A. Hartley - Will Power

“Shut up, Will,” said Renthrette. “Well, at least we know Mithos and Orgos are alive.”

“If our little visit doesn’t change that,” I replied grimly.

All peril and near-death experiences aside, I was puzzled. I still didn’t understand how we had got in, why the side door wasn’t better protected. Maybe the goblins had only been there a little while, but. .

“Mithos was trying to tell us something,” Renthrette added, pensively. “I wonder what it was.”

“We may never know,” I answered. “I hope it wasn’t important.”

Renthrette prowled the inn, brooding, muttering curses and shooting me black looks. We had to go back, she said. We hadn’t tried hard enough. We could still get them out. I let her rant and pace for a while and then told her she was talking nonsense, that we were lucky to be alive, and that going back was like taking a swan dive off the Cliffs of Doom or whatever they called that damned mountain that was full of teeth, scimitars, and other nasty, spiky things I wasn’t about to get stuck through my throat. Amazingly enough, she actually listened, and eventually nodded in silence.

That evening, over a melancholy dinner of meat and potatoes utterly devoid of flavor, we came to the obvious conclusion. We couldn’t get Mithos and Orgos out alone, presuming they hadn’t already been killed in reprisal for our botched “rescue,” and the locals were too concerned with protecting their own property to consider helping. We needed to go somewhere where we could mount a less suicidal rescue attempt with real soldiers instead of relying on incompetents like yours truly. The idea that the locals were “concerned” with protecting their farms and houses was an understatement. There was a frenetic mood approaching paranoia in the tavern’s sitting room that night, the men sitting armed and talking about how best to defend their houses and barns against the “hand of evil” which was expected to extend from the mountains. They feared, they said, for their wives and children, it having been confidently reported that the goblins had a taste for human flesh, raw or broiled. Moreover, the goblins, foul and twisted though they were themselves, prized human females as their concubines, and their brutal lust was legendary.

“My Alsary would die before she submitted to their loathsome hands,” said one, a large man, pale and blond as the rest but with a weathered look about him. This met with general agreement. “And if she could not, she would find a way later. She would not foster their brood or bring forth any creatures of tainted blood.”

“Tainted blood?” I repeated. Even given the subject matter, I thought the phrase a bit rich.

“I mean that she would stifle at birth any monstrous bastard fathered by such as they,” said the man, his blue eyes hard on mine. “A child with goblin blood, however little, is a goblin through and through and must be destroyed as such.”

I frowned and he responded instantly, leaning forward with an odd, disarming light in his eyes. “Do you not yet know what they are? Can’t you see it when you look upon their horrid blasphemy of the human form? They are born with a malice and cruelty so intense that it shows through in their very features, their twisted faces and foul hides. That is their nature as a species! They breathe the stench of death and corruption. They yearn to cause misery, to practice acts of obscenity and torture, to ruin the living and defile the dead. Nothing pleases them like the tearing down of all that is fair and beautiful, the ravaging of virtue, the perverting or violating of all which is true and bright. They bring terror, and in their path they leave destruction of a savagery you cannot conceive.”

There wasn’t much you could say to that. A grim silence had descended on the room during this dreadful litany and all I could do was nod respectfully as their pale faces clouded over and they each turned to their own thoughts. It was some time before anyone spoke again, and in the end it was me who tried to break the awkward silence. I wanted to ask about interesting local cuisine, their attitudes to plays and music, but I couldn’t think of a segue.

“So the goblins have always been on your borders like this?” I began.

“Far from it,” said an elderly man with a growth of silver-gold beard. “They used to cross the river rarely, and they have been in the mountain fastnesses only a few months.”

“But they have always been in this land with you?” I asked.

“God, no!” said another. “They first appeared only four or five generations ago. A wandering, vagabond race of cutthroats, they are. They steal and murder for their living, moving from place to place, sacking what they find and settling only when all is laid waste. Then they move on. Five or six score years they have been here, loitering away yonder on the far side of the river, inching into the mountains when we could not defend them adequately, mainly in the winter. But lately their numbers have grown, and they have massed an army bent on conquering our lands and cities.”

“The forests fell to them first,” said the older man, to whom the others seemed to defer. “A hundred years ago it is said they were fair and golden, full of deer and birdsong. Back then the forest west of the river was called Lucendale, the bright place, and the portion on the east bank, twenty miles south of here, was Eventor. Since then, the goblins have taken the forest west of the river and it has changed. They call it Sarak-Nul; it is a darksome place of blasted trees and stinking swamp into which few, save the enemy, will travel. On this side, Eventor remains ours, but goblins have been seen in its glades and clearings and the mark of their corruption is feared to be spreading, souring the air and rotting the earth. Their grasp on the mountain passes grows steadily stronger, and our Warders can no longer keep them at bay. The Falcon’s Nest, the ancient bastion and lookout, whose strength and beauty you can affirm, fell but recently as our warriors gathered in the White City. We have been sleeping and it has cost us dear. You have looked upon the wonders of the Falcon’s Nest, but many of us have not. Our ancestors carved its magnificence out of the very mountain, sweating and bleeding over their hammers and chisels. We will no longer lie silently while goblin filth soils the labor, the memory, nay, the very lives of our forefathers with their presence. Dark times are ahead and the struggle which you have seen begin will be long and bloody. It has been long in the making and will not end until they have destroyed us completely, or till we have vanquished them.”

Well, so much for music and theater. There didn’t seem to be much to say about their local cuisine either, since these people seemed to have no concept of the word “gourmet.” Never before had I tasted beef so cunningly disguised as tree bark. I know: tough to imagine, but the chef at the Refuge clearly had special gifts. Renthrette swore it was wholesome and nutritious, but since she rarely ate anything other than raw vegetables and rice, her opinion did little to sway me. I poked at the gray meat and wondered what day they had begun boiling it. The fact that no one remarked on this study in the culinarily bland and stodgy did not bode well.

The beer wasn’t much better, either. It looked like a kind of lager, but paler, with almost no alcohol content and absolutely no flavor. When I first sipped the fizzy, yellowish stuff, I presumed there was something wrong with the barrel and took it back to the bar. The landlord helpfully gave me another glass of the same gutless liquid and followed it up with a blank look when I asked to sample something else. The Refuge served only one kind of “beer” and this watered-down donkey urine was it.