6. Solitude

“Strange to think I spent so much of my life on my own, and now I am never alone. Even with Sibbe and Hjorvarth safe in Timilir, I am surrounded at all times by dozens of men who only ever take a break from their belligerent noise when they are sleeping, at which point they violently snore. Perhaps this is why I have returned to writing. I barely speak with anyone, save for small words here and there for the sake of putting on a happy face and not ignoring warriors who might soon have opportunity to save me from a goblin’s jaws.

I do visit Brolli at times, to see how he is settling in, and I am surprised how quickly he has given up drinking and smoking. Though those first few nights were horrendous to witness. When I look at him, as he stares off at nothing, I see a sort of purity in his black eyes.

There was no happy reunion between he and his brother. Gudmund did not embrace him or even look him in the eye. It was as if I returned a lost dog to an owner who had shooed the animal away in the first place. Yet despite this Brolli is seemingly at peace. When I asked him why, he said, “We’re not at peace. We’re at war.”

Which was true as not. We will be marching in through the Snake Basin path in just a few days.

I did ask Gudmund if he wished for me to lead a band of men, but he simply looked at me with a confused sort disdain and suggested instead that I try not to get myself killed. I look forward to showing him I can hold a blade just as well as a tune.”

Grettir scratched at his overgrown beard, scowling at the pale wisps of his own breaths as they faded into the frigid night air. He had volunteered to keep guard, and let the other men stay in the main tent while he sat amid the wintry dark. He had kept watch the night before as well, because he had been having grim dreams of late. Dreams of Ragadin’s return and vast goblin hordes come to finally wreak vengeance on Gudmund and Grettir.

But Ragadin was surely dead. No one had seen him since the Blackwood, not even in the Midderlands. A goblin like that was far too obsessed with reputation to just slink off and die. Like as not he’d been killed by another Great Chief or died of wounds from his many battles. That was what Grettir told himself at least. Brolli had been offering mad warnings just before they left and surely that was what made Grettir dream of goblins.

But he had dreamed of another goblin too. Just as large and monstrous as Ragadin had been but with a blackened face of twisted features and snarling fangs.

There was something about the dreams that seemed all too real. And made Grettir feel, for the first time in many winters, fear for himself. Not just the constant worry that came with wanting the best for Sybille and Agnar and Geirmund. But real bone chilling fear that makes your heart go cold in your chest.

“I’m just old,” Grettir gruffly assured. He’d known old warriors, of course. Still knew them. Horvorr’s Guard was not exactly flush with fresh recruits.

Engli and Hjorvarth were the youngest men among them now. Though the son of Isleif could easily be confused for a man much older. The young warriors were always brave, of course. But the rest, as the seasons weighed on them, were always complaining. Seeking out some new thing to be afeared of. So doubtless this had happened to Grettir as well.

The hirsute warrior decided in the end that old age would soon take him. And a death fighting goblins would be far preferable to that. He searched all around him, listening to the sighing wind and all was clear and all was quiet. Then, flickering in the distance, he glimpsed the light of a torch atop the snaking mountainous path to Timilir.

Then another, and another.

Grettir gritted his teeth. “Should have broken his legs.”

***

“Strange,” came the high and eerie voice of the night black goblin known as Lazoor. He had been watching the tiny manling encampment, considering slaughtering them all while they slept in a colourful tent, but now the other manlings were coming down by the mountains as if they knew of the looming threat. Though Lazoor could still not quite believe just how small was this force sent roaming by The Young Wolf.

Horvorr’s Guard was meant to be an innumerable fighting force of great warriors. Not a sad gathering of grey and overripe manlings. Lazoor half-wondered if he couldn’t have simply killed them all with his own two claws. But then that was a needless risk. And he was not in the habit of putting his life on the line for no gain at all.

It was not as if Braguk Moonbear or those enormous triplets would be grateful. They would just bellow of how he stole their honor and demand some tribute. If he even mentioned that he was out here watching the manlings, they might grow suspicious.

