by Mel Odom
Hesitantly, Juhg peered into the cabin. “No goblins,” he announced.
“Good.” Raisho strode into the room with his blade in his fist. “Come on.”
Juhg forced himself to follow. Cold wind blew in from the sea and crossed the back of his neck. He shivered.
Raisho lifted the glass on the lantern hanging on the wall.
“What are you doing?” Juhg demanded.
“I can’t search this room in the dark.” Raisho pulled up the wick.
Hurriedly, Juhg closed the door and stood with his back to it. He watched in disbelief as Raisho used his own tinderbox to light the lantern.
Yellow light filled the room and brought Raisho’s face out of the darkness in gleaming relief. Smoke twisted in tiny threads up to the cabin’s low ceiling and pooled there briefly before spreading and thinning away. Cargiff oil wasn’t completely smoke-free. After spending hours trapped in a room lit by lanterns aboard Windchaser, Juhg wistfully remembered the sweet smell of glimmerworm juice that lighted the halls within the Vault of All Known Knowledge. Now, however, he was glad for the oil stink because it helped cover up the stench of the goblin captain’s quarters.
Buckets of bones and refuse sat at the foot of the captain’s unmade bed. Weapons adorned the wall, and Juhg knew from past experience that goblin commanders and leaders all had stories to tell of the weapons in the creatures’ possession, of how the goblin had killed warriors in glorious battle. Most of the weapons came from junk the goblins picked up and passed off as trophies of war. Cloaks and outerwear lay strewn across the room and filled four sea chests.
Raisho wasted no time searching the room. The young warrior plowed through the personal belongings in short order.
Juhg took a more sedate approach, even though a screaming voice in the back of his mind kept worrying him with the possibility of discovery. He didn’t cover as much of the room as Raisho did, but he was thorough. Unfortunately, that thoroughness required coming in contact with the crawling vermin that lived within the goblin captain’s things.
“I don’t see how these creatures can live like this.” Raisho dusted an army of insects from his clothing. The bugs crunched underfoot. “If’n I was a bug, I’d choose somewheres else to live, I would.”
“Ships are worse than the houses goblins choose to live in,” Juhg said. “Goblinkin can move from house to house, abandoning each in turn, or live out in the forest if the tribe chooses. But a ship is a considerable investment.” He shook meal weevils from a pile of garments. “Goblins won’t just leave a ship because they’re too hard to replace. The creatures don’t build them, and dweller slaves don’t know enough to build them.”
Raisho glowered at the room. “There’s no book here.”
“There are often hiding places.” Juhg got down on his hands and knees. “Didn’t you notice that we also didn’t find any valuables?”
“Ye mean, aside from them dog bones what’s in them buckets by the bed?” Raisho’s tone was sarcastic.
Juhg shuddered. “You didn’t look closely at the bones.” He ran his hands across the dirty wooden floor.
“I looked close enough.”
“Those aren’t all dog bones or rabbit bones or cat bones or fish bones.” Juhg shoved more refuse out of his way. He forced himself to breathe through his open mouth so the stench wouldn’t gag him. “There are also dweller bones in that bucket.”
Looking into the bucket, Raisho cursed.
Even though seeing the bones of his people in the bucket hadn’t surprised Juhg, simply speaking the fact left him chilled and even more nauseous.
“Goblins are a blight,” Raisho whispered in a voice hoarse with disbelief. “Ought to kill ’em all.”
Even after everything he had been through, Juhg couldn’t find it within himself to be so hateful, even toward goblins. The creatures remained feared and ferocious enemies, but Juhg would rather have seen goblinkin put in places where the tribes couldn’t prey on the rest of the world. Before Lord Kharrion had organized and led the goblinkin, the creatures hadn’t multiplied to such vast numbers or lived in areas that could sustain a tribe well enough to allow those large numbers to thrive.
Rapping against the wooden floor with his knuckles, Juhg located a hollow spot beneath the planks. “Bring the lantern here.”
“Ye found something.” Raisho caught the lantern up in one hand and approached.
