Distopia (Land of Dis)

by Robert Kroese

  Following the guard’s directions, they found themselves standing in front of an establishment called The Battered Goblin. Assuming this was the inn the guard had spoken of, they went inside. If Tobalt had reservations about the name of the establishment, he was wise enough not to voice them.

  They walked through the dimly lit common room, where an odd assortment of a dozen or people ate and drink, casting curious glances at the three strangers as they entered. It was dark enough that it would be unlikely for anyone to identify Tobalt as a goblin from more than a few feet away. Unfortunately, the innkeeper, a sullen, slovenly man, evinced a bit more suspicion about the strange little hooded figure lurking behind Wyngalf and Evena than the guard at the city gate had, and Wyngalf was about to take Tobalt aside and suggest that he spend the night in the alley when Evena spoke up.

  “We’d prefer a private room if you have one,” she said. “Our son tends to snore.” She produced three gold coins from her purse and placed them on the counter in front of her.

  “Your… son,” said the innkeeper dubiously, his eyes darting from Tobalt to the coins and back to Tobalt again. The light in the inn was dim, but not that dim. Behind them, a dozen or so men sat at tables drinking beer and talking boisterously. A few of them had begun to take notice of the strange trio, and Wyngalf was anxious to retreat someplace where there were fewer drunken and undoubtedly xenophobic locals.

  “He has a… condition,” said Evena, putting another coin on the counter. Wyngalf inhaled sharply. He didn’t know how much gold she had in that purse, but she was going to be broke pretty fast if she had to pay four gold pieces just for a place to sleep every night. Whatever they owed Tobalt for his assistance, having a goblin as a companion was going to be expensive—not to mention dangerous—in Skaal City. It just wasn’t going to be practical to keep him around long-term. It was unfortunate for Tobalt that he’d been spurned by his own kind, but he wasn’t going to fit in any better among humans. In the morning, Wyngalf would explain the situation, and they would go their separate ways. In the meantime, though, they needed to get him out of sight before there was trouble.

  The innkeeper looked at the coins on the counter and bit his lip. His eyes went to Tobalt, and then to the men behind them, drinking their beer and muttering quietly. The men stared back, as if daring him to take the money. Wyngalf doubted they had figured out that Tobalt was a goblin, but they clearly sensed something was off. If the innkeeper had just taken the money and shuffled them off to a room, there wouldn’t have been a problem, but his hesitation had provoked suspicion. Wyngalf saw Evena pulling another gold coin from her purse in an effort to seal the deal, but putting more money on the counter was only going to escalate things. The more she offered, the more suspicious their situation became. Already one of the men—a lanky old fellow with long, grayish-white hair—had gotten out of his chair and was limping slowly toward them. He was a mean-looking man, all sinew and gristle. A large burn scar covered the right side of his face and continued down his neck.

  Wyngalf’s hand went to his sword: he didn’t want to start a fracas, but if the man’s intention was to unmask Tobalt, all pretense would evaporate and they’d be tossed into the street—if they were lucky. It was best to prepare for the worst.

  But the man stepped past Tobalt and, before Wyngalf understood what was happening, snatched the coin out of Evena’s hand. “A round for the house?” he said loudly, as if responding to something Evena had said. “A splendid idea!”

  Evena started to protest, but Wyngalf nudged her. He didn’t know what the old man’s game was, but if a round of drinks would distract the crowd for a moment, he was all for it. Cheers went up and everyone in the room raised their mugs to Evena. The old man handed the coin to the innkeeper, who took it and slid it into his pocket. He moved to refill the men’s mugs, but the old man caught him by the shoulder. “First, a room, Merton,” he said sternly. “For the handsome couple and their…” – he glanced at Tobalt and shuddered slightly – “son.”

  The innkeeper nodded, sliding the coins off the counter into his pocket. “Through that doorway,” he said. “First door on the left. Orbrecht, if you wouldn’t mind….”

  “Glad to be of service,” said the old man, whose name was evidently Orbrecht. He turned to Wyngalf and Evena. “This way.” He limped through the doorway the innkeeper had indicated, and the three followed, anxious to get out of the common room. He took a lamp from where it hung on a hook in the wall and walked to a door at the end of the hall. He opened the door and walked inside. The three followed. Orbrecht hung the lamp on another hook, and Wyngalf looked around to see that they were in a windowless room lined with several small cots. Orbrecht smiled and said, “Only the best for a wealthy young couple and their extraordinarily good-looking son.”

