by Dorian Hart
Worsk wore a ragged shirt and trousers, gray and brown, a simple outfit Ernie might have expected a goblin to wear. He reached up a hand to touch the side of his head and winced.
“Thank you,” he said. “Ernest, thank you for saving my son. And me. But why? You are humans in goblin lands. Why?”
Ernie smiled, then worried that facial expressions might mean different things to goblins. “We need to reach the far side of the mountains. The passes are buried in snow, and these tunnels are our only option.”
“Would not believe you,” said Worsk, “if you had not acted with goblin bravery. Humans not to be trusted. They have no honor, it is said.” He looked pointedly at Grey Wolf. “Was going to kill me, had you not stopped him.”
Grey Wolf sat silently, staring at the tunnel wall. Certainly he could hear their conversation but wasn’t reacting to it.
“I’m sorry about him,” said Ernie. “He…has a bad family history with goblins back in our own lands.”
Worsk thrust out his lower jaw and shifted it back and forth, a gesture that obviously carried some meaning, though Ernie had no idea what. “A bad history, yes. We all have bad history. Is why we live underground, no?”
Ernie’s mind raced. Appeasement and deference were their best options right now. “We come from very far away. Thousands of miles away. The goblins where we’re from are different from you. Tell me why you live underground.”
Worsk’s stare was indecipherable. Dagalk had curled up beside him, watching and listening intently. “Did you come from human towns? Outside?”
Ernie considered carefully how to respond. “We passed through one human town, but they did not offer us any help. They are scared of goblins and didn’t want us to risk making you angry.”
Worsk’s face wrinkled, and he made a loud snorting noise. “Scared of goblins? Humans, who outnumber us as the ull outnumber the ossip? Ernest, once goblins lived both inside the mountains and outside. Humans came from the lowlands and waged wars upon us. Goblins killed them, but more humans came, and more, sea after dam breaks. Too many to kill them all. Drove us inside, into holes and caves and tunnels. Many times tried to take back our sunlit lands, but humans were always too many, too many. Now our home is beneath the mountains only. That is history our mothers’ mothers speak.”
Ernie felt he ought to acknowledge Worsk’s words, though without knowing quite what to say. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry your people were ill-treated. I can only ask that you not judge us based on what those people did to you. Not all humans are alike.”
“Hrgh. Not all goblins alike, either. I will tell them how you saved me, saved Dagalk. Some will want to kill you anyway. Others may be willing to understand, to help.”
“I hope so,” said Ernie. “We need help badly. My friend is severely injured and will die soon. Do you have healers in your…do you have healers?”
“Aggantis has medicine woman, Persk, very good, can heal anything.” Worsk pointed at Tor. “But his wounds not so bad. Will heal.”
“No, not him.” Ernie motioned to where Dranko lay unconscious, bringing up his light-rod to illuminate his face.
Worsk leaned over. “A soft-skin! You have a soft-skin among you!”
“Er…yes. Dranko is part goblin.”
Worsk made that jaw-wobbling motion again. “His name is ‘Unwelcome’?”
“He chose that name himself. His grandfather always treated him poorly, and no one in his home village liked him.”
“Because he is a soft-skin. A goblin with human blood.”
“I’m afraid so. Humans are suspicious of…of soft-skins.”
“Hrgh. Soft-skins not common in Aggantis. They have difficulty. Weak. Fragile. But we help them live the goblin way, earn respect.”
While the humans shoot them on sight.
“Worsk, can you take us to Aggantis and ask Persk if she will help us?”
The goblin looked down at his son. “Yes. I will speak for you. But I am only fish-catcher. Cannot guarantee your safety.”
“We understand,” said Aravia. Ernie was startled to hear her speak; the others had been letting him do all the talking. “If we’re taking risks to save time,” she continued, “then let’s save as much as possible.”
“One thing first,” said Worsk. “Fishing net. Come. Bring light. Help.”
The goblin and his son both stood and returned to the lizard cave. Ernie, Morningstar, and Aravia went with him. The lizard had not come back. Worsk reached into the pool near the outflow and pulled out a wide square of netting that had been hidden beneath the surface. More than a dozen fish flopped helplessly in its mesh. There were also three large leathery eggs.
