Nine Goblins

by T. Kingfisher

  Sings-to-Trees had always rather liked goblins. They reminded him of tiny trolls—ferocious looking, often foul, but generally without malice. He had no particular opinion about the war, except that it was probably a shame. In his experience, people were usually people, even the ones who were four feet tall and lumpy, and if you treated them well, they mostly returned the favor.

  He was quite sure the sergeant—the rather imposing female goblin with the bun and the put-upon expression—didn’t quite trust him, but in her position, he wouldn’t have trusted him either.

  Despite all warnings to the contrary, the one named Gloober was trying to insert a zucchini up his nose. Sings-to-Trees sighed and went to go rescue his vegetables from a fate worse than death.

  The goblins approved of the zucchini, in goblin fashion. They sat around the table on barrels, crates, and anything else that would hold them, complaining happily.

  “This is terrible!”

  “Worst zucchini I’ve ever seen! Looks like baked dog turds!”

  “And they’re gritty! Did you even wash them?”

  “What’s with this bread? I could use it to fix my boots!”

  “I think this butter’s about to turn.”

  The Nineteenth polished off three bowls apiece, five loaves of zucchini bread, and Mishkin and Mushkin were licking the casserole dish clean. Nessilka opened her mouth to explain the cultural differences to the elf and that he was actually receiving a compliment, only to find him standing behind Blanchett’s chair and beaming. Apparently he really did know goblins.

  “Okay, troops, take the man’s bowls out to the pump and wash ‘em. And don’t half-ass it, either. I want those clean enough to see my reflection! Murray, go supervise.”

  Murray saluted idly and began herding the goblins out of the house. Blanchett started to rise, and Nessilka caught his shoulder. “Not you, Blanchett. I want to see if we can do anything about your ankle.”

  “Aww, Sarge…”

  Sings-to-Trees knelt on the floor and caught Blanchett’s foot in one hand. Nessilka revised her opinion of the elf’s courage upwards. She’d have used tongs.

  “Does this hurt? Does this? How about this?”

  After a few moments of prodding, he dropped the foot and vanished into the kitchen, absently wiping his hands on his tunic. “Just a moment…”

  After a minute, Nessilka got up and began wandering restlessly through the house, listening to the bang of crockery from the next room.

  It was a decent house. It didn’t look like the kind of place an enemy would live. There were no swords crossed on the walls, or severed goblin heads mounted over the fireplace. The house was a little too clean and airy for a goblin, but it had a comfortable, lived-in look, with battered furniture and faded rugs.

  There was a young raccoon in the hutch by the fire. She hooked a finger through the mesh, and it licked her hand.

  Even the raccoons were friendly.

  Nessilka felt that she ought to keep her guard up, because she was in enemy territory, damnit, in the very home of the foe, but it was hard when she was stuffed on the foe’s zucchini bread and the foe’s baby raccoon was slurping at her fingers.

  Sings-to-Trees emerged from the kitchen, arms full of pottery. Steam wreathed his face and plastered lank blonde hair to his forehead.

  “Your ankle’ll be fine,” he told the goblin, slathering some kind of herbal plaster on it. It made Blanchett smell very strongly of mustard, which was something of an improvement over smelling very strongly of goblin. “Now drink this.”

  Blanchett eyed the mug of murky brown herbs warily. “How do I know you’re not trying to poison me?”

  Sings-to-Trees sighed and dipped a finger into the mug, then slurped the liquid off it. “There. Happy?”

  “Well, now you’ve put your finger in it!”

  Nessilka figured it was time to intervene. “Private, I know for a fact you haven’t washed your hands since the war started. You have no business complaining about anybody else’s fingers. Drink the nice gunk already.”

  Blanchett rolled his eyes upward, possibly appealing to the authority of his teddy-bear. After a moment, he grimaced. “He says to drink it.”

  “Listen to the bear. The bear is smart. Also, that’s an order.”

  With a much-put-upon expression, Blanchett drained the mug.