  Tobalt bowed slightly at the compliment. He hadn’t said a word since they’d entered the inn, so as to better preserve what little illusion remained that he was a human being. Even in the lamp light and partially obscured by his hood, Tobalt’s goblinesque features were evident. Orbrecht was either nearly blind or being deliberately disingenuous.

  “Yes,” said Wyngalf uncertainly. Orbrecht continued to stand there smiling at them, and Wyngalf began to wonder if the man expected some sort of tip. Five gold pieces seemed like more than enough for these accommodations, and while he appreciated Orbrecht’s help, he was suspicious of the man’s motives. If he was planning on shaking them down by threatening to reveal Tobalt’s race, Wyngalf wished he would be a little more explicit about it. He was too tired to play games. “Yes, well,” Wyngalf said, stretching his arms and yawning, “it’s been a very long day.” He was actually more hungry than tired, and expected Evena and Tobalt were as well, but they might have to get by with no dinner tonight. He didn’t dare go back to the common room to face questions about his strange companion from the men gathered there.

  Orbrecht nodded in understanding, but gave no indication that he planned on leaving.

  “Is there… something we can do for you?” asked Evena at last.

  “There is, actually,” said Orbrecht, with a nod. “I take it from your accents that you fine folks are not from around these parts, and in any case you’re too young to remember the Frontier Wars.”

  A moment of awkward silence followed. Tobalt shifted nervously.

  “I remember, though,” said Orbrecht. “Oh, yes. Lost my leg in the Second Frontier War.” He pulled up his trouser leg to reveal a wooden peg below the knee. “Goblin bite,” he said. “I killed so many of ‘em, I lost count. By Grovlik, do I hate goblins! Orbrecht the Goblin-Killer they called me. At the Battle of Vornulpa, I must’ve killed forty of ‘em. Only thing keepin’ me from killing more goblins was the ones I already killed. Piled up to my knees, they were. I had to climb over them just to get to the ones what were still alive. ’Cept one of ‘em wasn’t dead. Not quite. Had just enough life in him to get his foul yellow teeth into my leg. I ran him through, but by then it was too late. Goblin bites are nasty things, they are. My leg turned colors I’d never seen before. Finally had to saw it clean off at the knee. Did it myself, with a leather belt cinched around my thigh. Took me six tries, as I kept blacking out. I hated goblins even more after that, if you can believe it.”

  Wyngalf cleared his throat, his hand having surreptitiously moved to his sword hilt. “Yes, well,” he said. “My wife and I thank you for your service. Without sacrifices such as yours, this city wouldn’t be safe for families like ours.”

  Orbrecht grinned at him. “Let’s get a couple things straight,” he said. “For starters, I didn’t lose my leg so that you could bring a filthy runt of a goblin into this town.” He pulled his cloak aside and swiftly drew a dagger from a sheath at his belt. “Second, I can slice your neck wide open before you can even get that pig-sticker out of its scabbard.”

  Wyngalf swallowed hard, slowly raising his hands. He suspected Orbrecht was bluffing, but Wyngalf wasn’t about to trust Evena’s life to his own decidedly
amateur combat proficiency. “Alright,” he said. “We don’t want any trouble. What do you want? Money? If you’re going to kill us, I’d appreciate it if you’d just get it over with. It’s been a very long day.”

  “Ha!” Orbrecht yelped. “I’m not going to kill you. Not unless you try something stupid with that sword, anyway. You’re the most interesting thing that’s happened in this sorry excuse for a city for weeks. All I wants is to know your story.” He placed the dagger back in its sheath and sat down on one of the cots, looking at Wyngalf expectantly.

  “Our story?” asked Wyngalf.

  “Aye,” said Orbrecht. “How you came to be traveling with a goblin, for starters.”

  Tobalt had retreated into the corner, and in the dim light he looked almost human.

