The word “gretch,” a slur often hurled at little goblins, had an interesting history that Griff knew all about. He’d studied it carefully, the first time he’d been called that, so he could know exactly what it meant, exactly how they were intending to degrade him. It was a corruption of the old Orcish word “grekkin,” a name for Goblin shamans. It was supposed to mean something like speaks from far away. The corruption was intended to sound more like the Orcish word “gritch,” which was the name for slaves. It was an old stain that followed any little Goblin around, no matter where they went.

As Griff pulled the trigger, he wasn’t thinking about any of this. He was barely hearing the word. There was a wild sense of mischief filling him up, wanting to see exactly how wrong he could make all of this go.

For a moment, the smile on the face of the Islander remained. The bright flash lit him up and then it started to twist. The skin pulled back and the already broken teeth shattered, as the bullet pulled through the skull and caved it in. The little piece of shrapnel tore through the man and lodged somewhere inside his head. He was dead before that happened, and he fell backward, bits of blood and bone exploding gloriously outward and onto the tight packed throng behind him.

The body hadn’t even hit the ground before Arn was on the big man, a mace in his right hand and an axe in his left. His crooked shoulder spun around and made a loud crack. He caved in the big man’s head in one hard swing, twisted his head to the side, the eye going all blooded. There were white bits of bone now, sticking out from the shattered remains, the skin torn and rippled, already black with bruises.

It all went to chaos then. Men began tearing into one another. Arn was right at the middle of it. Jean, who had no weapons, had fallen to the ground and taken a blade off one of the dead men, nothing more than a dagger. He slashed around with it, trying to pull back.

Griff just rolled. He saw Ryon take a hard blow to the shoulder, nearly cut all the way through, then an arrow bloomed in the eye of the man who cut him. They both went down but only Ryon moved again, rolling away.

Griff scrambled up and ran. He yelled for the others, so hard that his voice seemed to tear, but he ran anyway. He turned back and fired behind him but his gun just clicked, empty. When had he fired? He didn’t stop to reload.

It was a long time before he stopped, the blood pounding in his ears, the rain starting to fall gently over him. Griff collapsed on the forest floor, into the sweet stench of old, decomposing leaves. He waited for inevitable death.

It did not come.

After a long while he picked himself up. The others, it seemed, had followed him.

Arn had laid himself up on a rock. He was cut in about ten places and his arm was hanging near off, but he was there, breathing. Griff could hear the wheezing, clicking sound as his lungs caught he cool air. Not a good sound.

Nearby he saw Jean and, as his head started to clear, Ryon, too. Roach was by him now, holding out in arm and looking over his wounds.

“Bad,” Roach said.

"Good to see you, too,” Ryon said, taking deep breaths to steady himself. He tried to laugh but the pain cut it short and he closed his eyes tight against it. His eyes were wet, but Griff said it was just the rain coming down against his friend’s wide face.

Griff went to Jean, laying in a bush, a heavy red stain spreading along his side. “Shit,” Griff said.

“That bad?” Jean asked. His face was pale white and his hair was all mussed up. For once, Griff could see both of Jean’s eyes, and there was a clear, cold fear in them. He’d killed them. All three of them.

As well as Griff could, he helped Jean get up. They hobbled together over to the rock where Arn lay. Griff settled his friend in there and went away to get some dry branches. He worked hard, piling them up over the rock to keep them out of the rain. Roach came over at some point and corrected Griff’s work. Together, they made a little shelter.

“What now?” Arn asked. He still had a smile on his face, though he was bloody and bruised. “Damn good fight, though. Damn good.”

“Not bad,” Ryon said. “Not bad at all.” His breathing was heavy but he tried to pull himself up. He didn’t even make it half way.

“Don’t move,” Roach said, and the big Orc obeyed. Roach walked over to Griff and stood close. They walked away from the others, picking up dry sticks as they went.

“What do we need?”

“Blankets,” Roach said. “Rations.”

“No game in the forrest? We need weapons or coin or anything you left at camp?” Roach just shrugged.

“Need useful things,” Roach said. “Those will be useful, if we live.” He looked back over his shoulder when he said that. Roach was always a hard one to read, but even he looked afraid.

“Is there any medicine? In your tent?” Roach nodded. “Good.” Griff turned back to the others, put his hands into his pockets and tried to sound casual. “Well, we can’t go back, not yet, they’ll rip us apart. And if we wait, Durriso will tear us apart for desertion. So, we’re deserters now, everyone good with that?” He almost expected them to disagree but instead there was only silence. He pushed on. “We’re on our own. You all gather up your guts and get ready to move a bit. We’ll find a good place to camp for the night.” Griff rubbed his chin. That wasn’t going to be fun or easy for anyone. “Right, well, when we are settled I’ll head back to camp and see what I can get.”

