Snag didn’t align himself with any of the almighty deities believed to control the reins of fate. It was all tall tales as far as he was concerned. Even if such beings existed, it wouldn’t have changed his stance on the matter. No god or goddess had ever granted him any favors, after all. Snag had been born with smarts, not brawn, into a goblin clan that considered intelligence synonymous with trying to rise above one’s social station. He’d learned to fight the hard way, sure, but skills didn’t make up for a puny body. Physically speaking, Snag made a plucked chicken look formidable in compassion.

Fortunately for him, Fangle wasn’t much bigger. Still, a little height would’ve gone a long way in the intimidation department. Snag widened his stance, flashing Fangle a cocky smile. “Are you finished playing games yet?”

“I playing ain’t games, Snaggy. I told you, this is business.”

“Sure it is.” Snag added insult to injury with the inclusion of a dramatic eye roll. He hoped Daana saw, mostly because he’d learned it from her. “This is the whole reason I went around the den, you know. So I wouldn’t have to put up with your nonsense.”

“Put up with us?” A tint of red flushed across Fangle’s weathered face. “It’s us who’ve been putting up with you! Do you have any idea what sort of trouble you caused us? Abandoning your family was bad enough, but then you became a traitor, too. And, to top it all off, you went and joined the other side! You gave us a bad name. The other dens refused to do any trade with us on account of you.

Snag opened his mouth to speak but Fangle wasn’t finished.

“And now, the moment you finally do something right, get your name cleared, raise the status of the goblin across the land, you refuse to come home! We’re the laughing stock of the community. Do you know how that makes us look? We were screwed with you and now we’re screwed without you. And you couldn’t even be bothered to stop in and throw us a bone, eh? Selfish little maggot.”

“I…” Snag reached up and scratched the back of his head as his former nerve emptied like a popped wine skin. However he was expecting this confrontation to go, it was certainly not in this direction. “I’m sorry?”

“Damn right you should be!”

“I didn’t realize.” Snag’s voice was small.

“Yeah, you didn’t. Did you?”

Snag gestured to Not-Mam halfheartedly. “Can we cut the theatrics? You don’t need to be dragging the elderly out into the wilderness just to make me feel guilty. What is it you want? It’s money, innit? It’s always money.”

“Money?” Insult danced across Fangle’s red face. “I don’t want money!”

“You don’t?”

“No! I want you, numbskull. Forget your fucking money. Been in the realm so long you’ve started to think like one of them, eh? No, dingus, I want you back in our den and at my side. My number two.”

Snag’s gaze darted to Ashwyn and Daana. The former was too preoccupied with guarding her dinner to be paying attention, but Daana had heard every word. Her eyes screamed ‘don’t you dare’ while her mouth, oddly, said nothing at all on account of it being snapped shut. He sort of whished her eyes would snap shut, too, so she’d stop looking at him like a kicked puppy.

Snag turned back to Fangle with a sigh. “And this was your elaborate scheme? Dragging an old lady who ain’t even my mam out here to guilt me into coming back home?”

“Told him it was stupid plan,” Not-Mam muttered. The elderly goblin was crouched alongside the fire, rubbing her gnarled hands together for warmth as she edged unmistakably closer to the simmering cook pot. A loud snap of Ashwyn’s tusks convinced her that whatever was in the pot wasn’t worth losing a hand over.

Fangle didn’t notice. He slung his scrawny arm over Snag’s shoulder and pulled him close. “Your influence is in your name, Snaglebrag. Everyone knows about the former traitor turned hero. You pitted the United Territories of Realm against itself! Tore it apart from the inside. I want you by my side and then, together, we’re going to rub in all the other dens’ faces. We’ll become the most powerful clan in the land! Those who scorned us will come crawling back, begging for my forgiveness.”

Fangle let the idea settle before prompting a response out of Snag with a gentle shake. “Sounds good, doesn’t it? I can see my brilliance has kindled the fire in your eyes. What do you say?”

Snag didn’t sound so sure himself. “No?”

“No?” Fangle’s ears went stiff as a board. “What do you mean no? A goblin’s nothing without his family. You of all people should know that by now. How you managed to scrape by on your own in the territories is beyond me.”

“I didn’t,” Snag said. “I made a new family.”

Fangle’s accusatory stare immediately settled over Daana and Ashwyn. “I know what family is, brother. An orc and an elf do not a family make.”

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“There’s a dwarf too. And another orc and—”

“We’ll get you a wife!” Fangle announced as if the idea had just come to him and was worth shouting at the top of his lungs.

“I don’t want a wife.”

The other goblin scrunched his face up at Snag’s protest. “Well, I suppose we could arrange for a husband. It’s not really the done thing in these parts, but if it means keeping you happy, I s’ppose we could try to be a bit more — how do the realm folk put it? Accepting?”

Snag’s voice was flat and did not match the sudden impulse he had to slam his head against something solid. “That’s lovely, Fangle. Thank you.”

“Not as lovely as your future husband will be. I promise you that, Snaglebrag. We’ll get you a real looker.”

“It was sarcasm, idiot!”

