Kings of the Wyld

by Nicholas Eames

  “Could he be right?” he said, pointing to Balur. “Could there be another cave?”

  Lette rolled her eyes and set her jaw. “Look around you,” she said. “There are sixty-four corpses here. We left eighteen others back up at the mountain pass. That means they need to scavenge enough wildlife to support eighty-two souls. That means a range of twenty or more miles in any direction from here. That means that if any other tribe came within that distance they’d fight until the others were dead and their eyes boiled down to surprisingly tasty after-dinner snacks. Which means that unless I’m a complete fucking idiot who couldn’t track her own grandmother from the bedroom to the privy, then this is the only fucking place the goblin that stole my purse could have gone. And yet that fucking purse is not fucking here.”

  Another dagger appeared as if by magic in her hand, and she flung it at one of the piles of corpses. It buried itself up to the hilt in a dead goblin’s back. She spat after it.

  There was, Will thought, something very sexy about Lette’s competence. The area of expertise was utterly terrifying, but, on the other hand, it was significantly more exciting than butter churning, or animal husbandry, or any of the other interests the Village girls usually pursued.

  “Could the thief have dropped it?” he said somewhat against his better judgment. He was trying to keep in mind that the moth tended to come out of confrontations with the flame rather the worse for wear, but it wasn’t helping much.

  Lette closed her eyes.

  Balur grunted again. “Running pretty hard, it was,” he said. “And it was being focused on not dying more than it was on being rich.”

  Lette groaned.

  “It was being easy enough for us to miss,” Balur continued. “We were being focused on the beast instead.”

  Lette clawed her hands down her face.

  “Might be a drop even,” Balur went on. “Someplace special hidden like. Be dumping the stuff there and be returning for it later when the coast has been cleared. Be throwing it up in a tree even. Makeshift drop.”

  “Shut up,” said Lette. “Just shut up.” She sank to her knees. “Gods’ hex on it all.”

  Will almost reached out to her, to put a hand on her shoulder, but he saw Balur shaking his head.

  “I had a coin once,” Firkin commented from the front of the room. “But she left me. Cantankerous bitch.”

  It happened so fast, Will almost missed it. A roar of rage from Lette. The blur of her limbs. And then she was across the room, knife in hand, holding Firkin’s collar by the other, pressing him up against the wall.

  “You fucking—” she started to snarl.

  “Excuse me?”

  A new voice—the tone deep but feminine—brought Lette to an abrupt halt.

  They all stared at the newcomer standing in the entrance of the cave. She wore a gray traveling robe, hood pulled up to obscure her features. Dark-skinned, long-fingered hands were clasped in front of her. Looking at them, Will found himself thinking of small blackbirds.

  For a moment everything was very still.

  “By Barph’s ball sack,” Lette said, not letting go of the squirming Firkin. “How many people are going to wander into this cursed cave tonight? Is there some gods-hexed sign I missed?”

  “Like you were missing a goblin tossing all our gold,” Balur murmured.

  Lette whirled, pointed the dagger. “Don’t you even fucking start.”

  “You know,” said the figure, “I think this is the wrong cave after all.” There was a tone of refinement to her voice that made Will straighten up a little, and run his hands down his shirt to smooth it. The action mostly served to spread the bloodstains out.

  “I’ll j-just be going,” said the robed woman, and stepped away, back toward the sheets of rain that blanketed the night.

  The tremor in her voice caught Will’s attention, though. He saw water dripping from the front of her hood in an almost steady stream. Her robe swung heavily. She was soaked to the bone.

  “Wait,” he said. “You can’t go out.”

  The others looked at him. Even Firkin, still pressed up against the wall.

  “She’s soaked to the bone.” He pointed out to the room at large. “She’ll catch her death.”

  “You be saying that a lot, I think,” Balur said. “Unhealthy obsession.”

  Will stared around at the sixty-four goblin corpses. But, yes, of course, he was the one with an unhealthy obsession. Though, given the size difference between him and Balur, he decided to keep that opinion quiet.

  Instead he just said, “It’s been that sort of night.”

  Lette let out a small huff of laughter. She let Firkin go. The disheveled man collapsed away from her. “Come in then,” she said to the woman in the cave’s entrance. “Let’s get a fire going and try to salvage what’s left of this shit show of a day.”

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