“Over there.” The woman jerked the pistol toward the fire pit. “Wake up lads, we’ve got company. Ugly little green company.”
The furs by the fire pit stirred. “It got money?”
“It’s a goblin. Of course not.”
“It has a name,” Malagach said. “And a gender.”
Two bearded faces turned toward him. One man yawned, and a gold bucktooth glinted. When the other fellow sat up, sans shirt, Malagach stared at the tree-trunk-sized arms. They were bigger around than his whole body.
“My name is Malagach,” he said.
Gold-Tooth kicked the fire to life and added a couple branches. “Lippy for a greenie, isn’t it?”
“Got that right,” said Tree-Trunk-Arms.
“You here for the treasure, gobber?”
Snickers came from all three. While the woman kept her pistol aimed at Malagach, Tree-Trunk-Arms patted him down, a rough act that dropped Malagach to his knees three times before it was done.
“He hasn’t got a map.”
No, Gortok had it in his tool bag. That thought reminded Malagach that it was time to get the improvisation show going.
He raised his eyebrows and blinked innocently. “Treasure? Map? I am here because the goblin gods wish me to deliver a message.”
This drew snorts from the men and cool silence from the woman.
“We’re not interested in goblin messages,” Gold-Tooth said.
“Besides,” the woman said, “aren’t you a little young to be a divine oracle?”
She was smarter than the others, Malagach sensed. He would have to be careful.
“Indeed,” he said. “I am merely an apprentice to a shaman who speaks for the gods. I’ve been instructed to inform you that this grotto is a sacred ceremonial place for our people, as you can see from the generations of shamans’ paintings on the walls.” He pointed to the faded illustrations, more noticeable now that the flames had kicked up. “The goblin pantheon is not pleased with your intrusion here, especially since your purpose is stealing people’s belongings.”
“I’m about as afraid of greenie gods as I am of a roach droppings,” Tree-Trunk-Arms said.
“The goblin gods are just as powerful as their human counterparts and some say more dangerous because of their...whimsy. They’ve been known to strike non-goblins down simply to play tricks on each other. Imagine what they might do to those who truly displease them.”
At that moment, the fire surged to life with a dramatic whoosh. The three bandits jumped. Malagach, too, flinched but hid his surprise before the humans looked back to him. He nodded as if he had expected the flair up.
He hid a smile when, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Gortok dart from the first pillar to a hiding spot behind the booty pile. Malagach was careful not to look directly at his brother, lest he draw the humans’ attention, for the two men were now regarding Malagach with new wariness. Arms crossed over her bodice, the woman looked significantly less impressed.
“No, the gods are not pleased by your blasphemous presence,” Malagach said. “They require you to halt this operation and leave goblin country for good.”
He hardly expected them to flee based on a poof of firelight and his words, but he trusted Gortok to come up with something to make his story more convincing.
Gold-Tooth nudged his cohort. “He talks like that bookish fellow we robbed last week, doesn’t he?”
“The one that screamed all the way down the river after we tossed him in the waterfall?” Tree-Trunk-Arms asked.
“Yup, that one. I figure we should do the same with this little toad.”
“I shall not scream.” Malagach tried to look like a zealot who wholeheartedly believes his gods will save him. In truth, he knew he’d probably start screaming before the bandits even lifted his toes off the ground. “The gods will protect me even as they punish you.”
Fwoomph!
The fire flared up again, briefly throwing its orange light all the way to the rocky ceiling.
Come on, Gor, Malagach thought. It would take more than pitch balls thrown at the fire to scare these folks into repentance.
“Nice trick,” the woman said, “but we’ve been here a while and nobody has punished us yet.” She tilted her chin toward the pile of accumulated booty.
“You will be,” Malagach said, hurrying to speak and draw their gazes from the ‘treasure’ mound before anyone could spot Gortok. “The gods are eternal and have no need to work quickly. But they have grown weary of your foul presence, and you’ll be punished tonight.”
Fwoomph!
