The Goblin War

by Hilari Bell

  One of the brighter barbarians gave up trying to tear the cloth and pulled out a knife. Tobin yelped as he knelt, and the point of the other man’s spear popped painfully through his skin. But the barbarian with the knife only slit open his shirt, and then swore at the sight of an amulet lying against Tobin’s chest. The same sort of amulet they all wore, crudely cast copper, with runes inscribed around it.

  The same sort of amulet Tobin’s troop had been ordered to remove from barbarian bodies, because it was said that if the barbarians captured a spy who was wearing one, they wouldn’t kill him.

  “That’s right,” Tobin said. Could they understand him? And how in two worlds was he understanding what they said? “I’m wearing one of your amulets. So you can’t kill me.”

  He prayed to all the Bright Gods he was right.

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” The barbarian seemed to expect Tobin to understand him, even though he still spoke the rough barbarian tongue Tobin had never heard before, except for a few battlefield shouts. “I think stolen amulets should be different from ones warriors have earned. And you reek of the Spiritworld. If you’re their spy—”

  “That’s not for you to judge,” another barbarian said. “It must be decided by the storyteller and the clan chiefs. So we’d better take him with us.”

  That, at least, they all agreed to. The spear was removed, and Tobin was foolish enough to struggle as they tied his hands behind his back and bound his kicking legs. He was still weak from the illness that had attacked him in the Otherworld . . . so how could he now be in the real one, being captured by barbarians?

  His weakness, and the fact that he remembered being in the Otherworld when he was dressed in the clothes he now wore, made nonsense of his tentative theory that he’d been hit on the head and lost days? weeks? months? of memories. Besides, his head felt fine. In fact, he felt better than he had in weeks, until they picked him up and bound him, stomach down, over the back of someone’s saddle like a newly shot deer.

  The barbarians’ coarse-coated horses were smaller than the Realm’s chargers, though sturdy and courageous in battle. Some of the taller bushes they passed through brushed Tobin’s face or tugged at his feet, and the rapidly growing discomfort of being carried in that position reinforced his conviction that, however he’d gotten here, it wasn’t a dream.

  The barbarian camp was only a short distance away, but his back muscles were on fire and his stomach was churning by the time they arrived.

  His head spun as they pulled him off the horse and thrust him into . . . a cage, Tobin noted grimly. A human-sized cage, mounted on a two-wheeled cart, perfectly designed for carrying your “meat” with you to keep it fresh—just as the worst of the rumors had claimed.

  Would they really eat him? It seemed more horrible than simply being killed, and so outrageously unlikely that Tobin clung to hope despite the rough wooden bars surrounding him. He struggled to his knees, which was tricky with his hands and feet still bound, and studied the barbarian camp.

  Round tents, made of stitched leather spread over arched wooden poles, were scattered through a large field—probably the communal pasture of the burned-out village he could see in the distance. Tobin had heard that they’d conquered a large strip of the Southlands not long after he’d left to try to capture the “sorceress” of the Goblin Wood. But this was the first time he’d realized what that conquest meant in loss of lives and property.

  Hopefully the people who’d lived and worked in these charred ruins had been evacuated in time. Tobin didn’t see the mounds of any recent graves. Of course—a chill roughened his skin at the thought—the barbarian method for disposing of enemy bodies might not leave graves.

  But he didn’t understand why they’d burned the village instead of moving into the houses themselves. A tight wooden cottage had to be drier than those tents, and the late spring could be stormy this far south.

  Cooking fires burned in front of many of the tents, and Tobin was relieved to see that the meat on their spits looked like sheep or goat. A herd of goats milled in the small corral the village must have used—which they hadn’t burned, for some reason. Why destroy the houses but not that?

  Tobin had no time to notice more, for a group of barbarians, clearly a committee, was stalking toward his cage, arguing as they approached.

  Some of the men weren’t painted with the white clay that had covered all the barbarians Tobin had seen. They had the same brownish skin as Southlanders, though their hair was generally a lighter shade of brown, sometimes with a reddish tint.

  They were smaller, by and large, than Tobin’s people—but he had fought them, and he knew those lithe, white-painted bodies were unbelievably agile and strong.

  He’d been told that their warriors went nearly naked into battle to prove their courage. The men who’d captured him—a scouting party?—had worn only stiffened leather strapped around their limbs and torsos, and loincloths for modesty’s sake. The men who now approached wore very loose britches, gathered at the ankles, and embroidered vests over long tunics, whose sleeves were gathered at the wrists.

  The women were similarly clad, even wearing britches like their men, and there were others in the camp Tobin took to be servants, wearing rougher, drabber cloth.

  “. . . high time we began to differentiate between us and our enemies,” one of them was saying as they drew near. “Stealing an amulet from one of our dead doesn’t make him Duri. In fact, it makes him less than the chanduri, for even they have more honor than that.”

  The word “Duri” came to Tobin’s mind simultaneously as warrior, clansman, and lord, all three meanings clashing and blending into the word itself. A barbarian term for which his language had no matching concept? “Chanduri” came to him as “lesser Duri”—not warriors, less in rank, less worthy than the Duri.

