T. Kingfisher - Nine Goblins

“S’nice hill,” rumbled Algol. “S’pretty, anyway.” He had a wildflower tucked behind one ear.

“It’s a trollslip,” he said helpfully, when they all looked at him and his flower. “They grow on hillsides like this.”

“It’s very…um….pink,” said Murray.

“My mom used to grow them back home.”

There didn’t seem to be anything more to say on that front. They all looked forward again.

He was right, so far as it went, but so was Murray. It was a hill, with big grey rocks scattered around the top, and little pink trollslips tumbling over them. Here and there, an oxeye daisy nodded in the sun. The hill had risen gently out of the woods behind them, leaving the trees behind in favor of a band of heather, and the wildflowers. The other sides ranged between steepish (in front) and suicidal (to the sides.) It had a pleasant, but not particularly dramatic view of the fields below.

A nice place for a picnic, maybe, but probably not a place you’d build a house.

Being the highest point for some miles, it was, however, the perfect place for a battle. Everybody wants the high ground, particularly if you’re only four feet tall and need all the help you can get.

The elves down below looked like tall white foxes, all narrow pointy faces and broad pointy ears. Their pale silver hair floated around their heads like haloes. They stood in grim silent ranks, and watched the goblins through narrowed almond eyes.

The humans below were a more varied lot, and came in almost as many colors as goblins, from dark brown to pasty pink. No green, though. You couldn’t trust a species that didn’t come in green.

At least they fidgeted before the battle. Nessilka appreciated that. The elves stood like carved marble. The humans sweated and twitched and snickered and poked each other, very much like goblins.

“They say the waiting…”

“…is the worst part.”

Mishkin and Mushkin had taken Algol’s advice literally, and were crowded up next to him like two ticks on a tomcat.

Algol considered this.

“Nah. The worst part is the bit where you hit the other guy and hope he doesn’t hit you.”

“Oh.”

“And the bit where they hit you, that’s the worst, too.”

“…oh.”

“And the bit where they’ve already hit you, and you’re not sure if you’re alive or not, that’s definitely the wor—”

“Corporal!”

Algol blinked at Sergeant Nessilka. “Yes, Sarge?”

“It is possible to be too honest, Corporal.”

“Yes, Sarge.”

They all stood and fidgeted for a while.

“Do you think we could make tea?” asked Gladblack, who had a purple tint to his skin most of the time, but was now a kind of unhappy grey.

“No.”

Weatherby was tugging at his clothes again. Behind Nessilka, Thumper was singing something tuneless under his breath. She caught something about “with a whack-whack here, and a whack-whack there…” and tuned him out.

“Do you think—” Murray began, and then there was no time for questions, because somebody had yelled “Charge!”

Nessilka had been in any number of battles, and she couldn’t remember the first ten minutes of any of them.

She had a theory that if you could remember the first ten minutes, you’d never, ever charge at anybody again, so parts of your brain blotted them out.

The problem was that she couldn’t imagine why her brain would want her to continue charging at people, and this then led her to the theory that parts of her brain worked for the Goblin High Command, which she didn’t like at all.

Regardless, it was ten minutes into the battle, and she couldn’t remember what had just happened. There’d been a lot of yelling. Everyone yelled. No matter what species you were, elf, human, goblin, orc, random bystander, you yelled. There had been a lot of hitting things. Her shield was bent in four or five places, and her arms ached dreadfully.

Algol went by at high speed, shield raised, with Mishkin and Mushkin practically stepping on his heels. Mishkin had gotten a sword from somewhere, and was waving it dangerously close to Algol’s kidneys.

She had no idea how the battle was going, but she didn’t seem to be dead, so from her perspective, everything was really going rather well.

Unfortunately, Sergeant Nessilka had just seen a problem.

The problem stood on a little rise, just enough to lift him out of the battle proper. He looked human, and he wasn’t wearing armor, or carrying any weapons.

He was doing something with his hands, and there was a blueness in the air around him—not really a blue light, per se, but the world around him was turning shades of blue, like something behind a pane of cobalt glass. That wasn’t right. That was magic , that was.

A bolt of blueness streaked out from his open mouth, and hit a knot of goblins, who fell down.

Aw, hell , Nessilka thought. It’s a wizard.

All wizards are crazy.

Not the quaint, colloquial “crazy” where you have an offbeat sense of humor and wear brightly colored socks, not mild eccentricity coupled with a general lack of fashion sense. Not “you don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps.” Wizards aren’t weird. They are genuinely, legitimately, around the bend.

This is because magic is a form of psychosis.

Forget the bearded men wearing robes covered in stars trying to sell you bargain spellbooks. Nine times out of ten, it’s a scam, and the tenth time, they really can do magic, but it’s not something they can teach.

Various parties have done intensive studies of Arcane Manifestation Disorder, or AMD, and the results often make for interesting reading, but they still don’t know what causes someone to have a sudden psychotic break and wake up able to throw fire from their fingertips. It just happens.

There are basically two kinds of sufferers of AMD—the high-functioning, and the rather less so. High-functioning wizards can live on their own, and while they tend to be shy and awkward in social situations, meticulously neat, and easily startled, they’re not any worse off than the rest of us.

The more unfortunate wizards generally require someone to dress them and can’t be allowed near any sharp objects.

By its very nature, magic is highly complex and highly individualized. It’s hard to say what magic can and can’t do, because it varies so wildly between wizards. Some of them are battle machines, some of them are good in the garden, some of them do weather. Some of them can, on a good day, turn mushrooms into hedgehogs, and some of them can shatter mountains. There’s a young woman in East Charring who can’t talk, but can heal just about anything that ails you. You just don’t know.

Because of this unpredictability, nobody much relies on magic. People have tried, but you get a lot of very unhappy wizards and they’re not a group you want to make unhappy. While individuals with AMD often find work suited to their own particular talents, the only large institutions with a policy of employing wizards en masse are various armies.

Sergeant Nessilka had been in the Goblin Army since she was old enough to lie about her age, and she had encountered a fair number of enemy wizards. There’d been the one who shot smothering clouds of butterflies out of his fingertips, and the one who made people’s skeletons shuck off their bodies like someone taking off a heavy coat, and the really creepy one who’d just made people go away .

This guy shot blue out of his mouth. Nessilka had never seen anybody shoot blue from their mouths, but the goblins who’d been hit weren’t getting up again, and that was more than enough for her.

“It’s a wizard! Get the wizard!” somebody was yelling. “Follow me! Quick!” After a minute of this, Nessilka realized she was the one doing the yelling, and cursed her traitorous vocal cords. Of all the body parts to suddenly discover patriotism…