The Demon Awakens by R.A. Salvatore Read Free Book Online

trance and she let out a shriek for her mother and ran full out for home.
    Elbryan thought to call out for her, but indecision held his voice and kept him from immediately following. What should he do? What were his responsibilities?
    A warrior would know these things!
    With great effort, Elbryan tore his gaze from the dreadful spectacle below and glanced all around. He should organize his friends—yes, that was the course, he decided. He would gather together his scouts, perhaps even call in the older scouts from the vale, and charge down into Dundalis in tight formation, anchoring the defense.
    But time was against him. He glanced about again, turned to the evergreen and caribou moss valley, and started to call out, thinking to bring in the patrol of older men.
    Elbryan fell back behind the twin pines, catching the shout in his throat, gasping for breath. Just over the ridge, facing away from him, he saw the nearly bald head, the pointed ears, the chalky yellow skin of an enemy. With trembling fingers, Elbryan retrieved his short sword, and then he sank even deeper into the hollow, paralyzed with terror.
     
    Pony wasn’t armed, having left her club back at the ridge. She didn’t care, for she wasn’t really running into battle.
    The girl was running to find her mother and father, to feel their comforting hugs, to hear her mother telling her that everything would be all right. She wanted to be a little girl again, wrapped tight in her bedsheets, and tighter in Mother’s embrace, waking from a nightmare.
    This time, though, she was awake. This time, the screams were real.
    Pony ran on desperately, blinded by tears. She stumbled to the base of what she thought was a tree, then nearly fainted as it shifted suddenly, as the fomorian giant, huge club in hand, took a long step away from her.
    If she had had any breath in her lungs, she would have screamed, and if she had screamed, the giant would have noticed her and squashed her where she stood.
    But its focus was the village and not some insignificant little girl, and in a few loping strides it left Pony far behind. She scrambled back to her feet, picked up a couple of rocks of a good size for throwing, and ran on, taking a course that would parallel, but not too closely, the giant. Now, as she entered the area of battle, as she saw the confusion, the fierce fighting, the dead bodies on the road, she was no more a little girl. Now she remembered her training, forced herself to think clearly and concisely. Goblins swarmed everywhere, and Pony spotted at least two other giants, fifteen feet tall and perhaps a thousand pounds of chiseled muscle. Her friends and family could not win! That logical, adult part of Pony—the part that knew that the time of fending off nightmares with bedsheets was long past—told her without doubt that Dundalis could not survive.
    “Plan B,” she whispered aloud, using the words to steady her thinking. The rules of survival, taught to every child in Wilderlands settlements, declared that the first priority in any catastrophe was to save the village, if that failed, the next task was to save as many individuals as possible. Plan B.
    Pony picked her way around the back of the nearest houses, moving in and out of the shadows. She peeked around the corner and stood transfixed.
    On the main road of Dundalis, just on the other side of this house, a fierce battle raged. Pony saw Olwan Wyndon first, standing tall in the middle of the human line, calling out commands, forming the group of twenty men and women into a tight circle as enemies came at them from nearly every direction. Pony’s first instincts were to try and join that battle group, but she quickly surmised that she would never get in. She clenched her fist hopefully as Olwan Wyndon smashed a goblin’s head, dropping the wretch to the dirt.
    Then she held her breath as she noticed the man behind Olwan, parrying wildly as two goblins prodded at him with sharp spears.
    Her