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Nine Goblins

by T Kingfisher

Episode 1 – Episode 2 – Episode 3 – Episode 4 – Episode 5

The farmhouse was very quiet.

It was too quiet.

Generally when people say it’s “too quiet,” it’s a prelude to a monster with a lot of teeth jumping out of the grass. In this case, however, since the only thing that could qualify as monsters with a lot of teeth were the goblins themselves, it was just plain too quiet.

The farmhouse was a small sod building—and that was odd, too, since there was a whole forest right there, and who builds out of sod when they have wood?—and the fences were the low dry-stone affairs that look cute and quirky and charming until you realize they’re made of all the rocks that some poor farmer had to haul out of a field by hand.

There was wood, but not much. The timbers were in place only where nothing else would do. A few scattered tree stumps around the farm showed where they had probably come from.

It was a neatly kept yard, with a thatch roof and a small henhouse and a pigpen. Around back, a low stable held three empty stalls.

It was very, very quiet.

“Perhaps they went into town. The horses aren’t here.”

“And took the pigs and chickens with them?” asked Murray skeptically.

A rising, rattling hum startled them all, until they realized that one of the trees dotting the property had cicadas in it. The insects buzzed their way up the register, and then fell silent.

It was still too quiet.

“Maybe it was market day? They took the pigs and chicken in to sell?”

“Every single one, Sarge?”

“Do you have a better explanation?”

Algol cleared his throat. “They must have looked pretty odd carrying all those chickens and walking. The wagon’s still here.”

They all looked at the wagon. It was distinctly wagon-like. The cicadas buzzed again.

“Check the hen-house.”

They made their way around the farmhouse. Coming out of the woods, they had been moving like goblins on a raid—low to the ground, skulking, hiding behind things. It was beginning to seem silly in this deep, abandoned silence, but Nessilka hadn’t lived this long by going into enemy territory and sauntering around in the open.

Besides, it was so quiet that it was almost comforting to crouch behind water barrels and old haystacks. It made you feel like you could hide from that terrible silence.

The last stretch to the hen-house had no cover for anyone over six inches tall. Crouched behind the compost bin, the three goblins eyed the distance. Nessilka gritted her teeth, squared her shoulders, and said “Wait here.”

She didn’t run. Goblins know all about monsters—they’re related, after all—and they know all about the rules. Like small children, they know the rules in their bones. If there was something out there, something cloaking itself in the silence, if she ran, it could run, too.

She walked, therefore, to the door of the henhouse, over earth packed hard and littered with old chicken droppings and bits of straw, while the skin between her on the back of her neck crept and crawled and cringed. Algol and Murray crouched together, shoulder to shoulder, biting their lips. The sergeant reached out, caught the wire door, and flung it open.

Sunlight lanced down through cracks in the ceiling, and made pale spots on the straw. Old dust, old straw, old feathers. There were reasonably fresh droppings near the door, but no clucking greeted her, and there was no movement of nervous chickens along the walls.

She considered looking behind the door. She decided not to tempt fate.

She closed the door instead, and walked back across the courtyard with a deliberately steady tread.

“Empty,” she said in a low voice. “For a few days, probably.”

Algol, without saying anything, crab-walked over to the pig pen and looked over the fence. The other two followed him.

“There’s still a half-bucket of slops here, Sarge,” he said quietly.

“Well, that’s not that weird—”

“Have you ever known pigs to leave any slops behind ‘em?”

They stood around the slop bucket like three witches around a cauldron. It was indeed half full. The sides of the bucket had crusted and dried, and there was mold growing in the bottom.

Algol dipped a finger in, pulled it out covered in gunk, and popped in it his mouth, rolling the tastes around like a gourmand.

“More than three days. Less than a week. Needs more salt.”

They stood in silence, then, as one, looked at the farmhouse. Nessilka sighed.

“Okay, what are you guys thinking?”

“Plague, maybe?” said Algol.

Murray shook his head. “No bodies. And where’d the chickens go?”

“Maybe they buried the bodies and took the chickens.”

“Doesn’t explain the pig slop. And I haven’t seen anything that could be grave markers.”