Worsk muttered something that sounded like “Malgub curse it” when he saw the eggs. “Is why the lizard attacked. Laid eggs in fishing hole.” He and his son bunched up and tied off the net. Worsk let Dagalk carry it over his shoulder.
Horn’s Company took the opportunity to fill their water skins from the little waterfall that filled the pool.
“Now, come,” said Worsk. “I take you to Aggantis.”
It took longer than Ernie expected; some trick of echoes amplified the sounds coming from the goblin city. Ernie lost track of the number of times he expected to round a corner and see the place, only to find another stretch of empty tunnel. And Kibi was slowing.
“Nearly there,” said Worsk. “Wait here. Are guards at entrances. Must warn them about you. Bad idea for humans to surprise them. Dagalk, come.”
As soon as the goblins were out of sight, Grey Wolf stood up. “We shouldn’t be here when they get back.”
Step rose to his feet, but no one else moved.
Morningstar looked pointedly at Dranko’s unconscious form. “If we flee now, we condemn Dranko to death.”
Grey Wolf’s hands became agitated, his eyes wide with frustration. “That goblin will return with a hundred more. They’re going to slaughter us!”
“That don’t seem likely,” said Kibi. “But if they do, they do. Ain’t like we’re gonna outrun ’em if they’ve a mind to kill us.”
Ernie glared at Grey Wolf. Would he admit his secret to the rest? Grey Wolf opened his mouth but only let out an exasperated breath and sat back down.
Ernie shuffled over to Tor. “How are you feeling?”
“I’ll be fine.” His friend smiled, though his face looked unusually pale in the light of Aravia’s rods.
“I’m not sure I’d say that much,” said Certain Step. “He’s not going to bleed to death as long as he doesn’t do anything stupid that pulls out his stitches. For now he should move as little as possible.”
Minutes passed in the shadows. Ernie could sense the restlessness building in his companions, Grey Wolf especially, who walked back and forth in the tunnel, hand on his sword hilt. Only Aravia acted unperturbed; she read a book, holding a light-rod inches from the pages while she mouthed silent words. They ate some rations, drank from their skins. The water was cold and fresh, a pleasant change.
Ernie had started to doze off—was it day or night outside?—when the sound of many footsteps reached them.
Grey Wolf drew his sword. “I knew it! Morningstar, Ernie, get ready to fight!”
Ernie stood but left Pyknite in its sheath. The others stood as well, Aravia hastily stuffing the book back into Tor’s pack. The echoes made it impossible to know exactly how many goblins were coming.
“Grey Wolf.” Ernie silently cursed the quaver in his voice. “Don’t do anything…rash.”
“Rash? Like putting our lives into the hands of these beasts?”
“We still have our lives. Let’s keep it that way.”
Light from the goblins’ torches preceded them by a few seconds, and then the tunnel was full of them. Their collective smell could charitably be called “not very nice,” and Ernie couldn’t tell one from another; they all looked like Worsk, more or less, though these newcomers were attired in patchwork leather armor. Ernie counted at least ten of them, and there were mor
e piling up behind those. Their weapons were of an impressive and deadly looking variety: swords, axes, a spear, something like a pike with a strangely shaped blade, an iron-banded hammer.
Grey Wolf had a wild look in his eyes, as though he might charge into their midst just to do as much damage as possible before they killed him. Ernie gulped and stepped quickly in front of him, hands raised, to stand before the foremost of the goblins.
“Stand in line,” said the goblin, his voice a throaty growl. “I count.”
Ernie gestured to Dranko. “We have a soft-skin with us, who is wounded and unconscious. He cannot stand.”
The goblin leaned forward and lowered his torch to get a look at Dranko.
“Rest of you. Stand in line. Count.”
Step and Kibi helped Tor to his feet, and they stood in a row, diagonally since the tunnel wasn’t wide enough for them to line up side by side. The goblin counted them and nodded when he reached eight.
“Weapons. Packs. Give them.”
Two more goblins stepped forward, hands out. Ernie drew Pyknite and presented it hilt-first. The goblin who took it snatched his hands away as if burned; the blade clanged to the ground.
