The Good, the Bad and the Smug

by Tom Holt

  “Right,” Mordak said. “Ready?”

  “Standing by.”

  The manifold uses of intestine had been known to goblins for centuries. You could make sausages. Nothing like a strip of gut, wound tight around the fracture, for mending a broken axe-handle. Thinner and more delicate than ordinary rawhide, it could be cured in such a way that it was practically transparent, which made it perfect for repairing books that had split down the spine. Or—

  “Basically,” Mordak went on, “I want to get across the fact that we’ve got this huge great army of merciless, savage goblins, and the humans don’t stand a chance. So start off with a vast goblin horde marching across the plain, or something.”

  “With you so far, yes.”

  “Then they arrive at the gates of a human city, right? Do some terrified humans peering down from the battlements, women and children running screaming through the streets, that sort of thing.”

  Girk, who had already started work on the huge army, smiled. “I’m good at that.”

  “Yes, you are. Right, so then we’ll have a deputation from the city going out to meet the goblin king–that’s me, of course–and they’ve got a white flag, and they want to surrender.”

  “And then you kill them and eat them.”

  “No.”

  The breakthrough came when a goblin inventor discovered that if you drew a little sketch on a piece of cured translucent intestine and shone a bright light through it, you got a big, bright picture projected on the opposite wall. The uses of this discovery were obvious, and quite soon every goblin training camp had its own projector room, where guts of the correct way to throw spears and shoot arrows were exhibited to thousands of eager recruits.

  “No?”

  “No,” Mordak repeated firmly. “The humans offer to surrender. I say yes.”

  “Ah.” Girk grinned. “And then, as soon as we’re inside the gates, we slaughter everything that moves.”

  “No.”

  Not long after that, an even greater goblin inventor found that if you drew lots and lots of little pictures on a roll of gut (ripped, of course, from the still-steaming corpse of your mortal enemy) and if each one was slightly different, and if you then pulled them quickly and smoothly past the projector lamp, you could give the impression that the picture was moving. And at that moment, YourTubes was born.

  “All right, then, everything that stays still. But it won’t look nearly so good on gut.”

  Mordak shook his head. “We don’t slaughter anything.”

  It was typical of the Elves that their first reaction was to denounce goblin moving-image technology as decadent and barbaric, and their second reaction was to copy it for themselves. The goblins didn’t mind about that–the sincerest form of flattery, and so forth–but they couldn’t help feeling that the Elves had missed the point. For one thing, they insisted on using animal intestines, cows’ mostly, which gave a much grainier effect. For another, instead of using the new medium for education, military training and propaganda, they insisted on churning out fiction–mostly revisionist versions of fairy-tales in which everybody’s miserable all the time; a load of old tripe, in fact, and no Elvish production could hope to compete with true goblin gut noir. It lacked that visceral quality.

  “Sorry,” said Girk, laying down his needle. “You’ve lost me.”

  “The idea is,” Mordak said, helping himself to chocolate-coated knuckles, “we scare them so much they don’t want to fight, and then when they surrender we don’t kill them, which encourages the next lot to surrender too. That way, we’re spared the trouble and expense of conquering them.”

  Girk stared at him for a moment. “But that way we don’t do any fighting.”

  “Got it in one,” Mordak said, with his mouth full.

  “But—”

  “Yes, I know.” Mordak frowned. “It’s new, it’s different, it’s flying in the face of tradition. I also happen to believe there may be something in it.”

  “Really?”

  “Mphm.” Mordak knew that look. It meant; he’s clearly mad, but after all, he’s the king, and we’ve got to do what he says, at least till he gets kicked out, and all goblin kings go mad, usually within days of getting the spiky hat, and when you stop and think about it, there’s worse forms of lunacy than not having wars absolutely all the time, or a visit to the doctor not costing you an arm and a leg (goblin doctors tended to prefer payment in kind), so maybe we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt for now and then be extra-imaginative as and when there’s a rebellion and he gets chucked out… “I think it’s the way forward. A dark new sunset for Goblinkind.”