  “I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” said Wyngalf. “It’s true that our son is not conventionally handsome…”

  Orbrecht’s smile faded, and the lamplight glinted off the dagger blade as he slid it several inches out of its sheath.

  “Okay, okay!” cried Wyngalf, holding up his hands again. “We’ll tell you.”

  “The truth,” snarled Orbrecht. “No sugar-coating. I’ll know if you’re lying.”

  Wyngalf nodded.

  “Good!” exclaimed Orbrecht, letting the dagger slide back into its sheath again. “Please, have a seat.”

  Wyngalf, Evena and Tobalt each sat down on one of the cots.

  “Well,” Wyngalf began. “I’m a missionary representing the—”

  “Hold on!” cried Orbrecht, getting to his feet. The three of them jumped at the sudden movement, but Orbrecht simply hobbled to the door and left, slamming the door behind him. Wyngalf and Evena stared at each other, confused.

  “Do you suppose he’s gone to find a larger knife?” asked Tobalt.

  “I don’t think he intends to hurt us,” said Evena.

  “We should be ready, just in case,” said Wyngalf. “If he tries anything, I’ll go for his throat. Tobalt, try biting his leg. The good one.”

  Tobalt nodded and exercised his jaw as if readying himself for this task.

  But when the door opened a moment later, Orbrecht reappeared with a large platter full of food. Behind him was the innkeeper, bearing a jug of wine and a small wooden table. The innkeeper shuffled past Orbrecht and set the table in the middle of the room, where it could easily be reached by all the cots. They set the food and wine on the table.

  “Anything else, Orbrecht?” asked the innkeeper.

  “That’ll do for now, Merten,” Orbrecht replied. The innkeeper nodded and left, closing the door behind them. Famished, Wyngalf and Evena tore into the food—bread, vegetables and some sort of stew of indeterminate constituency. Tobalt crept nervously forward, as if not certain whether he was welcome.

  “Come, then, goblin!” Orbrecht barked. “I haven’t killed a goblin in twenty years, and if I was going to start up again, I’d find a more robust specimen than yourself. I could beat you to death with my wooden leg.”

  “I thought you hated goblins,” said Tobalt uncertainly, in which was perhaps the shortest sentence Wyngalf had ever heard him utter.

  “Oh, I do,” said Orbrecht. “Hate them with a passion. Vile, revolting creatures. But I hate them as a group, not as individuals. And while it is doubtful you will ever overcome the base instincts of your accursed race, nor, I think, make suitable penance for the crimes you have undoubtedly committed, to say nothing of the sins of your forebears going back to the slime pit from which the first pair of proto-goblins emerged, hateful and stinking, I have nothing against you personally.”

  The goblin accepted this explanation with aplomb. “I am indebted to you, kind sir, for your forgiveness and pragmatism,” he replied. “For while I did not choose to be a vile subhumanoid, I must confess that at times I forget to be suitably abashed at my goblinhood. To my shame, in fact, I sometimes delight in the thought of such activities as skulking and pillaging, which, as you undoubtedly know, are hallmarks of the goblin race. It is, I suspect, only my own congenital unsuitability for such pursuits, and not my stunted sense of morality, that prevents me from attaining the depths of depravity that is characteristic of my fellows.”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” said Orbrecht. “I’d run you through as soon as look at you if I met you on the field of battle. But then I suppose that’s true of your friends here as well.” He grinned at Wyngalf and Evena.

  “But we’re not on a battlefield,” Evena reminded him.

  “Aye,” said Orbrecht. “It is curious, though, a young couple smuggling a goblin into an inn. The way I figure it, you’re either an exceptionally kindly and sophisticated goblin, or these two are a couple of exceptionally crude and vile human beings. When I figure out which, I’ll know whether you need killing or not. Anyway, on with the story!”

  Wyngalf narrowly avoided choking on a mouthful of stew, and once again launched into his story. He doubted Orbrecht would believe the part about being rescued by Verne, but he couldn’t think of a likelier explanation for their surviving the shipwreck, and he guessed that it was better to tell a story that Orbrecht might find fantastical than risk being caught in a lie. In any case, Orbrecht seemed at least as interested in entertainment as he was in truth, and you couldn’t beat a dragon for sheer entertainment value. But when Wyngalf got to the part where Verne landed on the island, Orbrecht scowled, and Wyngalf wondered whether he’d miscalculated.

