Arthur Daigle's Blog - Posts Tagged "monk"

Guzzle the goblin waited none too patiently for his unwanted guest to arrive. He hadn’t asked for the man to come, nor particularly wanted him to come, but like it or not he was coming. Normally Guzzle would set a trap for the man, but the goblin had been paid in cheese to behave, and there was the possibility of more cheese in the future. Guzzle could overlook nearly anything when cheese was involved.

Many people didn’t think Guzzle was a goblin, although they weren’t sure what he might be. Given that Guzzle had lavender colored skin, wore nearly stylish green clothes, had graying hair and was balding caused much of the confusion, but there was more too it than that. Guzzle practiced a trade other than mayhem (which he wasn’t adverse to), and that was rare among goblins.

The morning sun was fully up and it was getting warm. Guzzle liked warm sunny days like this. His pets were at their best under these conditions. The young forest teemed with flowers, and not far beyond that lay cropland planted with buckwheat. His pets would grow fat under such abundant food.

Guzzle peered down the muddy trail and saw his guest coming. The goblin’s mind raced at the possibilities of which traps he could set and where to place them. This wasn’t a good attitude given how many men came seeking Guzzle’s business. Every time he had a visitor, he was sorely tempted to torment them with traps, insults and inane jokes at their expense.

Customer service was not Guzzle’s strong point.

“Blessings be upon you,” the stranger said as he approached. The man was middle aged with thinning brown hair, and he wore a simple brown robe. He also had a leather backpack, which hopefully contained cheese.

“Enough pleasantries,” Guzzle replied. “You don’t like me, I don’t like you, and the king hates us both. So what’s this about?”

Such a greeting often provoked insults, shouts and whining, and occasionally made visitors leave. This time was an exception. The man didn’t loose his temper, instead smiling at Guzzle. “I have no ill will toward you or any other. My name is Brother Mayfield. I am a fellow apiculturist.”

Guzzle stared at him. “Did you just say something dirty about my mother? Because I haven’t got one.”

“No insult was given. Apiculture is the raising of bees. I raise honey bees, and I am told you do as well.”

Surprised, Guzzle asked, “You’re a beekeeper, too? Huh, small world. Wait a minute, if you’re a bee guy then why are you here? The messenger who told me you were coming said this was about bees, and if you’ve got your own then you shouldn’t need anything from me.”

“I need your help because I raise bees. Mr. Guzzle, I serve the Brotherhood of the Righteous in Sunset City. I manage thirty hives of bees outside the city to provide both honey and beeswax for church needs. The brotherhood has a cathedral in Sunset City, and it is celebrating its bicentennial. Such a celebration requires a great many beeswax candles, more than my hives can provide. I had heard from others that you also raise bees. I hope I can offer you a fair deal in barter for any wax you might be able to spare.”

Guzzle scratched his head. He wasn’t used to being called mister. It felt wrong. “I think I understood a few words of that. You want wax and you can trade for it?”

“That is correct.”

This meeting wasn’t nearly as vulgar as Guzzle was hoping for. Eager to get it back on track, he asked, “What have you got to trade? Dirty limericks, marked cards, incriminating evidence on public officials?”

“I though tangible goods would be a better trade,” Brother Mayfield said as he set down his backpack.

“You’re underestimating the value of dirty limericks.” Guzzle watched Brother Mayfield unload his backpack. “You got cheese in there? The messenger boy paid me off in cheese to not dump cow dung on him or you.”

“I do indeed have cheese.” Brother Mayfield unwrapped a small wedge of cheese covered in paper and handed it to Guzzle, who gobbled it up in one bite. “I also have two ceramic jugs, a square yard of cheesecloth, a pair of scissors, a knife—”

“Forget the rest of that stuff!” Guzzle snatched the knife and held it up to the light. “I want this one. It’s the perfect tool…for revenge!”

That statement gave Brother Mayfield pause. “Who do you want revenge against?”

“I’ve got an enemies list,” Guzzle said proudly. He dug a grubby sheet of paper out of his shirt pocket and held it up. The moment should have been dramatic, but was ruined when Guzzle frowned and asked, “Who are these people? Does this look like my handwriting to you?”

Brother Mayfield briefly studied the paper and read off the first few names. “That guy. That other guy. The guy with the thing.”