“Careful,” said Ernie. “It’s… it’s a magic sword. It doesn’t like my enemies touching it.”
The goblin leader frowned. “Sheath. Put sword in sheath, give sheath.”
Everyone except Grey Wolf handed over their weapons and other possessions. The goblin looked at him impatiently. “Your weapon. Give.”
Grey Wolf hesitated just long enough to make everyone nervous, but in the end he must have resigned himself to the futility of resistance. He passed over his sword.
Once Horn’s Company was disarmed, a half-dozen of the goblins squeezed past them, so that the eight humans were surrounded. The leader pointed down to Dranko. “You carry.”
“What do y’ think I’ve been doin’?” Kibi muttered. He scooped up Dranko.
“Back to Aggantis!” shouted the leader.
The goblins marched them steadily but respected Kibi’s slower pace. The ones in front constantly jostled one another, bumping shoulders, throwing elbows. One of them body-checked his fellow right into the wall for no apparent reason, and the other retaliated with a hard elbow to the neck, but afterward they both made noises that sounded like laughter. At least they showed no inclination to treat Horn’s Company that way!
Ernie had a vision in his head of what a goblin city would look like: a mile-long, high-ceilinged cavern, with roads and buildings spread out across its floor. When they reached Aggantis, he found his expectations weren’t far wrong, though instead of one massive space, the city was formed of multiple connected caverns that opened onto one another in a labyrinthine confusion. Their approach tunnel brought them out high onto one of these, giving Ernie a clear view of the nearest section. Torches burned in many places, showing up low stone buildings, winding roads, and swarms of goblins. The ceiling was easily a hundred feet from the ground, obscured by a haze of smoke and overhung with knobby stalactites. A huge round building rose in the very center of the cavern, dominating everything around it.
At least five or six wide tunnels led away from the caverns within view, and through one of these a procession of goblins arrived, pulling what looked like flat barges on wheels. The rolling platforms were heaped with…dead cows? That’s what it looked like.
Several more goblins met their procession there at the edge of the cavern. The largest of these wore a gray shirt on which was painted a large fist, its wrist a goblin-skin green, while the hand was an ominous red. He pointed at Horn’s Company.
“Prison.”
The goblins herded them down a long staircase cut into the side of the cavern, then through the streets of Aggantis. Goblins everywhere stopped to stare at them; many shook their fists and yelled. The powerful smell of unwashed goblin, mixed with the smoky odor of hundreds of torches, nearly overwhelmed him. While the tunnels had been quite cool, the air in Aggantis was warm and had a sweaty, clinging feel to it. It was loud, too, mostly with goblin voices. Goblins shouted at one another a great deal, though whether out of anger, joy, or mere enthusiasm Ernie couldn’t tell. Behind the cacophony of voices was a constant sound of metal-on-stone.
Everywhere was the symbol of the red fist: on the sides of buildings, on the clothing of goblins, and even on freestanding statues of goblin forearms rising from the ground, their clenched fists at head-height. The statues allowed for greater detail, and the red color was from a liquid shown dripping down the wrist, as though the fist had just punched right through someone’s chest.
Could be the turtle’s nose.
A group of goblin children had gathered at an intersection to stare at them. One, a goblin girl, dunked her head into a barrel of water, then sprayed the water out of her mouth all over Horn’s Company as they passed. The other children laughed, as did an older goblin woman who stood nearby. One of the boys in the group tried the same trick, but while his head was submerged, the first girl picked him up by his knees and dumped him into the barrel. The others laughed uproariously.
Soon they were led into a slot in the stone down an iron stair, ending at an iron-banded door built similarly to the one they had passed through earlier. The wood must have come from the same place as the cows. Inside, the cells they passed were empty, and the place had the dusty smell of a building little-used. At the end of a long hall was a large hollowed-out cave, without even a door to keep in prisoners.
One of the goblins pointed. “Sit. Back wall. Wait for shaman. No escape.”
Horn’s Company did as instructed. Kibi set Dranko down gently.
“He’s in a bad way,” said Kibi. Step hiked up Dranko’s trouser leg. The thigh wound and the skin around it were a blistered red, with oozing, black edges. It smelled of foul rot.
