Fate Deals the Cards Temperance

  Chapter 11

  Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough

  I waited til shortly after full dawn, before binding my eyes and slipping from my burrow, headed downhill and into the waterways of the delta.

  The human witch’s ritual obscenity would draw a line in its components, pointing directly to its target, but only at the moment of dawn and only once. Until another dawn, they couldn’t use the spell again, since it needed to stew overnight, draining energy from whatever poor wretch they were going to sacrifice, in order to do that one, weak ass thing. These guys, really…

  So, shortly after dawn, while they were still scratching their bug bites and searching for lost rapists, I bundled together a crude reed canoe and slipped into the waterways, silent, blindfolded and deeply amused by the whole deal.

  Without horses, slaves or supplies, they were never going to catch me, certainly not once I led them out into the trackless delta.

  This is where I would do an evil laugh, but I might drown in my own blood, so let’s not.

  “Put that toy away, Flanders.” Peltier grumbled angrily, from the wreckage of his command.

  “I detected some residual energies on the scouter module, sir!” Drew insisted weakly. “I think the target might be stalking us at night!”

  “Under the light, man, a class C entity is not a threat! We’ll find it soon enough.” The captain sneered. “Now give me that toy. The cardinal will sweat butter if you lose it in this mire.”

  The entire camp had been despoiled by the swarming vermin, a full knight of the Light drowned in a pond and all but two of their goblin servants were strewn like emptied like wineskins around the camp, drained of blood. The goblin warriors emerged from their burrows unscathed… So there was that.

  “Drew, find our heading. We hunt this pest and kill it. I am sick of wading through muck.”

  “East northeast, lord inquisitor. Toward those hills.” The mage knight answered quickly.

  “How far?” Peltier demanded, his voice sharp and angry.

  “That remains uncertain…” The man stammered, fiddling with his travel robe awkwardly, when the inquisitor glared at him silently. “Twenty miles, if it has not moved since last dawn, my lord…”

  “It hasn’t moved in two weeks, man. We follow at speed and slaughter anything that looks like it might be our prey.” The lord glared at his bedraggled and muddy men and sneered. “Move out.”

  /

  When dusk fell and I could see again, I realized my mistake… Those goons were tracking my house, not me. They continued on a more or less direct line, toward my home… at a hilariously glacial speed. Afoot and with no supplies, they were forced to hunt, forage, search out clean water and find shelter in my unwelcoming and wintery domain.

  My self appointed job as unquestioned ruler of this land, was to make certain they had an awful time and never returned… First, I had to get off the water and ahead of them.

  My reed canoe fell apart into a loose mass of random flotsam, when I snipped the cordage holding it bundled together, leaving no trace of my passage and nothing of value behind. I slipped through the game trails and shady places by day, lurking in shadows and crept around their camp at night, luring in vermin with the lightest call of my aura. After that, natural hunger did my work for me.

  Just a small stripe drawn from the contents of my little clay pots of foul smelling stink-roach guts worked wonders. Aged to perfection and fermented into a rancid paste, a single leaf tainted with the stuff, dropped in the camp would draw the scuttling pests in from half a mile away. Thankfully, once stashed in my shadow, no one could smell it, the trick was not getting any on me.

  I haunted their every step, making their hunt an experience so miserable, even the goblins were grumbling audibly.

  /

  “That’s our last eunuch…” Drew muttered nervously, when his ritual finished and the little wretch screamed no more.

  “The gobbs will get restless if we sacrifice any of them.”

  “We’ll be eating goblin, if we don’t get back to civilization soon…” Portnoy mumbled angrily, once he was certain the captain was nowhere around. “No game in these hills at all.”

  /

  Chasing away all the wildlife that wasn’t awful was the easiest part of my day. The humans and their pet gobs reeked; not like sweaty, unbathed people… like an open sewer full of sweaty, unwashed animals. They were frankly a mess; loud, clumsy and clueless, so it required little effort to get the already skittish rabbits, deer and such to take flight.

  I let the gobbs see me occasionally at night, always when in my awful mudbug armor and only from a distance, which was hilarious.

  The little turds would rush to the nearest human, gibbering with fear and invariably receive a beating, which would wake the lucky few men not on watch, which those men appreciated greatly…

  I was having a grand time! They were super vigilant now, so I didn’t risk strolling into their muddy, reeking camp again, I just pulled the strings from the trees.

