AUTHORS NOTE:

Archer1eye - Perhaps it was Shard's presence in the forest that prevented the kobolds from going out to the farms? Kobold's aren't too magically sensitive and wouldn't likely recognise

Kar-Vermin - Thanks for the favourite! It makes me so happy to know that people are enjoying this :D

Drouppi - Thanks for the suggestion of what she *didn't* do ;-) Kobold raids could happen at any time! (Random encounter time!)

Chapter 30

19th Day of Late Winter 768 n.c

In hindsight there were many other things that I could have done that may have scared the kobolds away with less potential ramifications. I could have used Minor Illusion to make the sound of a mob of voices, I could have used Mage Hand to pick up one of the kobolds. I could have cast Light on more stones and thrown them as the kobolds seemed wary of the glowing rock we'd already thrown.

I didn't do any of these things, instead I concentrated my magic inside of me even as Father and Jocam took a step forward with their boar spears lowered towards the kobolds.

Both sides took two more steps towards each other, it was only a matter of moments before either the kobolds or my family would charge, despite the presence of the fence separating the two.

Father and Jocam froze, their boar spears lowering slightly. The kobolds grinned menacingly and glanced at each other, obviously thinking that they had the upper hand.

Mooooooooooooooo!

The cow behind them bawled loudly. The kobolds froze. As one they all turned around, on the spot, to look behind them. Two of the ones on the end jumped out of the way but two in the middle didn't move quick enough. The cow barrelled into them, sending one flying into the air towards us only to collide with the wooden fence with a sickening thump and a fairly loud crack. It fell to the ground, its body bent almost double the wrong way. Father and Jocam actually dropped their spears in surprise when the cow stopped its charge facing them and haltingly turned around. The sight of the eyeless beast (for its eyes must have been the first things the kobolds ate), missing chunks of flesh from its ribs and flank and dragging its entrails behind it must have been too much for them. Considering the chicken incident, I didn't blame them for their reaction. Now that I knew I could control what it was doing, it brought forth no such primal reaction from me. I was its master, I was in charge. The kobolds were in two separate groups so I made the cow charge at the larger of the two, the one with four kobolds. The cow charged, trampling two of the kobolds under it's hooves and turned to continue its charge towards the two of the other group who had begun to run away. The cow chased down those two, hitting them in their backs so that they flew forward a short distance, then trampled over them. Movement to my right, at the edge of the thrown light drew my attention. The final two kobolds were sneaking towards us. They must have been thinking that the cow was far enough away, or that perhaps we were the lesser risk. They were close, enough that they would be leaving the edge of the thrown light and getting into the circle of light that Father held, making their way through the fence at any moment. The cow would never be able to make it back in time. I let go of the Manipulate Elements spell and cast it again. The cow collapsed with a thud and I noticed absently that the kobolds looked back towards the noise in fear, even as they almost reached the fence. As the magical energy from Manipulate Elements was travelling down my arm I realised that I could tell that all of the kobolds that had been hit by the cow were dead, except for the first one that hadn't been thrown into the fence. That one was lying there, still, but still alive. That wasn't the one I wanted though, in any case. The one closest to us, the one between us and the two remaining kobolds was the one I concentrated on. The one with the broken spine. Even as it somehow forced itself to its feet, with half of its body bent backwards, it still managed to keep its balance. I made it turn around so that its feet faced us, but its head faced the kobolds (even though it was upside down). One of the kobolds dropped its dagger in fright. The other one, the one that was bullying its friends at the start, did not. It stepped forward and lunged at the animated kobold, stabbing it in the chest. The knife went in, straight where I supposed its heart probably was, and the kobold stepped back in triumph. Its smug confidence didn't last long however, when I made the animated kobold bring its own dagger up to slash at it. The overconfident kobold collapsed, with its innards spilling out onto the frozen mud. The last kobold, the one that dropped its weapon, was already running away towards the forest. I made the kobold run after it, but It was slower and wouldn't be able to catch up. I was considering alternatives when I felt someone put their hand on my arm. I cancelled the spell and looked up to see Father next to me.

"Let it go Shar, let it go," he said quietly, "it doesn't need to die and it might tell its friends to stay away."