“Maybe they left suddenly? Bandits?”

“No blood, and they wouldn’t have taken the chickens. And it still doesn’t explain the pig slop.”

“Maybe bandits killed the pigs before they were done eating.”

“No blood in the pen. And the place is in pretty good shape. Bandits would have wrecked the joint.”

“Could they be hiding?” Algol jerked his chin at the farmhouse.

“With the pigs, and the chickens, and the mules or whatever ought to be in those empty stalls? It’s not that big a house.”

They all looked at the house in question again. Nessilka nodded.

“Okay, let’s go in. Don’t bother sneaking, let’s just get this over with.”

In a properly run universe, the door would have opened with one of those long creaks that go on forever, but it was hung on leather strap hinges and swung open silently.

The interior was dark and quiet. Two chairs, one table, one bed. A thin film of dust lay over everything. The goblins looked towards the bed, which was unmade, but empty, and breathed a sigh of relief.

A plate of food lay on the table, with a fork next to it. There was a piece of elderly broccoli speared on the end of the fork. Mold fuzzed most of the other contents of the plate.

Algol stepped onto something that groaned, and they all jumped. He leapt back, revealing a square wooden trapdoor set in the floor.

“Root cellar, probably,” said Nessilka. Her father had been a mountain goblin, and she had no fear of tunnels or holes, but she found she really, really didn’t want to go down there.

Algol and Murray looked ready to bolt. She reminded herself that it was just as alarming for them, and they were from hill and marsh and didn’t even have the advantage of having tunnels in their blood.

“You two stay up here until I call.”

The corporals visibly relaxed.

She grabbed the handle on the trapdoor, counted to three, and yanked it up.

Dust rattled down from the opening, but that was all. A ladder led down into the earth.

Nessilka pulled her stub of candle from her kit and lit it. “Here goes nothing…”

She didn’t know what she was expecting. No, that was a lie. She was expecting to find a couple of dead bodies, and possibly something gnawing on them. Please gods, let me be wrong. Please let it be empty…

The gods were kind. The root cellar was barely large enough to turn around in, full of shelves that groaned under the weight of canned preserves. The floor was dirt, the walls were dirt, and somebody had tossed an old burlap sack on the ground to soak up spills. And that was all.

There were no bodies, unless somebody had canned them.

I really wish I hadn’t thought that.

“Well, at least we won’t starve. Murray!”

Murray’s head appeared in the hole. “Yes, Sarge?”

“Have Algol stand guard, and help me lug these up. See if there’s a blanket we can carry this stuff in.”

There was a set of rough blankets on the bed, which were a welcome find all on their own. Murray rigged two slings with harness leather scavenged from the stable, and they filled them with jars of indeterminate preserves. Most of them seemed to be peaches, with some dark red things that might have been meat, tomatoes, plums, or oddly colored peaches thrown in for good measure.

Thus loaded, Murray and Nessilka did a quick sweep of the farmhouse. A frying pan and an iron pot were too good to pass up—Nessilka did not want to be making tea in Blanchett’s helmet on a regular basis—along with a small sack of salt and a bigger sack of flour.

They emerged from the house, heavily laden and clanking as they walked. Despite the mysterious emptiness of the farm, discovering the food couldn’t help but raise their spirits. This lasted for a good five seconds, before Nessilka said, “Where’s Algol?”

The two goblins looked around. “He was right out here…” Murray said.

“Algol!” hissed Nessilka. She didn’t want to yell. She couldn’t shake the feeling that yelling would bring something down on them. “Algol, where are you?”

The cicadas were the only answer.

“He can’t have gone far,” muttered Nessilka.

“Unless whatever got the farmers got him, too,” said Murray glumly.

“Put a lid on it, Corporal.”

Murray gave her the look that said you know I’m right, but it’s okay, I understand you have to say that. She hated that look. She just couldn’t do anything about it, because he usually was right, hang it all.

“We can’t just leave without him,” she said slowly, scanning the fields. “But I don’t want to stay out here in plain sight, either…” Far across the fields, she could just make out the town. It wasn’t close enough to see any people, and they probably couldn’t have seen the goblins either, but still, better safe than sorry.

