Daana stepped reluctantly to the side, surrendering the rest of the interrogation to Snag. He swaggered forward, sizing the young goblin up and down. Snag’s wrinkled expression was caught somewhere between bored and woefully unimpressed. Unlike Twig, who was a jittery mess. He twiddled his clawed hands and kept glancing over his shoulder at the surrounding tundra grass, as though considering whether or not to make a break for it. It would be pointless to try, of course, considering Ashwyn’s proximity. She’d grab him before the young goblin got more than two steps in.

Twig must have arrived at the same conclusion as he remained where he was, resigned to his fate. He cowered lower when Snag came to a stop in front of him, separated only by a small stretch of ground. “I didn’t do nothing,” Twig said, in the event Snag hadn’t heard the first three times he’d claimed as much. “Just let me go. I won’t bother you no more.”

“Of course you didn’t do anything. I believe you.” Snag flashed the sort of smile one would expect from a snake. “I just want some clarification, is all. You said some things that piqued my interest and it’s going to drive me crazy until I know what you meant. You’ll be free to go after that. Promise.”

Whether or not Twig believed a word out of Snag’s mouth was irrelevant. The young goblin was trapped either way. Wordlessly, he bobbed his trembling head in agreement.

“Excellent.” Snag withdrew the intricately carved pipe from the confines of his jacket and offered it his interrogee. “Now, first thing’s first, you’re gonna assure all your mates out there that you’ve come to no harm and that they can all just stay where they are.”

Twig stared at the instrument with wide eyes, unable to look away.

“Ashwyn clunk you on the head too hard, boy? It’s a pipe, not a knife. I ain’t gonna stick you with it.”

Nervously, Twig accepted the pipe and produced a series of sharp notes. A second pipe responded, its shrill screech dampened by distance. Even Daana’s sharp elven ears couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from amongst the sea of swaying tundra grass.

Snag listened and then, once the message was delivered in full, nodded his satisfaction. “Good. Now that that’s taken care of, let’s get down to business, shall we?”

“I don’t have a business,” Twig wailed.

“You don’t have much in the way of smarts either, boy, but we won’t let that stop you.” Snag drew his arm around Twig’s shoulder in an unusual display of chumminess. The disgust must have shown on Daana’s face because the look he shot her warned that now was not the time to mention it. And also, there would never be a good time to mention it. Ever.

Snag gave Twig a gentle shake, as if attempting to jiggle the answers loose like pieces of silver from a coin jar. “Now what’s all this talk about Snaglebrag rejecting his old clan, huh?”

“Our den leader said you—”

“Snaglebrag, not me,” Snag corrected with an uncomfortably tight smile.

Twig attempted again. “He claimed Snag turned down his clan’s offer for reconciliation. Not really a surprise, boss said. They’re the pithiest of all the clans. Can’t fault Snaglebrag for not wanting to associate with such a sorry lot.”

Snag’s ears started to droop. “Is that so?”

“Word is he had to bribe Fangle to get him to leave him alone.”

“Ah.”

Twig’s confidence was on the mend. He stood taller, growing more animated as he got to the good part of his explanation. “Anyway, now that the old den has been officially turned down, the boss said it was time to make a move. He tasked us with bringing Snag in for a sit down so he could make an offer you couldn’t refuse.”

Snag was too caught in thought to catch Twig’s mistake and reaffirm, once more, that he and the infamous Snaglebrag Flint were not one of the same. Snag removed his arm from Twig’s shoulder and stepped away, fiddling with the ring strung through his lip. “And what happens to the Fangle’s den?”

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it,” Twig said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “They keep scrounging in the dirt for scraps like the bottom feeders they are, and you ascend to the top of the goblin hierarchy. Boss is prepared to offer whatever you want. Power, status, munchies, you get to have it all.”

“And what do you get out of this?” Snag demanded.

Twig puffed out his scrawny chest and stood, if not straighter, something that looked less like a sagging weed. “Boss promised us our first bangle.” He pointed to one of the paint chipped fishing lures hanging from his left ear. “A real one. Made of gold.”

“Uh-huh.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“I’ll have status after that. And respect.”

Having given up playing guard, Ashwyn moved to Daana’s side. The orc leaned closer and whispered under her breath. “His eye’s doing that twitchy thing again. Should we be worried?”

Snag’s eyes darted in their direction, having undoubtedly heard regardless of Ashwyn’s attempt to keep her volume low. “Stay here, boy.” He started in their direction with slow, reluctant steps. “I have to convene with these two a moment.”

If Daana wasn’t concerned before, she certainly was now.

“So,” Snag started, once he’d reached them.

“Wait!” Daana grabbed him by the elbow and dragged him closer. “We’ve got goblins all around, remember? We’d better do this right and huddle.”

Ashwyn rolled her head back with a groan. “Good goddess, Peaches. No.”

“Come on!” Daana said. “You guys never want to do what I want to do.”

