Hob Goodfellowe

He tried to edge away, when fingers like bands of steel gripped his wrist. The man sitting to the right said, suddenly, “Here! Watch it!” The looked down. He was overflowing the cup. The foamy puddle was spreading on the table. A big growling red-bearded face turned to him. “You simple, boy?” The man who…

The boy was more or less ready to give up and go back to the inn. He turned himself about, trying to figure out the most direct way back, when he noticed a small wayhouse across the square. It was a tidy, respectable little place with a wooden landing open to the air. It was…

Once the room was paid for, Caewen and Fleat retreated behind a closed door and stayed there. But someone needed to scout the town and gather news. The boy slipped quietly out through a side door of the inn. He started off at a directionless walk, listening quietly to everyone and everything. All the while…

The town of Baght was stinking, dark with looming half-timber houses, and full to the walls with every walk of humanity. Soldiers of the Sorthe Princes lingered about in thuggish groups on every street corner. Several times, soldiers grabbed some young man or woman off the street and ‘accepted’ their enlistment into the army. Once,…

Upon the evening of that day, they broke out of the wilderness and tangled scrublands, and came suddenly to farmed country. The tilled countryside had been visible from high up on the mountain slopes, but they had lost sight of it whilst moving through the wild woods and tangle-scrubs of the foothills. The fields that…

The draig-rider was gone by morning light. Where he had winged off to, they could not tell. But he was nowhere in sight at least. They tracked carefully north and west for the next two days. For a time they moved only through wilderness and met no troubles, not even feral boggarts out of the…

No more than an hour had passed since leaving behind the ivy-choked boggart dens when Fleat squinted into the sky and said, “There is a creature up there. Diving in and out of the clouds. It has a rider on its back, too, it does. One of them winged draig, I think?” Caewen squinted at…

They hurried out through the gap. The boy looked back when they were clear of the ivy, and saw it collapse into place, concealing the darkness beyond. They had emerged onto a circular stone area with dead trees standing all around, ivy-smothered all over their branches. The valley walls stretched above them left and right….

“Good.” She turned half-a-glance at Dapplegrim. “And don’t you be getting ideas, neither. I’m not easily trampled, nor bitten. My skin is tough. But. Now… as I said: who are you lot? You break into me nursery. Me idiot boggart-men are chasing you. And them’s all riled up. But you didn’t raise a finger against…