by Ed Greenwood
“Captain Kergis,” gasped Zeth, though I had made no sound as I had come up, “you do not understand, do you?”
“No,” I said, not even thinking of lying. “It is your will.”
“It is my will, you say, but I am empty,” Zeth returned, still out of breath. “I am the cup that holds the drink, but not the drink itself. I am the mouth, but not the word.”
“I don’t understand this,” I said. “I don’t understand any of this. We are warriors. We don’t-” I broke off, trying to frame my thoughts. “We fight warriors, not worthless farmers. This is cowardice, to kill the dregs and the helpless! We fight those who can fight back! It’s the way to win wars.”
Zeth finally caught his breath and sighed as he lay back on the grass, resting on his elbows. He let his head fall back, staring up into the endless night.
“Captain,” he said softly, “you are more blind than I am.”
I knelt down on the grass a dozen paces from him. Strength seemed to flow out of me into the air. The warriors were drinking and laughing aloud in the distance.
“You wish to kill me,” said the half-breed. “I can feel it. Sometimes I can see things, when the gods borrow my head and I see through their eyes for a few moments. But other things I can hear and taste and feel for myself. You would be glad to see me dead.”
Zeth cocked his head in my direction, without looking directly at me. “It was the insult, you see, that drove me to this.”
When I did not respond, he nodded to himself. “You do not see, then, not even the insult. The taint. My birth. You do not even see that.”
“I see it,” I said under my breath. I was thinking about killing him right then with my sword, the gods be damned. It would be easy.
“You see only this body. You see that I am different. You see that you wish to kill me. I hear it in your voice. But you do not see the insult. You cannot learn what I am teaching.”
Zeth turned his head away in the direction of the warriors. In a few moments, he got to his feet and walked away.
After a while, I got up, too. Goblins milled around the field, aimless and tired. I guessed from the sky that dawn was only three hours away. We had to be off to make camp. Someone would find the massacred village, and the word would be out. I looked back and saw in the moonlight that our trail would not be difficult for vengeful parties to follow. We had to move or else die here.
I found Zeth sitting on the ground, talking to himself in a low voice. He paused and turned his head as I came closer, my boots crunching sticks beneath them.
“We must get out of here,” I said flatly. “We have no time to delay.”
Zeth turned away again. He was still talking to himself. Or to someone I couldn’t see. “He does not understand,” he whispered. “He cannot see where they are weak. It is the same place we are weak.”
He was motionless for a time, then got unsteadily to his feet.
“Lead us on,” said the blind half-breed. “South. We must hurry to our next teaching.”
The following night, about twelve miles south of the halfling village, we attacked an isolated farm. Two of our number were wounded but stayed on their feet. We left the farm a few hours later, after Zeth spoke again about the maggots we came from and the gods who watched us. The dozen humans of the family that had lived there now hung by their feet from the ceiling rafters in the dining hall, butchered like deer.
Those who had been my warriors took some of the meat with them.
“Do you see more clearly, Captain?”
I did not look away from the dark horizon as I marched. “No.”
Zeth hummed tunelessly to himself. “It is just as it was with me,” he said at last. “They would ask, ‘Do you see more clearly now?’ And I would cry and say, ‘No! Give them back to me!’ But that was not possible. They had thrown them out already. They were given back.”
“Your eyes,” I said after a pause.
“My mother said she would put them back, but she had no hands. My father had cut her hands off after he had attacked her and planted the seed for me. He had cut off her hands and left her to die. He was a human, but it was not a human thing to do. He was a hunter, she said, a hunter who had chosen her as his prey. She went out for water and he caught her. He tried to be a goblin. Surely, now, you see it.”
I licked my lips. I had lost my warriors and did not care what happened to me anymore. “No.”
Zeth sighed heavily. “The insult,” he said slowly, as to a child.
I didn’t bother to answer.
