Chelsea and Swindle

by James K. Pratt

Mina must have noticed my fear. “Ignore them. They are just feeding on what I had in the barrels. Come, follow me.”

  * * *

  Prinus the philosopher stood before the court defending Tuk. “Justice—that is all we want when we are wronged. Tuk is on trial for attempted robbery and murder, but what he took was stolen from his father’s lifeless hand. All creatures who live in peace have the right to live without being harmed, and if we deny that of Tuk, we are in effect denying it for all of us.”

  While Prinus spoke, a hobgoblin tapped Tuk’s shoulder. “Sorry bloke, but your friends from the orphanage can’t come. Dirk and the kids are stuck outside with the rest who couldn’t fit in the room. They just wanted me to give you that message.”

  “Thanks,” Tuk said.

  When it came time for the prosecutor to speak, he made jokes and told the people about the wizard’s service to his people. The prosecutor spoke with a confident air, but his confidence in himself and the case may have been misplaced. At the end, after talking for five minutes, the jury was hung. This surprised Tuk. He was free.

  “Wait!” The princess rose from her seat. “I hold the final say, and I say guilty! I won’t have a mongrel besmirching the integrity of this court and our heroes. The monster must die.” She gave a cold smile down at Tuk.

  Gasps and murmurs filled the room. Seldom did the royals lower themselves to such duties of overriding the court.

  Tuk’s anger overrode any sadness at having his life snatched from him. Now he wished his friends were with him.

  While Tuk stood on the gallows, the executioner asked him, “Would you like to say a few last words?”

  Tuk knew he had little chance of not being killed, so his words must be chosen well. The crowd was full of humans and elves, as well as goblins, orcs, and even rare minotaurs.

  In the distance, he saw the princess with her armed guards. Tuk saw the pride in her cold smile. Her eyes held an old anger at Tuk. He figured his true crime in the princess’s eyes, even if she didn’t realize it herself, was that he was born a goblin and she could not forgive his crime of existing.

  If I can, I will rip that smile off her pale human face, I will!

  He understood the so-called goodly folk would not care. He needed to talk to the less noble races.

  “The goodly folk think they can kill an innocent goblin child and they are right. They can do anything they want. They can insult you, and with every insult that goes unpunished they prove to you that they are better. But if you realize that you are strong, you can cut down the prideful humans and elves.”

  “That’s it! Enough from you,” the executioner said, grabbing the goblin by the arm and dragging him to the noose. Even with the black mask and veil over the executioner’s face, Tuk felt his angry gaze.

  Suddenly a horn burst through the executioner’s chest. The man didn’t even scream. The dead man’s grip clamped on Tuk’s arm, and together they rose into the air. Tuk saw that a minotaur had impaled the executioner. With the executioner hanging from his horn and Tuk dangling in the executioner’s grip, the minotaur yelled to the crowd, “Let’s show the humans and elves that we are not their underlings!”

  The princess retreated as a volley of stones came her way. The guard formed a roof of shields over her head. In the sea of people, humans and elves tried to fight for their lives, many of them poor and powerless as well, but the rioters didn’t care.

  Tuk knew hanging him wasn’t justice, but this wasn’t either.

  Once Tuk pried the executioner’s dead fingers from his arm, he dropped down to the wooden gallows floor and ran.

  Chapter 16 Teeth and Riots

  “Look, this is a promising sign,” Mina said, picking up what I thought was a yellowish white stone.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “A human tooth,” Mina said.

  I gasped.

  “Wow,” Swin said. “You can tell we made all the wrong choices when a human tooth is the good sign we are looking for.”

  “It means we are close,” the necromancer said.

  A few minutes later, Mina spotted something. “Here,” she said. “We are getting closer to the buried old city.”

  “How did the old city get to be in the sewer?” I asked.

  “When the city was being modernized under the rule of Hedrion the Third he decided to use what remained of the old city that was buried underground. What he didn’t count on was that occasionally his sewer and manmade run-off streams would be used by people for nefarious purposes.”

  “Like necromancy,” I said.

  “Exactly,” she smirked.

  * * *

  The riot spread like a fire, or more like the riot spread with a fire blazing in its wake. Screams called out as goodly and lesser folk burst from burning buildings. Few came to anyone’s rescue.

  Tuk’s lungs burned as he raced to find the wizard. No one cared who he was and even more didn’t know that he was the catalyst for the riot. An explosion burst from a second-story glass window. It was the wizard’s place. A goblin came flying out of the window with a trail of glass like a goblin comet.

