“Until a real dragon comes along?” Dayn offered.
“What?” Kresean raised an eyebrow warily, then realized Dayne was kidding. Kresean bellowed with laughter, and the young bard joined in. The celebrating villagers surrounded them with cheers, and they laughed until the tears ran down their faces.
Gnomebody
Jeff Grubb
“This is a gnome story, right?” asked Augie, staring over the rim of his tankard. There was derision in both his glare and his voice-they had traded a number of tales that evening, each more implausible than the last.
“Not exactly,” replied Brack, the older and more slender of the two sellswords.
The pair had met by chance in the tavern. They were veterans of separate units from the same side in the War of the Lance, now reduced to mere mercenary work in these years of chaos. As a youth, Augie had served in the personal guard of Verminaard himself, and Brack had been a lieutenant in the Green Dragonarmy. Now older, and presumably wiser, they chose their battles and their employers more carefully.
After a few moments of sizing each other up and determining that they had both fought for the same masters at one time, they slid into an easy conversation. They spoke of what regions would need their services, which wars and rumors of war would pan out, and the chaos they’d seen brought on the backs of the great dragons. The gnome wait staff brought the drinks quickly, and the dwarf at the bar kept a running tab.
Of course, over time, the conversation drifted to how the world in general had gone into the midden and that nothing was as good as it once was. This line of discussion quickly gave way (after a few more tankards) to stories of how things were in the old days.
Which of course brought Brack to mention of his last battle in the Green Dragonarmy, a disaster brought about in the pursuit of one man-or, to be more specific, one gnome and that gnome’s invention.
Which brought Augie’s question and Brack’s answer and Augie’s reply, “Whadayah mean, not exactly?”
Brack shifted in his chair, noted that his mug was more half-empty than half-full, and signaled to the serving gnome. He paused as the diminutive being brought him a full, foaming tankard, then continued, “I mean yes, it’s a gnome story, in that it’s about a gnome, but no, it’s not a gnome story because it’s not about a gnome at all.”
The big man’s bushy brows hovered over bleary eyes stained by many a drink that evening. “How can it be about a gnome and not about a gnome?”
“When the gnome does not exist,” said Brack, “but his greatest invention survives to this day. Let me explain.”
The patrol of hobgoblins, scouts in the service of the Green Dragonarmy, were having a bad time of it. Scouts were at their best in clear terrain and moderate climate, but ever since their invasion force had landed, they had been deluged by heavy rain and forced to reconnoiter through thick, bramble-filled overgrowth. Little to see, less to smell (other than wet hobgoblin), and nothing to report. They had been gone four days from the main encampment and were soaked to the skin. After a brief, heated discussion (the only heat the dozen creatures had experienced in three days), they decided to ascend one of the hills for a better view of the rain-damp fog.
“We shudda stayed in camp,” said one particularly large hobgoblin.
“And what?” growled another. “It’s just as marshy there. There’s a swamp where our bivvie should be.”
“At least then we don’t hafta march around in wet boots,” said the big one.
“At least yah have boots,” returned the sergeant, a scarred hobgoblin with one good eye. “When I first signs up, we had to do this barefoot.”
The big complainer bared his lower fangs, and the other hobgoblins assumed that a fight was coming and drifted into normal positions, a circle surrounding the sergeant and the big one. But the sergeant stared at the hobgoblin with an icy ferocity, and the big one closed his mouth and at last shook his head in agreement.
“Where we go?” said the big one, finally.
“Up,” replied the sergeant.
The ground grew no drier as they climbed the small tor. Indeed, it now had the added difficulty of being steep as well as damp. The hill was completely saturated, and the hobgoblins began to slip as they climbed. Their trail became a broad swath of mud-stained grass, and their armor was soon decorated with clumps of hanging sod.
“Where we going?” asked the big one again.
“Up,” said the sergeant.
“Down is easier,” said one of the smaller hobgoblins, which earned another icy glare from the one-eyed sergeant.
The fog-shrouded hilltop loomed above them, and a great granite cliff suddenly reared from the tor, blocking their path. “Up,” said the sergeant a third time, pointing at the small complainer.
“It’s wet and slippery,” protested the small hobgoblin.
“Stone is harder than mud,” said the sergeant. “Therefore it’s less slippery than mud.” The other hobgoblins in the group looked around for anyone to gainsay this bit of wisdom. There was no one.
The small hobgoblin was soon scrabbling up the granite cliff, a rope tied around his waist. He started strong, but tired halfway up, and the sergeant had to bellow threats to get him to finish the climb. The sergeant made it clear it was safer to climb up than to climb down, so up the small hobgoblin went.
He disappeared at the cliff’s edge and was gone, finding some tree or rock to secure the line. A moment later he appeared over the edge again and gave a thumbs-up to the patrol below.
The sergeant hooked a thumb at the rope. “Up you go,” he said.
The big complainer looked at the thin strand of hemp. “Don’t look safe,” he said. He looked more afraid than challenging.
“Neither am I,” snapped the sergeant, but the big complainer still stared at the rope. The sergeant sighed, “I go first, but when I get to the top, you follow, unnerstand?”
The big one (and most of the others) nodded in agreement as the sergeant began the climb. He found the stone was more slippery than the mud after all, and he had to clutch the rope tightly in order to keep from falling. At last he arrived at the top. The view was less than spectacular. There was slightly less rain up this high, but the hilltop was still wrapped in clouds. The surrounding whiteness parted slightly, allowing a brief glimpse of the neighboring hills before wrapping the hobgoblins in another gray, wool blanket.
They were on a gray promontory of bare rock, broken only by a single twisted tree, its thick and ancient roots shattering the surrounding stone. The small hobgoblin had tied the rope to one of the more prominent, arching roots.
“Not much to see,” said the small hobgoblin. “We go down now?”
The sergeant scowled. He’d had to scrabble up here. He’d be damned if the rest of the patrol got off scot-free. Instead he leaned over the edge and let out an assault of obscenities, promising all manner of torture for the last hobgoblin up.
The rest of the patrol sprang into action, fighting among themselves for the opportunity to clamber up the rope. The big one, the complainer, was the first up the rope, but the others followed closely, not waiting for him to get more than a quarter of the way up before following. Soon most of the patrol was hanging on the rope up the cliffside, their twisted paws clutching the rope and the surrounding rocks. Some lost their grips and slid down, bashing into others, who in turn lost their hold and slid a few feet into the rest of the patrol.
The sergeant watched their attempts and muttered a curse, thinking of the (relative) warmth and the (relative) dryness of their base camp. His ruminations were broken off by a sharp snapping noise directly behind him.
It sounded like the noise a crossbow made when sprung. He wheeled but saw nothing else on the tor except the small hobgoblin and the gnarl-rooted tree. The small hobgoblin was looking at the tree, his eyes round like platters.