The next day, a scout shot a rider from his horse as the latter passed our camp at full gallop. It was a remarkable shot, given that the sun was full and we could barely see. The rider tried to crawl away but was found. Zeth did not even need to make a speech. The goblins knew what to do.
The rider was a human soldier from Durpar. Our doings had been discovered. Someone had sent for help against us.
“We can’t go farther south,” I told Zeth. ‘The danger is great. We’ve got to head back, or at least go west where they won’t look for us right away.”
“You do not understand,” said Zeth.
We went on south. We caught a farmer on a hay wagon, then two field hands, one human and one halfling. We surrounded a cottage on the edge of a woodlot, but there was only an old woman inside.
“We are cowards,” I said, looking at the old woman’s body as it swung in the breeze. I did not say it loudly, as goblins were all around. I no longer felt like one of them. They had betrayed me. Death was better than this.
“We are goblins,” said Zeth. He stood with his back to the tree from which the old woman hung. He looked high into the branches. “We have been like humans for too long. We did not understand what the gods wanted of us. We forgot their lessons. We forgot the maggots.”
“I’ve been listening to you talk about teachings and lessons and forgotten things, and I am sick of it,” I said. ‘Tell me what the lesson is, or I will kill you.”
The talking among the goblins stopped. Those who had been my warriors were now motionless, holding drinking flasks and cups and jugs pilfered from the old woman’s cottage. The goblins were all around me, watching me.
“We have been like humans for too long,” said Zeth. His voice was calm and peaceful. “We forgot that the gods made us from the lowest of all life, then gave us the burning inside to become the highest. They gave us the will to gain supremacy at all costs. Yet humans challenge us at every turn. Humans think they are better than we in every way. All know this-goblins, ores, giants, elves, dragons-all know this is true. Humans believe only in humans. None of the rest of the world matters to them. Soon we all come to believe that, and we lose the vision the gods gave us to see our way up. We lose our will, and then we are gone.”
Zeth pushed away from the tree and walked slowly over to the hanging corpse. He put out his hand and touched the body, causing it to slowly spin.
“It was only when my grandfather put out my eyes that I began to see for the first time,” he said. “The gods gave me the vision. Humans do not understand us and call us evil. They think we do terrible things just because we want to, because we are selfish. They call it evil, what we do, and I will call it evil, too, because the humans hate it so.”
Zeth looked directly at me. “We do evil, then, but we do this for the gods. Humans do not see that our evil is like love, in that it is greater than the self. Our evil reaches out to embrace the world and slay it, as the gods did, so that it will be ours. Our evil is as warm and red as love, and it enters the world in the same way love enters the heart-through the least defended places.”
The half-breed spread his arms, palms up. “You did not understand what I meant by the ‘insult,’ ” he said. “This body is tainted. I am forbidden by the gods to carry a weapon or wear armor to protect the taint.” A cold grin formed at the edges of Zeth’s mouth. “My father wanted to prove something when he attacked my mother and cut off her hands. He wanted to prove he was stro
nger than a goblin. Perhaps he wanted to show that he was more evil than a goblin, too. He certainly knew how we feel about humans and what we call the taint-the touch of humanity, of goodness and weakness. We might wallow in it, but we hate the word. And my father rubbed it in our faces.
“How could a human be stronger than a people descended from the worms that crawled in the wounds of the earth? How could he be more evil? Humans say they are so much better than we, and my father’s deed was as if humans had also claimed to be so much worse, as if we were nothing. It was an insult to us all. The gods saw it and were angry, and I was born to repay the insult to our people.
“We are now teaching humans how it feels to be weak. What do the strong fear more than weakness? What is more terrible to a warrior who prides himself on his might than to know it means nothing? We strike at the weak and the helpless, and the mighty humans go mad because they cannot protect the weak and helpless with goodness! The gods and our people are avenged! The old debt is repaid!”
Zeth suddenly whirled on his heel and slapped the swinging corpse of the old woman. It spun around and around in the moonlight. He looked back at me. His face shone like the moon. “Now do you understand, Captain? Do you see now?”