Lazoor tried to decide whether more would be gained by telling Braguk Moonbear that the manlings were moving, or whether he should simply return to the rest of the clans.

The manlings did not often travel by night and the other goblins would soon emerge from the Middle Lands Pass, so there was no great risk of them escaping. Even if they did, the dozens of manlings did not inspire much fear. But then Braguk often knew things he had no right of knowing. He was always talking to the Moon and learning all sorts of secrets. Perhaps it was better to say he saw the flames on the mountains and decided to take a closer look, and spare any need to explain why he was watching the manling encampment so closely to begin with.

“I wouldn’t.”

Lazoor turned to the manling’s voice. Proud and assured. The hooded figure wore a dark robe, sitting legs outstretched with his back to a small boulder.

Lazoor would have towered over the manling even if he were standing, but in these positions the black goblin loomed at thrice his height.

“Braguk is busy with his own plans,” the manling went on. “Best not to give him any more reasons to distrust you. Of all the Great Chiefs, he considers you the true threat.”

“What is this?” Lazoor hissed.

“A boulder?”

“No!”

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“A friendly conversation?”

“Who are you?” the black goblin then demanded in snarl. “Answer me.”

“I’m the son of no man you know.”

“Hm.” Lazoor bared his razor sharp teeth. “I understand. I will eat you now.”

“Not so friendly, then.”

Lazoor did not understand the last words, but neither did he care. He lashed out with blinding speed, only to for his claws to rasp off of hard stone. He leapt back, cautious as always, and scoured the surrounding snow. Yet the robed man was nowhere to be seen.

“Tricky,” Lazoor chided, before disappearing as well.

Then all that remained was a golden ring, which shone dully in the faint moonlight.

***

Ragadin made his way through the Blackwood Forest at great haste, leaping easily over fallen trees, sprinting without difficulty across treacherous footing while a pair of massive axes rattled in a cross upon his back. Of all the Great Chiefs in Southwestern Tymir, Ragadin considered himself best suited for scouting and delivering messages.

He also thought he stood apart as the greatest fighter amongst all the goblins. He did not see that as a boast. It was fact. He was not as Lazoor the Black, using magic to deceive. He was not as Braguk Moonbear, or even Dalpho, a being of such enormity that grace or skill held no consequence. Ragadin was as a goblin should be. Pure. An honourable fighter. He felt more affinity for the old warriors of Horvorr, for the Young Wolf, the Black Heart, and the One Swing, then he did for his own people.

In truth, Ragadin believed that the goblins were done. Chief of Chiefs Gahr’rul had been dismembered many years ago. Yet the Great Chiefs did not band together to avenge him then. No, they waited like cowards until time itself had withered their enemies.

There was only one among them that could be excused. Lazarus. The Great Chief that stood no bigger than Ragadin’s knee, no larger than Dalpho’s foot. Yet size was of no consequence to Ragadin. Prodigious height made Braguk Moonbear no less a cannibalistic wretch. Lazarus had the excuse of youth on his side. He had not lived through the old war. He had not sworn loyalty to the Chief of Chiefs. He had been birthed to a time when the meat of Gahr’rul’s body had long been churned to filth.

In truth, Ragadin believed he himself was done.

He no longer saw purpose in the world around him. He had spent his prime days fighting across the Midderlands for clans that were obsessed with slaying and eating one another while the manling lords got fat on richer lands. There was no honor in that. No honor in living. This new clan was a gathering of cowards that lacked the courage to die. Yet Ragadin would fight one last time, as he had once tried at the Battle of the Blackwood.

Lazarus saw a future for the goblins of the region. Ragadin, a fighter of the past, would offer his last years in sacrifice.

He slowed as he gained sight of a disorganised encampment.

Dozens of fires scattered about ruined woodland. Hundreds of goblins gathered around the flames, eating, sleeping, or fighting. Though most broke from their tasks to watch the approach of a Great Chief, of a gargantuan goblin who had to struggle not to crush insignificant kin underfoot.

