    “We’ll all fight, of course,” a deeper voice said, chuckling.


    “You’re all in here for a reason. If you could be trusted to stand with the defenders of Fyrie, you would,” Goslin said.


    “You’re in here with us, little brother,” Gatling reminded. “What is your crime?”


    “Treason,” Goslin admitted.


    Several prisoners laughed, Gatling among them.


    “The noble houses have fallen and now they are eliminating all that are left, no matter how insignificant,” Gatling said, once the laughter finally died down.


    “No, that isn’t want happened,” Goslin said.


    “Then tell me, brother, what act of treason did you commit?”


    “I refuted orders from the council and took matters in my own hands. To protect the wall and Fyrie.”


    “A truly heinous act,” Gatling said dryly.


    The other prisoners resumed talking, but Goslin turned away and headed toward the cot. As soon as he put his head down, sleep took him.


    Dreams of death and destruction plagued his sleeping mind. Images of Sarien lost between worlds with his head hung low, defeated by unseen forces. He dreamed of Hart being chased through the woods by the kozimuz while Heylien launched arrows after the beast, missing each time and cursing up a storm. Lana was in the clutches of the priests of Wyndemir, struggling to free herself while monsters closed in on all sides.


    He woke with a yelp, his body cold and drenched with sweat. The cell was dark, with only a single torch flickering by the heavy wooden door. Through the slits in the wall they called windows, faint yells and screams drifted in.


    “What is happening?” he asked into the dark.


    “Silence, little brother,” Gatling said, his voice barely more than a hushed whisper. “We are not alone.”


    Goslin went up to the metal bars and pressed close to see the door leading into the dungeon. It slowly creaked open and something dark slipped inside through the narrow gap.


    Each step the thing took made a slapping sound, like wet, bare feet on stone. It passed through the dim glow of the torch and Goslin glimpsed a thin, pale, hairless being with long clawed fingers. Its breathing was quick and excited and in the otherwise deathly quiet dungeon. The sound of its lips smacking sent a shiver down Goslin’s back.


    The monster was thin enough to pass through the gaps in the bars, Goslin thought. He silently pushed away and searched his small cell for a weapon. Anything to fight off the monster.


    “No, wait!” someone shouted. It was from the cell next to Goslin’s.


    He searched desperately for anything to use as a bludgeon, but the cell didn’t even have a chamber pot, and the cot was bolted into the wall. Goslin swore under his breath and moved back to the front of his cell. The nightmarish creature was partway through his neighbor’s cell.


    “Hey!” Goslin yelled.


    It stopped and turned its head. A pair of bottomless pits regarded him.


    “Come on, then!” Goslin shouted, reaching out with his arm through the gap, as if trying to reach the monster. By then, some prisoners were screaming due to fright while others kept silent and hidden.


    It disentangled itself from the bars and moved toward Goslin, a gleeful smile spreading across its thin, blueish lips. Goslin stepped back and glanced around his dark cell again. Still nothing he could use. He’d have to fight it with his bare hands.


    Just as the creature moved to enter Goslin’s cell, something soared through the air and struck its head, shattering against its skull. A clay chamber pot. It did not hurt the creature, but it sure pissed it off. It snarled and turned, running past Goslin’s cell.


    “Come over here, you ugly bastard!” Gatling yelled.


    “No!” Goslin shouted, but it was too late.


    Sounds of struggling echoed off the stone walls of the dungeon. Gatling let out a pained grunt, and then all sound ceased.


    “Gatling?” Goslin asked.


    “Yes, little brother?” Gatling panted.


    “What happened?”


    “It’s dead.”


    “Are you injured?”


    “Not too badly.”


    “You saved me,” Goslin said.


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    Silence hung in the air a moment before Gatling spoke again. “I just wanted a fight. Don’t think I did it for you.”


    Several soldiers entered the room, blinding Goslin with their torches.


    “Goslin!” one of them shouted.


    “Landé?”


    Landé appeared before the bars to Goslin’s cell. “The city is in disarray. We’re under attack. We need you.”


    “The council is releasing me?” Goslin asked.


    He shook his head. “I am.”


