Which was true. Which Murray shouldn’t have had to tell her.
“Move him into the shade, at least.” She and Murray each took a side and carried him back inside the house. There was a pallet on the floor—not much of one, but better than the walkway.
“Right. Let’s move. Blanchett, if you hear anyone crying out, let us know.” He nodded. She put her earplugs back in.
There were cattle in the town square. Some of the humans had died when the cattle crushed them. It was a mess, a horrible mess, which was a laughably ineffective word for the scene before them.
At least if she thought of it as mess she didn’t have to think of it as people.
Nessilka was glad Sings-to-Trees hadn’t come. Or Algol. She didn’t know if the elf could handle it, and while she knew Algol had been on battlefields, at least everybody there had been trying to kill you back.
There probably wasn’t much point in sneaking, but they kept to the shadows and the corners of buildings anyway.
Murray tapped her shoulder, and she pulled the earplug loose again—really, why was she bothering? The moss was coming unwrapped by now—and whispered “Yes?”
“Eleven humans so far,” he whispered back. “Maybe more in the buildings, but I don’t think too many. They all seem to be trying to get into the town.”
“Where are they going?”
Murray leaned out from the shadow of the building and pointed. “At a guess, that building there.”
They studied the building in question.
“Pointy,” said Blanchett finally.
“It’s a steeple. Some kind of church, I think. In a town like this, probably the main meeting hall too.”
“All right. Stay low. We’re in enemy territory and don’t anybody forget it,” said Nessilka.
Murray looked around and said, “How could we forget, Sarge?”
They skulked from the shadow of one building to another. Nessilka thought that one was probably a bar, judging from the smell of spilled beer and rotting sawdust. She crouched behind a rain barrel and looked over at the church.
“The bear doesn’t like it,” said Blanchett suddenly.
Nessilka paused. “Does the bear have any suggestions?” she asked delicately.
Blanchett conferred with the bear, and said “He says not. Just…it feels like a trap. Not for us, maybe, but for everybody.”
“I hate this,” said Nessilka to no one in particular. “Tell the bear I agree with him. If he has any thoughts, tell me immediately.”
“Will do, Sarge.”
They crept closer.
The greatest concentration of the dead was at the end of the street, where the church sat in what had formerly been a village square. They were pressed right up against the walls of the church, close to the doors. They looked like they’d trampled each other, and then the cows had trampled them. In a couple of places there were three or four bodies piled together.
The church had big wooden double doors. The worst concentration of bodies was around the doors, and what looked like most of a steer had beaten itself to death against one, blockading it with a half-ton of rotting meat.
The other door was ajar.
She and Murray exchanged glances. She had the fight the urge to meet the teddy-bear’s single button eye as well.
“Somebody moved those bodies away from the door,” Murray hissed.
“Going in or coming out, that’s the—ah!” She grabbed Murray’s shoulder and yanked him back into the shadows.
A small figure—taller than a goblin, but not so broad—came out of a building across the square. It wore a cloth over its head and a bright blue coat. Its arms were full of…groceries? Nessilka could make out the corner of a sack of flour and some jars of preserves.
The goblins watched, hardly daring to breathe, as the figure looked around the square, then threaded its way nonchalantly through the bodies toward the open door.
“Human,” whispered Murray. “Sub-adult. Can’t do the genders from here.”
“How can it even breathe?” asked Nessilka. The stench of the piled bodies was enough to knock her over, and she was twenty yards away and a goblin to boot.
“Maybe it’s had time to get used to it.”
The figure stopped at the door, balanced the load of groceries on one hip, and pushed the door open with its free hand.
One of the corpses shifted slightly when the door hit it, a limp arm flopping in the dust. The figure shoved the arm aside with its foot, caught the door with the edge of its shoulder, and slipped inside.
The goblins sat in the shadow of building. Nessilka crouched behind a water barrel on the edge of the street and stared at the building.
Nothing happened.
“Maybe its parents are dead and it’s just trying to eat until someone gets here to find it,” she said, without much conviction.
“Uh-huh,” said Murray.
“The bear is pretty sure that’s a load, Sarge,” said Blanchett.
She sighed. “Yeah, me too.” The casual way it had moved the corpse aside with its foot—that screamed “murderer” and “crazy person” and “do not touch.”
“Think it’s a wizard?”
“It’d almost have to be, wouldn’t it?”
“There could be a grown-up wizard in there doing the actual magic.” Murray chewed at his lower lip.
“Children are vicious little bastards, some of ‘em,” offered Blanchett.
Flies buzzed. Across the square, two crows got into a brief squabble over a tasty bit of carrion.
“Now what do we do, Sarge? Go back?” Murray glanced behind them.
Nessilka would have loved to go back. Going back sounded like a great idea.
But if they went back and told Sings-to-Trees, he’d insist on coming out to see if the human really was a child who needed help, and if his rangers showed up, they’d probably do the same, and if it was a goblin child they’d be on their guard, but since it was a human and humans were nice…
There were already a whole lot of dead people out there. Nessilka didn’t care very much for faceless unknown rangers, particularly not elves, but Sings-to-Trees didn’t deserve to wind up in that pile of bodies.
