It turned out not to be goblins. The vilgers seemed to know that too, of course, but Simon hadn’t bothered to ask them. Instead, after a quiet ride to the source of the problem, he just tried the same trick he’d used st time. Suffog them in their ir would be a fairly bloodless victory. Unfortunately, he found out the hard way that this wasn’t going to be like st time when half a dozen hobgoblins staggered out of the dank hole in the ground. Other than their dark olive skin, they had little in on with the goblins he’d fought so far, and they were definitely going to be a little tougher than their smaller cousins. They scattered the fire in all dires as they charged through the smoke looking for something to kill.

  Simon hadn’t been ready for a ter-attack or the rger-than-expected oppos. None of them were. Still, he charged in before he remembered that this was the very st life he wao die in. He was just so used to fighting now that it was his first impulse, and he regretted it as he moved toward the oppos that were almost as rge as he was.

  They were vicious, too, but his boldness surprised him as much as it did his oppo, aween their coughing from the smoke and their squinting from the sun, he was certain that he and his men could make short work of the bastards. He was mostly right, but partway through the fight, when there were only three of the green ski, Simon took a club to the back while he was gutting his sed oppohat sent him sprawling. It hurt, but he didn’t think that anything was broken. He would have almost certainly been stomped to death if two of his fellow warriors hadn’t shot it with their crossbows, though.

  After that, Simon was about to order his men to start rebuilding the fire wheiced that one of them was hurt pretty bad. “The rest of you start the bonfire back up unless you want to go in and see if there are any of those big bastards left while I tend to Trav,” he said. From the expression of the other men, he realized that they probably thought he meant he was going to end his suffering with the point of his sword, but Simon doubted it would e to that.

  The man had been raked across the belly with the foul cws of the hobgoblins, and he was bleeding badly enough that Simon was sure the abdominal wall had been ripped, which meant there might be all sorts of internal damage as well. Simon wasn’t much for sce, and he barely remembered his high school biology test book, but still, he struggled to remember those crucial details as he soothed the wounded soldier.

  “Easy there, man. The worst is over. Yoing to be okay,” Simon said, struggling to find something to say that wasn’t so generid ing up empty. He’d shared a campfire with these men for all of two nights, and he knew o nothing about him.

  “I-I’m dying, aren’t I,” the man gasped as he y there in obvious pain.

  “Nah,” Simon lied. “I’ve seen way worse than this. It’s just a flesh wound.”

  “A flesh wound?” he moaned in fear. “What is that? Does that mean it’s already diseased? Gods protect me!”

  Simon realized the man would have no idea what he’d meant by the phrase flesh wound only after he said it, but he didn’t bother to answer. Instead, he gathered up the image in his mind of the wound knitting shut, the iines returning to normal, and the blood pooling in the man’s abdominal cavity slowly being reabsorbed by the body before he whispered, “?????????????f?????v??????????r????ú?????m????? ????????????j??????a?????k???k???????,” under his breath. Simon could see that it wasn’t enough to fully heal such a rge wound, but it did help, and he quickly reached for the bandages.

  The st thing he wao do was reveal his magical powers. He kly what would happen once he’d dohat. Instead, he just made Trav fortable. After all, Simon could always heal him again that night or on the way bae if necessary.

  They stayed there the rest of the day, filling the ir with smoke, and when night came, they camped nearby a a wat the entrail m. It was only then that Simon was pletely satisfied that they’d doheir job. They brought one of the heads back to the vilge on a spear and mou in the square to show everyohat they had nothing to worry about, and that night a feast was held in their honor.

  The vilge wasn’t rich, so the food was meager, but Simon still ehe crude folk musid the amusing medieval dahat he had no idea how to perform. Before the end of the night, he was all but propositioned by one of the women there. “Please allow me to show you my gratitude properly,” she’d breathed into his ear when she brought him another beer.

  Simon politely deed, but the whole thing just made him miss Freya more, and so the m, they made haste back to the Baron to deliver the news of their success. The ride back gave him plenty of time to refle his stratle life. The life of a merary warrior certainly wasn’t what he would have chosen if he’d gotten a say in it. Being the Baron and actually managing all the details of the kingdom could have been fun. Pying a wizard in a tower studying how to make this magic system slightly less broken could have also been cool too, but even if he could figure out a way to reach that spot in one of his lives, he couldn’t imagine how he’d be able to do it without Freya by his side, and that was more important than anything else.