Fangle’s shoulders lowered as he rolled this thought around in his head. “What’s sarcasm?”

“When you say something you don’t mean.”

“Isn’t that just lying?”

“It’s different, because it’s supposed to be funny. Like a mean joke. Gah — I don’t have time to explain this to you!” They’d wandered so far off course, Snag feared he didn’t know how to get the conversation back on the right track again. Not that he necessarily wanted to finish his conversation with Fangle, but there were a few items worth setting straight. “I don’t want a husband, alright? Or a wife. No spouse. No mate. No concubines.”

Another brilliant idea lit within Fangle’s yellow eyes and he opened his mouth to deliver it.

Snag took some small joy in cutting him short, shouting, “No puppies either!”

“Not even a nice juicy one?”

“No!”

“Well what do you want then?”

“Nothing! I don’t want any part of this, Fangle. I’m sorry you all suffered because of me, but I’m not coming home. I got things to see, people to do.” From the corner of his eye, Snag saw Daana’s eyes bulge, proving yet again that he should not have trusted idioms from a Stoneclaw. Daana desperately wanted to say something. Her face practically screamed ‘you’re saying that wrong’ but she had the sense to keep it to herself. There was a time and place for corrections and the middle of a damn standoff was definitely not it.

“That’s not fair!” Fangle protested, sounding just like the snot-nosed brat Snag had grown up with all those years ago.

“No, Fangle. Being driven from your home’s not fair. Being kicked out of your land for trying to help a stranger isn’t fair. Saying goodbye to your closest friend when you knew full well it should have been you that died isn’t fair!” Crap. Snag hadn’t meant for that last one to slip out. Regardless, he couldn’t seem to stop the hot torrent of excrement bubbling its way up his gullet and out his mouth. “So don’t you tell me about life being fair because I’ve lived it! Nothing has ever been fair for me. And I’ll be damned before you march on in here and demand what you think you deserve from me too, alright?”

“Snagle–”

“Shit, Fangle! That’s all you’re ever getting from me!” The rage boiled over inside of him and Snag suddenly had the insatiable need to kick something over and over. Even in the throes of madness, the logical portion of his brain decided against taking his anger out on Fangle. He chose a hapless shrub instead, and kicked and kicked and kicked until the shrub was nothing more than a few bare branches sticking out of the ground. Snag stared at it, chest heaving, ignoring the twitch in his lower eyelid. He felt simultaneously better and burdened with the insatiable urge to do it all over again.

“Snag?”

Daana’s voice snapped him from his mania. Snag’s startled gaze shifted back to Fangle and the elderly goblin. Both were frozen in place staring at him as he’d sprouted a second head. Crap on a cracker. This was not going at all as he intended. So much for cool, collected Snag. He was acting like a downright monster.

“Fangle,” Snag started.

“I won’t bother you no more,” Fangle murmured. “This was a stupid idea anyway. Shouldn’t have come here. Don’t know what I was thinking.”

This was what he wanted, wasn’t it? Fangle was leaving empty-handed, having been bested by the more clever goblin. Snag should have been elated and yet, he didn’t feel like it. He opened and closed his mouth several times before he settled on an answer which would have normally made him question his own sanity. “Wait here.”

Snag stomped away into the grass. Once certain no thieving sneaks were watching him, he dug up one of his money stashes. While time consuming, burying his wealth each night ensured that if anyone jumped them in the night, they would only make off with the handful of decoy change he kept in Wormy’s saddlebag. Snag fished a small sack of coin from the hole before replacing the dirt back over the top.

With his prize in hand, Snag trudged back to camp and jutted it at Fangle. “Here. Take it.”

Fangle’s scowl darkened. “I said I don’t want your money.”

“You want me to snap at you again instead? Take it and go.”

Reluctantly, the other goblin accepted it. “Alright, but it was your idea.”

“It was.”

“Goodbye then. I guess.”

“Goodbye.”

“You sure you don’t want to—”

“No!”

With one final confused look over his shoulder, Fangle took Not-Mam by the arm and led her away until both of their sinewy forms disappeared into the swaying tundra grass.

With a disgruntled sigh, Snag dropped back onto the ground between his gobsmacked companions. Ashwyn had the cook pot sitting in the dirt between her legs, scraping the bottom clean with a wooden spoon. Wordlessly, she jutted the spoon in his direction, offering Snag the last bite of stew.

Snag shook his head no, miserably.

Daana tried the more personable approach. She reached out and touched his shoulder, asking, “Are you alright?”

What kind of question was that? Alright? How could he possibly be alright? Instead of facing his issues, he went and lost his temper and made a fool of himself. And then, when he could have just talked it out like damned adult, he took the coward’s approach and gave Fangle a sackful of coin...

“Fuck me.” Snag raised his head as his inner thoughts transformed from misery to horror. “I think I just got played. I handed that asshole a sack of money!”

“Thought that seemed out of character for you,” Ashwyn grunted, still bent on scraping the last bits of burnt supper from the bottom of the cast iron pot.

“That clever bastard! Why didn’t one of you stop me?”