“This is insulting!” Guzzled yelled as he snatched back the paper. “I don’t want to get the wrong guys after I went to all this work. Do you know how long it takes to get a beehive up and running?

Brother Mayfield returned the rest of his belongings to his backpack. He hesitated before asking, “You have a troubled relationship with others?”

Guzzle tucked the knife into his belt. “What’s it to you?”

Brother Mayfield looked even more sincere than normal when he spoke. “The Brotherhood of the Righteous is always ready to resolve disputes between neighbors. We’d be only too happy to help if we can solve this problem for you. What person has hurt you so much that you hold such anger?”

“It’s not about me.” Guzzle looked down, his hands clenching and unclenching. “I had a friend who got pushed around a lot. It wasn’t fair, and the guy who did it hurt a lot of other people. Goblins can ignore most of the bad things that happen, but there’s got to be a reckoning for his guy, and I aim to give it. There have been plenty more since him who deserve what they get, except I can’t remember their names. But that first guy, I won’t ever forget him.”

“If he has done wrong, we can aid you,” Brother Mayfield offered.

Guzzle looked at Brother Mayfield. He didn’t doubt the monk’s word, but he shook his head all the same. “This is personal. Come on, let’s get you your beeswax.”

Guzzle led Brother Mayfield up the path to his home. The trail was lined with flowers, and Guzzle’s bees were thick in the air. They buzzed around him as they sought nourishment from weeds and wildflowers that grew in a thick carpet between the trees.

“I came out here to be alone with my bees,” Guzzle told Brother Mayfield as they walked. “There’s good eating for them with all these flowers, and nobody around who could rob me. I had trouble with wild boars for a while, but I fenced them out. Then one year after I moved in, these people come asking for honey. I mean, dozens of them! It was like there was a glowing sign pointing to my house. I was going to let the bees keep all their honey, but men wouldn’t stop bothering me for the stuff. I finally agreed just to get them to leave and traded the honey for things I need, like your knife.”

“I’ve found men, elves and dwarfs ever eager to purchase honey,” Brother Mayfield replied. “I produce hundreds of pounds per year, and it’s never enough. I hope to obtain more hives and one day meet the demand.”

The goblin laughed. “Good luck with that! Anyway, they came so often I couldn’t get anything done. I even cut down trees to block the path, but the bums cleared the road inside of a day. One of these days I’m going to have to get a dog to chase them off.”

Bees became more numerous as they walked until their buzzing was as loud as a busy city street. They finally reached Guzzle’s house, a crude wood structure next to a fenced in field. Inside the field were dozens of beehives set on tall wood tables. The hives were simple affairs, just straw rope coiled to form wide hollow cones. This was enough for the bees, and they were content.

“This is a very healthy population,” Brother Mayfield said approvingly. “How do you support so many?”

“I let them feed on one batch of flowers, and when they’re done I move the hives at night to another patch. I’ve got fenced in places like this all over the woods, each one by good feeding sites.”

Guzzle climbed the fence and dug through a pile of debris next to one of the hives. “Let’s see, straw rope, mouse traps, smoker, leather gloves. Where’s the wax?”

Brother Mayfield raised a hand and let a bee land on his palm. “I admire bees. They have so many qualities man should copy. Hard working, cooperative, loyal.”

“Pugnacious,” Guzzle added. “Kill one bee and every one in a hundred feet will come after you, and they don’t give up easy.”

“I tend to group that under loyal,” Brother Mayfield replied.

Guzzle pushed aside a large roll of burlap and picked up a block of yellowed wax weighing twenty pounds. “So there you are. Here’s all the beeswax I’ve got. If you’d wanted honey you’d be out of luck, but not many people trade for wax.”

“That is perfect,” Brother Mayfield told him. He took the block of wax and turned it over in his hands. “I can melt it and filter out the impurities to get pure wax, and produce the candles the brotherhood needs. Mr. Guzzle, I am grateful for your help and will tell all who will listen of your good deed.”

“Yeah, can we skip that last part? I’ve got enough yahoos pestering me without them thinking I’m nice. Let me walk you back to the main road. I’ve got traps to reset now that we’re done, and signs redirecting visitors to a dung heap.”

“That’s not very nice,” Brother Mayfield told him.

“That’s me in a nutshell.”

