[https://scontent.fmnl8-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.15752-9/313520736_1143570626272301_545225775092673846_n.png?stp=dst-png_p280x280&_nc_cat=107&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=ae9488&_nc_eui2=AeHCpqakgmF1qQqcvkS3ZPFOJ5coOB8f6t4nlyg4Hx_q3gaRGuKiJGc_BiqUzsRLraUTRrCA8IZYl8KC-zL3KJX9&_nc_ohc=bxUHiBqZ2BoAX9ErLmg&_nc_ht=scontent.fmnl8-1.fna&oh=03_AdStroCH78gwkFwq2PdgUnYccjB8s0P4umXHr6b9vm7CfA&oe=63B99AA5]
8
When You Have a Hammer
----------------------------------------
SCARAMOUCHE KNEW ABOUT MANY THINGS but he never said it. He knew how to smile when he was supposed to be happy, and he knew how to smile when he was supposed to hide that he was sad. He knew how to clean his teeth using only the leaves of trees that grew fruits. He knew how to bash a skull by hitting the side of the head. He knew how to stab in the softest parts of the stomach lest his rusty blades get stuck.
He knew that Canyon was strong, strong enough to take the frontline alone covered in thick, full-plated metal, hidden under patches of grass and moss to keep the armor out of human sight, who rained arrows from the sky like stars shooting down the night.
He knew what bait means, in the same way he knew Viktor. In the same way he knew the walk of a king, in the same way he knew about Amanila. And Erin the Endless. And the War of the Five Kings. And the monarchs and rulers of men, who in his last life dressed him in a bright suit and made him dance in theaters; who cut off his tongue and dragged him to the Gaian expeditions. Who made him dance and dance so the Sanguine Cursed would chase him instead of them.
He knew how to smile even when he is angry. He never forgot. He died and became a tree and he never forgot. When Scaramouche woke up into his second life, like every other goblin, he woke up smiling.
“Death to the monkey pig-dogs!” Scaramouche charged!
His part of his was important. While Canyon caught the first wave of arrows by himself, Scaramouche and a few of his men needed to run before the second wave arrives.
The night was bright in its rain of stars and storm. The moonlight bathing over the small human settlement, the goblins drenched in dreg and dirt hid in their blankets of grass, as the shadows hid their numbers and their speed.
One leap and Scaramouche was already half the height of the human walls; he stabbed a dagger into the wood and used it as leverage, and then leaped again, and from over the walls his neck bent just in time to evade an arrow shot into the dark.
He landed into a smash, as in, his legs buried into the earth while Viktor’s war hammer that he held buried into the archer’s skull. And he laughed.
Oh Scaramouche knew how to laugh. He knew the laugh that sounded joyous and the laugh of nobles with subtle pompousness, and he knew how to laugh like a monster made only of mouths with an abyss for a throat. A laugh that echoes and echoes and echoes within skulls and skulls and skulls.
Scaramouche knew many things.
He opened the settlement’s gate as thunder ripples through their ears. Canyon’s armored army greeted his smile.
“You’re one terrifying piss-drinker,” his old boss commented. Noise and nagging rings across the air as both sides were fumbling for commands. The rain sang against Canyon’s armor. “These Purezan pig-dogs look at us and see goblins, they didn’t know what hit them.”
Scaramouche had a simple job: open the gates. He trained his army to be fast and nimble, which was to say he trained them how to dance.
Just dance. A year of dancing while a flurry of arrows with non-pointed ends was thrown at them, and the ground was littered with spiked iron, and they could only stand upside-down.
He forced his army to climb generously-oiled posts and pillars and were expected to stay there for hours and were trained to climb trees using only their hands while they were drenched in gruman slime.
Canyon called him cruel. Viktor called him a madman. He called Viktor a hypocrite.
Swiftly the sixty goblins entered the settlement like cockroaches ripping through a garbage bag. Canyon’s men of muscle and meat, and Scaramouche’s collection of conscious limbs. The walls burned beneath the rain, and they outnumbered the humans by at least ten bodies.
It shouldn’t have been dangerous if their enemies weren’t armored. Their daggers simply slipped through the steel; their arrows were useless and their javelins couldn’t pierce through. And so their army did as their leaders do:
Canyon blocked a knight’s attack using his shield, while Scaramouche climbed and coiled around the knight like a snake, until he found a gap between the plates, in the armpit, and stabbed—ripped—then he dug his hand in and pulled at whatever organ he could pull.
Their armies understood and quickly worked together to replicate it.
“I don’t even know how you learned to fight like that,” Canyon said as his hook sword tripped down another man. “I mean, I don’t understand you at all, lad.”
Scaramouche stabbed the man in the neck, then gave his old boss a huge grin. “That’s fine flatbag, I don’t understand myself either.”
“Yes, you don’t really look like you do.” Canyon’s armor clanked as an arrow hit it. “Tell me, when Viktor asked you ‘what do you want,’ what did you tell him?”
