When his vision cleared he found himself on top of the goblin, its eyes bulging, face swelling. Padric’s forearm was across its throat, his full body weight crushing into the windpipe. The goblin hissed and spit, his hands gouging feebly at Padric’s face, legs kicking in the dirt, snot tossed out of its bulbous nose. To his right the fallen seax lay within reach and Padric snatched it up, keeping the goblin pinned. The struggling bastard managed to catch his wrist, but there was no strength left in his arms. Slowly, inevitably the blade pushed downwards and the goblin watched helplessly, feebly trying to move his head out of its path. The steel was halfway through the eye socket when the goblin went limp, dropping Padric’s entire weight into the knife, pinning the twitching head to the ground.

He yanked the blade free and staggered to his feet. Smoke from the burning houses was thick in the air, flecked with glowing embers. Nine of the villagers still stood, Ardal among them. A hole in the side of his head wept blood where his ear had once been. The others were dead, dying or too wounded to keep their feet. Laoire was no longer screaming. He lay silent against the stable, eyes staring sightlessly. Faabar still stood, dead goblins lying sprawled at his feet. The remaining Red Caps, some three dozen Padric guessed, had withdrawn from the fomori’s reach. They stood back, malice and murder in every face, the knobby knuckles of their long fingered hands caressing the hafts of their weapons.

“What have we, my cullies?” Torcan stepped through the ranks of goblins, striding boldly towards the fomori. His hideous helm rode the crook of his arm, the large war axe propped across his shoulders. “The mortals keep a guard dog?” He swept the bodies of his fallen soldiers with a face full of mock surprise. “And it bites!”

The Red Caps laughed, unconcerned that half their number lay slain.

“You would stand against us, fomori?”

“Aye, Swinehelm,” Faabar’s voice rumbled hoarsely. “Until you and all those who follow you lay in this pile of stinking meat.” He kicked one of the goblin corpses contemptuously and it rolled limply over to rest at Torcan’s feet.

The Red Cap leader regarded the grisly carcass for a moment, and then swung his axe lazily down as if he were reaping wheat, severing an arm cleanly from the body. He kicked the appendage back at the fomori. “Have a last meal, elf’s pet!”