If she did like me, I wasn’t about to make this harder. It was a bad idea to screw around when sensitive feelings were on the line. It risked making friends into enemies.
“It’s like the bit of glass in my hand,” she said. “Things have sucked for so long, even this… inconvenience, it’s cool. It’s great, like the nugget said. Because I’m not there. I’m not dealing with that.”
“Yeah,” I said.
The goblins were spreading out, drawing closer.
“If we’re here and we only ever talk, that’s great,” she said, as she climbed off me. She dropped to the ground, elbows bent, ready to pounce, “If you’re carrying me that’s great, too. If you decide you want to date or whatever it is monsters do together, or if you want to do something with none of the strings attached or people trying to make you into something you’re not, then that’s great. Better than great.”
“I’m not sure how this is going to turn out.” If we’ll survive the night?
“So? You’re being weird and overthinking it.”
I think you’re being weird by talking about it right now, when we’re about to get in a damn fight.
“I don’t want to mislead you, or hurt your feelings.”
“You got me out of there. You freed me and you didn’t have to. I’m not… you’re not that guy you were talking about. You’re you and you helped me and you’re my hero. Hell, you offered to let me eat you. You’re nice.”
“That’s an odd metric for nice,” I said.
“I don’t think big about the future, I don’t think complicated. The only way you’re going to hurt me is if you lie to me or if you decide you never want to see me again.”
“I don’t think I can lie,” I said, “And in terms of the future, if we make it out of this, if I’m being honest, I’ve always thought of the future as this place I’d go where I could get away from it all, get away from everyone…”
She wasn’t facing me, but I could see the muscles in her arms and back tense.
“…But,” I said, “You’re on the short list of company I’d like to keep, anyway. Only way that’s going to change is if you eat someone I care about.”
“Great!”
“‘Ey, fish,” one of the hairy goblins said. He moved his knife over to the hand with the bottle and then groped his man-parts. “You want company? I got some right ‘ere. Two ‘andfuls.”
To his credit, it did look like two.
“Already stanks like pussy,” the other hairy goblin said. “Fishy smell. Gets the heart pumping, ‘ey? You can ‘ave us both at the same time, fishy. If you’re good, we won’t cut you up for sushi after.”
I saw her tense.
Thinking she was stressed or bothered delayed me by about a second. Then I realized who I was thinking about, and only just managed a “Wait!”
But she pounced. Strength of arms and tail together, she covered a solid ten feet, from ground to eye level.
Right for the one with the knife and hatchet.
He staggered back a few steps, trying to keep from being bowled over.
It was pretty impressive he managed to keep his feet at all. They were strong.
But Green Eyes’ jaw strength wasn’t that bad, either.
She sank her teeth into his throat.
Dropping the hatchet, grabbing her hair, he tried to pull her away. It wasn’t that effective – basic engineering at work. To get her to let go, he’d have to pry her jaw open, or pull her teeth out of his throat sideways.
She swung her tail around and up, and slapped the second hairy one in the face. Pulling the tail away, she removed a full quarter of the face, and sent him staggering toward me.
Having them both at the same time, in a way.
I was already moving forward, acting on instinct.
The goblin’s arms were already up around his face, so I went for the body, rather than risk hitting the arms. I stabbed him in the ribcage, stomach, then a few more times in the ribcage.
I wasn’t sure what I was stabbing for, and he was big enough that I wasn’t sure the Hyena’s relatively short blade was penetrating anything vital. If goblins had the same vitals.
I stabbed, then cut, forcing it out sideways. The blade penetrated between two ribs, and exited about a half-foot below the armpit.
I couldn’t focus too much on the one. Green Eyes was still attacking the other, and the other two goblins were on the attack. Fatty and the woman goblin with the tongue.
The woman squared off against me, which left Fatty to go after Green Eyes, cleavers in hand.
The woman goblin’s pipe was held like a spear. I could smell the substances on the end. Caked in shit and blood, from the smell of it.
I tried to move around, but she was almost as fast as I was, and her weapon had reach. She jabbed for my face. I slashed back in retaliation, trying to strike the spear. I hit only air.
“Watch out!” I called out.
The fat one was attacking, cleavers swinging.
Green Eyes leaped away, pushing herself off with as much force as she’d leaped onto the hairy goblin.
In that half-second where I was looking, the woman goblin caught my throat with her tongue. She turned in a quick circle, her tongue winding around her head, then leaned her head back in the same moment her spear came forward.
I managed to turn my head just in time to avoid losing an eye. The spear’s point raked the side of my head, digging over my scalp.
She leaned to one side, using the fact that my head was turned, pulling me just a bit off balance.
Enough that I couldn’t do anything as she stabbed the spear through the bottom of my chin. The point hit the back of my throat.
I could taste it. The metal, the shit, the blood.
I cut with the Hyena, but the tongue was already retracting.
The spear was yanked out, and I was pulled forward. I caught myself, and backed away before she could stab me somewhere else.
Tongue came out, lighting fast, like a frog’s, and caught my knee. She retracted it, pulling her head back, and tried to pull my leg out from under me.
I wasn’t that lightweight, though she did succeed in making my feet slide on the road’s surface, where tires had packed the snow down into an almost ice-like slickness. She retracted her tongue in the instant I started to swing the Hyena. I saw the spear coming, and elbowed it off course with a change in direction of my still-moving sword arm.
Fatty appeared at her side, cleavers in hand.
“Nuh,” she said. “Mah fog!”
“Share,” Fatty sneered.
“Mah fog!” she said, her voice shrill. She swung the spear, striking him across the face with the flat of it.
He swung the cleaver at her head. She ducked out of the way.
My throat was healing, but slowly. I wasn’t sure I could speak, with the damage to my tongue.
I couldn’t call a message to Green Eyes. We were allies on the battlefield, but until we could communicate, we weren’t much of a team.
These two were mine to deal with.
I took a step forward. Tongue slashed the spear’s point in the general direction of my head, and I was forced to stop and back away a step. She then kicked fatty in the side, screeching, “Mahn!”