The Heart Grows

Short Claws felt a buzzing excitement as his army ambushed the surface-dwellers. So long they'd planned, built their numbers, farmed the most amazing toxins and diseases, only to be denied their chance to besiege the stupid little town by another army marching in.

They had waited, and waited, and finally were nearly bored enough to attack the army and go through them to hit the city—when the army pulled back. Focusing his thoughts outward, Short Claws asked, "Are they almost in the gully?"

"Count to fifty slowly and the first of them will reach it." Sharp Eyes was invisible to all but magic-enhanced vision. He sat in a tree and watched the huge column of surface-dwellers steadily march on. They looked unhappy, and he could understand why. He had observed their assault on the city and had seen them leave empty-handed. Lifting his bow, he breathed life into its sickly limbs and created a pox arrow for one lucky creature to catch.

The attack started when Axer threw the first tree. Standing high on the hill above the gully, he recalculated his distance and threw a second. Around him other trolls began doing the same.

When the surface-dwellers charged up the hill toward the trolls, Sharp Eyes sent a whisper of thought to Bash, the orc boss of the dungeon. From their hidden locations along the hillside, the orcs jumped from the ground and met the charge with heavy armor and heavier shields. Spotting one of the army that was shouting orders, Sharp Eyes put his little arrow into the man's shoulder.

The rot worked fast. Poisons were only the first wave of attack from the arrow. After those, molds grew rapidly, sinking their spores into the man's blood and spreading wherever it took them. Tens, hundreds, millions of sites all over his body bloomed with fungal infections that quickly produced yet more poisons. His fate was sealed before the arrow had even finished penetrating his skin.

However, while each of the dungeon monsters accounted well for themselves, this was merely the beginning of a battle. Short Claws had planned out many smaller shifts in the fight to keep the push of battle moving back and forth.

When the surface-dwellers tried to pivot south, they found themselves in a bog created by a dam on the river—upstream of which were dozens of beasts the dungeon minions had killed, infected, and left to pollute the waterway.

The northmen weren't always the ones ceding ground or lives, either. A fierce counterattack by a huge woman with a sword, flanked by a retinue of veteran fighters, forced a wedge into the goblin lines that sought to cut off one flank of the dungeon from the fighting—and it worked.

But Short Claws didn't expect the fight to go completely his way. Summoning his power, he drew on the corruption of the orcs and trolls that the woman's squad had felled, he supercharged the fungal growths in their bodies to bloom in long, thin tendrils of spore-spreading fruit.

Soldiers went mad in an instant, grappling their fellows and dragging them down before their armor puffed out with fungus and they infected each other. Short Claws felt his power grow as over half the squad dropped on the spot. The survivors had moved to get upwind of the whole situation.

With over fifteen thousand combatants involved in the battle, however, things were not going to be won by a single rout, no matter how effective.

Hilda had barely gotten the cloth around her face before her allies had started to show signs of a plague from the hole. She shouted and led what remained of her squad away and to safety from the infected air. She had a city behind her, bristling with weapons and having formed a pact with foul heresy that made it impossible to starve out or whittle down, and now she had an endless army that, for every one of her soldiers it killed cleanly, it seemed to take five others with disease.

The north, she realized, was cut off from her. "Check your masks. We're pushing back to our line. If we can't break through here, what chance does our army?" She didn't have to give her reasoning to the few of her veterans remaining, but she figured she owed them that much. "We'll push south. There won't be a relief army coming yet, so we can edge around and find another city to hit."

There wasn't any grumbling among the soldiers. Bracing themselves and checking their masks, they set off back downwind with the aim of rejoining the main force.

Looking for where the fighting should be, Hilda wished she hadn't sent Astrid and her wolves at the front gate of the city. Their powerful metabolism and almost god-like resilience could withstand such diseases as a rot dungeon could produce. Dispelling the dream of seeing a pack of the wolves running over the hill, Hilda felt the air shift a fraction and started to turn.