Murray dug out his looky-tube-thing. Nessilka opened her mouth to say that she’d check behind the farmhouse, and then stopped. Splitting up did not seem like a good idea.

She fiddled with a strap on her sling.

“Sarge…”

“Did you find him?”

“No. But—Sarge—there’s no smoke over at the town.”

“It’s pretty warm out. Why would there be smoke?”

“A town that size is going to have a blacksmith. Plus there’s a windmill over there, which means there’s a miller, and where there’s millers, there’s usually a baker, except there isn’t. And even when it’s warm, people have to cook. But none of the chimneys are going at all. There’s no smoke in the sky anywhere. And I don’t see any horses or cows in the fields.”

He raised the tube again, and stopped. Nessilka pushed the tube gently back down. “Corporal,” she said quietly, “let’s not borrow trouble. Let’s just find Algol and get out of here.”

He wasn’t behind the farmhouse. He wasn’t in the chicken coop. Nessilka’s nerves were fraying badly and there was a cold stone in her gut. Murray kept yanking on his ponytail as if hoping to find Algol hiding somewhere inside it.

“Well,” she said finally. “I suppose—”

“Sarge!”

Murray pointed. She whirled.

Across the fields, coming out of a drainage ditch, was a familiar tall gray-green figure.

Nessilka exhaled. It seemed to come from her toes. She stomped towards him, furious and relieved all at once.

“Corporal, what in the name of the great grim gods do you think you’re—”

“Look, Sarge!” he cried, holding something over his head.

It was small. It was muddy. It wiggled.

It was a kitten.

Algol was covered in mud, and grinning from ear to ear.

“Oh, for gods’ sake…” said Nessilka, covering her eyes.

“I heard him mewing! He was stuck down in a pipe in the ditch, and I got him out. Can I keep ‘im, Sarge, can I? Please?”

“Corporal—” she began, and stopped, because she didn’t know what she was going to say after that. She should never have let him name the supply goat. Once you started naming goats, it was all downhill from there. She massaged the bridge of her nose and tried again. “Corporal, we’re goblins. The scourge of the night! Stealers of children!¹⁰ Marauders of the dark! The terror of…well, fairly terrible anyway.”
¹⁰Footnote: Unlike fairies, goblins have not stolen any children within living memory—sheep and chickens being more portable and less inclined to whine—but the reputation clings. This is due in large part to the goblins themselves, who like to think that at some point, they could steal children. Y’know, if they ever really wanted to.

Algol looked at her blankly, petting the kitten.

“We aren’t kitten people!”

Algol stared at her, still petting the kitten. It made a little mrrp! noise and butted its head against his big fingers. “But Sarge, he was stuck.”

“We’re behind enemy lines! We don’t know how we’re going to get back! And you want to adopt a kitten?”

Algol sniffed. The sergeant could see a traitorous moisture beginning under his eyes.

“We can’t leave ‘im,” he said quietly. “He’s the only thing alive out here. He’ll die.”

“Corporal—”

His lower lip wibbled.

“Oh, fine,” she said, relenting. “If somebody eats it, don’t come crying to me.”

“Thank you, Sarge!” Algol thrust the kitten at her face. Nessilka recoiled. “Look, kitty! This is Sarge! She says I can keep you! Say hi!”

The stealer of children and marauder of the dark grudgingly reached up and petted the kitten. It licked her finger with a raspy little tongue. She grumbled. It purred.

“By rights I oughta have you thrown in the stockade, abandoning your post like that…” she muttered.

“We don’t really have a stockade, Sarge,” Murray pointed out.

“I oughta make him build one, then!”

Algol, besotted with his kitten, ignored this.

Nessilka threw her hands in the air. “Don’t do it again, Corporal, or I’ll bust you back down to Private so fast…”

“I think I’ll name him Wiggles. He looks like a Wiggles.”

Nessilka knew when she was beaten. Wiggles perched on Algol’s shoulder and purred the entire way back to camp.