  It had to be the amulet that was letting him understand them, but he had no time to contemplate that realization.

  The men had gathered around the cage now; several Tobin thought he recognized from the scouting party. Were the rest the clan chiefs they’d spoken of? Though the word also seemed to have some connotation of “law keeper.”

  They were older than the scouts, but not nearly as old as a group of village headmen would have been. Tobin had no doubt that these men could lead their clans into battle when the time came. Except, perhaps, one of them. He was much older than the rest, his hair threaded with gray, and he wore a patch over one eye. Though his clothing wasn’t as drab as the servants’, it wasn’t as rich as the warriors’ either.

  “I didn’t come here to spy on you.” Tobin decided to speak to the oldest man. “I came . . . I think I came here by accident.”

  Now that he’d had a few minutes to think, he had a vague memory of many hands shoving him, and of looking back at Makenna through a shimmering curtain that had to be a gate. There was only one known method to pass from the Otherworld to this one, so somehow they’d managed to make a gate and shoved him out—right into the hands of the barbarians.

  The oldest barbarian looked at him blankly.

  “He says he isn’t here to spy,” one of the other barbarians told the one-eyed man. “As if we care.”

  One-Eye shook his head. “No, our enemies are enemies, more chan than the chanduri. Our tradition is clear on that.”

  “Yes, but it’s also clear that even a Softer can’t be killed if he wears the blood trust,” another man said. “If you start making exceptions because the man who wears the blood trust is our enemy, how long will it be before we start thinking of this clan or that one as enemies, and we end up wasting our strength fighting one another once more?”

  “But I’m here by accident.” Tobin tried again. “I didn’t come to fight you or to spy.”

  The fact that he’d fought them in the past wasn’t something he wanted to dwell on now—though for all the attention they paid him, he might as well have shouted it. Only the one-eyed man even glanced at Tobin when he spoke, and he seemed not to understand.
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  “So if our enemies come against us in the final battle, wearing the blood trusts they stole from our dead, we’re supposed to lay down our swords and let them kill us?” one of the scouts demanded.

  “Of course not,” another replied. “If they come weapon in hand to fight, then clearly we’ve been challenged.”

  “Yes, but what about when they’ve been disarmed?” another asked. “What if they’re wearing the blood trust then? By the strict interpretation of tradition/law/right”—another word clearly not in Tobin’s language—“we’d have to let them go. I don’t know about you, but to me that sounds like a fine formula for losing a war!”

  It sounded like that to Tobin too, and he made a mental note to report this whole conversation to his old commander when he got back. Then he realized that the only reason they’d spoken so freely in front of him was because he wasn’t going back, and he missed the next few sentences as the blood drained out of his head and the edges of his vision darkened.

  “Not only is our tradition clear on this,” One-Eye was saying when the ringing cleared from Tobin’s ears, “but our history as well. Before we shared in the sacred blood trust, our clans spent all their might fighting one another—and with warriors so proud and fierce, there is little doubt that if the blood trust could be violated, our clan wars would erupt again.”

  Tobin thought he detected a sardonic note in that last sentence, but none of the others seemed to notice it.

  “He’s right.” The clan chief sounded reluctant but resigned. “If we start saying the blood trust doesn’t apply to enemies, soon we’ll be calling everyone we take a dislike to ‘enemy,’ and that will be the end of everything. Besides . . .” He gestured to Tobin. “As you all know, there are ways. We haven’t even captured a spirit yet. We can feed him up, make sure he’s not so sick he’d infect us, and . . . Well, there are ways.”

  They moved off, chatting among themselves, and only One-Eye looked back at Tobin as they left.

  Tobin tried to fight off terror and depression by considering how much even that short conversation had told him. First, the amulets must be this “blood trust” they kept talking about. It really did keep them from killing—not only an enemy spy but also one another. If it kept them safe from their own gods, too, which was what the priests had claimed, no one seemed to care much about that.

  It also had to be the amulet that let Tobin understand them, so the amulets weren’t just symbolic but real magic. He lifted the medallion and looked it over, but the simple copper round hadn’t changed. A magic that could translate a foreign tongue in his own mind should look more impressive. And was it only one foreign tongue? Did the barbarians have more than one language? If so, it made sense that translation would help keep peace among them, but it sounded like the amulets did more than that.

  Well, Tobin knew they did! They were said to be part of the barbarians’ battle magic, although Realm knights had been forbidden to wear captured amulets into battle because they were reputed to have been made with human sacrifice—and by now Tobin believed every wild tale he’d ever heard about that.

  The wave of terror that washed over him was so intense, his vision blurred again, and he had to put his head between his knees.

  But clearly the amulet would protect him for a while.

  There were ways. Ways to take the amulet from him? To trick him into taking it off? Ways around their tradition/law that he couldn’t begin to guess?

  In that case, maybe Tobin could keep it on and survive long enough to escape.

  As the day wore on, Tobin’s fear slowly turned into something that was closer to boredom than terror.

