“At once,” said Galfen as he quickly sat at the circular table, drawing a sheaf of papers, quill, phial and a small stone well from his bag.
Cezzum watched as Lauret ordered his knights about and then turned to his dwarven brother. “Do you think we can take leave now? We have done what we must; Filburn’s charge is at an end.”
The dwarf’s eyes were warm to Cezzum’s words. “I hope as much, but something tells me this is not quite over yet, although I wouldn’t mind a good swig of ale or a flank of meat before we leave.”
As if Lauret were a god he answered Palodar’s prayers. “Beren.”
“Sir?”
“Prepare a meal and pour out the last of the mead; conserve our kindling, but break out a shank of the smoked elk. We take flight by first light; a hardy meal will be needed to cross the Leas once more.”
“Aye,” responded Beren, nodding; he set about rummaging through the packs and parcels scattered across the floor.
“Cezzum, Palodar,” asked the knight-captain as he gestured towards two seats adjacent his, “If you would be so kind as to share a meal with us in just reward for your service to Filburn.”
Palodar did not falter a step and trotted merrily to one of the seats indicated; Cezzum followed him and took the other. Lauret positioned himself on his own chair in front of his map. The captain looked at the halflings seated next to him, their heads barely above the level of the table as they sat, and smiled wryly.
Three tarnished, but reasonably clean, goblets were placed before them and filled to their tips with a dark, sweet-smelling mead. Palodar dove right into his oversized cup and in one binge managed to drain half of his vessel and cried out, “Lauret and his men be praised! A reasonably fine drink – it almost tastes of home.” Galfen laughed to himself as he wrote assiduously yet even though he found mirth in the dwarf’s words, there was no mistaking the suppressed anguish that still drifted through the tomb. Cezzum and Lauret sipped theirs more frugally.
The knight-captain placed his goblet carefully on the table and grimaced before addressing the two halflings. “I know both of you must be ailed; tired. What more: to be pulled from what lives you had before errant chance; but, gah... this wounds me to ask, for I know it is not your duty, but my company is few in number; there are too many paths to tread and fewer to journey them; please good goblin and dwarf I implore you to our service, our order.” The knight-captain could see the cold hesitation half strewn on faces half seen; he swiftly altered his tone. “Permit me to tell you a tale before you give a response.”
Cezzum’s heart sank in his chest, becoming anxious and seeping with an imminent wretchedness. His mind cried out to the captain that it was enough! He had done his task; he had been wrenched from his home; he owed naught to these people and this unnamed order; Cezzum wished he were home or at the end of things; his feet then would only have one road left to tread.
Palodar looked at his green companion and, in his mien, caught sight of every thought that was bubbling about. For Cezzum, it was unlucky fortune that he returned the gaze of his friend; he looked at the gregarious face of his comrade, his budding beard dribbling with mead, and eyes that spoke fathoms of naïve fealty, yet remained so affable, that against all his most earnest desires, Cezzum’s fury ebbed and his veins cooled. The dwarf smiled; his grimy and malodorous teeth glinted in the fey lantern’s light. “When we first met goblin, I could not have imagined all of this!” Palodar threw his hands around him gesticulating towards... everything. “But I have lived more in these few days than in my entire life of wheeling and haggling; even though death hid behind every hill and horizon on our way here, it was still more exciting than all the coin I have ever made! Don’t tell my kin that though, or I will deny it completely. As insane as it may be, coming from a dwarf who, just a few days ago, was quite eager to be rescued and not die: I believe dying on an adventure such as this, in the shadow of this mystery, would be a far happier thing than to live a lifetime going about the tedious drivel of a mundane life! Mind you though, to do this quest and live as well, to recount our deeds for all and spawn to hear, well that would be far better than dying of course! Nevertheless, my point stands!”
Palodar downed the rest of his goblet with an ardent gulp, and when his face emerged from the dregs, he looked up to find Cezzum, as well as all of the men, staring at him. With a merry expression on his face, he pounded the goblet onto the table and scoffed triumphantly. All but the grinning goblin guffawed at the audacious dwarf. Lauret looked at Cezzum whose mind was wrestling with the words of men and dwarf alike. While the battle raged within, Beren placed small loaves of hard bread before everyone’s place and withdrew the string over a large vessel of tantalizing honey.
