Even as he battled me, his expression never changed and his eyes remained glazed. Someone was definitely controlling these guys.
I twisted the kobold so that his back was to me and pinned his arms, pulling him against my hip so he couldn’t move.
To my left, the tall grasses parted to reveal the tip of an arrow pointing at me. The bowman hesitated, maybe afraid to hit his buddy, but he was too far away for me to reach with my sword. I plunged Chopper into the ground and yanked out Fezzik and fired.
My shot cracked through the top of the bowstave as I jumped back in case the kobold got the shot off. But I’d been fast enough. The arrow fell limply to the ground.
Sindari plowed into my would-be sniper from behind and batted him into a bramble patch with a swipe of his paw. The kobold’s bow fell from his grip as he tumbled into the thorny vines. Like the male I’d captured, he did not cry out. Robotically, he tried to extricate himself.
They’re going to keep coming if we don’t do something to stop them, Sindari pointed out.
The two he’d first sent sailing had regained their feet and were stalking back toward us, even though they’d lost their weapons. The one I held kept squirming and trying to escape.
“Chopper,” I blurted, a realization smacking me.
You wish to behead them? Sindari paused to knock another of the returning kobolds back into the woods. They only weighed about forty pounds, which meant his blows could send them far.
I winced as that one clipped a trunk with bone-crunching force. But it still had a dagger, and we couldn’t let them continue to attack us without defending ourselves.
“No.” I shifted my burden around and tried to put my sword’s hilt in the kobold’s hand without losing control of the blade. “Chopper’s magic has protected me many times from mental attacks. Maybe it could break whatever hold is on him.”
The kobold’s small fingers wrapped around the hilt, and he tried to lift it, to use it to brain me. I was stronger than he was, but he made a valiant effort, and I started to think I had made a mistake.
Until he blinked in surprise and stopped struggling. He gaped at me, glanced around, and screamed.
It was right in my ear, and I almost dropped him just to get him away from me—or make it stop—but I needed to question someone.
“Stop,” I said. “I’m not going to hurt you, and if you answer some questions, I’ll let you go.”
I hoped he understood English. Most of the magical refugees that had been on Earth and in America for years knew enough to get by, with some being experts at blending in, but newer arrivals often didn’t know the language.
He screamed again. I couldn’t tell if he didn’t understand me or he didn’t believe me.
Sindari sprang close and roared at the kobold.
“That’s not going to help anything,” I said.
But the kobold, eyes widening even further, stopped screaming… and wet himself.
I groaned and held him out at arm’s length. “Gross, Sindari.”
My apologies. I didn’t anticipate that result.
“What usually happens when you roar at people?”
Stupefied acquiescence.
“This probably qualifies. He got my hip.”
Perhaps you can roll in the fertilizer on the way out.
I don’t see how that would help.
It would mask the odor.
So I’d smell like blood and fish instead?
Yes. Those are far more appealing scents.
If you say so. I pulled my sword out of the kobold’s grip before realizing that might allow the mind-control to reassert itself.
But the glaze didn’t return to the kobold’s eyes. He struggled weakly—nothing like he had before—and stared at Sindari.
Two more kobolds, still under the mind-control influence, rushed at us. Once again, Sindari knocked them back into the brush. Though bruised and bleeding, they rose and came at us again.
I will keep that one from escaping, Sindari said. You’re going to have to let them all hold your sword to break the spell.
I didn’t hesitate to thrust my unwelcome and damp burden at him. As I trotted forward to catch the closest returning attacker, Sindari flattened our prisoner to the ground with a paw. He was kind enough to retract his claws.
It took several long moments to go through the process with the other five kobolds, and I grimaced at one holding a broken arm and limping, but Chopper successfully shattered the mind-control compulsion on all of them. As soon as they realized where they were and who they faced—one of them whispered my most common moniker, Ruin Bringer—they fled.
Since we had a prisoner already, I didn’t try to detain them. I had rope back in the Jeep, but I assumed the kobolds would cease to be a problem once we took care of whoever was controlling them. Or whatever. I glanced at the windmill, an ominous, dilapidated gray structure that looked to be a hundred years old, worried about Sindari’s warning about a dragon.
“I hope we kept one who understands English.” I walked up to Sindari, the prisoner still pinned on his back under a paw, after the others disappeared into the trees. I hadn’t missed that they had all run away from the windmill rather than toward it.
“I understand,” the kobold whispered, staring up at me. He had a split lip that was bleeding. “You are the Ruin Bringer. We didn’t do it.”
“You didn’t kill the pigs?”
He hesitated. “We didn’t take the children. I mean, we didn’t want to take the children.”
“But you took the pigs of your own free will?”
Another hesitation. “No. We were forced.”
“Why do I think you’re lying?”
He probed his bloody, puffy lip with his tongue. “Pigs are delicious?”
He’s not wrong, Sindari said. On Del’noth, we have wild boars that are succulent.
“Your kind would have an easier time hiding out in this world if you went vegan,” I said.
You don’t think the locals would also object to carrots being stolen from their gardens? Sindari asked.
“They might blame rabbits.”
The kobold looked confused.
“Kobold—uh, what’s your name?” Again, I thought of my mother’s advice to make friends with the magical, with those who weren’t criminals. I supposed I could at least be more polite. Maybe if fewer people loathed me, that would help with the issues I was reluctantly working on with the therapist.
“Bob.”
I raised my eyebrows, suspecting another lie, but this one didn’t matter. “Where are the children, Bob? Are they still alive?”
His eyes rolled toward the windmill. He couldn’t have seen it through the tall grass, but he was looking in precisely the right direction. As a full-blooded magical being, he would sense its magic even more easily than I.
“We took them there,” he said. “I do not know if they still live. He may have eaten them.”
“He who? Who’s been controlling you?” I should have asked that question first, but I dreaded the answer.
“The dragon,” Bob whispered. “If you go there, he’ll control you too. Or he’ll kill you like the other human who went there.”
Uh oh, was that the forest-ranger contact Willard had mentioned?
“Was it a black dragon?” I asked.