    “Treason? You?” Goslin asked, unable to keep a smirk from his lips.


    “Let’s call it an executive decision. I have your sword and shield with me. Monsters are roaming the streets, and the walls are under attack. Will you help us?”


    “Of course I will, but you must allow my brother to join the fight as well.”


    “Gatling?” Landé asked, glancing down the corridor as he opened the cell to release Goslin. “Are you sure?”


    Goslin accepted his sword and shield, only then realizing how naked he’d felt without them.


    He hurried to Gatling’s cell. The monster lay dead on the floor, its neck twisted nearly off its shoulders. Gatling bled from several spots on his arms, and a long gash traveled from his forehead down to his jaw. None of the wounds looked particularly deep or serious.


    “You said you wanted to fight. Can you do so alongside our rhinn allies?” Goslin asked.


    A wide grin spread across his brother’s face. “Release me and give me my sword, and I will single-handedly push our enemies into the sea.”


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    * * *


    Goslin slashed, severing the torso of an ape-like creature who’d killed several soldiers with its impressive reach. It grunted as its guts spilled onto the wet street. Everywhere around him, people were dying or dead. Hundreds of monsters rampaged through the streets. No one knew where they came from, if the wall was breached, or if they had another point of entry. Several soldiers crowded around Goslin as they slowly forced their way through the city, leaving dead monsters in their wake.


    From the north, a horn sounded. The wall. They needed reinforcements.


    Goslin pointed to three men. “Hurry to the garrison. We need every able-bodied fighter. We no longer have the luxury of rest!”


    “Sir!” they yelled, before turning and disappearing in the haze.


    Heavy rain obscured the chaos before him and Goslin had no sense of how devastating the attack was on their forces. He hoped that not all was lost as he ordered another four soldiers to head to the rhinn travelers. They needed to be protected at all cost.


    Fire erupted nearby. Goslin swore and started running toward hit. “To me!” he yelled. The city was inundated with monsters. Did they need to contend with enemy pyromancers now as well? He gritted his teeth. The situation just kept getting better and better.


    Goslin rounded the corner of a butcher’s shop, hefting his sword in ready for a swing when he stopped himself abruptly.


    “Tre!” he yelled with relief.


    The young lad burned a group of stalking wolf-like creatures to ash. Tre slumped against the wall and blinked, shaking his head.


    “You’re exhausted,” Goslin said.


    “I’m fine,” Tre said.


    “You’ll have to be. You’re needed here. Do you know where all these monsters are coming from?”


    “From the west,” someone shouted.


    Goslin looked up to see a trio of archers, all pointing westward. One of them shouted, “Over there!”


    “The wall?” Goslin shouted back up.


    “No!”


    “Follow me!” he said, hurrying in the indicated direction. Soldiers fell into step behind him.


    Goslin entered an upscale neighborhood that once housed the prosperous merchants of the city before the invasion. Now, the mansions acted as a sanctuary for the many refugees that flocked to Fyrie.


    He feared the worst, but once they approached, he found no massacred innocents. Hundreds of people were holding the monsters at bay with whatever they could find. A man swung a broomstick, smashing in the head of one of the smaller beasts, while a woman beside him wielded a cast-iron pan. A few soldiers were in the fray fighting alongside the refugees. One towered above all the rest.


    “Brother!” Goslin shouted, but Gatling didn’t hear him. He was too busy swinging that huge slab of metal he called a sword. It cut through the monsters and pushed them back almost as well as Goslin’s own sword. With each swing, Gatling took out huge chunks of flesh and forced the monsters toward the neighborhood square.


    Gatling’s intent was obvious. In the center of a square, a gateway stood open, with more and more monsters pouring out by the minute. Next to it stood two men. One of them wore white robes and, if Goslin had to guess, he was responsible for the gateway. Next to him was a priest of Wyndemir, his eyes purple to match the monsters’. The priest’s attention was fixed on Gatling, and he commanded his minions to focus their attacks on him.


    Goslin flanked the square with the soldiers he gathered along the way. Together, they’d turned into a force to be reckoned with.