“Perhaps.” Juhg dug at the plank with his deft fingers. Calluses covered his fingertips from years of working with a quill. He’d taught himself to write and draw with both hands, something that few Librarians at any level could do. He sought for unevenness but couldn’t find it.
Without a word, Raisho slipped one of his boot knives free and handed the weapon over.
Juhg pressed the finely honed point between two of the suspect planks and levered one of them up. The plank rose from the floor with a sucking noise caused by the semisoft tar that lined the fitting.
“A neat enough little hidey-hole,” Raisho commented as he moved the lantern over to reveal the contents of the hidden space.
Once uncovered, the hidden space was nearly as long as Juhg’s arm and as wide across as the span of his hand. Light gleamed over a handful of silver coins, two gold ones, a few pieces of jewelry, and three small black cloth bags.
“Not exactly a treasure trove,” Raisho whispered, grinning. “But ’twill do good enough.” He reached into the hole.
Alarmed, Raisho grabbed his friend’s hand. “What are you doing?”
“Helpin’ ourselves to a little windfall, of course.”
“Stealing from the goblin captain?”
Raisho looked puzzled. “Unless it’s some other creature what hides its belongin’s in the cap’n’s quarters, then aye, I’m takin’ it from the cap’n.”
“But … but … that’s stealing!”
“Course it is. Now, leave go of me hand so I can be about it an’ we can be on our way.”
“We didn’t come here to steal.”
“An’ if’n there’d been a book in this here hidey-hole, then?” Raisho raised his eyebrows.
“But there is no book.”
“So maybe the story about the book was a false alarm, right enough, but I can’t see any reason why we shouldn’t be a-helpin’ ourselves to a goblin cap’n’s ill-got gain. All that ye’re a-lookin’ at there, why, it’s probably twice-stole already. Us takin’ it will at least put everythin’ here back out of goblinkin hands where it belongs.”
The young sailor’s argument held flaws, but Juhg was too enervated to sort through it all now. He released his friend’s hand.
Raisho started scooping the contents from the hiding place. “Whyn’t ye busy yerself tryin’ to find another one of these?”
Knowing that neither of them could leave the captain’s quarters till the room was thoroughly searched, Juhg turned his thoughts from what Raisho was doing and concentrated on finding more hidden areas. He rapped plank after plank with his knuckles.
“Well, now,” Raisho said with pleasant surprise. “Looks like we’ll be havin’ new wealth to continue our merchantin’ investments.”
Glancing over his shoulder, Juhg stared at the jewels spilled across Raisho’s rough palm. Even from the distance, Juhg noted the flaws in the gems. “That isn’t the fortune you think that it is. Several of those stones aren’t worth much.”
Raisho closed his hand over them and grinned with true larceny. “We’ll be leavin’ with more’n we came with. That’ll make me happy enough.”
Juhg only hoped that leaving proved as easy as his friend described the effort. He continued his search.
“Well,” Raisho said, “this’n is a superstitious one, right enough.” He held out a fistful of carved toe bones blackened with runes.
A knot of distaste rose to the back of Juhg’s throat. He knew where the goblins had gotten the toe bones.
“An’ treachery, it appears, weren’t never far from his heart neither.” Raisho re
vealed the stoppered glass bottles of green-blue powder. “Know what this is?” He shook the bottle, causing the contents to slide back and forth.
“Ratter’s rot,” Juhg answered without hesitation. “Poison. Some goblinkin captains use it to poison the water supply of the ships when those creatures intend to cut part of the crew out of the cargo profits.” Even the goblinkin didn’t condone such practice.
Raisho carefully replaced the bottle of poison in the cloth bag he’d gotten it from. “An’ ye were a-worryin’ yerself about a little bit of stealin’ from such a despicable creature.” He shook his head and clucked.
Only a few minutes later, he was convinced that the hiding place he’d found was the only one in the room. Raisho’s agreement with the assessment relieved him.
“Ready, then, bookworm?” Raisho asked.
“To go back to the ship?” Juhg asked hopefully.