Cezzum cracked open the bread and munched on a hunk of it without any honey. There was much anticipation for the end of his mastication. “It seems, I think, I have been refuted again by my bearded friend and for the better. My home can only become more skew, but it will still stand – I hope. We have come this far, what is a little further? Besides loping off a goblin’s arm was rather fun;” – crow’s feet developed in the corners of Cezzum’s eyes as he gave his answer – “tell us your tale, knight-captain, and we shall do our best to aid thee!”
Palodar leered warily at his companion’s grim, offhand comment, but decided to chuckle in spite of it.
“I think it first prudent to blunt his blade Palodar, would it not?” bantered Lauret.
“Without a doubt!” The dwarf and the human laughed archly.
Lauret broke a piece of his bread off, lathered it with honey and gnawed at it absently for a few moments. When the bread eventually came to a rest in his stomach, he washed its crusty remnants away with a swig of mead; his face grew earnest; he wiped his lips and began to tell of his fellowship.
“My company of knights here are but that, a single band of an entire order which is comprised of the five un-fell races of our lands. Each of the five companies are led by a knight-captain of a particular race, and is thus followed by members of that captain’s fellows; however, each of our bands has an envoy from the others. You, yourselves, met our elven and loranic kin – it claws that they are gone; I shall miss them indeed. Our dwarven and telopian representatives are at present at respite in their home cities; it will be an unwelcome thing to serve them with this news. Regardless, I digress. No soul outside of our order knows of its presence; it was within that shroud that we were founded. Our soul task is to ensure, unyieldingly, that the fractious nature of our enemies remains uncrossed; without this rift, they would be a formidable plight upon these lands.”
Cezzum said, “You speak of goblins, pokroks and trolls?”
“To name but a few, yes,” continued Lauret. “But there are many more fell creatures in the lands that seek to bring harm to its people: creatures and beings who delight in nothing other than the sheer pleasure of despoiling the meek.”
The goblin’s eyes became unfocused as a thought crossed his mind; then he returned his look towards the knight-captain. “The unending wars between tribe and horde; between goblins and phagens... you sow their dissent!”
“Indeed we do, Cezzum. It is insidious, yes; we ensure that these forces, wan while scattered, never rally under a single banner. A single, goblin clan that pillages remains an ill; yet if it is at war with another, it becomes a smaller threat to the people; reduced by internal ravages, they are more easily dealt with by what militia there may be.”
“But how do you accomplish this? Surely there are those that would witness your dealings and inform their brethren of the treachery they suffer,” suggested Palodar curiously.
“It is a sage point dwarf; however, years of their feuding has resulted in little trust to be shared amongst them. The odd goblin or phagen, for pokroks are dotards, who might survive our designs are never trusted by their own, for that is how our tactics work, rarely is there one left to report what has transpired; those that are, we take great care to conduct their discovery not b
y their own kind.
“What more, we destroy entire encampments of our enemy and leave enough suspicion to suggest that the decimation was at the war-toil of another tribe. Our influence over the years has grown vastly, as has our armoury of deceit: boots, worn only by elders; sap preserved feet from all their disparate kinfolk; weapons of familial markings. We have master smiths; their sole art to forge the arms in exact replication, down to the tiniest hallmark; scribes study the intricacies of these malign creatures. Your faces display that you might think our work questionable, but there is no doubt that it has preserved the lives of countless; there has never been a war between our kind and those whose will never bends towards peace.”
Palodar rubbed his beard between his fingers. “A crafty design if ever one was to be done; I must and will admit, there never has been a war...”
Beren handed out generous portions of smoked meat to Lauret, Cezzum and Palodar, before the other knights helped themselves to the remaining stocks.