    The white clad stranger by the gateway noticed the new arrivals and gesticulated wildly at the priest. Goslin ordered a charge and his soldiers pushed the refugees to the side and out of harm’s way. With their two-pronged attack, Goslin and Gatling made short work of the monsters exiting the gateway. The priest stood his ground, but the man in white began to back away from the onslaught.


    “Don’t let the one in white get away,” Goslin ordered his troops. “He’s responsible for the gateway.” If the man escaped, he could simply open another gateway in a different part of the city.


    Goslin cut a path through the monsters, slicing apart limbs and felling beasts with each thrust. If multiple opponents squared up against him, he bashed them apart with his shield. Each time he crushed an enemy with it, cheers erupted behind him.


    For all his speed, skill, and magical weapons, Goslin fell behind his brother, who fought like a man possessed. A swing from Gatling’s sword cleaved the priest in two, resulting in a large group of the monsters collapsing to the ground and beginning their brutal transformations back to their human selves. Men and women ran up to gather their friends and loved ones.


    Goslin swatted aside one of the remaining monsters. “Don’t kill that one!”


    Gatling was in a rage, his chest and shoulders heaving and his eyes wide open but glazed. He began the swing as the white-robed man turned to run, but Goslin’s words must have reached him through the frenzy because Gatling lowered his sword and grasped the stranger’s robe instead.


    Their allies destroyed the remaining monsters as Goslin made his way to Gatling, and his screaming captive.


    “What’s on the other side?” Gatling asked the man, his voice low and growling.


    “Let me go and I’ll tell you!” the man screeched.


    “Tell me and I’ll give you a quick death!”


    Goslin stayed his brother’s arm. “You’re no rhinn traveler. I’m assuming this,” he pointed at the gateway, “is your work?”


    “I’m a Wayfarer! Tell the brute to let me down!”


    “What is a Wayfarer? Are there more of you?” Goslin asked.


    “We are the peacekeepers of the wayfaring!”


    Goslin was getting tired of the man’s uppity tone. “Are there more of you?”


    “Yes!”


    “How many?”


    “Many!”


    Goslin sighed. This was getting nowhere quick.


    “I’m going through the gateway,” Gatling said.


    “What?”


    “I’m going through.” His brother spoke calmly, the battle frenzy having left him.


    “We don’t know what is on the other side.”


    Gatling lifted his enormous blade with one hand. “We do. The enemy.”


    Goslin shook his head. “We need you here. <i>I </i>need you here.”


    Gatling ignored him, turning to the soldiers amassed around them. “I’m taking the fight to them. Those of you who wish for glory may follow!”


    He gave Goslin a look, then handed the prisoner over. He disappeared through the gateway.


    Goslin blinked. His last brother was gone. He turned to the Wayfarer. “Are there any more gateways into Fyrie?”


    “Oh, yes.”


    “Where?”


    The Wayfarer chuckled. “Everywhere.”


    Goslin gave the Wayfarer a look of disgust, then pulled his sword back readying himself to plunge it into the man’s heart. He didn’t like having to kill a defenseless man, but he didn’t see much of a choice.


    “Wait!”


    Goslin turned. “Landé?”


    The rebellion leader stood with his sword in hand. His leather jerkin was splattered with blood and eyes looked more alive than they had in quite some time. “Thought it best to stay out of the council’s way. They’re not pleased that I released you, much less your brother.” He pointed at the Wayfarer. “Don’t kill him.”


    “We can’t let him live. He’s letting monsters into Fyrie,” Goslin protested.


    “And he’ll pay for that when the time comes. For now, we need information.”


    Goslin shoved the Wayfarer into the grasp of two of Landé’s soldiers. “Just keep a close eye on him or he’ll open a gateway and escape.”


    “You have my word,” Landé said.


    Goslin turned to the Wayfarer and pointed to the gateway that still hung open in the middle of the square. It no longer ejected monsters, which hopefully meant Gatling was faring well on the other side. “Close it.”


    The gateway shimmered shut like he’d seen Sarien’s do so many times before. He hoped his friend was doing better than they were.


    Horns blared from multiple directions. Exhausted, Goslin picked a direction at random and started running. Behind him, hundreds of soldiers followed.