The goblin and monk walked down the trail and had only gone a short distance before they stopped. There were five men ahead of them sticking to the shadows provided by trees. Brother Mayfield said, “I fear you have more guests, whether you have goods to sell them or not.”

Guzzle squinted at the men. “They’re not here for honey. Two of them have swords.”

“Hello, Mayfield.” The men swaggered out of the shadows and onto the trail. They wore street clothes no different than you’d find in any city, but all five wore broad shoulder straps with red hands printed on them. Two men had short swords, easily concealable and good for stabbing, while the rest carried daggers and hand axes. “Been a long time, aint it?”

Brother Mayfield turned white as a sheet and backed away. “No.”

“What’s the matter, no friendly greeting?” the man jeered. “No smile and salute? You remember the sign of the Red Hand, don’t you? Twenty years shouldn’t be long enough for you to forget, traitor.”

Guzzle drew his brand new knife. “Who are these clowns?”

“We’re the Red Hand,” the man said. He was roughly the same age as Brother Mayfield but had plenty of scars. Sometime in the past his nose had been broken and not healed right, and his dark hair was shaved so close it was hard to tell the color. The man pointed his sword at Brother Mayfield and said, “All six of us are with the Red Hand. There’s only one way you get to leave, and that’s not by walking away.”

“How did you find me, Staback?” Brother Mayfield asked.

The men came nearer and spread out across the trail. “It wasn’t easy, traitor. We looked for you everywhere after you left. Ships, bars, slums, no trace of you, and here it turns out you found God and went to a monastery. I’d have never guessed it in a million years. But somebody found out, and he left these fliers all over town.”

Staback held up a sheet of paper covered in writing. “I wonder why he used blue ink. You know what it says, traitor? No secrets: Your leaders are keeping the truth from you! The Brotherhood of the Righteous has accepted known criminals into their ranks. Robbers, smugglers and forgers have taken religious vows as if they were law-abiding citizens. They’ve got some names here, traitor, with yours at the top.”

“I had to go, Staback,” Brother Mayfield said. “I couldn’t live with the violence, the hate, the suffering. We were making life miserable for thousand of people and for ourselves. How many of our friends did we bury? How many were left crippled?”

“You don’t get to use the word friends around me!” Staback screamed. “You were my right hand man! I counted on you! When I needed you, when the Red Hands were ready to take over Nolod’s port district and finish off the other gangs, what happens but you ran off. Worse than that, you got a quarter of my men to leave with you. The Red Hands could have controlled the port and gotten rich looting warehouses and ships, selling the goods on the black market, and instead we were pushed off to a stinking corner of Nolod. Friends? You have no friends.”

“Every corner of Nolod stinks,” Guzzle said. “I’ve been there. Not good for bees.”

Brother Mayfield regained his composure fast. “We were monsters on two legs, Staback. Nolod knew constant suffering because of us. I tried to talk to you, but you wouldn’t listen. I saved as many of our brothers as possible, and I would have saved you if I could.”

Staback threw the sheet of paper to the ground. “I didn’t come for a sermon, traitor. I came for your head. You love your God so much, then I’m happy to introduce you to him right now.”

One of Staback’s men threw an ax at Brother Mayfield. Guzzle shouted a warning, but to his amazement, Brother Mayfield slapped the ax out of the air with the palm of his hand and sent it spinning into the forest. A swordsman charged the monk and tried to skewer him. Brother Mayfield used the block of wax as a shield. The sword sunk so deep into it that the blade stuck, and Brother Mayfield twisted the block and wrenched the sword out of the man’s hands. Another man tried to strike the monk with an ax.

Guzzle was used to being overlooked. It came with the territory when you were a goblin. These men were so focused on their target that they forgot all about him. Guzzle ran straight for the man with the ax and kicked him in the shin. It wasn’t a crippling blow, but enough to make the man howl in pain and stagger off.

Staback went after Brother Mayfield. The monk dodged one swing and then a second, losing only a piece of his robe to the furious swings. “I see you ain’t forgotten what I taught you, traitor!”

Brother Mayfield slipped off his backpack and swung it into Staback’s face. The blow knocked him down and left him at the monk’s feet. Another gang member threw an ax at Brother Mayfield. This time he blocked it with his backpack. The ax shattered the ceramic jars in the backpack, but it got stuck in the leather. Brother Mayfield pulled out the ax and looked down at Staback. Man and goblin alike were shocked when he tossed the weapon to the ground.