  The first goblin defections came the second night, two of the little brutes slipped away shortly after midnight, vanishing into the wilds silently. Since they both made tracks as directly away from the humans as possible, I let them go.

  The humans took that very poorly, since they were really cranky… For some unknown reason. They dispensed beatings and were generally even more insufferable, so they were soon left alone, save for the poor lone cat-girl slave, who the captain kept close to him at all times.

  She seemed to be trying to stay close to him, too, despite his sunny disposition.

  That led me to believe that the other humans were either worse, or just less predictably awful than the leader of the shitty and bedraggled group.

  I’d had a number of opportunities to sneak close to the poor slave, but her iron collar and chain stymied me. I couldn’t interact with them and she was unlikely to be silent, if approached by a wild gobb with a mug full of razors like me.

  So I waited and spied, enjoying the misery inflicted on the humans and regretting her suffering at my claws.

  I got a good look and sniff of each human over the next night, each smelled as vile, tainted and weirdly befouled as my would-be rapist had. Each had been touched by an uncanny, eldritch or foreign influence, twisting them into a new design, from an early age.

  Beneath my questing nose and third eye, the awful things they had done and the twisted delights they enjoyed smelled of rooting corpses under the sun, while a sickly miasma draped their auras in my sight.

  The captain I avoided, since he kept his slave shackled to him when he slept and I suspected she might be tough to sneak up on.

  Morning came and I listened to their constant complaints with real pleasure. Five humans remained, and the unfortunate cat-person. The men were all either sick with skeeter fever, itching all over from bug bites, crotch and foot fungus or barely mobile, due to dysentery. They had the whole ‘Oregon Trail’ going on and I was there for it, enjoying the show.

  The rank and file started getting even more obviously desperate and the leader looked like he was on the ragged edge. I began to get worried they’d hurt the slave in some irrational act, before they would turn around and give up.

  When they bedded down that night, cold, sick and hungry, I moved in on the lone guard posted by their campfire.

  Silent and quick, my macuahuitl ended his life in near silence. It was only a little louder than a green log popping in the fire… Cutting throats is not so easy nor quick, but an obsidian edged warclub to the base of the skull ends things with little noise.

  Sleeping in their bowers, they never had a chance. Three more lives dribbled out into the thirsty forest soil, renewing the land with their nutrients and fostering new growth… is what I would say, if pressed.

  Really, I just saw it as housekeeping, rather than ‘murder’ or anything like that. These ass-clowns were a threat to my home, hadn’t taken ‘fuck-off’ for an answer. One had even tried to unstopper my tender young bung with his pork-screw and decant me into the swamp.

  I felt kinda… not justified. I felt Just. As in Justice, like this was as it should be, in my realm. They ended quietly, cleanly… It was a series of executions, carried out under the law, dispassionate and meted out with swiftness and mercy. That was my decision, and I was king.

  One more interloper remained, one more invader, seeking to plunder my home. I crept closer with great care, slipping silently into the bower the captain slept under.

  Perhaps I was overconfident, or perhaps catgirls have ears and eyes keener than I suspected. She woke before I came within three feet, alerted by the scent of blood and brains on my club and spattered on my shins. That was an error on my part.

  Big, green and gold eyes opened, blazing a lambent blue under the stars, fixed on my position in the shadows, very nearby.

  “Shh! Ow!” I tried to shush her, a finger to my lips, but I forgot about my damn teeth. I sliced my lip and poked my finger, which was not ideal at all.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  Anyway, she let a short yawp of distress escape her lips and that brought the human up swinging.

  What kind of fool sleeps with an unsheathed dagger in his bedding? I ask you, seriously!

  Decklan, as I’d heard his men call him, was no rube. He kept his blade close and played it smart. My short, fan shaped war-club didn’t look threatening to the uninitiated, but could deal horrific wounds with even a glancing blow.

  Unfortunately for me, he had reach, mass, a steel blade and thick woolen under-armor padding, which would give him pretty good protection against my jagged blades.

  That was the rub, metal armor was largely proof against my stone weapons, but even the cloth padding was enough to turn and entangle my flint knives and obsidian spear. Steel would slip through the cloth with ease, but stone struggled there.

  I backed away, bleeding from my mouth and from a small scratch on my forearm where he’d grazed me in his initial flurry of slashes. “To arms!” He shouted into the night, while pursuing me, until the chain linking him to the terrified cat-girl brought him up short. “To arms! I am beset!”

