Booth was the only one of the four to argue against dealing with the Lothians. To add insult to injury, he was the best negotiator, so he had to be the one that spoke to them while the others sat in silence, looking as uncomfortable as their chairs were intended to make them feel.

Around them, the Field Headquarters tent was stereotypical Lothian, spare and efficient, as was the man that sat behind the desk opposite Booth.

He'd introduced himself as Major Prawl, given them a rote expression of gratitude for taking up his invitation, and went right into business. His hair, silvery gray in contradiction to his apparently young age, was still quite thick; he kept it brushed efficiently back over his square-jawed head.

"I'd imagine you'd have a degree of curiosity about a number of things," he said, in an unremarkable but clear voice. "However, I intend for the amount I'm offering your group to ameliorate any question you'd have about our motivations."

Booth shrugged. It wasn't like he'd expected a Lothian to be effusive. In their society, conversation followed a pattern of 'here is your task, do it, yessir.'

Prawl unrolled a map and pointed at some of the shapes. "There's an old keep on this hill, just southwest of our camp. Our scouts tell me it's infested with goblins. I need it cleared out."

"Simple enough," replied Booth. Too simple. A couple of Prawl's squads could handle a few goblins.

"May I be presumptive enough to ask why? I'd like to know if we're to avoid damaging anything besides the goblins."

"That would be presumptive of you, but... I wish to establish a command post there. Don't worry about damaging anything; I doubt the four of you will be employing any onagers."

"Of course not; we find trebuchets much more effective."

The Major raised an eyebrow in a deadpan expression. Humor impacted Lothians the way a light breeze might sway a mountain.

Booth cleared his throat. "May I ask why you need us for the task, when you have so many soldiers at your disposal?"

"You may ask all you'd like, but don't expect an answer; in doing so I might give you information useful to our adversaries. Suffice it to say that I don't want my men up there. Until you've done your part, of course."

Booth tried to read Prawl's muddy brown eyes, and got nothing. "Well, will you at least indulge me with some answers to some tactical questions?"

"My adjutant can serve that purpose." The Major nodded toward a lean, sloe-eyed officer standing in the corner of the tent. "That must mean you're willing to take the job."

Booth held a hand up. "I wanted to get a better picture of what we'd be up against before giving you that answer. I can't agree to any payment we'd be too dead to collect."

He expected that answer to annoy Prawl, but instead the Lothian gave a quick, head-lunging nod and waved his hand toward the adjutant. "As you wish. Just don't take too long. If you're not the group I'm looking for, I need to continue my search as soon as possible."

* * *

"Thorold's stones, Booth! What was all that about?"

Chambard was half a head taller than Booth, but then again he was half a head taller than most. If this group had a leader, it was the proud Gammon warrior. He certainly looked the part, with his azure eyes, flowing hair, lantern jaw, and perfect teeth.

"Yeah, Booth. We could have had that toast a lot sooner." That was Scones, who never met a drink he didn't like. "That was some of the best wine I've ever tasted, and you made me wait for it."

Booth hazarded a look over his shoulder at Prawl's tent before responding. At the distance they were at, it would have taken magic to hear them now; the type of magic better suited to the Elven Triads than the Lothians.

"Gentlemen, I appreciate a good payday as much as the rest of you, but didn't it strike you as odd that they'd hire us to go in and chop up a few goblins? I'd imagine a Lothian soldier is more than a match for three or four of them."

Scones answered before Chambard had a chance. "The man said the gold should clear up any of those questions, and it does for me. Don't overthink an easy bag of coins, Booth. If we waited around for the perfect job, we'd starve to death."

"Pfft. We'd eat," said Wolter the Archer. He was a man of few words, but they were well chosen when he used them. "I can put an arrow through a hummingbird at fifty paces. But he's right, Booth. We can afford to be more selective about our work when our reputation precedes us."

"Hmmph. Well, we took the job, didn't we? So what are the three of you all bent up about?"

"Making me wait for the wine, of course," repeated Scones.

"Right, and didn't that make any of you..." Booth let the sentence go unfinished after looking at the rest of the party. He could tell that the fact that a Lothian had any sort of wine, let alone good wine, wasn't going to be something they wasted any energy wondering about.

* * *

Booth was glad to leave the Lothian camp, even if it meant they had an hour's walk to skirt the massive refugee camp that had grown along the main road to Fenburg, the nearest town.