---

The teddy-bear, by way of Blanchett, had nothing to report. The twins were asleep in a pile, looking like lumpy green kittens themselves. Gloober was exploring the inner reaches of his left ear. All appeared right with the world.

The returning goblins slung the preserves off their shoulders, and set about making tea, in the pot this time. Blanchett was pleased to get his helmet back.

Nessilka had just taken the first sip—sweet, gritty, fairly revolting, exactly what she’d been looking for—when Weasel burst out of the bushes.

“S-S-SARGE!”

Aw, crud.

The little goblin was scarlet-faced, and her hair had come out of its tight tail. Sweat glued it across her cheeks. Her chest heaved.

“It-t-t’s Th-th-th—”

“Calm down, kiddo.” Nessilka knew it was the height of rudeness to finish sentences for somebody with a stutter, but this sounded like an emergency. “Something’s happened to Thumper. Sit down, take a deep breath…okay, now tell me what it is.”

“He’s hu-hu-hurt! It’s el-el-el—”

“Elves?”

Weasel nodded furiously.

“Did elves hurt him?”

She nodded, then shook her head, then threw her hands in the air. Nessilka interpreted this, correctly, as a sign of a tale too complex to be summed up in yes or no questions.

“Okay, guys, let’s move. Take me where you last saw him, kiddo, and tell me on the way.”

---

As near as Nessilka could piece together from the badly upset Weasel, she and Thumper had been doing fairly well. They’d flushed a bird, and Weasel had dropped it with her sling.

Then it started to go bad.

When they’d startled the bird, they had also startled a deer. The deer took off across a clearing, and Thumper, seeing a whole banquet on the hoof, took off after it.

The fact that a goblin couldn’t possibly catch a deer on foot had apparently not occurred to him. The deer ran, he ran, they broke into a clearing in the woods, and then he put his foot in a hole and went down hard.

Weasel’s first thought was that he’d broken a leg, but she didn’t get close enough to see, because the other occupant of the clearing had straightened up at that point.

It was an elf.

The elf had gone over to Thumper and crouched down, and Weasel didn’t know what to do. Was he killing Thumper? Was Thumper killing him?

Minutes dragged by. If it had been anyone else, Nessilka would have wondered why they didn’t attack, but she wouldn’t have put Weasel up against an injured field mouse. Sure, a sling could kill somebody if you used it right, but she’d have laid odds the thought hadn’t even occurred to the little goblin.

The elf stood up with a grunt. An unconscious Thumper was slung over his shoulder. There was blood on the goblin’s head, and a crude bandage. Bent nearly double, the elf made his way slowly across the clearing, and into the woods.

At this point, Weasel proved her worth completely. She knew she couldn’t track the elf once he was gone, and she was pretty sure no one else in the Nineteenth could either. Quick and quiet as her namesake, she followed.

The elf had gone for nearly a mile, stopping occasionally to rest and set Thumper down. Weasel noted that the elf was being surprisingly gentle with his captive, and that he checked bandage, pulse, and pupils at every stop. It wasn’t the behavior she’d expect from elves, but then, she’d never seen one anywhere but the other end of a sword before.

At last, the elf emerged into a large meadow, bright with wildflowers and dotted with bumblebees. On the far side, a large cabin rose under the trees, surrounded by a neat garden and a ramshackle barn.

The elf set Thumper down and went to the barn. As soon as he vanished, Weasel darted out and shook Thumper’s shoulder, but the big goblin was out like a light. His forehead was sporting an enormous lump. Either the elf had clobbered him a good one, or he’d smacked his head on a rock when he’d fallen in the meadow.

The elf re-emerged from the barn, pushing a wheelbarrow. Weasel dropped low and scurried back to the tree line. As she watched, the elf set Thumper into the wheelbarrow and took him up to the cabin.

Weasel had watched only until Thumper vanished inside the cabin, and then had turned and run like a rabbit back to the Nineteenth.

---

It took all the way back to the clearing to get this story out of the agitated Weasel, and even then, seeing the scene helped solidify the details.