The horrid-smelling green arrow deflected from her pauldron instead of finding the gap between her bevor and her collar. Snarling, she didn't have to see the archer to know where it was. Instinct drove her to draw a dagger and send it back toward Sharp Eyes.

So much strength had been behind the throw that it flew in an almost flat trajectory, speeding toward and burying itself in the collarbone of the goblin that had fired the arrow. When the dungeon boss fell from the tree, visible once more, Hilda managed a small smile.

Between them and their army were goblins, orcs, and a few trolls. Hilda scythed through them like wheat. With the support of half a dozen other shields and swords, there was a line of destruction wrought through the goblin line up until they met up with their force again.

Getting a flood of reports, Hilda didn't like the news one bit. The path to the south had been cut off, the ground made too swampy with poisoned water to get through, and the northern path was now completely blocked by the monstrous creatures.

Hilda wanted to ask for Donna's opinion, or get Astrid fired up to lead a charge through to victory, but now she was all alone at the head of the army and she couldn't see a way out that wouldn't involve not just death, but probably worse for many at the hands of the goblins.

There was a foe who had the respect to simply kill them, however distasteful it felt to contemplate facing them again. "Turn the column around. We go back to that damned city and throw ourselves at their walls until we pile up high against them. There is no way out of this, but at least they offered us a good death—an honorable death."

She might as well have played a dirge. All the soldiers around her seemed shaken until one held out his arm to Hilda. Taking it, in a mutual clasp, he nodded to her.

"We fight. We kill. We die. We are born of the ice and snow, and this is the way of our lives."

The words spread. An old warriors chant, Hilda felt it boost her resolve and that of everyone around her. "We fight!"

"We kill!" It became a chant now as they turned the army around and began moving back toward Northridge. "We die!"

"They're coming back?!" Brolly was at the entrance of the dungeon and was about to head inside to give Travis the good news that everyone was fine with him building a wizard tower when an out-of-breath runner reached him. Looking back at the man, he stepped inside. "Travis! The northerners are returning!"

Penelope felt her mind start up again. Her awareness restored, she reached out to feel how changed her body was—and heard Travis start swearing. "What's wrong?" Her body, she realized, might be too big for the normal tunnels. She went to take a step and started to crouch, only for her size to shift as she shrank down so that it would only be a tight squeeze. She shuffled backwards again.

"The army pulled back while you were asleep. Well, they're coming back. Brolly said it and ran back off again. Why would they come back after spending days carefully pulling out?"

"Ask Astrid. I can't get my head around being these weird and crazy Balavians." A quick assessment of her body instantly sparked confusion. She had way more tail than before, and now her wings felt huge by dint of her sensing a lot more with them.

Turning her head revealed another change—her neck was longer. She glanced down to see her hands were now mostly talons, though they were sheathed with a soft green that she felt would be similar in effect to what her swords did. "Okay, do I walk on all fours now or can I stand up?"

Looking around the heart room, everything seemed much smaller now. "Trav, I'm going topside. That way I can see how big I am and find out what's going on. I can also figure out if I can walk upright." It worried at her thoughts how easy it felt to walk using her hands as feet. She knew it had been coming, but not that it would happen so soon.

"Is anything going cray—?" Penelope stopped in the middle of her question as the dungeon shook. "What was that?!"

"Wizard tower," Travis said, as if that really answered the question. "Okay, it's a big tower that's now my entrance. Huge tower! I need more than a lizard's eye view of this thing!"

"I'm heading out, I said. It'll just take me a bit to figure out walking in these halls. The twists are out of the question now, I think." What she liked, when she tested her new claws out, was that she could literally carve her way through the rock with them. She didn't want to think about digging a bigger area that might need shoring up.

Stairs, it seemed, were a problem. She had to squeeze a little more to take them, but got to the first floor of the dungeon quickly by taking the direct ones.

She made it all the way to the entrance without having to pass anyone, which was a relief, but she heard several people gasp when she got outside—and looked down at everyone. Not down as in a little taller than normal, down as in she lifted her head and was almost twice as tall as the people nearby. "Uh, hi. Look, don't worry about me. I had a little growth spurt is all. Someone said the northmen were coming back?"

