"If they are immortal, and bear no hatchlings," Jumper chittered, "how then do they evolve?"
Dor hadn't thought of that. "Maybe they themselves just keep changing. With magic-"
"Come, join me!" a cute naiad cried, wiggling her delicately scaled hips dexterously. "I regret-" Jumper began.
"I meant Dor!" she cried, laughing. Dor noted what these laughs and screams did to the nymphs' chest area; was that why they did such exhalations so often? "Take off those silly clothes, and-" She gave a little foot-kick.
"Uh, I-" Dor said, finding himself strongly tempted despite all his private reservations. After all, if the nymph were willing-
But it would be the first step in joining this colony, and he just wasn't sure that was smart. An easy life, filled with fun-yet what was the future in it? Was fun the ultimate destiny of Man? Until he was sure, he had better wait.
"At least you should try it once," she said, as if reading his mind. Probably such mind reading was not difficult; there was only one channel a man's mind would be in, at this stage.
There was an ear-rending roar. A torrent of dark bodies burst upon the party. It was a goblin horde!
"Press gang! Press gang!" the goblin leader cried, making a gap-toothed grin of joyous malice. "Anybody we catch is hereby impressed into the goblin army!" And he grabbed a dryfaun by the arm. The faun was substantially larger than the goblin, but, paralyzed by fear, seemed unable to defend himself.
The nymphs screamed and dived for water, trees, and mountain. So did the fauns. None thought to stand up, close ranks, and oppose the raiders. Dor saw that there were only about eight goblins, compared to a hundred or more fauns and nymphs. What was the problem? Was it that goblins inspired terror by their very appearance?
Dor's hand went for his sword. Goblins did not inspire terror in him! "Wait, friend," Jumper chittered. "This is not our affair."
"We can't just sit here and let them take our friends!"
"There is much we do not know about this situation," the spider chittered.
Ill at ease but respecting Jumper's judgment, Dor suffered himself to be restrained. The goblins quickly ran down five of the healthiest fauns, threw them to the ground, and bound them with vine-ropes. The goblins were capturing, not slaying; they wanted men fit for their army. So Jumper had been correct in his caution, as usual; Dor would have gained nothing by laying about him with his blade. Not anything worth gaining, anyway.
Yet still his mind was nagged: what sort of creatures were these fauns who welcomed strangers yet refused to assist each other in an emergency? If they did not fight for their own-
"That's five," the goblin sergeant said. "One more good one, we need." His darkly roving eye fell on Dor, who stood unmoving. "Kill the bug; take the man."
The goblins closed on the pair. "I think it has just become our affair." Dor said grimly.
"It seems you are correct. Perhaps you should attempt to parlay."
"Parlay!" Dor exclaimed indignantly. "They mean to kill you and impress me into their army!"
"We are more civilized than they, are we not?"
Dor sighed. He faced the goblin sergeant. "Please desist. We are not involved in your war. We do not wish to-"
"Grab him!" the goblin ordered. Evidently these goblins did not realize that Dor was not merely a larger faun: a creature who could be expected to match five goblins in combat. The seven others dived for Dor.
Jumper bounded over their heads while Dor's sword flashed in its vicious arc. That was one thing this sword was very good at. Two goblins fell, blood oozing and turning black. Then Jumper's silk caught the sergeant, and the spider trussed him up with the efficiency of eight trained legs.
"Look to your leader!" Dor cried, smashing another goblin down.
The remaining four looked. The sergeant was virtually cocooned in silk and helpless. "Get me out of this!" he bawled.
The others rushed to him. They had not been eager to fight Dor anyway, once the ratio dropped from seven to one down to four to one. Now they knew they had a fight on their dirty little hands.
Then, from the sky, shapes dived: harpies. "Fresh meat!" the harpy sergeant screamed. Dor knew that was her rank, because the filthy grease on her wings was striped. "Haul it away!"
The dirty birds clutched the bodies available: five fauns, three wounded goblins, and the cocooned goblin sergeant. Great ugly wings beat fiercely, stirring up dust. "Not the fauns!" Dor bellowed-for one of them was the orefaun who had befriended him. He grabbed for the orefaun's dangling hooves, yanking him down to the ground. Startled at this vigorous resistance, the harpies let go.
Jumper threw up a noose, catching a dryfaun and hauling him down similarly. But the remaining three, together with the four goblins, disappeared into the sky. The other goblins ran away.
Had Jumper been right to chitter restraint? Dor wasn't sure. He didn't care about the goblins, but he was very sorry about the three lost fauns. Could he have saved them if he had attacked before? Or would he merely have gotten himself trussed up and abducted? There was no way to be sure. Certainly Jumper, once he acted, had done so most effectively; he had nullified the leader, instead of mindlessly battling the troops, as Dor had done. Jumper had taken the most sensible course, the one with the least risk. Following this course, they had taken losses, but had not lost the battle.
The nymphs and fauns returned, now that the action was over. They were chastened by the double horror of goblin and harpy raids. Three of their comrades were gone. Obviously their illusion of security had been shattered.
The party was, of course, over. They doused the bonfire and retreated to their various habitats. Dor and Jumper hung from a branch of a large tree; it belonged to no one, since these creatures were not yet at the one-creature-one-tree stage. Night sank gloomily upon them.
In the morning Dor and Jumper were sober-but they had a surprise. The first nymph to spy Jumper screamed and dived into the lake-where she almost drowned, for she was an oread, not a naiad. The fauns clustered around aggressively. Dor had to introduce himself and Jumper, for no one remembered them.
They went through the bit about the jumping again, and quickly befriended the whole community-again. They did not mention the goblin press-gang raid; those lost fauns had been forgotten, literally, and the ore-faun Dor had rescued obviously was not aware of his narrow escape. The whole community knew that monsters never came here.
For this was part of the secret of eternal youth: the fauns and nymphs could not afford to be burdened by the harsh realities of prior experience. They were forever young, and necessarily innocent. Experience aged people. As it was aging Dor.
"At least the goblins won't do much successful recruiting here," Dor murmured as they left the colony behind and continued west. "You can't depend on troops who have to be taught again each day."