Arthur Daigle's Blog - Posts Tagged "trolls"
William Bradshaw and Urban Problems chapter 1
Chapter 1
Will walked down a muddy road running through fields and light forests, and for the millionth time he wished that someone on the world of Other Place had invented antiperspirant. Deodorant would be nice, too. He’d come up with a long list of things someone should have been clever enough to come up with, and antiperspirant was on the top.
Will was a young man with brown hair and gray eyes, and reasonably fit. His clothes included black pants, a green shirt, a cape that was black on the outside and green on the inside, a black hat with a green ribbon in the brim, and black boots. Normally his outfit included a black vest and black gloves with green fingers, but he’d left these at home because of the heat. In addition to a bronze fire scepter and bag of vegetables he’d grown in a small garden, he carried a hollow gourd filled with water. The gourd held almost a gallon, and although it was still morning, Will could drink it by afternoon.
In theory it was October, although you’d never guess it. There were no cool days and chilly nights in a gentle lead in to winter. Summer was being a very poor sport about the whole ‘changing of the seasons’ business, and August’s heat had never left. Mornings started warm and muggy, with afternoons hot enough to fry an egg and so humid it felt like he was swimming instead of walking. Sweat plastered Will’s clothes to his body.
Will left the Kingdom of the Goblins and headed for the nearest human town. Partly that was to get food, but there was another reason. He needed time away from his friends and followers, and this was the only way to get it.
His goblin followers were short, stupid and a bit crazy, and no two looked alike. Their skin color, height and weight varied astonishingly. Many had exaggerated features, such as large eyes or ears, big feet or arms longer than normal. Some even had stunted wings or an extra arm. Goblins were one of the most despised creatures on Other Place. They weren’t violent, but they were rude, dirty and troublesome. Setting bizarre traps was their favorite past time, with this year’s Most Convoluted Trap Award going to a design that catapulted victims into a pile of cow manure.
Will’s thoughts were drawn off his problems when he heard rustling in a patch of bushes. His usual goblin bodyguards that followed him when he went for meals were busy, leaving him on his own. Will froze and reached for his scepter, but his concern was unnecessary. It was just an older man driving an oxcart. The oxcart was loaded with sheaves of wheat, and the ox pulled it slower than Will could walk.
The farmer tipped his hat and smiled. “Morning.”
“Hi,” Will said. The locals were a friendly bunch that sympathized with Will’s predicament. They only dealt with goblins on rare occasions, whereas his hands were constantly full. The men also knew the good things Will had done since coming to Other Place and appreciated his efforts.
The farmer saw Will’s water gourd and smiled. “Say, you mind lending a drink to someone in need?”
“Sure.” Will tried to hand him the gourd, but the farmer shook his head and pointed at the ox.
“Not me! He’s the one doing all the work.”
Will reluctantly put the gourd in front of the ox. The animal lowered its head into the gourd and slurped up the water, even licking out the inside. The farmer said, “Thanks. We’ve had plenty of rain, but it’s still hard keeping the old boy watered. He loses a gallon an hour when it’s this hot.”
“Him and me both,” Will replied. The farmer laughed and left Will to continue to town. It wasn’t far and he should make it before it got much hotter. He could also refill the gourd before heading back to his kingdom.
His kingdom. It sounded impressive, but it wasn’t. Will was originally from Earth before the law firm of Cickam, Wender and Downe tricked him into become King of the Goblins. The only city in the kingdom had been a wreck when Will first saw it, and now was almost entirely destroyed by the goblins themselves. There was no farming or ranching. Once the land had thriving iron mines operated by dwarfs, but that ended ninety years ago when the last speck of ore was dug out. Waste from those mines had devastated the kingdom. And tourism? Ha! Only the desperate came, and they didn’t stay long if they could help it. The Kingdom of the Goblins was dirt poor and would remain so for generations to come.
In spite of this Will had come to see value in the goblins, if not their kingdom. They were stupid and a bit crazy, but he’d seen lots of stupidity on Earth and among the races of Other Place. And goblins had virtues if you looked hard enough. They weren’t cruel, and he’d even seen them take in orphaned children in a city far away. They weren’t greedy, with most showing no interest in money. They weren’t ambitious and didn’t aspire to rule empires and subjugate others. As far as Will was concerned, that put them ahead of a lot of people.
Will saw the town up ahead on the road. It was a pleasant place with a hundred buildings clustered around an inn and blacksmith shop. Will came here for his meals and to spend time with other humans. The town had no name, and for tax reasons pretended it was located in Will’s kingdom. Residents were kind and he returned the favor.
“We meet at last,” a melodious male voice said. Startled, he spun around and grabbed his fire scepter, only to find himself facing a male elf. Will didn’t see any cover the elf could have been hiding behind, and he was sure he hadn’t heard anyone approach. The elf smiled and raised his hands. “I assure you there’s no need for that. I’m quite tame.”
Will lowered his scepter but held onto it. “I hope you’ll forgive me for being jumpy, but lots of people have tried to kill me. Sneaking up on me isn’t nice.”
The elf bowed his head. “My apologies. I should have realized a man with as many enemies as you have wouldn’t like unannounced visitors.”
Will took a moment to study the elf. He was as tall as Will but thinner, and had pointed ears common to the race. His hair was turquoise blue and arranged in an elegant style. The elf’s clothes drew his notice the most, for the stylish silk garments were dyed blue and studded with sapphires easily worth hundreds of gold coins. Tasteful silver rings and a jade and silver armband finished the display.
The elf said, “Allow me to introduce myself. I am known as True Eyes, as my full name would take too long to recite. I am an ambassador of King Viliamorous Trathanic, ruler of the elves, the one true heir to the ancient Elf Empire, he whose ancestors defeated the Etherium Empire, he whom all call wise and just, he who—”. The elf noticed Will’s disbelieving expression and stopped. “His full title goes on like that for ten minutes, but you’re a busy man.”
“Okay,” Will began, “I’m assuming you’re here on business, even if I can’t figure out for the life of me what you want.”
“You do yourself a disservice! Few of the lesser races have accomplished what you have. You nearly approach an elf in competence and ability. Winning your war with the human king Kervol Ket was almost enough to draw my King’s attention.”
Will had experience with elves and their overwhelming egos. Elves had near superhuman dexterity and were dangerous in a fight, but their sense of superiority made it hard to deal with them. In ancient days elves had ruled almost all of Other Place, and they believed it should be that way again.
“Indeed, His Majesty was impressed with how you dealt with the Staff of Skulls,” True Eyes continued. “Your defeat of the Eternal Army was equally astounding, although I must say my King felt slighted that you didn’t include him in your endeavor.”
Will had stopped the Eternal Army the previous winter, burying those immortal psychopaths under thousands of tons of rock and dirt. But the job had been too big for him and the goblins, and he’d needed help from Kervol Ket (who’d sort of forgiven him) and King Gate of the trolls.
Not wanting to offend, Will explained, “We were on a tight schedule.”
True Eyes smiled, but there was a hint of insincerity when he spoke. “Yes, there is rarely time to do things properly in emergencies. Moving on, your offensive against the human billionaire Quentin Peck particularly interested my King. That rascal was deeply involved with the Yelinid Banking Cartel, renegade elves who don’t recognize his authority and supremacy. It saddened the King to learn that their poor judgment allowed Peck to discomfort you.”
“Discomfort me?” Will asked. “He tried to kill me!”
“Yet you stand before me looking quite healthy,” True Eyes noted. “Your accomplishments are all the greater considering the limited resources and low quality manpower you had. Few have matched your deeds, and none using goblins.”
While Will recognized his friends’ limitations, he didn’t like people disrespecting them. Gritting his teeth, he said, “They can do a lot when you give them a chance.”
True Eyes took a silver tube from his belt and removed a scroll from it. “So it seems. My King sees it as his duty to support the few leaders among the lesser races who prove themselves worthy. He sent me to arrange a formal declaration of friendship between our kingdoms. Such an offer would include financial assistance, diplomatic support, land development and the services of elf wizards, widely held to be the greatest of all races in their mastery of magic.”
Will took the scroll from True Eyes and unrolled it. On the face of it the offer was tempting. Will had been in trouble often since becoming King of the Goblins, and the list of people he could count on for help was a short one. Still, he was suspicious and wanted to read the declaration in detail. The long vellum scroll was covered in fanciful decorations and gold leaf along the borders, but what concerned him most was that it was written entirely in elven.
“We have a slight problem here,” Will told the elf. He pointed at writing that was both beautiful and incomprehensible. “I can’t read a word of this.”
“I see your concern,” True Eyes said. “I beg your forgiveness. Human kings of this world learn written and spoken elven at an early age, a sign of respect for our culture. But you are no more from this world than the kings who ruled here before you. My humblest apologies, but this is not the impediment you think.”
Will handed the scroll back. “I’m kind of wary about legally binding papers, especially ones I can’t read.”
True Eyes put an arm around Will’s shoulders and smiled like a used car salesman trying to reel in a customer. “Allow me to correct this oversight. I would be only too happy to translate the declaration for you.”
That didn’t sound much better. Will didn’t trust the elf to give an honest translation, but if he signed it he’d be trapped into following the contract whether he understood it or not. Thinking fast, he said, “That won’t be necessary. I have a magic mirror that reads elven just fine. Her name is Gladys, and I’m sure she’d be tickled pink to help.”
True Eyes tried to steer Will off the road and into town. “Ah, but could she understand the intricacies of diplomatic terminology, and the subtitles of courtly language? I take it from the early hour that you are on your way to breakfast? I would be delighted to translate the declaration while you dine. You would have a complete understanding of it within the hour regardless of the language barrier.”
“You swine!” someone behind them screamed. Will and True Eyes turned to see another elf marching down the road toward them. This elf, another male, was as well dressed as True Eyes, but the fashion was different. His clothes were dyed royal purple, and he favored gold and ruby jewelry. His expression set him apart as well, for his face was beet red and he wore a look of outrage. “You gutter filth, conniving, treacherous oaf!”
Will rubbed his eyes. “I hate starting the day like this.”
“Sir, my insults were not meant for you,” the new elf declared. He bowed and said, “My name is Perfect Strike when I don’t have five minutes for the full and correct version, but the elf beside you should be called mud!”
True Eyes scowled. “I fail to see what business a lesser elf like you has here.”
“Lesser?” Perfect Strike bellowed.
“Pay him no mind,” True Eyes told Will. “He is descended from traitors who deserted the Elf King. They are little more than bandits.”
“Lies!” Perfect Strike yelled. He was drawing attention from farmers, but he ignored them. Pointing an accusing finger at True Eyes, he replied. “The so called ‘Elf King’ is a tyrant sprung from a line of tyrants, and has no right to his throne. His poor rule drove off my ancestors and hundreds of others to start anew in distant lands. We formed the Versile Consortium, and are respected merchants and makers of fine goods.”
“Go count your money, peddler,” True Eyes retorted.
Will tried to slip away. “You two have a lot to talk about. I’ll leave you to it.”
Perfect Strike marched up to Will and said, “Listen to him not! He seeks to draw you in with lies and trick you into becoming his King’s slave.”
“Partner!” True Eyes retorted. “He would be a partner and trusted ally.”
“I just want some breakfast,” Will said.
“You lie, ‘Cross Eyed’!” Perfect Strike retorted. He took Will’s arm and said, “You can’t trust him. He knew I was coming with a proposed alliance between you and the Versile Consortium, and he sabotaged my mission! I intended to bring a trusted human servant of my family and assign her to your service as proof of our good intent. Instead he forced her onto a ship going out to sea! We’ve no idea where she is.”
“You mean the floozy you sent to seduce him?” True Eyes replied. “Yes, I put a stop to that!”
More farmers gathered to watch, but the elves seemed blind to it. Perfect Strike snapped, “She’s not a floozy! She’s a beloved family retainer.”
True Eyes leaned in close to Will. “That means she tied his shoes.”
“That does it!” Perfect Strike lived up to his name with a punch that knocked True Eyes to the ground. He jumped and tried to land on his prone enemy, but True Eyes rolled out of the way and shot to his feet. He kicked Perfect Strike hard enough to spin the purple clad elf in a circle. Perfect Strike recovered quickly and landed two lightning fast punches into True Eyes’ stomach, doubling him over.
Will shook his head and walked to the town’s inn. With any luck he could eat breakfast and get out of here while those two were clowning around. Chances were both of them wanted to involve him into some kind of scheme.
The inn was a pleasant place to visit in cold weather since the kitchen generated a lot of heat along with good food. That heat plus the unseasonable weather made conditions inside uncomfortable. The innkeeper had opened all the windows and propped open the door, which helped a little, but the inn’s large common room was still hot.
Will sat down at a table near the door and was soon visited by the innkeeper, a bear of a man with brown grizzled hair and bulging muscles like a weightlifter. The innkeeper nodded to Will and said, “It’s oatmeal and hardboiled eggs today.”
“Thanks.” Will handed the bag of vegetables to the innkeeper. “Here.”
The innkeeper accepted the bag, but said, “I don’t mind the food, but your king contract allows you to eat for free.”
“I know, but it’s not fair that I always come to the same place for the free food. I ought to give something in return, even if it’s turnips.”
The innkeeper left while Will studied his king contract. Will had gotten the infernal document when he was tricked into being King of the Goblins, binding him to both the job and kingdom. The contract was tens of thousands of lines long and written in words so small it was hard to read. He could go home if he found a loophole not covered in its countless lines of fine print.
The problem was there had been 47 other Kings of the Goblins who had escaped their contracts. Every time one got away, Cickam, Wender and Downe made the next contract harder to escape. It didn’t help that the cursed thing was actually growing and adding new clauses to keep him on the job. This included such bizarre terms as Article 105, subsection 2, paragraph 11, line 4: The King of the Goblins can’t escape his job by destroying the kingdom with a giant radioactive monster. We paid him off and he won’t help you.
The innkeeper brought Will his breakfast, a simple but filling meal. Will ate slowly and looked out the windows from time to time to see how the fight was progressing. The two elves were gracefully beating each other senseless. True Eyes leaped over a farmer and tried to kick Perfect Strike, but Perfect Strike grabbed him by the ankles and swung him into a ditch. Between attacks the two shouts at one another in elven. While Will couldn’t speak the language, judging by their tone he was pretty sure they were swearing.
A rancher watching the fight nudged a farmer and said, “A copper piece on the one in blue?”
The farmer grinned. “You’re on.”
Two farmers joined Will at the inn. The first said, “Someone said those two yahoos were fighting over you.”
“Yeah, that’s diplomacy for you,” Will said as he ate.
“We heard there were floozies involved,” the second farmer said.
“Just one, and she couldn’t make it.”
The first farmer patted Will on the shoulder. “Tough break, pal.”
The farmers left to watch the fight, leaving Will alone with his food. He finished the meal and leaned back in his chair.
The innkeeper stayed by the bar and watched Will. “Most times you hurry back after eating. This week you’ve stayed here as long as you can. Pretty sure you’re not here for the ambiance.”
“You have a nice place,” Will told him, then looked down. “I’m not in a rush to get back. You see the goblins are having a civil war.”
“It’s over cheese, right?”
Surprised, Will sat up straight. “How did you know?”
“It’s happened before,” the innkeeper replied. “I’ve seen it two, three times. Can’t blame you for wanting to stay out of it.”
“I can’t get them to stop,” Will said. “Most of the time they at least try to follow orders, but they’ve broken into factions and are pounding away at each other with sofa cushions and pillows. I’d be appalled if they were actually hurting each other.”
The conversation ended when True Eyes flew screaming through an open window to land on Will’s table. He unrolled the scroll and said, “If I could just point out the benefits detailed on line eight.”
Perfect Strike reached through the window, grabbed True Eyes by the heels and dragged him outside to continue their fight. The innkeeper stomped over and shouted, “I’m trying to run a business here!”
“Many apologies,” True Eyes replied before tossing a gold coin through the window. The innkeeper plucked it out of the air and stuffed it in his pocket before turning his attention back to Will.
“It doesn’t look it, but things are getting better. Goblins haven’t been much trouble since you took over, and most of their mischief is done on people who deserve it. You’ve got a tough row to hoe, no question, but you’ve done well so far and I think you can manage this.”
“Thanks,” Will told him. He left the inn and refilled his gourd at a well before heading back to his kingdom. The elves were still pounding each other, and he’d just as soon be gone before either of them won. The winner might follow him, but probably not into a war zone.
The walk back was uneventful. A tiny white skinned pixie threw pebbles at him, but it left after he swatted it with his hat. The real problems started once he crossed the border.
The kingdom had healed from the damage done so long ago. Intensive mining had once reduced the land to rocks and weeds, but now there were young trees, lush grasses and shrubs growing alongside dirt trails. In some places there were canyons, streams, pools and other attractive features.
There were new additions to the landscape, including muddy trenches, poorly built wood barricades and makeshift wood forts, all built to goblin proportions. Goblins had thrown up these flimsy defenses when the fighting first started, building more each day. Will could step over most of the obstacles, but he had to keep an eye out for traps his followers doubtlessly had set. The sounds of battle weren’t far off.
“Cheddar!” a horde of goblins screamed as they ran out of the woods and headed for the trenches. This bunch wore miniature versions of WW I German infantry uniforms complete with spiked helmet, and they were armed with pillows.
“Gouda!” the defending goblins screamed. They poured out of the forts and manned the trenches. These goblins wore rags and cast off human garments, with throw pillows as their weapon of choice. They included warrior and digger goblins, but since the fighting started they’d shown little interest in their chosen profession and were dedicated to this idiotic conflict. The two factions plowed into one another in a vicious no holds barred pillow war.
Knowing he was going to fail, Will tried for the third time that day to end the war. “Guys, cut it out! Stop fighting!”
The goblins ignored him in their unrelenting desire to defeat their accursed enemies. The fact that they hadn’t been enemies last week was unimportant, or that they weren’t actually doing damage. Goblin fought goblin, and feathers flew as pillows split open.
Will got down in the trenches and pulled two goblins apart. “I’m serious, stop it!”
This time his words had some effect. The goblins separated and looked at him curiously. A cross-eyed goblin with the Gouda faction asked, “Boss, you’re not with these cheddar heads, are you? You said you weren’t taking sides.”
“I’m not,” he said. “Listen, guys, this is pointless.”
“Most of what we do is pointless,” a red skinned goblin replied.
“That’s true,” Will admitted. “But this is really pointless. You guys fought side by side against some the worst threats on Other Place. You should be working together. Think of the amazing things you could be doing instead of fighting.”
A goblin scratched his head and asked, “Did you drink expired milk again?”
“I’m serious! You guys built the biggest maze on the planet. But as long as you’re fighting each other you can’t make it bigger.”
That did it. The goblins loved their maze, a three-story nightmare of blind corners, hidden rooms and traps so devious that the bravest men dared not enter. Invoking it made the goblins look on another with sympathy. They shook hands, and some hugged.
“The King is right,” the cross-eyed goblin said. “We’ve been so busy fighting there’s been no work done of the maze all week. What were we thinking?”
“Gouda and Cheddar should be allies,” the red skinned goblin announced to cheers. “Together we can make the maze even greater than before, once we’ve taken out the Parmesan faction!”
Goblins shouted, “Hurray!”
“No!” Will shouted back, but it was too late. The two hordes of goblins ran off in giddy anticipation of another fight. Will shook his head and headed for the Goblin City.
The name was a lie. There had been a poorly built dwarf city there at one point, and the city walls and tall gatehouse were still standing, but the insides of the city were gone, razed to make room for expanding the maze. A brick strewn wasteland had replaced the ramshackle buildings, and it would stay that way until the goblins ended their idiotic conflict and got back to work.
Once Will entered through the gatehouse, he heard a squeaky voice ask, “Hey, Will, what’s the score?”
“I’m zero for four at stopping the war today, Domo,” Will replied.
Domo was a short goblin with gray skin and ratty black hair. He wore yellow robes and carried a red walking stick made from an enemy flagpole. Domo was a good friend of Will’s and the closest the goblins had ever come to producing their own leader. Normally they wouldn’t follow him, but in emergencies they’d consider it. Domo was smarter than most goblins and could see how stupid their civil war was, and he was content to wait it out on a pile of rubble that used to be a tollbooth.
But he wasn’t alone in the ruined city. Not far away was Vial, leader of the lab rat guild. Vial had short red hair over his entire body and wore a lab coat, pants, shoes and glasses. He looked harmless enough, like a warped version of a university professor, but he was potentially the most dangerous goblin alive.
Vial and his followers were alchemists, which was as close to chemists as the people of Other Place had ever come. His specialty was explosives, although he also made glue, cement, instant webbing and chemically generated light. Like Domo, he was smarter than most goblins, but he was no less crazy. He considered alchemy a sport that required audience participation, and if the audience was accidentally blown up, well, they knew the risks. Vial was getting the hang of alchemy, but on a bad day he was still a threat to everyone around him.
“Ah, My Liege, so good to see you,” Vial said. He waddled over to Will and handed him a paper. “I wish to discuss a matter with you. We both have considerable free time due to this war. Namely, you have no interest in joining and all the factions have refused my help.”
“There’s a first: goblins making an intelligent decision,” Domo quipped.
“I find the choice baffling,” Vial replied. “I could settle this dispute within hours. But their loss is our gain. I have developed plans for a new and most impressive explosive I call Bitter Betty. I’ve worked out most of the design problems—”
Worried, Will asked, “Most?”
“And with just a few ingredients I can produce a working copy,” Vial continued. “The destructive potential is astounding, and should be highly entertaining.”
“I don’t want explosions,” Will replied. “Things are bad enough as it is.”
“This is nothing,” Domo replied. “We’ve had plenty of civil wars before. The guys get to talking about which cheese is best, angry words fly and they break up into factions. It usually lasts a week or so before they lose interest.”
Smiling, Will asked, “So this is going to get better on its own?”
Domo picked dirt from between his toes. “It’s true. The last civil war happened during the rein of King Gideon the Blackmailer and ended in ten days.”
“Do I want to know how he got that nickname?” Will asked.
“He turned back an invading human army by threatening to read out loud love letters from the human king to his mistress,” Vial replied.
“Before that there was a five day civil war during the rein of King Valerie the Irate,” Domo added.
Will turned slowly to look at Domo. “King? Valerie is a girl’s name.”
Domo shrugged. “She made the same point quite often, but she had a king contract, Will, same as you. Her title wasn’t going to change for something as unimportant as gender.”
“Those were confusing times,” Vial admitted.
“We’ll be safe this close to the maze,” Domo told Will. “The guys won’t risk damaging it. The fight should be over across the kingdom in another day or two. The Swiss and Blue Cheese factions defeated the Limburger faction this morning, and the Cheddar faction should beat the Parmesan faction by tonight. Mind you, the Brie faction retreated into the hills and vowed to make revolution, but I figure they’ll forget what they were doing and wander off in a few hours.”
A horde of goblins ran screaming by the city gate on their way to a battle. Will recognized the goblin leading them and called out, “Niff!”
Mr. Niff screeched to a halt and the other goblins piled into him. Once they sorted themselves out, Mr. Niff ran over and smiled at Will. He had blue skin and beady eyes, and he dressed in black. His trademark knife was tucked in his belt in favor of a long cushion. Mr. Niff was a brave goblin ever ready to jump into battle whether or not it was smart (or even necessary) to do so. “Hey, boss. We’re on our way to take on those Colby lovers.”
“I haven’t seen you since this mess started,” Will said. “Which side are you on?”
“You know, we’ve changed sides so many times I’m not sure.” Mr. Niff scratched his head and looked at the goblins following him. “Who are we with today?”
The goblins shouted every possible answer, no two of them the same.
“Gouda!”
“Brie!”
“The King of Spain!”
None of that bothered Mr. Niff in the least. “I’ll get back to you on that.”
Just then ten goblins ran out of the nearby woods. They flung something circular, white and lacy at Mr. Niff and his followers, and the goblins screamed and ran for cover. One goblin was hit and went down, but Mr. Niff pulled off the lacy projectile and dragged the goblin to safety. He shook his fist at the attacking goblins and shouted, “There are rules! No throwing doilies!”
Will watched the goblins run off. Dispirited and more than a little confused, he sat down on the rock pile next to Domo. “This is impossible! The guys have made big improvements and done amazing things, but they go back to being stupid at the drop of a hat. Every time I think I’ve helped them improve they slide back into bad habits.”
“He works a dozen miracles and wants more,” Domo said to Vial.
Vial walked over and patted Will on the hand. “Have no fear. The situation isn’t that bad, and should recover without your intervention. Please note the goblins can’t bother you much while they are involved in this foolishness. If it helps, try to think of this as a vacation.”
Will waved his hands over the brick piles that had once been homes. “It’s not just that. We don’t even have a city anymore! It wasn’t much to begin with and now it’s gone. The tunnels and caves under the city are intact, but the guys didn’t leave one building standing so they could expand the maze. Now they aren’t even doing that.”
“Yes,” Domo said dryly, “all those dirty, ugly, poorly made buildings that haven’t been repaired in decades are gone. Whatever shall we do without them?”
Will opened his mouth for an angry response, but he paused and raised one eyebrow. “When you put it like that I’m not so mad.”
Domo leaned over to Vial and whispered, “He’s just sore because he misses his fairy godmother.”
Vial smiled and nodded. “Ah yes, Miss Lydia Lajcek, our favorite fairy godmother, who Our Liege gave a fortune to and now doesn’t know where to find her. He really should have gotten a receipt for the cash.”
“Don’t go there!” Will warned them. The money didn’t bother him, but he’d been getting along well with Lydia before his contract forcibly separated them. Losing his best chance at love made this situation harder to deal with. Feeling a bit silly, he asked, “Did she, uh—”
“You didn’t get any mail from Lydia today, or this week or this month,” Domo responded. “It’s just the usual death threats, hate mail and catalogs for things you don’t need and can’t afford.”
“I feel the home Spam making kit had potential,” Vial said.
Looking more sympathetic than usual, Domo told him, “I know things are a mess, Will, and your love life being dead on arrival can’t help. I don’t like it any more than you do, and it’s going to stay bad for a long time. Look on the bright side, it can’t get worse.”
“Don’t say that!” Will shouted. “It can always get worse. My life is proof of that. Back home my biggest problem was finding a job. Now half the kingdoms on Other Place want me dead and two groups of elves are fighting over which one gets to manipulate me.”
Both goblins’ mouths dropped in surprise. Domo found his voice first. “Elves want you?”
“Two of them were waiting for me when I went for breakfast,” Will replied.
“It makes sense, in a highly suspect way,” Vial replied. “You won several wars, making you a valuable tool in their court intrigues. The elf faction that makes you their pawn would have significant advantages over their rivals.”
Domo grabbed Will’s hand and cried out, “Tell me you didn’t sign anything!”
“Oh come on! I’m dumb, but I’m not that dumb.” Will arranged the debris under him into a more comfortable pile. “I left them going at each other’s throats, but that’s temporary. I figure we should expect more visits in the future. What worries me is what they’ll do when I say no. If they think I’m a useful pawn, they might see me as a threat if I’m not on their side.”
“Sort of yes and sort of no,” Domo replied. “Elves don’t see anyone from other races as a threat no matter how powerful or successful they are, but they do see you as a useful tool. If they can’t have you they might kill you so other elf factions can’t have you.”
“There’s another problem to worry about,” Will said. “Some days it’s two steps forward and one step back. It doesn’t help that I don’t know about a lot of these problems until they come up, like that business with the elves or this civil war. I can only guess what’s next.”
**********
A thousand miles away, Thaddeus Macmillan sailed the open ocean in his boat, joined by his three grown sons, his cousin and nephew. They gathered around their nets in dismay. It was hot and they were tired from hours of work, but that’s not what bothered them. They’d been fishing for days in what should have been rich waters. The pickings were slim, and the things they caught barely qualified as fish. Every catch had been miserable, and today’s haul was the worst yet.
Thaddeus bent down and plucked a fish from the net. Holding it up, he stared at its large white eyes and gapping mouth filled with needle-like teeth. Brushing gray hair from his brow, Thaddeus declared, “That’s a new one on me.”
His nephew sniffed the fish and wrinkled his nose. “Smells awful. Uncle, I don’t think we can eat it.”
“We can’t,” Thaddeus said, and he looked behind his boat. The wood boat was thirty feet long, half as long as the sea serpents in its wake. A pod of ten of the beasts was following him like a shadow, as they always did when he put out to sea. There was an age-old rule that fishing boats throw overboard any part of their catch they didn’t want. Sea serpents ate the waste, and in return protected the boats from other predators. This trip they’d gotten more than half the catch.
“We can’t go home with so little,” one of his sons said.
“I know,” Thaddeus replied. “You boys put out the net. Maybe we’ll have better luck this time.”
Thaddeus was about to toss the disgusting fish overboard when he saw two smaller sea serpents swimming up to the boat. They were only six feet long, but in their own way were more dangerous than their parents. He grimaced and said, “Brace yourselves, boys. Their young ones are coming.”
Thaddeus’ cousin rolled his eyes. “I can deal with them trying to steal the catch, but I can’t take the puns!”
The two sea serpents came up to the boat and lifted up their heads. They had large eyes and pale blue scales, with short fins on the tops of their heads. One said in a child-like voice, “Whatcha doing?”
“Fishing,” Thaddeus told the young sea serpent. “You two go back to your pa.”
The second sea serpent tried to grab one of the few cod they’d caught. Thaddeus’ nephew pushed it back gently with an oar. “That’ll be enough of that.”
“I like cod,” the second one said innocently.
“So do we,” Thaddeus retorted.
The first sea serpent smiled and asked, “Hey, what do you call paint made from the hooves of a boar that liked candy?”
Thaddeus resigned himself to the inevitably bad punch line. “I don’t know.”
“Pig-mint.”
The entire crew groaned in agony. Thaddeus turned to the youngster and asked, “What does your pa do when you tell him puns like that?”
“He tells me to talk to you,” the sea serpent said cheerfully.
Thaddeus bit back a sharp reply and tossed the ugly fish to the sea serpent. “Make yourself useful and ask your pa if he’s ever seen a fish like this.”
The youngster took the fish in his mouth and they both left. They swam back to the pod and passed the fish to a sea serpent sixty feet long and five feet wide. The adult spoke and gulped the fish down before sending the young ones back.
“Pa said you only find fish like that very deep,” the first youngster reported. “He doesn’t know how it got in your net.”
“And he told you to give me a cod,” the second added.
Indigent, the first sea serpent said, “He did not, you big liar!”
“I want a cod!”
There was a splash behind them. Thaddeus saw the entire pod of sea serpents slap their tails on the water, a distress call among their kind. They looked scared, but that was impossible. There were five adults in the pod, any one of them a threat to the largest shark. Even a kraken wouldn’t attack a pod that big! The adults slapped the water again and scattered. The largest adult looked at the boat and bellowed, “Flee!”
The two youngsters swam off in a panic, leaving Thaddeus wondering what was going on. He saw no danger in the sky or the water, but anything that scared an entire pod of sea serpents was a threat whether he could see it or not.
“Take in the net!” he ordered. “Once it’s in we’re off at full sail.”
His sons went for the net while Thaddeus took the wheel. He watched the water for this unseen threat. The waves grew in height, but nothing worse.
“Pa!” his oldest son shouted. “The net won’t budge. Something’s caught in it.”
That was all the warning they got. The net went taut and the boat was dragged forward so hard everyone was thrown to the deck. In seconds the boat was pulled eighty feet. Water splashed over the railing and the few fish they had slid across the deck. For a moment the boat stopped moving, but then it shot forward another eighty feet.
“Cut the net loose!” Thaddeus shouted. “For the love of God, cut the net!”
His youngest son pulled himself along the railing until he reached the spot where the net was tied to the boat. He grabbed an ax off the deck, nearly missing it as it slid by. The boat came to another stop, giving him a chance to stand up and swing the ax with all his might.
Thunk! The ax cut through the thick net and into the deck. The boat came to a halt while the net was dragged beneath the waves. Thaddeus struggled to his feet and helped up his nephew.
“Pa, what happened?” his eldest son asked. “What was that?”
“I don’t know,” Thaddeus said numbly. He rubbed his head where he’d hit the deck, trying hard to think. It took him a moment to realize what it was, what it had to be, and terror shook him to his core. “Get us to full sail! We have to get home fast, while there’s still a home to go back to!”
Will walked down a muddy road running through fields and light forests, and for the millionth time he wished that someone on the world of Other Place had invented antiperspirant. Deodorant would be nice, too. He’d come up with a long list of things someone should have been clever enough to come up with, and antiperspirant was on the top.
Will was a young man with brown hair and gray eyes, and reasonably fit. His clothes included black pants, a green shirt, a cape that was black on the outside and green on the inside, a black hat with a green ribbon in the brim, and black boots. Normally his outfit included a black vest and black gloves with green fingers, but he’d left these at home because of the heat. In addition to a bronze fire scepter and bag of vegetables he’d grown in a small garden, he carried a hollow gourd filled with water. The gourd held almost a gallon, and although it was still morning, Will could drink it by afternoon.
In theory it was October, although you’d never guess it. There were no cool days and chilly nights in a gentle lead in to winter. Summer was being a very poor sport about the whole ‘changing of the seasons’ business, and August’s heat had never left. Mornings started warm and muggy, with afternoons hot enough to fry an egg and so humid it felt like he was swimming instead of walking. Sweat plastered Will’s clothes to his body.
Will left the Kingdom of the Goblins and headed for the nearest human town. Partly that was to get food, but there was another reason. He needed time away from his friends and followers, and this was the only way to get it.
His goblin followers were short, stupid and a bit crazy, and no two looked alike. Their skin color, height and weight varied astonishingly. Many had exaggerated features, such as large eyes or ears, big feet or arms longer than normal. Some even had stunted wings or an extra arm. Goblins were one of the most despised creatures on Other Place. They weren’t violent, but they were rude, dirty and troublesome. Setting bizarre traps was their favorite past time, with this year’s Most Convoluted Trap Award going to a design that catapulted victims into a pile of cow manure.
Will’s thoughts were drawn off his problems when he heard rustling in a patch of bushes. His usual goblin bodyguards that followed him when he went for meals were busy, leaving him on his own. Will froze and reached for his scepter, but his concern was unnecessary. It was just an older man driving an oxcart. The oxcart was loaded with sheaves of wheat, and the ox pulled it slower than Will could walk.
The farmer tipped his hat and smiled. “Morning.”
“Hi,” Will said. The locals were a friendly bunch that sympathized with Will’s predicament. They only dealt with goblins on rare occasions, whereas his hands were constantly full. The men also knew the good things Will had done since coming to Other Place and appreciated his efforts.
The farmer saw Will’s water gourd and smiled. “Say, you mind lending a drink to someone in need?”
“Sure.” Will tried to hand him the gourd, but the farmer shook his head and pointed at the ox.
“Not me! He’s the one doing all the work.”
Will reluctantly put the gourd in front of the ox. The animal lowered its head into the gourd and slurped up the water, even licking out the inside. The farmer said, “Thanks. We’ve had plenty of rain, but it’s still hard keeping the old boy watered. He loses a gallon an hour when it’s this hot.”
“Him and me both,” Will replied. The farmer laughed and left Will to continue to town. It wasn’t far and he should make it before it got much hotter. He could also refill the gourd before heading back to his kingdom.
His kingdom. It sounded impressive, but it wasn’t. Will was originally from Earth before the law firm of Cickam, Wender and Downe tricked him into become King of the Goblins. The only city in the kingdom had been a wreck when Will first saw it, and now was almost entirely destroyed by the goblins themselves. There was no farming or ranching. Once the land had thriving iron mines operated by dwarfs, but that ended ninety years ago when the last speck of ore was dug out. Waste from those mines had devastated the kingdom. And tourism? Ha! Only the desperate came, and they didn’t stay long if they could help it. The Kingdom of the Goblins was dirt poor and would remain so for generations to come.
In spite of this Will had come to see value in the goblins, if not their kingdom. They were stupid and a bit crazy, but he’d seen lots of stupidity on Earth and among the races of Other Place. And goblins had virtues if you looked hard enough. They weren’t cruel, and he’d even seen them take in orphaned children in a city far away. They weren’t greedy, with most showing no interest in money. They weren’t ambitious and didn’t aspire to rule empires and subjugate others. As far as Will was concerned, that put them ahead of a lot of people.
Will saw the town up ahead on the road. It was a pleasant place with a hundred buildings clustered around an inn and blacksmith shop. Will came here for his meals and to spend time with other humans. The town had no name, and for tax reasons pretended it was located in Will’s kingdom. Residents were kind and he returned the favor.
“We meet at last,” a melodious male voice said. Startled, he spun around and grabbed his fire scepter, only to find himself facing a male elf. Will didn’t see any cover the elf could have been hiding behind, and he was sure he hadn’t heard anyone approach. The elf smiled and raised his hands. “I assure you there’s no need for that. I’m quite tame.”
Will lowered his scepter but held onto it. “I hope you’ll forgive me for being jumpy, but lots of people have tried to kill me. Sneaking up on me isn’t nice.”
The elf bowed his head. “My apologies. I should have realized a man with as many enemies as you have wouldn’t like unannounced visitors.”
Will took a moment to study the elf. He was as tall as Will but thinner, and had pointed ears common to the race. His hair was turquoise blue and arranged in an elegant style. The elf’s clothes drew his notice the most, for the stylish silk garments were dyed blue and studded with sapphires easily worth hundreds of gold coins. Tasteful silver rings and a jade and silver armband finished the display.
The elf said, “Allow me to introduce myself. I am known as True Eyes, as my full name would take too long to recite. I am an ambassador of King Viliamorous Trathanic, ruler of the elves, the one true heir to the ancient Elf Empire, he whose ancestors defeated the Etherium Empire, he whom all call wise and just, he who—”. The elf noticed Will’s disbelieving expression and stopped. “His full title goes on like that for ten minutes, but you’re a busy man.”
“Okay,” Will began, “I’m assuming you’re here on business, even if I can’t figure out for the life of me what you want.”
“You do yourself a disservice! Few of the lesser races have accomplished what you have. You nearly approach an elf in competence and ability. Winning your war with the human king Kervol Ket was almost enough to draw my King’s attention.”
Will had experience with elves and their overwhelming egos. Elves had near superhuman dexterity and were dangerous in a fight, but their sense of superiority made it hard to deal with them. In ancient days elves had ruled almost all of Other Place, and they believed it should be that way again.
“Indeed, His Majesty was impressed with how you dealt with the Staff of Skulls,” True Eyes continued. “Your defeat of the Eternal Army was equally astounding, although I must say my King felt slighted that you didn’t include him in your endeavor.”
Will had stopped the Eternal Army the previous winter, burying those immortal psychopaths under thousands of tons of rock and dirt. But the job had been too big for him and the goblins, and he’d needed help from Kervol Ket (who’d sort of forgiven him) and King Gate of the trolls.
Not wanting to offend, Will explained, “We were on a tight schedule.”
True Eyes smiled, but there was a hint of insincerity when he spoke. “Yes, there is rarely time to do things properly in emergencies. Moving on, your offensive against the human billionaire Quentin Peck particularly interested my King. That rascal was deeply involved with the Yelinid Banking Cartel, renegade elves who don’t recognize his authority and supremacy. It saddened the King to learn that their poor judgment allowed Peck to discomfort you.”
“Discomfort me?” Will asked. “He tried to kill me!”
“Yet you stand before me looking quite healthy,” True Eyes noted. “Your accomplishments are all the greater considering the limited resources and low quality manpower you had. Few have matched your deeds, and none using goblins.”
While Will recognized his friends’ limitations, he didn’t like people disrespecting them. Gritting his teeth, he said, “They can do a lot when you give them a chance.”
True Eyes took a silver tube from his belt and removed a scroll from it. “So it seems. My King sees it as his duty to support the few leaders among the lesser races who prove themselves worthy. He sent me to arrange a formal declaration of friendship between our kingdoms. Such an offer would include financial assistance, diplomatic support, land development and the services of elf wizards, widely held to be the greatest of all races in their mastery of magic.”
Will took the scroll from True Eyes and unrolled it. On the face of it the offer was tempting. Will had been in trouble often since becoming King of the Goblins, and the list of people he could count on for help was a short one. Still, he was suspicious and wanted to read the declaration in detail. The long vellum scroll was covered in fanciful decorations and gold leaf along the borders, but what concerned him most was that it was written entirely in elven.
“We have a slight problem here,” Will told the elf. He pointed at writing that was both beautiful and incomprehensible. “I can’t read a word of this.”
“I see your concern,” True Eyes said. “I beg your forgiveness. Human kings of this world learn written and spoken elven at an early age, a sign of respect for our culture. But you are no more from this world than the kings who ruled here before you. My humblest apologies, but this is not the impediment you think.”
Will handed the scroll back. “I’m kind of wary about legally binding papers, especially ones I can’t read.”
True Eyes put an arm around Will’s shoulders and smiled like a used car salesman trying to reel in a customer. “Allow me to correct this oversight. I would be only too happy to translate the declaration for you.”
That didn’t sound much better. Will didn’t trust the elf to give an honest translation, but if he signed it he’d be trapped into following the contract whether he understood it or not. Thinking fast, he said, “That won’t be necessary. I have a magic mirror that reads elven just fine. Her name is Gladys, and I’m sure she’d be tickled pink to help.”
True Eyes tried to steer Will off the road and into town. “Ah, but could she understand the intricacies of diplomatic terminology, and the subtitles of courtly language? I take it from the early hour that you are on your way to breakfast? I would be delighted to translate the declaration while you dine. You would have a complete understanding of it within the hour regardless of the language barrier.”
“You swine!” someone behind them screamed. Will and True Eyes turned to see another elf marching down the road toward them. This elf, another male, was as well dressed as True Eyes, but the fashion was different. His clothes were dyed royal purple, and he favored gold and ruby jewelry. His expression set him apart as well, for his face was beet red and he wore a look of outrage. “You gutter filth, conniving, treacherous oaf!”
Will rubbed his eyes. “I hate starting the day like this.”
“Sir, my insults were not meant for you,” the new elf declared. He bowed and said, “My name is Perfect Strike when I don’t have five minutes for the full and correct version, but the elf beside you should be called mud!”
True Eyes scowled. “I fail to see what business a lesser elf like you has here.”
“Lesser?” Perfect Strike bellowed.
“Pay him no mind,” True Eyes told Will. “He is descended from traitors who deserted the Elf King. They are little more than bandits.”
“Lies!” Perfect Strike yelled. He was drawing attention from farmers, but he ignored them. Pointing an accusing finger at True Eyes, he replied. “The so called ‘Elf King’ is a tyrant sprung from a line of tyrants, and has no right to his throne. His poor rule drove off my ancestors and hundreds of others to start anew in distant lands. We formed the Versile Consortium, and are respected merchants and makers of fine goods.”
“Go count your money, peddler,” True Eyes retorted.
Will tried to slip away. “You two have a lot to talk about. I’ll leave you to it.”
Perfect Strike marched up to Will and said, “Listen to him not! He seeks to draw you in with lies and trick you into becoming his King’s slave.”
“Partner!” True Eyes retorted. “He would be a partner and trusted ally.”
“I just want some breakfast,” Will said.
“You lie, ‘Cross Eyed’!” Perfect Strike retorted. He took Will’s arm and said, “You can’t trust him. He knew I was coming with a proposed alliance between you and the Versile Consortium, and he sabotaged my mission! I intended to bring a trusted human servant of my family and assign her to your service as proof of our good intent. Instead he forced her onto a ship going out to sea! We’ve no idea where she is.”
“You mean the floozy you sent to seduce him?” True Eyes replied. “Yes, I put a stop to that!”
More farmers gathered to watch, but the elves seemed blind to it. Perfect Strike snapped, “She’s not a floozy! She’s a beloved family retainer.”
True Eyes leaned in close to Will. “That means she tied his shoes.”