  “Huh. Tastes like rat squeezins’ with too much honey.” He considered. “Can I get the recipe?”

  “Get outta here,” muttered Nessilka, aiming a swat in his general direction. Blanchett dodged with surprising agility and hobbled out in good humor.

  “Thanks,” she said to Sings-to-Trees.

  The elf waved dismissively. “He didn’t try to bite, kick, or gore. He’s already an improvement over most of my patients.”

  She grinned. She couldn’t help it.

  He passed her another mug of tea. “It might taste like rat squeezins’, mind you. Whatever a rat squeezin’ is.”

  She rolled the liquid around on her tongue. “You’re probably happier not knowing. Anyway, tastes like mud and rancid sticks to me.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “That means it’s good.”

  He nodded. “I remember. Took me awhile to get used to the goblin…err…courtesies.” He gestured with his own mug.

  “Really, thank you,” she said. “It’s damn decent of you, feeding us and letting us stay here for a few days. We were—well, we’re not really cut out for the woods.”

  “I’m glad to help.” Sings-to-Trees stared into his own mug, possibly looking for the elusive rat squeezins’. “Anyway, if the town really is deserted, I’d be glad of company.”

  “Thanks for that, too,” Nessilka said.

  “Hmm? For what?”

  “For not immediately assuming that we’d done something to the people in the village. You didn’t even ask. That…I appreciate that.”

  He smiled faintly. “I’ve known too many goblins. They’re…crude, and sometimes they’re a bit wicked, but I’ve never known them to be vicious. It surprised me to hear there was even a goblin war.”

  “We had to do something!” she bristled.

  He nodded. The silence stretched out while he ran a finger over the tabletop. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry your people were driven to that. I wish there had been another way.”

  “Heh!” Her laugh startled them both. “That’s the first time anybody’s apologized.”

  Odd little words, “I’m sorry.” Nessilka found that she didn’t feel any better about the war, but she did feel a bit better about Sings-to-Trees.

  “So—you said there was magic? Some poor wizard sent you?”

  Nessilka nodded. “I think he was trying to escape the battle, but we all came with him. It knocked him out cold, anyway.”

  Sings-to-Trees gave her a worried look. “What did you do with him?”

  It was embarrassing, but she suddenly found herself afraid that she might disappoint the elf, which made her feel defensive. “There wasn’t much we could do,” she snapped. “We couldn’t very well take him with us, and when a bunch of goblins show up at a human town with a human body, people tend to shoot first and not bother with the question bit at all!”

  He was silent. Nessilka sighed. She had to stop snapping at him. He took it all as patiently as he probably took having manticores vomit on him, but it wasn’t fair. He was one elf. She couldn’t make him stand for every elf that had ever been on the other end of a sword from her.

  “Sorry. I feel guilty, and it’s making me cross. We put a blanket over him and Algol got some water into him. I didn’t know what else we could do.”

  The elf nodded. “Honestly, I don’t know what else you could have done. Water and a blanket was a good thing. I could wish for a fire and food in him, but wizards…well, if one woke up to a goblin troop, it could go very badly. Poor guy.”

  He pondered. “I can send a pigeon to the rangers and tell them to keep an eye out for a shocky wizard in that
part of the woods.” He paused. “If you’d like to read it first—I wasn’t going to tell them about you, but I understand—”

  Nessilka shrugged. “I can’t read Elvish, and it’d look awfully odd if you sent them a note in Glibber, wouldn’t it?”

  “There’s that.” Sings-to-Trees looked into his mug, seemed surprised to find it empty, and began digging in a tin for more tea. “I wonder why the wizard picked that as an escape route, though,” the elf mused. “They don’t do well with surprises, most of them. I’d think one would want to go to a safe place, familiar surroundings. The middle of a forest under elven protection seems a little strange.”

  “Maybe he was from around here,” said Nessilka, who’d been wondering something similar herself. “The humans from the town can go into the forest, right? As long as they don’t cut the trees or overhunt?”

