Goblin Apprentice

by Gerhard Gehrke

  “Get your payment,” she said to Zane. “Bring your sailors. It’s time.”

  But Commander Zane hesitated. “It’s…in there?”

  “Yes, it’s in there. And you don’t want to be around when it comes out. Anyone that gets too close will be killed.”

  Zane nodded.

  “You’re just going to let it go?” the widow cried.

  “This is the best solution,” Zane said. “It leaves. It’s for the good of the town.”

  “Call your guards. Kill this thing while it’s trapped.”

  “We have an agreement. That animal will only murder more of us if we—hey!”

  The widow had grabbed Zane’s sword out of its sheath and was advancing on the warehouse.

  “Stop!” Zane called, but he made no move to follow.

  Alma tried to catch her but the chained goblins she was leading blocked her. By the time she stepped around them, the widow had charged up the ramp and gone inside.

  “I’ll get her,” Alma said as she hurried down the alley.

  The widow marched through the dark warehouse. “Where are you, monster?”

  “Come back here now!” Alma ordered as she entered the warehouse.

  The widow ignored her. Soon the woman found the dead soldiers. She stepped over body after body until finally she let out a gasp and a choked cry.

  Alma put a hand on her shoulder. The widow shook her off and studied the shadows of the rafters.

  “You need to leave. Mourn him later.”

  “Where is it?” she asked, and to the shadows called, “Where are you?”

  Alma stepped away from the woman and readied her arrow.

  The widow was between the goat pens. She lowered the sword and turned to Alma. “It’s not here, is it? Which means you’re lying.”

  “I’m not lying. The monster—the dragon—it’s real. Look at what it’s done.”

  The widow shook her head. “You’re part of this, somehow. Whatever happened here is your fault. You’re just trying to trick us into giving you a boat and a purse of gold. This whole town is rotten. I told Goa that before we ever moved here and accepted his assignment. I never thought it would get as bad as it is. But you. You’re worse. There’s no dragon here. There’s just you and your killers.”

  “We’re all just trying to get by.”

  “The commander isn’t going to give you anything. I’ll be sure of that. And everyone else who did this is going to pay. Monsters. Dragons. You’d have Commander Zane believe the Divine Mother herself was at the gates if it would line your coin purse.”

  Alma’s mother had told her there was a time to speak and a time to keep quiet. As a hunter, she understood both. She pulled the arrow from the woman’s body and cleaned it, thinking the less she told Commander Zane, the better. She would escort him to his office, and they would get her money. She could get out of Eel Port during the chaos. The gold would be enough to keep her comfortable for a while, and the thought of never having to face the dragon again was tempting. Someone else could take the beast down.

  But a man like Zane probably had more gold in his possession than he would ever need. And if she were to keep the boat and kill off the dragon?

  The possibility of being set for life had never felt so close.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The cries of alarm continued from the walls around the harbor. At least two new bells began tolling. Guards had their crossbows pointing at the water where Hog had vanished while people lined the docks trying to see what was happening. The rowboat the guard and the other man had been on was upside down and adrift, the oars floating and the men nowhere in sight.

  “Troll! Troll!” a guard on the wall shouted.

  Spicy could only watch helplessly as men took up gaffs, harpoons, javelins, and bows and lined the waterway.

  At a center dock, a cluster of men were standing and studying the harbor. Hog surfaced beneath them, climbing a piling with ease. She plucked a man from above her and flung him into the water. The other men responded, trying to stab at her with their weapons. But when she grabbed a man holding a harpoon, the others fled. The harpoon man had time to shriek before she clamped her teeth down on his head.

  Crossbowmen from either wall fired, but their bolts only struck the dock. Hog dropped the dead man and let out a roar before once again plunging into the water.

  Spicy was amazed that so few were fleeing. Two men busied themselves at a storefront and carried out a large barrel. Another man single-handedly rolled a second barrel after them. The three headed down a ramp and onto the dock where Hog had last been seen.

  “We have oil!” one of the men shouted. “We have to burn the monster!”

  Others moved to help them and soon they were hurrying their load to where Hog had vanished.

  Spicy knew he had to go. If he got caught again, Fath would make other arrangements. Rime and the children would be lost. Yet he hesitated.

  Hog had risked everything for him and now she was about to get burned alive.

  He ran to the store where the men had taken the barrels of oil.

  It was little more than a stall built into the side of a larger building, but the back contained more barrels. Some had handwritten labels he could read. Lamp oil. Fish oil. Olive oil. Alcohol. Using a hammer, he began to whack away at a lid. It took a few tries and he realized he was making too much noise. But the shouts from outside and the humans running every direction meant the racket he was making wouldn’t draw undue attention if he moved fast.

  With a final strike of the hammer, he popped the lid off the barrel of lamp oil, spilling the contents out. The floor at his feet was now covered. He knocked off a couple more lids. But he had no way to light the oil. He made a quick search of the stall but found no matches or flint.

  “Come on, come on,” he chided himself.