“That does it!” Perfect Strike lived up to his name with a punch that knocked True Eyes to the ground. He jumped and tried to land on his prone enemy, but True Eyes rolled out of the way and shot to his feet. He kicked Perfect Strike hard enough to spin the purple clad elf in a circle. Perfect Strike recovered quickly and landed two lightning fast punches into True Eyes’ stomach, doubling him over.
Will shook his head and walked to the town’s inn. With any luck he could eat breakfast and get out of here while those two were clowning around. Chances were both of them wanted to involve him into some kind of scheme.
The inn was a pleasant place to visit in cold weather since the kitchen generated a lot of heat along with good food. That heat plus the unseasonable weather made conditions inside uncomfortable. The innkeeper had opened all the windows and propped open the door, which helped a little, but the inn’s large common room was still hot.
Will sat down at a table near the door and was soon visited by the innkeeper, a bear of a man with brown grizzled hair and bulging muscles like a weightlifter. The innkeeper nodded to Will and said, “It’s oatmeal and hardboiled eggs today.”
“Thanks.” Will handed the bag of vegetables to the innkeeper. “Here.”
The innkeeper accepted the bag, but said, “I don’t mind the food, but your king contract allows you to eat for free.”
“I know, but it’s not fair that I always come to the same place for the free food. I ought to give something in return, even if it’s turnips.”
The innkeeper left while Will studied his king contract. Will had gotten the infernal document when he was tricked into being King of the Goblins, binding him to both the job and kingdom. The contract was tens of thousands of lines long and written in words so small it was hard to read. He could go home if he found a loophole not covered in its countless lines of fine print.
The problem was there had been 47 other Kings of the Goblins who had escaped their contracts. Every time one got away, Cickam, Wender and Downe made the next contract harder to escape. It didn’t help that the cursed thing was actually growing and adding new clauses to keep him on the job. This included such bizarre terms as Article 105, subsection 2, paragraph 11, line 4: The King of the Goblins can’t escape his job by destroying the kingdom with a giant radioactive monster. We paid him off and he won’t help you.
The innkeeper brought Will his breakfast, a simple but filling meal. Will ate slowly and looked out the windows from time to time to see how the fight was progressing. The two elves were gracefully beating each other senseless. True Eyes leaped over a farmer and tried to kick Perfect Strike, but Perfect Strike grabbed him by the ankles and swung him into a ditch. Between attacks the two shouts at one another in elven. While Will couldn’t speak the language, judging by their tone he was pretty sure they were swearing.
A rancher watching the fight nudged a farmer and said, “A copper piece on the one in blue?”
The farmer grinned. “You’re on.”
Two farmers joined Will at the inn. The first said, “Someone said those two yahoos were fighting over you.”
“Yeah, that’s diplomacy for you,” Will said as he ate.
“We heard there were floozies involved,” the second farmer said.
“Just one, and she couldn’t make it.”
The first farmer patted Will on the shoulder. “Tough break, pal.”
The farmers left to watch the fight, leaving Will alone with his food. He finished the meal and leaned back in his chair.
The innkeeper stayed by the bar and watched Will. “Most times you hurry back after eating. This week you’ve stayed here as long as you can. Pretty sure you’re not here for the ambiance.”
“You have a nice place,” Will told him, then looked down. “I’m not in a rush to get back. You see the goblins are having a civil war.”
“It’s over cheese, right?”
Surprised, Will sat up straight. “How did you know?”
“It’s happened before,” the innkeeper replied. “I’ve seen it two, three times. Can’t blame you for wanting to stay out of it.”
“I can’t get them to stop,” Will said. “Most of the time they at least try to follow orders, but they’ve broken into factions and are pounding away at each other with sofa cushions and pillows. I’d be appalled if they were actually hurting each other.”
The conversation ended when True Eyes flew screaming through an open window to land on Will’s table. He unrolled the scroll and said, “If I could just point out the benefits detailed on line eight.”
Perfect Strike reached through the window, grabbed True Eyes by the heels and dragged him outside to continue their fight. The innkeeper stomped over and shouted, “I’m trying to run a business here!”
“Many apologies,” True Eyes replied before tossing a gold coin through the window. The innkeeper plucked it out of the air and stuffed it in his pocket before turning his attention back to Will.
“It doesn’t look it, but things are getting better. Goblins haven’t been much trouble since you took over, and most of their mischief is done on people who deserve it. You’ve got a tough row to hoe, no question, but you’ve done well so far and I think you can manage this.”
“Thanks,” Will told him. He left the inn and refilled his gourd at a well before heading back to his kingdom. The elves were still pounding each other, and he’d just as soon be gone before either of them won. The winner might follow him, but probably not into a war zone.
The walk back was uneventful. A tiny white skinned pixie threw pebbles at him, but it left after he swatted it with his hat. The real problems started once he crossed the border.
The kingdom had healed from the damage done so long ago. Intensive mining had once reduced the land to rocks and weeds, but now there were young trees, lush grasses and shrubs growing alongside dirt trails. In some places there were canyons, streams, pools and other attractive features.
There were new additions to the landscape, including muddy trenches, poorly built wood barricades and makeshift wood forts, all built to goblin proportions. Goblins had thrown up these flimsy defenses when the fighting first started, building more each day. Will could step over most of the obstacles, but he had to keep an eye out for traps his followers doubtlessly had set. The sounds of battle weren’t far off.
“Cheddar!” a horde of goblins screamed as they ran out of the woods and headed for the trenches. This bunch wore miniature versions of WW I German infantry uniforms complete with spiked helmet, and they were armed with pillows.
“Gouda!” the defending goblins screamed. They poured out of the forts and manned the trenches. These goblins wore rags and cast off human garments, with throw pillows as their weapon of choice. They included warrior and digger goblins, but since the fighting started they’d shown little interest in their chosen profession and were dedicated to this idiotic conflict. The two factions plowed into one another in a vicious no holds barred pillow war.
Knowing he was going to fail, Will tried for the third time that day to end the war. “Guys, cut it out! Stop fighting!”
The goblins ignored him in their unrelenting desire to defeat their accursed enemies. The fact that they hadn’t been enemies last week was unimportant, or that they weren’t actually doing damage. Goblin fought goblin, and feathers flew as pillows split open.
Will got down in the trenches and pulled two goblins apart. “I’m serious, stop it!”
This time his words had some effect. The goblins separated and looked at him curiously. A cross-eyed goblin with the Gouda faction asked, “Boss, you’re not with these cheddar heads, are you? You said you weren’t taking sides.”
“I’m not,” he said. “Listen, guys, this is pointless.”
“Most of what we do is pointless,” a red skinned goblin replied.
“That’s true,” Will admitted. “But this is really pointless. You guys fought side by side against some the worst threats on Other Place. You should be working together. Think of the amazing things you could be doing instead of fighting.”
A goblin scratched his head and asked, “Did you drink expired milk again?”
“I’m serious! You guys built the biggest maze on the planet. But as long as you’re fighting each other you can’t make it bigger.”
That did it. The goblins loved their maze, a three-story nightmare of blind corners, hidden rooms and traps so devious that the bravest men dared not enter. Invoking it made the goblins look on another with sympathy. They shook hands, and some hugged.
“The King is right,” the cross-eyed goblin said. “We’ve been so busy fighting there’s been no work done of the maze all week. What were we thinking?”
“Gouda and Cheddar should be allies,” the red skinned goblin announced to cheers. “Together we can make the maze even greater than before, once we’ve taken out the Parmesan faction!”
Goblins shouted, “Hurray!”
“No!” Will shouted back, but it was too late. The two hordes of goblins ran off in giddy anticipation of another fight. Will shook his head and headed for the Goblin City.
The name was a lie. There had been a poorly built dwarf city there at one point, and the city walls and tall gatehouse were still standing, but the insides of the city were gone, razed to make room for expanding the maze. A brick strewn wasteland had replaced the ramshackle buildings, and it would stay that way until the goblins ended their idiotic conflict and got back to work.
Once Will entered through the gatehouse, he heard a squeaky voice ask, “Hey, Will, what’s the score?”
“I’m zero for four at stopping the war today, Domo,” Will replied.
Domo was a short goblin with gray skin and ratty black hair. He wore yellow robes and carried a red walking stick made from an enemy flagpole. Domo was a good friend of Will’s and the closest the goblins had ever come to producing their own leader. Normally they wouldn’t follow him, but in emergencies they’d consider it. Domo was smarter than most goblins and could see how stupid their civil war was, and he was content to wait it out on a pile of rubble that used to be a tollbooth.
But he wasn’t alone in the ruined city. Not far away was Vial, leader of the lab rat guild. Vial had short red hair over his entire body and wore a lab coat, pants, shoes and glasses. He looked harmless enough, like a warped version of a university professor, but he was potentially the most dangerous goblin alive.
Vial and his followers were alchemists, which was as close to chemists as the people of Other Place had ever come. His specialty was explosives, although he also made glue, cement, instant webbing and chemically generated light. Like Domo, he was smarter than most goblins, but he was no less crazy. He considered alchemy a sport that required audience participation, and if the audience was accidentally blown up, well, they knew the risks. Vial was getting the hang of alchemy, but on a bad day he was still a threat to everyone around him.
“Ah, My Liege, so good to see you,” Vial said. He waddled over to Will and handed him a paper. “I wish to discuss a matter with you. We both have considerable free time due to this war. Namely, you have no interest in joining and all the factions have refused my help.”
“There’s a first: goblins making an intelligent decision,” Domo quipped.
“I find the choice baffling,” Vial replied. “I could settle this dispute within hours. But their loss is our gain. I have developed plans for a new and most impressive explosive I call Bitter Betty. I’ve worked out most of the design problems—”
Worried, Will asked, “Most?”
“And with just a few ingredients I can produce a working copy,” Vial continued. “The destructive potential is astounding, and should be highly entertaining.”
“I don’t want explosions,” Will replied. “Things are bad enough as it is.”
“This is nothing,” Domo replied. “We’ve had plenty of civil wars before. The guys get to talking about which cheese is best, angry words fly and they break up into factions. It usually lasts a week or so before they lose interest.”
Smiling, Will asked, “So this is going to get better on its own?”
Domo picked dirt from between his toes. “It’s true. The last civil war happened during the rein of King Gideon the Blackmailer and ended in ten days.”
“Do I want to know how he got that nickname?” Will asked.
“He turned back an invading human army by threatening to read out loud love letters from the human king to his mistress,” Vial replied.
“Before that there was a five day civil war during the rein of King Valerie the Irate,” Domo added.
Will turned slowly to look at Domo. “King? Valerie is a girl’s name.”
Domo shrugged. “She made the same point quite often, but she had a king contract, Will, same as you. Her title wasn’t going to change for something as unimportant as gender.”
“Those were confusing times,” Vial admitted.
“We’ll be safe this close to the maze,” Domo told Will. “The guys won’t risk damaging it. The fight should be over across the kingdom in another day or two. The Swiss and Blue Cheese factions defeated the Limburger faction this morning, and the Cheddar faction should beat the Parmesan faction by tonight. Mind you, the Brie faction retreated into the hills and vowed to make revolution, but I figure they’ll forget what they were doing and wander off in a few hours.”
A horde of goblins ran screaming by the city gate on their way to a battle. Will recognized the goblin leading them and called out, “Niff!”
Mr. Niff screeched to a halt and the other goblins piled into him. Once they sorted themselves out, Mr. Niff ran over and smiled at Will. He had blue skin and beady eyes, and he dressed in black. His trademark knife was tucked in his belt in favor of a long cushion. Mr. Niff was a brave goblin ever ready to jump into battle whether or not it was smart (or even necessary) to do so. “Hey, boss. We’re on our way to take on those Colby lovers.”
“I haven’t seen you since this mess started,” Will said. “Which side are you on?”
“You know, we’ve changed sides so many times I’m not sure.” Mr. Niff scratched his head and looked at the goblins following him. “Who are we with today?”
The goblins shouted every possible answer, no two of them the same.
“Gouda!”
“Brie!”
“The King of Spain!”
None of that bothered Mr. Niff in the least. “I’ll get back to you on that.”
Just then ten goblins ran out of the nearby woods. They flung something circular, white and lacy at Mr. Niff and his followers, and the goblins screamed and ran for cover. One goblin was hit and went down, but Mr. Niff pulled off the lacy projectile and dragged the goblin to safety. He shook his fist at the attacking goblins and shouted, “There are rules! No throwing doilies!”
Will watched the goblins run off. Dispirited and more than a little confused, he sat down on the rock pile next to Domo. “This is impossible! The guys have made big improvements and done amazing things, but they go back to being stupid at the drop of a hat. Every time I think I’ve helped them improve they slide back into bad habits.”
“He works a dozen miracles and wants more,” Domo said to Vial.
Vial walked over and patted Will on the hand. “Have no fear. The situation isn’t that bad, and should recover without your intervention. Please note the goblins can’t bother you much while they are involved in this foolishness. If it helps, try to think of this as a vacation.”
Will waved his hands over the brick piles that had once been homes. “It’s not just that. We don’t even have a city anymore! It wasn’t much to begin with and now it’s gone. The tunnels and caves under the city are intact, but the guys didn’t leave one building standing so they could expand the maze. Now they aren’t even doing that.”
“Yes,” Domo said dryly, “all those dirty, ugly, poorly made buildings that haven’t been repaired in decades are gone. Whatever shall we do without them?”
Will opened his mouth for an angry response, but he paused and raised one eyebrow. “When you put it like that I’m not so mad.”
Domo leaned over to Vial and whispered, “He’s just sore because he misses his fairy godmother.”
Vial smiled and nodded. “Ah yes, Miss Lydia Lajcek, our favorite fairy godmother, who Our Liege gave a fortune to and now doesn’t know where to find her. He really should have gotten a receipt for the cash.”
“Don’t go there!” Will warned them. The money didn’t bother him, but he’d been getting along well with Lydia before his contract forcibly separated them. Losing his best chance at love made this situation harder to deal with. Feeling a bit silly, he asked, “Did she, uh—”
“You didn’t get any mail from Lydia today, or this week or this month,” Domo responded. “It’s just the usual death threats, hate mail and catalogs for things you don’t need and can’t afford.”
“I feel the home Spam making kit had potential,” Vial said.
Looking more sympathetic than usual, Domo told him, “I know things are a mess, Will, and your love life being dead on arrival can’t help. I don’t like it any more than you do, and it’s going to stay bad for a long time. Look on the bright side, it can’t get worse.”
“Don’t say that!” Will shouted. “It can always get worse. My life is proof of that. Back home my biggest problem was finding a job. Now half the kingdoms on Other Place want me dead and two groups of elves are fighting over which one gets to manipulate me.”
Both goblins’ mouths dropped in surprise. Domo found his voice first. “Elves want you?”
“Two of them were waiting for me when I went for breakfast,” Will replied.
“It makes sense, in a highly suspect way,” Vial replied. “You won several wars, making you a valuable tool in their court intrigues. The elf faction that makes you their pawn would have significant advantages over their rivals.”
Domo grabbed Will’s hand and cried out, “Tell me you didn’t sign anything!”
“Oh come on! I’m dumb, but I’m not that dumb.” Will arranged the debris under him into a more comfortable pile. “I left them going at each other’s throats, but that’s temporary. I figure we should expect more visits in the future. What worries me is what they’ll do when I say no. If they think I’m a useful pawn, they might see me as a threat if I’m not on their side.”
“Sort of yes and sort of no,” Domo replied. “Elves don’t see anyone from other races as a threat no matter how powerful or successful they are, but they do see you as a useful tool. If they can’t have you they might kill you so other elf factions can’t have you.”
“There’s another problem to worry about,” Will said. “Some days it’s two steps forward and one step back. It doesn’t help that I don’t know about a lot of these problems until they come up, like that business with the elves or this civil war. I can only guess what’s next.”
**********
A thousand miles away, Thaddeus Macmillan sailed the open ocean in his boat, joined by his three grown sons, his cousin and nephew. They gathered around their nets in dismay. It was hot and they were tired from hours of work, but that’s not what bothered them. They’d been fishing for days in what should have been rich waters. The pickings were slim, and the things they caught barely qualified as fish. Every catch had been miserable, and today’s haul was the worst yet.
Thaddeus bent down and plucked a fish from the net. Holding it up, he stared at its large white eyes and gapping mouth filled with needle-like teeth. Brushing gray hair from his brow, Thaddeus declared, “That’s a new one on me.”
His nephew sniffed the fish and wrinkled his nose. “Smells awful. Uncle, I don’t think we can eat it.”
“We can’t,” Thaddeus said, and he looked behind his boat. The wood boat was thirty feet long, half as long as the sea serpents in its wake. A pod of ten of the beasts was following him like a shadow, as they always did when he put out to sea. There was an age-old rule that fishing boats throw overboard any part of their catch they didn’t want. Sea serpents ate the waste, and in return protected the boats from other predators. This trip they’d gotten more than half the catch.
“We can’t go home with so little,” one of his sons said.
“I know,” Thaddeus replied. “You boys put out the net. Maybe we’ll have better luck this time.”
Thaddeus was about to toss the disgusting fish overboard when he saw two smaller sea serpents swimming up to the boat. They were only six feet long, but in their own way were more dangerous than their parents. He grimaced and said, “Brace yourselves, boys. Their young ones are coming.”
Thaddeus’ cousin rolled his eyes. “I can deal with them trying to steal the catch, but I can’t take the puns!”
The two sea serpents came up to the boat and lifted up their heads. They had large eyes and pale blue scales, with short fins on the tops of their heads. One said in a child-like voice, “Whatcha doing?”
“Fishing,” Thaddeus told the young sea serpent. “You two go back to your pa.”
The second sea serpent tried to grab one of the few cod they’d caught. Thaddeus’ nephew pushed it back gently with an oar. “That’ll be enough of that.”
“I like cod,” the second one said innocently.
“So do we,” Thaddeus retorted.
The first sea serpent smiled and asked, “Hey, what do you call paint made from the hooves of a boar that liked candy?”
Thaddeus resigned himself to the inevitably bad punch line. “I don’t know.”
“Pig-mint.”
The entire crew groaned in agony. Thaddeus turned to the youngster and asked, “What does your pa do when you tell him puns like that?”
“He tells me to talk to you,” the sea serpent said cheerfully.
Thaddeus bit back a sharp reply and tossed the ugly fish to the sea serpent. “Make yourself useful and ask your pa if he’s ever seen a fish like this.”
The youngster took the fish in his mouth and they both left. They swam back to the pod and passed the fish to a sea serpent sixty feet long and five feet wide. The adult spoke and gulped the fish down before sending the young ones back.
“Pa said you only find fish like that very deep,” the first youngster reported. “He doesn’t know how it got in your net.”
“And he told you to give me a cod,” the second added.
Indigent, the first sea serpent said, “He did not, you big liar!”
“I want a cod!”
There was a splash behind them. Thaddeus saw the entire pod of sea serpents slap their tails on the water, a distress call among their kind. They looked scared, but that was impossible. There were five adults in the pod, any one of them a threat to the largest shark. Even a kraken wouldn’t attack a pod that big! The adults slapped the water again and scattered. The largest adult looked at the boat and bellowed, “Flee!”
The two youngsters swam off in a panic, leaving Thaddeus wondering what was going on. He saw no danger in the sky or the water, but anything that scared an entire pod of sea serpents was a threat whether he could see it or not.
“Take in the net!” he ordered. “Once it’s in we’re off at full sail.”
His sons went for the net while Thaddeus took the wheel. He watched the water for this unseen threat. The waves grew in height, but nothing worse.
“Pa!” his oldest son shouted. “The net won’t budge. Something’s caught in it.”
That was all the warning they got. The net went taut and the boat was dragged forward so hard everyone was thrown to the deck. In seconds the boat was pulled eighty feet. Water splashed over the railing and the few fish they had slid across the deck. For a moment the boat stopped moving, but then it shot forward another eighty feet.
“Cut the net loose!” Thaddeus shouted. “For the love of God, cut the net!”
His youngest son pulled himself along the railing until he reached the spot where the net was tied to the boat. He grabbed an ax off the deck, nearly missing it as it slid by. The boat came to another stop, giving him a chance to stand up and swing the ax with all his might.
Thunk! The ax cut through the thick net and into the deck. The boat came to a halt while the net was dragged beneath the waves. Thaddeus struggled to his feet and helped up his nephew.
“Pa, what happened?” his eldest son asked. “What was that?”
“I don’t know,” Thaddeus said numbly. He rubbed his head where he’d hit the deck, trying hard to think. It took him a moment to realize what it was, what it had to be, and terror shook him to his core. “Get us to full sail! We have to get home fast, while there’s still a home to go back to!”
William Bradshaw and Urban Problems part 2
Chapter 2
Far away, and blissfully unaware of the approaching terror, Will carried a chair out of a tunnel and into the ruins that used to be the Goblin City. The wood chair was beautifully carved and sturdy, a gift from a king he’d helped the previous year. Will set it down on a patch of relatively flat ground next to Vial and Domo.
“Table coming through!” London and Brooklyn the trolls exited the same tunnel with an ornate wood table. The trolls stood over six feet tall and had green scales, serious under-bites and ears that looked like fish fins, and they wore only cotton trousers. They also had incredible strength and endurance. London was a tad taller and a darker shade of green than his brother, but otherwise they were identical.
The trolls had wandered into the kingdom years ago and volunteered to act as enforcers for numerous men who’d been King of the Goblins. With personalities like rugby players or soccer hooligans, they’d raised unnecessary force to an art form. For all the brothers’ faults, they were loyal and wouldn’t back down no matter the odds, and had saved Will’s life on many occasions.
Following them was Hugh Timbers the dwarf and Milo the minotaur, both carrying chairs. Hugh stood a head shorter than Will, but was heavier and had broad shoulders, powerful muscles, thick brown hair and wore simple leather clothes. Hugh had lost his home and business to the Eternal Army last winter and had settled in Will’s kingdom. The dwarf was polite and helped when he could, but Will could tell that he was still hurting.
Milo was a thoroughly modern minotaur dressed in a black frock coat, white dress shirt, black pants, briefcase and glasses. His fine clothes and refined speech made him slightly less intimidating, but couldn’t change the fact he was seven feet tall, had short brown fur and a bull’s head with long horns. He’d come to the kingdom last year to develop the goblin’s maze into a moneymaking venture.
London and Brooklyn set down the table and the others pulled their chairs around it. Domo and Vial climbed onto the table and the rest sat down.
“Gentlemen,” Will began with a smile, “I’ve been thinking we should have regular meetings to keep everyone up to date on what’s going on in the kingdom.”
“You mean like who’s invading us this week?” Domo asked.
“Ideally no,” Will replied.
“We have been invaded a lot,” London said.
“Not that we’re complaining,” Brooklyn added. “You get lots of exercise roughing people up in an invasion.”
Will frowned and put a hand over his face. “I’d like to know how everyone is doing, and if there’s anything important I should know about.”
“Why are we doing this outside?” Domo asked.
Vial raised a hand and said, “The American cheese and Pepper Jack factions are fighting in the tunnels. I’m told the battle is quite fierce, with much doily related violence.”
“Out here we’re close to the maze, so the civil war won’t interfere with our meeting,” Will said. “We should have the place to ourselves for now. I’m opening the floor to anyone and all topics.”
Milo opened his briefcase and spread papers on the table. “Since you were kind enough to ask, I have a report on maze profitability and expansion plans.”
Will waved his hand. “Go on.”
“I’m afraid maze revenues have been disappointing,” Milo said. He handed out papers with pie charts and bar graphs, but Domo and Vial ate the pages. “After an exhaustive statistical analysis, I’ve determined that in the last three months we have had zero visitors, plus or minus ten.”
“How do you get minus ten visitors?” Domo asked Milo.
“They thought about coming but decided against it.” Milo handed out more papers, this time making sure they went nowhere near the goblins. “This has had an unfortunate effect on sales of maps, and deluxe maps detailing trap locations. I believe the problem is marketing. People know the maze is here, but they don’t see a reason to enter it.”
“I don’t go in if I can help it,” Will admitted.
“That is a common response from people I’ve chased down and interviewed,” Milo replied. “There are two traditional reasons for entering a maze, to test one’s mental abilities or because there is treasure worth having in the maze, a tangible reward for completion.”
Will held out his empty hands. “We’re broke, Milo. The kingdom has a net worth measured in negative numbers. People don’t want anything we have. If we gave it to them, or forced it on them, they’d have to pay to get rid of it.”
“I could donate an exploding outhouse,” Vial offered.
“Hey, Will, we could get rid of those turnips you grew,” Domo suggested.
“How about a coupon for a free beating?” London offered. “One coupon gets one of your enemies beaten up.”
Brooklyn perked up. “I like that one.”
Milo scribbled notes on his papers. “Those are all good suggestions.”
“No they’re not,” Will said.
Milo pointed at the second stack of papers he’d handed out. “At the moment our best bet to attract visitors is to represent the maze as a challenge. I’ve come up with a marketing plan that makes the best use of our limited resources. With your approval, I can begin spreading these publicly.”
Will looked at the papers. The first read ‘The Maze of the Goblins: There’s got to be something in there’. This was followed by ‘The Maze of the Goblins: A challenge that probably won’t result in cannibalism’. The last suggestion was ‘The Maze of the Goblins: Like you’ve got something better to do’. Will handed Milo back the papers and asked, “You think this is going to draw visitors?”
“Definitely,” Milo said. “Our target audience includes adventurers, treasure hunters and the bored rich. We need to appeal to their greed and vanity while making the maze seem more dangerous than it really is.”
“And once they’re here we take them for all they’re worth,” Domo said.
Milo nodded. “Exactly! I have plans for a string of outrageously overpriced concession stands, with guaranteed business since they’ll be the only source of food for miles. Between that and poorly made souvenirs we’ll be swimming in gold.”
Will stared at Milo. “That sounds appallingly close to the amusement parks back home. I can’t see people coming here voluntarily, much less to spend money, but you’re the expert. If you think this might bring tourists then go for it.”
“Excellent!” Milo shook Will’s hand before leaving. “I expect to have good news within the month.”
When no one else volunteered to share concerns or problems, Will took a deep breath and addressed an issue that had been on his mind for months. “Hugh, I was wondering what it would cost to get you back in business again.”
Hugh Timbers looked surprised. “Sir William?”
“How much money would you need for a new home and blacksmith shop?”
Hugh bit his lower lip. “Building and furnishing a house wouldn’t be expensive when I could make most of it myself. The blacksmith shop would cost fifty gold coins for tools and raw materials. The cost is a moot point, though, for I would need customers and nearby people are already served by a competent blacksmith.”
Will scratched his head. “It would take a while for us to get that much money.”
“Us?” Hugh’s expression turned to a look of shock. “Sir William, no!”
“I want to help,” he said.
Hugh’s face showed surprise quickly changing to sorrow. “Sir, you have already done much by giving me refuge. The caves beneath this land are much like my ancestral home and most comfortable. You’ve requested few services and no money in return. You also granted me the privilege to avenge my loss by fighting at your side against the Eternal Army. I am grateful in ways words can’t express.
“But my home, my forge, this must be made or earned by my own hands. I can’t accept help or it wouldn’t be mine. I know my ways are different from yours, and I know you have only the best of intentions, but I must do this task alone.”
“You don’t have any money,” Will said. “It would take years to earn the cash you need to rebuild.”
Hugh frowned. “I did so once before when my people cast me out. It could take years to do it again. But honor demands a worker own his tools and workshop, paid for with neither gift nor loan, and that I must do.”
Will was curious why the dwarfs had exiled Hugh, but he didn’t ask. It was clear that even bringing up the topic hurt Hugh deeply. “If there’s any help you can accept, all you have to do is ask.”
Hugh bowed. “Your kindness is gift enough.”
“Boss!” Will looked over to see Mr. Niff running through the gatehouse. Mr. Niff dodged a barrage of doilies and throw pillows coming from outside. He turned only long enough to shout, “Your aim stinks!”
“Hey, keep it outside!” London yelled.
Mr. Niff scurried over piles of broken bricks until he reached Will. “A purple puppet person just came through the goblin gate. He said he needs to talk to you about super scary stuff, so I went ahead to let you know he’s coming.”
“This is new,” Will said. He got up and waved for the others to follow. “Niff, can you take us to him? I don’t want the poor guy to get caught in the fighting.”
“No sweat.” Mr. Niff led Will, the trolls, Domo, Vial and Hugh out of the ruined city. A band of goblins were waiting with pillows in hand for Mr. Niff, but they paused when they saw Will. Mr. Niff explained, “I’m helping the boss. We’ll fight to the death after I’m done.”
“Promise?” a gangly goblin asked.
Mr. Niff pushed the other goblins aside and led his friends on. They left the city and entered a young forest growing nearby. Narrow trails wound through the woods, most of which were trapped, but Mr. Niff picked his way around snares, pie throwers and concealed pits.
“I’m curious why a purple puppet person came to us for help,” Will said as they walked. “I thought they lived far away.”
“They do,” Domo told him. “They have a couple small communities scattered around the wilderness, but their homeland is seven hundred miles to the east.”
“They still manage to send people to say hello a couple times a year,” Mr. Niff volunteered.
Will glanced at him. “That’s a long way to go for hello.”
“Not really,” Mr. Niff replied. “We’re the only friends they have.”
Puzzled, Will asked, “Why is that?”
Domo shrugged. “No idea. They’re nice people, and they never get mad at us no matter how many stupid things we do. It’s not like they smell or anything. For some reason we’re the only ones who get along with them.”
“I’d think the trolls would be nice to them,” Will said. “All the trolls I’ve met were good people.”
“Wrong direction,” Domo explained. “Trolls live far to our west. I doubt they’ve met. It doesn’t help that puppet people are a new race. There aren’t many of them and they haven’t been around for long.”
On their way they saw Will’s garden. It wasn’t much to look at, just a patch of dirt surrounded by a rickety wood fence. Most plants in the garden had died weeks ago, but a few root crops and cucumber vines were growing. There was also what looked like a lifeguard tower manned by warrior goblins next to the fence.
One of the goblins saw movement in the forest and leaped off the tower before running screaming into the woods. He came back carrying a live rabbit by its hind legs.
“I got him! I got the long eared thieving bunny!” the goblin shouted triumphantly while dancing around in a circle.
“Hold on,” Will began, but the goblin was too taken with his victory to notice.
“He thought he’d ruin the boss’ garden, but I showed him!”
“What’s this about?” Domo asked.
Feeling faintly embarrassed, Will said, “An animal got in my garden last month and did some damage. When the warrior goblins found out they assigned guards to watch over it, which would be a really nice gesture if they didn’t keep attacking innocent animals and salesmen.”
“Animals are guilty until proven innocent!” the warrior goblin shouted. “And even then they’re guilty!”
“The rabbit wasn’t anywhere near my garden,” Will told him.
“He was thinking about it!” The goblin poked the rabbit in the belly. “You were conspiring! Confess!”
Will said, “Just take it a few miles away and let it go.”
The warrior poked the rabbit again before he marched into the woods. “The King’s going easy on you, but this is still going on your record! You have the right to remain silent! Anything you say will be ignored or misinterpreted!”
Will watched the warrior long enough to be sure he wasn’t going to hurt the rabbit before gesturing for Mr. Niff to lead them on. Unfortunately Domo had wandered off to inspect the garden.
“Your weed pile is still alive,” Domo said. He poked a cucumber vine with mildewed leaves. “I figured your plants would have given up and died by now, or that you’d have killed them.”
“The garden should be done for the year pretty soon, but I can still squeeze a bit more out of it for the innkeeper,” Will replied.
Domo looked quizzically at Will. “I thought you grew this green stuff to eat. Why do you keep giving it away?”
Will surveyed his garden and said, “I learned an important fact about myself since I started this: I’m a fair gardener and a terrible cook. None of the meals I made were poisonous, I think, but I ended up feeding a lot of them to passing goblins. It doesn’t help that there’s not much you can do with the plants I could pick from. I did eat some of it, but one more day of vegetable soup would have been the death of me. Can we get back to finding the puppet person? I don’t want him out here alone, especially after I saw the guys using catapults yesterday.”
“Goblin catapults aren’t too dangerous when we load them with sponges,” Mr. Niff said. “Except to goblins using them. People get excited, accidents happen, guys go airborne, but they heal up after a while. Workplace safety rules aren’t what they should be.”
They continued through the woods, going around trenches, small forts and more traps. A few goblins saw them and tagged along, apparently bored with their civil war. In a few minutes they were close enough to see the cave where the goblin gate was. What they didn’t see was the puppet person, which surprised Will. They should have met him by now if he was heading in the right direction.
“Hello!” an echoing voice called out. It took Will a few seconds to spot a pit dug into the trail. It had been covered with a thin wood board coated with dirt, blending in perfectly until some unwitting person stepped on it and broke through. Whoever was trapped in the pit called out again, “Is anyone there?”
“We hear you,” Will replied. He thought about who could be trapped in the pit, and then covered his face with his hand. “Excuse me, but are you the puppet person who came to warn us?”
“Yes, that’s me,” the puppet person replied. He had an echoing voice, like he was speaking inside a box, but he still sounded friendly. “I don’t wish to be a bother, but I was wondering if you could lend a hand. This pit is proving a tad inconvenient.”
“See, this is why I don’t like you guys making so many traps,” Will told the goblins. “We get an ambassador—”
“President,” the puppet person corrected him from inside the pit.
“A president comes to visit and he ends up in a pit!” Will shouted. “We either need to cut back on the traps or have someone around to keep them from catching innocent bystanders.”
“It’s not like we killed the guy,” Mr. Niff protested. He leaned over the pit and asked, “You’re alive, right?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Exasperated, Will said, “Just help me get him out.”
Will and the trolls reached down and grabbed the puppet person by his arms. Pulling him up took some work given his considerable weight, made worse by his fully packed bags and a small goblin clinging to his leg, but they managed.
Once they freed the puppet person, Will got a good look at him. Their guest was six feet tall and looked like a man in armor, but he was made entirely of expertly carved wood and molded steel plates. His features weren’t quite human, with shoulders a bit too wide, forearms a bit too thick and his waist a bit too narrow. The puppet person was painted purple with blue stripes on his legs and arms. His face was carved from wood but his mouth and eyes opened and closed, and he had wooden eyebrows that could move. In spite of such rough features the puppet person looked friendly, even sincere.
Hugh studied the puppet person and nodded approvingly. “Good craftsmanship.”
“Thank you,” the puppet person said cheerfully. Holding out his hand to Will, he said, “Allow me to introduce myself. I am President Percy of the purple puppet people. I assume from your clothes and scepter that you are William Bradshaw?”
Will shook his hand. “Yeah, that’s me. I’m sorry if this sounds rude, but I didn’t think anyone on Other Place had invented democracy. How is it you’re a president?”
This didn’t seem to bother Percy. “A common question, often followed by ‘what is a president’, and ‘are you kidding?’ Not long ago a group of humans formed an organization called the Barrel Wrights and developed the revolutionary concept that followers should have a say in government. When my people heard about it, we were so excited that we sent an ambassador to them for details. Two months later we had elections, and I’m proud to say I was selected to lead my people.”
“That’s impressive,” Will said. “Congratulations, and I hope you and your people do well.”
“We’re not, and neither are you,” Percy replied. “Our lives and good fortunes are about to come to a grinding halt.”
“I don’t understand,” Will said.
Percy frowned. “I’m sorry, I’m new at speech writing. It sounded good when I came up with the appeal. Let me try again. I recently learned that we’re all going to die in an extremely painful and messy fashion, turning us into mush and our cities into rubble.”
“I see,” Will replied. He paused a moment before asking, “So, is this a ‘kiss your loved ones goodbye’ kind of situation, or can we prevent it?”
“I don’t want to get kissed,” London said quickly. He and his brother backed away from Will.
“That’s a fascinating question I have no answer to,” Percy replied. “My people learned of this catastrophe only recently. We knew it was coming, but we thought we had decades longer to prepare. Sadly that assumption has proven untrue, and we are unready. Faced with this dire portent, I spoke with my advisers and we developed a plan.”
“Break down and cry?” Mr. Niff asked.
“That’s option two,” Percy replied. “Option one was to seek help. We sent ambassadors to neighboring kingdoms but they were turned away. Some were even attacked. Given the limited time remaining, I personally undertook a mission to our best and most powerful allies, the goblins.”
Domo stared at Percy. “We’re the best you could do?”
“We call only goblins friend,” Percy replied. “Even if that weren’t so, your deeds bring hope to many. We heard how time and again you did the impossible. Armies fought you and lost. The Staff of Skulls, said to be immortal, died at your hands. You imprisoned the Eternal Army in a tomb of rock. Even the richest man alive couldn’t best you.”
“We have been beating the odds lately,” Vial said.
Percy pointed at the small goblin with him. “Goblin gates were the only way to reach you in time, so I enlisted the aid of a goblin living in our land to provide the stupidity and craziness to power the gates.”
“The gates aren’t a reliable way of getting around,” Will said.
“Indeed, it took days to reach you, and we visited many distant lands in the process,” Percy replied. “I dispatched other puppet people with the same goal, but it seems I arrived first. Time consuming and dangerous as it was, the trip was worth the effort. My people need help, but aiding us helps both friends and strangers you have yet to meet. The lives of countless millions are at stake.”
“We’ll do whatever we can, but you’ve been kind of vague on details,” Will told Percy. “Exactly what are we dealing with? If we knew more we’d have a better idea of what we could do about it.”
Percy shook Will’s hand again. “Thank you! Your support means much to us, but then again we’ve always been able to count on our goblin friends in times of need.”
Will looked at Domo, who shrugged and said, “I don’t know what he’s talking about, either.”
Percy continued speaking before Will could ask for details. “Your request for information is natural, but I fear there is little I can provide. A people long since gone created a grave threat. They were a secretive group who lived on an island in the sea, and they were enemies to the men who created the first purple puppet people. Those who made this threat allowed no visitors of any kind to their island, even attacking merchants under the assumption they were spies.”
“Ah, good old-fashioned paranoia,” Domo said.
Percy looked down and spoke in a hushed voice. “They made a being capable of terrible destruction. None save his makers knew exactly what he could do, but all fear the worst. His creators are long dead yet he survived. Witnesses saw him howl in rage for his lost creators before marching into the sea. Many thought him lost, drowned or crushed by the intense pressure of the deep ocean. My people knew better. He is not dead, nor has he forgotten the loss of his makers. He has crossed the ocean floor and shall soon emerge to reap a terrible vengeance.”
“Can you at least tell me what this thing is called?” Will asked.
“His name is Sarcamusaad, the Walking City,” Percy told him, “and I fear he is the doom of us all.”
Will remembered hearing the name before, but knew nothing more. If he had any doubts of how serious the threat was, it was dispelled when the trolls and goblins gasped at the news. “It’s that bad?”
Domo gulped nervously. “Not end of the world bad, but a close second.”
“Okay, we’ve got a poorly understood threat that everyone agrees is big,” Will said. “That’s a start, but if we’re going to fight back we need more facts, more friends and weapons to stop this thing.”
“Does that include making ridiculously large bombs?” Vial asked hopefully.
Will patted him on the head. “I don’t know where I’d be without them. But those take a while to build. How long do we have to prepare?”
“I wish I knew,” Percy replied. “Sarcamusaad approaches land, that much we know, but he hasn’t set foot on solid ground. He should reach it soon, and when he does destruction is assured.”
“Well let’s get you back to our city, or the ruins of our city, and we’ll talk more about it,” Will said.
“Again, thank you,” Percy replied. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am. This has been a—” Percy froze in place. He looked to the south and cupped his hand to his ear. “No, not yet.”
Will grabbed his scepter. “What is it?”
“I hear something.” Percy scanned the horizon. “More than that, there’s a taste to the air I’m not familiar with. Magic approaches. It’s strong, but connected to…oh no. He found me.”
“Who found you?” Will asked. “Who’s looking for you?”
Percy stepped back and raised his arms. Short blades slid from each forearm, and he announced, “The shadow of Sarcamusaad falls upon us. Make ready for battle!”
“Spread out!” Will ordered. His friends took cover, with Mr. Niff drawing his knife while Vial gleefully plucked bombs from inside his lab coat. Will scanned the horizon for the danger Percy already seemed aware of. He saw nothing, and as the seconds rolled by he wondered if Percy was mistaken. Then he heard a faint buzzing from the south, like cicadas only more constant. The noise grew louder, but with dense tree cover Will couldn’t spot its source. He turned to Percy and asked, “What are we looking for?”
Percy didn’t have time to answer before a monster cast in bronze flew over the tops of the trees. Will only got a passing look at it, which was bad enough. It had a bronze body as big as a pickup truck and a long tail trailing behind it. There was a blur of motion along its side, wings moving too fast to be seen. It went over them like a shot before making a wide turn and coming back. The bronze monstrosity landed on the trail with a splat as its six legs sunk deep into the muddy ground. It needed a few seconds to pull itself free, offering Will a chance to see it clearly.
It was an entomologist’s nightmare. The body resembled a huge dragonfly with a hunched back sporting four long wings. But the head had a long horn on the nose and two coming from the side of its head like a rhinoceros beetle. There was also a scorpion’s tail as long as its body, ending in a wickedly barbed blade as long as a sword. It also had scorpion arms with man-sized pincers. Now that it wasn’t flying the buzzing noise was gone, replaced with a harsh metallic clanking.
“This is new and unpleasant,” Vial said.
Percy stepped forward and lowered his arms. “Sarcamusaad, mighty one, I beseech you to hear my pleas! We are not your enemies. We are friends made by the same magic. My people and I seek only peace. There is no need for violence.”
The monster disagreed. The insect horror raised its tail, and to Will’s amazement it fired its stinger at Percy. The blade was attached by a bronze chain and aimed straight for Percy’s chest. Will grabbed Percy and pulled him aside a fraction of a second before the blade struck. It flew on fifty feet to stab into the ground. The monster whipped its tail backwards, and the chain and blade flew back.
Thinking fast, Will aimed his fire scepter at the chain as it retracted. The salamander inside the scepter’s largest fire opal scowled as Will turned the scepter on. FOOM! A blast of white-hot fire shot into the air and melted the chain. The blade landed in front of the monster, useless to it.
“Flank it!” Will ordered. “All its weapons are on the front!”
The monstrous contraption lumbered forward swinging its pincers and horns. London and Brooklyn went to its left while Vial and Mr. Niff went right. Domo and Hugh led nearby goblins around the monster’s back. The bronze monster tried to catch London in its pincers but missed.
“Stop!” Percy cried out. “Sarcamusaad, your fight isn’t with us!”
The bronze horror charged Percy and tried to gore him with its horns. Percy and Will ran, leaving the monster to trample young trees and tear up the ground. Vial threw bombs at the monster, doing little damage, while Mr. Niff climbed up its legs and onto its back. The little goblin slid his knife between armor plates and cut vulnerable parts inside.
It was the trolls who did the most to hurt the monster. They grabbed one of its long wings and pulled for all they were worth. The monster shrieked, making a noise like a chainsaw as they ripped the wing off. It turned to face them, only to have Hugh, Domo and the goblins pile on.
“Guys, I need a clear shot!” Will shouted, but no one heard him over the noise of battle. Goblins hammered at the monster with their fists and Hugh pried up an armor plate near the back. The monster shook itself like a wet dog and threw them off, but Vial spotted the opening Hugh had made in its armor and threw his next bomb there. The monster buckled when the bomb went off inside it, and its tail went slack.
Far from defeated, the monster charged Percy again. Percy jumped out of its way and drove both his forearm blades where the monster’s right arm met its body. The blades cut through the thinner armor at the joint. The monster grabbed for him again, but Will was ready. He had a clear shot at the arm and fired his scepter. FOOM! The pincer melted under the intense flames and fell off.