Ragadin wondered whether the disregard he held for his own people was truly a marker of his own diminished worth. He saw awe in their gazes, respect, fear, admiration, and all the while he felt his own hollow regard. “I am everything to them,” he thought, “and yet they are nothing to me. Why can I muster no semblance of respect?”

He surveyed his surroundings. Moss, grasses and protruding roots covered the ground where fires and goblins did not. Trees dotted the darkness around the gathered hundreds. Shadowed sentinels that stood with solidity where the warmth of flames faded. Mountains rose to the North, preceded by rocky plateaus and walled stone pocked by the maws of small caverns. Ragadin looked for a cave with no sign of fire, and soon spotted the blubbery back of the goblin he sought.

Dalpho sat blocking the mouth of a cavern. He did not share likeness to the goblins of other clans, or even to his own clan. To most, he was an oddity. Ragadin suspected that the spawning pool that birthed Dalpho had been close to the sea, for the Great Chief had the girth of a whale and the face of a long-nosed seal. He was so large that he made Braguk Moonbear seem ordinary.

Ragadin ascended to the plateau with ease. He slowed to a stop behind Dalpho. Hundreds of scars, caused by blades, claws, and teeth, marred the rolled flesh of the Great Chief’s massive back. “Dalpho.”

Dalpho mumbled in surprise. He struggled to turn his head, beady eyes glistening with firelight. “Ragadin.”

“I had no mind to frighten you.”

“You did not,” Dalpho assured in a rumble. “For a moment, I took your voice as a man’s.”

“I hear yours more as storm clouds.”

“Yes.” Dalpho’s nod creased his chins. “Allow me to rise.”

The Great Chief tore rock from the cavern mouth with his rounded shoulders. He shook the stone plateau with his great weight.

Ragadin stepped forward and the heat of a burning brazier rippled out to greet him.

“What word?” Lazarus stood over the flames.

Ragadin thought for a moment that the lithe goblin was further away, struggling to reconcile the statures of Lazarus and Dalpho. Four dozen goblins, none more than half the size of Ragadin, waited within. They gathered into two groups that stood at opposite sides of the cavern. The rotund goblins shared porcine faces, while their wiry kin had appearance of bats.

Balluk crouched in the corner behind his fat clan. He was a head taller than Ragadin, though that height would always be mired by bowed legs and a hunched back. Ragadin despised Balluk. He always had. Balluk was born by defilement of a spawning pool. Gahr’ruls decaying organs had been thrown into the water that warmed eight birthing sacks. They had split the linings of seven, allowing the unborn goblins within to be consumed in a vain attempt at remaking the Chief of Chiefs. Yet in the end all they managed to make was a snarling monstrosity.

Height availed Braguk Moonbear nothing. It availed Balluk less than that.

Lazarus rasped his long claws against the brazier. “What word, Ragadin?”

“Horvorr’s Guard marched through the night. They avoided the ambush of the clans in the East before it was ever laid. By my own guess, I would say that the One Swing knew of the threat. I can see of no other reason for his pace, lest he fears some enemy follows their band from the manling mountains.”

Dalpho settled down near the cave and the ground shook once more with his weight.

“How long before they reach Fenkirk?” Lazarus asked.

“Two moons at most. We should ambush the manlings ourselves. We may find ourselves a simple end to this, if we can capture the sons of the Young Wolf.”

Lazarus stared into the writhing flames as if remembering the past. “Did Gudmund offer us a simple end?”

“He did not,” Ragadin replied. “Yet bad examples abound. If you wish to slaughter them, then slaughter them. Dalpho can bring down the gates with ease and we can overrun the town. Yet the manlings within are no more responsible for the actions of the Young Wolf—” He waved towards Balluk and his rotund clan. “—than these fat goblins are for the cowardice of their misshapen leader.”

Balluk’s sneer bared his filthy teeth. “Do you wish to challenge me, Ragadin?”

“I can think of no thing that would bring me greater dishonour.”

“Enough,” Lazarus warned. “When and where would you ambush them?”

“After the sun next rises. On the Snake Basin Path.”