“We don’t really have a stockade, Sarge,” Murray pointed out.
“I oughta make him build one, then!”
Algol, besotted with his kitten, ignored this.
Nessilka threw her hands in the air. “Don’t do it again, Corporal, or I’ll bust you back down to Private so fast…”
“I think I’ll name him Wiggles. He looks like a Wiggles.”
Nessilka knew when she was beaten. Wiggles perched on Algol’s shoulder and purred the entire way back to camp.
The teddy-bear, by way of Blanchett, had nothing to report. The twins were asleep in a pile, looking like lumpy green kittens themselves. Gloober was exploring the inner reaches of his left ear. All appeared right with the world.
The returning goblins slung the preserves off their shoulders, and set about making tea, in the pot this time. Blanchett was pleased to get his helmet back.
Nessilka had just taken the first sip—sweet, gritty, fairly revolting, exactly what she’d been looking for—when Weasel burst out of the bushes.
“S-S-SARGE!”
Aw, crud.
The little goblin was scarlet-faced, and her hair had come out of its tight tail. Sweat glued it across her cheeks. Her chest heaved.
“It-t-t’s Th-th-th—”
“Calm down, kiddo.” Nessilka knew it was the height of rudeness to finish sentences for somebody with a stutter, but this sounded like an emergency. “Something’s happened to Thumper. Sit down, take a deep breath…okay, now tell me what it is.”
“He’s hu-hu-hurt! It’s el-el-el—”
“Elves?”
Weasel nodded furiously.
“Did elves hurt him?”
She nodded, then shook her head, then threw her hands in the air. Nessilka interpreted this, correctly, as a sign of a tale too complex to be summed up in yes or no questions.
“Okay, guys, let’s move. Take me where you last saw him, kiddo, and tell me on the way.”
THIRTEEN
As near as Nessilka could piece together from the badly upset Weasel, she and Thumper had been doing fairly well. They’d flushed a bird, and Weasel had dropped it with her sling.
Then it started to go bad.
When they’d startled the bird, they had also startled a deer. The deer took off across a clearing, and Thumper, seeing a whole banquet on the hoof, took off after it.
The fact that a goblin couldn’t possibly catch a deer on foot had apparently not occurred to him. The deer ran, he ran, they broke into a clearing in the woods, and then he put his foot in a hole and went down hard.
Weasel’s first thought was that he’d broken a leg, but she didn’t get close enough to see, because the other occupant of the clearing had straightened up at that point.
It was an elf.
The elf had gone over to Thumper and crouched down, and Weasel didn’t know what to do. Was he killing Thumper? Was Thumper killing him?
Minutes dragged by. If it had been anyone else, Nessilka would have wondered why they didn’t attack, but she wouldn’t have put Weasel up against an injured field mouse. Sure, a sling could kill somebody if you used it right, but she’d have laid odds the thought hadn’t even occurred to the little goblin.
The elf stood up with a grunt. An unconscious Thumper was slung over his shoulder. There was blood on the goblin’s head, and a crude bandage. Bent nearly double, the elf made his way slowly across the clearing, and into the woods.
At this point, Weasel proved her worth completely. She knew she couldn’t track the elf once he was gone, and she was pretty sure no one else in the Nineteenth could either. Quick and quiet as her namesake, she followed.
The elf had gone for nearly a mile, stopping occasionally to rest and set Thumper down. Weasel noted that the elf was being surprisingly gentle with his captive, and that he checked bandage, pulse, and pupils at every stop. It wasn’t the behavior she’d expect from elves, but then, she’d never seen one anywhere but the other end of a sword before.
At last, the elf emerged into a large meadow, bright with wildflowers and dotted with bumblebees. On the far side, a large cabin rose under the trees, surrounded by a neat garden and a ramshackle barn.
The elf set Thumper down and went to the barn. As soon as he vanished, Weasel darted out and shook Thumper’s shoulder, but the big goblin was out like a light. His forehead was sporting an enormous lump. Either the elf had clobbered him a good one, or he’d smacked his head on a rock when he’d fallen in the meadow.