At least Gold-Tooth looked a little nervous at the fire-pit flare-ups. “Nobody needs to punish us,” he said. “Times are tough, and we’re just earning a living—nothing wrong with that.”
“You’re preying on the dreams of those who can least afford to lose what little they have in this world,” Malagach said, thinking of the farmers he and Gortok had overheard earlier. If they had better luck reading the map in the morning, they’d likely be the bandits’ next victims. “It’s deplorable, and my gods forbid you to continue your foul work in this sacred goblin cave.”
For a moment, all three bandits were facing him with their backs to the treasure pile. Gortok darted out, not from behind the pile, but from the second pillar. He seemed to be holding something, but Malagach could not see what. Gortok ran back behind the stack of booty.
“Enough of this nonsense,” the woman said. “Toss him into the falls, lads. If the goblin gods want to talk to us that badly, I’m sure they’ll send a sign.”
“Erp.” Malagach tried to step away, but Tree-Trunk-Arms stopped him with an easy grab.
Hurry, Gor, he thought as his feet were yanked from the ground.
A heartbeat later, a skull of fire appeared out of the darkness, floating in the center of the cave. Flames burned the aged bone and leapt from the gaping eye holes.
The bandits cried out and stumbled away from the skull. Malagach’s captor dropped him. Even the woman edged backward, toward the waterfall.
Fortunately none were looking at Malagach now, for they would have caught surprise on his face. How was Gortok doing that? The flaming skull wasn’t anywhere near the pile where he was hiding, and the thing was floating—moving slowly across the cave. Flames dripped off it like wax from a candle. They landed on the ground and continuing to burn.
“What in the demons-cursed hells is that?” Gold-Tooth blurted.
“I believe you requested a sign,” Malagach said blandly.
He eased to the side to let the bandits edge farther backward.
“An illusion,” the woman suggested, though she didn’t sound certain. “Or a magic trick. The whelp has an accomplice hiding in the cave.”
She aimed her pistol at the skull. Malagach cursed silently, trying to think of a way to stop her, but of her own volition she apparently decided firing a projectile in the closed confines of the cave might be stupid. Instead she picked up a pebble to throw at the skull. The stone clanged off without damaging the flaming bone.
“No illusion,” Malagach said, quick to speak again before they could come back to the idea of an accomplice. “A sign from the gods. Soon it’ll be your skulls burning.”
Indeed, the skull shifted its direction, moving closer to the center of the cave again. The bandits backed farther, stopping only when they felt splatters of water on their necks.
Next one of the kegs wobbled and tipped over. Malagach’s heart lurched. If those wooden containers were full of alcohol or black powder and they came in contact with fire...
The keg rolled down the slanted cavern floor toward the bandits. It left a trail of liquid behind it. Alcohol! Gortok wouldn’t be that foolish. Would he?
Shaking his head, Malagach scooted toward the side of the cavern.
A burning pine cone spun out from behind the treasure pile and landed in the liquid. The alcohol trail burst into flames, which raced toward the keg.
“The whiskey!” shouted
one man.
“It’ll explode!” shouted the woman.
The flame reached the keg.
“Jump!”
The bandits threw themselves over the edge and into the waterfall. If he had been closer, Malagach might have done the same. All he could do was leap farther sideways, landing on the rock floor with his arms over his head.
He held his breath. His galloping heartbeats reverberated through his body.
Silent seconds passed and nothing happened.
Finally, Malagach dared lift his head to look over his shoulder. Gortok leaned against the treasure pile, munching on an apple. The barrel had come to a stop at the fire pit, and flames were indeed consuming the wood, but nothing had exploded.
“Hunh.” Malagach pushed himself to his feet, wincing. Now that the threat of danger had past, his body protested the mighty leap and crash to the hard rock floor. Already he could feel a bruise swelling on his knee.
Malagach looked around. The bandits were gone. The fiery skull had burned out, though flames roared heartily from the barrel. Gortok winked at him.
“Not a keg of whiskey?” Malagach straightened his tunic and combed his hair with his fingers.