“Thought you said they will tear you up,” Jean said. Griff just smiled.

“I was talking about the lot of you.”

***

Just after dusk, Griff snuck back into their camp and looted their own belongings. He took the long way around, just to make sure it wasn’t being watched. It was all still intact. Turns out they were far enough on their own that no one had noticed where they pitched.

There was little enough for him to take. A few days’ worth of rations, blankets and bedrolls, some knives and things, a little shovel for digging a hole to shit in, and all the coin he could find. They did well enough hiding it, but Griff found it all the same, checking the obvious places, and then the less obvious places in turn.

Finally, he found Ryon’s sword. It was a beautiful, bright thing that Ryon had been asking after. He wanted it, for when he was well and could fight again. He always took special care of that sword, and Griff thought it would fetch a pretty coin when the inevitable happened.

He took the long way back, so that it was full dark when he finally came upon the hollow they had found beneath a fallen log. It was hard to spot, even for Griff who knew where it was, and that was a good thing. It took him longer than he’d be willing to admit to find it again, though he was never a master at tracking.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

The fire was low when he got back. Roach was nowhere to be seen. Jean was sleeping so still that for a moment Griff had though he’d gone, but his breath was still there. Weak and quiet, but present. Arn was awake and smiling through the pain, talking low to Ryon and passing a flask back and forth. They stopped when Griff approached.

Griff tried not to notice the way Arn and Ryon looked at one another as he knelt and began to dig through his packs and divvy up their things. Finally, Arn cleared his throat, a dry rasping sound, and spoke with a thick voice. “You get my booze?”

“You already have a flask,” Griff said. He closed his eyes and sighed. “Yes, somewhere in here, I did.”

“Damn right,” Arn said and smiled at Ryon. “Damn right. Told you he would. Fucking gem, that one. Fucking gem.” Griff found the other bottle that he had stowed at the bottom of his pack and handed it over to Arn. It was mostly full. He watched as harn pulled the cap off with his gnarled, broken teeth and took a long drink, like he was drinking from a pool in the desert. Arn handed the bottle over to Ryon and sat up a little straighter. “Now,” he said, his voice already slurring a bit, thick with the alcohol and the hurt. “Jean has taken a turn,” he said, his voice low. He wasn’t smiling anymore.

“It’s getting bad for all of us,” Ryon said.

“I know,” Griff said. “I know.” He stretched his head and then went back to his work, digging through the packs, looking for the blankets. He found Ryon’s sword there and offered it to the Orc. “Here,” Griff handed it over. Ryon took it and got a far off look in his eye. Griff went back to his packs. There was a little medicine there, wrapped in a leather pack, that he had taken from Roach’s things. He handed it over to Arn. “Take a pinch of that. It will make the pain better, for a bit. You too, Ryon. We’ll give Jean some later.” Though he wasn’t sure how he would do that.

He started to stoke the fire and wait for Roach. Eventually, Arn and Ryon both fell asleep, but Roach still hadn’t come back. Griff was not so lucky. He had his guilts, new and old, to keep him company, and they chilled him and roused him for a long time yet that night.

It was late when Roach came back, like a shadow close to morning, silent as a bug in the grass. Griff noticed the soft sound of his light footfalls and stirred. He hadn’t truly been sleeping, but he had finally found some rest. Still, Griff barely heard. He was quiet that one.

Roach was wrapped in a brown cloak, so that he resembled the little bug that gave him his name, a little shell skittering beneath the branches of an old, rotting oak. He had some things with him: a pair of scrawny rabbits tied to a string, a leafy bundle of herbs and flowers, and a bundle of dry sticks. He sat them all down, along with his packs, just outside of the glow of the fire. He had gathered up loads of things: herbs and leaves, hard-shell bugs, water, fungus, and thin, papery bark. He left that alone, for now. He handed Griff sticks to sharpen and then set toward skinning and cleaning the rabbits.

He handed the meat to Griff, who wrapped it in some of the herbs that Roach had found, as well as the mushrooms. He tied it all up with some string and put the skewers through them. He set them up next to the fire to cook while Roach worked at getting his medicine ready.

Griff watched the meat as it browned, as the fat popped and sizzled and the juices ran. As the smell of food grew stronger the others started to stir in their sleep and were up and fully awake by the time it was ready.

When they had all eaten Roach gathered up one of his bowls of salve and went around, putting the paste on their wounds with fresh bandages, making sure their wounds were clean, packed, and well treated. When he was finished with that he went around again, giving them a pinch of power to rub on their gums. That seemed to settle everyone down and lessen some of their pain.

Griff watched Jean. Some of the color had seemed to come back into the Gaulic man’s face. They passed around Arn’s flash and each took a small drink, not even a mouthful because it was nearly empty. They were quiet for a long time, as the day dragged slowly on.

