“It’s Finn,” Duncan panted. “They were ambushed on the way to Oslinna.”

11. Defeat

I don’t remember moving or running. It was al a blur of nothing until I was in the front hal with Finn. A smal crowd had gathered around, including Thomas, but I pushed them out of the way to get to him.

Finn was sitting on the floor, and I fel to my knees next to him.

He was alive, and I almost sobbed at the sight of him. Blood covered his temple, and his clothes were disheveled. His arm hung at a weird angle, and it took me a moment to realize it had to be broken.

“What happened?” I asked, and I touched his face with trembling hands, mostly to be sure he was real.

“We caught them off guard,” Finn said. He stared off at nothing, and his eyes were moist. “They were going home, I think, and we happened to run into them. We thought we could get the best of them. But they were too strong.” He swalowed hard. “They kiled the Chancelor.”

“Oh shit,” Tove said, and I turned to see him standing in the gap I had left in the crowd.

“Tove, go get your mother,” I said. Tove nodded once and left, and I turned back to Finn. “Are you okay?”

“I’m alive,” he said simply.

Finn was in shock, so I didn’t push him for details. Markis Bain ended up filing in the details about what had happened. They were on their way to Oslinna when they saw the Vittra camped out. The way he described it, it sounded al very Rumpelstiltskin. The hobgoblins had a fire going, and they danced around it, singing songs and teling tales of how they defeated Oslinna.

The Chancelor thought they should get the drop on the hobgoblins. They could end the fight right there in the woods. Finn was initialy against the idea, but if they had a chance to stop the Vittra before they hurt anybody else, they had to take it.

The only reason any of the team had survived was because they had surprised the Vittra, but the Chancelor wasn’t the only one who died. Another Markis had been kiled, and another tracker was severely injured.

Al of them were battered and bruised. When Aurora came over to heal them, Bain kept saying it was amazing that any of them were alive. Aurora healed Finn, but not completely. She wouldn’t waste her energy on a tracker, no matter what I said.

Duncan and I helped Finn up to his room to rest, and Tove stayed behind. He wanted to make sure the others got home okay.

We’d have to plan another way to help Oslinna, but we couldn’t do it now.