Raisho grinned. “Now, I have to admit that I’m sorely tempted to go knockin’ timbers throughout the rest of this vessel, especially since the cap’n an’ his crew seem bound an’ determined to go tavern crawlin’.”
Although the taverns along Kelloch’s Harbor never closed as long as coin purses remained open, Juhg knew they had no idea how long the goblinkin would be gone. “The goblinkin could be back at any moment. The creatures could already be on the way back.” Images of the goblins even now rowing for the vessel filled his head and reignited the terror that stayed poised to scream through him.
“Aye,” Raisho admitted ruefully. He took one of the cloth bags from the pouch at his hip. “But maybe we can make a trip to the ship’s water barrels afore we leave.”
Horror dried the back of Juhg’s throat. He hated the goblins with fierce passion, but the thought of pouring ratter’s rot into the water barrels to poison the crew made him nauseous.
“No,” he said, and he wanted to point out that getting off the ship in one piece was the most important thing they could do. Captain Attikus needed to know that the goblin ship held no book as Herby’s cooper had said. Maybe it was only a story. But he knew that Raisho would see through his falsehood.
Raisho grimaced as he surveyed the bag of ratter’s rot. “Those goblinkin deserve it. But I’ve got no stomach for killin’ like that either.” He tossed the bag to the captain’s ill-kept bed, then blew out the lantern’s flame.
Plunged once more into the inky blackness that filled the captain’s personal quarters, Juhg stood by the door. In the space of two drawn breaths, the foul odor of the cabin—no longer held at bay by the burning lantern wick—flooded his nostrils.
Raisho eased the door open and peered out. Positioned below his tall friend, Juhg peered out as well.
No one walked the main deck. Above the top of the prow deck railing, the heads of the goblins remained together near the lanterns. All of the creatures were accounted for.
Without a word, Raisho opened the door and stepped out onto the deck. He held his cutlass in one hand and waved to Juhg with the other.
Pushing his fear down tightly inside him, Juhg ran for the stairs to the stern deck. Fleet of foot, he reached the top quickly, feeling the vibration of Raisho on his heels.
Lantern light moved out onto the deck from one of the hatches leading belowships.
Juhg froze, watching terrified as a tall robed figure pushed the lantern ahead as he stepped out onto the deck. Before Juhg could recover, Raisho put a big hand between his shoulder blades and pushed him down onto the deck. He thumped, but the sound was lost in the thudding of his heart roaring in his ears. Raisho lay on top of Juhg, holding them both down behind the railing.
Spindly and cadaverously thin, the figure paused as if scenting the air. Arcane symbols decorated the man’s robes. Lantern light caused the symbols to glow, awarding them an inner fire, or perhaps only revealing the power they already contained.
A human! Juhg recognized the ancient man at once for what he was. He cringed a little more. Humans and goblins sometimes traded goods, generally when the goblins found something the tribe couldn’t use and the humans wanted it. More often than not, the only humans who spent much time in the company of goblins were outlaws and brigands. Even thievery couldn’t make friends of the two races.
But a human traveling in the company of goblins? That was the mark of a wizard who practiced evil and dark magicks, the kind that got them banished from human cities and towns. Dark magick was blood magick, and blood magic, required sacrifices to maintain power.
Juhg’s heart hammered inside his chest as he surveyed the spindly figure and hoped that the wizard didn’t ferret out Raisho or him. Wizards possessed keen senses of smell and knowing. During his time at the Vault of All Known Knowledge, Juhg had witnessed the Grandmagister’s wizard friend Craugh employ such powers.
Not much escaped wizards.
But wizards also meant something else, Juhg knew. Wherever wizards were, so too were books. If not tomes and treatises written by others, a wizard at least carried his own spell book. Those volumes often borrowed sections and passages from other books.
Not every Librarian at the Vault read from wizards’ spell books that had fallen into their hands over the years. Reading spellcraft was a demanding and risky bit of business. Grandmagister Lamplighter and a handful of First Level Librarians told stories about those who had mistakenly read from spell books without first recognizing them for what they were. Librarians had gone up in flames, turned into toads, or had vanished—never to be heard again. There were a lot of other nasty surprises, but those were the main ones that thundered through Juhg’s feverish mind.