London, Brooklyn and Hugh grabbed the monster’s limp tail and pulled hard. Between the three of them they slowed the beast down while goblins scurried over its legs and hammered at the joints. That wasn’t enough. It twisted its head and struck Percy with a horn, knocking him to the ground. The puppet person rolled away before the monster could catch him on its horns again.
Will pulled Percy away as the monster tried to trample them both. It attacked with its other pincer, but Will swept his cape in front of him. The pincer disappeared into the shimmering cape instead of striking him, coming out of the cape of a goblin scarecrow thirty yards away.
“Fascinating!” Percy told Will. “You must tell me how you did it!”
“Bigger problems at the moment!” Will answered. The monster pulled its claw back through the cape and tried again. Will grabbed Percy and wrapped his cape around them both. They disappeared with a whoosh, trading places with the nearby scarecrow. The monster snapped the empty uniform in half and then shook off the trolls and goblins. It flapped its remaining three wings, and to Will’s surprise it managed to lift five inches off the ground with no sign of stopping.
“Narrow,” Will told his scepter as he aimed it at the wings. FOOM! White-hot flames burned off half a wing and the monster fell to the ground. FOOM! He sent another blast at the monster’s head and burned off one of its horns. This didn’t seem to bother it in the least. “What does it take to stop this thing?”
Vial threw more bombs, blowing gaping holes in the remaining wings. London and Brooklyn scrambled to their feet. London grabbed the tail blade Will had removed with his first attack while his brother grabbed the severed horn. They drove the weapons through the monster’s armored hide to the sound of metal screaming as it tore. Mr. Niff climbed back onto the monster, but this time he crawled into the hole Hugh had made when he’d pulled up the armor plate.
“Niff, get out of there!” Will yelled. He didn’t dare fire again with Mr. Niff inside. Even if he didn’t hit the little goblin, the fire could cook him alive inside the metal monster. Mr. Niff didn’t leave.
The monster swung its remaining pincer at the trolls and knocked them to the ground before it charged Percy and Will again. It covered the distance in seconds and made a credible attempt to run them through with its two remaining horns, but at the last moment its legs buckled. The monster hit the ground and dug a deep furrow in the grass. It went into spasms, kicking its legs and swinging its pincer wildly before falling silent. Smoke rose from its armored carcass.
Covered in grime and smiling, Mr. Niff climbed out of the hole in the mechanical monster’s back and tossed a handful of cables and wires on the ground. “You guys got to see this! There’s lots of cool stuff in here!”
Will and his friends gathered around the steaming metal body. They stared at the strange monster that was so hard to defeat.
“Tough bug,” London said. “I actually broke a sweat.”
“That’s Sarcamusaad?” Will asked Percy.
Percy shook his head. “This is one of his scouts, his eyes and ears when he is still far away. Now he knows we are preparing for him, and our task is that much harder.”
Far away, and blissfully unaware of the approaching terror, Will carried a chair out of a tunnel and into the ruins that used to be the Goblin City. The wood chair was beautifully carved and sturdy, a gift from a king he’d helped the previous year. Will set it down on a patch of relatively flat ground next to Vial and Domo.
“Table coming through!” London and Brooklyn the trolls exited the same tunnel with an ornate wood table. The trolls stood over six feet tall and had green scales, serious under-bites and ears that looked like fish fins, and they wore only cotton trousers. They also had incredible strength and endurance. London was a tad taller and a darker shade of green than his brother, but otherwise they were identical.
The trolls had wandered into the kingdom years ago and volunteered to act as enforcers for numerous men who’d been King of the Goblins. With personalities like rugby players or soccer hooligans, they’d raised unnecessary force to an art form. For all the brothers’ faults, they were loyal and wouldn’t back down no matter the odds, and had saved Will’s life on many occasions.
Following them was Hugh Timbers the dwarf and Milo the minotaur, both carrying chairs. Hugh stood a head shorter than Will, but was heavier and had broad shoulders, powerful muscles, thick brown hair and wore simple leather clothes. Hugh had lost his home and business to the Eternal Army last winter and had settled in Will’s kingdom. The dwarf was polite and helped when he could, but Will could tell that he was still hurting.
Milo was a thoroughly modern minotaur dressed in a black frock coat, white dress shirt, black pants, briefcase and glasses. His fine clothes and refined speech made him slightly less intimidating, but couldn’t change the fact he was seven feet tall, had short brown fur and a bull’s head with long horns. He’d come to the kingdom last year to develop the goblin’s maze into a moneymaking venture.
London and Brooklyn set down the table and the others pulled their chairs around it. Domo and Vial climbed onto the table and the rest sat down.
“Gentlemen,” Will began with a smile, “I’ve been thinking we should have regular meetings to keep everyone up to date on what’s going on in the kingdom.”
“You mean like who’s invading us this week?” Domo asked.
“Ideally no,” Will replied.
“We have been invaded a lot,” London said.
“Not that we’re complaining,” Brooklyn added. “You get lots of exercise roughing people up in an invasion.”
Will frowned and put a hand over his face. “I’d like to know how everyone is doing, and if there’s anything important I should know about.”
“Why are we doing this outside?” Domo asked.
Vial raised a hand and said, “The American cheese and Pepper Jack factions are fighting in the tunnels. I’m told the battle is quite fierce, with much doily related violence.”
“Out here we’re close to the maze, so the civil war won’t interfere with our meeting,” Will said. “We should have the place to ourselves for now. I’m opening the floor to anyone and all topics.”
Milo opened his briefcase and spread papers on the table. “Since you were kind enough to ask, I have a report on maze profitability and expansion plans.”
Will waved his hand. “Go on.”
“I’m afraid maze revenues have been disappointing,” Milo said. He handed out papers with pie charts and bar graphs, but Domo and Vial ate the pages. “After an exhaustive statistical analysis, I’ve determined that in the last three months we have had zero visitors, plus or minus ten.”
“How do you get minus ten visitors?” Domo asked Milo.
“They thought about coming but decided against it.” Milo handed out more papers, this time making sure they went nowhere near the goblins. “This has had an unfortunate effect on sales of maps, and deluxe maps detailing trap locations. I believe the problem is marketing. People know the maze is here, but they don’t see a reason to enter it.”
“I don’t go in if I can help it,” Will admitted.
“That is a common response from people I’ve chased down and interviewed,” Milo replied. “There are two traditional reasons for entering a maze, to test one’s mental abilities or because there is treasure worth having in the maze, a tangible reward for completion.”
Will held out his empty hands. “We’re broke, Milo. The kingdom has a net worth measured in negative numbers. People don’t want anything we have. If we gave it to them, or forced it on them, they’d have to pay to get rid of it.”
“I could donate an exploding outhouse,” Vial offered.
“Hey, Will, we could get rid of those turnips you grew,” Domo suggested.
“How about a coupon for a free beating?” London offered. “One coupon gets one of your enemies beaten up.”
Brooklyn perked up. “I like that one.”
Milo scribbled notes on his papers. “Those are all good suggestions.”
“No they’re not,” Will said.
Milo pointed at the second stack of papers he’d handed out. “At the moment our best bet to attract visitors is to represent the maze as a challenge. I’ve come up with a marketing plan that makes the best use of our limited resources. With your approval, I can begin spreading these publicly.”
Will looked at the papers. The first read ‘The Maze of the Goblins: There’s got to be something in there’. This was followed by ‘The Maze of the Goblins: A challenge that probably won’t result in cannibalism’. The last suggestion was ‘The Maze of the Goblins: Like you’ve got something better to do’. Will handed Milo back the papers and asked, “You think this is going to draw visitors?”
“Definitely,” Milo said. “Our target audience includes adventurers, treasure hunters and the bored rich. We need to appeal to their greed and vanity while making the maze seem more dangerous than it really is.”
“And once they’re here we take them for all they’re worth,” Domo said.
Milo nodded. “Exactly! I have plans for a string of outrageously overpriced concession stands, with guaranteed business since they’ll be the only source of food for miles. Between that and poorly made souvenirs we’ll be swimming in gold.”
Will stared at Milo. “That sounds appallingly close to the amusement parks back home. I can’t see people coming here voluntarily, much less to spend money, but you’re the expert. If you think this might bring tourists then go for it.”
“Excellent!” Milo shook Will’s hand before leaving. “I expect to have good news within the month.”
When no one else volunteered to share concerns or problems, Will took a deep breath and addressed an issue that had been on his mind for months. “Hugh, I was wondering what it would cost to get you back in business again.”
Hugh Timbers looked surprised. “Sir William?”
“How much money would you need for a new home and blacksmith shop?”
Hugh bit his lower lip. “Building and furnishing a house wouldn’t be expensive when I could make most of it myself. The blacksmith shop would cost fifty gold coins for tools and raw materials. The cost is a moot point, though, for I would need customers and nearby people are already served by a competent blacksmith.”
Will scratched his head. “It would take a while for us to get that much money.”
“Us?” Hugh’s expression turned to a look of shock. “Sir William, no!”
“I want to help,” he said.
Hugh’s face showed surprise quickly changing to sorrow. “Sir, you have already done much by giving me refuge. The caves beneath this land are much like my ancestral home and most comfortable. You’ve requested few services and no money in return. You also granted me the privilege to avenge my loss by fighting at your side against the Eternal Army. I am grateful in ways words can’t express.
“But my home, my forge, this must be made or earned by my own hands. I can’t accept help or it wouldn’t be mine. I know my ways are different from yours, and I know you have only the best of intentions, but I must do this task alone.”
“You don’t have any money,” Will said. “It would take years to earn the cash you need to rebuild.”
Hugh frowned. “I did so once before when my people cast me out. It could take years to do it again. But honor demands a worker own his tools and workshop, paid for with neither gift nor loan, and that I must do.”
Will was curious why the dwarfs had exiled Hugh, but he didn’t ask. It was clear that even bringing up the topic hurt Hugh deeply. “If there’s any help you can accept, all you have to do is ask.”
Hugh bowed. “Your kindness is gift enough.”
“Boss!” Will looked over to see Mr. Niff running through the gatehouse. Mr. Niff dodged a barrage of doilies and throw pillows coming from outside. He turned only long enough to shout, “Your aim stinks!”
“Hey, keep it outside!” London yelled.
Mr. Niff scurried over piles of broken bricks until he reached Will. “A purple puppet person just came through the goblin gate. He said he needs to talk to you about super scary stuff, so I went ahead to let you know he’s coming.”
“This is new,” Will said. He got up and waved for the others to follow. “Niff, can you take us to him? I don’t want the poor guy to get caught in the fighting.”
“No sweat.” Mr. Niff led Will, the trolls, Domo, Vial and Hugh out of the ruined city. A band of goblins were waiting with pillows in hand for Mr. Niff, but they paused when they saw Will. Mr. Niff explained, “I’m helping the boss. We’ll fight to the death after I’m done.”
“Promise?” a gangly goblin asked.
Mr. Niff pushed the other goblins aside and led his friends on. They left the city and entered a young forest growing nearby. Narrow trails wound through the woods, most of which were trapped, but Mr. Niff picked his way around snares, pie throwers and concealed pits.
“I’m curious why a purple puppet person came to us for help,” Will said as they walked. “I thought they lived far away.”
“They do,” Domo told him. “They have a couple small communities scattered around the wilderness, but their homeland is seven hundred miles to the east.”
“They still manage to send people to say hello a couple times a year,” Mr. Niff volunteered.
Will glanced at him. “That’s a long way to go for hello.”
“Not really,” Mr. Niff replied. “We’re the only friends they have.”
Puzzled, Will asked, “Why is that?”
Domo shrugged. “No idea. They’re nice people, and they never get mad at us no matter how many stupid things we do. It’s not like they smell or anything. For some reason we’re the only ones who get along with them.”
“I’d think the trolls would be nice to them,” Will said. “All the trolls I’ve met were good people.”
“Wrong direction,” Domo explained. “Trolls live far to our west. I doubt they’ve met. It doesn’t help that puppet people are a new race. There aren’t many of them and they haven’t been around for long.”
On their way they saw Will’s garden. It wasn’t much to look at, just a patch of dirt surrounded by a rickety wood fence. Most plants in the garden had died weeks ago, but a few root crops and cucumber vines were growing. There was also what looked like a lifeguard tower manned by warrior goblins next to the fence.
One of the goblins saw movement in the forest and leaped off the tower before running screaming into the woods. He came back carrying a live rabbit by its hind legs.
“I got him! I got the long eared thieving bunny!” the goblin shouted triumphantly while dancing around in a circle.
“Hold on,” Will began, but the goblin was too taken with his victory to notice.
“He thought he’d ruin the boss’ garden, but I showed him!”
“What’s this about?” Domo asked.
Feeling faintly embarrassed, Will said, “An animal got in my garden last month and did some damage. When the warrior goblins found out they assigned guards to watch over it, which would be a really nice gesture if they didn’t keep attacking innocent animals and salesmen.”
“Animals are guilty until proven innocent!” the warrior goblin shouted. “And even then they’re guilty!”
“The rabbit wasn’t anywhere near my garden,” Will told him.
“He was thinking about it!” The goblin poked the rabbit in the belly. “You were conspiring! Confess!”
Will said, “Just take it a few miles away and let it go.”
The warrior poked the rabbit again before he marched into the woods. “The King’s going easy on you, but this is still going on your record! You have the right to remain silent! Anything you say will be ignored or misinterpreted!”
Will watched the warrior long enough to be sure he wasn’t going to hurt the rabbit before gesturing for Mr. Niff to lead them on. Unfortunately Domo had wandered off to inspect the garden.
“Your weed pile is still alive,” Domo said. He poked a cucumber vine with mildewed leaves. “I figured your plants would have given up and died by now, or that you’d have killed them.”
“The garden should be done for the year pretty soon, but I can still squeeze a bit more out of it for the innkeeper,” Will replied.
Domo looked quizzically at Will. “I thought you grew this green stuff to eat. Why do you keep giving it away?”
Will surveyed his garden and said, “I learned an important fact about myself since I started this: I’m a fair gardener and a terrible cook. None of the meals I made were poisonous, I think, but I ended up feeding a lot of them to passing goblins. It doesn’t help that there’s not much you can do with the plants I could pick from. I did eat some of it, but one more day of vegetable soup would have been the death of me. Can we get back to finding the puppet person? I don’t want him out here alone, especially after I saw the guys using catapults yesterday.”
“Goblin catapults aren’t too dangerous when we load them with sponges,” Mr. Niff said. “Except to goblins using them. People get excited, accidents happen, guys go airborne, but they heal up after a while. Workplace safety rules aren’t what they should be.”
They continued through the woods, going around trenches, small forts and more traps. A few goblins saw them and tagged along, apparently bored with their civil war. In a few minutes they were close enough to see the cave where the goblin gate was. What they didn’t see was the puppet person, which surprised Will. They should have met him by now if he was heading in the right direction.
“Hello!” an echoing voice called out. It took Will a few seconds to spot a pit dug into the trail. It had been covered with a thin wood board coated with dirt, blending in perfectly until some unwitting person stepped on it and broke through. Whoever was trapped in the pit called out again, “Is anyone there?”
“We hear you,” Will replied. He thought about who could be trapped in the pit, and then covered his face with his hand. “Excuse me, but are you the puppet person who came to warn us?”
“Yes, that’s me,” the puppet person replied. He had an echoing voice, like he was speaking inside a box, but he still sounded friendly. “I don’t wish to be a bother, but I was wondering if you could lend a hand. This pit is proving a tad inconvenient.”
“See, this is why I don’t like you guys making so many traps,” Will told the goblins. “We get an ambassador—”
“President,” the puppet person corrected him from inside the pit.
“A president comes to visit and he ends up in a pit!” Will shouted. “We either need to cut back on the traps or have someone around to keep them from catching innocent bystanders.”
“It’s not like we killed the guy,” Mr. Niff protested. He leaned over the pit and asked, “You’re alive, right?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Exasperated, Will said, “Just help me get him out.”
Will and the trolls reached down and grabbed the puppet person by his arms. Pulling him up took some work given his considerable weight, made worse by his fully packed bags and a small goblin clinging to his leg, but they managed.
Once they freed the puppet person, Will got a good look at him. Their guest was six feet tall and looked like a man in armor, but he was made entirely of expertly carved wood and molded steel plates. His features weren’t quite human, with shoulders a bit too wide, forearms a bit too thick and his waist a bit too narrow. The puppet person was painted purple with blue stripes on his legs and arms. His face was carved from wood but his mouth and eyes opened and closed, and he had wooden eyebrows that could move. In spite of such rough features the puppet person looked friendly, even sincere.
Hugh studied the puppet person and nodded approvingly. “Good craftsmanship.”
“Thank you,” the puppet person said cheerfully. Holding out his hand to Will, he said, “Allow me to introduce myself. I am President Percy of the purple puppet people. I assume from your clothes and scepter that you are William Bradshaw?”
Will shook his hand. “Yeah, that’s me. I’m sorry if this sounds rude, but I didn’t think anyone on Other Place had invented democracy. How is it you’re a president?”
This didn’t seem to bother Percy. “A common question, often followed by ‘what is a president’, and ‘are you kidding?’ Not long ago a group of humans formed an organization called the Barrel Wrights and developed the revolutionary concept that followers should have a say in government. When my people heard about it, we were so excited that we sent an ambassador to them for details. Two months later we had elections, and I’m proud to say I was selected to lead my people.”
“That’s impressive,” Will said. “Congratulations, and I hope you and your people do well.”
“We’re not, and neither are you,” Percy replied. “Our lives and good fortunes are about to come to a grinding halt.”
“I don’t understand,” Will said.
Percy frowned. “I’m sorry, I’m new at speech writing. It sounded good when I came up with the appeal. Let me try again. I recently learned that we’re all going to die in an extremely painful and messy fashion, turning us into mush and our cities into rubble.”
“I see,” Will replied. He paused a moment before asking, “So, is this a ‘kiss your loved ones goodbye’ kind of situation, or can we prevent it?”
“I don’t want to get kissed,” London said quickly. He and his brother backed away from Will.
“That’s a fascinating question I have no answer to,” Percy replied. “My people learned of this catastrophe only recently. We knew it was coming, but we thought we had decades longer to prepare. Sadly that assumption has proven untrue, and we are unready. Faced with this dire portent, I spoke with my advisers and we developed a plan.”
“Break down and cry?” Mr. Niff asked.
“That’s option two,” Percy replied. “Option one was to seek help. We sent ambassadors to neighboring kingdoms but they were turned away. Some were even attacked. Given the limited time remaining, I personally undertook a mission to our best and most powerful allies, the goblins.”
Domo stared at Percy. “We’re the best you could do?”
“We call only goblins friend,” Percy replied. “Even if that weren’t so, your deeds bring hope to many. We heard how time and again you did the impossible. Armies fought you and lost. The Staff of Skulls, said to be immortal, died at your hands. You imprisoned the Eternal Army in a tomb of rock. Even the richest man alive couldn’t best you.”
“We have been beating the odds lately,” Vial said.
Percy pointed at the small goblin with him. “Goblin gates were the only way to reach you in time, so I enlisted the aid of a goblin living in our land to provide the stupidity and craziness to power the gates.”
“The gates aren’t a reliable way of getting around,” Will said.
“Indeed, it took days to reach you, and we visited many distant lands in the process,” Percy replied. “I dispatched other puppet people with the same goal, but it seems I arrived first. Time consuming and dangerous as it was, the trip was worth the effort. My people need help, but aiding us helps both friends and strangers you have yet to meet. The lives of countless millions are at stake.”
“We’ll do whatever we can, but you’ve been kind of vague on details,” Will told Percy. “Exactly what are we dealing with? If we knew more we’d have a better idea of what we could do about it.”
Percy shook Will’s hand again. “Thank you! Your support means much to us, but then again we’ve always been able to count on our goblin friends in times of need.”
Will looked at Domo, who shrugged and said, “I don’t know what he’s talking about, either.”
Percy continued speaking before Will could ask for details. “Your request for information is natural, but I fear there is little I can provide. A people long since gone created a grave threat. They were a secretive group who lived on an island in the sea, and they were enemies to the men who created the first purple puppet people. Those who made this threat allowed no visitors of any kind to their island, even attacking merchants under the assumption they were spies.”
“Ah, good old-fashioned paranoia,” Domo said.
Percy looked down and spoke in a hushed voice. “They made a being capable of terrible destruction. None save his makers knew exactly what he could do, but all fear the worst. His creators are long dead yet he survived. Witnesses saw him howl in rage for his lost creators before marching into the sea. Many thought him lost, drowned or crushed by the intense pressure of the deep ocean. My people knew better. He is not dead, nor has he forgotten the loss of his makers. He has crossed the ocean floor and shall soon emerge to reap a terrible vengeance.”
“Can you at least tell me what this thing is called?” Will asked.
“His name is Sarcamusaad, the Walking City,” Percy told him, “and I fear he is the doom of us all.”
Will remembered hearing the name before, but knew nothing more. If he had any doubts of how serious the threat was, it was dispelled when the trolls and goblins gasped at the news. “It’s that bad?”
Domo gulped nervously. “Not end of the world bad, but a close second.”
“Okay, we’ve got a poorly understood threat that everyone agrees is big,” Will said. “That’s a start, but if we’re going to fight back we need more facts, more friends and weapons to stop this thing.”
“Does that include making ridiculously large bombs?” Vial asked hopefully.
Will patted him on the head. “I don’t know where I’d be without them. But those take a while to build. How long do we have to prepare?”
“I wish I knew,” Percy replied. “Sarcamusaad approaches land, that much we know, but he hasn’t set foot on solid ground. He should reach it soon, and when he does destruction is assured.”
“Well let’s get you back to our city, or the ruins of our city, and we’ll talk more about it,” Will said.
“Again, thank you,” Percy replied. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am. This has been a—” Percy froze in place. He looked to the south and cupped his hand to his ear. “No, not yet.”
Will grabbed his scepter. “What is it?”
“I hear something.” Percy scanned the horizon. “More than that, there’s a taste to the air I’m not familiar with. Magic approaches. It’s strong, but connected to…oh no. He found me.”
“Who found you?” Will asked. “Who’s looking for you?”
Percy stepped back and raised his arms. Short blades slid from each forearm, and he announced, “The shadow of Sarcamusaad falls upon us. Make ready for battle!”
“Spread out!” Will ordered. His friends took cover, with Mr. Niff drawing his knife while Vial gleefully plucked bombs from inside his lab coat. Will scanned the horizon for the danger Percy already seemed aware of. He saw nothing, and as the seconds rolled by he wondered if Percy was mistaken. Then he heard a faint buzzing from the south, like cicadas only more constant. The noise grew louder, but with dense tree cover Will couldn’t spot its source. He turned to Percy and asked, “What are we looking for?”
Percy didn’t have time to answer before a monster cast in bronze flew over the tops of the trees. Will only got a passing look at it, which was bad enough. It had a bronze body as big as a pickup truck and a long tail trailing behind it. There was a blur of motion along its side, wings moving too fast to be seen. It went over them like a shot before making a wide turn and coming back. The bronze monstrosity landed on the trail with a splat as its six legs sunk deep into the muddy ground. It needed a few seconds to pull itself free, offering Will a chance to see it clearly.
It was an entomologist’s nightmare. The body resembled a huge dragonfly with a hunched back sporting four long wings. But the head had a long horn on the nose and two coming from the side of its head like a rhinoceros beetle. There was also a scorpion’s tail as long as its body, ending in a wickedly barbed blade as long as a sword. It also had scorpion arms with man-sized pincers. Now that it wasn’t flying the buzzing noise was gone, replaced with a harsh metallic clanking.
“This is new and unpleasant,” Vial said.
Percy stepped forward and lowered his arms. “Sarcamusaad, mighty one, I beseech you to hear my pleas! We are not your enemies. We are friends made by the same magic. My people and I seek only peace. There is no need for violence.”
The monster disagreed. The insect horror raised its tail, and to Will’s amazement it fired its stinger at Percy. The blade was attached by a bronze chain and aimed straight for Percy’s chest. Will grabbed Percy and pulled him aside a fraction of a second before the blade struck. It flew on fifty feet to stab into the ground. The monster whipped its tail backwards, and the chain and blade flew back.
Thinking fast, Will aimed his fire scepter at the chain as it retracted. The salamander inside the scepter’s largest fire opal scowled as Will turned the scepter on. FOOM! A blast of white-hot fire shot into the air and melted the chain. The blade landed in front of the monster, useless to it.
“Flank it!” Will ordered. “All its weapons are on the front!”
The monstrous contraption lumbered forward swinging its pincers and horns. London and Brooklyn went to its left while Vial and Mr. Niff went right. Domo and Hugh led nearby goblins around the monster’s back. The bronze monster tried to catch London in its pincers but missed.
“Stop!” Percy cried out. “Sarcamusaad, your fight isn’t with us!”
The bronze horror charged Percy and tried to gore him with its horns. Percy and Will ran, leaving the monster to trample young trees and tear up the ground. Vial threw bombs at the monster, doing little damage, while Mr. Niff climbed up its legs and onto its back. The little goblin slid his knife between armor plates and cut vulnerable parts inside.
It was the trolls who did the most to hurt the monster. They grabbed one of its long wings and pulled for all they were worth. The monster shrieked, making a noise like a chainsaw as they ripped the wing off. It turned to face them, only to have Hugh, Domo and the goblins pile on.
“Guys, I need a clear shot!” Will shouted, but no one heard him over the noise of battle. Goblins hammered at the monster with their fists and Hugh pried up an armor plate near the back. The monster shook itself like a wet dog and threw them off, but Vial spotted the opening Hugh had made in its armor and threw his next bomb there. The monster buckled when the bomb went off inside it, and its tail went slack.
Far from defeated, the monster charged Percy again. Percy jumped out of its way and drove both his forearm blades where the monster’s right arm met its body. The blades cut through the thinner armor at the joint. The monster grabbed for him again, but Will was ready. He had a clear shot at the arm and fired his scepter. FOOM! The pincer melted under the intense flames and fell off.
London, Brooklyn and Hugh grabbed the monster’s limp tail and pulled hard. Between the three of them they slowed the beast down while goblins scurried over its legs and hammered at the joints. That wasn’t enough. It twisted its head and struck Percy with a horn, knocking him to the ground. The puppet person rolled away before the monster could catch him on its horns again.
Will pulled Percy away as the monster tried to trample them both. It attacked with its other pincer, but Will swept his cape in front of him. The pincer disappeared into the shimmering cape instead of striking him, coming out of the cape of a goblin scarecrow thirty yards away.
“Fascinating!” Percy told Will. “You must tell me how you did it!”
“Bigger problems at the moment!” Will answered. The monster pulled its claw back through the cape and tried again. Will grabbed Percy and wrapped his cape around them both. They disappeared with a whoosh, trading places with the nearby scarecrow. The monster snapped the empty uniform in half and then shook off the trolls and goblins. It flapped its remaining three wings, and to Will’s surprise it managed to lift five inches off the ground with no sign of stopping.
“Narrow,” Will told his scepter as he aimed it at the wings. FOOM! White-hot flames burned off half a wing and the monster fell to the ground. FOOM! He sent another blast at the monster’s head and burned off one of its horns. This didn’t seem to bother it in the least. “What does it take to stop this thing?”
Vial threw more bombs, blowing gaping holes in the remaining wings. London and Brooklyn scrambled to their feet. London grabbed the tail blade Will had removed with his first attack while his brother grabbed the severed horn. They drove the weapons through the monster’s armored hide to the sound of metal screaming as it tore. Mr. Niff climbed back onto the monster, but this time he crawled into the hole Hugh had made when he’d pulled up the armor plate.
“Niff, get out of there!” Will yelled. He didn’t dare fire again with Mr. Niff inside. Even if he didn’t hit the little goblin, the fire could cook him alive inside the metal monster. Mr. Niff didn’t leave.
The monster swung its remaining pincer at the trolls and knocked them to the ground before it charged Percy and Will again. It covered the distance in seconds and made a credible attempt to run them through with its two remaining horns, but at the last moment its legs buckled. The monster hit the ground and dug a deep furrow in the grass. It went into spasms, kicking its legs and swinging its pincer wildly before falling silent. Smoke rose from its armored carcass.
Covered in grime and smiling, Mr. Niff climbed out of the hole in the mechanical monster’s back and tossed a handful of cables and wires on the ground. “You guys got to see this! There’s lots of cool stuff in here!”
Will and his friends gathered around the steaming metal body. They stared at the strange monster that was so hard to defeat.
“Tough bug,” London said. “I actually broke a sweat.”
“That’s Sarcamusaad?” Will asked Percy.
Percy shook his head. “This is one of his scouts, his eyes and ears when he is still far away. Now he knows we are preparing for him, and our task is that much harder.”
William Bradshaw and Urban Problems part 3
Chapter 3
Will and his friends studied the remains of the bronze monster that had tried to kill them. The troll brothers and Hugh Timbers pulled it apart to reveal bewildering mechanical and magical bits inside its bronze shell. Will sorted through the wreckage and picked up a clear, slender crystal with a crack running through it.
“Is any of this dangerous?” Will asked Percy. “We can throw it down a bottomless pit if it’s poisonous or going to explode.”
“It’s harmless now,” Percy said sadly. He picked up a hollow sphere from the wreckage and tossed it aside. “That battle was a bad sign. Sarcamusaad didn’t even try to communicate with us. I wonder if his time alone in the ocean drove him mad.”
“It doesn’t sound like he was too stable to begin with,” Domo replied as he dug through the metal remains.
Will glanced at Percy. “What I want to know is how Sarcamusaad found you. You’re a long way from your people, and the Kingdom of the Goblins didn’t exist when Sarcamusaad went underwater. How’d he know
you were here?”
“Sarcamusaad is a puppet person, as I am,” Percy replied. “While he is much larger and vastly more powerful, he has many of the same abilities. One of those is the ability to sense magic, especially other puppet people.”
“How does that work?” Will asked.
“It’s difficult to describe to someone who can’t do it,”
Percy said. “It’s a scent we get when we’re close to magic, or a feeling. The stronger the magic the more it tastes, if that’s the right word. I can feel your magic scepter from thirty paces away, and a more powerful item from sixty or seventy paces. I can sense other puppet people at ten times that distance.”
Will twirled his scepter. “So you figure the scout was getting the lay of the land and just happened to be close enough to sniff you out.”
“I believe so,” Percy replied. “We shouldn’t linger by the remains. Sarcamusaad may send more scouts to see what happened.”
“Can he fix this one?” Will asked.
Percy looked at the wreckage. “I don’t know.”
Will led his friends back to the ruins of the Goblin City, stopping only long enough to take the table and chairs before going into the tunnels below. Along the way they attracted a fair number of goblins that had heard of the attack and decided it was more important than their civil war. Will took the growing crowd to the throne room to plan their next move.
The room’s name was misleading. While Will now had a bedroom overflowing with furniture thanks to a king he’d once helped, the king hadn’t sent a throne. The only furniture here consisted of a few old crates and an empty barrel. But the room was large enough to accommodate everyone, and seeing as he was dealing with a fellow leader it was probably the best place to use.
“London, if you could bring Gladys?” Will asked.
“No sweat,” London said. He nudged his brother and told him, “Keep him out of trouble while I’m gone.”
“How could I get in trouble in my throne room?” Will protested.
London left the room, saying, “You always get in trouble. That’s why it’s fun working for you.”
“Never a dull moment around here, just the way we like it,” Brooklyn agreed cheerfully.
Mr. Niff smiled. “You’ve come close to getting your ticket punched so often that the guys started a betting pool on who might try to kill you next. My money is on ‘attacked by enraged woodchucks’, but there are good odds on ‘chased off cliff by moose’ and ‘sat on by yeti’.”
Will raised an eyebrow. “You’re taking bets on how I’ll die?”
“Almost die,” Mr. Niff corrected him.
Will shook his head. “Okay, getting back on topic. I’m a little short on details here. I get that this is bad, but not how bad. And I’m trying really hard not to sound like a jerk, but exactly why is this our problem and not someone else’s?”
“Technically Sarcamusaad is everyone’s problem,” Percy replied. “Sarcamusaad has been called one of the fifty most powerful magic items in existence, which is a tad insulting as he is an intelligent being, not an item. He is among the most dangerous beings alive. No known person or beast could fight him and hope to win. The largest of armies would face ruinous losses against him, and their victory would be far from assured. Even his mere passing through a nation would be devastating.”
London came back with Gladys and set her down in front of Will. Gladys was a magic mirror, six feet tall with a bronze frame covered in eagle motifs and standing on two bronze eagle feet. The mirror’s surface showed Gladys as an overweight middle-aged woman with blond hair. She wore too much makeup and a garish pink and yellow dress.
“Just the person I wanted to talk to,” Will said.
“So, we’re screwed,” Gladys said.
“Inelegant, but correct,” Percy replied.
Gladys pouted. “I saw the fight through a scarecrow. If it takes that much to bring down a little one, I don’t want to know what it takes to stop the big one.”
Will pulled up a crate and sat down in front of Gladys. “I need whatever you have on Sarcamusaad.”
Gladys frowned as a bookcase appeared behind her inside the mirror. Taking a book out, she said, “There’s not much I can tell you. Sarcamusaad was built long ago by a group of humans called the Crafters. The Crafters lived in a small kingdom north of here that included parts of our kingdom. They stole dwarf magic secrets on building golems, but that wasn’t as useful as they’d hoped. Golems need constant supervision, break down a lot and are expensive. Crafters spent years researching better forms of golems until they made the purple puppet people.”
“We are indebted to them,” Percy said solemnly.
Gladys stared at Percy in disbelief. “They made you for slave labor.”
“I said we are indebted to them. I didn’t say we liked them.”
“I wouldn’t, either,” she said. “Crafters built thousands of purple puppet people to be their workers and soldiers. Puppet people built the cities, grew the food and protected them from their enemies. The bums didn’t do anything for themselves. You’d think that would be enough, but it wasn’t. Some of the Crafters decided to stage a coup and take over the kingdom. They lost and were driven out, swearing eternal vengeance.”
“I’m suddenly happy I never met these people,” Will said.
“Oh yeah, they were scum,” Gladys replied. “Roughly half the Crafters fled the kingdom and headed south with the other half hot on their heels. The renegade Crafters stole boats and escaped by sea. They settled on the island of Muramal, a tropical paradise where they should have lived happily ever after if they weren’t such jerks.”
Gladys pressed a book up against the mirror’s surface. The pages showed people building a large city by the sea. There were huge buildings, tall towers, imposing walls, and what looked suspiciously like cannons.
“Cannons?” Will asked. “These guys had cannons?”
“Magic cannons,” Percy replied. “They use four magic wands or scepters bundled together inside each barrel. The wands fire as one, meaning the cannons are capable of inflicting tremendous damage at incredible range. The design went out of production long ago because they were expensive and hard to make. If the cannons weren’t built exactly right they exploded when first used.”
Vial perked up and scurried over to Percy. “Really? How would one go about making one of these wonders?”
“Don’t answer that,” Will told Percy. “Go on, Gladys.”
“The renegade Crafters made Sarcamusaad to get their revenge,” Gladys continued. “Instead of making an army of man-sized puppets they made one as big as a city. The project took years and the renegade Crafters shot at anyone who came close to their island. One of the few ship captains who survived their attacks made these drawings.”
“Percy said the men who made Sarcamusaad all died,” Will said. “With guns like that, who could kill them?”
Gladys pulled her book back and turned a page. “Nobody knows. Ships steered clear of Muramal for years after the first few were fired on. One day a merchant ship saw a small boat leave Muramal and head their way. The captain thought they were going to attack and made a run for it, but the boat came close enough to hail them. Renegade Crafters on board said they needed medicine and doctors. They promised a fortune in gold if the captain could get them help within a month. The captain agreed and came back with a couple doctors and all the medicine he could buy. This is what he saw.”
Gladys placed the book against the surface of the mirror again. The drawing lacked detail, but what they saw was bad enough. Will and the others leaned in close to the picture of a towering, man-shaped thing standing where the city had been. It had a sloping head, no neck, broad flat shoulders, short legs and long arms that ended in huge armored fists. There were strange features to the giant, towers and gates that looked like they had come straight off the city. It took Will a second to realize this titanic creation was the city, folded up and twisted around until it resembled a man.
“Sarcamusaad roared that its makers had been murdered, and he fired lightning and fire into the sky,” Gladys told them. “Then he waded into the ocean toward the ship. The captain got away, but he thought that was because Sarcamusaad wasn’t going after him. He went home and never returned to Muramal. Years later a few idiots decided to explore the island and found thousands of graves with no markers. They swore it looked like giant fingers had dug the graves from volcanic rock.”
Will stared at the drawing. “And that’s coming our way.”
“Yes,” Percy replied. “I believe Sarcamusaad blames the Crafters for this crime. He has to travel through many kingdoms to reach his goal, and I fear for the people living there. Worse, the Crafters are no more, scattered to the wind like dandelion seeds. What happens when he finds no one to vent his rage on? I have come up with many possible outcomes, none of them pleasant.”
“And we’re supposed to stop that?” Domo sputtered.
Will kept staring at the picture. “Percy, this is out of our league. We’ve fought armies before, under protest, and we’ve taken down some big game in the last year or so, but this thing looks like it could grind us into paste without noticing. How could we fight a threat that big?”
Percy fidgeted. “That would be difficult bordering on impossible, but I believe we can stop Sarcamusaad without violence.”
“That ruins my day,” Brooklyn said.
“It’s true Sarcamusaad is a terrible danger,” Percy continued, “but in his own way he’s also a victim. He didn’t choose to be an engine of war. Others made that decision for him.”
Will rubbed his chin. “He’s got a right to be angry. I mean, the people who built him were kind of like his family, and they were taken from him. If I were in his place I’d be mad enough to bite through a crowbar.”
Percy nodded. “A valid point. Sarcamusaad is dangerous and we may have no choice but to fight him, but my greatest hope is that we can save him. Decades ago the purple puppet people successfully broke free from the Crafters’ rule. I would like for Sarcamusaad to do the same, help him become an independent person with goals and dreams beyond war or servitude.”
Domo waved his walking stick. “I’m sorry, but there was a little episode not too far back where he tried to kill us, and you in particular. Did you somehow miss that?”
“Yeah, he seemed kind of grumpy,” Mr. Niff added.
Percy fidgeted some more. “That is an issue. If Sarcamusaad is still intent on destroying the Crafters then he likely thinks the puppet people serve them, myself included. That’s where you have the best chance to help! Sarcamusaad has no quarrel with goblins and might listen to you.”
“That’s a stretch,” Will said. “On a good day people ignore us. On a bad day they try to kill us. We have lots of bad days. Why would a giant walking city care what we have to say?”
Percy looked down. “I realize how much I’m asking. Sarcamusaad is an incredible threat to anyone in his path, and trying to talk to him could be as dangerous as fighting him. But doing nothing can only have bad results.”
“Especially for us,” Gladys said.
“What do you mean?” Will asked.
Gladys opened another book and pressed it against the mirror’s surface. “This is a map of Other Place. The island shaped like a kidney at the bottom of the map is Muramal. The old homeland of the Crafters is north of here between the Raushtad Mountains and Elf’s Pride Lake. The wastelands of our kingdom used to be in the Crafter’s kingdom. Draw a straight line from Muramal to Crafter lands and what do you see?”
Will ran his finger across the mirror, following the points on the map. “Oh come on!”
The others huddled around Will. Mr. Niff asked, “What is it?”
“Us,” Will said. “If Sarcamusaad follows a straight line to his enemies then he’s going to march right through the Kingdom of the Goblins to get there. He might even hit the Goblin City, or what’s left of it.”
Alarmed, Mr. Niff declared, “There’d be ruin, untold devastation…oh, wait, too late.”
“He’ll go through a lot of other kingdoms first,” Domo pointed out. “Any chance one of them can stop him?”
Will shrugged. “It’s doubtful. Even if one of them destroys Sarcamusaad, he’ll still do lots of damage and kill people, and him dying isn’t necessarily a good thing. Someone that strong could do a lot of good if we calm him down.”
“How do we stop him, or slow him down enough to talk to us?” Domo demanded. “The guy is as big as a mountain! A small mountain, maybe, but that’s still really big. He’ll step on us and keep walking.”
Will tapped his scepter on his palm. “If Sarcamusaad is as dangerous as the books say then we’re going to need serious firepower. Vial, I want you to build one of your big bombs, the sooner the better.”
Vial clapped his hands together. “Rapturous joy!”
“Hugh, could you help him make the bomb casing?” Will asked.
Hugh nodded. “It is a fair request.”
Will addressed the others. “Domo, Niff, round up some goblins. I need them to go through the goblin gate and ask the trolls for help. I hate dragging them into this, but they’re one of the few people on speaking terms with us.”
“Can do, boss,” Mr. Niff said.
“We’ll also need to ask around the neighboring human kingdoms,” Will continued. “They don’t like us, so we might not do any better at finding help than Percy did, but there’s a chance. After all, they can’t want Sarcamusaad marching through their kingdoms, and the best chance to stop him is by working together.”
“That could be a problem,” Domo said. “We know Sarcamusaad is coming because Percy told us and one of his scouts tried to kill us. The neighbors don’t know he’s coming, and they’re not going to take our word for it.”
Vial added “Especially not after we spread rumors that tar is a cure for baldness.”
“Yeah, we got in a lot of trouble for that one,” Mr. Niff agreed. “Kind of strange how many men believed us.”
Surprised, Will asked, “When did this happen?”
“Last week,” Mr. Niff replied. “I was meaning to tell you about it, but, well, mistakes were made.”
Will shook his head. “Impossible. Okay, dealing with this is going to be as much fun as dental work without anesthetic, but it’s not going away on its own. I’d like to stop Sarcamusaad as far away from here as possible. Where is he going to come ashore?”
Percy pointed to a spot on the map far south of the Kingdom of the Goblins. “My people have teams along the coast where Sarcamusaad is most likely to reach land. They sensed him the strongest here. Expect him to reach land within five miles of this location.”
“Then that’s where we’re going,” Will said. “Once we’re there we try to talk to him and calm him down. If that doesn’t work—”
“If?” Domo asked.
Mr. Niff twiddled his thumbs. “We haven’t done so good at talking our way out of problems.”
“I know, but we’re going to try talking to him,” Will said.
“We owe Sarcamusaad a chance to settle down before we attack. Assuming that doesn’t work, Vial and Hugh are making a bomb to stop him. I’m not sure it can kill him, but at least it should hurt him enough that we’ll have an easier time stopping him afterwards.”
“We’re not taking Vial on our trip?” Domo asked.
“I need him here working on the bomb,” Will explained. “And no slight to Vial, but do you think his regular bombs would even scratch Sarcamusaad?”
“Can’t argue with that,” Domo admitted. “How do we get there?”
“That’s not a problem,” Will said. “I can trade places with goblin scarecrows, and there doesn’t seem to be a limit on the range. Plus I can take a lot of people with me. Getting there should be quick and easy.”
“Should be easy, but it’s not,” Gladys said. “Will, I just checked for goblin scarecrows near the site, and there aren’t any. There’s a gap of at least a hundred miles between the closest scarecrow and where Sarcamusaad is going to hit land.”
“Just great,” Will griped. He thought hard before looking at Percy. “Wait a minute. You said your people were on the lookout for Sarcamusaad. How did they get word to you from so far away?”
“They used a goblin gate,” Percy explained. “There is a gate located twenty miles from shore. When they sensed Sarcamusaad approaching, they sent four messengers through the gate along with goblins to power it. It took a few days, but one of them reached my people.”
Will snapped his fingers. “Then we can get there in time with the goblin gates. We’ll grab food and whatever else we need and leave right away. Niff, show Percy to an empty room where he can rest and drop off his things until we leave.”
“Gotcha, boss,” Mr. Niff replied. He took Percy by the hand and left the throne room, saying, “I know a place you can stay that wasn’t trapped this morning. Keep an eye out all the same.”
Will’s friends separated to collect food and supplies for the journey, with London carrying Gladys out on his back. Will sank down onto the empty crate he used for a throne. It took him a moment to notice Domo hadn’t left.
