T. Kingfisher - Nine Goblins

Finchbones said something to one of the other elves. The elf said, “The captain is warning you. You must step away from the girl. She is extremely dangerous and we cannot guarantee your safety.”

Lisabet glared up at her brother. “So you’re glad you went away?”

The boy was a poor liar, Nessilka thought. She was another species, and even she could see the answer on his face.

“Fine!” yelled the girl. “Fine, if that’s how it is! I’m sorry I ever wanted you to come back!”

The girl pulled back. Finchbones jerked the crossbow up.

She opened her mouth and made the noise again.

Nessilka had to give it to Captain Finchbones. His hands were shaking badly and the shot went wild, but it went past her left shoulder with only inches to spare. And he did all this while everyone else was slamming their hands over their ears. The only reason that Nessilka didn’t cover her own ears as well was because her arms were firmly pinned to the troll’s side.

The trolls didn’t seem bothered by the noise. They were looking at the humans with baffled expressions. “Graw?” said one uncertainly.

Sings whimpered, and the troll holding him picked him up and cuddled him, saying worriedly “Grah! Grah-grah-aaah?”

We have got to stop doing this, thought Nessilka wearily, we know there’s no conversation, we know there’s nothing to understand, my head is going to come apart if I hear much more of this…

“Graaaah?”

Finchbones crawled, inch by agonizing inch, toward the girl. He was still clutching the crossbow, perhaps planning to bludgeon her to death if nothing else presented itself.

John, closest to the source, had gone to his knees. He reached for his sister but she stepped out of the way. Her eyes narrowed, and the voice, if anything, got worse. Nessilka felt as if a mule were kicking her repeatedly between the eyes.

Our brains are gonna melt. There’s going to be blood coming out of our ears soon. It wasn’t just trampling—those people died of this.

“Grawww…” said her troll. It fidgeted, crushing her more tightly against its side.

Nessilka’s vision filmed with red mist.

Something moved.

It strode past the fire, past the torches, and even through the film of red, Nessilka thought it moved like a goblin.

… Blanchett?

Blanchett was wearing his helmet. He took one more step forward, reached up, and plucked the bear from his helm.

The voice redoubled. The girl had seen him. It focused, concentrated, and Nessilka began screaming because it drowned the sound out just a little and that was good and anyway, everybody else was screaming, too.

Blanchett wound up, took two running strides, and flung the bear across the sea of screaming elves.

It hit the girl square in the face.

Blanchett always did have good aim.

The voice ended in a very unmagical squawk. Nessilka considered how long the bear had been in battle— months —and how often it had been washed— never —and just how foul it must be.

Probably got a lot of Blanchett’s rancid hair gel on there, too. I don’t even want to know what that stuff’s made of.

Even somebody who’d been surrounded by corpses for a week might draw the line at taking that particular bear to the face.

Sings-to-Trees yelled in Elvish.

The troll holding Nessilka dropped her, gently, and lumbered forward. The girl’s face vanished under a large hooved paw.

“Graw?” it said.

Sings-to-Trees nodded.

John stood up. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said, to no one in particular. “I have to take her away. It’s too dangerous. I’ll make a hole.”

Finchbones coughed, spat, and tried to say something. His vocabulary did not seem to be up to either “summary execution” or “extradition” but John nodded gravely. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said again. “This is bad?—I think?”

“Yes,” said Sings.

John nodded again. “Yes. But it’ll be…worse. Much worse. She’s dangerous. I shouldn’t have left her alone. She just…wasn’t this strong before.” He nodded several times, as if cementing this idea firmly in his head. “I’ll have to take her away, sir.”

“Where will you go?” asked Sings.

“Somewhere—far. Remote?” John glanced at Sings, then away. “I go there sometimes? It’s safe. There’s nobody there.”

“That’s probably good,” said Sings.

“Yes, sir.”

John paused, closed one eye, and spat blue light. Nessilka cringed in memory of what that blue light could do.

Finchbones cursed and dropped his crossbow, shaking his fingers. Blue light slithered over the weapon.

“Very sorry, sir. But she’s my sister.”

Finchbones said something grim in Elvish to Sings. Nessilka recognized an order when she heard it. Sings said something right back. She didn’t recognize that, but by the tone, Sings wasn’t particularly concerned about following orders.

He’s a civilian, Finchbones, you can’t court-martial him…much as you might want to…

John reached up and grabbed the air, as he had once before on the battlefield. Nessilka’s stomach lurched again as he pulled downward, and the air showed… somewhere else.

It was daylight there. It looked like an alpine meadow. Mountains rose up toward a blue bowl of sky.

“Excuse me, sir?” said John to the troll.

“Graw?”

“Let her go,” said Sings, “and Matthien, you will not shoot one of my trolls or I will raise hell clear to the Great Glade.”

Finchbones looked as if he’d eaten something extremely sour.

The troll handed her to John. She gulped a breath and her brother promptly put a hand over her mouth. “Only until we go through,” he told her. “Then you can do whatever you like.”

He stepped through the hole in the air.

It hung there for a second longer—long enough to see John release his sister and for her to gaze around with wide eyes—and then the hole closed up and the fabric of the world healed itself.

A silence fell. It did not break until Finchbones let out a long, disgusted sigh, and picked up his no-longer-glowing crossbow.

Sings reached down, dusted off the bear, and handed it back to Blanchett.

“And now,” he said, “I think we’ve all got a lot of talking to do.”

Three days later, Nessilka sat in Sings-to-Trees’ kitchen and peeled potatoes.

Captain Finchbones, much-decorated leader of elite elven rangers, sat next to her and peeled them as well. Sings seemed to feel it would be good for him.

Finchbones could detach the entire peel in one continuous sweep of the knife, which was very impressive, but Nessilka’s rather cruder technique produced three peeled potatoes for every one of his.

There was probably some kind of deep philosophical point there, but Nessilka wasn’t inclined to go digging for it.

It was pretty much all over now. The goblins would leave tomorrow for Goblinhome, and would be provided a ranger escort the entire way. Meanwhile, Finchbones and a small group of his men had been staying with Sings. They pretended they weren’t there as guards and Nessilka pretended her goblins weren’t being guarded, and everyone was reasonably happy.

Thumper had made a full recovery. So had Blanchett. The bear not only had a set of stripes sewn on his arm, it was possibly the first teddy-bear in history to have received a medal for service to the elven nation.

Nessilka and Murray had them as well. They were delicate silver leafy things—about what you’d expect from elven medals. She didn’t know how long they’d last in combat, but it had been a nice gesture.

And…maybe more than a gesture. She glanced over at Finchbones.