“Not one of the full ones,” Gortok said. “There was a mostly drained one behind the other stuff. I just scooted it out front while you all were skull gazing, pulled the bung, and let it roll. I knew it wouldn’t explode. Probably. Maybe.” He shrugged and took another bite.
“How did you manage the skull?” Malagach asked. “I get that you put your pitch stash to liberal use, but, uhm, floating?”
Gortok hopped up and twanged an invisible line, and the skull shuddered. Not invisible, Malagach realized as he walked closer. Just very thin and, in the dark cave, impossible to see from more than a couple feet away.
Gortok went behind the pile and hefted the fishing pole Malagach had noticed earlier. Now that Malagach knew what to look for, he spotted a pulley tied about each pillar. Fishing line ran from the pole to each pulley, allowing the reel of the pole to move the skull along its track.
“Good work,” Malagach said.
“Yup.” Gortok tossed him an apple. “And now for our reward. Come look. There’s all sorts of good stuff back here. I could make passels of things—mechanical constructs, alarms, booby traps, new features for the tree hut. Oh, there’s the wrench set I was trying to buy from the trader!”
“We can’t take these things,” Malagach said. “They were stolen from people who, if they’re still alive, may come back looking for them. Besides it wouldn’t be right to take what we didn’t earn through honest means.”
“What?” Gortok stared at him. “We found a treasure map, worked to earn the treasure, and now it’s rightfully ours.”
“No, we’re not thieves,” Malagach said, looking toward the falls where the bandits had thrown themselves. “We’re better than people like that.”
He folded his arms and lifted his chin nobly, but then his gaze happened upon those two books. He waffled for a moment. His fingers reached toward them, clenched and went in his pockets, and then slipped out to reach again. Finally Malagach grabbed the books.
Gortok lifted his eyebrows.
“We’re mostly better than people like that,” Malagach said.
Gortok gave Malagach a knowing nod, picked up the wrench set, and they strolled out of the cave together.
The Goblin Brothers and the Pepper Slime Punch
A greenish-blue liquid simmered in a cauldron hanging above the largest fire pit in the village. A wind-up contraption fastened to the pot’s lip propelled a long metal spoon in continuous circles. The breeze stirred the sweet scent of the punch, and it wafted amongst the mud-and-thatch huts, delighting the noses of nearby goblins.
Malagach stuffed his hands into the pockets of his buckskins to keep from slipping a green finger into the gurgling cauldron. Others had already tried—and failed—to steal a taste.
Though Shaman Otik was busy dancing and chanting his way around the fire, he was capable of whacking whelps on the knuckles with his gods-stick without breaking rhythm. Malagach’s brother, Gortok, was still sucking on the welt on the back of his hand.
“He ought to let me have a taste,” Gortok said. “After all, that’s my pot stirrer that’s keeping it from burning while he jumps around godsifying it.”
Malagach rolled his eyes at his brother’s penchant for making up words. “We can wait. It’ll be tastiest when the peppers are added, a tantalizing blend of sweet and spicy.”
“That wakes you up like a troll kick between the cheeks.”
“Lovely description. You should write cookbooks for humans.”
“Really?”
“No.” Malagach smiled to take the edge off his teasing. His brother’s description was actually accurate. Pepper slime punch was designed to keep everyone awake through the coming night of dancing and eating at the Plenty-Picked Fest.
Shaman Otik froze, one bare green foot in the air, one hand stretched toward the heavens. The beads and fringes on his buckskins still clacked and swayed, but his body was statue still for a long moment. Silence descended on the village, and even the grown-ups who were busy fishing in the river, tanning hides, and weaving grass baskets, sensed the moment and paused.
“It is time to add the peppers,” Shaman Otik intoned.
Then he clapped, breaking the silence, and darted into his hut with the spryness of a ten year old instead of a council elder.
“The peppers!” came an unexpected cry.
Malagach arched his eyebrows. This line wasn’t part of the annual ceremony.
Thumps, clashes, and frantic rustlings came from the shaman’s hut, and then Otik burst outside, his eyes wide. “The peppers are missing!”