  “Stupid human,” Tuk exclaimed. The wizard had gone directly home. Tuk wasted no time. He found the door ajar and ran into the house. Something pounded the second floor above like a rock. Tuk forgot all thoughts of stealth and darted up the stairs. He paused halfway up, remembering surprise was his only chance at killing the wizard. He slowed, his feet landing on the steps with care. He made it to the top with minimal noise.

  The wizard was in his workroom. He had his back to Tuk, cursing while filling a bag with books, scrolls, and various statuettes. A dead goblin, his tunic burnt in the front, lay at the wizard’s feet. Apparently, he tried to rob or kill the wizard.

  The room reminded Tuk of a goblin wise man’s laboratory. It had a workbench with strange powders, bowls, and bottles for potions, but no feathers or bones like a wise man would have.

  With the wizard’s back to him, Tuk’s eyes darted all around the room looking for a weapon. He reached for a piece of glass from a broken mirror. The glass scraped the floor when he picked it up off the ground. Tuk took two steps without a sound, but then the wizard spun around. Tuk buried the glass into the human’s abdomen. A splash of blood burst forth, wetting the goblin’s green fingers.

  The wizard yelped in pain as he pulled the glass out with one hand. He reached for the goblin with the other.

  Not knowing what to do, Tuk scrambled on the wizard’s back.

  * * *

  “My grandfather should be in there,” Mina said, pointing to a wooden door that looked out of place in the sewer. The door was ajar.

  We entered the room. Swindle’s torchlight revealed it to be empty but for the carpet of blood that caked the floor. A cage sat in the middle of the room. Inside the cage was a man. His eyes were pale and unmoving, so I thought he might be blind.

  “How did you find me?” the man asked.

  “Doesn’t matter, Grandfather,” Mina said.

  “There is something I have to tell you,” Mina’s grandfather said.

  “Be quick, Grandfather. The bait I left for the ghouls won’t keep them distracted forever.”

  “While I have been turning, the ghouls have used me to speak for their god, Anu.”

  I knew that illegal god’s domain was vengeance.

  “You speak for their god?” Swindle asked.

  “I am between death and life, so my magical abilities are the strongest, making me the best to receive a message from their god. Anu saw a tomb with a goblin and an adventurer filled with rage for each other. The goblin overcame the adventurer and Anu watched the goblin come to this city. That’s why the ghouls are here. The god found this city ripe with rage—ready for a riot. The poor are angry and the lesser races are bursting with hate for the rich and fairer races. Anu said he could smell the ripe hatred in the city, and in some way I suspect that is literally true.”

  “We know, Grandfather. A trial could ignite
a riot this very night.”

  From the edges of Swin’s torchlight, ghouls crawled into view, revealing their withered bodies. They looked like dried humans and elves with pale, dead eyes. Their greedy lips parted to reveal dry, bloodstained teeth.

  The ghouls walked on all fours and snarled with a sound like both a dog’s growl and a housecat’s purr.

  Mina whispered words I did not know. My understanding of magic was too basic.

  To my horror, one ghoul whispered something. Was it magic? As if to answer that question, a shadow came out of nowhere and overlapped Swindle’s torchlight. The ghoul slowly walked onto the shadow. The creature must have been a wizard in his past life.

  “Hurry,” I said to Mina. I readied my bow.

  The torchlight began to dim.

  “Do what you came for, Mina,” her grandfather said.

  First, I loosed an arrow that hit the whispering ghoul’s head. The other ghouls howled.

  But Swindle’s torchlight snuffed out and everything went black. I couldn’t aim for the caged man.

  “Mina!” I yelled.

  Just then Mina shouted a word I did not understand, and a green loop of light burst from her and stretched into the darkness. The ghouls yelped in its wake.

  Swindle’s torchlight flared back up.

  I readied my arrow.

  “Aim well, Chelsea,” Mina said.

  I did. The arrow hit Mina’s grandfather right in the heart.

  The ghouls howled with rage.

  We ran.

  Tuk didn’t know what he was doing. He sat on the wizard’s shoulders and held onto his neck, grabbing for something off the table with his free hand. The old wizard was growing weaker as the wound in his abdomen took its toll. To Tuk’s bad luck, he had snatched a piece of bootlace off the table. What good was a bootlace in a fight? His first impulse was to be mad, but then he realized how stupid he was. He wrapped it around the wizard’s neck and leaned back, keeping a tight grip on the lace. Then he kicked his feet at the man’s upper back, pulling the shoelace tight against his throat.

