Nine Goblins Read online

  Nine Goblins

  T. Kingfisher

  Copyright 2013 Ursula Vernon

  Published by Red Wombat Tea Company

  Smashwords Edition

  Artwork by Ursula Vernon

  For Kevin, who had to put up with this story for a very long time.

  ONE

  It was gruel again for breakfast.

  It had been gruel for dinner the night before, and it would be gruel sandwiches for lunch, a dish only possible with goblin gruel, which was burnt solid and could be trusted not to ooze off the bread. It usually had unidentifiable lumps of something in it. Sometimes the lumps had legs.

  Once, Corporal Algol had found an eyeball in his gruel, the memory of which he carried with him like a good luck charm and inflicted regularly on his fellow soldiers.

  “Did I ever tell you guys about the time I found an eyeball—”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.”

  Algol wasn’t a bad sort, really. He was bigger than usual for a goblin, a whopping four foot ten, with broad, knotty shoulders and enormous feet. He had the ochre-grey skin of a hill goblin, and he wasn’t all that bright—but then, he was a goblin officer.

  Smart goblins became mechanics. Dumb goblins became soldiers. Really dumb goblins became officers.

  One of the latter was gesturing grandly from the top of a nearby rise. Nobody in the Nineteenth Infantry (better known as the Whinin’ Niners) could hear what he was saying, but this was probably a good thing. If you couldn’t hear what the officers said, you couldn’t be said to be disobeying orders. It was amazing how selectively deaf goblin soldiers could be, particularly when words like “Charge!” and “Advance!” and “Get your finger out of there, soldier!” were involved.

  “What do you think he’s on about?” asked Weatherby, jerking his thumb in the direction of the officer.

  Everybody turned and looked, since there was nothing else to do. They had been sitting in the middle of a stony wasteland for a week, and it was either watch the officers or watch the bird. (There was only the one bird, and it had been hanging around waiting for something to die for most of that week.)

  The officer was waving his arms wildly now and hopping on one foot, like a man being attacked by ants. His red coat flapped in the breeze like shabby scarlet wings.

  “We’re going to move out,” said Murray.

  “You think?”

  Murray nodded. “He’s making a big speech. He only does that when he thinks we might get into a scrape with the enemy. The enemy’s not gonna come at us here, so we must be moving out.”

  For a goblin, Murray was a genius. He’d washed out of the Mechanics Corps for being too good at his job. Goblins appreciate machines that are big and clunky and have lots of spiky bits sticking off them, and which break down and explode and take half the Corps with them. That’s how you knew it worked. If it couldn’t kill goblins, how could you trust it to kill the enemy?

  Murray made small, neat, efficient devices that didn’t even maim anybody during the construction phases. Nobody believed for a minute that the things would work, and Murray was sent down to the infantry in disgrace.

  When his designs later proved dramatically successful, leaving enormous craters in the enemy ranks, and on one notable occasion, causing an entire platoon of elves to simultaneously wet themselves on the field of battle, nobody could remember who’d built them. There was such a rapid turnover in the Mechanics Corps that the people who’d thrown him out were now mostly scattered in bits across the landscape, or had transferred back to Goblinhome to teach.

  Murray was, therefore, the exception to the Whinin’ Nineteenth—and indeed, to most of the surviving Goblin infantry. “Too dumb to desert. Too smart to die.”

  Even this was more clever than accurate. There are situations where no amount of smarts keeps you from getting killed. Blockhammer had been sitting down at breakfast a week ago, as canny a goblin veteran as you could wish for, and one of the supply rocs had gotten sweaty claws. The gigantic bird had been passing directly overhead, and the elephant it was carrying popped right out of its talons and landed directly on Blockhammer’s head. (Also on his body, his camp stool, and all the space in a fifteen foot radius around him.)