“Is there a target on my back?” Will asked.
Domo peered at Will’s back. “Not today. Why?”
“Because it’s starting to feel like the world’s got it in for me.” Will threw up his hands and cried out, “Why does this stuff keep happening to me? I’m a nice guy. I’ve never done anything to deserve this. But I’ve been hit by one thing after another ever since I came to this world. Idiot kings, insane super weapons, immortal lunatics, a sociopath billionaire, it just doesn’t stop!”
Domo tapped his walking stick on the floor. “It’s not just you, you know.”
“I’m sorry, that must have sounded really selfish. You and the rest of the guys are getting caught by this craziness, too.”
“True, but that’s not what I meant,” Domo said. “I have done a few things to earn this kind of bad luck, but there are lots of people hurting besides us. Our old friend and enemy King Kervol just survived an assassination attempt.”
Will sat up straight as a ramrod. “He what? Who did it?”
Domo shrugged. “Nobody knows. It looked like a professional hit with two killers using poisoned daggers. Thing is, Kervol drew his sword in time.”
“Yeah, Kervol is an idiot, but he’s a good swordsman,”
Will admitted. “Did the killers say anything?”
“Not after Kervol was done with them. Nobody knows who hired them or why they wanted him dead. A rival king could have sent them. Kervol is also worried that someone inside his kingdom did it so they could take his throne. His wife is the odds on favorite. Either way, he’s got to be worried there could be more killers coming. He’s trying to keep it quiet while he figures out who’s responsible, but that could take a while since his IQ and shoe size are the same number.”
“I didn’t hear about this,” Will said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You were already dealing with a goblin civil war,” Domo replied. “Besides, how could you help? You can’t investigate Kervol’s enemies. He has too many. You can’t interrogate Kervol’s people to see if they’re responsible. That would make him look weak. He’d never allow it.”
Will nodded. “Fair point.”
“Then there’s King Ethan,” Domo began.
It took Will a moment to remember who Domo was referring to. “Wait, isn’t he Prince Alexander’s sick father? I thought he’d be okay after we gave the prince water from the Bottle of Hope to heal him.”
“That’s him. It turns out not everyone was happy to see him recover. A couple noblemen even tried to make sure the prince never reached him. But the prince made it and King Ethan survived, only to learn a lot of his followers wanted him dead. He got rid of a few traitors before the rest holed up in their castles and declared themselves independent kingdoms. He’s taking them down one at a time with forces loyal to him, but it’s going to be a while before his kingdom is at peace, and a lot longer than that to fix the damage.”
“Why don’t you tell me these things?” Will asked. “I could have…ah nuts.” Will slumped back down on the crate. “I can’t help him. My king contract only lets me leave here if the kingdom or my life is in danger. I can’t leave when someone else’s life is on the line. And if I sent goblins to help without being there to keep them on task, I can’t imagine how many ways that could go wrong.”
“Yeah, it sucks,” Domo said. “The resident goblins are helping Kervol and Ethan when they can, for whatever that’s worth. It’s kind of funny when you think about it. Even with the power of a king, there’s a lot you can’t do.”
Domo walked up to Will and said, “Look on the bright side. You saved tens of thousands of lives in the last year or so, maybe hundreds of thousands. There aren’t many people who can say that, and it’s way more than anyone expected from you. And yes, there are big problems out there and good people getting hurt, but you’re not alone. The Fairy Godmothers, the Guild of Heroes, the Brotherhood of the Righteous, they handle a lot of problems you can’t be there for.”
“I’m guessing they can’t handle a homicidal city,” Will said.
“That’s a bit beyond them.”
Will went to his bedroom while the others prepared for the journey. The room was filled with furniture donated by Prince Alexander and King Ethan after he’d helped them last year. The gifts were of the highest quality, masterfully carved and stained wood in excellent condition. There wasn’t much here he needed, but there was one thing he had to take.
Will lifted his mattress and removed three letters he’d hidden there. The paper had a strong scent of roses when he’d first received them, but the perfume had faded with time, or perhaps gave up to despair amid the constant stink of the Goblin City. He held the letters for a moment, tempted to read them again.
These three letters were his only contact with Lydia. She’d written them months ago to thank him for his help and tell him how well things were going. Will had donated Quentin Peck’s vast wealth to the Fairy Godmothers to help them rescue children in distress. According to her letters the money was already working wonders and had saved hundreds of youngsters in terrible circumstances.
But communicating by letters was a one-way path. Each letter was sent from a different kingdom as Lydia moved about on her duties. He’d written letters and sent them to all three locations, but there was no sign any had reached her. Maybe she’d moved on before they’d arrived. Maybe the goblins he’d entrusted to deliver the letters had lost or eaten them.
That last possibility was why he was here. Goblins could eat almost anything, and they considered paper a good source of fiber. Worse, they thought nothing of coming into his room and rummaging around. While Will was fairly certain none of them would make a meal of Lydia’s letters, he wasn’t going to take the chance.
“Hey, boss!” It was Mr. Niff, running down the hall to Will’s room. Will quickly slipped the letters into his shirt pocket before he put on his black vest to cover them. Mr. Niff scurried into the room and announced, “Percy says the sooner we leave the better.”
“I’ll be ready once I pack some food and refill the gourd,” Will said. He paused for a moment and studied the furniture again. He rapped his knuckles on the bed post and said, “You know, now that I think about it, it’s strange I haven’t picked up goblin graffiti in here. You guys scrawl nonsense on everything else, and the wood isn’t that hard.”
Appalled, Mr. Niff said, “We wouldn’t damage that!”
“That’s good to hear, but I’m curious why.”
“It’s a gift,” Mr. Niff explained. “If you’d bought this stuff or made it yourself, then yeah, sure, we’d write on it, chew on it, set it on fire or launch it out of a catapult at passing insurance salesmen. But these are gifts. Gifts are special. If you get a gift that means someone cares about you, and that doesn’t happen a lot.”
Will couldn’t fault Mr. Niff’s reasoning, and he made more sense than most of the things goblins said or did.
“Let’s finish packing.”
Will loaded up two bags of fresh vegetables, which was the only food he had on hand. He could always get more supplies if he came across an inn or restaurant, but this would hold him for a while if he ended up in the wilderness. He refilled the gourd at a stream far enough outside the Goblin City that it should be drinkable.
The others joined him with all the supplies they could carry. London came with more gourds and packages of dried food while Brooklyn carried Gladys on his back. Domo and Mr. Niff brought nothing of importance, confident they could eat whatever garbage they’d come across. Percy came last with his bulging packs, while Vial and Hugh Timbers arrived to see them off.
“We shall begin work on the bomb after you leave,” Vial assured them.
“Thanks, Vial,” Will said. “Hopefully we won’t need it.”
“We always need pointlessly large explosives,” Vial countered. “If by some chance we don’t use it on Sarcamusaad, we can use it to keep the neighbors on their toes. I find the occasional random detonation does wonders to keep rival kings respectful.”
Percy raised an eyebrow. “My preference is for using meaningful dialogue to deal with misunderstandings, but your way has merit.”
Will led the group to the goblin gate. Fighting had ceased once news got out that there was a threat to deal with, and goblins abandoned their trenches, forts and tank traps. Will wondered what those were for, seeing as Other Place had no tanks or monsters similar to one. He was about to ask when he saw two goblins arguing on the topic.
A green skinned goblin pointed to a tank trap and said, “Why do we even make these things? You can just walk around them!”
A goblin with ram horns waved an old US army field guide in the other goblin’s face. “It’s in the book, right after the part about not fragging your officers!”
They soon reached a small cave containing the goblin gate, a circle of bricks each carved with a different symbol connecting the gate to twenty more gates. Each of those gates was connected to twenty more, and those to another twenty, forming a network that stretched across the planet. It was possible to go nearly anywhere on Other Place in seconds and was a near perfect method of travel, save for the minor problem that there was no way to control which gate you ended up at. Using the gate was a gamble, made worse by the fact that not all destinations were safe.
A mob of goblins were already gathered around the gate and going in one at a time. Each goblin disappeared with a whoosh when they set foot inside the gate, to be followed by the next goblin.
“The guys are sending word to King Gate of the trolls about what’s happening, just like you asked,” Domo explained. “One of them should reach the trolls sooner or later.”
The remaining goblins shouted their message together, saying, “King Will says we’re screwed!”
“You need to tell him why!” Will shouted back.
A small goblin looked puzzled. “This time or overall?”
Will grumbled before turning to Vial. “Tell the other goblins to spread the word to surrounding kingdoms. Have them bring pieces of that bronze monster with them as proof.”
“Neighboring kings never trusted us before, with good reason,” Vial told Will.
“I know, but we have to try. And tell the guys to get ready for a fight. I may have to send for them if things go wrong, and I’ll need them to come as soon as they can with all the weapons they’ve got.”
The last goblin messenger went through the gate, leaving Will and his friends to go next. Will took a deep breath and said, “Gentlemen, this is going to be hard to the point of being impossible.”
“Since when has that stopped us?” Domo asked.
“I know, we’re kind of stupid that way,” Will admitted. “We’ve got help from Percy and the purple puppet people, and I think we can scare up support once more people learn that Sarcamusaad is coming. Just as important, for once we’re forewarned. We know he’s on his way and we have some idea what to expect.”
Percy interrupted Will to ask, “Is this a morale building speech?”
“Um, sort of.”
“Fascinating! Does it work?”
Will scratched his head. “It seems to.”
Just then they heard talking in the distance. Will walked away from the group and saw the cause of the commotion. It was True Eyes, battered and bruised, his fancy clothes torn, but still standing after the battle with his elf rival. Goblins surrounded the elf, and he was too busy dealing with them to notice Will. That was good. Will didn’t need distractions when there was already so much on his plate.
“It’s imperative I speak with King Bradshaw!” True Eyes told the goblins. “I’m an ambassador on an important matter of state.”
A pudgy goblin snorted derisively. “An ambassador, dressed like that?”
True Eyes looked nervous. “There were problems getting here.”
“Yeah, right,” a furry goblin said. “Let’s see some ID.”
Percy walked up to Will and watched the exchange. “Shouldn’t you intervene?”
“Normally yes, but I’m trying to avoid this guy.” Will led his followers back to the goblin gate. “Everyone go through together so we don’t leave someone behind.”
They saw a small goblin armed with a rolling pin ask True Eyes, “Do you have an appointment?”
“Uh, no,” the elf conceded.
The goblin tapped the rolling pin on his hand. “Then we have a problem.”
“I didn’t have an appointment, either,” Percy said as they stepped onto the gate. The air around them grew dark and musty, and they disappeared with a whoosh.
________________________________
If you are enjoying William Bradshaw and Urban Problems, the full book is available on Amazon in both ebook and paperback formats.
Will and his friends studied the remains of the bronze monster that had tried to kill them. The troll brothers and Hugh Timbers pulled it apart to reveal bewildering mechanical and magical bits inside its bronze shell. Will sorted through the wreckage and picked up a clear, slender crystal with a crack running through it.
“Is any of this dangerous?” Will asked Percy. “We can throw it down a bottomless pit if it’s poisonous or going to explode.”
“It’s harmless now,” Percy said sadly. He picked up a hollow sphere from the wreckage and tossed it aside. “That battle was a bad sign. Sarcamusaad didn’t even try to communicate with us. I wonder if his time alone in the ocean drove him mad.”
“It doesn’t sound like he was too stable to begin with,” Domo replied as he dug through the metal remains.
Will glanced at Percy. “What I want to know is how Sarcamusaad found you. You’re a long way from your people, and the Kingdom of the Goblins didn’t exist when Sarcamusaad went underwater. How’d he know
you were here?”
“Sarcamusaad is a puppet person, as I am,” Percy replied. “While he is much larger and vastly more powerful, he has many of the same abilities. One of those is the ability to sense magic, especially other puppet people.”
“How does that work?” Will asked.
“It’s difficult to describe to someone who can’t do it,”
Percy said. “It’s a scent we get when we’re close to magic, or a feeling. The stronger the magic the more it tastes, if that’s the right word. I can feel your magic scepter from thirty paces away, and a more powerful item from sixty or seventy paces. I can sense other puppet people at ten times that distance.”
Will twirled his scepter. “So you figure the scout was getting the lay of the land and just happened to be close enough to sniff you out.”
“I believe so,” Percy replied. “We shouldn’t linger by the remains. Sarcamusaad may send more scouts to see what happened.”
“Can he fix this one?” Will asked.
Percy looked at the wreckage. “I don’t know.”
Will led his friends back to the ruins of the Goblin City, stopping only long enough to take the table and chairs before going into the tunnels below. Along the way they attracted a fair number of goblins that had heard of the attack and decided it was more important than their civil war. Will took the growing crowd to the throne room to plan their next move.
The room’s name was misleading. While Will now had a bedroom overflowing with furniture thanks to a king he’d once helped, the king hadn’t sent a throne. The only furniture here consisted of a few old crates and an empty barrel. But the room was large enough to accommodate everyone, and seeing as he was dealing with a fellow leader it was probably the best place to use.
“London, if you could bring Gladys?” Will asked.
“No sweat,” London said. He nudged his brother and told him, “Keep him out of trouble while I’m gone.”
“How could I get in trouble in my throne room?” Will protested.
London left the room, saying, “You always get in trouble. That’s why it’s fun working for you.”
“Never a dull moment around here, just the way we like it,” Brooklyn agreed cheerfully.
Mr. Niff smiled. “You’ve come close to getting your ticket punched so often that the guys started a betting pool on who might try to kill you next. My money is on ‘attacked by enraged woodchucks’, but there are good odds on ‘chased off cliff by moose’ and ‘sat on by yeti’.”
Will raised an eyebrow. “You’re taking bets on how I’ll die?”
“Almost die,” Mr. Niff corrected him.
Will shook his head. “Okay, getting back on topic. I’m a little short on details here. I get that this is bad, but not how bad. And I’m trying really hard not to sound like a jerk, but exactly why is this our problem and not someone else’s?”
“Technically Sarcamusaad is everyone’s problem,” Percy replied. “Sarcamusaad has been called one of the fifty most powerful magic items in existence, which is a tad insulting as he is an intelligent being, not an item. He is among the most dangerous beings alive. No known person or beast could fight him and hope to win. The largest of armies would face ruinous losses against him, and their victory would be far from assured. Even his mere passing through a nation would be devastating.”
London came back with Gladys and set her down in front of Will. Gladys was a magic mirror, six feet tall with a bronze frame covered in eagle motifs and standing on two bronze eagle feet. The mirror’s surface showed Gladys as an overweight middle-aged woman with blond hair. She wore too much makeup and a garish pink and yellow dress.
“Just the person I wanted to talk to,” Will said.
“So, we’re screwed,” Gladys said.
“Inelegant, but correct,” Percy replied.
Gladys pouted. “I saw the fight through a scarecrow. If it takes that much to bring down a little one, I don’t want to know what it takes to stop the big one.”
Will pulled up a crate and sat down in front of Gladys. “I need whatever you have on Sarcamusaad.”
Gladys frowned as a bookcase appeared behind her inside the mirror. Taking a book out, she said, “There’s not much I can tell you. Sarcamusaad was built long ago by a group of humans called the Crafters. The Crafters lived in a small kingdom north of here that included parts of our kingdom. They stole dwarf magic secrets on building golems, but that wasn’t as useful as they’d hoped. Golems need constant supervision, break down a lot and are expensive. Crafters spent years researching better forms of golems until they made the purple puppet people.”
“We are indebted to them,” Percy said solemnly.
Gladys stared at Percy in disbelief. “They made you for slave labor.”
“I said we are indebted to them. I didn’t say we liked them.”
“I wouldn’t, either,” she said. “Crafters built thousands of purple puppet people to be their workers and soldiers. Puppet people built the cities, grew the food and protected them from their enemies. The bums didn’t do anything for themselves. You’d think that would be enough, but it wasn’t. Some of the Crafters decided to stage a coup and take over the kingdom. They lost and were driven out, swearing eternal vengeance.”
“I’m suddenly happy I never met these people,” Will said.
“Oh yeah, they were scum,” Gladys replied. “Roughly half the Crafters fled the kingdom and headed south with the other half hot on their heels. The renegade Crafters stole boats and escaped by sea. They settled on the island of Muramal, a tropical paradise where they should have lived happily ever after if they weren’t such jerks.”
Gladys pressed a book up against the mirror’s surface. The pages showed people building a large city by the sea. There were huge buildings, tall towers, imposing walls, and what looked suspiciously like cannons.
“Cannons?” Will asked. “These guys had cannons?”
“Magic cannons,” Percy replied. “They use four magic wands or scepters bundled together inside each barrel. The wands fire as one, meaning the cannons are capable of inflicting tremendous damage at incredible range. The design went out of production long ago because they were expensive and hard to make. If the cannons weren’t built exactly right they exploded when first used.”
Vial perked up and scurried over to Percy. “Really? How would one go about making one of these wonders?”
“Don’t answer that,” Will told Percy. “Go on, Gladys.”
“The renegade Crafters made Sarcamusaad to get their revenge,” Gladys continued. “Instead of making an army of man-sized puppets they made one as big as a city. The project took years and the renegade Crafters shot at anyone who came close to their island. One of the few ship captains who survived their attacks made these drawings.”
“Percy said the men who made Sarcamusaad all died,” Will said. “With guns like that, who could kill them?”
Gladys pulled her book back and turned a page. “Nobody knows. Ships steered clear of Muramal for years after the first few were fired on. One day a merchant ship saw a small boat leave Muramal and head their way. The captain thought they were going to attack and made a run for it, but the boat came close enough to hail them. Renegade Crafters on board said they needed medicine and doctors. They promised a fortune in gold if the captain could get them help within a month. The captain agreed and came back with a couple doctors and all the medicine he could buy. This is what he saw.”
Gladys placed the book against the surface of the mirror again. The drawing lacked detail, but what they saw was bad enough. Will and the others leaned in close to the picture of a towering, man-shaped thing standing where the city had been. It had a sloping head, no neck, broad flat shoulders, short legs and long arms that ended in huge armored fists. There were strange features to the giant, towers and gates that looked like they had come straight off the city. It took Will a second to realize this titanic creation was the city, folded up and twisted around until it resembled a man.
“Sarcamusaad roared that its makers had been murdered, and he fired lightning and fire into the sky,” Gladys told them. “Then he waded into the ocean toward the ship. The captain got away, but he thought that was because Sarcamusaad wasn’t going after him. He went home and never returned to Muramal. Years later a few idiots decided to explore the island and found thousands of graves with no markers. They swore it looked like giant fingers had dug the graves from volcanic rock.”
Will stared at the drawing. “And that’s coming our way.”
“Yes,” Percy replied. “I believe Sarcamusaad blames the Crafters for this crime. He has to travel through many kingdoms to reach his goal, and I fear for the people living there. Worse, the Crafters are no more, scattered to the wind like dandelion seeds. What happens when he finds no one to vent his rage on? I have come up with many possible outcomes, none of them pleasant.”
“And we’re supposed to stop that?” Domo sputtered.
Will kept staring at the picture. “Percy, this is out of our league. We’ve fought armies before, under protest, and we’ve taken down some big game in the last year or so, but this thing looks like it could grind us into paste without noticing. How could we fight a threat that big?”
Percy fidgeted. “That would be difficult bordering on impossible, but I believe we can stop Sarcamusaad without violence.”
“That ruins my day,” Brooklyn said.
“It’s true Sarcamusaad is a terrible danger,” Percy continued, “but in his own way he’s also a victim. He didn’t choose to be an engine of war. Others made that decision for him.”
Will rubbed his chin. “He’s got a right to be angry. I mean, the people who built him were kind of like his family, and they were taken from him. If I were in his place I’d be mad enough to bite through a crowbar.”
Percy nodded. “A valid point. Sarcamusaad is dangerous and we may have no choice but to fight him, but my greatest hope is that we can save him. Decades ago the purple puppet people successfully broke free from the Crafters’ rule. I would like for Sarcamusaad to do the same, help him become an independent person with goals and dreams beyond war or servitude.”
Domo waved his walking stick. “I’m sorry, but there was a little episode not too far back where he tried to kill us, and you in particular. Did you somehow miss that?”
“Yeah, he seemed kind of grumpy,” Mr. Niff added.
Percy fidgeted some more. “That is an issue. If Sarcamusaad is still intent on destroying the Crafters then he likely thinks the puppet people serve them, myself included. That’s where you have the best chance to help! Sarcamusaad has no quarrel with goblins and might listen to you.”
“That’s a stretch,” Will said. “On a good day people ignore us. On a bad day they try to kill us. We have lots of bad days. Why would a giant walking city care what we have to say?”
Percy looked down. “I realize how much I’m asking. Sarcamusaad is an incredible threat to anyone in his path, and trying to talk to him could be as dangerous as fighting him. But doing nothing can only have bad results.”
“Especially for us,” Gladys said.
“What do you mean?” Will asked.
Gladys opened another book and pressed it against the mirror’s surface. “This is a map of Other Place. The island shaped like a kidney at the bottom of the map is Muramal. The old homeland of the Crafters is north of here between the Raushtad Mountains and Elf’s Pride Lake. The wastelands of our kingdom used to be in the Crafter’s kingdom. Draw a straight line from Muramal to Crafter lands and what do you see?”
Will ran his finger across the mirror, following the points on the map. “Oh come on!”
The others huddled around Will. Mr. Niff asked, “What is it?”
“Us,” Will said. “If Sarcamusaad follows a straight line to his enemies then he’s going to march right through the Kingdom of the Goblins to get there. He might even hit the Goblin City, or what’s left of it.”
Alarmed, Mr. Niff declared, “There’d be ruin, untold devastation…oh, wait, too late.”
“He’ll go through a lot of other kingdoms first,” Domo pointed out. “Any chance one of them can stop him?”
Will shrugged. “It’s doubtful. Even if one of them destroys Sarcamusaad, he’ll still do lots of damage and kill people, and him dying isn’t necessarily a good thing. Someone that strong could do a lot of good if we calm him down.”
“How do we stop him, or slow him down enough to talk to us?” Domo demanded. “The guy is as big as a mountain! A small mountain, maybe, but that’s still really big. He’ll step on us and keep walking.”
Will tapped his scepter on his palm. “If Sarcamusaad is as dangerous as the books say then we’re going to need serious firepower. Vial, I want you to build one of your big bombs, the sooner the better.”
Vial clapped his hands together. “Rapturous joy!”
“Hugh, could you help him make the bomb casing?” Will asked.
Hugh nodded. “It is a fair request.”
Will addressed the others. “Domo, Niff, round up some goblins. I need them to go through the goblin gate and ask the trolls for help. I hate dragging them into this, but they’re one of the few people on speaking terms with us.”
“Can do, boss,” Mr. Niff said.
“We’ll also need to ask around the neighboring human kingdoms,” Will continued. “They don’t like us, so we might not do any better at finding help than Percy did, but there’s a chance. After all, they can’t want Sarcamusaad marching through their kingdoms, and the best chance to stop him is by working together.”
“That could be a problem,” Domo said. “We know Sarcamusaad is coming because Percy told us and one of his scouts tried to kill us. The neighbors don’t know he’s coming, and they’re not going to take our word for it.”
Vial added “Especially not after we spread rumors that tar is a cure for baldness.”
“Yeah, we got in a lot of trouble for that one,” Mr. Niff agreed. “Kind of strange how many men believed us.”
Surprised, Will asked, “When did this happen?”
“Last week,” Mr. Niff replied. “I was meaning to tell you about it, but, well, mistakes were made.”
Will shook his head. “Impossible. Okay, dealing with this is going to be as much fun as dental work without anesthetic, but it’s not going away on its own. I’d like to stop Sarcamusaad as far away from here as possible. Where is he going to come ashore?”
Percy pointed to a spot on the map far south of the Kingdom of the Goblins. “My people have teams along the coast where Sarcamusaad is most likely to reach land. They sensed him the strongest here. Expect him to reach land within five miles of this location.”
“Then that’s where we’re going,” Will said. “Once we’re there we try to talk to him and calm him down. If that doesn’t work—”
“If?” Domo asked.
Mr. Niff twiddled his thumbs. “We haven’t done so good at talking our way out of problems.”
“I know, but we’re going to try talking to him,” Will said.
“We owe Sarcamusaad a chance to settle down before we attack. Assuming that doesn’t work, Vial and Hugh are making a bomb to stop him. I’m not sure it can kill him, but at least it should hurt him enough that we’ll have an easier time stopping him afterwards.”
“We’re not taking Vial on our trip?” Domo asked.
“I need him here working on the bomb,” Will explained. “And no slight to Vial, but do you think his regular bombs would even scratch Sarcamusaad?”
“Can’t argue with that,” Domo admitted. “How do we get there?”
“That’s not a problem,” Will said. “I can trade places with goblin scarecrows, and there doesn’t seem to be a limit on the range. Plus I can take a lot of people with me. Getting there should be quick and easy.”
“Should be easy, but it’s not,” Gladys said. “Will, I just checked for goblin scarecrows near the site, and there aren’t any. There’s a gap of at least a hundred miles between the closest scarecrow and where Sarcamusaad is going to hit land.”
“Just great,” Will griped. He thought hard before looking at Percy. “Wait a minute. You said your people were on the lookout for Sarcamusaad. How did they get word to you from so far away?”
“They used a goblin gate,” Percy explained. “There is a gate located twenty miles from shore. When they sensed Sarcamusaad approaching, they sent four messengers through the gate along with goblins to power it. It took a few days, but one of them reached my people.”
Will snapped his fingers. “Then we can get there in time with the goblin gates. We’ll grab food and whatever else we need and leave right away. Niff, show Percy to an empty room where he can rest and drop off his things until we leave.”
“Gotcha, boss,” Mr. Niff replied. He took Percy by the hand and left the throne room, saying, “I know a place you can stay that wasn’t trapped this morning. Keep an eye out all the same.”
Will’s friends separated to collect food and supplies for the journey, with London carrying Gladys out on his back. Will sank down onto the empty crate he used for a throne. It took him a moment to notice Domo hadn’t left.
“Is there a target on my back?” Will asked.
Domo peered at Will’s back. “Not today. Why?”
“Because it’s starting to feel like the world’s got it in for me.” Will threw up his hands and cried out, “Why does this stuff keep happening to me? I’m a nice guy. I’ve never done anything to deserve this. But I’ve been hit by one thing after another ever since I came to this world. Idiot kings, insane super weapons, immortal lunatics, a sociopath billionaire, it just doesn’t stop!”
Domo tapped his walking stick on the floor. “It’s not just you, you know.”
“I’m sorry, that must have sounded really selfish. You and the rest of the guys are getting caught by this craziness, too.”
“True, but that’s not what I meant,” Domo said. “I have done a few things to earn this kind of bad luck, but there are lots of people hurting besides us. Our old friend and enemy King Kervol just survived an assassination attempt.”
Will sat up straight as a ramrod. “He what? Who did it?”
Domo shrugged. “Nobody knows. It looked like a professional hit with two killers using poisoned daggers. Thing is, Kervol drew his sword in time.”
“Yeah, Kervol is an idiot, but he’s a good swordsman,”
Will admitted. “Did the killers say anything?”
“Not after Kervol was done with them. Nobody knows who hired them or why they wanted him dead. A rival king could have sent them. Kervol is also worried that someone inside his kingdom did it so they could take his throne. His wife is the odds on favorite. Either way, he’s got to be worried there could be more killers coming. He’s trying to keep it quiet while he figures out who’s responsible, but that could take a while since his IQ and shoe size are the same number.”
“I didn’t hear about this,” Will said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You were already dealing with a goblin civil war,” Domo replied. “Besides, how could you help? You can’t investigate Kervol’s enemies. He has too many. You can’t interrogate Kervol’s people to see if they’re responsible. That would make him look weak. He’d never allow it.”
Will nodded. “Fair point.”
“Then there’s King Ethan,” Domo began.
It took Will a moment to remember who Domo was referring to. “Wait, isn’t he Prince Alexander’s sick father? I thought he’d be okay after we gave the prince water from the Bottle of Hope to heal him.”
“That’s him. It turns out not everyone was happy to see him recover. A couple noblemen even tried to make sure the prince never reached him. But the prince made it and King Ethan survived, only to learn a lot of his followers wanted him dead. He got rid of a few traitors before the rest holed up in their castles and declared themselves independent kingdoms. He’s taking them down one at a time with forces loyal to him, but it’s going to be a while before his kingdom is at peace, and a lot longer than that to fix the damage.”
“Why don’t you tell me these things?” Will asked. “I could have…ah nuts.” Will slumped back down on the crate. “I can’t help him. My king contract only lets me leave here if the kingdom or my life is in danger. I can’t leave when someone else’s life is on the line. And if I sent goblins to help without being there to keep them on task, I can’t imagine how many ways that could go wrong.”
“Yeah, it sucks,” Domo said. “The resident goblins are helping Kervol and Ethan when they can, for whatever that’s worth. It’s kind of funny when you think about it. Even with the power of a king, there’s a lot you can’t do.”
Domo walked up to Will and said, “Look on the bright side. You saved tens of thousands of lives in the last year or so, maybe hundreds of thousands. There aren’t many people who can say that, and it’s way more than anyone expected from you. And yes, there are big problems out there and good people getting hurt, but you’re not alone. The Fairy Godmothers, the Guild of Heroes, the Brotherhood of the Righteous, they handle a lot of problems you can’t be there for.”
“I’m guessing they can’t handle a homicidal city,” Will said.
“That’s a bit beyond them.”
Will went to his bedroom while the others prepared for the journey. The room was filled with furniture donated by Prince Alexander and King Ethan after he’d helped them last year. The gifts were of the highest quality, masterfully carved and stained wood in excellent condition. There wasn’t much here he needed, but there was one thing he had to take.
Will lifted his mattress and removed three letters he’d hidden there. The paper had a strong scent of roses when he’d first received them, but the perfume had faded with time, or perhaps gave up to despair amid the constant stink of the Goblin City. He held the letters for a moment, tempted to read them again.
These three letters were his only contact with Lydia. She’d written them months ago to thank him for his help and tell him how well things were going. Will had donated Quentin Peck’s vast wealth to the Fairy Godmothers to help them rescue children in distress. According to her letters the money was already working wonders and had saved hundreds of youngsters in terrible circumstances.
But communicating by letters was a one-way path. Each letter was sent from a different kingdom as Lydia moved about on her duties. He’d written letters and sent them to all three locations, but there was no sign any had reached her. Maybe she’d moved on before they’d arrived. Maybe the goblins he’d entrusted to deliver the letters had lost or eaten them.
That last possibility was why he was here. Goblins could eat almost anything, and they considered paper a good source of fiber. Worse, they thought nothing of coming into his room and rummaging around. While Will was fairly certain none of them would make a meal of Lydia’s letters, he wasn’t going to take the chance.
“Hey, boss!” It was Mr. Niff, running down the hall to Will’s room. Will quickly slipped the letters into his shirt pocket before he put on his black vest to cover them. Mr. Niff scurried into the room and announced, “Percy says the sooner we leave the better.”
“I’ll be ready once I pack some food and refill the gourd,” Will said. He paused for a moment and studied the furniture again. He rapped his knuckles on the bed post and said, “You know, now that I think about it, it’s strange I haven’t picked up goblin graffiti in here. You guys scrawl nonsense on everything else, and the wood isn’t that hard.”
Appalled, Mr. Niff said, “We wouldn’t damage that!”
“That’s good to hear, but I’m curious why.”
“It’s a gift,” Mr. Niff explained. “If you’d bought this stuff or made it yourself, then yeah, sure, we’d write on it, chew on it, set it on fire or launch it out of a catapult at passing insurance salesmen. But these are gifts. Gifts are special. If you get a gift that means someone cares about you, and that doesn’t happen a lot.”
Will couldn’t fault Mr. Niff’s reasoning, and he made more sense than most of the things goblins said or did.
“Let’s finish packing.”
Will loaded up two bags of fresh vegetables, which was the only food he had on hand. He could always get more supplies if he came across an inn or restaurant, but this would hold him for a while if he ended up in the wilderness. He refilled the gourd at a stream far enough outside the Goblin City that it should be drinkable.
The others joined him with all the supplies they could carry. London came with more gourds and packages of dried food while Brooklyn carried Gladys on his back. Domo and Mr. Niff brought nothing of importance, confident they could eat whatever garbage they’d come across. Percy came last with his bulging packs, while Vial and Hugh Timbers arrived to see them off.
“We shall begin work on the bomb after you leave,” Vial assured them.
“Thanks, Vial,” Will said. “Hopefully we won’t need it.”
“We always need pointlessly large explosives,” Vial countered. “If by some chance we don’t use it on Sarcamusaad, we can use it to keep the neighbors on their toes. I find the occasional random detonation does wonders to keep rival kings respectful.”
Percy raised an eyebrow. “My preference is for using meaningful dialogue to deal with misunderstandings, but your way has merit.”
Will led the group to the goblin gate. Fighting had ceased once news got out that there was a threat to deal with, and goblins abandoned their trenches, forts and tank traps. Will wondered what those were for, seeing as Other Place had no tanks or monsters similar to one. He was about to ask when he saw two goblins arguing on the topic.
A green skinned goblin pointed to a tank trap and said, “Why do we even make these things? You can just walk around them!”
A goblin with ram horns waved an old US army field guide in the other goblin’s face. “It’s in the book, right after the part about not fragging your officers!”
They soon reached a small cave containing the goblin gate, a circle of bricks each carved with a different symbol connecting the gate to twenty more gates. Each of those gates was connected to twenty more, and those to another twenty, forming a network that stretched across the planet. It was possible to go nearly anywhere on Other Place in seconds and was a near perfect method of travel, save for the minor problem that there was no way to control which gate you ended up at. Using the gate was a gamble, made worse by the fact that not all destinations were safe.
A mob of goblins were already gathered around the gate and going in one at a time. Each goblin disappeared with a whoosh when they set foot inside the gate, to be followed by the next goblin.
“The guys are sending word to King Gate of the trolls about what’s happening, just like you asked,” Domo explained. “One of them should reach the trolls sooner or later.”
The remaining goblins shouted their message together, saying, “King Will says we’re screwed!”
“You need to tell him why!” Will shouted back.
A small goblin looked puzzled. “This time or overall?”
Will grumbled before turning to Vial. “Tell the other goblins to spread the word to surrounding kingdoms. Have them bring pieces of that bronze monster with them as proof.”
“Neighboring kings never trusted us before, with good reason,” Vial told Will.
“I know, but we have to try. And tell the guys to get ready for a fight. I may have to send for them if things go wrong, and I’ll need them to come as soon as they can with all the weapons they’ve got.”
The last goblin messenger went through the gate, leaving Will and his friends to go next. Will took a deep breath and said, “Gentlemen, this is going to be hard to the point of being impossible.”
“Since when has that stopped us?” Domo asked.
“I know, we’re kind of stupid that way,” Will admitted. “We’ve got help from Percy and the purple puppet people, and I think we can scare up support once more people learn that Sarcamusaad is coming. Just as important, for once we’re forewarned. We know he’s on his way and we have some idea what to expect.”
Percy interrupted Will to ask, “Is this a morale building speech?”
“Um, sort of.”
“Fascinating! Does it work?”
Will scratched his head. “It seems to.”
Just then they heard talking in the distance. Will walked away from the group and saw the cause of the commotion. It was True Eyes, battered and bruised, his fancy clothes torn, but still standing after the battle with his elf rival. Goblins surrounded the elf, and he was too busy dealing with them to notice Will. That was good. Will didn’t need distractions when there was already so much on his plate.
“It’s imperative I speak with King Bradshaw!” True Eyes told the goblins. “I’m an ambassador on an important matter of state.”
A pudgy goblin snorted derisively. “An ambassador, dressed like that?”
True Eyes looked nervous. “There were problems getting here.”
“Yeah, right,” a furry goblin said. “Let’s see some ID.”
Percy walked up to Will and watched the exchange. “Shouldn’t you intervene?”
“Normally yes, but I’m trying to avoid this guy.” Will led his followers back to the goblin gate. “Everyone go through together so we don’t leave someone behind.”
They saw a small goblin armed with a rolling pin ask True Eyes, “Do you have an appointment?”
“Uh, no,” the elf conceded.
The goblin tapped the rolling pin on his hand. “Then we have a problem.”
“I didn’t have an appointment, either,” Percy said as they stepped onto the gate. The air around them grew dark and musty, and they disappeared with a whoosh.
________________________________
If you are enjoying William Bradshaw and Urban Problems, the full book is available on Amazon in both ebook and paperback formats.
Crime and Punishment on Other Place
Crime and Punishment in Other Place
All cultures and worlds have some form of laws. In ideal societies laws protect people from harm, be it from outside forces or from one another. In dictatorships laws are used to keep citizens in line. This makes being obedient to the law a good or bad trait depending on where you are and what you’re doing. But what happens to those who break the law? On Other Place, this varies heavily depending on how serious the crime is and where it is committed, but there are some commonly observed principles.
In human controlled lands, punishments of minor crimes are often settled with fines or public humiliation (like being dressed as a wombat and ridden through town by small children). More serious crimes can result in banishment and forfeiture of all property, a popular penalty meted out by kings low on cash. If the accused has skill in battle, he or she can be assigned a quest to complete for the good of the kingdom. This is also known as, “Getting someone else to do your job for you”, which is also very popular among kings. Some kings go so far as to falsely arrest warriors, wizards and other moderately powerful people for the express purpose of freeing them if they’ll do a job. Needless to say this is dangerous for the king, but the ‘criminals’ are then lauded as heroes afterwards, which in theory makes everything better.
Most human kingdoms on Other Place don’t practice capital punishment. This isn’t because of enlightened thinking, but instead due to economics. Other Place has limited technology. Magic, while powerful, isn’t cheap, so is mostly reserved for important tasks. Manpower is how most work gets done, and dead men do no work. Unless a crime is spectacularly heinous, offenders are assigned a number of years of hard labor, generally in mining, construction or harvesting timber. Prisons, while common, are often workhouses for the authorities, with no real interest in redeeming the convict.
Dwarfs take this to an extreme by purchasing convicts. Dwarf merchants regularly visit human kingdoms and buy the sentence of convicted criminals. The convicts are taken to dwarf lands as prison labor. The work is hard but generally not dangerous, as dwarfs are determined to get their money’s worth from each convict. In some cases a king or prince will falsely arrest innocent people so they can sell them to dwarfs. Most of the time the dwarfs don’t bother asking sniggling questions like guilt or innocence, merely separating the innocent from the guilty in work crews so violent offenders don’t hurt their more peaceful fellows.
Among one another, though, dwarfs tolerate no crime. Even though dwarfs have been free from the elves for a thousand years, they still remember those days with pain. Theirs is a collectivist society, member working tirelessly to promote their corporations, and fearful that they could be reconquered if they ever become weak. Anyone breaking the law of kingdom or corporation has only days to make amends before being cast out. Such exiles are no longer even considered dwarfs regardless of the crime, or even their guilt or innocence.
Dwarf corporations are cutthroat places, where every dwarf is trying to get ahead. In such conditions it is sadly common for managers to blame subordinates for their own failures and cast them out. This has gotten so commonplace that among lower class dwarfs there is what’s called blamed, where everyone knows the offender didn’t do it, but nobody can change what happened. Such dwarfs receive pity and a bit of help, but only from the lowly. Corporate management makes no distinction between the guilty and scapegoats.
Crime among elves is so commonplace it barely merits mention. Elven laws are a convoluted mess, with hundreds of thousands of contradictory rules and rulings going back fifteen hundred years. It’s possible for an accused elf to be guilty and innocent at the same time depending on which laws are applied at trial. Indeed, in elf society it’s widely accepted that being accused of a crime is often entirely political, an attempt by those in power to weaken or humiliate their enemies. Corruption in the court system is so common that judges receive no salaries and are expected to live entirely off bribes. Most elves convicted of crimes are assigned a modest fine or are assigned temporary work in lowly but essential jobs, like catching goblins and evicting them from elf lands. Elf law is gentler with subject races such as men and minotaurs, if only to keep them happy.
In serious cases, elves often flee before courts can decide their fates. Such elves run off to join rival elf factions or form their own factions. This is actually encouraged by the courts. They’d rather not execute offenders, as killing criminals in a society where nearly every elf has a record sets a bad precedent. Letting the guilty leave and annexing their abandoned property is considered less likely to promote rebellion, a good way for judges to get rich, and not as messy as beheadings. Besides, after a few decades most of these renegades come back to elven society with handsome bribes to wash away their guilt.
Oddly enough, the religious order called the Brotherhood of the Righteous is a major player in dealing with criminals. In regions where the brotherhood is powerful, they will open Halls of Redemption and insist criminals be sent there. The brotherhood believes in the perfectibility of all beings through counseling, education, prayer, and yes, some labor. Convicts sent to Halls of Redemption are given every possible opportunity to repent their errors and become upstanding members of society.
How long a convict spends in a Hall of Redemption is based on how much progress they make towards rehabilitation. Those who change their ways can expect short sentences, if their changes of heart are genuine. There are cases where violent offenders were released within months, while petty thieves who refused chances to repent remained locked up for years.
As an added bonus for the Brotherhood of the Righteous, such reformed criminals often become hardcore members of the faithful. Some go so far as to enter the clergy. More than a few evildoers attacking brotherhood churches find out the hard way that humble deacons and priests, while truly repentant of their prior misdeeds, can still break kneecaps with the best of them.
Trolls have very little crime. Partly this is because very little can seriously hurt a troll. What would be considered attempted murder elsewhere is little more than a tap on the shoulder for trolls. Adult trolls are also surprisingly rational, calm beings, more likely to discuss a matter for decades than fight over it. If two trolls find themselves at loggerheads over an issue, they often conduct scientific studies of the problem and present their findings before a body of learned scholars.
Among troll youngsters, known for being much more aggressive, the law takes a ‘boys will be boys’ attitude. Brawling and property damage by youngsters is so common that adult trolls build houses and tools so sturdy they’re hard to damage. Young trolls that are massively aggressive, common enough, are politely encouraged to spend a few decades living among men in kingdoms where their troublemaking is tolerated. A few kingdoms actively petition such youngsters to come on the grounds that their strength and resilience at work is worth the brawling.
And then there are goblins.
Goblins have no laws, nor any a concept of guilt. Whatever happened in the past can’t be changed, so they ignore it. Indeed, many goblins take the attitude that once the sun sets and rises, all is forgiven, no matter what you did to them or they did to you. There is no penalty for destroying property because goblins have nothing worth having, and if you break their stuff, so what? Sooner or later the owner was going to break it anyway. Hurting goblins is easy enough when they are small and weak, but goblins heal so fast that what would be a critical injury for a man takes at most days for a goblin to recover from.
Nor do goblins respect the laws of others. In fact, goblins take a perverse pleasure in breaking human, elf and dwarf laws. They don’t set out to hurt or kill, but theft and property damage is much celebrated among goblins. The pricier and prettier, the better. Goblins typically avoid the poor and downtrodden on the unspoken rule that you don’t hit someone when they’re down, but the rich, the powerful, the influential, oh, they’re fair game.
Goblins despise criminals who target the poor. Part of this is goblins not hitting someone when he’s down, but there’s more. Goblins are so mindbogglingly stupid that most think that everyone, be he human, elf, dwarf or even troll, is actually a goblin. To them there is only one race, theirs. The poverty of the downtrodden makes goblins feel an even greater kinship with them. Woe be to the villain who targets the poor, for goblins, though rarely roused to genuinely violent acts, are relentless in the defense of those they love.
