“Nah, you two are all right. Heroic even. We can have some adventures together.”
Malagach and Gortok shared a look. Not bad. They had convinced one human boy that goblins could be heroes. Just the rest of the world to go.
“Of course, the stories told about us would have to be named after me, and I’d be the star,” Robhart said. “The hero, the main hero, can’t be a goblin.”
“Why not?” Gortok asked.
Robhart chuckled. “Who’d want to hear stories just about goblins?” He waved a quick goodbye and hustled off to turn in his orc hair.
Malagach and Gortok stared after the human.
“I’m middling sure people wouldn’t mind stories about us,” Gortok said. “Me, for sure.”
“Why you?” Malagach asked.
“I’m the cute, lovable, especial one.”
“That was especially trying,” Malagach reminded his brother.
“Close enough.” Gortok winked.
The Goblin Brothers and the Slave Trader’s Offer
The pounding green feet of the goblin pack tore down the trail ahead of Malagach. At the front raced tall and agile Zakrog. An eagle feather—a trophy from the first event he had won—bounced from his white topknot.
Malagach had no delusions about catching him, or any of the other whelps in the lead pack, but if he could at least finish the race in a respectable position, maybe there would be less teasing. Maybe Ma would not shake her head in her usual glum disappointment. Maybe Chief Loggok would look upon him with a glimmer of respect....
Pebbles flew under the pack’s feet as they pounded along the river toward the village. The line of watching grownups cheered and hooted encouragement. When Malagach ran past the blueberry bushes and filbert trees that edged the huts, his own ragged breaths drowned out the shouts of the onlookers. Sweat dampened his buckskin tunic and plastered his short white hair to his temples.
The course left the pebble-strewn riverside for a third and final loop through the forest. The trail narrowed, twisting around trees, boulders, and uneven terrain, and Malagach lost sight of the pack.
A log lay across the path ahead, its root mass upended during a recent storm. On the first loop, he had cleared the obstacle easily, but on the second, his heel had clipped it, and he’d nearly pitched onto his face. This time he coiled his tired legs for a generous leap.
When he was midair, a green body blurred out of hiding and crashed into him.
Malagach spun into a tree beside the trail. Reflexively, he threw his hands up, but momentum smashed his face into the trunk. Pain exploded across his nose, and he crumpled to the pine needles below. Peals of laughter pierced his shocked body. Through rapidly tearing eyes, Malagach glimpsed another goblin sprinting off down the trail—one with an eagle feather bobbing in his hair.
He slammed his fist into the pine needles.
Three younger whelps leaped over the log as Malagach was getting to his feet. He swiped tears out of his eyes and blood from his nose. His head throbbed in time with his pounding heart. Four more contestants raced past before he recovered enough to get back on the trail.
Malagach was about to start running—or at least jogging—when a familiar voice came from behind.
“Hullo, Mal.”
“Gortok.” He greeted his younger brother while wiping more blood from his nose. “You last?”
“Yup.” Gortok went around the root mass instead of over the log and huffed to a stop. Though sweat gleamed on his forehead—moisture which did nothing to tamp down his wild thatch of white hair—he did not look as exhausted as Malagach. In fact...
“Did you stop to forage?” Malagach eyed a fresh red stain on his brother’s tunic.
Gortok grinned sheepishly. “I might have grabbed a couple raspberries on my way past the patch.”
Malagach rolled his eyes. Running wouldn’t make a difference now, so they walked the rest of the way back to the village. With luck, the crowd would be gone if they arrived late enough.
Alas, luck did not favor them. When they came in long last, the adults merely shook their heads, hardly surprised. Ma’s eyes widened when she spotted Malagach’s bloody nose, but she stopped herself after a step in his direction, for which he was thankful. He was eleven now, too old for babying in front of everyone else. Besides it made the teasing worse.
He tried not to look when they walked past Zakrog and the eight or nine whelps surrounding him. They snickered and pointed at Malagach while nudging their leader.
