Fate Deals the Cards

  Temperance Ch 4

  Running Up That Hill

  In the misty moorlands, a few miles from a line of low, gray hills shrouded in deep fog, I stumbled out into the night. Owls hooted in the distance, praising the god of Beasts for a successful hunt. Bats chirped and spun, singing their song in perfect harmony with their prey; everything in balance, all was in complete and chaotically organized, natural order. Worms digested the leaf litter, remains of the prey and in due time, even, I supposed the top of the food chain, would feed the conqueror worm, someday...

  But not apparently, today. I stepped to the right, letting the spear point slip past my chest. It was simple, a rounded pole, crudely sharpened and hardened in a fire. The hands that wielded it were skilled, I sensed that in the way they moved, graceful, forceful and without hesitation.

  I had no memory of studying the martial arts, like most of the rest of my new skills, it came with practiced confidence.

  My knuckles flashed out, rocking the over-extended goblin warrior for a loop, with his jaw hanging in an unhealthy way. He hadn’t expected my move, or my swift, aggressive reply… that cost him dearly.

  By the time I’d patrolled the area and decided he was alone, he had choked to death on his own drool and vomit.

  Aside from his simple sharpened stick, he had nothing, just his bare ass. I followed his meandering back-trail for a while, but he crossed and re-crossed himself; it was impossible to figure out where he’d come from.

  A storm rolled in, windy and wild that morning, making travel by day both better and worse. I was all but naked, carrying only my new spear, tipped with an obsidian dagger one of the raiders wouldn’t be needing anymore.

  I had more goods, painstakingly collected, processed and crafted as I stalked the wilds, searching for my lost family. In this warm, ear shattering thunderstorm, I walked bare, embracing nature’s fury into my own heart as I walked.

  That was the key, I’d discovered, slowly and surely, with each new dawn. Magic drifted all around, unseen and unfelt by the unschooled. Only sentient and directed Will could move the magic in any way. The stronger and more disciplined the Will, the stronger the effect one could elicit. Subtle was the watchword, in every way.

  My will could slowly and surely influence the world around me, but if another being looked, it would unspool immediately.

  I began by slowly using my directed and intentional Will to pull a dry leaf toward me, from a few inches away. Simple! Until a songbird landed in a bush nearby and peered at my moving leaf, hoping to find a snack. The snap of my Will being rejected by the tiny mind of the creature was humbling, but informative.

  I played with that as I traveled, hunted and gathered my way around the lowlands, searching for clues to where Rache had gone.

  Three days later and many miles from where I’d last seen the girls, I smelled smoke on the wind. Distant, faint and kinda stinky, but smoke nonetheless. Among the low hills, a faint smudge of smoke lingered, hinting at a town, perhaps.

  I moved carefully, slipping through the darkened woods by bright starlight and by day, peering through a slitted visor I’d fashioned to protect my eyes from the blazing light of day.

  A half dozen low bowers of leaves and sticks squatted among a cluster of bare thornbushes, nestled between two stony hills. Small figures scurried in the wetlands and woodlands in the narrow valley, around a thin but swift moving stream of clear water. I kept my distance, watching and sniffing the wind, hoping my keen nose would find some scent of Rache.

  The people moving among the trees and bushes by day were all goblin women and children, gaunt, filthy, naked and all but empty handed. They scrounged for worms, roots, nuts, bugs and berries, operating in small family groups.

  I learned a lot, spying on those primitive huts among the thornbushes. No male gobbs moved by day, it was too bright on all but the darkest, most tempestuous days, when no-gob would be abroad anyway.

  The females and children were only active by day, doing their best to remain in the shade, underbrush or dim places, as they went about their lives.

  Furtive and sly, they fled fast at the first hint of any male goblin. I felt like chasing them would result in way more trouble than info, so I stuck to creeping around and spying on the small village among the hills.

  I searched those wetlands and the low hills for most of a week, learning about goblin society… as much as it existed. I came away unimpressed, to say the least. Settlements were widely scattered, primitive beyond belief and little better than animals, culturally. I avoided the few rude collections of huts I encountered after the first time.

