He’d finally agreed, but now he was wishing he hadn’t. The best he could do at this point was to hurry these elves to their villages as quickly as possible and then rush back to the rift.

  His sleep had been dreamless again. Or almost dreamless.

  All he could remember was a message from Zeke. No words, just a faint blast of urgency, like a distress signal sounding across a foggy sea.

  Why hadn’t Zeke transported Dan into the cave again?

  Was it because Dan’s sleep had been so short and so fractured by interruptions?

  Was Zeke giving up hope? Did he think that Dan had ignored him?

  Or was Zeke in trouble? Was the shield breaking down? Was he too busy fighting to communicate with Dan?

  Dan had no way of knowing. He needed to go to the Pool of Dreams and sort everything out.

  In the meantime, he had to hurry.

  Glancing at the fire pit, he saw the red elves gathered around Thelia, who was spraying sparks into a pile of fresh kindling piled atop the embers that Dan had painstakingly extinguished this morning.

  Thelia bent, giving him a glimpse of her unmatched cleavage, and blew on the small sparks. Some of the smaller bits of kindling glowed and caught, giving off feathers of pale smoke.

  Dan marched over and slammed a boot down on the little tepee of kindling and kept stomping until the last spark had died.

  The red elves looked up at him with huge eyes, shocked and frightened.

  The darkness in him responded to their fear and the trembling of their petite yet curvy bodies. That part of him wanted to punish them, wanted to strip them and spank them and shame them.

  Instead, he simply glared. “No fire,” he said.

  “We’re cold, Master,” Thelia said.

  “Deal with it,” he said. “Even if there was time for a fire, you would alert everyone from miles around that we’re here.”

  The red elves bowed down, apologizing. A short distance away, the green elves laughed nastily.

  Dan felt like telling them to shut the fuck up, but then they’d grumble about that, so instead, he grabbed empty water skins and headed downhill.

  The creek had calmed overnight from a raging torrent to a muddy, knee-deep stream. He would look for a feeder spring and fill the skins there if he could. Otherwise, he would have to—

  He stopped on the creek bank, surprised to see Ula standing in the water with her back to him, splashing water over her naked, light-green body.

  Damn. What a body…

  He’d never been into bodybuilder girls, but Ula was more than just muscle. She moved fluidly, spilling muddy water over her naked body and smoothing her hands over herself. She’d been hiding a shapely ass beneath that fur bikini, and when she raised her arms, he could see her ribs and a firm-looking swell of side boob.

  Her movements were soft and slow and utterly feminine. Seeing this side of the fierce warrior woman was strangely arousing, and he felt himself growing hard.

  It wasn’t just her hot body and contrasting sides. There was something alien about her, something almost taboo. She wasn’t human or elven. In T&T terms, hobgoblins were monsters, after all. He was watching a monster girl bathe.

  He also felt a pang of sympathy, seeing how gingerly she washed the bloody lashes on her back. Beneath those wounds, she was badly scarred from what looked like dozens, perhaps hundreds, of whippings.

  But those scars were old, he saw. Not the work of Roderick’s Raiders. She’d gotten these scars years ago, during what must have been an incredibly brutal childhood.

  As she rinsed her red hair, Dan also saw fresher injuries. A double necklace of tiny puncture wounds perforated both sides of her neck.

  Almost looks like—

  But Ula turned then, exposing her shapely breasts and a triangle of crimson pubic hair. Seeing Dan on the bank, she tensed.

  Dan’s face burned with embarrassment. He’d been caught spying on her like some kind of creeper. And he didn’t even know how to say “I’m sorry” in Hobgoblin.

  Worse still, his raging erection was obviously visible in his jeans because Ula’s yellow eyes were staring straight at it.

  Absurdly, he felt like covering himself, but he resisted, not wanting to look weak, and waited for Ula to explode with indignation.

  But the warrior woman didn’t shout at him.

  Her intense eyes rose from his crotch to his face, which felt like it was burning just as red as hers in this embarrassing moment.