Amidst the horrified gasps of his people, Malagach frowned at his brother. “You didn’t take them, did you?”
“Of course, not,” Gortok said. “Why would you think that?”
“Because you have a history of eating his spell components.”
“It’s not my fault about the Eyes of Newt. They were in a jar next to a bunch of pickled fox toes. How was I supposed to know they weren’t snacks? And those drying elderberries... I thought he’d laid them out for everyone to sample. I wouldn’t touch the pepper slime punch peppers though.”
Even as he finished speaking, Shaman Otik stomped over and jabbed a finger at Gortok’s nose.
“You!” Otik accused. “You ate them, didn’t you?”
“What?” Gortok stepped back, hands raised. “It wasn’t me. Why does everyone think—ouch!”
Shaman Otik’s fingers had found Gortok’s pointed ear. The old goblin dragged Gortok toward the hut. Malagach trailed after uncertainly.
“I didn’t take them,” Gortok promised. “I wouldn’t—”
“No Plenty-Picked Fest for you,” Otik said. “You’ll stay in my hut until tomorrow.”
“But I’ll miss the dancing,” Gortok said. “And the eating!”
“Yes, that’s the lesson I’m fixing to give you.”
Malagach stopped at the door flap, watching as his brother disappeared inside. Missing the festival would devastate Gortok, and Chief Loggok would also dole out punishment for something like this. If Gortok ended up with extra chores for the rest of the fall, who would Malagach go adventuring with?
“Someone else took them,” Malagach muttered.
He spun about, eyeballing the rest of the goblins. Drawn by the shouts, the crowd around the fire pit had grown. Young and old looked forward to the pepper slime punch, and crestfallen expressions turned down faces all around.
Zakrog, a large whelp who often bullied Malagach and Gortok, stood against the shaman’s hut with a couple of his flunky cousins. They had their ears to the wall, grinning as they listened to Shaman Otik berating Gortok.
Malagach glared at the pack suspiciously. “Did you take the peppers? To get my brother in trouble?”
“Not me.” Zakrog snickered. “But I reckon I should??
?ve. If I’d known you bookfaces would get blamed, I’d have swiped ‘em years ago.”
“I’m glad he’s in trouble,” one of the cousins said. “Last year Gortok scared everyone at the Plenty-Picked with that stupid mechanical snake.”
“You were the only one scared by that, dolt.” Zakrog swatted his cousin on the head. “That snake was middling fine, actually, considering a bookface made it.”
Malagach tugged at the fringes on his sleeve, not certain whether to believe the bullies or not. If Zakrog had pilfered the peppers, he would never admit it. Still, taking them to get Gortok in trouble was a stretch of sophistication for Zakrog, whose bullying tended to be more blunt—like a fist to the nose.
“Nogarf!” Shaman Otik called from hut. “Get in here. I need you to guard this whelp while I search the store caves for dried peppers.”
“Dried peppers,” a grownup moaned. “The punch won’t be the same.”
“Don’t think we even have any dried peppers,” another said. “We hardly get a handful a year up in these rainy mountains.”
Nogarf, a spindly eleven-year-old goblin, slipped through the crowd. A smug smile crooked his lips, and his yellow eyes twinkled as he entered Otik’s hut.
That look surprised Malagach. No one else was happy right now; why was this whelp?
Nogarf had only been in the village a few days, so Malagach hardly knew him. A shaman’s son, Nogarf had been sent from another village to study potion making with Otik. Nogarf was a born critter caller and could communicate with all sorts of animals. Unlike the loutish Zakrog types common in the village, the gifted youth had struck Malagach as someone worth befriending. That glance aroused Malagach’s suspicions though.
He slipped through the swaying door flap. Inside the one-room hut, shelves full of baskets, bottles, and clay pots rose from the river-stone floor to the thatch ceiling. Bundles of herbs and shamanic charms dangled from rafters. Gortok sat in the corner, arms hugging knees pulled to his chest.