  “Is that right?”

  “For our spawn and our spawn’s spawn, Girk.”

  “Whatever.” Girk yawned. “Though if you ask me, there’s more to it than that. You don’t want to fight the humans because you think they’ll win.”

  The most annoying thing about goblins, Mordak thought, is that ninety-nine per cent of the time, they’re remarkably stupid. The second most annoying thing is that one per cent of the time, they’re frighteningly bright. “Really? What makes you say that?”

  “All this armour they’ve been buying lately,” Girk said, as his claws traced tiny goblins on to the parchment tape. “Armour which our lads should’ve had and aren’t getting. Put anybody off fighting, that would.”

  “That’s just an unsubstantiated rumour put about by malicious and irresponsible troublemakers.”

  Girk nodded. “So it’s true, then.”

  “Mphm.”

  “Well in that case—” Girk held the tape up to the light, scratched out a tiny mistake with his claw-tip and repainted. “This is quite a smart idea, really. Won’t work, of course, but it’s quite smart.”

  “Thank you so much.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  The truth was (Mordak reflected later, over a rushed meal of troll spare ribs in the tunnels on the way to his next meeting) that there would be a war, no matter what he did, and that his goblins in home-produced armour, up against humans in dwarf-made kit, were in for a thrashing. They wouldn’t mind that. Goblins, for all their many faults, are good losers; they have to be, since sooner or later the good guys always win, and they’ve never particularly resented defeat or agonised over their losses. Generally speaking, when they lose a war, they retire into their deep, dark underground lairs, which no enemy has ever penetrated (no enemy has ever wanted to), lick their wounds, regroup, execute their king and replace him with a new one, and set about gearing up for the next war. A simple and reliable approach which had always worked well; and yet, Mordak thought, one that could be improved on, particularly if you were the king. Unfortunately, until he found out where the humans were getting the money from, there wasn’t a great deal he could do. His future, therefore, and that of his kingdom, rested in the bony paws of an Elf—

  He emerged from the tunnels into the offices of the Goblin Arbitration & Conciliation Service, where he was due to preside over a tribunal hearing. It was called a hearing because, like most goblin judicial duels to the death, the participants and the judges were blindfolded, which was held to be fairer. Waiting for him in the main lobby was a female with pointed ears.

  “I’m impressed,” he said. “That was quick.”

  “Don’t be,” Tiniturel replied, “I haven’t actually started yet.”

  “Oh,” Mordak said. “Why the hell not?”

  She sighed. “Well, I’ve had a preliminary glance at it, flicked through the back numbers of the Face, that sort of thing; and yes, you’re quite right, several of the main human nations do appear to have come into money recently, and there’s no obvious explanation for it.”

  “You mean, I was right.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “I knew that.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe you did, but naturally I had to check first. Anyway, there it is. And yes, a bunch of humans running around with money to burn is bad news for everybody. So something’s got to be
done about it.”

  “I know,” Mordak said. “That’s what I—” Pointless, he thought. Arguing with Elves is like arm-wrestling a circular saw. “So, what are you going to do?”

  “Me? I’m just a lowly secretary. I do as I’m told.”

  “Let me rephrase that,” Mordak said slowly and quietly. “If you had the misfortune to be me, what would you do now?”

  She grinned at him. “Pack,” she said. “Failing which, I’d send my best agents to find out where this money’s coming from.”

  “Ah,” Mordak said. “Silly me. I thought I’d already done that.”

  “Me? I’m just a lowly—”

  “I’m promoting you.”

  “Sorry.” Shake of the head. “I’m far too busy keeping the primordial soup you call a filing system in some vestige of order. You’ll have to send someone else.”

  “Oh, will I?”

  “Mphm. An Elf, naturally. Well, goblins are out of the question, and you can hardly expect humans to spy on other humans, and dwarves–well, quite. What you need,” she said, “is a smart, resourceful Elf so desperately down on her luck she’s prepared to work for you.”

  “I’ve got one.”