The wizard went forward. He climbed the stairs to the prow slowly, as if lifting his feet was all that he could do.
The three goblins at the prow moved away from the old man. The creatures’ hands drifted to weapons, but it was obvious the goblinkin feared the wizard.
The wizard spoke in a dry voice and looked toward Kelloch’s Harbor. One of the goblins answered him. The wind blew the wizard’s beard and long hair about. Whatever the question and whatever the answer, the wizard seemed content to stand in the open.
Raisho tapped Juhg on the shoulder.
The unexpected contact almost made Juhg yelp in surprise. He clapped both hands over his mouth in an effort to still the sound before it escaped his throat. He looked up at Raisho clad in the darkness.
“Belowdecks,” Raisho whispered.
Keeping his hands in place because he didn’t trust himself, Juhg shook his head. Belowdecks was the last place he wanted to go—or they needed to be.
“That’s a wizard.” Raisho pointed at the old man. “Wizards have books.”
Juhg couldn’t argue with that.
Light from the stern lanterns highlighted Raisho’s black skin, warming the color to dark molasses. He stared at the prow and let out a tense breath. “Then stay here. Yell a warnin’ if I need one.” He looked at Juhg. “Can ye do that?”
Despite the fear that rattled his insides, Juhg knew he couldn’t let his friend go alone. The same reasoning—that Raisho might not recognize a book if he saw one—held now.
Juhg forced his hands down. “I’ll go.”
“Then step lively.” Raisho shifted toward the stern castle stairs. “An’ don’t be heavy-footed. Might as well toss up a shot of Grekham’s Fire if’n ye do.”
Grekham’s Fire isn’t exactly the best comparison, Juhg thought. Humans had invented Grekham’s Fire. As a race, humans were known for their ability to bend the wind and water to their will, and for their borderline suicidal impulses for creating weapons of war. Elves and dwarves contented themselves with skills and a few magical weapons, goblins took whatever they could find, but humans went out of their way to invent arsenals that were as potentially dangerous to themselves or their compatriots as they were to their enemies. Grekham’s Fire was a prime example.
Designed for catapult loads for siege missions against castles and fortified cities, Grekham’s Fire was a concoction of pitch, sulfur, suet, and l
ye soap. Formed in large balls for catapults or in fist-sized chunks to rain like hail, the loads were fired and hurled against their opponents. When great balls of Grekham’s Fire landed on buildings, flames spread throughout.
However, the catapult loads didn’t always stay lit, and using the loads also proved dangerous because the flames frayed the catapults and caused launches to go awry so that often the loads landed on nearby armies. In addition, many times the warriors assigned to loading and firing ended up drenched in the stinking concoction and going up in flames.
When the human navies sought to use catapults loaded with Grekham’s Fire at sea, the disasters grew even larger. There was often nowhere to go from a burning ship in the middle of the ocean.
By the time Juhg got to his feet, Raisho had already reached the stairwell. The dweller hurried after his friend. He stayed so low his knuckles sometimes knocked against the ship’s deck and dragged.
The wizard continued staring toward the town nestled into the crooks and crannies of the ragged-edge shore while the three goblinkin watched on fearfully.
Amidships, Raisho stepped into the hold the wizard had emerged from. Juhg followed. His large feet found the ladder leading down into the hold with accustomed grace. After so many days at sea, crawling through the innards of Windchaser, he moved by instinct.
Most cargo ships of similar size tended toward a similar layout. With a ship’s shape, there were only so many designs that allowed comfortable usage of all available space.
The goblin ship held three decks. The upper, the waist, and the hold. Cargo went into the hold, jammed in to fill every conceivable space. Crew’s quarters occupied either end of the mid-decks. General sailors rode crammed into the prow, where the ride aboard was less generous. In the event of rough seas, the prow oftentimes took a beating.