  He ran into the street. Two storefronts down was a stall with an outside grill set over a round brazier where a few small fish on sticks were being roasted. From the oil seller’s stall, he grabbed a few pieces of paper from under a paperweight and ran to the grill. A woman wearing an apron stood in front of the food stall and was staring nervously towards the docks, but Spicy’s approach didn’t go unnoticed.

  “Copper each,” she said.

  Spicy curled the paper into a single long wad. “I just need your fire.” He lit an end of the paper on the coals under the grill.

  “What are you up to, gob?” she asked as he trotted away.

  Back at the oil seller’s, he blew on the smoldering paper. The flame grew and he set it to the floor. It ignited instantly, the fire running the length of the stall and over to the barrels. There was a flash and a burst of flame. The barrels were burning. Tongues of flame shot up to the ceiling of the stall and up the wall of the attached building. Spicy backed away onto the street.

  The woman from the fish stall was running towards him. “Hey! Goblin, what are you doing? Fire!”

  Spicy ran down to the dock as the woman gave chase. He ducked between men and women clustered around the waterfront. No one paid her any mind until her calls of “fire” were taken up by others. Dark smoke rose up from the building.

  He couldn’t see the woman anymore. He continued pushing through the crowd until he made it to the far side of the wharf. A larger boat had been capsized, its cargo and equipment floating free. The men with the oil had just finished dumping it out onto the surface of the water. On either wall, the guards with crossbows all scanned the harbor in search of the troll. A boy with a torch handed it to one of the men on the central dock. He flung it into the oil and the surface of the water began to burn.

  A cheer rose from the men who had poured the oil. Then there rose a confused cry.

  “Get the fire crew!” someone shouted. On the opposite end of the waterfront, the entire building was now covered in flame.

  A few of the men retreated from the docks, running towards the burning warehouse.

  If Hog didn’t surface, she’d be okay.
She’d see the blaze and would flee.

  The fire on the water began to die down.

  “There!” a man shouted, pointing to the rocks near the wall where Spicy had first found Hog. No fire burned there.

  “Stay down,” Spicy muttered.

  Hog rose up and climbed up to the base of the wall. The guards on top had trouble aiming down and were unable to fire their crossbows. The opposite wall seemed out of range, but that didn’t stop the guards from firing their weapons. Their bolts arced downward and missed the troll.

  A man with another oil barrel began dumping it and, with the help of another, flung it towards Hog. The barrel splashed and sank and oil covered most of the water between the dock and the wall. Then the oil slick ignited as it touched the first burning pool.

  But Hog was climbing.

  A crossbow bolt pierced her hand as she topped the wall. Then she knocked a guard away. It was impossible to see what happened next, but she let out a savage bellow and charged along the top of the wall. The guards screamed but were quickly silenced.

  Meanwhile, the cries for help at the burning building only grew. And the flames were spreading.

  Spicy felt both fear and a twisting thrill grow inside him. These weren’t the men who had attacked his village. But they were willing to hold goblins as slaves. He had saved Hog, if just for the moment. He had done all he could and it was time to go.

  He began to push past a line of men who were arranging buckets to fight the fire.

  Then a hand grabbed him.

  Blades pulled him close and cuffed him. “There you are, you sneaky gob.” He hit Spicy again. “I figured I’d find you wherever there was trouble.” He pulled Spicy along by his arm with several hard jerks. “I assume you found what you were looking for. Let’s go see if it’s worth me keeping you alive. Because right now, I’m feeling like cutting you open and leaving you gasping like a fish while I get out of this cursed burg.”

  Blades was taking him back to the slaver’s warehouse. Multiple bells and cries of alarm were sounding from the walls and through town as the smoke grew. Away from the docks, the people moved about with deliberate purpose and paid no attention to Spicy or his mercenary escort.

  No one was at the warehouse. Blades was reluctant to enter but also wouldn’t let Spicy go.

  “I’ll check inside and see if the dragon is still there,” Spicy said.

  “Fat chance. I’m not letting you out of my sight again.”

  Blades hung on to him as they stepped in through the front door. The cage where Rime and the others had been stood empty.

  “Hey!” Blades called. “Anyone in here?”

  Spicy rubbed his cheek where he had been struck. “This plan of yours—you know it’s not going to work. The dragon isn’t under my control or anybody’s. You think you’re going to survive climbing onto a boat with him?”

  “One: it’s not my plan. Two: I’m not dumb enough to get on a boat with a monster like that. And three: shut up. They’re gone. But they won’t leave without you.”

  He patted Spicy down and took both the book and the map. He let go of him long enough to flip through the book. “What the hell is this?”

  “Be careful. It’s a magic language that the dragon speaks. He’s been teaching me.”

  “Looks like a bunch of gibberish. It doesn’t matter, does it? I have it now. You’ve played out your usefulness.”

  Spicy snatched the map and headbutted Blades in the groin, just beneath his belt. The man groaned and doubled over. Spicy shoved him aside before running down the ramp and out the alleyway. He only then remembered he didn’t have the book, but it was too late.

  Blades let loose a ragged scream of anger as he hobbled after Spicy.

  Eluding Blades would be easy enough. But where to go?

