T. Kingfisher - Nine Goblins

Murray said, “What in the name of the dead orc gods am I doing?”

Nessilka, seeing bone deer hooves like lances around the head of her second-in-command, reached down and grabbed him by the ankles. She hauled. Murray was very heavy but female goblins tended to be strong all out of proportion to their size. He left long furrows in the mud behind him.

The bone deer stamped a hoof and nodded to Sings-to-Trees. Then it turned and reached the top of the narrow defile in a single leap. There was a second clack of bone, and the skeletal doe followed.

“She’s still a bit short on the front foot,” said Sings-to-Trees vaguely. “I hope its healing. She shouldn’t be making jumps like that. Oh gods, I was going to attack that poor creature!” He put his face in his hands.

“I suspect that poor creature would have torn you to shreds,” said Nessilka drily. “Murray, how’s your ribs?”

“Sore,” said Murray. “It hit me, didn’t it? I don’t think it wanted to hurt me, though, whatever it was. No holes.” He slid a finger under his leather breastplate and winced. “Nothing broken. Gonna have some fantastic bruises to show the recruits.”

“It was a cervidian,” said Sings-to-Trees. “They’re attracted to magic. I saw it the other day—I can’t believe I wanted to hurt it—”

Nessilka thumped him on the shoulder, which was the highest point she could reach. “Get over it, soldier,” she snapped, forgetting he wasn’t one of her soldiers. “You didn’t, and that’s the important thing. The most important thing, though, is what the hell was wrong with us?”

They all stared at each other.

“I heard a voice,” said Murray uncertainly.

“So did I.”

“I couldn’t hear what it was saying,” said Nessilka. “I almost could, but I thought if I could just get closer—”

“It had to be right around here, didn’t it?” Sings-to-Trees peered around the woods, puzzled. “I mean, we were really close to it…weren’t we?”

“I don’t think we were,” said Murray slowly. “We’ve been running, haven’t we? Blanchett couldn’t keep up…”

“Oh gods, Blanchett!” Nessilka spun around. “We have to go get him!”

“He’ll be fine,” said Murray. “The bear’ll take care of him”

Sings-to-Trees looked at them as if they were insane, which they probably were, but Nessilka did feel a bit better. “How long were we running?”

None of them knew.

“At least a mile, I think,” said Murray. “It’s hard to tell, because it’s cold out and the terrain’s twisty, but I don’t think I usually get this sweaty over anything less.”

“We can’t have been that close to the conversation for a whole mile,” said Sings-to-Trees.

Nessilka had already come to that conclusion, and a couple of others she didn’t like at all.

Murray tugged on his ponytail. “It was magic, Sarge. Had to be.”

“A voice that makes you want to get closer to it…That could explain why the farms were empty. They all left to get closer to the voice.” Nessilka chewed on her lower lip. “Maybe it worked on the animals, too.”

Sings-to-Trees looked around. “I don’t hear any birds,” he said. “But that could just as easily be the cervidian. It got real quiet around my farm when they showed up. I think they’re just too uncanny.”

“Well.” Nessilka rubbed the back of her neck. “Options?”

“Find the source,” said Murray immediately.

“Find out what happened to the farmers,” said Sings-to-Trees.

Nessilka sighed. “Normally, I’d say we should go back and report this, but I don’t know who we’d report it to.”

“I could send a pigeon to the rangers,” said Sings-to-Trees.

“How long would that take?”

“Um. It depends. A few hours at least. Probably more. I didn’t actually send the other one yet—it’s dark, they won’t fly, so I was going to wait until we get back. Although I’m surprised they’re not investigating already, frankly—nothing this big should be able to go down without them noticing.”

“Unless they sent somebody to investigate and the voice got them too,” said Murray. Sings-to-Trees winced.

“Okay,” said Nessilka. She mostly wanted to run away screaming, but she was in command, and Sings-to-Trees was a civilian and thus should probably be protected as much as possible. And he didn’t seem to be much good at sneaking.

Also, there was the small problem of the village being between them and Goblinhome, and the grim gods only knew how far the range on that magic extended.

“Here’s what we’ll do. We find Blanchett, first. Then Sings-to-Trees goes back to the farm and we’ll scout the village.”

“We should wear earplugs,” volunteered Murray. “I can rig something up. I don’t know how well they’ll work, but if it really is a sound, we should be able to block it.”

Nessilka was getting ready for the inevitable argument—Sings-to-Trees looked like he was about to argue—when there was a very welcome interruption.

“Sarge? Sarge!”

“Blanchett!” She turned and waved. A familiar teddy-bear, atop an equally familiar helm, appeared over the top of the low cliff edging the road..

“There you are, Sarge! Didn’t know why we were running, but the bear said you were somewhere around here…”

“Can you get down here?”

“Sure, give me a minute…” The helm disappeared.

“And while we’re asking questions…” said Nessilka slowly, “why wasn’t Blanchett affected?”

“Maybe the bear’s immune,” said Murray. And then, when Nessilka stared at him, “Have you got a better answer, Sarge?”

She didn’t. For any of it, apparently. “All right,” she said. “Make up your earplugs. I want to move out as soon as he gets here.”

Sings-to-Trees did argue, but it seemed to Nessilka that it was more a matter of form. The encounter with the cervidian had shaken him badly, and what he really wanted was to get home and send a pigeon to the rangers as quickly as possible.

“You don’t have to go,” he said. “We could all go back. We’ll let the rangers handle it.”

The notion that someone higher up the chain of command would be more able to handle anything was so foreign to Nessilka that she couldn’t really get her head around it. Could elves really be that different?

Naaaah. Elves were elves, but the military was the military. There was something immutable about it. Orcs were pretty different from goblins, too, but their military worked almost the exact same way, except that at the higher levels you were answerable to the priesthood, and nobody ever said anything nice about orcish gods.

“We’ll investigate,” said Nessilka. “Whatever this is, it’s between us and our way home.”

Sings-to-Trees sighed. “I’ll come as far as the tree line, then,” he said. “I promise I won’t go after you, but if you get hurt, I’m…well, a veterinarian, but I’ve worked on goblins before.”

Nessilka wavered.

“If this is affecting animals too—”

She sighed. “Fine, fine. But you don’t come after us. If something goes bad and we’re not back by nightfall, you go back to the farm and you tell Algol what’s happened.”

And gods above, don’t let Algol get a case of the heroics…

“I promise,” said Sings-to-Trees. She eyed him warily, but he was a civilian—and another species—and she probably didn’t have the authority to order him back to his farm.

Also, it was hard to assume authority when you only came up to the bottom of somebody’s ribcage.

Blanchett scrambled down to them before long, covered in leaf mold and mud but none the worse for wear. (Actually, the mud improved his odor significantly.) Sings-to-Trees checked his ankle again and pronounced it acceptable.