“I won’t take a life, not even to save my own,” Brother Mayfield said.

Staback got to his feet again. “Then you’re a bigger fool than I thought, and you’re going to be a dead fool.”

Guzzle grabbed Brother Mayfield’s hand and pulled. “Back to my place! Hurry!”

The two ran. The gang members didn’t follow right away, instead recovering their weapons before chasing their prey. Guzzle huffed and puffed from the exertion, but he and the monk reached Guzzle’s house. The goblin climbed over the fence and urged Brother Mayfield to follow.

“You ain’t getting away that easy, traitor!” Staback shouted. “You’re not getting away at all!”

“I’m sorry,” Brother Mayfield told Guzzle as armed men surrounded them.

“I’m not,” the goblin replied.

“No more running away,” Staback said and he raised his sword.

Guzzle sneered and grabbed a beehive. “We didn’t run away. I came here with malicious intentions, you pathetic little man. Let me tell you something no one’s ever understood about me. I don’t raise bees for honey or wax.”

Grinning like a maniac, Guzzle said, “I raise bees to have bees.”

With that Guzzle threw the hive at Staback and struck the man in the chest, killing a few bees in the hive and enraging the rest. Thousands of angry bees swarmed over the gang members. Worse was to come. The other hives emptied out as over a hundred thousand bees poured forth. As Guzzle had said, killing one bee brings more bees to avenge the loss, and they came eager for battle.

“Get down!” Guzzle yelled. He and Brother Mayfield dropped to the ground, and Guzzle covered them both with the sheet of burlap he kept by his hives. They heard angry buzzing and equally angry yells from Staback and his men. Those angry yells turned to panic and then terror. The yells receded into the distance as members of the Red Hands fled for their lives.

Guzzle and Brother Mayfield stayed safe under the burlap for nearly an hour, only daring to venture forth once they were sure the bees had calmed down. They found weapons abandoned around the fence and house. Staback and the rest of the Red Hand he’d brought were long gone. Brother Mayfield looked shaken. Guzzle was exuberant, awed that his bees had proven themselves such a potent weapon for the next time he needed them.

Smiling, Guzzle turned to Brother Mayfield and said, “That went well. What should we do next?”

Brother Mayfield scrubbed obscenities written in tar off the outer walls of the forest shrine. He’d been at the task for hours and still had much left to do, but the hardest part was yet to begin. He poured a bucket of filthy water onto the grass and went to a nearby stream to refill it, returned to the small marble shrine, took a rag, dropped to his knees and began scrubbing off the inexcusable slurs. He’d been at this task since dawn and wouldn’t finish anytime soon.

“Greetings!” a booming voice called out.
Mayfield turned to see a male ogre march down a forest trail to the shrine. The ogre was big, strong, furry and wore leather pants decorated with spiraling markings. He carried no weapons, and with bulging muscles like those didn’t need them. His musky body odor was noticeable from fifty feet away but wasn’t offensive. The ogre smiled and began, “I’m told there is a road near here leading to…oh.”

“Yes, it’s rather a mess,” Brother Mayfield replied.

The ogre peered into the shrine and saw half the walls were dripping wet and the other half were covered in foul lies. Adding to the disgrace, a life sized statue of Saint Angeline had been knocked off its pedestal. The marble statue was exquisite in its detail and so lifelike it seemed to breathe, and thankfully hadn’t been damaged. The ogre turned to Brother Mayfield and demanded, “Who did this?”

“I don’t know. This is the third time the shrine has been defaced, and each time the damage grows worse. Brotherhood of the Righteous properties have been attacked like this across the kingdom. Whoever commits these outrages does so under the cover of darkness.”

Grumbling, the ogre entered the shrine, picked up the statue and placed it back on the pedestal. He took the rag from Brother Mayfield and scrubbed the offensive words off the walls.

“Thank you for righting the statue,” Brother Mayfield said. “I can finish the task.”

“You did your share before I came. The rest is mine.”

Brother Mayfield stood back as the ogre finished. On one hand he was tired and greatly appreciated the chance to rest. On the other hand this was definitely his task, his fault, and having another fix the damage he’d caused was wrong. The ogre finished quickly and turned to face the monk.

