It was past sunset when Ellisar returned from her hunt with a third rabbit slung over her shoulder. She cleaned and skewered it herself this time, placing the rabbit over Daana’s crackling fire alongside the other two. Alas, not even the mouth-watering aroma of roasted meat was enough to lift the mood. No one spoke, not even after the food was broken down and portioned out. Seated near the fire, gnawing every edible scrap from a piping hot hind leg, Daana racked her brain for some way to ease the apprehension that hung as thick as smoke over their heads. Each attempt to start a conversation, however, was met with single word answers, serving only to double the mounting tension.
Daana practically jumped to her feet with relief when Wormy’s shaggy shape materialized from between the dark trees with Snag on his back. “By the gods, it took me nearly all day, but I did it! I finally found it!” The goblin slid from the saddle and sauntered towards them with an uncharacteristic spring in his step. Some of the glee bled from his smile when he noticed Ashwyn and Ellisar glowering across the dwindling coals at one another. “What, honeymoon over already? You two sure work fast.”
“Just having a moment,” Ashwyn assured him. Her easy smile returned, even if it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “You’re awful chipper. What’s it you found?”
“That is for me to know and you to find out. The sooner, the better. Now hurry up and get off your butts, let’s go.”
Daana extended half a skewer of roasted rabbit in Snag’s direction. “Don’t you want to eat first? We saved you some.”
“Do I look like I need mothering to you?” Snag snatched the stick from her hand and swung it at her for daring to be considerate of his needs.
Daana ducked out of the way in the nick of time, avoiding an unpleasant encounter involving the side of her face and a hunk of charred rabbit. “Ha!” she said, rolling triumphantly to her feet. “You missed.”
The goblin lifted the skewer to his mouth and ripped away a charred mouthful, chewing as he spoke. “You’re getting faster.”
“Funny. I was just about to accuse you of getting slower.”
“Yes, yes, pick on the old slow goblin, why don’t you? Never mind that he’s been away all day scouring the countryside all by his lonesome. No food, no water, no rest.” Snag met Daana’s scowl with his widest smile yet, displaying every needled tooth in his jagged mouth. “Go saddle your damn horse already. We’ve got places to do and things to be.”
And with that, the campfire was extinguished, the horses saddled, and they were plodding off into the dark wilderness. Ashwyn and Ellisar trailed behind them, maintaining a noticeable distance, enabling them to trade whispered words without anyone overhearing. At least they were speaking again, Daana supposed. Even if it didn’t look like a particularly productive dialogue.
“What’s with the shovels?” she said, noting the two new, suspicious additions strapped across Wormy’s saddle.
Snag glanced at her from the corner of his eye, using a rabbit bone to dig out the stringy bits of dinner still caught in his teeth. “Are you confused what a shovel is for? Or what I plan to be doing with ‘em? Not that it matters, really. The answer’s the same.”
“I know what a shovel is for.” Daana rolled her eyes. “You’re not planning to do some late night grave robbing, are you?”
His grin widened. “Not if I can help it.”
In spite of her persistent questioning, Snag didn’t offer much in the way of an explanation for anything. The most she got was that their destination was a surprise, and he wanted to keep it that way. Had this meager statement come from Ellisar, Daana might have turned and ridden as fast and as far as she could in the opposite direction. But Snag was infinitely more trustworthy and, despite his insistence otherwise, had too much of a conscience to lure anyone out into the dark woods to make them dig their own grave.
After nearly an hour of travel, the towering pines started to thin, revealing a wooded area that had been cleared of trees once upon a time. A long once upon a time ago, judging from the random scattering of saplings that now grew in the shadows of their ancient brethren.
Snag wasted no time with explanations. He slid from the saddle and flung a shovel in Daana’s direction. “Look alive!”
Daana caught it, nearly spilling from the horse in the process. With a grumble, she dismounted and tied her mare to a tree before picking her way across the fern-carpeted ground after him. A glance over her shoulder confirmed that Ellisar and Ashwyn were hanging back, both with their arms crossed, looking prepared to launch into a fight the moment their companions were out of earshot.
A chill wind blustered through the surrounding trees, carrying with it the familiar scents of decayed autumn leaves and damp toadstools. Daana shivered, drawing her cloak tighter over her shoulders. Ahead of her, she could just make out the decayed ruins of a former stone cottage. At least that’s what it might have been. After decades of neglect, the surrounding wilderness had simply grown over the top of it.
