Nine Goblins (17 page)

“There’s some very strange magic happening in
the woods here,” said Sings. “It attracted the cervidian.” He
nodded to the stag. It rattled.

“Okay?” Again that inquiring lift at the end
of the word. John darted a look at the elf’s face again.

Is he asking questions? He doesn’t seem
hostile, he just seems confused…

“It isn’t me,” said the wizard. Not a
question this time.

“It’s bad magic,” said Sings.

“It is?” He met the elf’s eyes with an
expression of naked entreaty. It reminded Sings, for a moment, of a
troll, all good nature and confusion.

Then Sings had it, and his heart broke a
little for the human, because he realized that what the man was
asking.

He knows he’s supposed to react
somehow
when I tell him these things, and he doesn’t know the
right thing to say. Poor baffled soul. Worst case of magic I’ve
seen in a while, and if Nessilka’s right and he’s able to kill
people with that blue stuff as well as “make holes”, then nobody’s
getting too close to him to teach him what’s normal.

“It’s killing people,” said Sings. “It’s bad.
We don’t like it.”

The wizard nodded once, firmly, as if
committing this to memory. “Sorry,” he said after a moment. “I get
confused.”

“That’s okay,” said Sings. “If I tell you
about the magic, can you tell me if you know anything about
it?”

“Yes, sir.” He lowered his head slightly and
pulled the goblin cloak tight around his shoulders. Sings-to-Trees
had the feeling that no one had ever listened to him so intently in
his entire life. The forest itself seemed to quiet down, out of
respect for the intensity of the wizard’s concentration.

“It’s some kind of sound. It’s as if you can
almost hear a conversation, but you can’t make out the words. It
makes you try to get closer, no matter who’s in the way. People run
toward it from miles away. In fact—”

He stopped there, because John had sat bolt
upright. Some of the vagueness vanished from his face, replaced
with dawning horror.

“It’s Lisabet,” he said, and it was clear he
knew exactly what he felt about that. “That’s her power. She makes
the voice.”

“Lisabet?” Now Sings-to-Trees was the one who
didn’t know how to feel about something. “Who’s that?”

“My sister,” said John. “We have to find her,
sir.” He didn’t look vague at all now, just very worried and very
determined. “It’s very important that we find her at once. Before
something terrible happens.”

Their bonds had been loosened and they had
been given water. When the goblins were retied, the elves let them
keep their hands in front. Nessilka debated requesting the
teddy-bear again, then decided not to push her luck.

“Do you think he believes us?” asked
Murray.

“No.”

“He has to know we couldn’t have killed all
those people. And they’ve been dead for days.”

“He doesn’t have any way to know how long
we’ve been here.” Nessilka sighed. “Think it through, Murray…”

He did. She saw his face fall. He scowled.
Nessilka nodded.

“He’s caught
us.
There could be dozens
of goblins in the woods, and he just doesn’t know it yet. We could
have been transported here weeks ago. We could have been killing
people all that time. We could have our own wizard with us.” She
considered this. “I’d be surprised if they hadn’t heard that voice
thing as they were approaching. That girl had a heckuva range.”

Murray considered this. “I think she might
have been focusing it on us. When we were hearing it before, it
didn’t give me that horrible headache, and we could move a lot
faster.”

Knowing that your enemy has the ability to
focus her powers was somehow not comforting. Nessilka rested her
forehead on her knees. “Well, regardless. They don’t know how many
of us there are. They may think we’ve got a wizard. Hell, maybe
Blanchett here’s a wizard, they don’t know.”

Blanchett focused his eyes with apparent
difficulty and said, “No.”

Nessilka forced a smile. “Glad to have to
with us again, Blanchett.”

“The bear?” he said.

“Still on a mission.”

“I’ll wait, then.” He lay down on his side
and, to all appearances, went to sleep.

Nessilka envied him.

A few minutes slid by, and then Murray said,
“Sarge?”

“Mm?”

“It’s worse than that. It may not matter if
he believes us or not.”

