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Nine Goblins

by T Kingfisher

Episode 1 – Episode 2 – Episode 3 – Episode 4 – Episode 5 – Episode 6 – Episode 7 – Episode 8

The village square felt agonizingly exposed. The goblins clung to the shadow of the buildings as long as they could, and then there was a water trough for horses partway there, but after that there was nothing to hide behind except bodies.

It was not the first time in Nessilka’s life she’d hidden behind bodies, but if the great gibbering gods were kind, it’d be the last. She thought the smell might follow her for several lifetimes.

She and Murray crouched behind a cow. It was bloated and its tongue was sticking out. Its udder had puffed up like a balloon. She had never given much thought to what happened to a cow’s udder when it rotted. She wished she wasn’t giving it any thought now.

Murray jerked his chin at the door. It was still slightly ajar, and there was no cover between them and it, unless you counted the dead steer blocking the other door. They could hide behind the open door, but there were bodies there, and they’d have to actually climb on them and…no.

The dead steer it would have to be.

She flicked her fingers. Going. Cover me.

That last dash across the open square made her nerves jangle like badly-tuned bells. Goblin feet were large and flat and actually fairly good for stealth if you moved carefully and didn’t let them go slap-slap-slap, but there were patches of…mud. Let’s go with mud. Red mud. Yes. She had to be careful not to squelch. And how was Murray going to cover her, anyway? Throw a dead body at anyone who attacked her?

She fetched up behind the dead steer and waited with her heart in her throat.

Nothing happened.

Flies buzzed around her in a cloud, but no strange voice called out. Nobody came to see what was going on, or to scream because there was a goblin warrior in town.

Oh, this would be a bad time for the rangers to show up… Thirty-odd dead bodies and three live goblins…no, that didn’t bear thinking about.

Murray crossed the square and dropped down beside her.

They exchanged glances, then looked at the gap in the door. It was about six inches wide, and yawned like a chasm before them.

She flicked a finger at Murray—wait—and sidled to the edge of the door.

It was dark inside. The bright sunlight made hot bars of light across the shadows, illuminating the edge of a pew. She crouched low, squinting.

It was hard to see anything. Well, no help for it… She took out an earplug.

There was a faint sizzling sound in the darkness. It was a familiar enough sound, but so far out of normal context that she couldn’t place it.
The smell of the dead was overwhelming, but under it, Nessilka could smell…pancakes?

She could make out a shape at the far end of the gloom, backlit by the remains of a fire, and in front of the embers, humming—humming?—was the human subadult, and it was frying pancakes.

Goblins were occasionally bad. Goblins were scourges of the night. And war was war and after a battle you generally ate like a starving wolf although you couldn’t always keep it down afterwards.

But even goblins didn’t stand in buildings surrounded by the piled dead and make pancakes.

She felt a brief, blinding rage—humans might be the enemy, but these were civilians, goddamnit—and then the rage died away and was replaced with a deep, unsettled disquiet.

Because anybody who would do that was crazy—bad, bugshit crazy, deep-down crazy. People like that had a crazed animal in their head and you could see it gnawing at the back of their eyes when they talked.

And they were very, very dangerous because there was absolutely no telling what they would do next.

She didn’t look back at Murray. Her eyes would have to adjust again if she did. And she couldn’t sign what she was seeing—goblin hand-sign did not include things like “crazy psychopath making pancakes.”

She gritted her teeth and slipped inside.

The door did not quite creak when she pushed it open, but it let in more light, and if the human looked up, it was bound to see the difference. Nessilka dropped low behind the first pew, breathing silently through her mouth, listening.

There was no change in the humming. It was a tuneless little repetition, hmm-hmm-hmm-hm-hm-hmm-hm, in no particular order.

Why don’t I have a crossbow? I could shoot it from here and save us all the trouble. She should have borrowed one from Sings-to-Trees. Surely he had one for dealing with…something. Rabid foxes or rogue deer or whatever.

She crept the length of the pew, shot another look at the fire—it appeared to be made out of broken chairs and cushions from the pews—and looked for the human. It had moved a foot or two to one side, and was fumbling with something on the ground.

Probably wants syrup on its pancakes, she thought darkly.

