Nine Goblins (15 page)

He looked at the stag’s backbone again.

Very…
personal
…discomfort.

He saved us before. I healed his mate. He
clearly knows more about the magic that’s going on than I do.

Oh, dear…

“Half a moment,” said Sings-to-Trees. He
stripped off his tunic and began packing grass and moss into it.
There was no putting a saddle on a cervidian, but perhaps he could
manage some slight protection between himself and the jut of the
stag’s vertebrae.

The cervidian waited. Sings-to-Trees finished
stuffing his makeshift pillow, took a deep breath, and prepared to
ride the bone stag into the unknown.

The village square felt agonizingly exposed.
The goblins clung to the shadow of the buildings as long as they
could, and then there was a water trough for horses partway there,
but after that there was nothing to hide behind except bodies.

It was not the first time in Nessilka’s life
she’d hidden behind bodies, but if the great gibbering gods were
kind, it’d be the last. She thought the smell might follow her for
several
lifetimes.

She and Murray crouched behind a cow. It was
bloated and its tongue was sticking out. Its udder had puffed up
like a balloon. She had never given much thought to what happened
to a cow’s udder when it rotted. She wished she wasn’t giving it
any thought now.

Murray jerked his chin at the door. It was
still slightly ajar, and there was no cover between them and it,
unless you counted the dead steer blocking the other door. They
could hide behind the open door, but there were bodies there, and
they’d have to actually climb on them and…no.

The dead steer it would have to be.

She flicked her fingers.
Going. Cover
me.

That last dash across the open square made
her nerves jangle like badly-tuned bells. Goblin feet were large
and flat and actually fairly good for stealth if you moved
carefully and didn’t let them go slap-slap-slap, but there were
patches of…mud.
Let’s go with mud. Red mud. Yes.
She had to
be careful not to squelch. And how was Murray going to cover her,
anyway? Throw a dead body at anyone who attacked her?

She fetched up behind the dead steer and
waited with her heart in her throat.

Nothing happened.

Flies buzzed around her in a cloud, but no
strange voice called out. Nobody came to see what was going on, or
to scream because there was a goblin warrior in town.

Oh, this would be a bad time for the
rangers to show up…
Thirty-odd dead bodies and three live
goblins…no, that didn’t bear thinking about.

Murray crossed the square and dropped down
beside her.

They exchanged glances, then looked at the
gap in the door. It was about six inches wide, and yawned like a
chasm before them.

She flicked a finger at
Murray—
wait
—and sidled to the edge of the door.

It was dark inside. The bright sunlight made
hot bars of light across the shadows, illuminating the edge of a
pew. She crouched low, squinting.

It was hard to see anything.
Well, no help
for it…
She took out an earplug.

There was a faint sizzling sound in the
darkness. It was a familiar enough sound, but so far out of normal
context that she couldn’t place it.

The smell of the dead was overwhelming, but
under it, Nessilka could smell…pancakes?

She could make out a shape at the far end of
the gloom, backlit by the remains of a fire, and in front of the
embers, humming—
humming?
—was the human subadult, and
it
was frying pancakes.

Goblins were occasionally bad. Goblins were
scourges of the night. And war was war and after a battle you
generally ate like a starving wolf although you couldn’t always
keep it down afterwards.

But even goblins didn’t stand in buildings
surrounded by the piled dead and make pancakes.

She felt a brief, blinding rage—humans might
be the enemy, but these were
civilians
, goddamnit—and then
the rage died away and was replaced with a deep, unsettled
disquiet.

Because anybody who would do that was
crazy—bad, bugshit crazy, deep-down crazy. People like that had a
crazed animal in their head and you could see it gnawing at the
back of their eyes when they talked.

And they were very, very dangerous because
there was absolutely no telling what they would do next.

She didn’t look back at Murray. Her eyes
would have to adjust again if she did. And she couldn’t sign what
she was seeing—goblin hand-sign did not include things like “crazy
psychopath making pancakes.”

She gritted her teeth and slipped inside.

