Nine Goblins (7 page)

The standard issue goblin field kit is a
pocket knife, two bandages of dubious cleanliness, a rubber band, a
stump of candle, some dried fruit and a book of matches. It fits
into the standard issue tin cup, which then fits into a small
pouch. It was better than nothing, but not by much.

“If I cannibalize a coupla things—” Murray
patted his pack, which caused everyone to brace briefly for an
explosion, “—I can probably rig another travel stove. We’ll be able
to cook, anyway.”

“Does anybody have a bow and arrow?”

Nobody did. Archers were another unit
entirely. The Nineteenth was strictly hand-to-hand.

Weasel put up a hand shyly.

“Yes, private?”

“I c-c-c….” Weasel turned bright red.

Nessilka put an arm around the small goblin’s
shoulders and turned her around so that the eyes of the troop
weren’t on her. “In your own time, private.”

“I c-can use a s-s-sling, s-s-sarge.”

“Good. We might actually eat after all.”

“We’re almost ready, Sarge,” said Algol.
Blanchett was experimenting with his crutch, under the watchful eye
of the teddy-bear.

Nessilka looked down at the wizard. No
blankets. She sighed.

She was going to miss it tonight, but she
pulled her cloak off and laid it over the wizard. Poor sod was
probably in shock, and if he didn’t stay warm, it was as good as
having killed him. Besides, he was a wizard, and they had a hard
time fending for themselves. “Algol, see if you can get a little
water into him before we go. I’d rather not leave a trail of dead
bodies behind us.”

Algol nodded.

“Everybody else—I want to get at least five
miles away from here, and then we’re looking for a place to hole up
for a bit that’s hidden and defensible. Let’s try not to leave a
trail like a wounded moose, okay?”

It was a beautiful day in the forest. The
birds were calling. The birds were calling a lot.

Nessilka was getting a feeling that whatever
they were calling was probably the ornithological equivalent of
“Come get a load of
this!
”

Travelling through thick woods with a troop
of goblins is not unlike a nature hike with a group of grumpy
toddlers with weapons.

They fell into things. They fell out of
things. They attacked bushes. The bushes frequently attacked back.
They startled small animals, who startled them badly in return,
causing them to fall over into more bushes. They stepped on things
that were not good to step on, and stepped in things that
squelched, or stank, or exploded with spores.

Sergeant Nessilka watched as her troop
discovered a patch of poison oak, and had to look away.

Blanchett stumped up beside her, leaned on
his crutch, and eyed the rest of the troop.

“He says that’s poison oak they’re rolling
in,” he informed her, pointing to the teddy-bear.

“I think he’s right.”

Murray emerged from the thicket, holding a
sprig of leaves at arm’s length.

“Leaves of three…” Murray was muttering.
“Leaves of three…gods!
Everything
has three leaves! How do
you
tell?
”

“If you touch me with that, corporal, I’ll
have you court-martialed.”

“Yes, Sarge.”

They rounded up the now-itchy troop and
staggered on.

“How far do you think we’ve come,
Murray?”

“Maybe a mile, Sarge. Probably not much more
than that. We lost some time when Gloober stepped on the
wasp-nest.”

A tree had apparently offended Thumper in
some fashion. He attacked it with his maces, and then with his
teeth.

“Algol, go rescue that tree. Gloober, if
you’ve got poison ivy on that finger, you’re going to regret
sticking it in there. Weasel—whoa!”

Weasel turned scarlet and mumbled
something.

“Is that a
pheasant?”

“I m-made a s-s-sling, S-sarge.” She held out
a strip that, in a former life, had been a section of rancid
goathide loincloth. Slung over her shoulder was a very large, very
dead bird, nearly as big as the little goblin’s torso and sporting
a gorgeous rainbow of feathers. “I th-thought—”

“Weasel, remind me to put in for a medal for
you when we get home. Bird tonight! Can you catch another one?”

The little goblin mumbled and shrugged and
stared at her toes.

“Do your best. Make someone else carry the
bird.”

“Sarge, there’s a break in the trees up
ahead.” Murray was already digging in his backpack. “Permission to
go scout the land.”

“Permission granted. What do you call that
contraption, anyway?”