  “Your men, they fell down and won’t rise…” I hissed through foaming blood and drool. “Not till they join the soil and enrich my lands… I am the goblin king, human. You stand before Ghnash Wharrgh, ruler of this land.” I decided to stay in character, since it worked last time.

  The man looked at me as though I were a mildly interesting bug he’d discovered and circled to the left, in a low crouch. Under the bower,I could move with ease, and he’d left his sword out of reach, over by the back of the nest.

  The cat-girl was a hissing, terrified mess, unable to do anything but back away from me as quickly as she could; cause, I’m awfully scary looking. She complicated his whole deal, without really helping me much, since she would spit and slash at me if I came in reach.

  We circled and paced in the small bower like that for a few seconds, until the human decided his men really weren’t coming. The man reached into his garments and withdrew something, not a weapon, a scrap of cloth. He carefully slipped it onto his head and pulled an orange crystal in front of his left eye, while keeping his knife pointed at me. He considered me through his lens for a moment. “Ah, it’s you, the swamp witch…” The man muttered, dragging the terrified slave between us, so his blade menaced us both. If it’s the cat you’re after… I’ll slaughter her first if you try anything! I’m sure you want to play with your food while she’s alive, warm and struggling, don’t you?” Decklan hissed.

  “I gave you many chances to flee, human. Now hunters are prey and the forest will grow stronger. Too bad, so sad.” I hissed, when he hesitated, his mind switching to thoughts of escape. It was written there in his eyes, plain to see. He’d decided I was a legitimate threat, for reasons of his own.

  “Leave the girl and fly away… If you run fast-fast, maybe you will escape.” I whispered, low and hungry sounding.

  My hunch paid off, when he grinned and started undoing the steel shackle on his wrist. “Enjoy her, goblin. I was done with her anyway.” He didn’t take his eyes off me for an instant, though.

  “Take the cat and good riddance.” He spat, as he clipped the end of the chain to a stout branch of the elderberry bush they camped beneath, a cruel smile on his handsome face.

  “A small sacrifice, for the Light.” He said, as he edged out of the low bush, his blade never wavering.

  I heard him crashing through the woods, headed for the lowlands, toward the nearest human town, sixty miles south.

  After a few seconds I sighed at the silent, terrified cat-girl chained under the tree. “I’m sorry, but could you scream, some, I mean really let it all out?” I whispered. “It’s pretty important.”

  Huge eyes, lost in abject terror stared back at me, unable to comprehend just how badly things had gone for her.

  “I didn’t think that would work…” I muttered sourly, biting my lip in my agitation. “Oh well… Go with what works.” I grumbled.

  I slipped out of the bower and vanished my armor, going full ‘goblin style’ which is to say, naked. I got a big mouthful of bloody drool slobbered up and stepped back inside, limp dick swinging. “Oogie Boogie.” I said flatly, and without enthusiasm.

  /

  Peltier listened to the cat scream and yowl for only a few seconds, before she fell silent. He’d hoped the beast would savage her for a while, but such is life. All too soon he was slipping and sliding across the wet hillsides, headed south and hoping that goblin would chew slowly. Though, with teeth like that, what choice did the filthy thing have.

  “Awful!” He muttered, as the swamp reeds closed around him.

  /

  After a few seconds of the poor girl’s mind shattering wail, I couldn’t bear it any more. My blowpipe ended her howl instantly, as the paralytic and soporific venom I’d been perfecting took hold. I felt awful for the moments of terror she suffered under my care, but it was the best I could manage.

  The damn chain remained troublesome, though. I could see how it was attached, where the simple lock was triggered and knew that it was a pathetic lock of shoddy craftsmanship… but it was as impossible as reaching up and plucking the stars from the sky.

  My stone axe hacked through the branch swiftly, then I used a few bamboo poles and some canvas from my shadow to make a simple travois. Before long, I was dragging the poor thing through the woods, headed for home.

  “That’s not meat.” Emmie announced very firmly, when I dragged the unconscious girl into the garden, four long hours and ten miles later.

  “Nub for eating, anyway.” She clarified a moment later. “We is nub that kind of tribe, husband.”

  The girl did look mostly dead, to be fair to my bride. I’d had to drug her once more, about an hour from home when she began to stir. The last thing I needed was a panicked, sharp clawed cat-woman slashing my hamstrings on a snowy hillside. On the other claw, I certainly didn’t want her to wake up tied down, in the hands of a strange goblin tribe.