The door did not quite creak when she pushed
it open, but it let in more light, and if the human looked up, it
was bound to see the difference. Nessilka dropped low behind the
first pew, breathing silently through her mouth, listening.

There was no change in the humming. It was a
tuneless little repetition, hmm-hmm-hmm-hm-hm-hmm-hm, in no
particular order.

Why don’t I have a crossbow? I could shoot
it from here and save us all the trouble.
She should have
borrowed one from Sings-to-Trees. Surely he had one for dealing
with…something. Rabid foxes or rogue deer or whatever.

She crept the length of the pew, shot another
look at the fire—it appeared to be made out of broken chairs and
cushions from the pews—and looked for the human. It had moved a
foot or two to one side, and was fumbling with something on the
ground.

Probably wants syrup on its pancakes,
she thought darkly.

She took the chance and scurried to the next
pew, and then she heard a quiet
glug
and had a hysterical
urge to laugh, because that was exactly the sound of somebody
pouring out syrup.

The tuneless humming stopped, and was
replaced by the scrape of fork on plate, and the sounds of chewing.
Nessilka doubted she would have been able to hear either if the
town had not been so deadly silent.

Did she dare risk another pew?

She had just decided to go down the length of
the pew to the far end and use that concealment to move forward
when she heard the door creak.

It was louder this time, and damnit, Murray
still had his earplugs in, so
of course
he didn’t hear it,
and if they got out of this alive, she was going to box his
ears—

The eating noises stopped.

“Hello?” said a voice, shockingly close.
Cloth rustled as the human stood up. “Is someone there?”

She stood up. If the human fixed on her,
maybe it would overlook Murray.

It was standing less than five feet away. It
still had a fork and a plate of pancakes in its hand. Blonde hair
poked out from under the cloth on its head, and it—she?—stared at
Sergeant Nessilka with wide blue eyes.

“Um,” Nessilka said. “Hi?”

“You’re a
goblin,”
said the human
girl, sounding strangely aggrieved, as if she had been expecting
someone else.

“Goblin,” said Nessilka. “Yes. Absolutely.
Born and bred. You can tell by the feet, see?”

She held up a foot. This was not strictly
necessary, as any idiot could have identified Nessilka as a goblin
at a hundred paces, but while the girl was looking at her foot, she
was not looking at Murray, who had damn well better be hunkering
down behind a pew and pretending to be a prayer book.

“It wasn’t supposed to be
goblins,”
said the girl.

“Um. Sorry.” Nessilka was not going to go for
her club. It would probably be sensible to go for her club, and she
knew this human was going to be bad news—innocent bystanders did
not make pancakes while surrounded by the piled dead—but it was
surprisingly hard to hit a kid who wasn’t doing anything but
staring at you. Even a human kid.

I am going to regret this later,
thought Nessilka,
I know I am, but I’m still not going for my
club, what am I, stupid, why am I not going for my club…?

“So…are you here all alone?” she asked
instead.

“Oh,
yes,”
said the girl, a faint
tremor in her voice. “The wizard came and—it was horrible—all those
people—” She put her face in her hands, and her hair fell down over
it in a perfect picture of misery.

Nessilka did not buy this for a second. She
supposed it was possible that it was just because humans were The
Enemy, but all her sergeanting instincts told her there was a
little too much practice in that delivery. If a new recruit had
come to her with that kind of theatrics, she’d have knocked him
down and had Thumper sit on him until he told the truth.

“I’m an
orphan,
” sobbed the girl.

“So am I,” said Nessilka. “We could bond, if
you like.”

Somehow she didn’t think the girl was going
to take her up on the offer.

“The wizard said these words…”

“Wizard, hmm?” She folded her arms and leaned
against the back of the pew. She was pretty sure the girl was
watching her from behind her hands and that curtain of hair. “Where
did he go?”

“It was so awful! He said these words,
and—all those
people—
”

“Yes, yes,” said Nessilka, “you said that bit
already.” She caught a glimpse of Murray peeking out behind the pew
and gave him a death glare. He had the grace to look ashamed,
mouthed
Sorry, Sarge,
and pulled back out of sight.