To avoid the refugees, they had to walk alongside the Lothian field fortifications. None of them considered it wise to spend five minutes under the stony gaze of archers who wouldn't mind a little target practice to break up the boredom, but it was a necessity.

They'd tried to use the main road on the way in. Scones, who at heart was a people person, had made the mistake of giving a coin to a particularly pathetic looking child with a club foot and an eye that was completely swollen shut. For his generosity, the entire party had been rewarded with a pressing wave of humanity, all convinced that these were people who could be persuaded to part with another coin.

"And that," said Wolter, as they hastily retreated from the swarm of outstretched arms, "is why you must be judicious with your generosity. Unless, of course, you have a coin for every one of them."

None of them debated taking the long way around to get out of the Lothian camp.

Even at a distance, the smell hammered at them, a living thing that not only crawled into their nostrils but assaulted every pore of their bodies. They had to watch their footing to keep from slipping in the muck that flowed out of the mass of humanity, a thought made all the more unpleasant by the fact that it hadn't rained in over a week.

"What is with all those people, anyway?" asked Scones.

Booth didn't understand that the question was probably rhetorical. "They're from Kestring. The Lothians took their land under the pretense of needing a buffer between Gadrung and themselves. They weren't a warlike country; it was inevitable that one of the two kingdoms would annex it. Some of the younger Kestringers, unreasonable as youth can be, felt that because they weren't warlike, they deserved to be left uninvolved. They almost immediately began to resist."

"Oh, like an insurrection? I thought they weren't warlike."

"No, something much different. Very polite. They'd mass themselves in a marketplace, or a mine that supplied iron to the Lothians, and just sit down. They didn't push anybody, or accost any miners. They'd just be sitting in their way."

"What did that do?"

"Well, for one thing, it withered the commerce that made the region so attractive to the Lothians in the first place. Soldiers would clear them out, and jail the leaders, but the next day even more of them would be sitting in their way."
"Did they kill any of 'em? That would have discouraged some folks."

"No, that's where it gets complicated. Too many eyes were on what was going on there; because Kestring was peaceful, a lot of people of other nationalities lived there. The Lothians have a well-trained army, but it's pretty small. They could fend off an invasion from Gadrung. But if other nations aligned against them, probably not. They found themselves in a position where international opinion mattered."

"So how'd they get all these people to flee and come here?"

"A plague started making its way through the population. Then wildfires in the hills, which wiped out a lot of homes and left the ground bare, so when the spring rains came, mudslides swept through the countryside and wiped out more homes."

"One catastrophe after another."

"Right. Catastrophes that could have happened by themselves, or, if you believe in the darker side of humanity, ones that could have been manmade."

* * *

The gates of Fenburg were shut in stony defiance to any refugees hoping for mercy, but Booth's party didn't have to dodge warning shots or respond to verbal challenges. No refugee would have visible weapons and armor. If one was lucky enough to have a weapon, or really anything of value to the merchants inside, they'd probably be let in to do business.

The guards at the gate must have been fairly new, because they only required a token bribe.

Inside the town wall, conditions weren't much better than they were outside of it. The smell of the refugee camp was fainter, to be sure, but it was still present. The burghers, for the most part, barely had more money than the refugees outside. It didn't have much in the way of merchants or artisans, but at least there was an inn with an available room.

It was in this room, poorly lit by a pair of rancid-smelling tallow candles, that they discussed the coming day's work. Booth, trying to draw the layout of the keep on the bare planks of the floor with a piece of charcoal, couldn't concentrate. "Why is it so much for just a bunch of goblins?"

Chambard, who had every right to rebuke Booth for his continued complaints, didn't. "You're really bothered by this, aren't you?"

"It's one thing for them to offer us twenty-five Lothian Crowns each. I mean … what would we need to kill to earn that kind of money? Minotaurs? Beyond that: there's got to be at least two legions stationed at that camp. That's over seven thousand men. They need to hire four mercenaries, when probably six thousand of the men in their camp are just sitting around, waiting for the next order to march? And what was with that toast Prawl gave us? Have you known Lothians to ever offer any gesture of gratitude beyond a purse of coins? What's so damned important about that keep? Command Post? Lothians always command out of their tents; their officers take pride in living conditions as sparse as those of their men."

Chambard didn't answer until Booth finished. "So, because of your misgivings, you'd recommend we'd… what? Walk away from enough money to buy mounts?"