  Sings-to-Trees nodded. “There are fairly strict rules and quotas, and the rangers check up on those, but generally we find that as long as they know what they can and can’t do—and that there’ll be repercussions if they break the rules—the humans are pretty reliable.”

  Nessilka sighed. “Maybe that was our problem. We didn’t make any rules, we just left.”

  Sings-to-Trees shrugged. “It might not have helped. The goblin tribes go everywhere, but they’re usually pretty thin on the ground. You would have had a hard time enforcing the rules. Whereas elves—well—”

  “You’re tall and impressive looking and you can put an arrow into a squirrel’s eye from a hundred paces,” said Nessilka.

  “There’s that, yeah. We had charisma and numbers and mayhem. All you had were pigs and enthusiasm. It’s not your fault.”

  She called up the goblin army in her mind’s eye, and had to laugh. Pigs and enthusiasm described it pretty well.

  The silence that stretched out was companionable. Dusk had finished with the trees and was starting to work across the yard. Crickets chirped, and a few fireflies telegraphed their attractiveness to the world.

  She gathered the mug up to head back inside. “I should probably go make sure they haven’t broken all your plates.”

  The elf shrugged and followed. “I’ve learned not to get too attached to plates. Here—take a lantern if you’re headed to the barn for the night.”

  She glanced over at Thumper, still asleep. Sleeping on a head wound worried her. She hoped the elf knew what he was doing.

  “I’ll wake him every few hours. That’s part of why I want him where I can keep an eye on him.”

  “Ah. Thank you.” She grinned, showing blunt tusks. “I seem to keep thanking you.”

  Sings-to-Trees grinned back. “So few of my patients can. It’s a nice change of pace.”

  Nessilka took the lantern down to the barn, where Algol and Murray were conscientiously overseeing the washing, and found, against all odds, that she was whistling.

  FIFTEEN

  It was still the small hours of the morning. The barn was smothered in shadow and in the rather thick smell of goblin digestion.

  Someone was shaking her shoulder. Sergeant Nessilka opened one eye, saw The Enemy standing over her, and threw herself sideways before it could bring the lantern crashing down on her head. She snatched up her club and lifted it, eyes glittering in the orange light.

  “Err,” said Sings-to-Trees.

  “Oh. Oh…right.”

  She straightened up and climbed out of the straw. “Sorry. Old habits…”

  “I quite understand.” He stood back politely while she roused Blanchett, Algol and Murray. “Out of curiosity, are you often woken up that way?”

  “Once. Night attack.” The barn was warm, but the air coming through the door was cool and damp. She shrugged into her armor. “I broke his kneecaps.”

  “Ah.”

  “With my forehead.”

  “Goodness.”

  They left the rest of the Nineteenth behind, a symphony of snoring and gas in the dark barn. It was going to smell like a feedlot in there by dawn. Sings-to-Trees didn’t seem particularly bothered by the idea.

  They gathered in the kitchen. He handed around slices of toast and mugs of hot tea, which the goblins fell on gratefully. Murray wrapped his long fingers around the mug and inhaled the steam, his eyelids still at half-mast.

  “Now,” said Sings-to-Trees, checking through the contents of a pack. “You said there were no people and no livestock there. Did you notice anything that was there that shouldn’t have been?”

  “There was Wiggles,” said Algol, patting the kitten, who was asleep on his lap. “But he was stuck in a drainpipe, so he probably doesn’t count.”

  “Anything else?”

  The goblins looked at each other helplessly and shrugged.

  “We’re not exactly experts on human farmhouses,” said Murray. “We tend to see them rather…err…briefly. And we usually have something else on our mind at the time.”

  The elf nodded. “Well, I didn’t expect anything, but I figured I’d ask. Everyone done with their breakfast?”

  More nods. The Nineteenth was not big on conversation before noon.

  “Guess we should get going, then.”

  Nessilka nodded. “Blanchett—can you walk? I wouldn’t ask, but I want Algol in charge here, and I’d rather have you along with us.” (This was almost true. Nessilka actually wanted the teddy-bear, who seemed to have a good head on its stuffed shoulders.)