Shaking out of her shock at seeing a dragon up close, Portentia Silversong raised her hand and pointed in the direction of the guardhouse. "Commander Windchime. Do you know if Axel is inside?" If her great grandfather wasn't a kobold in this very dungeon, she might have run screaming from the lunacy of giving a dragon directions, but he'd told her about Penelope and how she was going to be getting bigger and bigger. It didn't make facing a dragon any less panic inducing.

Without thinking, Penelope said, "Trav, is—? Oh, hold up, I need to go back inside and find out—"

"I can hear you out here! You're faint, but I can hear you, Pen! What did you need? Also, can you look up at my tower?" Travis asked.

Turning her head and looking up, Penelope laughed. "You have a hat! Anyway, is Axel inside?"

The wizard tower was a single spire, thicker around than the other towers of Northridge, it also shot about three times higher than any other—including the main gate. "Axel's working in his forge." Travis wished he could spend some time examining the tower more, but Penelope looked back down to Portentia. It shocked him a how far down that was. "How big are you out there?"

"He's inside. Trav, let him know he has a visitor. Also, I'm too damn big, but there's not much we can do about that now." Spreading her wings, Penelope froze before taking off when Portentia was trying to wave to get her attention. "What's up?"

"You, uh, might want to walk. If I was on guard duty, had a rifle, and saw you flying directly at me…" Portentia winced at where the sentence was going.

Blinking in surprise, then nodding, Penelope let out a long breath. "Thank you. I'd have gotten my ass shot if I'd done that. Okay, walking there. I hope the city itself isn't worried about this." Walking off up the street, trying to ignore the shouts of people along the way, she realized she wasn't as big as she'd heard dragons would be. "Trav, can you still hear me?"

"Faintly, but I can! Can you hear me?" Travis asked.

"Yeah. Okay, this is neat. So I guess that means you are more part of the city than ever now?" Feeling like she was lumbering, Penelope nonetheless kept her wings folded against her sides and tried to keep her big tail from hitting anyone or anything.

Finally, reaching the guardhouse, she considered that she wouldn't fit in the front door. "Hey, uh." The two guards had been watching her with a little boredom on their faces. At least, with such a relaxed meeting, they weren't going for their weapons. "Can one of you go inside and get Brolly out here?"

"First it was lizards, now this. Faith, what do you think that dungeon is feeding its critters now?"

"I dunno, Herb, seems like it's working, whatever it is." Sergeant Faith winked at Penelope. "I'll go get him. You're the dungeon's boss, right?"

Penelope nodded, doing her best not to look at the guards as if they could be a snack. "Yeah. I got another upgrade, what with all the insanity of this siege we thought it would be a good idea."

"Can't say as I've ever seen a dragon defend a city, but if they really are coming back—I'll have something new to brag about to future recruits," Corporal Herbert said. "She won't be lon—"

Brolly opened the door and froze. He hadn't been told about the new upgrade, and for a moment his hand reached down to the sword at his side before he pulled it back and sighed. "Pen?"

"Yeah. New upgrade. So, we have the army coming back? Any reason why?" Being quadrupedal, she was finding, solved and created problems. Problems like how to carry things were new, but how do I stop myself from gesturing with my hands while talking was a problem now behind her. She didn't mind that last one.

"Remember how they were blocking our plans to start delving into the goblin dungeon, giving it time to do whatever it wanted to?" Waiting for Penelope to nod, Brolly went on. "Turns out the goblins were raising an army, probably to besiege the city. They decided to attack the northerners as they retreated. Now, remember that talk we had about dealing with rot monsters being done with magic?"

Penelope winced at the idea, but from the way everyone reacted to her motion it didn't translate well to a dragon. "Ouch. Makes me feel sorry for them. That's no way to go. Okay. So, what if we cover their retreat and offer them a deal?"

"We can't. Part of the charter for founding a city involves taking oaths, and one is to not give aid to invaders. If it were only a matter of not calling them that, it might work, but we've already sent out requests for aid." Brolly sighed. The time for calling it all a mix up and starting over was gone, but he would rather that army have left for good. "So, if they're coming back to put us between them and the goblins, all the good, but if they attack us again, I can't turn a blind eye to that."