  When they went to bury him, they couldn’t figure out which bits were Blockhammer and which bits were the elephant, so the Nineteeth had buried his sword instead. They rolled a stone over it, and Murray wrote “RIP- BLoKhaMer” on it (his genius did not extend to spelling.), and Nessilka had sung a goblin lament. Everyone was very moved, and toasted Blockhammer’s memory repeatedly over the next batch of elephant gruel. (It was possible the gruel also contained bits of Blockhammer. Nobody wanted to dwell on this.)

  The other half of the saying wasn’t too accurate either. Weatherby, for example, had deserted no less than fifteen times, and he was so dumb it was remarkable he hadn’t been tapped as officer material.

  It was really pretty easy to desert—people did it all the time—but Weatherby had made an art of it. He would nod to the rest of the Nineteenth, as they sat around the campfire, and say “Right, I’m off then!” and then walk in a straight line until he hit the edge of the Goblin Army encampment. Once he was fifty feet from the edge of camp, Weatherby proceeded to rip off his clothes, run to the nearest hill, rise or tree stump, and begin dancing wildly in the moonlight, while shouting “I’m free, you sods, free! I’m a free goblin! Waahoooo! Free!”

  Eventually the guards would come get him and bring him home again, although his clothes were usually a loss.

  Since the Goblin Army had blown almost all its uniform budget on red coats for the officers, everybody was wearing loincloths from home anyway, so nobody much noticed.

  A runner came up to the edge of the fire where the Nineteenth were sitting. “New orders, Sergeant!” he said, saluting Nessilka.

  Nessilka muttered something under her breath. She was the ranking member of the Nineteenth since Blockhammer had gotten splattered, followed by Murray and Algol, who were corporals, and everybody else, who weren’t. You could tell the ranks by the stripes on the loincloth, although this system had drawbacks if you were trying to tell the difference between a general and somebody who just didn’t do laundry often enough.

  Nessilka didn’t like being in charge. She was good at it, but she didn’t like it. She had been the oldest of six children and was the veteran of three campaigns, and as a result, both responsibility and suspicion of rank were etched in Nessilka’s bones. Finding herself as the senior member of the Whinin’ Niners was like a constant itch between her shoulderblades.

  “What’s the word, then?” she asked.

  “General Globberlich says to break camp. We’re movin’ out!” He saluted again. He had to be new. Nobody was that enthusiastic after the first month.

  “Will do,” said Nessilka, and waited.

  The runner saluted again. He was a scrawny little green fellow, probably with imp blood somewhere a few generations back.

  He saluted for the fourth time, hard enough to bruise his forehead.

  Sergeant Nessilka took pity on him and saluted back, and he ran off to the next camp.

  Nessilka was a female goblin, which meant that everybody was a little scared of her. Occasionally you saw women in the enemy armies—generally slim, willowy young women with longbows and grim expressions. She wondered if everybody on their side tiptoed around them like naughty children with an unpredictable schoolteacher.

  Somehow, she doubted it.

  There was nothing slim or willowy about Nessilka. She was built like a chunk of granite, and she could carry a live boar under one arm. The only concession to femininity was that she wore her hair in a bun instead of a long queue, and she wore slightly fewer earrings than everyone else.
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  “Alright, maggots, you heard the man,” she growled. “Pack up and move out!”

  Most of the Whinin’ Nineteenth groaned and grumbled and sulked. Murray and Algol, however, got to their feet and went to start packing their kits, and eventually, the rest followed.

  Sergeant Nessilka had just shoved her spiked club into her belt when a flash of red indicated that the officer had returned to his position on the cliff. Now he was mounted on his parade pig, a big white porker with its hooves polished and ribbons twined in its tail. He made a sweeping gesture with his sword. The pig squealed.

  “And that’s our cue,” Nessilka said. She slung her pack over her shoulder, and looked around her unit. They were mostly packed. Murray was helping the two newest recruits get their gear arranged. Algol had the lead rope for the supply goat. Gloober had a finger up his nose.

  “Mooooooove OUT!”

  The Whinin’ Niners moved out.

  TWO

  How the Goblin War (if you asked the humans) or the Glorious Conflict Resisting The Ongoing Human Aggression (if you asked the goblin generals) or the Bloody Miserable Mess (if you asked the Nineteenth Infantry) got started really depends on which side was doing the talking.