She took the chance and scurried to the next pew, and then she heard a quiet glug and had a hysterical urge to laugh, because that was exactly the sound of somebody pouring out syrup.

The tuneless humming stopped, and was replaced by the scrape of fork on plate, and the sounds of chewing. Nessilka doubted she would have been able to hear either if the town had not been so deadly silent.

Did she dare risk another pew?

She had just decided to go down the length of the pew to the far end and use that concealment to move forward when she heard the door creak.

It was louder this time, and damnit, Murray still had his earplugs in, so of course he didn’t hear it, and if they got out of this alive, she was going to box his ears—

The eating noises stopped.

“Hello?” said a voice, shockingly close. Cloth rustled as the human stood up. “Is someone there?”

She stood up. If the human fixed on her, maybe it would overlook Murray.

It was standing less than five feet away. It still had a fork and a plate of pancakes in its hand. Blonde hair poked out from under the cloth on its head, and it—she?—stared at Sergeant Nessillka with wide blue eyes.

“Um,” Nessilka said. “Hi?”

---

“You’re a goblin,” said the human girl, sounding strangely aggrieved, as if she had been expecting someone else.

“Goblin,” said Nessilka. “Yes. Absolutely. Born and bred. You can tell by the feet, see?”

She held up a foot. This was not strictly necessary, as any idiot could have identified Nessilka as a goblin at a hundred paces, but while the girl was looking at her foot, she was not looking at Murray, who had damn well better be hunkering down behind a pew and pretending to be a prayer book.

“It wasn’t supposed to be goblins,” said the girl.

“Um. Sorry.” Nessilka was not going to go for her club. It would probably be sensible to go for her club, and she knew this human was going to be bad news—innocent bystanders did not make pancakes while surrounded by the piled dead—but it was surprisingly hard to hit a kid who wasn’t doing anything but staring at you. Even a human kid.

I am going to regret this later, thought Nessilka, I know I am, but I’m still not going for my club, what am I, stupid, why am I not going for my club…?

“So…are you here all alone?” she asked instead.

“Oh, yes,” said the girl, a faint tremor in her voice. “The wizard came and—it was horrible—all those people—” She put her face in her hands, and her hair fell down over it in a perfect picture of misery.

Nessilka did not buy this for a second. She supposed it was possible that it was just because humans were The Enemy, but all her sergeanting instincts told her there was a little too much practice in that delivery. If a new recruit had come to her with that kind of theatrics, she’d have knocked him down and had Thumper sit on him until he told the truth.

“I’m an orphan,” sobbed the girl.

“So am I,” said Nessilka. “We could bond, if you like.”

Somehow she didn’t think the girl was going to take her up on the offer.

“The wizard said these words…”

“Wizard, hmm?” She folded her arms and leaned against the back of the pew. She was pretty sure the girl was watching her from behind her hands and that curtain of hair. “Where did he go?”

“It was so awful! He said these words, and—all those people—”

“Yes, yes,” said Nessilka, “you said that bit already.” She caught a glimpse of Murray peeking out behind the pew and gave him a death glare. He had the grace to look ashamed, mouthed Sorry, Sarge, and pulled back out of sight.

“He left,” said the girl, sniffling. “And then everybody was dead and my brother is gone and I was all alone—”

“Overlooked you, hmm?” Nessilka began wandering down the aisle towards the altar. Anything to get her eyes away from Murray—maybe he’d be able to slip out the door, not that she could trust him to do anything so sensible…

“I th-think so…” The girl took her hands away from her face. “Please, you must save me! Take me away from here, before he returns!”

“Door’s open,” said Nessilka. “Why didn’t you just leave and go for help?”

“L-leave?” This clearly took her by surprise. Didn’t rehearse that part of your speech, did you?

“Seems a bit weird to stay here and make breakfast while you wait for this wizard of yours to come back.”

The girl’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not very nice,” she said. “It’s been horrible, and I’m the sold survivor—”

“Sole survivor,” said Murray, who had never in his life been able to resist correcting someone’s grammar.

Nessilka winced, and wondered when he’d taken out the useless earplugs.

Murray coughed apologetically and stood up. “And you’re actually not,” he said. “There’s at least one old guy in a little house on the edge of town who could probably pull through with a bit of water and some tending.”

