Lead he did, guiding them away from the hobgoblins and through the slowly descending tunnel that led to the lake. He didn’t even worry about what they faced there. Jig was too confused by what he had just seen and by what it meant.

All his life Jig had believed surface-dwellers killed goblins through trickery. They used enchanted weapons, spells to call fire and death, and fine armor the likes of which no goblin could make. Certainly some of that was true. That spell Ryslind had used to sneak up on their patrol, the one that made him appear to be a part of the rock, was magic no goblin could hope to fight. Nor was Jig’s knife a match for Barius’s sword or Darnak’s club.

But there was more. In their fight with the hobgoblins, the adventurers had used no magic. Their weapons, while of good quality, were no more magical than those of their foe. There had been no time for trickery or ruses. And still they had wiped out three times their number without losing a single one of their party. Barius struck like a serpent, fast and deadly. He knocked hobgoblin swords aside with ease, because he knew how to fight. His sword was a part of him, and it twisted and dodged past his enemy’s guard like a living thing. How many hours had he trained to be able to do that?

Jig flushed when he thought back to his poor kitchen knife, and how much he had secretly longed for a sword, thinking that all it took was a bit of steel to make him the equal of these adventurers.

The dwarven follower of Silas Earthmaker had stood like a god himself, unmovable and untouchable as his club lashed out to break swords and bones alike. He too must have worked hard to develop such strength of arm. Sure, dwarves were tougher than most races, but Darnak had taken that toughness and strengthened it further. Jig looked again at the dwarf’s pack, remembering how much equipment had been stuffed into that bulging leather pack. Jig would be hard-pressed just to lift what Darnak carried around as though it were nothing.

Ryslind was the worst of them all. As a wizard, he was the one enemy no goblin would expect to defeat. But he had used no magic just now. Instead, he had sent one arrow after another safely past his companions. Jig had watched him more closely than the others, and the wizard had not missed a single shot. That cold precision terrified Jig.