  The strong oppressed the weak in any way they wished, at all times and for any purpose. Goblin women and children got the worst and the least of everything, of course, while goons like me were on a gravy train to biscuit town.

  Only the women were worth conversing with and then, only at the risk of sparking a fight with whatever other male might be nearby.

  On the rare occasions I found myself speaking with a goblin woman it was super depressing. Even suggesting the idea of anything resembling a civil society left them puzzled and upset.

  Two days later a troop of relatively organized goblins strolled into town and then strolled out, leading a long line of green women and children, tied at the neck and wrists to each-other in a long chain with rawhide thongs.

  Rache wasn’t among them, but this was the first sign of anything organized I’d seen.

  Organized was a relative term. The leader was the biggest gobb, with the biggest stick. He used that stick with impunity and frequency, on his lackeys and the slaves, whenever he liked, which was often. His men were just as bad, brutish and wanton. They stuck close together in a group, largely ignoring their prisoners, who did what they could to scrounge for worms in the dirt when they stopped by day.

  Once in a while, the boss would scream and beat his men, until a few would break off to roam the nearby area, before coming back and hiding in their camp.

  I followed that trail, avoiding patrolling goblins in threes and fours, never alone. They didn’t really ‘march’ they just ambled along, making lots of noise and moving in a tight cluster, with the unfortunate captives stringing out behind. The idea seemed to be aimed at frightening predators and competitors with bluster and noise, while remaining ready to flee at a moment’s notice. Only the leader’s stick kept them in ‘line’ at all.

  The prisoners they treated with less than contempt. Any petty cruelty was allowed; save the gobb men never tried for a fumble with any of the women, not even a little.

  A distant memory, or something less substantial slid through my mind, as I watched from a treetop, nearby.

  ‘Goblin men possess an extreme and terrifyingly unpredictable reproductive cycle. A female in estrus can create chaos for miles, in their native habitat…’ The lecturing voice in my mind was warm, sweet and somehow, golden. I smiled, thinking of that kind and beloved… who?

  I shook away my daydreams, as the wretched parade began moving again at sundown. Three days I followed that miserable little caravan, all the way to a stone keep, in the mountains above the marshy valley.

  Iron bound gates of hewn logs swung open, dragged by brutish, gray skinned humanoid creatures. Ogres, my unseen old self offered helpfully. Neutered ogre slaves, judging by the chains, collars and scarred, hacked off nethers.

  Human men in shining steel armor moved on the ramparts, sneering, slovenly men with cruel eyes and the sigil of a radiant sun disk on their spotless tabards. A vast swarm of miserable goblin slaves labored all around, working at the simplest crafts and scrounging. Other people roamed around the town too, lean and ragged folk with fur, bunny ears, wolf tails or bear muzzles. Beastfolk, men with the aspect of animals, but the minds of sentient beings. Any anime fan knew that, even without any occult guidance from old me.

  The goblin band stopped outside the gate and surrendered their string of slaves to a goblin wearing a rawhide apron and bearing a whip. He lashed the erstwhile guards savagely, driving them back out into the wilds with curses and insults. The pitiable slaves he lashed and kicked into the compound, while the men on the wall leaned on their spears and gossipped.

  I never found a sign of Rache, Sheela or even Keerie; nor learned where they’d run from, not after long weeks of searching.

  Dozens of those keeps dotted the wide, boggy valley each one extracting slaves by the hundreds every week. Of most of those wretches, there was no sign once they entered the gates.

  Likewise, legions of naked, slavering gobbs would assemble from time to time, drawn together by promises of food, females and of course, dragged along by force. They would stampede in, each few dozen led by a troll or ogre and they would never emerge again, once the human templars closed the gate.

  I learned to avoid the men in steel armor and their swords… but they never left their towns, save in force, to punish some goblin chief for not providing enough slaves. I had the distinct feeling that once, I would have hurled myself at those shifty ass slavers and let the chips fall where they may… Old me was kinda an idiot, I suspected.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  I withdrew, once I decided that there was little hope… How would I explain not being dead, after the poor thing watched over me as I kicked out my last? Mostly I think I just couldn’t bear to learn their fate. Not knowing was a burning ache, but I suspected…

  I say I withdrew, by that, I entirely abandoned any thought of society, finding solace in the deep bogs where wild gobb men hardly roamed.

