DemonWars Saga Volume 1 by R. A. Salvatore Page A

course. He was beyond grief, beyond logic, with no tears to cry. He would go down to Dundalis; he would kill every goblin he could catch.

    She saw the dead, saw the dying. She didn't know why she hadn't yet been caught, but as she darted from shadow to shadow, from the side of one burning building to the next, she knew that her luck would not hold out for long. All thought of rescuing anyone was gone. All that she wanted now was to get away, far away.

    But how? The roads were thick with goblins. Groups of the ugly creatures ran into each house, ransacked the place, and then, set it ablaze. They showed no mercy; Pony saw one woman beg for her life, offer herself to the goblins circling about her.

    They hacked her down.

    The noose was getting tighter, Pony knew. As villagers died, more and more goblins were free to run about. She looked in every direction, trying to find some course out of the town to the trees. But there was no escape, no way to get beyond Dundalis without being seen. And there were other goblins in the woods, coming in a few at a time.

    No escape.

    Pony squeezed in tight between two buildings and put her head against a wall. She wondered if it would be better to run out into the road and get it over with. "Better that than to wait," she mumbled determinedly, but she found she could not do it, that her most basic instinct for survival would not let her.

    Pony took a deep breath. She felt the heat against her hands as this house, too, started to burn. Now where could she run?

    The girl cocked her head, suddenly realizing exactly where she was. This was Shane McMichael's house in front of her, Olwan Wyndon's right behind her.
    Olwan's house; Elbryan's house.

    Elbryan's new house!

    Pony remembered the building of the place, only two years previously. The whole village had buzzed about the house because Olwan Wyndon was laying a stone foundation.

    Pony fell to her knees and began to scrape the ground at the base of Olwan's house. Her fingers bled, she felt the heat growing behind her, but she dug on desperately.

    Then her hand broke through into an open area. She reached deeper, perhaps a foot and a half down, and her hand met cold, wet ground. Olwan had used large slabs for the base, and, as Pony suspected, the house hadn't completely settled.

    The smoke grew thick about Pony; Olwan's house, too, went up in flames.
    Still she dug, widening the hole, trying desperately to squeeze under the slab.

    The angry young man didn't have long to wait. The goblin band, sentries apparently and not part of the attacking force, did not continue down toward Dundalis but split ranks and filtered left and right into the trees.

    Elbryan went left, shadowing a group of three. He heard the continuing screams in Dundalis, more of a pitiful weeping now than any cries of resistance.
    He saw the houses burning, was close enough to realize that his own house was among them.

    That only fueled the young man's outrage. He stalked quietly from tree to tree, and when one of the goblins paused and fell behind the others, he was quickly to the spot.

    The kill was swift, a single thrust through the creature's ribs, but not quiet, for the goblin managed to let out a dying cry.

    Elbryan tore free his sword and started to run, but too late. He swiped left and right, picking off a pair of thrusting spears as the two other goblins bore down on him, howling and shouting. Their eyes — so full of glee, so uncaring for their fallen comrade — unnerved Elbryan, and he tried hard not to look at them, tried to concentrate on their stabbing spears.

    All the while he was backtracking, realizing he had to flee before the other group answered the howling, call. The goblin on his left came in hard and straight. Elbryan snapped his sword over and around the spear, angling it past on his right, and he skittered out to the left, up the slope, gaining the higher ground.

    All advantage was lost as the young man stumbled, the loose earth slipping