“I am on a quest to prove my strength. Ten tasks I swore I would complete. Preventing such outrages from happening again shall be the first. Someone wicked and cowardly did this and will never do it again. This I vow.”

The ogre bowed to Brother Mayfield and disappeared into the forest. The monk had met a few ogres in his life and knew how seriously they took their vows. The problem was in good hands, but it was the monk’s responsibility to fix. He wondered if this was aid from above but quickly dismissed the idea. He’d earned what was happening to him, and he had to correct it.

With this task finished, Brother Mayfield headed back to his nearest apiary. His bees needed little tending outside of the occasional harvest and moving them to new fields when blooms faded, but he feared for their safety. His enemies had grown so foul as to deface a shrine and would think nothing of smashing hives. It would be risky, but if a man was angry enough he could do much damage.

As of late there were many, many angry men.

Brother Mayfield walked down seldom used forest trails to his hives. It wasn’t a long trip to reach them, and he found fourteen conical hives in a fenced off forest glen. Bees filled the air, returning with pollen and nectar or heading out for more. He’d tended these hives for twenty years, watched them grow and divide into new hives, producing rich harvests of honey and wax. The thought they too might suffer on his account was another source of pain.

“There you are,” a familiar voice called out. The monk spotted Guzzle the goblin sitting next to a fencepost. The lavender skinned goblin got up and joined him. Bees flew around Guzzle, some landing briefly on him before leaving. Tended bees were by nature calm, but these ones seemed to recognize Guzzle as a friend.
“Greetings,” Brother Mayfield replied.

“My smoker broke and I came to see if you had a spare one you could live without, but that look on your face says you’ve got your own problems, and big ones.”

“Direct as always, friend.”

Guzzle laughed. “Friend? You know, you’re the only person to call me that.”

“May the day come when many know you by that name.” Brother Mayfield stopped at the fence and rested his hands on the railings. So tired.

“Is this about those jerks who came after you?”

“It is.”

“I took care of them. Problem solved.”

“That attack was only the beginning. Day after week after month my life has grown worse. I struggle to fix what is broken, and I fail.”

Sounding worried, Guzzle asked, “You wanna talk about it? One bee guy to another.”

Brother Mayfield managed a weak smile. He sat on the grass and pressed his back against the fence. “Very well, one apiarist to another. I was born in the city of Nolod.”

“We’re going that far back?”

“Only briefly. My family was poor in a city where only money could secure your future. From my earliest memories I knew despair and the desperate need to improve my lot, but there were no chances for the poor. The best I could hope for was to spend my life toiling for just enough money to survive.

“In my foolishness I looked for an easy way out and joined a gang, the Red Hand. It seemed like the only way to get ahead. Why obey the rules when those rules ensured a lifetime of poverty? Too late I learned the Red Hand was the source of endless suffering. In their service I helped cause that suffering. I came to regret joining them and I found others in the gang who also yearned to escape but were too fearful to try. I convinced them to leave with me, and together we deserted.”

“The Red Hand is toast,” Guzzle said. “Most of their guys got beat up by Julius Craton. No idea why they even tried to fight him.”

“Wise decisions were never their strong point. My problem is how Staback and his friends in the Red Hand found me. Those papers told thousands of men that I and other members of the Brotherhood of the Righteous came from bad backgrounds. I never hid my past, but neither did I proclaim it. Fewer than one in a hundred Brotherhood members are like myself, struggling to undo the damage we’ve done.”

Brother Mayfield looked at Guzzle and tried to fight back his tears. “The Brotherhood saved me, and I may have doomed it. Those papers convinced many that the Brotherhood of the Righteous is nothing but a gang of criminals. They condemn the brotherhood for accepting sinners and say they are villains for doing so. Every day more and more people denounce us.”

“So you’ve got enemies,” Guzzle said. “I’ve got plenty of them, too. Hey, if you do anything then somebody’s gonna hate you for it. Do nothing and people will still hate you.”

“If only I was hated I could deal with it, but good people in the Brotherhood are suffering because of me. Monks, nuns and priests are insulted on the streets. Rocks are thrown at them. Stores refuse our business. Brotherhood properties are vandalized. Just as bad, people in need of aid are too scared to come to us because they fear the Brotherhood can’t protect them anymore. Lord Bryce has openly declared me a menace and that the Brotherhood should be exiled, and all its properties seized and sold at public auction.”