  Humans and elves will tell you that goblins are stinking, slinking, filthy, sheep-stealing, cattle-rustling, henhouse-raiding, disgusting, smelly, obnoxious, rude, unmannerly, and violent.

  The goblins would actually agree with all that, and they might add “cowardly” and “lazy” to the list as well. Goblins have lots of flaws, but few illusions.

  As far as the human side of the war is concerned, one day the goblins, who had been keeping to themselves pretty well in the high hills and deep mires, came out to a human settlement, riding their pigs and waving banners, and holding a list of really laughable demands.

  The humans refused, and the next day they were hip-deep in short green-and-ochre people with tusks. The humans retaliated, the goblins retaliated for the retaliation, the elves got involved, the orcs got involved because the elves were involved, and by the end of six months it was a horrible churning entrenched mess, where troops on both sides sat around for weeks on end and occasionally ran at each other screaming.

  Again, the goblins would agree with most of that account, but there was more to it than that.

  Once upon a time, goblins had lived everywhere. Like rabbits, goblins are an immensely adaptable, quick-breeding lot, capable of living under practically any conditions. There are hill goblins and marsh goblins, forest goblins who live in trees and savannah goblins who live in networked tunnels like prairie dog towns. There are desert goblins and jungle goblins, miniature island goblins and heavy-bodied tundra goblins. Goblins live everywhere.

  Wherever a goblin happens to live, he complains about it constantly. This is actually a sign of affection. A desert goblin will complain endlessly about the beastly heat and the dreadful dryness and the spiky cactus. He will show you how his sunburn is peeling and the place where the rattlesnake bit him and the place where he bit the rattlesnake. He will be thoroughly, cheerfully, miserable.

  If you took him away from the desert, he would be lost. He wouldn’t know what to complain about. He might make a few half-hearted attempts, but he would eventually lapse into confused silence, and return as quickly as possible to the desert he loves. Complaining is how he shows he’s paying attention to all the little nuances of his home.

  This is basically goblin psychology in a nutshell. Goblin cooks wait in anticipation for the rude comments about the flavor. A goblin courting the lady goblin of his dreams will point out the new lumps and splotches on her skin and ask if she’s been sick lately because she looks off color and hey, is that a tick behind her left ear?

  Goblins are in many ways stoics. When they’re genuinely unhappy, they shut up and put their heads down and just try to blunder through. (Goblin divorces are notable for their lack of screaming.) If a goblin eats something without complaining, it was so bad he doesn’t want to dwell on it. (Gruel among the Nineteenth Infantry had recently reached this point, and breakfast had become a silent, glum affair.)

  A goblin trying to make the best of things is a very tragic sight indeed.

  So the goblins lived over much of the land, and the woods and plains and deserts and whatnot rang with the cheery sounds of goblin complaints.

  Then the humans came.

  They came in small groups at first, and cleared little clearings and built little houses, and the goblins didn’t really mind. They’re cowards, after all, and there was plenty of room, so they had no desire to forcibly evict the humans. They just avoided those places.

  The clearings got bigger and the houses got bigger, and the goblins kept avoiding them, until one day, there was hardly any place left that you weren’t avoiding. And one by one, tribe by tribe, the goblins would melt quietly away into the wilderness, to impose on the hospitality of the next tribe over.

  Sometimes, of course, it wasn’t that easy. In a few cases, goblins wound up living on mountaintops and tunneling down instead of running away. On islands, they would have to steal boats and rafts from the humans and strike out across the ocean. Occasionally they couldn’t find another island without people on it, and a whole colony of raft-goblins sprang up, traveling with the currents, living on fish and seabirds and whatever they could steal from human settlements.

  A knot of goblins even got stuck in a park for years, every avenue of escape having been filled in by a reasonably large city. They survived by panhandling and occasional muggings, and a fair number established themselves successfully in the sewers, where they breed riding rats the size of ponies and wrestle white alligators in the dark.

