T. Kingfisher - Nine Goblins

“You won’t work at all,” said the girl. “And if Old Man Houghton’s still kicking around—what a mess.” She sounded annoyed, but her crazylight eyes gleamed, and Nessilka knew that she was probably already too late.

The sergeant lunged.

She got over the back of the pew and two steps farther and that was all. The girl opened her mouth and tilted her head back a little, and a sound came out.

It was that maddening, half-heard conversation sound, but louder and closer and painful. The words cut right through the center of Nessilka’s head like the teeth of a bonesaw. The human’s lips were hardly moving but her throat was vibrating strangely and great gibbering gods Nessilka wanted to go towards it, it was important that she go towards it, but it hurt, it felt like the two halves of her skull were grating together and the girl was backing away from them but she had to get closer, perhaps if she could just hear what the voice was saying the horrible grating in her head would stop because if it didn’t stop the bones in Nessilka’s ears were going to shatter and she was going to go deaf and why was she moving so slowly, because the girl was backing out the door but her feet seemed to stick to the floor and Murray was moaning and she wanted to smack him because his moaning was making it harder to make out the words and oh gods, why hadn’t she used the club when she had a chance—

And then Blanchett brought his club down on the back of the girl’s head.

The sound cut off instantly. There was a thump as the human wizard—she couldn’t have been anything else—folded up and hit the ground. Nessilka heard herself cry out in anguish and relief. So did Murray.

She staggered to the door and looked out. The one-eyed teddy-bear bobbed atop the helmet. “Sorry, Sarge,” said Blanchett, “but he said you needed some help.”

“Tell him he’s promoted,” rasped Nessilka. “I’ll get him some stripes.”

“He’d like that, Sarge.”

Murray looked down at the crumpled human and nudged her with one flat foot. The human groaned. “You didn’t kill her,” he said.

“Was I supposed to?”

“Might have made things easier. What are we going to do now, Sarge?”

Nessilka looked at the unconscious wizard, looked at the pile of bodies, looked up at Murray—and was spared any kind of decision because at that moment, the rangers arrived.

There is a game that most civilized creatures play in times of great turmoil, which might best be called “How Boned Are We?”

Nessilka and Murray were playing it now.

“We’re boned,” said Murray.

“Yup,” said Nessilka.

“They’re gonna think we did all of it.”

“Sings-to-Trees will set them straight.”

“If they think to ask him.”

“True.”

“And there’s no chance they’ll believe the kid did it.”

“Doesn’t look like it, no.”

“So we’re boned.”

“Yup.”

Blanchett was sitting this one out, since the elves had taken their weapons and his fanged orc-helmet seemed to qualify. Without the bear, Blanchett was as silent as the grave.

Nessilka had made an effort. When she’d been kneeling in the mud with a sword held near her neck and an elf had been trussing her up with grim efficiency, she’d said “That bear is one of my men. I demand that you treat him with the courtesy due to a prisoner of war.”

Which had gone over about as well as you’d expect, but at least she’d seen bear, helmet, and weapons vanish into a sack together. So that was something. Leave no soldier behind and all.

They hadn’t been killed on the spot, and that was also something.

She was pretty sure that goblins were considered generally too incompetent to pull off something like this.

Pretty sure.

Fairly sure, anyway.

Reasonably hopeful.

She’d told them the kid was a wizard. She wasn’t sure if they’d listened. Probably not. They’d whisked the girl away somewhere, and realistically, the three enemies of the state standing in the town full of bodies, having just clubbed one of the last survivors, were not the most credible of witnesses.

They had been removed from the village and dropped in a sheep pasture about a half-mile distant. Somebody had set up a tent and she could smell a fire burning on the other side of the hedgerow. A silent elf with a crossbow was standing guard.

“Do you speak this language?” he had asked. (He had asked probably the same question three other times, in what sounded like three other languages, but Nessilka didn’t know any of them. She was interested to note that it was not the language the human had spoken, so perhaps the races didn’t have that much contact after all.)

“Yes,” she said. Murray nodded. Blanchett stared into the distance.

“Good. I am very angry. If you attempt to escape, I will be very glad to kill you. Do you understand me?”

They nodded.

“We didn’t do it,” said Murray hopelessly.

“You will have a chance to speak to Captain Finchbones in your defense,” said the elf, and then walked five feet away and became as communicative as a stone.

“We’re boned,” said Murray glumly.

“Yup.”

“Think we can escape?”

“No.”

“If the kid does the thing—”

“Then we’ll break our necks trying to get to her, most likely, if we don’t get trampled by the elves first. Unless it doesn’t work on elves.” She looked at their captor. His hair was perfect. You could braid enough coup markers in that hair to account for a small berserker nation.

They sat in the sheep pasture and watched the sun crawl across the sky.

Nessilka tried to engage Blanchett. “Blanchett? Can you hear the bear?”

No response.

Great grim gods, what if his brain is melted? What if this is what drives him over the edge?

More over the edge?

“Blanchett, I want you to listen to me. The bear is on a very important mission. He’s doing reconnaissance. You need to stay with me until the bear reports back, understand?”

He turned his head half an inch toward her. Nessilka felt a sudden enormous relief, capture by the enemy notwithstanding. She wriggled into a more comfortable position and leaned toward Blanchett.

The elf’s crossbow went click.

She leaned back and addressed the sky. “Blanchett, I know you’re in there. You just need to sit tight until the bear comes back, okay?”

His lips moved. It might have been Yes, Sarge. It might have been almost anything.

The tent flap was pulled back, and two more elves emerged. Nessilka sized them up as they approached. Was one Captain Finchbones?

“The one in the armor?” guessed Murray.

“No,” said Nessilka, who knew a bit more about command. “The one who looks tired.”

And indeed, of the two elves approaching, one looked exhausted. His shoulders were stooped and his long white hair made him look old instead of ethereal.

He had weary eyes. Nessilka clenched her fingers together.

If you are going to be captured—and if you are a goblin soldier, this is always at least a possibility—it is rarely a good idea to be captured by tired people. Tired people make mistakes. Those mistakes are rarely in your favor. For every guard who dozes off or who fails to lock the prison door, you get a dozen guards who forget that they’ve taken the safety off the crossbow, who mistake a plea for water for an assault, or who fail to loosen the ropes before somebody’s hand turns black and falls off.

Tired commanders are even worse. Tired commanders have a tendency to want problems to just go away.

Nessilka knew that she, Murray, Blanchett and a town full of corpses added up to a very big problem.