Nine Goblins (12 page)

“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.

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. What
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.