  People crowded the street, their arms loaded with possessions. Many had children in tow. Even a few goblins raced past, but Spicy couldn’t take the time to stop any of them to ask about Rime and the others. A man in a guard’s tunic trotted past, knocking aside several of his fellow Eel Port citizens in the process.

  Had the fire grown? He felt sick. He had only wanted a distraction. The whole town was in a panic. Surely Hog wasn’t causing such a commotion.

  But then he heard a woman shouting.

  “They’re coming!” she cried. “The zealots are attacking the walls!”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The dock was the only place Spicy knew to go.

  If Alma had the goblins, she would be leading them there.

  According to the wall map in the lawyer’s office, Eel Port had a second gate on its river side. If they were evacuating through that gate, Spicy would lose them. But he dismissed the thought. Alma wanted what the dragon had offered, and that meant showing up at the harbor. He could only hope that meant the children would be there too.

  Spicy had to dive to one side of the narrow street as a horse hauling a cart sped past. The man driving was shouting for people to move as he snapped a whip in the air above the horse.

  Closer to the waterfront, the crowd thinned, and the cobblestones became wooden planks. Smoke hung thick between the buildings.

  Spicy had begun to run when he spotted the lanky old man Harold hurrying along to the waterfront with an overstuffed suitcase under one arm. He fell in behind him. The last thing he needed was to be spotted, even if the man would have no reason to stop Spicy. Harold led him to a center dock where a large black boat waited.

  More than one building was burning now. The bucket brigades fighting the fire were reduced in number. Men continued to shout to others passing by for help.

  Several fishing vessels were on the water heading out onto the sea, while a few more were ready to launch, overloaded with townsfolk and their belongings. The oil that had been spilled on the water’s surface now only burned in a few small pools. A number of the boats were singed. There was enough smoke that the wall where Hog had climbed was obscured.

  A cluster of goblins were huddled on the center dock by the boat, where Harold had joined a group of humans. Alma was with them.

  He was about to run down to the dock when Blades appeared, and instead he ducked behind a stack of thick ropes. Blades limped past with a purpose and didn’t seem to notice Spicy.

  Spicy fell in behind him, careful to stay low and out of sight. The wide dock had enough crates and other equipment to provide ample places to hide.

  Harold and Alma were having a heated conversation. Harold had something she wanted and wasn’t handing it over. Then Blades approached. He and Alma exchanged sharp words. All the while, Rime and the children crouched together. A chain linked them. Spicy looked at the water and saw no nearby rowboats. The group of men were staring at the black boat with fear.

  Had the dragon already boarded? That would explain their faces. But how had Fath made it to the boat?

  He took a moment to scan the rooftops and the harbor behind him. If the dragon was indeed on board, all Alma needed was the map in his pocket.

  Alma stepped on board the black boat. None of the other men followed, even when she urged them on. Spicy crept closer behind a dilapidated crate. Rime saw him but instantly broke eye contact as if afraid to give Spicy away.

  “You sure it’s safe?” Harold was saying. Besides Alma, he was the only one brave enough to stand close to the boat. He peered inside with trepidation.

  “We have an arrangement. It’s promised us safety if we get it where it needs to go.”

  Harold finally committed, climbing over the side and making his way to the bow.

  “Are you forgetting something?” she said, holding out a hand.

  He offered a purse. “I could buy my own boat for this price.”

  She snatched the coins. “Be my guest. Or you can be a good citizen and help save your town. But I figure rats like you know when to run.”

  “This rat knows to watch the other rats. How did the, uh, dragon even get here?”

  “Sewer, I think.”

>   Blades and the other men weren’t moving. “I’m not getting on board with that thing,” Blades said. “Now give me my cut, and I’m out of here.”

  “Your cut?” Alma asked. “Our arrangement was to get you here with your life. You were supposed to keep the goblin under your control and find a map. You failed. You think you have a claim here?”

  “You wouldn’t be here if not for me. I deserve my share.”

  No one was paying the goblins any attention. Spicy waved Rime towards him. They had no cover, but if they hurried, maybe, just maybe they could flee, make their way back into town, and hide from the invaders breaching the town’s wall. If the humans were about to fight each other, it would be the perfect opportunity.

  Alma put the purse away. “Look, Martin, there’s enough goods here to sell and each take a share for the trouble. There’s payment for you rowers, too. But it means getting on board and rowing. Now.”

  “What’s my end?” Harold asked.

  “You bought passage and get to leave with us.”

  “I can live with that.”

  The group of men continued to waver. From the town came renewed shouting. Bells were sounding from all the walls. And the fire was only spreading.

  Spicy stretched out an arm and waved for the children to come his way. Rime kept them in place. Spicy saw the fear in his friend’s eyes. Rime wasn’t going to budge. Spicy would have to budge him.

  “Blades?” Alma prompted. “Time to make a choice.”

  “I’m thinking,” the mercenary said. He let out a sharp exhale and yanked on the chain of goblins. They were hauled to their feet and they stumbled into one another as Blades drew them over to the boat. “When we make it to Orchard, I get the price on the gobs.”

  “Fine, if that makes you happy.”

  Blades waited impatiently, as Rime and the children had a hard time climbing over the side rail. But he remained wary of boarding himself.