Kidnapping (5)
A scream from Susan, ringing in from somewhere beyond the prison, was enough to set Ariel moving.
According to Lou, the children of Harrington Village had tried to kidnap her. Even so, she had no wish to leave them to die at the hands of goblins, and so she decided to get out of this place first and then go save Susan.
The goblin prison looked solid enough, and yet the door, for some reason, was not locked. The goblins had simply forgotten to drop the bar when they dragged Susan off. Ariel opened it and headed toward the scream.
A few goblins lay nearby, snoring away — the ones Lou's sleep powder had put under. She ignored them and walked on, until a great door barred the way. Listening, she could hear a commotion on the other side. Unfortunately, this door was shut.
"We'll have to break it, Sis."
Ariel nodded at Lou's words and drove her fist forward.
With a thunderous crack, the door blasted free and went flying. Once it was gone, the space beyond lay open — quite large, for a cave. Dozens of goblins had gathered inside, and a red goblin sat in some manner of chair. On the floor, Susan lay unconscious.
She had blacked out when the barrier door sent her flying with it, but Ariel took it for the goblins' doing.
Footsteps pattered behind them. Jack and Tom had caught up.
Lou's healing powder had brought Jack around and onto his feet, though his body was nowhere near fully recovered. He could not simply stay lying down. Tom had told him that a fairy had healed him, and that an elf had gone to save Susan. He was the one who had kidnapped the elf and the fairy, yes — but things had come to this, and he wanted to help however little he could.
And then—
What was that just now?
A deafening blast, and the massive door went flying: the work of the punch Ariel had thrown. Jack was baffled, but he never got the chance to follow the thought. Susan was collapsed on the floor.
"Susan!"
Jack and Tom ran to her. A festering wound marked her face, and blood was seeping from her waist. She was breathing, but she was not conscious.
"Krrgh."
The goblins, for their part, stared blankly at their king. With a Goblin King among them, what the goblins did was decided by the king — and yet even the Goblin King had no idea what to do with a situation like this. He had ordered them to catch the fleeing human woman, and then the barrier door had burst apart as if it had exploded. A young elf and two human boys had come striding in without a moment's hesitation.
Were they dangerous? The Goblin King turned it over quickly. They did seem dangerous. That barrier door had been built with considerable care; even a troll throwing its whole body against it should not have broken it easily. For the door to fly apart in a single blow meant something powerful enough to do exactly that was here.
The Goblin King's gaze swung to Ariel, and Ariel looked back at the Goblin King.
The instant their eyes met, a chill prickled over his skin.
Ariel's appearance was unmistakably young. Ten, perhaps. And yet, for all that, there was no life in the face, no vitality at all. It was uncanny. Maybe, contrary to how she looked, she was not young. Maybe she was not even an elf. A dragon? The Demon King? The Goblin King could not tell. What he knew for certain was that he was in danger, and that he had to flee this instant.
He gave the order.
He had ordered the attack to buy himself time to run. Whatever the young elf truly was, there were dozens of goblins in this place. Putting down dozens of them would have to take a little while, and in that gap he could get away.
The order given, the Goblin King lurched up from his throne. A secret passage waited at the rear, and he meant to flee through it. But in that very instant he felt the cave flood with light.
He turned his head. A blue sphere had risen above Ariel's head. He did not know what it was, only that it was truly dangerous — and the moment he felt it, Ariel gave a light flick of her hand.
The blue sphere split into dozens of streaks and shot outward.
And that was the end.
A hole opened in the head of every goblin still standing. Dozens of them crumpled where they were, and the Goblin King, of course, was among them. And here he'd thought the day felt strangely lucky. A hole bored through his forehead, he died on that last thought.
Canna, shut in the inn's kitchen storeroom, was not found until several hours later. The village festival had ended, and her parents, returning to the inn, discovered her locked inside. She explained to them in a rush: Jack's crew seemed to have been plotting something together.
Her parents carried the news to the village chief, and before long it came out that the village's communal wagon was missing, and that Nelson had opened the palisade to let Jack's crew pass. The sleeping medicine Tom's mother took had vanished down to the last of it, and the cream bread Canna had meant to give Ariel was the very loaf Jack had offered to deliver in her place. Put together, it seemed Jack's crew had kidnapped Ariel and Lou and left for the city. Given the way Jack usually carried himself, it was easy enough to believe.
A gloom settled over the village like a bank of storm clouds. Even half-drunk, people gathered at the chief's house to talk over what came next.
"We can't just let this go. That young elf saved Daisy's life, and to repay a kindness with treachery — it's the sort of thing heaven itself would punish!"
"And the wagon that brat Jack rode off in is village property. That's plain theft. We have to catch them."
"Catch them and teach them a lesson. So they never try this again."
"No — better to just exile them from the village. Tom's not quite as bad, but Jack and Susan never did the village any good anyway."
"Right. All they were ever busy with was causing trouble."