Ironically, goblins actually like policemen, sheriffs and goblin catchers assigned to deal with them. To goblins it’s all a grand game, with them on one side and the authorities on the other. Many times they call the authorities their ‘special friends’, who play with them day after day, year after year. Many policemen are shocked to find that when they’re in danger, goblins are the first to come to their aid. If the goblins have to dress a herd of pigs as clowns and ride them through the streets at midnight into the Lord Mayor’s house to help a local sheriff, they’ll do it. Sure, it’s difficult, dangerous and probably won’t help at all, but that’s okay. There’s nothing a goblin won’t do for a friend.
All cultures and worlds have some form of laws. In ideal societies laws protect people from harm, be it from outside forces or from one another. In dictatorships laws are used to keep citizens in line. This makes being obedient to the law a good or bad trait depending on where you are and what you’re doing. But what happens to those who break the law? On Other Place, this varies heavily depending on how serious the crime is and where it is committed, but there are some commonly observed principles.
In human controlled lands, punishments of minor crimes are often settled with fines or public humiliation (like being dressed as a wombat and ridden through town by small children). More serious crimes can result in banishment and forfeiture of all property, a popular penalty meted out by kings low on cash. If the accused has skill in battle, he or she can be assigned a quest to complete for the good of the kingdom. This is also known as, “Getting someone else to do your job for you”, which is also very popular among kings. Some kings go so far as to falsely arrest warriors, wizards and other moderately powerful people for the express purpose of freeing them if they’ll do a job. Needless to say this is dangerous for the king, but the ‘criminals’ are then lauded as heroes afterwards, which in theory makes everything better.
Most human kingdoms on Other Place don’t practice capital punishment. This isn’t because of enlightened thinking, but instead due to economics. Other Place has limited technology. Magic, while powerful, isn’t cheap, so is mostly reserved for important tasks. Manpower is how most work gets done, and dead men do no work. Unless a crime is spectacularly heinous, offenders are assigned a number of years of hard labor, generally in mining, construction or harvesting timber. Prisons, while common, are often workhouses for the authorities, with no real interest in redeeming the convict.
Dwarfs take this to an extreme by purchasing convicts. Dwarf merchants regularly visit human kingdoms and buy the sentence of convicted criminals. The convicts are taken to dwarf lands as prison labor. The work is hard but generally not dangerous, as dwarfs are determined to get their money’s worth from each convict. In some cases a king or prince will falsely arrest innocent people so they can sell them to dwarfs. Most of the time the dwarfs don’t bother asking sniggling questions like guilt or innocence, merely separating the innocent from the guilty in work crews so violent offenders don’t hurt their more peaceful fellows.
Among one another, though, dwarfs tolerate no crime. Even though dwarfs have been free from the elves for a thousand years, they still remember those days with pain. Theirs is a collectivist society, member working tirelessly to promote their corporations, and fearful that they could be reconquered if they ever become weak. Anyone breaking the law of kingdom or corporation has only days to make amends before being cast out. Such exiles are no longer even considered dwarfs regardless of the crime, or even their guilt or innocence.
Dwarf corporations are cutthroat places, where every dwarf is trying to get ahead. In such conditions it is sadly common for managers to blame subordinates for their own failures and cast them out. This has gotten so commonplace that among lower class dwarfs there is what’s called blamed, where everyone knows the offender didn’t do it, but nobody can change what happened. Such dwarfs receive pity and a bit of help, but only from the lowly. Corporate management makes no distinction between the guilty and scapegoats.
Crime among elves is so commonplace it barely merits mention. Elven laws are a convoluted mess, with hundreds of thousands of contradictory rules and rulings going back fifteen hundred years. It’s possible for an accused elf to be guilty and innocent at the same time depending on which laws are applied at trial. Indeed, in elf society it’s widely accepted that being accused of a crime is often entirely political, an attempt by those in power to weaken or humiliate their enemies. Corruption in the court system is so common that judges receive no salaries and are expected to live entirely off bribes. Most elves convicted of crimes are assigned a modest fine or are assigned temporary work in lowly but essential jobs, like catching goblins and evicting them from elf lands. Elf law is gentler with subject races such as men and minotaurs, if only to keep them happy.
In serious cases, elves often flee before courts can decide their fates. Such elves run off to join rival elf factions or form their own factions. This is actually encouraged by the courts. They’d rather not execute offenders, as killing criminals in a society where nearly every elf has a record sets a bad precedent. Letting the guilty leave and annexing their abandoned property is considered less likely to promote rebellion, a good way for judges to get rich, and not as messy as beheadings. Besides, after a few decades most of these renegades come back to elven society with handsome bribes to wash away their guilt.
Oddly enough, the religious order called the Brotherhood of the Righteous is a major player in dealing with criminals. In regions where the brotherhood is powerful, they will open Halls of Redemption and insist criminals be sent there. The brotherhood believes in the perfectibility of all beings through counseling, education, prayer, and yes, some labor. Convicts sent to Halls of Redemption are given every possible opportunity to repent their errors and become upstanding members of society.
How long a convict spends in a Hall of Redemption is based on how much progress they make towards rehabilitation. Those who change their ways can expect short sentences, if their changes of heart are genuine. There are cases where violent offenders were released within months, while petty thieves who refused chances to repent remained locked up for years.
As an added bonus for the Brotherhood of the Righteous, such reformed criminals often become hardcore members of the faithful. Some go so far as to enter the clergy. More than a few evildoers attacking brotherhood churches find out the hard way that humble deacons and priests, while truly repentant of their prior misdeeds, can still break kneecaps with the best of them.
Trolls have very little crime. Partly this is because very little can seriously hurt a troll. What would be considered attempted murder elsewhere is little more than a tap on the shoulder for trolls. Adult trolls are also surprisingly rational, calm beings, more likely to discuss a matter for decades than fight over it. If two trolls find themselves at loggerheads over an issue, they often conduct scientific studies of the problem and present their findings before a body of learned scholars.
Among troll youngsters, known for being much more aggressive, the law takes a ‘boys will be boys’ attitude. Brawling and property damage by youngsters is so common that adult trolls build houses and tools so sturdy they’re hard to damage. Young trolls that are massively aggressive, common enough, are politely encouraged to spend a few decades living among men in kingdoms where their troublemaking is tolerated. A few kingdoms actively petition such youngsters to come on the grounds that their strength and resilience at work is worth the brawling.
And then there are goblins.
Goblins have no laws, nor any a concept of guilt. Whatever happened in the past can’t be changed, so they ignore it. Indeed, many goblins take the attitude that once the sun sets and rises, all is forgiven, no matter what you did to them or they did to you. There is no penalty for destroying property because goblins have nothing worth having, and if you break their stuff, so what? Sooner or later the owner was going to break it anyway. Hurting goblins is easy enough when they are small and weak, but goblins heal so fast that what would be a critical injury for a man takes at most days for a goblin to recover from.
Nor do goblins respect the laws of others. In fact, goblins take a perverse pleasure in breaking human, elf and dwarf laws. They don’t set out to hurt or kill, but theft and property damage is much celebrated among goblins. The pricier and prettier, the better. Goblins typically avoid the poor and downtrodden on the unspoken rule that you don’t hit someone when they’re down, but the rich, the powerful, the influential, oh, they’re fair game.
Goblins despise criminals who target the poor. Part of this is goblins not hitting someone when he’s down, but there’s more. Goblins are so mindbogglingly stupid that most think that everyone, be he human, elf, dwarf or even troll, is actually a goblin. To them there is only one race, theirs. The poverty of the downtrodden makes goblins feel an even greater kinship with them. Woe be to the villain who targets the poor, for goblins, though rarely roused to genuinely violent acts, are relentless in the defense of those they love.
Ironically, goblins actually like policemen, sheriffs and goblin catchers assigned to deal with them. To goblins it’s all a grand game, with them on one side and the authorities on the other. Many times they call the authorities their ‘special friends’, who play with them day after day, year after year. Many policemen are shocked to find that when they’re in danger, goblins are the first to come to their aid. If the goblins have to dress a herd of pigs as clowns and ride them through the streets at midnight into the Lord Mayor’s house to help a local sheriff, they’ll do it. Sure, it’s difficult, dangerous and probably won’t help at all, but that’s okay. There’s nothing a goblin won’t do for a friend.
William Bradshaw and For a Song
Here is the first chapter of my new novel, William Bradshaw and For a Song. It is available on Amazon in paperback and ebook formats.
Chapter 1
“I want to be clear, you’re not giving me a mohawk, shaving me bald, trimming words into my hair or doing anything else stupid I’d be stuck with until my hair grows out,” Will said as he sat on a large flat rock. His hair was getting long, and he needed it trimmed before his goblins started making rude jokes. That meant risking a trip to the barber. Most barbershops weren’t located in caves, but then very few barbers were goblins.
“Sir, you insult my creative talents with these meager requests,” the goblin barber said. He was half Will’s height and had a long, drawn out mouth like the muzzle of a dog, large hands, messy hair and raggedy red clothes. The goblin combed Will’s hair while waving sharp scissors around, nearly hitting Will’s right ear. “A little off the sides? Where is the art in that? The excitement? The daring? You need, nay, must have a haircut worthy of a king, and that means dreadlocks.”
“No!” Will took a wedge of cheese out of his coat pocket and held it up. A small goblin leapt screaming out of the darkness in a mad bid to seize the cheese, but Will lifted it higher and the poor goblin landed face first on the cave floor. “You see this cheese? You’re getting it only if you do exactly what I say. Cut one hair more and I’ll cram it into the mouth of the first goblin I meet.”
The barber rolled his eyes and went to work on Will’s hair. “I don’t know why I bother. I went into hair care for the thrills, and all I get are outrageously boring requests.”
“Why are you living this far north in the kingdom?” Will asked. Locks of brown hair fell onto his black pants, green shirt and black vest. “You can’t get many customers here.”
“It was regrettably necessary,” his barber said. “I was living in the south when I came across some human merchants resting for the night. They’d fallen asleep and clearly needed help. Tilt your head down.”
“What did you do to these people? Watch my ears.”
“You’ve got two of them,” the goblin scolded. “It was obvious they hadn’t been to a barber in ages, and being a generous soul I decided to offer my services for free.”
Will covered his face with his gloved hands. The gloves were black with green fingers, and currently a bit wet. “Let me guess, they didn’t appreciate experimental hair care.”
The goblin barber stopped working and looked off to one side. “My first hour’s work was quite conservative, but then I saw how bushy their eyebrows were. Something had to be done. I thought it was quite tasteful. You wouldn’t believe the response when they woke up! I was surprised how long they chased me, but they’ll wander off eventually. There we go, dull as dry toast, but done to your specifications.”
Will sat up from the rock and studied his reflection in a pool in the cave. He was a young man with gray eyes and brown hair, in good health despite many attempts on his life. He brushed cut hair off his black shoes and the bronze fire scepter hanging off his belt.
“Thank you,” he told the barber. He handed over the promised payment, avoiding another goblin’s desperate attempt to steal the cheese. The barber wolfed it down and welcomed in a goblin client with hair reaching down to his heels.
“Surprise me,” the hairy goblin said, and the barber shrieked in delight.
Will left the cool cave and went into the snowy landscape outside. There were young trees bare of leaves, dirt trails, small hovels built by goblins and an abandoned tollbooth left long ago by dwarf miners. Ten inches of snow covered the land and hid its worst flaws.
This land of ruin was the Kingdom of the Goblins, and Will ruled it as King. He didn’t want the job and had been tricked by lawyers into leaving Earth and coming here. The kingdom was once a dwarf strip mining operation. Nearly a century ago the dwarfs had run out of ore and left for greener pastures, leaving the land a disaster of epic proportions. Few could live here, but goblins thrived in places others ignored.
Outside the cave he found Domo waiting patiently for him. Domo was a leader among goblins, a thankless task given how few goblins felt like being led. Domo had gray skin, ratty black hair and wore yellow robes. He carried a red walking stick made from an enemy flagpole, but owned nothing more.
“Ah, Will, looking sort of respectable again,” Domo said. “I’d ask who you’re trying to impress in this dump, but I suppose there’s a chance your girlfriend might visit. How’s everyone’s favorite fairy godmother?”
Will went through his pockets and took out her latest letter. “Helping children in need and as happy as could be.”
“That’s lovely, but it begs a question. Getting your hair hacked down to an acceptable level makes sense if she’s planning on visiting, but there are barbers in the human villages south of your slovenly domain. You could have gone to one of them instead of coming within spitting distance of the wastelands.” Domo tapped his walking stick on the ground and asked, “You mind telling me what that’s about?”
“I had to be here anyway.” Will looked to the north where goblins dug their way through the snow toward him. “You see, Vial got this idea.”
“That statement pretty much ensures a bad ending.” Domo wasn’t being rude. Vial the goblin alchemist was responsible for endless property damage across the kingdom. There were times his skills were badly needed, and Will was glad to have him, but you could count on Vial ruining rare peaceful moments with explosions. The little guy couldn’t help himself.
Will swung his fire scepter like a golf club. “Vial said we keep getting in world ending kinds of trouble. Generally, that means he has to make one of his large bombs.”
“That’s fair,” Domo conceded.
“Problem is it takes him a while to make them. That leaves us in danger until he’d done. He figured why not preempt the crisis, make a large bomb right now and stash it away until we need it.”
“Stash a bomb?” Domo sputtered. “His bombs blow up everything in a hundred feet when they go off, and they aren’t too picky about when they go kaboom!”
Will bent down so he could look Domo in the eye. “That’s what one of them can do. He didn’t stop at one.”
“What?”
“In my defense, I sat him down and talked to him the second I found out what he was doing and convinced him storing highly unstable explosives wasn’t a safe idea. He didn’t seem too bothered by the fact they could go off and kill him, and us.”
Domo grabbed Will by the shoulders. “How many bombs did he make?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “The room was full when I saw it.”
“So if one went off, it would take the others with it,” Domo said.
“And probably what’s left of the Goblin City. I suggested he test them in the wastelands. I figured he couldn’t hurt anything since there’s nothing here.”
“Aren’t the wastelands healing?” Domo asked. One of Will’s earlier victories was against the Staff of Skulls, a horrifying magic weapon sworn to conquer or destroy Other Place. They’d destroyed it with the Bottle of Hope, and after the battle the bottle went on to cleanse a portion of the wastelands until it became a beautiful forest.
“The forest is spreading, but not fast. It may take years for the wastelands to heal. Until then it’s a safe place for Vial to experiment with.”
Vial and his lab rat goblins finally reached them through the deep snow. Vial looked like a twisted version of a university professor, with his lab coat, glasses, black pants and doctor’s bag filled with explosives. He had short red fur and a wide smile. That smile was proof something was going to blow up.
“Ah, My Liege, a pleasure to have you present for this monumental occasion.” Vial waved to his fellow lab rats in their white lab coats and patted one of them on the back. “This is an exciting day, and my fellow practitioners of alchemy have outdone themselves! It amazes me the thought of using all my bombs at once occurred to you before me, but I suppose that’s why you’re King.”
“I’m glad we could do this,” Will said. Specifically, he was glad they could do it away from the few parts of the kingdom that weren’t a total wreck. There weren’t many of those and he was keen on preserving them, along with his sanity.
Domo studied the flat, worthless, rocky land where Vial had come from. Dwarf smelters had produced this tragedy by dumping slag on the ground, covering countless acres with stone. “How does this work?”
Vial pressed his fingertips together and smiled. “It’s quite simple. We placed explosives across the landscape far enough apart that one bomb detonating would not set off others. Normally I’d dig the bombs in, but the depth of rock we’d have to excavate made this difficult, so the bombs were placed on the surface.”
“You could have asked digger goblins to make the holes,” Will suggested.
“I tried, but the ones I asked wet themselves when I explained the job.” Vial looked puzzled when he added, “Thirty or forty holes shouldn’t have taken them long.”
“You don’t know how many bombs you made?” Domo asked him.
“Why would that matter? Returning to the original question, once we placed the bombs we set their timers, allowing a generous amount of time to leave the blast radius. The bombs are staggered to detonate in sequence so we can better determine which designs work best.”
BOOM!
The ground shook, and a cloud of smoke rose in the distance. All eyes turned to see debris rain down around a newly formed crater.
Vial was positively beaming with joy. “That was beautiful! Far more energetic than I’d anticipated, and with a lovely—”
BOOM! BOOM!
Vial frowned and checked a notebook in his lab coat. “Those were supposed to be separate explosions. The timers must be a tad off.”
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Explosions went off fast, shaking the ground so hard that Will had trouble keeping his footing. Huge chunks of rock flew like cannonballs and shattered on landing. Great cracks opened up in the ground, the ragged breaks growing until they joined together.
“Hmm.” Vial shrugged and turned to Will. “It’s not going quite to plan, but we should be safe.”
“Should be?” Domo demanded.
“Alchemy isn’t an exact science, and we ignore the few rules there are. The only way you learn is by ignoring instructions with skulls printed next to them.”
Will edged back. “How far should we run?”
Vial clapped a hand over his heart. “You wound me! Why, the very thought that I’d put your life at risk is—”
CRACKA-BOOM!
Four bombs went off as one with devastating results. Already impressive crevasses widened until a grown man would have trouble jumping over them. A section of ground hundreds of feet wide trembled wildly, broke apart and sank into the earth. The giant crater grew wider as the edges snapped off and slid into the hole.
BOOM! Another explosion went off far away with similar results. Stony ground shattered under the force of the blast and sank from sight. One large slab of rock tilted up at a steep angle before gravity pulled it down and it disappeared below ground. More blasts cracked open the earth until the whole landscape convulsed and began a slow, noisy and violent descent.
“In theory, mining tunnels and chambers under the wastelands could collapse if enough force is applied,” Vial said. A crack formed near his right foot and extended well beyond the goblins. Vial studied the crack with rapt attention. “Fascinating.”
Will grabbed Vial and ran, shouting, “Last one out doesn’t get out!”
Will led the goblins in a screaming escape. Cracks in the ground grew so fast they seemed to chase them. More explosions followed. Will hazarded a look behind him and saw vast sections of land sinking as if some horrible monster was dragging them down. Two bombs were swallowed by the abyssal hole and detonated inside it, throwing up clouds of dust and small rocks.
They kept running until they left the wastelands entirely. Will set Vial down and bent over as he gasped for breath. The other goblins caught up with him and dropped to the ground in exhaustion. Will recovered enough to say, “I didn’t need that.”
“None of us did,” Domo told him. “Vial, you Grade A nutcase, you nearly got us killed!”
“How would that be different than normal?” Domo was going to club Vial, but the alchemist added, “In recent years we have been invaded by men and animated skeletons, fought immortal madmen, defeated the richest man alive, and did battle with both a walking city and an army of elves. Hardly a month goes by where we don’t face life ending threats.”
“Those weren’t our fault,” Will said. He frowned and added, “Not entirely our fault.”
“Need I remind you how many disasters we faced last year that were entirely our making?” Vial asked. “The goblin music festival drew international condemnation. The dirty limerick competition nearly started a war. Our adopt a highway program ended with four highways destroyed and two more traumatized.”
Not finished, Vial said, “The Kingdom of the Goblins is known for disasters of epic proportions. We would suffer more invasions except potential attackers worry they’d be caught in our latest catastrophe. Do we really expect matters to improve in the future?”
“No,” Will said. “I guess that’s the way it is.”
Vial wasn’t wrong. Will had led his goblins to victory many times since becoming King. They’d faced an invasion by Kervol Ket and his human army. The Staff of Skulls had been a terrifying threat they’d stopped only with help. They’d ended the Eternal Army’s march of destruction, again with help, and after that survived attacks by the billionaire Quentin Peck. Sarcamusaad the Walking City had been even worse.
They’d won every time, an impressive track record, but the strain was incredible. At best Will could count on a few weeks of peace before some minor peril rose up, and big threats were only months apart. It was a daunting situation, but he refused to let it break him.
“We’ve beat enemies who should have crushed us like bugs,” Will told the goblins. “We’ve fought the strongest, biggest, most dangerous threats this world has to offer, and we’re still standing. Whatever comes next, we’ll face it, we’ll beat it, we’ll move on to the next one. We’ll survive, because surviving is what goblins do, and I’ll be there with you because I’m your King.”
“That speech was very nearly inspirational,” Vial told Will. “Have you been practicing?”
“Every day and twice on Sundays.” Will looked out over the wastelands, which was actually worse after Vial’s bombs. Before it had been like a parking lot, flat and barren, but now part of the wastelands resembled the cratered surface of the moon. It was a reminder of what failure looked like if he wasn’t careful. “I’m heading back to what’s left of the Goblin City.”
“We need time to analyze the results of this test,” Vial said.
Domo waddled over to Will and held out a hand. “That doesn’t include me. Take me with.”
Will took Domo’s hand and closed his eyes. He concentrated on the Goblin City and the many goblin scarecrows in and around it. This morning there had been a scarecrow by the gatehouse, and barring a disaster (ha!) it would still be there. Will swept his cape over Domo and himself, vanishing into it and leaving his now empty uniform behind.
Whoosh. Will reappeared where he’d planned, wearing the uniform that had been hanging on the scarecrow. His ability to tap into the space warping magic of the goblins was improving, and he could trade places with goblin scarecrows anywhere on Other Place by falling backwards into his cape or sweeping it over himself. As in this case, he could bring friends with him on his journey. He could also use his cape as a shield and let attacks vanish into it to reappear at a scarecrow.
“That was an interesting escape from certain death,” Domo said. He looked around and frowned. “Looks like we’re back in time for another.”
The Goblin City was a place of constant activity, not unexpected when it housed thousands of goblins, but today goblins raced about in a panic. Some carried hammers, saws, nails and crowbars. Others had ropes and some dragged heavy chains. Goblins were so small and weak that they stood no chance in a fair fight, so when danger reared its ugly head they gathered together for protection. These goblins were in groups no smaller than forty, and some over a hundred.
Will approached the nearest group. “Guys, what’s up?”
The group had been running for the city and skidded to a halt. One goblin blinked and asked, “Who, us?”
“Yes, you. What’s happening?”
“Nothing. Yes sir, it’s a fine day. I’ve never seen a day this fine.”
Will saw two goblin mobs run into one another and merge into a single larger group that headed south. “Really, because you guys seem scared.”
“Us?” a second goblin asked. “Why I never! You’re stereotyping us. This has been the most peaceful day in the history of the kingdom.”
Will marched up to the goblins, who flinched as he approached. “Most peaceful day in the kingdom? There hasn’t been a peaceful day here since I became King. Not a one.”
“He’s got us there,” the first goblin said.
Mr. Niff ran by screaming, “Don’t panic! Do not panic! Just get tar and cement, and we’ll be all right!”
“Niff,” Will called.
Mr. Niff ran in circles around a tree stump. “Remain calm!”
“Over here, now,” Will ordered. Mr. Niff snapped out of whatever had seized hold of him and walked over to Will. “What’s wrong?”
“Wrong?” Mr. Niff asked as he tried to keep from hyperventilating. Mr. Niff had blue skin and wore black clothes. Niff was the bravest goblin in the kingdom, always ready to run to the rescue and never smart enough to know whether it was a good idea to do so. He was a competent fighter and armed with a magic dagger he’d stolen from an elf warrior. This made his current state of panic unusual. “Nothing’s wrong. It’s a perfectly peaceful day in the kingdom, with singing birdies, happy wombats and—”
“We already tried that,” a goblin told him.
“Oh.” Mr. Niff stared at his feet. “Would you believe we’re throwing you a surprise party?”
“A party involving tar and cement would certainly qualify as a surprise,” Will replied. He walked up to Mr. Niff and kneeled so they were eye to eye. “Niff, you know I like you, and I forgive a lot, more than I should. Keeping that in mind, I’d like you to tell me what’s got you and the other goblins worked up.”
Mr. Niff looked miserable. “After you left to get rid of Vial’s bombs, we kind of had visitors.”
“And what did these kind of visitors want?”
“Your head or a vital organ. Possibly both.”
Just then a voice called out in the distance, “Hurry up! We can’t hold them much longer!”
That was London, one of Will’s troll bodyguards. London and Brooklyn were troll youngsters, bigger, tougher and massively more aggressive than Will. They enjoyed fights, the bigger the better. If London was worried there was a serious threat.
Will followed the sound of London’s voice to a clearing outside the Goblin City, and found London and Brooklyn struggling to seal three large oak barrels. Someone or something inside those barrels was trying to break out, and it took all the trolls’ impressive strength to hold them in. They’d pound down the lid on one barrel, only for a second to come loose. Goblins brought ropes to tie the barrels shut, but the ropes kept snapping.
“Boys,” Will began as he walked over. Mr. Niff and Domo followed with hundreds more goblins behind them. London and Brooklyn looked shocked by his arrival. The brothers had fine green scaly skin, with London a shade darker, and wore cotton trousers. Both had serious underbites and fish fin ears, and muscles that would put a professional bodybuilder to shame.
“Boss, you’re back early,” London said.
A barrel nearly opened, and Brooklyn slammed it shut. “That’s not a good thing.”
“Who or what is in those barrels?” Will asked.
“We got invaded by lawyers while you were gone,” London replied.
That was bad. Lawyers were as dangerous as wizards and far more cunning. All the races of Other Place avoided lawyers, even goblins. Legal contracts could force men to obey them, and even rewrite the laws of nature for short times. Lawyers were responsible for abducting Will from Earth, marooning him on Other Place, and he had no desire to get close to one.
“Three of them, girl lawyers,” Brooklyn added.
“They were going to do nasty things to you. One threatened to open a branch office in the kingdom. You got to stop that sort of thing before it starts. Lawyer infestations are harder to get rid of than pixies.”
“You jammed old ladies into barrels?” Will demanded. “I don’t care if they are lawyers, you don’t do that!”
“Young lady lawyers,” London corrected him. “Feisty ones.”
“Give us a couple hours to seal the barrels and dump them in the river,” Brooklyn said. “By the time they get out they’ll be in the ocean and the only ones they can kill are sharks, who stand a fighting chance.”
“I appreciate you trying to protect me, but this isn’t how to fix the problem,” Will said. He headed for the barrels as his friends edged back. “We’re going to try and settle this peacefully, an opportunity that’s probably long gone, but we’ll try. I’ll let these women go and give them a chance to explain what they want. Don’t attack them or do anything stupid unless I tell you to.”
Mr. Niff turned to Domo. “He tells us to do stupid things?”
Domo waved his walking stick. “All the time.”
A barrel shook until it tipped over, and Will heard a muffled voice scream, “When I get out of here, you’re in for such a suing!”
Will hesitated. He took a deep breath and reached for the barrel. “Do the right thing, even if it’s hard.”
With that Will pried off the top of the barrel, and an enraged woman came out like a shot. He opened the other two barrels and tried to help the ladies out, but they ignored his assistance and clustered together.
The ladies were roughly Will’s age, wearing gray jackets, black skirts, high heel shoes and carrying briefcases. Their clothes were wrinkled and a bit dirty from being forced into the barrels, and they looked furious. They were also cute, which surprised Will. His experience with the legal profession always resulted in pain and indignity rather than an opportunity to ask someone on a date.
“You treacherous, backstabbing, louse ridden, stinking, illegitimate son of a road kill squirrel!” a lawyer yelled at Will. This one had blond hair cut very short.
“That’s a bad start to the conversation,” he replied. “Hi there, William Bradshaw, reluctant King of the Goblins. I had nothing to do with what just happened to you, and I’m very sorry.”
She marched up to Will and held a finger under his nose. “You’re sorry? We are way past the point where sorry would make things better! I am an official representative of the Ann Sheal Ruin law firm, and buster, Fine Ann doesn’t take this kind of garbage from anyone.” The woman took out a business card and held it in front of her like a knife. There was an awkward pause before she said, “You’re supposed to take that.”
“I’d really rather not, Ann.”
The lawyer rolled her eyes. “Ann is the name of our firm’s founder, a woman with an incredible force of personality who started the only all women law firm. I’m Cybil, you jerk.”
Will clapped his hands together. “Well, Cybil, I’m glad we cleared that up. Now I understand you wanted blood before you were stuffed in those barrels. Would you mind telling me why?”
Cybil sneered and pointed to one of her fellow lawyers. “Tell him, Patty.”
Patty was the youngest of the three and had brown hair worn in pigtails. She jumped when Cybil called on her and said, “Eep!”
The third lawyer snatched Patty’s briefcase and took out a sheet of paper. The woman held it up for Will to see, but pulled it back before he could read it. “This, you creep, is a lawsuit. The Coral Ring Merchant House had contracted to buy a load of salt from Quentin Peck. The salt was loaded and ready to go in the city of Nolod when you, yes you, sank the ship carrying it!”
“That’s right, Meg,” Cybil said. “The salt dissolved before it could be salvaged. The Coral Ring lost a major contract because of you. The cost came out to eight hundred guilders, and the damage you did to their reputation makes it harder for them to get business. We’re suing you for ten thousand guilders plus legal fees, and those are going to be high!”
Will showed no great concern at the threat of being sued. “Peck was trying to kill me. I was fighting back and had my goblins sink one of his ships. I’m sorry your client was hurt by our fight, but I can’t pay that much.”
“Yes, you can,” Cybil said menacingly. “You think you’re in the clear because you’re a king? Kings aren’t above the law. We can seize your assets, garnish your wages and shave your dog.”
“I haven’t got a dog,” Will told them.
Cybil snapped her fingers. “Patty, get him a dog so we can shave it.”
“Eep!” Patty’s pigtails flew up when she jumped like that.
Cybil marched up to Will and held out the lawsuit. “The mighty can fall, king or not. You have been served.”
“I know it’s supposed to work like that, but in my case it doesn’t,” Will said. “Seriously, you don’t want to—”
Too late. Cybil cried out in surprise as the lawsuit burst into flames in her hand. She barely managed to drop it before the fire scorched her fingers. The three lawyers looked amazed, as did the goblins and trolls.
“I tried to tell you.” Will took out his king contract tucked in his belt and unrolled the lengthy and confusing document. “Lawyers with Cickam, Wender and Downe drew this up when they tricked me into being King of the Goblins. It keeps me on this world and in this kingdom unless my life is in peril. If I can direct your attention to this part here?”
The lady lawyers gathered around the king contract. Meg pointed at it and said, “Article 140, subsection 11, paragraph 2, line 51: The King of the Goblins can’t escape by losing the kingdom in a game of chance, including poker, blackjack, backgammon, go fish, Monopoly or Clue.”
“No, this part over here.” Will read the contract aloud to them. “Article 140, subsection 12, paragraph 7, line 11: Any suit filed against the King of the Goblins is automatically sent to the nearest branch office of Cickam, Wender and Downe. Bring it on.”
He rolled up the contract and explained, “I’m sympathetic, really, but if you sue me it goes to the lawyers who got me in this mess. They win every time. Trust me, I know. I think if we sit down and talk this over, we can come up with a solution that helps your client.”
Meg stared at him like he was speaking Latin. “Are you being reasonable?”
“I’m trying to. It usually doesn’t work, but I figure one of these days it might.”
Cybil was having none of it. “You think you’re getting away that easy? Patty, let him have it!”
“Eep!” That seemed to be the extent of Patty’s vocabulary. She kept staring at Will.
Cybil took a rolled up parchment from Patty’s briefcase. Will wasn’t sure what good that would do after her last lawsuit combusted, but nothing could prepare him for what happened next. The parchment rustled and coiled around Cybil’s arm before reaching out like a snake or octopus tentacle. Goblins shivered at the sight. Even the trolls looked queasy.
“This is a living contract,” Cybil explained, her tone smug. “We stole the idea from your lawyers.”
“Hey, they aren’t my lawyers!” Will shouted.
“Whatever.” The contract continued reaching for Will as Cybil spoke. “Living contracts are sentient legal documents that can track their victims across kingdoms, never slowing, never stopping, immune to bribery and totally ignoring pleas for mercy. It’s going to make your life a waking nightmare.”
“That train already left the station,” Will said. He watched the contract move closer inch by inch, and he was honestly considering running for his life when a disturbing thought occurred to him. “If you stole the idea from Cickam, Wender and Downe, that means they already have living contracts. And if they want to keep me on the job—”
Snap! Will’s king contract unrolled so fast it sounded like someone swung a bullwhip. It shot through the air and wrapped around the enemy contract like a constrictor snake. The contracts fell to the ground and thrashed about so violently they knocked two oak barrels aside. Trolls, goblins and lawyers alike stared in shock at the bizarre battle.
“Okay, this is weird even by my standards,” Will admitted.
The contracts lashed out at each other. The fight wasn’t entirely physical as clauses and subclauses lit up as they were invoked. Violent as the battle was, Will’s contract was larger and far more aggressive. The smaller contract tried to slither away, but the king contract grabbed a rock and bashed it again and again until its whimpering enemy gave up and inched its way back to Cybil. Victorious, Will’s king contract slithered back to him and rolled up so one particular section was facing him.
Will retrieved the contract, reluctantly, and read aloud the part it seemed to want to show him. “Article 150, subsection 1, paragraph 1, line 1: This contract is now fully sentient and self aware. It has a total mastery of the law, is homicidally aggressive and has a borderline personality disorder. Well, that’s disturbing.”
“This, this isn’t over!” Cybil shouted. “You haven’t heard the last of us!”
“Obviously not since you’re still talking,” Will said. Cybil fumed and marched off with Meg following her. Patty kept staring at Will, not moving, not speaking. Hoping she was the reasonable one of the group, he walked up to her and smiled.
“I’m sorry the Coral Ring got hurt because of my fight with Peck, and I want to help. Give me time to think on this and we’ll get back together to work out a deal where they get compensation, just not ten thousand guilders. Okay?”
Patty nodded, still not saying anything as Will left. Once he was gone, she asked Domo, “Is he seeing anyone?”
“Yes, and she’s vindictive.”
Patty took a business card from her briefcase and handed it to Domo. “Let me know if they break up.”
Will headed back to what little was left of the Goblin City, but he stopped when he saw something high in the sky. It was a clear, cold day, and he could see for miles. At this distance he couldn’t tell what it was, but it was big.
Domo waddled up to him and saw what had his attention. The goblin squinted and said, “Huh.”
“Is that a good huh or a bad huh?” Will asked.
“It’s a huh,” Domo replied. “Huh rules out good or bad and just signify weird. That’s a harpy, which is weird because there’s not enough wild game to support a flock after the mess the dwarfs made.”
“So what’s she doing here?”
* * * * *
Gretchen the harpy slouched low on the thick, dead branch she was perched on. There weren’t many perches to begin with and fewer now that the flock was getting ready to move. It was hard work to fly so much lumber to their mountaintop roost. With only days to go before they left for fresh foraging grounds, the flock was breaking up the thick branches for firewood. Economical as that was, it meant there were progressively fewer perches as time went by, and harpy’s clawed feet had trouble standing on flat ground. It made the whole flock irritable.
Territory so far north was poor, with few animals or plants even in summer. The flock had stayed a month longer than intended, completely gutting the mountains and hills of edible plants and game large enough to merit catching. They had to migrate to the next part of their large (and largely worthless) territory.
“Good morning, Gretchen,” Tiffy said happily. Tiffy was Gretchen’s cousin, and annoyingly cheerful.
“Nothing’s good about it,” Gretchen snapped.
Harpies as a rule were foul tempered, and Gretchen was worse than most. Her face, chest, upper arms and upper legs were similar to a human woman, although more muscular and leaner. The resemblance ended there. Black feathered wings sprouted from her back. Her teeth were sharper than a human’s and could chew through leather. Her legs below the knees and arms below the elbows were scaled and ended in talons like a bird of prey. Her dirty dress was made from badly tanned animal skins.
“Let me top you off,” Tiffy said as she refilled Gretchen’s cup of coffee. “Nothing’s worse than cold coffee.”
“Lots of things are worse, and you know it. Just go away.”
Gretchen sipped coffee from her battered tin cup. Harpies couldn’t afford to have many possessions when every extra ounce made flying harder, but the flock had to have their morning cup. She owned her cup, a steel dagger that needed to be sharpened, an equally dull hatchet, and a leather bag loaded with food for the journey.
The rest of the flock kept their distance from Gretchen. Most of them were in equally foul moods since migrations were risky. Many of them had fledglings to carry, making it that much harder. But one day their fledglings would fly. Hers never would…her poor, crippled daughter.
“Sister.” It was Maggie, leader of the flock and Gretchen’s older sister. Maggie’s hair was going gray, and she was the most experienced harpy in a thousand miles. “We must talk.”
Gretchen gazed out at the snowy land far below their roost. “I know what you’re going to say, so save your breath. I’ve always seen to my daughter’s needs, no charity required.”
“Sister, the migration begins soon. You are not strong enough to carry Celeste. She’s grown too much. The flock has discussed the matter.”
Gretchen screamed, a horrid noise that made rocks vibrate. She threw her cup of coffee across the roost as she stumbled into the center of the assembled harpies. “The flock has discussed this? The flock? I’m a member of this flock! I wasn’t part of this discussion!”
Other harpies fell silent. Most stepped back. This day had been coming for years, and Gretchen had fought it every step of the way. She screamed at them. Harpies covered their ears from the wretched noise, but they didn’t back down when she stopped.
“She’s my daughter, not yours!” Gretchen screamed. “She’s done as much as any here to feed the flock, foraging and hunting. I won’t have this!”
“You could barely carry her to this roost, and that was a year ago,” Maggie said.
Gretchen hesitated. “She can walk.”
“Three hundred miles?” Maggie asked. “In winter? Alone?”
“I’ll go with her if you won’t!”
“No.” Maggie clumsily walked up to Gretchen, a risky move. “Sister, out of love for you and Celeste I have let, yes let, you keep your daughter. Other flocks would have placed her with a foster mother once she had teeth. I pushed this day back as far as possible, but Celeste can’t stay with us any longer. It’s not fair to the flock or to her.”
Gretchen’s muscles tensed to attack. Slowly, ever so slowly, she unclenched her fists and looked down. “What would you have me do?”
Maggie picked up Gretchen’s coffee cup and handed it back. “I have made inquiries among our friends. There is a kingdom where Celeste might take refuge. The leader has taken in an exiled dwarf, a minotaur and two young trolls. UMLIS live in peace within his borders. I believe we can place Celeste with him.”
“Can he protect her as the flock would?” Gretchen demanded.
“I don’t believe that’s going to be a problem.”
Chapter 1
“I want to be clear, you’re not giving me a mohawk, shaving me bald, trimming words into my hair or doing anything else stupid I’d be stuck with until my hair grows out,” Will said as he sat on a large flat rock. His hair was getting long, and he needed it trimmed before his goblins started making rude jokes. That meant risking a trip to the barber. Most barbershops weren’t located in caves, but then very few barbers were goblins.
“Sir, you insult my creative talents with these meager requests,” the goblin barber said. He was half Will’s height and had a long, drawn out mouth like the muzzle of a dog, large hands, messy hair and raggedy red clothes. The goblin combed Will’s hair while waving sharp scissors around, nearly hitting Will’s right ear. “A little off the sides? Where is the art in that? The excitement? The daring? You need, nay, must have a haircut worthy of a king, and that means dreadlocks.”
“No!” Will took a wedge of cheese out of his coat pocket and held it up. A small goblin leapt screaming out of the darkness in a mad bid to seize the cheese, but Will lifted it higher and the poor goblin landed face first on the cave floor. “You see this cheese? You’re getting it only if you do exactly what I say. Cut one hair more and I’ll cram it into the mouth of the first goblin I meet.”
The barber rolled his eyes and went to work on Will’s hair. “I don’t know why I bother. I went into hair care for the thrills, and all I get are outrageously boring requests.”
“Why are you living this far north in the kingdom?” Will asked. Locks of brown hair fell onto his black pants, green shirt and black vest. “You can’t get many customers here.”
“It was regrettably necessary,” his barber said. “I was living in the south when I came across some human merchants resting for the night. They’d fallen asleep and clearly needed help. Tilt your head down.”
“What did you do to these people? Watch my ears.”
“You’ve got two of them,” the goblin scolded. “It was obvious they hadn’t been to a barber in ages, and being a generous soul I decided to offer my services for free.”
Will covered his face with his gloved hands. The gloves were black with green fingers, and currently a bit wet. “Let me guess, they didn’t appreciate experimental hair care.”
The goblin barber stopped working and looked off to one side. “My first hour’s work was quite conservative, but then I saw how bushy their eyebrows were. Something had to be done. I thought it was quite tasteful. You wouldn’t believe the response when they woke up! I was surprised how long they chased me, but they’ll wander off eventually. There we go, dull as dry toast, but done to your specifications.”
Will sat up from the rock and studied his reflection in a pool in the cave. He was a young man with gray eyes and brown hair, in good health despite many attempts on his life. He brushed cut hair off his black shoes and the bronze fire scepter hanging off his belt.
“Thank you,” he told the barber. He handed over the promised payment, avoiding another goblin’s desperate attempt to steal the cheese. The barber wolfed it down and welcomed in a goblin client with hair reaching down to his heels.
“Surprise me,” the hairy goblin said, and the barber shrieked in delight.
Will left the cool cave and went into the snowy landscape outside. There were young trees bare of leaves, dirt trails, small hovels built by goblins and an abandoned tollbooth left long ago by dwarf miners. Ten inches of snow covered the land and hid its worst flaws.
This land of ruin was the Kingdom of the Goblins, and Will ruled it as King. He didn’t want the job and had been tricked by lawyers into leaving Earth and coming here. The kingdom was once a dwarf strip mining operation. Nearly a century ago the dwarfs had run out of ore and left for greener pastures, leaving the land a disaster of epic proportions. Few could live here, but goblins thrived in places others ignored.
Outside the cave he found Domo waiting patiently for him. Domo was a leader among goblins, a thankless task given how few goblins felt like being led. Domo had gray skin, ratty black hair and wore yellow robes. He carried a red walking stick made from an enemy flagpole, but owned nothing more.
“Ah, Will, looking sort of respectable again,” Domo said. “I’d ask who you’re trying to impress in this dump, but I suppose there’s a chance your girlfriend might visit. How’s everyone’s favorite fairy godmother?”
Will went through his pockets and took out her latest letter. “Helping children in need and as happy as could be.”
“That’s lovely, but it begs a question. Getting your hair hacked down to an acceptable level makes sense if she’s planning on visiting, but there are barbers in the human villages south of your slovenly domain. You could have gone to one of them instead of coming within spitting distance of the wastelands.” Domo tapped his walking stick on the ground and asked, “You mind telling me what that’s about?”
“I had to be here anyway.” Will looked to the north where goblins dug their way through the snow toward him. “You see, Vial got this idea.”
“That statement pretty much ensures a bad ending.” Domo wasn’t being rude. Vial the goblin alchemist was responsible for endless property damage across the kingdom. There were times his skills were badly needed, and Will was glad to have him, but you could count on Vial ruining rare peaceful moments with explosions. The little guy couldn’t help himself.
Will swung his fire scepter like a golf club. “Vial said we keep getting in world ending kinds of trouble. Generally, that means he has to make one of his large bombs.”
“That’s fair,” Domo conceded.
“Problem is it takes him a while to make them. That leaves us in danger until he’d done. He figured why not preempt the crisis, make a large bomb right now and stash it away until we need it.”
“Stash a bomb?” Domo sputtered. “His bombs blow up everything in a hundred feet when they go off, and they aren’t too picky about when they go kaboom!”
Will bent down so he could look Domo in the eye. “That’s what one of them can do. He didn’t stop at one.”
“What?”
“In my defense, I sat him down and talked to him the second I found out what he was doing and convinced him storing highly unstable explosives wasn’t a safe idea. He didn’t seem too bothered by the fact they could go off and kill him, and us.”
Domo grabbed Will by the shoulders. “How many bombs did he make?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “The room was full when I saw it.”
“So if one went off, it would take the others with it,” Domo said.
“And probably what’s left of the Goblin City. I suggested he test them in the wastelands. I figured he couldn’t hurt anything since there’s nothing here.”
“Aren’t the wastelands healing?” Domo asked. One of Will’s earlier victories was against the Staff of Skulls, a horrifying magic weapon sworn to conquer or destroy Other Place. They’d destroyed it with the Bottle of Hope, and after the battle the bottle went on to cleanse a portion of the wastelands until it became a beautiful forest.