I looked at the corpse as it swung, the old woman’s dress ruffled by the gentle night breeze.
And I saw.
Zeth knew it. He felt his way back to the tree. The god who had let him see had now left.
“Let us head south,” he said. “Our teaching is not yet done.”
Three days later, the humans caught us.
“How many are there now?” Zeth asked. He did not shield his face from the sunlight, as the rest of us were forced to do on the flat hilltop. Whatever god or gods had been using him were now gone.
It didn’t matter. The teaching had gone well.
“About a hundred,” I replied. There looked to be more, but it was hard to tell in all the light. Many of the humans were mounted, so more troops could have been hidden in the dust behind them. Their battle flags were raised. The colors of Durpar flew.
We dug in as well as we could. We could not outrun them on the open fields where the humans had sighted us. The hilltop was no defense, but it gave us the altitude we needed against the tall folk and their mounted riders.
“A hundred is good,” said Zeth. “More would have been better, but a hundred is good.”
One of our human prisoners screamed at the soldiers marching toward us. I could not understand what she was saying. A goblin slapped her across the face, then began to beat her.
“Stop it,” Zeth said mildly. He didn’t turn around. “Let her scream. It is better that way. Let the prisoners scream as much as they want.”
“They’re splitting up,” a warrior said. “Some have bows drawn.”
“They won’t use them,” said Zeth, his face at peace. “They know we have the prisoners.”
‘They’ll charge us,” I said, squinting at the distant figures. I made decisions and shouted aloud. “The horsemen will come in first-archers, take out as many as you can. I want everyone with a spear to be ready to meet them. Go for the horses first. Ignore the riders. Once a horse is down, ignore it. Draw your swords and go for the next horses. Cut at their legs and drop them. The riders won’t be able to get up right away; we can send a second rank over to finish them. Then get ready to meet the foot soldiers. Use your height and go for the heads and arms as they come up the slope.”
“Ever the warrior,” said Zeth, quietly so only I heard.
My mouth opened, then closed in silence. Ever the warrior. Perhaps so I was. I had known nothing else. Yet my words were wise, even now. More humans would learn from us as a result. It was better that way.
I watched the humans close in, dust flying against the distant rumble of hooves. Though I could not see their faces, I sensed their hunger for our blood. I could almost smell it. It was natural and right.
“It is a good day,” I finally said. It wasn’t what I had meant to say, but it was true. I was at ease at last, at peace with all. It would be a good fight on a good day. I looked at the oncoming riders, their pennants flying, and a strange sensation passed through me. It was the purest feeling that had ever touched me. I blinked, forgetting myself, and my breathing stopped.
“You feel it,” said Zeth softly. “It is good, yes?”
My lips formed the word yes, but gave no sound. I slowly smiled at the humans coming for us, smiled as a child would do. Welcome, I said without sound, full of that feeling. Welcome to our final teaching.
“They will hear of this in the Dustwalls,” Zeth said, as if dreaming. “I can see it happen. My grandfather will hear of this from the gods, then he will teach it to our people, then the gods will release him from his shell of life. We will have found ourselves at last. We will be as we should be.”
“It is a good day,” I repeated, nodding. I felt light, light and strong, eager and pure. I had struggled so long with such simple things. It was so good to let it go.
The human riders charged at us, heads down, swords and axes at their sides, the hooves of their steeds flying through the tall grass. The world grew brighter, sharper, clearer, but I did not look away.
Zeth turned and made a single motion. Arrows hissed from a dozen bows. Horses and men fell. Behind us, warriors began to kill the prisoners in view of their rescuers. A woman screamed in one long howl that rose over us all like a great arch.
Many, many riders were left. They came on faster, growing in size, faces hard as stone. Zeth spread his pale arms to greet them.
It was a beautiful day. The first riders reached our hill, came up the slope, came through our ranks of spears. I ran to meet them with my people, sword high. The feeling touched me again, and I laughed and could not stop.
It felt just like love.
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