Booth held out his arms. "I don't know."

Wolter set down an arrowhead he'd been sharpening. "Shall we look at this issue from the other end?"

Booth and Chambard both turned to the archer.

"Consider me a Lothian Commander. I've hired four men to kill some goblins. Maybe I'm some sort of sick pervert that wants horrible things to happen to these four. How's that going to come about as a result of this mission?"

Chambard, despite being squarely in the camp of doing the job and earning the money, still ventured a guess. He liked riddles, after all. "Perhaps the keep in question has no goblins in it, but a maniple of Lothian soldiers waiting to ambush us?" He shook his head. "Of course, we were in the Lothian camp, and they could have neatly disposed of us right then and there."

Booth considered the archer's words, even more unhappy at the sense they made. "That's what I hate about this whole thing," he said, looking at the floor, idly etching sets of lines with the charcoal. "There's no reason not to do it."

* * *

There was no point in waiting for the cover of darkness. Goblin night vision was far superior to that of humans, and they had no discernible circadian rhythm. Instead, the group rose at dawn, ate a light breakfast, and walked right out the front gate of Fenburg. The guards were too apathetic to even ask for an exit tax.

The plan, devised by Chambard and Wolter, was simple enough. There was sufficient vegetation around the old keep to allow them cover. Chambard and Wolter would scale the wall at one corner, near the tower, while Booth and Scones scaled the other. If either pair was detected, the other could take advantage of the diversion. As long as nobody was trapped in a dead end, or in a position where goblins could get above them, they'd be able to fight their way out.

The Lothian adjutant had told them to expect two clan groups, which only meant eight to ten fighting adults. The whole operation should be over before midday. After removing a sufficient number of right ears, and salvaging what they could, the party would return to Fenburg to meet the courier that would deliver the balance of their payment.

Easy money.

Goblins weren't especially fond of bright sunlight, so it surprised Booth to see one stationed on the keep's curtain wall about twenty paces from where they'd intended to scale it. Scones wasn't as good of a shot as Wolter, but skilled enough to bury a shaft into its torso as Booth threw the grappling line over the parapet.

It let out a shriek, and Booth could only hope that the noise would draw attention away from Chambard and Wolter.

It took half a minute to scale the wall. Years of weathering had rounded off the stones, making footing difficult, and requiring more arm strength. If one of the goblins thought to pull the grappling hook free while Booth and Scones were climbing, they'd have nothing to hold onto.

Right as Booth let the thought cross his mind, a goblin looked over the parapet, straight down at him. It was a smaller one, he could see, possibly an adolescent. It shrieked over its shoulder, confused and...scared?

Did goblins get scared?

Holding onto the line with his left hand, Booth pulled a throwing knife from his belt with the right. In a smooth, underhand motion, he let it fly. It missed the wretched creature's head as it retreated from the edge. Seizing on the narrow window of opportunity, Booth gave the rope three more strong pulls and cleared the parapet.

The young goblin ran for it, and before he could ponder why, Booth had another throwing knife on its way. This one didn't miss.

He looked around to see that he was on a walkway used by defenders behind the parapet. It was wide enough to accommodate two people, and in some areas a rickety wood handrail was still attached to it. The Lothians will have that back up in no time, thought Booth as he made his way to the rendezvous point. Behind him, the unmistakable cadence of Scones and his mild limp thumped along the walkway.

It was unnervingly devoid of goblins. Surely some of them heard the commotion.

In the southeast corner there was a guard tower, which held a set of stairs that led down to the ground level. This was where they found Chambard. "Wolter and I agreed that he should stay on the rampart. There was a place where he could see almost everything, and he can provide covering fire."

Booth nodded; it wasn't the time to argue the importance of sticking with a plan, especially if it wasn't his.

The wooden stairs let out protests of agony under their feet. "Nothing like sneaking up on 'em, eh?" jibed Scones, who like usual was in the rear behind Chambard and Booth. At the bottom, a doorway led out into the courtyard.

Which was completely empty.

"Move with caution!" Chambard whispered, as if it were necessary to say so. While goblins, impatient to a fault, usually preferred direct attacks, there had been stories of them hiding and ambushing an opponent that wasn't clearly inferior.

Every corner they rounded was whirled on with weapon ready. Every doorway they passed was kicked in and rushed. But all that greeted them in these rooms were motes of dust and once, a scurrying rodent.

