“Lieutenant!” Captain Vellis shouted, turning around to scan for his subordinate.

“Here, captain!” The junior officer replied, standing up from among the wounded. With a start, Edwin realized that Elm had been the soldier with the useless arm whose bandage he’d fixed. In the heat of battle, he hadn’t even noticed.

“Can you move? Good. Set up a perimeter and organize treatment of the wounded. Morner? Rodrick?”

One of the nearby soldiers jogged up, Edwin recognizing bannerman Morner under the blood and grime.

“Get me the ten least injured men. We still have a job to do.”

Morner jogged off, shouting at the nearby soldiers. Gerrit and Bordan walked up, their quivers empty and bloody spears in hand.

“Most of us are still good to go.” Gerrit said. “I suggest leaving the marksmen with the wounded. Only two of them still have ammunition, and the others can help patching up your people.”

“Good idea.” Vellis nodded. “Any of the fighters that are up for it can join in. We’ll search the trees ahead and look for the cave, then clear the rest of the valley in case some of the goblins are hiding or coming back for more.”

While the area behind the former line was quickly turning into an impromptu medical station, Edwin glanced around to find his missing teammates. Salissa was up again, the mana overuse having only knocked her out for a moment, and Leodin was helping her drink from his waterskin. Amused, Edwin noticed that Leodin was one of the two marksmen who still had bolts, the crossbow’s lower rate of fire as well as the boy’s habit to carry plenty of ammunition allowing him to outlast the others.

The bannerman returned with his hastily thrown together squad, joined by the uninjured adventurers. They formed up and marched towards the trees.

It hadn’t been so bad from behind the line of soldiers, but now that he was walking across the battlefield, Edwin felt his bile rise. He’d seen plenty of blood and guts, but this was on another level.

The piles of blackened corpses, first killed by the defending soldiers, then burnt by the shaman’s fire were overpowering, the stench of burnt flesh hanging heavily in the air. As they moved towards the trees, they left the worst of it behind, but the field was still littered with corpses picked off by the marksmen. They passed the two hobgoblins that had died to arrows and bolts just outside the forest and headed into the thick underbrush that blocked their vision deeper into the trees. A few steps in, it became much lighter. Still hard to walk through, but at least they could see.

The forest wasn’t large, maybe a hundred meters long and as wide as the valley. The forest floor was pockmarked with small holes and dugouts that the goblins had lived in, dead fires and gnawed-off animal bones sprinkled about randomly.

“Cave on the left.” One of the soldiers reported.

It wasn’t really a cave, definitely not what Edwin had expected. The layers of rock that made up the cliff rose at an angle, and at ground level some of those layers had broken and crumbled, forming a hole with a slanted ceiling several meters high at the center. The goblins had used crude tools and lots of manual labor to make that hole deeper and wider, pulling out the rubble and heaping it into a tall pile just in front of the opening. Atop the pile sat a crude wooden throne.

“I guess that’s the shaman’s seat.” Vellis said conversationally as they made their way there.

“Wonder how it got up there.” Borm said with a grin. “Didn’t look like it did a lot of climbing.”

“Speaking of the shaman,” The captain said, turning to Gerrit who walked next to him. “I guess you were wrong when you said that if it was a shaman, it wouldn’t be able to do magic.”

“I sure was.” Gerrit said with a slow nod. “I’ve exterminated a bunch of nests in my time, three of those had shamans. All they did was jump up and down, wave their hands and yell a lot, right up to the moment we cut them apart. Charlatans, pretending to be powerful to trick their stupid brothers into following them. I’ve heard of shamans doing magic, but I didn’t think I’d ever see it.”

He went quiet for a few steps, then spoke again.

“The last one was before my time, but I heard the stories when I was just starting out. Over a hundred adventurers went out to destroy the nest, more than two dozen of them didn’t return. Most of the worst losses in Guild history were caused by true goblin shamans. If I’d known there would be one here, I would’ve insisted that we wait for reinforcements. A lot of reinforcements. Without Salissa, we would’ve lost.”

“It explains why there were so many of them though, especially so many hobgoblins.” Doren added from the side. “Only a real shaman could instill enough fear to keep this many under control.”

They rounded the throne and arrived at the cave, looking down into the pit. It was completely filled with large, green, leathery eggs.