  “Another one. One you can spare. Fortunately,” she went on, before Mordak could interrupt, “I’ve found you one. Smart kid, used to be a columnist on the Face.”

  Mordak grinned. “Ah.”

  “Indeed.” Tiniturel gave him a cold look, which he relished. “But we haven’t got time for a critique of goblin cultural vandalism. Her name’s Efluviel, and she’ll be in your office, half-nine sharp.”

  “What joy,” Mordak said. “All right. But why don’t you tell her what to do? You know as much about it as I do.”

  “More,” Tiniturel said. “But I’m just a lowly secretary. You’re late for your tribunal.”

  Which was true, as usual. As he hurried for the door, it occurred to Mordak, not for the first time, that he always ended up doing what she told him to because he never had time to remonstrate with her because he was always late for something, which might just possibly be something to do with the fact that she scheduled all his appointments.

  The judicial duel turned out to be a bit of a washout. Both the prosecutor and the defendant, being duly blindfolded, spent half an hour groping about in the caverns, and never came within a hundred yards of each other. But the prosecutor blundered into a disused shaft, broke his leg and had to be hauled up on ropes, which was a bit of a laugh, and the defendant mistook the president of the tribunal for his enemy and speared him through the heart, whereupon the deputy president, instantly and automatically promoted to replace him, found in the defendant’s favour on the principle that close enough is good enough. All’s well that ends well, as they say in Goblinland.

  “You’re one of—”

  “Yes. This way.”

  Apart from the obvious, Archie noted, she looked just like any human female; no trace of the exaggerated high cheekbones, vacant grey eyes or needle-sharp chin. He decided to chance his arm. “The spell,” he said. “It doesn’t work on ears.”

  She gave him a poisonous look, which suddenly dissipated into something approaching a smile. “Apparently not,” she said.

  “That must be awkward.”

  “You could say that.” They were standing outside the door of the shed-on-wheels. “Fortuitously, in and around the movie business there are lots of weird people, some of whom wear prosthetic pointed ears as part of obscure tribal dressing-up rituals connected with religious movements called fandoms. My story is, I put the stupid things on with super-glue and they won’t come off. Just so you know.”

  “Understood,” Archie said gravely.

  She put her hand on the doorhandle and turned it, but didn’t open the door. “You know,” she said, in a voice entirely devoid of expression, “you’re quite sweet, for a goblin. In you go.”

  She swung the door open, shoved him through it and closed it again behind him, leaving him with no avenue of escape. Before he’d completely recovered his balance, a man’s voice said, “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m Archie. Who are you?”

  The speaker emerged from a sort of built-in closet, a tall, broad man wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around his head. He was dripping wet. “Sit down,” he said.

  Archie looked round for a seat. As he did so, he noticed something on the table so familiar that it stood out like a boil on a supermodel’s chin. “Fix yourself a drink,” the man said. “Pour me one, while you’re at it.”

  Archie saw a bottle and a conventional human glass next to the familiar object. He uncorked the bottle and poured.

  “Thanks.” The man sat down opposite him. “Here’s luck.”

  Archie took a drink from the glass. Then he said, “Where did you—?”

  The man grinned. “Oh, it’s not real,” he said. “It’s plastic. I had the props people make it for me. Said it’d look good in publicity shots, me in costume drinking beer from the jewelled skull of my enemy.” He shrugged. “I know it’s only a fake, and it makes the beer taste funny. I just wanted something from home. But there you go.”

  “From home.”

  “Yup.” The big man emptied the drinking-skull and refilled it from the bottle; that strange human concoction known as lemonade. “You too, huh?”

  “Me too,” Archie said.

  “Ah well.” The big man raised the skull for a toast. “Here’s to the old country,” he said. “Call me Kurt, by the way.”

  “All right,” Archie said. “And the Elf?”

  Kurt shrugged. “We stick together over here,” he said. “I think it may be something to do with that stupid skin-changing spell. I think nasty bits of human get into your head when it converts you.”

  “I noticed that,” Archie said.