“The forest is spreading, but not fast. It may take years for the wastelands to heal. Until then it’s a safe place for Vial to experiment with.”
Vial and his lab rat goblins finally reached them through the deep snow. Vial looked like a twisted version of a university professor, with his lab coat, glasses, black pants and doctor’s bag filled with explosives. He had short red fur and a wide smile. That smile was proof something was going to blow up.
“Ah, My Liege, a pleasure to have you present for this monumental occasion.” Vial waved to his fellow lab rats in their white lab coats and patted one of them on the back. “This is an exciting day, and my fellow practitioners of alchemy have outdone themselves! It amazes me the thought of using all my bombs at once occurred to you before me, but I suppose that’s why you’re King.”
“I’m glad we could do this,” Will said. Specifically, he was glad they could do it away from the few parts of the kingdom that weren’t a total wreck. There weren’t many of those and he was keen on preserving them, along with his sanity.
Domo studied the flat, worthless, rocky land where Vial had come from. Dwarf smelters had produced this tragedy by dumping slag on the ground, covering countless acres with stone. “How does this work?”
Vial pressed his fingertips together and smiled. “It’s quite simple. We placed explosives across the landscape far enough apart that one bomb detonating would not set off others. Normally I’d dig the bombs in, but the depth of rock we’d have to excavate made this difficult, so the bombs were placed on the surface.”
“You could have asked digger goblins to make the holes,” Will suggested.
“I tried, but the ones I asked wet themselves when I explained the job.” Vial looked puzzled when he added, “Thirty or forty holes shouldn’t have taken them long.”
“You don’t know how many bombs you made?” Domo asked him.
“Why would that matter? Returning to the original question, once we placed the bombs we set their timers, allowing a generous amount of time to leave the blast radius. The bombs are staggered to detonate in sequence so we can better determine which designs work best.”
BOOM!
The ground shook, and a cloud of smoke rose in the distance. All eyes turned to see debris rain down around a newly formed crater.
Vial was positively beaming with joy. “That was beautiful! Far more energetic than I’d anticipated, and with a lovely—”
BOOM! BOOM!
Vial frowned and checked a notebook in his lab coat. “Those were supposed to be separate explosions. The timers must be a tad off.”
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Explosions went off fast, shaking the ground so hard that Will had trouble keeping his footing. Huge chunks of rock flew like cannonballs and shattered on landing. Great cracks opened up in the ground, the ragged breaks growing until they joined together.
“Hmm.” Vial shrugged and turned to Will. “It’s not going quite to plan, but we should be safe.”
“Should be?” Domo demanded.
“Alchemy isn’t an exact science, and we ignore the few rules there are. The only way you learn is by ignoring instructions with skulls printed next to them.”
Will edged back. “How far should we run?”
Vial clapped a hand over his heart. “You wound me! Why, the very thought that I’d put your life at risk is—”
CRACKA-BOOM!
Four bombs went off as one with devastating results. Already impressive crevasses widened until a grown man would have trouble jumping over them. A section of ground hundreds of feet wide trembled wildly, broke apart and sank into the earth. The giant crater grew wider as the edges snapped off and slid into the hole.
BOOM! Another explosion went off far away with similar results. Stony ground shattered under the force of the blast and sank from sight. One large slab of rock tilted up at a steep angle before gravity pulled it down and it disappeared below ground. More blasts cracked open the earth until the whole landscape convulsed and began a slow, noisy and violent descent.
“In theory, mining tunnels and chambers under the wastelands could collapse if enough force is applied,” Vial said. A crack formed near his right foot and extended well beyond the goblins. Vial studied the crack with rapt attention. “Fascinating.”
Will grabbed Vial and ran, shouting, “Last one out doesn’t get out!”
Will led the goblins in a screaming escape. Cracks in the ground grew so fast they seemed to chase them. More explosions followed. Will hazarded a look behind him and saw vast sections of land sinking as if some horrible monster was dragging them down. Two bombs were swallowed by the abyssal hole and detonated inside it, throwing up clouds of dust and small rocks.
They kept running until they left the wastelands entirely. Will set Vial down and bent over as he gasped for breath. The other goblins caught up with him and dropped to the ground in exhaustion. Will recovered enough to say, “I didn’t need that.”
“None of us did,” Domo told him. “Vial, you Grade A nutcase, you nearly got us killed!”
“How would that be different than normal?” Domo was going to club Vial, but the alchemist added, “In recent years we have been invaded by men and animated skeletons, fought immortal madmen, defeated the richest man alive, and did battle with both a walking city and an army of elves. Hardly a month goes by where we don’t face life ending threats.”
“Those weren’t our fault,” Will said. He frowned and added, “Not entirely our fault.”
“Need I remind you how many disasters we faced last year that were entirely our making?” Vial asked. “The goblin music festival drew international condemnation. The dirty limerick competition nearly started a war. Our adopt a highway program ended with four highways destroyed and two more traumatized.”
Not finished, Vial said, “The Kingdom of the Goblins is known for disasters of epic proportions. We would suffer more invasions except potential attackers worry they’d be caught in our latest catastrophe. Do we really expect matters to improve in the future?”
“No,” Will said. “I guess that’s the way it is.”
Vial wasn’t wrong. Will had led his goblins to victory many times since becoming King. They’d faced an invasion by Kervol Ket and his human army. The Staff of Skulls had been a terrifying threat they’d stopped only with help. They’d ended the Eternal Army’s march of destruction, again with help, and after that survived attacks by the billionaire Quentin Peck. Sarcamusaad the Walking City had been even worse.
They’d won every time, an impressive track record, but the strain was incredible. At best Will could count on a few weeks of peace before some minor peril rose up, and big threats were only months apart. It was a daunting situation, but he refused to let it break him.
“We’ve beat enemies who should have crushed us like bugs,” Will told the goblins. “We’ve fought the strongest, biggest, most dangerous threats this world has to offer, and we’re still standing. Whatever comes next, we’ll face it, we’ll beat it, we’ll move on to the next one. We’ll survive, because surviving is what goblins do, and I’ll be there with you because I’m your King.”
“That speech was very nearly inspirational,” Vial told Will. “Have you been practicing?”
“Every day and twice on Sundays.” Will looked out over the wastelands, which was actually worse after Vial’s bombs. Before it had been like a parking lot, flat and barren, but now part of the wastelands resembled the cratered surface of the moon. It was a reminder of what failure looked like if he wasn’t careful. “I’m heading back to what’s left of the Goblin City.”
“We need time to analyze the results of this test,” Vial said.
Domo waddled over to Will and held out a hand. “That doesn’t include me. Take me with.”
Will took Domo’s hand and closed his eyes. He concentrated on the Goblin City and the many goblin scarecrows in and around it. This morning there had been a scarecrow by the gatehouse, and barring a disaster (ha!) it would still be there. Will swept his cape over Domo and himself, vanishing into it and leaving his now empty uniform behind.
Whoosh. Will reappeared where he’d planned, wearing the uniform that had been hanging on the scarecrow. His ability to tap into the space warping magic of the goblins was improving, and he could trade places with goblin scarecrows anywhere on Other Place by falling backwards into his cape or sweeping it over himself. As in this case, he could bring friends with him on his journey. He could also use his cape as a shield and let attacks vanish into it to reappear at a scarecrow.
“That was an interesting escape from certain death,” Domo said. He looked around and frowned. “Looks like we’re back in time for another.”
The Goblin City was a place of constant activity, not unexpected when it housed thousands of goblins, but today goblins raced about in a panic. Some carried hammers, saws, nails and crowbars. Others had ropes and some dragged heavy chains. Goblins were so small and weak that they stood no chance in a fair fight, so when danger reared its ugly head they gathered together for protection. These goblins were in groups no smaller than forty, and some over a hundred.
Will approached the nearest group. “Guys, what’s up?”
The group had been running for the city and skidded to a halt. One goblin blinked and asked, “Who, us?”
“Yes, you. What’s happening?”
“Nothing. Yes sir, it’s a fine day. I’ve never seen a day this fine.”
Will saw two goblin mobs run into one another and merge into a single larger group that headed south. “Really, because you guys seem scared.”
“Us?” a second goblin asked. “Why I never! You’re stereotyping us. This has been the most peaceful day in the history of the kingdom.”
Will marched up to the goblins, who flinched as he approached. “Most peaceful day in the kingdom? There hasn’t been a peaceful day here since I became King. Not a one.”
“He’s got us there,” the first goblin said.
Mr. Niff ran by screaming, “Don’t panic! Do not panic! Just get tar and cement, and we’ll be all right!”
“Niff,” Will called.
Mr. Niff ran in circles around a tree stump. “Remain calm!”
“Over here, now,” Will ordered. Mr. Niff snapped out of whatever had seized hold of him and walked over to Will. “What’s wrong?”
“Wrong?” Mr. Niff asked as he tried to keep from hyperventilating. Mr. Niff had blue skin and wore black clothes. Niff was the bravest goblin in the kingdom, always ready to run to the rescue and never smart enough to know whether it was a good idea to do so. He was a competent fighter and armed with a magic dagger he’d stolen from an elf warrior. This made his current state of panic unusual. “Nothing’s wrong. It’s a perfectly peaceful day in the kingdom, with singing birdies, happy wombats and—”
“We already tried that,” a goblin told him.
“Oh.” Mr. Niff stared at his feet. “Would you believe we’re throwing you a surprise party?”
“A party involving tar and cement would certainly qualify as a surprise,” Will replied. He walked up to Mr. Niff and kneeled so they were eye to eye. “Niff, you know I like you, and I forgive a lot, more than I should. Keeping that in mind, I’d like you to tell me what’s got you and the other goblins worked up.”
Mr. Niff looked miserable. “After you left to get rid of Vial’s bombs, we kind of had visitors.”
“And what did these kind of visitors want?”
“Your head or a vital organ. Possibly both.”
Just then a voice called out in the distance, “Hurry up! We can’t hold them much longer!”
That was London, one of Will’s troll bodyguards. London and Brooklyn were troll youngsters, bigger, tougher and massively more aggressive than Will. They enjoyed fights, the bigger the better. If London was worried there was a serious threat.
Will followed the sound of London’s voice to a clearing outside the Goblin City, and found London and Brooklyn struggling to seal three large oak barrels. Someone or something inside those barrels was trying to break out, and it took all the trolls’ impressive strength to hold them in. They’d pound down the lid on one barrel, only for a second to come loose. Goblins brought ropes to tie the barrels shut, but the ropes kept snapping.
“Boys,” Will began as he walked over. Mr. Niff and Domo followed with hundreds more goblins behind them. London and Brooklyn looked shocked by his arrival. The brothers had fine green scaly skin, with London a shade darker, and wore cotton trousers. Both had serious underbites and fish fin ears, and muscles that would put a professional bodybuilder to shame.
“Boss, you’re back early,” London said.
A barrel nearly opened, and Brooklyn slammed it shut. “That’s not a good thing.”
“Who or what is in those barrels?” Will asked.
“We got invaded by lawyers while you were gone,” London replied.
That was bad. Lawyers were as dangerous as wizards and far more cunning. All the races of Other Place avoided lawyers, even goblins. Legal contracts could force men to obey them, and even rewrite the laws of nature for short times. Lawyers were responsible for abducting Will from Earth, marooning him on Other Place, and he had no desire to get close to one.
“Three of them, girl lawyers,” Brooklyn added.
“They were going to do nasty things to you. One threatened to open a branch office in the kingdom. You got to stop that sort of thing before it starts. Lawyer infestations are harder to get rid of than pixies.”
“You jammed old ladies into barrels?” Will demanded. “I don’t care if they are lawyers, you don’t do that!”
“Young lady lawyers,” London corrected him. “Feisty ones.”
“Give us a couple hours to seal the barrels and dump them in the river,” Brooklyn said. “By the time they get out they’ll be in the ocean and the only ones they can kill are sharks, who stand a fighting chance.”
“I appreciate you trying to protect me, but this isn’t how to fix the problem,” Will said. He headed for the barrels as his friends edged back. “We’re going to try and settle this peacefully, an opportunity that’s probably long gone, but we’ll try. I’ll let these women go and give them a chance to explain what they want. Don’t attack them or do anything stupid unless I tell you to.”
Mr. Niff turned to Domo. “He tells us to do stupid things?”
Domo waved his walking stick. “All the time.”
A barrel shook until it tipped over, and Will heard a muffled voice scream, “When I get out of here, you’re in for such a suing!”
Will hesitated. He took a deep breath and reached for the barrel. “Do the right thing, even if it’s hard.”
With that Will pried off the top of the barrel, and an enraged woman came out like a shot. He opened the other two barrels and tried to help the ladies out, but they ignored his assistance and clustered together.
The ladies were roughly Will’s age, wearing gray jackets, black skirts, high heel shoes and carrying briefcases. Their clothes were wrinkled and a bit dirty from being forced into the barrels, and they looked furious. They were also cute, which surprised Will. His experience with the legal profession always resulted in pain and indignity rather than an opportunity to ask someone on a date.
“You treacherous, backstabbing, louse ridden, stinking, illegitimate son of a road kill squirrel!” a lawyer yelled at Will. This one had blond hair cut very short.
“That’s a bad start to the conversation,” he replied. “Hi there, William Bradshaw, reluctant King of the Goblins. I had nothing to do with what just happened to you, and I’m very sorry.”
She marched up to Will and held a finger under his nose. “You’re sorry? We are way past the point where sorry would make things better! I am an official representative of the Ann Sheal Ruin law firm, and buster, Fine Ann doesn’t take this kind of garbage from anyone.” The woman took out a business card and held it in front of her like a knife. There was an awkward pause before she said, “You’re supposed to take that.”
“I’d really rather not, Ann.”
The lawyer rolled her eyes. “Ann is the name of our firm’s founder, a woman with an incredible force of personality who started the only all women law firm. I’m Cybil, you jerk.”
Will clapped his hands together. “Well, Cybil, I’m glad we cleared that up. Now I understand you wanted blood before you were stuffed in those barrels. Would you mind telling me why?”
Cybil sneered and pointed to one of her fellow lawyers. “Tell him, Patty.”
Patty was the youngest of the three and had brown hair worn in pigtails. She jumped when Cybil called on her and said, “Eep!”
The third lawyer snatched Patty’s briefcase and took out a sheet of paper. The woman held it up for Will to see, but pulled it back before he could read it. “This, you creep, is a lawsuit. The Coral Ring Merchant House had contracted to buy a load of salt from Quentin Peck. The salt was loaded and ready to go in the city of Nolod when you, yes you, sank the ship carrying it!”
“That’s right, Meg,” Cybil said. “The salt dissolved before it could be salvaged. The Coral Ring lost a major contract because of you. The cost came out to eight hundred guilders, and the damage you did to their reputation makes it harder for them to get business. We’re suing you for ten thousand guilders plus legal fees, and those are going to be high!”
Will showed no great concern at the threat of being sued. “Peck was trying to kill me. I was fighting back and had my goblins sink one of his ships. I’m sorry your client was hurt by our fight, but I can’t pay that much.”
“Yes, you can,” Cybil said menacingly. “You think you’re in the clear because you’re a king? Kings aren’t above the law. We can seize your assets, garnish your wages and shave your dog.”
“I haven’t got a dog,” Will told them.
Cybil snapped her fingers. “Patty, get him a dog so we can shave it.”
“Eep!” Patty’s pigtails flew up when she jumped like that.
Cybil marched up to Will and held out the lawsuit. “The mighty can fall, king or not. You have been served.”
“I know it’s supposed to work like that, but in my case it doesn’t,” Will said. “Seriously, you don’t want to—”
Too late. Cybil cried out in surprise as the lawsuit burst into flames in her hand. She barely managed to drop it before the fire scorched her fingers. The three lawyers looked amazed, as did the goblins and trolls.
“I tried to tell you.” Will took out his king contract tucked in his belt and unrolled the lengthy and confusing document. “Lawyers with Cickam, Wender and Downe drew this up when they tricked me into being King of the Goblins. It keeps me on this world and in this kingdom unless my life is in peril. If I can direct your attention to this part here?”
The lady lawyers gathered around the king contract. Meg pointed at it and said, “Article 140, subsection 11, paragraph 2, line 51: The King of the Goblins can’t escape by losing the kingdom in a game of chance, including poker, blackjack, backgammon, go fish, Monopoly or Clue.”
“No, this part over here.” Will read the contract aloud to them. “Article 140, subsection 12, paragraph 7, line 11: Any suit filed against the King of the Goblins is automatically sent to the nearest branch office of Cickam, Wender and Downe. Bring it on.”
He rolled up the contract and explained, “I’m sympathetic, really, but if you sue me it goes to the lawyers who got me in this mess. They win every time. Trust me, I know. I think if we sit down and talk this over, we can come up with a solution that helps your client.”
Meg stared at him like he was speaking Latin. “Are you being reasonable?”
“I’m trying to. It usually doesn’t work, but I figure one of these days it might.”
Cybil was having none of it. “You think you’re getting away that easy? Patty, let him have it!”
“Eep!” That seemed to be the extent of Patty’s vocabulary. She kept staring at Will.
Cybil took a rolled up parchment from Patty’s briefcase. Will wasn’t sure what good that would do after her last lawsuit combusted, but nothing could prepare him for what happened next. The parchment rustled and coiled around Cybil’s arm before reaching out like a snake or octopus tentacle. Goblins shivered at the sight. Even the trolls looked queasy.
“This is a living contract,” Cybil explained, her tone smug. “We stole the idea from your lawyers.”
“Hey, they aren’t my lawyers!” Will shouted.
“Whatever.” The contract continued reaching for Will as Cybil spoke. “Living contracts are sentient legal documents that can track their victims across kingdoms, never slowing, never stopping, immune to bribery and totally ignoring pleas for mercy. It’s going to make your life a waking nightmare.”
“That train already left the station,” Will said. He watched the contract move closer inch by inch, and he was honestly considering running for his life when a disturbing thought occurred to him. “If you stole the idea from Cickam, Wender and Downe, that means they already have living contracts. And if they want to keep me on the job—”
Snap! Will’s king contract unrolled so fast it sounded like someone swung a bullwhip. It shot through the air and wrapped around the enemy contract like a constrictor snake. The contracts fell to the ground and thrashed about so violently they knocked two oak barrels aside. Trolls, goblins and lawyers alike stared in shock at the bizarre battle.
“Okay, this is weird even by my standards,” Will admitted.
The contracts lashed out at each other. The fight wasn’t entirely physical as clauses and subclauses lit up as they were invoked. Violent as the battle was, Will’s contract was larger and far more aggressive. The smaller contract tried to slither away, but the king contract grabbed a rock and bashed it again and again until its whimpering enemy gave up and inched its way back to Cybil. Victorious, Will’s king contract slithered back to him and rolled up so one particular section was facing him.
Will retrieved the contract, reluctantly, and read aloud the part it seemed to want to show him. “Article 150, subsection 1, paragraph 1, line 1: This contract is now fully sentient and self aware. It has a total mastery of the law, is homicidally aggressive and has a borderline personality disorder. Well, that’s disturbing.”
“This, this isn’t over!” Cybil shouted. “You haven’t heard the last of us!”
“Obviously not since you’re still talking,” Will said. Cybil fumed and marched off with Meg following her. Patty kept staring at Will, not moving, not speaking. Hoping she was the reasonable one of the group, he walked up to her and smiled.
“I’m sorry the Coral Ring got hurt because of my fight with Peck, and I want to help. Give me time to think on this and we’ll get back together to work out a deal where they get compensation, just not ten thousand guilders. Okay?”
Patty nodded, still not saying anything as Will left. Once he was gone, she asked Domo, “Is he seeing anyone?”
“Yes, and she’s vindictive.”
Patty took a business card from her briefcase and handed it to Domo. “Let me know if they break up.”
Will headed back to what little was left of the Goblin City, but he stopped when he saw something high in the sky. It was a clear, cold day, and he could see for miles. At this distance he couldn’t tell what it was, but it was big.
Domo waddled up to him and saw what had his attention. The goblin squinted and said, “Huh.”
“Is that a good huh or a bad huh?” Will asked.
“It’s a huh,” Domo replied. “Huh rules out good or bad and just signify weird. That’s a harpy, which is weird because there’s not enough wild game to support a flock after the mess the dwarfs made.”
“So what’s she doing here?”
* * * * *
Gretchen the harpy slouched low on the thick, dead branch she was perched on. There weren’t many perches to begin with and fewer now that the flock was getting ready to move. It was hard work to fly so much lumber to their mountaintop roost. With only days to go before they left for fresh foraging grounds, the flock was breaking up the thick branches for firewood. Economical as that was, it meant there were progressively fewer perches as time went by, and harpy’s clawed feet had trouble standing on flat ground. It made the whole flock irritable.
Territory so far north was poor, with few animals or plants even in summer. The flock had stayed a month longer than intended, completely gutting the mountains and hills of edible plants and game large enough to merit catching. They had to migrate to the next part of their large (and largely worthless) territory.
“Good morning, Gretchen,” Tiffy said happily. Tiffy was Gretchen’s cousin, and annoyingly cheerful.
“Nothing’s good about it,” Gretchen snapped.
Harpies as a rule were foul tempered, and Gretchen was worse than most. Her face, chest, upper arms and upper legs were similar to a human woman, although more muscular and leaner. The resemblance ended there. Black feathered wings sprouted from her back. Her teeth were sharper than a human’s and could chew through leather. Her legs below the knees and arms below the elbows were scaled and ended in talons like a bird of prey. Her dirty dress was made from badly tanned animal skins.
“Let me top you off,” Tiffy said as she refilled Gretchen’s cup of coffee. “Nothing’s worse than cold coffee.”
“Lots of things are worse, and you know it. Just go away.”
Gretchen sipped coffee from her battered tin cup. Harpies couldn’t afford to have many possessions when every extra ounce made flying harder, but the flock had to have their morning cup. She owned her cup, a steel dagger that needed to be sharpened, an equally dull hatchet, and a leather bag loaded with food for the journey.
The rest of the flock kept their distance from Gretchen. Most of them were in equally foul moods since migrations were risky. Many of them had fledglings to carry, making it that much harder. But one day their fledglings would fly. Hers never would…her poor, crippled daughter.
“Sister.” It was Maggie, leader of the flock and Gretchen’s older sister. Maggie’s hair was going gray, and she was the most experienced harpy in a thousand miles. “We must talk.”
Gretchen gazed out at the snowy land far below their roost. “I know what you’re going to say, so save your breath. I’ve always seen to my daughter’s needs, no charity required.”
“Sister, the migration begins soon. You are not strong enough to carry Celeste. She’s grown too much. The flock has discussed the matter.”
Gretchen screamed, a horrid noise that made rocks vibrate. She threw her cup of coffee across the roost as she stumbled into the center of the assembled harpies. “The flock has discussed this? The flock? I’m a member of this flock! I wasn’t part of this discussion!”
Other harpies fell silent. Most stepped back. This day had been coming for years, and Gretchen had fought it every step of the way. She screamed at them. Harpies covered their ears from the wretched noise, but they didn’t back down when she stopped.
“She’s my daughter, not yours!” Gretchen screamed. “She’s done as much as any here to feed the flock, foraging and hunting. I won’t have this!”
“You could barely carry her to this roost, and that was a year ago,” Maggie said.
Gretchen hesitated. “She can walk.”
“Three hundred miles?” Maggie asked. “In winter? Alone?”
“I’ll go with her if you won’t!”
“No.” Maggie clumsily walked up to Gretchen, a risky move. “Sister, out of love for you and Celeste I have let, yes let, you keep your daughter. Other flocks would have placed her with a foster mother once she had teeth. I pushed this day back as far as possible, but Celeste can’t stay with us any longer. It’s not fair to the flock or to her.”
Gretchen’s muscles tensed to attack. Slowly, ever so slowly, she unclenched her fists and looked down. “What would you have me do?”
Maggie picked up Gretchen’s coffee cup and handed it back. “I have made inquiries among our friends. There is a kingdom where Celeste might take refuge. The leader has taken in an exiled dwarf, a minotaur and two young trolls. UMLIS live in peace within his borders. I believe we can place Celeste with him.”
“Can he protect her as the flock would?” Gretchen demanded.
“I don’t believe that’s going to be a problem.”
William Bradshaw and For a Song chapter 2
Chapter 2
The next morning, Will walked through the shallow snow to a small canyon. Goblins hadn’t noticed him yet, and his only companion was a small wombat waddling after him. He sat down on a low rock ledge blown clear of snow and took a thin book from his pocket. The wombat stopped next to him and sniffed his feet.
“Hey there, boy,” Will said. He held up the book for the small animal to see. “Funny you should show up. I got this from the goblins just yesterday. The Joy of Raising Wombats, which probably wasn’t a best seller, but it might help now that there are a few of you guys wandering around the kingdom.”
Will had learned only last autumn that some goblins rode wombats, a relatively inoffensive animal that shared goblins’ desire to avoid death. Goblins and their cowardly mounts ran from every fight, which goblins considered proof of intelligence. These same goblins had imported dozens of wombats to the Kingdom of the Goblins in the belief they were helping Will. He hadn’t made up his mind whether this was a good thing or not.
The wombat nibbled on Will’s boots as he read. He reached down and scratched its back while he steadied the book with his other hand.
“Let’s see, you’re herbivores, you’re marsupials, you’re licking my fingers,” Will said. “Stop that. You dig burrows. See, I didn’t know that.”
“Hey, it’s the King!” a thin goblin shouted. The goblin hurried over to annoy Will, a popular pastime among goblins, when he cried out and disappeared into the earth.
“That would be one of your burrows.” Will scratched the wombat’s back and the little animal rolled over to get its belly rubbed. He obliged it while continuing to read. “If predators show up you run into your burrow. That’s sensible. If the predator is small enough to go in after you, it can’t hurt you because it can only attack your…okay, this can’t be right.”
The wombat made a contended sound as Will stared at it. “You have a nearly indestructible rump? Be honest, you guys got out of line when God was handing out blessings.”
“I’m all right,” the thin goblin said from inside the burrow.
“Boss!” It was Mr. Niff, running through the snow straight for Will. He stopped long enough to help his fellow goblin out of the burrow. Mr. Niff looked down the hole and said, “He’s got the place nicely furnished. Wait, I’m forgetting something, besides my name. Oh, right, I’ve got a message for you.”
“If it involves whatever you guys were doing with that dung heap and teddy bear, I’d rather not know,” Will said. The wombat crawled onto his lap and rubbed against his stomach.
Shocked, Mr. Niff shouted, “Hey, that bear was rabid!”
“That was cotton stuffing coming out of a tear,” Will said. He closed the book and put it back in his pocket. “Alone time is officially over, so tell me what’s up.”
Mr. Niff frowned. “Builder goblins say Hugh Timbers is throwing a fit. They need you to calm him down or get him drunk. Either one is good.”
Will got up and carried the wombat with him. “That’s new. Hugh is a pretty levelheaded guy. Where is he?”
“He’s in what’s left of the Goblin City.” Mr. Niff followed Will to their slovenly capital, saying, “It was bad, boss. He was going on about quality, workmanship, not trapping the toilets. Then he started yelling at walls.”
Will walked back to the Goblin City. The city consisted of an outer wall and gatehouse, and next to that a large maze. Inside the wall was, well, nothing. Once it had poorly built houses and shops abandoned by dwarfs. The goblins had done considerable damage to these structures over the years before deciding that Will wanted them to expand the maze into the city. He didn’t, but once goblins get a stupid idea into their heads you’d need a crowbar, iron chains and team of oxen to pry it out. They’d demolished every building inside the city to make room for the expanded maze.
Will entered the city through the gatehouse. There were piles of rubble where buildings had been brought down, and holes leading to the tunnels and caves below the city. Goblins scurried by, babbling and hooting as they went about their business. But there was a disturbance near the maze, and goblins gathered around to watch.
“It was right there!” Hugh Timbers yelled. The dwarf had been a resident of the kingdom ever since the Eternal Army destroyed his home. Simply dressed in leather clothes and boots, the barrel chested dwarf had brown hair with hints of gray. He pointed at a bare patch of ground and shouted, “There was a wall thirty feet long and ten feet tall on this spot not one hour ago!”
“Morning, Hugh,” Will said. He set down the wombat and joined the dwarf at the now empty space. “Is there a problem?”
Hugh looked like he was going to give an angry response, but he took a deep breath and calmed down. “Sir William, I went fishing this morning and passed a wall newly built on this site. I returned an hour later to find the wall gone. This is not an isolated event. I have noticed other walls missing from the maze in the last month.”
“Maybe it went on vacation?” a goblin offered. “It deserves one, what with all the work walls do.”
“Yeah, they have to stand around all day,” said another goblin.
Hugh’s face turned red and he scowled at the goblins. Will stepped forward and said, “I’ve seen goblins put up walls and take them down again. They don’t have a plan for the maze, so new walls can seal off parts of the maze and have to be removed.”
“Sir, I have also seen this and struggled to maintain my composure at such wasted effort, but this is different.” Hugh bent down and ran his hand over the ground. “The spot is clear of dust or debris that would be present if the wall was taken apart. It is as if it were never here to begin with.”
“And?” a goblin asked.
“You don’t mind losing a part of the maze?” Will asked. Goblins loved their maze, spending endless hours building and improving it. The maze was gradually expanding into the ruined city, with walls reaching out into the courtyard.
A goblin with a tail shrugged. “I’m sure the wall is happy wherever it went.”
“You know the old saying, if you love something, let it go,” a stubby goblin added.
“Has anyone asked—” Will began, but stopped in mid sentence when the air shimmered and dirty paper plates rained down from the sky. The goblins were warping space with their collective stupidity and craziness, an ability they could barely control and didn’t bother trying to. He turned to find a brick wall twenty feet long and ten feet high running between him and Hugh. “This looks too small to be the wall you’re referring to. Has anyone asked Milo about this?”
Milo the minotaur was another resident of the kingdom. He’d applied for a job as monster in the goblins’ maze and was trying to turn it into a tourist destination, a hard task when the maze was so confusing and complex that visitors could be lost in it for months.
“I have been unable to find him,” Hugh said from the other side of the newly appeared wall. He walked around it to rejoin Will and explained, “Milo spotted humans exploring the maze and ran after them. I believe he intended to ask them to take a survey about their experience, but they fled at the sight of a seven foot tall monster with a bull’s head.”
Mr. Niff folded his arms across his chest. “That’s rude.”
“Milo is in charge of the maze, as much as anyone can be, so this is his responsibility,” Will said. “We’ll sit down and discuss the matter once he gets back, and maybe find a solution.”
Hugh frowned. “As you wish, Sir William. This situation troubles me greatly. Walls are meant to be permanent.”
“Very little around here makes sense.” Will studied the debris filling the courtyard. “The piles of broken bricks are smaller. I guess the guys are using them to build the maze, but there aren’t many left. Work is going to stop when they run out of building material.”
“Oh ye of little faith,” Domo said as he entered the city through a massive hole in the outer wall and picked up a stray brick. “We would have run out of bricks months ago if we were only recycling what little is here. Builder goblins are importing bricks from across the border.”
Will’s eyes snapped open. “Please tell me you aren’t raiding Kervol Ket for bricks! We’re getting along these days!”
“No, no, no,” Domo said as he waved his walking stick from side to side. “We’re getting some of them by dismantling old dwarf roads in the kingdom. There aren’t many of them left, so we had to get the rest from Silyig Kingdom, our neighbor to the east.”
“Whose leader is going to declare war on us for robbing his kingdom,” Will pointed out. “Can’t we go a few months without a war?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?” Mr. Niff asked.
“It shouldn’t be,” Will replied. “Why is this the first time I’m hearing about these people if they live next door?”
Domo rolled his eyes. “The obvious answer is because you’ve never asked who’s in the neighborhood. The less obnoxious answer is because you focus your attention on whoever is trying to kill us this week, leaving very little time to do anything else. Silyig’s people aren’t going to invade us, ever, so you can safely ignore them.”
Feeling hopeful, Will asked, “Is that because they’re civilized people, possibly nice, and don’t judge goblins harshly?”
“There’s that optimism of yours again,” Domo chided him. “They aren’t going to invade because they can’t. Silyig started as an oligarchy, then became a monarch, then an empire, eventually turning into a fallen empire. These days Silyig is a kleptocracy with a side order of irony.”
“It’s a country of mob bosses posing as nobles,” Mr. Niff added cheerfully.
“Anything is legal there as long as their emperor gets a fifteen percent cut,” Domo added. “They’re too busy stabbing each other in the back to threaten people outside their borders.”
“I’ve never met a mob boss,” Will admitted, “a fact I’m proud of, but I’d think they’d mind us carting off tons of bricks from their land.”
“Speak of the devil,” Domo said. A mob of goblins pulling a small cart loaded down with a cubic yard of loose bricks entered the city through the gatehouse. Builder goblins scurried over and carried off the bricks for the maze. Once the cart was empty, the goblins towed it out again.
“Anyway, with all the fighting they’ve had over the years, Silyig has a heaping helping of ruined castles, forts, villas, outposts and the like,” Domo continued. “Nine of them are within a few miles of the border. Builder and digger goblins cross into Silyig and dismantle them, then bring back the bricks for us to enlarge the maze.”
Surprised, Will asked, “No one notices you doing this?”
“Goblins are careful not to be seen while they work, and eight of the nine ruins are unoccupied,” Domo explained.
“That’s a relief.”
Mr. Niff smirked and said, “We’re breaking down the ninth one. The bandit chief living there can’t figure out why his castle gets smaller every week.”
“That,” Will began, but he paused and looked off into the sky. It was a clear day and he could see for miles, making it easy to spot the harpy circling high overhead. “Well look who’s here. I’m guessing our new friend didn’t come for the nightlife or fine dining, so what brought her back?”
Domo frowned. “I haven’t seen a harpy in these parts for years, and only then because she was passing through. She might be scouting the kingdom to see if it’s worth bringing her flock to spend the winter.”
“Exactly how bad would that be?” Will asked him.
“Harpies eat meat and some plants. They have large territories they move through, emptying each part of food before going to the next. The Kingdom of the Goblins is still recovering from our days of being a dwarf strip mine, so they’d have a hard time keeping fed here. They move far and fast, so they might poach livestock from Kervol’s kingdom to keep the dinner pot full.”
“They’re not too popular with humans,” Mr. Niff added.
“I guessed as much,” Will replied. “Is there anyone they do get along with?”
Hugh shrugged. “Harpies trade animal hides to dwarfs in return for steel daggers and axes. I would see them once or twice a year when I was still welcome among my kin. Meetings were brief and profits were slim, but such events were peaceful.”
“They don’t bother goblins,” Domo said. “Harpies live in poor quality land, same as we do, but they fly high and nest in mountains. We can’t get close enough to annoy them, and they don’t seem to care about us.”
“That’s a start we can build on.” Will walked away from the others and waved at the harpy. He gestured for her to come down and called out, “Welcome to the kingdom! Let’s sit down and talk!”
The harpy didn’t react for a while, then flapped her large wings and headed north until she disappeared from sight. Will frowned and said, “That could have gone better. I wonder why she left.”
Mr. Niff smiled at him. “Maybe it’s your breath.”
Will looked at Domo and said, “That harpy had a wingspan of twenty feet, maybe twenty-five. That’s not enough to keep someone so large in the air. How could she fly?”
“She’s filled with gas, like a dirigible,” a goblin said.
“No, it’s flatulence!” declared another. “She’s rocket powered!”
“It’s magic,” Domo said.
“Flatulence is magic,” the second goblin replied.
Domo smacked the offending goblin over the head with his walking stick. “Harpies are magic creatures. They can fly even though they shouldn’t be able to, and they can scream like an opera singer who stepped on a hedgehog.”
Will was going to ask more questions when he heard screams coming from the maze. He turned to see two men run out of the maze and head for the gatehouse. Not three steps behind them was Milo the minotaur in his black frock coat and black pants. The men and minotaur ran past Will and the goblins as if they weren’t there.
“Did you find the maze easy, challenging, impossible or mindboggling?” Milo yelled at the fleeing men.
“Impossible!” one yelled back as he ran out the gatehouse.
Still hot on their heels, Milo asked, “Would a reasonably priced map have helped?”
“Yes!”
“Are you going to require therapy after your visit?” Milo called out as he chased the men into a nearby forest.
Will stared at the spectacle for a few seconds. “That’s it, I’m out of here.”
Will left the city and goblins behind and headed for the nearby human town where he took his meals. After more than a year on the job he’d learned to appreciate his goblin followers and accept the admittedly few perks his job had, but there came a time when he’d had as much as he could deal with and needed human company. Regular trips outside the kingdom gave him a chance to spend time with men and women who were, for the most part, normal. Spending an hour or so a day with them did wonders for his sanity.
This was Will’s second winter on Other Place. So far snowfall was light and temperatures were moderate. His uniform was reasonably warm, and he stayed comfortable as long as he kept moving. He worried what would happen if a major storm hit. Deep snow would make it hard for him to go for food and could be a real danger to his smaller goblins.
It didn’t take him long to cross the border into Ket Kingdom. The rubble, graffiti and random traps were gone now that he was among men. Farmhouses were scattered about with bare fields and orchards. He saw few animals except birds picking through the fields for stray grains of wheat.
Not far ahead was a human community of roughly a hundred buildings. Legally this land belonged to Kervol Ket, but for tax reasons they pretended to be part of the Kingdom of the Goblins. The town had no name to better avoid royal attention. A few people walked the streets and waved when they saw him.
“How’s it going?” a smiling farmer asked.
“Chaos, confusion, mayhem,” Will replied. “Same as always. You seem cheerful. What’s up?”
The man’s smile widened. “You’ll see soon enough. I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.”
“What does that mean?” Will asked, but the man left without answering. Will didn’t like surprises, as they often meant bad things were about to happen, but he got along fairly well with these people. They’d warn him of danger.
He went into the town’s inn, a large, warm and pleasant place. The building was packed with families chatting and gossiping. Will took one of the few empty chairs and was surprised when a teenage girl walked up and curtsied.
“We’re serving fresh bread, sugared plums and broiled trout, Your Majesty.”
Will blushed. “There’s no need for titles. Call me Will like everyone else.”
“It would be inappropriate to address a king that way, especially one who saved my life.” The teenager set his table with a wood spoon and fork as Will stared at her. “My family lost our home to the Eternal Army.”
Will’s face flushed in embarrassment. “Oh, oh God, I am so sorry! I tried to stop them as fast as I could!”
“You stopped them in time,” she said, her tone respectful. “The Eternal Army would have caught up with us when we were fleeing, but they turned away at the last minute. We found out later they left because you’d issued them a challenge.” She looked at him in awe. “They marched to fight you, and you made sure they’d never hurt anyone again. You are due respect, Your Majesty, from me and everyone else.”
The teenager curtsied again and left. Will’s face felt warm from blushing, and he blushed even more as men and women in the inn watched him and smiled. The girl brought him a filling meal and enough leftovers to cover his lunch.
Some of the inn’s patrons chuckled. Will grimaced and asked, “You knew she was going to do that, didn’t you?”
“She’s been asking when you’d come all morning,” a woman told him.
Will finished as much food as he could and went to the bar. The innkeeper was there, a bear of a man dressed in simple cotton clothes. He glanced up when Will approached and pointed to the girl waiting tables. “Quite the crowd you’ve got. What’s the occasion?”
“No occasion.” The innkeeper gestured to the crowded inn and explained, “Not much work to do in winter after you’ve fed your animals. It’s hot in here from the kitchen fire, so people stop to warm up and talk with their friends.”
Trying (and failing) to sound causal, Will said, “I see you hired a waitress. When did that happen?”
It was the innkeeper’s turn to be embarrassed, and he looked at the floor. “I’m not sure. She and her family are refugees who lost their homes last winter to the Eternal Army. Her father and brothers hired on as farmhands with the farmers, and she showed up here last week asking for work. I told her a dozen times I can manage my own inn, but she kept after me. I don’t think I hired her…pretty sure I didn’t.”
“They’ve been wandering around for an entire year?”
“Way I hear it they lost everything, home, barn, tools, money, animals. There’s nothing for them to go back to and no way to rebuild. They’ve been going from town to town, taking what work they can find.”
Will’s embarrassment turned to shame. He’d stopped the Eternal Army with considerable help, but not before they’d burned out tens of thousands of people. “I knew life would be hard for the refugees, but I didn’t realize they’d be hurting for so long. I should have done more. I failed them.”
“Try telling her that. The girl’s been on cloud nine since she learned you eat here. Surprised she didn’t ask for your autograph.”
This felt strange. Races across Other Place considered goblins vermin, and since Will was their King most people held him in contempt. He wasn’t used to anyone showing him gratitude, much less hero worship. It was nice, in a weird sort of way.
He tried to think of how to help the girl and her family. He only had a little money, and no chance to get more. Land in the Kingdom of the Goblins wasn’t good for farming (he’d tried), and there wasn’t good timber they could harvest. There was the section of the wastelands healed by the Bottle of Hope. Could they live there? Could he ask for help from the trolls or the purple puppet people? He didn’t think so. They’d already done a lot for him and had problems of their own.
The innkeeper saw Will’s conflicted expression. “They’re hurting, but it’s getting better. They’ve got a roof over their heads, food to eat and a chance to rebuild. You’ve done a lot, but you can’t be everywhere and do everything. Good folks are doing their part to help, too.”
“Let me know if there’s anything I can do for them.” Will loaded his food into a small sack and turned to leave. Before he went, he asked the innkeeper, “Hey, have you seen any harpies in the last few days?”
That was a mistake. In seconds a crowd of angry men surrounded Will. One man demanded, “You’ve seen harpies? Where?”
“I saw one yesterday in my kingdom and another this morning, but it was so far away it might have been the same one.” Will saw the news spread through the inn like wildfire, drawing in more people. “I understand humans and harpies don’t get along, but both times the harpy left with no harm done.”
“Go fetch the mayor,” a rancher told his wife. He looked worried and said, “There ain’t been harpies in these parts for years, and we’d just as soon keep it that way. The thieving, stinking, loudmouth bird women steal livestock. No disrespect intended, but it went well for you because you didn’t have anything they could take.”
“They don’t just steal chickens and piglets, bad as that would be,” a farmer added. “My daddy told me how whole flocks of them would break into barns at night and kill cattle, then carry off the parts they wanted.”
Worried, Will asked, “When was this?”
The rancher spat “Thirty years ago. They showed up out of the blue and stole every animal they could until our parents chased them off. Looks like we’ll have to do the same.”
Will held up his hands and tried to calm the crowd. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. I saw a harpy or at most two, and it was in my land, not yours. I’ll look into the situation and see if we can solve it peacefully.”
The crowd’s foul mood didn’t improve. The rancher put a hand on Will’s shoulder and said, “You’ve been a good neighbor, better than any of the men who had the job before you. When the time comes to drive them off, let us know and we’ll help. Longbows are the only things harpies fear.”
“Okay,” Will said slowly. He exited the inn and headed back to his kingdom. Clearly the situation was worse than he’d first believed. It would take some effort to prevent violence between the harpies and humans. He needed advice from Domo and Gladys the magic mirror to form a plan. Hopefully the harpies had been just passing through.
Will traveled only a few minutes before he got a funny feeling like he was being watched. Back on Earth he would have written that off as paranoia, but after surviving multiple attempts on his life he didn’t take chances. He grabbed the edge of his cape with one hand and his fire scepter with the other. Will was still close to the town and its farmland, so there was no cover on the harvested fields for an attacker to hide behind. He looked up on a hunch.
“This is getting repetitive,” he muttered. A harpy flew high overhead, hard to see because she was keeping the sun to her back. At this distance he couldn’t tell if it was the same harpy from before or a new one. He was curious why he kept seeing them and the townspeople didn’t. After all, they had livestock harpies could prey upon. They should be more common in Ket Kingdom than his land.
