Thereupon a bed of grass, ‘neath boughs most great and grand, Fia of the Garish Blade made her final stand.
A pox upon the world was she, a pox upon our souls! A river of young blood she drank, a river gold she stole.
And wonder did the merry kings, to whom she made her threats;
a birthless month did she gift, a mother’s babe she rent!
“I am Lord of Violence, Queen of Sin and Sand! From the Desert did I come, from there will I stand!”
Such were her lies, such were her thoughts!
Such were the ways of a woman unwrought!
Unwrought by what, a man might well ask?
Unwrought by death, and the killing of her task:
for friends did she have, four friends was their number. Younglings were they, quite fond of their slumber;
green of skin, of fang and claw; goblins danced, unbound by law.
“My friends are these most uncommon folk; touch not their hides, lest I bring fire and rope!”
Thus the Desert did howl, the Desert did thunder! In the quiet of night, green tides made first lumber;
and more indeed: like cloth and jewel, textiles and burns, and languages too.
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Beyond the outskirts of the village Rhime, maidens and mothers fled east, buoyed by desperate vim; and with them came children and husbands and fathers no less fearful. Four women waited, apart. Left to fend for their lonesome, they were seated around a crackling cookfire in the center square; sporting neither armour nor terrified miens, their air was one of lackadaisical expectation.
Together, the wizened crones listened as this decade’s victor in the Thousand Year War approached - theirs was the latest village to fall, and a clear sign the Kings of Man had declined. Not for the first time, the march of goblinkind proved more implacable than humanity.
Tallest amongst those gathered, Blind Reina rasped, “I hear them coming through the main gate. Be they hideous?”
Fearless before the coming storm, Bald Darla cackled, “Does it matter? We’ll not be wedding them, will we?” She smiled at her friend. Strong Lonny spat a wad of displeased phlegm, speckling the face of Poor Poppy (her uglier, kinder, more unfortunate twin).
“Oh, be quiet, you feckless prunes! We’re to be honoured guests,” grumbled the less mangled of the warborne sisters. “No steel or silk for us.”
“Like a goblin would bed your hairy arse, Lonny.” Bright teeth and a snicker answered Darla’s provocation.
“Yer husband did!”
Darla scoffed, then hacked as the act proved perilous; bony fingers rubbed circles against her coated back. To the tune of lockstep steel, she spared her friend another smile before meeting Lonny’s gaze. Both women grinned.
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“He was a poor fuck, old Hubert. Though he gave good sons. Mostly.”
“Aye, he did,” agreed Lonny, whose hand was then gripped. “Poppy?” she wondered, but the scarred sister’s focus was not for her.
“How will the families fare, Darla?” Worry marked the woman’s tone.
“In Godsfall?” The village’s sole seer gave a stilted shrug, though not without care. “Tis not for I to say; the capital is rich in grain and water. Richer still in strength.”
“But burdened,” chimed Lonny. “The Green Tide’ll be upon them soon enough, too. They’re here, aren’t they? Rhime is but a moon’s ride from the City of Graves.”
“Aye, they will.” Darla rubbed her chin, stiffness eased by the crackling firelight. “I pray they’ll find succor. If I’m lucky, Robert will settle down and beget a whelp or three, the daft boy.” She doubted he would, but a woman could dream.
“I prayed for children,” whispered Poppy, who they knew to have been born barren. “They’re worth less as the years tumble by.” She frowned, a hawkish gaze set towards the sky, resolute in looking away from the goblins; her sister had attention enough for the both of them - and indeed, she did. In the dark of Lonny’s gaze, a microcosm of the Green Tide was reflected. Stretched along the village’s main road in ranks some twenty astride, they reached the forest horizon like so much steeled grass.
“Never thought to see this day,” said Reina, a preemptive scowl injecting itself into her next words: “Do be quiet, Darla. You too, Lonny. I’ll not be teased for this accursed blindness of mine.”
“Bitter, bitter,” tutted the latter (Lonny), despite.
Grousing notes a lie, Darla’s interjection died unformed; a goblin hailed their quartet.
There was no known figure in history so reviled as Cursed Fia, for having betrayed Man in favour of spurring goblinkind towards societal parity. The lessons spoke for true: she’d birthed a nation bent on eradication. If not for the fixative veneration with which they treated elderly women, never would there be a survivor of their incursions.
Millions had died for her folly.
Ears grated by his waspish Kingspeech, Darla spared not a whit of thought for such truism. Rather, she confronted her new reality, and liked it not. In scuffed armour, bearing a golden standard upon which a homely woman was depicted with arms askew, as if to embrace another, five goblins marched ahead of their collective. Upon their backs and belts sat stowed weaponry.
“Greetings, Honoured Crones,” said the leading figure, who was especially short amidst his fellows, standing no taller than Poppy’s stooped collar. The quartet could not help but focus on the fangs his words revealed, sharp as they were. They’d heard stories, from neighbours and travelers and nightmares in the dark - everyone had: “They like to feast on manflesh. We’re tender, you see.”
“Feh! You’re to be our gaoler, then?” Lonny sniffed, unimpressed. In her hands, a dagger glinted.
The goblin craned his head, threatened not by the brandished steel. Arms untouched, hands clasped, he said, “I am Roka of Crystal Hill, and I have been elected to your protection.”
“Ha!” Bone smacked flesh as Reina unknowingly echoed his gesture, drawing what Poppy thought constituted a look of concern from the small creature.
Green of skin, Roka - and how Poppy hated the named creature - lacked the same thickness of hide as possessed by the silent sentinels at his back. Four to their four, they looked part golem. So too were his claws less prominent and his eyes less expressive; a weakling, he seemed. ‘Why him?’ she wondered. The Filial Entreatment was a well recorded tradition of the Green Tide, during which ‘those similar to Saintess Fia’ were given honours and comforts and a singular choice: “To where do you desire?”
Poppy thought it best she stayed with her friends; she thought it best they venture into the occupied territories, too. There was little reason to ask for eastwards guidance, when the army might capture and then kill their families; the survival of her nieces and nephews was a source of light in these dark times she’d no intention of snuffing out.
Reina and Darla were of a similar mind.
Not so, Lonny. Not entirely: “What if we wish to reach Godsfall?”
Poppy made to thwack her sister’s arm, fire and storm her blood; she could have murdered the blithering bint. Lonny laughed at the impact, contrasting Reina’s aggrieved sigh. Throughout, Roka stared.
The goblin’s puggish nose creased alongside his brow. Slowly, he rasped, “We will take you. But… you understand what it is you ask; our orders do not allow for base mercy. Your stratagem of distraction is well known.”
Lonny sighed, “A poor jest on my part,” and stowed her dagger in a leather sheathe.
“To where do you desire, then?”
Reina cleared her throat. “Might we venture west? As far as you can take us.”
“Another known stratagem, but one whose fulfillment we will see to completion.” Roka clapped a fist against his armoured breast and loosed a fiery howl, startling the quartet of crones. Steel clattered, and wood rolled - a carriage parted the goblin ranks.
“Come,” he said. “Let us away,” and so they went.