It was a very pastoral clearing, one of those that look lovely and lush and green and turn out to be sopping wet marsh under the plants. Sweet flag irises poked up proudly over the long grass. Nessilka went over the ground carefully, and found the hole. It had a large goblin footprint in the mud at the bottom of it. A handprint skidded off to one side.

There was a rock the size of a pig directly in front of it, with blood on it.

“Hmm.” Murray crouched down and looked. “I’d say he stepped, fell, tried to catch himself, his hand slipped, and he whacked his head. And then the elf came up here.” He pointed to a line of heavy bootprints.

“Believe it or not, I could probably have figured all that out on my own,” said Nessilka a bit dryly.

“Sorry, Sarge.”

“It does mean that the elf probably didn’t hit him. Which may mean he’s not violently opposed to all goblins. It’s possible we’ll be able to get Thumper back peacefully.”

“And if we can’t?

Nessilka stood up and looked around at the other seven goblins. The teddy-bear and Wiggles the kitten watched from atop their respective owner’s heads. They did not look very war-like, but they were what she had.

“Then,” she said, “we’ll get him back by any means necessary.”

---

The elf was out in his garden, with his back to them. As the goblins approached, he straightened, rubbing his back and grimacing. Nessilka couldn’t blame him—lugging someone Thumper’s size over his shoulder must have been agony.

Nessilka figured stealth wasn’t exactly called for here. She cleared her throat.

He turned around.

Eight goblins in a tight knot, bristling with swords, clubs, and boards-with-nails-in-them, faced him.

The elf was about six feet tall and lanky, with white hair in a loose braid and quizzical eyebrows.

His clothes were odd. Elves usually looked immaculate. It was how you could tell they were elves. You could cut an elf’s leg off, and he would contrive to make it look as if two legs were unfashionable. Elves were just like that. It was one of their more annoying traits.

This one wore a loose shirt that had been washed so many times the sleeves had shrunk, revealing bony wrists, and pants with carefully patched knees. He had the usual elven cheekbones, but they were smudged with dirt.¹¹ He was practically scruffy.
¹¹Footnote: Had he been a goblin, that particular smudge pattern would have indicated that he was a member of an obscure priesthood that worshipped Mogluk the World-Chicken. This was probably a coincidence.

He didn’t look scared. He didn’t look angry. He didn’t even look very surprised—probably he’d known that where there was one goblin, more would be coming—but he did look a little bemused.

His almond-shaped eyes traveled over the goblins, not missing either Wiggles or the teddy-bear.

“Say something!” hissed Nessilka, elbowing Murray in the ribs.

“What? Why me?”

“You speak Elvish! Say something useful!”

“I—but—”

“Do it!”

Murray gulped, faced the elf, and stammered out a long phrase in Elvish, like a child repeating a speech it has learned by heart.

The elf’s eyebrows climbed until they nearly touched his hairline. He said something brief, and jerked a thumb to the left.

Murray nodded weakly.

“What did you say?” Nessilka demanded.

“I asked him where the bathroom was.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s the only sentence I know! I think he said it was around back!”

“I thought you spoke Elvish!”

“Not very well!”

Nessilka ground the heel of her hand into her forehead.

When she looked up, the elf was watching her. She was expecting to find an expression of contempt or hatred or something, but he met her eyes with unexpected camaraderie, like the only other babysitter in a room full of children. How odd that our lives should bring us to this point, that look said.

Despite herself, Nessilka warmed to that look.

Okay. Can’t speak Elvish. I know a fair bit of Human, but there’s no telling if the humans here speak the same as the ones where we’re from….

The elf cleared his throat. “Can you understand me?” he asked, in fair, if oddly accented Glibber.

The Nineteenth stared at him. Nessilka exhaled. “Oh, thank the great grim gods,” she said. “You speak a civilized language.”

He smiled a little at that. “It has been many years. But if you speak slowly, I think I can keep up. Now, you are probably here to see your friend, yes?”

They all nodded.

“Please follow me.”

---

The inside of the house was one large room with high rafters, containing a kitchen, a fireplace, and a bed. The kitchen contained a very long wooden table, the fireplace contained a broad hearth with a raccoon sleeping on it, and the bed contained Thumper.