Scaramouche slammed his war hammer into a teenager’s chest plate, who vomited blood the moment it connected. “Nothing that materialistic,” he said. “I said I wanted to be happy.”
“What?”
“I said I wanted to be happy. You know? Smiles!” Scaramouche used his bloody finger to stretch his lips from cheek to cheek. “I wanted to do it, and feel it.”
“And you think he can grant you that?”
“Yes,” Scaramouche smiled. He thought about winning a fight against Viktor, about a dagger in his hand burying into the proud goblin’s neck. Don’t get him wrong, he loved Viktor. He loved how tall he seemed to be. Loved how he carried himself, how he walked, how deep and final his voice was. Loved how he looked like a King and acted like a King. And how Viktor’s eyes would have looked, should he find that he was defeated by someone he considered worthless? “Why flatbag, what was your answer?”
A knight smashed his mace toward Canyon, and the goblin simply caught it with its hand. “I told him I want to be remembered.”
“You’ll be remembered when you’re dead,” Scaramouche replied, shoving the handle of the war hammer into the man’s throat. “You’re getting old, flatbag,” he said. “You don’t even know you’re being used.”
“Used, lad?” Canyon grabbed the jester by his collar. “I was a slave, don’t talk to me about being used.”
“And you’re still a slave.” Scaramouche twisted his body into angles and got out of the old man’s grip. “you just don’t understand the difference between a bigger cage and freedom.”
“Following him is my choice!”
“You’re following him because you’re cornered!”
“We are his men. He made us strong. He took care of us.”
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“He doesn’t even look at you like you’re people!” He shouted, his wide smile was venomous now. “You are a tool, flatbag! You’re a walking castle wall and he sees you for your value!” he wanted to spit at the old man’s face. “You are a pet! A project! An object!”
“He lead us, lad!” Canyon headbutted him. “I have lived for thirteen years, and I doubt your last life has been as long. But never in my life, nor in history, have I seen a goblin unite our kind. All I’ve seen are attempts of monkeys who thought they understood power.” Canyon continued. “I am his tool because I allow myself to be, and the moment I see an ounce of incompetence from him, I will lead the very army he built against him and shove his head up a pike.”
“But you think Viktor is King.”
“Viktor is King.”
Scaramouche simply smiled, the smug kind of smile. “Flatbag,” he started. “We’re saying the same thing, only you don’t understand what you are saying,” the jester laughed as if to mock him. “I know what kings do, I know how kings live. You may be old, but you are too young to know nuance,” Scaramouche pointed out. Their armies were finishing up the battle now, the rain soaping the soil. “I doubt you even know what ‘nuance’ means.”
“I know what ‘king’ means.”
“A king commands,” Scaramouche remembered an old phrase he heard from one of the Amanilan armies. “A slave obeys.”
“I. Am. No. Slave—”
Scaramouche punched his old boss in the face. “Then what do you think we’re doing here, Canyon sir?” He thought about his past life, his severed tongue. He used to dance for the men who ruled the court, some pig-dog Prince Edward, a warmonger Princess Daedara, their games of politics and rule. “You think this is a test? Some form of training? A show of strength? Get that goblin blood boiling?”
“We need armors and supplies to trade with Fog-eyes.”
“This is a culling.” Scaramouche pointed out. “Our numbers are big but not all of us are useful. And our list of prey is getting shorter.”
“Your reasoning is so stretched out.”
Scaramouche bent his back to dodge a sword swing, he landed on his hands and then leaped back with his legs hooked around the swordman’s neck, whom he stabbed and stabbed and stabbed. “And your reasoning is so deluded.”
Thunder cracks as if to stop their conversation.
“Semos almighty, why do you think that pig-dog is hellbent on going to Amanila?” Scaramouche went on. “He was five days old when we met him. Five. Piss-drinking. Days. Old. And he killed a Sanguine Cursed! I’d say that gob’s a witch if I didn’t know how much he hated them.”
“I didn’t know you hated him.”
“I don’t trust him.” The thunder mingled with Scaramouche’s raspy voice. The settlement’s walls burned in the background, as bodies after bodies fell and fell and fell. “Who is he, Canyon? He told you, right? I saw you two talking. He told you," he pushed Canyon's chestplate using with his finger "You know, you know, you know.”
“It’s not my secret to tell.”
“He’s not good, Canyon. He’s not good for you. Please, please, please trust me,” Scaramouche’s face, for the first time once again, rested into one that does not resemble a smile. He had a worried face, which was his neutral face, and the rain fell to his cheek as if to symbolize something. “He makes as kings make,” he continued. “With blood.”
Canyon just stared at him, paused, and finally said: “If you don’t trust him, you could always leave.”
And for a moment, one could say Scaramouche seemed sad.
But his face contorted back to his usual face. The one he wore in his last life, permanently, because the humans said that jesters should always smile. Like a puppet. Like invisible hands pulling strings from the air and his lips curved slowly back into a smile.
