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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As of late there were many, many angry men.

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

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

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

“Direct as always, friend.”

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

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

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

“It is.”

“I took care of them. Problem solved.”

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

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

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

“We’re going that far back?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Lord Bryce denounced me, not you.”

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

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

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

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

“Divine justice?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Lost who?” Brother Mayfield asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I was destroyed by them!”

“Sensitive topic,” Guzzle told the other goblins.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Gee, thanks,” the overweight goblin said.

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh,” the swordsman said. “Oh no!”

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

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

“I think it’s a recent development.”

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

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

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

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

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