I nodded to him, that made sense. If there were more of them out there, that might stop them from invading. I was about to tell Father about the one playing at being dead when I heard a noise from behind. I looked over quickly to see Jocam throwing up into the garden. I could understand in part. We'd all taken part in the slaughtering, skinning, gutting and butchering of animals around the farm, but the kobolds were almost human. Human-like at least. Honestly, I was a little surprised I wasn't doing likewise. After all, technically I'd just killed them all. Almost all of them.

"Father?" I whispered and pointed, "That one's still alive."

He nodded to me and advanced into the paddock, climbing between the fence's cross-beams. He closed the distance to the kobold I had indicated quietly and carefully with his boar spear pointed at it the whole time. When he got close, he pulled the boar spear back and advanced another two steps before jabbing it into the kobold. Three times he stabbed the beast.

When he returned he asked me "It would be best to pull the bodies out of the paddock now, otherwise these cows won't get a wink of sleep at all. Will those lights last long enough?"

"I'll stay out here while you do that, just in case," I offered, and cast Light on three more rocks that I had Jocam throw out to light up the area better. There were no more kobolds, but he did scare the living daylights out of a fox that he almost hit as it was making its way towards the chicken's hutch.

Father and Jocam together managed to drag the kobold bodies over to the burning heap, a pile of tree roots and stumps that weren't good for the inside fire that Father would eventually burn as a bonfire.

"I'll chop some more wood in the morning before Church and light this up once we return," he told Jocam, "scavengers will likely be attracted tonight, but we don't want to leave the fire unattended lest it sets fire to the farm, so after Church it shall have to be."

He gave Jocam a hug and said "Good work lad, go have a drink of water and get yourself to bed."

He turned to follow Jocam inside before he stopped and half turned back to me, "You did well too, Sharein. Without you we could have been injured or killed."

He said it stiffly, as if he knew that he should be praising me but didn't really want to. Or wanted to praise me but knew that he shouldn't be. He almost made it sound like he would have preferred to have been injured or killed. I knew immediately why… why he didn't want to thank the necromancer who raised zombies to defend his farm. Even if I wasn't really a necromancer and they weren't really zombies, it didn't matter. I knew. I knew that as far as Father was concerned, that's exactly what I was and what I'd done. It was exactly what Alladrial warned me against. Father had always been much more pious than Mother, much more honest in his worship every tenday. I felt somehow lucky that I had a bed to sleep in tonight, maybe he was still half asleep and hadn't really thought about it? Maybe he was thinking 'just one more night and then we'll tell Malkarov not to send her back'? A small voice suggested that Mother would make it all okay. When it came to us girls, Mother always had the final say. But would that change now that I was apprenticed?

What would tomorrow bring?

Dejectedly I followed him into the house. When I entered Father and Jocam had already headed towards bed. Mother was sitting at the table however. She immediately stood and gathered me into a hug.

"Well done Sharein, well done," she whispered to me as she held me, "I was watching through the window. Without you it could have ended very badly."

She let go of me, and gently guided me to sit down at the kitchen table next to her.

"Why is Malkarov teaching you necromancy now, with light spells and illusions? Is that normal?" she asked me.

"He's not teaching me necromancy!" I said, slightly too loudly. Mother glanced over her shoulder at my volume.

"He's not," I said much quieter, "it's a spell called Manipulate Elements that lets you manipulate whatever your seeming is."

Mother nodded to me before I continued to explain, "Every wizard has a seeming that affects how some of their spells are cast. A wizard with a fire seeming will have some spells affecting fire or appearing as fire. My seeming is what's called negative material; death and darkness and such. They weren't really zombies, they were just animated bodies that I could make move only because they were previously alive. It wasn't really necromancy."

"That's what I'll tell Father then," she said, "that will put his mind at ease. I'll tell him now before he tries to go back to sleep, otherwise he may not be able to. Well done Sharein, go to bed and rest up, you must be exhausted."

I let out a yawn, "A little Mother, I dislike waking up in the middle of the night. It will probably take me a while to get back to sleep now."

"You don't feel like you could fall asleep any moment now?" she asked me.

"Oh no," I told her, "with all that excitement, I'll probably have a hundred things running through my mind before I fall asleep."

"Well then," she said as she stood up, "best you get to bed then, the quicker to bed the quicker to sleep."

With that, I made my way to the comfort and warmth of bed, shivering for a while in the cold sheets until I warmed up.

Before I fell asleep, I told Shard everything that had happened and wished her a good night also.

Just before I did actually fall asleep, I may have whispered "I love you," out loud.