Will continued home. He didn’t try to interact with the harpy or show that he’d seen her. After ten minutes he stopped and bent down like he was tying his shoes, and he stole a glance up. The harpy was still there, roughly the same distance from him and farther from the town and its livestock. This was starting to feel personal.
“Let’s see how far she’s willing to take this.” Will kept going, crossing the border into his own lands. He tried to act casually when he looked around. Sure enough, every time he saw the harpy. She kept after him for thirty minutes, maintaining the same distance between them. Thankfully she wasn’t attacking, but this made him nervous.
“The boss is back!” It was a mob of Will’s goblins. They poured out of a young forest bare of leaves and hurried over toward him. The harpy veered off and headed north.
“You look spooked,” a goblin with claws said. “Or possibly gassy.”
“I’ve got a puzzle that needs solving, and sooner would be better than later.” He leaned down and asked, “Boys, have you ever had harpies living in the kingdom?”
“Visit, yes,” the clawed goblin said. “Stay, no. Harpies haven’t lived here since the first day lawyers and wizards created the kingdom. The only harpies who passed through complained there wasn’t enough to eat. We offered them goblin stew, but they said they weren’t that desperate or stupid.”
“More for us,” a squat goblin said.
“Then something changed, because they’re taking an interest in us.” Will stood up straight and said, “Come on, guys, we need to see Gladys.”
Will needed a few minutes to reach his bedroom under the Goblin City. The rough-cut room was filled with furniture he’d received last year as a gift from a grateful king he’d helped. Gladys was in a corner, a mirror six feet tall and made of bronze with eagle motifs in the frame. The mirror’s surface was black, so Gladys was probably asleep.
“Gladys, have problem, need solution,” Will said.
Gladys appeared in the surface of the mirror. She looked like a middle-aged woman, overweight and wearing ridiculously bright pink clothes. Her blond hair was curly, and she wore way too much makeup. “You’re going to have to be specific about the problem. We’ve got so many I’ve started numbering them.”
“Harpies are visiting the kingdom, and one followed me back from getting lunch. I mentioned this to the farmers and they freaked out. I need to know how many harpies are here, and I need a solution to this that doesn’t result in anyone stopping an arrow the hard way.”
“Harpies, huh?” A bookcase appeared behind Gladys in her mirror, and she took out a book. “Surprised they’d bother coming here. A flock needs a lot of food each week to keep fed, and there’s no way they’ll find it here. They might want to nest here and raid farms to the south, but that’s risky. How many did you see?”
“Three, but only one at a time and never close enough to identify them.” Will tapped his scepter on his palm. “Can you see any in the kingdom or in Kervol’s land?”
“Checking.” Gladys disappeared from the surface of her mirror and was replaced by an image of a barren farm field. Gladys could see through scarecrows the goblins had set up, each scarecrow a copy of Will’s uniform. Will could also trade places with these scarecrows if he had to. Gladys showed one image after another, going through dozens of them in seconds. “The scarecrows aren’t pointed up, so there’s a limit to what I can see, but so far Kervol is in the clear. Not one harpy in his land.”
“How about us?”
“I found five.” Gladys displayed five images, each showing a harpy flying overhead. She zoomed in on them to get a better look. Will saw that the harpies had hands and feet like hawk’s feet, with sharp talons inches long. They wore leather clothes, and two carried hatchets. “They’re in the southern half of the kingdom, with three of them close to the Goblin City. Are we still calling it a city when there are no buildings?”
“I don’t know, or really care. You mentioned flocks earlier. How many harpies to a flock?”
“Some flocks have fifty members and others only a dozen. Bigger flocks need more food, which means they have either good quality territory or a lot of poor quality land. Maybe they’re thinking of adding us to their territory, stopping by to eat everything in sight before moving on.”
Will frowned. “Five harpies are too few to be a flock. Wait, what’s that one doing?”
One of the harpies had been circling but went into a dive and landed next to a scarecrow. They watched as she approached the scarecrow, stumbling as she walked. She reached out and grabbed the scarecrow near the waist.
Indignant, Gladys said, “She’s going through the scarecrow’s pockets! That’s tacky!”
The harpy came up empty handed and flapped her large wings, slowly taking to the air. Magic or no, it took her time to gain altitude. The others continued flying around the kingdom. Oddly enough, they never went south to Ket or came close to one another.
“This isn’t too bad,” Will said. “There are only a few of them. I don’t want them to get hurt or hurt anyone. Do you have suggestions on how to deal with them peacefully?”
Gladys reappeared in her mirror. “Not many. Harpies don’t get along with men, ever, so they’re not going to like or trust you. They live in the wilds and stick to themselves, so they might not have even heard about you. They’re not here to trade with us because we haven’t got anything worth having. I know you won’t like it, but threats may be the way to go. You’re strong enough to force their respect, and they’ll listen to that.”
“You’re right, I don’t like it.” Will waved his left hand in the air. “So what are they here for? Are they scouts for a larger group? Are they raiding or colonizing the kingdom?”
Gladys closed the book and put it back in the bookcase, which vanished from the surface of her mirror. “I don’t have answers for you yet. I’ll keep watching and see if there’s a pattern to their behavior. And Will?”
“Yes?”
Looking worried, she said, “There aren’t a lot of good reasons why a harpy would follow you. She might have been planning to rob you, or hoping you’d lead her to a settlement or house she could raid for food. Harpies can be dangerous, especially to lone travelers. Keep your guard up and don’t go anywhere by yourself until this is settled.”
“Is there a way this could end well? I’d really like it if we didn’t have another conflict.”
Gladys faded from the mirror, returning it to a solid black. “They could leave, and soon. That’s as close to a happy ending as we’re going to get.”
The next morning, Will walked through the shallow snow to a small canyon. Goblins hadn’t noticed him yet, and his only companion was a small wombat waddling after him. He sat down on a low rock ledge blown clear of snow and took a thin book from his pocket. The wombat stopped next to him and sniffed his feet.
“Hey there, boy,” Will said. He held up the book for the small animal to see. “Funny you should show up. I got this from the goblins just yesterday. The Joy of Raising Wombats, which probably wasn’t a best seller, but it might help now that there are a few of you guys wandering around the kingdom.”
Will had learned only last autumn that some goblins rode wombats, a relatively inoffensive animal that shared goblins’ desire to avoid death. Goblins and their cowardly mounts ran from every fight, which goblins considered proof of intelligence. These same goblins had imported dozens of wombats to the Kingdom of the Goblins in the belief they were helping Will. He hadn’t made up his mind whether this was a good thing or not.
The wombat nibbled on Will’s boots as he read. He reached down and scratched its back while he steadied the book with his other hand.
“Let’s see, you’re herbivores, you’re marsupials, you’re licking my fingers,” Will said. “Stop that. You dig burrows. See, I didn’t know that.”
“Hey, it’s the King!” a thin goblin shouted. The goblin hurried over to annoy Will, a popular pastime among goblins, when he cried out and disappeared into the earth.
“That would be one of your burrows.” Will scratched the wombat’s back and the little animal rolled over to get its belly rubbed. He obliged it while continuing to read. “If predators show up you run into your burrow. That’s sensible. If the predator is small enough to go in after you, it can’t hurt you because it can only attack your…okay, this can’t be right.”
The wombat made a contended sound as Will stared at it. “You have a nearly indestructible rump? Be honest, you guys got out of line when God was handing out blessings.”
“I’m all right,” the thin goblin said from inside the burrow.
“Boss!” It was Mr. Niff, running through the snow straight for Will. He stopped long enough to help his fellow goblin out of the burrow. Mr. Niff looked down the hole and said, “He’s got the place nicely furnished. Wait, I’m forgetting something, besides my name. Oh, right, I’ve got a message for you.”
“If it involves whatever you guys were doing with that dung heap and teddy bear, I’d rather not know,” Will said. The wombat crawled onto his lap and rubbed against his stomach.
Shocked, Mr. Niff shouted, “Hey, that bear was rabid!”
“That was cotton stuffing coming out of a tear,” Will said. He closed the book and put it back in his pocket. “Alone time is officially over, so tell me what’s up.”
Mr. Niff frowned. “Builder goblins say Hugh Timbers is throwing a fit. They need you to calm him down or get him drunk. Either one is good.”
Will got up and carried the wombat with him. “That’s new. Hugh is a pretty levelheaded guy. Where is he?”
“He’s in what’s left of the Goblin City.” Mr. Niff followed Will to their slovenly capital, saying, “It was bad, boss. He was going on about quality, workmanship, not trapping the toilets. Then he started yelling at walls.”
Will walked back to the Goblin City. The city consisted of an outer wall and gatehouse, and next to that a large maze. Inside the wall was, well, nothing. Once it had poorly built houses and shops abandoned by dwarfs. The goblins had done considerable damage to these structures over the years before deciding that Will wanted them to expand the maze into the city. He didn’t, but once goblins get a stupid idea into their heads you’d need a crowbar, iron chains and team of oxen to pry it out. They’d demolished every building inside the city to make room for the expanded maze.
Will entered the city through the gatehouse. There were piles of rubble where buildings had been brought down, and holes leading to the tunnels and caves below the city. Goblins scurried by, babbling and hooting as they went about their business. But there was a disturbance near the maze, and goblins gathered around to watch.
“It was right there!” Hugh Timbers yelled. The dwarf had been a resident of the kingdom ever since the Eternal Army destroyed his home. Simply dressed in leather clothes and boots, the barrel chested dwarf had brown hair with hints of gray. He pointed at a bare patch of ground and shouted, “There was a wall thirty feet long and ten feet tall on this spot not one hour ago!”
“Morning, Hugh,” Will said. He set down the wombat and joined the dwarf at the now empty space. “Is there a problem?”
Hugh looked like he was going to give an angry response, but he took a deep breath and calmed down. “Sir William, I went fishing this morning and passed a wall newly built on this site. I returned an hour later to find the wall gone. This is not an isolated event. I have noticed other walls missing from the maze in the last month.”
“Maybe it went on vacation?” a goblin offered. “It deserves one, what with all the work walls do.”
“Yeah, they have to stand around all day,” said another goblin.
Hugh’s face turned red and he scowled at the goblins. Will stepped forward and said, “I’ve seen goblins put up walls and take them down again. They don’t have a plan for the maze, so new walls can seal off parts of the maze and have to be removed.”
“Sir, I have also seen this and struggled to maintain my composure at such wasted effort, but this is different.” Hugh bent down and ran his hand over the ground. “The spot is clear of dust or debris that would be present if the wall was taken apart. It is as if it were never here to begin with.”
“And?” a goblin asked.
“You don’t mind losing a part of the maze?” Will asked. Goblins loved their maze, spending endless hours building and improving it. The maze was gradually expanding into the ruined city, with walls reaching out into the courtyard.
A goblin with a tail shrugged. “I’m sure the wall is happy wherever it went.”
“You know the old saying, if you love something, let it go,” a stubby goblin added.
“Has anyone asked—” Will began, but stopped in mid sentence when the air shimmered and dirty paper plates rained down from the sky. The goblins were warping space with their collective stupidity and craziness, an ability they could barely control and didn’t bother trying to. He turned to find a brick wall twenty feet long and ten feet high running between him and Hugh. “This looks too small to be the wall you’re referring to. Has anyone asked Milo about this?”
Milo the minotaur was another resident of the kingdom. He’d applied for a job as monster in the goblins’ maze and was trying to turn it into a tourist destination, a hard task when the maze was so confusing and complex that visitors could be lost in it for months.
“I have been unable to find him,” Hugh said from the other side of the newly appeared wall. He walked around it to rejoin Will and explained, “Milo spotted humans exploring the maze and ran after them. I believe he intended to ask them to take a survey about their experience, but they fled at the sight of a seven foot tall monster with a bull’s head.”
Mr. Niff folded his arms across his chest. “That’s rude.”
“Milo is in charge of the maze, as much as anyone can be, so this is his responsibility,” Will said. “We’ll sit down and discuss the matter once he gets back, and maybe find a solution.”
Hugh frowned. “As you wish, Sir William. This situation troubles me greatly. Walls are meant to be permanent.”
“Very little around here makes sense.” Will studied the debris filling the courtyard. “The piles of broken bricks are smaller. I guess the guys are using them to build the maze, but there aren’t many left. Work is going to stop when they run out of building material.”
“Oh ye of little faith,” Domo said as he entered the city through a massive hole in the outer wall and picked up a stray brick. “We would have run out of bricks months ago if we were only recycling what little is here. Builder goblins are importing bricks from across the border.”
Will’s eyes snapped open. “Please tell me you aren’t raiding Kervol Ket for bricks! We’re getting along these days!”
“No, no, no,” Domo said as he waved his walking stick from side to side. “We’re getting some of them by dismantling old dwarf roads in the kingdom. There aren’t many of them left, so we had to get the rest from Silyig Kingdom, our neighbor to the east.”
“Whose leader is going to declare war on us for robbing his kingdom,” Will pointed out. “Can’t we go a few months without a war?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?” Mr. Niff asked.
“It shouldn’t be,” Will replied. “Why is this the first time I’m hearing about these people if they live next door?”
Domo rolled his eyes. “The obvious answer is because you’ve never asked who’s in the neighborhood. The less obnoxious answer is because you focus your attention on whoever is trying to kill us this week, leaving very little time to do anything else. Silyig’s people aren’t going to invade us, ever, so you can safely ignore them.”
Feeling hopeful, Will asked, “Is that because they’re civilized people, possibly nice, and don’t judge goblins harshly?”
“There’s that optimism of yours again,” Domo chided him. “They aren’t going to invade because they can’t. Silyig started as an oligarchy, then became a monarch, then an empire, eventually turning into a fallen empire. These days Silyig is a kleptocracy with a side order of irony.”
“It’s a country of mob bosses posing as nobles,” Mr. Niff added cheerfully.
“Anything is legal there as long as their emperor gets a fifteen percent cut,” Domo added. “They’re too busy stabbing each other in the back to threaten people outside their borders.”
“I’ve never met a mob boss,” Will admitted, “a fact I’m proud of, but I’d think they’d mind us carting off tons of bricks from their land.”
“Speak of the devil,” Domo said. A mob of goblins pulling a small cart loaded down with a cubic yard of loose bricks entered the city through the gatehouse. Builder goblins scurried over and carried off the bricks for the maze. Once the cart was empty, the goblins towed it out again.
“Anyway, with all the fighting they’ve had over the years, Silyig has a heaping helping of ruined castles, forts, villas, outposts and the like,” Domo continued. “Nine of them are within a few miles of the border. Builder and digger goblins cross into Silyig and dismantle them, then bring back the bricks for us to enlarge the maze.”
Surprised, Will asked, “No one notices you doing this?”
“Goblins are careful not to be seen while they work, and eight of the nine ruins are unoccupied,” Domo explained.
“That’s a relief.”
Mr. Niff smirked and said, “We’re breaking down the ninth one. The bandit chief living there can’t figure out why his castle gets smaller every week.”
“That,” Will began, but he paused and looked off into the sky. It was a clear day and he could see for miles, making it easy to spot the harpy circling high overhead. “Well look who’s here. I’m guessing our new friend didn’t come for the nightlife or fine dining, so what brought her back?”
Domo frowned. “I haven’t seen a harpy in these parts for years, and only then because she was passing through. She might be scouting the kingdom to see if it’s worth bringing her flock to spend the winter.”
“Exactly how bad would that be?” Will asked him.
“Harpies eat meat and some plants. They have large territories they move through, emptying each part of food before going to the next. The Kingdom of the Goblins is still recovering from our days of being a dwarf strip mine, so they’d have a hard time keeping fed here. They move far and fast, so they might poach livestock from Kervol’s kingdom to keep the dinner pot full.”
“They’re not too popular with humans,” Mr. Niff added.
“I guessed as much,” Will replied. “Is there anyone they do get along with?”
Hugh shrugged. “Harpies trade animal hides to dwarfs in return for steel daggers and axes. I would see them once or twice a year when I was still welcome among my kin. Meetings were brief and profits were slim, but such events were peaceful.”
“They don’t bother goblins,” Domo said. “Harpies live in poor quality land, same as we do, but they fly high and nest in mountains. We can’t get close enough to annoy them, and they don’t seem to care about us.”
“That’s a start we can build on.” Will walked away from the others and waved at the harpy. He gestured for her to come down and called out, “Welcome to the kingdom! Let’s sit down and talk!”
The harpy didn’t react for a while, then flapped her large wings and headed north until she disappeared from sight. Will frowned and said, “That could have gone better. I wonder why she left.”
Mr. Niff smiled at him. “Maybe it’s your breath.”
Will looked at Domo and said, “That harpy had a wingspan of twenty feet, maybe twenty-five. That’s not enough to keep someone so large in the air. How could she fly?”
“She’s filled with gas, like a dirigible,” a goblin said.
“No, it’s flatulence!” declared another. “She’s rocket powered!”
“It’s magic,” Domo said.
“Flatulence is magic,” the second goblin replied.
Domo smacked the offending goblin over the head with his walking stick. “Harpies are magic creatures. They can fly even though they shouldn’t be able to, and they can scream like an opera singer who stepped on a hedgehog.”
Will was going to ask more questions when he heard screams coming from the maze. He turned to see two men run out of the maze and head for the gatehouse. Not three steps behind them was Milo the minotaur in his black frock coat and black pants. The men and minotaur ran past Will and the goblins as if they weren’t there.
“Did you find the maze easy, challenging, impossible or mindboggling?” Milo yelled at the fleeing men.
“Impossible!” one yelled back as he ran out the gatehouse.
Still hot on their heels, Milo asked, “Would a reasonably priced map have helped?”
“Yes!”
“Are you going to require therapy after your visit?” Milo called out as he chased the men into a nearby forest.
Will stared at the spectacle for a few seconds. “That’s it, I’m out of here.”
Will left the city and goblins behind and headed for the nearby human town where he took his meals. After more than a year on the job he’d learned to appreciate his goblin followers and accept the admittedly few perks his job had, but there came a time when he’d had as much as he could deal with and needed human company. Regular trips outside the kingdom gave him a chance to spend time with men and women who were, for the most part, normal. Spending an hour or so a day with them did wonders for his sanity.
This was Will’s second winter on Other Place. So far snowfall was light and temperatures were moderate. His uniform was reasonably warm, and he stayed comfortable as long as he kept moving. He worried what would happen if a major storm hit. Deep snow would make it hard for him to go for food and could be a real danger to his smaller goblins.
It didn’t take him long to cross the border into Ket Kingdom. The rubble, graffiti and random traps were gone now that he was among men. Farmhouses were scattered about with bare fields and orchards. He saw few animals except birds picking through the fields for stray grains of wheat.
Not far ahead was a human community of roughly a hundred buildings. Legally this land belonged to Kervol Ket, but for tax reasons they pretended to be part of the Kingdom of the Goblins. The town had no name to better avoid royal attention. A few people walked the streets and waved when they saw him.
“How’s it going?” a smiling farmer asked.
“Chaos, confusion, mayhem,” Will replied. “Same as always. You seem cheerful. What’s up?”
The man’s smile widened. “You’ll see soon enough. I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.”
“What does that mean?” Will asked, but the man left without answering. Will didn’t like surprises, as they often meant bad things were about to happen, but he got along fairly well with these people. They’d warn him of danger.
He went into the town’s inn, a large, warm and pleasant place. The building was packed with families chatting and gossiping. Will took one of the few empty chairs and was surprised when a teenage girl walked up and curtsied.
“We’re serving fresh bread, sugared plums and broiled trout, Your Majesty.”
Will blushed. “There’s no need for titles. Call me Will like everyone else.”
“It would be inappropriate to address a king that way, especially one who saved my life.” The teenager set his table with a wood spoon and fork as Will stared at her. “My family lost our home to the Eternal Army.”
Will’s face flushed in embarrassment. “Oh, oh God, I am so sorry! I tried to stop them as fast as I could!”
“You stopped them in time,” she said, her tone respectful. “The Eternal Army would have caught up with us when we were fleeing, but they turned away at the last minute. We found out later they left because you’d issued them a challenge.” She looked at him in awe. “They marched to fight you, and you made sure they’d never hurt anyone again. You are due respect, Your Majesty, from me and everyone else.”
The teenager curtsied again and left. Will’s face felt warm from blushing, and he blushed even more as men and women in the inn watched him and smiled. The girl brought him a filling meal and enough leftovers to cover his lunch.
Some of the inn’s patrons chuckled. Will grimaced and asked, “You knew she was going to do that, didn’t you?”
“She’s been asking when you’d come all morning,” a woman told him.
Will finished as much food as he could and went to the bar. The innkeeper was there, a bear of a man dressed in simple cotton clothes. He glanced up when Will approached and pointed to the girl waiting tables. “Quite the crowd you’ve got. What’s the occasion?”
“No occasion.” The innkeeper gestured to the crowded inn and explained, “Not much work to do in winter after you’ve fed your animals. It’s hot in here from the kitchen fire, so people stop to warm up and talk with their friends.”
Trying (and failing) to sound causal, Will said, “I see you hired a waitress. When did that happen?”
It was the innkeeper’s turn to be embarrassed, and he looked at the floor. “I’m not sure. She and her family are refugees who lost their homes last winter to the Eternal Army. Her father and brothers hired on as farmhands with the farmers, and she showed up here last week asking for work. I told her a dozen times I can manage my own inn, but she kept after me. I don’t think I hired her…pretty sure I didn’t.”
“They’ve been wandering around for an entire year?”
“Way I hear it they lost everything, home, barn, tools, money, animals. There’s nothing for them to go back to and no way to rebuild. They’ve been going from town to town, taking what work they can find.”
Will’s embarrassment turned to shame. He’d stopped the Eternal Army with considerable help, but not before they’d burned out tens of thousands of people. “I knew life would be hard for the refugees, but I didn’t realize they’d be hurting for so long. I should have done more. I failed them.”
“Try telling her that. The girl’s been on cloud nine since she learned you eat here. Surprised she didn’t ask for your autograph.”
This felt strange. Races across Other Place considered goblins vermin, and since Will was their King most people held him in contempt. He wasn’t used to anyone showing him gratitude, much less hero worship. It was nice, in a weird sort of way.
He tried to think of how to help the girl and her family. He only had a little money, and no chance to get more. Land in the Kingdom of the Goblins wasn’t good for farming (he’d tried), and there wasn’t good timber they could harvest. There was the section of the wastelands healed by the Bottle of Hope. Could they live there? Could he ask for help from the trolls or the purple puppet people? He didn’t think so. They’d already done a lot for him and had problems of their own.
The innkeeper saw Will’s conflicted expression. “They’re hurting, but it’s getting better. They’ve got a roof over their heads, food to eat and a chance to rebuild. You’ve done a lot, but you can’t be everywhere and do everything. Good folks are doing their part to help, too.”
“Let me know if there’s anything I can do for them.” Will loaded his food into a small sack and turned to leave. Before he went, he asked the innkeeper, “Hey, have you seen any harpies in the last few days?”
That was a mistake. In seconds a crowd of angry men surrounded Will. One man demanded, “You’ve seen harpies? Where?”
“I saw one yesterday in my kingdom and another this morning, but it was so far away it might have been the same one.” Will saw the news spread through the inn like wildfire, drawing in more people. “I understand humans and harpies don’t get along, but both times the harpy left with no harm done.”
“Go fetch the mayor,” a rancher told his wife. He looked worried and said, “There ain’t been harpies in these parts for years, and we’d just as soon keep it that way. The thieving, stinking, loudmouth bird women steal livestock. No disrespect intended, but it went well for you because you didn’t have anything they could take.”
“They don’t just steal chickens and piglets, bad as that would be,” a farmer added. “My daddy told me how whole flocks of them would break into barns at night and kill cattle, then carry off the parts they wanted.”
Worried, Will asked, “When was this?”
The rancher spat “Thirty years ago. They showed up out of the blue and stole every animal they could until our parents chased them off. Looks like we’ll have to do the same.”
Will held up his hands and tried to calm the crowd. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. I saw a harpy or at most two, and it was in my land, not yours. I’ll look into the situation and see if we can solve it peacefully.”
The crowd’s foul mood didn’t improve. The rancher put a hand on Will’s shoulder and said, “You’ve been a good neighbor, better than any of the men who had the job before you. When the time comes to drive them off, let us know and we’ll help. Longbows are the only things harpies fear.”
“Okay,” Will said slowly. He exited the inn and headed back to his kingdom. Clearly the situation was worse than he’d first believed. It would take some effort to prevent violence between the harpies and humans. He needed advice from Domo and Gladys the magic mirror to form a plan. Hopefully the harpies had been just passing through.
Will traveled only a few minutes before he got a funny feeling like he was being watched. Back on Earth he would have written that off as paranoia, but after surviving multiple attempts on his life he didn’t take chances. He grabbed the edge of his cape with one hand and his fire scepter with the other. Will was still close to the town and its farmland, so there was no cover on the harvested fields for an attacker to hide behind. He looked up on a hunch.
“This is getting repetitive,” he muttered. A harpy flew high overhead, hard to see because she was keeping the sun to her back. At this distance he couldn’t tell if it was the same harpy from before or a new one. He was curious why he kept seeing them and the townspeople didn’t. After all, they had livestock harpies could prey upon. They should be more common in Ket Kingdom than his land.
Will continued home. He didn’t try to interact with the harpy or show that he’d seen her. After ten minutes he stopped and bent down like he was tying his shoes, and he stole a glance up. The harpy was still there, roughly the same distance from him and farther from the town and its livestock. This was starting to feel personal.
“Let’s see how far she’s willing to take this.” Will kept going, crossing the border into his own lands. He tried to act casually when he looked around. Sure enough, every time he saw the harpy. She kept after him for thirty minutes, maintaining the same distance between them. Thankfully she wasn’t attacking, but this made him nervous.
“The boss is back!” It was a mob of Will’s goblins. They poured out of a young forest bare of leaves and hurried over toward him. The harpy veered off and headed north.
“You look spooked,” a goblin with claws said. “Or possibly gassy.”
“I’ve got a puzzle that needs solving, and sooner would be better than later.” He leaned down and asked, “Boys, have you ever had harpies living in the kingdom?”
“Visit, yes,” the clawed goblin said. “Stay, no. Harpies haven’t lived here since the first day lawyers and wizards created the kingdom. The only harpies who passed through complained there wasn’t enough to eat. We offered them goblin stew, but they said they weren’t that desperate or stupid.”
“More for us,” a squat goblin said.
“Then something changed, because they’re taking an interest in us.” Will stood up straight and said, “Come on, guys, we need to see Gladys.”
Will needed a few minutes to reach his bedroom under the Goblin City. The rough-cut room was filled with furniture he’d received last year as a gift from a grateful king he’d helped. Gladys was in a corner, a mirror six feet tall and made of bronze with eagle motifs in the frame. The mirror’s surface was black, so Gladys was probably asleep.
“Gladys, have problem, need solution,” Will said.
Gladys appeared in the surface of the mirror. She looked like a middle-aged woman, overweight and wearing ridiculously bright pink clothes. Her blond hair was curly, and she wore way too much makeup. “You’re going to have to be specific about the problem. We’ve got so many I’ve started numbering them.”
“Harpies are visiting the kingdom, and one followed me back from getting lunch. I mentioned this to the farmers and they freaked out. I need to know how many harpies are here, and I need a solution to this that doesn’t result in anyone stopping an arrow the hard way.”
“Harpies, huh?” A bookcase appeared behind Gladys in her mirror, and she took out a book. “Surprised they’d bother coming here. A flock needs a lot of food each week to keep fed, and there’s no way they’ll find it here. They might want to nest here and raid farms to the south, but that’s risky. How many did you see?”
“Three, but only one at a time and never close enough to identify them.” Will tapped his scepter on his palm. “Can you see any in the kingdom or in Kervol’s land?”
“Checking.” Gladys disappeared from the surface of her mirror and was replaced by an image of a barren farm field. Gladys could see through scarecrows the goblins had set up, each scarecrow a copy of Will’s uniform. Will could also trade places with these scarecrows if he had to. Gladys showed one image after another, going through dozens of them in seconds. “The scarecrows aren’t pointed up, so there’s a limit to what I can see, but so far Kervol is in the clear. Not one harpy in his land.”
“How about us?”
“I found five.” Gladys displayed five images, each showing a harpy flying overhead. She zoomed in on them to get a better look. Will saw that the harpies had hands and feet like hawk’s feet, with sharp talons inches long. They wore leather clothes, and two carried hatchets. “They’re in the southern half of the kingdom, with three of them close to the Goblin City. Are we still calling it a city when there are no buildings?”
“I don’t know, or really care. You mentioned flocks earlier. How many harpies to a flock?”
“Some flocks have fifty members and others only a dozen. Bigger flocks need more food, which means they have either good quality territory or a lot of poor quality land. Maybe they’re thinking of adding us to their territory, stopping by to eat everything in sight before moving on.”
Will frowned. “Five harpies are too few to be a flock. Wait, what’s that one doing?”
One of the harpies had been circling but went into a dive and landed next to a scarecrow. They watched as she approached the scarecrow, stumbling as she walked. She reached out and grabbed the scarecrow near the waist.
Indignant, Gladys said, “She’s going through the scarecrow’s pockets! That’s tacky!”
The harpy came up empty handed and flapped her large wings, slowly taking to the air. Magic or no, it took her time to gain altitude. The others continued flying around the kingdom. Oddly enough, they never went south to Ket or came close to one another.
“This isn’t too bad,” Will said. “There are only a few of them. I don’t want them to get hurt or hurt anyone. Do you have suggestions on how to deal with them peacefully?”
Gladys reappeared in her mirror. “Not many. Harpies don’t get along with men, ever, so they’re not going to like or trust you. They live in the wilds and stick to themselves, so they might not have even heard about you. They’re not here to trade with us because we haven’t got anything worth having. I know you won’t like it, but threats may be the way to go. You’re strong enough to force their respect, and they’ll listen to that.”
“You’re right, I don’t like it.” Will waved his left hand in the air. “So what are they here for? Are they scouts for a larger group? Are they raiding or colonizing the kingdom?”
Gladys closed the book and put it back in the bookcase, which vanished from the surface of her mirror. “I don’t have answers for you yet. I’ll keep watching and see if there’s a pattern to their behavior. And Will?”
“Yes?”
Looking worried, she said, “There aren’t a lot of good reasons why a harpy would follow you. She might have been planning to rob you, or hoping you’d lead her to a settlement or house she could raid for food. Harpies can be dangerous, especially to lone travelers. Keep your guard up and don’t go anywhere by yourself until this is settled.”
“Is there a way this could end well? I’d really like it if we didn’t have another conflict.”
Gladys faded from the mirror, returning it to a solid black. “They could leave, and soon. That’s as close to a happy ending as we’re going to get.”
William Bradshaw and For a Song chapter 3
This is the third and final chapter of William Bradshaw and For a Song that I will be posting here. The full book is available on Amazon.
Chapter 3
The next day brought a major snowstorm that dropped visibility to fifty feet and stacked snow up an inch per hour. Will worried this might cause trouble for the smaller goblins, but his concern was baseless. Most of them went underground and traveled via tunnels, and those who stayed above ground put on snowshoes.
More enterprising goblins scooped up snow and made snowmen. In true goblin fashion, they proceeded to trap them so the snowmen would fall on anyone setting off trip lines. Vial and his lab rat goblins booby-trapped their snowman with explosives, which went off prematurely and splattered its makers with slush. Will had to free a small goblin who’d accidentally buried himself inside a snowman, but otherwise the event was peaceful.
That ended when London and Brooklyn ran screaming through the horde of snowmen and flattened them. Will fixed them with a stern glare, and the trolls looked down.
“It’s been hours since we hit anyone!” London protested. “Boss, you’ve got to start another war or we’ll get out of practice.”
“It has been a while since we were almost killed,” a feathered goblin said.
“No wars,” Will said firmly. “We’ve been having far too many of those.”
“Start a little war,” Brooklyn pleaded. He took a sheet of paper out of his trouser pocket and offered it to Will. “Here’s a couple guys we could pound on and nobody would mind.”
Will read the paper and handed it back. “I’ve never heard of any of these people.”
London grinned. “That way they won’t see it coming.”
Bored goblins gathered around Will and implored him to pick a fight. The fact that they could be killed for no reason didn’t deter them in the slightest, and Will knew from experience that logic and common sense were totally worthless in such a discussion. He was saved from a long and fruitless argument when Domo and Mr. Niff arrived with armfuls of mail.
“Neither snow nor rain nor enraged dragons with marital problems can stop the postman from his appointed rounds,” Domo declared. He stopped in front of Will and began going through the stacks of letters.
“I’m curious why the mailman hands my letters to you instead of me,” Will said. “Trusting goblins doesn’t come easy to outsiders.”
“It was hand it to us or go deeper into the kingdom to give it to you,” Mr. Niff explained. He smiled and added, “The guy has stepped into enough pit traps that he won’t test his luck anymore.”
“Most of this is hate mail and death threats,” Domo said as he sorted the mail. “Duke Thornwood wishes you a slow and painful death.”
“Yeah, season’s greetings to you too, pal,” Will snarled as he tore up the letter. Goblins scooted in and gobbled up the shreds of paper. He went through more of the mail, asking, “That one’s never written to me before. Is there a reason why he’s homicidal?”
“It’s nothing personal, boss,” Mr. Niff assured him. “Thornwood wants half the people on Other Place dead and the rest to suffer.”
Will shredded another letter. “There ought to be a law against someone that screwed up ruling anyone. The dwarf corporation Geo Speculations wants to dump their trash in our kingdom. The Esteemed King Landcrest wants to exile his political prisoners here. Someone named Pippiloo Pondscum wants my travel itinerary so she can have me beat up people for her. That’s three more for the shred pile.”
“Can we keep the last one?” Brooklyn asked.
Mr. Niff belched up a stamp. “Too late.”
Domo held up a smaller stack of letters. “Now here are the interesting ones. The law firm of Takeda Money & Runn is suing you for—”
Foom! The lawsuit burst into flames and was reduced to ashes. Not deterred, Domo reached for another letter. “This one—”
Foom! This time the entire stack went up together. Goblins clapped, and Mr. Niff said, “Wow, four lawsuits at once!”
“And that leaves us with the last one,” Domo said as he handed Will a letter.
This letter wasn’t cremated before it reached Will. Curious, he opened it and read it aloud.
“Let’s see, some kind soul wants my help transferring a million guilders out of his homeland. All he needs is my name, date of birth, signature, power of attorney and right leg.”
There was a snap like a whip crack as Will’s king contract shot out. It tore the letter apart while growling like an angry dog, even beating the offending letter against a tree stump for good measures. The contract rolled up again, briefly stopping to show Will a few lines near the end.
“Article 150, subsection 8, paragraph 4, line 2: The King of the Goblins can’t escape his contract through mail fraud, pyramid schemes, Ponzi schemes or Fonzi schemes.” Will frowned and asked, “Does anyone else think that crosses the line from thorough to paranoid?”
“Lawyers are involved, so no,” Domo told him. He looked a bit nervous and tugged at his robes before saying, “I understand you paid Gladys a visit after the harpy showed up.”
“Harpies, plural. We’ve got at least five of them in the kingdom, and one followed me home from the human town.” Will slid his king contract under his belt and searched the skies. Was the weather bad enough to ground the harpies? “Gladys sounded worried and suggested I keep you guys close.”
London frowned. “Not sure what good we can do, boss. The birdies fly high and we can’t fly at all. I guess we could throw stuff at them if they come close to the ground.”
“It’s not fair the way they stay too far away to rough up,” Brooklyn complained.
“There is something we can do,” Will said. “Spread the word to the goblins that harpies are in the kingdom. Ask them to look for a nest, roost, anything that looks like they’re moving into the neighborhood.”
“Can do, boss,” Mr. Niff said.
Will’s stomach grumbled. He’d had some luck growing food in the Kingdom of the Goblins, but he’d long ago eaten what little he’d produced. That meant he had no choice but to cross the border for all his meals, and if yesterday was any indication the harpies might be interested in that trip.
Pointing at the trolls, Will said, “London, Brooklyn, get the guys working on finding those harpies. If you see them, report back, and try to be friendly if they want to talk. Vial, Domo, talk to Gladys and let me know if she turned up anything new. Niff, if you’re free I could use some company on the way to lunch.”
Indignant, London demanded, “Why not us?”
“If the harpies show up, I want there to be at least a chance for a peaceful meeting, and you two might, no, scratch that, definitely would pick a fight with any man, monster or farm animal we might meet on the way.”
Brooklyn thumped his chest. “We don’t take guff from cattle!”
Will left with Mr. Niff following. They went through the gatehouse and headed south, pausing briefly by the site of last year’s battle with Sarcamusaad the Walking City. Will and the goblins had survived that fight through planning, goblin warp magic and blind luck, but signs of the conflict remained. There was a chasm hundreds of feet across and nearly as deep where Sarcamusaad had collapsed the caves and tunnels running under the Goblin City. Huge pieces of rusted iron, some weighing thousands of tons, littered the landscape, remnants of the German battleship Bismarck that had been warped in by the goblins and fell onto Sarcamusaad.
Pointing at the wreckage, Will said, “And that’s why we’re trying to solve this peacefully. We’ve had five major conflicts that could have killed us all. It’s pure luck that we’ve lasted so long without losing anyone. I have to find ways to deal with problems without them turning into win or die situations.”
“Speaking of that, maybe you can help me out a little.” Mr. Niff smiled and scooted in front of Will. “The guys have a betting pool on who’s going to try to kill you next, but we just started one on who you’re going to beat up.”
“You’re joking.”
“It’s true. The smart money is on you picking a fight with the wizards of the Inspired, but goblins have put bets on you going after Duke Thornwood, clearing the Ruined Lands, taking down Viliamorous the Elf King and rubbing out Plausible Deniability Jones.”
Will shook his head and continued on. “I hate to disappoint everyone, but I’m trying very hard to not get killed or kill anyone else.”
Mr. Niff hurried after him. “Nobody said kill, just kick them in the shins, ruin their plans and turn them over to the authorities. Now me, I like long shots and big payouts, so I bet a small green frog that you’d go to Battle Island and clean out the arenas and gladiator pits. So if you’re feeling generous and want to help out an old friend—”
“No!”
“I’ll split the winnings fifty-seventy.”
Will stopped and stared at the short goblin. “That’s one hundred twenty percent.”
“Don’t get all mathy on me.”
It kept snowing for the rest of their trip and slowed them down. Will didn’t see any harpies, but anything farther than fifty feet away was concealed by snowfall. They needed almost twice as long to reach the human town as they normally would. The residents stayed indoors with only a few hurrying between houses and barns. An alarming number of men were carrying weapons, mostly farming tools, but some had bows.
“Stay on the outskirts of town and keep your eyes peeled,” Will told Mr. Niff. “Come get me if you see or hear anything suspicious.”
“Gotcha, boss.”
Will went into town and headed for the inn. He was nearly there when he spotted a hunched over woman at the mouth of an alley. She wore a heavy cloak, blouse, skirt, boots, gloves and leggings, all of it made of animal hides and leaving little skin exposed besides her face. He’d never seen her before, but according to the innkeeper there were refugees settling in town. Will was half convinced she was just another unfortunate person when she ducked back into the alley.
That wasn’t a good sign. Just to be sure, Will walked past the inn and turned off onto a side street. He stopped at the next corner, and moments later he saw her again. He took two more turns and found her hobbling after him wherever he went.
“Let’s see how far you’re going to take this,” Will said softly. This time he walked to the inn and went inside. The ground outside the door was wet from the heat melting snow, and his boots squelched in the mud. He found the building packed with people, most happy and laughing. Will took a table near the fireplace and sat down. Not a minute passed before the hobbling woman came in. She hesitated at the entrance, a worried look on her face.
“Hello there!” a rancher called to her. Her fear turned to shock as he waved for her to join him. “Don’t be shy. Strangers are welcome here.”
The woman lingered by the door but went inside when other guests echoed the rancher’s encouragements. She looked across the inn, her expression wary.
Oh, this could be bad. If these people realized she was a harpy, they’d attack her. Will stood up and waved to her, saying, “Come on over. Let me buy you something to eat.”
The inn’s other customers smiled and a few clapped at his generosity. One woman put her hands on her hips and looked at her husband. “See, that’s how a gentleman acts.”
“Thanks for ruining it for the rest of us,” a farmer said. Men across the inn laughed.
The harpy hobbled over and sat down awkwardly on a chair, nearly sliding off. Will headed to the bar and asked, “What’s on the menu?”
“Beef soup and fresh bread,” the innkeeper said. More softly, he asked, “What’s wrong?”
“So far nothing, but if things get bad, I’ll need help keeping everyone calm,” he whispered back.
Will returned to his table and new guest. He spoke softly so no one else could hear. “I don’t think we’ve met before. I’m Will Bradshaw, King of the Goblins. It’s a rough job, but somebody’s got to get stuck with it. You’re brave to travel in a storm like this. What’s your name?”
The woman cast her eyes down. “Ann.”
The waitress hurried over and placed bowls of soup in front of them both. The woman stared at it like she’d never seen soup before. Maybe she hadn’t. She looked around the inn and saw people eating with spoons, and with an example of what was expected she took a spoon and tried to feed herself. It took her a few tries to get the soup to her lips without spilling it.
Will asked, “What brought you here on a night like this?”
“I, my family lost our home to the Eternal Army. I’ve been wandering ever since.”
That upset Will. There were tens of thousands left homeless and desperate because of the Eternal Army, something he blamed himself for. He’d done what little he could to help, and others like the Brotherhood of the Righteous were doing their part. For the harpy to falsely claim to be a victim was wrong.
Will ate some soup. “We both know that’s not true.”
The harpy dropped her spoon and gasped. Her mouth opened wide enough for Will to see her teeth, long and sharp.
“I’ve seen you and your friends following me for days.” He pointed his spoon at her and added, “I want to make it clear I’m not mad. Confused, but not mad. There are a lot of people here who don’t like harpies, so I understand your disguise. I have nothing against you. If you want to talk, we can talk. If you have a reasonable request, I’ll try to help, but I won’t see these men hurt or lose their livestock. So, let’s you and me talk.”
“Hold on,” a farmer said. He stood up from his chair and pointed at the harpy. “She’s been sitting next to the fire for a couple minutes, but she hasn’t taken off her hat or gloves.”
“Mind your own business,” the innkeeper said.
“He’s right!” a rancher yelled. He drew a knife. “She’s got to be baking under all those clothes. What are you trying to hide?”
The harpy stood up and hobbled toward the exit, but a crowd gathered to block her path. Will ran between them and the harpy. He held up his hands and gestured for the others to sit. “Everybody calm down! I don’t want anyone to—”
That’s when the harpy screamed, a horrific cry that dropped every man, woman and child to their knees. Will clasped both hands over his ears in a vain attempt to muffle the agony sweeping over him. Pain shot through him like a sword thrust, and his own scream was lost in the cries of terrified people.
Such a potent attack left the harpy gasping for breath. She hobbled out of the inn, leaving everyone doubled over in incredible pain. Will staggered to his feet. He heard people crying. The teenage waitress was on her knees, sobbing, her hands still pressed against her ears. Will gritted his teeth and headed for the door. He saw the harpy pull off her cloak and toss it aside before spreading her wings. Will bent down and scooped up handfuls of mud at the inn’s entrance. He jammed mud into his ears and went after the harpy.
“Wait!” he yelled. His voice sounded weird with his ears plugged up. He saw the harpy turn to face him, a startled expression on her face.
The harpy took a deep breath and let loose another scream. It was so strong it forced Will back a few inches and sent waves of pain through him, but with his ears plugged it was nowhere near as strong as the first attack. The harpy gasped for breath and backed away when she saw that Will didn’t falter. With her best weapon rendered ineffective, she grabbed a steel hatchet laced to her leg. Will unhooked his fire scepter from his belt and held it like a club. She lashed out at him with her hatchet, missing by a wide margin, then flapped her wings and tried to take to the air. As she rose higher, he grabbed her by the ankles and pulled her back to the ground. He barely heard the harpy’s started cries through his clogged ears.