And the Nineteenth—what there was of it—still had to get home, and if the weird voice magic could reach as far as the treeline, then they’d have to go miles out of their way to get home, and that would undoubtedly lead them into trouble with somebody who wasn’t nearly as nice as Sings-to-Trees.
“We have to get a better look. Murray, you and me—Blanchett, stay here.”
“Sarge…”
It was a poor day when Blanchett was questioning orders, Nessilka thought grimly. Still—“You’re the only one we know is immune, so you’re the only one who can get a message back if it gets us. If it’s a kid…fine. If it’s a grown-up wizard…well, we’ll find out.”
Blanchett hunched his shoulders and looked mulish, but perhaps the bear had a word with him, because he said gloomily “If you say so, Sarge.”
She took one final look at the church and the bodies, shoved her earplugs back in—Murray did the same—and made a move out gesture with her fingers.
Nessilka and Murray moved out.
SEVENTEEN
Sings-to-Trees stood just inside the forest and fretted.
He’d lost sight of the goblins fairly quickly—for all their apparent clumsiness, they knew their way around a hedgerow.
He hoped they would be okay.
He couldn’t believe he’d nearly attacked the cervidian.
He should go back to the farm and send a pigeon. He should send a pigeon about the mage, and about the weird noise. The goblins would be fine. The goblins could take care of themselves.
Sings wrung his hands together.
The goblins could probably take care of themselves better than Sings himself could.
It was so quiet. The quiet bothered him almost as much as the memory of the voice did. Forest edges were hopping with life—birds a
nd bugs and lizards and squirrels. There should be scurrying and scuttling and chirping and singing.
There should be—
Something stamped.
He turned his head slowly, already knowing what he would see.
Ah.
Yes.
The empty eyes of the cervidian stag stared back him.
“I won’t go out there,” he told the stag. “It’s okay.”
The stag rattled and stamped again.
“Er? Is there something else?”
He looked for the bone doe, but she wasn’t there. Perhaps the stag had seen her somewhere safe, then returned.
The stag paced toward him. Sings held his ground. I almost attacked him. He didn’t attack me, and he didn’t hurt that goblin, even though he could have. If anything, he’s got the moral high ground on me.
A few feet away, the cervidian halted. Hollow eyes gazed into his.
And then the stag turned slightly, stretched out a forelimb, and…knelt?
Why is he—
“Oh no,” Sings-to-Trees said out loud. “Oh no! Ride you? You can’t be serious!”
The stag rattled with impatience.
Sings-to-Trees eyed the exposed knobs of the stag’s backbone and imagined then against his tender bits. He shuddered.
“Are you sure I can’t just follow you?”
The stag rattled again and pawed at the ground.
“I’ll—but your back—oh, dear….”
Sings-to-Trees was not any more fond of pain than any elf, but he had chosen a life that involved a certain degree of personal discomfort. It appeared that this was going to involve more of the same.
He looked at the stag’s backbone again.
Very…personal…discomfort.
He saved us before. I healed his mate. He clearly knows more about the magic that’s going on than I do.
Oh, dear…
“Half a moment,” said Sings-to-Trees. He stripped off his tunic and began packing grass and moss into it. There was no putting a saddle on a cervidian, but perhaps he could manage some slight protection between himself and the jut of the stag’s vertebrae.
The cervidian waited. Sings-to-Trees finished stuffing his makeshift pillow, took a deep breath, and prepared to ride the bone stag into the unknown.
The village square felt agonizingly exposed. The goblins clung to the shadow of the buildings as long as they could, and then there was a water trough for horses partway there, but after that there was nothing to hide behind except bodies.
It was not the first time in Nessilka’s life she’d hidden behind bodies, but if the great gibbering gods were kind, it’d be the last. She thought the smell might follow her for several lifetimes.
She and Murray crouched behind a cow. It was bloated and its tongue was sticking out. Its udder had puffed up like a balloon. She had never given much thought to what happened to a cow’s udder when it rotted. She wished she wasn’t giving it any thought now.
Murray jerked his chin at the door. It was still slightly ajar, and there was no cover between them and it, unless you counted the dead steer blocking the other door. They could hide behind the open door, but there were bodies there, and they’d have to actually climb on them and…no.
The dead steer it would have to be.
She flicked her fingers. Going. Cover me.
That last dash across the open square made her nerves jangle like badly-tuned bells. Goblin feet were large and flat and actually fairly good for stealth if you moved carefully and didn’t let them go slap-slap-slap, but there were patches of…mud. Let’s go with mud. Red mud. Yes. She had to be careful not to squelch. And how was Murray going to cover her, anyway? Throw a dead body at anyone who attacked her?
She fetched up behind the dead steer and waited with her heart in her throat.
Nothing happened.
Flies buzzed around her in a cloud, but no strange voice called out. Nobody came to see what was going on, or to scream because there was a goblin warrior in town.
Oh, this would be a bad time for the rangers to show up… Thirty-odd dead bodies and three live goblins…no, that didn’t bear thinking about.