Gerrit sighed and drew his sword. “I hate this part.”

--- ----- ---

Edwin staggered out of the cave, drawing in deep gulps of fresh air. To the side, Borm was on his knees, retching.

The battlefield had been bad, but Edwin had been able to handle it. The eggs had been filled with a clear liquid that smelled so foul, it made breathing almost impossible. It had been even worse on Edwin with his improved sense of smell. Smashing the eggs had splattered the disgusting fluid everywhere, and Edwin dropped to his knees as well, trying to wipe it off his arms and mace on fallen leaves and moss.

The soldiers that had been assigned to guard their back looked on with equal parts disgust, pity and relief that they could stay out of the hole.

Once everyone was back to their senses, they did a quick sweep of the rest of the valley. The cooking fires were deserted, anything of interest that had been left behind during the charge towards the humans had been pilfered once the goblins had passed by again on their flight. They didn’t find any of the monsters hiding nearby or trying to circle back, and once all the fires were put out, they returned to the others.

“What are you going to do now?” Gerrit asked the captain.

“Back to Newmark to have mage Fordwen help with our wounded and pick up the two we left behind, then straight on to the fort.” Vellis replied, exhaustion slowly creeping into his voice now that the fight was over. “As far as I’m concerned, our job here is done.”

Gerrit nodded. “If you don’t mind, Foris and his team will travel with you. They need to bring their dead companion back to the city for burial.”

“Of course.” Vellis said, looking towards the cliffside where Bolko was lying next to the four soldiers that hadn’t survived the fight.

Elm walked up, looking sweaty, dirty and disheveled after having ditched his helmet, his left arm in a sling.

“The wounded are being cared for. Most of the men have at least a few scratches, seventeen are being treated for more serious injuries. Five of those are critical and have lost a lot of blood. Two are unconscious, Haskin says he doesn’t know if they’ll survive the night.”

Edwin looked over to the wounded, frowning. Walter, even though he wasn’t a healer, could’ve fixed all of them within five minutes. Being unable to save their lives even though he was right next to them and knew exactly what it would take was torture, and for once he regretted Walter’s decision to completely block his access to his mana. Logically, he knew that it had been the only choice, but that didn’t make it any easier.

His eyes fell on Salissa. The girl was sitting off to the side, quietly speaking to Leodin as she was chewing some dry rations. He looked to the wounded, then back to the mage. Having made a decision, he stomped off towards his two teammates.

“Leodin, are you alright?”

The young man looked up as Edwin approached. “Sure, they barely got close to me.”

“And you, Salissa, how are you feeling?”

She gave him a weak smile.

“Still a little dizzy, but I’m getting there.”

Edwin knelt down next to her and fixed her with a serious look.

“Good, because you have a decision to make. See these soldiers over there? Two of them might not make it through the night if they don’t get proper care. Remember at Newmark, where you asked me if you could help the wounded? We had another option then. We don’t now.”

“But…” She stopped eating, confused. “You said I’d be likely to do more harm than good.”

Edwin nodded gravely. “You might have.”

She glanced between Edwin and Leodin, who looked on with worry.

“I can’t, I mean, I used up all my mana anyway.”

Edwin knelt next to her.

“Look. I know it’s scary, but I wouldn’t suggest this if I didn’t believe in you. Yes, you’re almost out of mana, but that’s a good thing too. Much of the risk comes from you not having good enough mana control and flooding your patient. That isn’t a worry now. I can tell you what to do, you just need to do it.”

She still looked scared, so Edwin gently put a hand on her shoulder.

“There are no assurances in life, Salissa. If you do nothing, chances are they won’t see tomorrow. If you try, you might give it your all and both of them could still die. But there is a chance that you can save their lives. What I can promise you is that if you don’t try, years from now you will look back on this day and wonder if you could have.”

She looked over to where the wounded were being treated, expression slowly hardening.

“I’ll do it.” She finally said.

“Are you sure?” Edwin asked. “With how little mana you have, it will be bad. You need resolve, otherwise you won’t make it through the first one.”

She met his eyes, nodding resolutely.

“Good.” Edwin said, squeezing her shoulder before standing up. “Then let’s go and see your patients.”