“What happened, Book Face?” Zakrog asked. “Get your nose caught between the pages?” Zakrog casually flicked a second eagle feather now twined in his hair.
Malagach missed a step, hardly able to believe the bully had not only caught back up, but won. Malagach gritted his teeth. No response at all would be best, but a retort spilled from his lips unbidden.
“I didn’t, but it’s a practice you should try. If you were thumped on the head with a book, some knowledge might spill out and leak into that empty vessel on your shoulders.”
With all the adults in the village nearby, Malagach did not fear for his life just then, but the steely gaze Zakrog shot him did promise pain later on. No, make that now. The start of the “Log King” event was called, and the grownups headed for the river. Zakrog led his cronies not around but through Malagach and Gortok. Elbows “accidently” jabbed their ribs, callused heels stepped on their feet, and someone kicked Malagach in the shin. Finally the group had passed, and walked toward the beach laughing and muttering such classic goblin insults as “snot suckers,” “troll dung eaters,” and the ever witty, “orc lips.”
“I hate him.” Malagach rubbed his shin.
“Yeah,” Gortok said. “Berry?” He had pulled a handful of squashed raspberries from a pocket and was chomping them. He offered Malagach one that was only slightly mutilated. “At least this is the last event.”
“Why do parents inflict these competitions on us? It’s not as if athleticism is all that important for goblins. We make our livings foraging, scavenging, and fishing.”
“Spear fishing takes athleticism,” Gortok said. “Which is probably why you’re horrible at it.”
“You’re not any good either.”
“I’ve never stabbed myself in the foot,” Gortok said. “Twice.”
“You’re young.”
“Only a year younger than you,” Gortok said.
“A year and three months.”
Heading for the river, they wound through the mud-and-stick huts that made up the village. Apple, pear, and plum trees sheltered the reed roofs, and berry bushes lined the paths. Medicinal herbs and edible ground covers filled in the gaps. The practical camouflage filled bellies and meant those who did not know what to look for rarely found goblin villages.
On the river side of the village, everyone was preparing for the last event. Contestants stripped off their buckskins while two large male goblins stood hip deep in the backwater, readying a log that had escaped from a beaver dam upriver.
“Glad I’m not in this one,” Gortok said cheerfully.
Malagach would be cheerful too if he had already finished the mandatory three events. He had chosen Log King because it would be over quickly. And on a warm summer day, a dunk in the river was not too unpleasant. But when Uncle Tyok called the contestants for the first challenge, a deep grimace pulled down Malagach’s face.
“Round One, Malagach and Zakrog.”
The smug grin Zakrog had been wearing all afternoon turned into a cackle of delight.
Malagach tried not to groan too loudly.
“At least it’ll be over quickly,” Gortok said.
“I guess.” Malagach sighed. “I’d really like to beat him at something.”
“You can beat him at lots of things,” Gortok said. “You can read and write. You can add and subtract. And you’ve got the Elvish-to-Kingdom dictionary memorized—which is odder than a one-horned deer, by the way. Zakrog...I don’t have proof, but I think he ate my ari
thmetic book last winter.”
“I’d like to beat him at something that matters to our people,” Malagach clarified.
“Oh.” Gortok squinted at the log. “You could beat him at this.”
Malagach snorted.
“Really. Just keep your center of balance lower than his. You’ll be harder to knock off the log and less likely to fall off on your own. And if he pushes you, he’ll be expecting you to push back. Pull him instead.”
Malagach slanted a dubious look at his brother. That sounded like a lot to think about while balancing on a floating log. Then it was time for the event to start.
The two grownups held the log steady while Malagach and Zakrog waded out and climbed onto opposite ends. Other whelps waited for their matches on the bank. If by some chance, Malagach won here, he would have to compete against more opponents, but that didn’t matter. Just this. If he could just beat Zakrog this one time...
He forced himself to concentrate on the now.
As soon as Malagach and Zakrog squared off, the grownups let go of the log. The damp perch wobbled, promising a pitch into the river sooner or later. Later, Malagach thought. Let’s make mine later. He sank low and dug his toes into the bark.