  “She’s drugged, scared and dangerous… I’ll keep her downstairs, in workshop for now.” I mumbled, headed for the back door in the garden. I was too tired, stressed and agitated to consciously realize just how many new faces were clustered around for a peek at the cat-girl; I just shooed them all away.

  Except Saphie, who could go anywhere, anytime and followed me downstairs, piping softly in her panflute. “Stay back, dumpling. She’s scared and has claws.” I warned the little smiling runtie.

  “We all has claws, papa!” She answered, with a goblin kind of logic I had trouble finding fault in.

  “Stay back anyway.’ I murmured as she stirred slowly in her unnatural sleep. “Play your flute, softly… maybe will help.” Saphie and I sat quietly on the far end of the workshop, at my stonecutting bench; when she woke in our warm, snug nest by the kiln.

  The slow, sweet whisper of aimless melody Saphie kissed from her pipes was just darling, childlike and unstructured. It had as much in common with birdsong as with any musical form, but eased the transition from sleep to waking admirably.

  Sadly, waking in a goblin’s nest is a nightmare for anyone… With very few exceptions.

  “No one will hurt you.” I said very slowly and clearly, when she scrambled halfway up the wall behind the kiln, her tail bottle brushed in terror.

  I wore a robe and a simple veil, all in undyed swamp linen; hoping that clothes and not seeing the mess I had going on dentally would help the whole, ‘Terrifying Monster’ issue.

  It didn’t; or at least, the improvement was marginal. Somehow I went from ‘Terrifying Monster’ to ‘Unknown Abomination’ just like that. It was a lateral move at best.

  “Really, won’t hurt you, not in any way…. Really.” I insisted, which didn’t help at all.

  Finally, Saphie hopped down from my shoulder and stomped over to the trembling wreck of fur and claws. “Lookie here, kitty-girl.” She snapped, her sweet, high voice ringing on the rough stone walls.

  “King-papa has a bunch of girls to stuff outside, so he can’t spend all day with you… But I kin stay down here, so you won’t have to be scared no-more.” She whispered, while waving at me to go away.

  “Kitty-girl won’t hurt me.” She scolded her king, when I hesitated. “Scat!”

  In the face of the true ruler of the house, I retreated, feeling like I was always being bossed around by the women in my lives.

  I also noticed the witch, clambering down the ladder head first, her long, boney limbs bent in spidery ways that I found oddly comforting. She reminded me slightly of a spider I knew. Until she spoke.

  “I will watch over your child and this unfortunate, Ghnash Wha’rrgh. Go attend your real duties up in your nest.” She always sounded like she was casting an evil spell, even when passing the honey crock at tea.

  I emerged in the house through the trapdoor, which shouldn’t exist, into a warm, cozy world of divine and sublime aromas. I was tired, sore, barely able to see in the bright morning light pouring through the barely open door, where at least one more girl waited, an eager, hungry look in her eyes as she peeked in.

  “Hi, I’m Lapis, this is Alba; she’s shy… It’s her first tummytime.” The more gregarious girl cooed warmly when she saw me emerge from the hatch.

  Alba and Lapis were both slim, almost skinny, with little in the way of curves. Pale, almost white tinted green, Alba’s long, pink hair drifted over her shoulders, barely reaching her modest bosom. Her long, lean legs and divine hips gave me shivers, when she smiled shyly, curled up at the far edge of the nest, hugging her knees.

  Lapis’ skin was dark green with a gray cast, but just as long and lean as her friend, at almost four feet tall. With dark green hair and a bright, eager smile. She carried a little more boob and butt than her friend and carried herself more confidently in the face of a male goblin she hadn’t actually met before…

  Not that I was that knowledgeable about the home lives of other gobbs. I got the impression that my little tribe was an oddity in any number of ways.

  “I’m Ghnash… I guess you are waiting for me?” I muttered, shifting uncomfortably in my homespun loincloth.

  “Oh… He really talks first? He’s kinda just like a girl!” Lapis gasped excitedly at her nervous friend. “He’s hardly scary at all, when he talks!” She hugged her pale comrade and rocked her back and forth a few times, purring and cooing. “Just think of it like when we diddle each-other… but with one more girl… a super weird girl!”

  “Dunno ‘bout bein called girl…” I grumbled a little, while struggling to hide my smile of delight at her antics.

  “Hush up, goblin! She’s scared!” She grumbled at me right back. “Alba’s my pillow-pal, nub yours. She’s shy and far from home… We just need your dick for a while, ‘til we can drink the tea again.”