***

They buried Jean at the foot of a low hill that they had come down just that morning. The air was damp and the rocks were slippery. He’d gotten a bad cough, deep within his lungs. Just about midmorning, as they were making their way south, toward Viccard’s, he collapsed and never got back up.

There weren’t many words said, but Ryons Orcish prayer and a rude song that Jean and Arn used to sing together, that the small Goblin was happy to oblige. Griff and Roach took turns digging, being the only two that still could dig, and when they were too tired to go on they covered him over with rocks and leaves as best they could. They didn’t know if he’d had any family left, or if there was anyone else in the world they could tell about Jean who’d care. The man had never talked about anything like that, which was why Griff had always liked him so much.

The most shocking thing to Griff was how fast it was over when someone died. Not that this was his first time seeing it, but it always struck him. One moment they were struggled and fighting, the next they were gone, their body empty. Then they were in the dirt and halfway toward being forgotten.

They kept moving after that. Jean had seemed to be getting better, but the wounds had left him weak and he just got sick. That wasn’t a good omen for Arn or Ryon, who were still in a bad way. Roach’s medicine was helping, there was no doubt. Still, it wasn’t enough. And they had to keep moving. They weren’t going to wait around for the wilderness to retake them. It would happen soon enough, without them sitting still.

So, they walked. It was an aimless kind of walking where there wasn’t much at all to say and no one felt like talking. Roach scouting ahead while Griff led and the other two helped one another move along, step by bitter step.

When they stopped for their midday meal Roach went around again with his bowl of salve. He changed their bandages and wiped away the spent salve, then wrapped them again, fresh and new. This time, though, when he pulled the bandage off of Ryon’s wound, even from way across camp, on the other side of the fire, Griff could smell the stench coming off of the wound. Griff didn’t say anything, but he knew. It seemed by the strained look on the old Orc’s face that he knew well enough, too.

When they were eating everyone was quiet. No one wanted to speak and there was nothing much to say anyway. They didn’t even look at one another. Roach had already disappeared, before they were even finished eating when Ryon cleared his throat.

“Well,” he said, his voice thick. “I guess I ought to tell you something.” Arn and Griff looked up at Ryon, then at one another. The old Orc just stared far away, into the distance of the forest at nothing in particular. “I’ve been looking around a lot and I think we’ve gone far enough south.” He took a moment to set what remained of his food down, careful to balance it on a small rag so that he could come back to it. He stood up, his legs shaking. He reach for his belt. He undid the clasp and was just able to catch it before it fell. He held it up to them. “This was my father’s sword and his before that. An old relic. I’d like my wife to have it again, though we have no son. If you could take it her. To remember me, if nothing else.” They were quiet for a long time. Neither Arn nor Griff had to heart to refuse.

“Aye,” Arn said, after a time.

“We will, old friend,” Griff answered.

“We swear it,” Arn added. Griff looked a question at him, but Arn just shrugged (as well as he could with only one shoulder). “Seemed like the right thing to say.” Ryon nodded.

“Aye,” he said, solemn.

When Roach returned he spoke with Ryon for a while, taking his directions and not saying much. They had a little roughly drawn map after a while. Roach had drawn it and given it to Ryon to look over. When they were both satisfied they put it away and didn’t talk about it anymore.

They meandered through the woods in the direction of Ryon’s little hamlet for a few days before the sour weather took him. It was in the dark of night. At some point, in his sleep, he just stopped breathing. Griff sent Roach out all that morning to scout ahead but they weren’t close enough to carry his body on. Besides, it was more than the two little Goblins would be able to manage on their own. Maybe if they had Arn, but they didn’t, and probably wouldn’t for a very long while.

If Griff had meant to guess, that day two weeks ago when they all collapsed into the undergrowth, he would have never picked Arn as the last to survive. His wound looked too ugly, he’d lost too much blood. Yet, he’d survived the other two bigger, stronger men.

But not tougher men, Griff thought. Never was there one tougher than Arn.

It took them all morning to dig the hole, but this time Arn was feeling better and could take a short turn. And Ryon was an Orc. They felt like they should have done something more important, though none of them knew any of the rituals.

They laid him down on his back with an axe in his hand. It was Arn’s and it looked small against Ryon’s chest, but they gave it anyway. Arn led the prayer, too. He’d lived in Orclands before and he could speak the language, though even Griff could tell it was stilted and unsure. But he said the words, that was what mattered. When they were finished they lit the fire, and when he was all burned up they pushed the dirt over top of him. They sat there where the smoke was billowing up from the loose dirt for a long time, looking at the place where their friend had once been. Griff let it sting his eyes, and he told himself that was the only reason that they had started to fill with tears.