Having never heard of the oaths before, Penelope had to accept that and move on. "So what do we do? Attack them and move onto the goblins behind them?"

"We don't have that kind of range. I've put all the guards on alert. They're working in shifts to man the walls again. I'd hoped this was over, but it seems like even if we kill every last one of the northerners, we then have a goblin army to fight. At least that'll be easier." Brolly remembered the other news he had for the dungeon. "Right, I forgot to tell you. Let Trav know that we're okay with him building the wizard tower."

Before Penelope could reply, Travis coached her on how to handle the indiscretion of building the tower before he had permission. "Don't tell him we did it anyway. He doesn't need to know that. You can tell him that I can hear you anywhere in the city now, though. That should distract him and help him think I just built it. If they figure it out later, I'll tell them with news of the army returning, I wanted to push forward with all major works."

Penelope at first wasn't sure what to say about it, but shrugged again and moved on. "Trav said he can hear and see where I am now. Might only be in the city, but I let him know you were okay with the tower." It wasn't a lie, she thought. "I suppose I should fly out there and take a look at things."

Still getting used to having flying cavalry, Brolly nodded. "So long as you don't think they can hit you, go for it."

"You're going to strafe the goblins, aren't you?" Travis asked Penelope.

The concept of strafing was new, but Travis had explained it to Fife in her hearing. "Yeah, I think I got this." Her answer was for both Travis and Brolly—though she was glad the latter didn't hear the former's comment. "If I see a target of opportunity, though, I'll take it."

Brolly watched her walk off to an open square that, while it wasn't empty of people, it was after they all realized it was where a dragon planned to go. She spread her wings, jumped, and launched into the sky. Despite knowing she was a friend and despite having praised her for defending his city, Brolly felt a small hit of irrational fear at seeing such a huge predator. Dragons, typically, saw people as fodder, and his subconscious knew that and wouldn't give the idea up.

Flying was everything Penelope hoped it would be. Her body knew how to do it and her muscles seemed particularly good at working her huge wings to keep her in the sky. Circling around the top of the new wizard tower, she reached out for Travis. "I don't know how any of them will take seeing me like this, but hopefully the idiot northerners don't have time to get any kind of ballista set up."

"Make sure you come back, okay?"

"Of course I will. Love you, Trav."

"Love you too." Travis watched through her eyes as Penelope grew distant and, then, faded completely. It was nice to know she wouldn't die so long as he survived. "And good luck."

The world was so much easier to understand from the sky. Penelope circled around the whole city once to get her bearings, then turned toward the goblin dungeon. The ongoing battle wasn't exactly hard to see. There were tens of thousands swarming along. The goblins seemed less numerous, but they definitely had the energy to chase the northerners.

While not looking exactly like they were retreating, the northerners seemed focused on the city before them—only their rearguard seemed to pay the goblins any mind at all.

Instinct told Penelope where the perfect spot was to begin a dive toward the goblins. As she tipped toward the ground, a strong pressure began to build inside her. She knew what was coming and welcomed it. Lined up with the second row of the goblins pursuing the northerners, she opened her mouth and came in about twenty feet above the goblins and breathed down at them in a line.

Hilda had been focused on the monsters chasing them. Time and again they'd skirmished and fought off the advances while their column pulled back toward the city. Each encounter she'd lost more of her veterans. Now, with none of her elites left and only regular infantry, she was losing more troops faster. Where the dragon had come from or why it was attacking the goblins, she didn't know, but the sight of it spraying acid down on the enemy lines made her warrior spirit cheer. A foe, at last, that she could die to and know only honor. "Pull back! Move fast before it comes for us!"

The wide swathe Penelope's acid carved through the goblins sated something inside her she didn't know she had. She pulled up, pumping her wings hard to get height above them, before banking around and coming down again.

"It's hitting them again." Gunhild, her whole body screaming with exhaustion, stared in awe as the monster came down and burned its way through the monster army.

