“The regs just say it has to be off your neck and fit in your hat,” Willard said.
“If I had more money, I’d bribe you to grow it out just so I could see that.”
“You’ll get your usual combat bonus if you bring in whoever is leading the kobolds. There’s a school less than a mile from there. We can’t let them keep kidnapping children.”
“I know. I’m on it.” I hung up.
I’d resumed walking as I spoke and reached a stream that flowed through the corner of the property. The blackberry brambles lay thick on one side but hadn’t yet taken over the other.
“Looks like we can get through here, Sindari. What happened to…” I trailed off, realizing he wasn’t at my side.
I whirled, afraid he’d been kicked out of our world again. But I spotted him rolling like a dog on his back under some apple trees.
“Sindari?” I called. “What are you doing?”
He stopped rolling, his legs splayed, his forepaws in the air, but he kept rubbing his head on the grass under the tree. Rolling, he replied.
“I see you’re not overly traumatized by whatever punted you away from Earth. That was someone else’s doing, wasn’t it? You didn’t simply get tired and want to take a nap?”
Of course not, Val. My stamina is amazing. And I’ve only spent an hour in your world today. Sindari kept rubbing his head in the grass.
“Well, if you wouldn’t mind, we still need to find a kobold to question. And can you close your legs? I can see your junk.”
My what?
“Never mind. I’m going this way. Please join me at your earliest convenience.”
My boots squished in mud as I walked along a well-used trail on the clear side of the stream. It grew dim quickly under the forest of firs and hemlocks, the trunks rising a hundred feet and more. Dew dripped from the branches, occasionally landing on my head.
Every few steps, I knelt down to study fresh prints in the mud. They were smaller than mine but not as small as kobold prints. Maybe the local children used this path to cut through from property to property. That was another reason to find whoever was threatening them.
You’re going the right direction, Sindari told me as he caught up. Forgive my distraction. I could not resist.
“Resist what? Did someone sprinkle catnip under those trees?”
Fertilizer, I believe.
“Isn’t that stuff poisonous to animals?”
This was bone meal and fish meal fertilizer. Quite aromatic and delightful.
Maybe I would get some catnip later and see if my mighty silver tiger would roll around like that on my living room floor.
“Where did you go when you disappeared? Did you catch the kobold?”
No. I was close and then… ah, I found a trap of my own.
“You didn’t step in a snare and fly up in a tree, did you?”
No, I’m not so foolish.
“Ha ha.”
Follow me. Sindari sprang across the creek and onto another path. Here, the brambles had been burned back, as if by someone with a flamethrower. It was hard to imagine that being effective, since the forest was still very damp this early in the season. The trap was expertly laid and camouflaged. I didn’t sense the magic until it sprang, knocking me back into my realm with a blast of pain.
I’m sorry you were hurt. Do kobolds have mages powerful enough to create such things? I eyed the burned-back vines, wondering if magic had been used rather than a flamethrower.
It wasn’t created by a kobold.
Do you know what did create it?
Sindari didn’t answer right away, instead leading me around bends in the trail, then on toward an opening in the trees ahead. Maybe he didn’t know who had created it.
A faint tingle poked at my senses, like electricity under a high-voltage line. Magic.
Eventually, the trail led us into a large meadow of waist-high grass leading to an old windmill beside a creek. Sindari sat on his haunches and faced it. It was the source of the magic.
That is who created it, Sindari told me.
The windmill? I drew even with him, my instincts itching. The windmill represented a threat, but I also had the feeling that someone was watching us.
No, the being using it for its lair. He isn’t there now, but I can smell dragon.
I gave him a sharp look. Zav?
I didn’t sense his aura, and it was powerful enough that I usually did from a mile away. All I sensed, other than the windmill itself was…
Oh, damn. There were the kobolds again. I’d almost missed their auras since the windmill radiated magic. They were out in the tall grass. All six of them. Had they spotted us yet?
No. I recognize the scent of Lord Zavryd. This is another dragon.
“Another dragon?” I blurted out loud before I caught myself and switched to silent speech. How can we have gone from no dragons on Earth for a thousand years to two in the same month?
I don’t know, but brace yourself. We’re about to be—
All six kobolds rushed toward us, the grasses wavering madly with their passage. As I drew Chopper, the first one came into view. He’d traded his slingshot for a gun.
3
I dove to the side, rolling into the grass, a split second before the kobold fired at me.
Sindari pounced as the bullet whizzed past my head. He tackled the kobold with the gun, but the five others burst out of the grass, armed with guns, daggers, and bows and arrows. The weapons were small enough to fit in their diminutive hands—but dangerous enough to be deadly.
I leaped up from my roll in time to greet two rushing kobolds, one male and one female, with Chopper.
The male had a dagger and the female a pistol. Faster than she could take aim, I whipped the blade across to strike the weapon. I’d only intended to knock it from her grip, but Chopper’s magical blade cut through it like butter, leaving a glowing blue streak in the air.
Even though I could have finished her off, Willard’s words came to mind. I spun on my heel and launched a low side kick. My boot slammed into her small chest, and she flew backward into the grass.
Her companion lunged at me with his dagger. His black eyes were glazed, and he didn’t react to his comrade being kicked away. As I skittered back to avoid the sharp blade, he stabbed at me with a combination of robotic movements.
Like many magical beings, he was faster than the typical human, but my elven blood also gave me extra speed, and I was accustomed to quick and agile opponents. When he committed himself to a lunge, stabbing straight ahead with the dagger, I glided to the side and toward him, close enough to bend down and catch his wrist. I twisted it, but to my surprise he didn’t yelp in pain or drop the weapon. He didn’t make a noise at all as he tried to pull his arm away.
I hefted him into the air, knocked his hand against a nearby tree trunk, and finally his dagger fell to the dirt.
A roar came from the grass, and a disarmed and bleeding kobold sailed over my head and into the woods.
“Don’t kill them,” I yelled as I struggled to keep my prisoner subdued, so we could question him later.
They are not yielding to my superior power, Sindari told me, sounding exasperated. Another kobold flew into the woods. It is impossible to stop them without harming them greatly.
The one I held struggled and managed to get a fist past my guard. It clipped me in the chin enough to hurt, and I had to resist the urge to fling him away—or bash him in the head with Chopper.