“What?” This information somehow did not seem to gratify the human at all. “Old Man Houghton? How—” Her face smoothed out, and she said, in a much different tone, “Oh. That’s wonderful, of course!”

Nessilka and Murray glanced at each other.

“You don’t know! It’s been horrible!” said the girl, and burst into furious tears.

Were all human civilians this wet? Nessilka didn’t much like humans to begin with, what with the taking-her-homeland bit and lately the always-trying-to-kill-her bit, but she’d give the human soldiers this—they didn’t cry at you. Not until you’d cut their legs off, anyway, and that didn’t count.

“Uh, Sarge…” said Murray.

The human sobbed.

“There there, yes, you’ve suffered terribly. ‘Scuse us a minute,” said Nessilka, grabbing Murray by the arm. She yanked him back towards the door and hissed, in furious Glibber, “Are you out of your mind?”

“I think she’s the one who did it, Sarge!”

“Well, obviously! And I ought to bust you back down to private for disobeying orders!”

“But Sarge, I think—”

“You’re not going to work,” said the girl, in a clear, carrying voice without a trace of a sob.

Nessilka wheeled around, and found that the girl was between them and the door. Her hand dropped instinctively to the haft of her club.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” said the girl. “You were supposed to be elves. The elves were supposed to come and take me away to find John, and you’re just going to ruin everything.”

The human’s eyes were very bright. Crazylight, thought Nessilka. Sane people’s eyes don’t look like that unless they’re dying.

“Let’s not do anything rash,” said Murray, spreading his hands. “We can talk about this—”

Ten steps, thought Nessilka. Over the back of the pew and ten steps and then club her.

“You won’t work at all,” said the girl. “And if Old Man Houghton’s still kicking around—what a mess.” She sounded annoyed, but her crazylight eyes gleamed, and Nessilka knew that she was probably already too late.

The sergeant lunged.

She got over the back of the pew and two steps farther and that was all. The girl opened her mouth and tilted her head back a little, and a sound came out.

It was that maddening, half-heard conversation sound, but louder and closer and painful. The words cut right through the center of Nessilka’s head like the teeth of a bonesaw. The human’s lips were hardly moving but her throat was vibrating strangely and great gibbering gods Nessilka wanted to go towards it, it was important that she go towards it, but it hurt, it felt like the two halves of her skull were grating together and the girl was backing away from them but she had to get closer, perhaps if she could just hear what the voice was saying the horrible grating in her head would stop because if it didn’t stop the bones in Nessilka’s ears were going to shatter and she was going to go deaf and why was she moving so slowly, because the girl was backing out the door but her feet seemed to stick to the floor and Murray was moaning and she wanted to smack him because his moaning was making it harder to make out the words and oh gods, why hadn’t she used the club when she had a chance—

And then Blanchett brought his club down on the back of the girl’s head.

The sound cut off instantly. There was a thump as the human wizard—she couldn’t have been anything else—folded up and hit the ground. Nessilka heard herself cry out in anguish and relief. So did Murray.

She staggered to the door and looked out. The one-eyed teddy-bear bobbed atop the helmet. “Sorry, Sarge,” said Blanchett, “but he said you needed some help.”

“Tell him he’s promoted,” rasped Nessilka. “I’ll get him some stripes.”

“He’d like that, Sarge.”

Murray looked down at the crumpled human and nudged her with one flat foot. The human groaned. “You didn’t kill her,” he said.

“Was I supposed to?”

“Might have made things easier. What are we going to do now, Sarge?”

Nessilka looked at the unconscious wizard, looked at the pile of bodies, looked up at Murray—and was spared any kind of decision because at that moment, the rangers arrived.

---

There is a game that most civilized creatures play in times of great turmoil, which might best be called “How Boned Are We?”

Nessilka and Murray were playing it now.

“We’re boned,” said Murray.

“Yup,” said Nessilka.

“They’re gonna think we did all of it.”

“Sings-to-Trees will set them straight.”

“If they think to ask him.”

“True.”

“And there’s no chance they’ll believe the kid did it.”

“Doesn’t look like it, no.”

“So we’re boned.”

“Yup.”