  “You accepted a ride from a dragon?” Orbrecht asked. He sounded more disapproving than dubious.

  “We had no choice,” said Evena. “We’d have starved.”

  Orbrecht nodded thoughtfully. “Red or green?”

  “The dragon?” said Wyngalf. “He was green.”

  Orbrecht scowled again. “Ah, that would be Verne.”

  “That’s what he said,” Evena said, nodding.

  “And what did he want in return?”

  “He didn’t ask for anything,” Evena said. “But after he brought us to Dis, we… that is, I suspect…”

  “He wanted to know where we were from,” said Wyngalf. “And I told him. It never occurred to me that he might not know there were lands across the sea. It was a stupid mistake, and it was all my fault. Evena tried to warn me, and we hadn’t even met Tobalt yet. So if you want to kill someone, you should just kill me. Let them go.”

  “Relax, lad,” said Orbrecht, holding up his hands. “Dragons are tricksy, and Verne’s a particularly tricksy one. I’d not run you through merely for being taken in by the likes of him. Now, if you please, continue with your story.”

  Wyngalf told him about finding Tobalt scrounging in the ruins of Sybesma, and meeting Verne again on their way to Skaal City. “Tomorrow we’re going to the Shipping Guild to see if we can negotiate for passage for Evena back home to Skuldred. So here we are.”

  Orbrecht nodded. “A word of advice,” he said. “When you tell the Shipping Guild clerk about how you got here, leave out the dragon.”

  “You don’t think he’ll believe us?” Evena asked.

  “Oh, to the contrary,” said Orbrecht. “I think he will believe you. If the Shipping Guild finds out Verne is keeping you on this side of the sea as ransom against your hometown, they might not be willing to help you. Very little happens around here without Verne’s approval.”

  “Yes,” said Wyngalf. “We’ve heard all about his extortion scheme. If the city doesn’t pay, he threatens to burn the place down.”

  Orbrecht snorted. “He doesn’t have to threaten. People in this city are tripping over themselves trying to make Verne happy. Bunch of cowards, if you ask me. You know how I got this?” He turned his face so they could get a good look at the burns. “Not from the incisors of a goblin, I’ll tell you that!” He gave Tobalt a jab in the ribs, and the goblin chuckled good-naturedly.

  “You fought Verne?” asked Evena, in awe.

  “That I did, lass. I and several score of brave men, years ago, when such could still be found in this city. I led an e
xpedition to the dragon’s lair in the Kovac Mountains to the south. We sneaked into his lair to attack him while he slept. Unfortunately, he woke up. We fought well and bravely, but the odds were against us.”

  “But how do you fight a dragon?” Wyngalf said. “Those scales must be almost impenetrable.”

  “The eyes, lad,” said Wyngalf. “The eyes are the weak points. I myself shot an arrow into his left eye. It’s the only reason I’m alive today. He couldn’t see straight to aim his fire. The rest of my men weren’t so lucky.”

  “Verne killed them all?”

  “Every last one, save me,” said Orbrecht gloomily. “As I lay there on the cave floor, my face half burned off, I begged him to finish me, but he refused. Told me to warn the people of Skaal City what would happen to anybody who trespassed in his lair. But I left him with a reminder as well. He’s still blind in the eye I shot the arrow into. Tries to hide it, but if you look close, you can see that eye never moves. I’d return to finish him off, but I’m an old man now, and I can’t do it alone. Sadly, there are few brave men left in this city. The bravest of them all was the father of Morten, the innkeeper. He was my best friend. The dragon took his head off with one swipe of his claws. Ever since then, Morten has given me room and board, and I do what I can to look out for him. ”

  They sat for a moment in silence. The food was gone, and Wyngalf was growing sleepy.

  “But that’s none of your concern!” declared Orbrecht, getting to his feet. “Tomorrow you’ll be on your way home across the Sea of Dis. I thank you for your company and your story. In my estimation, not one of you needs killing at present. Not even you, goblin, runt of an accursed brood though you may be. I bid you all goodnight!” With that, he hobbled out of the room, closing the door behind him.

  “Strange man,” said Evena.