“What, the looky-tube-thing?”

“Yeah.”

“The looky-tube-thing.”

“Ask a stupid question…Yeah, go get the lay
of the land. Everybody, take five. Gloober, I warned you about that
finger!”

Murray returned in about ten minutes,
frowning. Algol supervised the application of mud to scrapes,
stings, and welts. Nessilka was mentally composing a report to the
Goblin High Command detailing the need for wilderness survival
training for the troops.

Heading One—Poison Oak, identification
of…

“What’s the good word, Murray?”

Murray chewed on his lower lip. “Not much of
a good word. We’re on the west edge of a pretty substantial forest.
It runs a fair way, and it curves around to the north, so if we
follow the edge, we’ll get closer to Goblinhome, but not very
fast.”

“What about striking out from the
forest?”

“Don’t recommend it, Sarge. It’s all farmland
out there between us and home—absolutely flat for a long way,
practically right up to the foothills. At least thirty miles of
farm, twenty more of hills. You or I could make it in a coupla
days, but with this crew—” He spread his hands in an eloquent
gesture that expressed, rather better than words, the general
competence of the Whinin’ Niners at anything resembling stealth.
“Better part of a week, in the open, with cornfields and hedgerows
for cover. You know I’ll follow you anywhere, Sarge, but I think
it’s suicide.”

Heading Two—Moving stealthily, practice
thereof…

“And if we follow the forest?”

“Probably closer to fifty or sixty miles,
although it’s hard to tell. Could be more. We’ll still have an open
bit at the end—can’t tell if the woods go up to the foothills, but
I don’t think they do—but we’d be under cover most of the way.”

Nessilka nodded. She had a brief vision of
herding the Nineteenth across open fields by night, hiding in
drainage ditches during the day, barking dogs, men with crossbows,
and shuddered. “I’m thinking we’ll go with your plan.”

“One more thing. There’s a town—probably ten
miles north, real close to the woods. We can probably go deeper in
and go around it, and risk getting lost, but we might want to try
raiding it.”

“Raiding? Corporal, there are
nine
of
us.” Nine goblins could, on a good day, probably disrupt a child’s
tea party or decimate a chicken coop, but Nessilka wouldn’t have
put them against anything bigger.

“I’m not suggesting we try to pillage the
town, Sarge. I had more in mind hitting a henhouse, and maybe
somebody’s laundry. Have you seen Thumper’s loincloth?”

“Thank you, I’ve been trying not to
look.”

“There’s a coupla isolated farmhouses on the
outskirts. I think a small group could raid one.”

“I’ve got no stomach for killing farmers,
Murray, and if we do, we’re going to have hunters after us before
you can say “glarguk.”

“Great gods, no, Sarge, I’m hoping they won’t
even see us.”

She relented. “Okay, talk to me again when
we’ve found a place to hole up for a bit. I’m still hoping to put
miles between us and that wizard.”

In the end, they found a kind of dirt cave in
a mostly dried-out riverbed. If it rained, they might flood out,
but the promise of even a muddy pool of water nearby was more than
enough to recommend the campsite. They had made at least three
miles, which wasn’t as much as Nessilka liked, but it was better
than nothing.

Weasel had managed to bring down a rabbit. A
rabbit and a bird weren’t much between nine people, but along with
the dried field rations, it wasn’t bad, and everybody knew it could
have been a lot worse. Both rabbit and pheasant were cooked on a
spit, and were greeted with so many appreciative complaints—“Gah!
Tough as an old shoe!” “You call this rabbit? Looks like a
long-eared ferret. Tastes like one too!” “What was this bird
eating, stinkbugs?”—that the little goblin was completely
tongue-tied.

“Okay, guys, tomorrow we’re doing a full
day’s march,” said Nessilka once the last bones had been gnawed.
Groans greeted this. She waved them off. “We’ve got a route back to
Goblinhome, but we’re sticking to the woods for now.”

“How far are we…”

“…from Goblinhome, Sarge?”

“’Bout fifty miles as the crow flies. We’re
not crows, though, so we’re looking at seventy or eighty.”

More groans. “Why can’t we take the short
way?”

“’Cos it’s through human farmland, and I
don’t think they’ll be real happy to see us.”