Blanchett was sitting this one out, since the elves had taken their weapons and his fanged orc-helmet seemed to qualify. Without the bear, Blanchett was as silent as the grave.

Nessilka had made an effort. When she’d been kneeling in the mud with a sword held near her neck and an elf had been trussing her up with grim efficiency, she’d said “That bear is one of my men. I demand that you treat him with the courtesy due to a prisoner of war.”

Which had gone over about as well as you’d expect, but at least she’d seen bear, helmet, and weapons vanish into a sack together. So that was something. Leave no soldier behind and all.

They hadn’t been killed on the spot, and that was also something.

She was pretty sure that goblins were considered generally too incompetent to pull off something like this.

Pretty sure.

Fairly sure, anyway.

Reasonably hopeful.

She’d told them the kid was a wizard. She wasn’t sure if they’d listened. Probably not. They’d whisked the girl away somewhere, and realistically, the three enemies of the state standing in the town full of bodies, having just clubbed one of the last survivors, were not the most credible of witnesses.

They had been removed from the village and dropped in a sheep pasture about a half-mile distant. Somebody had set up a tent and she could smell a fire burning on the other side of the hedgerow. A silent elf with a crossbow was standing guard.

“Do you speak this language?” he had asked. (He had asked probably the same question three other times, in what sounded like three other languages, but Nessilka didn’t know any of them. She was interested to note that it was not the language the human had spoken, so perhaps the races didn’t have that much contact after all.)

“Yes,” she said. Murray nodded. Blanchett stared into the distance.

“Good. I am very angry. If you attempt to escape, I will be very glad to kill you. Do you understand me?”

They nodded.

“We didn’t do it,” said Murray hopelessly.

“You will have a chance to speak to Captain Finchbones in your defense,” said the elf, and then walked five feet away and became as communicative as a stone.

“We’re boned,” said Murray glumly.

“Yup.”

“Think we can escape?”

“No.”

“If the kid does the thing—”

“Then we’ll break our necks trying to get to her, most likely, if we don’t get trampled by the elves first. Unless it doesn’t work on elves.” She looked at their captor. His hair was perfect. You could braid enough coup markers in that hair to account for a small berserker nation.

They sat in the sheep pasture and watched the sun crawl across the sky.

Nessilka tried to engage Blanchett. “Blanchett? Can you hear the bear?”

No response.

Great grim gods, what if his brain is melted? What if this is what drives him over the edge?

More over the edge?

“Blanchett, I want you to listen to me. The bear is on a very important mission. He’s doing reconnaissance. You need to stay with me until the bear reports back, understand?”

He turned his head half an inch toward her. Nessilka felt a sudden enormous relief, capture by the enemy notwithstanding. She wriggled into a more comfortable position and leaned toward Blanchett.

The elf’s crossbow went click.

She leaned back and addressed the sky. “Blanchett, I know you’re in there. You just need to sit tight until the bear comes back, okay?”

His lips moved. It might have been Yes, Sarge. It might have been almost anything.

The tent flap was pulled back, and two more elves emerged. Nessilka sized them up as they approached. Was one Captain Finchbones?

“The one in the armor?” guessed Murray.

“No,” said Nessilka, who knew a bit more about command. “The one who looks tired.”

And indeed, of the two elves approaching, one looked exhausted. His shoulders were stooped and his long white hair made him look old instead of ethereal.

He had weary eyes. Nessilka clenched her fingers together.

If you are going to be captured—and if you are a goblin soldier, this is always at least a possibility—it is rarely a good idea to be captured by tired people. Tired people make mistakes. Those mistakes are rarely in your favor. For every guard who dozes off or who fails to lock the prison door, you get a dozen guards who forget that they’ve taken the safety off the crossbow, who mistake a plea for water for an assault, or who fail to loosen the ropes before somebody’s hand turns black and falls off.

Tired commanders are even worse. Tired commanders have a tendency to want problems to just go away.

Nessilka knew that she, Murray, Blanchett and a town full of corpses added up to a very big problem.

The tired elf squatted down in the mud in front of her—he was wearing very good boots—and said “I am Captain Finchbones.”

“Point to you, Sarge,” muttered Murray.

“Do you understand this language?”