“He left,” said the girl, sniffling. “And
then everybody was dead and my brother is gone and I was all
alone—”

“Overlooked you, hmm?” Nessilka began
wandering down the aisle towards the altar. Anything to get her
eyes away from Murray—maybe he’d be able to slip out the door, not
that she could trust him to do anything so sensible...

“I th-think so…” The girl took her hands away
from her face. “Please, you must save me! Take me away from here,
before he returns!”

“Door’s open,” said Nessilka. “Why didn’t you
just leave and go for help?”

“L-leave?” This clearly took her by surprise.
Didn’t rehearse that part of your speech, did you?

“Seems a bit weird to stay here and make
breakfast while you wait for this wizard of yours to come
back.”

The girl’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not very
nice,” she said. “It’s been horrible, and I’m the
sold
survivor—
”

“
Sole
survivor,” said Murray, who had
never in his life been able to resist correcting someone’s
grammar.

Nessilka winced, and wondered when he’d taken
out the useless earplugs.

Murray coughed apologetically and stood up.
“And you’re actually not,” he said. “There’s at least one old guy
in a little house on the edge of town who could probably pull
through with a bit of water and some tending.”

“What?” This information somehow did not seem
to gratify the human at all. “Old Man Houghton? How—” Her face
smoothed out, and she said, in a much different tone, “Oh. That’s
wonderful, of course!”

Nessilka and Murray glanced at each
other.

“You don’t know! It’s been horrible!” said
the girl, and burst into furious tears.

Were all human civilians this
wet?
Nessilka didn’t much like humans to begin with, what with the
taking-her-homeland bit and lately the always-trying-to-kill-her
bit, but she’d give the human soldiers this—they didn’t cry at you.
Not until you’d cut their legs off, anyway, and that didn’t
count.

“Uh, Sarge…” said Murray.

The human sobbed.

“There there, yes, you’ve suffered terribly.
‘Scuse us a minute,” said Nessilka, grabbing Murray by the arm. She
yanked him back towards the door and hissed, in furious Glibber,
“
Are you out of your mind?”

“I think she’s the one who did it,
Sarge!”

“Well,
obviously!
And I ought to bust
you back down to private for disobeying orders!”

“But Sarge, I think—”

“You’re not going to work,” said the girl, in
a clear, carrying voice without a trace of a sob.

Nessilka wheeled around, and found that the
girl was between them and the door. Her hand dropped instinctively
to the haft of her club.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” said the
girl. “You were
supposed
to be elves. The elves were
supposed to come and take me away to find John, and you’re just
going to ruin
everything.”

The human’s eyes were very bright.
Crazylight,
thought Nessilka.
Sane people’s eyes don’t
look like that unless they’re dying.

“Let’s not do anything rash,” said Murray,
spreading his hands. “We can talk about this—”

Ten steps,
thought Nessilka.
Over
the back of the pew and ten steps and then club her.

“You won’t work at all,” said the girl. “And
if Old Man Houghton’s still kicking around—what a
mess.”
She
sounded annoyed, but her crazylight eyes gleamed, and Nessilka knew
that she was probably already too late.

The sergeant lunged.

She got over the back of the pew and two
steps farther and that was all. The girl opened her mouth and
tilted her head back a little, and a sound came out.

It was that maddening, half-heard
conversation sound, but louder and closer and painful. The words
cut right through the center of Nessilka’s head like the teeth of a
bonesaw. The human’s lips were hardly moving but her throat was
vibrating strangely and great gibbering gods Nessilka wanted to go
towards it, it was
important
that she go towards it, but it
hurt, it felt like the two halves of her skull were grating
together and the girl was backing away from them but she had to get
closer, perhaps if she could just hear what the voice was saying
the horrible grating in her head would stop because if it didn’t
stop the bones in Nessilka’s ears were going to shatter and she was
going to go deaf and why was she moving so slowly, because the girl
was backing out the door but her feet seemed to stick to the floor
and Murray was moaning and she wanted to smack him because his
moaning was making it harder to make out the words and oh gods, why
hadn’t she used the club when she had a chance—