“I feel like I’m dying.”

“Don’t say that!”

“I’m sorry Tita.”

“Don’t be sorry! Una said, sharper than she meant.

Robin Martillo hung his head. A lock of brown hair fell into his eyes. He held a turquoise basin, shaped like a kidney bean. She hoped he wouldn’t need it, this time.

He needs a haircut, Una thought.

Robin began to cough. He did need the basin.

Maybe not, Una decided. A haircut was two dollars, after all. It was an ugly thought. Robin began to cry afterward. Guilt fell on Uma Martillo like a hammer.

“Let’s go back inside and get you cleaned up, there’s some on your shirt. Do you need my help?”

“I can do it,” Robin said.

She waited outside the boy’s room and when he came out the basin was clean. She eyed him like a hawk, that was his church shirt. Robin had done a good job scrubbing it off. It wouldn’t stain.

“Are you ready to go home? We can wait until you settle.”

“I’m ok.”

“Do you want to walk over? I can pull around.”

He needed the basin again.

Better here than in the car, Una thought. Her hip was acting up again, but she was too worried about Robin to pay it any mind. It was the second treatment and the first time he’d thrown up twice. The tan station wagon baked in the Albuquerque noon. Though the engine was warm, it still took three tries to turn over. Una had bought the Ford Falcon new, in 1961. It wasn’t new anymore. The headliner fabric drooped in a big bubble at the middle of the roof. She’d slapped Robin once, for messing with it. It was not long after he came to live with her, the wounds were still fresh. He hadn’t cried then, just stared back at her, angry. He was such a willful child, before.

Her eyes found Jesus on the dashboard, with Mary beside him on her abalone throne.

“Why not me?” Una asked him, not for the first time. The savior had nothing to say. The pink plastic had faded in the sun, the figurine’s back was white as bone. Una put both hands on the steering wheel and took deep breaths. She had to be stronger.

Robin seemed a little better when she pulled around. She eyed his shirt again but it was fine. Una made a mental note, no more church clothes after this. She drove homeward, toward Los Griegos. The boy stared out the window, too silent. It bothered her. The fire was out.

Una began to calculate. The Falcon’s tires were almost bald, but they could probably last another month. She turned off Lomas Boulevard into a strip mall. There was a parking space open right in front of the big pink “31” sign. She pulled up and smiled.

¿Quieres un helado?

Robin shook his head, miserable.

“I can’t, Tita.”

It was so hard to keep the worry from her face. He doesn’t even want ice cream. How had it gotten so bad so fast?

“I’ll bring you back later, when you feel better,” Una promised.

“OK,” Robin said. He didn’t sound hopeful.

Una prayed for strength and glanced towards the figurines on the dashboard. Above Jesus and Mary was a sign, in the shape of a scroll with chess pieces on either side. Between the king and queen it said “DUKE GAMES”.

“Do you know how to play chess?” Una asked.

Robin shook his head. She wasn’t surprised. Robin was a wild boy before, she couldn’t keep him indoors. All he cared about was football and riding bikes with his fellow hooligans. He’d noticed the storefront and perked up. His eyes roamed over the displays of model trains and toy soldiers in the window. They all looked expensive.

“Let’s go take a look,” Una said, against her better judgment.

* * *

Burbak Breakbow stood over the ruins of Dagbellow Dell and wept before his men. Shameful tears ran down his scarred face and soaked into his blood-caked beard. He did not weep alone. The surviving berserkers lined the ridge, unable to face each other.

They had failed. Dagbellow was gone. The gate was smashed, the stockade was overrun, and the thatched roofs of the building caught like kindling. The fields of golden barley that ringed the town were all aflame.

The wolf riders came just after the harvest began and a horde of spearmen followed, backed by archers. Now, pillars of black smoke rose from blazing sheafs. Long lines of smoldering stalks were broken by the bodies of fallen warriors. Their losses were tremendous. Both shield phalanxes were overrun and slaughtered. The ballista was shattered. The general and his retinue were gone, mobbed down by goblins and carried away to an unspeakable fate.