Nessilka glanced over at the tent. Late
afternoon shadows stretched over the grass, but there was no
movement. “It doesn’t?”

The other goblin gestured as well as he could
with his wrists bound together. “Look, there are people who don’t
like the war, right?”

“I’m not terribly fond of it myself,
Murray.”

“No, no. I mean
civilians.”

“Oh, them.”

“Well…Sings-to-Trees thinks the war is bad.
And there’s probably more like him out there. Maybe not so many
elves, but what about the humans? They’re doing most of the
fighting and they’re probably getting tired of it.”

“The great grim gods know that
I
am.”
Nessilka glanced at their guard. He had not moved an inch in the
last two hours. She had to watch for a minute to make sure he was
blinking.

“So…” said Murray. “Say you’ve got people
getting tired of the war. Then you get a bunch of goblins showing
up and wiping out a whole human village. Do you think those people
are still going to be tired of it?”

Nessilka scowled. “That’s
politics,
Murray.”

“Well, yeah. Lotta people die of
politics.”

She was suddenly very glad that she hadn’t
told the elf captain about the rest of the regiment, or about
Sings-to-Trees.

They sat in the sheep pasture while the
shadows grew so long that they joined up to each other and became
evening.

“Hey, Murray?”

“Yes, Sarge?”

“Maybe they’ll figure out we were right, and
they’ll give us medals.”

“Very funny, Sarge.”

Torches were lit outside the tent, and
someone started a campfire. When Nessilka looked back to their
guard, she saw his pupils dilated as wide as a cat’s in the dark.
It was an unsettling look. Goblin eyes didn’t do that.

She engaged in a few moments of recreational
xenophobia, which didn’t help at all but did pass the time.

Someone came toward them with a torch.
Nessilka was hoping for food, but it was Captain Finchbones
again.

He did not crouch down this time, but said
without preamble, “The human girl says that you and a wizard killed
everyone in the village.”

Nessilka shook her head. “No,” she said.

Finchbones narrowed his eyes. “Where is this
wizard?”

“Not us. Girl is wizard.”

What’s the point? They’re not going to
believe a couple of goblins. If Murray’s right, it doesn’t even
matter if they do or not.

“Ask the old man,” said Murray suddenly.

It took Nessilka a minute to remember what he
was talking about—it had been that long a day—and then she sat up.
“Yes! Old man! Old man alive, in house. Old man saw us. Gave him
water.”

And he may decide we’re responsible. Or he
may be dead. But I suppose it’s better than nothing. At least he
can testify we didn’t kill him when we had the chance.

Murray nodded. “We told the wizard girl he
was alive. She didn’t like that.”

Finchbones shook his head slowly. “It’s very
likely you are lying,” he said, “but for the life of me, I can’t
figure out why you’d lie about this. It’s easily checked,
anyway.”

He turned to the elf with the torch and
issued a few short commands in Elvish. The man nodded and hurried
away.

This left them in relative darkness. The
elven captain’s eyes dilated in the same fashion as the guard’s.
Nessilka hadn’t noticed that effect with Sings-to-Trees, but she
supposed she hadn’t been paying attention.

What was Sings thinking, now that they hadn’t
shown up? Would Algol wait until Thumper had healed, then take the
group of them to Goblinhome? They’d practically walk by the elven
camp if they did…

“I will get to the bottom of this,” said
Finchbones. “I don’t believe you were alone out here, and I think
goblins turning up in a dead village is too much of a coincidence.
But there are a great many things that don’t add up, either.”

Like how three goblins caused herds of farm
animals to trample themselves to death, say?

No, I suppose they’ll blame that on the
hypothetical wizard we’re apparently working for. Sigh.

“We are rangers,” said Finchbones. “We can
track a squirrel through a thousand-mile forest. We will find out
where you came from, and what has happened here.”

Nessilka met his eyes squarely. “Good. Then
will understand. Then will grant fairness as prisoners of war.”

If you can grandstand, son, so can I…
She only wished she had the words to do it well.

His eyes did not look tired any longer. He
nodded once, turned on his heel and left.

