Jon awoke the next morning with an armful of harpy-girl. She'd taken to sleeping on her side recently, since it was the only position where neither her wings nor her breasts were squashed, and Nina had taken advantage of that, snuggling up in the safety of her arms. It was kind of heartwarming, or at least it would have been if it hadn't left Jon's left arm numb. She carefully extricated herself, slapped and rubbed her arm until the feeling returned, and then gently shook Nina awake.
They had a quick breakfast, and then it was back on the road again. Nina was still quiet, but seemed less shell-shocked than yesterday, and definitely tired less easily. Jon noticed that the harpy was sticking closer to her than to Karyn or Sylvia, and wondered if Nina wasn't developing an attachment to her. It was a weird thought, but she was more worried that it might make it harder when they found a place for her to stay.
Where would that be, she wondered? Were there any sort of orphanages in this world? If so, were they decent places where the staff really cared for the kids, or hideous Dickensian poorhouses? She didn't think an adventuring party was any place for a child, but she'd rather take care of Nina herself than dump her in a place like that.
Lunch came and went without much interesting happening, aside from Karyn using the time to do some magic practice over a nearby lake. She had been working on figuring her magic out during the past couple of days, and she was making definite progress; her non-fire spells still needed work, but she was able to exercise some control over both the spread and intensity of her fire spells. Not surprisingly, smaller, weaker spells drained less of her energy, and she was able to fire them off almost effortlessly.
The day drew on and the mountains grew closer until, by late evening, they were setting up camp by the foot of the pass.
"I don't get it," Karyn said. "Why don't we just go up there now and get it over with? It's nearly a new moon; who'd see us coming?"
Sylvia shook her head. "That might be a good plan for other enemies," she said. "But about the one thing I do know about goblins is that they've got great low-light vision. The tradeoff is that they're sensitive to bright light. We're attacking tomorrow because the sun is actually better cover than the dark would be."
"Huh," Jon said. "So do we attack at noon, then?"
The dryad shook her head. "I dunno," she said. "I was thinking nine o'clock, myself. That way it's plenty bright, but the sun's still at a lower angle."
Karyn smiled. "I get it. Since the path you said we're taking curves east-west just before the camp, they'll have to be staring right into the sun to face us."
Sylvia smiled. "Should help a bit, I think. As for actual tactics, I think you should find a spot up in the rocks where you have a clear shot at both the path and the camp. We'll start off with you taking a few weak potshots to get them to come investigate." Karyn nodded.
"So then they come down the path and I handle them, right?" Jon asked. Sylvia nodded. "They'll probably send down a few at first, but they'll send more when the first few don't come back. I don't think they're terribly bright, but I doubt they're idiots."
"And then I start laying down heavy fire?" Karyn asked. Sylvia grinned. "Now you're getting the idea. When they start sending down large groups, your goal is to keep them from reaching Jen. If we're lucky, after a couple group failures, they'll empty out most or all of the camp. If that happens, I want you to give it everything you've got left. Stop short of total collapse, but go ahead and drain your reserves. Jen can handle mopping up the survivors."
Karyn nodded, and Sylvia smiled. "I think that about covers it. Let's getsome sleep, girls. We've got quite a morning ahead of us."