“Ha! You think he’d allow that?” the jester taunted. “You think he’d let me merrily leave after he invested so much in me? Maybe if I was Dos, that soft-hearted pig-dog, maybe yes, sure. But me?” he laughed, in his pompous noblemen's laughter, like the entire thing was so obvious and so beneath him. “You, me, and Mimic, we are his best hand. Have you seen how he looked at us, that year ago? Had you seen that joy in his eyes when he was beating us up for the first time? He looked at us like we were gold.”
Scaramouche could remember it well; the goblin’s eyes staring at them from a distance, like they were treasures for him to collect. That when Viktor offered them a place under his command, Scaramouche expected it. That when Viktor asked what he wanted, he knew where their trust was built: on self-interest.
The backbone of an egoistic man who’d rather break than bend.
Scaramouche knew. He knew a lot of things, except for the things he didn’t know because he died. So he had never heard of Viktor the King, only the echo of a young usurper he didn’t care about, fighting for a throne that was of no importance to him. He had never heard of the War finishing. He had never heard of peace.
But he knew of Harris, a young boy assigned to the Gaian expedition Scaramouche was thrown into. When Scaramouche got the Sanguine Rot and his arms and legs started to stretch, it was Harris who fixed his clothes.
It was Harris who gave them a swift death. It was Harris who probably buried him. In that place behind a waterfall where his tree was safe to grow roots. He remembered how Harris looked at him despite himself, it was the eyes of a man who looked at him as his equal.
And Viktor looked at everyone as if they were pests. Like they were rot of the earth, as worthless as a gruman whose only use was to be a feast for maggots. The only consolation that goblins had, was that they were a rot Viktor could use.
As if the man was not a goblin himself. As if his existence was just a concept.
In the end, all Scaramouche knew was all Scaramouche knew, and he wouldn’t dare assume that it was all the knowledge in the world.
“This is pointless,” Canyon said, as he began commanding his army to clean up. The humans were all dead, and now they had bodies to bury and plunders to gather. “I know this is all a joke to you anyway,” the old man muttered. “You’ve never taken anything seriously.”
“I did, I did once.” the jester said. “I took you seriously,” he spat. “Immortal Canyon, what a joke. I didn’t take you for a man who would give his life in service of another.”
“Viktor is King,” Canyon emphasized. “I would die for a king who serves me.”
“Viktor is King,” Scaramouche repeated. “And when you have a hammer,” he says under his breath, staring at Viktor’s weapon of choice resting on his hand. “Everything looks like a nail.”
[https://scontent.fmnl8-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.15752-9/315312438_1341022673369440_7929462700702226116_n.png?stp=dst-png_p280x280&_nc_cat=100&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=ae9488&_nc_eui2=AeEG0GDdSKnPF3dEdqIA_ODGXbfae0IbRNpdt9p7QhtE2jLY7TTbXP1W_BDJ8QiASm8plczGVHI63CR4sTAgZhyR&_nc_ohc=aCHFJC3dyP0AX8aj7Pj&_nc_ht=scontent.fmnl8-1.fna&oh=03_AdSIEl3oglxdUhTf4tGvXklMsBkl8sGlcUe2iEGOn3Vjsw&oe=63B99501]
The Gaian Expeditions
[Entry from Archives of the Inquisitors, courtesy of the Empire of Amanila]
The Gaian Expedition is a group of Amanilan adventurers who were tasked to travel The Land Beyond the Walls. An Expedition is generally composed of two hundred men, all of whom are supposed to know construction and architecture. There exists a Captain-in-Command, at least a hundred soldiers, cooks, cleaners, tamers, hunters, trappers, herbalists, chroniclers, linguists, and other personnel that can sustain a walking army who could obtain their own provisions.
They are generally divided into two groups, the Janitors and the Marchers, none of which are less suicidal than the other.
The Janitors are tasked with Amanilan’s expansion, which is to say that they are to clean entire hectares of land of pests. By pest, it meant orcs, grumans, beasts, and other monstrosities. Once an entire landscape has been successfully erased of all living things save from the useful ones, construction of a wall connected to Amanila will begin and the expansion would start.
It usually takes decades for ten groups of Janitors to clean an entire area of land, and by then the original members of those groups would have already been dead, maimed, or crippled. All for the glory of the Empire.
The Marchers were to leave and explore the lands beyond, most of them never came back and none of them were expected to. And those who did were supposed to bring back entire cultures. Like a collection of seeds of fruits and vegetables from a forest of moving trees, a horde of a new species of mounts or poultry, or an entire human settlement that managed to survive The Land Beyond the Wall.
Most members of the Gaian Expeditions are brave volunteers, soldiers on mandatory service depending on rank, the sorry kind of criminals who had life and death sentences and rather chose to risk the Gaian life, and those who were chosen by the King.
A man is free of his punishment once he served and survived ten years as any member of The Janitor, or came back as one of The Marchers.
----------------------------------------