"I don't understand why it's only attacking them. It could have hit us as easily, and we wouldn't throw cursed sorcery and trees its way." All her intent of running to the city to die had faded for a moment, and Hilda could only stand there and witness a slaughter so complete and profound that it dwarfed what the monsters had done to her own army. "If it's part of one of the holes in that city, what hope have we of escaping this field to find a good death?"

Again and again Penelope strafed the goblin lines. She killed thousands of them, turning their rout of the northerners into a stall and, finally. When the goblins had all withdrawn rather than face her wrath again, she wheeled around and sighted on the group of soldiers who'd been the rearguard.

When the dragon turned toward them, Hilda swore she could feel the line of her ancestors at her back. The power the beast displayed sent shivers of fear through her that she clamped down on and ground away. "Ready yourselves! Our lives will be sung about for generations if we can fight this beast without filling our pants!"

Slamming into the ground, Penelope kept a full length of her body between her and the fighters. The burning inside her seemed ever-present and wanted out, but instead of sending it in a line toward the fighters, she lifted her head and shot it into the sky.

Having seen that very breath attack fell trolls, orcs, and goblins already, Hilda had no doubt her own fate should it have caught her. That's when she realized what Penelope was doing. "It's posturing. Why?" Keeping her hand on her hilt, not drawing her weapon yet, Hilda walked closer to the beast. "Are you here to kill us?"

The words were hard to follow, but Penelope's recent dreaming had carried some of them to her. She knew Travis had been learning it, and now she had proof that his mind bled knowledge to her while she slept. She was at least able to follow Hilda's words. "No. You will leave!"

Hearing it speak passable Balavian, Hilda drew her hand back, slowly, from her hilt. "We cannot. Goblins forced us back."

Following enough, again, Penelope shook her head. "I'll kill them all. You leave. Never bring an army here to fight us again."

Still itching to fight and die, it was only Hilda's honor to her soldiers and the hope to get them out of this that kept her from drawing her blade and facing a glorious end at the dragon's claws. Bowing her head in a nod, her eyes never leaving Penelope, she only had one goal left now. "Turn the column around! We're leaving!" Only when she turned, to see who had heard her, did Hilda realize that every one of her rearguard had run. "Shit."

The expletive almost made Penelope laugh. It was such a normal thing that when she coughed, and rubbed her nose with the back of one talon, it didn't register as odd until flaring pain started to shoot through her.

Spinning around toward the dragon, Hilda spotted the white lines of mycelium around Penelope's nostrils and cursed. Off, in the distance, a hobgoblin spellcaster looked far too happy with himself. "Try not to cough." Reaching to a pouch strapped to her hip, Hilda pulled out her spare toxin cloth and rushed at the dragon to press it against her nose. "This kills the spore. Inhale."

Taking a shuddering breath, and struggling not to cough, Penelope stared down the armored limb to Hilda's eyes. There was fury in them that she didn't understand, but she could tell it wasn't aimed at her. More breaths came before the burning in her lungs abated. "Get on."

In the moment it took Hilda to figure out what Penelope meant, the dragon seemed to regain more of its strength. She moved fast, though, when the intent resolved itself in her mind. Running past the dragon's head after shoving the wadded up cloth in one of Penelope's nostrils, Hilda considered how she would tackle the task before her.

Trying to ignore the indignity of the rag in her nostril, Penelope lowered herself as much as she could before she felt Hilda's mailed hand grab her spine and the woman's bulk heaved up and onto her back. It felt weird, and she hoped Fife wouldn't get wind of it—this was not a role she intended to submit to again. Spreading her wings, she looked over at the goblin that'd used its magic on her, and saw that there was a group of trolls and orcs with it now.

Inhaling to fuel her breath, Penelope almost gagged at what pain still inside her caused her natural acids to falter. Turning her head to the side, she spat out a ball of white mucus and acid that, she hoped, was only a short-term side effect of whatever the goblin had cast.