  The wizard fell like a giant, heavy statue.

  Swindle was a fast runner, but he ran backwards behind us slashing at the snapping ghouls while holding the magical torch.

  “I’ve one more scroll.” Mina looked at it while running. It glowed and light shot from her hand. “Swindle, I’ve one more spell. Keep them back until I fire it.”

  Swindle pulled what must have been his last throwing knife from his leather vest. He tossed the knife straight into the eye of a ghoul. It was a lucky hit, but still, just at the edge of the torchlight, the sound of finger and toenails ticking against the wet floor closed in.

  A shaft of light shot up along the manhole’s ladder. Our safety was near. Just a few seconds away.

  “Chelsea, you first,” Swindle said. I didn’t argue.

  The necromancer shot out a bolt of light that sent the ghoul ten feet back. “That’s the last spell I have,” Mina said, running.

  We slammed the hole shut after Swindle burst from the manhole. The necromancer and I stood on the manhole lid while one of the ghouls tried to push it up with all its might.

  And then, silence.

  Swindle dripped with sweat like he had stood in rain. His sickle dripped with undead ichor. He had kept us safe. Right then, I knew that Swindle was no longer a dreamer. He was an adventurer.

  Fear twinged in my stomach, worried that ghouls might try pounding out of the sewer. But they did not.

  “I think we are safe,” Mina said, looking exhausted. “That’s enough to spook many of the ghouls. Our city should be safe.”

  “Hey, something happened.” Swindle looked around the neighborhood we were in.

  Smoke hovered in the air. The city was silent but for distant crying and yelling. My mind had been so focused on the manhole, I had not noticed that the city was in ruins.

  “I don’t think Tuk got the verdict he wanted,” Swin said. “But if the apparent riot is any indication, I think he’s alive,” he added with a slight frown. “I hope he’s okay.”

  I nodded. “This riot leads me to think he’s okay.”

  Epilogue

  We spotted Tuk when we neared the Adventurers’ Guild. He stood alone with blood splattered on his clothes and some on his hands. Oddly, the weapon he held while looking at us expressionlessly did not have a spot of blood on its pale bone blade.

  We ran to him. I reached him first. I had quickly lost my breath, being not long after we escaped the ghouls. “Sorry we couldn’t come to the trial. We were…” I tried to find my words. “It’ll sound unbelievable—”

  “They were helping me try to scare ghouls who would have eaten the population in the event of a riot,” said Mina. Despite it being true, it was a really bad answer. Yet I was at a loss for a better one. Tuk’s expression showed he felt the same way.

  Mina gestured to the smoking ruins behind him where the sound of rioting could be heard a block away. “Did you cause this?”

  Tuk’s eyes widened like a child accused of mischief. He turned around and looked at the destroyed city as if he hadn’t noticed the ruins. His gazed dipped to his feet. “No.”

  “You’re a terrible liar, goblin. Learn to lie better. You’ll live longer,” Mina said. This was true, especially if people wanted to kill him for being the catalyst for this riot, but again I noted the necromancer’s lack of tact.

  “Thanks, pale face,” Tuk said.

  Mina only smiled back.

  “We are glad you survived,” I said. Swin smiled and nodded in agreement. Then I added, “I gather the court found you guil—” I stopped short.

  “The goblin races, orcs, and minotaurs disagreed with the princess overriding my verdict. Who am I to override popular opinion?”

  “If you weren’t a goblin, you’d make a good person for legal defense. Proconsul would be in your future. Too bad you’re a goblin,” said the Necromancer.

  “Thanks.” Tuk’s eyes narrowed.

  “Well, we survived a horrible day,” I said, putting my arms over Tuk’s and Mina’s shoulders. “I don’t think we want to be out at night. I know the part of town we are in. We are closer to the inn. If Morn is the man I think he is, the kids and Dirk will be okay. Morn will look out for them.”

  We went on our way. As I quietly walked the ruins of my city, I knew with a fledgling adventurer, a vindictive goblin, and a necromancer, that my life would never be the same.

  To be continued….

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank everyone who helped me with this story. I like to thank, Mary Parker, John Littlefield and my family Robert, Susan and Kyle Pratt for their help with this story.