The Reign Of Istar (13 page)

“No!” The kender grabbed the goblin's arm and pulled it down. For a second the goblin
started to resist, almost turning the spear to run it into the kender's chest, but holding
off. Instead, he simply shoved at the kender with his free hand and sent him sprawling. The kender immediately got to his feet, face filled
with rage. “No!” he shouted. “I want to help him! If it was you, I'd help you! Look at his
chains! He was a human's slave! I want to save him!”

“We have no food to feed him in winter!” the goblin retorted. “We live good, bellies full
now, but food gone when rain come. You say you hungry in cold rain, hunting bad. He
hungry, too. What you feed him, eh? You like him chew off leg?”

The heated argument continued unabated for several minutes. Finally, the goblin cursed and
turned his back on the kender, walking the two miles back to the cave where they lived.
Damn the little bastard! Did he want to start a city out here in the forest? The fool was
not thinking with his head. The minotaur was more dangerous than a company of city
guardsmen. The goblin once saw a chained minotaur bite off the arm of its slave overseer,
though it knew it would be killed for its crime. The minotaur had roared with laughter
until the massed humans had beaten it unconscious with clubs before dragging it away to
its fate.

The goblin fumed and stamped around the cave, finally realizing it was cold. The kender
had always gathered wood in the evening while the goblin sharpened their weapons and
relaxed. Everything had been just fine until now. The goblin knew how to use the
fire-starter bow, but he didn't know where the kender found all the wood for the fire pit.
When he went outside, all he could see were sticks and leaves, no burning wood.

And the kender did most of the hunting and cooking, too.

The goblin stamped around some more.

Maybe the minotaur could be bargained with. The goblin had no illusions about whether or
not the minotaur would be a grateful and friendly ally, but even a brute like that would
see the value in having two lesser beings tend to its wounds and hunt for it. And having a
monster like that around might not be a bad idea, if it could be managed. Minotaurs were
as savage and brutal as could be imagined. They were damn strong, mightier than humans.
They hated humans more than they hated any other being, and they hated the slave-taking,
holier-than-all Istarians most.

The goblin cursed himself for believing this would work. The kender was infecting his brain. He should just kill both the kender and the
minotaur and let them rot.

But the kender did almost all the hunting and cooking.

The goblin sullenly picked up his weapons again and left the cave. Life wasn't fair. He
hated that.

The tired kender looked up, knee deep in the water alongside the minotaur, and a grin
broke out on his face. “I knew you'd help,” he said with relief.

They made a crude sledge before nightfall, roping two long rough poles together with a
ragged length of hemp that the kender recovered from disassembling an animal snare. It was
past midnight when they got back to the cave with the minotaur and set him down inside.
The huge brown beast had never once stirred. The goblin staggered off to collapse in a
corner and fall asleep.

When he awakened, it was long past sunrise. Cold, cooked venison was spitted over the fire
pit; the fire itself had long gone out. The minotaur's festering wounds had been carefully
cleaned and dressed with old rags from the cave's rag pile, donated by many farmhouse
clotheslines. The kender apparently had found nothing to cut the huge chain the minotaur
was dragging around. The chain was carefully wound into a loose pile by the minotaur's
side.

The goblin rubbed his face and got up. He noticed the kender had succumbed to exhaustion
and was asleep, sitting upright against a cave wall, some rags in his lap, a bone needle
and sinewy thread in his hand. He'd been stitching together a crude blanket.

Then the goblin saw that the minotaur, still lying flat on its stomach, was watching him.
The beast's dull eyes were as large as a cow's, with the same deep brown color. Long scars
crisscrossed the monster's muzzle and low forehead. One broad nostril was split open from
an old wound. Long yellow teeth gleamed dully against its thick lips.

Trying to pretend he hadn't been caught off guard, the goblin nodded at the beast.
Suddenly the idea of having a live minotaur in the cave did not look as good as it had
earlier. The goblin could almost feel the monster's enormous teeth tear into his flesh.
The minotaur made no move to get up, and the goblin took care of a few minor chores with
an air of forced casualness. The minotaur must be very weak to skip a live meal. The
goblin made his decision.