  There, among the trackless mires and empty swamps I learned more secrets, uncovering arts and crafts unknown to my kin.

  I wore the shells of giant crayfish, shaped and hardened into armor that protected me and terrified goblin men beyond reason.

  My stone blades, spears and arrows bit deep, when hunters encroached on my territory, deep in the wastes. I dwelt in trees, bowers and caves, never sleeping in the same place twice, stalking my vast realm in search of the next clue to the underpinnings of this world.

  I found much of worth in the storms and tempests that scoured the marsh in late summer. In the mornings I learned the lessons of stillness and deep thought, before daylight came calling with bouquets of flowers, delicious, medicinal or deadly. Fungus, algae, water weeds and the moss draped from high boughs… They all held secrets, subtle clues and hints that led me to my next logical step.

  I hummed and whistled softly, as I worked on a cluster of bamboo rods, joined at the bottom in a slot carved in a long, curving rib bone from a swamp bison. My tiny, obsidian flake scratched softly as I carved an almost endless, looping line of script into the aged bone.

  If my Will could manipulate the world, I could manipulate myself a tool, to make things more efficient. Each word I scratched into that bone held a distinct thought or idea, linked to the next in a looping, endless spiral of intent, written in song lyrics from a hundred tunes, from number-ones to deep cuts.

  “I’ll call you, ‘Pipes of Stillwater’... I’m such a nerd.” I whispered softly, as I finished the last line and felt something ineffable, but very real, become active in my hand.

  The simple panflute came to my lips slowly, hesitantly. I hadn’t really allowed myself to make music, since landing here, beyond birdcalls and the occasional short snippet of something catchy, whistled in an idle moment.

  My first note squealed abominably, of course. My ragged lips were scarred and misshapen, pulled into a ravenous, angry sneer by my tusks and fangs. It took some time and effort to gently kiss real notes from my creation, but it was worth it.

  Sweet, clear and piercing, my song of wild, half mis-remembered Andean folk music from farmer’s markets in my old life soared into the clear, daylit sky. I wandered around the chromatics, playing with melody and harmony in the sunshine, without a thought in my head for at least an hour of blissful stupidity.

  When I let the music drift away, I had to rub my big, watery eyes a few times and then give myself a pinch. Just a few steps away, a tall house stood. Timber built and rustic, it had a roof of crude clay tiles and windows paned with thin scraped rawhide.

  Flowering vines surrounded the rubble stone foundation and climbed the walls in places. A chimney of river stones puffed a thin stream of smoke into the sky, beside a tall column of steam, rising from somewhere behind the rustic, humble, inviting and deeply familiar, strange little house.

  It was the inn from his dreams, manifested in primitive materials and humble arts, but it was the same damn house, scaled for a goblin man. No raucous, friendly family of tall, smiling humans greeted me, as I stepped into the foyer, through a door of wooden planks, pegged together without nails, hinges or metal of any kind.

  In the kitchen, all was of stone or wood, from the simple stone hearth, oven and stove, to the furniture and fixtures. No metal of any kind, nor glass, refined minerals, planed lumber or complex workings existed in the house. Likewise, I was alone, profoundly and deeply alone, this place was empty in a way I felt my dream home had not been, in a long time.

  “Wild!” I whispered, speaking aloud for the first time in days. The sound startled me, breaking my reverie. I slowly and carefully explored the house, knowing what would lie behind each door and passage, before ever I opened or looked.

  I saved the workshop for last, slipping out to the baths, hoping I would find those dimly remembered pools of hot, steaming water. I splashed down into the stone ringed hot-spring, floating in blissful peace at last. It was just as I had dreamt it, hot, soothing, cleansing and utterly tranquil… but I was alone still.

  Goblins do not bathe… ever. They hold, as a race, a deeply rooted terror of any water more than ankle deep or whose bottom could not be seen.

  Crayfish were the answer. That nerd lurking in the back of my damaged mind made with the info, not exactly whispering the knowledge into my skull.