The casualties were incredible, but it was the barley that made Burbak weep. It was one thing to raid for riches, or to war for territory. To burn good barley was an act of madness. The gobbos only had to wait two days and their raid could have claimed the entire crop. They wouldn’t have needed to attack the stockade or massacre the farmers. When winter came, all of Dagbellow would have starved.

Instead, the goblins had spent thousands of warriors to overcome the stronghold. They came in screaming waves. Ten times, they were repulsed, then the arrows and the oil ran out. The defenders fought tooth and nail, to no avail. The stockade was swallowed by a sea of green.

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Breakbow turned to his men and held up his thick hands. He was gory to his armpits, his armor glistened with sticky, green goblin blood. One by one, the others lifted their hands, a few raised stumps. They were all the same, each berserker was painted in death, from head to toe. None could recall what they’d done with the black wrath upon them, if they’d killed ten or a hundred. It wasn’t enough. With every battle, the brothers dwindled. There were always more goblins.

“Runagir. Duandan. With me. The rest of you, see to your wounds. See if there are any survivors in the ashes,” Breakbow commanded.

Breakbow’s sergeants grimaced, but hastened to his side at once. The three dwarves picked their way across the battlefield. Corpses festered in the sun and flies swirled in great, stinging swarms. They reached the eastern edge of the stockade and found the bunker. Goblin bodies tangled in diminishing rings as the defenders broke and fell back again and again. Here, they’d made their last stand. With a sinking feeling the berserkers climbed over the wall of dead.

The heavy lid of iron-banded oak was chopped apart. Down the spiral stair, all was dark. Goblins had snuffed the ever-burning lights. No sound came up from the pit. There would be nightmares inside.

“Draw straws?” Duandan suggested.

“Brothers, guard here. I will go,” said Breakbow.

The sergeants turned away, stung though he hadn’t meant to shame them. Duandan and Runagir’s forebearers had left the mountain long, long ago. Neither could see in the dark.

Burbak could. He set down his battleaxe and drew his daggers. The moment he bared the heavy blades, all fatigue evaporated. He flew down the spiral stair, heedless of stealth. His eyes shifted into the bleached grays of darksight that pulsed with each beat of his heart. He hoped there were a thousand goblins below, stymied by the final door. He would butcher them all.

At the bottom, the stench of death blew from the deathtrap, many goblins had fallen for the false path on the right. Alas, they’d found the hidden way too and broken through. Burbak stalked forward in the low tunnel, hoping for an ambush. Rank death wafted from the second deathtrap, a dozen goblins were skewered at the bottom of the pit. Burbak cheated along the edge. Fifty paces ahead, it looked like the tunnel had collapsed. The odor of freshly scythed hay tickled his nose.

“Oh no.”

With a rag over his mouth, Breakbow moved as close as he could bear. What looked like rubble was only dead goblins. Their yellow eyes were bugged-wide. In their frenzy to get away, they’d crawled over each other. Burbak climbed up to look past. A great mound of goblins was piled before the smashed holdfast door. His eyes stung, he could go no further.

There was no need. He knew what happened now. When the goblins broke through, the women broke the vials. The women and children were all dead.

Breakbow had a mad urge to dash forward into the holdfast and take a deep breath. He would fill his lungs with poison, lie down and be still forever beside the women and children he’d failed to save. He turned away, so distraught he nearly blundered into the pit.

As he climbed the stairs to the surface, a strange thing happened. His eyes began to adjust to the natural light, but his vision stayed gray. Outlines pulsed, threads of black seeped in at the seams. The daggers in his hands felt burning hot, eager to be quenched in blood.

The rage!

Burbak’s body stiffened with alarm. It was a wicked thing, a terrible sin to slip into the black rage with no foe at hand. That was the oathbreaker’s way. His daggers clattered against the steps. He clutched his hands over his temples and tried to bottle the anger, breath by breath. The darkness only grew. He threw his head back and bared his teeth at the gray haze of sky above.

Above the bunker, Runagir and Duandan jolted at the unearthly howl.

“REVENGE!”

* * *

“No way. Goblins are such bull—“

Una Martillo made a sound in her throat.

The players looked up and found the old woman staring at them, with her hands on her hips. A boy was at her side. Immediately the dwarf player’s face went bright red.