Chores finished, the goblin walked over to the fire pit and carefully sawed off a piece of
venison with his machete. Very slowly, he moved over to the minotaur and knelt down near
its scarred, long-homed head. He could see no readable expression on the creature's
bestial face.

If this worked, they would have a new ally. The goblin was sure that the minotaur would
eventually kill both the kender and himself if they weren't careful or if it went hungry.
But the goblin had worked with the strong and brutal all his life, and he knew the value
of strength in numbers. He hoped the minotaur knew this lesson, too. At least the minotaur
wasn't a human. It was poor consolation, but in these days, it helped.

The goblin held out the piece of venison near the minotaur's muzzle, letting it smell the
food. Then he moved the venison closer to the monster's mouth.

The huge nostrils flared and snorted. The minotaur stirred slightly, then grimaced with
pain. Its teeth were bared as its lips drew back and it closed its eyes, but it quickly
forced itself to relax and open its eyes again.

With a carefully measured move, its gaze fixed on the machete that the goblin gripped in
his other hand, the minotaur opened its mouth, revealing a set of teeth that rivaled those
of the largest bear. Its breath was unspeakably foul. Very gently, it took the venison and
began to chew.

*****

Four weeks passed. The minotaur recovered. The kender was overjoyed and talked until the
goblin dreamed of killing him just to shut him up. Both goblin and kender hunted now; the
minotaur sat silently in the cave. Though the minotaur never spoke, the goblin feared that
the beast would react violently the moment the two smaller beings asked anything of it, so
he worked more than he had ever worked when it was just him and the kender, and he
grumbled about it under his breath. But deep inside he was satisfied. He began to think
that bringing the minotaur to the cave had been his own idea. He had a boss again, a
strong boss who could eat humans for breakfast if it chose. It was worth the trouble for
the added power and safety - just as long as the minotaur didn't go hungry.

The wind grew colder. The kender raided some of his old caches, laid more traps, and brought more food and supplies to the cave. The goblin
was able to build a windbreak of huge branches and rocks at the cave's entrance, and this
doubled as camouflage for the cave in case humans were about. The minotaur ate a whole
deer now every three or four days, and its muscles bulged until they were like huge knots
of steel under its ugly brown hide. It still never spoke, though the kender talked
incessantly now, a beatific look on his face as he gladly tended his new friends.

The kender still borrowed the goblin's things, but the goblin no longer cared. He had too
much else to worry about. The winter rains were almost upon them.

*****

The goblin watched his quarry - a large buck worth half a week of food for them all - leap
out of bow range and bound away. The cry had startled it. Cursing softly to himself, the
goblin leaned forward in the bushes and strained to hear against the stirring leaves.

He heard nothing now. A bird? His grip on the bow and arrow relaxed.

No. Not a bird. He could hear it again. It was a human, maybe, crying out. He'd probably
fallen in one of the kender's pits. Perhaps the kender heard it, too, but the kender was
nowhere to be seen. Figured. He was probably distracted by something again when he should
be hunting. It was amazing that the kender had lived this long.

If the human was alone, it wouldn't take much to finish him off and pick through his
belongings. He might even have some money. The goblin didn't plan to live in the forest
forever. It wouldn't hurt to save a little change for a future day.

Crouching low, the goblin moved through the crackling brown undergrowth, sliding from tree
to tree. Cool wind blew over his face and through his black rags. He kept an arrow nocked.
He had only three more arrows if the first one missed, which it often did. He wasn't the
experienced hunter the kender was.

Laughter reached his ears, human laughter. The goblin stayed down, listening, then moved
forward more slowly. Hidden among rock outcroppings and thick briars, he climbed up a low hill. Someone was saying something in a nonhuman language. It sounded
like an elven tongue, Silvanesti. The speaker mumbled; his words were unclear.

“I can't understand you,” said a human voice in a language the goblin remembered well from
his days in East Dravinar. 'Talk Istarian, boy."