  Something about goblin pheromones or biology was simply catnip to crayfish, crabs, lobsters, spiders and all the other carapaced crawlers in that very large, very predatory group. We were just delicious and irresistible to the things.

  Any-gob who fell in the marsh was unlikely to escape, even if there were no pythons, gators, piranha, crocks, gar, giant fish, bull-sharks… You see where this is going. Life is perilous for a goblin, one needed to keep one’s wits.

  That was also my superpower. A clean goblin could walk unseen at the edges of a town, invisible by virtue of smelling unremarkable. Like a cloak of invisibility, I smelled like my surroundings, since they all stank to the heavens above, all the time.

  Likewise, I wasn’t a real goblin, so crayfish and such noticed me, but no more than any other warm blooded, possible meal. I suspected some subtle magic at work as well, something that erased my presence from the attention of the unwary. Wildlife and goblins just failed to detect me regularly.

  I’d done some experimenting with that and I could definitely affect the giant skeeters, either repelling or attracting them, by focusing my Will and sending ‘vibes’ into my aura. If I manifested the idea that I was really a lurking spider, or hungry giant mantis, the skeeters would avoid me like they owed me money.

  Their tiny minds bent to my focused Will, not by force, but through deception. If I opened myself to the night, they would flock in, drawn by my inattentive and relaxed aura, to devour me.

  I mused on that, while the native wards of my soul home kept those bugs out, excluding them from my domain in the wetlands.

  I could feel it, in every fiber of my being, this place was mine on some fundamental levels. I could manifest my Will here in ways impossible outside, where ‘reality’ held sway. Here, I could create simple objects or dismiss them, rearrange the house, dismiss the entire thing, leaving empty ground behind. In the same way, I could raise it again wherever I wished, so long as there was space and time to enact the musical ritual, unseen by others.

  A simple robe of soft, felted cloth fell over my shoulders as I left the bath, headed for the stairs down into the foundation. The fabric was homespun and coarse, but softer than anything I’d yet managed to create. Manifested of shadows and mist, it would vanish at my whim, or if I left the grounds. Until then, it was warm, cozy enough and comforting after weeks wandering the bush mostly naked.

  I descended the stairs, my bare, green, taloned feet silent on the smooth flagstones. I looked out on the place I’d seen so often in my dreams, almost more than every other place in the whole home combined. This is where my old self had truly lived and thrived, until he died in an unremembered violent event.

  Rage, lust for vengeance and just plain old lust mingled in my belly, as I looked out into the funhouse mirror image of that familiar workshop.

  My tools were all there… kinda-sorta. The lathe was a simple springpole number, the kind knocked together at renaissance festivals to impress the tourists with some quick handicrafts. Functional, but not the iron monster I remembered from my dreams.

  The forge was little more than a fire pit and bellows beside a primitive kiln, potter’s wheel and a stonecutter’s workbench… Fred Flintstone’s workbench. Stone hammers, wooden and stone wedges, primitive polishing and grinding tools, it was pretty grim.

  The woodworker’s bench was a little better. Every woodworker made tools, jigs, helpers and trinkets from scrap lumber every day and I had been a luthier’s apprentice, until I died. It felt really distant, that life, beyond the ragged scraps who I had been in between, but lumber was still my jam.

  The complete absence of metal and glass in the house was noticeable though; there was something going on there. That would require some slow and careful experimentation to figure out, but I had little besides time on my hands, in my isolated, moorland.

  I hunted and fished, studied my prey and their parts, along with their environment, diligently seeking more of those subtle hits and clues. Slowly my power grew, through meditation, contemplation and plain ‘ol experimentation.

  I could create ephemeral, but solid and real seeming objects on my grounds, wherever the house stood… But such goods were no more advanced or refined than what I could make with my two hands and the materials I had stowed away. Likewise, they would vanish in a gust of sweet smelling smoke at the edge of my domain. Conjured knives were of flint, obsidian jade or other simple materials, though they cut as fine and clean as my ‘real’ knife.

  They could not, however, do any harm to a living thing. I tried butchering a captured bog-rat with one of my imaginary tools, only for the blade to puff out of existence a scant hair’s breadth before it pierced the aquatic, naked mole-rat’s skin. Further experimentation proved it, even in the heart of my domain, any living being’s Animus was strong enough to dispel my conjurations harmlessly.

