T. Kingfisher - Nine Goblins

“Alright, maggots, you heard the man,” she growled. “Pack up and move out!”

Most of the Whinin’ Nineteenth groaned and grumbled and sulked. Murray and Algol, however, got to their feet and went to start packing their kits, and eventually, the rest followed.

Sergeant Nessilka had just shoved her spiked club into her belt when a flash of red indicated that the officer had returned to his position on the cliff. Now he was mounted on his parade pig, a big white porker with its hooves polished and ribbons twined in its tail. He made a sweeping gesture with his sword. The pig squealed.

“And that’s our cue,” Nessilka said. She slung her pack over her shoulder, and looked around her unit. They were mostly packed. Murray was helping the two newest recruits get their gear arranged. Algol had the lead rope for the supply goat. Gloober had a finger up his nose.

“Mooooooove OUT!”

The Whinin’ Niners moved out.

How the Goblin War (if you asked the humans) or the Glorious Conflict Resisting The Ongoing Human Aggression (if you asked the goblin generals) or the Bloody Miserable Mess (if you asked the Nineteenth Infantry) got started really depends on which side was doing the talking.

Humans and elves will tell you that goblins are stinking, slinking, filthy, sheep-stealing, cattle-rustling, henhouse-raiding, disgusting, smelly, obnoxious, rude, unmannerly, and violent.

The goblins would actually agree with all that, and they might add “cowardly” and “lazy” to the list as well. Goblins have lots of flaws, but few illusions.

As far as the human side of the war is concerned, one day the goblins, who had been keeping to themselves pretty well in the high hills and deep mires, came out to a human settlement, riding their pigs and waving banners, and holding a list of really laughable demands.

The humans refused, and the next day they were hip-deep in short green-and-ochre people with tusks. The humans retaliated, the goblins retaliated for the retaliation, the elves got involved, the orcs got involved because the elves were involved, and by the end of six months it was a horrible churning entrenched mess, where troops on both sides sat around for weeks on end and occasionally ran at each other screaming.

Again, the goblins would agree with most of that account, but there was more to it than that.

Once upon a time, goblins had lived everywhere. Like rabbits, goblins are an immensely adaptable, quick-breeding lot, capable of living under practically any conditions. There are hill goblins and marsh goblins, forest goblins who live in trees and savannah goblins who live in networked tunnels like prairie dog towns. There are desert goblins and jungle goblins, miniature island goblins and heavy-bodied tundra goblins. Goblins live everywhere.

Wherever a goblin happens to live, he complains about it constantly. This is actually a sign of affection. A desert goblin will complain endlessly about the beastly heat and the dreadful dryness and the spiky cactus. He will show you how his sunburn is peeling and the place where the rattlesnake bit him and the place where he bit the rattlesnake. He will be thoroughly, cheerfully, miserable.

If you took him away from the desert, he would be lost. He wouldn’t know what to complain about. He might make a few half-hearted attempts, but he would eventually lapse into confused silence, and return as quickly as possible to the desert he loves. Complaining is how he shows he’s paying attention to all the little nuances of his home.

This is basically goblin psychology in a nutshell. Goblin cooks wait in anticipation for the rude comments about the flavor. A goblin courting the lady goblin of his dreams will point out the new lumps and splotches on her skin and ask if she’s been sick lately because she looks off color and hey, is that a tick behind her left ear?

Goblins are in many ways stoics. When they’re genuinely unhappy, they shut up and put their heads down and just try to blunder through. (Goblin divorces are notable for their lack of screaming.) If a goblin eats something without complaining, it was so bad he doesn’t want to dwell on it. (Gruel among the Nineteenth Infantry had recently reached this point, and breakfast had become a silent, glum affair.)

A goblin trying to make the best of things is a very tragic sight indeed.

So the goblins lived over much of the land, and the woods and plains and deserts and whatnot rang with the cheery sounds of goblin complaints.

Then the humans came.

They came in small groups at first, and cleared little clearings and built little houses, and the goblins didn’t really mind. They’re cowards, after all, and there was plenty of room, so they had no desire to forcibly evict the humans. They just avoided those places.

The clearings got bigger and the houses got bigger, and the goblins kept avoiding them, until one day, there was hardly any place left that you weren’t avoiding. And one by one, tribe by tribe, the goblins would melt quietly away into the wilderness, to impose on the hospitality of the next tribe over.

Sometimes, of course, it wasn’t that easy. In a few cases, goblins wound up living on mountaintops and tunneling down instead of running away. On islands, they would have to steal boats and rafts from the humans and strike out across the ocean. Occasionally they couldn’t find another island without people on it, and a whole colony of raft-goblins sprang up, traveling with the currents, living on fish and seabirds and whatever they could steal from human settlements.

A knot of goblins even got stuck in a park for years, every avenue of escape having been filled in by a reasonably large city. They survived by panhandling and occasional muggings, and a fair number established themselves successfully in the sewers, where they breed riding rats the size of ponies and wrestle white alligators in the dark.

By and large, though, the goblins went deeper and deeper into the wilderness, and the wilderness got smaller and smaller and tamer and tamer. And then one day, a goblin scouting for new territory found himself standing on a beach, gazing out across the western sea.

It was the end of the road. They’d been pushed right to the edge of the continent, and there was simply no place else for them to go.

Sings-to-Trees had hair the color of sunlight and ashes, delicately pointed ears, and eyes the translucent green of new leaves. His shirt was off, he had the sort of tanned muscle acquired from years of healthy outdoor living, and you could have sharpened a sword on his cheekbones.

He was saved from being a young maiden’s fantasy—unless she was a very peculiar young maiden—by the fact that he was buried up to the shoulder in the unpleasant end of a heavily pregnant unicorn. Bits of unicorn dung, not noticeably more ethereal than horse dung, were sliding down his arm, and every time the mare had a contraction he lost feeling in his hand.

It had been nearly two hours, the ground was hard and cold, and his knees felt like live coals wrapped in ice. She’d kicked him twice, and if Sings-to-Trees hadn’t known that it was impossible, he’d have begun to suspect that the unicorn had arranged a breech birth out of spite.

No, he was being unfair. It couldn’t be any more fun for her than it was for him. Just because he didn’t really like unicorns, he shouldn’t let it cloud his judgment.

He sighed and tried yet again to get a grip on one of the foal’s legs. Unicorn foals had hooves as delicate as glass bells, naturally, and however adorable they were when tripping lightly ‘cross the meadow, they were pure torture to grab in the slippery less-than-hospitable environment inside the mother unicorn.