“Yes,” said Nessilka. She licked dry lips and wracked her brain, trying to remember vocabulary. “Most. Need you explain some words.”

Finchbones nodded. “I wish to make sure there are no misunderstandings. Explain to me why you were in the village.”

Nessilka hardly knew where to begin. “We were in woods. We heard very strange noise.” Should she mention Sings-to-Trees? If they went to his farm, they’d find the rest of the regiment. Damn. “A magic noise. We had to walk to it.”

“Why were you in the woods?” asked Finchbones.

“A wizard—” Damn, what was the word for transported? “—moved us.”

Finchbones eyebrows went up at that. “A goblin wizard?”

“No!” That was all they needed, to have the elves thinking that they had wizards that could dump whole regiments behind enemy lines. “No. Human.”

“Why did a human wizard send you into my people’s lands?”

Murray muttered, “Careful, Sarge…” in Glibber. The elf behind him made a warning noise.

Nessilka sighed. There was really no answer that was going to paint them in a positive light. It was best to be honest. At least if they were prisoners of war, there were supposed to be rules about how they were treated.

“In battle. Ran at wizard.” Her hands were tied, but she managed a vague pantomime of attack with her head and one shoulder. Finchbones nodded. “Wizard moved. We moved too. Then we were in woods.”

Murray cleared his throat. Apparently he spoke this human dialect better than he spoke Elvish. “We think he was trying to run from the battle, but he brought all of us with him.”

Nessilka winced a little at all of us, but presumably that could apply to three people as easily as nine.

Finchbones shifted so that he was addressing both Murray and Nessilka. “Where is this wizard now?”

Nessilka shook her head. “Asleep.” That wasn’t the right word, but it was as close as she was going to get. “Left wizard asleep in woods.”

“Dead?”

“No!”

“Unconscious,” said Murray.

Finchbones nodded.

Nessilka tried to explain that they’d given the wizard some water and put a blanket over him, but she wasn’t sure how much of that came through, or whether Finchbones believed her.

She hated not being able to speak clearly. It made her sound stupid, and people thought goblins were stupid enough already.

“Who is in command?”

“I am,” said Nessilka. “I am—” She looked helplessly at Murray.

“Sergeant,” said Murray.

“Sergeant Nessilka. I am in command.” She licked her lips again. “I ask…fair. Fairness. Treatment of soldiers.”

“Prisoners of war,” said Finchbones.

Nessilka nodded. So did Murray.

Finchbones steepled his fingers. “And yet the people you have killed were not soldiers.”

“Did not kill people!”

Murray said, “The village was like that already. Already dead.”

“Days,” said Nessilka. “Many days dead. And we only three goblins.” She jerked her chin at Blanchett and Murray.

“You were found standing over a girl with a club,” said Finchbones grimly. “Making pancakes.”

Part of Nessilka was enormously gratified that the elf could see how insane it was to make pancakes while surrounded by dead bodies. This was largely mitigated by the fact that he thought they were her pancakes.

“Not us. Girl.”

“She is a wizard,” said Murray. “She made the noise.”

Nessilka stared up into Finchbones’ eyes, willing him to believe her. Because if he didn’t…Well, it was going to be unpleasant for the goblins in the short term, and for everybody in the long term.

Finchbones made a noncommittal noise and stood up. “I am not sure that I believe you.”

Nessilka sighed. “Wouldn’t believe either,” she said. “Hear magic noise, then believe.”

“By then it’ll be too late,” said Murray.

Finchbones lifted his other eyebrow. “You will be brought water,” he said. “Do not try to escape.”

Nessilka snorted. “Where we go?”

“There’s that,” said Finchbones, and walked away.

---

Sings-to-Trees had found the wizard, for all the good it was doing him.

He hadn’t been hard to find. The cervidian had dumped Sings directly in front of the young human’s campfire. It wasn’t a large campfire, but it was perfectly serviceable, and the wizard was feeding it twigs and making no attempt to hide the smoke or his presence in the forest.

Sings could tell it was the wizard, because he was still wearing Nessilka’s cloak. Badly cured goathide clashed oddly with the human’s military uniform.

