Spikehollow wished for a treasure to take away from the village, not just something to eat. He wanted something to keep for himself, or perhaps he would give it to Saro-Saro. The old goblin might enjoy a quilt as fine as that. As he carried the quilt to the door, he spotted two more blankets on a shelf, one loosely woven and dyed green, the other gray and frayed. He carefully folded the quilt and set it down and pulled the gray blanket off the shelf.
Then he returned to the old dwarf and covered him with the frayed blanket. Even though Spikehollow meant well, he felt bile rising in his throat and he gagged.
“Worst stink ever.”
Holding his breath, he stared at the dwarf. The dwarf’s eyes never opened, and the goblin had to look closely to make sure the dwarf was indeed alive.
“Not breathing much,” Spikehollow decided. The dwarf’s chest rose and fell only slightly. “Dying, maybe. Old things die. And dying old things don’t need any lovely blankets.” The goblin cocked his head, noticing a swollen black spot on the dwarf’s neck, like a knob on a tree trunk. Spikehollow scowled. “Ugly, stinking, dying old thing.”
The stinking old dwarf with the black spot on his neck didn’t need the gray blanket, Spikehollow decided, and so he removed it, with the dwarf still sleeping. Spikehollow folded it and set it atop the fine, colorful quilt. Then he pulled the green blanket down too, deciding that was the one he would give to Saro-Saro. He would keep the butterflies and birds and flowers in vases quilt for himself. Satisfied, he took all three out into the sunlight.
Rustymane and Graytoes were heading toward the longest and narrowest home. It was their third stop on their explorations, and they had bulging pillow cases and satchels that they set outside the door. The work had kept Graytoes occupied, and she’d not whimpered or mentioned Moon-eye since they’d started foraging.
“Could live here, in this village,” Rustymane was saying. “This place tall enough. This one house anyway.” The other two homes the pair had looted had low ceilings, and the hobgoblin had had to stoop.
“Could live in the Qualinesti Forest, like Mudwort says,” Graytoes said, more cheerfully than she felt. Then Graytoes slipped inside, her eyes adjusting to the shadows and spotting movement. “Another dwarf.” She pointed, adding, “No more killing, Direfang says.”
Rustymane pushed past her, growling when the young female dwarf started shouting. She was the height of a goblin, though stockier and smooth all over, marking her as a child. The hobgoblin couldn’t understand her angry words, and so he shoved her against a wall.
“Quiet! Quiet, quiet!” He pinched his lips and bent until he was face-to-face with the short female dwarf.
The dwarf stopped yelling and started shaking, beads of sweat sprouting on her wide forehead.
“Stay!” he ordered, pressing his hand against her shoulder. He pushed, and she sat.
“Stay, dwarf!” Graytoes parroted. “Stay quiet!”
“There’s food in here,” Rustymane announced, looking around. “Lots of it, Graytoes. All of it mushy and sweet.” The hobgoblin leaned over a table, where several large bowls were filled with a pulpy mixture. He thrust two fingers in a bowl, and using them like a spoon, shoveled the pulp into his mouth. “Can’t put this in a bag, Graytoes. Might as well eat it.” He continued to feast, using both hands. “Want some?”
He didn’t see her shake her head or squeeze past him. Neither did he see what filled the rest of the one-room building. Small beds and cradles. Rustymane slurped the porridge so noisily that he didn’t hear the wave of soft gurgles and sighs or hear Graytoes coo back at the eight dwarf infants inside the place.
The goblin went from child to child, looking each one over and tentatively touching their chins and noses. She giggled when they smiled, and she tucked the blankets up around the ones who’d kicked theirs loose. She couldn’t tell precisely how old the younglings were; she’d never seen a dwarf before coming to that village. But she knew they were young; it didn’t look as if any of them could walk yet.
“Which one?” she asked Rustymane, though he wasn’t paying any attention to her. He was busily slurping up the mixture that Graytoes realized was food for the babies. Frowning, she looked around the table and spotted a jar and spoons. She left the babies and gathered up a jar and the prettiest silver spoon.
Moving to a bowl that Rustymane hadn’t yet delved into, she spooned the porridge into the jar and tightly stoppered it and carried it outside and squeezed the jar into a satchel. Then she went back inside happily.
“Which one?” she mused, that time to herself.
Rustymane didn’t hear her anyway. The hobgoblin’s slurping was louder than all the little sounds the infants made.
The young female dwarf still sat against the wall, quivering and looking timidly between Graytoes and the hobgoblin. The female dwarf wailed when Graytoes started lifting up blankets and counting the infants’ toes and looking to determine their sex.
“Boy,” Graytoes said. “Boy. Boy. Girl.” She halted at the cradle of the baby girl dwarf. “A girl, and the smallest one here.” She reached inside and picked up the baby. It gurgled pleasantly. She made sure the blanket was wrapped tightly around it, and she held it close. “Moon-eye always wanted a girl.”
Larger than a goblin baby, the dwarf infant was cumbersome, but Graytoes managed to cradle it lovingly. “The best treasure,” she said. “This is the best treasure ever.”
She left the building, ignoring the frightened young female dwarf who wailed her protest. Rustymane’s feasting sounds diminished behind her as, with some difficulty, she shouldered the satchel she’d nestled the porridge in while still carrying the child.
Graytoes struggled only a little with her burdens. The acquisition of a baby had given her strength and purpose.
DIREFANG’S MAPS
The moon was full, and its light was bright enough that Direfang could study the series of maps one of the dwarves had drawn. Rendered in charcoal and spread out over the small pages of the book, the maps were not near as detailed as the Dark Knight maps he’d admired in Steel Town. But then, he’d never been allowed to get too close to those precious maps. He had to be careful with the charcoal drawings too because the pages of the book were thin and the lines smeared easily.
He desperately needed a real map, one large and sturdy and drawn by men who’d been over the terrain. But he did not know where to get one.
The hobgoblin sat in the center of a wide trail that ran south of Reorx’s Cradle. He’d intended to peruse the crude maps while he was in the village, perhaps pass a few nights there and give the goblins more time to dig through the garden and truly relax. He certainly could have used the time to rest his leg and his foggy eyes, and to ask the old female dwarf more about the mountains. But he worried too much that the dwarves would provoke his charges into killing the women and children. It was bad enough when one of the dwarves saw Graytoes carry away a baby; the dwarf became hysterical, and her fellows had had to restrain her.
The priest had pleaded with Direfang to leave the baby in the village. “She belongs with her own kind,” the priest had argued.
But Graytoes wanted the child badly, and the mewling thing seemed to make her happy. So Direfang let Graytoes keep it, and he ordered the goblins out of the village to keep the surviving dwarves safe.
Why did he care about the dwarves to begin with? he wondered. What kind of spark of weakness, deep inside him, stopped him from letting the goblins slay every last dwarf in Reorx’s Cradle? Was it the same spark that had kept him from sending the goblins after the Dark Knights in the infirmary in Steel Town? Was his heart too soft?
“Weakness,” he grumbled. “Helpless and empty of fire.” He returned his attention to the maps.