  The trip back was uful, and Simon made his report only very briefly before he went to find his wife. Even that brief stopover was enough to chill him when the Baron’s eldest said, “Hobgoblins, you say? Are you sure? I had no idea. Is it possible fighting goblins might not be as simple as you cim it to be?” He’d actually ughed at that, and it had taken every ounce of Simon’s willpower not to draw his on. The man had known that they were bei out against something a lot tougher, and he’d lied to him.

  “Even so,” the Baron stepped in to smooth things over. “You mao deal with the problem and e baharmed. Excellent work.”

  “Well, not unharmed,” Simon corrected him, “but I think that Trav will pull through.”

  “Yes, I had heard something about that,” the old man said, “Apparently, in addition to your other talents, you are a gifted healer.”

  Simon just shrugged, not sure what to say, and after a little more discussion, he left. His stop was the inn, but Freya wasn’t there, so he tried their home and leased to find her ing up their little hovel. When he first saw her, she seemed upset, ahought he was about to get yelled at, but as soon as the door creaked and she turned, she ran to him and hugged him like she was afraid he was going to vanish at any moment.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “I-I heard that someone came back from your little adventure and was hurt pretty bad. I feared the worst, and…” her words dissolved into tears as she beat her hand importantly against his chest. “How could you think any of this is okay? What if you’d died? What if you’d left me in this strange pce already a widow!”

  “It’s going to be okay,” Simon said, trying to soothe her by stroking her hair. “Everything is going to be just fine. I mean, look at this lovely home. You’ve—”

  “The gods take it for all I care,” she spat. “We could leave tonight. We still have the wagon; we could—”

  “What happened here?” Simon asked, notig the small bandage on her arm. For a moment, he had a fshback of the time Breanna had hidden a wound and then turned into a zombie and bitten him. He felt the sudden impulse to undo the bandage and cheake sure it wasn’t a bite, but he suppressed it.

  “Oh, I just cut myself in here while I was… ing up,” She looked like she was on the verge of tears again, and Simon didn’t uand, but he did his best to make her feel safe.

  Freya g to him all night, except for when she was cooking over the low fire he’d made with some of the cutlery they’d saved from their trip. “I believe someone called all this junk,” she said, smiling.

  Simon didn’t care about the dig. He just cared that it was the first time she’d really looked happy all day. That night he told her about the fight and about the man that had almost died under his and. He bmed the Baron for sending him without the proper information and the people of the region for not warning them, but as he drifted off to sleep, he khe truth. It had been his fault for not iigating more before he’d sought out the frontation. They could have watched and waited or done some scouting and asked around to figure out that they o prepare more. They didn’t, though, because he’d been so certain it wasn’t going to be a challenge.

  He was going to have to work on that.

  The rest of the week they spent ing and building. Simon used ao make some new posts for their fence, and he hired a carpeo fix their doors and shutters, so the pce should be less drafty, but by the time he was called away again almost two weeks ter, their house was finally starting to look like a home, and that brought him a measure of joy and peace that was almost indescribable. The st versation he had with his wife was about what they should pnt in their garden in the spring, and then he was off on the road again, dreaming about a herb garden and perhaps a nice spinning wheel for her if he could find one.

  This seission was against the taurs that had been raiding vilges and herds to the east. taurs were rare creatures in games, so Simon hadn’t had much experieh them, but the reality was fairly terrifying when he saw one for the first time. The creatures were huge aial. They were taller than him at the shoulder, and they had huge sharp teeth and dead eyes that made them look more like animals than men.

  It turned out that the creatures favored short bows that they could fire while they ran at speed, which made them almost impossible to fight or capture. Simon was shot twi their first enter and was forced to y there in pain for most of the day until he could get enough privacy to heal himself.

  Thereafter, he was more careful. They retreated and spent a day practig with whatever the men had on them, be it a long bow, a crossbow, or a sling, and after that, they recruited a likely shepherd in a dangerous area, and they waited among the rocks and the sheep for the taurs to reappear. As the nine of them galloped toward the shepherd kig up a trail of dust in their wake, the man drove his flock back further into the rough ground, and when the taurs moved to follow, Simon and the dozen men he’d brought with him sprang from their hiding pces and took down several of the monsters before the taurs evehey were endangered.

  This time Simon was not able t his men bascathed, but after a few minutes of fierce fighting, only three taurs were left to retreat, and all but two of Simon’s men had survived the enter.

  This time there would be no celebration because their survival had been a hing. If Simon had met them on an open field of battle to “put the fear of house Raithewait in them,” as the Baron had suggested, Simon was quite sure they’d all be dead by now. No, this time, all he wao do was go home and kiss his beautiful wife, and appreciate that he’d survived.