Also, the wizard’s response to having a skeletal deer leap in front of him and a bruised and whimpering elf fall off its back was to say, “Oh.”

That was it. He didn’t even make eye contact with Sings-to-Trees. (This was all very well, as far as Sings was concerned, because he didn’t really want someone looking at him right at that moment. He was curled around bruises that would have felled a trained warrior, let alone a veterinarian.)

The cervidian rattled and stamped a hoof. The wizard fed another twig to the fire.

Sings sat up and said, “Are you the wizard?”

The wizard looked at his face briefly, and then back at the fire. “Yes?” He sounded unsure about it.

“Did you come through a—” Sings had to stop and translate mentally from the goblin tongue “—a hole in the air?”

“Yes?”

“There were goblins with you.”

The wizard nodded. “Lots of them,” he said. “I ran away. They came with me through the hole.” He gave Sings-to-Trees a brief, determined look. “I make holes.”

“Good for you,” said Sings. “Are you injured?”

“No?”

“The goblins said you were unconscious.”

The wizard nodded again. “Lots of them came through the hole. They were very heavy.”

Sings realized this was all the explanation he was going to get. “My name is Sings-to-Trees.”

“My name is John.”

“I live here, in the woods. A few miles away.”

John was silent for so long that Sings-to-Trees started thinking of another question, but then the wizard seemed to realize that something else was expected of him. “I live in the village. Elliot’s Cross?”

He looked worried. Sings said, “That’s a nice place,” and the wizard visibly relaxed.

Poor soul. He’s trying. People like this shouldn’t be in wars, even if they are good at it.

“Were you trying to get back there?”

“Yes? But lots of them came through the hole.” He furrowed his brow. Sings had an impression not so much of lack of intelligence, but of lack of ability to communicate. “When…when too many go through the hole…the hole won’t go far.”

“I understand, I think,” said Sings. Elliot’s Cross is what the humans call their village, isn’t it? He was trying to escape the battle and go back home, but when the goblins fell through, he only got partway there, and it took so much energy it knocked him out. Makes sense, I guess, as much as anything with magic makes sense.

“There’s some very strange magic happening in the woods here,” said Sings. “It attracted the cervidian.” He nodded to the stag. It rattled.

“Okay?” Again that inquiring lift at the end of the word. John darted a look at the elf’s face again.

Is he asking questions? He doesn’t seem hostile, he just seems confused…

“It isn’t me,” said the wizard. Not a question this time.

“It’s bad magic,” said Sings.

“It is?” He met the elf’s eyes with an expression of naked entreaty. It reminded Sings, for a moment, of a troll , all good nature and confusion.

Then Sings had it, and his heart broke a little for the human, because he realized that what the man was asking.

He knows he’s supposed to react somehow when I tell him these things, and he doesn’t know the right thing to say. Poor baffled soul. Worst case of magic I’ve seen in a while , and if Nessilka’s right and he’s able to kill people with that blue stuff as well as “make holes”, then nobody’s getting too close to him to teach him what’s normal.

“It’s killing people,” said Sings. “It’s bad. We don’t like it.”

The wizard nodded once, firmly, as if committing this to memory. “Sorry,” he said after a moment. “I get confused.”

“That’s okay,” said Sings. “If I tell you about the magic, can you tell me if you know anything about it?”

“Yes, sir.” He lowered his head slightly and pulled the goblin cloak tight around his shoulders. Sings-to-Trees had the feeling that no one had ever listened to him so intently in his entire life. The forest itself seemed to quiet down, out of respect for the intensity of the wizard’s concentration.

“It’s some kind of sound. It’s as if you can almost hear a conversation, but you can’t make out the words. It makes you try to get closer, no matter who’s in the way. People run toward it from miles away. In fact—”

He stopped there, because John had sat bolt upright. Some of the vagueness vanished from his face, replaced with dawning horror.

“It’s Lisabet,” he said, and it was clear he knew exactly what he felt about that. “That’s her power. She makes the voice.”

“Lisabet?” Now Sings-to-Trees was the one who didn’t know how to feel about something. “Who’s that?”

“My sister,” said John. “We have to find her, sir.” He didn’t look vague at all now, just very worried and very determined. “It’s very important that we find her at once. Before something terrible happens.”