  Ula smiled and stood straight, chin held high as she cupped her small, shapely breasts, gave them a squeeze, and bounced them up and down in her palms. She turned, looking at him over one shoulder, and gyrated her hips slowly, bending slightly to push her shapely ass in his direction.

  Dan stared, mesmerized.

  Then Ula surprised him, spinning around to face him again. She thumped her chest and shouted guttural gibberish at him.

  She didn’t sound mad, exactly.

  She sounded like she was insulting him.

  Then, grinning fiercely with a wild light in her eyes, Ula stretched out a palm in his direction and curled her fingers in an aggressive come-hither gesture.

  It was clearly an invitation, but Dan didn’t know whether she wanted to fuck or fight.

  Or both.

  At that moment, Holly’s voice called from uphill, breaking his trance. He turned away from the naked hobgoblin without so much as a wink and started uphill, Ula’s girlish laughter following after him.

  19

  Ula’s Challenge

  Holly walked alongside the ox, occasionally smoothing a hand over its shoulder. She was careful to avoid the whip marks. She had cleaned the wounds as best she could and packed them with healer’s moss, but they would take a long time to heal.

  Poor ox.

  If only she could take the animal to the grove. The elder druids could heal the ox well in seconds, and the animal could live out its remaining years in the peace and tranquility of the meadows, safe from the outside world.

  But of course, she couldn’t go back to the grove. Not now. Maybe not for a long time. Maybe, she thought with a pang of sorrow, never again.

  Lily would have laughed at her for that thought. Lily insisted that Father would forgive her soon—and had probably already forgiven her.

  But Holly wasn’t so sure. The Iron Druid had been livid.

  She hadn’t seen his anger coming and certainly never would have dreamed that he would even consider banishing her.

  That hurt. For a day, she’d been so sad that it had been difficult to think straight.

  But now, having slept, she was no longer sad.

  She was angry.

  If the Iron Druid wanted her out of the grove, so be it. Now she could see just how prejudiced and prideful he’d been all along.

  Is that why he hadn’t wanted her to attend college? He’d always said that college was a dangerous distraction. She had assumed that he meant it might distract her from druidism. Now she suspected that he had been more worried about Holly seeing the world beyond the grove and forming her own opinions.

  Well, if her father didn’t want her in the grove, she wasn’t about to go begging forgiveness. Exile meant 1500 years without her family, home, or community. If that didn’t bother her father, she wouldn’t be bothered by the prospect of his growing old and dying without her at his side.

  In the meantime, she would make her own way, love her husband and sister-wife, and live her life as she saw fit.

  Her mother’s voice returned to her then, like a dark cloud blocking out he sun.

  If you have his offspring, these children will not be elves. They will be half elves. You will watch them age, wilt, and die. Just like your husband and sister-wife, just like my flowers.

  Holly felt a twist of dread in her chest. She couldn’t endure that, couldn’t even imagine losing her spouses, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

  To them, she would be unnatural at best and a monster at worst. Perhaps she would be a curiosity during their childhood, but as they aged, Holly, forever young, would be a constant reminder of their own mortality. The grim reaper with a blond ponytail.

  She pushed these thoughts from her mind. There would be time later, much later, to deal with these concerns. She was abstaining from sex for the next month and wouldn’t be fertile again for a year. Plenty of time to hash out how she felt and to talk with Dan.

  For now, she would concentrate on the moment, the walk, this beautiful day, soothing the ox, enjoying the sense of the forest around her, and the simple pleasure of watching her loved ones, Dan and Nadia, walking at the head of the procession.

  The red elves skipped and sang and basically acted like the happy idiots they were reputed to be. For countless generations, the red elves had been incredibly powerful, renowned for their fire mages, fortresses, and fighting prowess.

  Their warriors, males and females alike, had tattooed their faces with black flames. Famed for bravery, they had never broken, never surrendered. No foe could extinguish their fierce flame; only peace could do that.

  It was hard to imagine that the ancestors of these busty flibbertigibbets had actually been fearsome warriors.