Someone mumbled again. The goblin was almost at the top of the hill. No guards were
visible. He carefully checked his bow, arrows, and machete, then began to crawl toward a
fallen tree trunk overgrown with briars and thick vines, slightly downslope on the hill's
far side. The wind covered the sounds of his movements.

“Talk to me, gods damn you!” Beefy smacks sounded from the hill's other side.

A few seconds later, the goblin reached the fallen log and looked down the slope.

There were three humans, two men and a woman. All wore the brown and gray leather of
Istarian free rangers. Once the defenders of Istar's forested west, the free rangers were
now no better than mercenaries and bounty hunters. A thin, blond-haired man was leaning
into the face of a male elf, whose arms were wrapped back around a tree trunk and
presumably tied there. The elf's head sagged; cuts and bruises were visible through his
long, sun-bleached hair. Both his eyes were blackened and swollen. The elf's fine
clothing, too light for the weather, had been deliberately cut and ripped to shreds.

“You listening to me?” the blond man demanded. His right hand gripped the elf's hair and
pulled the prisoner's head up and back. “Anything getting through your pointy ears? Why
were you trailing us, elf? What were you after?”

The elf started to mumble through thick, puffy lips. His knees had given out, and he hung
upright only because he was tied in place.

The goblin chewed his lower lip. An elf and some rangers. Great. Two of a goblin's worst
possible enemies. Maybe there should be a dwarf here, too, just to round things out. But
it looked like there soon would be one less elf, and that was fine with the goblin. Damn
shame the rangers had probably robbed their victim first. This day was nothing but bad
pickings all around.

“The elf said something about a sword,” said the massively built, dark-haired man standing
nearby. He sounded uncertain. “Didn't the captain find a long sword, a ceremonial thing of some kind,
in a box with that elf the boys caught yesterday?”

“I thought he said sword, too,” said the woman with them. She had the plainest face the
goblin had ever seen on a human, but she was heavily muscled, too, with short, stringy
hair the color of old hay.

“Hey, elf!” yelled the thin, blond man, his mouth against the elf's left ear. The elf
winced and tried to turn his head away. “Hey, can you hear me? Did you want that pretty
sword with the gems on it? Was that what you wanted?”

When no response came, the blond man slammed his fist into the elf's abdomen. The three
humans waited as the elf vomited and choked and gasped for air.

“This is taking all day,” said the woman. “We gotta get back to the troops. We should just
take this sword and sell it to the clerics in Istar, make our fortune! Either gut him here
or take him with us.”

“Shhh!” said the blond man. He leaned close to the elf, listening as the elf's lips moved.
The goblin heard no sound.

“So it was the sword, right?” the blond man said. Without waiting for a response, he
added, “Is that sword magic, boy? Does it got magic powers?”

The other two humans stood a little straighter, startled by the question. They watched the
elf intently.

After a pause, the elf nodded, his face slack. He was nearly unconscious.

“Damn,” said the blond man. He looked up at the other two humans, a smile crossing his
face.

There was a whisper in the wind, followed almost immediately by a thump. At the same
moment, the huge man with the dark hair bent back, his hands clawing behind him at the
dull-colored arrow that had struck him directly between his shoulder blades. The arrow was
sunk in almost to the feathers. The man made a strange wheezing sound, then pitched
forward on his face.

“Oh, great Istar!” the woman said, wide-eyed. Her hands pulled her sword free, and she and
the thin, blond man ran for cover behind separate trees. They crouched down, both clearly
visible to the goblin. The man on the ground did not move. The elf hung limp from the
tree, his chin against his chest. The wind started to blow harder. The goblin slowly reached down to
his side. His fingers touched the curved wood of his bow. The blond-haired man, his nerve gone, made a
break for it. He took off from his tree, running in a straight line for a clump of bushes about
a hundred feet away. The woman started after him, but she must have heard the arrow as it
went past her, for she dropped to the ground, rolling until she was behind a pair of close
tree trunks. From there, she could hear the blond man scream as he writhed in the leaves
and dead ferns.