With no experience killing dragons—since her homelands never let a dungeon get big enough to have one—Hilda didn't know what to expect from Penelope. When they were close to the goblins and still Penelope hadn't exhaled on them, Hilda decided she was best fighting how she'd been trained. "Down here! Let me down!"

Masking her lack of experience with landing by crashing with style, Penelope and Hilda had the orcs bearing down on them while the slower trolls were not far behind.

"We move forward. Watch my back—I can't see well behind me in this armor. If you—" Hilda had started to duck as she saw the tree trunk winging its way toward her from the corner of her eye. When Penelope moved her foreleg and intercepted it, Hilda was starting to see more upsides to fighting beside a dragon.

The tree didn't impart nearly as much energy to Penelope as she'd expected, and after she battered it aside she realized that she'd braced far more than she'd needed to. "Got it." Being an adventurer, and continuing to work with them, she knew how to listen to good advice. Stepping forward when Hilda did, she used one talon to take the head off the more brash orc that was leading the charge.

Ducking under Penelope's strike, Hilda brought her shield up to meet the next orc's attempt at slashing Penelope's talon, then she took the beast's arm off at the elbow.

At first, they were only dealing with the orcs, but after the pair of them had cut down all but one or two, trolls started taking their places. The trolls, at least, provided better targets for Penelope. She could go to town on them with her talons, wings, and in one case she bit down on the forearm of one and braced her foot against its shoulder to rip it free.

With the fight wearing on, and the goblins being forced onto the back foot, their caster was doing everything it could to keep them in the fight. Spells to speed up and strengthen were cast repeatedly as more reinforcements arrived.

Despite having spent all day fighting the goblins, Hilda still moved like the wind and cut like an axe. Her heavy sword never lacked for momentum and her shield was always fast enough to deflect blows that could well have caused her harm. As the engagement wore on, she thought more on the whole campaign and how poorly it had gone. Her sister had been so convinced that the chain would work and they'd control a dungeon to use against their enemy, and even though it hadn't been the dungeon itself that had killed Donna, she still knew it had a hand in it.

But that was war. Living. Gambling. Strategizing. Dying. Winning and losing.

And now she was engaging in heresy. By the oaths of her people, she should cut down the dragon and the goblins and, because she knew she had no hope of defeating them all, die trying. Only there was a wild rush of excitement in her that could only come by killing all these green menaces.

Standing taller than any of the goblins, Penelope could see when no more reinforcements were arriving. What they had on the field, it seemed, was all they were getting on the field. The last of the trolls she ripped in half, sending each piece in a different direction.

The orc Hilda was fighting against was not just bigger and stronger than the others, but it seemed to have far more experience fighting. While her expertise was not dungeon fighting, her time listening to her sister's prattle about holes made her sure she knew this was what a boss was.

Parrying and blocking were the main orders, though Hilda was on the lookout for a chance to strike effectively. With so many opponents during the day, throwing tired muscles against such a heavy defense wouldn't see her through to the end of the fight.

The orc moved with the same indefatigable motion that Penelope herself felt. She wanted to move in and bash it down, but Hilda was too closely engaged for her to risk it. Finally, after an entire day of fighting the minions of the goblin dungeon, Hilda's block came a moment too late and the orc was given its chance to push on her.

Matching the strikes had become too much and, with its cleaver-like axe smashing into her chest armor, Hilda was thrown off balance and felt the orc's shield connect with sword arm—knocking her limb aside and leaving her exposed.

What felt like thunder opened up as something grabbed Hilda and dragged her backward. Falling to her rear, she watched the dragon move to stand over her and had a close-up view of its chest flexing.

The orc barely had time to raise its shield before Penelope breathed onto it. The acid ate into the armor, melting not the adamantine plate, but the steel pins and straps holding it onto the orc's body. With its armor coming undone, and various patches of its skin smoldering, each of Penelope's strikes hit their mark and rendered it piece by bloody piece.

At last, with just the goblin dungeon boss standing, Penelope shifted herself away from Hilda and walked toward the hobgoblin. "You are going to be endlessly enjoyable to fight and kill."