“Thumper!” The Nineteenth crowded around the bed. Thumper cracked one eye, groaned, and closed it again.

“Report, Private!” snapped Nessilka.

“…no.”

“No?”

“…no, Sarge.” muttered Thumper.

She grinned hugely with relief. “I knew no rock could make that big a dent in your skull. Rest, you big idiot.”

“…where’m I…?”

“You’re—ah—safe.” She looked up at the elf, who nodded. “Get some rest.”

“…can’t march….”

“We’re not gonna leave you, Thumper. No goblin left behind and all that. Relax.”

It was not like Thumper to smile, but his scowl had a relieved quality as he sank back into sleep.

---

The elf’s name was Sings-to-Trees and he liked animals.

This was something of an understatement.

Many people like animals in the abstract. Sings-to-Trees liked them the way saints like lepers. He lived with them, he treated them, he patched them up and fed them and sent them on their way. In return, they kicked him and bled on him and oozed on him and had offspring in the middle of his bed, which was admittedly something that saints have rarely had to worry about from lepers.

“Your friend’ll be fine,” he told Nessilka. “It’s nice having a patient who can actually answer questions. And before you worry—” he held up a hand, “—I know there’s a war on, but it’s about fifty miles thattaway. Your friend is hurt and this isn’t the front, so I’m not planning on turning you in. But you sure are a long way from home.”

Nessilka nodded glumly. “Tell me about it. We didn’t plan to be here. There was a wizard, and you know how it goes…”

He nodded. “I doubt anybody’s going to find you. Other elves don’t come by here much. A little too much nature for them, I think.”

“I thought all elves…y’know…were into nature…” said Nessilka, with a vague hand gesture that could have indicated either into-nature-ness or raving insanity.

Sings-to-Trees snorted. “Sure. Pretty nature. Unicorns, griffins, hummingbirds, sylphs, those little dragon-butterfly things…t he animals that don’t smell bad, and look pretty. But you get an eggbound cockatrice that needs its cloacal vents oiled three times a day for a week, and suddenly everybody has pressing engagements elsewhere.”

(“What’s a cloacal vent?” Mishkin asked Algol, who told him. Both twins turned a little grey and gazed at Sings-to-Trees with awed disgust.)

“And just try to get them to patch up a troll. Trolls are wonderful.” He was pacing now. Nessilka got the impression that this was a rant he’d been working on for a long time, and he didn’t often get a new audience. “They’d let you saw off their head without flinching. I love trolls. And they keep you in all the goat meat you can eat, too. But if one gets lost and goes wandering through some elf’s backyard, are they understanding? Noooo, it’s all ‘Call out the guards, there’s a rogue troll on the loose!’ Bah! Trolls are like kittens.” He stabbed a finger in the direction of Wiggles for emphasis, then paused.

“Which reminds me, let me get you some milk for that little guy.”

“So how did you learn to speak Glibber at all?” asked Murray, while Sings-to-Trees poured out a saucer of milk for the kitten and Murray made tea. All eight of the uninjured goblins had crowded around the long table in the kitchen. The wood was scarred from countless claws and the edges had a distinctly gnawed look.

“There used to be a lot of goblins here. Some were my friends. I used to treat their pigs.” He smiled. “Sometimes I’d treat them, too—I don’t know if the state of goblin medicine has advanced much in the last hundred years—”

“No, it’s still pretty much “amputate at the neck,” said Murray.

The elf nodded. “I was sorry when the tribe left. They were company, anyway. Most elves don’t come out this far. The humans aren’t bad, really. I help their animals sometimes. Somebody comes up from the town every couple of days with cheese or bread or some such.”

Algol, Murray, and Nessilka slid glances at each other, then quickly away. Murray looked at the ceiling and Algol looked at the floor. Nessilka ran a finger through a groove on the side of the table, which seemed to be a tooth mark from something with teeth the size of her thumb.

“Has anyone come up in the last few days?” she asked quietly.

The elf’s forehead twisted. “There was bread and cheese…no, that was a while ago. Now that you mention it, no. Nobody’s dropped off food for almost a week.”