Uncle Tyok yelled, “Start!”
Without hesitating, Zakrog lunged across the log.
Just as the bigger goblin was about to crash into him, Malagach dropped even lower, his knee banging into the trunk. He sank his weight into the log and willed himself to be as heavy as possible.
Probably expecting his target to be higher, Zakrog only managed to plant one hand on Malagach’s shoulder. Gortok’s advice sailed through Malagach’s mind. Instead of tensing and trying to stay rigid, he grabbed Zakrog’s tunic, leaned back, and pulled.
Zakrog let out a surprised shout and toppled past Malagach and into the river. The log jerked at the weight shift, and Malagach soon lost his own grip and fell in too. But it didn’t matter. Zakrog had gone in first.
Zakrog came up slapping the water and cursing. “Friga’s hairy—”
“Language, whelp,” Chief Loggok, Zakrog’s father, warned from the bank. That, he corrected his son for. The bullying he never seemed to notice.
When Malagach glimpsed the fury in Zakrog’s eyes, he hustled to get out of the water. Gortok winked at him.
Using his brother’s tactics, Malagach won three more matches before losing to an adaptable whelp in the final round. That was fine. Watching Zakrog stalk around, glaring, and muttering about his missing third feather, was victory enough. In fact, Malagach grinned all the way through a dinner of fox tail stew and acorn flour dumplings, and was still feeling quite satisfied when he strolled down to the river that evening. He sat on the bank and dangled his toes in, enjoying the last bird songs of the day.
“You still have that gloating smile on your face?” Gortok asked when he came up behind.
Malagach fixed his upturned lips into a neutral position. “Of course not.”
“Uh hunh.” Gortok flopped down beside him and unrolled a piece of parchment to reveal a muddled charcoal diagram. Pens and paper were hard to come by in the mountains, and Gortok had used this parchment several times. While he had done his best to wipe away old charcoal lines, the image was still hard to read, and Malagach squinted uncertainly.
“Plans for a machine to squirt the trunk of the tree hut with something slick—I’m still working on the recipe—to make it unclimbable. Old Zakrog is madder’n a badger who got her kits stole, so I’m planning extra defenses.”
Gortok sounded much more excited than concerned. Any excuse to build more contraptions tickled him.
“Wise,” Malagach said. “He’ll probably hold a grudge.”
“Probably?”
“All right, he will, and he’s doubtlessly plotting revenge by now.”
“It’s scary imagining him as chief some day.”
“We’ll be long gone from the village by then,” Malagach said.
“Oh?”
“Can you actually imagine staying here one day longer than our coming-of-age ceremony? I’m already tired of trying to explain why I’d rather read than fish, why I want to learn languages, history, and of other cultures, why playing Log Hop, Tackle the Rabbit, and Pod Kick are torture. I’m tired of feeling guilty because we get involved in some adventure far more interesting than village chores and forget to make it home for dinner or collect all the mushrooms Ma wanted, or whatever mundane goblin thing we’re supposed to be doing.”
“At least Ma doesn’t seem to get as upset about the stuff we forget anymore,” Gortok said. “Chief Loggok even said it’s all right for us to play at the tree hut when we get all our chores done first. We’ve got a fair heap more freedom than we did when we were littler.”
“Because they’ve given up on us turning into respectable goblins.” Malagach plucked a weed from the crack between two rocks. “Is it still freedom if it’s given out of apathy instead of love and understanding?”
The screwed up expression on Gortok’s face reminded Malagach that his brother thought a lot less about what others were saying or thinking about them than he always did. Half the time Gortok was so inwardly focused on plans for some new project that he did not even hear insults. For that and other reasons, Malagach often had to remind himself not to envy—or resent—his little brother. Gortok was the only true ally he had in the world.
“I dunno,” Gortok finally said. “You worry too much. Like a grownup.”
“Shaman Otik did say I have an old soul.”
“I thought he said you smelled like old sole,” Gortok said.
