Jean Rabe - Death March

“Talk about Chislev,” she said to Grallik, her head bobbing forward. She forced herself to stay awake. “Talk clear, wizard, and talk slow.” Mudwort’s command of the human’s language was limited.

“You should be talking to Horace,” the wizard said. “Horace is a follower of Zeboim, but there’s a part of him that respects all the gods. He’s a scholar of the divine, Mudwort, and he-”

She stuffed her fist in her mouth as she yawned again, shook her head vehemently, and fixed him with a narrowed gaze. “Did not ask the skull man. Will not ask the skull man.” She slammed her fist against the table, making her empty plate jump. The others around them edged away. “Tell me about Chislev. It is important.”

Grallik’s eyes widened. He’d been watching her, and he’d heard her repeat “Chislev” once during one of her far-seeing enchantments.

“She-”

“Chislev is female?”

Grallik nodded.

“There is power in females,” Mudwort said. “But not in gods. Goblins do not-”

“Believe in them, I know.” Grallik rubbed at a smudge on the table and looked up as a sailor came around with a kettle, ladling out more helpings of a meat and potato stew onto plates. The air filled with slurping and belching sounds, appreciative chatter, and plates clanking against the table to hurry the sailor.

“Chislev. Talk some more, wizard.” Mudwort yawned wide. “More about this female god.”

“She is called the Beast and also Kisla, the Mother of Sea Creatures, which is why you should ask Horace about her. Some call her the Wild One as she represents nature.”

“And power?”

“Aye, the wild goddess represents that too.”

Mudwort nodded, beginning to understand Saarh’s interest in Chislev’s spear. Saarh seemed very in touch with nature and eager to accumulate arcane power.

Grallik pursed his lips, searching his memory for what he had heard about Chislev. “Worshipers associate colors with her-”

“Yellow,” Mudwort supplied, remembering the colors on the spear in her vision of Saarh. “Brown too. Mostly green.”

“You know much,” Grallik said, “for one who does not believe in Chislev.”

Mudwort glared at him. “More, wizard.”

Grallik nodded to the sailor, who ladled more of the stew on his plate. “Another helping, yes, a small one.” The wizard stirred a spoon in the stew and noticed that not a single goblin had asked for or been given a spoon. He smiled about that.

“Chislev’s symbol is a feather, of her colors. Her weapon, the short spear.” He didn’t notice Mudwort’s eyes widen, or see her mouth, “My spear.”

He ate a spoonful of the stew. “Most of her worshipers are farmers and hunters, druids too, some bands of elves, and I believe the centaurs of the plains. It is said that the seasons march on her whim, that summer comes when she is passionate, winter when she wraps herself in melancholy. When she is angry, she shows it in violent storms.”

One of the sailors carrying the stew pots stopped at Grallik’s shoulder. “You speak of Chislev,” he said, frowning. “I favor Zeboim, who despises the Mother of Sea Creatures. It was Zeboim’s will that we got through that last blow with nary a problem.” He moved on.

Grallik took a few more spoonfuls of the stew and continued his explanation. “Chislev doesn’t have priests in the same sense as Krynn’s other gods. Hers are the druids, and they protect the forests. As that sailor said, she is known to dislike Zeboim. Their ill will was fostered in the All-Saint’s War when Zeboim defeated her. I know little else, Mudwort. As I told you, Horace could-”

Mudwort had been fighting off sleep for too long. Her head plopped onto her empty plate, and she started to snore.

Grallik shrugged and kept eating.

“Rude things, ain’t they?” said another sailor passing by with slices of bread. “K’lars calls them rats what walk on two legs.”

“Be careful,” Grallik hissed. “A few of those rats can understand every word you say.” He fell to finishing his plate of stew, the clatter of plates and pitchers and the goblin chatter rising all around him.

Direfang struck the cold sea and dropped like a heavy stone. After a moment, however, the water buoyed him up again, just as he’d seen happen with the goblins he’d thrown over. His reflexes caused him to gasp and gulp in the sweet air-his last breaths, probably.

In truth, he didn’t want to die. But more than that, he didn’t want to suffer the way Saro-Saro and the other stricken goblins had languished, didn’t want his already-ugly body to become covered with the large, black, oozing knobs. He didn’t want to cough up great gobs of blood. A quick death was better. And it was better that the plague end with him than spread to his comrades.

The saltwater stung the slashes on his arms and legs, and it made his tattered clothes heavy and worked to pull him down again. Direfang was at the same time terrified of dying and furious at Saro-Saro for bringing about such a sorry end to his miserable life. He raged at the circumstances that had caused all of it, yet it had been his decision to swarm into Reorx’s Cradle and take away the foul sickness. He’d survived so much-the years of tortuous labor at the mining camp, the beatings, the night they poured salt in his wounds and cut off his left ear, the earthquakes, the lava, the fight with the tylor-all to be murdered by some foul disease.

He slipped under gradually. He felt a buzzing in his ears, then a quick thrumming, which he guessed was his heart beating. He briefly kicked with his legs, feeling himself rise again then drew his legs together, deciding to resist the instinct to survive.

The plague ends here, he thought.

Direfang opened his eyes, astonished that he could see under water. The world down there was a green-gray with a few slender, shadowy shapes passing through it: fish. It was colder than he had expected, but he welcomed that-the air in the ship’s hold had been cloying and hot. He swallowed the water, thinking it really had no taste to it. He felt heavy, full of water, and very cold.

Then the world turned black just as he felt himself pulled upward again.

“Got him!” K’lars shouted, his booming voice carrying across the chop. “Heavy, this big rat is!” The half-ogre treaded water several dozen feet behind the Clare .

A longboat was being lowered with four sailors in it. The Clare had dropped its sails when Direfang started heaving sick goblins overboard. K’lars had followed Direfang into the sea a heartbeat after the hobgoblin leader had jumped to what he believed was a certain death. But the ship did not stop immediately and was drifting ahead, so the longboat was needed to go back and retrieve the pair.

“Hurry it, will you?” K’lars called. “I said he’s heavy!” The sailor had grabbed Direfang under one armpit and was lifting his head above the water as best he could. The two were of similar build and size, both nearly seven feet tall. But the hobgoblin was dead weight, and twice the half-ogre lost his grip and fumbled with his burden, briefly sinking, before the longboat arrived.

“You pull ’im up. He’s an anchor, that’s for sure.” K’lars waited until they had Direfang in the center of the boat; then he dragged himself in. The hobgoblin leader’s eyes were shut, and he lay still as stone. “The cook better make something special for me for dinner after I risked my own sorry hide to save this big rat.”

Once on the ship, they turned Direfang on his side, and K’lars struck him in the center of his back. The hobgoblin coughed once, his eyes opening, the water rushing out of his mouth. He coughed again, blinked, and struggled to rise. K’lars helped him up.