“What is this place?”
Snag came to a stop several yards from the site. “Home. One of ‘em anyway.”
“Oh.” Daana looked up and down the rotted plot of land, racking her brain for something nice to say. “I like what you’ve done with the place.”
“After I returned you, I used the reward money to open an apothecary,” Snag explained. “The nearby villagers weren’t a fan of my kind, turns out. So they burned it to the ground. I rebuilt, a little further from town just to be safe. And they burned that one too. The third and final testament to my obstinate nature was this little rundown hovel way out in the middle of the woods where only the truly desperate would care to find me. Business was slow, but steady. It wasn’t much, but it was mine at least.”
“This is going to be another sad story, isn’t it?”
He wrinkled his upturned nose at her in a teasing manner. “Did the rotted pile of house give it away?”
Nothing seemed to go right for Snag. She supposed she could let him tell the story without interrupting at least. “Go on then. What happened to this one?”
“It was all going surprisingly well, actually. And then one day this crazy elf comes knocking down my door. Says she’s looking for a doctor. Before I could get two words in, an orc barges in and drops an injured dwarf on my worktable. All three of ‘em were covered in blood and armed to the teeth. I just shut up and did what I could to stop the bleeding. Turns out, they’d been sent in to take care of a nuisance dragon problem. What they didn’t tell me was that the beast was still alive. It tracked them back to my shop and–can you guess what it did?”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Daana covered her mouth as her eyes grew wide. “It didn’t.”
“The next thing I know, the roof is up in flames!” Snag threw his hands over his head for effect. “They got their friend out in time, but there was no saving the place. I got so mad I blacked out. I don’t remember what happened, but when I came around again, I was covered in dragon guts and the other three were looking at me like I was foaming at the mouth. Apparently I’d made some mixture, popped it into the beast’s mouth, and stood in front of it waiting for it to blow fire at me. It did just that, except instead of incinerating me, whatever I’d thrown down it’s gullet caught fire first and blew the damn thing’s head off. The orc was real quick to compensate me for all the damages after that. She paid in full, too. No questions asked. Didn’t even try to haggle the price down–which was a stroke of luck considering I’d quoted her double.
“And then the unthinkable happened.” Snag lowered his arms and hugged them to his chest as his gaze swept across the reclaimed hovel. “She offered me a job. Said she could use someone with my skills on her team.”
“And you accepted?”
“To be fair, I had no idea who she was. There was still a bit of a language barrier at the time. But she had coin and obviously wasn’t shy about dishing it out. I figured I’d join up and fleece her blind for a couple months before going off on my merry way.” Snag’s smile lessened. “I eventually figured out who she was and realized swindling the Protector of the Realm probably wasn’t the best idea.”
“But you stayed.”
“My salary was never stilted and no matter where we went, there would be chaos to pay if someone refused me service. I was planning to leave, just never got around to it. It’s funny the lengths we’ll go to feel wanted.”
“Aw,” Daana said. For a Snag story, this one didn’t seem to end as miserably as most. For that reason, she hoped it didn’t have a part two. “Did you bring us all the way out here just to tell me that?”
“I wanted to rub it in Ellisar’s face one last time before I leave this wretched place forever. For that, I’m gonna need money.” Snag walked to the large bent willow tree growing on the left side of the destroyed cottage. He studied the trunk for several seconds before picking a direction and walking heel-to-toe, counting softly to himself.
“Don’t trust banks?” Daana called to him. “Why am I not surprised?”
“Find me a single bank in Sunstorn that’ll open an account to a goblin and I’ll show you a two-faced liar.” Finished counting, he marked the ground with the largest claw on his foot and turned to her expectantly. “Got your shovel ready?”
Daana raised her eyebrows at him, unamused. “Nice try. You’re not conning me into doing your grunt work.”
“Ah!” The goblin took a step and winced as imaginary pain coursed across his body. He dropped to the fern-carpeted ground, drawing one knee to his chest dramatically. “Curse this wretched leg! Sometimes I wonder if it would have been better if the mountain took me.”
“Not buying it.”
He writhed helplessly amongst the weeds for several more awkward seconds.
“Still not buying it.”