“No...he said that about you. A comment he followed with a suggestion for a bath.” Malagach swatted at his brother’s unruly hair, which was sticking out in more directions than canes in a blackberry patch. “And a haircut.”
“He did not—”
Clink!
Startled, Malagach jerked his feet out of the water. A small clay bottle had landed on the stones between them. Gooey brown liquid oozed out of the mouth, and gray-blue smoke wafted from it.
“What’s that?” Gortok asked.
As soon as the odor reached his nostrils, Malagach was overwhelmed with grogginess.
“Get back!” At least that’s what he tried to say—and do—but the words came out garbled. His leaden limbs would not respond. He fell backward, losing consciousness before his head hit the ground.
* * * * *
Awareness returned slowly, along with pain at the back of his head. Blurry vision focused, and Malagach saw stars moving in and out through branches. He was on his back, and slowly he realized the stars were not moving, he was. Someone was dragging him along a bumpy trail on a travois. Several someones. He glimpsed goblin-sized figures walking in front of and behind him.
“Hurry,” someone said. “That potion we filched from Shaman Otik could wear off any time.”
“If they wake up, we’ll just club them over the head until they’re sleeping again.” That was Zakrog’s voice.
Malagach decided to close his eyes and stay ‘sleeping.’ There were too many to escape at that moment, and he hadn’t had a chance to confer with Gortok. He wasn’t even sure Gortok was along, though Zakrog had said ‘they.’
“How much farther?” a new voice whined from the back.
That was one of Zakrog’s cousins. It seemed the whole annoying posse was along for this trek.
“Not far. We’re meeting Trapper Arik at Black Stump Rock for the trade off.”
Trade off? Malagach’s heart quickened.
“Why couldn’t we just have the slavers come pick them up direct?” a different voice asked.
“And let them know where our village is?” Zakrog asked. “You dolt, they’d take all our people, including us.”
Malagach swallowed. Slavers. They were selling him to slavers?
A half moon had risen on the horizon when the group came out of the trees at the meeting point, a field of stumps where a fire had burned through a f
ew years back. In the center rose a jagged rock that young goblins often climbed for sport and less young goblins met at for romantic trysts.
“Boys,” greeted a gruff male voice.
From his back, Malagach could not see the speaker though he glimpsed the top of a small wooden structure. A wagon, he realized, when a horse snorted nearby.
“Trapper Arik, sir,” Zakrog said in a respectful tone he usually saved for his father.
“Two of them? That’s it? Well, here’s your two silver.”
When Malagach heard the number two, his first reaction was relief; Gortok was here as well. Then he felt indignation tighten his chest. One tiny silver coin a piece? That’s all a goblin life was worth? His life?
Malagach forced himself to play limp when big calloused arms grabbed his ankles. He had to bite his lip to keep from yelping when he was slung, like a sack of acorns, into the back of an enclosed wagon. Fortunately he landed on a pile of furs. A moment later, Gortok landed beside him. Then the door creaked closed, and the clank of a metal lock snapping shut came through the wood.
“Gor?” Malagach reached out and touched his brother.
Though Gortok made no reply, he was warm and breathing steadily. Actually, he was snoring. He must have inhaled a bigger whiff of that concoction.
The wagon lurched into motion, and Malagach tumbled off the pile of furs. He pitched down the side and clunked his temple against the wall. Groaning, he grabbed his head with both hands. This had been a bad day for his cranial anatomy.
“Mal?” came Gortok’s shaken voice from atop the fur pile.
“I’m here.” Malagach doubted the trapper would hear them through the wooden wagon walls and over the clopping of hooves, but he kept his voice low. “Zakrog and his cronies...sold us.”
“Sold? How do you sell someone?” In a softer voice, he added, “And to who?”
“To whom,” Malagach said.
“Yeah, that.”
“Some trapper, though a slaving outfit is apparently our final destination. Maybe the gods are punishing me for being unappreciative of the freedoms we have at home.” Malagach cleared his throat. “Uhm, Gor... It’s possible...well, it’s probable...”