The elf re-emerged from the barn, pushing a wheelbarrow. Weasel dropped low and scurried back to the tree line. As she watched, the elf set Thumper into the wheelbarrow and took him up to the cabin.
Weasel had watched only until Thumper vanished inside the cabin, and then had turned and run like a rabbit back to the Nineteenth.
It took all the way back to the clearing to get this story out of the agitated Weasel, and even then, seeing the scene helped solidify the details.
It was a very pastoral clearing, one of those that look lovely and lush and green and turn out to be sopping wet marsh under the plants. Sweet flag irises poked up proudly over the long grass. Nessilka went over the ground carefully, and found the hole. It had a large goblin footprint in the mud at the bottom of it. A handprint skidded off to one side.
There was a rock the size of a pig directly in front of it, with blood on it.
“Hmm.” Murray crouched down and looked. “I’d say he stepped, fell, tried to catch himself, his hand slipped, and he whacked his head. And then the elf came up here.” He pointed to a line of heavy bootprints.
“Believe it or not, I could probably have figured all that out on my own,” said Nessilka a bit dryly.
“Sorry, Sarge.”
“It does mean that the elf probably didn’t hit him. Which may mean he’s not violently opposed to all goblins. It’s possible we’ll be able to get Thumper back peacefully.”
“And if we can’t?
Nessilka stood up and looked around at the other seven goblins. The teddy-bear and Wiggles the kitten watched from atop their respective owner’s heads. They did not look very war-like, but they were what she had.
“Then,” she said, “we’ll get him back by any means necessary.”
The elf was out in his garden, with his back to them. As the goblins approached, he straightened, rubbing his back and grimacing. Nessilka couldn’t blame him—lugging someone Thumper’s size over his shoulder must have been agony.
Nessilka figured stealth wasn’t exactly called for here. She cleared her throat.
He turned around.
Eight goblins in a tight knot, bristling with swords, clubs, and boards-with-nails-in-them, faced him.
The elf was about six feet tall and lanky, with white hair in a loose braid and quizzical eyebrows.
His clothes were odd. Elves usually looked immaculate. It was how you could tell they were elves. You could cut an elf’s leg off, and he would contrive to make it look as if two legs were unfashionable. Elves were just like that. It was one of their more annoying traits.
This one wore a loose shirt that had been washed so many times the sleeves had shrunk, revealing bony wrists, and pants with carefully patched knees. He had the usual elven cheekbones, but they were smudged with dirt. He was practically scruffy.
He didn’t look scared. He didn’t look angry. He didn’t even look very surprised—probably he’d known that where there was one goblin, more would be coming—but he did look a little bemused.
His almond-shaped eyes traveled over the goblins, not missing either Wiggles or the teddy-bear.
“Say something!” hissed Nessilka, elbowing Murray in the ribs.
“What? Why me?”
“You speak Elvish! Say something useful!”
“I—but—”
“Do it!”
Murray gulped, faced the elf, and stammered out a long phrase in Elvish, like a child repeating a speech it has learned by heart.
The elf’s eyebrows climbe
d until they nearly touched his hairline. He said something brief, and jerked a thumb to the left.
Murray nodded weakly.
“What did you say?” Nessilka demanded.
“I asked him where the bathroom was.”
“What? Why?”
“It’s the only sentence I know! I think he said it was around back!”
“I thought you spoke Elvish!”
“Not very well!”
Nessilka ground the heel of her hand into her forehead.
When she looked up, the elf was watching her. She was expecting to find an expression of contempt or hatred or something, but he met her eyes with unexpected camaraderie, like the only other babysitter in a room full of children. How odd that our lives should bring us to this point, that look said.
Despite herself, Nessilka warmed to that look.
Okay. Can’t speak Elvish. I know a fair bit of Human, but there’s no telling if the humans here speak the same as the ones where we’re from….
The elf cleared his throat. “Can you understand me?” he asked, in fair, if oddly accented Glibber.