Cezzum gnawed on the shank, thinking deeply. He found the notion of his race being slaughtered to preserve rivalries to be a sinister one at best, yet there was a cool logic to it, and indeed, a well justified one at that. Cezzum knew, besides from himself, his kind was wholly taken by fell ways, caring not for any being in the world apart from themselves; it had always been a torment for Cezzum to witness brutality not for greater design, only for pleasurable whim. “But how do you maintain such a devoted cause, Lauret? As ravaging as our hordes are, or as pugnacious as some of the other fell creatures are, the five races too are as prone to war and strife and suffering as we are; not beyond the recount of most memories here was the Greater Telopian-Dwarven War.” Cezzum queried this most candidly.
“An astute observation. It was decreed upon our order’s creation that even though alliances between our people are fickle at most, the Order of the Paladins would remain united despite any grievances of despots or tempestuous, child kings. Any oath-breaking of this would result in the malediction of the member’s entire bloodline; what these dooms are, may scarcely be shared.”
Palodar’s eyes enlarged, awe etched around his cheeks. Cezzum noted the creasing of his friend’s face, but could not quite understand the cause for his astonishment.
Lauret grinned at the gawking dwarf. “Aye, Palodar, your very namesake; Palu’don, was a founding member of this; it was from his birthright that the Paladin’s took their name. Arcun’son, of men; Palu’don, of the dwarves; Beaug, of the telopians; Velino of the elves and Sadares of the lorans; they were the authors of this endeavour.”
“If you say this was created during the reign of those rulers, this is surely an ancient cabal,” said Cezzum.
Lauret agreed and swallowed a large chunk of bread and smoked elk. “That it is and it is why our current problem bewilders us so; it too is the reason that the missive you brought, bearing a single name, holds the entire weight our... sometimes free lands upon it. For without that name there was no hope; now a foolish hope spurs cause; with that, we can set our designs into action.”
Palodar entranced by the words of the knight-captain did not notice that he, quite absently, brought Cezzum’s goblet of mead to his lips, for his own was dry; he drank deeply. The dwarf put the goblet back before Cezzum without a second thought. Cezzum shook his head in helpless amusement and asked, “Then what has changed? What is the problem that you speak of?”
The knight-captain’s tone grew woeful. “Our designs are failing. Our seeds of plot and dissention do not bear their fractious fruit any longer. The hordes of the goblins are rallying under a single banner, but it is not merely goblins that heed the call. Nay, fell creatures throughout the land have been tracked, heading to the east, at the call of the Banner-Flyer’s name. Goblins alone would prove a trying skirmish for any single army, but our kind are not mustered, nor can be in such a poor span of time. Pokroks, trolls, wood-reapers, gegiawulfs, fen-dryads – and more of ancient tongues, are heeding this call to arms. All but the phagens and the pokroks travel far from the distant western shores; that is why swift reply is needed before their legions may be added to numbers already too strong for our means. Perhaps even more unsettling are the whispers borne from the dragons that tell of wyverns spiriting through the air.”
If a pin were to be dropped in the sepulchre at that moment, it would have deafened all those within. Both Cezzum and Palodar sat in horror as Lauret’s words resounded within them; even his own three knights, who knew of the evils to come, stopped in silence; the fresh words reminded them of the significance of their impossible task.
Cezzum was not ignorant of what emotions played on their faces when he spoke. “From what I last knew of the strength of the east, when I was still kept in confidence by my kin, is that an army of that size, of that assortment, could reign a doom on any that oppose it; even the strongest armies of this region, of all lands united, would fall before it.” Cezzum cried his words out, drenched with an envisioned fear; the consequence of the quest he had, seemingly so long ago, been sent upon, echoed the destructive legacy it would come to leave if the other races were to succumb to a united horde.
Lauret nodded and said, “Your information remains veracious. Grass still struggles to grow upon the Westop Knolls where The Greater Telopian-Dwarven War played itself out; thousands, from both, were decimated; not enough time has yet passed to replenish their ranks with brave souls. The eastern frontiers of men are still newborns, and despite the devastating power the lorans can bring to bear if called to arms, they are not impervious; none are. But this is the oath of the Paladins: to prevent the world from ever knowing of this congregation; to stem this tide of war before it has the faintest chance of flowing. The missive you so valiantly delivered unto us, the dirge of Filburn, bears the name of the self-proclaimed lord whom the hosts gather behind.”