“Uhm. Sorry Ma’am,” he apologized. The dwarf player was a skinny teenager with big ears and bad acne. He wore a purple Duke Games shirt, his nametag said “DUNCAN.”

“Filthy mouths, filthy minds,” Una chided. The players were silent. Satisfied, she tutted away to look at chess boards. Once she was out of earshot, the players shared a look.

Robin was still wide-eyed at the tableside. The table was huge, four foot by eight with the entire surface covered by model terrain. There were hills made of styrofoam with sawdust flocking, toothpick ramparts, a savaged stockade of splintered balsa wood and glued-together pebbles. Painted figurines were turned on their sides all over the board. By the accumulation of soda cans and candy wrappers, the battle must have raged for hours.

“What game is that?” Robin dared to ask.

“Lords of Rapaxoris. It’s not for kids,” the goblin player said, quick and dismissive. He had an unpleasant, nasal voice. He was heavy set, with thick glasses and a mustard stain on his shirt.

“Don’t listen to Vlad. It’s ages twelve and up,” Duncan chimed in, packing away his army.

“I’ll be twelve in two weeks,” Robin said.

“That’s fine! It’s just a suggestion anyway. We have a new player night every Saturday. The rules aren’t that complicated.”

Robin eyed the stack of rulebooks, they were thicker than his textbooks. He gawked at the figurines as Duncan and Vlad broke up the battle. There were standard bearers, captains, wolf calvary, siege weapons, all painted in incredible detail. He noticed the way the older boys handled each piece. They had flight cases with foam cut-outs for each figurine.

“Do they come like that?” Robin asked, pointing at a unit of brightly colored berserkers. The all had vicious looks, their faces were painted with interlocking woad tattoos.

“That’s half the fun! You get to put them together and paint them any way you like.” Duncan brightened with enthusiasm. “We sell starter armies, five hundred points, the lore tome, and the basic rulebook. I would avoid the dwarves for your first army though, they’re a little weak this season.”

“The dwarves are fine, it’s their leader that’s weak. Speaking of which, hand over your general,” Vlad thrust his palm over the table.

“Let me slide this time. I just finished painting Gorthar. I didn’t even get to use his ultimate! Goblins are so overpowered right now.”

“No mercy for dwarven scum. You lost, cough up Gorthar.”

Duncan had concealed his general behind a wall of Mountain Dew cans, perhaps hoping Vlad might forget to collect. With a sigh he handed the general over. The Gorthar figurine dripped with lavish detail. His many-colored robe was trimmed in golden runes and his staff had a silver ram’s head with sapphire eyes. Duncan must have spent days painting it.

“You have to give up your general if you lose?” Robin asked.

“It’s a house rule. You can get them back if you win. We have a campaign going, each battle impacts the greater war. Losing a general is a big deal.”

“Spoils of war,” Vlad grinned. “Check out my trophy hall.”

With pride, Vlad produced a smaller case with all the generals he’d captured. There was a twin-tailed lizard king with a feather headdress, an elf queen with three arrows nocked in her bow, a knight in crimson armor with a giant sword, and some sort of bloated half-man half-spider with eight glittering red eyes.

“That’s my Silverwind,” Duncan pointed to the elf. “I swapped to dwarves after Vlad’s Knights of Chaos wiped out my Everglade Brigade. I hoped I could win her back today. No such luck.”

“It isn’t just luck,” Vlad folded his arms across his chest.

“You rolled four sixes in a row!”

“You misplayed the scenario. You let your footmen get bogged down in the barley. By the time your berserkers got going, it was all over. Should have sacrificed your shieldbearers and rushed the stockade.”

“Hard to do when your archers get four sixes and negate all my armor!”

“How much is a starter army?” Robin interrupted. The older boys seemed like they might bicker all night.

Duncan snapped back to work.

“Just $19.99! Comes with everything you need, paint, primer, and brushes. Plus we’ll give you a general figure of your choice to lead your squad to glory!”

“Oh,” Robin said. He turned and found Una was watching him from the aisle. In her face he could see there was no way. He took a last look at the battlefield.

“Thank you,” he added.