  One of the giggling red elves skipped to the edge of the road, picked a bright flower, and was about to tuck it behind her ear, when Ula charged her, bellowing a battle cry.

  The little elf cried out and scurried back to her friends, who all stared at the hobgoblin like she might eat them.

  “Stick to the center of the road,” Ula grunted. Bost ul ta falil was a hobgoblin idiom applied to virtually any number of situations, going some distance in explaining the cultural mindset of hobgoblins, who valued training, well-maintained equipment, and proven strategies and tactics far more than individual brilliance or ingenuity.

  A hobgoblin might say Bost ul ta falil during a game, a business transaction, or combat, but right now, Ula was being literal. If the red elves walked too close to the edge of this wilderness road, sooner or later, one of them was going to become a snack for something hiding in the bushes.

  It amused Holly that Ula cared enough to say anything. Hobgoblins loathed elves. The sentiment was generally mutual, though neither Holly nor Lily had ever especially disliked hobgoblins. Holly had viewed them not as monsters but as what they were, a regimented, logical, and physically powerful race dedicated completely to warfare.

  Besides, after her recent revelations concerning her father’s attitudes, she would be careful not to perpetuate his prejudices. If she was going to hate Ula, Ula was going to have to earn that hatred. And that seemed unlikely. The warrior woman had sworn her axe to Dan, so she treated Holly, his first wife, with respect.

  “The red elves are stupid and weak, Tribe Mother,” Ula said now, falling into step beside Holly. “They are good only for raping, killing, and eating.”

  Holly couldn’t help but grin. In hobgoblin society, a young person who couldn’t protect himself or herself was an abomination.

  “Our chief wishes to keep them alive,” Holly reminded her.

  Ula snorted. “He will use them as pleasure slaves?”

  “Dan hates slavery,” Holly said. “As to pleasure, we’ll see. I won’t stop him from taking wives or concubines.”

  Ula nodded and fell silent, looking thoughtful as she stared ahead to where Dan and Nadia walked. When she turned back to Holly her face was even redder than usual.

  “I would like to challenge your husband,” Ula said, speaking quickly and forcefully. “Do I have your permission, Tribe Mother?”

  Holly didn’t say anything for several strides. Ula’s request wasn’t a surprise. She was clearly smitten with Dan, even though he was clueless to that fact.

  When Ula had been captured, she had been in the process of mate-ranging, scouring the wilderness in search of a worthy partner outside of her immediate tribe, a practice common among the strongest female hobgoblins.

  Dan had rescued her from slavers who would have sold her to the fighting pits, where she would have died for the entertainment of weak and drunken spectators, most of whom would never have even tasted battle. To a warrior like Ula, this would have been the ultimate humiliation.

  Dan was her savior. Now she wanted to test him.

  Holly weighed Ula’s request for a moment. Picturing her father’s haughty face twisting with shock, she smiled at the warrior woman. “You have my permission.”

  Ula grunted perfunctory thanks, then struggled and largely failed to disguise her excitement.

  At midday, they parted ways with the gnomes, who thanked Dan profusely before disappearing down the side trail.

  A short time later, and much to Dan’s frustration, the red elves started to lag behind. By midafternoon, the red elves stopped walking, claiming that they were too exhausted to travel any farther.

  Dan was furious. He wanted to deliver the elves and get back to the crevasse. Holly couldn’t blame him. She was very worried about what Nadia had seen.

  Were the acolytes trying to contact Griselda? The Noobs had destroyed the necromancer, but Holly knew that she couldn’t depend on Griselda staying dead. Holly’s grandmother had done just that—and died for her mistake.

  Beyond Griselda, Holly was also concerned about the thing they were feeding in the rift. What kind of monster could roar that loudly?

  Was the grove in danger?

  And yet, despite all of these concerns, she counseled patience, reminding Dan of the red elves’ legendary gift magic. It was unlikely that Thelia’s mother, the matriarch, would give Dan one gift, let alone three, but even that small chance justified this long and frustrating detour.