“Might we know the name, knight-captain?” asked Cezzum; thought of it burnt a hole within him.
The knight-captain drained the last of his mead then replied, “Osi’Bledun-Deorc.”
A hush drew over the air and Palodar, if he had but another tankard of ale in him, could have sworn that he heard the remains of Arcun’son stir within the tomb. Cezzum knew the word Osi in goblin tongue, Kig’n, meant Lord, but the rest of the name’s translation was lost.
“Well that is mighty fine then!” mocked Palodar. “But what good will it do us? Shall we shout his name as he breaks our homes and burns our fields in some hope that he, our dear Osi’BladdyDerk, has a change of heart – if he has one at that!”
Galfen grinned at the dwarf; he then quietly slid the finished missive he had penned, sealed with the insignia of the Paladins, across the table to his captain. Lauret’s eyes seemed to lighten at the dwarf’s flippancy, but he responded genuinely. “There is naught more important than a name. With a name you have a capacity that could not be claimed before. It is information, and information is strength of mind. This name, of our foe, is the lynchpin in our stratagem. But more on this I cannot say without sworn fealty. We are in dire straits at this moment and to alter the course of that torrent one must change or fall with the ages. Thus, my gallant halflings I offer unto you our order, our brotherhood; to become one of our kin – to take charge with us, by oath of blood, until such time as that covenant has been fulfilled or death speeds you on to what lies beyond. I offer you to be knighted under the arms of the Paladins.”
Cezzum and Palodar looked around in shock as grinning faces greeted both of them. They both knew that the offer they received would have been nigh unheard of before in the order; it was an honour neither knew quite how to describe. Knowing that to join the Paladins was not merely to join an order but rather it was to bear the weight of the world upon their shoulders, and that through unrelenting subterfuge, they were to ensure the safeguarding of a land. Yet it was to be part of something far greater than themselves: a tradition of valour guards, whose unknown deeds had woven the world for an epoch. And even if the binding was for but one single de
ed, it spoke fathoms of the care that it held for others: for everyone who draws breath and shares a common land, a common world, has an intrinsic duty to their fellows.
Cezzum’s heart was bursting at its seams; his most fervent of wishes was coming to a truth, even if the significance of it meant the exploration and deed of old darkness within. Palodar needed no coaxing, for to tell a tale, or be told in one, of how he joined a knighthood of his dwarven namesake would be his proud elegy.
Lauret saw the ineffable acceptance in the goblin’s and dwarf’s faces and his own heart bounded with warmth and hope that hid what later might swallow this momentary felicity. “Then my dear halflings, draw steel, for your blood must be given by your own accord!”
The two companions each equipped their swords and with a small cut drew blood from their fingers. The crimson drops dripped onto the stone table. After a few seconds the knight-captain held up his hand and Cezzum and Palodar staunched their lacerations. At Lauret’s gesture they all stood. The knights, as well as the knight-captain, each in turn dipped their fingers into both the blood of the dwarf and the goblin and brought it to their tongues - a sanguine embracing of each new member into their hearts. Lauret took off his own ring and asked Ulures for his as well. The knight-captain presented the two rings to the order’s newest members and asked them to wear the signets. With great care Cezzum took his oversized ring and Palodar his undersized one. Uncertainly they brought the rings to their fingers, unaware as to how they would fit. The rings altered their shape considerably, slipping on soundly and fixedly.
“Cezzum, Palodar,” announced their captain, his voice intoned with pride, “welcome, brothers, to the Order of the Paladins!”
The two friends’ eyes shone with delight and they bowed in respect to their captain and fellow knights. A raucous applause erupted from Ulures, Beren, Galfen and Lauret. When the indoctrination had quietened, the knight-captain called Cezzum and Palodar over to his map. The three others quickly went back to preparing for their leave on the morrow. The knight-captain immediately gave the freshly penned missive to Palodar, who was already eagerly pouring over the map, and set off indicating various points on the large vellum drawing.
The Good Goblin Page 11