  By and large, though, the goblins went deeper and deeper into the wilderness, and the wilderness got smaller and smaller and tamer and tamer. And then one day, a goblin scouting for new territory found himself standing on a beach, gazing out across the western sea.

  It was the end of the road. They’d been pushed right to the edge of the continent, and there was simply no place else for them to go.

  THREE

  Sings-to-Trees had hair the color of sunlight and ashes, delicately pointed ears, and eyes the translucent green of new leaves. His shirt was off, he had the sort of tanned muscle acquired from years of healthy outdoor living, and you could have sharpened a sword on his cheekbones.

  He was saved from being a young maiden’s fantasy—unless she was a very peculiar young maiden—by the fact that he was buried up to the shoulder in the unpleasant end of a heavily pregnant unicorn. Bits of unicorn dung, not noticeably more ethereal than horse dung, were sliding down his arm, and every time the mare had a contraction he lost feeling in his hand.

  It had been nearly two hours, the ground was hard and cold, and his knees felt like live coals wrapped in ice. She’d kicked him twice, and if Sings-to-Trees hadn’t known that it was impossible, he’d have begun to suspect that the unicorn had arranged a breech birth out of spite.

  No, he was being unfair. It couldn’t be any more fun for her than it was for him. Just because he didn’t really like unicorns, he shouldn’t let it cloud his judgment.

  He sighed and tried yet again to get a grip on one of the foal’s legs. Unicorn foals had hooves as delicate as glass bells, naturally, and however adorable they were when tripping lightly ‘cross the meadow, they were pure torture to grab in the slippery less-than-hospitable environment inside the mother unicorn.

  If he could just get the little monster turned around, a few good pushes should do it. The problem was getting a good grip. He rode out another contraction with gritted teeth.

  Sings-to-Trees loved all living creatures with a broad, impartial love, the sort of love that rescues baby bats and stays up nights feeding them, one drop of milk and mealworm mix at a time. He splinted the legs of injured deer and treated mites in the ears of foxes and gave charcoal to colicky wyverns. No beast was too ugly, too monstrous, too troublesome. He had once donned smoked glass goggles and shoul
der-length cowhide gloves to sit up with an eggbound cockatrice for three days, giving it calcium tablets and oiling its cloacal vents every four hours. Since he’d been nursing a pocketful of baby hummingbirds at the time, which had to be fed sugar water every fifteen minutes sixteen hours out of the day, it had been quite an extraordinary three days. He still had nightmares about it.

  But he’d never really warmed to unicorns. Possibly it was because they didn’t need him. Regular elves loved unicorns, as they loved all beautiful creatures, and a unicorn with so much as a stubbed hoof could turn up at the door of any elf in the world and be assured of royal treatment. Sings-to-Trees hardly ever had to deal with them, and he preferred it that way.

  But when somebody needed to actually reach a hand in there and turn a foal around, suddenly the unicorn lovers of the world melted away, and it was down to Sings-to-Trees and a barn and a bucket of soapy water. And the hind end of the unicorn, of course.

  As if to punctuate this thought, the unicorn kicked him again. He grunted. He was pretty sure the mare was smart enough to know that he was helping her. He just didn’t think she cared.

  He got a grip on something that felt like a wee little hock, and started the tricky process of hauling, coaxing, and generally begging the tiny creature to turn around. Another contraction came along, and he willed his numb fingers to hold on to the foal’s leg. His fingers laughed at him.

  Give him trolls any day. A thousand pounds of muscle and bone, froggish goatish creatures the size of grizzly bears, with enormous curling horns that could smash through a concrete wall. They were ideal patients. Trolls might not be any more talkative than unicorns, but they understood every word you said, and if they had come to you for help, they’d trust you to the ends of the earth. You could saw off a troll’s leg, and it would look at you with huge, tearful eyes the size of dinner plates and hold still while you did it. And if you told them to come back in a week for a check-up, they’d be there a week later, as soon as the sun went down, squatting patiently in the vegetable patch, ready to be poked and prodded all over again. Sings-to-Trees quite liked trolls.