Murray crossed the square and dropped down beside her.
They exchanged glances, then looked at the gap in the door. It was about six inches wide, and yawned like a chasm before them.
She flicked a finger at Murray—wait—and sidled to the edge of the door.
It was dark inside. The bright sunlight made hot bars of light across the shadows, illuminating the edge of a pew. She crouched low, squinting.
It was hard to see anything. Well, no help for it… She took out an earplug.
There was a faint sizzling sound in the darkness. It was a familiar enough sound, but so far out of normal context that she couldn’t place it.
The smell of the dead was overwhelming, but under it, Nessilka could smell…pancakes?
She could make out a shape at the far end of the gloom, backlit by the remains of a fire, and in front of the embers, humming—humming?—was the human subadult, and it was frying pancakes.
Goblins were occasionally bad. Goblins were scourges of the night. And war was war and after a battle you generally ate like a starving wolf although you couldn’t always keep it down afterwards.
But even goblins didn’t stand in buildings surrounded by the piled dead and make pancakes.
She felt a brief, blinding rage—humans might be the enemy, but these were civilians, goddamnit—and then the rage died away and was replaced with a deep, unsettled disquiet.
Because anybody who would do that was crazy—bad, bugshit crazy, deep-down crazy. People like that had a crazed animal in their head and you could see it gnawing at the back of their eyes when they talked.
And they were very, very dangerous because there was absolutely no telling what they would do next.
She didn’t look back at Murray. Her eyes would have to adjust again if she did. And she couldn’t sign what she was seeing—goblin hand-sign did not include things like “crazy psychopath making pancakes.”
She gritted her teeth and slipped inside.
The door did not quite creak when she pushed it open, but it let in more light, and if the human looked up, it was bound to see the difference. Nessilka dropped low behind the first pew, breathing silently through her mouth, listening.
There was no change in the humming. It was a tuneless little repetition, hmm-hmm-hmm-hm-hm-hmm-hm, in no particular order.
Why don’t I have a crossbow? I could shoot it from here and save us all the trouble. She should have borrowed one from Sings-to-Trees. Surely he had one for dealing with…something. Rabid foxes or rogue deer or whatever.
She crept the length of the pew, shot another look at the fire—it appeared to be made out of broken chairs and cushions from the pews—and looked for the human. It had moved a foot or two to one side, and was fumbling with something on the ground.
Probably wants syrup on its pancakes, she thought darkly.
She took the chance and scurried to the next pew, and then she heard a quiet glug and had a hysterical urge to laugh, because that was exactly the sound of somebody pouring out syrup.
The tuneless humming stopped, and was replaced by the scrape of fork on plate, and the sounds of chewing. Nessilka doubted she would have been able to hear either if the town had not been so deadly silent.
Did she dare risk another pew?
She had just decided to go down the length of the pew to the far end and use that concealment to move forward when she heard the door creak.
It was louder this time, and damnit, Murray still had his earplugs in, so of course he didn’t hear it, and if they got out of this alive, she was going to box his ears—
The eating noises stopped.
“Hello?” said a voice, shockingly close. Cloth rustled as the human stood up. “Is someone there?”
She stood up. If the human fixed on her, maybe it would overlook Murray.
It was
standing less than five feet away. It still had a fork and a plate of pancakes in its hand. Blonde hair poked out from under the cloth on its head, and it—she?—stared at Sergeant Nessilka with wide blue eyes.
“Um,” Nessilka said. “Hi?”
EIGHTEEN
“You’re a goblin,” said the human girl, sounding strangely aggrieved, as if she had been expecting someone else.
“Goblin,” said Nessilka. “Yes. Absolutely. Born and bred. You can tell by the feet, see?”
She held up a foot. This was not strictly necessary, as any idiot could have identified Nessilka as a goblin at a hundred paces, but while the girl was looking at her foot, she was not looking at Murray, who had damn well better be hunkering down behind a pew and pretending to be a prayer book.
“It wasn’t supposed to be goblins,” said the girl.
“Um. Sorry.” Nessilka was not going to go for her club. It would probably be sensible to go for her club, and she knew this human was going to be bad news—innocent bystanders did not make pancakes while surrounded by the piled dead—but it was surprisingly hard to hit a kid who wasn’t doing anything but staring at you. Even a human kid.
I am going to regret this later, thought Nessilka, I know I am, but I’m still not going for my club, what am I, stupid, why am I not going for my club…?
“So…are you here all alone?” she asked instead.
“Oh, yes,” said the girl, a faint tremor in her voice. “The wizard came and—it was horrible—all those people—” She put her face in her hands, and her hair fell down over it in a perfect picture of misery.
Nessilka did not buy this for a second. She supposed it was possible that it was just because humans were The Enemy, but all her sergeanting instincts told her there was a little too much practice in that delivery. If a new recruit had come to her with that kind of theatrics, she’d have knocked him down and had Thumper sit on him until he told the truth.
“I’m an orphan,” sobbed the girl.
“So am I,” said Nessilka. “We could bond, if you like.”
Somehow she didn’t think the girl was going to take her up on the offer.
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