“Think he’ll ask her about it?” asked
Murray.

“If he does,” said Nessilka, “I imagine we’ll
know in a few minutes.”

Nessilka’s estimate was off by almost an
hour. Possibly Finchbones had been subtle with his questioning, or
maybe he’d sent someone to go find the old human. Nessilka rather
hoped that the old man had pulled through.

Somebody ought to, and our odds don’t look
good.

And then, just as the moon came up and sat on
top of the hedgerow, the voice began again.

Oh hell…
thought Nessilka.

Their guard’s head jerked up, and without a
glance at them, he began to walk toward the command tent.

This is our chance! We can escape! We can get
away! We…Yeah, no, I’m crawling toward the tent, aren’t I?
Lovely.

The really obnoxious thing about this magic
was how knowing what was happening to her didn’t change anything.
She knew perfectly well that there wasn’t a conversation (oh but it
was so close) that she’d never understand it (unless she got just a
little bit closer, close enough to make out the words) that even if
she did understand it (just a little closer) that it was coming
from the throat of a deranged killer who’d destroyed an entire
village, apparently as bait for a group of elves.

I wonder if they heard what she was actually
saying before they died.

She tried to stand up, but the elves had
hobbled her feet with such a short length of rope that crawling
covered the ground more quickly. Murray shuffled along next to
her.

“Sarge?” asked Blanchett, slow and puzzled,
and Nessilka sank her teeth into her lower lip because she knew how
hard it was for him to talk without the bear thinking for him but
he was making it harder to hear the words and she could swear she
almost got a full sentence that time, just about—

She put her arm in a gopher hole and went
into it up to the shoulder. Murray crawled past her as she
struggled to extricate herself. Then Blanchett went past with a
very odd look on his face, except that he was going the wrong
way—not toward the command tent at all, but veering off toward one
of the other tents.

Nessilka managed to think:
He’ll never get
near the voice that way! Where is he going—oh, good thinking,
Blanchett, good job
—and then she found herself shushing her own
thoughts, trying to listen to the voice that was almost there, just
a little closer, just up to the back of the command tent now…

There were elves pushing up against the walls
of the tent. One lifted his sword to cut through the fabric, and
then the voice changed—Nessilka stifled a scream—and now it was the
same as it had been in the church, now it was painful, now the
conversation was a buzz that was going to pry the tiny bones of her
ears loose and throw them like jacks inside the chamber of her
skull…

Murray, a few yards ahead, sank down to his
belly and tried to shield his ears as best he could with his arms
tied together at the wrist.

I wonder if this is how those people
died…

A mountain of flesh passed in front of her
vision.

Something picked her up, one-handed, and
tucked her against what felt like a wall of warty skin. Nessilka’s
head was hurting terribly badly and if she could just hear what the
voice was saying, the pain would stop, that must be what it was
talking about, how to stop the headache, but still—
what? Is
something carrying me? How?

The creature reached down and grabbed Murray,
too, and then began moving toward the tent. Nessilka approved of
this, because it was getting her closer to the voice and it was
moving much faster than she could.

Her captor came around the side of the tent,
and Nessilka saw the girl.

She was standing a few feet from the front of
the tent, and there was a ring of elves around her, all of them on
their knees or curled on their sides, holding their heads.
Finchbones had a crossbow and was struggling to raise it, but his
hands were shaking so badly that he couldn’t even get it off the
ground.

There was another creature there as well,
like the one carrying Nessilka. It was holding a struggling
Sings-to-Trees around the waist, and in its other arm—

She wasn’t going to forget that human’s face
in a hurry. For one thing, he was still wearing her cloak.

The girl saw the wizard and snapped her mouth
closed. “John!” she cried, dashing toward him.

Nessilka’s brain felt like a crumpled ball of
paper suddenly smoothed flat. The elves gave a collective moan of
relief. Finchbones lifted the crossbow and fumbled with the
bolt.

The large creature set the wizard down
hurriedly. Sings-to-Trees, hanging limply in the monster’s other
arm, babbled something to it in Elvish.