Guzzle was quiet for a second before he took a sheet of paper and short pencil from his pockets. He wrote on it as he said aloud, “Lord Bryce. Is that spelled with an eye or a why?”

“Why.” Brother Mayfield frowned and asked, “Is that your list of enemies?”

“It’s the new one I started after I forgot who the people were on the old one. This time I’m making sure I get their names right.”

“Lord Bryce denounced me, not you.”

“I’m making it my business. I got my sunny disposition because of guys like him. Besides, bee guys stick together.”

“I have spent twenty years atoning for my actions,” Brother Mayfield continued. “I sought to help those in need, to make this world a better place, if only in some small measure. Twenty years has proven to be not enough. How much longer? How much more must I do to make right what I did wrong? How many more suffer because of my sins? I am at a loss what to do, my friend. No work is enough, no words reach those who hate me.”

“This is why I hurt people and laugh,” Guzzle replied. “Look, most goblins think whatever happened yesterday isn’t worth worrying about since you can’t change it. You screwed up twenty years ago and you fixed it, doing way more than my people would have, so you’re in the clear. Sounds like the people who don’t like you are doing the same stuff that you’re ashamed of doing way back when, so they don’t have a leg to stand on. And this Lord Bryce guy is trying to grab your stuff, not help people who got hurt, so he’s even more of a jerk.”

Guzzle stood up and helped Brother Mayfield to his feet. “You’re going to get through this. It’ll hurt, always does, but keep going and you’ll come out okay in the end. And the guys giving you grief? They’ll get what’s coming to them and then some.”

“Divine justice?”

“I was thinking petty revenge, but you be you.”

The steady buzz of countless bees was soon joined by the breaking of branches and trampling of brush. Brother Mayfield and Guzzle spun around and saw three goblins burst out of the forest and collapse at their feet.

“I didn’t see this coming,” Guzzle told Brother Mayfield. “You?”

Rother Mayfield helped up one of the goblins with gray skin and carrying a wood cane. “No, but somehow it doesn’t surprise me. Good sir, what ails you?”

“Good?” the gray skinned goblin with white hair asked. He brushed his ridiculously long eyebrows from away from his eyes.

“He says that a lot,” Guzzle told the gray goblin and helped up a purple skinned goblin wearing a blue trench coat.

An overweight goblin wearing ragged clothes got up on his own despite his gasps for breath. “I think we lost them.”

“Lost who?” Brother Mayfield asked.

“Idiots with swords,” the gray skinned goblin replied. “Whole bunch of them.”

The color drained from Brother Mayfield’s face. “Not again.”

The gray skinned goblin dusted himself off. “Don’t worry, you’re not who they’re after.”

“Hey, you’re Little Old Dude,” Guzzle told the gray skinned goblin. “You’re famous. Infamously famous.”

“Which is why I’m taking this personally,” Little Old Dude replied. “Decades of mischief and mayhem, training the most dangerous goblins, and these morons are trying to kill me for something I never did. It’s insulting.”

“Trying to kill us,” the overweight goblin corrected him.

Little Old Dude waved his cane. “Details. I had nothing to do with the robbery at Firestorm Keep. Proud of it, but innocent for a change. Somehow these fools think I was behind it because of these stupid papers.”

Fear turned into outrage, and Brother Mayfield demanded, “What papers?”

All four goblins looked surprised by his sudden change of tone. The blue goblin said, “The ones pasted to every wall, wagon and farm animal for five hundred miles. We didn’t pay them much attention until they started talking about us.”

“Papers with writing in blue ink?” the monk asked.

“You’ve seen them?” the blue goblin asked.

“I was destroyed by them!”

“Sensitive topic,” Guzzle told the other goblins.

“We’ve got that in common,” the overweight goblin replied.

“Soldiers from Firestorm Keep chased us instead of whoever pulled off the caper,” Little Old Dude added. “I’m not sure if that was the plan of whoever’s behind this, but a fortune in gold bullion is gone for good, and if those men catch up with us so are we.”

“Firestorm Keep is in the Land of Forthosia,” Brother Mayfield said. “Men have chased you that far?”

“Soldiers from Forthosia were after us for a few hundred miles,” Little Old Dude said. “After we lost them, people who think we’ve got the cash took up the chase so they could kill us and take it. Honestly, what would a goblin want with gold when there’s nowhere we could spend it? It’s idiot thinking like this that makes my life harder.”