  Blanchett tested the ankle. “Much better,” he said. “The gunk helped. Shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “You let me know if it is.” She nodded to Algol. “You’re in charge, Corporal. If anything happens…err…”

  She realized that she had absolutely nothing to say to fill that gap, so she stopped.

  “Will do, Sarge. Here, pet Wiggles for luck.”

  “Scourge of the night, Corporal.”

  “But he likes you!”

  Nessilka relented and petted the kitten. She probably needed all the luck she could get.

  Algol saluted. Nessilka saluted back. Sings-to-Trees watched them with an unreadable expression.

  She wondered if he’d sent the pigeon to the rangers, and how he explained where he’d heard about a strange wizard.

  They set out.

  It was still twilight under the trees. They left dark green tracks in grass turned silver with dew, even Sings-to-Trees. Nessilka was sneakingly pleased by this. There were stories that elves could walk soundlessly and without a trace. It was nice to see that this one didn’t.

  Fleabane the coyote kept pace with them for a few minutes before peeling off on some canine errand of his own.

  The forest got deeper and darker, even as the sun came up, so the net result was that the quality of light didn’t change much. The ground stopped being grass and started being moss and then stopped being moss and became nothing but slick wet leaves. Everybody skidded a little on those, even the elf. And when you were that tall, whippy little branches tended to hit you in the face a lot more than when you were short.

  It occurred to Nessilka that possibly the tales of elven slyness were much exaggerated…or possibly Sings-to-Trees was just a real klutz.

  Except for the fact that they moved much more quietly, and didn’t fall into any poison ivy—and one of them was extremely tall—it wasn’t much different than marching through the woods had been a day earlier.

  And then Nessilka heard something.

  It sounded like someone talking, but it wasn’t in a language she recognized—or was it? She could almost make out the words. It had to be nearby, she could almost hear it all—was that one voice or two? What were they saying? The cadences were definitely speech, it wasn’t an animal noise or a bird song, and if she could just get a little bit closer—

  It occurred to her, somewhat later, that she was hurrying through the woods now, trying to make out the words. She could hear the footfalls of the others behind her. Undoubtedly they could hear it, too, but nobody was saying anything, for fear of drowning out the words. Wh
at were they saying? She had to get a little bit closer, just a little bit, and she was sure she’d be able to make it out—

  She was annoyed to find that her panting was making it harder to make out the voice. Was she panting? Yes, she’d been running, she was still running, but now she’d have to get even closer because she was wheezing like a blown horse, and Blanchett was saying “Sarge? Sarge, what is it? Sarge?” and that was maddening because he was drowning out the voice—couldn’t he hear it?

  If she could only get close enough to make out what it was saying!

  Sings-to-Trees could hear it, she was sure, because he was out in front of her now. The path had gotten very narrow, through steep dirt cliffs cut by tree-roots, and it would have annoyed her that the elf was blocking her path, except that he was moving fast enough that she was having a hard time keeping up. Could he hear the voice? At least he panted more quietly than Murray, who was also wheezing, and Blanchett had fallen back—probably he couldn’t keep up, with his hurt ankle, and the sounds of “Sarge?” were fading behind them, and that was good because it wasn’t drowning out the voice any more—

  The skeletal stag landed in the path directly in front of them with a warning clatter of bone. It sounded like the mother of all rattlesnakes. Sings-to-Trees stopped, and Nessilka let out a cry of frustration. and Murray plowed into the back of her.

  They sorted themselves out wordlessly, practically dancing in place. “We have to get past it,” said Murray.

  “I know that,” said Sings-to-Trees, “but it doesn’t seem to want to let us!”

  The stag lowered its magnificent white rack.

  “We could backtrack,” said Nessilka wretchedly. Backtracking would take them away from the voice, and the conversation she was almost—almost—about to understand.

  “No!” said Murray. He wiggled past Nessilka and made a short charge at the deer, perhaps hoping to bluff it.