More annoyed at the defeat than intimidated, Short Claws raised his staff and started to chant. His focus narrowed to the dragon as he prepared to unleash his worst plague upon it; something that would, when released, kill everything around them—including himself.

It was a surprise to Short Claws when a heavy, black blade cut through the back of his neck and appeared in the bottom half of his vision. The action and location of it had not only severed his windpipe and stopped him from finishing the spell, but it had cut the strings from his head to the rest of his body.

Reaching out with her talon, Penelope closed it around Short Claws' head and squeezed. When blood and gore seeped out between her claws, she finally let go. "You fight well."

Hilda could only laugh. The way the dragon had killed the goblin, along with the whole fight, was the most intense experience of her life. She dropped to her knees and reached up to pull her helmet off. "You too. I never believed my sister when she spoke of beasts in dungeons putting up a fight, but you—you would be an opponent I could happily die fighting. That damn armored lizard of yours, too."

"You fought Fife?" Lifting her foreleg up, Penelope pressed it against one nostril and blew, shooting the rag out the other one along with a huge spray of snot and dead fungus.

"Someone I never want to fight again, but I can't help but feel the need to." Only after saying it did Hilda realize she'd started thinking of them as people. Talking, she deduced, was the key. Once a monster spoke to you and had bled with you, it was no longer a monster. "I don't know where to go from here."

"I have a friend who can think his way out of any problem, and I've started picking up that trait myself. What do you need?" It was easy to ask, hard to contemplate, and probably impossible given the city's obligations, but Penelope wanted to try. She might not actually die, even to the goblin's diseases, but Hilda had helped her.

"If my army can't return with riches or food, we can't return. We all know it—it's a way of life for our kind. If I can't claim riches from your city and return with them, it's expected that we'll throw ourselves on your walls until none of us survives." Grabbing up the disgusting rag, Hilda used it to clean her blade, though all that really accomplished was trading goblin gore for dragon snot.

Not completely understanding, Penelope put it together with what they'd deduced about Astrid and started to understand how screwed up Hilda's life was. "You can't go back, and your army got mauled by the goblins too much to try another city." Her mind raced to find a solution. The city needed plausible deniability, which meant that the army couldn't be around when reinforcements arrived from the kingdom. "How many are left in your force?"

"I was marching out of here nine thousand strong at dawn, not including followers. I have less than half that now." Hilda nodded down to where her army was, even now, waiting for her to lead them in a final charge against the city. "We can't stay here."

"How much gold, per person, would be enough to buy your way back home?"

It shocked Hilda to hear talk of buying them off when they posed no threat. "Why would you do that? We are your enemy—but for one fight. If we march home with gold, people will ask what city we got it from."

"You could tell them you raided a dungeon and took it. Maybe these goblins had it? How much?"

"They'll send us back next winter. They'll expect more." There were hundreds of arguments that were popping up in Hilda's head, most of which had to do with her own people ratting on her.

"So, you come back with a smaller force. Bring a few hundred who are sick of how things work in Balavia. Without the eyes of the kingdom on us, we can give you reasons not to go back." For a moment Penelope could see Hilda contemplating it.

It was frightening how fast the dragon eliminated barriers. Hilda tried to keep her head above water and establish why she should be left to fight and die. "And what, retire? I'm a soldier, bred to be a soldier among soldiers. Trained to lead and destined to die doing it. What would I do in this soft land?"

"'Soft land'?" Reaching over to the goblin boss' corpse, Penelope hefted the headless body up. "They will think you dragged back gold from a dungeon. You fight dungeons well. Why not make that your profession here?"

"It would take ten gold per person, and no more. Too much and you'll have multiple armies wanting to come down here immediately. Less and I won't be able to negotiate food for the rest of winter."

Running the numbers in her head, Penelope nodded at the sum. "Then we will get you fifty thousand. It will take time. Several days, but no more than five." It was a lot of gold. She was sure Travis didn't have that much in him right now, especially since he'd paid to upgrade her, but they had gold seams to mine and could make more. "Can you figure out a way to justify it?"

"I'll have to."

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