* * *
Mr. Timmo, Wyll, Cheeryup and a confused Minty trudged through the frosty terrain north of the village, making for the Great Wood.
“This is daft, Timmo,” sneered the tiny tinker, his short legs making him stumble in the snow. “How will we find the grave in this muck?”
“Because, Minty, I have a compass. The gravesite is exactly twenty-seven paces to the Southwest of the Meeting Tree’s trunk. I marked it during Dalbo’s funeral and committed that fact to memory.”
They marched on, ignoring the bitter winds and big clouds that blocked sunlight for minutes at a time. The quartet finally paused and looked about in confusion.
“Something isn’t quite right, Timmo.”
The metalsmith was equally baffled. “There’s the Meeting Tree, but … half the forest seems to have disappeared. Are we in the right place?”
Cheeryup piped up, “No question about it! This is the field—we’ve played here so many times it’s like a second home.”
Approaching the venerable Meeting Tree, Mr. Timmo looked about some more.
“There are quite a few trees missing, yet I don’t see any signs of cutting and violence. It’s like they walked off, which is ridiculous.”
“What about Dalbo’s grave?” asked the girl. “Get out your compass.”
Mr. Timmo pulled the intricate metal device from his pocket and began to calculate his bearings. “From the trunk, the grave is in this direction.”
He wandered off as if in a haze, until he simply stopped and looked down. The others rushed to join him and froze on the spot.
“This can’t be possible, Timmo,” offered Minty, scratching his head.
“Oh, I believe it’s entirely too possible.”
The four Thimble Downers stared downward, into the pit where Dalbo Dall had been buried.
It was empty.
Onslaught
His return to Fog Vale had been a fiasco. Instead of saving the day, Dorro had mucked everything up and was now in a dirty gaol cell, worse off than ever.
With no alternative, he followed Amos’ lead, falling to sleep miserably, his face sore from the beating. The bookmaster knew that somewhere in the hills surrounding the penal colony was a small contingent of giants, but also a vast army of goblins and trolls bent on destroying everything living under the sun.
Dorro’s mind became troubled as he drifted downward. In his dark dreams, the bookmaster had visions of the Perch, but now it was somehow larger as Saoirse lived there, too, along with Wyll and Truckulus.
Outside its doors, Dorro’s vegetable garden was draped in fog and mist, and full of threats—he knew goblins were hiding in the tomato patch, waiting to capture and torture him—but he felt calm knowing the giantess was there to protect him. She would always protect him, he knew.
Dorro jerked awake to the sounds of running and screaming outside the gaol. His brain still fuzzy from the nightmare, he nevertheless was aware what was happening—the orkus had arrived.
“What the hell is goin’ on?” shrieked Amos Pinchbottle, who pressed his face against the bars of his cell frantically.
“Mebbe you were right after all, Windy—this be the goblins come to finish us off!”
A door flew open and in ran Bullock, Salty and Hammersmith, the bounty hunters who’d brought Dorro and Amos to Fog Vale all those weeks ago. Salty ran to each cell and unlocked them.
“C’mon, ya fools! We need every Halfling we can get!”
Bullock followed up, “Here, take a sword and a shield. Half the goblins in the mountains are streaming into the Vale and come to wipe us out. You’ll either fight for your lives—or just give up and die. I don’t care which—just stay the hell out of my way!”
The Battle of Fog Vale had begun.