  The changing angle of the sun told him he’d been captured in the morning. Around midday, everyone seemed to return to their tents for a meal, and if there was some rivalry between the different clans that Tobin could exploit, he didn’t see any sign of it. They all seemed to be milling around together, not clustering in groups. No one wore different colors or flew banners that might indicate some sort of clan allegiance—at least, none that Tobin could recognize.

  Soon after midday a young woman, not much older than he was, carried a bowl and a waterskin up to his cage. Her expression was as calmly indifferent as a woman feeding chickens, so when she drew her dagger and held it through the bars, Tobin extended his feet for her to cut the ropes. His hands were even more painful, but he preferred to test her intent before he turned his back on the knife.

  She sliced neatly through the bonds on his ankles. “Turn around. You’ll need your hands free to eat.”

  “Thank you,” said Tobin. “I don’t suppose you’d throw that knife in, and let me do it myself?”

  She gazed at him blankly. “Turn around, so I can cut your hands loose. I know you understand me.”

  She gestured to his amulet, and Tobin realized she wasn’t wearing one.

  “So I can understand you, but you can’t understand me? Is that how it works?”

  She sheathed her knife and folded her arms. The bowl sat on the ground where she’d placed it, and her message was plain with no words at all.

  The hair on the back of Tobin’s neck prickled as he turned his back and pressed his hands against the bars, but she only cut through the rope around his wrists, handed him the bowl and waterskin, and departed.

  The stew was goat, vegetables, and some grain Tobin didn’t recognize. Once he got over a vague reluctance to eat with his fingers, the food was good, though the seasoning tasted a bit odd. They wouldn’t skimp if they were fattening him for the slaughter. But Tobin’s half-formed plan to appear more ill than he was by picking at his food gave way to hunger. Besides, he needed all his strength in order to escape.

  Watching the common business of the camp kept Tobin occupied till dark. The scouting parties, easily identified by their white-painted skin, had been coming and going all day, but by evening most of them had returned.

  They washed off the white clay in the stream, Tobin saw, yelping at the chill and splashing one another. But even without their paint, he was fairly certain it was a group of the warriors who finally approached his cage after darkness fell. Their faces, alive with mockery, held none of the woman’s half-kindly indifference.

  They said nothing to him, though one of them murmured something Tobin couldn’t hear and several of them laughed.

  There was enough firelight for him to see the glint of blood amulets on several chests, but Tobin knew that pleading with bullies only encouraged them, and taunting them would only give them an excuse.

  Not that they needed it.

  At least it was just the spear’s butt that shot through the cage bars, striking his ribs with bruising force but not penetrating for a lethal blow.

  Tobin scrambled to the other side of the cage, but they surrounded it and started poking at him from that side. He crouched in the center and waited for several long minutes, doing his best to dodge their thrusts. Then he made his snatch, closing both hands around a spear butt as it surged toward his shoulder.

  The young warrior on the other end of the spear almost lost his grip in sheer surprise, but his hands tightened reflexively when Tobin pulled. Then his face hardened.

  Tobin shifted his grip and tried to thrust the sharp point into the warrior’s stomach, but the sturdy wooden bars got in the way and the warrior dodged.

  Another spear butt slammed down on his wrist, numbing it, and the warrior yanked his spear out of Tobin’s hands.

  He tried to get hold of another, but now they were watching for it—and if the wariness of the men in front of Tobin hindered their blows, it freed those behind him to strike at will.

  A hard rap on his skull set him swaying, dizzy. A thread of hot blood crept down the back of his neck.

  The smartest thing Tobin could do now was lie down and fake unconsciousness, but he was too angry, too frightened.

  He grabbed for another spear and missed. A shrewd blow struck his elbow, and pain shot down his arm. He was gasping for breath, and the cag
e seemed to revolve slowly around him. Soon his unconsciousness wouldn’t be feigned.

  “This is not the conduct of warriors,” a man’s voice said coldly.

  The blows stopped.

  The one-eyed man gazed contemptuously at the warriors who surrounded Tobin’s cage. They looked down or aside and shuffled their feet, like boys caught in mischief.

  “A true warrior doesn’t attack those who are crippled or bound,” the older man went on. “Like the slaughter of animals, such tasks are the province of women, and no warrior would stoop to them.”

  A couple of the younger men flushed at this.

  “You know why we’re—” one of them protested.

  “I know exactly what you’re supposed to do and say,” One-Eye interrupted. “And for this night, that’s enough.”

  “Well, you don’t have to insult us,” another grumbled.

  But they departed, and Tobin dropped gratefully to the cage floor. Now that he had time to feel it, every muscle in his body throbbed and ached.

  “Thank . . .”

  One-Eye turned and walked away.

  Later, when the camp slept, Tobin tested the cage. For people who lived in tents, their carpentry was good. The bars that made up the walls and roof were set into a frame of thick, squared timbers and then, as far as Tobin could tell by touch, nailed into place.

  When the goblins had held him prisoner, only a few months ago, Tobin had freed himself by working the metal bolt that secured his chains back and forth till it ground away the wood around it. The sharpest tool he had here was his belt buckle, and filing through one of the hardwood bars with that would take days, at least.

  Tobin didn’t think he had days. Though hadn’t someone said something about having to capture a spirit?