“They’re over here!” a distant voice called out.

“Time to leave,” Little Old Dude announced. He shook Brother Mayfield’s hand and said, “Pleasure meeting you and good luck with your own problems.”

“I see them!” another man yelled from the opposite direction.

Scores of armed men poured out of the forest all around them. They carried swords and shields, and they wore leather armor that was befouled in ways Brother Mayfield had trouble understanding. There were stains from dung, tar, five colors of splattered paint, and some men had roadkill glued to them. They smelled far worse than the ogre Brother Mayfield had met, like a mix of spoiled milk, aged manure and rancid grease. But nothing could match the hatred of their expressions, their faces twisted into scowls, grinding what few teeth they still had. They looked half crazed and twitched around their lips.

“You’re going to die!” one yelled. He pointed his rusty and nicked sword at Little Old Dude. “I’ll kill you and every goblin I see from this day on!”

Little Old Dude pulled on his hair. “I don’t have the gold! I never had it! I told you that the first time we met! You, monk, do you see me carrying a hundred pounds of bullion?”

“I don’t think the three of you are strong enough to carry half that much,” Brother Mayfield replied.

“Gee, thanks,” the overweight goblin said.

“I don’t want the gold anymore,” the filthy swordsman said. “I want revenge for everything you did to us for the last two weeks. I’m going to cut you all to pieces, and you know what? I wish I could do it a hundred times, listening to your cries over and over.”

Brother Mayfield listened to this monstrous man and a terrible rage welled up in him. This wretched creature had been chasing innocent goblins, plotting to kill them for treasure when everyone knew goblins didn’t value gold. He was a murderous fool, and while he had clearly suffered for attacking the goblins, Little Old Dude and his fellow goblins hadn’t used lethal force. Men, elves and dwarfs would have done so in a heartbeat. In their own way the goblins had shown mercy, humiliating rather than killing their foes. And this was how that mercy was repaid.

As those horrible men howled and charged, the rage in Brother Mayfield’s heart left him. It was quite surprising. These men were so unstable they were likely going to kill him as well. Why did he feel so calm? And then he felt the certainty there was someone standing behind him. He heard a voice no one else did, and he did exactly what he was told.

“Enough,” Brother Mayfield announced, and hundreds of thousands his bees poured forth from their hives, their buzzing deafening. Guzzle, Little Old Dude and his two fellow goblins drew closer to Brother Mayfield, and the pack of vicious killers cried out in terror as they backed away. The bees formed a thick ring as they circled around the monk and goblins.

“Your lives have been wasted with greed, hatred and stupidity,” Brother Mayfield said, his voice clear even over the sound of his bees. “You have been punished frequently for your failing and learned nothing, changed nothing. This time I suggest you spend your recovery in self reflection.”

“Oh,” the swordsman said. “Oh no!”

The ring of bees shot out, swarming around the swordsmen. They fled screaming, dropping their swords and shields as they tried to slap away the bees. The goblins watched in awe as their enemies ran away from bees, each just under an inch long, but in such numbers they couldn’t be stopped.

“You didn’t tell me he could do that,” Little Old Dude said to Guzzle.

“I think it’s a recent development.”

“Leave their weapons here,” Brother Mayfield ordered. “Let the wood handles rot into dirt and steel blades rust away to powder, that none may ever be hurt by them.”

The bees returned and circled Brother Mayfield before flying to their hives. At peace for the first time in weeks, he gazed out over his hives, and that was when he saw a piece of paper glued to the side of a hive. Why was it here where no one save the monk could see it? Bees were chewing the paper off, but enough of it remained for Brother Mayfield to read.

‘No secrets! Your leaders are hiding the truth from you! Tristan Wayfarer, son of a rich Skitherin merchant family, fled his homeland with nothing but a serving girl and resettled in Oceanview Kingdom. Why has this man abandoned the riches of his homeland? What does he seek to gain among strangers?’

The paper was filled with more insinuations of evil with the flimsiest of evidence. Brother Mayfield had seen many such papers over the last few months, each one urging readers to fear, hate and doubt their neighbors.

“This must stop,” the monk said firmly, “lest those who cannot defend themselves are placed in harm’s way.”