Nessilka nodded slowly. “We were just at the village. Well, at a farmhouse. There’s nobody there.”

“You mean they left?”

“No…I mean, there’s nobody there. The wagon’s there, but no people. No animals. A meal left in mid-bite.” She shook her head. “We didn’t check the village, obviously, but we didn’t see anyone.”

The elf shook his head. “That’s odd. That’s really worrisome. Perhaps I should go look.”

Nessilka didn’t want to go anywhere near that farmhouse again, but—well—he had fixed Thumper and he did speak their language and he wasn’t turning them in. It would probably be better if he didn’t get a chance to go off alone and have second thoughts about that last bit, come to think of it.

“We’ll go with you, in the morning,” said Nessilka. Murray made a faint noise of protest and she silenced him with a glare. “We can at least show you where the abandoned farm was.”

“Thank you. You’re more than welcome to stay here for the night—your friend’s going to be on his back for at least three days, even as hard as goblin heads are. I want him in here, so I can check on him every few hours, but if you all don’t mind sleeping in the barn…”

“With real straw?” asked Mishkin.

“And a real roof?” asked Mushkin.

“All the straw and roof you want.”

The twins cheered.

“We should probably get dinner started, too.”

Nessilka raised her eyebrows. “Are you sure you want to feed all eight of us? You’re helping Thumper already. I don’t want to eat you out of house and home.”

Sings-to-Trees laughed in what he probably thought was a maniacal fashion, but there was something so inherently harmless about him that it looked more like he was practicing a peculiar bird call. “Are you kidding? Finally, an excuse to get rid of all of that zucchini! I planted two plants this year, and now not even the trolls will come by for fear I’ll throw zucchini bread at them.” He started for the door.

“Okay, then…Mishkin, Mushkin, go help the nice man with his zucchini. Algol, take Weasel and see to moving our stuff into the barn. Try to make as little mess as possible, we’re guests. Gloober, if you stick your finger any farther in your ear, you’ll go deaf, and I’ll have to learn sign language so I can say, “I told you so.” Go help with the zucchini. Try not to put one in your ear.”

Having thus disposed of the troops, Murray, Blanchett, and Nessilka were left sitting alone at the long wooden table. Nessilka swirled the dregs of her tea around her mug.

“What do you think?” she asked Murray.

“I think that it’s highly unlikely he and Algol were separated at birth, but I still wonder.”

“Nah, I’ve met Algol’s mother. Lovely woman, but goblin to the bone. Do you think we can trust him?”

Murray pulled on his ponytail. “We don’t have much choice until Thumper gets better, do we? I don’t know. If you’re asking whether I think he’s keeping us here until he can call in the elves, I don’t think so. He really doesn’t seem like the type.”

“The bear trusts him,” put in Blanchett.

Point in his favor, thought Nessilka, the bear is usually a pretty good judge of character. And that I’m even thinking that is probably a sign that I need my head examined.

---

Sings-to-Trees straightened up and watched the goblins picking zucchini. The twins were an indeterminate shade of grey-brown, and their lumpy, dirt-streaked skin blended surprisingly well with the earth. If they hadn’t been cheerfully finishing each other’s sentences, he would have had a hard time spotting them.

He had been startled by the goblin—Thumper—running across the field, but once the poor fellow had hit his head, there wasn’t much help for it but to take him home. He’d known the others were going to show up, of course. You never got just one goblin. The surprising thing was that there were any here at all, what with the war.

Sings-to-Trees had always rather liked goblins. They reminded him of tiny trolls—ferocious looking, often foul, but generally without malice. He had no particular opinion about the war, except that it was probably a shame. In his experience, people were usually people, even the ones who were four feet tall and lumpy, and if you treated them well, they mostly returned the favor.

He was quite sure the sergeant—the rather imposing female goblin with the bun and the put-upon expression—didn’t quite trust him, but in her position, he wouldn’t have trusted him either.

Despite all warnings to the contrary, the one named Gloober was trying to insert a zucchini up his nose. Sings-to-Trees sighed and went to go rescue his vegetables from a fate worse than death.