“Perhaps we could go in disguise?” asked
Gloober hopefully.

“We’re four feet tall and
green
. I
think they’re going to notice.”

Blanchett consulted with his teddy-bear for a
few minutes, and then said, “He says it’s a good plan, Sarge.” The
teddy-bear had one of the pheasant tail-feathers stuck behind one
ear, giving it a jaunty look.

“Err…thank him for me.” Nessilka wondered
briefly what she’d have done if the teddy-bear hadn’t approved, had
a brief vision of a mutiny led by a one-eyed stuffed animal, and
squelched it. It had been a long enough day already.

It was a long night, too.

Goblins are good at sleeping on the ground.
They had all been doing it for so long that they hardly cared any
more—pack for a pillow, cloak if they had one. And tonight they had
the luxury of cut pine boughs for a mattress, which was
significantly better than camping on the hillside. No one was
complaining there.

No, the problem was the noises.

Generally the noises of goblin digestion,
snoring, and other indelicate processes were enough to drown out
anything outside. This time, however, the gurgle of nine stomachs
had nothing on the woods.

“Those aren’t normal,” said Thumper, the
fourth or fifth time something went by with a
swoosh
outside, as if on enormous wings.

“It’s owls,” said Murray.

“It’s not owls,” said Thumper. “I’m a forest
goblin, ‘kay? Those aren’t owls.”

“You can’t have been in the forest since you
were little,” said Murray.

“They haven’t changed owls since I was a kid.
Owls are silent, like. They sneak up on stuff. That’s
not
an
owl.”

As if exhausted by speaking this many words
all at once, he fell silent. Everybody listened.

Something that probably wasn’t an owl wooshed
by again.

“We don’t like this, Sarge,” said Mishkin and
Mushkin.

“Sarge doesn’t like it either,” said
Nessilka, “but it’s out there and we’re in here, and it’ll have to
come through me to get to you, so go to sleep.”

She was closest to the entrance of the cave,
and she’d always had pretty good hearing. She was probably the only
one who could hear the other noise—the soft, sucking sound of
footsteps in mud, as something walked quietly up the riverbed,
fifteen or twenty feet away.

Thhhhwuck. Thhhhwuck.

Swoosh.

She glanced behind her. Murray was the next
closest, but he was half-deaf from his time in the Mechanics Corps
and the daily explosions. She didn’t say anything.

Her hand tight on the handle of the club,
Sergeant Nessilka stared wide-eyed into the dark.

Sings-to-Trees stood on his porch, a cup of
tea in one hand, and frowned into the darkness.

He wasn’t particularly scared of the dark. He
knew most of what lurked in it, and had occasionally removed thorns
from their paws. And although he was careful never to rely on it,
he was fairly certain that there was an understanding among the
smarter denizens of the forest that he and his farm were
off-limits. He suspected he’d been lumped in with the little birds
that pick the teeth of crocodiles, something too useful to waste on
a whim.

For the predators that went on two legs,
there were always the trolls. A desperate man had come to the farm
once, and he’d been much more desperate after the trolls got him
cornered on the roof and the gargoyle sat on his head. He’d been
positively grateful to see the rangers when they came to take him
away.

Sings-to-Trees had lived out here for years,
more or less by himself, and never had any particular cause to fear
the dark.

Still…

There was something odd about the dark
tonight.

The elf wrapped his fingers in Fleabane’s
ruff. The coyote whined briefly.

He must feel it too.

Sings-to-Trees wished he could put his finger
on it. The crickets all sang the usual songs and the fireflies had
been out in force through the evening. The spring peepers had
mostly stopped peeping, but that was nothing more sinister than the
season passing. Early cicadas had begun to take their place.

It wasn’t too quiet. It was a healthy forest
at night, so it was downright noisy. The stars were in the usual
positions and the leaves were hissing the way that leaves always
hiss in the wind.

Still, something was making him uneasy.

Fleabane sighed and flopped against his
shins. The coyote’s hackles kept coming up, then easing back down.
Sings-to-Trees knew exactly how he felt.

The leaves sighed. The crickets chirped. A
lone firefly, still lovelorn, flashed its message to any other
fireflies that might be looking for a good time.