“I really thought the pity card was going to work on you. Hmmm.” Snag sat upright and appeared to ponder an alternative that allowed him to get away with as little work as possible. “Think it’ll work on Ashwyn?”
“Think what’ll work on Ashwyn?” The orc in question strolled into the clearing and joined them. There was a sort of bounce to her step when she walked, giving the deceptive perception that she was lighter than she looked. She stopped alongside Daana and folded her arms over her chest as she eyed the crumbled cottage skeptically.
“He brought us all the way out here so someone could to do his dirty work for him.” Daana leaned on the shovel as she spoke. “Usually I’m the sap that gets suckered into it, but the last thing I need is for any more blisters on my hands.”
“Ah, that’s why Ellie calls you princess. Makes sense now.”
“Hey!”
Before Daana could protest further, Ashwyn snatched the shovel out from under her, nearly causing her to fall. “Peaches, those scrawny arms are never going to be more than twigs if you don’t break a sweat now and then. If I’m going to spend the next few months in your company, we’re going to have to work on your survival skills.”
Snag offered Daana his shovel along with a bright, beaming smile. He was wise enough to keep his taunting to the silent variety, forcing Daana to focus on Ashwyn and not him. Daana took the shovel from his claws, grumbling, “Since when is digging a hole considered a survival skill?”
“How else are you going to bury the bodies and your loot?” Ashwyn already had a sizable hole underway. Her gaze shifted to Snag as she tossed another shovelful of dirt to the side. “Poor thing doesn’t even have a grasp on the basics. What have the two of you been teaching her?”
“She was nobility before this, you know. We had to start from the ground up. Lying, thieving, cheating, the works.”
“You think those would come natural to a noble.”
“Right? Figures we get caught up with the one morally decent person from the capital.”
Daana struck the blade of her shovel into the ground. “I am not morally decent!”
“Of course not, Peaches. You’re as crooked as they come. We’d be foolish to think otherwise,” Ashwyn said. “I, however, feel personally obligated to help speed your downward spiral along. I have a reputation to uphold, after all. As such, we’ll need to polish out your hand-to-hand combat skills, knife work, those sorts of things.”
She was going to receive training? Actual training from Ashwyn Pride, the former scourge of the glass seas? A mercenary, notorious cutthroat, and slightly less successful revolutionist? A strange combination of dread and excitement stirred to life within Daana’s belly. If she was going to survive her new life, it only made sense to learn from one of the best. With her pride temporarily inflated by the prospect, Daana threw her whole concentration into digging the best and fastest hole possible.
“How the fuck do you do that?” Snag said.
Daana was so consumed with making the best impression, she failed to notice that Ashwyn had retreated out of the way and was now resting against the shovel beside Snag, watching her progress with a satisfied smirk.
The orc lifted one shoulder, shrugging. “I told you, just gotta make them think it’s their idea.”
Before Daana could come to terms with the fact she’d been duped into doing the majority of the work, her shovel struck something solid with a metal clang!
“Out of the way! I’ve got it from here.” Snag leapt down into the dirt beside her and used his hands to uncover the buried object. Daana climbed out of the hole to give him room to work. A cloud of loose dust bloomed into the air as the goblin made short work of the digging. Moments later, Snag heaved a small chest over the side of the hole. He scrambled out after it, wiping the filth from his clothes.
“You want to do the honors with that latch there?” He looked to Ashwyn expectantly. “Seems to have rusted shut.”
Ashwyn slammed the shovel across the iron latch. The rusted iron held strong, unlike the warped wood sidings, which gave away in a burst of rotted splinters and dirt. The orc’s brow pressed into a firm line as she used the spade to sort through the strange collection of belongings. “Did you, uh, invest all your money in women’s silken undergarments? No judgment. Sorry they didn’t hold up all that well.”
Snag’s ears flattened against the back of his head as he stared at the rotted pile of nightgowns. “Decoy box. This one’s sort of a revenge thing, actually.”
“Ah.”
Ellisar came trudging out of the tree line to join them. She stood along the edge of the pit, surveying the unusual collection. “That’s where all my silkies went. And here I thought it was Rali stealing them all these years. Snag, you perv.”
Snag disappeared back into the hole. “I thought maybe all the loud sex would stop if I took her nighties. Jokes on me, though. She just paraded around without ‘em.”