The villagers were of one mind. Catch Jack's crew, rescue the elf, and then either punish the crew or drive them out of the village. Even the parents of Jack's crew agreed. There were mistakes you could still scold a child for, and then there was this. This was too serious for even a parent to cover up. The village chief, of course, felt the same.
"Then the moment the sun is up, we go after them."
It was deep night. Going beyond the palisade in this state was dangerous. They might lose the path in the forest, or come face to face with monsters, and if that happened, someone would die. Anxious as he was, the chief resolved to wait in silence until the morning sun rose. No one objected. The villagers knew perfectly well how dangerous the forest was at night.
Fortunately, they had a fair idea of where Jack's crew had gone.
"The city, for sure, those brats. They were always going on about how they wanted to live it up there."
Once the goblin horde and the Goblin King had fallen, Ariel put every last corpse into her Inventory.
Unlike troll corpses, goblin bodies did not look as though they would be worth much money, but she did not care. She had space to spare; she could stuff them in to her heart's content.
"The Goblin King, at least, ought to fetch a fair price. They're rare, after all."
Ariel nodded at Lou's words. The Goblin King was certainly different from the other goblins — red-skinned, and a little larger. She had no idea why that made him a king, but he was no ordinary creature. Someone might want to buy him.
Once the cleanup was more or less finished, Ariel walked over to Jack's crew.
Susan still had not come to, but Lou had scraped together even the last of her soul to dust her with healing powder, and the wounds on her face and waist had closed. The one on her face would scar, and there was nothing even Lou could do about that. For now, the best she could manage was to keep the wounds from festering and let them heal clean.
Jack and Tom hung their heads, unable to meet anyone's eyes. If not for Ariel and Lou, the goblins would certainly have killed them. To owe their lives to the very people they had kidnapped — there was no face they could show for that. Once, Jack might have been a shade more shameless. This had broken him completely.
He had come face to face with reality. He was nothing, and beyond the village palisade the world was dangerous. Above all, there was the might Ariel had shown. She had blown a massive door apart with a single punch and swept dozens of goblins away with a single spell, and he — he — had thought to kidnap her. What a pathetic notion that had been. Even without the goblin raid, Jack would never have achieved his goal. The moment they reached the city and Ariel woke, it would have been over. She was that far beyond anything he could challenge.
Jack dropped to his knees.
"I'm sorry. I did something I never should have done. I haven't a word left to say for myself...."
Ariel and Lou were the village's benefactors. They had saved the chief's daughter, Daisy, and he had kidnapped the two of them. Even Jack knew how despicable that was. He had only pretended not to, blinded by greed. And afterward, when the goblins attacked and death closed in, he had received their kindness again. Without Lou's healing powder, Jack and Susan would not have lived, and if Ariel had not dealt with the goblins, Tom would have died in the end as well. So Jack could not lift his face at all. A sincere apology was the only thing left to him.
"I... I'm sorry too...."
Tom knelt beside Jack.
With the two of them like that, it was Ariel who was at a loss. Their behavior was far too much to bear. She did not even really understand what Jack and Tom had done. They said they had kidnapped her, but from where she stood, she had simply woken to find herself in a goblin prison. She had walked out, dealt with the goblins, and put the corpses in her Inventory. They had surely done wrong, but it did not quite land with her. Perhaps because she had not actually been harmed.
"Ahem."
Lou, beside her, cleared her throat and turned to Ariel.
"Sis, what should we do?"
Lou felt a little burdened by it too, much as Ariel did. She had no fondness for the human race, and these ones were galling, but as far as she could tell they truly regretted what they had done. If she and Ariel had actually been hurt, that would be another matter. At this level, it might look better simply to play the gracious one and forgive them.
"Shall we forgive them?"
At Lou's question, Ariel nodded as if she had been waiting for exactly that.
Jack and Tom jerked their heads up.
Ariel felt a weight lift, and so did Lou. Situations like this were uncomfortable for both of them.
"Th-thank you...!"
Jack and Tom, who had no way of knowing what Ariel and Lou were actually thinking, were so moved at being forgiven that the tears streamed down their faces.
Ariel and Lou set off once more for Harrington Village. A little way behind, keeping their distance, Jack's crew trailed after them.
Ariel and Lou were fine, but Jack's crew was exhausted. They had to walk, through the night, the whole distance they had covered by wagon. The dream of selling an elf and a fairy as slaves and living in splendor in the city had collapsed in a single day. Even so, Jack's face was somehow bright. He almost looked relieved. Susan and Tom wore much the same expression.
The morning sun was rising. A gentle wind blew, carrying the fresh smell of grass. Set against the nightmare of the night before, everything around them seemed only beautiful.
He was glad, after all, simply to be alive and not dead. Thinking so, Jack thanked Ariel once more in his heart. From now on, he would have to keep his head on straight. They had lost the village's communal wagon and two horses, so they were going to catch absolute hell — but if he reflected sincerely and worked hard to pay it back, that would be enough. And when they reached the village, he would have to apologize to Canna as well.
While Jack turned these things over, the palisade of Harrington Village began to come into view.