  “All right,” Dan grumbled as they made camp with three full hours of sunlight left in the day.

  “Patience, husband,” she said. “A leader must be patient.”

  “I’m trying,” he said, narrowing his eyes at the red elves, who were sitting in a circle, giggling and tossing a ball of woven grass back and forth. Dan marched toward the giggling red elves, shouting at them to pitch in.

  Holly laughed. Dan was so intense. When he locked onto something, he drove single-mindedly toward that thing.

  Sure, it would be nice if he was more tuned in to her emotions, but she loved how single-mindedly he pursued his goals, whether that meant killing a lich, marching a bunch of bubbleheaded red elves to Fire Ridge, or going down on Holly and bringing her to orgasm.

  But his single-mindedness did leave him open sometimes. He got so focused on his goal that he completely missed other things going on around him.

  When the shouting started after dinner, for example, Dan was taken completely by surprise.

  “What?” Dan said, his face twisted with confusion.

  Ula shoved him and started shouting again.

  The red elves shrieked and retreated behind nearby trees. The green elves picked up sticks and rocks.

  Nadia stepped toward Dan and Ula, but Holly stopped her. “Hold on,” Holly laughed. “This should be hilarious.”

  “What’s she doing? Oh!”

  Crack!

  Dan staggered backwards and put a hand to his jaw.

  Nadia was confused. “Why did she slap him?”

  “What the hell is wrong with—hey!” Dan said, breaking off as the warrior woman attacked again, this time swinging a closed fist.

  Dan ducked the punch, but Ula had clearly expected that. As he bent, her kick caught him in the midsection and knocked him from his feet.

  Ula thumped her chest and shouted down at him.

  “What’s she saying?” Nadia asked.

  “She’s saying that he has a small dick,” Holly interpreted. “Now she’s saying that if he was a real man, he would rape, kill, and eat the red elves.”

  Dan jumped to his feet, his face twisted with anger now. He pointed at Ula, who continued to shout. The hobgoblin’s powerful muscles rippled in the firelight.

  “I don’t know what your problem is, you crazy b—”

  Ula charged.

  Dan shoved out, trying to block her, but Ula dipped low and drove a shoulder into his stomach. Dan sprawled and threw her to the ground.

  Then they were both on their feet again.

  Ula circled Dan, peppering him with lightning-fast jabs and the occasional low kick. Dan blocked most of the shots, but here and there, she’d slip one through his guard, and Dan’s head would jerk with impact.

  “She fights like a wolf,” Nadia observed.

  Holly nodded. Ula would leap in, strike, and jump back to safety before Dan could counterattack.

  Not that he had swung at her yet. So far, he was just blocking punches and telling her to stop.

  “What’s she shouting now?” Nadia said.

  “She’s talking about how strong she is,” Holly said. “Talking about her bloodline and how many people she’s killed. A lot, apparently. Wait—now she’s going back to dick insults.”

  “I don’t get it,” Nadia said. “What did Dan do?”

  “He saved her,” Holly said.

  Ula kicked Dan in the crotch.

  The spectators groaned in sympathy as Dan’s face bunched up with pain.

  Seeing that she’d hurt him, Ula started winging heavy punches at Dan’s head.

  “Enough!” Dan said, his face twisted with anger. He bulled forward, not even bothering to block Ula’s punches, which cracked off his face. Then he wrapped up the warrior woman in his big arms, slid a leg behind her, and shoved her to the ground.

  Ula spewed insults as Dan rolled her onto her stomach and slid an arm under her chin. His forearm choked off her insults. She struggled to no avail. Dan cranked the chokehold, his muscles flexing. A few seconds later, Ula went limp.

  Dan got up, spitting blood from his split lip, and looked toward Holly with confusion. “What the fuck was that all about?”

  Holly laughed. “She likes you.”

  “Likes me?” Dan said. “She kicked me in the nuts.”

  “That was a test,” Holly explained, “and a demonstration. She was testing your strength and displaying her own.”

  “She’s fucking crazy,” he said.

 

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