The Nineteenth stared at him. Nessilka exhaled. “Oh, thank the great grim gods,” she said. “You speak a civilized language.”
He smiled a little at that. “It has been many years. But if you speak slowly, I think I can keep up. Now, you are probably here to see your friend, yes?”
They all nodded.
“Please follow me.”
FOURTEEN
The inside of the house was one large room with high rafters, containing a kitchen, a fireplace, and a bed. The kitchen contained a very long wooden table, the fireplace contained a broad hearth with a raccoon sleeping on it, and the bed contained Thumper.
“Thumper!” The Nineteenth crowded around the bed. Thumper cracked one eye, groaned, and closed it again.
“Report, Private!” snapped Nessilka.
“…no.”
“No?”
“…no, Sarge,” muttered Thumper.
She grinned hugely with relief. “I knew no rock could make that big a dent in your skull. Rest, you big idiot.”
“…where’m I…?”
“You’re—ah—safe.” She looked up at the elf, who nodded. “Get some rest.”
“…can’t march….”
“We’re not gonna leave you, Thumper. No goblin left behind and all that. Relax.”
It was not like Thumper to smile, but his scowl had a relieved quality as he sank back into sleep.
The elf’s name was Sings-to-Trees and he liked animals.
This was something of an understatement.
Many people like animals in the abstract. Sings-to-Trees liked them the way saints like lepers. He lived with them, he treated them, he patched them up and fed them and sent them on their way. In return, they kicked him and bled on him and oozed on him and had offspring in the middle of his bed, which was admittedly something that saints have rarely had to worry about from lepers.
“Your friend’ll be fine,” he told Nessilka. “It’s nice having a patient who can actually answer questions. And before you worry—” he held up a hand, “—I know there’s a war on, but it’s about fifty miles thattaway. Your friend is hurt and this isn’t the front, so I’m not planning on turning you in. But you sure are a long way from home.”
Nessilka nodded glumly. “Tell me about it. We didn’t plan to be here. There was a wizard, and you know how it goes…”
He nodded. “I doubt anybody’s going to find you. Other elves don’t come by here much. A little too much nature for them, I think.”
“I thought all elves…y’know…were into nature…” said Nessilka, with a vague hand gesture that could have indicated either into-nature-ness or raving insanity.
Sings-to-Trees snorted. “Sure. Pretty nature. Unicorns, griffins, hummingbirds, sylphs, those little dragon-butterfly things…the animals that don’t smell bad, and look pretty. But you get an eggbound cockatrice that needs its cloacal vents oiled three times a day for a week, and suddenly everybody has pressing engagements elsewhere.”
(“What’s a cloacal vent?” Mishkin asked Algol, who told him. Both twins turned a little grey and gazed at Sings-to-Trees with awed disgust.)
“And just try to get them to patch up a troll. Trolls are wonderful.” He was pacing now. Nessilka got the impression that this was a rant he’d been working on for a long time, and he didn’t often get a new audience. “They’d let you saw off their head without flinching. I love trolls. And they keep you in all the goat meat you can eat, too. But if one gets lost and goes wandering through some elf’s backyard, are they understanding? Noooo, it’s all ‘Call out the guards, there’s a rogue troll on the loose!’ Bah! Trolls are like kittens.” He stabbed a finger in the direction of Wiggles for emphasis, then paused.
“Which reminds me, let me get you some milk for that little guy.”
“So how did you learn to speak Glibber at all?” asked Murray, while Sings-to-Trees poured out a saucer of milk for the kitten and Murray made tea. All eight of the uninjured goblins had crowded around the long table in the kitchen. The wood was scarred from countless claws and the edges had a distinctly gnawed look.
“There used to be a lot of goblins here. Some were my friends. I used to treat their pigs.” He smiled. “Sometimes I’d treat them, too—I don’t know if the state of goblin medicine has advanced much in the last hundred years—”
“No, it’s still pretty much “amputate at the neck,” said Murray.