  “If scared, is okie. Nub will force.” I managed, it was pretty hard. Super hard, in a whole bunch of ways… ‘cause of the sweet scent drifting from the two.

  “Nub, you gotta force Alba some, she needs it so bad she can’t stop squirming all night but is scared.” Lapis said with a smile.

  “I’ll hold her down, you concentrate on not hurting her.” She announced firmly, while her friend curled up in an even smaller ball in the corner of my nest. “Emmie promised you would smush her careful-like.”

  “Nub like that!” I got up and left the nest, headed out the door and stopped, just before I finished putting on the goggles I’d stolen from an encampment at some point.

  Seeing the gobbs wear them on the march so many times, while I was squinting behind a blindfold and shady hat, under a bush, it finally hit me. I could wear them, too. And I had some tucked away.

  I was getting used to things like that hitting me in the face, once the idea had time to percolate.

  “Wait goblin! You gotta stick her!” Lapis complained, while I got the leather and smoky crystal lenses in place with just a little fumbling. I couldn’t really see, mostly vague shapes and such, but the light level was tolerable. It was better than wearing a bucket on my head, over a blindfold.

  “Nub, I don’t have to. Is Ghnash’s babystick, I says where it goes.” I smiled at the girl curled up on the nest.

  “You wanna get smushed? Fine, bend over, look back and smile! Til you do that, you is safe in Ghnash’s home.” It would have been cool to get all that out without spilling any of my own blood at the same time… Goblin life.

  I pinched my lip back together and sighed on the way to find Emmie, since my volunteer who was waiting outside had fled during the quarrel. And they smelled so good, too!

  “Did your smoosh Alba and Lapis?” She asked, when I appeared and seemed too energetic to have been properly ridden by even one horny goblin.

  “Nub. Is complicated.” I answered, as diplomatically as I could while holding my lip together.

  “Ah, the politics of smoosh.” She nodded sagely and grinned. “What about Sable? Did she play mouth stuff with you at least? She said she wanted to try it, before her tummytime starts up again.” Emmie smiled winsomely and sighed. “She wants to ‘get to know you’ first… is weird, but why not? Plenty to go around!”

  “Dark gray girl? Nub, she left while arguing.” She smiled a little hungrily and licked her lips when I said that.

  “Arguing, nub smooshing? So Ghnash still full up?” Her grabby little claws pulled me into a bamboo thicket we visited often, leaving my homespuns dangling on a stalk, indicating private time.

  The southern regions were occupied and closed to me, but her wildly swinging hormones and real, honest passion for me set her ablaze. Her whole body writhed and coiled around me as she tried to get me just everywhere, all the time, which was even more exciting, since I couldn’t see.

  “Nub wanna know what argued over with girls?” I asked, while Emmie pawed at me and giggled eagerly.

  “Nub-nub. Goblins argue. If they run away from chief’s babystick, is just more for me.” She cooed warmly. “They’ll come for dick or wait for the tea.”

  She didn’t get up to her usual tricks, however. She just kept rubbing, kissing, licking, snuffling and caressing me all over for a long time, driving me to a trembling and unsustainable crescendo. “Emmie? Is all okie?” I gasped, when my eyes wouldn’t uncross anymore behind the damn goggles.

  “Is okie! Hold on!” When two more hands joined the party, I tried to look, but my eyes were unable to focus. I panicked for a moment, until I remembered I was wearing those damn goggles. A deep sniff revealed that my new friend was the gray, muscular girl who had been lurking by the door. I’d caught her scent as I left the house, lingering on the breeze. “Who? Sagle?” I botched her name, but I was pretty close.

  “Yub, Sable’s here! Her tummytime hasn’t started back up yet, so no smushing her for a couple days. You’ll hurt her bad! She’s just here to play and get to know you.” My irrepressible munchkin purred.

  “Now hold still!” She draped a rabbit pelt over my face and wriggled my goggles off, leaving me fully blind and much more comfortable. What followed was too delightful to describe, but let’s just say, if two goblin girls want to blindfold you and ‘play’ let them. You’re in for the time of your life.

  They left me there, completely wrecked, with a shady bower woven above me by clever goblin fingers, protecting me from the sun as I slept, a few of my furs from the nest laid over me.

  When I woke, Emmie was curled up beside me, with Alba of all people on the other side, hugging my arm tight under the furs. Both girls whined a little when I wriggled free of their entangling limbs, but they soon huddled together and forgot all about me.

  /