“Our friend needs medicine!” Ernie shouted to the goblins who remained on guard.
One goblin nodded. “Wait. Shaman come.”
It wasn’t a long wait. Less than ten minutes passed before a small crowd of goblins arrived. The first four were enormous, covered in leather armor and wielding thick-handled, double-bladed axes. These warriors fanned out and formed a wall, silent and menacing. The fifth was shorter, slight as goblins went, but the prison-guard goblins bowed their heads in deference. The shaman wore a ceremonial robe festooned in feathers. Pendants hung around his neck, tattoos overran the skin of his arms, and an oversized feathered headdress tilted sideways on his green head.
“Stand,” said one of the axe-wielding bodyguards. “Bow.”
They did, all except for Dranko, though Grey Wolf’s was perfunctory.
The shaman walked forward until he stood between the middle two of his guards. “Welcome to Aggantis. Sit.” He sat down himself on the stone floor, and they all copied him.
Grey Wolf stared daggers at the shaman, a fact that one or two of the bodyguards seemed to have noticed. It was hard to know the shaman’s mood; his face was calm, his eyelids heavy, but with goblins who could tell?
“I am Irligg,” said the shaman. “You are first humans to have seen our city. Law says you should be put to death, but Worsk told me your story. Want to hear it from you.”
No one spoke, and it took Ernie a second to realize that the others in the company looked at him, as though his actions in the lizard cave had made him their official ambassador to goblinkind.
“We are seeking a way through the mountains since we have to reach the jungle on the far side. The passes are snowed under this time of year, so the tunnels were our only option. We bear no ill will toward goblins; in fact, we were hoping to avoid you altogether.”
Irligg rubbed one of his stone pendants between his fingers. “You speak goblin with scholar’s words but child’s grammar. Leaving out words for no reason. Makes you sound primitive. Uneducated.”
“Er, yes,” said Ernie. “We have magic that lets us speak your language, but I guess it’s not working perfectly. You sound the same to us.”
The shaman nodded as if that was a perfectly reasonable explanation. “Go on.”
“We stumbled across Worsk and his son in the middle of the lizard attack. The son—Dagalk—was trapped beneath some rocks the lizard had knocked loose. It was trying to eat him, so—”
“You risked life to save the boy?”
“Er, yes, I suppose so.”
“Mmmm. I am ruler of Aggantis. My word is the law. Decide death or not death.” The shaman closed his eyes and for several seconds said nothing more.
Ernie looked back at the others. Tor gave him an encouraging smile. Dranko was sprawled out on his back, his skin glistening with sweat.
“Um, Irligg? One of my friends is very hurt. Sick. Both. His leg is infected. Worsk said you had a healer in your city who could treat him.”
The shaman opened one eye. “Quiet. Am listening to Malgub.”
More seconds passed. Ernie’s desire to interrupt him, hurry him along, was dampened by the idea that the goblin was deciding whether to have them executed.
At last Irligg stirred and smiled widely. “Malgub blesses my decision. You will choose one for Yarakt.”
The four goblin bodyguards, as well as the prison guards who still stood at the cave mouth, all grinned. Some chuckled. They elbowed one another and pointed speculatively at the various members of the company.
Ernie wasn’t sure he wanted to know, but of course he had to ask. “Er…what’s Yarakt?”
“Yarakt! Fighting pit! You choose, we choose. Good sport, good fun, maybe broken bones, ha!”
Ernie swallowed. “Is it to the death?”
Irligg shrugged. “Sometimes. Goblins fight in Yarakt until I am satisfied. Fight well, entertain crowd, might end match before death.”
“What if we kill the goblin?” asked Grey Wolf, suddenly interested.
The shaman’s smile became indulgent. “One human killing goblin not great concern of ours.”
“Give me my sword,” said Grey Wolf, “and I’ll fight any goblin you name.”
Irligg made that jowl-shaking motion Ernie had seen from Worsk. “Sword? No, no sword. No weapons in Yarakt. Fists. Feet. Strength. Make good fight, we help you like you help Worsk and Dagalk.”