“Because it’s stupid.” The orc stubbornly stood her ground, as if huddling would somehow tarnish her already less than stellar reputation. An odd concern considering she’d been running around on all fours terrorizing a bunch of teenagers not ten minutes before. “Nobody actually huddles to make a plan.”

Maybe it was an attempt to lighten the mood. Maybe Daana was using it as an excuse to delay the inevitable even just a few seconds more. Regardless of her underlying reasons, she kept at it with the sort of cheerful desperation of someone moments away from losing their best friend. “Not true. I used to see it all of the time. And just once in my life, I’d like to be inside the huddle and not the one standing on the outside wondering what sort of nasty things they’re saying about me.”

“Peaches, that’s the saddest thing you’ve said so far.”

Daana widened her eyes pitifully. “Please?”

Trading exasperating glances, Snag and Ashwyn gave in, reluctantly forming a huddle with Daana. The positioning was a little awkward considering the orc had to crouch and the goblin had to be on damn near tiptoe, but they managed it in the end. Ashwyn’s gruff voice conveyed every inch of her mounting discomfort. “Alright, Snaggy, spit it out. What’s going on, mate? You look like how I feel and, suffice to say, it’s not a pretty sight.”

Her assessment wasn’t wrong. The color from Snag’s weathered features had gone from green to gray, as if the life was slowly being sapped out of his body. “I think I made a mistake with the way I handled Fangle,” Snag admitted. “By turning him down, I made the old den’s reputation even worse. Now nobody’s going to want anything to do with them.”

“You said you didn’t care,” Ashwyn reminded him.

“I say lots of things I don’t mean.” A cold look from Ashwyn convinced Snag to keep the explanation coming. “And anyway, I meant it in the ‘I don’t care to help you’ sort of way. I didn’t intend to make things for them worse.”

Daana piped up with, “How do you clear something like that up?”

Snag’s gaze dropped to his feet, unable to meet her gaze. “I think you already know.”

Damn right I did. Unfortunately, this particular instance of correctness didn’t come with the usual sense of accomplishment. Grief swelled up inside of her instead. Daana shifted her grasp from Snag’s shoulder to his hand, fighting another bout of spontaneous tears. “Would it be rude to say I told you so right now? Would you prefer it if I just think it?”

He, too, seemed incapable of expressing his feelings in a mature fashion. “I’ll tell you where to shove it if you do.”

Oh gods. He was really considering it. Really, really considering it. And yes, she may have been the one to suggest staying, but that didn’t mean she wanted it to happen. Since when did anyone listen to her anyways? Daana tried her best to smile around the pain shredding her to pieces on the inside. “We’ve got to come through here again on our way back. We’ll be sure to stop in and say hi.”

“You will?” Snag said.

Ashwyn thumped his shoulder, hard, from the way he grimaced. “Of course! We’re going to need directions, after all. You know Peaches and I didn’t pay a lick of attention to how you got us this far.”

Panic darted behind Snag’s yellow eyes. Daana could tell he wanted to fight the decision. He wanted to scream, complain, argue why it was the most foolish idea ever conceived, and then yell at them some more for not talking him out of it. Daana squeezed his hand again. She gave not the answer she wanted, but the one he needed. “Go. We’ll be fine without you.”

“Promise you’re not going to do anything stupid?”

“I would never promise that.”

Snag turned to Ashwyn, his face contorting in the strangest way, as if it was fighting the urge to melt off and slump into the dirt between his clawed feet. “I know better than to ask, but at least try to do things the smart way? For my sake? So I can sleep at night?”

The orc offered a highly convincing shrug. “Sure, mate.”

Reluctantly, Daana released his gnarled hand and threw her hood up over her head as she walked swiftly back to her horse, fighting the pressure building behind her eyes. Wayward tears slipped free and trickled down her cheeks regardless. “You’re going to do great.”

“Don’t you start blubbering again. All it’s going to do is send me away faster.” Ignoring the moisture pooling in his own eyes, Snag turned back to Twig, muttering as he unfastened one of the bangles from his tattered ear. “You see this, boy? This here is a real mark of status. I didn’t get this one from running some silly errand. This was earned through blood and grit.”

Twig wrinkled his nose at the curious disk-shaped dangle. “It’s not gold.”

“Dragon scale,” Snag replied. “Carved it myself after I killed the beast using nothing but a clothesline and a cheese knife.”

Daana sorely wanted to point out that she’d witnessed him pick it up at a vendor stall three months prior, but decided against shattering whatever illusion Snag was crafting. Twig was fully enraptured, staring wide eyed at the bangle as if it was the answer to all his life’s problems.

“You want a real mark of status, boy?” Snag held the prize just out of reach as he outlined his conditions. “Spread the word. Tell all the dens in the area that Snaglebrag Flint has come home and he’s going to restore his clan to their former might. Do that, and your first bangle will be worth more than gold.”