  “Yes, well, it’s a bugger. Anyway, whether it’s that or something else, the Elf isn’t so bad when you get to know her. I mean, I can talk to her for minutes at a time without wanting to break her neck.”

  “Just as well,” Archie said. “They’ve got some bloody weird homicide laws over here.”

  “Quite. Still, as I tell the others, we’re guests in this ludicrous excuse for a reality, we should do our best to abide by the local customs and superstitions. It’s simple politeness, really.”

  Archie sipped some more lemonade, then said, “So, who are you? Really, I mean.”

  Kurt gave him a long, meaningful look. “A word to the wise,” he said gently. “We don’t ask each other that. The way we see it, what a person may or may not have got up to back home is nobody’s business but their own. So, if it happened in the old country, it stays in the old country. Got that?”

  “Point taken,” Archie said. “Sorry.”

  Kurt waved his hand. “Forget about it,” he said. “You weren’t to know. Actually, for what it’s worth, I was a sewage farmer in a remote cavern under the Beige Mountains, doing quite nicely for myself, not a care in the world, really. Then one day I met this guy in a tavern.”

  “Ah.”

  Kurt grinned. “You too, huh? What did he promise you? Excitement? Adventure?”

  “A one-way trip to the Realms of Transcendent Bliss,” Archie said sadly. “I think the spell may not have worked properly.”

  That made Kurt laugh. “Oh boy,” he said. “You fell for that one. Still, I’ve heard dumber stories.” He lowered his voice slightly. “The Elf thought she was coming here as the Otherworld correspondent of the Face. There’s a human working on the chuck wagon, he got told he was being translated into a higher form of consciousness.” Kurt grinned. “He showed up somewhere called Düsseldorf. He was not pleased.” He shrugged. “They all end up here, sooner or later. It’s the only place where we can last five minutes without making complete idiots of ourselves.”

  Archie was aware of an unpleasant feeling in the pit of his stomach, and it wasn’t just the lemonade. “You make it sound like we’re being—”

  “Lured here?” Ku
rt’s grin spread across his face like a desert sunrise. “It does look that way, doesn’t it? Trouble is, none of us has the faintest idea who’s doing it or why. Crazy,” he added with a scowl. “Makes no sense. I mean, it’s a hell of a lot of trouble to go to just to freak out a few poor gullible fools. There’s got to be something behind it, but—” He spread his hands. “You tell me.”

  Archie leaned back in his seat and rested his head against the shed wall. “I thought it was just bad luck,” he said.

  “Me too, at first.” Kurt upended the lemonade bottle over his drinking-skull and watched the last few drips fall. “Snorg, you silly sod, I said to myself, you’ve gone and buggered up the spell, it’s your own stupid fault, no one to blame but yourself. I thought. At the time. But we can’t all have got it wrong, can we? Well,” he conceded, “goblins, maybe, goblins and magic don’t mix. But the Elf? I don’t think so. She’s smart, that one.”

  “Yes, she is,” Archie replied without thinking. “I mean, yes, they are. Bloody smartarses, the lot of them,” he added dutifully, “though not bad on toast, with chutney. So,” he went on, forcing his mind back on track with an effort, “you’re sort of, what, the leader?”

  Kurt laughed. “Not likely,” he said. “You know, since I’ve been here, I’ve been thinking about the old country. Gives you a sense of perspective, if you know what I mean. And you know what, it beats me why anybody’d be stupid enough to want to be a king or anything like that. People moaning at you all the time, saying nasty things behind your back, and as soon as something goes wrong, next thing you know, some bugger’s drinking cocoa out of your head. So no, I am not the leader, thank you ever so bloody much. But,” he added, with a sort of a shrug, “for some reason I’m doing all right in this acting thing, so they give me lots of money, and there’s nothing worth having in this shitheap reality to spend it on, so I do what I can for the rest of us. You know, see to it that everybody’s okay. But that’s not leadership,” he added quickly, “that’s just paying for things. Anybody calls me a leader to my face, I’ll tear his throat out.”