  I caught several more of the tasty little molerats alive, to experiment on the limits of my powers. I could fashion cages and pens, which worked, but ropes, collars or other restraints vanished away at the poor creatures’ first serious attempt to escape. Once slain with a proper tool, my conjured blades worked just as expected on the little critters.

  I munched on a sweet, tender mole-rat leg, while contemplating my next steps snug under my roof as autumn closed in.

  No male wandering gobbs had intruded in several weeks now, leaving me untroubled in my private, misty realm, far in the deepest swamps. The tribless males drifted and roamed endlessly, slaughtering each-other when they met, and studiously avoiding the more organized patrols of slave raiders, roaming the wetlands, seeking unwary gobbs to snatch up.

  They seemed to be avoiding my turf, as none who entered left without an encounter with the terrifying ‘pinch monster that walks on land’ and the awful skirling music in that haunted bog.

  I giggled and capered in the clearing, while ten goblins milled about in confusion at the terrible thing before them. I wore a full suit of crayfish chitin armor, on fishskin straps, reinforced with wood and bone, covering me from the crown of my head to my taloned toes. Not a hint of green skin showed, save for around my awful, ravenous pinch-monster mask.

  I played my panpipes in minor keys, shrilling rage and fear into them from the rank, grassy clearing until they couldn’t take it any more.

  Watching the last member of the small raiding party scamper back the way they had come was deeply pleasant, but the lone goblin female they had been tracking fled in squealing terror, clutching her tiny babe close, at her first hint of my presence.

  Her panicked flight through the darkened swamp terrified me as much as her. She leapt over bottomless mires, narrowly avoided deep pools of lurking crawdaddies and gators then vanished in the scrub, still flying at top speed the whole way.

  I trailed her discreetly, in silence through my familiar territory, until she collapsed beneath a rotted cypress log, curled around her child in the dark. When she woke, the small pile of foodstuffs and full waterskin beside her make-shift bed frightened her just as thoroughly as my appearance had, when I’d frightened away her pursuers the night before. She fled again, leaving the things behind, in her mindless panic, to vanish among the reeds and trees at my far border.

  So it went until winter closed its fist on the moorlands, stilling the world beneath snow, ice and chill winds that cut to the bone. Summer and winter passed a few times, out on the lonely moors among the deep, swift channels and sucking bogs, I don’t know how many…

  On a low mound of soil, surrounded by deep quagmires, almost frozen water channels and still, murky ponds I settle in to stay for the winter, too far from any settlement or passable trail for any-gob to find my comfortable, quiet little home, squatting among the reeds, willow trees and thorn bushes. The column of steam from my hot-spring diminished, as I used my Will to cool the waters in the outside pool. The indoor baths remained a steamy, warm treasure that made the long winter days of blinding snow and reflected sunlight bearable.

  By night, the frozen swamp was an entirely different place, so still and quiet, as all creation held its breath, awaiting spring. Every gulp of a catfish at the surface resounded across the silent moors, just as every birdcall drifted forever, ringing like a temple bell, calling the faithful to prayer.

  I was sitting on a stone in my garden, idly working on a simple lyre with little success. The wood work was fine, smooth, gracefully arched and nicely resonant, lacquered with a mixture of boiled down crawdadie chitin and connective tissue and tree sap. My simple wooden tuning pegs were nicely snug, everything was ready, but my crude gut strings refused to co-operate.

  Even in mid-winter, the swamp was too damp and humid, the strings stretched and refused to stay in anything like tune, then broke, every time. My summertime experiments had been just as dissappointing, ending with mouldy, useless wads of slightly damp trash, rather than usable strings.

  When my sad, sour and muted lyre fell silent, I heard a familiar sound, echoing across the moors; the cry of a child in hunger and discomfort. Soft, almost a whisper, swiftly hushed by a quiet hiss of fear.

  My keen, silence tuned ears caught the sound, just before a zephyr of cold wind brought me the scent of a goblin woman, a child… and something I hadn’t smelled before. It was faint, sweet and made me… hungry, just a little.

  /