Back on the ground again, the harpy swung at Will with her hatchet and her free hand. He dodged the hatchet and blocked her hand with his fire scepter, but the blow was strong enough that her talons tore through her glove. Her hand looked like a blend between a human’s and a hawk’s clawed feet. The harpy screamed again, and Will winced in pain. He staggered and the harpy pushed her advantage with an overhead swing of her hatchet. Will only barely blocked it.
There was a red light to their left as Mr. Niff came to the rescue. He’d drawn his magic dagger, and one swing of the weapon whacked off the hatchet’s steel head. My Niff followed up by scooping up a handful of snow and throwing it into the harpy’s mouth. She gagged on it before spitting it out, silencing her terrible scream for a moment.
“I appreciate the help,” Will said. Mr. Niff said something in reply, but Will couldn’t hear it with his ears plugged.
The harpy recovered fast and bared her teeth at them, a frightening mouthful of fangs that looked like they could bite through bone. She scrambled toward them as Will pointed his fire scepter into the air and turned it on.
FOOM! The scepter belched out an overwhelming blast of white-hot flames. The sudden light and heat scared the harpy, and she fled the battle. It took her a few seconds flapping her huge wings to get airborne. This time Will made no effort to stop her. She’d fought so hard that he was sure the only way to keep her from leaving was by crippling or killing her, and he had no desire to do either.
Will tried to dig the mud out of his ears while people from the inn came outside. He managed to unclog his left ear and heard the innkeeper ask, “Where is she?”
He pointed in the general direction she’d gone, but with the falling snow there was no way to see her. “She went that way.”
A rancher patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll get her next time.”
* * * * *
The trip home was depressing. Mr. Niff kept chatting away while he handled the steel hatchet head he’d taken as a trophy. When they got back to the Goblin City, the others panicked at the sight of Will looking dirty and angry. He could barely hear them and let Mr. Niff explain what had happened. While that was going on, he went to his room and spent thirty minutes washing mud out of his ears. His friends gathered around him as he dried off with a rag.
“What are we going to do about this?” Domo asked.
“Let’s pound on them!” Brooklyn roared.
Mr. Niff held up the hatchet head. “Look at my new toy!”
Everyone stared at Mr. Niff, blissfully ignorant of why they might be annoyed with him. Will cleared his voice to get their attention.
“You’re going to be reasonable, aren’t you?” London asked mournfully. “I can see it in your eyes.”
“I’m angry,” Will said. “I think I have good reason to be, but I’m not going to do anything rash. It’s obvious the harpies aren’t going to get along with us, which is unfortunately not surprising given our luck, but we aren’t going to fly off the handle. We’re going to make a proportionate response to what happened.”
London’s shoulders slumped. “I knew it.”
“Spread the word to the goblins that I was attacked,” Will said. “Harpies are to be considered armed and dangerous from now on. Make every effort to find where they’re staying in our kingdom or Kervol’s. Don’t start fights and stay in groups in case they attack.”
Will tossed the dirty rag aside and frowned. “I was hoping we could be friends with them. We get along with the trolls and the purple puppet people. I thought we could reach some kind of understanding with harpies, too.”
“You can’t be friends with everyone, Will,” Domo said. “If it makes you feel better, this is one of those rare times when strangers might help us. They hate harpies way more than us, which I admit sounds weird.”
“If they’re public enemy number one then we’re going to have to improve our game,” Mr. Niff said. “Who’s up for sabotaging imperial bedchambers?”
* * * * *
“Sir William?”
Will grumbled and rolled over in bed. He’d dismissed his friends late last night and went to sleep hungry, sore and angry. It was impossible to tell what time it was since his bedroom was deep underground and he couldn’t see the sun. Nor did he have a clock.
“Sir William, it is I, Hugh Timbers.”
The lack of sun or alarm clock to wake him didn’t mean Will got to sleep as late as he wanted. His followers were only too happy to wake him up, and in the case of the goblins they’d do the honors any time they pleased and for any reason, or no reason at all, like to announce the winner of the Nauseous Gopher Giveaway contest. Hugh Timbers, on the other hand, had never been one to disturb Will’s sleep before now. That meant this was important.
“Good morning, Hugh,” Will muttered. He lifted his head from his pillow and squinted at the dwarf. Hugh stood holding a lit lantern in the doorway to Will’s room. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say something bad happened.”
“That would not necessarily be a correct assumption. Earlier this morning I was approached by a harpy while fishing. She seeks parley.”
Will sat up in bed and got dressed. “I could use a parfait right about now.”
“Parley. It means to seek a conference between enemies under a flag of truce. The harpy claimed last night’s attack was an unfortunate mistake that her flock didn’t order. She said her flock would like to speak with you regarding a serious matter.”
Will stood up and grabbed his fire scepter. “And this serious matter is…come on, help me out.”
“I asked and she would not say. She repeated that it was important, adding that it could only be discussed between leaders.”
“Why’d she say this to you and not directly to me?” Will answered his own question by saying, “Because after last night the harpies have to figure I’m mad and heavily armed, and that doesn’t make for a good combination.”
“There is more to it than that. According to the harpy, her flock has conducted business with dwarfs. These dealings went well enough to earn their trust. She was comfortable talking to me and felt certain I would pass along this message as requested. I hesitate to mention this, but she also felt your other followers were likely to misunderstand the message or possibly forget it entirely.”
Will frowned as he imagined what would happen if a goblin tried to carry an important message. The goblin would forget part or all of it, maybe add bits or deliver it to the wrong person, and that assumed the goblin was trying to do the job right. If the hypothetical goblin was feeling ambitious, he might deliberately change the message and giggle at the resulting chaos.
“Okay, you were the best person for the job,” Will admitted. “So where do they want to meet and when?”
“There is a small stream where I met the harpy. The harpies promise to wait there until noon.”
“I like this plan. Hugh, you don’t look very happy. Why is that?”
“I was intercepted by Domo before reaching you, and he insisted on hearing the news. He believed you would accept the offer.”
Will peeked out of his room and saw the tunnels filled with hundreds of armed goblins. London and Brooklyn led the horde, with Vial, Mr. Niff and Domo present as well. The assembled goblins and trolls had fought armies to a standstill, a force to be reckoned with.
“And I said that after last night there’s no way you’re going alone,” Domo told Will. He pointed his walking stick at the others. “Your honor guard awaits.”
It took some time to reach the meeting place, partly because while the storm had ended, it had left nearly a foot of snow behind. Hugh Timbers led the unruly horde, while the goblins were surprisingly quiet as they scanned the skies for harpies. London and Brooklyn borrowed small bombs from Vial to throw should they be attacked. Domo and Mr. Niff stayed by Will to coordinate the defense.
“When Will does something needlessly stupid, you have to stop him,” Domo told the other goblins.
“But he’s being stupid right now,” a bug-eyed goblin protested.
“This is just basic levels of stupid for him,” Domo said. “You have to watch out for epic, mind blowing kinds of stupidity. It could happen at any time.”
“I’m standing right here!” Will yelled.
“Would you rather we whispered?” Mr. Niff asked him.
“I’m curious what your goals are in this meeting, My Liege,” Vial asked.
Will took a deep breath before answering. “I want very much to end this peacefully. Doing that depends on exactly what the harpies want. There could be some big problems if they’re looking to settle here, but we might be able to make it work. We don’t have enough food for them, and I can’t let them steal food from farmers living to the south.”
He glanced at Domo and asked, “Could they use the goblin gate to reach new hunting grounds? That way they could live here and get food from far away.”
Domo tipped his head to one side. “Maybe, but there’s no way to tell where the gate could take them. They could end up in a tundra, or in a city where everyone’s going to try to kill them. That’s a huge risk to take for dinner.”
“Sir William, the meeting place is ahead,” Hugh said.
They saw a stream running out of a young forest, and as promised the harpies waited for them. There were five of them dressed like the one who’d attacked Will, different only in that they lacked gloves, boots or cloaks, and were armed with daggers, spears and hatchets. They weren’t ugly, but there was a feral look to them that made Will hesitate. The harpies spread their wings at the sight of the approaching horde, and one of them waved a spear at Will.
“What is this?” the gray haired harpy screeched. “We offer parley, and you bring an army?”
“You offer parley and I accept.” Will stepped away from the others and waved for them to stay back. “My friends are here in case things end as badly as the last time I spoke with one of your flock. I tried being peaceful then, too. I know what happened wasn’t entirely her fault, but good people were hurt.”
The gray haired harpy scowled but dropped her objections. “I am Maggie, and this is my sister, Gretchen. You met Ula last night. My flock and I have been watching you for some time. It was our intention to cause no harm. The battle between you and Ula should not have happened and was against my wishes. Ula wishes to apologize.”
Will had no trouble recognizing the harpy he’d fought last night, and she glared balefully at him. Maggie nudged Ula, but the harpy neither moved nor spoke. Maggie grabbed Ula by the arm and pulled her back, saying, “Excuse us for a moment.”
The discussion was quiet enough that Will missed most of it, but a few sharp words came through. “Had this discussion…observe only, not interact…boneheaded, half-witted, mindless…you volunteered…expect better from my niece…don’t give me that look.”
“Should we come back later?” Mr. Niff asked.
“This won’t take a minute,” Maggie promised before turning back to Ula. “Screwing up everything…you agreed to this…flock’s already left…you want attitude, I’ll show you attitude…act like a lady instead of an ogre.”
Maggie pulled Ula back. Ula stared at the ground and mumbled words too soft and garbled to understand. Maggie bared her teeth and would likely have laid into her fellow harpy had Will not intervened.
“Apology accepted,” he told her.
“That is generous of you,” Maggie told him. “You no doubt have questions, and I shall answer them. My flock needs aid. Normally we see to our own needs or call upon other flocks when trouble arises, but a rare and tragic situation has occurred that requires outside help.”
“Why didn’t you just come out and ask if you wanted help?” Will demanded. The harpies flinched at his angry tone. Will calmed down, barely, and asked, “What sort of problem is it?”
The harpy Gretchen hobbled forward, pushing between the other two. He voice was pained as she said, “My daughter Celeste was born…wrong. She is a good girl! Hard working! Honest! But she can’t fly.”
Maggie put a hand on Gretchen’s shoulder. “In rare instances a harpy is born without wings or talons. It hadn’t happened in our flock before and we thought it never would until Celeste was born. We’ve looked after her as best we could for years, but she is too big to carry and our journey too far for her to follow. We must leave her in the care of others.”
The color drained out of Will’s face. “Wait, you want to leave your daughter with me?”
“Yes.” Maggie hobbled closer. “Few deal fairly with harpies, but those who do speak well of you. We followed you this last week to see if the tales were true or lies. They say you are fierce in battle. I see proof of that before me, for goblins are ready to fight in your name. They say you are merciful. I see that is also true, for an outcast dwarf takes shelter in your lands. Can you be fierce and merciful, protecting a cripple from our flock?”
“We would come to visit her often,” Gretchen promised. She was fighting back tears. “She can provide for herself and would not burden you.”
“This isn’t a small thing you’re asking for,” Will said. “We’re talking a lifetime commitment to look after someone. And while I know this makes me sound like a jerk, you’re showing up out of the blue and making a huge request.”
Domo shrugged. “It sounds like you’re not giving us anything in return, either. I’m not a greedy sort, but if Will says yes then you fly away with everything you want and we get squat.”
“I gave sanctuary to Hugh Timbers,” Will conceded, “but those were extraordinary circumstances. And let’s be honest, this isn’t a nice place to live. There must be kingdoms better suited for your daughter.”
Maggie wasn’t giving up. “If so we have not heard of them, or they are too far away to reach. You live three days travel from the edge of our territory, a manageable distance. Few men live so far north and none of your reputation. The flock spent weeks searching for an acceptable home, no easy task when few love us. Your name was not at the top of the list. It was the list.”
Hobbling closer, she set down her spear and said, “Harpies born with Celeste’s condition are especially vulnerable. She can’t flee danger the way we can. If she doesn’t have the flock to protect her then she is at risk from predators, be they on four legs or two. In your care she has the protection of your forces and none would dare harm her. I know you have reason to be angry with us, and the lies told of us must be terrible. I ask you not to look at our failings but instead at the great need there is for your help. The flock has already migrated to our next nest. We’ve no time to find her another home, and leaving Celeste on her own is unthinkable.”
“Call a travel agent, because we’re going on a guilt trip,” Domo muttered.
Will frowned. “I’d like to talk with your daughter before making a decision. And I want to make it clear that this has to be a mutual agreement between her and I. I’m willing to offer her a home, but I’m not going to make it a prison if she wants to leave.”
Maggie held up her empty hands. “Where else could she go? Celeste, the man wishes to speak with you.”
A hooded figure walked out of the woods. She wore the same stitched together animal skins as the harpies, but she moved with a grace they didn’t. She stopped by Gretchen and exchanged a brief embrace before approaching Will. Celeste removed her hood, and Will gasped at the sight.
Celeste didn’t have wings or talons, just as Maggie had said. That was because Celeste was a young woman of roughly twenty years, and possessed the kind of unearthly beauty painters and sculptures tried to capture in their art. Her skin was pale and flawless, her figure astounding. There were only two traits that proved she wasn’t human, her long turquois blue hair, tangled and tied back around a rib bone, and her eyes, which were entirely blue without white or pupil.
“She’s a siren,” Domo whispered.
“Uh, hi,” Will stammered. Judging by how the harpies had been talking, he’d assumed Gretchen’s daughter was at most twelve years old. Why did they talk about Celeste like she was a child?
“Opening lines aren’t his strong point,” Mr. Niff said. The goblins nodded in agreement.
“I understand why I’m a burden to my flock,” Celeste said in a voice so melodious that it might be a song. Her shoulders slumped and her eyes were fixed on the ground. “I won’t get in your way or cause trouble. You won’t even know I’m here.”
* * * * *
Hundreds of miles away, the same storm that had blanketed the Kingdom of the Goblins in snow was now deep in the mountainous north. Winds howled and snow drifts formed quickly before crumbing under their own weight to fall down the mountains. This was a formidable deterrent and one of the reasons why the harpies had nested here not long ago.
Today the fierce storm and towering mountains offered no defense. Fifty attackers scaled vertical cliffs with a single-minded determination. Their heavy armor was wrapped in cloth both to warm them and muffle sound. The attackers found handholds in the thinnest of cracks in the cliff face, driving in steel spikes and attaching ropes to them as they moved ever higher.
It took hours climbing in conditions that could kill a man, but they never stopped until they neared the spot where Maggie’s flock had once nested. They slowed as they approached the nest and spread out to strike from all sides. The foul weather that had given them such trouble would be strong enough to ground the harpy flock. There was no way their prey could escape. As one the fifty attackers drew magic weapons and surged over the top into the nest, and found nothing.
The leader of the assault took a small magic mirror from his backpack and held it to his face. “They’re gone! The nest is empty!”
“Are they out foraging?” a voice in the mirror demanded.
The attackers searched the nest and came up with little. There were piles of ash, frozen droppings and broken twigs. The leader turned his attention back to the mirror. “There are no perches left. They’ve been broken up and burned for fuel. Harpies only do that when leaving a nest for good. They could be anywhere in their territory, and that covers five hundred square miles.”
The leader spat in disgust and looked at the mirror. “They were here only days ago! Orders, sir?”
“Find them at all costs.”
Chapter 3
The next day brought a major snowstorm that dropped visibility to fifty feet and stacked snow up an inch per hour. Will worried this might cause trouble for the smaller goblins, but his concern was baseless. Most of them went underground and traveled via tunnels, and those who stayed above ground put on snowshoes.
More enterprising goblins scooped up snow and made snowmen. In true goblin fashion, they proceeded to trap them so the snowmen would fall on anyone setting off trip lines. Vial and his lab rat goblins booby-trapped their snowman with explosives, which went off prematurely and splattered its makers with slush. Will had to free a small goblin who’d accidentally buried himself inside a snowman, but otherwise the event was peaceful.
That ended when London and Brooklyn ran screaming through the horde of snowmen and flattened them. Will fixed them with a stern glare, and the trolls looked down.
“It’s been hours since we hit anyone!” London protested. “Boss, you’ve got to start another war or we’ll get out of practice.”
“It has been a while since we were almost killed,” a feathered goblin said.
“No wars,” Will said firmly. “We’ve been having far too many of those.”
“Start a little war,” Brooklyn pleaded. He took a sheet of paper out of his trouser pocket and offered it to Will. “Here’s a couple guys we could pound on and nobody would mind.”
Will read the paper and handed it back. “I’ve never heard of any of these people.”
London grinned. “That way they won’t see it coming.”
Bored goblins gathered around Will and implored him to pick a fight. The fact that they could be killed for no reason didn’t deter them in the slightest, and Will knew from experience that logic and common sense were totally worthless in such a discussion. He was saved from a long and fruitless argument when Domo and Mr. Niff arrived with armfuls of mail.
“Neither snow nor rain nor enraged dragons with marital problems can stop the postman from his appointed rounds,” Domo declared. He stopped in front of Will and began going through the stacks of letters.
“I’m curious why the mailman hands my letters to you instead of me,” Will said. “Trusting goblins doesn’t come easy to outsiders.”
“It was hand it to us or go deeper into the kingdom to give it to you,” Mr. Niff explained. He smiled and added, “The guy has stepped into enough pit traps that he won’t test his luck anymore.”
“Most of this is hate mail and death threats,” Domo said as he sorted the mail. “Duke Thornwood wishes you a slow and painful death.”
“Yeah, season’s greetings to you too, pal,” Will snarled as he tore up the letter. Goblins scooted in and gobbled up the shreds of paper. He went through more of the mail, asking, “That one’s never written to me before. Is there a reason why he’s homicidal?”
“It’s nothing personal, boss,” Mr. Niff assured him. “Thornwood wants half the people on Other Place dead and the rest to suffer.”
Will shredded another letter. “There ought to be a law against someone that screwed up ruling anyone. The dwarf corporation Geo Speculations wants to dump their trash in our kingdom. The Esteemed King Landcrest wants to exile his political prisoners here. Someone named Pippiloo Pondscum wants my travel itinerary so she can have me beat up people for her. That’s three more for the shred pile.”
“Can we keep the last one?” Brooklyn asked.
Mr. Niff belched up a stamp. “Too late.”
Domo held up a smaller stack of letters. “Now here are the interesting ones. The law firm of Takeda Money & Runn is suing you for—”
Foom! The lawsuit burst into flames and was reduced to ashes. Not deterred, Domo reached for another letter. “This one—”
Foom! This time the entire stack went up together. Goblins clapped, and Mr. Niff said, “Wow, four lawsuits at once!”
“And that leaves us with the last one,” Domo said as he handed Will a letter.
This letter wasn’t cremated before it reached Will. Curious, he opened it and read it aloud.
“Let’s see, some kind soul wants my help transferring a million guilders out of his homeland. All he needs is my name, date of birth, signature, power of attorney and right leg.”
There was a snap like a whip crack as Will’s king contract shot out. It tore the letter apart while growling like an angry dog, even beating the offending letter against a tree stump for good measures. The contract rolled up again, briefly stopping to show Will a few lines near the end.
“Article 150, subsection 8, paragraph 4, line 2: The King of the Goblins can’t escape his contract through mail fraud, pyramid schemes, Ponzi schemes or Fonzi schemes.” Will frowned and asked, “Does anyone else think that crosses the line from thorough to paranoid?”
“Lawyers are involved, so no,” Domo told him. He looked a bit nervous and tugged at his robes before saying, “I understand you paid Gladys a visit after the harpy showed up.”
“Harpies, plural. We’ve got at least five of them in the kingdom, and one followed me home from the human town.” Will slid his king contract under his belt and searched the skies. Was the weather bad enough to ground the harpies? “Gladys sounded worried and suggested I keep you guys close.”
London frowned. “Not sure what good we can do, boss. The birdies fly high and we can’t fly at all. I guess we could throw stuff at them if they come close to the ground.”
“It’s not fair the way they stay too far away to rough up,” Brooklyn complained.
“There is something we can do,” Will said. “Spread the word to the goblins that harpies are in the kingdom. Ask them to look for a nest, roost, anything that looks like they’re moving into the neighborhood.”
“Can do, boss,” Mr. Niff said.
Will’s stomach grumbled. He’d had some luck growing food in the Kingdom of the Goblins, but he’d long ago eaten what little he’d produced. That meant he had no choice but to cross the border for all his meals, and if yesterday was any indication the harpies might be interested in that trip.
Pointing at the trolls, Will said, “London, Brooklyn, get the guys working on finding those harpies. If you see them, report back, and try to be friendly if they want to talk. Vial, Domo, talk to Gladys and let me know if she turned up anything new. Niff, if you’re free I could use some company on the way to lunch.”
Indignant, London demanded, “Why not us?”
“If the harpies show up, I want there to be at least a chance for a peaceful meeting, and you two might, no, scratch that, definitely would pick a fight with any man, monster or farm animal we might meet on the way.”
Brooklyn thumped his chest. “We don’t take guff from cattle!”
Will left with Mr. Niff following. They went through the gatehouse and headed south, pausing briefly by the site of last year’s battle with Sarcamusaad the Walking City. Will and the goblins had survived that fight through planning, goblin warp magic and blind luck, but signs of the conflict remained. There was a chasm hundreds of feet across and nearly as deep where Sarcamusaad had collapsed the caves and tunnels running under the Goblin City. Huge pieces of rusted iron, some weighing thousands of tons, littered the landscape, remnants of the German battleship Bismarck that had been warped in by the goblins and fell onto Sarcamusaad.
Pointing at the wreckage, Will said, “And that’s why we’re trying to solve this peacefully. We’ve had five major conflicts that could have killed us all. It’s pure luck that we’ve lasted so long without losing anyone. I have to find ways to deal with problems without them turning into win or die situations.”
“Speaking of that, maybe you can help me out a little.” Mr. Niff smiled and scooted in front of Will. “The guys have a betting pool on who’s going to try to kill you next, but we just started one on who you’re going to beat up.”
“You’re joking.”
“It’s true. The smart money is on you picking a fight with the wizards of the Inspired, but goblins have put bets on you going after Duke Thornwood, clearing the Ruined Lands, taking down Viliamorous the Elf King and rubbing out Plausible Deniability Jones.”
Will shook his head and continued on. “I hate to disappoint everyone, but I’m trying very hard to not get killed or kill anyone else.”
Mr. Niff hurried after him. “Nobody said kill, just kick them in the shins, ruin their plans and turn them over to the authorities. Now me, I like long shots and big payouts, so I bet a small green frog that you’d go to Battle Island and clean out the arenas and gladiator pits. So if you’re feeling generous and want to help out an old friend—”
“No!”
“I’ll split the winnings fifty-seventy.”
Will stopped and stared at the short goblin. “That’s one hundred twenty percent.”
“Don’t get all mathy on me.”
It kept snowing for the rest of their trip and slowed them down. Will didn’t see any harpies, but anything farther than fifty feet away was concealed by snowfall. They needed almost twice as long to reach the human town as they normally would. The residents stayed indoors with only a few hurrying between houses and barns. An alarming number of men were carrying weapons, mostly farming tools, but some had bows.
“Stay on the outskirts of town and keep your eyes peeled,” Will told Mr. Niff. “Come get me if you see or hear anything suspicious.”
“Gotcha, boss.”
Will went into town and headed for the inn. He was nearly there when he spotted a hunched over woman at the mouth of an alley. She wore a heavy cloak, blouse, skirt, boots, gloves and leggings, all of it made of animal hides and leaving little skin exposed besides her face. He’d never seen her before, but according to the innkeeper there were refugees settling in town. Will was half convinced she was just another unfortunate person when she ducked back into the alley.
That wasn’t a good sign. Just to be sure, Will walked past the inn and turned off onto a side street. He stopped at the next corner, and moments later he saw her again. He took two more turns and found her hobbling after him wherever he went.
“Let’s see how far you’re going to take this,” Will said softly. This time he walked to the inn and went inside. The ground outside the door was wet from the heat melting snow, and his boots squelched in the mud. He found the building packed with people, most happy and laughing. Will took a table near the fireplace and sat down. Not a minute passed before the hobbling woman came in. She hesitated at the entrance, a worried look on her face.
“Hello there!” a rancher called to her. Her fear turned to shock as he waved for her to join him. “Don’t be shy. Strangers are welcome here.”
The woman lingered by the door but went inside when other guests echoed the rancher’s encouragements. She looked across the inn, her expression wary.
Oh, this could be bad. If these people realized she was a harpy, they’d attack her. Will stood up and waved to her, saying, “Come on over. Let me buy you something to eat.”
The inn’s other customers smiled and a few clapped at his generosity. One woman put her hands on her hips and looked at her husband. “See, that’s how a gentleman acts.”
“Thanks for ruining it for the rest of us,” a farmer said. Men across the inn laughed.
The harpy hobbled over and sat down awkwardly on a chair, nearly sliding off. Will headed to the bar and asked, “What’s on the menu?”
“Beef soup and fresh bread,” the innkeeper said. More softly, he asked, “What’s wrong?”
“So far nothing, but if things get bad, I’ll need help keeping everyone calm,” he whispered back.
Will returned to his table and new guest. He spoke softly so no one else could hear. “I don’t think we’ve met before. I’m Will Bradshaw, King of the Goblins. It’s a rough job, but somebody’s got to get stuck with it. You’re brave to travel in a storm like this. What’s your name?”
The woman cast her eyes down. “Ann.”
The waitress hurried over and placed bowls of soup in front of them both. The woman stared at it like she’d never seen soup before. Maybe she hadn’t. She looked around the inn and saw people eating with spoons, and with an example of what was expected she took a spoon and tried to feed herself. It took her a few tries to get the soup to her lips without spilling it.
Will asked, “What brought you here on a night like this?”
“I, my family lost our home to the Eternal Army. I’ve been wandering ever since.”
That upset Will. There were tens of thousands left homeless and desperate because of the Eternal Army, something he blamed himself for. He’d done what little he could to help, and others like the Brotherhood of the Righteous were doing their part. For the harpy to falsely claim to be a victim was wrong.
Will ate some soup. “We both know that’s not true.”
The harpy dropped her spoon and gasped. Her mouth opened wide enough for Will to see her teeth, long and sharp.
“I’ve seen you and your friends following me for days.” He pointed his spoon at her and added, “I want to make it clear I’m not mad. Confused, but not mad. There are a lot of people here who don’t like harpies, so I understand your disguise. I have nothing against you. If you want to talk, we can talk. If you have a reasonable request, I’ll try to help, but I won’t see these men hurt or lose their livestock. So, let’s you and me talk.”
“Hold on,” a farmer said. He stood up from his chair and pointed at the harpy. “She’s been sitting next to the fire for a couple minutes, but she hasn’t taken off her hat or gloves.”
“Mind your own business,” the innkeeper said.
“He’s right!” a rancher yelled. He drew a knife. “She’s got to be baking under all those clothes. What are you trying to hide?”
The harpy stood up and hobbled toward the exit, but a crowd gathered to block her path. Will ran between them and the harpy. He held up his hands and gestured for the others to sit. “Everybody calm down! I don’t want anyone to—”
That’s when the harpy screamed, a horrific cry that dropped every man, woman and child to their knees. Will clasped both hands over his ears in a vain attempt to muffle the agony sweeping over him. Pain shot through him like a sword thrust, and his own scream was lost in the cries of terrified people.
Such a potent attack left the harpy gasping for breath. She hobbled out of the inn, leaving everyone doubled over in incredible pain. Will staggered to his feet. He heard people crying. The teenage waitress was on her knees, sobbing, her hands still pressed against her ears. Will gritted his teeth and headed for the door. He saw the harpy pull off her cloak and toss it aside before spreading her wings. Will bent down and scooped up handfuls of mud at the inn’s entrance. He jammed mud into his ears and went after the harpy.
“Wait!” he yelled. His voice sounded weird with his ears plugged up. He saw the harpy turn to face him, a startled expression on her face.
The harpy took a deep breath and let loose another scream. It was so strong it forced Will back a few inches and sent waves of pain through him, but with his ears plugged it was nowhere near as strong as the first attack. The harpy gasped for breath and backed away when she saw that Will didn’t falter. With her best weapon rendered ineffective, she grabbed a steel hatchet laced to her leg. Will unhooked his fire scepter from his belt and held it like a club. She lashed out at him with her hatchet, missing by a wide margin, then flapped her wings and tried to take to the air. As she rose higher, he grabbed her by the ankles and pulled her back to the ground. He barely heard the harpy’s started cries through his clogged ears.
Back on the ground again, the harpy swung at Will with her hatchet and her free hand. He dodged the hatchet and blocked her hand with his fire scepter, but the blow was strong enough that her talons tore through her glove. Her hand looked like a blend between a human’s and a hawk’s clawed feet. The harpy screamed again, and Will winced in pain. He staggered and the harpy pushed her advantage with an overhead swing of her hatchet. Will only barely blocked it.
There was a red light to their left as Mr. Niff came to the rescue. He’d drawn his magic dagger, and one swing of the weapon whacked off the hatchet’s steel head. My Niff followed up by scooping up a handful of snow and throwing it into the harpy’s mouth. She gagged on it before spitting it out, silencing her terrible scream for a moment.
“I appreciate the help,” Will said. Mr. Niff said something in reply, but Will couldn’t hear it with his ears plugged.
The harpy recovered fast and bared her teeth at them, a frightening mouthful of fangs that looked like they could bite through bone. She scrambled toward them as Will pointed his fire scepter into the air and turned it on.
FOOM! The scepter belched out an overwhelming blast of white-hot flames. The sudden light and heat scared the harpy, and she fled the battle. It took her a few seconds flapping her huge wings to get airborne. This time Will made no effort to stop her. She’d fought so hard that he was sure the only way to keep her from leaving was by crippling or killing her, and he had no desire to do either.
Will tried to dig the mud out of his ears while people from the inn came outside. He managed to unclog his left ear and heard the innkeeper ask, “Where is she?”
He pointed in the general direction she’d gone, but with the falling snow there was no way to see her. “She went that way.”
A rancher patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll get her next time.”
* * * * *
The trip home was depressing. Mr. Niff kept chatting away while he handled the steel hatchet head he’d taken as a trophy. When they got back to the Goblin City, the others panicked at the sight of Will looking dirty and angry. He could barely hear them and let Mr. Niff explain what had happened. While that was going on, he went to his room and spent thirty minutes washing mud out of his ears. His friends gathered around him as he dried off with a rag.
“What are we going to do about this?” Domo asked.
“Let’s pound on them!” Brooklyn roared.
Mr. Niff held up the hatchet head. “Look at my new toy!”
Everyone stared at Mr. Niff, blissfully ignorant of why they might be annoyed with him. Will cleared his voice to get their attention.
“You’re going to be reasonable, aren’t you?” London asked mournfully. “I can see it in your eyes.”
“I’m angry,” Will said. “I think I have good reason to be, but I’m not going to do anything rash. It’s obvious the harpies aren’t going to get along with us, which is unfortunately not surprising given our luck, but we aren’t going to fly off the handle. We’re going to make a proportionate response to what happened.”
London’s shoulders slumped. “I knew it.”
“Spread the word to the goblins that I was attacked,” Will said. “Harpies are to be considered armed and dangerous from now on. Make every effort to find where they’re staying in our kingdom or Kervol’s. Don’t start fights and stay in groups in case they attack.”
Will tossed the dirty rag aside and frowned. “I was hoping we could be friends with them. We get along with the trolls and the purple puppet people. I thought we could reach some kind of understanding with harpies, too.”
“You can’t be friends with everyone, Will,” Domo said. “If it makes you feel better, this is one of those rare times when strangers might help us. They hate harpies way more than us, which I admit sounds weird.”
“If they’re public enemy number one then we’re going to have to improve our game,” Mr. Niff said. “Who’s up for sabotaging imperial bedchambers?”
* * * * *
“Sir William?”
Will grumbled and rolled over in bed. He’d dismissed his friends late last night and went to sleep hungry, sore and angry. It was impossible to tell what time it was since his bedroom was deep underground and he couldn’t see the sun. Nor did he have a clock.
“Sir William, it is I, Hugh Timbers.”
The lack of sun or alarm clock to wake him didn’t mean Will got to sleep as late as he wanted. His followers were only too happy to wake him up, and in the case of the goblins they’d do the honors any time they pleased and for any reason, or no reason at all, like to announce the winner of the Nauseous Gopher Giveaway contest. Hugh Timbers, on the other hand, had never been one to disturb Will’s sleep before now. That meant this was important.
“Good morning, Hugh,” Will muttered. He lifted his head from his pillow and squinted at the dwarf. Hugh stood holding a lit lantern in the doorway to Will’s room. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say something bad happened.”
“That would not necessarily be a correct assumption. Earlier this morning I was approached by a harpy while fishing. She seeks parley.”
Will sat up in bed and got dressed. “I could use a parfait right about now.”
“Parley. It means to seek a conference between enemies under a flag of truce. The harpy claimed last night’s attack was an unfortunate mistake that her flock didn’t order. She said her flock would like to speak with you regarding a serious matter.”
Will stood up and grabbed his fire scepter. “And this serious matter is…come on, help me out.”
“I asked and she would not say. She repeated that it was important, adding that it could only be discussed between leaders.”
“Why’d she say this to you and not directly to me?” Will answered his own question by saying, “Because after last night the harpies have to figure I’m mad and heavily armed, and that doesn’t make for a good combination.”
“There is more to it than that. According to the harpy, her flock has conducted business with dwarfs. These dealings went well enough to earn their trust. She was comfortable talking to me and felt certain I would pass along this message as requested. I hesitate to mention this, but she also felt your other followers were likely to misunderstand the message or possibly forget it entirely.”
Will frowned as he imagined what would happen if a goblin tried to carry an important message. The goblin would forget part or all of it, maybe add bits or deliver it to the wrong person, and that assumed the goblin was trying to do the job right. If the hypothetical goblin was feeling ambitious, he might deliberately change the message and giggle at the resulting chaos.
“Okay, you were the best person for the job,” Will admitted. “So where do they want to meet and when?”
“There is a small stream where I met the harpy. The harpies promise to wait there until noon.”
“I like this plan. Hugh, you don’t look very happy. Why is that?”
“I was intercepted by Domo before reaching you, and he insisted on hearing the news. He believed you would accept the offer.”
Will peeked out of his room and saw the tunnels filled with hundreds of armed goblins. London and Brooklyn led the horde, with Vial, Mr. Niff and Domo present as well. The assembled goblins and trolls had fought armies to a standstill, a force to be reckoned with.
“And I said that after last night there’s no way you’re going alone,” Domo told Will. He pointed his walking stick at the others. “Your honor guard awaits.”
It took some time to reach the meeting place, partly because while the storm had ended, it had left nearly a foot of snow behind. Hugh Timbers led the unruly horde, while the goblins were surprisingly quiet as they scanned the skies for harpies. London and Brooklyn borrowed small bombs from Vial to throw should they be attacked. Domo and Mr. Niff stayed by Will to coordinate the defense.
“When Will does something needlessly stupid, you have to stop him,” Domo told the other goblins.
“But he’s being stupid right now,” a bug-eyed goblin protested.
“This is just basic levels of stupid for him,” Domo said. “You have to watch out for epic, mind blowing kinds of stupidity. It could happen at any time.”
“I’m standing right here!” Will yelled.
“Would you rather we whispered?” Mr. Niff asked him.
“I’m curious what your goals are in this meeting, My Liege,” Vial asked.
Will took a deep breath before answering. “I want very much to end this peacefully. Doing that depends on exactly what the harpies want. There could be some big problems if they’re looking to settle here, but we might be able to make it work. We don’t have enough food for them, and I can’t let them steal food from farmers living to the south.”
He glanced at Domo and asked, “Could they use the goblin gate to reach new hunting grounds? That way they could live here and get food from far away.”
Domo tipped his head to one side. “Maybe, but there’s no way to tell where the gate could take them. They could end up in a tundra, or in a city where everyone’s going to try to kill them. That’s a huge risk to take for dinner.”
“Sir William, the meeting place is ahead,” Hugh said.
They saw a stream running out of a young forest, and as promised the harpies waited for them. There were five of them dressed like the one who’d attacked Will, different only in that they lacked gloves, boots or cloaks, and were armed with daggers, spears and hatchets. They weren’t ugly, but there was a feral look to them that made Will hesitate. The harpies spread their wings at the sight of the approaching horde, and one of them waved a spear at Will.
“What is this?” the gray haired harpy screeched. “We offer parley, and you bring an army?”
“You offer parley and I accept.” Will stepped away from the others and waved for them to stay back. “My friends are here in case things end as badly as the last time I spoke with one of your flock. I tried being peaceful then, too. I know what happened wasn’t entirely her fault, but good people were hurt.”
The gray haired harpy scowled but dropped her objections. “I am Maggie, and this is my sister, Gretchen. You met Ula last night. My flock and I have been watching you for some time. It was our intention to cause no harm. The battle between you and Ula should not have happened and was against my wishes. Ula wishes to apologize.”
Will had no trouble recognizing the harpy he’d fought last night, and she glared balefully at him. Maggie nudged Ula, but the harpy neither moved nor spoke. Maggie grabbed Ula by the arm and pulled her back, saying, “Excuse us for a moment.”
The discussion was quiet enough that Will missed most of it, but a few sharp words came through. “Had this discussion…observe only, not interact…boneheaded, half-witted, mindless…you volunteered…expect better from my niece…don’t give me that look.”
“Should we come back later?” Mr. Niff asked.
“This won’t take a minute,” Maggie promised before turning back to Ula. “Screwing up everything…you agreed to this…flock’s already left…you want attitude, I’ll show you attitude…act like a lady instead of an ogre.”
Maggie pulled Ula back. Ula stared at the ground and mumbled words too soft and garbled to understand. Maggie bared her teeth and would likely have laid into her fellow harpy had Will not intervened.
“Apology accepted,” he told her.
“That is generous of you,” Maggie told him. “You no doubt have questions, and I shall answer them. My flock needs aid. Normally we see to our own needs or call upon other flocks when trouble arises, but a rare and tragic situation has occurred that requires outside help.”
“Why didn’t you just come out and ask if you wanted help?” Will demanded. The harpies flinched at his angry tone. Will calmed down, barely, and asked, “What sort of problem is it?”
The harpy Gretchen hobbled forward, pushing between the other two. He voice was pained as she said, “My daughter Celeste was born…wrong. She is a good girl! Hard working! Honest! But she can’t fly.”
Maggie put a hand on Gretchen’s shoulder. “In rare instances a harpy is born without wings or talons. It hadn’t happened in our flock before and we thought it never would until Celeste was born. We’ve looked after her as best we could for years, but she is too big to carry and our journey too far for her to follow. We must leave her in the care of others.”
The color drained out of Will’s face. “Wait, you want to leave your daughter with me?”
“Yes.” Maggie hobbled closer. “Few deal fairly with harpies, but those who do speak well of you. We followed you this last week to see if the tales were true or lies. They say you are fierce in battle. I see proof of that before me, for goblins are ready to fight in your name. They say you are merciful. I see that is also true, for an outcast dwarf takes shelter in your lands. Can you be fierce and merciful, protecting a cripple from our flock?”
“We would come to visit her often,” Gretchen promised. She was fighting back tears. “She can provide for herself and would not burden you.”
“This isn’t a small thing you’re asking for,” Will said. “We’re talking a lifetime commitment to look after someone. And while I know this makes me sound like a jerk, you’re showing up out of the blue and making a huge request.”
Domo shrugged. “It sounds like you’re not giving us anything in return, either. I’m not a greedy sort, but if Will says yes then you fly away with everything you want and we get squat.”
“I gave sanctuary to Hugh Timbers,” Will conceded, “but those were extraordinary circumstances. And let’s be honest, this isn’t a nice place to live. There must be kingdoms better suited for your daughter.”
Maggie wasn’t giving up. “If so we have not heard of them, or they are too far away to reach. You live three days travel from the edge of our territory, a manageable distance. Few men live so far north and none of your reputation. The flock spent weeks searching for an acceptable home, no easy task when few love us. Your name was not at the top of the list. It was the list.”
Hobbling closer, she set down her spear and said, “Harpies born with Celeste’s condition are especially vulnerable. She can’t flee danger the way we can. If she doesn’t have the flock to protect her then she is at risk from predators, be they on four legs or two. In your care she has the protection of your forces and none would dare harm her. I know you have reason to be angry with us, and the lies told of us must be terrible. I ask you not to look at our failings but instead at the great need there is for your help. The flock has already migrated to our next nest. We’ve no time to find her another home, and leaving Celeste on her own is unthinkable.”
“Call a travel agent, because we’re going on a guilt trip,” Domo muttered.
Will frowned. “I’d like to talk with your daughter before making a decision. And I want to make it clear that this has to be a mutual agreement between her and I. I’m willing to offer her a home, but I’m not going to make it a prison if she wants to leave.”
Maggie held up her empty hands. “Where else could she go? Celeste, the man wishes to speak with you.”
A hooded figure walked out of the woods. She wore the same stitched together animal skins as the harpies, but she moved with a grace they didn’t. She stopped by Gretchen and exchanged a brief embrace before approaching Will. Celeste removed her hood, and Will gasped at the sight.
Celeste didn’t have wings or talons, just as Maggie had said. That was because Celeste was a young woman of roughly twenty years, and possessed the kind of unearthly beauty painters and sculptures tried to capture in their art. Her skin was pale and flawless, her figure astounding. There were only two traits that proved she wasn’t human, her long turquois blue hair, tangled and tied back around a rib bone, and her eyes, which were entirely blue without white or pupil.
“She’s a siren,” Domo whispered.
“Uh, hi,” Will stammered. Judging by how the harpies had been talking, he’d assumed Gretchen’s daughter was at most twelve years old. Why did they talk about Celeste like she was a child?
“Opening lines aren’t his strong point,” Mr. Niff said. The goblins nodded in agreement.
“I understand why I’m a burden to my flock,” Celeste said in a voice so melodious that it might be a song. Her shoulders slumped and her eyes were fixed on the ground. “I won’t get in your way or cause trouble. You won’t even know I’m here.”
* * * * *
Hundreds of miles away, the same storm that had blanketed the Kingdom of the Goblins in snow was now deep in the mountainous north. Winds howled and snow drifts formed quickly before crumbing under their own weight to fall down the mountains. This was a formidable deterrent and one of the reasons why the harpies had nested here not long ago.
Today the fierce storm and towering mountains offered no defense. Fifty attackers scaled vertical cliffs with a single-minded determination. Their heavy armor was wrapped in cloth both to warm them and muffle sound. The attackers found handholds in the thinnest of cracks in the cliff face, driving in steel spikes and attaching ropes to them as they moved ever higher.
It took hours climbing in conditions that could kill a man, but they never stopped until they neared the spot where Maggie’s flock had once nested. They slowed as they approached the nest and spread out to strike from all sides. The foul weather that had given them such trouble would be strong enough to ground the harpy flock. There was no way their prey could escape. As one the fifty attackers drew magic weapons and surged over the top into the nest, and found nothing.
The leader of the assault took a small magic mirror from his backpack and held it to his face. “They’re gone! The nest is empty!”
“Are they out foraging?” a voice in the mirror demanded.
The attackers searched the nest and came up with little. There were piles of ash, frozen droppings and broken twigs. The leader turned his attention back to the mirror. “There are no perches left. They’ve been broken up and burned for fuel. Harpies only do that when leaving a nest for good. They could be anywhere in their territory, and that covers five hundred square miles.”
The leader spat in disgust and looked at the mirror. “They were here only days ago! Orders, sir?”
“Find them at all costs.”