The elf nodded. “I was sorry when the tribe left. They were company, anyway. Most elves don’t come out this far. The humans aren’t bad, really. I help their animals sometimes. Somebody comes up from the town every couple of days with cheese or bread or some such.”
Algol, Murray, and Nessilka slid glances at each other, then quickly away. Murray looked at the ceiling and Algol looked at the floor. Nessilka ran a finger through a groove on the side of the table, which seemed to be a tooth mark from something with teeth the size of her thumb.
“Has anyone come up in the last few days?” she asked quietly.
The elf’s forehead twisted. “There was bread and cheese…no, that was a while ago. Now that you mention it, no. Nobody’s dropped off food for almost a week.”
Nessilka nodded slowly. “We were just at the village. Well, at a farmhouse. There’s nobody there.”
“You mean they left?”
“No…I mean, there’s nobody there. The wagon’s there, but no people. No animals. A meal left in mid-bite.” She shook her head. “We didn’t check the village, obviously, but we didn’t see anyone.”
The elf shook his head. “That’s odd. That’s really worrisome. Perhaps I should go look.”
Nessilka didn’t want to go anywhere near that farmhouse again, but—well—he had fixed Thumper and he did speak their language and he wasn’t turning them in. It would probably be better if he didn’t get a chance to go off alone and have second thoughts about that last bit, come to think of it.
“We’ll go with you, in the morning,” said Nessilka. Murray made a faint noise of protest and she silenced him with a glare. “We can at least show you where the abandoned farm was.”
“Thank you. You’re more than welcome to stay here for the night—your friend’s going to be on his back for at least three days, even as hard as goblin heads are. I want him in here, so I can check on him every few hours, but if you all don’t mind sleeping in the barn…”
“With real straw?” asked Mishkin.
“And a real roof?” asked Mushkin.
“All the straw and roof you want.”
The twins cheered.
“We should probably get dinner started, too.”
Nessilka raised her eyebrows. “Are you sure you want to feed all eight of us? You’re helping Thumper already. I don’t want to eat you out of house and home.”
Sings-to-Trees laughed in what he probably thought was a maniacal fashion, but there was something so inher
ently harmless about him that it looked more like he was practicing a peculiar bird call. “Are you kidding? Finally, an excuse to get rid of all of that zucchini! I planted two plants this year, and now not even the trolls will come by for fear I’ll throw zucchini bread at them.” He started for the door.
“Okay, then…Mishkin, Mushkin, go help the nice man with his zucchini. Algol, take Weasel and see to moving our stuff into the barn. Try to make as little mess as possible, we’re guests. Gloober, if you stick your finger any farther in your ear, you’ll go deaf, and I’ll have to learn sign language so I can say, “I told you so.” Go help with the zucchini. Try not to put one in your ear.”
Having thus disposed of the troops, Murray, Blanchett, and Nessilka were left sitting alone at the long wooden table. Nessilka swirled the dregs of her tea around her mug.
“What do you think?” she asked Murray.
“I think that it’s highly unlikely he and Algol were separated at birth, but I still wonder.”
“Nah, I’ve met Algol’s mother. Lovely woman, but goblin to the bone. Do you think we can trust him?”
Murray pulled on his ponytail. “We don’t have much choice until Thumper gets better, do we? I don’t know. If you’re asking whether I think he’s keeping us here until he can call in the elves, I don’t think so. He really doesn’t seem like the type.”
“The bear trusts him,” put in Blanchett.
Point in his favor, thought Nessilka, the bear is usually a pretty good judge of character. And that I’m even thinking that is probably a sign that I need my head examined.
Sings-to-Trees straightened up and watched the goblins picking zucchini. The twins were an indeterminate shade of grey-brown, and their lumpy, dirt-streaked skin blended surprisingly well with the earth. If they hadn’t been cheerfully finishing each other’s sentences, he would have had a hard time spotting them.
He had been startled by the goblin—Thumper—running across the field, but once the poor fellow had hit his head, there wasn’t much help for it but to take him home. He’d known the others were going to show up, of course. You never got just one goblin. The surprising thing was that there were any here at all, what with the war.
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