It was hard to maintain focus with so many dry attempts, but Chambard paused and closed his eyes in front of the sixth door they tried. It was wider, and appeared to lead to what had once been a great hall.

The warrior opened his eyes, nodded once, and thrust his shoulder against it. It resisted, but the sickened splintering of bone-dry wood indicated it wouldn't hold back someone that really wanted in.

Chambard and Booth stood next to each other, counted three, and planted a simultaneous kick at the midpoint of the door. It shattered inward, gouting dust and wood fiber.

It was dark inside, and it took their eyes a second to adjust.

In the center of the great room stood a lone goblin warrior, holding an impossibly long sword. A human warrior would have wielded it as a greatsword, but in the goblin's hands it was almost comical. Behind him, a dozen more goblins, male and female, some adult and some adolescent, were huddled together in fear.

Booth looked at the lone defender, then at Chambard, who poised to charge. "Wait!"

The taller man didn't look away from the goblin. "What do you mean, wait? There's no way he can swing that thing effectively. I'm surprised he can even hold it up."

"What I mean is: why aren't the others jumping for our throats? Have you ever seen a goblin cower in fear, to say nothing of a whole clan of them?"

"The leftover of some spell by a wizard they were dumb enough to accost. How should I know? All I see in here is an easy payday. Are you telling me you're feeling sympathy, for goblins?"

"No. I just don't like being handed strange gold so easily. Something about this whole exercise stinks."

From behind them, Booth heard Wolter. Apparently their entrance into the great hall had prompted him to come down and investigate. "What are we to do, Booth? Just walk away and leave a swarm of vermin infesting this place, because it doesn't feel right?"

Before Booth could answer, the goblin swordsman spoke. The words were heartfelt, and not exactly a plea, because the tone of voice was too proud and full of a willingness to die for a cause.

Of course, none of them knew a word of goblin.

Booth sheathed his sword, and turned to walk out the door. "Take my share. I'm having no part of this."

Wolter and Scones made no move to stop him. From behind, Chambard's only response to Booth was a battle cry and the clumping of his boots on the floor of the great hall.

* * *

Booth climbed the stairs back to the parapet, alone in his thoughts.

He needed the gold. They all did. But he felt he would sacrifice something important to his soul to earn it. Goblins or no, they were virtually defenseless. Slaughtering them would be akin to slaughtering dumb animals for the sake of killing them.

Over the wall, he could see a storm front approaching. Rain was visible over the Lothian camp, and sweeping toward the miserable tents of the refugees.

He'd be too proud to ask them for money after refusing this payment. He'd be fortunate if they even wanted him to stay in the group. If, for some reason, the goblin warrior had managed to get a lucky shot in on Chambard, they'd never forgive him.

Well, he could sell things. Not his sword, of course; a swordsman who parts with his weapon is beginning the first step of a long, downward spiral into starvation. But he did have his throwing knives. One well-crafted knife in the right town would get you a week's worth of food.

His boots clomped on the old, weathered rampart walkway as he went to retrieve the knife he'd buried into the back of the adolescent goblin. It was facedown, a crumpled heap of flesh and rags, its hand outstretched toward him.

He knelt, and pulled the knife out.

The blood on it was red.

He didn't wipe the knife off, but instead stared at it as he held it lightly between two fingers. He'd killed goblins before, and knew that their blood was an unnatural greenish-brown. Confusion reeled through his thoughts.

Still staring at the knife, he straightened up and leaned on the parapet wall, his free hand kneading his chin.

What if you were a Lothian commander, with seven thousand men, instrument of a nation that had forced a hundred thousand innocents from their homes?

What if there were some among those people who didn't stay in the refugee camp? What if they moved into a nearby abandoned keep?

What if this act of defiance was causing other refugees to have thoughts of joining them, of getting organized?

Why, you'd want to make an example of them.

But if you used your own soldiers to do so, the word would get out. Other nations would hear of the atrocity, and see it as the pretext they'd been waiting for to band together in opposition to you. And if you just happened to control some strategically important land, well ... all the better.

But you could hire mercenaries to do your dirty work, to make it look like the work of bandits. All you'd need to do is to find a group depraved enough...

Or the right potion, mixed with some tasty wine.

Booth closed his eyes, and concentrated on his breathing. He slapped himself in the face, hard, a second and third time, trying to clear his head.

He wasn't sure what image he hoped his eyes would give when he opened them.

Greg Hall © 2009